This week’s episode is a Cautionary Questions special with Nate Silver (On The Edge) and Maria Konnikova (The Biggest Bluff) of Risky Business.

The quest for the elusive Giffen good has taken economists to the depths of the Irish potato famine, to the poorest parts of rural China and to the cages of lab rats at Texas A&M University.

Sixteen years have passed since Ferdinand De Lesseps’ catastrophic failure in Panama, and the dramatic collapse of the French Panama Canal company. Now, President Theodore Roosevelt has picked up ...

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 ...

“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 ...

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.

20 years ago, a book called Freakonomics became an instant bestseller and worldwide sensation. Tim Harford got his hands on the first copy that Steve Levitt ever signed… and promptly sold it on eBay.

When Britain entered its first Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020, many found comfort in evoking the British wartime spirit. A timely hero emerged – Captain Tom Moore, a WWII veteran who walked up and ...