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 ...

Chris McKinlay is a good looking, smart student at UCLA, but he can’t seem to get a girlfriend. He’s a computing expert, so why not use his technology prowess to supercharge his search ...

To celebrate – or commiserate – this year’s Valentine’s Day, Tim has something a little different. Straight from the Cautionary Library of misadventures comes a bumper crop ...

In February 1912, noted scientist Arthur Woodward received an intriguing letter from Charles Dawson, a country lawyer with a growing reputation as an amateur geologist. Dawson told Woodward that ...

In the final days of the Sixties, The Rolling Stones join forces with other rock legends to plan a free concert at Altamont that will rival Woodstock.The “bad boys of rock” don’t have the best ...

https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/playlists/podcast https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/sphygmograph-be-damned-the-science ...

This episode is released exclusively on Pushkin+. Episodes are released on the main feed each Friday. An amateurish burglary in 1950s London ends in murder. One of the men involved is a 19-year-old ...

Thomas Midgley’s inventions caused his own death, hastened the deaths of millions of people around the world, and very nearly extinguished all life on land. Midgley and his employers didn’t set out to ...

Panic has erupted in the cockpit of AirFrance Flight 447. The pilots are convinced they’ve lost control of the plane. It’s lurching violently. Then, it begins plummeting from the sky at breakneck ...