Hello dear listeners, I hope you're having a great Halloween week. Today I'm

changing things up a bit and bringing you a preview of a podcast I think you are

going to love. It's called Cautionary Tales and like American hysteria it looks

at how fantastical thinking has shaped our understanding and sometimes our

misunderstanding of reality. Best-selling author Tim Harford takes you on a wild

ride through the extremes that human behavior and nature can throw at us. Looking

at the greatest mistakes and tragic catastrophes from history to see the

valuable lessons we can learn from them sounds pretty good to me. Some stories

will delight you others may scare you but they will all make you wiser. In this

preview Tim explores Halloween sadism. You know where a stranger puts

something dangerous in the trees collected by children. Razor blades in apples

rat poison in chocolate bars that sort of thing. Long time listeners know that we

have covered this topic before and it's always something that pops up in the

media each and every Halloween season. But the age-old question is trick-or-

treating really something to worry about? A young sociologist named Joel Best

became curious and what he found is that there is a deadlier danger awaiting

children on Halloween night. Okay here's the preview I hope you enjoy it as much

as I did. You can hear the full episode and more from cautionary tales wherever

you get your podcasts.

Pasadena, Texas 1974. Someone is getting ready for Halloween. He lays out five

pixie sticks on the kitchen counter. The large plastic tubes nearly two feet long

filled to the brim with fizzing candy quite a prize for the local trick-or-

...