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Speaker 1: Because four hours simply enough. This is armstrong and getty

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Speaker 1: extra large. Jonathan v. Last is the executive editor for

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Speaker 1: The Bulwark. He's the author of a number of five books,

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Speaker 1: including The Seven Deadly Virtues, which was very successful, and

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Speaker 1: he crassly cashed in on that success with The Dadly

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Speaker 1: Virtues and The Christmas Virtues, which are both charming. The

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Speaker 1: new book is What to Expect when No One's Expecting

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Speaker 1: about demographics, and in fact the subtitle is instructive what

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Speaker 1: to Expect when No One's expecting America's coming demographic disaster.

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Speaker 1: Well that's cheery. Hello, Jonathan, are you hey there? You

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Speaker 1: know I'm hard at work on the Arbor Day virtue,

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Speaker 1: which I think deeply important in something that that literally

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Speaker 1: dozens of Americans, you know, lap up. That's been our

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Speaker 1: go to for stupid holiday references for a very long time.

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Speaker 1: Harbor Day. I'm not anti tree, who could be but

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Speaker 1: a day really? So one of the reasons we wanted

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Speaker 1: to have you on is we've been talking about this

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Speaker 1: a lot for years, this whole people not having kids thing,

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Speaker 1: and one it's just weird what and how it doesn't

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Speaker 1: get talked about. Imagine if deer or whales or whatever

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Speaker 1: animal just stopped reproducing. You'd think would get people's attention.

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Speaker 1: Scientists would be beside. These people have stopped reproducing, and

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Speaker 1: it doesn't get that much attention. Plus the whole demographic thing.

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Speaker 1: And I was looking at the blurb on your book

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Speaker 1: from Tucker Carlson when he said America is changing more

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Speaker 1: quickly than ever before. And this book explains why both

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Speaker 1: things don't get enough a conversation. America has changed so much,

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Speaker 1: so fast in the last few years. It's just it's

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Speaker 1: mind boggling. You can barely keep up with it. What's

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Speaker 1: driving all that? The answer is everything. This is you know,

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Speaker 1: you asked why do people not have kids? Uh? Do

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Speaker 1: you guys have kids? Yes, yes, both of us. Do

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Speaker 1: you know why people don't have kids extent? Yea. This

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Speaker 1: is you know, being being a single human being with

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Speaker 1: money in your pocket or being married to a great

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Speaker 1: gal uh and living the life of I don't know,

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Speaker 1: like either traveling all the time or sitting reading the

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Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal Weekends section over espresso and croissants on

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Speaker 1: a quiet Saturday morning, like those those things should all

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Speaker 1: go away. The men you have kids? Uh? And so

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of things going on in America. There

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Speaker 1: is the rise of contraception. There is the increasing percentage

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Speaker 1: of people going to college, the increasing costs of college. Uh,

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Speaker 1: there is the delay of family formation, people waiting longer

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Speaker 1: to get married. There's divorced people getting divorced more often. Uh,

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Speaker 1: there's just a lot. And when you pull back I

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Speaker 1: would say this, if you pull back to the thirty

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Speaker 1: five thousand square foot authority thirty five thousand foot view

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Speaker 1: of all of this, what you would say is you

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Speaker 1: would say, actually, it looks like America is arranged to

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Speaker 1: discourage people from having kids. We do not live in

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Speaker 1: a society that is built to encourage people having kids.

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Speaker 1: Having kids as a gigantic cost on average abound one

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Speaker 1: point one million dollars once you factor in college and

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Speaker 1: foregone spousal wages, and you know, so like one point

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Speaker 1: one million dollars is real money. The average cost of

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Speaker 1: a house in America I think right now is about

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Speaker 1: two nine thousand dollars. So having a kid is like,

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Speaker 1: you know, buying four houses, but you can't sell them,

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Speaker 1: and then after fifteen years they yell, I hate you

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Speaker 1: and slam the door, Like why would anybody do this. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I I hate to argue with your whole premise. I

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Speaker 1: just I have not believed a lot of what you

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Speaker 1: just said and what a lot of people say about

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Speaker 1: this stuff. And I'll tell you why I got I

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Speaker 1: got married fairly late or got had kids fairly late

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Speaker 1: in life. So I did the single lifestyle until I

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Speaker 1: was forty five. I understand all the pleasures of the

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Speaker 1: single lifestyle, and there are a lot of them, right

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Speaker 1: and and and all of it does go away when

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Speaker 1: you have kids. Um, I wouldn't trade it. And if

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Speaker 1: I have any regrets, it's I wish I had to

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Speaker 1: start having kids earlier. But the and then moving to California,

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Speaker 1: when I realized that people had stopped dating. I was

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Speaker 1: from the Midwest and people were still dating. People would

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Speaker 1: slowed down on the getting married and having kids, but

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Speaker 1: people were still dating. Then I moved to the coast,

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Speaker 1: and I'm surrounded by people in their twenties and thirties

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Speaker 1: who were just not even boyfriend girlfriend. They didn't have

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Speaker 1: a boyfriend or girlfriend and didn't seem to have any

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Speaker 1: interesting getting a boyfriend or girlfriend. Everybody I grew up

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Speaker 1: with had a boyfriend or girlfriend. Now that's starting to

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Speaker 1: change in the Midwest. There's something deeper going on. It's

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Speaker 1: not people sitting around making a conscious decision. It would

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Speaker 1: cost this. These are the five things boy in college costs.

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Speaker 1: There's increase in coupling. Yeah, there's less sex. There's just

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Speaker 1: less getting damn. If there's something deeper going on, and

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Speaker 1: I find that more interesting rather than less interesting, How

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Speaker 1: does that even happen in a culture? It is happening,

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Speaker 1: you know. We see this actually most pronounced in Japan.

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Speaker 1: There have been a couple a couple of surveys of

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Speaker 1: teenage boys over the last five years or so where

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Speaker 1: gosh forgetting the exact number, but it's something insane like

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Speaker 1: thirty five percent of teenage boys saying it's just not

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Speaker 1: interested in having sex with a girl. If she were

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Speaker 1: to answer, if she would offer it. Wow, right, that's astounding.

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Speaker 1: That'd be like turning down my next breath. Because getting

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Speaker 1: to that, any fifteen year old boy you've ever met

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Speaker 1: would say no to sex, getting to the getting the old,

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Speaker 1: the kids thing. That doesn't explain dating less. You don't

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Speaker 1: you need to have kids because you've got a girlfriend

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Speaker 1: when you're twenty four. I didn't for a long time

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Speaker 1: after that, But I wanted to have a girlfriend, and

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Speaker 1: people just have stopped coupling. And I don't know if

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Speaker 1: that's driven by social media or something in the water

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Speaker 1: or what. But you know the example you just gave,

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Speaker 1: that's weird. Like, like I already said, if bears stopped coupling,

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Speaker 1: we would think, what the hell has happened to the environment? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's a it's a weird thing. And you know what's

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Speaker 1: funny is it? It's this has happened as we've become

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Speaker 1: more secular. And if you had just jumped back to

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Speaker 1: nineteen five, or had jump by the nineteen to the

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Speaker 1: Summer of Love. If I had said to you, hey,

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Speaker 1: guess what in fifty years, this will be a markedly

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Speaker 1: less religious country. Do you think people will be having

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Speaker 1: more sex or less sex? What would everybody have said? Oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it'd be unanimous next to the case. Yeah, Well, moving

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Speaker 1: on from what's causing it, which is obviously something that's

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Speaker 1: going to occupy the great minds for a very long time. Um,

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Speaker 1: what can we expect when no one's expecting you call

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Speaker 1: it America's coming demographic disaster? Why it's one of these

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Speaker 1: things where it would be Okay, if it was just US.

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Speaker 1: You know, if it was just America, then we have

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Speaker 1: pretty high immigration rate. We would muddle through. There would

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Speaker 1: be all sorts of problems with medicare and social security,

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Speaker 1: but you know, eventually we'd fixed that. If it was

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Speaker 1: just say, Japan, well that would be fine. The problem

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Speaker 1: is that it's almost everywhere. So this is this slow

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Speaker 1: rolling trend which is hitting something like of all the

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Speaker 1: countries in the world. Uh, and it's going to cause

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Speaker 1: instability in one place after another. You know. It's when

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Speaker 1: it happens in Ethiopia and Iran and China and Russia

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Speaker 1: and Germany and Japan and we're dealing with it over here,

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Speaker 1: that's when, all of a sudden, you can see how

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Speaker 1: the wheels could come off the cart. Right. So, when

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Speaker 1: you have deeply destabilizing trends happening just about everywhere. In

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Speaker 1: some places are liberal democracies which are reasonably well equipped

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Speaker 1: to handle such destabilization, and others are not, then you

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Speaker 1: can see your way to a world in which, all

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Speaker 1: of a sudden, all a lot of the things that

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Speaker 1: we take for granted a suddenly can't be taken that

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Speaker 1: way anymore. Well, first of all, it's it's news to

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Speaker 1: me that it's that universal birth rate dropping, But why

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Speaker 1: would it cause the instability you're talking about it is?

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Speaker 1: Is it just the need for young workers and young

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Speaker 1: people to support old stirs well, So different instability in

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Speaker 1: different places. So China, I'll just do. I'll do China

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Speaker 1: and America for you because they are sort of polar opposites.

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Speaker 1: So in China, the problem is you're going to have

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Speaker 1: about three hundred million people over the age of sixty

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Speaker 1: five who have nobody to take care of them financial really,

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Speaker 1: and they don't have a pension system. There is no

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Speaker 1: social security over there million people, So what happened with that? Right?

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Speaker 1: So does the government just send those people out to

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Speaker 1: the countryside to die? Right? You? Then, on top of

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Speaker 1: that have a whole bunch of guys because they do

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Speaker 1: a lot of sex selective abortion over there, so there's

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Speaker 1: a lot more boys born normally than than girls. Ship

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Speaker 1: them over here. We'll teach them how to not care

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Speaker 1: about that. Or Japan, but you're going to have a

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Speaker 1: couple of tens of millions of guys who simply can't

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Speaker 1: get married because there aren't women do marry them. Traditionally

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Speaker 1: unmarried young men cause trouble in societies. That's never like

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Speaker 1: a recipe for for good things. So you can see,

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Speaker 1: you know, old this is most an authoritarian government whose

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Speaker 1: stability is basically predicated on rising economic success, and you

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Speaker 1: wind up with a labor shortage and so that causes

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Speaker 1: problems with that anyway, So you can see what happens

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Speaker 1: in China and then in America. You know, so we

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Speaker 1: have of the average age increasing, and so this is

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Speaker 1: the real problem. The problem is never about the number

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Speaker 1: of people when you are talking about you know, sort

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Speaker 1: of broad broad based demographics, it's about the age structure. Traditionally,

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Speaker 1: your age structure is supposed to look kind of like

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Speaker 1: an obelisk. So you know, a lot of it's thicker

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Speaker 1: on the bottom, and then it's reasonably constant, and then

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Speaker 1: it narrows at the top. Here we're gonna look more

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Speaker 1: like an inverted pyramid. And so you're gonna wind up

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Speaker 1: with a whole bunch of old people to whom you

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Speaker 1: have promised enormous economic benefits, and then fewer younger workers

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Speaker 1: to support them. I mean, when so security was first

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Speaker 1: stood up, I think we had sixteen workers for every

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Speaker 1: old person. We're now down to about two point three

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Speaker 1: workers for the old person. Yeah, and so soon does

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Speaker 1: it geton? Does to one? It's probably not that far off.

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Speaker 1: It's like fifty years out or something like that. And

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Speaker 1: so what do you do. Do you break your promises

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Speaker 1: to all these old folks who have arranged their lives

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Speaker 1: because they anticipated the economics that they were promised, or

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Speaker 1: do you increase the tax burden on young workers, which

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Speaker 1: could have the unintended consequence of making them have even

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Speaker 1: to your kids, which then accelerates your problem. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: if you combine the demographic problem with our current pensiant

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Speaker 1: for overspending and sticking the kids and grandkids with the debt,

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Speaker 1: I mean you're talking about enormous tax confiscatory tax rates

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Speaker 1: that you know are unseen outside of the Scandinavian countries. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: basically not good new new Well. And meanwhile, listen, demography

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Speaker 1: matters and culture matters, and you'll have the developed countries

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Speaker 1: of Europe becoming France less and less France, Italy less

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Speaker 1: and less Italy Germany likewise, more social strife there and

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Speaker 1: probably more violence and the rest of it. That won't help. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And and you you know, and you get it coming

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Speaker 1: and going right. So the reaction you get to say, uh,

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Speaker 1: France becoming less French, is that you wind up with

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Speaker 1: the rise of like nationalism among the native born Frenchmen

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Speaker 1: who are left. And you see this across You've seen

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Speaker 1: it literally across all of Europe. So this is you know,

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Speaker 1: this is this is not good. This is why I've

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Speaker 1: been founding the alarm. Uh yeah, I mean it is

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Speaker 1: important understand Like I, it isn't just me over in

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Speaker 1: Europe and all throughout Asia. Everybody who studies demographics seriously

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Speaker 1: has been obsessed with exactly this question. For the last generation.

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Speaker 1: We hear a lot about overpopulation in just like the

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Speaker 1: mainstream media, and nobody who studies demographics seriously has worried

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Speaker 1: about that for fifty years. Wow, that's that's pretty interesting.

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Speaker 1: Um So, I know authors like it when I mentioned

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Speaker 1: other authors books, but reading Mark Stein's America Alone years

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Speaker 1: ago was first started me down this road, and I've

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Speaker 1: been pretty obsessed with it since then. As you said,

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Speaker 1: once you become aware of it, it seems like practically

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Speaker 1: the only thing that matters to the future of world history.

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Speaker 1: But at what point do we start shrinking in population

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Speaker 1: on the planet, we start going backwards. Yeah, Stein's book

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Speaker 1: is great. So we think that we peak around five

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Speaker 1: and start shrinking back then. Uh, it really depends on

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Speaker 1: what happens in sub Saharan At. The only countries which

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Speaker 1: have not begun what they call the second demographic transition,

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Speaker 1: which is when you're your fertility rates really fall off

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Speaker 1: the table are a narrow band of countries and stuff.

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Speaker 1: Saharan Africa. Everybody else is there. The Middle East is there.

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Speaker 1: People don't realize this. The fertility rate and I Ran

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Speaker 1: is lower than it is in America. Really get really

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Speaker 1: is global. Uh. So we think we're going to peak

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Speaker 1: somewhere between nine and twelve billion. We think it'll be

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Speaker 1: sometime around and things could change. I mean I always

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Speaker 1: get a little bit nervous about looking at the population

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Speaker 1: projections and pretending that they are written stone, because if

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Speaker 1: I had come to you in nineteen sixty and said, hey,

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Speaker 1: our fertility rate in America is about to basically fall

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Speaker 1: in half, you would say, well, why it's been for

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Speaker 1: twenty years, We've had largely above a placement fertility. We've

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Speaker 1: been in the middle of the baby boom, and why

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Speaker 1: would you think it would change, But it did. The

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Speaker 1: baby boom ended and people started behaving differently. So it

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Speaker 1: is possible that things could change, but we just haven't

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Speaker 1: seen any evidence to suggest that they will. Wow. Wow,

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Speaker 1: this is so interesting on so many levels, from the

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Speaker 1: financial as we've been discussing to the purely biological and

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Speaker 1: the rest of it. Why comfort and pleasure and well,

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Speaker 1: I think it's about self settered nous honestly, Um, and

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Speaker 1: that's that's an overly simplistic term. But you know, I

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Speaker 1: enjoyed the seven Deadly Virtues your your book. And but

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Speaker 1: I'm looking at the list of books. You enjoy the

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Speaker 1: book or you enjoy the the virtues yourself? Well, I

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Speaker 1: like to think I may display a couple of them

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Speaker 1: at least. But um, I find the use of the

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Speaker 1: term virtues quaintly anachronistic. Who do you have? Who do

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Speaker 1: you hear run around talking about? You know, the community

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Speaker 1: and virtues and sacrifice and that sort of thing. Man,

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Speaker 1: we're a self seeking the world at this point. You know,

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Speaker 1: let me, can I like dilate on that for forty

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Speaker 1: five seconds because feel free or tell me I'm full

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Speaker 1: of crap. I don't care. Go ahead, you know, you

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Speaker 1: are right, but you're right and like you are right

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Speaker 1: in the deepest possible sense, you know. So a lot

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Speaker 1: of people say, oh, what you have here is a

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Speaker 1: bunch of selfish people who are don't want to have

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Speaker 1: families because they're living for themselves. And I think that

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Speaker 1: that is wrong in some ways and right in others.

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Speaker 1: So it's wrong in this way. We have an entire

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Speaker 1: couple of generations of kids in America here who all

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Speaker 1: they do is delay gratification. They really want to get

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Speaker 1: into a good college, and so they don't scool around

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Speaker 1: in high school. They get to college, they've want to

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Speaker 1: get into a good law school or medical schools, so

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Speaker 1: they really knuckled down and they're always sort of pushing

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Speaker 1: off what they're going to be, you know. And then

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Speaker 1: they get out of law school or graduate school and

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Speaker 1: they want to have a family, but they think, well, no,

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Speaker 1: I really want to get my career sorted out first

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Speaker 1: before I go doing that. Then they sort of look

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Speaker 1: up and they're forty two years old and they think, hey,

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Speaker 1: I gotta start living. That is that is self centeredness,

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Speaker 1: but not self centeredness the way we have traditionally thought

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Speaker 1: of it. Traditionally, you couldn't describe they you would say, oh,

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Speaker 1: this is a person who just sort of plays all

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Speaker 1: day and never wants to do hard work. Instead, we

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Speaker 1: have at the opposite, all of which leads me to this.

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Speaker 1: The single best predictor of completed fertility in America is

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Speaker 1: not race. It is not geography, it is not income,

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Speaker 1: It is not even your religion. It is your religiosity,

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Speaker 1: which is to say, how many times you attend religious services.

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Speaker 1: And I think that that is deeply revealing about what

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Speaker 1: we mean when we say selfishness and self centeredness, because

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Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if you are Christian, Muslim, jew Catholic, Protestant, Mormon.

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Speaker 1: All that matters is how often you show up at church.

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Speaker 1: And if you can, if I can, if you tell

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Speaker 1: me how often you show up a church, I can

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Speaker 1: do a pretty good guessing job of you how many

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Speaker 1: kids you have. And this tells me that there is

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Speaker 1: something about religion quad religion. It's not about any particular

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Speaker 1: religious commandment. It's not about be fruitful and multiply or

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Speaker 1: anything like that. But it is about seeing the world

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Speaker 1: through the lens of somebody who believes that you have

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Speaker 1: a duty to people past behind you. Already dead and

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Speaker 1: a duty to people in front of you not yet born.

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Speaker 1: And that is like the very fundamental difference in worldview

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Speaker 1: between people who have kids and people who don't know.

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Speaker 1: Is that true for a Rand and all these other

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Speaker 1: countries that are going the wrong direction fertility wise? Also?

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Speaker 1: Uh no, I mean so everything. So we have a

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Speaker 1: lot of very general factors that influence everybody. Like, for instance,

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Speaker 1: the single biggest driver and fertility drop is the drop

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Speaker 1: in infant mortality rates. So which is a good thing, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean it used to be that you would have

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Speaker 1: twelve kids and then like six of them would survive

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Speaker 1: to age ten. That is no longer the case, and

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Speaker 1: then mortality drops. You see fertility dropping a straight line

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Speaker 1: with it that affect everybody. But then there are particular

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Speaker 1: causes that you noticed when in you know, specific so

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Speaker 1: you know what the particular causes in Japan are different

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Speaker 1: from the particular causes in Germany, which are different from

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Speaker 1: the particular causes of America. Yeah, okay, that's interesting. But direction, yes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you would think, wouldn't you that there would be a

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Speaker 1: boom in fertility in certain places just because of the

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Speaker 1: you know that the wide variety of the way human

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Speaker 1: beings approached life. But and there's a lot of a

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Speaker 1: lot to get your arms around the conflict states. I mean,

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Speaker 1: this is one of one of the interesting things. Where

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Speaker 1: you see fertility uh tending to remain very high are

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Speaker 1: places which are in constant warfare, such as Afghanistan, such

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Speaker 1: as Yemen. So places where people have been fighting one

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Speaker 1: another without stop for you know, forty years, a hundred years,

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Speaker 1: four hundred years, maybe their fertility rates remain quite high.

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Speaker 1: And this seems to be in the most for the

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Speaker 1: most obvious reason you can imagine, which is if all

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Speaker 1: you do is fight war as you need a lot

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Speaker 1: of suns. Wow. Wow. I've said many times Jonathan that

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Speaker 1: Homo sapiens are my least favorite species. This has done

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Speaker 1: nothing to garbage. This is one of them my my

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Speaker 1: load stars in life. So I I know that two

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Speaker 1: point one birds per woman is the cutoff. You go

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Speaker 1: below that and you start shrinking. But there's a number

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Speaker 1: where you can't recover. I know somewhere around there and

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Speaker 1: uh there, Italy's and some of those countries are there,

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Speaker 1: aren't they worried? Whether did you just can't make a comeback? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: So the what we call lowest low fertility. Is that

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Speaker 1: one point three children per woman and that's the completed

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Speaker 1: fertility number. And I would say again to be careful.

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Speaker 1: It isn't that a society can't come back from lowest low.

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Speaker 1: But nobody has ever seen one do it. So I mean,

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Speaker 1: there are one of these. We have this thing, and

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Speaker 1: there's a chance we have had this, this weird thing

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Speaker 1: over the last twenty years or so where we have

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Speaker 1: had a series of moments where demographers have recorded what

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Speaker 1: has been the lowest fertility rate ever recorded, you know,

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Speaker 1: and and then people keep breaking the record, and each

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Speaker 1: time people have thought, okay, so it probably can't this

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Speaker 1: is lowest low. It can't go any lower. You will

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Speaker 1: wind up bumping up against some natural carnal desires that

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Speaker 1: like really forced people into having kids, and it doesn't happen.

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Speaker 1: The lowest I've seen, I think is just under one

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Speaker 1: point one in Singapore, uh, you know. And and that

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Speaker 1: is coupled with in Singapore some of the most aggressively

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Speaker 1: pronatalist policies you've ever seen, and the type of stuff

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Speaker 1: that if you had made me king of Singa poor

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Speaker 1: and told me, you know, and told me that my

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Speaker 1: number one mandate was just to have kids, have people

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Speaker 1: making more babies. I would have done basically what the

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Speaker 1: sing of the Government of Singapore has done, and it's

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Speaker 1: had no effect. Have you seen any of those pro

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Speaker 1: having babies policies, whether Japan or Europe first Singapore, have

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Speaker 1: you ever seen any of them do any good or

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Speaker 1: any significant good? So not significant good. You you get

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Speaker 1: little bits of good here and there. My good, I

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Speaker 1: should say, what we mean is actually like returns. Uh,

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Speaker 1: there may be moral goods to these things. I myself

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Speaker 1: would love to have had some pronatalist policies here in

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Speaker 1: America to make my family life easier. I'm sure you

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Speaker 1: guys would have been will But there there's been a

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Speaker 1: lot of econometric analysis on this, and you get pennies

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Speaker 1: on the dollar back in terms of spend. Yeah, it is,

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Speaker 1: interestingly enough. The single, the single best example of this

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Speaker 1: was in the Republic of Georgia. And uh, Georgians are

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Speaker 1: pretty religious as a people. They have like a national church,

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Speaker 1: the Georgian Orthodox Church. Uh, something of Georgians belonged to it.

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Speaker 1: They seem to practice pretty well. And uh, the Georgian

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Speaker 1: patriarch Eally, the second came out and said that he

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Speaker 1: would baptize every third kid, every third born kid personally.

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Speaker 1: So this is like, you know, if your Catholic, like

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Speaker 1: the pope saying, if you have a third kid, I'll

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Speaker 1: baptize the kid myself. Now that's a promotion, right, And

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Speaker 1: then you get a toaster and the fertility rate jumped,

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Speaker 1: like really jumped overnight in measurable and sustained way. So

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Speaker 1: and again, this I think speaks to what we were

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Speaker 1: talking about having a worldview that is compatible. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I'd like to try to make this as ecumenical as possible,

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Speaker 1: but just with the idea of deism and the idea

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Speaker 1: of this self as not actually being the center of

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Speaker 1: the universe. Yeah, but it's you know, it builds upon

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Speaker 1: itself obviously, because if you are single and childless, you

402
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Speaker 1: can hear all the stories about how, you know, the

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Speaker 1: the American culture will just disappear with the people and

404
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Speaker 1: it will cease to exist. You don't care. You'll be dead.

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Speaker 1: And I care about stuff because I have kids and

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Speaker 1: I want them to live in a country. That's a

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Speaker 1: certain way. But if you don't have any kids, you

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Speaker 1: don't freaking care. Once your dad you're dead. I mean,

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Speaker 1: that's it's so it builds on itself. Yeah, you know.

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Speaker 1: I one of my democt for friends, guy named phil

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Speaker 1: one woman who is like a a liberal version of

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Speaker 1: me but plus fifty I Q points and uh, you

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Speaker 1: wrote a great piece about ten years ago for Foreign

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Speaker 1: Affairs magazine saying that, look, if if all the nice

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Speaker 1: liberal people who listen to NPR don't have kids, then

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Speaker 1: like the patriarchs, well the patriarchy will run and take

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Speaker 1: over the world. It will be the you know, the

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Speaker 1: most illiberal people, you know, the people who watch NASCAR

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Speaker 1: and Iran, it will be the Mulla's Like don't you

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Speaker 1: don't you You don't want to give the world over

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Speaker 1: to them? Like your your listen NPR, go out, put

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Speaker 1: on some very white and make some bad decisions. And

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Speaker 1: I would say his call has not been heated yet. Wow. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that is an interesting point and well said by him.

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Speaker 1: So I got a question for Jack here with if

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Speaker 1: the Pope promised you'd show up and baptized kid number

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Speaker 1: three or bless him or whatever, would that be incentive enough.

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Speaker 1: I can't imagine a culture where that worked, because you know,

429
00:23:16,960 --> 00:23:19,560
Speaker 1: if you have kids, that's that's a terrible reason to

430
00:23:19,600 --> 00:23:21,399
Speaker 1: decide how many you have kids you're gonna have. How

431
00:23:21,440 --> 00:23:24,200
Speaker 1: about if like Eric Clapton showed up, blessed the kid

432
00:23:24,240 --> 00:23:26,560
Speaker 1: and gave you a guitar lesson? Would that be would

433
00:23:26,600 --> 00:23:29,680
Speaker 1: any celebrity appearance? No? And I just I just think

434
00:23:29,680 --> 00:23:32,520
Speaker 1: in general, these aren't rational decisions. I just find that

435
00:23:32,640 --> 00:23:35,440
Speaker 1: very hard to believe. There's something deeper going on. I

436
00:23:35,480 --> 00:23:36,840
Speaker 1: don't know what it is, and I don't think anybody

437
00:23:36,880 --> 00:23:38,560
Speaker 1: really knows about although I think you know, we we've

438
00:23:38,560 --> 00:23:40,560
Speaker 1: certainly touched on it. I get the the idea of

439
00:23:40,560 --> 00:23:44,879
Speaker 1: a connection to the past and the future based on,

440
00:23:45,359 --> 00:23:49,760
Speaker 1: you know, belief in a greater power or a greater

441
00:23:49,960 --> 00:23:53,560
Speaker 1: meaning to life. At the same time, it is the bassist,

442
00:23:53,840 --> 00:23:57,920
Speaker 1: literally the bassist biological arth. If that's what blows my mind.

443
00:23:58,000 --> 00:24:02,560
Speaker 1: That's our entire most basic that's our that's our entire

444
00:24:02,600 --> 00:24:05,600
Speaker 1: biological directive, and the only reason we're here in our

445
00:24:05,720 --> 00:24:08,600
Speaker 1: DNA is to reproduce, and we've stopped. I mean, how

446
00:24:08,600 --> 00:24:13,840
Speaker 1: does that not get more people's attention? I'm asking, don't

447
00:24:13,880 --> 00:24:15,719
Speaker 1: ask me. I wrote the book on the food and

448
00:24:15,760 --> 00:24:20,280
Speaker 1: he still doesn't know. Aren't you? Aren't you amazed that

449
00:24:20,440 --> 00:24:23,480
Speaker 1: more people don't talk about this are amazed by it.

450
00:24:24,880 --> 00:24:27,639
Speaker 1: I am, you know, I've had to be carefully. Have

451
00:24:27,760 --> 00:24:29,639
Speaker 1: you ever run into the type of guy who's like

452
00:24:29,640 --> 00:24:33,399
Speaker 1: into numerology, you know, who sit down and be like, well, actually,

453
00:24:33,400 --> 00:24:35,040
Speaker 1: if you look at what the number seven does, and

454
00:24:36,560 --> 00:24:40,600
Speaker 1: you know, it actually explains everything demographics, if you dive

455
00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:42,639
Speaker 1: deep enough into it, you wind up sounding like one

456
00:24:42,640 --> 00:24:44,439
Speaker 1: of those guys, you know, like I looked at the

457
00:24:44,440 --> 00:24:45,960
Speaker 1: real estate bubble and I was like, oh, yeah, there's

458
00:24:45,960 --> 00:24:48,119
Speaker 1: all demographics, you know, Like I was just looking at

459
00:24:48,160 --> 00:24:50,919
Speaker 1: the age cohorts and people that they move into prime

460
00:24:51,320 --> 00:24:55,320
Speaker 1: uh prime home buying years, mixed with like the old

461
00:24:55,359 --> 00:24:57,840
Speaker 1: folks who are cashing out, and I was like, oh yeah,

462
00:24:57,840 --> 00:25:00,960
Speaker 1: there's all demographics. And so you can wind being too

463
00:25:01,000 --> 00:25:03,320
Speaker 1: obsessed with it. You know. One of the reasons that

464
00:25:03,520 --> 00:25:06,080
Speaker 1: I think this tends to be a little under the

465
00:25:06,160 --> 00:25:09,000
Speaker 1: radar is that it all just moves so slowly, Like

466
00:25:09,080 --> 00:25:12,160
Speaker 1: there's never a blockbuster moment where like, oh look at that,

467
00:25:12,400 --> 00:25:15,640
Speaker 1: like the demographics you finally dropped like these things, it's

468
00:25:15,680 --> 00:25:18,119
Speaker 1: it's like a glacier, you know, or a tectonic plate.

469
00:25:18,200 --> 00:25:21,040
Speaker 1: It's just moving and you can't stop it. Really you

470
00:25:21,040 --> 00:25:22,480
Speaker 1: can't change it. All you can do is sort of

471
00:25:22,480 --> 00:25:23,880
Speaker 1: sit there and watch it and be like, oh yeah,

472
00:25:23,880 --> 00:25:27,959
Speaker 1: well there goes up another twelve inches, so uh yeah.

473
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:31,639
Speaker 1: It's it's funny and it's also complicated because you know,

474
00:25:31,720 --> 00:25:37,439
Speaker 1: like everybody's boxes getting gored by this, and people tendre

475
00:25:37,520 --> 00:25:40,280
Speaker 1: there are no easy solutions, like the environmentalists take talking

476
00:25:40,280 --> 00:25:44,520
Speaker 1: about this, the nationalists they talking about this because nobody,

477
00:25:44,600 --> 00:25:47,120
Speaker 1: nobody ever really gets what they want out of the subject.

478
00:25:47,280 --> 00:25:49,760
Speaker 1: You're right, yeah, I could see that. Jonathan V. Last,

479
00:25:49,800 --> 00:25:52,520
Speaker 1: executive editor for The Bulwark. The book is what do

480
00:25:52,560 --> 00:25:57,040
Speaker 1: you expect when no one's expecting America's coming demographic disaster? Jonathan,

481
00:25:57,080 --> 00:25:58,960
Speaker 1: It's always great when we get a chance to chat.

482
00:25:59,200 --> 00:26:02,440
Speaker 1: We appreciate the I'm good luck with the book. Thanks guys,

483
00:26:02,480 --> 00:26:05,639
Speaker 1: good to talk. Thanks. I'm I've been a fan of

484
00:26:05,640 --> 00:26:07,600
Speaker 1: his whenever I catch him on some TV show or

485
00:26:07,600 --> 00:26:09,320
Speaker 1: anything like that and get to see it, always like it.

486
00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:12,920
Speaker 1: I'll never believe that it's a lot of the things

487
00:26:12,960 --> 00:26:14,920
Speaker 1: that he mentions, is cause I'll just never believe that

488
00:26:14,920 --> 00:26:18,000
Speaker 1: at the outset. Yeah, I just don't believe it's it's

489
00:26:18,080 --> 00:26:20,520
Speaker 1: the cost of housing today or anything like, I don't

490
00:26:20,560 --> 00:26:24,679
Speaker 1: think my parents, their parents, people were making those decisions

491
00:26:24,720 --> 00:26:26,480
Speaker 1: when it came to having kids. It was either the

492
00:26:26,720 --> 00:26:28,880
Speaker 1: only thing that mattered to you or you're you're not.

493
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:31,840
Speaker 1: I wanted a girlfriend every minute of my life past

494
00:26:31,920 --> 00:26:35,840
Speaker 1: age twelve or so. And Judy and I got married

495
00:26:36,040 --> 00:26:37,920
Speaker 1: and we were talking about, yeah, I'm not sure we

496
00:26:37,960 --> 00:26:40,480
Speaker 1: want kids. No, I mean neither. And then there's like

497
00:26:40,600 --> 00:26:43,680
Speaker 1: one week when all of a sudden, we just really

498
00:26:43,720 --> 00:26:46,119
Speaker 1: wanted kids more than anything else in the world, and

499
00:26:46,119 --> 00:26:50,439
Speaker 1: there was absolutely no calculation of direct and into direct

500
00:26:50,520 --> 00:26:53,760
Speaker 1: economic benefits. And then blah bah, none of that, none

501
00:26:53,960 --> 00:27:01,000
Speaker 1: of that, and that urges going away. If it were antelopes,

502
00:27:01,240 --> 00:27:03,080
Speaker 1: the scientific world would be in a pan oh, and

503
00:27:03,080 --> 00:27:05,800
Speaker 1: it'd be global warming, and people be willing to upend

504
00:27:05,840 --> 00:27:10,080
Speaker 1: economies to try to fix that problem because it's so important.

505
00:27:11,480 --> 00:27:15,960
Speaker 1: In the theater narrated by Al Gore, and nobody cares, well,

506
00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:21,159
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do? I don't know, I don't know.

507
00:27:21,880 --> 00:27:23,960
Speaker 1: There you go. The book is What to Expect when

508
00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:27,280
Speaker 1: no One's expecting America's coming demographic disaster. Dig It Man,

509
00:27:27,320 --> 00:27:30,200
Speaker 1: dig it extra large