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SYSK Selects: How Population Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hi, everybody, it's Chuck and I am introducing this week's
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Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know Selects episode. This is from the
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Speaker 1: Vault from two zero zero nine two nine November twelve,
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Speaker 1: and it's called How Population Works. And I picked this
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Speaker 1: one because I remember this being a super cool episode
0:21
Speaker 1: because it was one of those where I thought, population,
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Speaker 1: what does that even mean? And how can we make
0:26
Speaker 1: a show out a full show about this? And it
0:31
Speaker 1: turned out to be great. Um, Josh, I think it
0:32
Speaker 1: was his pick initially, and it's just really really cool.
0:35
Speaker 1: So if you don't even know what, uh what how
0:38
Speaker 1: Population Works might mean, give it a listen. I think
0:41
Speaker 1: you'll be pretty intrigued. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know
0:50
Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot com. Punky chucking, pocky chucking,
0:59
Speaker 1: puckey chucking. That's right, CHUCKK And welcome to the podcast.
1:02
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. Clearly Chuck Bryant's here, and uh, let's
1:06
Speaker 1: talk about punkin Chunking. I guess you just kind of
1:09
Speaker 1: forced our hand, Chuck. Yes, the road to punkin Chunking
1:12
Speaker 1: and punkin Chunking. So that's on. That's on Science Channel
1:15
Speaker 1: a p m. Eastern time on Thanksgiving night. Yeah, you
1:19
Speaker 1: can see some pumpkins get chunk punkins. Get chunk Punkins. Yeah,
1:23
Speaker 1: okay again. Science Channel. The Road to Punkin Chunkin starts
1:26
Speaker 1: at eight pm Eastern Time. Punkin chunk In Itself starts
1:30
Speaker 1: at nine Thanksgiving night. Yes, Science Channel on with the show. Yeah, chuck, Um,
1:36
Speaker 1: have you ever belonged to a population? No? Man, I'm like,
1:41
Speaker 1: I'm totally independent. Screw population. You're like that guy who
1:44
Speaker 1: lives in the commune, right right, Yeah, Well the joke's
1:46
Speaker 1: on him, because a commune constitutes a population. That's right. Um,
1:51
Speaker 1: this sounds kind of boring, and you would think it is.
1:54
Speaker 1: Do how population works. It actually started to pick up.
1:58
Speaker 1: Actually didn't know what it was even gonna be. When
1:59
Speaker 1: I saw how population works, I was like, what, you know,
2:02
Speaker 1: it's awesome. This was my idea this article was. I
2:04
Speaker 1: pinched it. Why didn't they let you write it? I
2:07
Speaker 1: don't know, jerks, I know, but the grabst did a
2:10
Speaker 1: good job with it. Oh yeah, the grabs is always good. Yeah, class,
2:13
Speaker 1: that's ed grab Anowsky. By the way, right, So, um,
2:17
Speaker 1: human beings marriage, human beings tend to um congregate, Yes,
2:25
Speaker 1: we segregate. Interestingly, that is an excellent. You just blew
2:30
Speaker 1: my mind, good lord chuck. UM. Well, let's get back
2:34
Speaker 1: to what I was saying, unless you want to go
2:36
Speaker 1: on the segregation. We'll get on that later. UM. Humans
2:40
Speaker 1: congregate and segregate. But let's talk about congregation and that UM.
2:44
Speaker 1: Most of the time, I would say, our early early ancestors, UH,
2:49
Speaker 1: and probably even other species congregate because they're safety and
2:53
Speaker 1: numbers and it helps like with farming, collecting water and
2:56
Speaker 1: food power numbers. But even before farming, UM a hundred
3:00
Speaker 1: hunter gatherers lived in bands. I think thirty was about tops.
3:04
Speaker 1: They figured out somewhere along the way that groups of
3:06
Speaker 1: thirty or groups of more than thirty there tended to
3:09
Speaker 1: be a lot more hostility and UM inner group problems.
3:13
Speaker 1: Have you ever tried to kill a mass it on
3:14
Speaker 1: by yourself? That's another good point too. There's cooperation mastered
3:20
Speaker 1: on UM. There's UM. If if let's say, if you
3:25
Speaker 1: are farming and your crop fails, well you're not standing
3:28
Speaker 1: there like, well I'm in trouble. You can say, hey, neighbor, UM,
3:33
Speaker 1: I'll totally give you favors of some variety if you
3:37
Speaker 1: will let me have some of your grain. I can
3:39
Speaker 1: a chicken. Let's say, sure you can trade. There's a
3:43
Speaker 1: lot of reasons people live together. So it's my theory
3:46
Speaker 1: that people aggregate together naturally. Yes, And then there are
3:51
Speaker 1: people out there who get their jollies by studying these
3:54
Speaker 1: groups of people. They're called demographer demographers. So we have
3:57
Speaker 1: populations natural or otherwise. And let's a natural population, uh
4:02
Speaker 1: today are people who live in a certain state Georgians.
4:07
Speaker 1: That's where we are, So that you have natural populations
4:10
Speaker 1: in demographer's studying, right, um, and they look at things
4:15
Speaker 1: like say, how many people in this natural population are
4:18
Speaker 1: Republicans or Democrat? Or how many are Caucasian? Right? Or
4:23
Speaker 1: how many have um, how many you live below the
4:27
Speaker 1: poverty line? All kinds of things you can study right
4:30
Speaker 1: by looking at a population and are are is this?
4:34
Speaker 1: Are these groups segregated like you brought up? You know,
4:37
Speaker 1: like if you study, uh, where different races are living?
4:41
Speaker 1: Are they living mingling? If so, then that's probably a
4:43
Speaker 1: fairly harmonious place hopefully. If not, why are they living apart?
4:47
Speaker 1: How do we fix this? Because it's probably a problem.
4:51
Speaker 1: Who knows? But yes, so demographers study populations natural or otherwise? Right, Yes,
4:58
Speaker 1: The problem is is you. Very few people have the
5:01
Speaker 1: ability to hover over the earth and use super binocular
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Speaker 1: vision to study populations by side. Very few people, Yeah,
5:10
Speaker 1: like three or four I think tops. Uh so does
5:14
Speaker 1: that count as a statistic I think so? Okay, Richard,
5:17
Speaker 1: um So measuring populations after you can talk about how
5:20
Speaker 1: do we actually determine this kind of thing? Yeah, that
5:23
Speaker 1: was my That was That was a good segue. There's
5:25
Speaker 1: a kind of ways. One is um by counting them
5:30
Speaker 1: literally counting them, like counting every single person, right, and
5:34
Speaker 1: that is called complete enumeration. Yeah. Remember we talked about
5:38
Speaker 1: that poor guy who was killed or possibly kill himself
5:40
Speaker 1: in Kentucky, the census taker, right. Oh, I didn't know
5:43
Speaker 1: that suicide was a possibility there. I got a cryptic
5:45
Speaker 1: email from somebody never followed up on that said that
5:49
Speaker 1: he identified himself as a doctor and I think said
5:53
Speaker 1: that he was part of the group that was the
5:56
Speaker 1: medical examination team and said that they suspect, strongly suspected suicide.
6:02
Speaker 1: My problem with it is is how do you bind
6:04
Speaker 1: yourself in duct tape? How do you bind your own
6:08
Speaker 1: risks and duct tape? I'll show you later, Okay, um
6:12
Speaker 1: So my point is, Wow, he threw me off of
6:15
Speaker 1: that one. My point is that he was called an enumerator. Yes,
6:20
Speaker 1: literally counter, and that's the people who work for the census.
6:24
Speaker 1: Whenever they had their their drive and they count and
6:27
Speaker 1: that's one way to determine it. Well, let's talk about
6:29
Speaker 1: the census. It's gone on every ten years since, right,
6:33
Speaker 1: And the reason they do it every ten years because
6:34
Speaker 1: it's real pain in the asked to count every person
6:37
Speaker 1: in America. Yeah, the real reason they do it so
6:39
Speaker 1: they can. Well, there's a lot of reasons, but that
6:43
Speaker 1: is the reason why anyone's ever conducted a census. Yeah. Well,
6:47
Speaker 1: plus they they determine the number of house representatives for
6:51
Speaker 1: your state based on population stuff like that. Oh yeah,
6:53
Speaker 1: there's that too. But you know, come on, Texas, did
6:55
Speaker 1: you know that, um, that that the census inform nation
7:01
Speaker 1: is kept is kept secret for seventy two years aside
7:04
Speaker 1: from the numbers, I believe the public cannot see that
7:07
Speaker 1: information for seventy two years, Right, what do I seventy
7:09
Speaker 1: two that's odd? It is odd. I wonder if that
7:12
Speaker 1: was the average lifespan at the time or something. Dude,
7:15
Speaker 1: that's got to be it. I'll bet you're right. Okay.
7:18
Speaker 1: The other way, Josh, is to uh do something called sampling,
7:23
Speaker 1: and that is when um statticians use a mathematical formula
7:27
Speaker 1: to determine the minimum number of people that must be counted,
7:32
Speaker 1: and then they multiply that out and basically end up
7:37
Speaker 1: getting a full population. And sometimes I did, I didn't
7:40
Speaker 1: know this. That's even more accurate than an actual head count.
7:44
Speaker 1: You see that margin of air, it's like plus or
7:46
Speaker 1: minus four percent. Yeah, you gotta have a margin of
7:48
Speaker 1: error there whenever you're sampling, right, because you're not actually
7:51
Speaker 1: going around asking every single person in America are you
7:54
Speaker 1: left handed? To determine how many people are left handed?
7:58
Speaker 1: But let's say you have a population with a thou
8:00
Speaker 1: in and some statistician has been like, you need a
8:03
Speaker 1: hundred do it, but do your egghead voice, Yeah, you
8:08
Speaker 1: need a hundred and fifty people. The hundred and fifty
8:10
Speaker 1: people and that are left handed, and you can just
8:13
Speaker 1: multiply that out to determine that there are, in fact
8:16
Speaker 1: how many people, let's say, ten percent of the population
8:19
Speaker 1: of the population. But your sample is perfect. Your sample
8:24
Speaker 1: has to be a random sample to be an effective sample. Yeah,
8:29
Speaker 1: and you know how they used to do that. Uh
8:31
Speaker 1: huh at used to just pick it out of the
8:32
Speaker 1: phone book. Oh, I know and call people I know.
8:35
Speaker 1: And that makes sense to a certain extent. No, well
8:39
Speaker 1: back then it made a little more sense. I would
8:40
Speaker 1: think it made it made less sense, especially if you're
8:43
Speaker 1: talking like nineteen fifty years. Well, it depends on what year.
8:46
Speaker 1: I'd say in the nineteen eighties it was probably a
8:48
Speaker 1: good way. But now there are cell phones. People in
8:51
Speaker 1: college probably don't have a phone. Poor people who don't
8:53
Speaker 1: have phones at all, people who don't have phone. Sure,
8:55
Speaker 1: so that's not a very good way. Because what about
8:58
Speaker 1: freight train writers of America? What's that they don't have funds?
9:02
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, good point. Yeah, they're not allowed. I don't
9:05
Speaker 1: think they want them. So sampling is a little harder
9:07
Speaker 1: than it seems. Yeah, right, especially coming with a random
9:11
Speaker 1: populationandom sample of the population. Um. But okay, so so
9:15
Speaker 1: far we've talked about people and where they live. There's
9:20
Speaker 1: other ways to define a population. There's other attributes that
9:23
Speaker 1: people have that we use to lump into population. It's
9:26
Speaker 1: not just a geography when people think um populations, it's
9:30
Speaker 1: not just a city population or state. Yes, what acian
9:35
Speaker 1: age you have a population of age or continent, a
9:37
Speaker 1: demographic what else location of course, socio economic Well, population,
9:43
Speaker 1: let's talk about age. Why would you even want to
9:45
Speaker 1: know age? Who cares? People are old, people are young? Whatever? Right, Well,
9:49
Speaker 1: there's a lot of factors like, um, take the baby
9:51
Speaker 1: boom for instance, after World War Two, all these babies
9:53
Speaker 1: were born, so there was a bulge in the population.
9:57
Speaker 1: And I just like saying that we're bulged. You got
9:59
Speaker 1: to do the air quote. So, um, what that will
10:03
Speaker 1: show them then is wow, we got a bulge here.
10:05
Speaker 1: So that means probably in to sixty years there's gonna
10:09
Speaker 1: be some serious buying power. Let's start borrowing as much
10:13
Speaker 1: money as we can right now. But it also means
10:15
Speaker 1: in seventy plus years that they may be a medical
10:20
Speaker 1: burden and a burden on social security. So let's start
10:23
Speaker 1: borrowing as much money as we can right now. Same
10:27
Speaker 1: same result there. I like that, and we'll get to
10:30
Speaker 1: bulges again in a little bit. But let's move on.
10:33
Speaker 1: Like you said, socioeconomic data, right, yeah, what what why
10:36
Speaker 1: would they want to do this job? This one? I found?
10:38
Speaker 1: I find this the most interesting of all data. You
10:41
Speaker 1: can look at a bunch of people who are maybe
10:45
Speaker 1: related geographically, um, but other than that, aren't related in
10:49
Speaker 1: any other way. Uh. And all of them suddenly have
10:53
Speaker 1: this horrible cancer and they're just so happens to be
10:57
Speaker 1: some manufacturer there by what did you say, high tension wires,
11:03
Speaker 1: which has been proven I think, to not actually have
11:05
Speaker 1: any effect on people, not in my buddy. Um. So uh, now,
11:10
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you have this information thanks to
11:13
Speaker 1: your demographer friend who went and collected it, and um,
11:17
Speaker 1: you can say, okay, paint factory, you guys better start
11:20
Speaker 1: giving away some free paint, yeah, or we're gonna sue you. Race.
11:27
Speaker 1: That's a little little more hinky, because technically there is
11:30
Speaker 1: no such thing as any difference in different races. I
11:33
Speaker 1: remember watching MTV years and years and years ago, and um,
11:37
Speaker 1: the VJ was interviewing the Bastie Boys and he was like,
11:41
Speaker 1: Mike D, I hear you're dating a black girl. You know,
11:44
Speaker 1: what's it like dating somebody from a different race, Which
11:47
Speaker 1: is just an anthenine question to begin with. But I
11:49
Speaker 1: remember Mike D going there's only one race, the human race,
11:53
Speaker 1: And I was like, huh. That was clearly before he
11:57
Speaker 1: was down with the ione or no, was ad Rock sorry. Yeah,
12:02
Speaker 1: add rocks down with the Ionia. They're divorced though, so
12:05
Speaker 1: he's not down with her anymore. Ione. Uh So, Yeah,
12:08
Speaker 1: race is a little hinky, but you can't actually determine
12:10
Speaker 1: some um useful things when you study populations of race
12:15
Speaker 1: because of like you know, it's important for people to
12:17
Speaker 1: be involved in their culture. Yeah, and to hang onto
12:20
Speaker 1: that for sure. I guess racial profiling again. I don't
12:24
Speaker 1: know if I should say again or not, but it's
12:25
Speaker 1: such a hot button issue that Yeah, I don't know.
12:30
Speaker 1: We need to talk about it collectively. That's my answer
12:33
Speaker 1: for everything. Everybody needs to get together and decide what
12:35
Speaker 1: we want to do. Okay. Well, the other thing with race,
12:37
Speaker 1: so is if there's a medical problem the specific to
12:39
Speaker 1: that race that can help out that exactly true. It's alright, so, Chuck,
13:06
Speaker 1: We've got all these different factors, attributes, variables. We've used
13:10
Speaker 1: the word demographer several times. Um, so we know that
13:15
Speaker 1: people study populations. One of the reasons why we study
13:19
Speaker 1: populations is to see how big it's getting. And I
13:23
Speaker 1: gotta tell you, buddy, the human population is kind of
13:27
Speaker 1: exploded on this planet in the last several thousand years. Yeah,
13:31
Speaker 1: but you know what they were reading these stats. There
13:32
Speaker 1: were a lot more people here way back when than
13:35
Speaker 1: I thought. Yeah again, favorite book of all Time fourteen
13:40
Speaker 1: one UM Charles C. Man. Yes, he basically points out
13:45
Speaker 1: that there is probably a hundred million people on the
13:48
Speaker 1: North American or on the in the America's uh in Yeah,
13:54
Speaker 1: which is a fifth of the world population. Is way
13:56
Speaker 1: more than anyone thought. And the reason why is because
14:01
Speaker 1: Columbus shows up. Smallpox just ravages both continents and by
14:06
Speaker 1: the time the European settlers start coming for real, uh,
14:10
Speaker 1: the places decimated. It seems like there's nobody there right. Well,
14:13
Speaker 1: he had the whole genocide to things you ever know
14:14
Speaker 1: about that Columbus I hear um his men used to
14:18
Speaker 1: like sharpen their knives on like the skulls of live
14:21
Speaker 1: um live natives. Well, there's the because genocide we talked
14:26
Speaker 1: about later on um in the article. But there's uh
14:30
Speaker 1: speculation that Columbus may have been responsible for like the
14:34
Speaker 1: worst mass genocide in human history by completely wiping out
14:38
Speaker 1: the the Tano Taino Indian people. And that was in Hispanielo,
14:42
Speaker 1: which is modern day I think Haiti and Dominican Republic.
14:45
Speaker 1: And they some people say there were only like five
14:48
Speaker 1: thousand of them, and some people say there were as
14:49
Speaker 1: many as fifteen million at the time that were decimated
14:53
Speaker 1: to about two thousand. Decimated through violence or through disease. Yeah,
14:58
Speaker 1: well through violence, because Columbus came over, set up a
15:00
Speaker 1: camp in Hispaniola for about forty people, and then left,
15:04
Speaker 1: came back on trip number two and found that the
15:08
Speaker 1: Indian tribe there had killed all those people. So he
15:11
Speaker 1: went on to kill crazy rampage basically and completely wiped
15:15
Speaker 1: out the population. And they're saying it may have been
15:18
Speaker 1: like double the size of the Holocaust. So Happy Columbus Day, everybody, seriously,
15:23
Speaker 1: but we do mention that because genocide is is a
15:25
Speaker 1: way that a population can change rapidly. Well, let's talk
15:29
Speaker 1: about population growth. Yes, all right, so I guess about
15:32
Speaker 1: ten thousand BC, they estimate that there's between one and
15:36
Speaker 1: ten million humans. So we're starting to slowly grow because
15:39
Speaker 1: by one thousand BC there's fifty million, and then by
15:43
Speaker 1: six hundred ce UM we're at two millions. See that's
15:47
Speaker 1: a lot more than I thought. Yeah, there would be
15:49
Speaker 1: at the time. Yeah, I think there was about five
15:52
Speaker 1: hundred million in the mid fifteen century. So um, let's go.
15:57
Speaker 1: But let's say there's a five million in the mid
16:00
Speaker 1: fifteenth century. The twentieth century, the industrial revolutions happened, There's
16:05
Speaker 1: been great leaps in science and UM medicine. That's when
16:09
Speaker 1: populations really grow is during those big booms. Yeah, because
16:12
Speaker 1: it lends itself to fertility, higher and fertility and um
16:16
Speaker 1: longer lifespans, good times breed kids. So the twentieth century
16:20
Speaker 1: hits were at one point five billion people and then
16:24
Speaker 1: this century the population of the world has quad druple. Yeah,
16:30
Speaker 1: and with like six billions. I know that that. It
16:33
Speaker 1: sounded like there should have been a drum roll there,
16:35
Speaker 1: but maybe there was. By that Jerry might have put
16:37
Speaker 1: one in there, our producer, Jerry, we'll find out later. Uh.
16:40
Speaker 1: And Josh here projecting the U. S. CENTSUS Bureau projects
16:43
Speaker 1: that by there will be ten billion people. Right. So
16:47
Speaker 1: the reason for this is what we call the lenthusisant
16:50
Speaker 1: growth model. Mouth. This was a eighteenth century clergyman, Thomas
16:57
Speaker 1: huh he uh he actually, I guess inadvertently became one
17:02
Speaker 1: of the great economic theorists, and he figured out that
17:06
Speaker 1: population grows exponentially. Right, So if you have one million
17:10
Speaker 1: people and they have enough kids double the population. But
17:13
Speaker 1: the next generation you have four million people. So in
17:15
Speaker 1: one full generation you've gone from one million to four
17:17
Speaker 1: million people. Right. Yeah, that's that's big, especially when the
17:23
Speaker 1: planet is finite in size and we don't have the
17:27
Speaker 1: ability to go colonize other planets yet. Right. But it's
17:30
Speaker 1: not necessarily that incremental and steady because of what we
17:34
Speaker 1: talked about, which are bulges or spikes and bottlenecks like genocide. Right, yeah,
17:41
Speaker 1: so it doesn't always grow steadily. And actually, Chuck, if
17:45
Speaker 1: you heard of the replacement right now, the replacement rate
17:48
Speaker 1: is it's how many kids a woman has to have
17:53
Speaker 1: to have a high uh statistical probability of having a
17:57
Speaker 1: daughter so that she in essence replaces herself. And right
18:02
Speaker 1: now it's two point three three is the replacement rate worldwide,
18:06
Speaker 1: and the point of it is to trend towards zero
18:09
Speaker 1: population growth. Right, So for every woman who dies, she
18:12
Speaker 1: has a daughter that can reproduce and and continue on
18:16
Speaker 1: and continue on and continue on, So you have overall
18:19
Speaker 1: as many people dying as they're being born, so there's
18:22
Speaker 1: no strain, right, and there's also no um dearth. Well,
18:27
Speaker 1: it's equilibrium that reading this reminded me of when we
18:30
Speaker 1: did our Big Econ audio book. It's kind of population
18:33
Speaker 1: kind of wants to seek equilibrium. I think, like, uh,
18:37
Speaker 1: just like economics does and and and it doesn't always happen,
18:41
Speaker 1: uh organically, I should say it probably rarely happens organically.
18:46
Speaker 1: But let's think about um. Like you said, the baby boom,
18:49
Speaker 1: post war success in in Europe and um, the US
18:54
Speaker 1: and Canada, I guess lead to UM a huge boom
18:58
Speaker 1: in the population. No, it he went to war to
19:01
Speaker 1: grow the population. It was just an indirect effect. So
19:04
Speaker 1: all of a sudden we had a population spike that
19:06
Speaker 1: created a bulge. Bulge if you will, things can go
19:10
Speaker 1: the other way to which is a bottleneck. Right. Yeah,
19:13
Speaker 1: And that's well we and God, if I say genocide
19:16
Speaker 1: one more time, we should do a podcast in genocide.
19:18
Speaker 1: I wonder if there's a drinking game where every time
19:20
Speaker 1: it's like genocide, gide drink um. Famine disease. Uh, something
19:26
Speaker 1: called the plague I think wiped out like half the
19:29
Speaker 1: world population at one point, or half the population of Europe.
19:31
Speaker 1: They suspect that um in uh the fifth century. That
19:36
Speaker 1: would be a c e. The plague of Justinian may
19:40
Speaker 1: have killed as many as half the world's population, a
19:43
Speaker 1: hundred million people. Unbelievable. Can you imagine walking around at
19:47
Speaker 1: that time, like, holy crap, the entire half the world
19:50
Speaker 1: is dead, just died in the last couple of years.
19:53
Speaker 1: It's crazy. In the Black Death killed twenty to thirty
19:55
Speaker 1: million Europeans, So so plagues can happen. There's also I
20:00
Speaker 1: was talking to an evolutionary geneticist this is my way
20:04
Speaker 1: um today recently, and he was talking about study he
20:10
Speaker 1: authored where they found two evolutionary bottlenecks, one coming out
20:15
Speaker 1: of Africa. Uh, they suggested a fifty thousand years ago
20:19
Speaker 1: and another one that happened along the bearing Land Bridge, right.
20:23
Speaker 1: And he wasn't saying like all of a sudden a
20:25
Speaker 1: bunch of people died, but um, these bottlenecks turned up
20:29
Speaker 1: because big groups of people separating in smaller groups of people,
20:33
Speaker 1: which is which accounts for a loss of genetic diversity.
20:36
Speaker 1: So you have the founders effect. Because, as he put it,
20:39
Speaker 1: if you take um, if you go into a town
20:42
Speaker 1: and grab the first fifteen people you meet and say,
20:44
Speaker 1: let's go found a new town. That new town isn't
20:47
Speaker 1: going to have a representative sample of all the surnames
20:49
Speaker 1: in that town. If you do that enough time, some
20:52
Speaker 1: surnames are going to be lost because people didn't reproduce
20:55
Speaker 1: or whatever. The same thing happens with jenes and genetic diversity.
20:58
Speaker 1: Look at you stuff? Thanks? Uh? Can I mention this
21:02
Speaker 1: place in Hong Kong? Yeah, we're talking about well we
21:05
Speaker 1: should mention. Population density is the number of humans per
21:10
Speaker 1: unit area whatever unit you you know, you choose to
21:13
Speaker 1: call it. And the highest ever is believed to have
21:16
Speaker 1: been a place called Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong,
21:22
Speaker 1: and at one point evidently there were fifty thousand people
21:26
Speaker 1: in a mega block, which is five hundred by six
21:29
Speaker 1: fifty feet. Fifty thousand people stuffed in there, and apparently
21:33
Speaker 1: it was a lawless district. The grabsters. She's kidding me,
21:37
Speaker 1: fifty people could conceivably get along. Yeah, hands across America style?
21:41
Speaker 1: Did you know that? Um? In Athens when Widespread Panic
21:44
Speaker 1: played that free show, there was an estimated hundred thousand
21:47
Speaker 1: people there, not one fight really, Yeah, that's because they
21:51
Speaker 1: were all on dope. The dope. I wasn't there? Were
21:55
Speaker 1: you there? Yeah? I never got into them. Although I
21:58
Speaker 1: did hang out with that guy the bass play day schools. Yeah,
22:01
Speaker 1: I hung out with him a couple of times, just
22:03
Speaker 1: through friends. Anyway, Uh, that that park is no, I'm sorry.
22:07
Speaker 1: It is now a park where the walled city used
22:10
Speaker 1: to be. Yeah, which is the opposite of the highest population. Ironically,
22:15
Speaker 1: it's just the park maybe the highest population of grass.
22:18
Speaker 1: But that's it. So what do we got here, Josh?
22:44
Speaker 1: We got um. Population control is something that we've referenced
22:48
Speaker 1: before with our China One Child policy. Yeah, and we
22:51
Speaker 1: talked about why you would want to control the population.
22:54
Speaker 1: A huge group of people put a strain on resources.
22:57
Speaker 1: When resources go away, you have resource conflicts like in
23:00
Speaker 1: darfour again genocide. Right. Um. There's all sorts of problems
23:05
Speaker 1: that come from too many people coming or living in
23:09
Speaker 1: one place because of the strain that puts on resources
23:12
Speaker 1: and resource allocation. Right. Um. And yeah, you can control
23:17
Speaker 1: the population e g. You know, state mandated reproduction um China. Right,
23:24
Speaker 1: and that actually works as as China shows. Um, although
23:28
Speaker 1: much to the detriment of some people, Thank you, Chuck
23:32
Speaker 1: for that. Look and not everyone thinks um, some people
23:35
Speaker 1: think we should add more people though, well, yeah, there's Japan.
23:38
Speaker 1: In other countries there's a problem of population declins. So
23:42
Speaker 1: we talked about the strain um people put on an
23:46
Speaker 1: area that's carrying capacity, which we've talked about before, and
23:49
Speaker 1: that's also from Malthus, that eventually human population is going
23:54
Speaker 1: to outstrip advances in technology or our resources and we're screwed. Right. Um,
24:01
Speaker 1: on the other side, is shrinking, population shrinking? And what's
24:04
Speaker 1: the problem with that, Well, you don't want the population
24:07
Speaker 1: to shrink too much because you, uh, you need those
24:10
Speaker 1: hands to go to work and to contribute to the
24:13
Speaker 1: economy and to grow the grain and sow the flower
24:17
Speaker 1: and all that good stuff. And apparently in Russia, Japan,
24:20
Speaker 1: and Australia they all have like little incentive programs to
24:23
Speaker 1: make little babies. Sure, how about that? Which is the
24:26
Speaker 1: way to go? Remember John Fuller's famous quote, um, when
24:29
Speaker 1: he was pitching an article about that program in Russia,
24:32
Speaker 1: and he's talking about poutin giving away a TV. Oh yeah,
24:35
Speaker 1: that's right, that's really funny. Yeah, um, the baby get
24:39
Speaker 1: a TV. I think you'd be there and check the
24:41
Speaker 1: reason why. Uh, some of these places are seeing a
24:45
Speaker 1: population shrink and are having to I guess give incentives
24:49
Speaker 1: to reproduce. Uh, started in about nineteen sixty birth control.
24:55
Speaker 1: That's so crazy that it had an effect that much
24:58
Speaker 1: of an effect, that pronounced of an effect. Well, it
25:00
Speaker 1: would seem like it would though, I guess so because
25:02
Speaker 1: it's called birth control. Sure you know before that it
25:06
Speaker 1: was called have as many babies as you possibly can.
25:09
Speaker 1: It was called no control. All right, So clearly there's
25:13
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons to study people. Yeah, it's I
25:17
Speaker 1: thought it would be. There's a lot of stuff to
25:18
Speaker 1: study to you can find out whether or not we're
25:21
Speaker 1: going to kill the planet, or whether um people need
25:25
Speaker 1: to stop using contraceptives, or whether you know what your
25:29
Speaker 1: chances are of putin giving you a free TV. Uh.
25:33
Speaker 1: It's all in there. It's all demographers know everything, all
25:36
Speaker 1: there for the taking. So when your frenzy friendly enumerator
25:40
Speaker 1: comes knocking on your door, don't chase them off your
25:43
Speaker 1: land with your dog or a gun. Let him in,
25:46
Speaker 1: give them some lemonade, maybe some cookies. Yeah, we'll check
25:49
Speaker 1: their lamb in at first. But before you let them in,
25:51
Speaker 1: ceo a chuck pep going. And if you want to
25:54
Speaker 1: know more about population, you could read Grabbingowski's great article
25:58
Speaker 1: on the site. Just type in population in the handy
26:00
Speaker 1: search part how stuff works dot com, which of course
26:03
Speaker 1: leads us to the listener mail. Josh, I'm just gonna
26:08
Speaker 1: call this your turn at listener mail, because I think
26:13
Speaker 1: you have to do we'll talk about Yeah. I just
26:16
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily have too much listener mail per se um.
26:20
Speaker 1: But I just wanted to give a shout out to
26:22
Speaker 1: a couple of fellow Toledo wins. One who's a longtime resident,
26:27
Speaker 1: one who's a recent transplant. Christopher is holding the fort
26:30
Speaker 1: down in Toledo for me. Keeping it real, he has
26:33
Speaker 1: uh officially lobbied um the congresswoman from Toledo to get
26:39
Speaker 1: me the key to the city. How awesome with it? Yeah,
26:43
Speaker 1: so Marcy kept her. If you're listening, I would like
26:46
Speaker 1: if you get a key to the city, we gotta
26:48
Speaker 1: go for a ceremony and I at least want to
26:50
Speaker 1: get like a key chain to the city, and you
26:52
Speaker 1: can have the key. We'll see what we can do. Um.
26:56
Speaker 1: So yeah, Christopher has officially petitioner. He's he suggested it
26:59
Speaker 1: and third most famous Toledo in of all time after
27:02
Speaker 1: Jamie Farr. Jamie Farr, Danny Thomas the Great Entertainer and
27:06
Speaker 1: then me and I was like, I think you're for
27:08
Speaker 1: getting Katie Holmes from Toledo and he's like, no, you
27:13
Speaker 1: got her? Bek is it Kate Cruise now? So anyway,
27:18
Speaker 1: thanks a lot for the effort, Christopher, even if it
27:21
Speaker 1: doesn't come to fruition. If it does, you will get
27:24
Speaker 1: a firm handshake and a free Friendlies Sunday of your choosing.
27:28
Speaker 1: For me, Yeah, we'll be going to Friendlies if we
27:31
Speaker 1: go to Toledo. But uh, and then I also want
27:33
Speaker 1: to say hi to Colin, who is a recent transplant.
27:37
Speaker 1: As I said, Um from Colorado, I believe, who moves
27:41
Speaker 1: from Colorado to Toledo. He moved to Toledo to attend
27:45
Speaker 1: Bowling Green State University. Joe Falcons, my brother went there,
27:49
Speaker 1: and uh, Colin did so in an eight eight Dodge
27:52
Speaker 1: Colt that's having a couple of problems. One, the rear
27:57
Speaker 1: struts are completely detached and the acts sole is holding
28:00
Speaker 1: on by a tread, he says, Um, and the mechanics
28:04
Speaker 1: didn't want him to leave when he took it in
28:07
Speaker 1: for service, so they're like, you're going to die in
28:09
Speaker 1: this thing, Um. And the other problem is it has ants.
28:14
Speaker 1: He says, I've never heard of a car having ants.
28:16
Speaker 1: I had an incident car once. Really, you can't get
28:19
Speaker 1: rid of them when they well, that's probably when you
28:20
Speaker 1: were living in the car, which was probably always parked
28:22
Speaker 1: on the ant hill. This is actually prior to that,
28:25
Speaker 1: when I lived in the car. Um. But yeah, no,
28:27
Speaker 1: it's a it's a it's a real problem. And Collin's
28:30
Speaker 1: basically just put the bullet and said, well, I have
28:32
Speaker 1: ants in my car now. He loves his AD eight
28:35
Speaker 1: Dutch cole. He said, he loves solito. He's enjoying. He
28:37
Speaker 1: went to Tony Paco's as I suggested, I gotta try
28:40
Speaker 1: that one day. I also told him to go to
28:42
Speaker 1: Rusty's Jazz Cafe because it's as authentic as it comes.
28:46
Speaker 1: It's awesome. Um. So hey Christopher, hey Colin, you guys,
28:50
Speaker 1: enjoy yourselves, be safe and toledown for the winner. Go
28:54
Speaker 1: mud hens and uh, thanks for writing in. And if
28:57
Speaker 1: you want to say hi to me or Chuck or
28:59
Speaker 1: both of us Chuckers or Jerry you right, Chucker's Jerry
29:03
Speaker 1: chuck Er, I I mean Chucker me chucking me. Um.
29:08
Speaker 1: You can put that in an email to stuff podcast
29:11
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
29:18
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
29:21
Speaker 1: dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our
29:24
Speaker 1: blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page