Category: Active

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More or Less: Behind the Stats - Is the UN underestimating the global fall in fertility?

Every two years, the UN release their predictions for the future population of humanity ? currently expected to peak in the 2080s at around 10.3 billion people.

One of the things they use to work this out is the fertility rate, the number of children the average woman is expected to have in her lifetime. When this number falls below 2, the overall population eventually falls. In this episode of More or Less, we look at the fertility estimates for one country ? Argentina. The graph of the real and predicted fertility rate for that country looks quite strange.

The collected data ? that covers up to the present day ? shows a fertility rate that?s falling fast. But the predicted rate for the future immediately levels out. The strangeness has led some people to think that the UN might be underestimating the current fall in global fertility.

To explain what?s going on we speak to Patrick Gerland, who runs the population estimates team in the United Nations Population Division.

Presenter / producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound mix: Sue Maillot Editor: Richard Vadon

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Everything Everywhere Daily - How Much Did Rome and Sub-Saharan Africa Know About Each Other?

The Romans were familiar with Africa. At one point, they controlled everything on the north coast of Africa from Morocco to Egypt. 

However, below their African territories was the vast Sahara Desert, which was extremely difficult to cross. For all practical purposes, it served as a permeable barrier between the people above and below the desert. 

As such, historians have wondered just how much the people above and below the Sahara knew about each other. 

Learn more about  Rome and Sub-Saharan Africa, and what contact they had with each other on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Pod Save America - Did Republicans Just Lose the House?

In the middle of the night, the House narrowly passes Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill," a witch's brew of tax cuts for the wealthiest and benefit cuts for the neediest, sending it on to the Senate. Jon and Dan talk about what Democrats can do to stop the bill—and the upside of Republicans passing something so massively unpopular, Trump's "white genocide" show-and-tell for South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, and the damning new data showing why Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election. Then, Dan talks with Rep. LaMonica McIver about getting slapped with criminal charges by Trump's Justice Department, and what it means for the executive branch to be targeting legislators for doing their job.

For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.