On 26 April, I plan to be on the start line of the London Marathon. I’m in my fifties, I’ve only been running for a few years, and this will be my first marathon. I’m doing it to raise money for ...

In 1860, police officer Robert O’Hara Burke plans an expedition to map the ghastly blank in the centre of Australia. Joining him is scientist William Wills, and a ragtag team of hires. Burke ...

In the 1970s, some basic ideas in supposedly useless number theory were deployed by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman. They developed the RSA algorithm, which enables public key cryptography, ...

As the Victorian era dawns, modernisation erodes the old ways of life and poverty rises. In the unrest, an unlikely hero emerges, capturing the imagination of the countryside’s working ...

In a column in January about the paradox of work, I recalled the immortal Douglas Adams joke about working conditions: the hours are good, but “most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy”. The ...

In November 1979, Flight 901 departs New Zealand on a sightseeing journey over Antarctica, heading directly towards a volcano. When the plane vanishes, investigators are left with a mystery: how ...

One of the most famous experiments in social psychology took place in the early 1950s. Solomon Asch, a professor at Swarthmore College, gathered together groups of young men for what he told them was ...

Do you want more Cautionary Tales episodes in your life? Do you want behind the scenes stories and bonus conversations with me? Or do you want to support us in making the show? On behalf of the whole ...