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.

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

And there's various psychological experiments and measurements of things going on in organizations. voice-verified

And more generally, whenever one of these things goes wrong, there is often a theme or something about how organizations work, how complex systems work, or very often how human cognition works, how we all think. voice-verified

That you can carry forward and you can learn from in the modern world. voice-verified

So one of the very first cautionary tales we did was about a captain in Berlin before the First World War, an army captain. voice-verified

who just commandeered some soldiers walking down the street, said, you're on a special mission. voice-verified

You need to come with me. voice-verified

They fall in behind him. voice-verified

He gets himself a little army. voice-verified

There's about 10 of them. voice-verified

They cross Berlin. voice-verified

They go to Köpenick, which is a suburb of Berlin. voice-verified

They arrest the mayor of Köpenick. voice-verified

This captain says, you've been accused of corruption, orders him to open the safe to confiscate the money that this mayor has stolen. voice-verified

The mayor's put under arrest. voice-verified

The mayor's wife is put under house arrest. voice-verified

He tells his men to take the mayor to the police station in central Berlin. voice-verified

And then the captain with the bag of money under his arm walks into the lavatory cubicle at Köpenick station. voice-verified

And then five minutes later walks out again in civilian clothes. voice-verified

He never was a captain. voice-verified

He's just a bloke wearing a soldier's uniform and just disappears. voice-verified

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