Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford

Photographing Fairies

Sherlock Holmes is known for approaching all mysteries with cool logic - and yet when his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle saw photographs taken by two young girls purporting to show real life fairies at play... he unwisely declared them genuine. How did Elsie and Frances fool so many people with their photography... and why did they keep the hoax going for decades? For a full list of sources go to <a href="https://timharford.com/">timharford.com</a> If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to sign up for our email list at <a href="https://pushkin.us20.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=ec28005461416f0b42178894f&amp;id=1694c40f69">Pushkin.fm</a>.See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.

We tell our children unsettling fairy tales to teach them valuable lessons, but these Cautionary Tales are for the education of the grown ups – and they are all true. Tim Harford (Financial Times, BBC, author of “The Data Detective”) brings you stories of awful human error, tragic catastrophes, and hilarious fiascos. They'll delight you, scare you, but also make you wiser. New episodes every other Friday.