Before he became Muhammad Ali, Cassius Clay was known as the “Louisville Loud-mouth”, as famous for his sharp taunts and poetic put-downs as he was for his skills in the ring. In 1963, ...

In 1999, a series of bombs explode in Russian apartments, killing hundreds and spreading panic. No one knows who is behind it. But when one device is spotted before it detonates, troubling ...

I recently described the contradictions inherent in my fitness-tracking watch. On the one hand, it had unlocked the joy of ...

Robert Propst is more than an inventor: he is a visionary, an innovator dreaming up how to make the perfect office workstation. When he reveals his bold design for a creative, flexible ‘cockpit of ...

Dear Economist, This Christmas and new year, I expect to encounter a lot of drunks on the road. In fact, I may well be one of them. Should I feel guilty? And should I be worried? Mr F Jones, London ...

Senator Joe Biden did himself no favours when he “praised” his fellow presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a ...

Should we feel threatened by the rise of China? The relentless progress of what my colleague Martin Wolf describes as the world’s largest ant colony is giddying. Exports from China have risen by ...

The Undercover Economist - FT MagazineIsrael’s strategy for dealing with Hizbollah has been called “tenfold deterrence”: any attack will be met with a far more forceful counterattack. Unfortunately ...

At the risk of turning this column into “The Undercover Environmentalist”, I need to return to that vexed question of carbon dioxide emissions. In my first column of the year, I vowed to reduce my ...

Dear Economist,I receive vastly more invitations to speak than I can manage. Some will be very lucrative, some will be very interesting and some will be easy to do. Many, however, will be neither ...

Dear Economist, I am a woman in my early 30s. I am also a virgin. Should I be? Gloria, New York Answer at ft.com, subscription free.

The electric toaster seems a humble thing. It was invented in 1893, not long after the light bulb and long before the microchip and the laser. This century-old technology is now a household staple, ...