Everything Is Content - Spooky Faves, Gay Halloween and RIP Birth Rates

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

BOO - Beth, Ruchira and Oenone are back to scare you with some scarily-astute analysis of pop culture in time for Halloween week. First, just how much do they love horror as a genre? From memories of sleepovers and scary-movies, to the recent rise of artistic horrors with social commentary i.e. Jordan Peele's 'Get Out', they dive into their changing relationship to jump-scares and frightening films. Also, listen to hear their best horror recommendations across literature, TV and film.A new meme has the internet in a chokehold. 'Gay Halloween' has radically changed the dressing-up landscape, with people boasting about their pop culture knowledge by donning the most obscure referential costume they can, so only the chronically online understand it. Is it fun or is it pretentious? Finally, we can't forget the real world is full of horrifying things including recent stats that show a significant decline in birth rates. Should women bear the brunt of this societal issue? Whose responsibility is it that we're moving towards an ageing population?If you have anything you want to add to this week’s episode we would LOVE to hear it on Instagram @everythingiscontentpod. See you over there!GOODREADS - Motherthing PAN MACMILLAN - Our Wives Under The SeaVOX - HereditaryROGER EBERT - Rosemary’s BabyA24 - Midsommar NETFLIX - The Purge NY Times - Jordan PeeleTHE GUARDIAN - The HostTHE GUARDIAN - The Shards Know Your Meme - Gay HalloweenNY TIMES - Halloween Can Be the New ChristmasSKY NEWS - Fertility rates fall ADULTING - Motherhood Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Spooky spooky Halloween culture. No, I can't do this. Never ad-lib again. I'm Beth. I'm Richera. And I'm Anoni, and this is Everything Is Content, the podcast for pop culture. Whether it's TV, film, famous people, internet trends, we've got it covered. With the eye of Newt and Ader's tongue in the potion of pop culture this week on the podcast we're talking about spooky season gay halloween and the death

of birth so obviously it's the 31st of october this week but i don't know if you girls know this it's auspicious for a few reasons it's not just just Halloween, it's actually Diwali on the same day, which I feel like is an extra special day for the South Asian and the spooky among us. So I wanted to start off this segment by just asking you girls, what do you think of horror films? Do you love it? Do you hate it? Do you avoid it if you can? And what are some of your spooky recommendations for this very special hallowed week? That's so funny how you said that, this hallowed week that's so funny how you said that this hallowed week i felt really spooky i love horror films because i lived in a house such a long time with like my best friends it was just a little tradition every saturday night we'd obviously be

hung over from the night before we'd all have just crawled out of our pits and we would sit down and we would always go let's find a horror film i think it's such a fun like communal activity i love getting a bit scared with people I do have limits on it I there's some things which I just don't want to touch and it's like really like violent too true crimey stuff I can't be arsed with but anything like funny gory anything gross anything a little bit mystical I think it's bang on I think it's so so much fun do you know what's so funny I hadn't really thought about this before but I don't really watch horror as the genre now. I don't know if that's an active thing or I don't know what happened there. I've never watched like Get Out or any of those movies, which I know are massive.

But when I was a child, and I mean, starting from like 11, I was obsessed with horror films. And we used to have The Hills Have Eyes on DVD. And I think I used to watch it like three times a week. I was truly obsessed with anything horror horror like anything about exorcisms there was another film which name i can't remember but anything yes sort of about the supernatural and ouija boards and that kind of thing up until my teenage years and that now i can't actually tell you the last time i've watched a real horror film like all the saw films i used to love but i think that is quite a teenage thing maybe but i think it is quite weird that i would watch these films like on my own on your own just as a little girl by myself watching the hills have eyes on repeat yeah that's something something to

unpack with a therapist maybe yeah I mean I'd jot that one down yeah so I I think Ouija culture Ouija board culture when we were teenagers was such a big thing I feel like all my friends were obsessed with either suggesting we should do it at sleepovers or just like bringing up as a concept to scare all of us. I don't know why that was so present in our upbringing. I think it probably was just all these films, right? I really wanted to do Ouija board when I was at school. Now, maybe it's just that as you get older, you get more risk averse and more like obviously aware of your own mortality so that it doesn't seem as fun. But I was really obsessed with the idea of doing a Ouija board and would have I was also quite into witches for quite a long time like actually one of my favorite I know this isn't as an adult necessarily scary film but the Roald Dahl the witches that

original film was again like one of my favorite films but now it's actually like quite scary and also has lots of ableist undertones and I think has been classed as quite problematic in recent times. Okay, it sounds like we've got a bit of a nuanced response to horror, but what are some of the spooky recommendations that you have for this week? They don't have to be current, they can be across time. Please share. I have a few. I started with books, actually, because I think scary books are fewer and further between, obviously, than scary films. But I read an amazing book last year called Mother Thing by Ainsley Hogarth.

It was actually one of my top picks for the year. And it was also just really fucking scary. It's got an amazing cover, which you might recognize. It's kind of like a pop-arty woman with a witch's hand, cartoonish, but not silly. But anyway, I saw the cover and I was was like that looks like a little bit of me it is a kind of domestic horror slash dark comedy which is such a great place to sit I think the horror genre is best when it's blended with a little bit of comedy you know when you get scared and you sort of laugh it is silly but it's also the most terrifying anyway Mother Thing is about this woman Abby who is married to a nice sort of depressive man. She had a really hard upbringing

and now is just devoted to being a really good wife. Her mother-in-law is a nightmare. She's this cruel, quite punishing woman. And at the open of the novel, she kills herself in quite a brutal way and continues to linger, or does she, in like a ghostly bodily form in the basement of Abby and her husband's house and the story essentially is the unravelling attempt of Abby to get rid of exercise this woman from the house while still trying to maintain this domestic bliss while her husband is sinking into this depression and spending a little bit too much time down in the basement where his mother is was maybe is and it's very very scary you really see the paces she puts herself through to maintain normality to take on like the weight of the world to save the family while her husband is just off communing with his

dead mom it is so eerie so creepy so gory and just an absolutely cracking read if you aren't too bothered about being like scared or grossed out, this is like a big recommendation from the brain of Beth. Love that. That sounds great. I think, yeah, the idea of horror through fiction, I think is especially appealing because I love like, especially recently, the feeling of being so transfixed and almost like horrified by a book and just obsessed with it, like ripping through the pages. I have one horror book for you, which is not too distant in the past, which is Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield, who we also had on this podcast talking about private rights. And Our

Wives Under the Sea is kind of modern horror, magical realism about a lesbian couple who are married and one of the wives works in deep sea exploration. And so she goes on a submarine or a submersible and they lose contact for a bit of time. It's amazing. I would really recommend it. Also like private rights. We haven't asked you, Ruchira, what was your perception of horror? Are you a fan? Are you a hater? So when I was younger, I would get off on the idea of being able to watch horror as like some kind of achievement. Like I was, you know, a cut above the rest. I was like some way extraordinary by being able to get through a film, especially if I was at a sleepover and no one else could.

So I feel like there's some weird pick me behavior going on with me and horror. And then I feel like now I'm just very happy to be like, you know what? It's not for me. That looks way too scary. I'm fine. Like, my partner made me watch Hereditary two years ago, and I was like, actually convulsing and shaking. And then I like started an argument with him after because I was like, why did you make me sit there? And he was like, you could have left. And I felt like traumatized, absolutely fucking traumatized by that film.

Hereditary is one of those films that actually I still think about. And it really like, it sets my teeth on edge. And I think that's the thing with horror. You have to be prepared that that will sit in about and it really like it sets my teeth on edge and i think that's the thing with horror you have to be prepared that that will sit in you and like give you new i mean it maybe didn't give me new fears car journeys maybe but like you could get a whole new phobia whereas if you're watching like a fucking rom-com you get a warm fuzzy feeling so it is very different what because i remember thinking about why i was just thinking about all the films that i loved when i was young i used to love like the conjuring there was one called

skeleton key with kate hudson which again i watched loads that had all that magical stuff in it and yeah the hills have eyes the others the conjuring skeleton key what was the one where they got trapped in a cave or descendant or descending something like that but the psychology apparently about horror is that it's actually really comforting because what happens is when you're watching it you're feeling like oh my god thank god i'm safe in my nice warm cozy house my life is so much better than that i wonder if sometimes with a lot of horror now especially if you're thinking i don't know if you class black mirror as horror but that kind of genre where it's very close to reality maybe we are craving more saccharine

sweet rom-com stuff because real life does feel quite dystopian already so it's actually it doesn't make you feel that cozy you just think oh I guess it could be a bit worse actually like we could be being chased with like a big machete but it's actually quite bad already I don't know I just apart from the odd kind of like artistic horror like Midsommar I thought was incredible and weirdly wasn't scary. It was horrifying, but it wasn't scary. And I feel like that distinction is one that I can get on board with, but like actually scary, like making me feel unsafe. I can't deal with. So, you know, the true crime stuff, the documentaries about serial killers, all that kind of stuff. I just, I don't go anywhere near because that scares me.

I think two things that scared me in recent years would be squid games which I've actually completely forgot about but that was so horrifying because it just felt like right at the end when you find out kind of what's happening and we hear these stories about human trafficking it just felt too close to home and also the films the purge films oh yeah I remember those yep and. And that's where crime is legal. Murder becomes okay. There's a one night called The Purge where everyone's allowed to commit any crime that you want and people go out and wear these massive masks and commit these awful atrocities. And I think again, when we know so much about just how many evil, awful people that are in the world

doing these evil rank things, that actually did fill me with fear because I was like there is a world where if this became there will be absolute sickos out there who would quite literally killed have a day when they could do the most rancid dark things and that as a concept I just I'm like sometimes I think don't put ideas in people's heads yeah that one is particularly particularly horrible and is very reminiscent of like the January insurrection QAnon vibes of things we've actually seen I do agree I watched Rosemary's Baby this week and I really want to recommend that as a film I rarely go back into the archives of film beyond like I don't know the 1980s so like watching a 1960s film I think it is with Mia Farrow as Rosemary and like nothing is shown on screen

that is scary it's all this kind of tension building and this storyline that slips into you know narratives of like her being gaslit by everyone around her and this paranormal satanic storyline bubbling around her and basically everyone just saying that she's going crazy rather than accepting what she is picking up to be people essentially trying to take her baby away and you know trying to kill her was such a good film and I think it's really changed my mind on basically going back into really old films to see their value in how they've kind of impacted the films that we see today in that same kind of tension building. It's interesting as well that they are often a really feminist

medium. It is a way to tell like body horror stories about pregnancy, about motherhood, about, I mean, what is a scary film? It's like, I'm in the dark and someone wants to do me harm. Okay, welcome to every single night of the winter for a woman. What else is new? It can be such an amazing vehicle for telling female stories and for communicating that more universally in just a way. Maybe that's why we cannot escape through them in the same way that some male viewers would be able to because a lot of them do hinge on existing dangers in the world, existing dangers that maybe women face. Rosemary's Baby is such an interesting one because it was also one of my favourite reads last year. It is, again, outdated in the way that you go, oh, there's a slur. There's a word that you are not allowed

to publish nowadays. But it's such a good, it's not particularly long book either. And it's such a good book at kind of like eking you gradually to this point of like full madness. I would recommend that one, but with the caveat that it is of its time oh I'm absolutely gonna read that now yeah no I completely agree with you and I think also Jordan Peele's whole MO and his absolute talent is being able to use race and racism as the source of horror so like get out just being so exceptional in being able to make you feel absolutely like your skin is crawling and you're on the edge of a cliff because some very scary white lady in a small village has given you a microaggression, but you feel so scared. It's just so powerful. I think horror is really interesting

for being able to be a commentary on society and exposing what we find scary and fearsome that exists in the everyday. I think what's so fucked up about so much of horror is you're right. You have it. You can either view it from the lens of this is really exposing the way that society is set up for women to be abused. But on the other end of that, a lot of it is quite fantasy based around damsels in distress and like Scary Movie does a really great satire on this obviously but like women that are in distress that are really gorgeous and sexy that are like in their underwear in the

dark and can't see where they're going and so there's like there's kind of two sides to it where some of them are a bit rape fantasy i would agree as well and like i think what's great about modern horror is in the kind of vein of jordan peele obviously not the only one to do it but like you turn on its head the kind of um one that famously in a lot of horror films, the black characters would be killed off soon to the point that it has been made a mockery of again and again, because it was so prevalent. Same with women being like vehicles for vulnerability and like does feel a bit voyeuristic. And then in modern horror, there is space with more adept directors and writers to do something so interesting that is also kind of satisfying to watch. Because sometimes, you know, the horror

builds and it doesn't always end with the worst case scenario. So I do think it's a misunderstood genre at times. Yeah, I like the kind of direction it's evolving in. Because you're right, some of the tropes are just so shit like the person of color always dying first also the gay character maybe dying second and then did you know the trope that is the main female lead is often a virgin and she often loses her virginity in the film which is the instigator of her dying next so it's almost inferred that if she had kept her virginity she would still be able to perceive and see and observe and she wouldn't lose this kind of ability to pick out the murderer or see what's in plain sight god that is fascinating you guys make me think i need to get into the jordan peele universe

maybe i need to dip my toe and not be such a scaredy cat dip your little toe there is a film called the host which is it's kind of a horror monster film, written and directed by Bong Joon-ho, who a lot of people know from Snowpiercer and Parasite, multi-Academy Award winning writer and director. And it's about an American pathologist who orders all of these bottles of formaldehyde to be dumped in the Han River, which actually was a thing that happened in real life. And in the film, years after this happened, some strange goings on start to happen in the river. One day, a big, horrible creature emerges, starts eating, killing, and it is actually incredibly moving. It's so well written and directed. It's an incredibly entertaining and brilliant film, but it's also, if you want to

read it as commentary, you can read it you know commentary about american interference it has the layers of a great horror film you can watch it for fun you can also watch it with like a little academic brain on i'm just i love parasite so much i re-watched it earlier this year and i i really want to watch that that sounds so good yeah i'm absolutely watching that this weekend My final quickfire recommendation as well is I think it's technically a thriller, but I'm going to shove it into the horror category. And it's Bret Easton Ellis's The Shards, which is a massive, giant, thick old book, but is so spooky and so thrilling and so scary and is very nostalgic for I think I would say the 1970s in a California high school private school very much like his worlds that he loves bringing in his own kind of history into they're all private

school kids but what happens is kind of a series of sociopathic murders in the town that gets closer and closer and closer to the narrator and yeah it's really really fucking good oh we've been spoiled today so let us know how you're going to spend Halloween this year. And also, if you have any recommendations for us, we're in the business of horror films and books. Hopefully, you are terminally online like us. And so when I say, I hate gay Halloween, you'll know I mean I love gay Halloween.

Specifically, the post that began with, I hate gay Halloween. What do you mean your dress says dot, dot, dot? And then it's usually followed by something absurd like Anna Delvey's ankle monitor or the carousel horse from the first promotional photo of We Live in Time, for example. And according to Know Your Meme, which is a meme database and very important resource, actually, the I hate gay Halloween phrase began to pick up traction in recent years as a joke about the obscurity of queer Halloween costumes. I personally love these posts. My fave was the girl who went as the she's so crazy meme, which is literally just a woman with a pack of crisps on her head, throwing up the peace signs. But I want to know what does this mean for Halloween in general?

In the UK, we're definitely catching up to the more Americanized commercialism of the holiday, which focuses less on the spooky and more on the spectacular and, dare I say, the slutty, to quote Mean Girls. In a girl world, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it. Although I would say that gay Halloween tends to subvert this. It's not really spooky or slutty the gays are all about the most niche online references the one can find so I wanted to go over to the girlies and say because I know you're into this just as much as I am did you have any fave gay Halloween standouts from this year I have a few because I love gay Halloween also I love being online it's my perfect day I first do want to fact check you on the I'm so crazy meme does she have crystal on her head or does she have

frozen McCain chips because I'm going to report you to know your meme if you get this wrong oh my god that's so funny because I was gonna put bag of chips and then I was like wait chips is American I think it's McCain's so that was excellent and I haven't actually seen I saw one last year haven't seen that one this year. So I would like to see that. I've just got so many. I spent the whole Halloween weekend, which was apparently last weekend, on my phone looking at these. I saw quite a few Amelia de Moldenberg and Andrew Garfield for Chicken Shop Date, which weren't well executed, which was a shame because she goes all out for Halloween. She gives so much to the culture. I think we should give it back.

I saw a really niche one. Do either of you know who becky jones is no i'm not sure this is a big tiktoker but two people went as there's one moment in one video where she gets mcdonald's and she's doing the mcdonald's monopoly and she sees what she's got and she goes oh i've got a mcflurry and she says it like that or a fruit bag and two people dressed as the McFlurry and the fruit bag which was the collision of all my interests so niche I kind of wanted to be their friend immediately that was maybe one of my favorites oh and Gandalf the Grey with big naturals so that was my favorite. Ruchira what was yours? So I saw somebody dressed as the tennis ball POV from Challengers.

So they had a little video camera and they were dressed in neon green. I thought iconic. The other one I thought was the person who dressed as, it's two dumb bitches saying exactly to each other. That was pretty good. So it was two guys wearing t-shirts that said exactly because the tweet is, it's always two dumb bitches saying exactly to each other that was so good sometimes three yeah and I think that's my rounder oh I mean obviously

somebody went as um the unknown from the Willy Wonka experience yeah which is the callback to last year but yeah good good good good I just love it that there was also someone that went as Florence and machines someone's dressed up as Florence Welsh and then she was with a washing machine which I really enjoyed yeah people are so creative I I love it so much I love it so it's when it's a really really specific like it's I like it when it has to be explained to me that's when I actually that is probably one of the only times when a joke it's like the more difficult it is for me to understand, the more I love it. But what do we think this means for Halloween in terms of like, how much has Halloween evolved since social media? You mentioned Amelia de Moldenberg. Obviously she is someone that goes to my jammers Halloween parties, which have become

like a really big thing in the UK. Heidi Klum is now famous for doing these crazy outfits. She once went as a worm which was amazing and there was an article in the new york times that was titled the music industry is hoping halloween will be the new christmas which makes sense especially when you think about like video content and reels using trending music that's relevant to the moment in the piece they actually said that monster mash which is bobby pickett's halloween anthem from 1962 has been in the billboard hot 100 the last three years ahead of Halloween. And last year, it estimated that the hit would generate $1 million in annual combined revenue,

which is wild because that song isn't something that you would probably listen to until now. It just seems quite funny slash dystopian that we've got these big, typically religious holidays, Halloween and Christmas, which have now just become basically commercialist, capitalist outlets. What is going to happen in the future? I wonder if children, do you think children even know what Halloween is or just think it's like, I don't even know if it's always spooky anymore. They just think it's fancy dress day. Something I always think about with Halloween is for me, it was literally just, it was like a blip on the social calendar, really. It was like, I didn't go trick or treating. So unless I was going to party, I just didn't care. It was like a vehicle for me to have sweets. Whereas now I do think, and my cousins are amazing at this, they will dress

their kids up so well, get the most amazing photos. And I just think it's a whole phenomenon. And I'm very curious about what you say as the music industry wants to capitalize on this, because does that mean we're going to get spooky songs? Because it makes sense for Christmas. I love to hear those Mariah Carey opening notes. I don't really want a spooky anthem. I think it's been done. Yeah, but then also saying that,

if I was going to throw together a spooky playlist, I would be struggling to put more than maybe three songs on there. I can't think of any scary cool modern songs so maybe maybe we need some I don't know I think there's obviously a gap in the market well they like that Lana Del Rey song must be the season of the witch everyone does that there's the monster man I agree with you Beth about that because what's interesting is like building up to Christmas it is a season and one of my favorite things about Christmas is the vibe. I don't actually like the practice or the practicalities of like Christmas day or all of

that but I love the music and the vibe and the kind of the feeling that it brings of like closeness and happiness and mulled wine but Halloween to me me, same as you, is a day, which as a child, I did trick or treat and I would get dressed up. And again, I would eat loads of sweets. At university, I would buy a white t-shirt from Primark, get a really padded bra, slash it and pour fake blood on myself and go to like a phone party. And then as an adult, if someone invites me to a cool Halloween party, I'll go. But even in my social circles, it has become a thing that people will be talking about in the lead up for weeks like what you're doing for Halloween what you're dressing as but it does seem odd that artists are going to start creating songs because realistically after

Halloween are we going to be listening to a song it's just it just feels way too transient but it must just be because of social media because I guess for this week last, it's content. It's the, everything is content. And like, not to be, not to be just like saying the obvious, but I do think having another platform, social platform with TikTok and, you know, having another means to just like generate memes that generate even more memes with this being a meme in itself, the fact that you costume an already existent meme and kind of continue the conversation it's just like further creating I guess uh more amplification of what it means to dress up and like the importance of it and the cachet you can get from it whereas before you might just post a picture on Instagram and you'd be like haha spooky bitch x and then you know get

a few hundred likes now it's like you could genuinely go viral if you're funny enough and if your costume is so galaxy brained meme communication about it it's just like I don't know we're having deeper conversations in like 5hd about Halloween now I think if you try to explain this to your dad they would just be like what are you on about what what is this you could literally launch a career based on halloween content because it is a lot of the creators are makeup based you can be like it is such a gateway if you're excellent makeup if you're creative if you're good at tiktok you could launch potentially a makeup empire it sounds silly but based off one really creative makeup campaign when else is it going to happen? Halloween. I think the fun of

Halloween for adults is that you get to feel like a child. It is that you get to, yes, you get to be slutty. Yes, you get to get drunk and yes, you get to go out with your mates, but also you're allowed to tap into that childishness. And I think that has been lost with this bait of really niche, really self-referential in-club costumes and that's not necessarily a bad thing because I'm sure you can still have fun dressed as you know Katie Price's broken feet or whatever it is but it just requires a level of planning and self-consciousness and like needing to create content off the back of it that we didn't have when we were at university we didn't have when we were sort of teenagers so I do think

the hot like I mean Halloween is Halloween it can continue to evolve as long as we're alive it doesn't you know it doesn't feel sacred to me but it does feel very interesting that it is now a vehicle for being like but aren't I clever I don't know I might be being a Halloween Scrooge so please tell me if I am I feel like it's become a bit edgelordy hasn't it or maybe that's just this meme it's kind of turned it away from it being fun and it's kind of feeling a bit more like you know yeah edgelord humor about the culture that we consume. What is so interesting when we were growing up you could either be a cat, a bat, a pumpkin, a witch a skeleton a zombie a mummy that was kind of your remit and you would get maybe from sainsbury's you go and buy a witch's hat with your mom

and i did trick-or-treating and i used to absolutely love it and we used to have pet rabbits and so when people came to our house which they never did because we lived in the middle of nowhere and i would be like we need to have sweets i'd be so excited to come we maybe got like one child come around but my dad used to cut a hole in the bottom of a bucket and put a bunny one of our pet bunny rabbits hold it underneath so if you did treat you'd put your hand in you'd you'd strike the rabbit it's so cute so you got like a little lick from a baby rabbit which actually was really cute and toffee apples and all that kind of thing but now i was actually talking to a friend and i was like oh i was like oh well everyone's going to be going as barbie aren't they because you can't

go as barbie and they were like no everyone has barbie last year I was like, oh, I was like, oh, well, everyone's going to be going as Barbie on this. You can't go as Barbie. And they were like, no, everyone was Barbie last year. I was like, oh yeah. It's like, you had to be so current and topical. And if you go too on the note, like everyone's going to be doing that because that was the film that was out this year. The high level of stress that again is being transferred onto late. It's like all of this social media has made us all be living our lives in quite a hyperbolic way as if we are all mini celebrities because of the fact that we're constantly broadcasting everything that we're doing and i just think it's making our consumption levels really high i think it's actually probably is ruining the fun of it because whilst it is the memes are really funny as a

picture or as a video online loads of them if you're walking around a don't make any sense b aren't interesting c probably aren't that comfortable and there is something more interesting about being a cat at five and then turning 18 but i'll be a sexy cat and then maybe getting to like your mid-20s and going actually i'm going to be like an ugly cat i don't know i feel like that's the transition you kind of you kind of become less worried about being hot I don't know it's it is really really interesting I just don't know how much further it can go I do think people maybe there were a couple of articles of people saying they're kind of sick of it I do it does make me

laugh as you guys said me being online but we're just so online it's the perfect content for us but I don't know where it can go from here I wish that we actually as adults did just go trick-or-treating because I do love sweets so much. Yeah, I feel like this year's been the first year that I've really leaned into Halloween. So I've carved some pumpkins and cut my index finger and it still kind of hurts, actually. So be careful out there, kids.

But yeah, pumpkin carving. I watched Twilight with some friends here. And it feels nice to observe the season change because I get really bad SAD, which is seasonal affective depression. And usually around this time, I'd be cutting myself off from friends and just like going cold and going off grid. But instead, I'm making plans and doing nice things. And also just in defense, maybe of the kind of edge lordy online costumes I don't know where I sit with it but I do think what it means is if you're not

somebody who wants to dress sexy for Halloween there's like this whole new world open to you because before it would be you're either sexy or you're scary whereas now there's like a whole other pool of shit that you can do especially if you're a nerd like we are about things that don't matter online I think your Halloween sounds so cute and I'm actually really jealous because I haven't honored it at all this year and when I live with a boyfriend I would kind of buy like little pumpkin things and put them on the table and kind of do a little display but this year I just felt I just haven't really done that but I've realized as you're speaking what I would love to do actually maybe we should do this next year I'd love to do pumpkin carving and then I'd love to do some sort of like witchy ceremony and I'd love to actually look into the

pagan roots of Halloween all of those because I think the history of it is actually really fascinating and I am getting into my kind of witchy vibes and I think I'd like to curse some people done and done yes there's three of us so you know perfect coven. Please do let us know how you celebrate Halloween. Is it your favourite holiday of the year? Did you not even know it was happening? Please do send us in pictures if you were an edgelord who did some really creative crazy meme we would love to see it all. So now for something pretty spooky indeed, at least if you are invested in the future of the human race. Figures from the Office for National Statistics, figures from the Office for National Statistics, that is a mouthful, have reported that between 2022 and 2023, women in

England and Wales had the lowest birth rate since record began in 1938. That translates to only about 590,000 babies, which is fewer babies than any year since 1977, and a drop of about 14,000 babies on the year prior. The average age for new parents has also increased. That's 33.8 for dads and 30.9 for mums. In 1946, the average age of first birth for women was 23 years old, and more than half of women born in 1946 went on to have a child before the age of 24. I know that that is a lot of numbers, but I think they're quite startling as a very young baby of 31. And as we are three millennial women without children, to my knowledge, who are in or approaching our 30s, we are right in the middle of this statistic and this news story. I feel like eyes are very much on us as women who have not done what our

ancestors had pretty much mostly done by our age, which is procreate and have babies. So I wanted to discuss this. I think there are so many reasons why women, men, everyone are putting off having children or simply never having them at all, which I'd love to get into. But to put it into a bit of perspective, the head of population health monitoring at the ONS has said that for countries to maintain their populations, the fertility rate needs to be about 2.1 children per mother, which sounds terrifying to imagine 2.1 children. And it is in England and Wales currently at 1.44 children per mother, which is less than the other figure. He also reported that the most dramatic drops in fertility rates can be seen in the age groups of 20 to 23 and 25 to 29,

which is pretty much what we are. I know I'm a little bit out of it, but that's pretty much us. And since this was reported earlier this week, we have seen a lot of reactions from women and men and millennials and Gen Z on social media who have a lot of their own theories about why this is happening and have been sharing their frustrations about the circumstances that they believe have led us to this place where having children is less appealing, less practical, less possible. So I want to ask you both, what were your reactions to reading these statistics? Can I just say, I'm not laughing at the topic. I'm just laughing at the like 1.4 children that you keep saying and just, I don't know why it just really tickles me.

I was laughing at it as well because after you said imagining 2.1 yeah no me too sorry what was your question again Beth I'm really sorry what was our reaction to the statistics yes your unfiltered reaction to reading this new story yeah it doesn't surprise me at all I feel like to just exist in the world and to you know hear stories from friends and to have conversations with just women across age groups it feels obvious that women are having children later and the reasons that my friends are telling me are all pretty much the same which is just none of them can financially afford it also especially the friends that do live in London everything feels like we're kind of working a bit slower because I guess all of the drains of eating breathing living here it's just so expensive so I think no one's really in a rush to settle down and have another reason to struggle month

to month and also I think I know for me therapy has meant that the idea of bringing life into this world is absolutely fucking terrifying so I just don't feel mentally ready to bring in another being, let alone to like own my own shit just yet. So that probably is where I stand with it, I think. I actually did a long episode on motherhood on adulting, let's talk about which was about specifically about how lots of women are actually being put off motherhood because of the way that due to social media, people are actually being really honest and upfront about how difficult it is to be a parent. And it's making lots of people quite scared. So I think so many of us are now really armed with this information, adding it up, weighing up against all the things you said, you know, like financial costs and just

like changing culture and going, actually, maybe this isn't for me. And so I won't rehash too much that because that is all in that episode. But another thing that I thought and some of the I was reading so many of the retweets was the statistic about the age that women are having children in this it says 30.8 but I think also a lot of statistics say it's actually around like maybe 33 as well and the information has kind of changed about how long you should wait before you have a second child it used to be that women would quite quickly have children back to back especially if we're talking about certain religions where, you know, people weren't using contraception and they might end up having lots of children, which is really dangerous for the mother and also can be like quite difficult for the babies and things. Obviously, mortality

rate of children was really high. So when women are choosing or having to have babies later, then they're trying to like wait a year, then it gets even harder, obviously, to conceive once you get past 35. Statistically, it can take a bit longer or just be more difficult so even if people do want to have more children it's like people actually aren't able because of biological clocks to get there as well so there's so many things happening where not only are people finding it harder to get to the point of reaching the ability to be a parent because of financial strains but also then when they do get there even if they want more kids you're then then your biological clock. It just feels like we're being squeezed from every single angle. And I also find it quite dystopian and weird in a way that there's so many articles being like,

women need to be having more babies. Oh my God, because it makes you realize how much power we have as women. We're literally like populating the earth. And a lot of this comes from women having more agency, making decisions around their bodies that we perhaps weren't given the choice to make before and that the fact that that can actually have such a drastic impact and you have these like pro-natalist people like elon musk who are encouraging everyone to go and have like 15 kids there's so many things going on there that i just find really interesting because i think a lot of people are actually and there was amazing piece by evil wiseman in the guardian as well which was basically like forget all of these reasons people just actually don't want to be parents like it one's making it look that nice. So I found it interesting,

but I also found it comforting because I do sometimes worry that I've got an arrested development or there's something wrong with me that I haven't reached this thing. And it can be very confusing, the information that we get around motherhood and actually reading so plainly people laying out all the reasons why they haven't yet or won't. I actually felt a bit selfishly quite comforted. That's actually quite, I'm glad to hear that because I was waiting for your episode on this because it is, as a 31 year old woman, I thought I'd get here and be so relaxed about motherhood and whatever and life and in a lot of ways I am, but actually the question persists. I think what it is, I want the choice. I want to have full agency. If I decide I don't want them, if I decide I would

actually rather sleep well for the next 20 years, I don't want to hear a peep about it. But if I decide I want them, I want to be able to have them. I think that's the rub because there are, like you say, so many good reasons why the birth rate would go down. Birth control, greater autonomy for women, a bigger female workforce, access to safe abortion, all of these things will fantastically lower birth rate of a country. But what we're seeing is we've dipped and we've dipped. We're in the really dangerous territory. And I think what frustrates me is I actually do sort of feel like, well, it's not my fucking problem. It feels like the British ruling class over the last 20 years plus have sort of, they fucked around and now they're finding out. And

now they're saying, can you fix this women of the earth? Can you fix this women of England and Wales? And I just don't feel like it's my problem. And I don't want, you know, whether I reproduce or not to be an issue of obligation to a country that in so many ways is just so terrible to all of us. When I was a little girl dreaming of my future, I just never saw this as a primary conflict it like it just feels so cynical and so depressing I remember finding a little drawing that I'd done at school and it was like what do you hope for from the future and I was like I'm Bethany I'm this years old and when I grow up I'm excited to be mums and dads it was just so coded in but then you get older

and you realize it is not just a case of yes or no it's so many little decisions along the way when you bring into it bus fare is going up by 50% wages stagnating I'm single all of these things it's so many little decisions I just did not foresee it being this fucking complicated no I agree and it does feel very strange to read it as if we need to get up off our asses and get into gear when it's like this giant issue. It's like, what, you want me to take responsibility for the population now? This is just way above my pay grade, literally. And also, I would say it kind of makes me feel a bit gleeful realizing that we're inadvertently boycotting the system. And if they want us to

lean back into pregnancy and lean back into motherhood why don't they make it worth our while when it comes to protections when it comes to maternity care especially for freelancers that's obviously a big factor the fact that I would have to work in a workplace for x amount of years to access that and I haven't having been a freelance writer for two two slash three years It's all of these kind of fundamentals that they don't change my direction, but they are a big reason that if I in the future change my mind and wanted to have children, that would set me back further and maybe even push me past my age of ability to conceive and maybe not be able to. So it just kind of feels like if we're going

to do the bargaining, let's sit down at the table, give me something that's worthwhile and maybe we'll talk. Exactly to both of your points. And what you said, Beth, about having the choice, that's kind of where I feel now. I mean, obviously I'm single, so that is a big spanner in the works in terms of actually getting the production going. But I don't feel like I have a choice right now unless my job suddenly took off really well or I found a really really rich partner and then beyond that as well it's not just about finding someone that could be financially stable it's also making sure that if I decided to have a baby with a man that that man would have the language and the education in order to understand how he would need to support me as a mother not

just perhaps financially but also doing all of those things helping with the mental load which is mostly loads of the submissions I got from let's talk about was mother saying nothing just prepares you for the amount of stuff that you have to do when you have a child and that is just really terrifying and it is exactly that thing of to be a mother everyone is sort of like it's like the best thing in the world and actually the minute that you're a mum life is just statistically so much more difficult and there's been so much so many reports that have come out saying like the happiest women the happiest demographic are childless single women and yet they're the people that in society we view as like child catless women childless cat women spinsters losers basically but actually that

that isn't true and so I think that this idea of these pieces coming out being like oh my god it's so awful it's like what do you expect you're not giving mothers any of those things that you guys have outlined it just isn't a very attractive prospect but I still do have that person inside me who would love to create life with another person who would love to raise a child but really in order for me to get back to that point of wanting that and desiring that the systems would have to be so much further improved I would have to feel so protected I would have to feel like my own mental health sanity stability was at such a perfect point I know that they would say you're never ready to have a baby

but I really think that well now certainly isn't a good time so to be saying you should be doing it I wonder I wonder I love saying these things and they never are right but maybe if continues, this could be ironically the thing that forces them to have to look at making changes. Something that we do have to talk about is the impact of a declining fertility rate, because we are an aging population. So we're looking at kind of really tipping the scales as we get older to being a heavily elderly population without descendants, without people to fulfill those roles in the care system. And having worked in the care sector myself, looking after elderly people, looking after the people at end of life. And this was, I want to say 12 years ago, which is impossible because I'm a teenager. But anyway, it was so strained then. It was one of the first

things that radicalized me actually, was working with elderly people, seeing the ways that austerity had affected quality of care in that area. I really do fear for old age. And it feels like if I get there, touch wood, it's a long, long way away. But if I live a very long time, then I will at one point likely need someone to look after me. And in a world where birth rates do fall to such a level, it feels really gross and strange to have to think about my own eventual death and decline. But that is why it is so concerning when birth rates fall, because you do end up with such an ageing population. I read a statistic that was, I think, even within the next 10, 15 years, the number of people aged 80 and older will outnumber infants under one year old. Within

the next 50 years, I think it's meant to be the number of 65 year olds will surpass the number of under 18 year olds which i think when you think about it that's actually quite a disparity there's a lot of people alive on the earth at one point it's a lot of older people to younger people it does sort of feel like that film what was that film with that man you know the one children of men god i'm glad i got there yeah i said film with a man and i just i expected you both to know where no one's having children. And we you know, everyone's like, wow, what a crazy sci fi concept. What a dystopian future. But it sort of feels like we're leaning towards like a sci fi conceit with the fact that people are just not reproducing. We are like globally, we're running

out of babies. But I guess also the other thing is like so many of us won't have good pensions in the way that like the older generations would. And're not earning that much money but people are living longer so I guess it's we're going to have lots of older people in the workforce but that does worry me because yeah if we're not having kids we don't have people to look after us I'm not in a job that gives me a pension so I wouldn't have anything to pay to put me into like a care home like what really are we going to do it is scary to think about but it is I do have I don't want to say a level of vitriol, but it just does. It just does feel like there should be a turning point in really thinking about how we move forward as a society and how we look at the roles of mothers. I think it's the fact that it's so much unpaid work that is just expected for mothers to do. And it's my

friends who are new moms who work, who really want to go back into work. And then like, I actually can't because if I go back into work, we won't be able to afford the childcare. So the only way they can afford to look after their own child is by staying at home and looking after them, which shows obviously, it's worth quite a lot of money and that they should be somehow funded for that. Yeah, no, that's a really good point. And I feel like in this last election as well, free childcare was something that came up. And I just read online that it's meant to be rolled out by the current labor government but next year so that's already you know so many parents who are struggling and who are making massive life

decisions based on the fact that child care is so fucking expensive and there's so many people who are just fucked over by the fact that child care is not free and i don't know i wonder if part of this rollout of this policy is in response to the fact that these statistics have suddenly pushed the government or pushed, you know, politicians to realize, oh, we should probably take notice of parents and maybe try and support them. Also, ironically, to get back into the workplace to still support the economy, which ultimately is not really caring about them. It's just making our economy run smoother.

I don't know. The whole thing is just a mess I feel similarly where I'm not convinced that parenthood feels like an option that is one that is going to bring me more happiness in the near future so I'm just I don't know I'm just going to keep going as I am and this conversation hasn't made me feel more secure or more excited by the prospect in all honesty no and I do i think it is quite natural to oscillate between frustration and anger and despondency and then also like fuck you like we have to be alive we can only make the decisions that are informed by the society we live in i mean

life does go on that's potentially the next 50 years of my life if i don't have children i don't want to then feel resentful of a government or a situation because it just feels like a big waste of time but it is difficult let us know your thoughts about this new research has it changed your opinions about parenthood has it changed your plans has it elicited any strong emotions if it has let us know at everything is content pod on instagram and do please also listen to anoni's latest episode of let's talk about because i promise on this topic if we haven't covered it here she's covered it there. Thank you so much for listening this week and thank you also to everyone who took the time to help us out on social media we love you very very

much. If you missed it we are expanding the Everything Is Content universe with brand new episodes of Everything In Conversation. We'll keep doing the author specials, of course, as we know you love those, but we've realized that's not enough and we want to do even more. So stay tuned. And if you have anything you'd love more of, then our DMs are wide open. As always, if you've enjoyed the podcast,

please do leave us a rating. Or if you really want to spoil us, then leave a review in your podcast app. And don't forget to follow the podcast. Please also follow us on instagram at everything is content pod where you'll find us getting even more stuck into the discourse and you can even join in yourself please do see you next week bye they're the sexiest one of course vampires. Vampires are very sexy, swamp monsters, zombies have

become a little bit sexier.