Robert Solow, the Nobel laureate economist, says he had long been “bothered” by the fact that most people — even educated people — “had no clear idea of what economics is, and what economists do”. Solow was born in Brooklyn in 1924, to what he has described as a...
In the 17th century, a boy named Hugh Montgomery fell from his horse and lost part of his rib cage; doctors replaced it with a metal plate and he survived — with a living heart that could be inspected by the pioneering doctor William Harvey. Phineas Gage survived a...
There may be times and places where it’s a good idea to talk back to a military officer — but Germany in 1906 wasn’t one of them. So the young corporal didn’t. The corporal — let’s call him Muller — had been leading his squad of four privates down Sylterstrasse in...
My recent "lunch with the FT" with Richard Thaler (Nobel laureate, author of Nudge and Misbehaving) was a lot of fun. I don't do these formal sit-down interviews often but over the years I've racked up a few. At the end of the lunch I mentioned to Thaler the other...
The Anthologist doesn’t serve cashew nuts, so I order a bowl of smoked almonds instead. When they arrive, caramelised and brown as barbecue sauce, I ask for them to be put right in front of Richard Thaler. He protests that the waiter isn’t in on the joke. The readers...
The year 2011 was a big one for me. My son was born. We moved to a new city. I published a book. But something else happened that was in some ways more significant: on February 9 2011, I bought my first smartphone. It didn’t feel like a milestone in my life at the...
J F C Fuller did not invent the tank. That distinction should probably fall to E L de Mole, an Australian who approached the British war office in 1912 with a design that was — in the words of historians Kenneth Macksey and John Batchelor — “so convincingly similar to...
Given that The Cost-Benefit Revolution (UK) (US) has emerged from the pen of the co-author of Nudge (UK) (US) — the 2008 book that showed how to pull the levers of behavioural science to persuade us to eat less, save more and donate our kidneys — we should start with...
I'm delighted to report that "Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy" is out in paperback in the UK this week. (The US edition - Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy - is out at the end of August. Sorry you have to wait...) I had such fun writing this...