The more we ponder, the odder the world can seem. How do footballers get their shirt numbers? Why does having daughters make couples more likely to divorce? How do you move a horse from one country to another? What counts as a journey into space? The keen minds at The Economist contemplate all these questions and more in their quest for the globe's most extraordinary quandaries and conundrums, with bizarre facts and headscratchers that show the world is even stranger than we might have thought. From plant-based milk and supermoons to the next Dalai Lama and what really happened at the storming of the Bastille, this collection of the oddest and most mindboggling explanations will amaze and delight in equal measure.

The world can be an amazing place if you know the right questions to ask: How much does a ghost reduce a house's value? How are winemakers responding to climate change? How much should you tip your Uber driver? Should your dog fear Easter more than fireworks? The keen minds of The Economist love to look beyond everyday appearances to find out what really makes things tick. In this latest collection of The Economist Explains, they have gathered the weirdest and most counter-intuitive answers they've found in their endless quest to explain our bizarre world. Take a peek at some Unconventional Wisdom - and pass it on! The world only gets more amazing when discoveries are shared.

Some questions you never think to ask. Others, you didn't know you didn't know. And some facts are so surprising they cry out for answers.

What can a president actually do? Why do cities sink into the ground? Why is Australia seemingly invulnerable to recessions? Why do people in couples do more housework than singletons? The brilliant minds of the Economist collect these questions. Individually, they might seem bite-sized and inconsequential, but taken together they can reveal a whole new world.

From beer to Coca-Cola, the six drinks that have helped shape human history
Throughout human history, certain drinks have done much more than just quench thirst. As Tom Standage relates with authority and charm, six of them have had a surprisingly pervasive influence on the course of history, becoming the defining drink during a pivotal historical period.
"A History of the World in 6 Glasses" tells the story of humanity from the Stone Age to the 21st century through the lens of beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola. Beer was first made in the Fertile Crescent and by 3000 B.C.E. was so important to Mesopotamia and Egypt that it was used to pay wages. In ancient Greece wine became the main export of her vast seaborne trade, helping spread Greek culture abroad. Spirits such as brandy and rum fueled the Age of Exploration, fortifying seamen on long voyages and oiling the pernicious slave trade. Although coffee originated in the Arab world, it stoked revolutionary thought in Europe during the Age of Reason, when coffeehouses became centers of intellectual exchange. And hundreds of years after the Chinese began drinking tea, it became especially popular in Britain, with far-reaching effects on British foreign policy. Finally, though carbonated drinks were invented in 18th-century Europe they became a 20th-century phenomenon, and Coca-Cola in particular is the leading symbol of globalization.
For Tom Standage, each drink is a kind of technology, a catalyst for advancing culture by which he demonstrates the intricate interplay of different civilizations. You may never look at your favorite drink the same way again.

Our extraordinary world makes more (and sometimes less) sense when you wonder: What's driving the international turkey-meat boom? How does a cannonball determine a maritime boundary? Where can you wed your mobile phone? Why do septuagenarians have a better chance of summiting Mount Everest than ever? The ever-keen minds of The Economist Explains solve all these riddles and more in their latest encyclopaedic excursion around the globe. Baffle your friends and colleagues with unconventional headscratchers that shed surprising light on science, culture, world affairs and more. From the underground trade in hair to Hollywood's role in the creation of the snow globe, Truly Peculiar takes a walk on the weird side.

'Speckled with anecdotes, insights and surprises. It is great fun - and utterly timely' Sunday Times 'Standage writes with a masterly clarity' New York Times 'The product of deep research, great intelligence and burnished prose . . . It is rare that I encounter a non-fiction author whose prose is so elegant that it is worth reading for itself. Standage is a writer of this class' Wall Street Journal Beginning around 3,500 BC with the wheel, and moving through the eras of horsepower, trains and bicycles, Tom Standage puts the rise of the car - and the future of urban transport - into a broader historical context. Our society has been shaped by the car in innumerable ways, many of which are so familiar that we no longer notice them. Why does red mean stop and green mean go? Why do some countries drive on the left, and some on the right? How did cars, introduced only a little over a century ago, change the way the world was administered, laid out and policed, along with experiences like eating and shopping? And what might travel in a post-car world look like? As social transformations from ride-sharing to the global pandemic force us to critically re-examine our relationship with personal transportation, A Brief History of Motion is an essential contribution to our understanding of how the modern world came to be.

The world can be an amazing place if you know the right questions to ask:

How did carrots become orange? What's stopping us from having a four-day week? How can we remove all the broken bits of satellite from orbit? If everything is so terrible, why is the global suicide rate falling?

The keen minds of the Economist love to look beyond everyday appearances to find out what really makes things tick. In this latest collection of The Economist Explains, they have gathered together the juiciest fruits of their never-ending quest for answers. For an uncommonly interesting read, take a peek at some Uncommon Knowledge - and pass it on! The world only gets more amazing when discoveries are shared.

The bestselling author of "A History of the World in 6 Glasses "charts the enlightening history of humanity through the foods we eat.

More than simply sustenance, food historically has been a kind of technology, changing the course of human progress by helping to build empires, promote industrialization, and decide the outcomes of wars. Tom Standage draws on archaeology, anthropology, and economics to reveal how food has helped shape and transform societies around the world, from the emergence of farming in China by 7500 b.c. to the use of sugar cane and corn to make ethanol today. "An Edible History of Humanity "is a fully satisfying account of human history.

The history of the telegraph - the men and women who made it - and its relevance to the current Internet debate Beginning with the Abbe Nollet's famous experiment of 1746, when he successfully demonstrated that electricity could pass from one end to the other of a chain of two hundred monks, Tom Standage tells the story of the spread of the telegraph and its transformation of the Victorian world. The telegraph was greeted by all the same concerns, hype, social panic and excitement that now surround the Internet, and Standage provides both a fascinating insight into the past and a context in which to think rather differently of today's concerns. Standage has a wonderful prose style and an excellent eye for the telling and engaging story. Popular history at its best.

In 1770 in the imperial court of Vienna, one of the most extraordinary and baffling hoaxes in history was set in motion. 

As soon as it was unveiled to the cries of shocked courtiers, the Mechanical Turk became a sensation: a life-sized clockwork figure dressed in Eastern costume that, somehow, could play world-class chess. For decades this incredible automaton confounded audiences across Europe and America. It trounced grand masters, outwitted Napoleon, defeated Benjamin Franklin and was even said to have stopped Catherine the Great from cheating.

What was its secret? Could a machine really think? During its chequered career the Turk sparked frenzied speculation and often downright fabrication, but it was nearly a century before the truth was finally discovered …  

Social media is anything but a new phenomenon. From the papyrus letters that Cicero and other Roman statesmen used to exchange news, to the hand-printed tracts of the Reformation and the pamphlets that spread propaganda during the American and French revolutions, the ways people shared information with their peers in the past are echoed in the present. After decades of newspapers, radio, and television dominating in dissemination of information, the Internet has spawned a reemergence of social media as a powerful new way for individuals to share information with their friends, driving public discourse in new ways.Standage reminds us how historical social networks have much in common with modern social media. The Catholic Church's dilemmas in responding to Martin Luther's attacks are similar to those of today's large institutions in responding to criticism on the Internet, for example, and seventeenth-century complaints about the distractions of coffeehouses mirror modern concerns about social media. Invoking figures from Thomas Paine to Vinton Cerf, co-inventor of the Internet, Standage explores themes that have long been debated, from the tension between freedom of expression and censorship to social media's role in spurring innovation and fomenting revolution. "Writing on the Wall" draws on history to cast provocative new light on today's social media and encourages debate and discussion about how we'll communicate in the future.