It Could Happen Here - What’s Real in the Politics of Population with Andrew

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

Andrew talks with Mia about the history of the human population and how different groups have sought to leverage it for their own fears and advantage.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hello, America's sweetheart Johnny Knoxville here. I want to tell you about my new true crime podcast, Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, from Smartless Media, campside media, and big money players. It's a wild tale about a gang of high-functioning nitwits who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash heist. Kind of like Robin Hood, except for the part where he's still,

from the rich and gifts to the poor, I'm not that generous. It's a damn near inspiring true story for anyone out there who's ever shot for the moon then just totally muffed up the landing. They stole $17 million that had not bought a ticket

to help him escape. So we're saying like, oh God, what do we do? What do we do? That was dumb. People do not follow my example. Listen to Crimless, Hillbilly Heist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. I live below a cult leader and I fear I've angered her.

Wait a minute, Sophia. How do you know she's a cult leader? Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon. This person writes, My neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals. And now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder.

I think they might be part of a cult. Hold up. Real life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue, Dakota. Find out how it ends. Listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What happens when Reese Witherspoon calls up the king of thrillers, Harlan Coben, and says, let's write a book together.

I was asking him basically to let me into his secret thriller writing world. This week, bookmarked by Reese's Book Club goes live from Apple Soho in New York City for the ultimate storytelling. mashup. Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben on their new thriller, Gone Before Goodbye. Can you think you're going to read for 10 minutes? And next thing you know, it's 4 in a morning. Get the story behind the season's most addictive read, already in New York Times bestseller. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, I'm Cal Penn. And on my new podcast, here we go again. We'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? Each week, I'm calling up my friends

like Bill Nye, Lily Singh, and Pete Buttigieg to talk about everything from the space race to movie remakes to psychedelics. Put another way, are you high? Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now. But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to here we go again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. CallZone Media. Hello and welcome to It Could Happen here. I'm Andrew Sage.

I run Andrewism over on YouTube, but I'm here on this podcast with the one and only Mia Wong, who does this podcast most of the time. Exactly, exactly. And I think you and I both have something in common, which is that we are people and we are two people but the world has a lot more

than just two people. It's a really convoluted way of saying that for this episode we're going to be talking about population. You know, how many of people there are and how many of them there will or will not be in the future and all the different conversations

that end up happening around that. Most of which suck. So it's a time. True. True, true, true. Yeah. I mean, every single one of us humans is a product of billions of years of reproduction. But for most of that reproduction, population growth was pretty slow.

You know, the world's population is estimated at around 5 million in the year 8,000 BC. So 5 million is like the population of New Zealand right now or Costa Rica or Ireland or Norway, but spread across the entire planet. Can you guess how many people who are alive in the year 1, CE though? 30 million? That's actually an underestimate. It's 188 million. Jeez.

Right? So that's between the current population of Bangladesh and the current population of Brazil, which are at 169 million and 230 million respectively. But that's spread across the entire planet. So, I mean, imagine that, you know, a whole world of people so spread out. I mean, they were concentrated in Sydney areas, of course, but you had all this vast forest land and planes and entire continent that barely had people compared to today. And the reason the population grew so

slowly was really because, I mean, humans have always been doing the dew, you know, but death was kind of a very present phenomenon. You know, you had famines, you had plagues, you had the occasional war, and you especially had a lot of infant mortality. Yeah. And that's what really kept populations in check. You know, I remember hearing,

I don't even remember who it was, but this one person had like 19 children and only eight of them survived to adulthood. Yeah, they honestly did pretty good, like, by those metrics, like, yeah, the infant mortality rate was unbelievably high. Yeah, yeah. So families had a lot of children, but only a few of them made it to adulthood. Now, thanks to early industrialization, things were able to change a bit. You know, we improved our agriculture, we invented refrigeration, we got better fertilizer, and most importantly, we developed advancements in sanitation.

You know, the doctors were actually washing their hands. You know, we developed vaccines, so children weren't dying of measles and mumps. Imagine that. Oh, good Lord. And we also had an overall improvement in medicine. You know, one of the greatest inventions of humanity, I think, is the vaccine. And it's such a wonderful thing that there's not this massive movement of people who challenge its very legitimacy in this day and age. and threaten all of our lives as a result.

You know, imagine being in that world. Oh, God. So we eventually hit $1 billion in the year 1804, which is just below the current population of China. And things really began to accelerate from there. We end up creating something called a J curve of exponential population growth thanks to, like I said, the declining infant mortality and improvements in fertility and food production.

And then the other billionaire milestones started rolling it. By 1804, Haiti had just gained its independence. Napoleon I first was crowned Emperor of France, and Lewis and Clark had begun their expedition across America. In 1927, that's 123 years later, we hit 2 billion people. You know, by then we had Trotsky being expelled from the USSR, which had just been founded. We had Charles Lindenburg completing the,

the first solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. And then, also in 1927, we had the release of the first feature-length film to feature synchronized sound for dialogue. Quite the time to be alive. You fast forward to 33 years later, 1960, and we hit 3 billion people. By then, Nigeria had just gained its independence. JFK was in the White House. Ham, the chimpanzee went to space, and the FDA approved the first ever.

birth control pill. But the birth control pill didn't really kick in in terms of, you know, hampering our growth for some time. By 1974, 14 years later, we had four billion people. By then Nixon had resigned. Turkey had invaded Cyprus. Portugal overthrew its dictatorship. The godfather part two came out and Abba was still at the top of the charts. 1987, 13 years later is when we got 5 billion people. That's when we had most of the major colonies around the world gaining their independence or having already had gained their independence.

You know, Thatcher was beginning her third term and The Simpsons first appeared on TV. 12 years later in 1999, we had the Y2K panic, the Clinton impeachment, the SpongeBob premiere, the introduction of the euro, and 6 billion people made their debut

on planet Earth. In 2011, 12 years later, we hit 7 billion people and that was in the midst of the Arab Spring, a tsunami hit in Japan, the Occupy Movement, the premier of Game of Thrones and really the beginning

of smartphones and social media taken over the world. Finally by 2022, which is 11 years after 2011, we hit 8 billion people amidst Russia invading Ukraine, the growing popularity of TikTok

and Elon's purchase of Twitter. So from 1804 to 2022, we went from 1 billion people to 8 billion people. And the UN expected to grow by about 1.9 billion between now and 2100. So we'll end up reaching from 8.2 billion people to 10.2 billion people. And population is projected to peak at 10.3 billion in 2084 and then declined to 10.2 billion through the end of the century. So with this rapid population growth, there has been a lot of fares surrounding overpopulation, particularly in the late 20th century in early 2000s. There was a lot of conversation around, you know, this population bomb, this worry that there were too many people. Now, at least early on in the population boom,

I think it makes some sense to have concerns. You know, there had never been this many people on the earth at any point in time prior. You know, if you're watching the numbers climb and climb and climb, you might have thought we were headed straight for a planet covered in cities and some kind of collapse. But even before we even hit a billion people, the idea of overpopulation being a significant problem wasn't new. In late 1700s, Thomas Malthus, argue the population would always outpace food supply.

And his prediction was that there'd be too many people, not enough resources, and a decline into famine, disease, and mass death. Now, he was obviously proven wrong, but in 19th century Britain, Mathis' ideas helped justify the harsh welfare policies that that government ended up implemented, like the spread of workhouses around the country. Also, we speak about famine as if it's this natural phenomenon that can't be helped that is just almost like a hurricane or a tornado, but famines are usually not actually the result of not having enough food.

You know, Amartya Sen found that famines usually happen despite food surpluses. The issue is usually distribution and not scarcity. You know, a famous example being, you know, during the Irish famine, Ireland was still exporting tons of food to feed its colonial overlord. So we fast forward to 1968 and the biologist Paul Ehrlich publishes the population bomb. He describes visiting Delhi and feeling the crush of overpopulation, convinced that mass starvation was imminent in the 1970s. Now, I think that book that he published was one of the main influences in the widespread panic around overpopulation. You know, governments started to scramble about it. A lot of policies were born likely from people reading that very book.

You know, some of these policies were fairly benign, you know, you promote family planning, you improve access to contraceptives, you improve education for women especially. But other approaches were very harsh and brutal. You know, you had sterilization campaigns, forced sterilization campaigns taking place in India and Puerto Rico and in the United States. China's one-child policy also gets a lot of attention, but it was only one example of a widespread brutality around the impositions placed on women especially in that time. The fear of too many people and that anxiety leading to the control of women and their bodies. And it's a scary prospect, especially if you were a minority in this time, if you were a cultural, racial, or religious minority. Because it made very ordinary human activity, things like moving around, having children, just existing. Made it seem like an existential threat to civilization, to humanity that needed to be dealt with by any means necessary.

I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her. Well, wait a minute, Sophia. How'd you know she's a cult leader? Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast, so you'll find out soon. This person writes, My neighbor's been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals, and now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they may be part of a cult?

Hold up, Sophia. A real-life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue. But according to this person, contractors are tearing down the patio to find out what's going on with their ceiling and her neighbors are not happy. Well, she needs to report them ASAP. She did! And now they've been confronting her in really creepy ways all the time.

So do we find out if this person survives their neighborhood cult or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here we go. Hey, I'm Cal Penn, and on my new podcast, Here We Go Again, we'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? You may know me as the second hottest actor from the Harold and Kumar movies,

but I'm also an author, a White House staffer, and as of like 15 seconds ago, a podcast host. Along the way, I've made some friends who are experts in science, politics, and pop culture. And each week, one of them will be joining me to answer my burning questions. Like, are we heading towards another financial crash, like in 08? Is non-monogamy back in style? And how come there's never a gate ready for your flight when it lands like two minutes early?

We've got guests like Pete Buttigieg, Stacey Abrams, Lili Singh, and Bill Nye. When you start weaponizing outer space, things can potentially go really wrong. Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now. because it is. But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to here we go again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up everybody? This is Snacks from the Trapner's podcast, and we're bringing you the horror every week all October long. Kicking off this month, I'll be bringing you all my greatest fear-inducing horror games from Resident Evil to Silent Hill, me and Tony bringing back fire team on Left for Dead too.

and we're just going to be going over some of the greats. Also in October, we'll be talking about our favorite horror and Halloween movie and figure out why black people always got to die further. The umbral reliquary invites any and all fooling, brave enough, to peruse its many curiosities. But take heed, all sales are final. Weekly horror side quests written and narrated by yours truly. With a full episode read and a commentary special. And we will cap it all.

with horror movie battle royale Jason versus Freddie Michael Myers versus the 80 thing with the little tongue muster October we're doing it Halloween style listen to the Trabner's podcast

from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHard Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast A combat surgeon with secrets a world built on power and privilege

and the most unexpected creative duo of the year as an actor for so many years I would always walk into other people stories and they thought well why don't I give it a shot You know, and try write up my thought. This week, bookmarked by Reese's Book Club

goes live from Apple Soho in New York City with Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben, the powerhouse team behind Gone Before Goodbye. Now a New York Times bestseller. I think we both knew right away that this was going to happen. It's a conversation about fear, ambition, and what happens when two master storytellers collide? I've never seen a woman in kind of a James Bond world.

come for the chills and stay for the surprises and find out why readers can't put it down listen to bookmarked by reisa's book club on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts so they had some positive outcomes of couldn't quote positive outcomes of the overpopulation concern you know you had pushes for men's empowerment you had the proposal of improved urbanization to reduce the sprawl of human activity. You also have people proposing things like extraterrestrial settlement, which, you know, is not really realistic as a solution for a multitude of valid reasons. Yeah. I think it's really funny, you know, whenever people push that sort of, yeah, humans are destined for the stars kind of narrative. You know, it's a story, a really powerful story.

coming out of science fiction and it's good that it has inspired people to learn more about space and, you know, dedicated lives to the study of the stars and that kind of thing. But this idea that we're going to be shipping off like millions of people off planet to settle on other planets I think is pretty safely in the realm of science fiction. Yeah, that's a full like get back to me in a thousand years and we could maybe start talking about moving like thousands of people. Yeah, even thousands or hundreds of people, I mean, we don't have those

massive generation ships. We can't even get those off the ground at this stage in our spacecraft. And we also have a lot of issues to resolve on Earth before we spread our problems across the galaxy as far as I'm concerned. But beyond these solutions,

the ideas and public discourses around the population have also birthed a lot of conspiracy theories. you know, I'm sure you might have heard a few of them in your time. Oh, boy. Yep. This is one of the big Alex Jones things, for example. So he's convinced that there's like a giant plot by the globalist to kill off an enormous part of the human population to like stop over population or something.

It's. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, any combination of conspiracies can't all be smushed together to fit that kind of narrative. And they could talk about all the vaccines are sterilizing people, the chemtrails, the 5G towers, the Bill Gates microchips, even the food supply, all these things allegedly being used to sterilize people. Not to say that there isn't validity to any claims of the things that we consume contributing to lower fertility, the fact that we clothe ourselves and, like polyester, you know, we still don't have a full idea of the impact of microplastics on our bodies. You know, there's valid concerns about some of the consequences of the

ultra-processed foods that, you know, fill our grocery shelves. But that's the sad thing about conspiracy theories. You know, they have some kernels of truth mixed in to bolster their validity, but then they mix it up with a bunch of garbage about, you know, that's a nonsense. Yeah. And then, of course, I mean, some of these conspiracy theories are kind of benign, you know, like if you think it's 5G towers, I guess you put a, I don't know, a tinfoil hat on your junk. But, I mean, to be fair, there was one of the 5G guys who did like blow himself up at a giant car bomb.

I did not hear about that. A couple of years ago. Down. Oh, yeah. Luckily, he only killed himself, but giant, giant car bomb in the middle of, I want to say Memphis or something. Down, yeah. But, yeah, so like every once in a while, you get some real, oh boy stuff from that. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, honestly, people could take even the simplest things and turn it into a threat to themselves and others. If they're not in the right headspace, so they haven't been given the right. It supports, sadly. And obviously, like, none of all the conspiracies are benign. I mean, if you have people rejecting vaccines, you know, it's almost like we're in the world that I alluded to earlier, you know, where we have a resurgence and measles, for example. Yeah, Jim O'Neill, who's the Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services and the acting

director for the CDC, literally on Monday, called for splitting the MMR vaccine. it's multiple vaccines, which is basically, which is just straight up the Andrew Wakefield. I think like I said this on seven podcasts on this show now, but this is literally just straight up the Andrew Wakefield anti-vaccine thing from the original giant anti-vaccine panic in the 90s. That was the autism vaccine thing. Yeah, yeah. And this is the guy who's currently running the CDC.

It's just being like, no, yeah, you should do this thing that's, again. Yeah, yeah, you guys are cooked. Yeah, again, this thing that was developed specifically. that Angie Wakefield could sell his own vaccine. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the thing. If I was conspiracy-brained, I would say that actually the popularization

of vaccine conspiracies on social media sites contribute to exactly that kind of population control that those same conspiracy theorists fair longer about. But that's if I was conspiracy-brained, which I'm not. God, so someone believes that somewhere. Absolutely, there is someone who's like the anti-vaxxers are a conspiracy to hold of global population or something like. No, because I mean, we have this very straightforwardly effective human invention, one of the best in the history of humankind. And you're telling me that a couple people on Facebook are now responsible for the entire government rejecting the effectiveness of vaccines and...

you know, jeopardizing the health, the entire population. Come on. Yeah, I mean, uh, unfortunately the true believers are in charge now. Indeed, indeed they are. True believers and of course people who stand to profit from the dip in the sails of paracetamol and whatever else. So there are those conspiracies about population,

and then there's the typical far-right Nazi conspiracies about great replacement right the idea that shadowy elites are orchestrating falling birth rates among white populations while encouraging immigration from the population boom in global south i mean of course not all the global south is booming population-wise a lot of places are also experiencing decline it's a global problem but we're going to get to that and connected of course to those great replacement types you have the eco-fash with their worries about the environmental impact of population and their twisted belief that environmental collapse could be solved by reducing the number of people, which usually ends up targeting marginalized groups,

which is exactly the kind of thinking that inspired real violence, like with the Christchurch shooter in 2019. And of course, the actual drivers of ecological collapse are not poor families in India or Africa having too many kids. It's the overconsumption of the global north. You know, if you actually wanted to reduce consumption, reduce the impact of population on the planet, are you going to start with fewer people or are you going to start with fewer billionaires

flying private jets, you know? Mm-hmm. It's not about the number of people, the headcount, it's about the lifestyles and the systems that support those lifestyles. You know, believing population is a very cheap, simplistic and cowardly get out of jail-free card for the rich minority,

that drive this systemic crisis. The thing about this, obviously, is that if you believe that you need to reduce the human population, that it's your obligation to go first. Yes, but we are going to talk about those types of people in the next episode. But, you know, speaking of the population,

I think there's nowadays at least an opposite concern that is dominating the headlines. You know, in wealthier, more developed countries, fertility tends to be lower. And that's tied to things like better education, more women working, urban living, greater choices, greater access to contraception, etc. But in less developed countries,

fertility is usually higher because children are often seen as both helping hands and future caregivers and education and access to birth control are more limited. But the global fertility rate is now steadily dropping

due to that increase in development, greater access to birth control, greater education, and women's rights. and there's a fair nowadays that there won't be enough people to support the system as it has been built. Remember capitalism is predicated on endless growth. When its population starts to decline,

naturally, everything that it's building towards in terms of the amount of consumers, the amount of infrastructure, the amount of workers, those are not going to be there anymore, especially as more and more people end up dipping out of the workforce as they age. I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her.

Well, wait a minute, Sophia. You know she's a cult leader. Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast, so you'll find out soon. This person writes, My neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals, and now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they may be part of a cult. Hold up, Sophia. A real-life cult? And what is a dirt ritual?

No clue. But according to this person, contractors are tearing down the patio to find out what's going on with their ceiling and her neighbors are not happy. Well, she needs to report them ASAP. She did. And now they've been confronting her in really creepy ways all the time. So do we find out if this person survives their neighborhood cult or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast. podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Here we go. Hey, I'm Cal Penn, and on my new podcast, Here We Go Again, we'll take today's trends and

headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? You may know me as the second hottest actor from the Harold and Kumar movies, but I'm also an author, a White House staffer, and as of like 15 seconds ago, a podcast host. Along the way, I've made some friends who are experts in science, politics, and pop culture. And each week, one of them will be joining me to answer my burning questions. Like, are we heading towards another financial crash like in 08? Is non-monogamy back in style? And how come there's never a gate ready for your flight when it lands like two minutes early?

We've got guests like Pete Buttigieg, Stacey Abrams, Lili Singh, and Bill Nye. When you start weaponizing outer space, things can potentially go really wrong. Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now, because it is. but my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to here we go again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What's up, everybody? This is Snacks from the Trapner's podcast, and we're bringing you the horror every week all October long. Kicking off this month, I'll be bringing you all my greatest fear-inducing horror games from Resident Evil to Silent Hill, me and Tony bringing back fire team on Left for Dead 2. And we're just going to be going over.

for some of the greats. Also in October, we'll be talking about our favorite horror and Halloween movie and figure out why black people always got to die first. The Umbril reliquary invites any and all fooling, brave enough to peruse its many curiosities. But take heed, all sales are final. Weekly horror side quests written and narrated by yours truly with a full episode read and a commentary special.

And we will cap it off with horror movie battle on your. Jason versus Freddie. Michael Myers versus the 80 thing with the little tongue muster. October, we're doing it Halloween style. Listen to the Trabner's podcast from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcast. A combat surgeon with secrets, a world built on power and privilege, and the most unexpected creative duo of the year. As an actor for so many years, I would always walk into other people stories. And they thought, well, why don't I give it a shot? You know, and try to write up my stuff.

thought. This week, bookmarked by Reese's Book Club goes live from Apple Soho in New York City with Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben, the powerhouse team behind Gone Before Goodbye, now a New York Times bestseller. I think we both knew right away that this was going to happen. It's a conversation about fear, ambition, and what happens when two master storytellers collide? I'd never seen a woman in kind of a James Bond world. Come for the chills and stay for the prizes and find out why readers can't put it down. Listen to Bookmarked by Rees' Book Club on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

So in 2013, the global average had dropped to just 2.3 children per woman, which is less than half of what it was 60 years ago. According to the United Nations, fertility will keep forward. throughout the century, and by the year 2100, the global average is expected to dip below replacement level of 2.1 to about 1.8 children, poor woman. Now, some countries are already there. Japan sits at a 1.2 children per woman. Italy, Spain and much of Eastern Europe are well below 1.5. South Korea is famously a demographic outlier at 0.7 children per woman, which is the lowest facility rate in the world, and that means, obviously, that on average,

Korean women are having less than one child each. For very valid reasons, I might add, considering the economic and cultural conditions in that country. Now, I don't live in Eastern Europe or Southern Europe or East Asia. I live in the Caribbean. I live in Toronto, Tobago, but speak it anecdotally at least, which obviously is not representative of the full picture, I can count maybe on one hand the number of people I know my age who think that they'll be able to bring children into the world, whether they want to or not. You know, very few people I know actually want children or if they do want children, they don't think they'll be able to afford to have children. But maybe that's her selfishness. What do you think?

I mean, I don't know, like, I am not interacting with a representative sample of the population. But no, yeah, I mean, it's a lot of people who are like, no, and it's too expensive. It sucks. I don't want to deal with this. But again, like, not a representative sample here. yeah yeah yeah i mean you can just look at the economy things have been getting worse for my entire life you know there hasn't been any point in my life where anyone in my generation could look around honestly and say yeah you know this is we be cooking you know it's time to double double it

you know let's let's have a child you know the housing situation has gotten worse the cost of living as a whole has gotten worse child care costs have gotten worse and of course Outside of that economic stuff, there's also cultural attitude shifts, you know, people realizing, I don't need to have a child to be fulfilled, to find meaning. You know, people are able to pursue higher education and also they're more educated about the process of childbearing in general, including the very valid medical concerns surrounding that whole process. I mean, if I were a woman, I would not want to have a child. you know, the consequences on their bodies, on their minds and their health, the risks to their very life are not something that can be swept aside as it was previously. People are aware of it now. People are talking about it now and they are empowered to make decisions that feel right for

them. You know, a lot of people are also very much focused on their careers, either by choice or because they don't have any other choice but to focus on putting food on the table. You know, people are also getting married later and as a whole we have shifted to one a more individual society so you know in the past you did have the extended families the close-set communities that made raising children a bit more manageable but today it's a bit rarer to find and you tend to see a lot more nuclear families or even just individuals going at it alone you know less support and more isolation and so it makes it very difficult. And then there's the existential angst of it all. You know, I can't forget the fact that

there are multiple wars waging around the world. You know, there's a lot of political instability in much of the world. And of course, the biggest issue of all climate change, which makes it, honestly, it makes it feel irresponsible to even think about bringing a child into this mess. So a declining fertility, a decline in population, it has the government's panic. You know, China went from having decades of a one-child policy to now desperately trying to encourage people to have more babies. They're offering cash bonuses and housing perks and extended parental leave, but it's not really working. You know, as populations are aging, there's a lot more elderly people to care for and fewer working-ish people to support them. So that is, you know, a recipe for pension crises and labor shortages and spiral in healthcare costs.

So some governments are even trying to raise the retirement age, which as France and their protests have shown, is not going to go over well with much of the population. Nobody wants to work an extra five years, an extra 10 years more when they've already put so much of their lives to these dead end, pointless and, you know, mentally and physically draining tasks that really just line the pockets of their bosses. It is worth pointing out the last year there was a pretty massive raise in the retirement age people in China that's being phased in a way where it's going to take over the course of 15 years. It goes up gradually to sort of like spread out the anger over it. But yeah, it is worth noting that China's is like significantly increased or is going to significantly increase over the course of the next 15 years. Yeah. And then on the other side of things, They're raising the retirement age now, but the young people who are working today

are more than likely not going to get any kind of pension. Yeah. You know, I'd rather the world of my 60s don't look like the world of my 20s. That would be my preference. So I would rather that we've reached a point as a society where pensions are not the necessary band-aided they are right now. But until then, you know, there's quite. the powder keg.

Yeah. We also have in Eastern Europe, you know, you have countries rolling out pro-natalist policies that tie financial support directly to family size. I'm going to get a bit more into pro-natalism in the next episode. But there's also the darker side of that pro-natalist push in terms of the policies meant to reverse the population decline. some governments instead of making life better for potential parents are criminalizing they're turning to anti-choice policies they're restricting abortion they're limiting

reproductive rights they're demonizing child-free lifestyles Russia actually recently criminalized what they called child of free propaganda you know yeah and then this is also part of a broader conversation about population where they have the immigration concerns as a political flashpoint. And because a lot of wealthy countries, because of their population decline, are starting to rely more on immigrants to keep their economies going. But as a flip side, that tends to fuel backlash from the far-right groups who are able to frame it as a threat to national identity. And because the system of the state and capitalism is not interested in actually taking care of people, those immigrants become a very useful scapegoat. You know, obviously, I'm in support of

people moving and living wherever they want to move and live as they please. I don't believe in borders, especially as the climate consequences are hitting those of us in the global south first. Yeah. But I also am not a fan of the way that some progressives end up talking about immigration, where they act as if, you know, the global south is like a population bank that wealthy countries could tap into and, you know, pull population from regardless of the consequences on the home countries of these people.

You know, it's like, let immigrants come, and I'm all for that. But then it's also like, your government is destabilizing their governments, your, your system, your economic system, and the global economic system is making life in those countries unlivable. And I think the priority also needs to be on dealing with that issue and not just shrugging and say, well, you know, at least immigrants are able to help our economy stay afloat, even as their countries languish and suffer. So to kind of wrap things up, where does this all leave us?

You know, for centuries, we fared having too many people, and now we're starting to fear having too few people, and both anxieties are shaping policy, feeling conspiracy theories, and sparking culture wars. And whether the future holds overcrowded cities or ghost towns really depends on the direction of politics, economy, culture, and urban designs take. On the next episode, I'm going to be talking about the ideas around population, the pro-natalists and the anti-natalists. But until then, I've been Andrew Sage here with Mia Wong on It Could Happen here.

Peace. Woo! It Could Happen Here is a production of Coolzone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, poolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down. Unlock Elite Gaming Tech

at Lenovo.com. Dominate every match with next level speed, seamless streaming, and performance that won't quit. Push your gameplay beyond performance with Intel Core Ultra processors for the next era of gaming. Upgrade to smooth high-quality streaming with Intel Wi-Fi 6E and maximize game performance with enhanced overclocking. Win the tech search. Power up at Lenovo.com. Lenovo, Lenovo. Johnny Knoxville here.

Check out Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, my new true crime podcast from Smartless Media, Campside Media, and Big Money Players. It's the true story of the almost perfect crime and the Nimrods who almost pulled it off. It was kind of like the perfect. storm in a sewer. That was dumb. Do not follow my example. Listen to Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist on

the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her. Wait a minute, Sophia. How do you know she's a cult leader? Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon. This person writes, my neighbor has been blasting music every day. and doing dirt rituals. And now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder.

I think they might be part of a cult. Hold up. A real life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue, Dakota. To find out how it ends. Listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What happens when Reese Witherspoon calls up the king of thrillers, Harlan Cobin, and says, let's write a book together. I was asking him basically to let me into his secret. thriller writing world. This week, bookmarked by Reese's book club goes live from Apple Soho in New York City for the ultimate storytelling mashup. Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Cobin

on their new thriller, Gone Before Goodbye. Can you think you're going to read for 10 minutes? And next thing you know, it's four in a morning. Get the story behind the season's most addictive read, already in New York Times bestseller. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is an IHeart podcast.