Pearl - June 06, 2025


Megyn Kelly Hit The Buzzer Beater

Topics
motherhood and career choices
Mentioned
Doug Lila Rose Motherhood Megan
Why Dowries Used to Make More Sense Than Modern Marriage w⧸ @thisisshah How the System Punishes Men Before Divorce Is Final w⧸ @thisisshah

Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

178.48

Word count

2,132

Sentence count

186

Harmful content

Misogyny

13

sentences flagged

Toxicity

9

sentences flagged

Hate speech

8

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

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

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 I didn't meet the right man until I was 35.
00:00:02.320 If Doug had come into my life at 22 and I rejected him,
00:00:05.680 and then we went and married different people and re-found each other at 35,
00:00:08.880 that would be...
00:00:09.480 Yeah, she got a provider guy for the second half of life.
00:00:13.180 She was getting dug out by commentators, I'm sure. 1.00
00:00:16.460 I mean, I think there's no problem in setting out those honest truths,
00:00:19.500 which are your life will be happier if you have a partner and children.
00:00:25.540 I just think that's just true.
00:00:27.140 And people should be told that.
00:00:28.400 And then they should be told the realities of fertility.
00:00:31.840 See, this whole conversation is so pointless.
00:00:33.980 It's just conservatives trying to control the world.
00:00:36.540 Because those are realities that can be potentially meddled with,
00:00:40.040 but there's no guarantee.
00:00:41.760 And if you're one of the people who cannot meddle with it
00:00:44.980 and you missed your window,
00:00:46.140 it will be a lifelong regret that will be unsolvable
00:00:48.820 and will be like a deep source of pain, an ongoing deep source of pain.
00:00:54.180 So it's not something that you could easily brush off.
00:00:56.380 And so all those truths need to be shared.
00:00:58.400 While at the same time prizing and sharing the fullness of the rewards of motherhood
00:01:05.060 with young women, which isn't done.
00:01:06.820 That's the other piece of it.
00:01:07.800 Like if you listen to Jordan, if you listen to Ben,
00:01:10.360 if you listen to, you know, The Daily Wire, you'll hear that.
00:01:13.240 You won't hear motherhood, early motherhood,
00:01:15.220 or any kind of motherhood generally bashed. 0.98
00:01:17.580 You'll hear it praised.
00:01:18.520 But in society still, in the movies, on the television shows that women watch, it's not. 0.92
00:01:25.060 You're still...
00:01:25.660 Right.
00:01:25.860 But they always blame...
00:01:27.020 Do you see this programming?
00:01:28.980 They're blaming society and the TV for women not wanting to be moms. 0.99
00:01:33.600 Well, like you still hear, she's just a stay-at-home mom, you know, or she doesn't work. 1.00
00:01:41.420 They still don't look at, you know, motherhood as something that's, you know, something valuable.
00:01:45.960 Like work as though it's a bad word.
00:01:47.920 Motherhood is work too. 1.00
00:01:49.080 It's great work.
00:01:49.920 It's life-fulfilling work.
00:01:51.080 But it still has this like, and women who I know all over New York, and now I'm in Connecticut, 0.65
00:01:58.160 they say things like, it's very important to me that my daughter see me going to a business meeting.
00:02:05.080 Like mommy's got a business meeting or going to the office if they have just like some small meeting.
00:02:09.820 And I'm like, why?
00:02:11.300 Why?
00:02:12.060 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,
00:02:18.440 which is absurd and hashtag part of the problem, right?
00:02:20.860 Like, no, we all need to be teaching young girls and boys that motherhood is enough.
00:02:27.760 Like being a mother is a completely valid, beautiful, awesome, really important choice.
00:02:33.200 I actually went to my daughter's school and I said, I think it's fine you have career night.
00:02:36.400 It's an all-girls school.
00:02:37.720 And you bring in doctors and lawyers and journalists and whomever.
00:02:40.920 You need to bring in a stay-at-home mom. 1.00
00:02:43.180 You need to have somebody stand up there and tell the girls, I made a totally different choice. 0.99
00:02:47.860 And so much the better if she's got a great education.
00:02:51.440 And she can say, yeah, I have all the same skills you have.
00:02:55.760 And I was on the exact same path as you were.
00:02:57.960 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.
00:03:05.080 And I chose a totally different path when I graduated from those schools because there was one thing that was most important to me.
00:03:12.800 And let me tell you how that's rewarded me.
00:03:14.640 The school did not do it.
00:03:15.920 Okay.
00:03:16.020 So, you know, we've got a counter program at home.
00:03:18.860 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.
00:03:28.880 And yet still, I'm very, very happy.
00:03:31.540 I'm a very contented person.
00:03:34.480 Happy is a charged word.
00:03:35.640 But I really am very happy with my life.
00:03:38.040 I'm contented.
00:03:38.620 I have a very, very strong marriage and extremely intact, loving.
00:03:42.780 Do you guys think she has a strong marriage?
00:03:45.220 One in the chat, yes.
00:03:46.280 Two in the chat, no.
00:03:47.160 Do you believe her?
00:03:49.040 And tell me why in the chat.
00:03:51.500 Present and meaningful relationships with my three kids.
00:03:54.320 But I also have a very large career that's been hugely successful.
00:03:58.940 Not to be self-aggrandizing, but just saying like on the scales of career.
00:04:01.740 See, again, this is the same psychology women. 1.00
00:04:04.660 Media is kind of a cheat code.
00:04:06.080 It's not really fair.
00:04:07.040 There's a lot of money in media.
00:04:08.800 It's very competitive, similar to being like a musical artist.
00:04:11.860 But you tend to get like egos in media because they think they're super important because
00:04:18.500 we talk into a microphone.
00:04:20.780 And I don't mean to downplay it, but I mean, you guys know.
00:04:23.620 You guys are doctors, lawyers.
00:04:25.780 You guys do a lot of the tough jobs.
00:04:28.060 You are linemen, construction workers.
00:04:33.700 You guys do a lot of the hard jobs in society. 0.99
00:04:36.920 So compared to you guys, we ain't shit. 0.98
00:04:39.940 You know what I mean? 0.97
00:04:40.540 And also, if I'm low energy today, I'm a little bit sick.
00:04:45.300 I don't know.
00:04:45.740 I think it's something.
00:04:47.460 I don't know.
00:04:48.580 But I still wanted to do a show.
00:04:50.880 So this may be a shorter one today.
00:04:52.620 I'm just giving you a heads up.
00:04:53.700 It has worked out very well.
00:04:54.820 So in no way did I really sacrifice much in that lane.
00:04:58.780 And I realize this puts me in the 0.00001% of people and probably even, you know, fewer
00:05:06.700 percent of women. 0.96
00:05:09.160 So the way that I did it was not that unconventional for, you know, when I grew up.
00:05:16.180 I was definitely part of a generation that felt, you work.
00:05:20.100 You know, you get to work.
00:05:21.560 You graduate from college, go to college.
00:05:23.140 But when you finish college, you work.
00:05:24.820 That's the thing you do.
00:05:26.100 But in my case, Jordan, from that day to this, I've always loved working.
00:05:32.140 I love it.
00:05:33.260 It's totally exciting and interesting and intellectually stimulating to me.
00:05:39.660 And I cannot imagine not doing this.
00:05:42.520 It's been really important to me.
00:05:44.660 And if I looked at the 21 or 22-year-old version of me versus me now, or let's say when I had
00:05:50.840 my kids, which was later, 38, 40, and 42, I guarantee you I...
00:05:57.440 Wait, when did she have her kid?
00:05:59.720 Wait, let me go back.
00:06:03.260 It's just totally exciting and interesting and intellectually stimulating to me.
00:06:08.980 And I cannot imagine not doing this.
00:06:11.840 It's been really important to me.
00:06:13.960 And if I looked at the 21 or 22-year-old version of me versus me now, or let's say when I had
00:06:20.140 my kids, which was later, 38, 40, and 42. 0.99
00:06:23.480 Holy shit. 0.99
00:06:24.640 She really buzzer beat her. 1.00
00:06:27.620 Now, I want to have an honest conversation, Megan.
00:06:30.100 If you did it, how did you do it?
00:06:31.520 Did you freeze your eggs?
00:06:33.800 IVF?
00:06:34.580 Did you get pregnant naturally?
00:06:36.600 How was it?
00:06:38.800 I guarantee you I personally, this isn't true of everybody, but I personally wouldn't...
00:06:43.320 Do you know what?
00:06:43.800 She's more exciting talking about work than her husband.
00:06:45.740 I believe that the women that are always talking up their husbands, if I'm being honest, have 1.00
00:06:53.460 very, very beta husbands generally.
00:06:56.320 Like if it's always a positive word about him, I think women love their husbands more than 1.00
00:07:04.120 say he's an asshole. 1.00
00:07:06.080 Not have been anywhere near as good a mother. 1.00
00:07:08.180 I was much more selfish and less capable of giving and I was more of a taker, like most young 0.77
00:07:14.740 people are, not all, but most.
00:07:16.860 And so I really think that the calm I've brought to motherhood, the life lessons, the wisdom
00:07:21.760 has been a boon to my children who are calm and cool.
00:07:27.000 Lila Rose made $271,000 in 2022 from her nonprofit, Live Action, and $375,000 in 2023.
00:07:37.460 That's a 100K raise.
00:07:39.100 By the way, Live Action was in a $478,000 deficit for 2023.
00:07:47.880 Oh, I should have brought that up.
00:07:49.400 We just ran out of time.
00:07:50.540 And not panickers and have a wisdom about them that I think you kind of get through osmosis 0.99
00:07:55.940 and maybe some genetics, but they're in a very good place, I think, in part, thanks to the
00:08:00.880 fact that I was, it's not age related for everybody, but for me, I didn't reach that place in my life
00:08:06.920 until I was older.
00:08:08.300 And unfortunately, it wasn't planned this way because I didn't meet my husband until we were
00:08:12.660 35. But unfortunately, and believe me, I think about it all the time, it means that my children
00:08:18.900 and I have a shorter runway together. And I hate that fact. I, it haunts me. I'm so grateful that I
00:08:26.960 have them at all.
00:08:27.720 Choices and trade-offs. Life's about choices and trade-offs.
00:08:31.440 You know, unlike so many women who weren't this fortunate, but I hate the fact that every time we
00:08:36.540 talk about their lives, I'm calculating, you know, it's his age plus 42. That's what I'll be.
00:08:42.660 You know, when my youngest has his children and boy, my kids better have kids young if they want 0.93
00:08:49.060 me to be part of that child's life at all. If they want, if I, if I get to be a grandparent.
00:08:53.640 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
00:08:59.760 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
00:09:08.680 father, he really lived out the, you could say the trad dream. Like a lot of these people on the
00:09:16.200 internet, they'll say they like live trad, but my dad actually did it. Like they got married young,
00:09:21.520 had kids in their twenties. My dad's older than my mom by five years.
00:09:33.180 Granted, we did have a nanny, but other than that, I just met like the 10 kids, you know,
00:09:40.560 whatever. I'm not saying they were trad, but it's funny. Cause you always hear these podcasters say
00:09:46.720 like have kids, have more kids. And I was always told to like, my dad was like, yeah,
00:09:53.380 this is going to be tiring. Enjoy like not having them while you don't have them. But to be fair,
00:09:59.780 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.
00:10:07.260 You know, like would I have traded my career building and doing the things that I love?
00:10:13.980 Just say, no, you wouldn't, you wouldn't trade it. You love it. Move on.
00:10:18.500 I was a lawyer for the first 10 years. And then I switched to journalism.
00:10:22.300 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
00:10:27.460 my life at 22 and I rejected him, and then we went and married different people and refound each other
00:10:32.500 at 35, that would be. Yeah. She got a provider guy for the second half of life. She was getting dug
00:10:38.460 out by commentators. I'm sure. It'd be really painful, but I don't have that regret. We didn't
00:10:44.280 meet until the time I think God brought us together. And for me, that was the time that's
00:10:49.900 when I was ready. I was ready to not downshift in my career exactly, but to make compromises in my
00:10:56.280 career that I hadn't been prior to that. And I was fully committed to devoting myself to motherhood
00:11:01.420 in a way I never had been before. And some of it was born of the intense love that I had for my
00:11:06.440 husband and still have, which my kids were born into this swath of like truly mad romantic love
00:11:12.420 that they're products of and, and are immersed in every day, which is probably the best medicine
00:11:18.040 for them. So I have no regrets about how I did it, but I also acknowledge it's not all roses and
00:11:25.560 unicorns. There are downsides to doing it the way I did. Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide
00:11:31.920 supporting everyone from established. First time in human history, young people had excess money to
00:11:37.680 spend and could be, you know, marketed out. We, we, we tend to construe, especially in popular culture.
00:11:46.880 Yeah. She doesn't regret it because she hit the buzzer beater.
00:11:52.000 Would you regret it? I mean, she gets to talk for a living,
00:11:54.320 make millions of dollars and be a wife and a mother.