WS More or Less: Is my Baby a Giant?
More or Less: Behind the Stats
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 12 May 2017
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
All over the world mothers are given numbers as their baby grows. The numbers are from ‘growth charts’ showing how a baby is developing in comparison to others. Seven month old Baby Arlo has particularly big numbers, so much so that his parents are worried he’s one of the biggest babies in America. But where do these numbers come from? Is it an average? Why do they measure a baby’s head? Reporter Jordan Dunbar sets out to find out how we get these baby numbers and just how big Baby Arlo is.
Presenter: Tim Harford and Jordan Dunbar Producer: Charlotte McDonald and Jordan Dunbar
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 | This is the shorter edition of More or Less, first broadcast on the World Service on May 15th. Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service, |
| 0:51.0 | your statistical guide to the world around us. |
| 0:53.4 | I'm Jordan Dunbar. |
| 0:56.6 | It was a cold and grey London evening |
| 0:58.6 | when this more or less reporter got a Skype call. It was to set me off on an investigation of huge proportions. |
| 1:10.0 | Hello? |
| 1:11.1 | Jordan. Hi. We've got a question for you and the plus and minus team. |
| 1:15.0 | It's more or less. |
| 1:17.0 | Yeah, yeah, yeah. |
| 1:18.0 | Listen, I need you to look into something, but doctor keeps telling us that baby alo is a giant. |
| 1:22.0 | That's seven month-old Arlo. |
| 1:24.5 | Apparently a giant in booby form and the panicked guy is my best friend Tom who lives in |
| 1:29.4 | Texas in the US. This is his much more sensible wife Elizabeth. |
| 1:34.7 | He's not a giant, but they've told us that he's in the 99th percentile for head size, |
| 1:40.6 | the 97th percentile for weight and the 90th percentile for height. |
... |
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.