Harold Holt

You mean to tell me that the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is to have the Afghans keep walking into machine gun fire until the Russians run out of bullets? That's

Harold Holt's strategy.

It's not U.S. strategy.

What is U.S. strategy?

She still does at the grand age of 95.

And a news, um, announcement came over that Harold Holt had disappeared, and I remember my mother being totally shocked, and I, I didn't understand what it was about, but I just remember her being so shocked that a Prime Minister of Australia had disappeared in the ocean.

And how old were you at that time?

Six or seven.

him.

More than 17 years after Harold Holt disappeared into raging surf at Cheviot Beach, his widow has finally revealed his last romantic words.

Gawky, terrifying, mesmerising.

That's the way a number of Australians have described their alleged encounter with the Yowie.

Then

Harold Holt plunged into the boiling sea Is that why you're

about

to do to me

Laura Stone, who runs Sydney by Kayak, they offer kayak tours at Sydney Harbour, is the country's top tourist guide.

And Tiny Town, the best tiny town, population below 1,500, Portsea in Victoria, probably because they're still looking for Harold Holt.

Stanthorpe has been named the best country town for tourism in the whole country.

It looks like I've upset fans of Stanthorpe because I'm getting lots of calls and text messages coming in about the town.

I'm leaving the porch light on.

Harold Holt, the Sharks, everything.

I'm into it.

Now, Sunday, of course, the Warriors...

Okay, so let's go to the land down under.

I got a prime minister named Harold Holt in 1967.

Australian prime minister went for a swim and he vanished in rough surf.

Guess we're done.

But history does that experiment for us.

Namely, since World War II, forty-seven prime ministers have died natural deaths, uh, most often of heart disease and cancer, but Harold Holt died of drowning and, and a prime minister of Iceland died in a fire, da, da, da.

So there are natural deaths, but a majority of politicians have survived their term in office.

And so what you can do, their nature has performed the experiment.

Hmm.

Um, you have to make-- You have to recognize the difference between cause and effect if you see two things that are correlated with each other.

Um, did the death of the-- did the drowning of Harold Holt cause a decline in Australia's economy? Or instead, did a decline in Australia's economy get Harold Holt depressed and, and distracted so that he drowned as a result? There, there are many practical problems in doing natural experiments w-well, convincingly, and it's really only in the last twenty-five years that social scientists have gotten increasingly sophisticated at doing them.

I learned a great deal from two great economists, especially Jim Robinson and Daron Acemoğlu, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics last year.