January 11, 2023 • 51 mins
Humanity has always had one biological mission: to grow and expand its population. And, since the days of antiquity, great thinkers have been terrified by the idea that, one day, there will simply be too many people on the planet. In today's episode, Ben and Noel explore the numerous concerns about overpopulation, separating fact from fiction as they delve into one of the most disturbing genres of conspiracy: What if the most powerful people in the world are conspiring to murder the less fortunate, all in the name of the Greater Good?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome back to
(00:25):
the show. My name is Noel. Our colleague Matt is
on adventures but will be returning soon. They called me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer Paul. Mission
controlled deconds. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
to know. We're coming in hot one, despite the fact
(00:48):
that calendars are arbitrary part in the accidental rhyme. Uh no,
you know this is this is something that you and
Matt and Paul and uh Doc Holiday and I have
talked about at length off air population, you know, for
for a lot of people. You know, we can we
(01:10):
can start with a kind of microcosmic question. Is it
crowded where you live? If you're like most of the
people on the planet, The answer is yes, Like right now, Uh,
you are in New York City, famously pretty crowded place,
right yeah, man, you know it's funny. I actually just
started hanging out more in Brooklyn in the last handful
(01:32):
of years. I don't know what I was missing. I
didn't know what I was missing. It's just so much
more chill, if not still somewhat crowded. But the difference
between Brooklyn and uh, some of the outer boroughs to
to Manhattan is like night and day. Um, you take
the train to Manhattan and all of a sudden, it's
just like a crush. Um. And uh, it's not super
(01:53):
pleasant all the time, especially in this age of paranoia
concerning viruses and and other you know, pandemic related things. Um,
people are still sometimes wearing masks, but nine of the
time it's kind of not a thing anymore. So I
don't know. I heard there was a new variant that
was potentially about to sweep through the land. So we'll
(02:15):
see how that goes. I don't know. Sometimes population takes
care of itself though, a little bit, with these things,
you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, the new variant is,
as Will Farrell would say, and several as our coworker
Will Farrell would say, and several uh, several things. Uh,
the new variants so hot right now, and it really is.
(02:35):
So be safe out there, folks. As we roll into
twenty twenty three. Earth's human population, wealthy and poor alike,
every imaginable demographic wrestles with a terrifying question. What happens
when this planet cannot sustain the amount of people living
on it? Is it too late to do anything? Is
(02:59):
there someone already working to lower the human population by
hook or by crook in secret? So here are the facts. Look,
you don't need to be you don't need to be
in Singapore, you don't need to be in Brooklyn, you
don't need to be in Bangkok or uh, what's in
the very crowded place Mumbai to know that they are
(03:20):
just a ton of people on the planet. And this
has been something that we've always thought about in terms
of great corrections. This is a teaser for what's called
the great reset. But humanity has gotten big for its
bridges and gotten it's it's knuckles wrapped a couple of times.
(03:42):
Remember those stories that we're hitting, like in the midst
of COVID about how the dolphins have returned to the
bays and uh, you know the rainforests are starting to
regrow themselves and all that. It turns out a bit
of hyperbole involved in that kind of reporting. Um, you know,
the airic quality is so much better because no one's
driving anymore, because everyone's locked down. Um. You know, things
(04:05):
like that maybe over a long enough timeline would maybe happen.
But I think there was a good bit of pie
in the sky reporting there. But uh, you know what
I mentioned earlier is the idea of the population kind
of taking care of itself. That coup's back back back,
you know, to the beginning of time. Um, these corrections
have occurred, But let's start with something you may have
heard of. A little thing called the Black Death or
(04:27):
the Bubonic plague, a pandemic that absolutely ravaged Western Eurasia
and North Africa in multiple ways from thirteen forty six
to thirteen fifty three. It was an absolute nightmare. Yeah, yeah,
it's horrific. Honestly, this one event remains the most fatal
(04:47):
pandemic in all of recorded human history. We're talking big numbers.
Somewhere between seventy five the two hundred million people died.
That's thirty to sixty percent of literally everyone in Europe
and about people in the Middle East. This single disease,
(05:08):
this single thing carried by fleas on on Rudent's fundamentally
altered the course of civilization. Humanity took it on the chin.
But the weird news is, and it looked like very
positive news for a few centuries after. The human population
has been growing leaps and bounds ever since. It's the
(05:30):
hottest thing. Yeah, sometimes you gotta trim back the hedge
to encourage new growth. Right there, it is maybe I
don't know. And man, you gotta imagine a lot of
these folks that lived through that period COVID shmoved. They
would say, you call that a pandemic. This is a pandemic.
You know, it's crocodile Dundee reference. Um, But you're right.
(05:51):
You know, there has been massive growth in the human
population ever since, for better or for worse. Things really
started to take off around a night teen fifty to
nineteen eighties. Six population pretty much doubled from two point
five actually doubled from two point five to five billion
people in just under forty years. Uh. And this wasn't
(06:14):
due to mutations, you know, things that would cause folks
to be maybe more resilient or resistance to say, disease.
Everyone was still working with the same exact biological hardware. Instead,
there were breakthroughs and things like agriculture, which allowed people
to be more nourished, medicine which allowed people to fight
off said diseases or infections, allowed them to actually live longer.
(06:38):
We know that in you know, the age of the
bubonic plague, life expectancy was already pretty bad, you know,
in terms of it was low, right, Yeah, yeah, you know,
for most of human history you could get any number
of diseases that would spell death for you a matter
(07:00):
of weeks, months, years maybe. But now, just like you said,
it's not that people are reproducing more often. Everybody is
always still trying to have some amorous moments. It's that
people are less likely to die the way they would
have in the past. And that's why as of November two,
(07:24):
the global population of human beings on the planet Earth
hit eight billion. It is above eight billion now, so
I suggest Nole Michigan Trol that we check the current
world population. It is eight billion, nine million, five thousand
and going back and forth between nine twenty and nine
(07:50):
one as we record this. What does this fluctuation indicate,
like births and deaths? Yeah, I love that very cool website.
You know, there's this immediately makes me think of of course,
the Georgia Guidestones, which is what it's call to maintain
humanity at five hundred million in perpetual balance with nature. Uh.
(08:10):
And and you know, we know one of the controversies
around that thing is that without the correct context, perhaps
what correct might not even be the right word. Without
whatever context you choose to give it, um, this could
potentially look like a call to to call a massive
portion of the population, you know, to bring about some
sort of plague level or you know, population dramatic population
(08:33):
reducing event to get to from eight billion? How's that
going to happen? But then, of course the other interpretation
is that it's more like in the event that there
were some the stand level you know, pandemic. Uh, maybe
we think a little smarter about how many people, you know,
we allow to come into the world. But even that
comes with it some issues. Who do we allow to reproduce?
(08:57):
Who do we forbid to reproduce? It is a human
whether you say right, or is a biological process that
humans are capable of doing. So you are literally kind
of telling people to do with their bodies at a
certain point. And people don't like that. No, No, people
don't like being told what to do with their bodies,
especially when you get to this thing um where where
(09:19):
you're talking about overpopulation. That's that's today's episode. Than what
you see is that a lot of people will agree
in the abstract there shall be fewer people. There should be,
but I should be But I'm fine, don't put me
on the on the blacklist. So it's no surprise that
(09:40):
a lot of people have historically had a problem with
the idea of the human population. For not centuries, millennia, scientists, philosophers,
and usually cartoonishly wealthy people have said, well, how many
people is too many? What should be done about that?
It goes so far. Confucius noted the danger of population
(10:03):
increases as early as the fifth century b c our Boys,
Plato and Aristotle also talked about this, and they were
some of the first ones in the Western world to
nail them, to nail the potential danger between the amount
of people who need resources and the amount of resources
(10:24):
that exist. That's right, And you found this fabulous quote
from a philosopher from Carthage from the second century CE.
Uh fellow. I wasn't familiar with Tertullian, who had a
very pithy little hot take on this whole quandary we're
talking about here. I'll give that to you right now.
Um our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can
(10:47):
hardly support us. In very deed, pestilence and faminine wars
and earthquakes have to be regarded as a remedy for nations,
as the means of pruning the luxuriance of the human race. Wow,
then that is a jim I mean, it's everything that
we've been talking about, you know, kind of written large,
you know. Yeah, but he also is putting it in
(11:10):
pretty blunt terms. He noted. No, he's saying he's saying, look, okay,
things are sad. You know, war is terrible. Family, you know,
he's silver lighted for the survivors at least. Yeah. We
fast forward a few centuries. We got to introduce one
of the most infamous guys in this conversation, Thomas Malthus.
(11:34):
In sevent he writes this thing he calls an essay
on the principle of population, and you know, no, he
argues that humanity is I don't know, it's not quite
a Ponzi scheme, but he's talking about exponential growth and
he says that The problem is, all things being equal,
(11:57):
humanity can reproduce at this enormous scale, but resources cannot
grow at the same frequency. You'll still have the same
amount of water in the system, right, the same ability
to grow food. And so he says, no matter what happens,
no matter what you believe, there is a breaking point,
(12:20):
there is a systemic flaw. More and more people will
produce more and more people, and the massive people will
struggle to survive off these dwindling resources until they die.
And this is something that you do see in u
non human populations. One of the biggest arguments for hunting
(12:41):
certain animals like deer or rabbits is that vascally webbits
is that if they if their populations are not called,
they will eventually die slower deaths due to starvation. And
it has to do with like their habitat, you know,
and making sure that they're not over overly consuming, you know,
(13:05):
the parts of the habitat that we could potentially cause
problems with with growth, you know. And that's why fish
and game you know, departments or wildlife whatever have seasons
for hunting certain animals because it's all kind of mapped
to a cycle, you know, to make sure that everything
UH is in its right place, in its right time. Yeah,
(13:26):
and if we want to be very crude about what
we do, what what Malthus has saying and what malenthusiasts
his followers are saying. Can you say malenthusian that word?
I love it. It just sounds villainous, doesn't it sound
a little villainous? It sounds like an evil UH, an
(13:46):
evil group in the Star Trek universe. But Malenthusians are
essentially arguing that if literally nothing else goes wrong, humanity
is still going to get raw dogged by the math.
That's just exactly that's put very bluntly. But for a time,
this was just for quite a long time, this was
(14:08):
a frightening conversation that the powerful people of the world
would have with each other. Right think about it. To
know about this and to speak about this, you would
have to be able to be literate one which a
lot of people are not. You would also have to
have the luxury of sitting around and digesting abstract concepts
(14:31):
in your free time. As a result, these powerful classes
usually took this argument as a way to rationalize further
oppression of people less powerful than them. But something changed
in the West in the nineteen sixties were still fast
forwarding centuries. There's a guy named Professor Paul R. Erlike,
(14:58):
and he writes a book in called The Population Bomb.
His predictions are kind of neo Malthusian thing. He says,
there's going to be mass starvation, environmental catastrophe, civilization, as you,
dear reader know, it will plummet, just like the Stephen
(15:19):
King book The Stand. And interestingly enough, in the original
publication of the book, Old Doc Earli predicts this happening
in the nineteen seventies. Later predictions later editions of the
book would move that up a decade to the nine eighties.
But this created a genre of conspiracy, not just one,
(15:42):
but many. It continues today. And the question all boils
down to this, is there some cabal of the world's
most powerful people working in secret to murder billions of
human beings in the name of some greater good, heavy
(16:02):
stuff deep water. I think we should pause for a
word from our sponsor for the cause. Indeed, here's where
it gets pretty yeah. I mean, look, these these kinds
(16:24):
of things are always able to be hyperbolized to the
nth degree. You know, um, we do know real horrific
tales of of forced sterilization programs. Um, you know, the
idea of picking out people that are so you know,
feeble minded, I think was one of the term Oh
(16:45):
there's this whole you know, just cash of offensive dated
Bizarro terms used in these in this era to refer
to people that were seen as less than And it's
much closer to our current time line that we live
in than many people realize or would like to believe.
You're talking about India, right, Yeah, but even in the
(17:05):
United States, you know, I mean there there were they
were like the idea of people being slow or you know, um,
there were there were four sterilization programs. Yeah, exactly in India.
For instance, six point two million male residents of India
were forcibly sterilized in nineteen seventy five, just one year,
(17:32):
and this happened multiple years. And then to to your point,
between nineteen oh seven and nineteen sixty three, something like
sixty four thousand people that we know of were sterilized
in the United States, which really you know, the Nazis
in World War two, uh took eugenics to the era
(17:54):
of genocides, but they learned it from the United States
in a very real a way which history textbooks ignored. Uh.
And then you know, like to your point about how
recent this is an ongoing think about the Leakers in
Western China. Think about or you know, the forced dissimilation
where they have to marry Han Chinese. Think about not
(18:17):
just the cultural erasure, but think about that government's one
child policy. The consequences are coming to bear even now. Yeah,
I mean, it really is. It's I mean, let's just
call it what it is. It's ethnic cleansing, you know,
in the same way of what the Nazis are doing
was just a much more overt and brazen form of
(18:40):
ethnic cleansing. You know, the idea of calling um an
entire population due to racial connections seem to be less
than or potentially a threat to some sort of agenda, right, Yeah,
And in all of these examples that we've named across
the world. Peru also practiced for sterilization, and all of
(19:02):
these examples what we see our power structures attempting to
address some perceived problem by stopping the creation of new
human beings rather than outright systemized murder. But that definitely
occurred as well throughout history. You know, you see horror
shows like Pilgrims, things like the Holocaust, genocides and Rwandan
(19:26):
armenia in those cases, in those mass murder cases. Overpopulation
is just one of like a mix tape of rationalizations
people in power use to justify their monstrous deeds. And
what we get from all of this is one undeniable fact.
(19:46):
Conspiracies about overpopulation and population control, they don't generating a vacuum.
They came from real world events are based on Oh
I understand. I do just want to add um. You
know we're talking talked about talking about feeble mindedness. This idea,
it was a way of um turning people into subhumans,
(20:08):
you know, conceptually. UM. There was a Canadian physician and
eugenicist named Helen McMurchy or mcmurkey who issued these reports
on feeble mindedness between nineteen o seven and nineteen eighteen,
and published a study in nineteen twenty called the Almost
a Study of Feeble minded a Study of the Feeble
minded UM. And the idea was that feeble mindedness was
(20:32):
this really dangerous high class of mental defectiveness UH, people
that could on first glance passed as normal, but were
therefore an even greater threat to society and had to
be stopped. Every mental defective is a potential criminal. She wrote,
This is again nineteen hundreds, early early nineteen hundreds. It's
(20:57):
so it's so recent, and it's it's continued, right, it
continues in some way today. Also, we uh, we would
be remiss if we didn't note that a lot of
these programs, a lot of this binality of evil, to
quote Hannah Arrants are they're based in preconceptions or prejudices
(21:19):
about what the people in power considered race, right, about
what they considered class. You know, there's there's never been
a wide scale program to eliminate the wealthy. Uh, you know,
there have been revolutions, but those were revolutions that were
(21:40):
meant to overthrow a system, not to prevent overpopulation. It's
more of like a slogan than a real thing that happens,
you know what I mean. The rich are usually pretty
well insulated, you know what I mean? Yeah, and probably
don't taste great now that I think about it. Fat
(22:03):
Who's who's the wig? Who's the wig of the billionaire class?
Who is the one that would be the most tasty?
Let us know, obviously the prize cow of the billionaire
class at all. I'm just saying he's, you know, he's,
he's I don't know, he's he seems like he'd be tasty.
I wonder where he tastes like, Yeah, uh, there are
(22:26):
these real world examples, So it's not a big leap
to imagine that people in power today, power structures today
might have the motivation as well as the means to
put something even bigger into play. With that, we're going
to walk through some of the more prevalent conspiracy theories,
and then we're gonna end at a twist that might
(22:48):
surprise some folks. We got to talk about Agenda twenty thirty.
Agenda twenty thirty, population control. It's a big one, man.
It's recent. Turns out a surprising number of people believe
that Bill Gates, I think, co creators of Microsoft, is
on a mission to wipe out the human species through
(23:12):
forced injections, disguised his vaccines that will block fertility, control
the mind, and uh tag everybody with microchips and poison
them with various uh long acting substances. This is something
we talked about our our recent book that came out
last year. Correct some folks even believe that the COVID
(23:35):
nineteen pandemic was in fact deliberately engineered by Mr Bill
Gates or or his foundation. They definitely have a lot
of initiatives and experience involving infectious disease, but it's you know,
largely the prevention of such. And there is I think
a ted talk that the Gates did where he sort
(23:55):
of talks about the fact that we are as a
country were not prepared for something like what happened with
COVID nineteen, and he was right. So it's almost like
you know that retro I guess proactive I told you so,
caused some people to maybe create this scenario where and
wherein Bill Gates was giving us a taste of our
(24:18):
own medicine or whatever, doing it to just you know,
enrich the rich further. I think it's it's nonsense. Um,
but that's just me. Well, there's you know, you could
see where people would think about that, right, Like most
people in the world have never met Bill Gates. Actually
most people have never met most people. That's just the math. Uh.
(24:41):
And also it is not as if Bill Gates or
people in Bill Gates class financially have ever gone hungry,
right have ever gone without some basic resource. This is
the idea of the Great Reset, and the belief in
this concept is pretty widespread, at least in the United States.
(25:04):
There was this pull back in that found about one
fifth of people in the United States believed that Bill
Gates and billionaires were purposely trying to kill the poor.
And the weird thing is Gates in specific has spoken
(25:25):
multiple times on record at length about ways to reduce
the population. He has never said, let's kill a few
billion people, you know, the types of people won't miss.
But he, like many others, has put a lot of
time and effort into thinking through ways to reduce the
rate of not the current population but population growth a
(25:49):
k a. Getting people to have fewer children basically. And
there's a we pulled a quote from a place called
pop matters dot org that talks about their approach, which
again is not kill all the poor, but it is
definitely get the poor to have fewer children. I mean, right,
(26:11):
and and and the whole the poor idea of that
is is debatable. Perhaps it's that's the part that kind
of gets turned into sort of like an act to
grind against these riches and their foundation you know, but
like here's sort of their their position, right. The Billy
Millinda Gates Foundation is long supportive reproductive health and rights
and developing countries, including family planning services. Foundation has also
(26:35):
pledged billions in support of vaccination programs. Bill Gates has
publicly spoken out about the benefits of slowing population growth
through improved healthcare several times. For example, in a TED
talk on ways to reduce climate emissions, the Wealthy Entrepreneur
acknowledge the population factor and stated, we could reduce this
if we do a really great job on new vaccines, healthcare,
(26:55):
reproductive health services. Because let's also just point out some
people aren't having kids like on purpose. They just don't
have access to contraception, they don't have access to birth control. Uh,
perhaps there are religious reasons behind I mean, you know,
I mean there's mainly the first things. But you know,
the idea that every time you have intercourse you have
(27:17):
to have you know, a potential baby is a religious
kind of tenant. You know, for certain old school Catholics
for example. You know, I don't know that they're necessarily
the problem here, but there really is an issue in
other countries that maybe don't have the same kind of
healthcare that we have, which sucks, by the way, in
this country, and access to it, but it can you
(27:39):
imagine it being even worse and with even less access.
That's a big part of the problem. So I don't
I don't look at this as like him saying poor
people stop having children. It's like, let us help you
get in a situation where you can like have sex
for fun. Well, yeah, there's the other thing here. There's
tremendous social pressure on people who could have children to
(28:00):
have right, It's like it's supposed to be a part
of your identity. It's also it's also something where you
would say, well, this person is telling me not to
have kids, but they're having kids, So why is this
a do what I say, not what I do? Situation?
(28:20):
That's inherently unfair then, and that's a good point. And
then there's also the point that there is a clear
correlation between increasing women's rights and access to education and
decreasing the amount of children a household will have in
countries where those opportunities are present. But for a lot
(28:41):
of us, let's stay along at home. It might sound
weird to hear vaccines put in that argument, and that
can wondering about that. I wanted to see if you
can shed a little light on that. I get it
sort of, but also it's a little bit of a
head scratcher. So here's the idea, right of course, it's
how it sounds weird at first. Don't vaccine save lives
(29:02):
if they work the way they are supposed to work.
Billy's logic we can call him Billy for this, uh
is as the following old Billy g says that improving
access to vaccines one reduces child mortality, and then research
suggests that if more children are living to adulthood, then
(29:25):
their parents are going to have fewer children because you know,
if you know that the two point one you have
are all going to make it, then you don't need
to have three point four as a margin of error
or something. Uh. And this this, uh, this is basically
arguing that if you don't have to worry about losing
(29:48):
your kids to preventable diseases, then you don't feel like
you need to have more of them. You can read
a letter that Gates wrote in fourteen where he makes
this argument. And it's just a little it could seem
a little round about for some folks you don't have
to agree to the logic, but a lot of people,
a lot of experts and folks in the world of
(30:10):
academia and social science, have found this to be the case.
I just yeah, I'm just trying to put myself in
the position of someone who loses a child and as
the immediate impulse to have another one to replace it.
I know, you wouldn't think about it like that. That's
that's very callous. You wouldn't certainly be like, I have
to replace my my my child, who who I've lost,
(30:32):
who we've lost. But it's not, no, it's not. I
just feel like I feel like some people would maybe
not want to do that. I feel like the reaction
would maybe be the opposite, that they don't ever want
to have to grieve like that again, right, yeah, agreed
and and aggrieved. So what what we see is that
(30:54):
for a lot of observers this might feel like a
bait and switch. And that's why you find a lot
of people, especially folks who are against reproductive rights for women. Uh,
You'll see a lot of people saying this idea of
reproductive health services is just a sneaky way to promote abortions.
(31:17):
But you know again, if if you look at any
any credible study, what you will find is that improving
access two planned parenthood to prophylactics, which is the fancy
name for stuff like condoms, if you improve access to that,
you're actually going to see fewer abortions occur because when
(31:40):
women are empowered to use contraception, their risk of unwanted
pregnancy is hugely reduced. Which leads to a bigger question
if you are if you consider yourself this might ruffle
some feathers, and I have no problem with that. If
you consider yourself pro life, right, then how how long
(32:02):
are you pro life? Because one of the issues, one
of the intellectual fallacies that's occurring in some situations is
you'll see people in power banning abortions, banning contraception, but
then not continuing to be pro life when that child
enters into early education or when that child needs basic things. Right, So,
(32:26):
if someone makes a pro life argument, then the natural
logical conclusion is that they should continue to be pro life.
You should be supportive of that child when that child
needs food, medicine, water, and shelter all the way to
the end of their lives. And unfortunately that doesn't seem
(32:47):
to be the case in a lot of places. Um.
Just to add a little levity here, I saw really
funny meme with Pope Emeritus Benedict, who passed away recently
at the age of and has said says he's pro
life and then dies. Yeah. I think that that format
(33:07):
has been used before, but it always gives me a
little chuckle in the face of a very serious, you know,
conversation and uh and and debate. Um. I just think
the term pro life is so loaded because we also
know that, you know, when when folks, especially with all
these noum rigidness towards incest and rape victims and all
(33:28):
of that stuff, that part is you know absolutely Uh.
I mind been mind boggling how they won't you know,
make those concessions. It's such an agenda. It really blows
my mind. But um, the idea that when you know
you are forced to carry every pregnancy to turn no
matter what, um, because it's you know, God's beautiful child
(33:49):
or whatever. Um. But then we're done with you at
that point, you know what I mean, It's like, well, well, yeah,
we're gonna make you have his baby. Um, you're criminal
if you do anything to prevent it. But and we're
not going to help your baby get education, We're not
going to help you with with health care, you know,
to make sure that baby is nourished and and fed well,
or or you the mother. Um, So it really is
(34:10):
just kind of this agenda that that really is very
callous and very self serving for a particular political bent.
You know, at least at the very least, the numbers
show that it's either shortsighted or purposely misleading. And these
are just the facts here. Uh, they are crazy facts,
(34:31):
but they are true. Uh. The thing is if regardless
of where you find yourself on that debate, the thing is,
if you don't trust billionaires in general, and honestly, not
trusting billionaires is the only logical stance to take. Uh,
You're you're going to be skeptical about their proposed solutions
(34:53):
and you're gonna say, hey, you're probably pitching something that
works for you, Well what about everybody else? If don't
trust Billy g in particular, you can easily see how
these proposals sound like smoke and mirrors, a little bit
of a trojan horse of pr spin, hiding something dangerous
beneath and the weirdest thing about it. Man, agenda is
(35:16):
a real thing. It's not It's not just some made
up stuff on Reddit. It's a genuine thing from the
United Nations. Yeah, the United Nations launched this initiative in
to solve um hunger crisis, the hunger crisis plaguing the
world like humanity. UM. The idea is to hopefully get
(35:37):
rid of hunger by twenty UM, in addition to things
like gender inequality UH and poverty UM and also halting
climate change and biodiversity loss is is built in there.
So these are all kind of points on this this
multi part kind of agenda, but ending hunger is a
(35:58):
big one. UM. The idea is to get this done
through seventeen sustainable development goals AK things that sound great
on paper, so they're so tight. Were so stoked about
these points, the sustainable development goals, and we have acronyms
(36:20):
and everything. So this also wasn't the first version of
that from our buddies at the U n In earlier
version was called Agenda one, which came about ninety How
we do there, you know, we fixed the world. We're good, well,
good hustle. We could say, uh, nice idea, you know
(36:40):
what it looked great on paper two and so, and
I think, you know, we already know the answer to
that question because of agenda. You know, it's like it's
called kicking the can down the road, you know, with
these big agendas, these big you know, resolutions that ultimately,
I mean, they're well meaning, but ultimately toothless, because we
(37:01):
know the United Nations doesn't really have any enforcement power,
you know, in the global the world of global politics
or global policy. So what can they really do besides
gift wrap these delightful you know, kind of wish fulfillment
kind of things, you know. And their their intentions are
(37:21):
likely good, you know, they're they're not seeing themselves as
supervillains of one sort or another. They see themselves as
like the Justice superheroes assembled, you know, and they're they're
what is it, the solitude of the fortress of solid
whatever they're they're like headquarters the whole of the justice.
Thank you. And and the agenda says the following. The
(37:45):
growth of world population and production, combined with unsustainable consumption practices,
pointing out the resource problem, places increasingly severe stress on
the life supporting capacities of our planet. But Agenda one
doesn't propose population control action and still like at this
(38:06):
point we got to go back to the author of
the population bomb we mentioned earlier, Professor Paul Erlike, he
has spoken at length about the relationship between population numbers
and the amount of resources available for people to consume.
This is math, This is mrs math. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
lay it out for us. Oh, I'm just saying, like,
(38:28):
this is not uh imaginary. You know, there there are
finite amounts of of of physical things that are consumable. Um. So,
according to him, the optimum population of Earth that would
guarantee the very bare minimum of of these ingredients that
would lead to living a decent life. Again, that's sort
(38:49):
of in quotation fingers um to everyone with some amount
of equality was one point five to two billion people
rather than the you know, seven billion or more than
seven billion we're alive today, or the nine billion that
we're expected to see by um. He had a very
candid conversation with The Guardian and where he actually did
(39:12):
propose something of a of a solution, not killing the
poor as as we've heard kind of that's the boogeyman
in this exactly. Uh. Instead he had this to say, Ben,
you want to you want to give it to us that? Yeah, yeah,
here he's going to the problem with consumption. He says,
(39:33):
we have too much consumption among the rich and too
little among the poor. We're gonna have to somehow redistribute
access to resources away from the rich to the poor.
That sounds like communism, socialism. Like that, move on, next,
next option? Exactly, let's go back to let's kill the
(39:55):
nut candor. And then someone's like, so that's all the
ten percent of the popular show. Does that kill the
poor option? Again? Yeah? What was that? Let that do?
Check out that mental and web sketch kill the poor.
But the he's raising a good point regards Look, most
people don't agree with the Relich, by the way, but
he's raising a good point when we talk about consumption.
(40:17):
So if you have paid attention to this problem, folks,
then you realize that the places in the world where
population is growing at the at the fastest rate, there
are also places that are relatively impoverished, like Nigeria, for instance,
or parts of India, and those populations are growing, but
(40:37):
per person, they're already consuming much less than an individual
in a developed country. So if the problem is consumption
rather than procreation. Then you have to ask serious questions
about consumption, which is what this guy is doing, and
people don't want to hear it. Again. It's the same
old problem, like, yes, this is good and abstract until
(41:00):
it affects me. Uh. He also says, He also says again, uh,
this is this guy dot us. He says, the US
trend is strongly moving in uh, in a redistribution model.
But it's redistrict. It's taking value from the poor right
from and giving more to the tem percent. But that's
(41:22):
just capitalism in it, you know. I mean, that's just
how it worked. There's no checks and balances on capitalism.
And I'm not trying to sound like that soapboxy guy,
but I really do feel like, you know, that is
the biggest issue in our country anyway, is that there's
there is no you know, way of keeping that in balance.
(41:43):
There's nothing in place, no system in place. You know,
if if you you know, pull yourself up by your
bootstraps whatever, But I mean, if you, you know, become
a giant gazillionaire, why shouldn't you be able to have
all that and do with it what you will? And
you shouldn't be required to give any of it back,
and in fact, maybe we won't even make you pay
taxes because we're just so grateful to you for your
(42:04):
contribution to the economy that will give you a pass.
And it's okay, the poor people will take care of that,
you know. Well, yeah, it's like it's a it's a
similar question to say, uh, well, if I can buy
a tiger, why can't I eat the tiger? It's my tiger,
you know what I mean? And consequences, consequences be damned.
But with all this that we've given about this conspiracy,
(42:26):
we do have to give you one twist that will
end on. We'll be back in a second, and uh,
it might surprise you. It surprised me, and we're back. Um,
I don't know, Ben, it doesn't exactly surprise me. You
(42:47):
you you the twist you alluded to, because we sort
of alluded to it a little bit at the top,
the idea of kind of course correction, you know, not
not necessarily needing to be meeted out by unseen conspirator
or you know, cabal or whatever. Um. The idea that
perhaps the population might actually take care of itself and
(43:10):
be declining on its very own. Yeah. Sorry, Malthusians, starting
back in the eighteen hundreds in Britain and reaching most
of the world. By the end of the nineteen hundreds
or so, birthrates actually plummeted overall, most notably due to
uh greater access to education, greater access to contraception, not
(43:35):
Draconean laws about population. It's known it's proven that in
wealthy societies where women have opportunities outside of traditional home requirements,
right the average family size is small. It's below what's
called replacement level, which means that on average, you got
(43:58):
two parents, if they get together, they have kids, but
they have less than two kids. Over time, over decades,
the population shrinks. This is called the demographic transition. And
there's a lot of debates still about how this all
is gonna play out. Researchers are gonna disagree on whether
(44:18):
global populations are actually on track to decline, and they
disagree for some notable and honestly very valid reasons. First off,
it's very difficult to have a exact estimate of how
many people are living and dying because countries some countries
(44:38):
can't report it very well. And it's even more difficult
to prognosticate the trends. But in terms of the overpopulation
fears from centuries back, we can look at this in
terms of four phases. There's malenthusianism, too many people, the
world is doomed, the end is NYE. There is eugenics.
(45:01):
Let's be racist, or let's be discriminatory and cut out
the parts of the of the human hedge that we
don't like. There's the population bomb, it's too late, everything's doomed.
And now there's the current stage reproductive rights. And when
we talk about for now, that's where we ended because
nobody outside of a few scientists can reasonably predict the future.
(45:26):
So we can say good news. We're gonna say good news,
and then we're going to ruin it. For now the
world there it is right right, So for now, the
world's producing more food than it ever has, but also
probably wasting more food than it ever has. Also that
there's nothing that grinds me up more than seeing like
(45:50):
food waste, you know. And then also places that like
for forbid, dumpster diving, like put locks on their dumpsters
and they're throwing away like perfectly edible you know, pay
streets or donuts or I've even seen catering, big catering trays.
You know, there's big you know, um aluminum ones just
dumped on the street, trashed, you know, or like or
(46:13):
like the times I got to taint for trying to
give away food. Uh yeah, So for now, we can
also say the population of multiple developed countries is in decline.
We can also say, for now, access to education and
reproductive rights seem to reliably reduce population growth. But there's
(46:34):
the thing, No, this is all just the case for now,
because there's another villain on the horizon. Arable land is
becoming less reliable due to widespread pollution due to climate change,
things that the ordinary individual cannot fix within their lifetime. Uh,
there's less access to potable water. The next World war
(46:59):
may honestly be about climate and water access. We've talked
about that numerous times, you know, like the mad maxification
of the world. And I don't know that we're gonna
necessarily see that hit its peak in our lifetime. That
we can sure see the writing on the wall. Even
with water disputes, you know along borders and uh and
(47:20):
and you know, certain municipalities may be taking more than
their share or diverting resources things like that. These are
real problems and that is a thing that you need.
And if if people are deprived of what they need
and they see someone depriving them of it, they're gonna
kill those people. Yeah, take it, and they have. And
we can't be uh collectively putting our heads in the
(47:43):
sand on this. There are very difficult choices ahead, There
are turning points, and you can't you know, even if
you think someone sounds like a kop for talking about
overpopulation conspiracies, you can't dismiss those feet years. If you
are being truly rational and skeptical, then you have to
(48:05):
understand there's some as salt to the idea. There there
is a solid logical grounding for the concern that the
wealthy of the world may do something drastic. There are
right now multiple groups trying to address population growth through
non sinister means, positive stuff. But the question is what
(48:25):
happens when we're no longer in this for now situation?
What kind of approaches with these powerful groups consider if
we get past the don't panic stage and into a
world where brutal solutions seem increasingly viable. It's heavy stuff
to think about, and that's where we need your help.
(48:48):
What do you think. Let us know, we hope you're
having a great time in three, and you know what,
we hope you're having a great time in thirty thirty three.
But this is an episode we'll have to revisit and
let's not forget, you know, take stock. Yeah, things are
scary and there's you know, impending doom at all time,
but they're always has been. And did you have a
(49:08):
good year personally? You know, maybe you you hit some
personal milestones, or you had like a creative spurt or
whatever it might be. I mean, everything's all relative. So
it's like, I think it's important we certainly have to
take this advice ourselves not to get caught up in
the negative and sure be aware of it and and
try to do what you can to not be part
of the problem. But also like life can still be
(49:29):
good even when they are scary things on the horizon.
Just just to put that out there, not to talk
down or or man mansplain life to anybody, but I
just I try personally to keep that balanced as best
I can. And I had a good year all in all,
despite all the crazy things that happened and crazy things
personally that happened. You know, Yeah, the world is ending
(49:51):
for someone somewhere every day, and you know, collectively we
can do our best to make the world a little
less terrible for ourselves and everyone around us. We want
to hear your thoughts, folks. Any this conversation touches on
a lot of things, So uh, come in hot, come
in punchy. It's right so let us know. Find us
(50:14):
on Instagram, Find us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, all
the hits, all the good ones, all that slow jazz,
and if you don't sip the social meads, why not
give us a phone call? Correct? You can reach us
at one three st d w y t K on
your rotary phone or your you know whatever ones with
the buttons to light up. Maybe you got one of
(50:35):
those Garfield phones. That'd be cool. Um call us up.
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message if you can. If you've got more to say
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you can send us a good old fashioned email. We
are conspiracy at I heart radio dot com m H.
(51:11):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome back to
(00:25):
the show. My name is Noel. Our colleague Matt is
on adventures but will be returning soon. They called me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer Paul. Mission
controlled deconds. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
to know. We're coming in hot one, despite the fact
(00:48):
that calendars are arbitrary part in the accidental rhyme. Uh no,
you know this is this is something that you and
Matt and Paul and uh Doc Holiday and I have
talked about at length off air population, you know, for
for a lot of people. You know, we can we
(01:10):
can start with a kind of microcosmic question. Is it
crowded where you live? If you're like most of the
people on the planet, The answer is yes, Like right now, Uh,
you are in New York City, famously pretty crowded place,
right yeah, man, you know it's funny. I actually just
started hanging out more in Brooklyn in the last handful
(01:32):
of years. I don't know what I was missing. I
didn't know what I was missing. It's just so much
more chill, if not still somewhat crowded. But the difference
between Brooklyn and uh, some of the outer boroughs to
to Manhattan is like night and day. Um, you take
the train to Manhattan and all of a sudden, it's
just like a crush. Um. And uh, it's not super
(01:53):
pleasant all the time, especially in this age of paranoia
concerning viruses and and other you know, pandemic related things. Um,
people are still sometimes wearing masks, but nine of the
time it's kind of not a thing anymore. So I
don't know. I heard there was a new variant that
was potentially about to sweep through the land. So we'll
(02:15):
see how that goes. I don't know. Sometimes population takes
care of itself though, a little bit, with these things,
you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, the new variant is,
as Will Farrell would say, and several as our coworker
Will Farrell would say, and several uh, several things. Uh,
the new variants so hot right now, and it really is.
(02:35):
So be safe out there, folks. As we roll into
twenty twenty three. Earth's human population, wealthy and poor alike,
every imaginable demographic wrestles with a terrifying question. What happens
when this planet cannot sustain the amount of people living
on it? Is it too late to do anything? Is
(02:59):
there someone already working to lower the human population by
hook or by crook in secret? So here are the facts. Look,
you don't need to be you don't need to be
in Singapore, you don't need to be in Brooklyn, you
don't need to be in Bangkok or uh, what's in
the very crowded place Mumbai to know that they are
(03:20):
just a ton of people on the planet. And this
has been something that we've always thought about in terms
of great corrections. This is a teaser for what's called
the great reset. But humanity has gotten big for its
bridges and gotten it's it's knuckles wrapped a couple of times.
(03:42):
Remember those stories that we're hitting, like in the midst
of COVID about how the dolphins have returned to the
bays and uh, you know the rainforests are starting to
regrow themselves and all that. It turns out a bit
of hyperbole involved in that kind of reporting. Um, you know,
the airic quality is so much better because no one's
driving anymore, because everyone's locked down. Um. You know, things
(04:05):
like that maybe over a long enough timeline would maybe happen.
But I think there was a good bit of pie
in the sky reporting there. But uh, you know what
I mentioned earlier is the idea of the population kind
of taking care of itself. That coup's back back back,
you know, to the beginning of time. Um, these corrections
have occurred, But let's start with something you may have
heard of. A little thing called the Black Death or
(04:27):
the Bubonic plague, a pandemic that absolutely ravaged Western Eurasia
and North Africa in multiple ways from thirteen forty six
to thirteen fifty three. It was an absolute nightmare. Yeah, yeah,
it's horrific. Honestly, this one event remains the most fatal
(04:47):
pandemic in all of recorded human history. We're talking big numbers.
Somewhere between seventy five the two hundred million people died.
That's thirty to sixty percent of literally everyone in Europe
and about people in the Middle East. This single disease,
(05:08):
this single thing carried by fleas on on Rudent's fundamentally
altered the course of civilization. Humanity took it on the chin.
But the weird news is, and it looked like very
positive news for a few centuries after. The human population
has been growing leaps and bounds ever since. It's the
(05:30):
hottest thing. Yeah, sometimes you gotta trim back the hedge
to encourage new growth. Right there, it is maybe I
don't know. And man, you gotta imagine a lot of
these folks that lived through that period COVID shmoved. They
would say, you call that a pandemic. This is a pandemic.
You know, it's crocodile Dundee reference. Um, But you're right.
(05:51):
You know, there has been massive growth in the human
population ever since, for better or for worse. Things really
started to take off around a night teen fifty to
nineteen eighties. Six population pretty much doubled from two point
five actually doubled from two point five to five billion
people in just under forty years. Uh. And this wasn't
(06:14):
due to mutations, you know, things that would cause folks
to be maybe more resilient or resistance to say, disease.
Everyone was still working with the same exact biological hardware. Instead,
there were breakthroughs and things like agriculture, which allowed people
to be more nourished, medicine which allowed people to fight
off said diseases or infections, allowed them to actually live longer.
(06:38):
We know that in you know, the age of the
bubonic plague, life expectancy was already pretty bad, you know,
in terms of it was low, right, Yeah, yeah, you know,
for most of human history you could get any number
of diseases that would spell death for you a matter
(07:00):
of weeks, months, years maybe. But now, just like you said,
it's not that people are reproducing more often. Everybody is
always still trying to have some amorous moments. It's that
people are less likely to die the way they would
have in the past. And that's why as of November two,
(07:24):
the global population of human beings on the planet Earth
hit eight billion. It is above eight billion now, so
I suggest Nole Michigan Trol that we check the current
world population. It is eight billion, nine million, five thousand
and going back and forth between nine twenty and nine
(07:50):
one as we record this. What does this fluctuation indicate,
like births and deaths? Yeah, I love that very cool website.
You know, there's this immediately makes me think of of course,
the Georgia Guidestones, which is what it's call to maintain
humanity at five hundred million in perpetual balance with nature. Uh.
(08:10):
And and you know, we know one of the controversies
around that thing is that without the correct context, perhaps
what correct might not even be the right word. Without
whatever context you choose to give it, um, this could
potentially look like a call to to call a massive
portion of the population, you know, to bring about some
sort of plague level or you know, population dramatic population
(08:33):
reducing event to get to from eight billion? How's that
going to happen? But then, of course the other interpretation
is that it's more like in the event that there
were some the stand level you know, pandemic. Uh, maybe
we think a little smarter about how many people, you know,
we allow to come into the world. But even that
comes with it some issues. Who do we allow to reproduce?
(08:57):
Who do we forbid to reproduce? It is a human
whether you say right, or is a biological process that
humans are capable of doing. So you are literally kind
of telling people to do with their bodies at a
certain point. And people don't like that. No, No, people
don't like being told what to do with their bodies,
especially when you get to this thing um where where
(09:19):
you're talking about overpopulation. That's that's today's episode. Than what
you see is that a lot of people will agree
in the abstract there shall be fewer people. There should be,
but I should be But I'm fine, don't put me
on the on the blacklist. So it's no surprise that
(09:40):
a lot of people have historically had a problem with
the idea of the human population. For not centuries, millennia, scientists, philosophers,
and usually cartoonishly wealthy people have said, well, how many
people is too many? What should be done about that?
It goes so far. Confucius noted the danger of population
(10:03):
increases as early as the fifth century b c our Boys,
Plato and Aristotle also talked about this, and they were
some of the first ones in the Western world to
nail them, to nail the potential danger between the amount
of people who need resources and the amount of resources
(10:24):
that exist. That's right, And you found this fabulous quote
from a philosopher from Carthage from the second century CE.
Uh fellow. I wasn't familiar with Tertullian, who had a
very pithy little hot take on this whole quandary we're
talking about here. I'll give that to you right now.
Um our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can
(10:47):
hardly support us. In very deed, pestilence and faminine wars
and earthquakes have to be regarded as a remedy for nations,
as the means of pruning the luxuriance of the human race. Wow,
then that is a jim I mean, it's everything that
we've been talking about, you know, kind of written large,
you know. Yeah, but he also is putting it in
(11:10):
pretty blunt terms. He noted. No, he's saying he's saying, look, okay,
things are sad. You know, war is terrible. Family, you know,
he's silver lighted for the survivors at least. Yeah. We
fast forward a few centuries. We got to introduce one
of the most infamous guys in this conversation, Thomas Malthus.
(11:34):
In sevent he writes this thing he calls an essay
on the principle of population, and you know, no, he
argues that humanity is I don't know, it's not quite
a Ponzi scheme, but he's talking about exponential growth and
he says that The problem is, all things being equal,
(11:57):
humanity can reproduce at this enormous scale, but resources cannot
grow at the same frequency. You'll still have the same
amount of water in the system, right, the same ability
to grow food. And so he says, no matter what happens,
no matter what you believe, there is a breaking point,
(12:20):
there is a systemic flaw. More and more people will
produce more and more people, and the massive people will
struggle to survive off these dwindling resources until they die.
And this is something that you do see in u
non human populations. One of the biggest arguments for hunting
(12:41):
certain animals like deer or rabbits is that vascally webbits
is that if they if their populations are not called,
they will eventually die slower deaths due to starvation. And
it has to do with like their habitat, you know,
and making sure that they're not over overly consuming, you know,
(13:05):
the parts of the habitat that we could potentially cause
problems with with growth, you know. And that's why fish
and game you know, departments or wildlife whatever have seasons
for hunting certain animals because it's all kind of mapped
to a cycle, you know, to make sure that everything
UH is in its right place, in its right time. Yeah,
(13:26):
and if we want to be very crude about what
we do, what what Malthus has saying and what malenthusiasts
his followers are saying. Can you say malenthusian that word?
I love it. It just sounds villainous, doesn't it sound
a little villainous? It sounds like an evil UH, an
(13:46):
evil group in the Star Trek universe. But Malenthusians are
essentially arguing that if literally nothing else goes wrong, humanity
is still going to get raw dogged by the math.
That's just exactly that's put very bluntly. But for a time,
this was just for quite a long time, this was
(14:08):
a frightening conversation that the powerful people of the world
would have with each other. Right think about it. To
know about this and to speak about this, you would
have to be able to be literate one which a
lot of people are not. You would also have to
have the luxury of sitting around and digesting abstract concepts
(14:31):
in your free time. As a result, these powerful classes
usually took this argument as a way to rationalize further
oppression of people less powerful than them. But something changed
in the West in the nineteen sixties were still fast
forwarding centuries. There's a guy named Professor Paul R. Erlike,
(14:58):
and he writes a book in called The Population Bomb.
His predictions are kind of neo Malthusian thing. He says,
there's going to be mass starvation, environmental catastrophe, civilization, as you,
dear reader know, it will plummet, just like the Stephen
(15:19):
King book The Stand. And interestingly enough, in the original
publication of the book, Old Doc Earli predicts this happening
in the nineteen seventies. Later predictions later editions of the
book would move that up a decade to the nine eighties.
But this created a genre of conspiracy, not just one,
(15:42):
but many. It continues today. And the question all boils
down to this, is there some cabal of the world's
most powerful people working in secret to murder billions of
human beings in the name of some greater good, heavy
(16:02):
stuff deep water. I think we should pause for a
word from our sponsor for the cause. Indeed, here's where
it gets pretty yeah. I mean, look, these these kinds
(16:24):
of things are always able to be hyperbolized to the
nth degree. You know, um, we do know real horrific
tales of of forced sterilization programs. Um, you know, the
idea of picking out people that are so you know,
feeble minded, I think was one of the term Oh
(16:45):
there's this whole you know, just cash of offensive dated
Bizarro terms used in these in this era to refer
to people that were seen as less than And it's
much closer to our current time line that we live
in than many people realize or would like to believe.
You're talking about India, right, Yeah, but even in the
(17:05):
United States, you know, I mean there there were they
were like the idea of people being slow or you know, um,
there were there were four sterilization programs. Yeah, exactly in India.
For instance, six point two million male residents of India
were forcibly sterilized in nineteen seventy five, just one year,
(17:32):
and this happened multiple years. And then to to your point,
between nineteen oh seven and nineteen sixty three, something like
sixty four thousand people that we know of were sterilized
in the United States, which really you know, the Nazis
in World War two, uh took eugenics to the era
(17:54):
of genocides, but they learned it from the United States
in a very real a way which history textbooks ignored. Uh.
And then you know, like to your point about how
recent this is an ongoing think about the Leakers in
Western China. Think about or you know, the forced dissimilation
where they have to marry Han Chinese. Think about not
(18:17):
just the cultural erasure, but think about that government's one
child policy. The consequences are coming to bear even now. Yeah,
I mean, it really is. It's I mean, let's just
call it what it is. It's ethnic cleansing, you know,
in the same way of what the Nazis are doing
was just a much more overt and brazen form of
(18:40):
ethnic cleansing. You know, the idea of calling um an
entire population due to racial connections seem to be less
than or potentially a threat to some sort of agenda, right, Yeah,
And in all of these examples that we've named across
the world. Peru also practiced for sterilization, and all of
(19:02):
these examples what we see our power structures attempting to
address some perceived problem by stopping the creation of new
human beings rather than outright systemized murder. But that definitely
occurred as well throughout history. You know, you see horror
shows like Pilgrims, things like the Holocaust, genocides and Rwandan
(19:26):
armenia in those cases, in those mass murder cases. Overpopulation
is just one of like a mix tape of rationalizations
people in power use to justify their monstrous deeds. And
what we get from all of this is one undeniable fact.
(19:46):
Conspiracies about overpopulation and population control, they don't generating a vacuum.
They came from real world events are based on Oh
I understand. I do just want to add um. You
know we're talking talked about talking about feeble mindedness. This idea,
it was a way of um turning people into subhumans,
(20:08):
you know, conceptually. UM. There was a Canadian physician and
eugenicist named Helen McMurchy or mcmurkey who issued these reports
on feeble mindedness between nineteen o seven and nineteen eighteen,
and published a study in nineteen twenty called the Almost
a Study of Feeble minded a Study of the Feeble
minded UM. And the idea was that feeble mindedness was
(20:32):
this really dangerous high class of mental defectiveness UH, people
that could on first glance passed as normal, but were
therefore an even greater threat to society and had to
be stopped. Every mental defective is a potential criminal. She wrote,
This is again nineteen hundreds, early early nineteen hundreds. It's
(20:57):
so it's so recent, and it's it's continued, right, it
continues in some way today. Also, we uh, we would
be remiss if we didn't note that a lot of
these programs, a lot of this binality of evil, to
quote Hannah Arrants are they're based in preconceptions or prejudices
(21:19):
about what the people in power considered race, right, about
what they considered class. You know, there's there's never been
a wide scale program to eliminate the wealthy. Uh, you know,
there have been revolutions, but those were revolutions that were
(21:40):
meant to overthrow a system, not to prevent overpopulation. It's
more of like a slogan than a real thing that happens,
you know what I mean. The rich are usually pretty
well insulated, you know what I mean? Yeah, and probably
don't taste great now that I think about it. Fat
(22:03):
Who's who's the wig? Who's the wig of the billionaire class?
Who is the one that would be the most tasty?
Let us know, obviously the prize cow of the billionaire
class at all. I'm just saying he's, you know, he's,
he's I don't know, he's he seems like he'd be tasty.
I wonder where he tastes like, Yeah, uh, there are
(22:26):
these real world examples, So it's not a big leap
to imagine that people in power today, power structures today
might have the motivation as well as the means to
put something even bigger into play. With that, we're going
to walk through some of the more prevalent conspiracy theories,
and then we're gonna end at a twist that might
(22:48):
surprise some folks. We got to talk about Agenda twenty thirty.
Agenda twenty thirty, population control. It's a big one, man.
It's recent. Turns out a surprising number of people believe
that Bill Gates, I think, co creators of Microsoft, is
on a mission to wipe out the human species through
(23:12):
forced injections, disguised his vaccines that will block fertility, control
the mind, and uh tag everybody with microchips and poison
them with various uh long acting substances. This is something
we talked about our our recent book that came out
last year. Correct some folks even believe that the COVID
(23:35):
nineteen pandemic was in fact deliberately engineered by Mr Bill
Gates or or his foundation. They definitely have a lot
of initiatives and experience involving infectious disease, but it's you know,
largely the prevention of such. And there is I think
a ted talk that the Gates did where he sort
(23:55):
of talks about the fact that we are as a
country were not prepared for something like what happened with
COVID nineteen, and he was right. So it's almost like
you know that retro I guess proactive I told you so,
caused some people to maybe create this scenario where and
wherein Bill Gates was giving us a taste of our
(24:18):
own medicine or whatever, doing it to just you know,
enrich the rich further. I think it's it's nonsense. Um,
but that's just me. Well, there's you know, you could
see where people would think about that, right, Like most
people in the world have never met Bill Gates. Actually
most people have never met most people. That's just the math. Uh.
(24:41):
And also it is not as if Bill Gates or
people in Bill Gates class financially have ever gone hungry,
right have ever gone without some basic resource. This is
the idea of the Great Reset, and the belief in
this concept is pretty widespread, at least in the United States.
(25:04):
There was this pull back in that found about one
fifth of people in the United States believed that Bill
Gates and billionaires were purposely trying to kill the poor.
And the weird thing is Gates in specific has spoken
(25:25):
multiple times on record at length about ways to reduce
the population. He has never said, let's kill a few
billion people, you know, the types of people won't miss.
But he, like many others, has put a lot of
time and effort into thinking through ways to reduce the
rate of not the current population but population growth a
(25:49):
k a. Getting people to have fewer children basically. And
there's a we pulled a quote from a place called
pop matters dot org that talks about their approach, which
again is not kill all the poor, but it is
definitely get the poor to have fewer children. I mean, right,
(26:11):
and and and the whole the poor idea of that
is is debatable. Perhaps it's that's the part that kind
of gets turned into sort of like an act to
grind against these riches and their foundation you know, but
like here's sort of their their position, right. The Billy
Millinda Gates Foundation is long supportive reproductive health and rights
and developing countries, including family planning services. Foundation has also
(26:35):
pledged billions in support of vaccination programs. Bill Gates has
publicly spoken out about the benefits of slowing population growth
through improved healthcare several times. For example, in a TED
talk on ways to reduce climate emissions, the Wealthy Entrepreneur
acknowledge the population factor and stated, we could reduce this
if we do a really great job on new vaccines, healthcare,
(26:55):
reproductive health services. Because let's also just point out some
people aren't having kids like on purpose. They just don't
have access to contraception, they don't have access to birth control. Uh,
perhaps there are religious reasons behind I mean, you know,
I mean there's mainly the first things. But you know,
the idea that every time you have intercourse you have
(27:17):
to have you know, a potential baby is a religious
kind of tenant. You know, for certain old school Catholics
for example. You know, I don't know that they're necessarily
the problem here, but there really is an issue in
other countries that maybe don't have the same kind of
healthcare that we have, which sucks, by the way, in
this country, and access to it, but it can you
(27:39):
imagine it being even worse and with even less access.
That's a big part of the problem. So I don't
I don't look at this as like him saying poor
people stop having children. It's like, let us help you
get in a situation where you can like have sex
for fun. Well, yeah, there's the other thing here. There's
tremendous social pressure on people who could have children to
(28:00):
have right, It's like it's supposed to be a part
of your identity. It's also it's also something where you
would say, well, this person is telling me not to
have kids, but they're having kids, So why is this
a do what I say, not what I do? Situation?
(28:20):
That's inherently unfair then, and that's a good point. And
then there's also the point that there is a clear
correlation between increasing women's rights and access to education and
decreasing the amount of children a household will have in
countries where those opportunities are present. But for a lot
(28:41):
of us, let's stay along at home. It might sound
weird to hear vaccines put in that argument, and that
can wondering about that. I wanted to see if you
can shed a little light on that. I get it
sort of, but also it's a little bit of a
head scratcher. So here's the idea, right of course, it's
how it sounds weird at first. Don't vaccine save lives
(29:02):
if they work the way they are supposed to work.
Billy's logic we can call him Billy for this, uh
is as the following old Billy g says that improving
access to vaccines one reduces child mortality, and then research
suggests that if more children are living to adulthood, then
(29:25):
their parents are going to have fewer children because you know,
if you know that the two point one you have
are all going to make it, then you don't need
to have three point four as a margin of error
or something. Uh. And this this, uh, this is basically
arguing that if you don't have to worry about losing
(29:48):
your kids to preventable diseases, then you don't feel like
you need to have more of them. You can read
a letter that Gates wrote in fourteen where he makes
this argument. And it's just a little it could seem
a little round about for some folks you don't have
to agree to the logic, but a lot of people,
a lot of experts and folks in the world of
(30:10):
academia and social science, have found this to be the case.
I just yeah, I'm just trying to put myself in
the position of someone who loses a child and as
the immediate impulse to have another one to replace it.
I know, you wouldn't think about it like that. That's
that's very callous. You wouldn't certainly be like, I have
to replace my my my child, who who I've lost,
(30:32):
who we've lost. But it's not, no, it's not. I
just feel like I feel like some people would maybe
not want to do that. I feel like the reaction
would maybe be the opposite, that they don't ever want
to have to grieve like that again, right, yeah, agreed
and and aggrieved. So what what we see is that
(30:54):
for a lot of observers this might feel like a
bait and switch. And that's why you find a lot
of people, especially folks who are against reproductive rights for women. Uh,
You'll see a lot of people saying this idea of
reproductive health services is just a sneaky way to promote abortions.
(31:17):
But you know again, if if you look at any
any credible study, what you will find is that improving
access two planned parenthood to prophylactics, which is the fancy
name for stuff like condoms, if you improve access to that,
you're actually going to see fewer abortions occur because when
(31:40):
women are empowered to use contraception, their risk of unwanted
pregnancy is hugely reduced. Which leads to a bigger question
if you are if you consider yourself this might ruffle
some feathers, and I have no problem with that. If
you consider yourself pro life, right, then how how long
(32:02):
are you pro life? Because one of the issues, one
of the intellectual fallacies that's occurring in some situations is
you'll see people in power banning abortions, banning contraception, but
then not continuing to be pro life when that child
enters into early education or when that child needs basic things. Right, So,
(32:26):
if someone makes a pro life argument, then the natural
logical conclusion is that they should continue to be pro life.
You should be supportive of that child when that child
needs food, medicine, water, and shelter all the way to
the end of their lives. And unfortunately that doesn't seem
(32:47):
to be the case in a lot of places. Um.
Just to add a little levity here, I saw really
funny meme with Pope Emeritus Benedict, who passed away recently
at the age of and has said says he's pro
life and then dies. Yeah. I think that that format
(33:07):
has been used before, but it always gives me a
little chuckle in the face of a very serious, you know,
conversation and uh and and debate. Um. I just think
the term pro life is so loaded because we also
know that, you know, when when folks, especially with all
these noum rigidness towards incest and rape victims and all
(33:28):
of that stuff, that part is you know absolutely Uh.
I mind been mind boggling how they won't you know,
make those concessions. It's such an agenda. It really blows
my mind. But um, the idea that when you know
you are forced to carry every pregnancy to turn no
matter what, um, because it's you know, God's beautiful child
(33:49):
or whatever. Um. But then we're done with you at
that point, you know what I mean, It's like, well, well, yeah,
we're gonna make you have his baby. Um, you're criminal
if you do anything to prevent it. But and we're
not going to help your baby get education, We're not
going to help you with with health care, you know,
to make sure that baby is nourished and and fed well,
or or you the mother. Um, So it really is
(34:10):
just kind of this agenda that that really is very
callous and very self serving for a particular political bent.
You know, at least at the very least, the numbers
show that it's either shortsighted or purposely misleading. And these
are just the facts here. Uh, they are crazy facts,
(34:31):
but they are true. Uh. The thing is if regardless
of where you find yourself on that debate, the thing is,
if you don't trust billionaires in general, and honestly, not
trusting billionaires is the only logical stance to take. Uh,
You're you're going to be skeptical about their proposed solutions
(34:53):
and you're gonna say, hey, you're probably pitching something that
works for you, Well what about everybody else? If don't
trust Billy g in particular, you can easily see how
these proposals sound like smoke and mirrors, a little bit
of a trojan horse of pr spin, hiding something dangerous
beneath and the weirdest thing about it. Man, agenda is
(35:16):
a real thing. It's not It's not just some made
up stuff on Reddit. It's a genuine thing from the
United Nations. Yeah, the United Nations launched this initiative in
to solve um hunger crisis, the hunger crisis plaguing the
world like humanity. UM. The idea is to hopefully get
(35:37):
rid of hunger by twenty UM, in addition to things
like gender inequality UH and poverty UM and also halting
climate change and biodiversity loss is is built in there.
So these are all kind of points on this this
multi part kind of agenda, but ending hunger is a
(35:58):
big one. UM. The idea is to get this done
through seventeen sustainable development goals AK things that sound great
on paper, so they're so tight. Were so stoked about
these points, the sustainable development goals, and we have acronyms
(36:20):
and everything. So this also wasn't the first version of
that from our buddies at the U n In earlier
version was called Agenda one, which came about ninety How
we do there, you know, we fixed the world. We're good, well,
good hustle. We could say, uh, nice idea, you know
(36:40):
what it looked great on paper two and so, and
I think, you know, we already know the answer to
that question because of agenda. You know, it's like it's
called kicking the can down the road, you know, with
these big agendas, these big you know, resolutions that ultimately,
I mean, they're well meaning, but ultimately toothless, because we
(37:01):
know the United Nations doesn't really have any enforcement power,
you know, in the global the world of global politics
or global policy. So what can they really do besides
gift wrap these delightful you know, kind of wish fulfillment
kind of things, you know. And their their intentions are
(37:21):
likely good, you know, they're they're not seeing themselves as
supervillains of one sort or another. They see themselves as
like the Justice superheroes assembled, you know, and they're they're
what is it, the solitude of the fortress of solid
whatever they're they're like headquarters the whole of the justice.
Thank you. And and the agenda says the following. The
(37:45):
growth of world population and production, combined with unsustainable consumption practices,
pointing out the resource problem, places increasingly severe stress on
the life supporting capacities of our planet. But Agenda one
doesn't propose population control action and still like at this
(38:06):
point we got to go back to the author of
the population bomb we mentioned earlier, Professor Paul Erlike, he
has spoken at length about the relationship between population numbers
and the amount of resources available for people to consume.
This is math, This is mrs math. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
lay it out for us. Oh, I'm just saying, like,
(38:28):
this is not uh imaginary. You know, there there are
finite amounts of of of physical things that are consumable. Um. So,
according to him, the optimum population of Earth that would
guarantee the very bare minimum of of these ingredients that
would lead to living a decent life. Again, that's sort
(38:49):
of in quotation fingers um to everyone with some amount
of equality was one point five to two billion people
rather than the you know, seven billion or more than
seven billion we're alive today, or the nine billion that
we're expected to see by um. He had a very
candid conversation with The Guardian and where he actually did
(39:12):
propose something of a of a solution, not killing the
poor as as we've heard kind of that's the boogeyman
in this exactly. Uh. Instead he had this to say, Ben,
you want to you want to give it to us that? Yeah, yeah,
here he's going to the problem with consumption. He says,
(39:33):
we have too much consumption among the rich and too
little among the poor. We're gonna have to somehow redistribute
access to resources away from the rich to the poor.
That sounds like communism, socialism. Like that, move on, next,
next option? Exactly, let's go back to let's kill the
(39:55):
nut candor. And then someone's like, so that's all the
ten percent of the popular show. Does that kill the
poor option? Again? Yeah? What was that? Let that do?
Check out that mental and web sketch kill the poor.
But the he's raising a good point regards Look, most
people don't agree with the Relich, by the way, but
he's raising a good point when we talk about consumption.
(40:17):
So if you have paid attention to this problem, folks,
then you realize that the places in the world where
population is growing at the at the fastest rate, there
are also places that are relatively impoverished, like Nigeria, for instance,
or parts of India, and those populations are growing, but
(40:37):
per person, they're already consuming much less than an individual
in a developed country. So if the problem is consumption
rather than procreation. Then you have to ask serious questions
about consumption, which is what this guy is doing, and
people don't want to hear it. Again. It's the same
old problem, like, yes, this is good and abstract until
(41:00):
it affects me. Uh. He also says, He also says again, uh,
this is this guy dot us. He says, the US
trend is strongly moving in uh, in a redistribution model.
But it's redistrict. It's taking value from the poor right
from and giving more to the tem percent. But that's
(41:22):
just capitalism in it, you know. I mean, that's just
how it worked. There's no checks and balances on capitalism.
And I'm not trying to sound like that soapboxy guy,
but I really do feel like, you know, that is
the biggest issue in our country anyway, is that there's
there is no you know, way of keeping that in balance.
(41:43):
There's nothing in place, no system in place. You know,
if if you you know, pull yourself up by your
bootstraps whatever, But I mean, if you, you know, become
a giant gazillionaire, why shouldn't you be able to have
all that and do with it what you will? And
you shouldn't be required to give any of it back,
and in fact, maybe we won't even make you pay
taxes because we're just so grateful to you for your
(42:04):
contribution to the economy that will give you a pass.
And it's okay, the poor people will take care of that,
you know. Well, yeah, it's like it's a it's a
similar question to say, uh, well, if I can buy
a tiger, why can't I eat the tiger? It's my tiger,
you know what I mean? And consequences, consequences be damned.
But with all this that we've given about this conspiracy,
(42:26):
we do have to give you one twist that will
end on. We'll be back in a second, and uh,
it might surprise you. It surprised me, and we're back. Um,
I don't know, Ben, it doesn't exactly surprise me. You
(42:47):
you you the twist you alluded to, because we sort
of alluded to it a little bit at the top,
the idea of kind of course correction, you know, not
not necessarily needing to be meeted out by unseen conspirator
or you know, cabal or whatever. Um. The idea that
perhaps the population might actually take care of itself and
(43:10):
be declining on its very own. Yeah. Sorry, Malthusians, starting
back in the eighteen hundreds in Britain and reaching most
of the world. By the end of the nineteen hundreds
or so, birthrates actually plummeted overall, most notably due to
uh greater access to education, greater access to contraception, not
(43:35):
Draconean laws about population. It's known it's proven that in
wealthy societies where women have opportunities outside of traditional home requirements,
right the average family size is small. It's below what's
called replacement level, which means that on average, you got
(43:58):
two parents, if they get together, they have kids, but
they have less than two kids. Over time, over decades,
the population shrinks. This is called the demographic transition. And
there's a lot of debates still about how this all
is gonna play out. Researchers are gonna disagree on whether
(44:18):
global populations are actually on track to decline, and they
disagree for some notable and honestly very valid reasons. First off,
it's very difficult to have a exact estimate of how
many people are living and dying because countries some countries
(44:38):
can't report it very well. And it's even more difficult
to prognosticate the trends. But in terms of the overpopulation
fears from centuries back, we can look at this in
terms of four phases. There's malenthusianism, too many people, the
world is doomed, the end is NYE. There is eugenics.
(45:01):
Let's be racist, or let's be discriminatory and cut out
the parts of the of the human hedge that we
don't like. There's the population bomb, it's too late, everything's doomed.
And now there's the current stage reproductive rights. And when
we talk about for now, that's where we ended because
nobody outside of a few scientists can reasonably predict the future.
(45:26):
So we can say good news. We're gonna say good news,
and then we're going to ruin it. For now the
world there it is right right, So for now, the
world's producing more food than it ever has, but also
probably wasting more food than it ever has. Also that
there's nothing that grinds me up more than seeing like
(45:50):
food waste, you know. And then also places that like
for forbid, dumpster diving, like put locks on their dumpsters
and they're throwing away like perfectly edible you know, pay
streets or donuts or I've even seen catering, big catering trays.
You know, there's big you know, um aluminum ones just
dumped on the street, trashed, you know, or like or
(46:13):
like the times I got to taint for trying to
give away food. Uh yeah, So for now, we can
also say the population of multiple developed countries is in decline.
We can also say, for now, access to education and
reproductive rights seem to reliably reduce population growth. But there's
(46:34):
the thing, No, this is all just the case for now,
because there's another villain on the horizon. Arable land is
becoming less reliable due to widespread pollution due to climate change,
things that the ordinary individual cannot fix within their lifetime. Uh,
there's less access to potable water. The next World war
(46:59):
may honestly be about climate and water access. We've talked
about that numerous times, you know, like the mad maxification
of the world. And I don't know that we're gonna
necessarily see that hit its peak in our lifetime. That
we can sure see the writing on the wall. Even
with water disputes, you know along borders and uh and
(47:20):
and you know, certain municipalities may be taking more than
their share or diverting resources things like that. These are
real problems and that is a thing that you need.
And if if people are deprived of what they need
and they see someone depriving them of it, they're gonna
kill those people. Yeah, take it, and they have. And
we can't be uh collectively putting our heads in the
(47:43):
sand on this. There are very difficult choices ahead, There
are turning points, and you can't you know, even if
you think someone sounds like a kop for talking about
overpopulation conspiracies, you can't dismiss those feet years. If you
are being truly rational and skeptical, then you have to
(48:05):
understand there's some as salt to the idea. There there
is a solid logical grounding for the concern that the
wealthy of the world may do something drastic. There are
right now multiple groups trying to address population growth through
non sinister means, positive stuff. But the question is what
(48:25):
happens when we're no longer in this for now situation?
What kind of approaches with these powerful groups consider if
we get past the don't panic stage and into a
world where brutal solutions seem increasingly viable. It's heavy stuff
to think about, and that's where we need your help.
(48:48):
What do you think. Let us know, we hope you're
having a great time in three, and you know what,
we hope you're having a great time in thirty thirty three.
But this is an episode we'll have to revisit and
let's not forget, you know, take stock. Yeah, things are
scary and there's you know, impending doom at all time,
but they're always has been. And did you have a
(49:08):
good year personally? You know, maybe you you hit some
personal milestones, or you had like a creative spurt or
whatever it might be. I mean, everything's all relative. So
it's like, I think it's important we certainly have to
take this advice ourselves not to get caught up in
the negative and sure be aware of it and and
try to do what you can to not be part
of the problem. But also like life can still be
(49:29):
good even when they are scary things on the horizon.
Just just to put that out there, not to talk
down or or man mansplain life to anybody, but I
just I try personally to keep that balanced as best
I can. And I had a good year all in all,
despite all the crazy things that happened and crazy things
personally that happened. You know, Yeah, the world is ending
(49:51):
for someone somewhere every day, and you know, collectively we
can do our best to make the world a little
less terrible for ourselves and everyone around us. We want
to hear your thoughts, folks. Any this conversation touches on
a lot of things, So uh, come in hot, come
in punchy. It's right so let us know. Find us
(50:14):
on Instagram, Find us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, all
the hits, all the good ones, all that slow jazz,
and if you don't sip the social meads, why not
give us a phone call? Correct? You can reach us
at one three st d w y t K on
your rotary phone or your you know whatever ones with
the buttons to light up. Maybe you got one of
(50:35):
those Garfield phones. That'd be cool. Um call us up.
You can leave a message. You've got three minutes, tell
us a tale. Try to keep it to that one
message if you can. If you've got more to say
than will fit in a three minute audio, missive, why
you can send us a good old fashioned email. We
are conspiracy at I heart radio dot com m H.
(51:11):
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United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com