Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Zero Population Growth Works

Episode Date: February 24, 2024

In 1968, Paul Erlich published The Population Bomb, predicting coming famine and mass death. Erlich's predictions didn't pan out but his ideas launched a debate still raging today. Learn all about it in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, I'm Laura VanderKam. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And I'm Sarah Hart Unger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer, and course creator. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families. On the Best of Both Worlds podcast each week, we share stories of how real women manage work, family, and time for fun. From figuring out childcare to mapping out long-term career goals, we want you to get the most out of life." Listen to Best of Both Worlds every Tuesday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 47 years ago, on a warm summer's night in Melbourne, Susan Bartlett and Suzanne Armstrong

were stabbed to death in their home in Easy Street, Collingwood. Suzanne's 16-month-old son was asleep in his car at the time. The double homicide left the community shocked. No one has ever been charged. And critical questions remain unanswered. Listen to Case Far Presents, The Easy Street Murders, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, it's your old pal, and for this week's Select I've chosen our 2015

episode on Zero Population. It's an extremely interesting episode about the upper limits of human population that the earth can handle. And interestingly, it's also about just how many humans humanity can handle too. When does eating soil and green make sense? Maybe you can decide for yourself in this heady episode. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. This is Stuff You Should Know. Podcast? Jerry's over there? It's pretty much the norm. Yep. Yep. How you doing, man? How are you feeling today? Oh, a little rough, sir. Are you? You'll make it through, won't you? Yeah. Yesterday we celebrated the beginnings of gin and tonic season.

It's definitely that kind of weather, for sure. Yeah, it's hard to not sit on the deck and have a citrusy, delightful drink. Nice going. So I'm just a little sleepy, but I'm feeling good. I feel like this topic is all about being sort of down in the dumps. A little bit. Well, it depends. It depends on where you land.

And you just place yourself pretty squarely in the gloom and doom camp, my friend. No, I'm actually not in the doom and gloom camp. I was about to say, which if I remember correctly in our episode was Malthus right about carrying capacity. You overtly said that you are an optimist. That's right.

Not a Malthusian Naysayer You know, you know, yeah, I forgot about that one. We've touched on this a few times Uh-huh. We talked about we did a whole profile on Norman Borlaug alone on our yeah very short-lived and reasonably so Live webcast. Oh, yeah, do you remember we did basically a book report on Norman Borlaugh? Yeah, he was Well, I think he's even controversial. He is very much so you know you win a Nobel Prize But for saving a billion lives. Yeah, but still people are gonna poop you. Yeah, you get pooped interesting stuff. So If you don't know what we're talking about you should probably press pause go listen to the

If you don't know what we're talking about, you should probably press pause. Go listen to the Malthus episode. Go to stuffyoushouldknow.com slash podcasts. I think it's plural slash archive. Make that your homepage and all 700 and change episodes are there. And then do control F. Is everybody doing this so far? Yeah. And then type in Malthus, M-A-L-T-H-U-S. It's going to highlight that link,

click that and press play and then come back to us. That's right. We'll wait. Boom. So we're back. It's been an hour. What we're talking about is carrying capacity in part. But carrying capacity, Chuckers, is just kind of a,

it's a reflection of a larger issue. And that larger issue is population, specifically overpopulation. Yeah, and is that a thing or not? It's the big question. Because I mean, at any given point in time, they have like the CIA World Factbook has, pretty good assessment of how many people are alive.

It's a total guess, it's a total estimate. We could be at 10 billion right now. We could be at 100 million and everybody just is really terrible at counting. The point is we don't specifically know. It's probably pretty accurate, but it's still a guess. The point isn't to shoot holes in the estimates of how many people are alive on the planet.

It's to point out that there's so many people we don't know and we can't possibly know at any given point in time. And that has led a lot of people to say, well, wait a minute, there's this thing called carrying capacity, which is the earth's ability to support and sustain us humans and really any creatures, but really we're just kind of concerned with us humans at this moment. Yeah. And with a quality of life. Right, and sustainably.

Yes. Those two factors have to be met or else you're putting a tremendous amount of stress on earth and you're eventually bringing about your own demise. Right. So a lot of people are saying like, we're probably past caring capacity and we just don't know it yet. Or other people are saying, there's really no such thing as caring capacity thanks to human ingenuity. Anytime we come up against it, we'll figure out a way around it. And Norman Borlaug was a way to go. But before Borlaug really became famous, there was a lot of people who were legitimately concerned that we were all going to die. Yeah, Borlaug, if you haven't listened to that one, if you didn't follow Josh's instructions, like a good little podcast listener,

he was one of the leaders of the Green Revolution in the 60s and 70s in which we made great advances in agricultural and agriculture. And yields. Yeah, new types of wheat in Mexico, new types of rice in India that yielded much, much more than they ever had. And plus they were drought resistant, flood resistant. They could stand up and hold more grain. They could stand up and say hello. They basically, they could pick day daily double at high Leia So borlaug was you know by

All standards a very smart guy who cared very much about people Hey, it wasn't doing it for fame or riches or anything like that Like this guy felt like yeah, he was working against the clock and if he didn't and he wasn't the only one doing this Yeah, he's the most famous. But if he didn't do it, then yeah, a lot of people were going to starve. Yeah. And I think I proposed to you before this that we do just one on the Green Revolution. Yeah. And I think that will be a one, two, three podcasts. Sweet. I can't wait. I love this stuff. Ecology population. That was another one

we did too, was how population works. Yeah, and it sounds so like Ibleedingly boring, but it turned out to be really interesting stuff. So go read that too. We'll wait go ahead And we're back and it's 1968 Yeah, and everybody's a little nervous. Everyone is nervous and Stanford Biology professor Paul Ehrlich. There's another famous Paul Aerlich. This is Paul R. Aerlich, I believe. Oh, it's a different one? Well, there's two dudes. I did not realize that.

What do you mean? I mean, I'm familiar with the other Aerlich then, I guess. Well, who was the other one again? He wrote some other famous books. He's a biologist. I think it's not the same guy. Yeah, the other guy was a German physician who worked in chemotherapy, immunology. Oh yeah, that's not what I'm thinking of. Yeah, a different guy. So this guy, he wrote other things besides the population bomb.

Yeah, so in 1968, he writes, the population bomb goes on the Tonight Show, it explodes, it's a huge hit. Apparently he was on more than once. Yeah. And everyone got super nervous because his book started with these words, the battle to feed all of humanity is over. Oh, good. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.

In spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. No, that's not so good. That's how he starts his book. He basically says there's going to be a death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. No, that's not so good. That's how he starts his book. He basically says there's going to be a Malthusian collapse. Yeah. At one point in the book he said, if I was a betting man, I would wager by the year 2000, England won't be around. Boom.

He drops the mic. Yeah. And we should probably mention who Malthus is. Thomas Malthus was a very forward thinking, smart, mathematically inclined minister, I believe, in the early 19th century, late 18th century. Yeah, an economist. And he was the one who said,

we have a problem here, everyone. I've just done the math. And population grows exponentially, but our food supply grows linearly. And so we are destined to out but our food supply grows linearly. And so we are destined to outgrow our food supply, and that's where the idea of carrying capacity came from. So Malthus and Malthusians are the people who think like we're going to exceed the food supply eventually and die from famines.

And Erlich was one of the most vocal and alarmist neo-malthusians around. Yes, absolutely. And he scared the pants off of people back then. In 1968, there were about three and a half billion people. And the birth rate, we're going to talk a lot about birth rates and such, because that has a lot to do with this. Buckle up. The American women had three and a half babies on average, and the global birth rate was five babies per woman. Seems like a lot to me. It was a lot.

Five kids? Supposedly in the fifties, we were at six. The global average fertility rate was six babies per woman. And that's not just per woman. That's, you want to talk about fertility rates? Sure. So fertility rate basically is the number of live births that a population has assigned to the population of women thought to reasonably be a reproductive age. So 15 to 44 times 1000.

So you take all of those, figure out the, how many women there are, and then you multiply it by a thousand. So you have something like 50 births per 1,000 women age 15 to 44, and that's your fertility rate, right? Yeah. Okay? Yes. And that's, you can figure out how many actual births are taking place. Yeah, with reasonable detail. Yeah. So like Malthus, Erlich did the math in the 60s and said, you know what? Our food production isn't keeping up. Just like Malthus said, we're in big, big trouble. Wrote the population bomb and co-founded Zero Population Growth, which is an organization that is now called, what are they called now?

The population connection. Population Connection. Population Connection, a very little sunnier name. Sounds electric company-ish. It does. And you should check out their website, it's good. They have a lot of good information on there just to help you, you know, figure out what you might want to believe. So people are scared.

The zero population growth group, their aim is to, their big thing is contraception and giving women control of their reproduction basically and their fertility. Right. Like you decide how many kids you want. Exactly. They have that many. They've identified that there's an issue that could easily address overpopulation, and that is cutting out unwanted pregnancies or having unwanted kids.

They've identified that plenty of people, there are two different fertility rates. There's the wanted fertility rate, and then there's the unwanted fertility rate. We're pretty much across the board in any country in the world The unwanted fertility rate is higher whether slightly or largely than the wanted fertility rate So they're saying like if the unwanted fertility rate is like 3.8 Yeah, babies per woman in a given country and the wanted fertility rate is like 2.5 Well, if we can just figure out a way to only have the wanted pregnancies, then you are doing a lot to control over population.

And the way that they figured out how to address this is to just basically spread awareness and access to contraception. Yeah. Right? The two-pronged approach. What their goal is is they aren't saying that people should not have babies. Right. Like you said, they're saying people should only have the babies that they want to have. Exactly.

And their, their ultimate goal is to, um, to have a sustainable global birth rate below the replacement level. Right. Which means there's a lot of different factors, but it basically means that the world is not growing when it's like a work in a club at a door, being a doorman. One person goes out, one person comes in. You got a little clicker. That's basically what that means is, you know, someone dies, someone can be born. And of course it's not that one-to-one, but you know, in a big picture way.

If you're a bouncer and you're tasked with keeping it an even ratio, you just have to remember that you can't keep people inside until a new person comes along because that's called kidnapping. Yeah. You still, they still have to leave and you have to deal with an imbalance for a little while. That's true. Right now, the replacement level fertility rate in the US is 2.1 babies per woman and 3.0 in other developing countries because they have higher death rates and shorter life spans, which makes sense. So we're on to the replacement rate basically, right?

Yeah. The replacement rate is the number of kids a woman of reproductive age would have to have to replace herself. And she's not just replacing herself, she's replacing herself and her male mate, who she's reproducing with. This guy's can't have babies. Yes, and it's kind of gross to think

that a woman is giving birth to a boy and a girl who can mate and reproduce her, that's not the point. You want them to go mingle with other people's babies. But the replacement rate you would think then is two, right? For every woman, 2.0 the replacement rate you would think then is two, right? Yeah. For every woman, 2.0 kids is what you need to have to have an even replacement rate. That means as people die, new people are born, and the population never grows or declines,

it stays the same. The replacement rate is never actually 2.0, though. It's 2.1 right now. And the reason why is because we humans tend to have more male offspring than female. Apparently for every 100 girls that are born, 107 boys are born. So the actual replacement rate is 2.07 and then they round up to 2.1.

Yeah, plus there's, I mean, there's a lot of other factors too. For sure, yeah. So those other factors include things like you said, like infant mortality rates, lifespan, immigration into a certain area. And the thing is of birth rates or fertility rates and replacement rates,

the replacement rate tends to be a little more stable. The birth rate, the fertility rate has a lot more to do with social attitudes, access to health care, education, and it can change dramatically from place to place, whereas say anywhere in the Western world, the developed world, the replacement rates about 2.1. Yeah, exactly. And that's in the 3.0 for the developing countries. All the modifiers just stood up and were clapping. So clearly, Erlich was not correct in his dire predictions.

Here's a little off. Here we are in 2015 and there are problems, but England is still around. That was a bad prediction. Four billion people haven't starved to death. Yeah. But does that mean that he was wrong altogether? No, not necessarily. Because right now, and this was a pretty startling stat to me, over the past 110 years, we have grown from 1.6 billion people to 7.2 billion people in 110 years. Well, we're expected to get up to 9.2 in another 35 years by 2050. And so one of the reasons we have this many people, most of the reasons are positive because

of like advances in healthcare. The lifespan in 1900 was 31 years old and now it's 70 or maybe even a little bit higher because that was 2012. So imagine it's a little bit higher and the infant mortality rate globally in 1900 was 165 deaths per 1000 live births in 2013. It was down to 34. So that's why there's more people because we're doing better at taking care of ourselves. Yeah, and that those are two huge factors when it comes to demographics and population because the longer you live, the more old people you have. So therefore, the less babies you need to replace those people and the fewer babies that die or that survive infancy.

Will be adults one day. Exactly. Exactly. But these are the, really if you're a demographer, the sweet spot is that working age. So when you're a demographer, especially one that's economics minded Chuck, that sweet spot, the reproductive working age people, that's a good sizeable population you wanna have.

If you have a lot of babies, well then you have a lot of people who are raising those babies, so those babies are dependent on. So say you have a lot fewer women in the workforce, so your workforce is depleted. If you have a lot, like an aging population, you have a lot of older people who have already aged out of the workforce and are now dependent on the taxes paid by that workforce. So a large population of either babies or old people, and God forbid both at the same time, it puts a lot of strain on the middle.

You know what I'm saying? So when you have a longer life expectancy and a lower infant mortality rate like we have now in the developed world, you want to have something closer to the replacement rate. Right. You know? Which makes sense.

Right. I got some more stats too that would seem to back up Aerox predictions, or not predictions, but at least his gloomy outlook. He was a gloomy dude. Currently, you know, I couldn't find much on what he felt today. Yeah, I'm curious. He's still around. I'm curious. He's still around.

I'm curious, I bet there's some good interviews. I'm going to check that out. So currently, as of last year, an estimated 805 million people go to bed hungry every night, more than half of which are in Asia. One in four people in sub-Saharan Africa was chronically malnourished. 750 million people worldwide lack access to clean water,

contributing to about 850,000 deaths per year. And here's the thing though, is we're living in cities now more than ever. People are moving into cities, which is a good thing in one way, because it provides a lot of opportunity, economic opportunity for people, especially in developing countries. But when you look at these cities, a lot of them are full of slums and sweatshops in these developing nations. Something like half of the population in a lot of cities live in slum conditions. Yeah, sub-Saharan Africa is 61%. Right, so you think sub-Saharan Africa, I think rural in a lot of ways.

So yes, I'm aware that they lack access to clean drinking water, and that's an issue that sub-Saharan Africa faces. You don't think about that being an issue in a city, but the problem with slums is they very rarely have access to clean drinking water in the exact same way that places like rural Africa have the same problem. Yeah, and we're not even, I mean, that's clean drinking water and like sanitation and shelter. We're not even talking about education and healthcare and like all the things that people need to live a fruitful life, you know? Yep. So cities are a problem.

Even if Ehrlich was wrong, there are clearly issues. Some people will argue, and we'll get to the critics and stuff later, but a lot of people argued that it's distribution of food and stuff like that. Like we have the resources, where it is not dividing it out properly. Right, and apparently if I read that, if everyone lived

like an American and consumed like an American does, the caring capacity would be something like 2 billion. So we would have already far exceeded it. But if everybody lived with just the minimal amount that they need to live, the caring capacity would be something like 40 billion. We've been able to sustain the caring capacity as it is right now because not everybody lives like 40 billion. We've been able to sustain the caring capacity as it is right now because not everybody lives

like an American. But if you're an American, that means that a lot of the other world, especially developing world, thinks that you are over consuming by a lot. And that's really evident in, there was a graph that went around recently that shows water use in agriculture by type of product. So everything from like soy to beef,

it showed how much water it uses. Did you see that? I didn't see that, but I've seen stuff like that. Because beef is like a huge consumer of water, right? 106.28 gallons of water used to produce one ounce of beef. That's a lot. That's a lot of water. And so that's part of the point where is if everybody's,

and apparently in China and India and these ascending countries with ascending economies, one of the great benefits of being part of the developed world is you can get steak anytime you want, baby. Yeah. And I want a big one right now. Put it in front of me. I'll give you some money here. Here. just take this and put it in your pocket. There's some money for you. Give me my stake. And you don't care how much water it took.

And these people who are saying, they don't necessarily agree with Aerolek, but they're saying, he wasn't totally off. Right, there are problems. He was alarmist. Clearly there are problems. They're saying, this is one of the problems. You know, this is one of the problems with too many people

Yeah, and so getting back to Contraception and zero population growth are now the population connection their big goal They say there are 222 million women into the developing world who have an unmet need for family planning So they're not saying You know, we want to put our ideals on you and you shouldn't be having kids. They're saying there are that many women that are like, I don't want these five kids. I would have wanted two. And I either don't know about contraception, don't have contraception, or I have literally no idea how conception works,

sadly. Right. So for a lot of them, I shouldn't say a lot. The first idea that women just need access to contraception and they will use it. Yeah. And they're working on that, right? But they found in studies that something like 10% or less of the women who are defined as having unmet contraceptive needs cite a lack of access as to why they're having unwanted kids. Yeah. Instead, they're saying it's things like family pressure or societal pressure to have a bunch of kids.

Like you're saying, like not understanding contraception or how conception works. Yeah, they say they don't believe that they need contraception if you have sex infrequently or after birth, after I've had one kid, we don't need to use contraception anymore. Like literally not knowing how conception works. So that's a big educational hurdle that population connection is trying to overcome. Right, so they're saying it's not just getting contraception to women,

it's educating them on how to use it and changing their social outlook. Yeah, changing the culture. Yeah. Largely men, you know, saying, oh, one more babies. Right. You know, it's a nice place. Like Revolutionary Road or something, you know.

All right, so we're gonna talk a little bit after the break about what the critics of zero population growth have to say. and amazing guests like Martha Stewart. Well, he did have an affair with one of his best friends, Jimmy Fallon. Do you want a zipline over your dad while he gets attacked by alligators? And Paul McCartney. John and I hitchhiked to Paris. We've saved you a seat. Ruthie's Table Four.

Listen to Ruthie's Table Four on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Martha Stewart and we're back with a new season of my podcast. This season will be even more revealing and more personal, with more entrepreneurs, more trailblazers, more live events, more Martha, and more questions from you. I'm talking to my cosmetic dermatologist, Dr. Dan Belkin, about the secrets behind my skincare. Walter Isaacson about the geniuses who changed the world. Angkor Jane about creating a billion-dollar startup. Dr. Elisa Pressman about the five basic strategies to help parents raise good humans. Florence

Fabrikant about the authenticity in the world of food writing. Be sure to tune in to season two of the Martha Stewart podcast. Listen and subscribe to the Martha Stewart podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm John Ho Bryant, host of Money and Wealth on the Black Effect Podcast Network. I'm an entrepreneur and a businessman. Some would call a thought leader. Now every Thursday, my newest venture is educating you on how to win financially. Even better, I'm going to teach it in a way that, well, you can understand.

No unexplained theories, no mundane lessons, no using 20 words when two will do. I'm going to meet you where you are and take you where you need to be. I'm giving you straight talk, relatable stories, and life lessons through my own experiences and the lens of others. We're not just talking about why financial freedom is important. We're focusing on how you can achieve it too. We all might have different starting points and end goals, but as long as we have the desire

to acquire financial freedom, it can be done, from the streets to the suites. Listen to Money and Wealth with John Hope Bryant every Thursday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. So we're back? Yes. We're talking about solutions to overpopulation, but not everybody thinks it's a problem. Some people say overpopulation is a myth.

They say that Erlich, in and of himself, damaged his own argument. Yeah, he got a lot of personal heat. Yeah, still does. Because of the language he used, it was so alarmist, starting his book off with, you know, that we've already lost, no matter what we do, billions of people are going to die. Yeah. And then it not panning out, saying that England wasn't going to be around in 30 years. I mean, that was putting a lot on the line.

Sure. And so a lot of people said, your specific landmarks or milestones were unmet, therefore your whole argument out the window. And some people believe that. Other people are like, that's not necessarily true. Is alarmist as well, possibly your reactionary at least. But some people say, I still don't agree with Erlich because humans are smart. We can figure our way out of any problem.

That's right. Critics will say that humans are not. We can figure our way out of any problem. That's right. Critics will say that humans are not parasites of the earth. We are the saviors of earth. And we are the ones that are coming up with these solutions, like the Green Revolution and longer life spans and progressing medically to help people live longer. I don't know about saviors of earth. You don't think?

I think that's stretching it a little bit. I think we extract a little too much to be called saviors of earth. You don't think? I think that's stretching it a little bit. I think we extract a little too much to be called saviors of earth. Well, I guarantee you there's a lot of people that think humans are saviors of earth. Sure. You know. I would see us more as like Homer with Pinty the Lobster again and the saltwater and fresh water trying to strike the balance. I wouldn't call him a savior of either the goldfish or pinchy at that moment. He's just keeping them both in stasis. How many times have you referenced pinchy the lot?

That's probably seven. Seven? Yeah. It's not bad. It's one for every 100 shows, roughly. Right. Other critics will say that low birth rates are no good for the economy, like you were talking about earlier. Yeah.

Older people and babies, well, I guess low birth rates wouldn't affect that, but older people are more of a tax on society than they are spenders and investors. Right. But in the same way, if you have too many babies, that's a big tax. Eventually, those babies will be a workforce. Yeah, and they'll spend money, too. Exactly.

So the baby boom and the post-war boom, economic boom in the United States, it's not coincidental that they went hand-in-hand. There are a bunch of people having babies and eventually they grew into the workforce and they made a bunch of money in the 80s for the United States. Yeah and there's it's also supported in developing countries. More than 70 countries are categorized now as low fertility with two babies or less per woman and those areas are expected to make big economic gains in the coming decades because they're going to be people to spend money and be in the workforce. And there's kind of a few ways that the workforce and wealth and the economy and birth rates

are all kind of tied together too. It turns out that if you give a woman rights to her own contraceptive decisions, the birth rate tends to inevitably fall as a result. And then when that happens, it happens because some women have more babies than they want to when they don't have right to their own contraceptive decisions.

Another reason is when they have those kinds of rights, they usually also have the right to an education. When they enter school, they will tend to put off having kids because once they graduate from school, they'll usually enter the workforce. And so just by nature of getting to the whole thing later on in life, they're having fewer kids as well. And when you have more educated women in the workforce, your economy is stronger too. So directly and by proxy, lower birth rates are

associated with the stronger economy. But again, you don't want to get too low because if you get too low, then all of a sudden the generation before it started to taper off is going to be bigger than the generation that's working. And if it costs $50,000 in tax money to keep the average retiree afloat, say in the United States, well, that divided by a thousand people is a lot easier to bear than divided by a hundred people, a hundred working people. You know what I mean? Yeah, we got to keep up the old folks and keep them in stake in Ovaltine. Right. You know? So, if you're an economist, a demographer, whatever, everybody's kind of saying like,

you want to get a country developed and you want to get them at that 2.1 replacement rate and everything will be hunky-dory from there. Yeah, and the other Thing a critic might say too is and this is what we were talking about earlier about the environment The impact on the environment like we're just going to destroy our world with so many people right It turns out that It turns out that impact carbon emissions aren't really tied to population growth rates. It's tied to per capita income levels by evidence that China and the US have some of the lowest fertility rates right now and we are the worst polluters. So it's not because we have all these people.

It's because we're consuming too much as Americans. Exactly. And I guess in China as well. Which actually makes it seem kind of nerve-wracking that India and China with these enormous populations are starting to become wealthier and wealthier because that's just going to make it even worse as far as the environment goes. Did you check out the population connection site? No, I didn't. They have a pretty interesting FAQ that if you don't know where you stand,

I mean, it's helpful to read. Like they say things like instead of we want to focus on quality of life, not quantity. And instead of saying how many people can the earth support, maybe how many people can't the earth support, because right now all these people are dying from lack of, you know, clean water and sanitation and food. And there's the counter argument that you hear from critics a lot. I've seen a stat thrown around that the entire world's population could live in Texas.

I've seen that before. It's so mind-boggling, I have trouble like believing it. Well, I think somebody forgot to carry a one or something. No, it's true. Population Connection says, sure, they can, you could fit everyone in Texas. You could also fit 40 people in a phone booth. Yeah. But Texas, they said, no way has the carrying capacity to take care of those people. So it's a little bit of a hollow fact that you throw out when you say that. Right. Like sure you can jam everyone in there.

Texas would be like. What are you guys doing here? Yeah. Everyone leave. Exactly. But it's pretty interesting stuff. I recommend people read their FAQ. It seems like they definitely have the right mindset because what they want to

do is make sure people have a good quality of life all over the world. Well, I will go read their FAQ because I suddenly feel underprepared, but I will tell you that the impression that I have from researching them without going on their website was I didn't find anything like beware population connection or the population connection myth or anything like that. There's definitely debate on the other side saying overpopulation is a myth, but no one seems to be attacking population connection

as like a nefarious organization. Yeah, because they're not saying don't have babies. Right, and that's a really sticky situation to be in because a lot of people are like, well, God wants us to have as many babies as we possibly can. Who are you to be meddling in that kind of thing? It's a fine line that a group like that has to walk. And they seem to be walking it fine.

They're just saying, like, here's some contraception. Maybe let's not have unwanted babies. Let those little angels stay in heaven. And we'll just go from there. Yeah. I think that's their, uh, on their homepage. At one of the most famous restaurants in the world, there's a table in the corner where the most incredible conversations on the planet are happening every week with owner Ruthie Rogers,

an amazing guest. Like Martha Stewart. But he did have an affair with one of his best friends, Jimmy Fallon. You want a zip line over your dad while he gets attacked by alligators. And Paul McCartney. John and I hitchhiked to Paris. We've saved you a seat. Ruthie's Table 4. Listen to Ruthie's Table 4 on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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I don't remember where I ran across it, but I'd read it a while back, but I have to give a shout out to Josh from Jersey, the original Jersey, not New Jersey, who recently wrote in to suggest we do an episode on that and had perfect timing because he wrote in after you'd selected this one. Oh yeah. And I was like, these two would go great together. Hand in hand. Yeah. So thanks Josh for reminding us.

Well, thank you Josh for thanking Josh. Which Josh? But I'm thanking all the Josh's. Okay. So in 1972, this dude named John B. Calhoun, this was one of his experiments. This guy, what he liked to do was build rat and mouse utopias. He've been doing it since the 40s. Yeah. And basically, with the aim to see what would happen to a population, in this case mice or rats, if you gave them a perfect mouse world.

Right, and he called these world universes. Yeah. And the one in 1972, the one that really like, made all the headlines I guess, was called universe 25. So you had 24 under his belt already. And it was pretty good size. It was over 100 inches square. The walls were 54 inches high. It had space for, let's see, what's 256 times 15, Chuck?

I'm going to go with about, in my head, I'm going to say like close to 30,000. It is exactly 3,800. Yeah, that's what I meant. I meant 3,000. It is exactly 3,800. Yeah, that's what I meant. I meant 3,000. 3,840. Okay. Okay. So there was enough room comfortably for 3,840 mice. Yes.

And long before that, he introduced four breeding pairs. So eight mice, he first introduced to Universe 25. Yeah, and it was well stocked, by the way. They had everything they wanted. Food, water that was cleaned out. They were all disease-free. No predators? Yeah, he threw a cat in there once a week. Right, just to keep him on their toes or something. Yeah, I mean, it was mouse heaven is what they called it.

Yes, and he actually did in papers about these universes. He would refer to them as heaven or utopia and he would use words like that. Yeah. So he introduces these four breeding pairs of mice to universe 25 and after 104 days it took them to finally settle down and be like, okay, this place is actually pretty great. It's not too good to be true. Right. Despite the fact that it seems to be built by human hand,

which is weird and the temperature never changes. But we're just going to say it's probably fine and start breeding. And they started breeding pretty quickly. They started doubling in population every 55 days after that, right? Yeah. Like you said, because it was so great there, they were just like, hey, let's eat and do it and make a little baby mice. Like you said, because it was so great there, they were just like, hey, let's eat and do it

and make little baby mice like there is no end in sight. So you're doubling every 55 days. This was all a big study to study what overpopulation, what would happen and what he found time after time was that things went bad. Yeah, which is really something. Because remember Paul Ehrlich released the population bomb in 1968.

But for decades before that, John Calhoun saw firsthand what the real problem was. The real problem wasn't overpopulation leading to scarcity of food and conflicts, conflict and resource wars, and famine and starvation. What he found was that the real problem was overpopulation itself. Yeah, but just too many mice and not enough valuable roles for mice to play. Exactly. So there comes to be a point in any mouse population as far as Calhoun was concerned.

And again, this is universe 25 and he wasn't making like one a week or something. These were detailed, sure, smart studies. He was hired by the National Institutes of Health. He spent like 20 or 30 years working there. He was like a bona fide legitimate researcher. And he would find that at some point, the abundance would lead to overpopulation rather than scarcity. He never ran out of food. They always had enough food and water and everything. What came to be an issue was space and social interactions. There were just too many people. There are too many mice, I should say.

To the mice, they're people. And they're rubbing shoulders up against one another constantly moving past one another. There's not enough room. And like you said, there wasn't enough, there were too many mice to fulfill the number of social roles needed, right? Yeah, it says by day 315. So this is close to a year. A lot of mice are living in there and they said there were more peers to defend against. So males were stressed out and stopped defending their territory. They abandoned it. It said normal social discourse broke down completely. Social bonds broke down.

There was like randomized violence for no reason it seemed like. The female mice, the mothers saw this and would attack their own babies. And it was procreation slumped, infant abandonment increased, mortality soared. Then he talked about the beautiful ones, which I thought was hysterical. There were these male mice that just, they never fought. They never sought to reproduce or have sex. All they did was eat, sleep and groom and just sort of loaf around. Yeah. So all these social barriers are completely being destroyed. Right. These social norms, I should say. Yeah. And these, the females that could reproduce went off by themselves, sequestered themselves away from society. And the males that were

capable of reproducing became those beautiful ones. didn't seek sex either. So over time, they lost their ability to carry out these complex social interactions that lead to reproduction, and they just stopped reproducing it in general. Yeah, by day 560, and this is, I guess, that's the close to two-year mark, well, I guess that's the close to two year mark. Well, I guess 18 months. They had 2,200 mice and then growth ceased. Yeah, which isn't even close to the 3,840 that this place could conceivably hang onto. Yeah, so it was, how many was it? 3,800?

3,840. Yeah, so at 2,200 they stopped reproducing very few mice survived past weaning at that point The beautiful ones were still secluded the females That they basically called this the first death of two deaths He did specifically call a social death essentially exactly like the death of the spirit the death of the society Yeah, and then eventually the physical death the second death. Yeah, the one leads to the second. Like there is a point that you pass and he came up with a great name for it called the behavioral sink.

Yeah. Where they, I think they refer to it as the event horizon. Once you pass that, it's all over. Right. There's no coming back from that. And once there's no coming back from that, not only has your society collapsed or does your society collapse, your population becomes extinct because reproduction becomes impossible. Even he found, which is pretty startling, he found that even after enough of the population dies off, that it returns to those optimal ideal numbers of the early

days in universe 25 or any of the universes. They still don't, reproduction doesn't start up again. Because remember, social norms and bonds have broken down. Yeah, they were so messed up. So they can't even figure out how to reproduce once there's room for people enough again. It's crazy. It is.

So interesting. He said that he wrote this really kind of blockbuster paper called Population Density and Social Pathology, and it was published in Scientific American in 1962. And he said that the individuals that are born under these circumstances will be so out of touch with reality as to be incapable even of alienation. So like they can't even feel like they're not connected as a society anymore because there's no society for them to ever Connect or disconnect from it's frightening. It really is and a lot of people jumped on this and said

Whoa, what's going on here? Because if you look at his data Every time he ran this experiment the results became the same. Yeah, there was an abundance of resources ran this experiment, the results became the same. There was an abundance of resources, there was never scarcity, population became overpopulation. Once they reached the point of the behavioral sink, the population slid into extinction. And on the way there was violence, cannibalism, like... And sexualism.

Yeah, infanticide, just like all all the horrible things you can possibly think of, on the way toward extinction. And so a lot of people said, you know, these mice kind of are reflective of our own society, don't you think? And Calhoun was kind of like, yeah, I would say that's probably correct. Yeah, and there was a big boom at the time because of this experiment in literature and movies with a lot of Doomsday scenarios. Tom Wolf, the great writer, wrote in the Pump House Gang in 1968, he actually referenced the behavioral sink in reference to New York City.

And he said it got to, it was easy to look at new yorkers as animals Especially looking down from someplace like a balcony at grand central at the rush hour friday afternoon The floor was filled with poor white humans running around dodging blinking their eyes making a sound like a pin full of starlings or rats Or something and there are all these movies that came out. There was one called Zpg right uh with oliver reed and uh, these movies that came out, there was one called ZPG with Oliver Reed and Geraldine Chaplin. Yeah. That was called Zero Population Growth.

Yeah, like for a generation, the government said, no one's allowed to have babies. Yeah. Here's your robot baby. Right. And they're like, no, we're going to have a real baby. And they're like, no, you're not. I think it, I didn't see it, but I'm sure it ended very portly for them. I didn't see it either.

Yeah. I saw it on IMDB though. And of course, of course, Soylent Green. Yeah. Great, great movie. From the novel, Make Room, Make Room. I didn't know I deal with it. I didn't either.

There's another novel called Stand on Zanzibar. And there were people called Muckers who ran a Muck and just suddenly went crazy and started killing a bunch of people. I don't know, it happens from time to time in the news. A lot of people were saying, yeah, this stuff that Calhoun's finding is clearly extrapolatable onto human society.

And at the time too, there was a lot of discussion about what to do about inner city overpopulation, crime, housing projects. There's this really great documentary called The Pruitt-Igoe Myth. And it's about, there was this, the Pruitt-Igoe Project in St. Louis. I think I've heard of this.

It became, I think we've talked about it before, but it became like the poster child for how no matter what you do for poor inner city people, they're gonna screw it up and it's gonna become crime-ridden and it's them. It's not their quality of life or education or anything like that, it's them. And this documentary just totally demolishes

that idea, but it's still a long-standing idea. And there were a group of policy makers who looked at Calhoun's research and said, clearly, we need to do something. There's too many people, and there's a lot of people who don't have valuable social roles, and they're turning a crime and everything. It was very much open to interpretation because Calhoun, even though he was putting these things in terms like heaven and utopia and hell and behavioral sink and that kind of stuff, he was still just kind of putting data out there and it was up to society at large to interpret it and it really said a lot about your attitudes toward your fellow human, how you interpreted it and it really said a lot about your attitudes toward your fellow human how you interpreted it

Yeah, but Calhoun himself actually took something of an optimistic view of all of this data, which is kind of mind-boggling Yeah, I was surprised to read this actually he um it makes sense though if you think about it Yeah, he found that there were outliers and that not all the mice descended into a hellish all the mice descended into hellish violence and looting and mouse looting. He found that some could actually handle this and what he called the ones that could had a high social velocity mice that fared well with a lot of high number of social interactions. That is not me. And he said, I'm a type A blood type, blood personality type.

He said that basically These mice will thrive and he said and even the ones who don't what he termed the losers found ways to be more creative. Yeah, and he had a sufficient yeah, son of your outlook basically saying that man is essentially a positive animal and we will create and design our own solutions. Right. And his solution was, and it makes sense because he found that it's not scarcity or famines or anything that leads to trouble. It's overpopulation itself. His idea was, well, let's go find more space. And so he was a member of this group called the Space

Kittets, which was a group of thinkers that were trying to figure out how to establish colonies on like Mars or the moon or wherever Right, which is exactly what Calhoun's point was is that we just need more space right as long we can sustain ourselves That's fine, but even if we don't Stress agriculture the planet or whatever we're still gonna run into problems. Let's go off to other worlds and terraform. Oh And did you see the thing about the rats of Nim? Oh Was that taken it was inspired by this? It was based directly on his research. Oh really in that cool very cool Mrs. Brisbane the rats of Nim nice. Yeah, so go see that again and also go read the behavioral sink Nice. Yeah, so go see that again. And also go read the behavioral sync. Super interesting read. It's an article on cabinet by Will Wiles that informed a lot of this episode.

Yeah, this stuff is fascinating to me. Agreed. Because I see kind of both sides. Clearly there are some issues going right now, but I also think that there are solutions around the corner. Yeah, I ultimately don't have a strong opinion either way. And I think if I think about it, it's because I think humans will become ingenuitive. You can have steak tonight. Tons. Me too. Grass fed only.

It doesn't make it any better. I mean, that's why beef is so, it uses so much because it eats so much food that also requires water. Yeah, right. It requires water like two times over at least. Big dumb cows. Oh yeah. I wish it feel bad about our steak consumption, Chuck.

I don't eat much steak. Good for you, buddy. It's because Emily doesn't eat beef, so. Oh yeah. You know, usually I just will cook chicken because it's not like I'll have a steak and I'll cook her chicken every now and then, but usually it's just easier. Because chicken comes in like a two or three pack. Plus you cook it until it's dry as a bone so you can feel better about the water consumption. If you want to know more about population growth

and specifically zero population growth, type those words into the search bar at house-to-works.com. And since I said search bar in there somewhere, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this linguist sticks up for us. Oh, right. Right? Hey guys, I studied linguistics in college, so it always tickles me when you guys go on tangents

about words and language. The main reason I'm writing is because I want to offer you a counterpoint to the language police that have been harshing your vibe. Grammar nuts are what we call in the biz, prescriptivists who like to dictate how people should speak. Linguists on the other hand are descriptivists who make their careers out of how people actually speak in real world situations. Oh I didn't realize. I thought linguists could be one or the other.

I didn't realize that linguists tend to be descriptivists. That's what she says. What is, who wrote Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace? Yeah. He was a big time prescriptivist. Oh, really? He used to drive him crazy. Like how people should speak?

Yeah. Yeah, I'm not gonna do that. Like that there is a specific way that humans are supposed to speak and write and communicate, and if you deviate from that, you're about as bad of human beings as you can be. And that would be like the downfall of society or something. Pretty much. Oh, come on. We don't use the terms good or bad grammar.

Instead, we prefer standard and non-standard. Linguists recognize the social functions of non-standard grammars and observe their uses and functions rather than to try and micromanage them. A final point, I'm certain your listeners still know what you mean when you say things like there's a lot of something even if it isn't standard grammar. In the laws of linguistics, as long as you're interlocutor, which is a listener. Interlocutor. Interlocutor. As long as they accurately understand what you mean, you have successfully communicated.

Okay. And that's why humans invented language, isn't it? So go, be free, and know that I will always love your show no matter how you speak. And that is from Kristen. Thanks, Kristen. The support supportive linguists. Appreciate that. That's funny that Kristen mentions that as long as your interlocutor understands what you're saying, you're communicating correctly. Sure. Someone else I don't remember who it was they wrote in and suggested we do an episode on shorthand. Oh Interesting. I was just talking about that with Emily last night. Bam. It's all over the place. I took speed riding in high school and she was very surprised at that.

So like speed riding with hands? Speed riding is like... Or like stenography? No, right with your hand. It's basically a version of shorthand, but not exact shorthand. Gotcha. It's a kind of shorthand. It sounds like shorthand, but like more aggressive.

Yeah. Like max power or something. The joke was my friend, Shannon, I won't say her last name. But she would cheat in class because she didn't learn the shorthand. So the test where they would just read a long passage quickly and you would have to do it and then transcribe that into longhand.

She was just super good at writing really fast. So she would just write down everything in longhand super fast and then figure out how to transcribe it back to shorthand and then back to longhand. And she got caught doing that. And the teacher's like, that's cheating. Yeah, it sounds like it. She was like, well, am I really fast?

Still doesn't count. Nope. That's not speed writing, that's just writing fast. If you want to get in touch with us, either to show us support, criticize us, and even something neutral is fine, you can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com and as always join us at our luxurious home on the web,

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