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Speaker 1: Pushkin. The ninety fifth Academy Awards are just around the corner,

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Speaker 1: and loyal Cautionary Tales listeners will know that the Academy

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Speaker 1: Awards ceremony was not so long ago the stage for

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Speaker 1: one of the most bizarre, fascinating, and instructive errors in

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Speaker 1: entertainment history. We explored that mistake in one of the

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Speaker 1: very first episodes of Cautionary Tales, and it remains one

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Speaker 1: of our best loved stories. If you want to know

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Speaker 1: more about the ideas in this episode, check out our

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Speaker 1: show notes, and in particular the wonderful book melt Down

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Speaker 1: by Chris Clearfield and Andrashtilchik. But first, another chance to

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Speaker 1: hear La La Land Galileo's warning. You've heard this story before.

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Speaker 1: You might even have watched it happening live. Thirty three

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Speaker 1: million people did. There they stand together on stage, Fade

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Speaker 1: Unaway and Warren, Beatty, Bonnie and Clyde together again after

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Speaker 1: fifty years. Even for a pair of veteran Hollywood stars,

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Speaker 1: it must have been a nerve racking moment. Yet their

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Speaker 1: task seemed simple. Open a red envelope, take out a card,

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Speaker 1: and read out the title of the film that had

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Speaker 1: won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Betty opens the envelope.

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Speaker 1: So far, so good. Then he looks at the card

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Speaker 1: in his hand. He hesitates. Then he looks inside the

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Speaker 1: envelope again, as though checking to see if there was

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Speaker 1: a cover note. He looks over at Dunaway, then raises

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Speaker 1: both eyebrows. She reaches over and touches his arm affectionately.

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Speaker 1: The Academy Award Betty begins. He pauses again, He looks

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Speaker 1: at the card again. He slips his hand inside the

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Speaker 1: envelope one more time. The audience laugh look at the

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Speaker 1: moment of maximum tension. That old rogue is playing with

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Speaker 1: everyone's emotions. He continues for a Best Picture. He stops again.

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Speaker 1: Faye Dunaway thinks he's goofing around too. You're impossible, she says,

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Speaker 1: come on, He shows her the card. She doesn't hesitate

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Speaker 1: for a moment. La La La. The audience erupts and applause,

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Speaker 1: and the producers of La La Lands take to the

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Speaker 1: stage to give their acceptance speeches. Meanwhile, off in the wings,

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Speaker 1: an accountant named Brian Cullenan knows that the biggest screw

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Speaker 1: up in the history of the Academy Awards is in

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Speaker 1: full flow. The twenty sixteen winner of Best Picture isn't

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Speaker 1: La La Land, It's Moonlight. So yes, you've heard this story,

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Speaker 1: have you on stood what it really means? You're listening

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Speaker 1: to another cautionary tale. There's a simple way to tell

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Speaker 1: the story of this fiasco. As Warren Beatty walked on stage,

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Speaker 1: Brian Cullenan's job was to hand him the envelope for

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Speaker 1: Best Picture. Instead, Cullenan handed over the envelope for Best Actress.

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Speaker 1: A few moments earlier, that award had been won by

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Speaker 1: Emma Stone for her performance in La La Land, and

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Speaker 1: so when Beatty opened the envelope, he saw Emma Stone

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Speaker 1: La La Land. Jimmy Kimmel, the host of the Oscars

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Speaker 1: that evening, jokingly blamed it all on Beati Larren, What

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Speaker 1: did you do? I wanted to tell you what happened,

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Speaker 1: but it really wasn't Beata's fault. He didn't understand what

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Speaker 1: he was looking at, and rather than say the wrong thing,

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Speaker 1: he hesitated. Then he turned to Faye Dunaway. She was

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Speaker 1: the person who actually uttered the title of the wrong film,

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Speaker 1: but it wasn't her fault either. Imagine her situation She's

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Speaker 1: on stage in front of the most star studded audience imaginable,

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Speaker 1: plus tens of millions watching live on television. Betty seems

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Speaker 1: to be messing around and she doesn't know why. The

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Speaker 1: first thing she sees on the card is La La Land,

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Speaker 1: and straightaway that's what she says. Some people blame Beattie,

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Speaker 1: some people blamed Dunaway, most people blame Brian cullenan, the

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Speaker 1: accountant who handed over the wrong envelope. But all of

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Speaker 1: those people I think are making a mistake. Almost a

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Speaker 1: decade ago, years before this fear asco I interviewed one

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Speaker 1: of the world's most important thinkers on how accidents happen.

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Speaker 1: He's a sociologist named Charles Perrault, and he told me

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Speaker 1: something that stuck in my mind that we always blame

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Speaker 1: the operator. It's always, he says, a case of pilot error.

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Speaker 1: Charles Perrault is a wise old man. He's older than

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Speaker 1: the Academy Awards themselves. He was four back in nineteen

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Speaker 1: twenty nine when they were first presented. And Perrault is

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Speaker 1: absolutely right. We inevitably look for someone to blame, and

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Speaker 1: that inclination leads us astray. Our instinct is to blame

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Speaker 1: the accountant, Brian Cullenan. He did give Beattie the wrong envelope.

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Speaker 1: He was distracted. He tweeted a photograph of Emma Stone

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Speaker 1: holding her Oscar statuette at a time he should have

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Speaker 1: been focusing on giving Beattie the right envelope. He was

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Speaker 1: on his phone, enjoying being close to one of the

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Speaker 1: world's most beautiful people at her moment of triumph. We

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Speaker 1: can all learn a lesson from that. Get off your phone,

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Speaker 1: get off your phone when you're supposed to be having

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Speaker 1: dinner with your family, get off your phone when you're

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Speaker 1: supposed to be driving, and get off your phone when

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Speaker 1: you're supposed to be giving the envelope containing the best

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Speaker 1: picture card to Warren Beatty. But the reason that it's

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Speaker 1: a mistake to simply blame Culonan is because Cullinan was

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Speaker 1: just being human. Humans are always getting distracted, humans are

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Speaker 1: always making mistakes. If our systems can't cope with those mistakes,

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Speaker 1: then it's hopeless to demand better humans. We need better systems.

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Speaker 1: When La La land fleetingly won Moonlight's Oscar, some rich

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Speaker 1: and successful people suffered some embarrassment, and some heartache, but

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Speaker 1: nobody died. Yet the lesson of the fiasco is far

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Speaker 1: from trivial. The same kind of mistake in different situations

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Speaker 1: can be catastrophic. Such mistakes can lead to nuclear accident

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Speaker 1: and financial meltdowns. And when I say can lead, I

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Speaker 1: mean have led. Such disasters have already occurred. So let's

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Speaker 1: try to understand what really happened that strange night at

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Speaker 1: the oscars. Perhaps we can use that insight to prevent

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Speaker 1: far more serious calamities. Let's talk about problem number one,

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Speaker 1: bad typography. I know it sounds strange, but it's true.

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Speaker 1: The card that Beatty took out of the envelope had

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Speaker 1: nine words on it, and the largest word is Oscars.

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Speaker 1: Really is that really the most important piece of information?

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Speaker 1: Are we worried that? Without it, Warren Beatty's going to

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Speaker 1: think he's at the Iowa State Fair handing out a

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Speaker 1: medallion for the best hog. The words La, La Land

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Speaker 1: and Emma Stone are printed with equal weight, even though

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Speaker 1: the winner is Emma Stone. The rest is detail. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: the important words best Actress are tucked away at the

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Speaker 1: bottom of the card, and they're tiny. If best Actress

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Speaker 1: had been prominent, Warren Baity wouldn't have been confused. He

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Speaker 1: would have known that he had the wrong card in

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Speaker 1: his hand. And if Emma Stone had been in larger

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Speaker 1: type than La La land Faye, Dunaway wouldn't have blurted

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Speaker 1: out the name of the wrong film. It would have

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Speaker 1: been awkward for Baiting and done Away to walk off

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Speaker 1: stage to get the right envelope, but not nearly as

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Speaker 1: awkward as not walking off stage to get the right envelope.

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Speaker 1: So the Academy should have hired a designer, but they're

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Speaker 1: not the only ones. Imagine that you're the night shifts

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Speaker 1: super advisor at a nuclear power plant. It's four o'clock

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Speaker 1: in the morning and you don't know it yet, but

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Speaker 1: the turbine system that draws away the heat from the

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Speaker 1: reactor core has just shut down. You're going to have

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Speaker 1: to make some quick decisions, assuming you can figure out

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Speaker 1: what's going wrong and why. What's that? Let's see, I

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Speaker 1: think it's Can we shut it down? I do no?

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Speaker 1: Can you? During the first few minutes of the accident,

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Speaker 1: more than one hundred alarms went off, and there was

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Speaker 1: no system for suppressing the unimportant signals so that operators

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Speaker 1: could concentrate on the significant alarms information was not presented

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Speaker 1: in a clear and sufficiently understandable form. That's from the

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Speaker 1: overview of the official inquiry into what was then arguably

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Speaker 1: the world's most serious nuclear accident at Three Mile Island

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Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine. It destroyed the reactor, came close

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Speaker 1: to a serious release of radioactive material on the Eastern Seaboard,

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Speaker 1: and shattered the reputation of the American nuclear industry. It's

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Speaker 1: striking how quickly the inquiry focused in on the question

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Speaker 1: of design, But to anyone who studies how accidents happen,

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Speaker 1: it's not surprising at all. The plan's control rooms were

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Speaker 1: so poorly designed that error was inevitable. Don Norman, the

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Speaker 1: director of the Design Lab at UC San Diego, was

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Speaker 1: asked to help analyze the problems at Three Mile Island.

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Speaker 1: Design was at fault that the operators the control panels

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Speaker 1: were baffling. They displayed almost seven hundred and fifty lights,

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Speaker 1: some next to the relevant switches, or above them, or

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Speaker 1: below them, sometimes nowhere near the relevant switch at all.

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Speaker 1: Red lights indicated open valves or active equipment. Green indicated

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Speaker 1: closed valves or inactive equipment. But since some of the

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Speaker 1: lights were typically read and others were normally green. The

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Speaker 1: overall effect was dizzying. So yes, the operators made mistakes

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Speaker 1: at Three Mile Island, but with better design they might

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Speaker 1: not have. Warren Beatty and Fade Unaway would sympathize. But

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Speaker 1: something else went wrong that night at the oscars, something

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Speaker 1: deeper and more surprising. It's a strange effect, and it

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Speaker 1: was first observed by a man less famous for looking

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Speaker 1: at why things go wrong and more famous for looking

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Speaker 1: at the stars. Galileo Galilei is known for his astronomy

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Speaker 1: and because his work was consigned to the Church's Index

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Speaker 1: Liborum Prohibitorum, the list of forbidden books. But the great

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Speaker 1: Man's final work opens with a less provocative topic, the

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Speaker 1: correct method of storing a stone column on a building site.

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Speaker 1: Bear with me, this book from sixteen thirty eight is

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Speaker 1: going to explain the Oscar fiasco and much more, a

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Speaker 1: master related circumstance which is worthy of your attention, as

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Speaker 1: indeed are ol events which happen contrary to expectation, especially

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Speaker 1: when a precautionary measure turns out to be a cause

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Speaker 1: of disaster. A precautionary measure turns out to be a

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Speaker 1: cause of disaster. That's very interesting, Galileo, please go on.

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Speaker 1: A large marble column was laid out so that its

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Speaker 1: two ends rested each upon a piece of beam. I

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Speaker 1: can picture that in my mind. Support the column while

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Speaker 1: it's being stored horizontally ready for use. If you lay

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Speaker 1: it on the ground, it may get stained and you'll

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Speaker 1: probably break it when you try to get ropes underneath

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Speaker 1: it to pull it upright. So yes, store it flat,

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Speaker 1: but propped up by a support at one end and

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Speaker 1: a support at the other. But what if the column

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Speaker 1: can't support its own weight like that and simply snaps

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Speaker 1: in half? Galileo has thought of that. A little later,

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Speaker 1: it occurred to a mechanic that in order to be

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Speaker 1: doubly sure of it's not breaking in the middle, it

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Speaker 1: would be wise to lay a third support midway. This

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Speaker 1: seemed to all an excellent idea. Yes, if two supports

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Speaker 1: are good, surely three supports are better. It was quite

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Speaker 1: the opposite, for not many months past before the column

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Speaker 1: was found cracked and broken exactly above the new middle support.

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Speaker 1: How did that happen? One of the end supports had,

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Speaker 1: after a long while, become decayed and sunken, but the

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Speaker 1: middle one remained hard and strong, thus causing one half

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Speaker 1: of the column to project in the air without any

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Speaker 1: sup The central support didn't make the column safer. It

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Speaker 1: pressed into it, like the central pivot of a seesaw,

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Speaker 1: snapping it in half. Galileo's tail isn't really about storing columns,

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Speaker 1: and neither is mine. It's about what I'm going to

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Speaker 1: call Galileo's principle. The steps we take to make ourselves

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Speaker 1: safe sometimes lead us into danger. The problem Galileo described

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Speaker 1: is well known to safety engineers. There's an article in

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Speaker 1: the fine scholarly journal Process Safety Progress titled no good

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Speaker 1: deed Goes unpunished. Case studies of incidence and potential incidence

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Speaker 1: caused by protective systems. These case studies are magnificent. There's

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Speaker 1: a chemical plant where two pressure relief systems interact in

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Speaker 1: a way that means neither of them work. There's a

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Speaker 1: flare designed to destroy pollutants which ends up causing the

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Speaker 1: release of toxic gases. There's an explosion suppression device that

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Speaker 1: causes an explosion. This kind of thing happens more than

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Speaker 1: you might think. An example is one of the earliest

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Speaker 1: nuclear accidents at Fermi One, an experimental reactor in Michigan.

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Speaker 1: It's barely remembered now except in Gil Scott Heron's song

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Speaker 1: We Almost Lost Detroit. This time, the operators at Fermi

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Speaker 1: one lost control of the nuclear reaction for reasons that

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Speaker 1: were baffling to them. Some of the reactor fuel melted.

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Speaker 1: It was all touch and go. Eventually they got the

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Speaker 1: reactor under control, shut it all down, and waited until

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Speaker 1: it was safe to take it all apart. It was

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Speaker 1: almost a year before the reactor had cooled enough to

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Speaker 1: identify the culprit. A piece of metal the size of

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Speaker 1: a crushed beer had blocked the circulation of the coolant

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Speaker 1: in the reactor core. It was a filter that had

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Speaker 1: been installed at the last moment for safety reasons, at

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Speaker 1: the express request of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It had

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Speaker 1: come loose and caused the entire problem. Galileo's principle strikes again.

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Speaker 1: Why do safety systems sometimes backfire? The wise old sociologist

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Speaker 1: Charles Perot's most famous book is called Normal Accidents. It's

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Speaker 1: about how certain kinds of system are vulnerable to catastrophic failure,

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Speaker 1: so vulnerable, in fact, that we should view accidents in

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Speaker 1: those systems as inevitable. The vulnerable systems have two features.

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Speaker 1: The first is that they're what Pero calls tightly coupled.

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Speaker 1: In a tightly coupled system, one thing leads to another,

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Speaker 1: and another and another. It's like domino toppling, which is

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Speaker 1: actually a great example of a tightly coupled system. Once

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Speaker 1: you start, it's hard to hit the pores button. A

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Speaker 1: second feature is complexity. A complex system has elements that

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Speaker 1: interact in unexpected ways. A rainforest is a complex system.

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Speaker 1: So is Harvard University. But Harvard University usually isn't tightly coupled.

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Speaker 1: If there's a problem, there's also time to find a solution.

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Speaker 1: A system that's both complex and tightly coupled is dangerous.

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Speaker 1: The complexity means there will occasionally be surprises. The tight

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Speaker 1: coupling means that there will be no time to deal

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Speaker 1: with the surprises. Charles Perot's theory explains Galileo's principle. Every

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Speaker 1: time you add a feature that's designed to prevent a problem,

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Speaker 1: you're adding complexity. The middle support for the column added complexity,

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Speaker 1: so did the safety filter that image the Fermi one reactor.

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Speaker 1: Safety systems don't always make us safe. Here's the question

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Speaker 1: we should be asking about that bizarre evening at the Oscars.

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Speaker 1: How was it even possible for the distracted accountant Brian

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Speaker 1: Cullenan to give Warren Beatty the wrong envelope a few

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Speaker 1: minutes earlier, the envelope for Best Actress, the envelope containing

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Speaker 1: the card that read Emma Stone La La Land. That

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Speaker 1: envelope had been in the hands of Leonardo DiCaprio as

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Speaker 1: he stood on stage announcing her win. How could that

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Speaker 1: envelope have made its way into the hands of Warren Beatty.

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Speaker 1: The answer it didn't. There were two envelopes. Every envelope

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Speaker 1: for every category had a duplicate version waiting in the wings.

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Speaker 1: These duplicate envelopes were there as a safety measure, and

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Speaker 1: that safety measure is what made the fiasco possible. Galileo's

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Speaker 1: principle had bitten hard. Charles Perrot's argument is that when

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Speaker 1: systems are both complex and tightly coupled, we should expect

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Speaker 1: catastrophic accidents. Does the Academy Award ceremony fit that description.

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Speaker 1: It's certainly tightly coupled. You can't easily interrupt a live

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Speaker 1: TV spectacular in front of millions of people to ask

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Speaker 1: for advice. The show must go on. Yet the ceremony

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Speaker 1: doesn't have to be complex. Giving an envelope to Warren

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Speaker 1: Beatty doesn't have to be complex, but you can make

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Speaker 1: it complex if you try. Brian Cullenan's partner in crime

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Speaker 1: that evening was Martha Ruise. Like Cullenan, she was a

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Speaker 1: senior accountant. The pair of them carried identical brief cases

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Speaker 1: with an identical set of envelopes. On the day of

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Speaker 1: the show, we'll get the ballots and Brian and I

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Speaker 1: will go to the theater on two separate roads. He'll

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Speaker 1: go one route and I'll go another route. That's how

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Speaker 1: Martha Louise helpfully explain things to journalists. Just before Oscar night,

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Speaker 1: both she and Cullenan had been proudly giving interviews about

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Speaker 1: the full proof system. We do that to ensure that

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Speaker 1: in kiss anything happens to one, the other will be

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Speaker 1: there on time and delivering what's needed with the full set.

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Speaker 1: We do have security measures up until we're at the

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Speaker 1: theater and delivering that envelope to the presenter just seconds

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Speaker 1: before they walk on stage. We'll be in two different locations.

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Speaker 1: Brian will be on stage right and I'll be on

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Speaker 1: stage left. It all sounds sensible, and in many ways

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Speaker 1: it is sensible. It's also complicated. The system of twin

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Speaker 1: envelopes meant that every time an envelope was opened on stage,

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Speaker 1: its duplicates in the wings had to be set aside.

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Speaker 1: Martha Ruiz stage left handed the envelope for Best Actress

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Speaker 1: to Leonardo DiCaprio, leaving Brian cullenan stage right with a

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Speaker 1: job of discarding the duplicate, the job he failed to do.

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Speaker 1: If there hadn't been that set of twin envelopes, Warren

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Speaker 1: Beatty could never have been given the wrong one. So

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Speaker 1: bad design helped cause the Oscar fiasco. It also helped

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Speaker 1: cause the accident at three Mile Island, and a complicated

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Speaker 1: safety system was at the root of the Oscar fast

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Speaker 1: It was also at the root of the Fermi one accident.

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Speaker 1: But it's not just Oscar's and nuclear power. I promised

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Speaker 1: you a financial catastrophe two and in this one, both

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Speaker 1: safety systems and bad typography at a blame. He might

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Speaker 1: even start to see the banking crisis in a very

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Speaker 1: different light. In September two thousand and eight, at the

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Speaker 1: height of the financial crisis, an insurance executive named Robert

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Speaker 1: Willemstat requested a meeting with Tim Geitner. Geitner would later

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Speaker 1: be the Treasury Secretary. At the time, he was the

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Speaker 1: President of the New York Federal Reserve. That meant he

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Speaker 1: was responsible for supervising Wall Streets banks, including Lehman Brothers,

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Speaker 1: which was on the brink of collapse. Robert Willemstadt was

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Speaker 1: the boss of an insurance company called AIG, and since

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Speaker 1: AIG wasn't a bank, it was far from obvious why

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Speaker 1: Willemstadt was Geitner's problem. In his book Too Big to Fail,

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Speaker 1: the journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin reports the intimate details of

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Speaker 1: this ill fated meeting. I'm really sorry, mister Willem's dead.

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Speaker 1: Mister Gattner's going to be a few minutes, no problem,

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Speaker 1: I have time. I'm sorry. I know you've been waiting

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Speaker 1: a long time. Mister Gattner's on the phone to the

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Speaker 1: boss of Layman Brothers. He's up to his arboles and Layman.

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Speaker 1: Tim Geitner was also exhausted. He'd been on an overnight

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Speaker 1: flight from a banking conference in Switzerland. He must have

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Speaker 1: felt completely overwhelmed. Who wouldn't have, Bob, is it sorry

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Speaker 1: to keep you waiting coming? Willemstad got his moment. He

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Speaker 1: badly needed to be able to borrow from the FED,

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Speaker 1: not normally something AIG would be allowed to do, But

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Speaker 1: he also didn't want to panic Geitner. He needed to

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Speaker 1: walk a tight rope to suggest that AIG could use

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Speaker 1: some help that wasn't actually bankrupt. Is this a critical

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Speaker 1: or emergency situation, Bob? Well, you know, let me just

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Speaker 1: say that it would be very beneficial to AIG. Mister Gaigner.

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Speaker 1: Perhaps I can leave us with you. William Stat handed

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Speaker 1: Gaigner a briefing note. Buried deep within it was a

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Speaker 1: fast ticking time bomb. The largest firms on Wall Street

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Speaker 1: were relying on AIG to pay out on insurance against

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Speaker 1: financial trouble. The total sum insured was a truly ludicrous

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Speaker 1: two thousand, seven hundred billion dollars. AIG couldn't possibly pay

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Speaker 1: if all the claims came in, and it was starting

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Speaker 1: to look as though they might. But that meant that

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Speaker 1: the big Wall Street banks wouldn't get the insurance payments

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Speaker 1: they were relying on. AIG was both a bigger threat

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Speaker 1: to the financial system than Lehman Brothers and a far

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Speaker 1: more surprising one. If AIG was a safety net, it

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Speaker 1: was one that wasn't going to break anyone's fall. But

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Speaker 1: to realize that, Tim Geitner would actually have to read

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Speaker 1: and absorb the information in the note, and he was busy,

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Speaker 1: really busy, so instead he filed it away and turned

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Speaker 1: back to the Lehman Brothers problem. AIG would melt down

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Speaker 1: a few days later. The parallels with oscarnite are uncanny.

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Speaker 1: For one thing, Geitner, who's no fool, had no idea

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Speaker 1: how to interpret what he was looking at. It was unexpected,

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Speaker 1: and the key information was buried in the small print.

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Speaker 1: Fade unaway and Warren Beatty know the feeling. Then there's

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Speaker 1: Galileo's principle. Safety systems don't always make us safe. Those

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Speaker 1: insurance contracts were supposed to offset risk, not create it, right,

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Speaker 1: But by now we know that safety systems also introduce

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Speaker 1: new ways for things to go wrong. The insurance contracts

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Speaker 1: that were about to destroy AIG were called credit default swaps.

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Speaker 1: They'd become popular as a way to offset risk with

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Speaker 1: the blessing of regulators. They seemed a smart idea, just

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Speaker 1: as the third support for the columns seems like a

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Speaker 1: smart idea, and the metal filters at the Fermi reactor

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Speaker 1: and the duplicate set of award envelopes, but they backfired.

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Speaker 1: Wall Street banks were relying on these credit default swaps

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Speaker 1: to keep them safe if there was trouble. When it

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Speaker 1: became clear that insurance companies such as AIG couldn't possibly

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Speaker 1: pay out, the banks all scrambled to sell off their

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Speaker 1: risky investments. At the exact same time for the exact

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Speaker 1: same reason. A few days after Willemstadt had met Geitner,

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Speaker 1: officials and bankers worked through the weekend on the Lehman

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Speaker 1: Brothers problem. Only on Sunday evening did one of those

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Speaker 1: bankers receive a request a Treasury official to ask if

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Speaker 1: she could drop everything and work on rescuing AIG instead.

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Speaker 1: The surprising phone call was greeted with a response that

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Speaker 1: was unsurprisingly unsuitable for family ears. Hold on, hold on,

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Speaker 1: you're calling me on a Sunday night, saying that we

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Speaker 1: just spent the entire weekend on laymen and now we

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Speaker 1: have this. How the fuck did we spend the past

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Speaker 1: forty eight hours on the wrong thing? How indeed, for

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Speaker 1: the same reason, they gave the oscar to the wrong movie,

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Speaker 1: confusing communication, and above all, a safety system that created

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Speaker 1: a brand new way to fail. The banking crisis of

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Speaker 1: two thousand and eight shook the world financial system and

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Speaker 1: destroyed millions of jobs. More than a decade later, we're

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Speaker 1: still living with the consequences. It was, in its way,

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Speaker 1: a more serious crisis than any nuclear accident. It was

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Speaker 1: certainly far graver than a bungle at the Oscars. Yet

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Speaker 1: the same problems were at the roots of all these accidents.

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Speaker 1: After the La La Land shambles, Vanity Fair reported the

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Speaker 1: Oscars have an intense six step plan to avoid another

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Speaker 1: envelope disaster. The six steps include getting rid of the

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Speaker 1: two accounting partners, Brian Cullenan and Martha Ruise, and the

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Speaker 1: twin sets of envelopes. Instead, says Vanity Fair, there will

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Speaker 1: be three partners. A third partner will sit in the

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Speaker 1: show's control room with the producers. All three partners will

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Speaker 1: have a complete set of envelopes. If having two sets

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Speaker 1: caused the problem, having three sets is better, right. I'm

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Speaker 1: not sure Galileo would agree. You've been listening to cautionary tales.

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Speaker 1: I expand on some of the ideas in this episode

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Speaker 1: in my book adapt You might like It. Cautionary Tales

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Speaker 1: is written and presented by me Tim Harford. Our producers

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Speaker 1: are Ryan Dilley and Marilyn Rust. The sound designer and

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Speaker 1: mixer was Pascal Wise, who also composed the amazing music.

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Speaker 1: This season stars Alan Cumming, Archie Panjabi, Toby Stephens and

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Speaker 1: Russell Tovey, with enso Celenti, Ed Gochen, Melanie Gutteridge, Mercia Munroe,

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Speaker 1: Rufus Wright and introducing Malcolm Gladwell. Thanks to the team

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Speaker 1: at Pushkin Industries, Julia Barton, Heather Fane, Mia LaBelle, Carlie Milliori,

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Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg and of course the mighty Malcolm Gladwell. And

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Speaker 1: thanks to my colleagues at The Financial Times,