Code Curiosities

The Spreadsheet That Crashed a Country's Economy

Episode Summary

In 2010, two Harvard economists published a paper that became the intellectual backbone for global austerity policy — affecting millions of lives across Europe and beyond. The only problem? Their flagship conclusion hinged on a Microsoft Excel formula that forgot to include five rows of data. We dig into how a copy-paste error became government policy, and what it tells us about the terrifying authority we hand to software we never actually check.