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Pushkin Industries

We tell our children unsettling fairy tales to teach them valuable lessons, but these Cautionary Tales are for the education of the grown ups – and they are all true. Tim Harford (Financial Times, BBC, author of “The Data Detective”) brings you stories of awful human error, tragic catastrophes, and hilarious fiascos. They'll delight you, scare you, but also make you wiser. New episodes every Friday.

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford

Dore Strauch and Friedrich Ritter make an unconventional couple, united by their contempt for shoes, root vegetables and, above all, society. In 1929 they leave Germany and begin anew on the deserted Galapagos island of Floreana. At first, it feels like a paradise, but soon cracks begin to show. Parasitic fleas, bombastic interlopers, and buried tensions turn their escape into a nightmare. Can they learn to thrive away from civilisation, or will Floreana claim more than their dreams?

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Paradise Poisoned: How Utopias Fall Apart

William McGonagall's poems are something else. The jarring meter, the banal imagery, the awkward rhymes: they made him a laughing stock in 19th Century Scotland and are still derided to this day. How does someone get that bad at poetry? Or have we been misunderstanding McGonagall all along?

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"Genius Still Unrecognised" - The Worst Poet in the World

In the early 90s, cutting-edge advertising agency Chiat/Day announced a radical plan, aimed at giving the company a jolt of creative renewal. They would sweep away corner offices and cubicles and replace them with zany open spaces, as well as innovative portable computers and phones. A brand new era of “hot-desking” had arrived.
 
Problems quickly began. Disgruntled employees found themselves hauling temperamental, clunky laptops and armfuls of paperwork all over the office; some even had to use the trunks of their cars as filing cabinets. Soon, the unhappy nomads had had enough.
 
Bad execution was to blame for the failure of this “playful” workspace. But Chiat/Day had made another mistake here, too – one that was more serious, more fundamental and altogether more common.
 
For a full list of sources for this episode, go to timharford.com.

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Office Hell: The Demise of the Playful Workspace (Classic)

Pepsi twice ended up in court after promotions went disastrously wrong. Other big companies have fallen into the same trap - promising customers rewards so generous that to fulfil the promise might mean corporate bankruptcy.

Businesses and customers alike are sometimes blinded by the big numbers in such PR stunts - but it's usually the customers, not the businesses, who end up losing out.

For a full list of show notes see http://timharford.com/

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Number Fever: How Pepsi Nearly Went Pop (Classic)

It's been five years since Cautionary Tales ran a mini-series about the Covid-19 pandemic, exploring the lessons we were learning in real time as the crisis unfolded. 'Fire at The Beverly Hills Supper Club' tells the story of a deadly blaze in a Cincinnati hotel and Tim's own experience reacting to new information about the virus. After the episode, Tim reflects on the anniversary, the cautionary tales the pandemic still had to teach us, and whether we've learned enough to deal with the next one.

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Fire at The Beverly Hills Supper Club (Update)

Lying on the cold metal table, Voyne Ray Cox knew the drill. This was his ninth round of cancer treatment - which is why he was certain that what happened next couldn't be right. He heard a sizzling sound and saw a blue flash. And then - agony. It was like someone had thrust a hot skewer through his shoulder. He cried out in pain, but the operator was down the corridor and she couldn't hear him. She blasted him again and again with the red-hot radiation beam.
 
Ray wasn't the first patient to be burned by the Therac-25 therapy machine, and he wouldn't be the last. Its dual-purpose design, controlled by a software programme, was supposed to offer hospitals more bang for their buck. But as patient after patient suffered ulcerated skin and yawning lesions, it should have been clear that something was horribly wrong. Why did it take so long for anyone to put this awful puzzle together?
 
For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.

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"Captain Kirk Forgot to put the Machine on Stun"

Acclaimed author Michael Lewis discusses his time with Sam Bankman-Fried and why he thinks both high finance and Effective Altruism shaped the 'Crypto King's' worldview, ultimately landing him in jail. Plus, we hear about the people fighting terrorism, cave-ins and brain-eating amoeba from Michael's new book 'Who Is Government?'.
 
For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.
 
Get ad-free episodes, plus an exclusive monthly bonus episode, to Cautionary Tales by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. Pushkin+ subscribers can access ad-free episodes, full audiobooks exclusive binges, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows. 

Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkin
Subscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.fm/plus

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"I get in trouble when I say things like this" - Michael Lewis on Sam Bankman-Fried

A radical thought experiment transforms the lives of a new breed of philanthropists, as they follow the logic of altruism to extraordinary lengths. The most famous convert to the Effective Altruism movement, Sam Bankman-Fried, is either a humanitarian hero, a con artist at an astonishing scale, or most bafflingly, both.
 
For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.
 
Get ad-free episodes, plus an exclusive monthly bonus episode, to Cautionary Tales by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. Pushkin+ subscribers can access ad-free episodes, full audiobooks exclusive binges, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows. 

Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkin
Subscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.fm/plus

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Grand Theft Automated: How to Save a Trillion Lives

George Price is on a mission to prove that human kindness is real. He's seen the latest research suggesting any altruism is ultimately selfish and finds it deeply depressing. George decides to learn the mathematics he needs to prove that research wrong, and throws his career, and life, into the quest for complete kindness.

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The Man who Solved Kindness

Steven Spielberg thought his career was finished. He was behind schedule, his actors were fighting, the crew were mutinous and worst of all, his shark was broken. It looked like Jaws was destined for failure, but the movie that came out defined the Hollywood blockbuster. In this special episode celebrating 50 years of Jaws, we take lessons from the greatest monster movie that almost wasn't made.
 
Thanks to Alastair Greig for additional music.
 
For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.
 
 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Number Fever: How Pepsi Nearly Went Pop (Classic)

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