Hey, let me ask you, sir, have you heard George's podcast?

Me and Ben Brick are back with a blast, this time with stories from Africa's past.

Not too distant, unsolved mysteries, unsung heroes from untold histories, I'm trying

to make sense of the present day, join me on this journey by pressing play.

Hello, it's Hannah Fry here and I am just dropping in your ears to let you know that my new series

for BBC Radio 4 Uncharted, Tales of Data and Discovery is out now. So for the next 15 minutes,

I'm going to take over this feed to give you just a little taste of the podcast. Enjoy the first

episode.

It's 1973 and Britain is in turmoil. The year begins with a stock market crash and quickly gets

worse. By May, millions are on strike, miners and steel workers, postal workers and train drivers,

inflation is surging and whole industries are on the brink of collapse.

But away from all of the societal unrest, unmentioned in the news,

something else is going on, something subtler and stranger, something that remained invisible

until many years later. In front rooms and hospitals across the country, an unusually high number

of baby boys were being born. We're not just talking about a few extra baby boys here.

In 1973 to 1974, the ratio of baby boys to baby girls born in England and Wales

was higher than at any other time in the 20th century. What on earth was going on?

I'm Hannah Fry, a mathematician who studies patterns in human behaviour and for BBC Radio 4,

this is uncharted, tales of data and discovery. This is a series about how graphs can help you to

see the invisible, about how plots can be rich with hidden depths and unheard stories,

and about how sometimes if you know where to look, there is mystery and drama and intrigue to

be found, or concealed within a few lines on a page. I was researching my book Sex by Numbers,

...