Pearl - June 06, 2025Megyn Kelly Hit The Buzzer Beater
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
178.47974
Summary
In this episode, I sit down with author, speaker, activist, journalist, and author Jillian Manus to talk about her experience with infertility and fertility. We talk about the role of women in society and the role they play in society, and why it s so important for women to know the realities of fertility.
Transcript
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If Doug had come into my life at 22 and I rejected him,
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and then we went and married different people and re-found each other at 35,
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Yeah, she got a provider guy for the second half of life.
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She was getting dug out by commentators, I'm sure.
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I mean, I think there's no problem in setting out those honest truths,
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which are your life will be happier if you have a partner and children.
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And then they should be told the realities of fertility.
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It's just conservatives trying to control the world.
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Because those are realities that can be potentially meddled with,
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And if you're one of the people who cannot meddle with it
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it will be a lifelong regret that will be unsolvable
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and will be like a deep source of pain, an ongoing deep source of pain.
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So it's not something that you could easily brush off.
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While at the same time prizing and sharing the fullness of the rewards of motherhood
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Like if you listen to Jordan, if you listen to Ben,
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if you listen to, you know, The Daily Wire, you'll hear that.
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But in society still, in the movies, on the television shows that women watch, it's not.
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They're blaming society and the TV for women not wanting to be moms.
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Well, like you still hear, she's just a stay-at-home mom, you know, or she doesn't work.
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They still don't look at, you know, motherhood as something that's, you know, something valuable.
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But it still has this like, and women who I know all over New York, and now I'm in Connecticut,
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they say things like, it's very important to me that my daughter see me going to a business meeting.
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Like mommy's got a business meeting or going to the office if they have just like some small meeting.
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Because they don't think the daughter will think that they're important if they don't have some sort of business pressing on them,
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which is absurd and hashtag part of the problem, right?
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Like, no, we all need to be teaching young girls and boys that motherhood is enough.
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Like being a mother is a completely valid, beautiful, awesome, really important choice.
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I actually went to my daughter's school and I said, I think it's fine you have career night.
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And you bring in doctors and lawyers and journalists and whomever.
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You need to have somebody stand up there and tell the girls, I made a totally different choice.
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And so much the better if she's got a great education.
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And she can say, yeah, I have all the same skills you have.
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And I loved learning and being introduced to the classics and being able to sit around a dinner table with so-called intellectuals and know the references.
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And I chose a totally different path when I graduated from those schools because there was one thing that was most important to me.
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So, you know, we've got a counter program at home.
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So, having said all that, I'll tell you my own personal experience, which doesn't really reflect that way of thinking or this recommended course at all.
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I have a very, very strong marriage and extremely intact, loving.
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Present and meaningful relationships with my three kids.
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But I also have a very large career that's been hugely successful.
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Not to be self-aggrandizing, but just saying like on the scales of career.
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It's very competitive, similar to being like a musical artist.
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But you tend to get like egos in media because they think they're super important because
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And I don't mean to downplay it, but I mean, you guys know.
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And also, if I'm low energy today, I'm a little bit sick.
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So in no way did I really sacrifice much in that lane.
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And I realize this puts me in the 0.00001% of people and probably even, you know, fewer
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So the way that I did it was not that unconventional for, you know, when I grew up.
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I was definitely part of a generation that felt, you work.
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But in my case, Jordan, from that day to this, I've always loved working.
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It's totally exciting and interesting and intellectually stimulating to me.
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And if I looked at the 21 or 22-year-old version of me versus me now, or let's say when I had
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my kids, which was later, 38, 40, and 42, I guarantee you I...
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It's just totally exciting and interesting and intellectually stimulating to me.
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And if I looked at the 21 or 22-year-old version of me versus me now, or let's say when I had
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Now, I want to have an honest conversation, Megan.
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I guarantee you I personally, this isn't true of everybody, but I personally wouldn't...
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She's more exciting talking about work than her husband.
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I believe that the women that are always talking up their husbands, if I'm being honest, have
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Like if it's always a positive word about him, I think women love their husbands more than
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I was much more selfish and less capable of giving and I was more of a taker, like most young
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And so I really think that the calm I've brought to motherhood, the life lessons, the wisdom
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has been a boon to my children who are calm and cool.
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Lila Rose made $271,000 in 2022 from her nonprofit, Live Action, and $375,000 in 2023.
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By the way, Live Action was in a $478,000 deficit for 2023.
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And not panickers and have a wisdom about them that I think you kind of get through osmosis
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and maybe some genetics, but they're in a very good place, I think, in part, thanks to the
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fact that I was, it's not age related for everybody, but for me, I didn't reach that place in my life
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And unfortunately, it wasn't planned this way because I didn't meet my husband until we were
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35. But unfortunately, and believe me, I think about it all the time, it means that my children
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and I have a shorter runway together. And I hate that fact. I, it haunts me. I'm so grateful that I
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Choices and trade-offs. Life's about choices and trade-offs.
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You know, unlike so many women who weren't this fortunate, but I hate the fact that every time we
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talk about their lives, I'm calculating, you know, it's his age plus 42. That's what I'll be.
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You know, when my youngest has his children and boy, my kids better have kids young if they want
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me to be part of that child's life at all. If they want, if I, if I get to be a grandparent.
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You know, it's funny. My dad, he's a saint. I'm from a, if you didn't know, I'm from a family of 10
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kids, right? So I'm one of 10. Oh, I do not feel the best today. Um, I'm from a family of 10 and my
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father, he really lived out the, you could say the trad dream. Like a lot of these people on the
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internet, they'll say they like live trad, but my dad actually did it. Like they got married young,
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had kids in their twenties. My dad's older than my mom by five years.
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Granted, we did have a nanny, but other than that, I just met like the 10 kids, you know,
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whatever. I'm not saying they were trad, but it's funny. Cause you always hear these podcasters say
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like have kids, have more kids. And I was always told to like, my dad was like, yeah,
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this is going to be tiring. Enjoy like not having them while you don't have them. But to be fair,
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he's, he's been a dad for like 30 years. He's tired. And it's, it's its own special form of pain.
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You know, like would I have traded my career building and doing the things that I love?
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Just say, no, you wouldn't, you wouldn't trade it. You love it. Move on.
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I was a lawyer for the first 10 years. And then I switched to journalism.
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I don't know if I can say that. I, I didn't meet the right man until I was 35. If Doug had come into
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my life at 22 and I rejected him, and then we went and married different people and refound each other
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at 35, that would be. Yeah. She got a provider guy for the second half of life. She was getting dug
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out by commentators. I'm sure. It'd be really painful, but I don't have that regret. We didn't
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meet until the time I think God brought us together. And for me, that was the time that's
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when I was ready. I was ready to not downshift in my career exactly, but to make compromises in my
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career that I hadn't been prior to that. And I was fully committed to devoting myself to motherhood
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in a way I never had been before. And some of it was born of the intense love that I had for my
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husband and still have, which my kids were born into this swath of like truly mad romantic love
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that they're products of and, and are immersed in every day, which is probably the best medicine
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for them. So I have no regrets about how I did it, but I also acknowledge it's not all roses and
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unicorns. There are downsides to doing it the way I did. Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide
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supporting everyone from established. First time in human history, young people had excess money to
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spend and could be, you know, marketed out. We, we, we tend to construe, especially in popular culture.
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Yeah. She doesn't regret it because she hit the buzzer beater.
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Would you regret it? I mean, she gets to talk for a living,
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make millions of dollars and be a wife and a mother.