WEBVTT - SYSK Selects: How Population Works 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:05.280 Hi, everybody, it's Chuck and I am introducing this week's 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:08.559 Stuff you Should Know Selects episode. This is from the 0:00:08.640 --> 0:00:13.320 Vault from two zero zero nine two nine November twelve, 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:17.240 and it's called How Population Works. And I picked this 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:21.120 one because I remember this being a super cool episode 0:00:21.160 --> 0:00:23.760 because it was one of those where I thought, population, 0:00:24.239 --> 0:00:26.920 what does that even mean? And how can we make 0:00:26.960 --> 0:00:31.159 a show out a full show about this? And it 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:32.879 turned out to be great. Um, Josh, I think it 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:35.680 was his pick initially, and it's just really really cool. 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:38.360 So if you don't even know what, uh what how 0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:41.040 Population Works might mean, give it a listen. I think 0:00:41.040 --> 0:00:50.080 you'll be pretty intrigued. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know 0:00:50.720 --> 0:00:59.120 from House Stuff Works dot com. Punky chucking, pocky chucking, 0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:02.200 puckey chucking. That's right, CHUCKK And welcome to the podcast. 0:01:02.280 --> 0:01:06.280 I'm Josh Clark. Clearly Chuck Bryant's here, and uh, let's 0:01:06.640 --> 0:01:09.160 talk about punkin Chunking. I guess you just kind of 0:01:09.200 --> 0:01:12.040 forced our hand, Chuck. Yes, the road to punkin Chunking 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:15.679 and punkin Chunking. So that's on. That's on Science Channel 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:19.280 a p m. Eastern time on Thanksgiving night. Yeah, you 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:23.440 can see some pumpkins get chunk punkins. Get chunk Punkins. Yeah, 0:01:23.520 --> 0:01:26.840 okay again. Science Channel. The Road to Punkin Chunkin starts 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:30.319 at eight pm Eastern Time. Punkin chunk In Itself starts 0:01:30.319 --> 0:01:36.720 at nine Thanksgiving night. Yes, Science Channel on with the show. Yeah, chuck, Um, 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:41.039 have you ever belonged to a population? No? Man, I'm like, 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:44.280 I'm totally independent. Screw population. You're like that guy who 0:01:44.480 --> 0:01:46.919 lives in the commune, right right, Yeah, Well the joke's 0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:51.200 on him, because a commune constitutes a population. That's right. Um, 0:01:51.640 --> 0:01:54.120 this sounds kind of boring, and you would think it is. 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:57.920 Do how population works. It actually started to pick up. 0:01:58.000 --> 0:01:59.680 Actually didn't know what it was even gonna be. When 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:02.120 I saw how population works, I was like, what, you know, 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:04.640 it's awesome. This was my idea this article was. I 0:02:04.720 --> 0:02:07.800 pinched it. Why didn't they let you write it? I 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:10.600 don't know, jerks, I know, but the grabst did a 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:13.640 good job with it. Oh yeah, the grabs is always good. Yeah, class, 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:17.400 that's ed grab Anowsky. By the way, right, So, um, 0:02:17.680 --> 0:02:25.120 human beings marriage, human beings tend to um congregate, Yes, 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:29.960 we segregate. Interestingly, that is an excellent. You just blew 0:02:30.000 --> 0:02:34.080 my mind, good lord chuck. UM. Well, let's get back 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:36.040 to what I was saying, unless you want to go 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:39.280 on the segregation. We'll get on that later. UM. Humans 0:02:40.080 --> 0:02:44.440 congregate and segregate. But let's talk about congregation and that UM. 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:49.000 Most of the time, I would say, our early early ancestors, UH, 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:53.040 and probably even other species congregate because they're safety and 0:02:53.120 --> 0:02:56.639 numbers and it helps like with farming, collecting water and 0:02:56.680 --> 0:03:00.000 food power numbers. But even before farming, UM a hundred 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:04.359 hunter gatherers lived in bands. I think thirty was about tops. 0:03:04.360 --> 0:03:06.680 They figured out somewhere along the way that groups of 0:03:06.760 --> 0:03:09.760 thirty or groups of more than thirty there tended to 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:13.440 be a lot more hostility and UM inner group problems. 0:03:13.480 --> 0:03:14.760 Have you ever tried to kill a mass it on 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:19.840 by yourself? That's another good point too. There's cooperation mastered 0:03:20.000 --> 0:03:25.440 on UM. There's UM. If if let's say, if you 0:03:25.520 --> 0:03:28.400 are farming and your crop fails, well you're not standing 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:33.440 there like, well I'm in trouble. You can say, hey, neighbor, UM, 0:03:33.520 --> 0:03:37.080 I'll totally give you favors of some variety if you 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:39.240 will let me have some of your grain. I can 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:43.120 a chicken. Let's say, sure you can trade. There's a 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:46.720 lot of reasons people live together. So it's my theory 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:51.160 that people aggregate together naturally. Yes, And then there are 0:03:51.200 --> 0:03:54.160 people out there who get their jollies by studying these 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:57.640 groups of people. They're called demographer demographers. So we have 0:03:57.920 --> 0:04:02.120 populations natural or otherwise. And let's a natural population, uh 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:06.720 today are people who live in a certain state Georgians. 0:04:07.240 --> 0:04:10.320 That's where we are, So that you have natural populations 0:04:10.320 --> 0:04:15.040 in demographer's studying, right, um, and they look at things 0:04:15.160 --> 0:04:18.520 like say, how many people in this natural population are 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:23.080 Republicans or Democrat? Or how many are Caucasian? Right? Or 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:27.200 how many have um, how many you live below the 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:30.080 poverty line? All kinds of things you can study right 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:34.000 by looking at a population and are are is this? 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:37.520 Are these groups segregated like you brought up? You know, 0:04:37.560 --> 0:04:40.839 like if you study, uh, where different races are living? 0:04:41.000 --> 0:04:43.440 Are they living mingling? If so, then that's probably a 0:04:43.520 --> 0:04:47.800 fairly harmonious place hopefully. If not, why are they living apart? 0:04:47.920 --> 0:04:50.880 How do we fix this? Because it's probably a problem. 0:04:51.760 --> 0:04:57.040 Who knows? But yes, so demographers study populations natural or otherwise? Right, Yes, 0:04:58.160 --> 0:05:01.479 The problem is is you. Very few people have the 0:05:01.520 --> 0:05:05.560 ability to hover over the earth and use super binocular 0:05:05.680 --> 0:05:10.840 vision to study populations by side. Very few people, Yeah, 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:14.520 like three or four I think tops. Uh so does 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:17.440 that count as a statistic I think so? Okay, Richard, 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:20.800 um So measuring populations after you can talk about how 0:05:20.839 --> 0:05:23.159 do we actually determine this kind of thing? Yeah, that 0:05:23.240 --> 0:05:25.800 was my That was That was a good segue. There's 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:30.880 a kind of ways. One is um by counting them 0:05:30.920 --> 0:05:34.359 literally counting them, like counting every single person, right, and 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:38.040 that is called complete enumeration. Yeah. Remember we talked about 0:05:38.080 --> 0:05:40.599 that poor guy who was killed or possibly kill himself 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:43.240 in Kentucky, the census taker, right. Oh, I didn't know 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:45.920 that suicide was a possibility there. I got a cryptic 0:05:45.960 --> 0:05:48.880 email from somebody never followed up on that said that 0:05:49.040 --> 0:05:53.000 he identified himself as a doctor and I think said 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:56.760 that he was part of the group that was the 0:05:56.880 --> 0:06:01.880 medical examination team and said that they suspect, strongly suspected suicide. 0:06:02.360 --> 0:06:04.320 My problem with it is is how do you bind 0:06:04.360 --> 0:06:08.480 yourself in duct tape? How do you bind your own 0:06:08.520 --> 0:06:12.480 risks and duct tape? I'll show you later, Okay, um 0:06:12.560 --> 0:06:15.840 So my point is, Wow, he threw me off of 0:06:15.920 --> 0:06:20.440 that one. My point is that he was called an enumerator. Yes, 0:06:20.760 --> 0:06:24.120 literally counter, and that's the people who work for the census. 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:27.240 Whenever they had their their drive and they count and 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:29.560 that's one way to determine it. Well, let's talk about 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:32.800 the census. It's gone on every ten years since, right, 0:06:33.120 --> 0:06:34.919 And the reason they do it every ten years because 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:37.159 it's real pain in the asked to count every person 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:39.200 in America. Yeah, the real reason they do it so 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:43.560 they can. Well, there's a lot of reasons, but that 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:47.680 is the reason why anyone's ever conducted a census. Yeah. Well, 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:50.960 plus they they determine the number of house representatives for 0:06:51.000 --> 0:06:53.240 your state based on population stuff like that. Oh yeah, 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:55.520 there's that too. But you know, come on, Texas, did 0:06:55.560 --> 0:07:00.359 you know that, um, that that the census inform nation 0:07:01.080 --> 0:07:04.159 is kept is kept secret for seventy two years aside 0:07:04.160 --> 0:07:07.159 from the numbers, I believe the public cannot see that 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:09.400 information for seventy two years, Right, what do I seventy 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:12.000 two that's odd? It is odd. I wonder if that 0:07:12.040 --> 0:07:15.160 was the average lifespan at the time or something. Dude, 0:07:15.400 --> 0:07:18.520 that's got to be it. I'll bet you're right. Okay. 0:07:18.960 --> 0:07:23.280 The other way, Josh, is to uh do something called sampling, 0:07:23.560 --> 0:07:27.640 and that is when um statticians use a mathematical formula 0:07:27.680 --> 0:07:32.640 to determine the minimum number of people that must be counted, 0:07:32.760 --> 0:07:37.080 and then they multiply that out and basically end up 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:40.080 getting a full population. And sometimes I did, I didn't 0:07:40.080 --> 0:07:43.200 know this. That's even more accurate than an actual head count. 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:46.080 You see that margin of air, it's like plus or 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:48.440 minus four percent. Yeah, you gotta have a margin of 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:51.280 error there whenever you're sampling, right, because you're not actually 0:07:51.280 --> 0:07:54.360 going around asking every single person in America are you 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:57.320 left handed? To determine how many people are left handed? 0:07:58.280 --> 0:07:59.920 But let's say you have a population with a thou 0:08:00.160 --> 0:08:03.120 in and some statistician has been like, you need a 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:08.440 hundred do it, but do your egghead voice, Yeah, you 0:08:08.480 --> 0:08:10.920 need a hundred and fifty people. The hundred and fifty 0:08:10.920 --> 0:08:13.080 people and that are left handed, and you can just 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:15.960 multiply that out to determine that there are, in fact 0:08:16.440 --> 0:08:19.000 how many people, let's say, ten percent of the population 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:24.480 of the population. But your sample is perfect. Your sample 0:08:24.600 --> 0:08:29.600 has to be a random sample to be an effective sample. Yeah, 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:31.200 and you know how they used to do that. Uh 0:08:31.280 --> 0:08:32.560 huh at used to just pick it out of the 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:35.679 phone book. Oh, I know and call people I know. 0:08:35.800 --> 0:08:39.240 And that makes sense to a certain extent. No, well 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:40.920 back then it made a little more sense. I would 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:43.560 think it made it made less sense, especially if you're 0:08:43.600 --> 0:08:46.120 talking like nineteen fifty years. Well, it depends on what year. 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:48.559 I'd say in the nineteen eighties it was probably a 0:08:48.600 --> 0:08:51.640 good way. But now there are cell phones. People in 0:08:51.640 --> 0:08:53.960 college probably don't have a phone. Poor people who don't 0:08:53.960 --> 0:08:55.680 have phones at all, people who don't have phone. Sure, 0:08:55.800 --> 0:08:58.080 so that's not a very good way. Because what about 0:08:58.720 --> 0:09:02.760 freight train writers of America? What's that they don't have funds? 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:05.440 Oh yeah, good point. Yeah, they're not allowed. I don't 0:09:05.440 --> 0:09:07.800 think they want them. So sampling is a little harder 0:09:07.840 --> 0:09:11.640 than it seems. Yeah, right, especially coming with a random 0:09:11.679 --> 0:09:15.600 populationandom sample of the population. Um. But okay, so so 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:20.560 far we've talked about people and where they live. There's 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:23.640 other ways to define a population. There's other attributes that 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:26.520 people have that we use to lump into population. It's 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:30.040 not just a geography when people think um populations, it's 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:34.760 not just a city population or state. Yes, what acian 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:37.640 age you have a population of age or continent, a 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:43.600 demographic what else location of course, socio economic Well, population, 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:45.760 let's talk about age. Why would you even want to 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:49.199 know age? Who cares? People are old, people are young? Whatever? Right, Well, 0:09:49.240 --> 0:09:51.600 there's a lot of factors like, um, take the baby 0:09:51.600 --> 0:09:53.960 boom for instance, after World War Two, all these babies 0:09:53.960 --> 0:09:56.960 were born, so there was a bulge in the population. 0:09:57.200 --> 0:09:59.400 And I just like saying that we're bulged. You got 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:03.400 to do the air quote. So, um, what that will 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:05.160 show them then is wow, we got a bulge here. 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:09.880 So that means probably in to sixty years there's gonna 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:13.240 be some serious buying power. Let's start borrowing as much 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:15.600 money as we can right now. But it also means 0:10:15.679 --> 0:10:19.960 in seventy plus years that they may be a medical 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:23.080 burden and a burden on social security. So let's start 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:26.440 borrowing as much money as we can right now. Same 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:29.839 same result there. I like that, and we'll get to 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:33.840 bulges again in a little bit. But let's move on. 0:10:33.880 --> 0:10:36.920 Like you said, socioeconomic data, right, yeah, what what why 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:38.679 would they want to do this job? This one? I found? 0:10:38.720 --> 0:10:41.920 I find this the most interesting of all data. You 0:10:41.960 --> 0:10:45.079 can look at a bunch of people who are maybe 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:49.640 related geographically, um, but other than that, aren't related in 0:10:49.679 --> 0:10:53.280 any other way. Uh. And all of them suddenly have 0:10:53.600 --> 0:10:57.240 this horrible cancer and they're just so happens to be 0:10:57.400 --> 0:11:02.400 some manufacturer there by what did you say, high tension wires, 0:11:03.360 --> 0:11:05.800 which has been proven I think, to not actually have 0:11:05.840 --> 0:11:10.480 any effect on people, not in my buddy. Um. So uh, now, 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:13.240 all of a sudden you have this information thanks to 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:17.079 your demographer friend who went and collected it, and um, 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:20.880 you can say, okay, paint factory, you guys better start 0:11:20.880 --> 0:11:26.280 giving away some free paint, yeah, or we're gonna sue you. Race. 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:30.520 That's a little little more hinky, because technically there is 0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:33.640 no such thing as any difference in different races. I 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:37.720 remember watching MTV years and years and years ago, and um, 0:11:37.840 --> 0:11:41.680 the VJ was interviewing the Bastie Boys and he was like, 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:44.679 Mike D, I hear you're dating a black girl. You know, 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:47.640 what's it like dating somebody from a different race, Which 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:49.800 is just an anthenine question to begin with. But I 0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:52.920 remember Mike D going there's only one race, the human race, 0:11:53.400 --> 0:11:57.880 And I was like, huh. That was clearly before he 0:11:57.960 --> 0:12:02.400 was down with the ione or no, was ad Rock sorry. Yeah, 0:12:02.480 --> 0:12:05.040 add rocks down with the Ionia. They're divorced though, so 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:08.040 he's not down with her anymore. Ione. Uh So, Yeah, 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:10.720 race is a little hinky, but you can't actually determine 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:14.400 some um useful things when you study populations of race 0:12:15.000 --> 0:12:17.280 because of like you know, it's important for people to 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:20.600 be involved in their culture. Yeah, and to hang onto 0:12:20.679 --> 0:12:24.360 that for sure. I guess racial profiling again. I don't 0:12:24.360 --> 0:12:25.840 know if I should say again or not, but it's 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:30.000 such a hot button issue that Yeah, I don't know. 0:12:30.880 --> 0:12:33.120 We need to talk about it collectively. That's my answer 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:35.480 for everything. Everybody needs to get together and decide what 0:12:35.520 --> 0:12:37.360 we want to do. Okay. Well, the other thing with race, 0:12:37.440 --> 0:12:39.600 so is if there's a medical problem the specific to 0:12:39.679 --> 0:13:06.000 that race that can help out that exactly true. It's alright, so, Chuck, 0:13:06.000 --> 0:13:10.800 We've got all these different factors, attributes, variables. We've used 0:13:10.840 --> 0:13:15.480 the word demographer several times. Um, so we know that 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:19.079 people study populations. One of the reasons why we study 0:13:19.120 --> 0:13:23.440 populations is to see how big it's getting. And I 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:27.440 gotta tell you, buddy, the human population is kind of 0:13:27.480 --> 0:13:31.280 exploded on this planet in the last several thousand years. Yeah, 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:32.880 but you know what they were reading these stats. There 0:13:32.880 --> 0:13:35.679 were a lot more people here way back when than 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:39.880 I thought. Yeah again, favorite book of all Time fourteen 0:13:40.360 --> 0:13:45.040 one UM Charles C. Man. Yes, he basically points out 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:48.880 that there is probably a hundred million people on the 0:13:48.960 --> 0:13:54.520 North American or on the in the America's uh in Yeah, 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:56.960 which is a fifth of the world population. Is way 0:13:56.960 --> 0:14:00.240 more than anyone thought. And the reason why is because 0:14:01.400 --> 0:14:06.079 Columbus shows up. Smallpox just ravages both continents and by 0:14:06.080 --> 0:14:10.200 the time the European settlers start coming for real, uh, 0:14:10.320 --> 0:14:13.160 the places decimated. It seems like there's nobody there right. Well, 0:14:13.200 --> 0:14:14.920 he had the whole genocide to things you ever know 0:14:14.960 --> 0:14:18.000 about that Columbus I hear um his men used to 0:14:18.040 --> 0:14:20.880 like sharpen their knives on like the skulls of live 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:26.440 um live natives. Well, there's the because genocide we talked 0:14:26.440 --> 0:14:30.520 about later on um in the article. But there's uh 0:14:30.800 --> 0:14:34.160 speculation that Columbus may have been responsible for like the 0:14:34.200 --> 0:14:38.120 worst mass genocide in human history by completely wiping out 0:14:38.200 --> 0:14:42.800 the the Tano Taino Indian people. And that was in Hispanielo, 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:45.440 which is modern day I think Haiti and Dominican Republic. 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:47.840 And they some people say there were only like five 0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:49.840 thousand of them, and some people say there were as 0:14:49.840 --> 0:14:53.800 many as fifteen million at the time that were decimated 0:14:53.840 --> 0:14:58.480 to about two thousand. Decimated through violence or through disease. Yeah, 0:14:58.480 --> 0:15:00.800 well through violence, because Columbus came over, set up a 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:04.080 camp in Hispaniola for about forty people, and then left, 0:15:04.840 --> 0:15:07.960 came back on trip number two and found that the 0:15:08.720 --> 0:15:11.560 Indian tribe there had killed all those people. So he 0:15:11.640 --> 0:15:15.760 went on to kill crazy rampage basically and completely wiped 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:18.240 out the population. And they're saying it may have been 0:15:18.280 --> 0:15:23.280 like double the size of the Holocaust. So Happy Columbus Day, everybody, seriously, 0:15:23.760 --> 0:15:25.840 but we do mention that because genocide is is a 0:15:25.880 --> 0:15:29.440 way that a population can change rapidly. Well, let's talk 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:32.880 about population growth. Yes, all right, so I guess about 0:15:32.880 --> 0:15:36.160 ten thousand BC, they estimate that there's between one and 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:39.840 ten million humans. So we're starting to slowly grow because 0:15:39.880 --> 0:15:43.280 by one thousand BC there's fifty million, and then by 0:15:43.320 --> 0:15:47.720 six hundred ce UM we're at two millions. See that's 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:49.960 a lot more than I thought. Yeah, there would be 0:15:49.960 --> 0:15:52.320 at the time. Yeah, I think there was about five 0:15:52.400 --> 0:15:57.680 hundred million in the mid fifteen century. So um, let's go. 0:15:57.760 --> 0:16:00.760 But let's say there's a five million in the mid 0:16:00.800 --> 0:16:05.120 fifteenth century. The twentieth century, the industrial revolutions happened, There's 0:16:05.200 --> 0:16:09.280 been great leaps in science and UM medicine. That's when 0:16:09.320 --> 0:16:12.240 populations really grow is during those big booms. Yeah, because 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:16.400 it lends itself to fertility, higher and fertility and um 0:16:16.600 --> 0:16:20.880 longer lifespans, good times breed kids. So the twentieth century 0:16:20.920 --> 0:16:24.320 hits were at one point five billion people and then 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:29.960 this century the population of the world has quad druple. Yeah, 0:16:30.880 --> 0:16:33.040 and with like six billions. I know that that. It 0:16:33.120 --> 0:16:35.040 sounded like there should have been a drum roll there, 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:37.520 but maybe there was. By that Jerry might have put 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:40.000 one in there, our producer, Jerry, we'll find out later. Uh. 0:16:40.040 --> 0:16:43.520 And Josh here projecting the U. S. CENTSUS Bureau projects 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:47.600 that by there will be ten billion people. Right. So 0:16:47.680 --> 0:16:50.760 the reason for this is what we call the lenthusisant 0:16:50.800 --> 0:16:56.880 growth model. Mouth. This was a eighteenth century clergyman, Thomas 0:16:57.200 --> 0:17:02.240 huh he uh he actually, I guess inadvertently became one 0:17:02.240 --> 0:17:06.320 of the great economic theorists, and he figured out that 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:10.320 population grows exponentially. Right, So if you have one million 0:17:10.320 --> 0:17:12.960 people and they have enough kids double the population. But 0:17:13.040 --> 0:17:15.200 the next generation you have four million people. So in 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:17.680 one full generation you've gone from one million to four 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:23.320 million people. Right. Yeah, that's that's big, especially when the 0:17:23.359 --> 0:17:27.000 planet is finite in size and we don't have the 0:17:27.040 --> 0:17:30.120 ability to go colonize other planets yet. Right. But it's 0:17:30.119 --> 0:17:34.240 not necessarily that incremental and steady because of what we 0:17:34.280 --> 0:17:41.280 talked about, which are bulges or spikes and bottlenecks like genocide. Right, yeah, 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:45.239 so it doesn't always grow steadily. And actually, Chuck, if 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:48.640 you heard of the replacement right now, the replacement rate 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:52.800 is it's how many kids a woman has to have 0:17:53.600 --> 0:17:57.720 to have a high uh statistical probability of having a 0:17:57.800 --> 0:18:02.560 daughter so that she in essence replaces herself. And right 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:05.439 now it's two point three three is the replacement rate worldwide, 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:09.119 and the point of it is to trend towards zero 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:12.639 population growth. Right, So for every woman who dies, she 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:16.760 has a daughter that can reproduce and and continue on 0:18:16.840 --> 0:18:19.440 and continue on and continue on, So you have overall 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:22.440 as many people dying as they're being born, so there's 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:27.440 no strain, right, and there's also no um dearth. Well, 0:18:27.480 --> 0:18:30.159 it's equilibrium that reading this reminded me of when we 0:18:30.160 --> 0:18:33.359 did our Big Econ audio book. It's kind of population 0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:37.600 kind of wants to seek equilibrium. I think, like, uh, 0:18:37.840 --> 0:18:41.200 just like economics does and and and it doesn't always happen, 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:46.080 uh organically, I should say it probably rarely happens organically. 0:18:46.280 --> 0:18:48.840 But let's think about um. Like you said, the baby boom, 0:18:49.440 --> 0:18:54.520 post war success in in Europe and um, the US 0:18:54.560 --> 0:18:58.520 and Canada, I guess lead to UM a huge boom 0:18:58.520 --> 0:19:01.119 in the population. No, it he went to war to 0:19:01.440 --> 0:19:04.480 grow the population. It was just an indirect effect. So 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:06.760 all of a sudden we had a population spike that 0:19:06.880 --> 0:19:10.399 created a bulge. Bulge if you will, things can go 0:19:10.520 --> 0:19:13.520 the other way to which is a bottleneck. Right. Yeah, 0:19:13.600 --> 0:19:16.400 And that's well we and God, if I say genocide 0:19:16.400 --> 0:19:18.719 one more time, we should do a podcast in genocide. 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:20.479 I wonder if there's a drinking game where every time 0:19:20.520 --> 0:19:26.720 it's like genocide, gide drink um. Famine disease. Uh, something 0:19:26.760 --> 0:19:29.000 called the plague I think wiped out like half the 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:31.560 world population at one point, or half the population of Europe. 0:19:31.600 --> 0:19:36.320 They suspect that um in uh the fifth century. That 0:19:36.359 --> 0:19:40.320 would be a c e. The plague of Justinian may 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:43.919 have killed as many as half the world's population, a 0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:47.359 hundred million people. Unbelievable. Can you imagine walking around at 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:50.639 that time, like, holy crap, the entire half the world 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:53.120 is dead, just died in the last couple of years. 0:19:53.119 --> 0:19:55.440 It's crazy. In the Black Death killed twenty to thirty 0:19:55.440 --> 0:20:00.320 million Europeans, So so plagues can happen. There's also I 0:20:00.760 --> 0:20:04.040 was talking to an evolutionary geneticist this is my way 0:20:04.640 --> 0:20:09.280 um today recently, and he was talking about study he 0:20:10.320 --> 0:20:15.080 authored where they found two evolutionary bottlenecks, one coming out 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:18.880 of Africa. Uh, they suggested a fifty thousand years ago 0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:22.680 and another one that happened along the bearing Land Bridge, right. 0:20:23.080 --> 0:20:25.000 And he wasn't saying like all of a sudden a 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:29.080 bunch of people died, but um, these bottlenecks turned up 0:20:29.119 --> 0:20:32.760 because big groups of people separating in smaller groups of people, 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:35.920 which is which accounts for a loss of genetic diversity. 0:20:36.400 --> 0:20:39.240 So you have the founders effect. Because, as he put it, 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:41.920 if you take um, if you go into a town 0:20:42.160 --> 0:20:44.760 and grab the first fifteen people you meet and say, 0:20:44.840 --> 0:20:47.080 let's go found a new town. That new town isn't 0:20:47.080 --> 0:20:49.760 going to have a representative sample of all the surnames 0:20:49.760 --> 0:20:52.119 in that town. If you do that enough time, some 0:20:52.160 --> 0:20:55.080 surnames are going to be lost because people didn't reproduce 0:20:55.160 --> 0:20:58.160 or whatever. The same thing happens with jenes and genetic diversity. 0:20:58.359 --> 0:21:02.480 Look at you stuff? Thanks? Uh? Can I mention this 0:21:02.520 --> 0:21:05.800 place in Hong Kong? Yeah, we're talking about well we 0:21:05.840 --> 0:21:10.120 should mention. Population density is the number of humans per 0:21:10.240 --> 0:21:13.040 unit area whatever unit you you know, you choose to 0:21:13.440 --> 0:21:16.639 call it. And the highest ever is believed to have 0:21:16.760 --> 0:21:22.399 been a place called Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong, 0:21:22.920 --> 0:21:25.600 and at one point evidently there were fifty thousand people 0:21:26.720 --> 0:21:28.960 in a mega block, which is five hundred by six 0:21:29.400 --> 0:21:33.520 fifty feet. Fifty thousand people stuffed in there, and apparently 0:21:33.520 --> 0:21:36.560 it was a lawless district. The grabsters. She's kidding me, 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:41.520 fifty people could conceivably get along. Yeah, hands across America style? 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:44.800 Did you know that? Um? In Athens when Widespread Panic 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:47.399 played that free show, there was an estimated hundred thousand 0:21:47.440 --> 0:21:51.320 people there, not one fight really, Yeah, that's because they 0:21:51.320 --> 0:21:55.320 were all on dope. The dope. I wasn't there? Were 0:21:55.359 --> 0:21:58.240 you there? Yeah? I never got into them. Although I 0:21:58.240 --> 0:22:01.400 did hang out with that guy the bass play day schools. Yeah, 0:22:01.520 --> 0:22:03.080 I hung out with him a couple of times, just 0:22:03.080 --> 0:22:06.840 through friends. Anyway, Uh, that that park is no, I'm sorry. 0:22:07.000 --> 0:22:09.959 It is now a park where the walled city used 0:22:10.000 --> 0:22:15.480 to be. Yeah, which is the opposite of the highest population. Ironically, 0:22:15.480 --> 0:22:18.720 it's just the park maybe the highest population of grass. 0:22:18.720 --> 0:22:44.400 But that's it. So what do we got here, Josh? 0:22:44.440 --> 0:22:48.360 We got um. Population control is something that we've referenced 0:22:48.359 --> 0:22:51.399 before with our China One Child policy. Yeah, and we 0:22:51.440 --> 0:22:53.680 talked about why you would want to control the population. 0:22:54.000 --> 0:22:57.000 A huge group of people put a strain on resources. 0:22:57.320 --> 0:23:00.280 When resources go away, you have resource conflicts like in 0:23:00.600 --> 0:23:05.679 darfour again genocide. Right. Um. There's all sorts of problems 0:23:05.720 --> 0:23:09.880 that come from too many people coming or living in 0:23:09.920 --> 0:23:12.800 one place because of the strain that puts on resources 0:23:12.800 --> 0:23:17.280 and resource allocation. Right. Um. And yeah, you can control 0:23:17.320 --> 0:23:23.840 the population e g. You know, state mandated reproduction um China. Right, 0:23:24.240 --> 0:23:28.560 and that actually works as as China shows. Um, although 0:23:28.760 --> 0:23:31.680 much to the detriment of some people, Thank you, Chuck 0:23:32.080 --> 0:23:35.680 for that. Look and not everyone thinks um, some people 0:23:35.680 --> 0:23:38.679 think we should add more people though, well, yeah, there's Japan. 0:23:38.960 --> 0:23:42.320 In other countries there's a problem of population declins. So 0:23:42.359 --> 0:23:46.320 we talked about the strain um people put on an 0:23:46.359 --> 0:23:49.159 area that's carrying capacity, which we've talked about before, and 0:23:49.280 --> 0:23:54.040 that's also from Malthus, that eventually human population is going 0:23:54.080 --> 0:24:01.600 to outstrip advances in technology or our resources and we're screwed. Right. Um, 0:24:01.680 --> 0:24:04.560 on the other side, is shrinking, population shrinking? And what's 0:24:04.560 --> 0:24:07.440 the problem with that, Well, you don't want the population 0:24:07.480 --> 0:24:10.720 to shrink too much because you, uh, you need those 0:24:10.760 --> 0:24:13.800 hands to go to work and to contribute to the 0:24:13.840 --> 0:24:17.240 economy and to grow the grain and sow the flower 0:24:17.440 --> 0:24:20.800 and all that good stuff. And apparently in Russia, Japan, 0:24:20.840 --> 0:24:23.879 and Australia they all have like little incentive programs to 0:24:23.920 --> 0:24:26.280 make little babies. Sure, how about that? Which is the 0:24:26.320 --> 0:24:29.640 way to go? Remember John Fuller's famous quote, um, when 0:24:29.640 --> 0:24:32.800 he was pitching an article about that program in Russia, 0:24:32.840 --> 0:24:35.680