Claude Shannon was brilliant. He was the Einstein of computer science… only he loved “fritterin’ away” his time building machines to play chess, solve Rubik’s cubes and beat the house at roulette.

It’s the time of year to ponder self-improving resolutions, and I find myself consulting one of my favourite 87-year-olds: the visionary author Stewart Brand. But if Brand is right, perhaps ...

Sherlock Holmes is known for approaching all mysteries with cool logic – and yet when his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle saw ...

The first line of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women is “Christmas won’t be Christmas without presents”, while Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1850 short story The Good Fairy is about Christmas presents ...

“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 ...

When the Financial Times uncovered the billion-dollar Wirecard fraud, it seemed like the story was over. But then the company’s Chief Operating Officer, Jan Marsalek, vanished – leaving behind clues ...

In the gilded court of Louis XIV, 17th Century France, manners are everything. Where to sit, how to eat, what to wear – any misstep is costly. No one knows this better than François Vatel, the ...

Writer Douglas Adams, best known for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, used science fiction and satire to warn us about potential dangers in our future, from artificial intelligence to social ...

In the early 90s, cutting-edge advertising agency Chiat/Day announced a radical plan, aimed at giving the company a jolt of creative renewal. They would sweep away corner offices and cubicles and ...

As artificial intelligence becomes ever more capable, is any job secure? “I’ve sort of convinced myself that the safest job in the world is probably gardener,” the FT’s chief economics commentator ...

A radical thought experiment transforms the lives of a new breed of philanthropists, as they follow the logic of altruism to extraordinary lengths. The most famous convert to the Effective Altruism ...