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More or Less: Behind the Stats

Sex, coal, missing people and mice

More or Less: Behind the Stats

BBC

Business, Mathematics, Science, News Commentary, News

4.63.5K Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2019

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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 stark: the number of young men having no sex at all in the past year has tripled in a decade. But is it true? No coal power for a week There were many reports in the newspapers this week saying the UK has set a new record for the number of consecutive days generating energy without burning any coal. So where is our electricity coming from? Missing people Some listeners got in touch to say they were surprised to hear that a person is reported missing in the UK every 90 seconds. Dr Karen Shalev Greene of the Centre for the Study of Missing Persons joins us to explore the numbers. In Mice One scientist is correcting headlines on Twitter by adding one key two-word caveat – the fact that the research cited has only been carried out "in mice". We ask him why he’s doing it.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome to more or less. We are weekly guide to the numbers behind sex, drugs and rock and roll.

0:06.2

Although this week we're mostly focusing on the sex.

0:09.8

Never fear though, we'll also have time to look at the UK electricity industries first week without coal since the time of Queen Victoria,

0:17.9

an alarming claim that someone goes missing every 90 seconds,

0:22.0

and have we discovered a cure for cancer, dementia, depression, heart disease and halitosis,

0:27.5

or have we only discovered it in mice?

0:30.7

But first, this week I bring you sad tidings, sex is dead.

0:36.2

Let's all take some time to look back on its glory days.

0:47.5

It began, according to the poet Philip Larkin, in 1963,

0:51.7

between the end of the Chattilly Band and the Beatles' first LP.

0:55.2

I like to think it peaked around 20 years ago, say when I was a young roister, deister,

1:00.6

tearing up the British economic scene, heady days.

1:03.8

And now it's dead, or at least dying.

1:07.7

Newsbeat.

1:09.7

Stan, I'd like to ask you, how many times have you heard sex in the last month?

1:14.1

Oh god, that's depressing. None.

1:17.5

Do you know what, you're not alone.

1:18.6

This is Newsbeat's Catherine Burns, here to tell you that Stan is not the only one not getting any.

1:23.9

Researchers do this study every 10 years or so.

1:27.4

The last time they asked about 23% of women and 26% of men said they had no sex at all in the last month.

1:35.8

This time around, that's gone up to 29% for both.

1:39.7

Ketchy says...

...

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