Cautionary Tales
Tim Harford on decisions and bias through real failures; mechanisms check out
40:22He Believed It Would Work, So He Never Prepared: The Daredevil Who Nearly Died at a 4,000-Foot Canyon
Knievel treated positive thinking as a method: before a jump he did not practice, did not calculate angles, did not measure risk. Experiments by psychology professor Oettingen show that optimistic fantasy does not push you toward success — it paralyzes you. The Snake River failure was settled before the ignition.
39:19A Nazi Sabotage Mission Undone by Its Own Idiots — and the One Smart Man Who Faked His Way Out
In WWII the Nazis landed eight saboteurs in America, and the mission collapsed under the weight of its own stupidity, infighting and betrayal. The one clever member escaped by injecting himself with baking soda — a story about how lethal recruiting and individual judgment really are.
49:04The DeLorean Case: Industrial Policy Should Never Bet on a Single Firm
DeLorean built its factory on roughly $100 million in British government support, then slid into an $18 million fraud and an FBI cocaine sting. The real lesson of industrial policy is not whether to subsidize, but to keep several firms competing, use export markets as discipline, and never bet on one company.
41:39An Actress's Contract Locked In Her Body: Gain Weight and You Breach It, Lose Weight and It Kills You
In the 1920s the actress Molly was shelved by her studio for gaining weight and ended up on an operating table; in the 1990s a bride named Mary died from the diet drug fen-phen. Once a body becomes a commercial asset, the punishment and the shortcut lead to the same place.
43:31Dissected and Displayed After Hanging: What She Threatened Was Order, Not Money
Mary Bateman, an 18th-century fraudster, worked through fortune-telling and a poisoned pie — not for the money, but for the pleasure of control. Her cons landed precisely on what people wanted to believe, and after her death her body was still put on display, exposing how much a society feared anyone who upended its order.
37:48No One Confirmed the Doors Were Shut: Institutional Carelessness Was the Real Killer
In 1987 the roll-on/roll-off ferry Herald of Free Enterprise capsized with her bow doors open, killing 193 people. The real culprit was not the sleeping crewman but a system that left everyone feeling this was not their job.