December 16, 2017 • 29 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 (00:00):
Hi, everybody, it's Chuck and I am introducing this week's
Stuff you Should Know Selects episode. This is from the
Vault from two zero zero nine two nine November twelve,
and it's called How Population Works. And I picked this
one because I remember this being a super cool episode
(00:21):
because it was one of those where I thought, population,
what does that even mean? And how can we make
a show out a full show about this? And it
turned out to be great. Um, Josh, I think it
was his pick initially, and it's just really really cool.
So if you don't even know what, uh what how
Population Works might mean, give it a listen. I think
you'll be pretty intrigued. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know
(00:50):
from House Stuff Works dot com. Punky chucking, pocky chucking,
puckey chucking. That's right, CHUCKK 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, the road to punkin Chunking
(01:12):
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 chunk 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 Channel on with the show. Yeah, chuck, Um,
(01:36):
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. That's right. Um,
this sounds kind of boring, and you would think it is.
Do how population works. It actually started to pick up.
(01:58):
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 Anowsky. By the way, right, So, um,
human beings marriage, human beings tend to um congregate, Yes,
(02:25):
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 the segregation. We'll get on that later. UM. Humans
congregate and segregate. But let's talk about congregation and that UM.
Most of the time, I would say, our early early ancestors, UH,
(02:49):
and probably even other species congregate because they're safety and
numbers and it helps like with farming, collecting water and
food power numbers. But even before farming, UM a hundred
hunter gatherers lived in bands. I think thirty was about tops.
They figured out somewhere along the way that groups of
thirty or groups of more than thirty there tended to
(03:09):
be a lot more hostility and UM inner group problems.
Have you ever tried to kill a mass it on
by yourself? That's another good point too. There's cooperation mastered
on UM. There's UM. If if let's say, if you
are farming and your crop fails, well you're not standing
there like, well I'm in trouble. You can say, hey, neighbor, UM,
(03:33):
I'll totally give you favors of some variety if you
will let me have some of your grain. I can
a chicken. Let's say, sure you can trade. There's a
lot of reasons people live together. So it's my theory
that people aggregate together naturally. Yes, And then there are
people out there who get their jollies by studying these
(03:54):
groups of people. They're called demographer demographers. So we have
populations natural or otherwise. And let's 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
in demographer's studying, right, um, and they look at things
(04:15):
like say, how many people in this natural population are
Republicans or Democrat? Or how many are Caucasian? Right? Or
how many have um, how many you 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? You know,
(04:37):
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, Yes,
(04:58):
The problem is is you. 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
(05:20):
do we actually determine this kind of thing? Yeah, that
was my That was That was a good segue. There's
a kind of ways. One is um by counting them
literally counting them, like 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 know
(05:43):
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 suspect, strongly suspected suicide.
My problem with it is is how do you bind
(06:04):
yourself in duct tape? How do you bind your own
risks and duct tape? I'll show you later, 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 work for the census.
(06:24):
Whenever they had their their drive and they count 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 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 census. Yeah. Well,
(06:47):
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 inform nation
is kept is kept secret for seventy two years aside
from the numbers, I believe the public cannot see that
information for seventy two years, Right, what do I seventy
(07:09):
two 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,
(07:32):
and then they multiply that out and basically end up
getting a full population. And sometimes I did, I didn't
know this. That's even more accurate than an actual head count.
You see that margin of air, it's like plus or
minus four percent. 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
(07:54):
left handed? To determine how many people are left handed?
But let's say you have a population with a thou
in and some statistician has 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
(08:16):
how many people, let's say, ten percent of the population
of the population. But your sample is 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 at 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
(08:39):
back then it 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 nineteen 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 funds?
(09:02):
Oh yeah, 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 with a random
populationandom 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
(09:23):
people have that 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 acian
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
(09:45):
know age? Who cares? 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 just like saying that we're bulged. You got
to do the air 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
(10:09):
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 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
(10:30):
bulges again in a little bit. But let's move on.
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, um, but other than that, aren't related in
any other way. Uh. And all of them suddenly have
(10:53):
this horrible cancer and they're just so happens to be
some manufacturer there by 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,
(11:17):
you can say, okay, paint factory, 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,
(11:37):
the VJ was interviewing the Bastie Boys and he was like,
Mike D, I hear you're dating a black girl. You know,
what's it like dating somebody from a different race, Which
is just an anthenine question to begin with. But I
remember Mike D going there's only one race, the human race,
And I was like, huh. That was clearly before he
(11:57):
was down with the ione or no, was ad Rock sorry. Yeah,
add rocks down with the Ionia. They're divorced though, so
he's not down with her anymore. 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 to hang onto
(12:20):
that for sure. I guess racial profiling again. I don't
know if I 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 the specific to
that race that can help out that exactly true. It's alright, so, Chuck,
(13:06):
We've got all 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
(13:27):
exploded on this planet 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 fourteen
one UM Charles C. Man. Yes, he basically points out
that there is probably a hundred million people on the
(13:48):
North American or on the in the America's uh in 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,
(14:10):
the places decimated. It seems like there's nobody there right. Well,
he had the whole genocide to 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
(14:30):
speculation that Columbus may have been responsible for like the
worst mass genocide in human history by completely wiping out
the 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 were as
many as fifteen million at the time that were decimated
(14:53):
to about two thousand. Decimated through 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
(15:15):
out the population. And they're 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
(15:36):
ten million humans. So 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 millions. 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 fifteen century. So um, let's go.
(15:57):
But let's say 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
(16:20):
hits were at one point five billion people and then
this century the population of the world has quad druple. Yeah,
and with like six billions. I know that that. It
sounded like there should have been a drum roll there,
but maybe there was. By that Jerry might have put
one in there, our producer, Jerry, we'll find out later. Uh.
And Josh here projecting the U. S. CENTSUS Bureau projects
(16:43):
that by there will be ten billion people. Right. So
the reason for this is what we call the lenthusisant
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, and he figured out that
(17:06):
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 don't have the
(17:27):
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, the replacement rate
(17:48):
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
(18:09):
population growth. Right, So for every woman 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 reading this reminded me of when we
(18:30):
did our Big Econ audio book. It's kind of population
kind of wants to seek equilibrium. I think, like, uh,
just like economics does and and and it doesn't always happen,
uh organically, I should say it probably rarely happens organically.
But let's think about um. Like you said, the baby boom,
post war success in in Europe and um, the US
(18:54):
and Canada, I guess lead to UM a huge boom
in the population. No, it he 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 God, if I say genocide
(19:16):
one more time, we should do a podcast in genocide.
I wonder if there's a drinking game where every time
it's like genocide, gide 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. The plague of Justinian may
(19:40):
have killed as many as half the world's population, a
hundred million people. Unbelievable. Can you imagine walking around at
that time, like, holy crap, the entire half the world
is dead, just died in the last couple of years.
It's crazy. In the Black Death killed twenty to thirty
million Europeans, So so plagues can happen. There's also I
(20:00):
was talking to an evolutionary geneticist this is my way
um today 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.
(20:23):
And he wasn't saying 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 grab the first fifteen people you meet and say,
(20:44):
let's go found a new town. That new town isn't
going to have a representative sample of all the surnames
in that town. If you do that enough time, some
surnames are going to be lost because people didn't reproduce
or whatever. The same thing happens with jenes and genetic diversity.
Look at you stuff? Thanks? Uh? Can I mention this
place in Hong Kong? Yeah, we're talking about well we
(21:05):
should mention. 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
(21:26):
in a mega block, which is five hundred by six
fifty feet. Fifty thousand people stuffed in there, and apparently
it was a lawless district. The grabsters. She's kidding me,
fifty 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 thousand
(21:47):
people there, 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 play 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
(22:10):
to be. Yeah, 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?
(22:44):
We got um. Population control is 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
(23:05):
that 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 yeah, 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
(23:28):
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 declins. So
we talked about the strain um people put on an
area that's carrying capacity, which we've talked about before, and
(23:49):
that's also from Malthus, 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, you need those
(24:10):
hands to go to work and 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,
(24:32):
and he's talking about poutin giving away a TV. Oh yeah,
that's right, that's really funny. Yeah, um, the baby get
a TV. I think you'd be there and check the
reason why. Uh, some of these places are seeing a
population shrink and are having to I guess give incentives
to reproduce. Uh, started in about nineteen sixty birth control.
(24:55):
That's so crazy that it had an effect that much
of an effect, that pronounced of an effect. 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. All right, So clearly there's
a lot of reasons to study people. Yeah, it's I
(25:17):
thought it would be. There's a lot of stuff to
study to 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 your frenzy friendly enumerator
(25:40):
comes knocking on your door, don't chase them off your
land with your dog or a gun. Let him in,
give them some lemonade, maybe some cookies. Yeah, we'll check
their lamb in at first. But before you let them in,
ceo a chuck pep going. And if you want to
know more about population, you could read Grabbingowski's great article
on the site. Just type in population in the handy
(26:00):
search part how stuff works dot com, which of course
leads us to the listener mail. Josh, I'm just gonna
call this your turn at listener mail, because I think
you have to do we'll talk about Yeah. I just
I don't necessarily have too much listener mail per se um.
(26:20):
But I just wanted to give a 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,
(26:43):
so Marcy kept her. If you're listening, I would like
if you get a key to the city, we gotta
go for a ceremony and I at least want to
get like a key chain to the city, and you
can have the key. We'll see what we can do. Um.
So yeah, Christopher has officially petitioner. He's he suggested it
and third most famous Toledo in of all time after
Jamie Farr. Jamie Farr, Danny Thomas the Great Entertainer and
(27:06):
then me and I was like, I think you're for
getting Katie Holmes from Toledo and he's like, no, you
got her? Bek 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.
(27:28):
For me, Yeah, we'll be going to Friendlies if we
go to Toledo. But 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,
(27:49):
and uh, Colin did so in an eight eight Dodge
Colt that's having a couple of problems. One, the rear
struts are completely detached and the acts sole 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. And the other problem is it has ants.
(28:14):
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 put the bullet and said, well, I have
ants in my car now. He loves his AD eight
(28:35):
Dutch cole. He said, he loves solito. 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 because it's as authentic as it comes.
It's awesome. Um. So hey Christopher, hey Colin, you guys,
enjoy yourselves, be safe and toledown for the winner. Go
mud hens and uh, thanks for writing in. And if
(28:57):
you want to say hi to me or Chuck or
both of us Chuckers or Jerry you right, Chucker's Jerry
chuck Er, I I mean Chucker me chucking me. Um.
You can put that in an email to stuff podcast
at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
(29:18):
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our
blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page
Hi, everybody, it's Chuck and I am introducing this week's
Stuff you Should Know Selects episode. This is from the
Vault from two zero zero nine two nine November twelve,
and it's called How Population Works. And I picked this
one because I remember this being a super cool episode
(00:21):
because it was one of those where I thought, population,
what does that even mean? And how can we make
a show out a full show about this? And it
turned out to be great. Um, Josh, I think it
was his pick initially, and it's just really really cool.
So if you don't even know what, uh what how
Population Works might mean, give it a listen. I think
you'll be pretty intrigued. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know
(00:50):
from House Stuff Works dot com. Punky chucking, pocky chucking,
puckey chucking. That's right, CHUCKK 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, the road to punkin Chunking
(01:12):
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 chunk 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 Channel on with the show. Yeah, chuck, Um,
(01:36):
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. That's right. Um,
this sounds kind of boring, and you would think it is.
Do how population works. It actually started to pick up.
(01:58):
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 Anowsky. By the way, right, So, um,
human beings marriage, human beings tend to um congregate, Yes,
(02:25):
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 the segregation. We'll get on that later. UM. Humans
congregate and segregate. But let's talk about congregation and that UM.
Most of the time, I would say, our early early ancestors, UH,
(02:49):
and probably even other species congregate because they're safety and
numbers and it helps like with farming, collecting water and
food power numbers. But even before farming, UM a hundred
hunter gatherers lived in bands. I think thirty was about tops.
They figured out somewhere along the way that groups of
thirty or groups of more than thirty there tended to
(03:09):
be a lot more hostility and UM inner group problems.
Have you ever tried to kill a mass it on
by yourself? That's another good point too. There's cooperation mastered
on UM. There's UM. If if let's say, if you
are farming and your crop fails, well you're not standing
there like, well I'm in trouble. You can say, hey, neighbor, UM,
(03:33):
I'll totally give you favors of some variety if you
will let me have some of your grain. I can
a chicken. Let's say, sure you can trade. There's a
lot of reasons people live together. So it's my theory
that people aggregate together naturally. Yes, And then there are
people out there who get their jollies by studying these
(03:54):
groups of people. They're called demographer demographers. So we have
populations natural or otherwise. And let's 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
in demographer's studying, right, um, and they look at things
(04:15):
like say, how many people in this natural population are
Republicans or Democrat? Or how many are Caucasian? Right? Or
how many have um, how many you 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? You know,
(04:37):
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, Yes,
(04:58):
The problem is is you. 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
(05:20):
do we actually determine this kind of thing? Yeah, that
was my That was That was a good segue. There's
a kind of ways. One is um by counting them
literally counting them, like 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 know
(05:43):
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 suspect, strongly suspected suicide.
My problem with it is is how do you bind
(06:04):
yourself in duct tape? How do you bind your own
risks and duct tape? I'll show you later, 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 work for the census.
(06:24):
Whenever they had their their drive and they count 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 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 census. Yeah. Well,
(06:47):
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 inform nation
is kept is kept secret for seventy two years aside
from the numbers, I believe the public cannot see that
information for seventy two years, Right, what do I seventy
(07:09):
two 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,
(07:32):
and then they multiply that out and basically end up
getting a full population. And sometimes I did, I didn't
know this. That's even more accurate than an actual head count.
You see that margin of air, it's like plus or
minus four percent. 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
(07:54):
left handed? To determine how many people are left handed?
But let's say you have a population with a thou
in and some statistician has 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
(08:16):
how many people, let's say, ten percent of the population
of the population. But your sample is 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 at 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
(08:39):
back then it 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 nineteen 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 funds?
(09:02):
Oh yeah, 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 with a random
populationandom 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
(09:23):
people have that 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 acian
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
(09:45):
know age? Who cares? 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 just like saying that we're bulged. You got
to do the air 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
(10:09):
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 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
(10:30):
bulges again in a little bit. But let's move on.
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, um, but other than that, aren't related in
any other way. Uh. And all of them suddenly have
(10:53):
this horrible cancer and they're just so happens to be
some manufacturer there by 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,
(11:17):
you can say, okay, paint factory, 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,
(11:37):
the VJ was interviewing the Bastie Boys and he was like,
Mike D, I hear you're dating a black girl. You know,
what's it like dating somebody from a different race, Which
is just an anthenine question to begin with. But I
remember Mike D going there's only one race, the human race,
And I was like, huh. That was clearly before he
(11:57):
was down with the ione or no, was ad Rock sorry. Yeah,
add rocks down with the Ionia. They're divorced though, so
he's not down with her anymore. 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 to hang onto
(12:20):
that for sure. I guess racial profiling again. I don't
know if I 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 the specific to
that race that can help out that exactly true. It's alright, so, Chuck,
(13:06):
We've got all 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
(13:27):
exploded on this planet 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 fourteen
one UM Charles C. Man. Yes, he basically points out
that there is probably a hundred million people on the
(13:48):
North American or on the in the America's uh in 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,
(14:10):
the places decimated. It seems like there's nobody there right. Well,
he had the whole genocide to 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
(14:30):
speculation that Columbus may have been responsible for like the
worst mass genocide in human history by completely wiping out
the 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 were as
many as fifteen million at the time that were decimated
(14:53):
to about two thousand. Decimated through 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
(15:15):
out the population. And they're 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
(15:36):
ten million humans. So 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 millions. 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 fifteen century. So um, let's go.
(15:57):
But let's say 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
(16:20):
hits were at one point five billion people and then
this century the population of the world has quad druple. Yeah,
and with like six billions. I know that that. It
sounded like there should have been a drum roll there,
but maybe there was. By that Jerry might have put
one in there, our producer, Jerry, we'll find out later. Uh.
And Josh here projecting the U. S. CENTSUS Bureau projects
(16:43):
that by there will be ten billion people. Right. So
the reason for this is what we call the lenthusisant
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, and he figured out that
(17:06):
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 don't have the
(17:27):
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, the replacement rate
(17:48):
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
(18:09):
population growth. Right, So for every woman 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 reading this reminded me of when we
(18:30):
did our Big Econ audio book. It's kind of population
kind of wants to seek equilibrium. I think, like, uh,
just like economics does and and and it doesn't always happen,
uh organically, I should say it probably rarely happens organically.
But let's think about um. Like you said, the baby boom,
post war success in in Europe and um, the US
(18:54):
and Canada, I guess lead to UM a huge boom
in the population. No, it he 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 God, if I say genocide
(19:16):
one more time, we should do a podcast in genocide.
I wonder if there's a drinking game where every time
it's like genocide, gide 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. The plague of Justinian may
(19:40):
have killed as many as half the world's population, a
hundred million people. Unbelievable. Can you imagine walking around at
that time, like, holy crap, the entire half the world
is dead, just died in the last couple of years.
It's crazy. In the Black Death killed twenty to thirty
million Europeans, So so plagues can happen. There's also I
(20:00):
was talking to an evolutionary geneticist this is my way
um today 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.
(20:23):
And he wasn't saying 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 grab the first fifteen people you meet and say,
(20:44):
let's go found a new town. That new town isn't
going to have a representative sample of all the surnames
in that town. If you do that enough time, some
surnames are going to be lost because people didn't reproduce
or whatever. The same thing happens with jenes and genetic diversity.
Look at you stuff? Thanks? Uh? Can I mention this
place in Hong Kong? Yeah, we're talking about well we
(21:05):
should mention. 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
(21:26):
in a mega block, which is five hundred by six
fifty feet. Fifty thousand people stuffed in there, and apparently
it was a lawless district. The grabsters. She's kidding me,
fifty 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 thousand
(21:47):
people there, 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 play 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
(22:10):
to be. Yeah, 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?
(22:44):
We got um. Population control is 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
(23:05):
that 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 yeah, 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
(23:28):
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 declins. So
we talked about the strain um people put on an
area that's carrying capacity, which we've talked about before, and
(23:49):
that's also from Malthus, 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, you need those
(24:10):
hands to go to work and 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,
(24:32):
and he's talking about poutin giving away a TV. Oh yeah,
that's right, that's really funny. Yeah, um, the baby get
a TV. I think you'd be there and check the
reason why. Uh, some of these places are seeing a
population shrink and are having to I guess give incentives
to reproduce. Uh, started in about nineteen sixty birth control.
(24:55):
That's so crazy that it had an effect that much
of an effect, that pronounced of an effect. 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. All right, So clearly there's
a lot of reasons to study people. Yeah, it's I
(25:17):
thought it would be. There's a lot of stuff to
study to 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 your frenzy friendly enumerator
(25:40):
comes knocking on your door, don't chase them off your
land with your dog or a gun. Let him in,
give them some lemonade, maybe some cookies. Yeah, we'll check
their lamb in at first. But before you let them in,
ceo a chuck pep going. And if you want to
know more about population, you could read Grabbingowski's great article
on the site. Just type in population in the handy
(26:00):
search part how stuff works dot com, which of course
leads us to the listener mail. Josh, I'm just gonna
call this your turn at listener mail, because I think
you have to do we'll talk about Yeah. I just
I don't necessarily have too much listener mail per se um.
(26:20):
But I just wanted to give a 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,
(26:43):
so Marcy kept her. If you're listening, I would like
if you get a key to the city, we gotta
go for a ceremony and I at least want to
get like a key chain to the city, and you
can have the key. We'll see what we can do. Um.
So yeah, Christopher has officially petitioner. He's he suggested it
and third most famous Toledo in of all time after
Jamie Farr. Jamie Farr, Danny Thomas the Great Entertainer and
(27:06):
then me and I was like, I think you're for
getting Katie Holmes from Toledo and he's like, no, you
got her? Bek 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.
(27:28):
For me, Yeah, we'll be going to Friendlies if we
go to Toledo. But 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,
(27:49):
and uh, Colin did so in an eight eight Dodge
Colt that's having a couple of problems. One, the rear
struts are completely detached and the acts sole 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. And the other problem is it has ants.
(28:14):
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 put the bullet and said, well, I have
ants in my car now. He loves his AD eight
(28:35):
Dutch cole. He said, he loves solito. 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 because it's as authentic as it comes.
It's awesome. Um. So hey Christopher, hey Colin, you guys,
enjoy yourselves, be safe and toledown for the winner. Go
mud hens and uh, thanks for writing in. And if
(28:57):
you want to say hi to me or Chuck or
both of us Chuckers or Jerry you right, Chucker's Jerry
chuck Er, I I mean Chucker me chucking me. Um.
You can put that in an email to stuff podcast
at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
(29:18):
and thousands of other topics, is 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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