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 physical bookshops to order and display the book,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...