0:15

Pushkin a

0:20

warning before we start. This cautionary

0:22

tale discusses death by suicide.

0:26

If you're suffering emotional distress or you're

0:28

having suicidal thoughts. Support is

0:30

available, for example, from the National

0:32

Suicide Prevention Lifeline in the US.

0:38

Fargo is a town in North

0:40

Dakota. It's also a

0:42

classic movie from nineteen ninety

0:44

six, the blackest of comedies.

0:48

A car salesman attempts to swindle

0:51

his wealthy father in law by

0:53

paying a couple of criminals to kidnap

0:55

his wife and demand a ransom.

0:58

It ends up with five innocent people

1:00

dead and one of the kidnappers

1:03

trying to dispose of his partner's body

1:05

by feeding it into a wood chipper.

1:09

Famously, the movie starts with

1:11

these words, this

1:14

is a true story. At

1:16

the request of the survivors. The

1:18

names have been changed out

1:21

of respect for the dead. The

1:23

rest has been told exactly

1:25

as it occurred. Fargo

1:30

isn't a true story. The shoote

1:32

was well underway when the directors, the Coen

1:35

Brothers, casually mentioned this to the cast.

1:38

One of the movie stars, William H. Macy,

1:41

was taken aback. You can't

1:43

say it's a true story if it wasn't, said

1:45

Macy, Why not, came

1:47

the reply. In

1:50

the movie, one of the hapless

1:52

kidnappers hides nearly a million

1:54

dollars by burying it in snow.

1:57

It's a comically stupid idea.

2:00

The landscape's generic and featureless as

2:02

far as the eye can see. How

2:04

will he ever find his way back to the spot.

2:07

He won't, and not

2:10

just because he ends up in a wood chipper,

2:13

and none of the movies other characters know

2:15

that cash is there. Hold

2:18

on, though, if the movie is told

2:21

exactly as it occurred, does

2:23

the money exist? Is

2:26

it still where the kidnapper left it? Undiscovered?

2:29

In real life? Five

2:32

years after the film was released, a

2:34

young woman turned up at the police station

2:36

in Bismarck, North Dakota.

2:39

She had just flown in from Tokyo. It

2:41

was the middle of winter, but she was wearing

2:44

a short black skirt and Thai high

2:46

boots. She was clutching

2:48

a simple map that showed nothing

2:50

but a road and a tree. The

2:53

police tried to understand what she wanted,

2:55

but they spoke no Japanese and her

2:57

English wasn't great. They

2:59

could make out one word, though fargo.

3:04

One policeman recalled, we'd tried

3:06

to explain to her that it was a fictional movie.

3:09

Really wasn't any treasure. The police

3:11

weren't sure if the message had got through,

3:14

but they took her to the bus station where she

3:16

could catch a greyhound to Fargo,

3:19

several hours to the east, across a

3:21

vast and empty landscape. A

3:24

couple of days later, they got

3:26

a call from another police department. In

3:29

some woods not far from Fargo.

3:32

On a freezing cold morning, a

3:34

hunter had found the body of

3:37

a young Japanese woman. Takakokanishi's

3:41

death was reported

3:43

around the world. Cult

3:46

film sparked Hunt for a Fortune.

3:50

You can't say it's a true story if

3:52

it wasn't, can you.

3:57

I'm Tim Harford, and

3:59

you're listening to cautionary

4:02

tales, you

4:24

must know the story of Hansel and

4:27

Grettel, made famous by the brothers

4:29

Grim. A great famine

4:32

sweeps the land. A poor

4:34

woodcutter can no longer afford to

4:36

feed his family. One

4:38

night, his new wife persuades

4:41

him that they must take his children into

4:43

the forest and abandon

4:45

them. They set

4:47

off early the next morning, the sun

4:50

glinting off the chimney of the woodcutter's

4:52

cottage, deep

4:54

into the woods. The man builds

4:57

a fire to keep his children warm.

5:00

Wait, hip, I won't be too far away. You'll

5:03

be able to hear me chopping trees. That

5:06

the sounds young handsland Grettel can

5:08

hear don't come from their father's

5:11

axe. He's tied a branch

5:13

to a tree trunk in such a way that

5:15

the wind will cause it to keep flacking.

5:18

By the time his children realize that he's gone,

5:21

he thinks they'll never find

5:23

their way home. He doesn't

5:25

realize that the children overheard

5:28

the plan. Hansel sneaked

5:30

out in the dead of night to fill his pockets

5:32

with pebbles, and as they walked,

5:35

he dropped them. By following

5:37

the trail of pebbles, Hansel

5:40

and Gretel get back home. Their

5:45

wicked stepmother is furious that

5:48

night she locks them in. The Next

5:50

morning, they set off again. Hansel

5:53

has no pebbles, but he does

5:56

have a hunk of bread, and

5:58

so instead he leaves a trail

6:00

of breadcrumbs. This

6:03

time, when the children try to follow

6:05

their trail back home, disaster

6:09

birds have eaten all

6:11

the crumbs. Hansel

6:14

and Gretel wander the forest, starving

6:17

and lost. Eventually

6:20

they chance across a house made from gingerbread

6:23

and begin to eat it. There

6:25

comes a soft voice from

6:27

inside. Nibble, nibble,

6:30

little mouse, who is

6:32

nibbling at my house? A

6:35

woman as old as the hills

6:38

creeps out of the door.

6:41

She invites the children inside with the

6:43

promise of more food. But

6:46

she's a wicked witch, and she

6:48

captures them. She keeps Hansel in a cage

6:50

and forces Grettel to work preparing

6:53

food for her brother. When he's fattened

6:55

up, I'm going to eat him.

6:58

The witch's eyesight is bad, so

7:00

every day she asks Hansel to stick

7:03

a finger through the cage for her to feel

7:05

how fat he's got. Hansel

7:07

tricks her he finds a bone

7:09

on the floor in every day he

7:12

pokes that through the cage instead. Eventually

7:15

the witch loses patience. She

7:17

announces she'll cook Hansel fat

7:20

or not, and secretly decides

7:22

to cook Gretel too. This

7:24

time, Gretel tricks her climb

7:27

into the overn and see if it's hot enough.

7:29

Yet I don't understand. How

7:32

can I climb inside the oven? Replied

7:34

Gretel, innocently. Stupid

7:37

girl like this? Do I have to show you everything?

7:40

Gretel shoves her in, slams

7:42

the door, and bars it with an iron rod.

7:45

The witch howls as the flames

7:47

consume her. Gretel lets Hansel

7:49

out of the cage, and the children again

7:51

look for the way back home. A

7:54

magical duckling helps them across

7:56

a great body of water, and

7:59

they arrive home. Their wicked

8:01

stepmother is dead, and their regretful

8:03

father is overjoyed to

8:06

have them back. The three live

8:08

happily ever after. Hansel

8:14

and Gretel is a cautionary tale, much

8:16

like the tales I tell. But

8:19

Hansel and Gretel is for children, a

8:21

warning about stranger danger. Or so

8:23

it seems. The tales

8:26

I tell are for grown ups,

8:28

and the tales I tell are

8:31

true. Hansel

8:33

and Gretel isn't true?

8:37

Or is it?

8:42

The fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel

8:44

fascinated a young boy growing up

8:47

in the nineteen twenties near the

8:49

border of Germany and Czechoslovakia.

8:52

Georg Osseg's grandparents

8:55

owned a rare early edition of Grimm's

8:57

Fairy Tales, published in eighteen

9:00

eighteen. It was beautifully

9:02

illustrated with intricate drawings.

9:05

Young George read it and reread

9:07

it until every page

9:10

was seared in his memory. Oseg

9:14

grew up to be a teacher. He got

9:16

a job in a Schaffenburg near Frankfurt.

9:19

He spent his weekends hiking in the

9:21

Spessart, a nearby range

9:24

of low wooded mountains. One

9:26

spring day in nineteen sixty two,

9:29

he was exploring a part of the woods he'd

9:31

never been to before. A

9:33

local farmer had told him

9:35

it was known as the Hexenvald,

9:39

the Witch's Forest. I

9:43

hadn't been out for half an hour when suddenly

9:46

I had a strange feeling. I felt as

9:48

if I had walked this path before. How

9:51

could that be? Osseg thought

9:53

for a moment. Then it

9:56

hit him. He realized that he'd

9:58

recognized the scene from an illustration

10:00

in his grandfather's book. Osseg

10:03

compared the drawing with the view from the

10:05

footpath. There could be no

10:08

doubt the trees had grown,

10:10

of course, that the oaks, the spruces,

10:12

and the beeches were all in exactly

10:15

the same configuration. The

10:17

line of the hills on the horizon was

10:20

unmistakable. That

10:22

illustration in Hansel and Gretel hadn't

10:25

just come from an artist's imagination.

10:28

It was a faithful depiction of

10:30

a real place. What

10:33

else about the story might be real? George

10:37

Osseg decided to do something

10:39

that no one had thought of before. He

10:41

read the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel

10:44

as if it were a factual

10:46

report. That's a line

10:49

from a nineteen sixty three book about

10:51

Georg Osseg. It was called di

10:54

varheite uber Hansel and Gretel

10:56

The Truth about Hansel

10:59

and Gretel, and it caused

11:01

a sensation. In

11:04

the book, the author Hans Trasler

11:07

describes what Oseg did next. The

11:09

illustration showed the path along which

11:11

Hansland Grettel's father had taken

11:13

them into the forest. In the story,

11:16

the children look back at the morning

11:18

sunlight glinting off the chimney of

11:20

the woodcutter's cottage. The

11:22

sun rises in the east. So

11:25

if Oseg followed the path east,

11:27

would it lead him to the woodcutter's

11:29

cottage. Osg walked

11:31

east, and he found a

11:34

newly built autobahn

11:37

connecting Frankfurt with Wurtzburg.

11:39

But what had been there before? The

11:42

records must exist. Tracksler

11:44

describes how Oseg tracked them down

11:47

to the Rubrun railway maintenance

11:50

depot. He leafed through

11:52

the dusty files until he found a note

11:54

of a court decision from November the

11:56

fourth, nineteen fifty four, a

11:58

dispute over the compensation

12:01

due from the Federal Motorway's administration

12:03

to a man called Georg Scheidhauer,

12:06

who'd owned the land at the east end

12:08

of the forest path. The

12:11

court awarded Scheidehauer eighteen

12:14

thousand, seven hundred and sixty

12:16

Deutsche marks for his property, a

12:18

half timbered house with

12:21

a barn and a garden with

12:24

eighteen fruit trees. Oss

12:27

Egg had found the

12:29

Woodcutter's cottage. Cautionary

12:35

tales will return in

12:37

a moment. Georg

12:47

oss Egg was now a man

12:49

with a mission. He

12:51

had located the site of the woodcutter's

12:53

cottage from hansland Grettel. He

12:56

had found the path along which the children

12:59

had been led. Next, he

13:01

looked for the place where they'd been abandoned.

13:05

The story mentions that the woodcutter made

13:07

a fire to keep the children warm.

13:10

No forester would make a fire in the

13:12

thick of the trees, so that

13:15

must have meant a clearing.

13:18

Oseg explored to the west until

13:20

he found one. In the story,

13:23

the woodcutter ties a branch to a

13:25

tree so the wind will make it swack

13:27

and sound like an axe. Oseg

13:30

spent two days inspecting

13:32

every tree near the clearing until

13:35

he came across an old oak with

13:37

a wound in the trunk where a cord

13:40

had been tied around it. He

13:42

had the tree felled and the cord radio

13:45

carbon dated it came

13:47

from the sixteen forties. What

13:51

about the Witch's house? Did

13:53

that exist and could Oseg

13:55

find it? According to the

13:57

story, Hansel and Gretel crossed

14:00

a body of water between the witch's

14:02

house and their own that could

14:04

only refer to the river Ashaft.

14:07

Oseg got a map, divided

14:09

it into squares, and methodically

14:12

searched each one. After

14:14

two months, he found ruins of a

14:16

building made from bricks. The

14:19

footprint of those ruins looked

14:21

like it exactly matched another illustration

14:24

in his grandparent's book showing

14:26

the which his four brick ovens.

14:30

Osseg grabbed his spade and started

14:33

to dig. Within the foundations

14:35

of one of the ovens, he found

14:38

the charred remains

14:40

of a woman's skeleton. He

14:43

brought in academic specialists who

14:45

concluded the woman was

14:47

thirty five years old and

14:51

she had been strangled before

14:53

she had been thrown in the oven. Osseg

14:56

dug some more. He found

14:58

a broken hinge had

15:01

the murderers forced their way

15:03

in? He found a small

15:05

iron chest. It contained

15:08

a hand written recipe

15:11

for gingerbread. But

15:15

who had the murdered woman been. Osseg

15:18

turned now to linguistic analysis.

15:21

In the Grimm's telling of the tale, the

15:23

witch speaks in a dialect which has

15:25

distinctive roots in the town of werniged

15:28

Oda. Osseg travels to the town

15:30

and searches through its records. He

15:33

discovers reports of a trial from

15:35

sixteen forty seven, The

15:38

year ties right in with the radio carbon

15:41

dating. A baker called

15:43

Katerina Schraderin is accused

15:46

of witchcraft by a man

15:48

whose proposal of marriage she's

15:50

spurned. Soon

15:53

after another trial,

15:56

Katerina has been murdered

15:59

and the man and his sister are

16:02

accused. The man

16:05

is called Hans Metzler,

16:09

his sister Gretta.

16:13

Hans and Gretta

16:17

Osg pieced together what had

16:19

happened. Katerina was

16:21

famous for her gingerbread. Hans

16:24

was a baker too. He had wanted to marry

16:26

Katerina to get his hands on

16:28

her recipe. When she turned him

16:31

down, he and his sister

16:33

went to her house in the woods and

16:36

murdered her. But they didn't

16:39

find her recipe because she'd

16:41

hidden it in the iron chest. So

16:44

the story of Hansel and Grettel was based

16:47

on real events, albeit loosely.

16:50

The protagonists weren't abandoned children,

16:52

they were cold blooded murderers

16:56

motivated by greed. And

16:58

the woman who burned in the oven wasn't

17:00

a wicked witch with a magical gingerbread

17:03

house, but a talented

17:05

baker with a sort

17:07

after gingerbread recipe. When

17:12

Hans Traxler published his book about geyorg

17:15

Osseg, The Truth about

17:17

Hansel and Gretel, he was

17:19

stunned by the response. What

17:22

stunned him was that everyone

17:25

took it seriously. I

17:28

was sure I'd hidden enough clues that it was

17:30

all a great big fib.

17:34

Traxler was a professional

17:36

satirist, a writer and illustrator

17:39

for a satirical magazine. Gayorg

17:41

Osseg didn't exist, but

17:44

the book sold hundreds of

17:46

thousands of copies. Requests

17:48

to translate it came in from eighteen

17:51

countries. Reviewers in Germany's

17:53

newspapers gushed about the thoroughness

17:55

of Oseg's research and the gripping

17:57

way. Traxler described it the

18:00

book of the year, maybe the book

18:02

of the decade, said one The

18:05

newspapers in communist East Germany

18:07

were just as impressed, perhaps

18:10

because they could blame capitalism for the murder.

18:13

A criminal case from the early capitalist

18:15

era, appined Berlina

18:18

Zeitung. What were

18:20

the clues Tracksler had left that

18:22

he had made the whole thing up. Some

18:24

were subtle. Katerina's

18:26

gingerbread recipe, for example, Tracksler

18:29

had copied it word for word

18:31

from a popular cookbook by doctor Utka.

18:34

Other clues should have been harder to miss.

18:37

In one passage, Osg recruits

18:40

an eight year old boy, fills

18:42

his pockets with pebbles and has

18:44

him walked down the path away

18:47

from the motorway where the woodcutter's house

18:49

had supposedly stood. The

18:51

pebbles run out before

18:53

he gets to the clearing, but when

18:56

Osgg fills his own pockets with pebbles,

18:59

he does have enough to cover the distance.

19:02

The book includes a diagram helpfully

19:04

showing how tall people can see

19:07

further and hence leave more space

19:09

between pebbles. Hansel

19:11

and Gretel were not children at all. Tracksler

19:14

describes osggers, concluding, to

19:17

put it scientifically, they must

19:19

have been the size of an adult

19:22

scientific Indeed, also

19:26

very scientific was a photograph

19:28

of OSG's radiocarbon dating

19:31

equipment. You don't have to look

19:33

too closely to see that it consists

19:35

of an upside down lasagna

19:37

tray, a length of coax

19:40

cable from a television, a

19:42

child's microscope, and some

19:44

jars from the kitchen spice rack. Tracksler

19:48

was bewildered that nobody

19:50

picked up on this unsubtle

19:52

clue. Real apparatus

19:54

to do carbon dating is the size of

19:56

a train. He pointed out. Some

19:59

of the images in the book show gay

20:02

org osgg in action. It's

20:05

Tracksler himself in the silliest

20:07

of disguises, wire rimmed

20:10

glasses and a fake mustache.

20:13

Tracksler took a photographer to a Frankfurt

20:15

construction site, where they jumped

20:17

into a ditch to shoot the excavation.

20:20

At the witch's house, tracks

20:22

Ler posed inspecting the side

20:24

of the ditch with a pastry brush.

20:27

The photographer and I lay on

20:29

the ground laughing, but

20:33

when the book was published the joke

20:35

was lost. Excited letters

20:38

flooded in gay Org. Oseg

20:40

was invited to give lectures. A

20:42

Japanese academic expressed earnest

20:45

interest in how the new field

20:47

of fairy tale archaeology could

20:50

improve cross cultural understanding.

20:54

Readers flocked to the scenic

20:56

woods of the spec Art, trying

20:58

to decipher Oseg's descriptions and

21:01

locate the witch's house for themselves.

21:04

Schools hired buses and took entire

21:07

classes. One made

21:10

the ten hour journey from

21:13

Denmark. Hahns

21:16

Traxler started to wander

21:19

what had done

21:24

in our social media age, Mistaking

21:28

satire for serious reporting

21:30

is a surprisingly common problem.

21:33

President Trump once retweeted

21:35

a news story from the satirical website

21:38

The Babylon Bee, without

21:40

seeming to be aware that The Babylon

21:43

Bee is a satirical website.

21:46

Twitter had suffered an outage, and

21:48

the Bee jokingly reported that the network

21:51

had decided to shut itself down to

21:53

slow the spread of negative news about

21:55

Joe Biden. Trump

21:58

wasn't chuckling at the joke. He

22:00

was demanding to know why Twitter

22:02

had done this. How

22:04

many voters also struggled

22:07

to spot tricks and jokes. When

22:10

researchers from Ohio State presented

22:12

voters with a selection of stories from

22:14

the Babylon b They found that

22:17

up to twenty eight percent of

22:19

Republicans thought the stories

22:21

were real. Democrats

22:23

were less likely to be fooled, But the

22:25

reverse was true when the researchers tried

22:28

stories from another satirical website,

22:30

arguably one with a different political perspective,

22:33

the Onion. The researchers

22:35

were looking for ways to minimize the spread

22:38

of misinformation over social networks.

22:41

In twenty nineteen, they ran an

22:43

experiment. They flagged

22:46

posts on Facebook in one of three

22:48

ways. The first type of

22:50

flag said that independent fact

22:52

checkers had said story wasn't

22:54

true. The second type

22:56

said that other Facebook users had raised

22:59

doubts about it. Neither

23:01

type of flag made the studies subjects

23:04

any less likely to share

23:06

the story, but

23:08

the third type did. When a story

23:11

was flagged as being from a satirical

23:13

website, people were less

23:16

likely to part it on. It

23:18

wasn't a huge effect, but it was something.

23:21

Clearly Labeling satire as satire

23:24

did seem to prevent some people from

23:26

sharing fake news. When

23:30

the truth about the truth about

23:32

Hansel and Gretel finally emerged,

23:35

some of Tracksler's readers were not

23:38

amused. An angry

23:40

couple from North Rhine West Failure

23:42

sent me the petrol bill for the trip they'd

23:44

made to the SPEs Art. Then

23:47

Trackxler received a letter from a

23:49

lawyer in herborn. If

23:51

you want to do business with a parody,

23:54

then you have to label your parody

23:57

as such. I have therefore decided

23:59

to bring the case to the attention

24:02

of the public prosecutor

24:05

or. As William H. Macy would put

24:08

it, can't say it's a true

24:10

story if it wasn't Hahn's.

24:13

Traxler was summoned to

24:15

the police station. Cautionary

24:19

tales will be back soon. If

24:28

you want to do business with a parody,

24:31

then you have to label your

24:33

parody as such, so

24:35

said the irate German lawyer.

24:38

Facebook seems to agree. It

24:41

has now rolled out the flags on satirical

24:43

stories. They join other algorithmic

24:46

warnings, from disputed claims

24:49

on Twitter to suspected

24:51

spam on emails and texts.

24:54

We're constantly assailed by people trying

24:56

to fool us because they want to influence

24:58

our vote or part us from our money.

25:01

Any reminders to consider the source

25:03

of information have to be a good thing,

25:06

and yet I can't help

25:08

feel that the lawyer from Herborne

25:11

was being too dogmatic in

25:13

demanding that paradies must always

25:16

be labeled. Phishing emails

25:18

and troll farm tweets can

25:21

be hard to spot. Even for

25:23

the algorithms, we can't

25:25

rely on them being flagged. We

25:28

have to think for ourselves. A

25:30

clever hoax can act a bit like a

25:32

vaccine, a benign way to prime

25:35

our critical thinking immune system,

25:37

to make us more alert against the

25:39

threats that matter. And a

25:41

hoax can't work if it has to

25:44

announce itself up front. What

25:47

does it take for a hoax to earn our

25:49

indulgence? I think there are three

25:51

things. First, the hoax

25:53

has to be good. That means it must

25:55

be plausible if you're not paying attention,

25:58

but obvious if you are. That's

26:01

harder than it sounds. Attempts at

26:03

satire are often either too

26:05

clunkily apparent on the first read

26:07

or too well discussed on the second.

26:11

Hans Trackler seems to have got

26:13

the balance exactly right. He

26:15

was amazed by how many letters he received

26:18

from readers who'd spotted one

26:20

piece of nonsense in his account of

26:22

georg Oseg's research, but who

26:24

hadn't. Then questioned everything else. Those

26:28

letters said things like, dear mister

26:30

Tracksler, I believe gay org Osegg

26:32

must have been mistaken when he says he

26:35

found the woodcutter's cord in the tree

26:37

twenty five meters above the ground, because

26:39

the tree had grown so much. You see,

26:42

trees sprout from the top, they

26:44

don't push up from the bottom, so the

26:46

cord would have been quite close to the ground.

26:49

Apart from that minor blemish,

26:51

I found mister Ossegg's work to be excellent.

26:55

Or the manuscript from Vinigaroda

26:57

can't have come from sixteen forty seven

26:59

because it refers to a famous event that

27:02

happened in eighteen eleven. Otherwise,

27:04

though, great job. These

27:07

are readers who really should

27:09

have felt their spidy senses tingling,

27:12

and when they discovered they'd been had,

27:15

they must have been embarrassed at their gullibility.

27:18

And that's a useful feeling, because

27:20

they'll resolve to think more critically

27:22

in future. The

27:24

second requirement of a satisfying hoax

27:27

is like a vaccine, it should

27:29

do no harm. I'm

27:31

not sure that's true about some satirical

27:34

stories from sites such as the

27:36

Babylon Bee. According

27:38

to the Ohio State Study For example,

27:40

twenty three percent of Republicans believed

27:43

the Bee's story that US Representative

27:45

Illan Omar said being

27:48

Jewish is an inherently

27:51

hostile act. You

27:53

can reach your own conclusions as

27:55

to whether this is or is not a hilarious

27:58

satire of the left wing of US politics.

28:01

But the point is she never said

28:03

it, and when people believe she

28:05

did, real damage

28:07

is done to political disc course. But

28:10

with Hansel and Gretel, what

28:12

were the worst things that happened? A

28:15

couple from North Rhine Westphalia

28:17

spent some money on petrol, a

28:19

teacher from Denmark looked like an idiot

28:22

for organizing an international study visit,

28:24

and a humorless lawyer from Herborne

28:27

made the Frankfurt police call in Hans

28:29

Tracksler for questioning. Although

28:32

I'm happy to report that Tracxler

28:34

was cleared of any crime. The

28:37

third and final ingredient of a good

28:40

hoax is that it has a

28:42

point. It draws our attention

28:44

to something about which we're more credulous

28:47

than we should be. When

28:49

the Cohen Brothers added that screencrawl

28:51

to Fargo, saying this is

28:53

a true story, they were poking

28:55

fun at a trend that began in the nineteen

28:57

seventies, directors of gory,

29:00

low budget drive in flicks discovered

29:03

their gross more if they added

29:05

words like based on real events

29:07

to the poster, however loose

29:09

the connection might be. Hahns

29:12

Tracksler was inspired to write about

29:15

Hansel and Gretel by reading a best

29:17

selling book called Gerta Graba

29:19

Ungelerta God's Graves

29:22

and Scholars. It told

29:24

of archeologists like Heinrich

29:26

Schliemann, who excavated the

29:28

site of ancient Troy in modern

29:30

day Turkey, and made the case

29:33

that Homer's epic poem The

29:35

Iliad was based on historical

29:37

events. There was a craze

29:39

for pop archaeology books in Germany

29:42

like Undi Biebel Hoch de

29:44

Rech and the Bible Is

29:46

Right. Researchers prove the historical

29:49

truth. Trakxler wandered

29:51

if readers might not always be consuming

29:54

books of this genre with a sufficiently

29:57

critical eye. He got his answer.

30:00

Both Tracksler and the Kohens

30:03

are prompting us to ask a deeper question.

30:06

When we like to hear there's truth in fix,

30:10

what is it we really care about? Because

30:13

there is a truth behind Hansel

30:16

and Grettel, but it's nothing

30:18

to do with tracks, less scoreless

30:20

nonsense about a murderous gingerbread

30:22

baker. In

30:27

thirteen fifteen, incessant

30:29

rain ruined crops across

30:31

Europe. The Great Famine

30:34

lasted for years. It's

30:36

hard to be sure of exactly what happened,

30:39

but some harrowing accounts

30:41

survive. In Bristol,

30:43

England, one writer tells of

30:46

such mortality

30:48

that the living could scarce suffice

30:51

to bury the dead, and some

30:54

eat their own children.

30:57

In the Baltics, it was said that mothers

31:00

fed upon their sons. Perhaps

31:04

it's no surprise that the folklore

31:06

of many countries has tales

31:09

Hansel and Gretel about

31:11

famine, child abandonment,

31:14

and cannibalism.

31:17

I said that Hansel and Gretel is a cautionary

31:19

tale for children about stranger danger.

31:22

But perhaps these stories were

31:25

also cautionary tales for

31:27

parents about

31:30

unimaginable hunger and

31:32

choices too awful

31:35

to contemplate. But

31:39

what about Takako Kunischi. Doesn't

31:42

her death show the risks of dressing

31:44

fiction as fact. Remember

31:48

in two thousand and one, Takaco had

31:50

turned up in North Dakota inappropriately

31:53

dressed in the cold midwinter, clutching

31:55

a map and asking for directions

31:57

to Fargo. The

32:00

world's media reported that she seemed to

32:02

have believed the movie's claims to truth

32:04

and hoped she could find the hidden million

32:07

dollars. Cult film sparked

32:09

hunt for a Fortune, said

32:11

the UK's Daily Telegraph.

32:14

It was an astonishing story and

32:17

the filmmaker Paul Bursla wanted to

32:19

find out more. Soon

32:21

after reading the news, he persuaded British

32:23

television's Channel four to send

32:25

him to North Dakota with a cameraman

32:28

and a Japanese actress. Bursla

32:31

planned to retrace Takako's final

32:34

days to find the people who

32:36

had encountered her and recreate some

32:38

scenes. They're

32:41

checked into the Quality Inn in downtown

32:43

Fargo, where Tacco had stayed

32:46

before she died. Bursla

32:48

spoke to the night clerk. It's

32:50

funny, he said, I was

32:53

surprised when I heard how she died looking

32:55

for the ransom in the movie. She never mentioned

32:57

anything to me about Fargo or any

33:00

other kind of movie. She asked

33:02

about seeing the stars, which

33:05

I thought was a little strange because it was November

33:07

and it isn't that warm outside in the

33:09

middle of the night. What

33:12

about the policeman in Bismarck, who told

33:14

journalists how they'd tried to explain

33:16

to Tacco that Fargo was

33:18

a fictional movie and there wasn't really any

33:20

treasure. I'd never seen

33:22

the film Fargo, one of them explained,

33:25

But another officer in the station

33:28

had seen it, and he told me there was

33:30

money buried in this movie. And then we started

33:32

to think that she had this false impression.

33:35

Takaco had never said anything about

33:38

money to the police either true.

33:40

It wasn't unreasonable speculation. There's

33:43

no obvious reason why a Japanese

33:45

woman would turn up in North Dakota

33:47

with a crudely drawn map asking

33:50

about Fargo. But it

33:52

all turned out to have been a case of

33:54

two plus two making five.

33:59

Burslo was now even more intrigued.

34:02

What was the real story. He

34:05

flew to Tokyo and tracked down Takaco's

34:07

former landlady. She

34:10

told him Takiko had been a normal, happy

34:12

girl until one day

34:15

everything changed. She

34:17

started drinking heavily. It must

34:19

have been man trouble, the landlady thought.

34:22

Bursler discovered that on her

34:24

last night in the hotel, Takiko

34:27

had spent forty minutes on the phone

34:30

to Singapore. He found

34:32

out the number Takiko had called and

34:34

dialed it himself. At

34:37

the other end of the line was an American

34:39

businessman. Yes. The

34:41

man told Bursler he had known

34:43

Takiko when he lived in Tokyo. She'd

34:46

wanted to go with him when he moved to Singapore.

34:49

He had said no. She was heartbroken.

34:53

He was from Fargo.

34:57

Several weeks after Takiko died, the

35:00

police found out that she'd sent her parents

35:02

a suicide note. She

35:04

hadn't come to North Dakota to seek her fortune,

35:07

she'd come to end her life. The

35:11

media thought Tackerco had been too

35:14

credulous about Fargo. Instead,

35:17

there'd been too credulous about Takaco.

35:21

The reports framed her tragic

35:23

death as a cautionary tale about gullibility,

35:26

a warning to think critically

35:29

even when a story presents itself as

35:31

true. That's exactly

35:34

what it was, but not

35:37

in the way they'd imagined. Essential

35:46

sources for this episode were Hans

35:48

Tracksler's book The Truth About

35:50

Hansel and Grettel, an article about the hoax

35:52

by Jordan Toderoff in at The Subscurer,

35:55

and Paul Bursler's documentary This

35:57

is a true story. For a full list

35:59

of our sources, see the show notes at Tim

36:02

Harford dot com.

36:06

Cautionary Tales is written and presented

36:08

by me Tim Harford, with help from

36:10

Andrew Wright. The show was produced

36:12

by Ryan Dilley with support from Pete Norton.

36:15

The music, sound design, and mixing are the

36:17

work of Pascal Wise. The scripts

36:20

were edited by Julia Barton. Special

36:22

thanks to mil LaBelle, Carlie Mediori,

36:25

Heather Fane, Maya Kanig, Jacob

36:27

Weisberg, and Malcolm Gladwell. Cautionary

36:30

Tales is a Pushkin Industry's production