This is the Guardian. Our first story has serious global implications, the very survival of the human species.

It seems like every year there's a new alarming headline about male fertility.

A new study has revealed human sperm counts are falling rapidly

and the rate of decline is accelerating.

It is an affliction of many struggle within silence and we could be headed toward a crisis.

Spermpapocalypse is one way of putting it. Spermageddon is another.

Sperm count zero is my preferred term of choice.

Judging by the language in question,

the stakes couldn't be higher.

According to some particularly excitable commentators,

we could be facing the complete end of humanity as we know it.

Perhaps most bafflingly and terrifyingly,

men seem to becoming less male fundamentally, measurably.

And you can say, okay, well, who cares?

Well, we're sterilized and the sperm counts are down 96%.

But scientists aren't in agreement that a fall in sperm counts and quality is actually happening, let alone what could be behind it.

So what's going on with sperm?

And if male fertility really is in crisis what's driving the decline.

I'm the Guardian Science Editor Ian Sample and this is Science

Weekly.

Nicholas, you're a guardian science correspondent and of course a friend of the

podcast and my go-to person for anything fertility and contraception related.

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