Stuff You Should Know - How Population Works

Episode Date: November 12, 2009

Population may not seem like the most scintillating topic in the world, but Josh and Chuck beg to differ. Join them as they explore how population works, from demographics to population control, in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Under 17. At a middle without parent. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. From HowStuffWorks.com. Punkin' Chuckin', Punkin' Chuckin', Punkin' Chuckin'! That's right, Chuck Hay and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, clearly Chuck Bryant's here. And let's talk about Punkin' Chunkin', I guess.

You just kind of forced our hands, Chuck. Yes, The Road to Punkin' Chunkin' and Punkin' Chunkin'. So that's on Science Channel, 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Thanksgiving night. Yeah, you can see some pumpkins get chunked. Pumpkins get chunked. Pumpkins, yeah, okay. Again, Science Channel, The Road to Punkin' Chunkin'

starts at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. Punkin' Chunkin' itself starts at nine. Great. Thanksgiving night. Yes. Science Channel. On with the show. Yeah, Chuck, have you ever belonged to a population? No, man, I'm like, I'm totally independent.

Screw populations. You're like that guy who lives on the commune, right? Right. Yeah, well, the joke's on him because a commune constitutes a population. That's right. This sounds kind of boring, and you would think it is. I thought it might be.

We're about to do how a population works. It actually started to pick up. Actually didn't know what it was even going to be when I saw how a population works, so I was like, what? You know what's awesome? This was my idea. This article was. I pitched it.

Oh, really? Why didn't they let you write it? I don't know. Chirks. I know, but the Grabster did a good job with it. Oh, yeah, the Grabster is always good. Yeah. Classic.

Let's Ed Grabonowski, by the way. Right. So human beings, marriage, human beings tend to congregate. Yes. We. And segregate, interestingly. That is an excellent, you just blew my mind. Good Lord, Chuck.

Well, let's get back to what I was saying. Right. Unless you want to go on the segregation, right? We'll get on that later. Humans congregate and segregate, but let's talk about congregation in that most of the time, I would say, are early, early ancestors and probably even other species congregate because there's safety in numbers. Sure.

And it helps like with farming, collecting water and food, power numbers. But even before farming, 100, 100 gatherers lived in bands. I think 30 was about tops. They figured out somewhere along the way that groups of 30 or groups of more than 30, there tended to be a lot more hostility and intergroup problems. Have you ever tried to kill a mastodon by yourself? That's another good point, too. There's cooperation.

Sure. Mastodon. There's, let's say, if you are farming and your crop fails, well, you're not standing there like, well, I'm in trouble. Yeah. You can say, hey, neighbor. I'll totally give you favors of some variety if you will let me have some of your grain. Right.

I'll give you a chicken, let's say. Sure. You can trade. Yeah. Barter. 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 demographers. Yeah, demographers. So we have populations, natural or otherwise, and let's say a natural population today are people who live in a certain state. Yeah, Georgians. Right. That's where we are.

So you have natural populations in demographers' study, I'm right? Sure. And they look at things like, say, how many people in this natural population are Republicans? Or Democrat? Or how many are Caucasian? Right. How many live below the poverty line? All kinds of things you can study by looking at a population.

And are these groups segregated like you brought up? Mm-hmm. You know, like if you study where different races are living, are they living mingling, if so, then that's probably a fairly harmonious place, hopefully. Right. If not, why are they living apart? How do we fix this? Because it's probably a problem.

Sure. 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 sight. Yeah, very few people. Yeah. Like three or four, I think.

Tops. Does that count as a statistic? I think so. Okay. Richard. So, measuring populations after you can talk about, how do we actually determine this kind of thing? Yeah.

That was my segue. That was a good segue. There's a couple of ways, Josh. One is by counting them, literally counting them like a census. 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 I 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 strongly suspected suicide. Really?

My problem with it is how do you bind yourself in duct tape? How do you bind your own wrists in duct tape? I'll show you later. Okay. So my point is, wow, he threw me off with that one, my point is that he was called an enumerator. Yes. Literally counter.

And that's the people who worked for the census whenever they had their drive and they count. Right. And that's one way to determine it. Well, let's talk about the census. It's gone on every 10 years since 1790, right? Yeah. And the reason they do it every 10 years is because it's a real pain in the ass to count

every person in America. Yeah. The real reason they do it is so they can, well, there's a lot of reasons. No, reveal it. Exactly. Taxes, taxes. That is the reason why anyone's ever conducted a census. Yeah.

Well, plus 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, taxes. Did you know that the census information is kept secret for 72 years? Yeah. Aside from the numbers, I believe. Right.

The public cannot see that information for 72 years. Right. I wonder why 72, 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 do something called sampling. And that is when statisticians 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 didn't know this, that's even more accurate than an actual head count. Right. You see that margin of error? It's like plus or minus 4%?

Yeah. You've got to 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? Yeah. But let's say you have a population of 1,000 and some statistician's been like, you need 100 and do it.

What? Do your egghead voice. No. Yeah. You need 150 people. The 150 people that are left handed, and you can just multiply that out to determine that there are, in fact, how many people? Let's say 10% of the population.

10% of the population. Right. 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. They 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 less sense, especially if you're talking like 1950 or so. Well, it depends on what year. I'd say in the 1980s, it was probably a good way.

But now there's cell phones, people in college probably don't have a phone. Poor people who don't have phones at all. Poor people who don't have phones, sure. So that's not a very good way, because... What about freight train riders of America? What's that? They don't have phones. Oh yeah, good point.

I don't think they want them. So sampling is a little harder than it seems. Yeah. Right. Especially coming with a random population, random sample of the population. But okay, so so far we've talked about people and where they live. Right. There's other ways to define a population.

There's other attributes that people have that we use to lump into populations. Yeah, it's not just a geography. When people think populations, it's not just a city population. Or state. Yes. A population. Age. You have a population of age.

Or continent. A demographic. Right. What else? Location, of course. Socioeconomic. Well, 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. Take the baby boom, for instance. After World War II, all these babies were born.

So there was a bulge in the population. Just like saying the word bulge. You've got to do the air quotes. Air quotes, yeah. So what that will show them then is, wow, we've got a bulge here. So that means probably in 25 to 60 years, there's going to be some serious buying power in this country. Right.

Let's start borrowing as much money as we can right now. But it also means in 70 plus years that they may be a medical burden and a burden on social security. Right. So let's start borrowing as much money as we can right now. Same result there. I like that. There's two bulges, again, in a little bit.

Yes. But let's move on. Like you said, socioeconomic data, right? Yeah. Why would they want to do this, Josh? This one, I find this the most interesting of all data. You can look at a bunch of people who are maybe related geographically. But other than that, aren't related in any other way.

And all of them suddenly have this horrible cancer and there just so happens to be some paint manufacturer nearby. What did you say? High tension wires. Sure. Which has been proven, I think, to not actually have any effect on people. You're not in my buddy. So now, all of a sudden, you have this information thanks to your demographer friend who went

and collected it. And you can say, OK, paint factory, you guys better start giving away some free paint. Yeah. Or we're going to sue you. Yeah, true. Race? Yeah. It's a 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 the VJ was interviewing the BC boys. And he was like, Mike D, I hear you're dating a black girl. What's it like dating somebody from a different race? Which is just an asinine question to begin with. But I remember Mike D going, there's only one race, the human race. And I was like, huh, Mike D's right.

Wise words, Mike D. That was clearly before he was down with the Ioni. Or no, that was Adrock. Sorry. Yeah, Adrock's down with the Ioni. Yeah, they're divorced though. So he's not down with her anymore. Poor Ioni.

So yeah, race is a little hinky, but you can't actually determine some useful things when you study populations of race because of like, you know, it's important for people to be involved in their culture and to hang on to 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 though is if there's a medical problem that's specific to that race that can help out. Exactly. Sure. You're ready to travel in 2023 and since 1981, Gate One Travel has been providing more of the world for less. Let Gate One handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours and European Riffer Cruises.

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Attributes, variables, we've used the word demographer several times. So we know that people study populations. One of the reasons why we study populations is to see how big it's getting. Yeah. And I got to tell you, buddy, the human population has kind of exploded on this planet in the last several thousand years. Yeah, but you know what? They're reading these stats.

There were a lot more people here way back when than I thought. Yeah, again, favorite book of all time, 1491. Charles C. Mann. Yes. He basically points out that there is probably 100 million people in the Americas in 1491. That's awesome. Yeah, which is a fifth of the world population is way more than anyone thought. And the reason why is because 1492, Columbus shows up, smallpox just ravages both continents

and by the time the European settlers start coming for real, the place is decimated. It seems like there's nobody there. Right. Well, he had the whole genocide too thing. Did you ever know about that? Columbus? I hear his men used to like sharpen their knives on like the skulls of live natives. Well, there's the, because genocide we talk about later on in the article, but there's

speculation that Columbus may have been responsible for like the worst mass genocide in human history. Wow. By completely wiping out the, the Taino, Taino Indian people. Really? And that was in Hispaniola, which is modern day, I think Haiti and Dominican Republic. And they, some people say there were only like 500,000 of them. And some people say there was many as 15 million at the time that were decimated to about 2000.

Decimated through violence or through disease? Yeah. Well, through violence. They came over, set up a camp in Hispaniola for about 40 people and then left, came back on trip number two and found that the, the Indian tribe there had killed all those people. So he went on a 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. Wow.

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 10,000 BC, they estimate there's between one and 10 million humans. So we're starting to slowly grow because by 1000 BC, there's 50 million.

And then by 600 CE, we're at 200 million. See, that's a lot more than I thought. Yeah. There would be at the time. Yeah. I think there was about 500 million in the mid 15th century. Crazy. So let's go by, let's say there's a 500 million in the mid 15th century.

The 20th century, the industrial revolutions happen. Yeah. There's been great leaps in science and medicine. That's when populations really grow is during those big booms. Yeah. Because it lends itself to fertility, higher in fertility and longer lifespans. Yeah. Good times, breed kids.

So the 20th century hits were at 1.5 billion people. Indeed. And then this century, the population of the world has quadrupled. Yeah. So it was like 6 billion. I know that that sounded like there should have been a drum roll there, but I'm impressed by that. Maybe there was.

Jerry might have put one in there. Our producer, Jerry. We'll find out later. And Josh here projecting, the US Census Bureau projects that by the year 2050, there will be 10 billion people. Right. So the reason for this is what we call the Malthusian growth model. Yes.

The Malthus was a 18th century clergyman. Yeah. Thomas. Uh-huh. 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 1 million people and they have enough kids to double the population, but

the next generation, you have 4 million people. So in one full generation, you've gone from 1 million to 4 million people. Right. Yeah. That's big. It is. And when the planet is finite in size, and we don't have the ability to go colonize other planet 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, have you heard of the replacement rate? No.

The replacement rate is, it's how many kids a woman has to have to have a high statistical probability of having a daughter so that she, in essence, replaces herself. Gotcha. And right now, it's 2.33. Is the replacement rate worldwide? Uh-huh. And the point of it is to trend toward zero population growth. Right.

So for every woman who dies, she has a daughter that can reproduce 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. Right. And there's also no dearth of people. Well, it's equilibrium. 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, just like economics does. And it doesn't always happen organically. I should say it probably rarely happens organically. Yeah. And it's about, like you said, the baby boom. Post-war success in Europe and the U.S. and Canada, I guess, led to a huge boom in the population.

Yeah. Nobody went to war to grow the population. It was just an indirect effect. So all of a sudden, we had a population spike that created a bulge. A bulge, if you will. Things can go the other way, too, which is the bottleneck, right? Yeah. Oh, and God, if I say genocide one more time, we should do a podcast on genocide.

I wonder if there's a drinking game where every time you say genocide, that's crazy. Genocide, drink. Yeah. Famine, disease, 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 in the fifth century, that would be CE, the plague of Justinian may have killed as many as half the world's population, 100 million people. Unbelievable.

Can you imagine walking around at that time like, holy crap, the entire half the world is dead. Yeah. Just died in the last couple of years. It's crazy. Well, and the Black Death killed 20 to 30 million Europeans. Yeah. So, plagues can happen.

There's also, I was talking to an evolutionary geneticist, this is my way, recently, and he was talking about a study he authored where they found two evolutionary bottlenecks. One coming out of Africa, they suggested it 50,000 years ago, and another one that happened along the Bering Land Bridge, and he wasn't saying all of a sudden a bunch of people died, but these bottlenecks turned up because big groups of people separated and smaller groups of people, which accounts for a loss of genetic diversity. Gotcha. So, you have the founder's effect because, as he put it, if you take, if you go into

a town and grab the first 15 people you meet and say, let's go find 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 at enough time, some surnames are going to be lost because people didn't reproduce or whatever. Same thing happens with genes, genetic diversity. Wow, look at you. Good stuff. Thanks.

Can I mention this place in Hong Kong? Yeah. In Hong Kong, well, we should mention, population density is the number of humans per unit area, whatever unit you choose to call it, and the highest ever is believed to have been a place called Kowloon Wald City in Hong Kong, and at one point, evidently, there were 50,000 people in a megablock, which is 500 by 650 feet, 50,000 people stuffed in there. Even if, apparently, it was a lawless district, the Grabster says. Of course, you kidding me?

50,000 people could conceivably get along. Yeah, hands across America style. Did you know that in Athens, when widespread panic played that free show, there was an estimated 100,000 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. Yeah, I never got into them. Although, I did hang out with that guy, the bass player. Day schools? Yeah, I hung out with them a couple of times, just through friends. Sure.

Anyway, that park is now a park where the Wald City used to be. Yeah, which is the opposite of the highest population in the city. Exactly. Yeah. Ironically, it's just a park. Highest population of grass, but that's it. You're ready to travel in 2023, and since 1981, Gate One Travel has been providing more of the world for less.

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We got 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 a population. A huge group of people put a strain on resources. When resources go away, you have resource conflicts like in Darfur, again, genocide, sadly. There's all sorts of problems that come from too many people coming or living in one place because of the strain it puts on resources and resource allocation, right? And yeah, you can control the population, e.g., state mandated reproduction, i.e., China.

Right. And that actually works as China shows, although much to the detriment of some people. Thank you, Chuck, for that look. Not everyone thinks some people think we should add more people, though. Well, yeah, there's Japan. In other countries, there's a problem of population decline. So we talked about the strain people put on an area. That's carrying capacity, which we've talked about before.

That's also from Malthus, that eventually human population is going to outstrip advances in technology or our resources and we're screwed. 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 need those hands to go to work and to contribute to the economy and to grow the grain and sow the flour and all that good stuff. And apparently in Russia, Japan, and Australia, they all have little incentive programs to make little babies.

Sure. How about that? Which is the way to go. Remember John Fuller's famous quote when he was pitching an article about that program in Russia and he was talking about Putin giving away a TV? Oh, yeah, that's right. That was really funny. Yeah.

Have a baby, get a TV. I think you had to be there. And check the reason why some of these places are seeing a population shrink and are having to, I guess, give incentives to reproduce started in about 1960. Birth control. That's so crazy that it had an effect, that much of an effect, that pronounced of an effect. Yeah.

Well, it would seem like it would though. I guess so. Because it's called birth control. Sure. You know? Yeah. Before that it was called have as many babies as you possibly can. Right.

It was called no control. Right. All right. So clearly there's a lot of reasons to study people. Yeah. There's a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. There's a lot of stuff to study too. Indeed.

You can find out whether or not we're going to kill the planet or whether people need to stop using contraceptives or whether, you know, what your chances are of Putin giving you a free TV. Right. It's all in there. It's all, demographers know everything. All there for the taken. So when your friendly enumerator comes knocking on your door, don't chase them off your land

with your dog or a gun. All right. Let them in. Give them some lemonade. Maybe some cookies. Yeah. Well, check their laminate first. But.

Oh yeah. Before you let them in. COH. Good going. And if you want to know more about population, you can read Grabenowski's great article on the site. Just type in population in the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com, which of course leads us to the listener mail.

Josh, I'm just going to call this your turn at listener mail because I think you have to talk about some money. Yeah. I just, I don't necessarily have too much listener mail per se, but I just wanted to give a shout out to a couple of fellow Toledoans, one who's a longtime resident and one who's a recent transplant. Christopher is holding the fort down in Toledo for me. Keeping it real.

He has officially lobbied the congresswoman from Toledo to get me the key to the city. Dude. How awesome would that be? What happens? Yeah. So Marcy Keptor, if you're listening, I would like that very much. If you get a key to the city, we got to go for a ceremony and I at least want to get like a key chain to the city.

Okay. And you can have the key. Okay. We'll see what we can do. All right. So yeah. Christopher has officially petitioned her. He's suggested that I'm the third most famous Toledo in of all time.

After Jamie Farr. Jamie Farr. Danny Thomas. Oh yeah, yeah. The great entertainer. Sure. And then me. And I was like, I think you're forgetting Katie Holmes.

She's from Toledo. Is she? She's like, no. You got her being. Yeah. No, Kate. Kate Cruz, you mean? Oh, is it Kate Cruz now?

Yeah. Give me a break. 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. I love friendlies. Yeah.

We'll be going to friendlies if we go to Toledo, buddy. For sure. And then I also want to say hi to Colin, who is a recent transplant, as I said, from Colorado, I believe. He's from Colorado to Toledo. He moved to Toledo to attend Bowling Green State University. Oh, OK. Joe Falcons.

Yeah, yeah. My brother went there. And Colin did so in an 88 Dodge Colt. Right. That's having a couple of problems. One, the rear struts are completely detached and the axle is holding on by a tread, he says. Nice.

And the mechanics didn't want him to leave when he took it in for service. Uh-huh. But you're going to die in this thing. And the other problem is it has ants, he says. I've never heard of a car having ants. I had ants in a car once. Really? You can't get rid of them when they come in.

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. But yeah, no, it's a real problem and Colin's basically just put the bullet and said, well, I have ants in my car now. He loves his 88 Dodge Colt. He said he loves Toledo. Uh-huh.

And the Tony Paco's, as I suggested. I got to try that one day. I also told him to go to Rusty's Jazz Cafe. Nice. It's authentic as it comes, it's awesome. So hey, Christopher, hey, Colin, you guys enjoy yourselves, be safe in Toledo. Heck yeah. Go Mudhens.

Go Mudhens for the winner. Go Mudhens. And thanks for riding in. And if you want to say hi to me or Chuck or both of us. Chuckers or Jerry. Right, Chuckers, Jerry, Chuck or I, I mean, Chuck or me, Chuck and me. Um, you can put that in an email to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com.

Want more HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com homepage. You're ready to travel in 2023 and since 1981, Gate One Travel has been providing more of the world for less. So let Gate One handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours in European River Cruises. And right now, through January 30th, use promo code HEART20 to receive 20% off your tour. That's promo code HEART20 through January 30th.

Visit GateOneTravel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's GateTheNumberOneTravel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. The South Dakota Stories, Volume 3. It was my first time traveling alone, packed my car with hiking boots, a camera, and my dog Randy. I don't know what I was searching for.

Maybe it was something new, with adventure. Maybe it was the idea of vacation I would never expect, filled with wildlife, national parks, rivers, whatever it was I set out to find, it was all there and more. Because there's so much South Dakota, so little time. Thank you so much.