Tim Harford

@timharford.bsky.social

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FT columnist, BBC journalist, author, host of Cautionary Tales, professional nerd.

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Cautionary Tales – Run, Switzer, Run: The Women Who Broke the Marathon Taboodlvr.it 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. Rubbish, of course. But when Kathrine Switzer signed up for the 1967…

What zebras can teach us about international tradedlvr.it It’s not often that you can squeeze zebras into a column about trade tariffs, but against the backdrop of a trade war over electric vehicles, with the US election, the Chinese economy and the global climate at stake, let’s try. The Biden administration is…

Shakespeare’s forgotten legacy: hyperbolic numbersdlvr.it There is a theory that Shakespeare was an accountant. How else to explain the detailed use of bookkeeping metaphors in his writing? “We shall not spend a large expense of time/ Before we reckon with your several loves,” declares Malcolm in Macbeth, “And…

Cautionary Tales – Adidas v Puma: A Battle of Boots and Brothersdlvr.it 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 and even the inhabitants of their home town. The…

The detours on memory lanedlvr.it Do you remember where you were when you heard that planes had struck the World Trade Center? That the Challenger shuttle had exploded? Or that Nelson Mandela had been released? Your memories may be different from mine, but not as different as Fiona…

It’s Independent Bookshop Week!dlvr.it I suggest that this is a particularly good week to visit your local independent bookshop and buy some lovely books. If, however, you are not in easy reach of an independent bookshop, Bookshop is the website which donates 30% of sales revenue to an…

There is no need to lose our minds over the Jevons paradoxdlvr.it A few years ago, two San Francisco doctors, Mary Mercer and Christopher Peabody, persuaded the busy hospital where they worked to conduct an experiment. They replaced their clunky and inflexible old pagers with a cheaper, more flexible and more powerful…

Cautionary Tales – The Revenge of the Whalesdlvr.it In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in 1819, Owen Chase is standing on a slowly sinking ship. It’s just been headbutted by an 85 foot whale. It’s taking in water. And now the creature is coming back for another go. This is a whaling ship, and Chase is…

When your smartphone tries to be too smartdlvr.it Back in the 1980s, the design expert Donald Norman was chatting to a colleague when his office phone rang. He finished his sentence before reaching for the phone, but that delay was a mistake. The phone stopped ringing and, instead, his secretary’s phone…

The lesson of Loki? Trade lessdlvr.it The pages of the Financial Times are not usually a place for legends about ancient gods, but perhaps I can be indulged in sharing one with a lesson to teach us all. More than a century ago, Odin, All-father, greatest of the Norse gods, went to his…

Cautionary Tales – When the robots take over… Cautionary Questionsdlvr.it Tim Harford is joined by Jacob Goldstein to answer your questions. Does winning the lottery make you unhappy? Is Bitcoin bad for the economy? When does correlation imply causation? And what will Tim and Jacob do when the robot overlords come for their…

Fossil fuels could have been left in the dust 25 years agodlvr.it Gordon Moore’s famous prediction about computing power must count as one of the most astonishingly accurate forecasts in history. But it may also have been badly misunderstood — in a way that now looks like a near-catastrophic missed opportunity. If we…

The surprising data behind supercentenariansdlvr.it If there is a Dog Heaven, what must Bobi be thinking as he gazes down? Bobi’s place in the record books seemed assured when he died in October at the age of 31 years and 165 days — more than two years older than his closest rival for the title of the…

Cautionary Tales – WW2: How Britain Ignored the Mother of All Secretsdlvr.it Cautionary Tales will be LIVE on stage in London 21 May 2024. Tickets are on sale now. Neatly dressed in his suit, Hans Ferdinand Mayer was every inch the unassuming corporate executive. So, when he asked to borrow a typewriter from his hotel in Oslo,…

Why, deep down, we’re all ultramarathonersdlvr.it Jasmin Paris is not built like ordinary mortals. Last month she won a moment of fame after completing the Barkley Marathons, a race so brutal that only 19 men have managed to finish in the past 35 years. Paris is the first woman to complete the race. It…

Cautionary Tales – The Fraudster’s Guide to Magic Moneydlvr.it Cautionary Tales will be LIVE on stage in London 21 May 2024. Tickets are on sale now. Sam Israel had a problem. The investors in his hedge fund, Bayou Capital, were expecting spectacular returns. Sam himself had spent years proclaiming the fund’s…

Why the biscuit tax leaves a bad taste in the mouthdlvr.it Earlier this year, two distinguished gentlemen, Judge Hyde and his adviser Julian Stafford, sampled a mineral-enriched flapjack — alas, a year past its sell-by date — and pondered its qualities. (Flapjacks are slabs of oats stuck together with a glue made…

Cautionary Tales – Blood and Gold (with Dan Snow)dlvr.it Bonus: When Spanish conquistadors arrived in Peru in 1526, it was the beginning of the end for the Inca. Their bloody pursuit of gold, fame and fortune was rife with treachery and deceit. Within a few short years, the once-thriving Incan empire had been…

A TikTok ban won’t solve social media’s collective trapdlvr.it US legislators are eager to ban TikTok. They are missing a bigger question: should they also ban Instagram, Facebook and the network formerly known as Twitter? The obvious answer is “no”, because although everyone grumbles about social media, we still use…

Cautionary Tales – the Rise and Fall of a Megalomaniacdlvr.it Nicolae Ceaușescu was not beloved. His regime was vicious and he treated Romania as his personal wallet: while Ceaușescu emptied the coffers to construct a vast, ornate palace, his people starved. He imposed disastrous population control policies on his…

Why Swifties, holidaymakers and the hygienic should cheer for surge pricingdlvr.it The “Wendy’s Dave’s Triple” is a fast-food offering that stacks two possessives and three hamburgers. I am not sure how easy it is to swallow in either regard, but what has really been sticking in people’s throats is the prospect of surge pricing at the…

The surprising public health benefit of unemploymentdlvr.it Here’s a discovery to bring you up short: unemployment is good for you. Really? Well, no, not really. But a new research paper has found a correlation that points in that direction: more unemployment, fewer deaths. Underneath lies something real, shocking…

Cautionary Tales – Inside the Bizarre World of Dictatorsdlvr.it Why are so many autocrats germaphobes? Why was the truth so dangerous for Soviet engineers? And what can salami reveal to us about the mind of Vladimir Putin? Tim Harford, host of the Cautionary Tales podcast, examines the true stories behind the HBO…

The alternate universe in which Tottenham are topdlvr.it Back in October, the headteacher at my son’s school began each assembly by displaying the Premier League table, with Tottenham Hotspur at the top. (My son, a fan of Tottenham’s local rivals Arsenal, was outraged.) Those familiar with English football will…

Why friends are always right – no matter their viewsdlvr.it My colleague John Burn-Murdoch recently presented striking evidence of a new trend: young men and young women are becoming politically segregated. Young men now sit substantially to the right of young women on the political spectrum. This is an…

Cautionary Tales – Do Nothing, Then Do Lessdlvr.it Chuck Yeager’s plane pitched and rolled as it plummeted from the sky. He grappled with the controls inside the cockpit, but to no avail: he couldn’t steady the aircraft. The test pilot was known for his nerves of steel but, as the barren Mojave Desert…

The real quandary of AI isn’t what people thinkdlvr.it Do you think the leading large language model, GPT-4, could suggest a solution to Wordle after having four previous guesses described to it? Could it compose a biography-in-verse of Alan Turing, while also replacing “Turing” with “Church”? (Turing’s PhD…

What the birth of the spreadsheet teaches us about generative AIdlvr.it When the spreadsheet launched in 1979, it was a bewildering piece of software. People had no idea what they were looking at. A computer screen, filled with a grid of numbers? As Keith Houston explains in his new history of the pocket calculator, Empire of…

Cautionary Tales – Buried Evil: V2 Rocket (Part 3)dlvr.it As US troops approached a prison camp in Nazi Germany, they could hear agonized wailing. The stench of rotting flesh filled their nostrils. Moments later they discovered a pile of smoldering corpses, alongside emaciated survivors. Next to the…

Of top-notch algorithms and zoned-out humansdlvr.it On June 1 2009, Air France Flight 447 vanished on a routine transatlantic flight. The circumstances were mysterious until the black box flight recorder was recovered nearly two years later, and the awful truth became apparent: three highly trained pilots…