More or Less: Behind the Stats - Should the government target persnuffle?

Are childhood obesity rates going down? Do 35 million birds die every year in the UK after hitting windows? How much money could the Chancellor find by changing the debt rule? And Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter contemplates the probability of his own conception.

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news, and in life.

Presenter: Tim Harford Reporter: Charlotte MacDonald Producers: Bethan Ashmead Latham, Natasha Fernandes and Nathan Gower Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Katie Morrison Sound mix: Neil Churchill Editor: Richard Vadon

Cato Daily Podcast - Financing Opportunity: How Financial Markets Have Fueled American Prosperity for More than Two Centuries

America's financial system is inseparable from America's enormous growth, productivity, and prosperity. Many myths about financial markets persist. Norbert Michel and Jennifer Schulp detail the many critical benefits of robust financial markets in Financing Opportunity.

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The Indicator from Planet Money - The year the music festival died

Is 2024 the year the music festival died? Festivals are getting canceled left and right, from Northern California to Florida to Virginia.

Big name festivals that used to sell out in minutes struggled to sell tickets this year, too, like Burning Man and Coachella.

And it's not just America. By one count, over 60 music festivals were canceled in the UK this year alone. In Australia, so many festivals were canceled that one newspaper there recently asked, are the nation's music festivals extinct?

Today on the show, the music festival recession. What's behind it and is it temporary or a permanent cultural shift?

Related Episodes:
Live Music Industry Blues
The Economics of Music Festivals

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The Indicator from Planet Money - Why the name Taft-Hartley got airplay during the dockworkers’ brief strike

The U.S. economy is breathing a little easier after the International Longshoremen's Association reached a tentative agreement last week with the United States Maritime Alliance. The short-lived dockworkers strike reignited a debate over whether the president ought to intervene, invoking an old law on the books called the Taft-Hartley Act. On today's show, we explain what the Taft-Hartley Act is, why it was created and why it's still scorned by unions.

Related episodes:
What the data reveal about labor strikes (Apple / Spotify)
Why residuals are taking center stage in actors' strike (Apple / Spotify)
The never-ending strike (Apple / Spotify)
The strike that changed U.S. labor

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More or Less: Behind the Stats - Are 672 billion pounds of corn eaten in the US every year?

National Geographic magazine recently wrote that ?people in the United States eat more than 672 billion pounds of corn per year, which breaks down to more than 2,000 pounds per person annually?.

Is this really true?

Tim Harford investigates all the things that we don?t eat, that are counted in this number.

Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Bethan Ashmead Latham Production co-ordinator: Katie Morrison Sound mix: Giles Aspen Editor: Richard Vadon

The Indicator from Planet Money - Does unemployment whiplash mean recession?

It's Jobs Friday! It's that time of the month where we check in on the American worker.

In September, 254,000 jobs were added to the US economy and the unemployment rate ticked down very slightly to 4.1%. It's unexpectedly strong, and relieving news for workers after a pretty lackluster summer.

But ... given how the labor market cooled over summer, is the labor market still on thin ice? And if there were to be a plummet in jobs, could anything be done to speed up the recovery?

Today on the show: How it's easier to break the economy than to fix it, and whether we can escape from the patterns of the past.

Related Episodes:
The Sahm Rule With The Eponymous Economist
How much would you do this job for? And other indicators

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Cato Daily Podcast - These Candidates Have Terrible Views on Freedom of Speech

Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz seems to have a poor understanding of what the First Amendment protects. Donald Trump pledges to use the Department of Justice to punish Google over the presentation of negative news stories about him. Cato's Brent Skorup and Nico Perrino of FIRE detail the candidates' troubling views.

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The Indicator from Planet Money - Champagne. Neapolitan pizza. Now döner kebabs?

In Germany, döner kebabs are more than just an affordable, satisfying street food. They're a symbol of Turkey's culinary influence in the country. Today on the show, how an effort to give döner kebabs a protected status under a little-known EU regulation could dish out some real economic consequences, in Germany and beyond.

Special thanks to Sidney Gennies, Sönke Matschurek, and Maren Möhring.

Related episodes:
Cheese wars
Coca Cola vs. Coca Pola (Apple / Spotify)

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