Main content

Tracking Terror Suspects

Costing counter-terrorism, interrogating tomatoes, the UK's reading age, and the politics of GDP. With Tim Harford.

Costing counter-terrorism, interrogating tomatoes, the UK's reading age, and the politics of GDP. It's a busy week on More or Less. We start in Streatham, where counter-terrorism officers shot dead a man they'd been following after he began stabbing people. Officials have been tight-lipped about the costs of tracking suspects. But we reached into the archive to find an interview with the former head of MI5, who gives a sense of the scale of the challenge and the expense facing the security services. We fact-check a claim from the Prime Minister about the level of economic growth under 'this government'. And there are broader questions: are today's tomatoes less healthy than those grown in the 1950s? Is there such a thing as a nation's 'reading age'? And are nurses disproportionately led by men?

Presenter: Tim Harford
Producer: Neal Razzell

Available now

28 minutes

Last on

Sun 9 Feb 2020 20:00

Broadcasts

  • Fri 7 Feb 2020 16:30
  • Sun 9 Feb 2020 20:00

Just how reliable is our intuition? Find out with The Open University

OU Connect: Put your brain to the test with our new mind-bending probability problems!

When can you trust statistics?

When can you trust statistics?

Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Ideas discovers three easy ways to help make sense of statistics.

Download this programme

Download this programme

Subscribe to the More or Less Podcast or download individual episodes.