An Army of Normal Folks - Wanna Make A Difference? Join An Army of Normal Babymakers!

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

America’s birth rates have fallen below replacement level—we’re no longer having enough children to sustain the country. In this Shop Talk, we explore why building and supporting families might be one of the most radical acts of hope—and service—there is.Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/#joinSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, everybody. It's Bill Courtney with an Army normal folks. Welcome to the shop. Shop to talk to 9-7. Oh, geez. I forgot to look up things. Do you know, 97's? He found a new girlfriend yet? We're recording this the same day as the last one. Oh. I mean, do you want me to swipe right now while we're sitting here and see him like to find somebody? Did you watch? Did you watch Good Morning, Vietnam? No, I haven't had time. I gave you that assignment four weeks ago. That's so funny. You brought it up.

Mitch, one of our favorite Army members, not that we're supposed to have favorites, but he texted me about conforming Vietnam too. Did he really? Yeah. What did he say? You're an idiot for not watching it. I just send me a link to it. I'm going to watch it.

You have to watch the movie, especially doing what you do for a living. All right, all right. Here's what you do. You walk over to the TV. You turn it on. Oh, God. And then you sit down with your children. and he-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h.

Actually, tonight, I got to send a bunch of emails, so I can do that. Well, you don't have a girlfriend anymore, so you need to fill your time. Yeah, I'm supposed to have a date tonight. Okay, perfect. If you don't have a day tonight, watch. Good morning, Vietnam. You'll love it. All right, uh, 97.

97. No famous 97s. There's no famous 97s. All right, everybody out there, we didn't come up with the famous 97. If you know, one, email it to us. Today's shop talk. Quiet crisis, no one's talking about. Cliffanger.

Sounds uplifting. We'll get right to it after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. A silver 40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene. From IHeart podcasts and Best Case Studios. This is Worshack. Murder at City Hall. How could this have happened in City Hall? Somebody tell me that.

July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall. Hall with a guest. Both men are carrying concealed weapons. And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead. Now, everybody in the chamber's duct. A shocking public murder. I scream, get down, get down. Those are shots. Those are shots. Get down. A charismatic politician. You know, he just bent to rules all the time. I still have a weapon and I could shoot you. And an outsider with a secret. He alleged he was a victim of flatdown. That may or may not have been political. It may have been about sex.

Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roll Doll, the writer who thought up Willie Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roll Doll, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans.

What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you, the guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's? Played poker with Harry Truman and had a long affair with a congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred

Hitchcock, before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever, and what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids. The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to the secret world of Roll Dahl on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Bailey Taylor, and this is It Girl. You may know me from my It Girl series I've done on the streets of New York over the years. Well, I've got good news. I am bringing those interviews and many more to this podcast. Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also

talking about the pressure, the expectations, and the real work with the women's shaping culture right now. As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated. So you have to work extra hard and you have to push the narrative in a way that doesn't compromise who you are in your integrity. You know, I like to say I was kind of like a silent ninja. Each week, I have unfiltered conversations with female founders, creatives, and leaders to talk about ambition, visibility and what it really takes to build something meaningful in the public eye. because being an It Girl isn't about the spotlight, it's about owning it. I think the negatives need to be discussed and they need to be told to people who maybe don't do this every day, just so they know what's really going on. I feel like pulling the curtain back is important. Listen to It Girl with Bailey Taylor on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? In 1998, my life was forever changed when I took on the role of Charlotte York on a new show called Sex and the City. Now I get to sit down with some of my favorite people and relive all of the incredible moments this show brought us on and off the screen. Like when Sarah Jessica Parker shared that she forgot we filmed the pilot episode. You forgot about it?

I completely forgot about it. And when the show was picked up, I panicked. And Cynthia Nixon reveals if she's a Miranda. We both feel confident about our brains. But that's kind of where it ends. Plus, sex in the city super-fitting. fan, Megan the Stelion, doesn't hold back on her opinions of the show. Carrie will literally go sit New York on fire and then come back and type about it at the end of the day.

Like half of it wasn't her fault. Listen to Are You a Charlotte on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, folks, Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes here. And we know there is a lot of news coming at you these days from the war with Iran to the ongoing Epstein fallout, government shutdowns. profile trials, and what the hell is that Blake lively thing about anyway? We are on it every day, all day. Follow us, Amy and TJ for news updates throughout the day. Listen to Amy and TJ on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

All right, shop talk number 97. Going crazy. A little extended bell ring there. 97. No famous 97s. The quiet crisis no one's talking about. you know what we should start doing with some of these maybe it's only relevant for the next two

like what happened in 1997 that could be fun well actually I'll do it 98 though when we get to 01 we could start with when we get to 100 that could be year 2000 yeah just 2000 2001 yeah yeah that's what we should do or or we just wait until we get to the year 2000

actually world history we do year 100 what happened in year 100 oh I don't want to do that but I tell you what we could do we can stop we We're in control of this. So after 99, the 100th shop talk will be 1650. We'll start there. And then we'll do world history starting in 1650.

No, thank you. Yes. That's what we're doing. That's what I'm, it's my show. Well, you can do that, and I'll do my own research and we'll compare notes. I'm not going to do any research. That's for you. I just sit here and read what you tell me to read.

Okay, here we go. The quiet crisis that's no one's talking about. I want to talk about something that does not trend on social media. It's not flashy, it's not loud, but it may be one of the most important stories of our time. Declining birth rates across the world and right here at home. Interestingly about this, I brought up a book that I've told everybody they need to read, and I think I did this. I went on a diatribe about this about a year ago, maybe eight, nine months ago.

but the end of the world is just the beginning. We did shop talk on it. If you want to really understand what birth rates mean to our entire civilization. It's all in here. It's all in here. I know. But read that book. That book is insane

because it also connects it to economic and military issues, and it's brilliant book. Brilliant book. Okay. Here's the numbers. In order for countries, to simply replace itself, not grow, not shrink. The fertility rate has to be about 2.1 children per woman. That's called replacement level.

And to replace a woman and her husband, it's 2.1 instead of 2 because some children don't survive the reproductive age and some adults will not have children. So the extra 0.1 accounts for mortality and childlessness to keep the population stable. So where's the United States? 1.6. We're a half a point below replacement. Most European countries are between 1.2 and 1.5. Japan is about 1.3, and this is the crazy one.

China is one. China, the country that only three decades ago taxed families, if they had more than one child because they were worried about overpopulation has now completely reversed and is around one. South Korea is 0.7 to 0.8, one of the lowest ever recorded in human history. Globally, fertility rates have been cut in half since 1960. This isn't a blip. It's a tectonic societal shift.

And if you think about that the U.S. is at 1.6 and China is at 1, think about how the country sustain themselves in four or five or six decades. And this is not part of the prep, but I'm just going to say to you... It's probably in the next part. Okay.

I'm still going to say it right now. And if it's redundant, it's redundant, but I'll forget it if I don't say it now. It really plays into the long-term decision-making with regard to financial investment and defense investment about what your plans are for national defense down the road because some countries without an adequate birth rate will simply become weaker on their own and you don't have to do anything but wait them out which I think is really interesting.

So what happens when birth rates fall? When fewer babies are born, schools shrink, workforces age, tax. Tax bases weaken. That's a big part of what I was just talking about. Social systems strained big time because things like Social Security, they only work if more and more people are paying into it as more and more people retire. But if you're a retirement age people, those numbers are greater than the number of people coming into the workforce, the entire systems disintegrates.

It's what's wrong with so many of our city's pension plans right now. most frightening innovation slows and the math gets hard because you end up with your workers supporting more retirees that's not political it's just arithmetic y'all um americans hidden cushion here's what's unique about us for decades we've been saved demographically by that's where i thought you were going i was going to immigration oh that dirty word those dirty people from other countries. But the big thing is if 2.1's the number and we're at 1.6, how come we're not at this horrible deficit that these other countries are experiencing? Well, ain't a whole lot of people just migrating to China or South Korea, but immigration is what's historically propped up our deficit in the United States. Without immigration, our population would already be shrinking. immigrants and the children have kept our workforce growing. They've started businesses at higher rates than Native-born Americans.

They keep communities alive, and they've kept our demographic pyramid from inverting, like you see in Japan and most of Europe. Guys, that's not political. That's not ideology. It's simply census data, arithmetic, and fact. So before you get your panties on a ride and you start jumping up and down and decide Bill and Alex have gone crazy, Unfortunately, if you have open-minded thought and you allow fact and data to guide the way you view a certain issue,

you know, again, the fancy people on CNN and Fox are incented by an enormous amount of wealth and power to continue to craft narratives to scare that out of you. It's better to quit listening to them and read the facts, pay attention to the data. So here's the part that matters most. We can debate that policy all, day long, but there's something deeper here because declining fertility isn't just about economics,

it's about culture. It's about whether people believe that the future is worth investing in, that a family is possible and you can afford it, the children are a gift, and the community will help carry the load. This is where all of this connects to the Army of normal folks. Bring a child in the world is one of the most radical acts of hope a human being can make. You're saying, I believe tomorrow is worth building. I believe tomorrow is worth bringing a being that I will love unconditionally into the world. That's not small. That's civilizational.

And it's not just about biological children. It's about fostering, adopting, mentoring, supporting families, creating environments where children can flourish. Because if families fill alone, overwhelmed, unsupported, birth rates fail. Fall. And they fail. But when communities rally around families, hope rises. Think about that. If families or people feel alone, overwhelmed, or supported, or scared, or they feel like they can't afford it, birth rates fall.

But when communities rally around families, when policy rallies around families, when communities and communities and society rally around families, when communities and society rally around, one another. Hope rises, and so do birth rates. The quiet heroism of parenthood, we don't celebrate parenthood the way we should. We celebrate celebrities. We celebrate viral moments on TikTok and all that stuff. We celebrate status. But raising children, well, with love, discipline, stability, sacrifice, that's nation building. That's long-term thinking. That's an investment in the future. And here's the truth. governments don't manufacture babies communities can support families normal folks us just you and me we can create environments where young couples feel supported single parents aren't drowning and grandparents are valued that's local that's doable that's ours so a challenge for the

army if declining fatality rates is partly a crisis of hope that one of the most powerful things that Army and normal folks can do is restore it. Have a bunch of kids, support young families, show up with meals, offer child care swaps, mentor teenagers, adopt if you can, foster if you can, encourage where you must, because every healthy child raised in stability is a long-term investment in democracy, in economy, and in culture. Kind of a final thought. The loud crises dominate the news.

The quiet ones shape the future. declining birth rates won't spark riots, they won't trend on Twitter, but they will determine whether communities grow or shrink. And maybe just maybe one of the greatest contributions of normal folk can make is bringing a new American into the world or helping raise one. That's not small. It's a real legacy. And it does change the country, one family, one child, one hopeful act at a time.

In addition to the final thought about birth rates, I think also you need to think about the data on immigration. This is not me saying that we don't need a secure border and we don't need a country and we don't need assimilation and we don't need people becoming naturalized citizens and doing the work. Because I think all of those things are true. But to vilify immigrants

is to not understand the vital importance of immigrants, in just keeping our country, what's the word I'm trying to do? Or replace itself to keep it going, period. Yeah, to keep our country above a placement level. And I'm telling you, to tie this all back to the book, the end of the world is just the beginning. If you read that book and you understand what declining birth rates

is the biggest threat there is to any nation, You might rethink the way we're approaching immigration and how screwed up our policy is toward it. So, immigration, childbirth, creating communities of hope so that we stay above replacement level, so that our population decline isn't like other countries and entire continents like Europe. That might be the greatest national defense on the face of the planet. and it also might be the greatest legacy can have to create hope for your own children and the children of those around you. What say you, Alex? You know what we need, Bill?

Oh, boy. An army of normal baby makers. Well, here's the other thing. There's a side benefit to this. Making babies is a blast. It's so much fun. Lisa and I had a bunch to it, fun doing that. I bet you did.

Yeah, we did. Honestly, raising children is a blast, too. This is a little bit of a touchy subject because, you know, you can, again, I think we said, this is not a political statement. It's just data. It's just math. It's just facts. Unfortunately, data math and facts oftentimes become political because they are presented against the backdrop of very political narratives that are often, unfactual. that are often unfactual.

So I just want to encourage all of our listeners to drop your preconceived notions and your defensive posture and just hear the facts, see the truth for what it is, and think about it. And maybe your perception about how our country approaches certain things can change,

especially if you care about the future of our country, because we have to stay above replacement levels or all our social nets and our tax base goes away, and we are no longer the country we need to be. And the thing is, I'm telling you, if you look at the birth rates of some of the countries that we would consider maybe not enemies,

but certainly not allies, you can see that in 50 years, if we take care of our birth rates while they don't, you don't have to do much to ward off their advances. They're going to do it to themselves, because without the right replacement rate, countries implode under the weight of their own costs. It's true.

Very interesting stuff. Well, some of that's probably going to change with AI and drones and we're going to have some crazy drone warfare in the future. Yeah, I mean, some of that's true, and it's not really about armies. It's about tax base. It's about, and as medicine continues to improve and the aged continue to live longer, this problem continues to exacerbate itself. It gets actually deep,

and worse. So there it is. Make some babies. Make some babies. As my dad would say, somebody's got to create great Americans, why not us? That's, you know, your dad's actually. Is that good? That's pretty cool. Yeah.

All right. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with friends on social, rate it, review it, join the Army at normal folks. Dot us. Find a dadgum service club. Find a spouse, make some babies. Find a spouse, make some babies. That's for you.

I got enough babies going on. I've got enough babies going on. I've got four. Hey, um... Way above the replacement right here. How are clubs going? Good. Um, actually, exciting thing here for Memphis.

They have, over 25 people have given to the giving circle. Good. They got their five grand. They got 3,000. So now they're working on getting to 100 to get 12 total. Awesome. We still need to get your gift in. You made a generous pledge.

I'll email you the link. Just remember. I will. I know you'll do it. What did I pledge? You want me to stay down the year? I guess. I don't care.

You can close a thousand. Okay. That's fine. Yeah, it's generous of you. I gave $1,000 to Oxford, too, just to be clear. Well, just tell me. People can join a $10 a month, and you can give up to $25,000. So I gave $1,000 of the Giving Circle?

Yeah, well, not yet, but you will. I pledged it. I'll give it as soon as you tell me how to pay it. Okay, thank you, Bill. I'm happy to do it. Yeah. That's good. Good, I'm glad I did that.

Yeah, everybody. All right, so. Would you tell I did a bed bill, the sleeping heavenly piece? I'm doing one in Oxford. Yeah, we're all doing good. Yeah. So when are we're going to start more? because there's people list us right now

that aren't in Atlanta, Memphis, obviously, New York, Chicago, which is making sure we feel stable and good with these six. And then maybe in a month or two, we'll look at more of the others. So here's the deal. Seriously, y'all,

email me at billetnormalfokes. And start politicking for your city to be one of the next five clubs. And the most votes, I'll lobby for. We've already had six or ten people in other markets expressing, Well, I haven't heard from them, so they don't count right now. They have to email me.

If you want to make Bill feel good, email him. Yeah, do that. Okay, everybody. That's Shop Talk for this week. Think about birth rates. Think about replacement levels. Think about how it affects our country, how it affects the world, how it affects the community.

Think about fostering, immigration. All of it is tied into these big numbers. And I highly suggest that you I highly suggest you get the book. The end of the world is just the beginning and read it and study it and understand the data points and understand the facts and just quit listen to all the view here on Fox and CNN and start forming some of your own opinions about how we view all of these things. Because to be an army of normal folks and engage in the community, you need to be doing it

buttressed by data in fact, not by supposition, and some narrative, some Yahoo and New York controls to scare you. So that's the way I feel about it. Okay. I guess that's it, right? Yep, let's go, baby. Goodbye. You know, Roald Dahl. He thought up Willie Wonka and the BFG. But did you know he was a spy? In the new podcast, The Secret World of Roll Dahl, I'll tell you that story, and much, much more. What? You probably won't believe it either. Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. I was a spy.

Listen to the secret world of Roll Doll on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Bailey Taylor, and this is It Girl. This podcast is all about going deeper with the women's shaping culture right now. Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also talking about the pressure, the expectations, and the real work behind it all. As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated. So you have to work extra hard in a way that doesn't compromise who you are, and your integrity. You know, I like to say

I was kind of like a silent ninja. Listen to It Girl with Bailey Taylor on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 10, 10 shots five, City Hall building. How could this have happened in City Hall? Somebody tell me that.

A shocking public murder. This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics. I scream, get down, get down. Those are shots. A tragedy that's now forgotten And a mystery That may or may not have been political

That may have been about sex Listen to Rorschach Murder at City Hall On the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts Or wherever you get your podcasts On paper The three hosts of the Nick Dick and Poll

Show are geniuses We can explain how AI works Data Centers But there are certain things That we don't necessarily understand Better version of play stupid games win stupid prizes. Yes.

Which, by the way, wasn't Taylor Swift who said that for the first time. I actually, I thought it was. I got that wrong. But hey, no one's perfect. We're pretty close, though.

Listen to the Nick, Dick, and Paul show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Saturday, May 2nd, country's biggest stars will be in Austin, Texas. At our 2026, IHeart Country Festival, presented by Capital One,

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