The noise of time
A study of the work of the British Library Sound Archive.
Snow Science Against the Avalanche
An insight into specialist avalanche mitigation teams and the challenges they face working with a natural material that is “light and fluffy and soft and downy, and it’s everybody’s favorite thing in the world” but also “one of the most destructive forces in nature”.
Everything on ‘Naked and Afraid’ Is Real—and I Lived It
The author writes about her extraordinary experience on the long-running Discovery Channel show Naked and Afraid, where two strangers have to survive in the wilderness together with nothing but a handful of tools.
The Secret History of a Cold War Mastermind
A great story about a master player in the “murky intersection of spycraft, politics, and war” during the Cold War, and whether his biggest operation was a “monkey wrench or a major event?”
Why outbreaks like coronavirus spread exponentially, and how to “flatten the curve”
A data story modelling the potential impact of different responses to infectious diseases, using a fictitious disease ‘simulitis’ for illustrative purposes.
The Drone Boat of ‘Shipwreck Alley’
A self-driving boat is helping with the discovery and exploration of shipwrecks.
Was the Millennium Dome really so bad? The inside story of a (not so) total disaster
The inside story of an often reviled, yet somehow enduring British infrastructure project – the Millennium Dome.
How do we know her?
Hillary Mantel displays her trademark historical insight, deftness of touch, and ability to create a sense of immediacy in this review of a 2017 book about the wealthy and influential 16th century noblewoman Margaret Pole.
Wikipedia Is the Last Best Place on the Internet
A look at the utopian vision of Wikipedia, the only not for profit in the top ten most visited sites on the web, and a journey through some of the tricky challenges inherent in creating any encyclopaedia, let alone an online one that is crowdsourced. Wikipedia is now so integrated into the web that its data arm powers all sorts of other services; a sign of its maturity to be sure, though also occasionally resulting in blips, such as when Apple’s Siri voice assistant “briefly thought Bulgaria’s national anthem was “Despacito”.