Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford

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Episodes

Date Title & Description Contributors
2025-02-21

  The Nursery Rhyme That Ruined a Rock Band

"Down Under" was huge. This jokey ode to legendary Australian wanderlust helped Men at Work win a Grammy and was a key part of the band's creative legacy. By 2007, it had been earning Men At Work a steady stream of royalties for nearly 30 years. That w...
  Pushkin Industries author
2025-02-19

  The Widow Who Disrupted Champagne (with Ben Walter)

Tim Harford is joined by Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business and the host of "The Unshakeables" podcast, to explore the story of the trailblazing Widow Clicquot. Her namesake brand la Veuve Clicquot revolutionized the champagne industry in the 19th c...
  Pushkin Industries author
2025-02-14

  The Thrill and the Drop: A First Date Rollercoaster

Leah Washington and her new boyfriend Joe Pugh are on their first day out together. They're at Alton Towers theme park, where they've chosen to ride the "Smiler" rollercoaster: a terrifying tangle of track that loops and swoops through a world-record 1...
  Pushkin Industries author
2025-02-07

  Dr. Brinkley's Miracle Cure For Impotence (with Betwixt The Sheets)

Cautionary Conversation: In the 1920s, a conman convinced America that goat testicles were the secret to male virility. Tim Harford and Dr Kate Lister (Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society) dive into the bizarre and grisly tale...
  Pushkin Industries author
2025-01-31

  The Night of the Mugger

Winston Trew has just been arrested for mugging. It's 1972 and the crime has recently made its way to Britain from the United States. Dangerous thugs, replicating their American counterparts, have made the city of London their hunting ground - so Winst...
  Pushkin Industries author
2025-01-24

  Missing on "Dead Mountain": A Cold War Cold Case

In the bleak Russian winter of 1959, nine experienced hikers led by Igor Dyatlov set out on an expedition. None of them made it back alive. When their campsite was finally discovered, it told a chilling story: their tent was slashed open, bodies scatte...
  Pushkin Industries author
2025-01-17

  Frozen in a Burning 747 (Tenerife Air Disaster 2)

Two airplanes have just collided on the runway at Tenerife Airport. While no one on the Amsterdam-bound KLM plane survives the resulting fireball, 71 Pan-Am passengers and crew make it off their plane. But could it have been more? Why did so many Pan-A...
  Pushkin Industries author
2025-01-10

  Cleared For Take-Off? (Tenerife Air Disaster 1)

“Evacuate the airport, we’ve planted bombs,” a terrorist tells the telephone operator at the airport in Gran Canaria, in 1977. By the end of that day, 583 people will have lost their lives – but not to a bomb explosion.The planes are diverted to the ne...
  Pushkin Industries author
2025-01-03

  Do NOT Pass GO! (Classic)

Cautionary Tales returns with new episodes on January 10th. Lizzie J. Magie (played by Helena Bonham Carter) should be celebrated as the inventor of what would become Monopoly. But, even though she had a patent, her role in creating the smash hit board...
  Pushkin Industries author
2024-12-20

  Demonizing Dungeons & Dragons (Classic)

When James Dallas Egbert III was reported missing from his college dorm in 1979, one of America's most flamboyant private detectives was summoned to solve the case. "Dallas" faced the same problems as many teenagers, but P.I. William Dear stoked fears ...
  Pushkin Industries author