Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello Tim Harford here. I've been sitting on some
Speaker 1: great ideas for gripping cautionary tales. Their stories full of
Speaker 1: exactly the sort of instructive downfalls and disasters that I love,
Speaker 1: but I've never quite found the right place to tell
Speaker 1: them during our normal episodes. So I've created five Cautionary
Speaker 1: Tales shorts. You're about to hear one of these bitesize
Speaker 1: stories right now, but there are four more cautionary Tale
Speaker 1: shorts available exclusively to Pushkin Plus subscribers to hear them.
Speaker 1: Subscribe to Pushkin Plus in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin
Speaker 1: dot Fm. You'll receive other bonus content and add free
Speaker 1: listening on all Pushkin shows, including Cautionary Tales for Visionist History,
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab, Against the Rules, and many others. Enjoy Disneyland,
Speaker 1: the Happiest Place on Earth December fifth, nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: As a celebration of Walt Disney's birthday and the thirtieth
Speaker 1: anniversary of Disneyland's opening, Disney release a world breaking flock
Speaker 1: of helium balloons, more than one million soar into the
Speaker 1: blue California sky, gladdening hearts everywhere. Hold my beard Disneyland,
Speaker 1: says Cleveland, A million balloons isn't cool. You know what's cool,
Speaker 1: two million balloons. Nine months later, excitement is building in
Speaker 1: public Square in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Above the square, billooing
Speaker 1: in a stiff breeze is a net filled with a
Speaker 1: mind boggling mass of helium filled multicolored latex balloons. The
Speaker 1: balloon mass oozes and bulges, eager for sweet release into
Speaker 1: the gray, overcast Midwestern skies. I'm Tim Harford, and you're
Speaker 1: listening to cautionary tales. When Disneyland had released those balloons,
Speaker 1: Cleveland had been watching from the shores of Chili Lake Erie.
Speaker 1: Cleveland had endured a lot a steel industry and decline,
Speaker 1: a popular that had nearly halved, a river so polluted
Speaker 1: that it regularly caught fire. People would sneer that the
Speaker 1: wants proud city of Cleveland was the mistake on the lake.
Speaker 1: But by the mid nineteen eighties, Cleveland was fighting back,
Speaker 1: securing tourist attractions such as the Rock and Roll Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame and well, what about a Disneyland style balloon release.
Speaker 1: Cleveland's branch of the nonprofit United Way is behind the
Speaker 1: quest to break the Guinness World Record for a mass
Speaker 1: release of balloons. The idea is that local kids will
Speaker 1: collect sponsorship for each balloon, and everyone knows that the
Speaker 1: record breaking balloon release is about much more than raising
Speaker 1: money for good causes. It's about civic pride. Beneath the hovering,
Speaker 1: gelatinous form of the balloon mass, more than two thousand
Speaker 1: young volunteers are inflating, knotting, and then releasing each newly
Speaker 1: buoyant balloon to join the angry swarm lowering overhead. Many
Speaker 1: of them wear tape on their fingers in an effort
Speaker 1: to prevent blisters. For those blisters usually come anyway. After
Speaker 1: the sixth or seven hundredth balloon of the day, there
Speaker 1: is no art without suffering. The local TV station is
Speaker 1: buzzing with excitement. The distinctive Cleveland TV hosts Chuck Shadowski
Speaker 1: and John Rinaldi of The Big Chuck and Little John
Speaker 1: Show are there on the scenes interviewing the organizers, the children,
Speaker 1: and the excited crowd. Mary Ellen is one of them.
Speaker 1: She's an elderly lady in a two toned stripy blue dress.
Speaker 1: She had brought two bunches of green and pink helium
Speaker 1: balloons to donate to the effort, but attached one of
Speaker 1: those bunches to her watch strap. The strap came loose
Speaker 1: and the balloons stole her watch away into the sky.
Speaker 1: TV host Big Chuck from behind the finest tinted aviator
Speaker 1: shades that nineteen eighty six can offer, sympathizes with Mary Ellen.
Speaker 1: If anybody finds Mary Ellen's watch tied to a bunch
Speaker 1: of balloons like this, announce his Big Chuck live on air.
Speaker 1: If you return it to the station, we'll have all
Speaker 1: kinds of rewards for you, all kinds of rewards. And
Speaker 1: there we see the whole Cleveland balloon fest in miniature,
Speaker 1: a well meaning gesture, a bit of bad luck, a
Speaker 1: rather predictable mishap, and extremely vague promises of good things
Speaker 1: to come. Cleveland, it's your time, says Treb Hinding to
Speaker 1: the TV cameras. It's time to say yes. Treb is
Speaker 1: indisputably the best balloon guy on the planet. He's sitting
Speaker 1: under the growing balloon cloud out on Cleveland's public Square,
Speaker 1: looking sharp in a flat white cap, blue blazer and
Speaker 1: red tie. Treb has the fastest balloon hands in the world.
Speaker 1: Armed with a helium hose. He can inflate and tie
Speaker 1: a thousand balloons an hour. He's from California. He worked
Speaker 1: on the Disneyland balloon release. Now he's in charge of
Speaker 1: Cleveland's attempt to break the record. As he speaks to
Speaker 1: the camera, cruise balloon after balloon rises in the background
Speaker 1: to join its roiling siblings above. Treb has definitely read
Speaker 1: the memo about Cleveland's civic pride. It's time to say
Speaker 1: it's a happening city where on the move. It's no
Speaker 1: longer the butt of jokes. In his months working on
Speaker 1: the project, Treb Hining seems to have picked up a
Speaker 1: certain energy from his colleagues. An inflated inferiority complex and
Speaker 1: Treb and his two million balloons, well, they're going to help.
Speaker 1: Those balloons will bring, as Big Chuck might say, all
Speaker 1: kinds of rewards. I've been in this city for six
Speaker 1: months and I absolutely love it, Treb continues. My wife
Speaker 1: and I have even talked of moving here, and our
Speaker 1: friends in La think we're nuts. Treb, maybe stop now,
Speaker 1: but it is a wonderful place. If I had money
Speaker 1: to invest, this is where ar'd be invested. Treb's team
Speaker 1: have built a formidable temporary structure with a one piece net.
Speaker 1: Every newspaper report notes that this net was made by
Speaker 1: the guys who also made cargo nets for the Space Shuttle.
Speaker 1: It's designed to withstand a sixty mile per hour wind.
Speaker 1: But September weather in Cleveland isn't as predictable as the
Speaker 1: weather at Disneyland. The night before the big release, a
Speaker 1: sudden storm blew in out on the lake. The way
Speaker 1: eaves swelled alarmingly. Small boats hurried to get to shore.
Speaker 1: It was frightening. One boat didn't return, and the coast
Speaker 1: guard headed out to try to find two missing fishermen.
Speaker 1: Even in the safety of the city, the storm was
Speaker 1: gusting at ninety miles an hour. As it hit Public Square,
Speaker 1: where the balloons were being stored. It was like a
Speaker 1: mini tornado, recalled one of the team, Things like chairs
Speaker 1: were physically picked up and spun in circles. Yet when
Speaker 1: the morning comes, but net is mostly intact. There are
Speaker 1: a few rips, a few balloons might have fled out,
Speaker 1: but nothing that will jeopardize the big day. But the
Speaker 1: balloon release team are worried that a second storm is
Speaker 1: forecast to hit. With the weather closing in the organizers
Speaker 1: decide to stop filling the net. There aren't two million
Speaker 1: balloons in there yet, but there are plenty, definitely more
Speaker 1: than Disneyland. The balloon release begins with a mass countdown,
Speaker 1: are you watching Mickey Mouse? Bah? Three? Two? Then with
Speaker 1: cheers and whistles and screams of triumph. The net is
Speaker 1: withdrawn and the balloons, every color of the rainbow, rise
Speaker 1: into the air, but at a distance, the colors merge
Speaker 1: to form a rusty cloud that royals around the city's
Speaker 1: iconic terminal tower. It's not a beautiful sight. It looks
Speaker 1: like blood released into water. It's unsettling. It was overwhelming.
Speaker 1: Balloons start like boiling in the air, recalled the local reporter.
Speaker 1: You thought, wow, we're going to drown in these balloons.
Speaker 1: The TV presenter, little John Ronaldi, isn't going to let
Speaker 1: the bilious storm cloud of balloons detract from the excitement.
Speaker 1: He bellows, Cleveland, Gas, the Cleveland, All this in Cleveland. Indeed,
Speaker 1: Cleveland has had its big build up. The balloons are free,
Speaker 1: and now what. A few years ago, three psychologists Jeff Gallac,
Speaker 1: Julian Givey, and Eleanor Williams examined the question of why
Speaker 1: so many Christmas or Birthday gifts are a bit disappointing.
Speaker 1: The researchers argued that while there were many ways in
Speaker 1: which a gift might fall flat, there was a single
Speaker 1: simple error behind them. All. When people bought gifts, they
Speaker 1: thought about the moment at which the gift would be unwrapped,
Speaker 1: the surprise, the delight, perhaps a grateful hug. All too
Speaker 1: often they didn't think beyond that. This explains why people
Speaker 1: give silly, joke gifts. It explains why they give stuff
Speaker 1: rather than experiences. It's hard to gift wrap and experience.
Speaker 1: And I think it also explains why the Cleveland balloon
Speaker 1: Fest happened. The idea of releasing so many balloons, of
Speaker 1: breaking the record, the sheer spectacle of the moment, it
Speaker 1: seems so exciting. It's only after the balloons have been
Speaker 1: released and the net droops flacidly to the ground that
Speaker 1: you start to ask questions like where are those balloons
Speaker 1: going to go? Are people actually going to start moving
Speaker 1: back to Cleveland because of a balloon record? And don't
Speaker 1: we love Disneyland because we love the characters and the
Speaker 1: scenery and the rides rather than because it released a
Speaker 1: million balloons. The wind and rain hit not long after
Speaker 1: the balloon release, and the balloons started dropping out of
Speaker 1: the sky as rapidly as they'd risen. There were reports
Speaker 1: of a few minor traffic accidents, and the local airport
Speaker 1: had to shut down a runway for a while. In
Speaker 1: a nearby farm, thoroughbred horses injured themselves after being spooked
Speaker 1: by the balloons. But the most obvious problem was the mess.
Speaker 1: Cleveland was now covered in shreds of lay techs. As
Speaker 1: for those cruel jibes about the mistake on the lake,
Speaker 1: they were becoming uncomfortably accurate because gazing out over Lake
Speaker 1: Erie from Cleveland, the water was covered in balloons. The
Speaker 1: morning of the big release, the coast Guard found the
Speaker 1: boat with the two missing fishermen, but the men themselves.
Speaker 1: The search became impossible. Rescue teams were out on boats
Speaker 1: scanning the water looking for a bright orange life jacket
Speaker 1: or ahead bobbing in the waves amid a couple of
Speaker 1: hundred thousand balloons. Eventually the search was abandoned. The bodies
Speaker 1: of the missing fishermen washed ashore a few days later.
Speaker 1: They were probably dead before the balloons were released, but
Speaker 1: the widow of one of the men sued United Way
Speaker 1: for over three million dollars. The case was settled out
Speaker 1: of court. So two was a case brought by the
Speaker 1: woman who owned those terrified prize horses. By then, of course,
Speaker 1: the surviving balloons had long since blown to Canada. Latex
Speaker 1: takes a while to biodegrade, while helium is a scarce
Speaker 1: and non renewable resource. The whole thing seems like environmental
Speaker 1: negligence at best, but treb hining. The balloon mastermind was
Speaker 1: infuriated by the idea that we should worry about a
Speaker 1: little latex. I've been in the balloon industry for years
Speaker 1: trying to spread joy and happiness, he complained to the
Speaker 1: Chicago Tribune. Are you going to eliminate everything on the
Speaker 1: face of the earth that creates happiness? If you eat
Speaker 1: enough apple pie, you can die? And what about fireworks?
Speaker 1: Are you going to ban them because they put a
Speaker 1: few chemicals in the air. It's very unfair to make
Speaker 1: this a litter issue. The balloon fest was not a
Speaker 1: resounding success. Amidst all the aches, United Way lost money.
Speaker 1: A representative said we would not do a balloon launch
Speaker 1: ever again. And what about that record a delightful short
Speaker 1: documentary Balloon Fest by filmmaker Nathan trusdall ends by noting
Speaker 1: that the event was not recognized by the Guinness Book
Speaker 1: of Records. Local newspapers tell the same story that it
Speaker 1: was never an official record, but then someone found a
Speaker 1: small print in an old edition of the Guinness Book
Speaker 1: of Records, Page two hundred and ninety says the largest
Speaker 1: ever mass balloon release was one of one million, four
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty nine thousand, six hundred and forty three
Speaker 1: sponsored by United Way at Public Square in Cleveland, Ohio,
Speaker 1: on September the twenty seventh, nineteen eighty six. So there
Speaker 1: you go. It was wrong to say the record wasn't
Speaker 1: recognized as a Guinness World Record. More accurate is to
Speaker 1: say that while Cleveland did break the record, the whole
Speaker 1: thing was so obscure that people thought it hadn't and
Speaker 1: people still take their vacations in Disneyland rather than Cleveland.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eleven, twenty five years after the
Speaker 1: original release, balloon Master Treb Hining told the Cleveland Plain
Speaker 1: Dealer that the record still stood. Of course it did,
Speaker 1: as the Plain Dealer noted, after the trouble the balloon
Speaker 1: launch caused no one around here would ever try a
Speaker 1: stunt like that. Again, it's good to dream big, but
Speaker 1: whether we're picking out a holiday present or planning to
Speaker 1: release two million balloons, we should imagine not just the
Speaker 1: moment of climax, but what happens afterwards, and whether it's
Speaker 1: really likely to play out as we hope. As for
Speaker 1: Mary Ellen's missing watch stolen away by a rogue bunch
Speaker 1: of balloons, your guests is as good as mine. Nathan
Speaker 1: Truesdell's documentary is balloon Fest. It's available to watch for
Speaker 1: free online. For a full list of our sources, please
Speaker 1: see the show notes at Tim Harford dot com. Cautionary
Speaker 1: Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Ryan Dilley with support from Courtney Guarino
Speaker 1: and Emily Vaughan. The sound design and original music is
Speaker 1: the work of Pascal Wise. Julia Barton edited the scripts.
Speaker 1: It features the voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie Gutridge,
Speaker 1: Stella Harford, and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been possible without the work of Mere LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: Heather Fane, John Schnarz, Carlie Mighiori, Eric Sandler, Royston Basserve,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Nicole Mrano, Daniellow, Lakhan, and Maya Kanig. Cautionary
Speaker 1: Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like
Speaker 1: the show, please remember to share, rate, and review.