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How Zero Population Growth Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:12
Speaker 1: Josh Clark, and there's Charles Stuff. Chuck Bryant is the
0:15
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know podcast. Jerry's over there. Uh, it's
0:22
Speaker 1: pretty much the norm. Yep, yep. How you doing man?
0:26
Speaker 1: How you feeling? It is a little rough, sir? Are
0:29
Speaker 1: you you'll make it through? What? Yeah? Yesterday we celebrated
0:33
Speaker 1: the the the beginnings of Gin and Tonic season. It's
0:38
Speaker 1: definitely that kind of weather for sure. Yeah, it's hard
0:40
Speaker 1: to not sit on the deck and have a citrusy,
0:43
Speaker 1: delightful drink. Nice going. So I'm just a little sleepy,
0:46
Speaker 1: but I'm feeling good. I feel like this topic is
0:50
Speaker 1: is all about being sort of down in the dumps
0:53
Speaker 1: a little bill. It depends, it depends on where you land,
0:56
Speaker 1: and you just place yourself pretty squarely in the gloom
0:59
Speaker 1: and doom camp. My friend. No, I'm actually not in
1:02
Speaker 1: the doom and gloom camp. I was about to say, which,
1:03
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, in our episode, was Malthus right
1:06
Speaker 1: about carrying capacity? You overtly said that you are a
1:11
Speaker 1: an optimist. That's right, not Mauthusian uh naysayer. You know, yeah,
1:19
Speaker 1: I forgot about that one. We've touched on this a
1:21
Speaker 1: few times. We talked about we did a whole profile
1:23
Speaker 1: and Norman Borlog alone on our very short lived and
1:27
Speaker 1: reasonably so UM live webcast. Do you remember we did
1:31
Speaker 1: basically a book report on Norman Borlog. Yeah, he was, um, well,
1:36
Speaker 1: I think he's even controversial. He is very much So
1:39
Speaker 1: you know, you win a Nobel Prize but for saving
1:42
Speaker 1: a billion lives. Yeah, but still people are gonna put you.
1:45
Speaker 1: You get interesting stuff. So um, if you don't know
1:50
Speaker 1: what we're talking about, should probably press pause, go listen
1:52
Speaker 1: to the Malthus episode, Go to stuff you should know
1:57
Speaker 1: dot com slash podcast, I think it's plural slash archive.
2:02
Speaker 1: Make that your homepage and all seven hundred and change
2:06
Speaker 1: episodes are there, and then do control f is everybody
2:09
Speaker 1: doing this so far? And then type of mouths m
2:11
Speaker 1: A L th h U S. It's gonna highlight that link,
2:16
Speaker 1: click that and press play and then come back to us.
2:20
Speaker 1: That's right, we'll wait boom. So so we're back an hour.
2:26
Speaker 1: We we're talking about is carrying capacity in part, but
2:29
Speaker 1: carrying capacity checkers is just kind of a it's a
2:33
Speaker 1: reflection of a larger issue, and that larger issues population
2:37
Speaker 1: specifically overpopulation, and is that a thing or not is
2:41
Speaker 1: a big question, because I mean, at any given point
2:44
Speaker 1: in time, you know, they have, like the the CIA
2:47
Speaker 1: World back book has you know, a pretty good assessment
2:50
Speaker 1: of how many people are alive. It's a total guess.
2:53
Speaker 1: It's a total estimate. We could be at ten billion
2:56
Speaker 1: right now, we could be at a hundred million, and
2:58
Speaker 1: everybody just is really terrible accounting. The point is we
3:01
Speaker 1: don't specifically know. It's it's probably pretty accurate, but it's
3:06
Speaker 1: still a guess. The point isn't to shoot holes in
3:09
Speaker 1: the estimates of how many people are alive on the planet.
3:13
Speaker 1: It's to point out that, like, there's so many people
3:16
Speaker 1: we don't know and we can't possibly know at any
3:19
Speaker 1: given point in time. And that has led a lot
3:21
Speaker 1: of people to say, well, wait a minute. There's this
3:24
Speaker 1: thing called carrying capacity, which is the Earth's ability to
3:28
Speaker 1: support and sustain us humans and really any any creatures.
3:32
Speaker 1: But really we're just kind of concerned with us humans
3:35
Speaker 1: at this moment um and right and sustainably those two
3:42
Speaker 1: factors have to be met or else you're putting a
3:45
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of stress on Earth, and you're eventually bringing
3:49
Speaker 1: about your own demise. So a lot of people are
3:51
Speaker 1: saying like, uh, we're probably past carrying capacity and we
3:54
Speaker 1: just don't know it yet. Or other people are saying,
3:58
Speaker 1: there's really no such thing as carrying capacity city. Thanks
4:00
Speaker 1: to human ingenuity, anytime we come up against it, we'll
4:04
Speaker 1: figure out a way around it. And Norman Borlog was
4:06
Speaker 1: a way to go. But before Borlog really became famous,
4:09
Speaker 1: there was a lot of people who were legitimately concerned
4:14
Speaker 1: that we were all going to die. Yeah Borlog, Um,
4:17
Speaker 1: I don't if you haven't listened to that one, if
4:19
Speaker 1: you didn't follow Josh's instructions like a good little podcast listener. Uh.
4:23
Speaker 1: He was the um, one of the leaders of the
4:26
Speaker 1: Green Revolution in the sixties and seventies, in which we
4:30
Speaker 1: made great advances in agricultural Uh than agriculture in yields. Yeah,
4:35
Speaker 1: new new types of wheat in Mexico, new types of
4:38
Speaker 1: rice in India that um yielded much much more than
4:42
Speaker 1: they ever had. And and plus they were drought resistant,
4:45
Speaker 1: flood resistant. They could stand up and and hold more grain.
4:49
Speaker 1: They could stand up and say Hello. They basically they
4:52
Speaker 1: could pick the day daily double at high Laia. So, uh,
4:57
Speaker 1: Borlog was, you know, by all standards, a very smart guy.
5:02
Speaker 1: He cared very much about the people. He wasn't doing
5:05
Speaker 1: it for fame or riches or anything like that. Like
5:07
Speaker 1: this guy felt like he was working against the clock.
5:10
Speaker 1: And if he didn't and he wasn't the only one
5:12
Speaker 1: doing this, yeah he's the most famous. Um, but if
5:16
Speaker 1: he didn't do it, then yeah, a lot of people
5:18
Speaker 1: were going to starve. Yeah. And I think, um, I
5:21
Speaker 1: proposed to you before this that we do just one
5:23
Speaker 1: on the Green Revolution. Uh and I think that would
5:25
Speaker 1: be a one to three podcast, sweet one. I love
5:30
Speaker 1: this stuff. Psychology population That was another one we did too,
5:34
Speaker 1: was how population works. And it sounds so like eye
5:37
Speaker 1: bleedingly boring, but it turned out to be really interesting stuff.
5:40
Speaker 1: So go go read that too. Well we'll wait, go ahead,
5:44
Speaker 1: and we're back and it's yeah, and everybody's a little nervous.
5:49
Speaker 1: Everyone is nervous. And uh Stanford biology professor Paul airlic Um,
5:55
Speaker 1: there's another famous Paul air Like this is Paul are
5:58
Speaker 1: airlic I believe, Oh it's a different one. Well, there's
6:01
Speaker 1: two dudes, I did not realize that. What do you mean,
6:05
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm familiar with the other Airic. Then I guess, well,
6:07
Speaker 1: who was the other one? Again? He wrote, um, some
6:10
Speaker 1: other famous books. He's a biologist. I think it's it's
6:12
Speaker 1: not the same guy. Yeah, the other guy was a
6:15
Speaker 1: German physician, uh who worked in chemotherapy immunology. Oh yeah,
6:23
Speaker 1: that's not thinking of different guy. So this guy he
6:26
Speaker 1: wrote other things besides the Population Bomb. Yeah. So in
6:29
Speaker 1: nineteen six eight he writes, the population bomb goes on
6:32
Speaker 1: the Tonight Show, it explodes, is huge hit. Apparently he
6:36
Speaker 1: was on more than once. Yeah, and everyone got super
6:38
Speaker 1: nervous because his book started with these words. The battle
6:42
Speaker 1: that he had all the humanity is over in the
6:45
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, the world where under will undergo famines. Hundreds
6:48
Speaker 1: of millions of people are going to starve to death
6:50
Speaker 1: in spite of any crash programs embarked upon. Now that's
6:53
Speaker 1: not so good. That's how he starts his book. He
6:55
Speaker 1: basically says there's gonna be a Malthusian collapse. Um. At
7:00
Speaker 1: one point in the book, he said, if I was
7:01
Speaker 1: a betting man, I would wager by the year two thousand,
7:04
Speaker 1: England won't be around boom. He drops the mic um
7:09
Speaker 1: and we should probably mention who mouth says Thomas. Malthus
7:12
Speaker 1: was a very forward thinking, smart, mathematically inclined minister, I
7:17
Speaker 1: believe in the early nineteenth century, late eighteenth century, an economist,
7:23
Speaker 1: and he was the one who said, we have a
7:25
Speaker 1: problem here everyone. I've just done the math. And population
7:30
Speaker 1: grows exponentially, but our food supply grows linearly, and so
7:35
Speaker 1: we are destined to outgrow our food supply. And that's
7:38
Speaker 1: where the idea of carrying capacity came from. So Malthis
7:41
Speaker 1: and Malthusians um are the people who think like we're
7:45
Speaker 1: going to exceed the food supply eventually and die from famines.
7:49
Speaker 1: And Erlic was one of the most vocal and alarmist
7:52
Speaker 1: neo Malthusians around. Yes, absolutely, and he scared the pants
7:56
Speaker 1: off of people back then. Uh in night, there were
8:00
Speaker 1: about three and a half billion people. And the birth rate.
8:03
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk a lot about birth rates and such,
8:06
Speaker 1: has a lot to do with this buckle up. Um.
8:08
Speaker 1: The American women had three and a half babies on average,
8:12
Speaker 1: and the global birth rate was five babies for a woman.
8:17
Speaker 1: It seems like a lot to me. It was a
8:20
Speaker 1: lot kids. Supposedly, in the fifties we were at six
8:25
Speaker 1: the global average fertility it was six babies per woman.
8:29
Speaker 1: And that's not just per woman. That's you want to
8:33
Speaker 1: talk about fertility rates. So fertility rate basically is the
8:38
Speaker 1: number of live births that a population has assigned to
8:43
Speaker 1: the population of women thought to reasonably be a reproductive age.
8:47
Speaker 1: So fifteen to forty four times a thousand, So you
8:52
Speaker 1: take all of those, figure out the the how many
8:55
Speaker 1: women there are, and then you multiply it by a thousand,
8:58
Speaker 1: so you have something like, um, fifty births per one
9:03
Speaker 1: thousand women aged fifteen to forty four, and that's your
9:05
Speaker 1: fertility right. Yeah, okay, that's you can figure out how
9:09
Speaker 1: many actual births are taking place. Yeah, with reasonable detail. Um.
9:14
Speaker 1: So like Mauthis Airlic did the math in the sixties
9:18
Speaker 1: and said, you know what, our food production isn't keeping up.
9:22
Speaker 1: Just like Mautha said, we're in big, big trouble, wrote
9:25
Speaker 1: the population bomb and co founded Zero Population Growth, which
9:29
Speaker 1: is an organization that is now called uh what are
9:32
Speaker 1: they called now? Population Connection? Population Connection? A very uh,
9:37
Speaker 1: a little sunnier sounds Electric company. It does, and you
9:40
Speaker 1: should check out their website. It's good. They have a
9:42
Speaker 1: lot of good information on it, just to help you,
9:44
Speaker 1: you know, figure out what you might want to believe. UM.
9:48
Speaker 1: So people are scared the zero population growth group. Their
9:54
Speaker 1: aim is to uh, They're big thing is is contraception
9:58
Speaker 1: and giving women um control of their reproduction basically in
10:04
Speaker 1: their fertility right. That's that you decide how many kids
10:06
Speaker 1: you want exactly they have that many. They've identified that
10:10
Speaker 1: that there's an issue that could easily address overpopulation, and
10:15
Speaker 1: that is cutting out unwanted pregnancies or pregnancies or having
10:20
Speaker 1: unwanted kids. They've identified that, you know, plenty of people.
10:25
Speaker 1: There are two different fertility rates. There's the wanted fertility
10:29
Speaker 1: rate and then there's the unwanted fertility rate, and pretty
10:32
Speaker 1: much across the board in any country in the world,
10:35
Speaker 1: the unwanted fertility rate is higher, whether slightly or largely,
10:39
Speaker 1: than the wanted fertility rate. So they're saying, like, if
10:43
Speaker 1: the unwanted fertility rates like three point eight babies per
10:46
Speaker 1: woman in a given country and the wanted fertility rate
10:50
Speaker 1: is like two point five, well, if we can just
10:52
Speaker 1: figure out a way to only have the wanted pregnancies,
10:56
Speaker 1: then you are doing a lot to control of a population.
11:01
Speaker 1: And the way that they figured out how to address
11:03
Speaker 1: this is to just basically spread awareness and access to contraception. Right,
11:09
Speaker 1: the two pronged approach. UM what their goal is is
11:12
Speaker 1: they aren't saying that people should not have babies like
11:15
Speaker 1: you said, They're saying people should only have the babies
11:17
Speaker 1: that they want to have, and their their ultimate goal
11:21
Speaker 1: is to um to have a sustainable global birth rate
11:25
Speaker 1: below the replacement level, which means there's a lot of
11:28
Speaker 1: different factors, but it basically means that the world is
11:33
Speaker 1: not growing. When it's like, uh, working a club at
11:37
Speaker 1: at a door, being a doorman, one person goes out,
11:39
Speaker 1: one person comes in. Yeah, you got a little quicker.
11:42
Speaker 1: That's basically what that means is, you know, someone dies,
11:45
Speaker 1: someone can be born, and of course it's not that
11:47
Speaker 1: one to one, but you know, well, if you're a
11:49
Speaker 1: big picture away, if you're a bouncer and you're tasked
11:51
Speaker 1: with keeping it in even ratio, you just have to
11:53
Speaker 1: remember that you can't keep people inside until a new
11:56
Speaker 1: person comes along, because that's called kidnapping. You still they
12:02
Speaker 1: still have to leave and you have to deal with
12:03
Speaker 1: an imbalance for a little while. Right now, the replacement
12:07
Speaker 1: level of fertility rate in the US is two point
12:10
Speaker 1: one babies for a woman and three point zero and
12:13
Speaker 1: other developing countries because they have higher death rates and
12:17
Speaker 1: shorter lifespans, which makes sense. So we were onto the
12:22
Speaker 1: replacement rate basically, right. The replacement rate is the number
12:25
Speaker 1: of kids a woman of reproductive age would have to
12:30
Speaker 1: have to replace herself. And she's not just replacing herself,
12:34
Speaker 1: she's replacing herself and her male mate who she's reproducing with. Yes,
12:40
Speaker 1: and it's kind of gross to think that a woman
12:42
Speaker 1: is giving birth to a boy and a girl who
12:45
Speaker 1: can mate and reproduce her. That's not the point he
12:47
Speaker 1: want them to go mingle with other people's babies. But
12:51
Speaker 1: the replacement rate, you would think then is to right
12:54
Speaker 1: for every woman, two point zero kids is what you
12:58
Speaker 1: need to have to have an even replacement rate. That
13:01
Speaker 1: means that people die, new people are born, and the
13:04
Speaker 1: population never grows or declines, it stays the same. The
13:07
Speaker 1: replacement rate is never actually two point oh though most
13:10
Speaker 1: two point one right now, and the reason why is
13:13
Speaker 1: because we humans um tend to have more male offspring
13:17
Speaker 1: than female. Apparently, for every one hundred girls that are born,
13:22
Speaker 1: one hundred and seven boys are born. So the actual
13:25
Speaker 1: replacement rate is two point zero seven and then they
13:27
Speaker 1: round up to two point one plus there's I mean,
13:30
Speaker 1: there's a lot of other factors too, for sure. So
13:32
Speaker 1: those other factors include things like you said, like, um,
13:35
Speaker 1: infomortality rates, lifespan, immigration into a certain area, And the
13:42
Speaker 1: thing is of birth rates or fertility rates and replacement rates.
13:47
Speaker 1: The replacement rate tends to be a little more stable. Um.
13:50
Speaker 1: The the birth rate. The fertility rate has a lot
13:53
Speaker 1: more to do with social attitudes, access to healthcare, education,
13:58
Speaker 1: and it's a it can change, uh dramatically from place
14:02
Speaker 1: to place, whereas say, anywhere in the western world, the
14:04
Speaker 1: developed world, the replacement rates about two point one exactly.
14:10
Speaker 1: That's in the yeah, the three point oh for the
14:13
Speaker 1: developing countries. All the monographers just stood up and we're clapping.
14:17
Speaker 1: So clearly Aerlic was not correct in his dire predictions.
14:23
Speaker 1: Here we are in and um, there are problems, but
14:28
Speaker 1: England is still around four billion people haven't starved to death. Um.
14:36
Speaker 1: But does that mean that he was wrong altogether? Not
14:39
Speaker 1: necessarily because right now, uh, and This was a pretty
14:43
Speaker 1: startling stat to me. Over the past hundred and ten years,
14:47
Speaker 1: we have grown from one point six billion people to
14:49
Speaker 1: seven point to billion people in a hundred and ten years. Well,
14:53
Speaker 1: we're expected to get up to nine point two and
14:56
Speaker 1: another uh thirty five years by twenty and so one
15:01
Speaker 1: of the reasons we have this many people, uh, most
15:04
Speaker 1: of the reasons are positive because of like advances in healthcare.
15:08
Speaker 1: The lifespan in nineteen hundred was thirty one years old
15:11
Speaker 1: and now it's seventy or maybe even little bit higher
15:14
Speaker 1: because that was two thousand, twelve UM, so imagine it's
15:17
Speaker 1: a little bit higher. And the infant mortality rate globally
15:21
Speaker 1: in nineteen hundred was a hundred and sixty five deaths
15:24
Speaker 1: per one thousand live births was down to thirty four.
15:29
Speaker 1: So that's why there's more people, because we're doing better
15:31
Speaker 1: at taking care of ourselves. Yeah, and that those are
15:33
Speaker 1: two huge factors when it comes to um demographics and
15:37
Speaker 1: population because though the longer you live, the more old
15:41
Speaker 1: people you have, so therefore the less babies you need
15:44
Speaker 1: to replace those people, and the fewer babies that die
15:49
Speaker 1: or that survive infancy UM will be adults one day exactly.
15:54
Speaker 1: But these are the really if you're a demographer, the
15:57
Speaker 1: sweet spot is that working age. So when you're a demographer,
16:01
Speaker 1: especially one that's um economics minded, chuck that sweet spot
16:06
Speaker 1: the reproductive working age people. That's a good sizeable population
16:11
Speaker 1: you want to have. If you have a lot of babies,
16:13
Speaker 1: well then you have a lot of people who are
16:16
Speaker 1: raising those babies, so those babies are dependent on So
16:19
Speaker 1: say you have a lot fewer women in the workforce,
16:21
Speaker 1: so your workforce is depleted. If you have a lot
16:24
Speaker 1: of like an aging population, you have a lot of
16:26
Speaker 1: older people who have already aged out of the workforce
16:29
Speaker 1: and are now dependent on the taxes paid by that workforce.
16:33
Speaker 1: So a large population of either babies or old people,
16:37
Speaker 1: and god forbid both at the same time. It puts
16:40
Speaker 1: a lot of strain on the middle you know what
16:42
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Sure, So when you have a longer life
16:46
Speaker 1: expectancy and a lower infant mortality rate like we have
16:51
Speaker 1: now in the developed world, you want to have something
16:54
Speaker 1: closer to the replacement rate, you know, which makes sense. Um,
16:58
Speaker 1: I got some more stats that would uh seem to
17:01
Speaker 1: back up air likes. Predictions are not predictions. But at
17:05
Speaker 1: least his gloomy outlook currently. You know, I couldn't find
17:09
Speaker 1: much on what he felt today. Yeah, I'm curious that
17:12
Speaker 1: he's still around. I'm curious about there's some good interviews.
17:16
Speaker 1: I'm gonna check that out. You know what, We'll post
17:18
Speaker 1: it on uh the website because now we're posting links, yeah,
17:23
Speaker 1: to like the research that we do stuff. You should know,
17:26
Speaker 1: great links on that on the podcast page for this episode. Guys.
17:30
Speaker 1: So currently, as of last year and estimated eight hundred
17:34
Speaker 1: and five million people go to bed Hungary every night,
17:38
Speaker 1: more than half of which are in Asia. One in
17:41
Speaker 1: four people in Sub Saharan Africa was chronically malnourished UM
17:46
Speaker 1: seven hundred fifty million people worldwide like access to clean
17:49
Speaker 1: water UM, contributing to about eight hundred and fifty thousand
17:53
Speaker 1: deaths per year. And UM, here's the thing, though, is
17:58
Speaker 1: we're living in cities out more than ever. UM. People
18:02
Speaker 1: are moving into cities, which is a good thing and
18:04
Speaker 1: one way because it provides a lot of opportunity, economic
18:08
Speaker 1: economic opportunity for people, especially in developing countries. But when
18:12
Speaker 1: you look at these cities, a lot of them are
18:15
Speaker 1: full of slums and sweatshops. In these developing nations, something
18:20
Speaker 1: like um half of the population and a lot of
18:22
Speaker 1: cities live in slum conditions in Africa, that's right. So
18:28
Speaker 1: you think sub Saharan Africa, I think rural in a
18:31
Speaker 1: lot of ways. So yes, I'm aware that they they
18:35
Speaker 1: lack access to clean drinking water, and that's an issue
18:38
Speaker 1: that Sub Saharan Africa faces. You don't think about that
18:41
Speaker 1: being an issue in a city. But the problem with
18:44
Speaker 1: slums is they very rarely have access to clean drinking
18:47
Speaker 1: water in the exact same way that places like rural
18:50
Speaker 1: Africa have the same problem. Yeah, and and we're not
18:53
Speaker 1: even I mean that's that's clean drinking water and like
18:55
Speaker 1: sanitation and shelter. We're not even talking about education and
18:59
Speaker 1: healthcare and like all the things that people need to
19:02
Speaker 1: live a fruitful life. You know. So cities are a problem.
19:07
Speaker 1: Even if air look was wrong, there are clearly issues. Um.
19:11
Speaker 1: Some people will argue and we'll get to the critics
19:13
Speaker 1: and stuff later, but a lot of people argued that
19:16
Speaker 1: it's distribution of food and stuff like that, Like we
19:18
Speaker 1: have the resources, we're just not dividing it out properly. Right,
19:22
Speaker 1: And apparently if I read that if everyone lived like
19:28
Speaker 1: an American and consumed like an American does, the caring
19:32
Speaker 1: capacity would be something like two billion, So we would
19:35
Speaker 1: have already far exceeded it. But if everybody lived with
19:38
Speaker 1: just the minimal amount that they need to live, the
19:41
Speaker 1: caring capacity would be something like forty billion. We've been
19:44
Speaker 1: able to sustain the caring capacity as it is right
19:47
Speaker 1: now because not everybody lives like an American. But if
19:50
Speaker 1: you're an American, that means that a lot of the
19:53
Speaker 1: other world, especially developing world, thinks that you are over
19:56
Speaker 1: consuming by a lot. And that's really evident. And um
20:00
Speaker 1: there's a graph that went around recently that shows water
20:03
Speaker 1: use in agriculture by type of product, so everything from
20:07
Speaker 1: like soy to beef. It showed how much water? Did
20:11
Speaker 1: you see that? I didn't see that, but I've seen
20:13
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Beef is like a huge consumer water, right,
20:17
Speaker 1: A hundred and six point to eight gallons of water
20:20
Speaker 1: used to produce one ounce of beef. That's a lot.
20:24
Speaker 1: That's a lot of water. And so that's that's part
20:27
Speaker 1: of the point. Whereas if everybody's and apparently in China
20:31
Speaker 1: and India and these ascending countries with ascending economies. Um.
20:35
Speaker 1: One of the one of the great benefits of being
20:38
Speaker 1: part of the developed worlds. You can get steak anytime
20:40
Speaker 1: you want, baby, and uh, I want a big one
20:43
Speaker 1: right now, put it in front of me. I'll give
20:45
Speaker 1: you some money here. Here, just take this and and
20:48
Speaker 1: put in your pocket. There's some money for you. Give
20:50
Speaker 1: me my steak, and you don't care how much water
20:52
Speaker 1: it took. And they're these people who are saying they
20:57
Speaker 1: don't necessarily agree with their like, but they're saying, he
20:59
Speaker 1: was totally off here, he was alarmed. They're saying, this
21:04
Speaker 1: is one of the problems. You know, this is one
21:06
Speaker 1: of the problems with too many people. Yeah, and so
21:09
Speaker 1: getting back to to uh, contraception and zero population growth
21:14
Speaker 1: or now the population connection they're big goal. They say
21:18
Speaker 1: there are two two million women in the developing world
21:21
Speaker 1: who have an unmet need for family planning. So they're
21:24
Speaker 1: not saying, you know, we want to put our ideals
21:27
Speaker 1: on you and you shouldn't be having kids. They're saying
21:30
Speaker 1: they're that many women that are like, I don't want
21:32
Speaker 1: these five kids. I would have wanted to and I
21:36
Speaker 1: either don't know about contraception, don't have contraception or I
21:40
Speaker 1: have literally no idea how conception works for a lot
21:45
Speaker 1: of them. Well, I shouldn't say a lot. The first
21:48
Speaker 1: idea that women just need access to contraception and they
21:52
Speaker 1: will use it. Yeah, and they're they're they're working on that, right,
21:56
Speaker 1: But they found in studies it's something like ten percent
21:58
Speaker 1: or less of the women who are defined as having
22:01
Speaker 1: unmet contraceptive needs. Um site a lack of access as
22:07
Speaker 1: to why they're having unwanted kids. Instead, they're saying it's
22:11
Speaker 1: things like family pressure or societal pressure to have a
22:14
Speaker 1: bunch of kids. Um Like you're saying, like not understanding
22:17
Speaker 1: contraception or how conception works. Yeah, they say they don't
22:21
Speaker 1: believe that they need contraception. If you have sex infrequently
22:24
Speaker 1: or after birth, after I've had one kid, we don't
22:27
Speaker 1: need to use contraception anymore. Like literally not knowing how
22:31
Speaker 1: conception works. So that's a big educational hurdle that Population
22:37
Speaker 1: Connection is trying to overcome. Right, So they're saying it's
22:40
Speaker 1: not just getting contraception to women, is educating them on
22:44
Speaker 1: how to use it and changing their social outlook. Yeah,
22:47
Speaker 1: changing the culture. Yeah, largely men, you know, saying you know,
22:53
Speaker 1: like revolutionary road or something. You know. Alright, So, uh,
22:58
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk a little bit after the break about
23:00
Speaker 1: what the critics of zero population growth have to say.
23:28
Speaker 1: So we're back. We're talking about solutions to overpopulation. But
23:33
Speaker 1: not everybody thinks it's a problem. Some people say over
23:36
Speaker 1: population is a myth. They say that are like in
23:40
Speaker 1: and of it himself damaged his own argument. Yeah, he
23:45
Speaker 1: got a lot of personal heat. Yeah, still does because
23:47
Speaker 1: of the language he used. It was so alarmed as
23:50
Speaker 1: starting his book off with, you know that we've already
23:52
Speaker 1: lost and no matter what we do, billions of people
23:55
Speaker 1: are going to die. Um and then it not panning
23:58
Speaker 1: out saying that England is going to be around in
24:01
Speaker 1: thirty years. I mean that was putting a lot on
24:03
Speaker 1: the line. And so a lot of people said, you're
24:07
Speaker 1: your specific landmarks or um or milestones were unmet. Therefore
24:13
Speaker 1: your heart whole arguments out the window. And some people
24:17
Speaker 1: believe that other people are like, that's not necessarily true.
24:20
Speaker 1: That is alarmist as well, possibly your reactionary at least.
24:25
Speaker 1: But some people say, I still don't agree with Earli
24:28
Speaker 1: because humans are smart. We can figure our way out
24:31
Speaker 1: of any problem. That's right. Critics will say that humans
24:35
Speaker 1: UM are not parasites to the earth. We are the
24:37
Speaker 1: saviors of Earth, and we are the ones that are
24:40
Speaker 1: coming up with these solutions like the Green Revolution and uh,
24:44
Speaker 1: longer lifespans and progressing medically to help people live longer.
24:48
Speaker 1: I don't know about saviors of Earth, you know, Like
24:51
Speaker 1: I think that's stretching it a little bit. I think
24:53
Speaker 1: we um extract a little too much to be called
24:56
Speaker 1: saviors of Earth. Well, I've guarantee you there's a lot
24:58
Speaker 1: of people that think humans are saying years of birth.
25:01
Speaker 1: You know. I would see us more as like Homer
25:03
Speaker 1: with Pincy the lobster again and the salt water and
25:06
Speaker 1: fresh water, trying to strike the balance. I wouldn't call
25:10
Speaker 1: him a savior of either the goldfish or Pinchy at
25:12
Speaker 1: that moment. He's just keeping them both in stasis. How
25:16
Speaker 1: many times have you referenced pinch there's probably seven seven
25:19
Speaker 1: It's not bad. It's one for every one shows roughly. UM.
25:24
Speaker 1: Other critics will say that low birth rates are no
25:26
Speaker 1: good for the economy, UM, like you were talking about
25:29
Speaker 1: earlier UM, older people and babies. Uh. Well, I guess
25:33
Speaker 1: low birth rates wouldn't affect that. But older people are
25:36
Speaker 1: more of a tax on society than they are spenders
25:39
Speaker 1: and investors, right, But in the same in the same way,
25:42
Speaker 1: if you have too many babies, that's a big text
25:44
Speaker 1: eventually that those babies will be a workforce like spend
25:48
Speaker 1: money exactly. So the baby boom and the post war
25:53
Speaker 1: boom economic boom in the United States, it's not coincidental
25:58
Speaker 1: that they went hand in hand. There are a bunch
26:00
Speaker 1: of people having babies and eventually they grew into the
26:03
Speaker 1: workforce and they made a bunch of money in the
26:07
Speaker 1: eighties for the United States. Yeah, and there's it's also
26:09
Speaker 1: supported in developing countries. Uh. More than seventy countries are
26:13
Speaker 1: categorized now as low fertility with two babies or less
26:17
Speaker 1: per woman, And those areas are expected to make a
26:21
Speaker 1: big economic gains in the coming decades because they're going
26:25
Speaker 1: to be people to spend money, right and be in
26:28
Speaker 1: the workforce. And there's kind of a few ways that
26:33
Speaker 1: the workforce and wealth in the economy and birthrates are
26:38
Speaker 1: all kind of tied together too. It turns out that
26:41
Speaker 1: if you give a woman rights to her own contraceptive decisions,
26:48
Speaker 1: um the birth rate tends to inevitably fall as a result. Uh.
26:52
Speaker 1: And then when that happens, it happens because some women
26:55
Speaker 1: have more babies than they want to when they don't
26:58
Speaker 1: have right to their own count receptive decisions. UM. Another
27:02
Speaker 1: reason is when they have those kind of rights, they
27:05
Speaker 1: usually also have the right to an education. When they
27:08
Speaker 1: enter um school, they will tend to put off having
27:11
Speaker 1: kids because once they graduate from school, they'll usually enter
27:14
Speaker 1: the workforce, and so just by nature of getting to
27:17
Speaker 1: the whole thing later on in life, they're having fewer
27:20
Speaker 1: kids as well. Uh. And when you have more educated
27:23
Speaker 1: women in the workforce, your economy is stronger too. So
27:27
Speaker 1: directly and by proxy, um, lower birth rates are associated
27:31
Speaker 1: with the stronger economy. But again, you don't want to
27:34
Speaker 1: get too low, because if you get too low, then
27:36
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the generation before it started to
27:40
Speaker 1: taper off is going to be bigger than the generation
27:42
Speaker 1: that's working. And if it costs fifty dollars in tax
27:47
Speaker 1: money to keep the average retiree afloat, say in the
27:51
Speaker 1: United States, well that divided by a thousand people is
27:55
Speaker 1: a lot easier to bear than divided by a hundred people.
27:58
Speaker 1: A hundred working people, you know what I mean. Yeah,
28:00
Speaker 1: we gotta keep up the old folks and uh keep
28:03
Speaker 1: them in stake and ovaltine right. You know. So if
28:05
Speaker 1: you're if you're an economist, demographer, whatever, everybody's kind of
28:10
Speaker 1: saying like, you want to get a country developed, and
28:13
Speaker 1: you want to get them at the two point one
28:14
Speaker 1: replacement rate and everything will be hunky dory from there. Yeah.
28:18
Speaker 1: And the other thing a critic might say too is um,
28:21
Speaker 1: and this is what we were talking about earlier about
28:23
Speaker 1: the environment, Uh, the impact on the environment, Like we're
28:26
Speaker 1: just going to destroy our world with so many people. Um.
28:30
Speaker 1: It turns out that impact carbon emissions aren't really tied
28:34
Speaker 1: to population growth rates. It's tied to per capita income levels.
28:39
Speaker 1: By evidence that China in the US have some of
28:42
Speaker 1: the lowest UH fertility rates right now, and we are
28:45
Speaker 1: the worst polluters. So it's not because we have all
28:48
Speaker 1: these people. It's because we're consuming too much as Americans exactly,
28:54
Speaker 1: and I guess in China as well, which actually makes
28:57
Speaker 1: it seem kind of nerve racking that India and China
29:02
Speaker 1: with these enormous populations, are starting to become wealthier and wealthier,
29:06
Speaker 1: because that's just going to make it even worse as
29:10
Speaker 1: far as the environment goes. Did you check out the
29:13
Speaker 1: Population Connection site? No? I didn't. They have a pretty
29:16
Speaker 1: interesting f a q um that if you don't know
29:19
Speaker 1: where you stand. I mean, it's helpful to read uh
29:22
Speaker 1: like they say things like, instead of we want to
29:25
Speaker 1: focus on quality of life, not quantity, and instead of
29:28
Speaker 1: saying how many people can the earth support, maybe how
29:31
Speaker 1: many people can't be or support because right now all
29:34
Speaker 1: these people are dying from lack of you know, clean
29:38
Speaker 1: water and sanitation and food. Um. And there's the counter
29:43
Speaker 1: argument that you hear from critics a lot. I've seen
29:44
Speaker 1: this stat thrown around that the entire world's population could
29:48
Speaker 1: live in Texas. It's still mind boggling. I have trouble
29:52
Speaker 1: like believing it. Well, I think somebody forget to carry
29:55
Speaker 1: a one or something. No, it's true. Population Connection says,
29:58
Speaker 1: sure they can. Uh, you could fit everyone in Texas.
30:03
Speaker 1: You could also fit forty people in a phone booth.
30:06
Speaker 1: But um, Texas, they said, in no way has the
30:09
Speaker 1: carrying capacity to take care of those people. So it's
30:12
Speaker 1: a little bit of a hollow. You know the fact
30:15
Speaker 1: that you throw out when you say that, right, like,
30:17
Speaker 1: sure you can jam everyone in there. Um. Texas would
30:21
Speaker 1: be like what do you guys doing here? Everyone? Um?
30:26
Speaker 1: But it's pretty interesting stuff. I recommend people read their
30:28
Speaker 1: f a Q U. It seems like they definitely have
30:31
Speaker 1: the right um mindset because that what they want to
30:35
Speaker 1: do is, you know, make sure people have a good
30:37
Speaker 1: quality of life all over the world. Well, I will
30:39
Speaker 1: go read the f a Q because I suddenly feel underprepared.
30:43
Speaker 1: But I will tell you that the impression that I
30:45
Speaker 1: have from researching them without going on their website was, um,
30:50
Speaker 1: I didn't find anything like where population connection or the
30:54
Speaker 1: population connection myth or anything like that. There's definitely debate
30:58
Speaker 1: on the other side saying overpopulation is a myth, but
31:02
Speaker 1: no one seems to be attacking population connection is like
31:04
Speaker 1: a nefarious organization because they're not saying don't have babies, right,
31:08
Speaker 1: And that's a really sticky situation to be in because
31:11
Speaker 1: a lot of people are like, well, God wants us
31:13
Speaker 1: to have as many babies as we possibly can. Who
31:16
Speaker 1: are you to be meddling in that kind of thing.
31:18
Speaker 1: It's a it's a fine line that a group like
31:20
Speaker 1: that has to walk, and they seem to be walking
31:23
Speaker 1: at fine, there's just saying like, here's some contraception. Maybe
31:27
Speaker 1: let's not have unwanted babies. Let this little angels stay
31:30
Speaker 1: in heaven, and uh, we'll just go from there. I
31:35
Speaker 1: think that's their on their homepage, all right, the Behavioral Sink.
31:42
Speaker 1: What um, where did you find this? I don't remember
31:46
Speaker 1: where I ran across it, but um, I'd read it
31:49
Speaker 1: a while back. But I have to give a shout
31:50
Speaker 1: out to Josh from Jersey, the original Jersey, not New Jersey,
31:54
Speaker 1: who recently wrote in to suggest we we do an
31:56
Speaker 1: episode on that and a perfect timing, because he wrote
31:59
Speaker 1: in after you'd selected this one, and I was like,
32:03
Speaker 1: these two would go great together, hand in hand. Yeah,
32:05
Speaker 1: So thanks Josh for reminding us. Well, thank you Josh
32:08
Speaker 1: for thanking Josh, which Josh, I'm thinking all the Josh
32:12
Speaker 1: is so. In nineteen seventy two, this dude named John B. Calhoun. Um,
32:18
Speaker 1: this is one of his experiments. This guy, what he
32:20
Speaker 1: liked to do was build um rat and mouse utopias.
32:25
Speaker 1: He've been doing it since the forties and basically with
32:28
Speaker 1: the aim to see what would happen to a population,
32:31
Speaker 1: in this case mice or rats if you gave them
32:34
Speaker 1: a perfect mouse world. And he called these world Universes.
32:40
Speaker 1: And the one in nineteen seventy two, the one that
32:42
Speaker 1: really like made all the headlines I guess, was called Universe,
32:50
Speaker 1: and it was pretty good size. It was a hundred
32:52
Speaker 1: over a hundred inches square. Um. The walls were fifty
32:56
Speaker 1: four inches high. It had space for um, let's see,
33:01
Speaker 1: what's two hundred fifty six times fifteen chuck. Um, I'm
33:05
Speaker 1: gonna go with about in my head. I'm gonna say
33:09
Speaker 1: like close to thirty. It is exactly hundred. Yeah, that's
33:15
Speaker 1: what I meant. I meant three thousand, hundred forty okay
33:19
Speaker 1: okay um. So there was enough room comfortably for thirty
33:22
Speaker 1: eight hundred and forty mice, yes, um. And long before
33:27
Speaker 1: that he introduced four breeding pairs, so eight mice he
33:31
Speaker 1: first introduced to Universe, and it was well stocked by
33:35
Speaker 1: the way. They had everything. They wood, water that was
33:38
Speaker 1: cleaned out. They were all disease free. No predators, yeah,
33:41
Speaker 1: no yah. He threw a cat in there one right,
33:43
Speaker 1: just to keep him on their toes or something. Yeah,
33:45
Speaker 1: I mean it was. It was mouse Heaven is what
33:47
Speaker 1: they called it. Yes, And he actually did in papers
33:50
Speaker 1: about these universes. He would refer to them as heaven
33:52
Speaker 1: or utopia, and he would use words like that. Um.
33:56
Speaker 1: So he introduces these for breeding pairs of mice to
33:59
Speaker 1: UM to verse twenty five and um. After a hundred
34:03
Speaker 1: and four days, it took them to finally settle down
34:06
Speaker 1: and be like, Okay, this place is actually pretty great.
34:08
Speaker 1: It's not too good to be true, um, despite the
34:11
Speaker 1: fact that it seems to be built by human hand,
34:14
Speaker 1: which is weird, and the temperature never changes. But we're
34:18
Speaker 1: just gonna say it's probably fine and start breeding. And
34:21
Speaker 1: they started breeding pretty quickly. Yes, they started doubling in
34:25
Speaker 1: population every fifty five days after that, right, Yeah, like
34:29
Speaker 1: you said, because it was so great there, they were
34:31
Speaker 1: just like, hey, let's eat and uh do it and
34:35
Speaker 1: make a little baby mice. Like you know, there is
34:38
Speaker 1: no end in sight, so you're doubling every fifty five days. Uh.
34:42
Speaker 1: This is all a big study to study what overpopulation,
34:45
Speaker 1: what would happen. And what he found time after time
34:48
Speaker 1: was that things went bad. Yeah, which is really something
34:53
Speaker 1: because remember Paul Airic released the population bomb in but
34:58
Speaker 1: for decades before that, John Calhoun saw firsthand what the
35:05
Speaker 1: real problem was. The real problem wasn't over population leading
35:09
Speaker 1: to scarcity of food and conflicts, conflict and resource wars
35:15
Speaker 1: and famine and starvation. What he found was that the
35:18
Speaker 1: real problem was over population itself, but just too many,
35:23
Speaker 1: too many mice, and not enough valuable roles for mice
35:27
Speaker 1: to play exactly, so there comes to be a point
35:30
Speaker 1: in any mouse population. As far as Calhoun was concerned.
35:33
Speaker 1: And again, this is the universe twenty five and he
35:36
Speaker 1: wasn't making like one a week or something. These were
35:38
Speaker 1: detailed or smart studies. He was hired by the National
35:41
Speaker 1: Institutes of Health. He spent like twenty or thirty years
35:43
Speaker 1: working there. He was like a bona fide legitimate researcher um,
35:48
Speaker 1: and he would find that at some point the abundance
35:53
Speaker 1: would lead to overpopulation rather than scarcely. Like he he
35:57
Speaker 1: never ran out of food. They always had enough food
35:59
Speaker 1: and water and everything. What came to be an issue
36:01
Speaker 1: with space and social interactions. There were just too many people.
36:05
Speaker 1: There are too many mice, I should say to the mice.
36:08
Speaker 1: There people, sure, um, And they're rubbing shoulders up against
36:12
Speaker 1: one another, constantly moving past one another. There's not enough room.
36:16
Speaker 1: And like you said, there wasn't enough. Um, there were
36:20
Speaker 1: too many mice to fulfill the number of social roles needed. Right. Yeah,
36:28
Speaker 1: it says by day three fifteen, so this is close
36:30
Speaker 1: to a year. Um. A lot of mice are living
36:33
Speaker 1: in there. And they said there were more peers to
36:36
Speaker 1: defend against. So males were stressed out and stopped defending
36:41
Speaker 1: their territory. They abandoned it. Uh said normal social discourse,
36:45
Speaker 1: UM broke down completely. Social bonds broke down. UM. There
36:51
Speaker 1: was like randomized violence for no reason. It seemed like. Um.
36:56
Speaker 1: The female mice, the mothers saw this and would attack
37:00
Speaker 1: our own babies. And it was procreation slumped, infant abandonment,
37:05
Speaker 1: increase mortality sword um. Then he talked about the beautiful ones,
37:09
Speaker 1: which I thought was hysterical. There were these male mice
37:12
Speaker 1: that just they never fought, They never sought to reproduce
37:15
Speaker 1: or have sex. All they did was eat, sleep and
37:18
Speaker 1: groom and just sort of loaf around. So all these
37:21
Speaker 1: social barriers are completely being destroyed, these social norms, I
37:25
Speaker 1: should say. Yeah, and these the the females that could
37:28
Speaker 1: reproduce one off by themselves to quester themselves away from society.
37:32
Speaker 1: And the males that were capable of reproducing became those
37:34
Speaker 1: beautiful ones and didn't seek sex either. So over time
37:39
Speaker 1: they lost their ability to carry out these complex social
37:42
Speaker 1: interactions that lead to reproduction, and they just stopped reproducing
37:46
Speaker 1: it in general. Yeah, by day five sixty and this
37:49
Speaker 1: is um, I guess that's the close to two year mark. Um, well,
37:54
Speaker 1: I guess eighteen months they had mice and then growth ceased. Yeah,
38:00
Speaker 1: which is even close to the thirty that this place
38:03
Speaker 1: could could conceivably hang on to. Yeah, So it was
38:06
Speaker 1: how many was they stopped reproducing? Um? Very few My
38:12
Speaker 1: survive pass weaning at that point. The beautiful ones were
38:17
Speaker 1: still secluded, the females that they basically called this the
38:21
Speaker 1: first death of two deaths. He did specifically social death
38:25
Speaker 1: essentially exactly like the death of the spirit, the death
38:28
Speaker 1: of the society, and then eventually the physical death the
38:32
Speaker 1: second death. Yeah, the one leads to the second, like
38:36
Speaker 1: there is a point that you pass, and he came
38:39
Speaker 1: up with a great name for it, called the behavioral
38:41
Speaker 1: sink um where they think they refer to it as
38:45
Speaker 1: the event horizon. Once you pass that, it's all over, right,
38:48
Speaker 1: there's no coming back from that, and once there's no
38:51
Speaker 1: coming back from that, not only has your society collapsed,
38:54
Speaker 1: or does your society collapse? Um, you your population becomes
38:59
Speaker 1: extinct because reproduction becomes impossible even he found, which is
39:03
Speaker 1: pretty startling. He found that even after enough of the
39:08
Speaker 1: population dies off that it returns to those potable, ideal
39:11
Speaker 1: numbers of the early days in Universe twenty five or
39:14
Speaker 1: any of the universes, they still don't reproduction doesn't start
39:18
Speaker 1: up again because remember, social norms and bonds have broken down,
39:23
Speaker 1: so they can't even figure out how to reproduce once
39:26
Speaker 1: there's room for people enough again. It's it is so interesting,
39:30
Speaker 1: he said that. Um. He wrote he wrote this really
39:33
Speaker 1: kind of blockbuster paper called Population Density and Social Pathology,
39:37
Speaker 1: and it was published in Scientific American in nineteen sixty two,
39:41
Speaker 1: and he said that the individuals that are born under
39:44
Speaker 1: these circumstances will be so out of touch with reality
39:47
Speaker 1: as to be incapable even of alienation, so like they
39:51
Speaker 1: can't even feel like they're not connected as society anymore,
39:54
Speaker 1: because there's no society for them to ever connect or
39:57
Speaker 1: disconnect from. It's right, it really is. And a lot
40:01
Speaker 1: of people jumped on this and said, whoa, what's going
40:05
Speaker 1: on here, because if you look at his data, every
40:08
Speaker 1: time he ran this experiment, the results became the same.
40:12
Speaker 1: There was an abundance of resources, there was never scarcity.
40:16
Speaker 1: Population became overpopulation. Once they reached the point of the
40:20
Speaker 1: behavioral sink, the population slid into extinction. And on the
40:25
Speaker 1: way there was violence, cannibalism um like uh and sexualism
40:31
Speaker 1: in fanticide um just like all the horrible things you
40:35
Speaker 1: can possibly think of, um, right, you know, on the
40:39
Speaker 1: way towards extinction. And so a lot of people said,
40:42
Speaker 1: you know, these mice kind of a reflective of our
40:45
Speaker 1: own society, don't you think and um, Calhoun was kind
40:49
Speaker 1: of like, yeah, I would say that's probably correct. Yeah.
40:52
Speaker 1: And there was a big boom at the time because
40:54
Speaker 1: of this experiment in literature and movies with a lot
40:58
Speaker 1: of doomsday uh areas uh. Tom Wolf, the Great writer
41:02
Speaker 1: wrote in The Pump House Gang in nine UH he
41:06
Speaker 1: actually referenced the behavioral sink um and uh in reference
41:11
Speaker 1: to New York City, and he said, I got to uh,
41:14
Speaker 1: it was easy to look at New Yorkers as animals,
41:16
Speaker 1: especially looking down from someplace like a balcony at Grand
41:18
Speaker 1: Central at the rush hour Friday afternoon and the floor
41:21
Speaker 1: was filled with poor white humans running around, dodging, blinking
41:24
Speaker 1: their eyes, making a sound like a pinfull of starlings
41:27
Speaker 1: or rats or something. And there are all these movies
41:30
Speaker 1: that came out. There was one called ZPG with Oliver
41:34
Speaker 1: Reed and Geraldine Chapman Chaplain that was called Zero Population Growth. Yeah,
41:40
Speaker 1: like for a generation the government said no, one's allowed
41:42
Speaker 1: to have babies. Here's your robot baby, right, and they're like, no,
41:45
Speaker 1: we're gonna have a real baby. And they're like, no,
41:46
Speaker 1: you're not. Um, I think it. I didn't see, but
41:50
Speaker 1: I'm sure it ended very portly. I didn't see it either. Yeah.
41:53
Speaker 1: I saw it on IMDb though. And of course, of
41:56
Speaker 1: course Soilent Green. Yeah, great, great movie from the novel
42:01
Speaker 1: Make Room, Make Room. And there's there's another novel called
42:07
Speaker 1: stand On Zanzibar, and um, there were people called muckers
42:12
Speaker 1: who ran them up and just suddenly went crazy and
42:15
Speaker 1: started killing a bunch of people. Oh no, what happens.
42:18
Speaker 1: From time to time in the news, a lot of
42:21
Speaker 1: people would were saying, Yeah, the stuff that Calhoun's finding
42:25
Speaker 1: is clearly extrapolateable onto human society, and at the time
42:32
Speaker 1: too there was a lot of discussion about what to
42:34
Speaker 1: do about um, inner city over population, crime, housing projects. UM.
42:41
Speaker 1: There's this really great documentary called The pruitt I go
42:43
Speaker 1: Myth and it's about there was this the pruitt I
42:47
Speaker 1: Go UM project in St. Louis became I think we've
42:52
Speaker 1: talked about it before, but it became like the the
42:58
Speaker 1: the poster child for how no matter what you do
43:01
Speaker 1: for poor inner city people, they're gonna screw it up
43:04
Speaker 1: and it's gonna become crime ridden. And it's them. It's
43:06
Speaker 1: not it's not the their their quality of life or
43:10
Speaker 1: education or anything like that. It's them. And this this
43:13
Speaker 1: this documentary just totally demolishes that idea, but it's still
43:17
Speaker 1: a longstanding idea. And there were a group of policy
43:20
Speaker 1: policymakers who looked at Calhoun's research and said, clearly, we
43:24
Speaker 1: need to we need to do something. There's there's too
43:27
Speaker 1: many people, and there's a lot of people who don't
43:29
Speaker 1: have um valuable social roles and they're turning a crime
43:33
Speaker 1: and everything. UM. It was very much open to interpretation
43:38
Speaker 1: because Calhoun, even though he was putting these things in
43:40
Speaker 1: terms like heaven and utopia and hell and behavioral sink
43:45
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff. He was still just kind
43:47
Speaker 1: of putting data out there and it was up to
43:49
Speaker 1: society at large or interpreted, and it really said a
43:51
Speaker 1: lot about your attitudes towards your fellow human how you
43:54
Speaker 1: interpreted it. But Calhoun himself actually took something of an
43:58
Speaker 1: optimistic view of all of this data, which is kind
44:01
Speaker 1: of mind boggling. Yeah, I was surprised to read this actually,
44:04
Speaker 1: he Um, it makes sense that if you think about it. Yeah.
44:06
Speaker 1: He found that there were outliers and that not all
44:10
Speaker 1: the mice descended into a hellish violence and looting and
44:16
Speaker 1: mouse looting. He found that some could actually handle this
44:19
Speaker 1: and what he called the ones that could had a
44:21
Speaker 1: high social velocity, UM, mice that fared well with a
44:25
Speaker 1: lot of high number of social interactions. And that is
44:28
Speaker 1: not me. And he said, I'm a type, A blood type,
44:32
Speaker 1: blood personality type. Uh. He said that basically, these mice
44:36
Speaker 1: will thrive. Um. And he said, and even the ones
44:39
Speaker 1: who don't, what he termed the losers, um, found ways
44:43
Speaker 1: to be more creative. And he sufficient, Yeah, he had
44:46
Speaker 1: a sunny your outlook, basically saying that man is essentially
44:50
Speaker 1: a positive animal and we will create and design our
44:54
Speaker 1: own solutions, right, and his solution was since and it
44:58
Speaker 1: makes sense because he own that it's not scarcity or
45:02
Speaker 1: famines or anything that leads to trouble, it's overpopulation itself.
45:07
Speaker 1: His idea was, well, let's go find more space. And
45:10
Speaker 1: so he was a member of this group called the
45:12
Speaker 1: Space Cadets, which was a group of thinkers that we're
45:14
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to establish colonies on like
45:17
Speaker 1: Mars or the Moon or wherever, which is exactly what
45:21
Speaker 1: Calhoun's point was, is that we just need more space.
45:24
Speaker 1: As long as we can sustain ourselves, that's fine. But
45:27
Speaker 1: even if we don't stress agriculture, the planet or whatever,
45:32
Speaker 1: we're still going to run into problems. So let's go
45:35
Speaker 1: off to other worlds and terror form. Oh and did
45:39
Speaker 1: you see the thing about the rats of nim Oh?
45:42
Speaker 1: Was that taken it? It was based directly on his research,
45:48
Speaker 1: Mrs Brisbee and the Rats of nim Nice. Yes, So
45:51
Speaker 1: go see that again and also go read the Behavioral Sink,
45:54
Speaker 1: Super interesting, an article on Cabinet by Will Wiles that
45:58
Speaker 1: informed a lot of episode. Yeah, this stuff is fascinating
46:02
Speaker 1: to me because I see kind of both sides. Um
46:06
Speaker 1: clearly there are some issues going right now, and uh,
46:09
Speaker 1: but I also think that there are solutions around the corner. Yeah.
46:13
Speaker 1: I ultimately don't have a strong opinion either way, and
46:16
Speaker 1: I think if I think about it, it's because I
46:20
Speaker 1: think humans will, yeah, become an ingenuitouve. You can have
46:24
Speaker 1: steak tonight, me too, grass fed only you know, it
46:31
Speaker 1: doesn't make it any better. I mean that's why beef
46:33
Speaker 1: is so it uses so much because it eats so
46:36
Speaker 1: much food that also requires water. Right, it requires water
46:39
Speaker 1: like two times over at least the dumb cows. Yeah,
46:43
Speaker 1: does you feel bad about our steak consumption? Chuck, I
46:46
Speaker 1: don't need much steak. Good for you, buddy, It's because
46:48
Speaker 1: Emily doesn't eat beef. So oh yeah, you know, usually
46:51
Speaker 1: I just will cook chicken because it's not like I'll
46:54
Speaker 1: have a steak and I'll cook work chicken every now
46:55
Speaker 1: and then. But usually it's just easier because chicken comes
46:58
Speaker 1: in like a two or three pack, right, you know. Yah,
47:01
Speaker 1: Plus you cook it until it's dry as a bone,
47:03
Speaker 1: so you can feel better about the water consumption, that's right. Uh.
47:07
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about population growth and
47:10
Speaker 1: specifically zero population growth type, those words into the search
47:13
Speaker 1: bar house to works dot com and don't forget to
47:15
Speaker 1: go to stuff you shaulow dot com and listen to
47:17
Speaker 1: this episode and check out the extra great links on
47:20
Speaker 1: there too. Uh. And since I said search bar in
47:23
Speaker 1: there somewhere, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call
47:27
Speaker 1: this linguists sticks up for us, all right? Right? Hey,
47:32
Speaker 1: guys studied linguistics in college, so it always pickles me
47:35
Speaker 1: when you guys go on tangents about words and language.
47:37
Speaker 1: The main reason I'm writing is because I want to
47:39
Speaker 1: offer you a counterpoint to the language police that have
47:42
Speaker 1: been harshing your vibe. Grammar nuts are what we call
47:46
Speaker 1: in the biz. Uh, prescriptivists, um, who like to dictate
47:50
Speaker 1: how people should speak. Linguists, on the other hand, are
47:54
Speaker 1: descriptivists who make their careers out of how people actually
47:59
Speaker 1: speak in real war old situations. Oh, I didn't realize.
48:02
Speaker 1: I thought linguists could be one or the other. I
48:05
Speaker 1: didn't realize that like linguists tend to be descriptive ists.
48:09
Speaker 1: That's what she says. What is um who wrote Infinite
48:12
Speaker 1: Jess David Foster Wallace. He was a big time prescriptivists,
48:16
Speaker 1: really he used to drive him crazy, like how people
48:18
Speaker 1: should speak? Yeah, like that, there is a a specific
48:22
Speaker 1: way that humans are supposed to speak and right, right
48:25
Speaker 1: and communicate, and if you dedate from that, you're about
48:29
Speaker 1: as bad as human being and that would be like
48:31
Speaker 1: the downfall of society or pretty much on um. We
48:35
Speaker 1: don't use the terms good or bad grammar. Instead, we
48:37
Speaker 1: prefer standard and non standard Linguists recognize the social functions
48:42
Speaker 1: of non standard grammars and observe their uses and functions
48:46
Speaker 1: rather than to try and micromanage them. A final point,
48:50
Speaker 1: I'm certain your listeners still know what you mean when
48:52
Speaker 1: you say things like there's a lot of something, even
48:55
Speaker 1: if it isn't standard grammar and the laws of linguistics,
48:58
Speaker 1: as long as you're interlocuature, which is a listener interlocutor interlocutor. Yeah,
49:09
Speaker 1: as long as they accurately understand what you mean, you
49:11
Speaker 1: have successfully communicated. And that's why humans had been in language,
49:14
Speaker 1: isn't it. So go be free and know that I
49:17
Speaker 1: will always love your show no matter how you speak.
49:19
Speaker 1: And that is from Kristen. Thanks Kristen. The supportive linguists
49:22
Speaker 1: appreciate that that's funny that Kristen mentioned that as long
49:26
Speaker 1: as your interlocutor understands what you're saying, you're communicating correctly. Um,
49:32
Speaker 1: someone else, I don't remember who it was, they wrote
49:33
Speaker 1: in and suggested we do an episode on shorthand. Oh interested.
49:37
Speaker 1: I was just talking about that with Emily last night. Bam,
49:39
Speaker 1: it's all over the place. I took speed writing in
49:41
Speaker 1: high school and she was, did you very surprised at that?
49:43
Speaker 1: So like speedwriting with hands? Speedwriting is like like stenography, No,
49:49
Speaker 1: right with your hand. Um, it's basically a version of shorthand,
49:53
Speaker 1: but not exact shorthand. Got you. It's a kind of shorthand.
49:58
Speaker 1: It sounds like shorthand, but like more aggressive. Yeah, like
50:01
Speaker 1: max power or something. The joke was my friend Shannon,
50:06
Speaker 1: I won't see her last name, but she would cheat
50:09
Speaker 1: and class because she didn't learn the shorthand. So the
50:12
Speaker 1: test where they would just read a long passage quickly
50:16
Speaker 1: and you would have to do it and then transcribe
50:18
Speaker 1: that into longhand. She was just super good at writing
50:22
Speaker 1: really fast, so she would just write down everything in
50:25
Speaker 1: longhand super fast and then figure out how to transcribe
50:28
Speaker 1: it back to shorthand and then back to Longhand and
50:30
Speaker 1: she she got caught doing that. Yeah, and the teachers
50:33
Speaker 1: like that's cheating. Yeah. It sounds like she was like,
50:35
Speaker 1: well name with fast. Nope, that's not speedwriting, that's just
50:41
Speaker 1: writing fast. Uh. If you want to get in touch
50:44
Speaker 1: with us, either to show us support, criticize us, and
50:47
Speaker 1: even something neutral is fine, you can tweet to us
50:50
Speaker 1: at s y s K podcast. You can join us
50:52
Speaker 1: on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You
50:54
Speaker 1: can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how
50:57
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at
50:59
Speaker 1: our look Curious home on the web, Stuff you Should
51:02
Speaker 1: Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of
51:09
Speaker 1: other topics, is it how stuff Works dot com