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 other Friday.
https://www.pushkin.fm/
Gesamtlänge aller Episoden: 3 days 3 hours 31 minutes
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episode 1: Martin Luther King Jr, the Jewelry Genius, and the Art of Public Speaking
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 Westworld, The Hunger Games, and the James Bond films) and jewelry store owner Gerald Ratner offer starkly contrasting stories on when you should stick to the script and when you should take a risk...
episode 2: Florence Nightingale and Her Geeks Declare War on Death
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 made to back her public health campaigns.
Her charts convinced the great and the good that deaths due to filth and poor sanitation could be averted - saving countless lives...
episode 2: The Ripper Retold: A Cautionary Tale
Tim discusses new research on the Jack the Ripper murders with historian Hallie Rubenhold.
episode 3: The Art Forger, the Nazi, and "The Pope"
"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 Göring. But perhaps Han van Meegeren's biggest con was to convince the Dutch public that he was a cheeky resistance hero...
episode 4: Catching a KiIler Doctor
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 death certificates he himself had signed...
episode 4: Cautionary Tales Presents: The New Bazaar
Introducing you to the New Bazaar Podcast with Cautionary Tales host Tim Hartford
episode 5: The Dunning Kruger Hijack (and Other Criminally Stupid Acts)
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 of an expert when the stakes were so very high? The Dunning Kruger effect.
But being too stupid to recognise the limits of your knowledge isn't confined to such prize idiots - it's something we are all guilty of at times and has huge implications for society...
episode 5: Cautionary Tales Presents: Endless Thread
Introducing you to the Endless Thread Podcast with Cautionary Tales host Tim Hartford
episode 6: The Curse of Knowledge Meets The Valley of Death
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 awful day in 1854 reveal a common human trait - we often wrongly assume that everyone knows what we know and can easily comprehend our meaning.
Starring Helena Bonham Carter as Florence Nightingale.
Read more about Tim's work at http://timharford...
episode 7: Number Fever: How Pepsi Nearly Went Pop
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 bankruptcy.
Businesses and customers alike are sometimes blinded by the big numbers in such PR stunts - but it's usually the customers, not the businesses, who end up losing out.
Read more about Tim's work at http://timharford...
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