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Speaker 1: Pushkin a mental health institution. A psychiatrist is assessing whether

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Speaker 1: a new patient needs to be admitted. I'm not going

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Speaker 1: to stay. I'm not going to stay. Please, Miss Tierney, relax,

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Speaker 1: take a seat, Miss Tierney. Miss Jean Tierney then one

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Speaker 1: of the most famous women in the world. She had

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Speaker 1: taken Hollywood by storm in the nineteen forties, starring in

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Speaker 1: Laura the Razor's Edge and as fem Fatale Ellen Barrant

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Speaker 1: in Leave Her to Heaven, which earned her an Academy

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Speaker 1: Award nomination for Best Actress. But now it's years later

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Speaker 1: and Jean Tierney hasn't starred in a movie for a while. Sadly,

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Speaker 1: it's not hard to see why. Nowadays she spends a

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Speaker 1: lot of time sleeping whole days, sometimes two at a time.

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Speaker 1: Then there were the delusions, and that means the steak

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Speaker 1: must be for you, ma'am. Take that back to the kitchen.

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry, ma'am. Is it not cooked? Your satisfaction? Please

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Speaker 1: just take it back to the kitchen. Gane, what are

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Speaker 1: you doing. You can't go on like this. You must eat.

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Speaker 1: I won't eat that food, mother. They're trying to poison me.

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Speaker 1: No wonder Jean's mother has brought her to a psychiatrist.

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Speaker 1: Who do you think is trying to poison you, Miss Dyrney?

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Speaker 1: I don't know if I can trust you. You might

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Speaker 1: be one of them. Who are you concerned about, Miss Dyrney?

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Speaker 1: The Communists? Jean is worried about the Communists, but she's

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Speaker 1: not going to tell him that. How do you spend

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Speaker 1: your time nowadays? Scrubbing the kitchen floor? It's true, Jeane

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Speaker 1: likes to scrub the kitchen floor. It's something she can

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Speaker 1: do without having to think. You know, miss Dearne, that

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Speaker 1: you'll have to stay so that we can help you.

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Speaker 1: You can't force me. No one wants to force you.

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Speaker 1: We can work on your problem and you might even

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Speaker 1: have fun. Do you have any floors that can scrub?

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Speaker 1: What had caused Jean Tierney's mind to become so tragically unmoored.

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Speaker 1: Her family did have a history of mental illness. Her aunt,

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Speaker 1: her mother's sister, had also been convinced that she was

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Speaker 1: being poisoned, But Jean herself later wrote a memoir tracing

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Speaker 1: her breakdown to a decision made by one of her

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Speaker 1: fans a decade and a half earlier. That decision is

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Speaker 1: one that might feel disturbingly familiar to many of us today.

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Speaker 1: I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to cautionary tales. Jean

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Speaker 1: Tierney never intended to be an actress. She came from

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Speaker 1: a well to do family. Her father was a New

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Speaker 1: York insurance broker. She had been to finishing school in Lausanne, Switzerland.

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Speaker 1: Girls from her class didn't become actresses. They married a

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Speaker 1: Yale man and made a home in Connecticut. That all

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Speaker 1: changed when Jean was seventeen. On a family holiday in California,

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Speaker 1: she went on a Hollywood studio tour where a director

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Speaker 1: approached her with the immortal line, young lady, you ought

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Speaker 1: to be in pictures? Could she come back tomorrow for

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Speaker 1: a screen test? She did, and she was offered a contract.

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Speaker 1: Her father, the insurance man, wasn't keen. He insisted that

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Speaker 1: she at least continue the plan to make her debut

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Speaker 1: in high society back on the East Coast. He was

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Speaker 1: sure she'd be so excited by the social whirl of

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Speaker 1: country club dances that she'd soon forget any pipe dreams

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Speaker 1: of the movies. I am so bored, I think I

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Speaker 1: will die. Jean's father grudgingly agreed, to help her get

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Speaker 1: into acting. She found an agent and roles on Broadway.

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Speaker 1: The critics loved her. She signed with twentieth Century Fox,

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Speaker 1: and in nineteen forty she starred in her first film,

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Speaker 1: a Western, with Henry Fonda. She landed more leading roles.

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Speaker 1: She got invited to much cooler parties. Yet one of

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Speaker 1: them she met a man. I thought he was the

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Speaker 1: most dangerous looking character I'd ever seen. Not handsome, but

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Speaker 1: dangerous in a seductive way. The man was Oleg Cassini,

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Speaker 1: a Russian Italian fashion designer. Jean's family did not approve

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Speaker 1: he wasn't a Yale man. He hadn't even gone to Harvard.

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Speaker 1: Jean and Oleg decided to elope. They booked flights to

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Speaker 1: Las Vegas under assumed names. In June nineteen forty one,

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Speaker 1: they were married. Jean was just twenty years old. While

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Speaker 1: Jean and Oleg were getting hitched in Vegas, on the

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Speaker 1: other side of the world, an eye surgeon was puzzling

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Speaker 1: over a mysterious wave of cases, all referred by pediatricians.

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Speaker 1: Norman mc alis to Gregg worked in a hospital in Sydney, Australia,

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Speaker 1: in the first half of nineteen forty one, he had

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Speaker 1: found himself seeing cataracts in newborn baby after newborn baby.

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Speaker 1: The cataracts were obvious from birth as dense white opacities

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Speaker 1: completely occupying the pupillary area. Most of the babies were

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Speaker 1: of small size, ill nourished, and difficult to feed. Many

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Speaker 1: of them were found to be suffering from a congenital

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Speaker 1: defect of the heart. It had seemed twenty cases himself

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Speaker 1: and had heard about more from his colleagues elsewhere in Australia.

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Speaker 1: Something strange was going on. But what Greg looked at

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Speaker 1: the babies dates of birth Six to nine months earlier,

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Speaker 1: an epidemic of rubella, often known as German measles, had

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Speaker 1: swept to Australia. Could there be a connection? Gregg asked

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Speaker 1: the mothers if they'd had German measles when they were pregnant.

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Speaker 1: Most said yes, some could remember, but that wasn't too

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Speaker 1: surprising as rubella is typically not too serious a rash

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Speaker 1: a few days of fever. If you had a mild case,

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Speaker 1: you might not even notice. Gregg published his speculations in

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Speaker 1: the Transactions of the Ophthalmological Society of Australia. I think

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Speaker 1: it is reasonable to assume that the occurrence cannot be

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Speaker 1: a mere coincidence. Not everyone was convinced. Could such a

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Speaker 1: minor infection in a pregnant woman really cause such severe

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Speaker 1: birth defects. To many doctors, it seemed unlikely. Still, it

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Speaker 1: was worth looking into. The National Health and Research Council

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Speaker 1: of Australia decided to investigate. Two years later, in nineteen

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Speaker 1: forty three, America had entered the Second World War. Jeane

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Speaker 1: Tierney's husband, Oleg Cassine, joined the army. It had just

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Speaker 1: been posted to Fort Riley in Kansas. Jean was preparing

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Speaker 1: to join him, but there was something she wanted to

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Speaker 1: do first. One last appearance at the Hollywood Canteen. The

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Speaker 1: Canteen was the movie industry's way of giving moral support

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Speaker 1: to the war effort. A social club with free entry

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Speaker 1: for anyone in an American military uniform. The stars would

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Speaker 1: entertain them, serve them food, chat to them, and dance

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Speaker 1: with them. Betty Davis, Rita Hayworth, Marlena Dietrich, Bob Hope.

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Speaker 1: They were all regulars. Jean hadn't been for a while.

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Speaker 1: She felt bad about that. At a nearby camp of

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Speaker 1: the United States Marine Corps Women's Reserve that gave one

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Speaker 1: young woman a moral dilemma. Have you heard Jean Tyranny's

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Speaker 1: at the Hollywood Canteen tonight. What a shame? We can't go.

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Speaker 1: They couldn't go because their camp was quarantine. There'd been

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Speaker 1: an outbreak of German measles. It was generally a mild disease,

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Speaker 1: but still in wartime, the military doesn't want any kind

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Speaker 1: of infection ripping through the ranks, potentially putting a lot

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Speaker 1: of people out of action at once. I know we're

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Speaker 1: not supposed to, but you're not thinking a break in quarantine. Oh,

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Speaker 1: I feel fine. And Gene Tierney, she's my favorite. There

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Speaker 1: were two things that young marine didn't know. She didn't

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Speaker 1: know about the article Norman McAllister Gregg had published in

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Speaker 1: the Transactions of the Ophthalmological Society of Australia. Why would

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Speaker 1: she and you might have guessed. The second thing she

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Speaker 1: didn't know Gene Tierney was pregnant. We'll discover the consequences

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Speaker 1: of the Marine's mistake in a moment. A few days

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Speaker 1: after her appearance at the Hollywood Canteen, Jean went to

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Speaker 1: see her doctor. I've got these red spots all over

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Speaker 1: my face. You have Rubella, nothing to worry about. You'll

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Speaker 1: be fine within a week. And she was, or so

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Speaker 1: it seemed. Jean went to Kansas and lived the life

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Speaker 1: of an army wife at Fort Riley, scrubbing o Leg's laundry,

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Speaker 1: and she had her baby, a daughter. They called her Daria.

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Speaker 1: She was fair and blond, a beautiful child. But Daria

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Speaker 1: was born premature. She weighed just two and a half pounds.

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Speaker 1: She needed eleven blood transfusions. She had a cataract in

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Speaker 1: the corner of an eye. As the months went by,

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Speaker 1: Jean fought the realization that Daria wasn't developing as she should.

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Speaker 1: When the baby waved her hands in front of her

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Speaker 1: eyes seemed to be struggling to see them. It also

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Speaker 1: appeared that she couldn't hear. When Daria was a year old,

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Speaker 1: Jean was leafing through a newspaper an article jumped out

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Speaker 1: at her. It was about a newly published study in Australia.

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Speaker 1: Researchers had been looking into a theory first suggested by

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Speaker 1: a Sydney eye surgeon, and now there was evidence doctor

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Speaker 1: Gregg had been right. When a pregnant woman gets German

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Speaker 1: measles in her first trimester, there's a risk of serious

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Speaker 1: birth defects. Jeanne took the article to her daughter's pediatrician,

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Speaker 1: hoping to be told that something could be done to

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Speaker 1: make Daria better. The doctor was diplomatic, new research was

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Speaker 1: being done all the time, and who knows what might

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Speaker 1: one day be possible, but it was clear that he

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Speaker 1: wasn't optimistic. Soon after, Jeanne was at a Sunday afternoon

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Speaker 1: tennis party in Los Angeles. A young woman approached her.

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Speaker 1: I don't suppose you remember me, do you? Why? No?

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Speaker 1: Should I? I'm in the women's branch of the Marines.

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Speaker 1: We met once at the Hollywood Canteen. Let's add two

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Speaker 1: more items to the list of things that the marine

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Speaker 1: now didn't know. She didn't know about Daria's disabilities. In

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Speaker 1: those days, such things simply weren't talked about, and surely

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Speaker 1: she hadn't read the newspaper article that jean had taken

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Speaker 1: to her pediatrician, making clear that rubella could be something

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Speaker 1: far more than a minor inconvenience. You know, I probably

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Speaker 1: shouldn't tell you this, but almost the whole camp was

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Speaker 1: down with German measles. I brought quarantine to come to

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Speaker 1: the Canteen to meet the stars. Everyone told me I shouldn't,

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Speaker 1: but I just had to go, and you were my favorite.

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Speaker 1: I've often thought about Jean Tierney during the COVID pandemic,

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Speaker 1: and the news has served up depressing stories about people

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Speaker 1: acting thoughtlessly like that young marine. Take the case of

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Speaker 1: Brady Sluda. He was a college student from Ohio went

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Speaker 1: to a spring break party in Miami in March twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty before the widespread lockdowns. But spring break came far

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Speaker 1: enough into the news of the pandemic that Sluda really

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Speaker 1: should have known better than to tell a journalist if

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Speaker 1: I get Corona, I get Corona. At the end of

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Speaker 1: the day, I'm not going to let start me from Vardian.

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Speaker 1: Brady's problem was thinking of himself only as a potential

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Speaker 1: victim of the coronavirus. If that were true, his view

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Speaker 1: would be completely defensible. COVID was unlikely to be serious

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Speaker 1: for someone of his age, and you're any young wants

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Speaker 1: But of course we're not just potential victims of COVID.

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Speaker 1: We're potential vectors. We can catch it, incubate it without

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Speaker 1: even knowing, and then pass it on to someone else

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Speaker 1: whom it might be a much bigger deal that can

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Speaker 1: be easy to forget. Consider some of the reactions to

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Speaker 1: a widely reported study of mask wearing early in the pandemic,

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Speaker 1: before most governments were mandating the use of masks. Some

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Speaker 1: Danish researchers recruited six thousand people to a randomized controlled

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Speaker 1: trial the best way of gathering evidence about what works.

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Speaker 1: They gave half the group masks and instructions about wearing them,

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Speaker 1: as well as some standard advice on social distancing. The

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Speaker 1: other half, the control group, got only the advice to

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Speaker 1: social distance. The results over the next few weeks, a

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Speaker 1: fraction under two percent of the mask wearing group got COVID.

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Speaker 1: Among the non mask wearers, it was a fraction over

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Speaker 1: two percent. The anti lockdown group Keep Britain Free shared

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Speaker 1: the news like this Denmark proves mask are not effective,

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Speaker 1: but the Danish study didn't prove any such thing. Keep

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Speaker 1: Britain Free was thinking of mask wearers only as potential victims,

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Speaker 1: and if your sole concern about COVID is getting the

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Speaker 1: disease yourself, this particular study did indeed suggest that wearing

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Speaker 1: a mask wouldn't do much to help you. But that's

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Speaker 1: not the only reason we wear masks, or even the

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Speaker 1: main reason we wear masks to protect others from virus

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Speaker 1: particles that might be coming out of our own mouths

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Speaker 1: and noses. We wear masks because we understand that we're

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Speaker 1: not just potential victims, we're potential vectors. Rubello is like

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Speaker 1: COVID in that it's far more dangerous for some people

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Speaker 1: than others, But that wasn't common knowledge in nineteen forty three.

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Speaker 1: And before we rush to judge the young marine, perhaps

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Speaker 1: we should first look at ourselves. Have you ever gone

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Speaker 1: into work when you should have in sick? If you're

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Speaker 1: a parent, have you ever sent your child to school

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Speaker 1: or daycare when they weren't fully recovered from an illness.

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Speaker 1: Research from twenty nineteen found that ninety percent of US

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Speaker 1: white collar workers sometimes or always came into the office

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Speaker 1: when they're coughing and sneezing. Perhaps surprisingly, they said that

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Speaker 1: the main reason wasn't lack of sick leave or pressure

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Speaker 1: from the boss. It was wanting to keep on top

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Speaker 1: of work. But researchers calculate that more productivity is lost

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Speaker 1: by people coming into work when they're sick than by

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Speaker 1: people taking cheeky days off when they aren't that's partly

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Speaker 1: because coughing and sneezing all over your co workers makes

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Speaker 1: them sick and unproductive too. As for sending children to school,

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Speaker 1: check out this advertising campaign from a local government website

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Speaker 1: in the UK, The Pushy parent Get Them to School.

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Speaker 1: A page on the local government's website explain that parents

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Speaker 1: should force their kids to go to school if they

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Speaker 1: complain of feeling a bit unwell. Putting your foot down

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Speaker 1: isn't always easy, but one hundred percent attendance should be

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Speaker 1: every parent's goal. This attendance campaign, like the research into

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Speaker 1: white collar sneezers, was from twenty nineteen, pre pandemic. Even then,

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Speaker 1: the pro attendance cheerleading was criticized. Isn't it courteous to

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Speaker 1: other parents to keep your child at home when they

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Speaker 1: might have something contagious? After COVID the campaign web page

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Speaker 1: now has a slightly different message. Sorry, the page you

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Speaker 1: asked for could not be found. It may have been

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Speaker 1: moved or deleted after the break. Agatha Christie puts her

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Speaker 1: own spin on the story. You know, I probably shouldn't

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Speaker 1: tell you this, but almost the whole camp was down

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Speaker 1: with German measles. I brought quarantine to come to the

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Speaker 1: canteen to meet the stars. As the young marine at

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Speaker 1: the tennis party made her confession to Jean Tierney, she

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Speaker 1: was utterly unaware of the impact she might have had

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Speaker 1: on Tierney and her daughter. One can only imagine the

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Speaker 1: star's state of mind. That is, in fact, what Agatha

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Speaker 1: Christie did a couple of decades later. Imagine it. In

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Speaker 1: her novel The Mirror Cracked from side to side, a

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Speaker 1: movie star takes revenge on the thoughtless partygoer who exposed

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Speaker 1: her to Rubella by offering her a poisoned dacri. In

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Speaker 1: real life, though Jean didn't seek revenge, she was too

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Speaker 1: stunned to seek anything. She just stood there for a

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Speaker 1: while as the young Marine babbled on. Then she silently

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Speaker 1: turned and walked away. Jean looked after her daughter, Daria

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Speaker 1: for as long as she could, hoping against hope that

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Speaker 1: one day Daria would hear and see clearly and speak.

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Speaker 1: When Daria was four, the doctor sat Jean down for

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Speaker 1: a difficult conversation. He told her that she simply couldn't

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Speaker 1: keep her child. It would be unhealthy for Jean and

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Speaker 1: hopeless for Daria. He explained reluctantly, Jean agreed to place

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Speaker 1: Daria in an institution where she could get round the

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Speaker 1: clock professional care. Daria lived to sixty six, her mind

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Speaker 1: ever locked in infancy. She has never talked, but on

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Speaker 1: my visit she is always aware of my presence. She

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Speaker 1: sniffs at my neck and hugs me. Jean's marriage crumbled

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Speaker 1: under the strain, but her movie career continued to thrive.

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Speaker 1: As long as I was playing someone else, I was fine.

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Speaker 1: When I had to be myself, my problems began. I

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Speaker 1: felt my mind begin to unravel. I felt scared for

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Speaker 1: no reason. She tried to talk to her mother, who

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Speaker 1: hoped it was all just a passing phase. All you

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Speaker 1: need is an attractive bow and some pretty new French dresses.

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Speaker 1: Attractive bows weren't hard to find in the late forties

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Speaker 1: and early fifties. Jean dated the future President John F.

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Speaker 1: Kennedy and the globetrotting playboy Prince Ali Khan. But as

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Speaker 1: her friends praised how well she was coping, she was

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Speaker 1: finding it harder and harder to hold herself together. I

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Speaker 1: felt like a person trying to get out of a

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Speaker 1: burning building. When my breakdown came, I cried all the time.

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Speaker 1: I cried for Daria and for me, and I cried

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Speaker 1: for hours until I often didn't know where the tears

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Speaker 1: came from. The young marine who decided the quarantine rules

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Speaker 1: needn't apply to her, Brady Sluda, who failed to realize

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Speaker 1: that anyone else might be hurt if he personally caught coronavirus.

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Speaker 1: It would be easy to think about this as a

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Speaker 1: tale of selfishness, but selfishness isn't quite the right word.

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Speaker 1: This is more a tale of thoughtlessness. In fact, we

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Speaker 1: flawed humans are far more altruistic than many people give

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Speaker 1: us credit for. We just need a little help. Ten

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Speaker 1: years ago, the psychologist Adam Grant and David Hoffmann, who

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Speaker 1: studies organizational culture, asked the question, how could you minimize

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Speaker 1: the number of times nurses and doctors forget to wash

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Speaker 1: their hands? Yes, even before the pandemic, we were being

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Speaker 1: reminded to wash our hands, or at least health professionals were,

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Speaker 1: lest they spread disease. But those reminders didn't always work.

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Speaker 1: Grant and Hoffmann put up signs above dozens of handgel

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Speaker 1: dispensers in hospitals. One sign read hand hygiene prevents you

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Speaker 1: from catching diseases. Another said hand hygiene prevents patients from

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Speaker 1: catching diseases. Then they came back a fortnight later to

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Speaker 1: see how much handgel had been used. The first sign,

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Speaker 1: reminding nurses and doctors that they were at risk of disease,

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Speaker 1: had no effect whatsoever. The second one did. When the

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Speaker 1: doctors and nurses were reminded of patience, they used fifty

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Speaker 1: percent more handgell. It's not just handwashing. In twenty fourteen,

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Speaker 1: researchers in Bosnia and Herzegovina wandered about the effects of

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Speaker 1: different kinds of messages on blood donation drives. They sent

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Speaker 1: out seven different types of letters to people who'd given

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Speaker 1: blood in the past, asking in different ways for them

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Speaker 1: to give blood again. One letter contained factual information about

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Speaker 1: what kind of illnesses cause others to need blood. Another

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Speaker 1: described a specific victim who needed blood, with a name

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Speaker 1: and a picture and so on. The results were even

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Speaker 1: more impressive than in the handgel study. The researchers found

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Speaker 1: something that made people sixty three percent more likely to

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Speaker 1: arrange an appointment to give blood. But this time there

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Speaker 1: wasn't anything to do with the different messages. They all

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Speaker 1: had a big impact compared with no letter at all,

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Speaker 1: just receiving the message was what mattered. Everyone knew that

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Speaker 1: giving blood was altruistic. It didn't require any clever persuasion

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Speaker 1: to get them to do it again. All it took

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Speaker 1: was a simple reminder. The list of examples goes on.

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Speaker 1: Ads about drunk driving often make you think about the

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Speaker 1: risk to others, not yourself. Some of the hardest hitting

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Speaker 1: anti smoking ads focus on secondhand smoke. Still, another study

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Speaker 1: finds that if you want to persuade people to get vaccinations,

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Speaker 1: a good way to do that is to remind them

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Speaker 1: of the benefit to others. That matters because vaccines don't

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Speaker 1: always work perfectly and not everyone can have them. When

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Speaker 1: the UK started to use a new rubella vaccine in

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy, the country vaccinated only women of childbearing age.

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Speaker 1: That seems to make sense, they're the population you should

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Speaker 1: worry about. After all. The rubella vaccine is pretty effective.

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Speaker 1: It works ninety five percent of the time, but that

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Speaker 1: still left five percent of women susceptible. In nineteen eighty seven,

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Speaker 1: the UK recorded one hundred and sixty seven cases of

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Speaker 1: pregnant women with rubella. They were catching it from children,

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Speaker 1: their own or their friends. So why not vaccinate the

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Speaker 1: children too. The US had been doing that since the

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Speaker 1: early nineteen seventies, and in nineteen eighty eight it's what

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Speaker 1: the UK started to do too. It made rubella vaccine

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Speaker 1: universal for children as part of the MMR vaccine. Rubella

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Speaker 1: is what the R stands for, alongside mumps and measles,

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Speaker 1: and fifteen years later, the number of rubella infections in

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Speaker 1: pregnancy had dropped from one hundred and sixty seven to

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Speaker 1: just one. Much the same will be true of COVID vaccines.

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Speaker 1: If we vaccinate only the vulnerable, it won't be enough.

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Speaker 1: We need the people who aren't at much risk, the

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Speaker 1: Brady Sluders of the world, to remember that they're not

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Speaker 1: just at risk of catching a disease, but of passing

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Speaker 1: it on, causing consequences for others that can be deadly

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Speaker 1: or last alike. As I said at the beginning of

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Speaker 1: this cautionary tale, we don't know the exact connection between

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Speaker 1: Gene Tierney's mental breakdown and her daughter's condition, but we

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Speaker 1: do know what Jean believed. She was certain that Daria's

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Speaker 1: disability was the cause of her own mental illness, and

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Speaker 1: that disability was caused by the marine's thoughtlessness, passing on

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Speaker 1: Rubella that night in the Hollywood Canteen. Jean spent time

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Speaker 1: in three mental health clinics. She went through thirty two

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Speaker 1: rounds of electro convulsive therapy. Between those spells in institutions,

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Speaker 1: she stayed in her mother's fourteenth floor apartment in New York.

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Speaker 1: One day, Jean's mother returned from shopping to be accosted

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Speaker 1: in the lobby by an anxious dorman. There are policemen

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Speaker 1: in your apartment, he said, talking to your daughter. Now,

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Speaker 1: don't worry, she's okay. But well, someone called the police

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Speaker 1: because they saw your daughter standing on the window ledge

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Speaker 1: looking like she was about to Jean's mother ran for

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Speaker 1: the elevator. Oh, Jean, don't get excited, mother. I'm perfectly

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Speaker 1: all right with you. I was never going to do it, mother,

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Speaker 1: I was only looking down to see how far it was.

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Speaker 1: Jean did get better. Mostly. She married an oil baron

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Speaker 1: and lived quietly in Texas. She wrote her memoir Self Portrait. Sometimes,

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Speaker 1: she said she'd wake up convinced that the Communists had

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Speaker 1: stolen her daughter. Once her husband found her banging on

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Speaker 1: their neighbor's door in Houston in the middle of the night,

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Speaker 1: sure that they'd kidnapped Daria and demanding that they give

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Speaker 1: her back. But these moments passed and she learned to

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Speaker 1: accept them. To make any progress at all, you first

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Speaker 1: have to accept the fact that you have an illness.

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Speaker 1: If it takes saying out loud, I am sick, I

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Speaker 1: am insane, I am a crazy person. One must say it.

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Speaker 1: I have gone through such a time and more and survived.

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Speaker 1: A couple of days after his Spring Break interview, Brady

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Speaker 1: Sluder posted on Instagram. Our generation may feel invincible, but

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Speaker 1: we have a responsibility. I deeply apologize for my unawareness

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Speaker 1: of my actions. I want to use this as motivation

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Speaker 1: to become a better person, a better son, a better friend,

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Speaker 1: and a better citizen. Brady Sluder hadn't been heartless, he

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Speaker 1: had been thoughtless, and once he had been prompted to think,

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Speaker 1: he wanted to do the right thing. I'm sure that

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Speaker 1: would have been true for them An if she'd had

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Speaker 1: the slightest idea of the harm she could do. In fact,

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Speaker 1: I think it's true for most of us. Remember those

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Speaker 1: blood donors in Bosnia. These were altruistic people. They'd given

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Speaker 1: blood before, but they were also forgetful. Without a reminder,

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Speaker 1: they didn't think of going back to give again. We

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Speaker 1: can often be self centered in that we instinctively see

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Speaker 1: things from our own perspective, but when we remember to

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Speaker 1: think about others, we're not selfish, quite the opposite, and

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Speaker 1: sometimes all it takes to remind us is something as

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Speaker 1: simple as a sign above the hand gel Dispenser. Key

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Speaker 1: sources for this episode include Gene Tierney's autobiography Self Portrait

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Speaker 1: and Adam gra and David Hoffman's study in psychological science

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Speaker 1: It's Not All About Me. For a full list of references,

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Speaker 1: see Tim Harford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written by

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Speaker 1: me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Ryan

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Speaker 1: Dilley and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music

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Speaker 1: are the work of Pascal Wise. Julia Barton edited the scripts.

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Speaker 1: Starring in this series of Cautionary Tales are Helena Bonon, Carter,

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Speaker 1: and Jeffrey Wright, alongside Nazar Alderazzi, Ed Gochen, Melanie Gutteridge,

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Speaker 1: Rachel Hanshaw, Cobnor Holbrook, Smith, Greg Lockett, Massa Munroe, and

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Speaker 1: Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without

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Speaker 1: the work of Mia LaBelle, Jacob Weissberg, Heather Fame, John Schnarz,

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Speaker 1: Carlie mcgliori, Eric Sandler, Emily Rostock, Maggie Taylor, Danielle Lacan

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Speaker 1: and Maya Canning. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries.

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Speaker 1: If you like the show, please remember to share, rate,

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Speaker 1: and review.