More or Less

So-called “pig butchering” scams take billions of dollars from people around the globe.

Presenter: Tim Harford

Will Conservative policies raise mortgages by £4800, as Labour claim?

Are primary school kids in England the best readers in the (western) world, as the Conservatives claim?

Are there more potholes in the UK than craters on the moon?

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news.

Presenter: Tim Harford

AWilliam Shakespeare might well rank as the most influential writer in the English language. But it seems he also had a knack for numbers.

Rob Eastaway, author of Much Ado about Numbers, tells Tim Harford about the simple maths that brings Shakespeare’s work to life.

Presenter: Tim Harford

What’s going on with the dodgy bar charts that political parties put on constituency campaign leaflets?

What’s the truth about tax promises?

Are 100,000 oil workers going to lose their jobs in Scotland?

Will class sizes increase in state schools if private schools increase their fees?

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news.

Presenter: Tim Harford

The claim that medical error is the third leading cause of death in the US has been zooming around the internet for years.

This would mean that only heart disease and cancer killed more people than the very people trying to treat these diseases.

But there are good reasons to be suspicious about the claim.

Professor Mary Dixon-Woods, director of The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute, or THIS Institute, at Cambridge University, explains what’s going on.

Presenter: Tim Harford

Were there any suspicious claims in the election debate between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer?

Do the claims in Reform UK’s policy documents on excess deaths and climate change make sense?

Can the Conservatives and Labour raise £6bn a year by cracking down on tax avoidance and evasion?

And do all the humans on earth weigh more than all of the ants?

Presenter: Tim Harford

India’s election has been running since 19 April. With results imminent on 4th June, More or Less talks with Chennai based data communicator Rukmini S. She founded Data for India, a new website designed to make socioeconomic data on India easier to find and understand. She talks us through the changing trends to help give a better picture of the type of country the winning party will govern.

Producers: Bethan Ashmead and Nathan Gower

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said that the UK economy is growing faster than Germany, France and the US, while Labour says the typical household in the UK is worse off by £5,883 since 2019. Are these claims fair? We give some needed context.

Net migration has fallen - we talk to someone who predicted it would - Dr Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford.

Is Taylor Swift about to add £1 bn to the British economy as some media outlets have claimed? The answer is ‘No’.

Why are our prisons full? We ask Cassia Rowland from the Institute for Government.

Presenter: Tim Harford

News stories earlier in the year appeared to suggest that time restricted eating – where you consume all your meals in an 8 hour time window – was associated with a 91% increase in the risk of death from cardiovascular disease.

But is this true? Tim Harford looks into the claim with the help of Cardiologist Dr Donald Lloyd-Jones, chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University in the US.

Presenter: Tim Harford

Is it going to take 685 years to clear NHS waiting lists in England?

Are 10 per cent of MPs under investigation for sexual misconduct?

How does gold effect the UKs export figures?

What does it mean to say that a woman has 120% chance of getting pregnant?

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news.

Presenter: Tim Harford