by Tim Harford

I first came across Tim Harford's Cautionary Tales as podcasts on BBC radio and many times, after I'd listened to one, I wanted to read more on the subject. Tim Harfords home page is easy to find but his podcasts are hidden by adverts for his books and even if we find them, at https://timharford.com/articles/cautionarytales/, it's tedious to page through links to find any particular podcast. This page is merly my effort to construct an index into them. Each page contains link to the audio and more reading.

Ep 1 – DANGER: Rocks Ahead!
Ep 2 – The Rogue Dressed as a Captain
Ep 3 – LaLa Land: Galileo’s Warning
Ep 4 – The Deadly Airship Race
Ep 5 – Buried by the Wall Street crash
Ep 6 – How Britain Invented, Then Ignored, Blitzkrieg
Ep 7 – Bowie, jazz, and the unplayable piano
Ep 8 – You Have Reached Your Destination
– A Tsunami of Misery
– Fire At The Beverly Hills Supper Club
– The Spreadsheet of Life and Death
– How To End A Pandemic
– That Turn to Pascagoula
– The Village of Heroes
– Storks, Smoking and the Power of Doubt
– The Dunning Kruger Hijack, and Other Criminally Stupid Acts
– The Art Forger, the Nazi, and “The Pope”
– Masterly Inactivity versus Micromanaging
– The Curse of Knowledge meets the Valley of Death
– Demonising Dungeons & Dragons
– Whistleblower on the 28th Floor
– Do NOT pass GO!
– Fritterin’ Away Genius
– The Fan Who Infected a Movie Star
– Wrong Tools Cost Lives
– The Mummy’s Curse
– The Truth About Hansel and Gretel
– Death on the Dance Floor
Short – The Balloons That Ate Cleveland
– Photographing Fairies
Short – Blood On The Tracks
Short – Voting in a Monkey as Mayor
– The False Dawn of the Electric Car
– Bless the Coal-black Hearts of the Broadway Critics
Short – A Screw Loose At 17,000ft
– When the autopilot switched off
– Frankenstein Versus the Volcano
– The French Knight’s Guide to Corporate Culture
– Chicago when it sizzles
– South Pole Race: “Mummy, is Amundsen a good man?”
– South Pole Race: David and Goliath on Ice
– “But You’re Not Howard Hughes”
– South Pole Race: When Limeys get scurvy
– A leap of faith from the Eiffel Tower
Cautionary Conversation – Flying on empty
Cautionary Conversations – The Conspiracy Theorist Who Changed His Mind
– The Halloween Poisoner
– The Online Date That’s Too Good To Be True
– The inventor who almost ended the world
– The Wild Turkeys of Schleswig
– The Company That Cancelled Christmas
double header – When a Plague Struck World of Warcraft, and Blood on the Tracks
– The Myth of the Million Dollar Tulip Bulb
– The Final Illusion of The Great Lafayette
– The Hero Who Rode His Segway Off A Cliff
– The Mummy’s Curse (Classic)
We are taking your questions for Cautionary Tales
– LaLa Land: Galileo’s Warning (Classic)
– Office Hell: The demise of the playful workspace
– The Vigilante and the Air Traffic Controller
– The Dark Money Behind Mother’s Day
– the true scandal of Lydia E. Pinkham’s vegetable compound
– The Man Who Bet His House on a Pop Song (A Eurovision Tale)
– Sonic Poison? The genesis of Havana syndrome
– The man who played with hurricanes
Cautionary Conversations – When the Parakeets Plundered New York
– A Fascination with Failure / Death on the Dance Floor (classic)
– The V2 Trilogy
– The Coup, the Poet and the Secret to Winning Wimbledon
Cautionary Conversations – Andy Warhol’s Factory of Truth
– Poles Apart: How A Journalist Divided A City
– General Ludd’s Rage Against the Machines
– The City that Sold Itself to Wall Street
– The Tragedy of Sydney Opera House
Double Header – A Monkey For Mayor / A Screw Loose At 17,000 Feet
– Killers of the Flower Moon: Osage Chief Jim Gray In Conversation
– Oil and Blood: The Osage Murders
– George Washington’s Beard of Beetles, with The Dollop
– Laser Versus Parchment: Doomsday for the Disc
– Tenerife: The most deadly air disaster
– Do Nothing, Then Do Less
– Inside the Bizarre World of Dictators
– Blood and Gold (with Dan Snow)
– The Fraudster’s Guide to Magic Money
– WW2: How Britain Ignored the Mother of All Secrets