Hans Rosling Uses Ikea Props to Explain World of 7 Billion People

Accord­ing to Unit­ed Nations demog­ra­phers, the world’s pop­u­la­tion like­ly topped 7 bil­lion on Mon­day, and we’ll now steam for­ward, hit­ting 9.3 bil­lion by 2050. 7 bil­lion is a news­wor­thy mile­stone, to be sure. But what does this num­ber real­ly mean? To put things in per­spec­tive, we’re fea­tur­ing a recent TED Talk by Hans Rosling, a pro­fes­sor of glob­al health who presents data in imag­i­na­tive ways. His pre­sen­ta­tions can get wild­ly dig­i­tal. (Just watch 200 Coun­tries & 200 Years in 4 Min­utes). But not so in this case. The props are sim­ple goods bought at IKEA, and they do more than an ade­quate job explain­ing the past, present and future of glob­al pop­u­la­tion growth.