How close is Greenland to the United States?
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 21 January 2026
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week:
How far away is Greenland from the United States? We check a number From Our Own Correspondent.
Does converting our entire energy system to be carbon neutral come with a £7.6 trillion price tag?
Is the inevitable rise of house prices in the UK not so inevitable after all?
Can the great mathematicians of history answer the question of the hour: how to play The Traitors?
If you’ve seen a number in the news you want the team on More or Less to have a look at, email moreorless@bbc.co.uk
Contributors: Jay Foreman, one half of YouTube duo the Map Men Mike Thompson, chief economist of the National Energy System Operator David Turver, author of The Cost of Net Zero, a report from the Institute of Economic Affairs Neal Hudson, housing market analyst and founder housing research website BuiltPlace Dr Kat Phillips, mathematician and Innovation research associate at the University of Warwick, Traitors aficionado
Credits: Presenter: Tim Harford Reporter: Tom Colls Producers: Nathan Gower and Lizzy McNeill Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound mix: James Beard Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. |
| 0:05.7 | Hello, you're about to listen to a BBC podcast, and I'm Ed Gamble, host of another BBC podcast, The Traitors Uncloaked. |
| 0:12.7 | But my show is available only on BBC Sounds, just like Ellis and John's Saturday bonus episodes, |
| 0:18.2 | The Pop Top Ten podcast with Scott Mills and Rylan, and comedy specials |
| 0:22.2 | from the likes of Harriet Kemsley, Susie Ruffle and Rommashranganathan. |
| 0:26.0 | However, and maybe I'm biased, it's really all about the traitors uncoaked. |
| 0:30.3 | So for a whole bunch of exclusive scoops and podcasts, listen only on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:35.5 | Hello and welcome to more or less. |
| 0:43.1 | We're your faithful guide to the numbers behind the environment, the economy, the geopolitics of the Arctic Circle, and most importantly, the mathematics of game shows. |
| 0:47.7 | I'm Tim Harford. |
| 0:49.3 | This week we try to put a price tag on net zero, or more precisely, we rip off a price tag we are sure |
| 0:56.1 | has been misapplied. We ask whether house prices are defying the laws of physics. And we |
| 1:02.7 | unleash some of the great mathematicians of history on the question of the hour. How to play The Traitors. |
| 1:11.8 | But first, the news has been dominated by a single story. It'd have to be living under a rock in the |
| 1:18.4 | remote Arctic not to have heard. Wait, actually, that doesn't work. In fact, you're even more |
| 1:23.3 | likely to have heard if you live in the remote Arctic because this story is, of course, |
| 1:27.6 | about Greenland and the designs upon it harboured by the US President Donald Trump. |
| 1:34.2 | One piece of coverage came on Radio 4s from our own correspondent, |
| 1:38.9 | where Europe editor Kachar Adler filed this report from Greenland's capital Nook. |
| 1:44.5 | As many Greenlanders have pointed out to me, trading with Denmark over 2,500 miles away, |
| 1:50.5 | makes far less business sense than working with the US, 300 miles away. |
| 1:55.4 | Loyal listeners got in touch to ask if this was right. So is it? Well, for reliable map-based fact-checking, |
... |
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