Food Bank Britain

Available for over a year

Recent newspaper headlines tell us a million people are using food banks in Britain. Labour say it's a disgrace and getting worse, and the Prime Minister says the figure rose tenfold under Labour. Are any of these numbers right? What do we really know about how many people are using food banks, and does this tell us anything about whether food poverty is increasing? Tim Harford remembers Gary Becker, the Nobel prize winning economist who did more than anyone else to extend the tools of economic analysis to the problems of everyday life. Alex Bellos tells the story of The Man Who Counted, a book of 'Arabic' mathematical tales. The book's author became a superstar in Brazil, but he also had a surprising story of his own. And was Roger Bannister really the first person to run a four minute mile, or did 18th century fruit and vegetable seller James Parrott beat him to it? We hear the case in Parrott's favour from a former Olympic sprinter with a passion for 18th Century running statistics.