Tim Harford

speaker

476 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 20 Jul

Tim Harford’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

Appearances

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After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal · Britain's Worst Airship Disaster · 20 Jul 2026 podcast

So you wouldn't have a smoking lounge, obviously, unless important people were on your airship, in which case you need a smoking lounge. voice-verified

so they did think about this and they had a quite a clever solution and i don't think the smoking lounge ultimately was the problem um the smoking lounge was slightly pressurized so you're constantly pumping air into the smoking lounge which means that air is constantly pushing out of under all the doors it's constantly escaping from the smoking lounge that means if there's hydrogen around it's not going to get into the smoking lounge because you're constantly you know they're voice-verified

So beautiful, so beautiful. voice-verified

But I think that this was part of the problem, that this was to be for very important people. voice-verified

And so one of the problems with the R101 is that the design was overly heavy and they made it difficult to lighten it down because you've got all these luxury items going on board. voice-verified

Second related problem is that Lord Thompson is constantly trying to show it off. voice-verified

So one of the things that he does is he invites the membership of the Houses of Parliament, or maybe it's the House of Lords. voice-verified

Anyway, a bunch of super VIPs are all going to come and they're all going to go for a ride on the R101. voice-verified

Meanwhile, the crew of the R101 are like, this is a prototype airship. voice-verified

There are a number of problems which we have yet to fix. voice-verified

We cannot take all these people around. voice-verified

In the end, they compromised. voice-verified

So they were served lunch on the R101, but it was attached to a mast. voice-verified

So it's floating. voice-verified

So amazing, amazing experience. voice-verified

But just this sort of sense of like, oh, these masters of the universe cannot be... voice-verified

It cannot be inconvenienced by a delay to the schedule. voice-verified

Yes. voice-verified

And that became a theme over and over again. voice-verified

People basically identifying problems and the problems not being passed up. voice-verified

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