Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

In the west there seems to be a push towards vegetarianism and veganism, but that's just

a tiny blip in a bigger upward trend in meat eating around the world. That's bad news

for the environment, but in a narrower sense it's good for people.

And a century ago one in eight girls born in France was named Marie. Now that number

is one in a hundred. Demographers love these kinds of trends. They reveal much more than

census data do about how France is secularizing and globalizing.

But first, Pakistan is poised to accept a hefty bailout from the International Monetary

Fund. Again, the over-indeaded country has just sought its twenty second loan from the

IMF. In a speech while opening a hospital last week, Prime Minister Imran Khan laid the

blame on his predecessors.

He blamed Pakistan's economic predicament on the previous government. He particularly

fingered the amount of debt that the previous government had racked up. Simon Cox is the

economist emerging market editor. And he pointed out to Pakistan is that fixing this problem

would require some hardship in the short term. He also reassured them that Pakistan was

in reality a rich country and that things would get better eventually.

And how have Pakistan is responded to the news of this loan?

So there's some dismay, some discontlement a little bit of surprise. Imran Khan during

campaigning for the elections last year said he wouldn't turn to the IMF, although most

economists knew that it would be inevitable. He also made large claims for instituting

a new kind of welfare state in Pakistan that would take better care of the poor. So that

...