Nowadays if you are an academic and who needs some participants for a study you go online, but over the summer academic studies were inundated with participants who all happened to be teenage girls ... we explore how one TikTok can tip the balance of data gathering.

Presenter: Tim Harford

(Image: TikTok logo is displayed on a smartphone screen/Getty/NurPhoto/contributor)

A French minister told people to eat fewer croissants at this year’s COP26 summit, after the menu said the carbon cost of the pastry was higher than that of a bacon roll, even if it was made without butter. Tim Harford investigates whether this claim could be true, and how the effect of food on climate change can be measured.

(Image: Continental breakfast with coffee and croissants: Getty/Cris Cantón)

When Professor Martin Schweinsberg found that he was consistently reaching different conclusions to his peers, even with the same data, he wondered if he was incompetent. So he set up an experiment.

Features an excerpt from TED Talks

(Image: Getty/erhui1979)

Who is counting, why are they counting, and what are they are counting?

(Image: Betta Blue Red Veiltail/Getty Images/zygotehasnobrain)

Netflix has announced that South Korean survival drama Squid Game is its most popular series ever.

Do immigrants drive down wages, do minimum wage increases reduce job opportunities, and do people who did well in school earn more money?

(Image: Mariel boat lift, which brought over 100,000 Cubans into the United States: Photo by Tim Chapman/Miami Herald)

A chat with More or Less's founding producer and presenter plus the first episode in full.

A look back at our origins, plus the usual mix of numerical nous and statistical savvy.

It’s two decades since More or Less first beamed arithmetic into the unsuspecting ears of Radio 4 listeners. We revisit the show’s genesis with the original presenter and producer.

Why are there two different figures about our vaccination rate doing the rounds and how does the UK now compare internationally?

Plus listener questions on how the colour of your front door affects your house price, TVs on standby mode, and more. And we try to respond to a meteor storm of complaints about our earlier item asserting that Star Trek’s Mr Spock is in fact highly illogical.

Tim Harford talks to Planet Money’s Stacey Vanek Smith about the gender pay gap in the US and the UK – and how Renaissance writer, Machiavelli might be an unlikely source of inspiration for women in the workplace.

Is our electricity extra expensive and our insulation inadequate? And a tale of tumbling trees.

Internet infographics suggest we’re paying way more for our energy than countries in the EU. Are they being interpreted correctly? And what part, if any, has Brexit had to play?

Insulation Britain activists have been gluing themselves to motorway slip-roads to raise awareness about poor home insulation. Their website says we have the least energy efficient homes in Europe. What’s the evidence?

Plus, what do the numbers tell us about migrants trying to cross the Channel in small boats? Are stereotypes about different generations backed up by the data? And is it or is it not true that the UK has lots of trees?