Factually! with Adam Conover - Could Cratering Birthrates Mean Impending Disaster? with Dr. Alice Evans

Episode Date: January 1, 2025

Global fertility rates are dropping, and while this might initially seem like a solution to overpopulation concerns, it also signals major challenges ahead. A generational imbalance could spell disaster for social security, elder care, and the workforce needed to combat climate change. This week, Adam sits down with Dr. Alice Evans to explore the causes behind declining birthrates, the consequences they could bring, and how society's failure to break harmful gender role expectations for men impacts everyone. SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. Hey there, welcome to Factually. I'm Adam know anything. Hey there, welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me on the show again. You know, a surprising undercurrent in the presidential election this year was the declining birth rate in America.

The birth rate here has actually been falling since 2007 and it continues plummeting to historic lows. And this year, for the first time I can remember, you had politicians talking about that. J.D. Vance leads a wing of the Republican Party that is somewhat obsessed with the birth rate. That's why he made all those comments about childless cat ladies,

denigrating people who don't want to have kids, and why he generally proposes a return to 1950s gender roles where you had one breadwinner and then a wife who could have as many kids as the family wanted. But you know, the weirdos in our political culture aside, the falling birth rate in America is still something that we need to think seriously about because when you have less people, it can cause problems.

I mean, sure, less people means you use less resources, you destroy less of the environment, et cetera, but it also means that you have less economic growth because you have less people means you use less resources, you destroy less of the environment, et cetera, but it also means that you have less economic growth because you have less people who are working or inventing or creating new things. And it means a smaller tax base of young people who are working who can pay for all the old people who are not working.

It basically creates a crisis for programs like social security and Medicare, not to mention, it creates political instability, demonization of immigrants, et cetera, that we are seeing today. And here's the thing, this is not just an American issue. Fertility is actually going down globally, and it's going down faster than we previously realized.

The declining birth rate of humans around the globe is the defining demographic trend of this century. And we can see it wherever we look. So we need to ask the question, why is the fertility rate falling? What effects is that going to have on our lives? And what, if anything, should be done about it? That is not a question with a very clear answer. Well, to help us get into it, we have one of my favorite guests returning to the show.

I know you're gonna love this conversation. Before we get into it, I wanna remind you that if you wanna support the show, you can do so on Patreon. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every conversation we have on this show, ad free. We got a lot of other wonderful community features as well.

And if you like standup comedy, come see me on the road. I'm doing a brand new hour of stand-up. You have never seen it before if you've seen me in the past. Coming up soon, I'm headed to Dallas, Texas, Toronto, Ontario, just added dates in Omaha, Nebraska, doing Minneapolis pretty soon. Head to adamconover.net to see all of my tickets and tour dates.

And now let's get to this week's conversation. I am so thrilled to welcome back on the show the brilliant and charismatic Dr. Alice Evans. She's a social scientist at King's College London, host of the Rocking Our Priors podcast, and she is writing a book called The Great Gender Divergence. This was an incredible conversation.

We talked about not just the fertility rate, but the global crisis facing men, what can be done about it. I know you're going to love it. Let's get to this conversation with Dr. Alice Evans. Alice, thank you so much for being on the show again. Adam, this is a delight. You, it's your second time on the show.

Our last interview, which was not on video, because it was a few years ago during COVID. One of my favorite interviews, you're absolutely wonderful to talk to, and you're like a shot of espresso. So we're back at time on the show, our last interview, which was not on video, because it was a few years ago during COVID. One of my favorite interviews, you're absolutely wonderful to talk to, and you're like a shot of espresso every time I speak with you. So let's jump into it.

How seriously is the birth rate declining globally and why is it happening? Right, yes, I think this is the biggest problem of our lifetimes. Really, the biggest problem of our lifetime, ahead of climate change or anything else? Well, yes, because fertility is plummeting globally. It's collapsing very, very rapidly and every single country in the world needs a big

workforce, work, you know, people are ideas, people are innovators, people support their parents, they provide the outputs that provide for goods and services. And even if we're very concerned about climate mitigation, we need government funds to build flood defenses or have green industrial policy. So if you have fewer workers, that directly affects growth as they've seen in Japan. So yeah, it's a big issue.

So let's really address the sort of opposite view that some people have immediately, because I know this year in California, very crowded state, right? A lot of people say there's too many people. There's been, you know, worries about population explosion for decades and decades. So what do you say to folks who have that,

like, hold on a second, aren't there too many people? Wouldn't it be good to have less, and we'd hurt less of the environment, and we could be less of the environment and we could be in a smaller space? Why does there need to be more people? Can you speak to that emotion that people have? Absolutely.

So maybe going back 60 years ago, the United Nations had this strong push to get people down to having two kids because if parents have two kids rather than say six, they can invest in their quality education, they can bring them up and then have a skilled workforce. Great. But now we're way past that.

So in Guatemala, for example, we're getting to below two. In Mexico City is having fewer children than say New York. So right across Chile, Colombia, Tunisia, Turkey, they're down to 1.5 kids per adult. And so this is a real crisis for many developing countries and indeed Europe as well. So if workers are major innovators, if we need people to, as I say, to create the output, for governments to generate taxes, to generate revenue, If you have fewer workers, you've got reduced tax base, and then you have a fiscal squeeze, and then you need to put more taxes on the younger generation

to support that increasingly older population. So as your fertility falls, then more and more people are over the age of 60. Now, as much as we all love our grandparents, they're not very economically active, you know, grandmothers and grandfathers might sit and read books. Great. Nice for them.

But if they're living for 30 or 40 years and not contributing to the economy, they need to be supported. So that's a drain economically on all our short, no offense to anyone's grandmother, but they're economically dependent. And supporting them is costly. Got it. I mean, the way that our social welfare system works here in America is that the current workers

support the minority of people who are older and not working anymore, because a bunch of people have died and the birth rate has gone up. So everybody, like that's how social security works in practice here in the US. So if you have a much smaller generation

and a much bigger older generation, then suddenly you've got a whole lot of elderly people who the younger folks have to pay for. I see that as being a problem. Is there no other policy? Okay. Because I mean, I will say what you're saying sounds a little bit like you know We've got this idea that we need uninterrupted growth all the time. You know that's what certainly what capitalism demands

That's what stockholders demand Is this just a fiscal issue right is it just about money because you know I mean money's made up right people are real And so is there no other way to you you know, adjust our society to accommodate for this sort of thing? I know that's a good question. That's a great point. That's a great point. So there are many different things we could do.

So for example, at the current rate of falling fertility, if we do nothing at all, then we will then many countries will have a very aging population. That means there'll be, say, like a one-to-one ratio of one worker for every old person. The only way you can accommodate those older people is higher taxes on young people. That's fine. It just means that you and I would spend less money. Then that has a direct effect on other people's jobs and services. If you're being taxed more, but then maybe you're not buying a sofa, for example.

It reduces demand in your economy. it reduces consumption and our welfare is less. So that's one option. Another possibility is say, maybe they could generate amazing AI that has massive, massive productivity. That's possible. Will we see it? I don't know. Another possibility is that you just import people. So you have massive immigration. And again, that's totally possible. But let me add two caveats. So- It doesn't seem like it's likely to happen

in the US anytime soon. A lot of countries, they're moving the opposite direction. So there, yeah, so there are three concerns. One is we see this political backlash to high immigration, as you've seen in the US, as we also see in Europe. Now, immigration can be amazing. Immigration, you know, diversity can stimulate in innovation and integration, but if it's well managed. So Lance Pritchett estimates that to maintain the current ratio of the working age population with the current model of immigration,

rich countries would need to be around 45 to 55% immigrants by 2050. So that's a significant change in the demographics, right? Which, you know, so that's a significant change. So that's one option. So AI is one option. Just getting poorer is one option. Immigration is one option. But yeah, there are tensions with each of those things. And those are all options that are big changes

to our current way of life, in one way or another. So this is a shock to the system, shock to these societies, no matter what happens. Let's get into why this is the case. Why is fertility falling globally? I mean, I would understand a country, too, I've heard this about the US know, the U S about Japan. Why would it be happening on a global scale?

Right. And I think that's a really crucial question you ask Adam, because here in Britain, you know, we've just seen our total fertility rate. That's the number of children each woman has has fallen to one point for four. And lots of people say, oh, it's the cost of living or it's high house prices. And each of those phenomena are real, but that same explanation cannot explain why this is happening all around the world everywhere. You know, high house prices in London can't explain what's going on in the Guatemalan highlands. It's happening everywhere, all at once. So irrespective of country level of income, this is dropping. Now the most famous traditional model of collapse, of falling

fertility was Gary Becker's model of a quality quantity trader. That parents are choosing to sort of maximize their children's output. So if you, maybe if you're on a farm, you choose to have lots of children, you're maximizing quantity because you need all those hands, you need little Adams to be doing the transplants in your rice or whatever, or you're living in a city like, like LA. And there are lots of nice job opportunities. And you think I'll have two Adams so that they can be super

skilled and get nice jobs. Right. Do you think most people are thinking about like I'm having kids. I'm thinking about, I'm going to have two Adams. I'm going to have two of me. You'll have two Alice's we think of our kids as just some economist. Why you think about this.

How can I maximize child output? Should I medium? Sure, sure. It's me, it's little me's doing work for me. Yeah, exactly. And I understand that about, you know, agricultural, especially earlier in, you know, American society. It's like, I need, kids are my revenue source.

I have kids because I need somebody to pull the weeds and like pick the crops, right? And that has changed. Right, so you might say, so some economists might think that with skill bias, technological change and rising rewards for skills, the skills premium that you just invest in having fewer, more skilled little atoms.

That's how economists often think. But I don't think that's so persuasive if we think that this is happening all over the world, irrespective of parental investments in education, irrespective of the level of economic growth. So this is happening globally. So I think those traditional explanations to me, they don't seem to cut it. Right. It's happening in countries that don't have extremely expensive higher education

like we do in the US. Like that higher education is this huge thing in the US that parents have to save for. So you might say, all right, well, if they have to do that, they're gonna have less kids because it's hard to save a couple hundred thousand dollars for more than two kids. But it's happening in countries

that don't have that system or where that's not such a pressure. So what do you think it is? Yeah, I think we need to be very careful, just to add one more thing, and say, just because we perceive something as a pain and as a cost doesn't mean that it's that painful cost that's changing people's behavior.

Like something can be crappy, but it's not necessarily the thing that's changing people's lives. Right, and I'm also, by the way, always skeptical of the economics behavioral explanation of, oh, people are trying to maximize their economic output. That's not why people do things, and especially not when having kids, right?

Like, people have kids for all sorts of reasons. First of all, most people have kids by accident. Like, let's be honest. Most kids are, someone just, you know, they got horny and they made a mistake, and they're like, oh, well, I guess I'll keep this one. You know, that's not bad, sure, let's do it. Let's get married.

That's, people aren't going, hmm, well, I wanna maximize my family's economic output over the next hundred years. And the best way to do that is to breed two lawyers. Like, that's not in practice what people do. People also don't behave economically. They're not economic optimizers in any part of their lives. People buy shitty food because they want to eat shitty food, right? And people do things because they hate themselves.

And they're trying to punish themselves. People, people are too fucking weird to obey economists optimizing principles. Yeah. I think that's a really important point. Okay. So let's talk about the global climate, but first of all, I want to highlight the regional variation. So the fertility collapse happened fastest and most rapidly, and it's

the lowest currently in East Asia. So earlier this year, I spent time chatting to people in South Korea and Hong Kong. And I think there are two really important things going on in that specific region, and then we can talk more globally. So one really salient thing is there's a massive educational arms race. So it's not just that their education is costly, but the parents really, really want their kids to get to the top. This may resonate with some very upper middle-class families in the US that super want their kids to get to the Ivy League, whereby in South Korea and Hong Kong, parents are making videos

to get their kids into the best kindergarten. They're sending their kids to mass camp until 2 p.m. at night just to help them get to the top universities. So that massive, massive investment in education means that having a child is not just financially draining, but also emotionally draining. And so I speak to lots of people and they say, you know, I'm just stopping at one. I cannot go through that enormous sludge again. But you know, there's something, Adam, that gave me hope in thinking how this might change.

Hmm. So I noticed when I'm in East Asia, and I also noticed this in California, there are lots of very fancy pet shops. Hmm. And this made me think that I think humans, many humans, love something little. They love something cute, like that, you know, people with their puppies, people enjoying it. Like people in Singapore, people in Hong Kong, you know, in China, people in Beijing are having more dogs than kids.

And I think if kids were more like dogs, like if they weren't so high maintenance, people would be more likely to have kids. Like if it's just a casual thing, it's a nice, cute thing that you can look after, have a cuddle, you know, that's great. People want these cuddly, sweet things. Yeah, and well, I mean, I've always felt that pets are serving the human need to have something to love, right?

Yeah, they're a cheap substitute. They're a low maintenance substitute for kids. Yeah, because you want to love something, you want to care for something. Here's something that loves you and appreciates your care, and never grows up. Yeah. Right?

They remain puppies forever. So that's the key. So I think that's one thing, that the massive educational competition, where it's a zero-sum race and parents are constantly investing. So that makes having a kid very costly. Another thing that makes kids very costly is child care.

Right? So I was speaking to a couple in Silicon Valley where they were spending $30,000 a year on care. So care costs are really going to hit parental income. So anything, so anything that's making children more costly, if it's emotionally, financially, that's going to, you know, mean in a kind of trade-off be like, I don't want such a big commitment. So that's one aspect. And so many governments across the world

have tried to give pronatal incentives in Scandinavia, for example, they give all kinds of sweeteners to encourage people to have children. And they're doing the same in China. Sure, swag bag at the hospital. Right, swag bag. And the problem with these swag bags

is they fail to notice something even bigger that's happening in many rich and culturally liberal societies. And that is relationship frictions. So in Sweden, 50% of all households are single adult households. Whoa. So, wait, wait. 50% of all households are single adult households. So,

whoa, wait, wait, 50% of all households is some, is an adult living alone. Yeah. Wow. And so, and this correlates very closely with fertility. So in South Korea, as young women go to university and for all kinds of reasons, don't necessarily find someone that they love and cherish

and who treats them with the respect that they want. Many are increasingly choosing to remain single. So there could be some personality frictions. You know, let's suppose you go on a date with a guy, let's call him Adam, and he's narcissistic. He's not that funny. Why is everybody Adam in the... He's narcissistic. Okay, no, keep it going. I like to imagine a world peopled by little me as like being John Malkovich. Let me frame this. I suggest that people marry for three reasons. Love, money, or respect.

Now in some very conservative societies, you just have to marry. It's been stigmatized. In my granny's era, everyone got married. It was the darn thing. But now you can live your life and no one is saying, are you married or not? You know, that, that degree of freedom means that you don't worry about ostracism. So you can be more selective.

And as people, as women on their own money and they're no longer stigmatized, they can choose, right? So if you've got some guy, let's call him Adam is a total douche bag, they can just close their doors. So Adam, do you know the globally most streamed song on Spotify last year? Last year, no, I don't.

What was it? Flowers by Miley Cyrus. I can buy myself flowers. Right. So historically, like, you know, in a Christian wedding, you know, all these desperate singles would queue up hoping to catch the bouquet. You know, maybe they could be next. Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful if I got married?

How fantastic. I'm so desperate to get that. But now there's a whole new narrative, right? So women like Miley Cyrus are celebrating, say, hey, you know, if some guy's not gonna be the one that I want, hell, I've got my own money and it's perfectly fine. No one's gonna shame me. I've got the money.

I can do these nice things. I can provide for myself. I can have a great time. So as people celebrate, single them, and that's a massive liberal advance, right? That's a massive progressive advance and no one is being forced into marriage, et cetera, or forced to endure.

Because people are not forced by society to do one thing, they have the ability to choose. And so more people are choosing a lifestyle that doesn't include a partner or children. Yeah, but it's not like, it's not necessarily the case that people don't want to be married. So if we look at surveys,

lots of people like the idea of love, they like the idea of marriage, but there can be various personality frictions. I do my interview, I was in Mexico for a month, in Puebla, all over in little villages. Maybe there were concerns about guys being unfaithful, maybe guys were machista, or it can be any little thing, like people you know, people being depressed, people being controlling, people being passive aggressive, all these little personality frictions, or just plain boring. You know, you go on a second date and the guy is,

you know, texting you and saying, how was your day? My day was fine. Want to meet later, right? I'm sorry, Alice. So I understand you travel the world and you interview people. You're doing basic research on why they're making the choices they're making, right?

But it is funny to me that you are traveling the world to study the fact that dating sucks. Like, that's what you, like, I went to Mexico and I found out that sometimes guys don't text you back. Did you know this? I'm like, yeah, I don't know if you needed to travel to Mexico to figure that out. You could have just talked to like any of my friends.

Adam, I have news. People are not that great. Yeah, so, all right. Cause you've like discovered a revelation here. I love you picturing, writing this in an economics journal. Hey, I know all you guys said everyone's economically optimizing their behavior, but did you know that dudes be shitty? Like that's, we've, I've proven it.

It's peer reviewed. Like. Yes. And I would add, and I would add that, you know, this works both ways, right? So it dudes be shitty and women may have all kinds of hangups and you know, maybe women have. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. Alice. Sometimes it's not all us.

Thank you. Appreciate it. So there can be a range, there can be a range of things going on. Maybe women are not sufficient. You know, there could be a woman who thinks she's hilarious. Let's call her Alice, but actually she's not all that. Oh, you're quite charming. But- So all these personality frictions, all these personality frictions means that

in many culturally liberal and economically developed countries, we have a rise in singles. And this holds in Latin America, for example. So in Latin America, where women are becoming increasingly progressive and they may want a loving, caring, companionate relationship, you know, with increasingly progressive and they may want a loving, caring companion

in a relationship, you know, with social media as they watch US TV shows, they want that kind of respectful guy. I was in Malaysia two weeks ago and I was chatting to these women, they were telling me their favorite show is Emily in Paris. And that's a show about a woman making choices, you know, deciding whether she likes the guy or not,

if he's not being good enough, you know, if a guy is being snobbish or whatever. And they're inspired by that. And they tell me about guys who don't treat them with respect. And they said, you know, I don't want to tolerate that kind of guy. They tell me about guys who are intimidated about their earnings and they don't like that kind of guy. So they're choosing to pass. So I have these conversations with all kinds of people. And if people are not measuring up to their expectations, they may choose to be single. So, and this, this also has an economic aspect to it whereby in Sweden and in the U S for example, it is men who earn less men who still live with their parents.

Also men who are obese, who are more likely to be single. Right. So as, as, as, as people become selective, those who are not likely to be single, right? So as people become selective, those who are not deemed attractive, that can be subjective, et cetera, those who are struggling financially, et cetera, those people can really struggle. Because the cohort of single people,

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Twisted Tea is gonna be there to turn your day up a notch and make a good time a great time. So tell you what, why don't you listen to this ad and grab a refreshing Twisted Tea today and keep it twisted. In terms of the overall fertility globally going down, so far you've said it's the sort of high burden of having a kid in some societies. So the cost of childcare could be part of it.

Another important part of it to the rise of singles. And then there is a third factor. Yes, what is it? So this is my hypothesis and I want to, I want to emphasize that's just a hypothesis because we don't have hard data on this, but it's something I observe. And, and maybe before starting, I want to, so it's about the rise and improvement, the massive quality improvement in personal online entertainment. So for example, so first of all, I want to take you back,

Adam, to when I was a teenager. So, uh, when I was younger, you know, in little England, we had four television channels and my friends and we had N64, you know, and the most exciting game on a mobile phone was to play snake, right? That was the peak. That was epic. Now in that kind of environment, you know, your, your entertainment options are kind of limited.

So I had a garage and I would often invite my friends to the garage. Now in that environment, coming to my house versus playing snake, it's a pretty no brainer, like I've got zero competition there, right? Should I go to Alice's? Shall I play snake? Yeah. Okay. Like she's not back.

Go to Alice's garage where she keeps her car. Okay. That's not even a great invite, but it is better than snake on the phone. Sure. Yeah. And so because people are coming, it becomes totally normal. You know, everyone is going, it's the, it's the normal conventional thing. And then, you know, my friends and I, Adam, we make little jokes,

we tease each other, we play. Now it is, we are, you know, this isn't a fancy, it's not an amazing thing, but we're making jokes, we're teasing, we're playing, and we're perfectly comfortable with each other. Now that's a very, very different environment to growing up as a teenager today, because your outside options are so much better. Right? If I was a teenager now, inviting me to someone's garage, like the competition has just got a lot better, right?

Like you can watch anything on Netflix. You can play Call of Duty and there'll be an amazing like graphic engaging game. You can binge Bridgerton. You can listen to hilarious comedians on YouTube. You can listen to podcasts. You can, you know, watch all the premier league you want. There are so many fun, fantastic, great options. So if some little ginger invites you to her garage, you're going to be like,

I think I'll pass. Go to the ginger's garage. Like we're going to go to this ginger, this very effusive gregarious ginger's garage. And you can also do a lot of those things online with your friends, right? You can do, you can interact socially, you can play Call of Duty with your friends,

you can be on a Discord with your friends, et cetera. And so I just following your train of thought, is it that people go out less, so they meet people less, so they get married less, so they procreate less? Well, let me add. So I think slowing it down a little bit. So if we look at a bunch of data, we see that people are becoming more introverted in general.

So young people aren't going out so much, they aren't drinking so much, so they're generally staying in more. And we also, you know, that was of course accelerated by COVID. So we see a general trend in people becoming more introverted. And as people become more introverted, you know, for example, I have data from a consumer market research

company and it shows that in Brazil, in the Philippines, in Saudi Arabia, people are spending about three and a half hours a day on social media apps. And that's passively strolling. And so if you're just consuming a TV or et cetera, you're not developing these social skills, right? So you're not being like me in my garage where I've got to entertain people. I've got to try to be funny. If you're just looking at your phone and not hanging out with people, one, you don't necessarily develop the social skills, and two, you may also develop more social anxiety,

and you're just not bonding with other people so much. And I don't know about, yeah, sorry. Oh no, I just wanted to ask you two, I have two questions that maybe complicate this, or I wanna push back a little bit, but if you have another point, you can make it before I give my little push back. Yeah, so I was just saying,

so one is I think that the decline in social skills could affect relationship formation. So that's just a hypothesis. I think if people spend more time on their phones, passively strolling, they may not be a brilliant date. They may not be so amazingly hilarious. And then the second point is that, often I watch it that even people, they go out, and I'm sure you've observed in California Adam, that you see couples or you see people going out and still at restaurants looking at their phones.

They're just, they're two people going out and they're not spending time with each other. And if we go back to our earlier discussion about why people have kids, like you have this strong bond and maybe you wanna have kids just for a fun thing to do together, right? Like, let's bring some more zest into our life. Let's have a fun little thing. Well, what if the kid is being outcompeted by really compelling entertainment? I guess, so here's my question is that,

you said people are spending three and a half hours a day scrolling on their phones. I remember 20 years ago, the stat was, people are spending four hours a day watching television. And, you know, I grew up with television. It wasn't as, you know, just cable or whatever, wasn't as rich an entertainment experience as I can get from the internet plus video games

plus Netflix, yada yada, there weren't as many options. But, you know, the story since the fifties was people are staying indoors, watching television. They're not doing anything else. Um, and then I guess the other thing I'd ask is, uh, if I'm staying indoors, watching television, that is not as social as social and activity. When I am truly wasting time right now, when I think about what am I doing when I'm wasting time?

Yes, I'm scrolling, but what am I doing in between the scrolling? I'm texting all time right now. When I think about what am I doing when I'm wasting time, yes, I'm scrolling, but what am I doing in between the scrolling? I'm texting all of my friends. I'm having five text conversations simultaneously, right? And that's a sort of weird social interaction because we're not really spending time together, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, I am like reaching out

and communicating with people. And so I guess my last question is, does the drop in fertility correlate with the rise of all of those technologies, like in terms of when we see the drop happen? Like when does the line start going down? Yeah, so those are three brilliant questions. And let me start with the last one. Yeah, there is a perfect correlation, right?

That is the big thing that has happened in the past 15 years. Most of the world is getting these smartphones. Most of these world is getting these little dopamine devices, sending you notifications. Adam, someone likes you. Adam, here's something exciting. Hey, Adam, check out this. There's this little thing in your pocket,

constantly demanding your attention, constantly distracting you from whoever is in the room with you right now. And so I think, yeah, so the correlation is absolute. So that is why I'm inclined to think that this hypothesis could have some weight. Because it is the one thing affecting all countries. And that's why, and going back to my starting premise, right? We need something that would explain why we see this in Tamil Nadu. Why are we seeing this in religiously conservative places,

which still have universally high rates of marriage, where everyone is getting married. So it can't be the relationship frictions. It can't be about the competitive parenting in rural Guatemala and highlands. It's something that's happening irrespective of culture. It's not feminism. It's happening irrespective of culture. You know, it's not feminism. It's happening irrespective of culture. It's happening in Saudi Arabia. It's happening in Tunisia.

It's happening in Turkey. It's happening irrespective of wealth. It's happening irrespective of culture. The only thing that is happening everywhere all at once is this massive technological shock in that there is a massive improvement in the quality of leisure, of personal online leisure.

Okay, so that I think is the correlation point. So let me push, let's just prod on that a little bit. So you're saying that we're talking about societies that are very conservative socially, where they still have sort of compulsory marriage almost socially. And those marriages are happening, but the people in the marriages are not having kids

and that would be because they're on their phones. It's like, the story makes more sense to me, like talking about the US or a society where, well, people are just staying home and gambling on sports rather than going out and getting laid. But in a society where, no, actually they're sort of, the marriages are forced to happen,

it doesn't make, it's not as clear to me why a phone would stop people in that situation from having kids. So the possibility, so the poss, and I'm just raising this as a hypothesis, right? So the possibility is that, why is it that poor conservative places are behaving exactly the same way as people in rich places?

And the one single common thing that's happening everywhere all at once is just that there are these fun things happening on their phones. And so that's just one possible hypothesis that people are getting that kind of leisure and enjoyment and distraction distraction possibly from their phone. And it's not that people have- Can I ask you one other- Yeah, yeah, yeah, go for it, go for it. One other hypothesis, just that you said

that's the only thing that's happened everywhere. I did have, and I'm blanking on the person's name and I'll look it up and I'll say it in the outro of the episode, but we did an episode a few years ago talking about the rise of microplastics and how that might be, you know, interfering with biological fertility, right? There was, we had a researcher on who had some

hypothesis to that effect. Have you considered anything along those lines if there's some sort of like mass biological change that is causing a drop in fertility where, hey, people are having just as much sex, but they are, you know, it's causing less fertilizations, right? Yeah, that's certainly possible. And it would speak to your earlier point about kids happening, you know, if some kids were previously happening by accident, right?

Right. Or biology shifted. So that's one possibility. It's certainly possible that there's been some biological shift and that the way that's difficult for us to track because we don't know what's going on in people's bodies. That's certainly one possibility. But, you know, again, the dates aren't lining up as much as they do with the technological change. Okay. And I suppose- Like people have been using plastics for ages. It's not like Indians were using wood or something else. Yeah.

You're right. The plastics thing has been going on for a very long time. And you know, maybe, you know, there could be something in that. I don't want to rule it out. It's just this, this, okay, now let's go back. You had an earlier point. Ah, yeah, yeah. So I wanted to say that, you know, it's perfectly possible that people text, you

know, chatting to most of your friends on your phone and people do that. Absolutely. But we also see, but I think the really important point for family formation and couple formation are social skills, right? Are you having a fun, enjoyable time with that person? So it's one thing to be texting your friends, totally possible. It's another, if you're in that impersonal connection. And you know, when I speak to young people all over, whether it's Chicago or New Haven or California,

you know, they say the date was dull or he was boring or there was no spark. Right? That's the thing they always thought there was no spark and for spark, you need the, the in-person excitement, you know, the little butterflies, right? We can all be romantic and, and those texting conversations aren't necessarily helping people forge the social skills. So let me give you another example. So I go to the gym a lot, and then when I travel, I go to different gyms all over the world.

And here again, I noticed a big trend. Like, so when I was younger, it was me and a bunch of guys would train to get those, like a mechanic, a sales rep and a plumber. And we were all like, little jokes and tease each other. But now when I look at gyms, I never see anyone chatting because people have their phones. And so if you have your phones, if you have instant online entertainment, you don't need to coordinate with your buddy, right?

You can just go by yourself. Previously, when you had no entertainment, you coordinate to go with your buddy. Now you've got the entertainment, you can listen to that guy, Adam, and you go to the gym, right? Right. Right.

So, so. Someone's probably listening to this in the gym right now, and they're listening to that guy Adam, and as a result, they're not meeting the love of their life, because they're not talking to the gym hottie, and they're not gonna have kids, and they're gonna die alone. So I'm sorry if that's you listening.

I am not blaming you for the global collapse in fertility. But. It's all because of Adam. I'm, the title of this episode is gonna be why is fertility collapsing globally? And now we've learned the answer. It's me, I did it. But if you.

Yeah, it's because of me. But if you think about it, going back to teenage Alice, right? Teenage Alice only had to compete with Snake, right? So I didn't have much competition, so people could come to me and I, you know, I didn't become funny overnight, Adam. This took decades of, decades of broth.

But now, but now people can gravitate, people can leapfrog, right? So instead of just looking in your immediate environment and hanging out with your neighbors and making it the best entertainment you can with us. Through singing, through joking, through teasing. Now you can leapfrog for losers in your immediate environment

and just watch the most glorious, hilarious, charismatic celebrities in the world. So, you know, Kylie Jenner has half a billion or whatever, right? People gravitate to those people and they skip over all the losers. And all the losers, like that ginger, don't develop the social skills that you need

to charm people to build the relationship. So I just, so my point is that it just, they skip to Kylie Jenner and Adam and they're not forging those social skills. That is my concern. You put me on a par with Kylie Jenner. They're all parallels. They skipped a Kylie Jenner and Adam, you said. Oh my God.

Wow. That's, this is, what a nice interview. So that's a fascinating hypothesis. So that's a fascinating hypothesis, and I'm not going to tell you you're wrong. And neither is anybody else because it's a hypothesis. But it is fascinating that this is happening literally everywhere. I just want to ask, I know, you know, I think of countries like India, places like Africa, those are places I think of as having extremely high birth rates.

Are they dropping there or are they slowing down? Or is it that the rest of the world is slowing down so much that if you look at, like is the global fertility rate is going down? We're not just talking about individual places. Oh yeah, it's global. So let me tell you about Tamil Nadu. So India as a whole is below the replacement, right?

So it's having less than two. Oh, okay. Tamil Nadu is now seriously worried because their fertility is so low. Now in places like the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, they brought a really big challenge. Why? Because female employment is well below the global average. So in India, only 25% of women are in the labor force. Most women are dependents. So that means the guy

is going to be supporting two sets of elderly parents. So that is an enormous strain on young men's shoulders, an enormous strain. So those dependency ratios is not just the working age population relative to the elderly. It's the men. So the men will have to really, really massively support. So this is a massive, massive crisis for developing countries, for places like Tunisia, for Turkey, for South Asia, for Egypt. This is a really, really, really big crisis.

So, so let me just ask the macro level. I just wanna go back to the way the average person thinks about population the way I've thought about it throughout my life. I remember being in high school and being told that there were six billion people in the world. And then a couple years later, it was like, oh, it's seven billion people in the world.

I was like, that's a lot of people. That's, you know, we've gone up by one sixth over the course of my young life, right? And that's a billion people. That's a huge, that sure seems like a big change in the world to me to add that many people. And it's gone up since then, right? And if part of your thesis is that,

hey, it's bad when population goes down, right? I guess, is there not a point at which that hey, it's bad when population goes down, right? I guess, is there not a point at which we do run out of space and run out of resources? Like if it is nothing but bad when the population goes down, can we expect the human population to go up forever? Like is that never a problem, or how do you reconcile those two pressures? So I would say it's not so much about population, but the ratio of your

working age population to the total population. So it's going back to these point of these worker bees, right? So you've got people who are clever, you know, whether people are inventing stuff, they're making movies, they're selling stuff, they're creating stuff, they're starting new businesses, right? These young people are the innovators. They're more likely to start companies. They're contributing to economic growth.

And we can create economic growth, you know, through artificial intelligence, through technology, but you do need people, people to generate the growth. So it's not the resources holding us back, it's the innovators. Ah, it is. I think we often forget that every time we create someone, people are, people create more than they take generally.

Like that's sort of part of the point of a person. Like we are anti-entropic. We consume, but we also like by means of moving around and doing shit and having ideas and writing things down and starting stuff, we do like contribute to the world. And so you, I guess it's a, you can have an abundance mentality about people. The problem you're saying is that

when you have too many old people versus young people, that's a problem. So maybe what we need to do, have the population stay still, but we gotta kill the old people. What if maximum age, 70, and then you're done? Right, so that's one option. So, so, so there's, so, so, so, so yes.

So most seriously, anyone's ever taken a joke on this show, but all right. So, so there are, you know, the issues with old people is not just supporting them economically, but yeah, their healthcare costs. And so let me give you the example of Japan. So my co-author, Jesus Fernandez Villavete, he looks into this. He says, so for decades, you know, economists have been troubling over

Japanese economics stagnation. Why do they have so many recessions? What's wrong with their macroeconomic policy? And what he said is, Jesus looks, it says, well, instead of just looking at their GDP per capita, let's look at their GDP, let's look at their gross domestic product per working age individual. And if you just look at that statistic, there is no difference really between the U S and Japan.

So the Japanese worker has not become less productive. The problem in Japan is just that there are fewer workers and more old age dependence, and it's the strain workers and more old age dependents. And it's the strain of supporting those old age dependents that's hurting the Japan's economy. And that's why taxes are getting so high in Japan and that consumption is down because young people just can't spend so much or pay for so much if they've got these high taxes. Now the US may be able to avoid this just by having more and more immigrants as long

as people support this. Europe has a slightly different challenge. Which we're about to do the opposite. We're about like, you know, the the new president says he's going to deport 20 million people, which moves us in the opposite direction. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So this is so and and yeah, so it's it, you know, there are all these options, but none of them are easy. Yeah, so there are all these options, but none of them are easy. It's very interesting to me. I just want to return to this idea

of how we think about the presence of other people and the rise in numbers of other people, because it strikes me that the sort of degrowth mentality that a lot of folks on the left have, they say, there's too many of us. We use too much stuff, we need less, we need to have less people, we need to do, we need to live with less population,

less people. Seeing the other people as a threat is sort of very similar to the right-wing view of immigrants, that immigrants are taking from me, that there's a zero sum in my country, and that someone else coming takes away from me, that there's a zero sum in my country and that someone else coming takes away from me. And you are really, the mentality that you're describing

is one where no, no, no, more people means more stuff, means more production is like a necessary thing economically. And you really feel this very strongly. Like this is very much your point of view and I've heard it before, I don't argue with that point of view necessarily, but it strikes me as very in contrast with a lot of people's feeling about other people.

And I know you can't argue with someone else's emotions, right, that's something that I've learned, but there's a real tension there, isn't there? Yeah, so let's put it like this. So I totally agree that climate breakdown is happening and that much of the world is facing major challenges in terms of tsunamis, in terms of droughts, in terms of deforestation.

Our capacity to address that is going to be mediated by two things. One is our innovations and two is our money, right? Do we have lots of clever people who can make green tech or green industrial policy or climate change mitigation, right? So we need people to invent stuff to handle how we transition to a green economy. And we need the money. Now Spain, for example, has just had devastating floods that killed, I think, 200 people.

Spain simultaneously, from 2013 to present, has seen a three percentage point increase in its expenditure on pensions. Across Europe, one of our biggest macroeconomic challenges is that we're spending more and more of the government budget on pensions. That makes it much, much harder to do green industrial policy. We want to transition. We've seen a massive improvement in decarbonisation, massive improvement in reducing pollution, massive improvement in getting out cold.

There has been massive improvement in going, Texas leaning the way and going green, surprising us all. There have been massive improvements, but we need money to make some of those improvements. And it's harder to spend on climate change mitigation if you're firefighting on pensions, or if you're having to tax your young people just to pay for those old people.

I mean, it's been in the news a lot lately because Elon Musk says he's gonna cut $2 trillion in the federal budget here in the US, and many people he's going to cut two trillion dollars in the federal budget here in the U.S. And many people have pointed out, well, the majority of the federal budget is just paying for old people is Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And a huge chunk of Medicaid is actually going to elderly folks who are, you know, don't have money in the bank. Yeah, I mean, exactly. So if you go to any hospital, the people who are in those

beds, the people who need the care, all the people. So technological advances mean that we do prop up our grannies, right? And so grannies and grandpas are living longer and longer and longer, and that costs money. And that's a human value, right? Like we want old people to live longer because we want to live longer and we love our parents

and we love our grandparents. And also we have a basic value that death is bad and that we should avoid it if we want to live longer and we love our parents and we love our grandparents. And also we have a basic value that death is bad and that we should avoid it if we want. But we're sort of running into the cold hand of economics where we're like, oh, but also it's bad for old people to live long. Right? Like macroeconomically, we're running into problems.

Yeah, it's just a really, really big pension crisis. And to support an old people, to celebrate living long, you need a big working age population. That's a problem if your fertility, it looks like an amusement park ride that goes vertical. Right. I want to talk about men, because you have also written a lot about the crisis facing men.

Again, not just in the UK or the US, but globally, I believe. Tell me what you mean by that. Okay. So I think over the past 50 years, we've seen that many of our economies have become, there's an increasing premium for skills, right? So we want skills workers. But we've seen that the least educated men are often, many countries, struggling to make so much educational progress. So in Europe, in America, in Latin America, even in India, women are outpacing men in education. And so the least educated men are struggling to transition to college. Now, if men are struggling to transition to college in the US, for example, they, they stay pretty much in three sectors. That's construction, manufacturing, or just not working at all.

And the construction and manufacturing, the problem, if you don't go to college is those sectors are particularly vulnerable to automation. So, you know, instead of a guy being on a construction site and lifting a ton of shit, it's the robot who's doing it instead, right? So why would you bother hiring your worker if you can just get the robot? In manufacturing, whether we're creating cars, we're creating phones, you can do it all with robots. So if you didn't have much education, it was fine. Maybe in the 1970s, you could still get a decent job and, you know, workers could

still get a little cottage at near Lake Michigan or something like that. And now you can't because it's been displaced by robots. And so the wages of men without college education massively plummeted. So the least educated men, the men who don't go to college, um, are struggling. Their, their wages have been hit, you know, and that's a function of automation. That's a function of globalization with increased competition from overseas. And so these least educated men are struggling. And then on top of that, I think that men suffer from a particular cultural straight jacket in that we simultaneously

see rising demand for care, rising demand for interpersonal skills, for social skills. But young men without their college education aren't transitioning to work in a nail salon, for example, or to work in an old age and in a care home or to work, you know, so, so where there is labor demand for that skilled interpersonal care work, ideas of masculinity impose a straight jacket. And so men aren't moving into those sectors. So it's, it's men have been really, really hit in ways that women have not. And something that I talk about a lot is that men really suffer from a narrow view of masculinity that they have more trouble breaking out of than women.

Definitely. Like, you know, we have this expectation that, okay, there's an idea for female gender roles in terms of the workforce, in terms of, you know, what role you're having in the family, etc. But our expectation is that women will break out of those roles, right? I take the example of like the Barbie movie, this huge mass hit IP movie designed to sell toys.

But like the narrative of that movie is sort of breaking the bounds of stereotype, right? That's what's happening in this female centered movie. That does not, like men are not encouraged to break out of the narrow bound of masculinity. 100%, 100%. Either by other men or by women, right? If you look at a lot of, you know, the ideas of like,

oh, what is, you know, the ick or et cetera, it's always like a man who's behaving in not a traditionally masculine way. And so there's like an incentive for women to take on male roles in the workplace. There is a disincentive culturally for men from basically everybody to move from a traditionally male occupation into a traditionally female occupation. So men are more like constrained in terms of their choices. Do you agree with that?

A hundred percent. I think that cultural celebrations have been enormously unfair to men. So let's go back to Hollywood movies and television can craft cultural change by celebrating things, making it prestigious and you're breaking boundaries. So ever since the 1960s, we've seen female action heroes, whether it's from Charlie's Angels to Wonder Women to women police detectives, women computer scientists. It's all breaking the boundaries

and everyone celebrates that. And everything's fantastic because they're moving from a lower status role as being a housewife to a high status role as a, you know, in the public sphere, you know, in the Oval Office, you know, all these dramas about female diplomats, female heroes, female superstars, right? It's all about smashing those boundaries

and cheering people on. And that has a huge cultural effect because it can raise people's aspirations, you know, going right back to the Mary Tyler Moore Show, which was our female journalist that lived in Minneapolis. And Oprah herself said that really inspired her. And that's really great. And that's really amazing that we're smashing those boundaries and prestige, encouraging lots of women to feel accepted, to aim higher and follow suit. But we have not done any of that, any of that in terms of men. So there's no movies, there's no movies where it's like, oh, look at this boundary breaking man who's caring for his aging parents or like, I don't know, going into, you know, going into nursing or like, I don't know, going into nursing

or like whatever the fuck. When it does exist, it's laughable. It's a movie like Mr. Mom or I don't know, the movie. Isn't there a movie where like Arnold Schwarzenegger gets pregnant? You know, it's diminishing. It's like, it's comedy as a Wonder Woman or you know, whatever, that sort of movie,

that's heroic, that is aspirational. The opposite is it's diminuating. It makes you smile, it's funny. It's, oh, look at the big man taking down a peg. It's not seen as something desirable, it's seen as something like unfortunate. Yeah, so I think that cultural narratives have been enormously unfair and asymmetric

in that men have still been confined in that very, very narrow mold. So there have been very few celebrations of men as caring fathers, as nurturers, as you say, as sons, as pursuing diverse fields in more feminine fields, which are growing, which are seeing growing economic returns. And so here I noticed something, you know, from my, from my global studies, you know, all over the world, culture can constrain people from pursuing economic opportunities.

So as I was saying earlier in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, female employment is well below the global average, even controlling for economic growth, because male honor depends on female seclusion. So that culture means that men don't want their wives to go into the workforce. So that's an example of how culture can inhibit people from pursuing economic opportunities. And we see exactly the same thing with men, in that the culture, the ideas of masculinity, mean that men don't want jobs as teachers or carers because they see that as emasculating. They see that as embarrassing and it would risk stigma and loss of status. I definitely think that these combined processes, one, men making less progress in education

and that inhibiting them from getting skills-based jobs, and also then those low-skilled jobs being vulnerable to automation and globalization. And then on top of that, men not moving out of those sectors into the more feminine jobs. So it's those three processes really hurting boys and men, the least educated. I want to be really clear. Men do this to ourselves as much as anybody does it to us, right? Like it's up to everybody to sort of achieve their own liberation. But the overall effect is we've encouraged a sort of fluidity or flexibility among women

and we have not done the same for men. And so men end up in this box that they've had trouble getting out of as economic conditions change. That seems to be what you're describing. Absolutely. I'm not blaming anyone individual. And I think this is very much, as you say, about an ecosystem, right? Because it's not about one role model. It's whether, you know, everyone wants social inclusion

and status in their community. So we pay close attention to who has prestige in our community, what our peers are doing. And if no one is doing it and no one is celebrating it, we may be very reluctant to be the first one because no one wants to be laughed at, right? Well, and I think it like, look, sometimes these conversations about like,

men are having a hard time get dicey because people say, well, men have been on top for so long in the hierarchy of human society, yada, yada. And that is still true. And yet, we have this problem where, male status is seen as higher, right? So male status is seen as higher, so female status is seen as lower, so there's an incentive for women to break out and move up.

There is not a similar incentive for men to give up the quote privileges and go to something that has societally been lower, even though the entire hierarchy is fucked. The hierarchy is the problem. It's still the problem. But you are a little bit, you know, more stuck when you have historically been on top

because it is seen as a status loss to move down, quote, down to a female role. And it's just like this particular bind that men are in that we don't discuss enough, I think. So I think there are, I think there are three issues. So one is we should be careful not to say men in general, because, you know, there are a bunch of men, you know, in, you know, the guys who go into, that guy's in Wall Street and the guys in Silicon Valley who are earning 200,

300K a year, they're doing fine, right? We don't need to worry about them. They're doing great, right? And there are need to worry about them. They're doing great, economically, right? So there are many men who are flexible in this. My brother-in-law is a preschool teacher and he's one of the most caring, wonderful, and a very masculine guy, right? And there are incredible number of counter examples

of what we're talking about. I want to pick up on that. So first of all, I'm specifically focusing on the least educated men. So yeah,, I'm specifically focusing on the least educated men. So yeah, so let me just focus. So the least educated men struggling to advance in education. And then that has a knock on effect. It's not just that they're earning less and more vulnerable to automation,

but of course that hurts their dating prospects, right? So if you're not earning so much, then you know, you're less attractive as a partner. And so then these guys are just constantly getting ghosted, constantly getting jilted. Like the feeling of being unwanted, the feeling of being unattractive. You know, we, you know, some people might laugh at incels, but like, it's really psychologically hurting. You know, 39% of US men are like under, you know, under 60 are now single. So it's a lot of guys feeling unwanted, feeling unloved, not getting the

affection, the desire and the sort of esteem boost that they might want. So that's one, so it's really the least educated men who are really struggling there, but let me, I'm so glad you raised the point about your brother-in-law. And that's a really key issue. And I think that's something that definitely needs attention. The death of male teachers. So the overwhelming majority of teachers are women. And this could potentially have an effect on male educational progress.

So there was a nice study in Finland where they find that when there were more male teachers, boys did better. And it may be that, you know, men make them feel more valued in the classroom. Men, you know, a sort of role models that they can relate to. It may, you know, it feels someone like them is interested in education. So whatever the exact mechanisms are, I don't know, but there could be an issue with the lack of men in education and that could be affecting

men's education progress. Wow. Is there like, does this accentuate the entire problem with the birth rate decline? Yeah, of course. Are these things linked? Of course. And there's a further issue.

So, there are two issues. So one is if the least educated men are earning less, obviously they're less attractive as partners. The second issue is that if you have this big disparity in women being more likely to go to universities and universities being progressive ecosystems where academics are increasingly progressive, increasingly identifying as Democrat. And that crafts a sort of environment where people are more likely to get on board with the progressive ethos, learn about things in a sort of progressive way.

Then there's a big mismatch because you've got a lot more women with university education who don't necessarily relate to guys who are not with university education. So that's another big, big relationship friction. I find it really interesting how much we started talking about this conversation, economics and demographics, and now we're firmly in the realm of culture, that all of the reasons for this shift

that we're talking about are really cultural, what is seen as high status, what is seen as low status, et cetera. It's a difficult thing for people like economists to quantify, isn't it? And it's a little bit difficult to find the right story because you can tell the story of culture so many different ways.

Yeah, so there are lots of different things. And I don't think any one person is motivated only by one reason. And so what I try to do is sort of study all the different kinds of evidence, draw on economics, draw on sociology, have my own conversations with me. People try to work out what makes people tick

and then try to figure out structurally what's happening. Okay, we've got a more skills-based workforce, but men are struggling to get those skills and then automation is hitting them. They're sort of trying to combine these qualitative insights that I get from my interviews in Uzbekistan and Morocco with all the big structural economic stuff. I wanna ask, we are starting to see a political response

to these problems, at least here in the US. When I look at the political wing of the Republican party that JD Vance is leading, or is seen as leading, it's specifically talking about family issues. And it is, you know, he's talking about birth rate, even the comment about childless cat ladies, right, which is disparaging and a little bit ludicrous, we've talked about on this show,

but it is about, he's talking about the fertility rate, right, he's talking about declining fertility, he's concerned with that, and he's also talking about the crisis for men. And he's specifically speaking to a cohort of men who feel that something has gone wrong, like that is clearly part of their political outreach, is reaching out to disaffected men.

Now the solution that they're offering is this sort of return to traditional gender roles. Hey, you should, I believe his literal political program is we wanna make it possible for only the man in the household to work, for the woman to stay home, and then that way you can have more kids, right? And that's like their actual political program is returning to something a little bit closer to the 50s,

right? At least as I understand it, if JD Vance hears this and wants to correct me, feel free to come on the show. I'd love to talk to you about it. But that, I'm not sure about that solution to the problems that we're discussing. I'm curious if you have a, you know,

is there, are there policy changes that could be made that would ameliorate some of these problems? Okay, so that's a great point. So let me make three points. And I'm curious about your take on the politics overall, by the way, and how this affects, you know, the global political situation here in the U.S.,

in the U.K., and around the world. So firstly, on the disaffected men, I think one, we see these economic issues that met some men struggling in education and being vulnerable to automation, et cetera, as we said, the least educated men. And then on top of that, I think we should highlight a shift in technologies.

So what I didn't say earlier is that the rise of personal online entertainment and smartphones means that instead of us all being just watching the three major networks, we can each tune in and self select into our little echo chambers. And so as you, you know, choose to watch particular kind of news and information on Twitter, on TikTok or YouTube, it shares information similar to what you and people like you have liked. And so it feeds you information that play that caters to your prides, right?

So the algorithm is sharing things that you expect you to like. So we say similar things going on. And so what this means is that we can all become cocooned in sort of echo chambers of groupthink, where everyone is agreeing with us and we see sort of angry vitriol of the sort of other people, right? So it's us against them. And so technology can really nurture these narratives.

And I see it in South Korea, I see it in China, I see it in the US, whereby people can express resentment, can express hostility to the other, to the out group, and they can be ideologically persuasive. And here is where culture interacts with technology, because technology enables these echo chambers to form, where we only hear views that agree with us, we encourage us, we hear this resentment, this misogyny, and it's not just in the US, it's also in South Korea, where just last year they actually elected an anti-feminist president,

and he got the most votes from like young, disaffected men who were struggling, you know. It was called the in-sale election, right? So this is happening. So technology shapes these discourses, but ideological persuasion, cultural entrepreneurs matter too. So it's not, it's certainly not a simple story of economics. It's about persuading each other in these sorts of echo chambers. So that's one thing. So we get these disaffected men encouraging and emboldening these other, blaming immigrants, blaming women, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, so that's one aspect.

And then your next question is, what will fix it? What are the policy responses that might help? And so if we break down all the different things we've looked at, so one is as our economies increasingly reward skills, it's super, super important that everyone goes and gets a decent quality education and goes to university. So therefore we really need to help people make the transition to university. And that's where I think possible things that could be important could be more male teachers. Another aspect is as automation does many routine jobs, I think it also seems important

for people to develop social skills, like coming to my garage. And that's where I think schools can play. I know I would develop so many social skills if I was in your garage. It would be a crash course, just spending an hour in that garage. So for example, in the UK,

schools are increasingly banning mobile phones. And that means that instead of being constantly distracted by these dopamine devices with exciting notifications, kids can spend more time playing and interacting with each other. So we really want to encourage these community spaces. In England, we actually had a really interesting study just came out here that as a result of austerity, as a result of government cutbacks, they actually closed down a bunch of youth centers right across the country. And a new economic study found that actually the most

deprived kids are a really big increase in crime and are really worsening of their educational progress. If you don't have these community spaces, people turn to crime and do much worse in education. So I think building people's social skills, whether it's through community centers, through schools is really, really important to their, to importing their educational progress and also their economic outcomes in a labor market that will increasingly reward skills and in a dating market that cares about social skills.

I want people to fall in love. I want people to go on dates and be like, wow, this guy was so charming. This guy was hilarious. This guy rocked my world. I want that too. I also want that for the men of America anded my world. I want that too. I also want that for the men of America and around the world. I want people to go out and have great dates. That's my vision of the world.

So this conservative recipe. And that solves fertility. That solves the crisis for men. We get a lot of men who are having some good sex. People feeling loved and wanted. The US has got a massive issue of loneliness. Why are people lonely? Cause they're not having great dates.

Yeah. Right? So the Alice Evans agenda is not saying to people, be trad wife. It's go out, be funny, have fun in the garage, charm the ladies. Yes. Yes, Alice.

You, the last thing I want to ask you about, you have written recently about how romantic love is an underrated driver of gender equality. That romantic love actually increases gender equality. So I think it's a perfect segue, why is that? Yeah, I think love is really underrated. Like people really, you know, if you talk to anyone, ask them about their lives, they care about love,

but social scientists have weirdly like overlooked it. Like it's not really a thing. Love is the most, this is something I talk about in my standup act right now. Love is the most important thing to people. Like that is, it's what every song is about. It's what every movie is about. People are not talking about economics and climate change.

People care about like, when will I find love? Why won't anyone fuck me? Yeah, yeah. So this is the story about that. Okay. So across the world there is, so, you know, as we discussed in our previous episode, which everyone should listen to and was fantastic.

We discussed how most of the world was pretty patriarchal and that's true. But Europe, you know, North America, and obviously it was kind of different in that we celebrated love. And this goes right back to the ancient Romans, the idea of marital monogamy, and then fast forward to Christianity and the Protestant Reformation, and they really sanctified love. Love is the marital bond. Love is that you as a young individual should go out and woo and choose someone.

So I don't know if you watch Bridgerton, but it's a big celebration about finding the one, wooing the one, seeing, finding a companion, finding someone who gets you, finding someone who makes you happy and to spend your life living with that person. Like that's the ideal, right? So it doesn't necessarily happen, but that's the big ideal that sort of European

culture has always celebrated, as you say, in art and movie, et cetera. So what I find is that, you know, this creates a man who loves his wife, a man who cherishes his wife, takes her welfare seriously, right? He loves her. He wants her to be happy. So when she gets a promotion, he's like, yeah, you did it, let's have a party, let's have a drink. When she said, hey, I really need you to help me,

can you pick up the kids? He's like, yeah, sure. Because he cares about her welfare. When she's crying, when she's upset, when she needs to move to another location to get that promotion, he's like, yeah, we're a team and we're gonna do it. I'm gonna be with you one step of the way. When she says, you know, I've got, I've got this thing

going on. Can you do the dishes tonight? He's like, a hundred percent. I've got you. We're going to do this together. So they're a unit and he's loyal to her and he's bidding her up. And this guy, you know, all his energy, all his power, all his strength is a hundred percent behind her and he is turbo charging her to the top. So that's one scenario. But in much of the world, we see this cultural heterogeneity whereby people may experience romantic love, may feel that romantic love, but actually it has been sabotaged.

It has been suppressed. So in the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and East Asia, these are patrilineal societies whereby descent is traced down the male line and it's a male who inherits the family assets and who provides for his parents in old age. Now in these patrilineal societies, marriage is necessary to reproduce the lineage, but it also creates a threat. So in my interviews in Morocco and in Pakistan with Pakistanis, with Indians, with Chinese, it's like the wife comes in and there is the real risk, the danger

that your son could fall so deeply in love with her that he runs off with her, gives her the money and neglects the parents. And then the mother, say in Pakistan, who herself does not earn, who herself does not have high status, who herself does not have any resources, loses her son, loses the one guy who is going to look after her in old age. So in India, we see this massive, massive friction, this tension between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law who is the threat. Right?

And so how do families deal with that? What they have done historically and continue to do to this day is to suppress love. So maybe stopping the couple spending time together, driving them apart. And so, for example, I do interviews with people living in Karachi and whereby, you know, not letting the husband and wife spending time together, totally stigmatizing and shaming marriage to love so that it's not normal for a husband and wife to spend time together. I mean, the obvious most blatant example of this is arranged marriages, right? But it's more than arranged marriage.

The whole society is structured so that the husband and wife do not socialize together. So even if they spend a little bit of time together and love each other initially, if they are continually broken up and pushed apart, then the husband may not necessarily care about his wife's welfare. Like if he does not feel that they are together as a unit, if he feels that his primary loyalty is to his parents, he may turn a blind eye when the mother-in-law is rude to his wife. And I see this all the time. So there is this trope about the abusive mother-in-law. And what his wife. And I see this all the time. So there is this trope about the abusive mother-in-law. And what I'm saying is that is enabled by the son because the son, all his life,

has been socialized for loyalty to his parents. You know, an Uzbek woman said to me, you know, this is an exaggeration, but if his mother told him to throw me into the fire, he would. Right? The son is so loyal to his parents that he loves his mother more than his wife. And I hear this in Egypt. I hear this in Morocco. I hear this in Morocco. I hear this in India.

Right. So the man's loyalty to his wife is very, very weak. And if your wife's, if your love for your wife is not primary, then if she pisses you off, if she's annoying or she's disrespectful, if she hurts you on her, then maybe the guy beats her up. And if he doesn't love her, her welfare matters less. So, you know, you have all these campaigns against gender-based violence. But I'm saying, you know, our relationship within each individual

is fundamentally between those individuals. And if I don't love that woman, if she's nothing to me, because we haven't really spent much time together, because we never had that love to begin with, or our love was never allowed to grow, then her pain, her suffering, whether she has to do the housework, she could just be a plena to me. Yeah, what I find really fascinating

is you are connecting love as being in a reciprocal relationship with all the economic pressures and the social structure. All those things are here together. We often think of, oh, in certain societies, you know, economic pressures stop love from happening. You know, like arranged marriage cultures, like there isn't that much. There's a lot of stories here in, at least in America,

about the transition from an arranged marriage culture to a marriage for love. Look at the movie Aladdin, right? Or whatever, like that kind of thing. It's all about finding true love rather than being, you know, under that kind of thing. It's all about finding true love rather than being, you know, under the thumb of society. But you're also showing how, well, love actually influences the structure of society

if it's allowed to grow. Like all these things are tightly knit with each other. Culture and emotion and economics are all in this, like, you know, relationship swirling around each other, affecting each other. Yeah, so each country has its unique cultural inheritance and culture and economics will affect that. So if we look at East Asia, what's happening is that, you know, as women increasingly go into the workforce, many of them are deciding that that man is so loyal to his parents and

they don't have that strong culture of love to the wife, that women increasingly don't want to go into that relationship. So if men are not wooing women, if men appear too loyal to their mothers, that's going to create a relationship friction. So when we talk about South Korean fertility plummeting, then one of the lowest rates in the world, well, part of that is due to the women staying single. Part of that is because men have these strong loyalty to these parents and they don't have this culture of romantic love. So all of these things are totally interconnected.

Like women are more likely to have babies if they feel loved, if they feel cherished, if they feel part of a team and the man is going to support them. Right? That's another thing we didn't raise about engaged fathers, which of course is cultural in terms of which narratives we support it. But if men do not signal love, support and cherishing women and being engaged fathers, you know, here to support you here to take care of you because of the cultural narratives, because of the cultural narratives, then we'll see a decline in relationships,

which of course means the, you know, men are frustrated and unhappy. So South Korea is in cells, and also a decline in fertility because of those relationship frictions. Wow, well, so the Alice Evans prescription for fertility, for gender equality, for the crisis in men is love. That's what you're telling me. Love in my garage.

Love in your garage? All right, I gotta check out this garage, man. you're telling me is going on, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, Thank you so much. It's been absolutely wonderful. If people similarly feel that way about you,

where can they find your work on the internet? Oh, I am all over. So there is www.ggd.world. So that's the great gender divergence, which is my forthcoming book. I'm also on Instagram, on YouTube, and I'm on Twitter at underscore Alice underscore Evans. But I just searched my name.

And do you know the one thing, they should be careful. There's also a woman who was in a hundred and one Dalmatians of my same name. I'm not that one. The lesser Evans. You're not in a hundred and one Dalmatians. That's too bad. I am the lesser Evans. Alice, you're absolutely wonderful.

Thank you so much for coming on the show and I hope you'll come back on again soon. Thank you. Oh my God. Thank you again to the incredible Alice Evans. I know you guys are obsessed with her now as I am. Thank you back on again soon. Thank you. Oh my God, thank you again to the incredible Alice Evans. I know you guys are obsessed with her now, as I am. Thank you so much for listening, and thank you to everyone who supports the show on Patreon, especially those of you who support the show

at the $15 a month level. This week, I wanna thank Thor, Thor-tron, Samuel Montour, David Snowpeck, Eric Carlson, Scooty Chimkinuggy, and MissMeWith With the Fascism. If you wanna make me say some funny words, you can subscribe to us on Patreon at patreon.com slash Adam Conover for 15 bucks a month. I will read your name in the credits

and put it in the credits of every single one of my video monologues. But of course, any amount that you can chip in is great and helps keep the show free for everyone listening. If you wanna come see me do standup comedy, just a reminder, I am headed to Dallas, Texas, Omaha, Nebraska, Toronto, Ontario. I think they'll be on sale at this point.

It looks like I'm headed to London and Amsterdam pretty soon if you wanna come check out those shows, if you happen to live in Europe. I'm always adding shows all the time, so head to adamconover.net for all those tickets and tour dates. I would love to see you out there. I wanna thank my producers, Tony Wilson and Sam Roudman, everybody here at HeadGum for making the show possible. Thank you so much for listening.

I'll see you next time on Factually. Stay safe out there, everybody. That was a HeadGum Podcast.