Andrew Dilnot's scheme to educate us about the numbers which dominate our life calls on one of the heavy hitters. The guest in More Or Less (4pm, Radio 4) is Mervyn King, widely tipped as the next Governor of the Bank of England. The Blair government decided in 1997 to make the Bank independent. But what do its inflation targets mean?
Downing Street is keen to make us vigilant about terrorism without generating panic. The problem, which Gerry Northam highlights in File on 4 (8pm, Radio 4), is that we may already have reason enough for alarm without Osama bin Laden's help. To devise an antidote well before it would be needed, British scientists are trying to develop new super-viruses quicker than any terrorist organisation. But the management record of some of these authorised laboratories raises serious questions about their ability to stop an accidental release of such organisms.
Georgina Ferry continues her study of synaesthesia, the condition which makes the brain's perception of words, colours, and tastes strangely confused. Only about one adult in 2,000 is affected, but there is a suggestion that every one of us may start out with the condition. In Hearing Colours, Eating Sounds (9pm, Radio 4) the neuropsychologist John Harrison suggests that the brain's hearing-seeing pathways (adjacent areas of the left hemisphere) do not develop separately until three to six months after birth. In a few cases, of course, this separation never happens.
