The Charlie Kirk Show - Rich, Successful, and Childless with Alex Berenson

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk show.

00:00:01.000 Alex Berenson, why are birth rates plummeting in almost every major country?

00:00:06.000 There's no easy answer to it.

00:00:07.000 There isn't.

00:00:08.000 You think you might know, and then we find another piece of data that contradicts it.

00:00:11.000 A fascinating conversation.

00:00:13.000 Finally, five minutes on why weed is really bad for you.

00:00:17.000 If you smoke weed, you should stop doing that.

00:00:19.000 And if you are a parent and your kid smokes weed, you should tell them to stop doing that.

00:00:23.000 At the very least, learn about what Alex Berenson has to say about it.

00:00:27.000 Fascinating.

00:00:28.000 We elevate marijuana as if it's this miracle catch-all drug.

00:00:32.000 Maybe it works for you.

00:00:33.000 I don't know.

00:00:34.000 But know the downsides.

00:00:35.000 Far too often, we do not tell our kids about the cost or the price of instant pleasure.

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00:01:59.000 Hello, everybody.

00:02:00.000 Very important topic with one of my favorite guests, Alex Berenson.

00:02:04.000 He's been terrific.

00:02:06.000 Alex, I want to talk to you about this piece here about having children.

00:02:10.000 It's so interesting and fascinating.

00:02:12.000 But towards the end of our conversation, I just want to rehash our marijuana discussion because you have done some of the most important scholarship.

00:02:18.000 I love talking to you about that, Alex.

00:02:20.000 We've had you on it a couple of times.

00:02:20.000 You know that.

00:02:22.000 I was at the University of Arizona and these kids' minds were blown.

00:02:25.000 I was like, you know that one of the most respected journalists in the country has done a whole book on the negative parts of marijuana.

00:02:31.000 They said there's no downsides whatsoever.

00:02:33.000 I said, you guys should, right?

00:02:35.000 Alex, I know that's not why you're here, but it's just so pervasive, that lie.

00:02:40.000 Alex, you have a great piece out, and I want to plug your sub stack, unreported truth.

00:02:44.000 Everyone should go to his sub stack and support it about birth rates, having kids.

00:02:51.000 What did you learn in the series of doing this research?

00:02:54.000 So, I mean, this is something as I write in the substack that I'm going to come back to because it's a vital issue.

00:03:03.000 And I mean, you can argue it's the most important issue, right?

00:03:06.000 You know, Elon Musk may want to take us to Mars, but right now, if you look at birth rate trends, and it's not just in the U.S. or Europe, it's sort of in every rich country, they're low and dropping.

00:03:18.000 Low, meaning below the replacement rate.

00:03:20.000 So every woman has to, on average, have slightly more than two kids, or the population will start to fall.

00:03:29.000 And actually, I remember in January talking to Elon about this, and he said, you know, the demographers make the math really complicated, but it's actually quite simple.

00:03:37.000 Look at the number of children who are born and multiply that times 85.

00:03:42.000 And, you know, that will give you, if nothing changes, the number of people a country will have in 85 years, right?

00:03:51.000 At the end of the average life of a child born today.

00:03:54.000 So a country like Taiwan, Taiwan has about 23 million people in it.

00:03:59.000 And this year, it's going to have about 130,000 children born.

00:04:03.000 So 130,000 times 85 is about 10 million.

00:04:07.000 So what that tells you is if nothing else changes and the children of Taiwan who are being born today actually have the replacement number of kids, in 85 years from now, Taiwan's population will be less than half of what it is today.

00:04:22.000 And I mean, that's really unbelievable, right?

00:04:25.000 And actually, you know, in South Korea, it's worse.

00:04:29.000 In Japan, it's nearly as bad.

00:04:31.000 In Southern Europe, it's terrible.

00:04:33.000 Northern Europe is a little bit better in terms of the rates, but they're going down there.

00:04:38.000 The U.S. is a little bit better, but we're below replacement.

00:04:41.000 But this is, it's not just, again, it's not just sort of quote unquote white wealthy countries.

00:04:46.000 It's South America is like this, countries that you wouldn't even expect.

00:04:50.000 Like Saudi Arabia, for example, is barely above replacement level.

00:04:54.000 All over the world, people are choosing not to have children.

00:04:58.000 And, you know, think about, think about Japan and Sweden and Australia and Canada and Germany.

00:05:04.000 These are countries that don't necessarily have that much in common aside from the fact that they're, you know, they're, they're, they're wealthy.

00:05:10.000 Their cultures are very different.

00:05:12.000 Their attitudes towards women in the workforce are very different.

00:05:14.000 They're, you know, their religions are different.

00:05:18.000 Their languages are different.

00:05:20.000 Their ethnicities are different.

00:05:21.000 I mean, one of the things they all have in common actually is that they're having this stunning trend towards very few kids.

00:05:28.000 So it's something that actually crosses cultures.

00:05:32.000 And if you think about, you know, what is the like, what is the ultimate biological goal of any organism?

00:05:38.000 It should be to produce, you know, reproduce to get your genes to the next generation.

00:05:42.000 Somehow, something is happening worldwide that is bigger than culture and bigger than what should be our most basic drive to reproduce.

00:05:51.000 And I do think this is an issue we have to talk about.

00:05:55.000 What do you think it is, Alex, that somebody in Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and America are all making the same choices with different cultures, different religions, different worldview, but they all are deciding to have less kids.

00:06:07.000 You know, that's what I'm going to explore over the next few months, year, you know, and maybe this turns into a book.

00:06:13.000 I don't know.

00:06:14.000 You know, certainly it generated a ton of comments on the substitute.

00:06:19.000 You know, people usually I give all my content away.

00:06:24.000 Sometimes I, you know, occasionally I make people wait a week to read a story, but to comment, you have to actually sign up.

00:06:29.000 So people and be a paid subscriber.

00:06:33.000 And people were actually, you know, deciding to sign up just so they could comment, which was striking to me.

00:06:40.000 I mean, I think there are a number of potential explanations, none of which necessarily, you know, are that compelling to me is, is it religion?

00:06:50.000 You know, maybe, but if you look at a country like Japan 50 years ago, or certainly in the aftermath of World War II, the Japanese had huge families and they were not, you know, that's not a Christian country.

00:07:01.000 You know, is it is it something to do with women's choices about, you know, workplace, you know, stress that they don't think they can have kids and so, you know, and have a meaningful career.

00:07:13.000 So they're choosing to drop out of the workplace.

00:07:15.000 Well, how come then in Northern Europe, you know, where there's a country like Finland or Sweden where there's very pro, you know, sort of what you, what the U.S. would call progressive policies in terms of keeping, you know, women's jobs, will they take six months or a year off?

00:07:31.000 Those places also have low birth rates.

00:07:32.000 Why is it that government policies don't seem to be able to turn this around?

00:07:36.000 These are, this is, these people are making, I mean, really, it's the most individual choice you can have to have children or not.

00:07:43.000 And yet it's happening everywhere.

00:07:44.000 So I don't think I have a great answer yet.

00:07:47.000 I mean, I'd love to hear what your explanation is.

00:07:50.000 Yeah, I've thought about this quite a lot the last couple of years.

00:07:54.000 And so this started during COVID, my thinking about this, because I made a couple really bad predictions during COVID, Alex.

00:08:02.000 One of the predictions I made is that the churches were not going to listen to the lockdowns, and they did.

00:08:06.000 That was one of the worst predictions I've ever made in my career.

00:08:09.000 The other prediction I made, Alex, is I said there was going to be a baby boom. 0.92

00:08:12.000 Makes sense, right?

00:08:14.000 People are locked down, nothing to do.

00:08:17.000 You're going to see a spike in the birth rate.

00:08:19.000 And we didn't.

00:08:20.000 We actually saw you could tell me.

00:08:23.000 I would say there was very, very briefly, it wasn't a boom, but it was like sort of a few months when the decline stopped, but then it picked up again with a vengeance.

00:08:35.000 Yeah.

00:08:35.000 It more than made up.

00:08:37.000 So yes.

00:08:38.000 It wasn't New York City blackout boom, right?

00:08:40.000 We're nine months after the New York City blackouts in the 1980s.

00:08:44.000 We saw, you know, like a 30%, which people are familiar with it.

00:08:47.000 It was like, I don't know, the summer of 86 or 87, there were like three or four days of rolling blackouts and people were just at home with nothing to do.

00:08:53.000 But so I thought about this and my immediate conclusion was for the first time in the species, we've now discovered something that having kids is a value.

00:09:11.000 And if you don't hold the value to want to have children, then it's not automatic is what I'm getting at.

00:09:18.000 We used to think that having kids is automatic.

00:09:20.000 It's built into the species.

00:09:22.000 Having sex might be, but now if you have the technology to have sex without having kids, a lot of people are making that choice.

00:09:32.000 Now, there's other contributing factors, but that's amazing because a decade ago, you'd say people are always going to have kids because they want kids.

00:09:39.000 They want to further their genes.

00:09:40.000 It's built into you.

00:09:42.000 But Alex, that's not necessarily the case, is it?

00:09:44.000 I mean, it doesn't seem to be.

00:09:46.000 The most positive explanation I've seen for this, I mean, you know, in sort of, I guess I would call it the least depressing explanation, although in some ways you could argue it's the most depressing explanation, is that most people, certainly in the U.S. anyway, having children is still the cultural norm. 0.91

00:10:06.000 Women still want children. 0.99

00:10:07.000 It's just that they have gotten too in love with finding the perfect partner and delaying childbirth or conception into their early to mid-30s. 0.96

00:10:19.000 And they still think it's going to be very easy.

00:10:20.000 And then it turns out a significant number of those women have a very hard time being pregnant.

00:10:25.000 What I find to be interesting is that, you know, there's a couple young ladies that send us emails.

00:10:30.000 Charlie had the hardest time, you know, having kids and we're praying on it and we're working on it.

00:10:35.000 We're working on it.

00:10:36.000 I don't know what the reason is, Alex, but the poorest countries don't have fertility problems.

00:10:41.000 Isn't that interesting?

00:10:43.000 Is that because it's 18 year olds, right?

00:10:47.000 I mean, no joke.

00:10:48.000 No, there's a lot of truth to that.

00:10:50.000 It's just if you look at the countries that have the most kids that they are advocating for birth control, I mean, it's not the wealthy ones.

00:11:01.000 And so in the poorest countries, having kids is so embedded into what you do that the poorest countries have the thing that actually the people of the West sometimes want the most in their 30s.

00:11:14.000 It's just, it blows your mind, right?

00:11:15.000 Yes, we might have air conditioning.

00:11:17.000 We might have Wi-Fi.

00:11:18.000 We might have antibiotics, but they can't have the one thing that the people in the countryside of Nigeria have. 0.78

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00:11:30.000 I try to take care of myself.

00:11:32.000 I try to eat right.

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00:11:35.000 I'd rather have them than anything else, but I know I don't get nearly enough.

00:11:39.000 So I thought, I'll try it for two months and no harm, no foul.

00:11:42.000 If it doesn't work after that, then let's try it.

00:11:44.000 And at least I know.

00:11:46.000 Within two weeks, I noticed a huge difference in my energy, sleeping better at night, and just energy.

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00:11:56.000 You guys have got to try this.

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00:12:29.000 I work in a school.

00:12:30.000 So I'm around like a thousand kids a day constantly.

00:12:33.000 And so I wash my hands and use alcohol on them probably 100 times a day or better.

00:12:39.000 And my hands are always cracking open and splitting.

00:12:42.000 And I did not have that this entire winter.

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00:13:29.000 Did you want to comment on what I said?

00:13:30.000 Poor countries have what sometimes wealthier people want.

00:13:34.000 I mean, listen, you, you're married, obviously.

00:13:38.000 Yes, I have a kid.

00:13:38.000 You have kids, right?

00:13:39.000 Yes.

00:13:41.000 So I have three kids.

00:13:43.000 And I mean, I didn't write about this in the stack.

00:13:46.000 At some point, I'm going to come back to it.

00:13:48.000 I think I have a personal advice here because I love being a dad.

00:13:53.000 I genuinely love it.

00:13:54.000 It's the best.

00:13:55.000 And look, I can imagine that if your kids were really difficult or, you know, or, you know, you have, you have a kid who's got like special needs and it, you know, and it, and it becomes something where it's very hard to, you know, to have.

00:14:09.000 I mean, even then, I'm sure you love your kids no matter what.

00:14:11.000 But when your kids are cool and you can hang out with them and like watch them grow up and start to do more and more things and like, and they're fun.

00:14:20.000 And like, my kids are awesome.

00:14:22.000 Like I love my kids.

00:14:24.000 And it's, you know, again, like, I'm sure every parent thinks that, but like, I have the best kids.

00:14:24.000 I'm sure.

00:14:29.000 So like I love hanging out with them.

00:14:32.000 And so, and, and, but even like, again, even when it's hard, being a parent is, it's a way to be not selfish.

00:14:42.000 And it's a way to like have somebody who's so dependent on you, you know, especially when they're little, right?

00:14:49.000 And it's a, it's a way to grow as a person.

00:14:51.000 And so I think it's very hard to convey that to people who don't want to be parents or who are not parents.

00:14:58.000 And the reason, you know, what prompted me to write that piece, obviously I've been like aware of these trends for a long time.

00:15:04.000 What prompted me to write that piece was that somebody I know just got married and, you know, they're they're healthy, they have good jobs, and they're choosing, they're saying we're never going to have children.

00:15:18.000 Like we don't want to have kids.

00:15:20.000 And, and, and, you know, and they're not 42 where it would be some heavy lift.

00:15:25.000 Like it would, you know, they should be, they, they can have kids and they're choosing not to.

00:15:30.000 And I don't know why a heterosexual couple would make that decision. 0.87

00:15:34.000 I don't know why you bother to get married if you don't want to have a family.

00:15:38.000 And so that's so depressing to me.

00:15:40.000 So I can't, in some ways, I can't decide which is more depressing.

00:15:43.000 If you can't have kids and you really want them, but you started too late or you have some biological issue, or if you're making that choice not to have kids, because it seems to me either way, either way, it's sad, but you're denying yourself such a great thing.

00:16:01.000 I totally agree.

00:16:02.000 And not to say that this is a moral question.

00:16:06.000 You're not a better person or a worse person if you don't have kids, but you're missing something.

00:16:11.000 It's a fact.

00:16:12.000 You are missing something that is hard to describe that a Mercedes-Benz or 10 Days on, you know, the Greek Islands doesn't even compare to.

00:16:22.000 That's true.

00:16:22.000 It just doesn't.

00:16:23.000 And, you know, and I rarely say, I'm saying it in public now.

00:16:26.000 I genuinely, I don't think people who are parents generally say this to people who aren't, but to my mind, you're not truly an adult.

00:16:33.000 Okay.

00:16:34.000 If you, if you, until, until you have children, you are not truly an adult.

00:16:41.000 And again, like, and by the way, they don't have to be your children.

00:16:43.000 Okay.

00:16:44.000 If you can't have kids and you choose to adopt, you're, you're very much a parent, obviously.

00:16:49.000 Like, it's not, it's not, it's not really about biology.

00:16:52.000 That's an important point.

00:16:54.000 That's exactly right.

00:16:55.000 Until you choose to take on that responsibility for another.

00:17:00.000 And by the way, you can have kids, unfortunately, and not be a parent, right?

00:17:05.000 I mean, you know, certainly in large parts of, you know, some communities, that's, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to knock somebody up and take no responsibility for that child.

00:17:13.000 Like that, you're not a parent then either.

00:17:15.000 You know, I don't care how many, you know, you know, how much of your DNA you've passed on.

00:17:20.000 You're not a parent.

00:17:21.000 Being a parent means being part of your child's life in a meaningful daily way.

00:17:27.000 This is such an important topic.

00:17:29.000 I want to go through the objections.

00:17:30.000 I want to try to figure this out with you together because some people say, well, it's too expensive to have kids.

00:17:36.000 Some people will say that don't have time or I want one of each or they wait too long.

00:17:43.000 And then there is also the ideological dark, you know, climate cult of death where they say, I don't want kids because it just pollutes the earth.

00:17:50.000 That is a growing group, but it's still, I'd say, five to seven percent.

00:17:53.000 That is not a majority.

00:17:55.000 That kind of weird apocalyptic, you know, cult of death stuff.

00:17:58.000 But then also I want to talk, Alex, because you've done some amazing work.

00:18:02.000 You've done amazing work on marijuana and vaccines and asking the right questions.

00:18:06.000 Do we have a fertility problem brought on, yes, by people getting married later, but also by the food that we're eating?

00:18:13.000 Testosterone rates are down significantly, right?

00:18:16.000 Sex biting hormones are down significantly for men.

00:18:20.000 70 or 80%.

00:18:21.000 Is that playing a role?

00:18:23.000 And it's another interesting thing.

00:18:25.000 If men have lower testosterone, not only is it harder to have kids, is the drive to have kids lower?

00:18:30.000 That's another.

00:18:32.000 Not only is it that harder to have kids when you commit to it, but maybe you're just like, I don't know if I want it too much.

00:18:38.000 Testosterone is the life force of a man and your testosterone is low, your life force winnows.

00:18:44.000 These are important questions that we will talk to.

00:18:45.000 Alex Berenson, check out his sub stack.

00:18:47.000 It's amazing.

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00:19:51.000 So, Alex, fertility.

00:19:54.000 Fertility.

00:19:55.000 How big of an issue does that play here?

00:19:57.000 I think that's a really great question.

00:19:59.000 And it's clearly becoming more of an issue.

00:20:01.000 I mean, the most obvious way is that, you know, as again, we talked about this a little bit, but as women delay having children, you know, I think most, I think a lot of women and men too don't really understand how quickly female fertility can drop after you're 30.

00:20:18.000 And I think actually, oftentimes, if you, if you've had one child, let's say when you're 28, 29, it's relatively easy to have a second and a third.

00:20:27.000 But if you delay having the first child till after 30, it gets complicated.

00:20:31.000 And then, you know, if it takes you a couple of years, then all of a sudden, maybe you're 35 and it's harder to have a second child.

00:20:37.000 So, so, so female fertility, I mean, it's, we know this, right? 1.00

00:20:41.000 But I think most women, you know, sort of educated women are under the misimpression that I can wait till I'm almost 40 and I'll pretty easily be able to have kids.

00:20:50.000 And that's, you know, that's not true.

00:20:52.000 I mean, it doesn't mean you can't have children, but it is, it is hard, significantly hard.

00:20:58.000 Well, especially for men, especially if you've been on the pill.

00:21:01.000 If you've been on the pill.

00:21:02.000 Especially if you've been on the pill.

00:21:04.000 And women aren't told this, Alex.

00:21:07.000 And just, I just want to make sure everyone understands this. 0.99

00:21:09.000 Women are largely clueless on this because people have lied to them. 1.00

00:21:12.000 They're on the pill. 1.00

00:21:14.000 And then they say, I'll just figure this out in my 30s.

00:21:16.000 And an unfortunate truth is that their fertility drops in about half, if they're lucky, in half.

00:21:22.000 When a woman is born, they have all the eggs that they will have for the rest of their life. 1.00

00:21:25.000 And people don't know that.

00:21:27.000 And so they enter their 30s and it's a risk.

00:21:31.000 Keep going, though, Alex, please.

00:21:33.000 And then, so then you switch to talk about men.

00:21:35.000 So, you know, there's been these, you know, sort of every couple, every few months, you'll see these papers that come out about showing, you know, sort of global declines in sperm counts.

00:21:35.000 Okay.

00:21:47.000 You know, that sperm counts are down by 50% in the last 50 years.

00:21:51.000 And I don't know.

00:21:53.000 I haven't looked at the underlying data.

00:21:55.000 This is something that as I, you know, as I start writing more unreported truths about this, I really want to know whether this is true or not.

00:21:55.000 Okay.

00:22:01.000 Right.

00:22:01.000 And so like, you know, one thing I certainly think I'm reasonably good at, you know, from writing tell your children, even before that, from, you know, when I was working at the New York Times, which may shock some of your viewers, I was a reporter at the New York Times for a long time.

00:22:16.000 I covered the drug industry.

00:22:17.000 I like to read the, and I, and I like to read the underlying scientific papers when I'm writing about them.

00:22:23.000 So I don't know if that number is real, but the number that I have seen is that, you know, sperm counts just for the average man worldwide are down 50% in the last 50 years.

00:22:34.000 Now, we are born with a lot of extra, you know, not born with, but, but, you know, our bodies make way more sperm than we need to, you know, to implant a single egg, obviously.

00:22:45.000 So people can still get pregnant, but that's not the trend that you want. 0.88

00:22:49.000 And then on top of that, to you know, to sort of bring it all together with tell your children, there's no question that cannabis impairs male fertility, both because I think it, you know, it reduces, you were talking about like testosterone and, you know, does it too many, you know, sort of young men these days want to sit around getting high?

00:23:10.000 But also the old joke, doobies make boobies, turns out to be, turns out to have some truth in it. 0.99

00:23:16.000 That, you know, that cannabis is an endocrine disruptor.

00:23:21.000 It is.

00:23:22.000 And actually reduces the quality and motility of sperm.

00:23:27.000 And so given the number of young men, at least in the United States, who are using cannabis, that could be a real issue.

00:23:34.000 But the reason you can't say, oh, well, that's the number one reason or even the number two or three reason is, again, the worst declines in fertility globally are in East Asia.

00:23:44.000 And those are countries that don't have a lot of drug use.

00:23:47.000 That's fascinating.

00:23:48.000 There's something cultural.

00:23:50.000 And by the way, I don't know whether those countries have seen the same sort of declines in sperm count.

00:23:56.000 This is when you start to get into the weeds of this issue, like any really interesting, complicated issue, it turns out that there's a ton of nuance that you have to look at.

00:24:06.000 But there's nuance, Alex, but you're not going to see this is where you, I know you agree.

00:24:11.000 You don't see macro multi-continental, multicultural trends just in the nuance.

00:24:16.000 There has to be something happening, right?

00:24:19.000 And when you have values, I mean, Saudi Arabia is fascinating to me.

00:24:23.000 They're wealthy, but they're super Islamic. 1.00

00:24:25.000 So are even Muslims saying they don't want to have as many kids now?

00:24:29.000 Aside from really aside from poor Muslim countries and a few African countries, the trends are extremely clear here. 0.96

00:24:29.000 Yes. 0.96

00:24:36.000 And again, countries that, you know, Indonesia, which is the world's largest Muslim country by population, is just at that sort of just over two level that's that's flat right now.

00:24:47.000 Countries that you wouldn't expect to be below replacement level are below.

00:24:52.000 Again, that's most of South America.

00:24:54.000 So, I mean, I think if you had to pick one factor, you know, I think you'd say that it's sort of women worldwide choosing to have fewer children because they now have birth control options that were not available to them.

00:25:08.000 But that can't be the only factor or even the one primary factor, I would think.

00:25:16.000 I just don't know.

00:25:17.000 But this is something that we need to talk about.

00:25:21.000 Is it potentially women's education? 1.00

00:25:24.000 The more educated women become, the less that they want to have kids. 0.99

00:25:29.000 I don't know whether that, you know, I don't know.

00:25:32.000 I don't know whether that correlation is as strong as you might think off the top of your head.

00:25:38.000 I mean, I just don't know.

00:25:40.000 So then the only one that makes sense that you found is the wealthier the society, the less kids that they want to have.

00:25:47.000 Is that effectively the if you were to draw the graph?

00:25:50.000 I would also say it's very clear that people who, you know, I don't know what you call whether the hyper-religious, whether it's ultra-Orthodox or Amish or, you know, sort of other sort of extremely religious subgroups, the rates of fertility are very high.

00:26:09.000 So I live in upstate New York, you know, in the Hudson Valley of New York, right across the Hudson River from me are communities of ultra-Orthodox that have the highest rates of childbirth, you know, not just in New York State, but in some of the highest rates nationally.

00:26:23.000 And these are places, you know, these are, these are, these are families where women have, you know, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 children.

00:26:31.000 You know, I have a cousin, okay?

00:26:32.000 I mean, so I'm a, I'm a, you know, Reformed Jew.

00:26:35.000 My dad is one of five kids, you know, because he's, you know, he was, he was born in 1943.

00:26:43.000 And so, I mean, he died a couple of years ago, but, but so, you know, it was not unusual that he was one of five.

00:26:50.000 So I'm one of nine cousins.

00:26:52.000 One of my cousins converted to ultra-Orthodox Judaism, and she now has six kids.

00:26:57.000 So clearly, there is a religious go forth and multiply, you know, aspect of this that still applies.

00:27:05.000 But it's a, you know, there's, there's a relatively tiny number of those folks now.

00:27:10.000 Part of the problem is that kids are largely presented as a burden, not a blessing.

00:27:16.000 Let's play cut 72.

00:27:17.000 Last piece of advice for young people? 0.99

00:27:19.000 Get married. 1.00

00:27:21.000 Yeah, get married and have a ton of kids.

00:27:22.000 I mean, get married when you're too young, have more kids than you can afford.

00:27:26.000 Take a job you're not qualified for.

00:27:28.000 Live boldly.

00:27:28.000 Stop getting high.

00:27:30.000 Stop doing anything that blurs your vision or makes time go faster.

00:27:33.000 You're going to die before you know it.

00:27:35.000 Don't waste a second.

00:27:36.000 That's the sin.

00:27:38.000 It goes on to say that.

00:27:41.000 Please continue.

00:27:42.000 No, no, just, I mean, I agree with all that.

00:27:47.000 And, you know, he practiced what he preached.

00:27:50.000 I believe Tucker has four kids.

00:27:51.000 And, you know, and I know he's impossibly proud of them.

00:27:56.000 I think we're, you know, we're sort of, we're, I wouldn't say we're talking around the issue.

00:27:59.000 We're talking, we're trying to talk through a very complicated issue.

00:28:02.000 Is it biological?

00:28:03.000 Is it cultural?

00:28:05.000 Is it fear of the future?

00:28:06.000 I mean, this needs to be, you know, is it economic, right?

00:28:13.000 Is it?

00:28:13.000 But again, I think, I do think the role of economics here is overstated because those ultra-Orthodox families, you know, in Rockland County, New York, they are not wealthy families.

00:28:24.000 I mean, occasionally, and this is another interesting sort of facet of this, you see a little bit, for example, in the super wealthy that there's a desire, you know, to have four or five or six, not necessarily six, but let's say three or four kids in New York City because it's a status symbol.

00:28:40.000 I'm so rich, I can have a big apartment, I can have these kids and send them to private school.

00:28:45.000 But, but I think that's really on the margins of this.

00:28:48.000 Yeah, even Mormon fertility is dropping like a rock. 0.90

00:28:52.000 Modernity is eating almost everything.

00:28:54.000 So let me ask you, not, I want to, is there data to support this?

00:28:56.000 Because anecdotally, I know it, that the people that live the most joyful and deepest lives tend to have kids and then a lot of kids, that their lives are harder, their lives are crazier, they're less about themselves, but they're deeper and more fulfilling.

00:29:14.000 Is there data to support that?

00:29:16.000 If there is, I have not seen it.

00:29:18.000 Again, I'm really, you know, I wrote that piece and, you know, it is hopefully going to be the first, a number of pieces I write about this because I really have been surprised by the interest.

00:29:29.000 You know, the Federalists wrote something about the piece.

00:29:31.000 You know, we're talking about it now.

00:29:34.000 I mean, clearly there's a desire to have sort of a fact-based, you know, hopefully non-ideological discussion about this that doesn't, you know, it doesn't get caught up in this idea of, oh, you know, you're talking about how white people aren't reproducing.

00:29:49.000 No, I'm not talking about that.

00:29:50.000 Like this is a this is clearly a global issue.

00:29:53.000 And, you know, in a way, it reminds me to tell your children, you know, which was my book about cannabis and the problems.

00:30:00.000 This was something that was sort of known in the psychiatric community among serious researchers, but it hadn't been discussed.

00:30:08.000 It hadn't sort of made the jump into pop culture, the potential issues about sort of high THC cannabis.

00:30:14.000 There may be interesting conversations that, you know, demographers and social scientists are having with each other about this.

00:30:21.000 And the pop, you know, the sort of popular culture is not getting into it because it's caught up in, oh, you know, again, you're just saying that Muslims want to take over the United States.

00:30:31.000 No, I'm not saying that at all.

00:30:32.000 I'm saying we need to figure out what's going on here.

00:30:36.000 This is a mystery that Elon Musk says: if we do not address, it will result in a population collapse.

00:30:42.000 Alex, is that hyperbole?

00:30:44.000 No, look at the numbers.

00:30:45.000 I mean, countries in East Asia, their populations are now declining.

00:30:50.000 And the other thing that is scary is there seems to be no bottom to this.

00:30:55.000 So in South Korea right now, the numbers are that the average woman is expected to have 0.7 children.

00:31:02.000 Okay.

00:31:03.000 So as I said in the sub stack, men can't have children, despite what the, you know, the left likes to think sometimes.

00:31:11.000 So if every woman is having fewer than one child, that's a true collapse of population. 0.50

00:31:18.000 And even a few years ago, the rates in places like South Korea were significantly higher.

00:31:23.000 So I don't know where the bottom is on this.

00:31:27.000 It's not good.

00:31:28.000 It's not good.

00:31:29.000 Elon Musk says that the species will fail to exist.

00:31:33.000 I don't know.

00:31:33.000 Might be right.

00:31:36.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

00:31:38.000 And like many of you, I'm a busy guy balancing family, show, travel, and TPUSA.

00:31:42.000 When I needed a mortgage, I went to my friends, Andrew Del Ray and Todd of Aki at Sierra Pacific.

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00:31:58.000 Ask them about a reverse mortgage.

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00:32:06.000 Call them and help you prepare.

00:32:08.000 I'm telling you, anything mortgage-related, please call them and not the big woke bags. 0.97

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00:32:30.000 That is andrewandtodd.com.

00:32:32.000 Fill out the quick form and they'll get you back with answers, andrewattodd.com.

00:32:38.000 So Alex, I want to close on the marijuana issue.

00:32:41.000 I feel a moral obligation to do this.

00:32:43.000 Yes, I was at University of Arizona.

00:32:45.000 And I just said, look, I know you guys are all pro, you know, weed legalization.

00:32:48.000 They all cheer and, you know, they love it.

00:32:50.000 I said, can you guys tell me a single negative?

00:32:54.000 Well, I'm not even saying, I mean, I think it should be not legal, but that's a separate issue.

00:32:58.000 I said, can you just tell me something negative that happens if you use a lot of weed?

00:33:02.000 They said, it's God's herb is what they would say.

00:33:05.000 It's a beautiful gift from the heavens.

00:33:08.000 It allows us to go to the next level of enlightenment.

00:33:11.000 I'm not kidding, Alex.

00:33:12.000 You've heard all of it.

00:33:13.000 What are some of the documented proven negatives?

00:33:17.000 I mean, first of all, even the stuff that, you know, that they call flour, that sort of smokable herb, has been genetically engineered these days.

00:33:26.000 So it has about 10 times the levels of THC that, you know, the stuff that came out of the ground in India and China 100 years ago did.

00:33:34.000 So, I mean, the idea that this is some natural product and it's stuff these kids are using that they're vaping, you know, if they're vaping THC liquid or if they're taking edibles, you know, I mean, this is a chemical, okay?

00:33:46.000 It comes out of labs, all right?

00:33:48.000 And, you know, and it's processed with butane.

00:33:50.000 And I mean, the idea that this is in any way natural is a joke.

00:33:55.000 But, you know, cannabis is addictive.

00:33:58.000 It reduces, it reduces motivation.

00:34:00.000 It hurts memory.

00:34:02.000 You know, it can trigger severe anxiety in people, even though, you know, it's advertised as an anti-anxiety drug.

00:34:11.000 It can trigger psychotic episodes, short-term psychotic episodes.

00:34:15.000 Most of the time, most people do recover.

00:34:16.000 But if you use it too heavily, too frequently, and you start too young, you have a real risk of permanent psychotic break.

00:34:24.000 I mean, that's what tell your children is really all about.

00:34:29.000 It is not as physically dangerous as alcohol.

00:34:32.000 I don't think anybody would disagree with that, but it is more psychiatrically dangerous.

00:34:37.000 It is more dangerous to the brain than alcohol.

00:34:39.000 And I would also say it has this, you know, we talked about it a little bit in the previous segment.

00:34:43.000 It has this subtle or not so subtle effect on hurting your motivation and sort of making you comfortable doing very little with your life.

00:34:53.000 And I think as you get older, you really see the people that happen to.

00:34:57.000 Smart people often who, you know, who used a lot of cannabis in college and used it in their 20s.

00:35:03.000 And at some point, they just sort of stopped meeting milestones.

00:35:07.000 They didn't get married.

00:35:08.000 They didn't have kids.

00:35:10.000 You know, their careers didn't progress and they just kind of go through life in a haze.

00:35:14.000 And I do think because, you know, the drug, I would say cannabis, not in its, obviously not in the way that it works, but in the way that it's sort of societally accepted is most comparable to is alcohol, obviously.

00:35:27.000 But if you drink the way these folks use cannabis, you're going to wind up with bad hangovers.

00:35:34.000 You're going to wind up obviously having problems.

00:35:37.000 In some ways, the problem with cannabis is that because it's less physically toxic, you can really use a lot of it enough to really disrupt your life and tell yourself you don't have a problem.

00:35:49.000 So you wake up every morning, you wake and bake, you go through life stoned, and you tell yourself, oh, you know, I don't have hangovers.

00:35:57.000 I'm fine.

00:35:58.000 And that's, you know, that's just not true.

00:36:01.000 A lot of people use it to quote unquote treat depression and anxiety.

00:36:05.000 That actually could be making it worse.

00:36:07.000 Is that correct?

00:36:08.000 Yes.

00:36:08.000 It's a terrible.

00:36:10.000 In general, trying to treat anxiety with pharmaceutical products is a terrible idea.

00:36:15.000 And I say that about benzos too.

00:36:17.000 People say, oh, you don't talk about benzos or you don't talk about prescription drugs.

00:36:23.000 No, I do.

00:36:24.000 I think the United States has a problem with drugs.

00:36:26.000 The problem is that the United States loves drugs, whether they're prescription or non-prescription.

00:36:32.000 And, you know, so the problem with trying to treat anxiety with any drug that actually successfully treats anxiety in the short term is that when you try to get off that drug, you are very likely to have terrible rebound anxiety.

00:36:48.000 And so you can wind up addicted very quickly, whether that's a benzodiazepine, in other words, a drug like Valium or Xanax, or cannabis, because you're going to wind up with all the anxiety you had before that you haven't really figured out how to deal with, plus pharmaceutically generated anxiety.

00:37:07.000 The name of the marijuana book, Alex?

00:37:09.000 Tell your children.

00:37:11.000 Tell your children.

00:37:12.000 At the very least.

00:37:14.000 Yes, please.

00:37:15.000 I got to say, you know, it's funny because pandemia, you know, which is my book about COVID that came out, you know, about two years ago.

00:37:25.000 Tell your children now, which came out five years ago, now outsells pandemia.

00:37:30.000 And I hear from parents, I hear from prosecutors, I hear even still from users who have just found the book.

00:37:36.000 And I would say that as more and more people get exposed to the problems, especially with high potency cannabis, the book has sort of taken on a second life.

00:37:46.000 It's your greatest work, Alex.

00:37:48.000 It is.

00:37:48.000 We'll have you on soon.

00:37:49.000 Thank you.

00:37:50.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:37:51.000 Email us as alwaysfreedom at charliekirk.com.

00:37:54.000 Thanks so much for listening and God bless.

00:37:59.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - November 02, 2023

Rich, Successful, and Childless with Alex Berenson

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