All that fuss over nothing

Afternoon all, Subliminal advertising has been banned in the UK since 1957. But is a ban pointless, when there's little evidence that it actually works? No-one, apparently, has tested it scientifically for a long time. Until now. Our friends at Radio 4’s science programme, The Infinite Monkey Cage, carried out a test to see if people could be persuaded to drink Lipton’s Ice Tea by inserting hidden messages in an episode of Spooks. They even gave the participants loads of crisps before to make them extra thirsty. But it didn’t appear to have any significant effect. The message from this experiment, it seems, isn't hidden at all... Does subliminal advertising actually work? Freddie Knoller's life story is a film script waiting to happen. An Austrian Jew, he fled the Nazis three times. For a while he lived in occupied Paris, where he worked as a guide introducing Nazi soldiers to prostitutes. Once he was arrested by the Gestapo, and was sure he'd reached the end of his luck. But they actually offered him a job as an interpreter. Without spoiling the rest of the story, he is still alive to tell us what happened next.

The Jew who got a job offer from the Nazis

After the Charlie Hebdo attack, a Paris Imam was quoted as saying that 95% of victims of terrorism are Muslim. It turns out he might not be far off. There is one caveat – the data on the religion of terrorism victims is patchy. But, just to give a rough idea, between 2004-2013 the US suffered 131 attacks. Compare that to 12,000 in Iraq – which is a mostly Muslim population - and you can see how this could have a ring of truth. Are most victims of terrorism Muslim? Could the internet make it possible for us to replicate Ancient Greek democracy? At the moment we vote for representatives to make decisions for us. It’s practical. But the ancient Greeks saw this as un-democratic, since it favoured members of the few rather than the masses. They could vote on the actual laws. Not practical in a much bigger population. Only, now we now have the technology to make it possible. There is one hitch, according to historian Paul Cartledge - he thinks we are not up to the job. Viewpoint: Would Athenian-style democracy work in the UK today?

Meanwhile... Technically, King John didn’t actually 'sign' Magna Carta The Page Three Girl went from being the Sun’s best-known feature to an anachronism Wealthy Chinese inmates are buying up patents The price of life-saving vaccines has skyrocketed

That's it from us today.