Stephen Shaw is the creator of the groundbreaking documentary, The Birth Gap, which explores the impact of Demographic Apps on the way we think about the future of human society. In this episode, we talk to Stephen about his experience with the backlash to the documentary, and how he s dealing with it.
00:00:35.680And, you know, they're subtly moving away from blaming the environment because they know we're all going to see the population maximizing right now.
00:00:43.940So they're preparing, you know, they're being smart from their point of view, but preparing their argument that, oh, it's no longer about the environment.
00:00:50.940It's about men forcing themselves on women.
00:00:54.540We've got to be really careful and call these guys out because, you know, they have an agenda.
00:01:02.980We are extremely excited today to be joined by Stephen Shaw, who is the creator of the Birth Gap documentary, which we consider to be the seminal documentary on demographical apps that covers the stats, but also the personal fallout from demographical apps already.
00:01:32.100What we'd really love to ask you to start, at least, because there's so many things we'd like to discuss, is after Birth Gap came out, did you encounter any surprises in terms of who was really excited about it, who it resonated with, and who didn't like it?
00:01:45.580Because we found in our own journey with prenatalist advocacy that, or demographic collapse awareness advocacy that sometimes like surprising groups either really appreciated and also really don't.
00:01:56.720We'd love to hear what you've experienced.
00:01:58.020I've experienced everything, and I don't think I was prepared for it at all.
00:02:51.420But on the other side, the optimistic side also surprised me.
00:02:53.960I admit the documentary feeling, frankly, quite pessimistic that this is a reality that we have to simply prepare for a world with fewer and fewer people and the inevitable consequences of that, personally, to communities and to societies.
00:03:09.440But actually, looking into the eyes of so many young people who watch this who are, frankly, shocked.
00:03:15.780I mean, anger is what's being used, that society is preparing them for a life of education first, career second.
00:03:24.380And then, what do you mean we're going to run out of time to start a family?
00:03:27.720What do you mean we might end up childless when we want families?
00:03:30.940Those people give me confidence, despite their frustrations and anger, because I see in their eyes that very likely many of them will do things differently.
00:03:39.400Can you talk a bit more about what is motivating, like, ideologically or dispositionally the antinatalist groups?
00:03:48.240I assume many of them are in the negative utilitarian sort of David Benatar sphere of antinatalism?
00:03:53.460Or are there other things that are motivating them, more just like general human pessimism?
00:03:59.960And actually, I mean, there's one or two very few people who come out and say that they believe in extinction.
00:04:05.600And relatively speaking, I respect them speaking relatively, because they're saying what they believe, and you can discuss that, and not many people think that, so that's fine.
00:04:16.480What worries me is that many people who perhaps think that, I don't know, but they cloak their arguments in many different ways, and it's so easy to see.
00:04:25.680So, I mean, just to maybe answer your question in terms of what the rationale is, these are clearly ideologists who are threatened by the idea that people, women in particular, actually want children, and that many who end up childless have regrets, or more rather, grieve.
00:04:46.180And that's why I show, in part two of the documentary, there's a lot of deep grief that is felt by these organizations.
00:04:53.320And so, in some ways, I've realized that, you know, by challenging the pre-mind that women don't really want children, and that if they don't, it's fine, actually goes to the heart of their own ideology.
00:05:06.980So, I think they have to argue against it, because otherwise, their ideology is finished.
00:05:13.360Well, I was just going to say, so in a sense, it's a compliment, in other words, to me, that, you know, they've been forced into that position.
00:05:19.240Well, I, to put, like, reword what you said, because I think it's really interesting, it's the lifestyles a lot of large groups in our society right now are promoting lead to people not being able to have kids.
00:05:32.480And when I say lifestyles, I mean, like, college degree and independence before you marry a man.
00:05:37.560I'm not, you know, like, just generic mainstream lifestyles and groups.
00:05:43.200What you're saying is an aspect of this is a cognitive dissonance.
00:05:46.060They don't want to take responsibility for the pain that this advocacy that they're pushing causes.
00:05:52.500And so, to do that, they're sort of denying or punishing anyone who brings up that there are negative consequences of this.
00:05:59.680Well, I think cognitive dissonance is a big element, but it's not the entire story.
00:06:04.440I think there are people who are persuaded to focus on those things, persuaded, perhaps, indeed, that children aren't that important.
00:06:11.840And I have seen twice in screenings of my documentary in Tokyo where women have had breakdowns.
00:06:20.180I'm talking about women in their 50s who, I mean, one of them argued that the documentary wasn't fair on women, that no one didn't need their children.
00:06:30.820Then spent a weekend, I later found out, with her curtains closed, didn't come out of her apartment, remembering that she had one of the kids one day.
00:06:38.040But finally came to terms with it and invited me to lunch.
00:06:42.100And suddenly it was like, thank you for allowing me to grieve the reality that I had when the kids.
00:06:47.580So that's cognitive dissonance, where you're trying to kind of avoid the reality that perhaps for...
00:06:52.420No, no, no. I will say this. I want to say this. We should say this.
00:06:55.440A minority, I think somewhere around 5% of women do not ever have the desire of children.
00:07:02.080I am to be fired at those women in the documentary, and they're entirely happy. They have no regrets.
00:07:06.580I'm not saying it's entirely binary. I don't know that, but it's clear that for some who simply never, ever want children, they can and will go through life quite happy.
00:07:15.900That's what they wanted. It's the remainder.
00:07:18.820I think it's a significant majority of childless people who either had wanted and life didn't work out.
00:07:23.640They didn't have a partner at the right time. They left it too late.
00:07:26.940We can't blame people. Society, though, is at the heart of this.
00:07:29.860We tell people as society that it's fine to have children in your 30s.
00:07:35.180Too many things get in the way and leave so many people childless.
00:07:39.360What I really appreciated about the way that you framed things in the documentary, too, was just how clearly you presented two really interesting dichotomy of issues between men and women, which we see a lot just among our own social networks.
00:07:57.020Where women are interested in having kids often, but they're just delaying, delaying, delaying because of education and career, and then it's too late.
00:08:05.560Plus, they're really struggling to find male partners who are willing to have kids.
00:08:09.780And then on the other end, there's, I think, a lot of sort of societal pressures on men.
00:08:14.720Holy smokes. Sorry, two birds just randomly flew into my window.
00:08:18.700I think that they're not doing too much.
00:08:20.060They were probably chasing each other, but they're not doing so well right now.
00:08:27.520That men are sort of discouraged from living anything but a sort of freewheeling, hedonistic life where they don't want to give up their freedoms.
00:08:35.860They don't want to give up their ability to travel at the drop of a hat, do whatever they want, live their lives.
00:08:40.680And they're certainly not celebrated for making any of those sacrifices.
00:08:43.600So that makes it even harder for women who, once they are ready, to find partners who are willing to take that leap.
00:08:50.940And I mean, it showed up a lot in part one.
00:08:54.040And it was really interesting to me because people don't really discuss that weird bifurcation as much as I would expect because it is such a big part of the problem, culture.
00:09:02.400Well, you know, I came to realize quite quickly that, you know, men generally, including myself, I have to say I'm divorced, not by choice, just life.
00:09:13.740My ex-wife didn't want to leave London and that happened.
00:09:17.160And I think I did expect at some point in time I'd meet someone else.
00:09:19.900But I think as men get older, what we forget is we're effectively competing with our younger selves for the pool of younger women who are able to have children.
00:09:27.380So technically we can have children later in life, much later in life, but actually you still have to find a woman willing to have a child with you.
00:09:50.320We're just not thinking this through, whether, you know, certainly men and society is not, you know, helping at all.
00:09:57.060Well, to the point that you made, and this is something I would strongly advocate our listeners because I often talk to young men and they act like they have an infinite timeline on having kids.
00:10:06.280And that perception is one of the reasons why people who go at life with that mindset are unlikely to have kids.
00:10:14.720And I think just a good heuristic is you should plan to have all of the kids you are going to have in your entire life by like 35 if you plan to do this naturally.
00:10:26.300Now, if you're freezing embryos, that's a bit different, which means that realistically you likely need to have secured the partner you're going to marry by like 27.
00:10:34.540And this is just not the time society is giving.
00:10:37.960Another thing that I really wanted to advocate for our audience here, because, you know, this is like the pro natalist movement or the closest thing to a hub the movement has, is something that has constantly surprised me.
00:10:49.980And it's something that you mentioned here is allies that are out there for us and that want to be the pro natalist movement's allies.
00:10:58.020Are women who feel that they were hoodwinked by the system, never had any kids and are grieving and want to help reach out or through donations, help younger women not follow the same path that they followed.
00:11:12.580And it's really important to note this as a movement, because I think that sometimes young people in the movement can get really excited and be very dismissive of these individuals like it's their fault that they fell for all this, that it's their fault that they everyone was telling them this, you know, everyone was telling them they were good people for doing this.
00:11:30.900And when you lack compassion for these people who are genuinely suffering, you isolate the movement from a huge fraction of people who could be very strong allies.
00:11:42.060And this is especially true because we have a lot of like manosphere types who watch our podcast and stuff like that.
00:11:47.240If you want to convince young women to change priorities, like red pill guys telling them to do that isn't going to work.
00:11:54.260Old women who didn't have kids is going to work.
00:11:57.160Yeah, and that's what I'm finding too.
00:12:01.060I think women, from what I see, and perhaps men too, simply being made aware that the fertility window is likely much shorter than you expect.
00:12:15.240It's do you have a partner at that time?
00:12:17.280Are you sure you're not going to go through a divorce or breakup?
00:12:19.420Because that's quite commonplace these days.
00:12:21.060How sure are you at that age you want to have a child, age 35 or whatever it is, that you're going to have everything lined up that turns out to be the biggest reason, you know, for not having children?
00:12:32.840And, you know, another point as well, I think, Chair, is that, you know, whatever statistics you may come up with, a lot of people want to know, well, what is the age when fertility falls off?
00:12:42.220And you hear different things about this.
00:12:44.080But the reality is there's a huge variation in this.
00:12:46.620You can't assume, as a woman, that your fertility level is the same as the average woman.
00:12:55.480So if children are important, erring on the side of caution is a common sense thing to do.
00:13:02.560One of the greatest conversations I had was with a young Japanese 24-year-old who had it all worked out.
00:13:07.480She was in a long-distance relationship, and I, you know, cautioned that.
00:13:11.220So don't worry, I'm giving it one more year because if it doesn't work out, that gives me two more years to find the next boyfriend.
00:13:16.300If that doesn't work out, I can still meet someone by 30, and I can still have the three children I want.
00:13:28.740Well, and speaking of cold and calculated, a statistic I always love to cite is if you look at the rates of love in arranged marriages versus the rates of love in marriages that were chosen for love, they are about equal.
00:13:39.200But when you account for survivalship bias because love marriages have higher divorce rates than arranged marriages, they're actually higher.
00:13:45.240So applying a level of clinicalness to relationships, even though society will shame you for it, can have really positive outcomes for what is, without a doubt, the most important decision you're going to make in your life.
00:13:59.840Yeah, and I haven't looked into that specific statistic, but it's interesting.
00:14:03.220I do live in Japan, and it's certainly true that when arranged marriage was commonplace that there was more marriage and there were more births.
00:14:11.320I'm not totally convinced that that's necessarily meaningful in today's society, but you still have this culture in Japan of people helping each other find dates.
00:14:19.420It's a thing where people effectively, you know, three men, three women meet together, and they get to know each other without any pressure.
00:14:27.040It hasn't helped the birth rate, though, I have to say, but it is still, I think, a nice way to potentially meet that person.
00:14:33.640Also, something I want to bring up here that's important for fans to know when they're thinking about planning their own life is this actually comes from a call we were having this morning.
00:14:41.320It was Rye Egg Nationalist, sort of going over all the stats on just how much male fertility has dropped in the last 50 years or so.
00:14:48.240We are not dealing with the same biologies that our grandparents had, and it is dramatically harder to get somebody pregnant today than it was historically, whether you're looking at sperm motility dropping over 50% in the last 51 years.
00:15:06.420I'm sure you remember that stat better than I do, or, you know, the, the, like, TIDE studies and endocrine disruptors and stuff like that, which means that you may need to approach fertility in a clinical fashion that may even feel unromantic.
00:15:20.740And, and, and, and fertility isn't always a romantic thing anymore.
00:15:23.340You know, we, we are in many ways becoming a more sterile species.
00:15:26.960Yeah, and this is not my specific area of expertise, but I do have a couple of comments to add.
00:15:38.200I'm a little bit skeptical whether this has yet been, become a major factor in overall fertility.
00:15:45.040It might do, it may have recently, but my argument is one of my findings was that mothers, once they do have the first child in recent decades, are having the same number of children as decades, well, decades ago.
00:15:57.020So in the U.S., you know, the average mother was having 2.4 children, 1980s, today it's actually up to 2.6.
00:16:04.040And this is universal in Japan, 6% of mothers today are having four more children.
00:16:09.400That's exactly the same as it was 50 years ago.
00:16:11.440So it seems to be about having that first child, maybe it's sperm levels dropping to a point where you can't even.
00:17:04.300And the rise in childlessness is the key thing.
00:17:07.040I want to pull on the statement you just made because I think it's really interesting.
00:17:10.520And it really contrasts with our thesis around fertility, which is to help very high fertility cultural groups maximize their fertility rates because their kids are more likely to have more kids.
00:17:21.200Whereas for you, it seems that thesis is actually to get the people who have no kids to have that first kid, and then the rest will work itself out.
00:17:30.180Can you talk a bit about what kind of interventions you've seen be effective there?
00:17:33.680Because we haven't even looked at that as a potential solution.
00:17:35.860Yeah, well, just one thing to put on the table here is that if you look at someone with two children, they were more likely than not thinking of two or maybe three.
00:18:26.460So if you like the kind of the power of that group, if they were to have that first child, in terms of changing the overall birth rates of nations is much higher than increasing six to seven children, for example.
00:18:42.920So how much of this do you think, if you were going to say, is dating market failure?
00:18:47.760Now, when I say dating market failure, I don't just mean finding a partner.
00:18:50.260I mean, the men who are on the market are not what the women who are on the market want.
00:18:53.980And the women who are on the market are not what the men on the market want.
00:18:56.460And how much of it do you think is missed expectations around timing?
00:19:06.440But I think another reality, you know, whether it's these days or decades ago, is that when you're in your 20s, you can build a life together.
00:19:16.340By the time you get into your 30s, you've got your career, you know, pretty much what city you want to live in.
00:19:24.600Now you need someone to match those things as well as someone you actually like and want to spend the rest of your life and have kids with.
00:19:31.820In your 20s, you can build much of those things together.
00:19:34.900So by definition, the pool of people available is less.
00:19:40.060Also, the fact that many people have already got married in their 20s, so the pool is less anyways.
00:19:44.600So by definition, it cannot get easier.
00:19:47.760And, you know, during the documentary, but certainly after, there have been so many people trying to find that partner struggling with dating apps.
00:19:55.260But I'm not sure it's just the app's fault.
00:20:00.240You know, if you are looking at the smaller group of people who might match you, who meet all of your criteria, you know, it gets harder and harder.
00:20:30.060And, you know, one of the irritations I found is when you're with someone and they're a little older, they will say things like, oh, when I was in my 20s, I had this friend.
00:20:44.480And then later it's like, is that the same friend?
00:20:46.440It becomes complicated to unravel someone's life and enjoy those conversations instead of having been there and actually recall them together.
00:20:54.240It's a personal perspective, but again, it doesn't get easier.
00:20:58.600This is a fascinating way to frame it because this aligns with our experience when we started dating, which is we got rid of almost all of our social network that we had before we started dating, after we started dating.
00:21:09.260And to an extent, you should almost think of all the socializing you do before you get married or find the person you end up marrying as sort of wasted effort, which might encourage you to find the person you're going to marry earlier.
00:21:21.080Well, that may or may not work for everybody, but certainly I'm not saying experiences before meeting the right person have no validity at all, but it does make it more complex as time goes on.
00:21:34.980And you just haven't been there to experience those emotions, those friendships, those experiences, not necessarily together, but to know, oh, yes, I remember you went on that trip with that group of friends.
00:21:45.060I met those friends and now I understand that story better. So let's say a slightly more shallow series of conversations.
00:21:53.660I'm curious after you release a documentary, if you've come across any innovations or interventions that give you hope or where you feel like people are recognizing the problem, either with dating markets or starting early enough to have a family or anything related to these declines in fertility, where you're like, oh, wow, like this is a solution that seems to be working well.
00:22:16.760Or are you really only starting to see people innovate now? I mean, we personally aren't seeing much.
00:22:22.400So I'm curious to see if you've seen anything in all your travels and interactions.
00:22:26.980Yeah, a lot. Well, first of all, a lot of things have been tried in the field.
00:22:29.980I mean, I often do is explain, you know, some great policy that's going to be tried in a certain country and we'll show you all the exceptions as to why that hasn't worked.
00:22:38.840The one thing I would like to see, because I do believe it will make the biggest difference is within our high school, college textbooks, biology textbooks to just explain when we talk about fertility, which we mostly do, that there's a fertility window.
00:22:53.500You know, we don't explain that. I'm not sure why that is. Like, why wouldn't we? It's just objective information from science.
00:22:59.520And I have a pretty good idea why that might be. There's certain people who prefer that young people don't have that information.
00:23:07.280And I cover that in part of the documentary as to why our education system has really not been sharing the reality of that fertility window.
00:23:16.180I think that would make a huge difference if young people were prepared for that. But the optimism I get often.
00:23:21.820I was wondering if you would mind summarizing your thesis here, why the school system is hiding this from people.
00:23:26.020Yeah. Well, if you look at the U.S. high school system, the biggest educator on population, I'll call them out, organization called Population Connection.
00:23:38.320They have educated 50,000 U.S. teachers and those U.S. teachers every year are responsible for educating, I believe it's three or four million U.S. high school students.
00:23:50.440Now, I interviewed the CEO of the organization in the documentary and asked him why he's not including information on falling fertility rates around the world.
00:24:01.660And his response was, that's not our thing.
00:24:05.040So they, for example, you know, would be and it's not just them.
00:24:08.240They happen to be the most prolific. And let me explain briefly the heritage.
00:24:11.600They were formerly known as ZPG, founded by Paul Ehrlich, the author of the famous Population Bomb book in the late 1960s.
00:24:20.940They have millions and millions of donations every year from groups of people.
00:24:24.380I suspect many going back to that time who thought we were about to experience a population bomb.
00:24:29.380So there's an organization out there educating our children on population matters.
00:24:33.080And, you know, the kind of things that educate them on are that, you know, that the world's population is starting here, started here in 1800 and then kind of did this.
00:24:43.000Why would they stop explaining if they're, you know, if they're trying to be objective about the reality that we know that everything's going to flatten out beyond that time?
00:24:52.760And when I asked upon that scene online, they try to, you know, say, well, in the year 2100, there's going to be the same number of people as 1970.
00:24:59.300Yes, but most of those are going to be really all people that society is going to have to support.
00:25:06.920Another point, you know, if you look at the collection of organizations who share that message, they don't ever come out with messages like South Korea.
00:25:49.560They want U.S. high school kids to think about how many children are in Africa.
00:25:54.460That is, you know, to me, that's propaganda.
00:25:56.520That's like, think about having less kids yourself to balance out what's happening in Africa.
00:26:02.500So to me, it's, it's high, you know, best, I would say it's, you know, partial information.
00:26:09.700I would be, I'm open to go much further than that and just say it's ideological.
00:26:13.900It's driven by mindsets of the 60s that haven't changed and needs to stop.
00:26:17.880Yeah, well, let's talk about who, who has, because you talked a bit about this, but I just find it's really interesting.
00:26:22.980What have been unexpected supporters that you've had?
00:26:25.620Any, any groups where you're like, I did not expect this group to be as happy about this.
00:26:30.720Not, not as happy about your work, not that situation.
00:26:34.460I'm not sure unexpected, to be honest with you.
00:26:37.860I mean, there have been a wide range of groups, religious groups.
00:26:41.460Groups that support, you know, marriage have supported this a lot.
00:26:44.860So I'm agnostic as a person, I, you know, marriage is probably a good thing for most people, I think, but I'm not certain of that.
00:26:51.400I don't try to get into those moralistic judgments at all.
00:26:55.280So, you know, while I'm happy that they are supporters, well, let me just call it one more thing.
00:27:01.460I think it's, it might not be a direct answer to your question, but I have been on quite a number of conservative podcasts and conservative TV stations.
00:27:11.380I do not choose to be on conservative podcasts or TV stations.
00:27:15.960They're the only ones who want to talk about this.
00:27:18.740I mean, just literally no one from the left wants to talk about it.
00:27:22.820Yet this impacts the left at least as much as the right.
00:27:26.200You know, if you look at education levels, I would argue that there's more people on the left are left in a state of unplanned childlessness.
00:27:33.680So it's terribly sad that some people want to want to talk about this.
00:27:38.960As we often say, this is the right to global warming, which doesn't mean that either one of them is a true or untrue.
00:27:47.320But just what we're saying is it's very toxic for the other side to talk about it.
00:27:50.500It's so much so I actually had a professor at Harvard, which was talking to me.
00:27:54.560She's like, I follow you guys was my secret account, my secret Twitter account, because I don't want my students to know.
00:27:58.900But even so, one of my students somehow accused me of being a pronatalist, like accused her of potentially being a pronatalist, which she saw as being threatening to her tenure.
00:28:09.660That was insane to me that it has become that hyperbolic that being a out pronatalist could lose you your tenure at a major college.
00:28:20.700So my own solution to that, I actually believe it's a good idea.
00:28:26.880Pannatalist, meaning I equally support those who don't want children to live a life without children and to support those who do want children.
00:28:35.600So perhaps anyone who feels conflicted can come out with something like that and actually say they support both sides because people who don't want children should not become parents.
00:28:44.740They're probably not making very good parents.
00:28:46.120They're something that want to look after children.
00:28:50.700In fact, one of the reasons why we're really fighting for this is we know that basically reproductive choice and especially the option to not have children if you don't want to is largely contingent on those who are feminist, those who do support reproductive choice, having kids and sort of carrying their culture forward into the future.
00:29:10.500Because if in the end we end up in a future where only those who don't support these things are around, people aren't really going to have as much choice as they did in the past.
00:29:19.040And we totally agree that, you know, not everyone is cut out to be a parent, not everyone wants to be a parent, not everyone's lucky enough to be in a situation to be a good parent.
00:29:29.800I mean, I think, like, for example, I would have been a terrible parent or I would have preferred to not have any kids at all in the vast majority of permutations of my potential life.
00:29:38.640Only because I met Malcolm, who's like absolutely perfect for me, am I really excited to be a parent and I would not want to be in a world where I would be forced to be a parent otherwise.
00:29:48.580And it's I mean, I arguably this is much more a problem for the hyper progressive groups that don't support pernatalism, either out of environmental concern or out of reproductive choice concern or the desire to not have kids than it is for the conservative groups that that support marriage, that support having families.
00:30:07.020They're going to be fine, largely speaking.
00:30:09.800And we really agree with you on the like an armed movement does not take a stance on things like do you need to be married to have kids?
00:30:15.880We say everyone right now that is attempting a different cultural solution to having kids is attempting a hypothesis.
00:30:21.840Our hypothesis is that intergenerationally that won't work like it'll lead to lower fertility rates and those groups will die out.
00:30:27.560But I don't think that we, you know, time passes that judgment, not us.
00:30:32.380I don't think people realize how quickly the transformation will happen.
00:30:37.880You know, of course, year by year, things look the same, even decade by decade to some extent.
00:30:44.440But, you know, I call this a tipping point because, you know, as you as birth rates get lower, you know, I have a thing that we share with you.
00:30:52.160It's it's it's in the second part of the documentary.
00:30:55.780But I call it the societal half life, the time taken for low birth rates to materialize and half the number of babies being born.
00:31:05.260And most of the industrialized world right now, that's somewhere around 50 to 70 years.
00:31:10.620I mean, halving the number of newborns in 50 to 70 years is frighteningly fast.
00:31:16.140Now, if you so what will happen is it will be those groups, perhaps ideologies, those who have more children, those will be the ones.
00:31:23.640For the one thing we do know is that religiosity is associated with higher birth rates, but also, you know, that that can be that that's inheritable.
00:31:35.220I would really caution anyone who thinks that we're going to glide down to a planet with fewer people.
00:31:42.340We're all going to have more space and life's going to be beautiful.
00:31:44.920No, the world's going to be a very, very different place.
00:31:48.320Civilizations will have changed and people may not like what we're heading for.
00:31:52.180Yeah, as we often point out, not only is this relevant to the economy, but when a developed economy collapses or goes downhill, it's much worse than it is at equivalent economic levels if it's developing.
00:32:04.920And we keep pointing to South Africa as a good example of what a developed economy looks like as it collapses, because, you know, you get rolling blackouts, you get security issues that are much higher than equivalent income levels in developing countries.
00:32:17.800And we have other videos that talk on this.
00:32:20.720But, yeah, this idea that this all can just happen quietly in the background, I think, is completely delusional when you look at the statistics on how much we rely on the young to support the old in our society.
00:32:34.860And, you know, we've really lost, you know, the sense of community has disappeared, really.
00:32:39.400And, you know, my own feeling is that national governments have only a minor role to play in the solution.
00:32:44.080The real solution will come from, you know, people, young people, by definition, you're finding communities and societies where they're able to have the children they want to have.
00:32:53.560And a lot of the problems are there's no one around health support to be role models, et cetera.
00:32:58.980So a lot does have to change, but we've got to be very careful that it changes in, you know, a positive way, because, I mean, for example, can I share now, you know, in Iran right now, Iran's got very low birth rates.
00:33:11.840It's terrible, but they, I think, two years ago, banned vasectomies to increase birth rates.
00:33:18.080I'm hearing, I don't know if it's correct, but I'm hearing that the number of vasectomies in China has fallen by over 80%.
00:33:24.160There's no specific order about that, but that's how things like that will happen.
00:33:28.780And, you know, some people speculate that at some point there will be a ban on abortions in China to force birth rates up.
00:33:34.180So seeing things go down too fast will likely have a counterreaction in many cultures that, you know, people should not be gleeful that we're, you know, heading to smaller populations.
00:33:45.940There will be a lot of turbulence along the way.
00:33:48.740Well, we really don't like those policies because, you know, when we look at when these policies have been implemented in the past, they don't actually solve the problem.
00:33:55.960They may cause a temporary boost and then a huge depression in the future because, you know, all these people then associate fertility with coercion and with, you know, being low class and all these things.
00:34:06.920Like when this happened in Romania, horrible fallout after that.
00:34:13.100And I think something that's captured in your work that's not captured in any of our work, and our viewers know this about this, we're completely heartless and we are incapable of approaching things from a heartful matter.
00:34:22.960But your work really shows the amount of genuine human pain that this is causing and the amount of people who wanted larger families than they had, but due to social and cultural reasons, were not able to find partners that they were satisfied with.
00:34:41.340And I think when we look at today, you know, whether it's on TikTok, whether it's the gender wars or everything like that, it's really easy to like fractionalize yourself and have teams and everything like that and dunk on women or dunk on men or, you know, whatever.
00:34:55.640But these lead to behavior patterns which make long-term partnerships really unviable.
00:35:01.900And it's, I think, one of the things that is causing this.
00:35:05.160And so, and I think that this is more of a progressive issue than anything else.
00:35:08.860These people on TikTok who are gladly stolen them not having kids because they get virtual, like, like social points for that.
00:35:16.780They get validation for that and they move up within their local social hierarchy because it's seen as a high value thing to, to, to signal.
00:35:24.320Without considering the long-term pain they might be causing to impressionable young people by convincing them that they will always feel the way about kids they do in their early 20s.
00:35:35.240And that's one of the hardest things about kids is when you really, really want kids is generally after it's, it's easy to have them.
00:35:44.220You need to have been preparing for the way you feel about the world to shift before it happens.
00:35:50.060In the same way that our school system prepares us for puberty before we go through it, you need to be prepared for this like baby puberty beforehand.
00:35:56.740Because if you don't have a partner, by the time this biological flip happens, you know, there really isn't anything you can do at that stage often.
00:36:06.900Again, I get confidence from just seeing younger people watch the documentary because I think people figure this out for themselves.
00:36:12.420I don't think we have to, you know, say more than just like hear examples of people with regrets.
00:36:17.180And people have, people generally aren't aware of that, certainly haven't seen those emotions.
00:36:21.960And if I could explain, I didn't go, I mean, I was, I come from the world of data science.
00:36:26.200I don't know if your viewers know that, but I'm not a filmmaker.
00:36:28.600I ended up throwing myself into this project, realizing that something was out in the data.
00:36:33.020Why would all these countries have falling birth rates at the exact same time?
00:36:36.400And the data itself wasn't answering this question.
00:36:40.140I thought I needed to talk to people about what's happening in their lives.
00:36:42.740A one-year project to film in a few countries turned into a seven-year project filmed in 24 countries and 230 people I interviewed.
00:36:51.340But what kept happening when I met people mid, well, mid 40s, 50s, certainly, much more often than not, these emotions of some level of regret would come out.
00:37:04.640I'm not saying everybody's life was completely grief ridden.
00:37:29.920So I think people, when they see that this is a reality, which is why I think these antinatalists are so, you know, upset with my documentary, because, you know, it goes against the idea that people, you know.
00:37:41.020So a couple of other things that I just throw in.
00:37:43.840I mean, what we're seeing is back in the 60s, you know, antinatalists were, you know, I call them antinatalists.
00:37:50.400Antinatalism to me is clear, though some people define it in different ways.
00:37:53.480It's simply, you know, it's wanting fewer children or no children.
00:37:57.200So this was to do with the world running out of food.
00:38:00.720And then the world didn't run out of food with the Green Revolution.
00:38:03.400And then we came about the environment.
00:38:17.900And, you know, they're subtly moving away from blaming the environment because they know we're all going to see the population maximizing right now.
00:38:27.380So they're preparing, you know, they're being smart from their point of view, but preparing their argument that, oh, it's no longer about the environment.
00:38:34.580It's about men forcing themselves on women.
00:38:37.960We've got to be really careful and call these guys out because, you know, they have an agenda.
00:39:29.920They don't care about people's suffering.
00:39:31.960They just want to pretend that human nature doesn't exist and women don't have children, which is just nonsense.
00:39:38.460Yeah, well, I think one of the things that I often mention on the show is if you're at a party in New York with a bunch of, you know, wealthy progressives, which we often go to, and you bring up the concept like fertility rates, uncommon for someone to say.
00:39:54.980In fact, I'd say it almost happens every time if you're in a group of five or more for someone to say, is it really so bad if humans go extinct?
00:40:01.100And I think that this concept has been normalized among a large part of our society, and they know they're not supposed to talk about it publicly.
00:40:08.520I mean, some do, but I think it's more commonly held than people would think.
00:40:14.420Yeah, well, you know, if that's true on that scale, it explains a lot of these ideologists.
00:40:21.720I think they're concealing their real motives or their, you know, benefactors maybe have those motives in terms of setting up these organizations.
00:40:30.660It would explain a lot because they never change the message.
00:41:22.980It's interesting to me, though, as I hear you talk about your experiences, I feel like you've come across so many more pronatal people than we do.
00:41:30.120And I wonder if that's because of your international focus and creating this documentary, whereas, like, Malcolm and I are mostly interacting with probably coastal elites in the United States.
00:41:42.020And the antinatalism among that group is much more vehement than that.
00:41:47.020I've never heard someone say, oh, everyone has a right to have one kid.
00:41:49.760And what we're more used to hearing is, wouldn't it be better if there were just no more humans at all, which is really sobering.
00:41:57.200But it's encouraging to hear that, like, even the more skeptical groups that you're coming across are a little bit more friendly to children.
00:42:05.540I didn't expect to be pleasantly surprised by that.
00:42:18.880It's a community just where we share information and thoughts and data that the maps I created, for example, in the documentary are on there.