Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.

Thank you for downloading this edition of More or Less from BBC Radio 4.

Here's Tim Harford.

Hello and welcome to more or less the brandy-fueled flame on top of your statistical Christmas pudding this week.

So this is 4-4-0.

The strange mathematical art of juggling,

the real average age of first-time buyers,

and could chocolate make you more intelligent.

But first, the massacre of 20 children and six women at a school in the United States

has reopened the debate on gun ownership in the US.

Here's President Barack Obama speaking

at a vigil in Newtown, Connecticut a few days after the killings.

Are we really prepared to say that we're powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard,

we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom.

The debate hasn't just been taking place in the US, but all around the world and across

social media.

A popular message that's been posted and

...