Pepsi twice ended up in court after promotions went disastrously wrong. Other big companies have fallen into the same trap – promising customers rewards so generous that to fulfil the promise ...

As artificial intelligence becomes ever more capable, is any job secure? “I’ve sort of convinced myself that the safest job in the world is probably gardener,” the FT’s chief economics commentator ...

One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic. If Stalin ever said such a thing, he wasn’t the first — but the ghoulish claim has stuck to him because he is one of very few ...

Fire at The Beverly Hills Supper Club (Update) It's been five years since Cautionary Tales ran a mini-series about the Covid-19 pandemic, exploring the lessons we were learning in real time as the ...

Lying on the cold metal table, Voyne Ray Cox knew the drill. This was his ninth round of cancer treatment – which is why he was certain that what happened next couldn’t be right. He ...

Smoking kills. A few people had suspected as much before the second world war, but it was not until 1950 that the scientific evidence began to accumulate that smokers were at dramatically higher ...

Adi and Rudi Dassler made sports shoes together – until a feud erupted between them. They set up competing companies, Adidas and Puma, and their bitter rivalry divided the sporting world, their family ...

“Thanks to Tim Harford’s characteristic wit and magnetic storytelling, you may not realize you’re getting an advanced course in how to understand the kinds of statistics we’re all faced with every day ...

Fire at The Beverly Hills Supper Club (Update) It's been five years since Cautionary Tales ran a mini-series about the Covid-19 pandemic, exploring the lessons we were learning in real time as the ...

Visit the post for more.“Endlessly insightful and full of surprises — exactly what you would expect from Tim Harford.” Bill Bryson In Fifty Things that Made the Modern Economy, I presented a selection ...

Did you know that a toy spaceship can teach you about inflation? Or that a pooping cow can show you how to invest your pocket money? And that even the greatest detectives have been fooled by fake news ...