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b'Does the United States have too few people? It\\u2019s a provocative question\\u2014but one perhaps not asked often enough. And journalist Matthew Yglesias has an even more provocative answer.\\nIn his new bestselling book, One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger, Yglesias makes the case for tripling the American population. The U.S. is not \\u201cfull,\\u201d he writes in the book\\u2019s introduction. \\u201cMany of its iconic cities\\u2014including not just famous cases of collapse like Detroit but also Philadelphia and Chicago and dozens of smaller cities like Rochester and Erie\\u2014actually have fewer residents than they had decades ago. And virtually all of our thriving cities easily have room to grow and accommodate more people.\\u201d As things stand now, he says, the United States is \\u201cstaring down the barrel of inevitable relative decline.\\u201d The economies of China and India are growing quickly and threaten America\\u2019s position as the world\\u2019s leading power. And there are compelling domestic reasons for growing the population too.\\nMatthew Yglesias is the special guest on this week\\u2019s episode of the Strong Towns podcast. (It\\u2019s our first podcast of 2021, and the first of a two-part interview.) Yglesias is the host of The Weeds podcast and cofounder of Vox Media, and he recently launched the new blog and newsletter Slow Boring. In this episode, he talks with Strong Towns founder and president Chuck Marohn about why population growth would make the U.S. stronger\\u2014not just at the international level but as a \\u201ccommunity of communities.\\u201d They also discuss why the idea of one billion Americans is actually a centrist one, why it doesn\\u2019t have to be an environmental disaster, and how it can get done.\\nPart 2 of the interview will run next week. But we think by the end of this episode you\\u2019ll see why Chuck named One Billion Americans one of the best books he read in 2020.\\nAdditional Show Notes:\\n\\nSlow Boring\\n\\n\\nThe Weeds Podcast\\n\\n\\nOne Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger, by Matthew Yglesias\\n\\n\\nMatthew Yglesias (Twitter)\\n\\n\\nCharles Marohn (Twitter)\\n\\n\\nThe Strong Towns Local-Motive Tour'