Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - June 20, 2023


Ep 825 ｜ Dystopia Update： Synthetic Embryos, Frozen Brothers & Rented Wombs ｜ Guest： Libby Emmons


Episode Stats

Length

58 minutes

Words per Minute

164.36137

Word Count

9,637

Sentence Count

559

Misogynist Sentences

24

Hate Speech Sentences

37


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Last week, scientists from the University of Cambridge and Caltech announced that they have
00:00:05.080 created synthetic human embryos. What are these creatures? What are the ethical and moral
00:00:11.740 implications of a creation like this? Today, Libby Emmons, my guest, the editor-in-chief for
00:00:19.040 the Postmillennial, will analyze the ethics behind not only a development like this, but
00:00:26.900 reproductive technology in general. We've got several stories that demonstrate how dystopian
00:00:33.640 we are getting when it comes to the creation, the reproduction, the gestation of human beings.
00:00:40.700 These are existential, fundamental questions, issues that Christians must have an answer for
00:00:49.500 and think through thoroughly and biblically. Absolutely fascinating conversation with Libby
00:00:55.400 that I know you guys are really going to like. This episode is brought to you by our friends at
00:01:00.900 Good Ranchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com. Use code Allie at checkout. That's GoodRanchers.com. Code Allie.
00:01:15.840 Libby, thanks so much for joining us again. Loved having you last time. Everyone loved it. So I
00:01:21.700 wanted to have you back to talk about all these dystopian, reproductive, crazy stories. Not just
00:01:26.820 that. Also, if we have time, we'll get into this crazy ACLU story of them lamenting the plight of
00:01:34.820 this rapist, murderous prisoner who apparently wasn't afforded the transition that he desperately
00:01:41.040 needed. So if we have time, we'll get into that kind of stuff, too. But let's start with the dystopian
00:01:45.380 reproductive stuff, which you really specialize in. I saw the story the other day. This is according to
00:01:50.820 the Guardian Daily Mail, synthetic human embryos created using stem cells. So scientists from the
00:01:58.800 University of Cambridge in the California Institute of Technology, Caltech, announced last week that
00:02:03.960 they have created synthetic human embryos using stem cells in what they call groundbreaking advance
00:02:08.380 that sidesteps the need for the need for eggs and sperm. Now, this is not happening or this is not
00:02:16.900 probably going to lead to right now implanting these synthetic embryos into a woman's womb.
00:02:27.280 It says when the researchers used mouse cells to develop synthetic mouse embryos, the synthetic
00:02:31.620 embryos appeared almost identical to natural embryos. However, when they implanted the synthetic embryos,
00:02:36.880 they did not develop into live animals. So there's still a lot of research going on there. But the fact
00:02:42.940 that this is even happening, that we're trying to create these, I don't even know exactly what you
00:02:47.700 would call them, synthetic human beings, that in itself is disturbing to me. What's your take on the
00:02:53.760 story? Well, I would say that they are not human beings in the event that a creature develops without
00:03:00.980 having been made from an egg and sperm, a human egg and sperm. That is not a human being. That is a creation
00:03:08.520 made by human beings as human beings declaring themselves to be gods and to be able to create
00:03:15.540 beings that, you know, perhaps resemble ourselves. So that's exactly what I would call that. I do
00:03:22.180 wonder if we're going to get to a point where these synthetic non-human creations do develop into
00:03:30.240 beings. That would be really quite an interesting thing as it is right now when we
00:03:38.460 develop embryos in a lab, which certainly can be done. There's a 14-day rule. You're only allowed
00:03:45.260 to develop them up to 14 days. And that is due to ethical concerns. I have a lot of ethical concerns,
00:03:52.540 though, about the potential creation of non-human beings, creating our own replacements, perhaps,
00:03:58.940 or creating a subclass of citizens. How would they be treated? What would they be used for? Would
00:04:06.180 they be viewed as equal to us? Would they be viewed as subservient? Would they be viewed as
00:04:12.540 greater and better than us? These are a lot of questions that human beings, as we stand right
00:04:18.360 now on this earth, are not even remotely prepared to answer. We're not even prepared to answer these
00:04:24.200 questions when it comes to robots, when it comes to artificial intelligence, because we've lost the
00:04:30.200 definition of really anything, but certainly the definition of what it means to be human,
00:04:34.740 what it means to have innate human value. Of course, that concept in itself is widely debated,
00:04:40.620 especially when it comes to abortion and to euthanasia. And we've lost the definition of male
00:04:46.580 and female. So it makes sense that we would also lose the definition of what it actually means to be
00:04:51.000 human and what distinguishes a human from an animal and real intelligence from artificial intelligence.
00:04:56.880 You kind of already see this happening. I mean, you see this in the rise of so-called sex robots.
00:05:02.820 You see this in the rise of people developing some kind of relationships with artificial intelligence,
00:05:08.860 people saying that we should bring on the robots, that they're going to be a part of us. So even with
00:05:16.520 beings that don't look like us, that aren't even remotely human, that don't really have any human
00:05:22.240 characteristics beyond just being able to regurgitate things that humans say, we're already starting to see
00:05:28.620 a failure of distinction between us and them. I can't even imagine how complicated and muddy that's going
00:05:35.360 to be. Say if one day, one of these synthetic embryos is implanted in a human being, and it results in a life
00:05:43.680 birth of something that resembles a human sounds like a human has some, I don't even, I honestly,
00:05:50.220 this is beyond my understanding, but it has some kind of emotional capacity, has the capacity for
00:05:58.140 pain, has the capacity for communication. I mean, as someone who would know the difference between that
00:06:05.740 synthetic being and a real being, it would be very difficult to not feel compassion for that person,
00:06:12.720 for that baby, what looks like a baby. So I really don't know how in the world we're going to
00:06:19.540 distinguish via law, via perspective, the difference between us and them, if this does continue to go on.
00:06:27.860 Yeah. And I think we can also look to our science fiction and our speculative fiction to give us some
00:06:32.820 indication of the potential pitfalls. We see that in Battlestar Galactica, for sure, we see that.
00:06:41.680 A movie Blade Runner with, what is it, Harrison Ford, we see it in that film as well, this concept of
00:06:48.140 beings that are not human, that were created by humans, and then live alongside us, and we don't
00:06:55.000 know how to treat them. And they, in many cases, don't know how to treat us. Are they better than us?
00:07:01.360 Are they subservient to us? These are huge questions. We see it in Star Trek also, when they develop
00:07:06.500 conscious androids. And I think that we need to address these questions finally. And as a society,
00:07:14.040 I don't know that we are united enough to actually do that, but there are a lot of concerns. And yes,
00:07:20.960 we would look at these beings as, we would look at them with compassion because we are human beings.
00:07:27.900 We look at everything with compassion. That is a huge component of how we go about our lives.
00:07:35.020 It's very difficult when we abandon that compassion, and that's when we start to lose
00:07:39.780 meaning and hope and optimism, is when we release ourselves from the consideration for our fellow
00:07:47.620 human beings. But these would not be human beings. These would be creatures created by human beings.
00:07:52.980 We would essentially be their gods, right? We would replace God for these creatures who have
00:07:59.160 absolutely no connection to God. They would not have been created by God. They would not have a
00:08:05.220 spark of life given by God. They would have all of those things given by human beings. Are human beings
00:08:11.800 ready to be gods to a subclass of creation that may or may not possess our innate qualities towards
00:08:22.980 empathy and compassion and kindness? Are we prepared to make a value system for them that is cohesive?
00:08:31.680 What would that look like? As it is in our society, we have so devalued human life. We see constant
00:08:38.860 overdoses all over the country. No one really cares about these people. We see the destruction of youth
00:08:45.660 with the lies about gender, and they are being coming sterilized by doctors and a medical system that
00:08:53.120 actually claims to be doing that based on compassion. We have euthanasia, where even in Canada, you have people
00:08:59.900 arguing that perhaps poverty is a good enough reason to seek to end your life because it's just too difficult to
00:09:06.120 survive when you are broke. So what does this mean? If we are not valuing ourselves, will we value some creation
00:09:14.620 that we have made? Yeah, I'm just not sure. I think that it were these creatures to evolve into grow into
00:09:25.600 um, human looking creations, human looking beings. I don't know that we have the capacity, um, to, I don't think we have
00:09:35.920 the capacity to handle that.
00:09:37.220 Well, we already see, as you just listed, all of the ways that human beings are already trying to
00:09:58.380 be God. We've already determined, we collectively, of course, you and I disagree with this, but the
00:10:03.680 God of self for most people has replaced the God of scripture. That is actually why people believe that
00:10:09.060 you can be self-defining, that you can take all forms of reproduction into your own hands, that you
00:10:14.480 can rearrange the family, you can redefine sexuality or marriage or gender to your own liking, because this
00:10:22.120 is all about what adults want or what people want. Um, autonomy and happiness and personal fulfillment
00:10:30.960 are more important today in our society than anything else. Certainly you can put yourself
00:10:37.680 in your wants before you can put the needs and the well-beings or before the needs and well-beings of
00:10:43.740 other, uh, of other people. And so I think about this and this is going to sound maybe conspiratorial,
00:10:52.120 but knowing what we know, I mean, it would have sounded conspiratorial a few years ago to say
00:10:56.700 that something like a synthetic embryo could ever even come into existence. But if these are,
00:11:03.220 if these are human-like creatures that are really just objects, they really are actually this time
00:11:09.800 clumps of clumps of cells in a way, as you said, they don't have souls. They're not made in the image
00:11:15.560 of God. And so they're going to be used. I mean, what would, what would stop the powers that be
00:11:23.020 from multiplying as many of these synthetic non-human creatures as possible who maybe have
00:11:30.720 the same physical capacity, uh, as everyone else? What's stopping them from multiplying and then
00:11:36.960 military, uh, militarizing them for any purpose. They're going to be used for all sorts of objectification.
00:11:43.240 They could be used for sexual gratification. They could be used for, uh, profit. If you're talking
00:11:49.620 about different kinds of trafficking, sex trafficking, but they could also be used to
00:11:54.920 carry out whatever purpose, whatever, uh, is the will of the people in charge. And again,
00:12:01.980 this sounds crazy. This sounds like some far off dystopian novel, but this is what technology
00:12:08.640 is. Technology can be very good, but it cannot, it can only answer the question of, can we,
00:12:14.720 it can never answer the question of should we, and because we have too few people who will ask
00:12:21.840 that question who don't even understand the concept of should or shouldn't anymore. Because again,
00:12:27.020 if you don't believe in God, if you don't believe in a transcendent moral order, what is should or
00:12:31.660 should we really the only question you have is can or can't we. Um, so that's what, that's what I worry
00:12:36.840 about. Technology can be great, but the people that are developing it have to have a moral compass to be
00:12:42.760 able to answer the question of should. And so, so far, what we've seen is that they don't.
00:12:49.500 That's correct. Yeah, we do not, we do not see them having any real ethical concerns. Even if they
00:12:56.040 think they have ethical concerns, they're moving ahead with these experiments. They've convinced
00:12:59.820 themselves that the benefits far outweigh the negatives. And we see that too, with something like
00:13:06.180 neural link, um, that at its, at its, um, you know, sort of foundation, the idea is that it would
00:13:12.760 really help disabled people and it for sure would help disabled people, but there are so many, uh,
00:13:19.640 negatives associated with it and what could be done and mind control and all of these things.
00:13:25.620 And you talk about how it looks like a far off dystopian novel or a dystopian society, dystopian film.
00:13:31.620 And we have covered this as a society, we have fully covered this. We've covered the militarization
00:13:38.280 of manufactured beings in star Wars. It's a, in the clone Wars, right? We see what they, what they,
00:13:45.200 the imagination comes up with in those cases. We've seen what happens. Uh, Ian Forster wrote,
00:13:51.900 the machine stops in something like 1918 that covers what happens when we turn all of our, um,
00:14:01.200 capability over to a machine to have a machine do things for us in that, in that short novel novella,
00:14:07.420 you can look at it and you could replace some of the terms like machine with Siri or Alexa,
00:14:13.000 and it would make perfect sense. You could replace view screen with laptop and it still makes perfect
00:14:18.760 sense. Um, in that story, the machine comes up with, uh, uh, romantic matches for people. You could
00:14:25.740 just call it, I don't know, Tinder or match or what have you. It still would make perfect sense if you
00:14:31.520 just replaced the terminology that Forrester used with what we have today. Um, but the, the real
00:14:38.000 concern too, is as we're talking about, we are in a relativist culture. Western culture is not only
00:14:44.180 relativist, uh, has no understanding of should or shouldn't or ought or ought not as our philosophers,
00:14:50.720 you know, have talked about. And instead we have this perspective that if the technology exists,
00:14:57.440 it must be used. We must see it through. And I think that for a lot of people,
00:15:04.440 this isn't going to have a deep impact on their lives because it's tech, the technology is expensive,
00:15:11.400 it's distant. Um, but we've seen also that the kind of tech that we've used in the reproductive
00:15:19.820 industry, which is what we really should be calling it has disseminated down. And a lot of it is now
00:15:25.900 commonplace. And these things that start off as very distant do bleed into our understanding of what
00:15:33.020 it means to be a human being, what it means to live in a society with one another. And it starts to
00:15:38.860 affect our value system. And it's so important, I think, for people to understand what their values
00:15:46.620 are, understand the difference between right and wrong, understand how to make good decisions and
00:15:53.780 to constantly be examining your beliefs so that you understand what you believe and why, and what that
00:16:00.360 means to you in terms of the value of life. A lot of this stuff that we're seeing, the reproductive
00:16:06.540 technology that's coming by, the scientific developments where we could then, uh, potentially
00:16:12.540 experiment on these beings. Let's say they do feel pain, et cetera. We're going to be running scientific
00:16:19.100 experiments on them. I don't know if that is ethical either, but we really need to understand what we
00:16:25.160 believe and why express that and understand it. So that let's say we do end up with a bunch of creatures,
00:16:33.740 we're going to need to give them a value system and we're going to need to use our values and our
00:16:41.000 morality in order to understand how to treat them ethically, because it could become a slave race.
00:16:48.880 Totally. And, and, and you can see how this, you can see how this all makes sense from a materialist
00:16:54.480 perspective that we are just all, we all developed from star, but a stardust. I almost said Starbucks.
00:17:00.660 That'd be crazy. Well, stardust is just as crazy. It's just as wild of an assertion that, you know,
00:17:07.180 the evolutionists claim that we all came from stardust. We are all clumps of cells, whether
00:17:12.500 we're in the womb or out of the womb, we're just cosmic accidents. We're just balls of material
00:17:17.280 and matter. Like we don't have any intrinsic value. We don't have souls. There's no God that created us
00:17:26.180 that tells us who we are and gave us a purpose. And so from that perspective, you could understand
00:17:32.120 both how someone would justify creating these synthetic human beings because they would justify
00:17:37.600 it, how we justify all kinds of technology. Well, it can make one person happy. Think about how it
00:17:42.920 could help infertile couples. Think about how, how great it could be if maybe these synthetic human
00:17:49.320 beings were used as victims of crimes instead of real human beings. Again, like that, that's a,
00:17:55.920 that's a problem. That's a problem there that doesn't actually solve the issue because if you're
00:18:02.100 failing to distinguish between a synthetic human being and a real human being, because you don't
00:18:09.240 actually believe that we have souls or that we have intrinsic value, that's not going to stop the
00:18:16.300 abuse of real human beings. It's just going to justify it further because again, the lines are
00:18:23.120 just blurred. If these people are objects, why aren't we objects too? And so it's so crazy how our
00:18:29.400 disagreements today, it seems like, oh, our disagreements today are so much more complicated
00:18:33.260 than they used to be. They're so much more complex than they used to be. We used to have just,
00:18:38.160 we used to have more, you know, more simple disagreements, but really that's not true.
00:18:43.000 Our disagreements today are much simpler and much more fundamental and much more black and white
00:18:49.720 than they were say 20 years ago. We are disagreeing on the most fundamental existential things today
00:18:57.320 that yes, we used to all share a common view of them. But today we're asking the basic questions
00:19:02.840 that our parents did not feel like they had to teach us because they were so obvious. What is male?
00:19:08.260 What is female? Do gametes matter? Does your sex actually matter? Can you self-define? And now we're
00:19:14.520 even going even more fundamental than that, that what is a human? What is existence? Like what is a
00:19:21.760 body? Like what does it mean to have sentience? What does it mean to have a consciousness? Why do any of
00:19:27.120 these things matter? Which is why I'd say like to me, all these battles actually go back to Genesis one
00:19:33.460 and why ultimately, ultimately it is a theological conversation that we're having. Who do you think
00:19:41.460 is in charge? Is it us or is it at the very least a higher power? So it's, it's like, it's big,
00:19:47.460 deep stuff that we are battling here. Yeah, I agree with you. It is big, deep stuff. And this is the
00:19:54.020 stuff that not only have our theologians been asking since, you know, Genesis one, since, you know,
00:19:59.300 the dawn of time really, but our philosophers have been asking these questions as well. And we had
00:20:04.180 the entire philosophical deconstructionist movement that sought to unravel the building blocks of
00:20:11.360 reality. And that has now been done on a very wide scale. We ask what a woman is, we ask what a human
00:20:20.820 being is. These are things that philosophers would, you know, consider and then get made fun of on Monty
00:20:26.400 Python for having done so. But we have essentially deconstructed the building blocks of our reality.
00:20:34.180 And now we don't know how to put them back together. Sometimes I think that we spent the 20th century
00:20:40.120 building our own Tower of Babel. We hit the, you know, late 90s, we ended up with this pinnacle of
00:20:48.000 civilization where we seem to understand everything. We had a colorblind society, there was shockingly
00:20:53.600 little racism. There was an incredible amount of equality between the sexes. Women could make
00:20:59.620 choices about staying home or going to work. Both of those things were understood as valuable.
00:21:06.080 And then we hit the 21st century and the whole thing came crashing down around us. And now we're
00:21:11.520 running off speaking different languages. We don't know how to communicate and we don't have a shared
00:21:15.720 value system anymore. We don't have a shared culture. When you talk to your friends about what shows
00:21:21.460 they're watching, half the time, I don't even have the same subscription. I don't even know where to
00:21:25.620 find those shows. I've never heard of it before. You know, and so, so who are we if we are not
00:21:32.080 cohesive and we cannot define ourselves, our existence or our culture? These are sort of
00:21:38.540 terrifying questions. And I think that it's good that you're asking them and really digging into it.
00:21:43.960 But I don't know that, you know, the thing that the thing that I find the most terrifying,
00:21:49.320 honestly, is looking at my son and his friends and seeing what they're really up against.
00:21:55.000 They're going to have to figure all of this stuff out and try and understand their own intrinsic value.
00:22:01.200 And to a certain extent, they're going to have to decide that they have value. They're going to have
00:22:05.760 to decide that life has meaning. They're going to have to just make it up. Even with religion,
00:22:13.280 you know, the kids are learning religion. My son is, but he has doubts and the kids all have doubts
00:22:20.180 and they look around and it's very hard to just assume that life has meaning and value when you see
00:22:26.980 how wretchedly we treat each other and how little, you know, how little faith we have in humanity itself
00:22:36.400 to the point where we're creating things to replace us, creating creatures. What is that even,
00:22:45.260 what could that even be? Yeah, I think that we really do need to need to consider it. I don't know
00:22:51.020 how though, like Ali, how would you recommend that society come together and actually address
00:22:58.240 questions in a cohesive way? I don't think that there is a conversation that can be had about ethics
00:23:06.740 until honestly, I know that maybe it seems like I'm simplifying this too much, but I really,
00:23:14.020 because I like explaining things in the most simple terms possible. And I like thinking about
00:23:18.300 things in the simplest terms possible so that I can understand and then, and then, um, you know,
00:23:23.800 really grasp them and try to teach them to someone else. So that, that brings me to always go back.
00:23:29.980 Like sometimes I'll have a thought and I'll think, how did, why am I thinking about that? And then I'll
00:23:34.540 have to trace it back to, oh yeah, that one thing happened or it goes back to that or whatever it is.
00:23:39.860 And as I'm having these conversations, I'm like, okay, how did we get here? Okay. We redefined male
00:23:44.240 and female. We redefined marriage. We redefined like what it means to be whatever it is. It all goes back
00:23:50.460 to some kind of redefining and postmodernism. And then it brings me all the way back to the garden
00:23:55.180 where Eve was asked, okay, but did God really say, did God really say, and immediately she exchanged
00:24:03.320 the God that she knew for the God of self. She decided, I want to be like God. And so I'm not sure
00:24:10.340 that any like ethical conversation that we have about what human beings are, like what defines our value
00:24:17.200 you can be had without at least an acknowledgement that we are not the highest power
00:24:22.920 and authority. Even if we don't agree on the canon of scripture, even if we don't agree on all the
00:24:30.220 different theological points about creation or about scripture in general, the biblical narrative
00:24:38.720 of redemption in Christ, which of course I think is central. But if we cannot at least agree that there
00:24:44.600 is a transcendent power. There is a universal moral order. There is an objective reality and morality.
00:24:51.800 Maybe we disagree on some of these things, but there is a standard and a standard bearer.
00:24:56.980 If we cannot agree on that, then we can't agree on anything else because what is right and wrong?
00:25:03.480 What is meaning? What is transcendence? What is innate human value? What is innate anything?
00:25:09.300 Innate means that it was implanted in you, not just that it was passed down by evolution,
00:25:13.540 because that's so malleable. So yeah, like if we can't agree on that fundamental thing that we were
00:25:19.260 created, um, then honestly, I don't see how we can come together because every time I do ask an
00:25:26.980 atheist who there are a lot of atheists that I agree with, but when I ask, but why, why do you believe
00:25:35.780 that? Where does that come from? I have never, ever gotten a good answer. The most that I've gotten is
00:25:40.520 because, because it is, or because it's obvious. Um, so yeah, that, that, I mean, that's my answer
00:25:46.980 to that. It's not an easy answer, uh, because I don't know how we get there, but if you think that
00:25:52.780 you're the highest form of authority, which we know that at least everyone at the world economic
00:25:56.940 forum does, they sure do. Yeah. Then like, I, I don't even know how we proceed.
00:26:03.080 Yeah. It's interesting. You mentioned atheists because I asked this question of atheists as well,
00:26:10.020 and it's sort of like their entire, because is the Judeo-Christian worldview and they think they
00:26:18.600 can just pull the bottom out and that it will still, it will still stand. And it, it doesn't
00:26:24.460 actually stand without that. Okay. Um, we can talk about just this story, just the subject the
00:26:43.040 whole time, but I want to get your reaction to this TikTok video that's going around, um, this
00:26:48.620 girl, she's doing her makeup and I won't explain that. I'll just allow her to explain this very
00:26:53.380 interesting situation that she's in as an IVF baby who still has siblings that are on ice.
00:27:00.700 I am an IVF baby. And so is my sister. My sister is three years younger than me,
00:27:06.160 but technically we were from the same batch. If you will, my parents actually still have some
00:27:13.180 embryos from the exact same batch frozen because they wanted two kids. The first two times were
00:27:17.860 successful, but the doctor had extracted, I don't know how many, so I don't know how many embryos are
00:27:22.820 left, but there are some of my twins per se still sitting in a lab alive and frozen. Tell me why
00:27:30.900 it has always been my desire ever since I knew that to, you know, grow up, get married, didn't plan on
00:27:38.440 getting divorced, but get married again, maybe eventually and have my kids with my partner,
00:27:42.940 but eventually also go through the implant process myself and give birth to one of my twin embryos.
00:27:54.400 I just would want to know, especially if it was a boy, what a little boy sibling of me was like,
00:28:01.480 and to bring that baby into the world. And I'm just so curious.
00:28:05.940 Okay. Tell me your initial thoughts on that.
00:28:10.540 She doesn't know why she was born. She was chosen by a scientist to be born. Totally random. No reason
00:28:19.840 to believe that there was any sort of higher power involved, even in her conception, perhaps in the
00:28:25.520 building blocks that she came from, the sperm and the egg, but certainly her conception was at the whim
00:28:31.300 of her parents and the scientists that created her. I think that that must be a really weird place
00:28:38.860 to be. It obviously is. She's, uh, she's concerned about the, the siblings that were never born, that will
00:28:45.140 never see life outside of a Petri dish. And, uh, I think I want, I wonder if she has a little bit of
00:28:51.560 survivor's guilt about that.
00:28:54.100 Yeah. It's crazy to think, I mean, she acknowledges they are alive. They are alive. They are my siblings.
00:29:01.300 They are my twins, she says, and they are there, but she seems to also have no thought as to how
00:29:09.120 this would affect her brother. And, or if she, you know, if she implanted this little human being
00:29:15.980 and to say, well, I'm kind of your mom because you were implanted into me and I, who's going to
00:29:23.340 take care of that? Is she planning on taking care of her little brother? But you are also,
00:29:27.180 you're actually my sibling. Now, all of us have this intrinsic longing to know from where we come,
00:29:36.680 like, who do we get our traits from? What is our purpose? I think there is something that affects us
00:29:42.160 about how we were conceived, like how that process went down. If we were wanted, you know, were we made
00:29:49.860 in love between our mother and father? Like all of those things do actually form us and cause us to
00:29:57.080 think about ourselves in different ways. And so she's not even thinking how this works out ethically
00:30:03.720 or how this would impact her little brother who may very well want to be raised by his parents.
00:30:10.420 He might long for a mother and father. Would she have the same bond towards her sibling
00:30:16.060 that she would towards a child that she knows came from her and is actually her child? Like we think
00:30:24.600 that all of that humans are just endlessly malleable, that we're just products of nurture,
00:30:30.220 that we have no nature, we have no innate needs, that we can just be produced and gestated and birthed
00:30:39.640 and raised however adults want us to be processed and raised, and that it has no impact on us
00:30:46.200 whatsoever. That's just not true. It's crazy just how much we prioritize our own wants, even our own
00:30:53.980 curiosity. She's just curious. She just wants to know what her brother's going to look like.
00:30:57.120 She wants to know what it's like.
00:30:58.300 Yeah. We just prioritize our own curiosities and our own fleeting wants over someone else's
00:31:03.920 long-term well-being. Yeah, that's weird. And it's also weird that she would have this desire
00:31:10.440 to further her parents' reproductive material in addition to her own. That seems kind of weird to
00:31:18.240 me. So weird. But I do think that, yeah, yeah, it's very weird. I wouldn't want that. But at the same
00:31:24.620 time, is IVF essentially manufacturing abortions? Is that what we're doing when we engage in this
00:31:32.980 practice? Because that is pretty disturbing. It is disturbing how many of these embryos are sitting
00:31:39.980 in labs. What can you do with them? You can't throw it away. You can't necessarily keep it there forever.
00:31:46.000 They're not all going to be implanted. It's a very confusing conundrum. Yeah. And I think, you know,
00:31:53.420 she's feeling that, this woman in this video, imagining her siblings all sitting on shelves and how
00:31:59.400 any of them could have been born instead of her. It was pretty random, I guess, that she was even
00:32:05.900 born at all. Who knows how many there are? And there are these from countless IVF. I mean, we all know
00:32:11.900 people who had their children through this method. I think it would be really disturbing. But we do
00:32:19.880 always want to know where we came from. And we want to know who our parents were. That would be disturbing
00:32:25.500 for a child who was born to his sister more than 30 years after he was conceived.
00:32:32.500 Right. And what would that person be like? Would they have the capability? If you take an embryo from
00:32:37.900 at this point, I think you could probably go back 50 years, right? Could you? Maybe 30,
00:32:44.000 maybe 35 years, depending on how long this goes on. Right. But would a human being that was conceived
00:32:49.580 in the middle of the, or in the late part of the last century, have the tools to survive? Are we
00:32:56.800 evolving in ways that we are not even aware of? Would it make sense to plop a person who was conceived in
00:33:03.460 1985 into, you know, 2038 or what have you? Right. There are so many questions. And look there,
00:33:12.960 I mean, there are just questions about IVF in general, not just this particular very bizarre case,
00:33:18.700 but again, anytime technology takes us from what's natural to what's possible, we have the obligation
00:33:26.400 to ask, is this moral? Is this ethical? Sometimes it totally is. Sometimes the technology takes us from
00:33:31.980 what's natural to what's possible. We can fly. It's totally moral to fly. That's great. You know,
00:33:37.340 it can access in a variety of ways, but not always. Again, it goes from can to should. And you mentioned
00:33:45.160 like, why was this particular embryo picked? I'm sure that a lot of IVF babies sometimes ask that
00:33:50.200 question, but the fact is sometimes they're, I mean, not even sometimes, I would say very often,
00:33:55.280 I heard this with Paris Hilton recently, there's a eugenics process here. There's a TikTok that I saw
00:34:01.080 circulating of people who did IVF specifically, a couple who did IVF specifically for the purpose of
00:34:07.340 being able to analyze each embryo. They knew, I guess, about all the different characteristics
00:34:12.980 that embryos may have to determine, well, of course, whether they want a boy or a girl. That's
00:34:17.940 very common, very common for couples who use IVF to say, oh yeah, throw away the girls, throw away
00:34:24.540 the boys, or we want a boy and a girl. You can throw away all the extraneous ones. But this couple
00:34:29.840 wanted to see all the different characteristics that their embryo had according to their DNA, and they
00:34:34.960 would be choosing the embryos based on that. So of course, they're not going to pick the one that may
00:34:39.440 have Down syndrome. Of course, they're not going to pick the weaker one. Maybe they're not going to pick
00:34:43.260 the one that has brown eyes, whatever it is. There is a eugenics process that is very common, not in every
00:34:50.440 IVF case, of course. Some people implant, you know, all the embryos that they have, although that's
00:34:55.700 extremely rare. But very often there is. There was a same-sex couple, this was reported last year, a year
00:35:01.400 ago, that is still, I think they're still suing a fertilization clinic in Pasadena because they
00:35:09.080 wanted a boy. And it turns out... And they got a girl, right? Yes, the female embryo was implanted.
00:35:14.860 Well, they're so livid that they were going to have to raise a female that they are actually
00:35:19.660 suing this fertility clinic. I see this, I'm sorry, but with a lot of same-sex couples who are like,
00:35:25.940 no, we want to raise a boy or we want to raise a girl. There's so many questions that, again,
00:35:34.000 go unanswered when it comes to IVF because the only thing that we're told is important
00:35:38.080 is adults' happiness. Yeah, it's this whole thing about your desire is more important than anything
00:35:45.660 else. And we have seen this repeatedly throughout our recent past, the spate of divorces, right?
00:35:53.360 There were so many divorces in the 70s, or at least there were in my family. And I think about this
00:35:58.040 because both of my grandparents, sets of grandparents got divorced before I was born or
00:36:04.240 right around that same time in the mid-70s. And the idea was that my grandfathers, who I loved very
00:36:11.960 much, you know, but they believed that their own desire to go off and be with someone else was more
00:36:18.080 important than maintaining their families and staying with the woman that they married and who
00:36:23.640 had, you know, conceived and bore all of their children. So this is not a new thing, this idea that our
00:36:30.220 own personal desire is more important than anything else and is paramount. And it is not paramount. Our own
00:36:38.060 personal desire is not as important at all. And in fact, happiness and joy are totally different
00:36:44.080 things as well. You see, you know, people talk about how they wish they hadn't had children because it
00:36:49.660 ruins their happiness and they completely discount the joy that they get from that. And there's also
00:36:55.080 as a, as a parent, there is the joy and amazement at the unexpected in your child, at having expectations
00:37:03.480 for your child that are about the content of their character and not their career achievements or any of
00:37:10.340 the other things. I know when I look at my son and some of the things that he comes out with, and I
00:37:15.980 am absolutely amazed. I could not conceive of the damage that I would do as a parent, deciding that
00:37:23.200 I know what's going to be best for this individual, or even knowing, you know, deciding that I know what's
00:37:30.460 best to bring into the world at a certain time. We don't know that, right? I mean, I really like the idea
00:37:37.400 and I, I love the idea that God gives us the children that are for us, that God gives us the parents that
00:37:43.960 are for us. My son, when he was, you know, three years old or something like that, told me that he picked
00:37:49.500 me and his dad before he was born. And I was like, okay, well, I appreciate it very much. You know, thank you
00:37:55.860 for doing that. But parents don't know, they, they don't know what they need. They don't know what the world
00:38:02.140 needs. They don't know what their children need before they are born. You have to accept your child and
00:38:08.700 grow with them and guide them into adulthood. I think that's really important, giving them the tools that
00:38:15.020 they need, and not assuming that your expectations are what's paramount for them. Right. It's really
00:38:21.380 disturbing, I think, that whole concept. You know, I, we think about this, even going back to, you know, I'm sure we
00:38:28.380 all thought about China's one child policy and the abortions that have resulted from that. It's really
00:38:33.400 devastating to think that as a parent, you know best the genetic makeup of your child, not just what
00:38:40.760 they should have for dinner and what they should study in school, which makes sense, but their genetic
00:38:45.600 makeup, I really think we should leave that to, you know, to a, to a higher power, to God, to decide.
00:38:58.380 Yeah, absolutely. There's, gosh, there's so many questions. There's so many questions that come
00:39:11.240 with this. And I always get this, I always get this question and I just want to, I just want to
00:39:15.640 distinguish it. People ask me, well, what's the difference between using, you know, a surrogate
00:39:20.720 in which you buy the eggs from one woman, typically, unless you're using your own eggs, you buy the eggs
00:39:25.040 from one woman, you rent the womb of another woman, you're using two women's bodies too, and then IVF.
00:39:30.980 And so you're typically choosing the embryos and then you're creating this child. What's the
00:39:35.120 difference in that? What's the difference in IVF and adoption? And I say, well, adoption, of course,
00:39:42.660 the ideal, the ideal is like, especially for looking at scripture is for a child to live with their
00:39:49.060 biological mother and father who are married. But we understand we don't live in an ideal world.
00:39:54.460 We live in a broken world. We live in an imperfect world. And so sometimes that doesn't happen.
00:39:59.100 Sometimes the dad leaves. Sometimes the parents are just incapable. They're mentally, physically,
00:40:04.280 financially, completely incapable of raising a child. Sometimes the parents die. And so sometimes
00:40:09.920 that child is already created and a broken situation happens in which we need redemption. We need
00:40:16.760 healing. And so the next best thing is for that child to be adopted. Adoption redeems in all
00:40:23.840 ready, created child, an already broken situation and heals it and makes it better through adoption.
00:40:32.740 Whereas creating a child to purposely take them away, especially if you're talking about two moms or
00:40:38.720 two dads trying to create a child artificially, you are creating a broken situation. You're creating
00:40:46.000 fatherlessness. You're creating motherlessness. You're creating, in some cases, a eugenic situation.
00:40:52.240 It's not a situation that already existed and then you redeemed it. You created the brokenness
00:40:57.220 because you wanted to. Yes. Because it was your desire. It was your happiness that was paramount.
00:41:02.040 And that's all that really mattered. That is the difference.
00:41:06.320 Yeah, that's a huge difference. I totally agree with you.
00:41:09.440 I saw this other story from the Daily Mail on Twitter that said like the number of single mothers who
00:41:14.960 are using a sperm donor and I hate that term sperm donor egg donor because they're selling it. Sperm
00:41:20.700 seller. They're using a sperm seller or maybe sometimes they're using a friend. Who knows?
00:41:25.660 And they're creating these embryos and they're freezing them and then they're implanting them
00:41:30.840 with the expectation of being a single mom. Again, because who knows why? Maybe they didn't find the
00:41:37.040 person that they wanted to marry or maybe they just put off having kids, you know, for their career.
00:41:41.920 And then they're expecting to be able to raise these fatherless kids. Again, I think that's entirely
00:41:48.940 selfish. Don't just because you have the desire to be a mom doesn't mean that that's the best case
00:41:54.860 scenario for this helpless, vulnerable human being that you're created, who I believe actually needs
00:42:00.540 a mother and a father. Yeah, this is an interesting question, too. This is something that I explored when
00:42:07.100 I was writing plays and making theater. I was commissioned to do a play at the Williamstown
00:42:12.900 Theater Festival. This was I don't know. I don't even know when it was. It was a good while ago.
00:42:18.400 Yeah. But I was working with a director, a woman who was older than me, was not married, was not in a
00:42:24.260 relationship, wanted to be a mother and was sort of tormented with this idea. Should she engage,
00:42:31.300 you know, purchase sperm and undergo that process or should she adopt or should she do nothing? And
00:42:39.080 this was really weighing heavily on her mind. So the play we discussed and decided to make was about
00:42:44.620 this idea of single motherhood by choice. And so we started exploring it. I started digging into it
00:42:51.000 and I discovered that there were cases where one sperm donor or sperm seller, as you call it,
00:42:58.140 had, you know, essentially sired dozens and dozens and dozens of children and that some of these kids
00:43:08.300 had found themselves, found each other on ancestry sites and come together and realized that they were
00:43:13.800 all from the same sperm donor. And for me, this play and these questions started raising real issues
00:43:21.320 about what does it mean to be a parent? This is before I had a child. What does what is the meaning
00:43:26.900 of life? What is humanity? Do we have responsibility for our own reproductive material? And I came to the
00:43:32.960 conclusion that, yes, yes, we have responsibility for our own reproductive material. That is important.
00:43:38.500 That is an important part of being a human being. And when we got into the first reading for this play,
00:43:43.420 the producer at Williamstown, Roger Rees, the the actor who has since passed. But he he said,
00:43:51.800 why are you writing about the meaning of life? We don't want that. We want something fun.
00:43:55.900 Why are you doing this? I was like, well, if you can engage the wrong writer. Right, right, right.
00:44:02.400 But it's interesting how that led you that led you down an interesting path, though, to think about
00:44:07.600 things you hadn't before. Yeah, it sure it sure did. And I wonder about the
00:44:13.000 you know, the men who put out their sperm all over the place. Are they, you know, happy about it? I
00:44:18.960 actually a friend of mine, I was talking to recently, had sold his sperm at a sperm bag. And he met a few
00:44:26.740 of the children that were fathered from that. And he was, he was happy. So for your weird man,
00:44:34.780 I mean, it's child, it's child abandonment. It is because I mean, it's not the same as just releasing
00:44:41.580 your sperm when you're releasing the sperm to with the purpose of creating a human being that you have
00:44:48.080 no intention of raising yourself. And it's the same way selling eggs. It's also so crazy to think about
00:44:55.080 like, okay, so you basically have to go through these very invasive fertility treatments. If you're
00:45:00.240 a woman who's selling your eggs, because they can't just take your eggs out, you have to, you know,
00:45:04.800 take all these hormones and things like that, which are very risky. A guy looks at a magazine and does
00:45:10.560 his thing. And I mean, like that. Yeah. And so I could see why there is an incentive to get paid,
00:45:18.060 you know, by, you know, a guy abandoning his children. It's it is crazy that we're creating
00:45:24.200 this epidemic of motherlessness and mother abandonment. Yeah. And I think that's weird as
00:45:32.280 a woman, I would find that very bizarre to imagine that there were children created with my genetic
00:45:37.760 material that I had absolutely no awareness of. There was a surrogate mom in the UK, I believe,
00:45:45.640 I believe it was the UK, who had gone through IVF. She didn't know who the purchaser or body renter or
00:45:55.580 what have you the client was. She didn't know who that person was, which was part of it was she wasn't
00:46:00.600 supposed to know. It turned out that I think three of the embryos took in her womb and began to gestate.
00:46:09.560 The customer did not want them all. He only wanted one and encouraged abortion, which she would not go
00:46:18.100 along with. I believe that is entirely unethical. I'm not sure if it's legal or not to make a surrogate
00:46:24.540 undergo abortion, but she would not do it. After the children were born, she figured out she found out
00:46:31.280 who the customer was, was a single man who lived with his parents. Why is a single man who lives with
00:46:38.540 his parents getting access to this kind of thing, being allowed to purchase children? And she had
00:46:46.160 absolutely no say in it. The woman who carried the children and had to let them all go. She was
00:46:53.040 tormented by this. Yes. I mean, absolutely no idea. I've heard Jennifer Law, she's talked about this,
00:46:59.360 how this is a stipulation in many surrogate contracts that says if we want you to terminate for whatever
00:47:07.940 reason, we change our mind, we separate, we get a divorce. Oh, it's a girl. We didn't want a girl.
00:47:14.040 Oh, it's twins. We didn't want twins. That in some of these cases, these surrogates are contractually
00:47:20.660 obligated. I do think it is legal, at least in some states. They're contractually obligated to go
00:47:26.480 through with the abortion, which is interesting because the same people who say my body, my choice
00:47:33.740 are typically like the biggest surrogacy advocates. So it's no longer your body,
00:47:39.440 your choice. If you sign a dotted line and are gestating, you know, a couple's baby, then because
00:47:46.620 you signed a contract, your bodily autonomy doesn't, doesn't matter. You have to abort this
00:47:52.520 child, go through with the abortion yourself. I mean, I think that there's, this probably happened
00:47:57.400 a lot more than we realize. Yeah, I think that you're right. It's interesting to, to me that while
00:48:05.300 the Supreme Court was weighing the Dobbs decision, you had so many progressive women activists going
00:48:11.960 out to the court wearing the, you know, handmaid's costume from the, the handmaid's tale that was
00:48:19.940 created from the Margaret Atwood novel. And they were, you know, they talk about laws against abortion
00:48:25.520 as forced pregnancy laws. Meanwhile, it is primarily the progressive left that are pushing
00:48:31.520 women into surrogacy that are pushing for the legalization of commercial surrogacy, you know,
00:48:38.280 in the country that are okay with the global sales and trafficking of pregnant women and babies.
00:48:48.300 And I think that that's really disturbing. The, the progressive left are not the ones who should
00:48:53.340 be wearing the handmaid's costume. It instead should be, you know, um, lower middle-class women
00:49:00.120 across the U S who are, who are wearing these handmaid's costumes because they're the ones who
00:49:05.560 are carrying the children for the Kardashians and the Hiltons and whoever else decides that,
00:49:10.800 uh, their body is just too good to carry children.
00:49:14.420 Let's look at this. Uh, let's look at this. I think it's a Tik TOK. It's a video that I saw
00:49:31.880 circulating. I've seen multiple videos like this. It's a maternity, uh, surrogate photo shoot. So
00:49:39.520 these are for those listening, this is, these are so disturbing. These are two men who have again,
00:49:45.740 bought eggs from one woman, rented the womb of another woman. And gosh, they're just so loving
00:49:51.420 and amazing that they allow, that they allowed the gestator of their child to be included
00:49:56.300 in the maternity shoot. So if this is not the handmaid's tale, I don't know what is. Here's that
00:50:02.260 video. Disgusting and disturbing in so many ways. What are your thoughts?
00:50:18.100 There's no one there for that woman. She's pregnant. She's alone. These men are far more
00:50:22.960 interested in each other than they are in her or the child that she's carrying. And I think as they
00:50:28.500 make this shoot, so we'll go their family. So we'll go their relationship with this child who is
00:50:34.720 clearly secondary, clearly an afterthought, clearly just part of the photo shoot, but not really
00:50:41.500 involved with them. They don't look at her. They touch her stomach. They don't have her involved.
00:50:47.200 She's always on the outside. And I think that that's just so devastating. How would that,
00:50:52.160 I would feel terrible in that situation. And also these men are manufacturing a motherless child.
00:50:58.500 Yeah. And the child will never know who their mother is, whether, and probably it's not this
00:51:04.700 woman either. It's some other woman. There was an episode of Radiolab. I don't know if you know this
00:51:09.960 show. It's an NPR show that was around far before podcasts, but they had an episode years ago that I
00:51:17.600 think was called Cheap White Eggs. And it was about the global trade in reproductive material that is then
00:51:26.620 used to fulfill the desires of adults who want to create children. And there was a case, there was a
00:51:36.060 couple from Israel, a gay couple from Israel where surrogacy is not illegal, not legal rather. They had
00:51:42.220 purchased eggs from Estonia, which is the home of Cheap White Eggs because there are white women there
00:51:50.220 selling their eggs for cheap. So that was part of it. They purchased the eggs from Estonia. They use
00:51:56.240 their own sperm. They hired, I believe, an Indian woman who then went to a surrogacy clinic in Nepal
00:52:06.160 because it's not legal for Indian women in India to be surrogates. And in Nepal, women aren't allowed to
00:52:12.680 be surrogates, but surrogacy is legal. So immigrant women were going to Nepal. I think I'm getting this
00:52:18.780 right. It's an old, but immigrant women were going from India to Nepal to be in surrogacy clinics and
00:52:25.120 carry the concoctions of gay couples from all over the world. Uh, in Nepal, there was at the time of
00:52:33.420 the birth, there was an earthquake. Everything went to ruins. The records were trashed. These men showed
00:52:40.080 up in Nepal to collect their children and no one could figure out whose children they were. There was
00:52:45.880 a situation. I think it was in, it was in the Midwest U S it was a French couple had come to the U S
00:52:52.280 in France. Surrogacy, not legal. French couple had come to the U S to buy the child. And the woman who
00:52:58.840 was the surrogate had to sign over the child legally to the French couple. And this process totally
00:53:07.220 triggered her and made her really freaked out that she was giving away her baby that she had carried.
00:53:13.260 Um, yeah, I think that it's, I think it's really disturbing. Yes. And we saw this with Ukraine
00:53:19.660 and reproductive material. Yes. We saw this with Ukraine that all these babies that these surrogates
00:53:24.100 birthed because they had been their rented or their wombs had been rented by typically like American and
00:53:30.100 other European couples, because again, surrogacy is not legal in a lot of places. It's, and that's
00:53:38.560 why also the surrogates in these very poor countries who are desperate, they're cheaper than
00:53:43.380 surrogates here. I mean, this is human trafficking. It's human trafficking. Just like prostitution is
00:53:48.140 technically consensual. Typically the women who are caught up in prostitution, they're desperate,
00:53:54.120 they're exploited, they're being coerced in some way. Um, so we saw that there. And also just like
00:54:00.960 with the whole argument, cause this is what I hear. Well, it's consensual. These women are choosing
00:54:04.760 to do it. It's empowering for them. First of all, I reject the idea of consent only based morality
00:54:11.740 that consent is only determinant of something being right or wrong. Look, if sure, if Cardi B consents
00:54:19.500 to objectifying herself on stage, she is choosing to do that. It's still, I believe it's still wrong
00:54:26.680 to objectify yourself, whether it's self-objectification or someone else objectifying
00:54:31.440 you, it's still wrong. We can have standards of morality that go beyond again, what someone
00:54:36.220 wants to do. Again, it goes back to the God of self versus a higher power versus the God of scripture.
00:54:44.060 Um, but I wanted to go back really quickly cause we do have to wrap it up. We're not going to have
00:54:47.380 time to talk about the transgender prisoner, at least not today, our so-called transgender, but,
00:54:52.420 um, uh, something that you said about the couple that we saw on the photo shoot is that they're
00:54:57.820 purposely creating a motherless child. I think about this all the time. People I know who were
00:55:03.220 like, Oh, yay. This couple is, you know, they're, they're creating these two children. I'm like,
00:55:09.380 but they don't like as a mom, myself, you're a mom. I know how irreplaceable I am in my kid's life,
00:55:15.680 not just because of my specific personality or specific skills, but simply because I'm a mom,
00:55:21.700 my kids go to their dad and their mom for different things. And I saw this quote by Lance Bass the
00:55:26.760 other day, you know, he's, he's gay, the guy from NSYNC. And he said, so he confessed something
00:55:31.880 that I thought was so tragic. He said, you know, I was so sad for the first year of their life because
00:55:36.640 they wouldn't cuddle with me. He said, and, uh, he said that they, they didn't want to snuggle.
00:55:42.160 They didn't want to be loving, but he said, when my mom would come over, they would immediately
00:55:47.200 just lay on, lay on her chest and just wanted to be cuddled by her. I'm like, yes, because they want
00:55:54.140 their mom. They want a mom. And you tore these kids, not just away from their own mom, but any
00:56:00.720 opportunity for a mom. Kids need their mom for healthy development. And again, just because
00:56:07.420 adults say, well, it doesn't matter. I want it. And it's homophobic to say otherwise. You know,
00:56:13.340 we're, we are taking away in a lot of cases, the healthy development of kids for the sake on the altar
00:56:20.940 of human desire, adult desire, fulfillment, which is really not as important, which is something
00:56:28.960 that you don't necessarily realize until you do become a parent is that what you want, what your
00:56:35.240 personal desires are, you know, are really not, they're really, they don't just pale in comparison
00:56:41.820 to the needs of your child, but they are practically irrelevant. They don't matter even nearly half as much
00:56:48.460 as what you're, what your kids need. You're responsible for these people and you're responsible
00:56:53.620 to the world to raise children who are kind and considerate and understand that life matters. And if
00:57:01.920 you don't do that, then we have a world full of crazy people. And that's the problem with
00:57:06.200 manufacturing orphans as they're doing with these synthetic embryos or manufacturing orphans as they
00:57:13.300 would do if they started breaking that 14 day rule or manufacturing orphans through birthing pods
00:57:20.260 or things like this or surrogates. Uh, it's cruel to women. It's cruel to children. It's, it's, um,
00:57:28.020 you know, anathema to what I think is essential and good about humanity. Um, but without any moral
00:57:36.220 cohesion, as we were talking about before, yeah, people are just going to do these crazy things and we're
00:57:42.640 going to really suffer the result of this fall. It's going to be far greater than being kicked out
00:57:48.360 of Eden. Um, I think. Yeah. Wow. Gosh, there's so, there's so much we'll have to have you back on
00:57:55.220 soon. Cause there's so many other topics like this, but as always, I found this to be a very
00:57:59.600 fascinating conversation. I hope the audience does too. Um, remind people where they can find you
00:58:04.380 cause you're writing about this stuff and talking about this stuff all over the place. So if they want
00:58:08.440 to read that, listen to that, where should they go? You can find more about these topics at the
00:58:13.900 postmillennial.com. We also are running a lot of stories at humanevents.com about issues like this
00:58:20.800 and from moms who really care. You could also subscribe to the postmillennial on Twitter at
00:58:26.040 T postmillennial and see more of what we're cooking up over there. And you can find me at Libby
00:58:32.140 Emmons on Twitter. Thank you so much, Libby. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on.
00:58:36.440 Thanks so much, Ali.