The Mysterious Fertility Strip Running Down the Center of the USA
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Summary
In this episode, we discuss a bizarre phenomenon where there is a weird blue strip in the United States that appears to have a higher fertility than the rest of the counties in the country. Why does this happen? Is it a statistical error? Is there something wrong with the way the data is calculated? Or is there something else going on?
Transcript
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Hello, Simone! I am excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be discussing a
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bizarre phenomenon where there is, if you look at the county level total fertility rate in the
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United States, there is an extremely high fertility. I mean extremely high fertility
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when you look at the rest of the map. Nothing comes close to the strip's fertility rate.
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This strip down basically like where the west side of Texas is, all the way up to the top of the
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United States. Yeah, like from the Texas panhandle up basically directly up from there is this weird
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blue strip. And so like obviously I'm gonna have a map on screen here that you guys can look at and
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be like what is going on here. One of the people who dug into it was friend of the show Robin Hanson
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because of course like if somebody's looking at interesting questions it's like always going to
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be one of our like small friend groups. I sometimes wondered it's like not everyone else programmed in
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this simulation? Like is it like 20 people who are fully programmed and they're all guests of the
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show? You gotta save processing power. This stuff's expensive. I mean so yeah I'm very so if okay what
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before we go into what he thinks is going on what are you going to guess? Is it that like these are
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very low population rural states? I mean we're looking at North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska,
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Kansas, a little bit. There's lots of low population rural states that would not explain this at all.
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Okay, okay. So I'm gonna guess it's either one of two things. Okay. Thing number one that it could be
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is it could be actually a mistake in the data. Okay. It could be something about how these are like
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near a date line or how these are near some line. Some time zone where it's measured twice because of
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like. Is causing things to be measured twice. That's hypothesis number one. Because it just doesn't seem
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realistic when I look at other things here. But then I think okay like I'm from Texas right? Yeah.
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These districts do not not make sense as to why they would be higher fertility. They are incredibly
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rural districts. Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. Rural. And that's where you get those. I mean
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it's it's there's a selection bias there, right? You're getting people who want big families who are
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probably more likely to be religious conservative who have this space. And of course there's all these
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religious advocates. But here's the problem with this explanation. Okay. The districts actually
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remind me most of places like Arizona or Western California, which is way below these districts in
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terms of fertility rate. That's true. Yeah. Why would those not also show up? Yeah. Why would those
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they're just as conservative? They're just as so the other thing that it could be is immigration
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patterns is the other thing I'd hypothesize here. Interesting. It could be that if you look at
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this, this is if you're looking at immigration waves moving west, this is where pretty much everyone
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would stop when hitting the Rockies. So if you're just going to continue to move west until you hit the
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Rockies immigration wise, that's what would lead to this line. This is the most I wanted to get away
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from other people and live my own way of all people in the United States make up this line.
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That could be what we're seeing. And then people could be like, well, what about that? Like edge
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of Texas saying like, that's not the Rockies. And I'd say, well, that's the desert.
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Yeah. So let's, let's have a look here. What is, what is the first thing that he notes here?
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He says, it's really weirdly along the mountain time and central time time zone divider.
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Yeah. What is up with that? If you overlaid them, it looks so suspicious.
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That's why I think it could be a statistical error because, okay, that divider, if you look,
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and I'm comparing them on screen here, goes through the center of South Dakota there. And the line
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moves from where it is on this map towards the center of South Dakota, which is weird. Why is it
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doing that? Yeah. This to me indicates that it might be some sort of statistical error.
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Yes. But then when we scroll down a little bit more, Wyvert, who's so prolific on X,
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suggests that it's a combination of being rural and high income showing an American community survey
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of five-year estimates showing medium household, median household income for counties that are
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completely rural from 2013 to 2017. And there's also exactly where the fertility strip is
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a concentration above $75,000. I think that this graph is entirely, hugely misleading.
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So let's talk about why it's misleading because there's something you might not be noticing about
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it because it draws your eyes in and you're like, oh, okay, this could explain it. But what you're
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not counting is really almost all of the colored in places on the map at all are in this strip.
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That's why it looks so green because it's not looking at the whole of the US. It's only looking
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at rural counties. And so what we're actually seeing here is for whatever reason, this strip in the
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United States has far more consistent rural counties than any other strip in the United States.
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But then the question is, how are rural counties being counted here? Because I know for a fact that
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these places aren't particularly more rural than places in Arizona, for example, which is shown as not
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having a single rural county. Or Eastern California, not shown as having a single rural county.
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Or New Mexico, shown as having almost no rural counties. I'm sorry, I don't buy that. There's
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something about the way this map is structured that I think is trying to prove a point. And I don't know
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how they fudge the data, but I can tell you there are rural counties in Arizona. Arizona is not a
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populated place. There's like a few like medium sized cities in it. But like if I was trying to date in
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Arizona, I'd be like, but nobody lives in Arizona. Yeah. So something's off. Something's off about
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that. Yeah. Okay. Now, now Cremieux comes in, by the way, which I love. We're getting all the all
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the art stars here, Simone. How did you not hear about that? Yeah, this is well, because I'm not on
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X. We're so bad at doing but we have things to do. I don't know how these people can be so productive
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and yet spend so much time on X. I don't understand. But anyway, yes, Cremieux's graph is quite
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interesting. I want to be clear, Simone. They are not an ounce as productive as you and I.
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None of these people have a daily podcast. None of these people are running multiple companies at
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the same time. None of them are running multiple major efforts to... Or they don't have... Like
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Robin Hanson has grown kids. Cremieux has no kids yet, to my knowledge. You're pregnant with kid number
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five. Yeah. We also are regularly in the media. I mean, we were just before this recording in a phone
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call was... What was it? ABC? USA Today. USA Today. And then I had another interview this morning and
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then yesterday we had a reporter team come over to our house. So our days are being constantly
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disrupted in spite of all this. No, these people really are shredding their potentiality through
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their engagement with X and I think it's bad. Yeah. So Cremieux says you get a somewhat similar
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the Bible belt it's gone or has shifted picture was data from the US religious census. And here he's
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looking to adherence of US religious bodies, adherence as a percentage of the population,
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very heavy overlap with that line. Yeah. This again makes me think it's immigration patterns
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stopping at the natural barriers to Western immigration. That is what we're actually seeing
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here. Is it the Americans who had the most fire in their heart to keep moving or to take action? And
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here you see another thing about these districts, right? I actually really like this one, right?
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Jeremy Paccio, where he showed that this is the line in America with by far the lowest suicide rate.
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Oh, that's so interesting. Wow. And it's such a fascinating map of suicides. Okay. Where is it
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really bad? Nevada. They just, they just want to die. Northern California. What's wrong with you?
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So this really divides like the Arizona or Eastern California thing I keep talking about
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because both of them have a really high suicide rates. Maine, why would you ever want to die if
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you're in Maine? And this whole Pacific Northwest is not looking good there. I don't get it.
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Because it's a lack of vitalism. A lot of these places are traditional. And I think that this is
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the thing that people don't get. It's the different American cultural groups, which have a different
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reason to live. This line is a lot of backwoods Americans and a lot of people with faith,
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people with faith, which is really important. No, no, no, no. There's people with faith in Maine.
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There's people, there's a, you overlap this with a map of like faith of the United States,
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which I can do here. Going back to the religious Bible Belt. No, Maine is pretty freaking light. And
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also the Pacific Northwest is actually, yeah. If you look at these graphs, no, actually. So the,
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the, so what's interesting is that religiosity is, is pretty still high in the South.
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And yet this suicide rate, you only really see this no, no kill rate in, in that, in that fertility
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strip and not in the religious South. Well, that's because the religious South is descendant
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of cavalier culture. Like, of course it wouldn't be as vitalistic. That's really, yeah. Yeah. I guess.
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So you can't say religiosity predicts lower nihilism or desire to end your life. It is,
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it is religious vitalism specifically. Like you keep going on how, like so many Orthodox Christians
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just see, so seem so depressed. And I note here, what isn't in this for people who aren't looking
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is Utah. Like, if you want to say this is Mormons, no, Utah is actually like super not in this.
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Yeah, man. That's not, not only is it not high in fertility rates, particularly it's, is it,
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you know, at the County level, at least it's not in this rural thing. It is in the high religiosity
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thing, but here's, what's really interesting. You go down to suicide rates, super high across
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Utah. It's crazy. That's crazy. I would, I've actually noted this suicide rate thing. Like
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if you look at other places with like really low fertility rates, they typically have high
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suicide rates, like South Korea. Yeah. So yeah, this is, this is a bigger story about is humanity
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good? Is the future bright? Is life good? Or are we intensely focused on suffering humanity,
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really bad future dark? And then those people both don't have children and, and their lives at
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disproportionate rates. Apparently. That's really fascinating. That is fascinating. All right. You
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want to go to the next map? This is my board. Okay. This is also, this mystery strip, the mystery
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strip, the mystery strip. Aren't you loving the mystery strip? I'm loving the mystery strip. Oh my
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goodness. What can we call this catchier than mystery strip? America's, what is it? They call
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it like the whatever trail on, on humans? The trail of tears? The Western trail? On humans? On
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like the human body? Like I, the. The linea negra? I want to say like that. That's it. That's a line
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that sometimes shows up on a pregnant woman's belly from her belly button downward. Oh. So we
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can call it the linea negra. Linea negra. That's, that's fine. And then people will be like, that's
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racist. You said negra. And I'm like, what is wrong with your people? You've never encountered a
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pregnant belly before, apparently. Oh, goodness. I don't think I get them though. I haven't seen one,
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but I also just don't spend a lot of time looking at my body. So I wouldn't know. You don't get them.
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I, I wouldn't. I don't, I don't think that they're unattractive. Like I, I've seen them before. You've seen them,
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right? Yeah. Yeah. I haven't been like, that's unattractive looking. It looks like a type of
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pregnant belly. So yeah. I was thinking, by the way, if I, if I get a tattoo, I probably shouldn't,
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like, I wouldn't do that for surgeries, but like a zipper on my C-section line would be hilarious.
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You can get that after you have your surgery. After all the C-section. I actually think that'd be
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really fun for reporters. It would make me so sad though. If it was after I lost my uterus. No,
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I'll be so traumatized and devastated by that, that I can't do something else.
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Sorry. She has to have a C-section with every pregnancy. So maybe we can put something else
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interesting where the uterus used to be, you know, like, I don't know, an AI
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muffled speech within my belly. I really don't know.
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Yell at people. Like you have a baby inside you that talks to me.
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Oh my God. Something, something like, uh, I don't know.
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We'll say is Simone, I have faith that it's not going to happen anytime soon. I believe that,
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that, you know, God's looking out for us. It's going to work out as long as we keep
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deading ourselves fully to this, this cause. I hope so. I really, really hope so.
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Anyway, so Borg here did one, the title, the 2024 presidential party heat map by county.
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Yep. There you go. You got the MAGA pronatalists.
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You're right. MAGA is vitalism. MAGA is the future is bright. MAGA is family is good. MAGA is children
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are awesome. That's huge. But I also think that this is where the most vitalistic people from the
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Backwoods Cultural Group eventually immigrated out to. This is the wild west of the wild west. This
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is the wild west strip. Yeah, no, that's, that's really interesting. Like every western you've seen
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takes place in this strip. I guess, yeah. Yeah. Now, now here's an interesting take on this.
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The agriculture? I don't, I don't see this one. Most crops by county. So this county, this line
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isn't exact, but it's where most wheat in the U.S. is grown and, and a bit where corn in the U.S. is
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grown. The problem is, is where the line like sort of splits apart the most and is the most large is
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in South Dakota. In South Dakota, you don't see a lot of this. And then you also see the lines sort
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of expand in, what state is that? Nebraska. And it doesn't look like, well, yeah, you get corn farming
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there. Yeah. So it could be wheat farming. Well, I just think of this, that gladiator scene.
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His hand. The reason why he's got his hands on the wheat? That's my life already. Yeah.
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You can't do that as easily with corn. So you have children of the corn. They're creepy,
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but you've got the sentimental dad of gladiator running his hand over the wheat, but this is
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too tenuous. I want to go to the next graph. Oh, oh. Wind speeds. This is where it just gets like,
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let's play the ridiculous data matches game. And this is why so much research is just bonkers.
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No, I actually think wind speeds are at play here. Are you kidding me? Right. So what we're looking at
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now, for those who are just listening, is a map of wind speeds in the United States, showing zones with
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the highest versus the lowest wind speeds in miles per hour. And in this fertility line, weirdly,
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you see much lower wind speed. So what you're actually seeing here is what creates high wind speed.
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It is the last part of flat land before you get to the mountainous or desert regions. And so it's large
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areas of flat land before you get to mountainous or desert regions, which is leading to these wind
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speeds. So it could be caused by the same things that taught the migrants to stop.
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Interesting. Flatlands. Why would flatlands promote higher birth rates?
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It's not that they promote higher birth rates. It's that these are the migrants who kept moving and
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moving and moving. They were more vitalistic people. They were more flatland. So vitalistic people just
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love flatland. No, it's that they kept moving as far as they could, where there was good land.
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You stop moving. Why would non-vitalistic people not give up? That sounds, it sounds like the place
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where the lazy, easy people give up then. That doesn't change. No, the hungriest people settle in the
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richest possible soil. It is the, the, there, I think what you're confusing is people who just
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want to like huckster their way through lives and live on the fringes of civilization and not actually
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thrive. Who are the ones who are squeaking by and like the Arizona deserts and stuff like that,
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or in the mountains of the Rockies. This is quite different than that. These are the individuals
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who were always looking for something better. Maybe, maybe I'm what, what so far has convinced
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me the most is the, the line of religiosity and the line of MAGA. So I think that's, that's what so
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far has got me. Wind speeds. I don't know. Here's the next graph here. U S home affordability.
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That's, I mean, it's not a strong correlation, but there's definitely, when you keep in mind the
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income of these regions, which is quite high, you know, around 70 K and this, this, this home.
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Oh yes. Yes. Right. Because there was an other graph that showed that there's this line of relatively
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higher wealth in that area. So when you combine higher wealth with affordability, you get people
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who feel like they're millionaires, which would produce this feeling of abundance. And of course the
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future is going to be bright because I can buy a giant house. Okay. Sorry. Nevermind. Change my
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mind. Delta. That is compelling and interesting. Yes. But it's not that strong a connection. Now
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here's one aligns with. No, no, no. But like when you combine the two, because the houses are here
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more broadly affordable than they are in like the coasts, certainly in California. And when you combine
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that with, especially, I think when you have, when you feel really wealthy, like remember how we felt
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when we were in Peru and we're like, I can just go to a restaurant. Ha. Look at me. I'm a king.
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I literally would like eat at restaurants every day there because I could at the same cost as like
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cooking at home in the U S. Yeah. But now I'm cooking from home. You're better than the Peruvian
00:19:00.620
restaurant. So like, it doesn't even matter. You're so sweet. But like, I think that feeling
00:19:04.820
of abundance can create this. So, cause you, you've also pointed out in other podcasts and research
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that there's this, this fertility, you curve where obviously very low levels of income and poverty.
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People have more, more kids. And then also when you see people starting to make more than $500,000,
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they start having more kids. And I think what might be going on here is people feel like they're making
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more than $500,000. Cause they're able to literally get everything they want.
00:19:33.580
Yeah. And then they're like, well, if I can get everything I want, then I don't have to worry.
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$70,000 to a family in rural America is quite a lot of money. And in terms of like housing the
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kids and everything like that, you're going to have space and everything. Yeah. Yeah. Childcare,
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especially if you're in a religious community where maybe theoretically there's a bunch of like
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girls in your church community who babysit kids for like $12 an hour.
00:19:56.080
No, here's another interesting graph here that I quite like. This one is from slut dragon.
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Something strange to do is a hundredth meridian and rainfall. So what they're showing here is the
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hundreds versus the 98th meridian, which is around this area. And you'll notice at each of these two
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lines, the rainfall changes pretty dramatically. Then it's really where that strip is on the,
00:20:18.280
on the left side of Texas. Yes. It was actually a bit past the hundredth meridian. Remember I said
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it's like right at the end of where you would stop when you're hitting like the issues that have to do
00:20:30.500
is moving into mountainous regions. Yeah. So it's, it's past the hundredth meridian. They're sort
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of acting like it's between the 98th and the hundredth, but it's really not. It's past the
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hundredth meridian. Rainfall has already started to decline a bit. So again, this is the furthest
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you can go and still claim to be hitting better, good land. That's what we're seeing here. I think
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now this one is a very interesting map from Chad Sanger. This map shows how far you have to drive to get
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an abortion and it lines up exactly with this line. Wow. So these are all districts that I guess post
00:21:07.640
Dobbs, which was the Supreme court ruling in the United States that, that basically gave decisions
00:21:15.240
about abortion legality back to States. This is showing this strip of, of apparently, because it's
00:21:21.440
not on a statewide basis, but districts that have made it very difficult to get an abortion.
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How far do you have to drive to get out of a state or district? Oh, okay. Fair enough. That's
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why the edges look like they do. Okay. But the point, the point here being is that what I think
00:21:35.780
we're actually seeing here, isn't that the abortions, because we know from other studies and from like
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Europe, like typically the stricter a country is on abortions, the lower its fertility rate is.
00:21:44.540
Now this could be a false correlation created with Catholic countries being stricter on abortions and
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Catholics having like garbage fertility rates, which, okay, maybe that's what we're seeing in
00:21:54.480
Europe. But I actually think what we're seeing here is it's not the legality of abortions. It's
00:22:00.020
the public sentiment around abortions. If you get pregnant is your first thought, I'm going to have
00:22:05.840
an abortion or is it, well, no one I know to would ever talk to me again. Like this is a really horrible
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thing to do. Like voting happens in these districts this way because people have this sentiment.
00:22:19.120
Yeah. And I think that's what's leading to higher fertility rates. I think it's the same thing
00:22:23.060
that leads to the religiosity. I think it's the same thing that leads to the Trumpism.
00:22:26.120
I think all these things are connected. That makes sense. Very interesting.
00:22:31.700
And remember I was talking about good land before, right? Yeah. Look at this post by Matt Popovich,
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which looks at acres of land in farms as a percentage of land in acres in 2007
00:22:46.080
by county. And what you'll see is this district up and down is straight up farmland compared to other
00:22:54.880
Do you think this may also have to do more with the corporate family? If you have a family growing up
00:22:59.640
and they're more likely to own a farm, you have probably a mother and a father and extended family
00:23:06.080
living together, working on the farm together, and then the kids helping out too. And suddenly
00:23:09.960
this is the corporate family is an inherently pronatal environment. You know, you're all leaning in
00:23:15.540
together. You're spending time together. The corporate family is the much like the truly
00:23:21.540
trad family, which is a family where the mother, the father, children, and often extended family plus
00:23:28.600
additional workers in some cases all live together and work together in a household, not necessarily on a
00:23:35.380
farm. It could be a brewer. It could be a blacksmith. It could be any number of things. But this is what
00:23:40.420
the norm was before the industrial revolution. And we argue that it really is when the men left the house
00:23:46.560
to go work in factories that we started to see the beginnings, the wheels started turning that set up
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demographic lapse. It wasn't women getting empowered. It wasn't the birth control pill. By that point, the
00:23:58.200
momentum was already there. We were already headed straight to the Titanic without an ability to turn
00:24:04.120
away. It's just that that was when they saw the iceberg and were like, oh no, that doesn't mean
00:24:08.660
that it wasn't going to happen anyway. And so yes, this is a region clearly from the various graphs that
00:24:15.180
we're seeing that if there isn't going to be a place in the United States where we will see more
00:24:20.320
corporate families, more husbands and wives living and working together very closely, it's going to be
00:24:26.660
here. That's so interesting. Oh, hold on. I got another one for you. And this aligns with my original
00:24:31.800
seasons. If you scroll down a while, you're going to run into a light map of the US, a picture from
00:24:36.580
space of the United States to see where light density is. And what you'll see is this region
00:24:42.180
is right past the end of sort of civilizational expansion in the United States. Yes, it's where
00:24:48.360
the darkness comes. Oh, and meaning romantically, they get to see like the Milky Way at night. They
00:24:53.380
actually see a real night sky more likely. Right. But it's not just that. Remember how I said,
00:24:57.320
like a lot of people think like, oh, Americans just kept immigrating forever. Like the frontier.
00:25:02.380
No, there is still a frontier in the US and it is this line. Like the frontier gets pushed westwards
00:25:08.600
every decade, every year. And in the US, yes, you had people like rush to the coast, for example,
00:25:15.660
but this is still where the American frontier is. Gosh. And still this feeling of manifest destiny,
00:25:23.800
growth, space. Right. So these are the people who went just past the last major populated area,
00:25:30.260
but didn't go out seeking further unpopulated areas for the sake of further unpopulated areas.
00:25:42.480
Here is the last graph that might explain it for you if you go a bit further down than that.
00:25:46.580
Okay. It's mostly, this is rational renaissance. It's mostly population density. Don't overcomplicate
00:25:52.260
this. People in less densely populated places have more kids. Dan Hess is just chiming in to be like,
00:25:58.580
I told you so. Well, I would disagree because it doesn't actually map exactly.
00:26:05.680
This is the first line in the US where you get a low population density, which aligns with my
00:26:10.580
theory that it's about immigration patterns. It is not the last line in the US where you get low
00:26:15.140
population density. Look at like Nevada, for example, or north of that, or like there's all
00:26:21.200
sorts of places here. Utah is low population density where you don't have the high fertility rate.
00:26:25.100
Yeah. So it is not about population density. It is about the first strip of migration where you
00:26:32.440
get low population density. The first strip. So just the edges of humanity, you're trying to say,
00:26:41.760
just the, the fringes. Is that what you're saying? Okay.
00:26:48.700
Yeah. I think it's what, what's really getting me is this, this zone in the United States where there's
00:26:55.040
this feeling of abundance and more corporate families. So one, you feel like your dollar goes
00:27:01.840
farther and you're making more, like you're making enough to feel like you really have everything you
00:27:07.020
need and you can get everything you need. And it's totally okay to have a family plus you're religious
00:27:11.360
plus you're MAGA and you think the future is bright. And then plus you're more likely to be
00:27:17.160
surrounded by, or even be a corporate family. Maybe here's another couple of maps that is
00:27:24.540
interesting where you get a line that overlaps with this a lot. It's minerals. So here you have
00:27:31.660
critical minerals by region. And here you have a lot of, it's the first line, not the last line
00:27:38.540
of expensive minerals in the United States. Um, and, and it also explanation of hardness in
00:27:46.620
milligrams per liter. You get a line of valuable minerals around this area. It's not a perfect
00:27:54.540
match, but it's, it's, it's something else to think about. I don't know. I mean, stranger things
00:28:00.060
have caused other strange things to happen, but I ain't seeing it here. You ain't seeing it. Well,
00:28:07.320
let's see this farming dependent counties, heavy overlap, non-metro farming, depending counties,
00:28:14.280
more points to the corporate family theory. I'd say more points to the corporate family theory. Yes.
00:28:19.760
Well, what did you think of that interesting deep dive? That is truly fascinating. When you
00:28:26.420
mentioned to me that there was a mysterious fertility strip, the linea negra, as we're calling it. I,
00:28:33.060
I don't know. I just, I figured it would be where the Bible belt was. And I thought it was just going
00:28:39.040
to be this open shut case of, oh, I guess religious people are still having kids.
00:28:42.860
I think what we see is that cavalier culture in the United States, the aristocratic Southern culture
00:28:50.780
Well, that's because it's performative. I mean, by our definitions, I don't think we would even call
00:28:54.960
it religious. Yeah, I wouldn't either. I think it's a performative form of social conformity
00:29:00.420
that is antithetical to, I think, what we would think of as real internal religion. But keep in
00:29:08.260
mind, you know, we're the type of people who, you know, who were traditional Christians, we'd be some
00:29:11.260
form of like Calvinist Baptist or Reformed Baptist, right? Like, I don't know if I, yeah, I agree.
00:29:18.620
Like, if religiosity is about conformity to you, and it's about fitting social norms. And this is
00:29:24.840
why I think the iterations of conservatism in America that are being replaced by the sort of
00:29:28.920
new right are dying so much where they're like, you're acting weird, you're doing weird, extreme
00:29:34.200
things, you're doing whatever, like just fit in, you know, those are the ones that are going to go
00:29:39.860
extinct. Because it is that mindset that is so toxic to fertility rates. I actually think that this is
00:29:45.760
part of what's led to a lot of Catholic fertility crash is a lot of Catholic culture historically was
00:29:51.440
like, don't be weird, fit in, etc. And it had a very similar cultural framework to the, the, the
00:29:58.380
cavalier culture, which is like, would just structure yourself, you know, hierarchically, you know, don't
00:30:04.420
be weird. Social hierarchy is not based on like personal vitality, right. But it's based on, you know,
00:30:11.440
like specific metrics of like, this is how you act like you have manners. These are the special things
00:30:17.120
you buy. This is the country club you're a member of. These are the people who approve of you. This is how
00:30:23.640
Yes, yes. Whereas this other cultural group has always much more focused, instead of having religion come
00:30:31.240
from above, have religion come from within. And when I say above, I mean above culturally and socially
00:30:37.040
speaking, like your betters tell you what's true about religion. Instead, if you tell yourself what's
00:30:41.280
true about religion, F your betters, they don't know what they're talking about. Right. And so that is
00:30:48.720
That is, yeah. I'm, I'm shocked. I really would have thought that the Bible belt would have more.
00:30:56.640
Also, because I expected to see regions that had higher immigrant populations, which, which I associate
00:31:03.600
with a lot of coastal cities and also the South, I think they have fairly high. I wonder if I can
00:31:11.420
look up a map of immigrant USA recent. Oh yeah. It could be migrant workers. That'd be really
00:31:17.680
interesting. Population. No, I don't think it's migrants. I, but I just thought that where there would
00:31:23.380
be more immigrants. No, but it's not. Okay. So if you look up maps of U S recent immigrant population
00:31:33.440
density, there's basically no overlap with this strip. So it's also not that we're talking about
00:31:41.680
immigrant populations. It's just haven't yet been. That's, that's not true. There is high
00:31:46.880
overlap in the Southern parts of Texas. Yeah. Yeah. And the Southern parts of, yeah, but the,
00:31:51.260
but there's the, the whole strip is the whole point is it's the strip. It goes all the way
00:31:55.120
because when you look at the immigrant population density maps, it's, it's from the, the, I mean,
00:32:02.100
Florida is drenched. It's like, it's dipped in it. And then the base of Texas is drenched. And then
00:32:06.640
of course, all in line, the Mac all along the Mexican border through California, you see, it's
00:32:12.580
like, like a cookie, like the cookie of the United States was dipped in the milk of immigration.
00:32:17.180
And it's, it's just soaked in a little bit there, but it just stays soaked in around the borders.
00:32:22.020
It doesn't go all the way up the strip. And so I'm just writing that off. I'm saying it's not an
00:32:26.520
immigrant thing because it would have gone all the way up the strip. You're looking for matching
00:32:29.520
patterns. That's what everyone else. I found this map after we filmed this episode, but this is a
00:32:37.100
map looking at immigrant versus native born fertility rates. And you can see here, this dark green and
00:32:44.620
green area with dark green, meaning foreign born growth overcame native loss and light green meaning
00:32:50.320
foreign born growth slowed overall population loss. And it aligns almost perfectly with the strip.
00:32:55.440
So what this could mean is what we are actually looking at here is immigrant farm laborers making
00:33:02.340
up the fertility rate of the native population by county religion. And you see an overlap with
00:33:11.400
the Eastern part of the Baptist group. That's like, I guess, Baptist, but not under the, you know,
00:33:17.020
Cavalier cultural group does very well here. And then the, a lot of Lutherans.
00:33:21.280
It's not a perfect overlap, but, and it's some Catholics, if you're talking about the immigrant
00:33:27.700
heavy areas. I mean, that's interesting. The Mormon areas seem to be doing really bad.
00:33:33.920
That's what's crazy, especially when it came to suicidality in Utah.
00:33:39.960
Even where they expand outside of Utah. Like I was just surprised like Mormons are not doing that good.
00:33:44.960
Yeah. It's saddening. It's saddening. But also I personally find the landscape of Utah to be
00:33:53.400
fairly oppressive, but I don't know if I would feel that differently about these flatlands
00:33:57.420
across the mysterious fertility strips. Well, we live in heaven out here, so that's the problem,
00:34:03.760
right? Oh my gosh. It's so amazing. But yeah, apparently people aren't having big families out
00:34:09.420
here. There's too much light. I mean, they're not doing that bad. If you're, if you're looking
00:34:15.180
at like the Northeast, like it's. Well, I'm sure if you went and looked at Lancaster County,
00:34:19.180
where there's a bunch of, a bunch of Amish, you see, again, I think the same characteristics that
00:34:24.460
we're highlighting here and, and theorizing are the driving factors of the fertility strip, which is
00:34:30.240
farming families, the corporate family, religious dedication, and relatively low levels of
00:34:38.400
development. I mean, if you actually look at our County, Simone, in the County next to us,
00:34:42.120
you're looking at an around two fertility rate. That's pretty impressive. All things considered,
00:34:47.140
but the fertility strip was getting close to three, which is very impressive. I'm just pointing out
00:34:53.820
that we're not like in a bad area fertility wise. Yeah. I hear you. And especially for the wealth of
00:34:59.900
our, of our district, which is quite high. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You're quite right. You would expect
00:35:05.540
us to, but is it just the Amish that are holding us up? No, not our County. Monco. There's almost.
00:35:13.280
Oh yeah. Right, right, right. Montgomery County doesn't really have. Yes. Okay. Two counties I'm
00:35:17.140
looking at here. The one where we bought a house Chester County, which is actually really high
00:35:20.100
fertility. I don't think they have many Amish at all in Monco. Okay. Wow. Good for us.
00:35:27.720
We moved to a good place. You should move to Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Cause it is
00:35:34.560
really awesome. It really is. It really is. It's like a spectacular place to live. Anyway,
00:35:41.160
love you to Des Simone. You are amazing. You are beautiful. And I am so happy to be married to you.
00:35:48.340
I love you so much. And I am excited for dinner and going to sleep. It's been a week, hasn't it?
00:35:57.640
Since we slept. Yeah, it has. Sorry. We've gotten like super viral this. I don't know when this
00:36:02.960
episode is going to go live, but like, this has been crazy. Nothing like this has ever happened.
00:36:07.080
I think we're just tired. I can't stop yawning, but we'll just, we'll just get rest and it's
00:36:15.200
going to be amazing. But thank you for being you. And thanks to everyone for listening. Oh,
00:36:20.940
and by the way, if you do listen, if you could, if you have an iPhone and you can give us a five
00:36:25.460
star review on Apple podcasts, let's see what our Apple podcast rating is now. Do you know?
00:36:31.340
I don't, but I have a Mac. So while I can't leave us a rating, cause I guess you need an iPhone to do
00:36:37.600
that. I can. Reviews now on Apple. My God, you guys, thank you. If this is one of you,
00:36:45.200
who did this, who contributed one of these. Thank you.
00:36:52.120
Okay. Well, that's, hold on. I need to see this for myself.
00:37:02.460
You're getting close to the a hundred mark. A hundred reviews on Apple is quite big. Cause you
00:37:07.360
know, you can only do it if you have like an iPhone or something.
00:37:09.800
That's true. Yeah. Well, that's, that is really wonderful. There's still that picture of you and
00:37:13.780
toasty with dry ice. I think that's a good image for the podcast to be honest.
00:37:18.880
A mixing bowl. Yeah. Toasty with this giant head. Everything else is so tiny. This giant head,
00:37:25.340
this little noggin. Yeah. Wow. Okay. I love you. And I am capable of getting out of this chair
00:37:32.620
and moving on with the day. I bet you are. I'm definitely. You're going to go to bed soon.
00:37:39.220
You're going to get to make dinner soon. I know, but like the, the things that have to happen
00:37:43.940
between dinner and bed, like hauling the children up the stairs, bathing them, cleaning up after
00:37:49.920
dinner. You don't have to bathe them. I do to check for ticks these days. I want to make, like,
00:37:56.100
I just want to check every inch of their bodies. Cause they're playing outside now, which is as they
00:38:00.260
should, cause it's finally warm and you just got a tick. So I'm not taking any chances. Like the
00:38:06.600
shower, the shower period I do with each of them is like my chance to check for rashes, ticks,
00:38:13.200
mosquito bites, scratches, wounds, anything else. Sand in the hair. You got, you got this
00:38:18.700
tight, dumped a bunch of sand in her hair or whatever again. It'll still be there. I
00:38:23.220
rinsed so many times, no matter what I did, just kept like, how did, how can you get that
00:38:31.920
much sand in your hair? Like, I don't even know. Like it should, anyway, I love our children
00:38:45.420
I'm hitting, I'm hitting, I'm hitting, I'm hitting.
00:38:53.940
I wanted to do more like the, the, the bio diesel song.
00:39:08.240
I slink through the night with a sneer and a plan.
00:39:28.740
Their cities of glass built on ego and lies will crack
00:39:47.460
I'll see the new world with my blood and my bone.
00:39:54.200
The woke's brittle culture will crumble and wane.
00:40:15.020
Its debts I'll repay with children who carve out a glorious new day.
00:40:31.480
But I'll torch their vain spark with the truth in my eyes.
00:40:44.280
I'll see the new world with my blood and my bone.
00:40:50.740
The woke's brittle culture will crumble and wane.
00:41:03.740
My offspring will surge like a flood through their streets.
00:41:24.200
Their strength will unravel the woke's frail defeats.
00:41:50.660
I'll see the new world with my blood and my bone.
00:41:58.120
The woke's brittle culture will crumble and wane.
00:42:18.580
Your trivial fads will be swept to their tombs.