Why did audience members fail to flee a deadly fire… despite being told to escape? Flames are spreading through a Cincinnati hotel. The staff know it, the fire department is coming, and the people ...

One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic. If Stalin ever said such a thing, he wasn’t the first — but the ghoulish claim has stuck to him because he is one of very few ...

Smoking kills. A few people had suspected as much before the second world war, but it was not until 1950 that the scientific evidence began to accumulate that smokers were at dramatically higher ...

"Captain Kirk Forgot to put the Machine on Stun" Lying on the cold metal table, Voyne Ray Cox knew the drill. This was his ninth round of cancer treatment - which is why he was certain that what ...

Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright. It is produced by Ryan Dilley and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music is the work of Pascal Wyse. Julia Barton edited ...

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… ...

There are eight American turkeys painted on the walls of Schleswig’s Cathedral of St Peter – which is odd… since the frescoes were created two centuries before Columbus even crossed the Atlantic. How ...

This episode is released exclusively on Pushkin+. Episodes are released on the main feed each Friday. The sewing machine was once thought to be an impossible invention. It was such a complicated ...

“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 ...