TRIGGERnometry - The Modern Dating Catastrophe, Sex Recession & Population Collapse - Louise Perry

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

Louise Perry is a British journalist, author and podcast host. She is the author of the best-selling book ‘The Case Against the Sexual Revolution’ and the host of the podcast ‘Maiden Mother Matriarch’. Perry co-runs the charity ‘We Can't Consent To This’ which campaigns around problems with the rough sex murder defence. She is also the co-founder and research director of ‘The Other Half’, a non-partisan feminist think tank which was founded in 2022. Louise’s book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1509549994/ Louise's podcast: Maiden Mother Matriarch https://linktr.ee/maidenmothermatriarch SPONSORS: Go to https://cozyearth.com/ and enter promo code TRIGGERNOMETRY at checkout for up to 35% off. We are proud partners with GiveSendGo - a world-leading crowdfunding platform that believes in free speech. Go to https://givesendgo.com and raise money for anything important to you. Join our Premium Membership for early access, extended and ad-free content: https://triggernometry.supercast.com OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube: @xentricapc Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/#mailinglist Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Why is this such a controversial subject to say, We're not having enough children and maybe we should think about ways of encouraging people to reproduce the society in which they live. Why do people think it's inherently fascist? Yeah. Every country cares about this up until five minutes ago. If your country has a shrinking population, you don't have enough young men to form an army. Obviously, you're incredibly vulnerable. I mean, this just seems sort of, it's like 101 stuff. Do you think there's a way to stop the decline?

Louise Perry, so good to have you back. We had you on the show a couple of years ago. You're doing great work since, and I'm really delighted because I thought it's probably one of our most watched interviews and certainly one of the most popular internally among everyone here. It was absolutely fantastic discussion. It was mostly about your last book. I know you're working another one, but that's still to come.

And we were talking mostly about men and women in the modern context and relationships and so on. What's happened in the time since? Where are we? Has the needle moved in any direction? Have relations between the sexes improved? I think not really. I had this question the other day, actually, from a reader, would you write it differently now? I mean, I started writing a case against sex revolution four years ago now, I think. And I don't think that anything has really changed substantially in terms of the issues I was writing about. So, like, dating. and porn and marital breakdown and things like that. I think possibly I've changed a little bit.

Tell us more. So I think I've maybe become, there were certain things I sort of wavered on in the book. So, you know, to summarise very briefly, like the argument in the book is that sexual evolution is often presented by progressives, there's been unambiguously good for women. My argument is actually there's been costs to women

and to men in lots of important ways. and that there's wisdom in some old sexual norms, which we've thrown out the window post-sexual revolution and actually, like, there's a lot to be said for resurrecting them. So marriage is one example, that actually marriage is really good for protecting the interests of women and children in a lot of ways. And I made...

So, okay, so one example. I made the recommendation in the book for women reading in particular to wait for maybe six months into a new relationship before having sex as a way of, you know, having a chance to assess this guy's character, not be befuddled by hormones, all that stuff. And I did think at the time, should I just go for it and say wait until engagement

or wait until marriage? Because what better indication is there of genuine commitment, et cetera, particularly if you're going through marriage counselling and all that kind of stuff. And my mum said, no, don't, because if you say that, that's the only thing anyone will remember about that book. And that will be like the first line of every review, you know, like crazy lady makes the case for waiting until marriage. And so I didn't.

I thought, okay, like six months or something, that's sort of my compromise position. And now I sort of think, I think it's true that that would have been the top line of every review. But I also think actually probably waiting until engagement is actually what I would tell my children to do. So maybe I should have said that. Do you know what's interesting about, I just think it's such an interesting thing

about the modern world in general where I think lots of people who are in the public eye to any extent now, we have like a thing we say in public and then there's the thing we will say to our children. Yeah. Or our friends or yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's true.

Yeah. And almost always, almost always. the thing that people are saying in private is more right-wing. Yeah. That's not totally publicly. Yeah. Yeah. That is absolutely spot on.

That is so spot-on. That's why everybody's terrified that people are going to get access to their WhatsApp or their telegrams. Indeed, yeah. Because then they'll just get outed as like, this right-wing person. Well, and I suppose what that says is

high-status opinions are left-wing, low-status opinions are right-wing. Yeah. Even if on some issues, the more practical opinion is, as in this case, the right-wing opinion. So, Louise, you're very, why are opinions that don't work in a practical sense high status? Well, I mean, Rob Henderson's luxury beliefs thesis is very persuasive. There's probably a lot to do with signaling. I think as well that one of the features of modernity, I suppose, is you don't go.

a lot of immediate feedback on bad decisions, particularly say, so like one example would be the welfare state, the modern welfare state acts as this cushion, basically, that if you make some bad decision, the welfare state is there as a safety net to cushion the blow. I think that if that weren't there, people would probably be forced to reckon with reality. a lot more in, I don't know, something like, something like single motherhoods, you know, in, it's absolutely true, you know, the feminist critique of the shaming of single mothers, that the shaming of single mothers

causes a lot of harm to women and their children. It's also the case that single motherhood is itself catastrophic, particularly in eras when there isn't a safety net, you know, like you really are facing some very difficult choices. And that's, of course, why traditional norms, around not hooking up with some random guy exists because that's a catastrophic outcome for the mother, for her children, for her family, etc.

I guess the welfare state exists. The welfare state can now cushion that blow. At a very high cost, you know, it's still really rough being a single mother dependent on welfare. It's also true that it probably like removes some of that immediate feedback to bad, norms and therefore allows us to continue thinking that these norms are okay, and also particularly

when, of course, the people who are expressing luxury beliefs, they're not really worried about their daughters becoming teenage single moms or whatever, right? Because it's so class-based. I agree with you. I also think as well that when it comes to talking about single moms, we talk about single moms a lot. We don't talk about the men who know that they have children and have walked away from their responsibilities. And as someone who used to be a teacher, you can all drink now, I've said it. That used to make me so angry.

Used to make me so angry because I could see the damage it did to these kids. Having an absent father, or actually even worse, having a dad who one day wanted to play dad and then for a couple of months couldn't be bothered. Yeah, and just dropping in and out. Yeah, which is actually worse from the effects that I saw.

Yeah, it's true. And hey, I mean, the fact that single moms get shamed more than dead-beed dads, which I think generally they do, is dreadful because they're the ones who hung around. They're the ones who made the commitment to their children. It's curious, isn't it, that we don't shame dead-beat-d-bads more than we do? I don't know. I don't know why that is. I mean, so the feminist argument would obviously be that there's sort of particular shame attached to female sexual indiscretion. more than to male and that's true but then I generally don't believe in patriarchy.

So like I in terms of patriarchy is this like great explanatory force, this like invisible force which influences all of society. So there's probably it probably comes down to the fact that in the ancestral environment, women are the more valuable reproductive resource to put it in really crude economic terms because a woman can have maybe one baby a year max, like the number of women you have in your society determines how many babies you can have basically whereas in theory men can impregnate women all the time and like you could in theory have just one man who's fathering loads and those and those of children so there is which is where the male expendability thing so called comes

from the idea that men are less valuable than are women. I think in this instance, what's happening kind of perversely is that because of that, because of that valuable nature of women's reproductive potential, women making unwise sexual decisions is worse, is worse for society, is worse for her family, and therefore attracts more opprobrium. I think that's probably what's going on.

And it's also a vicious circle. I don't think people talk about this enough because if you're a kid from a single parent family, you're more likely to be a single parent. And because we replicate what we see, particularly in childhood. So if you've never seen a healthy, positive relationship, then it's going to be far more difficult to have one for yourself because you don't know what that looks like.

Yeah, absolutely, and it becomes really normalized. And this is one of these weird things about the invention of the pill, right? Like, who could have predicted that the invention of the pill and also the decriminalisation of abortion, which happened soon after, would have produced more illegitimacy? That's really weird, right? You'd expect the opposite, because suddenly women have control over their fertility. But I think the reason is it's because the absolute amount

of extramarital or premarital sex that was happening increased. And because contraception, particularly that early form of the pill, isn't actually that reliable of that amount of extramarital premarital sex it was happening. You know, even only 1% of women getting pregnant, that's still a lot. Some of those women are always going to keep the baby. They're not going to want to have an abortion for whatever reason. And so all of a sudden you have this spike in illegitimacy. And I think that produces this sort of feedback loop where it becomes normal and it becomes normal.

And now, I mean, I think in the UK, it's like half of kids are now born outside of wedlock. I think we crossed that threshold a couple of years ago. And in some groups, it's even higher. Do you think there will be some kind of snap back against it, or is it single parenthood all the way down? I don't know. I mean, I suppose it might be that we're just reverting to the human mating norm is polygynous, right? Where you have... Just explain that for people.

Where you have one male having multiple female partners and some portion of men not having any, right? The monogamous system that we... that prevails until recently in the West is quite unusual. I think it's 20% of societies that have a monogamous system, which does, of course, me, include some of the most, like, successful civilisation to have ever existed, including Christendom and Roman, you know, Roman Empire. But it's still kind of an outlier. So it may be that we're just, now that we've lifted the monogamous expectation,

it may be that people are now reverting to the species norm, which is a smaller number of attractive men having lots of different women. So the Genghis Khan model. Yeah, maybe not quite as extreme as the Genghis Khan model, but yeah, I move in that direction. But effectively moving in that direction. Yeah. Ah, interesting. Well, you already hear stories.

I won't mention names of celebrities and successful podcasters who are practicing very, very, very much along those lines. Yeah. And I suppose unless you are really strongly indoctrinated culturally, I certainly am. Like, I'm someone who's just like, I'm just monogic, well, my brain's wired in that way, right? I guess from a male perspective, you worked your ass off to be at the top of whatever profession you're at. Even if it's not about sex, it's about reproduction, well, I mean, if it's there and you've got the resources, isn't this what you fought for? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think it's not, I'm surprised in literally zero cases when you find out that some high status man has lots of women on the go.

I mean, obviously there are men who don't do that regardless of how successful they are, but it's so common because I think they kind of can. And also because, I mean, thinking he'd say politicians, politicians are always kind of famously for Landra's, also because they, I think a certain type of personality is attracted to politics. I'll put it gently, which is probably also attracted to that kind of, you know, lots of dark triad traits, right, at the top of politics. They get in less trouble for it now than they used to as well. In, say, in the 1950s, that would have been quite a big deal.

And hiding the fact of your affairs, was, I mean, look at how much effort was put into hiding JFK's for laundering, for instance. We now know about, in retrospect, but at the time, lots of effort made to keep this quiet. I don't know if they'd bother now. I mean, like, Trump's for laundering. No one seems to care. It's just like part of the package. I mean, it's got to the point now where I go, oh, at least it's not a kid.

Yeah, basically, that's the win. Yeah, you're like, well, you know, at least it's legal. Oh, dear. But you're welcome to Trigonometry. You're such a fucking idiot. It's genuinely what I think, though. That's where I am. That's where I am now with it.

Well, there we go. But I think the thing is as well, like when I see politicians, I also think this phenomenon, which is actually replicated in places like the comedy industry, where you look at a lot of these guys and you think at school, you wouldn't be the popular guy. You wouldn't be the guy that's attractive to women. Nobody has ever wanted to say, oh, I'd love to shag a young conservative.

Yeah. And then you get to the point where you have money, you have power, you have influence, and then all of a sudden, the doors open. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's even more novel for that reason. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like women are attracted to status,

like, what's new men are attracted to youth and beauty. Although I always think that we probably do slightly exaggerate that in terms of, I mean, I think that, there are obviously plenty of examples. Leonardo DiCaprio is kind of the famous example of this, right? The guy who will never date a woman over the age of 25. But which I always think is kind of funny because he's also never had children with any of these women.

So it's almost like he's like the point of that drive is to reproduce with like maximally fertile women with great genes. It's kind of like he's just amassed like a fleet of Ferraris and he's never driven them or something. Like it's like weird, it's weirdly maladaptive behaviour even though it's driven by an evolutionary. There is a kind of teenage dimension to all of this. Yeah, that it's just, yeah, just pure status,

but nothing more productive than that long time. Right. So coming back to this erosion of monogamy, I'm going to guess this isn't good for women. No, I don't think so. I mean, there would be some, so something like Diana Fleischman, who you've had on the pot having you, she's in front of mine.

She's Polly. I'm sure, you know, she's very open about this. And she would say that there's a threshold in terms of how attractive a man is where women are willing to tolerate not being the only woman. Like if he's so attractive and the condition of being with him is that you're part of a harim, there's a point where women will be like, okay. Some women, yeah, some will be more adverse than others. But like, yeah.

And I guess she'd say, well, it's up to them. You know, if the women are willing to tolerate not being, the only one. It's obviously different if they're being lied to, but if he's being open about what's going on, then I suppose you could say they're adults, they can make the decision. I think though that having, I think it's totally possible, and in fact there are loads of cases where this is the case where you can say that at an individual level, that might be fine and that for some people that might be fine, but having it as the norm is bad. Well, right, coming back to our conversation about children,

growing up without fathers. Precisely. If there's 100 children with one father, it's probably going to struggle to give them, you know, a love. So that's certainly true. Yeah, that's certainly true. And I think also it's probably bad for societies to have lots of men without mates.

Yes. Because we do know that fatherhood kind of tames men in terms of men commit less crime. And, you know, just societies with lots of sexually frustrated men are more, less peaceful societies. And also I know you can end up, you can go from that to be like, oh, well, in that case, we need to be apportioning women to all of the in cells. And, you know, there's a, there's a very, there's a very dystopian vision that could lead from that insight.

But it's also just, you know, you can compare, say, different African countries, some of which are side by side, some of which are Muslim, some of which are Christian and therefore either permit polygamy or don't. And you can see, straightforwardly, these otherwise similar societies are made more violent and unstable and have more. more domestic violence and have more child abuse and whatever by virtue of not being monogamous. So just based on the data, you can quite clearly see that the monogamy norm is a good one. I quite agree with you. I think what's really interesting at the moment in society, Louise, is that we're talking, we seem to be talking about sex more than ever. Pornography is literally the click of a button away, the tap of a screen away. Dating apps, you can go on there and you can get potentially whatever it is that you like.

to a very fine degree. But we're having less sex than ever before. Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? The sex recession. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my theory, although I don't really have any proof for it, it's just vibes, is that it's that those things might be linked. It might be that when you have this sort of copious availability of sexual stimuli, you don't feel the need to go out and actually do the hard work

of building a relationship with a real person, that maybe sex has less mystique. mystique. I mean, I think that's definitely, I think it's definitely the case that when men are not allowed to have sex before marriage and when they can only get married when they have done various adult things, like you've got a job, you've got a house, you earn X amount, whatever, they are going to be extremely motivated to do those things. Whereas if men can get sex just by being good looking or even not, like, why that motivation is removed. So I think there's definitely, I think sexual frustration, I think good societies know how to harness sexual frustration to productive ends. And it's also interesting as well is that so many people on SSRIs, and one of the things that SSRIs do, particularly women, is it kills libido. So what you have is just so many people in society who literally have no sex, right? Yeah, and also the pill does weird things to people's sexuality, to women's sexuality.

Like women are more attracted to less masculine men when they're on the pill. You've probably heard this. And so there's this phenomenon of women who've been on the pill their entire lives or their entire adult lives. And then they get off the pill to have a baby and they suddenly find that they don't fancy their partner anymore. I know. And it causes, you know, obviously a lot of personal tragedy.

But yeah, we're meddling with a lot of weird psychoactive drugs as a standard thing that we give, particularly teenage girls. We just put them on the pill, we put them on SSRIs, we don't really think about it. But obviously they are going to have quite serious effects on the developing brain. Absolutely. And then if you think about it as well,

you talk about the sex recession, that leads to some very dire consequences when it comes to population. Yeah. I mean, in general, I think, Is it, is the birth rate dropping because people are having less sex? There's this kind of fashionable view that you'll hear among some demographers that actually the pill

doesn't really have anything to do with birth rate decline because birth rates were declining before the pill was invented in countries like France, for instance, birth rates start to decline quite early in the 19th century and people are able to limit how many children they have through like crude versions of fertility tracking and things like that. True.

But I just don't buy it. I think that, I mean, one, because birth rates really fall off a cliff post-1960s. I mean, in the UK, it's like 1971, I think, is when we fell below. We really started falling below replacement. And I think also that the thing that the pill does

is not just about limiting your fertility in the moment, changes social norms. It does things like, for instance, means that getting married becomes less necessary because if you can have premarital sex without the expectation of getting pregnant, because it normalises premarital sex, basically. And then the drive to get married is reduced. And, you know, one of the, of all the policies that the Hungarian government has introduced to try and encourage natalism, the one that has been most effective has actually been the marriage incentives. Weirdly, because they also do things like, they'll give you a massive sum of money towards a house and you do have to be married to get it.

But like there are various policies available which are much more financially impactful. And yet the one that actually seems to be, was thought to be the most effective is the one encouraging younger people to get married because it seems like people get married and they're like, oh, okay, this is the next thing we do is have kids. It's like a psychological intervention. And yeah, I, it's not just the pill that are obviously other things. But to me that does seem like the really watershed moment. in terms of producing low fertility.

There are a lot of writers that I see now, yourself included, obviously talking about the pill as something that you may not necessarily want to take, certainly as an automatic thing that is a right of passage into womanhood. Right. Can you talk a little bit more about that? So I'm not completely anti-pill.

I actually think that, you know, when the pill was first introduced in Britain and America, and I think most countries, to my knowledge, it was only available to married women. And then there was a gap of some years and then it was made available to unmarried women. I think that using the pill within marriage to space your births is a very good use of it

because it's really bad for your body, basically, to have 10 kids in most instances. There are some women who are superwomen and who can do it, you know. But you read these accounts of women, you know, in the days before reliable contraception was available, And they're just, they're made so unwell by just being constantly pregnant or nursing and, and really just feeling like powerless to, you know, so I, I, I, and that's even more the case if you have a caesarian, for instance, you need to take a break before you have another

baby to prevent things like uterine rupture. So I think the pill has a place and other kinds of reliable contraception have a place. What I don't think is a good thing, though, is the kind of mass effects. I mean, it's going back to that thing again, right? individual cases, it can be great, but a culture is more than the sum of its parts. And the mass social effects of the pill, I think, have generally been negative. And the population conversation is fascinating to me, because if you look into it for about three seconds, you instantly get, like, you can be shown one graph and you suddenly, like, get everything, right? Our population, particularly in Western countries, but not just in Western countries, is just way below replacement. and you know Francis was

talking we were having lunch and he was talking about the fact that teachers are getting fired from schools now because there's not enough kids restructuring yeah yeah particularly in central London there's the largest schools closing down so you've got that going on and yet whenever I see any politician

who's like maybe like Miriam Kate's you know whatever you think about the rest of her politics or whatever she just says we need we need to talk about babies and suddenly like the swarm of rage descends upon them. The same with, look, I don't know much about Victor Orban. I read bad things about him in the papers. Okay, let's assume that they're all true. But still, like, why is it such a like a controversial subject to say we're not having enough children

and maybe we should think about ways of encouraging people to reproduce the society in which they live? Why do people think it's inherently fascist? Yeah. I mean, it's worth saying that basically. every country cares about this up until five minutes ago. They used to be this line in Australia encouraging people to have more children

that it was you have one for mum, one for dad and one for Australia, encouraging people to have three kids. So it's definitely not, I mean it's also the case that like Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia and so on who encourages high fertility. That doesn't mean that that... Among certain groups.

Yes. That doesn't mean that natalism is unique to authoritarian regimes by any means. It's basically a normal position for governments up until very recently. And yeah, I mean people, I mean, because not least, like the geopolitical implications are just so blindingly obvious. Yes. Like if you, if your country has a shrinking population, you don't have enough young men to

form an army, obviously you're incredibly vulnerable. I mean, this just seems sort of, it's like 101 stuff. And yet, yes, I mean, I love Miriam, but yeah, she stands up and talks about natalism and people just, people on the left lose their minds. Well, why is that, Louise? Why is the idea that? Because natalism is like a clever word, like intellectual use. But like the idea that people in a country ought to replenish the population by having children.

Yeah, the families are good, the babies are good. Yeah. Like, why is this coded? Like we have this, by the way, this is another thing that pisses me off, which is like we have this term now, something is coded as right wing, which basically means it's not right. right wing. It's just a bunch of dickheads in the media think that you shouldn't talk about this issue. He gives right wing vibes. Right. Yeah. Which like, so why is this coded as right wing?

Yeah, I mean, it's a really fascinating question. Like, why would, why would the most affluent people and comfortable people who have ever lived in the history of the world? It decides that actually having babies is bad and is onerous and is, I mean, because what you'll hear so often, right? There's like a little bit of truth to it, but I think it really misses the mark. is that old people can't afford to have children, which means, like, translates as people can't afford to maintain the lifestyle associated with having two incomes and no kids when they have kids, which is absolutely true. And it's also the case that obviously house prices in many urban centres are incredibly high.

And there is downward mobility, like the baby boomers were pretty much the peak in terms of affluence and comfort. That's true. But it's also kind of crazy because it's literally the opposite trend globally. the poorest countries have the most kids, the richest countries have the furiest kids. And actually that is the single best predictor of people having children

is crossing the certain threshold in terms of GDP per capita. It's somewhere like 5,000 to 10,000 US dollars per person per year, which is not very much, right? Like countries that are below replacement now include countries like Nepal, like Sri Lanka, like much of the Middle East, much of South America.

You know, we're not talking just the rich countries. This is now increasingly a global phenomenon. And yeah, I mean, so the big mystery, and I'm not sure if I have, it's sort of, I think you reach the point where you have to, you can't just think of it in materialist or economic terms. You have to start thinking in almost spiritual terms. Like people in rich countries have just lost the will to reproduce themselves and to reproduce their cultures and in fact often think that doing so is a bad thing. They think that there's something suspect about their cultures, about their genetic line, whatever. Like there's this. It's obviously not everyone by any means, but there is a kind of elite faction that has this incredible, like, drive to suicide almost, like cultural suicide. And, yeah, I mean, it's quite hard to explain that without thinking of it in spiritual terms. I mean, the thing I'm driven to think, which isn't very happy thought, is that maybe, you know, the, I think when I last came on this show, we talked about why the progress model of history is really silly, right, to think. everything gets better all the time. A model of history, which is obviously simplifies,

but which probably has a lot more truth to it than the progress model is a civilizational cycles model. So the idea that civilizations rise, they peak, they fall. And that a common feature of civilizations at their decline phase is this complete loss of confidence. And this complete, I mean, in the final centuries of Rome, you will read people complaining about how the elites have all stopped having kids. Like there was a tax brought in on childless men

to try and encourage elite childless men to reproduce. You know, they had exactly the same phenomenon. And the Romans, of course, were using more primitive forms of contraception and abortion and obviously used infanticide. So they had different means of controlling their fertility. But it was the same phenomenon and people were saying the same things. And there does just seem to be a point where a civilised... Yeah, it reaches this, like spiritual malaise.

And maybe we're just there. I know it's not a very happy answer. But I think that's from doing all my research on this subject. I can't really help but reach that conclusion. This is a Bose moment. It's 10 blocks from the train to your apartment door. 10 basic, boring city blocks until the beat drops in Bose clarity. Streetlights become spotlights as you stretch.

down the sidewalk, your own personal runway. With Bowes, you get every note, every baseline, every detail, just as you should. Those 10 blocks, they could be the best part of your day. Your life deserves music. Your music deserves Bose. Find your perfect product at Bose.com. Do you know what's interesting? That would explain about what's going on when we talk about the climate, because to me, when you talk, it seems to be more prevalent in America, actually, where people say they're not going to have kids because they're worried about the climate. Yeah. Therefore, that means that having kids is an immoral decision.

Yeah. And you go, how have you come to this really bizarre conclusion? Because it sounds over the top, because it's an anti-human position. Yes. I mean, it's true. Like, if your priority was preserving other species and natural environment and so on, then, like, reducing the number of humans in the world would be obviously your goal. And that's where you reach the point where you almost can't,

it's become almost impossible to have a debate with someone. Like if we don't share those premises, if you don't think that humans are good, if you don't think that having kids is good, if you don't think that being alive is good, you know? I'm not joking. Like there are anti-natalists sometimes who think that it is better not to, better to have never been born, right?

It's the David Benetard book. There are people who think that, Not very many of them, but there are some. And there's just a point where you can't, you can't really have a conversation. Like, because those priors, they're not rational priors. They're like deeply, deeply felt profound priors. And if you don't share them with someone,

then there's not really anything that you can agree on. So on this point about, because I don't know, I've been talking about this for a long time, this feeling of like civilizational decay. Yeah. Sort of, there's a whiff of it in the air. And it's interesting, I know you read my piece about Australia, because you go to Australia and it's sort of like,

you feel like you've gone 10 years into the past, but like in a good way. Yeah. You know what I mean? So they're still on the way towards that. Whereas to compare and contrast is very interesting. Do you think that once, do you think where the past event horizon of the point of no return, where you just go,

you've gone so far down this part now, you just, there's no coming back. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing to, you know that meme a little while ago about how men think about Rome every day? Yeah. So I think about the fall of Rome every day. Whatever that says about me, okay. And I think that the fall of Rome is really instructive.

I mean, it's obviously not the only example of a civilizational decline, but it's probably the most, the one we think about most often is the forefront of our minds when we think about this thing. And you know, the thing to know about the fall of Rome is it took sensual And even though there are obviously, you know, a lot of people will think of artistic representations of barbarians sacking Rome or whatever, that doesn't really actually represent what it was like to live through, except in some cases. For most people living in the Roman Empire, it would have felt just like kind of slow decline with occasional speeding up, right? and you just would have less connection with the centre of empire. You would become poorer technology that was previously available to you,

wasn't available anymore. I mean, we didn't, Rome didn't really completely collapse, right? I mean, to some extent, it retreated to Byzantium. It morphed into the Roman Catholic Church. You know, it's not like Latin is still with us. It's not like it was a complete collapse. It was just a fall from that peak. And, you know, that's probably what's going to happen in some way

over the coming centuries to the West and people on the edges of empire, which kind of includes us. I mean, obviously Britain used to be at the Central Empire, but now we're very much a vassal of Washington. We're just going to have less... We'll become poorer, technology we once had will no longer be available communications

that we once seem normal to us will kind of... But do you know the... Francis, I'm sorry, go for it, go for it. I just want to press you on this point, though, ladies. The question I was asked you, do you think there's a way to stop the decline? Oh, no, probably not. But I also don't want to be completely,

that the term my husband uses for this, is he calls me a collapsed tard. And if I talk too much about collapse, he's like, no, you can't be a collapsedard in my house. I'm actually not being, I'm not saying that, like, I'm not prophesying apocalypse. I'm not saying there's going to be, I'm not saying go prep with your tins of beans and guns, right?

But you're also saying that you're saying the decline is not going to be overnight and it's not going to be explosive all the time and it's not necessarily going to be chaos and violence. And that we're not going to lose everything. Yes. Like we're going, probably what will happen, right, is that sites of technological sophistication will just kind of shrink and entrenched. That there'll be like New Byzantiums. My point is, there's a big difference between being a Roman and an Italian who sells ice cream on the ruins of what used to be a real civilization. No offence to Italians, who my love.

But do you see what I'm saying? Not really. Okay. What I'm saying is, yes, it will be slow and maybe not as painful and is not awful and is not straight away and blah, blah, blah, as some people might like to imagine. But there's a big difference between being a great civilization and living on the ruins of one feeding off whatever remnants are still around. Oh, yeah, it's bad. Yeah. Yeah, no, no, yeah.

I'm not pretending it's not bad. You don't think there's any way to stop that process? We've yet to find... No one has ever reversed to the birth rate decline. It doesn't mean it can't happen, I guess, in theory, but like no one has ever done so. And much as I support a lot of pro-nationalist policy, if nothing else for selfish reasons,

like, I would love a tax break. It doesn't actually work really very well. Like the Hungarians have nudged her birth rate up a little bit. They're never close to replacement, though. I mean, what's very likely to happen, maybe sooner rather than later, is that very fertile subpopulations are obviously going to flourish, you know, and generally very fertile subpopulations are the very religious and the very conservative. So to some extent, we've already seen this in Israel, you know, that Israeli politics has

moved to the right, is widely remarked upon that it's moved to the right quite significantly in recent decades. And probably the reason for that is it's because the most liberal Israelis have been having the fewest kids and the most conservative and religious Israelis have been having the most and that's starting to show. And so that will probably happen everywhere. There are these projections about what portion of the American population is going to be Amish in like 200 years. I know it sounds funny, but like they have a lot of kids and they're pretty good at retaining their, they're pretty good at sustaining that fertility. So that's going to be the big thing.

And then of course the big question is like, what would a... an America run by the Amish be like. I mean, we can assume less interested in technological progress. I had the economist Robin Hansen on my podcast a while ago, because he's very concerned about this issue as an economist.

And he's very clear about this. He's like shrinking populations, low facility populations, are not innovative populations. They are not, these are not societies that can create amazing new technologies, you know. Like he's not, again, he's not like a massive duma.

He doesn't say, we're going to not going to not have running water, we're not going to have electricity or anything like that, more like, we're going to stagnate and there's going to, we just won't, I mean, we already have seen that to be honest, but we're just not going to see the sort of, all the stuff we're imagining, like, robots, AI, whatever, it's just, actually probably just not going to happen. The thing that he said that really stuck in my mind is, was Elon has five years to get to Mars or it's not going to happen. because we'll reach that point where there just aren't enough

like bright young engineers to go around to do all the stuff that he's doing. They just isn't enough human capital to get to Mars when you have a shrinking population and when the bright young engineers you do have are being funneled into keeping the electricity network running and stuff like that. You don't have excess human capital necessary

to do things, do crazy things like go to Mars. So we probably just won't. That's really interesting. I think the one thing that gives me hope around this is, if you look at the other countries, you could say our rivals, competitors, whatever you want to say, call them, I mean, they're not doing great either. Yeah, true. It would be, yes, like the three great superpowers in the world, right? They all have declining fertility massively. Imagine if one of them didn't. Imagine if, like, China had incredibly high fertility or something, which, of course, it did not that long. I mean, China massively shot itself in the foot with the one-child policy. Yeah. Because it's become even harder now for it to get up, get back from where it's got to in terms of low fertility. Yeah, I mean, yeah, think of the geopolitical implications. As it is, of course, that's not the case. It is obviously very, it's very relevant if, say,

you're a South Korean. Oh, absolutely, because there was there, they're 1.4 at the moment, aren't they? Or something? No, lower than that. It's like 0.8, I want to say. It's really low. So it's the lowest in the world. Now, we're at 1.4. Oh wow. Wow, so they're even lower. Very low. And whereas North Korea is at 2 or 2.1 or something. So not super high, but much higher than South Korea.

So it won't be that long until South Korea, even though it has a technological advantage over North Korea, will not have a military advantage because it does some other people. Louise, is there a biological element to this in that things like microplastics? Because I've been reading lots of studies that the quality of young men's sperm is in free-fall, might also that be a problem? Yeah, I think probably not,

although it is a thing, definitely, and it's not a good thing. And again, it comes back to the pill. The pill has pretty bad effects on the natural environment, which may be implicated in low sperm counts, along with things like microplastics. But as far as I know,

the problem is not that people are trying to have kids, like on mass, and not managing it. It's that people not get... People are the thing, mostly the thing that's going wrong is people not getting into relationships in, within which they want to have children. That seems to be the bit of the sequence that people are faltering at most often. Which is why the Hungarian idea of getting people to marry seems to make a difference. Yeah, yeah.

And yeah, I mean, again, it comes back to things like the pill, like disrupting that sequence. I think there's, I mean, clearly there is also just something about wealth. There's something that, you know, you cross this threat. of whatever 5,000, 10,000 US dollars a year, GDP per capita. And people just, just fertility does this. And that just happens everywhere. And it happens regardless. One of the things about this birth rates phenomenon as a sociological phenomenon is that it attracts just so stories.

It's very easy. Everyone has an opinion. And it's very easy to be like, oh, it's because of this. It's because of this. I read in the BBC the other week that it's absolutely definitely low fertility in South Korea because of South Korea being patriarchal. And I thought, lads, when South Korea actually was patriarchal, it had very high fertility.

Right. Right. I like every, and I mean, that's also true. You know, I've got to say, like, my hobby horses, like being pro-marriage and stuff. It's also the case that plenty of socially conservative places that love marriage and whatever are still sub-replacement. You know, it's the big factor is wealth.

There's something about wealth that makes people less keen to reproduce. And there's also societies that are openly anti-natal, career being one of them. You've got all these holiday resorts or restaurants or cafes which are strictly no children. No children are allowed. So if you're automatically, if you're sending out that message and what you're saying, kids are undesirable, then why would people want to have kids if they're constantly being told that they're not wanted? Yeah, absolutely. And I think also you just end up in this vicious cycle

where if no one around you is having kids it becomes weird to have kids, it also becomes more difficult. I think another problem that people have and this is in some senses I think the issue with wealth causing low fertility is that, you know, I go onto Instagram or whatever and I see I'm bombarded with images of what a luxurious, comfortable child-free life looks like, right?

The dink lifestyle. The dink lifestyle. Or the travel or the whatever. And if you're, you know, just the case that if you have kids you have less free time and less free money is just like there's just no way around it and that doesn't seem so bad if everyone else in your peer group is doing the same thing it seems much more painful if you're the only one who's suffering this cost and then you can see why people are thinking like why am i doing this thing happy

i mean obviously people you know people adore their children like people regretting having children is actually extremely rare. Like, I'm, like, I'm, like, I'm, like, I'm, I'm not just a natalist for, like, geopolitical reasons. Like, I also think the children are just wonderful. Right. I also think the children are just wonderful, and it's like the most meaningful thing you can do with your life, right? But there's just no getting away from the fact that it does,

it has economic implications. And a lot of people, like, when it comes down to it, they're just like, I'd actually rather have a bit more money and only have one or two. Well, this is one of the things about, I think we increasingly need to talk about in modern society, which is, I think we live in the age of money, and so we've forgotten the money isn't the most important thing. At the same time, as I think it's fair to say, you know, I was having this conversation with somebody last night. Like, I'm a first generation immigrant, so I came here. I didn't have a family network. I spent the first 10 years of my life kind of struggling to make my way, no inheritance, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I've basically had to create this with Francis and build a pretty successful career in doing what I'm doing to be able to have what baby boomers in America had in the 60s on one income. Yeah, I know. It's terrible. Do you know what I mean? Completely. So basically all I ever wanted was to have like a house and kids and to be comfortable. And that's really it. And nowadays, to do that, you have to, like, if you want to live in London, you basically have to be a millionaire.

Yeah, yeah. No, I agree. And I'm living it as well. Like, I totally get you. Yeah. The thing that, though, that I always try and remind myself of is like, it's harder than it was for my parents, for your parents. It's, we're still safer, more comfortable, richer, whatever,

than like 99.9% of people who have ever lived. Yeah. And it's so hard to remember that because I think the human mind is so set up to be doing these kind of minute peer comparisons. Interesting. Well, let me ask you another question then, because you talk about it's GDP. And I was wondering whether it's GDP or,

whether it's urbanisation? It's, yeah, it's both. I mean, yeah, cities shred fertility. Also true in Rome, right? Rome largely shredded fertility because of disease. But it's always been the case that, you know, the villagers are basically like little reproduction machines. Like, they're like perfectly set up for people,

which is a lesson there. There's something in there. You know, if what you're trying to do, if you want to design a fertile culture, it probably has to look something like a village because that seems to be, of all the sort of social technology we've ever invented, that seems to be the best one for encouraging people to have children, like having their extended family around, being in a very settled place,

all this kind of stuff. But anyway, so historically, yes, I mean, villages have always, rural areas have always been the engines of fertility, and then people go to the city and either have fewer children or die from plague or, you know, whatever. I mean, this is a point, actually, like, again, worth remembering when my husband accused of me of being a collapsed start. I saw in the paper recent, I think it was a Lancet, had a piece on low fertility the other week, and it mentioned the fact that the global population has not shrunk since the Black Death

and is now set to shrink quite soon, which makes it sound very frightening. It is worth reflecting on the fact that, yes, I mean, normally population only shrinks because of disease, war, famine, some sort of disaster. That's not true for us. that our population is such a shrink is because people who have just, like, don't fancy having kids, which is kind of great. I mean, if you have to go through a period of population decline, this is definitely the most pleasant. But it's still, they're like, it still spells only one thing, which is civilisation decline. Yeah. And with that as well, there's this other phenomenon

that has started to bubble up, which is surrogacy. Which I find... Sleased. Yeah, I think so. I was an interesting transition. Yeah. It was like, what can we get Louise to say? But the whole surrogacy movement.

I still don't get the connection, by the way. You carry on, yeah. Because, well, it's to direct, you get these people now who want children, but don't want to go, sometimes don't want to go through the rigors of an unpleasantness of being pregnant and having a child. Yeah. Like, celebrity, I mean, I can tell, I'm pregnant right now. I can tell you pregnancy sucks. Like, I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

I actually had a really interesting conversation. My podcast recently with a woman called Catherine Pekulloch. He's had eight children and also has, I think, six stepchildren. And she wrote a book about women who, and is an academic. Very unusual, right? And she wrote a book about women who have, who both go to university and have five children or more. And she did interviews with them to basically work. out what's going on because that's such an unusual thing to do statistically.

And the thing she concluded, which I found so interesting, is it's not that these women have suffer fewer trade-offs. It's not, for instance, that they have easier pregnancies. Like she talks to women who are like, I hate being pregnant. Like, Catherine said to me herself, like, I hate being pregnant. It's so uncomfortable, it's horrible. It's not that they have loads more money, like they've got nannies coming out of their ears or anything like that.

It's not that they have particularly supportive extended families. it's just that they really, really like kids and they just really, really want to do it. And they've just decided that it's worth it. And yeah, I mean, that's, that whatever drive that is, presumably some genetic component, is presumably being selected for very aggressively at the moment.

But yeah, I mean, so the surrogacy thing, I mean, pregnancy is onerous. This is true. And I can, I get why these celebrity, you know, rich ladies or whatever, rich men want to farm it out to poor a woman. But then the thing is that as Mary Harrington likes to say, pregnancy doesn't just make a baby, it makes a mother. There are psychological components to pregnancy,

which are essential in terms of priming you to care for this helpless newborn when he or she is born. and we can't replicate that. You know, science. It's beyond science to try and imitate that. Louise, in the interest of promoting the natalist message, let me mansplaint pregnancy to you. No, but I have heard from some other women

that it's a mixed bag, I think, pregnancy. Is that fair to say? Yeah. It's not that it sucks, it's that there are times when it sucks and there are times when it's actually brilliant. Would that be? Yeah, and it's worth it.

Yeah. Yeah. And also you just forget. You're not telling it very well. No, but it's true. I mean, also true of childbirth. Like, you, I remember vividly, so I've just come to the end of morning sickness, and I had the same thought while writing a book about pronatalism, right?

And I had the same thought during... This is great. I had the same thought during this pregnancy that I did. I remember having during last pregnancy, I'm like, I never want to do this again. And I've already forgotten that impulse. I'm already like, oh yeah, I'll do it. I'll do it loads more, whatever. And that's also true of childbirth.

you just, you just like get over it. And I think, of course, that's just, it's just life, isn't it? Like, you, like, it's very rare to accomplish anything that's really worthwhile without some hardship. Do you think part of it as well? And I was thinking about this, because when I was teaching, people always used to say to me, oh, you know, kids are this, kids of that. Most kids are really lovely and wonderful.

You get, you know, the others that you think, you know, you could be put somewhere else and, you know, society would be better for it. But the vast majority of them are... I'll chill out, Adolf. Their moms probably don't think so. Yeah, trust me, some of their moms definitely. Long and honest conversation with their moms.

But we now see motherhood and being a parent as long, onerous, incredibly unsatisfying. Because most of us don't have encounters with children, the only time we really notice with them is if we're in a plane or in a public space, they're having a meltdown and we're like, oh my God, shut the... up. Yeah. And the joys of, I think the joys of parenthood tends to be hidden, partly because maybe we don't talk about it enough. Because you don't want to be smug, do you? Like, particularly if you've, particularly, I don't know, if you know, if you know that you're talking to people who are struggling with infertility or if you have friends who, who, you know,

but I mean, I should say that anecdotally, by far the most common reason I know for women in my peer group not having kids is because they haven't found the right man. Yeah. Like the, the sort of girl boss narrative about this, that what's happening is women and just choosing their, like, fancy shoes and handbags and pursuing their careers over having children. You know, that ideology absolutely exists as a little bit of truth to it.

I think overwhelmingly, though, that's not what's going on. Like, I think at least 90% of British women say they want to have children at some point, and yet only 75% of my generation will end up doing so. So mostly it's circumstantial. So you don't want to go around being really smart, and talking about how wonderful your children are. But it's true, and there's just nothing like it.

And I think as well that if you don't have kids, it's very hard to imagine that feeling. It's like a one-way street. I always think that for fathers as well, but I obviously only know it from the mother's perspective, having children just changes your moral universe. Totally. Because suddenly it's the number one thing you care about

in the whole world forevermore and you would die for your children without even thinking about it. And not only that, it also means at any time you encounter a child suffering, like even in fiction or something, you think of your child. Like you become so much more acutely sensitive to any harm coming to children and so on. And yeah, and that's just so hard to, it's so hard to directly empathise with that feeling if you've not been through it and hard also to explain it. Yeah.

But at the same time, Francis, like when my son comes in here, everyone's like, oh my God, you're so, you know, so I think having kids around, this is, you would making this point, but can we come back to the urbanization conversation, actually, Louise, a little bit, because I guess one of the things I wanted to ask you about is there was a time when conservatives in particular, but lots of people banged on about the nuclear family. And I wonder if the nuclear family is actually a big part of why we're here, because it takes more than a nuclear family to raise a child as I'm rapidly discovering. I mean, do you know what I mean?

And is it maybe just particularly the urbanization of society where you basically have older generations staying put in rural areas, younger generations moving in, you create separation, cities are not exactly encouraging you to have kids anyway. Yeah. And then that is then, and it's like then you're going super expensive. Yeah. I'm surrounded by people who don't have kids and therefore I've got all these other disincentives. Yeah. I'm not increasingly living in a safe or comfortable place. Yep.

I don't have my own home. Yeah. And I'm not going to get this help that, you know, 100 years would have been expected, which is grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. And it's this kind of tragedy in a sense that,

you know, British Britain had the first industrial revolution, right? And we also had birth rate decline earlier, almost than anyone else. And so we're, you know, with the exception of some of these northeast Asian countries, we're further along this road than anyone else. else. And one theory as to why Britain had the first industrial revolution is because we abandoned clannishness earlier. We basically invented individualism, right? And then exported it, of course, to, you know, America is now, of course, famous for its individualism. America was originally a British colony, right? So it was all the same culture. Individualism is absolutely amazing

for wealth generation, absolutely amazing for encouraging people to be mobile and innovative and entrepreneurial and all the rest of it. And, you know, for a long time, like that allowed British people to dominate the world because we had the combination of individualism and also high fertility. I mean, for such a long time, Britain was a net exporter of people. We talk so often now about mass net immigration. We had net emigration for centuries because we were sending, we were, you know, having loads and loads of kids and sending them to Australia, Canada, everywhere.

And the problem, though, that we've now. found is that eventually individualism meets itself because you have this problem that you describe exactly that you don't have people move around, they don't have the extended family networks anymore, they're not, they're not settled in one place, they don't, you know, I mean, one of the reasons, right, where people have fewer children when they're not surrounded by extended family is the extended families are constantly telling you to have kids because your grandmother or whoever is constantly sort of prodding you about it. Why would your friends care, really. Like your friends, your friends don't have any genetic investment in you having children.

They might have some other, it might suit their interest in other ways, but generally they don't have that genetic investment, whereas families do. And families also will drop everything to help their children, grandchildren, whatever, who are, of course, their genetic, represent their genetic future. So yeah, I mean, shredding the family kind of can't help but disincentivise people from having children. All right, well, there you go. It's the last days ago. I guess the question before we do our last one is you're pregnant. You want to have more kids in this declining, dying, collapsed, hard world.

I know. What is that? Well, I guess it comes back to this like fundamental priors thing, isn't it? Like, look, actually, I would rather live in the winter of civilization if you have to choose. It might be a bit depressing. It might feel like this feeling of loss and sort of cultural malaise isn't very happy. But also we're getting to live off the fumes of the amazing civilization that our ancestors built. You know, if you'd lived in the 19th century, say, or earlier, you would have got to feel that sense of like confidence and like certainty and all of this.

You also would have had to worry about your kids dying of cholera. You would have had to worry about... The two world wars. Yeah, exactly. Whereas we actually, we get all the great stuff that our ancestors built for us. And I don't think it's going to just vanish. I mean, I'm not worried about apocalyptic scenarios.

And yes, we also have to feel melancholy about loss. But it's not that bad. It's still the case that I think our children can, I mean, I think particularly, mind you like, we've got loads of passports. Like we're, you know, in global terms, we're very well off. Like, I don't actually think that, we're facing that kind of level of crisis,

you just have to take a punt and not invest in the future. So unconvincing. I'm sorry, but again, it's this priors thing. It's like, if you... You're having more children because you think children are good and you enjoy having them. Oh, it's because I love children and they're gorgeous and like, I think my son is the best thing in the world and having more of him is an amazing thought. But also, but in a broader sense, like you just have to choose.

Are you pro-human or aren't you? Yeah. I agree with that. I definitely agree with that. Louise, you should start a party, Britain. It's not too bad. That would be a slogan. Louise, as always, we end with the same question. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? Before Louise answers, once the interview is over, make sure you head on over to locals using the link in the description to see this. I have reached the conclusion, you know, not via scripture, but via looking at social.

social science data and whatever, that Christian ideas are true, like they produce better societies. 1% of young women in the US are on OnlyFans of girls. No way. That's very high. Only fans is to the marriage market as a criminal record is to the jobs market. Like, it's a very bad long-term thing. What advice would you give to men raising daughters in 2024? It's hard not to just repeat myself because we've been like, because this is this thing that no one's

talking about. I mean, I find it crazy that people, you'll still get comments under articles about natalism being like, what about the environment, what about overpopulation, whatever? Yeah, I mean, I think I, my bet is that people are actually too worried right now about, like, runaway modernity and runaway technology and not worried enough about how we're going to deal with declining modernity and declining technology. I think that our whole like focus on the future is basically wrong. And we should all be making decisions with the expectation that there's not going to be endless growth. And yeah, so I'm just a ray of sunshine.

Okay. There we go. All right, head on over to locals where Louise will say what she really thinks. Do you believe the Jesus stuff or is it just a more ideal way to live regarding sex and relationships? Do I believe the Jesus stuff?