Category: Series

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More or Less: Behind the Stats - Is the world’s population being miscounted?

Exactly how many people live on our planet is one of those difficult-to-answer questions. The UN estimates is 8.2 billion, but that’s largely based on census data, which is certainly not a perfect measure.

So when a recent study from Finland found that rural populations around the world had been underestimated by 50 to over 80%, the media got quite excited. This would be a big error - a 50% underestimate would mean the actual number of people in an area is double the number they thought there were.

One newspaper in Spain - El Mundo - did its own sums and said this meant there were potentially 2 billion more people in the world than we currently think there are.

But is it what the researchers in Finland actually meant?

“Absolutely not,” says Josias Lang-Ritter, a researcher from University in Finland and a co-author of the study.

Tim Harford speaks to Josias to figure out the right way of understanding the study.

Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Caroline Bayley Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound mix: Nigel Appleton Editor: Richard Vadon

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The Indicator from Planet Money - Why U.S. workers keep getting more productive

For the last couple of years, U.S. labor productivity has been on the rise. And economists don't know exactly why. So today on the show, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago plays economic detective and helps us investigate some different theories about why U.S. workers seem to be more productive than in prior decades.

Related episodes:
What keeps a Fed president up at night (Apple / Spotify)
Productivity and workforce whiplash (Apple / Spotify)

For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Cato Daily Podcast - Best of Cato Daily Podcast: Detailing The Libertarian Mind

Caleb O. Brown hosted the Cato Daily Podcast for nearly 18 years, producing well over 4000 episodes. He has gone on to head Kentucky’s Bluegrass Institute. This is one among the best episodes produced in his tenure, selected by the host and listeners.


Cato Executive Vice President David Boaz answers a few questions about and related to his new book, The Libertarian Mind.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Cato Daily Podcast - Best of Cato Daily Podcast: One Local Impediment to Free-Range Kids

Caleb O. Brown hosted the Cato Daily Podcast for nearly 18 years, producing well over 4000 episodes. He has gone on to head Kentucky’s Bluegrass Institute. This is one among the best episodes produced in his tenure, selected by the host and listeners.


Parents might embrace their children’s independence, but how much support do those parents have in the form of local infrastructure? Andrea Keith of Let Grow explains.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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The Indicator from Planet Money - Gilded Age 2.0?

To hear President Trump tell it, the late 1800s, i.e. the Gilded Age, was a period of unparalleled wealth and prosperity in the U.S. But this era was also marked by corruption and wealth inequality. Sound familiar? On today's show, is history repeating itself?

Related episodes:
Trump's tariff role model (Apple / Spotify)
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (Apple / Spotify)

For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Curious City - ‘Have you checked on your ancestors?’ This woman brings dignity to deceased Black Chicagoans

Tammy Gibson wants you to visit the gravesites of your deceased relatives. “Have you checked on your ancestors?” said Gibson, the founder of Sankofa TravelHer, an organization dedicated to honoring the legacy of African-Americans who were often denied dignity in death. As we learned last episode, Chicago’s long history of segregation affected both the living and the dead, as many area cemeteries once offered burial space “for the exclusive use of the Caucasian race.” So where did African-Americans bury their loved ones in the 19th and early 20th centuries? “From my research, African-Americans could not get buried in Chicago,” Gibson told Curious City. Instead, she said many African-Americans buried their dead in the South Suburbs, at cemeteries like Mount Glenwood in Glenwood, Ill., and later Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Ill. In this episode, Gibson tells us about the people who first started these cemeteries and the notable people buried there. She talks about the work she does to continue honoring the deceased, including offering a reinterment ceremony years after the 2009 grave-stacking scandal at Burr Oak Cemetery. Gibson also works to get headstones for notable Chicagoans who do not have them. This includes Eugene Williams, whose death sparked the 1919 Chicago Race Riot, and journalist Ethel Payne from Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, who was known as the First Lady of the Black Press.