innovation
Why the restaurant world hates beer drinkers
I’ve always thought working in hospitality is like getting a free MBA – but one rooted in the real world…
‘Judgment is the price of being creative’: Rory Sutherland and Rick Rubin in conversation
Rick Rubin is a legendary American record producer who co-founded Def Jam records, which helped popularise hip hop. He has…
Nothing beats a 1980s brick phone
In the late 1980s, a story entered advertising folklore. A group from an ad agency had boarded an evening train…
Below average
This week, writing in the Daily Mail, Matt Ridley produced a devastating takedown of the government’s 2030 ban on the…
Art for the people
When I mentioned the subject of this book to someone reasonably well-informed about 20th-century British art, the response was: ‘Isn’t…
Sense and sensibility
Steven Pinker and Rory Sutherland on reason vs instinct
Cross purposes
I was once asked by a previous editor of the Timeshow to increase sales of the paper. I was slightly…
31 inventions that really could transform the 21st century
‘Get Brexit done, then Arpa’ read Dominic Cummings’s WhatsApp profile. Arpa was what’s now the American Defense Advanced Research Projects…
The enquiring minds of Egypt
The government has plans to fund a new research agency to back ‘cutting-edge science’. Ptolemaios (Ptolemy) I (367-282 bc), the…
A brief history of luck
One of the staples of crime drama is the ‘cold-case squad’. This allows programme-makers to add period detail to the…
Patently wrong
In the past 30 years, I have driven about 8,000 miles in France in right-hand-drive cars. And I would be…
The other side to the division of labour: the concentration of attention
Adam Smith’s theory on the division of labour first appeared in 1776 in The Wealth of Nations. The idea was…
Does HS2 pass the Butterfield test?
Despite my opposition to High Speed 2, I am quite a big fan of HS1, the line which runs from…
