# La La Land: Galileo's Warning

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 22 Nov 2019, 31 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/2e2f5584-5844-43c3-9c9d-ae3900401b4b/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

Galileo tried to teach us that adding more and more layers to a system intended to avert disaster often makes catastrophe all the more likely to happen. His basic lesson has been ignored in nuclear power plants, financial markets and at the Oscars... all resulting in chaos. Read more about Tim's work at http://timharford.com/ Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello Tim here. Shortly after we recorded this episode,
[0:22] Speaker 1: I received the sad news that Charles Perrault, the great
[0:25] Speaker 1: sociologist whose work we discuss, had just died. I was
[0:29] Speaker 1: sorry to hear it. I do hope that Charles would
[0:32] Speaker 1: like what we've done with his ideas. As the night
[0:40] Speaker 1: draws in and the fire blazes on the hearth, we
[0:44] Speaker 1: warn the children by telling them stories. Star Wars teaches
[0:49] Speaker 1: them always scan for droids. But my stories are for
[0:55] Speaker 1: the education of the grown ups, and my stories are
[0:59] Speaker 1: all true. I'm Tim Harford. Gather close and listen to
[1:05] Speaker 1: my cautionary tale. You've heard this story before. You might
[1:21] Speaker 1: even have watched it happening live. Thirty three million people did.
[1:27] Speaker 1: There They stand together on stage, Fade Unaway and Warren, Beatty,
[1:32] Speaker 1: Bonnie and Clyde together again after fifty years. Even for
[1:37] Speaker 1: a pair of veteran Hollywood stars, it must have been
[1:40] Speaker 1: a nerve racking moment. Yet their task seemed simple. Open
[1:44] Speaker 1: a red envelope, take out a card, and read out
[1:48] Speaker 1: the title of the film that had won the Academy
[1:51] Speaker 1: Award for Best Picture. Betty opens the envelope, So far,
[1:56] Speaker 1: so good. Then he looks at the card in his hand.
[2:01] Speaker 1: He hesitates, then he looks inside the envelope again, as
[2:05] Speaker 1: though checking to see if there was a cover note.
[2:08] Speaker 1: He looks over at Away, then raises both eyebrows. She
[2:12] Speaker 1: reaches over and touches his arm affectionately. The Academy Award
[2:16] Speaker 1: Betty begins. He pauses again. He looks at the card again.
[2:21] Speaker 1: He slips his hand inside the envelope one more time.
[2:25] Speaker 1: The audience laugh at the moment of maximum tension that
[2:28] Speaker 1: old rogue is playing with everyone's emotions. He continues for
[2:33] Speaker 1: a Best Picture. He stops again. Faye Dunaway thinks he's
[2:37] Speaker 1: goofing around too. You're impossible, she says, come on, He
[2:41] Speaker 1: shows her the card. She doesn't hesitate for a moment.
[2:47] Speaker 1: La La The audience erupts and applause, and the producers
[2:55] Speaker 1: of La La Land's take to the stage to give
[2:57] Speaker 1: their acceptance speeches. Meanwhile, off in the wings, an accountant
[3:02] Speaker 1: named Brian Cullenan knows that the biggest screw up in
[3:06] Speaker 1: the history of the Academy Awards is in full flow.
[3:11] Speaker 1: The twenty sixteen winner of Best Picture isn't La La Land.
[3:16] Speaker 1: It's Moonlight. So yes, You've heard this story, Have you
[3:22] Speaker 1: understood what it really means? You're listening to another cautionary tale.
[3:51] Speaker 1: There's a simple way to tell the story of this fiasco.
[3:54] Speaker 1: As Warren Beatty walked on stage, Brian Cullenan's job was
[3:58] Speaker 1: to hand him the envelope for Best Picture. Instead, Cullenan
[4:03] Speaker 1: handed over the envelope for Best Actress. A few moments earlier,
[4:08] Speaker 1: that award had been won by Emma Stone for her
[4:11] Speaker 1: performance in La La Land, and so when Betty opened
[4:14] Speaker 1: the envelope, he saw Emma Stone La La Land. Jimmy Kimmel,
[4:21] Speaker 1: the host of the Oscars that evening, jokingly blamed it
[4:24] Speaker 1: all on Beatty. Larren, what did you do? I wanted
[4:28] Speaker 1: to tell you what happened, but it really wasn't Beata's fault.
[4:33] Speaker 1: He didn't understand what he was looking at, and rather
[4:35] Speaker 1: than say the wrong thing, he hesitated. Then he turned
[4:39] Speaker 1: to Faye Dunaway. She was the person who actually uttered
[4:43] Speaker 1: the title of the wrong film, but it wasn't her
[4:46] Speaker 1: fault either. Imagine her situation. She's on stage in front
[4:50] Speaker 1: of the most star studded audience imaginable, plus tens of
[4:53] Speaker 1: millions watching live on television. Betty seems to be messing
[4:56] Speaker 1: around and she doesn't know why. The first thing she
[4:59] Speaker 1: sees on the card is La La Land, and straightaway
[5:02] Speaker 1: that's what she says. Some people blamed Betty, some people
[5:06] Speaker 1: blamed Dunaway, most people blame Brian Cullenan, the accountant who
[5:11] Speaker 1: handed over the wrong envelope. But all of those people,
[5:15] Speaker 1: I think are making a mistake. Almost a decade ago,
[5:21] Speaker 1: years before this fiasco, I interviewed one of the world's
[5:25] Speaker 1: most important thinkers on how accidents happen. He's a sociologist
[5:30] Speaker 1: named Charles Perrault, and he told me something that stuck
[5:34] Speaker 1: in my mind that we always blame the operator. It's always,
[5:39] Speaker 1: he says, a case of pilot error. Charles Perrault is
[5:44] Speaker 1: a wise old man. He's older than the Academy Awards themselves.
[5:48] Speaker 1: He was four back in nineteen twenty nine when they
[5:51] Speaker 1: were first presented. And Perrault is absolutely right. We inever
[5:57] Speaker 1: to be looked for some one to blame, and that
[5:59] Speaker 1: inclination leads us astray. Our instinct is to blame the accountant,
[6:05] Speaker 1: Brian Cullenan. He did give Batty the wrong envelope. He
[6:08] Speaker 1: was distracted. He'd tweeted a photograph of Emma Stone holding
[6:12] Speaker 1: her Oscar statuette at a time he should have been
[6:15] Speaker 1: focusing on giving Batty the right envelope. He was on
[6:18] Speaker 1: his phone, enjoying being close to one of the world's
[6:22] Speaker 1: most beautiful people at her moment of triumph. We can
[6:26] Speaker 1: all learn a lesson from that. Get off your phone,
[6:29] Speaker 1: get off your phone when you're supposed to be having
[6:31] Speaker 1: dinner with your family, get off your phone when you're
[6:33] Speaker 1: supposed to be driving, and get off your phone when
[6:35] Speaker 1: you're supposed to be giving the envelope containing the best
[6:38] Speaker 1: picture card to Warren Beatty. But the reason that it's
[6:42] Speaker 1: a mistake to simply blame Culonan is because Cullinan was
[6:45] Speaker 1: just being human. Humans are always getting distracted, Humans are
[6:50] Speaker 1: always making mistakes. If our systems can't cope with those mistakes,
[6:54] Speaker 1: then it's hopeless to demand better humans. We need better systems.
[7:00] Speaker 1: When La La land fleetingly won Moonlight's Oscar, some rich
[7:04] Speaker 1: and successful people suffered some embarrassment and some heartache, but
[7:09] Speaker 1: nobody died. Yet the lesson of the fiasco is far
[7:13] Speaker 1: from trivial. The same kind of mistake in different situations
[7:18] Speaker 1: can be catastrophic. Such mistakes can lead to nuclear accidents
[7:22] Speaker 1: and financial meltdowns. And when I say can lead, I
[7:27] Speaker 1: mean have led. Such disasters have already occurred. So let's
[7:33] Speaker 1: try to understand what really happened that strange night at
[7:37] Speaker 1: the oscars. Perhaps we can use that insight to prevent
[7:40] Speaker 1: far more serious calamities. Let's talk about problem number one,
[7:57] Speaker 1: bad typography. I know it sounds strange, but it's true.
[8:02] Speaker 1: The card that Betty took out of the envelope had
[8:05] Speaker 1: nine words on it, and the largest word is oscars.
[8:10] Speaker 1: Really is that really the most important piece of information?
[8:14] Speaker 1: Are we worried that without it? Warren bate He's going
[8:17] Speaker 1: to think he's at the Iowa State Fair handing out
[8:20] Speaker 1: a medallion for the best hog. The words La La
[8:24] Speaker 1: Land and Emma Stone are printed with equal weight, even
[8:29] Speaker 1: though the winner is Emma Stone. The rest is detail. Meanwhile,
[8:34] Speaker 1: the important words best Actress are tucked away at the
[8:38] Speaker 1: bottom of the card, and they're tiny. If best Actress
[8:43] Speaker 1: had been prominent, Warren Batey wouldn't have been confused. He
[8:47] Speaker 1: would have known that he had the wrong card in
[8:50] Speaker 1: his hand. And if Emma Stone had been in larger
[8:55] Speaker 1: type than La La land Faye Dunaway wouldn't have blurted
[8:59] Speaker 1: out the name of the wrong film. It would have
[9:02] Speaker 1: been awkward for Baiting and done Away to walk off
[9:04] Speaker 1: stage to get the right envelope, but not nearly as
[9:07] Speaker 1: awkward as not walking off stage to get the right envelope.
[9:13] Speaker 1: So the Academy should have hired a designer, but they're
[9:17] Speaker 1: not the only ones. Imagine that you're the night shift
[9:22] Speaker 1: supervisor at a nuclear power plant. It's four o'clock in
[9:26] Speaker 1: the morning and you don't know it yet, but the
[9:29] Speaker 1: turbine system that draws away the heat from the reactor
[9:32] Speaker 1: core has just shut down. You're going to have to
[9:35] Speaker 1: make some quick decisions, assuming you can figure out what's
[9:39] Speaker 1: going wrong and why? What's that? Ah, let's see, I
[9:47] Speaker 1: think it's he Can we shut it down? I do no,
[9:56] Speaker 1: can you. During the first few minutes of the accident,
[10:02] Speaker 1: more than one hundred alarms went off, and there was
[10:05] Speaker 1: no system for suppressing the unimportant signals so that operators
[10:09] Speaker 1: could concentrate on the significant alarms. Information was not presented
[10:13] Speaker 1: in a clear and sufficiently understandable form that from the
[10:17] Speaker 1: overview of the official inquiry, into what was then arguably
[10:21] Speaker 1: the world's most serious nuclear accident at Three Mile Island
[10:26] Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine. It destroyed the reactor, came close
[10:30] Speaker 1: to a serious release of radioactive material on the Eastern Seaboard,
[10:34] Speaker 1: and shattered the reputation of the American nuclear industry. It's
[10:39] Speaker 1: striking how quickly the inquiry focused in on the question
[10:43] Speaker 1: of design, But to anyone who studies how accidents happen,
[10:47] Speaker 1: it's not surprising at all. The plan's control rooms were
[10:51] Speaker 1: so poorly designed that error was the inevitable. Don Norman,
[10:56] Speaker 1: the director of the design lab at UC San Diego,
[10:59] Speaker 1: was asked to help analyze the problems at Three Mile Island.
[11:03] Speaker 1: Design was at fault, not the operators. The control panels
[11:08] Speaker 1: were baffling. They displayed almost seven hundred and fifty lights,
[11:13] Speaker 1: some next to the relevant switches, or above them, or
[11:16] Speaker 1: below them, sometimes nowhere near the relevant switch at all.
[11:20] Speaker 1: Red lights indicated open valves or active equipment. Green indicated
[11:26] Speaker 1: closed valves or inactive equipment. But since some of the
[11:30] Speaker 1: lights were typically red and others were normally green, the
[11:33] Speaker 1: overall effect was dizzying. So yes, the operators made mistakes
[11:40] Speaker 1: at three Mile island, but with better design they might
[11:43] Speaker 1: not have. Warren Beatty and Fade Unaway would sympathize. But
[11:51] Speaker 1: something else went wrong that night at the oscars, something
[11:54] Speaker 1: deeper and more surprising. It's a strange effect, and it
[11:59] Speaker 1: was first observed by a man less famous for looking
[12:02] Speaker 1: at why things go wrong, and more famous for looking
[12:05] Speaker 1: at the stars. Galileo Galilei is known for his astronomy
[12:11] Speaker 1: and because his work was consigned to the Church's Index
[12:15] Speaker 1: Liborum Prohibitorum, the list of forbidden books. But the great
[12:21] Speaker 1: Man's final work opens with a less provocative topic, the
[12:25] Speaker 1: correct method of storing a stone column on a building site.
[12:30] Speaker 1: There with me, This book from sixteen thirty eight is
[12:34] Speaker 1: going to explain the Oscar fiasco and much more, a
[12:38] Speaker 1: master related circumstance which is worthy of your attention, as
[12:42] Speaker 1: indeed are ol events which happened contrary to expectation, especially
[12:47] Speaker 1: when a precautionary measure turns out to be a cause
[12:51] Speaker 1: of disaster. A precautionary measure turns out to be a
[12:54] Speaker 1: cause of disaster. That's very interesting, Galileo. Please go on.
[12:59] Speaker 1: A large marble column was laid out so that its
[13:03] Speaker 1: two ends rested each upon a piece of beam. I
[13:07] Speaker 1: can picture that in my mind support at the column
[13:09] Speaker 1: while it's being stored horizontally ready for use. If you
[13:13] Speaker 1: lay it on the ground, it may get stained and
[13:15] Speaker 1: you'll probably break it when you try to get ropes
[13:17] Speaker 1: underneath it to pull it upright. So yes, store it flat,
[13:22] Speaker 1: but propped up by a support at one end and
[13:25] Speaker 1: a support at the other. But what if the column
[13:28] Speaker 1: can't support its own weight like that and simply snaps
[13:31] Speaker 1: in half? Galileo has thought of that. A little later,
[13:37] Speaker 1: it occurred to a mechanic that, in order to be
[13:40] Speaker 1: doubly sure of it's not breaking in the middle, it
[13:43] Speaker 1: would be wise to lay a third support midway. This
[13:47] Speaker 1: seemed to all an excellent idea. Yes, if two supports
[13:53] Speaker 1: are good, surely three supports are better. It was quite
[13:56] Speaker 1: the opposite, for not many months past before the column
[14:00] Speaker 1: was found cracked and broken exactly above the new middle support.
[14:07] Speaker 1: How did that happen? One of the end support's head,
[14:10] Speaker 1: after a long while, become decayed and sunken, but the
[14:14] Speaker 1: middle one remained hard and strong, thus causing one half
[14:19] Speaker 1: of the column to project in the year without any support.
[14:24] Speaker 1: The central support didn't make the column safer. It pressed
[14:29] Speaker 1: into it like the central pivot of a seesaw, snapping
[14:32] Speaker 1: it in half. Galileo's tail isn't really about storing columns,
[14:37] Speaker 1: and neither as mine. It's about what I'm going to
[14:40] Speaker 1: call Galileo's principle. The steps we take to make ourselves
[14:45] Speaker 1: safe sometimes lead us into danger. The problem Galileo described
[14:52] Speaker 1: is well known to safety engineers. There's an article in
[14:56] Speaker 1: the fine scholarly journal Process Safety Progress titled no good
[15:02] Speaker 1: deed Goes unpunished Case studies of incidence and potential incidents
[15:07] Speaker 1: caused by protective systems. These case studies are magnificent. There's
[15:14] Speaker 1: a chemical plant where two pressure relief systems interact in
[15:18] Speaker 1: a way that means neither of them work. There's a
[15:23] Speaker 1: flare designed to destroy pollutants, which ends up causing the
[15:27] Speaker 1: release of toxic gases. There's an explosion suppression device that
[15:33] Speaker 1: causes an explosion. This kind of thing happens more than
[15:37] Speaker 1: you might think. An example is one of the earliest
[15:42] Speaker 1: nuclear accidents at Fermi One, an experimental reactor in Michigan.
[15:48] Speaker 1: It's barely remembered now except in gil Scott Heron's song
[15:52] Speaker 1: We almost lost Detroit. This time, the operators at Fermi
[15:56] Speaker 1: one lost control of the nuclear reaction for reasons that
[16:00] Speaker 1: were baffling to them. Some of the reactor fuel melted.
[16:03] Speaker 1: It was all touch and go. Eventually they got the
[16:07] Speaker 1: reactor under control, shut it all down, and waited until
[16:11] Speaker 1: it was safe to take it all apart. It was
[16:13] Speaker 1: almost a year before the reactor had cooled enough to
[16:17] Speaker 1: identify the culprit. A piece of metal the size of
[16:21] Speaker 1: a crushed beer can had blocked the circulation of the
[16:25] Speaker 1: coolant and the reactor core. It was a filter that
[16:29] Speaker 1: had been installed at the last moment for safety reasons,
[16:33] Speaker 1: at the express request of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It
[16:37] Speaker 1: had come loose and caused the entire problem. Galileo's principle
[16:43] Speaker 1: strikes again. Why do safety systems sometimes backfire? The wise
[16:51] Speaker 1: old sociologist Charles Perrault's most famous book is called Normal Accidents.
[16:57] Speaker 1: It's about how certain kinds of system are vulnerable to
[17:00] Speaker 1: catastrophic failure, so vulnerable, in fact, that we should view
[17:05] Speaker 1: accidents in those systems as inevitable. The vulnerable systems have
[17:10] Speaker 1: two features. The first is that they're what Pero calls
[17:14] Speaker 1: tightly coupled. In a tightly coupled system, one thing leads
[17:18] Speaker 1: to another, and another and another. It's like domino toppling,
[17:22] Speaker 1: which is actually a great example of a tightly coupled system.
[17:26] Speaker 1: Once you start, it's hard to hit the pores button.
[17:29] Speaker 1: A second feature is complexity. A complex system has elements
[17:35] Speaker 1: that interact in unexpected ways. A rainforest is a complex system.
[17:40] Speaker 1: So is Harvard University. But Harvard University usually isn't tightly coupled.
[17:46] Speaker 1: If there's a problem, there's also time to find a solution.
[17:50] Speaker 1: A system that's both complex and tightly coupled is dangerous.
[17:56] Speaker 1: The complexity means there will occasionally be surprises. The tight
[18:01] Speaker 1: coupling means that there will be no time to deal
[18:04] Speaker 1: with the surprises. Charles Pero's theory explains Galileo's principle. Every
[18:12] Speaker 1: time you add a feature that's designed to prevent a problem,
[18:15] Speaker 1: you're adding complexity. The middle support for the column added complexity.
[18:20] Speaker 1: So did the safety filter that damaged the Fermi one reactor.
[18:24] Speaker 1: Safety systems don't always make us safe. Here's the question
[18:35] Speaker 1: we should be asking about that bizarre evening at the OSCARS.
[18:39] Speaker 1: How was it even possible for the distracted accountant Brian
[18:44] Speaker 1: cullenan to give Warren Beatty the wrong envelope. A few
[18:49] Speaker 1: minutes earlier, the envelope for Best Actress, the envelope containing
[18:53] Speaker 1: the card that read Emma Stone La La Land. That
[18:57] Speaker 1: envelope had been in the hands of Leonardo DiCaprio as
[19:01] Speaker 1: he stood on stage announcing her win. How could that
[19:06] Speaker 1: envelope have made its way into the hands of Warren Beatty.
[19:09] Speaker 1: The answer it didn't. There were two envelopes. Every envelope
[19:17] Speaker 1: for every category had a duplicate version waiting in the wings.
[19:22] Speaker 1: These duplicate envelopes were there as a safety measure, and
[19:26] Speaker 1: that safety measure is what made the fiasco possible. Galileo's
[19:32] Speaker 1: principle had bitten hard. Charles Perrot's argument is that when
[19:38] Speaker 1: systems are both complex and tightly coupled, we should expect
[19:43] Speaker 1: catastrophic accidents. Does the Academy Awards ceremony fit that description.
[19:49] Speaker 1: It's certainly tightly coupled. You can't easily interrupt a live
[19:53] Speaker 1: TV spectacular in front of millions of people to ask
[19:57] Speaker 1: for advice. The show must go on. Yet the ceremony
[20:02] Speaker 1: doesn't have to be complex. Giving an envelope to Warren Beatty.
[20:06] Speaker 1: Doesn't have to be complex, but you can make it
[20:10] Speaker 1: complex if you try. Brian Cullenan's partner in crime that
[20:14] Speaker 1: evening was Martha Ruise. Like Cullan, she was a senior accountant.
[20:20] Speaker 1: The pair of them carried identical briefcases with an identical
[20:24] Speaker 1: set of envelopes. On the day of the show, we'll
[20:28] Speaker 1: get the ballots and Brian and I will go to
[20:30] Speaker 1: the theater on two separate roads. He'll go one route
[20:33] Speaker 1: and I'll go another route. That's how Martha Ruise helpfully
[20:38] Speaker 1: explain things to journalists. Just before Oscar night, both she
[20:42] Speaker 1: and Cullinan had been proudly giving interviews about the full
[20:46] Speaker 1: proof system. We do that to ensure that in case
[20:49] Speaker 1: anything happens to one, the other will be there on
[20:53] Speaker 1: time and delivering what's needed with the full set. We
[20:57] Speaker 1: do have security measures up until we're at the theater
[21:01] Speaker 1: and delivering that envelope to the presenter just seconds before
[21:05] Speaker 1: they walk on stage. We'll be in two different locations.
[21:09] Speaker 1: Brian will be on stage right and all the on
[21:13] Speaker 1: stage left. It all sounds sensible, and in many ways
[21:17] Speaker 1: it is sensible. It's also complicated. The system of twin
[21:24] Speaker 1: envelopes meant that every time an envelope was opened on stage,
[21:28] Speaker 1: its duplicate in the wings had to be set aside.
[21:32] Speaker 1: Martha Ruiz stage left handed the envelope for Best Actress
[21:36] Speaker 1: to Leonardo DiCaprio, leaving Brian cullenan stage right with a
[21:41] Speaker 1: job of discarding the duplicate, the job he failed to do.
[21:46] Speaker 1: If there hadn't been that set of twin envelopes, Warren
[21:50] Speaker 1: Beatty could never have been given the wrong one. So
[21:55] Speaker 1: bad design helped cause the Oscar fiasco. It also helped
[22:00] Speaker 1: cause the accident at Three Mile Island, and a complicated
[22:05] Speaker 1: safety system was at the root of the Oscar fast
[22:08] Speaker 1: It was also at the root of the Fermi one accident.
[22:12] Speaker 1: But it's not just oscars and nuclear power. I promised
[22:16] Speaker 1: you a financial catastrophe two and in this one, both
[22:21] Speaker 1: safety systems and bad typography at a blame. He might
[22:25] Speaker 1: even start to see the banking crisis in a very
[22:29] Speaker 1: different light. In September two thousand and eight, at the
[22:36] Speaker 1: height of the financial crisis, an insurance executive named Robert
[22:41] Speaker 1: Willemstat requested a meeting with Tim Geitner Geitner would later
[22:46] Speaker 1: be the Treasury Secretary. At the time, he was the
[22:49] Speaker 1: president of the New York Federal Reserve. That meant he
[22:54] Speaker 1: was responsible for supervising Wall Streets banks, including Lehman Brothers,
[22:59] Speaker 1: which was on the brink of collapse. Robert Willemstadt was
[23:03] Speaker 1: the boss of an insurance company called AIG, and since
[23:07] Speaker 1: AIG wasn't a bank, it was far from obvious why
[23:12] Speaker 1: Willemstadt was Geitner's problem. In his book Too Big to Fail,
[23:17] Speaker 1: the journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin reports the intimate details of
[23:22] Speaker 1: this ill fated meeting. I'm really sorry, mister Willemstad. Mister
[23:27] Speaker 1: Gattner's going to be a few minutes, no problem, I
[23:30] Speaker 1: have time. I'm sorry. I know you've been waiting a
[23:34] Speaker 1: long time. Mister Gattner's on the phone to the bars
[23:37] Speaker 1: of Lehman Brothers. He's up to his arboles and layman.
[23:42] Speaker 1: Tim Geitner was also exhausted. He'd been on an overnight
[23:46] Speaker 1: flight from a banking conference in Switzerland. He must have
[23:49] Speaker 1: felt completely overwhelmed. Who wouldn't have barbas Sorry to keep
[23:54] Speaker 1: you waiting coming, Willemstat got his moment. He badly needed
[23:59] Speaker 1: to be able to borrow from the FED, not normally
[24:02] Speaker 1: something AIG would be allowed to do. But he also
[24:06] Speaker 1: didn't want to panic Geitner. He needed to walk a
[24:09] Speaker 1: tight rope to suggest that AIG could use some help
[24:13] Speaker 1: but wasn't actually bankrupt. Is this a critical or emergency situation, Bob, Well,
[24:19] Speaker 1: you know, let me just say that it would be
[24:23] Speaker 1: very beneficial to AIG, mister Gagner. Perhaps I can leave
[24:28] Speaker 1: this with you. William Stat handed Gaigner a briefing note.
[24:32] Speaker 1: Buried deep within it was a fast ticking time bomb.
[24:37] Speaker 1: The largest firms on Wall Street were relying on AIG
[24:42] Speaker 1: to pay out on insurance against financial trouble. The total
[24:46] Speaker 1: sum insured was a truly ludicrous two thousand, seven hundred
[24:53] Speaker 1: billion dollars. AIG couldn't possibly pay if all the claims
[24:58] Speaker 1: came in, and it was starting to look as though
[25:01] Speaker 1: they might, But that meant that the big Wall Street
[25:05] Speaker 1: banks wouldn't get the insurance payments they were relying AIG
[25:11] Speaker 1: was both a bigger threat to the financial system than
[25:13] Speaker 1: Lehman Brothers and a far more surprising one. If AIG
[25:18] Speaker 1: was a safety net, it was one that wasn't going
[25:21] Speaker 1: to break. Anyone's fall. But to realize that Tim Geitner
[25:26] Speaker 1: would actually have to read and absorb the information in
[25:29] Speaker 1: the note, and he was busy, really busy, So instead
[25:35] Speaker 1: he filed it away and turned back to the Lehman
[25:38] Speaker 1: Brothers problem. AIG would melt down a few days later.
[25:44] Speaker 1: The parallels with Oscar Nite are uncanny. For one thing, Geitner,
[25:49] Speaker 1: who's no fool, had no idea how to interpret what
[25:53] Speaker 1: he was looking at. It was unexpected, and the key
[25:56] Speaker 1: information was buried in the small print. Fade unaway and
[26:00] Speaker 1: Warren Beatty know the feeling. Then there's Galileo's principle. Safety
[26:06] Speaker 1: systems don't always make us safe. Those insurance contracts were
[26:11] Speaker 1: supposed to offset risk, not create it, right, But by
[26:15] Speaker 1: now we know that safety systems also introduce new ways
[26:19] Speaker 1: for things to go wrong. The insurance contracts that were
[26:23] Speaker 1: about to destroy AIG were called credit default swaps. They'd
[26:29] Speaker 1: become popular as a way to offset risk with the
[26:32] Speaker 1: blessing of regulators. They seemed a smart idea, just as
[26:36] Speaker 1: the third support for the columns seems like a smart idea,
[26:40] Speaker 1: and the metal filters at the Fermi reactor and the
[26:43] Speaker 1: duplicate set of award envelopes, but they backfired. Wall Street
[26:49] Speaker 1: banks were relying on these credit default swaps to keep
[26:52] Speaker 1: them safe if there was trouble. When it became clear
[26:56] Speaker 1: that insurance companies such as AIG couldn't possibly pay out,
[27:01] Speaker 1: the banks all scrambled to sell off their risky investments
[27:04] Speaker 1: at the exact same time for the exact same reason.
[27:09] Speaker 1: A few days after Willemstadt had met Geitner, officials and
[27:13] Speaker 1: bankers worked through the weekend on the Lehman Brothers problem.
[27:17] Speaker 1: Only on Sunday evening did one of those bankers receive
[27:21] Speaker 1: a request from a Treasury official to ask if she
[27:25] Speaker 1: could drop everything and work on rescuing AIG instead. The
[27:31] Speaker 1: surprising phone call was greeted with a response that was
[27:35] Speaker 1: unsurprisingly unsuitable for family ears. Hold on, hold on, you're
[27:41] Speaker 1: calling me on a Sunday night, saying that we just
[27:44] Speaker 1: spent the entire weekend on Layman and now we have this.
[27:47] Speaker 1: How the fuck did we spend the past forty eight
[27:50] Speaker 1: hours on the wrong thing? How Indeed, for the same
[27:54] Speaker 1: reason they gave the oscar to the wrong movie, Confusing
[27:58] Speaker 1: communication and above all, a safety system that created a
[28:03] Speaker 1: brand new way to fail the banking crisis of two
[28:08] Speaker 1: thousand and an eight shook the world financial system and
[28:12] Speaker 1: destroyed millions of jobs. More than a decade later, we're
[28:16] Speaker 1: still living with the consequences. It was, in its way,
[28:20] Speaker 1: a more serious crisis than any nuclear accident. It was
[28:25] Speaker 1: certainly far graver than a bungle at the Oscars. Yet
[28:28] Speaker 1: the same problems were at the roots of all these accidents.
[28:34] Speaker 1: After the La La Land shambles, Vanity Fair reported the
[28:38] Speaker 1: Oscars have an intense sixth step plan to avoid another
[28:44] Speaker 1: envelope disaster. The six steps include getting rid of the
[28:49] Speaker 1: two accounting partners, Brian Cullenan and Martha Ruise, and the
[28:54] Speaker 1: twin sets of envelopes. Instead, says Vanity Fair, there will
[28:59] Speaker 1: be three partners. A third partner will sit in the
[29:03] Speaker 1: show's control room with the producers. All three partners will
[29:07] Speaker 1: have a complete set of envelopes. If having two sets
[29:12] Speaker 1: caused the problem, having three sets is better, right. I'm
[29:17] Speaker 1: not sure Galileo would agree. You've been listening to Cautionary Tales.
[29:29] Speaker 1: I expand on some of the ideas in this episode
[29:31] Speaker 1: in my book adapt You might Like It. Cautionary Tales
[29:36] Speaker 1: is written and presented by me Tim Harford. Our producers
[29:40] Speaker 1: are Ryan Dilley and Marilyn Rust. The sound designer and
[29:44] Speaker 1: mixer was Pascal Wise, who also composed the amazing music.
[29:50] Speaker 1: This season stars Alan Cumming, Archie Panjabi, Toby Stevens and
[29:55] Speaker 1: Russell Tovey, with enso Celenti, Ed Gochen, Melanie Gutteridge, Mercia Munroe,
[30:01] Speaker 1: Rufus Wright and introducing Malcolm Gladwell. Thanks to the team
[30:06] Speaker 1: at Pushkin Industries, Julia Artin, Heather Fame, Mia LaBelle, Carlie Migliori,
[30:12] Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg and of course the mighty Malcolm Gladwell. And
[30:17] Speaker 1: thanks to my colleagues at The Financial Times

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