Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford

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Flixborough: The Factory that was Wiped off the Map

12/12/2025 • 38 min

A megaplant near the small village of Flixborough, England, is busy churning out a key ingredient of nylon 6, a material used in everything from stockings to toothbrushes to electronics. When a reactor vessel fails, the engineers improvise a quick-fix workaround, so the plant can keep up with demand. Before long, the temporary patch - a small, bent pipe - become… Play episode

The Disappearance of Grace Oakeshott
Your Chance to Attend a Cautionary Tales Table Read
How to Experience the Joy of Giving Right Now: A Giving Tuesday Special fr…
Homo deceptus: Science's Dirty Little Secret
Presenting Heavyweight: Etta
Kyoto: The Battle that Defined Climate Politics - with Joe Robertson
Presenting: Twenty Thousand Hertz
The Treasure Hunt that Broke America (Part 2)
The Treasure Hunt that Broke America (Part 1)
The Truth About Hansel and Gretel (Classic)
On Fire from the Inside - Lethal Injection Up Close with Malcolm Gladwell
Derek Bentley Must Hang
The Canal, the Crash and the Ketamine - Pushkin's Reign of Error
Schrödinger's Spy: Businessman, Fraud, or Russian Agent? - with Sam Jones
Missing Fish and Fatal Feasts: Ritual and Ruin at the Sun King’s Table
Don't Panic! Douglas Adams' Guide to Tomorrow - with Arvind Ethan David
A Deadly Day at the Races: What Radical Protest Can and Cannot Do
True Lies and Genuine Fakes
Stalling for Survival - A Lonely Fight Against a Deadly Medicine
Announcing: The Cautionary Club
Disaster Favours the Daring: Shipwreck at Honda Point
Paradise Poisoned: How Utopias Fall Apart
"Genius Still Unrecognised" - The Worst Poet in the World
Office Hell: The Demise of the Playful Workspace (Classic)
Number Fever: How Pepsi Nearly Went Pop (Classic)
Fire at The Beverly Hills Supper Club (Update)
"Captain Kirk Forgot to put the Machine on Stun"
"I get in trouble when I say things like this" - Michael Lewis on Sam Bank…
Grand Theft Automated: How to Save a Trillion Lives
The Man who Solved Kindness
The Shark That Ate Hollywood: Jaws at 50
Le Mans 55: The Deadliest Race
The Nazis, the Bomb, and the Woman that Science Forgot
Give Politicians a Raise, Smuggle Smartphones into School, and go Full Don…
Roosevelt and the Renegade (Panama Disaster 2)
The Great Frenchman's Folly (Panama Disaster 1)
Lab Leak: Could Smallpox Come Back?
"Dangerously Near to Absolute Perfection"
Buried by the Wall Street Crash (Classic)
Presenting: You Must Remember This - Alfred Hitchcock
“I love being the person who doesn’t know anything” - Why Steven Levitt ha…
The Old Man and the Wrecking Crew
Houdini: The Phone Call from the Coffin (Part 3)
Houdini's Detective and her 1500 Dead Husbands (Part 2)
Houdini: A Message from the Spirits (Part 1)
Would You Trust a Gangster Nanny? - Cautionary Questions with Rachel Botsm…
Lights, Camera, Tax Break
The Nursery Rhyme That Ruined a Rock Band
The Widow Who Disrupted Champagne (with Ben Walter)

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