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PODCAST

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford

Pushkin Industries

We tell our children unsettling fairy tales to teach them valuable lessons, but these Cautionary Tales are for the education of the grown ups – and they are all true. Tim Harford (Financial Times, BBC, author of “The Data Detective”) brings you stories of awful human error, tragic catastrophes, and hilarious fiascos. They"ll delight you, scare you, but also make you wiser. New episodes every Friday.

history

All Episodes

31:46

Whistleblower on the 28th Floor

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford ·

2021/04/30

Financial expert Ray Dirks (played by Jeffrey Wright) exposed one of the biggest corporate crimes of all time - and yet he was the one who ended up in front of the Supreme Court.Whistleblowers often face intimidation from those they bring to justice, but also face hostility from their co-workers, new employers, the authorities and even the public. Why are we suspicious of "tattletales" and what can we do to make vital whistleblowing easier?Read more about Tim's work at http://timharford.com/ Learn

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32:08

Masterly Inactivity Versus Micromanaging

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford ·

2021/04/23

Lady Sale (played by Helena Bonham Carter) was part of a bloody and ignominious British retreat from Afghanistan in 1842. The arrogant colonial invaders had thought intervening in Afghan affairs and dominating the country would be easy - they were wrong. Lady Sale was among the lucky few to escape with her life.Wiser heads later recommended "masterly inactivity" as a better course of action. In politics, parenting and even medicine - avoiding the temptation to act is a sadly neglected art form.Read

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36:59

Demonizing Dungeons & Dragons

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford ·

2021/04/16

When James Dallas Egbert III was reported missing from his college dorm - one of America's most flamboyant private detectives was summoned to solve the case. "Dallas" had many of the same problems that most teenagers face - but P.I. William Dear stoked fears that he might have fallen under the evil spell of a mysterious and sinister game.... Dungeons & Dragons.The global panic about the dangers the role-playing game posed to impressionable young minds may seem quaint 40 years on - but again and

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35:02

Number Fever: How Pepsi Nearly Went Pop

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford ·

2021/04/09

Pepsi twice ended up in court after promotions went disastrously wrong. Other big companies have fallen into the same trap - promising customers rewards so generous that to fulfil the promise might mean corporate bankruptcy. Businesses and customers alike are sometimes blinded by the big numbers in such PR stunts - but it's usually the customers, not the businesses, who end up losing out. Read more about Tim's work at http://timharford.com/ Learn more about your ad-choices at

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33:36

The Curse of Knowledge Meets The Valley of Death

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford ·

2021/04/02

Why were soldiers on horseback told to ride straight into a valley full of enemy cannon? The disastrous "Charge of the Light Brigade" is usually blamed on blundering generals. But the confusing orders issued on that awful day in 1854 reveal a common human trait - we often wrongly assume that everyone knows what we know and can easily comprehend our meaning.Starring Helena Bonham Carter as Florence Nightingale.Read more about Tim's work at http://timharford.com/ Learn more about your ad-choices at

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33:12

The Dunning Kruger Hijack (and Other Criminally...

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford ·

2021/03/26

The hijackers of flight 961 wanted its pilot to fly them to Australia - and wouldn't listen to his pleas that there simply wasn't enough fuel for the mammoth trip. What would cause them to totally disregard the advice of an expert when the stakes were so very high? The Dunning Kruger effect.But being too stupid to recognise the limits of your knowledge isn't confined to such prize idiots - it's something we are all guilty of at times and has huge implications for society.Starring Jeffrey Wright

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33:40

Catching a KiIler Doctor

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford ·

2021/03/19

Family doctor Harold Shipman got away with murdering his patients for decades. He was one of the most prolific serial killers in history - but his hundreds of crimes largely went unnoticed despite a vast paper trail of death certificates he himself had signed.Why do we sometimes fail to see awful things happening right under our noses? And how can the systems that maintain quality control in cookie factories be employed to prevent another doctor like Shipman killing with impunity?Read more about

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35:16

The Art Forger, the Nazi, and "The Pope"

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford ·

2021/03/12

"The Pope" was a revered Dutch art expert - and yet he fell for a not very convincing forgery of a "lost" Vermeer masterpiece. The forger had duped other art connoisseurs too - including the high ranking Nazi Hermann Göring. But perhaps Han van Meegeren's biggest con was to convince the Dutch public that he was a cheeky resistance hero.We assume knowledge and intelligence can protect us from being duped - but often they are not enough to save us from the fraudster's greatest ally - our own wishful

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36:00

Florence Nightingale and Her Geeks Declare War on Death

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford ·

2021/03/05

Victorian nurse Florence Nightingale (played by her distant cousin Helena Bonham Carter) is a hero of modern medicine - but her greatest contribution to combating disease and death resulted from the vivid graphs she made to back her public health campaigns.Her charts convinced the great and the good that deaths due to filth and poor sanitation could be averted - saving countless lives. But did Nightingale open Pandora's Box, showing that graphs persuade, whether or not they depict reality?Read more

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35:24

Martin Luther King Jr, the Jewelry Genius, and the...

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford ·

2021/02/26

One speechmaker inspired millions with his words, the other utterly destroyed his own multi-million-dollar business with just a few phrases.Civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr (played by Jeffrey Wright of Westworld, The Hunger Games, and the James Bond films) and jewelry store owner Gerald Ratner offer starkly contrasting stories on when you should stick to the script and when you should take a risk.Read more about Tim's work at http://timharford.com/ Learn more about your ad-choices at

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14:08

Bonus: Why We Believe What Isn't True (with Axios Today)

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford ·

2021/02/12

We're no stranger to stories about misinformation or deliberate disinformation. We live in a world where now more than ever, you have to be skeptical. That skepticism can be healthy, but it also can be used to cast more doubt and misinformation on data and statistics that are very real. Tim Harford talks to Niala Boodhoo, from the news podcast Axios Today, about why people believe things that aren't true.Check out Axios Today, where Niala delivers the news every weekday - in just 10

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34:07

The Data Detective

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford ·

2021/02/02

Cautionary Tales' host Tim Harford has a new book - The Data Detective - setting out ten commandments for understanding the numbers, charts, graphs and statistics that bombard us every day. In this free extract, Tim explains his extra "golden" rule that allows us to observe all his other commandments - be curious. Enjoy.Cautionary Tales returns February 26.The Data Detective (Riverhead Books) is published in the US and Canada on February 2. The same book is available elsewhere under the title How to

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10:14

BONUS: Storks, Smoking and the Power of Doubt

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford ·

2020/09/16

It's easy to mock statistics or cast doubt on them... but we do so at our peril. Undermining our trust in facts and figures can cause great harm, and even death. We should guard against it.Tim Harford looks at how the seeds of doubt are planted in this mini-episode of Cautionary Tales to celebrate the release of his latest book.“How To Make The World Add Up” is out now in much of the world, while listeners in US/Canada can pre-order it under the title "The Data Detective" - ahead of its release in

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25:05

How To End A Pandemic

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford ·

2020/07/17

The eradication of smallpox is one of humanity's great achievements - but the battle against the virus was fought by the most unlikely of alliances. How did the breakthrough happen - and can we guarantee that the world is still safe from smallpox?This episode owes a debt to Stephen Coss’s book The Fever of 1721, Ibram X. Kendi’s book Stamped From the Beginning, and to an article about Dark Winter written by Tara O’Toole, Michael Mair and Tomas Inglesby.For a full list of our sources please see the

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24:16

That Turn To Pascagoula

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford ·

2020/07/10

For years, people had warned that New Orleans was vulnerable - but when a hurricane came close to destroying the city, the reaction was muted. Some people took the near miss as a warning - others, as confirmation that there was nothing to worry about.So why do we struggle to prepare for disasters? And why don't we draw the obvious lessons from clear warnings?Sources for this episode include Amanda Ripley's The Unthinkable, The Ostrich Paradox by Howard Kunreuther and Robert Meyer, Margaret

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21:58

The Village of Heroes

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford ·

2020/07/03

It looked like any ordinary roll of cloth, but it brought the dreaded plague to the village of Eyam. First it killed the tailor, then resident after resident succumbed. To stop the spread of the disease to neighbouring towns the people of Eyam agreed to isolate themselves and let the plague run its deadly course. This terrible act of sacrifice is still remembered centuries later - but what does it tell us about how far people will go to save the lives of strangers?Read more about Tim's work at

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24:04

The Spreadsheet of Life and Death

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford ·

2020/06/26

Clive had a deadly form of cancer, but fortunately there was a new drug to treat it. Imagine his anger when he was told the treatment was too expensive. He’d entered a world where unique human lives are given a value in a mathematical formula. So how much should we spend to extend or save a life? And are some lives worth more than others?Read more about Tim's work at http://timharford.com/Tim's latest books 'Fifty Inventions That Shaped The Modern Economy' and 'The Next Fifty Things That Made The

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21:07

A Tsunami of Misery

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford ·

2020/06/19

A monstrous wave and then a nuclear disaster forced Mikio and Hamako Watanabe from their home. But being saved from the potential dangers of a radiation leak destroyed their lives in a different way. Why do we overlook the fact that taking action against an urgent danger can also cause longer term ills?WARNING: This episode discusses death by suicide. If you are suffering emotional distress or having suicidal thoughts, support is available - for example, from the National Suicide Prevention

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21:00

Fire at The Beverly Hills Supper Club

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford ·

2020/06/12

Flames are spreading through a Cincinnati hotel. The staff know it, the fire department is coming, and the people in the packed cabaret bar have been told to evacuate… and yet they hesitate to leave. Why don’t we react to some warnings until it’s too late?Read more about Tim's work at http://timharford.com/Tim's latest books 'Fifty Inventions That Shaped The Modern Economy' and 'The Next Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy' are available now. Learn more about your ad-choices at

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18:11

Cautionary Tales Presents: TED Talk Daily

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford ·

2020/01/31

In this special episode of Cautionary Tales, we feature Cautionary Tales host Tim Harford's TED Talk Daily from 2018. What can we learn from the world's most enduringly creative people? They "slow-motion multitask," actively juggling multiple projects and moving between topics as the mood strikes -- without feeling hurried. Tim Harford shares how innovators like Einstein, Darwin, Twyla Tharp and Michael Crichton found their inspiration and productivity through cross-training their minds. Learn more

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209 results

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