July 13, 2011
Derek Hoff to appear Friday on PBS show 'Need to Know'
The PBS news magazine program "Need to Know" will include an interview with K-State's Derek Hoff, assistant professor of history, Friday, July 15.
"Need to Know" airs at 7:30 p.m. in Manhattan on KTWU, Channel 11 on Cox Cable; the show airs at 8:30 p.m. in many other markets, so check local listings.
The segment with Hoff looks at debates and policy issues surrounding population growth in the United States. The U.S. is an outlier among the wealthy nations of the world in that its population is expected to keep growing throughout the 21st century. The Census Bureau projects a population of 420 million in 2050 and 570 million in 2100.
Hoff will speak about his research and forthcoming book on the history of American population debates, "The State and the Stork: The Population Debate and Policymaking in United States History" from the University of Chicago Press. He was interviewed for more than an hour at Stanford University for the program. While he doesn't know how much of the interview will be included in the program, Hoff thinks a likely snippet will be on the recent conservative-driven dismissal of fears about overpopulation, which dominated in the 1960s, and the current bipartisan embrace of the nation's steady population growth.
Paul Ehrlich, professor of biology at Stanford and author of the famous 1968 book, "The Population Bomb," will also appear in the segment.
More information about "Need to Know" is available here.