1
00:00:15,370 --> 00:00:28,450
Speaker 1: Pushkin. It was sunset when the Lieutenant Governor of Java,

2
00:00:28,730 --> 00:00:35,130
Speaker 1: Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, heard the thunderous explosion. He assumed

3
00:00:35,130 --> 00:00:38,330
Speaker 1: it was the sound of cannon, perhaps the wily French

4
00:00:38,650 --> 00:00:42,970
Speaker 1: seeking to wrestle colonial control of the Indonesian archipelago away

5
00:00:42,970 --> 00:00:47,010
Speaker 1: from the British. In response to the detonations, for hundreds

6
00:00:47,050 --> 00:00:50,610
Speaker 1: of miles around, British officials were sending out troops to

7
00:00:50,690 --> 00:00:54,450
Speaker 1: look for invaders, or warships to look for pirates, or

8
00:00:54,530 --> 00:00:59,330
Speaker 1: rescue boats to look for shipwrecked survivors. The Javanese locals

9
00:00:59,490 --> 00:01:04,010
Speaker 1: saw things differently. They thought one of Java's many volcanoes

10
00:01:04,130 --> 00:01:08,330
Speaker 1: was erupting. That was a better guess. The noise was

11
00:01:08,450 --> 00:01:13,250
Speaker 1: coming from a volcano, But like the colonial occupiers, they

12
00:01:13,290 --> 00:01:17,490
Speaker 1: assumed the source of the noise was nearby. Nobody could

13
00:01:17,570 --> 00:01:21,970
Speaker 1: quite grasp that the earth shattering roar was coming from

14
00:01:22,010 --> 00:01:27,610
Speaker 1: Mount Tambora. Mount Tambora was thought to be extinct, or

15
00:01:27,650 --> 00:01:32,570
Speaker 1: to the point, Mount Tambora was producing the cacophony from

16
00:01:32,690 --> 00:01:38,810
Speaker 1: eight hundred miles away. It was April fifth, eighteen fifteen,

17
00:01:39,210 --> 00:01:43,210
Speaker 1: and Tambora was just getting started. A few days later,

18
00:01:43,250 --> 00:01:49,970
Speaker 1: after nightfall, it erupted again. Lava sprayed up in gigantic

19
00:01:50,050 --> 00:01:55,410
Speaker 1: fountains before engulfing the entire mountain in flames an hour later.

20
00:01:55,610 --> 00:01:59,170
Speaker 1: The glow of those flames were shrouded in ash and dust,

21
00:02:00,210 --> 00:02:06,090
Speaker 1: and still the eruption continued. The air above the mountain

22
00:02:06,490 --> 00:02:10,690
Speaker 1: was superheated, carrying a column of ash many miles into

23
00:02:10,730 --> 00:02:14,530
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. As more air rushed in to fill the void,

24
00:02:14,810 --> 00:02:20,530
Speaker 1: the infernal vortex sucked in horses and cattle, trees, and people.

25
00:02:21,810 --> 00:02:25,530
Speaker 1: The surge of lava into the sea caused fifteen foot

26
00:02:25,610 --> 00:02:29,490
Speaker 1: hide tsunamis that scoured the region, while the meeting of

27
00:02:29,650 --> 00:02:36,090
Speaker 1: cold ocean and searing rock created violent steam explosions. Ash

28
00:02:36,130 --> 00:02:42,250
Speaker 1: and pummice covered the oceans, eventually drifting two thousand miles

29
00:02:42,250 --> 00:02:47,730
Speaker 1: away behind the impenetrable cloud of dust. The top three

30
00:02:47,730 --> 00:02:54,370
Speaker 1: thousand feet of the mountain had been obliterated. Mount Tambora's

31
00:02:54,490 --> 00:02:58,450
Speaker 1: eruption had been a hundred times more violent than that

32
00:02:58,570 --> 00:03:02,610
Speaker 1: of Mount Saint Helens in nineteen eighty or Vesuvius, which

33
00:03:02,650 --> 00:03:07,570
Speaker 1: destroyed Pompeii in the year seventy nine, tens of thousands

34
00:03:07,610 --> 00:03:11,810
Speaker 1: of times more vile than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

35
00:03:13,410 --> 00:03:18,770
Speaker 1: After a night of unimaginable ferocity, dawn was scarcely visible.

36
00:03:19,890 --> 00:03:23,730
Speaker 1: The ashes now began to fall in showers, wrote the

37
00:03:23,770 --> 00:03:27,490
Speaker 1: captain of a British ship three hundred miles away, and

38
00:03:27,610 --> 00:03:32,890
Speaker 1: the appearance altogether was truly awful and alarming. He described

39
00:03:32,970 --> 00:03:37,770
Speaker 1: the dark rain as a perfect impalpable powder or dust

40
00:03:37,890 --> 00:03:41,650
Speaker 1: that gave off a singed odor. The sailors had to

41
00:03:41,690 --> 00:03:44,410
Speaker 1: shovel tons of the stuff into the harbor to prevent

42
00:03:44,450 --> 00:03:48,410
Speaker 1: the ship from sinking under the weight. The darkness was

43
00:03:48,490 --> 00:03:51,970
Speaker 1: so profound throughout the remainder of the day that I

44
00:03:52,090 --> 00:03:55,290
Speaker 1: never saw anything equal to it. In the darkest night,

45
00:03:55,930 --> 00:03:58,410
Speaker 1: it was impossible to see your hand when held up

46
00:03:58,450 --> 00:04:03,370
Speaker 1: close to the eye. The ash cloud was now nearly

47
00:04:03,410 --> 00:04:07,330
Speaker 1: the size of the United States. With the sun blotted out,

48
00:04:07,690 --> 00:04:12,810
Speaker 1: temperatures in Java had fallen by twenty degrees fahrenheit. An

49
00:04:12,890 --> 00:04:16,450
Speaker 1: inch of ash is enough to destroy crops, but for

50
00:04:16,570 --> 00:04:20,450
Speaker 1: miles and miles around, the ash lay a yard deep.

51
00:04:21,930 --> 00:04:27,770
Speaker 1: The human cost of the explosion was terrible. Twelve thousand

52
00:04:27,810 --> 00:04:30,890
Speaker 1: people had died the night of the largest eruption in

53
00:04:30,930 --> 00:04:35,890
Speaker 1: the torrent of superheated gas ash and rock. Tens of

54
00:04:35,970 --> 00:04:39,170
Speaker 1: thousands more would die as the ash poisoned the air,

55
00:04:39,570 --> 00:04:43,610
Speaker 1: the water, and the food. The death toll in the

56
00:04:43,650 --> 00:04:51,850
Speaker 1: Indonesian archipelago was nearly ninety thousand people. It would be

57
00:04:51,930 --> 00:04:55,690
Speaker 1: many weeks before anyone in Europe or America even new

58
00:04:55,730 --> 00:04:59,770
Speaker 1: about the calamity, But the echoes of the colossal eruption

59
00:05:00,370 --> 00:05:05,890
Speaker 1: would not be quick to fade. Mount Tambora would reshape

60
00:05:05,890 --> 00:05:12,130
Speaker 1: the world, and the story had been he begun. I'm

61
00:05:12,290 --> 00:05:41,770
Speaker 1: Tim Harford, and you're listening to cautionary tales. When the

62
00:05:41,850 --> 00:05:47,210
Speaker 1: volcano exploded, the young Londoner Mary Walstoncroft Godwin was seventeen

63
00:05:47,290 --> 00:05:50,850
Speaker 1: years old and her love life flowed as hot and

64
00:05:51,090 --> 00:05:54,690
Speaker 1: dangerous as any lava. She was the daughter of the

65
00:05:54,690 --> 00:05:59,290
Speaker 1: philosophers William Godwin and Mary Walstoncroft, but her mother had

66
00:05:59,370 --> 00:06:03,330
Speaker 1: died when Mary was just a newborn. William Godwin remarried

67
00:06:03,610 --> 00:06:08,210
Speaker 1: and struggled financially even in the early eighteen hundreds. Philosophy

68
00:06:08,250 --> 00:06:14,050
Speaker 1: didn't pay. Mary first met Percy bish Shelley three years

69
00:06:14,170 --> 00:06:18,970
Speaker 1: before Tambora erupted. They would secretly visit her mother's grave

70
00:06:19,050 --> 00:06:22,570
Speaker 1: in Saint Pancras Churchyard in London, and they would read

71
00:06:22,610 --> 00:06:25,930
Speaker 1: the great woman's works, such as a Vindication of the

72
00:06:26,010 --> 00:06:29,570
Speaker 1: Rights of Women. The churchyard seems to have been a

73
00:06:29,650 --> 00:06:35,730
Speaker 1: venue for other activities too, since Mary soon became pregnant.

74
00:06:35,810 --> 00:06:39,610
Speaker 1: The two of them eloped with Mary's stepsister, Claire Claremont,

75
00:06:39,690 --> 00:06:43,570
Speaker 1: who had her own designs on Shelley. Shelley's wife, Harriet,

76
00:06:44,130 --> 00:06:51,090
Speaker 1: also pregnant, was left behind. Mary's first pregnancy ended in tragedy.

77
00:06:51,730 --> 00:06:55,530
Speaker 1: Her daughter was born prematurely. She nursed the baby for

78
00:06:55,650 --> 00:07:00,170
Speaker 1: eleven days, and then her diary recorded, I awoke in

79
00:07:00,290 --> 00:07:03,170
Speaker 1: the night to give it suck. It appeared to be

80
00:07:03,250 --> 00:07:07,130
Speaker 1: sleeping so quietly that I would not awake. It followed

81
00:07:07,210 --> 00:07:16,250
Speaker 1: in the morning by my baby dead. By the summer

82
00:07:16,290 --> 00:07:22,090
Speaker 1: of eighteen sixteen, Mary was pregnant again, still with Percy Shelley,

83
00:07:22,210 --> 00:07:25,810
Speaker 1: and with Claire Claremont still in tow. The three of

84
00:07:25,850 --> 00:07:29,930
Speaker 1: them had joined what some people called the League of Incest,

85
00:07:30,570 --> 00:07:34,810
Speaker 1: and such rumors did credibly swirl around their companion, Lord Byron.

86
00:07:35,690 --> 00:07:39,450
Speaker 1: The League of Incest was completed by Byron's personal doctor,

87
00:07:39,570 --> 00:07:43,610
Speaker 1: John Polydori, and the air was thick with sexual tension.

88
00:07:45,050 --> 00:07:48,210
Speaker 1: Claire had slept with Shelley and was pregnant by Byron,

89
00:07:48,370 --> 00:07:51,410
Speaker 1: and had ambitions to renew at least one of those relationships,

90
00:07:51,570 --> 00:07:55,890
Speaker 1: and perhaps both. John Polydori was certainly keen to sleep

91
00:07:55,890 --> 00:08:00,050
Speaker 1: with Mary, which Shelley might well have encouraged, Shelley, being

92
00:08:00,250 --> 00:08:05,770
Speaker 1: that sort of poet. Byron himself had designs on Percy Shelley.

93
00:08:07,650 --> 00:08:10,610
Speaker 1: The scent of scandal around all of them were so

94
00:08:10,690 --> 00:08:15,650
Speaker 1: strong that they decided to leave England altogether. They converged

95
00:08:15,690 --> 00:08:19,330
Speaker 1: on the shores of Lake Geneva in May eighteen sixteen.

96
00:08:21,090 --> 00:08:25,130
Speaker 1: Byron's party were staying at the Villa Dea Dhati, Shelley's

97
00:08:25,170 --> 00:08:28,730
Speaker 1: party nearby, and the two groups spent a great deal

98
00:08:28,730 --> 00:08:33,570
Speaker 1: of time together in the Swiss summer. Lake Geneva is

99
00:08:33,730 --> 00:08:38,130
Speaker 1: ordinarily an idyllic area. They would have gone boating, slept

100
00:08:38,170 --> 00:08:41,770
Speaker 1: in meadows in the sunshine, and admired the alpine peaks

101
00:08:41,810 --> 00:08:46,370
Speaker 1: as they sparkled against the blue sky. Not that year,

102
00:08:47,130 --> 00:08:50,610
Speaker 1: never was a scene more desolate, wrote Mary of her

103
00:08:50,690 --> 00:08:54,330
Speaker 1: journey to Geneva. The trees in these regions are incredibly

104
00:08:54,450 --> 00:08:57,890
Speaker 1: large and stand and scattered clumps over the white wilderness.

105
00:08:58,810 --> 00:09:02,290
Speaker 1: The vast expanse of snow was checkered only by these

106
00:09:02,330 --> 00:09:06,130
Speaker 1: gigantic pines and the poles that marked our road. No

107
00:09:06,370 --> 00:09:10,610
Speaker 1: river or rock encircled lawn relieved the y. After the

108
00:09:10,690 --> 00:09:15,170
Speaker 1: snow came the incessant rain. The group rarely traveled, and

109
00:09:15,290 --> 00:09:19,570
Speaker 1: when they did, they saw desperate peasants roaming begging for food.

110
00:09:20,970 --> 00:09:24,490
Speaker 1: Then one day Shelley and Byron went sailing on the lake.

111
00:09:25,250 --> 00:09:29,730
Speaker 1: A sudden storm nearly drowned them both. With the external

112
00:09:29,730 --> 00:09:34,130
Speaker 1: world rather lacking in jollity, the group stayed inside, trapped

113
00:09:34,170 --> 00:09:41,130
Speaker 1: by the oppressive conditions, talking, reading, violently, arguing. Polyodori even

114
00:09:41,210 --> 00:09:45,450
Speaker 1: challenged Shelly to a duel, which Shelley laughed off. In

115
00:09:45,610 --> 00:09:50,730
Speaker 1: various pairings, they flirted with a smoldering intensity. Shelley and

116
00:09:50,770 --> 00:09:55,290
Speaker 1: Byron talked of science and philosophy. Polydori explained the new

117
00:09:55,330 --> 00:10:01,530
Speaker 1: ideas of galvanism, jerking corpses into movement by applying electric currency.

118
00:10:02,890 --> 00:10:06,730
Speaker 1: Many and long were the conversations, said Mary Godwin, to

119
00:10:06,770 --> 00:10:10,570
Speaker 1: which I was a devout but nearly silently listener. Various

120
00:10:10,650 --> 00:10:14,810
Speaker 1: philosophical doctrines were discussed, and, among others, the nature of

121
00:10:14,850 --> 00:10:20,850
Speaker 1: the principle of life outside. The thunderstorms raged the lightning

122
00:10:20,970 --> 00:10:25,090
Speaker 1: throwing the mountains around them from deep darkness into harsh light.

123
00:10:26,370 --> 00:10:31,130
Speaker 1: That heady mix of sex and loss, philosophy and poetry,

124
00:10:31,570 --> 00:10:35,930
Speaker 1: drab confinement, and the spectacles of nature was to produce

125
00:10:36,010 --> 00:10:44,650
Speaker 1: something extraordinary. One night at the Villa Diodati, Byron challenged

126
00:10:44,690 --> 00:10:48,210
Speaker 1: his group of friends, lovers and rivals to each write

127
00:10:48,530 --> 00:10:54,650
Speaker 1: a ghost story. The rivalry, the lust, the psychodrama, the darkness.

128
00:10:54,730 --> 00:10:59,410
Speaker 1: It must have been intoxicating. One evening, during a dramatic

129
00:10:59,490 --> 00:11:04,330
Speaker 1: reading by Byron, Percy Shelley had a panic attack, screaming

130
00:11:04,330 --> 00:11:07,090
Speaker 1: at a vision of a woman with eyes staring out

131
00:11:07,090 --> 00:11:09,410
Speaker 1: of her breasts from where her nipples should of being.

132
00:11:11,090 --> 00:11:15,050
Speaker 1: John Polidori used this fit of fantasy in his story

133
00:11:15,410 --> 00:11:21,050
Speaker 1: The Vampire, which influenced Dracula. But it's not the Vampire

134
00:11:21,130 --> 00:11:25,570
Speaker 1: that's most remembered from the ghost story contest. It's Mary

135
00:11:25,650 --> 00:11:32,090
Speaker 1: Godwin's novel Frankenstein, a work which she imagined and started

136
00:11:32,130 --> 00:11:35,490
Speaker 1: to write at Lake Geneva, and which is so much

137
00:11:35,530 --> 00:11:38,530
Speaker 1: more than a ghost story. It's an account of a

138
00:11:38,570 --> 00:11:41,850
Speaker 1: man who conjures life through the power of science, and

139
00:11:41,930 --> 00:11:45,210
Speaker 1: who abandons his own creation and of the suffering of

140
00:11:45,250 --> 00:11:50,050
Speaker 1: the creature he creates. And rejects, and of the wickedness, cruelty,

141
00:11:50,330 --> 00:11:58,370
Speaker 1: and murder that result. The work was initially published anonymously

142
00:11:58,770 --> 00:12:01,610
Speaker 1: with a preface by Percy Shelley, who was by then

143
00:12:02,010 --> 00:12:07,810
Speaker 1: Mary's husband. It both captivated and scandalized its readers. In

144
00:12:07,890 --> 00:12:11,970
Speaker 1: a preface to a later Mary Godwin, Shelley felt obliged

145
00:12:12,010 --> 00:12:15,610
Speaker 1: to explain how I, then a young girl, came to

146
00:12:15,650 --> 00:12:18,930
Speaker 1: think of and to die late upon so very hideous

147
00:12:18,970 --> 00:12:22,010
Speaker 1: an idea. It had come to her in a dream,

148
00:12:22,130 --> 00:12:25,850
Speaker 1: she wrote, which is not really an explanation at all.

149
00:12:26,610 --> 00:12:29,970
Speaker 1: She dreamed of other things too. She dreamed that her

150
00:12:30,010 --> 00:12:33,090
Speaker 1: baby had merely been cold, that she had placed it

151
00:12:33,130 --> 00:12:36,410
Speaker 1: near the fire and rubbed it, and that she had

152
00:12:36,410 --> 00:12:41,090
Speaker 1: brought it back to life. But no. In her diary

153
00:12:41,530 --> 00:12:47,570
Speaker 1: she mournfully described the dream, adding, awake and find no baby.

154
00:12:48,170 --> 00:12:50,850
Speaker 1: It's not hard to see the inspiration for the novel,

155
00:12:51,410 --> 00:12:55,970
Speaker 1: crucial scenes of which are set in Geneva Polidori's explanations

156
00:12:56,010 --> 00:12:59,690
Speaker 1: of Galvanism and the poetry bros debating the nature of

157
00:12:59,770 --> 00:13:04,130
Speaker 1: life itself, prompting the conceit of the novel Byron as

158
00:13:04,130 --> 00:13:09,450
Speaker 1: the wild, selfish, irresponsible Victor Frankenstein. The starving peasant as

159
00:13:09,490 --> 00:13:14,450
Speaker 1: the outcast creature, Mary's own experience of creating life and

160
00:13:14,570 --> 00:13:19,850
Speaker 1: experiencing great loss, All this imagined against the backdrop of

161
00:13:20,090 --> 00:13:25,970
Speaker 1: awe inspiring electrical storms. That year without summer had given

162
00:13:26,010 --> 00:13:30,610
Speaker 1: us a story for the ages, But the human cost

163
00:13:30,730 --> 00:13:35,570
Speaker 1: of that spectacular backdrop had been greater than Mary or

164
00:13:35,610 --> 00:13:51,890
Speaker 1: any of them could possibly know. Lake Geneva was not

165
00:13:51,970 --> 00:13:54,650
Speaker 1: the only place to suffer bad weather. In the months

166
00:13:54,690 --> 00:14:01,090
Speaker 1: after Tambora erupted, snow fell in Taramo, Italy, the heaviest

167
00:14:01,130 --> 00:14:05,290
Speaker 1: snow ever known in that country, said one report. But

168
00:14:05,330 --> 00:14:09,530
Speaker 1: it wasn't really the quantity. It was the color. If

169
00:14:09,650 --> 00:14:13,170
Speaker 1: hell ever freezes over, that's how the snow will look.

170
00:14:13,770 --> 00:14:19,730
Speaker 1: Sandy yellow, brick red, and a fleshy, pale brown. When

171
00:14:19,770 --> 00:14:23,410
Speaker 1: the snow melted, it left a light powder, unctuous to

172
00:14:23,450 --> 00:14:28,050
Speaker 1: the touch, with an astringent taste. That taste would have

173
00:14:28,090 --> 00:14:32,290
Speaker 1: been familiar to the farmers around Mount Tambora, the acid

174
00:14:32,450 --> 00:14:40,170
Speaker 1: tang that poisoned everything. The bad weather continued in Western

175
00:14:40,210 --> 00:14:44,650
Speaker 1: and central Europe. Rainfall in June eighteen sixteen was twice

176
00:14:44,690 --> 00:14:49,090
Speaker 1: what was normal. August was very wet too. Throughout the summer,

177
00:14:49,250 --> 00:14:53,370
Speaker 1: the temperature was three to seven degrees fahrenheit lower than usual.

178
00:14:54,130 --> 00:14:57,450
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound too bad, but from any peasants it

179
00:14:57,570 --> 00:15:02,290
Speaker 1: was the difference between food and starvation. Grapes did not

180
00:15:02,530 --> 00:15:06,690
Speaker 1: ripen on the vine, while grain, turnips and potatoes rotted

181
00:15:06,730 --> 00:15:10,850
Speaker 1: in the ground or in barns and silo. In Italy,

182
00:15:11,210 --> 00:15:14,730
Speaker 1: the hills were still covered with snow in April, making

183
00:15:14,770 --> 00:15:20,010
Speaker 1: it impossible to sow wheat. In Austria, late frosts stunted

184
00:15:20,010 --> 00:15:24,610
Speaker 1: the crops. In Scotland, farmers brought their cattle to market early.

185
00:15:25,250 --> 00:15:28,610
Speaker 1: The alternative was to let them starve for want of fodder.

186
00:15:29,810 --> 00:15:33,450
Speaker 1: The weather has been unusually barren, noted one report in May,

187
00:15:33,690 --> 00:15:37,050
Speaker 1: adding that the fields are backward and in great want

188
00:15:37,090 --> 00:15:41,850
Speaker 1: of warm sun. Britain had laws to restrict the import

189
00:15:41,930 --> 00:15:46,250
Speaker 1: of grain, swelling the profits of influential farmers. Now, with

190
00:15:46,330 --> 00:15:50,930
Speaker 1: a weak domestic harvest, the price of wheat soared. There

191
00:15:51,010 --> 00:15:55,330
Speaker 1: was rioting in several parts of England. Fifteen hundred demonstrators

192
00:15:55,330 --> 00:15:59,850
Speaker 1: in Norfolk armed themselves with spiked clubs and a banner

193
00:15:59,890 --> 00:16:05,890
Speaker 1: reading bread or blood. While the most spectacular changes in

194
00:16:05,930 --> 00:16:09,650
Speaker 1: climate were experienced in Western Europe, other parts the world

195
00:16:09,690 --> 00:16:14,530
Speaker 1: also felt the effects. A New England clockmaker, Chauncey Jerome,

196
00:16:15,050 --> 00:16:19,090
Speaker 1: walked to work in Plymouth, Connecticut, through six inches of

197
00:16:19,130 --> 00:16:23,330
Speaker 1: snow in a heavy overcoat and mittens. It was June

198
00:16:24,450 --> 00:16:28,090
Speaker 1: when the summer snows came. Vermont farmers who'd shorn their

199
00:16:28,090 --> 00:16:32,210
Speaker 1: sheep desperately tried to tie the fleeces back on. It

200
00:16:32,250 --> 00:16:37,090
Speaker 1: was usually in vain. The animals froze, so did the birds.

201
00:16:38,930 --> 00:16:43,610
Speaker 1: In Salem, Massachusetts, temperatures topped one hundred degrees in late June,

202
00:16:44,050 --> 00:16:48,570
Speaker 1: but then fell below freezing again, with frosts destroying the crops.

203
00:16:49,410 --> 00:16:54,050
Speaker 1: The severe cold spell was followed by drought. By September,

204
00:16:54,930 --> 00:16:58,810
Speaker 1: people were beginning to starve. On the other side of

205
00:16:58,850 --> 00:17:03,050
Speaker 1: the world, in Yunnan, southwest China, the rice crop failed,

206
00:17:03,330 --> 00:17:07,690
Speaker 1: causing widespread famine, with the grain reserves of Imperial China

207
00:17:07,850 --> 00:17:11,890
Speaker 1: finding it impossible to cope. When the weather improved a

208
00:17:11,930 --> 00:17:15,090
Speaker 1: couple of years later, some farmers gave up on rice.

209
00:17:15,650 --> 00:17:19,890
Speaker 1: They switched to a crop they regarded as more reliable, poppies,

210
00:17:20,810 --> 00:17:28,050
Speaker 1: producing a rich harvest of opium. At the time, nobody

211
00:17:28,090 --> 00:17:32,330
Speaker 1: realized the main cause of these catastrophes. We now understand

212
00:17:32,370 --> 00:17:37,410
Speaker 1: that it was Mount Tambora's eruption. Scientists estimate that thirty

213
00:17:37,490 --> 00:17:41,730
Speaker 1: to forty cubic miles of ash were ejected, enough to

214
00:17:41,770 --> 00:17:46,450
Speaker 1: bury Rhode Island under fifty yards of rubble, and long

215
00:17:46,490 --> 00:17:50,250
Speaker 1: after the ash sank back to Earth, sulfur dioxide from

216
00:17:50,250 --> 00:17:54,050
Speaker 1: the eruption lingered high in the stratosphere, ten miles and

217
00:17:54,130 --> 00:17:58,210
Speaker 1: more above sea level. The sulfur dioxide formed a fine

218
00:17:58,290 --> 00:18:02,250
Speaker 1: mist of dilute sulfuric acid, which persisted for a year

219
00:18:02,330 --> 00:18:05,690
Speaker 1: or more and cooled the Earth by reflecting back the

220
00:18:05,770 --> 00:18:10,850
Speaker 1: Sun's rays. The circulation of the atmosph sphere itself shifted,

221
00:18:11,250 --> 00:18:15,290
Speaker 1: making some areas wetter and some dryer, disrupting the harvest.

222
00:18:15,330 --> 00:18:18,970
Speaker 1: Either way. You can even see the traces of Mount

223
00:18:19,010 --> 00:18:24,090
Speaker 1: Tambora in the colors used by landscape artists. Scientists have

224
00:18:24,170 --> 00:18:27,490
Speaker 1: examined the color choices used across five hundred years of

225
00:18:27,530 --> 00:18:32,170
Speaker 1: painting and conclude that after dramatic eruptions changed the composition

226
00:18:32,170 --> 00:18:37,690
Speaker 1: of the stratosphere, the skies are depicted using more red paint.

227
00:18:38,330 --> 00:18:42,810
Speaker 1: Those famous fiery skies by the British painter Turner depict

228
00:18:42,890 --> 00:18:49,770
Speaker 1: the afterglow of Mount Tambora, But while the skies were beautiful,

229
00:18:49,970 --> 00:18:53,010
Speaker 1: the cost in human life from this temporary shift in

230
00:18:53,010 --> 00:18:57,610
Speaker 1: the climate was appalling. Typhus broke out as a result

231
00:18:57,650 --> 00:19:02,490
Speaker 1: of hunger, killing sixty five thousand people in Ireland and Britain.

232
00:19:03,250 --> 00:19:07,570
Speaker 1: In India, heavy rains worsened an epidemic of cholera, which

233
00:19:07,610 --> 00:19:11,530
Speaker 1: spread as far north as Mosso and south as Indonesia,

234
00:19:11,850 --> 00:19:16,490
Speaker 1: where the original eruption had taken place. Around ninety thousand

235
00:19:16,530 --> 00:19:19,290
Speaker 1: people had died there in the aftermath of the disaster

236
00:19:19,410 --> 00:19:23,970
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifteen. By some estimates, even more died from

237
00:19:24,050 --> 00:19:29,810
Speaker 1: cholera in eighteen sixteen and eighteen seventeen. Globally, hundreds of

238
00:19:29,970 --> 00:19:35,850
Speaker 1: thousands perished. I had a dream which was not all

239
00:19:35,890 --> 00:19:40,530
Speaker 1: a dream. The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars

240
00:19:40,570 --> 00:19:45,570
Speaker 1: did wonder, darkling in the eternal space, rayless and pathless,

241
00:19:46,090 --> 00:19:49,650
Speaker 1: and the icy earth swung blind and blackening in the

242
00:19:49,730 --> 00:19:55,370
Speaker 1: moonless air. These lines are from a poem by Lord Byron. Darkness.

243
00:19:55,770 --> 00:19:59,170
Speaker 1: Forests were set on fire, but hour by hour they

244
00:19:59,250 --> 00:20:04,290
Speaker 1: fell and faded, and the crackling trunks extinguished with a crash,

245
00:20:04,330 --> 00:20:09,330
Speaker 1: and all was black like Frankenstein. It was d did

246
00:20:09,370 --> 00:20:12,170
Speaker 1: in what should have been the summer of eighteen sixteen,

247
00:20:12,490 --> 00:20:16,450
Speaker 1: if there had been any summer to enjoy, Morn came

248
00:20:16,610 --> 00:20:21,490
Speaker 1: and went and came and brought no day. It's not

249
00:20:21,530 --> 00:20:25,610
Speaker 1: as brilliant or influential work as Frankenstein, but it's a

250
00:20:25,690 --> 00:20:31,050
Speaker 1: striking poem, another creative response to a terrifying time, and

251
00:20:31,210 --> 00:20:34,370
Speaker 1: men forgot their passions in the dread of this, Their

252
00:20:34,410 --> 00:20:39,650
Speaker 1: desolation and all hearts were chilled into a selfish prayer

253
00:20:39,690 --> 00:20:48,770
Speaker 1: for light. Loyal listeners to cautionary tales may remember the

254
00:20:48,810 --> 00:20:52,650
Speaker 1: story of Keith Jarrett's disastrous booking at the Cologne Opera House.

255
00:20:53,490 --> 00:20:56,090
Speaker 1: He arrived at the venue to find a beaten up,

256
00:20:56,250 --> 00:21:00,970
Speaker 1: almost unplayable piano, but he grudgingly adapted to produce a

257
00:21:01,050 --> 00:21:05,730
Speaker 1: triumphant performance. If you've heard that story, you won't be

258
00:21:05,770 --> 00:21:08,450
Speaker 1: surprised at all to hear that. The Year Without Summer

259
00:21:09,130 --> 00:21:13,570
Speaker 1: hired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein. We first released that

260
00:21:13,650 --> 00:21:17,770
Speaker 1: episode in December twenty nineteen, just a few days before

261
00:21:17,810 --> 00:21:21,690
Speaker 1: reports started to emerge from China of a worrying new

262
00:21:21,770 --> 00:21:26,330
Speaker 1: respiratory virus. I still tell the story, and I still

263
00:21:26,330 --> 00:21:29,610
Speaker 1: find it inspiring and instructive to think about how Jarrett

264
00:21:29,650 --> 00:21:34,850
Speaker 1: managed to turn disaster into triumph. And yet I see

265
00:21:34,890 --> 00:21:38,690
Speaker 1: it a little differently now. I described the unplayable piano

266
00:21:39,050 --> 00:21:43,010
Speaker 1: as a disaster, but there's not the same kind of

267
00:21:43,090 --> 00:21:48,210
Speaker 1: disaster as a global pandemic. It's not the same kind

268
00:21:48,250 --> 00:21:51,650
Speaker 1: of disaster as a volcanic eruption which derails the world's

269
00:21:51,690 --> 00:21:55,690
Speaker 1: climate and leaves hundreds of thousands dead from hunger or disease.

270
00:21:56,570 --> 00:21:59,730
Speaker 1: You can point to the beautiful, best selling Colden concert

271
00:21:59,770 --> 00:22:02,770
Speaker 1: album and say it all turned out brilliantly in the end,

272
00:22:03,490 --> 00:22:07,210
Speaker 1: But nobody would ever point to Frankenstein as compensation for

273
00:22:07,250 --> 00:22:12,890
Speaker 1: the cataclysm of Mount tamber Aura. Yet while it's no compensation,

274
00:22:13,650 --> 00:22:17,730
Speaker 1: it is a remarkable response, And I found myself wandering

275
00:22:17,730 --> 00:22:21,730
Speaker 1: again what drives this sort of innovative counterthrust in the

276
00:22:21,850 --> 00:22:29,570
Speaker 1: teeth of catastrophe. Recently, social scientists have tried to chart

277
00:22:29,690 --> 00:22:33,330
Speaker 1: the different ways in which calamities teach us lessons. For

278
00:22:33,410 --> 00:22:36,690
Speaker 1: one thing, trouble breaks us out of our routines, and

279
00:22:36,770 --> 00:22:38,810
Speaker 1: so we try an approach that we should have been

280
00:22:38,850 --> 00:22:43,170
Speaker 1: embracing all along. That's what happened when Keith Jarrett, confronted

281
00:22:43,170 --> 00:22:46,250
Speaker 1: with an unplayable piano, found a new way to perform,

282
00:22:47,050 --> 00:22:52,210
Speaker 1: but it happens on a grander, graver scale too. When

283
00:22:52,290 --> 00:22:56,770
Speaker 1: Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the lives of many survivors

284
00:22:56,810 --> 00:23:02,490
Speaker 1: were turned upside down. The economist Bruce Sassdote studied the

285
00:23:02,650 --> 00:23:07,890
Speaker 1: educational achievement of the children most affected by the hurricane. Unsurprisingly,

286
00:23:08,090 --> 00:23:11,370
Speaker 1: their test scores fell at first as their lives were disrupted,

287
00:23:11,810 --> 00:23:15,570
Speaker 1: but after three years they were actually doing better than before,

288
00:23:16,170 --> 00:23:19,090
Speaker 1: often because the hurricane had forced their families to move

289
00:23:19,530 --> 00:23:24,610
Speaker 1: and then ended up in better schools. Three other economists,

290
00:23:24,690 --> 00:23:28,650
Speaker 1: Tatiana Derugina, Laura Kawano, and the co author of Freeconomics,

291
00:23:28,730 --> 00:23:32,650
Speaker 1: Steve Levitt, looked at people's earnings after Katrina, and they

292
00:23:32,650 --> 00:23:36,410
Speaker 1: found a similar pattern, a short term plunge followed by

293
00:23:36,450 --> 00:23:40,090
Speaker 1: people actually starting to earn more than comparison groups since

294
00:23:40,130 --> 00:23:44,210
Speaker 1: cities that were unaffected. A very similar pattern was discovered

295
00:23:44,250 --> 00:23:48,610
Speaker 1: by the economists Emmy Nakamura, Joseph Sigurdson, and John Steinson

296
00:23:49,090 --> 00:23:52,050
Speaker 1: when they examined the devastation of a fishing community in

297
00:23:52,130 --> 00:23:56,890
Speaker 1: Iceland in nineteen seventy three. Lava from one of Iceland's

298
00:23:56,930 --> 00:24:00,170
Speaker 1: many volcanoes simply rolled through the middle of the town.

299
00:24:00,730 --> 00:24:04,290
Speaker 1: Nobody died, but the lava destroyed the homes that happened

300
00:24:04,330 --> 00:24:08,090
Speaker 1: to be in its path. Nakamura and her colleagues later

301
00:24:08,130 --> 00:24:12,930
Speaker 1: concluded that having your childhood home destroyed by lava was

302
00:24:12,970 --> 00:24:16,490
Speaker 1: worth about thirty thousand dollars a year in mid career

303
00:24:16,530 --> 00:24:19,650
Speaker 1: earnings and an extra three and a half year's worth

304
00:24:19,650 --> 00:24:23,570
Speaker 1: of education. That's a degree's worth. As in your Leans,

305
00:24:24,090 --> 00:24:26,770
Speaker 1: the families affected had been more likely to move out,

306
00:24:27,370 --> 00:24:31,130
Speaker 1: as in Your Leans, many of them had benefited unexpectedly

307
00:24:31,130 --> 00:24:35,050
Speaker 1: as a result. But the creative response to disaster isn't

308
00:24:35,090 --> 00:24:38,650
Speaker 1: just about being shaken out of old habits. A disaster

309
00:24:38,690 --> 00:24:41,210
Speaker 1: can also encourage us to invest in a new way

310
00:24:41,210 --> 00:24:43,970
Speaker 1: of doing things, a new way that would never have

311
00:24:44,050 --> 00:24:49,810
Speaker 1: been worthwhile before. Think about working from home. In the

312
00:24:49,850 --> 00:24:53,450
Speaker 1: lockdowns of twenty twenty, many people invested in a better

313
00:24:53,490 --> 00:24:58,210
Speaker 1: internet connection, web camera, microphone, and office chair. We've invested

314
00:24:58,210 --> 00:25:02,210
Speaker 1: in learning how to use remote working software too. Without

315
00:25:02,250 --> 00:25:05,730
Speaker 1: the pandemic, we might not have bothered. But now that

316
00:25:05,810 --> 00:25:08,650
Speaker 1: we spent all that time and money, it'll be easier

317
00:25:08,650 --> 00:25:12,610
Speaker 1: to work home in the future. The effect is made

318
00:25:12,690 --> 00:25:15,410
Speaker 1: much stronger because we're all dealing with the same problem.

319
00:25:15,450 --> 00:25:18,210
Speaker 1: At the same time, that makes it easier to coordinate

320
00:25:18,290 --> 00:25:21,170
Speaker 1: on a solution. It's not easy to be the only

321
00:25:21,210 --> 00:25:24,490
Speaker 1: person working from home, but once lots of people do it,

322
00:25:24,850 --> 00:25:29,090
Speaker 1: we collectively figure it out. It's a simple point. But

323
00:25:29,290 --> 00:25:32,410
Speaker 1: if everyone is forced to invest their energy into solving

324
00:25:32,410 --> 00:25:36,090
Speaker 1: a problem, once the problem has gone, the solution may

325
00:25:36,090 --> 00:25:40,250
Speaker 1: still be useful. This leads to a third, more vicious

326
00:25:40,330 --> 00:25:44,610
Speaker 1: way in which destruction can produce an innovative response. By

327
00:25:44,730 --> 00:25:48,250
Speaker 1: culling weaker companies, it gives more space to the strong.

328
00:25:49,090 --> 00:25:52,570
Speaker 1: The COVID lockdown strengthened the big tech firms in part

329
00:25:52,890 --> 00:25:57,610
Speaker 1: by weakening their competitors. Netflix and Disney Plus prospered when

330
00:25:57,690 --> 00:26:02,010
Speaker 1: cinemas were closed. Amazon thrived when the shopping malls were deserted,

331
00:26:02,850 --> 00:26:07,410
Speaker 1: when nobody was walking or driving past billboards. Google's digital

332
00:26:07,450 --> 00:26:14,050
Speaker 1: advertising looked stronger than ever. So did podcast advertising. I suppose, so,

333
00:26:14,930 --> 00:26:19,650
Speaker 1: who benefited from Mount Tambora. I'll suggest an answer in

334
00:26:19,690 --> 00:26:39,210
Speaker 1: just a moment. Mount Tambora didn't just spoil the vacation

335
00:26:39,290 --> 00:26:43,450
Speaker 1: of some sexy young poets. It killed hundreds of thousands

336
00:26:43,490 --> 00:26:47,250
Speaker 1: of people and ruined lives all over the world. But

337
00:26:47,490 --> 00:26:50,490
Speaker 1: did it spark any ideas beyond the world's first and

338
00:26:50,690 --> 00:26:56,850
Speaker 1: greatest Gothic science fiction novel one or two. Three hundred

339
00:26:56,850 --> 00:26:59,970
Speaker 1: miles away from the ghost Stories of the Villa Diodati

340
00:27:00,370 --> 00:27:04,570
Speaker 1: in Mannheim, an inventive young man named Carl Dras had

341
00:27:04,610 --> 00:27:08,570
Speaker 1: been working on his latest idea. The initial spur had

342
00:27:08,610 --> 00:27:12,170
Speaker 1: been a add harvest in eighteen twelve, which was followed

343
00:27:12,170 --> 00:27:16,650
Speaker 1: by other crop failures eighteen sixteen. The year without summer

344
00:27:17,210 --> 00:27:20,490
Speaker 1: was the worst of the lot. With the bad harvests,

345
00:27:20,650 --> 00:27:24,210
Speaker 1: the price of oats had soared, and when oats were expensive,

346
00:27:24,570 --> 00:27:28,130
Speaker 1: so too were horses. Few could afford to keep horses

347
00:27:28,170 --> 00:27:32,810
Speaker 1: now because few could afford to feed them now. On

348
00:27:32,890 --> 00:27:37,450
Speaker 1: the twelfth of June eighteen seventeen, Carl Drace was ready

349
00:27:37,530 --> 00:27:42,730
Speaker 1: to unveil his alternative. Comfortably seated in its saddle, he

350
00:27:42,890 --> 00:27:46,490
Speaker 1: zipped halfway to Schwetzingen and back in about an hour,

351
00:27:46,970 --> 00:27:51,170
Speaker 1: a round trip of ten miles. A month later, he

352
00:27:51,210 --> 00:27:54,050
Speaker 1: announced that he would ride the thirty two miles between

353
00:27:54,130 --> 00:27:58,490
Speaker 1: two nearby towns in just four hours. He began his

354
00:27:58,570 --> 00:28:03,050
Speaker 1: journey at noon, and as verified by the local police commander,

355
00:28:03,370 --> 00:28:07,890
Speaker 1: he arrived at four o'clock in the afternoon perfectly punctual,

356
00:28:09,090 --> 00:28:12,330
Speaker 1: all very impressive for a man on a wooden horse.

357
00:28:13,970 --> 00:28:17,930
Speaker 1: Carl Drace called his invention a lauf machine a running machine.

358
00:28:18,530 --> 00:28:21,490
Speaker 1: It's not a bad description. It was a saddle set

359
00:28:21,570 --> 00:28:25,290
Speaker 1: on a wooden crossbar. The crossbar itself connected two wheels

360
00:28:25,290 --> 00:28:28,730
Speaker 1: front and back. The front wheel was steerable by handlebars.

361
00:28:29,050 --> 00:28:31,410
Speaker 1: There were no pedals. You propelled it with your feet,

362
00:28:31,450 --> 00:28:36,010
Speaker 1: pushing off the ground in great loping strides. The strange

363
00:28:36,010 --> 00:28:39,450
Speaker 1: invention became known as a hobby horse, or a velocipede

364
00:28:39,570 --> 00:28:43,650
Speaker 1: or a dresn, but these days would call it a

365
00:28:43,690 --> 00:28:49,770
Speaker 1: primitive bicycle. The invention made an instant impression, and several

366
00:28:49,770 --> 00:28:53,050
Speaker 1: commentators expressed the hope that thanks to the running machine,

367
00:28:53,530 --> 00:28:56,810
Speaker 1: people would need fewer horses and the high price of

368
00:28:56,850 --> 00:29:01,970
Speaker 1: oats would fall. Carl Drace's wooden horse wasn't a perfect

369
00:29:02,010 --> 00:29:05,570
Speaker 1: alternative to the real thing. It only worked on excellent roads,

370
00:29:05,810 --> 00:29:08,730
Speaker 1: It lacked breaks, and it wasn't all lack quick anyway,

371
00:29:09,690 --> 00:29:12,450
Speaker 1: for the cost of oats pushed him to try something.

372
00:29:13,890 --> 00:29:17,290
Speaker 1: As with today's video conferencing, the idea could be improved

373
00:29:17,330 --> 00:29:21,290
Speaker 1: once a critical mass of people were interested. The more

374
00:29:21,410 --> 00:29:24,730
Speaker 1: people tried Drace's running machine, the more likely they would

375
00:29:24,770 --> 00:29:30,010
Speaker 1: be to demand and get better roads. Today, most people

376
00:29:30,130 --> 00:29:33,810
Speaker 1: still cannot afford to keep a horse, but most people,

377
00:29:34,170 --> 00:29:38,730
Speaker 1: even in poor countries, can afford a bicycle, exactly as

378
00:29:38,810 --> 00:29:43,610
Speaker 1: Carl Drace have believed all along. In fact, bicycles are

379
00:29:43,650 --> 00:29:47,810
Speaker 1: more popular than ever In recent years, their production has

380
00:29:47,890 --> 00:29:57,570
Speaker 1: comfortably outpaced the production of cars. Not far away, in

381
00:29:57,610 --> 00:30:01,970
Speaker 1: the German town of Darmstadt, another young inventor, Eustace Liebig,

382
00:30:02,450 --> 00:30:06,530
Speaker 1: learned his trade in his father's chemical workshop. They would

383
00:30:06,570 --> 00:30:10,850
Speaker 1: concoct paints and polishes and pigments, but thirteen year old

384
00:30:10,850 --> 00:30:14,770
Speaker 1: Eustace was destined for much more. When he saw the

385
00:30:14,850 --> 00:30:18,650
Speaker 1: same awful harvests as Carl Drace, he felt the same

386
00:30:18,690 --> 00:30:22,650
Speaker 1: impulse he had to invent something to solve the problem.

387
00:30:23,690 --> 00:30:26,530
Speaker 1: He was focused less on the fact that people couldn't

388
00:30:26,570 --> 00:30:30,530
Speaker 1: afford horses and more on the fact that people couldn't

389
00:30:30,530 --> 00:30:35,010
Speaker 1: afford supper. Liebig grew up to become one of a

390
00:30:35,090 --> 00:30:39,810
Speaker 1: handful of scientists who transformed the way people ate. One

391
00:30:39,850 --> 00:30:42,690
Speaker 1: of his inventions was an early formula for baby milk,

392
00:30:43,050 --> 00:30:47,730
Speaker 1: a potential lifesaver for babies with no mothers. Babies such

393
00:30:47,730 --> 00:30:53,330
Speaker 1: as Mary Godwin Liebig was a pioneer of nutritional science,

394
00:30:53,770 --> 00:30:58,170
Speaker 1: analyzing food in terms of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. He

395
00:30:58,290 --> 00:31:01,970
Speaker 1: performed a similar analysis for plants, too, helping to show

396
00:31:01,970 --> 00:31:05,570
Speaker 1: how crops grew lush and strong when given appropriate fertilizer

397
00:31:05,610 --> 00:31:09,970
Speaker 1: and trace nutrients. His work on beef extract and infant

398
00:31:10,010 --> 00:31:15,130
Speaker 1: formula came from the same motivation. In a civilized, scientifically

399
00:31:15,170 --> 00:31:20,890
Speaker 1: advanced world, nobody should be going hungry. For most of

400
00:31:20,970 --> 00:31:25,570
Speaker 1: western continental Europe, the Crisis of eighteen sixteen was the

401
00:31:25,690 --> 00:31:30,930
Speaker 1: last serious famine that is largely thanks to Eustas Liebig.

402
00:31:34,170 --> 00:31:39,370
Speaker 1: Mount Tambora caused untold suffering around the world. It also

403
00:31:39,450 --> 00:31:45,690
Speaker 1: inspired ideas as diverse as nutritional science, Frankenstein and the bicycle.

404
00:31:47,530 --> 00:31:51,530
Speaker 1: I've compared the fallout from Mount Tambora to the COVID pandemic.

405
00:31:52,370 --> 00:31:55,730
Speaker 1: It's not hard to see the analogy. Both swept through

406
00:31:55,730 --> 00:31:59,050
Speaker 1: the world, killing millions, turning our lives upside down for

407
00:31:59,090 --> 00:32:01,810
Speaker 1: a couple of years, and inspiring some of us to

408
00:32:01,930 --> 00:32:05,650
Speaker 1: come up with new ways of doing things. But it's

409
00:32:05,650 --> 00:32:08,770
Speaker 1: impossible to hear the story of how Mount Tambora reached

410
00:32:09,330 --> 00:32:13,690
Speaker 1: on the climate without thinking of another modern parallel the

411
00:32:13,810 --> 00:32:18,770
Speaker 1: changes we're making ourselves. The greenhouse effect produces a much

412
00:32:18,770 --> 00:32:22,290
Speaker 1: more gradual influence on the climate, of course, and it's

413
00:32:22,290 --> 00:32:26,370
Speaker 1: making the planet hotter, not colder. But it's also an

414
00:32:26,370 --> 00:32:29,970
Speaker 1: impact that will last much longer than Mount Tambora's and

415
00:32:30,130 --> 00:32:35,130
Speaker 1: perhaps be no less dramatic in its way. The world

416
00:32:35,450 --> 00:32:46,810
Speaker 1: was void, the populace and the powerful was a lump, seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless,

417
00:32:47,530 --> 00:32:52,850
Speaker 1: a lump of death, a chaos of hard clay. The

418
00:32:53,050 --> 00:32:59,850
Speaker 1: river's lakes and ocean all stood still, and nothing stirred

419
00:33:00,010 --> 00:33:06,170
Speaker 1: within their silent depths. Should we be terrified by the

420
00:33:06,170 --> 00:33:10,130
Speaker 1: way that nature can rereak such havoc, sometimes with our

421
00:33:10,170 --> 00:33:14,890
Speaker 1: provocation and sometimes without it, Or should we be inspired

422
00:33:14,930 --> 00:33:19,850
Speaker 1: by the innovation and resilience we muster in response. I

423
00:33:19,890 --> 00:33:39,850
Speaker 1: suppose it's possible to feel both at once. For a

424
00:33:39,890 --> 00:33:42,450
Speaker 1: list of the sources for this episode, please visit the

425
00:33:42,490 --> 00:33:57,330
Speaker 1: show notes at Tim Harford dot com. Cautionary Tales is

426
00:33:57,330 --> 00:34:01,370
Speaker 1: written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced

427
00:34:01,370 --> 00:34:05,210
Speaker 1: by Ryan Dilley with support from Courtney Guarino and Emily Vaughan.

428
00:34:05,730 --> 00:34:08,530
Speaker 1: The sound design and original music is the work of

429
00:34:08,690 --> 00:34:12,290
Speaker 1: pass gal Wise. It features the voice talents of Ben Crow,

430
00:34:12,690 --> 00:34:17,290
Speaker 1: Melanie Gutridge, Stella Harford, and rufus Wright. The show also

431
00:34:17,410 --> 00:34:20,250
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been possible without the work of Mia LaBelle,

432
00:34:20,530 --> 00:34:25,650
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fane, John Schnaars, Julia Barton, Kylie mcgliori,

433
00:34:26,090 --> 00:34:31,330
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Royston Basserve, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Mrano, Danielle Lakhan,

434
00:34:31,770 --> 00:34:36,890
Speaker 1: and Maya Kanig. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries.

435
00:34:37,170 --> 00:34:39,890
Speaker 1: If you like the show, please remember to share, rate

436
00:34:40,010 --> 00:34:43,050
Speaker 1: and review, tell a friend, tell two friends, and if

437
00:34:43,050 --> 00:34:45,290
Speaker 1: you want to hear the show, adds free and listen

438
00:34:45,330 --> 00:34:49,530
Speaker 1: to four exclusive Cautionary Tales shorts. Then sign up for

439
00:34:49,650 --> 00:34:53,170
Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus on the show page and Apple Podcasts, or

440
00:34:53,290 --> 00:34:56,130
Speaker 1: at pushkin dot fm, slash plus