This is the Guardian's new pop culture podcast.

In each episode I'm going to get under the skin of the week's biggest stories.

If you love pop culture and want to get into how it's shaping and impacting our lives,

then you should join me every Thursday.

Listen wherever you get your podcast out now.

Bye! Last week the global population hit 8 billion, officially at least.

A woman at the Jose

for Belia Hospital in Manila gave birth to the so-called

symbolic 8 billions of baby. The healthy baby girl has

been named Venus. Humans may have taken thousands of years to make it to 1 billion, but recently we've been growing at speed.

The number of people in the world has tripled in just 70 years.

The global population is predicted to keep growing to 10.4 billion,

with booms in Egypt, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia.

The United Nations says more than half the projected population increase to 2050

will be in just eight countries. Half of them are in sub-Saharan Africa.

But for some countries like Latvia, Lithuania and Serbia,

populations are actually already in decline.

And as a species, we're also aging.

In other words, not only will the overall population shrink, but the overall number of young people as well

will be reduced significantly, and if that is confirmed, would have a huge impact on the country's

economic growth.

Should we be worried or are there potential benefits to an older smaller population? From the Guardian, I'm Ein, and this is Science Weekly.

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