More or Less Podcast
Tim Harford explains - and sometimes debunks - the numbers and statistics used in political debate, the news and everyday life
Episodes to download
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How many American women will have an abortion in their lifetime?
Sat 2 Jul 2022
In the wake of the historic overturning of Roe vs Wade, we look at the statistics.
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Ed Sheeran and the mathematics of musical coincidences
Sat 25 Jun 2022
Ed Sheeran thinks that musical coincidences will always happen… but do the numbers agree?
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Hannah Fry: Understanding the numbers of cancer
Sat 11 Jun 2022
The maths professor on the choices she and others have faced after a cancer diagnosis
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Are girls starting puberty earlier?
Sat 4 Jun 2022
We look into a claim that the age of girls’ puberty is falling rapidly
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Noisy decisions
Sat 28 May 2022
Nobel prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman on how 'noise' impacts decision making
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Are just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions?
Sat 21 May 2022
Looking at numbers on green house gas emissions and stress.
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Did the WHO get some of its excess death estimates wrong?
Sat 14 May 2022
We look at the World Health Organisation’s latest estimates of the pandemic’s death toll
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Have the oceans become 30% more acidic?
Sat 7 May 2022
Tim Harford asks how we measure the health of our oceans
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Sweden’s polarising pandemic response
Sat 30 Apr 2022
Has Sweden’s pandemic response been a triumph or a disaster…or something in-between?
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Understanding India through data
Sat 23 Apr 2022
What can data tell us about a country of 1.4 billion people?
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Subitising and simplifying: how to better explain numbers
Sat 16 Apr 2022
How can we clearly explain complex numbers to the public without losing their meaning?
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Did tea-drinking cut deaths in the Industrial Revolution?
Sat 9 Apr 2022
How tea became an accidental lifesaver in 18th Century England.
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Will the war in Ukraine cause a global wheat shortage?
Sat 2 Apr 2022
How much of the worlds wheat comes from Ukraine and Russia
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Why has Hong Kong’s Covid wave been so bad?
Sun 27 Mar 2022
What’s behind one of the worst Covid death rates ever?
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Pizza and nuclear war
Sun 20 Mar 2022
How good negotiation can help us split pizzas fairly and also avoid nuclear war.
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Does the UK take in more refugees than other European countries?
Sun 13 Mar 2022
Fact checking Boris Johnson’s claim
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Are female patients more likely to die if the surgeon is male?
Sun 23 Jan 2022
Should women be worried about having a male surgeon?
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QAnon: Did 365,348 children go missing in the US in 2020?
Sun 16 Jan 2022
Fact checking a QAnon claim.
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How much plastic is in the ocean and can Mr Beast make a difference?
Sun 9 Jan 2022
Can two social media stars remove $30million worth of plastic from the ocean?
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Will the population of Nigeria be larger than Europe’s?
Sun 2 Jan 2022
Will Nigeria’s population really reach 600million?
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Does catching Covid give you more immunity than being vaccinated?
Sun 12 Dec 2021
Infection vs injection: Could Covid infection provide 27 times more protection?
Unlock the history and truth behind the data with The OU
Explore how numbers shape, and sometimes mislead us, with The Open University.
