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The Thought Show: The World’s Most Diverse City, #Airbnbwhileblack, Time Perception

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The World’s Most Diverse City

19/05/2016 GMT

The World’s Most Diverse City, #Airbnbwhileblack, Time Perception

BBC World Service - The Thought Show, The World’s Most Diverse City, #Airbnbwhileblack, Time Perception

Is it true or false that London is the most diverse city in the world?

Is it true or false that London is the most diverse city in the world, does Airbnb have a racism problem, and why do we perceive time differently in different circumstances?

Is London the most diverse city in the world? The new London mayor Sadiq Khan has claimed that it is, but is he right? This month, British mathematician Sir Andrew Wiles will go to Oslo to collect the Abel prize, a prestigious maths prize for his work proving Fermat’s last theorem. Science author Simon Singh explains his work for More Or Less.

The hashtag #Airbnbwhileblack has been trending this week after African American twitter users accused some homeowners on the room booking website of rejecting them because of their skin colour. Greg Selden from Virginia says when he used fake white profiles he was accepted at properties who had previously said the room was unavailable. Plus, has Facebook been censoring conservative news trends? This week it was revealed that a team of journalists review the trending topics which appear in the top right hand corner of the site. That has led to allegations that the site has promoted more liberal stories. BBC Trending investigates.

Why do some weeks just fly by but sometimes minutes can seem like hours? Why do we perceive time differently in different circumstances? On the Why Factor, Mike Williams talks to  Pakistani writer and broadcaster Raza Rumi, Claudia Hammond, author of Time Warped, David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at the Baylor College of Medicine at Houston and John McCarthy, a British journalist taken hostage in Lebanon in 1986.

(Photo: A street in Brixton, London. Credit: Getty Images)

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