Of all the wonders witnessed by Sir John Mandeville, a 14th-century English knight, none was more astonishing than the “wondirfulle” fruit of a tree he encountered on his travels in India. This fruit resembled a gourd, but cut it open and you would find tiny...
https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/talent-time-and-money-the-curse-of-general-magic It's 1990. A new company called General Magic is going to build its vision of the future: the smart phone. They have talent, almost unlimited cash, and a 15 year...
It all seems very long ago, but there was a time when David Cameron was most famous for his enthusiasm for behavioural public policy, better known as “nudges”. In a TED talk released a few months before Cameron became the UK’s prime minister, he began by asking, “How...
In the noughties, reality TV is in an arms race. Shows compete for viewers by one-upping each other with increasingly shocking and controversial formats. The Dutch production company behind Big Brother, Endemol, has a bold idea. What if, instead of money, the...
https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/evel-knievel-faces-the-abyss Evel Knievel, the world-famous daredevil, is planning his greatest ever stunt. In 1974, he wants to leap over Snake River Canyon in Idaho. The chasm is almost a third of a mile wide,...
In a small black box, in a cupboard just out of reach of my desk, I keep one of my few treasured possessions: a set of Oblique Strategies cards, signed by their co-creator, the artist and musician Brian Eno. The cards, each carrying a brief instruction, are a prompt...
https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/dumm-und-d-mmer-hitler-invades-florida In 1942, eight men are sent from Nazi Germany to infiltrate America. Their mission: to sabotage critical infrastructure. Their problem: they’re idiots. Operation Pastorius...
https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-harford/the-delorean-saga-fraud-drugs-and-marty-mcflys-car-with-business-history This is a special crossover episode with Business History. John DeLorean was a visionary who wanted to create a futuristic new sports car -...
In 2012, the creator of the xkcd cartoon Randall Munroe unveiled Up Goer Five — a detailed diagram of the Saturn V rocket, annotated using only the most common 1,000 (sorry, “ten hundred”) words in the dictionary. It was a viral hit, as was the follow-up book, Thing...