Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford cover art

All Episodes

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford — 214 episodes

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Title
1

The Queen's Astrologer: The Price of Prophecy (Part 1)

2

Beware Tech Tycoons with Piranha Tanks - with Katie Prescott

3

Finding Grace in a Burger Bun: An Incrediburgible Quest

4

Run, Switzer, Run: The Women who Broke the Marathon Taboo (Classic)

5

The Lovestruck Explorer's Deadly Guessing Game

6

The Refugee Who Led a Software Revolution - with Ben Walter

7

The Mad Mystic and the Last Battle on English Soil - with Ian Breckon

8

The Sightseeing Flight and the Invisible Mountain

9

Presenting: Drug Story - On Xanax and Anxiety

10

"And it went click" - Dawn of the Working Dead

11

Explosives or Sugar? The Deadly Art of Distraction in Putin’s Russia - with Helena Merriman

12

Flight of the Fantasist: The Race Around the World - Part 2

13

The Philosopher and the Handyman: The Race Around the World - Part 1

14

Presenting... American Criminal: The Great McDonald's Monopoly Heist

15

Sphygmograph Be Damned: The Science of Love

16

The Angels, The Stones and The Dead

E
17

Powered by Orgasm: The Rise and Fall of a Sex Cult - with Ellen Huet

E
18

The WOW Machine Stops (Pt 2)

19

Shoes, Booze and the Pursuit of Happiness (Pt 1)

20

Liar, Bigamist, Brute: How Isaac Singer Liberated Women

21

Fritterin' Away Genius (Classic)

22

Photographing Fairies (Classic)

23

"They fall behind and are slowly crushed" - Board Games and Economics with Richard Garfield

24

Flixborough: The Factory that was Wiped off the Map

25

The Disappearance of Grace Oakeshott

26

Your Chance to Attend a Cautionary Tales Table Read

27

Homo deceptus: Science's Dirty Little Secret

28

Kyoto: The Battle that Defined Climate Politics - with Joe Robertson

29

Presenting: Twenty Thousand Hertz

30

The Treasure Hunt that Broke America (Part 2)

31

The Treasure Hunt that Broke America (Part 1)

32

The Truth About Hansel and Gretel (Classic)

33

On Fire from the Inside - Lethal Injection Up Close with Malcolm Gladwell

34

Derek Bentley Must Hang

35

The Canal, the Crash and the Ketamine - Pushkin's Reign of Error

36

Schrödinger's Spy: Businessman, Fraud, or Russian Agent? - with Sam Jones

37

Missing Fish and Fatal Feasts: Ritual and Ruin at the Sun King’s Table

38

Don't Panic! Douglas Adams' Guide to Tomorrow - with Arvind Ethan David

39

A Deadly Day at the Races: What Radical Protest Can and Cannot Do

E
40

True Lies and Genuine Fakes

E
41

Stalling for Survival - A Lonely Fight Against a Deadly Medicine

42

Announcing: The Cautionary Club

43

Disaster Favours the Daring: Shipwreck at Honda Point

44

Paradise Poisoned: How Utopias Fall Apart

45

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

46

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

47

Number Fever: How Pepsi Nearly Went Pop (Classic)

48

Fire at The Beverly Hills Supper Club (Update)

49

"Captain Kirk Forgot to put the Machine on Stun"

50

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

51

Grand Theft Automated: How to Save a Trillion Lives

52

The Man who Solved Kindness

53

The Shark That Ate Hollywood: Jaws at 50

E
54

Le Mans 55: The Deadliest Race

55

The Nazis, the Bomb, and the Woman that Science Forgot

56

Give Politicians a Raise, Smuggle Smartphones into School, and go Full Donk! Cautionary Questions with Risky Business

57

Roosevelt and the Renegade (Panama Disaster 2)

58

The Great Frenchman's Folly (Panama Disaster 1)

59

Lab Leak: Could Smallpox Come Back?

60

"Dangerously Near to Absolute Perfection"

61

Buried by the Wall Street Crash (Classic)

62

Presenting: You Must Remember This - Alfred Hitchcock

63

“I love being the person who doesn’t know anything” - Why Steven Levitt has swapped academia for podcasting

64

The Old Man and the Wrecking Crew

65

Houdini: The Phone Call from the Coffin (Part 3)

66

Houdini's Detective and her 1500 Dead Husbands (Part 2)

67

Houdini: A Message from the Spirits (Part 1)

68

Would You Trust a Gangster Nanny? - Cautionary Questions with Rachel Botsman

69

Lights, Camera, Tax Break

70

The Nursery Rhyme That Ruined a Rock Band

71

The Widow Who Disrupted Champagne (with Ben Walter)

72

The Thrill and the Drop: A First Date Rollercoaster

73

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

74

The Night of the Mugger

75

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

76

Frozen in a Burning 747 (Tenerife Air Disaster 2)

77

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

78

Do NOT Pass GO! (Classic)

79

Demonizing Dungeons & Dragons (Classic)

80

Captain Coward and the Blame Game

81

Get Happier, Help Others: Some Good Ideas About Giving

82

RoboPod and the Perpetual Money Machine - Cautionary Questions 2

83

Darwin's Grandpa and the Art of Sex Appeal

84

The Edinburgh Body Snatchers: Murder at Halloween

85

Cautionary Tales Presents: Death Fraud and Other Risky Business

86

The Poet Who Toppled The British Empire

87

Reason, Wrath and Rebellion on the High Seas

88

Steel and Kindness: Clash of the Skyscrapers

89

The Nice Guy, the Bully and the Kiss

90

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

91

The Human Guinea Pigs of Camp Lazear

92

Embracing the Escape Fire (with Adam Grant)

93

Cautionary Tales Presents Vultures from Lost Hills: Dark Canyon

94

Flying Too High: AI and Air France Flight 447

95

Run, Switzer, Run: The Women Who Broke the Marathon Taboo

96

Adidas v Puma: A Battle of Boots and Brothers

97

The Revenge of the Whales

98

When the Robots Take Over... - Cautionary Questions

99

WW2: How Britain Ignored the Mother of All Secrets

100

The Fraudster's Guide to Magic Money

101

Blood and Gold (with Dan Snow)

102

The Rise and Fall of a Megalomaniac

103

Inside the Bizarre World of Dictators

104

Do Nothing, Then Do Less

105

Buried Evil: V2 Rocket (Part 3)

106

Into the Black Lair: V2 Rocket (Part 2)

107

Supersonic Nazi Vengeance: V2 Rocket (Part 1)

108

Tenerife: The Most Deadly Air Disaster

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109

Martin Luther King, the Jewelry Genius, and the Art of Public Speaking (Classic)

110

DANGER: Rocks Ahead! (Classic)

111

When Stalin Killed the Weekend (with The Happiness Lab)

112

How the Radium Girls Fought Back

113

Glowing Peril: The Magical Glitter That Poisoned a City

114

George Washington's Beard of Beetles (with The Dollop)

115

Laser Versus Parchment: Doomsday for the Disc

116

Cautionary Tales Presents The Dream

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117

Killers of the Flower Moon: Osage Chief Jim Gray In Conversation

118

Oil and Blood: The Osage Murders

119

DOUBLE BILL: A Monkey For Mayor / A Screw Loose At 17,000 Feet

120

"7000 horses are being flown across space..." - Cautionary Questions #2

121

Cautionary Tales Presents: Getting out of Dodge from Revisionist History

122

A Chorus of Contempt at The Sydney Opera House

123

The City That Sold Itself To Wall Street

124

General Ludd's Rage Against the Machines

125

Andy Warhol's Factory of Truth

126

Poles Apart: How A Journalist Divided A City

127

The Father of Space Travel

128

A Fascination with Failure: Death On The Dancefloor (Classic)

129

When Parakeets Plundered New York

130

The Coup, the Poet and the Secret to Winning Wimbledon

131

The Man Who Played With Hurricanes

132

Cautionary Tales Presents: Lost Hills - The Dark Prince

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133

Sonic Poison? The Genesis of Havana Syndrome

134

Airships, AI and Alan Cumming: Tim Answers Your Questions

135

The Man Who Bet His House on a Pop Song - A Eurovision Tale

136

The Dark Money Behind Mother's Day

137

The True Scandal of Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound

138

What if Terrorists Could Weaponize Covid?

139

The Vigilante and the Air Traffic Controller

140

America's Mata Hari? The Double Life of Esther Reed

141

Office Hell: the Demise of the Playful Workspace

142

La La Land: Galileo’s Warning (Classic)

143

The Scientist and the Swindler

144

The Hero Who Rode His Segway Off a Cliff

145

The Mummy's Curse (Classic)

146

The Final Illusion of the Great Lafayette

147

LIVE: The Myth of the Million Dollar Tulip Bulb

148

DOUBLE BILL: When a Plague Struck World of Warcraft/Blood on the Tracks

149

"Snow Crashing Into The Metaverse" from Imaginary Worlds

150

The Company That Cancelled Christmas

151

The Wild Turkeys of Schleswig

152

Cautionary Conversation: The Blitz Spirit and the Blackout Ripper

153

The Inventor Who Almost Ended the World

154

The Halloween Poisoner

155

Cautionary Conversation: The Conspiracy Theorist Who Changed His Mind

156

Cautionary Tales Presents: Warfare, The Life of Anne Frank

157

The Online Date That's Too Good to be True

158

A Leap of Faith From the Eiffel Tower

159

Cautionary Conversation: Flying on Empty

160

Tim Talks Bicycles with Patented

161

"You’re Not Howard Hughes!"

162

"Who would you dine with? Scott or Amundsen?" Malcolm Gladwell and Tim Harford in Discussion.

163

South Pole Race: When the Limeys Get Scurvy

164

The Bowery Boys and the Black Tom Explosion

165

South Pole Race: “Mummy, is Amundsen a good man?”

166

South Pole Race: David and Goliath on Ice

167

Chicago When It Sizzles

168

The French Knight’s Guide to Corporate Culture

169

Frankenstein Versus the Volcano

170

Bless the Coal-black Hearts of the Broadway Critics

171

Monkey for Mayor from This Day in Esoteric Political History

172

When the Autopilot Switched Off

173

Cautionary Tales Presents: World's Greatest Con

174

Photographing Fairies

175

Tim Joins ‘No Such Thing As A Fish'

176

The False Dawn of the Electric Car

177

The Balloons That Ate Cleveland (A Cautionary Tales Short)

178

Death on the Dance Floor

179

Cautionary Tales Returns Every Other Friday from March 25th

180

The Mummy’s Curse

181

The Truth About Hansel and Gretel

182

Do NOT Pass GO!

183

Wrong Tools Cost Lives

184

Fritterin’ Away Genius

185

The Fan Who Infected a Movie Star

186

Whistleblower on the 28th Floor

187

Masterly Inactivity Versus Micromanaging

188

Demonizing Dungeons & Dragons

189

Number Fever: How Pepsi Nearly Went Pop

190

The Curse of Knowledge Meets The Valley of Death

191

The Dunning Kruger Hijack (and Other Criminally Stupid Acts)

192

Catching a KiIler Doctor

193

The Art Forger, the Nazi, and "The Pope"

194

Florence Nightingale and Her Geeks Declare War on Death

195

Martin Luther King Jr, the Jewelry Genius, and the Art of Public Speaking

196

Bonus: Why We Believe What Isn't True (with Axios Today)

197

The Data Detective

198

BONUS: Storks, Smoking and the Power of Doubt

199

How To End A Pandemic

200

That Turn To Pascagoula

201

The Village of Heroes

202

The Spreadsheet of Life and Death

203

A Tsunami of Misery

204

Fire at The Beverly Hills Supper Club

205

Cautionary Tales Presents: TED Talk Daily

206

You Have Reached Your Destination

207

Bowie, Jazz and the Unplayable Piano

208

How Britain Invented, Then Ignored, Blitzkrieg

209

Buried by the Wall Street Crash

210

The Deadly Airship Race

211

La La Land: Galileo's Warning

212

The Rogue Dressed as a Captain

213

DANGER: Rocks Ahead!

214

Introducing: Cautionary Tales