Benefits vs minimum wage: Which pays more?
Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week: (00:42) Former Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Jeremy Hunt argues that...
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More or Less: Behind the Stats
Tim Harford and the More or Less team try to make sense of the statistics which surround us. From BBC Radio 4
More or Less: Behind the Stats Podcast Guide
Listen to More or Less: Behind the Stats, a News & Politics podcast by BBC. Stream 1,102 episodes in English, follow new audio stories, and play episodes online on Radio and Podcast.
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Episodes
20 of 1,102 episodes
Is the US worse than North Korea for malnutrition deaths?
This surprising claim was spotted circulating on social media: ‘The United States has surpassed China and North Korea in deaths from malnutr...
Does Europe suffer more heat deaths than the US?
Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week: (00:31) Claims have circulated on the internet that Europe sees a parti...
Andrew Ross Sorkin: What can the Great Crash of 1929 tell us about today?
The Great Crash of 1929 has faded into history, but financial journalist and author Andrew Ross Sorkin argues it holds vital lessons for tod...
Education, Education, Education (and immigration)
Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week: (00:32) The internet is abuzz with the claim that twenty-seven young mi...
Factchecking claims that 400 churches were burned to the ground in France
In certain corners of the internet some suspicious numbers are cropping up again and again. People claiming that 400 churches have been burn...
Debunking the claim that migrants will get half of new homes
Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week: The Daily Express claims that ‘Migrants will get half of all new homes’...
The known unknowns of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
On the 17th of May the World Health Organisation declared a new outbreak of Ebolavirus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as an Interna...
Does a fall in the UK's healthy life expectancy mean what you think it means?
Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week: Headlines have claimed that “healthy life expectancy” in the UK has fal...
Is the ‘loneliness epidemic’ real?
What does it mean if you say that something is an epidemic? In the case of a virus, it usually means that it is spreading rapidly and that m...
Are refugees more likely to commit crime?
Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. On the programme: Last week, Annunziata Rees-Mogg took to X to post a claim about...
Erdos Problem 1196: Can AI now solve maths that no human can?
It’s said that AI could soon be coming for the jobs of artists, lawyers, and software engineers. But it might now also be threatening a role...
Why it’s wrong to say vaping is as bad for you as smoking
According to the World Health organisation, smoking kills some 7 million people every year. It is one of the world’s leading causes of preve...
Does it take 15,000 litres of water to produce a kilogram of beef?
If you spend much time on social media, and we don’t necessarily recommend it, then you’ve probably come across a strange fascination with w...
Have RFK and MAHA really changed American views on vaccines?
Vaccine policy in the US is something of an ideological battleground. Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr is a vaccine sceptic, and since t...
Is Trump right that wind turbines are killing millions of birds?
US president Donald Trump is no fan of wind turbines, or windmills as he calls them. Not only does he think they ruin the view from a golf c...
Dr Spock’s dangerous advice on baby sleep
Sometimes it is obvious to everyone when an idea is harmful, or a piece of advice is damaging. But not always. Occasionally bad ideas and te...
How likely is ‘likely’?
When you’re listening to the news, you will often hear words that are meant to communicate the probability of something happening. A terrori...
How much water does AI consume?
As Artificial Intelligence continues to expand rapidly, some people have raised concerns about its potential environmental impact - in parti...
Paul Ehrlich: The man who bet England wouldn’t exist by the year 2000
Paul Ehrlich’s bestselling book The Population Bomb opens with an apocalyptic paragraph. “The battle to feed all of humanity is over,” it st...