Lyman Stone is a demographer, researcher, and a writer.
It’s no surprise that birth rates are plummeting; raising kids feels harder than ever. Life is expensive, the future feels uncertain, and chaos is everywhere. So how do we reverse course? What would actually convince people to have more children and pull us back from a looming population crisis?
Expec ... Show More
Today
“We Won 3 Grammys and Still Felt Like Failures” - Dan + Shay (Live Performance) - #1176
Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney are American country music singers, songwriters, and Grammy Award-winning artists. Expect to learn the biggest differences between being on the come-up to worldwide fame as artists, whether it’s harder to get your first hit or following it up, what it w ... Show More
1h 34m
Nov 12
Why Atheists Keep Finding God (in everything) - Alex O’Connor - #1175
Alex O’Connor is a YouTuber, writer and a podcaster. Expect to learn what shifts happened in Alex’s thinking these past few years, why you actually would ever want to time travel, why so many people are moving away from atheism, why consciousness is the biggest hole in the atheis ... Show More
1h 56m
Nov 9
How To Turn Your Pain Into Greatness - Bugzy Malone - #1174
Bugzy Malone is a British rapper, actor, and entrepreneur from Manchester, England. Expect to learn what the difference between “making it and maintaining it” is, the childhood experiences that shaped Bugzy, and why it’s important to be ultra vulnerable, if you can ever have mast ... Show More
2h 7m
Nov 2023
Counterintuitive Ideas About Marriage, Family, and Kids
There are a lot of popular ideas out there around marriage, family, and culture, like, for example, that living together before marriage decreases your chances of divorce, people are having fewer children because children are expensive to raise, and society is becoming more secul ... Show More
47m 34s
Oct 2025
Birth Rates: Are We Running Out of Babies??
Birth rates are falling all over the world, and some people are freaking out, saying this could tank our society — and even spell the end of humans. In the U.S., so-called pronatalism is having a major moment, with lots of people making the case for more babies — President Trump ... Show More
43m 8s
Oct 2024
Why Paying People to Have Babies is a Billion-Dollar Mistake
Overpopulation has been our biggest fear for decades, but now, shrinking populations are the real crisis. From aging societies to dwindling birth rates, countries worldwide are grappling with the risks of a declining population and struggling with radical measures to reverse it. ... Show More
15m 45s
Mar 2024
Birthrates Are Plummeting Worldwide. Why?
<p>For a long time, the story about the world’s population was that it was growing too quickly. There were going to be too many humans, not enough resources, and that spelled disaster. But now the script has flipped. Fertility rates have declined dramatically, from about five chi ... Show More
1 h
Nov 2021
Baby Boom or Bust
Birth rates in many countries, including China, Japan, Italy and the UK have dropped below replacement level. Clare McNeil asks if we should be concerned about this, and the burden it will place on taxpayers and the young, or welcome it as a good thing for climate change, where s ... Show More
29m 8s
<p>For decades, the great fear was overpopulation. Now it’s the opposite. How did this happen — and what’s being done about it? (Part one of a <a href="https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/cradle-to-grave/">three-part series</a>, “Cradle to Grave.”)</p><p> </p><ul><li><strong>SOU ... Show More
