Don't Worry About the Vase Podcast The Most Important Charts In The World
Apr 29, 2026
A whirlwind tour of striking visualizations, from a meteor chart mapping AI progress to calculations-per-dollar soaring past brain-equivalent levels. Global trends appear: collapsing child mortality, extreme poverty’s historic fall, and fertility dipping below replacement. Other highlights include dramatic animal-slaughter growth, CO2 rising since Mauna Loa records, and playful, surprising data-driven jokes.
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Extreme Poverty Fell From Nearly Total To Minor
- Global extreme poverty fell from ~90% in 1820 to ~10% by 2015, showing sustained long-run decline.
- The steepest reductions occurred post-mid-20th century, concentrating recent gains in many countries.
Compute Per Dollar Has Grown Exponentially
- Computing performance per dollar rises exponentially across technologies, reaching human-brain-level benchmarks in the early 2020s and projecting far beyond by 2050.
- Successive tech generations (vacuum tubes to GPUs) sustain many orders-of-magnitude gains.
Energy Transition Is Real But Energy Demand Keeps Rising
- Low-carbon electricity generation increased from ~1,000 TWh in the 1960s to ~13,000 TWh by 2024, but total global energy use grew linearly and faster.
- High-income countries use far more electricity per person, linking wealth and energy consumption.