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Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello Tim here. Shortly after we recorded this episode,

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Speaker 1: I received the sad news that Charles Perrault, the great

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Speaker 1: sociologist whose work we discuss, had just died. I was

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Speaker 1: sorry to hear it. I do hope that Charles would

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Speaker 1: like what we've done with his ideas. As the night

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Speaker 1: draws in and the fire blazes on the hearth, we

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Speaker 1: warn the children by telling them stories. Star Wars teaches

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Speaker 1: them always scan for droids. But my stories are for

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Speaker 1: the education of the grown ups, and my stories are

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Speaker 1: all true. I'm Tim Harford. Gather close and listen to

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Speaker 1: my cautionary tale. You've heard this story before. You might

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Speaker 1: even have watched it happening live. Thirty three million people did.

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Speaker 1: There They stand together on stage, Fade Unaway and Warren, Beatty,

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Speaker 1: Bonnie and Clyde together again after fifty years. Even for

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Speaker 1: a pair of veteran Hollywood stars, it must have been

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Speaker 1: a nerve racking moment. Yet their task seemed simple. Open

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Speaker 1: a red envelope, take out a card, and read out

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Speaker 1: the title of the film that had won the Academy

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Speaker 1: Award for Best Picture. Betty opens the envelope, So far,

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Speaker 1: so good. Then he looks at the card in his hand.

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Speaker 1: He hesitates, then he looks inside the envelope again, as

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Speaker 1: though checking to see if there was a cover note.

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Speaker 1: He looks over at Away, then raises both eyebrows. She

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Speaker 1: reaches over and touches his arm affectionately. The Academy Award

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Speaker 1: Betty begins. He pauses again. He looks at the card again.

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Speaker 1: He slips his hand inside the envelope one more time.

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Speaker 1: The audience laugh at the moment of maximum tension that

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Speaker 1: old rogue is playing with everyone's emotions. He continues for

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Speaker 1: a Best Picture. He stops again. Faye Dunaway thinks he's

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Speaker 1: goofing around too. You're impossible, she says, come on, He

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Speaker 1: shows her the card. She doesn't hesitate for a moment.

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Speaker 1: La La The audience erupts and applause, and the producers

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Speaker 1: of La La Land's take to the stage to give

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Speaker 1: their acceptance speeches. Meanwhile, off in the wings, an accountant

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Speaker 1: named Brian Cullenan knows that the biggest screw up in

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Speaker 1: the history of the Academy Awards is in full flow.

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Speaker 1: The twenty sixteen winner of Best Picture isn't La La Land.

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

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Speaker 1: understood what it really means? You're listening to another cautionary tale.

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Speaker 1: There's a simple way to tell the story of this fiasco.

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Speaker 1: As Warren Beatty walked on stage, Brian Cullenan's job was

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Speaker 1: to hand him the envelope for Best Picture. Instead, Cullenan

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Speaker 1: handed over the envelope for Best Actress. A few moments earlier,

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Speaker 1: that award had been won by Emma Stone for her

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Speaker 1: performance in La La Land, and so when Betty opened

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Speaker 1: the envelope, he saw Emma Stone La La Land. Jimmy Kimmel,

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Speaker 1: the host of the Oscars that evening, jokingly blamed it

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Speaker 1: all on Beatty. Larren, what did you do? I wanted

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Speaker 1: to tell you what happened, but it really wasn't Beata's fault.

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Speaker 1: He didn't understand what he was looking at, and rather

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Speaker 1: than say the wrong thing, he hesitated. Then he turned

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Speaker 1: to Faye Dunaway. She was the person who actually uttered

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Speaker 1: the title of the wrong film, but it wasn't her

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Speaker 1: fault either. Imagine her situation. She's on stage in front

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Speaker 1: of the most star studded audience imaginable, plus tens of

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Speaker 1: millions watching live on television. Betty seems to be messing

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Speaker 1: around and she doesn't know why. The first thing she

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Speaker 1: sees on the card is La La Land, and straightaway

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Speaker 1: that's what she says. Some people blamed Betty, some people

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Speaker 1: blamed Dunaway, most people blame Brian Cullenan, the accountant who

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Speaker 1: handed over the wrong envelope. But all of those people,

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Speaker 1: I think are making a mistake. Almost a decade ago,

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Speaker 1: years before this fiasco, I interviewed one of the world's

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Speaker 1: most important thinkers on how accidents happen. He's a sociologist

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Speaker 1: named Charles Perrault, and he told me something that stuck

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Speaker 1: in my mind that we always blame the operator. It's always,

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Speaker 1: he says, a case of pilot error. Charles Perrault is

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Speaker 1: a wise old man. He's older than the Academy Awards themselves.

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Speaker 1: He was four back in nineteen twenty nine when they

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Speaker 1: were first presented. And Perrault is absolutely right. We inever

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Speaker 1: to be looked for some one to blame, and that

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Speaker 1: inclination leads us astray. Our instinct is to blame the accountant,

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Speaker 1: Brian Cullenan. He did give Batty the wrong envelope. He

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: his phone, enjoying being close to one of the world's

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Speaker 1: most beautiful people at her moment of triumph. We can

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Speaker 1: 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 accidents

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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 Betty 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 bate He's going

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: though 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 Batey 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 shift

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Speaker 1: supervisor at a nuclear power plant. It's four o'clock in

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: make some quick decisions, assuming you can figure out what's

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Speaker 1: going wrong and why? What's that? Ah, let's see, I

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Speaker 1: think it's he 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 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 the inevitable. Don Norman,

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Speaker 1: the director of the design lab at UC San Diego,

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

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Speaker 1: Design was at fault, not 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 red 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: There 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 happened 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 at the column

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

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Speaker 1: lay it on the ground, it may get stained and

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

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Speaker 1: underneath 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 support's head,

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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 year without any support.

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: and neither as 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 incidents

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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 can had blocked the circulation of the

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Speaker 1: coolant and the reactor core. It was a filter that

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: strikes again. Why do safety systems sometimes backfire? The wise

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Speaker 1: old sociologist Charles Perrault's most famous book is called Normal Accidents.

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Speaker 1: It's about how certain kinds of system are vulnerable to

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

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Speaker 1: accidents in those systems as inevitable. The vulnerable systems have

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Speaker 1: two features. The first is that they're what Pero calls

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: that 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 Pero'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 damaged 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 Awards 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 Beatty.

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Speaker 1: Doesn't have to be complex, but you can make it

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

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Speaker 1: evening was Martha Ruise. Like Cullan, she was a senior accountant.

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Speaker 1: The pair of them carried identical briefcases with an identical

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Speaker 1: set of envelopes. On the day of the show, we'll

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Speaker 1: get the ballots and Brian and I will go to

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Speaker 1: the theater on two separate roads. He'll go one route

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Speaker 1: and I'll go another route. That's how Martha Ruise helpfully

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Speaker 1: explain things to journalists. Just before Oscar night, both she

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Speaker 1: and Cullinan had been proudly giving interviews about the full

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Speaker 1: proof system. We do that to ensure that in case

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Speaker 1: anything happens to one, the other will be there on

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: Brian will be on stage right and all the 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 duplicate 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 oscars 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 Willemstad. Mister

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: of Lehman 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 barbas Sorry to keep

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Speaker 1: you waiting coming, Willemstat got his moment. He badly needed

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Speaker 1: to be able to borrow from the FED, not normally

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Speaker 1: something AIG would be allowed to do. But he also

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Speaker 1: didn't want to panic Geitner. He needed to walk a

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Speaker 1: tight rope to suggest that AIG could use some help

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Speaker 1: but wasn't actually bankrupt. Is this a critical or emergency situation, Bob, Well,

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Speaker 1: you know, let me just say that it would be

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Speaker 1: very beneficial to AIG, mister Gagner. Perhaps I can leave

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Speaker 1: this with you. William Stat handed Gaigner a briefing note.

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Speaker 1: Buried deep within it was a fast ticking time bomb.

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Speaker 1: The largest firms on Wall Street were relying on AIG

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Speaker 1: to pay out on insurance against financial trouble. The total

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Speaker 1: sum insured was a truly ludicrous two thousand, seven hundred

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Speaker 1: billion dollars. AIG couldn't possibly pay if all the claims

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Speaker 1: came in, and it was starting to look as though

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Speaker 1: they might, But that meant that the big Wall Street

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Speaker 1: banks wouldn't get the insurance payments they were relying AIG

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Speaker 1: was both a bigger threat to the financial system than

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Speaker 1: Lehman Brothers and a far more surprising one. If AIG

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Speaker 1: was a safety net, it was one that wasn't going

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Speaker 1: to break. Anyone's fall. But to realize that Tim Geitner

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Speaker 1: would actually have to read and absorb the information in

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Speaker 1: the note, and he was busy, really busy, So instead

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Speaker 1: he filed it away and turned back to the Lehman

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Speaker 1: Brothers problem. AIG would melt down a few days later.

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Speaker 1: The parallels with Oscar Nite are uncanny. For one thing, Geitner,

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Speaker 1: who's no fool, had no idea how to interpret what

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Speaker 1: he was looking at. It was unexpected, and the key

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

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Speaker 1: Warren Beatty know the feeling. Then there's Galileo's principle. Safety

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Speaker 1: systems don't always make us safe. Those insurance contracts were

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Speaker 1: supposed to offset risk, not create it, right, But by

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Speaker 1: now we know that safety systems also introduce new ways

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Speaker 1: for things to go wrong. The insurance contracts that were

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Speaker 1: about to destroy AIG were called credit default swaps. They'd

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Speaker 1: become popular as a way to offset risk with the

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

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Speaker 1: the third support for the columns seems like a smart idea,

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Speaker 1: and the metal filters at the Fermi reactor and the

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Speaker 1: duplicate set of award envelopes, but they backfired. Wall Street

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Speaker 1: banks were relying on these credit default swaps to keep

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Speaker 1: them safe if there was trouble. When it became clear

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Speaker 1: that insurance companies such as AIG couldn't possibly pay out,

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Speaker 1: the banks all scrambled to sell off their risky investments

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Speaker 1: at the exact same time for the exact same reason.

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Speaker 1: A few days after Willemstadt had met Geitner, officials and

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Speaker 1: bankers worked through the weekend on the Lehman Brothers problem.

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Speaker 1: Only on Sunday evening did one of those bankers receive

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Speaker 1: a request from a Treasury official to ask if she

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

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

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Speaker 1: unsurprisingly unsuitable for family ears. Hold on, hold on, you're

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Speaker 1: calling me on a Sunday night, saying that we just

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Speaker 1: spent the entire weekend on Layman and now we have this.

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Speaker 1: How the fuck did we spend the past forty eight

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Speaker 1: hours on the wrong thing? How Indeed, for the same

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

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

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Speaker 1: brand new way to fail the banking crisis of two

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Speaker 1: thousand and an 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 sixth 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 Stevens 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 Artin, Heather Fame, Mia LaBelle, Carlie Migliori,

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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