Penalty shootouts have haunted English football fans for years. Since 1990, England have been involved in nine shootouts across the European Championship and World Cup competitions and won only two of them: a dismal record for what is supposed to be a premier footballing nation. An estimated 31 million people in the UK tuned in to watch England play Italy in the Euros final of 2021, only for the team’s journey to be ended by the all-too-familiar nemesis. So with

I’ve been told I can be very competitive. Having grown up with three siblings, I wouldn’t disagree. Last weekend however I more than met my match while playing a board game with my future in-laws. While I managed to clinch a victory, it was a little too close for comfort. So here I am, unashamedly using my slot for this week’s blog as an excuse to figure out the best strategy for the inevitable rematch. The board game in question

Back in 2016, my inaugural Thank Fathom It’s Friday covered an upcoming election. In a year of shock results, the piece focused on countries where political results were set in stone. Using South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) as an example, it looked at the enduring political success of parties that led their country to independence. At that point, the ANC had been in power for 22 years. Looking at the experience of other ‘freedom’ parties, I reckoned they had

It’s always fun to mock politicians. So, when I saw UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announce his ambitions for the UK to possess a one-trillion-dollar homegrown company within ten years, I thought another opportunity was coming my way. But then I started imagining whether it was actually possible… Unsurprisingly, in turns out that there’s a positive correlation between the size of a country’s economy and the market cap of its largest publicly listed firm. The chart below shows this relationship for

I enjoyed reading my colleague Elisabeth’s blog post, published last Friday, in which she quotes the former Norwegian Prime Minster, Gro Harlem Brundtland, who once declared: “It’s typically Norwegian to be good”. This got me thinking: what are we Brits good at? Many things, I hear you cry. To which I would specifically add: winning Olympic medals. I am reminded of one of the first Thank Fathom It’s Friday blog posts that I wrote back in 2016, which tried to model

“Its typically Norwegian to be good” is the somewhat awkward direct translation of a quote from Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former Norwegian prime minister. ‘Good’ in this case should be read in the same way as ‘being good at something’ rather than being especially moral.[1] Brundtland originally made this remark in her 1992 New Year’s Eve speech, when comparing Norwegian international sporting achievements with her ambitions for Norwegian businesses struggling with the ongoing recession. It has since become a piece of

Stereotypes fascinate me: their origin, their motives, their many exceptions and the strong emotions they elicit. Let's embrace some controversy and dive straight into a few. Consider stereotypes about men having better spatial awareness or being better drivers than women. It's easy to find references either disproving or supporting these old chestnuts. Women have lower car insurance premiums than men, but there's an irrefutable body of anecdotal evidence of ladies asking random men for help in parking their car (it's

I often wonder why people vote in the way they do. Are they voting in what they perceive to be their own best interests, or in the wider interests of society as a whole? Indeed, why do we vote at all? Is democracy the best form of government? On the question of why we vote in the way we do, an anonymous straw poll of Fathom employees gave the results below. The majority of Fathom employees vote for the party

I recently travelled to Seoul to visit a friend who is doing her master’s there. The trip was a good mix of learning about South Korean history and culture through visiting temples and museums, and consuming barbecue (and a fair amount of soju, a rice spirit rather like vodka). One of the most interesting parts of my stay was comparing what it’s like being in your 20s there and in the UK. I was explaining the crazy rental market in

My dad occasionally likes to gift me books that serve a double purpose. So when he spotted one that covered both my work and my passion for cooking, he thought, ‘Bingo!’ And so to Edible Economics: The World in 17 Dishes, where author Ha-Joon Chang, a professor at SOAS University of London, aims to make economic concepts more digestible by serving them up alongside stories about… food! To give you a flavour of what’s covered in the book, in the