Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
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We tell our children unsettling fairy tales to teach them valuable 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 “The Data Detective”) brings you stories of awful human error, tragic catastrophes, and hilarious fiascos. They'll delight you, scare you, but also make you wiser. New episodes every other Friday.
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This podcast could be its own cautionary tale
Sept 21
**When a British host only gives temperature measurements in Fahrenheit, it still reaches ALL of your listeners, all around the world.** I understand your audience is largely American, but not exclusively. The clear message you are sending to your listeners from *all* the “other” countries, is that they are less important. Extremely damaging in at least two (2) ways: 1 — it reinforces the American belief that they do not have to make room for anyone else, nor come part way. In turn, it prevents them from allowing space for other countries and cultures. And 2 — it means that if you are from any other country, you are less important. You are a second-class citizen. (And this fact is so un-disputable that I will not even consider reading Celsius, peasants!) It is not unreasonable to suggest Americans read Celsius (which would be beneficial in their future) rather than assigning the extra conversion work to “lesser” countries. As usual. (They’re used to working harder anyway!) Just a thought!
I want to like it, but...
Oct 28
I want to like it, but the execution is so often misleading and/or in poor taste. The host are unable to examine more than one argument or one side of history, leading to a conclusion that is often as disturbing as it is disturbingly numb-skulled.
Misleading
Jan 30
Don’t title your episodes in a misleading way to try to get people to listen to a different podcast and/or to get people to pay for your subscription service. It’s annoying.
Good storytelling, but those accents…
Jul 5
I enjoy the storytelling on this podcast and I think Tim Harford does a great job exploring historical anecdotes and finding nuggets of wisdom. However, the show is brought down by the reenactments. The American accents in those reenactments range from mediocre to cartoonishly bad. It is especially glaring when they attempt to represent people whose real voices we can listen to. For example, in the Billy Joel/Twyla Tharp episode, the actress playing Twyla seems to be doing an exaggerated impersonation of a TV mafioso. You can watch interviews with the real Twyla Tharp and immediately notice that she sounds nothing like that. So many episodes seem to have English actors doing bad, obvious fake American accents and it makes the show come across as unserious. It’s one thing to have people doing terrible accents in a comedy podcast, but in a podcast that’s trying to be educational, it’s rather distracting. I would rather that the podcast just be Tim talking with zero reenactments. That would be a five star podcast. Also, too many Malcolm Gladwell advertisements. Do we really need the same ad for a Malcolm Gladwell repeated four times in one episode? Is the show’s estimation of its listeners’ memories so low that it assumes that those who would be interested in the podcast must be reminded about it every few minutes?
About
Information
- Channel
- CreatorPushkin Industries
- Years Active2019 - 2024
- Episodes148
- RatingExplicit
- Copyright2024 iHeartMedia, Inc. © Any use of this intellectual property for text and data mining or computational analysis including as training material for artificial intelligence systems is strictly prohibited without express written consent from iHeartMedia
- Show Website
- ProviderPushkin Industries Inc.
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