La La Land: Galileo’s Warning (Classic)
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
Pushkin Industries
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2023
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With the 95th Academy Awards just around the corner, Tim Harford looks back at a basic lesson. Galileo tried to teach us that adding more and more layers to a system intended to avert disaster often makes catastrophe all the more likely. This principle has been ignored in nuclear power plants, financial markets and at the Oscars... all resulting in chaos.
For a full list of sources for this episode, go to timharford.com.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The 95th Academy Awards are just around the corner, and loyal cautionary tales listeners |
| 0:16.0 | will know that the Academy Awards ceremony was not so long ago, the stage for one of the |
| 0:21.5 | most bizarre, fascinating, and instructive errors in entertainment history. |
| 0:28.1 | We explored that mistake in one of the very first episodes of cautionary tales, and it |
| 0:33.5 | remains one of our best loved stories. |
| 0:36.5 | If you want to know more about the ideas in this episode, check out our show notes, and |
| 0:40.6 | in particular the wonderful book Meltdown by Chris Cleafield and András Tildczyk. |
| 0:46.6 | But first, another chance to hear La La Land, Galileo's warning. |
| 0:56.2 | You've heard this story before. |
| 0:58.4 | You might even have watched it happening live. |
| 1:01.3 | 33 million people did. |
| 1:05.2 | There they stand, together on stage, fade on away and Warren Beatty, bonning and clied |
| 1:11.4 | together again after 50 years. |
| 1:14.5 | Even for a pair of veteran Hollywood stars, it must have been a nerve-wracking moment, |
| 1:19.4 | yet their tasks seemed simple. |
| 1:22.2 | Open a red envelope. |
| 1:24.2 | Check out a card, and read out the title of the film that had won the Academy Award for |
| 1:29.7 | Best Picture. |
| 1:31.9 | Beatty opens the envelope so far so good. |
| 1:35.8 | Then he looks at the card in his hand. |
| 1:38.7 | He hesitates. |
| 1:40.3 | Then he looks inside the envelope again as though checking to see if there was a cover note. |
... |
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