This is an IHeart podcast.

Guaranteed human.

No gloss, no filter.

Just stories.

Spoken without fear.

Person who is not generous can not be an artist.

The world will be at peace only when it is ruled by poets and philosophers.

Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Abhawad show

on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts.

Come for the honesty.

Stay for the fire.

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,

a production of IHeart Radio.

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry. And I'm Tracy B. Wilson. So today's subject is a person who's been on my list for a minute, not a really commonly known name, but whose work is probably impacting the life of every single person listening in one way or another.

He did this work nearly 400 years ago, but it really changed the way that people perceived population and mortality by measuring it, because that changes the outcome.

We are talking about John Grant, who was a shopkeeper in London, who, through both personal

connections and a desire to just kind of follow his own curiosity, which I love, to a rather

grand result,

became very well respected among the city's most revered intellectuals.

And his work gave rise to the field of demography and epidemiology.

...