https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?p=CAD6536215675 My new book, "How To Make The World Add Up", is out tomorrow around the world (except US / Canada). Ordering a copy early, online or from your local bookshop is enormously helpful: it prods review interest, encourages...
The eradication of smallpox is one of humanity's great achievements - but the battle against the virus was fought by the most unlikely of alliances. How did the breakthrough happen - and can we guarantee that the world is still safe from smallpox? Written by Tim...
For years, people had warned that New Orleans was vulnerable - but when a hurricane came close to destroying the city, the reaction was muted. Some people took the near miss as a warning - others, as confirmation that there was nothing to worry about. So why do we...
Not far from where I grew up, there's a village called Eyam with a story to tell - a story of a plague, and of tragedy, and of heroism. That old tale sits easily with stories of our modern response to the pandemic: too many people seem unwilling to suffer the...
Clive Stone was dying, and the drug that might help him was unavailable: a spreadsheet somewhere said that the numbers didn't add up. But Clive Stone wasn't a man to accept that sort of decision without a fight. How do we value human life? What happens when we turn...
Saving people from an urgent threat can cause their lives to be blighted in profound, yet hidden ways. A monstrous wave and then a nuclear disaster forced Mikio and Hamako Watanabe from their home. But being saved from the potential dangers of a radiation leak...
Why did audience members fail to flee a deadly fire... despite being told to escape? Flames are spreading through a Cincinnati hotel. The staff know it, the fire department is coming, and the people in the packed cabaret bar have been told to evacuate… and yet people...
More than two and a half thousand years ago – so the story goes – King Croesus of Lydia consulted the oracle at Delphi. And the oracle assured him that if he went to war against Persia he would destroy a mighty empire. Reassured, Croesus launched his war, and was...
He’d played with Miles Davis and Art Blakey and this was to be the biggest solo concert of Keith Jarrett's career - but the Virtuoso pianist was in for a shock when he entered Cologne's opera house. The only piano at the venue was a wreck. His musical contemporaries...