0:15

Pushkin a

0:22

mental health institution. A

0:26

psychiatrist is assessing whether

0:28

a new patient needs to be admitted.

0:31

I'm not going to stay. I'm

0:33

not going to stay. Please, Miss

0:35

Tierney, relax, take a seat,

0:39

Miss Tierney. Miss Jean

0:41

Tierney then one of

0:43

the most famous women in the world. She

0:46

had taken Hollywood by storm in the nineteen

0:48

forties, starring in Laura the

0:51

Razor's Edge and as fem

0:53

Fatale Ellen Barrant in Leave

0:56

Her to Heaven, which earned

0:58

her an Academy Award nomination for

1:00

Best Actress. But

1:03

now it's years later and

1:05

Jean Tierney hasn't starred in a movie

1:08

for a while. Sadly,

1:11

it's not hard to see why. Nowadays

1:14

she spends a lot of time sleeping whole

1:17

days, sometimes two at a time.

1:21

Then there were the delusions, and

1:24

that means the steak must be for you,

1:26

ma'am. Take that back to the kitchen. I'm

1:29

sorry, ma'am. Is it not cooked? Your

1:31

satisfaction? Please just take

1:33

it back to the kitchen. Gane,

1:35

what are you doing. You can't go on like

1:37

this. You must eat. I

1:39

won't eat that food, mother. They're

1:43

trying to poison me. No

1:46

wonder Jean's mother has brought

1:48

her to a psychiatrist. Who

1:50

do you think is trying

1:53

to poison you, Miss Dyrney? I

1:55

don't know if I can trust you.

1:57

You might be one of them. Who are

1:59

you concerned about, Miss Dyrney? The

2:02

Communists? Jean is worried

2:04

about the Communists, but

2:07

she's not going to tell him that. How

2:10

do you spend your time nowadays? Scrubbing

2:12

the kitchen floor? It's true,

2:15

Jeane likes to scrub the kitchen floor.

2:18

It's something she can do without

2:20

having to think. You know, miss Dearne,

2:23

that you'll have to stay so

2:25

that we can help you. You can't force

2:27

me. No one wants to force you. We

2:30

can work on your problem and you might

2:32

even have fun. Do you have any

2:34

floors that can scrub? What

2:39

had caused Jean Tierney's mind to become

2:41

so tragically unmoored. Her

2:44

family did have a history of mental illness.

2:47

Her aunt, her mother's sister, had

2:50

also been convinced that she was being

2:52

poisoned, But

2:54

Jean herself later wrote a memoir

2:56

tracing her breakdown to a decision

2:59

made by one of her fans a

3:01

decade and a half earlier. That

3:03

decision is one that might feel

3:06

disturbingly familiar to

3:08

many of us today. I'm

3:12

Tim Harford and you're listening

3:15

to cautionary tales. Jean

3:44

Tierney never intended to be an actress.

3:47

She came from a well to do family. Her

3:49

father was a New York insurance broker.

3:52

She had been to finishing school in Lausanne,

3:54

Switzerland. Girls

3:56

from her class didn't become actresses.

3:59

They married a Yale man and made

4:01

a home in Connecticut. That

4:04

all changed when Jean was seventeen.

4:07

On a family holiday in California, she

4:10

went on a Hollywood studio tour where

4:12

a director approached her with the immortal

4:15

line, young lady,

4:18

you ought to be in pictures? Could

4:20

she come back tomorrow for a screen test?

4:23

She did, and she was offered a contract.

4:26

Her father, the insurance man, wasn't

4:29

keen. He insisted

4:31

that she at least continue the plan to

4:33

make her debut in high society

4:35

back on the East Coast. He

4:37

was sure she'd be so excited by the

4:40

social whirl of country club dances

4:42

that she'd soon forget any pipe dreams

4:44

of the movies. I am so bored,

4:47

I think I will die. Jean's

4:49

father grudgingly agreed, to help her

4:51

get into acting. She found

4:53

an agent and roles on Broadway.

4:56

The critics loved her. She signed

4:58

with twentieth Century Fox, and in

5:00

nineteen forty she starred in her

5:02

first film, a Western, with

5:05

Henry Fonda. She landed

5:07

more leading roles. She got invited

5:10

to much cooler parties. Yet

5:12

one of them she met a man. I

5:15

thought he was the most dangerous

5:17

looking character I'd ever seen. Not

5:20

handsome, but dangerous in a seductive

5:23

way. The man was

5:25

Oleg Cassini, a Russian

5:27

Italian fashion designer. Jean's

5:29

family did not approve

5:33

he wasn't a Yale man. He hadn't

5:35

even gone to Harvard. Jean

5:37

and Oleg decided to elope.

5:40

They booked flights to Las Vegas under

5:42

assumed names. In June

5:44

nineteen forty one, they were married.

5:47

Jean was just twenty years

5:50

old. While

5:56

Jean and Oleg were getting hitched in

5:58

Vegas, on the other side of the

6:00

world, an eye surgeon was

6:02

puzzling over a mysterious wave

6:04

of cases, all referred by

6:06

pediatricians. Norman mc

6:09

alis to Gregg worked in a hospital in Sydney,

6:11

Australia, in the first half

6:13

of nineteen forty one, he had found

6:15

himself seeing cataracts in newborn

6:18

baby after newborn baby. The

6:21

cataracts were obvious from birth as

6:23

dense white opacities completely

6:25

occupying the pupillary area. Most

6:28

of the babies were of small size, ill

6:30

nourished, and difficult to feed. Many

6:32

of them were found to be suffering from a congenital

6:34

defect of the heart. It

6:37

had seemed twenty cases himself and

6:39

had heard about more from his colleagues elsewhere

6:41

in Australia. Something strange

6:44

was going on. But what

6:47

Greg looked at the babies dates of birth

6:51

Six to nine months earlier, an

6:53

epidemic of rubella, often

6:55

known as German measles, had swept

6:57

to Australia. Could

7:00

there be a connection? Gregg

7:02

asked the mothers if they'd had German measles

7:04

when they were pregnant. Most

7:06

said yes, some could

7:09

remember, but that wasn't too surprising

7:11

as rubella is typically not too serious

7:14

a rash a few days of fever. If

7:17

you had a mild case, you might not even

7:19

notice. Gregg

7:21

published his speculations in the Transactions

7:24

of the Ophthalmological Society of

7:27

Australia. I think it is

7:29

reasonable to assume that the occurrence

7:32

cannot be a mere coincidence. Not

7:35

everyone was convinced. Could

7:37

such a minor infection in a pregnant

7:39

woman really cause such severe

7:42

birth defects. To many

7:44

doctors, it seemed unlikely. Still,

7:47

it was worth looking into. The

7:49

National Health and Research Council of Australia

7:52

decided to investigate. Two

8:01

years later, in nineteen forty

8:03

three, America had entered

8:05

the Second World War. Jeane Tierney's

8:07

husband, Oleg Cassine, joined

8:09

the army. It had just been posted

8:12

to Fort Riley in Kansas. Jean

8:14

was preparing to join him, but there was

8:16

something she wanted to do first. One

8:19

last appearance at the Hollywood

8:21

Canteen. The Canteen

8:24

was the movie industry's way of giving moral

8:26

support to the war effort. A

8:28

social club with free entry for

8:31

anyone in an American military uniform.

8:34

The stars would entertain them, serve

8:36

them food, chat to them, and dance

8:38

with them. Betty Davis, Rita

8:41

Hayworth, Marlena Dietrich, Bob

8:43

Hope. They were all regulars. Jean

8:46

hadn't been for a while. She felt

8:49

bad about that. At

8:51

a nearby camp of the United States

8:53

Marine Corps Women's Reserve that

8:56

gave one young woman a moral

8:58

dilemma. Have you heard Jean

9:01

Tyranny's at the Hollywood Canteen tonight.

9:03

What a shame? We can't go. They

9:06

couldn't go because their camp was

9:09

quarantine. There'd been an outbreak

9:11

of German measles. It was generally

9:14

a mild disease, but still in

9:16

wartime, the military doesn't want

9:18

any kind of infection ripping through the ranks,

9:21

potentially putting a lot of people out of action

9:23

at once. I know we're not supposed

9:26

to, but you're not thinking a break in

9:28

quarantine. Oh, I feel fine. And

9:31

Gene Tierney, she's my

9:33

favorite. There were two

9:35

things that young marine didn't know.

9:38

She didn't know about the article Norman

9:40

McAllister Gregg had published in the

9:42

Transactions of the Ophthalmological

9:44

Society of Australia. Why

9:46

would she and you

9:48

might have guessed. The second thing

9:51

she didn't know Gene

9:53

Tierney was

9:55

pregnant. We'll

9:59

discover the consequences of the Marine's

10:02

mistake in a moment. A

10:11

few days after her appearance at

10:14

the Hollywood Canteen, Jean

10:16

went to see her doctor. I've

10:18

got these red spots all over

10:20

my face. You have Rubella,

10:23

nothing to worry about. You'll be fine

10:25

within a week. And she was,

10:28

or so it seemed. Jean

10:31

went to Kansas and lived the life of an

10:33

army wife at Fort Riley, scrubbing

10:35

o Leg's laundry, and she had

10:37

her baby, a daughter. They

10:40

called her Daria. She

10:42

was fair and blond, a beautiful

10:45

child. But Daria

10:47

was born premature. She weighed

10:50

just two and a half pounds.

10:52

She needed eleven blood transfusions.

10:55

She had a cataract in the corner of an eye.

10:58

As the months went by, Jean fought

11:01

the realization that Daria wasn't

11:03

developing as she should. When

11:06

the baby waved her hands in front of her eyes

11:09

seemed to be struggling to see them. It

11:11

also appeared that she couldn't hear. When

11:15

Daria was a year old, Jean was

11:17

leafing through a newspaper an

11:19

article jumped out at her. It

11:22

was about a newly published study in

11:24

Australia. Researchers

11:26

had been looking into a theory first suggested

11:28

by a Sydney eye surgeon, and

11:31

now there was evidence doctor

11:34

Gregg had been right. When a

11:36

pregnant woman gets German measles

11:38

in her first trimester, there's a risk

11:40

of serious birth defects. Jeanne

11:44

took the article to her daughter's pediatrician,

11:47

hoping to be told that something could be done to

11:49

make Daria better. The

11:52

doctor was diplomatic, new

11:54

research was being done all the time, and

11:56

who knows what might one day be possible,

11:59

but it was clear that he wasn't optimistic.

12:04

Soon after, Jeanne was at a Sunday

12:06

afternoon tennis party in Los Angeles.

12:09

A young woman approached her. I

12:11

don't suppose you remember me, do you? Why?

12:14

No? Should I? I'm in the women's branch

12:17

of the Marines. We met once at

12:19

the Hollywood Canteen. Let's

12:22

add two more items to the

12:24

list of things that the marine

12:26

now didn't know. She didn't

12:28

know about Daria's disabilities. In

12:31

those days, such things simply

12:33

weren't talked about, and surely

12:35

she hadn't read the newspaper article that

12:37

jean had taken to her pediatrician,

12:40

making clear that rubella could be something

12:42

far more than a minor inconvenience.

12:45

You know, I probably shouldn't tell you this,

12:48

but almost the whole camp was down

12:50

with German measles. I brought

12:52

quarantine to come to the Canteen to meet the stars.

12:55

Everyone told me I shouldn't, but I just

12:58

had to go, and you were

13:00

my favorite. I've

13:05

often thought about Jean Tierney during

13:07

the COVID pandemic, and the news

13:09

has served up depressing stories

13:11

about people acting thoughtlessly like

13:14

that young marine. Take the

13:16

case of Brady Sluda. He

13:18

was a college student from Ohio

13:21

went to a spring break party in Miami

13:23

in March twenty twenty before

13:25

the widespread lockdowns. But spring

13:27

break came far enough into the news of the pandemic

13:30

that Sluda really should have known better

13:32

than to tell a journalist if I get

13:34

Corona, I get Corona. At the end

13:36

of the day, I'm not going to let start me from Vardian.

13:40

Brady's problem was thinking of himself

13:42

only as a potential victim of

13:44

the coronavirus. If that were

13:46

true, his view would be completely

13:48

defensible. COVID was

13:51

unlikely to be serious for someone of his

13:53

age, and you're any young wants But

13:56

of course we're not just potential

13:58

victims of COVID. We're potential

14:01

vectors. We can catch it,

14:03

incubate it without even knowing, and

14:05

then pass it on to someone else whom

14:08

it might be a much bigger deal that

14:11

can be easy to forget. Consider

14:15

some of the reactions to a widely reported

14:18

study of mask wearing early

14:20

in the pandemic, before most governments

14:23

were mandating the use of masks. Some

14:25

Danish researchers recruited six thousand

14:27

people to a randomized controlled trial

14:30

the best way of gathering evidence about what works.

14:33

They gave half the group masks

14:35

and instructions about wearing them, as

14:37

well as some standard advice on social

14:40

distancing. The other half,

14:42

the control group, got only the

14:44

advice to social distance. The

14:47

results over the next

14:49

few weeks, a fraction under

14:51

two percent of the mask wearing group

14:54

got COVID. Among

14:56

the non mask wearers, it was a fraction

14:59

over two percent. The

15:01

anti lockdown group Keep Britain

15:03

Free shared the news like this Denmark

15:07

proves mask are not effective,

15:10

but the Danish study didn't prove any

15:13

such thing. Keep

15:15

Britain Free was thinking of mask wearers

15:17

only as potential victims,

15:19

and if your sole concern about COVID

15:22

is getting the disease yourself, this

15:24

particular study did indeed suggest

15:27

that wearing a mask wouldn't do

15:29

much to help you. But that's

15:31

not the only reason we wear masks,

15:34

or even the main reason we

15:36

wear masks to protect others from

15:38

virus particles that might be coming out of

15:40

our own mouths and noses. We

15:42

wear masks because we understand that

15:44

we're not just potential victims,

15:47

we're potential vectors. Rubello

15:52

is like COVID in that it's far more dangerous

15:54

for some people than others, But

15:57

that wasn't common knowledge in nineteen forty

15:59

three. And before we rush

16:01

to judge the young marine, perhaps

16:04

we should first look at ourselves. Have

16:07

you ever gone into work when you should have in

16:09

sick? If you're a parent, have

16:12

you ever sent your child to school or daycare

16:14

when they weren't fully recovered from an illness.

16:18

Research from twenty nineteen found

16:20

that ninety percent of US white

16:22

collar workers sometimes or

16:24

always came into the office when

16:26

they're coughing and sneezing. Perhaps

16:29

surprisingly, they said that the main reason

16:31

wasn't lack of sick leave or pressure

16:33

from the boss. It was wanting to keep

16:36

on top of work. But

16:38

researchers calculate that more productivity

16:40

is lost by people coming into work when they're

16:43

sick than by people taking cheeky

16:45

days off when they aren't that's

16:48

partly because coughing and sneezing all

16:50

over your co workers makes

16:52

them sick and unproductive too.

16:55

As for sending children to school, check

16:58

out this advertising campaign from a

17:00

local government website in the UK, The

17:03

Pushy parent Get Them to School.

17:06

A page on the local government's website explain

17:08

that parents should force their kids

17:11

to go to school if they complain of feeling

17:13

a bit unwell. Putting your foot

17:15

down isn't always easy, but one hundred

17:17

percent attendance should be every parent's

17:19

goal. This

17:22

attendance campaign, like the

17:24

research into white collar sneezers, was

17:26

from twenty nineteen, pre pandemic.

17:30

Even then, the pro attendance

17:32

cheerleading was criticized. Isn't

17:34

it courteous to other parents to keep

17:36

your child at home when they might have something

17:39

contagious? After

17:41

COVID the campaign web page now

17:43

has a slightly different message. Sorry,

17:46

the page you asked for could not be found. It

17:49

may have been moved or deleted after

17:53

the break. Agatha Christie

17:56

puts her own spin on the story.

18:09

You know, I probably shouldn't tell you

18:11

this, but almost the whole camp

18:13

was down with German measles. I

18:15

brought quarantine to come to the canteen to meet

18:17

the stars. As

18:20

the young marine at the tennis party made her

18:22

confession to Jean Tierney, she

18:24

was utterly unaware of the impact

18:27

she might have had on Tierney and her daughter.

18:30

One can only imagine the star's state

18:32

of mind. That

18:34

is, in fact, what Agatha Christie

18:36

did a couple of decades later. Imagine

18:39

it. In her novel The

18:41

Mirror Cracked from side to side,

18:44

a movie star takes revenge on the thoughtless

18:47

partygoer who exposed her to Rubella

18:49

by offering her a poisoned dacri.

18:53

In real life, though Jean didn't

18:55

seek revenge, she was

18:57

too stunned to seek anything. She

19:00

just stood there for a while as

19:02

the young Marine babbled on. Then

19:05

she silently turned and walked

19:07

away. Jean

19:11

looked after her daughter, Daria for

19:13

as long as she could, hoping

19:15

against hope that one day Daria

19:17

would hear and see clearly and

19:20

speak. When Daria

19:22

was four, the doctor sat Jean down

19:25

for a difficult conversation. He

19:28

told her that she simply couldn't

19:30

keep her child. It would

19:32

be unhealthy for Jean and hopeless

19:35

for Daria. He explained reluctantly,

19:38

Jean agreed to place Daria in an

19:40

institution where she could

19:42

get round the clock professional care.

19:46

Daria lived to sixty six, her

19:49

mind ever locked in

19:51

infancy. She has

19:53

never talked, but on my visit

19:55

she is always aware of my presence.

19:58

She sniffs at my neck and hugs

20:01

me. Jean's

20:03

marriage crumbled under the strain, but

20:06

her movie career continued

20:08

to thrive. As long

20:10

as I was playing someone else, I was fine.

20:13

When I had to be myself, my

20:16

problems began. I felt

20:18

my mind begin to unravel. I

20:20

felt scared for no reason.

20:24

She tried to talk to her mother, who

20:26

hoped it was all just a passing phase.

20:29

All you need is an attractive

20:32

bow and some pretty new French

20:34

dresses. Attractive

20:36

bows weren't hard to find in

20:39

the late forties and early fifties.

20:41

Jean dated the future President John

20:44

F. Kennedy and the globetrotting playboy

20:46

Prince Ali Khan. But

20:49

as her friends praised how well

20:51

she was coping, she was finding

20:53

it harder and harder to

20:56

hold herself together. I

20:58

felt like a person trying to get out of a

21:00

burning building. When my breakdown

21:03

came, I cried all the time.

21:06

I cried for Daria and for me,

21:09

and I cried for hours until

21:11

I often didn't know where the tears

21:13

came from.

21:17

The young marine who decided the quarantine

21:20

rules needn't apply to her, Brady

21:22

Sluda, who failed to realize that anyone

21:25

else might be hurt if he personally

21:27

caught coronavirus. It

21:29

would be easy to think about this as

21:32

a tale of selfishness, but

21:35

selfishness isn't quite the right

21:37

word. This is more a tale

21:39

of thoughtlessness. In

21:41

fact, we flawed humans are far

21:44

more altruistic than many people give

21:46

us credit for. We just need

21:48

a little help. Ten

21:51

years ago, the psychologist Adam Grant

21:53

and David Hoffmann, who studies organizational

21:56

culture, asked the question, how

21:59

could you minimize the number of times

22:01

nurses and doctors forget to wash their

22:03

hands? Yes, even before

22:05

the pandemic, we were being reminded

22:07

to wash our hands, or at least health

22:10

professionals were, lest they spread disease.

22:13

But those reminders didn't always work. Grant

22:16

and Hoffmann put up signs above dozens

22:18

of handgel dispensers in hospitals.

22:21

One sign read hand hygiene

22:24

prevents you from catching diseases. Another

22:27

said hand hygiene prevents

22:29

patients from catching diseases. Then

22:33

they came back a fortnight later to see

22:35

how much handgel had been used. The

22:38

first sign, reminding nurses and

22:40

doctors that they were at risk of disease,

22:43

had no effect whatsoever.

22:46

The second one did. When the

22:49

doctors and nurses were reminded of patience,

22:52

they used fifty percent more handgell.

22:56

It's not just handwashing. In

22:58

twenty fourteen, researchers in

23:00

Bosnia and Herzegovina wandered

23:03

about the effects of different kinds of

23:05

messages on blood donation drives.

23:08

They sent out seven different types of

23:10

letters to people who'd given blood in the past,

23:13

asking in different ways for them to give

23:15

blood again. One

23:17

letter contained factual information

23:19

about what kind of illnesses cause

23:21

others to need blood. Another

23:23

described a specific victim who needed

23:26

blood, with a name and a picture

23:28

and so on. The results

23:31

were even more impressive than in the

23:33

handgel study. The researchers

23:35

found something that made people sixty

23:38

three percent more likely to arrange

23:40

an appointment to give blood. But

23:43

this time there wasn't anything to do with

23:45

the different messages. They all

23:48

had a big impact compared with no

23:50

letter at all, just receiving

23:52

the message was what mattered. Everyone

23:56

knew that giving blood was altruistic.

23:58

It didn't require any clever persuasion

24:01

to get them to do it again. All

24:03

it took was a simple reminder.

24:07

The list of examples goes on. Ads

24:10

about drunk driving often make you

24:12

think about the risk to others, not yourself.

24:16

Some of the hardest hitting anti smoking

24:18

ads focus on secondhand smoke.

24:21

Still, another study finds that if you want

24:23

to persuade people to get vaccinations, a

24:25

good way to do that is to remind them

24:27

of the benefit to others. That

24:30

matters because vaccines don't always

24:32

work perfectly and not everyone

24:34

can have them. When

24:36

the UK started to use a new rubella

24:39

vaccine in nineteen seventy, the country

24:41

vaccinated only women of childbearing

24:44

age. That seems

24:46

to make sense, they're the population you should

24:48

worry about. After all. The rubella

24:50

vaccine is pretty effective. It

24:53

works ninety five percent of the time, but

24:56

that still left five percent

24:58

of women susceptible. In

25:00

nineteen eighty seven, the UK recorded

25:02

one hundred and sixty seven cases

25:04

of pregnant women with rubella. They

25:07

were catching it from children, their own or

25:09

their friends. So why

25:12

not vaccinate the children too. The

25:15

US had been doing that since the early nineteen

25:17

seventies, and in nineteen eighty eight

25:19

it's what the UK started to do too.

25:22

It made rubella vaccine universal

25:24

for children as part of the MMR

25:27

vaccine. Rubella is

25:29

what the R stands for, alongside

25:31

mumps and measles, and

25:34

fifteen years later, the

25:36

number of rubella infections in pregnancy

25:38

had dropped from one hundred and

25:40

sixty seven to just

25:43

one. Much

25:47

the same will be true of COVID vaccines.

25:50

If we vaccinate only the vulnerable,

25:52

it won't be enough. We need the

25:54

people who aren't at much risk, the

25:56

Brady Sluders of the world, to

25:59

remember that they're not just at risk of catching

26:01

a disease, but of passing it

26:03

on, causing consequences for

26:05

others that can be deadly or

26:08

last alike. As

26:15

I said at the beginning of this cautionary tale,

26:18

we don't know the exact connection between

26:20

Gene Tierney's mental breakdown and

26:23

her daughter's condition, but

26:25

we do know what Jean believed. She

26:27

was certain that Daria's disability

26:30

was the cause of her own mental illness,

26:33

and that disability was caused by the

26:35

marine's thoughtlessness, passing

26:37

on Rubella that night in the Hollywood Canteen.

26:41

Jean spent time in three mental health

26:43

clinics. She went through thirty

26:45

two rounds of electro convulsive

26:48

therapy. Between those

26:50

spells in institutions, she stayed

26:52

in her mother's fourteenth floor apartment

26:55

in New York. One day,

26:57

Jean's mother returned from shopping to be

26:59

accosted in the lobby by an anxious

27:02

dorman. There are policemen

27:04

in your apartment, he said, talking

27:06

to your daughter. Now, don't worry, she's okay.

27:09

But well, someone called the

27:11

police because they saw your daughter standing

27:13

on the window ledge looking like

27:15

she was about to Jean's

27:19

mother ran for the elevator.

27:22

Oh, Jean, don't get excited,

27:24

mother. I'm perfectly all right with you. I

27:28

was never going to do it, mother, I

27:31

was only looking down to see how far it was.

27:36

Jean did get better. Mostly.

27:39

She married an oil baron and lived

27:42

quietly in Texas. She

27:44

wrote her memoir Self Portrait.

27:48

Sometimes, she said she'd

27:50

wake up convinced that the Communists

27:52

had stolen her daughter. Once

27:55

her husband found her banging on their neighbor's door

27:57

in Houston in the middle of the night, sure

28:00

that they'd kidnapped Daria and demanding

28:02

that they give her back. But

28:04

these moments passed and

28:06

she learned to accept them.

28:09

To make any progress at all, you first

28:11

have to accept the fact that you have an

28:13

illness. If it takes saying

28:16

out loud, I am sick, I am

28:18

insane, I am a crazy person. One

28:20

must say it. I have

28:23

gone through such a time and more and

28:26

survived. A

28:32

couple of days after his Spring Break

28:34

interview, Brady Sluder posted

28:37

on Instagram. Our

28:39

generation may feel invincible, but

28:41

we have a responsibility. I

28:44

deeply apologize for my unawareness

28:46

of my actions. I want to

28:48

use this as motivation to become a better

28:50

person, a better son, a

28:52

better friend, and a better citizen.

28:56

Brady Sluder hadn't been heartless,

29:00

he had been thoughtless, and once

29:02

he had been prompted to think, he

29:04

wanted to do the right thing. I'm

29:07

sure that would have been true for them An if

29:09

she'd had the slightest idea of the harm

29:12

she could do. In fact, I

29:14

think it's true for most of us. Remember

29:17

those blood donors in Bosnia.

29:19

These were altruistic people. They'd

29:21

given blood before, but they

29:23

were also forgetful. Without

29:26

a reminder, they didn't think of going

29:28

back to give again. We

29:30

can often be self centered in

29:33

that we instinctively see things from

29:35

our own perspective, but

29:37

when we remember to think about others, we're

29:40

not selfish, quite the opposite,

29:43

and sometimes all it takes to remind us

29:46

is something as simple as a sign

29:48

above the hand gel Dispenser. Key

30:02

sources for this episode include

30:04

Gene Tierney's autobiography

30:06

Self Portrait and Adam gra

30:09

and David Hoffman's study in psychological

30:11

science It's Not All About

30:13

Me. For a full list of references,

30:16

see Tim Harford dot com.

30:21

Cautionary Tales is written by me

30:23

Tim Harford with Andrew Wright.

30:26

It's produced by Ryan Dilley and Marilyn

30:28

Rust. The sound design and original

30:31

music are the work of Pascal Wise.

30:34

Julia Barton edited the scripts.

30:37

Starring in this series of Cautionary

30:39

Tales are Helena Bonon, Carter,

30:41

and Jeffrey Wright, alongside

30:44

Nazar Alderazzi, Ed Gochen,

30:47

Melanie Gutteridge, Rachel Hanshaw,

30:50

Cobnor Holbrook, Smith, Greg

30:52

Lockett, Massa Munroe, and

30:54

Rufus Wright. The show also

30:57

wouldn't have been possible without the work of Mia

30:59

LaBelle, Jacob Weissberg, Heather

31:01

Fame, John Schnarz, Carlie

31:04

mcgliori, Eric Sandler, Emily

31:07

Rostock, Maggie Taylor, Danielle

31:09

Lacan and Maya Canning. Cautionary

31:12

Tales is a production of Pushkin

31:14

Industries. If you like the show,

31:17

please remember to share, rate, and

31:19

review.