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How Population Works · Stuff You Should Know

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