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PODCAST

More or Less

Tim Harford explains - and sometimes debunks - the numbers and statistics used in political debate, the news and everyday life

science mathematics

All Episodes

8:59

Does a single AI query use a bottle of water?

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2025/08/06

We’re living through boom-times for Artificial Intelligence, with more and more of us using AI assistants like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Grok and Copilot to do basic research and writing tasks. But what is the environmental impact of these technologies? Many listeners have got in touch with More or Less to ask us to investigate various claims about the energy and water use of AI.One claim in particular has caught your attention - the idea that the equivalent of a small bottle of drinking water is consumed

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8:58

Does a single AI query use a bottle of water?

More or Less ·

2025/07/26

We’re living through boom-times for Artificial Intelligence, with more and more of us using AI assistants like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Grok and Copilot to do basic research and writing tasks. But what is the environmental impact of these technologies? Many listeners have got in touch with More or Less to ask us to investigate various claims about the energy and water use of AI.One claim in particular has caught your attention - the idea that the equivalent of a small bottle of drinking water is consumed

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8:58

Are one in six children living through war?

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2025/07/19

In the midst of the television coverage of Soccer Aid, a celebrity soccer match organised by Unicef, the audience was told that “one in six children around the world are currently living through war”. Listener Isla got in touch with More or Less to ask whether the claim was correct, so we tracked down the source to an organisation called the Peace Research Institute Oslo.Research director Siri Aas Rustad tells us how they worked out a figure for the number of children living near to a “conflict” and

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8:58

Why Manchester United can afford to play badly

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2025/07/12

Manchester United are terrible, even according to their own manager. Last season saw their worst ever performance in Premier League history.But at the same time, according to Forbes magazine, they’re still the second most valuable football club in the world. How is that possible?Tim talks to Kieran Maguire, a football finance expert and the author of The Price of Football, to find out the secret of Manchester United’s financial success. Presenter: Tim HarfordProducer: Nicholas Barrett Series

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26:40

Can drinking one less bottle of coke a day halve...

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2025/07/09

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news and in life. This week:Is the secret to halving obesity rates really just a matter of cutting back on one fizzy drink a day?How many new babies in the City of London have a foreign-born parent? And since fewer than one baby a week is actually born in the City of London, how much should we care?Electricity in the UK is more expensive than almost anywhere else. Why? And is it anything to do with wind turbines?And we help out rival Radio 4

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8:58

The economics of war: Vikings, Conquistadors and Vietnam

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2025/07/05

How does economics help us understand conflicts through history? That’s the question that economist and journalist Duncan Weldon tries to answer in his new book, Blood and Treasure. Tim talks to Duncan about the economic perspective on Viking raiders, Spanish conquest and the Vietnam war.Presenter: Tim HarfordProducer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound mix: Neil Churchill Editor: Richard Vadon

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28:17

Is the UK seeing a Christian revival?

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2025/07/02

Tim Harford looks at some of the numbers in the news and in life. This week:Is church-going making a comeback in the UK?Is it true that every day, 1000 people begin claiming personal independence payments, or PIP?When the government talks about how it “returns” illegal immigrants, what does it mean?Can a new telescope really see golf balls on the moon?If you’ve seen a number you think looks suspicious, email the More or Less team: moreorless@bbc.co.ukMore or Less is produced in partnership with the

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8:59

Has Russia suffered a million casualties in the...

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2025/06/28

It’s been over three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the human toll is growing on both sides.Recently, politicians and journalists have declared a grim milestone, one million Russian casualties.But is this number accurate? Tim talks to Seth Jones, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Olga Ivshina, from the BBC Russian service, to investigate this statistic.If you’ve seen a number in the news you think we should take a look at, email the More or Less

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28:48

Why is data on grooming gangs so bad?

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2025/06/25

Tim Harford looks at some of the numbers in the news and in life. In this episode:Why is the data on the ethnicity of grooming gangs of such poor quality?Iran has apparently enriched uranium to 60%, but what does that number mean?Adam Curtis’s latest series, Shifty, includes claims about Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power. We ask Sir John Curtice, polling king of election night, if they’re accurate.And we ask an economist to explain why being pillaged by a Viking might be more lucrative than you’d

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8:58

How to spot a suspicious statistic

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2025/06/21

Untruths sneak into our lives in all kinds of ways. Sometimes they’re outright lies. Blatant misinformation. But in this episode, we’re going to talk about something else - those sneaky numbers and claims that bounce around our society and that aren’t exactly false, but are leading you down the wrong path. That’s the subject of a book called May Contain Lies by Alex Edmans, a professor of finance at London Business School. Tim talks to Alex about the statistical claims that might not be wrong, but

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28:49

Are 4% of young women in the UK on OnlyFans?

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2025/06/18

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news, and in life. This week:We debunk a false claim that the hotel bill for immigrants is the size of the tax bill for Manchester.An article in the Spectator claimed that 4% of women aged between 18 and 34 in the UK are OnlyFans creators. We track down the source and discover that it is not very good.Do people in Scotland use much more water than people in Yorkshire? If so, why?And we examine a popular claim that today’s working mothers spend more

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9:55

Could you be hit by a falling satellite?

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2025/06/14

The number of satellites orbiting our planet has been rapidly increasing in recent years. But what are the risks when they start falling back down to earth?The European Space agency estimate that by 2030 there will be 100,000 satellites in orbit. We look at whether that estimate is realistic and what it means for those of us living on the ground below, with the help of Jonathan McDowell and Fionagh Thomson. Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Lizzy McNeill Series Producer: Tom Colls Production

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28:28

How do you make something 10-times more lethal?

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2025/06/11

What does the government mean when it commits to developing a “10-times more lethal” army? Why was the much-missed Sycamore Gap tree said to be worth a strikingly exact £622,191? Are there really twice as many people teaching Yoga as there are in the fishing industry? Is the number of workers per pensioner really falling from 4 to 3 to 2? And what did Donald Trump mean when he said the price of eggs had fallen by 400%?Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. If you want us to look

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8:58

Is the world’s population being miscounted?

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2025/06/07

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

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28:48

Does the average American have fewer than three friends?

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2025/06/04

Tim Harford is here to sprinkle a refreshing shower of statistical insight over the parched lawns of misinformation.This week, we try to unpick the confusion over a claim made by London Mayor Sadiq Khan about the contribution skilled immigrants make to the nation?s finances.Mark Zuckerberg says that the average American has fewer than 3 friends. Is he right?Two doctors claim that up to 90% of Alzheimer?s disease can be prevented. Are they wrong?And Tim interviews an American, Catholic, philosopher

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9:14

Factchecking the Trump administration’s Autism claims

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2025/05/31

Picking Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a known vaccine sceptic, as the Secretary for Public Health might not be the most ‘out there’ thing the Trump administration has done but it certainly raised some eyebrows. Since his appointment Kennedy has been on a mission to ‘Make America Healthy again’ and has set his sights on finding ‘the cure’ for Autism. Autism Spectrum Disorder is a neurological and developmental disorder that can affect how someone communicates, socialises, learns and behaves. In the

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8:58

Is the UN underestimating the global fall in fertility?

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2025/05/24

Every two years, the UN release their predictions for the future population of humanity – currently expected to peak in the 2080s at around 10.3 billion people.One of the things they use to work this out is the fertility rate, the number of children the average woman is expected to have in her lifetime. When this number falls below 2, the overall population eventually falls.In this episode of More or Less, we look at the fertility estimates for one country – Argentina. The graph of the real and

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8:59

How dead is the internet?

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2025/05/17

In the early 2020s, a conspiracy theory started circulating online known as the “dead internet theory”. This suggested that, instead of a vibrant digital super-community where people freely share things like cat videos and conspiracy theories, the internet was instead basically dead - an AI dystopia controlled by the deep state, where almost everything you see and interact with is generated by computers.The theory that the internet is 100% dead can be easily disproven, but the theory does hint

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8:58

Warren Buffett’s brilliant bets

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2025/05/10

Warren Buffett has announced he is stepping down as CEO of his company, Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett is one of the richest people in the world, and is widely held up as the greatest investor who ever lived. He’s also been remarkably critical of other masters of the financial universe. Tim Harford talks to Financial Times journalist Robin Wigglesworth, author of the book Trillions, about Buffett’s money making method, and how he used a massive bet to make a point about hedge funds. Presenter: Tim

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15:08

Bonus episode: The Autism Curve

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2025/05/05

An interruption to your regular podcast feed: the first episode of a new BBC Radio 4 series investigating the steep rise in autism diagnoses. The Autism Curve looks into the data that has prompted arguments - and conspiracy theories - about what’s behind the rapid rise. It goes on to explore changes in what autism is, who gets to define it, and whose experience counts.In this first episode, Ginny Russell discusses her 20-year study that showed an astonishing eightfold rise in new autism diagnoses in

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