Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
Episodes
"7000 horses are being flown across space..." - Cautionary Questions #2
29 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why are board games so popular in Germany? What’s Tim Harford’s top tip for productivity? And where do all those sound effects come from? Tim is j...
Cautionary Tales Presents: Getting out of Dodge from Revisionist History
19 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The longest running television series of the 20th century was Gunsmoke, a western set in the notorious Dodge City, Kansas. Malcolm sweeps away mountai...
A Chorus of Contempt at The Sydney Opera House
15 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
1957. Jørn Utzon receives a phone call: he's just won an international competition to design a brand new opera house for the Australian city of Sydne...
The City That Sold Itself To Wall Street
01 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Cautionary Book Club: When Morgan Stanley offered to lease Chicago's parking meters for the princely sum of $1 billion, the City Council were convinc...
General Ludd's Rage Against the Machines
18 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
1812. A band of "Luddites" is laying siege to a textile mill in the North of England, under cover of night. They plan to destroy the machines that are...
Andy Warhol's Factory of Truth
11 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Cautionary Conversation: Andy Warhol’s assistant, Gerard Malanga, is facing a long prison sentence in Italy. He’s forged several Che Guevara portr...
Poles Apart: How A Journalist Divided A City
04 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Heroic explorer Frederick Cook has just returned from the very roof of the world, the first man to reach the North Pole. Or so he says. Journalist Phi...
The Father of Space Travel
28 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Cautionary Conversation: Did a Nazi put America on the moon? To celebrate the launch of his mini-series on the V-2 rocket, Tim Harford sits down with ...
A Fascination with Failure: Death On The Dancefloor (Classic)
21 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Henry Petroski is one of Tim Harford's favourite fellow nerds. His study of engineering failures has profoundly influenced Tim's own writing, includin...
When Parakeets Plundered New York
14 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Cautionary Conversation: An invasive parakeet species began spreading in New York City - and the government decided to kill every last bird. Tim Harfo...
The Coup, the Poet and the Secret to Winning Wimbledon
07 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
“If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss..." Those words - from Rudyard Kipling's poem "If" - were b...
The Man Who Played With Hurricanes
23 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today, the idea of controlling the weather is controversial. Scientists who research geoengineering have even received death threats. But once upon a ...
Cautionary Tales Presents: Lost Hills - The Dark Prince
15 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today, we're sharing an episode of the gripping Pushkin series Lost Hills: The Dark Prince. The brand-new season takes a deep dive into the surf world...
Sonic Poison? The Genesis of Havana Syndrome
09 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
CIA agents in Havana complaining of mental fog, dizziness and ear pain in 2016. Children in Miami in 1974, hyperventilating and wracked with abdominal...
Airships, AI and Alan Cumming: Tim Answers Your Questions
26 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why does economics get a bad rap? How did a small Hungarian airline wreak havoc in the 2000s? What cautionary tales can we glean from Tim’s own life...
The Man Who Bet His House on a Pop Song - A Eurovision Tale
12 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
You can gamble on horses or on the turn of a card - but Daniel Gould made a living betting on the outcome of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. Danie...
The Dark Money Behind Mother's Day
28 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Anna Marie Jarvis wanted a national holiday to honor the dedication and sacrifice of America's mothers. She wasn't the first person to propose a Mothe...
The True Scandal of Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It could cure any 'female ailment' - even cancer - said the adverts. But Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound was, in fact, just a concoction of he...
What if Terrorists Could Weaponize Covid?
07 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Cautionary Conversation: In 1990, a small extremist group launched a nerve gas attack on passengers riding the Tokyo subway. Thousands of people were ...
The Vigilante and the Air Traffic Controller
31 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Air traffic controllers are meant to stop aircrafts from flying into one another... and if they fail, computer systems are installed to warn pilots of...
America's Mata Hari? The Double Life of Esther Reed
24 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Cautionary Conversation: When a small-town detective gets a tip about a missing woman, he believes he's uncovered a highly-trained chameleon: a foreig...
Office Hell: the Demise of the Playful Workspace
17 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 90s, cutting-edge advertising agency Chiat/Day announced a radical plan, aimed at giving the company a jolt of creative renewal. They wou...
La La Land: Galileo’s Warning (Classic)
10 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With the 95th Academy Awards just around the corner, Tim Harford looks back at a basic lesson. Galileo tried to teach us that adding more and more lay...
The Scientist and the Swindler
03 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Cautionary Conversation: Celebrated physicist Professor Paul Frampton was on his way to Brussels to meet the love of his life, swimwear model Denise M...
The Hero Who Rode His Segway Off a Cliff
17 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Steve Jobs called It “the most amazing piece of technology since the PC.” According to Jeff Bezos It was not only “revolutionary,” but infinit...
The Mummy's Curse (Classic)
10 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A hundred years ago, the Tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun was officially opened - despite the widely held belief that disturbing the remains of the Egy...
The Final Illusion of the Great Lafayette
03 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Golden sparks are raining down on the Great Lafayette’s famous vaudeville show, “The Lion’s Bride”. They look like they’re part of the perfo...
LIVE: The Myth of the Million Dollar Tulip Bulb
20 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Recorded before an audience at the Bristol Festival of Economics (11/17/2022) The Dutch went so potty over tulip bulbs in the 1600s that many were rui...
DOUBLE BILL: When a Plague Struck World of Warcraft/Blood on the Tracks
06 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As a special New Year treat we're presenting two Cautionary Tales Shorts - which have previously only been available to paying Apple and Pushkin+ subs...
"Snow Crashing Into The Metaverse" from Imaginary Worlds
03 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we’re sharing an episode of Imaginary Worlds. For the last 30 years, the real world has been catching up to Neal Stephenson’s vision of...
The Company That Cancelled Christmas
09 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
More than 100,000 families - many of them amongst the poorest in Britain - put money aside for Christmas gifts and other seasonal treats in a savings ...
The Wild Turkeys of Schleswig
25 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
There are eight American turkeys painted on the walls of Schleswig's Cathedral of St Peter - which is odd... since the frescoes were created two centu...
Cautionary Conversation: The Blitz Spirit and the Blackout Ripper
18 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In a crisis most people respond with decency and solidarity. The bombing of British cities in the Second World War did not cause society to crumble as...
The Inventor Who Almost Ended the World
11 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Thomas Midgley's inventions caused his own death, hastened the deaths of millions of people around the world, and very nearly extinguished all life on...
The Halloween Poisoner
28 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Candy laced with cyanide and needles in marshmallows, we've long been warned to be suspicious of the sweet treats handed out by strangers at Halloween...
Cautionary Conversation: The Conspiracy Theorist Who Changed His Mind
21 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Charlie Veitch was certain that 9/11 was an inside job. The attack on the World Trade Center wasn't the work of Al-Qaeda, but an elaborate conspiracy....
Cautionary Tales Presents: Warfare, The Life of Anne Frank
14 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This week, it's an episode from Warfare, a podcast from our friends at History Hit. It's 1942. The year Anne Frank and her family went into hiding dur...
The Online Date That's Too Good to be True
07 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Single and looking for love, Dr Robert Epstein found himself chatting with a slim, attractive brunette online. She seemed perfect... perhaps even too ...
A Leap of Faith From the Eiffel Tower
23 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Inventor Franz Reichelt wants to test his novel "parachute suit" from as tall a structure as possible - and the Eiffel Tower seems ideal. Previous tri...
Cautionary Conversation: Flying on Empty
09 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A meter is longer than a yard. An ounce is heavier than a gram. We harmlessly mix them up sometimes, but a "unit conversion error" when you're filling...
Tim Talks Bicycles with Patented
02 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Invented in the mid-1800s, bicycles have had enduring popularity. Across cultures, they have been embraced, promising freedom and mobility at a lower ...
"You’re Not Howard Hughes!"
26 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
By the 1970s Howard Hughes was the "invisible billionaire”. A business tycoon, a daring aviator and Hollywood Lothario, Hughes had an amazing life s...
"Who would you dine with? Scott or Amundsen?" Malcolm Gladwell and Tim Harford in Discussion.
19 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Malcolm Gladwell joins Tim Harford to discuss our recent three-part tale about the race to reach the South Pole. There's talk of imperial decline; the...
South Pole Race: When the Limeys Get Scurvy
12 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Polar exploration is dangerous... but trudging hundreds of miles in subzero temperatures isn't made any easier if you're suffering from scurvy. The de...
The Bowery Boys and the Black Tom Explosion
05 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Cautionary Tales returns next week, but in the meantime enjoy a story of disaster from The Bowery Boys Podcast. It's July 30th 1916, just after 2am,...
South Pole Race: “Mummy, is Amundsen a good man?”
29 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Roald Amundsen beat Captain Scott to the South Pole. The Norwegian - using dog sleds and skis - made it look easy... fun, even. He was heading home to...
South Pole Race: David and Goliath on Ice
15 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
1910: Two men are racing to be the first to reach the South Pole. Captain Robert Falcon Scott heads a well-financed, technologically-advanced expediti...
Chicago When It Sizzles
01 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
July 1995: A deadly heatwave gripped Chicago - bridges buckled; the power grids failed; and the morgue ran out of space - but some neighbourhoods saw ...
The French Knight’s Guide to Corporate Culture
17 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
France 1346: The army of King Philip VI is Europe's pre-eminent killing machine. It's accustomed to crushing any force stupid enough to oppose it, and...
Frankenstein Versus the Volcano
03 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When Mount Tambora erupted it spewed ash across the globe; blotting out the sun; poisoning crops; and bringing starvation, illness and death to millio...
Bless the Coal-black Hearts of the Broadway Critics
20 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When Billy Joel agreed to let dance legend Twyla Tharp turn his songs into a Broadway musical it seemed like a surefire hit. But in previews, Movin&rs...
Monkey for Mayor from This Day in Esoteric Political History
13 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when a monkey gets elected mayor? Well, not really a monkey, but a monkey mascot for a town’s football games. Tim Harford joins Thi...
When the Autopilot Switched Off
06 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
An airline captain thought he was giving his children a harmless thrill by letting them "fly" his packed airplane - the young cockpit visitors weren't...
Cautionary Tales Presents: World's Greatest Con
29 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We'll be back with another story of human error next week, but today we're sharing another podcast you might like. On World's Greatest Con, Brian Brus...
Photographing Fairies
22 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sherlock Holmes is known for approaching all mysteries with cool logic - and yet when his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle saw photographs taken by two ...
Tim Joins ‘No Such Thing As A Fish'
15 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
‘No Such Thing as a Fish’ is one of Tim Harford’s favorite podcasts and he was recently invited on as a guest. So here’s a chance to listen to...
The False Dawn of the Electric Car
08 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sir Clive Sinclair was a computer whizz and business mogul to rival Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. He was a visionary who could do no wrong... until he tri...
The Balloons That Ate Cleveland (A Cautionary Tales Short)
25 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When Disneyland released one million helium balloons to set a new world record, Cleveland, Ohio looked on in envy. Could it top the Magic Kingdom? Wha...
Death on the Dance Floor
25 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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, la...
Cautionary Tales Returns Every Other Friday from March 25th
11 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
The Mummy’s Curse
29 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
The Truth About Hansel and Gretel
22 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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, ea...
Do NOT Pass GO!
28 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 sma...
Wrong Tools Cost Lives
21 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The British Government promised to create a "world-beating" system to track deadly Covid 19 infections - but it included an outdated version of the of...
Fritterin’ Away Genius
14 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Claude Shannon was brilliant. He was the Einstein of computer science... only he loved "fritterin' away" his time building machines to play chess, sol...
The Fan Who Infected a Movie Star
07 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 clea...
Whistleblower on the 28th Floor
30 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Masterly Inactivity Versus Micromanaging
23 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Lady Sale (played by Helena Bonham Carter) was part of a bloody and ignominious British retreat from Afghanistan in 1842. The arrogant colonial invade...
Demonizing Dungeons & Dragons
16 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When James Dallas Egbert III was reported missing from his college dorm - one of America's most flamboyant private detectives was summoned to solve th...
Number Fever: How Pepsi Nearly Went Pop
09 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Pepsi twice ended up in court after promotions went disastrously wrong. Other big companies have fallen into the same trap - promising customers rewar...
The Curse of Knowledge Meets The Valley of Death
02 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 blame...
The Dunning Kruger Hijack (and Other Criminally Stupid Acts)
26 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Catching a KiIler Doctor
19 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 hun...
The Art Forger, the Nazi, and "The Pope"
12 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"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 ot...
Florence Nightingale and Her Geeks Declare War on Death
05 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Victorian nurse Florence Nightingale (played by her distant cousin Helena Bonham Carter) is a hero of modern medicine - but her greatest contribution ...
Martin Luther King Jr, the Jewelry Genius, and the Art of Public Speaking
26 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
One speechmaker inspired millions with his words, the other utterly destroyed his own multi-million-dollar business with just a few phrases.Civil righ...
Bonus: Why We Believe What Isn't True (with Axios Today)
12 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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....
The Data Detective
02 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Cautionary Tales' host Tim Harford has a new book - The Data Detective - setting out ten commandments for understanding the numbers, charts, graphs an...
BONUS: Storks, Smoking and the Power of Doubt
16 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
How To End A Pandemic
17 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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. H...
That Turn To Pascagoula
10 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 pe...
The Village of Heroes
03 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 r...
The Spreadsheet of Life and Death
26 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 expensiv...
A Tsunami of Misery
19 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 radiati...
Fire at The Beverly Hills Supper Club
12 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Cautionary Tales Presents: TED Talk Daily
31 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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...
You Have Reached Your Destination
27 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We may mock our ancestors for seeking the advice of oracles, soothsayers and psychics, but today we rely heavily on computer programs and math formula...
Bowie, Jazz and the Unplayable Piano
20 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 ve...
How Britain Invented, Then Ignored, Blitzkrieg
13 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1917, a brilliant British officer developed a way to use an emerging military technology: the tank. The British army promptly squandered the idea –...
Buried by the Wall Street Crash
06 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 sto...
The Deadly Airship Race
29 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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...
La La Land: Galileo's Warning
22 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 happe...
The Rogue Dressed as a Captain
15 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
DANGER: Rocks Ahead!
15 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Introducing: Cautionary Tales
22 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 pla...