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In 1960 the journal Science published a paper with doomsday in the title: Friday 13 November 2026. Three scientists at the University of Illinois had fitted a curve to 2,000 years of world population estimates, and found it heading for infinity this month. For 30 years the real world stayed close to their line. Then it swerved.
Hyperbolic growth and a finite-time singularity, 'squeezed to death', the letters that called it 'manifestly absurd', Verhulst's S-curve from Brussels, and how falling child mortality and smaller families, from Bangladesh and Iran to South Korea, broke the curve. The UN now expects a peak of about 10.3 billion in the 2080s, not a wall. Early population figures are rough estimates; we say where historians disagree.
CHAPTERS
0:00 Cold open
1:13 I. Three People and a Curve
3:16 II. Faster Than Exponential
5:22 III. Squeezed to Death
7:06 IV. Manifestly Absurd
8:46 V. The Belgian Curve
10:27 VI. How Do We Know?
12:38 VII. The Great Swerve
14:54 VIII. Why It Matters Today
16:15 Epilogue
ARCHIVE PHOTOS & FOOTAGE
• T. R. Malthus, portrait (Wellcome L0069037) — John Linnell, CC BY 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons)
• T. R. Malthus, engraving (Wellcome L0069029) — after John Linnell (Wellcome), CC BY 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons)
• Essay on the Principle of Population, 1798 — T. R. Malthus, Public domain (Wikimedia Commons)
• P.-F. Verhulst, engraving — unknown engraver, Public domain (Wikimedia Commons)
• Courbe logistique, Verhulst 1845 — Verhulst, Pierre-François, Public domain (Wikimedia Commons)
• The Numbering at Bethlehem — Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Public domain (Wikimedia Commons)
• Over London by Rail, 1872 — Gustave Doré, Public domain (Wikimedia Commons)
• Exeter Domesday Book, 1086 — Domesday Book, Public domain (Wikimedia Commons)
• Graunt, Observations, 1662 — John Graunt, Public domain (Wikimedia Commons)
• ILLIAC I chassis — Daderot, Public domain (Wikimedia Commons)
• ILLIAC I memory drum — Daderot, CC0 (Wikimedia Commons)
• 80-column punched card — Fil22plm, CC0 (Wikimedia Commons)
• Faber-Castell slide rule — Slashme, CC0 (Wikimedia Commons)
• Fireworks at Ryogoku Bridge (Met) — Utagawa Hiroshige, CC0 (Wikimedia Commons)
• Crowds at Ryogoku (British Museum) — Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Public domain…
Charts are schematic re-drawings (the 1960 curve uses the paper's own constants); title pages are re-set. No photographs of the 1960 authors are shown.
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