Cautionary Tales Short – The Balloons That Ate Cleveland
When Disneyland released one million helium balloons to set a new world record, Cleveland, Ohio looked on in envy. Could it top the Magic Kingdom? But what did citizens hope to gain from getting into the record books… and at what cost?
This shorter episode is one of a series of five Cautionary Tales Shorts I’ve made for subscribers to Pushkin+ – subscribers can listen to the other four but this one is for everyone… enjoy!
Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright. It is produced by Ryan Dilley, with support from Courtney Guarino and Emily Vaughn.
The sound design and original music is the work of Pascal Wyse. Julia Barton edited the scripts.
Thanks to the team at Pushkin Industries, including Mia Lobel, Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fain, Jon Schnaars, Carly Migliori, Eric Sandler, Emily Rostek, Royston Beserve, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morana, Daniella Lakhan and Maya Koenig.
[Apple] [Spotify] [Stitcher]
Further reading and listening
Nathan Truesdell’s delightful micro-documentary is “Balloonfest“. Other sources include Be Amazed, and reporting from the Los Angeles Times, CBS, the Chicago Tribune and the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
The academic research on why gifts are disappointing is Galak, J., Givi, J. and Williams, E. F. (2016) ‘Why Certain Gifts Are Great to Give but Not to Get: A Framework for Understanding Errors in Gift Giving’, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25(6), pp. 380–385. doi: 10.1177/0963721416656937.
← Cautionary Tales - Death on the Dance FloorOwl Media Group takes pride in providing social-first platforms which equally benefit and facilitate engagement between businesses and consumers and creating much-needed balance to make conducting business, easier, safer, faster and better. The vision behind every platform in the Owl Media suite is to make lives better and foster a healthy environment in which parties can conduct business efficiently. Facilitating free and fair business relationships is crucial for any thriving economy and Owl Media bridges the gap and open doors for transparent and successful transacting. No advertising funds influence the functionality of our media platforms because we value authenticity and never compromise on quality no matter how lucrative the offers from advertisers may seem.
Originally posted on: https://timharford.com/2022/03/cautionary-tales-short-the-balloons-that-ate-cleveland/