We live in a world where data is everywhere ? informing if not governing our lives. But this wealth of data didn?t just turn up overnight. Tim Harford talks to academics Chris Wiggins and Matthew Jones, whose new book How Data Happened aims to explain how the world we know today has been shaped by not just technological developments but battles around how emerging sources of data should be utilised.
More or Less: Behind the Stats - Food prices, net migration and beef about beef
Does Britain really have the most affordable food in Europe? That's a recent claim of the President of the National Farmers' Union. We ask if it's true and look in detail at what is driving rising food prices in the UK. We also try and make sense of the latest net migration figures, ask if dating apps are making Gen Z more single and explain why a correction to a correction on Radio 4's Farming Today wasn't quite right.
Start the Week - Hay Festival – Dickens in the 21st century
In front of an audience at the Hay Festival Tom Sutcliffe asks what Dickens would say about the world today. The prize-winning Barbara Kingsolver discusses her retelling of David Copperfield, in which her eponymous hero, Demon Copperfield, must struggle to survive amid rural poverty and America’s opioid crisis.
Michael Rosen has imagined his own modern Oliver Twist (An Unexpected Twist) and A Christmas Carol (Bah! Humbug!) and reflects on the unspoken grief and trauma of recent years, retold in his memoir, Getting Better.
And while Natalie Haynes’s favourite Dickens adaptation is The Muppet Christmas Carol, she explores how the telling and retelling of stories and ancient myths shines a light on our contemporary world. Her latest work, Stone Blind, looks again at the tragedy of Medusa.
Producer: Katy Hickman
More or Less: Behind the Stats - Are young people more single than ever before?
What?s the definition of being single ? and how easy is it to measure? There?s a perception that young people today are more single ? in a relationship sense - than ever, and dating apps are to blame. But how true is that? Ellie House investigates, with the help of Marina Adshade of the Vancouver School of Economics. Presenter: Ellie House Producers: Ellie House, Jon Bithrey Editor: Richard Vadon Sound Engineer: Rod Farquhar Production Co-ordinator: Brenda Brown
More or Less: Behind the Stats - NHS waiting lists, Voter ID and measuring divorce
The government has trumpeted a big fall in those waiting over 18 months for hospital treatment in England. But total numbers on waiting lists have hit a new high. Also we look at how much impact the introduction of Voter ID had on turnout in May's English local elections. We ask whether Portugal really has a divorce rate of 94%. And we remember mathematician Dr Vicky Neale of Oxford University, who has died at the age of 39. The government has trumpeted a big fall in those waiting over 18 months for hospital treatment in England. But total numbers on waiting lists have hit a new high. Also we look at how much impact the introduction of Voter ID had on turnout in May's English local elections. We ask whether Portugal really has a divorce rate of 94%. And we remember mathematician Dr Vicky Neale of Oxford University, who has died at the age of 39.
Presenter: Tim Harford Series Producer: Jon Bithrey Reporters: Josephine Casserly, Octavia Woodward, Ellie House Sound Engineer: James Beard Production Co-ordinator: Brenda Brown
Start the Week - Birds and moths
The exhibition Animals: Art, Science and Sound at the British Library (until 28 August 2023) reveals how animals have been documented across the world through history. Cheryl Tipp, Curator of Wildlife and Environmental Sound, explores how people have tried to capture bird song – from using musical notation in the 17th century to the first commercial recording three centuries later, and the recording of the last Kauaʻi ʻōʻō songbird in Haiwaii.
Swifts are summer migrants, flying thousands of miles, only pausing to breed in Europe. Their screeching cries and darting flight might be the sight and sound of summer evenings, and yet we know relatively little about their lives. In One Midsummer’s Day the naturalist Mark Cocker goes in search of the elusive swift, and finds a whole natural world of connections.
The ecologist Tim Blackburn also discovers the hidden rules and interconnectedness of nature in his study of moths. His book, The Jewel Box, celebrates the diversity he finds within the moth trap on the roof of his flat. But also exposes a glimpse of a larger landscape, beyond the world of lepidoptera.
Producer: Katy Hickman
More or Less: Behind the Stats - Detecting Bad Science with Data
For more than a decade there?ve been longstanding concerns about the credibility and reliability of science research. This ?bad science? has often stemmed from poor data practice or worse. But statistics can also help us identify and understand some of what?s going wrong, whether that?s selective data-slicing or outright fabrication.
Tim Harford talks to writer and broadcaster Michael Blastland about his new BBC radio documentary ?The Truth Police?, which hears from the outsiders who are calling out fraud, malpractice and incompetence in science.
Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Nathan Gower Editor: Richard Vadon Programme Coordinator: Brenda Brown Sound Engineer: James Beard
Start the Week - Virtuous bankers?
The economic historian and former trader Anne Murphy looks back at the Bank of England in the 18th century. In Virtuous Bankers she shows how a private institution became ‘a great engine of state’ and central to Britain’s economic and geopolitical power. Anne Murphy tells Adam Rutherford that both its inner workings and outer structure had to command the respect of the general public.
Interest was a fact of life long before the involvement of central banks and goes back as far as ancient Mesopotamia. In Price of Time the financial historian and Reuters’ commentator Edward Chancellor explores its long history and warns of the financial instability caused by years of low interest rates. Far from benefitting the majority of individuals, the ultra-low rates following the banking crash in 2008 have proved a boon for bankers, financiers and corporate stakeholders.
After the crash, the businessman David Fishwick was concerned that few people or small businesses in his home town of Burnley could get access to credit. His challenge to the traditional high street banks was to set up his own banking enterprise which became Burnley Savings and Loans – a story told in a Channel 4 series and the film Bank of Dave (on Netflix). He argues for a return to banking as a means to serve and grow the local economy.
Producer: Katy Hickman
More or Less: Behind the Stats - Do 94% of marriages in Portugal really end in divorce?
Portugal has a divorce rate of 94% and India just 1%, according to a social media post about divorce in 33 countries that has gone viral. But how are these figures calculated and what do they really tell us about the quality and endurance of marriage? We investigate with guests Marina Adshade, assistant professor at the Vancouver School of Economics and Dr Cheng-Tong Lir Wang of the Institute for the Future in San Francisco.
Presenter: Ben Carter Producers: Octavia Woodward and Jon Bithrey Editor: Richard Vadon Production Co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound Engineer: Neil Churchill
Start the Week - Monster artist/monstrous art?
What to do with the art of monstrous men? That’s the question Claire Dederer grapples with in Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma. She wonders whether she can or should continue to love the work of Roman Polanski and Michael Jackson, Hemingway and Picasso? And if it’s possible to divorce the art from the artist.
How do we now view the glorious, technicolour paintings of Paul Gauguin’s works from Tahiti? The writer Devika Ponnambalam has imagined the life of one of his muses Teha’amana in her latest novel, I Am Not Your Eve. Gauguin was 43 when he first arrived on the island in 1891 and made numerous teenage girls his ‘unofficial wives’.
The science writer Michael Bond is interested in the psychology behind fandom. In his book Fans he looks at the pleasure of tribalism and sense of belonging, but also what happens when one’s hero falls short, and the cognitive dissonance needed to continue to stay true to a monstrous genius.
Producer: Katy Hickman