Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
Dettagli canale
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
We tell our children unsettling fairy tales to teach them valuable lessons, but these Cautionary Tales are for the education of the grown ups – and they are all true. Tim Harford (Financial Times, BBC, author of “The Data Detective”) brings you stories of awful human error, tragic...
Episodi recenti
232 episodi
Proceed with Caution - Pascal's Guide to Podcasts
How does a story on Cautionary Tales come to life? In this episode of our subscriber-exclusive series, Proceed with Caution, sound designer Pascal Wys...
The Weight of Fame: A Hollywood Tragedy
Talented and beautiful, Molly O'Day is a rising star in 1920s Hollywood. But when Molly's teenage body starts to change and she can no longer fit into...
Arsenic and Lace: The Trial of the Yorkshire Witch - with Maddy Pelling
Mary Bateman lived in Yorkshire in the late 18th Century, an age that prized rational thought. Many people still longed to believe in the old ways and...
The Doors of Death: The Herald of Free Enterprise
The Herald of Free Enterprise is a new class of ferry that allows cars to drive directly into the ship. The doors must be closed before every departur...
"What a Bloody Mess we're in" - Britain's [REDACTED] Accident
Windscale is supposed to be Britain's big leap into the nuclear age, bringing science fiction to life in 1950s Northern England. But in the race to ca...
Attack of the Night People
If you tuned in to late-night WOR radio in 1950s New York, you'd enter the secret world of Jean Shepherd. Shepherd's nonconformist style, off-beat hum...
LIVE: We Are Not Machines - with Sarah O'Connor
When the Luddites smashed factory frames in a bid to defend their craft and livelihoods, the machines came out on top. Today, AI and automation threat...
Treacle Tears: The Boston Molasses Disaster
The children of North End, Boston, play in the shadow of an enormous steel tank of molasses. The thick, sticky sugar syrup is being used to make munit...
The Thief, the Jewels, and the Dublin Castle Conspiracy
In the early 1900s, Sir Arthur Vickers keeps the magnificent Irish Crown Jewels safe under lock and key at Dublin Castle. When the jewels disappear, t...
The Dunning Canoe-ger Effect
When John Darwin walks into a shop in London, it causes an instant stir. After all, John Darwin has been dead for five years. He claims to have amnesi...
Presenting...This is History: A Dynasty to Die For
This episode comes to you from the new series of This is History, the podcast which tells the story of the Plantagenet Dynasty. Historian Dan Jones ta...
How Civilizations Die - with Paul Cooper
As Governor of Britannia, Magnus Maximus has a huge army at his disposal, which is just what he needs to secure the Roman imperial throne. But perhaps...
Can You Make a Sherman Tank Float?
It’s D-Day and the Allies are about to invade Nazi-occupied France. For the landings to succeed, American soldiers on Omaha Beach will have to break t...
The Inventor who Almost Ended the World (Classic)
Thomas Midgley's inventions caused his own death, hastened the deaths of millions of people around the world, and very nearly extinguished all life on...
From Drilled: The Carbon Gold Rush
We usually bring you failures of the past, but today we're sharing an episode from someone who uncovers failures as they happen. Amy Westervelt is an...
Angels, Gold and Lust: John Dee and the Philosopher's Stone (Part 2)
Part Two: When Tudor polymath John Dee meets a man who claims he can speak with angels, his path to understanding the universe suddenly becomes clear....
The Queen's Astrologer: The Price of Prophecy (Part 1)
In Tudor England, the line between mathematics and the mystic arts is vanishingly thin. Straddling both worlds is John Dee, a brilliant scholar and as...
Beware Tech Tycoons with Piranha Tanks - with Katie Prescott
Mike Lynch was often lauded as Britain's answer to Bill Gates. Born into a working-class family, Lynch's incredible intellect and passion for computer...
Finding Grace in a Burger Bun: An Incrediburgible Quest
Dick and Mac are content with their lives: they enjoy making burgers by day and stargazing by night. Ray Kroc is a workaholic chasing success at any c...
Run, Switzer, Run: The Women who Broke the Marathon Taboo (Classic)
Tim is running the London Marathon on the 26th of April. To give him a week off to finish training, we're playing this running-themed classic from the...
The Lovestruck Explorer's Deadly Guessing Game
In 1860, police officer Robert O'Hara Burke plans an expedition to map the mysterious blank in the centre of Australia. Joining him is scientist Willi...
The Refugee Who Led a Software Revolution - with Ben Walter
Millionaire-making tech start-ups are most often associated with Silicon Valley. But this software revolution begins on a woman’s kitchen table in rur...
The Mad Mystic and the Last Battle on English Soil - with Ian Breckon
As the Victorian era dawns, modernisation erodes the old ways of life and poverty rises. In the unrest, an unlikely hero emerges, capturing the imagin...
The Sightseeing Flight and the Invisible Mountain
In November 1979, Flight 901 departs New Zealand on a sightseeing journey over Antarctica, heading directly towards a volcano. When the plane vanishes...
Presenting: Drug Story - On Xanax and Anxiety
This episode comes to you from the new podcast Drug Story, which investigates the origins, workings and cautionary tales behind today's medical interv...
"And it went click" - Dawn of the Working Dead
Robert Propst is more than an inventor: he is a visionary, an innovator dreaming up how to make the perfect office workstation. When he reveals his bo...
Explosives or Sugar? The Deadly Art of Distraction in Putin’s Russia - with Helena Merriman
In 1999, a series of bombs explode in Russian apartments, killing hundreds and spreading panic. No one knows who is behind it. But when one device is...
Flight of the Fantasist: The Race Around the World - Part 2
Donald Crowhurst is a brilliant inventor with a failing business. When he hears about the Golden Globe Race offering publicity and cash to the fastest...
The Philosopher and the Handyman: The Race Around the World - Part 1
Who will be the first to sail non-stop around the world? In 1968, The Sunday Times announces a trophy and a cash prize for the winner, and the Golden...
Presenting... American Criminal: The Great McDonald's Monopoly Heist
This episode comes to you from American Criminal, the true-crime history podcast that takes you inside the minds of some of America's most notorious o...
Sphygmograph Be Damned: The Science of Love
Chris McKinlay is a good-looking, smart student at UCLA, but he can't seem to get a girlfriend. He's a computing expert, so why not use his technology...
The Angels, The Stones and The Dead
In the final days of the Sixties, The Rolling Stones join forces with other rock legends to plan a free concert at Altamont Speedway that will rival W...
Powered by Orgasm: The Rise and Fall of a Sex Cult - with Ellen Huet
Run by the charismatic Nicole Deadone, OneTaste billed itself as a sexual wellness startup celebrating the power of female orgasm. But behind the cele...
The WOW Machine Stops (Pt 2)
Tony Hsieh, the billionaire CEO of Zappos, is passionate about community. He pours his time, energy and fortune into building a network of like-minded...
Shoes, Booze and the Pursuit of Happiness (Pt 1)
They say the company Zappos is harder to get into than Harvard. Zappos may sell shoes, but its mission is to deliver WOW through a fun-focused company...
Liar, Bigamist, Brute: How Isaac Singer Liberated Women
The sewing machine was once thought to be an impossible invention. It was such a complicated contraption that it would take more than one inventor, wi...
Fritterin' Away Genius (Classic)
Claude Shannon was brilliant. He was the Einstein of computer science... only he loved "fritterin' away" his time building machines to play chess, sol...
Photographing Fairies (Classic)
Sherlock Holmes is known for approaching all mysteries with cool logic - and yet when his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle saw photographs taken by two...
"They fall behind and are slowly crushed" - Board Games and Economics with Richard Garfield
Playing board games and spending too much money are time-honored Christmas traditions, so to mark the festive season, Tim is joined by the creator of...
Flixborough: The Factory that was Wiped off the Map
A megaplant near the small village of Flixborough, England, is busy churning out a key ingredient of nylon 6, a material used in everything from stock...