Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast number eight.

I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and this episode is an introduction to the Colombian Exchange

recorded on February 10th, 2021 in New Orleans. Before we get to the fun part, I want to thank all our new

listeners. Well, maybe that is the fun part. We've had more than 600 downloads since inception,

which far exceeds my expectations. I figured if I had a thousand in the first few months, it would be amazing.

I hope is that there is an audience for telling history without grinding an axe,

or at least without forcing a connection between events in the past and today's politics.

The percentage of undergraduates majoring in history has fallen by about 75% since 1970,

and it has collapsed since 2007.

It cannot help but wonder if the decline in part is because the teaching of history in some places by some people

has become so tediously political

rather than fun and interesting. So I'll try and keep it fun and interesting.

This episode is an introduction to the Colombian Exchange, and it should appeal especially to listeners

who love factoids. In 1492, the entire human population of the

planet was in the vicinity of 450 to 600 million people, the gap perhaps explained in part

by the controversy over the pre-Columbian population of the Western Hemisphere.

We do know that by 1500 the population of Europe had not grown on a net basis since 1300.

There was plenty of hunger in most places outside of the Western Hemisphere,

and every reason to believe that humans in the eastern hemisphere had reached something

of a limit in their capacity to grow or capture calories faster than their need to consume them.

Now I'm going to break my promise and roll out some math.

On the very cool website, Our World in Data.org, one can find a graph of

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