1957. Jørn Utzon receives a phone call: he's just won an international competition to design a brand new opera house for the Australian city of Sydney. Utzon is unknown in the field, so this is a triumph. But the young architect couldn’t have imagined what a bitter...
Cautionary Book Club:When Morgan Stanley offered to lease Chicago's parking meters for the princely sum of $1 billion, the City Council were convinced they had struck gold and hastily signed the deal. They soon learnt, however, that they hadn't just traded away...
1812. A band of "Luddites" is laying siege to a textile mill in the North of England, under cover of night. They plan to destroy the machines that are replacing their jobs. But mill owner William Cartwright is prepared: he's fortified his factory with skilled...
Andy Warhol’s assistant, Gerard Malanga, is facing a long prison sentence in Italy. He’s forged several Che Guevara portraits and tried to pass them off as genuine Warhols. What happens next is a landmark moment in the history of art and authenticity… Tim Harford is...
Heroic explorer Frederick Cook has just returned from the very roof of the world, the first man to reach the North Pole. Or so he says. Journalist Philip Gibbs has been watching him, and he’s convinced he’s lying. When Gibbs publishes that belief, he stands alone....
We're releasing an epic three-part series about the V2 rocket - a terrifying and also bafflingly expensive weapon. How did Nazi Germany ever decide to build such a thing, and what does it teach us about grandiose projects today? Also - what does the shameful...
This week I present a personal reflection on what the late Henry Petroski meant to me and how he influenced my thinking and writing, followed by our classic episode "Death on the Dance Floor". The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance by Henry Petroski remains...
This week I speak to Ben Nadaff-Hafrey about his podcast The Last Archive, the time the US started panicking about parakeets, population control, Ursula Le Guin, and more. Enjoy! If you want to read my essay about the wonderful Elinor Ostrom and her intellectual...
“If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss..." Those words -- from Rudyard Kipling's poem "If" -- were based on charismatic nineteenth century doctor Leander Starr Jameson. In Britain, Jameson was worshipped as a plucky...