Radiolab Body Count
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Jan 24, 2020 Do the living outnumber everyone who has ever died? A simple question spirals into population math, ancient migration, ice-age roadblocks, and the slow-growing power of corn. Then the numbers get personal as the team counts America’s living and dead, and wonders when the balance might tip.
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Start Date Shapes The 'Ever Lived' Count
- Focusing on when to start counting humans changes the total dramatically; Radiolab chose ~200,000 years for Homo sapiens.
- Using that window, demographers estimate roughly 100 billion people have ever lived while ~7.6 billion are alive now.
Archaeologist Turns Dirt Finds Into Data
- Jeffrey Dobereiner described his path from archaeology fieldwork to spreadsheet-heavy analysis.
- He explains archaeology involves lots of counting, carbon-dating, and 'a lot of Excel.'
Global Dead Vastly Outnumber The Living
- Global estimates suggest about 108–110 billion people have ever lived, far exceeding today's population.
- That implies roughly 13 deceased ancestors for every living person on Earth today.