November 15, 2019 • 36 mins
A new show from Pushkin Industries: Cautionary Tales. We tell our children unsettling fairy tales to teach them valuable life 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 “Messy” and “The Undercover Economist”) brings you stories of awful human error, tragic catastrophes, daring heists and hilarious fiascos. They'll delight you, scare you, but also make you wiser. Featuring original music and an award-winning cast including Alan Cumming and Archie Panjabi (The Good Wife), Toby Stephens (Die Another Day), Russell Tovey (Quantico) – and Malcolm Gladwell.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. This thing still on. Michael Lewis here. Guess what.
I'm working on a second season of Against the Rules.
I had so much fun doing season one that I
decided to keep going. I'm back in the field with
my producers, talking to people and poking around. The next
(00:35):
season is going to be about coaches and why the
role of coach has expanded so far beyond sports in
American life. If everybody hates the ref, everyone seems to
love the coach these days. In season two, I'm going
to explore why it's out next spring. Meanwhile, I have
(00:56):
something else for you to listen to. It's a new
show from Pushkin Industries by a British writer I really admire.
His name is Tim Harford. He's a familiar voice on
the BBC. Whereas most recent series was about the modern
inventions we might not have noticed but would shape our lives,
this new show from Tim is called Cautionary Tales, and
(01:20):
it's full of spectacular stories about other people's mistakes, my
favorite kind of mistakes. Tim and his team of actors
re enact airship disasters and great frauds and safety systems
gone awry, and then he tells us what we can
learn from it all. We've got one of the first
(01:41):
episodes right here. This one is an unbelievable story about
an enormous tanker about to crash into the coast of England.
Give it a listen, then go subscribe to Cautionary Tales
wherever you listen to your podcasts to hear more from Tim.
And I promise I'll be back in this feed before
(02:02):
you know it. Here's Tim Harford. I opened the wrapping
paper hurriedly with nervous hands, excited to get at the
gift inside. Little did I know, disaster was about to
enter my previously happy childhood. It wasn't a disaster visited
on mean or my family. It was a catalog of
(02:22):
disasters for everyone else. For the gift was a book,
and it was titled, in bold letters on a blood
red background, the World's Greatest Mistakes. The stories were set
out like a trashy and exciting tabloid newspaper. Some were absurd,
like the bride who accidentally married the best man. Some
(02:42):
of them were famous tragedies, the Titanic slipping beneath the
icy sea, funny or sad. All of them fascinated me,
and I realized something that has guided me throughout my life.
Learning from other people's mistakes is a lot less painful
than learning from your own. My name is Tim Harford.
(03:03):
Some people call me the undercover Economist. I use scientific
ideas to help people think more clearly about the world
in my books, my ted Talks, my BBC shows, and
my column for the Financial Times. That may sound all
very grown up, but part of me is that little
boy who loved stories of catastrophe, mistake and mayhem. So
(03:28):
I still seek out and collect such stories, but now
I probe the details. I challenge the orthodox view and
look for the root causes and ponder how disaster could
have been prevented. In short, I look for the painless
lessons they can teach me. And now I want to
share some of these cautionary tales with you too. Each
(03:52):
story has a moral, each story is true, and each story,
if you're not careful, could happen to you. So gather
closer and I'll begin. We pray thee Lord, not that
(04:19):
rex should happen, but that if any Rex do happen,
thou wilt guide them to the silly isles for the
benefit of the poor. Inhabitants. That's an old prayer from
the Isles of Scilly. The isles are just off the
coast of Cornwall, the southwest tip of Great Britain, and
(04:40):
that prayer has been answered many times. The rocks around
the islands have a fearsome reputation and it's well earned.
One autumn night in seventeen oh seven, the Royal Navy
lost its way in a storm. The flagship HMS Association
struck a rock and went down in minutes. Eight hundred
(05:01):
men drowned behind it. HMS Saint George hit the rocks
and became stuck. So did HMS Phoenix, did HS Firebrow.
HMS Romney lost her entire crew. HMS Eagle was shattered
on the cruel stone. Hundreds more sailors died. That dreadful
night was one of the worst disasters in the history
(05:24):
of the British Navy. Local legend has it that there
was one notable survivor, that the Commander in Chief of
the British Fleets, Sir Cloudsley Shovel, was washed up on
the beaches of the Aisles of Scilly, but was strangled
(05:46):
by a local woman who fancied wearing his Emerald ring
herself if she had been praying the old prayer God
or the devil had been listening. It is a dark tale,
but the story I shall tell you today is a
far stranger one. It was some time after dawn on
(06:12):
Saturday March the eighteenth, nineteen sixty seven. Martyr Christie was
a langoustier, a French lobster boat, fishing for crayfish and
crab between the mainland and the Isles of Scilly. Twenty
one miles further west on deck was Captain Gui Folich,
another langoustier, was near by, both of them enjoying rich pickings.
(06:35):
A few hundred yards north of the Seven Stones. The
Seven Stones make up a vicious reef about one third
of the way between the Isles of Scilly and the mainland.
At low tide, the unyielding rocks are visible, but even
at high tide there marked by a lighthouse vessel warning
ships to stay away. Gui Folich looked up from his
(06:57):
lobster lions to see an unexpected sight, a vast black
hull coming over the horizon from an unusual direction. He
was surprised. A major vessel in that position would usually
have passed outside of the aisles of Scilly rather than
squeezing between them and the mainland. True, a big ship
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could come between the aisles of Scilly and the mainland,
passing on either side of the seven Stones, but it
would be a little on the tight side. And this ship,
a supertanker, was very big. Indeed, in fact, it was
the thirteenth biggest ship in the world. On the lighthouse vessel,
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the two seamen on watch saw the tanker approaching too.
Have you seen this? Have you? Yeah? Look at that
big bastro coming up. Gifolich could see the huge ship
coming straight towards him as he fished kayak, but he
wasn't worried. In between him and the oncoming juggernaut were
(08:01):
the seven Stones. He later said, I was sure that
before ever eating us, you would go on to the rugs.
He yelled to his men, stop work, you're going to
see something extraordinary. All seven of them lined up on
the rail of Marta Christie to watch the oil tanker
bear closer and closer, four miles, three miles. Folich was
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sure it was doomed. It just wasn't possible to turn
a supertanker that quickly. Was it? Actually? Folich wasn't quite right.
The tanker, whose name was Torry Canyon did still have
room to turn. This wasn't a storm tossed fleet of
sailing ships fumbling through the darkness. The weather was good,
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the visibility was good. Torry Canyon was a superb ship,
in fine working order and armed with radar. The seven
Stones were clearly marked on every chart, as well as
being identified by the position of the lighthouse vessel. But
Tory Canyon still wasn't turning. Gather close and listen to
(09:16):
my cautionary tail. Nobody knew it at the time, but
the trouble all started with a radio message from milford Haven,
the harbor towards which Torry Canyon was sailing. Milford Haven
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is a major UK port, and the thing you need
to know about ports in the UK is that the
difference between high tide and low tide can be enormous.
What's more, there are high tides and high tides, some
are higher than others. The message from Milford Haven was
simple enough. Torry Canyon needed to hurry. If the ship
(10:00):
didn't arrive by eleven pm on Saturday evening, March the eighteenth,
nineteen sixty seven, it would miss the extra high tide
wouldn't be able to slip into the harbor and dock.
It would then have to wait another six days before
the tide would once more be high enough. Missing the
eleven pm deadline would mean a very expensive delay. That
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news put Captain Pastrengo Rugiati under pressure. He had no
more than one or two hours margin, not a lot,
but Rujiahti had coped with worse. He'd been a navigator
on an Italian submarine during the war, had survived a
German prison camp, and had been commanding oil tankers for
twenty years. Captain Rujati was in many ways a genial fellow,
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chatty and hospitable. He liked to eat good food, but
insisted he shouldn't be served anything that wasn't available to
his crew. As a result, the men on Torry Canyon
ate very well. But Rujiahti was also a detailsman who
kept a close eye on his officers. Rugiasty was extremely conscientious.
He was a man who wanted to know absolute, loutely everything.
(11:10):
Perhaps because of that, Ruggiati stayed up late on the
Friday night before landfall preparing the paperwork for when they docked.
It was only at half past three in the morning
that he went to bed, leaving instructions that he was
to be awakened first thing when the Aisles of Silly
were sighted. It was half past six in the morning
when the Aisles of Scilly appeared on the radar, about
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thirty five miles away. First Officer Silvano Bonfilio was on duty,
and the position of the ship relative to the Isles
of Scilly was an unpleasant surprise. Torry Canyon, plowing through
the night across the ocean had been pushed off its
intended course by the current and the winds. It was
now headed between the islands and the mainland. Bonfilio immediately
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changed course, steering away from the channel, figuring that Captain
Rugiati had intended to pass outside of the islands, but
he hedged his beds. Rather than out to sea or
closer to the mainland, he was bearing straight towards the
Isles of Scilly. He then woke up Captain Ruggiati. Rugiati
(12:19):
was angry. Was it because Bonfilio had changed course without checking,
Was it because the new course was neither one thing
nor another? Or was he just sleep deprived will our
original heaving of eighteen degrees be free of the Sillies? Yes,
then continue on course eighteen degrees. I intend to pass
to the starboard of the Silly Isles. When Filio was
(12:41):
so surprised he had to check that it understood the order,
which irritated Ruggiati. Still further Still, a maneuver shouldn't be
too perilous. It was perfectly possible to get even a
large ship through. The standard manual for navigating the waters
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around the coast of the British Isles is called the
Channel Pilot. If Captain Ruggiati had consulted a copy, here's
what it would have said. The actual width of the
channel between the nearest of the Silly Islands and Land's
End is twenty one miles, but as the route taken
by all large vessels should be eastward of seven stones
light vessel, the navigable channel can only be considered as
(13:25):
twelve miles wide. The lights render the passage perfectly simple
at night as well as by day in ordinarily clear weather.
But as there is no part of the coast of
England more subject to sudden changes of weather, the greatest
vigilance is necessary and a vessel's position, even in the
clearest weather, should be checked by cross bearings at short intervals.
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But Captain Rugiati Alas did not have a copy of
the channel pilot on board, and so he missed two
important pieces of wisdom. First, if you want to go
between the Isles of Scilly and the mainland, be careful. Second,
pass between the mainland and the seven Stones. There is
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an alternative route between the seven Stones and the Aisles
of Silly themselves, but the channel pilot doesn't mention it
because it's narrower, six and a half miles wide rather
than twelve. Why take the narrower channel when you could
take the broader one. Of course, you could still fit
an oil tanker through the narrower gap, even an oil
tanker that's nearly as big as the Chrysler building, but
(14:30):
you'd be cutting it close. You'd be better and nothing
went wrong. Inertia is a powerful thing. That's true for
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an oil tanker the size of Torry Canyon, which needed
nearly five minutes to make a ninety degree turn, during
which time it would travel a mile and a half
at cruising speed. But inertia is a powerful thing for humans. Too.
We also sometimes struggle to change course. Psychologists have identified
a strong bias towards the status quo. For example, whether
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we sign up for a workplace pension plan or not
seems to depend on whatever the status quo is. If
the default option is to sign up, we sign up.
If the default is to stay out, we stay out.
As I say, inertia is powerful. Psychologists who study accidents
have a name for a particular form of inertia. They
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call it plan continuation bias. It's best known in aviation.
Pilots form a plan and then are reluctant to change it,
even if the circumstances suggest they should. The pilots themselves
have another name for it, get their itis. The classic
form of get their itis is an approach to an
(16:05):
airfield with a storm coming in. If you and well
before the storm arrives, no problem. If the storm arrives
before you land, that's not a crisis either. It's a hassle.
You have to divert to another airfield, with all the delay,
expense and annoyance that implies. But you do it because
you don't want to fly into a dangerous storm. The
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risk comes, and the storm is closing in, but there's
still a window of opportunity to land. The landing strip
is so close, just minutes away. Tunnel vision sets in,
people start to hurry, Margins for error are stripped away.
Usually there's no harm done. The pilot lands just as
the storm rips across, and congratulates himself or herself for
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keeping cool and showing skill under pressure. But sometimes the
consequences are more serious. One study of get their Itis
looked at twenty occasions when thunderstorms had closed in at
Hartsfield Jackson, Atlanta's major international airport. Again and again, pilots
decided to chant a risky landing, risky in the sense
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that the Federal Aviation Administration's official guidelines would have advised
against it. One plane after another would land under ever
more perilous conditions, until eventually one flight crew would resist
the inertia and decide to divert elsewhere. At that point,
every subsequent plane would also decide to divert. The madness
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only ended when someone set an example and changed the plan.
I'm no airline pilots, but I sometimes suffer from get
their itis in my own life. Perhaps you do too.
For me, it tends to emerge when dealing with family logistics.
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I've got three children at two different schools, and they
all have their hobbies and sports and all usual things.
I'm sure many parents will be familiar with the play
spinning that this sometimes involves. But then something goes wrong.
The cars in the shop to be repaired, No problem,
we can bike instead. Then someone needs to be at
home to meet the plumber. We make contingency plans and
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they seem like they'll be fine, but then a fresh
errand appears, or a babysitter calls to cancel. As complications mount,
the plan starts to resemble an increasingly precarious assembly of
stages and steps, lift, swaps and rendezvous. It's a Rube
Goldberg fever dream of an itinerary. And then, if I'm lucky,
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either I or my wife will find enough headspace to
say this is crazy. Someone's going to have to skip
dance class tonight. We'll call the plumber to see if
tomorrow's okay. Instead, we'll replace the entire time and motion
nightmare with something radically simpler. But that's hard to do
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because of the inertia, because of the plan continuation by us,
and the more the pressure mounts, the harder it is
to see clearly just how precarious everything has become. I
become so fixated on executing the plan that I don't
have a moment to realize that it's now a stupid plan.
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Captain Rugiati was under pressure to reach the harbor at
Milford Haven in time, and had been woken with the
unwelcome news that the ship was off course too far
towards the mainland. If he'd stopped to think or to
talk to his officers, he would have realized that he
still had time to turn and go the long way
round outside the Aisles of Scilly. He only had an
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hour or two to spare, but a brief calculation would
have revealed that the detour would have cost just twenty
nine minutes. Yet he didn't pause to reflect. He snapped
at Bonfilio and ordered him to stick to the course
that would now cut inside the Isles of Scilly. Nor
did he reflect that, since his ship had already been
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deflected by the current and the wind, those forces might
well continue to work upon the ship, moving it out
of its intended position. Under time pressure, he began to
suffer get their itis. His plan was risky, and his
plan was not about to change. At eight eighteen am,
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a junior officer calculated their position, this being the days
before GPS. He did it with the ship's charts, a
compass bearing, and a radar reading old school, but the
inexperienced officer was anxious. He wasn't convinced he'd got the
ship's position exactly right, but he didn't speak up. After all,
there'd be another chance to take a fix in ten
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minutes or so. Captain Rugiati wasn't speaking up either, as
the ship steamed north at sixteen knots nearly twenty miles
an hour. He had already decided which course he would take,
but he hadn't told his crew, which meant that they
hadn't had a chance to comment, and they didn't feel
entitled to ask. Captain Rugatti had actually decided to pass
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through the narrow channel, which involved bending the ship's course
in a long, slow curve to the left. Why Perhaps
because it was the most direct route, but mostly because
well why not? To me? It was, they say, But
should he not have taken just a few more minutes
to avoid the narrow route? That was never in my mind.
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That's a revealing turn of phrase. Never, in my mind,
Pastrenger Rugiati didn't even consider the possibility of going through
the wider channel. And while that might seem strange to
you or me, it's a natural feature of planned continuation
by us. As the tunnel vision develops. We don't even
think about alternatives to our ishor plan. We don't have
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the bandwidth. We continue to plow on. In two thousand
and five, a young boy was rushed into a hospital
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emergency room. He suffered from asthma, and he was in distress.
He was finding it harder to breathe and harder and harder,
and then his breathing stopped. The medical team quickly strapped
an oxygen mask on to the boy. That should have helped,
but instead his heart stopped beating two. There were eight
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trained medical professionals in the room, taking it in turns
to perform CPR on the boy. Still no pulse, Still
no breathing. The minutes ticked by a doctor slid a
breathing tube down the boy's throat. No thing's happening. Is
the tube in position? The tube's fine? I checked, Is
there any pulse? Still nothing? Let's take the breathing tube
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out and try the airbag again. It's not helping. No,
it wasn't helping. And the reason it wasn't helping was
because the breathing apparatus was broken. It would have taken
a few seconds to check if any of the five
nurses or three doctors had thought to check, but they
didn't think, not until the boy had been deprived of
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oxygen for ten minutes. Thankfully, this wasn't a tragedy. It
was a training exercise. Instead of a real boy, it
was a medical dummy that was lying on the bed
failing to produce a simulated pulse or simulated respiration because
the medical team didn't step back and think. This training
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scenario was conducted nineteen times, and videos of the exercise
were studded by Marlist Christiansen, a professor of organizational behavior
and previously the doctor Professor. Christiansen found that some medical
teams took just seconds to identify the problem with a
breathing equipment. This isn't working, it's broken. That's impressive, But
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perhaps more impressive were the teams who started with the
wrong theory about the problem, but didn't get stuck on
that idea. They didn't fixate on one possibility, or keep
repeating the same approach over and over again. They would
talk through what they were thinking and challenge themselves and
each other. They could change course, but not every team
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did that. Many teams would hammer away at the same plan,
regardless of the signs that it wasn't going to work.
They didn't step back and think, They didn't talk things through,
They just kept going. Could Captain Rugiati avoid the same fate.
(25:15):
Captain Rugatti is now trying to curve his ship through
the narrower channel. He doesn't even have the full six
and a half miles to aim at because he's approaching
at an angle. He's left himself precious little margin for error.
As it is, Torry Canyon is heading straight for the
submerged rocks at half past eight. As the slow, slow
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turn begins, two fishing boats appear on the radar, the
two French langoustiers that are watching the oncoming supertanker with astonishment.
Rugiati had planned to keep turning, but now he has
to ensure he doesn't hit the boats. Suddenly, floats come
into view. There are a sign of fishing nets beneath
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the surface. Tory Canyon can't possibly avoid them all and
slices through one set of nets. Captain Rugiati pauses his
turn in order not to shred thet He's now heading
very close to where he thinks the stones are, but
he still hopes to be able to resume his turn
after passing the nets. But meanwhile, all the while, the
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current has been gently, insistently pushing Torry Canyon closer and
closer to the seven Stones. At this point, Rugiati seems
to have woken up to the danger. He has precious
little room for maneuver. Rather than curving out of danger,
he's heading directly towards the seven Stones. He was later
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asked whether he would have been heading that way if
not for the fishing boats and their nets. No, only
a madman would have followed. In northern course, Rugiati now
knows his heading is dangerous. His plan to go through
the narrow channel is being frustrated, but as the pressure rises,
he can't step back and form a better plan. Why
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doesn't he slow down? Why doesn't he abandon his plan
to turn left into the channel and instead turned sharply
right into deep water. That was never in my mind. Never.
When get their itis takes hold there are a lot
of things that should be in our minds but aren't.
(27:25):
At eight thirty eight am, Captain Ruggiati takes a look
at the charts. His junior officer has just taken another bearing.
Ruggiati is an old hand. He can see at once
that it can't be right. The crosses marking the ship's
position should be at regular intervals, but they're not. One
of the bearings is wrong. He doesn't know which. Maybe
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they're both wrong. Captain Ruggiati doesn't know where he is.
The junior officer takes another bearing with the Captain's help.
The new fix shows that the ship is closer to
the seven Stones than they're realized, less than three miles. Remember,
Torry Canyon takes a mile and a half to make
a ninety degree turn on his trawler. Watching with horror
(28:12):
guy Foliage has already concluded that it's all over. Torry
Canyon can't possibly avoid the rocks, but he's wrong. There
is still time. There's still time to turn into deep water.
There's even still time to turn into the channel, which
is what Pastrengo Rugiati has been trying to do for
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the last four miles and so, even though it doesn't
really make sense anymore, that's what he continues to try
to do. Helmsman can't do their wheel, Yes, Captain hard
to part. Go to three fifty, Take her to three,
take her to three twenty. Rugiati is ordering an ever
tighter turn into the channel. Captain. Captain, the ship's are
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turning even now there's still time. She's not turning. Captain
Rugiati needs to think, why isn't the ship turning? Perhaps
the fuel pumps controlling the rudder have broken. Rajati has
seen that happen before. He tries to dial the engine room,
but instead he makes the kind of mistake you make
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when you've had three hours sleep and you only have
seconds to solve a problem. He calls the officers dining room. Ah, captain,
are you ready for breakfast? Well? God deal, God is
a pig. That's some serious blasphemy from a good Italian Catholic.
It's the blasphemy of a man who knows time has
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just run out. There's a photograph of Pastrenga Rugiati. I
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can't get out of my head. He's scrunched up in
a confined space, his knees tucked into his chest as
if to protect himself. His eyes rolled sharply to one side,
his face ghoulishly lit from below. He's wearing a hospital
gown and he's hiding under a hospital bed. That's where
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he was when the paparazzi found him. He looks terrified.
He's broken. His ship was gone, impaling itself onto the
Seven Stones at full speed with a noise. One crewman said,
look a slab of lead being ripped by spikes. Watching
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from his trawler, Gefolich turned to his men, that's the
end of her. She'll never get off. He was right.
The crew escaped safely, but during an attempt to re
float the ship, there was a huge explosion. One of
the salvage team was killed. By then, Torry Canyon's back
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was already broken and her underbelly sliced open by the
teeth of the reef. She was bleeding one hundred and
nineteen thousand tons of crude oil into coastal waters. It
was an environmental catastrophe. The oil spill was unprecedented. Even today,
there are places where you can still see the dark
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stain on the coast. Torry Canyon was, at the time
the largest shipwreck in history and the largest maritime insurance claim.
Rugiati took responsibility. He was the captain, and he was,
he said, in charge of the best ship in their
world for a ship's captain. His ship is all and
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I have lost mine. I'm terrified by the dimensions which
the accident has assumed. The inquiry was conducted in private.
Journalists weren't allowed in, but the manager of the hotel
where the proceedings were being held told one of them
that he had seen Captain Rugiati. I had a glimpse
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of this man. I had the impression of a man finished.
He very seldom have so strong an impression from so
short of seeing a man. I must answer for everything,
for everyone. I must carry the cross alone. I wish
I could tell the people of Cornwall how sorry I am,
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And he really was sorry. It was very bad. The
disaster broke Rugiati. He spent months in hospital recovering from
the strain and the anxiety and the heartbreak, which is
where the eager photographers found him. A transcript of the
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inquiry was leaked to the journalist Richard Petro. The tanker
owners were keen to downplay any fault on their part,
including the fact that the steering had broken in the past,
confusing Captain Ruggiati when the ship had failed to turn.
But why had the ship failed to turn in those
last moments? It was a small thing. After Ruggiahti had
(33:30):
accidentally called the officer's dining room and slammed down the receiver,
he looked across the bridge. From his position by the telephone,
he could see that someone had inadvertently knocked the steering
control lever. The ship's steering had simply been disconnected. All
Ruggiati needed to do was switched the lever back and
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dragged Torry Canyon over to port. But he had lost time.
With thirty seconds more to maneuver, I could have avoided
the rocks. Ruggiati had made a plan, and as one
small problem after another made the plan riskier and risk
here he hadn't been able to adjust. Many leader things
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added up to one big disaster. That's true. The deadline,
the currents, the fishing boats, the error from his junior officer,
the steering control. It's bad luck thirty seconds before the
sheep she was saved. But the missing thirty seconds aren't
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what interests me. What interests me are the two hours
that Ruggiati had to save his Torry Canyon, the best
ship in the world. He had two hours to reroot
outside the aisles of Scilly, two hours to slow the
ship down, two hours to ask for advice or to
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turn towards the wider channel, but he didn't do any
of those things. After the exploitative photograph was released, there
was a surge of sympathy for Ruggiati from around the world.
People wrote letters of consolation. One that caught my eye
was from a thirteen year old boy from County Cork
(35:17):
in Ireland. I see beautiful tankers, but I'm sure I've
never seen one as beautiful as yours. I thought and
prayed for you. I am sure you will sail the
seas again. Pastrengo Rougiati never did. His mistake was just
too grave, But at the same time, it was also
(35:37):
all too human. After all, it's our nature to be
slow to change course. You've been listening to Cautionary Tales.
If you'd like to find out more about the ideas
(35:58):
in this episode, including links to our sources, the show
notes are on my website, Tim Harford dot com. Cautionary
Tales is written and presented by me Tim Harford. Our
producers are Ryan Dilley and Marilyn Rust. The sound designer
and mixer was Pascal Wise, who also composed the amazing music.
(36:20):
This season stars Alan Cumming, Archie Panchabi, Toby Stevens and
Russell Tovey, with enso Celenti, Ed Gochen, Melanie Gutteridge, Mercia Munroe,
Rufus Wright and introducing Malcolm Gladwell. Thanks to the team
at Pushkin Industries, Julia Barton, Heather Faine, mil LaBelle, Carlie Milliori,
(36:42):
Jacob Weisberg and of course the mighty Malcolm Gladwell. And
thanks to my colleagues at The Financial Times
Pushkin. This thing still on. Michael Lewis here. Guess what.
I'm working on a second season of Against the Rules.
I had so much fun doing season one that I
decided to keep going. I'm back in the field with
my producers, talking to people and poking around. The next
(00:35):
season is going to be about coaches and why the
role of coach has expanded so far beyond sports in
American life. If everybody hates the ref, everyone seems to
love the coach these days. In season two, I'm going
to explore why it's out next spring. Meanwhile, I have
(00:56):
something else for you to listen to. It's a new
show from Pushkin Industries by a British writer I really admire.
His name is Tim Harford. He's a familiar voice on
the BBC. Whereas most recent series was about the modern
inventions we might not have noticed but would shape our lives,
this new show from Tim is called Cautionary Tales, and
(01:20):
it's full of spectacular stories about other people's mistakes, my
favorite kind of mistakes. Tim and his team of actors
re enact airship disasters and great frauds and safety systems
gone awry, and then he tells us what we can
learn from it all. We've got one of the first
(01:41):
episodes right here. This one is an unbelievable story about
an enormous tanker about to crash into the coast of England.
Give it a listen, then go subscribe to Cautionary Tales
wherever you listen to your podcasts to hear more from Tim.
And I promise I'll be back in this feed before
(02:02):
you know it. Here's Tim Harford. I opened the wrapping
paper hurriedly with nervous hands, excited to get at the
gift inside. Little did I know, disaster was about to
enter my previously happy childhood. It wasn't a disaster visited
on mean or my family. It was a catalog of
(02:22):
disasters for everyone else. For the gift was a book,
and it was titled, in bold letters on a blood
red background, the World's Greatest Mistakes. The stories were set
out like a trashy and exciting tabloid newspaper. Some were absurd,
like the bride who accidentally married the best man. Some
(02:42):
of them were famous tragedies, the Titanic slipping beneath the
icy sea, funny or sad. All of them fascinated me,
and I realized something that has guided me throughout my life.
Learning from other people's mistakes is a lot less painful
than learning from your own. My name is Tim Harford.
(03:03):
Some people call me the undercover Economist. I use scientific
ideas to help people think more clearly about the world
in my books, my ted Talks, my BBC shows, and
my column for the Financial Times. That may sound all
very grown up, but part of me is that little
boy who loved stories of catastrophe, mistake and mayhem. So
(03:28):
I still seek out and collect such stories, but now
I probe the details. I challenge the orthodox view and
look for the root causes and ponder how disaster could
have been prevented. In short, I look for the painless
lessons they can teach me. And now I want to
share some of these cautionary tales with you too. Each
(03:52):
story has a moral, each story is true, and each story,
if you're not careful, could happen to you. So gather
closer and I'll begin. We pray thee Lord, not that
(04:19):
rex should happen, but that if any Rex do happen,
thou wilt guide them to the silly isles for the
benefit of the poor. Inhabitants. That's an old prayer from
the Isles of Scilly. The isles are just off the
coast of Cornwall, the southwest tip of Great Britain, and
(04:40):
that prayer has been answered many times. The rocks around
the islands have a fearsome reputation and it's well earned.
One autumn night in seventeen oh seven, the Royal Navy
lost its way in a storm. The flagship HMS Association
struck a rock and went down in minutes. Eight hundred
(05:01):
men drowned behind it. HMS Saint George hit the rocks
and became stuck. So did HMS Phoenix, did HS Firebrow.
HMS Romney lost her entire crew. HMS Eagle was shattered
on the cruel stone. Hundreds more sailors died. That dreadful
night was one of the worst disasters in the history
(05:24):
of the British Navy. Local legend has it that there
was one notable survivor, that the Commander in Chief of
the British Fleets, Sir Cloudsley Shovel, was washed up on
the beaches of the Aisles of Scilly, but was strangled
(05:46):
by a local woman who fancied wearing his Emerald ring
herself if she had been praying the old prayer God
or the devil had been listening. It is a dark tale,
but the story I shall tell you today is a
far stranger one. It was some time after dawn on
(06:12):
Saturday March the eighteenth, nineteen sixty seven. Martyr Christie was
a langoustier, a French lobster boat, fishing for crayfish and
crab between the mainland and the Isles of Scilly. Twenty
one miles further west on deck was Captain Gui Folich,
another langoustier, was near by, both of them enjoying rich pickings.
(06:35):
A few hundred yards north of the Seven Stones. The
Seven Stones make up a vicious reef about one third
of the way between the Isles of Scilly and the mainland.
At low tide, the unyielding rocks are visible, but even
at high tide there marked by a lighthouse vessel warning
ships to stay away. Gui Folich looked up from his
(06:57):
lobster lions to see an unexpected sight, a vast black
hull coming over the horizon from an unusual direction. He
was surprised. A major vessel in that position would usually
have passed outside of the aisles of Scilly rather than
squeezing between them and the mainland. True, a big ship
(07:19):
could come between the aisles of Scilly and the mainland,
passing on either side of the seven Stones, but it
would be a little on the tight side. And this ship,
a supertanker, was very big. Indeed, in fact, it was
the thirteenth biggest ship in the world. On the lighthouse vessel,
(07:41):
the two seamen on watch saw the tanker approaching too.
Have you seen this? Have you? Yeah? Look at that
big bastro coming up. Gifolich could see the huge ship
coming straight towards him as he fished kayak, but he
wasn't worried. In between him and the oncoming juggernaut were
(08:01):
the seven Stones. He later said, I was sure that
before ever eating us, you would go on to the rugs.
He yelled to his men, stop work, you're going to
see something extraordinary. All seven of them lined up on
the rail of Marta Christie to watch the oil tanker
bear closer and closer, four miles, three miles. Folich was
(08:29):
sure it was doomed. It just wasn't possible to turn
a supertanker that quickly. Was it? Actually? Folich wasn't quite right.
The tanker, whose name was Torry Canyon did still have
room to turn. This wasn't a storm tossed fleet of
sailing ships fumbling through the darkness. The weather was good,
(08:52):
the visibility was good. Torry Canyon was a superb ship,
in fine working order and armed with radar. The seven
Stones were clearly marked on every chart, as well as
being identified by the position of the lighthouse vessel. But
Tory Canyon still wasn't turning. Gather close and listen to
(09:16):
my cautionary tail. Nobody knew it at the time, but
the trouble all started with a radio message from milford Haven,
the harbor towards which Torry Canyon was sailing. Milford Haven
(09:38):
is a major UK port, and the thing you need
to know about ports in the UK is that the
difference between high tide and low tide can be enormous.
What's more, there are high tides and high tides, some
are higher than others. The message from Milford Haven was
simple enough. Torry Canyon needed to hurry. If the ship
(10:00):
didn't arrive by eleven pm on Saturday evening, March the eighteenth,
nineteen sixty seven, it would miss the extra high tide
wouldn't be able to slip into the harbor and dock.
It would then have to wait another six days before
the tide would once more be high enough. Missing the
eleven pm deadline would mean a very expensive delay. That
(10:25):
news put Captain Pastrengo Rugiati under pressure. He had no
more than one or two hours margin, not a lot,
but Rujiahti had coped with worse. He'd been a navigator
on an Italian submarine during the war, had survived a
German prison camp, and had been commanding oil tankers for
twenty years. Captain Rujati was in many ways a genial fellow,
(10:48):
chatty and hospitable. He liked to eat good food, but
insisted he shouldn't be served anything that wasn't available to
his crew. As a result, the men on Torry Canyon
ate very well. But Rujiahti was also a detailsman who
kept a close eye on his officers. Rugiasty was extremely conscientious.
He was a man who wanted to know absolute, loutely everything.
(11:10):
Perhaps because of that, Ruggiati stayed up late on the
Friday night before landfall preparing the paperwork for when they docked.
It was only at half past three in the morning
that he went to bed, leaving instructions that he was
to be awakened first thing when the Aisles of Silly
were sighted. It was half past six in the morning
when the Aisles of Scilly appeared on the radar, about
(11:33):
thirty five miles away. First Officer Silvano Bonfilio was on duty,
and the position of the ship relative to the Isles
of Scilly was an unpleasant surprise. Torry Canyon, plowing through
the night across the ocean had been pushed off its
intended course by the current and the winds. It was
now headed between the islands and the mainland. Bonfilio immediately
(11:58):
changed course, steering away from the channel, figuring that Captain
Rugiati had intended to pass outside of the islands, but
he hedged his beds. Rather than out to sea or
closer to the mainland, he was bearing straight towards the
Isles of Scilly. He then woke up Captain Ruggiati. Rugiati
(12:19):
was angry. Was it because Bonfilio had changed course without checking,
Was it because the new course was neither one thing
nor another? Or was he just sleep deprived will our
original heaving of eighteen degrees be free of the Sillies? Yes,
then continue on course eighteen degrees. I intend to pass
to the starboard of the Silly Isles. When Filio was
(12:41):
so surprised he had to check that it understood the order,
which irritated Ruggiati. Still further Still, a maneuver shouldn't be
too perilous. It was perfectly possible to get even a
large ship through. The standard manual for navigating the waters
(13:02):
around the coast of the British Isles is called the
Channel Pilot. If Captain Ruggiati had consulted a copy, here's
what it would have said. The actual width of the
channel between the nearest of the Silly Islands and Land's
End is twenty one miles, but as the route taken
by all large vessels should be eastward of seven stones
light vessel, the navigable channel can only be considered as
(13:25):
twelve miles wide. The lights render the passage perfectly simple
at night as well as by day in ordinarily clear weather.
But as there is no part of the coast of
England more subject to sudden changes of weather, the greatest
vigilance is necessary and a vessel's position, even in the
clearest weather, should be checked by cross bearings at short intervals.
(13:46):
But Captain Rugiati Alas did not have a copy of
the channel pilot on board, and so he missed two
important pieces of wisdom. First, if you want to go
between the Isles of Scilly and the mainland, be careful. Second,
pass between the mainland and the seven Stones. There is
(14:08):
an alternative route between the seven Stones and the Aisles
of Silly themselves, but the channel pilot doesn't mention it
because it's narrower, six and a half miles wide rather
than twelve. Why take the narrower channel when you could
take the broader one. Of course, you could still fit
an oil tanker through the narrower gap, even an oil
tanker that's nearly as big as the Chrysler building, but
(14:30):
you'd be cutting it close. You'd be better and nothing
went wrong. Inertia is a powerful thing. That's true for
(14:56):
an oil tanker the size of Torry Canyon, which needed
nearly five minutes to make a ninety degree turn, during
which time it would travel a mile and a half
at cruising speed. But inertia is a powerful thing for humans. Too.
We also sometimes struggle to change course. Psychologists have identified
a strong bias towards the status quo. For example, whether
(15:20):
we sign up for a workplace pension plan or not
seems to depend on whatever the status quo is. If
the default option is to sign up, we sign up.
If the default is to stay out, we stay out.
As I say, inertia is powerful. Psychologists who study accidents
have a name for a particular form of inertia. They
(15:43):
call it plan continuation bias. It's best known in aviation.
Pilots form a plan and then are reluctant to change it,
even if the circumstances suggest they should. The pilots themselves
have another name for it, get their itis. The classic
form of get their itis is an approach to an
(16:05):
airfield with a storm coming in. If you and well
before the storm arrives, no problem. If the storm arrives
before you land, that's not a crisis either. It's a hassle.
You have to divert to another airfield, with all the delay,
expense and annoyance that implies. But you do it because
you don't want to fly into a dangerous storm. The
(16:29):
risk comes, and the storm is closing in, but there's
still a window of opportunity to land. The landing strip
is so close, just minutes away. Tunnel vision sets in,
people start to hurry, Margins for error are stripped away.
Usually there's no harm done. The pilot lands just as
the storm rips across, and congratulates himself or herself for
(16:53):
keeping cool and showing skill under pressure. But sometimes the
consequences are more serious. One study of get their Itis
looked at twenty occasions when thunderstorms had closed in at
Hartsfield Jackson, Atlanta's major international airport. Again and again, pilots
decided to chant a risky landing, risky in the sense
(17:17):
that the Federal Aviation Administration's official guidelines would have advised
against it. One plane after another would land under ever
more perilous conditions, until eventually one flight crew would resist
the inertia and decide to divert elsewhere. At that point,
every subsequent plane would also decide to divert. The madness
(17:41):
only ended when someone set an example and changed the plan.
I'm no airline pilots, but I sometimes suffer from get
their itis in my own life. Perhaps you do too.
For me, it tends to emerge when dealing with family logistics.
(18:01):
I've got three children at two different schools, and they
all have their hobbies and sports and all usual things.
I'm sure many parents will be familiar with the play
spinning that this sometimes involves. But then something goes wrong.
The cars in the shop to be repaired, No problem,
we can bike instead. Then someone needs to be at
home to meet the plumber. We make contingency plans and
(18:21):
they seem like they'll be fine, but then a fresh
errand appears, or a babysitter calls to cancel. As complications mount,
the plan starts to resemble an increasingly precarious assembly of
stages and steps, lift, swaps and rendezvous. It's a Rube
Goldberg fever dream of an itinerary. And then, if I'm lucky,
(18:42):
either I or my wife will find enough headspace to
say this is crazy. Someone's going to have to skip
dance class tonight. We'll call the plumber to see if
tomorrow's okay. Instead, we'll replace the entire time and motion
nightmare with something radically simpler. But that's hard to do
(19:05):
because of the inertia, because of the plan continuation by us,
and the more the pressure mounts, the harder it is
to see clearly just how precarious everything has become. I
become so fixated on executing the plan that I don't
have a moment to realize that it's now a stupid plan.
(19:29):
Captain Rugiati was under pressure to reach the harbor at
Milford Haven in time, and had been woken with the
unwelcome news that the ship was off course too far
towards the mainland. If he'd stopped to think or to
talk to his officers, he would have realized that he
still had time to turn and go the long way
round outside the Aisles of Scilly. He only had an
(19:53):
hour or two to spare, but a brief calculation would
have revealed that the detour would have cost just twenty
nine minutes. Yet he didn't pause to reflect. He snapped
at Bonfilio and ordered him to stick to the course
that would now cut inside the Isles of Scilly. Nor
did he reflect that, since his ship had already been
(20:13):
deflected by the current and the wind, those forces might
well continue to work upon the ship, moving it out
of its intended position. Under time pressure, he began to
suffer get their itis. His plan was risky, and his
plan was not about to change. At eight eighteen am,
(20:36):
a junior officer calculated their position, this being the days
before GPS. He did it with the ship's charts, a
compass bearing, and a radar reading old school, but the
inexperienced officer was anxious. He wasn't convinced he'd got the
ship's position exactly right, but he didn't speak up. After all,
there'd be another chance to take a fix in ten
(20:58):
minutes or so. Captain Rugiati wasn't speaking up either, as
the ship steamed north at sixteen knots nearly twenty miles
an hour. He had already decided which course he would take,
but he hadn't told his crew, which meant that they
hadn't had a chance to comment, and they didn't feel
entitled to ask. Captain Rugatti had actually decided to pass
(21:22):
through the narrow channel, which involved bending the ship's course
in a long, slow curve to the left. Why Perhaps
because it was the most direct route, but mostly because
well why not? To me? It was, they say, But
should he not have taken just a few more minutes
to avoid the narrow route? That was never in my mind.
(21:47):
That's a revealing turn of phrase. Never, in my mind,
Pastrenger Rugiati didn't even consider the possibility of going through
the wider channel. And while that might seem strange to
you or me, it's a natural feature of planned continuation
by us. As the tunnel vision develops. We don't even
think about alternatives to our ishor plan. We don't have
(22:10):
the bandwidth. We continue to plow on. In two thousand
and five, a young boy was rushed into a hospital
(22:33):
emergency room. He suffered from asthma, and he was in distress.
He was finding it harder to breathe and harder and harder,
and then his breathing stopped. The medical team quickly strapped
an oxygen mask on to the boy. That should have helped,
but instead his heart stopped beating two. There were eight
(22:54):
trained medical professionals in the room, taking it in turns
to perform CPR on the boy. Still no pulse, Still
no breathing. The minutes ticked by a doctor slid a
breathing tube down the boy's throat. No thing's happening. Is
the tube in position? The tube's fine? I checked, Is
there any pulse? Still nothing? Let's take the breathing tube
(23:16):
out and try the airbag again. It's not helping. No,
it wasn't helping. And the reason it wasn't helping was
because the breathing apparatus was broken. It would have taken
a few seconds to check if any of the five
nurses or three doctors had thought to check, but they
didn't think, not until the boy had been deprived of
(23:39):
oxygen for ten minutes. Thankfully, this wasn't a tragedy. It
was a training exercise. Instead of a real boy, it
was a medical dummy that was lying on the bed
failing to produce a simulated pulse or simulated respiration because
the medical team didn't step back and think. This training
(24:04):
scenario was conducted nineteen times, and videos of the exercise
were studded by Marlist Christiansen, a professor of organizational behavior
and previously the doctor Professor. Christiansen found that some medical
teams took just seconds to identify the problem with a
breathing equipment. This isn't working, it's broken. That's impressive, But
(24:28):
perhaps more impressive were the teams who started with the
wrong theory about the problem, but didn't get stuck on
that idea. They didn't fixate on one possibility, or keep
repeating the same approach over and over again. They would
talk through what they were thinking and challenge themselves and
each other. They could change course, but not every team
(24:50):
did that. Many teams would hammer away at the same plan,
regardless of the signs that it wasn't going to work.
They didn't step back and think, They didn't talk things through,
They just kept going. Could Captain Rugiati avoid the same fate.
(25:15):
Captain Rugatti is now trying to curve his ship through
the narrower channel. He doesn't even have the full six
and a half miles to aim at because he's approaching
at an angle. He's left himself precious little margin for error.
As it is, Torry Canyon is heading straight for the
submerged rocks at half past eight. As the slow, slow
(25:38):
turn begins, two fishing boats appear on the radar, the
two French langoustiers that are watching the oncoming supertanker with astonishment.
Rugiati had planned to keep turning, but now he has
to ensure he doesn't hit the boats. Suddenly, floats come
into view. There are a sign of fishing nets beneath
(25:58):
the surface. Tory Canyon can't possibly avoid them all and
slices through one set of nets. Captain Rugiati pauses his
turn in order not to shred thet He's now heading
very close to where he thinks the stones are, but
he still hopes to be able to resume his turn
after passing the nets. But meanwhile, all the while, the
(26:22):
current has been gently, insistently pushing Torry Canyon closer and
closer to the seven Stones. At this point, Rugiati seems
to have woken up to the danger. He has precious
little room for maneuver. Rather than curving out of danger,
he's heading directly towards the seven Stones. He was later
(26:43):
asked whether he would have been heading that way if
not for the fishing boats and their nets. No, only
a madman would have followed. In northern course, Rugiati now
knows his heading is dangerous. His plan to go through
the narrow channel is being frustrated, but as the pressure rises,
he can't step back and form a better plan. Why
(27:04):
doesn't he slow down? Why doesn't he abandon his plan
to turn left into the channel and instead turned sharply
right into deep water. That was never in my mind. Never.
When get their itis takes hold there are a lot
of things that should be in our minds but aren't.
(27:25):
At eight thirty eight am, Captain Ruggiati takes a look
at the charts. His junior officer has just taken another bearing.
Ruggiati is an old hand. He can see at once
that it can't be right. The crosses marking the ship's
position should be at regular intervals, but they're not. One
of the bearings is wrong. He doesn't know which. Maybe
(27:48):
they're both wrong. Captain Ruggiati doesn't know where he is.
The junior officer takes another bearing with the Captain's help.
The new fix shows that the ship is closer to
the seven Stones than they're realized, less than three miles. Remember,
Torry Canyon takes a mile and a half to make
a ninety degree turn on his trawler. Watching with horror
(28:12):
guy Foliage has already concluded that it's all over. Torry
Canyon can't possibly avoid the rocks, but he's wrong. There
is still time. There's still time to turn into deep water.
There's even still time to turn into the channel, which
is what Pastrengo Rugiati has been trying to do for
(28:33):
the last four miles and so, even though it doesn't
really make sense anymore, that's what he continues to try
to do. Helmsman can't do their wheel, Yes, Captain hard
to part. Go to three fifty, Take her to three,
take her to three twenty. Rugiati is ordering an ever
tighter turn into the channel. Captain. Captain, the ship's are
(28:57):
turning even now there's still time. She's not turning. Captain
Rugiati needs to think, why isn't the ship turning? Perhaps
the fuel pumps controlling the rudder have broken. Rajati has
seen that happen before. He tries to dial the engine room,
but instead he makes the kind of mistake you make
(29:20):
when you've had three hours sleep and you only have
seconds to solve a problem. He calls the officers dining room. Ah, captain,
are you ready for breakfast? Well? God deal, God is
a pig. That's some serious blasphemy from a good Italian Catholic.
It's the blasphemy of a man who knows time has
(29:44):
just run out. There's a photograph of Pastrenga Rugiati. I
(30:12):
can't get out of my head. He's scrunched up in
a confined space, his knees tucked into his chest as
if to protect himself. His eyes rolled sharply to one side,
his face ghoulishly lit from below. He's wearing a hospital
gown and he's hiding under a hospital bed. That's where
(30:33):
he was when the paparazzi found him. He looks terrified.
He's broken. His ship was gone, impaling itself onto the
Seven Stones at full speed with a noise. One crewman said,
look a slab of lead being ripped by spikes. Watching
(30:55):
from his trawler, Gefolich turned to his men, that's the
end of her. She'll never get off. He was right.
The crew escaped safely, but during an attempt to re
float the ship, there was a huge explosion. One of
the salvage team was killed. By then, Torry Canyon's back
(31:17):
was already broken and her underbelly sliced open by the
teeth of the reef. She was bleeding one hundred and
nineteen thousand tons of crude oil into coastal waters. It
was an environmental catastrophe. The oil spill was unprecedented. Even today,
there are places where you can still see the dark
(31:38):
stain on the coast. Torry Canyon was, at the time
the largest shipwreck in history and the largest maritime insurance claim.
Rugiati took responsibility. He was the captain, and he was,
he said, in charge of the best ship in their
world for a ship's captain. His ship is all and
(32:00):
I have lost mine. I'm terrified by the dimensions which
the accident has assumed. The inquiry was conducted in private.
Journalists weren't allowed in, but the manager of the hotel
where the proceedings were being held told one of them
that he had seen Captain Rugiati. I had a glimpse
(32:21):
of this man. I had the impression of a man finished.
He very seldom have so strong an impression from so
short of seeing a man. I must answer for everything,
for everyone. I must carry the cross alone. I wish
I could tell the people of Cornwall how sorry I am,
(32:43):
And he really was sorry. It was very bad. The
disaster broke Rugiati. He spent months in hospital recovering from
the strain and the anxiety and the heartbreak, which is
where the eager photographers found him. A transcript of the
(33:06):
inquiry was leaked to the journalist Richard Petro. The tanker
owners were keen to downplay any fault on their part,
including the fact that the steering had broken in the past,
confusing Captain Ruggiati when the ship had failed to turn.
But why had the ship failed to turn in those
last moments? It was a small thing. After Ruggiahti had
(33:30):
accidentally called the officer's dining room and slammed down the receiver,
he looked across the bridge. From his position by the telephone,
he could see that someone had inadvertently knocked the steering
control lever. The ship's steering had simply been disconnected. All
Ruggiati needed to do was switched the lever back and
(33:51):
dragged Torry Canyon over to port. But he had lost time.
With thirty seconds more to maneuver, I could have avoided
the rocks. Ruggiati had made a plan, and as one
small problem after another made the plan riskier and risk
here he hadn't been able to adjust. Many leader things
(34:14):
added up to one big disaster. That's true. The deadline,
the currents, the fishing boats, the error from his junior officer,
the steering control. It's bad luck thirty seconds before the
sheep she was saved. But the missing thirty seconds aren't
(34:34):
what interests me. What interests me are the two hours
that Ruggiati had to save his Torry Canyon, the best
ship in the world. He had two hours to reroot
outside the aisles of Scilly, two hours to slow the
ship down, two hours to ask for advice or to
(34:56):
turn towards the wider channel, but he didn't do any
of those things. After the exploitative photograph was released, there
was a surge of sympathy for Ruggiati from around the world.
People wrote letters of consolation. One that caught my eye
was from a thirteen year old boy from County Cork
(35:17):
in Ireland. I see beautiful tankers, but I'm sure I've
never seen one as beautiful as yours. I thought and
prayed for you. I am sure you will sail the
seas again. Pastrengo Rougiati never did. His mistake was just
too grave, But at the same time, it was also
(35:37):
all too human. After all, it's our nature to be
slow to change course. You've been listening to Cautionary Tales.
If you'd like to find out more about the ideas
(35:58):
in this episode, including links to our sources, the show
notes are on my website, Tim Harford dot com. Cautionary
Tales is written and presented by me Tim Harford. Our
producers are Ryan Dilley and Marilyn Rust. The sound designer
and mixer was Pascal Wise, who also composed the amazing music.
(36:20):
This season stars Alan Cumming, Archie Panchabi, Toby Stevens and
Russell Tovey, with enso Celenti, Ed Gochen, Melanie Gutteridge, Mercia Munroe,
Rufus Wright and introducing Malcolm Gladwell. Thanks to the team
at Pushkin Industries, Julia Barton, Heather Faine, mil LaBelle, Carlie Milliori,
(36:42):
Jacob Weisberg and of course the mighty Malcolm Gladwell. And
thanks to my colleagues at The Financial Times
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