The Week Unwrapped: Africa rising, ticket offices, and the Spanish infanta

Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days. With Harriet Marsden, Sorcha Bradley and Suchandrika Chakrabarti

You can subscribe to The Week Unwrapped wherever you get your podcasts:

• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts
• Global Player

In this week's episode, we discuss:

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Africa rising

The population of Africa is projected to nearly double over the next 25 years, to 2.5 billion. Already, the median age of the continent is 19 – compared with 38 in the US and China, and 40 in the UK. By 2050, about more than a third of the world's young people will live in Africa. But what are the implications for this so-called "youthquake"? How does this drive both cultural revolution, increasing unemployment and desperate migration? How will Africa support its people? And how will the world react?

Ticket offices

The government has reversed its decision to close rail ticket offices in England, abandoning proposals to shut nearly all 1,007 train station outlets. Have rail unions struck a blow against automation? And does rail ticketing need reform?

The Spanish infanta

Princess Leonor, the heir to the Spanish throne, stepped into the public eye as she celebrated turning 18 this week. On her birthday, she pledged allegiance to the Spain's constitution, cementing her place as the country's future monarch. But the ceremony faced a boycott from republican ministers and Catalan and Basque nationalist MPs, critical of the scandal-laden monarchy. Can Princess Leonor salvage the monarchy's bruised reputation? And are there lessons for the British monarchy?