https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/the-lovestruck-explorers-deadly-guessing-game In 1860, police officer Robert O'Hara Burke plans an expedition to map the 'ghastly blank' in the centre of Australia. Joining him is scientist William Wills,...
Of honey bees, long shots, and the usefulness of useless knowledge…
https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/the-mad-mystic-and-the-last-battle-on-english-soil-with-ian-breckon As the Victorian era dawns, modernisation erodes the old ways of life and poverty rises. In the unrest, an unlikely hero emerges, capturing the...
In a column in January about the paradox of work, I recalled the immortal Douglas Adams joke about working conditions: the hours are good, but “most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy”. The joke is back already — and generative AI has flipped the script. Academics...
https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/the-sightseeing-flight-and-the-invisible-mountain In November 1979, Flight 901 departs New Zealand on a sightseeing journey over Antarctica, heading directly towards a volcano. When the plane vanishes,...
One of the most famous experiments in social psychology took place in the early 1950s. Solomon Asch, a professor at Swarthmore College, gathered together groups of young men for what he told them was an experiment in “visual judgment”. It was no such thing. What...
If the 21st century has produced a more prescient book, I’ve not seen it. I’m thinking of The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, by Harvard economics professor Benjamin Friedman. The book was published in late 2005, making it the same age as this column....
https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/and-it-went-click-dawn-of-the-working-dead Robert Propst is more than an inventor: he is a visionary, an innovator dreaming up how to make the perfect office workstation. When he reveals his bold design for a...
Am I the only one still using email instead of WhatsApp? Perhaps so. I find it ever harder to persuade my contacts — and more vexingly, my friends — to use email for important messages instead of interrupting me with the ping of an instant message. And my failure to...