BBC Radio 4

More or Less

Science EN ↓ 1449 episodes

Tim Harford explains - and sometimes debunks - the numbers and statistics used in political debate, the news and everyday life.

Be sure to visit the podcast's website and support the creator: www.bbc.co.uk

Author

BBC Radio 4

Category

Science

Podcast website

www.bbc.co.uk

Latest episode

Sep 30, 2026

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Episodes

Teen Suicide; Brexit Business Moves; Wood-Burner Pollution 08.02.2019

Tim Harford finds untrue a recent report that there is a 'suicidal generation' of teens.

WS More or Less: You have 15,000 likes! 04.02.2019

A listener doubts her popularity on the dating app Tinder. We investigate the numbers.

Holocaust Deniers; Venezuelan Hyperinflation; Tinder Likes 01.02.2019

Tim Harford on Holocaust deniers; food prices in Venezuela, and dating app statistics

WS More or Less: Is Suicide Seasonal? 26.01.2019

Tim Harford asks which times of the year are riskiest for suicide.

Domestic Violence, Jobs, Easter Snowfall 25.01.2019

Tim Harford on domestic violence, employment numbers, and the chance of a white Easter.

WS More or Less: Close Encounters of a Planetary Kind 19.01.2019

Which planet is closest to Earth?

Intersex Numbers, Fact-Checking Facebook, Jack Bogle 18.01.2019

Tim Harford asks whether 1.7% of people are intersex, and examines false claims about MPs

WS More or Less: The Mathematics of Fever 12.01.2019

We look at the numbers behind body temperature – what is normal?

Sugar, Outdoors Play and Planets 11.01.2019

Tim Harford on sugar, train fares, children's outdoors play and Earth's closest neighbour

WS More or Less: Numbers of the Year Part 2 04.01.2019

Helena Merriman with numbers about water shortage, plastic recycling and American jobs.

WS More or Less: Numbers of the Year Part 1 29.12.2018

The numbers that made 2018.

Numbers of the Year Part One 28.12.2018

Russian Trolls, a president’s false claims and the amount of Nigerian households that don’t have access to clean drinking water; these all feature in this first instalment of our numbers of the year. We speak to Ben Nimmo, information defence fellow at Atlantic Council’s Digital Defence Lab, Heather Long, the economics correspondent at the Washington Post and Allwell Okpi, researcher and journalis...

WS More or Less: Mission Impossible - Quantifiying Santa 22.12.2018

What to look out for on Christmas Eve.

WS More or Less: Dam Lies and Statistics 17.12.2018

Are mega-dams really sustainable?

WS More or Less: Sex and Heart Attacks 30.11.2018

Are women more likely to die from a heart attack than men?

WS More or Less: Are 90% of War Fatalities Civilians? 23.11.2018

Xavier Zapata examines what the data tells us about the deadly impact of war on civilians

WS More or Less: When’s a Kilogram Not a Kilogram? 16.11.2018

Updating the kilogram.

WS More or Less: Do Assassinations Work? 09.11.2018

How likely are assassination attempts on heads of state to succeed?

WS More or Less: Vaccines - The importance of the herd and social media 28.10.2018

What proportion of a population needs to be vaccinated to stop a disease spreading?

WS More or Less: Foreign Aid: Who’s the most generous? 19.10.2018

In foreign aid terms what’s the best way of measuring how generous a country is?

WS More or Less: Paul Romer and William Nordhaus’ Big Ideas 12.10.2018

The economists tackling climate change and growth.

Loneliness, School Funding, Same-Sex Divorce 09.10.2018

New figures reveal that same-sex divorce rates are much higher among women than among men. The pattern is the same in Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK. Everywhere where there are statistics on same-sex divorce it is the same sex doing the bulk of the divorcing. Tim Harford discusses why this may be with Marina Ashdade, economist at Canada’s Vancouver School of Economics and auth...

WS More or Less: Why are Lesbians More Likely to Divorce than Gay Men? 07.10.2018

New figures reveal that same-sex divorce rates are much higher among women than among men. The pattern is the same in Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK. Everywhere where there are statistics on same-sex divorce it is the same sex doing the bulk of the divorcing. Tim Harford discusses why this may be with Marina Ashdade, economist at Canada’s Vancouver School of Economics and auth...

Loneliness; School Funding; Same-Sex Divorce. 05.10.2018

This week BBC Radio 4’s All in the Mind programme announced the results of The Loneliness Experiment. It was a large survey conducted by the programme in collaboration with the Wellcome Collection. The largest survey into the issue of loneliness to date, said All in the Mind, while the accompanying BBC press release reported that “The survey results indicate that 16-24 year olds experience lonelin...

WS More of Less: Surviving the Battle of Britain 01.10.2018

Were Spitfire pilots killed after an average of four weeks in the World War Two battle?

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