DOUBLE BILL: A Monkey For Mayor / A Screw Loose At 17,000 Feet
34:25 Share

So I have some big news for vegans and vegetarians everywhere. It's Hellman's plant-based mayo spread and dressing. Made for people with a plant-based diet or anyone really who wants to enjoy the great taste of Hellman's real without the eggs. Hellman's plant-based is perfect for sandwiches, salads, veggie burgers, or any of your family favorites.

To celebrate, Hellman's is sharing some easy, delicious plant-based recipes at hellmans.com. Hellman's plant-based mayo spread and dressing. Same great taste, plant-based. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and I'd like to take a moment to talk about an amazing new podcast I'm hosting called Medal of Honor.

It's a moving podcast series celebrating the untold stories of those who protect our country. And it's brought to you by LifeLock, the leader in identity theft protection. Your personal info is in a lot of places that can accidentally expose you to identity theft. And not everyone who handles your personal info is as careful as you.

LifeLock makes it easy to take control of your identity and will work to fix identity theft if it happens. Join the millions of Americans who trust LifeLock. Visit LifeLock.com slash metal today to save up to 40% off your first year.

The most innovative companies are going further with T-Mobile for Business. Red Bull harnessed the strength of the T-Mobile 5G network to launch point-of-view drones and give fans unmatched views of their extreme sports, while broadcasting in real time from some of the most remote locations in America. This is heart-pounding fan experiences. This is Red Bull with T-Mobile for Business.

Take your business further at T-Mobile.com slash now.

And a reminder that if you are a Pushkin Plus subscriber, we've released our epic series on the V2 rocket, looking at this fearsome Nazi weapon from three very different perspectives. For now, and for everyone, I present 'A Screw Loose at 17,000 Feet' and first, 'A Monkey for Mayor'. It's early in the 19th century and England is at war with Napoleon's France.

Far up the north-east coast of England, a long way from the action, there's been a shipwreck. So the story goes. And something else that was on the ship has washed up too. A man? Is it a man? It's like no man I've ever seen. The people of Hartlepool had never seen a monkey. There was something else they'd also never seen. A Frenchman. Could it be a Frenchman come to spy on us? You think? I suppose it could be. Seize him!

If this was indeed a French spy, clearly they would have to hang him. The countries were at war. But first, he deserved a fair trial. Are you a French spy? What's he saying? I don't know. I don't speak French. The people of Hartlepool hung the monkey. I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to Cautionary Tales.

Did this really happen? Did the people of Hartlepool really mistake a monkey for a French spy during the Napoleonic Wars? Well, that would be telling, wouldn't it? And it doesn't actually matter for the purposes of our cautionary tale. What we do know from the historical record is that the legend soon came to be widely believed.

People from nearby towns poked fun at Hartlepudlians with a song. Hartlepudlian, by the way, is what people from Hartlepool are called. Sometimes they're also still known today as monkey hangers.

Over the decades, Hartlepool grew from a tiny village into a town of 90,000 people. Not many are fishermen anymore, although the staple food is still fish and chips, served with the traditional regional delicacy of mushy peas. A bright green lumpy gloop, unpromising to look at, delightful to taste.

Hartlepool became an industrial port, built on steel and shipbuilding, then struggled as those industries declined. And through it all, the gentle mockery from nearby towns continued. Hartlepudlians decided there was only one way to respond, by joining in and laughing at themselves. They embraced the monkey-hanging story as a source of civic identity, even civic pride.

They weren't proud about their forebears not knowing the difference between a monkey and a Frenchman, of course. The pride is in the self-deprecating humour. Being a good sport. The ability to take a joke. When Hartlepool's soccer club needed a mascot, the choice was obvious. They called him Hangus. Hangus the monkey. That's Angus with an H apostrophe at the front. Hang-us.

At Hartlepool United games, Hanges, played by a man in a full body costume, performed the traditional role of the mascot, entertaining the crowd before kick-off and at half-time. Hanges sometimes took things too far. At one game he got into a fight against the rival team's mascot, Desmond the Dragon. He punched Desmond's head off.

At another, Hangus was kicked out of an opponent's stadium on suspicion of being drunk. At this point in the story, I need to take you on a brief diversion into politics. In 2002, the UK changed its system of local government. Until 2002, only big cities had directly elected their mayors.

More modestly sized towns like Hartlepool elected a town council, and the councillors chose the mayor from among themselves. Now national reforms meant that more towns like Hartlepool would also be asked to elect a mayor directly. In Hartlepool there was little doubt about who would win the first mayoral election. It would be whoever the Labour Party picked as their candidate. Labour usually won elections in Hartlepool.

The biggest group of town councillors was Labour. The Member of Parliament was Labour. Hartlepool was a working town and Labour was the party of workers. Or it always had been. But its national leaders were trying to change its left-wing image. They no longer talked about socialism or taxing the wealthy. One party high-flyer had recently made waves by saying they were intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich.

That high flyer was called Peter Mandelson. He also happened to be the Member of Parliament for Hartlepool, the town's representative in the London legislature. But Mr Mandelson was not very representative of the town. Hartlepool is gritty and provincial. Mr Mandelson, who comes from London, was smooth and urbane and cosmopolitan.

It's said that when Mr Mandelson first travelled to Hartlepool to campaign for election, his local handlers took him to a fish and chip shop. He spotted the tub of gloopy green mushy peas and asked for a portion of that excellent looking guacamole. That story isn't true.

But, like the monkey story, it stuck. Because it seemed to capture something about how the Labour Party's leaders didn't understand their traditional northern voters. Still, they'd win the election for mayor. Of course they would. Hartlepool was a Labour town. At Hartlepool United Football Club, the man who wore the monkey costume went to the club chairman with an idea. What if...Hangus the Monkey ran for mayor? As a joke.

It would raise the profile of the club, he suggested. Maybe raise some money. Go for it, said the club's chairman. So Hangus began a campaign for mayor, with a flagship promise of free bananas for all the town's schoolchildren. Bookmakers gave odds of 100 to 1, and you can guess where I'm going with this story, can't you?

Here are the results of the election for Mayor of Hartlepool. Leo Gillum, the Labour Party candidate, 6,762 votes. Hengist the monkey, 7,395 votes. Hartlepool had once supposedly hung a monkey. Now they'd elected one. Only, technically speaking, it wasn't the monkey who'd been elected.

It was the man who wore the costume. His name was Stuart Drummond. He was 28 years old. He worked in a call centre. He knew absolutely nothing about local government. And now he found himself unexpectedly put in charge of a municipal authority with an annual budget of over £100 million – that's almost $250 million in today's terms –

and 3,000 staff looking to him for leadership. There's a famous theory, partly a joke and partly deadly serious, which is called the Peter Principle. The Peter Principle says that people who are good at their jobs will keep on being promoted until they end up in jobs that they don't have the skills to do well. They then stay in this job indefinitely, too incompetent to be promoted further.

The Peter Principle says that promotion is a way of losing good workers without any guarantee of gaining good managers. In 2009, researchers from the University of Catania in Italy wondered if promoting people at random might solve the Peter Principle problem. That may sound crazy,

But a few years earlier, some other researchers in Texas had studied random promotion as a point of comparison for promoting by merit or length of time with the organization. To their surprise, they found that random choice was almost as likely to identify a junior worker who turned out to have the skills to succeed in a senior role.

And promoting people at random, rather than picking out those who are good at their job, would also keep more people in lower-level jobs that they're good at. The academics from Catania modelled the effects and argued that organisations would indeed become more efficient overall if they handed out promotions randomly.

For their troubles, the Italian researchers received an Ig Nobel Prize in Management Theory, a prize for research that makes you laugh, then makes you think. Inspired by this award, or at the very least undeterred by it, they went on to ask another provocative question. Why don't we do this for politicians too? Politics is broken. Only partisan hacks get elected.

What if we appointed at least some parliamentarians by drawing lots? Might it improve the quality of governance?

Stuart Drummond wasn't quite drawn by lot to be mayor of Hartlepool, but I can't imagine anything more similar to a random chance. He never intended to be mayor. He had none of the conventional qualifications. He had no interest whatsoever in politics. He'd stood for election as hangus, only as a joke. When the result was announced, the 28-year-old was dazed.

Then, Stewart says, he saw the town's Member of Parliament striding up to him. Peter Mandelson looked furious.

You're a disgrace. You've set this town back 20 years. You think any business will want to invest here now? You've made us a laughing stock. Peter Mandelson started to quiz Mr Drummond about his background. What did he do, other than wear a monkey costume on weekends? What had he studied at university? Business and languages, Mr Drummond replied.

Yes, ironically, Hangus the monkey spoke French. Mr Mandelson stalked off, leaving Mr Drummond feeling even more bewildered. A few minutes later, Mr Drummond caught sight of a television on which Mr Mandelson was being interviewed. No, not at all. Stuart's an intelligent guy. He speaks three languages. He has a degree in business. He has the best interests of the town at heart.

And that, said Stuart Drummond, was his introduction to how politics works. Mr Drummond could have refused to take up the post of mayor, but he thought, why not give it a go? He figured out what he'd need to learn and sent himself on training courses. It was like doing six master's degrees in six months, he later said. But after a year or so, he began to feel like he was getting the hang of it.

And he kept his big campaign promise about free bananas. Or close enough. He found some funding from a healthy eating programme and every day the schools of Hartlepool offered their children a free piece of fruit. At the end of his term as mayor, Stuart Drummond stood for re-election. Not as hangus this time, but as himself. He won, with a bigger share of the vote.

Four years later, at the end of his second term, he stood for a third, and one again. He'd got the job by accident, but the people of Hartlepool clearly thought he'd done it well. So if you ever find yourself looking at the politicians who govern us and wondering if a random person picked off the street could do better, I have one thing to say to you. I think that's French for, you might be right.

Can you tell the difference, dear listener, between an A2117D bolt and an A2118C? Well, nor could the tired and stressed engineer fitting a cockpit windshield to flight 5390. Our next Cautionary Tale short looks at what happened when those two very similar bolts were muddled up and how the dramatic consequences played out at 17,000 feet.

That's after the break.

OCI is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds, offers one consistent price instead of variable regional pricing, and of course, nobody does data better than Oracle. So now you can train your AI models at twice the speed and less than half the cost of other clouds. If

If you want to do more and spend less, like Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic, take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com slash strategic. That's oracle.com slash strategic. oracle.com slash strategic. I love cycling, and I'm eager to get my kids cycling too. It's a great way for them to stay fit and move around our home city independently. But of course, I also want them to be confident and safe.

which is where Guardian Bikes comes in. The bike comes in a box and it's easy to assemble with all the tools you need and simple online instructions. My son and I unboxed his bike together, spent about 20 minutes working as a team to assemble it

And then he was on the bike and ready to ride. The bike looks great and with the SureStop braking system it brakes quickly and safely without locking the front wheel and sending you over the handlebars. Guardian bikes offer a 365-day money-back guarantee covering returns, repairs and spare parts. Join hundreds of thousands of happy families by getting a Guardian bike today.

Visit GuardianBikes.com to save up to 25% off bikes. No code needed. Plus, receive a free bike lock and pump with your first purchase after signing up for the newsletter. That's GuardianBikes.com. Happy riding! If you're listening to this right now, you probably like to stay on top of things, which is why I want to mention The Economist. Today, the world seems to be moving faster than ever. Climate and economics, politics and culture, science and technology, wherever you look,

Events are unfolding quickly, but now you can save 20% off an annual subscription to The Economist so you won't miss a thing. The Economist broadens your perspective with fact-checked, rigorous reporting and analysis. It's journalism you can truly trust. There is a lot going on these days, but with 20% off, you get access to in-depth, independent coverage of world events through podcasts, webinars, expert analysis and even their extensive archives. So where

Whether you want to catch up on current events or dive deeper into specific issues, The Economist delivers global perspectives with distinctive clarity. Just to give an example, What's Next for Amazon as it turns 30? analyzes how Amazon's fourth decade looks like an area of integration for the company. Go beyond the headlines with The Economist. Save 20% for a limited time on an annual subscription. Go to economist.com and subscribe today.

The maintenance hangar at Birmingham International Airport, near an industrial city in the English Midlands, is not a glamorous location in the dark hours before the dawn. But it is an important one. The night shift maintenance manager is replacing an ageing aeroplane windshield. Let's call him Guy. It isn't his real name.

Standing on a raised maintenance platform beside the plane, Guy examines the 90 bolts he's just removed, along with the old windshield. Those bolts are a bit worn, he thinks. He's going to need to replace them too. But one bolt looks pretty much the same as any other. Which ones should he use? I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. CAUTIONARY TALES

Instead of consulting the manual, Guy grabs one of the bolts he's removed, climbs down and heads to the room where the spare parts are stored. He knows roughly what he's looking for and so quickly finds the box with the bolts that match the bolt he's brought with him. They're A2117Ds. "Oh crap," says Guy to himself. There are less than half a dozen left. He needs 85 more.

Guy drives across the airport to another Spares storage facility. This one is unstaffed and poorly lit. If you're standing in front of the parts drawers, you're also obstructing the light. It's night, it's raining. And Guy hasn't brought his reading glasses. Even if he had, the drawers aren't labelled properly. Crap, crap, crap. At least Guy has one of the right bolts with him.

So, he manually compares it until he finds a box with the right bolts in. Or at least, he thinks they're the right bolts. And then he remembers one section of the windshield needs six slightly longer bolts. Which ones are they? He finds the longer bolts and drives back to the plane. The next step is to grab a special tool called a torque wrench, which, when the bolt is tight enough, stops tightening and instead gives a click. Except that the torque wrench is missing from the tool store.

Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap. I should confess that I'm someone who has trouble putting up a bookshelf so that it stays straight and level at a height of four feet. I have both sympathy and admiration for the maintenance crews who keep an entire aeroplane in tip-top condition, able to keep straight and level at 30,000 feet. But the thought that one of them might be as fallible as I am, it's unnerving.

Matt Parker, whose book Humble Pie contains the definitive account of this sorry tale, writes: Great. So Guy is trying to replace a windshield. He doesn't have the right parts. He doesn't have the right tools. And it's not even his regular job.

And did I mention that it's 4 o'clock in the morning? Guy returns to the plane with his next best option: a torque-limiting screwdriver. The trouble is, it needs an adapter, which doesn't fit. Which means that the adapter keeps falling out, and Guy keeps having to climb down from the maintenance platform and climb back up again. It also means he's having to use both hands for the job, which is awkward. Finally, Guy reaches for those six longer bolts. They don't fit.

You have to be kidding me. In the end, Guy decides that the old bolts he'd decided to replace are probably fine. It's now five o'clock in the morning. It's been a long night shift, but at least Guy can head home to bed in the knowledge of a job well done. A day later, the 10th of June 1990, British Airways Flight 5390 climbed off the runway at Birmingham Airport

and turned south towards Malaga in Spain. There were 81 passengers on board and most of them were looking forward to a vacation on the Costa del Sol. As the plane climbs higher, the air pressure outside gets lower. The air inside is kept at a constant pressure so it pushes more and more firmly against the inside of the aircraft. There's a huge amount of pressure pushing out against the windshield.

As BA5390 rose past 17,000 feet, Captain Tim Lancaster was relaxing and shrugging off his shoulder harness. He had no warning at all. There was a sudden explosive bang and the windshield disappeared. The cabin almost instantly depressurised. Captain Lancaster was sucked out of his seat and out towards the freezing air above Didcot Oxfordshire. He would have disappeared just as quickly as the windshield

Had his legs not become tangled in the aircraft controls, flight steward Nigel Ogden was opening the door to the flight deck to offer the crew a cup of tea. The door was ripped off its hinges and flew out of the gap where the windshield had been. Ogden just had time to see that Captain Lancaster was heading the same way. Instinctively, he leaped forward and grabbed Lancaster's waist, but he gashed his hand badly as he did, and without the protection of the windshield,

Ogden was now being blasted with air at zero degrees Fahrenheit as he desperately tried to keep hold of Captain Lancaster's legs. The upper half of Lancaster's body was outside the plane and now in danger of disappearing into the slipstream through the side windshield. Nigel Ogden could see the captain being buffeted against the outside of the plane. Lancaster's face was bloodied, his eyes wide and sightless.

Meanwhile, the co-pilot, Alastair Acheson, was fortunately still in his shoulder harness. But when Tim Lancaster's legs had snagged in the controls, they'd switched off the autopilot. The plane was now plummeting downwards at hundreds of miles an hour. Co-pilot Acheson was fighting to get the aircraft back under control while coping with the wind and the lack of oxygen and the cold. At that kind of altitude, you really want to be wearing a thick coat, a hat and gloves.

Acheson was dressed in short sleeves. So was flight steward Nigel Ogden. He was bleeding, freezing and starting to lose his grip on Captain Lancaster. Other crew members rushed to help. There was a hurried exchange as to whether they would have to let go of the captain's body. "Never!" yelled Ogden. "How would they look his widow in the eyes?"

Co-pilot Acheson had a more practical concern. He shouted that the body might hit the plane's engine. He urged them to hang on. Eventually, Alistair Acheson managed to level the plane at a lower altitude. The air became warmer and more breathable. But he still had to get the plane on the ground. He was yelling at air traffic control, trying to be heard over the rush of the wind. They directed him to Southampton Airport on the south coast of England.

Acheson pointed out that the plane was heavy with fuel, so he'd need a long runway to be able to stop safely. "As long as we have 2,500 metres, I'm happy," he said. Air Traffic Control gave him the bad news. Southampton's runway was 700 metres short of that. But under the circumstances, Acheson didn't want to make any more detours. "Talk me down," he told Southampton Control. "I need all the help I can get and make sure the emergency crews are ready."

Against the odds, Acheson's landing was perfect. Bleeding and frostbitten, Nigel Ogden staggered back to help evacuate the passengers. None of them were hurt. Most of them elected to fly on to Malaga that afternoon. Ogden returned to the flight deck to find Captain Tim Lancaster lying on a paramedic stretcher. He was blooded and most of his clothes had been ripped off, but he was awake and asking when he could eat.

Ogden slumped into a seat and began to sob with shock and relief. Why had the aeroplane's brand new windshield popped off? It isn't hard to guess. The day before the flight, maintenance guy had grabbed the wrong bolts, hadn't he? He didn't have the A2117D bolts. He got himself a fistful of A2118Cs. Matt Parker, the author of Humble Pie, ordered himself both types of bolt just to take a look.

They're astonishingly similar. The A2117D bolts have a slightly different thread, are fractionally shorter, and are one quarter of one tenth of an inch thicker. Even in daylight, with perfect eyesight, the difference is hard to spot. Guy was doing it in the dark, without his glasses. But while the difference is subtle...

That one quarter of one tenth of an inch means that the bolts are slim enough to be ripped out once the air pressure outside is low enough. That is exactly what happened. But as Matt Parker explains, there's more going on here. Guy only chose the wrong bolts because the original store wasn't properly stocked and the backup store was a poorly lit, poorly labelled mess. He didn't notice that the bolts didn't fit properly because he was using the wrong tool, which obscured his view.

His torque-limiting screwdriver was supposed to click when it reached the right tension. Instead, the misfitted bolts would slip in a way that apparently felt quite similar. And the shift manager didn't check Guy's work. Because Guy was the shift manager. Safety experts have a cute analogy to describe what's going on here, first proposed by James Reason, a psychologist and the author of many books about human error.

James Reason's analogy is to imagine different safety measures as slices of Swiss cheese with holes in them. Line up slice after slice of Swiss cheese and usually the holes won't overlap. There'll be no holes that go all the way through the stack of cheese slices. In this analogy, the holes represent something going wrong. But usually when something goes wrong, there's some sort of fallback. A hole in one slice is covered by cheese from another slice.

Or maintenance guy grabs the wrong bolts, but with the proper tool and a better view, he notices that the bolts are slipping. Or a supervisor checks the work and spots the problem. Mistakes turn into accidents when all the problems line up, like all the slices of Swiss cheese having a hole in the same place. That's really bad luck, a million to one piece of bad luck. But sometimes really bad luck strikes.

I love cycling and I'm eager to get my kids cycling too. It's a great way for them to stay fit and move around our home city independently. But of course, I also want them to be confident and safe. Which is where Guardian Bikes comes in. The bike comes in a box and it's easy to assemble, with all the tools you need and simple online instructions. My son and I unboxed his bike together, spent about 20 minutes working as a team to assemble it,

And then he was on the bike and ready to ride. The bike looks great and with the SureStop braking system it brakes quickly and safely without locking the front wheel and sending you over the handlebars. Guardian bikes offer a 365-day money-back guarantee covering returns, repairs and spare parts. Join hundreds of thousands of happy families by getting a Guardian bike today.

Visit GuardianBikes.com to save up to 25% off bikes. No code needed. Plus, receive a free bike lock and pump with your first purchase after signing up for the newsletter. That's GuardianBikes.com. Happy riding! If you're listening to this right now, you probably like to stay on top of things, which is why I want to mention The Economist. Today, the world seems to be moving faster than ever. Climate and economics, politics and culture, science and technology, wherever you look,

Events are unfolding quickly, but now you can save 20% off an annual subscription to The Economist so you won't miss a thing. The Economist broadens your perspective with fact-checked, rigorous reporting and analysis. It's journalism you can truly trust. There is a lot going on these days, but with 20% off, you get access to in-depth, independent coverage of world events through podcasts, webinars, expert analysis and even their extensive archives. So where

Whether you want to catch up on current events or dive deeper into specific issues, The Economist delivers global perspectives with distinctive clarity. Just to give an example, What's Next for Amazon as it turns 30? analyzes how Amazon's fourth decade looks like an area of integration for the company. Go beyond the headlines with The Economist. Save 20% for a limited time on an annual subscription. Go to economist.com and subscribe today. I interviewed James Reason a few years ago.

And he told me he's been thinking about his Swiss cheese analogy a little differently. The mistakes don't all have to line up simultaneously. Instead, some mistakes cause lasting problems that nobody notices. They lurk in wait, never fixed. It's like that particular slice of Swiss cheese was nibbled away months ago and nobody's realised.

For example, the rule that if the shift manager does the work, nobody checks it, that's an accident waiting to happen. So's the badly organised, badly stocked, badly lit spare parts store. And perhaps most profoundly, so is the existence of several subtly different types of bolt. The bolts are in labelled boxes, but they themselves aren't labelled, and they're almost indistinguishable. Yet put the wrong one in, and you have a problem.

This confusion could be avoided. The entire windshield could have been designed to be fitted from the inside, so that the internal air pressure pushed it tighter against the hull. More awkward perhaps, but safer. Failing that, new windshields could at least come pre-packaged as a kit with a set of the correct bolts. At the very least, each bolt could be stamped with a label.

When the windshield was found intact in a field near Oxford, along with some of the bolts, it didn't take accident investigators long to figure out what had gone wrong. Broadly speaking, they blamed Guy and the managers who should have been paying more attention to the way Guy and his colleagues were doing their jobs. Fair enough. But they also discovered something else. When British Airways had acquired the aircraft, the windshield

was already fitted with the wrong bolts. Instead of being slightly too slim, they were slightly too short. It's all a question of whether you fit the A211-7Ds, the A211-8Cs or the correct bolts, the A211-8Ds. Confused? Well, maintenance guy was. Anyway, it turns out that you can get away with bolts that are slightly too short.

But as Captain Tim Lancaster discovered, you can't get away with bolts that are too slim. You should also be nervous. After the accident, airlines started double checking the windshields on this sort of plane. It turns out that BA5390 wasn't the only plane flying with the wrong bolts. Not by a long shot.

One airline found that half the planes of this type had windshields fastened with bolts that were too short. Maintenance Guy had caused a terrifying accident, but perhaps more unnerving were all those planes flying around the world with the wrong bolts installed. Captain Tim Lancaster had suffered frostbite and a broken arm, along with many cuts and bruises, but within a few months he'd recovered.

He continued flying for another 15 years before retiring. Nigel Ogden wasn't so lucky. He suffered a dislocated shoulder and a frost-bitten eye, but the real injury was to his peace of mind. He could never forget the experience of clinging on to what he assumed was a corpse, or the sight of Tim Lancaster's face smashing against the window, eyes sightlessly staring.

He retired early on the grounds of ill health and went to work for a charity. Given what we now know about all those planes and all those wrong bolts, I don't blame him. If you like stories of things going wrong, you'll love Matt Parker's book, Humble Pie. For a full list of our sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.

Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Ryan Dilley, with support from Courtney Guarino and Emily Vaughan. The sound design and original music is the work of Pascal Wise. Julia Barton edited the scripts. It features the voice talents of Ben Crow, Melanie Gutteridge, Stella Harford and Rufus Wright.

The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Mia LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fane, John Schnarz, Carly Migliori, Eric Sandler, Royston Besserve, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano, Daniela Lacan and Maya Koenig. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review. MUSIC

I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and I'd like to take a moment to talk about an amazing new podcast I'm hosting called Medal of Honor. It's a moving podcast series celebrating the untold stories of those who protect our country. And it's brought to you by LifeLock, the leader in identity theft protection. Your personal info is in a lot of places that can accidentally expose you to identity theft.

and not everyone who handles your personal info is as careful as you. LifeLock makes it easy to take control of your identity and will work to fix identity theft if it happens. Join the millions of Americans who trust LifeLock. Visit LifeLock.com slash metal today to save up to 40% off your first year.

So I have some big news for vegans and vegetarians everywhere. It's Hellman's plant-based mayo spread and dressing. Made for people with a plant-based diet or anyone really who wants to enjoy the great taste of Hellman's real without the eggs. Hellman's plant-based is perfect for sandwiches, salads, veggie burgers, or any of your family favorites.

To celebrate, Hellman's is sharing some easy, delicious plant-based recipes at hellmans.com. Hellman's Plant-Based Mayo Spread and Dressing. Same great taste, plant-based.

The news isn't always good news, but when you're getting quality journalism and in-depth expert analysis that's held up for more than 180 years, that is definitely good news. So if you haven't already, save 20% with The Economist's summer sale today and stay on top of the stories that matter to you. You'll instantly gain unlimited digital access to daily articles, special reports, award-winning podcasts, subscriber-only events, and so much more. Now that's

Good news. Go to economist.com and subscribe today.