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BBC Radio 4
Tim Harford explains - and sometimes debunks - the numbers and statistics used in political debate, the news and everyday life.
1129 episodes tracked Similar shows
36%How much of all the money in the world does Elon Musk have?
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30%Would you take £50,000 or a 50/50 chance of £1m?
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21%The mistake in Trump’s tariff formula
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31%Is crime in London ‘through the roof’?
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28%How much luck do you need to win the World Cup?
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22%Does playing tennis make you live 9.7 years longer?
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27%Does the average teacher really earn £54,000?
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21%Does a full moon make crime rates go up?
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25%Examining the numbers behind Andy Burnham’s ‘Manchester Miracle’
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30%Benefits v minimum wage: Which pays more?
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56%Is the US worse than North Korea for malnutrition deaths?
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26%Does Europe suffer more heat deaths than the US?
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21%Andrew Ross Sorkin: What can the Great Crash of 1929 tell us about today?
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23%Education, Education, Education (and Immigration)
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33%Factchecking claims that 400 churches were burned to the ground in France
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20%Debunking the claim that migrants will get half of new homes
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29%The known unknowns of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
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34%Does a fall in the UK's healthy life expectancy mean what you think it means?
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21%Is the ‘loneliness epidemic’ real?
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20%Are refugees more likely to commit crime?
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30%Erdos Problem 1196: Can AI now solve maths that no human can?
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29%Why it’s wrong to say vaping is as bad for you as smoking
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26%Does it take 15,000 litres of water to produce a kilogram of beef?
More or Less · 9m
27%Have RFK and MAHA really changed American views on vaccines?
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25%Is Trump right that wind turbines are killing millions of birds?
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34%Dr Spock’s dangerous advice on baby sleep
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33%How likely is ‘likely’?
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23%How much water does AI consume?
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32%Paul Ehrlich: The man who bet England wouldn’t exist by the year 2000
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20%Transgender women in sport: Does ‘comparable’ mean ‘equal’?
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24%US-Israel war with Iran: Do the gulf states have enough interceptor missiles?
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32%Has a company really discovered a million new species?
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22%Did AI researchers let AI hallucinations into scientific papers?
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27%Is an ancient charioteer the best paid sportsperson of all time?
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31%Is this Premier League striker a secret maths genius?
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26%Could Europe use its financial muscle to strong-arm the US?
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23%Can you get £71,000 on benefits?
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30%Is Greenland as big as Africa?
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26%How close is Greenland to the United States?
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25%No, a study has not shown that the covid jab causes cancer
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23%Have more than 100 private schools been forced to close because of VAT?
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21%Does Venezuela really have the biggest oil reserves in the world?
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31%Immigration, Benefits and Inequality
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27%The Stats of the Nation: Immigration, benefits and inequality
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24%Older People, Education, Prisons and the Weather
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29%The Stats of the Nation: Older people, education, prisons and the weather
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38%The Stats of the Nation: Sex, drugs and empty homes
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25%Sex, Drugs and Empty Homes
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31%The Stats of the Nation: Health
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33%Health
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30%The Stats of the Nation: The Economy
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21%The Economy
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21%Numbers of the year 2026
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27%Numbers of the Year 2025
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29%Numbers of the year 2025
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23%Were there really Three Wise Men?
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32%The shocking world of US health costs
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31%Do we really have ‘superflu’?
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34%RCP 8.5: Why did the climate change model get it wrong?
More or Less · 8m
21%Is RFK right about US sperm counts?
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30%Richard Thaler and The Winner’s Curse
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25%Is there a stock market crash coming?
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30%Has there been a $50 trillion wealth transfer to the richest Americans?
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28%Is RFK Jr right about China's diabetes rate?
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29%Halloween special: How many people did the real Dracula impale?
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24%Is your housework split sexist?
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24%Nobel economics prize 2025: What's the big idea?
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34%Are millions of people getting Motability cars for anxiety and ADHD?
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22%Are 72% of prison inmates in Switzerland foreign?
More or Less · 8m
34%Does half the UK get more in benefits than they pay in tax?
More or Less · 26m
23%Is the world getting less miserable?
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20%Has Donald Trump ended seven 'unendable' wars?
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24%The Case of the Missing US Data
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34%Was it easier to deport migrants to France before Brexit?
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23%Is JD Vance right about left-wing violence?
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22%Is it true that out-of-work benefits have almost doubled?
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30%Will the world really be 50 million workers short by 2030?
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23%Are Afghan nationals more likely to be convicted of sexual offences?
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29%Do 11,000 sharks die every hour?
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26%Are self-driving cars safer than cars with drivers?
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21%Do women feel the cold more than men?
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22%How weird was the Mediterranean Sea heatwave?
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29%How weird was the Med Sea heatwave?
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27%Why it matters that Trump fired data chief
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32%Are abortion numbers rising in the US?
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35%Does a single AI query use a bottle of water?
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23%Are abortion numbers rising in the US?
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22%The messy history behind the modern calendar
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22%Are one in six children living through war?
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24%Why Manchester United can afford to play badly
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34%Can drinking one less bottle of coke a day halve obesity?
More or Less · 26m
30%The economics of war: Vikings, Conquistadors and Vietnam
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20%Is the UK seeing a Christian revival?
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30%Has Russia suffered a million casualties in the Ukraine war?
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23%Why is data on grooming gangs so bad?
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33%How to spot a suspicious statistic
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31%Are 4% of young women in the UK on OnlyFans?
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22%Could you be hit by a falling satellite?
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19%How do you make something 10-times more lethal?
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23%Is the world’s population being miscounted?
More or Less · 8m
34%Does the average American have fewer than three friends?
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21%Factchecking the Trump administration’s Autism claims
More or Less · 9m
23%Is the UN underestimating the global fall in fertility?
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30%How dead is the internet?
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36%Warren Buffett’s brilliant bets
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23%Bonus episode: The Autism Curve
More or Less · 15m
28%Donald Trump: 100 days fact-check
More or Less · 9m
28%Are 80% of women really only attracted to 20% of men?
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35%The pioneers of proof
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23%How much is a human life worth?
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29%The mistake in Trump’s tariff formula
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25%Trump tariffs: All about the deficits
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30%Is one in four people in the UK disabled?
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28%What’s Trump’s problem with Canada?
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23%Could a 2% wealth tax raise £24bn?
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20%What are the chances of an asteroid hitting earth in 2032?
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29%Why are more people claiming disability benefits?
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24%How did lockdown impact children?
More or Less · 41m
32%What is an IQ map and can we trust them?
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35%DOGE, apples and irregular migrants
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25%Is there really $500bn of Rare Earths in Ukraine?
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24%Defence Spending, Rare Earths and Trunk Truths
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24%Has the US really given Ukraine more aid than Europe?
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21%Are 150 year olds getting social security payments?
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25%Has the US sent $50 million worth of condoms to Gaza?
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27%Are black babies in the US really more likely to die under the care of white doctors?
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23%Are quantum computers already super-powerful?
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33%Did Trump make billions with his meme-coin?
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23%Can redheads handle 25% more pain than brunettes?
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19%Do 79% of Swedish asylum seekers go on holiday to the country they fled from?
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26%Numbers of the year part 2
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21%Numbers of the year 2024
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26%Did Mussolini make the trains run on time?
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35%How many Americans live ‘paycheck to paycheck’?
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36%Did one in 10 Greeks die in World War Two?
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28%Can Elon Musk save the US Government $2 trillion?
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29%Do fossil fuels get $7 trillion in subsidies?
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25%Did 20 million votes really go missing in the US election?
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26%Do we have enough clothes for the next six generations?
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21%What can economics learn from sport?
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34%Are older drivers more dangerous?
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22%Is Trump right about violent crime in Venezuela and the US?
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26%Do US crime statistics miss out the most violent cities?
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29%Nobel prize: Why are some countries so much richer than others?
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19%When are numbers like a horse at a gymkhana?
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24%Uncertainty, probability and double yoked eggs
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23%Should the government target persnuffle?
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24%Are 672 billion pounds of corn eaten in the US every year?
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23%How do you breed seventeen octillion rats?
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31%The puzzles you’re meant to get wrong
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76%Could the winter fuel cut cost more than it saves?
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32%Do 85% of the world’s population practice a religion?
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22%How do you count millionaires?
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28%Nate Silver: Do risk-takers run the world?
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30%How long does it take to turn around an oil tanker?
More or Less · 27m
23%Who pays when trade wars heat up?
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34%Exclusions, black holes and dividing by zero
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23%Where have Cuba’s people gone?
More or Less · 9m
28%Do we eat a credit card's worth of microplastic each week?
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25%Are companies making more money from their customers?
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28%Is planet Earth getting greener?
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27%Does a language die every two weeks?
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23%Are women 14 times more likely to die in natural disasters?
More or Less · 12m
31%Is increasing turbulence making flying more dangerous?
More or Less · 10m
31%Federer’s 54%: Tennis stats explained
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24%The magic of trigonometry
More or Less · 9m
27%Election endings, tennis and meeting men in finance
More or Less · 37m
23%How a tick box doubled the US maternal mortality rates.
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37%Election claims and erection claims
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20%Do ‘pig butchering’ cyber scams make as much as half Cambodia’s GDP?
More or Less · 9m
25%Worse mortgages, better readers, and potholes on the moon
More or Less · 31m
22%Shakespeare’s maths
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34%Leaflets, taxes, oil workers and classrooms
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26%Why medical error is not the third leading cause of death in the US
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27%Debate, Reform, tax evasion and ants
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32%Data for India
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25%UK growth, prisons and Swiftonomics
More or Less · 28m
35%Is intermittent fasting going to kill you?
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36%MP misconduct, NHS waiting lists and gold (gold)
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27%Are falling marriage rates causing happiness to fall in the US?
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23%Is reading for pleasure the single biggest factor in how well a child does in life?
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30%Do one in five young Americans think the holocaust is a myth?
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81%Has Milei fixed Argentina’s inflation problem?
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23%98%: Is misinformation being spread about a review of trans youth medicine?
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20%Tackling The Three-Body Problem
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28%Is loneliness as bad for you as smoking?
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20%Remembering Daniel Kahneman
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36%Bonus episode: Daniel Kahneman on Thinking, Fast and Slow
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26%What's happening to Arctic ice?
More or Less · 9m
23%Does the Russian government really spend 40% of its budget on the military?
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30%Is public speaking really our biggest fear?
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29%Ultramarathons: Are women faster than men?
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30%School spending, excess deaths and billions of animals at Heathrow
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31%NBA basketball: Is height more important than skill?
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31%Per capita GDP, MP claims and the entire EU budget
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34%The digital ‘robots’ unlocking medical data
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21%Debt, students, shark and chips
More or Less · 28m
32%The global gender split in young people’s politics
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55%Council tax weirdness: Hartlepool vs Westminster
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27%A pocket-size history of the calculator
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25%Measles, Traitors and the cost of Brexit
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38%Is Oxfam right about the world’s richest and poorest people?
More or Less · 10m
28%Shopping, shipping and wind chill-ing
More or Less · 28m
33%Are there more possible games of chess than atoms in the universe?
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23%Life expectancy, inheritance tax and the NHS vs winter
More or Less · 23m
34%Do we see 10,000 adverts per day?
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21%Deaths, taxes and missing cats
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24%How much money do the ‘Ndrangheta mafia make?
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21%Numbers of the year 2023
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35%Can chocolate be better than salad?
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22%China’s missing numbers
More or Less · 8m
26%Does endurance sport harm your heart?
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30%Will there be a billion climate refugees?
More or Less · 9m
24%A boy meets girl meets stats story
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20%Are women in the UK the biggest binge drinkers in the world?
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22%Can maths prove the existence of aliens?
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31%Do Indian women own 11% of the world’s gold?
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22%The Overlooked Mathematicians of History
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32%What do windscreen splats tell us about insect decline?
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23%Greedy jobs and the gender pay gap
More or Less · 12m
32%Are half the words in English from French?
More or Less · 9m
29%Vaccine claims, Alzheimer's treatment and Tim's Parkrun times
More or Less · 28m
24%Is the UK really ahead in cutting carbon emissions?
More or Less · 8m
28%NHS consultant pay, Net Zero claims and Scotland's ferry woes
More or Less · 30m
25%Which city has the longest canals?
More or Less · 9m
30%Social housing, NHS workforce and Liz Truss debt claims
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27%How to approach the world through numbers
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20%Skin cancer, London rents and your great great great granddaughter
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30%Did 35,000 Americans die building the Panama Canal?
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29%Covid deaths, North Sea gas and Chloe Kelly's World Cup penalty
More or Less · 28m
24%What percentage of our brain do we actually use?
More or Less · 8m
29%HS2 and electric cars, UK vs China emissions & massive maths errors
More or Less · 28m
25%How safe is the release of Fukushima nuclear plant water?
More or Less · 9m
19%How many butterflies are there in the world?
More or Less · 8m
31%Why is it so hard to predict the outcome of competitions like the Premier League?
More or Less · 9m
26%Are the media exaggerating how hot it is in the Mediterranean?
More or Less · 8m
30%Data, extreme weather and climate change
More or Less · 8m
21%Ukraine war: A new way of calculating Russian deaths
More or Less · 9m
22%Are more adult nappies sold in Japan than baby ones?
More or Less · 9m
25%Does it take 10,000 litres of water to make a pair of jeans?
More or Less · 9m
61%Immigration: A More or Less Special Programme
More or Less · 28m
20%Will there be just 6 grandchildren for every 100 South Koreans?
More or Less · 9m
31%Halving inflation, Scottish tidal power and have 1 in 3 women had an abortion?
More or Less · 31m
31%US National Debt: is $32 trillion a big number?
More or Less · 8m
29%Mortgages, birth rates and does space contribute 18% to UK GDP?
More or Less · 28m
27%Is breastfeeding the key to exam success?
More or Less · 9m
28%Electric vehicles, 600 million bottles and does oral sex cause cancer?
More or Less · 32m
26%Counting Hunger in India
More or Less · 9m
28%Lib Dem ambulance claims, affordable rent and goat meat
More or Less · 28m
25%A short history of data
More or Less · 9m
37%Food prices, net migration and beef about beef
More or Less · 30m
23%Are young people more single than ever before?
More or Less · 8m
36%NHS waiting lists, Voter ID and measuring divorce
More or Less · 28m
29%Detecting Bad Science with Data
More or Less · 10m
21%Do 94% of marriages in Portugal really end in divorce?
More or Less · 10m
28%Why is life expectancy falling in the USA?
More or Less · 10m
34%How much is the Coronation crown worth?
More or Less · 10m
23%The Pentagon Leaks and Fox News
More or Less · 9m
30%How accurate is baby's due date?
More or Less · 10m
25%How to better understand and explain numbers
More or Less · 10m
27%A groundbreaking new proof for Pythagoras’ Theorem?
More or Less · 10m
56%Covid vaccines and false claims about miscarriage
More or Less · 9m
31%Silicon Valley Bank: a very modern bank run
More or Less · 9m
21%Do fungi kill three times as many people as malaria?
More or Less · 8m
24%Does your jewellery contain stolen Brink’s-Mat gold?
More or Less · 10m
28%UK vs European energy prices, falling excess deaths and is 5 grams of cocaine a lot?
More or Less · 28m
21%Do 29,000 coffee pods really go to landfill every minute?
More or Less · 10m
31%Reoffending rates, Welsh taxes and the menopause
More or Less · 29m
20%Florence Nightingale and how she visualised data
More or Less · 10m
30%Nurses' pay, ambulance times and forgotten female economists
More or Less · 28m
21%Spreadsheet disasters
More or Less · 10m
25%The IMF and the UK economy, NHS staff shortages and British vs English
More or Less · 28m
56%Hannah Fry on using shopping data to detect ovarian cancer
More or Less · 9m
27%Brexit and trade, pensioner millionaires and Hannah Fry on loyalty cards and cancer
More or Less · 28m
29%Are wild mammals only 4% of the mammal population?
More or Less · 10m
27%Coffee with the Chancellor, inflation measures, GP numbers and toilet paper
More or Less · 28m
33%Does toilet paper cause 15% of global deforestation?
More or Less · 8m
29%Ambulance response times, teacher pay and Irish pubs
More or Less · 29m
22%How we shook the world of very large numbers
More or Less · 8m
25%A&E delays and deaths, religious identity in N Ireland and naming the monster numbers
More or Less · 28m
20%Can China's data on covid deaths be trusted?
More or Less · 9m
20%Irish pubs - a global numbers game
More or Less · 10m
30%Numbers of the Year 2022
More or Less · 8m
30%Qatar World Cup: the pressure of penalties
More or Less · 8m
26%Why are data so important in determining how we live?
More or Less · 8m
27%The World Cup: how many migrant workers have died?
More or Less · 10m
26%When do food shortages become a famine?
More or Less · 8m
35%A $220 billion World Cup?
More or Less · 8m
28%Bonus Episode: Understand the Economy
More or Less · 14m
30%Improving the numbers in the news
More or Less · 8m
20%Lula’s “zero deforestation” plan for the Amazon
More or Less · 8m
30%Can China’s GDP data be trusted?
More or Less · 8m
20%Do half of new books really sell fewer than twelve copies?
More or Less · 8m
28%Ben Bernanke and the magic of banking
More or Less · 10m
28%Catching Chess Cheats with Data
More or Less · 8m
23%Teens and antidepressants, stamp duty savings and earthquake probabilities
More or Less · 28m
23%NASA’s asteroid collision: how many asteroids are really out there?
More or Less · 9m
29%Falling pound, the Queen’s funeral and is 0.5 on the Richter scale a big number?
More or Less · 29m
61%Ukraine’s progress in numbers
More or Less · 10m
25%Ukraine offensive, weak pound & how much do women really exercise
More or Less · 28m
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