Could there really be 26,911 words of European Union regulation dedicated to the sale of cabbage? This figure is often used by those arguing there is too much bureaucracy in the EU. But we trace its origins back to 1940s America. It wasn't true then, and it isn't true today. So how did this cabbage myth grow and spread? And what is the real number of words relating to the sale of cabbages in the EU? After the recent announcement that all schools would be converted to academies, a number of listeners have asked us to look into the evidence of how they perform. Education Secretary Nicky Morgan wrote a guest post on Mumsnet and More or Less were called upon to check her numbers. The popular TV show The Only Way is Essex claimed in its 200th episode that it had contributed more than a billion pounds to the UK economy. We investigate if this is true. Plus, can we trust food surveys? Stories about which foods are good and bad for you, which foods are linked to cancer and which have beneficial qualities are always popular. But how do experts know what people are eating? Tim Harford speaks to Christie Aschwanden, FiveThirtyEight's lead writer for science, about the pitfalls of food surveys. She kept a food diary and answered nutrition surveys and found many of the questions were really hard to answer.
Start the Week - Existentialism and Ways of Seeing
On Start the Week Kirsty Wark asks how we make choices about freedom and authenticity - questions that preoccupied Paris intellectuals in the 1930s. Sarah Bakewell looks back at one of the twentieth century's major philosophical movements - existentialism - and the revolutionary thinkers who came to shape it. Sartre and de Beauvoir may have spent their days drinking apricot cocktails in café's but Bakewell believes their ideas are more relevant than ever. The historian Sunil Khilnani reveals the Indian thinkers who didn't just talk about philosophy but lived it, and the photographer Stuart Franklin, famous for the pictures of the man in Tiananmen Square who stopped the tanks, discusses the impulse to record and preserve these moments of action. The art historian Frances Borzello looks at the female artists who chose the freedom to present themselves to the world in self-portraits. Producer: Katy Hickman.
Start the Week - Existentialism and Ways of Seeing
On Start the Week Kirsty Wark asks how we make choices about freedom and authenticity - questions that preoccupied Paris intellectuals in the 1930s. Sarah Bakewell looks back at one of the twentieth century's major philosophical movements - existentialism - and the revolutionary thinkers who came to shape it. Sartre and de Beauvoir may have spent their days drinking apricot cocktails in café's but Bakewell believes their ideas are more relevant than ever. The historian Sunil Khilnani reveals the Indian thinkers who didn't just talk about philosophy but lived it, and the photographer Stuart Franklin, famous for the pictures of the man in Tiananmen Square who stopped the tanks, discusses the impulse to record and preserve these moments of action. The art historian Frances Borzello looks at the female artists who chose the freedom to present themselves to the world in self-portraits. Producer: Katy Hickman.
More or Less: Behind the Stats - WSMoreOrLess: Safe drinking
New alcohol guidelines were issued recently in the UK which lowered the number of units recommended for safe drinking. But are the benefits and harms of alcohol being judged correctly? We speak to Professor David Speigelhalter. Tim Harford presents. Producer: Charlotte McDonald/Richard Vadon
Start the Week - Is Faster Better?
On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks at the pace of life with the writer Robert Colvile who celebrates today's accelerating flow of change and argues that we are hard-wired to crave novelty, speed and convenience. But Carl Honoré challenges this cult of speed in his praise of slowness. The scientist Steve Jones looks back at another period of history where the pace of change was revolutionary impacting scientifically, socially and politically - the French Revolution. And the writer Sarah Dunant focuses on 16th century Italy at a time when ideas in politics, religion and art were gathering pace. Producer: Katy Hickman.
Start the Week - Is Faster Better?
On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks at the pace of life with the writer Robert Colvile who celebrates today's accelerating flow of change and argues that we are hard-wired to crave novelty, speed and convenience. But Carl Honoré challenges this cult of speed in his praise of slowness. The scientist Steve Jones looks back at another period of history where the pace of change was revolutionary impacting scientifically, socially and politically - the French Revolution. And the writer Sarah Dunant focuses on 16th century Italy at a time when ideas in politics, religion and art were gathering pace. Producer: Katy Hickman.
More or Less: Behind the Stats - WSMoreOrLess: Mobiles or lightbulbs
Mobile technology is spreading fast in Africa, and one lawyer Gerald Abila has done the maths and worked out that there are more mobile phones than lightbulbs in Uganda. We look at his figures and find that measuring them is more complicated than you might imagine. There are certainly numbers you can choose to demonstrate this, but are they the right ones? Thyroid cancer has gone up after the Fukushima accident - but it's not what you think. Japanese authorities were worried about the impact of radiation that escaped into the atmosphere after a nuclear plant was damaged during the earthquake of 2011. Around 300,000 under-19s received ultrasound scans to look for abnormalities, and the results appeared alarming. One expert claimed there were 30 times more cases than might have been expected. But a group of epidemiologists have since questioned this - they say if you survey so many people, you will always find more cases. Producer: Charlotte McDonald/Laura Gray
Start the Week - The Easter Rising: 100 Years On
On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe looks back a hundred years to Easter Rising of 1916. Ruth Dudley Edwards explores the lives of Ireland's founding fathers and questions how they should be remembered, while Heather Jones places this historical moment in the context of the Great War. David Rieff praises forgetting in his study of the uses and abuses of historical memory, and its often pernicious influence on the present. And the Irish commentator Fintan O'Toole examines the present fortunes of a country once famed as the Celtic Tiger. Producer: Katy Hickman.
Start the Week - The Easter Rising: 100 Years On
On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe looks back a hundred years to Easter Rising of 1916. Ruth Dudley Edwards explores the lives of Ireland's founding fathers and questions how they should be remembered, while Heather Jones places this historical moment in the context of the Great War. David Rieff praises forgetting in his study of the uses and abuses of historical memory, and its often pernicious influence on the present. And the Irish commentator Fintan O'Toole examines the present fortunes of a country once famed as the Celtic Tiger. Producer: Katy Hickman.
More or Less: Behind the Stats - WSMoreOrLess: Can we trust food surveys?
Stories about what foods are good and bad for you, which foods are linked to cancer and which have beneficial qualities are always popular online and in the news. But how do experts know what people are eating? Tim Harford speaks to Christie Aschwanden, FiveThirtyEight?s lead writer for science, about the pitfalls of food surveys. She kept a food diary and answered nutrition surveys and found many of the questions were really hard to answer ? how could she tell all the ingredients in a restaurant curry; and how many tomatoes did she eat regularly over the past six months? Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Charlotte McDonald/Wesley Stephenson