The Curious Minute

A clear, direct answer in about two minutes. Produced by Bellwether Audio. Visit curiousminute.fm/notes for sources and transcripts.

The names of the fingers on our hands are well known; we use them every day without a second thought. Our toes are another matter entirely, and we tend to treat all five of them as one anonymous group.

Roundabouts, priority-to-the-right and a stubborn city council: for decades one capital has run its junctions with almost no signals at all, and the crash figures are stranger than you would expect.

An early dissolution rearranges a country's politics in a matter of weeks. We look at where the power to call one actually sits, why leaders reach for it, and the two or three times it spectacularly backfired.

Microbiologists have actually timed this, with buttered toast, wet floors and a lot of petri dishes. The answer depends far less on the clock than on what you dropped and where you dropped it.