With just a few sentences, Tim Hartford can make you care passionately about an air disaster, or a car race, or a magician and be on the edge of your seat for the rest of the podcast. He is a master weaver of tales and adds just the right details that only an eyewitness would notice. I am delighted every time another episode drops into my feed. May he never run out of stories or the lessons they provide.

I have been listening for years and I’ve shared many episodes with friends and family. We always learn so much. Oh, and we enjoy Tim‘s voice!

Tim Harford has an amazing voice and well-researched, fascinating stories. Some stories are heavy; some are lighter fare, but I always learn something new. Always anticipating the next episode.

I’ve noticed that recent episodes have been well-written, interesting stories about people or events. But what happened to the “cautionary tale” aspect? The broader lesson and its applicability to current events/the human experience/whatever is missing. For me, that’s what used to make this podcast so compelling and satisfying and unique. I really miss it.

Your episode on Meitner and Hahn was a great story well told (as always), but doesn’t your treatment of Ruth Sime the author whose work you leveraged deserve more than just a footnote? Did you suggest she buy you a beer? Why not invite her on for an interview at least?

Like many other Pushkin podcasts, Cautionary Tales has great content. I’ve been enjoying Tim’s stories for years now. But I’m done. Way too many commercials.

This is my favorite non fiction podcast. Tim is always highly informative yet endlessly entertaining. The best.

I love the episodes that are literally the cautionary tales. Always well researched and narrated. However the sprinkled in guest episodes, such as the recent Q & A with Nate Silver and Maria, are exhaustingly boring and annoying. Those two are basically professional poker players trying to condescend to listeners about world affairs. Maria’s constant giggling made the show unlistenable and she brought nothing to the table.

I get the same enjoyment out of this interesting podcast as if I were a child listening to an interesting story from a great storyteller. A warning on language in some episodes would be appropriate.

Great podcast that not only informs but gives us the entire story. So entertaining!!

It’s ironic that a podcast that seeks to uncover the truth is peppered with ads from companies who tout pseudoscience along the lines of organic bedding and approval by the Environmental Working Group. Thankfully, I fast-forward through those ads and still enjoy the content.

Tim Hartford delivers consistently interesting stories in a well modulated voice perfect for audio

I’ve been listening to podcasts on average an hour a day for 10 years. This is my favorite podcast.

Please stop the American woman from narrating and doing accents. It’s unforgivable and unlistenable. Please stop, we beg you.

Love this podcast and Tim’s charming accent

Excellent story telling! Even harder when you can’t throw in some fiction to make the story better. I love Tim’s writing and presentation skills 😊❤️

This was unlistenable. While the topic and text seemed interesting, the female host’s overly articulated speech and her enunciation, and - heaven help us - her imitation of Hitchcock was so awful that I could not listen to the whole episode.

Perfect amounts of entertaining, informative, and intriguing!

Putting on a French accent when imitating Truffaut or Imitating Hitchcock is distracting and difficult to follow. Please don’t.

The guest episode from You Must Remember This, on Hitchcock, features the most irritating host I’ve heard on any podcast. Her overpronounced normal narration is made doubly worse by her awful accents in quoting Hitchcock and Truffaut.

I’d much rather just listen to Tim tell the story than a voice actor and/AI. Love the pod and want more but gotta keep it real 🖤

First time I listened to this. Story is OK but the women doing Hitchcock’s voice is abysmal.

Most of the “new” episodes are just host interviews with his friends, colleagues, and authors he wants to promote. This week is the last straw. Entire episode is another podcast altogether. How sounds robotic, except for borderline offensive accents. I’m done with Cautionary Tales.

So many great topics, all are well researched and presented in a fun and interesting way.

Thoughtful, well written, and nicely produced. The tales are interesting and keep your attention. Probably the best podcast of those I listen to.

Always well told & wildly interesting. I’d love to know how they figured out where to “pull that first thread.” Also, I very much enjoy the narrator (& assume he’s writer also). I think we can all trust that anything underneath the Gladwell umbrella is going to be smart & well told. But wait! No! Is this the end of “Cautionary Tales?” Please tell me there will be more. I love your writing style & your voice & the production! Please tell me there will be more❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Remember when Tim would simply tell us a cautionary tale without excessive character voices or sound effects? Those were great times.

This is my go to podcast to hear a great story,well told.

The stories are always fascinating and well told, especially for someone like myself who has always loved reading about different kinds of disasters. That was what initially drew me to this podcast. Not only do I learn a lot about the past, though, but the podcast goes above and beyond: I often come away feeling like I understand the world better than I did when I started the episode. To me, this podcast is on point in every single episode, in its critical analysis of why such and such a thing happened, what other moments in history offer insights, and what seems to be to blame, and maybe something in the process illuminates a path forward for what could be done about the problem. I am a huge fan of the way many episodes work through the logic behind what happened towards a set of takeaways that are often much more complex or even opposite to what an observer would have concluded at the start. And the logic makes sense, I am with Tim every step of the way. I can’t think of one time I’ve been able to catch him in a major logical misstep. Let me compare that to the first season of Revisionist History, which I listened to recently: Malcolm Gladwell tries to punch as hard as possible in his conclusions, but I felt that maybe 20% of his episodes in the first season had major logical missteps that ruined his main arguments, and this left me skeptical of the rest of his episodes, even though I do still think those were mostly actually very good. And there are some episodes that raise enormous questions in my mind, but then the episode ends without giving me an idea of what to think about how to answer that question. And at first, I can’t believe he’d abandon me like that. But then I realize he’s done me a great service: he showed restraint, only telling me what he knew and leaving me to figure out the rest. Both as a global citizen and as a researcher, I appreciate that he would help me understand the context around difficult questions that I’d never even thought about before, and then leave me to figure out what to do with that information. I don’t know if I have been emphatic enough in my praise of this podcast, so let me put it differently. I am currently in an economics PhD program, and I criticize everything that I can. But this podcast is beyond criticism for me. It's perfect. I am excited that the podcast will now be releasing episodes more frequently, and I hope the team is able to maintain the same quality as always as they try to accelerate their output.

To start off I must say I enjoy CT, great stories that I have repeated often to friends. The only issue I have is that Tim has made it clear his political preference in the US, which is fine, since it is his podcast after all. As my father would say, your dime, your dance floor. But I wonder why there is no mention of UK politics and an almost weekly mention of US politics? Is the UK so meaningless there is no point? Just wondering.

Cautionary Tales is a 5 star pod cast. Risky Business can’t go 5 minutes without cursing to get a point across. Why play this garbage?

This is a good podcast with some excellent stories. The production is weak, though, and the special effects often drown out the voices. Plus, Harford is fine narrator and they don’t need the voice impersonators.

Lots of stories you probably wouldn’t hear about, except for this podcast.

Is the format of the show just one guy telling a story and the other guy saying “you know one time we had a guest who… “[insert very slightly related plug for their company here] over and over and over?? It’s quite annoying.

Tim, Tim, Tim — I’m a subscriber and fan but this epp — so topical, so under achieved on behalf of the great Widow Clicquot. There is so much more to the story. She had amazing employees, partners etc, and there were other women in the champagne business but she created an environment for more. Not only that, not going into the freedoms widows had in this period?! This incredible woman deserved a longer better researched episode. The fact that you two men were talking about her at all gives you four stars.

I've only just discovered this podcast. So glad I did. The host is intelligent and respectful of the subject matter. He provides details that you've most likely never heard before. And most importantly, he always selects unique or interesting events. Definitely give this one a listen.

A serious podcast that offers informed perspectives based on actual research.

This show is so good. The lessons to be learned are so practical for our times. I feel wiser after every episode.

This pod is being unfairly attacked by a bunch of babies who can’t stand when someone makes simple observations about reality, because it forces them to realize that they are on the wrong side of history. This is a thoughtful and not-at-all aggressively political show that is being brigades by reactionary troglodytes.

NPR who

I’m not sure if it’s just my headphones but sometimes it seems like you’re speaking into a piece of heavy cloth- the treble is diminished, and your otherwise impeccable annunciation muddled. That said; this is a fantastic show and you should be very proud of this production! I look forward to every episode!

Just when you start getting immersed into the story, another 3 minute add break, resulting 1/3 of podcast being ads, ripping you out of the story. I get the content provider needs to make money, but how much does playing the same company ad 4 times in the same podcast pay?

Spooky elites healing this "horrible horrible world"

I had previously listened to a few select episodes of Cautionary Tales (Blitzkrieg), but it wasn’t until Tim Hartford mentioned the show on the More or Less podcast that I discovered just how amazingly good Cautionary Tales actually is. I’m now thoroughly addicted and steadily working through the back catalog of episodes. Fascinating stories, amazing insights, well produced, smart and entertaining. Love it.

This is one of the best written and best produced scripted podcasts ever. Such a refreshing break from endless “conversation/interview” podcasts.

I am a podcast junkie and this one is the one I look forward to the most. I've also listened to an episode and then followed up with more reading to find out more information. I cannot rave about the show enough

I love the podcast but u feel like there isn’t a lot half of the episodes are episodes promoting something else it’s very irritating seeing a notification for a new episode and it’s for another show

I look forward to each and everyone of the Cautionary Tales. The latest one “Steel and Kindness” is an absolute keeper for me! Really love the research, insight and thoughtfulness that goes into each episode. Tim Hartford is a wonderful storyteller!

Well the reviews speak for themselves. Just look at how consistently high they were before you started bringing your politics into the episodes. It is possible to tell a story without injecting personal biases into them. The point of a podcast is to reach as many people as possible, no???? Get back to doing that and leave tour agenda on the shelf. I don’t talk politics with friends and family, what makes you think that I hi e one flip what you think politically? I could car less, so leave it at home.

Tim Harford makes history compelling as well as giving it context, showing how it directly affects us today. He is a master storyteller as well. You don’t feel lime you’re learning, you feel like you’re being entertained!