Straws, women on boards, plus animals born each day
More or Less: Behind the Stats
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 27 April 2018
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Does the UK throw away 8.5 billion straws a year? (0’33’’)
Women on FTSE 100 boards (4’35”) We explore whether the proportion of female directors has changed over time, and what it tells us about women in business.
Using personal data for the public good (11’28”) Hetan Shah, the Executive Director of the Royal Statistical Society, talks about storing people’s data.
How many animals are born every day? (15’39”)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
| 0:14.3 | experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC |
| 0:20.4 | makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | Hello and welcome to a new series of more or less, your weekly guide to the numbers that describe or mis-describe the world around us. |
| 0:44.2 | This week, how many penguins hatch every day and what, if anything, does that teach us |
| 0:49.5 | about the animal population more broadly? |
| 0:52.3 | How can scientists use data for the common good without invading |
| 0:56.2 | our privacy in that creepy way that seems to be the way of things these days? And are women |
| 1:01.0 | finally cracking the glass ceiling. |
| 1:03.2 | The plan was to try and double the percentage of women on our top 100 boards within four years. |
| 1:09.7 | But before any of that, Beth Segar Fenton is here in the studio to help me go through our mail bag. |
| 1:15.0 | Hello Beth. |
| 1:16.0 | Hi Tim. What have you found in the more or less inbox? |
| 1:18.0 | Well, I've been clutching at straws. |
| 1:20.0 | 8.5 billion straws. |
| 1:22.0 | 8.5 billion straws. |
| 1:22.8 | 8.5 billion? |
| 1:23.8 | Yeah, that's right. The government is considering banning plastic straws |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.