In 1968, The Population Bomb by the Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich became a bestseller. With its foreboding thesis that humanity’s population growth was outpacing its ability to feed itself, it was a rare book that both caught the attention of the public and became deeply influential in academic circles. But not everyone was a fan. One of the book’s biggest critics was the economist Julian Simon, then a professor at the University of Illinois. Simon thought the thesis of The Population Bomb was little more than poorly drawn speculative fiction, calling Ehrlich a ‘false prophet’. Human ingenuity, Simon argued, would ultimately accommodate the exploding population. As this short animation from TED-Ed details, the ongoing professional feud between the two prominent academics ultimately culminated in a $1,000 bet on the fate of humanity – one which Ehrlich would ultimately pay out, and that shifted the way the world understood population growth.
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Nature and landscape
‘A culture is no better than its woods’ – what our trees reveal about us, by W H Auden
5 minutes
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History
Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches
13 minutes
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Art
Background music was the radical invention of a trailblazing composer
17 minutes
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Metaphysics
What do past, present and future mean to a philosopher of time?
55 minutes
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Animals and humans
Villagers struggle to keep their beloved, endangered ape population afloat
19 minutes
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Art
Radical doodles – how ‘exquisite corpse’ games embodied the Surrealist movement
15 minutes
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Language and linguistics
Why Susan listens to recordings of herself speaking a language she no longer remembers
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Family life
The migrants missing in Mexico, and the mothers who won’t stop searching for them
21 minutes
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Beauty and aesthetics
In art, the sublime is a feedback loop, evolving with whatever’s next to threaten us
9 minutes