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 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 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 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, 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. 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, 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, 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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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? 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 is it's how many kids a woman has to have to have a high uh statistical probability of having a daughter so that she in essence replaces herself. And right now it's two point three three is the replacement rate worldwide, and the point of it is to trend towards zero population growth. Right, So for every woman 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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? 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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. 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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, 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, 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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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? 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 is it's how many kids a woman has to have to have a high uh statistical probability of having a daughter so that she in essence replaces herself. And right now it's two point three three is the replacement rate worldwide, and the point of it is to trend towards zero population growth. Right, So for every woman 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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? 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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. 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, 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. 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 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 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 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