Category: Series

Tim Harford and the team return for a new series of the number crunching show. With the huge pressures facing the NHS we ask how many people may be dying because of treatment delays in A&E. We hear what the latest census tells us about changing religious identity in Northern Ireland. We look at misleading claims about covid vaccines after the collapse of American football player Damar Hamlin. And we hear how More or Less has wielded its influence over how we all describe very large numbers.

Presenter: Tim Harford Series producer: Jon Bithrey Reporters: Nathan Gower, Louise Hidalgo, Charlotte McDonald Production Coordinator: Brenda Brown Sound Engineer: James Beard

The U.S. shouldn't stumble its way into a war with Russia, but there are plans under consideration that put the U.S. at greater risk of a direct confrontation. Eric Gomez details why sending heavier firepower to Ukraine risks greater American entanglement.

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Courts have given public sector employees the ability to walk away from their unions, so unions have had to get creative in retaining those members. Ken Girardin of the Empire Center discusses the state of unions today.

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The housing crunch is showing signs of breaking, at least when it comes to states where the availability of affordable housing has been most visible. Nolan Gray, author of Arbitrary Lines, discusses what changed in 2022.

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When the pandemic took hold, the Chinese government imposed a zero-Covid policy that aimed to contain the virus through mass-testing and strict lockdowns.

But early in December, amidst widespread public protests and the spread of the omicron variant to more than 200 cities, those draconian, highly restrictive measures were lifted almost entirely.

For the first time in just under two years, the majority of the country?s near one-and-a-half billion citizens were free to meet, mix and mingle where they pleased, triggering what experts believe is a gargantuan wave of covid infections and related deaths. Some analysts say death rates could be as high as15,000 per day. But the Chinese authorities are reporting five or fewer deaths a day. The numbers don't stack up so More or Less's Paul Connolly speaks to some of the world's leading experts and epidemiologists to work out if China's data on covid deaths can be trusted - and, if not, what the real death toll could be.

Thomas A. Berry details two cases that may provide an opportunity for the Supreme Court to bolster its reputation as protectors of free speech and weaken the troubling court-invented doctrine of qualified immunity.

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