The marathon, the algorithm and me Twenty-five centuries ago, after the Greeks shattered the Persian army at Marathon, brave Pheidippides ran 26 miles to Athens with the news. Robert Browning’s poem tells the tale: “Rejoice, we conquer!” Like wine thro’ clay Joy in...
Who can predict what he will do next? Back in 1987, one of the world’s most celebrated experts opined: “Sad to say, the poor fellow has incurable emotional problems. At times he feels euphoric and can see only the favorable factors . . . At other times he is depressed...
Editor’s note: This story is presented in a choose-your-own-path style. If you happen to have a D20 on hand, feel free to roll for your choices. In 1984, when I was 11 years old, a friend told me about something new, something exciting. He urged me to try it. He...
At the London School of Economics, a few weeks before Christmas, in 1949, the Lionel Robbins seminar was about to begin. The prestigious event was at the razor’s edge of postwar economic thought: Robbins, a giant of economics, had made the LSE a rival to John Maynard...
Not long after Eric Hebborn was murdered, an off-the-record conversation with the famed artist-turned-forger was published. On tape, Hebborn made explosive claims about his time as a student at the Royal Academy of Art in the 1950s, where he had been awarded a...
One winter morning in early 1637, a sailor presented himself at the counting-house of a wealthy Dutch merchant and was offered a hearty breakfast of fine red herring. The sailor noticed an onion lying on the counter. “Thinking it, no doubt, very much out of its place...
As I was finishing the first draft of this story, the lights went off. The power to my house had failed. We checked the fuse box, found some bike lights to serve as torches, and my teenage daughter helped her little brother with his candlelit homework. My wife and I...
Early last October my phone rang. On the line was a researcher calling from Today, the BBC’s agenda-setting morning radio programme. She told me that something strange had happened, and she hoped I might be able to explain it. Nearly 16,000 positive Covid cases had...
“The things right in front of us are often the hardest to see,” declares Apollo Robbins, the world’s most famous theatrical pickpocket. “The things you look at every day, that you’re blinded to.” As he says these words, he’s standing on stage at a TED conference in...