Windscale is supposed to be Britain's big leap into the nuclear Age, bringing science fiction to life in 1950s Northern England. But in the race to catch up with America's nuclear program, scientists are tinkering with forces they don't fully understand. When the...
https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/the-disappearance-of-grace-oakeshott At the start of the 20th century, Britain was slowly becoming a freer place for women. Young Grace Oakeshott seized every opportunity to learn and improve the world around her...
Christmas now is drawing near at hand, and your favourite undercover economist has been observed performing some most uncharacteristic acts. My father used to make amazing Christmas puddings and distribute them to his children. Now that he’s dead, I have the recipe...
It's become something of a seasonal tradition - with apologies to the remarkable Randall Munroe - for me to tackle your bizarre hypothetical economics questions. To give you a sense of what I meanm here are some questions from previous years: What if DogeCoin became...
https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/homo-deceptus-sciences-dirty-little-secret In 1912, a fossil discovery shakes the scientific world. Piltdown Man is the elusive missing link between humans and their ape-like ancestors. Forty years, and countless...
Given how many things there are to rage-tweet about these days, it was almost a pleasure to stumble upon the hate for the Analog™ to-do list system, available from a Philadelphia-based design studio, UgMonk, for a mere $100. What does that $100 buy you? Basically,...
https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/kyoto-the-battle-that-defined-climate-politics-with-joe-robertson Misinformation, double-dealing, character assassination - lobbyist Don Pearlman will stop at nothing to prevent the world from agreeing to cut...
Algorithmic dating, like online dating in general, has overpromised and underdelivered. Yes, that is the uninformed opinion of a centrist dad who has never tried online dating — but it is not merely the uninformed opinion of a centrist dad who has never tried online...
I've played tabletop role-playing games for forty years or so, but I've never played in a "professional" game. That changed last week when - as a guest of RPG Taverns in south London - I was given a run through one of the new adventures in "Welcome to Hellfire Club",...