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Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford

Pushkin Industries

237 episodes

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.

Episodes page 5 of 5

  1. Death on the Dance Floor

    · 37 min · S3 E1

    With its splendid modern architecture, the Hyatt Regency was the place to be seen in Kansas City in 1981. Beneath space-age walkways, guests drank, laughed and danced... not realizing that the 60 tons of of glass,…

  2. Cautionary Tales Returns Every Other Friday from March 25th

    · 3:04 · Trailer

    The greatest mistakes, disasters and fiascos of the past aren't just gripping stories... they're also warnings from which we all can learn. Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford returns EVERY OTHER FRIDAY FROM MARCH 25th…

  3. The Mummy’s Curse

    · 37 min · S2 E17

    Disturbing the remains of the Egyptian pharaohs is known to incur a deadly curse, so why did a team of archeologists still risk inciting the wrath of King Tutankhamun by entering his burial chamber? And how many of…

  4. The Truth About Hansel and Gretel

    · 37 min · S2 E16

    Was the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel - the story of a woodcutter’s children abandoned in the woods and left at the mercy of a witch - in fact, early true crime? A hit book - The Truth About Hansel and Gretel - said…

  5. Do NOT Pass GO!

    · 35 min · S2 E14

    Lizzie J. Magie (played by Helena Bonham Carter) should be celebrated as the inventor of what would become Monopoly - but her role in creating the smash hit board game was cynically ignored, even though she had a…

  6. Wrong Tools Cost Lives

    · 34 min · S2 E13

    The British Government promised to create a "world-beating" system to track deadly Covid 19 infections - but it included an outdated version of the off-the-shelf spreadsheet software Microsoft Excel. The result was…

  7. Fritterin’ Away Genius

    · 37 min · S2 E12

    Claude Shannon was brilliant. He was the Einstein of computer science... only he loved "fritterin' away" his time building machines to play chess, solve Rubik's cubes and beat the house at roulette. If Shannon had…

  8. The Fan Who Infected a Movie Star

    · 32 min · S2 E11

    German measles is a minor illness for most people - but for unborn children it can be devastating. In 1943 - when the link was only just becoming clear - a young US marine decided to break rubella quarantine to meet…

  9. Whistleblower on the 28th Floor

    · 32 min · S2 E10

    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…

  10. Masterly Inactivity Versus Micromanaging

    · 32 min · S2 E9

    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…

  11. Demonizing Dungeons & Dragons

    · 37 min · S2 E8

    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…

  12. Number Fever: How Pepsi Nearly Went Pop

    · 35 min · S2 E7

    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…

  13. The Curse of Knowledge Meets The Valley of Death

    · 34 min · S2 E6

    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…

  14. The Dunning Kruger Hijack (and Other Criminally Stupid Acts)

    · 33 min · S2 E5

    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…

  15. Catching a KiIler Doctor

    · 34 min · S2 E4

    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…

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

    · 35 min · S2 E3

    "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…

  17. Florence Nightingale and Her Geeks Declare War on Death

    · 36 min · S2 E2

    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…

  18. Martin Luther King Jr, the Jewelry Genius, and the Art of Public Speaking

    · 35 min · S2 E1

    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…

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

    · 14 min · Bonus

    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…

  20. The Data Detective

    · 34 min · Bonus

    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…

  21. BONUS: Storks, Smoking and the Power of Doubt

    · 10 min · Bonus

    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…

  22. How To End A Pandemic

    · 25 min · S1 E14

    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…

  23. That Turn To Pascagoula

    · 24 min · S1 E13

    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…

  24. The Village of Heroes

    · 22 min · S1 E12

    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…

  25. The Spreadsheet of Life and Death

    · 24 min · S1 E11

    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…

  26. A Tsunami of Misery

    · 21 min · S1 E10

    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…

  27. Fire at The Beverly Hills Supper Club

    · 21 min · S1 E9

    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…

  28. Cautionary Tales Presents: TED Talk Daily

    · 18 min · Bonus

    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,"…

  29. You Have Reached Your Destination

    · 33 min · S1 E8

    We may mock our ancestors for seeking the advice of oracles, soothsayers and psychics, but today we rely heavily on computer programs and math formulas to help us navigate our world. If we continue to follow them…

  30. Bowie, Jazz and the Unplayable Piano

    · 31 min · S1 E7

    It was the biggest concert of Keith Jarrett's career - but the pianist was in for a shock when he entered Koln's opera house. The only piano at the venue was a broken-down wreck. Should he risk humiliation and play…

  31. How Britain Invented, Then Ignored, Blitzkrieg

    · 36 min · S1 E6

    In 1917, a brilliant British officer developed a way to use an emerging military technology: the tank. The British army promptly squandered the idea – but the Germans did not. Blitzkrieg, the devastating advance of…

  32. Buried by the Wall Street Crash

    · 36 min · S1 E5

    Both of the world’s greatest economists, Irving Fisher and John Maynard Keynes, thought they could see into the future and make a killing on the stock market - and then both were wiped out by the Wall Street Crash. One…

  33. The Deadly Airship Race

    · 38 min · S1 E4

    A British Lord wanted to build the best airship in the world - and so he had two rival design teams battle it out to win the juicy government contract. Competition is supposed to bring the best out of people, but run…

  34. La La Land: Galileo's Warning

    · 31 min · S1 E3

    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,…

  35. The Rogue Dressed as a Captain

    · 33 min · S1 E2

    One crisp morning in Berlin, in 1906, a small group of soldiers were led on an extraordinary heist by a man they believed to be a Captain. So how did an ageing nobody in a fake uniform trick them into aiding him in the…

  36. DANGER: Rocks Ahead!

    · 35 min · S1 E1

    Torrey Canyon was one of the biggest and best ships in the world - but its captain and crew still needlessly steered it towards a deadly reef known as The Seven Stones. This course seemed like utter madness, but the…

  37. Introducing: Cautionary Tales

    · 2:57 · Trailer

    Coming November 15 from Tim Harford and Pushkin Industries, Cautionary Tales relates a true story of a time when something did not go according to plan. Some of these true stories are tragic, some are comic, but like…

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