Podcast Episodes

WS More or Less: Florence Nightingale – recognising the nurse statistician

How collecting data about the dead led the famous nurse to promote better sanitation.

Published on 6 years, 7 months ago

Eurovision and fact-checking Naomi Wolf

The stats behind making a successful song, plus misunderstanding Victorian court records.

Published on 6 years, 7 months ago

Making music out of Money

Data visualisation is all the rage, but where does that leave the old-fashioned values of audio? Some data visualisation experts are starting to explore the benefits of turning pictures into sound. F…

Published on 6 years, 7 months ago

Heart deaths, Organised crime and Gender data gaps

Are deaths from heart disease on the rise?

This week the British Heart Foundation had us all stopping mid-biscuit with the news that the number of under 75s dying from cardiovascular disease is going …

Published on 6 years, 7 months ago

Sex Every Seven Seconds

We revisit some classic topics from past years. We hear which statistics about sex you should trust, and which are less robust. Do men think about sex every seven seconds? Plus, did the arrival of ro…

Published on 6 years, 7 months ago

Sex, coal, missing people and mice

Sex Recession This week it was reported that British people are having less sex than they used to. Similar statistics are cropping up elsewhere in the world too. But one US stat seemed particularly s…

Published on 6 years, 7 months ago

Avengers - Should we reverse the snap?

*Spoiler-free for Avengers: Endgame* At the end of Avengers: Infinity War film the villain, Thanos, snapped his fingers in the magical infinity gauntlet and disintegrated half of all life across the …

Published on 6 years, 7 months ago

Nurses, flatmates and cats

Nurse suicide rates

There were some worrying figures in the news this week about the number of nurses in England and Wales who died by suicide over the last seven years. We try to work out what the nu…

Published on 6 years, 7 months ago

Bernie Sanders and the cost of having a baby

Bernie Sanders, a Senator in the United States and one of the front-runners in the campaign to be the Democratic presidential candidate, said on Twitter that it costs $12,000 to have a baby in his co…

Published on 6 years, 8 months ago

Hottest Easter, Insects, Scottish villages

Was it a surprise that Easter Monday was so hot?

A heatwave struck the UK over Easter – and in fact Easter Monday was declared the hottest on record in the UK. But listeners asked - is it that surpris…

Published on 6 years, 8 months ago