Very gratifying to have a piece doing so well on the Times website. It’s a little taster of each of the 13 Things, and was the “most-read” over the weekend (or so the people at Profile Books told me this morning).
The original piece on the New Scientist website (which has a slightly different set of Things) was extraordinarily popular, becoming the sixth most circulated article on the internet in 2005. People keep asking me what the draw is: why is it so appealing to examine what we don’t know?
My answer is, essentially, answers take the fun out of life: speculation is more interesting. I’m convinced that, while mysteries are appealing to everyone, solutions appeal only to some.
No doubt this is the root of those staples of the news agenda: conspiracy theories, UFO reports and weird spookiness. So maybe 13 Things reinforces that innate sense, which I’ve written about here, that there’s more to the world than we can perceive.
Subscribe