November 12, 2009 • 28 mins
Population may not seem like the most scintillating topic in the world, but Josh and Chuck beg to differ. Join them as they explore how population works, from demographics to population control, in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you should know from house stuff works
dot com. Punky chucking, punky chucking, punky chucking. That's right, chuck.
He and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Clearly,
Chuck Bryant's here, and uh, let's talk about punkin Chunking.
I guess you just kind of forced our hand, Chuck. Yes,
(00:23):
the Road to Punkin Chunking and punkin Chunking. So that's on.
That's on Science Channel a p m. Eastern Time on
Thanksgiving night. Yeah, you can see some pumpkins get chunk punkins,
get chunks punkins. Yeah, okay again Science Channel. The Road
to punkin Chunkin starts at eight pm Eastern Time. Punkin
chunk In Itself starts at nine Thanksgiving night. Yes, Science
(00:46):
Channel on with the show. Yeah, chuck, Um, have you
ever belonged to a population? No, man, I'm like, I'm
totally independent. Screw population. You're like that guy who lives
in the commune, right right, Yeah, Well the joke's on him,
because a commune constitutes a population. Um, this sounds kind
of boring, and you would think it is how population works.
(01:08):
It actually started to pick up. Actually didn't know what
it was even gonna be. When I saw how population works,
I was like, what you know, it's awesome. This was
my idea, this article was. I pinched it. Why didn't
they let you write it? I don't know, jerks, I know,
but the grabst did a good job with it. Oh yeah,
the grabs is always good. Yeah, class, that's ed grab Ainowsky.
By the way, right, So, UM, human beings marriage, human
(01:34):
beings tend to um congregate. Yes, we segregate. Interestingly, that
is an excellent You just blew my mind. Good lord chuck. Um. Well,
let's get back to what I was saying. Unless you
want to go on a segregation we'll get on that later. Um,
humans congregate and segregate. But let's talk about congregation and that.
(01:56):
UM most of the time, I would say, our early
early ancestors, uh, and probably even other species congregate because
there's safety and numbers and it helps like with farming,
collecting water and food power numbers. But even before farming,
um h hunter gatherers lived in bands. I think thirty
was about tops. They figured out somewhere along the way
(02:18):
that groups of thirty or groups of more than thirty,
they're tending to be a lot more hostility and UM
in a group problems. Have you ever tried to kill
a mass it on by yourself? That's another good point too.
There's cooperation masted on. Um. There's um. If if let's say,
if you are farming and your crop fails, well you're
(02:40):
not standing there like, well I'm in trouble. You can say, hey, neighbor, um,
I'll totally give you favors of some variety if you
will let me have some of your grain. Right, I'll
give you a chicken. Let's say, sure, you can trade. Yeah,
there's a lot of reasons people live together. So it's
my theory that pepe will aggregate together naturally. Yes, And
(03:03):
then there are people out there who get their jollies
by studying these groups of people. They're called demographer demographers.
So we have populations natural or otherwise. And let's say
a natural population, uh today are people who live in
a certain state Georgians. That's where we are, So that
you have natural populations, and demographers study um right um,
(03:25):
and they look at things like say, how many people
in this natural population are Republicans or Democrat, or how
many are Caucasian, or how many have um, how many
live below the poverty line. All kinds of things you
can study right by looking at a population and are
are is this? Are these groups segregated like you brought up?
(03:50):
You know, like if you study, uh, where different races
are living? Are they living mingling? If so, then that's
probably a fairly harmonious place hopefully. If not, why are
they living apart? How do we fix this? Because it's
probably a problem. Who knows, but yes, so demographers study
populations natural or otherwise. Right. The problem is is you
(04:13):
very few people have the ability to hover over the
earth and use super binocular vision to study populations by side.
Very few people. Yeah, like three or four I think tops.
Uh so does that count as a statistic I think so? Okay, Richard,
um so measuring populations after you can talk about how
(04:33):
do we actually determine this kind of thing? Yeah, that
was my sec That was that was a good segue.
There's a kind of way, josh one is um by
counting them literally counting them like it's counting every single person, right,
and that is called complete enumeration. Yeah. Remember we talked
about that poor guy who was killed or possibly kill
himself in Kentucky. The census taker. Right, Oh, I didn't
(04:56):
know that suicide was a possibility. There. I got a
cryptic email from somebody never followed up on that said
that he identified himself as a doctor and I think
said that he was part of the group that was
the medical examination team and said that they suspected, strongly
suspected suicide. My problem with it is is how do
(05:16):
you bind yourself in duct tape? How do you bind
your own risks and duct tape? Okay, um, So my
point is, wow, he threw me off of that one.
My point is that he was called an enumerator, yes,
literally counter, and that's the people who worked for the
census whenever they had their their drive and they count
(05:39):
and that's one way to determine it. Well, let's talk
about the census. It's gone on every ten years since, right,
And the reason they do it every ten years because
it's a real pain in the asked to count every
person in America. Yeah, the real reason they do it
so they can Well there's a lot of reasons, but
that is the reason why anyone's ever conducted a sense. Yeah. Well,
(06:00):
plus they they determine the number of House representatives for
your state based on population. Stuff like that. Oh yeah,
there's that too. But you know, come on, Texas, did
you know that um that that the census information is
kept is kept secret for seventy two years? Yeah, aside
from the numbers, I believe the public cannot see that
information for seventy two years. Right, what do I seventy two?
(06:22):
That's odd? It is odd. I wonder if that was
the average lifespan at the time or something. Dude, that's
got to be it. I'll bet you're right. Okay. The
other way, Josh, is to uh do something called sampling,
and that is when um statticians use a mathematical formula
to determine the minimum number of people that must be counted,
(06:45):
and then they multiply that out and basically end up
getting a full population. And sometimes I did, I don't
know this. That's even more accurate than an actual head count.
You see that margin of error, it's like plus or
minus for sent Yeah, you gotta have a margin of
error there whenever you're sampling, right, because you're not actually
going around asking every single person in America are you
(07:07):
left handed? To determine how many people are left handed?
But let's say you have a population of a thousand,
and some statisticians been like, you need a hundred do it,
but do your egghead voice. Yeah, you need a hundred
and fifty people. The hundred and fifty people and that
are left handed, and you can just multiply that out
to determine that there are, in fact how many people,
(07:30):
let's say, ten percent of the population of the population. Right,
but your sample as perfect. Your sample has to be
a random sample to be an effective sample. Yeah, and
you know how they used to do that, Uh huh.
Used to just pick it out of the phone book. Oh,
I know and call people I know. And that makes
sense to a certain extent. No, well, back then it
(07:52):
made a little more sense. I would think it made
it made less sense, especially if you're talking like nineteen
fifty years. Well, it depends on what year. I'd say,
in the night, teen eighties, it was probably a good way.
But now there are cell phones. People in college probably
don't have a phone. Poor people who don't have phones
at all, people who don't have phone. Sure, so that's
not a very good way. Because what about freight train
writers of America? What's that they don't have phones? Yeah,
(08:16):
good point. Yeah, they're not allowed. I don't think they
want them. So sampling is a little harder than it seems. Yeah, right,
especially coming up with a random population SANDOM sample of
the population. Um. But okay, so so far we've talked
about people and where they live. There's other ways to
define a population. There's other attributes that people have that
(08:37):
we use to lump into population. It's not just a
geography when people think, um, populations, it's not just a
city population or state. Yes, what an age? You have
a population of age or continent, a demographic? What else? Location?
Of course, socio economic Well population, let's talk about age.
Why would you even want to know age? Who cares?
(09:00):
People are old, people are young? Whatever? Right, Well, there's
a lot of factors like, um, take the baby boom
for instance, after World War Two, all these babies were born,
so there was a bulge in the population, and I'd
just like saying the word bulge. You got to do
the air quote a quote. So, um, what that will
show them then is wow, we got a bulge here.
So that means probably in to sixty years, there's gonna
(09:22):
be some serious buying power. Let's start borrowing as much
money as we can right now. But it also means
in seventy plus years that they they may be a
medical burden and a burden on social security. So let's
start borrowing as much money as we can right now,
same same result there. I like that, and we'll get
to bulges again in a little bit. But let's move on.
(09:46):
Like you said, socioeconomic data, right, yeah, what what? Why
would they want to do this job? This one I found.
I find this the most interesting of all data. You
can look at a bunch of people who are maybe
related geographically, right, um, but other than that, aren't related
in any other way. Uh, and all of them suddenly
have this horrible cancer and they're just so happens to
(10:09):
be some manufacturer or thereby what did you say, high
tension wires, which has been proven I think to not
actually have any effect on people, not in my buddy.
Um so uh, Now, all of a sudden, you have
this information thanks to your demographer friend who went and
collected it, and um, you can say, okay, paint factory,
(10:32):
you guys better start giving away some free paint, yeah,
or we're gonna sue you. Race. That's a little little
more hinky because technically there is no such thing as
any difference in different races. I remember watching MTV years
and years and years ago, and um, the VJ was
interviewing the Beastie Boys and he was like, Mike D,
(10:55):
I hear you're dating a black girl. You know, what's
it like dating somebody from a different race? Which is
just an asinine question to begin with, But I remember
Mike D going there's only one race, the human race,
And I was like, huh so that that was clearly
before he was down with the Ione or no, that
was ad Rock. Sorry, yeah, ad Rocks down with the
(11:16):
IONI Yeah they're divorced though, so he's not down with
her anymore, poor Ione. Uh So, Yeah, race is a
little hinky, but you can't actually determine some um useful
things when you study populations of race because of like,
you know, it's important for people to be involved in
their culture. Yeah, and and to hang onto that for sure.
I guess racial profiling again. I don't know if I
(11:37):
should say again or not, but it's such a hot
button issue that yeah, I don't know. We need to
talk about it collectively. That's my answer for everything. Everybody
needs to get together and decide what we want to do. Okay, well,
the other thing with race so is if there's a
medical problem that's specific to that race, that can help
out that exactly. Josh alright, So, Chuck, We've got all
(12:19):
these different factors, attributes, variables. We've used the word demographer
several times. Um, so we know that people study populations.
One of the reasons why we study populations is to
see how big it's getting. And I gotta tell you, buddy,
the human population is kind of exploded on this planet
(12:41):
in the last several thousand years. Yeah, but you know
what they were reading these stats. There were a lot
more people here way back when than I thought. Yeah. Again,
favorite book of all time, Um, Charles C. Man. Yes,
he basically points out that there is probably a hundred
million people on the North American or on the in
(13:03):
the America's uh in that's awesome, Yeah, which is a
fifth of the world population is way more than anyone thought.
And the reason why is because Columbus shows up. Smallpox
just ravages both continents, and by the time the European
settlers start coming for real, Uh, the places decimated. It
(13:24):
seems like there's nobody there. Right. Well, he had the
whole genocide. Two things you ever know about that Columbus
I hear um his men used to like sharpen their
knives on like the skulls of live um live natives. Well,
there's the because genocide we talked about later on Um
in the article. But there's uh speculation that Columbus may
(13:45):
have been responsible for like the worst mass genocide in
human history by completely wiping out the Tano Taino Indian people.
And that was in Hispanielo, which is modern day I
think Haiti and Dominican Republic. And they some people say
there were only like five thousand of them, and some
people say there as many as fifteen million at the
time that were decimated to about two thousand. Decimated through
(14:09):
violence or through disease. Yeah, well through violence, because Columbus
came over, set up a camp in Hispaniola for about
forty people, and then left, came back on trip number
two and found that the Indian tribe there had killed
all those people. So he went on to kill crazy
rampage basically and completely wiped out the population. And they're
(14:30):
saying it may have been like double the size of
the Holocaust. So Happy Columbus Day, everybody, seriously, but we
do mention that because genocide is is a way that
a population can change rapidly. Well, let's talk about population growth. Yes,
all right, so I guess about ten thousand BC, they
estimate that there's between one and ten million humans. So
(14:51):
we're starting to slowly grow because by one thousand BC
there's fifty million, and then by six hundred CE UM
we're at two mill And see that's a lot more
than I thought. Yeah there would be at the time. Yeah,
I think there was about five hundred million in the
mid fifteenth century, so um, let's go. But let's say
(15:11):
there's a five million in the mid fifteenth century. The
twentieth century, the industrial revolutions happened, there's been great leaps
in science and UM medicine. That's when populations really grow
is during those big booms. Yeah, because it lends itself
to fertility, higher and fertility and UM longer lifespans, good
times breed kids. So the twentieth century hits were at
(15:34):
one point five billion people and then this century the
population of the world has quadruple. Yeah, and with like
six billions. I know that that's it sounded like there
should have been a drum roll there, but there was
by that Jerry mnd have put one in there, our producer, Jerry,
we'll find out later. Uh, And Josh, you are projecting.
(15:54):
The U. S CSUS Bureau projects that by there will
be ten billion people. Right. So the reason for this
is what we call the malthusisant growth model. Mouth. This
was a eighteenth century clergyman, Thomas huh he uh he actually,
I guess inadvertently became one of the great economic theorists,
(16:17):
and he figured out that population grows exponentially. Right, So
if you have one million people and they have enough kids,
double the population. But the next generation you have four
million people. So in one full generation you've gone from
one million to four million people. Right. Yeah, that's that's big,
especially when the planet is finite in size and we
(16:39):
don't have the ability to go colonize other planets yet. Right.
But it's not necessarily that incremental and steady because of
what we talked about, which are bulges or spikes and
bottlenecks like genocide. Right. Yeah, so it doesn't always grow steadily.
And actually, Chuck, if you heard of the replacement right now,
(17:00):
the replacement rate is it's how many kids a woman
has to have to have a high uh statistical probability
of having a daughter, so that she in essence replaces herself.
And right now it's two point three three is the
replacement rate worldwide, And the point of it is to
trend towards zero population growth. Right, So for every woman
(17:24):
who dies, she has a daughter that can reproduce and
and continue on and continue on and continue on. So
you have overall as many people dying as they're being born.
So there's no strain, right, and there's also no um dearth. Well,
it's equilibrium that remot. Reading this reminded me of when
we did our Big Econ audio book. It's kind of
(17:45):
population kind of wants to seek equilibrium. I think, like, uh,
just like economics does and now, and it doesn't always
happen uh organically, I should say, it probably rarely happens organically. Well,
let's think about um, like you said, the baby boom,
post war success in in Europe and um, the US
(18:07):
and Canada, I guess led to um a huge boom
in the population. Nobody went to war to grow the population.
It was just an indirect effect. So all of a
sudden we had a population spike that created a bulge
bulge if you will, things can go the other way
to which is a bottleneck. Right. Yeah, and that's well
we and I've got If I see genocide one more time,
(18:30):
we should do a podcast in genocide. I wonder if
there's a drinking game where every time I say genocide, genocide,
drink um. Famine, disease. Uh, something called the plague I
think wiped out like half the world population at one point,
or half the population of Europe. They suspect that UM
in uh the fifth century. That would be a c e.
(18:51):
The plague of Justinian may have killed as many as
half the world's population, a hundred million people. Unbelievable. Can
you imagine walking around on at that time, like, holy crap,
the entire half the world is dead, just died in
the last couple of years. It's crazy. On the Black
Death killed twenty to thirty million Europeans. So so plagues
can happen. There's also UM. I was talking to an
(19:14):
evolutionary geneticist this is my way UM recently, and he
was talking about study he authored where they found two
evolutionary bottlenecks, one coming out of Africa. Uh. They suggested
a fifty thousand years ago, and another one that happened
along the bearing Land Bridge, right, And he wasn't saying
(19:36):
like all of a sudden a bunch of people died,
but um, these bottlenecks turned up because big groups of
people separating in smaller groups of people, which is which
accounts for a loss of genetic diversity. So you have
the founders effect. Because, as he put it, if you
take um, if you go into a town and grabbed
the first fifteen people you meet and say, let's go
(19:58):
found a new town, that new town isn't to have
a representative sample of all the surnames in that town.
If you do that enough times, some surnames are going
to be lost because people didn't reproduce or whatever. The
same thing happens with jeans in genetic diversity. Look at you,
good stuff? Thanks? Uh. Can I mention this place in
Hong Kong, Yeah, we're talking about well we should mention.
(20:19):
Population density is the number of humans per unit area
whatever unit you you know, you choose to call it,
And the highest ever is believed to have been a
place called Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong, and at
one point evidently there were fifty thousand people in a
(20:39):
mega block, which is five hundred by six fifty feet.
Fifty thousand people stuffed in there, and apparently it was
a lawless district. The grabster. She kidding me. People could
conceivably get along. Yeah, hands across America style. Did you
know that um in Athens when Widespread Panic played that
free show, there was an estimated hundred some people. They're
(21:01):
not one fight really, Yeah, that's because they were all
on dope. The dope. I wasn't there. Were you there? Yeah?
I never got into them, although I did hang out
with that guy, the bass player day schools. Yeah, I
hung out with him a couple of times, just through friends. Anyway. Uh,
that that park is no, I'm sorry. It is now
a park where the walled city used to be. Yeah,
(21:23):
which is the opposite of the highest population. Ironically, it's
just the park maybe the highest population of grass. But
that's it. So what do we got here, Josh? We
(21:57):
got um population control. It's something that we've referenced before
with our China One Child policy. Yeah, and we talked
about why you would want to control the population. A
huge group of people put a strain on resources. When
resources go away, you have resource conflicts like in darfour
again genocide. Right. Um. There's all sorts of problems that
(22:18):
come from too many people coming or living in one
place because of the strain that puts on resources and
resource allocation. Right. Um. And yet you can control the
population e g. You know, state mandated reproduction um, China, right,
and that actually works as as China shows. Um, although
(22:41):
much to the detriment of some people, thank you Chuck
for that look and not everyone thinks um, some people
think we should add more people though, well, yeah, there's Japan.
In other countries, there's a problem of population declients. So
we talked about the strain um people put on an
area that's in capacity, which we've talked about before, and
(23:02):
that's also from Malthus, right that eventually human population is
going to outstrip advances in technology or our resources and
we're screwed. Right Um. On the other side is shrinking,
population shrinking, And what's the problem with that, Well, you
don't want the population to shrink too much because you, uh,
(23:22):
you need those hands to go to work and to
to contribute to the economy and to grow the grain
and sow the flower and all that good stuff. And
apparently in Russia, Japan and Australia they all have like
little incentive programs to make little babies. Sure, how about that?
Which is the way to go? Remember John Fuller's famous quote, um,
when he was pitching an article about that program in Russia,
(23:45):
and he's talking about poutin giving away a TV. Oh, yeah,
that's right, that's really funny. Yeah, um and the baby
get a TV. I think you had to be there
and check the reason why. Uh, some of these places
are seeing a population shrink and or have to, I
guess give incentives to reproduce. Uh. Started in about nineteen
sixty birth control. That's so crazy that it had an
(24:09):
effect that much of an effect that pronounced of an effect. Yeah,
well it would seem like it would though, I guess
so because it's called birth control. Sure you know before
that it was called have as many babies as you
possibly can. It was called no control alright, So clearly
there's a lot of reasons to study people. Yeah, it's
(24:29):
I thought it would be. There's a lot of stuff
to study to h you can find out whether or
not we're going to kill the planet or whether um,
people need to stop using contraceptives, or whether you know
what your chances are of putin giving you a free TV. Uh.
It's all in there. It's all demographers know everything, all
there for the taking. So when you're a frenzy friendly
(24:52):
enumerator comes knocking on your door, don't chase them off
your land with your dog or a gun. Let him in,
give him some lemonade, maybe some cookies. Yeah, we'll check
their lambing at first, but oh yeah, before you let
them in. Ceo Ah, Chuck could go in. And if
you want to know more about population, you can read
Grabanowski's great article on the site. Just type in population
(25:12):
in the handy search bart how stuff works dot com,
which of course leads us to listener mail. Josh, I'm
just gonna call this your turn at listener mail because
I think you have to know we'll talk about Yeah.
I just I don't necessarily have too much listener mail
per se um. But I just wanted to give a
(25:34):
shout out to a couple of fellow Toledo wins. One
who's a longtime resident, one who's a recent transplant. Christopher
is holding the fort down in Toledo for me, keeping
it real, he has uh officially lobbied, um, the congresswoman
from Toledo to get me the key to the city.
How awesome with it? Yeah, so Marcy kept her. If
(25:57):
you're listening, I would like, if you get to the city,
we gotta go for a ceremony and I at least
want to get like a key chain to the city. Okay,
and you can have the key. We'll see what we
can do. Um. So yeah, Christopher has officially petitioner. He's
he suggested that I'm the third most famous Toledo in
of all time after Jamie Farr, Jamie Farr, Danny Thomas,
(26:18):
the Great Entertainer, and then me. And I was like,
I think you're for getting Katie Holmes because she's from Toledo.
And he's like, no, you got her bek Kate Cruz.
You know, is it Kate Cruise now? So anyway, thanks
a lot for the effort, Christopher, even if it doesn't
come to fruition. If it does, you will get a
firm handshake and a free Friendlies Sunday of your choosing
(26:40):
for me. Friend. Yeah, we'll be going to Friendlies if
we go to Toledo. Sure. Uh. And then I also
want to say hi to Colin, who is a recent transplant,
as I said, Um from Colorado, I believe, who moves
from Colorado to Toledo. He moved to Toledo to attend
Bowling Green State University. Joe falcons my brother went there,
(27:02):
and uh, Colin did so in an eight eight Dodge Colt. Right,
that's having a couple of problems. One of the rear
struts are completely detached and the axle is holding on
by a tread, he says, Um. And the mechanics didn't
want him to leave when he took it in for service,
so they're like, you're going to die in this thing, um.
(27:24):
And the other problem is it has ants, he says.
I've never heard of a car having ants. I had
an incident car once. Really, you can't get rid of
them when they well, that's probably when you were living
in the car, which was probably always parked on the
ant hill. This is actually prior to that, when I
lived in the car. Um. But yeah, no, it's a
it's a it's a real problem. And Collin's basically just
(27:44):
put the bullet and said, well, I have ants in
my car now. He loves his ad eight Dutch Colt,
he said he loves Salito. He's enjoying. He went to
Tony Paco's as I suggested. I gotta try that one day.
I also told him to go to Rusty's Jazz Cafe.
So it's as authentic as it comes. Awesome. Um So,
hey Christopher, Hey Colling, you guys enjoy yourselves, Be safe
(28:04):
and toledown for the winner, Go mud Hens and h
Thanks for writing in. And if you want to say
hi to me or Chuck or both of us Chuckers
or Jerry, you're right, Chucker's Jerry chuck Er, I I
mean Chucker me chuck in me. Um. You can put
that in an email to stuff podcast at how stuff
(28:25):
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics, does it how stuff works dot com. Want
more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the
house stuff works dot com home page
Welcome to stuff you should know from house stuff works
dot com. Punky chucking, punky chucking, punky chucking. That's right, chuck.
He and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Clearly,
Chuck Bryant's here, and uh, let's talk about punkin Chunking.
I guess you just kind of forced our hand, Chuck. Yes,
(00:23):
the Road to Punkin Chunking and punkin Chunking. So that's on.
That's on Science Channel a p m. Eastern Time on
Thanksgiving night. Yeah, you can see some pumpkins get chunk punkins,
get chunks punkins. Yeah, okay again Science Channel. The Road
to punkin Chunkin starts at eight pm Eastern Time. Punkin
chunk In Itself starts at nine Thanksgiving night. Yes, Science
(00:46):
Channel on with the show. Yeah, chuck, Um, have you
ever belonged to a population? No, man, I'm like, I'm
totally independent. Screw population. You're like that guy who lives
in the commune, right right, Yeah, Well the joke's on him,
because a commune constitutes a population. Um, this sounds kind
of boring, and you would think it is how population works.
(01:08):
It actually started to pick up. Actually didn't know what
it was even gonna be. When I saw how population works,
I was like, what you know, it's awesome. This was
my idea, this article was. I pinched it. Why didn't
they let you write it? I don't know, jerks, I know,
but the grabst did a good job with it. Oh yeah,
the grabs is always good. Yeah, class, that's ed grab Ainowsky.
By the way, right, So, UM, human beings marriage, human
(01:34):
beings tend to um congregate. Yes, we segregate. Interestingly, that
is an excellent You just blew my mind. Good lord chuck. Um. Well,
let's get back to what I was saying. Unless you
want to go on a segregation we'll get on that later. Um,
humans congregate and segregate. But let's talk about congregation and that.
(01:56):
UM most of the time, I would say, our early
early ancestors, uh, and probably even other species congregate because
there's safety and numbers and it helps like with farming,
collecting water and food power numbers. But even before farming,
um h hunter gatherers lived in bands. I think thirty
was about tops. They figured out somewhere along the way
(02:18):
that groups of thirty or groups of more than thirty,
they're tending to be a lot more hostility and UM
in a group problems. Have you ever tried to kill
a mass it on by yourself? That's another good point too.
There's cooperation masted on. Um. There's um. If if let's say,
if you are farming and your crop fails, well you're
(02:40):
not standing there like, well I'm in trouble. You can say, hey, neighbor, um,
I'll totally give you favors of some variety if you
will let me have some of your grain. Right, I'll
give you a chicken. Let's say, sure, you can trade. Yeah,
there's a lot of reasons people live together. So it's
my theory that pepe will aggregate together naturally. Yes, And
(03:03):
then there are people out there who get their jollies
by studying these groups of people. They're called demographer demographers.
So we have populations natural or otherwise. And let's say
a natural population, uh today are people who live in
a certain state Georgians. That's where we are, So that
you have natural populations, and demographers study um right um,
(03:25):
and they look at things like say, how many people
in this natural population are Republicans or Democrat, or how
many are Caucasian, or how many have um, how many
live below the poverty line. All kinds of things you
can study right by looking at a population and are
are is this? Are these groups segregated like you brought up?
(03:50):
You know, like if you study, uh, where different races
are living? Are they living mingling? If so, then that's
probably a fairly harmonious place hopefully. If not, why are
they living apart? How do we fix this? Because it's
probably a problem. Who knows, but yes, so demographers study
populations natural or otherwise. Right. The problem is is you
(04:13):
very few people have the ability to hover over the
earth and use super binocular vision to study populations by side.
Very few people. Yeah, like three or four I think tops.
Uh so does that count as a statistic I think so? Okay, Richard,
um so measuring populations after you can talk about how
(04:33):
do we actually determine this kind of thing? Yeah, that
was my sec That was that was a good segue.
There's a kind of way, josh one is um by
counting them literally counting them like it's counting every single person, right,
and that is called complete enumeration. Yeah. Remember we talked
about that poor guy who was killed or possibly kill
himself in Kentucky. The census taker. Right, Oh, I didn't
(04:56):
know that suicide was a possibility. There. I got a
cryptic email from somebody never followed up on that said
that he identified himself as a doctor and I think
said that he was part of the group that was
the medical examination team and said that they suspected, strongly
suspected suicide. My problem with it is is how do
(05:16):
you bind yourself in duct tape? How do you bind
your own risks and duct tape? Okay, um, So my
point is, wow, he threw me off of that one.
My point is that he was called an enumerator, yes,
literally counter, and that's the people who worked for the
census whenever they had their their drive and they count
(05:39):
and that's one way to determine it. Well, let's talk
about the census. It's gone on every ten years since, right,
And the reason they do it every ten years because
it's a real pain in the asked to count every
person in America. Yeah, the real reason they do it
so they can Well there's a lot of reasons, but
that is the reason why anyone's ever conducted a sense. Yeah. Well,
(06:00):
plus they they determine the number of House representatives for
your state based on population. Stuff like that. Oh yeah,
there's that too. But you know, come on, Texas, did
you know that um that that the census information is
kept is kept secret for seventy two years? Yeah, aside
from the numbers, I believe the public cannot see that
information for seventy two years. Right, what do I seventy two?
(06:22):
That's odd? It is odd. I wonder if that was
the average lifespan at the time or something. Dude, that's
got to be it. I'll bet you're right. Okay. The
other way, Josh, is to uh do something called sampling,
and that is when um statticians use a mathematical formula
to determine the minimum number of people that must be counted,
(06:45):
and then they multiply that out and basically end up
getting a full population. And sometimes I did, I don't
know this. That's even more accurate than an actual head count.
You see that margin of error, it's like plus or
minus for sent Yeah, you gotta have a margin of
error there whenever you're sampling, right, because you're not actually
going around asking every single person in America are you
(07:07):
left handed? To determine how many people are left handed?
But let's say you have a population of a thousand,
and some statisticians been like, you need a hundred do it,
but do your egghead voice. Yeah, you need a hundred
and fifty people. The hundred and fifty people and that
are left handed, and you can just multiply that out
to determine that there are, in fact how many people,
(07:30):
let's say, ten percent of the population of the population. Right,
but your sample as perfect. Your sample has to be
a random sample to be an effective sample. Yeah, and
you know how they used to do that, Uh huh.
Used to just pick it out of the phone book. Oh,
I know and call people I know. And that makes
sense to a certain extent. No, well, back then it
(07:52):
made a little more sense. I would think it made
it made less sense, especially if you're talking like nineteen
fifty years. Well, it depends on what year. I'd say,
in the night, teen eighties, it was probably a good way.
But now there are cell phones. People in college probably
don't have a phone. Poor people who don't have phones
at all, people who don't have phone. Sure, so that's
not a very good way. Because what about freight train
writers of America? What's that they don't have phones? Yeah,
(08:16):
good point. Yeah, they're not allowed. I don't think they
want them. So sampling is a little harder than it seems. Yeah, right,
especially coming up with a random population SANDOM sample of
the population. Um. But okay, so so far we've talked
about people and where they live. There's other ways to
define a population. There's other attributes that people have that
(08:37):
we use to lump into population. It's not just a
geography when people think, um, populations, it's not just a
city population or state. Yes, what an age? You have
a population of age or continent, a demographic? What else? Location?
Of course, socio economic Well population, let's talk about age.
Why would you even want to know age? Who cares?
(09:00):
People are old, people are young? Whatever? Right, Well, there's
a lot of factors like, um, take the baby boom
for instance, after World War Two, all these babies were born,
so there was a bulge in the population, and I'd
just like saying the word bulge. You got to do
the air quote a quote. So, um, what that will
show them then is wow, we got a bulge here.
So that means probably in to sixty years, there's gonna
(09:22):
be some serious buying power. Let's start borrowing as much
money as we can right now. But it also means
in seventy plus years that they they may be a
medical burden and a burden on social security. So let's
start borrowing as much money as we can right now,
same same result there. I like that, and we'll get
to bulges again in a little bit. But let's move on.
(09:46):
Like you said, socioeconomic data, right, yeah, what what? Why
would they want to do this job? This one I found.
I find this the most interesting of all data. You
can look at a bunch of people who are maybe
related geographically, right, um, but other than that, aren't related
in any other way. Uh, and all of them suddenly
have this horrible cancer and they're just so happens to
(10:09):
be some manufacturer or thereby what did you say, high
tension wires, which has been proven I think to not
actually have any effect on people, not in my buddy.
Um so uh, Now, all of a sudden, you have
this information thanks to your demographer friend who went and
collected it, and um, you can say, okay, paint factory,
(10:32):
you guys better start giving away some free paint, yeah,
or we're gonna sue you. Race. That's a little little
more hinky because technically there is no such thing as
any difference in different races. I remember watching MTV years
and years and years ago, and um, the VJ was
interviewing the Beastie Boys and he was like, Mike D,
(10:55):
I hear you're dating a black girl. You know, what's
it like dating somebody from a different race? Which is
just an asinine question to begin with, But I remember
Mike D going there's only one race, the human race,
And I was like, huh so that that was clearly
before he was down with the Ione or no, that
was ad Rock. Sorry, yeah, ad Rocks down with the
(11:16):
IONI Yeah they're divorced though, so he's not down with
her anymore, poor Ione. Uh So, Yeah, race is a
little hinky, but you can't actually determine some um useful
things when you study populations of race because of like,
you know, it's important for people to be involved in
their culture. Yeah, and and to hang onto that for sure.
I guess racial profiling again. I don't know if I
(11:37):
should say again or not, but it's such a hot
button issue that yeah, I don't know. We need to
talk about it collectively. That's my answer for everything. Everybody
needs to get together and decide what we want to do. Okay, well,
the other thing with race so is if there's a
medical problem that's specific to that race, that can help
out that exactly. Josh alright, So, Chuck, We've got all
(12:19):
these different factors, attributes, variables. We've used the word demographer
several times. Um, so we know that people study populations.
One of the reasons why we study populations is to
see how big it's getting. And I gotta tell you, buddy,
the human population is kind of exploded on this planet
(12:41):
in the last several thousand years. Yeah, but you know
what they were reading these stats. There were a lot
more people here way back when than I thought. Yeah. Again,
favorite book of all time, Um, Charles C. Man. Yes,
he basically points out that there is probably a hundred
million people on the North American or on the in
(13:03):
the America's uh in that's awesome, Yeah, which is a
fifth of the world population is way more than anyone thought.
And the reason why is because Columbus shows up. Smallpox
just ravages both continents, and by the time the European
settlers start coming for real, Uh, the places decimated. It
(13:24):
seems like there's nobody there. Right. Well, he had the
whole genocide. Two things you ever know about that Columbus
I hear um his men used to like sharpen their
knives on like the skulls of live um live natives. Well,
there's the because genocide we talked about later on Um
in the article. But there's uh speculation that Columbus may
(13:45):
have been responsible for like the worst mass genocide in
human history by completely wiping out the Tano Taino Indian people.
And that was in Hispanielo, which is modern day I
think Haiti and Dominican Republic. And they some people say
there were only like five thousand of them, and some
people say there as many as fifteen million at the
time that were decimated to about two thousand. Decimated through
(14:09):
violence or through disease. Yeah, well through violence, because Columbus
came over, set up a camp in Hispaniola for about
forty people, and then left, came back on trip number
two and found that the Indian tribe there had killed
all those people. So he went on to kill crazy
rampage basically and completely wiped out the population. And they're
(14:30):
saying it may have been like double the size of
the Holocaust. So Happy Columbus Day, everybody, seriously, but we
do mention that because genocide is is a way that
a population can change rapidly. Well, let's talk about population growth. Yes,
all right, so I guess about ten thousand BC, they
estimate that there's between one and ten million humans. So
(14:51):
we're starting to slowly grow because by one thousand BC
there's fifty million, and then by six hundred CE UM
we're at two mill And see that's a lot more
than I thought. Yeah there would be at the time. Yeah,
I think there was about five hundred million in the
mid fifteenth century, so um, let's go. But let's say
(15:11):
there's a five million in the mid fifteenth century. The
twentieth century, the industrial revolutions happened, there's been great leaps
in science and UM medicine. That's when populations really grow
is during those big booms. Yeah, because it lends itself
to fertility, higher and fertility and UM longer lifespans, good
times breed kids. So the twentieth century hits were at
(15:34):
one point five billion people and then this century the
population of the world has quadruple. Yeah, and with like
six billions. I know that that's it sounded like there
should have been a drum roll there, but there was
by that Jerry mnd have put one in there, our producer, Jerry,
we'll find out later. Uh, And Josh, you are projecting.
(15:54):
The U. S CSUS Bureau projects that by there will
be ten billion people. Right. So the reason for this
is what we call the malthusisant growth model. Mouth. This
was a eighteenth century clergyman, Thomas huh he uh he actually,
I guess inadvertently became one of the great economic theorists,
(16:17):
and he figured out that population grows exponentially. Right, So
if you have one million people and they have enough kids,
double the population. But the next generation you have four
million people. So in one full generation you've gone from
one million to four million people. Right. Yeah, that's that's big,
especially when the planet is finite in size and we
(16:39):
don't have the ability to go colonize other planets yet. Right.
But it's not necessarily that incremental and steady because of
what we talked about, which are bulges or spikes and
bottlenecks like genocide. Right. Yeah, so it doesn't always grow steadily.
And actually, Chuck, if you heard of the replacement right now,
(17:00):
the replacement rate is it's how many kids a woman
has to have to have a high uh statistical probability
of having a daughter, so that she in essence replaces herself.
And right now it's two point three three is the
replacement rate worldwide, And the point of it is to
trend towards zero population growth. Right, So for every woman
(17:24):
who dies, she has a daughter that can reproduce and
and continue on and continue on and continue on. So
you have overall as many people dying as they're being born.
So there's no strain, right, and there's also no um dearth. Well,
it's equilibrium that remot. Reading this reminded me of when
we did our Big Econ audio book. It's kind of
(17:45):
population kind of wants to seek equilibrium. I think, like, uh,
just like economics does and now, and it doesn't always
happen uh organically, I should say, it probably rarely happens organically. Well,
let's think about um, like you said, the baby boom,
post war success in in Europe and um, the US
(18:07):
and Canada, I guess led to um a huge boom
in the population. Nobody went to war to grow the population.
It was just an indirect effect. So all of a
sudden we had a population spike that created a bulge
bulge if you will, things can go the other way
to which is a bottleneck. Right. Yeah, and that's well
we and I've got If I see genocide one more time,
(18:30):
we should do a podcast in genocide. I wonder if
there's a drinking game where every time I say genocide, genocide,
drink um. Famine, disease. Uh, something called the plague I
think wiped out like half the world population at one point,
or half the population of Europe. They suspect that UM
in uh the fifth century. That would be a c e.
(18:51):
The plague of Justinian may have killed as many as
half the world's population, a hundred million people. Unbelievable. Can
you imagine walking around on at that time, like, holy crap,
the entire half the world is dead, just died in
the last couple of years. It's crazy. On the Black
Death killed twenty to thirty million Europeans. So so plagues
can happen. There's also UM. I was talking to an
(19:14):
evolutionary geneticist this is my way UM recently, and he
was talking about study he authored where they found two
evolutionary bottlenecks, one coming out of Africa. Uh. They suggested
a fifty thousand years ago, and another one that happened
along the bearing Land Bridge, right, And he wasn't saying
(19:36):
like all of a sudden a bunch of people died,
but um, these bottlenecks turned up because big groups of
people separating in smaller groups of people, which is which
accounts for a loss of genetic diversity. So you have
the founders effect. Because, as he put it, if you
take um, if you go into a town and grabbed
the first fifteen people you meet and say, let's go
(19:58):
found a new town, that new town isn't to have
a representative sample of all the surnames in that town.
If you do that enough times, some surnames are going
to be lost because people didn't reproduce or whatever. The
same thing happens with jeans in genetic diversity. Look at you,
good stuff? Thanks? Uh. Can I mention this place in
Hong Kong, Yeah, we're talking about well we should mention.
(20:19):
Population density is the number of humans per unit area
whatever unit you you know, you choose to call it,
And the highest ever is believed to have been a
place called Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong, and at
one point evidently there were fifty thousand people in a
(20:39):
mega block, which is five hundred by six fifty feet.
Fifty thousand people stuffed in there, and apparently it was
a lawless district. The grabster. She kidding me. People could
conceivably get along. Yeah, hands across America style. Did you
know that um in Athens when Widespread Panic played that
free show, there was an estimated hundred some people. They're
(21:01):
not one fight really, Yeah, that's because they were all
on dope. The dope. I wasn't there. Were you there? Yeah?
I never got into them, although I did hang out
with that guy, the bass player day schools. Yeah, I
hung out with him a couple of times, just through friends. Anyway. Uh,
that that park is no, I'm sorry. It is now
a park where the walled city used to be. Yeah,
(21:23):
which is the opposite of the highest population. Ironically, it's
just the park maybe the highest population of grass. But
that's it. So what do we got here, Josh? We
(21:57):
got um population control. It's something that we've referenced before
with our China One Child policy. Yeah, and we talked
about why you would want to control the population. A
huge group of people put a strain on resources. When
resources go away, you have resource conflicts like in darfour
again genocide. Right. Um. There's all sorts of problems that
(22:18):
come from too many people coming or living in one
place because of the strain that puts on resources and
resource allocation. Right. Um. And yet you can control the
population e g. You know, state mandated reproduction um, China, right,
and that actually works as as China shows. Um, although
(22:41):
much to the detriment of some people, thank you Chuck
for that look and not everyone thinks um, some people
think we should add more people though, well, yeah, there's Japan.
In other countries, there's a problem of population declients. So
we talked about the strain um people put on an
area that's in capacity, which we've talked about before, and
(23:02):
that's also from Malthus, right that eventually human population is
going to outstrip advances in technology or our resources and
we're screwed. Right Um. On the other side is shrinking,
population shrinking, And what's the problem with that, Well, you
don't want the population to shrink too much because you, uh,
(23:22):
you need those hands to go to work and to
to contribute to the economy and to grow the grain
and sow the flower and all that good stuff. And
apparently in Russia, Japan and Australia they all have like
little incentive programs to make little babies. Sure, how about that?
Which is the way to go? Remember John Fuller's famous quote, um,
when he was pitching an article about that program in Russia,
(23:45):
and he's talking about poutin giving away a TV. Oh, yeah,
that's right, that's really funny. Yeah, um and the baby
get a TV. I think you had to be there
and check the reason why. Uh, some of these places
are seeing a population shrink and or have to, I
guess give incentives to reproduce. Uh. Started in about nineteen
sixty birth control. That's so crazy that it had an
(24:09):
effect that much of an effect that pronounced of an effect. Yeah,
well it would seem like it would though, I guess
so because it's called birth control. Sure you know before
that it was called have as many babies as you
possibly can. It was called no control alright, So clearly
there's a lot of reasons to study people. Yeah, it's
(24:29):
I thought it would be. There's a lot of stuff
to study to h you can find out whether or
not we're going to kill the planet or whether um,
people need to stop using contraceptives, or whether you know
what your chances are of putin giving you a free TV. Uh.
It's all in there. It's all demographers know everything, all
there for the taking. So when you're a frenzy friendly
(24:52):
enumerator comes knocking on your door, don't chase them off
your land with your dog or a gun. Let him in,
give him some lemonade, maybe some cookies. Yeah, we'll check
their lambing at first, but oh yeah, before you let
them in. Ceo Ah, Chuck could go in. And if
you want to know more about population, you can read
Grabanowski's great article on the site. Just type in population
(25:12):
in the handy search bart how stuff works dot com,
which of course leads us to listener mail. Josh, I'm
just gonna call this your turn at listener mail because
I think you have to know we'll talk about Yeah.
I just I don't necessarily have too much listener mail
per se um. But I just wanted to give a
(25:34):
shout out to a couple of fellow Toledo wins. One
who's a longtime resident, one who's a recent transplant. Christopher
is holding the fort down in Toledo for me, keeping
it real, he has uh officially lobbied, um, the congresswoman
from Toledo to get me the key to the city.
How awesome with it? Yeah, so Marcy kept her. If
(25:57):
you're listening, I would like, if you get to the city,
we gotta go for a ceremony and I at least
want to get like a key chain to the city. Okay,
and you can have the key. We'll see what we
can do. Um. So yeah, Christopher has officially petitioner. He's
he suggested that I'm the third most famous Toledo in
of all time after Jamie Farr, Jamie Farr, Danny Thomas,
(26:18):
the Great Entertainer, and then me. And I was like,
I think you're for getting Katie Holmes because she's from Toledo.
And he's like, no, you got her bek Kate Cruz.
You know, is it Kate Cruise now? So anyway, thanks
a lot for the effort, Christopher, even if it doesn't
come to fruition. If it does, you will get a
firm handshake and a free Friendlies Sunday of your choosing
(26:40):
for me. Friend. Yeah, we'll be going to Friendlies if
we go to Toledo. Sure. Uh. And then I also
want to say hi to Colin, who is a recent transplant,
as I said, Um from Colorado, I believe, who moves
from Colorado to Toledo. He moved to Toledo to attend
Bowling Green State University. Joe falcons my brother went there,
(27:02):
and uh, Colin did so in an eight eight Dodge Colt. Right,
that's having a couple of problems. One of the rear
struts are completely detached and the axle is holding on
by a tread, he says, Um. And the mechanics didn't
want him to leave when he took it in for service,
so they're like, you're going to die in this thing, um.
(27:24):
And the other problem is it has ants, he says.
I've never heard of a car having ants. I had
an incident car once. Really, you can't get rid of
them when they well, that's probably when you were living
in the car, which was probably always parked on the
ant hill. This is actually prior to that, when I
lived in the car. Um. But yeah, no, it's a
it's a it's a real problem. And Collin's basically just
(27:44):
put the bullet and said, well, I have ants in
my car now. He loves his ad eight Dutch Colt,
he said he loves Salito. He's enjoying. He went to
Tony Paco's as I suggested. I gotta try that one day.
I also told him to go to Rusty's Jazz Cafe.
So it's as authentic as it comes. Awesome. Um So,
hey Christopher, Hey Colling, you guys enjoy yourselves, Be safe
(28:04):
and toledown for the winner, Go mud Hens and h
Thanks for writing in. And if you want to say
hi to me or Chuck or both of us Chuckers
or Jerry, you're right, Chucker's Jerry chuck Er, I I
mean Chucker me chuck in me. Um. You can put
that in an email to stuff podcast at how stuff
(28:25):
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics, does it how stuff works dot com. Want
more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the
house stuff works dot com home page
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