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Terence Tao is widely celebrated as the world’s greatest living mathematician.

He was doing university-level maths at the age of 9, won Gold at the International Mathematical Olympiad at 13 - still the youngest person to have done that - and got his PHD at age 20.

At 31 he won the Fields Medal - somewhat equivalent to a Nobel Prize for pure mathematics. He has now embarked on what some might consider the greatest challenge of his life - he’s written a book for a general audience, called Six Maths Essentials.

This provided the opportunity for Tim to interview Professor Tao.

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Last week, Ukraine launched drone attacks against three data centres owned by Russian tech giant Yandex. After these attacks Yandex announced that they were struggling to maintain their services.

This led to widespread claims that Russian disinformation campaign on social media had been affected, as users produced graphs that they argued showed a dramatic decline in suspicious online activity by bots.

The claim was even made by the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenksy, saying there was “less hate” online as a result of the strikes.

We speak to Shayan Sardarizadeh from BBC Verify and Amil Khan, the co-founder and CEO of Valent.

If you’ve seen a number, or a graph, that you think we should look at, email the team: [email protected]

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Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week:

(00:40) First Minister John Swinney has claimed that Scottish pensioners are set to lose £2000, with the money going to fund English social care. We gently suggest he might like to consider the existence of the Barnett formula, and explain that, when you do, the picture looks very different.

(06:08 ) The Liberal Democrats have dug out data on maternity injuries that they claim is ‘a shocking indictment of our NHS maternity services’. We explore flaws in their analysis and ask an expert what a better source of data tells us about maternal healthcare.

(13:20) Professor Terence Tao is good at maths. Extremely good at maths. We ask him how he feels about AI being better at maths than him.

(15:49) Great news! The UK is reducing its deficit at the fastest rate of any G7 nation. Except we’re not. Ah, shame. But we are planning to! Fantastic! But we’ve got reason to be sceptical of these plans. That’s a pity. Join the FT’s Chris Giles on the economic and emotional rollercoaster that is the UK’s fiscal trajectory.

(21:14) The series reaches its intellectual zenith as we ask what would happen if you ‘put the whole of the country into baked beans’. Expect back of the tin workings, cutting edge agri-science research and true public service journalism. Just don’t ask what the nadir was.

Guests:

Dr Spencer Thompson - Senior Knowledge Exchange Fellow at the Fraser of Allander Institute

Presenter: Tim Harford

A viral video circulating online claims the population of China is actually a billion people lower than the UN and China say.

A billion is big number, you'd think the Chinese would notice if that many were missing - and the claim is certainly false.

However, as the team dug into the stats, a strange story emerged - which suggests the official data on births and fertility may not be quite as reliable as you might think.

We spoke to demographer Professor Sabu Padmadas from the University of Southampton to find out more.

If you spot a story you'd like us to dig into contact us at [email protected]

Presenter: Tim Harford

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week:

(07:23) In a podcast feud nobody saw coming, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg and Tucker Carlson recently locked horns over whether Russia or UK has a larger economy. Who's right? Only one person can possibly adjudicate this one: Duncan Weldon.

(15:06) What effect did this year’s heatwaves have on excess deaths? We analyse the mortality data and explore how, despite thousands of deaths associated with the heat, 2026 is so far setting a record low mortality rate.

(22:35) And finally, in an ‘and finally’ story to end all ‘and finally’ stories, we finally ask how many times the world population can fit into Loch Ness. And Lake Baikal. And, finally, the Caspian Sea.

ARCHIVE: The Tucker Carlson Show, YouTube

How much could climate change cost the global economy?

That would be a very useful thing to know, and scientists have developed statistical models that they think can help give a reasonable answer.

In 2024, a scientific paper was published that apparently offered the most accurate projection yet of that potential cost - analysing the impact of temperature on economic activity at a far more granular level than had been attempted before. The paper quickly became highly influential. And then at the end of 2025, it was retracted.

Why? It’s all got something to do with Uzbekistan. Solomon Hsiang, Professor of Global Environmental Policy at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, explains how he and his team identified the problem.

Presenter: Tim Harford

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week:

(00:40) Does the UK account for nine out of ten of the poorest regions in Northern Europe? It’s a classic story of devil meets detail where the true meaning is the geographical inequality we met along the way.

(07:54) An article in The Economist has claimed that a single donkey charity in Devon received more in annual donations than all the major political parties combined. Is this true? And if so, should we be Led by Donkeys?

(11:29) Last week 781 migrants crossed the channel in small boats in one day. Social media is keen to work out how much this might cost the UK economy. We put the numbers in context and ask Madeleine Sumption from the Migration Observatory about the fiscal impact of asylum seekers.

(21:38) A claim has been buzzing round the internet that bees could hold the secret to long life, but our team is sceptical. We deliver the statistical exposé of Big Honey that the mainstream media’s been too afraid to cover.

Guests:

Liam Sides, Associate Director at Oxford Economics’ Cities and Regions team

Presenter: Tim Harford

US president Donald Trump has claimed in a speech to the UN that the US and Venezuela combined now have 60% of the world’s oil.

What measurement was the president using to get to this figure? Barrels of oil produced a day? Reserves of oil in the ground? It’s hard to make any of these stats add up.

To find out whether there was any truth in the claim, we spoke to energy expert Bill Farren-Price of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

If you spot any numbers you think we should take a look at, email us at [email protected]

Presenter: Tim Harford

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week:

(00:42) Frustrated economists have been left rending their garments and howling in the streets after the UK’s ‘productivity puzzle’ - a decade-long head-scratching, soul-searching conundrum - disappeared with a click of the fingers and a tweak of the methodology. Should the Office for National Statistics have acted sooner? We ask Financial Times economic guru Chris Giles.

(07:26) Can it really be true that by the 1960s, one in ten Irish children entered religious orders? Reporter Lizzy McNeill has the answer, and the history.

(13:51) Is the AI datacentre goldrush threatening to swamp our electricity grid? And what are the consequences for its carbon footprint? We delicately untangle the live wires of this hot potato and give the people what they want: nuanced #GridChat.

(20:38) This is the way the album ends - not with a banger, but with a whimper. Music Substacker Mitchell Stirling has used data to test the decades theory that albums tend to end with a quiet track. Come for the explanation of the physics of vinyl, stay for whatever music we end up being able to use.

Guests:

Presenter: Tim Harford

Are fruit and vegetables less nutritious than they used to be? And is declining soil quality to blame?

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