Stalling for Survival - A Lonely Fight Against a Deadly Medicine
In 1960, FDA scientist Frances Oldham Kelsey is tasked with approving an application for a mild sedative to be sold in America. The drug is popular across Europe and is touted to be free of side effec...
5 Sep 202538min
Announcing: The Cautionary Club
Do you want more Cautionary Tales episodes in your life? Do you want access to behind the scenes stories and bonus conversations with Tim? Do you want to support us in making the show? We're excited t...
2 Sep 20252min
Disaster Favours the Daring: Shipwreck at Honda Point
In 1923, legendary navigator Captain Dolly Hunter led a squadron of warships into America’s worst peacetime naval catastrophe. The mission was supposed to be a speed trial, a display of the squadron’s...
29 Aug 202539min
Paradise Poisoned: How Utopias Fall Apart
Dore Strauch and Friedrich Ritter make an unconventional couple, united by their contempt for shoes, root vegetables and, above all, society. In 1929 they leave Germany and begin anew on the deserted ...
22 Aug 202541min
"Genius Still Unrecognised" - The Worst Poet in the World
William McGonagall's poems are something else. The jarring meter, the banal imagery, the awkward rhymes: they made him a laughing stock in 19th Century Scotland and are still derided to this day. How ...
15 Aug 202540min
Office Hell: The Demise of the Playful Workspace (Classic)
In the early 90s, cutting-edge advertising agency Chiat/Day announced a radical plan, aimed at giving the company a jolt of creative renewal. They would sweep away corner offices and cubicles and repl...
8 Aug 202538min
Number Fever: How Pepsi Nearly Went Pop (Classic)
Pepsi twice ended up in court after promotions went disastrously wrong. Other big companies have fallen into the same trap - promising customers rewards so generous that to fulfil the promise might me...
1 Aug 202535min
Fire at The Beverly Hills Supper Club (Update)
It's been five years since Cautionary Tales ran a mini-series about the Covid-19 pandemic, exploring the lessons we were learning in real time as the crisis unfolded. 'Fire at The Beverly Hills Supper...
25 Jul 202532min
