Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week:
Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey says it was easier to deport illegal migrants to Europe when we were in the EU. Is that true?
Did the governor of the Bank of England get his numbers wrong on the UK’s ageing population?
Why is the price of beef up by 25% in a year?
Is it possible to prove that MPs are using AI to write their speeches?
If you’ve seen a number you think we should take a look at, email the team: moreorless@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: Tim Harford
Reporter: Lizzy McNeill
Producers: Nathan Gower and Nicholas Barrett
Series producer: Tom Colls
Production co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele
Sound mix: Gareth Jones
Editor: Richard Vadon
At the Contains Strong Language Festival in Bradford, Tom Sutcliffe and guests explore the history and culture of the city, and nation, through its poetry and stories. From battlefields and royal courts, coalmines to curry houses Start the Week looks at the language and rhythms that have captured the country.
The historian Catherine Clarke is retelling the story of the past in a new way in ‘A History of England in 25 Poems’. From the 8th century to today these verses illuminate the experiences, emotions and imaginations of those who lived through it.
As the 2025 City of Culture, Bradford gets an imaginative re-making in ‘The Book of Bradford: A City in Short Fiction’, a collection filled with rich diversity and youthful energy. Its editor Saima Mir, who grew up in the city, says the stories don’t avoid the scars of past challenges, but there’s pride in a city that has overcome differences and is looking ahead.
Moving on from the past is also reflected in Andrew McMillan’s debut novel, ‘Pity’, which follows three generations of a Yorkshire mining family, exploring themes of masculinity and post-industrial decline. As a prize-winning poet, McMillan will also be performing at the Contains Strong Language Festival in Bradford.
On September the 10th 2025, right-wing political activist and media personality Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking at an event in Utah. In the aftermath, his friend JD Vance, the US Vice President, hosted a special memorial edition of ‘The Charlie Kirk Show’, live from the White House, during which he called for unity, but said that could only be found by “climbing the mountain of truth”.
“While our side of the aisle certainly has its crazies, it is a statistical fact that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far left,” he said. We investigate the statistical evidence around political violence – both in people’s attitudes and the crimes themselves.
Presenter: Tim Harford
Reporter: Lizzy McNeill
Series producer: Tom Colls
Sound mix: Hal Haines
Editor: Richard Vadon
Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week:
Nigel Farage says 6.5 million people are on out-of-work benefits – with some benefits up 80% since 2018. Are those numbers right?
Do French pensioners really earn more than their working-age compatriots?
How is it possible for one kilogram of fish food to produce one kilogram of salmon?
And do we really have five senses?
If you’ve seen a number you think we should take a look at, email the team: moreorless@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: Tim Harford
Reporter: Lizzy McNeill
Producer: Nicholas Barrett
Series producer: Tom Colls
Production co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele
Sound mix: Neil Churchill
Editor: Richard Vadon
Lyse Doucet tells the history of Afghanistan in recent decades through the story of the Inter-Continental hotel, which opened in the capital in 1969. The BBC’s international correspondent stayed there frequently from the late 1980s, and she details how the Soviet occupation, civil war, US invasion and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban have all left their mark on 'The Finest Hotel in Kabul', and the people who worked there.
There’s plenty of pink champagne and fine dining in Michela Wrong’s study of the rise and fall of Mobutu Sese Seko, the charismatic dictator of Congo/ Zaire at the end of the 20th century. It’s 25 years since her biography, 'In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz', was published, and as the Democratic Republic of Congo appears to be on the brink of another civil war, she reflects on this latest cycle of violence.
There have been calls for international help in the DRC, but just how effective is military intervention in the long run? Ashleigh Percival-Borley served in Afghanistan in 2010 but had to watch from the sidelines as the US and UK abruptly pulled out a decade later, leaving a vacuum filled by the Taliban. Now, as a military historian and one of BBC Radio 4's researchers-in-residence, she’s interested in giving voice to women in war – not just as the victims, but as active participants.
The New Generation Thinkers scheme, which puts research on radio, is a partnership between BBC Radio 4 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says the world faces a severe labour shortage – 50 million workers by the end of the decade.
The boss of the world’s most valuable company thinks humanoid robots will be needed to fill the gap.
But is this prediction based on solid evidence?
Tim Harford looks at the calculations behind the claim with Rajiv Gupta, a technology expert at Boston Consulting Group, who is the likely source of the 50 million figure.
If you’ve seen a number in the news you think we should look at, email the team: moreorless@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: Tim Harford
Producer: Nicholas Barrett
Series producer: Tom Colls
Sound mix: Hal Haines
Editor: Richard Vadon
Tim Harford looks at some of the numbers in the news. This week:
Is it true that interest payments on the UK’s national debt are equivalent to £240 per month for everyone in the country?
Reform UK claim that Afghan migrants are 22 times more likely to be convicted of sex offences. Is that number correct?
We try to make sense of a claim that one in 10 women are being driven to leave work by their menopause symptoms.
And we investigate a claim comparing the speed of a snail and the war in Ukraine.
If you’ve seen a number you think we should look at, email the team: moreorless@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: Tim Harford
Reporter: Lizzy McNeill
Producer: Nicholas Barrett
Series producer: Tom Colls
Production co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele
Sound mix: James Beard
Editor: Richard Vadon
The Booker prize winning novelist Arundhati Roy looks back at her foremost influences in her memoir, Mother Mary Comes To Me. While her writing and activism are shaped by early circumstances – both financial and political – at the centre is her relationship with her mother, who she describes as ‘my shelter and my storm’.
The poet Sarah Howe won the TS Eliot prize for poetry for her debut collection, Loop of Jade. In her new work, Foretokens, she returns to the complex inheritance of family and language, as she tries to piece together the fragmentary, often mythical, early life of her Chinese mother, given away at birth.
The academic Lea Ypi travels through the history of Ottoman aristocracy to the making of modern Albania and the early days of communism as she attempts to retrace the life of her beloved grandmother. In her new book, Indignity: A Life Reimagined, she reveals the fragility of truth, as her own memories collide with secret police reports and newly discovered photographs.
Hollywood has given sharks a terrible reputation. But in reality, the finned fish should be far more scared of us, than we of them.
Millions of sharks are killed in fishing nets and lines every year.
One statistical claim seems to sum up the scale of this slaughter – that 100 million sharks are killed every year, or roughly 11,000 per day.
But how was this figure calculated, and what exactly does it mean?
We go straight to the source and speak to the researcher who worked it out, Dr Boris Worm, a professor in marine conservation at Dalhousie University in Canada.
Presenter: Lizzy McNeill
Producer: Nicholas Barrett
Series producer: Tom Colls
Production coordinator: Brenda Brown
Sound mix: Annie Gardiner
Editor: Richard Vadon
Fully autonomous cars are here. In a handful of cities across the US and China, robotaxis are transporting human passengers around town, but with no human behind the wheel.
Loyal Listener Amberish wrote in to More or Less to ask about a couple of safety statistics he’d seen regarding these self-driving cars on social media. These claimed that Waymo self-driving taxis were five times safer than human drivers in the US, and that Tesla’s self-driving cars are 10 times safer.
But, are these claims true?
We speak to Mark MacCarthy, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution Center for Technology Innovation, to find out.
If you’ve seen some numbers you think we should look at, email the team: moreorless@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: Lizzy McNeill
Producer: Nicholas Barrett
Series producer: Tom Colls
Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown
Sound mix: Neil Churchill
Editor: Richard Vadon
