Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford

By: Pushkin Industries
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  • Summary

  • We tell our children unsettling fairy tales to teach them valuable lessons, but these Cautionary Tales are for the education of the grown ups – and they are all true. Tim Harford (Financial Times, BBC, author of “The Data Detective”) brings you stories of awful human error, tragic catastrophes, and hilarious fiascos. They'll delight you, scare you, but also make you wiser. New episodes every other Friday.
    2024 iHeartMedia, Inc. © Any use of this intellectual property for text and data mining or computational analysis including as training material for artificial intelligence systems is strictly prohibited without express written consent from iHeartMedia
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Episodes
  • Tim's Tolkien Obsession & Amazon Prime's The Rings of Power

    Tim's Tolkien Obsession & Amazon Prime's The Rings of Power
    Aug 30 2024

    Tim Harford's life has been building up to this moment. In this Cautionary Conversation, he discusses the works of his favorite author J.R.R. Tolkien and the social science at play in Amazon Prime's series The Rings of Power. What do elves and whistleblowers have in common? How can evil hide in plain sight? And where do orcs come from?

    Season 2 of The Rings of Power is available to watch on Prime Video from August 29th.

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    45 mins
  • The Human Guinea Pigs of Camp Lazear

    The Human Guinea Pigs of Camp Lazear
    Aug 16 2024

    Young doctor Jesse Lazear has deadly Yellow Fever. He thrashes around and convulses in his sick bed, and his vomit is black. He is just 34 when he dies.

    Curiously, mosquito expert Lazear was researching the disease when he became ill. Some historians think his infection wasn't an accident, and that he was secretly experimenting on himself...

    Today, human challenge trials - where volunteers are intentionally given a disease under the watchful eye of medical support - are rare. The authorities are wary of the risks involved. But such trials can also mean that vaccines are developed faster and thousands of lives are saved. Is it time to start thinking differently about experimenting on humans?

    For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    40 mins
  • Embracing the Escape Fire (with Adam Grant)

    Embracing the Escape Fire (with Adam Grant)
    Aug 2 2024

    Cautionary Conversation: Steve Jobs hated his phone so much that he smashed it against a wall. He also referred to mobile carriers as "orifices". Yet he went on to invent the world's most popular smartphone. Why did he change his mind?

    Tim Harford and organizational psychologist Adam Grant (Think Again, Hidden Potential) discuss the consequences of letting our ideas become part of our identity; when it's essential to adapt; and whether frogs really do stay sitting in slowly boiling water.

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    37 mins
World Social Sciences
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What listeners say about Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford

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Profile Image for Mr. R. Thomas

Riveting

I had no idea about the self testing humans had the bravery to encounter. The point is made near to the end of the broadcast possible reasons for this bravery. These are astonishing accounts.

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Profile Image for James M.

Super interesting

Love this (as well as pretty much anything Tim Harford does) - just wish they clearly titled which episodes are the proper episodes and which are conversations - you end up having to listen to the start to figure it out a lot of the time

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Profile Image for Jen

Very good but…

Tim H is highly entertaining and authoritative journalist, making complicated topics seem very straight forward. So why the 3 stars? I highly resent the adverts when I’m paying for an annual subscription to a streaming service. If these were free, fair enough but the high cost of the audible service does not justify adding adverts. Plus, as Tim H would himself would say, paying twice for an item is not economical! Audible, pls sort it out and don’t treat your audience like idiots.

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Profile Image for BookCovered

If only someone had actually researched the name

Why did no-one tell Tim it's pronounced Eem, not Eee -am, and he says he grew up nearby....little things like this can be so frustrating. So apart from getting that basic fact wrong, and changing Curbar Edge from 'Curber' to become 'Curr - pause - barr it's not ' a bad retelling.

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