How do you make something 10-times more lethal?
More or Less: Behind the Stats
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 11 June 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What does the government mean when it commits to developing a “10-times more lethal” army?
Why was the much-missed Sycamore Gap tree said to be worth a strikingly exact £622,191?
Are there really twice as many people teaching Yoga as there are in the fishing industry?
Is the number of workers per pensioner really falling from 4 to 3 to 2? And what did Donald Trump mean when he said the price of eggs had fallen by 400%?
Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. If you want us to look at a number you think looks a bit suspicious, email the team - [email protected]
Please note an earlier edition of the programme incorrectly stated that the new EU-UK fishing agreement would last 4 years. The agreement length is 12 years.
More or Less is produced in partnership with the Open University.
Presenter: Tim Harford Reporter: Lizzy McNeill Producer: Nicholas Barrett Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound mix: Neil Churchill Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Why do some big successful brands go bust? |
| 0:05.0 | Toast is back for a new series, taking a look at the decisions that often left investors burnt. |
| 0:11.0 | I'm Sean Farrington, a BBC business journalist. I'll be hearing about the hype. |
| 0:15.0 | They're going to do the deal that makes them the most money at that point of time. |
| 0:19.0 | And I'm picking what went wrong, talking to owners and employees to ask, what can we learn? |
| 0:25.4 | It was being undercut by similar rivals. It just couldn't survive. |
| 0:30.3 | Toast. Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:35.2 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. Hello and welcome to more or less, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:38.8 | Hello and welcome to more or less, your weekly guide to some increasingly idiosyncratic numbers. |
| 0:45.2 | Thank you to everyone who emailed more or less at BBC.co.uk, because this particular programme is nothing but answers to the questions you sent in, among them. What does the government |
| 0:55.9 | mean when it commits to developing a ten times more lethal army? Why was the much-missed Sycamore |
| 1:03.2 | Gap Tree, said to be worth a strikingly exact £622,191? Are there really twice as many people teaching yoga as there are in the fishing industry? |
| 1:15.2 | And is the number of workers per pensioner really falling from four to three to two? |
| 1:22.8 | Actually, there is one question we took the liberty of asking on your behalf. |
| 1:26.1 | When Donald Trump claimed |
| 1:28.3 | the price of eggs had fallen by 400%, was he getting his numbers scrambled? |
| 1:36.1 | Loyal listener Doug Kelly got in touch shortly after the launch of the UK's Strategic Defence Review |
| 1:42.0 | to ask about the army's new target. |
| 1:45.2 | The government's defence strategy commits it to developing a 10 times more lethal army. |
| 1:51.4 | Do we know how the relative lethality of an army is measured? |
| 1:55.6 | Good question, Doug. We wouldn't want the truth to be the first fatality in a build-up of |
| 2:00.4 | aggressive statistical rhetoric. |
... |
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