Cautionary Tales
99% Invisible19 Nov 2019

Cautionary Tales

Galileo tried to teach us that adding more and more layers to a system intended to avert disaster often makes catastrophe all the more likely. His basic lesson has been ignored in nuclear power plants, financial markets and at the Oscars... all resulting in chaos. At the 2017 Academy Awards, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway famously handed the Best Picture Oscar to the wrong movie. In this episode of Cautionary Tales, Tim Harford takes us through all of the poor design choices leading into the infamous La La Land/Moonlight debacle, and how it could have been prevented.

Cautionary Tales

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Episoder(771)

The Falling of the Lenins

The Falling of the Lenins

On the night of December 8, 2013, a huge crowd gathered on a tree-lined boulevard in downtown Kiev, Ukraine. The crowd was there to watch as a statue in the boulevard was pulled down by a crane. The t...

21 Mar 201722min

Negative Space: Logo Design with Michael Bierut

Negative Space: Logo Design with Michael Bierut

Logos used to be a thing people didn’t really give much thought to. But over the last decade, the volume and intensity of arguments about logos have increased substantially. A lot of this is just the ...

14 Mar 201744min

State (Sanctuary, Part 2)

State (Sanctuary, Part 2)

In the 1980s, the United States experienced a refugee crisis. Thousands of Central Americans were fleeing civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala, traveling north through Mexico, and crossing the bord...

8 Mar 201727min

Church (Sanctuary, Part 1)

Church (Sanctuary, Part 1)

In the 1980s, Rev. John Fife and his congregation at Southside Presbyterian Church began to help Central American migrants fleeing persecution from US backed dictatorships. Their efforts would mark th...

28 Feb 201726min

Atom in the Garden of Eden

Atom in the Garden of Eden

As the world entered the Atomic Age, humankind faced a new fear that permeated just about every aspect of daily life: the threat of nuclear war. And while the violent applications of atomic research h...

21 Feb 201717min

Usonia the Beautiful

Usonia the Beautiful

Frank Lloyd Wright believed that the buildings we live in shape the kinds of people we become. His aim was nothing short of rebuilding the entire culture of the United States, changing the nation thro...

15 Feb 201718min

Usonia 1

Usonia 1

Frank Lloyd Wright was a bombastic character that ultimately changed the field of architecture, and not just through his big, famous buildings. Before designing many of his most well-known works, Wrig...

7 Feb 201724min

The Eponymist

The Eponymist

Eponym (noun):  A person after whom a discovery, invention, place, etc., is named or thought to be named; a name or noun formed after a person. An eponym, almost by definition, has some kind of story ...

1 Feb 201727min

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