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Index
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Table of Contents
Introduction: the case for being seriously curious
Seriously curious: unexpected explanations to stretch your mind
Why polygamy makes civil wars more likely
Why there is a shortage of sand
How shoelaces untie themselves
Why the sea is salty
Why diamond production may be about to peak
Why Boko Haram prefers female suicide bombers
Move over, oil. Which countries have the most lithium?
Why the global arms trade is booming
What do think-tanks do?
How to measure the black market for cigarettes
Mapping the rise and fall of witch-hunting
Globally curious: peculiar proclivities from around the world
Why spaghetti is smuggled across the Sahara
Why so many places are called Guinea–and turkeys don’t come from Turkey
Why New Zealand has so many gang members
Why the exorcism business is booming in France
Why China has the world’s worst flight delays
Why Somaliland is east Africa’s strongest democracy
Why yurts are going out of style in Mongolia
Which cities have the highest murder rates?
Why young Britons are committing fewer crimes
How car colours reflect Britain’s national mood
Why Swedes overpay their taxes
Mapping the world’s mega-rich
Why nobody knows how many Nigerians there are
Why Chinese children born in the year of the dragon are more successful
Sexual selection: love, sex and marriage
Why the sperm-bank business is booming
How porn consumption changed during Hawaii’s false alarm
Why transgender people are being sterilised in some European countries
How opinions on acceptable male behaviour vary by age, sex and nationality
What porn and listings sites reveal about Britain’s gay population
Attitudes to same-sex relationships around the world
Why couples do more housework than single people
What men and women think about their partners’ careers and housework
How fracking boosts birth rates
What explains Europe’s low birth rates?
Why America still allows child marriage
Also on the menu: oddities of food and drink
The surprising link between avocados and crime
Why China’s dog-meat market has expanded
Why obesity is a growing problem in poor countries
The Argentine–American lemon war of 2001–2018
Which European country has the most craft breweries per person?
Why some American cities don’t like food trucks
How wine glasses have got bigger over the years
Why food packaging is good for the environment
Peak booze? Alcohol consumption is falling around the world
Why wheat has a more complex genome than humans
Asian countries are eating more wheat
By the numbers: economical, with the truth
The easiest way to get rich in America
Why women still earn much less than men
Why China is rebuilding the old Silk Road
Why “death taxes” have fallen out of favour
Wealth inequality has been increasing since the stone age
What makes something a commodity?
Does longevity always increase with national wealth?
Why do companies exist?
Millennial Americans are just as loyal to their employers as previous generations
Why old-fashioned manufacturing jobs aren’t coming back
Why India scrapped its two biggest bank notes
The roots of the gender pay gap lie in childhood
Department of white coats: science, health and the environment
Can young blood really rejuvenate the old?
What people want at the end of life
How China reduced its air pollution
Why forests are spreading in the rich world
The Arctic could be ice-free by 2040, 30 years sooner than expected
Why there’s something in the water in New Zealand
Measures to discourage smoking are spreading around the world
Why “gene drives” have yet to be deployed in the wild
Why it is so hard to fix India’s sanitation problems
Why some deadly diseases are hard to eradicate
Why China is sick of foreign waste
Why are wolves coming back in France?
Why biggest isn’t fastest in the animal kingdom
Geek speak: getting technical
What is a brain-computer interface?
The link between video games and unemployment
What do robots do all day?
Why 5G might be both faster and slower than previous wireless technologies
Mobile phones are more common than electricity in much of sub-Saharan Africa
Why self-driving cars will mostly be shared, not owned
How ride-hailing apps reduce drink-driving
What is augmented reality?
Why we’re still waiting for the space elevator
How astronomers spotted the first interstellar asteroid
Why drones could pose a greater risk to aircraft than birds
What is the point of spam e-mail?
Why the police should wear body cameras
Why tech giants are laying their own undersea cables
Game theory: sport and leisure
Why tennis players grunt
Why board games are so popular in Nigeria
How drones can keep beaches safe from sharks
How football transfers work
How St Louis became America’s chess capital
What does “digitally remastering” a film really mean?
How bookmakers deal with winning customers
The world’s highest-earning football clubs
Speaking my language: words and wisdom
Why emoji have beneficial linguistic side-effects
How the letters of the alphabet got their names
Why Papua New Guinea has so many languages
Is Serbo-Croatian one language or four?
How language is bound up with national identity
How machines learned to process human language
Why the World Bank needs to cut down on the word “and”
The French argument over a new punctuation mark
Seasonal selection: festivals and holidays demystified
Where new year’s resolutions come from
How St Patrick’s Day celebrations went global
Why Easter moves around so much
Why Europeans slack off in August
How Thanksgiving became a secular holiday
How weather, religion and daylight hours affect Christmas music consumption
How Christmas, once a raucous carnival, was domesticated
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