Pushkin

I opened the wrapping paper hurriedly with nervous hands, excited to get at the gift inside.

Little did I know, disaster was about to enter my previously happy childhood.

No, don't worry, it wasn't a disaster for me. It was a catalogue of disasters for everyone else.

The gift was a book titled The World's Greatest Mistakes.

Some of the stories were absurd, the bride who accidentally married the best man.

Some of them were famous tragedies like the Titanic swallowed by the ICC.

All of them fascinated me.

And I realised, learning from other people's mistakes

is a lot less painful than learning from your own.

My name is Tim Hafard.

Some people call me the undercover economist.

I use scientific ideas to help people think more clearly about the world.

In my books, my BBC radio shows and my column for the Financial Times.

Now I'm using the same rigorous research to understand what we can learn from other people's errors.

My new podcast, Corsairytales, takes you aboard a doomed airship.

With downloads.

Sits you on a concert stage in front of a broken piano

and puts you in a room with cult members counting down the final seconds before the end of the world.

Helping me tell these Corsairytales are some marvelous actors,

such as Alan Cumming and Archipand Jabi from The Good Wife.

The Bond villain Toby Stevens and Russell Tovey from Quantico.

...