Hello and welcome to more or less your weekly guide to the numbers all around us, with me,

Tim Harford.

This week we evaluate the policy of perhaps the universe's most famous economist, Thanos

the Mad Titan.

As fans of the Avengers will be aware, Thanos, like any good economist, takes a keen interest

in the availability of scarce resources in an overpopulated universe.

The entire time I knew him, he only ever had one goal.

To wipe out half the universe.

If he gets all the infinity stones, he can do it with the snap of his fingers.

Just like that.

Audio from Gritty documentary Avengers Infinity War there, as you must all know by now,

Thanos's quest succeeded.

The follow-up Avengers Endgame is a fly on the wall report of the plans to undo the damage.

Let's talk about this plan years.

I think it's good, except it sucks.

So, we four billion survivors mourn the fallen.

Nickel-American, in his bone, Wesley Stevenson, Charlotte Pitchard, Andrew Dilknot, Rich

Knight, Oliver Hawkins, more or less has never been the same since you were disintegrated.

But should we really want to go back to a world population of 8 billion?

Or as Thanos believes, might we be better off with a little more elbow room?

I spoke to Professor Sharon DeWitt, an anthropologist at the University of South Carolina.

I wanted to know whether there was any precedent for losing half the population so suddenly.

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