Start the Week comes from Glasgow this week. As the debate over the EU Referendum continues Kirsty Wark looks back at the Scottish Referendum with the historians Tom Devine and Chris Whatley. How much did the history of the union from 1707 and Scotland's sense of identity play a role in the public vote and imagination? The poet Kathleen Jamie wrote a poem a week to mark the momentous changes taking place in Scotland last year. Jamie is well-known for her celebration of the country's wild landscape, but the artist Angus Farquhar is focused on transforming a very different piece of Scottish heritage - the 60s modernist ruin, St Peter's Seminary. Producer: Katy Hickman.
Start the Week - Scotland
Start the Week comes from Glasgow this week. As the debate over the EU Referendum continues Kirsty Wark looks back at the Scottish Referendum with the historians Tom Devine and Chris Whatley. How much did the history of the union from 1707 and Scotland's sense of identity play a role in the public vote and imagination? The poet Kathleen Jamie wrote a poem a week to mark the momentous changes taking place in Scotland last year. Jamie is well-known for her celebration of the country's wild landscape, but the artist Angus Farquhar is focused on transforming a very different piece of Scottish heritage - the 60s modernist ruin, St Peter's Seminary. Producer: Katy Hickman.
More or Less: Behind the Stats - WSMoreOrLess: Fact checking The Big Short
"Every one percent unemployment goes up, 40,000 people die, did you know that?" says Brad Pitt playing a former investment banker Ben Rickert, in the recent Oscar-winning film The Big Short. Although based on a true story, the filmmakers admit there is some creative license in some of the scenes. But is there any truth to this statistic? It turns out it?s a figure that has been around for many decades. We explore its origins.
The debate over whether the UK should leave the European Union is heating up ahead of the referendum this summer. Many politicians have said that the UK is the fifth largest economy in the world ? is that a fair assessment? We look at the GDP figures.
(Image: Brad Pitt attends the premiere of "The Big Short" in New York 2015. Credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)
Start the Week - Nature or Nurture?
On Start the Week Mary-Ann Sieghart asks why some people succeed while others fail. She talks to the journalist Helen Pearson about the Life Project, a study of the health, wellbeing and life chances of thousands of British children, started in 1946. The television producer Joseph Bullman also charts a series of families back to the Victorian times to look at social mobility through the generations. The psychologist Oliver James wades into the nature/ nurture debate by arguing that we are the result of our environment and upbringing, but the scientist Marcus Munafò says there is increasing evidence of genetic links to who we are and what we do. Producer: Katy Hickman.
More or Less: Behind the Stats - WSMoreOrLess: Antibiotics and the problem of the broken market
It?s a life and death situation ? the world is at its last line of defence against some pretty nasty bacteria and there are no new antibiotics. But it?s not the science that?s the big problem, it the economics. Despite the $40 billion market worldwide there?s no money to be made in antibiotics so big pharma have all but stopped their research. Why is this and how do we entice them back in? Wesley Stephenson finds out. (Image: Computer artwork of bacteria - credit: Science Photo Library)
Start the Week - Future Economies
On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks ahead to a future dominated by automation, cyber security, the 'sharing economy' and advanced life sciences with the innovation expert Alec Ross, computer scientist Steve Furber and the journalist Paul Mason who predicts such changes heralding a post-capitalist world. But cutting-edge advances in robotics and computers will have a huge but uneven impact on working lives: while previous industrial revolutions affected blue collar workers, in the future traditionally middle class jobs will be under threat. The journalist Hsiao-Hung Pai focuses on the most marginalised sector of the white working class - the British far right. Producer: Katy Hickman.
More or Less: Behind the Stats - WSMoreOrLess: When ?10,000 isn?t a good incentive
Could no prize have been a better way to motivate snooker player Ronnie O?Sullivan?
More or Less: Behind the Stats - WSMoreOrLess: Fishy numbers?
There were reports recently that there will more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050. The report comes from The Ellen MacArthur Foundation. But as we discover there's something fishy about these figures. And what are the chances that as a parent you share your birthday with two of your children.
Start the Week - Who Owns Culture?
On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe discusses who owns culture. The writer Tiffany Jenkins tells the story of how western museums have come to acquire treasures from around the world, but dismisses the idea of righting the wrongs of the past by returning artefacts. The Zimbabwean writer Tendai Huchu believes the west shouldn't underestimate the impact of colonisation on cultural identity. Ellen McAdam, Director of Birmingham Museums Trust, discusses the pressures regional museums are under. While the art critic Waldemar Januszczak eschews traditional views of Renaissance art, arguing that far from a classical Italian form, its roots are in the 'barbarian' lands of Flanders and Germany. Producer: Hannah Robins.
More or Less: Behind the Stats - Selfies, sugar daddies and dodgy surveys
Adverstising dressed up as research has inspired us this week. Firstly recent reports that said that young women aged between 16 and 25 spend five and a half hours taking selfies on average. It doersn't take much thinking to realise that thhere something really wrong with this number. We pick apart the survey that suggested women are spending all that time taking pictures of themselves.
The second piece of questionable research comes from reports that a quarter of a million UK students are getting money from 'sugar daddies' they met online. The story came from a sugar daddy website. They claim around 225,000 students have registered with them and have met (mostly) men for what they call "mutually beneficial arrangements". We explain our doubts over the figures.
There were reports recently that there will more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050. The report comes from The Ellen MacArthur Foundation. But, as we discover, there's something fishy about these figures.
Away from advertising, studies have shown that children born in the summer do not perform as well as children born earlier in the academic year. For this reason schools are being encouraged to be sympathetic to parents that want their summer-born children to start a year later. But what should parents do? Is this a good option? We speak to Claire Crawford, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University.
Gemma Tetlow from the Institute for Fiscal Studies explains how some areas of public spending having fallen to similar levels seen in 1948. She explains how spending has changed over time, and what might happen in the future.
And friend of the programme, Kevin McConway, explains some of the statistical words that non-statisticians do not understand.