
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
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.
Latest Episode
Paradise Poisoned: How Utopias Fall Apart (22.08.2025)
Previous Episodes
- "Genius Still Unrecognised" - The Worst Poet in the World 15.08.2025
- Office Hell: The Demise of the Playful Workspace (Classic) 08.08.2025
- Number Fever: How Pepsi Nearly Went Pop (Classic) 01.08.2025
- Fire at The Beverly Hills Supper Club (Update) 25.07.2025
- "Captain Kirk Forgot to put the Machine on Stun" 18.07.2025
- "I get in trouble when I say things like this" - Michael Lewis on Sam Bankman-Fried 11.07.2025
- Grand Theft Automated: How to Save a Trillion Lives 04.07.2025
- The Man who Solved Kindness 27.06.2025
- The Shark That Ate Hollywood: Jaws at 50 20.06.2025
- Le Mans 55: The Deadliest Race 13.06.2025
- The Nazis, the Bomb, and the Woman that Science Forgot 06.06.2025
- Give Politicians a Raise, Smuggle Smartphones into School, and go Full Donk! Cautionary Questions with Risky Business 30.05.2025
- Roosevelt and the Renegade (Panama Disaster 2) 23.05.2025
- The Great Frenchman's Folly (Panama Disaster 1) 16.05.2025
- Lab Leak: Could Smallpox Come Back? 09.05.2025
- "Dangerously Near to Absolute Perfection" 02.05.2025
- Buried by the Wall Street Crash (Classic) 25.04.2025
- Presenting: You Must Remember This - Alfred Hitchcock 18.04.2025
- “I love being the person who doesn’t know anything” - Why Steven Levitt has swapped academia for podcasting 11.04.2025
- The Old Man and the Wrecking Crew 04.04.2025