To ice or not to ice?

Summary

More or Less – "To ice or not to ice?"

BBC Radio 4 | September 5, 2014 | Host: Tim Harford

Episode Overview

This episode of "More or Less," presented by Tim Harford, investigates the numbers behind popular claims circulating in the news and public discourse. The show’s main theme explores how statistics are wielded (and sometimes misused) when it comes to viral charitable campaigns, antisemitic incidents in Europe, debates over Shakespeare’s linguistic prowess versus hip hop artists, and alarming claims about generational longevity due to obesity.

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Key Segments & Insights

Ice Bucket Challenge: Is Viral Charity Effective?

[00:47 – 08:11]

The Hype and Numbers

• The Ice Bucket Challenge, designed to raise funds for ALS (known as Motor Neurone Disease in the UK), goes viral.
• Major celebrities participate, leading to a surge in donations:
  • ALS Association raised $100 million in August 2014—over 30 times more than the previous year ([01:28]).
  • UK’s MND Association receives six months' income in a few days.

Addressing Cannibalisation Concerns

• Tim discusses whether such viral challenges redirect money from other causes (“charity cannibalisation”).
• Neil Bowerman (Centre for Effective Altruism) warns, “I don't think viral memes should be what determine our charitable spending. I think it should be which charities have the most impact.” ([03:17])
• Professor Stephen Lee argues there’s "no evidence that charity cannibalization exists," except possibly after very large, unique events ([04:08]).

Evaluating Cost-Effectiveness

• Bowerman highlights disparities in impact between charities:
  • Malaria net: $10–$100 = +1 healthy year of life.
  • ALS: ~$230,000/year to sustain a patient ([04:34]).
• "For that amount of money, you could be helping hundreds of times, thousands of times more sufferers of diseases that are cheaper to cure." – Neil Bowerman ([04:52])
• Ellie Hassenfeld (GiveWell) recommends:
  • GiveDirectly: Direct cash transfers to poor people in East Africa.
  • SCI and Deworm the World: Deworming children for as little as $0.50–$1 per person ([07:16]).
• Tim concludes: “I think I've got to donate £5 to Motor Neurone Disease association simply because it feels bad not to do that. But...my full hundred pounds to diseases of poor children in Sub Saharan Africa.” ([08:12])

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Antisemitism in Europe: Are Hostilities Increasing?

[09:53 – 15:57]

Incident Data During Conflicts

• UK’s Community Security Trust reports 240 antisemitic incidents in July 2014—a fivefold increase during the Gaza conflict compared to "normal" months ([09:53]).
• Spikes in incidents observed after previous Israeli-Gaza conflicts as well ([10:27]).

Long-Term Trends

• Encouraging news: 2013 had the lowest annual number of antisemitic incidents in Britain since 2005.
• "The number of incidents had steadily declined from a peak in 2009 to the end of 2013, but it is still a little higher than it was 10 years ago." – Ruth Alexander ([10:41])
• Across France, Germany, and the UK: Incidents fluctuate, with the average still higher than in the 1990s—a "step change" around the early 2000s ([12:00]).

Data Gaps & Perceptions

• Only about half of EU states collect official data on antisemitic incidents, making wide conclusions difficult ([11:05]).
• Public attitude surveys show declines in antisemitic prejudice, but spikes in economic downturns. "Jews remain the most accepted group in France" – Nona Mayer ([13:54]).
• Despite relatively low numbers, fear is widespread: “...more than 85% of the Jews who were interviewed by that survey [in France] say that they have the feeling anti Semitism is on the rise and they're afraid for themselves and for their children.” – Nona Meyer ([15:04])

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Vocabulary Showdown: Shakespeare vs. Hip-Hop

[16:16 – 23:44]

The Data-Driven Rap Battle

• Listener question: Does Shakespeare really have the largest English vocabulary of any writer?
• Matt Daniels’s viral analysis compares unique word counts in rapper lyrics (first 35,000 words) vs. Shakespeare’s plays ([18:05]).
• “Shakespeare had 22 rappers ahead of him and they're mostly these more underground rappers.” ([19:31])

Methodological Caveats

• “It's not quite apples to apples...to get it actually methodologically bulletproof and publishable in, like, a linguist journal would take probably years of data cleaning. And again, I wanted this to be fun and really a side project versus a scientific analysis.” – Matt Daniels ([19:45])

Shakespeare in Context

• Professor Hugh Craig's research shows that, when comparing samples, “Shakespeare comes out as just a little bit below the average” among contemporaries ([21:19]).
• Quantity ≠ Quality: “Using an awful lot of different words in your plays isn't necessarily such a wonderful thing...it's not necessarily a sign of literary quality.” – Hugh Craig ([22:13])

Memorable Moment

• Alex Wegerman:
  “A horse, a horse, My kingdom for a horse Sounds much better than a hoe, a hoe, My kingdom for a hoe...maybe this is much ado about nothing.” ([23:26])

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Life Expectancy and Obesity: Is This the First Generation to Die Younger?

[24:08 – 27:38]

Debunking the Staggering Statistic

• Claims by Michelle Obama and Jamie Oliver suggest today's children will live shorter lives due to obesity ([24:08]).
• But data say otherwise: “[In Britain] the probability of dying from heart attacks or strokes in middle age was 16% at 1980 death rates and it's 4% at 2010 death rate. That's despite...we're getting a bit fatter.” – Sir Richard Peto ([25:05])
• Mexico now leads for obesity but has a falling probability of early death: dropped from 50% (1970) to 25% (2010) before age 70 ([25:59]).
• "Fat or not, around the world, the probability of dying before you're 50 is actually half what it was 40 years ago." – Laura Gray ([26:23])

Broader Trends

• Improvements driven by: vaccinations, cleaner water, better infection control, and especially reduced tobacco deaths ([26:33]).
• While lifespans are increasing, “they won't necessarily be golden ones”—obesity may reduce quality, not quantity, of life ([27:15]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Viral Charity:

  • "Neil thinks that there's a real problem with cannibalization here, that people have a fixed budget in mind for charitable giving. If they give more to one charity because of a viral campaign, they give less to others." – Tim Harford ([03:32])
  • “It's not the words, you know, it's what you do with them that counts.” – Tim Harford ([23:44])

• On Statistical Caution:

  • "I'm not saying it's not on the rise, I'm saying we don't know. The gaps are just too large." – Katja Andrush, FRA spokesperson ([11:28])
  • “Using an awful lot of different words in your plays isn't necessarily such a wonderful thing.” – Hugh Craig ([22:13])

• On Quality vs. Quantity in Literature:

  • “If all there is is quantity, maybe this is much ado about nothing.” – Listener Alex Wegerman ([23:26])

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Key Takeaways

• Charity Fads: Viral campaigns like the Ice Bucket Challenge massively increase donations for specific charities, but the most cost-effective interventions—frequently for preventable diseases in the developing world—rarely receive such bursts of popular attention.
• Antisemitism: Data show short-term spikes in antisemitic incidents during conflicts but suggest fluctuating or declining long-term trends. Nevertheless, fear and anxiety remain high in Jewish communities.
• Vocabulary and Literary Merit: New analyses challenge long-held beliefs about Shakespeare’s vocabulary supremacy, but also question whether sheer word count reflects literary quality.
• Generational Life Expectancy: Dire warnings about today's children dying younger than their parents are contradicted by evidence showing rising life expectancy. Gains are more about public health advances than the impacts of obesity, but quality of life deserves attention.

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For Further Exploration:
Visit BBC More or Less for episode downloads and more program information.

Transcript

[A]

Thanks for downloading More or less from the BBC. This is the version first broadcast on Radio 4. If you're a regular listener to the Shorter World Service podcast of More or Less, just want to let you know that the second item in this program is one you'll already have heard. Here's Tim Harford.

[B]

Hello and welcome to More or Less, the programme that dumps a bucket of iced water over dodgy statistics in the news and in life. This week, does the evidence support claims of a rising tide of antisemitism across Europe?

[C]

And.

[B]

And we delve into the world of stylometrics to find out if data can prove conclusively that this. Is better than this.

[D]

To be or not to be, that is the question.

[B]

But first we'll be looking at the. No, hang on. No. A bucket of ice water. No. You can write off. None of my friends have nominated me for the Ice Bucket Challenge.

[E]

That's because you don't have any friends, Tim.

[B]

Yeah, very funny, Keith, Very funny.

[E]

Oh, come on, Tim. It's for a good cause. You agree to have a bucket of icy water thrown all over you, you donate money to the ALS association in the US or the Motor Neurone Disease association in the uk. A lot of people have also been giving money to WaterAid or to the Macmillan Cancer Support too. You nominate three other people. The joy of giving spreads.

[B]

And so does pneumonia.

[E]

Oh, come on, Tim. Benedict Cumberbatch has done it.

[A]

Bring a bucket.

[E]

Oprah Winfrey's done. Even George W Bush, the former US president, has done it. The ALS association raised $100 million this August, which is more than 30 times what it raised in the same period last year. ALS stands for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is also known as motor neurone disease in the uk. And the Motor Neurone Disease association has also been benefiting. It's received the equivalent of six months income in just a few days. Everyone's doing it well, that's all very

[B]

well, but a true nerd doesn't run with the herd. I always look at the evidence first. So why don't we call up Douglas Graham of the Motor Neurone Disease Association?

[F]

Motor neurone disease is a fatal and rapidly progressive disease which attacks the motor neurons. The neurons allow you to move your muscles. It leaves people trapped in a failing body, unable to walk, unable to talk, unable to feed themselves and eventually unable to breathe.

[B]

Well, that's clearly a horrible illness. So what does the Motor Neurone Disease association do with all these donations?

[F]

We have Three main aspects to our work. We fund world class research into trying to find the causes of MND because most of them are not yet known, and also ultimately to find an effective treatment and a cure. We also do a lot of work providing care and support to people living with the disease and their families. And then the third pillar of our work is we also raise awareness.

[B]

I think there's no question that it's a worthy cause, but is it the most worthy cause? When people take the Ice Bucket Challenge, I'm guessing they do it for a laugh because they've been prodded by a friend rather than because of a logical assessment of the merits of the donation. Here's Neil Bauerman, co founder of the Centre for Effective Altruism.

[G]

The viral nature of the Ice Bucket Challenge is genius. However, there are some risks and some worries with this. I don't think viral memes should be what determine our charitable spending. I think it should be which charities have the most impact.

[B]

Neil thinks that there's a real problem with cannibalization here, that people have a fixed budget in mind for charitable giving. If they give more to one charity because of a viral campaign, they give less to others. A couple of experts that he's spoken to agree with him. And it's certainly true that charities in the UK are spending more and more on fundraising without any obvious results in the total donations to charity. Now, this claim of cannibalisation is a bit speculative. We spoke to Professor Stephen Lee of the center for Charity Effectiveness at Cass Business School. He says there's no evidence that charity cannibalization exists. Except. And even then, this is just anecdote. Except after large events such as Comic Relief or Band Aid. Professor Lee speculates that because the Ice Bucket Challenge produces spontaneous donations, it'll increase total donations rather than eating into money that would have gone to other causes.

[C]

But this.

[B]

But still, if I'm going to give money to charity, I want to think about the most deserving cause. Here's Neil Bowerman again.

[G]

Health charities can be measured as to how much they improve people's quality and length of life. And some charities do this incredibly cheaply. For example, distributing malaria nets. It costs only between ten and a hundred dollars to give someone an additional year of healthy life, whereas ALS sufferers have to spend something like $230,000 per year to sustain someone in the final years of the disease. And so for that amount of money, you could be helping hundreds of times, thousands of times more sufferers of diseases that are cheaper to cure.

[B]

This makes perfect sense logically, but hearing you explain it, it sounds like I'm listening to Mr. Spock. It somehow sounds very cold and uncaring.

[G]

There's a number of different ways that people can do their charitable giving. You can donate so that you feel good, you can donate to causes that help friends of yours, or you can donate so that you can try and have as big an impact as you can. And in order to do that, it is, unfortunately a difficult question. There are millions of charities in the world, and identifying which of them is going to do the most with your funds is not a case of looking at nice videos and nice pictures of smiling children. It's actually a case of going down into the data and looking at which of these is actually going to provide the most bang for your buck.

[B]

Neil Bowerman of the center for Effective Altruism. So if I'm looking for ratings of cost effectiveness, I need to talk to Ellie Hassenfeld. He's co founder of an American organization called GiveWell, which evaluates charities and produces recommendations for donors. So I began by asking him how they do this.

[H]

We are looking at the independent academic evidence for a program asking questions like, how large an effect does this program have? How costly is it to obtain that effect, and how likely is it that this effect will translate into other conditions? We're looking for organizations that are transparent and allow us to thoroughly vet them and understand what's going well, what's going poorly, and how they're likely to perform in the future. We're looking for organizations that are working in the poorest parts of the world because those are places where small amounts of funds from donors can go very far. And then finally, we're looking for organizations that have a pressing need for additional funding. And so we're looking for ones that can take in money and put those marginal funds to good use.

[B]

So, Ellie, I'm planning to give £100 to a charity in a few minutes. Based on your research, what are the three top charities you would recommend?

[H]

One of them is an organization called GiveDirectly. They have a very simple model, but is still new to the charitable world, which is directly giving cash to very poor people in East Africa. The two other organizations we recommend right now both work on a program called deworming, which is treating parasitic infections in the developing world. The two organizations, the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, or sci, based in the UK and the deworm the World Initiative, based in the US Run programs in slightly different ways, but broadly speaking, this is a program that For a very small amount of money, about 50 cents to a dollar per person, can treat young children, can rid them of this disease and has the potential to affect their cognitive development long term in a way that allows them to lead more productive lives as adults.

[E]

Okay, Tim, so you've heard all the evidence. What are you going to do?

[B]

I'm torn. I think I've got to donate £5 to motor neuron Disease association simply because it feels bad not to do that. But as an economist, having heard the evidence, I've got to donate money, my full hundred pounds to diseases of poor children in Sub Saharan Africa. And so I'm going to donate my hundred pounds to the Schist Control Initiative. I need to do nominations. I'm going to nominate three of my favourite economists and I would urge them to make a charitable donation, being guided by economic logic. They are Evan Davies, Stephanie Flanders and Tyler Cowan. Bring it on, Ben. Okay, that's cold. I'm going to get dry. And a video of my ice bucketing is online now. You're listening to More or Less and I'm Tim Harford. Our email address is more or lessbc.co.uk in the wake of the recent conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza, there have been reports from around the world of serious hostility towards Jews. In Britain, a rabbi was attacked near a Jewish boarding school. In France and Germany, synagogues and Jewish community centers have been firebombed and slogans like Kill the Jews have been seen at protests. All this has led to claims that prejudice against Jews is on the rise. Take for example the British columnist and author Owen Jones, who wrote in the Guardian that the evidence suggests that anti Jewish hatred is actually increasing again. But is it? Well, Ruth Alexander's here. Ruth, what does the evidence say?

[I]

Well, let's look at the UK first and let's start with incidents such as violence, threats, graffiti or online abuse. In Britain, the Jewish organisation, the Community Security Trust monitors this sort of thing. And it says, to give you an idea, it received about 240 reports of anti Semitic incidents in July in the middle of the conflict. And that's five times what they'd normally expect to see in that month.

[B]

And that's a lot, clearly. Although we can't say to what extent it's driven by heightened awareness and therefore heightened reporting. Do we see that sort of spike with previous conflicts?

[I]

We do. The last major Israeli offensive in Gaza was in 2009 and looking at the UK and other European countries, you can see a short term spike in anti Semitic incidents. After that.

[B]

So that's the short term. What about the longer term trend?

[I]

It is more encouraging. 2013 had the lowest annual number of antisemitic incidents in Britain since 2005. During the past decade, the levels have fluctuated, making it difficult to identify a single trend. The number of incidents had steadily declined from a peak in 2009 to the end of 2013, but it is still a little higher than it was 10 years ago.

[B]

What about the rest of Europe?

[I]

Well, the European Union's Fundamental Rights Agency, or fra, publishes a report every year which summarises data from governments and other organisations on antisemitic incidents. But its spokeswoman, Katja Andrush, says only about half the EU states collect data on this sort of incident.

[C]

It is very incomplete. There are huge gaps in the data that's collected at the official level.

[I]

So does this collection of official data support the idea that antisemitism is on the rise? Not what we have, is all I can say. I'm not saying it's not on the rise, I'm saying we don't know. The gaps are just too large.

[B]

So the data aren't good enough to show what the Europe wide long term trend is. But can we draw conclusions about any individual countries here? I'm thinking particularly of France. We hear a lot about anti Semitism there being bad. There are high profile incidents, including the killing of a teacher and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012.

[I]

Well, in France and in Germany too, the official data also shows the number of incidents has fluctuated up and down, trending downward in the decade up to 2012, before then rising that year. But in France, the UK and some other countries, you can see that although the numbers go up and down over the past decade, the average level is a fair bit higher than it was in the 1990s. So there appears to have been a step change in the numbers of antisemitic incidents around the early 2000s. Nola Meyer is president of the French Political Science association and a professor at Paris's Sciences Po university.

[C]

Actually, since 2000, the beginning of the second intifada, the revolt of the Palestinians against the Israeli occupation, we've had an explosion, a very clear explosion, of actions and threats against people identified as Jews. And every time something goes on in the Middle east after the second intifada, the numbers, as they are collected by the police, of actions taken against Jews flare up.

[B]

So that's actual incidents of antisemitism. Specific things you can point to. But what about more general attitudes? How People think and feel about Jewish people.

[I]

There can be some tricky definitional issues here. Now, there are some things that are clearly antisemitic. But what about an individual's criticism of Israel's government policy that might be motivated by anti Semitism or it might not. And this sort of disagreement helps explain why one poll from earlier this year suggests almost 40% of people in France are anti Semitic, while another suggests the figure is 10%.

[B]

So are there any more reliable data out there measuring people's attitudes?

[I]

Well, let's return to France because Nonna Mayer from Sciences Po has been running a long term project surveying people's attitudes to Jews and to other minorities.

[C]

We have many surveys even before 1990. What they show you is a global decline of prejudice towards minorities and especially towards Jews. Actually, Jews are the better accepted minority in France. But what we also see is that in a context of economic recession since 2009, prejudice which was decreasing since World War II, has been going up again also for the Jews. But the Jews remain the most accepted group in France. And we see the same thing in Europe today. The group that people reject, it's Arabs, it's Muslims.

[B]

So it's a mixed picture. There's a spike in incidents at the moment, but it's more difficult to see clear evidence of a broad Europe wide upward trend in antisemitism. There is still clearly a level of fear in some parts of the Jewish community.

[I]

There definitely is, both in response to current events and over the longer term. The Fundamental Rights Agency of the EU has done a detailed survey of experiences and perceptions of antisemitism among the Jewish community in eight European countries. Here's Nona Meyer again.

[C]

It shows that among Jews in Europe today there's real fright, there's a real anxiety. And more than in any other country, it's the case of France. We have something like more than 85% of the Jews who were interviewed by that survey who say that they have the feeling anti Semitism is on the rise and they're afraid for themselves and for their children. But I wouldn't put the opinions and the acts at the same level. How many acts of violence? 100 in the year of 2013. So a minority is enough to frighten to say, maybe it's going to happen to me or to my children.

[I]

Nona Meyer. So while the trends are harder to discern, the fact that anti Semitic incidents happen at the level they do is enough to make some Jewish people feel fearful.

[B]

Well, thank you very much, Ruth. You're listening to more or less you can find us on the [e-mail] more or less, where you can also find our download. You can download as many episodes as you like and you can listen to them back to back. James Fletcher's poked his big smiley face around the studio door. Hello, James. What have you got for me?

[A]

Hi, Tim. Well, I've got a question for you. Which of these do you think has more literary merit?

[E]

This.

[D]

What a piece of work is a man. How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty.

[A]

Or this? I smoke all the like. Like smoking Joe Fraser, the hell Razor Raising hell with the flavor.

[B]

Well, to be honest, I've got a lot of time for both Shakespeare and hip hop, but I'd be a bit shocked if school children stopped learning Shakespeare and started taking rap lessons. So I'm. I'm gonna go for Shakespeare.

[A]

Well, Tim, I think that's a bit wishy washy. This is more or less. I want to see the numbers. Where's your evidence base for saying Shakespeare is so great? Where is it?

[B]

Come on. I don't have it.

[A]

Well, here's a suggestion from a loyal listener in Northern China, Alex Wegerman.

[J]

I've been an English teacher for many years now. Every year I tell my students that Shakespeare had a larger vocabulary than any of us can ever aspire to.

[A]

Now, students everywhere are probably going to be familiar with this. Literary merit is very hard to quantify. But this is an exception, an objective reason why Shakespeare sits at the very pinnacle of English literature. That he had the largest English vocabulary of any writer in history. But Alex got in touch with us because he's worried.

[J]

I am usually greeted with many wise nods, but now I'm thinking maybe I've been lying all those years.

[B]

So what's caused Alex to lose faith?

[A]

Well, he saw a chart which was doing the rounds on the Internet earlier this year, comparing the vocabulary sizes of various rappers. It was the brainchild of data scientist and hip hop fan Matt Daniels. And while his main purpose was to compare the rappers to each other, he thought it would be good to throw in Shakespeare too.

[B]

So how do you go about comparing the vocabulary of Shakespeare and a bunch of rappers?

[A]

Well, Matt used a method called token analysis that counts the number of unique words in any body of text that you feed into a computer program. He analysed the first 35,000 words of lyrics recorded by around 100 hip hop artists, and for comparison, the first 5,000 words of seven Shakespeare plays. So, 35,000 words. Again, Matt ran the numbers and found one name at the head of the

[K]

pack, he was actually off the chart, like, orders of magnitude higher. So that was eye opening and I actually had to. I should have readjusted the scale for him.

[B]

I really hope he's talking about Shakespeare.

[A]

You just know that he isn't. Tim. It's actually this guy.

[J]

Once the inertia start and when the

[H]

shipwreck sunk through the perfect darkest serpent's

[B]

arch alerts every circle shark.

[A]

That's rickety Rackety. A track from a rapper called Aesop Rock.

[B]

Yeah, I know who it is. He's not a mainstream star. He's got a loyal underground following. But what about Shakespeare?

[A]

Ah, not too bad, Tim, I'm impressed by the infinite variety of your knowledge. Shakespeare doesn't do too badly. He does come out ahead of most of the big mainstream stars like Tupac, Snoop Dogg, Jay Z or Kanye West. They're all back in the pack behind Shakespeare. The size of his vocabulary puts him in the top quarter, but barely. Shakespeare had 22 rappers ahead of him and they're mostly these more underground rappers.

[B]

Well, I can see why our listener Alex is worried. But hang on, can you actually just grab 35,000 words from everyone, bung them in a computer and name the winner?

[A]

Fair enough. Question? I asked Matt if it's fair to compare Shakespeare to the rappers this way.

[K]

It's not quite apples to apples. Shakespeare is writing prose. Often in hip hop, you're obviously writing song lyrics. There's much more slang in hip hop, so it's not a direct comparison. And to get it actually methodologically bulletproof and publishable in, like, a linguist journal would take probably years of data cleaning. And again, I wanted this to be fun and really a side project versus a scientific analysis.

[B]

Well, we're all in favour of fun, but this is the reputation of the Bard that's at stake here, James, so this has got to be rock solid. I want a second opinion, please.

[A]

Well, in that case, I think it's time to talk about stylometrics.

[B]

Oh, yeah? Yeah, I know another hip hop group.

[A]

Yeah, I think I just flushed you out there, Tim. Not quite the hip hop fan you claim to be. Stylometrics is a field of literature studies and it uses computers and data analysis to tell us things about literary styles. So, for your second opinion, I went to Professor Hugh Craig and he's director of the Centre for Linguistic and Literary Computing at the University of Newcastle in Australia.

[L]

Yep, they did the right thing by taking exactly. I think it's 35,000 words, blocks of 35,000 words for each of the candidates. That's a good way to do it.

[A]

Now it turns out that this technique has had an impact in Shakespeare's studies as well. The reason people thought Shakespeare used so many more unique words than anyone else is that a relatively large amount of his work survives and people were simply counting all the words in his entire output. But a couple of years ago, Hugh Craig used a broadly similar technique to Matt Daniels to analyse Shakespeare's vocabulary. And he came up with a surprising result.

[L]

If you take six plays by Shakespeare and six plays by a group of his contemporaries, maybe Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson, John Fletcher and so on, Shakespeare comes out as just a little bit below the average.

[B]

Oh, brilliant.

[G]

Really?

[B]

Really? All these years we've been told Shakespeare had a huge vocabulary and actually it was just that lots of his plays survive.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. That's it. It's strange that people are so keen to find some objective proof of Shakespeare's greatness. And you can see the same urge in the responses to Matt Daniel's Hip Hop chart too. People are desperate for evidence that this rapper is better than that rapper. These new sophisticated analytical tools really tempt us to believe that there must be a number out there, the greatness of someone like Shakespeare. But Hugh Craig says he hasn't found such a number yet. And for rappers as much as for Shakespeare, vocabulary is of limited use.

[L]

Using an awful lot of different words in your plays isn't necessarily such a wonderful thing. If you use different languages within a play, if you bring in lots of technical terms, you'll increase your vocabulary and that might be actually tedious to listen to if you're in the audience. It's not necessarily of itself and by itself a sign of literary quality.

[B]

Now it's time for our wrap up.

[A]

It makes sense when you think about it, Tim. Can you name a book which might have the highest number of unique words?

[B]

Words like Billabong and Dinkum and so on. Yeah, the Oxford English Dictionary.

[A]

That's a low blow, Tim, but you're exactly right. Who would ever read a dictionary cover to cover? I mean, what could be more boring than a list of words in alphabetical orders with each and every energetic epileptic episode? That's the rapper gift of gab there, who incidentally rates above Shakespeare on Matt Daniel's charts with a track called Alphabet Aerobics. But perhaps I should give the last word to our English teaching listener, Alex in China.

[J]

A horse, a horse, My kingdom for a horse Sounds much better than a hoe, a hoe, My kingdom for a hoe I think it would be difficult to measure the quality of the vocabulary. And if all there is is quantity, maybe this is much ado about nothing.

[B]

It's not the words, you know, it's what you do with them that counts. James Fletcher, thank you very much.

[A]

We, the adults of the last four generations have blessed our children with the destiny of a shorter lifespan than their own parents. Your child will live a life 10 years younger than you because of the landscape of food that we've built around them.

[B]

The youngest generation is on track for the first time in this nation's history of being less healthy, having a shorter

[D]

lifespan than their parents.

[B]

Jamie Oliver and Michelle Obama there just a few of the people claiming that this generation may die at an earlier age than their parents as a consequence of childhood obesity. Well, Laura Gray's here. Hello, Laura.

[I]

Hello, Laura.

[B]

Is it true?

[M]

Well, sometimes it seems that we're surrounded by Turkey Twizzlers, triple decker cheeseburgers and King sized chocolate bars. So this does sound plausible, but it's not true. If obesity really was having such a stark impact, then we'd expect to see death rates from heart attacks and strokes rising because they're common illnesses associated with obesity. But in fact, the death rates from such conditions are falling sharply. Here's Sir Richard Peto, professor of medical statistics at Oxford University.

[D]

If you take Britain as an example, sure, people are getting fatter here and that's a bad thing. But if you go back 30 years, then the chances that we die from heart attack, stroke, you know, diseases like that in middle age was 16% at 1980 death rates and it's 4% at 2010 death rate. So the probability of dying from heart attacks or strokes, vascular disease, the sorts of things that get caused by being overweight, has gone down by a factor of four in just 30 years. That's despite the fact that we're getting a bit fatter. So being fat is accounting for a slowly increasing proportion of a very rapidly decreasing total. Things are getting better, not worse.

[B]

That's encouraging. That's Britain, then. What about other parts of the world?

[M]

The trend is the same. Mexico is now the fattest country in the world and even there, people are less likely to die earlier.

[D]

The probability of dying before you're 70. If you go back to 1970 in Mexico, it was a half and now it's a quarter.

[B]

Ok, so although obesity causes cardiovascular problems, fewer people are dying from them. And so we're living longer than we used to.

[M]

Yes, that's right.

[B]

And taking weight out of the equation is this generation likely to die at a younger age than previous ones?

[M]

Unlikely. Fat or not, around the world, the probability of dying before you're 50 is actually half what it was 40 years ago.

[B]

And what explains that drop in death rates?

[M]

There isn't really one explanation. Better vaccination programs and drugs, cleaner water, better infection control, trained midwives, all of these are contributing factors. And according to Richard Peto in Britain, one thing has made a huge difference.

[D]

The chief thing that's driven death rates down is the decrease in tobacco deaths. I mean, if you go back to 1970, about half of all the premature deaths in men were from one thing, which was tobacco. At that time, we had the worst death rate in the world from tobacco. And since then, we've had the best decrease in tobacco deaths in the world. But it's easy to have the best decrease if you start off with the worst death rate.

[B]

So this generation is likely to live longer than the previous one.

[M]

Yes, but that doesn't mean we will live healthier, longer lives than the generation before us. If you're obese, you run the risk of type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, among other things, which diminishes quality of life. So although you might get a few more years because of better healthcare, they won't necessarily be golden ones. So stay away from the pies, Tim, you greedy oink.

[B]

Consider the pies duly banished from my thoughts. And thank you very much, Laura. That's all from More or Less this Week. Please get in touch with your questions and comments via more or lessbc.co.uk. as always, you can subscribe to the program for [e-mail] more or less. But failing that, we will be back on air next week. Until then, goodbye.

[A]

More or Less was presented by Tim Harford, the Financial Times undercover economist. The producer was me, James Fletcher, with Ben Carter and Keith Moore. And the programs made in association with the Open University. You can download many more programs for free from Radio 4. You can find them at BBC.co.uk radio4.