A megaplant near the small village of Flixborough, England, is busy churning out a key ingredient of nylon 6, a material used in everything from stockings to toothbrushes to electronics. When a ...

Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross suggested that there are five stages of grief, but nobody has the attention span for that any more. We have leapt instead from stage one, denial — “there ...

Windscale is supposed to be Britain’s big leap into the nuclear Age, bringing science fiction to life in 1950s Northern England. But in the race to catch up with America’s nuclear ...

At the start of the 20th century, Britain was slowly becoming a freer place for women. Young Grace Oakeshott seized every opportunity to learn and improve the world around her – though she ...

Christmas now is drawing near at hand, and your favourite undercover economist has been observed performing some most uncharacteristic acts. My father used to make amazing Christmas puddings and ...

It’s become something of a seasonal tradition – with apologies to the remarkable Randall Munroe – for me to tackle your bizarre hypothetical economics questions. To give you a ...

“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 ...

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 ...

Cautionary Conversation: Steve Jobs hated his phone so much that he smashed it against a wall. He also referred to mobile carriers as “orifices”. Yet he went on to invent the world’s most popular ...