Cautionary Tales, with Tim Harford

What can history teach us about the present? How can the average person use critical thinking to avoid being taken in by slick infographics and ardent pundits? In today’s interview, Ben, Matt and Noel sit down with legendary economist, author and podcaster Tim Harford to learn more about the importance of critical thinking, economics, and empathy.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.

(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call
me Bed, and we are joined as always with our
super producer Paul Mission Control Decades. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know history. That's part of where
we're going today, folks. Despite what some of us may

(00:45):
experience in grade school, history is much more than a
collection of isolated statistics and out of context facts printed
in dusty classroom tomes. History is both powerful and at
times controversial. The story of human civilization, in particular, is
full to the brim of stories that people in power

(01:06):
sometimes would rather be forgotten, as well as stories that
can empower us with a new understanding of the present.
In today's interview, we're diving into the power of history,
and we're diving into the consequences of sometimes bad decisions
as well as the literal cautionary tales it can teach us.
And we're not setting off on this journey alone. Please

(01:29):
join us and welcoming the economist, journalist, broadcaster, and author.
Tim Harford, the creator of the Cautionary Tales podcast, Thanks
so much for joining us today, Tim, Oh, I'm so
pleased to be on the show. Thank you. Ben. So
you've got a podcast to that too, right, you know
you're you're an old school and a new school media
specialist there, right, Yeah, I've I've done it all. I'm

(01:51):
I mean, I'm done it all. Just on that note,
I have to bring this up to him. I was
looking act just through your work and I realized I had.
I've been watching you on television for quite a while.
I think we all have. UM. Specifically, I looked back
at an episode of the Colbert Rapport. Uh there's actually

(02:11):
I'm sure there's more than one. Maybe they're the only
one that I saw and vividly remembered was when you
were you were discussing a book that had recently come out,
The Logic of Life, and uh, my goodness, that was wonderful.
Thank you for doing that. It was there was an
incredible experience that colbet he I there was a joke

(02:32):
in that exchange about um, well, maybe I shouldn't. I
don't know how adult the audience is, so maybe I
shouldn't go into all the details. The joke was slightly
excuted joke about Pepsi and coke and I had I
had worked on that book for two years, and Colberts
and did not the joke, which in retrospect is obvious

(02:55):
about today's teenagers being the Pepsi generation and what they
like to get up to. The joke did not occur
to me. It's it occurred to to Stephen in about
three seconds. I mean, he's um, he's very very good
at what he does. He's also he's super nice backstage,
he was so nice. He came into the green room
and he talked it all through and he's like, have
you ever seen the show? Do you know what the
show's about? And I'm going to be in character. My

(03:17):
character is a total idiot. My character hasn't made your book.
My character doesn't doesn't understand anything. I was like, Oh,
that's that's so kind of him. And then he got
into character later and he walked past my dressing room
and he yells out, I'm going to tell you apart Wow,
Like the guys, he's in the zone. Now this is
how it all works behind the scenes. Yeah, you gotta

(03:38):
wonder if that took a toll on him eventually, and
that's why he kind of decided to pivot away from
doing that character, which it was a wonderful period in
his career. But I'm kind of glad that he's just
himself now. He's such a thoughtful guy and a devout,
a devoutly religious man, which is interesting considering the types
of conversations that that we're having today as well, And
and Dungeons and Dragons fan as Well's right, Yeah, I

(04:01):
mean he's he's one of the gang. There. There's a
couch entails abou Dungeons Dragons, which we can discuss if
you like. Yes, the whole reason of bringing that up
is because that that appearance was in two thousand eight
and far before that and up and to that point
and up until today. One of your main at least
in my mind, one of your main studies is in

(04:23):
logic itself and how we think, in critical thinking, and
the way we look at things and how we analyze them.
And I just want to say thank you for doing that,
first of all, because we need it very very much now.
And then and before and always we need that. And
how has that pursuit of logic, and how has that
affected your own work in choosing what to cover next.

(04:46):
It's it's a good question. It's taken me on quite
a journey because I began I studied philosophy, and I
studied formal logic, and I studied economics, and as a journalist.
At first I was covering economics, and I deers in
economics and the free economics kind of stuff, and also
statistics and the way people think about numbers and the

(05:07):
way numbers are used as weapons, and the way numbers
are used to sell things, to sell political ideas, to
sell your soft drinks, whatever it is. And over time
I came to realize that the way that we process
these apparent facts is not often logical. It's emotional, and

(05:28):
it's not because people are done, it's because they're human.
And I got more and more interested in the things
that we get wrong, in the way that we persuade ourselves,
or things that aren't necessarily true. And so I had
this journey on studying from studying logic, studying rationality, studying
statistical reasoning, to study studying the you know, we've kind

(05:50):
of meat sacks that we are trying to understand all
these things, and I think you need a bit of both.
You've got to understand the world. You You want to
understand the rational side, but you need to understand the
ootional side as well. The reason I brought up the
core beer thing in him being devoutly religious, Um, you know,
when thinking about logic and this kind of stuff, is
obviously an incredibly intelligent man. They're obviously very intelligent people

(06:11):
that are very much like yourself, focused on statistics and
logic and all of this kind of thing and rational thought,
who are devoutly religious. Is there a place for that
in your studies that you found or is it sort
of Do you see it as a form of self delusion? Well,
I'm not a religious person myself, but I certainly wouldn't
see it as self delusion. I mean, my my wife
is religious, and I don't certainly. I think my wife

(06:33):
is a person of extreme taste and good judgment in
all things. So yeah, I'm struck by how there's a
particular group who say that they're logical and say that
they're rational about this issue and then seem to get
really up in everyone's faces about it, and after I'm

(06:54):
not sure that we need to argue so much about
this particular subject. I think it's possible to unders to
disagree with someone in a friendly way, to still treat
them as human, to still treat them as thoughtful, and
to be curious about their views. Um, you don't have
to agree with them, but you don't have to just
constantly be chipping away at them either. Yeah, and you

(07:15):
know this is something that I see as a common
through line in your work, Tim. I will admit that
when I was researching this interview that we're doing today,
I had a moment of epiphany similar to what Matt described,
where I said, Oh, it's it's that Tim. I've been
reading I have, I have his books, and uh, I

(07:39):
love this through line of exploring empathy as well as economics.
And I was wondering if we could ask some some
kind of dumb questions on my end about economics. Uh.
I was going to say, there are no dumb questions,
but I should wait until I've heard the questions before
I say that I shouldn't. But you know, go right ahead.

(08:01):
I'm leaning into your long history as a columnist fielding
questions from the public. And what one thing that I
wanted to start with is the idea that economics have
occasionally been called, you know, the dismal science. What, in
your mind are some of the common misconceptions about economics

(08:23):
and statistics in in the public. I mean that that
dismal science thing is a good place to start, because
the person who accused economics of being the dismal science,
the dismal science was a guy called Thomas Carlyle, who
was very upset that so many economists were abolitionists. Wanted
to get rid of the slave trade, and they felt

(08:46):
that if you wanted someone to work, you should agree
a contract and pay them a wage to which they agree,
and that's what you do. If you want someone to
work for them, you don't treat them as property, you
don't oppress them. And Carlisle was like, oh, no, you
don't understand kind of humanity is so diverse. There are
people who are supposed to be masters, and there are
people who are supposed to be enslaved, and economists just

(09:08):
don't understand this about the diversity of human beings. He's
the guy who called us the dismal science. So guilty
has charged I'm happy to be dismal if I think
that basically all all humans are fundamentally equal. So that's
one thing, and then people people call us dismal science,
they very often don't know where that comes from. Another
thing that I think people get wrong if they think

(09:29):
that economics is basically the study of money. I think
actually economists don't think much about money, and you could
accuse them of not thinking enough about money and and
kind of treating it as though was this it's a
detail that doesn't really matter. What we're interested in is
in the real flow of goods and services and the
decisions that people make every day and how they spend

(09:51):
their lives and how they spend their time and how
they reason. Maybe we should think a bit more about money.
But that's the thing people think that economics is is
about money, And actually economics is kind of about everything
except money. If that sounds a bit weird, but I
think it's defensible well, And the the economic argument against
slavery wasn't necessarily even taking a political stance. It was

(10:12):
mortgaged about logistics and like how things would function better
like as a society if we, you know, moved towards
this model. I think there would be higher quality work,
there would be less strife. It would just be a
better situation. Is that correct? Yeah, well, I'm not I'm
not an expert in the history of it, but I
know that one of the people who was most prominent
was John Stuart Mill, who was both one of the
greatest economists who have ever lived and also one of

(10:34):
the greatest moral philosophers. So I I would be fairly
confident that he would be taking both the political moral
angle and also the practical angle. He would do both.
I want to follow up with the question on with
the question on misconceptions in the world of statistics. You know,
you said something that really tickled me right before recording

(10:57):
to him where we were talking about our tech details,
and he said, you know, I I study how things
go wrong, so I'm prepared for the stuff and when
we're talking about misconceptions and how things go wrong, something
that I believe everyone in our audience has encountered hinges
on statistics, especially when sort of cherry picked presented by

(11:20):
politicians and pundits, usually to attempt to support their point
right a quick glance at a kind of lazy, simple,
colorful infographic and then move on right, What can the
average person do to understand whether or not a statistic
is legitimate? So I wrote an entire book about this,

(11:43):
and I'm going to give you the secret to that book,
so you don't need to buy it, although I do
recommend that you do buy it. It's called The Data Detective.
And uh and yeah, I recommend the book. But but
then I would, wouldn't I? But let me try and
give you the okay. So the three part approach to
making sense of a number that you see, it's the
three cs. Calm, context, curiosity. So the first he is calm.

(12:08):
Most of the statistics that we see are drawn to
our attention on social media or regular media because they
elicit an emotional reaction. They're meant to make you upset, afraid, angry,
amused at some other person is being stupid, dumbfounded at
the mendacity of politicians? Was something. It's supposed to elicit

(12:29):
an emotional reaction, That's why you're seeing it. So the
very first things, just be calm. Notice what is my
emotional reaction? Is it denial? I can't possibly be true?
Is it? Oh? Yes, this just proves I'm right. Let
me just go and tell my friend, who are is
arguing about this with? Just notice that reaction counter three.
Then you then you move on so that the second

(12:50):
thing is context, and that's just to ask some basic
facts about the statistic that you're being shown. The most
basic of all is what is the definite issue? What
is the way that this thing is being measured or
what is being measured? So let's say, for example, you're
having an argument about I don't know immigration, well, immigration
is a is a subject that you know, people get

(13:12):
very excited about, they feel very emotional about on one
side or the other. But how is it being measured?
Like are we talking about illegal immigration? Are we talking
about people kind of illicitly crossing the border? Are we
talking about people with green cards? Are we or are
we are we actually not really talking about immigration at all?
We're talking about people of different ethnicities. What is it

(13:33):
that we're talking about? So get the context, and that
can also mean is the number going up or down? Whatever?
Could also is it a big number? Is it a
small number? Can I compare it to something that makes
it makes sense? So first, see was calm, second see
was context, and the third really encompasses everything, which is curiosity.
So you treat all this information as Hey, I don't

(13:54):
know everything about the world. There are gaps in my knowledge.
Is this filling a cap Is this answering a question?
If it doesn't answer a question, well, you know, dig deeper,
go another click, ask around, get some more context, and
and view these statistics as a way of making your

(14:15):
ignorance smaller, rather that which sounds obvious like, of course
a fact informs you, it fills in a gap in
your knowledge. But that's not how we treat facts. We
treat facts as weapons. We treat them as ah, I
can use this to win an argument. That's how so
much of what we see as processed so treated instead
in a curious frame of mind, calm, context, curiosity, And

(14:37):
now you don't have to buy the data is a detective,
but maybe you should. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going to
uh for sure. Um. I wish that Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle could have purchased the data detective while he was
still around. I want to bring this back to the
Fourth Sea, which is Cautionary Tales, that is, in a
specific episode there there we listen to you in preparation

(15:01):
for this interview. It's on a curious case of images
of fairies, of photographs specifically plates um and how these
photographs taken I guess the first photograph ever taken by
an amateur photographer, and how it fooled Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
So could you just tell us a bit of the story,

(15:22):
maybe the condensed version that we can get into what
what occurred? Because of belief in this situation, I find
the story just completely enchanting. And by the way, this
is a classic way that we approach for cautionary tales.
So so I tell a story, we have actors, we
have music, really put in, putting the work to give

(15:43):
people really immersive storytelling experience, and then we try to
draw lessons from the story, like what went wrong? What
was the mistake? Are we making that same mistake ourselves?
In this particular case, the story is of arthuricon and Doyle,
the creator of Sherlock Holmes, one of the most famous
men in the world at the time. This is about

(16:04):
a hundred years ago, going public, publishing a book, publishing
these huge cover stories saying we found these photos of fairies.
Fair is a real mind blown and he sort of recognized, well,
you know, maybe it could be a hoax, but of
course it's not a hoax, and he found all these
ways to dismiss the evidence that it was a hoax.

(16:24):
And the photos you can look them up on the
internet very easily. That they're called the Cottingly Fairies, Cottingly
being a suburb of Bradford in the north of England.
Very charming black and white photos. Got these girls. One
of them looks about nine years old, and other ones
a little older, and then these fairies in the foreground,
and they kind of look a little bit like maybe

(16:47):
they were cut out of a picture book, which probably
they in fact were. And and yet Sir Arthur convinced
himself that a nine year old girl can't fake photos.
He he really wanted to believe. And there's a couple
of different things going on there. One was his own
family history. He was he had been bereaved several times,

(17:08):
he had lost his son, he had lost his brother,
his wife, and his mother. He was very close to
his mother, and he really wanted to believe there's something
out there, there's something more than just what we can
see and touch ourselves. So he was very open to
spiritualist beliefs. He was hungry for that there was also
a history in his family of taking fairies seriously. His

(17:28):
father was confined to a mental asylum and he used
to draw pictures of fairies, and right, I have known
such a creature, So you really there's this real longing
to believe. But the other thing was that Arthur was
actually a very good photographer himself. His first ever published
work was not The Sign of for or The Hound

(17:49):
of Basketball is one of these great Shollock home stories.
It was a piece in the British Journal of Photography.
So so Arthur knew that photographs could be faked. He
just didn't want to believe that these ones swhere. And
what he basically told himself is, I know how hard
it is to take a photograph. I know how hard
it is to fake a photograph, and I don't think
a nine year old girl can do it. And that's

(18:10):
why he just put his whole reputation on the line
and he made a total fool of himself. I mean,
it's so fascinating, especially since this is a man whose
life's work it's all about detective work and finding clues
and using logic and reason to get to a realistic
solution to a puzzle. Um, and he threw all that
out the window in favor of belief. I think there's
the cautionary tale right there. If this can happen to him,

(18:32):
that can happen to any of us. Yes, if you
want to believe it enough, you can find a way
to believe. There's there's another cautionary tale, rather darker, but
it's very very similar, of an art forger who fools
the greatest art critic in the world. And it's the
same basic story. A guy who really he knows more
than anybody else about the works of Vermeir, and that's

(18:56):
why he wants so badly to believe he's just found
a Vermeir. And that one involves Nazis and sex workers
and kind of all kinds of weird stuff. So it's
it's a little less family friendly, but same fundamental story.
The the leading expert uses their own expertise to kind
of unravel themselves and to to fool themselves. I love

(19:16):
that you can apply something like that to other stories,
right something that you find in cautionary tales as a
listener a larger story and then apply it to other things.
I want to just go quickly back to kind of
the origin of the fairy photograph and how it began,
because I believe in the episode that you've got it's
not necessarily a statement, but it was an interview that

(19:37):
was given at some point by one of the children,
either Francis Griffith's or Elsie, right. I think it might
have been Elsie who gave the interview, and she spoke
of why it even occurred in the first place and
how this entire huge scenario was generated. All you know,
one of the most famous men, as you said in
the world writing about it. Um, it all started as

(20:00):
an attempt to help a child who was what could
you tell this in that story, The child was getting
in trouble for something or getting chastise for something, and
she wanted to help and that's all she wanted to
help out. Yeah, Because because one of the things we
do in caution tales is is not is there's often
more than one side of the story. So we were
trying to ask not only how did Sir Arthur fool himself,

(20:22):
but also why did these girls do this and why
didn't they own up for it? Turns out sixty five
years they kept the secret for sixty five years and
Francis and Elsie were initially motivated because Francis, who was nine,
got into trouble with her mother. She slipped in the stream,
she got her clothes wet. Her mother was yelling at her,

(20:45):
and she said, well, I was playing with the fairies.
That's why I slipped, and her mother sent her to
her room because not only did she get her clothes wet,
but she also told a lie about the fairies. And Elsie,
who is her cousin who lives with her, who's older,
she's a teenage jay. She was outraged. She's growing ups
are always making up stupid stuff. They're always telling us

(21:07):
these fantastical lies. You know, you can think of your
own examples. And why should Elsie, why should Francis get
into such trouble for doing the same thing. So she
said to Francis, don't worry. We'll borrow my father's camera.
We're going to go down the back and we will
take photographs of the fairis. And that's what they did,

(21:28):
and of course they were they were fake. Francis always
said she really did see fairies, but she admitted that
the photographs were faked. Elsie, I think never believed in fairies,
but she believed in her artistic ability. She believed in
her ability as a photographer and as an artist, and
so it was partly a matter of pride. Once she
had started, she she wanted to continue, and things escalated,

(21:52):
so her father didn't believe her. Her mother was kind
of curious. Her mother mentioned the photographs. At this meeting
of local spiritualists. Word got out to a very senior piritualist,
a man called Edward Gardner. Edward Gardner told Doyle Doyle
got hold of the photographs. Doyle is, as I mentioned,
one of the most famous men in the world. And
at each stage, Elsie is thinking, probably should own up,

(22:18):
but that would be bad, past that would be bad,
and it just escalated and escalated and escalated, and it
just got too far. In the end, she realizes she
would just humiliate these men, and so not for the
first time, this young woman keeps quiet because she doesn't
want to offend the egos of these older men. You know,
this is something that really stands out to me about
Cautionary Tales. I don't want to spoil too much, but

(22:42):
one thing that really stood out in every episode, and
in The Mummies Curse in particular, is the structure, the
way that we explore this story of the Mummy's Curse
right in depth, and we go through all of the
all of the anecdotes and all of the embellishments that

(23:02):
accrete to the core legend over time, and then towards
the turn of the narrative we learn about selection bias.
So in a very a very real way to cautionary
tales seems to me a masterclass in teaching people how
to think. So I'm quite curious to learn when you

(23:24):
first said about making this show, did you start with
perhaps a list of concepts who wanted to impart or
was it more um, did it start the other way?
Did you start with these stories a Mummy's Curse, a
whistleblower and then say what what can we find? What

(23:45):
is our teachable concept in these stories? I'm just interested there, Well,
thank you bad. I mean, that is what we're trying
to do with and where we are trying to ensnare
people with the stories, to draw them in, get them
fascinated by what whats what's gonna happen? How is this
going to work out? And then while we've got them,
then we suddenly whack them over the head with some

(24:06):
social science or something, and really tell people something that
hopefully they didn't know or they hadn't thought of in
a way that they'll remember with the music and with
the acting and so on. So to answer your question,
do I start with the story or do I start
with the concept? A bit of both at first, so
you'd find a concept you would think it would be
great to find um and a really nice example of

(24:30):
I don't know, plan continuation bias. The plan continuation biases,
like when you have a plan and a little something
goes wrong makes it a bit more difficult, but you
kind of stick to it and something goes something else
goes wrong, and something else goes wrong, And we've all
had this way, like we've got some you know, we're
going to meet some friends, or we go to a
business meeting or something, and gradually more and more obstacles

(24:51):
accumulate and the plan gets ever more complicated and difficult,
but because it's happening bit by bit, you never take
that step back and go, hang on, this is a
ridiculous absurd I need a different plan. So sometimes you
have the concept. Sometimes you've got the story and you think, well,
this is a great story, but what's the what's the
psychological concept to illustrate, And often there's more than one,

(25:14):
and then you can choose. More Recently, we've now done
oh goodness, me probably getting on for I'm not sure,
maybe forty cautionary tales, and we're now we're releasing new
caution details every two weeks. Now. It's more story driven now,
because I find that that's that that gets you a
better result. It's easier to research um. And once you

(25:38):
have that library of psychological concept, if you have a
story of something going wrong, you can figure out why.
You can figure out a reason why to discuss. But
every now and then I still bump into some really
really cute psychological idea and I think, wow, I'm going
to wait until the story comes along that I can
hang that idea on because it's really nice. It will

(25:58):
be surprised to how easy it is to just like
research the idea and how many stories you will find
just by like a simple Google search of some concept
or some you know, psychological you know, construct or whatever,
and then they'll be you know, the Internet is a
beautiful place and things like Reddit are wonderful hunting grounds
for these kinds of tales. It really is. And sometimes

(26:18):
you'll find them mentioned in an academic article for example,
as you know, an example, and you'll look into it
and one of two things happens. Either you find that
actually the story is just an urban myth it never happened,
or they've got all kinds of important details wrong. The
other thing that sometimes happens, and that's when it gets
really fun, is where you go, oh, wow, you guys

(26:40):
totally buried the lead. There's so much to this story.
It's so fascinating. I can't believe that you just kind
of threw it away into sentences, because I can. I
can keep people entertained for forty minutes with this because
there's it's just so much detail, so amazing, so many twists. Yes,
and I would urge everyone to listen to especially I

(27:00):
think the Conningly Fairy story really is extremely strong, especially
when it comes to applying lessons we learned within that episode.
Two other things. I keep thinking about the snowballing lie
that that's at the heart of that story, and how
you can apply that to something like an alien abduction
story that maybe was told to one person or two

(27:22):
people for a very specific reason to you know, get
out of one situation or another as you're saying, like
this one tiny thing to escape consequences of whatever action,
and then it you can't tell the truth because it's
become too big. Um. And I just wonder if I
think there, I think there's so many concepts within the
world of conspiracy theories in particular, that we can take

(27:44):
that and apply it to Yeah. I mean, I'm currently
very interested in in urban myths and which of them
have something really important at the heart of them, and
which are in fact is completely allusiveate. So I don't
want to do too many spoilers because I'm still researching
the story, but I'm looking into the poisoned candy myth.

(28:08):
The Halloween parents are told, you know, some child will
die tonight in America because a stranger has poisoned their candy.
That will happen, and that is almost completely false, but
it's not quite false. And the exception to that is

(28:28):
actually one of the most horrendous things I've ever researched
in my life for cautionary tales. But even then, it's
not the story that people think it is. And the
deeper you go and the more you look at it,
the more you realize people just people misunderstood when when
this story hit about this was a child who died.
When this story hit the headlines, everybody thought they knew
what they were looking at. And actually, wait a week

(28:52):
and the truth comes out. But in a week's time,
no one's paying any attention. And it's it's surprising that
that's a very similar actually to the dungeons and drag
cautionary tales, the story that everyone told and everyone told,
and everyone told. It turns out there's absolutely nothing to
do with what really happened at all. But people remember
the fake story and they don't sit around for the

(29:13):
reality because the reality is never as fun. Let's pause
here for a word from our sponsor, and we'll return
with more from Tim Harford. And we're back with Tim Harford.
Let's turn the page here to uh the idea of conspiracies,

(29:35):
conspiracy theory, the idea of that grain of truth and
that sort of uh, cumulative pearl of bs and malarkey
that people kind that people love. We love it so much, right,
it's cognitive. Oh, mommy, I want to spend some time
exploring an article you wrote for the Atlantic in what

(29:56):
conspiracy theorists don't believe. And I was profoundly into this
and realized that we were all very much on the
same page when I saw this examination, this very empathetic
examination of how we can talk our loved ones back
from that cognitive brink In there too, you you draw

(30:18):
a distinction that a lot of people don't think about
as often as they perhaps should, a distinction between excessive
doubt and excessive belief. Could you tell us a little
more about the distinction here? Also, folks, you can read
the article in full right now, but listen to the
rest of the episode. So this started to interest me

(30:42):
as I was working on the Data Detective, because everybody
I spoke to was was like, Oh, you're writing a
book about statistics. That's great. I mean, it's not really
a book about statistics. It's a book about how to
think clearly, and statistics are a tool to help you.
But as people thought I was writing this book about statistics,
they kept saying, Oh, that's great. You're going to tell

(31:04):
people that they shouldn't believe all these fake statistics. And
I was like, yeah, that is partly what I'm going
to say. But if you just sit there disbelieving everything
you think it's all fake. Then where do you end up?
You end up in a very weird place. It feels
kind of smart and kind of savvy to you know,

(31:26):
not believe what you're told here and not believe the
spin here, or to say, oh, that's just the kind
of the mainstream media or whatever. It feels smart, but
it can take you to some strange places. And when
I looked at what was happening with, for example, the
you know, the Capital riots, the mainstream narrative about about

(31:48):
the people who invaded the capital was these are people
who believe all kinds of crazy stuff that's not true. Well,
you could characterize them in that way, but I thought
it was much more or it helped me much more understand.
These are people who have decided to disbelieve all kinds
of things. They've disbelieved what the New York Times is

(32:11):
telling them, they disbelieve what CNN is telling them, disbelieve
what the judiciary are telling them. They disbelieve what at
the time mainstream Republican politicians were telling them. Although many
of those politicians have changed their views, this is this
is a group of people who don't trust anything. They
don't believe any of these things Now then it then

(32:32):
gets you too well, and they believe some other stuff.
But much more important to understand the disbelief, to understand
that the distrust, than to focus on what these people
ended up believing well and and and what kind of
power and influences that take to so that level of
disbelief to say, believe me when I say, do not

(32:53):
believe there's other you know that I have differentiated from
my word. You know, what I'm saying is the truth
and they're saying is not. And it creates this kind
of us versus them mentality that if you let it
go too far unchecked, it can erupt into violence in
the streets. Um And it does go unchecked, because that's

(33:14):
sort of what it's designed to do, isn't it. It's
designed it's like the weaponized rhetorical version of all those
clickbata articles that are designed to make you a little upset.
This is designed to make you act out. You know.
This is sort of the culmination of all that other stuff, right,
And it goes back a long way. So the use
of disbelief as a weapon goes back well, at least

(33:35):
to the cigarette industry. So I described this in in
the data detective, the evidence comes out cigarettes are very dangerous,
dramatically increased risk of lung cancer, and new evidence starts
coming in and heart disease and all kinds of other stuff.
That's what the science is starting to show. But it's
early days because we don't have great evidence. But that's
what it's looking like. What's the response of the cigarette companies. Well,

(33:58):
they could say, don't believe this stuff. You know, it's
it's untrue. Trust us. We are giving you safe products,
you know, have we ever let you down? And they
realized that's not gonna work. Instead they just work on doubt. Well, yeah,
isn't it interesting These scientists they haven't quite got their
story all lined up, have they. They disagree about some

(34:20):
interesting stuff, Like these people are saying this thing, these
people are saying this other thing. Shouldn't we do some
more research, shouldn't we shouldn't we dig a bit deeper?
Shouldn't we wait until the full facts are out? And
of course all those things they sound really reasonable, and
in fact they kind of are really reasonable, except you
take them to the extreme conclusion, and the extreme conclusion

(34:41):
is no one knows anything about anything, and therefore keep
smoking that's and it's incredibly effective, and it's been so
interesting to see that strategy weaponized and continued in the
modern world and so many different people trying to sell
so many different ideas, is political ideologists, whatever, they'll focus

(35:03):
first on doubt. Can you believe what you're being told?
Can you can you believe what the mainstream media are
telling you? And it's it's effective partly because well, you know,
sometimes you shouldn't believe what you're told. Sometimes you shouldn't
believe the mainstream media, but it can if you overdo
it. It It gets you to a very sort of corrosive place.
But also, like I mean, the nature of research is

(35:23):
you know, disagreement. The nature of research is this scientist
says this, this scientist is this. It takes a year
sometimes to prove out, you know, which parts are actually
the truth. And it's the same with the media. And
now we're in this super cluttered space that's very confusing
and difficult. It's it's easier to just disbelieve than it
is to pick out the right pieces over time yourself.

(35:43):
I think the motto of the Royal Society, one of
the oldest scientific societists in the world, is nullius in
wherever take nobody's word for it, just you need to
prove to your own satisfaction, and that is of course
how science works. UM. But you can't go through the
world basically saying I'm not going to believe anything anybody

(36:05):
tells me about anything at all until I personally can
verify it. You can't function like that. It works for
scientists in the science that they're investigating, UM, it can't
be a universal strategy for life. You have to pick
your battles. What am I going to focus more curiosity on?
What am I going to pay more attention to? And

(36:26):
when am I just going to pick somebody that I
will believe? And that is so beautifully put. I think
this is an exploration that has to be continuing journey
for people, especially when you're not a scientist, and when
you live in an age of endless inundation right of
information that grabs your attention and tells you again to

(36:49):
get angry or to have an emotional reaction. Um, it's
quite as successful strategy as as you've established both in
the Data Detective and in other work. But before we
move on from from the world of conspiracy term, I
have to ask you, and I know there's a little
bit of a silly question. Do you have a favorite

(37:10):
conspiracy theory, by which I mean not one you necessarily believe,
but one that one that just is fascinating to you. Well,
here's one. I'm not even sure you'll have heard of
this conspiracy theory, although I know you guys have heard
a lot Brendall sham Forest. Okay, So do you remember

(37:32):
the reported sex attacks in Cologne in I think New
Year's Eve beginning of UM, there were a lot of
media reports that men of North African heritage we're roaming

(37:53):
around the center of Cologne and just attacking women, uh,
sexually assaulting women, and it's got a lot of attention.
People are horrified. Obviously, people are horrified. There's this whip
for UM people who are kind of liberal. There was
this weird kind of tug of war because you want

(38:13):
to take sexual assault on women extremely seriously, but also
you're very suspicious of reports of people with brown skin
doing bad things. That feels like it's not politically correct.
So people didn't know what to believe. There's a lot
of confusion, there's a lot of angst. It was a
very weird story and then it just kind of every
wanting to forget about it. I never really saw any
follow up reporting. So that's the that's the story. The

(38:38):
conspiracy theory is that the that was in some respects
Russian disinformation. I have no evidence that that was Russian
disinformation other than one person who has had some experience
of Russian disinformation wants talk to me. Wandered about that

(39:02):
because it was so strange, It came from nowhere, It
was very sensitive in its timing. It was before the
Brexit referendum in the UK and I believe before an
important election in Germany. It was you know, court got
all this attention. It just seemed odd, like, what does
that happen? That seems strange, and there's never seems to

(39:23):
have happened ever before. It never seems to have happened
ever ever again, So then there was the conspiracy theory
is that somehow the Kremlin paid some young men to
do some stuff. I mean not saying that this didn't happen,
but this was in some way organized. Now that is
a conspiracy theory that I find why the Kremlin and
not the right wing government like like of of Britain

(39:44):
seems more like it would be a way of pushing
the England for the English kind of narrative, like like,
what's the why would the Kremlin have been involved? Like
I mean, I mean, Cologne is in Germany, So the
for a British faction to get involved, would you would
you would thought they'd arranged for it to happen in um,
I know, Luton instead some some British city rather than

(40:06):
German city. Also, I just have more belief in the
Kremlin's ability to organized this kind of thing that I
do in any British politicians ability. But let me just
to be serious, I don't believe this conspiracy theory. And
yet it's I'm not the kind of person who normally
does believe in conspiracy theories. I tend to just go, oh,

(40:27):
you know, that's a really kind of compelling story, but
surely not. But this is one that I can't I
can't get out of my head. But I've seen no evidence,
and so I think I have to say that the
most plausible explanation probably is that the kind of horrible
thing that was reported just happened, and it was fairly spontaneous,

(40:48):
and thank goodness, it doesn't usually happen. Okay, we'll take
a quick pause and hear a word from one of
our sponsors, and then we'll be back with more from Tim.
And we're back. Tim. I want to just take again,
take some of the same logic that you have going
on there and apply it to something that we've all

(41:10):
been dealing with for gosh, it's going to be three
years now, it's over three years um, the reaction, the
public reaction to a mandated vaccination. You know, we get
a ton of emails and voicemails and listeners calling in
and giving us their opinions and how they feel and
why they will or won't get vaccinated, and their fears

(41:32):
or their complete lack of fear when it comes to
a pandemic. What have you seen or how have you
maybe analyzed the public reaction to a mandated vaccination, especially
in your podcast how to Vaccinate the World, Yeah, the World,
which I did for for the BBC, and we did

(41:52):
that weekly for several months, starting with the announcement of
the first the FISA trial results. So when it first
became clear that there there might well be a vaccine approved,
and it looked it looked pretty good, but it was
all very early day. So how would you know who
would take this and how would it work and how
safe would it be and how would it be manufactured

(42:13):
and how quickly could we get this into what people's
arms and etcetera. So all of those issues we discussed
UM and it was such a privilege. I just met
so many people who really thought so deeply about the subject.
So mandated vaccination. I find it interesting that that's the
way that you introduced the topic because in the UK

(42:35):
the vaccine isn't mandatory, and I've crossed borders a few
times recently, flown to various other European countries and mostly
it's easier to cross the border if you can show
proof of vaccination. But it's not mandatory. You know, you
have to show negative tests and so on, which is
just more of a hassle. It's super easy to show

(42:57):
you've that you've been vaccinated. And absolutely, I'm sorry for
even putting it that way. I think that's the perhaps
the perception that is out there that exists and the
way it's spoken about, especially in UM you know, on
places like read it and in places where uh maybe
fears about the vaccine are discussed. Yeah, so it's but

(43:18):
it is interesting and you know, there is a school
of thought that says, on it, you should. You should.
It's a public health issue. It's like drink driving. You know,
you're not allowed to wander around unvaccinated, just like you're
not allowed to get in your car if you've been drinking.
I mean, there's an argument, but it doesn't seem just purely.
I mean, who cares what I think. But it doesn't
seem necessary. Right. The vaccine seems very effective at protecting

(43:42):
you from harm. It doesn't seem as effective as we
hoped at preventing transmission. And therefore, you know, there's a
strong case that it's an individual decision. I mean, there's
always got to be a presumption of an individual decision anyway.
You would always you want really good ever before you
mandated anything at all about anything. But you know, the

(44:04):
vaccine protects you, it probably doesn't protect other people as
much as we hoped. So it's not like the smallpox vaccine.
Was the smallpox vaccine, You're like, hey, do we actually
could eradicate this disease forever? We just need to make
sure that everybody who is anywhere close to being exposed
to smallpox has that has the vaccine, then you might say, well,

(44:24):
maybe maybe there's a reason to to mandate. But for
covid um, it's stuff that it's something that people have
talked about a lot. But even in China, where they
have a problem because they don't have enough up there there,
elderly population is not very well vaccinated. They everyone who's
young who is probably not at serious risk from covid

(44:45):
unless they're very unlucky, they're all vaccinated. The elderly people
are not vaccinated. You would have thought the Chinese government
would get around to mandating it, But even the Chinese,
unless I've missed something, have not mandated it. So so
what interests me more is this question of well, first
of all, what evidence can we gather, how safe is
the vaccine, how effect how effective is the vaccine? And

(45:06):
then how do we how do we have conversations about
it um and talking to people who who thought think
about this a lot. The first thing to recognize is
people are hesitant about having the vaccine for lots and
lots of different reasons. So for some people it's a
religious objection. For some people it's that there's fear of needles,

(45:27):
like they want it, but they really it's really scared
of the needle. Some people think that it's a pharmaceutical conspiracy,
the vaccine is not safe. Um. Some people just want
to wait for more data. People just have different kinds
of objection, and so to lump everybody together as anti
vaxes or vaccine hesitant or whatever, these labels never really help.

(45:51):
And if you're if you have a loved one and
you would like them to get vaccinated, UM, then the
conversation you need to have with them has got to
involve a lot of listening to what are the what
are their reasons for? I mean, this is not just true.
A vaccinations is true anybody, anybody you disagree with. If
you disagree with someone, ask a couple of questions and

(46:13):
then shut up and just let them explain themselves to you.
But shouldn't it be a simpler conversation kind of like
how you're describing it a very matter of factly, and
yet it's not um And do you think that's because
of how it's been used as a talking point and
kind of politicized the point of weaponization to create this
discord in the same ways that we've kind of been
talking about throughout the episode. Yeah, that doesn't help. There's

(46:35):
a really interesting essay by Dan Kahan, who's a psychologist
and law professor at Yale, and he studies two different vaccines.
This is all pre COVID, so it's kind of interesting,
like a time capsule. He studied the hb V and
HPV vaccines. HPV as heptitis b. HPV is human paploma virus,

(46:56):
so this is the prevents the virus that can lead
to cervical cancer. And what he found was these are
two vaccines that are basically they even kind of sound
the same. Where HBV you get it. If your doctor
says you should have the heap BE vaccine, you get
the heap V vaccine. You just take a cue from
your physician, whereas the HPV vaccine you take a cue

(47:21):
from your congressman. But it's a polite, completely political thing.
And it's partly because it's associated with teenage sexuality. It's
the virus is sexually transmitted. You're giving this vaccine to teenagers.
It's kind of a sensitive topic. What does that imply
about teenagers? Well, I mean, all it really implies is
that one day most teenagers will have sex one day,

(47:43):
so you might as well vaccinate them before they start.
But it's sensitive, and some you know, the companies that
were making it, we're trying to get it made mandatory,
which probably backfired, well, definitely backfired. But Dan Kahan's point is,
these are two vaccines fundamentally in terms of public health.
It's see the same choice, but one of them is
politicized and one of them is not. One of them

(48:04):
you just talk to your doctor and you take professional advice.
One of them you just you get your cues from
whether you're whether you vote read or vote blue. And
this is going back to I think your your earlier
three step process for statistics. We can apply this to
so many other things, right, calm context, curiosity, Um, I'm repeating,

(48:28):
And Matt, I like that you added the fourth seas
cautionary tales. So what one of my questions then at
that point becomes a question about um, about historical context
and the dangers of broad brushes. I greatly appreciate how
you pointed out the danger of putting everyone in one

(48:51):
demographic bucket, right, the thought terminating cliche of anti vaxers.
It's just it's quicker to say it on the evening
news when you got six minute, it's right. But with
the idea of historical context. One of the things that
we've heard often from people in the US and abroad

(49:11):
regarding their hesitancy to in uh to engage in a
vaccine program, it's often a matter of historical context. They'll say, well,
look at the Tuskegee experiments. Right here in the US
or in Pakistan, people will talk about US intelligence services
using a vaccination program as cover to hunt down Asama

(49:33):
bin Laden. How how much weight should people give those
historical context arguments and is there any sand to those arguments? Well,
I mean those are I mean that both these both
of these things happened, and you've got to recognize them.
And if I was talking to somebody who who was

(49:56):
using that as a concern and that seemed to be
a consent, I would just speak curious to ask them, um,
do do you do you think a similar thing is
happening with the COVID vaccine. You'll just tell me what,
Just tell me more about about the connection between the two,
because you know, the connection to me is not obvious,
but it might be obvious to them. Same with Tuskege.

(50:17):
I mean the Tuskegee experiments, I mean, I wouldn't even
dignify them with the term experiments. And it's just horrendous
what happened to allow African American men to just develop
syphilis just so we could see what happened. And that's
it's astonishing. I mean, it's like kind of what the
Nazis did. It's really it's a war crime, except there

(50:38):
was no war. I mean, it's yeah, it's awful, awful, awful, um,
but I wouldn't know. I would be curious if someone
brought that up to ask, well, tell tell me about
the connection. Tell me how you see those two things
playing out. I personally don't see the connection really, but
but people might be able to explain to me the connection,

(50:58):
and then I'd get I'd be smarter, right, because then
they're telling me they're explaining something to me that I
don't know. Or maybe this sometimes happens as people talk
it through, they might go, actually, now you know, now
I now you ask me to to elaborate. Maybe the
connection is not so strong. But I wouldn't be wanting
to use that as a tactic. I think it's got

(51:19):
to be genuine. You gotta ask the question, not hoping
I have that they'll talk themselves out of it. Have
you really seen people do that? I mean, you're giving
people a lot of credit. I have to say. I
find so many people dig in deeper the more they
talk it through. In my experience, yeah, of course, there's
no magic bullet. It can happen. So by the way,
I don't know if you guys have spoken to David McCraney,

(51:40):
the host of the You Are Not So Smart podcast,
but he has a new book coming very soon that
really explores this kind of thing and and various field
experiments and trials where you just get you just have
a conversation and you ask people to explain themselves because
in the end, nobody it's persuaded by anybody else of anything.

(52:02):
People persuade themselves. And if you if you're hoping someone
might change their mind, you've got to give them room
to think. And maybe as they're thinking, maybe as they're talking,
maybe as they're explaining, it's just possible they will change
their mind. But you're right now, you can't expect that.
You can't kind of like, oh, all I need to
do is ask the question and boom they will. They

(52:24):
will have this conversion. That's that's not how it works.
That's why it's called the Socratic method and not the
Socratic solution, right, yea, absolutely, And of course we know
what they did to Socrates, you know, for this whole
for the whole vaccine thing. I really do blame British television, Tim,
I want you to know that, and specifically Dennis Kelly

(52:46):
and the show Utopia that came out, and I think
it was like it was early two thousands or mid
two thousand's, and uh, I blame I blame you completely
Utopia for making everybody go, oh, vaccines are bad, but
it is. It is amazing when you have these conversations
of what people will tell you. I was, I was

(53:08):
really struck by had a conversation with with an imam.
But this is for part of how to vaccinate the world.
And so he he a lot of his congregance, uh A,
young Islamic men go to his mask and he said
some of them had this belief that the vaccine wasn't hallal,

(53:28):
so it was religiously forbidden because it contained animal products,
which it turns out isn't true. But that's a conversation
that they could have. And others felt that it was
to take a vaccine was to break your fast. So
they had the the festival of Ramadan. You're not allowed
to eat or drink during the daylight hours. You could

(53:49):
for logistical reasons, you could only get vaccinated during the
daylight hours. And they felt that was breaking there fast.
So he would he would talk to them and he
would explain that in his his opinion as a religious authority,
it was to be vaccinated. It's okay to receive medical
it's a medical treatment, and medical treatment is different from
eating and drinking. But just like, I've never never occurred
to me that this might be a reason someone would object.

(54:13):
And then he said something that really stuck with me.
He said, I tell them that the vaccine is a
gift from God. God is working through the scientists who
made this vaccine, and the vaccine is a gift from God.
And I'm not a religious man. It brought tears to
my eyes. It was just too to have somebody who
has a totally different worldview to me thinking about what's

(54:38):
been done and what's been achieved and expressing it in
a way that would never have occurred to me. And yeah,
you only learned this stuff if you if you ask
the question. But I understand that's that's a very distinct
point that's being made to a distinct group by someone
with a basis in faith. And then it's also like
even a very fascinating and moving co signed the s A.

(55:00):
This is a way of of having people, you know,
buy into this, you know, whether it's completely mean. I
know it seems genuine and to me it truly seems
like it's coming from a place of genuineness. But where
does the micro chipping stuff come from? Where does the
five G stuff come from? Is someone just inventing this
out of whole cloth and isolation and then spreading it
a little at a time and it gets picked up

(55:22):
like a meme like where is that coming from? So yeah,
I'm not an expert in that, but I did ask
an expert and she as I said, well, what is
is it? Do people genuinely believe this? Or is it
is it disinformation? Um you know, you know, Chinese disinformation,
Russian disinformation? Or is it is it people trying to

(55:44):
sell something like they're trying to sell vitamins or whatever,
some alternative cure. And she said, well, it's all three
as far as she can work out, there are different.
There are different sources. There's loads of those are different
sources of disinformation. Some of it sticks, some of it doesn't.
It's invented for different reasons, it gets spread for different reasons.
And I mean that's true of information as well. I mean, no,

(56:06):
I love the way you put it when you said
it's a very it's a very specific point in a
very specific context. But you know that's true of almost everything.
Everyone believes. It's it's coming from a very specific context.
And the fact that we put each other in buckets
are like, oh, they're kind of their red status, their
blue status, their anti vaxes, their their woke. You put

(56:30):
people in buckets, you slap the label on them, and
that's when you stop engaging with them as human beings
and you stop trying to understand the individual context. And
we don't just do this to each other, we do
it to ourselves as well. In certain context, we adopt
these mentalities and we're like, well, I say the things
I'm supposed to say, and I believe the things I'm
supposed to believe, and I perform membership of this tribe.

(56:53):
None of us are at our best in those circumstances.
It reminds me of the expression and I'm sure annoys
you the idea don't let yourself become a statistic, you
know what I mean? Like, you know, don't be someone
that gets killed in a certain situation because you do
something stupid. You know. Um, But that's what we're talking
about here. We're talking about whittling someone down to like

(57:14):
the most basic, easy to understand element. But that's not
what statistics are at all. They're much more complex. But
I don't know, it's just interesting kind of cognitively dissonant concept,
the idea of becoming a statistic. Yeah, and it's it's
true though, And this is something i'd say in the
data detective that there's just certain things that are easier
to measure. And you know, the easiest thing of all
to measure is did somebody die or not? I mean

(57:35):
there's still some wiggle room. You'd be surprised generally. That's
the thing when you're measuring, oh, mental health, or you're
measuring injuries, like is it a serious injuries and a
minor injuries and not really an injury at all? Did it?
Does it? Does it get counted? Deaths get counted? And
so there are certain things that they end up absorbing

(57:56):
our attention, not just because death is of obviously we
should pay attention to death, but also they absorbed our
attention because you can count it. And so something like
say long COVID you know, side effects of a COVID infection,
all side effects of vaccination is much harder to measure.
Someone dies, you can measure that. So that's that's an

(58:18):
inbuilt bias, and statistics it's always worth I would never
dismiss statistics for that reason, but you need to be aware,
and you know, I would also add death is the
great commonality, right, so that's something everyone, everyone can identify with. Unfortunately,
at some point, uh, this this uh has been such

(58:40):
a fascinating conversation to my only regret here is that
we can't make this a whole series of episodes just yet.
But if you would like to learn more, just as
Matt Nolan I have about Cautionary Tales, do check out

(59:00):
the show available wherever you find your favorite podcast. Uh,
take a page from Matt's book and join me being
as a fan of The Data Detective along with The
Undercover Economist and Messy and How to make the World
add Up. Tim Harford Thank you so much for joining

(59:21):
us today. Where can people learn more about your work,
both in and outside of the things we've discussed. My
website is tim Harford dot com. That's not Hartford, Connecticut
as no tea in it, in Harvard dot com. And
there you've got my articles for the Financial Times. You've
got linked to the podcast, links to the books. That's

(59:45):
that's the best place I think to find out more.
And I would just recommend everyone listen to a specific
episode of Cautionary Tales that we kind of mentioned here.
It's uh, it's a beautiful story of Howard Carter, a
cheeky wound, some spooky all trick and an empathetic count.
It's beautiful. It's about the Mummy's curse. And in the meantime,
if you want to get in touch with us, you

(01:00:06):
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