Steel and Kindness: Clash of the Skyscrapers
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
Pushkin Industries
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 13 September 2024
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Paul Starrett has just won a major building contract. If everything goes according to plan, this will be the tallest building in the world. But will everything go according to plan?
This prestigious new project will have Starrett's biggest workforce yet. Everyone will need to pull together, but labour relations in the United States have been rough. There have been tens of thousands of strikes in recent years, many ending in shootings and arbitrary mass arrests.
Something else is bothering Starrett too: enormous steel-framed buildings normally take three or four years to complete. The deadline on this one? Just thirteen months.
This is the second episode in a four-part series about how to succeed without being a jerk. It's based on David Bodanis' excellent book The Art of Fairness: The Power of Decency in a World Turned Mean.
For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Pushkin. |
| 0:09.0 | I'm Dr. |
| 0:10.0 | I'm Dr. Lorry Santos, host of the happiness lab podcast. |
| 0:12.0 | Is the U.S. elections approach, |
| 0:15.0 | it can feel like we're angrier and more divided than ever. |
| 0:18.0 | But in a new hopeful season of my podcast, |
| 0:22.0 | I'll share with the science really shows that we're But in a new hopeful season of my podcast, |
| 0:22.6 | I'll share with the science really shows |
| 0:24.7 | that we're surprisingly more united than most people think. |
| 0:27.8 | We all know something is wrong in our culture, |
| 0:30.6 | in our politics, and that we need to do better and that we can do better. |
| 0:34.7 | Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. |
| 0:41.6 | One late afternoon in June 1928, the 62-year-old man from Kansas, Paul Starrot, was leaving |
| 0:50.0 | an elegant private office high up in Manhattan's built more hotel. |
| 0:57.1 | He ran a construction company with his brothers and had just a |
| 1:03.3 | yet. It was a building on a site just a few blocks away |
| 1:06.7 | that would make or break their company's fortunes. |
| 1:11.5 | Starret was a handsome man, always dressed in the latest trim suits, but he didn't smile much. |
| 1:18.0 | He'd suffered from periods of depression for years, and on this day it was especially acute. |
| 1:26.8 | That wasn't because he'd lost out on the contract. |
| 1:30.6 | It was because he had a sinking feeling he was going to win it. |
| 1:36.0 | Starrot was embarrassed by his depression, |
... |
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