Podcast Episodes

Breaking Climate Records

June saw a brutal heatwave shatter a number of all-time temperature records in Canada and the Northwest of the USA. But when can we attribute new records to man-made climate change, rather than natur…

Published on 4 years, 5 months ago

The Rise of Delta

The Delta Variant was first identified in India, fuelling a huge wave of cases and deaths. It is now spreading around the world, becoming the most dominant variant in many countries. This week we tak…

Published on 4 years, 5 months ago

The Freedom Day Gamble

On the day the Government plans to drop the remaining Covid restirictions, Tim Harford and the More or Less team try to work out how long cases will continue to rise and whether we can be sure the li…

Published on 4 years, 5 months ago

Are there 40 million Nigerians on Twitter?

In recent months, Twitter has rarely been out of the headlines in Nigeria. After it deleted a tweet by the country’s president, the Nigerian government responded by banning it altogether. In the medi…

Published on 4 years, 5 months ago

Is Ivermectin a Covid ‘wonder drug’?

To some on the internet, the cheap anti-parasitic drug Ivermectin is a potential wonder drug that could dramatically change the global fight against Covid-19. It has passionate proponents, from a sma…

Published on 4 years, 5 months ago

Scotland cases, flood risk and taxing the poor

The UK’s Covid cases are still rising and Scotland is being hit particularly hard - so are we speeding up our vaccination programme in response?

Will many of the UK’s coastal towns, not to mention cen…

Published on 4 years, 6 months ago

Maths and the Mayflower

This year sees the delayed 400th anniversary celebrations of the Mayflower voyage, an event seen as a crucial moment in the history of the United States. But how many people alive today can trace bac…

Published on 4 years, 6 months ago

Delta cases, blue tits and that one-in-two cancer claim

The Delta variant is behind the big increase in the number of new Covid 19 cases in the UK since April. We take a look at what impact vaccines have had on infections, hospitalisations and deaths.

Chri…

Published on 4 years, 6 months ago

The origins of Covid

To find out where a virus comes from, researchers compare it to other viruses to try to trace its origin. This leads to claims like SARS-CoV-2 is 91 or even 96% similar to other known viruses. But wh…

Published on 4 years, 6 months ago

Covid deaths, outdoor swimming and care homes

The official number of deaths attributed to Covid 19 around the world in the whole of 2020 is 1.88 million. The global toll this year surpassed this figure on 11th of June. We look at how things are …

Published on 4 years, 6 months ago