The Peppa Pig Pregnancy Conspiracy： Exploring Pronatalist Propaganda
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, my first ever guest is the matriarch of an entertainment dynasty, Mummy Pig, who is the mother of the popular british cartoon character Peppa Pig, and is also the wife of the founder of the UK's National Child Care Trust, a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting the best birth care in the world. She is also a mother of three children under five and is due to have her fourth baby in the summer, so we're all very excited to meet her.
Transcript
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they did a like a photo shoot of mama pig and they she's like she's spread out on like a sort
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of like silk a lush silk showing off her baby bump and like looking like half naked and it's
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like a total like glamour spread thing we were given these baby dolls that you had to take home
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and the baby dolls would cry on a randomized schedule throughout the day and night the babies
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looked very realistic and they would just start crying in a very realistic way you had to have
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them with you all the time and you would be graded based on your ability to placate the baby doll
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the child wouldn't stop crying at night and so i marched outside and put it in the trunk of my
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mom's car which wait is this it probably really deserved like disturbed passers-by like it's
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kind of amazing like the police were crying from the trunk of the car i didn't i didn't really like
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now when i think about it like if i came across i would have a freaking heart attack i would literally
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crowbar that car open in panic like i i just i can't believe i did that like now being a mom i
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cannot believe i did that and i feel really bad would you like to know more hello malcolm i'm so
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excited to be speaking with you today because we did it guys we we and our pronatalist cabal coerced
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the british media into pumping out pronatalist propaganda or this is this is the rumor going
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around a youtuber who i like to watch izzy something she she paints her face in various
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like clown things she did a a piece on a a rumor that's going around right now a conspiracy theory
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if you will that um a pig recently got the the mom and it got pregnant yeah let me i'll get i'll get
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the overview and i'll also link to her video in the pinned comment because it's so good and her
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channel is just delightful and she's amazing but basically what happened is mummy pig who is the
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mother of the popular british cartoon character peppa pig who is the fourth most in demand cartoon
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character in the world she has her own theme park okay it's just like she's a big deal in case you
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don't know she's the reason why many american kids have vague british accents so it's just great
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and so the mother mummy pig announced on tv on live morning tv on good morning britain that she was
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pregnant now my next guest is the matriarch of an entertainment dynasty and now i'd like to
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welcome in her first ever interview someone we're all very excited to meet it's mummy pig
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mummy pig good morning welcome to the show gosh well i'm excited to share that our family
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is getting even bigger because we're having another baby i'm due in the summer and we're all so excited
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that is amazing congratulations how are you feeling about it oh thrilled a little overwhelmed at the
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thought of having three children under five running around and then mummy pig's pregnancy and birth
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was covered even more in media outlets it was covered in magazines it was covered in live events
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etc it was announced on the news it was yeah but more than that it was announced by a british town
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crier like apparently there's this thing in the uk where like if you want to you can hire a town crier
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in full royal looking regalia to say here you hear you the sort of the same way royal babies were
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in fact allegedly you know peppa pig's little sister and she already has a little brother george
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so this is the family's third baby but her little sister evie was born in the linda wing of saint
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mary's hospital in london which is the same wing where kate middleton has given birth to her children
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that's like 7 000 pounds plus a night the rooms are really pretty well i know people this is a big
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scandal because everyone was like wait they didn't use the nhs you know they think they're too good for the
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nhs honestly though like this this one influencer lesbian couple that i i follow had had twins
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recently like in nhs hospitals i'm like wolf like i i get why they shell that we would shell out but
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also seriously like given how much we pay in the united states with insurance but we pay out of pocket
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to reach our deductible just to have a kid really like we we're expected to pay eleven thousand
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dollars up front well before the birth just to give birth at a normal hospital though the rooms are
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much nicer than nhk hospital so i don't know anyway that's aside from the point that the the peppa pig
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campaign around this birth they also partnered with uk's national child care trust but that that org is
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to be fair primarily interested in helping people who are already bullish on having kids and they
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were able to raise money through this they even did like a sponsorship with clear blue like i think
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they showed well yeah mama and and daddy daddy pig daddy pig clear blue box this is a pregnancy testing
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company in the united states like branded pregnancy testing it was the one where there was a rumor that
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started that if you broke them open they had plan b inside them oh my god yes yes and it turned out it
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was a desiccant and people were like encouraging people to eat oh my god right i forgot about that
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yes that clear blue and then you know of course the the peppa pig franchise also released 10 episodes
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about baby evie's arrival where you know you can also buy like a movie version of this called peppa
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meets the baby but then people started on posting on social media that this was an effort
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to counter falling birth rates in britain and so i i freaking love that i love that go watch it like
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is he dizzy is he or is he something again we're gonna link to her videos she she's way bigger than
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us she's like a million subscribers so still this is all to say whether this was propaganda or not
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propaganda is underrated it is it is quite powerful despite costing countries relatively nothing and you
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know keep in mind here that hungary is spending between five and six percent of its of its gdp on
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trying to raise birth rates through all these cash handouts that aren't really working that's equivalent
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to what the u.s is spending on its defense and military just to give you a sense of perspective
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their birth rate went up less than neighboring countries and that is its lowest rate ever now so the the
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point here that we're getting to is one we did not actually plan a big conspiracy around peppa pig the
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pro natalists did not not plan this even though this is a huge meme online that's exactly what we
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would say if we did it we did but it's not actually a bad thing like if i was going to attempt to so
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first let's talk about why peppa pig because people be like but peppa pig targets very young kids why
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would you use it as a way to spread propaganda and it's like why do you think the alphabet brigade is
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targeting young kids with their crazy books because you need to build a person's value system
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while they are very very young but in addition to that what many people have already reported
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is their kids who like peppa pig asking the parents for siblings isn't that sweet
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but i think that though is in the end we literally we were just walking by in a strip mall this morning
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on our strategy walk this like kid gym where people were dropping off their kids and it was
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advertising like a parent's date night where you could drop your kid for three hours and they're
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like in their advertisement they said imagine a moment where you're not watching moana for the 15th time
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and in the end though parents end up watching a lot of what their kids are watching because they're
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stuck around their kids and so as much as you say yeah you got to get kids while they're early and yes
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this does affect children the reason why you're seeing this combined with things that are very
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much targeted at parents like the national child care trust and clear blue is because parents are
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watching this stuff they're a captive audience but what i like it about it even more malcolm
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is that the key thing like beyond cultural sovereignty we do absolutely vote for propaganda
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but we're not about shaming dinks or childless people into having kids
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carnitalism is all about making it easier for people and cooler for people who are already in
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to this kind of thing to family and having kids going all in and what peppa pig is doing here
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is just celebrating parenthood amongst those who have already bought in these are in these are already in
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you're not you're not making things crazy and then also like quite frankly it's more affordable for
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people who already have kids to have more than it is for someone who doesn't have kids to have kids i
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mean when you're going from zero to one kid you're making a huge lifestyle change you're buying
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everything for the first time you're completely changing your career and your schedule and
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everything else and your responsibilities if you have two kids and you're going to three
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not a lot of changes and you already have a lot of stuff that's reused which is something of course
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that mama pig talked about in her exclusive editorial with that italian magazine where she has the
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maternity spread because she has the point here being is that you are much going to have a much
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easier time influencing somebody who already has kids to have more kids or to have the marginal
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additional kid instead of somebody who has zero kids at all which is funny that the dinks are all
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afraid of the pronatalist propaganda in peppa pig and i'm like what dink dual income no kids family
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is watching peppa pig they're not even no one's yeah no no dink is watching this and feeling bad about
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their lives literally the opposite of insidiousness yeah well that's and that's the really interesting
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thing that i want to touch on in this episode about pronatalist propaganda is that one propaganda
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we're all for it it's actually quite effective it's very affordable and it works really well in concert
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with cultural sovereignty when done right which is something we're really big on is let let me live
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my life the way i want don't tell me how to live my life don't shame me don't legally coerce me to live
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a certain way or restrict my choice and yet what's so ironic about up-to-date like actual
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pronatalist propaganda because we don't have any real evidence that the peppa pig thing was actual
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pronatalist propaganda like led by government at all or anything is is that the actual attempts being
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made by governments are super bad like and then the famous case studies when you see birth rates
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affected by something that is essentially and functionally propaganda it's typically backfiring
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so let's go into it because i think this is just a fascinating subject and i think i gotta start
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with one of my favorite cases okay which is the town in japan where there's no more kids oh god
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only one kid in the town left so what they've done is they have made dolls of other kids so that
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when the kid goes to like the playground it doesn't look empty when they're walking to school it doesn't
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look like there aren't other kids waiting at the bus stop but it actually looks and if you're only
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listening to this on audio my god you have to google this town it is the most haunting scary thing you've
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ever seen it looks straight out of a horror film yeah imagine going to a children's park and what
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instead you see are a bunch of of stuffed hay figurines that are meant to look vaguely like like
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rotting scarecrows of children because these have been put out for many years in many cases right
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you know they keep building new ones and so the old ones are sort of left as like three-year-old
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scarecrows all around the tattered yeah all around the town's environments where children used to play
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i i was making a horror movie this would be a great horror movie like i can imagine few things scarier
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than or than this inversion of childhood yeah though we live in the timeline where basically
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truth is stranger than fiction and more entertaining so at least we have that but yeah i mean that's a
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great example of it not working so thanks for kicking us off with that i i would like to remind
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people that it does work there are numerous case studies and examples including tv radio music movies
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celebrities that that have absolutely immeasurably changed human behavior they're not
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all intentional sometimes they're kind of unintentional but we're able to see examples
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where yes absolutely the equivalent of propaganda has changed behavior so there was for example a
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tanzanian radio drama called towende na wataki that led to 82 percent of listeners reporting increased
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condom use and reduced number of sexual partners that's that's pretty freaking huge this this was
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entirely and this was real propaganda targeted at hiv prevention and in northern nigeria 60 percent of
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family planning clients cited the radio drama ruandare as the reason for visiting a clinic so you can use
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propaganda to get people to have more protected sex you can use propaganda to get people to go to a
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clinic the indian soap opera kunyuki jessa isikanam hi i'm doing a malcolm mispronunciation here i can't
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even try funded by unicef so again clear propaganda was found to shift viewers perceptions of social norms the
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longer they watched so that demonstrated that sustained exposure to educational entertainment
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can change attitudes and behaviors and then the radio program but shan and ama in nepal combined
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drama and like live call-in segments it sounds really fun reported four out of five listeners
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took appropriate action after listening contributing to improve nutrition and health behaviors at the
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community level so 100 percent and honestly like do you remember the savage love cast did you ever listen
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to that yeah yeah i mean it wasn't exactly sex ed but i mean i think really it did it did influence i
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think a lot of people's sexual behavior and things that they found to be normative or help them
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contextualize things in terms of movies and in documentaries and so this this wasn't intentional
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but films like aaron brockovich blackfish the code and food inc sometimes intentionally sometimes not
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sparked real world world changes from environmental reforms and animal welfare policy changes to shifts in
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consumer consumer eating habits and increased awareness the most famous case here is the brazil case right
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are you you should i'm getting that i'm getting i'm getting into that but we're we're starting now with
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success cases because the brazil one was very effective malcolm but i don't think it's a i think that
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the best success case for prenatalist propaganda that we are aware of i'm gonna get to these malcolm
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i'm gonna get to these i'm gonna get to these okay but basically propaganda works when applied
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smartly but yeah absolutely the the two examples of propaganda shifting birth rates that are most
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prominent and well documented are either unintentional or backfiring programs so the brazilian
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soap opera example that malcolm referenced basically there was a study on this on this phenomenon
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called soap operas and fertility evidence from brazil this was done in 2012 the researchers
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analyzed data from 1970 to 1991 and found that exposure to global networks novellas so this one
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particular tv network which consistently portrayed small middle-class families this is the key thing
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correlated with reduced fertility in the covered regions and so basically women in areas with global
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coverage because this network didn't play everywhere which is you then you have a natural controlled
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experiment experienced a 0.5 to 0.6 percentage point decrease in the probability of giving birth which
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is the equivalent to five per six to two five to six percent of the mean fertility rate so the effect
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accounted for seven percent approximately of brazil's overall fertility decline which seems like a little
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but honestly like considering the relative cost of this and what other countries are spending to try to
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shift fertility it's pretty meaningful and then also you could see other areas of of influence so parents
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in global covered areas were 33 percent like more likely to name their children after novella
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characters so that also confirms behavioral influence you can't just say oh it was something else because
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you're also seeing other areas not necessarily directly fertility related where the where the show had a lot
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of influence so that's that's crazy especially because the big the bigger picture here if we want to kind of
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compare it is brazil's fertility drop between 1960 and 2000 matched china's one child policy decline but
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without state coercion which suggests the media power in social transformation so in china you're getting a
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checkup and then you're getting a forced abortion whereas in brazil you're at home watching a
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telenovela and sterilizing yourself i mean i know which country i'd want to be in i want to watch the
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telenovelas and have people leave me alone and then the second one and this is actual sort of
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pregnancy intervention it just went the wrong way is the botched teen pregnancy avoidance programs
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the most definitive evidence comes from a large randomized control trial conducted in western
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australia and this was published in the lancet where nearly 3 000 girls aged 13 to 15 were tracked from
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57 schools and about half participated in the virtual infant parenting vip program which involved
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tracking home infant simulator doll for a weekend and receiving related health education and then the other
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half received standard health education without the doll and then the key findings are that by age 20
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8 of the girls who participated in the vip program had given birth compared to just four percent in the
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control group wait eight eight percent by age 20 but still that's double the rate by age 20
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age 20 is an early time to have kids and then nine percent of the vip group had an abortion versus six
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percent in the control group so they also had more oopsie pregnancies for whatever reason
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but overall girls exposed to the infant simulator were 36 percent more likely to experience a pregnancy
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birth or abortion if you don't know the infant simulator you saw this a lot on old shows as like
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a trope i did it i did it i had it so yeah so this this happened to me in middle school what happened was
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in in is part of our health class we were given these baby dolls that you had to take home and the baby
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dolls would cry on a randomized schedule throughout the day and night the babies looked very realistic
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aside from this the fact that they smelled like bowling ball shoes because they were sprayed with like
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a disinfectant because god knows teens are infectious and you can't spread disease by having too many teens
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touch the dolls before you disinfect them and they would just start crying in a very realistic way
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you had to have them with you all the time and you would be graded based on your ability to placate
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the baby doll so you were given a key ring and there were a bunch of little key cards on it
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one was like diaper change one was feeding one was soothing so you had to like put these these cards
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in their backs to figure out what was wrong with them because you didn't know and then every now and
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then a crying cycle they would go on could not be solved by anything you would just have to wait it out
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and this was a little bit awkward for me when i had the doll because my doll i i had to like go to
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the grocery store with my mom and like i'm i'm like shoving the cards into its back and like people
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think that it's a real baby and then i'm like beating this child and then also i think my doll
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was defective i'm imagining because you are an awkward adult yeah you would have been a very awkward
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teen and you would have looked like you were like trying to turn off a child it was not the best
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look for me personally and keep in mind like until i met malcolm i was very against having kids this
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program worked for me because the child wouldn't stop crying at night and like none of the keys worked
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and so i marched outside and put it in the trunk of my mom's car which wait is this
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it probably really deserved like disturbed passers-by like it's kind of amazing like
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the child is crying from the trunk of the car i didn't i didn't really like now when i think about
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it like if i came across i would have a freaking heart attack i would literally crowbar that car open
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in panic like i i just i can't believe i did that like now being a mom i cannot believe i did that and
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i feel really bad my only concern then was literally like i'm going to be given a bad grade because
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the doll's like chip is going to show up as like being neglected because we were told that what
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happened were you given a bad grade i told my teacher that the doll was defective and she didn't
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i think she was as she was like the the classic lesbian gym teacher kind of person i think and like
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she's just like i fine i don't care like i don't you know i'm not big on kids anyway so yeah that that
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happened but yeah so what happened though and i saw this with my classmates is there were some girls
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girls who were like but out going out buying clothes for the baby they were so excited for
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the baby program they were like oh look at me this is so great and and these programs i think
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were different from like earlier 1950s versions of these programs where you had to like carry around
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a sack of flour or an egg which i think we saw in some of our childhood cartoons because this was
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you know a real baby and so i can absolutely see how these australian studies were onto something
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what we're seeing here is different cultural genetic predilections interact with different forms
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of propaganda in different ways yes yeah that for some girls this was like okay i'm sold i freaking
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love this and for me i was like the paving the trunk of the car but yeah so i think you know what we also
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need to do is discuss what's going on now though with propaganda and prenatalism and and the most
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prominent example now i would say is is looking at russia and china these are the countries that
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are really interesting programs well no what's happening more if you look at news alerts with
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prenatalism is it's all about russia right now and the headline that is just repeating ad nauseum
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is putin is paying russian schoolgirls to have babies because he's giving some kind of stipend
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or bonus to schoolgirls like well basically minor minor women like women under 18 if they choose to
00:22:15.660
have children so that's that's that's outside the domain of this but like russia is kind of going
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for broke because they've like killed killed their men russia is really screwed like they're really
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screwed one of the most screwed demographic countries in the world right now yeah because
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they have a fertility rate of like what is it like 1.2 or something or let's see russian tfr and it's not
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just that though they're like killing their their men of reproductive age so unless they're like hey let's
00:22:39.920
let's bring harems back let's do polyamory let's do polygamy that's it's not well they're also losing
00:22:46.060
their women tons of women oh it's at 1.41 ukrainian women yeah but like the news i've seen recently is
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more about ukrainian women leaving and not coming back but yeah russian women too hey russian russian
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women i hasn't they're they're they're definitely in many countries well they're they're they're
00:23:02.740
sought after both russian and ukrainian women are sought after as passport bro wives so you know because
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they're like hot and i don't know i think they're too cunning i wouldn't want to no i wouldn't want
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one either anyway anyway that's kind of a sign because that has to do more with money there is
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actually a lot of russian propaganda work being done which is great because when you think about
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pernatalist propaganda i think a lot of people think of that famous poster of this woman with like
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nine children you know she's holding a baby and then behind her her oldest children have joined the
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military already it's it's great i i love it it's a wonderful poster i'll share it with you but the
00:23:41.180
the russia the russian state doom has passed legislation that bans all but positive depictions
00:23:46.060
of parenting and children in the media yeah and people have been to be like i think this is hurting
00:23:50.800
some like gay rights groups this is hurting yeah no this is so this was this was on top of existing
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anti-lgbt legislation so what they've done most recently is they've effectively outlawed the
00:24:01.940
promotion or dissemination of content that portrays child-free lifestyles or voluntary childlessness
00:24:06.860
in a neutral or even neutral you can't so it can only be depicted negatively or positively can only
00:24:12.960
be a tragedy which i think is good is it's good that russia is doing this and it will have an effect
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yeah although you know i i am i'm i'm more for the peppa biggs style i mean look at america right i i think
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the worse than glorifying child-free lifestyles is glorifying having two or one kids which i think
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is a problem with u.s natalist stuff yeah because the ones yeah if you're gonna have kids you should
00:24:38.800
go for broke man if you look at the like boss baby which people could see oh this is a pro natalist
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thing the tfr average of the main characters in boss baby because it's about two brothers yeah is
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what is it one is it one it's one it's literally abysmal because it is one of the brothers has two
00:24:57.400
kids the other brother has no kids and that's and that's two kids with a stay-at-home dad i'm sorry if
00:25:03.000
you have a stay-at-home parent you gotta go for you gotta go for a lot you gotta go for at least like
00:25:08.400
you've demonstrated that you're willing to invest in parenthood so invest in parenthood for the love
00:25:12.820
of god and don't isolate your children with you i mean the whole point i mean like sometimes i feel
00:25:16.980
like the whole point of having siblings is just to water down the negative effects of parents you
00:25:21.740
know you just you don't have to worry about yourself screwing them up as much because the kids
00:25:25.540
are monitoring but anyway so but if you look at older shows like like consider shows that you grew
00:25:31.440
up on like home alone and stuff like that huge family yeah large families are very normal and that's
00:25:37.260
not even about kids the i think the the tfr average in home alone is like five yeah they're big
00:25:42.380
families it's great it's yeah and it's and it's it's not even like brought up as like a point in
00:25:47.400
the show other than you know even with a large family they still love all their kids and you know
00:25:51.900
sometimes they forget what they just sometimes forget them oops like on multiple occasions but it
00:25:57.780
happens right but anyway the russia's new law just basically prohibits what's called child-free
00:26:04.340
propaganda any media this is films advertisements online content that encourages or justifies the
00:26:10.080
conscious decision not to have children this was passed unanimously unanimously by the duma in
00:26:15.060
november 2024 so it's relatively new and like like you were saying what this legislation does it amends
00:26:20.960
existing laws it already banned promotion of lgbtq relationships and gender reassignment so this is
00:26:27.080
on top of like an anti-woke thing and violations of the law are fines up to about four thousand dollars for
00:26:33.980
individuals because again this is like if you're a social media influencer this is not just for
00:26:37.920
like movies and up to fifty thousand dollars for companies so this wow no i saw one woman who was
00:26:44.720
like really she was like really sad because she'd become this big influencer or something
00:26:48.900
and she goes wait now i'm getting fined for this yeah now being a dink influencer and suddenly being
00:26:54.400
fined i mean if you and i were fined four thousand dollars every time we promoted kids we'd be kind of
00:26:59.340
screwed we've spoken on russian state tv i think a lot of people would be surprised by the state tvs
00:27:04.640
we've spoken on iranian state tv about increasing iran's fertility rate we've spoken on you know
00:27:09.940
russian state tv about increasing russian's yeah and next week it's australia and the netherlands
00:27:14.700
and then what on monday it was germany so other people are waking up to this but what what had
00:27:22.100
happened in 2024 in russia was they they named it they declared it the year of the family so this was
00:27:27.900
just one of many things but that's typically how propaganda has worked in countries like it's supposed
00:27:33.400
to be used in concert with a bunch of other things but basically starting september 1st of this year
00:27:38.600
so this hasn't actually gone into effect yet there's going to be social media monitoring media regulators
00:27:44.020
so we haven't even seen it yet so we can't say how it's going to play out but we're absolutely
00:27:49.060
you know interested in actually i was just thinking like with all the stuff russia's doing maybe we
00:27:54.000
should reach out i know because this isn't the only thing they're doing so here's some other
00:27:56.960
propaganda style year of the family things there's family studies became an optional extracurricular
00:28:02.260
and russian schools so this is designed to like instill traditional family values promote abstinence
00:28:07.380
before marriage encourage having multiple children the curriculum this this this isn't what i would
00:28:13.960
necessarily i mean it would freak a lot of people this wouldn't work in america but it covers topics
00:28:18.800
such as masculinity and femininity the importance of large families and the reproductive function of
00:28:24.020
the family and addressing demographic problems like it's your russian duty to do this which is just so
00:28:28.760
russian i like it there are also public campaigns promoting family values just in
00:28:33.880
media and advertising so it's not just don't do this it's also hey we really support this so i think
00:28:40.660
that's that's just really interesting and then of course there's there's china you know that's the
00:28:45.620
other place it's really trying to go for this and this is after decades of the one child policy now
00:28:51.340
they've pivoted to their pro-birth culture so there are television and service ads their propaganda
00:28:56.340
posters and slogans social media campaigns cultural content and you can see and i will send them to
00:29:02.820
you hilarious examples of before and after the child policy in in japan here actually let me send
00:29:11.580
these on whatsapp oh first i'm going to send you a picture of the linda wing where peppa pig's baby
00:29:17.560
sister was born and a a screenshot of the gratia exclusive oh wow nice i want that i want that
00:29:26.260
i mean i my hospital delivery room oh my god yeah they did a like a photo shoot of mama pig is this
00:29:32.500
from the mama pig that's from the the magazine exclusive and they and they make her look like
00:29:38.300
one of those fancy magazine ladies yeah like she has her she's like she's spread out on like a sort
00:29:43.780
of like silk a lush silk showing off her baby bump and like looking like half naked and no it's it's
00:29:50.620
like a total like glamour spread thing it is it is absolutely it's really it's it's kind of weird
00:29:57.180
because they also had her on a on a podcast wait hold on it goes in this world exclusive mummy pig
00:30:03.360
sits down with grizzier for her first pregnancy shoot and interview oink no they really it's the
00:30:11.200
extent to which they acted like it's uh it was a real thing especially with the town crier and like
00:30:16.320
being really specific about it being the linda wing let me show you actually like for comparison
00:30:21.060
the room that i gave birth in was actually pretty not not bad because i know you don't see them
00:30:27.640
because i don't i ask to be alone when i give birth but compare compare the room where i gave birth to
00:30:33.600
like my post postpartum room for indie yeah but it has a better view it has a better view yeah i mean
00:30:39.880
it doesn't have like the like your room too and your bedroom yeah so bigger than where the the prince
00:30:47.580
was born that i'm just saying like good american hospitals are pretty good like i just think giving
00:30:53.560
birth in the uk if they really want to make it more pleasant they need to make every hospital like
00:30:57.380
the linda wing like these are basic requirements it's it's not it's not exactly like a delivery room
00:31:02.940
but the view that you have from there is of a giant cornfield it's really nice yeah i'm really
00:31:08.040
excited to give birth there in in october because then like hopefully the cornfield would be this
00:31:12.980
like gorgeous color and everything but here i'm sending you a an image of a statue in china before
00:31:20.260
and after the the pro-family policy where there's this it starts with a one child policy statue where
00:31:27.540
there's a mom and a dad and a child and then suddenly two more child statues appear
00:31:34.840
huh i love this in in china where they're adding children to the statues yeah what what on earth
00:31:41.700
is going on and i'll i'll show you a stamp from the year of the pig where huh what there's one pig and
00:31:50.400
then there's and now it's it's two pigs with a bunch of little piglets three piglets not even a
00:31:54.700
bunch what what is this with peppa with pigs and birth rates it's i thought it was like we're at it
00:32:02.960
right like rabbits not we're reproducing like pigs that's not like a phrase i know but it's piglets
00:32:07.400
yeah here here other examples there's before and after of just some other materials and ads
00:32:14.220
where just more children are just randomly being in china yeah they added it was a girl playing with
00:32:19.920
a kite and now she's waving at her dad and brother which yeah and then there's there's like a tv
00:32:24.700
commercial where the there they have they're depicting like a house full of children and
00:32:30.620
there's a woman coming into like a bedroom holding her stomach saying it's eating life they're around
00:32:36.140
here and like focusing on old and young generations together enjoying fireworks together and also there
00:32:43.720
are examples of places where one child policy propaganda paintings and illustrations on the sides of
00:32:51.540
of buildings have just been like deleted like acid washed off well i i know that like in china i doubt
00:32:59.200
this will work because it all feels so totalitarian and that's the problem that's the problem the thing
00:33:03.580
is is is is while japan has a troubling fertility rate right now it does have like one of the best of
00:33:10.060
the wealthy countries in east asia but also i think what japan does so well is they they
00:33:14.980
pro-natalist propaganda you they've got you know guru login and grandpa and grandpa turned young
00:33:19.980
you can watch our episode on pro-natalist anime darlings was frank's but japan has extensive
00:33:26.500
well thought out pro-natalist stuff that was made by individuals in japan who are concerned about
00:33:33.360
losing their culture that's but who make it glamorous and not going back to that brazilian
00:33:38.340
case study where they inadvertently reduced the birth rate they did that because the glamorous family
00:33:44.400
had fewer children people it's not like they hated children it's that they wanted to be like that
00:33:48.880
family because they still had children they just named people after i mean i think making it look
00:33:53.460
glamorous is going to work depending on the culture that you're targeting i think one of the things
00:33:57.780
that japan has done really well is they target an understanding of japanese culture in in their
00:34:04.660
messaging so they don't make lots of kids look glamorous in something like grandpa grandpa turned
00:34:10.460
young again but there's like the great scene where she goes and the person is like oh well you know i'll
00:34:16.460
be closing them the shop soon because just every year there's fewer and fewer people that come
00:34:20.100
through and she goes you know it's just the way of things these days and then the other person
00:34:27.920
like stomps their feet angrily and they go why aren't we even fighting you know and like why are we even
00:34:34.340
trying and the the the point here is like are we gonna go down without even a fight and i think it
00:34:41.140
appeals to traditional japanese sensibilities of like yeah we should be fighting this or you look
00:34:47.760
at the way it's promoted in something like your own login where it's ultra vitalistic like you know
00:34:53.500
we're we're gonna go to the stars and expand throughout the universe and the the big bad guys
00:34:58.660
they want to keep you down and at low population levels and and have you believe there's a carrying
00:35:03.520
capacity of the earth or in darling was frank's you know it's the life extensionists who are the bad
00:35:09.320
guys the people who believe in good old-fashioned sex and having kids with a mom and a dad who are
00:35:16.660
the good guys and and then they make it about fighting monsters in meccas well because it come on
00:35:25.060
because anime but but at least in gura it's darling with frank's you could only the month the the meccas
00:35:33.460
only work if they have a male and female pilot and the female sits down butt up in front of the
00:35:40.340
male in a very suggestive pose no but see this is how it's done you don't like doing it in russia
00:35:46.760
where there's these classes in school like your elective where you can learn about femininity and
00:35:51.200
masculinity from a teacher who you probably don't respect that much that's not how you do propaganda
00:35:55.880
you do propaganda like this anime nonsense okay no but i i i mean i mentioned this in the in the
00:36:02.440
anime episode but the the crazy scene in darling with frank's like if you want to see this would
00:36:07.160
never get published in the u.s one of the characters no shame at all is shown in this in the show is a
00:36:13.360
girl who has a crush on another girl and she tries to get the robot to work the the robot which is like
00:36:21.300
this is what you use to save and preserve human civilization to work with a girl and a girl
00:36:26.420
and like no shade is shown on them for her being gay but it's like but this just doesn't work yeah
00:36:31.680
this is like mechanically yeah which i thought was really a bold thing to put in an anime it was in
00:36:40.300
modern context but uh you know it was it was there yeah no absolutely no i so i think that's a really
00:36:46.620
good point i mean in terms of what we suggest it's it's it's feed into what works for your culture
00:36:52.480
don't be creepy about it like in china or i mean arguably like i want to say like i just don't think
00:36:59.240
shame is how you do it as aria babu found in countries where i think you do feel more shame for
00:37:05.580
in being insufficiently conservative or being insufficiently conformist per what the government
00:37:11.060
or society at large expects of you then you've made the pressure exogenous you have to make
00:37:15.400
the desire endogenous it has to come from within and doing it in more subtle ways where it's
00:37:20.980
inspiring through anime or through a telenovela or through exposure to a doll that makes you super
00:37:27.240
excited about it because it actually helps you wrap your head around the idea of being a parent
00:37:31.340
because that's another really big thing one thing that katherine pakolic talks about in her book
00:37:35.340
hannah's children where she interviews mothers who are college educated in america but who have more
00:37:39.520
than five children or five children is that a lot of the the typical american child is never around
00:37:46.760
babies is never around other kids like it's hard to model what being a parent could even be like
00:37:52.500
because they don't know what it they they can't imagine it like who's who's held a baby you know
00:37:59.100
who's a 20 year old right now not that many people unless they themselves had a lot of siblings and that
00:38:03.120
helps i think a lot so like that exposure i think is also important and in a positive context of course
00:38:09.940
but then you know also stuff that targets the parentally inclined that's why i like the peppa
00:38:14.680
pig thing i think it's brilliant because you're leaning in to the families who really are the most
00:38:19.180
likely to solve the birth rate problem because this isn't about shaming people and to have
00:38:24.480
i think like yeah you could say it doesn't work with shame in some cultures but i think within
00:38:31.540
other cultures like you look at you like you are not convinced to have a kid by giving a little doll
00:38:36.740
or something like that and men within my culture wouldn't be but i i know that when i say something
00:38:42.480
like you are technically a cuck if you don't have a kid you you are being cucked right by the state
00:38:48.280
adequate that targets it support yeah people who are replacing you yeah that you are being
00:38:54.180
genetically replaced and paying for it that that would get me pumped yeah so you're right the
00:39:00.120
targeting is important like the the dolls only work for the girls who are like oh a doll how cute and
00:39:04.840
like oh my gosh you can capture the future of human civilization through being reproductively
00:39:10.780
successful and raising those kids well yeah that's what appeals to me you know all of this
00:39:15.260
sentimentality and oh you know this is high status or oh this is i don't care about any of that but if
00:39:21.260
it's oh this is how you matter in the grand scheme of reality and this is what is morally good that
00:39:27.040
gets me yeah when i i think what kind of initially got me was that you were like this could be just an
00:39:35.900
additive to your achievement in life like one you don't have to give up your career but also you can
00:39:40.460
you can also have this huge family and be really impressive this way like there are ways to frame it
00:39:45.200
to highly career-minded ambitious women too if you frame it the right way so yeah there is no one
00:39:50.800
size fits all for sure and every country has to think about this very differently but i really do
00:39:56.240
think that in terms of the propaganda that's taking place today if we had like a 2025 pro natalist
00:40:02.500
propaganda olympics russia despite their intense investment and especially the crackdown that's going
00:40:08.160
to begin september of this year is not taking first place the peppa peg is taking first place
00:40:14.580
like hands down clearly so anyway i'm excited i mean i think that fortunately we're seeing a shift
00:40:23.480
was in public narratives that people are seeing this with peppa pig and i love that they freak out
00:40:28.220
that there might even be a pro natalist agenda one of the things they're like it's so insidious
00:40:33.040
children are seeing this it's like bro children are seeing a mom have a three-kid family and you
00:40:38.780
didn't freak out when kids were given books about how to give like blowjobs like it was a real thing
00:40:45.480
by the way yeah this is one of the books that were was being fought about in the court cases on this
00:40:50.700
like you what how how is it that this is a problem to you and you're like oh my god the other side has
00:40:57.600
propaganda too but we will use our propaganda i will make more addicting ai agents than you i will have
00:41:04.560
them on every website we are going to win this fight darn it yeah absolutely i love you too so
00:41:13.540
much am i am i making you rendang taquitos tonight no you're gonna reheat the yang from the last two
00:41:18.720
nights in taquitos yeah that's so the answer is yes yes and then i'll have it with the guacamole you
00:41:25.980
made you just can't bear to say yes can you can you throw out the older guacamole because i can't
00:41:32.180
tell which is the old i did no i already i already fed it to the oh so the new one separated into like
00:41:36.180
a liquid and guacamole and we just need to remix it it did yeah i think it's the result of adding
00:41:42.240
chicken bullion no because it was dry malcolm well then what's the liquid i will take a look i haven't
00:41:49.900
looked at it in the fridge but i think it'll be fine after remixing condensation formed on top but no
00:41:55.820
the the guacamole that is in the fridge now is only the guacamole we made last night
00:41:59.860
the other guacamole has gone to the chickens well i love you to death simone i am very excited for
00:42:07.140
your taquitos you make really good taquitos by the way well as long as i follow your rule which is
00:42:12.420
not too much meat not too much meat very little meat i know basically it's like it's almost like
00:42:18.080
a spice in taquitos meat is a spice it is not a it's like sushi levels like but the wraps the
00:42:25.900
the rolls sushi roll yes literally it should be smaller than sushi levels i know see i'm a i'm more
00:42:32.100
of a burrito person i want like you know pack it in there taquitos are like basically just lightly
00:42:38.500
flavored fried tortilla rolls but stop your complaining with cheddar cheese or no cheddar cheese
00:42:46.860
cheddar cheese would be quite good okay and then you'll dip it in the guacamole after i remix it
00:42:52.180
yeah i mean unless cheddar cheese makes it harder i mean i'll shred some i'll shred some it'll be
00:42:57.820
fine all right love you to death simone you are a very very good wife um and i hope that we are
00:43:05.660
pronatalist propaganda for our fans and obviously the biggest pronatalist propaganda is to and we achieved
00:43:11.320
this very early in the movement is the the the high fertility billionaires that the you know these
00:43:18.460
were like the original stories and they were they were quite attempted to be negative towards us
00:43:23.140
but they always associated pronatalism with tech elite yeah they had to make us seem wealthier than
00:43:31.360
we were in higher status than we were because we wouldn't seem like big big bads big bad elite yeah
00:43:39.260
like they couldn't i think they would want to play us down because they wanted to make us look as bad as
00:43:43.320
possible but they also had to make us look as evil as possible and you're not sufficiently evil if
00:43:48.100
you're not literally like the most wealthy and powerful yeah but but the funny thing is is what
00:43:53.720
tech elite literally translates to in the mind of the average american is self-made educated wealthy
00:44:02.280
person which is the category of wealthy people that most people want to be most people don't want to be
00:44:08.560
old money or blue-blooded i think you're forgetting how few people even know what the the acronym vc
00:44:15.320
stands for no i understand simone but the point i'm making is that the the of all the groups they
00:44:23.160
could have painted us as there is no other group of elite that is more cogent with the mainstream
00:44:30.600
american dream yeah no yeah that is the new american dream is that you strove you took risks and it paid
00:44:36.680
off yeah yeah and so it really painted and we're actually already seeing the effects downstream of this
00:44:43.380
where people consider it high status within specific groups now how many kids you have
00:44:49.220
and it's even becoming so cool this is just like when you and i popularized married search funds and
00:44:55.380
at first people were like no one does that you did this thing and now it's taught about at harvard and
00:44:59.840
stanford business school now it's just one of the standard formats and yeah before you would never hang
00:45:04.160
out at like a tech elite party um and hear people be like oh yeah i'm gonna start my company and have a lot
00:45:12.160
of kids and bank my embryos and now it's just like super normative talk super normative i'd say like
00:45:17.280
almost every event we we see this now and by the way the thing she's talking about so people don't
00:45:22.080
know that people don't know that's about us but you know i went to stanford business school and when i
00:45:27.100
was at stanford business school i invented it's actually really i just want to be clear the fact
00:45:32.860
that malcolm went to stanford business school is actually a really big deal because it is harder to get
00:45:36.220
into than the harvard's business school it's also harder to get into than any other degree program
00:45:41.740
at stanford any phd i remember somebody was like oh you pretended like you a stanford phd when you
00:45:47.000
only have an nba and i'm like actually the nba is dramatically harder to get into than the other
00:45:50.620
i applied to other phd programs and i got in like at equal schools to stanford i didn't apply to
00:45:56.460
stanford because i was looking at going to like i can't remember where it was but i remember i got into
00:45:59.940
another ivy league institution or quality and and and the business school was the one that i was really
00:46:05.020
excited about because i was like oh this is the actual hard one when people don't know that but
00:46:09.200
the point here being is i was watching recently a thing on lex freeman for example who i actually had
00:46:14.420
believed was like a smart guy and it turned out that all of his degrees are from drexel and he never
00:46:19.000
actually worked at the professor at mit he taught night courses that like anyone could go to and they
00:46:24.620
were off semester night courses and and the the picture he uses from all his profiles is him standing
00:46:30.340
in front of somebody else's equation at one of these and this actually matters because friedman
00:46:36.300
calls himself an mit professor because he did this simone and i have also taught lectures at
00:46:41.700
harvard business school at stanford business school at carnegie mellon business school at i'm sure you
00:46:47.080
taught something at cambridge so we could call ourselves harvard or stanford professors with the
00:46:51.740
exact same credibility that lex freeman is an mit professor and that really annoyed me when i saw that
00:46:57.120
because i was like oh why didn't i think to lie you know it's just just because i wouldn't do that i
00:47:02.780
guess you wouldn't all right my mic because given up on me so i guess that's our sign for me to have a
00:47:10.560
good one simone and i love you to death the computer is telling me to get in the kitchen and make you a
00:47:14.320
sandwich get in the kitchen and make me taquitos and do it right and don't do it wrong because it is
00:47:19.660
expected of you the perfect woman hi i love you
00:47:26.540
and i'll i'll get us started i'll i'll take the lead so you can take a breather since you took the
00:47:36.120
lead on the last one people love it when you take the lead i don't think so i think just variation
00:47:42.900
makes people excited so anyway here i go what are you guys up to
00:47:48.080
oh yeah yeah show her again okay let me do it again i'm gonna do it again
00:48:09.360
oh even bigger and bigger than it was before oh no rainstorm oh no closed door
00:48:22.100
indy really likes that yeah she seems to like putting all the laundry away too
00:48:35.040
yeah he really likes indy are you gonna be my laundry helper one of these days
00:48:39.520
yeah she's hard at work he really likes it right yeah
00:48:45.920
does she like the cream i think he really has been fine with me
00:48:51.420
i think she is too yeah maybe i think oh did you win your game
00:48:58.720
proud of you thanks for playing with your sister buddy
00:49:02.280
yeah so you don't have to like do it down to him
00:49:05.840
well she gets bored with just me she wants her brother