WTW16: Unmarried Woman Posts Happy TikTok. Fox News Loses It
You might have seen the recent viral TikTok of an unmarried, child-free woman spontaneously deciding to make shakshuka for breakfast after sleeping in a bit the morning after going to the Beyonce concert - or the backlash from conservatives and the anti-woke that promptly followed. So did we, and we've invited none other than unmarried, child-free man Heath Enwright on the show to break down the Fox News reaction. It somehow involves Ancient Rome??? Is one happy unmarried woman the end of all of civilization? Tune in and find out! Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke!
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down.
The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything.
Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green Eminem will now wear sneakers.
Hello, and welcome to Where There's Woke.
I don't know what episode this is because we record everything in advance, so who cares?
I'm Thomas.
That's my beautiful, amazing wife, Heath.
And Lydia is joining us.
Hello.
Man, they're reeling it.
I do that every time.
Yeah, it's unfortunate.
Oh, hey, Lydia.
Oh, yeah, sorry.
I'm here too, yeah.
Heath, I might not have mentioned Lydia's going to be here.
No, it's fine.
We'll talk later.
Are you in a small closet in our house too, Heath?
In a manner of speaking, yeah.
I'm right behind you.
We are a little closeted, but we'll soon change that.
So this is, in addition to the deep research ones that we put out, we also like to have a little fun here on Where There's Woke, and this is a more fun one because- I'm sorry, but I did some deep research on TikTok about this.
Oh, did you?
I don't know, it feels like you were saying this wasn't journalism, but for me it was.
Was it with all the time that you have, the extra time that you have that we don't, that you're like- I'm gonna have shakshuka.
I'm gonna make a quick shakshuka.
Okay, sorry, I didn't mean to diminish that.
We didn't do deep research, but we did life research, and we like to keep track of what's ruining society according to Fox News in a given hour.
I was gonna say week, and then I was like, no, it's like by the day, and then I was like, no, it's truly by the segment.
You know, like there's a new thing ruining civilization on Fox News.
Just hour to hour.
You know, like it doesn't even... Literally civilization.
We'll get to it.
They're going to say this is ruining human civilization.
It's going to come to an end.
Yep.
Would you like to guess, is it climate change?
Is there an asteroid heading to, is it just the decline of democracy and institutions and?
Rolling back regulations and drinking water, our air is polluted.
Is it any of that?
No, no, it's women enjoying themselves a little bit, I think.
Shekshuka, the bane of human civilization.
But more than that, it is the very idea, which cannot be countenanced on Fox News, of a woman being happy with her choices to not be chattel or to not just be only a uterus and nothing more.
Oh, it's so good.
Yeah, we got this TikTok clip of this woman who seems so happy.
She's just like genuinely happy.
Well rested.
She's rested.
I'm watching it and I'm like, oh God.
She's everything we're not.
Actually, Heath, is this just you in a wig?
Is this your channel?
Okay, I'll be honest.
I literally today woke up very late because I can.
I went to a delightful restaurant by myself.
Nobody bothered me.
I did it exactly when I wanted.
I walked over there and I almost ordered shakshuka.
They actually do have it there.
It's a really good place.
Amazing.
This is great.
I love this.
I'm so happy to have you on to talk about this because, well, Lydia, do you want to present our subject matter for the day?
Sure.
So as you alluded to, everyone's in a tizzy, basically, because a woman went on TikTok to present what her life looks like and how nice it is to not have children right now, from her perspective.
And in response to this video, which we're going to play, Everyone went nuts.
It was just ridiculous.
Matt Walsh really kicked it off, but I have some tweets here from, like, Stephen Miller.
Everyone was chiming in.
Ooh, Matt Walsh, who chimed in on this?
Oh, yeah.
That's gonna be beautiful.
That's why this went viral at first, yeah.
Oh, that's fantastic.
I don't think she had, like, a huge account, but she had, like, a, what, a semi-popular?
She's actually a podcaster, apparently.
We should have got her on, damn it.
I know, I know.
I didn't know that until today.
Oh, okay.
Well, we'll see.
But yeah, I don't think she was like a huge TikToker is my impression, but she had a following and then a man is like, how dare you?
She's also a star of the silver microphone medium called podcasting, so.
But Matt Walsh, what, retweeted it?
I don't know.
No, he wasn't on TikTok.
He tweeted it out with the video.
34.9 million views on this tweet, by the way.
Her life doesn't revolve around her family and kids, so instead it revolves around TV shows and pop stars.
Worst of all, she's too stupid to realize how depressing this is.
But I guess we better play the TikTok, and then we have a Fox News segment.
We got to start with a TikTok, otherwise the segment won't make sense.
To be clear, he's tweeting about how depressing her life is.
Exactly.
Just want to make sure that context is very clear.
I love the idea of a fine summer's day.
She's woken up late.
She's just strolling around with all her free time and beautiful skin and everything.
Everything she has time to do, all the self-care that, you know, Lydia and I don't have time to do.
And just a butterfly like lands on her hand and it's just a rainbow in the sky.
She's, yeah, drinking, eating whatever she wants.
And then Matt Walsh is like, she's too dumb to know she's depressed.
She's doing yoga and she's like, you can see her oxytocin levels on a reader.
It's so good.
She's actually radiating.
She gives off a firm, light energy.
Yeah, you know, we thought we'd have an expert in living LaVita.
Living it up.
Let's make a 90s reference that doesn't even make sense.
Heath Enright, of course, of such pods as all the pods that you already listened to.
Got off of movies, Kevin Caskey, Citation Needed.
Oh, I love that one.
Don't want to forget that one.
Let's see.
Oh, D&D Minus.
D&D Minus.
Yeah, I listened to all these.
Also known as two Ds in a pod.
Some people are calling that because it's an awesome pun.
I like that.
It's getting a lot of traction.
Season one just wrapped up.
That was a hell of a finale over on D&D Minus.
Really enjoyed it.
Oh, that was so fun.
Yeah, we're just finished up season one and season two is on the way.
It does exist in the universe, but not on the feed quite yet.
And he had time to do all that because he does not have any children that we know of.
Yup.
Fingers crossed.
That's what makes you the expert we wanted to consult today.
So why don't I, uh, should I push play on this TikTok?
Let's do it.
Let's do it.
Try not to get too outraged at a woman living her life.
1045 AM on a Saturday.
I'm 29 and single and I don't have kids yet.
Here's what your Saturday morning looks like when you're single at 29 and you don't have a kid running around the house.
I didn't rise from my bed until 1015.
Every time I thought, I should probably get out.
I'm sorry.
I have to stop us, which, by the way, you can stop any to anyone can elect to stop us anytime.
But I need to deal with I'm going to truly I'm going to do about 35 minutes.
A tight 35.
On the scourge of today's society, which is the quick edit, I think, is now done on purpose.
And I want to die.
I hate it.
It's the worst.
That's the style on TikTok, actually.
It's a classic way to do TikTok videos.
It's not only acceptable, it's like chic to do it.
I hate it.
Look, an occasional quick edit for comedic points?
Brilliant.
Nothing wrong with that.
Sometimes it's great.
But now it's every edit is that.
You don't have kids, you got time.
Get a second camera.
You have all the time in the world.
You're fine.
You also don't have to press stop.
This is a stream of thoughts.
She really could probably do it in a take and it would be fine.
Did she say something insane during these cuts that had to go?
Maybe.
I really think it's a style and this will be an unexpected... I always think we try to predict.
What's going to be the thing where we're the old boomer being like, fuck this, we can't do it anymore.
Oh, this might be it.
I love thinking about this stuff.
I've always, I don't know why.
I think it was because we grew up in such a rapid technology change era, you know, with the internet really coming to its own and all that.
Even as a kid, I was like, oh, what's going to be the thing that'll be like, we'll be old and we'll be like, we can't even understand this because so whatever.
I think it's impossible to predict.
So this is one of those ones, like, maybe this is it.
Maybe all media, all video, all audio for Gen fucking Z or whatever they are, maybe it'll all be this.
Like, that'll be the way they think it sounds normal to just have a cutoff thing on the back of every sentence every single time.
They'll be like, yeah, that's good editing.
And I'll be like, I'm going to kill myself.
I can't.
I'm sorry.
I'm a boomer.
I will not do it.
Yeah, this is a get off my lawn moment.
It is!
Line in the sand.
Get off of my edit lawn.
Okay, that's all.
Edit better.
Nobody wants to edit anymore.
That's the problem in the world, in the economy.
This is the downfall of civilization.
Yeah, I offered $8.50 for someone to edit and nobody took the job.
Me and Thomas are going to go on Fox News and talk about this for a while, as soon as we can.
Okay.
So that was 59 minutes, but I'm sure I edited that down.
So don't worry.
Okay.
Let's do, we need to grab lunch.
Put a bunch of terrible cuts in that.
All right, back to it.
I thought, why nobody's making me and I'm not missing out on anything.
I went to Beyonce last night and I didn't get home until 1am and I danced and drank my little heart out.
I didn't pay a babysitter to watch my kids as I did that.
And I woke up a tad hungover this morning, which is probably why I was in bed for so long.
And I was just scrolling on my phone, and I saw a picture of shakshuka, and I thought, you know what sounds really good?
Maybe I'm gonna learn how to make shakshuka today.
Because I have no plans, and I don't have kids, and I don't have a husband, and I don't have errands to run.
So good.
I can go to the grocery store and learn how to make shakshuka.
So that's on my agenda today.
Also on my agenda, probably a rewatch of someone else's video.
I woke up, I masturbated by myself, I had like seven orgasms.
It was the best.
Nobody involved in that.
Just me.
So fun.
I'm also doing a rewatch of Normal People on Hulu, which is really spicy and I highly recommend.
Weirdly, I'm into this documentary on Netflix about blue zone countries, so I've got a pretty stacked day.
Anyway, I save all this to say, whenever I'm hurt on myself about why I'm not married and I don't have kids and I should be further along at 29, almost 30, I wouldn't want to do anything else this Saturday.
I know that you can do all these things when you have kids and you're married and I understand, but the effortlessness and ease of my life just kind of focusing on myself and the shakshuka I want to make or the Beyonce concert I want to go to really pays off when I'm hard on myself for not being where society tells me I should be in life.
Love that.
Oh, so good.
And she's even self-aware.
She's not even being judgy.
She's like, yeah, no, I get it.
It's like harder for people who have kids a lot of time.
I like this though.
And I think what's important too is that element of sometimes I get hard on myself.
I should be further along in life.
I should have a partner.
I should be married.
I should have kids.
But it's okay to not be hard on yourself in those ways.
What she's experiencing now is also life.
And, you know, really important for her, and I think that that probably resonates with a lot of people who tend to, especially women, you know, feel like that clock ticking, if that's something that they're looking for, and understand that at the end of the day, like, it really isn't about having kids by a certain age.
It's not about having a partner by a certain age.
You might not do it at all, and you can still have a fulfilling, awesome life, and her life sounds awesome, so.
It really does.
Freaking Beyonce?
Yeah.
Oh, come on!
I know.
I mean, bee?
Beehive.
For life.
Absolutely.
And, I mean, you chimed in on it a little bit, too, where she was like, I know you can do this stuff if you have kids, and it's really freaking hard.
You can't do it spontaneously at all.
It's a conversation that, like, you and I have, where I'm tapping out kind of thing, and you're like, you need some time.
Yeah, like once every five years.
Yeah, yeah.
And then we have to organize it, right?
And in the same way that... The whole planning committee.
Yeah, pretty much.
We call Ethan to do some consulting.
We're like, hey man, we forgot how to have fun, I think you call it?
Is the word you use normally, your people, fun?
And so can you help us with that?
And then he draws us up like, okay, here's how to remember what fun is.
And we're like, I don't know.
Ready?
I'll take your word for it.
Like I don't, we do, we go through the motions.
I'm not even sure we're having fun.
I'm just like, I think this is what fun is supposed to be.
And then we do it and it's fine.
Cost us a thousand dollars in babysitting.
Exactly.
And that was my next point.
If we wanted to go to Beyonce or anything, even just to dinner, babysitting is, you know, understandably, we're going to pay someone for that.
But that adds up so fast.
And it's not really something that you can do all the time.
Yeah.
I really felt for her in that moment.
It's the common thing at Heath, I'm sure you're the same way, where you know you're going to get a bunch of fucking annoying-ass comments.
She was trying to head it off like, oh, I know you can do all that when you're married, but it's like, I understand why she's doing that, but no, you really can't do all that while you're married.
She just envisioned a bunch of married people being like, I can do that.
No, the only way you can do that is if you have a spouse who's like, I will perform miraculous feats For you to have, like, eight hours of this, maybe.
I will move heaven and earth for you to maybe get a taste of this life that she's describing for, like, four minutes.
And you can't even do it together then as two spouses.
And I'll tell you, like, from my experience, it's also really hard to turn off that part of your brain.
While I'm getting that time to myself, for myself, often, you know, you have thoughts Creeping through of the to-do list.
It's that mental load.
How do you let go of that mental load?
Even if you have those eight hours to focus on yourself or learn how to make shakshuka, that stuff still creeps in and you're like, oh crap, I forgot to do, you know, changing the dentist appointments for the kids.
So I need to make sure I do that, you know, when I'm done with my eight hours of me time.
And it's just constant.
I have the same thing with podcasting.
It's just like having three kids.
It's like really hard.
Someone will be like, I have a dog, so it's the same.
It's like, yeah, I mean, yes and no.
We went through the puppy process, and that's not, I'm not saying that's not hard.
In some ways it's worse.
Never again.
Yeah, in some ways it's worse, but it's also very temporary, and then quickly it becomes a different thing.
And also, if you neglect your dog a tiny amount, it doesn't feel like you've committed the worst heinous crime in the history of civilization.
You know, like if you accidentally, oh, oh shoot, accidentally didn't let, you know, whereas if you do anything like that with a kid, you're killed by a mob of people.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I guess with a dog, you might be killed by a mob of Heath's of dog lovers.
But you could forget to feed your dog for like 15 minutes and it's like, oh, that sucks.
Here you go.
All is forgiven.
You forget to feed your kid.
It's like, no, you're the worst person.
You're in jail now.
Yeah.
So the stakes are low.
I'm not saying you should do either of those things, but they're like the stakes I just had a question about the societal pressure concept there.
So Lydia, you're talking about it and I'm guessing that pressure is huge on women in comparison to like the tiny amount that I've experienced, but I actually have a small Anecdote about me experiencing that, but I'm just curious, like, what that level was from your family, to give me some privilege checking.
Oh, you know, actually, not from my family.
My parents didn't get married until they were 35.
And they're atheist California liberals.
Yeah, atheist liberal Californians, you know.
They had zero expectations for marriage for me.
They were like, it's your life.
Do it or don't do it when you want to, when you don't want to.
Yeah, so that was really easygoing.
Really, really good parents, apparently.
Whatever.
Check your privilege.
So how many toothpick sandwiches did your dad give you?
I don't know.
Does the public know that joke?
I forget.
Maybe?
But anyway, his dad fed him toothpick sandwiches as a prank.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
Well, it makes it sound crazy like that.
He would sneak a toothpick into, he would like, if he made like an English muffin for me, he'd like sneak one toothpick in sideways so you couldn't see it, but it was like embedded in the thing.
Oh my gosh.
And then I'd bite down on it and it would be like, he'd be like, ah, I got you.
Cause it's a classic prank and that's funny.
That's horrible.
There was a pivotal time, not to bring up a sad memory, but I remember when your dad was at his final kind of days, where I was so conflicted because I wanted to text you a joke.
And I'm not actually like a joke about death guy.
Like, it depends on the thing.
But I'm not going to do that for anyone else.
Like, I'm not going to assume anyone else ever wants a joke about their thing because the risk is too high.
You know, I just don't.
It's not worth it for me.
But I was like, oh, I just want to text Heath this joke.
I almost did, but I was like, ah, I don't want to.
And then I ran it by you afterwards and you're like, you definitely should have done that.
I was like, damn it!
That would have been the best.
And the joke was this, when you, you know, were kind of at your dad's side for those final moments, maybe you pranked yourself with like one last toothpick sandwich.
And we're like, ah, hey dad.
And he's like barely, you know, he can, he can kind of blink in acknowledgement and you, ah, you got me again.
One last toothpick sandwich.
Yeah.
No, I should have done.
What I did do is I had hospice.
They snuck a toothpick into his morphine for one last little bit, but he didn't really get it.
The hospice people didn't have the sense of humor I was hoping.
They probably didn't do it right.
They probably didn't do it like in the funny way that you intended.
No, I meant, yeah, exactly.
I had to give him notes.
I was like, no, but funnier.
And they were like, we're not doing it again.
And I was like, okay, this went badly.
Heath, you were saying that you felt, you know, experience of societal pressure too?
Oh yeah, a tiny amount.
From especially my grandmother, my mom's mom, not a whole lot.
She was pretty chill too about this sort of thing, but a couple different times during like a holiday or something, I'm in my 30s and she's like, hey man, noticed you're in your 30s and here you are at Thanksgiving.
I'm not being introduced to your like fiance right now or anything like that.
What the fuck are you doing, man?
D up." And I was like, okay, okay, I get it.
And one of her comments was like, you know, to maintain a balance of population, like you have two kids.
You know, like two people get together and have two kids.
That's what me and my husband did.
You know, we had your mom and your mom's sister.
That's what we did.
We just miscounted slightly.
It's actually 2.1.
It was 2.1 and we figured, well, you got to round up because like, You know, because if we all- Be safe.
Well, yeah, if the population all did two, and it turns out you need 2.1, we're going to all die, so we round it up.
We'll help, absolutely.
Yeah.
Right, no, err on the side of not extincting human beings.
Because 0.1 of a human isn't anything, that's why you have to round up.
Exactly.
If there's a group, and you're like, hey, grab me 2.1, you're going to be like, well, I'll get you three, because otherwise, you know what I mean?
So that's our excuse.
No, that's how we know evolution is fake, because like 0.1 humans doesn't even make sense.
But my grandma said that, and I was like, yeah, I'll let you know as things are progressing with a lady friend, if that starts happening.
I'm not against getting married or having kids, I just haven't done it yet.
But then I kind of defended the position a little bit, and I was like, hey, you know what I did today?
And I described what I did today.
And my grandma was like, oh, that sounds great.
Sounds amazing.
And then I was like, wait a minute.
That's what you did today too.
Because at this point, my grandfather had passed away and my grandma, she's 98 years old.
She's healthier than I will ever be in my life or have ever been in my life.
She's going to outlive me very likely.
She runs a 4-4-40.
She almost runs, like, I don't know that it's 4-4 anymore, but she runs a quick 40.
She hikes every day.
She swims in an Olympic-sized swimming pool every day.
She's politically active.
- Amazing. - Contacts like movie makers to do screenings at her beautiful senior community that's like truly, truly beautiful.
Like, I don't know how she pulled this off.
She lives like on the Hudson River, it's gorgeous.
And I was like, didn't you have a day just like that?
But like healthier and better and like more action.
And she was like, yeah, yeah.
It's great And I was like so you're like super happy since you got to be like by yourself and retired without having to deal With kids and she's like yeah, it's like the happiest time of my life And the only reason she has that is because she miraculously is living that life at 98 Whereas a lot of people have to fucking grind themselves to a pulp Have the kids and then right when they're like all right time to have a little fall heart attack.
I'm dead.
Mm-hmm.
Yep Damn it.
No, she's nailing it.
She's like beating all the actuaries.
And also I love this idea that Matt Walsh is getting all high and mighty about life revolving around TV shows.
I got news for you.
We got three kids.
Our life still revolves around TV shows.
You know what's fucking great?
TV shows.
They're awesome.
They're really good.
What he's doing is fucking tweeting about a woman enjoying her day.
That's what he's doing.
That's so much more noble than watching a show that you like.
Fucking asshole.
Seriously, did he finish writing that tweet like in the dark by himself like an asshole and be like, I'm fulfilled today.
And she is not.
It's so sad.
The funniest part really is the too dumb to know you're depressed.
That is such a good, oh, I didn't want to play with you anyway, kind of thing or something.
Like, they just don't know.
It's that meme with the guy standing in the corner or whatever.
And it's like, they have no idea that they're too dumb to know they're depressed.
Yeah.
They're just over there having the time of their fucking lives.
Psychological Dunning-Kruger.
Matt Walsh is the perfect exemplar.
Absolutely.
So, lest you think this clip could just happen and no one complain about it, we've already talked about Matt Walsh, and this led to a hard-hitting, talking about deep research, a very hard-hitting segment on Fox News.
Shall we hit play on this one?
Let's do it.
Let's do it.
Fantastic.
Ashley St.
Clair joins me now.
Is this a trend among young women to celebrate not having a family?
It is.
It's the Chelsea Handler culture of it all, where they just want to pursue pleasure and drinking all night, going to Beyonce concerts.
It's this pursuit of self-pleasure in replace of fulfillment and having a family.
Can we just pause for a second here?
Yes, anytime.
Can we congratulate Chelsea Handler on having, like, her name on a cultural phenomenon now?
Thanks to Fox News.
Like, that's such a good boost for Chelsea Handler.
I love that.
I'm so happy for her.
They lost their crap over Chelsea Handler, you know, the child-free-by-choice step that she did, I don't know, a couple years ago?
Yeah.
They lost their minds over that.
She's winning so hard.
I'm sure that's riling up the bass using her name.
Oh yeah, they're doing that too.
Yeah, but in a real milkshake duck scenario, Chelsea Handler is dating Mel Gibson, so fuck her.
I know!
What?
Are you serious?
I don't know if she still is, but yeah.
That was, that's a choice.
Okay.
Cause no.
That's rough, but I'm going to say if they're broken up, then this is wrong.
But if they're still together, there's a non-zero chance that she's running some amazing prank that ends in something funny.
Like that's not out of the question for Chelsea Handler.
I look forward to that.
Oh boy.
Yeah.
That's like a, hey, maybe don't do that.
But yes, child-free.
Yeah.
Cool.
Agree.
Awesome.
Great.
But the other cultural phenomenon, I don't know if there's a name for that one.
Dating the fucking horrible racist who's like, anyway.
Yep, there we go.
We'll continue.
It was blasted online, especially by Matt Walsh and the likes of them.
I do feel bad for her because you heard her say, she said, I don't have a family yet.
And many of these women do want that.
And I don't think she understood she was contributing to that Chelsea Handler culture that's very anti-natalist.
They think that having a family is bad, having a kid is a burden.
And like you said, it's contributing to a declining birth rate, and it will contribute to the fall of civilization in our country eventually.
Why the propaganda?
This is incredibly dramatic.
Yeah.
The decline of civilization in our country, specifically our country, though.
Yeah.
And so that's interesting because I was like, there's no way.
And really, I mean, there is a declining birth rate across the entire world.
Every country has a declining birth rate right now.
And there are serious consequences when you think about what that could mean in like a hundred years.
Yeah, the serious consequence is 7 billion people instead of 8 billion people?
Is that what it is?
Well, but here's the thing.
It's the difference between the generations, the volume of people within generations.
And so basically we get stuck in this position where because there are so many boomers, we have to have enough kids to take care of all the boomers.
And if we don't keep up with the rate that they decided.
We have to get Social Security taken care of for them.
Or fuck them because they support Trump anyway and they can die alone.
How about that?
That's another solution to it.
Yeah, in some ways, like, yeah, maybe we just right size.
Take some of their vast wealth that they still have and build fucking convalescent homes for themselves.
Right.
Because fuck that.
No, I've had this argument.
I feel like a million times.
I don't care if the population.
Yeah, there may be a temporary.
This is the greatest literal pyramid scheme.
No, no, you have to see if you don't have more kids than we're already there, then it's going to be a little financially inconvenient for a while.
It's like, yeah, the globe will figure it out.
We'll fucking figure it out.
And then there'll be fewer people, which is probably better, but also who cares?
Better for like the finite number of resources that we have.
Yeah, like I don't want to go down that road because I feel like that also goes down the road of like, oh, overpopulation is actually not really the problem that I used to think it was because people talked about it like it was, but like also I don't care either way.
Like if our society is so fragile that us having 1.7 kids instead of 2.1, it just burns to the ground, then like maybe we have other problems.
Like maybe Maybe we didn't organize society properly.
Yeah.
Instead of the pyramid scheme with like the birth rate having to constantly increase like we're like the board of a public company that has to worry about the shareholder.
Yeah.
We could just have a better social safety net.
Like we could just tax high dollars better.
And that would take care of, for example, Social Security better.
You know, real simple.
And then maybe actually people would want to have kids then.
Yeah, well let's finish this one out because there's plenty more to talk about there and there's only a minute left.
To scare young women away from getting married and having children.
Because you see it everywhere with the climate agenda, you see it almost in a corporate agenda to a certain extent.
Yes, it's a very anti-natalist agenda, anti-human agenda in my opinion.
We see it with everything.
Be a boss babe, don't have kids.
Don't have kids, they're bad for the environment, nothing worse than carbon emitting babies.
That to me is a very evil thing to say.
Okay, I agree.
I 100% agree with her on that.
I don't know of anyone saying an evil carbon emitting baby.
I don't know if people know this, because, you know, if you don't have kids, Heath, your baby actually does have an exhaust port that just spills out black smoke all the time.
I can hear Scombert firing a turbine in the background right now.
Like, that's clearly what's happening, right?
Your kid's like... Like, God, fuck, did we get a diesel, kid?
We should...
No, this is something I feel pretty strongly about.
I haven't seen as much lately, so I'm glad, but we did a really stupid thing that I think is, in my opinion, probably just influenced by oil companies, which is people decided to, like, assign a carbon value to humans, you know, and then be like, don't make more humans because then you're the... and it's like, how How about first off, fuck you.
That's number one.
It's like if you said, here's the thing, there's two large companies and they're murdering a thousand dolphins a year each.
And so if you divide that out by the population, that means each of us is murdering whatever amount of dolphins.
And so if you have kids, you're making more dolphin.
It's like, no, how about you ask them why they're murdering dolphins?
How about you do that and then stop them doing that?
And then I don't think I'm contributing to that problem.
I'm pretty sure, like, I'm only very modestly, if at all, contributing to the dolphin murder that I don't sanction.
So maybe look at the source of the murdering and not assign a value across all humans divided up.
Can we focus on the numerator?
And they're like, there's no such thing.
That's a hoax.
It's only anonymous.
Fuck you.
Because, like, that is a thing that people consider.
And if you want, by the way, if you are worried about having kids because, like, the world is going to be fucked and you don't want to raise them in a fucked world by climate change, that I get.
But there was a brief time, and I don't hear it as much anymore, where people were like, there's nothing that contributes more to climate change.
than having a kid.
And I'm like, fuck you, man.
You can't just divide the average carbon output of humans and assign it more to a baby.
You know what we could do is we could reduce that carbon output to zero and then like having a baby is zero carbon.
We literally could.
Numerator hoax again.
There was an Onion article from like 2010 that I always loved that was like, scientists remind everybody that we have perfect renewable energy ready to go whenever.
Like, whatever you guys want.
It's not that much of an exaggeration.
Like, obviously, you know, of course, we can get into all that and there is a transition period.
There's challenges, but like, no, if we had the will to actually put serious effort into it to the same extent that we filled jets for no fucking reason.
And just make defense contractors rich beyond their wildest imaginings.
If we put like a tenth of that energy into fixing climate change, we could easily do it.
And then the total output of carbon is fucking zero for your baby because that's a societal issue.
It's not a problem that my baby is making too much carbon.
Yeah.
Also, if you just have a baby and the baby is educated well and ends up voting for clean energy instead of dirty, like that's a, I would imagine a clear positive.
What the fuck are we talking about?
You heard it here, Fox News is right.
I now agree with Ashley St.
Klitanoff.
Oh god.
Nevermind.
We say this consistently and we do have a declining birth rate.
We saw it with Rome.
They had a declining birth rate right before the fall of Rome.
Rome!
Right before.
It's happening in Japan.
You know all those feminists in the Holy Roman Empire?
We need to reject this culture or it's going to be very bad.
What's shashuka?
I have no idea because I don't watch The Real Housewives of New York.
I wish you guys could have seen his face.
I have a child.
All right, I'm gonna go find out what that is.
Ashley, thank you so much.
Thank you, Jesse.
That was just him being like, this is truly so stupid.
How do I get out of this segment?
What's Shakshuka?
Amazing.
Where's do you like things?
Like if there's just no, he's just like, what's, there's no way to get it.
It's so stupid.
I love the fault, the Rome thing.
I don't know if anyone else did any like, you know, quote unquote research into that very stupid point, but I think it betrays a really, really stupid and racist way that conservatives look at basically history and society and all that.
Because I think in her mind, The Roman Empire was like, and this is, look, she didn't say it explicitly, but this, I'm pretty sure.
I'm pretty sure in her mind and a lot of conservatives' minds, the Roman Empire was a race of white people that had an awesome empire.
And then they were like- Togas, eating grapes.
And then they started, and they're all white, obviously.
I'm pretty sure that's what you think.
- They started having fewer kids, and so they didn't have the numbers to maintain their empire, and then that's why Rome fell.
I'm pretty sure that's what you think.
I'm not a historian. - Absolutely. - But I'm pretty sure, I'm not a historian.
Historians call in, email in.
I'm pretty sure Rome is like a bajillion different peoples and languages and whatever's and like- Because it was literally an empire.
Yeah, it was like, if you look at the map, it's like fucking Africa, Spain, the Balkans, like it's everything.
This idea that like some group of people within that had 1.5 babies instead of one, and that's what did it, the fall of Rome.
Also the idea too that like, Yeah, the Roman Empire was a good thing and it's bad.
You know, like, is that true?
I don't know that that's true.
The Roman Empire was just who levied the taxes and controlled the areas and made the political decisions for different areas.
That's not necessarily a great thing.
Like, I don't know.
Look, bad people on all sides back then, you know, of course, like everybody's Everybody's doing the pillaging and the killing, but like in general, my kind of mindset is like the more local control, the better, you know, of places.
And when you have that many different cultures all under the control of a central authority somewhere, inevitably that's going to fall apart eventually, you know, with the different people are like, Hey, we actually want to be in control of our land over here.
And it's like, yeah, maybe that was a good thing.
I don't know.
I'm not a historian, but I really do think that's what conservatives think.
They think it was like all a bunch of people, oh, Roman, Evettus, they were talking like that.
And then they just didn't have, the feminazis came and they didn't have enough babies.
The Empire fell, and then it wasn't like an apocalypse end times scenario in all of Europe and Northern Africa and the Middle East.
It wasn't like I Am Legend all of a sudden with just Will Smith walking around Europe by himself and a dog.
And a dog, yeah.
There were all the people there, it was just specifically that ruling structure eventually wasn't there.
It was just a tumbleweed and a bunch of empty Roman helmets or whatever.
They're like, we don't have the people to inhabit.
The Empire's ready to go!
It's actually, all the stuff is there.
Waiting for the people.
We just don't have enough, you know?
I got a question.
Do you think that the population went down or grew since then?
Like, it's not that there were fewer people.
It's like there were, if anything, there's more people in those areas for all time until now, because the population has just always increased, you know, at different rates.
But like, The people are there.
It's just, there's different political control than what it was, you know?
It's not like a birth rate issue.
It's really tempting to use the like global warming denier arguments against them.
Like it was cold the other day and there was like seven kids born.
Look at this.
Yeah.
I was just at a hospital and I heard the cry of many, a newborn babe.
So therefore, I brought a baby onto the floor of the Senate and was like, this is a baby.
Threw it like a snowball.
There's no way that babies could be happening less because here is one.
Yeah.
Insane.
The fall of Rome.
It's so, so good.
So perfect.
Fox.
The other thing they did is with that, with the what the fuck is Shakshuka thing.
Yeah.
It's like, they do this all the time.
You remember in middle school, where there would be some sort of disagreement, and Thomas, Lydia, I'm guessing both of you had this experience where you were trying to be, you know, a relatively intelligent voice of reason about something.
You were just trying to make some, like, tiny amount of nuanced point about, like, hey, no, like, here's what's happening.
And you said one word that some idiot didn't know, and they were like, shakshuka, duh!
And, like, the rest of your entire explanation didn't matter.
That is that guy's face in a nutshell.
Yeah, who is this?
Jesse Watters?
Yeah, it's Jesse Watters.
The new Tucker Carlson.
Ah, he looks like wet Ron DeSantis.
Ron DeSantis looks like wet Ron DeSantis though.
Yeah, that's fair.
He just reminds me of some like, he would have been on like TGIF or something.
He's just some dork in a show.
Like he would have entered and then the crowd's like, yay, that idiot.
With the Danny Tanner music.
Yeah, something about him like that.
But I think that if we want to have more people in this country, if she's really worried, I got great news.
There's a lot of people who would like to immigrate to this country.
That's actually what a lot of researchers say is going to help is migration and that it won't be a choice anymore.
It's going to be a necessity for a lot of countries in order to keep things going.
So yeah, why don't we open all those borders?
Let folks in who want to come in and give them jobs and give them opportunities.
Because the thing that they, I was going to say is the quiet part, but it's not really the quiet part, is those are the wrong kind of people.
So like in their minds, and it's the same thing with the Rome thing.
In her mind, Rome was white and it fell.
I'm almost positive because that's what these idiots think.
And this is the same thing.
It's like, no.
Your Christians need to have more babies and we can't let anyone else, because they don't count immigrants as Americans.
You know, it's like in their mind, that doesn't help America because those aren't Americans.
And I am fully the opposite.
Like, yeah, those are Americans.
They become Americans when they come here.
That's how it works.
And then they bring pretty much nothing but positive effects in every respect.
If you allow immigration, like, yeah, Immigration in ways that make sense.
Like our immigration system is really stupid and doesn't make sense.
And so we have a bunch of really unbalanced kind of illegal immigration that has problems, but it's not because of the immigrants.
It's because we're fucking stupid and do things wrong.
And even considering the bad system that we have and the fact that we're nowhere near like the problem levels of like needing to get human beings in as fast as possible.
Yeah.
Despite that not being true, right now there's plenty of economic studies that show immigration helps the economy.
It's a net benefit very clearly, even given all the issues with it at the moment and the fact that we don't need it need it at the moment in that losing population sense.
It's great for the economy.
They really will, in the same sentence, be like, we're full.
What part of we're full?
Didn't you understand?
Hey, we don't have enough people.
We need babies.
Hey, come on.
We need babies.
Who do you think has a more immediate impact economically?
Someone who went through hell on earth to get to this country to maybe make a dollar because that's a ton of money to them and would help their families?
Such an impressive person.
Backbreaking labor.
Truly an extraordinary person that would take to do that.
Or our fucking lazy ass baby.
Because I'll be honest, I love Remy.
He's not doing any work.
If anything, it's the opposite.
He's just causing work from not only us, but others.
I think he's even caused Heath some work.
He's just spewing out carbon pretty much doing nothing else.
Through his exhaust port, you know, he's just, he's got that, he's got the truck nets too.
Yeah, having babies is a sure it will eventually help the economy or something.
But imagine if we could just give birth to a fully formed, ready to work human in terms of their like economic output that we want or whatever.
That would obviously be better than giving birth to a scumbag who can't do anything and just shits himself forever.
That's not he's not going to start a business soon.
Basically everywhere in all history on Earth in every society, the more well-off you get as a people, as a subgroup, as a whatever, the less you reproduce.
Because for one, having the ability to control our own reproduction or for childbearing people to control their own reproduction is something that takes a lot of work to get to in society.
If you're in a war-torn region, if you're in a place that, you know, where you don't have clean water, you don't have, you know, all these infrastructure things you don't have, it becomes another burden to like figure.
you're out birth control or you don't have a doctor to go to.
You know, so like the more well-off a society becomes or people becomes, usually their birth rate goes down.
And what these people who are so scared never realize is like, yeah, let's say we let in a lot of immigrants, which I always think we should do.
That will happen to them as well.
They will come here and be well-off, be a benefit to our society.
And their birth rate will also decline because they won't be in this feeling of desperation where honestly it becomes like you try to have a lot of kids or you don't really have the means to control it much and they don't survive as much.
Like, you just change from that mode to like, instead of that, we're going to make the decision to have a kid when and if we want to.
And that will inevitably happen no matter what.
It's such a racist trope that like, oh yeah, these people, they're just really fertile, if you know what I mean.
And it's like, no man, there's also a lot that goes into having the ability and the privilege to be able to control your own reproduction to the extent that you want to.
Yeah.
Also, within their stupid racist scheme, they should be impressed by that.
Like, more fertility would be, like, eugenically better that they should admit that, like, they just have the wrong master race in their stupid fucking heads.
That first video, though, I just love this thing that feels like so many people, so many grown-ass adults are just such children.
The idea that someone else having a good time But differently than you or something is a threat to you is just such a childish impulse.
You know, like Lydia and I have our three beautiful, amazing children.
I wouldn't trade that.
I won't speak for Lydia.
You can feel how you have regrets.
That's you know, that's you.
You might.
Some people do.
You know, a lot of people do regret having kids.
That's a real thing.
I don't.
And I am also completely fine with the idea that there are fucking tradeoffs.
Yeah.
If I spend my life, even just with hobbies, like if I decide to devote my life to fucking woodworking, and then I see somebody who's like, oh yeah, well, what I do is I play golf every day and it's the best.
And I'm like, fuck you, you should do woodworking.
Cause then look at all this you don't have.
I bet you can't make a chair because you're too busy putting.
It's like, worst of all, you're too stupid.
Too dumb.
He's out on the course.
Just getting a nice tan, wind through his hair.
And I'm like, you're too dumb to know how depressed you are without your woodworking.
It's like, no man, people can make different choices.
And yeah, you might miss out or maybe they might've missed out.
Yeah.
It's a finite amount of time that we have and attention that we have.
And there might be trade-offs.
Lydia and I are fucking exhausted.
Lydia, you know, more so than me because of how much more of a demand it is on mothers.
But like, it's hard.
You know, it's a very, there are a lot of sacrifices involved and there's nothing wrong with childless people recognizing the trade-off they made and being like, yeah, I don't know.
I get to fucking do whatever I want today.
That's fine.
That's not a threat to me because I made that trade-off.
I'm fine with that.
It's weird.
And Heath, I think you brought this up earlier, that self-awareness that she had, right?
And I just appreciated how thoughtful she's coming to this decision.
You know, and you're not just pushing through life, running through life and check off the list, finish high school, finish college, get married, have a kid, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, hit all those milestones.
She and a lot of other people in the world have this opportunity to kind of reflect and say, you know, that might be the right choice for me, but I want to take time to make sure that it is because it is a huge responsibility.
It is a huge.
demand on time.
And I want to make sure that I'm showing up to be the best parent for that child if I choose to have a child.
And I think that's the kind of people that, you know, you'd hopefully want as parents, someone who, if they come to that choice, that they arrive there in a thoughtful way and that they're all in.
100%.
That's the idea.
That's the whole point of like progressing as a society with like science and technology and medicine and just people being more well off in general, they have more choices.
And when they have more choices, they can choose wisely to do things that are big, like having a kid or having multiple kids.
That's fantastic.
And that's The Fox News crowd is like, yeah, but this old book told us that fuck that conflicts with our thing.
And now now they're mad about it, even though that's like the whole point of being on the planet as a human and progressing.
That's the whole thing.
Allowing better choices.
Here's another component of it that I strongly believe is part of it.
Even though it may be a little more distant in terms of like the effect, it's a little downstream.
But I think it's also a strong part of the patriarchal system of men never having to be good at all.
So like if you create this environment where it's like, yeah, women, you gotta have kids, have a family, have kids, have a family, have kids, then you can just be a piece of shit dude, but be like nearby.
And then more women are like, fuck, I guess everyone's saying I have to do this, so fuck.
All right, let's get married.
And also fostering this feeling of like, yeah, you should be miserable.
Is also beneficial to those shitty dudes?
Yeah.
Like, yeah, you should be miserable.
And she's too dumb to know she actually is miserable.
But don't worry, you're smarter in that you're being miserable on purpose with me, a shitty dude.
I really think that's part of it.
I think it's a long con.
Can you imagine the reverse of this, the Fox News response to this?
The reverse would be like MSNBC seeing a TikTok where like two parents were like, hey, look, we're really proud of our child who was the lead in this play.
It was really good.
And then Rachel Maddow coming on and being like, fuck having children and being proud.
That's bullshit.
What a weird fucking take.
You need to get your ass to Beyonce right now.
First off, get drunk.
Stop what you're doing.
Get drunk.
Ignore the kid.
That's fine.
You know, like there's not too late.
Yeah.
No, we would never do that.
Cause it's fucking insane.
I've looked at the comments a little bit and there is a tension in the Republican.
I don't even know if it makes sense to call it.
I'll just say on the right, because it's fucking not a party.
It's just a cult and then some old Republicans.
But there is a tension between the more populist wing and the classical bullshit, the Reagan-ish crap that we are more familiar with, like of our generation.
That's like, no responsibility and low taxes and blah, blah, blah.
Bootstraps.
Yeah, and you see it in the comments.
And, you know, it's hard for me to know who's coming from where.
It's just random comments.
But I actually thought this first thread I thought was kind of funny and instructive.
I thought it'd be funny to go through some of it.
Because the top comment, actually, from my view is, if America wants more families and kids, then make it more affordable.
It's not always about living a certain lifestyle.
100%.
Like, yeah!
Perfect.
Like, there's this tension between the new, like, younger people who are conservative who are like, yeah, okay, fuck all the non-white people and all that.
We're on board with all that stuff.
But also, like, we can't afford to have kids.
Like, nobody can afford anything.
And then there's still the boomer conservatives who are like, not my problem!
You figure it out!
And they both want the same racist thing, I think, which is like, no, we all want more white babies.
We get, but like, we don't have any, like you have all the money boomers and the boomers are like, ah, not listening.
Get a job, loser.
You know, it's funny because it is a tension and it's not resolved within the Republican party at all yet.
Yeah, that's interesting.
And I think if anything, some of the Trumpism, some amount of that is sort of just sidestepping the issue.
Trumpism is a way to not ever talk about any policy ever or care about anything because if they did have to talk about policy, I think there would be a strong divide.
It's the reason that shitty country song went viral is that guy saying like, no one has any fucking money.
Which is the one valid part of that song and the rest of it is Reagan fucking propaganda.
But yeah, that's why that resonated even with people on the right.
They're like, nobody has any money and they can't solve that because the big money of the party is like, well, I don't like that message because we would like to continue to ruin this country and pay no taxes.
We would still like to do the bootstrappy, like, oh, it's not my problem, you know, figure out your own shit.
But the problem is so pervasive, like you can't, you know, the median wage doesn't afford fucking shit anywhere.
That eventually gets so bad that even the right recognizes it, which I think they are, but they can't have that policy fight at all among themselves because they're too busy with the culture war Trumpism crap.
It's kind of like sidestepping that, you know?
Right.
It's taken like 40, 50 years for their stupid thing to fully implode and like slice them in half.
And now they have to pretend they're not sliced in half.
We get to watch this idiot fight.
A good little relic is that comment you pointed out.
That's great.
Yeah.
So there's more too.
So the next one is like, if everyone waited until the pocketbook was right, nobody would have kids.
They are your responsibility, not the government.
It takes two parents, not a village as they want you to believe.
Um, no, it takes way more than two parents.
And then it's like the response, when a parent or parents can't afford to support their family, whose responsibility does it become?
The government?
No, the taxpayers.
Well, that's the same fuck.
Yep.
Idiots.
More entitlements and welfare programs.
And while the parents are both working long hours to try to pay the bills, who is influencing their children?
The rest of society.
So I love this because they're all like kind of, they're still trying to put the problem in their insane right wing frame, but they're doing it in different wrong ways.
I actually love it.
Yeah, and while they're out working too much trying to afford children, because no one can afford children, who's going to influence them?
The fucking trans people or something.
I don't know.
They're having to construct this crazy web of things to get there.
Instead of just parsimoniously landing on the progressive position.
Yeah, you're totally right.
Instead of just landing on like, hey, maybe people should be somewhat happy in our society.
Yeah.
No, no, we can't do that.
We gotta say, no, no, you're gonna be too busy working your ass off.
And then when you do that, the LGBTQ will come for your kids because you're not able to watch them as much when you're working.
All the drug store hours.
It's totally just like spinning a wheel of bigotry to end your sentences.
What are you talking about?
It doesn't make any sense.
Yeah.
But it's totally true.
Sometimes, I guess it does take a village.
If things were affordable in this country, tax dollars could be reallocated to other sectors of society and parents could spend more time with their kids.
What are you talking about?
It's so funny.
God, and nobody is aware of the village they're in.
The people who are like anti the village concept, they seem to think that they're not on roads and they're not part of like an American society that has so much infrastructure that they're using all the time directly and indirectly.
But they're like, we're bootstrapping.
No, you're not.
You're not bootstrapping in the SUV that you drove down the road in, in the subsidized whatever.
No, none of that.
You're not a survivalist like out in the wilderness.
Exactly.
And to further my policy point that actually I really do think is a dynamic to keep an eye on.
This was how they did it in the idiot Republican debate the other week.
It's the same thing that the moron country singer with a shit song said, which is the way they have to sidestep this.
Oh, yeah.
You know why you don't have any money?
Taxes.
Yeah.
Are you?
Have you looked at any information ever in your life?
Like, you think the reason someone making $30,000 a year doesn't have money is because taxes.
Do you really want to do that math?
You pay not much in taxes if you don't make any fucking money.
That person's barely paying a dollar in taxes, yeah.
If you gave them 0% taxes, they'd, guess what?
They'd be making $30,000 a year!
That's still not enough to fucking do anything!
They'll be in a really tough position, exactly.
Yeah, that's not enough to afford a $2,000 a month apartment that's like one bedroom.
You know what I mean?
Like, but that's what they do.
You heard it in the debate a lot where they're like, the taxes are just through the roof.
No, they're not.
What are you talking about?
You don't know anything about... It's this battle of the moneyed right still trying to maintain this kind of control.
You know what I mean?
Oh yeah, the reason you have no money?
It's the taxes.
What do they think taxes are?
If you make minimum wage and you paid no taxes, you'd actually be a millionaire.
You'd actually make a million dollars.
And it's funny because one country that has seen an increase in their fertility rate is Sweden.
And it's meager, very, very meager.
They've been working to try and increase their fertility rate and they've been doing it by providing that societal support.
No way.
Via taxes.
That's just a neocon state called Sweden.
Yeah.
And you know, it's working out.
I think all these, you know, $30,000 a year living out in the middle of nowhere, red state Republicans truly believe that they're a couple steps away from being a billionaire.
They're, you know, they're going to invent a better CD changer or something.
And like, they're going to be billionaires and they want the taxes to be lower on that when they eventually bootstrap themselves up to that.
I don't understand how that's been working for 40, 50 years.
This con has been working.
It's amazing that they can't see it.
You know, if I ever debate a conservative again, I do want to make that, like, you could still be a piece of shit, racist, conservative, and still recognize, like, yeah, but also the rich people are playing us, like, really hard on this party.
Yeah.
It's funny that they can't do both things.
They can't be like, yeah, I hate trans people and all the, you know, I'm a piece of shit like every conservative.
But like, also, do you notice that the rich have been using us to keep taxes low forever?
Do you notice that?
You know, like, can't they take note of that?
I think some of them are, but the culture war is just so dialed up that there's no room for anything else.
The main issues on the right are Trump won in 2020.
That's the issue.
They'd rather have bigotry than money, which is true and insane.
Terrible.
I wanted to read this comment because it's fucking hilarious.
Here we go on the YouTube.
This is the boomer conservative coming in with their wisdom.
You ready?
I had five children.
Never used disposable diapers.
Breastfed.
What?
Bought a five pop-up stroller.
Never ate out except for special occasions.
Parents make having kids expensive.
I went to school full-time and by organizing my classes, I worked three days a week.
Had four kids at that time.
They had supper cooked by me every night.
I didn't even have a microwave.
Utilized the crock pot a lot and my cooker.
I'm not saying everyone should follow my lead, but you can raise children without it breaking the bank.
Yeah, how much did you buy your fucking house for, this person?
How much did school cost?
Did you spend $40 on a house in 1970 that's now worth $2 million?
Yeah.
Yeah, how much was school?
Yeah, their $700 tuition for their college education.
Yeah, exactly.
So dumb.
Also, I want the camera to pan over to those five horrible kids at the doctor's when they're doing their bullshit lives.
Yeah, or like two of them are cool and they disowned this person already and they're like, yeah, actually our child had fucking sucked.
Yeah, it's one of those two options.
Yeah, right.
One of them's gay and she doesn't speak to him anymore, and it's like, yeah, no, this person's the worst, actually.
Yeah, that grandma is not allowed to see some of her kids at Thanksgiving, for sure.
I mean, like, everything is so freaking expensive that most people, if they're partnered, they have to have dual incomes, right?
Oftentimes, you can't even get a house with dual incomes, just sort of depends.
But then you look at, okay, then what does childcare cost?
In some counties, it's 47% of the median income of a family.
Whoa.
47%.
So it becomes, your choices are, do the traditional tradwife fucking, unfortunately a woman has to be miserable raising kids on her own at home while a dude works, or I guess vice versa.
You can try that, but because boomers have fucked us so hard and the Republicans have fucked us so hard, that doesn't work anymore because you need four incomes to make one income now.
And so somehow women are put in this impossible position of, well, you got to make money.
That's why there's all these multi-level marketing things that mainly women tend to fall prey to because there's so much pressure to not only you have to raise all the kids on your own in these instances, but also somehow make money because nobody makes any fucking money relative to rent now or relative to mortgages.
That's just not sustainable.
Like it just is not.
And then the decision that a lot of couples have to make is, Okay, I'll go back to work and we'll pay for daycare.
And then you do the math and you're like, well, I guess that does net us a little bit more money.
A couple hundred bucks.
Yeah, and it's like, fuck!
Either way, it's kind of shit.
If you can even get a spot in daycare.
I was reflecting back on when I was pregnant with Phoebe.
It was right after I found out I was pregnant.
I think I was like five weeks.
It's like very, very early, but I knew how impacted daycares were.
And so I took a lunch hour and I was just walking around to daycares, my five week tiny little cluster of cells in my belly and trying to get information on their wait lists.
And one of the daycares said, oh, we have a two year wait list for our infant program.
Yeah.
You should have known to sign up two years before you were pregnant or whatever.
Wow.
That's terrifying.
I think also a lot of women, when they're weighing that decision about, you know, more of a traditional lifestyle, potentially, where they're at home raising the kids, stay at home momming it, versus being a working mom, not just the money portion of it, but also thinking about opportunity in your typical working environment for women.
There is something that, you know, it's called the motherhood penalty.
I'm sure you guys know it.
I heard it was a hoax.
It's this very real thing where moms in the workforce, they're less likely to be chosen for new roles and promotions, they'll earn lower salaries, and they're held to higher standards than fathers and non-mothers that are working in there.
So now you have this additional stress, fewer opportunities potentially to move up, to make more money, to, you know, not even just money, but like that professional fulfillment that's important to a lot of women.
And then for what?
So then you get home super late, you barely see your children, and then you start the grind all over again the next morning.
And then what is life at that point?
Like, what are you living for?
I don't know.
Yeah.
When are you going to get your shakshuka in there?
That's insane.
Exactly.
We made shakshuka a couple weeks ago.
Did you?
Nice.
Yeah.
It's so good.
I don't know what it is, but I bet it was good.
It was delicious.
You liked it?
Nice.
Yeah, solid.
I'm sure I did.
There's not a lot of food I don't like these days.
True.
Have you guys had food?
It's fucking awesome.
You should try it if you haven't.
Lydia, did you say that the estimate was 47% of the median household income is the cost of daycare?
Annually, yeah.
Is that for one kid?
Uh, yeah, that's for one kid.
Jesus Christ.
For one kid.
Okay, so the understanding needs to now be if there's a traditional, you know, division of the labor, like one person going to work and making a salary and the other person being the, like, stay-at-home parent, the stay-at-home parent is the fucking breadwinner on that.
Like, that needs to be understood, especially if there's multiple kids.
If there's multiple kids, that math seems right to me.
Even with one, You're probably not considering the like the cost of the extra time of daycare versus home care and like the cost of driving and the, you know, it probably even with one kid is like, well, yeah, you're the breadwinner now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
That's a good point.
Mind blown.
Well, and there is that, you know, not to branch off too much, but there was a, I remember reading this a while back, there was a concerted decision or like an intentional decision.
Should we include stuff like childcare and all that kind of stuff in GDP?
Like that was an intentional choice to do that or to not do that, and they decided not to.
Like that caregiving support, right?
And not just children, but like elderly parents and stuff, right?
That people are taking care of.
It's just essentially slave labor in so many ways.
Like in many instances, it's, oh no, you just do all this work, which is, by the way, a fucking tremendous amount of work.
It is so much harder than going to an office and sending a couple emails and pretending to work.
And then you're like, well, I'm the breadwinner.
Like that's that's the job that a lot of people have, at least around here with the state jobs.
And so it's like, yes, you can have a hard job.
But, like, it's another reason I just really believe in a lot of this ideology around feminism and, like, men getting smarter about this stuff is there's so much benefit that men get from some of these societal assumptions, you know?
We think, like, oh, well, it's a trade-off because, yeah, the woman gets to stay at home and raise kids.
The man, he's going off to work in a coal mine because every single man works in a coal mine.
And they worked so hard.
And you're like, no, dude, he's sending an email.
He's probably pretending he's still working and going golfing and then coming home.
He got laid off from the coal mine as you said it.
Like, as that was happening, he's laid off.
He's coming home.
He's been in an air-conditioned office all day.
He's done nothing.
He comes home and demands dinner from fucking that mom in the beginning of Beauty and the Beast, the greatest acting performance in the history of time, who says, I need six eggs and is dragging 50 kids.
The poor mother is that.
I really think men are the beneficiaries of so many of those assumptions that are just wrong, you know, like on average.
Yeah, apparently we literally engineered a stat, a huge economic indicator stat, to not include this giant swath of labor that we don't do, so we're like, that doesn't...
Nah, that doesn't count.
- Yeah, that's bullshit. - Oh, do you wanna hear another insane comment just for fun, but it's indicative of this battle? - Yeah.
- It really is.
I truly am interested, assuming the whole fucking world doesn't end, I am interested in how this plays out.
I think this battle is perhaps an opportunity for the left to make some progress and grab some people from the right, maybe.
Maybe.
And I only say that not because I'm optimistic, but because I'm really scared of what happens if we don't do that.
Like, we're always on a knife edge of the electoral college giving us Trump again.
Like, no matter how many fucking millions of tens of millions of people we win by, the electoral college is so close.
And so I see these people as maybe an opportunity to grab them from the right.
Here's a comment.
Well, if people could afford to raise a family, it might help.
It has 31 up votes.
And then this is the best.
You ready for this one?
This one's so good.
Because they're still trying to figure it out.
They're still trying to negotiate.
How can we still be conservative pieces of shit?
But all this, here's this one.
You could have from 2016 to 2020.
Ignoring the fact that, by the way, the presidency was from 2017 to 2021, essentially.
But yeah, like, what world do you live in?
What fucking fantasy world do you live in?
Where like, yeah, the day that Trump became president, my income jumped 5,000% to where I can afford- Also, it's before the day, and they're stupid.
He came in 2017, but it's fine.
Just when he was campaigning, it actually increased my salary.
He campaigned so hard on feminist childcare as part of his platform, That it helped people for those four plus years.
OK.
Oh, so funny.
You know, I was thinking about how these folks would feel if she were single and having kids.
Yeah.
They also really, really, really want women to get married.
Yeah, that's a good point.
It's just a bundle of contradictions.
You know, it really is.
They want exactly the perfect Handmaid's Tale thing.
And anything else is not going to be OK with them.
Yeah, well, especially somebody being like, this is fucking great.
Do you see how opposite of Republican Christian I am?
This is so fun.
Oh my God, I'm having such a good time.
So of course they're going to panic.
Makes me happy.
To bring it back full circle, one thing that Heath doesn't have in his life is kids that create the most delightful nonsense 24-7.
It's truly a delight.
And it's just a trade-off, man.
Who cares?
Whatever you value for your life, either way, make your choices.
Why would I ever want someone who doesn't want kids to have kids?
They're just going to be an angry, shitty parent.
Why would I want that?
Raising terrible children.
Yeah, you do you.
You do the decisions you want to do, live your life how you want.
And part of that trade-off is there's tremendous benefit on the other side of Heath waking up late, Just all kinds of masturbation I hear, just tons of stuff.
And on the other end, we have a kid who makes up names for a potential baby that are so fucking hilarious that I'll never forget them.
Phoebe, for anyone who didn't hear this story, we asked her what we should name the new baby and she said, if it's a boy, Scombert, and if it's a girl, Chyne.
The kid brain is so impressive, and this is a great example of it, because authors talk about this.
One of the hardest things for an adult author to do is make a name of a fictional character.
It's just hard to do.
You have to make a new noise, maybe, or use a last name that's already there, a first name that's already there, and you feel that's boring.
A kid is just like, this is the noise I want right off the top of the dome.
They have no rules.
And it's great.
It's before they've learned all the rules.
And they lose it at a certain age.
If we ask Phoebe to name something now, she just comes up with normal stuff.
So I try to ask Arlo, but he's not as good at naming stuff.
He's not quite as creative as Phoebe was along those lines.
Except when they came downstairs the other day and they told me they were teenagers.
They came down and Phoebe has a purse and Arlo is carrying, you know, a little case that they put some toys in that he's saying it's his purse.
And then Phoebe says, we're teenagers.
My name is Emma and his name is Bored.
Does it kickflip?
Yeah.
Did Arlo pick that name?
Yeah, he picked that name.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, that's his name.
Do you think it was B-O-A-R-D or B-O-R-E-D?
I don't think it matters.
Or just B-O-R-D.
I don't think it corresponds...
I don't think he was choosing the word.
They're not great with homonyms.
Yeah.
I don't know that he knows the word board necessarily.
I don't know.
Like as in wood or as in skateboard.
Maybe.
I guess they know skateboard.
You never know with kids.
That's the thing.
You just never know what they're thinking.
It's the best.
Oh, good times.
Anyway, when are you going to have some kids?
When are you going to bring home some grandkids to your 98-year-old fucking Nobel Prize winning grandma that you have?
Amazing grandma.
I'm so jealous all the time whenever I talk to her.
She's always got great stories, doing amazing things all day.
And I was like, I read stories and wrote podcast scripts.
Yeah, you kind of play it, Corey, about the whole masturbation thing.
Yeah, that's mine.
Grandma, you can... Never mind.
She's like me too.
It's okay.
Thanks so much for joining us once again, Heath.
And everybody, live the fucking life you would like to live and have a good time.
I threw out the plugs in the beginning.
Is there any specific plug you'd like to make among your shows?
Any episodes or topics or something coming up that you would like to specifically call out here at the end?
Okay.
Cool thing coming up.
Halloween weekend.
I think the 28th of October is a Saturday before Halloween.
We will be live in Las Vegas, Nevada for a God awful movies live show.
I'm pretty excited about it, and I think the movie is going to be that horrible, horrible QAnon movie with Jim Caviezel that came out in July that I can't think of the name of now.
We want to cover that too!
Yeah, we're going to cover that too.
Sound of Freedom.
Sound of Freedom, yes.
Shit, are you allowed to reveal that here on our show?
Am I going to get like a really angry call from Noah or Eli?
Yeah, we're seeing if I can go to that.
I want to go real bad.
We'll see.
Well, it comes back to the whole, you know, we have to be organized and negotiate.
Yeah.
We have to hire a team of babysitters.
It's like an hour flight.
I want to come and show.
Yeah, it's so close, relatively speaking.
Oh, yeah, right.
Yeah.
So I might also be there.
But yeah, check it out, everybody.
Gam is one of my favorite shows.
And once again, Heath, thank you so much for coming on.
So happy to be here.
Kid number four.
Just kidding.
No.
Every single time we tease any announcement, we get a bunch of people saying kid number four.
We're not having a fourth kid.
No, we're done.
We're like 90% not having a fourth kid.
I think that's fair.
I think that's a fair percentage to put on it.
Definitely 75% not having a fourth kid.
The bit with there being a real Scombert is pretty strong argument in favor, but.
Yeah.
If we have another boy.
I told him, I told Thomas, I was like, we're out of boy names, so we have to use Scombert.
That's the only viable option if we have another boy.
Yeah, we need to have a girl so we can use Chyne though.
