Tim Harford

Cautionary Tales – How Civilisations Die (with Paul Cooper)

https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/playlists/podcast

As Governor of Britannia, Magnus Maximus has a huge army at his disposal, which is just what he needs to secure the Roman imperial throne. But perhaps the impressive general should have looked into the past before focusing on his future. Ti

https://timharford.com/2026/06/cautionary-tales-how-civilisations-die-with-paul-cooper/

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Chatbots make stuff up. Why do we believe them anyway?

Marathon day. An early train into London, then an unfamiliar journey across a race-disrupted city from Paddington to Blackheath, all in good time for the start of the race. I was nervous, of course, but was cheered by the sight of another bib-wearing runner — more experienced at marathons, less familiar with London.

Me

https://timharford.com/2026/06/chatbots-make-stuff-up-why-do-we-believe-them-anyway/

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Cautionary Tales – Can you make a Sherman tank float?

https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/playlists/podcast

It’s D-Day and the Allies are about to invade Nazi-occupied France. For the landings to succeed, American soldiers on Omaha Beach will have to break through some formidable coastal defences – Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. Sherman tanks will come in very h

https://timharford.com/2026/05/cautionary-tales-can-you-make-a-sherman-tank-float-2/

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Rage in the age of X

There is a gap between the calm, rational decision-makers we often aspire to be and the overwrought, sentiment-tossed creatures we often are. Rarely is that gap wider than in the political arena. Policy seems like it should be a matter for cool, evidence-based deliberation, but politics is soaked in emotion.

This is not wholly to our collective advantage. Emotions often lead us astra

https://timharford.com/2026/05/rage-in-the-age-of-x/

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Cautionary Tales – The inventor who almost ended the world (classic)

https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/playlists/podcast

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 poison the air wi

https://timharford.com/2026/05/cautionary-tales-the-inventor-who-almost-ended-the-world-classic/

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Science in the shadow of the Third Reich

In these pages, and in my last book, I’ve written about the lessons we should learn from Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill’s investigations in the 1950s into the link between cigarettes and lung cancer. There is one lesson I failed to draw. I wrote that in 1954 the British epidemiologists Doll and Hill “marshalled some of the first compelling e

https://timharford.com/2026/05/science-in-the-shadow-of-the-third-reich/

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Cautionary Tales – Angels, Gold and Lust: John Dee and the Philosopher’s Stone (Part 2)

https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/playlists/podcast

Part Two: When Tudor polymath John Dee meets a man who claims he can speak with angels, his path to understanding the universe suddenly becomes clear. At their instruction, the pair begin searching for the fabled philosopher's stone. But

https://timharford.com/2026/05/cautionary-tales-john-dee-2/

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Betting on risk changes the world

It was one of the most astonishing displays of persuasion I have ever seen. In the audience, a group of Midwestern agribusiness types, who by profession should have been well attuned to climate change, but by culture were deeply sceptical. On the stage, a Germanic gentleman from one of the great Alpine reinsurance companies, presenting a meticulous analysis of h

https://timharford.com/2026/05/betting-on-risk-changes-the-world/

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Cautionary Tales – The Queen’s Astrologer: the Price of Prophecy

https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/playlists/podcast

In Tudor England, the line between mathematics and the mystic arts is vanishingly thin. Straddling both worlds is John Dee, a brilliant scholar and astrologer whose intellect grants him access to the highest circles of power. Dee navigates the politics of the c

https://timharford.com/2026/05/cautionary-tales-john-dee-1/

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When persistence prevails

Almost 51 years ago — when I was still a toddler — a gaming and science-fiction enthusiast named Lee Gold put together the first edition of an unusual collaborative role-playing-games magazine, Alarums and Excursions. This time last year, after 593 monthly editions, she abruptly stopped. Gold is in her mid-eighties, and her eyesight is no longer up to the task.

Alarums and E

https://timharford.com/2026/05/when-persistence-prevails/

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Cautionary Tales – The Drop of Paint that Sank a Submarine

Brand new submarine HMS Thetis is the pride of the British Navy. In 1939, she sets out for a test dive with 103 men on board. But a tiny flaw in her construction has gone unnoticed, and the crew of Thetis is soon racing against time to stop that flaw from spiralling into total destruction.

This episode is availabl

https://timharford.com/2026/05/cautionary-tales-the-drop-of-paint-that-sank-a-submarine/

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Cautionary Tales – Beware Tech Tycoons with Piranha Tanks, with Katie Prescott 

https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/playlists/podcast

Mike Lynch was often lauded as Britain's answer to Bill Gates. Born into a working-class family, Lynch's incredible intellect and passion for computers led him to become a billionaire tech entreprene

https://timharford.com/2026/05/cautionary-tales-beware-tech-tycoons-with-piranha-tanks-with-katie-prescott/

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Lessons from your petrol pump

It may seem strange to celebrate, but let’s hear it for oil-price shocks. Admittedly, there is little reason to rejoice in a disruption to the world’s energy system. The price of oil is linked to the price of all sorts of essentials, including food, so this crisis will be painful for billions of people. But the high price is the consequence of the energy shock, not the

https://timharford.com/2026/04/lessons-from-your-petrol-pump/

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Marathon day tomorrow…

Well, it's been a long road since I raced the dinosaurs at a New Year's Day parkrun. I've managed various niggles (knee, glute, achilles... yawn). I've run around the amazing Ladybower Reservoir, across St Mark's Square, even chased Alistair Brownlee down Regent's Park Canal. (He is faster than the dinosaurs.)

And tomorrow: it's my first marathon. Quite possibly my only marathon. I'v

https://timharford.com/2026/04/marathon-day-tomorrow/

#Marginalia

Cautionary Tales – Finding grace in a burger bun: an incrediburgible quest

https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/playlists/podcast

Dick and Mac are content with their lives: they enjoy making burgers by day and stargazing by night. Ray Kroc is a workaholic chasing success at any cost. When the brothers’ folksy charm collides with Kroc’s

https://timharford.com/2026/04/cautionary-tales-finding-grace-in-a-burger-bun-an-incrediburgible-quest-2/

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A $30mn lesson in patience

Bobby Bonilla is known to baseball fans of a certain age as one of the best batters in the sport back in the 1980s and 90s. To grumpy fans of the New York Mets, he is known as the man who fooled the Mets into agreeing to one of the worst contracts in the history of baseball. And, thanks to an entertaining new guide to economics, Planet Money, he is known to me as a man who tea

https://timharford.com/2026/04/a-30mn-lesson-in-patience/

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Cautionary Tales – Run, Switzer, Run: The Women Who Broke the Marathon Taboo (Classic)

https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/playlists/podcast

Until the 1960s, women couldn't compete in Olympic events any longer than a sprint - and commentators declared that a marathon would kill them, or leave them unable to have children. Rubbis

https://timharford.com/2026/04/cautionary-tales-run-switzer-run-the-women-who-broke-the-marathon-taboo-classic/

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How can we tell good AI from bad?

Among the many steps along the road to high-performance AI, one of the most important was taken in 2007 by Fei-Fei Li, then an assistant professor in Princeton’s computer science department. Using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service to amass many millions of small acts of human judgment, Li built a vast database of hand-labelled images.

“We settled on a goal of

https://timharford.com/2026/04/how-can-we-tell-good-ai-from-bad/

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Cautionary Tales – Bravo, Comrade Lysenko! The Man Who Failed To Feed The USSR

Comrade Lysenko has seized control of Soviet agriculture with his radical ideas about genetics. He disdains traditional scientists who learn everything from books and nothing from the land, and those who question his methods soon find themselves in trouble with Stalin.  Meanwhile, across the world the abrasive Iowan

https://timharford.com/2026/04/cautionary-tales-lysenko-and-borlaug/

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Running a marathon for Winnie

On 26 April, I plan to be on the start line of the London Marathon. I’m in my fifties, I’ve only been running for a few years, and this will be my first marathon. I’m doing it to raise money for the Teenage Cancer Trust (TCT).

Cancer is brutal for anyone. For teenagers and young adults, it can be isolating in a particular way: while friends are setting off on the adventures o

https://timharford.com/2026/04/running-a-marathon-for-winnie/

#Marginalia

Cautionary Tales – The Lovestruck Explorer’s Deadly Guessing Game

https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/playlists/podcast

In 1860, police officer Robert O'Hara Burke plans an expedition to map the ghastly blank in the centre of Australia. Joining him is scientist William Wills, and a ragtag team of hires. Burke falls out with virtually everyone around him, and demonstrates a

https://timharford.com/2026/04/cautionary-tales-burke-and-wills/

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The usefulness of useless knowledge

Of honey bees, long shots, and the usefulness of useless knowledge...

https://timharford.com/2026/04/the-usefulness-of-useless-knowledge/

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What if AI just makes us work harder?

In a column in January about the paradox of work, I recalled the immortal Douglas Adams joke about working conditions: the hours are good, but “most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy”. The joke is back already — and generative AI has flipped the script.

Academics at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business have been doing ethnographic research into

https://timharford.com/2026/04/what-if-ai-just-makes-us-work-harder/

#UndercoverEconomist

It’s the end of the world as we know it (but I feel fine)

How are you doing? Well, I hope, despite everything. And if you are, then you are just like all the friends and colleagues who sent me messages at Christmas, all of them claiming that they were also doing just fine, also despite everything.

The contradiction here is worth exploring: I’m fine, you’re fine, they’re

https://timharford.com/2026/02/its-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-but-i-feel-fine/

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