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The Epidemic That Dare Not Speak Its Name | Stephen J Shaw | EP 338 — Transcript

by Jordan B Peterson · 18,131 words · 2,967 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00You should accept yourself just the way
0:01you are. What does that say about who I
0:04should become? Is that just now off the
0:06table because I'm already good enough in
0:08every way? So, am I done or something?
0:10Get the hell up. Get your act together.
0:13Adopt some responsibility. Put your life
0:16together. Develop a vision. Unfold all
0:18those manifold possibilities that lurk
0:21within. Be a force for good in the world
0:24and that'll be the adventure of your
0:25life.
0:31The world's falling birth rate isn't on
0:33the list of major threats to life as we
0:35know it, but it soon will be.
0:38Taxes are destined to soar. Pension
0:40systems will become unsustainable, while
0:42our health care systems won't be able to
0:44cope with the ratio of old people to
0:46take care of compared to the shrinking
0:49number of taxpayers. Businesses will
0:51struggle to find workers to hire. School
0:53closures will accelerate, while social
0:55care will continually be sliced.
0:57And they say it's an economic time bomb.
1:00I'm worried about the birth rate. Most
1:01people think we we have like too many
1:03people on the planet, but actually this
1:05is an outdated view. I think that the
1:07biggest problem the world will face in
1:0920 years is population collapse.
1:12Collapse. I want to emphasize this. The
1:15biggest issue in 20 years will be
1:17population collapse.
1:34Hello everyone. I'm here today talking
1:36to Mr. Stephen J. Shaw.
1:39Stephen is a British national who has
1:41studied and lived on three continents.
1:43He trained as a computer engineer and
1:46then as a data scientist
1:48before starting his first film project
1:50Birth Gap at age 49.
1:54He maintains the position of president
1:56of the data analytics company he
1:58co-founded AutoMetrics Analytics LLC.
2:03Stephen holds an MBA graduate business
2:05degree from ISG in Paris, France and is
2:09continuing his studies at the Harvard
2:11Extension School. Looking very much
2:13forward today to delving into the issue
2:16of declining
2:19birth rates and population collapse,
2:21something that's not particularly on
2:23everyone's rate or and the issue of um
2:27the invisible epidemic of unplanned
2:30childlessness.
2:32Why are people having so few children?
2:36The more I read about falling birth
2:37rates,
2:39everything was negative.
2:41You enter a downward spiral. As you have
2:43fewer and fewer children, you have fewer
2:46and fewer future mothers,
2:48which in turn goes on and on and on.
2:52And no society in history has been known
2:55to come out of that spiral.
2:57So, I'm talking today with Stephen J.
3:00Shaw who's produced a documentary Birth
3:03Gap that was originally released in its
3:06first version in 2021 and later version
3:08in 2022 and he's been spending an awful
3:11lot of time delving into this particular
3:14problem and so we're going to walk
3:15through what he's learned. Uh
3:18Good to see you. Thank you for inviting
3:20me. Hey, thanks for agreeing to talk.
3:22So,
3:23let's start with your background.
3:26We could walk through what you what
3:28you've been up to biographically first
3:30of all to situate it and then you can
3:32expand on that to the degree that you're
3:34willing and able. So,
3:37Um historically for the last 20 years
3:40I've been involved in data analytics,
3:41what we now call data science. I'm a
3:44part statistician, part coder.
3:47I've worked with some great academics
3:49and PhDs that we have on staff and
3:51coming up with academic models,
3:53forecasting models for industries,
3:56mainly in the automotive sector. We try
3:58and do short-term forecasting and what
4:00might people purchase, uh what should
4:03car companies build, what should they
4:05market, what should they give for
4:07incentives, down to a very minute level.
4:09This is a private venture?
4:11It is.
4:11And and and so it's a corporation that
4:13offers these services?
4:14Yeah, it's a small niche corporation
4:16that's been offering services to the
4:17world's largest corporations for 20
4:19years.
4:20And how did you get involved in that? It
4:21was a startup in London 20 years ago. I
4:24personally moved to the US to we got a
4:26contract with Nissan North America. Uh
4:29took me to LA and following that, yeah,
4:31I spent like 15 years
4:33uh following that company hands-on
4:36until around 2015.
4:39Um
4:39bizarrely
4:41and I should explain I'm a lifelong
4:42learner. I I I'd gone I'd got accepted
4:44into Harvard Extension School
4:47uh to do uh become a degree candidate to
4:49keep my data science skills up to date.
4:52And I was presented with some data that
4:55I just couldn't believe on falling birth
4:57rates.
4:58So, as someone who's involved in
5:00forecasting, albeit short-term
5:02forecasting,
5:04realizing that we've got this
5:06fundamental problem
5:08with birth rates that's ultimately going
5:11to affect well, not just the number of
5:13potential car buyers. I mean, that's the
5:15smallest problem in this overall, but
5:16that was, you know, something I felt
5:18almost ashamed of. Why do I know this?
5:21And then you expand that to what is this
5:23going to mean for the planet? And as a
5:26father of three, all my three children
5:28were just about still teenagers then,
5:31I felt a sense of failure that I hadn't
5:36been preparing my children for the world
5:38they're about to enter into.
5:40You know, we all I think are are led
5:43into the belief that sure that the
5:44world's population is growing perhaps
5:47exponentially still. That's what I would
5:49have said at that time based on what I
5:51was learning. And I had no idea that the
5:54actual dynamics of
5:57everything from how work is going to be
6:01like to how society's going to be like
6:03to how pension systems are going to be
6:05like
6:06is fundamentally fundamentally flawed.
6:09And
6:11at that moment I realized something's
6:12wrong because do you know what? The same
6:14trend
6:16was showing up for Germany and Italy and
6:19Japan. South Korea. Yeah,
6:22South Korea was just a little bit later,
6:24just a little bit later, which was
6:25interesting. But something triggered the
6:28early 1970s in Japan, Germany, Italy and
6:31you can add Spain, Portugal,
6:33Switzerland, Austria
6:35to cause a par- a series of parallel
6:38trends and yet
6:41what I was reading from experts was that
6:43these are localized problems. That Japan
6:46it's work-life balance. That in Germany
6:48it's something called Rabenmutter, which
6:51is the idea that uh parts of Germany
6:54even today for a woman to have a child
6:56and go straight back to work is really
6:58something that culturally shouldn't be
7:00done. So, that might cause some people
7:02to de- delay parenthood. Um in Spain and
7:06Italy it was down to
7:08uh high unemployment among among the
7:10youth. Other areas it was gender
7:12balance, etc. So, all these localized
7:16reasons were being proposed.
7:18For me as a data scientist, you could
7:21see clearly and
7:22if I can give you an analogy, it's one
7:24of your own. I I you were talking to Lex
7:27Friedman. You talked about the dragon I
7:28think in terms of the environment
7:30context. Someone finds a dragon and they
7:32scream, "There's a dragon." And I love
7:35the analogy and then I since saw that
7:36you you use dragons quite a lot, so I
7:38thought I I might too.
7:40And it's like you found this little
7:42dragon in Japan and the same kind of
7:44dragon in Germany and Italy at the same
7:46moment in time and they're starting to
7:48get bigger and I saw
7:49So, they're lizards to begin with.
7:51Right. I mean, they're tiny. They're the
7:53size of a kitten I think is the analogy
7:54I saw.
7:56And they're getting bigger and then
7:57suddenly they're appearing in other
8:00neighboring countries and it's growing
8:01growing growing from there. So, the idea
8:04that these are localized issues to me
8:06just did not make sense.
8:07So, why do you think you were struck to
8:09begin with by the fact that birth rates
8:12were plateauing or declining? I mean,
8:15because the typical response to that
8:17would be either so what, there's too
8:20many people on the planet anyways, or
8:22actually it's a net good. So, now you
8:25said you're in a private company. Now, I
8:27should let everybody watching and
8:28listening know that
8:30one of the markers for the
8:32trustworthiness of a data analytic
8:34company is that people will actually pay
8:36for their information.
8:37And so,
8:39you know, it doesn't necessarily mean
8:40that a private data analytic company is
8:43credible, but it does mean at least that
8:46they've been able to demonstrate their
8:47credibility enough so that they have
8:49paying customers and that's not an easy
8:51thing to manage. And so, you were doing
8:53short-term forecasting that was
8:55integrated into the capitalist economy,
8:57let's say, to help people plan their
8:59product development and so forth. But
9:01you came across this data at a much
9:03broader level indicating a plateauing
9:05birth rate or population growth. Why did
9:08that disturb you? Why did you think that
9:10was a problem?
9:12Because birth rates less than
9:14replacement level spiral downwards. They
9:17never stop.
9:19If you have fewer children than are
9:21required to replace a parent's
9:23generation, once that generation grows
9:25up,
9:27they will if unless birth rates change,
9:30which they don't historically, they stay
9:32low once they're low, you're going to
9:33have fewer people again.
9:35So, you see it as a as a positive
9:37feedback loop.
9:38It is. And when you you then look up,
9:41well, what do you you want to find
9:42examples of societies coming from low
9:45birth rates going back to replacement
9:47level and you realize there are no
9:48examples. In fact, there's no known his-
9:51historical examples anywhere. And some
9:54people
9:54do we have enough of a historical track
9:57to consider that a concern?
10:00In modern times, if you look at the
10:02number of countries who fallen to birth
10:05rates of 1.7, 1.6, 1.5, when you have
10:08no single example
10:11of a country going back to replacement
10:12level, we should be concerned. In fact,
10:14we should be very concerned. Right. I
10:16know places like Quebec, for example, in
10:18Canada with very, very low birth rate
10:20have tried to institute
10:22government policies that, for example,
10:24make daycare in principle more
10:26accessible to to young women and in
10:29young families, although that's had
10:30pretty much zero impact on outcome. I
10:33know that Hungary has put forward a
10:34series of policy transformations
10:37on the family support front, and my my
10:40uh belief is, from what I've read, is
10:42that they've at least stopped the birth
10:44rate decrease and
10:47increased it slightly.
10:49So, that's the only I mean, Quebec, it
10:50didn't work at all. Hungary, it looks
10:52like there's some minor They're still
10:53way below replacement.
10:56rectified the problem in any in any
10:58sense.
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11:55What's fascinating about Hungary,
11:58um
11:58So, what I wanted to do was look at
12:01something much deeper than the typical
12:04birth rate numbers of that we see today.
12:07I'm trying to change that.
12:09If you look deeper, you can find data
12:11that if you merge together, which I
12:13don't believe anyone had ever done
12:14before, that gives you two measures. One
12:17is of societal childlessness,
12:21and the other is family structure.
12:24So, um the traditional way to measure
12:26childlessness is to wait till women are
12:2945, usually,
12:31and have some surveys, maybe a census.
12:34So, you're waiting till the till the end
12:36of the fertility window and counting
12:37them then. What I wanted to see was,
12:40what is societal childlessness today? If
12:43there's a reduction in the number of
12:44women starting their families compared
12:46to what you would expect. We should be
12:48able to track that now. So, looking at
12:50Hungary, which I've just been doing
12:52recently, was fascinating. I mean,
12:54they're giving huge incentives for
12:56people to have three and four children.
12:58But the family structure in Hungary is
13:00not changing at all at all. What is
13:03changing, which may or may not be
13:05linked, is associative in some way,
13:08um but causally we don't know, is the
13:11childlessness rate in Hungary does seem
13:13to be going down. More people
13:15look like they're starting to have
13:17families. And what happens then is, when
13:19people start their families, they go on
13:21because family structure's locked in
13:23globally. That's another finding.
13:25And so, and so what do you What do you
13:26mean? So, we'll go in two directions.
13:27What do you mean What What are you
13:29speaking about when you're talk when
13:31you're expressing your concerns about
13:32family structure? Well, family structure
13:35basically is the percentage of women. We
13:37say women because we got so much data on
13:39women, but really we should think of men
13:41and women.
13:42Um
13:44the proportion of
13:46women couples who have one child or two
13:50or three or four or five or more.
13:52And if you take data for Japan,
13:56and you look at 1973,
13:59right before the fall in birth rates,
14:02the percentages of women having one,
14:04two, three, four are identical today as
14:06they were then. 6% of women in 1973 were
14:09having four or more children. Today,
14:11it's the exact same number, 6%.
14:14So, our focus has been completely
14:18If you We've been in a fog looking at
14:21overall birth rates.
14:23What you find is in Japan in 1974,
14:27interesting year, an explosion in
14:29childlessness, which went from 3% to 6%
14:33to 15 to 21 to 30 plus percent in the
14:36space of like four years.
14:38The same in Italy, the same in Germany.
14:40Four years? In four years. It's a shock.
14:43It was a What they call a baby shock.
14:46And then if you look at Korea, South
14:47Korea, which you mentioned earlier, if
14:49we take South Korea, mid-90s, right in
14:52the midst of a currency shock, you see
14:55childless rates were already maybe 15%
14:57there, suddenly it goes up to I believe
15:0030% and now it's over 40%.
15:02is childless at what age?
15:04Well,
15:05when I
15:06um estimate childlessness,
15:09I'm taking the for the given population
15:12of women, the number of births you would
15:14expect to have at any age, and saying,
15:16how many first-time mothers were there?
15:18And when you count up the number of
15:20first-time mothers of any age group, and
15:22look at the overall population
15:24structure, you can see, well, wait a
15:26minute, there's a gap opening up here
15:27compared to the number you would expect.
15:30So, this is like age-agnostic in a
15:32sense. Mhm, okay. And as a measure the
15:35people will say, well, some of those
15:36women might you know, there might be a
15:39boom in future. People might be just
15:40delaying, but that doesn't happen.
15:42There's no example of those booms ever
15:44happening. Mhm.
15:46So, it seems to be we've got this cycle
15:48going on
15:50uh that people are pulled quite quickly
15:53into this
15:55um
15:56what I call um world of unplanned
15:59childlessness, if I can I've had to coin
16:01quite a few phrases
16:03um and explain I should explain what
16:05what I mean mean by unplanned
16:07childlessness.
16:08If you um
16:10look at surveys,
16:12uh look at research, the vast majority
16:15of people want children. It's innate.
16:19And some don't. That's clear. What
16:22percentage do, approximately? I'm
16:25estimating around 5% don't. There've
16:27been Gallup polls in the US done Is that
16:29different between men and women? Um I
16:32don't have that data, but
16:33Okay. So, 5% you figure are are out of
16:35the game Yes. by voluntary choice. Yes.
16:38Right. And and what percentage are are
16:40childless? Well, right now we're looking
16:43at 30 to 40% in most developed nations.
16:45So, the vast majority, 80% is it's
16:48estimated in in studies.
16:50And I think this
16:51So, that's that involuntarily
16:52involuntary childlessness. I've been
16:55thinking about that lately. We have this
16:56notion for men of involuntary celibacy,
17:00incels. We don't have a term that's as
17:03at hand for involuntary childlessness
17:06among women, and it hasn't been
17:08recognized as a
17:09like a What would you call it? A
17:11universal
17:13social problem. But you just said 5% of
17:16women don't want children, but 30% don't
17:19have them. And so, there's a huge gap
17:21there between desire and reality.
17:24It's a I think frankly, I believe it's
17:26the biggest societal problem that we
17:29have, and it's hiding because we haven't
17:31recognized it. And if you find people,
17:34as I did making a documentary, um people
17:38who are struggling,
17:40the 30s, late 30s,
17:42women particularly, but men too, who
17:44have given up in their 40s,
17:46and they're opening their heart to you
17:48with a level of what they call grief.
17:50Yeah.
17:51And in English language, grief is used
17:54for one particular context. It's not
17:56necessarily used normally for something
17:58you never had. I think in other
17:59languages there there are terms that
18:02that that encompass that, but it's the
18:04same emotion.
18:05And I've been pulled into conversations
18:08where
18:09I have frankly been brought myself to
18:11the depths of understanding the
18:13suffering from these people who
18:17thought they were going through life
18:18getting the education, probably,
18:20starting the career path, probably,
18:23thinking that, well, you know what? I'm
18:25not 30 yet.
18:26I've got time to meet a partner. Yeah.
18:29And then getting to the point of often
18:31there is no partner,
18:33or that biology gets in the way.
18:35Yeah, well, it turns out that life is
18:37shorter than people think. You know,
18:38I've
18:39I've had clinical clients who
18:42have followed that path, and and some of
18:45them were women who had initially
18:46decided that they didn't want to have
18:48children, and then changed their minds
18:50quite dramatically in their late 20s,
18:52which is very common pattern. And then
18:55couldn't have children, and it was just
18:56absolutely disastrous for them. They
18:58were often on the
19:00you know, artificial fertility route for
19:0210 years with multiple miscarriages and
19:04failures on that front, and it's a
19:06bloody dismal outcome.
19:07Did you want to have children?
19:38I think if you caught me at the right
19:40day in my 20s, when I was very in love
19:44or excited about a partner, I would say
19:46yes.
19:48But if you were to pry into that, I
19:51might say, oh, no, that seems crazy to
19:53have a kid in my 20s."
20:06Okay, so you're making a case here.
20:08You're making a psychological case in
20:10some sense at the moment in that this is
20:13a phenomenon worth attending to because
20:16the vast majority of people who end up
20:18childless, which is a a more serious
20:21immediate problem for women because of
20:23the biological restrictions on their
20:24reproductive capacity.
20:26The reason that's a problem is because
20:28so many women
20:29end up in that situation despite wanting
20:32children. So, that's a real
20:33psychological problem, but you could
20:35take a sociological stance and say,
20:37"Well, as we've been
20:39as has been insisted upon
20:41for 60 years, there's too many people on
20:44the planet and it's just not a bad thing
20:46at all if we stop reproducing in this
20:48manner and if the price we have to pay
20:50for reduction in the number of excess
20:53mouths to feed is that there are some
20:55unhappy women, so be it." What do you
20:57think about this at a sociological or
20:59political or economic level?
21:02Well, first of all, I think that's a
21:03terribly sad thing to contemplate that
21:06we have to and somehow
21:08somehow enforce
21:11perhaps life-long
21:12grief and sadness on a subset of society
21:15who were mostly unlucky enough not to
21:18have the children they wanted to have
21:20for the sake of the planet when there
21:24are other options.
21:24Hypothetical sake hypothetical planet
21:27yeah, at some future time. At some
21:29future time.
21:31And to me, the first thing my reaction
21:34strong reaction isn't there another way
21:36if that's right. And then you look at
21:39data as a report in nature last year on
21:43the overall footprint by age group.
21:46Quite a number of scientists put their
21:48name to it and
21:49it says very clearly that 8% of our
21:52footprint
21:54occurs when we're aged under 30.
21:57Then it rises quite significantly
21:59between 30 and around 65, I believe, and
22:01then it falls off sharply.
22:04Well, that means that if the world's
22:08births were to magically, well, wouldn't
22:11be magic, drop by say half. I love
22:13taking extreme situations. So, let's
22:14imagine that from tomorrow only half of
22:17the births happen for some crazy reason.
22:20That 8% of total emissions or footprint
22:23would go down to 4% in 30 years' time.
22:27This is going to have almost no impact
22:30for decades.
22:31At a time when I think we have to find
22:33other solutions as much as they're
22:35needed to solve problems that are out
22:37there. So, the idea that we're going to
22:39inflict this pain deep personal
22:42suffering pain in people and perhaps be
22:44pleased about it as I know some people
22:47are. I I think it's terrible terribly
22:51sad. I I I think it might be that to
22:53come back I would like to clarify that
22:55for those people who don't have the
22:57desire. You know, I will I consider
22:59myself a pan-nihilist.
23:02If you don't want to have children, I
23:03will be your biggest supporter to say
23:04that's fine.
23:06And I think there might be a
23:07misunderstanding in society for some
23:09people who perhaps don't share that
23:11desire, who perhaps can't quite
23:13understand how fundamental this desire
23:15is.
23:16Yeah, well, most people who are in that
23:18boat are being willfully blind
23:20in my experience. And so, the idea that
23:24there are reasons to not want to have
23:26children. One reason is an overwhelming
23:29self-centered narcissism. That's not the
23:31only reason, but it's definitely one
23:34reason and people talk about, you know,
23:37the interference with their personal
23:38freedom and their desire to pursue their
23:40career. And in that, I read something
23:42like the absolute inability to ever
23:44sacrifice your own narrow self-interest
23:46and I do mean narrow to the to the
23:50what would you say, concerns and needs
23:52of other people. And so,
23:54you know, it's interesting to me that
23:55it's 5%
23:57that don't want children and that the
24:00the rate of that kind of self-centered
24:02narcissism is about 4 to 5% too. Now, I
24:04am not saying that everyone who who
24:06decides not to have children falls into
24:08that category, but I am saying that a
24:10fair number of people who don't want
24:12children fall into that category. I
24:14mean, if you think about it
24:16biologically, every single one of your
24:19maternal ancestors for 3 and 1/2 billion
24:21years reproduced successfully. And might
24:24be that you're the exception to that
24:25rule, but you know, if you are, you
24:27should think long and hard about why.
24:29You also might want to think long and
24:31hard about why given that it's likely to
24:34have a pretty damn detrimental effect on
24:36your life. You know, it's all fine to be
24:38fancy-free and footloose when you're 30
24:40and 35, but it's a lot less amusing when
24:43you're 50 and it might be downright
24:45dreadful by the time you're, let's say,
24:4765.
24:48So,
24:49All right. So,
24:51on the on the population front now, we
24:53talked a little bit about the
24:54psychological catastrophe of involuntary
24:57childlessness. I'm curious too about the
25:00social and economic
25:02consequences. So, as you get a
25:04demographic bulge, more and more older
25:06people and fewer and fewer younger
25:07people, obviously, you have fewer people
25:10to take care of the older people, but I
25:12also have never really read anything
25:16pertaining to models of like real estate
25:19value collapse because it doesn't take
25:21very long if there are more houses than
25:24there are people for the value of real
25:27estate to fall to Well, to what? To
25:30nothing? I mean, that's what happened in
25:32Detroit. It basically fell to nothing. I
25:35mean, Detroit has recovered to some
25:36degree, but we don't know all what the
25:39world would look like if
25:41real estate values fell to virtually
25:43nothing, especially because that's where
25:45most people put their retirement value.
25:48So, what do you see What do you foresee
25:51happening on the
25:53political and economic front
25:55given the
25:56shift towards the elderly
25:59demographically. We're going to see it
26:01in China first, right? Clearly.
26:03Clearly.
26:04Well, Japan, too.
26:06I One of the reasons I moved to live in
26:07Japan is to be close to I wanted to feel
26:11this problem. I wanted to be able to see
26:12it and almost touch it and you can
26:14there. But you mentioned Detroit. I
26:17spent I spent many many years living in
26:19the suburbs of Detroit. And right around
26:21the time I was
26:23looking to start this project,
26:25you know, that I was able to drive
26:27around the streets of Detroit and see
26:29street after street after street of tens
26:32and tens of thousands of you know, the
26:35decaying houses.
26:36Yeah. Yeah. I remember one day driving
26:38along and there was a house and these
26:41were nice houses right back in the day.
26:43Right. Still spacious.
26:45And there was a young family having a
26:47picnic outside one of these houses.
26:50And it was a perfect setting, you might
26:52say, in every context except every other
26:54house in the street looked like they
26:56were completely vacant and
26:59dilapidated.
27:01Around that time
27:03listening to local Detroit news every
27:05night, it was crime. It was street
27:07lights that weren't functioning. It was
27:09lack of safety. It was lack of
27:11functioning of basic utilities. It was
27:12infrastructure and bridges that the city
27:15couldn't afford. And of course, in 2013,
27:16it went bankrupt. So, I had this
27:18backdrop to knowing what was happening
27:21to to Detroit as a city. And you're
27:24right with property value around that
27:25time, you could buy significant property
27:27in Detroit for $10,000.
27:28Yeah. You probably couldn't go there to
27:30ever see it because it wasn't safe at
27:31that time.
27:32Right.
27:32And you were right, Detroit has come
27:34back. So, in some ways it is a testament
27:35demolished huge tracts of houses. But
27:38how do you do that when half the houses
27:40are still occupied? You go through this
27:42period of time unless you're going to
27:44say to people, "Everybody move three
27:46streets over now." And you do that every
27:48few years. You can't easily go into
27:51neighborhoods and start moving things
27:54back to to nature, which is what
27:56Detroit's doing. You know, you you can
27:58individual houses, but you know, you
28:00still have these scars of the empty
28:01spaces over there. I show some of this
28:04in the documentary. So, the idea I mean,
28:07people
28:10I was on a podcast Chris Williamson's
28:11recently and I I just it was the first
28:13time I got, you know, a sense of the
28:16comments that people make and many
28:18people were were sharing these deep
28:20personal stories about their life to do
28:22with unplanned childlessness. Yeah.
28:24Others were sharing concerns about
28:27whether they'd ever become grandparents
28:29and
28:30so
28:31but a lot of people were saying
28:34well, this is just about economics. You
28:36know, who cares? This is just about big
28:38corporations suffering. Who cares?
28:40I think people need to understand this
28:42is going to impact everybody.
28:43Everybody's life. If you're living in an
28:45area where there's literally decay,
28:47dilapidation all around you and the
28:49taxes that you're paying to your city or
28:52your municipality aren't covering the
28:54basic infrastructure,
28:56no one's going to escape from this. I
28:57think people don't understand that. So,
28:59in my case
29:02understanding life in Detroit, and
29:04again, I really love the city and it's
29:06great. You know, I love the people.
29:08I I
29:09I love the way it is starting to come
29:11back.
29:12But that experience, I think, really
29:15spoke to me that we really need to think
29:17about what this means. You talk about
29:19the socio-economic. I mean, the
29:21economics, you know, go beyond the city
29:23and the property values. It's the it's
29:25the pension funds. It's the social
29:27welfare funds that, you know, people
29:29think I think I did, too, at the time
29:31that, you know, the
29:33retirement the cost to maintain each of
29:36us in our retirement is basically what
29:38the government or someone's been saving
29:40for when we get to that age. It's not
29:43what we're paying right now.
29:45That's a bargain with the future.
29:46That's a bargain.
29:47You're covering the people who are
29:48retired now.
29:49What the government has put away for us
29:51is debt. Debt.
29:52Yeah, yeah, there's no savings. And then
29:55you There's a promise. Right. And then
29:57the debt's a problem because
29:58Yes, that's for sure.
29:59If you have a shrinking number of
30:00taxpayers, the debt's not shrinking. So,
30:03the repayment on the debt actually
30:06becomes worse and worse and worse.
30:08Yeah, well, and hypothetically, you can
30:10remediate that with immigration, but
30:12then that opens up another can of worms,
30:14which is no one really knows what the
30:17maximal rate of incorporation a society
30:21can manage without imploding, right? I
30:24mean, obviously, Canada, the US, US in
30:27particular, is an immigrant society, and
30:29that's worked out extremely well for the
30:31immigrants and for the society. But, the
30:34idea that there's no upper limit to our
30:37capacity to digest and integrate, let's
30:39say, is absolutely preposterous. So, and
30:42and we don't know, but the notion that
30:45we can replenish at the rate that we're
30:48losing on the birth rate front strikes
30:50me as at it's at least a debatable
30:52claim.
30:55We'll be right back. First, we wanted to
30:57give you a sneak peek at Jordan's new
30:59series, Exodus.
31:06So, the Hebrews created history as we
31:08know it.
31:11You don't get away with anything. And
31:12so, you might think you can bend the
31:14fabric of reality and that you can treat
31:16people instrumentally and that you can
31:17bow to the tyrant and violate your
31:19conscience without cost. You will pay
31:21the piper. It's going to call you out of
31:23that slavery into freedom, even if that
31:26pulls you into the desert.
31:30And we're going to see that there's
31:32something else going on here that is far
31:34more cosmic and deeper than what you can
31:37imagine. The highest ethical
31:40spirit to which we're beholden is
31:43presented precisely as that spirit that
31:46allies itself with the cause of freedom
31:49against tyranny. Yes, exactly. I want
31:52villains to get punished. But, do you
31:53want the villains to learn before they
31:55have to pay the ultimate price?
31:57That's such a Christian question.
32:11Immigration is a subject that, you know,
32:13I think um
32:14we we we actually only look at one side
32:16of it, and
32:17I certainly did until I went to Nepal,
32:20and I went and I sat down with a
32:21professor, the head of the department of
32:23population, Professor Pathak, in one of
32:26the largest universities in Asia.
32:28And I wanted to talk about falling birth
32:31rates in Nepal, which were just about
32:32replacement level at that time.
32:35And all he he wanted to seemed to want
32:37to talk about was the pains of migration
32:40on Nepal, the people, the communities
32:43that are left behind.
32:44And never for one second had thought
32:46about this dark side of, you know,
32:48immigration. Oh, you mean the brain
32:50drain. Yeah, for example, community
32:52drain. You're actually taking away
32:53You're leaving the old parents there,
32:55and you're sending, you know,
32:56remittances back, and that's seen as
32:58positive.
33:00But, those parents is aren't really
33:01looking for remittances, they're looking
33:03for people, community, their children to
33:05be there
33:06to into their older age.
33:08And, you know, we went to film some of
33:10these older people, and you know, the
33:12looks on their forlorn looks on their
33:14face.
33:15No one thinks about that. And then you
33:17have another situation, which is often
33:19that's men who are the immigrants, at
33:21least first. Yeah. And well, okay, so
33:25maybe that seems
33:27to some a good way for it to start.
33:30But, there's another dark side to that
33:32is the the woman behind or even not
33:35married yet, or they are married and
33:37their men have gone off elsewhere,
33:40and they're not having children. Right.
33:42Or their husband's coming back for 3
33:44weeks a year.
33:46And you've got 3 weeks a year to try and
33:48get pregnant. Mhm.
33:49And of course, most are not.
33:51So, you actually are propelling
33:53countries into
33:55low birth rates, the same factor that
33:58the rest of us are going through right
33:59now.
34:00So, the immigration debate,
34:03and I'm an immigrant myself, you know,
34:04I've been an immigrant to to to to the
34:06US, to Japan now.
34:09Um so, I'm I'm absolutely not against
34:11immigration at all. As you said, it's
34:13done great service to US, Canada, and
34:15and and many other countries, too.
34:17Um
34:18But, the idea that
34:19But, yeah, but that doesn't mean it's a
34:20solution to the problem of population
34:22replacement.
34:23Right. Right. Now, you talked about
34:25Japan. Let's talk about Japan a little
34:26bit. You How long did you live in Japan?
34:28I still do. So, I've been there for 5
34:30years. Uh-huh. And and you said you you
34:33can Well, so what do you experience
34:35there in relationship to your concerns
34:36about population decline?
34:39Let me tell you about a community in um
34:43rural Tokyo. So, this is what the
34:44world's biggest city is in some
34:46measures.
34:48You go to the northwestern part of
34:51Tokyo, and there's an area called
34:53Takashimadaira, and it's featured in the
34:55documentary.
34:561973,
34:58the 10,000 homes in this apartment were
35:00filled with young families.
35:03And there's old footage where you see,
35:04you know, just children everywhere. I
35:06went back with someone who was a child
35:08in those days.
35:09And, you know, you can hear the voices
35:12of the past. And today,
35:15it's a ghost town.
35:17But, it's not
35:18unoccupied. 98% of the apartments are
35:22still occupied, but they're old people.
35:24And they're mostly old women right
35:26living alone. Yes, and they're old women
35:28because men die early.
35:29Men die early.
35:30Right. So, this is another That's
35:31exactly right. So, one of the things
35:33that you see as
35:35young people disappear
35:37and as the population ages is that the
35:40landscape is made up of isolated old
35:43women
35:44who no one cares about. Right. A dismal
35:49destiny for all concerned.
35:52I I you know, I I'd love people,
35:54frankly, to watch the documentary to
35:55really sense this because, you know,
35:58there's one scene there, and it's it is
36:00harrowing, but uh
36:02to put it in simple terms, there's an
36:0480-year-old woman who has no family.
36:07Mhm.
36:08Who's contemplating suicide. Mhm.
36:11Because she's nothing to live for, no
36:13one to live for, and no one to
36:14communicate I thought she should move to
36:15Canada. We have a nice medically
36:17assisted death program here that's, I
36:20think, accounting for something like 3
36:22to 5% of all deaths now. So, you know.
36:25Yeah. There's a solution for everyone to
36:27contemplate. Yeah, I Well, I just worry
36:29there was a Japanese professor who came
36:31out the other day, week ago, suggesting
36:33that it would be
36:35morally appropriate for the older people
36:37in Japan to consider suicide as a route
36:38out because they're a burden to the
36:41they're a burden to society.
36:43Yeah. And now he's backtracking saying
36:45he didn't really mean that. But, but
36:46it's dangerous once you start to put
36:48that out there because there are people,
36:51you know, I I remember a conversation
36:52with a young woman in Japan, and
36:56talking about her future. And I did that
36:58with a lot of people, over 230 people I
37:00interviewed in 24 countries.
37:03And she mentioned that her grandmother
37:06was living with her family.
37:08Mhm. Mhm. But, she mentioned the burden
37:10of her grandmother to the family.
37:13And she came out with a point that I
37:15guess many might be thinking when you're
37:17that age, why is she still here?
37:20And when you hear that, you know, and
37:23then you meet
37:25people who are that age, who I think
37:28have still so much to give to society.
37:30They're just excluded from it. They're
37:31not Well, it's hard if they're not
37:33integrated in
37:34Well, sometimes it's hard if they are
37:36integrated into a family, but it's
37:37definitely harder if they're not. It's
37:39also the case that a lot of people who
37:41contemplate suicide
37:43do that not so much because they're
37:46specifically suffering, although that
37:48can certainly be a contributing factor,
37:49but because they do believe that they
37:52are fundamentally best construed as a
37:55burden, and that the world, including
37:57the people around them, would be better
37:58off if they disappeared.
38:00So, that's a that's a very sad uh
38:03what would you say, realm to inhabit in
38:05your misery and isolation. So, can can
38:09we can we walk through the structure of
38:11the documentary?
38:12Yes, of course. Yeah. So, it's just so
38:14everyone listening is reminded, it's
38:16called the name of the documentary is
38:18Birth Gap. And so, let's walk through
38:20the structure of it.
38:22The
38:23First of all, the title Birth Gap I I
38:25have to just explain why it's called
38:26Birth Gap. What is a birth gap?
38:29To me, it's Well, I define it as the gap
38:31between the number of old people to
38:33support in a society and births.
38:35So, it's it's an indication of, frankly,
38:39a measure that that we're not taking
38:40account of today. What is that ratio?
38:43So, to me,
38:45to be very honest with you, you know,
38:47whether we hit 9 billion or maybe 10,
38:52it's it's trivial. You know, it's going
38:54to happen. It's going to be in that
38:55ballpark. Whether we like it or not,
38:58that's going to happen. Yeah. And
39:01what actually matters is the age
39:03structure. So, Birth Gap, the title of
39:05the movie, that's where it comes from.
39:07Um before I went on this journey,
39:09chapter one
39:11is me literally going with an iPad,
39:14showing people data.
39:16We started in Italy, we Switzerland, we
39:18went to Japan, and just started talk to
39:21people about what's happening in their
39:22own societies. So, how did you move into
39:26the realm of documentary filmmaking?
39:28Well,
39:30I have to thank my my second son, Adam,
39:32for that because my idea at this point,
39:34I mean, I'm not a filmmaker.
39:36Certainly wasn't then.
39:39My thought was this is a big problem. I
39:42can write a book about this. I thought
39:44just about I have the ability to write
39:46to explain this.
39:48And what I wanted to do cuz there's
39:50other books out there was come up with a
39:51new way to help visualize this problem.
39:55And to use the book to kind of
39:56communicate. And I felt well maps, no
39:58one's really come up with a structure of
40:00a map.
40:01And
40:03in doing this
40:04I was explaining to my son Adam and he
40:06um
40:07said dad no one our age, his age, reads
40:10books anymore. We all watch
40:11documentaries. Right. Right. I don't
40:13know.
40:13Or listen to them. Or listen to them.
40:15Yeah. And for me, you know, well that's
40:18not me. There's no way I could possibly
40:19do that. And then by chance a friend of
40:22a friend was a former videographer news
40:25anchor for
40:26a Washington D.C.
40:29news network. Um but was going out on
40:31her own. And long story short, we
40:34thought well okay, let's see if we can
40:35make this work on a broad her along for
40:382 weeks to film the first interviews
40:40thinking if nothing else this is going
40:41to be an archive Right.
40:43for my own research.
40:44Right. Right. Right.
40:45Um save me note taking while I'm
40:48listening to all of these people. And as
40:50we got into it
40:51the personal stories opened up of people
40:54who you could see them contemplating the
40:57future of their lives. Like one
40:59springs to mind a young elementary
41:01school teacher in Switzerland. 30 years
41:03old, a young man. And
41:07when we walked through with him the
41:08future of elementary schools in
41:10Switzerland
41:12you could see the process in his mind
41:14realizing
41:15we're not going to need anywhere near
41:17the number of elementary school teachers
41:19that we have now. And what that might
41:21mean for him.
41:23Um so the documentary starts literally
41:25with me asking people in countries, why
41:27is this happening? Mhm. And um
41:31frankly, you know, I I was hoping
41:35you know, in this entire project I was
41:37expecting at some point to sit down and
41:39do some form of regressive model. You
41:41know, to find a correlation between
41:43something that would link uh these small
41:46dragons, these
41:48uh you know,
41:49uh
41:50falling birth rates in Japan, Germany,
41:52and Italy because they were happening at
41:54the same time and they were spreading.
41:56I never got to that point and I'm very
41:58grateful I didn't because I probably
41:59would have find found something like,
42:01you know, ice cream sales you know,
42:03happened at the same time and I
42:05some spurious thing would have come up.
42:06It's very hard to to identify the Well,
42:10it seems obvious that I mean one of the
42:12causes, the distal causes, I would say
42:15clearly is the promotion
42:18of the birth control pill. But even that
42:21is a
42:22somewhat shallow answer because
42:24there's a very specific set of social
42:27and economic
42:29realities, zeitgeist, that even made the
42:32invention and distribution and
42:34acceptance of the birth control
42:36possible. Right? You had to have the
42:38psychological stage set for the
42:42acceptance of that technology, the
42:43demand for that technology before it
42:45could be developed or implemented. And
42:47so
42:48well, so okay. So you you started the
42:51documentary. You're in chapter one.
42:52You're starting to ask people what's
42:54going on. What are they telling you?
42:56Yeah, well no one had a clear answer.
42:58And that, you know, maybe that was
42:59overly simplistic. But what I was trying
43:01to do is find some common thread.
43:05But let me just if I can talk about
43:08contraceptives because it's a wonderful
43:11counter example.
43:13The contraceptive pill was not legalized
43:15in Japan until 1990.
43:18Mhm.
43:19And
43:20it was only legalized because Viagra was
43:23legalized. And at that point women said
43:25wait, you've been blocking
43:27the contraceptive pill and now you're
43:29allowing Viagra. And at that point it
43:30was made available.
43:31the precipitous decline in birth rate
43:33from '73. You had an increase in mass
43:37abortions.
43:38So this was a societal issue Right.
43:41Right. So okay. So that shows that it's
43:43something deeper than the Something
43:44deeper. And also if you look at other
43:46countries, particularly UK at the time,
43:49France too, the US where you also had
43:52access to the contraceptive pill, you
43:53were not seeing falling birth rates.
43:56And then a lot of people
43:58would say well it's obvious it was
43:59industrialization. It was
44:02something to do with urbanization. But
44:05the correlations aren't there. If you
44:07look at well why did this only happen in
44:10those three countries? And the answer
44:11comes back to that. I'd love people to
44:13see it unfold in the documentary. But
44:15it's a sudden increase in this unplanned
44:20involuntary childlessness happened in
44:21Germany, Italy, those countries at the
44:23same time.
44:24Well, it's definitely the case that as
44:26women become more educated they have
44:28fewer children.
44:30And that that's now
44:33the precise causal pathway there isn't
44:37obvious. One simple
44:40suggestion would be that
44:43it is a matter of accidental delay. I
44:45mean, I have seen this in my daughter,
44:47you know, my daughter although she had
44:49terrible health problems and that
44:50complicated your life a lot. She had
44:52initially thought that she might want to
44:54go be a physician. But that's like 12
44:57years. And she was also very oriented
45:01towards having children.
45:02Um and she's managed to have one child
45:05despite her health problems. But
45:08that desire to pursue an intense
45:11educational pathway does exist in
45:13conflict certainly with an early start
45:15to
45:17to family development.
45:19If you presume that that doesn't matter
45:21because you've got time, you're not
45:22going to find out that isn't true for
45:2510 years in your own life and maybe the
45:26culture won't find out that's true for
45:28like 30 years, you know? I mean we still
45:30tell young young women who are 19 huh
45:34I made a comment
45:36on that was clipped on an Instagram reel
45:38by someone
45:40about the fact that we always lie to
45:41young women about what's going to be
45:42important in their lives. We tell them
45:44it's going to be all career. Said, you
45:46know, I've
45:47worked in female dominated industries my
45:49whole life. And what I've observed is
45:53among men and women alike that
45:55it's a very rare person for whom career
45:57is the most important thing in their
45:59life even if they're men, although it's
46:02true for more men, it's true for
46:04virtually no women by the time they hit
46:0630. And the amount of vitriol that
46:09comment generated was unparalleled. And
46:11that's something cuz I've had plenty of
46:13vitriol generated from things I said.
46:16But that wasn't it was all young women,
46:18you know, talking about how some old
46:20white guy like me had no right to tell
46:22young women what to do with their bodies
46:24which I most certainly was not. But
46:27but it is
46:30you can see a simple pathway there,
46:32right? It's like, well, we have this
46:34avenue where we can pursue our career
46:36and our education and everything else we
46:38want. And then we'll be able to solve
46:40the problem of having a family. The
46:42problem with that is
46:44well, it's hard enough to find a mate
46:45when you're 23, 24. By the time you're
46:4930 it's even more difficult. And by the
46:51time you're 35 it's starting to become
46:53well nigh impossible to find a mate and
46:55get pregnant and have a family
46:56especially if you're going to have more
46:57than one kid. And so
47:00well, so there's a there's a direct
47:02conflict there
47:04between
47:05the avenues that are open to women and
47:08they the need to
47:10to strike while the iron's hot on the
47:12reproductive front. Nobody really knows
47:14how to reconcile that. I mean it's all
47:16odd because women will live about 7
47:18years longer than men. So it could be
47:20the case that
47:22the societal norm could be that women
47:24have their children when they're quite
47:26young and then go back to school in
47:27their 30s. That would actually work out.
47:29In principle that could work out quite
47:31nicely. But we don't have the norms in
47:33place to make that a possibility. But we
47:35have to start addressing exactly this
47:37because if we don't you know, I I
47:40to me I can't I mean
47:42there's so many ideas today about
47:44reproductive technology that are
47:46overstated.
47:47The idea is freeze your eggs and
47:50age 40, you know. If you have a partner
47:52and if you still have energy that you
47:54might then Yes, if everything goes well.
47:57Yeah, if everything goes well.
47:58the money. Yeah, and you And the
47:59emotional stamina.
48:00All of that.
48:01So part of what I'm um
48:04hoping to do through the documentary and
48:06my work after this is to just increase
48:09awareness particularly to women. But you
48:12need a man as well. So it's both that
48:14the fertility window is much shorter.
48:17And the ability to have children gets
48:20harder and harder and harder. It's not
48:21just about getting pregnant. It's about
48:23being able to deliver, you know, and
48:25being able to see the pregnancy through
48:26to
48:27which gets exponentially harder very
48:30very quickly. I should mention I
48:31interviewed five fertility doctors for
48:33the documentary itself.
48:36And you know
48:38each one of them wanted to open up about
48:40the challenges because normally they
48:42have to sell their services.
48:43Right. Normally have to tell people
48:45think positively, here's
48:48what we've done for other people, here's
48:49what we think we can do for you. What
48:51they were telling to me openly and
48:53frankly getting quite emotional about it
48:55on a couple of occasions was it's
48:57terrible because so often it doesn't
49:00work out. Well, one in three couples by
49:02the age of 30 have
49:04pronounced fertility problems defined as
49:07inability to conceive within a year of
49:10embarking on the endeavor consciously.
49:13Right? So that's one in three. And of
49:15course it just gets worse and worse as
49:17as age creeps up. And 30's not that old.
49:20And it does mean that women have a damn
49:22tight window.
49:23It's it's it's 13 years let's say by the
49:26time you're 17 by some standards you're
49:29mature enough to consider reproduction.
49:3317 or 18 and
49:35on the on the extreme end, and
49:37and then well, 35 is the other end of
49:40that distribution, and
49:43you're playing with fire
49:45by the time you're delaying, especially
49:47if you don't have a partner, by the time
49:48you're delaying till till 35, especially
49:50if you want three children, you know,
49:52Yeah, well, right. I'm thinking just
49:53one, you know, and and it's also the
49:56case, I think if you're a reasonable
49:58observer of human nature, you see that
50:00people have
50:02three sources of fundamental
50:04gratification in their lives. One is
50:07their the pursuit of their own
50:09interests, including career and job. One
50:12is their intimate relationship, and the
50:14other is their family, and
50:15obviously, the intimate relationship and
50:17the family are very integrally
50:19associated, and if you miss out on one
50:22of those, you may be able to fill it by
50:25exceptional ability
50:28in the remaining domains, but for most
50:30people, not only is that highly
50:32unlikely, it's also highly undesirable.
50:35So, the to to come come because to take
50:38the point as well, I here here am I, you
50:40know, an older
50:42male talking about things that are very
50:44sensitive to women, but
50:46there there are a lot of women out there
50:48saying the exact same thing, and you
50:50know, that there was one this morning I
50:51got got an email from Melanie Notkin,
50:53who's written a book called Otherhood,
50:56um who herself has no children, and she
50:58put it succinctly that
51:00in her words, women are going through
51:02the education path, the career path, to
51:05try to ultimately fall in love and have
51:07a family.
51:07Yeah, right. It's all linked. Yeah,
51:09well, I think it's the same for men. I
51:11think so, too.
51:12half the reason, half, it's more than
51:14that, half the reason that men strive
51:17for career success is to impress women
51:19and attract them. In fact, it's higher
51:21than that. So, but
51:23but maybe that point is at the heart of
51:24the problem we have today, because
51:26today, if you look at who's at college,
51:29and who's actually earning more right
51:31now, I read this morning women in in
51:33cities in the US are earning more than
51:35men. I don't know if that's right or
51:36wrong, but
51:37you have this situation.
51:38right, under 30. Yeah. So, in US
51:40colleges right now, there I believe it's
51:429.5 million women, and around 6.57
51:46million men.
51:47Well, and the women start dropping out
51:48of college, by the way, when the when
51:50they when the when they start to
51:51outnumber the men two to one.
51:53Right, cuz a lot of the reason people go
51:55to college, you know, you got to ask
51:56yourself, what's college for? It's like,
51:58well, it's get educated, to go to
52:00lectures, to be accredited. It's like,
52:02no, probably not. Probably the reason
52:04people go to college is to find a mate,
52:07and there's a selected pool there, and
52:09you have a decent chance of finding
52:10someone, you know, of approximately your
52:13ability, and and forward-looking vision,
52:16let's say, and the reason people are
52:18willing to shell out between 150 and
52:20250,000 dollars for four years is in no
52:23small part so that they can find a mate.
52:26Well, if you demolish that by well,
52:28radically decreasing the number of
52:30available men, for example, you're just
52:32going to blow the whole enterprise out
52:33of the water, which is already what's
52:34happening. And and and
52:36absolutely.
52:38And this is perhaps my greatest concern,
52:40because I think if we make young people
52:43more aware of fertility the fertility
52:45window, they might want to have children
52:48earlier. If we link that to in some way
52:49enabling careers later in life, what has
52:52to fundamentally happen for this to
52:54work, we might still be left with a
52:56situation where women who the term is
53:00hypergyny, where people women typically
53:02want to marry someone at least as
53:03educated, at least as successful, taller
53:06than they are. But if we're in the
53:07situation where there's so few men
53:09getting the same level of education, we
53:11might be left with this imbalance. Oh,
53:13yeah, that's that's already happening,
53:15clearly. Yeah, it's very difficult for
53:17women to overcome the hypergamous
53:19instinct, because they're trying to
53:21redress the imbalance in terms of
53:22reproductive responsibility. There's no
53:24evidence at all. You get a little bit of
53:26flattening of hypergamy in extremely
53:29egalitarian societies like Scandinavia,
53:31but it certainly doesn't disappear. And
53:34so, that's that's built in at a very
53:36fundamental biological level, and I
53:38don't think any casual tinkering on the
53:40anthropological or sociological front is
53:42going to shift that a bit. So, that's a
53:44big problem. It's a big problem. So,
53:46it's also the case, too, that if
53:48marriages where the wife out-earns or
53:52out-statuses the husband tend to be
53:55comparatively unstable and violent. So,
53:58you know, now you can lay that at the
53:59feet of the man, if you're inclined to,
54:01but it
54:02but in some sense, it doesn't really
54:04matter, because that's the way it is.
54:06And so, the women are unhappy, and the
54:08men are threatened, and that's just not
54:10a good that's not a good
54:12recipe for marital stability. So,
54:15everyone loses in this situation, and so
54:17let's talk about another country,
54:19Thailand. So, you you would think it if
54:22you ask me how many women are in college
54:25in Thailand, I might have said 15%. I've
54:27no idea, but
54:28it's 55%.
54:3140% of men are in college in Thailand.
54:33So, you've a similar shift even there.
54:35And what's happening to to the men the
54:37documentary we we went to a to a temple
54:39where monks are trying to rehabilitate
54:41young men who fell out of college or
54:44didn't go to college, moreover. What
54:46they did at 16-18 was turn to alcohol.
54:49Was turn to substances. Yeah. To drive
54:52taxis, because they could get some cash,
54:54because there was no point trying to
54:55compete with the women. Yeah. So, you
54:58have these deep societal problems, but
55:00yet they are I want to be really clear
55:01that the the answer to this is not
55:04um in some way preventing women from
55:07getting an education. That's just not
55:09going to function. You know, how are you
55:10going to do that? Well, you lose access
55:13to half the world's brainpower.
55:14Of course. Of course. And you know,
55:17there are people who think that. There
55:18are people who I think want to use this
55:20conversation to promote that, because
55:23I've seen comments along
55:24those lines too often. This has to be
55:27therefore partly about
55:30men in some way asking, why are men
55:33excluded from society? Why are they
55:34becoming incels? Or in Japan, they call
55:36them otaku, you know, the young man who
55:38stays home playing his gaming systems,
55:41and may or
55:42See, I don't I don't think that's the
55:43right question. I think we almost always
55:45ask questions backwards.
55:48Why people become useless? That's not a
55:51mystery.
55:52It's easy to be useless. The mystery is
55:55why that doesn't happen to everyone all
55:57the time, and the answer is because we
55:59build up extremely careful
56:01structures of societal discipline to
56:05encourage people to adopt mature,
56:07long-term responsibility, and to reward
56:10them judiciously for doing so. And when
56:13you allow those structures to collapse
56:15or work consciously to undermine them,
56:17then you get default to the default, and
56:21the default is useless. It's short-term
56:24gratification. And so, you never need an
56:26explanation for that. It's like, well,
56:28why do people turn to short-term
56:29gratification? Cuz it's gratifying in
56:32the short term. It's easy. Now, you
56:35know, getting men encouraging men to
56:38shed their Peter Pan persona,
56:42juvenile Peter Pan persona, and to adopt
56:44mature responsibility,
56:46that's a real challenge for every
56:49society, and we are increasingly not
56:53only failing at doing that, but
56:55punishing young men for developing
56:58say, the virtues of ambition and and
57:01well, and even sexual desire, for that
57:03matter.
57:04So,
57:06All right, so, chapter one, you went
57:08interviewed a lot of variety of people,
57:10and and and and just started to flesh
57:12out the territory. How does it unfold
57:13after that?
57:14Well,
57:16it comes to the point where I realize
57:18there's a moment I realize there is a
57:20connection across all of these
57:21countries, and it's to do with this
57:25structure of the family. You know, you
57:27would expect,
57:29if you're having fewer children, you
57:31know, and some of these organizations
57:33encourage people to have fewer children,
57:35have fewer smaller families, you would
57:37expect if they had had any success, or
57:40if people were doing it, you would have
57:41a lot of families with only one child.
57:44But actually, singletons are actually
57:46really quite rare in life, and they're
57:48no more common today than they were
57:5030-40 years ago.
57:52So, I started to discover
57:55You see people with zero children.
57:57Right. That's the only How do you get a
57:59fertility rate of less than replacement
58:01level? It's either the number of people
58:03having one child or none.
58:05So, connecting that allowed me to start
58:07ask more questions about childlessness,
58:09and about aspirations in life, and that
58:11really moved
58:12I see. So, it's not a matter of small
58:14families. It's a matter of no family.
58:16That's right.
58:16And then it's a matter of involuntary no
58:18family. Okay, got it.
58:20And that's why I didn't end up doing any
58:22regressive analysis, because it's it's
58:24it's a counting problem. You know, we
58:25were counting this the wrong way. You
58:27just simply need to look at
58:29the number of people having one child,
58:31two, three, four, and you find this gap,
58:33and you find that gap getting wider and
58:34wider, and they effectively explain
58:37effectively explains the entire fall
58:41below replacement level, but there's
58:42really
58:42I see. There's really good news here,
58:44too.
58:46The best news in all of this is that if
58:49the majority or significant number of
58:51those people who are involuntarily
58:53unplanned childlessness, as I call it,
58:55if they were having a family, they're
58:57not going to have one.
58:59They're going to have in the same
59:00proportions, one, two, three, four, five
59:02plus. It's all about having that first
59:04child. Mhm. So, the documentary
59:07Right, well, the pre Look, the second
59:08child is pretty straightforward after
59:10the first, and once you've got two,
59:12you're already completely screwed, so
59:13you might as well have three. Well,
59:16that's
59:16Then the kids start to take care of each
59:17other, by the way, too, which is
59:19something that parents don't understand,
59:20is that you know, you don't if you have
59:22eight kids, it's not like you're taking
59:25care of eight kids. The kids start to
59:27form their own society and take care of
59:28each other. Yeah, and there's great
59:30examples of that in the documentary. Or
59:32at least in my journey of you saw in
59:34Italy this mother of four children
59:36saying she educated her eldest daughter,
59:38taught her how to read, she taught the
59:40next daughter, who taught the next one,
59:41next one, and so so that's certainly
59:43true. But the good news is here because
59:45family structure is really locked in.
59:48Once of course,
59:50you know, if you go to some countries as
59:52I did in Africa, you got high birth
59:53rates because poverty.
59:55Somewhat access to reproductive, you
59:58know, services, but mostly that's
59:59covered. Not mostly so we got poverty
1:00:02that people in Africa need children to
1:00:04go and get the water, but a lot of good
1:00:07things are being done on that that
1:00:09poverty level is coming way down and
1:00:11we're seeing in Africa on average in
1:00:13sub-Saharan Africa just to cover that
1:00:15briefly.
1:00:17The average woman is having one less
1:00:19child every 15 years. It's around four
1:00:22now. So in around 30 years time we're
1:00:24looking at Africa starting to get down
1:00:25towards replacement level. It's on the
1:00:27same path.
1:00:28Yeah.
1:00:28That's the reason we're saying based on
1:00:30the data right now. So once you get to
1:00:32that point and this is what I think the
1:00:34world of demography really skipped over
1:00:40is that it's not the same
1:00:42um
1:00:44form it's not like you look at your
1:00:47family going from four to two and then
1:00:48down to 1.5 and say this is the same
1:00:50trend. It's not. When you get to
1:00:53replacement level, when women are having
1:00:55pretty much the family size that they
1:00:56actually want
1:00:58childlessness kicks in and it's that
1:01:00that pulls it down a different level. So
1:01:02the next part of the documentary then
1:01:04going to people, finding out what their
1:01:06young people with their aspirations for
1:01:07the future was then also talking to men
1:01:11and women who hadn't had children, why
1:01:14they didn't, and what it meant to their
1:01:16lives. And that that gets quite So what
1:01:18do you find on the aspirational front
1:01:20and Oh, you know,
1:01:22the the majority the significant
1:01:24majority of people young people expect
1:01:27or want to have children someday.
1:01:29I do have some concerns but I've no
1:01:31evidence but it's just a natural concern
1:01:33that what we're seeing in the world
1:01:34today
1:01:36perhaps is over focus on the environment
1:01:38is through fear Yeah. persuading people
1:01:41more than you would normally expect to
1:01:44not think of children but I have hope
1:01:45around that because it's this internal
1:01:47desire. We really don't see it kicking
1:01:49in.
1:01:49not so much fear that's interfering on
1:01:51that front. I think it's actually
1:01:53demoralization.
1:01:55Right? Because
1:01:58this is especially true for let's say
1:02:00decent young men who would like to be
1:02:02moral actors. If they're told
1:02:05continually, which they are, that all of
1:02:08their male pattern behaviors for example
1:02:10in school are disruptive
1:02:12and that their male ambition is nothing
1:02:15but a reflection of the tyrannical
1:02:17patriarchy and that any interest they
1:02:19might evoke
1:02:21they might evince towards women is part
1:02:24of the predatory pattern of male
1:02:26behavior then
1:02:28it demoralizes them. Literally it makes
1:02:30them feel like their natural proclivity
1:02:33for ambitious striving let's say and
1:02:36sexual desire is immoral. And the people
1:02:41you hurt the most by doing that are the
1:02:44people who have a moral heart because
1:02:47the ones who don't don't care and the
1:02:49ones who do
1:02:50I had a friend
1:02:51uh his name was Rob Dernan
1:02:54and uh
1:02:55he was an early he fell prey to this
1:02:58anti-male narrative very early in his
1:03:00life. This is like 40 years ago, 50
1:03:02years ago and he was definitely guilty
1:03:05about
1:03:06his role as a patriarchal male let's say
1:03:09and he did everything he could to adopt
1:03:11a kind of nihilistic Buddhism and just
1:03:14take himself out of life.
1:03:16You know, he thought everything he did
1:03:18was and everything that men did in
1:03:19general was just part of the destructive
1:03:21force that was ravaging the world and he
1:03:24eventually committed suicide. It was
1:03:26awful. I watched that unfold for 50
1:03:29years.
1:03:30You know, and I would say
1:03:32you know, he had his flaws like everyone
1:03:34does and
1:03:36in that self-destructive pathway there
1:03:38can be a fair bit of
1:03:40let's say unconscious self-serving but
1:03:43fundamentally he
1:03:47was overwhelmed by existential guilt in
1:03:49relationship to being male and that
1:03:51eventually
1:03:53convinced him to do himself in.
1:03:55It was quite the
1:03:57catastrophic voyage all things
1:03:59considered and I
1:04:01I know perfectly well that that's not
1:04:03rare because I've talked to thousands of
1:04:06young men who have been demoralized to
1:04:08the point of suicide and that story is
1:04:13I'd say that's the archetypal story.
1:04:15So it's not fear exactly. It's
1:04:20it's an assault it's a moral assault
1:04:23and it's un
1:04:26conscionable. It's an unconscionable
1:04:28moral assault. If your
1:04:30solution to saving the planet is that
1:04:32you have to demoralize young people so
1:04:34badly that they even abstain from sex
1:04:38then there's seriously something wrong
1:04:40with your world view
1:04:42and maybe we can call out Paul Ehrlich
1:04:44on that front for example.
1:04:46So
1:04:47all right, so now you're starting to
1:04:49talk to people about their aspirations.
1:04:51You're finding out that young people do
1:04:52want to have family and that doesn't
1:04:55mean one child, it means a family and
1:04:58but they're not prioritizing that
1:04:59properly or they're they're they're What
1:05:02happens to the people who end up without
1:05:04children? Well, there's no path to it.
1:05:06Right. The path is education, education,
1:05:10education usually. Not for everyone but
1:05:13And then debt.
1:05:14Sure, debt.
1:05:15Yeah. Um
1:05:17but that's not the driver because
1:05:18education in some countries is much
1:05:21lower than the US. So some people will
1:05:23say oh debt's a problem. It's not a good
1:05:25thing. It can't help.
1:05:27Um and then there's career, career,
1:05:29career and no
1:05:30Right. Is guiding people to say actually
1:05:33there is a moment in time when you
1:05:35really need to prioritize this.
1:05:37So the
1:05:38we've left young people
1:05:41to find a path on their own having sent
1:05:44them off as parents as
1:05:47as a as as societies
1:05:50to find a path in life that will get
1:05:53them to where they want to be which
1:05:54everyone I think implicitly assumes for
1:05:57most people not all will involve love
1:06:00and will involve children.
1:06:02Yeah.
1:06:03But actually what's happening is when
1:06:05young people are getting to that point
1:06:07they're often in their 30s because no
1:06:10one really is is is thinking
1:06:13that 30 is too late at all.
1:06:16Yeah.
1:06:17But
1:06:18I mean just another statistic if you
1:06:20look across
1:06:21every country we have data on
1:06:24the probability of becoming a parent a
1:06:27mother rather it's it's on women again.
1:06:29The probability of
1:06:31someone without children age 30 ever
1:06:33becoming a parent at most at most is
1:06:3650%.
1:06:38Really?
1:06:38That's just the outcome.
1:06:40So by 30 By 30. If you haven't had your
1:06:43first child by 30 in most countries it's
1:06:46lower than that.
1:06:48And and and why is that? Is it is it do
1:06:51you know I mean there must be multiple
1:06:53causes. Part of that would be
1:06:55partnerlessness, part of that would be
1:06:57fertility difficulties.
1:06:59Um what are the major contributors to
1:07:01that?
1:07:01The major contributor is not finding a
1:07:04partner at the right time. Yeah, right.
1:07:06Or when you do find a partner it's
1:07:08you've challenges. Yeah, but the other
1:07:10thing that that is painful to point out
1:07:13to women is that 30-year-old women
1:07:16aren't competing with other 30-year-old
1:07:18women for partners. They're competing
1:07:21with 18- to 35-year-old women for
1:07:24partners and so all things considered
1:07:27if you're 30 and you're looking for a
1:07:30mate and you want children, you're
1:07:32putting an awful lot of pressure one way
1:07:34or another on your 30-year-old male
1:07:38target because his option is to find a
1:07:4025-year-old woman
1:07:43who all things being equal
1:07:45is of the same value as you are except
1:07:48that you're 30 and that means his time
1:07:50frame is now shortened in a manner that
1:07:53wouldn't be the case if he married
1:07:54someone younger. Plus
1:07:57women tend to prefer men who are
1:07:59slightly older than them. Well, not
1:08:01exactly it's actually four years is the
1:08:03average internationally. And so
1:08:06the optimal target for a 25-year-old
1:08:08woman is a 29-year-old man. And so and
1:08:12it's it's it's it's rude to point such
1:08:15things out but mate selection is a very
1:08:18difficult problem and
1:08:21it's also exacerbated by the fact that
1:08:23this is also a terrible thing is that
1:08:25because of this hypergamous tendency of
1:08:27women as women are I knew a lot of very
1:08:31successful young women
1:08:34who worked in the legal field and they
1:08:36were often stars in their firms.
1:08:40Extremely able people and generally they
1:08:43were very vivacious, attractive
1:08:48um intelligent, educated
1:08:51and intimidating as hell to men.
1:08:55And not that interested in someone who
1:08:57didn't have the same ability and status
1:08:59they did which was almost no one. So
1:09:02then they're 30, they're extremely
1:09:04choosy and you could say they have a
1:09:05right to be but the problem is well,
1:09:08yeah, you're 30 and you're extremely
1:09:11choosy and your pool of available
1:09:13candidates has basically shrunk to none
1:09:16because first of all a lot of men are
1:09:17already snapped up by the time they're
1:09:1930 so there's that reduction right off
1:09:21the bat and then if you're going to
1:09:22reject eight women rate 80% of men on
1:09:26dating sites as below average in
1:09:28attractiveness and that's just the
1:09:29baseline, right? For the women who are
1:09:32high status and high attraction
1:09:34attractive, let's say, very able on the
1:09:37career front. And
1:09:39the men they're going to regard as
1:09:42acceptable, that's a vanishingly small
1:09:44proportion of men. So that's part of the
1:09:47reason why that they they what would you
1:09:49say?
1:09:50Select themselves out of the mating
1:09:52market. That's that's brutal, man. It's
1:09:54brutal. And I watched women struggle
1:09:56with that like mad and certainly had no
1:09:58shortage of sympathy for them, but
1:10:03the mere fact that you're sympathetic to
1:10:05someone doesn't mean that the brute
1:10:06reality that confronts them has been
1:10:08altered in any manner whatsoever. A
1:10:10couple of points on that. So I agree
1:10:12with all of that. Um
1:10:14what I see and I
1:10:17I get to
1:10:18often once or twice a week have a coffee
1:10:21with a young person who has reached out
1:10:24and
1:10:25you you know when you talk about the
1:10:26documentary or friends or friends or
1:10:27friends, someone wants to talk to you
1:10:29about something personal. Uh-huh. And a
1:10:31common
1:10:33um conversation would be
1:10:36more women more than men
1:10:39they've been dating someone for 5 years.
1:10:40Yeah.
1:10:42They think they might want to Well,
1:10:44different scenarios. They think they
1:10:45might want to settle down and have a
1:10:46child with them, but they've never
1:10:47talked about it. Right, it's only been 5
1:10:50years. Right. Or they've they've already
1:10:53figured out they probably don't want a
1:10:55child with this person. What should they
1:10:57do?
1:10:58Or worst of all, they've just broken up
1:11:01because they've been dating this guy for
1:11:027 years and he's not got another
1:11:04girlfriend who's 25. Yeah.
1:11:07And she's pregnant. Yeah.
1:11:09Oh my god, yeah, that's a brutal
1:11:11situation. Brutal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But
1:11:13those are real life stories.
1:11:14that's very yeah, all that's very
1:11:16common.
1:11:17So the idea of dating someone for an
1:11:19extended period I mean my children are
1:11:21now, you know, you know, 27 to 20, you
1:11:24know, they're getting to the point where
1:11:26you know, to me I'm thinking of my own
1:11:28children when I think of these young
1:11:30people and the the advice I I I would
1:11:32give them and
1:11:33frankly, the advice I usually give and
1:11:36I'm not a clinical psychologist, but um
1:11:38you know, people are asking for advice
1:11:40and I've talked to a lot of people is if
1:11:42you're unsure
1:11:44break up because you know what? If it
1:11:45feels wrong after you've broken up,
1:11:48you'll get back together quickly.
1:11:50And I would say more
1:11:51The other advice too is get the hell out
1:11:53of it. You think you have a long time to
1:11:55decide. Well, here's here's a way of
1:11:56thinking about it.
1:11:58If you're reasonably attractive
1:12:02you'll be able to try out five people.
1:12:05That's it.
1:12:07That's what you've got. You know, cuz it
1:12:09takes a while to find someone and then
1:12:11it takes a while to get to know them.
1:12:13And
1:12:14finding them and getting to know them,
1:12:16that's probably something approximating
1:12:191 to 2 years. And if you do that five
1:12:21times, that's 10 years and that's your
1:12:23fertility window. And so you think you
1:12:26have time?
1:12:27But that's a delusion and you think the
1:12:29right person will come around. Well,
1:12:31first of all, that's a delusion to begin
1:12:32with because
1:12:35you build a relationship, you don't find
1:12:37one. Now, you should have some sense
1:12:38when you pick your partner
1:12:40to the degree that you have the luxury
1:12:42to have some sense.
1:12:43But the notion that
1:12:46the person right for you will come along
1:12:48at the right time, that's just that's
1:12:50just not the case. That isn't how things
1:12:52work at all. And if you know that even
1:12:54if you're very attractive that the list
1:12:57of true candidates is probably five and
1:13:00for some people
1:13:02it's one or zero.
1:13:05And so that's
1:13:08it's hard, eh, cuz when you're 17 or 16,
1:13:10especially if you're attractive and I
1:13:12would say this is especially true if
1:13:13you're an attractive young woman, you
1:13:15have no shortage, generally speaking, of
1:13:17people who are interested in you. And it
1:13:19looks like that's sort of a landscape of
1:13:21plenty, but that doesn't mitigate
1:13:24against the fact that it still takes a
1:13:26long time to get to know people and to
1:13:28find the right person.
1:13:30Now, men have it a bit easier on that
1:13:31front, I would say, because
1:13:33I had one friend who didn't have a child
1:13:35till he was 55.
1:13:37You know, that can always be the case
1:13:39for men and and so the pressure isn't on
1:13:41in the same way.
1:13:42But even with men
1:13:45I can't I married my wife earlier, we
1:13:47would have more kids.
1:13:49You know, and that didn't happen.
1:13:51So and we got married comparatively
1:13:52early for our social class, say, and
1:13:55educational background.
1:13:58Okay, so now you're talking to people
1:13:59and you're finding out they want to have
1:14:01kids and then they find out that they
1:14:02don't get to, right? A little bit too
1:14:04late. And so where does the documentary
1:14:06go from there? So from from there we
1:14:08take it into the consequences.
1:14:10The consequences
1:14:12um
1:14:13well, they're partly personal
1:14:15um
1:14:16but partly economic. But everything
1:14:18ultimately is personal because
1:14:19everything ultimately comes back to, you
1:14:21know, whether it's
1:14:23you and your life and how you live and
1:14:25whether you're lonely or not. Yeah.
1:14:27Or how much the state can help you,
1:14:30particularly in your later years,
1:14:31through health care, through pensions,
1:14:33through your city providing basic
1:14:35services like water. It
1:14:37it all comes back together. So we
1:14:39explore a lot of those and by the way, I
1:14:42I sat down with I believe about a dozen
1:14:44experts, many professors, many uh
1:14:47you you you
1:14:48a priest, a a monk,
1:14:50uh people involved working with
1:14:51government health care programs around
1:14:53the world. So we hear these voices. And
1:14:56other than
1:14:58one organization, which happens to be
1:15:00the successor to what Paul Ehrlich set
1:15:03up. Um they were the only organization
1:15:06who took an optimistic view. Of course
1:15:07you would they would do that. Everybody
1:15:09else is negative. Everybody else is
1:15:11worried about the future consequences of
1:15:13this.
1:15:14Um and just by the way, I I should call
1:15:16this out. Ehrlich set up an
1:15:18organization,
1:15:20uh author of the population bomb, of
1:15:21course, called ZPG, which evolved into
1:15:24an
1:15:24Zero population growth. Yeah. It evolved
1:15:26into another organization that still has
1:15:29something like 30,000
1:15:31teachers who train other teachers who
1:15:34educate 4 million US high school
1:15:37kids every year.
1:15:40And they explain the population
1:15:42problems, usually in Africa, and their
1:15:44message is
1:15:46please think about this. Yeah, well,
1:15:48there's nothing there's nothing racist
1:15:49about the too many African narrative.
1:15:52Yeah. And when you teach someone like
1:15:55two and two is four, you don't say think
1:15:56about that. But when you say here's the
1:15:59problem in Africa and you say to a think
1:16:01about that, you're not really saying
1:16:03think about Africa, you're thinking
1:16:05about, you know, do you want to have
1:16:07kids or not? So
1:16:08that's covered in the documentary as
1:16:10well as as part of the narrative as to
1:16:12why we still have this viewpoint when
1:16:14frankly we should have known about this,
1:16:15you know, decades ago.
1:16:16Well, we can also look at the
1:16:19self-evident economic statistics
1:16:21demonstrating that since Paul Ehrlich
1:16:23and
1:16:25his population bomb and the Club of
1:16:27Rome, etc., these anti-population
1:16:29zealots started beating the drum back in
1:16:311965
1:16:33saying that we were all going to starve
1:16:35to death by the year 2000 when we'll
1:16:36have 4 billion people, God help us. And
1:16:40now we have eight. And the relationship
1:16:42between wealth growth and population has
1:16:45been extremely positive, not negative or
1:16:48flat. And everyone on the planet
1:16:50virtually is richer than well, than
1:16:52anyone had ever conceived of and it's
1:16:54clearly the case that we could manage
1:16:55this if we had half the will to do it.
1:16:58And so the data are in.
1:17:01One of the things I've really learned is
1:17:03that
1:17:04I believe the whole idea of natural
1:17:05resource, almost the whole idea of
1:17:07natural resources specious.
1:17:10In that
1:17:11human beings
1:17:12the wealth of the planet
1:17:15is dependent on
1:17:17the psychological health and the
1:17:19structures of governance that are put in
1:17:20place by people of goodwill and that if
1:17:22we organize ourselves properly and we
1:17:25aim up there's no real limit to
1:17:28abundance.
1:17:29And it's certainly not population
1:17:31dependent. We're not in a zero-sum game.
1:17:33We are not yeast in a Petri dish.
1:17:36We're not doomed to a Malthusian
1:17:38outcome.
1:17:39And the biologists who make that claim
1:17:41and say it's scientific are assuming
1:17:44that the yeast in the Petri dish model
1:17:46of human function is the appropriate
1:17:49biological model.
1:17:50And it's not. And the reason for that is
1:17:53because we can let our ideas die instead
1:17:55of us and we can learn and we can
1:17:56transform and we're very good at that.
1:17:59And
1:18:01there's no
1:18:02justification whatsoever
1:18:04for stating that it's a scientific fact
1:18:07that population increase is going to
1:18:09produce a Malthusian catastrophe. Now,
1:18:11it can in limited circumstances, but we
1:18:13are not yeast in a Petri dish. That's
1:18:15the wrong model.
1:18:17So
1:18:18and I can't disagree. I mean I'm a data
1:18:20analyst. I I'm only prepared to comment
1:18:23when I have done my own work or I've
1:18:25seen detailed work of others. I can't
1:18:27imagine how complicated
1:18:30it must be to model a planet. I mean,
1:18:32that's on a level beyond anything any,
1:18:36you know, rational statistician could do
1:18:38alone. It's models on top of models on
1:18:40top of models. Yeah, yeah. So where I
1:18:42It's a Tower of Babel. So where I come
1:18:44from is to to be honest with you, I
1:18:46don't know. But I do know that we are
1:18:49adaptive. I do know that we should
1:18:51prepare because to be honest with you,
1:18:53you know, green technologies sound like
1:18:56pretty cool things when you look at
1:18:57Teslas out there. They're not perfect,
1:18:59but they're
1:19:01Remember, I work with a lot of
1:19:02automotive clients, but what Elon has
1:19:04done for the industry, you know, is
1:19:05phenomenal. And
1:19:08if we come at this from a point of view
1:19:09of positivity, what can we do? And I
1:19:12look at my own kids and well, their
1:19:14generation, the malaise, they they the
1:19:16belief that the world is coming to an
1:19:17end. The world is not coming to an end
1:19:20anytime soon
1:19:21we precipitate it in that direction,
1:19:23which we seem to be striving to do with
1:19:25all diligence at the moment. Bring back
1:19:28to the
1:19:29the documentary at this point we we
1:19:31We come back to this point loneliness
1:19:33and meet people
1:19:35I mean there's a scene where I go to a
1:19:37crematorium in Germany.
1:19:39And I'm hoping to find out something
1:19:42about what it's like to
1:19:46bury people have no family. I just want
1:19:48I nearly got an interview
1:19:50uh directly with the director but he
1:19:52refused to meet me and I intermediary
1:19:54kind of sat down to explain why.
1:19:56And it's horrendous. And
1:19:59so this is off camera
1:20:01I got a
1:20:02long note recently with more information
1:20:05as to to what's happening. People with
1:20:07no family and care homes are being
1:20:10effectively mistreated malnourished.
1:20:11Yes. Tied to their beds for long periods
1:20:14of time.
1:20:15And
1:20:16we know this or it's known in this
1:20:18crematorium because
1:20:20the bodies that come are I guess white
1:20:23unmarked.
1:20:25And they weren't prepared to say it
1:20:26because they're fearful of the system.
1:20:28So
1:20:29you know that's someone should make a
1:20:30documentary about that alone but it
1:20:32tells you that the life of these people
1:20:36without family you know
1:20:38we can't see it because these people
1:20:40whether it be in a suburb in Japan or in
1:20:42Germany or anywhere else
1:20:44these people are spending their lives in
1:20:45their homes alone hidden from the world.
1:20:48So Well the thing is in our culture we
1:20:50only seem to be able to apprehend
1:20:53life until about 30. Like that's our
1:20:55vision. You know the vision is you're
1:20:57young you're full of promise you get
1:20:59educated you have your career and then
1:21:02you're 30. And what's happening? Well
1:21:04now you're successful. It's like okay
1:21:05but you got 60 years left there.
1:21:08What are you going to do with that?
1:21:11Well how long is your career going to
1:21:13run you? Well you know lots of people
1:21:16think about early retirement and that's
1:21:17particularly perhaps the case if you're
1:21:20successful economically. So let's say
1:21:22you retire at 50. Okay.
1:21:24Fair enough.
1:21:26You got 45 years left. What's your
1:21:28vision for that? Well now you're alone
1:21:30and you don't have a family you don't
1:21:31have a partner you don't have a career
1:21:33either. So uh
1:21:36what do you plan on to do? Exactly.
1:21:38What's your vision? And the answer is we
1:21:40don't have a vision for that. We don't
1:21:42have a vision for the expanse of our
1:21:43life.
1:21:44And so and that's an interesting thing
1:21:46in and of itself. I mean
1:21:48you know for a long time
1:21:50back in the 1860s
1:21:53people even in the West were struggling
1:21:55along on less than a dollar 50 a day in
1:21:57today's money and it's it's not like
1:21:59people had the luxury of developing a
1:22:02lifetime vision. They were sort of
1:22:04fending off one disaster disaster after
1:22:07another like people do now who live in
1:22:09absolute privation. There's about 800
1:22:11million people like that still on the
1:22:13planet.
1:22:14And then
1:22:15once you get a little bit wealthier a
1:22:17little more secure you can start
1:22:18thinking about the future and
1:22:20that's very very complicated and this
1:22:23luxurious wealth we have is new enough
1:22:25so that our capacity to develop a
1:22:28lifetime vision hasn't developed
1:22:30to a degree that's sophisticated enough
1:22:32to take that whole time span into
1:22:34account. But this vision of
1:22:37isolated death with no one around you
1:22:39that cares that's I wouldn't recommend
1:22:42that as
1:22:43your life from 70 to 95.
1:22:47It's pretty damn dismal. So
1:22:50Jordan It's going to be worse in less
1:22:54industrialized nations because you go to
1:22:56Brazil and it's professors there I met
1:22:58three of them.
1:23:00The phrase they used was we're getting
1:23:03old before we got rich in Brazil.
1:23:05Right. So they can't provide the
1:23:06infrastructure resources to the elderly
1:23:08on a level comparable to what we can. So
1:23:11the life of elderly people so I look at
1:23:15when I look at India with the birth rate
1:23:17now below replacement level growing
1:23:19population because it's so young people
1:23:21are living longer which is a good thing.
1:23:23But I'm looking at future for India 30
1:23:26years from now where you're going to
1:23:27have so many old people and so few
1:23:30people to take care of them.
1:23:32So this is a problem that we focused too
1:23:36much on in our own societies.
1:23:39This is a global humanitarian crisis of
1:23:41old people who are going to be left by
1:23:43and large to some extent defend for
1:23:46themselves and when they're not
1:23:47defending for themselves you know
1:23:49they're going to be mostly in their
1:23:50homes are alone. And you know
1:23:53I find the I find the psychological
1:23:55argument I would say probably more
1:23:57compelling. I I think not because I take
1:24:00any issue to your forward-looking
1:24:02projections but because
1:24:04things are so unstable on the
1:24:06technological and economic and political
1:24:09front that projecting even a decade into
1:24:12the future seems in some ways like a
1:24:13fool's errand right because
1:24:15God only knows what's coming down the
1:24:17pipelines with regards to
1:24:19new technology. But I think you can make
1:24:22an extraordinary strong case that
1:24:24one of the things you don't want to end
1:24:26up happening to you in your own life is
1:24:29to be involuntarily childless and
1:24:32isolated starting at the age of 30 going
1:24:35forward. Yes. Right. And so I do you
1:24:38know I I I've looked at the situation in
1:24:41China and in Japan
1:24:43with this what do they call that the
1:24:45inverted pyramidal distribution where
1:24:47there's way more old people than young
1:24:49people. Obviously that seems untenable
1:24:51on the technological or on the economic
1:24:53front. But um
1:24:55I do think the the psychological issue
1:24:58is
1:24:59much more present should be much more
1:25:02present for young people and the warning
1:25:04is don't be thinking you've got a lot of
1:25:05time to get your act together cuz you
1:25:07don't have as much time as you think.
1:25:09And you want to get things going
1:25:11sooner than you
1:25:13might find it convenient. There's never
1:25:15a convenient time to have a child.
1:25:17There's stupid times to have a child for
1:25:19sure but there's never a convenient time
1:25:21and that's the other thing people do too
1:25:22you know. Um when when my wife and I
1:25:25finally got together she was about 28 or
1:25:27so she wanted to have a kid pretty
1:25:29you know pretty much right away. And uh
1:25:33I was finishing off my post-doc and I
1:25:34hadn't got a permanent job yet and my
1:25:37sense was
1:25:38well you know everything's not in place
1:25:40and we talked that out for quite a while
1:25:42and decided to proceed regardless
1:25:44because
1:25:46there was no real reason for me to be
1:25:47concerned. The probability that I was
1:25:49going to be jobless was barring
1:25:51catastrophe zero and you jump into the
1:25:55abyss holding hands with your wife you
1:25:57know there's no right time.
1:26:00And the reason that's so important to
1:26:02know is because the clock ticks while
1:26:04you're waiting and that's also a
1:26:06catastrophe and then it sneaks up on
1:26:08people unawares as you just described
1:26:10and takes them out. Not good. Okay so
1:26:13now you're talking now you're
1:26:14investigating in the documentary the
1:26:16consequences of this involuntary
1:26:18childlessness and do do you progress
1:26:20past that? Yeah well so the consequences
1:26:23go into both
1:26:25the economic we go to Detroit we look at
1:26:27what might happen to the future of the
1:26:29world based on what's happened to
1:26:30Detroit.
1:26:32Yeah we look at
1:26:33briefly
1:26:35future pension systems we look at
1:26:38AI technology but only very briefly.
1:26:40It's an area that I'm sure many people
1:26:42you mentioned technology just now but
1:26:46a comment for me is that robot robots
1:26:47don't pay taxes. So simply saying this
1:26:49is going to
1:26:50They also don't necessarily want to take
1:26:51care of you.
1:26:53So we'll just see how that works out.
1:26:55And I think they're going to be
1:26:56expensive. So the idea that AI is a
1:26:58solution just like this
1:27:00is
1:27:02probably oversimplified possibly very
1:27:04oversimplified but of course it has a
1:27:06role. Technology definitely has a role
1:27:07in this. But we can't just turn away
1:27:09from this subject and say let's not
1:27:11worry about it for that reason.
1:27:13The final part of the documentary and um
1:27:15I have to credit a friend. I thought I
1:27:17was done after filming in probably 18
1:27:19countries I thought well this is enough
1:27:21now kind of I can see the global
1:27:22pattern.
1:27:24And
1:27:25this friend in LA said no you haven't
1:27:27finished you have to go to Africa and
1:27:28you have to go to other countries like
1:27:32and India I'd already been to but I
1:27:33wanted to do more filming. I wanted to
1:27:35go into we went to to slums in Mumbai we
1:27:37went to slums in Rio
1:27:41I think five in Johannesburg
1:27:43um and I wanted to see what's happening
1:27:46in the parts of the world that I think
1:27:48to some extent we might fear are
1:27:50exploding.
1:27:52And you have
1:27:54the same fundamental story happening
1:27:57everywhere even Nigeria.
1:28:00And so Nigeria is a good example of a
1:28:03country that's moving towards lower
1:28:07birth rates at a much slower pace.
1:28:09There'll be more people by the way in
1:28:10Nigeria by the year 2100 than there are
1:28:13in China for everyone watching and
1:28:15listening. So and That's quite the
1:28:16shocking bit of information. Yeah and
1:28:19you know you look at Nigeria you you
1:28:20still have a culture there where the
1:28:22more male children you have is part of
1:28:24the what you might say that the bravado
1:28:26that Yeah yeah it's like That's that's
1:28:28status reward.
1:28:29Status. Yeah.
1:28:30But you go to Ethiopia and you meet
1:28:32people there and you talk to professors
1:28:33there and Ethiopia used to be like that
1:28:35but the birth rate right now in Ethiopia
1:28:37is four it used to be seven or eight not
1:28:39that long ago and there's a
1:28:41transformation happening. So you can see
1:28:43and feel the transformation happening in
1:28:45Africa just like everywhere else. So I
1:28:47like to think of the analogy that the
1:28:49world is on a roller coaster.
1:28:52And countries like Japan and Germany and
1:28:54Italy and now South Korea are in the
1:28:57front car you know they're over in terms
1:28:58of their peak population and sure
1:29:01they're aging and people are going to
1:29:02live longer and longer so we're not
1:29:03going to really see the the drop for a
1:29:06little while but we know what's coming.
1:29:09Africa is in the rear car you know
1:29:11they're still on the way up but the path
1:29:13is the same here.
1:29:14But I I perhaps a thing that's me about
1:29:18Africa where I'm planning to go back and
1:29:20spend a significant amount of time for
1:29:22my own purposes as much as anything.
1:29:25When you go through Africa, you go to
1:29:27Malawi, which is I believe World Bank
1:29:30data the 12th poorest poorest country in
1:29:32the world by GDP per person.
1:29:35And you go to community and people are
1:29:37laughing. Mhm. Smiling.
1:29:39Mhm. And you go to kind of a
1:29:41an area it's not even a soccer pitch
1:29:43it's nothing like a soccer pitch but
1:29:44there's a soccer ball there. There's no
1:29:46rules but you got 30 kids running and
1:29:48screaming and laughing.
1:29:49Yeah. And we're there, you know, and you
1:29:51know, they come and say hi for a moment
1:29:53but they want to get back and play
1:29:54soccer with each other.
1:29:55And to see that sense of community Mhm.
1:29:59and that intergenerational community,
1:30:01you know, maybe in some ways part of a
1:30:03solution here that we've, you know, I
1:30:05think an argument for me is that we
1:30:06we've lost a sense of community for one
1:30:08reason or another.
1:30:10And so you know, that's that's you know,
1:30:13something that surprised me actually.
1:30:16How how similar really we all are and
1:30:20we're just at different parts of this of
1:30:22of that cycle.
1:30:23Right. Um so
1:30:25So so you've you've laid out this
1:30:27documentary and you've documented a
1:30:30problem that is not being attended to
1:30:33much.
1:30:34That's a very pervasive problem and
1:30:37that's going to affect virtually
1:30:39everyone personally and sociologically.
1:30:43We talked a little bit about pathways.
1:30:46You know, I mean it's one time obviously
1:30:48to diagnose a problem and that's not a
1:30:50straightforward thing to do. To see the
1:30:52problem and then to diagnose it.
1:30:54It's a completely different order of
1:30:56things to start thinking about what
1:30:58might constitute an acceptable
1:31:00alternative. So in Hungary, what they've
1:31:01done, you probably know this, is that
1:31:04if you're a mother in Hungary and you
1:31:07have one child,
1:31:08you're now exempt from income tax at the
1:31:10federal level for the rest of your life.
1:31:1225% and then that scales up to 100% for
1:31:16four children. And the idea there was
1:31:18both practical and cultural. So the
1:31:20cultural idea was
1:31:22we need to signal that we value
1:31:24motherhood and children. And one of the
1:31:27more powerful signals that that
1:31:30society has access to is
1:31:32access to is economic signals and the
1:31:34Hungarians have stopped the decline in
1:31:36their birth rate and tapped it up
1:31:37slightly. They've increased female
1:31:39participation in the workforce by the
1:31:40way 13%. So the feminists had objected
1:31:44or some of them that
1:31:46the Hungarian government was just
1:31:47turning women into baby making
1:31:48factories, which is hell of a
1:31:51you know, nasty epithet I might add, but
1:31:54um
1:31:55what's happened is the reverse is more
1:31:56women are working now than before and I
1:31:58suppose that's because they get to keep
1:31:59more of their money, you know, and they
1:32:02can make child care arrangements more
1:32:03straightforwardly and all of that.
1:32:05They've knocked the divorce rate down
1:32:07substantially. They've increased the
1:32:09marriage rate. They've knocked the
1:32:10abortion rate down 40% 38% with no
1:32:14compulsion, right? It's not as easy to
1:32:16get an abortion in Hungary as it is in
1:32:18the US or Canada.
1:32:20And the legal limits there is 12 weeks
1:32:24instead of the 16 weeks which is about
1:32:26what Americans think it should be, but
1:32:28the point is these alterations in policy
1:32:30have
1:32:32produced
1:32:33increases in
1:32:35fertility, increases in the marital
1:32:37rate, decreases in the divorce rate,
1:32:39decreases in the abortion rate and those
1:32:40look arguably like desirable things. Do
1:32:44you see And we talked a little bit about
1:32:46the fact that women live seven years
1:32:48longer and so in principle have a time,
1:32:51let's say eight years, where they could
1:32:53have children without really being at a
1:32:55competitive disadvantage on the economic
1:32:57front with men assuming that it is a
1:32:59competitive landscape and that's also
1:33:01not particularly obvious to me.
1:33:03I mean
1:33:05what have you have have have your
1:33:07thoughts turned to what might constitute
1:33:10an appropriate pathway forward for young
1:33:11people? Well, I certainly
1:33:14would um
1:33:17quite boldly say
1:33:19what will not work because there's so
1:33:20many examples of things that been tried
1:33:22and tried and tried and tried. Now I'll
1:33:23come back to Hungary in a moment cuz it
1:33:25is very interesting.
1:33:26Um
1:33:27but if you look at baby bonus programs
1:33:30globally, at best what they do is
1:33:33temporarily increase the birth rate
1:33:37and then you see a dip and the dip
1:33:38usually goes below where it was before.
1:33:40All you've done is bring forward the
1:33:44the people who would have had kids
1:33:45anyway.
1:33:46Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. So we
1:33:49and you look at the amount of money in
1:33:50certain Japan, certainly South Korea are
1:33:52spending on kindergarten
1:33:54Yeah. Yeah. That doesn't seem to help.
1:33:55Quebec it didn't make a bit of
1:33:56difference. Yeah. Yeah. No, it isn't it
1:33:58isn't lack of child care that's causing
1:34:00this problem.
1:34:01Yeah. And it's not income either. So
1:34:03a lot of people think it is income
1:34:05that's a natural thing I think for
1:34:06people thinking well, if I had a little
1:34:08bit more money or you know, at the right
1:34:09time, you know, or my apartment's too
1:34:11small but actually what what you find is
1:34:14that when people have more money in
1:34:15their pocket, birth rates go down. They
1:34:17do other things. It's like not yet not
1:34:19you know, we can take this vacation
1:34:21Well, I think also well, I also think
1:34:22that their expert expectations for what
1:34:25constitutes sufficiently prepared for
1:34:27children also change.
1:34:29You know, like I said when I was in
1:34:30Montreal, well, you know, I was already
1:34:32educated. I had a job. It was clear I
1:34:34was going to get a job, but my standard
1:34:37for what was sufficient security and
1:34:38opportunity for my children rose along
1:34:41with my horizon of vision on the
1:34:43economic front and it's also not the
1:34:45case that more security makes you
1:34:48liable to take more risks. That isn't
1:34:50how life works. You have to jump into
1:34:52children just like you jump into a
1:34:54marriage or into into your life for that
1:34:56matter. I think that's the key point,
1:34:58you know, so ultimately
1:35:00Hungary aside for a moment and also
1:35:02Russia in the past has had similar
1:35:04programs where they have put significant
1:35:06benefits in place that seem to work for
1:35:08a time. Um but
1:35:11vast majority of financial incentives or
1:35:15even societal
1:35:17changes such as kindergartens have very
1:35:20limited effects. Very limited indeed.
1:35:23Now if we come back to understand the
1:35:25fundamental of the problem is this
1:35:27unplanned childlessness issue.
1:35:30Perhaps what Hungary might have got
1:35:33right
1:35:34and you know, I you know,
1:35:37I will never frankly tell someone you
1:35:39should or should not have an abortion.
1:35:41That's your choice. That's not something
1:35:43I want to have any say. I don't believe
1:35:44that's my right to say that. That's just
1:35:47my personal position on it. But what
1:35:51Hungary might have done and you you
1:35:53stated a moment ago is just make it more
1:35:57positive the idea of parenting something
1:35:59that people want to do.
1:36:00they're aiming at.
1:36:02The the Hungarians do understand. So
1:36:05their president Katalin Novak, young
1:36:07dynamic woman who who is their symbolic
1:36:10head of state was very much involved in
1:36:12the formulation of these family policies
1:36:14and she knew perfectly well that part of
1:36:17what the goal was was to
1:36:20culturally elevate the let's call it the
1:36:23sacred significance of motherhood,
1:36:24something like that. To to put the
1:36:26mother again
1:36:28on something on something approximating
1:36:30the necessary pedestal. You know, you
1:36:32see this in Catholic imagery all the
1:36:34time is that of course in the Christian
1:36:36tradition, Christ is obviously the
1:36:38central figure of redemption and
1:36:40divinity, but there's strong competition
1:36:43symbolically on the part of Mary because
1:36:46it's Mary and the infant and I would say
1:36:48any society that doesn't hold the mother
1:36:50and infant as sacred is doomed.
1:36:52Right? For obvious reasons since we all
1:36:55had mothers and were all infants. If you
1:36:57don't value that, whatever that value
1:36:59means. And when when my wife had little
1:37:01kids,
1:37:02she was treated pretty damn dismally I
1:37:05would say. You know, I used to go out to
1:37:06restaurants with her and just watch when
1:37:08she entered in with the kids and there
1:37:10was a lot of sneers and a lot of you
1:37:13know, mis- casual mistreatment. There
1:37:16was no they were a nuisance, you know,
1:37:19and that was extremely annoying to me to
1:37:21watch because I don't think of kids as
1:37:23kids can be nuisances if they're not
1:37:24well behaved, but
1:37:26you there's something wrong with you if
1:37:28you think children are fundamentally a
1:37:29nuisance and and it's definitely the
1:37:32case that
1:37:34we don't value
1:37:36the contribution of young mothers in our
1:37:40culture the way that we would if we were
1:37:42wise. And that's a very difficult
1:37:44problem to solve, right? All this
1:37:46emphasis on, you know, the kind of
1:37:48hedonic freedom that's associated with
1:37:50you with being a youthful teenager and
1:37:52then that equally Sex and the City
1:37:54nonsense about you know, your your
1:37:57freedom on the sexual front while you're
1:37:59pursuing your career. It's so bloody
1:38:00juvenile that it's almost
1:38:02incomprehensible, but it's not an easy
1:38:04thing to reverse and it and it isn't
1:38:05even though obvious that it's the
1:38:07government's role to reverse that, but
1:38:10And the outcomes are unplanned
1:38:12childlessness. I see it time and time
1:38:14again. I think you know,
1:38:16it is just clear that people who go down
1:38:18that path are thinking of what society
1:38:20tells them they can do in the short term
1:38:22only.
1:38:22That'd be a good title for this this
1:38:25this interview really. We should
1:38:27probably call it unplanned
1:38:28childlessness.
1:38:29I love that.
1:38:30Well, because that's that is so
1:38:33it's so interesting that that exists as
1:38:35such a plague and yet it isn't
1:38:37identified and it doesn't have a name
1:38:40and that's a real that's a real
1:38:41catastrophe. I
1:38:43I you know, one of the early screenings
1:38:45I did there was a a young man who's in
1:38:47Japan but he's he's from the US and he
1:38:50just stood there afterwards gazing at
1:38:51the ceiling and he's probably 30 early
1:38:5430 35
1:38:56and he said unplanned childlessness. And
1:38:58he looked at me and said, that's me.
1:39:01Uh-huh. Yeah.
1:39:02That's me.
1:39:03And you could see that it it wasn't just
1:39:05the term it was talking
1:39:07Yeah. Right.
1:39:07He was talking
1:39:08realization that you actually have to in
1:39:10some way
1:39:12have a plan, even if the plan is to do
1:39:14something
1:39:15not rational, but to take a leap of
1:39:18faith. A faith.
1:39:19And to come back to men as well in this
1:39:22issue.
1:39:22Men can have children age 55. Um you
1:39:26know, I I divorced sadly. Um you know,
1:39:29at at around 40, I guess, and I thought
1:39:32there'd be a a time where I would meet
1:39:34someone again and have more children.
1:39:35That's something I would have desired,
1:39:37frankly.
1:39:38Um not to get too personal, but I it
1:39:40wasn't my plan for life to be a divorced
1:39:43dad.
1:39:43Right, right. And uh what what you find
1:39:46is
1:39:47um that you're competing with younger
1:39:49men.
1:39:49Yeah, right. For the same younger woman.
1:39:52Easier said than done. The fact that you
1:39:54can technically have a child at almost
1:39:56any age as a man doesn't mean that
1:39:58you're going to. So, the the outcome is
1:40:00I don't know. What makes you think
1:40:02you're going to be more successful old
1:40:03and ugly than you had been young and
1:40:05ugly? Right. So, yeah, yeah. And every
1:40:08year you're on the path to get older and
1:40:10uglier.
1:40:11Um so so, you know, it it it's men and
1:40:15women in this situation. I think that
1:40:17society needs to make parenting
1:40:19something more valuable. But to come
1:40:22back to your point, that cannot be at
1:40:24the sacrifice of career and educational
1:40:26options. We have to make it more
1:40:29uh al- almost the default option
1:40:32that you can continue your education. I
1:40:34love the idea of lifelong learning,
1:40:36which is what I'm doing.
1:40:38Why
1:40:38Yeah, well, it's very odd that we orient
1:40:40our our educational establishments to
1:40:42people between 18 and 22. I just can't
1:40:44figure that at all. I taught at the
1:40:46Harvard Extension School, by the way. I
1:40:47had a lot of adult students, and I
1:40:49enjoyed teaching them a lot. There's
1:40:51absolutely no reason whatsoever that the
1:40:53university should specialize in 18- to
1:40:5522-year-olds. I do I that's a that's a
1:40:58hangover from
1:41:00oh, I don't know, God. I don't even know
1:41:01when that was useful and relevant. It's
1:41:04just not a smart idea. And it's in the
1:41:06college's interest because there's a
1:41:07shrinking number of
1:41:09children come through the systems.
1:41:11Universities are going to need to
1:41:13diversify. Lifelong learning is the
1:41:15answer to that. So, why Well, and it's
1:41:17it's also the case that in an era of
1:41:19rapid technological transformation that
1:41:21lifelong learning is necessary
1:41:23practically, but it's also why the hell
1:41:25wouldn't you want that? Because it's
1:41:26part of what keeps you updated. So, I
1:41:29remember the first class I took at
1:41:30Extension School. It um was in
1:41:32statistics, and I went to my first
1:41:33class, probably dressed like I am now
1:41:35with a leather briefcase, and
1:41:37uh you know, everyone else I was not the
1:41:39oldest at all, but everyone else is in
1:41:41jeans and t-shirts and you know,
1:41:43backpacks, and you know, I thought,
1:41:45well, I haven't dressed like that for
1:41:47for decades, but I went out, and you
1:41:49know, I got a couple of t-shirts and a
1:41:50backpack.
1:41:51And you know, the most uh
1:41:54transformational thing happened to me.
1:41:56The first recognition, I'm learning
1:41:58something I want to learn.
1:41:59Yeah, right. I'm fully engaged.
1:42:01makes you the best kind of student, too.
1:42:03I I think so, but everyone else
1:42:06there were
1:42:07Harvard College kids there taking summer
1:42:09classes, and there were people older
1:42:10than me. It didn't matter. Yeah, yeah. I
1:42:13love teaching at the Extension School. I
1:42:14mean
1:42:15at Harvard, the undergraduates in the
1:42:18formal school were smarter than the
1:42:21people on average in the Extension
1:42:22School. But the Extension School people
1:42:24were a lot more motivated to learn,
1:42:27right? There there was no one not
1:42:29attending, cuz they were there because
1:42:30they wanted to be there, right? So I'm
1:42:32probably asking questions that were
1:42:34actually took a psychology class uh
1:42:36um probably in the building of this
1:42:38William James.
1:42:39Yeah, William James, yeah. Yeah, and uh
1:42:41you know, you know, again, I was there
1:42:43with a a lot of even high school
1:42:45learners at a summer school program,
1:42:48but I realized the professors enjoying
1:42:49the questions I was asking because
1:42:50they're just different to the questions
1:42:52Yeah, yeah, they're serious questions,
1:42:53right? Yeah. So
1:42:55When were you there? Uh that I started
1:42:57in 2015, 2016 I would have taken the
1:42:59psychology, probably 101, of course, but
1:43:02you know, the point is that the
1:43:04recruitment cycle
1:43:06for many career options is linked to the
1:43:09education cycle. So, you can't change
1:43:11one without the other.
1:43:12Yeah, yeah. You have
1:43:14People say, well, it's fine, certain
1:43:16companies allow recruitment later in
1:43:18life, but it's not the normal thing to
1:43:19do. It's a risk.
1:43:21So, if you're a woman or a parent taking
1:43:23time out to raise a family because you
1:43:25think you want to do that exclusively
1:43:27earlier on, that's a risk today. You
1:43:29might not get on that path, and you
1:43:31might not get the recruitment. YEAH, YOU
1:43:32KNOW, I I DON'T really buy that. I don't
1:43:34really buy that because I had one
1:43:36student, for example, um Shelley Taylor,
1:43:40who uh you know, sorry, Shelley Carson.
1:43:43Um
1:43:43she came back to Harvard as a graduate
1:43:46student at in her 40s. I was younger
1:43:49than her as her supervisor. She'd been
1:43:51an airline stewardess, pretty
1:43:53middle-class life, um had been out of
1:43:55the academic stream for quite a while,
1:43:57and was quite a lot older than most of
1:43:59the graduate students, and she
1:44:02hit it hard and developed bang-up
1:44:04career, and she's managed that quite
1:44:05successfully. And I think that that's
1:44:08not normal, you know, it's not the
1:44:10standard practice, but it's by no means
1:44:11impossible, and given that women do have
1:44:13that 7-year advantage in terms of
1:44:15lifespan,
1:44:17there's man,
1:44:18you think you're out of the running on
1:44:20the education and career front when
1:44:22you're 35. You're out of the running on
1:44:24the reproductive front. Yes. You're not
1:44:26really out of the running on the
1:44:27education and career front. And I've
1:44:29seen lots of people
1:44:31hit the education ground running in
1:44:34their 30s, mid-30s, sometimes later, and
1:44:37have a whole new career. I mean, Jesus,
1:44:39at 40, you could still have 30 years at
1:44:42your new career. Yeah. So, that's that's
1:44:44a very optimistic way of looking at it,
1:44:46and
1:44:47and so all right. So, well, for
1:44:49everybody watching and listening on
1:44:50YouTube and its associated platforms,
1:44:53thank you very much for your time and
1:44:54attention.
1:44:55And uh
1:44:57to Stephen Shaw for agreeing to talk to
1:44:59me today about birth gap and about the
1:45:02issue of
1:45:03uh declining birth rates and and
1:45:05population shrinkage,
1:45:06um
1:45:07bringing that to everyone's attention,
1:45:09bringing the issue of unplanned
1:45:11childlessness to everyone's attention,
1:45:14cuz that's a crucial issue here. To note
1:45:16the existence of a problem and to give
1:45:18it a name is to bring it out of the
1:45:20darkness and to unshroud it, let's say.
1:45:22And that's an extremely useful thing to
1:45:24do.
1:45:25And I'm going to talk to Stephen for
1:45:27another half an hour on the
1:45:28DailyWirePlus platform. I like to spend
1:45:31half an hour with my guests
1:45:34investigating how their
1:45:36pathway through life made it manifest,
1:45:38made itself manifest to them both in
1:45:41terms of the problems that gripped them,
1:45:44the concerns they had, both voluntary
1:45:46and involuntary, and the opportunities
1:45:48that presented themselves as a
1:45:49consequence. And so, if you're
1:45:50interested in that,
1:45:52then please head over to the
1:45:53DailyWirePlus platform. You could
1:45:55consider supporting them in any case.
1:45:57They have also worked diligently to make
1:46:00the kind of conversations I had today uh
1:46:02possible, and that's much appreciated to
1:46:04the film crew here in Vancouver, cuz
1:46:06that's where I am today. Thank you very
1:46:08much, and uh
1:46:10thank you all for your time and
1:46:11attention.
1:46:12Good to talk with you. Yeah. Yep, you
1:46:14bet. You bet.
1:46:16Hello, everyone. I would encourage you
1:46:18to continue listening to my conversation
1:46:21with my guest on dailywireplus.com.

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