Has the UK’s productivity puzzle been solved?

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week:

(00:42) Frustrated economists have been left rending their garments and howling in the streets after the UK’s ‘productivity puzzle’ - a decade-long head-scratching, soul-searching conundrum - disappeared with a click of the fingers and a tweak of the methodology. Should the Office for National Statistics have acted sooner? We ask Financial Times economic guru Chris Giles.

(07:26) Can it really be true that by the 1960s, one in ten Irish children entered religious orders? Reporter Lizzy McNeill has the answer, and the history.

(13:51) Is the AI datacentre goldrush threatening to swamp our electricity grid? And what are the consequences for its carbon footprint? We delicately untangle the live wires of this hot potato and give the people what they want: nuanced #GridChat.

(20:38) This is the way the album ends - not with a banger, but with a whimper. Music Substacker Mitchell Stirling has used data to test the decades theory that albums tend to end with a quiet track. Come for the explanation of the physics of vinyl, stay for whatever music we end up being able to use.

Guests:

Chris Giles - Economics Commentator at the Financial Times

Johnny Gowdy - Director at Regen

Mitchell Stirling - Substacker, data nerd, music nerd (Renaissance man)

Presenter: Tim Harford

Series Producer: Tom Colls

Reporters: Nathan Gower and Lizzy McNeill

Editor: Richard Vadon

Programme Coordinator: Maria Ogundele

Sound Engineer: James Beard