Oddly Informative: Matters of Fact that Amaze and Delight

Tom Standage

Dec 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Mike Cooper

About this audiobook

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.

About the author

Mike Cooper is a British voice talent who left big-city life in London for a log cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Mike is recognizable from his years with the BBC World Service, and as the narrator of countless television documentaries.

Tom Standage is deputy editor of the Economist and the author of Writing on the Wall, A History of the World in 6 Glasses, An Edible History of Humanity, and The Victorian Internet. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, Wired, and other publications. He lives in London.