The show, episode by episode

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford

Pushkin Industries

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.…

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford

The Weight of Fame: A Hollywood Tragedy

Arsenic and Lace: The Trial of the Yorkshire Witch - with Maddy Pelling

The Doors of Death: The Herald of Free Enterprise

"What a Bloody Mess we're in" - Britain's [REDACTED] Accident

Attack of the Night People

LIVE: We Are Not Machines - with Sarah O'Connor

Treacle Tears: The Boston Molasses Disaster

The Thief, the Jewels, and the Dublin Castle Conspiracy

The Dunning Canoe-ger Effect

Presenting...This is History: A Dynasty to Die For

How Civilizations Die - with Paul Cooper

Can You Make a Sherman Tank Float?

The Inventor who Almost Ended the World (Classic)

From Drilled: The Carbon Gold Rush

Angels, Gold and Lust: John Dee and the Philosopher's Stone (Part 2)

The Queen's Astrologer: The Price of Prophecy (Part 1)

Beware Tech Tycoons with Piranha Tanks - with Katie Prescott

Finding Grace in a Burger Bun: An Incrediburgible Quest

Run, Switzer, Run: The Women who Broke the Marathon Taboo (Classic)

The Lovestruck Explorer's Deadly Guessing Game

The Refugee Who Led a Software Revolution - with Ben Walter

The Mad Mystic and the Last Battle on English Soil - with Ian Breckon

The Sightseeing Flight and the Invisible Mountain

Presenting: Drug Story - On Xanax and Anxiety

"And it went click" - Dawn of the Working Dead

Explosives or Sugar? The Deadly Art of Distraction in Putin’s Russia - with Helena Merriman

Flight of the Fantasist: The Race Around the World - Part 2

The Philosopher and the Handyman: The Race Around the World - Part 1

Presenting... American Criminal: The Great McDonald's Monopoly Heist

Sphygmograph Be Damned: The Science of Love

The Angels, The Stones and The Dead

Powered by Orgasm: The Rise and Fall of a Sex Cult - with Ellen Huet

The WOW Machine Stops (Pt 2)

Shoes, Booze and the Pursuit of Happiness (Pt 1)

Liar, Bigamist, Brute: How Isaac Singer Liberated Women

Fritterin' Away Genius (Classic)

Photographing Fairies (Classic)

"They fall behind and are slowly crushed" - Board Games and Economics with Richard Garfield

Flixborough: The Factory that was Wiped off the Map

The Disappearance of Grace Oakeshott

Homo deceptus: Science's Dirty Little Secret

Kyoto: The Battle that Defined Climate Politics - with Joe Robertson

Presenting: Twenty Thousand Hertz

The Treasure Hunt that Broke America (Part 2)

The Treasure Hunt that Broke America (Part 1)

The Truth About Hansel and Gretel (Classic)

On Fire from the Inside - Lethal Injection Up Close with Malcolm Gladwell

Derek Bentley Must Hang

The Canal, the Crash and the Ketamine - Pushkin's Reign of Error

Schrödinger's Spy: Businessman, Fraud, or Russian Agent? - with Sam Jones

Missing Fish and Fatal Feasts: Ritual and Ruin at the Sun King’s Table

Don't Panic! Douglas Adams' Guide to Tomorrow - with Arvind Ethan David

A Deadly Day at the Races: What Radical Protest Can and Cannot Do

True Lies and Genuine Fakes

Stalling for Survival - A Lonely Fight Against a Deadly Medicine

Disaster Favours the Daring: Shipwreck at Honda Point

Paradise Poisoned: How Utopias Fall Apart

"Genius Still Unrecognised" - The Worst Poet in the World

Office Hell: The Demise of the Playful Workspace (Classic)

Number Fever: How Pepsi Nearly Went Pop (Classic)

Fire at The Beverly Hills Supper Club (Update)

"Captain Kirk Forgot to put the Machine on Stun"

"I get in trouble when I say things like this" - Michael Lewis on Sam Bankman-Fried

Grand Theft Automated: How to Save a Trillion Lives

The Man who Solved Kindness

The Shark That Ate Hollywood: Jaws at 50

Le Mans 55: The Deadliest Race

The Nazis, the Bomb, and the Woman that Science Forgot

Give Politicians a Raise, Smuggle Smartphones into School, and go Full Donk! Cautionary Questions with Risky Business

Roosevelt and the Renegade (Panama Disaster 2)

The Great Frenchman's Folly (Panama Disaster 1)

Lab Leak: Could Smallpox Come Back?

"Dangerously Near to Absolute Perfection"

Buried by the Wall Street Crash (Classic)

“I love being the person who doesn’t know anything” - Why Steven Levitt has swapped academia for podcasting

The Old Man and the Wrecking Crew

Houdini: The Phone Call from the Coffin (Part 3)

Houdini's Detective and her 1500 Dead Husbands (Part 2)

Houdini: A Message from the Spirits (Part 1)