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What is China's one-child policy? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
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Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuckers Bryant. You know, one day I'm just
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Speaker 1: not going to show up. I'll do both of our bits.
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Speaker 1: I'll be like, hey, I'm Josh, Hey, I'm Chuck. Hey,
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Speaker 1: I'm Josh. Hey, I'm Chuck. I think it's pretty accurate.
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Speaker 1: Good luck with that shows good luck although I finally
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Speaker 1: get to be shirtless the whole time. Are you ready
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Speaker 1: for a little bit of irony this this afternoon? Yeah,
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Speaker 1: let's hear it um. Back in nine okay short, little
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Speaker 1: six years before Ghostbusters, Apple cheeked No. Thirty five? Uh short,
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Speaker 1: little happy apple cheeked Chinese man named Mal's a Dung,
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Speaker 1: also known as Chairman Mao, established the People's Republic of
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Speaker 1: China Z yes and uh. One of the things that
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Speaker 1: they were um big on was reproduction. I guess it's
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Speaker 1: the only way to put in okay um. The the
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Speaker 1: communist government under Chairman Mao UM they opposed birth control.
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Speaker 1: They banned the import of contraceptives, and in in forty
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Speaker 1: nine he said, of all the things in the world,
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Speaker 1: people are the most precious. Ready for the ironic twist? Yes,
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Speaker 1: thirty years later, China catapulted itself to the forefront of
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Speaker 1: state controlled reproduction, which what came to be known as
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Speaker 1: its one child policy. Discuss you know what, I got
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Speaker 1: a little stat for your speaking. In the life expectancy
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Speaker 1: in China was then like seven thirty five years old.
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Speaker 1: Holy cow, and it's seventy three years old now. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: with the with the communist government came things like sanitation,
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Speaker 1: relative peace. War had had beleaguered China for generations, had
2:04
Speaker 1: been killing people left and right, and as a result,
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Speaker 1: the population just skyrocketed. Indeed, and the old image of
2:12
Speaker 1: China that we have is probably like four or five kids,
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Speaker 1: a couple of parents, a couple of grandparents, and auntie
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Speaker 1: and uncle like packed together living in a house. Not
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Speaker 1: true anymore, No, not anymore because of the one child policy.
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Speaker 1: So let's talk about this. This is something people might
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Speaker 1: have heard of before. But first of all, why did
2:31
Speaker 1: it come about. It came about from the population skyrocketing, right. Well,
2:35
Speaker 1: I've got some more info actually, are you ready for this?
2:38
Speaker 1: You want to know how it really came about? Yeah,
2:40
Speaker 1: you didn't look at any of this, I song Jianne. No, okay,
2:46
Speaker 1: all right, we're all gonna learn here. Then let's hear
2:48
Speaker 1: Mr Smart. Apparently there was a system's control specialist in China.
2:55
Speaker 1: He decides to visit Europe and back then, um, he
3:00
Speaker 1: was kind of isolated from the outside world, like many
3:03
Speaker 1: of the people in China, the intellection known for isolation. Yeah,
3:07
Speaker 1: so he goes to Europe and he picks up a
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Speaker 1: little book called The Limits to Growth. Have you ever
3:10
Speaker 1: heard of this? The Limits of Growth was a really
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Speaker 1: controversial book um to study put out by a think
3:16
Speaker 1: tank called the Club of Rome, and basically they said,
3:20
Speaker 1: in a nutshell the world will end by because of
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Speaker 1: population overrun and uh. They brought it out to big
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Speaker 1: fanfare along with The Blueprint for Survival, which was published
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Speaker 1: in seventy two in England, who basically said that people
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Speaker 1: in Britain were reproducing too quick and they couldn't maintain Uh.
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Speaker 1: He goes back to China with these books and he said,
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Speaker 1: you know, it really made sense to me, and so
3:45
Speaker 1: he was connected. He formed a little group. Uh, and
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Speaker 1: decided to take it to the government and said, hey,
3:52
Speaker 1: we're gonna you know, he started applying these studies and
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Speaker 1: these statistics to China and said, we're in big trouble.
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Speaker 1: And so he took all this stuff and basically it
4:02
Speaker 1: was from there that it leap frogged, uh, that it
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Speaker 1: catapulted rather into a reality. However, the ironic thing is
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Speaker 1: is that whole limits to growth Apparently it was a
4:13
Speaker 1: bunch of bunk and it was based on bad statistics.
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Speaker 1: And the co founder, I'm sorry, the founder of the
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Speaker 1: Book of Rome, who actually helped write the book, came
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Speaker 1: out a couple of years later and they had a
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Speaker 1: retraction that said they wanted to jolt people from the
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Speaker 1: comfortable idea that present growth trends could continue indefinitely. So
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Speaker 1: they basically said, we were trying to scare people, and
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Speaker 1: we cooked up a bunch of studies which led to
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Speaker 1: China's one child policy. That's pretty cool. That's not the
4:42
Speaker 1: only thing, though, I think um China has uh never
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Speaker 1: apologized for its policy and one of the reasons why
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Speaker 1: they instituted it was because the population was growing rapidly UM,
4:55
Speaker 1: which is fine, right. That the reason that chairman MoU
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Speaker 1: Is like reproduced, reproduced was because his vision for China was, uh,
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Speaker 1: this huge booming economy based on tons and tons of labor. Right,
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Speaker 1: it kind of makes sense in a way, it does
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Speaker 1: make sense. The problem is, right now China has a
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Speaker 1: quarter of the world's population but only seven percent of
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Speaker 1: the world's arable land. That's that's that is a rub
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Speaker 1: right there. Um. So one of the one of the reasons,
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Speaker 1: in addition to this fake book that the institute the
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Speaker 1: one child policy was to slow this population growth, right,
5:30
Speaker 1: and it worked tremendously, right it did, you know at
5:33
Speaker 1: ninth Well it worked to the team of about four
5:35
Speaker 1: hundred million kids not born, Is that right? It depends
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Speaker 1: on who you talk to. Four millions the high end
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Speaker 1: that I've seen. The lowest i've seen is two d
5:43
Speaker 1: and fifty million. Even still, that's substantial since in the
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Speaker 1: last thirty years, you know, they said in nineteen eighty
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Speaker 1: was the the what's it officially called the National Population
5:53
Speaker 1: and Family Planning Commission of China, the state agency that
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Speaker 1: runs the reproduction control They said in nineteen eighty that
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Speaker 1: we must have a cap in the by the year
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Speaker 1: two thousand of one point two billion people, and uh,
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Speaker 1: it's projected that they had one point to seven. They
6:08
Speaker 1: weren't too far off, but that's Chinese figures, and continue
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Speaker 1: to grow. Now there's one point three three actually in
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Speaker 1: more than that, because that was two thousand eight. Yeah,
6:16
Speaker 1: apparently every year China adds the population of Belgium to
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Speaker 1: its own population ten million people. They literally bring over
6:23
Speaker 1: everyone from Belgium. Come on, and then Belgium has to
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Speaker 1: start from scratch again. They get to ten million, and
6:29
Speaker 1: every January, come on, Belgium, I'm gonna go to Belgium.
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Speaker 1: Next January. You can go, free trip trip to China.
6:35
Speaker 1: Well now, so I can stick my claim there in Belgium. Okay,
6:39
Speaker 1: just moving too, somehow move you to China eventually, chuck. So, okay,
6:43
Speaker 1: we have this huge population explosion. It's still going just
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Speaker 1: because if you have one point three billion people, even
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Speaker 1: allowing them to have one kid is going to add
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Speaker 1: an add an add up. What's the projection. I believe
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Speaker 1: by twenty there expected to peak at one point six billion.
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Speaker 1: That is a lot um. But actually that's nothing compared
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Speaker 1: to what it would have been had they not instituted
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Speaker 1: this policy, which at first was voluntary um, and they
7:14
Speaker 1: saw a greater decline in um for fertility UM when
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Speaker 1: this policy was voluntary. Right in nineteen seventy they had
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Speaker 1: a fertility rate of I think six and by nine
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Speaker 1: means six births per one woman, just so people understand
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Speaker 1: what that means. That's the mean um. And then by
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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine it was down to three. So they
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Speaker 1: have their fertility rate, you know, it is now what
7:45
Speaker 1: uh in the urban areas one point seven I'm sorry,
7:48
Speaker 1: in the urban areas one point three and the rural
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Speaker 1: areas two point out for about a one point seven average, right,
7:53
Speaker 1: but even still, if you look at the numbers, that's
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Speaker 1: less of a decline than there was when it was voluntary.
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Speaker 1: China started out with was a campaign called what chuck
8:04
Speaker 1: late long, few, late long and few. So you marry
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Speaker 1: late in life, you wait a long time in between births,
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Speaker 1: and you have few children. Uh, And couples who uh
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Speaker 1: volunteer for this get a little certificate. What's that called
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Speaker 1: the Certificate of Honor for single child parents? Ye must
8:25
Speaker 1: be nice, I guess having a came it depends, I
8:29
Speaker 1: don't know. Um. We should also say that the one
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Speaker 1: child policy that was instituted in nineteen seventy nine. I
8:36
Speaker 1: don't know if we actually came out and said that yet. Yeah,
8:38
Speaker 1: that was when it officially became a mandate. So the
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Speaker 1: one child policy, um, at least at first and generally
8:45
Speaker 1: in practice has been has restricted almost exclusively the Han
8:51
Speaker 1: ethnic majority. Those are the people who are really subject
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Speaker 1: to one child policies, and the people who are under
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Speaker 1: the most risk astrictions are urban couples from the Han
9:04
Speaker 1: majority ethnic minorities are allowed to have more kids. They've
9:08
Speaker 1: generally been excluded from the one child policy. Well, you
9:12
Speaker 1: have to get permission. I think if you're in the
9:14
Speaker 1: Royal area, you have to get legal permission to have
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Speaker 1: a second child, if your firstborn as a girl, and
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Speaker 1: if you're an ethnic minority, you can have three kids. Well,
9:22
Speaker 1: you bring up a really good point. Um. That's one
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Speaker 1: of the huge byproducts this, uh, this one child policy,
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Speaker 1: is that there China, the culture of China, not just
9:33
Speaker 1: the government, the culture has been accused of preferring boys
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Speaker 1: over girls, to the tune of encouraging abortions for females
9:42
Speaker 1: stuff like that. You know that's true, but that's it is. Yeah, Um,
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Speaker 1: at the very least, there's been tons and tons of
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Speaker 1: reports and allegations that, uh, there's actually if state pressure,
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Speaker 1: if not state mandated abortions UM or at the very
9:59
Speaker 1: at least local mandated, local pressured abortions UM. But one
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Speaker 1: of the one of the ways China still um hasn't
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Speaker 1: a low abortion rate of the female population report having
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Speaker 1: an abortion. Where in the US forty three, that's higher
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Speaker 1: than I thought. That's apparently really low, is it? Yeah, um,
10:22
Speaker 1: at the very least low compared to anecdotal evidence. There's
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Speaker 1: probably a lot of girls out there who aren't willing
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Speaker 1: to say that they had an abortion in half UM.
10:31
Speaker 1: But still, let's say that those numbers are completely accurate.
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Speaker 1: China has abortion rate the US has forty three. One
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Speaker 1: of the reasons that they've been able to maintain a
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Speaker 1: low abortion rate comparatively UM is through open and universal
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Speaker 1: access to contraception. Yes, i U d S and sterilization
10:51
Speaker 1: is what they prefer over of contraception is long term, right,
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Speaker 1: They don't do the condom or the birth control pill
10:58
Speaker 1: that much, not much or vosectomes of work in China.
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Speaker 1: They put it all on the woman because again that
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Speaker 1: they have been accused of preferring boys. It's a very
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Speaker 1: patriarchal society. You can't do that though in the long run,
11:09
Speaker 1: because I got another stat in the end, they think
11:13
Speaker 1: in the future, I would say, of the men in
11:17
Speaker 1: China won't have access to a wife, there aren't enough women.
11:22
Speaker 1: There won't be enough women right, which in and of
11:24
Speaker 1: itself is a problem, but it also gives rise to
11:28
Speaker 1: other problems. Um. Apparently there's been a huge rising prostitution,
11:31
Speaker 1: which has led to a huge rise in the prevalence
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Speaker 1: of HIV. UM. There's been all sorts of um social maladies.
11:40
Speaker 1: I guess among men who can't find a wife. I
11:42
Speaker 1: mean imagine like they're just not being a woman out
11:45
Speaker 1: there that you can find to marry and settle down with,
11:48
Speaker 1: Like it's just not an option for you. Is going
11:51
Speaker 1: to produce all manners psychological and social problem. So yeah,
11:55
Speaker 1: there's there's all sorts of weird things that are kind
11:59
Speaker 1: of popping up up from this one child policy another
12:02
Speaker 1: one that I hesitate to work. Use the word weird
12:05
Speaker 1: more like horrific is female and fantaside, we said that
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Speaker 1: China's been accused of preferring boys over girls. Um, there
12:14
Speaker 1: are so I should say there are surveys out there,
12:17
Speaker 1: there are facts and figures that China puts out that
12:20
Speaker 1: contradict any criticism. UM. But there's two sides of this coin.
12:26
Speaker 1: But in the West there's lots and lots of accusations
12:30
Speaker 1: of female and fantaside. Apparently it was UM traditional until
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Speaker 1: the Cultural Revolution UH, and it started to kind of
12:38
Speaker 1: pick back up again. UM. There's no statistics or figures
12:42
Speaker 1: on how many girls might be killed at birth. UM,
12:45
Speaker 1: but number one apparently UH abortion after ultrasound sex screening.
12:53
Speaker 1: Sexing was so prevalent that in China banned UH sex
12:58
Speaker 1: screening neatle or prenatal sex screening, so you couldn't tell
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Speaker 1: whether you you're having a boy or a girl. You know,
13:04
Speaker 1: there's a private sector that's picked up UM lack that
13:09
Speaker 1: will give you an ultratone to let you know what
13:11
Speaker 1: you're having. And apparently the the female and fantaside, if
13:15
Speaker 1: you view abortions in fanticide, has increased well, even in
13:19
Speaker 1: fant aside under like the the medical or sociological definition
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Speaker 1: of killing a child when it's born or leaving it
13:26
Speaker 1: to die UM is still around UM and the the
13:30
Speaker 1: those are reflected in the boydie girl ratio right right,
13:35
Speaker 1: which are which is pretty significant. It doesn't sound like
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Speaker 1: a lot, but what what are they? Uh? In two
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Speaker 1: thousand five and estimated one hundred and eighteen boys were
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Speaker 1: born for every one hundred girls, and that peaked at
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Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty boys for every one hundred girls.
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Speaker 1: And uh, just to compare that to the rest of
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Speaker 1: the world UM or industrialized countries, I should say, UM
13:55
Speaker 1: roughly a hundred and four to a hundred and seven
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Speaker 1: boys for every one hundred girls. So definitely a big
14:00
Speaker 1: deaf UM. One of the reasons why boys would be
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Speaker 1: preferred is, um, they can earn more than a woman.
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Speaker 1: Let's say a woman marries a man, she gets married off,
14:13
Speaker 1: she gets absorbed into the man's family. Um, what happens
14:17
Speaker 1: to the parents. Here's part of the problem. Seventy of
14:22
Speaker 1: UM China's aging population doesn't have a pension. They don't
14:27
Speaker 1: have four oh one case over there, they don't save
14:28
Speaker 1: the government starting to encourage it. This is what I
14:31
Speaker 1: see is the biggest problem. Maybe this is a huge,
14:33
Speaker 1: huge problem. Who's going to take care of people when
14:35
Speaker 1: they're getting older? So here's here's what's resulted a phenomenon
14:38
Speaker 1: called four to one. Right, you have a couple that's
14:43
Speaker 1: the two and they're they're responsible for the care of
14:46
Speaker 1: one child and for parents, for grandparents. So that's like
14:52
Speaker 1: the new family structure. Um as far as financial support goes.
14:57
Speaker 1: And as you keep having just one child, one child child,
15:00
Speaker 1: that for to one structure keeps going on and then
15:03
Speaker 1: it's one six. Well you know what I mean, that
15:06
Speaker 1: one child will have to be responsible for the care
15:09
Speaker 1: of ultimately six right, if everyone is still alive, his
15:14
Speaker 1: two parents and the four grandparents, well, then you just
15:17
Speaker 1: start killing the grandparents. This is too much of a
15:19
Speaker 1: burdens that, Um, No, because that that well, yeah, I
15:24
Speaker 1: guess if it's a boy and he has no one
15:26
Speaker 1: to marry and he's unlucky enough, No, that wouldn't work
15:30
Speaker 1: out if it were if it were just a boy
15:33
Speaker 1: and he never married, he'd just be responsible for his
15:35
Speaker 1: own parents. But what about the grandparents again? I think
15:39
Speaker 1: that was one of the points they made though, was
15:41
Speaker 1: as your parents old and the grandparents are hanging in there,
15:43
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, your parents are in their seventies,
15:45
Speaker 1: your grandparents are in their nineties, and you're the sole child.
15:50
Speaker 1: If you are lucky enough to marry and there are
15:53
Speaker 1: no grand if your grandparents are dead, you still are
15:56
Speaker 1: saddled with two sets of grandparents and a child, and
16:00
Speaker 1: that's what you're responsible for providing for. Right. Yeah, that's
16:04
Speaker 1: a big problem. Part of that is UM has been
16:08
Speaker 1: alleviated by a revision in the policy who where UM.
16:12
Speaker 1: Urban couples who are only children themselves can have more
16:17
Speaker 1: than one child. True, so that leaves two siblings, but
16:20
Speaker 1: you have to it's still very much unless you're an
16:24
Speaker 1: ethnic minority. I don't think you have to apply for
16:27
Speaker 1: a child if you're an ethnic minority. Another revision that
16:31
Speaker 1: they had, Chuck was, um, they stripped local birth quotas
16:36
Speaker 1: they is this the birth permits? Yeah, okay, yeah, they
16:40
Speaker 1: they stripped the requirement to obtain these birth permits and
16:43
Speaker 1: a lot of the provinces recently, right yeah, which basically
16:47
Speaker 1: they did it by um taking away the requirement to
16:50
Speaker 1: get a birth permit for a first birth. So what
16:54
Speaker 1: happened before was any locality had a quota of how
16:59
Speaker 1: many birth could occur, say in a year or a
17:01
Speaker 1: month or something like that, and if that quota was
17:04
Speaker 1: filled already, then some couple applying for a permit to
17:07
Speaker 1: have a birth would be denied until the next cycle.
17:10
Speaker 1: This is nuts. It is nuts. I'm all for family planning,
17:13
Speaker 1: but this is uh, this is turbo family planning. What's
17:17
Speaker 1: nuts is that aside from these social problems, it actually
17:20
Speaker 1: has led China to become a burgeoning economy. I mean
17:26
Speaker 1: it's actually worked in an economic sense, but in a
17:29
Speaker 1: socioeconomic sense it's it's it's exacting these huge tolls. I
17:35
Speaker 1: do have a couple of stats to back that up. UM,
17:38
Speaker 1: before they instituted this policy, the population and poverty was
17:41
Speaker 1: two d and fifty million. That's been reduced to forty million.
17:45
Speaker 1: And uh, education um of the average fifteen year old
17:49
Speaker 1: went from four point five years to eight point five years.
17:52
Speaker 1: So these are the stats that China's gonna point to
17:55
Speaker 1: clearly to say that hey, it's working right and you can't.
17:58
Speaker 1: I think it's so easy to vilify China for this. UM.
18:02
Speaker 1: The like Christian pro life groups are hugely against this
18:07
Speaker 1: one child policy UM because it does suborne um abortion
18:14
Speaker 1: right very clearly. UM. So there's a lot of people
18:17
Speaker 1: opposed to it. But if you're an economist, and maybe
18:21
Speaker 1: an economist with um, no heart damage to your prefrontal cortex,
18:27
Speaker 1: then yeah, it makes a lot of sense, and it worked.
18:29
Speaker 1: They've also started the girl care program you heard of
18:32
Speaker 1: that one, and that's basically, uh in a nutshell kind
18:37
Speaker 1: of trying to encourage the fact that girls have value
18:40
Speaker 1: and worth and are not second class citizens. You like
18:44
Speaker 1: that billboard doing, Yeah, the billboard. They have a billboard
18:46
Speaker 1: in China that's said in the Hibai province. It says
18:50
Speaker 1: there's no difference between having a girl or a boy.
18:53
Speaker 1: Girls can also continue the family line, yes, genetically speaking.
18:57
Speaker 1: So they're trying to do what they can there. UM.
19:03
Speaker 1: I guess probably the biggest rub of China's one child
19:07
Speaker 1: policy is that, UM, reproduction is a basic human right.
19:12
Speaker 1: The government's not supposed to tell you how many kids
19:14
Speaker 1: are do anything to interfere with your reproduction right. Um.
19:20
Speaker 1: And it's also contrary to the will of the people.
19:23
Speaker 1: In a two thousand three Chinese study, UH, there were
19:26
Speaker 1: some people who said they preferred one child. That's about
19:30
Speaker 1: of the population surveyed, but fifty seven percent said they
19:33
Speaker 1: preferred to So it's directly flies in the face of
19:36
Speaker 1: them exactly. What's interesting though, is that UH, there is
19:41
Speaker 1: a huge decrease in preference of three children, or more
19:47
Speaker 1: like five point five percent of the population. Surveys said
19:49
Speaker 1: that they would want three kids. So it seems to
19:52
Speaker 1: have peaked around too. And one of the reasons why
19:55
Speaker 1: China announced recently that it would be another decade before
19:59
Speaker 1: it appeal that's one child policy, is because they're afraid
20:02
Speaker 1: of another baby boom, and what they're trying to do
20:05
Speaker 1: is create a small family culture in the country. Gotcha.
20:08
Speaker 1: But surveys like these suggest that that's they've been successful
20:11
Speaker 1: in doing that, right. I think it's up for review
20:13
Speaker 1: next year and no to two thousand is it's up
20:17
Speaker 1: for review next year, But I don't know if that
20:20
Speaker 1: means anything's gonna I think they said this summer in
20:22
Speaker 1: July that it is going to be another decade before
20:25
Speaker 1: they repealed it. And there were a lot of people
20:27
Speaker 1: after remember the earthquake in such Uan province, Yeah, killed
20:31
Speaker 1: what like ten thousand kids, Yeah, and a lot of
20:33
Speaker 1: people's only child. That's your only child. It's a long kid.
20:36
Speaker 1: And what happens if you were fifty and when your
20:38
Speaker 1: child died, because you know, you wait a long time
20:42
Speaker 1: to get married and you your s O L thank
20:44
Speaker 1: you government. Uh, you know, I know plenty of Americans
20:47
Speaker 1: who think that it's the responsible thing to do to
20:50
Speaker 1: only have one child. I've heard people say that as
20:53
Speaker 1: a human it's like irresponsible to have two and three
20:56
Speaker 1: kids these days. Well, yeah, the toll we exact on
20:59
Speaker 1: the environment in or adding to the strain on the
21:02
Speaker 1: carrying capacity of agriculture. Supposedly, the agricultural techniques we have
21:07
Speaker 1: now can support a global population of ten billion. So
21:11
Speaker 1: we have a little ways to go. But who knows
21:14
Speaker 1: what will happened before then, how how much technology will advance? Um,
21:18
Speaker 1: we may turn to soilent green who knows? Um, do
21:22
Speaker 1: you know there's two women out there walking the planner
21:25
Speaker 1: right now, at least two who were sterilized before they
21:28
Speaker 1: ever had kids because they wanted to say the environment.
21:32
Speaker 1: Uh they're both English. As far as I know, I
21:37
Speaker 1: remember reading about that. Yeah, thank you pointing that out
21:39
Speaker 1: to me. Has nothing to do with China's one child policy.
21:42
Speaker 1: But yeah, so Chuck doesn't look like they're appealing it.
21:47
Speaker 1: They did make some they did for those people who
21:49
Speaker 1: were still in reproductive age following the earthquake who lost kids.
21:53
Speaker 1: They were um, making exceptions, right, but ultimately it's it
21:57
Speaker 1: looks like steady the course with the child the one
22:00
Speaker 1: child policy. So if, okay, if you want to read
22:04
Speaker 1: anything more on China's one child policy, We've got an
22:07
Speaker 1: article on the site appropriately entitled what is China's one
22:11
Speaker 1: child Policy? I'm pretty sure if you just type in
22:13
Speaker 1: one child it will come up in the handy search
22:16
Speaker 1: bar at how stuffworks dot com. Uh, and let's do
22:19
Speaker 1: listener mail Josh's listener mail time, And I'm just gonna
22:24
Speaker 1: call this Uh from Austin. Are our young fan who
22:28
Speaker 1: had a dream about us. And I've tried not to
22:31
Speaker 1: read dream emails because that encourages people to send in
22:34
Speaker 1: their dreams. And we've gotten a lot of hey that
22:36
Speaker 1: had this weird dream, but this one was about us,
22:39
Speaker 1: so of course I'm gonna read it. My name is Austin,
22:42
Speaker 1: I'm fourteen, and I'm your fan, and I live in Atlanta.
22:44
Speaker 1: And it makes it show so much better because you're
22:47
Speaker 1: located in Atlanta. True, you know, he feels at homeless. Uh.
22:51
Speaker 1: He's been listening for a while. He loves us, and
22:53
Speaker 1: he's just starting high school this year and his podcast
22:56
Speaker 1: has been a lifesaver in ap biology. Anyways, finally had
23:00
Speaker 1: my first dream about you. First first dreams. Uh, this
23:06
Speaker 1: is a good one, though. He awakes from bed and
23:08
Speaker 1: he notices that he's fallen asleep while listening to the podcast.
23:11
Speaker 1: It sounds like reality so far. Uh. He walks outside
23:15
Speaker 1: and there's a small red plane with a huge banner
23:17
Speaker 1: that reads all hail Chuck and Josh. I'm looking dream. Yeah,
23:22
Speaker 1: we sent that plan over your house, buddy. I'm a
23:25
Speaker 1: little confused about it, and even more so when I
23:27
Speaker 1: arrive at school and see that there is a bronze
23:29
Speaker 1: statue in your honor because you guys save the economy
23:33
Speaker 1: with our audiobook. Yeah, how about that? Um. However, it
23:36
Speaker 1: takes a gloomy turn from here. After a day of
23:38
Speaker 1: many questions and much confusion, I finally put together the clues.
23:42
Speaker 1: After saving the economy, you both take charge and become
23:45
Speaker 1: dual dictators of America. He require everyone to be educated
23:50
Speaker 1: by your podcast, and only your podcast, as made by
23:53
Speaker 1: the Stuff Amendment actually amended the constitutions. And we institute
23:58
Speaker 1: a half child policy, sure, half job policy. Uh, and
24:02
Speaker 1: we all must obey your command immediately. China declares war
24:05
Speaker 1: on us because you try to expand your band uh
24:08
Speaker 1: podcast to their country. We had a guy that wrote
24:10
Speaker 1: in by the way, it said it was not banned. No,
24:13
Speaker 1: the blogs, band, not the podcast. Okay, good to know.
24:17
Speaker 1: The rest of the dream is a bit foggy and
24:18
Speaker 1: I wish I could remember more. However, it seems to
24:21
Speaker 1: be a theme that the dreams that people right in
24:23
Speaker 1: end up being true and the unlikely chance that this
24:25
Speaker 1: does happen. Please remember me as a fan that's from Austin.
24:29
Speaker 1: In Atlanta and Austin. We will definitely remember you. We will.
24:31
Speaker 1: We will remember you when we take power and crush you.
24:36
Speaker 1: If you have a super cool dream about me and Chuck,
24:39
Speaker 1: or if you want to comment on China's one child policy,
24:44
Speaker 1: or um you have more than ten children more than ten,
24:48
Speaker 1: send us an email about it to stuff podcast at
24:52
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. For more on this and
24:59
Speaker 1: that's of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
25:03
Speaker 1: Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
25:06
Speaker 1: the how stuff works dot com home page. M brought
25:11
Speaker 1: to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
25:14
Speaker 1: are you