The Worst Poet in the World | From Cautionary Tales

Introduction to Cautionary Tales

0:00you're about to hear an episode of cautionary tales with tim harford tim's podcast explores mistakes from history and importantly what we can learn from them as you can imagine there's a lot of disasters to choose from but there's always an interesting angle on what we can take from them i learned something new every time you'd be surprised but a shipwreck from the 60s can teach

0:31us something about a mistake we all make when making decisions today this episode is about a poet william mcgonigal is remembered today as the worst poet in the world and tim is obsessed with his work i think i am too here's a quick example a pathetic tale of the sea i will unfold enough to make one's blood run cold concerning four fishermen cast adrift in a dory as i've been told i'll relate the story it was on the 8th april on the afternoon of that day that the village of louisburg was thrown

1:04into a wild state of disarray so what can we learn from a disastrous poet tim has a few ideas and in true revisionist history style he has a feeling we've been understanding mcgonigal all wrong enjoy the episode it's one of my favorites and make sure you subscribe to cautionary tales for plenty more disasters and plenty more lessons

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3:39language where you're vulnerable they don't sell insurance they deliver transparency giving you the same understanding insurers have had for decades when i heard about my policy advocate my first thought was at last a level playing field before you trust your policy to protect you let my policy advocate tell you what it really says go to my policy advocate dot com that's my policy advocate dot com

The Tay Bridge Disaster

4:07the wind is fierce no doubt about it it's the strongest gale that john what can remember and he's been working for the north british railway since 1867 a full 12 years it's a good night to be safely sheltered in the railway signal cabin sharing a mug of tea with a friend signalman thomas barclay as watt and barclay sit their tea and look out of the window into the darkness it can see the faint

4:45line of lamps all along the new railway bridge running almost two miles across the wide river tay to the city of dundee every now and then the clouds gust apart and the full moon picks out the high girders of the longest bridge in the world a few minutes after seven o'clock comes the signal from the south the northbound train is approaching thomas barclay steps out of the cabin into the wind and waits as the train approaches the sparks from

5:24the wheels visible in the dark he greets the crew with a smile handing over the baton that gives permission for a train to cross the bridge the train is moving at walking pace he sees a child peer out of the window of a carriage as it passes then as the train puffs off over the long high iron span thomas goes back to his friend in the shelter of the cabin and sends a message to the signal box over on the other side of the river tay

5:59the signal bell rings three times in response and still the wind howls

6:11thomas turns back to his mug of tea but john watt is gazing out of the window at the bridge

6:19there's something wrong with the train he says thomas barclay thinks he's imagining it but john knows what he's seen three red tail lamps fading into the distance over the bridge and then a series of flashes three small and one big then darkness no tail lamps the train's gone over thomas he says thomas barclay still isn't convinced

6:50surely the train has just disappeared from view after cresting the highest point of the bridge surely they'll see her again soon but they don't

7:03thomas tries calling the signal box on the other side of the bridge nothing they go outside briefly venture onto the bridge and then retreat as the wind threatens to tear them off the girders and into the waters below the clouds part again and the full moon reveals the scene a thousand yards of the bridge are gone the high girders of the central spans

7:34the iron piers that had supported them also gone and of course the train has gone too and every one of its passengers it's a catastrophe but this is not a story about a fatal bridge collapse

William McGonagall's Poetry

7:52it's a story about a poet i'm tim harford and you're listening to cautionary tales beautiful railway bridge of the silvery tay alas i'm very sorry to say that 90 lives have been taken

8:33away on the last sabbath day of 1879 which will be remembered for a very long time

8:42thus begins a poem titled the tay bridge disaster it is widely regarded as the worst poem ever written and its author william mcgonagall is widely regarded as the worst poet i'll spare you the full poem but here's a central verse so the train moved slowly along the bridge of tay until it was about midway then the central girders with a crash gave way and down went the train and passengers into the tay

9:18the storm fiend did loudly bray because 90 lives had been taken away on the last sabbath day of 1879 which will be remembered for a very long time

9:33when i was just a boy i saw an illustration of the tay bridge catastrophe in a children's picture book it stayed with me i can still see it in my mind the bridge seemed so horribly high and thin as it collapses into the storm the train is just steaming off into thin air

9:57it's awful and then i encountered william mcgonagall's truly terrible poem and it stuck with me just as vividly or should i say it has been remembered for a very long time here's the end of the poem oh ill-fated bridge of the silvery tay i must now conclude my lay by telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay that your central girders would not have given way at least many sensible men

10:33do say had they been supported on each side with buttresses at least many sensible men confesses for the the stronger we our houses do build the less chance we have of being killed

McGonagall's Life and Education

10:51it's awful i'm obsessed with william mcgonagall i have so many questions who was this man what does he teach us about art and above all how does a poem get to be this bad i have several biographies of the poet mcgonagall in front of me one of them says he was born in 1825 another says he was born in 1830 and both were written by william mcgonagall himself william mcgonagall's parents were irish but he was born

11:30in edinburgh and went to school in south ronaldsay one of the orkney islands remote even by the standards of scotland william's education was interrupted by of all things an encounter with his teacher's beloved pet tortoise william was fascinated by the creature but when he picked it up to fully admire the beauty of its shell the unfortunate animal voided its bowels on his hands in disgust the boy hurled the tortoise

12:03to the ground nearly killing it and mcgonagall's teacher enraged started thrashing his face with a cane all very distressing william's father complained to the local magistrate the magistrate threatened to disbar the teacher and the practical outcome was that the teacher lived in fear of ever upsetting william again who skipped school with impunity that was the story mcgonagall would tell and his point

12:37was clear william mcgonagall was much like william shakespeare he had learned more from nature than he learned at school mcgonagall adored his namesake william shakespeare he read and re-read macbeth richard the third hamlet and othello i gave myself no rest until i obtained complete mastery over the above four characters mcgonagall's family moved to dundee where both he and his father worked as weavers william

13:14would give impromptu performances of shakespeare to his shopmates he says they were quite delighted and perhaps they were since they were willing to pay good money to support his theatrical ambitions william mcgonagall was to play the title role in macbeth just as long as he paid one pound to the theater owner for the privilege about a hundred dollars in today's money his colleagues all contributed and nobody can say they didn't get their money's worth mcgonagall couldn't afford a costume of his own

13:51so borrowed a few items from friends and colleagues and took the stage dressed less like the ambitious nobleman macbeth and more like a highland beggar the play traditionally ends with a climactic fight in which macbeth is slain by mcduff this concept proved too pedestrian for mcgonagall one witness described the result an immortal scene in more ways than one mcgonagall had evidently made up his mind to

14:25astonish the gods at his performance for instead of dying when run through the body by the sword of mcduff he maintained his feet and flourished his weapon about the ears of his adversary in such a way that there was for some time an apparent probability of the performance ending in real tragedy mcgonagall saw it differently the actor who was playing mcduff against my macbeth tried to spoil me

14:57in the combat by telling me to cut it short i continued the combat until he were fairly exhausted and until there was one old gentleman in the audience cried out well done mcgonagall walk into him and so i did until he was in a great rage and stamped his foot and cried out fool why don't you fall

15:21with mcduff audibly urging mcgonagall's macbeth to go down and mcbeth ignoring him over and over again mcduff enraged wrapped mcbeth over his knuckles with a flat of the blade forcing him to drop his own sword mcgonagall was now unarmed but undaunted and he dodged around and around mcduff looking for all the world as though he now planned to wrestle for it the mcduff actor disgusted at the tomfoolery tossed

15:53his own sword aside and charged in to tackle mcgonagall the sublime tragedy of mcbeth came to an undignified end with the title character swept off his feet and deposited on his backside the audience were ecstatic they bellowed for mcgonagall to be brought forward to receive a standing ovation what a shame that mcgonagall's artistic sensitivities were not put to full-time use

16:26he continued to work as a weaver for decades not to worry good things come to those who wait he would eventually emulate william shakespeare the man he so admired william mcgonagall would become

McGonagall's Career as a Poet

16:43a poet cautionary tales will be back after the break we spend hours researching products online and deciding what to buy but there's a split-second decision that can make or break a sale do you have the trust to hit the buy now button the way we discover and compare things is evolving happening faster and influenced by new forms of intelligent advice but the underlying trust question doesn't go away if anything it's more important than ever

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20:06off your first purchase with code revisionist at checkout that's 20 off your first purchase with code revisionist at liquidiv.com mcgonagall was about 50 when it became clear to him that there was no future in weaving machine looms had taken over i couldn't make a living from it but i may say dame fortune has been very kind to me by endowing me with the genius of poetry i remember how i felt when i

20:41received the spirit of poetry it was june 1877 mcgonagall was lamenting that he couldn't get away to the highlands for a holiday all of a sudden my body got inflamed and instantly i was seized with a strong desire to write poetry so strong in fact that in imagination i thought i heard a voice crying in my ears right right i wondered what could be the matter with me and i began to walk backwards and forwards

21:15in a great fit of excitement saying to myself i know nothing about poetry but still the voice kept ringing in my ears ringing in my ears right right until at last being overcome with a desire to write poetry i found paper pen and ink and in a state of frenzy sat me down to think what would be my first subject for a poem that subject was the reverend george gill fillon a local preacher mcgonagall wished to

21:48praise the poem stirringly concludes my blessing on his noble form and on his lofty heed may all good angels guard him while living and hereafter when he's dead mcgonagall sent the poem to the dundee weekly news which took the unwise step of printing it thus encouraged he sent a second poem bonnie dundee oh bonnie dundee i will sing in thy praise a few but true simple lays regarding some of your beauties

22:25of the present day and virtually speaking there's none can them gain say for superfine goods there's none can excel from inverness to clark and well and your tramways i must confess that they have proved a complete success which i am right glad to see and a very great improvement to bonnie dundee

22:49there is more but alas the weekly news declined to print what it described as a so-called poem at which point mcgonagall sent them a letter threatening to stop sending any more poems the weekly news dryly explained to its readers that we can only express the fervent hope that he may put into execution this artful threat

23:16in the summer of 1878 mcgonagall had been a poet for just a year when he received a letter from queen victoria's private secretary sir thomas biddulph informing him that her majesty would like to become a patron of his poems mcgonagall seems not to have registered any surprise at this sudden honor but

McGonagall's Attempt to Meet Queen Victoria

23:39he was inspired to make the 59 mile journey from dundee to queen victoria's residence at balmoral so that he could recite his verse for her for an unemployed weaver there was no way to reach balmoral except to walk the journey took three days during which time mcgonagall was fed and sheltered by shepherds who took pity on him he recorded some of his journey in poetry notably on the spittle of glenshee which is most

24:11dismal for to see with its bleak and rugged mountains and clear crystal spouting fountains with their misty foam and thousands of sheep there together doth roam

24:25he was drenched by hours of rain and threatened by the roaring and flashing of a thunderstorm overhead that was undaunted having told his friends back in dundee that on his way to see her majesty and balmoral he would pass through fire and water rather than retreat finally mid-afternoon on the third day mcgonagall reached her majesty's residence at balmoral castle he was intercepted by the constable at balmoral's gatehouse lodge who presumably observed mcgonagall's collar-length wave of hair

25:02his drenched patched up clothes and his dirty boots and did not think to himself here comes a future poet laureate i showed him her majesty's royal letter of patronage for my poetic abilities and he read it and said it was not her majesty's letter someone had played a cruel trick but mcgonagall insisted that the letter was genuine the constable took it away for a while before returning to

25:32announce well i've been up at the castle with your letter and the answer i got for you is they cannae be bothered with you mcgonagall showed the constable a copy of his poems including the claim that mcgonagall was poet to her majesty the constable objected you are not poet to her majesty tennyson's the real poet to her majesty ah yes alfred lord tennyson the actual poet laureate how inconvenient in writing the charge

26:07of the light brigade alfred lord tennyson performed a rare feat he created a poem that is as famous as the disaster it describes cannon to the right of them cannon to the left of them cannon in front of them volleyed and thundered stormed at with shot and shell boldly they rode and well into the jaws of death into the mouth of hell rode the six hundred

26:43william mcgonagall never got close to succeeding tennyson as poet laureate yet his poem the tay bridge disaster matches tennyson's achievement i mean tennyson was good but he was no william mcgonagall but i digress the constable suggested that mcgonagall demonstrate his skills by reciting some poetry at the castle gate no sir said mcgonagall he wasn't some wandering charlatan he was the real thing take me into

27:18one of the rooms and the lodge and pay me for it and i will give you a recital the constable didn't oblige but he gave mcgonagall some advice unless you want to be arrested go home and don't think of returning to balmoral mcgonagall duly began the three day walk home to dundee when he got back he wrote up his adventures sent them to the newspapers and before long was being mocked up and down the british

27:51isles as a headline in the evening telegraph put it extraordinary freak of a dundee poet william mcgonagall at balmoral genius still unrecognized

McGonagall's Later Life and Performances

28:09when a cruel prank wastes a week of your life dashes your hopes and leads you to being mocked in the national press what can you do the answer pick yourself up and try again mcgonagall noted that tennyson was famous for his war poetry so he decided to dabble in war poems too they are not very good the battle of crecy begins to as on the 26th of august the sun was burning hot

28:44in the year of 1346 which will never be forgot and ends with the classic mcgonagall move of cramming some extra syllables in free of charge and the king's heart was filled with great delight and he thanked jack for capturing the bohemian standard during the fight

29:05but mcgonagall was soon encouraged to receive a lucrative job offer from the famous playwright and theater impresario dion busico busico's letter invited him to a fine dinner but as mcgonagall tells the story he arrived to find several men awaiting him barely suppressing giggles as mcgonagall was served a cheap sandwich mcgonagall had been pranked again although when busico heard about the joke

29:39he sent mcgonagall a sympathetic letter and five pounds enough money for mcgonagall to visit london he had hoped to meet with one or two of london's most celebrated actors but had no more luck there than at balmoral later mcgonagall ventured to new york a city he honored in distinctive style as for brooklyn bridge it's a very great height and fills the stranger's heart with wonder at first sight and with all its

30:13loftiness i venture to say it cannot surpass the new railway bridge of the silvery tay

30:21william mcgonagall did not succeed in selling his poems in new york so returned to scotland he was cheered to receive a letter from the poet laureate of burma writing on behalf of burma's king tibor making mcgonagall topaz mcgonagall knight of the white elephant of burma mcgonagall accepted the honor and wore his medal a silver elephant with pride if he ever feared that this letter was as

30:55fraudulent as the others he shared no doubts mcgonagall spent his final years giving public performances in perth glasgow and edinburgh where the main attraction appeared to be the opportunity to hurl abuse and worse at the aspiring poet laureate mcgonagall would dash about the stage excitedly enacting the action as he gave dramatic recitals of his war poems clad in a kilt and

31:26brandishing a claymore with perilous enthusiasm more useful was his small round shield with which he could parry incoming eggs and cabbages william mcgonagall died in poverty on the 29th of september 1902 he was 72 years old or 77 he was buried in a pauper's grave having practiced the art of poetry for 25 years

31:57and having been mocked for every one of them the death certificate misspells his name emile zola died on the same day as it happens zola a fine writer he was no william mcgonagall cautionary tales will return after the break

32:26we spend hours researching products online and deciding what to buy but there's a split second decision that can make or break a sale do you have the trust to hit the buy now button the way we discover and compare things is evolving happening faster and influenced by new forms of intelligent advice but the underlying trust question doesn't go away if anything it's more important than ever that's where paypal comes in for more than 25 years they've been a trusted way to pay and now paypal can make the

32:58agentic era of commerce work for merchants letting them maintain control of their brand their customer relationships so even as the way we shop changes the moment that matters most still feels familiar and deeply dependable built for payments growth and agentic paypal open built for all business visit paypalopen.com to get started purchase and seller protections on eligible transactions only terms apply see paypal.com risk management for details imagine never buying gas again evs electric

33:36vehicles are as easy to charge as your phone and perfect for everyday life drive daily with confidence everywhere you go most americans drive 40 miles a day most evs are equipped with 200 to 400 miles of range they've got fewer parts fewer repairs and fewer headaches with hundreds of new and used ev models available today there's an ev to fit every lifestyle and every budget ghost the gas station and save up to two thousand dollars a year not buying gas evs are perfect for real life with a daily range that

34:10allows you to drive with confidence wherever you want to go and charging is easy plug in overnight at home just like your phone or use a fast charger and get back on the road in as little as 20 minutes learn more at electric for all dot org we buy insurance for peace of mind but the policies we trust often cause the biggest financial shocks every year millions of claims are denied not because people did anything wrong but because their policies quietly excluded what happened insurers know every detail policyholders

34:45rarely do that's why my policy advocate exists for just 27 cents a day their platform reads your policies and explains in plain language where you're vulnerable they don't sell insurance they deliver transparency giving you the same understanding insurers have had for decades when i heard about my policy advocate my first thought was at last a level playing field before you trust your policy to protect you let my policy advocate tell you what it really says go to my policy advocate dot com that's my

35:20policy advocate dot com the poetry critics argue that mcgonigal has an important lesson to teach us he is the perfect example of how not to write poetry if you must read him be sure to do the opposite of whatever he does joseph salami an award-winning poet complains i know far too many persons who share some of mcgonigal's faults can we at least resolve that we will not commit the poetic crimes that mcgonigal

35:56committed can we stop with the humdrum plainness the vapid statement the dull diction the crappy meter the tedious length the triviality the commonplace thoughts and the cliched perceptions dr gerard caruthers an expert in scottish literature agrees there is something rather cruel about a still reprinting and republishing mcgonigal he told the bbc it's time for us to close the book on mcgonigal once and for all

36:28all but that feels so narrow-minded i draw a different lesson we shouldn't complain about a

Lessons from McGonagall's Story

36:36man who wrote bad poetry we should celebrate a man who wrote poetry of course the poems are bad but most poems are bad most acts of human creativity are fairly incompetent most of us can't write novels not that anyone else would pay to read most of us can't draw or paint anything that anyone else would pay to look at most of us can't act we can't sing we can't dance who cares dance and sing anyway

37:07i think we're prone to making a sad mistake when we think about creative acts we instinctively set the benchmark at an absurdly high level we've been spoiled perhaps because at the touch of a button we can listen to glenn gould playing johann sebastian bach we can watch ian mckellen and judy dench performing shakespeare we can read a novel by austin or watch a film by coppola or gaze at an interior by vermeer not only has modern technology made these wonders possible but modern technology

37:42also makes more humdrum creative acts economically worthless nobody is going to pay me to perform bach or paint a watercolor but i still play the piano from time to time and very occasionally i pick up a pencil in a sketchbook it doesn't matter if there's no economic value in the result there's personal value for me in the process of trying to express myself that might seem obvious but it's easy to forget in debates about the rise of generative ai people worry about the death of human creativity

38:19but i don't think generative ai is more of a threat to human creativity than the camera or the record player it changes the economics to be sure mcgonagall lost his job as a weaver because of machine looms so he would have understood all about losing work to a machine but while a new technology changes who might be paid for creative work and what sort of creative work they might be paid for and how much they might be paid for it it doesn't make creative work

38:52impossible all of us are free to sit down in front of a piano or an easel and try to create something beautiful and while it's nice to succeed it's more important to try

39:08as we grow from children into adults we often express our creativity less it might be because we're afraid of failure which is another thing to admire about mcgonagall he wasn't afraid of creative failure in fact he wouldn't recognize creative failure if it hurled an egg at him that's one way to look at mcgonagall anyway as a man who was always willing to express his inner creativity but that's not actually the way i see him i don't think william

39:41mcgonagall was admirable because he gave poetry a try i think he was a genius

Reevaluating McGonagall's Genius

39:49you've perhaps heard the story about the man who goes to a doctor he feels depressed the world seems so frightening and bleak don't worry says the doctor the great clown pagliacci is in town tonight go and see him perform that'll cheer you up the man starts to sob but doctor i am pagliacci

40:20it's a story that's been retold and remixed countless times so here's another remix what if william mcgonagall isn't the pompous talentless sad victim of bullies that he seems to be what if william mcgonagall is the most brilliant clown who ever lived and what if unlike pagliacci whose despair became clear when he took off the mask mcgonagall never removed his mask because

40:51underneath it he was the one laughing harder than anyone think back to that appearance as macbeth in which mcgonagall refused to lie down and die and wrestled with the infuriated actor playing mcduff it's hard to think of a funnier scene in the history of theater was it really just mcgonagall's arrogance and stupidity or did he know full well that he was putting on a show when the reviewer said that mcgonagall had decided to astonish the

41:29gods he wasn't referring to some pagan pantheon the gods is theater speak for the cheap seats mcgonagall was playing to the crowd and specifically to the poorest theater goers of all his friends from the workshop who'd all contributed to get him on stage in the first place and they loved what they saw mcgonagall certainly gave you a show and once you read mcgonagall's poetry not as an exhibit of

42:01utter incompetence but as a deliberate sly joke you quickly detect hints of mischief a one poem an ode to the moon begins beautiful moon with thy silvery light thou seemest most charming to my sight as i gaze upon thee in the sky so high a tear of joy does moisten mine eye just the usual clumsy cliche no mcgonagall's winking at us he knows what we do in the dark

42:34the next verses celebrate the way that the moon provides light for the fox to steal a goose from the farmyard and the poacher to set his snares and beautiful moon with thy silvery light thou cheerest the lovers in the night as they walk through the shady groves alone making love to each other before they go home really we're going to believe that william mcgonagall was only accidentally funny

43:07mcgonagall is best known today for his poem about the tay bridge disaster but in an early poem he also describes the tay bridge when it was first built beautiful railway bridge of the silvery tay the longest of the present day that has ever crossed or a tidal river stream most gigantic to be seen nearby dundee and the magdalen green at nearly two miles in length it was an engineering miracle but mcgonagall was a

43:41dundee local and like any local he would have known that the high girders of the central bridge had already been blown down once during construction otherwise why on earth include this verse

43:59beautiful railway bridge of the silvery tay i hope that god will protect all passengers by night and by day and that no accident will befall them while crossing the bridge of the silvery tay for that would be most awful to be seen nearby dundee and the magdalen green this isn't the work of an idiot it's the work of an old school medieval fool a court jester using humor to speak truth to power two years later the bridge

44:35was down and dozens of people were dead after a disaster at a shipyard which killed 38 people mcgonagall composed a long lament including praise for one thousand pounds from the directors of the thames ironworks and shipbuilding company which i hope will help to fill the bereaved one's hearts with glee idiot or court jester you be the judge as for those prank letters from queen victoria's secretary

45:08from dion busico from the king of burma maybe they were hoaxes on mcgonagall maybe they were hoaxes by mcgonagall on the rest of us they certainly helped to shape the legend for a man almost universally viewed as a failure mcgonagall knew how to draw a crowd when a statue of scotland's greatest poet robert burns was unveiled in dundee mcgonagall was kept away from the occasion

45:41by police to avoid a disturbance of the peace his dundee performances so often ended in a near riot that he was eventually banned from giving any more recitals in the town no wonder he died in poverty he'd been making 15 shillings a night the equivalent of a week's wages for an ordinary laborer not so bad for a man who lost his trade because of the march of the machines his downfall

46:14wasn't because his poems were terrible it was because his clowning performances were too riotously successful to be allowed to continue he died in poverty not because he was bad but because he was just too good we'll never know what william mcgonagall was really thinking as he took to the stage each night was he oblivious as he seems to be a man with skin so thick that neither insults nor insights ever got

46:46through or was he far more tragic than the mythic figure of pagliacci the clown proud of his poems but knowingly subjecting himself to nightly humiliation because there was no other way to put food on the table or was the whole thing a comic masterstroke did he never take off the mask or did he never put it on in the first place but while we can't read his mind we can read his poems and they've brought pleasure to

47:22countless people a few years ago an edinburgh auction house put up for sale a collection of first editions of harry potter books signed by the author jk rowling who it turns out named professor minerva mcgonagall in honor of the man she described as the worst poet in british history the books went for a handsome enough price i suppose

47:54but in the same auction a rather higher sum was paid for a different literary gem 35 poems by william mcgonagall mcgonagall some of them signed by the great man himself

48:10jk rowling if commercial success is the mark of a great artist then she's one of the best but she's no william mcgonagall he will be remembered for a very long time

48:34for a full list of our sources see the show notes at tim harford.com cautionary tales is written by me tim harford with andrew wright alice fines and ryan dilley it's produced by georgia mills and marilyn rust the sound design and original music are the work of pascal wise additional sound design is by carlos san juan at brain audio ben nadaf haffrey edited the

49:09scripts the show features the voice talents of genevieve gaunt melanie guttridge stella harford oliver hembrer sarah jopp maseya monroe jamal westman and rufus wright the show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of jacob weisberg greta cohn sarah nix eric sandler carrie brodie christina sullivan kira posey and owen miller cautionary tales is a production of pushkin industries it's recorded at wardour studios in london by noria bar and lucy rowe if you like the show

49:45please remember to share rate and review it really makes a difference to us and if you want to hear the show ad free sign up to pushkin plus on the show page on apple podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus we spend hours deciding what to buy but there's a split second decision that can make or break a

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