A radical thought experiment transforms the lives of a new breed of philanthropists, as they follow the logic of altruism to extraordinary lengths. The most famous convert to the Effective ...

You’re not imagining it. There is something shallow about modern life — a sense that traditional virtues, from craftsmanship to professionalism to loyalty, have somehow been hollowed out. Don’t ...

George Price is on a mission to prove that human kindness is real. He’s seen the latest research suggesting any altruism is ultimately selfish and finds it deeply depressing. George decides ...

Can we “nudge” our way to a higher rate of economic growth? In a recent speech, David Halpern argued that we should at least try. Halpern was the founder of the Behavioural Insight Team (BIT) that ...

Steven Spielberg thought his career was finished. He was behind schedule, his actors were fighting, the crew were mutinous and worst of all, his shark was broken. It looked like Jaws was destined for ...

This episode is released exclusively on Pushkin+. Episodes are released on the main feed each Friday. The sewing machine was once thought to be an impossible invention. It was such a complicated ...

This week’s episode is a Cautionary Questions special with Nate Silver (On The Edge) and Maria Konnikova (The Biggest Bluff) of Risky Business. “Thanks to Tim Harford’s characteristic wit and magnetic ...

Beneath all the tariff craziness — the taxes on islands inhabited only by penguins, the pseudo-profound mathematical definition of “reciprocal”, the idea that the settled trade policy of every other ...

This episode is released exclusively on Pushkin+. Episodes are released on the main feed each Friday. In 1912, a fossil discovery shakes the scientific world. Piltdown Man is the elusive missing link ...

Of all the dubious claims uttered recently by Elon Musk, I have yet to see a more interesting one than his tweet asserting that “a more accurate measure of GDP would exclude government spending.