麻豆社

How many people have UN staff raped?

It was reported in a number of the newspapers this week that UN staff are responsible for 60,000 rapes in a decade. We unpick the back of an envelope calculation that has resulted in this extraordinary figure.

Gender in literature

How are women depicted in books? Author Ben Blatt has carried out an analysis of the types of words used to describe them, and also their absence in some of the classics.

How many people did Stalin kill?

How do you extract facts from a regime that was so profoundly secretive? We speak to Professor James Harris and Professor Barbara Anderson about why there are so many different figures and how historians and demographers calculate death tolls by regimes.

The wealth of Mr Darcy

The male love interest of 'Pride and Prejudice' is supposed to be fabulously wealthy. It says in the early 19th century English novel that Mr Darcy has an income 拢10,000 a year - that seems to impress the fictional characters. Two hundred years later, it's not clear how remarkable it really is. We speak to Professor Stephen Broadberry of the University of Oxford.

Presenter: Tim Harford
Producer: Charlotte McDonald.

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