William McGonagall’s poems are something else. The jarring meter, the banal imagery, the awkward rhymes: they made him a laughing stock in 19th Century Scotland and are still derided to this ...

Johnny Echols, lead guitarist for the 1960s rock band Love, is a fount of stories. In a podcast interview with superstar producer Rick Rubin a few years ago, he talked about happy accidents in the ...

This episode is released exclusively on Pushkin+. Episodes are released on the main feed each Friday. Robert Propst is more than an inventor: he is a visionary, an innovator dreaming up how to ...

Economists love to tell each other stories about perverse incentives. The “cobra effect” is a favourite. It describes an attempt by the British Raj to rid Delhi of its cobras by paying a bounty ...

Office Hell: The Demise of the Playful Workspace (Classic) In the early 90s, cutting-edge advertising agency Chiat/Day announced a radical plan, aimed at giving the company a jolt of creative renewal.

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 ...

“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 ...

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 ...

Panic has erupted in the cockpit of AirFrance Flight 447. The pilots are convinced they’ve lost control of the plane. It’s lurching violently. Then, it begins plummeting from the sky at breakneck s… ...

When Mount Tambora erupted it spewed ash across the globe; blotting out the sun; poisoning crops; and bringing starvation, illness and death to millions. It may also have helped inspire great ...