Speaker 1: Pushkin. This episode of Cautionary Tales is made possible by
Speaker 1: HBO and their new series The Regime, which depicts a
Speaker 1: crisis in the rule of a fictional dictator, Elena Vernham,
Speaker 1: played by Kate Winslet. You can stream The Regime now
Speaker 1: on Max and you can find more episodes of this
Speaker 1: show Cautionary Tales wherever you get your podcasts. The Regime
Speaker 1: is inspired by real events and real characters, including the
Speaker 1: Romanian dictator Nikolai Shawshesku and his wife another Elena. Today's
Speaker 1: cautionary tale is all about their downfall and a word
Speaker 1: of warning. It does contain one or two little spoilers
Speaker 1: for the Regime, so you might prefer to watch that
Speaker 1: first stick around at the end of this true story
Speaker 1: to peer behind the scenes of the Regime and hear
Speaker 1: me in conversation with writer, executive producer and showrunner Will Tracy.
Speaker 1: But for now on with the episode. Dr Nicolay Dekker
Speaker 1: is driving home in his little red Datcha after finishing
Speaker 1: his shift at the local hospital. Dr Deker is a short,
Speaker 1: stout man in his fifties. He's puttering along a quiet
Speaker 1: country road fifty odd miles outside book arrest Romania. The
Speaker 1: year is nineteen eighty nine, early in the afternoon on
Speaker 1: the last Friday before Christmas. Dr Dekker has made this
Speaker 1: journey many times, but today everything is different. The news
Speaker 1: had buzzed around the hospital. The hated dictator Nikolai Chowsescu
Speaker 1: and his even more hated wife Elena are on the run.
Speaker 1: Protest as in book Arest took over for their palace.
Speaker 1: They fled by helicopter. Now they were who knows where.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll catch the bastards on my way home, joked
Speaker 1: Dr Decker. For nearly twenty five years, the country has
Speaker 1: been in the grip of the increasingly deranged Chowshescus. Now
Speaker 1: they're gone. What comes next? Dodor Decker drives along, lost
Speaker 1: in thought. His reverie is interrupted by the sight of
Speaker 1: a big man at the side of the road, urgently
Speaker 1: flagging him down. A big man with a submachine gun.
Speaker 1: Dr Decker pulls over. The big man clambers into the
Speaker 1: back seat of the datcher. An old woman gets in
Speaker 1: next to him, then into the passenger seat of the
Speaker 1: little red DATCHA climbs a short, old man with a
Speaker 1: graying pompadour and a wild eyed look. On him his face.
Speaker 1: It's the chow Chescus, Nikolay and Elena and what must
Speaker 1: be a bodyguard. Drive, says the bodyguard. Doctor Deca drives.
Speaker 1: Have you heard about what happened? The old dictator asks him.
Speaker 1: The doctor decides to play dumb. No, he says, I've
Speaker 1: just finished my shift at the hospital. I haven't heard
Speaker 1: any news. There's been a coup, says Nikolay chow Chescu darkly.
Speaker 1: Then we must organize the resistance.
Speaker 2: Are you with us?
Speaker 1: Dr Deca is horrified. He can't say yes. He despises
Speaker 1: the chow chescuse everyone does, but he's acutely aware that
Speaker 1: their bodyguard is sitting right behind him with a gun.
Speaker 1: In this moment, Doctor Decca embodies the predicament the Romanian
Speaker 1: people have faced over the last quarter century. The doctor
Speaker 1: grips the steering wheel of the little red datcha.
Speaker 2: What to do?
Speaker 1: I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to cautionary tales. In Bukarest,
Speaker 1: Romania stands one of the world's biggest buildings, the Palace
Speaker 1: of the Parliament. I went there once years ago. It's
Speaker 1: not an experience you easily forget. The Palace of the
Speaker 1: parliament is fast. It's seven times the size of the
Speaker 1: Palace of Versailles, and at least as opulent, all intricately
Speaker 1: carved wood, gold leaf, and marble colonnades, enough marble to
Speaker 1: build a column twelve feet wide and sixty miles high,
Speaker 1: says the tour guide. She takes us from one ludicrously
Speaker 1: oversized room to the next. Forty foot ceilings, five ton chandeliers,
Speaker 1: fifty acres of carpet. The carpets had to be woven
Speaker 1: in the rooms because they'd be too big to carry
Speaker 1: if you made them elsewhere. The tour goes on and on,
Speaker 1: room after room after room, and still you see just
Speaker 1: a fraction of this astonishing structure. If you didn't know
Speaker 1: its history, what would you think of this place? It would,
Speaker 1: I reckon leave you cold. Externally, the architecture is boring, functional,
Speaker 1: almost brutalist. Inside, it's a display of wealth, but not
Speaker 1: of taste. There's no artistic vision, just bling piled upon bling.
Speaker 1: But when you do know the history, it doesn't leave
Speaker 1: you cold. It makes you see. The palace was built
Speaker 1: on the orders of Nikolai Chowshescu, the dictator remembered mainly
Speaker 1: for his disastrous ban on birth control, which led to
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of unwonted children being left to rot
Speaker 1: in squalid orphanages. As the palace was going up, Chowsescu's
Speaker 1: policies were pushing the Romanian people deeper into poverty, with
Speaker 1: rationing of food and heat turned off during the biting
Speaker 1: Romanian winters. Out on the balcony, you look straight down
Speaker 1: the two mile boulevard that leads up to the palace,
Speaker 1: a boulevard longer and wider than the chance of Lysee
Speaker 1: in Paris, and you think of the swathes of old
Speaker 1: buildings that Chowchescu ordered to be demolished to build his
Speaker 1: boulevard and his palace. The homes of forty thousand people
Speaker 1: were bulldozed to make way for this monument to Megalomania,
Speaker 1: A gilded marble middle finger raised to the city. Nikolai
Speaker 1: Choschescu was born in nineteen eighteen into a peasant family.
Speaker 1: As soon as he had finished primary school in his village,
Speaker 1: his parents sent him off to the city Bucharest to
Speaker 1: earn his way as an apprentice shoemaker, but Nikolay soon
Speaker 1: developed other ideas. He discovered Marx and Lenin and became
Speaker 1: a Communist. Nikolai seems to have been deeply earnest in
Speaker 1: his beliefs. Stories from his youth. Paint a picture of
Speaker 1: a hue, m Willis Zelot. Well, let's ask his son Valentine,
Speaker 1: who incredibly turned out or right. Soon after his parents
Speaker 1: were forced from power, Valentine Sharsescu sat down with the
Speaker 1: British journalist John Sweeney. The new kind of politicians, said Valentine.
Speaker 1: Lie all the time. My father was one of the
Speaker 1: old kind. He was driven by some kind of fanaticism,
Speaker 1: this belief that you can do good. It's a sort
Speaker 1: of madness. After the Second World War, the Communist Party
Speaker 1: took power in Romania, Nicolai became a rising star. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five, when the party needed a new leader,
Speaker 1: they turned to him. At first, Nikolay seemed to be
Speaker 1: a relative good guy among the communist dictators of Eastern Europe.
Speaker 1: He seemed more open to engaging with the West. He
Speaker 1: wasn't afraid to disagree with the Soviet Union. But then
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one, Nikolai and Elena went on a
Speaker 1: state visit to Asia. In North Korea, Nikolay saw how
Speaker 1: every room contained a photograph of Kim Il Sung and
Speaker 1: a sixty foot statue of the great leader dominated the
Speaker 1: Pyongyang skyline. This thought, Nikolai is a proper level of
Speaker 1: respect in China. Elena had an epiphany of her own.
Speaker 1: She saw that Chairman Mao's wife had a personality cult
Speaker 1: as powerful as that of Mao himself. That she thought
Speaker 1: is how a leader's wife should be treated. Elena Chowshsku,
Speaker 1: in the words of historian Mark Almond, combined arrogance, brutality, stupidity,
Speaker 1: and self confidence. Like her husband, Elena had no schooling
Speaker 1: beyond the village primary, where her report card suggests she
Speaker 1: flunked almost every subject. But Elena decided to become a scientist.
Speaker 1: She forced actual scientists to put her name on their papers.
Speaker 1: She set herself up as world leading expert in the
Speaker 1: stereo specific polymerization of isoprene. Every night Romanian television carried
Speaker 1: a two hour update on the glorious deeds of Nikolai
Speaker 1: and Elena Chowshescu. Newspapers gushed with praise. Elena's birthday said
Speaker 1: one is a crucial date in Romanian history. Her husband's
Speaker 1: underlings are based themselves the entire country highly appreciates the
Speaker 1: outstanding activity you carry out in the field of science
Speaker 1: and technology. It was all nonsense, of course, obvious nonsense,
Speaker 1: though few dared say so openly fear of the securitate.
Speaker 1: The secret police saw to that Romanians would let their
Speaker 1: guard down only with people they felt they could trust.
Speaker 1: There's an urban legend from the time that goes like this.
Speaker 1: A friend of a friend was in a car that
Speaker 1: broke down. He's stranded by the roadside when another car
Speaker 1: pulls up and the driver says, where are you going
Speaker 1: book arrested? Get in, says the driver, I'll give you
Speaker 1: a lift. They start to talk. They get on well.
Speaker 1: The hitchhiker tentatively ventures a comment about the state of
Speaker 1: the economy. Yes, agrees the driver. Things are very bad,
Speaker 1: and you know you can't believe a word you read
Speaker 1: in the newspaper, a good harvest when there's so little
Speaker 1: food in the shops. Before long, they're ripping into the
Speaker 1: delusional dictator and his dim wife. They're roaring with laughter
Speaker 1: and trading well worn jokes. Why is it a good
Speaker 1: thing that porn magazines are banned in Romania? Because we
Speaker 1: all know which couple would insist on being the centerfold
Speaker 1: in every issue. They get to Bucharest and the passenger
Speaker 1: thanks the driver for the lift and the conversation. We
Speaker 1: never introduced ourselves, he says. He holds out a hand
Speaker 1: and mentions his name. The driver shakes his hand warmly
Speaker 1: in return and says, I'm Valentine Chowsescu. The story may
Speaker 1: not have been true, but it captured a truth. Even
Speaker 1: the couple's oldest son knew what was really going on
Speaker 1: in Romania and felt just as powerless as everyone else.
Speaker 1: And then, after twenty five years, suddenly and unexpectedly, the
Speaker 1: people rose up. What does does it take to turn
Speaker 1: sullen private grumbles into angry public protest? In this cautionary tale,
Speaker 1: we'll meet two ideas that can help explain it. Dr
Speaker 1: Deker is gripping the steering wheel of his little red Thatcher.
Speaker 1: One minute he was quietly driving home from work. The
Speaker 1: next he somehow got Nikolai Chowschesku in his passenger seat
Speaker 1: and a layer in the back, along with their gun
Speaker 1: toting bodyguard. We must organize the resistance, says the mad dictator.
Speaker 1: Are you with us? Dr Decker tries to stone wall
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I'd be much used to the resistance,
Speaker 1: says Doctor Decker. I'm getting on a bit, you see,
Speaker 1: and my health isn't the best. The doctor's mind is
Speaker 1: whirring the whole country. He knows would love to lynch
Speaker 1: the chowchescus if they're found in his car, he might
Speaker 1: be lynched too.
Speaker 2: How can he get rid of them?
Speaker 1: He's approaching a village and he sees a man he
Speaker 1: knows outside his house cleaning his car another little datcha.
Speaker 1: Not many people have cars in communist Romania. In the villages,
Speaker 1: you'll see more horses and carts, But everyone who does
Speaker 1: have a car has a datcher. They aren't fame for
Speaker 1: their reliability, and that gives doctor Decer an idea. Listen
Speaker 1: to that engine, he says, it sounds like the carberetta
Speaker 1: is about to fail. I'll better stop and get help.
Speaker 1: Dr Decker pulls over. Cautionary tales will be back after
Speaker 1: the break. This cautionary tale is made an association in
Speaker 1: with HBO and their new series The Regime, which depicts
Speaker 1: the rule and the fall of the fictional dictator Elena
Speaker 1: Vernon after she's been toppled by a citizen uprising Elena
Speaker 1: goes on the run with her confidante, Herbert. Zubac flags
Speaker 1: down a bewildered citizen and jumps into the back of
Speaker 1: his car. She too has a wild eyed look on
Speaker 1: her face. You are joker.
Speaker 2: Will you help your chancellor? Yes?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: Where are you loyal?
Speaker 2: There? To your home?
Speaker 1: It is a kind nice much like Dr Dekker. The
Speaker 1: bewildered citizen drives off Elena and Zubac now in his charge.
Speaker 1: But the outcome for fictional Elena and Zubac isn't quite
Speaker 1: the as for their real life counterparts. If you haven't
Speaker 1: seen the series yet, I won't spoil it for you.
Speaker 1: Let's return to the true story of Nikolai and Elena Chowsescu.
Speaker 1: When an international church asked Nikolai Chowchescu's permission to donate
Speaker 1: twenty thousand Bibles to their Romanian branch, he said, of course.
Speaker 1: Chousescu was keen to get investment from Western countries and
Speaker 1: westerners in you like the idea of religious freedom. But
Speaker 1: the bibles mysteriously went missing in transit. A few months later,
Speaker 1: a batch of toilet rolls appeared in the shops with
Speaker 1: fragments of verse still readable for religions in Romania, the
Speaker 1: unspoken deal was clear, you can operate as long as
Speaker 1: you don't cause any trouble. Religious leaders formed a multi
Speaker 1: faith panel and issued joint statements. Called Chowsescu, the leaders agreed,
Speaker 1: is a man of supreme wisdom, the greatest hero in
Speaker 1: Romanian history. Every local priest knew that if they dared
Speaker 1: to raise doubts about the wisdom of Chowsescu's policies, the
Speaker 1: leader of their church would soon slap them back into line.
Speaker 1: But one local priest risked it anyway. Laslo Tokas was
Speaker 1: a pastor with the Hungarian Reformed Church in Tibershwara, a
Speaker 1: city in western Romania just over the border from Hungary.
Speaker 1: He spoke out against Chowsscu's program of systematization, a mad
Speaker 1: grand plan to demolish half the country's villages and move
Speaker 1: everyone into identicate high rise blocks in new agro industrial towns.
Speaker 1: Toke's his boss, the bishop ordered his troublesome priest to
Speaker 1: relocate to a new parish in a tiny, remote hamlet
Speaker 1: at the end of a rutted track in the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere. No said Tokees, I won't go this parochial
Speaker 1: dispute caught the attention of television journalists in Hungary, which
Speaker 1: had just emerged from its own period of communist rule.
Speaker 1: Journalists secretly recorded an interview with Tokees and managed to
Speaker 1: smuggle the videotape over the border. Why are you putting
Speaker 1: yourself at risk like this, they asked, As a minister
Speaker 1: said Tokees, I feel myself responsible for the people. This
Speaker 1: responsibility is all the more heavy as most of my
Speaker 1: fellow ministers are silent. After the interview was broadcast, Tokees
Speaker 1: found that his telephone line no longer worked most of
Speaker 1: the time. Sometimes it rang, and when he picked it
Speaker 1: up he heard a torrent of anonymous threats. Some members
Speaker 1: of his congregation started getting threats too. One was found
Speaker 1: dead in nearby woods. The bishop went to court to
Speaker 1: get an eviction order that would force Tokees to move
Speaker 1: to his new parish. Others tried a different approach. Four
Speaker 1: masked men broken to tokees home and beat him up
Speaker 1: in front of his pregnant wife and three year old son.
Speaker 1: Tokees lost his court case on the date set for
Speaker 1: his eviction, the fifteenth of December nineteen eighty nine. A
Speaker 1: few parishioners gathered outside his house to sing psalms. More
Speaker 1: people joined from different churches, and more and more. When
Speaker 1: a truck arrived to take Tokees and his belongings away,
Speaker 1: it couldn't get through. The mayor of Timishwara turned up
Speaker 1: and told the crowd to disperse. Did not disperse. They
Speaker 1: stayed through the night. By the following evening, five thousand
Speaker 1: people were gathered around the house of Laslo Tokas. This
Speaker 1: was no longer a show of mournful solidarity for a
Speaker 1: priest facing eviction. It had morphed into a full on
Speaker 1: protest against the regime. Nothing like this had ever happened
Speaker 1: before in Chaoshescu's Romania. What explains it? One answer comes
Speaker 1: from economics, the idea of an information cascade. This can
Speaker 1: happen when people make a decision in sequence, one after
Speaker 1: the other, such as which movie to watch, which product
Speaker 1: to bile, which doc to invest in. We each have
Speaker 1: our own private information on which we could base that decision,
Speaker 1: but if we can also see what decisions were made
Speaker 1: by others before us, we might think maybe they know
Speaker 1: something I don't. We set aside what we originally thought
Speaker 1: and make the same decision as everyone else. Cascades can
Speaker 1: be sparked by an initial choice made by just a
Speaker 1: few people, and they can lead us astray. Often other
Speaker 1: people don't know something we don't. We join a queue
Speaker 1: for a public toilet cubicle that turns out to be empty.
Speaker 1: Everyone just assumed that the first person in line must
Speaker 1: have checked. But cascades can also emboldness. Do we protest
Speaker 1: against a repressive regime? Our private information says, of course not,
Speaker 1: will be arrested or worse. Then we see a few
Speaker 1: people singing psalms, or a few dozen blocking a removals truck.
Speaker 1: They don't look afraid. Maybe they know something I don't.
Speaker 1: In Timishwara, the crowd forget all about the priest laslow Tokas.
Speaker 1: They're emboldened.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: To let us out all their anger, they turn on
Speaker 1: a bookshop. It's shelves piled high with the latest best
Speaker 1: seller Romania on the Way of building up the multilaterally
Speaker 1: developed Socialist Economy by Nikolai Chowchescu. They smash the bookshop's door,
Speaker 1: throw the books into the square, and set them alight.
Speaker 1: They break into the local headquarters of the Communist Party,
Speaker 1: rip down all the portraits of the Chowchescus and add
Speaker 1: them to the bonfire. Then the shootings start. Machine guns
Speaker 1: spray indiscriminately into the crowd. How many are dead is?
Speaker 1: It later turns out not quite a hundred, But in
Speaker 1: the chaos, the carnage seems much greater. It's surely one thousand,
Speaker 1: ten thousand, sixty thousand. Rumors of the massacre start to spread,
Speaker 1: and the rumors are impossible for officials to quell because
Speaker 1: one knows you can't believe a word you read in
Speaker 1: the newspaper. Back in Book Arrest, two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: miles to the east, Nikolai blames foreign enemies. He decides
Speaker 1: to give a speech to show the world that the
Speaker 1: Romanian people still support him. They never realized, it, says
Speaker 1: their son Valentine Chowshesku. They never realized that they were
Speaker 1: not loved. Nikolai orders tens of thousands of workers to
Speaker 1: be busted into central Book Arrest. It's a well worn routine.
Speaker 1: The workers are given banners to hold with communist slogans
Speaker 1: or big photos of Nikolai and Elena playing clothes. Members
Speaker 1: of the Securitat stand at the front to lead the
Speaker 1: applause and look enthusiastic for the television cameras comrades begins
Speaker 1: Nikolai a warm revolutionary greeting, but then there's noise from
Speaker 1: the crowd. A screen, a shout. What are they saying?
Speaker 4: Tim Mishwara, Tim Mishwara, everyone's heard the rumors of a
Speaker 4: massacre in Timishwara on live television.
Speaker 1: Nikolai pauses. He looks confused. He raises his hand as
Speaker 1: if to quell applause, but this isn't applause, and he
Speaker 1: doesn't quell it. An apparatic appears behind him and mutters
Speaker 1: in the dictator's ear. The microphone picks it up. They're
Speaker 1: getting in. In a village outside of brook Arrest, thirty
Speaker 1: five year old factory worker Nikolai Petrish is cleaning his
Speaker 1: thatcher when a car pulls up at the roadside. He
Speaker 1: recognizes the driver. It's doctor Dekker from the local hospital,
Speaker 1: and that old man in the passenger seat is that
Speaker 1: Petrashaw watches in astonishment as Nikolai and Elena Chowshsku get
Speaker 1: out of doctor Deker's car and then get straight into
Speaker 1: his car. They're followed by a big man who waves
Speaker 1: his garden at Petra Shaw, get in and drive, he says.
Speaker 1: Petra Shaw gets in and drives. He turns on the radio.
Speaker 1: Out booms the jubilant voice of a dissident poet who's
Speaker 1: been under house arrest. At last, we are free. Turn
Speaker 1: that off, says the old dictator. Petra Shaw turns it off.
Speaker 1: On the road ahead, villagers are gathered in the street
Speaker 1: in spontaneous celebration. As Petra Shaw drives past the crowd,
Speaker 1: someone notices who's in his passenger seat. Stones rain down
Speaker 1: on the car. Petra Shaw's terrified. He stands on the accelerator,
Speaker 1: urging the little data onwards.
Speaker 2: But where to.
Speaker 1: The bodyguard suggests they seek refuge at a steel works
Speaker 1: that's somewhere near here, though he's not exactly sure how
Speaker 1: to get there. Stop over there, he says to Petra Shaw,
Speaker 1: I'll go and find someone to ask directions. The bodyguard
Speaker 1: gets out and doesn't come back. Some children walk past
Speaker 1: the car and start to shout, hey, look he's in there. Now.
Speaker 1: Elena's got a pistol. She puts it to Petroshaw's neck.
Speaker 1: Get us out of here, she says. Petra Shaw drives off.
Speaker 1: Where can he take the old dictator and his wife.
Speaker 1: They pass a nunnery. Perhaps the old couple can seek
Speaker 1: refuge there. Get lost, say the nuns. Maybe they'd heard
Speaker 1: about the toilet paper. There's a hotel for Communist party officials.
Speaker 1: Surely they'll take him in. Sorry, we're fully booked. Petra
Speaker 1: Shaw realizes they're close to an agricultural institute. He knows
Speaker 1: the director, why not take them there? The director is
Speaker 1: in his office, glued to the television news on the run.
Speaker 1: The army is on the side of the people.
Speaker 3: That loyalists and the sec.
Speaker 1: Into the director's office, bursts a white faced Nikolai Petrashaw.
Speaker 2: I've got the show.
Speaker 1: Escu to the back of my car, he says. The
Speaker 1: director is appalled. What did you bring them here for?
Speaker 1: Corti retales will be back in a moment. Picture the scene.
Speaker 1: A palace and a siege. Protesters rage unchecked to its hallways, pillaging, looting, smashing.
Speaker 1: A fallen leader scrambles to escape by helicopter from the
Speaker 1: palace roof. That's what happens in the HBO series The Regime.
Speaker 1: But how do all powerful dictators, whether the fictional Elena
Speaker 1: Vernum or the all too real Nikolai and Elena Chowshscu
Speaker 1: find their power suddenly evaporating. The answer turns on a
Speaker 1: strange seeming question, what do we know about what other
Speaker 1: people know? Let me give you an example from a
Speaker 1: very different situation. Imagine that you're on a date. The
Speaker 1: evening seems to have on well, you say, would you
Speaker 1: like to come back to my place for coffee? Better
Speaker 1: not comes the reply, I can't drink coffee late at night.
Speaker 1: It keeps me up, except, as Seinfeld's George Costanzo once
Speaker 1: realized just a little too late, Coffee's not coffee. Coffee
Speaker 1: is sex. So why don't we just say, would you
Speaker 1: like to come back to my place for sex? The
Speaker 1: linguist Stephen Pinker is intrigued by that question, why do
Speaker 1: we use indirect speech such as euphemisms and innuendos. His
Speaker 1: answer traces back to what seems like an obscure distinction
Speaker 1: made in philosophy journals in the nineteen seventies between common
Speaker 1: knowledge on the one hand, and mutual or shared knowledge
Speaker 1: on the other. It's a slippery difference to grasp, so
Speaker 1: so let's explore it with an example. What economic theorists
Speaker 1: would call a game, a baker has to decide what
Speaker 1: to bake to sell at the market. One thing she
Speaker 1: could bake is a batch of buns for hot dogs.
Speaker 1: That would net her the most profit, but only if
Speaker 1: the butcher has decided to make sausages. If the butcher
Speaker 1: comes to market with something other than sausages, nobody will
Speaker 1: buy the baker's buns. This is a variant of what
Speaker 1: game theorists call a coordination problem. If the bakers and
Speaker 1: butchers could agree to make bums and sausages, they'd both
Speaker 1: be better off, but they can't talk to each other.
Speaker 1: Each has to decide based on their expectation of what
Speaker 1: the other will do. When Stephen Pinker and his colleagues
Speaker 1: ran this experiment, they found that most bakers sensibly chose
Speaker 1: not to gamble on the butcher's having made sausages. They
Speaker 1: played safe by baking something other than bums. Then the
Speaker 1: experimenters changed the setup. They had a messenger visit each
Speaker 1: baker and say just say no of talk to the butcher.
Speaker 1: He's aware that hot dogs will fetch a high price
Speaker 1: at the market. This is shared knowledge. The baker knows
Speaker 1: that the butcher knows. Is that enough for them? To
Speaker 1: gamble on baking the bums. This time, about half the
Speaker 1: baker's decided to risk it. Then, in a final twist,
Speaker 1: the experimenters made an announcement over a loud speaker, there's
Speaker 1: a great profit margin on hot dogs. This time, the
Speaker 1: vast majority of the bakers chose to bake the bums.
Speaker 1: They knew the butchers had heard the announcement too, and
Speaker 1: felt sure they'd bring the sausages. The loud speaker turned
Speaker 1: shared knowledge into common knowledge. On the surface, that might
Speaker 1: not seem like much of a change. After all, with
Speaker 1: shared knowledge, the baker nw the butcher knew, but the
Speaker 1: loud speaker changed how people acted. Stephen Pinker argues that
Speaker 1: this transition from shared to common knowledge is a powerful
Speaker 1: explanation for a range of puzzles, including why we say
Speaker 1: do you want to come in for a coffee? We
Speaker 1: know it's about sex, but that's shared knowledge. Asking do
Speaker 1: you want to have sex would make it common knowledge,
Speaker 1: and that could make the situation far more awkward. Common knowledge,
Speaker 1: says Pinker, creates a distinctive cognitive state. It happens when
Speaker 1: shared knowledge gets out there in a way that's impossible
Speaker 1: to ignore.
Speaker 4: Dud tovirus ship pretty.
Speaker 1: In book Arrest, Nikolai Choschescu begins his speech comrades a
Speaker 1: warm revolutionary green. Everyone who's been bust in to be
Speaker 1: part of that crowd hates Chowsescu. They all know that
Speaker 1: everyone else like them hates chow Escu too, But that
Speaker 1: shared knowledge has never before been enough to spark collective
Speaker 1: action to bring down the regime. At every previous rally
Speaker 1: like this, for years and years, people have held up
Speaker 1: their banners, applauded on command, glanced nervously at the guns
Speaker 1: of the Securitat, and gone back home to complain to
Speaker 1: each other in private. Today, in the shadow of the
Speaker 1: protests and the killings in Timishwara, that changes a scream,
Speaker 1: a shout, a chant, Timishwara, tim Mishwara, chow Chescu's pause,
Speaker 1: his confused look. It's just like the loud speaker announcement
Speaker 1: in the Butcher Baker game. Suddenly shared knowledge becomes common
Speaker 1: knowledge out there, impossible to ignore. And just like in
Speaker 1: the Butcher Baker game, the switch from shared to common
Speaker 1: knowledge solves the coordination problem. Everyone spontaneously decides to act together.
Speaker 1: In Timishwara, the crowd had grown gradually as people observed
Speaker 1: others choosing to join. In Bucharest, the crowd was pre
Speaker 1: gathered and its mood changed, like the flipping of a switch.
Speaker 1: All around the city, people watching on the television saw
Speaker 1: chowshesku pause. Then the screen went dead, the television director
Speaker 1: choosing not to show what was happening. They understood all
Speaker 1: at once. They left their houses and took to the streets.
Speaker 1: An information cascade had started the revolution. Common knowledge was
Speaker 1: about to finish the job inside the palace, with protesters
Speaker 1: breaking in the Chaosescu's face of choice. Take the lift
Speaker 1: down to the basement and try to make their escape
Speaker 1: through a secret tunnel, or take the lift up to
Speaker 1: the roof, where a helicopter awaits to whisk them away.
Speaker 1: They choose the roof. Nikolai and Elina cram into the helicopter,
Speaker 1: along with two bodyguards and two henchmen who are also
Speaker 1: keen to get away. It's too many. The helicopter struggles
Speaker 1: to lift. Where too, asks the pilot Snagov. The dictator says,
Speaker 1: a country palace not far from Broucharest. The pilot lands
Speaker 1: the helicopter. Nikolai goes inside to make phone calls. The
Speaker 1: pilot turns on the radio news. The army has changed sides,
Speaker 1: he hears, but some secure Tarte loyalists are still fighting
Speaker 1: for the old dictator. The pilot calls his superior what
Speaker 1: should he do? Figure it out for yourself, comes the reply.
Speaker 1: Power it seems is fast draining away from the Chowshescus.
Speaker 1: And here they are again, still with the bodyguards, but
Speaker 1: the henchmen have decided to take their chances on their own.
Speaker 1: Nikolai tells the pilot to fly to an air force base.
Speaker 1: The pilot thinks, I'm not doing that. The army is
Speaker 1: supporting the revolution. Now what if they shoot us down?
Speaker 1: But then the bodyguards also have guns? What to do?
Speaker 1: The pilot takes off, then makes up an excuse. Something's wrong.
Speaker 1: We have to land here in a field by a
Speaker 1: country road. Nikolai, Elena and one of the bodyguards walk
Speaker 1: to the road and flag down a passing thatcha the
Speaker 1: country dot to Nikolay decker. The doctor dumps the Chowchescu's
Speaker 1: on Nikolai Petreshaw, who offloads them onto the director of
Speaker 1: the Agricultural Institute. The director calls the police. They can
Speaker 1: decide what to do with the old dictator and his wife.
Speaker 1: Nikolai keeps looking at his watch and glancing impatiently at
Speaker 1: the window, as if expecting the secure Tarte to rescue
Speaker 1: him at any moment. The door opens and it's not
Speaker 1: the securit Tate. It's two local policemen. They put Nikolai
Speaker 1: and Elaina in the back of their police car and
Speaker 1: take them to an army barracks. Nikolai seems to assume
Speaker 1: he's still in charge. Well, what's the situation, he says
Speaker 1: to the major at the barracks, Give me your report.
Speaker 1: The major explains his instructions. I'll protect you from the mob,
Speaker 1: he says, and wait for the new government in bookret
Speaker 1: to tell me what to do. Nikolai and Elena spend
Speaker 1: three nights in the barracks, complaining about the uncomfortable bed,
Speaker 1: the smelly toilets, and the food. I can't eat this,
Speaker 1: they say, when offered salami, bread and cheese. Its normal
Speaker 1: army rations. Their guards explain this stuff's inedible. At home,
Speaker 1: we have proper food. Then they try a different tack.
Speaker 1: Take me out of here, says Nikolai. I could see
Speaker 1: that you get one million dollars on Christmas Day, helicopters
Speaker 1: arrived from brook Arrest with lawyers, judges, and a video recorder.
Speaker 1: Some members of the old regime have moved quickly to
Speaker 1: seize power, and they made the decision the Chowsescus must die.
Speaker 1: They hastily put on a show trial, and it's all
Speaker 1: a bit of a farce. The prosecutor accuses them of
Speaker 1: killing sixty thousand people in Timishwara, which it turns out
Speaker 1: wasn't actually true. He goes Elena, who wrote your scientific papers.
Speaker 1: You can't talk to me like that, snaps Elena. You
Speaker 1: smuggled money out of the country, says the prosecutor. Where's
Speaker 1: your proof. The couple say you ate well while everyone
Speaker 1: else had meager rations. Nikolai keeps repeating, I do not
Speaker 1: recognize this tribunal. No matter. The judge gives his verdict guilty.
Speaker 1: It's only as their hands are tied together behind their
Speaker 1: backs that Nikolai and Elena seem finally to understand what's
Speaker 1: about to happen. Elena snaps at a soldier, go fuck
Speaker 1: your mother. They're led into the courtyard where the firing
Speaker 1: squad jump the gun. By the time the cameraman's ready
Speaker 1: it's all over. He can only film close ups of
Speaker 1: the bodies. For a while, it feels like Catharsis, But
Speaker 1: then the doubts set in. Was that really the best
Speaker 1: way to do it? The couple's son Valentine, doesn't think so.
Speaker 1: The execution was a political mistake. He says they should
Speaker 1: have said that they were shot while trying to escape.
Speaker 1: Maybe I can't help wishing that they'd had a proper trial,
Speaker 1: with detailed charges and evidence. The best way to rebuke
Speaker 1: a dictator is by upholding due process, that fundamental virtue
Speaker 1: that dictators erode. But if you're tempted to feel sorry
Speaker 1: for Nikolai and Elena, I suggest you visit their offensively
Speaker 1: opulent palace in book Arrest, Your sympathy will vanish as
Speaker 1: suddenly as their grip on power. This episode of Cautionary
Speaker 1: Tales was produced in partnership with HBO and their new
Speaker 1: series The Regime starring Kate Winslett. You can stream The
Speaker 1: Regime now on Max, and you can find Cautionary Tales
Speaker 1: with Me Tim Harford wherever you get your podcasts. This
Speaker 1: episode relied on books about the Chowshescus by John Sweeney,
Speaker 1: Mark Almond, and Edward Bare. For a full list of
Speaker 1: our sources, see the show notes at Timharford dot com.
Speaker 1: Up next, I'll be sitting down with Regime creator Will
Speaker 1: Tracy to discuss the thinking and research behind the series.
Speaker 1: When it came to writing HBO's new show, The Regime,
Speaker 1: the series creator Will Try drew inspiration not just from
Speaker 1: the Chaoushescus in Romania, but from real rulers around the
Speaker 1: world and throughout history, from cruel autocrats such as Bashar
Speaker 1: al Assad in Syria to democratically elected but unconventional populists
Speaker 1: such as Georgia Maloney and Donald Trump. These governments offer
Speaker 1: a plethora of cautionary tales, and I'm curious about the
Speaker 1: research and thinking behind the show. And I'm delighted to
Speaker 1: say that Siria's creator, Will Tracy joins me now Welcome
Speaker 1: to Cautionary Tales. Will, Thanks Tim. One theme that struck
Speaker 1: us as we were thinking about cautionary tales inspired by
Speaker 1: the Regime was this idea of germaphobia. And Elena Vernham
Speaker 1: is terrified of mold, and this idea that black mold
Speaker 1: is going to get into her lungs. But as we
Speaker 1: started to look into this, we realized this is not
Speaker 1: just something you made up. No idiosyncratically, it turns out
Speaker 1: there's something of a running theme with dictators and germaphobia.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think for many of them it might stem from
Speaker 3: this idea of purity. And I think, obviously with a
Speaker 3: kind of a xenophobic or nationalistic state, that makes some sense. Right,
Speaker 3: if you're constantly talking about the purity of culture, the
Speaker 3: purity of thought, politics, and the purity of genetics, it
Speaker 3: would make sense that you become quite paranoid about the
Speaker 3: idea of contamination generally speaking. But you know, I also
Speaker 3: think that, and this is certainly the case for the
Speaker 3: character and the show, that the germophobia it's an excuse
Speaker 3: to isolate from the mess of other people. The more
Speaker 3: that you create this pretext of contamination, the fear of contamination,
Speaker 3: the more you're able to kind of remove yourself from
Speaker 3: people and stay within your bubble, the less that you'll
Speaker 3: have to actually confront people and hear about whatever their
Speaker 3: personal messes, whatever their problems are, problems which probably your
Speaker 3: state that you've created is the culprit of and so
Speaker 3: you can kind of remove yourself from that, you don't
Speaker 3: really have to confront what's wrong with the lives of
Speaker 3: the people you are leading.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting because I had thought, in part, well,
Speaker 1: maybe this is just about being famous. This is a
Speaker 1: celebrity problem. As a celebrity, Yeah, everyone wants to get
Speaker 1: close to you, everyone wants the selfie, everyone wants to
Speaker 1: shake your hand, just to touch you. That just must
Speaker 1: get quite wearing for someone who can never get away
Speaker 1: from that. And you know, I thought of the germophobia
Speaker 1: was possibly a little bit of an extreme response to that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's the politics of it as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well there's also it's an externalization of an internal
Speaker 3: feeling that something might be wrong, that everything that I've
Speaker 3: created might come crashing down, that this is all going
Speaker 3: to end, that there's going to be reprisals, that there's
Speaker 3: going to be the hague, that I might be hanged
Speaker 3: in the town square, That maybe my ideas are wrong,
Speaker 3: that maybe I've created something wrong, that there's some sort
Speaker 3: of corruption or sickness that's in me that has created
Speaker 3: this world that I live in. But if you externalize
Speaker 3: all of those feelings and kind of repress them and
Speaker 3: shut them out and convince yourself that well, no, there's
Speaker 3: something in the walls that's trying to get me, or
Speaker 3: there's something in the air, there's something on people's hands
Speaker 3: or on surfaces, and it's that contamination that's trying to
Speaker 3: destroy me. I think it probably becomes a bit easier
Speaker 3: psychologically for these kinds of narcissistic personalities to go through
Speaker 3: their days and the comfort that what they're doing is right.
Speaker 1: Yes, and in the regime as well, it becomes a
Speaker 1: metaphor for corruption.
Speaker 2: Yes. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Herbert Zuback is telling Elena that the mold is really
Speaker 1: the corruption of the people around her and her weakness exactly.
Speaker 3: Yes, her microphobia is delusional. There is not black mold
Speaker 3: in the walls. It's trying to kill her. That he
Speaker 3: correctly diagnoses. But I think he's somewhat incorrectly diagnoses what
Speaker 3: the underlying problem of the regime is. The underlying problem,
Speaker 3: of course, is her and her narcissism, and I think
Speaker 3: he likes to convince her that it is not. It's
Speaker 3: the foreign bodies who threaten you, the foreign bodies of
Speaker 3: NATO and this fifth column of corrupt ministers within your palace.
Speaker 1: One of the things I enjoyed doing while watching the
Speaker 1: regime was playing spot the Despot because of course, some
Speaker 1: of it is it's from your imagination. Some of it
Speaker 1: is purely fictional. Yeah, it's a mix, but some of
Speaker 1: it is based on real dictators, that it is inspired
Speaker 1: by the behavior of real dictators. And one I wished
Speaker 1: I'd had more time to look into is the Emperor
Speaker 1: of Ethiopia, highly Selassie. So tell me about him and
Speaker 1: how he inspired some of the scenes.
Speaker 3: I was reading a book by Kapachinski called The Emperor
Speaker 3: about the last days of Higley Selassie. You know, it
Speaker 3: kind of brings you through the end of his regime,
Speaker 3: but it's also it's just kind of a look of
Speaker 3: what his day to day life was like within that
Speaker 3: bubble that he had created. When he would get up,
Speaker 3: what do would eat for breakfast, how he would dress,
Speaker 3: who address him. As the walls were closing in and
Speaker 3: the country was sort of spiraling into famine and unrest,
Speaker 3: there was still this kind of immaculate little jewel box
Speaker 3: of a palace that he lived in, and it was
Speaker 3: just a question amongst his servants and bureaucrats to what
Speaker 3: extent he was aware, really aware of what was happening
Speaker 3: outside that jewel box, Whether he knew or didn't know,
Speaker 3: and how much he wished to conceal about that knowledge.
Speaker 3: In the case of Selassie's quite different from other dictators,
Speaker 3: and that he didn't react with extreme emotion or anger
Speaker 3: or desperation as the wall started to close in.
Speaker 2: He sort of maintained this.
Speaker 3: Perfect facade of calm as long as he sort of
Speaker 3: presented this veneer of kind of placid lack of concern
Speaker 3: that would not only deny that there was a problem,
Speaker 3: but also would kind of bolster his own sense of
Speaker 3: himself as someone who was unshakable. That in the end
Speaker 3: backfired in a way because that unshakeability and that seeming
Speaker 3: calm and placidity just came off as cluelessness, completely out
Speaker 3: of touch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, am I right in thinking that the flower garden
Speaker 1: scenes in the conservatory are inspired by Yeah, something he
Speaker 1: used to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he would sort of in his daily constitutional he
Speaker 3: would sort of walk around the flower gardens. They had
Speaker 3: a kind of zoo within the palace, and he would
Speaker 3: feed meat to the lion, and he would water the flowers.
Speaker 3: And while he was doing all of this, his palace
Speaker 3: spymaster would give him the update on what's happening. Not
Speaker 3: only what's happening outside in the countryside and also on
Speaker 3: the world stage, but what's the palace intel, what are
Speaker 3: they whispering, what are they saying? And the way Selassie
Speaker 3: would handle this was quite similar to how the character
Speaker 3: on the show handles it, which is to offer no
Speaker 3: reply to just simply listen. If you only listen and
Speaker 3: you offer no reply, you immediately are sort of baking
Speaker 3: in a plausible deniability.
Speaker 2: Later.
Speaker 3: It's quite easy to reshape your thoughts and reactions to
Speaker 3: intelligence you're receiving later if you say nothing while you're
Speaker 3: receiving the intelligence.
Speaker 1: Yes, they're very striking scenes. So you studied all sorts
Speaker 1: of dictatorships while you were researching the show, and I'm
Speaker 1: curious as to whether you think that fundamentally they're all alike,
Speaker 1: or whether it's more accurate to say that every single
Speaker 1: one is different.
Speaker 3: I would say I have noticed maybe a few commonalities
Speaker 3: amongst the leaders of these regimes, as opposed to commonalities
Speaker 3: amongst the regimes themselves. One commonality that I have noticed
Speaker 3: amongst many of these leaders is that when they first
Speaker 3: arrive on the scene, there's something off about them. They
Speaker 3: look a little funny, or they sound a little funny
Speaker 3: in some way, they don't fit the mold of what
Speaker 3: a head of state is supposed to look like. They
Speaker 3: might even be a little bit laughable because they are
Speaker 3: so new and so different. You know, in the media
Speaker 3: or pundit class, or just generally amongst the general population,
Speaker 3: the tendency is to laugh because it's so new and
Speaker 3: so odd and so and you're not supposed to talk
Speaker 3: like that or sound like that when you're in that position.
Speaker 3: That's not the visual that we're used to seeing on
Speaker 3: the screen when we think of a leader. What these
Speaker 3: autocratic figures often do them is they take these idiosyncrasies
Speaker 3: and they weaponize them, and they turn them into superpowers.
Speaker 3: They turn them in the thing that makes them unique
Speaker 3: and authentic, and they wry that feeling of uniqueness and
Speaker 3: authenticity to power. But of course, you know what happens
Speaker 3: is that they never forget they used to laugh at me.
Speaker 2: That sort of.
Speaker 3: Insecurity, I think is hardwired in the personality of a
Speaker 3: lot of authoritarians. I was not respected, I wasn't taken
Speaker 3: seriously by the establishment or by the elite. I'm not
Speaker 3: taken seriously on the world stage, and I demand to
Speaker 3: be taken seriously because I'm a serious figure. I'm not
Speaker 3: a laughable figure. What happens, of course, in order to
Speaker 3: get back at their alleged enemies and all the people
Speaker 3: who laughed at them. The more power that they accrue,
Speaker 3: they become increasing out of touch and thus increasingly somewhat ridiculous,
Speaker 3: and so the problem just sort of compounds itself, and
Speaker 3: I have noticed that being an issue amongst otherwise quite
Speaker 3: dissimilar personalities who become authoritarians.
Speaker 1: Did you also draw inspiration from some of the democratic
Speaker 1: populists in Europe, people like Marine Lapenn Maloney in Italy?
Speaker 1: To what extent are they inspirations for Elena Vernham?
Speaker 3: Yeah, certainly. Le Penn was a big influence, a seemingly
Speaker 3: mainstream figure who was actually smuggling in some quite insidious
Speaker 3: and racist views from the Party of the Father, Right,
Speaker 3: Marina Lapenn, what she's been able to do with alarming
Speaker 3: success is sort of sanitize the party. You know, at heart,
Speaker 3: it's not very different from anything her father was espousing,
Speaker 3: but it sort of cleaned up and made more protogenic ortellogenic,
Speaker 3: it sounds a little nicer. It helps in a way
Speaker 3: that it's given. I think very consciously what she has
Speaker 3: I think called herself a sort of woman's touch, right,
Speaker 3: this feeling that it's coming from. It's a softer place, right.
Speaker 3: It doesn't feel as hard as her father, right. It
Speaker 3: feels in some ways gentler and more nurturing, more caring.
Speaker 3: She's been able to use her status as a woman
Speaker 3: in some ways in a very weaponized and cynical way.
Speaker 3: And I always thought that would be more interesting for
Speaker 3: this character of the authoritarian this show to be a.
Speaker 2: Woman leader rather than a male leader.
Speaker 3: I think we've seen that archetype of a strong man
Speaker 3: so often, and you know, what would that be like
Speaker 3: to see someone who uses the optics of femininity in
Speaker 3: a really destructive way, but also in a way to
Speaker 3: kind of win the approbation and investment of the West.
Speaker 3: She knows this will look good, a strong woman leader
Speaker 3: in the region, and ignore the fact that I'm actually
Speaker 3: just as repressive as any male. I kind of have
Speaker 3: the air of being new, modern progressive.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask about the parallels and differences between
Speaker 1: dictatorships and democracies. Donald Trump was democratically elected and then
Speaker 1: he was democratically rejected, but some of the techniques that
Speaker 1: he uses to win power or to justify what he
Speaker 1: does are the same techniques that dictators use. And is
Speaker 1: it a bright line between dictatorship and democracy or is
Speaker 1: there a certain leadership style that works in both.
Speaker 3: Hmm, boy, that's a great question. I know the UK
Speaker 3: certainly has its own problems politically, but I do sometimes
Speaker 3: think about the usefulness of having a culture in which
Speaker 3: all the focus and all the bright light, and all
Speaker 3: of the blame and credit and the kind of heat
Speaker 3: and celebrity of politics isn't all focused on this one person,
Speaker 3: which very much feels like it is in America that
Speaker 3: this person has to be everything to everybody.
Speaker 2: We have to have this.
Speaker 3: Feeling of this person being the leader who brings us
Speaker 3: into the fray, rather than a leader of their party
Speaker 3: or a leader of parliament, one sort of heater state functionary.
Speaker 3: And then you have another kind of ceremonial, maybe monarchical
Speaker 3: functionary who can kind of take some of that heat
Speaker 3: away from the bureaucratic leader. I do think sometimes in
Speaker 3: America you dovetail into the possibility of a demagogic figure
Speaker 3: because we kind of place all of our tension on
Speaker 3: this one person meaning everything to everybody.
Speaker 1: One of the things we always try to do on
Speaker 1: caution detales is to learn from the mistakes of the past.
Speaker 1: Do you think that there was a mistake that dictators
Speaker 1: make over and over again, some common theme.
Speaker 3: You know? I think that sometimes it's an inability to
Speaker 3: be able to tell a salami from a suckling pig,
Speaker 3: if you will, sort of that inability to know how
Speaker 3: to do these small, incremental terrible things in little steps,
Speaker 3: and then going for the big brass ring once you
Speaker 3: feel that your power is unchecked and that you can
Speaker 3: do anything. Putin's big mistake is something that you will
Speaker 3: see quite a bit, right, There's a similarity there between
Speaker 3: what Putin did with Crimea versus Ukraine and what Hitler
Speaker 3: did in Poland versus Russia. Right, it's inability to see
Speaker 3: the task in front of you because you've had so
Speaker 3: much success, or if you had so much appearance of success.
Speaker 1: Do you regard the regime as a cautionary tale?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, in a sense, the regime has this
Speaker 3: other layer on top where the cautionary tales not just
Speaker 3: about how a seeming democracy can fall into autocracy, but
Speaker 3: it's also how democracies around the world can abet and
Speaker 3: aid autocracies around the world. Some of these states because
Speaker 3: of their geographical placement, or because of a natural resource
Speaker 3: they have, or because of their usefulness as a foil
Speaker 3: against the common enemy. It becomes very easy for an
Speaker 3: autocracy to become a client state of a so called
Speaker 3: progressive Western democracy like the United States. You know, I
Speaker 3: think we can all think of the examples. I suppose
Speaker 3: the cautionary tale of how to avoid finding yourself in
Speaker 3: a country like the country in the Regime, but also
Speaker 3: how to question the way your own government interacts with
Speaker 3: oppress of regimes around the world. So probably more in
Speaker 3: that sense, it's a cautionary tale.
Speaker 1: HBO's The Regime is available to stream now on Max
Speaker 1: Will Tracy thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Tim.
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Alice Fines with support from Marilyn Rust.
Speaker 1: The sound design and original music is the work of
Speaker 1: Pascal Warriz. Sarah Nix edited the scripts. It features the
Speaker 1: voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Jammas Saunders,
Speaker 1: and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible
Speaker 1: without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohne,
Speaker 1: Vital Millard, John Schnaz, Eric's handler, Carrie Brody, and Christina Sullivan.
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded
Speaker 1: at Wardoor Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you
Speaker 1: like the show, please remember to share, rate and review,
Speaker 1: tell your friends and if you want to hear the
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Speaker 1: show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm,
Speaker 1: slash plus