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.

Thanks for downloading the more or less podcast from BBC Radio 4.

Here's Tim Harford.

Hello and welcome to the last in this series of more or less, the program which deals in numbers.

This week we'll be interviewing Alex Allen, the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, about the use of statistics in fighting

terrorism and outwitting foreign spies.

We'll also be asking whether hosting the Olympics is a good deal for Britain, and we'll

work out the chances of this happening.

introduced to Scrabble when I was 19 at a social event I drew to go first.

Staring at my seven blind-picked letters I realized they could make a whole word and put down

janitor to general consternation.

But first let's talk about government waste.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could have less of it? Here's the community about government

less of it.

Here's the communities and local government minister Bob Neal

speaking in the House of Commons on Monday.

The estimates are that savings on 20% could be made on 50 billion pounds that local authorities spend with at third parties.

...