Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford Episodes Episode guide
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Supersonic Nazi Vengeance: V2 Rocket (Part 1)
In WW2, British intelligence began to hear that the enemy was developing a rocket weapon.
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Steel and Kindness: Clash of the Skyscrapers
Paul Starrett has just won a major building contract, but will everything go to plan?
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Stalling for Survival - A Lonely Fight Against a Deadly Medicine
Oldham Kelsey is tasked with approving an application for a drug to be sold in America...
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Run, Switzer, Run: The Women Who Broke the Marathon Taboo
Until the 1960s, it was deemed too "dangerous" for women athletes to run longer distances
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Roosevelt and the Renegade (Panama Disaster 2)
Sixteen years have passed since Ferdinand De Lesseps' catastrophic failure in Panama.
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RoboPod and the Perpetual Money Machine - Cautionary Questions 2
Tim Harford and Jacob Goldstein answer more of your questions.
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Reason, Wrath and Rebellion on the High Seas
History remembers Captain Bligh as a cruel, petty tyrant. The reality is more complicated
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Poles Apart: How A Journalist Divided A City
Heroic explorer Frederick Cook has just returned from the North Pole...
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Paradise Poisoned: How Utopias Fall Apart
Dore Strauch and Friedrich Ritter make an unconventional couple.
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Office Hell: The Demise of the Playful Workspace
In the early 90s, cutting-edge advertising agency Chiat/Day announced a radical plan.
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Number Fever: How Pepsi Nearly Went Pop
Why some botched competitions ruin businesses, while others short-change consumers.
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Missing on "Dead Mountain": A Cold War Cold Case
In winter 1959, nine experienced hikers led by Igor Dyatlov set out on an expedition.
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Missing Fish and Fatal Feasts: Ritual and Ruin at the Sun King’s Table
In the gilded court of Louis XIV, 17th Century France, manners are everything...
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Masterly Inactivity Versus Micromanaging
Lady Sale (Helena Bonham Carter) was part of a British retreat from Afghanistan in 1842.
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Martin Luther King Jr, the Jewellery Genius, and the Art of Public Speaking
Some speeches help us dream of a better world…while others become the stuff of nightmares
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Lights, Camera, Tax Break
When Ernest Borgnine gets his big break, it's not the dream gig he thought it was.
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Le Mans 55: The Deadliest Race
A race for speed ends in disaster, changing motor sport forever.
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Lab Leak: Could Smallpox Come Back?
When a photographer begins to feel ill, doctors are mystified.
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La La Land: Galileo's Warning
Giving an Oscar to the wrong film proved that some safety systems can increase mistakes.
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Introducing... The Science of Happiness
The Science of Happiness is available now on ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Sounds.
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Introducing... Short History Of...
Introducing Short History Of... The Dambusters. Listen other episodes on ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Sounds now!
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Into the Black Lair: V2 Rocket (Part 2)
How Nazi Germany was convinced that they couldn’t afford to ignore rocket technology.
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How the Radium Girls Fought Back
Tim Harford and Kate Moore discuss how the "Radium Girls" took on their employers.
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How Britain Invented, Then Ignored, Blitzkrieg
Why organizations can't always see a brilliant idea that's staring them in the face.
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Houdini's Detective and her 1500 Dead Husbands (Part 2)
Harry Houdini - part 2/3.
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Houdini: The Phone Call from the Coffin (Part 3)
In 1926, Houdini's death shocks the world, but what follows is even more astounding.
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Houdini: A Message from the Spirits (Part 1)
Part 1 of 3: Harry Houdini
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Grand Theft Automated: How to Save a Trillion Lives
Sam Bankman-Fried is either a humanitarian hero or a con artist at an astonishing scale.
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Glowing Peril: The Magical Glitter That Poisoned a City
No-one saw this horrifying radiation accident coming. Should they have?
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Give Politicians a Raise, Smuggle Smartphones into School, and go Full Donk! Cautionary Questions with Risky Business
Can game theory be used to win a world cup? Can you pay the way out of corruption?