The number of people living on the earth is expected to peak at 9.73 billion in 2064, before falling down by almost one billion, or almost 10 percent, to 8.79 billion by the end of the century. This is only fewer than 80 years from now. During this period of time, 23 countries, including Japan, Thailand and Spain, were forecasted to see their populations shrink by more than a half. The global shrinking population is due mainly to falling fertility rate. In Japan, its population has peaked at 128 million in its 2010 census, and dropped to 127 million in just five years later, marking the first such drop in the census history of the country. In about 30 years from now, or in 2050, Japan’s population will lose slightly over one-fifth to 100 million. In Thailand, its population growth rate is expected to approach zero in 2025 to 2030, when its population is expected to reach its peak at 70.4 million. After that, the number of Thai people will start to slide. Discussing the phenomenon of global shrinking population are Dr. Reiko Hayashi, deputy director general of National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Japan, and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Wiraporn Pothisiri of College of Population Studies, Chulalongkorn University.

National heritage is a key asset of all countries in the world as it’s a legacy for knowledge sharing and a great way to boost tourism. As of February 2021, the list of Unesco features 1,154 sites in 167 countries as world heritage. Included on the list are 897 cultural sites, 218 natural domains and 39 mixed natural and cultural sites. Italy is home to the largest number of Unesco world heritage sites in the world, boasting 58 such locations, just ahead of China with 56. For Thailand, the country owns six Unesco world heritage sites recognized for their outstanding cultural or natural importance, but Ministry of Culture is preparing to propose two more archaeological sites of Si Thep historical park in central-north Petchabun province, and the ensembles of Phanom Rung, Muang Tam and Plai Bat sanctuaries in northeastern Buri Ram province, with the hope that Unesco will include them on the world heritage list by 2023. But to succeed, Thailand must find ways to manage these sites sustainably with the engagement and interaction of local communities and their shared history. Discussing the issues are Asst. Prof. Dr. Kasira Cheeppensook, deputy dean of Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, and Dr. Phacharaphorn Phanomvan Na Ayudhya, senior specialist with Si Thep District Cultural Council in Phetchabun.

Responsible for millions of deaths and costing the global economy around one trillion U.S. dollars yearly, cancer has placed immense burden and pressure on its patients, global medical system as well as the society as a whole. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a specialized agency under World Health Organization, estimated that there were more than 19 million cancer cases and over 9 million deaths in 2020 around the world. The agency also found out that in 2020, the number of new cases of breast cancer surpassed that of lung cancer for the first time, especially in low- and middle-income countries. In Thailand, approximately one in every 365 Thai people of all ages and genders was diagnosed with cancer in 2020. More than half of these patients passed away due to the illness as cancer has been the No. 1 killer of Thai population for more than a decade. Immunotherapy is a way of treating cancer that utilizes a person’s immune system to fight cancerous cells. This type of treatment works by teaching the person’s immune system to identify and eliminate cancer cells in his or her body. Guests in this episode are Assoc. Prof. Dr. Virote Sriuranpong, a lecturer of medical oncology from Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Kris Chatamra, a breast cancer surgeon and director of the Queen Sirikit Center for Breast Cancer, Chulalongkorn Hospital.

Roughly a third of the world’s food production is wasted every year, amounting to about 1.3 billion tons of food, which are enough to feed as many as two billion people for a year, according to Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. On the other hand, nearly 800 million people, or around 10 percent of the world population, notably in poor African and Asian nations, are currently unable to get enough food to meet their minimum daily nutrition demand. Since food production is a resource-intensive activity, food waste poses a major squandering of resources, including water, land, energy, labor, and capital, and needlessly produces greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to global warming and climate change. In Thailand, due to its lack of proper waste segregation, municipal solid waste is often contaminated with spoiled food waste, and is most likely dumped in open-air landfills, which often leads to environmental and health problems for nearby communities. Asst. Prof. Dr. Nuta Supakata from Department of Environmental Science, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University, talks about Chula zero waste project, while Nantaporn Thirapongphaiboon, outreach manager of Scholars of Sustenance Foundation Thailand, or SOS Thailand, talks about her organization’s food rescue mission.

More than 60 percent of the world’s employed population, equivalent to two billion people, earn their living in the informal economy. In some countries, informality takes up to 90 percent of the whole workforce. In Thailand, slightly over half of all employed people in the country are informal workers, who have been described as “workers who are not protected by labor protection laws and social security law.” Therefore, they are always harder hit by any crisis. Many of them cannot afford to join online delivery platforms to offer their goods or services due to the high costs of their memberships. At Chulalongkorn University, a delivery platform project was launched in 2021 in collaboration with other organizations to help small shops and motorcycle taxi riders. The platform, known as “Tamsung-Tamsong”, meaning roughly as deliver as you order, was developed as a community-based service allowing consumers, venders and riders to negotiate and set the delivery price. The platform developers do not charge any fee from any party involved. Guests in this episode are Poonsap Suanmuang Tulaphan, director of Foundation for Labor and Employment Promotion, or Homenet Thailand, and Akkanut Wantanasombut, a researcher at Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, who plays a key role in the Tamsung-Tamsong project.

Life-limiting conditions are a general term referring to incurable and fatal diseases, and there are currently over 300 life-limiting conditions threatening humans. Children who are diagnosed with life-limiting diseases have their life expectancy shortened. While some live for years and decades, others pass away within weeks or months after their birth. In order to deliver health benefits and improve patients’ quality of life, music therapy has been applied in the field of palliative care for decades. Patients do not have to be knowledgeable about music to engage in therapeutic activities, which include listening to music, singing, playing instruments, composing a song, and using music technology. Music therapy also helps to serve educational needs of children who have to be away from school because of their terminal conditions, as taking part in music-related activities could maintain such skills as attention, memory, decision making, and problem solving. Prof. Dr. Issarang Nuchprayoon, a pediatrician at Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, and Prof. Jos De Backer, an invited lecturer for the master of arts in music therapy program at Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Chulalongkorn University are guests in this episode.

The industrialization of agricultural production has led to significant increase of global cereal products, especially wheat and rice. Within the span of around two decades, a study in 1998 found that cereal production in developing nations more than doubled between the years 1961 and 1985. However, a 2021 report by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) disclosed that as of 2020 the world still failed to sufficiently feed almost 10 percent of the world’s population or almost 770 million people. The situation is specifically dire in Africa and Asia, which are the first and second region that have the highest level of the prevalence of undernourishment. FAO estimated that there is a need to produce about 50 percent more food by 2050 in order to feed the increasing world population and overcome the shocks and stresses to global food system from environmental degradation and climate crisis. Some scientists have proposed the utilization of genetic modification technology to be the new driving force for the next agricultural revolution. But the development of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, comes with many controversies. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jessada Denduangboripant from Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University, and Kingkorn Narintarakul na Ayutthaya, deputy director of Biothai Foundation, discuss the pros and cons of GMO technology.

The Covid-19 pandemic has devastated our entire world in 2020 and 2021, and is doomed to continue affecting all walks of life at least in the beginning of 2022 due to its one variant after another. In its course of wrecking the globe, the pandemic has changed the way we live, work, do our schooling, and do our social life. People have lost their lives, their jobs, their livelihood and even the years they can expect to live. Covid-19 also ruins livelihood of many people on the globe by hitting the most vital means to their well-being – their jobs. And it seems the vulnerable sectors of the population have been hardest hit. Urban people have been affected more by the pandemic than rural communities because of population density in cities and their way of life. In terms of industries, tourism is obviously the hardest hit in the world by the Covid-19 pandemic. World Tourism Organization of the United Nations has declared that the year 2020 was the worst year on record for tourism. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Apiwat Ratanawaraha of Department of Urban & Regional Planning, Faculty of Architecture, Chulalongkorn University, who is an expert in urban planning and policy and who has done some key studies on Thailand’s tourism, shares his thoughts and study findings on how our urban living and tourism could become beyond the Covid-19.

Emerging infectious disease is defined as the diseases whose incidence in humans has increased in the past two decades or threatens to increase in the near future. They can be either newly discovered diseases or re-emerged diseases, but the underline is these diseases are capable of spreading very quickly beyond national boundaries and of becoming major public and global concerns as potential causes of worldwide pandemic. It has been found that there has been an increase in the emergence of new infectious diseases, as around 30 new diseases have been identified in recent decades. It is believed that the fight against these infectious diseases is development of vaccines against new viruses. Fortunately, with the gradual advancement of medical technology, researchers worldwide are developing new techniques of vaccine production to enhance its efficiency. Guests of this episode are Prof. Dr. Thiravat Hemachudha, head of Thai Red Cross Emerging Infectious Diseases – Health Science Center, Chulalongkorn Hospital, and Asst. Prof. Dr. Suthira Taychakhoonavudh of Department of Social and Administrative Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chulalongkorn University. Dr. Suthira is also chief executive and co-founder of Baiya Phytopharm, which is developing new kinds of vaccines.

Climate projections by various organizations have agreed that a hotter earth will contribute to a more volatile and more extreme climate pattern, in which natural disasters such as flood and drought, heatwave, wildfires, or powerful tropical storms will commonly occur. Thailand is one of the countries that has greatly suffered from climate disasters during the past two decades. Bangkok is extremely vulnerable to coastal flooding and storm surge, due to its location on low-lying river delta. Therefore, in the worst-case scenario, in which global warming is left unchecked, 96 percent of Bangkok could be under sea level by 2030. According to an estimation, if the world temperature increases up to two degrees Celsius in about 80 years from now, or by the year 2100, the world is going to suffer costs of damages from climate change of up to 69 trillion U.S. dollars, or slightly over three times of the current GDP of the United States. Discussing the issue of climate threats to urban cities are Renato Redentor Constantino, executive director of Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities, which is based in Manila, the Philippines, and Asst. Prof. Dr. Suthirat Kittipongvises of Environmental Research Institute, Chulalongkorn University.