#868 - Mads Larsen - The Hidden Truth About Our Collapsing Birth Rates
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Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My yesterday is mad len. He's an author and journalist whose research focuses on the history of human made ideologies.

The truth can be a tough pill to swallow, but when IT comes to saving humanity, even the hardest truth is Better than the soft st line. So why is mad facing outrage for speaking the truth that could save his country? Expect to learn why mads was cancelled for talking about norway.

Is declining birth rates the key reasons why people aren't having more kids? The underlying psychology behind modern mating, the potential interventions to fix this, and much more really dancing a tight rope today. IT is not easy to have this discussion about this topic and IT come across in a baLanced way.

But I really appreciate mad for sort of putting both feet into the landmine field and seeing if we can dance this way through. It's fascinating. And I am still perplex to to win.

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You managed .

to get yourself in trouble. Well, I tried to get my country of norway at to start taking the fertility crisis seriously. And as we've seen in many nations, people are unwilling to do that. And dob, yeah, that are motivated. Some some attacks A A along that way.

How did all of this stuff well .

IT started with with an article that uh me and leave can are a professional volume psychologie earlier this year where we conceptualize and there's the concept of involuntary single women in things um and then we I did some interviews about that and the people people weren't happy um they felt that talking about in voluntary single women was was a genitive and they didn't want to connect that to declining for tilly.

What's the line between talking about involuntarily single women ends method?

I well one of the main drivers of low fertility is that people is having too hard of the time to find partners ers, so women either do not find a partner with them, they can have children, or they find one too late so that the reproduction window is shortened. So this means that women aren't having the children they would like to have in norway. Women would like to have two point four children, and they're having one point four. So this functional dating market is an important contributor to this futility crisis.

okay. And how's that?

A genistein is a bit of a puzzle that I think I have eventually managed to solve through going through this process. Um many felt that are if you uh, bring the attention to how the dating market works for women, you are somehow blaming women for low forklifts. And as an evolutionary scholar, um I would never think of assigning blame to any groups. We are born to this environment with a certain nature, and that plays out differently, different environments. And now we created an environment where IT has become very difficult for women to find partners.

What are the specifics of the mating psychology that are going on that are contributing to making this environment difficult for women in that regard?

Well we are the first um first societies in in human history that have um that have individual partner choice know the society have done that before. It's always been different ious degrees of arranged marriage. Um so when we open this up in the one thousand and sixties, we talked about this last year how the six million year built up to the today's meeting regime. And when we open these main markets up, what has happened is actually quite predictable as a consequence of the difference between women's promise you attraction system and airport ning attraction systems. And um the regular fit late researchers do not understand these mechanisms um for everyone is just a big puzzle while we're no longer partnering up and and creating children, but from an evolutionary perspective it's it's quite predictable.

Explain that. Think deep for me.

Well as as we talked about the last time six million years ago with our last common anchor answers to with jian anees, we made IT promiscuously which is was most which is most animals do so there are women or females are incentivised to be very choice. They're supposed to uh give many opportunities, dominic, to the most successful males because that is the most effective distributing uh beneficial genes of the population.

So um and then because of the development of our speeches around four millions years ago, we evolved a different attraction system, fair bonding attraction system. And there that's more um say in galitch, ian, because then it's it's uh you want poterne investment from the mail. And then a woman will typically then pair bond with the male of similar partner value.

So you, having a promiscuous system, made opportunities going to the most to only to the mostly to the most attractive, the males. And in a pair boundings attraction system, IT spreads more evenly. But we didn't become A A pure pair bonding species.

We have a mixed system. We both have an a place to attraction system and a carbonic attraction system and for every human communities has existent. A fundamental chAllenge has been how to reconcile women's different preferences according to those attraction systems in a way that allows functional math. Now men are different um our their promised to attraction system is very inclusive.

Most men would sleep with most women, while most women would sleep only with a small proportion of men um so what what happened when we try to um introduce this system for the first time with the west second sector revolution in eighteen century, things went very poorly because we didn't have contraceptives and we were so poor that breaking up uh was very hard and women were independent to independent on men. So you had a very high rise in the legitimacy because women competed for the most cracked emails. And when they became pregnant, a lot of the time the man just moved on, which wasn't allowed a century earlier.

So then we had a pull back with romanticism, and we went back to reconnected population repair, borne again. But then in the thousand, nine hundred and sixty, with a birth control and posters will trip prosperity. We were able to implement this system.

And then because of this uh this gap between women's promiscuous and uh are boring attraction systems, we've seen an increasing stratification among men. Were some men at the top uh get an increasing among mating opportunities and then well men at the bottom are being uh excluded for meeting both long torm and short term that means relationships and uncommitted sex respectively. Um and if and if people can't find somebody department with if they can pare bum, it's just much less likely that they will reproduce. So as the the single rate has skyrocketed over the past four, five decades, you also see an increase in in low forker ity.

What are the stats that convinced you this was an important um area to look at both from a birthrate standpoint but then also from a relationship satisfaction single ten standpoint as well.

Well, so in norway, the Victory is one point four and uh, experts haven't wanted to portray this negatively. They've said that well, it's low but the population going to continue increase. People have been impression at same terms ahead.

This will have addressed consequences. But the fact is that with a forgery of one point for you lose one third of your generation size per generation. So in only three generations, we will have lost seventy percent of the children. And that is if we in norway are able to keep a realtor, or one point for the leading experts in this field predict that the rates will just continue to decline as they have for a long time now, not so lonely norway. But in other nations, IT seems to be a self reinforcing process where as people get used to their being fewer children, even though they want more for each generation, people want less children.

So if our focus rate keeps falling, for instance, down to south korean level, zero point seven ten in three generations, one hundred people in general size reduced to to just four and in the next generation one, which means countries will be empty and that is, uh that is uh, that is a very real existential threat, uh, that experts from populations have not so far wanted to take seriously. And that's what I tried earlier this year by spring this debate in norway and um yeah people weren't ready for IT but but IT is moving along and uh people are contributing and with time I think people accept that this is an existential threat, perhaps the greatest chAllenge of our error. And then we perhaps can start experimenting with ways to uh to find a way to motivate people to reproduce again.

Yeah, I mean, i've been helping on about this. What to me felt like kind of late are but to the internet and maybe wider society was still outside of the overton window as an early adopter. But yeah I will be maybe the five, six seventh conversation that i've had on something to do with birth rates declining fatlings.

And um i'm going to keep on fucking basing this run because we can think about how much public attention has been gazed toward climate change where they cause something that people probably should be concerned about but not trying to destroy the ecosystem so and so forth. Yeah, it's not gonna happen in seventy five years. There are more pressing concerns.

And my biggest learning when I started digging deep into x risks or that you should be triaging your efforts onto the ones that are more global, more catastrophic. And toner, uh, there is nothing. There is nothing.

I mean, maybe, maybe you could look at a missile, ai, nanotechnology and engineer pandemics, but even those, you don't have a particularly good prediction mechanism. We know how many one year olds were born last year. We know how many there are in no way in the U.

K. In america, in australia, we know that number. Demography is destiny as it's called. So if we know that we have a guarantee, and one thing that some people maybe thinking is why is a declining birth rate a bad thing? I think this is one of the sort of key um areas .

of ignorance .

that a lot of people have if they haven't thought about IT so well, the the worlds over populated in any case or oh, maybe that just means more room or maybe that means more jobs or maybe that means to D T, to get into good schools or something like that. So can you just give the overview of what a declining population means? Dam stream from that for the people that alive to see IT .

yeah absolutely a few weeks ago, in order we have this this big controversy because of north, they had to shut down a school and people were very unhappy um if every generation you lose a third of your generational size, there's gonna a lot of schools shut down. And then when they grow up, there won't be enough people to step into the jobs that exist. And this across time will age to population drastically.

You can image if look at the situation like south korea, where in three generations you'll go from one hundred to four people um who's gonna who's gonna ep society running you're just gonna a bunch of really, really old people. And this will also change on cultural psychology. We've been very fortunate since the world war two with with a growing economy.

When we start have to fight, when we have negative growth or or stall growth, we're gonna fighting over a shrinking pie and our species tends to get quite unpleasant in those situations. Um also, you would think this is connected to the this is this this is some interesting connections on several levels with the climate crisis. One thing is that people assume that this will be a slow decrease on that having fewer people will be good for the climate in a way that is true.

That is one factor. But if we're onna solve the climate crisis, we're going have to make a lot of progress between now and and say twenty fifty when we're supposed to reach at zero and it's possible to do that. But if we have to channel more and more of our of our uh resources toward taking care of the elderly and we see societies start.

Solid disintegrating and becoming will have more, more ghost town and and the cultural psychology turns unCoOperative. I don't think we're gonna be able to make those technological steps to allocate those resources that we need in order to get there. So I I think solving the climate change and climate crisis and other chAllenges that we have in a decade is just going to be a lot harder if we have uh h collapsing population numbers and also um because of the climate a crisis, people are less willing to engage uh low fertility because they assume that you will be beneficial to some people.

Are they're so used to the to to the chAllenge of overpopulation, which we talked about for generations. So that switching your mind and thinking about a brand new problem that goes against the previous concern, it's just really difficult. But if we don't have these discussions now, things do not look good.

We're gonna to start experimenting and see what we can do soon because i'm pretty sure very few people would want to live in societies where there are less and less Young people and will be eventually disappear. And that is where we're heading. Now this isn't this isn't some temporary thing. This is a really large trend, and experts think IT will only get worse. So at some point we have to take this seriously and see what we might be able to do about .

IT yeah maybe um not the best thing for us to bone, but the uk's recent census data came out and said that we were I think one point for four uh compared with norway is one point four. So just for clarity, to run those numbers again is very difficult to work out what one point for apply by one point four or apply by one point when you need two or two point one.

That means that last year there were five hundred and ninety one thousand seventy two births in england, wales in twenty twenty three. That's the lowest number since records began, the lowest number that that has ever been recorded. One point four four. That means that one hundred people in britain today will have fifty two grandchildren between them and only thirty seven great grandchildren. So in one hundred years old time, you're talking about sixty three percent of the population being wiped out, every hundred norwegians, thirty great grandchildren, and for every hundred south koreans.

Four the mats, those are those are terrifying numbers and that we're not sounding the alarm and we're fusing to talk about IT IT makes you feel like your that movie don't look up. I mean, the asteroid is heading straight for us, but out of this place concerns political concerns, confusion. We're not willing to accept the facts the way they are.

And of experiences that in norway over the past months, i've talked to quite a few of the leading experts of the people that research futility, people that work on this in the government, and they all have this unified um approaches to this, that we can portray this as a negative thing. We this is this is, I mean this is there this is what the research, this is what this is all they do and they are concerned. But they're a afraid that if if they tell people how seriously, how seriously is, somehow the politicians won't take them seriously.

They will think their alarm st this could affect their career and their funds and they're hoping like the current strategy among uh commentators in the media, animal researchers, is that somehow those children that weren't born when women earned their early twenties and late twenty years and early thirties will now over the next ten years be born when women are in their late thirties under early forties. So there's no data that supports that this will happen. But the researchers are assuming that if we just wait ten years, perhaps the fortification rate and best case scenario will go up to one point seven because women around forty will start having so many children that IT really boost difficulty rate. And that could happen. It's not impossible, but it's a really puzzling strategy after we waited in now for fifteen years, while this has has plumage, that we should wait ten more years before we portray this negatively because the rate could go up, uh, over the next ten years.

IT seems strange to me that somebody doing research into the literal future of the human species forget the kind of projected future of the environment that the potential human progeny will inhabit. climate. These, this is the number of people that are going to be around in future IT seems odd d to me that when you able to throw soup over a van, go or glue yourself to the m twenty five in protest of big oil or whatever um and and you know even the more sort of down to earth data science cy people hanna Richie from our world in data who specializes in climate science being on the show. You know she's SHE doesn't pull any punches when she's talking about the climate you know she's really and she's as science cy and evidenced as it's possible to be. Seems out to me that these researchers would think that they wouldn't be taken seriously if they gave what are, to be honest, much more easily verifiable pieces of data that will occur in a much shorter time about something that's a pretty big threat to human civilization.

Yeah no. I mean, we will get there. Uh, south korea. Uh um the government, there is pretty clear.

They said not too long ago that this is this is the point of no return. If we don't get the fertility rate up now we're gona disappear. We're not there yet. This is a process. Finland is a little bit ahead of norway.

Colleague of mine, she's been running the debate there for three years and three years ago they have the same anger and the and the attacks on people who who said that this was a really serious problem, uh, but after a process of a few years, the population politicians have gotten to where they're now taking this seriously. And they are gonna start experimenting to see what they can do. And also her.

In norway, the politicians are beginning to take this seriously. StrAngely, they're taking IT more seriously, the researchers that that that underworld that that have the data and work on this. So we just uh established uh a national birth rate committee, uh that will study this and see what kind of solutions they may suggest that I don't have two high hopes to the take substantial coming from there.

They're probably gone to try to throw a little money on the problem when we know from other countries that that doesn't work um giving giving money to parents to have children and IT doesn't have an effect that in those incenses, there are certain ways you can boost the numbers a little bit, but then suddenly you're paying at a million dollars or two million dollars break to child. So it's not it's just not feasible. But the researchers that are doing this and and those that are working on IT in the government, they they have what I think at least are misplaced fares.

I I wasn't debate um last week uh with someone from the birthday committee e and someone from the ministry of finance and the the woman from the ministry finances started by showing the audience um kind of frivolous the equation. He was showing that having more children would be negative for the national economy because in our way we are very generous welfare state and we have oil money every group and the population is is negative so he was making the kind of jokingly saying that, well, at least children aren't profitable for us. And then later in the debate, because I was so cute and I been cursed for so long, why they're not portraying ying this with the seriousness that IT that IT requires.

They all have this added to that. Okay, let's talk about IT, but not negatively. And then when I pushed on IT on and I asked, just to amuse me, could could you say, can you confirm to the audience that one point four means that we lose the third of the generation? And SHE did that.

You finally did that. Yes, study is true, but you can't portray this so negatively because then you will empower the political forces on the right. So there's this belief that if we talk about low futility, there's going to be they are going to be these people on the right that will deprive women of their uh their reproductive rights and we will be taken back to the dark ages.

And at least igor, with the risk of that is in intensional small we even our writer's party are from an international perspective, feminist social democrats. So I don't think I I I don't think of having this discussion and taking things seriously is going to turn us into the hand made. But this is this is a common assumption.

Also, some some of them, they were free that they will be pursued. This racist that if we are concerned about a western countries having low fertility, uh, that would be inappropriate because there are so many people in africa, so they have all these things. So that is .

olympic level mental gymnastics to say if we care about our country, that somehow throws into harsh light people of a different skin color and a different country. I think i've been banging the drum from my conversation with Stephen j.

Shaw, who wrote to this amazing documentary, birth gap, a south korea, his pet project, like whose whose campaigning for the south korea that are going to, by their great, great grandchildren, have one person for every hundred south koreans that there are. Now there's entire schools that empty in korea at the moment. And did does IT not count? IT only counts if it's the dark, the darker skin people IT doesn't matter if it's the ones from the east.

I wouldn't take the content that seriously. This is the beginning of a debate that is very confusing. And at that phase of the debate, personal attacks, anger, those kind of accusations tend to be quite common.

So, uh, over the last months i've been called, i've been called a msg st a fascist uh because because I bring up this problem, people assume I want the government to force women to have sex with and have children with in sales uh and yeah so those at station of racism or wanting to and power the far right, it's just the the confusing beginning face over of a really important debate. And that will only last for so long once we once people work their way through that. And throughout those accusations that I don't know if that that serious when the people .

being racist, I very much applause your patients with this. But I find that I find IT so difficult in my default, never to throw a label at somebody like that. I don't, none of my friends do that.

None of the people that I respect or care about do that either. And I just find IT, I find IT very trying to imagine the psychology of somebody who defaults to to that the defaults like this is so boring as well, is so fucking predictable. Like this this, uh, big what like just it's like the big tree dark board. And you just.

Close your eyes and throw a dart and whichever one IT lands on, you know, honestly, you could have told me that this would have been transformed a and I would have said, yeah, could have picked that one as well like it's just so obvious to me and IT doesn't IT doesn't take the best of what your interlocutor is trying to propose to you. IT takes what your mental model of the worst of IT and then just tries to run away with that. So I mean, fair play for keeping your cool with regards to IT.

Do you see you know you do seem quite even killed as best I can tell. Do you kind of see your role at the moment as being like the vanguard of this political talking point? You're kind of through the breach first and you're going to take some arrows and maybe that's surprised that's worth paying. Is that kind of .

how you perceiving IT? Well, people are people and in the cultural moment that we live in obols kind of accusations are the weapons available. Um so when I I presented uh my research for the norwegian uh in fact late institute a few weeks ago and and they had been so amazed at how I this summer had been able to elevate this debate about low fertility to the national level and and trig really theory debate and fairy debate on IT, they had tried to do that for years but they weren't successful.

And the reason why they weren't successful is because they didn't portray this is as the problem that is as serious as IT is uh, while I said that this was an existential threat and that we need to look at how making markets work, how why is modern dating sodas functional? And then I described, uh, using IT, the evolutionary ressources ces, what IT is about female and male mating psychology. That in our current environment, create a certification that contributes to single them that then result in no filler. So the way I see this, there's there's several there there's several uh bottle next in the pipeline between being single and having a child. And then I described the different h hindu anes along that pipeline and of course um especially in a culture like the region one and very social democratic culture at the evolutionary sciences are not broadly embraced to say IT mildly ah and and yes, I saw in one of the .

articles that IT referred to him as a controversial wing of psychology or a controversial subset of psychology that you come from yeah .

and when we published the instant article and evolutionary behavioral sciences, uh one of the newspaper commentators refer to this is the online publication, the evolutional behavioral sciences.

So yeah it's it's been strange and also the attacks of, I would say, over the last few weeks, uh, people in in newspaper commentators, experts, even the leader of the of the birthrate committee have disproven by positions about ten or twenty of them but the weird part is when they write these articles to disprove my positions, not a single time have they uh argued against the positions not actually have it's been exclusively strawman which is a little bit predictable too. And it's okay. Um I just want this debate to get started and now IT has started. And if that means that I have to uh just endure all those weird attacks and personal attacks and and being discredited, well, hopefully i'll be able to be in this for the long hall and I hope to contribute more productively with time. But right now the debate is going and for that, i'm thankful.

Let's get back to the underlying dynamics that are driving the sort of decline in birthday because it's something that we are seeing across the world for as i'm sure that the researchers that you are talking with recently, no of the birthrates, especially inside of south the south areas of africa, fitting me. I think chat has the highest birthrate in the world, which kind of on brand, given the name, every fifteen years.

Every fifteen years, the birth rate decreases by one child per mother in african countries too. So from eight to seven to six round, about every fifteen years or so at least. This was when I looked at the data about eight months.

IT may set up, IT may slow down. But my point being, this is a global situation. I think everywhere except israel, basically they've managed everybody, is is a dealing with this. And this was really interesting in telling to me when I looked at the, uh, news article from the U. K.

That came out because you had some very country specific reasons given by people in the comments they were saying, uh, migrants, islam, taxation, cost of living, the covet job, who would want to bring a human into this cruel, rotten world? Tap water. This is good to countries too full, and this is good, the world is too overpopulated.

I was thinking what some of the stuff is kind of universal, right? But a lot of that migrants, islam, taxation, cost of living, covet jab, uh, that this is very specific to the country, and yet was seeing birthrate s across the world change. So can you just square, square the circle of the dynamics for me, of what is univerSally happening, that calling this to oo is presumably the into sexual dynamics. And the sex ratios in different countries are all at different levels and yet we seem to have this sort of universal uh, degradation of .

birthrate. Yeah um so um let's line this up along that these bottles that I that I talked about. So um I like to view this is as uh something that happens in three steps.

First, you have to be able to find a partner. You have to date, you have to find someone, will have to be that your couple. And that has become increasingly chAllenging.

The next step is that you have to decide to have a children. And there, there are different instances, and then you have to be able to make one. Now the latter one is not IT seems not to be that big of deal.

As you aware, spring quality has decreased forty percent among men. But according to the experts, it's still more than good enough for making children. So is not that we're not able to.

Now then there are some problems for women because they post one having children, but women aren't. Therefore, Kennedy has not decreased in all likelihood at the earlier ages. So so the latter bottle that seems not to be a real issue. And then .

the step, you mentioned that the early ages, but obviously, if the first of the second one finding a partner, getting a partner, then push you into a third one, the third one can then become right. I jumped solute.

yeah, yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. So there then but the issue that there hasn't been changes in for condy for conder seems to be the same or Better than before.

So it's not that we're not able to children but yeah when women start very late than IT becomes more problematic. But that is not more problematic than he used to be. It's just that women are starting later.

So then we have to look at, then we have to look at the world. So where and so where in the world were birthday, where people are still reproducing and growing, all in countries where female equality is not a very high value. And and and this is an important factor.

This is a result of the empowerment and liberation and quality a for the women in the process that has been ongoing in the west scene for like eight hundred years inherits very important for each state, uh, that I am an enormous supporter of a quality for women. I am such a big supporter of that that I would like also women in the future to have the same rights and opportunities that women have today. If we continue down the path we are now and just self era dict, those populations that are left are not champions of women's freedoms.

So when when we go into this and we talk about what has happened um with women over the past, say particularly hundred and fifty years, that explains um much of the first booming but describing these mechanisms and this process is not um doesn't mean that I am against IT. I'm just describing these are the mechanism stead are at play. This is how human nature plays out in certain environments and I wish IT wasn't that way, but IT really seems to be that way.

So this is what I will be describing. So what we talked about last year is that our lineage, uh, over the year, it's interesting to look at the last six million years we became as pair bonding species around four million years ago. And women only evolve and attraction to men, uh, that motivated sufficient personal and reproduction in really impoverish environments.

So men, as we talked about, because their promising attraction system is so uh, generous there a lot more willing to have sex with women, engage with women than what or a lot many different kinds of women than what women are. So if if a man activates a pair bonding attraction system that can be a man with similar mate value as he has, they fall in love, they have sex, they have a child. But if you have an environment like to have now that appeals predominantly to, or to a great extent to the promiscuous attraction system, which is what tinder us at sea, uh, then women will be a lot more selected.

So have a few things that have happened here. Women have been empowered to have their own jobs, make your money, be free and importantly to choose their own partners. For the first time in human history, the result of that has been that the Better women are doing, the more they exclude uh, the lowest values from their potential pool of partner and with prosperity and with a premises mating resume like we have hour or that is a lot more promiscuous than before.

Female mating, psychology seems, are to channel the attention to hire value ment to avoid uh the deception of similar value men. That something that happens in promise when there's high promise duty while lower value men in in in a um environment like we have today, even though they are uh receiving less made attraction, having less opportunities and we see their number of sex partner going down, they will have increased expectations of promise guity. Uh so you you get more and more this function.

The further away from this third sexual revolution of the night and sixties, we get this is only getting worse. So the problem with creating relationships now, and this has been something that's been in the in the debate in our way up to an enormous extent, what women are, what very many women are, have said in this debate. I don't know how represented is this. What the main point talking point is that men are good enough. And if men do not become Better, women simply don't want a partner with them and certainly not have children.

what do you think they mean when they say Better?

It's it's quite predictable. Women, of course, because they have because our evolutionary past, they have a uh, lower desire for partner of variety. While men, because by having promised to sex, they would leave a larger genetic dacy.

They have a higher desire for partner ready. So want to study, show that region women one, five lifetime sex partners and region men want twenty five. So this is a question of how markets work when you have a high demand of female sexuality and a low supply, women will have the power on the shop cremating market.

So as we know, if you if you as a woman go on, tend out, you will get access to thousands and tens of thousands of men and and you will have men that are much higher value um give you a lot of attention and try really hard to get a date with you and then get you to bed. So when you have that kind of enormous choice, that kind of power is very natural that you increase your standards. Now if women understood Better, and I do understand IT and many understand IT very well and some understanding some extent, but this isn't this isn't a cultural script that we're raised with.

We're not offered this information. We would grow up. It's just not a part of our culture because it's matting reaching is so new. But IT sets a big difference between the short and long training market. So if many women confuse the power they have on the short for mating market with the long training market where men and women are more equal, so the short their experiences on the short remain market motivates women to increase their partner demands, which then when they, when which they can do on the short, committing more original limits to how many attractive men they can have there.

But if they want a boyfriend, then they have to go on dates with men that have a similar meeting value with them because in an argument resume, our species mates sartaj vely people with similar value find each other. And this makes IT harder and harder for women to find partners. Uh and and the funny thing in the debate that's bit more with that so many said that, oh my god we reeled that those men need to stop telling women to lower their standards uh the problem isn't that we have high demands and and then they go and list ten things that men have to do to get Better so um this environment I will live in now we just motivates women to, number one, they don't need men anymore.

They used to need men. And those emotion that a cracking women have for men evolved in a much more powers environment where having a man was could be of existential al importance. And now they don't need them.

Women can have wonderful lives without men. For many women, the type of men that they would have access to simply isn't good enough to justify not longer, uh, being single. And on an individual level, that is perfectly fine.

And I supported one hundred percent. So what women are doing on the short and long treater market, I have no issue on that. As individuals, I lay no blame.

But our society will disappear if we don't do anything about this. And the thing is, this is a brand new system that no human community succeeded with them. We've been doing this for fifty years.

And these processes, these changing between uh uh, different mating regimes to be we can take centuries. Some of them, the older ones took much longer even so that we, after fifty years, haven't found a way to reconcile individual and social needs. Its no wonder. But now that we see the effect that our inability to find partners that leads to self for edication, we need to talk about IT. We need to agree that this is a problem and that it's an existential problem.

And we have to start experimenting, not by forcing women to marry in sales, but to try to find if we can create new dating arenas, if we can increase the knowledge around this, if we can change people approach to dating and meeting, then I am, I am not easily positive. I mean, up studied the human or human in meeting over six million years with this tremendous chAllenges. And our ancestors solve every single one of them.

And the twenty first centuries reproductive crisis, it's not the bag is one. I, I, I, I think we can make changes in this faculty research ches that I talk with. They don't have much of an historical perspective to look at today, and they see this is a problem that I understand what is happening.

And then they give up. And a lot of them say, we just need to embrace slow fertility with solve problems like this so many times. Yeah great.

How do you know that it's women standards being too high and not men the standard of men decreasing?

Um because it's it's relative. I mean men are men and women or women are going out and saying, men, you have to get Better. I mean, who would go out and say a smalls need to get Better or people with down's ndr mm have to get Better?

We don't talk like that to groups. We don't say they're not good enough and tell them to Better themselves one because it's in your main until IT doesn't work, you can't tell groups to pull themselves together. Uh, so yeah, maybe men have gotten worse and worse.

Maybe women have gotten Better and Better, right? But I think it's more it's a it's it's a change in that women, we had paid real societies where women were subservient, independent on men. Uh, if they didn't find a partner, they would be sanctioned socially hard, uh, they would live in poverty many times.

So now that we've created these wonderful new societies, that innate biological attraction that women had to man, that motivated sufficient reproduction in the past, it's no longer strong enough. Life is too good. And given that we have to look for new solutions.

I can see why somebody that wanted to find, uh, potential holes or headlines to pick in your argument would be repeat with options because a mean characterization of some of the points they are putting forward would be something like so the argument is women should get into relationships with guys who either aren't good enough or that they don't fundamentally like that, bringing back a patriarchal or enforced monogamy style, socially enforce monogamy, not handmade so social enforcement, organic style uh society Better that uh equality and women's financial and socio economic independence is a anathema uh to um having A A flourishing cities death.

All of the things we have done should we roll back and the more that we roll them back, the more that we then get the birthrate to be able to flourish. H again. So um I mean, we've spoken about this have spoken about this hundreds of times, but it's a difficult circle to square to say that something which was good and that everybody is in support of women getting their socioeconomic independence, women having equal access to the things that they should, women not being under the boot of their father or their brother or like that, like these things are good in the developed society and yet they can also have this external ity, which is what missiles with mating psychology.

And downstream from that, what you end up with is this really difficile situation. And you know, to the women the are listening to, especially the ones are struggling to find a guy that they think is good enough. You know there's no and this is why we get into interventions a little bit late run.

But I think it's very difficult to say, hey, goals, lower your standards. Like what does that mean? What does that mean in in the same way as telling guys that you need to do Better? Like what does that mean?

Especially a group level, you know, the individual level. What you're asking is kind of like a tragedy of the commons type thing, a god save a coordination. You individual man, you should work harder so that you can help the birthrate.

Or you individual woman, you should lower your standards so that you can help the birthrate. Like not for you. You take A A personal uh, cost.

You pay a personal cost in order to supply a public benefit. And yeah, it's it's fascinate. It's okay. We've got what a couple of of the things here. When women say men do Better, they've got a list of a list of things.

What are the main areas? Because presumably one of the places that we should be looking at for intervention is how do we make men more attractive to women in this new environment? That has to be one of the roots that you lay out.

IT would be stupid to not give that information out to guys, because there will be a subset of men. O hey, just give me the cheek. What is that that looking for again? And if you just give me that and i'll just like take tick k and i'll be sweet. So what are the areas that women say men are lacking in? Well.

these lists that that have spread, they're not terribly insightful or helper, I think. But IT reflects the experiences that women are that with men, um don't be so interested in hunting and fishing and cars, uh, don't talk about yourself, uh, give me the right emotional support, uh, don't prag about things. It's this, my usual that they say that many in general suffer from and IT is not men in general.

There's, there's there's a Normal distribution among men. You have a few minutes at the top. There are phenomenal, and a few minutes at the bottom that are terrible.

And then you have just a bunch of Normal guys. And and women are right. In today's environment, men are good enough for women. But then we have to ask, what are we gone to do about that? And I don't know a single person.

I don't even know if I met a single person who wants to go back to the dark ages and and put women under the boot of the pay turkey. But if we really love female freedoms as highly as many proclaim, and I certainly do, then we owe ourselves to start experimenting and trying new things to see if we can have societies that exist in the future where women also are free. I mean, the stakes couldn't be higher.

So this misplaced fair, that if we talk about law, futility, women will suddenly live in oppressive patrokles the day after tomorrow, or ten years down the line, or fifty years down the, I mean, I understand the fair because nobody wants to go back. Women don't want to be on free again. But what i've done in my research in in other projects also, I ice up study the cultural changes over the last thousand years to see how, what is that, that made majority ity emerge.

And we never go backwards. We have these really deep cultural changes, intrinsic tly, and they're terrible and we're living through one now. Um and in those cases, we have to start entertaining new thoughts, new norms and new values.

And and different communities should try different solutions based on what is sAiling to them, based on their cultural legacy. And I think norway, in a unique position here, we've been sparing spare heading new gender relations for hundred and fifty years. We have been in the forefront of female equality.

And we in scanning area with really good culture for this, we have a cohesive populations. We have a lightly national debt. We're willing to find an experiment with new things and find solutions.

And I think we can do IT here also, and I think all nations should do that, build on their cultural legacies and trying new things. And I mean, in norway, IT would be so an athena, for I think the risk of us going back to the dark ages is very small. But i'd be willing to to suggest a suicide pact on this.

I mean, we're staring towards self era diction. Let's just degree if I and I understand women's fear of this. So let's agree, female freedoms at the level of twenty twenty four can never be threatened.

Let's have, that is our starting point. Let's experiment with new ways of dating and meeting, but never, ever anything that would involve jeopardizing women's freedoms. And if those means that we come up with or unable to help us increase fertility, then we will die together, will disappear.

We'll just do window until there's no one left. And that will be the norwegian weight. And then i'm sure some other countries in the world will experiment with more uh handmaid tail like like means for racing fertility.

But that won't be us. And that is that is to keep a successful with with all these different communities, all these different cultural legacies that make different means sAiling to us, we need to start experimenting. We need to do something because we're all disappearing in in this part of the world.

Yeah, I am just a kind of play the other side. And so much of what I was learning about over the last few years to do with the increasing the economic successive of women over the last fifty years, particularly the toll goal problem, as i've come to say, that if you stand on the top of your own state as hierarchy, it's very difficult to find someone above and across on the other one. And um you know fifty years ago when title nine came in and the gap between women and men in university was smaller than the gap between men and women. Now men now further behind terms of the university uh, attendance than women were when title nine, a policy that was brought in to precisely help raise up what was at the time and under performing minority right, or an under performing group haps not A I.

I ve just trying to think about my where that energy is to help raise up underperforming men um you know if we do have if if this is true, let's say to let's take sort of public proclaims as accurate that men are not being a high enough standard in order of the women to date them that would be like saying, well, women aren't of a high of intellect in order to get to go to university. Or do you do you you, you help you spend billions and billions in tax, pay a funded money to create councils and research initiatives and social change campaigns, and you help to change norms and you raise up the group, which is falling behind. But even more so in this one, the death of appropriate and eligible male partners directly impact the well being of the life of the single women who don't have anybody to date.

You know, you could say that kind of in around about way more smart people, including women going to university makes for a smarter and more prosperous world because there's like people doing innovation and stuff like that bit too much less direct root right? Then if you spend a lot of money helping men to become Better, which i'm sure that the men are going to have a problem with, it's like, hey, man, like his friga membership and mindfulness training and ba blah, or looking at the service economic problems, which is what? Why aren't meant flourishing? why? Why aren't they going university? Why is IT two women for every one man doing a four year U.

S. College degree? Why do women out men between twenty one and twenty nine by over a thousand pounds a year? The age during which the service economic success of your partner is probably going to be more indicative of your making success when men and women are more likely to be available and trying to find potential partner, whether for Kenny, is highest. So you're going to be able to get the best bangs for your book, so to speak, out of your mating efforts.

Stage two of the bottle and will get on to I just get the sense that the really is very little sort of charitable ability being paid uh you know even the word in sell, uh, William costolo, Andrew Thomas was on very recently talking about IT the word instead just sort of counties up all manner of maybe IT needs to be rebranded, you know and unfortunately a very great term that was used and sort of spread too widely as a me. But like, who wants that? Who wants there to be people who wants to do a thing and can't do the thing and, uh, sort of chLorine and and desperate and trying and and don't get that like that's not would be like saying like a in in intellect or something oh involuntarily stupid or something that's the reason that women aren't to universe is like, no, no one said that, no one thought that. But because we are dealing with men who traditionally have been in uh a preferential position in society and because we are talking about women's bodies, which is a very fraught t topic, that nobody wants to come in and and feel like they are starting to Mandate anything ah yeah you know, if you talk about .

situations .

that sort of raise up men and men standards, that feels like kind of manipulating the market in a wait, like men, women should raise themselves up, they should try, they should want to do IT. It's the if you loved me, you'd know why I added you kind of argument and then on the other side, if you say, well, what about women standard being to how to go what do you do saying you want me to get into a relationship with somebody that I don't like, that I don't love, that isn't good enough for me. We've spent all of this time building up a society omy success, finally getting a galati, an access to all of the things that we need.

And you telling me that now I have to roll back my financial independence to, like some weird olden world in nineteen hundreds, eighteen hundreds, Victorian england version of mating mentality, just so that I can feel remotely satisfied with a partner that I don't think meets my son, and that's not going to happen. So I mean, this is like a of you you seem to think it's attractive problem, but to me it's like a you know spaetzle unction of cables that every time you try and pull on them that today is between the two of us there's been like twenty absolutely unspeakable things that use one of us. He said, right, like to these the this area of discussion is so non typically done in a manner that isn't used as a casual to to hit people over the head with or to try and get some sort of the furious campaign across that you don't nobody uses what's called the oxford manner right the the ability to play Gracefully with ideas that's not a loud um but yeah anyway just to kind of fight the other decide of this.

When women had a problem, we said, what can we do to fix society? But now that men have a problem, we say, what is that? That men are doing what they can't fix themselves.

We don't tell when that is. Certainly not is going to. Navy is not what we tell poor people. You just pull yourself up by the bootstraps that more than american strategy. But what you said about the insull term is very interesting.

Unfortunately, that coin was termed uh or at least and spread into the mainstream with these terrorist attacks of the two thousand and ten. And what this is cost, it's very unfortunate. I mean, in sales, it's arguably the most or one of the most marginalized groups in society.

On some level, IT is the most modernized groups. These are meant that we are being deprived of life opportunities. Review suffering in in in in ah and I bought one up at in norway where I said there's a reason why you don't know the name of a single norwegian on in sell.

I speak up about these matters, and i'm in a position to endure the hatred and the attacks that come on and they have become increasingly grave. Could you imagine what happened if a regular guy and insel spoke up and said, I have never had animated opportunities? Let me tell you how this destroys my life.

First, he wouldn't be met with compassion. He'd be vanished. To be seen as a massage is than a potential terrorist. So we've created the culture where these men that are the most marginalized, and you could say, oppressed, aren't even allowed to speak up about how terrible the line had become.

So we don't hear anyone bear witness to this modern aliza women spoke up loudly and proudly about what the page rocky were doing to them. And they succeeded with with liberating themselves from that. It's very difficult to see in the short to to mid range how these men can be a part of the public conversation because the costs that we impose them are so enormous into that other thing you said about how can we raise up.

Meanwhile, that's that's what you could call one of the Candy avian paradoxes in racing up women. As I again think that I mentioned to you last year, the norwegian welfare state men pay more into IT in taxes than they receive from IT. Women received more than one point two million dollars from the, from the welfare state over over their lifetime.

Then they pay in in taxes. And one point two million dollars. Is that still pretty good money? So and and I think that is one of the linch pints of our society.

The reason why not, according to the U. N. Almost every year, is the best society living in the world is precisely because we transfer these resources from men to women. And that allows, and there's a variety of reasons why that creates a Better society.

But then a negative aspect of that is that men lose these resources and women gain them, which is good for society, good for the women and the children they bear. But IT makes men relatively less attractive because, number one, women, to a much less extent, neither resources of a partner and men or or had lost these resources that in previous times would make them more attractive to women. And that's that's a very bad externality.

So we created the prop to greater society in human history. And because of the way we did that, we're now serving towards self eradication because we created society where men actually aren't good enough to entice women's attraction systems so that women are want to have sex with them and pair borne wisdom, have children with them. And that is unfortunate. Unlike you said, that is a spaghetti's.

What about the second bottles neck? Let's say that we've managed to weave a way through the first one. We've managed to find a partner while happy with them, were ready to settle down, get married in. The question comes up, are we going .

to make babies? yeah. So that has to do about cultural ology. This is what recovered the last time over, over, over hour.

And I reason to published a book called stores of love, from biking to where I take the readers through eight hundred year journey of western ideologies of love, to show how we ended up where we are today, and how that explains our dating diffunce in the demographic collapse. So we now live in a world with the meeting ideology that's called confluence love. Confluence means to come together.

So we're supposed to come together. And as long as that's beneficial, we're supposed to stay together when it's not move on. So it's we have serial pair bonding entropy urs for opportunistic short term relationships.

So we sleep around when we're single and hope preferably not when we're hitched up and then relationship last for long and say last. And this this, the values of this mating regime is convenience, reward and individualism realization. So we supposed to to do whatever works for us as individuals and to modern ideology.

That makes a lot of sense. And, uh, we we wanted, we wanted to do that for a goodwill, but we weren't prosper songs. But now we are.

And now with implemented this receipt a symbolic from one hundred and sixty eight uh, before that, to give an example of another uh, ideology of love, from the early eighteen hundred until one thousand eighty six, we had the ideology romantic club where cultures imposed on people, they indoctrinated them and cultural them, socialize them. However, you want to put IT into thinking that a man and a woman as individuals, there only half a person. So you're supposed to find that other soul that matches yours, and then you're supposed to merge in a pair bond, underpin by very strong true love.

And this love last a lifetime. And then you self realized as a couple through the bread winner housewife model. So from our perspective that that sounds a little bit silly, but imposing those beliefs on people, push them together and make them have children to a sufficient extent, well, you could say maybe to a too high extent because they read the pink.

Population growth during that period was enormous. So in that second, bottled when IT comes to having children in earlier times, in all earlier times, i'm sure there were exceptions serving there, but maybe those weren't functional societies imposed on people that they had to pair bond hab children, if not your desk tion australites or maybe me a month, or go to war or worth the fields. Uh, and we don't do that anymore and we only and here's an important part on reception.

We only we didn't evolve to have this incredible desire to be parents. We have a desire for IT. But as we see now, it's not strong enough for our current environment.

Uh, evolution works in a way that IT implants proxy for, uh, you sexually attracted to one, uh, you you do these things and then in some at least as efficient reproduction. But now that we detach population from from reproduction through effective contracts, tips, those adaptations that we evolved for the previous mating shines don't work as well. And we also have this ideology or not having children has we're having children has become quite voluntary.

I mean, they're still some pressure but beautifying without in some million, it's even seen as a row with not to have children. You have environment ists um that think having children is wrong. You have all kinds of different anti ais beliefs and and this reduces the pressure that in previous times pushed people toward reproduction so that when people do manage to pair bond and they have to decide where their children, you have those ideological differences from earlier times.

And then you have all the environment pressures, such as the castle ness of having children difficulties, the time pressure at sea. So you have all these factors to play in there. And what politicians and futility researchers have grown to are those more mondaine environmental factors.

So norway probably has the best social regime in the world driving children. We give incredible benefits to parents and children at there's probably never existed. An environment in the history of humanity awards more beneficial to be children that in orally and children not doing IT.

So what this birthrate committee, uh, is probably going to do is suggest with another hundred dollars there, another thousand dollars there. But we know from research that's not gna work. So if if we're gonna work on this second bottle neck, it's about cultural change and evolving towards a new ideology of love.

And that sounds very an appropriate for modern minds. Were not we're supposed to leave individuals alone. A lot of people have set in the debate over it's inappropriate for politicians to engage. But I mean, if we're staring towards self eradication, nothing is more important than and the question of existence versus non existence. So we really should be open uh to experimenting and trying to question even Normal sacred values.

In a lot of the studies, I think that i've seen lots of the survey data, G S S data and a few others come back, and some of the highest rated reasons for why people haven't had kids is not ready yet, still working on myself, don't have the money in a insufficiently finances secure. What do you make of the sort of cost of living and self actualization ideology, sort of slash thought pattern when IT comes to its contribution because at least in terms of self reports, uh haven't found somebody i'm sufficiently attracted to well to do that haven't found somebody that i'm sufficiently attracted to um to be able to uh have a partner with is very low down eerily very low.

Yeah yeah well, we don't know that is the thing about that. We expert actually do not know what the precise factors are that I created the situation. They don't understand why people aren't that.

They know some might. They know that urban ization is a factor, uh individualizing. But how they play in, how much they affect things, uh, it's still a puzzle. And especially why of these factors could be a manimal to policy. What is that we have to do? What kind of society we have to move towards to make people again, having children is been very under researched um that is, among other things, my part of A A group of researchers that are playing for funds now and we want to actually find this out.

We want to study a female and male mating reproductive psychology and see what are the actual factors, not what people say are the factors, but through long to two new studies to uncover what the actual elements are that motivate or demotivate reproduction. And it's it's especially with an evolutionary psychology. This has been so under research over the last few decades, there's been so many valuable contributions on on dating and relationships and parental investment, partner preferences, sex, everything within meeting accept its ultimate function, which is to reproduce, that's been enormously under research, which is which is puzzling and now it's it's become existence ally important to understand these mechanisms.

I suppose you you hinted at IT before the difference tween proximate and ultimate reasons you know proximately reason sex feels good. Ultimate reason IT makes babies um looking .

at the ultimate .

justification is a much more direct uh intervention to just get straight to approximate because you you know exactly how that works. You can manipulate IT more directly, uh, getting in and and sort of the ultimate is usually the unspoken thing is a thing behind the thing.

Uh but I do wonder as having a conversation with a friend, uh, who was telling me the he held his sister's newborn baby for the first time and this is the first member of his kin had been like newborn's first family newborn he held IT in his hands and as as he was doing IT immediately, he had these sort of classic visions of a warrior man going to protect this child, his child, but is pretty close, right? You know, he's an uncle and we had a conversation, I think, that an odd may be sort of mystic child desire that goes on that increasingly atomized a non pad generation living where people are in their own houses, they move away from home, eighteen. They don't get to see their brothers and sisters and potentially their children quite so much anymore.

Everyone's in their own silo. On top of that are declining both right? Means that there are a few children around to show people who don't yet have children, the children or thing that you can have. How much have you considered this this kind of um the one of the big impacts as being around children is that IT perhaps encourages you to have children. And by that, having fewer children big gets reduction in the incentive to all the drive to have children.

Yeah, that's that's that's why the leading research in this believe that this unfortunately is self for reinforcing process. Like I mention, the region women want to have two point four children. But to have one point four, now that it's fell to one point for the next generation will probably want to have quite a bit fewer than two point four.

And we see in this through the generations. So we're not able to fully our fertility ideals. And this puts us in a spiral that just and tells us the society circling the drain until there's no unless we're able to turn this around.

Yeah the fatality yes, that that is a moving target.

Yeah no. That's why I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation how unfortunate IT is that the main or region researchers from this, they're just waiting for women around forty to have an on precedent in a number of baby because I mean, deleting international experts, you're pretty uniform. They all agree, but they are pretty uniform.

This isn't turning around. Its they say that it's more likely that IT continues to decline than that IT tapes off or goes up again. So if we don't turn this around, likely IT will only get worse. And this circling of the drain is just gonna fast and faster. Chinese societies collapse.

Didn't someone say that the best you can do is for the fault rate, is to just resign and relax?

Yeah that was the commentary or his biggest newspaper ah he thought one point four was just that was just A A number that captured the moment um and he also so he talked to this expert I said, yeah, I know norwegian women will start having baby soon in their forty so this this is going to go up again so yeah, SHE SHE actually wrote that the best thing we could do for the to increase the regulators to resign and relaxing. If we do that, we disappear. And then .

now's x sexist woman of the year said the men were wing and then a gay guy said that men are trying to cry their way into women's pants.

Yeah, there's spin. And i'm grateful that they charm in I I haven't responded almost any of them. Uh, i'm just glad that people are participating in this debate.

And if they want a sere men or or anna attack my credentials for my intentions or call me a fashious, that's just tell these debates work. And hopefully this is the first face of the debate. And then if we're able to get past that, we can agree that this is an existence al chAllenge.

And after that we can start talk mobile experiments and then executing them. And maybe we can have more research on this and and we can have IT a national movement to try to turn this around. I'd like I said, I think especially as any navy nations are the best situated nations from doing something about this, we should spare her this.

We should be the forefront, were so rich and wealthy, we have such good national conversations and were so far ahead in generation. We've been doing this for so long, why can't we get ceased? This is the bigger problem with faced, at least in a very long time. Let's try to solve IT. Let's not resign and give up what .

happened at your university when they found out they were researching fatlings rates.

Well, there too, I am very understanding. I I was working at a center of of environmental sts and they need to have their profile. And I respect that when they found out that I was going to research declining populations from a negative perspective.

So you didn't want to have anything to do with that, but I found a different university that i'm applying for research funds from. So i'm OK by IT out. Well, if people don't understand that, one point four means that our societies will disappear.

They don't see the problems with, and they don't see how this can work against solve in the climate crisis, collapse. And societies are not going to develop new technology. They're not going to be CoOperative there.

Probably not in recycle too much either. I mean, it's we want functioning society, stable functioning society for the next generation so we can fix the climate crisis. And this is a new situation. Before this summer, they're maybe one or two open the year in leading newspapers where people said that will be fine. One point four isn't the big of a deal and one op, ad rote that this for sure won't be as bad as the black that so we'll be okay, which is a pretty so yeah I I I I understand and yeah especially for environmentalists, it's hard to rapt or head around how a declining population could be a negative thing. So um I I tried to be understanding but yeah it's it's yeah that .

wasn't too cool. Be okay. I applaud your patients. I really do. It's a you know you had this really great conversation with Richard reeves.

S i'll send to you once we're done because I think the political psychology side of science, communication, activism, talking about topics that are kind of on the edge of the overton window, I think IT IT really might be good framing for you given that he's the uh, founder of the american institute for boys and men. So he's having a similarly unpopular discussion. We spoke about that.

He had this really interesting insight where he said that people who talk about unpopular topics and feel h escape goat or uh or uh castigated or you know h insulted when they do IT. What they do is they become increasingly aggressive with that tone because that more and more frustrated that they get sort of labeled as this really nasty thing. So you know, you see A A lot of, I think, men's rights activists, a probably a good chunk of them get thrown into this bucket because they've been fighting about family cord or divorce law, male suicide de or whatever IT, whatever IT is for for a long time and because they've either been ignored or insulted, what they do is they just keep ramping the rhetoric cup.

I think you could see this with the climate, uh, movement too, right? No, you don't understand. If we get passed however many parts per million in CEO two, it's going to be a problem. So i'm going to throw paint over, throw super over painting. I am going to glue myself to the m twenty five and i'm going to do, you know, big, big, all bigger, bigger, bigger.

And as Richard said, the problem you have when you do that is that you become less and less acceptable to be understood, especially in the arena that's increasingly inflammatory because you are more inflammatory. The way that you communicate these ideas becomes more aggressive, which is the exact opposite of the impact that you wanted that to have. So at the very time when you need to be as peaceful and gentle as possible, you're putting the strong argument forward.

But you're doing IT from a place of sort of rationality, and realism is opposed to one of like just steeping in its all emotion, because it's much easier to dismiss the arguments of somebody saying something you don't want to believe that is already unpopular if they do IT laid in with emotion, as opposed if they come in and they say, hey, interesting that i'm going to put some some facts fold for you hear his, his some things that you should consider and they go, what a reasonable nothing anybody can say that you haven't been reasonable with the way that you put your your points forward. And I I never thought about that before is really interesting. I've never been an activist really for anything.

I've got interests and stuff, but i've certainly felt that this taste, sometimes I been talking about stuff to do with med's mental health or whatever, and know he does get a little bit more agitated, IT does get a little bit more fairy, you think, is that actually effective? What am I doing? Am I using this as A A punching bag opportunity to vent about my own internal frustration at nobody listening? Or am I doing this to try and make as big an impact as I can in the world? Because those two things often are actually a counter to each other.

Now you asked her earlier, if, if, if I saw myself as some kind of fire brand, I I wish I wasn't in in position. I wanted jump over these next two phases and jump to the one where we start researching this in a docking experiments and try to turn things around. I don't enjoy being the objective hatred, inclusion and having, well, if, if, if at least they attacked something, that was actually my position.

But that is so far, it's been exclusively drawn. And it's of course it's it's tiresome. IT sucks.

My my department lied to a newspaper that I was no longer connected to them. I have a contract of the year and they just didn't want to be associated with me. The reason why i'm sitting here is because, uh, my university would no link longer.

Let me use the podcast studio, which are just bizarre. I'm like, just what is this? It's so odd. That's how these things work.

Yeah was at a dinner a couple of weeks ago with A A member of the birthday committee of a reasonable person, and he said they haven't been able to create debate about this. And this summer I was able to do that and and that noise will help them. So now, now we're working through that face where people are just arguing and Bakery and saying this isn't a problem.

Hopefully, we can get to the point where we can have a recent discussion about this. And that's when the birthday commit will put forward their findings, however useful unuseful they are. I don't know if IT we'll have to see, but then after that, something else will come to mean, this isn't a one year conversation.

We're gonna talking about this for generations. Unless were able to turn this around, this recycled the drain. I mean, it's gonna become more and more apparent how devastating, how disastrous the consequences will be of losing a third of your generation or two thirds with your generational size.

Prove generations it's it's this discussion is not over IT as just started. And thank you for for pushing this and not just inviting me but so many others to talk about this. You're the you're one of those really are spare heading this in the international marketplace of ideas, and that's really valuable.

I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, it's it's a such an odd type of existential risk because, you know some of them at wildfires start, you feel the heat are those black plumes of smoke in the air or or the smog on the ground, or, you know, people die in a pandemic. But demographic collapse is this sort of really unique class of.

we would never face this problem before. Yeah, no. I mean, an incident enemy at us, guess it's, we're immediately gonna know exactly what to do. Our neighbors es go to war against us. We're going to band together.

We're going to forget all the bickering and we're going unite, and we're going to draw best to survive and beat them and murder them and win. That's in our nature when we're now self eradicating ating or just what it's we we've had low fatlings before, but we never had this kind of increasingly global phenomenon. That is that just isn't stopping.

It's it's just a continuing decline. So our cultural intuitions, our cultural legacies, we have almost nothing to build on. We have to think, I knew we have to analyze, understand something that is really complex.

And then we have to come up with completely novel solutions probably. And that is help of a chAllenge. We have very little to go on here. This is a brand new environment.

Well, I know that even I just published your last book, which is awesome, but I mean, you've got a hell of a topic for the next one. Jumping in with two feet and doing whatever is that you need to do. Do appreciate you.

I I really do. I very much appreciate you sort of sticking your neck out as we would say the U. K, and doing this work. It'll be interesting to see how you in late in the rest of the guys get on. I loved when we met at age best last year, and it's been a the interesting to see where people end up. So I really hope that you sort of make IT through if people want to keep up today with what's happening from your side of the world, your data, your research and stuff like that was best to go.

Well, maybe under the youtube video, you can put a link to a stories along of vans. Tender is open access, so it's free to download if you want to see what published. And go to my google scholar.

Yeah, thank you. You can go to my google scholar page and just type in my name, and then you'll see my publications there. Also, research k is good. There are .

different ways to find IT unreal math. Until next time i'll see you.

Thank you very much. Chris was a pleasure talk with you again. Take care.

Get away. get.