Humanity at Eight Billion

With political violence on the rise and new weapons like drones proliferating, is it still possible to protect America’s leaders? Why has such a basic governmental mission been overstretched and underfunded? Which is the bigger threat—invisible “lone wolves” among us, or nation-s ...  Show more

People are worried that AI will automate their jobs. Yet Brian Merchant has interviewed hundreds of workers disrupted by AI, and what he sees isn’t a technological revolution but a centuries-old power struggle: bosses wielding new tech as leverage to deskill and destabilize worke ...  Show more

The United Nations says humanity has reached 8 billion, but Western nations are worried about population decline. Africa isn’t, though. The continent is about to shape the rest of the century. This episode was produced by Haleema Shah, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by ...  Show more

There are, its estimated, 8.2 billion people on the planet. The UN projects that the world's population will reach 9.7 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100. We won’t reach that, says Steve Keen. Even if we ignore climate change, we’ll exceed our capacity to support the p ...  Show more

Even with the global population hitting 8 billion, could we be facing a reproductive crisis? Professor Luke O'Neill explains this more with Pat this morning on the show. 

As India is poised to overtake China as the world's most populous country, we put questions from World Service listeners to the author of 8 Billion and Counting. Dr Jennifer Sciubba explains how the number of humans is growing in some countries, declining in others, how people ar ...  Show more