1
00:00:07,960 --> 00:00:10,720
Speaker 1: The average number of children each woman gives birth to

2
00:00:10,880 --> 00:00:15,480
Speaker 1: globally has been steadily declining. To some, this is a disaster.

3
00:00:16,120 --> 00:00:19,599
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, for example, says that collapsing birth rate is

4
00:00:19,640 --> 00:00:24,360
Speaker 1: the biggest danger civilization faces by far, with fourteen children

5
00:00:24,440 --> 00:00:27,200
Speaker 1: at last count, he seems to be attempting to avert

6
00:00:27,240 --> 00:00:31,560
Speaker 1: this crisis single handedly. Folks concerned with the decline in

7
00:00:31,640 --> 00:00:35,440
Speaker 1: birth rates advocate for policies that incentivize having more children.

8
00:00:35,840 --> 00:00:38,200
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, a decline in birth rate

9
00:00:38,320 --> 00:00:41,720
Speaker 1: is music to the ears of others. As someone who

10
00:00:41,760 --> 00:00:45,640
Speaker 1: adores both human beings and nature, I would love to

11
00:00:45,640 --> 00:00:50,040
Speaker 1: see living standards rise as population size falls. It seems

12
00:00:50,159 --> 00:00:53,440
Speaker 1: reasonable to assume that more humans translates into a greater

13
00:00:53,560 --> 00:00:57,600
Speaker 1: environmental impact. So if humans are choosing to have fewer babies,

14
00:00:58,080 --> 00:01:01,720
Speaker 1: that sounds like a win win for humans and for nature. Plus,

15
00:01:01,760 --> 00:01:03,680
Speaker 1: I've heard humans are going to level out at eight

16
00:01:03,680 --> 00:01:07,200
Speaker 1: billion people anyway, so any decline in population size would

17
00:01:07,200 --> 00:01:10,240
Speaker 1: be short lived, and anyway, this seems like a problem

18
00:01:10,280 --> 00:01:13,479
Speaker 1: for future generations. Right, Why should we start worrying about

19
00:01:13,520 --> 00:01:17,760
Speaker 1: population size now? Well, today we're going to talk to

20
00:01:17,880 --> 00:01:21,600
Speaker 1: Dean Spears and Michael Jeruso about their recent book After

21
00:01:21,640 --> 00:01:25,840
Speaker 1: the Spike, Population Progress and the Case for People. They

22
00:01:25,959 --> 00:01:28,880
Speaker 1: are concerned that the future will see a precipitous decline

23
00:01:28,920 --> 00:01:31,600
Speaker 1: in human population size, and they want to see us

24
00:01:31,600 --> 00:01:34,840
Speaker 1: start taking this problem seriously now so that we have

25
00:01:34,920 --> 00:01:37,800
Speaker 1: plenty of time to find compassionate solutions to the problem

26
00:01:38,040 --> 00:01:41,840
Speaker 1: before society start to feel the pinch. Welcome to Daniel

27
00:01:41,840 --> 00:01:43,560
Speaker 1: and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.

28
00:01:56,440 --> 00:01:59,680
Speaker 2: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor

29
00:01:59,760 --> 00:02:02,200
Speaker 2: a you see Irvine, and I have two children and

30
00:02:02,240 --> 00:02:02,640
Speaker 2: a dog.

31
00:02:02,920 --> 00:02:06,200
Speaker 1: Hello. I'm Kelly Weener Smith. I study parasites and space

32
00:02:06,240 --> 00:02:10,959
Speaker 1: and I have two children, two dogs, seven goats, two cats,

33
00:02:11,040 --> 00:02:14,120
Speaker 1: and as of next week, I will have five ducks

34
00:02:14,120 --> 00:02:14,840
Speaker 1: and two geese.

35
00:02:16,440 --> 00:02:18,440
Speaker 2: Is that it really how many rats are living on

36
00:02:18,440 --> 00:02:18,960
Speaker 2: the property?

37
00:02:19,840 --> 00:02:21,919
Speaker 1: Well, you know, there used to be a lot of them,

38
00:02:22,120 --> 00:02:25,320
Speaker 1: but we took care of them. And I know, I

39
00:02:25,400 --> 00:02:27,960
Speaker 1: know you and I really like rats, but not when

40
00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:31,560
Speaker 1: they're eating the chickens food. And it was just complicated

41
00:02:31,680 --> 00:02:32,679
Speaker 1: and it was us or them.

42
00:02:33,240 --> 00:02:35,560
Speaker 2: So my question for you, Kelly is why did you

43
00:02:35,639 --> 00:02:39,160
Speaker 2: decide to have two children and not three or seventeen?

44
00:02:39,680 --> 00:02:42,520
Speaker 2: And you considered goats part of the Wiener Smith clan.

45
00:02:44,919 --> 00:02:46,359
Speaker 1: I love the goats, but not as much as I

46
00:02:46,400 --> 00:02:49,560
Speaker 1: love my kids, and so there's a hierarchy there for sure.

47
00:02:50,120 --> 00:02:53,480
Speaker 2: Wow, species is much Yep, Yes, it's true.

48
00:02:53,800 --> 00:02:56,440
Speaker 1: I like humans. I do like humans a lot. We

49
00:02:56,520 --> 00:02:58,760
Speaker 1: decided to have two because after we had the second

50
00:02:58,800 --> 00:03:02,360
Speaker 1: one and he was old enough to be like sleeping

51
00:03:02,360 --> 00:03:05,320
Speaker 1: a little bit better, I thought to myself, I do

52
00:03:05,360 --> 00:03:08,919
Speaker 1: not have the energy to go through those long nights again.

53
00:03:09,360 --> 00:03:12,400
Speaker 1: And my second pregnancy was a high risk. I ended

54
00:03:12,480 --> 00:03:15,360
Speaker 1: up in the ICU with hypertension after my son was born,

55
00:03:15,840 --> 00:03:17,560
Speaker 1: and so I was like, I think my body is

56
00:03:17,600 --> 00:03:21,200
Speaker 1: telling me two is good, and yeah, what about you?

57
00:03:21,240 --> 00:03:22,000
Speaker 1: Why'd you pick two?

58
00:03:22,360 --> 00:03:24,400
Speaker 2: I feel like two is a special number because it's

59
00:03:24,400 --> 00:03:27,400
Speaker 2: the same number as parents in the family, And so

60
00:03:27,440 --> 00:03:30,280
Speaker 2: I think people really underestimate, like how much more work

61
00:03:30,320 --> 00:03:32,920
Speaker 2: a third child is. And you know, when we talk

62
00:03:32,960 --> 00:03:34,880
Speaker 2: to the economists today on the program, they're talking about

63
00:03:34,880 --> 00:03:37,240
Speaker 2: these numbers one, two, three, But I really feel like

64
00:03:37,240 --> 00:03:39,960
Speaker 2: there's a barrier there past two where it just really

65
00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:42,680
Speaker 2: becomes much much harder. And also if you have like

66
00:03:42,720 --> 00:03:45,960
Speaker 2: two academics and young careers, and it just didn't seem

67
00:03:46,000 --> 00:03:49,080
Speaker 2: plausible for us. Plus every pregnancy for us is high

68
00:03:49,160 --> 00:03:51,760
Speaker 2: risk because Katrina is Type one diabetic. Yeah, so it

69
00:03:51,880 --> 00:03:53,240
Speaker 2: just felt like more than we could handle.

70
00:03:53,640 --> 00:03:55,240
Speaker 1: So you and I both read the book, and they

71
00:03:55,240 --> 00:03:58,280
Speaker 1: do address how difficult and time consuming it is to

72
00:03:58,280 --> 00:04:01,080
Speaker 1: have children, also like how beauty full and amazing it is.

73
00:04:01,760 --> 00:04:04,280
Speaker 1: And one of their suggestions is that, you know, society

74
00:04:04,360 --> 00:04:08,440
Speaker 1: needs to modify in ways that make it easier, you know,

75
00:04:08,560 --> 00:04:11,320
Speaker 1: easier to get child cares, or less work for the

76
00:04:11,360 --> 00:04:13,520
Speaker 1: moms and for the dads, and just trying to make

77
00:04:13,520 --> 00:04:16,680
Speaker 1: the whole thing easier. But I agree, two was a

78
00:04:16,720 --> 00:04:19,680
Speaker 1: lot more work than one. And I thought, I thought, well,

79
00:04:19,720 --> 00:04:21,640
Speaker 1: I'm already doing this parenting thing. It won't be that

80
00:04:21,720 --> 00:04:24,279
Speaker 1: much more. It's a lot more, And I'm still glad

81
00:04:24,279 --> 00:04:27,000
Speaker 1: I did it, for sure, But yes, three is to

82
00:04:27,120 --> 00:04:29,040
Speaker 1: me conceivable.

83
00:04:29,800 --> 00:04:32,200
Speaker 2: So thank you to all the parents out there having

84
00:04:32,240 --> 00:04:35,880
Speaker 2: more than two children and helping us maintain the human population.

85
00:04:36,279 --> 00:04:39,120
Speaker 1: That's right, Yes, it's an important job and needs to

86
00:04:39,120 --> 00:04:42,640
Speaker 1: be done well. And so speaking of the human population,

87
00:04:42,960 --> 00:04:45,080
Speaker 1: the book that we're talking about today sort of projects

88
00:04:45,120 --> 00:04:47,599
Speaker 1: forward what the human population might look like as we

89
00:04:47,680 --> 00:04:51,120
Speaker 1: go through multiple generations, and so we wanted to know

90
00:04:51,360 --> 00:04:54,279
Speaker 1: what our audience thinks about how many people will be

91
00:04:54,320 --> 00:04:57,160
Speaker 1: on the planet in three hundred years, and here are

92
00:04:57,200 --> 00:04:57,839
Speaker 1: their answers.

93
00:04:58,400 --> 00:05:01,560
Speaker 3: That's a good question, but realistic unanswable, and my humble opinion,

94
00:05:01,760 --> 00:05:03,760
Speaker 3: because there are too many unknown variables that can occur

95
00:05:03,800 --> 00:05:05,880
Speaker 3: in three hundred years that could wipe out a portion

96
00:05:05,960 --> 00:05:08,320
Speaker 3: of all of humanity, from our own deeds to an

97
00:05:08,360 --> 00:05:10,800
Speaker 3: asteroid impact like the size that took out the dinosaurs,

98
00:05:11,000 --> 00:05:14,159
Speaker 3: or a combination of things like successive volcanic eruptions, wildly

99
00:05:14,240 --> 00:05:17,600
Speaker 3: ballenced anomious tornadoes, and plant earthquakes. So I don't think

100
00:05:17,640 --> 00:05:19,240
Speaker 3: the question is realistically answerable.

101
00:05:19,560 --> 00:05:25,480
Speaker 4: So the optimist in me would say that overall population

102
00:05:25,839 --> 00:05:31,080
Speaker 4: would be in a slow decline by then, since as

103
00:05:31,360 --> 00:05:34,200
Speaker 4: education levels increase around the world and the standard of

104
00:05:34,200 --> 00:05:37,640
Speaker 4: living increases around the world, people tend to have fewer

105
00:05:37,839 --> 00:05:41,200
Speaker 4: children on average. In fact, they tend to have a

106
00:05:41,200 --> 00:05:43,360
Speaker 4: negative birth rate, So I would say.

107
00:05:44,400 --> 00:05:45,680
Speaker 2: One billion individuals.

108
00:05:45,720 --> 00:05:47,640
Speaker 4: I kind of feel like we'd go back down to

109
00:05:47,680 --> 00:05:52,400
Speaker 4: something like that. The pessimist in me says that we

110
00:05:52,480 --> 00:05:55,080
Speaker 4: blow ourselves up with a nuclear disaster.

111
00:05:55,880 --> 00:06:00,040
Speaker 5: Birth rates in all countries have dropped. I expect in

112
00:06:00,120 --> 00:06:04,160
Speaker 5: three hundred years, we will have less population than today.

113
00:06:04,760 --> 00:06:07,760
Speaker 6: It's easy to naively imagine living like the Jetsons three

114
00:06:07,839 --> 00:06:11,480
Speaker 6: hundred years from now, but considering the unsustainably outrageous rate

115
00:06:11,520 --> 00:06:15,200
Speaker 6: of our populace over consuming all natural resources except sunlight,

116
00:06:15,680 --> 00:06:18,880
Speaker 6: I anticipate a bleak existence. For However, many humans can

117
00:06:18,880 --> 00:06:22,400
Speaker 6: subsist on what remains. Choosing a number, I doubt even

118
00:06:22,440 --> 00:06:24,720
Speaker 6: first order billions.

119
00:06:24,080 --> 00:06:28,000
Speaker 7: Well, I think that in three hundred years there will

120
00:06:28,000 --> 00:06:33,400
Speaker 7: be social pressure to just replace yourself. I think with longevity,

121
00:06:33,839 --> 00:06:36,560
Speaker 7: people will be living for a very long time and

122
00:06:37,080 --> 00:06:39,119
Speaker 7: we will avoid overpopulation.

123
00:06:40,080 --> 00:06:43,599
Speaker 8: I personally think we have a horrible future as a species.

124
00:06:44,560 --> 00:06:50,000
Speaker 8: We are terribly overpopulated right now without enough resources. My

125
00:06:50,160 --> 00:06:52,839
Speaker 8: guess is in three hundred years they'll probably be less

126
00:06:52,880 --> 00:06:57,720
Speaker 8: than ten percent of the population left. Sadly, I don't

127
00:06:57,720 --> 00:07:00,440
Speaker 8: think there will be any people lift on planet in

128
00:07:00,520 --> 00:07:01,400
Speaker 8: three hundred years.

129
00:07:02,279 --> 00:07:05,280
Speaker 6: We are our own worst enemy, and considering the trajectory

130
00:07:05,320 --> 00:07:08,040
Speaker 6: we're going in right now, I would say.

131
00:07:08,680 --> 00:07:12,880
Speaker 2: Less of five percent of the current population, precisely zero.

132
00:07:13,480 --> 00:07:14,920
Speaker 5: There's no way we'll make it that far.

133
00:07:15,680 --> 00:07:18,320
Speaker 2: So, Kelly, why did you pick three hundred years? It's

134
00:07:18,360 --> 00:07:20,240
Speaker 2: a really specific timeline.

135
00:07:20,400 --> 00:07:23,760
Speaker 1: Oh. I went to one of the figures in their book,

136
00:07:24,320 --> 00:07:27,280
Speaker 1: and I looked at a point where the projected population

137
00:07:27,360 --> 00:07:29,280
Speaker 1: size was quite a bit lower, and so I thought,

138
00:07:29,360 --> 00:07:31,640
Speaker 1: you know, at this point, people can say up or down,

139
00:07:31,720 --> 00:07:35,280
Speaker 1: and according to their projections, the answer should be definitely down.

140
00:07:35,960 --> 00:07:38,520
Speaker 1: But I gotta be honest, I did not expect answers

141
00:07:38,560 --> 00:07:42,680
Speaker 1: to be so dark dark from our audience. Usually there's

142
00:07:42,720 --> 00:07:44,520
Speaker 1: like a bunch of jokes thrown in there, like I

143
00:07:44,560 --> 00:07:46,720
Speaker 1: don't know, but here's a poop joke, and I'm like, oh,

144
00:07:46,760 --> 00:07:49,119
Speaker 1: I love you guys. But this was like we're probably

145
00:07:49,120 --> 00:07:51,360
Speaker 1: gonna blow ourselves up. Yeah, And they're like, oh man,

146
00:07:51,400 --> 00:07:54,560
Speaker 1: a couple answers like that, and so wow.

147
00:07:54,640 --> 00:07:56,960
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know. Maybe digging this deep into science,

148
00:07:57,000 --> 00:08:00,160
Speaker 2: into physics and biologies made people existential. You know, they

149
00:08:00,200 --> 00:08:03,920
Speaker 2: realize how fragile our meat bags are on this tiny

150
00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:07,040
Speaker 2: speck of dust we're floating on in this vast universe.

151
00:08:07,560 --> 00:08:09,640
Speaker 2: So it's sort of hard in that context to imagine

152
00:08:09,640 --> 00:08:11,760
Speaker 2: we're going to be around in three hundred years, three

153
00:08:11,800 --> 00:08:14,840
Speaker 2: thousand years, three million years. It seems like incredible we

154
00:08:14,880 --> 00:08:15,520
Speaker 2: are here at all.

155
00:08:15,800 --> 00:08:16,040
Speaker 5: Yeah.

156
00:08:16,040 --> 00:08:19,960
Speaker 1: No, I absolutely agree, and I share concerns about what

157
00:08:20,120 --> 00:08:23,000
Speaker 1: our species is going to do because we have nuclear

158
00:08:23,000 --> 00:08:25,680
Speaker 1: weapons and are we going to like just totally accidentally

159
00:08:25,720 --> 00:08:29,000
Speaker 1: blow ourselves up? I hope not, but from a like

160
00:08:29,160 --> 00:08:33,240
Speaker 1: resources and population standpoint for anyone who's feeling negative but

161
00:08:33,320 --> 00:08:36,600
Speaker 1: would like to have their spirits slightly lifted, I really

162
00:08:36,720 --> 00:08:39,280
Speaker 1: liked Not the End of the World by Hanna Richie.

163
00:08:39,320 --> 00:08:43,360
Speaker 1: She runs our world in data and so she really

164
00:08:43,360 --> 00:08:46,160
Speaker 1: digs into the numbers for a bunch of these resource problems,

165
00:08:46,240 --> 00:08:48,520
Speaker 1: and it's like one of my favorite books because I

166
00:08:48,559 --> 00:08:51,600
Speaker 1: love the way she addresses these problems with data, and

167
00:08:51,640 --> 00:08:54,120
Speaker 1: in the end she decides, look, we can handle this

168
00:08:54,240 --> 00:08:57,720
Speaker 1: and it doesn't need to be too catastrophic in terms

169
00:08:57,720 --> 00:09:00,360
Speaker 1: of all of us changing our lives, but we do

170
00:09:00,400 --> 00:09:02,600
Speaker 1: need to make some changes and here are some suggestions.

171
00:09:02,600 --> 00:09:04,600
Speaker 1: And anyway, I really enjoyed her book.

172
00:09:04,720 --> 00:09:05,960
Speaker 2: Awesome. I'll check that out.

173
00:09:06,080 --> 00:09:06,200
Speaker 7: Well.

174
00:09:06,240 --> 00:09:08,400
Speaker 2: Today we're talking about the book After the Spike, Population

175
00:09:08,520 --> 00:09:11,480
Speaker 2: Progress and the Case for People by Dean Spears and

176
00:09:11,520 --> 00:09:14,400
Speaker 2: Michael GURUSO out today. Go check it out. Kelly and

177
00:09:14,440 --> 00:09:16,680
Speaker 2: I both read this book. I really enjoyed it because

178
00:09:17,160 --> 00:09:21,200
Speaker 2: I love books that take apart sort of popular misconceptions like,

179
00:09:21,240 --> 00:09:24,880
Speaker 2: here's the standard lore everybody believes. Why did you believe that?

180
00:09:25,280 --> 00:09:28,520
Speaker 2: Why is that not true? And what's more likely to happen?

181
00:09:28,880 --> 00:09:31,000
Speaker 2: And this book does a great job of that. It's

182
00:09:31,040 --> 00:09:34,320
Speaker 2: a little bit nerdy and economical and data heavy, but

183
00:09:34,360 --> 00:09:37,160
Speaker 2: only as much as you need to convince yourself that

184
00:09:37,160 --> 00:09:39,160
Speaker 2: these guys know what they're talking about and the issues

185
00:09:39,200 --> 00:09:42,040
Speaker 2: they raise are real issues. It's also fun and their

186
00:09:42,160 --> 00:09:44,680
Speaker 2: jokes and as you'll hear in our conversation today, these

187
00:09:44,679 --> 00:09:46,000
Speaker 2: guys are good at explaining stuff.

188
00:09:46,160 --> 00:09:48,559
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I also felt like they were sort of

189
00:09:48,640 --> 00:09:52,600
Speaker 1: kindred spirits with us because for a lot of the answers, it's, look,

190
00:09:52,640 --> 00:09:54,480
Speaker 1: we just we don't know, we don't have the data,

191
00:09:54,559 --> 00:09:57,440
Speaker 1: and they're very honest about what we do know what

192
00:09:57,480 --> 00:09:59,880
Speaker 1: we don't know. Yeah, and I really appreciate that they're

193
00:09:59,880 --> 00:10:01,960
Speaker 1: t taking on this problem because it has sort of

194
00:10:01,960 --> 00:10:05,400
Speaker 1: become politicized, as I mentioned in the intro, and I

195
00:10:05,440 --> 00:10:07,760
Speaker 1: feel like they might be sort of making themselves targets,

196
00:10:07,760 --> 00:10:11,320
Speaker 1: which is maybe why they are so so tied to

197
00:10:11,360 --> 00:10:14,440
Speaker 1: their data, the data and their arguments. And anyway, they

198
00:10:14,440 --> 00:10:17,560
Speaker 1: make some pretty interesting arguments. And let me go ahead

199
00:10:17,559 --> 00:10:20,640
Speaker 1: and give their bio real Quick. Spears and Jeruso are

200
00:10:20,640 --> 00:10:24,320
Speaker 1: professors of economics and demography at U t Austin. Jeruso

201
00:10:24,520 --> 00:10:27,520
Speaker 1: served as a senior economist in the Biden White House.

202
00:10:27,880 --> 00:10:32,840
Speaker 1: Spears runs the nonprofit research Institute for Compassionate Economics, which

203
00:10:32,840 --> 00:10:37,400
Speaker 1: helped establish a give well backed newborn health program in India.

204
00:10:37,480 --> 00:10:40,120
Speaker 9: Welcome to the show, guys, Thanks so much for having us.

205
00:10:40,360 --> 00:10:41,160
Speaker 5: Glad to be here.

206
00:10:41,280 --> 00:10:44,080
Speaker 1: My husband Zach has been absolutely raving about your book.

207
00:10:44,120 --> 00:10:45,640
Speaker 1: He loved it, so I was excited to have a

208
00:10:45,720 --> 00:10:48,400
Speaker 1: chance to read it. So let's jump right in. One

209
00:10:48,440 --> 00:10:49,960
Speaker 1: of the things that I like about this book is

210
00:10:49,960 --> 00:10:53,960
Speaker 1: that it gets me to think about population size way

211
00:10:54,000 --> 00:10:56,480
Speaker 1: differently than I thought about for like, literally all of

212
00:10:56,480 --> 00:10:58,480
Speaker 1: my life. So I was born in nineteen eighty two.

213
00:10:58,880 --> 00:11:01,560
Speaker 1: When I was born, popular size was about four point

214
00:11:01,640 --> 00:11:05,360
Speaker 1: six billion, and it's currently over eight billion. And I'm

215
00:11:05,440 --> 00:11:09,040
Speaker 1: an ecologist, so I usually think about population size as

216
00:11:09,040 --> 00:11:13,040
Speaker 1: being the thing that kills animals and destroys ecosystems and

217
00:11:13,040 --> 00:11:16,280
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So when I started hearing that, you know, oh,

218
00:11:16,320 --> 00:11:19,760
Speaker 1: eventually population size is going to go down, that sounded

219
00:11:19,800 --> 00:11:22,600
Speaker 1: like good news to me. And so your book was

220
00:11:22,640 --> 00:11:25,440
Speaker 1: sort of like mental whiplash for me. So explain to

221
00:11:25,520 --> 00:11:29,000
Speaker 1: us why population is going to go down and why

222
00:11:29,080 --> 00:11:31,400
Speaker 1: instead of feeling like, oh, this is maybe good news,

223
00:11:31,440 --> 00:11:33,760
Speaker 1: why this is something that we should be concerned about.

224
00:11:34,120 --> 00:11:37,480
Speaker 9: So we were also born in the eighties and we

225
00:11:37,640 --> 00:11:41,680
Speaker 9: also grew up hearing about overpopulation. But right now, global

226
00:11:41,800 --> 00:11:45,720
Speaker 9: depopulation is the most likely future. And what global depopulation

227
00:11:45,880 --> 00:11:49,840
Speaker 9: means is that every decade, every generation, the world's population

228
00:11:49,960 --> 00:11:52,559
Speaker 9: is going to shrink. That's the path that we're on.

229
00:11:52,720 --> 00:11:55,800
Speaker 9: Within a few decades, the world's population will begin to decline.

230
00:11:56,280 --> 00:11:59,120
Speaker 9: And there's no reason to think that once that happens,

231
00:11:59,160 --> 00:12:00,480
Speaker 9: it'll automatically reverse.

232
00:12:00,960 --> 00:12:01,840
Speaker 5: So a big.

233
00:12:01,720 --> 00:12:05,280
Speaker 9: Question before us is should we welcome that or should

234
00:12:05,280 --> 00:12:08,280
Speaker 9: we want something else to happen. But even before that

235
00:12:08,679 --> 00:12:12,880
Speaker 9: is why it's happening. And the fundamental explanation is that

236
00:12:12,960 --> 00:12:16,120
Speaker 9: birth rates are low and falling. So that's a way

237
00:12:16,160 --> 00:12:18,840
Speaker 9: that humans are different from other animals. If you're thinking

238
00:12:18,880 --> 00:12:23,319
Speaker 9: about ecology, that humans have cultures in society and decision

239
00:12:23,320 --> 00:12:26,560
Speaker 9: making and decide how many children to have. And over

240
00:12:26,600 --> 00:12:30,200
Speaker 9: time we've been deciding to have fewer children. And you know,

241
00:12:30,240 --> 00:12:32,800
Speaker 9: when I say low birth rates, you might think something

242
00:12:33,000 --> 00:12:35,760
Speaker 9: like South Korea where there is zero point seven of

243
00:12:35,760 --> 00:12:37,960
Speaker 9: a kid on average for two adults right now. But

244
00:12:38,120 --> 00:12:42,280
Speaker 9: actually it would be enough for global depopulation to have

245
00:12:42,400 --> 00:12:45,360
Speaker 9: low birth rates like in the US where it's one

246
00:12:45,400 --> 00:12:48,880
Speaker 9: point six kids per two adults, or like Texas or

247
00:12:48,920 --> 00:12:52,880
Speaker 9: Latin America where it's one point eight, because depopulation will

248
00:12:52,920 --> 00:12:56,480
Speaker 9: be the unavoidable consequence of there being fewer than two

249
00:12:56,640 --> 00:13:00,120
Speaker 9: children in the next generation to replace two adults in

250
00:13:00,160 --> 00:13:03,240
Speaker 9: the last generation. In two thirds of people now live

251
00:13:03,280 --> 00:13:05,880
Speaker 9: in a country where the birth rate is below that

252
00:13:06,040 --> 00:13:09,920
Speaker 9: two births per two adults average, that would stabilize the population.

253
00:13:10,400 --> 00:13:14,080
Speaker 2: And what exactly is new about that piece of knowledge, Like,

254
00:13:14,360 --> 00:13:17,160
Speaker 2: is this something that demographers and economists have known for

255
00:13:17,160 --> 00:13:20,079
Speaker 2: a long long time but the general population isn't aware of,

256
00:13:20,520 --> 00:13:23,760
Speaker 2: Or have we recently learned something about birth rates? Why

257
00:13:23,800 --> 00:13:26,120
Speaker 2: this conflict between our knowledge that birth rates are following

258
00:13:26,280 --> 00:13:28,520
Speaker 2: and the general sense among the whole population that the

259
00:13:28,520 --> 00:13:30,080
Speaker 2: population is growing out of control.

260
00:13:30,400 --> 00:13:33,000
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's a really good question. The fact

261
00:13:33,000 --> 00:13:35,560
Speaker 5: of the matter is that falling birth rates are not

262
00:13:35,880 --> 00:13:38,800
Speaker 5: some entirely new phenomenon that just popped up on the

263
00:13:38,800 --> 00:13:41,280
Speaker 5: scene in the last five or ten years. During this

264
00:13:41,440 --> 00:13:45,599
Speaker 5: period of rapid global population growth, you know, over the

265
00:13:45,679 --> 00:13:48,960
Speaker 5: last fifty sixty years, that was a period during which

266
00:13:49,080 --> 00:13:52,319
Speaker 5: birth rates were already falling. It's just really hard to

267
00:13:52,400 --> 00:13:55,040
Speaker 5: see and appreciate that birth rates are falling in a

268
00:13:55,080 --> 00:13:58,480
Speaker 5: time when the goal population is spiking up so quickly. Right,

269
00:13:58,559 --> 00:14:01,640
Speaker 5: So you mentioned you were born in nineteen eighty, Kelly,

270
00:14:01,840 --> 00:14:04,000
Speaker 5: or sorry, nineteen eighty two. I was born in nineteen eighty.

271
00:14:04,280 --> 00:14:07,080
Speaker 5: But the birth rate has been falling for a very

272
00:14:07,120 --> 00:14:07,559
Speaker 5: long time.

273
00:14:07,679 --> 00:14:07,880
Speaker 1: Ian.

274
00:14:07,880 --> 00:14:11,200
Speaker 5: It's been falling for as long back as we have

275
00:14:11,400 --> 00:14:15,080
Speaker 5: good statistics to document it. So birth rates were falling

276
00:14:15,160 --> 00:14:17,720
Speaker 5: in France and the seventeen hundreds, birth rates were falling

277
00:14:17,800 --> 00:14:20,600
Speaker 5: in other places in Europe in the eighteen hundreds. Birth

278
00:14:20,680 --> 00:14:24,240
Speaker 5: rates have been falling for the globe overall for as

279
00:14:24,280 --> 00:14:27,160
Speaker 5: long back as we have any good statistics now, like

280
00:14:27,240 --> 00:14:30,080
Speaker 5: there have been temporary blips, like the post World War

281
00:14:30,120 --> 00:14:33,880
Speaker 5: two baby boom, but on average, over the whole world,

282
00:14:34,200 --> 00:14:38,560
Speaker 5: over time frames that span decades rather than individual years

283
00:14:38,560 --> 00:14:40,880
Speaker 5: where things might bounce up or down, birth rates have

284
00:14:40,920 --> 00:14:43,120
Speaker 5: been falling. And so I just think it's really hard

285
00:14:43,160 --> 00:14:45,920
Speaker 5: to come to grips with the idea that even as

286
00:14:45,960 --> 00:14:49,200
Speaker 5: the population is rising birth rates have been falling.

287
00:14:49,360 --> 00:14:50,960
Speaker 2: Can you break that down a little bit for those

288
00:14:50,960 --> 00:14:53,760
Speaker 2: of us who don't always think in terms of differential equations,

289
00:14:53,880 --> 00:14:56,120
Speaker 2: How is it possible for the population to be rising

290
00:14:56,160 --> 00:14:57,400
Speaker 2: and the birth rate to be falling?

291
00:14:57,640 --> 00:15:01,520
Speaker 5: Okay, good question. Population changed At the basic level is

292
00:15:01,520 --> 00:15:04,640
Speaker 5: the difference between birth rates and death rates. So there's

293
00:15:04,640 --> 00:15:07,920
Speaker 5: two ways that population can increase. Births can go up

294
00:15:08,160 --> 00:15:11,840
Speaker 5: or deaths can go down. And the revolution that's happened

295
00:15:11,920 --> 00:15:15,040
Speaker 5: around the world in the past two centuries has not

296
00:15:15,080 --> 00:15:18,000
Speaker 5: been birth rates climbing. It's been death rates falling, and

297
00:15:18,000 --> 00:15:21,040
Speaker 5: in particular, the death rates of children falling.

298
00:15:21,600 --> 00:15:23,120
Speaker 2: So that sounds like good news.

299
00:15:23,240 --> 00:15:25,560
Speaker 5: Yay, Yes, that's very good news.

300
00:15:25,680 --> 00:15:25,840
Speaker 3: Yay.

301
00:15:26,360 --> 00:15:28,440
Speaker 5: I mean it's really good news. It's sort of hard

302
00:15:28,440 --> 00:15:32,800
Speaker 5: to appreciate from a modern perspective just how awful the

303
00:15:32,840 --> 00:15:35,960
Speaker 5: mortality rates of children and babies were not all that

304
00:15:36,000 --> 00:15:39,360
Speaker 5: long ago. So a couple hundred years ago, the sort

305
00:15:39,400 --> 00:15:43,800
Speaker 5: of the global average for mortality for a kid would

306
00:15:43,840 --> 00:15:49,600
Speaker 5: be something like one in three kids dying before age five, right,

307
00:15:49,640 --> 00:15:53,160
Speaker 5: And so as we've learned to keep ourselves and our

308
00:15:53,240 --> 00:15:58,000
Speaker 5: children alive through better sanitation, through an understanding of the

309
00:15:58,080 --> 00:16:00,960
Speaker 5: drum theear of disease, through better water, through better nutrition,

310
00:16:01,120 --> 00:16:05,440
Speaker 5: eventually through vaccines later at our history, what that's meant

311
00:16:05,520 --> 00:16:07,760
Speaker 5: is that more people have grown up to become adults

312
00:16:07,800 --> 00:16:10,160
Speaker 5: and to have children of their own. So the part

313
00:16:10,160 --> 00:16:12,960
Speaker 5: of the equation that's been changing this time is that

314
00:16:13,000 --> 00:16:15,280
Speaker 5: death rates have been falling and birth rates have been

315
00:16:15,280 --> 00:16:19,400
Speaker 5: falling too. It's just that they've been chasing death rates downward.

316
00:16:19,800 --> 00:16:21,760
Speaker 5: And the net effect of all of that over the

317
00:16:21,800 --> 00:16:25,400
Speaker 5: past one hundred years two hundred years has been just

318
00:16:25,680 --> 00:16:28,480
Speaker 5: a skyrocketing of the global population. So, just to put

319
00:16:28,480 --> 00:16:31,800
Speaker 5: that in some perspective, in eighteen hundred, there were about

320
00:16:31,800 --> 00:16:34,560
Speaker 5: a billion of us worldwide. About a century later, in

321
00:16:34,600 --> 00:16:37,640
Speaker 5: nineteen twenty five we passed two billion, and then since then,

322
00:16:37,920 --> 00:16:41,000
Speaker 5: in the last hundred years, we've quadrupled to the present

323
00:16:41,160 --> 00:16:43,760
Speaker 5: eight point two billion. And all of that action has

324
00:16:43,800 --> 00:16:46,720
Speaker 5: been about declining death rates that have been declining faster

325
00:16:46,840 --> 00:16:48,240
Speaker 5: than birth rates have been declining.

326
00:16:48,520 --> 00:16:50,720
Speaker 1: And so is the idea that at some point we're

327
00:16:50,760 --> 00:16:53,640
Speaker 1: going to max out on what we can do in

328
00:16:53,720 --> 00:16:56,600
Speaker 1: terms of reducing death rates, and now the birth rates

329
00:16:56,600 --> 00:16:58,000
Speaker 1: are going to start being more important.

330
00:16:58,240 --> 00:17:01,680
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, we're going to in out on what we

331
00:17:01,720 --> 00:17:05,119
Speaker 5: can do for minimizing death rates. Thankfully, mortality rates for

332
00:17:05,240 --> 00:17:07,760
Speaker 5: children are so low that they're pressing up against a

333
00:17:07,840 --> 00:17:10,960
Speaker 5: zero lower bound, so there's just not much more room

334
00:17:11,040 --> 00:17:14,200
Speaker 5: for them to fall. Meanwhile, fertility rates continue to fall.

335
00:17:14,400 --> 00:17:17,040
Speaker 2: Can't we all just transform into immortal cyborgs and solve

336
00:17:17,040 --> 00:17:17,520
Speaker 2: this problem?

337
00:17:17,960 --> 00:17:21,360
Speaker 5: That would be? That would be that would be.

338
00:17:21,280 --> 00:17:26,280
Speaker 2: Something I love seeing you search or an adjective there?

339
00:17:26,720 --> 00:17:28,960
Speaker 9: Well, I mean, okay, so there is actually there's something

340
00:17:29,000 --> 00:17:31,440
Speaker 9: interesting there. I want to jump in on that because

341
00:17:31,480 --> 00:17:34,159
Speaker 9: that is a question that we get, which is, could

342
00:17:34,440 --> 00:17:38,480
Speaker 9: lower mortality rates solve this problem? We don't mean lower

343
00:17:38,520 --> 00:17:40,320
Speaker 9: info mortality rates? What sort of brought us up to

344
00:17:40,320 --> 00:17:42,600
Speaker 9: spite people's like what if people just stop dying in

345
00:17:42,720 --> 00:17:44,680
Speaker 9: older age and live longer than so, like, what if

346
00:17:44,680 --> 00:17:47,200
Speaker 9: instead of dying on average at seventy five or something,

347
00:17:47,480 --> 00:17:50,760
Speaker 9: we live twice as long and died at one hundred

348
00:17:50,800 --> 00:17:51,280
Speaker 9: and fifty?

349
00:17:51,440 --> 00:17:51,680
Speaker 4: Right?

350
00:17:51,840 --> 00:17:54,640
Speaker 9: Would that be enough to knock us off the path

351
00:17:54,640 --> 00:17:56,840
Speaker 9: and make it so it's no longer the case that

352
00:17:56,960 --> 00:18:00,240
Speaker 9: depopulation is the most likely future. And they answered that

353
00:18:00,320 --> 00:18:05,200
Speaker 9: question is surprisingly no. Now you asked out differential equations

354
00:18:05,200 --> 00:18:06,879
Speaker 9: and I won't get into it. But just think of

355
00:18:06,920 --> 00:18:10,760
Speaker 9: it as like this. If everybody still has two kids

356
00:18:10,840 --> 00:18:13,240
Speaker 9: or one point six kids on average for two adults,

357
00:18:13,400 --> 00:18:16,159
Speaker 9: then we're going to have the same phenomenon where the

358
00:18:16,200 --> 00:18:19,920
Speaker 9: next generation is smaller than the generation before. A given

359
00:18:19,960 --> 00:18:22,800
Speaker 9: generation will live longer, so the number of people alive

360
00:18:22,840 --> 00:18:25,959
Speaker 9: and any one time will be greater, but depopulation will

361
00:18:26,000 --> 00:18:28,720
Speaker 9: still be what's happening. As generation after generation gets smaller

362
00:18:28,760 --> 00:18:29,600
Speaker 9: and smaller.

363
00:18:29,280 --> 00:18:30,680
Speaker 2: You're just stretching out the time scale.

364
00:18:30,800 --> 00:18:33,560
Speaker 9: Befasted exactly, stretching out the timescale. Now it could be

365
00:18:33,800 --> 00:18:35,920
Speaker 9: if we live to be one hundred and fifty instead

366
00:18:35,920 --> 00:18:39,919
Speaker 9: of living to be seventy five. And also the biology

367
00:18:39,960 --> 00:18:43,399
Speaker 9: of reproduction change that instead of having you know, kids

368
00:18:43,440 --> 00:18:45,840
Speaker 9: in our twenties and thirties and maybe forties, you had

369
00:18:45,840 --> 00:18:47,640
Speaker 9: a couple of kids in your thirties, a couple kids

370
00:18:47,680 --> 00:18:50,360
Speaker 9: in your fifties, a couple kids in your seventies. Right

371
00:18:50,840 --> 00:18:53,520
Speaker 9: then we would get off the path from depopulation. But

372
00:18:53,560 --> 00:18:56,000
Speaker 9: it wouldn't be because we were living longer. It would

373
00:18:56,040 --> 00:18:59,480
Speaker 9: still be because we were having more kids. I'll pass,

374
00:19:01,280 --> 00:19:02,639
Speaker 9: I don't know, I mean, what are you going to

375
00:19:02,720 --> 00:19:04,200
Speaker 9: do with all that time when you're one hundred and

376
00:19:04,280 --> 00:19:07,920
Speaker 9: forty and sleep read read we.

377
00:19:07,960 --> 00:19:09,879
Speaker 2: Might need to be cyborgs that to keep up with

378
00:19:09,880 --> 00:19:11,720
Speaker 2: our toddlers when we're one hundred and thirty. That does

379
00:19:11,720 --> 00:19:12,800
Speaker 2: not sound like a lot of fun.

380
00:19:13,080 --> 00:19:15,479
Speaker 1: That's hard. I've been telling a bunch of my friends

381
00:19:15,480 --> 00:19:17,960
Speaker 1: that I read this book and have wanted to like

382
00:19:18,000 --> 00:19:20,800
Speaker 1: start conversations with them about it, and a lot of

383
00:19:20,840 --> 00:19:23,280
Speaker 1: them will say to me, well, that doesn't match up

384
00:19:23,320 --> 00:19:25,520
Speaker 1: with what I've heard. What I've heard is that the

385
00:19:25,600 --> 00:19:28,439
Speaker 1: Earth's population is going to settle at eight billion and

386
00:19:28,480 --> 00:19:30,720
Speaker 1: we're going to stay there. And a couple people have

387
00:19:30,760 --> 00:19:33,000
Speaker 1: said this to me, do you know where that figure

388
00:19:33,080 --> 00:19:35,639
Speaker 1: came from? And could you explain why it's wrong?

389
00:19:36,240 --> 00:19:40,560
Speaker 9: Yeah. So I think it's just that people have known

390
00:19:41,000 --> 00:19:44,359
Speaker 9: that population growth was slowing, and there's just like a

391
00:19:44,560 --> 00:19:47,040
Speaker 9: trope or something that's come out of you know, population

392
00:19:47,119 --> 00:19:49,600
Speaker 9: growth is slowing and it's going to hit zero, and

393
00:19:49,640 --> 00:19:53,240
Speaker 9: there just isn't a lot of thought about what happens next.

394
00:19:53,359 --> 00:19:55,600
Speaker 9: So you might read a newspaper article it says, you know,

395
00:19:55,600 --> 00:19:58,119
Speaker 9: demographers that come out with new information that shows that

396
00:19:58,160 --> 00:20:01,320
Speaker 9: population growth is slowing in going to hit zero. Yes,

397
00:20:01,720 --> 00:20:04,040
Speaker 9: but then what happens next you throw a ball up

398
00:20:04,040 --> 00:20:08,120
Speaker 9: into the air, and at some point it's vertical velocity

399
00:20:08,160 --> 00:20:10,320
Speaker 9: is going to hit zero. But that's not the end

400
00:20:10,359 --> 00:20:13,680
Speaker 9: of the story, right The same force that slowed its

401
00:20:13,680 --> 00:20:16,240
Speaker 9: ascent is eventually going to bring it back down. And

402
00:20:16,280 --> 00:20:19,320
Speaker 9: I think people just aren't seeing that second side of

403
00:20:19,320 --> 00:20:22,880
Speaker 9: the story, that just as falling birth rates have slowed

404
00:20:22,880 --> 00:20:26,000
Speaker 9: the growth rate in the population, falling birth rates are

405
00:20:26,040 --> 00:20:28,760
Speaker 9: also going to bring the population size down.

406
00:20:29,200 --> 00:20:31,840
Speaker 2: So are you suggesting that we haven't had any sort

407
00:20:31,880 --> 00:20:35,760
Speaker 2: of realistic model in the sort of popular discussion of population,

408
00:20:36,200 --> 00:20:39,520
Speaker 2: that it's all just been assumptions about how things are

409
00:20:39,520 --> 00:20:40,520
Speaker 2: going to stabilize.

410
00:20:40,760 --> 00:20:43,959
Speaker 9: I think there has been a lot of thinking that

411
00:20:44,040 --> 00:20:48,680
Speaker 9: because the population size is growing, it's going to continue growing,

412
00:20:49,119 --> 00:20:51,960
Speaker 9: even though there have been signs all along that that

413
00:20:52,040 --> 00:20:54,840
Speaker 9: probably wasn't going to be the case. So all the

414
00:20:54,840 --> 00:20:58,000
Speaker 9: way back in nineteen eighty, a long time ago, as

415
00:20:58,040 --> 00:21:01,520
Speaker 9: we've already discussed on this one, and five people already

416
00:21:01,600 --> 00:21:05,359
Speaker 9: lived in a country where the birth rate was below two.

417
00:21:05,840 --> 00:21:08,919
Speaker 9: You know, in the nineteen seventies, Europe passed below to Japan,

418
00:21:09,040 --> 00:21:12,359
Speaker 9: passed below to Cuba, Australia, Canada passed below too. In

419
00:21:12,400 --> 00:21:15,280
Speaker 9: the nineteen seventies, and so not only have birth rates

420
00:21:15,320 --> 00:21:20,640
Speaker 9: been falling for not just decades, but centuries. It's long

421
00:21:20,720 --> 00:21:23,719
Speaker 9: been the case that we could have seen this coming.

422
00:21:24,000 --> 00:21:28,159
Speaker 9: But I think because rapid exponential population growth due to

423
00:21:28,160 --> 00:21:31,600
Speaker 9: low mortality was so new on the historical scene that

424
00:21:31,760 --> 00:21:35,240
Speaker 9: got everybody's attention, and so it just wasn't that many

425
00:21:35,280 --> 00:21:39,000
Speaker 9: that thought through that if then, if the world's average

426
00:21:39,000 --> 00:21:41,800
Speaker 9: birth rate falls below two, then what's going to happen next?

427
00:21:42,040 --> 00:21:44,600
Speaker 9: And the evidence pointing towards that being the likely future.

428
00:21:45,080 --> 00:21:47,440
Speaker 2: And you mentioned earlier that birth rates vary a lot

429
00:21:47,480 --> 00:21:50,399
Speaker 2: from country to countries, South Korea versus other places, And

430
00:21:50,760 --> 00:21:54,520
Speaker 2: you know, I've heard anecdotally about subpopulations that have very

431
00:21:54,560 --> 00:21:57,679
Speaker 2: high birth rates. I remember my wife in grad school

432
00:21:57,720 --> 00:22:01,120
Speaker 2: learning about some population where they have like seven eight

433
00:22:01,200 --> 00:22:04,360
Speaker 2: children on average. What do we know about the sort

434
00:22:04,359 --> 00:22:07,960
Speaker 2: of variation among subpopulations? Are we going to see the

435
00:22:08,000 --> 00:22:12,440
Speaker 2: global population decline but some populations grow very rapidly to compensate.

436
00:22:12,840 --> 00:22:16,240
Speaker 5: What's sort of interesting, and I think flying under the

437
00:22:16,359 --> 00:22:20,480
Speaker 5: radar in the popular discourse about this is that really

438
00:22:20,920 --> 00:22:25,399
Speaker 5: almost every region on Earth has either low fertility or

439
00:22:25,520 --> 00:22:28,480
Speaker 5: falling fertility. So it's really easy to think that this

440
00:22:28,600 --> 00:22:31,480
Speaker 5: is a phenomenon that's like special to Southeast the rich

441
00:22:31,520 --> 00:22:34,720
Speaker 5: economies of Southeast Asia, or maybe to Europe or the US.

442
00:22:35,119 --> 00:22:38,200
Speaker 5: But you know, we're here at Texas, and the birth

443
00:22:38,280 --> 00:22:40,400
Speaker 5: rate in Mexico, just south of the border is lower

444
00:22:40,440 --> 00:22:43,439
Speaker 5: than the birth rate in Texas. The fertility rate in

445
00:22:43,520 --> 00:22:47,080
Speaker 5: Latin America as a whole is something like one point eight,

446
00:22:47,560 --> 00:22:50,960
Speaker 5: which is below the replacement rate. Let's see. So the

447
00:22:51,119 --> 00:22:55,000
Speaker 5: three largest countries in the world are India, China, and

448
00:22:55,240 --> 00:22:58,720
Speaker 5: the United States, and all three countries have birth rates

449
00:22:58,800 --> 00:23:01,080
Speaker 5: below replacement and those are places that are very different.

450
00:23:01,080 --> 00:23:04,280
Speaker 5: They're different socially, they're different economically, they range. You know,

451
00:23:04,359 --> 00:23:07,600
Speaker 5: India's a developing country, China's middle income country. The United

452
00:23:07,600 --> 00:23:11,080
Speaker 5: States is an advanced economy. But basically everywhere in the

453
00:23:11,080 --> 00:23:14,199
Speaker 5: world we have low birth rates. And the exceptions to

454
00:23:14,240 --> 00:23:17,000
Speaker 5: that places like subs Haer in Africa. Birth rates are

455
00:23:17,040 --> 00:23:19,479
Speaker 5: still high. So it's still something like four kids per

456
00:23:19,520 --> 00:23:22,400
Speaker 5: two adults, but that number has also been falling over

457
00:23:22,400 --> 00:23:26,679
Speaker 5: the last fifty years, and demographers tend to project that

458
00:23:26,800 --> 00:23:29,560
Speaker 5: will continue to fall into the future as subs Haer

459
00:23:29,600 --> 00:23:33,440
Speaker 5: in Africa continues its development in terms of rising incomes,

460
00:23:33,520 --> 00:23:35,320
Speaker 5: rising opportunities, rising education.

461
00:23:35,760 --> 00:23:37,600
Speaker 1: So let's take a break and when we get back,

462
00:23:37,640 --> 00:23:40,240
Speaker 1: we'll talk about what we know about why birth rates

463
00:23:40,280 --> 00:23:54,800
Speaker 1: fall and how good we are at predicting this stuff.

464
00:24:03,240 --> 00:24:03,879
Speaker 1: And we're back.

465
00:24:04,200 --> 00:24:04,320
Speaker 7: Mike.

466
00:24:04,359 --> 00:24:06,440
Speaker 1: At the end of the last segment, you were talking

467
00:24:06,480 --> 00:24:10,040
Speaker 1: about how birth rates in the Sahara region have gone

468
00:24:10,080 --> 00:24:13,600
Speaker 1: from four to Are they dropping from four or did

469
00:24:13,640 --> 00:24:15,280
Speaker 1: they go from higher than four to four?

470
00:24:15,600 --> 00:24:19,159
Speaker 5: They've gone from something like six in the middle of

471
00:24:19,200 --> 00:24:21,720
Speaker 5: the twentieth century to something like four today.

472
00:24:21,920 --> 00:24:24,359
Speaker 1: So how good are we at predicting this kind of

473
00:24:24,359 --> 00:24:26,560
Speaker 1: stuff in like a ten year frame for example?

474
00:24:27,040 --> 00:24:30,000
Speaker 5: So in a ten year frame, professional demographers are good

475
00:24:30,040 --> 00:24:34,000
Speaker 5: at predicting population trajectories. The reason that demographers are pretty

476
00:24:34,000 --> 00:24:37,520
Speaker 5: good at predicting population sizes over a course like ten

477
00:24:37,600 --> 00:24:40,199
Speaker 5: years is that the population just has a lot of

478
00:24:40,200 --> 00:24:43,399
Speaker 5: inertia in it, so no matter what happens to they

479
00:24:43,560 --> 00:24:46,160
Speaker 5: were sticking too much on calculus here. But a fertility

480
00:24:46,240 --> 00:24:49,240
Speaker 5: rate is a flow and population is a stock, and

481
00:24:49,280 --> 00:24:51,560
Speaker 5: so you can change the flow as much as you

482
00:24:51,640 --> 00:24:55,280
Speaker 5: want instantaneously and it's going to have no immediate effect

483
00:24:55,400 --> 00:24:59,359
Speaker 5: on the stock. So in terms of predicting the population tomorrow.

484
00:24:59,480 --> 00:25:01,920
Speaker 5: I can pred debt very well, even though I don't

485
00:25:01,960 --> 00:25:04,800
Speaker 5: know how many babies will be born today, because most

486
00:25:04,800 --> 00:25:06,919
Speaker 5: of that prediction is built up in the stock of

487
00:25:07,280 --> 00:25:10,800
Speaker 5: people who are already alive. We know how people age

488
00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:13,600
Speaker 5: and die in their later years. We can predict that

489
00:25:13,600 --> 00:25:17,560
Speaker 5: with pretty good statistical accuracy. And so the uncertainty is

490
00:25:17,640 --> 00:25:21,399
Speaker 5: really about fertility and changes, and fertility actually take a

491
00:25:21,440 --> 00:25:25,920
Speaker 5: long time to play out into changes in population size. Now,

492
00:25:26,080 --> 00:25:29,879
Speaker 5: how good is anyone predicting whether fertility rates will stay low,

493
00:25:30,200 --> 00:25:32,160
Speaker 5: not just in the next decade, but in the next

494
00:25:32,320 --> 00:25:34,720
Speaker 5: half century, the next century. I think we should be

495
00:25:34,800 --> 00:25:37,680
Speaker 5: pretty clear that nobody knows for sure. But what we're

496
00:25:37,720 --> 00:25:41,880
Speaker 5: seeing around the world is a convergent pattern of low

497
00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:47,080
Speaker 5: fertility fertility below too. And history is not a guarantee

498
00:25:47,119 --> 00:25:49,800
Speaker 5: of future performance. Is That's what they say in stock

499
00:25:49,840 --> 00:25:53,480
Speaker 5: market predicting. But if we look around, we shouldn't ignore history.

500
00:25:53,520 --> 00:25:55,639
Speaker 5: And if we look around the world at all of

501
00:25:55,640 --> 00:25:59,560
Speaker 5: the countries where over a full childbearing lifetime fertility rates

502
00:25:59,560 --> 00:26:03,360
Speaker 5: have ever fall in below one point nine, there's twenty

503
00:26:03,440 --> 00:26:06,320
Speaker 5: six countries in that category. In none of those have

504
00:26:06,440 --> 00:26:09,440
Speaker 5: lifetime fertility rates meaning over the course of women's entire

505
00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:13,679
Speaker 5: life ever risen above two again, So that zero and

506
00:26:13,720 --> 00:26:16,159
Speaker 5: twenty six record isn't a guarantee of what will happen,

507
00:26:16,640 --> 00:26:18,640
Speaker 5: but it would be something that we would do well

508
00:26:18,680 --> 00:26:20,720
Speaker 5: to take seriously as a risk for the future.

509
00:26:21,119 --> 00:26:24,160
Speaker 2: So I want to understand what we know about why

510
00:26:24,200 --> 00:26:26,560
Speaker 2: this is happening, and then also talk in a minute

511
00:26:26,680 --> 00:26:29,520
Speaker 2: about things people have tried and why that might or

512
00:26:29,640 --> 00:26:32,000
Speaker 2: might not work. But what do we know about the

513
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:34,439
Speaker 2: overall trends that are causing this.

514
00:26:35,000 --> 00:26:38,840
Speaker 9: So surprisingly less than you might think. You know, everybody

515
00:26:38,920 --> 00:26:42,840
Speaker 9: has a theory of why birth rates are low and falling,

516
00:26:43,359 --> 00:26:46,760
Speaker 9: but everybody's theories are different, and none of them really

517
00:26:46,800 --> 00:26:50,040
Speaker 9: captured the bigness of falling birth rates. And by bigness,

518
00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:52,120
Speaker 9: I mean we've talked about how it's something that's been

519
00:26:52,160 --> 00:26:55,119
Speaker 9: going on not just for years or decades, but for centuries.

520
00:26:55,600 --> 00:26:59,240
Speaker 9: And also that's happening in societies that are very different

521
00:26:59,280 --> 00:27:00,760
Speaker 9: from one another around the world.

522
00:27:00,800 --> 00:27:02,840
Speaker 2: And so we can't blame it all on Joe Biden,

523
00:27:02,880 --> 00:27:03,280
Speaker 2: for example.

524
00:27:03,280 --> 00:27:04,760
Speaker 9: You can't blame it all on Joe Biden. You can't

525
00:27:04,760 --> 00:27:07,359
Speaker 9: blame it all on any one thing. There's going to

526
00:27:07,359 --> 00:27:10,000
Speaker 9: be no silver bull exc So you hear people you know,

527
00:27:10,040 --> 00:27:13,760
Speaker 9: depending on as you say, there are sort of preconceptions

528
00:27:13,800 --> 00:27:18,119
Speaker 9: thinking about well, maybe it's about capitalism or the free

529
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:21,000
Speaker 9: market or neoliberalism that's causing the problem. Or maybe somebody

530
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:24,960
Speaker 9: might say it's about feminism or the retreat for marriage

531
00:27:25,040 --> 00:27:27,560
Speaker 9: or the decline of religion that's causing the problem. But whatever,

532
00:27:28,119 --> 00:27:32,040
Speaker 9: whatever your theory is, you can find an exception. So

533
00:27:32,440 --> 00:27:35,120
Speaker 9: for me, I learn a lot by thinking about India,

534
00:27:35,200 --> 00:27:37,320
Speaker 9: which is the country that I study in my research

535
00:27:37,359 --> 00:27:39,800
Speaker 9: and where I work. And so India is now not

536
00:27:39,840 --> 00:27:42,520
Speaker 9: only the world's most populous country, but the world's most

537
00:27:42,520 --> 00:27:46,720
Speaker 9: populous below replacement country. It's below too also, even though

538
00:27:46,920 --> 00:27:49,040
Speaker 9: India was the place in the middle of the twentieth

539
00:27:49,080 --> 00:27:53,439
Speaker 9: century that was the center of these overpopulation fears. And

540
00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:56,800
Speaker 9: what makes India so interesting is that it's a society

541
00:27:56,960 --> 00:28:02,040
Speaker 9: where religion continues to be important and in almost everybody's lives,

542
00:28:02,080 --> 00:28:04,719
Speaker 9: not just on a piece of paper, but actually something

543
00:28:04,760 --> 00:28:08,000
Speaker 9: that's part of their practices. Almost everybody gets married and

544
00:28:08,080 --> 00:28:11,440
Speaker 9: at young ages. Almost everybody gets married at young ages

545
00:28:11,480 --> 00:28:14,040
Speaker 9: and starts having kids at young ages. And here's what's

546
00:28:14,240 --> 00:28:18,000
Speaker 9: particularly striking is that female labor force participation in India

547
00:28:18,160 --> 00:28:21,439
Speaker 9: is still pretty low in international comparison, So in a

548
00:28:21,480 --> 00:28:25,960
Speaker 9: place like the US or Europe, there's an important story

549
00:28:26,000 --> 00:28:30,439
Speaker 9: about conflicts between career and family being part of why

550
00:28:30,640 --> 00:28:33,240
Speaker 9: people aren't having so many children. In fact, that's the

551
00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:36,400
Speaker 9: title of Claudia Golden's books. She's a Nobel Prize winny

552
00:28:36,359 --> 00:28:39,320
Speaker 9: economist's career and family, and this is very important in

553
00:28:39,320 --> 00:28:42,360
Speaker 9: many people's lives. But even that's not the explanation that

554
00:28:42,400 --> 00:28:44,880
Speaker 9: works everywhere, because it couldn't be what's going on in

555
00:28:44,880 --> 00:28:46,920
Speaker 9: India because so many of the women aren't working in

556
00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:50,320
Speaker 9: the paid labor force but still having below replacement birth rates,

557
00:28:50,360 --> 00:28:54,239
Speaker 9: and so no theory is right or applicable everywhere. And

558
00:28:54,280 --> 00:28:57,400
Speaker 9: so part of what's so striking is that, yes, there's

559
00:28:57,480 --> 00:29:01,520
Speaker 9: variability across countries, but that very really is shrinking. As

560
00:29:01,720 --> 00:29:04,760
Speaker 9: as birth rates fall everywhere, countries are becoming more similar

561
00:29:04,800 --> 00:29:07,560
Speaker 9: in this way, and so what we're seeing is a

562
00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:10,480
Speaker 9: convergent outcome, and that's part of what makes us think

563
00:29:10,480 --> 00:29:12,480
Speaker 9: that depopulation is so likely.

564
00:29:13,200 --> 00:29:15,640
Speaker 1: So Mike kind of already addressed this, but while I

565
00:29:15,680 --> 00:29:17,360
Speaker 1: was reading the book, this was a question that kind

566
00:29:17,360 --> 00:29:19,440
Speaker 1: of kept going through my mind. So I want to

567
00:29:19,520 --> 00:29:22,360
Speaker 1: sort of bottom line this. So we don't understand why

568
00:29:22,440 --> 00:29:25,920
Speaker 1: birth rates are falling, So we don't know for sure

569
00:29:26,160 --> 00:29:28,640
Speaker 1: that things won't change when we hit a population size

570
00:29:28,640 --> 00:29:31,480
Speaker 1: of six billion, for example, But we have really good

571
00:29:31,560 --> 00:29:35,240
Speaker 1: data on trends which suggests we should be concerned about this.

572
00:29:35,280 --> 00:29:37,480
Speaker 1: Would that be a fair way of sort of summarizing

573
00:29:37,640 --> 00:29:38,160
Speaker 1: the argument.

574
00:29:38,520 --> 00:29:40,880
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think we could say more too. I

575
00:29:40,960 --> 00:29:42,920
Speaker 5: think we can sort of do a little bit of

576
00:29:42,920 --> 00:29:46,280
Speaker 5: introspection here. Sometimes we can too quickly jump to the

577
00:29:46,360 --> 00:29:49,360
Speaker 5: idea that, well, this is like an unsustainable trend. You know,

578
00:29:49,480 --> 00:29:52,000
Speaker 5: birth rates can't keep falling. I mean, the first thing

579
00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:54,120
Speaker 5: to say there is that birth rates wouldn't need to

580
00:29:54,200 --> 00:29:56,120
Speaker 5: keep falling, whether they're already low. They we just have

581
00:29:56,160 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 5: to stay low. And then the question is, couldn't it

582
00:29:59,360 --> 00:30:01,360
Speaker 5: be the case that people could continue to choose to

583
00:30:01,440 --> 00:30:03,840
Speaker 5: have the sort of families that they do now. I mean,

584
00:30:03,880 --> 00:30:06,320
Speaker 5: in a world that was shrinking, that fell to six

585
00:30:06,400 --> 00:30:10,720
Speaker 5: billion or four billion, I think it's quite plausible that

586
00:30:11,120 --> 00:30:14,040
Speaker 5: if nothing else in society changed, people could look around

587
00:30:14,320 --> 00:30:16,600
Speaker 5: and think. You know, lots of people thinking that two

588
00:30:16,680 --> 00:30:19,360
Speaker 5: kids as the right number for them. Some people thinking one,

589
00:30:19,440 --> 00:30:21,920
Speaker 5: some people thinking zero, some people thinking three or more.

590
00:30:22,120 --> 00:30:24,640
Speaker 5: I think people could continue to make those sort of

591
00:30:24,720 --> 00:30:28,840
Speaker 5: choices even as the population was falling. Sometimes people think

592
00:30:28,880 --> 00:30:30,840
Speaker 5: that there's going to be some natural rebound to two,

593
00:30:31,520 --> 00:30:34,680
Speaker 5: that two is some sort of special number when it

594
00:30:34,680 --> 00:30:37,320
Speaker 5: comes to fertility, and two might be the number that

595
00:30:37,320 --> 00:30:39,480
Speaker 5: a lot of people choose. But two is not a

596
00:30:39,480 --> 00:30:42,520
Speaker 5: special number in terms of a population average. We've never

597
00:30:42,560 --> 00:30:45,560
Speaker 5: had a population average in any population any time that

598
00:30:45,640 --> 00:30:48,239
Speaker 5: just held exactly at two. When birth rates fall, they

599
00:30:48,240 --> 00:30:50,720
Speaker 5: fall right across two, and they don't. There's no like

600
00:30:50,720 --> 00:30:53,240
Speaker 5: a magnetic force pulling them back up to two. So

601
00:30:53,760 --> 00:30:56,600
Speaker 5: I think there's lots of reasons to think that low

602
00:30:56,680 --> 00:30:59,600
Speaker 5: fertility could continue even in the face of a flawing

603
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:00,600
Speaker 5: global population.

604
00:31:00,840 --> 00:31:03,040
Speaker 2: I think you're bumping up on something really interesting there,

605
00:31:03,160 --> 00:31:07,040
Speaker 2: which is implicitly doing differential equations. You know, you're telling

606
00:31:07,120 --> 00:31:10,200
Speaker 2: us that people don't respond to the density of people

607
00:31:10,240 --> 00:31:12,800
Speaker 2: around them. It's not like families get together and they're like, hmm,

608
00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:15,200
Speaker 2: there's lots of kids in the kindergarten, Let's have fewer kids.

609
00:31:15,320 --> 00:31:18,800
Speaker 2: Or while kindergartens seem empty, let's have more kids. That's

610
00:31:18,840 --> 00:31:21,440
Speaker 2: not sensitive to the population itself, right.

611
00:31:21,280 --> 00:31:23,160
Speaker 9: And it's more than that, it's that it might not

612
00:31:23,240 --> 00:31:26,600
Speaker 9: even seem that different. And so you know, in Texas

613
00:31:26,680 --> 00:31:29,280
Speaker 9: right now, the average is one point eight. What if

614
00:31:29,320 --> 00:31:33,640
Speaker 9: the average instead were two point one. You know, that

615
00:31:33,760 --> 00:31:36,560
Speaker 9: would make the difference for the world as a whole

616
00:31:36,840 --> 00:31:41,040
Speaker 9: between depopulating and growing. But I don't think life would

617
00:31:41,040 --> 00:31:43,600
Speaker 9: seem very different living in a society with an average

618
00:31:43,680 --> 00:31:45,480
Speaker 9: one point eight from living in a society with an

619
00:31:45,520 --> 00:31:48,200
Speaker 9: average of two point one. When you're you know, jogging

620
00:31:48,240 --> 00:31:50,760
Speaker 9: around the park or going to the store, it would

621
00:31:50,760 --> 00:31:52,960
Speaker 9: feel pretty similar. And I think, you know, back to

622
00:31:53,000 --> 00:31:55,880
Speaker 9: the question of how did this all slip under everybody's

623
00:31:55,960 --> 00:31:57,600
Speaker 9: radar and how did we get on the path of

624
00:31:57,680 --> 00:32:00,560
Speaker 9: depopulation with that everybody noticing? I think I think part

625
00:32:00,560 --> 00:32:02,520
Speaker 9: of it is because, at least in the United States,

626
00:32:02,600 --> 00:32:05,280
Speaker 9: where we were right around this two level for a

627
00:32:05,360 --> 00:32:08,480
Speaker 9: long time, one point it's just not going to feel

628
00:32:08,520 --> 00:32:10,480
Speaker 9: that different from two point two, but it's going to

629
00:32:10,520 --> 00:32:13,360
Speaker 9: have very different consequences for the long term future.

630
00:32:13,600 --> 00:32:16,160
Speaker 2: And the story we're sort of getting to is that

631
00:32:16,560 --> 00:32:20,920
Speaker 2: birth rates and rates of production of children somehow depends

632
00:32:21,040 --> 00:32:23,880
Speaker 2: on a lot of complicated factors that it's not always

633
00:32:23,960 --> 00:32:26,520
Speaker 2: obvious to dig out. And it reminds me this story

634
00:32:26,560 --> 00:32:29,040
Speaker 2: I remember from my wife being in graduate school shit

635
00:32:29,080 --> 00:32:31,680
Speaker 2: a friend who was working to study this population of

636
00:32:31,760 --> 00:32:35,640
Speaker 2: hutter Rights, a small religious community in the Midwest, and

637
00:32:35,680 --> 00:32:38,800
Speaker 2: they have like an enormous fertility rate, like huge numbers

638
00:32:38,800 --> 00:32:41,080
Speaker 2: of children. And I remember these researchers studying like why

639
00:32:41,200 --> 00:32:43,800
Speaker 2: is it, why are they so fertile? And eventually the

640
00:32:43,840 --> 00:32:47,520
Speaker 2: answer was they just have sex every day and why

641
00:32:47,640 --> 00:32:49,880
Speaker 2: they have so many kids. And so it's not like,

642
00:32:50,040 --> 00:32:52,840
Speaker 2: you know, we want to populate the earth, or kindergartens

643
00:32:52,880 --> 00:32:55,720
Speaker 2: are too empty. It's just like a product of lots

644
00:32:55,720 --> 00:32:57,800
Speaker 2: of choices people are making about.

645
00:32:57,600 --> 00:32:59,560
Speaker 1: Their days, but their numbers are going down too.

646
00:33:00,080 --> 00:33:02,000
Speaker 5: We talk a bit in the book, not about the

647
00:33:02,040 --> 00:33:05,120
Speaker 5: hutter rates, but about like the Pennsylvania Dutch, the Amish,

648
00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:07,560
Speaker 5: and we talk about it because I think a sort

649
00:33:07,600 --> 00:33:10,960
Speaker 5: of a certain kind of math inclined person would hear

650
00:33:11,040 --> 00:33:15,320
Speaker 5: these arguments and think, huh, well, it's one thing to

651
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:18,000
Speaker 5: say that many populations have birth rates that would lead

652
00:33:18,040 --> 00:33:20,800
Speaker 5: to decline, but there are these subcultures like the Amish

653
00:33:20,880 --> 00:33:23,719
Speaker 5: that just have tons of kids. Right, So even if

654
00:33:23,720 --> 00:33:25,720
Speaker 5: we're not having a lot of kids in the rest

655
00:33:25,720 --> 00:33:28,000
Speaker 5: of America. The Amish are having a lot of kids,

656
00:33:28,240 --> 00:33:30,600
Speaker 5: and you could do a sort of extrapolation to think, well,

657
00:33:30,640 --> 00:33:33,160
Speaker 5: if the Amish keep having more and more kids, they're

658
00:33:33,160 --> 00:33:34,680
Speaker 5: going to build up to be a larger and larger

659
00:33:34,720 --> 00:33:38,240
Speaker 5: fraction of the population. And you know, so you know,

660
00:33:38,280 --> 00:33:41,920
Speaker 5: we look this up and the recent population growth rates

661
00:33:41,920 --> 00:33:43,920
Speaker 5: of the Amish or something like four percent a year,

662
00:33:44,400 --> 00:33:47,520
Speaker 5: and if you just extrapolate that naively, then you know,

663
00:33:47,520 --> 00:33:49,120
Speaker 5: in two hundred years there's going to be a billion

664
00:33:49,160 --> 00:33:51,680
Speaker 5: Amish in the world. But we don't think that argument

665
00:33:51,760 --> 00:33:54,600
Speaker 5: makes an awful lot of sense for a couple of reasons.

666
00:33:55,280 --> 00:33:59,160
Speaker 5: One is that sort of high fertility enclaves, whether it's

667
00:33:59,200 --> 00:34:02,920
Speaker 5: the Amish or any other, their fertility is also going down,

668
00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:07,520
Speaker 5: like Kelly alluded to. So, you know, maybe last century

669
00:34:07,960 --> 00:34:11,640
Speaker 5: the Amish we're having eight kids per two adults. Today

670
00:34:11,760 --> 00:34:14,000
Speaker 5: the estimates put it as something like five or five

671
00:34:14,040 --> 00:34:16,400
Speaker 5: and a half kids per two adults. It's hard to know.

672
00:34:16,440 --> 00:34:18,080
Speaker 5: There's not a census of the Amish the way that

673
00:34:18,120 --> 00:34:21,160
Speaker 5: there's like a census of Texas. So reason one is

674
00:34:21,160 --> 00:34:24,839
Speaker 5: that even among high fertility subcultures, what counts as high

675
00:34:24,880 --> 00:34:27,960
Speaker 5: fertility is changing over time, and you know, Sunday high

676
00:34:28,000 --> 00:34:30,480
Speaker 5: fertility might be in two kids instead of one, rather

677
00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:33,440
Speaker 5: than five kids instead of three. The other reason that

678
00:34:33,480 --> 00:34:37,319
Speaker 5: we shouldn't count on the Amish outnumbering grains of sand

679
00:34:37,400 --> 00:34:41,040
Speaker 5: on the beach is that people don't always adopt the

680
00:34:41,080 --> 00:34:45,759
Speaker 5: cultural practices of their parents. We see cultural change all

681
00:34:45,760 --> 00:34:49,600
Speaker 5: over the world. South America is changing from being more

682
00:34:49,640 --> 00:34:53,040
Speaker 5: Catholic to becoming more Protestant over time, just as one example.

683
00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:55,040
Speaker 5: But you know, in our own lives, I think we've

684
00:34:55,040 --> 00:34:57,680
Speaker 5: all had the experience of being teenagers and projecting one

685
00:34:57,680 --> 00:35:00,399
Speaker 5: cultural practice or another of our parents. These these links

686
00:35:00,400 --> 00:35:03,719
Speaker 5: that connect generations aren't perfect. And you really have to

687
00:35:04,360 --> 00:35:07,520
Speaker 5: push this idea of cultural heritability pretty far to think

688
00:35:07,560 --> 00:35:11,759
Speaker 5: that even as the Pennsylvania Dutch ran out of Pennsylvania farmland,

689
00:35:11,800 --> 00:35:14,920
Speaker 5: because you know, they're spilling across continents, because there's just

690
00:35:14,960 --> 00:35:18,239
Speaker 5: so many of them, that somehow these cultural practices and

691
00:35:18,360 --> 00:35:21,919
Speaker 5: preferences are going to be inherited one for one from

692
00:35:21,960 --> 00:35:22,760
Speaker 5: parent to child.

693
00:35:23,160 --> 00:35:25,240
Speaker 1: I think some of that cultural stuff is at play

694
00:35:25,440 --> 00:35:28,400
Speaker 1: with the Hutter rates. Hutter rates are communal. So my

695
00:35:28,480 --> 00:35:30,439
Speaker 1: husband and I spent a lot of time reading about

696
00:35:30,440 --> 00:35:32,439
Speaker 1: them when we were trying to decide if communes would

697
00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:36,080
Speaker 1: be a good model for early space settlements, and so

698
00:35:36,160 --> 00:35:38,520
Speaker 1: we became sort of experts in hutter rates, and they

699
00:35:38,560 --> 00:35:40,960
Speaker 1: were also lamenting their declining birth rates.

700
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:43,960
Speaker 2: I keep waiting for somebody to make a weird al

701
00:35:44,040 --> 00:35:45,840
Speaker 2: joke here. Nobody's going to talk about how we're not

702
00:35:45,880 --> 00:35:47,920
Speaker 2: going to be living in the future Amish paradise.

703
00:35:48,560 --> 00:35:53,600
Speaker 1: Now we missed that cultural touchstone. Let's talk a little

704
00:35:53,600 --> 00:35:57,560
Speaker 1: bit about why depopulation could be bad. So, you know,

705
00:35:57,600 --> 00:35:59,960
Speaker 1: as an ecologist, the idea that we might have four

706
00:36:00,120 --> 00:36:02,200
Speaker 1: billion people, like, I don't want there to be zero people.

707
00:36:02,239 --> 00:36:04,640
Speaker 1: I like people, and I don't want any people to die.

708
00:36:05,000 --> 00:36:07,399
Speaker 1: But if people are choosing to not have as many

709
00:36:07,400 --> 00:36:09,520
Speaker 1: babies and we end up with something like four billion,

710
00:36:10,080 --> 00:36:12,160
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound so bad to me initially to have

711
00:36:12,320 --> 00:36:14,640
Speaker 1: fewer people that we invest more in. But you all

712
00:36:14,640 --> 00:36:17,600
Speaker 1: make a pretty good argument about more people being better

713
00:36:17,640 --> 00:36:19,839
Speaker 1: for a lot of reasons. So let's hear about why

714
00:36:19,920 --> 00:36:23,040
Speaker 1: we don't want billions of people fewer on this planet.

715
00:36:23,120 --> 00:36:25,680
Speaker 9: Well, first, I want to hold on that four billion

716
00:36:25,760 --> 00:36:28,359
Speaker 9: thing for a second, because I think it's important if

717
00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:32,920
Speaker 9: somebody's listening to this and they're thinking, yeah, let's have

718
00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:36,719
Speaker 9: some depopulation. And what I want is a future where

719
00:36:36,760 --> 00:36:40,680
Speaker 9: the world stabilizes at some number like four billion or

720
00:36:40,719 --> 00:36:45,320
Speaker 9: three billion or two billion. Then that sort of future

721
00:36:45,520 --> 00:36:49,520
Speaker 9: would fundamentally require the same thing we're talking about here,

722
00:36:49,719 --> 00:36:52,680
Speaker 9: which is an increase someday in birth rates. Right, the

723
00:36:52,760 --> 00:36:55,520
Speaker 9: population is not just going to suddenly hang and hold

724
00:36:55,560 --> 00:36:57,839
Speaker 9: still at eight billion or ten billion, and it's not

725
00:36:57,880 --> 00:36:59,960
Speaker 9: just going to suddenly hang and hold still at four

726
00:37:00,200 --> 00:37:03,520
Speaker 9: billion either unless birth rates go back up. So in

727
00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:07,160
Speaker 9: our book, after the spike, what we're considering is would

728
00:37:07,200 --> 00:37:10,640
Speaker 9: it be better to have a future of depopulation generation

729
00:37:10,680 --> 00:37:13,440
Speaker 9: after generation or would it be better instead to have

730
00:37:13,480 --> 00:37:16,760
Speaker 9: a future of stabilization. And not to hide the ball,

731
00:37:17,000 --> 00:37:19,239
Speaker 9: we make the case for a future of stabilization. Now

732
00:37:19,280 --> 00:37:22,239
Speaker 9: we don't say where. That's beyond what anyone could know

733
00:37:22,320 --> 00:37:25,080
Speaker 9: given the science we have. But let's take four billion.

734
00:37:25,560 --> 00:37:29,080
Speaker 9: For the world's population to ever stabilize someday at four billion,

735
00:37:29,440 --> 00:37:33,239
Speaker 9: that means after a period of depopulation, birth rates around

736
00:37:33,280 --> 00:37:35,560
Speaker 9: the world are going to have to go back up

737
00:37:35,600 --> 00:37:36,680
Speaker 9: to to and stay there.

738
00:37:36,800 --> 00:37:38,520
Speaker 2: And I just want to bottom line that to make

739
00:37:38,560 --> 00:37:40,839
Speaker 2: sure people caught that because you're arguing that if birth

740
00:37:40,880 --> 00:37:44,200
Speaker 2: rates stay below replacement, we won't just go from eight

741
00:37:44,239 --> 00:37:46,040
Speaker 2: billion to four billion, we'll go to two billion and

742
00:37:46,080 --> 00:37:47,560
Speaker 2: one billion and a half a billion, and you just

743
00:37:47,680 --> 00:37:48,680
Speaker 2: keep going.

744
00:37:48,360 --> 00:37:49,040
Speaker 5: Down, right.

745
00:37:49,040 --> 00:37:51,080
Speaker 9: It's you know, when your rocket ship gets to the

746
00:37:51,120 --> 00:37:52,840
Speaker 9: planet that you want to be on, how do you

747
00:37:52,960 --> 00:37:57,320
Speaker 9: slow down and stop right? When the global population gets

748
00:37:57,360 --> 00:38:00,239
Speaker 9: to the size that you want to stabilize that four

749
00:38:00,280 --> 00:38:02,759
Speaker 9: billion or three billion or whatever, if you want to

750
00:38:02,800 --> 00:38:05,400
Speaker 9: stay there, then just like at any other size, birth rate,

751
00:38:05,480 --> 00:38:07,279
Speaker 9: you have to be an average of two. So this

752
00:38:07,440 --> 00:38:11,160
Speaker 9: is my conciliatory message that we're on the same team here.

753
00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:14,320
Speaker 9: If you want the size of the population to stabilize somewhere,

754
00:38:14,600 --> 00:38:18,680
Speaker 9: and we face the same question of how would we

755
00:38:18,760 --> 00:38:20,840
Speaker 9: ever get back to a birth rate and an average

756
00:38:20,840 --> 00:38:24,200
Speaker 9: around two. Okay, Now, another question, and it's the one

757
00:38:24,200 --> 00:38:25,920
Speaker 9: that you asked, which is.

758
00:38:26,400 --> 00:38:27,319
Speaker 5: Why would we want that?

759
00:38:27,600 --> 00:38:31,480
Speaker 9: Why would we want the size of the population to

760
00:38:31,840 --> 00:38:37,520
Speaker 9: stabilize or to avoid depopulation generation after generation? And here's

761
00:38:37,600 --> 00:38:40,560
Speaker 9: one reason why we think that depopulation matters and that

762
00:38:40,640 --> 00:38:43,080
Speaker 9: we should want to avoid it, because we're all made

763
00:38:43,160 --> 00:38:45,720
Speaker 9: better off by sharing the world with more other people,

764
00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:49,399
Speaker 9: Other people alive alongside us, other people who were live

765
00:38:49,480 --> 00:38:52,080
Speaker 9: before us. Other people make the discoveries and have the

766
00:38:52,160 --> 00:38:55,600
Speaker 9: ideas that improve our lives. And other people are where

767
00:38:55,640 --> 00:38:57,040
Speaker 9: science and knowledge comes from.

768
00:38:57,239 --> 00:38:58,120
Speaker 1: I like people too.

769
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:00,960
Speaker 2: People are awesome.

770
00:39:01,719 --> 00:39:03,839
Speaker 5: We can drill down on that too. I mean, why

771
00:39:03,880 --> 00:39:07,200
Speaker 5: are lives better now than a couple centuries ago?

772
00:39:07,840 --> 00:39:08,000
Speaker 7: You know?

773
00:39:08,040 --> 00:39:10,120
Speaker 5: Why do we all have shoes on our feet and

774
00:39:10,160 --> 00:39:14,200
Speaker 5: glasses to correct our vision, plenty to eat, climate controlled work, environment,

775
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:18,480
Speaker 5: shorter workdays, a library of literature AI in our pocket?

776
00:39:18,920 --> 00:39:22,000
Speaker 5: You know, social safety net systems to protect the elderly

777
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:25,280
Speaker 5: and disabled. Why our living standards so much higher today

778
00:39:25,520 --> 00:39:29,000
Speaker 5: than not all that long ago. It's the same sun overhead,

779
00:39:29,120 --> 00:39:31,680
Speaker 5: it's the same wind blowing, it's the same dirt underneath

780
00:39:31,680 --> 00:39:34,320
Speaker 5: our feet. But knowledge is the difference. We know better

781
00:39:34,440 --> 00:39:36,520
Speaker 5: what to do with these things. We know how to

782
00:39:36,560 --> 00:39:39,160
Speaker 5: extract the minerals from the rocks and make glass and

783
00:39:39,160 --> 00:39:42,120
Speaker 5: solar panels and computer chips. We know how to farm

784
00:39:42,200 --> 00:39:45,360
Speaker 5: more efficiently to grow more food, more calories per acre

785
00:39:45,480 --> 00:39:47,160
Speaker 5: of that dirt, and we know how to do that

786
00:39:47,200 --> 00:39:49,520
Speaker 5: with less human labor. We know how to make soap

787
00:39:49,719 --> 00:39:51,840
Speaker 5: to keep us from getting infections. We know how to

788
00:39:51,840 --> 00:39:54,759
Speaker 5: make antibiotic pills to treat infections, and we have a

789
00:39:54,840 --> 00:39:58,040
Speaker 5: germ theory of disease so that we know what an

790
00:39:58,040 --> 00:40:01,880
Speaker 5: infection is. And we know all of these things because

791
00:40:01,880 --> 00:40:05,120
Speaker 5: of people that came before us. We know better how

792
00:40:05,160 --> 00:40:07,719
Speaker 5: to organize a kindergarten or a cancer drug trial, or

793
00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:14,200
Speaker 5: a parliamentary democracy. These these things ideas, discoveries, process improvements, innovations.

794
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:17,920
Speaker 5: They are why we all on this call of listening

795
00:40:17,960 --> 00:40:20,439
Speaker 5: to this podcast get to expect more out of life

796
00:40:20,520 --> 00:40:22,920
Speaker 5: and better things out of life than people did not

797
00:40:23,120 --> 00:40:27,200
Speaker 5: all that long ago. This notion is something that economist

798
00:40:27,200 --> 00:40:30,320
Speaker 5: Paul Romer won a Nobel Prize for in twenty eighteen,

799
00:40:30,800 --> 00:40:34,719
Speaker 5: and his realization that he sort of formalized in the

800
00:40:34,800 --> 00:40:38,960
Speaker 5: language of economic math was that an idea isn't scarce

801
00:40:39,040 --> 00:40:41,640
Speaker 5: in the same way a parcel of land or a

802
00:40:41,680 --> 00:40:45,440
Speaker 5: physical object like a hammer is scarce. Instead, an idea

803
00:40:45,560 --> 00:40:49,880
Speaker 5: can be reused and shared endlessly. You know, we've been

804
00:40:49,880 --> 00:40:52,920
Speaker 5: talking about differential equations. I took differential equations as an

805
00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:56,960
Speaker 5: undergraduate engineering major. Maybe Kelly or Daniel you had the

806
00:40:57,000 --> 00:40:59,400
Speaker 5: same textbook as I did, But what I read the

807
00:40:59,440 --> 00:41:02,240
Speaker 5: words out of that textbook. It didn't cause the words

808
00:41:02,280 --> 00:41:05,480
Speaker 5: to disappear from your copy of the textbook. Right, We

809
00:41:05,560 --> 00:41:08,840
Speaker 5: get to reuse these ideas over and over again. And

810
00:41:08,920 --> 00:41:13,279
Speaker 5: so once Newton or Leibniz invents calculus, or maybe if

811
00:41:13,320 --> 00:41:15,719
Speaker 5: they didn't live, somebody else would have, then we all

812
00:41:15,760 --> 00:41:18,360
Speaker 5: get to benefit from that over and over and over again.

813
00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:22,800
Speaker 5: So ideas and scientific knowledge are a sort of special

814
00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:26,200
Speaker 5: resource that never gets depleted no matter how much it's used.

815
00:41:26,520 --> 00:41:29,360
Speaker 5: And that's sort of one of the core reasons why

816
00:41:29,560 --> 00:41:31,920
Speaker 5: sharing the world with a lot of other people. We're

817
00:41:31,920 --> 00:41:34,640
Speaker 5: getting to live at a time after a large population

818
00:41:34,640 --> 00:41:37,759
Speaker 5: has already existed. It's just a huge benefit to us.

819
00:41:38,120 --> 00:41:41,280
Speaker 2: And it's more than just expanding the population and creating

820
00:41:41,320 --> 00:41:43,839
Speaker 2: new innovations, right, it's about maintaining our quality of life.

821
00:41:43,840 --> 00:41:46,680
Speaker 2: We need a certain number of people to keep making

822
00:41:46,800 --> 00:41:50,440
Speaker 2: t shirts and pencils and teaching our children like the world.

823
00:41:50,640 --> 00:41:53,640
Speaker 2: Our infrastructure can't survive on a tiny population. But it

824
00:41:53,680 --> 00:41:55,840
Speaker 2: makes me wonder if we're going to do a ridiculous

825
00:41:55,880 --> 00:41:59,319
Speaker 2: extrapolation tell us about sort of the numbers of people

826
00:41:59,400 --> 00:42:02,400
Speaker 2: we expect to have on Earth. If birth rates don't change,

827
00:42:02,680 --> 00:42:05,200
Speaker 2: how many people we have on Earth in ten years,

828
00:42:05,239 --> 00:42:08,960
Speaker 2: fifty years, one thousand years, extrapolate all the way out

829
00:42:08,960 --> 00:42:11,120
Speaker 2: to you know, twenty five thousand years. Are we going

830
00:42:11,160 --> 00:42:13,360
Speaker 2: to end up with like twenty people on the planet.

831
00:42:13,760 --> 00:42:17,479
Speaker 9: Okay, we don't know, right, we don't have a crystal ball,

832
00:42:17,520 --> 00:42:19,960
Speaker 9: but we can make if then assumptions, right, you know,

833
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:22,600
Speaker 9: if the birth rates end up like this, then we

834
00:42:22,640 --> 00:42:24,680
Speaker 9: can say something about how the future would evolve. And

835
00:42:24,719 --> 00:42:28,120
Speaker 9: so one easy and plausible case is to imagine the

836
00:42:28,160 --> 00:42:31,480
Speaker 9: worldwide average birth rate of one point five, which is

837
00:42:31,560 --> 00:42:34,040
Speaker 9: what it is right now in Europe, you know, a

838
00:42:34,120 --> 00:42:36,839
Speaker 9: little bit less than in the US, and a little

839
00:42:36,880 --> 00:42:38,040
Speaker 9: bit more than in Canada.

840
00:42:38,320 --> 00:42:39,279
Speaker 5: So one point five.

841
00:42:39,440 --> 00:42:43,239
Speaker 9: That's the next generation being twenty five percent smaller, the

842
00:42:43,280 --> 00:42:46,000
Speaker 9: next generation after that being twenty five percent smaller.

843
00:42:46,040 --> 00:42:46,279
Speaker 5: Again.

844
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:49,160
Speaker 9: So if the world were like that, then every decade

845
00:42:49,560 --> 00:42:52,160
Speaker 9: we would see the size of the world population fall

846
00:42:52,200 --> 00:42:55,120
Speaker 9: by ten percent, and every century the size of the

847
00:42:55,160 --> 00:42:59,680
Speaker 9: world population would fall by two thirds, and that cumulative

848
00:42:59,800 --> 00:43:03,960
Speaker 9: exponential decay would continue and we could get quite small

849
00:43:04,360 --> 00:43:06,520
Speaker 9: in just a few hundred years. If instead of it

850
00:43:06,600 --> 00:43:08,879
Speaker 9: being one point five, it were an average of one

851
00:43:09,600 --> 00:43:12,279
Speaker 9: like in China today, then you can see the next

852
00:43:12,320 --> 00:43:15,040
Speaker 9: generation is going to be half the size. The generation

853
00:43:15,120 --> 00:43:17,120
Speaker 9: after that, the grandchildren's generation is going to be a

854
00:43:17,200 --> 00:43:20,759
Speaker 9: quarter the size, and so the fall could be very fast. Now,

855
00:43:21,040 --> 00:43:23,160
Speaker 9: how does all of that play out? How does that,

856
00:43:23,280 --> 00:43:26,280
Speaker 9: you know, cash out in something big breaking or something

857
00:43:26,320 --> 00:43:29,279
Speaker 9: breaking down, or not having the discoveries we need, or

858
00:43:29,320 --> 00:43:32,719
Speaker 9: even the librarians to staff the libraries that we can

859
00:43:32,760 --> 00:43:35,880
Speaker 9: maintain the knowledge we have. That's hard to know, but

860
00:43:36,080 --> 00:43:39,000
Speaker 9: we can learn something about it by thinking about sort

861
00:43:39,040 --> 00:43:43,600
Speaker 9: of comparing more populated places like cities and less populated

862
00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:48,720
Speaker 9: rural places. You need enough other people around who want

863
00:43:48,760 --> 00:43:51,520
Speaker 9: and need the same sorts of things that you want

864
00:43:51,560 --> 00:43:54,520
Speaker 9: and need in order for those things to exist to

865
00:43:54,560 --> 00:43:58,239
Speaker 9: be feasible to be provided by a government or a

866
00:43:58,239 --> 00:44:01,000
Speaker 9: business or a nonprofit other people wanting and need. What

867
00:44:01,040 --> 00:44:03,359
Speaker 9: you want is how you get in. That's true if

868
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:07,080
Speaker 9: what you want is well functioning public transportation, because a

869
00:44:07,120 --> 00:44:10,320
Speaker 9: network of trains and buses can't operate without enough riders.

870
00:44:10,360 --> 00:44:13,080
Speaker 9: It's true if what you want is a green energy

871
00:44:13,080 --> 00:44:17,799
Speaker 9: infrastructure built on the work of scientists and engineers and implementers.

872
00:44:18,239 --> 00:44:20,800
Speaker 9: And it's true for all of us as a whole.

873
00:44:21,080 --> 00:44:24,120
Speaker 9: If what you need is a vaccine for a novel virus,

874
00:44:24,239 --> 00:44:27,279
Speaker 9: or a cure for a rare disease. It's the sorts

875
00:44:27,280 --> 00:44:30,319
Speaker 9: of things that only the niche medical specialization of a

876
00:44:30,360 --> 00:44:32,800
Speaker 9: big world could produce. And so as there are fewer

877
00:44:32,880 --> 00:44:35,200
Speaker 9: and fewer of us, we're not going to be able

878
00:44:35,280 --> 00:44:40,920
Speaker 9: to provide those sorts of discoveries, products, innovation, creation that

879
00:44:41,080 --> 00:44:44,399
Speaker 9: are only possible with other people. So other people may

880
00:44:44,520 --> 00:44:49,920
Speaker 9: sometimes be another person may sometimes be your competition, but

881
00:44:50,080 --> 00:44:52,799
Speaker 9: other people there being other people over the long run,

882
00:44:52,840 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 9: or why things like this can exist and there resource

883
00:44:55,120 --> 00:44:55,759
Speaker 9: of abundance.

884
00:44:56,320 --> 00:44:58,040
Speaker 1: Let's take a break, and when we get back, we'll

885
00:44:58,040 --> 00:45:01,600
Speaker 1: talk about some let's say, less than compassionate methods that

886
00:45:01,640 --> 00:45:03,480
Speaker 1: have been used in the past to try to improve

887
00:45:03,520 --> 00:45:06,759
Speaker 1: birth rates, and what are some more ethical options we

888
00:45:06,800 --> 00:45:14,120
Speaker 1: could consider in the future for improving birth rates. And

889
00:45:28,880 --> 00:45:32,040
Speaker 1: we're back and we are talking about how the average

890
00:45:32,080 --> 00:45:35,799
Speaker 1: birth rate globally has fallen below too and the implications

891
00:45:35,840 --> 00:45:39,040
Speaker 1: of that. So when I think about ways for trying

892
00:45:39,040 --> 00:45:42,080
Speaker 1: to improve birth rates, the first thing that come to

893
00:45:42,160 --> 00:45:45,840
Speaker 1: mind are some authoritarian governments who have tried to control

894
00:45:45,880 --> 00:45:48,440
Speaker 1: birth rates in ways that I'm not super comfortable with.

895
00:45:48,880 --> 00:45:51,319
Speaker 1: To put it lightly, so let's review some methods that

896
00:45:51,400 --> 00:45:54,120
Speaker 1: have not worked when countries have tried to improve their

897
00:45:54,120 --> 00:45:55,879
Speaker 1: birth rates in the past. What do we know does

898
00:45:55,920 --> 00:45:57,040
Speaker 1: not work well?

899
00:45:57,080 --> 00:45:59,160
Speaker 5: All of them? All of them.

900
00:46:00,200 --> 00:46:05,320
Speaker 9: There isn't an example of, you know, government coercion, whether

901
00:46:05,400 --> 00:46:09,280
Speaker 9: trying to coerce higher birth rates or trying to coerse

902
00:46:09,640 --> 00:46:13,680
Speaker 9: lower birth rates, you know, resulting in the sort of lasting,

903
00:46:14,280 --> 00:46:19,320
Speaker 9: big picture, sustainable change to birth rates that could knock

904
00:46:19,440 --> 00:46:23,160
Speaker 9: the population off of a path of depopulation and onto

905
00:46:23,160 --> 00:46:25,480
Speaker 9: a path of stabilization. I mean, I want to take

906
00:46:25,520 --> 00:46:28,440
Speaker 9: a step backwards here. You know, we're making the case

907
00:46:28,680 --> 00:46:33,960
Speaker 9: that a stabilized future population would be better than global depopulation.

908
00:46:34,920 --> 00:46:38,759
Speaker 9: We also think that a stabilized population is compatible with

909
00:46:38,800 --> 00:46:44,200
Speaker 9: commitments to environmental stewardship, to reproductive freedom, and to progressive

910
00:46:44,200 --> 00:46:46,719
Speaker 9: priorities more broadly, and we want other people to think so,

911
00:46:47,120 --> 00:46:49,839
Speaker 9: to be a part of this conversation. So we don't

912
00:46:49,840 --> 00:46:53,239
Speaker 9: want anyone to misunderstand that if somebody chooses to have

913
00:46:53,320 --> 00:46:56,399
Speaker 9: no children or few children, that's not for anyone else

914
00:46:56,440 --> 00:46:58,840
Speaker 9: to say whether they're making a mistake. And that's a

915
00:46:58,960 --> 00:47:01,840
Speaker 9: question of an f starting point. But it might still

916
00:47:01,920 --> 00:47:05,200
Speaker 9: be that all of us together are making a mistake

917
00:47:05,440 --> 00:47:08,560
Speaker 9: when we make it hard for people to choose larger

918
00:47:08,600 --> 00:47:12,319
Speaker 9: families and choose to have children. So you can talk

919
00:47:12,360 --> 00:47:14,920
Speaker 9: about this and talk about whether stabilization is the future

920
00:47:14,960 --> 00:47:19,200
Speaker 9: we want without it, you know, necessarily invoking the idea

921
00:47:19,239 --> 00:47:22,760
Speaker 9: that anyone should be coercing anybody else. Now, that said,

922
00:47:23,080 --> 00:47:25,760
Speaker 9: it's an important and reasonable thing to worry about, because

923
00:47:25,760 --> 00:47:29,840
Speaker 9: there have been examples where governments have tried to compel

924
00:47:29,920 --> 00:47:32,759
Speaker 9: people to have kids they don't want to have, or

925
00:47:33,120 --> 00:47:35,759
Speaker 9: to compel people not to have kids. So, you know,

926
00:47:35,880 --> 00:47:39,719
Speaker 9: the classic example that people think about is China's one

927
00:47:39,800 --> 00:47:44,759
Speaker 9: child policy, where the government of China made it illegal

928
00:47:44,920 --> 00:47:48,879
Speaker 9: and with harsh and coursive implementation to have what they

929
00:47:48,920 --> 00:47:51,560
Speaker 9: consider to be too many children. And sure enough, if

930
00:47:51,680 --> 00:47:54,480
Speaker 9: you look at the birth rate in China over this

931
00:47:54,560 --> 00:47:58,360
Speaker 9: time period, it fell. However, that doesn't turn out to

932
00:47:58,440 --> 00:48:02,520
Speaker 9: be evidence that the one policy is why birth rates

933
00:48:02,520 --> 00:48:06,040
Speaker 9: in China fell. And the surprising fact is that if

934
00:48:06,040 --> 00:48:08,880
Speaker 9: you take the birth rate in China over time, so

935
00:48:09,160 --> 00:48:11,880
Speaker 9: make a plot where you know you're looking at the

936
00:48:11,920 --> 00:48:14,359
Speaker 9: birth rate in nineteen eighty the birth rate nineteen eighty five,

937
00:48:14,440 --> 00:48:16,600
Speaker 9: the birth rate in nineteen ninety. What you see is

938
00:48:16,600 --> 00:48:18,520
Speaker 9: the birth rate in China fell overtime while the one

939
00:48:18,600 --> 00:48:21,200
Speaker 9: child policy was in effect. But if you also look

940
00:48:21,239 --> 00:48:24,160
Speaker 9: at what happened to birth rates over time in any

941
00:48:24,200 --> 00:48:28,560
Speaker 9: other middle income developing country that was also undergoing the

942
00:48:28,600 --> 00:48:31,960
Speaker 9: same sort of increase in living standards, increase in education,

943
00:48:32,120 --> 00:48:35,960
Speaker 9: specifically increase in female education, you see birth rates falling

944
00:48:36,320 --> 00:48:39,760
Speaker 9: in basically the same parallel way that that was happening

945
00:48:39,960 --> 00:48:42,920
Speaker 9: all around the world in countries about that sort of

946
00:48:43,000 --> 00:48:46,239
Speaker 9: level of socioeconomic development. And so what that tells us

947
00:48:46,320 --> 00:48:49,200
Speaker 9: is that it probably wasn't the one child policy that

948
00:48:49,360 --> 00:48:51,839
Speaker 9: was responsible for the big picture decline in birth rates

949
00:48:51,840 --> 00:48:53,680
Speaker 9: in China. It's not to say that China would have

950
00:48:53,760 --> 00:48:55,880
Speaker 9: ended up in the exact same place without the one

951
00:48:55,960 --> 00:48:59,080
Speaker 9: child policy, but somewhere pretty similar. And it's certainly not

952
00:48:59,200 --> 00:49:02,160
Speaker 9: to say that one child policy didn't do a lot

953
00:49:02,200 --> 00:49:04,920
Speaker 9: of harm to people's lives in China. But the birth

954
00:49:04,960 --> 00:49:07,560
Speaker 9: rate is probably where it would have been otherwise.

955
00:49:07,600 --> 00:49:10,160
Speaker 1: And wasn't there. I can't believe that. I'm forgetting the

956
00:49:10,239 --> 00:49:12,240
Speaker 1: name of the country and the leader was it child Chescu.

957
00:49:12,360 --> 00:49:16,640
Speaker 1: Somebody tried to increase birth rates by making birth control

958
00:49:16,719 --> 00:49:20,720
Speaker 1: unavailable or something like that. Correct my historical inaccuracies, please

959
00:49:20,800 --> 00:49:21,800
Speaker 1: and tell us that story.

960
00:49:21,960 --> 00:49:25,680
Speaker 5: No, that's you are correct. So this was Romania, This

961
00:49:25,880 --> 00:49:32,480
Speaker 5: was nineteen sixty six or sixty seven, Chescu. He implemented

962
00:49:32,600 --> 00:49:36,239
Speaker 5: decrease seven seventy. And what decrease seven to seventy said

963
00:49:36,440 --> 00:49:38,040
Speaker 5: was that birth control was no longer going to be

964
00:49:38,120 --> 00:49:41,400
Speaker 5: available or legal, that abortion was going to be illegal.

965
00:49:41,760 --> 00:49:44,960
Speaker 5: And just to put this in context, in Romania, prior

966
00:49:45,000 --> 00:49:49,480
Speaker 5: to that time, abortion was more freely available than it's

967
00:49:49,520 --> 00:49:51,600
Speaker 5: ever been for like the whole of the United States.

968
00:49:51,719 --> 00:49:55,480
Speaker 5: So this was a big change in Romania, and that

969
00:49:55,560 --> 00:50:00,160
Speaker 5: big change overnight did cause birth rates to rise overnight.

970
00:50:00,520 --> 00:50:03,600
Speaker 5: So you know, you pulled the rugout from people, you

971
00:50:03,719 --> 00:50:07,560
Speaker 5: change what's available to them, and birth rates did climb

972
00:50:07,640 --> 00:50:09,839
Speaker 5: between nineteen sixty six and nineteen sixty seven. I think

973
00:50:09,880 --> 00:50:11,400
Speaker 5: they something like almost doubled.

974
00:50:11,560 --> 00:50:11,960
Speaker 7: Wow.

975
00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:15,280
Speaker 5: But in the years that followed, birth rates started tacking

976
00:50:15,480 --> 00:50:19,960
Speaker 5: back down, and you know, within something like a decade,

977
00:50:20,000 --> 00:50:22,359
Speaker 5: they've fallen two thirds the way back from where they

978
00:50:22,360 --> 00:50:26,920
Speaker 5: started prior to the policy, as people made other plans

979
00:50:27,160 --> 00:50:31,240
Speaker 5: and built their family planning around the new coercive regime,

980
00:50:31,520 --> 00:50:34,040
Speaker 5: so that policy did a lot of harm to people,

981
00:50:34,280 --> 00:50:37,000
Speaker 5: and you know, just a lot of harm. I mean,

982
00:50:37,200 --> 00:50:41,360
Speaker 5: women died, pregnancy became very unsafe. So it was awful,

983
00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:44,760
Speaker 5: but it was awful without achieving the goal of boosting

984
00:50:44,800 --> 00:50:49,360
Speaker 5: birth rates super high. And you know, Chescu was overthrown,

985
00:50:50,080 --> 00:50:52,960
Speaker 5: was lined up against the wall and shot. And so

986
00:50:53,880 --> 00:50:56,280
Speaker 5: if your formula, and I know this is not anyone

987
00:50:56,320 --> 00:50:58,840
Speaker 5: on this cause formula, but if it's anybody's formula to

988
00:50:58,880 --> 00:51:01,480
Speaker 5: try to bring birth rates up by you know, a

989
00:51:01,560 --> 00:51:04,960
Speaker 5: dictator coursing women to have children they don't want, that's

990
00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:08,480
Speaker 5: not a sustainable option for anybody, including that dictator.

991
00:51:09,360 --> 00:51:11,960
Speaker 2: So you want policymakers in the audience to hear that

992
00:51:12,000 --> 00:51:13,960
Speaker 2: as a cautionary tale.

993
00:51:14,520 --> 00:51:19,239
Speaker 1: It's a good message. So in either direction trying to

994
00:51:19,600 --> 00:51:21,840
Speaker 1: push numbers up or push numbers down. We don't have

995
00:51:21,880 --> 00:51:25,080
Speaker 1: good evidence that it works, and it's incredibly unethical the

996
00:51:25,080 --> 00:51:25,719
Speaker 1: way it's been done.

997
00:51:25,800 --> 00:51:27,839
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's I think we have I say, even something

998
00:51:27,880 --> 00:51:29,759
Speaker 5: a little bit stronger. We have good evidence that it

999
00:51:29,760 --> 00:51:30,279
Speaker 5: doesn't work.

1000
00:51:30,480 --> 00:51:33,960
Speaker 2: What about other things like trying to provide more childcare

1001
00:51:34,080 --> 00:51:38,279
Speaker 2: or making college cheaper, or more family planning. Aren't there

1002
00:51:38,280 --> 00:51:40,960
Speaker 2: ethical ways we can make it easier for people to

1003
00:51:41,000 --> 00:51:41,800
Speaker 2: have more kids.

1004
00:51:42,080 --> 00:51:45,000
Speaker 5: There are lots of ethical things that we can try

1005
00:51:45,040 --> 00:51:49,000
Speaker 5: and that countries have tried. Unfortunately, the track record there

1006
00:51:49,239 --> 00:51:51,400
Speaker 5: isn't as great as one would hope it would be.

1007
00:51:51,760 --> 00:51:53,759
Speaker 5: So I think we're still still a long way to

1008
00:51:53,800 --> 00:51:56,440
Speaker 5: go to figure out what might work, you know, on

1009
00:51:56,480 --> 00:52:00,319
Speaker 5: this question of making childcare more affordable, more available. You know,

1010
00:52:00,360 --> 00:52:03,880
Speaker 5: if you look to Scandinavian countries, for example, places where

1011
00:52:04,040 --> 00:52:08,600
Speaker 5: college tuition is free, where there's universal health care, where

1012
00:52:08,800 --> 00:52:12,239
Speaker 5: there's childcare that's not only heavily subsidized or free for

1013
00:52:12,320 --> 00:52:16,480
Speaker 5: you know, pre K childcare, but it's also provided like

1014
00:52:16,520 --> 00:52:19,440
Speaker 5: it's available. I don't know what your experiences are, but

1015
00:52:19,480 --> 00:52:21,880
Speaker 5: my experience as a parent is like it's just hard

1016
00:52:22,160 --> 00:52:25,480
Speaker 5: sometimes to organize childcare for when work is on but

1017
00:52:25,520 --> 00:52:28,960
Speaker 5: school is out or you know, summertime. It's a patchwork

1018
00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:32,560
Speaker 5: of things. But even in places where childcare is better organized, free,

1019
00:52:32,560 --> 00:52:36,520
Speaker 5: where tuition is free, where healthcare is more available or

1020
00:52:36,800 --> 00:52:39,839
Speaker 5: free provided socially by the government, these aren't places with

1021
00:52:40,000 --> 00:52:43,680
Speaker 5: high birth rates. And so yes, I think there are

1022
00:52:43,719 --> 00:52:47,080
Speaker 5: things that there's plenty left still to try in the

1023
00:52:47,120 --> 00:52:50,319
Speaker 5: toolkit of what like free liberal societies can do to

1024
00:52:50,360 --> 00:52:54,279
Speaker 5: make life better and easier for parents. But I don't

1025
00:52:54,280 --> 00:52:57,480
Speaker 5: think anybody, not governments, not social scientists, have figured out

1026
00:52:57,719 --> 00:52:59,239
Speaker 5: that what that special sauce is.

1027
00:52:59,320 --> 00:53:02,040
Speaker 9: Yet I want to sort of say that maybe that's

1028
00:53:02,080 --> 00:53:05,080
Speaker 9: not so surprising. I mean, think about, you know, the

1029
00:53:05,160 --> 00:53:07,680
Speaker 9: sort of policies that we hear of, you know, a

1030
00:53:07,719 --> 00:53:10,560
Speaker 9: few thousand dollars baby bonus or something like that. Right,

1031
00:53:10,920 --> 00:53:14,560
Speaker 9: you know, let's do a thought experiment. Would you have

1032
00:53:14,680 --> 00:53:18,040
Speaker 9: agreed to marry somebody other than the person who you

1033
00:53:18,120 --> 00:53:22,799
Speaker 9: married for about five thousand dollars? I don't think very

1034
00:53:22,880 --> 00:53:24,560
Speaker 9: many people are going to say yes to that, right.

1035
00:53:24,600 --> 00:53:27,839
Speaker 2: Our spouse is listening to the podcast, so that question, well.

1036
00:53:28,000 --> 00:53:31,040
Speaker 9: Okay, so it's not a fair task or anonymize. I

1037
00:53:31,080 --> 00:53:34,359
Speaker 9: didn't do my research procedures, right, But I think you know,

1038
00:53:34,840 --> 00:53:38,880
Speaker 9: these are people's biggest decisions forming their family. What's their

1039
00:53:38,920 --> 00:53:41,120
Speaker 9: life story about? What autobiography am I writing?

1040
00:53:41,200 --> 00:53:41,439
Speaker 5: Right?

1041
00:53:41,560 --> 00:53:44,359
Speaker 9: You know, a few thousand dollars will help a lot.

1042
00:53:44,640 --> 00:53:47,239
Speaker 9: And you know, if you ask me or yes, Mike

1043
00:53:47,360 --> 00:53:50,640
Speaker 9: will say that society should do more to help parents,

1044
00:53:50,680 --> 00:53:53,040
Speaker 9: must do more to help parents, right, But when we

1045
00:53:53,120 --> 00:53:56,319
Speaker 9: say do more, we're meaning something a lot bigger, and

1046
00:53:56,360 --> 00:53:58,359
Speaker 9: it just shouldn't be a surprise. If we don't think

1047
00:53:58,400 --> 00:54:01,319
Speaker 9: that a few thousand dollars is going to change who

1048
00:54:01,320 --> 00:54:03,560
Speaker 9: you're going to marry, it's probably not going to change

1049
00:54:03,680 --> 00:54:07,560
Speaker 9: your biggest picture decisions about how to form your family

1050
00:54:07,600 --> 00:54:10,479
Speaker 9: and form your own life story in other ways too,

1051
00:54:10,880 --> 00:54:14,440
Speaker 9: And so yes, by all means, let's support parents, support families.

1052
00:54:14,520 --> 00:54:17,880
Speaker 9: Let's do that, but let's not be surprised when that doesn't,

1053
00:54:18,000 --> 00:54:21,480
Speaker 9: you know, shift us from the path to depopulation the

1054
00:54:21,520 --> 00:54:22,480
Speaker 9: path is stabilization.

1055
00:54:23,080 --> 00:54:25,200
Speaker 1: I was listening to Left, Right and Center the other

1056
00:54:25,280 --> 00:54:28,640
Speaker 1: day and one of the hosts, Sarah Iger, was saying that,

1057
00:54:28,719 --> 00:54:31,200
Speaker 1: you know, one of the reasons population is going down

1058
00:54:31,239 --> 00:54:34,279
Speaker 1: globally is that when women have more reproductive choice and

1059
00:54:34,320 --> 00:54:37,120
Speaker 1: more options in life, they choose to have fewer kids.

1060
00:54:37,440 --> 00:54:38,960
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I love that you

1061
00:54:39,120 --> 00:54:42,960
Speaker 1: all addressed directly in your book was that increases in

1062
00:54:43,040 --> 00:54:47,080
Speaker 1: population size, would you know, in the absence of artificial wombs,

1063
00:54:47,120 --> 00:54:50,560
Speaker 1: have to come from women having more babies, which has

1064
00:54:50,680 --> 00:54:54,479
Speaker 1: a health impact, a career impact, et cetera. So one

1065
00:54:54,600 --> 00:54:57,160
Speaker 1: my question is is it true that when women have

1066
00:54:57,280 --> 00:55:00,200
Speaker 1: more choice, they have fewer children, and that's the mechanism.

1067
00:55:00,239 --> 00:55:02,640
Speaker 1: It sounds like maybe we don't understand that mechanism as well,

1068
00:55:02,640 --> 00:55:05,360
Speaker 1: based on our conversation we've had, and what do you

1069
00:55:05,440 --> 00:55:08,200
Speaker 1: propose as the method for having more babies in a

1070
00:55:08,239 --> 00:55:11,560
Speaker 1: way to do it that sort of distributes this responsibility

1071
00:55:11,640 --> 00:55:12,240
Speaker 1: more evenly.

1072
00:55:13,000 --> 00:55:17,279
Speaker 9: I think that we all have a shared interest in

1073
00:55:17,400 --> 00:55:21,120
Speaker 9: their being future generations, and so that we all need

1074
00:55:21,160 --> 00:55:25,839
Speaker 9: to be pitching in to making there be future generations

1075
00:55:25,840 --> 00:55:28,600
Speaker 9: and sharing and lifting those burdens off of one another.

1076
00:55:28,640 --> 00:55:32,080
Speaker 9: And I think it's no surprise that in a history

1077
00:55:32,520 --> 00:55:36,080
Speaker 9: where we have long put a lot of that burden

1078
00:55:36,160 --> 00:55:38,680
Speaker 9: on a subset of the population, I mean mothers in particular,

1079
00:55:39,160 --> 00:55:43,160
Speaker 9: that we have people saying no, thank you. But because

1080
00:55:43,160 --> 00:55:46,480
Speaker 9: that's been the past, that doesn't necessarily mean that that

1081
00:55:46,640 --> 00:55:49,120
Speaker 9: has to be the future. I mean, sometimes we hear

1082
00:55:49,200 --> 00:55:52,080
Speaker 9: people talking about these conversations about low birth rates, and

1083
00:55:52,120 --> 00:55:54,439
Speaker 9: they act like there's a choice we have to make.

1084
00:55:54,960 --> 00:55:59,040
Speaker 9: Either we can have regressive gender politics that ask more

1085
00:55:59,080 --> 00:56:03,040
Speaker 9: of women, or we can have global depopulation. I think

1086
00:56:03,160 --> 00:56:05,839
Speaker 9: people both on the left and the right start these

1087
00:56:05,880 --> 00:56:09,400
Speaker 9: conversations with the presumption that if we're going to stabilize

1088
00:56:09,440 --> 00:56:12,680
Speaker 9: the population, the extra burden has to fall on to women,

1089
00:56:13,120 --> 00:56:15,759
Speaker 9: and I don't think that's right. I don't think that

1090
00:56:16,000 --> 00:56:18,520
Speaker 9: we should start by asking more for mothers. I think

1091
00:56:18,600 --> 00:56:20,600
Speaker 9: the place to start, or a place to start, is

1092
00:56:20,600 --> 00:56:24,359
Speaker 9: by asking more from fathers. Males can't get pregnant, that's right,

1093
00:56:24,760 --> 00:56:27,000
Speaker 9: But it takes more than nine months to make a

1094
00:56:27,000 --> 00:56:30,120
Speaker 9: new person. It takes decades to raise a child into

1095
00:56:30,160 --> 00:56:32,239
Speaker 9: a new adult. And that means there's plenty of time

1096
00:56:32,280 --> 00:56:34,799
Speaker 9: and plenty to do for men to even things out.

1097
00:56:34,960 --> 00:56:37,000
Speaker 9: Dads can get up at three am to sue the

1098
00:56:37,040 --> 00:56:40,200
Speaker 9: crying baby. They can cook even though they're tired. They

1099
00:56:40,200 --> 00:56:43,240
Speaker 9: can process the laundry and pack the snacks and figure

1100
00:56:43,239 --> 00:56:45,719
Speaker 9: out about the childcare when school is out, and drive

1101
00:56:45,760 --> 00:56:49,320
Speaker 9: to swim lessons and do so much. They can accept

1102
00:56:49,360 --> 00:56:52,480
Speaker 9: the work and the responsibility and being the person who's

1103
00:56:52,520 --> 00:56:55,799
Speaker 9: on call on sick days and summer days, and they

1104
00:56:55,880 --> 00:56:57,880
Speaker 9: can do that for years and years and years and years.

1105
00:56:58,480 --> 00:57:01,080
Speaker 9: You know, I think this is it sounds nice. I

1106
00:57:01,120 --> 00:57:03,520
Speaker 9: mean it's more than just hopeful rhetoric. I think it's

1107
00:57:03,560 --> 00:57:06,359
Speaker 9: a challenge, and we shouldn't consider there to be any

1108
00:57:06,360 --> 00:57:08,960
Speaker 9: sort of guarantee that this is what's going to happen.

1109
00:57:09,360 --> 00:57:13,800
Speaker 9: But the future of birth rates is going to be chosen.

1110
00:57:14,640 --> 00:57:17,080
Speaker 9: Whether or not we depopulate and whether and where we

1111
00:57:17,120 --> 00:57:19,000
Speaker 9: stabilize is are going to come down to the choices

1112
00:57:19,040 --> 00:57:22,400
Speaker 9: that people and especially women make for their lives. That

1113
00:57:22,560 --> 00:57:26,200
Speaker 9: seems pretty clear. And so if we're going to expect

1114
00:57:26,280 --> 00:57:30,360
Speaker 9: people to choose parenting, then there's work that we all

1115
00:57:30,400 --> 00:57:33,680
Speaker 9: need to do to make parenting more attractive, and that

1116
00:57:33,960 --> 00:57:37,560
Speaker 9: starts with lifting and sharing the burdens that for so

1117
00:57:37,720 --> 00:57:39,400
Speaker 9: long have only fallen on.

1118
00:57:39,320 --> 00:57:39,840
Speaker 2: Some of us.

1119
00:57:40,200 --> 00:57:41,840
Speaker 1: I loved reading that part of your book.

1120
00:57:42,360 --> 00:57:44,960
Speaker 2: And is this why you've written a popular book instead

1121
00:57:44,960 --> 00:57:49,040
Speaker 2: of like making this argument to policymakers and within academia.

1122
00:57:49,320 --> 00:57:51,240
Speaker 2: Are you're writing this to the general public to make

1123
00:57:51,240 --> 00:57:53,480
Speaker 2: people aware of this coming issue.

1124
00:57:53,800 --> 00:57:58,560
Speaker 9: Well there's that and the differential equations, but no.

1125
00:57:58,880 --> 00:58:00,440
Speaker 2: That's really your goal in the end, right, This is

1126
00:58:00,480 --> 00:58:01,880
Speaker 2: really just a math lesson This.

1127
00:58:01,800 --> 00:58:03,760
Speaker 9: Is a topic that more people should be talking about,

1128
00:58:04,400 --> 00:58:07,520
Speaker 9: not just you know, more numbers, but a broader set

1129
00:58:07,520 --> 00:58:11,360
Speaker 9: of people. We're at the very beginning of facing up

1130
00:58:11,400 --> 00:58:14,360
Speaker 9: to this challenge. Most people haven't yet come to the

1131
00:58:14,440 --> 00:58:17,680
Speaker 9: terms of the magnitude of what we're facing. But you know,

1132
00:58:17,720 --> 00:58:20,680
Speaker 9: we wouldn't have written this book calling to avoid depopulation

1133
00:58:21,200 --> 00:58:25,040
Speaker 9: if we didn't think it were possible for humanity to

1134
00:58:25,120 --> 00:58:28,760
Speaker 9: change course. Depopulation is the path that we're on, but

1135
00:58:28,920 --> 00:58:33,160
Speaker 9: it's not the inevitable future. People ask us, so, what's

1136
00:58:33,200 --> 00:58:36,160
Speaker 9: your policy recommendation, what legislation would you write? And I

1137
00:58:36,200 --> 00:58:38,840
Speaker 9: think jumping to a policy solution at this point is

1138
00:58:38,920 --> 00:58:41,600
Speaker 9: probably the wrong move. This isn't something that's going to

1139
00:58:41,600 --> 00:58:44,600
Speaker 9: turn around in one presidential term or because of one

1140
00:58:44,640 --> 00:58:47,880
Speaker 9: set of legislative considerations for parents, or you know, a

1141
00:58:47,920 --> 00:58:51,080
Speaker 9: new bill about print to leave. I think we're facing

1142
00:58:51,080 --> 00:58:55,200
Speaker 9: something big, and the first step is many more people

1143
00:58:55,680 --> 00:58:58,600
Speaker 9: sharing a belief that we should want something to change.

1144
00:58:58,800 --> 00:59:03,480
Speaker 9: That's necess Harry precursor. If you're already convinced and you're

1145
00:59:03,520 --> 00:59:06,560
Speaker 9: asking what to do next, I don't think it's advocate

1146
00:59:06,600 --> 00:59:09,240
Speaker 9: for a particular piece of legislation. It's invite more people

1147
00:59:09,280 --> 00:59:12,680
Speaker 9: into the conversation and convince your friends and family and

1148
00:59:12,720 --> 00:59:16,520
Speaker 9: classmates and colleagues that people are fundamentally good for another

1149
00:59:16,640 --> 00:59:20,080
Speaker 9: and that depopulation is not going to get us off

1150
00:59:20,120 --> 00:59:24,480
Speaker 9: the hook for challenges like climate change and our environmental

1151
00:59:24,520 --> 00:59:29,280
Speaker 9: problems that we face. Start a conversation about what could

1152
00:59:29,320 --> 00:59:32,760
Speaker 9: be good about a future in which more people feel

1153
00:59:32,800 --> 00:59:35,120
Speaker 9: like they're able to and support it to choosee parenting.

1154
00:59:35,440 --> 00:59:38,600
Speaker 9: That sort of re orientation to thinking that stabilization might

1155
00:59:38,640 --> 00:59:41,040
Speaker 9: be a good future has got to be the first step.

1156
00:59:41,160 --> 00:59:43,320
Speaker 9: And in the meanwhile, there is a lot of social

1157
00:59:43,400 --> 00:59:46,000
Speaker 9: science to do that we should be building out to

1158
00:59:46,040 --> 00:59:49,720
Speaker 9: better understand what might work, so that once we're able

1159
00:59:49,760 --> 00:59:51,960
Speaker 9: to build the social and the political support for a

1160
00:59:52,000 --> 00:59:54,560
Speaker 9: stabilized future, will know what to do. But there are

1161
00:59:54,600 --> 00:59:56,480
Speaker 9: a lot of minds to change first.

1162
00:59:57,080 --> 00:59:58,560
Speaker 2: Can I end us on an alien's question?

1163
00:59:58,720 --> 01:00:01,000
Speaker 1: Of course, it wouldn't be a DECA episode about it.

1164
01:00:02,000 --> 01:00:04,320
Speaker 2: So the fact that we see this trend across so

1165
01:00:04,440 --> 01:00:07,680
Speaker 2: many different communities in so many different circumstances makes me wonder,

1166
01:00:07,760 --> 01:00:10,600
Speaker 2: naturally if this is something that exists in I don't know,

1167
01:00:10,760 --> 01:00:14,480
Speaker 2: all intelligent technological civilizations in the galaxy. And do you

1168
01:00:14,520 --> 01:00:16,720
Speaker 2: think maybe what you've done here is stumble on the

1169
01:00:16,760 --> 01:00:18,480
Speaker 2: solution to the Fermi paradox.

1170
01:00:18,880 --> 01:00:20,680
Speaker 5: I'm so glad you asked that. Wait, wait, wait, wait,

1171
01:00:20,880 --> 01:00:22,640
Speaker 5: we need to we need to stop just for a moment.

1172
01:00:22,960 --> 01:00:25,360
Speaker 5: You've really made Dean's day. He wants to put the

1173
01:00:25,360 --> 01:00:28,439
Speaker 5: Fermi paradox in the book. Don't we ended up putting

1174
01:00:28,440 --> 01:00:29,440
Speaker 5: the Fermi paradox in.

1175
01:00:29,400 --> 01:00:30,680
Speaker 2: The book, big mistake.

1176
01:00:31,680 --> 01:00:32,400
Speaker 7: We cut it.

1177
01:00:32,400 --> 01:00:34,360
Speaker 9: There was a cutting room for But I was interviewed

1178
01:00:34,360 --> 01:00:36,480
Speaker 9: on a podcast from someone at SETI and I brought

1179
01:00:36,480 --> 01:00:40,320
Speaker 9: this up and he was just it was almost like like,

1180
01:00:40,400 --> 01:00:44,320
Speaker 9: how how could I say something so silly and smirch

1181
01:00:44,400 --> 01:00:47,240
Speaker 9: the podcast? But yeah, I mean, I think it makes

1182
01:00:47,280 --> 01:00:50,560
Speaker 9: a lot of sense that, you know, individuals have to

1183
01:00:50,600 --> 01:00:54,960
Speaker 9: sacrifice to make the next generation. There are shared public

1184
01:00:55,040 --> 01:00:58,080
Speaker 9: benefits of there being a next generation. We're gonna you're

1185
01:00:58,120 --> 01:01:01,000
Speaker 9: gonna learn how to control your birth rates, and so

1186
01:01:01,320 --> 01:01:06,120
Speaker 9: I do think that this sort of dilemma is probably

1187
01:01:06,840 --> 01:01:11,640
Speaker 9: a common one. Now, I am just a humble demographer

1188
01:01:11,640 --> 01:01:13,120
Speaker 9: of utra British India.

1189
01:01:13,160 --> 01:01:13,880
Speaker 5: I don't you know.

1190
01:01:13,960 --> 01:01:16,360
Speaker 9: I can't speak to the larger questions.

1191
01:01:16,440 --> 01:01:21,000
Speaker 1: But Dean is glowing right now. Everyone, He's very excited

1192
01:01:21,040 --> 01:01:23,160
Speaker 1: to be talked about this. We love it all right,

1193
01:01:23,240 --> 01:01:25,080
Speaker 1: Dean and Mike, thank you so much for being on

1194
01:01:25,120 --> 01:01:27,880
Speaker 1: the show. This was fascinating and anybody who wants to

1195
01:01:27,920 --> 01:01:30,080
Speaker 1: learn more should go grab the book after the spike.

1196
01:01:30,240 --> 01:01:32,000
Speaker 5: Thanks very much, guys, Thank you so much.

1197
01:01:32,080 --> 01:01:32,440
Speaker 7: Thank you.

1198
01:01:40,000 --> 01:01:43,840
Speaker 1: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio. We

1199
01:01:43,880 --> 01:01:46,440
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you, We really would.

1200
01:01:46,600 --> 01:01:49,320
Speaker 2: We want to know what questions you have about this

1201
01:01:49,560 --> 01:01:51,200
Speaker 2: Extraordinary Universe.

1202
01:01:51,280 --> 01:01:54,240
Speaker 1: We want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions

1203
01:01:54,240 --> 01:01:57,240
Speaker 1: for future shows. If you contact us, we will get

1204
01:01:57,280 --> 01:01:57,680
Speaker 1: back to you.

1205
01:01:57,960 --> 01:02:01,200
Speaker 2: We really mean it. We answer every free message. Email

1206
01:02:01,320 --> 01:02:04,720
Speaker 2: us at Questions at Danielandkelly.

1207
01:02:03,760 --> 01:02:05,880
Speaker 1: Dot org, or you can find us on social media.

1208
01:02:05,960 --> 01:02:09,760
Speaker 1: We have accounts on x, Instagram, Blue Sky and on

1209
01:02:09,840 --> 01:02:11,800
Speaker 1: all of those platforms. You can find us at D

1210
01:02:12,240 --> 01:02:13,760
Speaker 1: and K Universe.

1211
01:02:13,960 --> 01:02:15,520
Speaker 2: Don't be shy, write to us