Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to our second Cautionary Questions episode. I'm
Speaker 2: Tim Harford. You are our loyal listeners. You have sent
Speaker 2: in your questions and we are going to try to
Speaker 2: provide some answers this episode. I am delighted to be
Speaker 2: joined by composer, sound designer representative of you are listeners,
Speaker 2: representative of the people, Pascal Wise.
Speaker 1: Pascal.
Speaker 3: Hello, Tim. This is very exciting, isn't it.
Speaker 2: It's it's so exciting because you were with Cautionary Tales
Speaker 2: from the beginning.
Speaker 1: Do you remember when we we we sat down in.
Speaker 2: My producer Ryan's apartment. Yea, and we just we talked
Speaker 2: about airships and what what what are airship's going.
Speaker 1: To sound like? What's what's the music going to sound like? Yeah?
Speaker 4: And then I went off to record a hair dryer
Speaker 4: or something whatever it was required. It's I feel like
Speaker 4: I've been I'm like a kid who's been allowed onto
Speaker 4: the into the cockpit for this episode. Although having said that,
Speaker 4: that's a really bad sort of analogy.
Speaker 3: Because we did an episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, I didn't, and it didn't go well at all.
Speaker 2: So let's hope we you've set the bar low there.
Speaker 1: That's good.
Speaker 4: So yeah, hopefully we're not going to crash in this one.
Speaker 2: On our last Q and A episode with Jacob Goldstein,
Speaker 2: we invited people to tell us what they thought of
Speaker 2: cautionary conversation. So what what about the episodes where we're
Speaker 2: not doing a fully mixed, composed, narrated story, but we're
Speaker 2: doing something else, like having this kind of conversation or
Speaker 2: talking to an author. And we got a lot of opinions,
Speaker 2: a lot of feedback. So Pascal, you've got some of
Speaker 2: them in front of you.
Speaker 4: Yes, Now, Tim, for this, I would like you there's
Speaker 4: a bit of an exercise view. I want you to
Speaker 4: imagine that there's a bowl of chocolates in front of us.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, you got that in mind.
Speaker 1: I'm liking that already.
Speaker 4: I don't want to stress your imaginative skills because Ruth Ware, Alice,
Speaker 4: our producer, is telling us it is the Ruthware, the novelist.
Speaker 3: Okay, that had not hit my radar.
Speaker 4: Well, she sent a great email in with a little
Speaker 4: analogy for us. I do enjoy the cautionary interviews, some
Speaker 4: more than others, depending on the person you're speaking to.
Speaker 4: But I think perhaps the issue is they're quite a
Speaker 4: different pleasure from the cautionary tales. I'm sure I'm not
Speaker 4: the only podcast addict who gets a pleasurable little ping
Speaker 4: of dopamine when I see there's a new episode of
Speaker 4: my favorite podcast.
Speaker 3: But that turn.
Speaker 4: Into slight disappointment when it's not what you were expecting.
Speaker 4: I suppose it's a bit like picking your way through
Speaker 4: a box of chocolates and going chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, olive.
Speaker 4: I mean, I like olives, I like them a lot,
Speaker 4: but if I've been promised a chocolate, I may not
Speaker 4: be in the best frame of mind to enjoy the olive.
Speaker 3: Could there you go? I could have offered you a
Speaker 3: bottle of olives, but I went chocolate.
Speaker 1: You can tell she's a novelist. Can't you? Thank you
Speaker 1: so much? Ruth.
Speaker 2: What I've been trying to do when a cautionary conversation
Speaker 2: appears is I try to make it seem a little
Speaker 2: bit like a cautionary tale. I try and write a
Speaker 2: little bit of narrative up at the front to make
Speaker 2: it seem as close as possible to the original.
Speaker 3: It's a really good point, isn't it about expectation.
Speaker 4: I mean, I really recognize that sort of dopamine hit, which,
Speaker 4: of course all our technology.
Speaker 3: At the moment seems to be entirely based on.
Speaker 2: So maybe we should be teaching people to resist. You
Speaker 2: should enjoy the olive, don't be controlled by the steady
Speaker 2: flow of chocolate. We invited people to keep writing in
Speaker 2: about this question of the cautionary conversations versus the full
Speaker 2: fledged cautionary tales.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 4: We've had a really good response actually, and obviously that
Speaker 4: one is pointing to the idea that we should sort
Speaker 4: of flag this up again Dopamine management. Other people like
Speaker 4: Nada and Sandra, they were very keen on the traditional
Speaker 4: episodes with full sound design, you know, full stop. They
Speaker 4: love those and didn't really want the conversation episodes fair enough.
Speaker 4: And then you know, there are lots of listeners who
Speaker 4: are just very happy with the current setup Kira sets.
Speaker 4: All of your episodes are thoroughly enjoyable and incredibly enlightening.
Speaker 4: Ed Midden from Arlington chimes with While I'm always interested
Speaker 4: in a good story and a lesson, i also find
Speaker 4: it very interesting to learn about the storyteller. Context matters,
Speaker 4: and getting to know more about the world around you
Speaker 4: helps me better understand cautionary tales.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it is it it is. It's like a
Speaker 2: mixedbox chocolates any others.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Sammy, Maitlenan and I hope I'm pronouncing that somewhere
Speaker 4: in the ballpark.
Speaker 1: Make a linen.
Speaker 3: Maybe make a linen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we apologize to everyone whose name we're mangling. We
Speaker 2: are sorry about Sammy went to the trouble of making
Speaker 2: as a chart. You will loved him because you love
Speaker 2: a chart.
Speaker 1: An, I've seen the charts so well.
Speaker 4: As far as I understand that, I think you will
Speaker 4: probably have a deeper understanding than me. But it shows
Speaker 4: how the conversational format has grown over the life of
Speaker 4: the podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I enjoyed Sammy's graft. Alice sent it on
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: What Sammy did was.
Speaker 2: To show what proportion of the show is now cautionary
Speaker 2: conversations rather than cautionary tales, which is fair enough. That's
Speaker 2: that's a question to ask. But for me, I would
Speaker 2: also have liked to have seen just the absolute number
Speaker 2: of cautionary tales. But I think I have it. I
Speaker 2: think I think I have it from memory. So in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen we did eight. In twenty twenty, I think
Speaker 2: we did six. In twenty twenty one, I think we
Speaker 2: did sixteen, and in twenty twenty two, I think we
Speaker 2: probably did eighteen. So we're trying to do twenty.
Speaker 3: A year now of the fully fledged, of the.
Speaker 2: Full fledged, fully mixed, and the aim is to get
Speaker 2: something out every two weeks. So obviously twenty doesn't quite
Speaker 2: cover it. So then you would need these conversations that
Speaker 2: we're having now, you and either Q and A episodes,
Speaker 2: some reruns, some cautionary conversations.
Speaker 3: Otherwise I'm just going to fall over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean yeah, because you got I mean
Speaker 2: I can't write them. Andrew, of course Andrew write write
Speaker 2: some of the episodes. There's a limit to how much
Speaker 2: he can write. There's a limit to how much I
Speaker 2: can write. There's a limit to how much you can
Speaker 2: compose and mix. So really the choice is not could
Speaker 2: we have some more cautionary tales instead of these cautionary conversations? Sorry,
Speaker 2: we can't write any more cautionary tales? About twenty year
Speaker 2: is about the limit. The question is would you like
Speaker 2: some cautionary conversations on top of those or not? Thanks
Speaker 2: everyone for writing in. I mean I acknowledge that everyone
Speaker 2: who bothered to write in, they'll have their own view,
Speaker 2: and they wrote in in response to a conversation episode
Speaker 2: a Q and a episode, So people who despise such
Speaker 2: episodes won't have even been around to respond. And then
Speaker 2: you know, and there's more jazz in it for you,
Speaker 2: isn't there? In terms of when you get someone else
Speaker 2: in the studio, there's more of an improvisation. You're being
Speaker 2: pulled in different ways.
Speaker 4: The others are written and set and you know, we
Speaker 4: know what's coming, Whereas it's really interesting to hear different
Speaker 4: brains and different brains interacting with you and encouraging the conversation.
Speaker 3: In different directions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a different thing.
Speaker 3: Now let's move on to D and D.
Speaker 1: Of course, Dungeon Dragons.
Speaker 4: Why not the look of excitement and relief on your face.
Speaker 4: I used to play D and D and I can't
Speaker 4: remember too much about it other than it did have
Speaker 4: an eighteenth level Monk. Does that mean anything to you?
Speaker 2: It doesn't mean something to me, But I mean you
Speaker 2: say you used to play D and D. I've played
Speaker 2: D and D twice in June, and we're recording this
Speaker 2: conversation in July, so I'm a current player.
Speaker 3: You're a dungeon master.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I'm a dungeon master. So the dungeon master, for
Speaker 2: people who don't know, is the kind of referee, stroke, storyteller,
Speaker 2: stroke arbiter, the director of the drama, if you like,
Speaker 2: while the others are the actors in the drama.
Speaker 1: There's no I mean, there's no precise analogy.
Speaker 4: So yeah, D and D has got some of our
Speaker 4: listeners very interested to hear more.
Speaker 3: Norwin, that's a.
Speaker 4: I can't believe you would think of yourself as lawful neutral.
Speaker 3: You might need to unpack that one.
Speaker 4: I've listened to a lot of your stuff on the
Speaker 4: radio and your podcasts, and even read a book, and
Speaker 4: you're clearly good. I also suspect the UK government would
Speaker 4: consider you chaotic rather than lawful.
Speaker 2: I'm not even sure we should unpack this. I think
Speaker 2: people who know what Norwin is talking about, and if
Speaker 2: you don't know, you don't know. All I'd say is yes,
Speaker 2: as I mentioned, I'm not really a D and D player.
Speaker 2: I play other games, and other games do not hitching
Speaker 2: nowing I'm completely consistent.
Speaker 3: With what I told you forty five seconds ago. Oh
Speaker 3: I can't remember that far fair.
Speaker 2: Enough so but yes, I'm very flat at that Norway
Speaker 2: regards me as chaotic good, because chaotic good is you're
Speaker 2: the rule breaking good guy. This is definitely the coolest
Speaker 2: of all the alignments.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to let you out of the dungeon
Speaker 4: quite yet, I'm afraid because the D and D thing
Speaker 4: did spark quite a few questions from the listeners. Ryan
Speaker 4: Kennedy and his son Ian were in touch. Hello and
Speaker 4: mister Harford. My youngest son and I are huge fans
Speaker 4: of Cautionary Tales. Ian is eight and really looks forward
Speaker 4: to each new episode coming out. We listen to your
Speaker 4: show every time we are driving somewhere to go camping
Speaker 4: or hiking together, and we each have a question for you.
Speaker 4: From me, how have you ever thought about doing a
Speaker 4: Cautionary Tales podcast episode specifically for kids who like to
Speaker 4: listen to your show? And from Ian. Ian loves D
Speaker 4: and D and after listening to your first question episode,
Speaker 4: would like to know what is your favorite D and
Speaker 4: D character class and why? So thank you for your time,
Speaker 4: for such a great podcast, and for your fantastic books.
Speaker 4: Ryan and Ian Kennedy now your best friends.
Speaker 2: I would imagine oh yeah. As a lovely email thank you.
Speaker 2: So I haven't considered doing a Cautionary Tales podcast specifically
Speaker 2: for children. I know there are quite a lot of
Speaker 2: quite young people who listen, which always makes me worry
Speaker 2: a little bit because I mean, these really are stories
Speaker 2: for grown up. Some of them are horrible, some of
Speaker 2: them aren't. But my son, who is eleven, he was
Speaker 2: photographed glued to the Cautionary Tales table read. The table
Speaker 2: readers when we it's basically like a rehearsal where we
Speaker 2: kind of explore things. I was doing a table read
Speaker 2: at home and he was lying on the floor outside
Speaker 2: my study with his ear the bottom of the door,
Speaker 2: listening to me read this story. And the story in
Speaker 2: particular is about this guy who murders his own son.
Speaker 2: It's the most tim on the most horrific episode. But
Speaker 2: he was completely hooked. So yeah, yes, I think about that.
Speaker 2: I have written a book for children which is not
Speaker 2: yet available in the US and Canada, but is available
Speaker 2: in most other places, called The Truth Detective. So if
Speaker 2: there are any eight to thirteen year olds listening and
Speaker 2: they want a bit more of me, they can get
Speaker 2: a copy of the Truth Detective and have fun with that.
Speaker 2: And Ian's question was was my favorite character class in
Speaker 2: D and D. I'm going to say a fighter. The
Speaker 2: reason I say that is because I actually find Dungeons
Speaker 2: and Dragons to be quite complicated. I prefer simpler games
Speaker 2: that are more about the narrative of the storytelling, the description,
Speaker 2: all of that, and less about all the complex rules.
Speaker 2: And fighters have the simplest rules. So I tend to
Speaker 2: stick with a fighter when I can.
Speaker 4: First person shoot them up exactly. So here's another question
Speaker 4: from Mary, who's living in France and who sends some
Speaker 4: kind words get ready to him.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I like kind words.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: Hello.
Speaker 4: I'd just like to start by saying thank you for
Speaker 4: Cautionary Tales. I've recommended it to a lot of people,
Speaker 4: and I look forward to the new episodes when they
Speaker 4: come out.
Speaker 1: Oh my pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 4: Right, come on, a question, here we go. A question
Speaker 4: I ponder is why do board games, and especially role
Speaker 4: playing games have such a geeky and often negative reputation.
Speaker 4: I think it's much more socially acceptable in France to
Speaker 4: be a role player gamer, and indeed any kind of gamer.
Speaker 4: I know lots more people who talk openly about them
Speaker 4: in different kinds of social circles. Can't quite get my
Speaker 4: head around why in the UK regularly playing board games
Speaker 4: with a bit of strategy or role play games seems
Speaker 4: to somehow marginalize you. After all, they're all social activities
Speaker 4: that you do with your friends. Anyway, makes me ponder.
Speaker 4: Thanks again for the podcast, Mary, Wow, great question.
Speaker 2: It is it is. I did do some thinking about this.
Speaker 2: About fifteen years ago. I wrote a magazine cover story
Speaker 2: for The Financial Times that partly involved me going to
Speaker 2: Germany to the biggest board game conference in the world
Speaker 2: at Essen, where there's just these huge, huge conference centers
Speaker 2: full of board game geeks and interviewing the board game
Speaker 2: geeks about the board games. And one of the questions
Speaker 2: was how come board games are so big in Germany
Speaker 2: and so relatively small in the UK and the US.
Speaker 2: And I mean, I think the best answer I've got
Speaker 2: it's a historical accident. And these things feed upon themselves.
Speaker 2: So if you have a board game culture, then the
Speaker 2: newspapers are kind of interested in board games, and so
Speaker 2: a new board game comes out, people actually review it,
Speaker 2: so it gets reviewed in the newspapers. It's a good
Speaker 2: board game. That means that there's more mileage and making
Speaker 2: a good board game, so the board games get better,
Speaker 2: or board games that win a prize in Germany are guaranteed.
Speaker 2: It's like winning the book a prize in the UK,
Speaker 2: You're instantly guaranteed to sell half a million copies because
Speaker 2: you won the game of the year. And so there's
Speaker 2: this virtual circle. And then just in terms of people's
Speaker 2: people's own social activity, is it acceptable after you've had
Speaker 2: people over for dinner to crack open a board game.
Speaker 2: I think back in the day it would have been
Speaker 2: quite common for a certain kind of English person to
Speaker 2: suggest a game of bridge. But I think it's less
Speaker 2: weird now. I've got lots of friends who are happy
Speaker 2: to try a board game.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Don't think I have a better answer than that, which
Speaker 2: is that these success breed success in this sort of thing.
Speaker 4: I wonder if things like Stranger Things, you know, the
Speaker 4: television series which features a bunch of kids quite obsessed
Speaker 4: with D and D. I mean, I wonder if that,
Speaker 4: you know, sparked any interest. And I certainly know quite
Speaker 4: a few kids around the ten to fourteen age group,
Speaker 4: sons and daughters of friends of mine, who are really
Speaker 4: into it. And I'm always quite surprised because I feel
Speaker 4: like they've picked up something from my childhood and I think, wow,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 2: YouTube as well, so there are live play channels for
Speaker 2: D and D and reviews of games on YouTube all
Speaker 2: of that. So yeah, the hobby is bigger than it's
Speaker 2: ever been.
Speaker 4: The next question Tim comes from Peter who's in Calgary,
Speaker 4: and he asks Tim, what do you feel is the
Speaker 4: most pressing problem we need to solve as humans and
Speaker 4: how substantial is any progress we've made.
Speaker 2: I guess the interesting thing about this is that if
Speaker 2: we have made a lot of progress in solving it,
Speaker 2: it no longer becomes a pressing problem.
Speaker 3: So the foot comes off the gas a bit.
Speaker 2: So I did discuss this in my book The Data
Speaker 2: Detective Stroke, How to Make the World Add Up. If
Speaker 2: you go back one hundred years, I think the most
Speaker 2: obvious problem that the human race faced was infant mortality,
Speaker 2: which is a polite way of saying babies and young
Speaker 2: kids dying. And it was an incredibly common occurrence. So
Speaker 2: if you imagine a class full of thirty kids who
Speaker 2: are going to show up to kindergarten at the age
Speaker 2: of four, and that these thirty children have just been born,
Speaker 2: perhaps a quarter of them, perhaps eight will never make
Speaker 2: it to kindergarten because the mortality rate is so high,
Speaker 2: so many children would have died immediately after childbirth, in
Speaker 2: childbirth or from these diseases. That would have been the
Speaker 2: situation in the early nineteenth century, and then this country
Speaker 2: or globally that is the global average, but it would
Speaker 2: have been true most places. But now the global average,
Speaker 2: I think it's less than one would die under the
Speaker 2: age of five out of thirty and that is globally,
Speaker 2: that is including the very poorest, most imprived countries in
Speaker 2: the world. So I would say, if that's the most
Speaker 2: pressing problem that the human race faced, that problem has
Speaker 2: not been solved, but we've made the most incredible progress.
Speaker 2: But then you just turn it around and say, well,
Speaker 2: maybe that's no longer the most pressing problem. Maybe the
Speaker 2: most pressing problem is fascism, or maybe the most pressing
Speaker 2: problem is climate change or the risk of nuclear war.
Speaker 2: Who knows, but that's the one that springs to my mind,
Speaker 2: and it's not as pressing as it used to be, thankfully.
Speaker 2: The writer Oliver Berkerman argues that instead of making to
Speaker 2: do lists, we should make done lists. At the end
Speaker 2: of every day, you should make a list of all
Speaker 2: the things you've done. It's just much more uplifting. And
Speaker 2: so maybe the infant mortality it is on the done
Speaker 2: list rather than the to do list. But we shouldn't
Speaker 2: forget that we have made that progress.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Oliver is an intriguing writer, and I've got a
Speaker 4: question relating to him later.
Speaker 2: Okay, well we will come to that after the break,
Speaker 2: but not immediately, because the first thing we are going
Speaker 2: to do after the break is Pascal. I am going
Speaker 2: to start asking you some questions because I am very
Speaker 2: curious about where all the magic comes from.
Speaker 3: Q sound effect off screen.
Speaker 1: Stick with us. We'll be back in a moment. We're back.
Speaker 2: It's me Tim Harford, host of Cautionary Tales, and if
Speaker 2: I am, if I'm the heart of Cautionary Tales, perhaps
Speaker 2: i am Pascal Wise is the soul of Cautionary Tales.
Speaker 2: Pascal is our composer. He does the sound design for
Speaker 2: all the episodes he's been with Cautioning Tales. Right from
Speaker 2: the start, before even a word of any of these
Speaker 2: episodes had been written, Pascal and I and the producer
Speaker 2: Ryan were talking about, you know what does an Airship,
Speaker 2: Hangar full of Rats sound like anyway? And so Pascal,
Speaker 2: you are such an important part of the way cautionary
Speaker 2: tales sounds and what people love about the show.
Speaker 1: How do you do it? How does it happen? Just
Speaker 1: talk me through the process.
Speaker 4: I mean often actually in the cut and thrust of
Speaker 4: our production schedule, oftentimes I've not really had much of
Speaker 4: a chance to look through the script before I get,
Speaker 4: as I say, you naked, it's you in the studio
Speaker 4: reading the whole show, and I just get that as
Speaker 4: what we the audio, Yeah, just the audio of you
Speaker 4: having read out the entire episode. What we'd call a stem,
Speaker 4: I suppose in audio terms. And it's interesting, having done
Speaker 4: so many episodes, a lot of things happen very instinctively
Speaker 4: now for me, but they deserve I suppose a little
Speaker 4: bit of unpacking because what I do with that, And
Speaker 4: often I'm doing this away from the script, I just
Speaker 4: play it and I drop little markers in on my
Speaker 4: computer which is playing the audio, so I have a
Speaker 4: timeline with you speaking, and I just start to drop
Speaker 4: in thoughts about what I'd like to hear at any
Speaker 4: given moment, you know, and those markers as I would
Speaker 4: call them will kind of come into two categories. Some
Speaker 4: will be music and some will be sound effects or
Speaker 4: sound design. And one of the great things about podcasts
Speaker 4: is that, you know, you look at the sort of
Speaker 4: size of this operation. There quite a small team, and
Speaker 4: I'm handling effectively everything that happens in sound after you.
Speaker 4: So I can play around with the relationship between those
Speaker 4: two things, but fundamentally, the first thing I've got to
Speaker 4: do is think, well, what do we want to hear here?
Speaker 4: Do we want to hear anything or is this something
Speaker 4: the listener will happily imagine? And of course, you know,
Speaker 4: when you're doing music and sound design for something which
Speaker 4: is audio only, there's very rarely a moment that you
Speaker 4: kind of have the stage to yourself. I mean, I
Speaker 4: suppose the theme tune is the only spot where there's
Speaker 4: a little moment where the one is just listening to music.
Speaker 2: Which I sorry to interrupt with that. I mean, the
Speaker 2: theme tune is is magical. And I vividly remember I
Speaker 2: was on holiday with some family and so I'm on
Speaker 2: some Italian hillside with a glass of wine. I was
Speaker 2: sent the draft of the theme chain. Yeah, and I said,
Speaker 2: you know this podcast thing that you know, I'm maybe
Speaker 2: doing I've just been sent to music. Let's all have
Speaker 2: a listen, and just clicking the button on my phone
Speaker 2: and all of us gathering around the phone and just
Speaker 2: hearing through the tinny speakers these the cautioning tale theme,
Speaker 2: and it was magic. Everyone's like, wow, that sounds really good.
Speaker 2: I don't have the vocabulary to explain why it sounds
Speaker 2: really good, but trust me, it sounds really good.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, sometimes you sometimes you get it lucky
Speaker 4: and your first idea kind of fits. I mean, I
Speaker 4: think the theme had to indicate a certain sense of
Speaker 4: kind of jeopardy or drama without being overtly kind of grim.
Speaker 4: Because of course, there are so many different kinds of tales,
Speaker 4: so it has to be kind of quite multi purpose.
Speaker 4: I think somewhere in the back of my minds would
Speaker 4: be the music to Tales of the Unexpected, you know,
Speaker 4: the rolled arm stories.
Speaker 1: There's a sort of vintage about it.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's kind of Victoriana kind of wind up music
Speaker 4: box element to it. There's a moment where it gets
Speaker 4: a little bit widescreen and goes almost sort.
Speaker 3: Of bond like.
Speaker 2: And I mean, there are other things that you do
Speaker 2: an episode that you've mixed. And this is an epic
Speaker 2: three parter about the creation of the V two rocket,
Speaker 2: and I don't want us to talk too much about it,
Speaker 2: but there's a scene where there's a high pressure meeting
Speaker 2: with Heinrich Himmler, who is arguably the most evil man
Speaker 2: of the twentieth century. And there's a lot of competition
Speaker 2: for that, and you just made it sound so frightening
Speaker 2: in ways that I cannot put my finger on. Just
Speaker 2: the echo, the sound design. We had wonderful acts as
Speaker 2: reading these lines. The rhymes were a matter of historical record.
Speaker 2: There's just something chilling about the effects the mixing. Himmler's
Speaker 2: command center had the nickname the Black Lair. At first
Speaker 2: a few concrete bunkers hidden from air assault by the
Speaker 2: Polish forests, it had grown low. Wooden buildings were scattered
Speaker 2: through the trees, heavily camouflaged. There was even a command
Speaker 2: train parked up on a ramp. SS guards were everywhere.
Speaker 2: It was the kind of place people were summoned to,
Speaker 2: never to return. Even the self assured Von Brown was
Speaker 2: unnerved by the prospect of meeting the most sinister man
Speaker 2: in the third Reich Himmler received Von Brown behind a
Speaker 2: simple wooden table.
Speaker 5: I must confess that I felt a bit jittery when
Speaker 5: I was shown into his office. But he greeted me
Speaker 5: politely and conveyed rather the impression of a country grammar
Speaker 5: school teacher than that horrible man who was said to
Speaker 5: weighe knee deep in blood.
Speaker 6: I trust you realize that your V two rocket has
Speaker 6: ceased to be an engineer's toy, and that the German
Speaker 6: people are eagerly waiting for it. Why don't you come
Speaker 6: to us. You know that the fust door is open
Speaker 6: to me at any time, don't you. I shall be
Speaker 6: in a much better position to help you lick the
Speaker 6: remaining difficulties than that clumsy army machine Heinra.
Speaker 2: Himmler was making his play. The SS was launching a
Speaker 2: hostile takeover of Painamunda and the entire rocket program. Vron
Speaker 2: Brown pushed back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny, isn't it.
Speaker 4: There are sometimes when pressure you know what, a necessity
Speaker 4: being the mother of invention, But when pressure of time
Speaker 4: to do things sometimes leads you to a quick solution
Speaker 4: which is actually really effective. Because when the one of
Speaker 4: the world's most evil men gets ushered onto the script.
Speaker 4: It's very tempting to you know, reach for the Wagnerian
Speaker 4: orchestra or whatever, which's.
Speaker 1: Just what he would want.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exelling I'm not playing that game and get sort
Speaker 4: of twelve French horns up and running. But in this case,
Speaker 4: it came down to just a very uneasy, very low
Speaker 4: humming background sound. There's something just rumbling down in there
Speaker 4: to unsettle the listener.
Speaker 2: It worked for me, And I'm curious. Is there an
Speaker 2: episode that sticks in your mind as being either particularly
Speaker 2: satisfying to work on or particularly difficult one that you
Speaker 2: got through and just thought, what on earth am I
Speaker 2: going to do with this?
Speaker 1: This is very hard?
Speaker 4: Well, that's a very good question because there's a real
Speaker 4: pain and pleasure principle at play with Cautionary Tales in
Speaker 4: that every time we move on to a next episode,
Speaker 4: we reset the clock. You know, literally one week I'll
Speaker 4: be doing the Charge of the Librigade, and the next
Speaker 4: week I'll be doing Clive Sinclair. Now that's incredibly refreshing
Speaker 4: and fun because you know, literally I can kind of
Speaker 4: just chuck everything off the desk and start again. But
Speaker 4: it's it's I suppose it's in a sense labor and
Speaker 4: sensive in the way that you know, when you're working
Speaker 4: on a long form in any given story, what tends
Speaker 4: to happen is you build up a library of things
Speaker 4: that are repeatable and usable. And there is an element
Speaker 4: of that in caution Retails, actually, because we do often
Speaker 4: return to subjects, you know, like quite.
Speaker 3: Often we end up on an aeroplane in Cautionary Tails.
Speaker 4: But to go back to your actual question, I often
Speaker 4: do open up an episode and you'll say something casual, like,
Speaker 4: you know, seven thousand horses are being flown across space,
Speaker 4: you know, and it's like, oh God, I got to
Speaker 4: Oh really, I got to do that now, and I
Speaker 4: sort of start reaching for stuff to put in. Sometimes
Speaker 4: I kind of, you know, I dread that moment to think,
Speaker 4: oh God, I'm gonna have to build a massive world here.
Speaker 4: But more often than not, it's exciting. I mean, there
Speaker 4: are so many different episodes that had different, really nice
Speaker 4: challenges for me. The Clive Sinclair episode I really liked
Speaker 4: kind of trying to dig into the synthesizer world of
Speaker 4: that era, and not at least because I was a
Speaker 4: Zex eighty one owner that was Clive Sinclair's second computer.
Speaker 2: The Clive Sinclair episode being the False Dawn of the
Speaker 2: Electric Car, which I think is still one of our
Speaker 2: most popular ever episodes.
Speaker 1: So you did your job on that? Was it?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Great? Yeah?
Speaker 4: So I found it very redolent, and I really enjoyed
Speaker 4: trying to get us into that time and that that's
Speaker 4: a really key thing in cause retales because it moves
Speaker 4: through time. It's really there's a really interesting question of
Speaker 4: every episode. It's like, what are the kind of signature
Speaker 4: sounds of that period? What would things have sounded like?
Speaker 4: In what way would they be different? What will listeners
Speaker 4: be expecting if we're in, you know, nineteen twenties New York,
Speaker 4: how is that different from nineteen eighties London, you know,
Speaker 4: over in a restaurant or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Actually, my favorite episode in terms of the sound design
Speaker 2: was the one about claud Shannon and Ed Thorpe's going
Speaker 2: to Las Vegas. And I think it's partly because it
Speaker 2: seemed to be very unpromising.
Speaker 1: It wasn't.
Speaker 2: I don't think it was my best work in terms
Speaker 2: of setting scenes or telling a story. It was a
Speaker 2: little bit more of an essay than a story in
Speaker 2: some ways, and you just you did wonderful work on that.
Speaker 4: Very briefly, there was a gift in that episode there,
Speaker 4: which was that part of the clever machinery that Shannon
Speaker 4: developed for predicting the outcome of a roulette whel involved
Speaker 4: a guy having a little ear piece in that played
Speaker 4: a little scale. Yeah, and of course you know that
Speaker 4: was You long for moments like that because it's you know,
Speaker 4: when you open an episode up, you've got infinite possibility,
Speaker 4: and then if something in the story tells you something musical,
Speaker 4: it's like brilliant. It's like that's the way I've got
Speaker 4: to go, and suddenly you know your ideas flow from that.
Speaker 3: It's great to have a little peg like that.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, Askal, Thank you for answering my questions.
Speaker 2: Thank you for putting the listeners questions to me. Do
Speaker 2: you have a question for me anything he wants to
Speaker 2: ask me while you're here?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've got a meta question for.
Speaker 1: You, best kind of question maybe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is.
Speaker 4: Going to have you kind of walking up and down
Speaker 4: an esher staircase for the next three days. So you've
Speaker 4: now done a podcast called Cautionary Tales for what nearly
Speaker 4: three years now?
Speaker 2: Is it three it's more than three. It's about fifty
Speaker 2: fifty episodes, maybe sixty episodes.
Speaker 3: Now so since the Victorian era.
Speaker 4: So what cautionary tale would you tell about making a
Speaker 4: podcast called cautionary Tales.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's very meta. Well, and the obvious thing to
Speaker 2: talk about is the mistakes that I've made over the
Speaker 2: time I've been writing. But rather than pick out specific mistakes,
Speaker 2: because we do make mistakes, you know, we get things wrong, accidentally,
Speaker 2: get a fact, get a fact wrong, I guess what's
Speaker 2: on my mind at the moment. Just to get very
Speaker 2: personal is I absolutely love writing cautionary Tales, but it
Speaker 2: just takes how much time? And so it's a question
Speaker 2: of how do I divide my time between writings like
Speaker 2: Cautionary Tales and doing someth thing else I might want
Speaker 2: to do, like writing a book. And I guess the
Speaker 2: caution Tales is a man who loved his podcast so
Speaker 2: much that he Yeah, you couldn't let go of it.
Speaker 4: Well, actually, you know, quite a few listeners are really
Speaker 4: interested in this, and that it does. Again, I mentioned
Speaker 4: Oliver Berk went earlier on.
Speaker 2: He wrote this wonderful book called four Thousand Weeks, which
Speaker 2: is about how to live your life wisely, I suppose, yeah.
Speaker 3: In the very limited time that we have.
Speaker 4: And he's you know, a lot of the questioners are
Speaker 4: fascinated by you know, I think they think they must
Speaker 4: be like for Tim Harford's because they don't quite understand
Speaker 4: how you do all that you do.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are kind of to Tim Harford's because
Speaker 2: Andrew Wright writes half the Spritsah, so he does. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he does all the good ones.
Speaker 4: Obviously in your writings and in caution retales and elsewhere
Speaker 4: you have come across, consumed and investigated. It's you know,
Speaker 4: so many different kinds of life hacks and self help
Speaker 4: things and ways of operating and dealing with the myriad
Speaker 4: problems with faith. And I wondered, you know what has stuck?
Speaker 3: Because I asked Oliver berk Whan the same thing. You know,
Speaker 3: having tried so.
Speaker 4: So many ways of organizing your life and experimented with them,
Speaker 4: what really remained to something that you now routinely do?
Speaker 2: And there's so many different things. There's no one hack,
Speaker 2: is there? Because life is complicated. I mean that one
Speaker 2: piece of advice that I think people underrate is looking
Speaker 2: ahead more often and more thoughtfully than seems sane, like
Speaker 2: what have I got to do tomorrow? What have I
Speaker 2: got to do this afternoon? What have I got to
Speaker 2: do next week? What have I got to do the
Speaker 2: week after that? What have I got to do over
Speaker 2: the next three months? And just keep to keep doing
Speaker 2: it and keep asking the question. And it's not because
Speaker 2: these things can be controlled, because they can't be and
Speaker 2: unexpected stuff happens all the time. If you're looking ahead
Speaker 2: and you just see, oh, it's going to be a
Speaker 2: bit of a crunch towards the end of next week,
Speaker 2: you just you know what's happening, and you can you
Speaker 2: can be calmer, and you haven't got this this sort
Speaker 2: of sense of something's out of your control and you're
Speaker 2: not quite sure what it is.
Speaker 3: It's like going into the shed, isn't it?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 4: Don't let them the rats nor away get in there
Speaker 4: and face it.
Speaker 2: One thing I would say, though, and I've been thinking
Speaker 2: about this kind of thing for a long long time.
Speaker 2: I've read a lot of productivity books. I've written a
Speaker 2: lot of articles for the FT about getting things done
Speaker 2: and being productive. There is no hack, there's no piece
Speaker 2: of advice, there's no maxim that I could give you
Speaker 2: that I couldn't then retract, retract or give the counter example.
Speaker 4: That's why the bookshelves are so heavily stopped, and no
Speaker 4: one's obviously got the right answers, because self help shelves
Speaker 4: are groaning, aren't they?
Speaker 1: Absolutely?
Speaker 2: Carl Jung famously wrote a letter to a patient who
Speaker 2: asked him about this, and he said, what you're asking
Speaker 2: me for is to be told how to live your life,
Speaker 2: and I can't tell you how to live your life.
Speaker 2: So Pascal, it has been such a pleasure. Thank you
Speaker 2: for joining us on Cautionary Tales.
Speaker 4: Thank you, I mean so great to be in the
Speaker 4: cockpit are now I'll return to my seat in economy.
Speaker 3: There make some sounds.
Speaker 2: Yes, either the cockpit or economy probably a very bad
Speaker 2: place to be, given what happens to airplanes on question
Speaker 2: Tales A lot. Thank you to everybody who sent in
Speaker 2: their questions to Tales at Pushkin dot FM.
Speaker 1: That's t a l e s.
Speaker 2: Keep sending your questions in really about anything you want
Speaker 2: about Pascal, about me, about cautioning Tales, about anything. We
Speaker 2: will have the wonderful Jacob Goldstein back in the studio
Speaker 2: soon enough. He is an expert on podcasting, entrepreneurship, technology,
Speaker 2: problem solving, finance and economics. So if you have any
Speaker 2: particular questions about those subjects send them in. But anything really,
Speaker 2: and thank you so much for listening to Cautionary Tales
Speaker 2: and thank you once more, Pascal Wives, great pleasure. Thanks everyone.
Speaker 2: Cautionary Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright.
Speaker 2: It's produced by Alice Fine with support from Edith Russlow.
Speaker 2: The sound design and original music is the work of
Speaker 2: Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited the scripts. It features the
Speaker 2: voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie Gushridge, Jemma Saunders and
Speaker 2: Rufus Wright. The show wouldn't have been possible without the
Speaker 2: work of Jacob Weisberg, Bryan Dilly, Greta Cohne, Leitel Millard,
Speaker 2: John Schnaz, Carlie mcgliori and Eric Sandler. Cautionary Tales is
Speaker 2: a production of Pushkin Industries. It was recorded in Wardore
Speaker 2: Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you like the show,
Speaker 2: please remember to share, rate and review go on you
Speaker 2: know it helps us And if you want to hear
Speaker 2: the show ad free, sign up for Pushkin Plus on
Speaker 2: the show page. In Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin, dot FM,
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Speaker 5: Speaking about the st