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Rich, Successful, and Childless with Alex Berenson

The Charlie Kirk Show / Charlie Kirk
The Truth Network Radio
November 2, 2023 5:00 am

Rich, Successful, and Childless with Alex Berenson

The Charlie Kirk Show / Charlie Kirk

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November 2, 2023 5:00 am

From the U.S. to Taiwan to South America, fewer and fewer children are being born all over the world. Is it lack of money, a change in values, or what? Alex Berenson joins Charlie to discuss his massively viral Substack post about how the world's rich countries are giving up on future generations.

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The only gold company I trust. Hey everybody, it's the end of Charlie Kirk's show. Alex Berenson. Why are birth rates plummeting in almost every major country? There's no easy answer to it. There isn't. You think you might know and then we find another piece of data that contradicts it. Fascinating conversation. Finally, five minutes on why weed is really bad for you. If you smoke weed, you should stop doing that. And if you are a parent and your kid smokes weed, you should tell them to stop doing that. At the very least, learn about what Alex Berenson has to say about it.

Fascinating. We elevate marijuana as if it's this miracle catch-all drug. Maybe it works for you and I don't know, but know the downsides.

Far too often, we do not tell our kids about the cost or the price of instant pleasure. Email us as always freedom at charliekirk.com. Get involved with Turning Point USA at tpusa.com. Start a high school or college chapter today at tpusa.com. Become a chapter leader at tpusa.com. Go to amfest.com to get your tickets to America Fest December 16, 17, 18, and 19. Tucker will be there, Josh Hawley, Donald Trump Jr., Riley Gaines, Dennis Prager, James Lindsay, and more.

That is amfest.com, A-M-F-E-S-T.com. Email me as always freedom at charliekirk.com. Buckle up, everybody. Here we go. Charlie, what you've done Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks. I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

That's why we are here. Brought to you by the loan experts I trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandtodd.com. Hello, everybody. Very important topic with one of my favorite guests, Alex Berenson.

He's been terrific. Alex, I want to talk to you about this piece here about having children. It's so interesting and fascinating. But towards the end of our conversation, I just want to rehash our marijuana discussion because you have done some of the most important scholarship. I love talking to you about that, Alex. You know that. We've had you on it a couple of times. I was on I was at the University of Arizona and these kids minds were blown. I was like, you know, that one of the most respected journalists in the country has done a whole book on the negative parts of marijuana.

They said there's no downsides whatsoever. I said, you guys should write Alex. I know that's not why you're here, but it's just so it's so pervasive that lie. Alex, you have a great piece out and I want to plug your sub stack unreported truth. Everyone should go to his sub stack and support it about birth rates, having kids.

What did you learn in the series of this doing this research? So, I mean, this is something as I write in the sub stack that I'm going to come back to because, you know, it's it's a it's a it's a vital issue. And I mean, you can argue it's the most important issue, right? You know, Elon Musk may want to take us to Mars, but right now, if you look at birth rate trends and it's not just in the U.S. or Europe, it's sort of in every rich country, they're they're low and dropping low, meaning below the replacement rate. So every woman has to has to, on average, have slightly more than two kids or or the population will start to fall.

And actually, I remember in January talking to Elon about this and he said, you know, the demographers make the math really complicated, but it's actually quite simple. Look at the number of children who are born and multiply that times 85. And, you know, that will give you, if nothing changes, the number of people a country will have in in 85 years, right?

At the at the end of the average life of a child born today. So a country like Taiwan, Taiwan has about 23 million people in it. And this year it's going to have about 130,000 children born. So 130,000 times 85 is about 10 million.

So what that tells you is if nothing else changes and the children of Taiwan who are being born today actually have the replacement number of kids in 85 years from now, Taiwan's population will be less than half of what it is today. And I mean, that's really unbelievable, right? And actually, you know, in South Korea, it's worse. In Japan, it's nearly as bad. In Southern Europe, it's terrible.

Northern Europe is a little bit better in terms of the rates, but they're going down there. The US is a little bit better, but we're below replacement. But this is, it's not just, again, it's not just sort of quote unquote white wealthy countries. It's South America is like these countries that you wouldn't even expect. Like Saudi Arabia, for example, is barely above replacement level.

All over the world, people are choosing not to have children. And, you know, think about, think about Japan and Sweden and Australia and Canada and Germany. These are countries that don't necessarily have that much in common, aside from the fact that they're, you know, they're, they're wealthy. Their cultures are very different. Their attitudes towards women in the workforce are very different. They're, you know, their religions are different. Their languages are different. Their ethnicities are different.

I mean, one of the things they all have in common actually is that they're having this stunning trend towards very few kids. So it's, it's something that actually crosses cultures. And if you think about what, you know, what is the, like, what is the ultimate biological goal of any organism? It should be to produce, you know, reproduce to get your genes to the next generation. Somehow something is happening worldwide that is bigger than culture and bigger than what should be our most basic drive to reproduce. And I do think this is an issue we have to talk about.

What do you think it is, Alex, that somebody in Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and America are all making the same choices with different cultures, different religions, different worldview, but they all are deciding to have less kids? You know, that's, that's what I'm going to explore over the next few months, year, you know, and maybe this turns into a book. I don't know. You know, certainly it generated a ton of comments on the sub stack. You know, people, usually I give all my content away. Sometimes I, you know, occasionally I make people wait a week to read a story, but to comment, you have to actually sign up.

So people, and be a paid subscriber, and people were actually, you know, deciding to sign up just so they could comment, which was striking to me. I mean, I think there are a number of potential explanations, none of which necessarily, you know, are that compelling to me. Is it religion? You know, maybe, but if you look at a country like Japan 50 years ago, or certainly in the aftermath of World War II, the Japanese had huge families and they were not, you know, that's not a Christian country. You know, is it, is it something to do with women's choices about, you know, workplace, you know, stress that they don't think they can have kids.

And so, you know, and have a meaningful career. So they're choosing to drop out of the workplace. Well, how come then in Northern Europe, you know, where there's a country like Finland or Sweden, where there's very pro, you know, sort of what you, what the U.S. would call progressive policies in terms of keeping, you know, women's jobs, will they take six months or a year off? Those places also have low birth rates.

Why is it that government policies don't seem to be able to turn this around? These are, this is, these people are making, I mean, really, it's the most individual choice you can have to have children or not, and yet it's happening everywhere. So, so I don't think I have a great answer yet.

I mean, I'd love to hear what your explanation is. Yeah, I've thought about this quite a lot the last couple of years. And so this started during COVID, my thinking about this, because I made a couple really bad predictions during COVID, Alex. One of the predictions I made is that the churches were not going to listen to the lockdowns, and they did. That was one of the worst predictions I've ever made in my career. The other prediction I made, Alex, is I said there was going to be a baby boom. It makes sense, right?

People are locked down, nothing to do. You're going to see a spike in the birth rate. And we didn't. We actually saw, you could tell me. I would say there was very, very briefly, it wasn't a boom, but it was like sort of a few months when the, when the, when the decline stopped. But then it picked up again with a vengeance.

It more than made up. It wasn't New York City blackout boom, right? Where nine months after the New York City blackouts in the 1980s, we saw, you know, like a 30%, which people are familiar with it.

It was like, I don't know, the summer of 86 or 87, there were like three or four days of rolling blackouts and people were just at home with nothing to do. But so I thought about this and my immediate conclusion was for the first time in the species, we've now discovered something. That having kids is a value. And if you don't hold the value to want to have children, then it's not automatic is what I'm getting at. We used to think that having kids is automatic. It's built into the species. Having sex might be, but now if you have the technology to have sex without having kids, a lot of people are making that choice. Now there's other contributing factors, but that's amazing because a decade ago you'd say people are always going to have kids because they want kids. They want to further their genes.

It's built into you. But Alex, that's not necessarily the case, is it? I mean, it doesn't seem to be. The most positive explanation I've seen for this, I mean, you know, in sort of I guess I would call it the least depressing explanation, although in some ways you could argue the most depressing explanation, is that most people, certainly in the US anyway, having children is still the cultural norm. Women still want children. It's just that they have gotten too in love with finding the perfect partner and delaying childbirth or conception into their early to mid 30s.

And they still think it's going to be very easy. And then it turns out a significant number of those women have a very hard time. Well, what I find to be interesting is that, you know, I there's a couple of young ladies that send us emails. Charlie had the hardest time, you know, having kids and we're praying and we're working on it.

We're working on it. I don't know what the reason is, Alex, but the poorest countries don't have fertility problems. Isn't that interesting? Is that they might not have because, you know, it's 18 year olds, right? I mean, no joke like, no, that's there's a lot of truth to that. It's just if you look at the countries that have the most kids that that they are advocating for birth control, I mean, it's not it's not the wealthy ones. And so in the poorest countries, having kids is so embedded into what you do that the poorest countries have the thing that actually the people of the West sometimes want the most in their 30s. It's just it blows your mind, right? Yes. We might have air conditioning.

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Poorer countries have what sometimes wealthier people want. I mean, listen, you're married, obviously. You have kids, right? Yes, I have a kid. Yes. So I have three kids.

And I mean, I didn't write about this in the stack. At some point, I'm going to come back to it. I think I have a personal bias here because I love being a dad. I genuinely love it.

It's the best. And look, I can imagine that if your kids were really difficult or you have a kid who's got special needs and it becomes something where it's very hard to have. I mean, even then, I'm sure you love your kids no matter what. But when your kids are cool and you can hang out with them and watch them grow up and start to do more and more things and they're fun. My kids are awesome. I love my kids. Again, I'm sure every parent thinks that. But I have the best kids.

So I love hanging out with them. But again, even when it's hard, being a parent, it's a way to be not selfish. And it's a way to have somebody who's so dependent on you, especially when they're little. And it's a way to grow as a person. And so I think it's very hard to convey that to people who don't want to be parents or who are not parents.

And the reason, what prompted me to write that piece, obviously I've been aware of these trends for a long time. What prompted me to write that piece was that somebody I know just got married and they're healthy, they have good jobs and they're saying, we're never going to have children. We don't want to have kids.

And they're not 42 where it would be some heavy lift. They can have kids and they're choosing not to. And I don't know why a heterosexual couple would make that decision.

I don't know why you'd bother to get married if you don't want to have a family. And so that's so depressing to me. So in some ways I can't decide which is more depressing. If you can't have kids and you really want them, but you started too late or you have some biological issue or if you're making that choice not to have kids, because it seems to me either way, it's sad, but you're denying yourself such a great thing. I totally agree.

And not to say that it is a moral question, you're not a better person or a worse person if you don't have kids, but you're missing something. It's a fact. You are missing something that is hard to describe that a Mercedes Benz or 10 days on the Greek islands doesn't even compare to. It just doesn't. That's true. And I rarely, I'm saying it in public now. I generally, I don't think people who parents generally say this to people who aren't, but to my mind, you're not truly an adult. Okay. Until you have children, you are not truly an adult. And again, and by the way, they don't have to be your children. Okay. If you can't have kids and you choose to adopt, you're very much a parent, obviously.

It's not really about biology. That's an important point. That's exactly right. Until you choose to take on that responsibility for another, and by the way, you can have kids, unfortunately, and not be a parent.

Right. I mean, you know, certainly in large parts of, you know, some communities that's, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna knock somebody up and take no responsibility for that child like that. You're not a parent then either.

You know, I don't care how many, you know, you know, how much of your DNA you've passed on. You're not a parent. Being a parent means being part of your child's life in a meaningful daily way. This is such an important topic. I want to go through the objections. I want to try to figure this out with you together because some people say, well, it's too expensive to have kids.

Some people will say that don't have time or I want one of each or they wait too long. And then there is also the ideological dark, you know, climate cult of death where they say, I don't want kids because it just pollutes the earth. That is a growing group, but it's still, I'd say five to seven percent. That is not a majority.

That kind of weird apocalyptic, you know, cult of death stuff. But then also I want to talk, Alex, because you've done some amazing work. You've done amazing work on marijuana and vaccines and asking the right questions. Do we have a fertility problem brought on? Yes, by people getting married later, but also by the food that we're eating. Testosterone rates are down significantly, right? The sex-biting hormones are down significantly for men.

70 or 80 percent, is that playing a role? And it's another interesting thing. If men have lower testosterone, not only is it hard to have kids, is the drive to have kids lower?

That's another. Not only is it that harder to have kids when you commit to it, but maybe you're just like, I don't know if I want it too much. Testosterone is the life force of a man.

And your testosterone is low, your life force winnows. These are important questions that we'll talk to Alex Berenson. Check out his substack. It's amazing. Are you prepared for the unthinkable ahead?

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Go to mypatriotsupply.com. So Alex, fertility. Fertility. How big of an issue does that play here?

I think that's a really great question and it's clearly becoming more of an issue. I mean, the most obvious way is that, you know, as again, we talked about this a little bit, but as women delay having children, you know, I think most, I think a lot of women and men too don't really understand how quickly female fertility can drop after you're 30. And I think actually oftentimes if you've had one child, let's say when you're 28, 29, it's relatively easy to have a second and a third. But if you delay having the first child till after 30, it gets complicated. And then, you know, if it takes you a couple of years, then all of a sudden maybe you're 35 and it's harder to have a second child. So, so, so female fertility, I mean, it's, we know this, right? But I think, I think most women, you know, sort of educated women are under the misimpression that I can wait till I'm almost 40 and I'll pretty easily be able to have kids.

And that's, you know, that's not true. I mean, it doesn't mean you can't have children, but it is, it is hard, significantly. Well, especially, especially if you've been on the pill, if you've been on the pill and, and, you know, and women aren't told this, Alex, and just, I just want to make sure everyone understands this. Women are largely clueless on this because people have lied to them. They're on the pill. And then they say, I'll just figure this out in my thirties. And an unfortunate truth is that their fertility drops in about half, if they're lucky, in half. When a woman is born, they have all the eggs that they will have for the rest of their life. And people don't know that. And so they enter their thirties and it's, it's a risk.

Keep going though, Alex, please. And then, so then you switch, you talk about men. Okay. So, you know, there, there's been these, you know, sort of every couple, every few months, you'll see these papers that come out about showing, you know, sort of global declines in sperm counts. You know, that, that sperm counts are down by 50% in the last 50 years. And I don't know, I haven't looked at the underlying data. Okay. This is something that as I, you know, as I start writing more unreported truths about this, I really want to know whether this is true or not.

Right. And, and so like, you know, one thing I certainly, I think I'm reasonably good at, you know, from writing Tell Your Children and before that from, you know, when I was working at the New York Times, which it may shock some of your viewers. I was a reporter at the New York Times for a long time. I covered the drug industry.

I like to read the, and I, and I like to read the underlying scientific papers when I'm writing about them. So, so I don't know if that number's real, but the number that I have seen is that, you know, sperm counts just for the average man worldwide are down 50% in the last 50 years. Now we are born with a lot of extra, you know, not born with, but, but you know, our bodies make way more sperm than we need to, you know, to implant a single egg, obviously. So, so people can still get pregnant, but that's not the trend that you want. And then on top of that to, you know, to, to sort of bring it all together with Tell Your Children, there's no question that cannabis impairs male fertility, both because I think it, you know, it, it, it reduces, you were talking about like testosterone and, you know, does it, do, do, do too many, you know, sort of young men these days just want to sit around getting high, but also the old joke doobies make boobies turns out to be, turns out to have some truth in it that, you know, that, that, that, that, that cannabis is an endocrine disruptor.

It is. And, and, and, and actually reduces the quality and motility of sperm. And so, so given the number of young men, at least in the United States who are using cannabis, you know, that could be a real issue, but the reason you can't say, oh, well, that's the number one reason, or even the number two or three reason is again, the worst declines in fertility globally are in East Asia. And those are countries that don't have a lot of drug use.

That's fascinating. There's something cultural. And by the way, I don't know whether those countries have seen the same sort of declines in sperm count. This is the, when you start to get into the weeds of this issue, like, like any really interesting, complicated issue, there's, it turns out that there's a ton of nuance that you have to look at, but there's nuance, Alex, but you're not going to see, this is where you, you, I know you agree. You don't see macro multi-continental multicultural trends just in the nuance.

There has to be something happening, right? And it, when you have values, I mean, Saudi Arabia is fascinating to me. They're wealthy, but they're super Islamic. So are even Muslims saying they don't want to have as many kids now?

Yes. Aside from really, aside from poor Muslim countries and a few African countries, the trends are extremely clear here. And again, countries that, you know, Indonesia, which is the world's largest Muslim country by population is just at that sort of just over two level.

That's, that's flat right now. Countries that you wouldn't expect to be below replacement level or below again, that's most of South America. So, I mean, I think, I think if you had to pick one factor, you know, I think you'd say that it's sort of women worldwide choosing to have fewer children because they now have birth control options that were not available to them. But, but, but that can't, that can't be the only factor or, or even the, you know, the one primary factor, I would think. I just, I just don't know, but it is, this is something that we need to talk about. Is it potentially women's education? The more educated women become the less that they want to have kids? I don't know whether that, you know, I don't know. I don't know whether that correlation is as strong as, as you might think off the top of your head. I mean, I just don't know. So then the, the only one that makes sense that you found is the wealthier the society, the less kids that they want to have.

Is that effectively the, if you were to draw the graph? I would also say it's very clear that, that people who, you know, I don't know what you call, whether the hyper religious, whether it's ultra Orthodox or Amish or, you know, sort of other sort of extremely religious subgroups, the rates of fertility are very high. So I live in upstate New York, you know, in the Hudson Valley of New York. Right across the Hudson River from me are communities of ultra Orthodox that have the highest rates of childbirth, you know, not just in New York state, but in some of the highest rates nationally. And these are places, you know, these are, these are, these are families where women have, you know, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 children. You know, I have a cousin.

Okay. I mean, so I'm a, I'm a, you know, reformed Jew. My dad is one of five kids, you know, cause, you know, he's, you know, he, he was, he was born in 1943.

And so, I mean, he died a couple of years ago, but, but so, you know, it was not unusual that he was one of five. So I'm one of nine cousins. One of my cousins converted to ultra Orthodox Judaism and she now has six kids. So, so clearly there is a religious go forth and multiply, you know, aspect of this that still applies, but it's, you know, there's, there's a relatively tiny number of those folks now. Part of the problem is that kids are largely presented as a burden, not a blessing.

Let's play cut 72. Last piece of advice for young people, get married. Get married and have a ton of kids. I mean, get married when you're too young, have more kids than you can afford.

Take a job you're not qualified for. Live boldly. Stop getting high. Stop doing anything that blurs your vision or makes time go faster.

You're going to die before you know it. Don't waste a second. That's the sin. It goes on from there.

Yes. Please continue. No, no, just, just, I mean, I, I agree with all of that. I, I, I, and you know, he, he practiced what he preached.

I believe Tucker has four kids and, you know, and, and, and I know he's impossibly proud of them. I think we're, you know, we're sort of, we're, I wouldn't say we're talking around the issue. We're talking, we're trying to talk through a very complicated issue. Is it biological? Is it cultural?

Is it fear of the future? I mean, this, this needs to be, you know, is it economic, right? Is it, but again, I think I do think the role of economics here is overstated because those ultra orthodox families, you know, in Rockland County, New York, they are not wealthy families. I mean, occasionally, and this is another interesting sort of facet of this. You see a little bit, for example, in the super wealthy that there's a desire, you know, to have four or five or six, not necessarily six, but let's say three or four kids in New York City.

It's a status symbol. I'm so rich. I can have a big apartment. I can have these kids and send them to private school. But, but I think that's really on the margins of this.

Yeah. Even Mormon fertility is dropping like a rock. Modernity is eating almost everything. So let me ask you not, I want to, is there data to support this? Cause anecdotally, I know it that the people that live the most joyful and deepest lives tend to have kids. And then a lot of kids that their lives are harder. Their lives are crazier.

They're less about themselves, but they're deeper and more fulfilling. Is there data to support that? If there is, I have not seen it again. I'm really, you know, I wrote that piece and you know, it is hopefully going to be the first, a number of pieces I write about this because I really have been surprised by the interest. You know, the Federalist wrote something about the piece. You know, we're, we're talking about it now. I mean, clearly there's a desire to have a sort of a fact-based, this, you know, hopefully non-ideological discussion about this that doesn't, you know, it doesn't get caught up in this idea of, Oh, you know, you're talking about how white people aren't reproducing.

No, I'm not talking about that. Like this is a, this is clearly a global issue. And you know, it, in a way it reminds me to tell your children in, you know, which was my book about cannabis and the problems. This was something that was sort of known in the psychiatric community among serious researchers, but it hadn't been discussed.

It hadn't sort of made the jump into the pop culture, the potential issues about sort of high THC cannabis. There may be interesting conversations that, you know, demographers and social scientists are having with each other about this. And, and the pop, you know, the sort of the popular culture is not getting into it because it's caught up in, Oh, you know, again, you're just saying that Muslims want to take over the United States. No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying we need to, we need to figure out what's going on here. This is a mystery that Elon Musk says, if we do not address, it will result in a population collapse.

Alex is that hyperbole? No, look at the numbers. I mean, countries in East Asia, their populations are now declining. And, and there, the other thing that is scary is there seems to be no bottom to this. So in South Korea right now, the numbers are that the average woman is expected to have 0.7 children.

Okay. So as I said, in in the sub stack, you know, men can't have children despite what the you know, the left likes to think sometimes. So if every woman is having fewer than one child, that's a true collapse of population.

And even a few years ago, the rates in places like South Korea were significantly higher. So I don't know where the bottom is on this. It's it's not good. It's not good. Elon Musk says that the species will fail to exist. Might be right.

I don't know. Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here. And like many of you, I'm a busy guy balancing Family Show Travel and TPUSA. When I needed a mortgage, I went to my friends Andrew Del Rey and Todd Avakian at Sierra Pacific. They were amazing. And look, I had some complicated stuff.

Don't need to go into the details. They handled it personally. Call them if you have an aging family member, for example, that needs some financial relief. Ask them about a reverse mortgage. If you're self-employed and are finding it difficult to qualify because of that, they have my 100% full and complete endorsement. Call them and help you prepare.

I'm telling you anything mortgage related, please call them and not the big woke bags. Go to andrewandtodd.com. That's andrewandtodd.com. Fill out the quick form and they will get back to the answers. Call them at 888-888-1172, andrewandtodd.com. They're good friends of mine, full and complete endorsement.

If you are a first time home buyer renting and want to be, they'll call and help you prepare. Check it out, andrewandtodd.com. That is andrewandtodd.com. Fill out the quick form and they'll get you back with answers, andrewandtodd.com. So Alex, I want to close on the marijuana issue. I feel a moral obligation to do this. Yes, I was at University of Arizona and I just said, look, I know you guys are all pro, you know, weed legalization.

They all cheer and, you know, they love it. I said, can you guys tell me a single negative? But I'm not even saying, I mean, I think it should be not legal, but that's a separate issue. I said, can you just tell me something negative that happens if you use a lot of weed? They said it's God's herb, is what they would say. It's a beautiful gift from the heavens. It allows us to go to the next level of enlightenment.

I'm not kidding, Alex, you've heard all of it. What are some of the documented proven negatives? I mean, first of all, even the stuff that, you know, that they call flower, that sort of smokable herb has been genetically engineered these days. So it has about 10 times the levels of THC that, you know, the stuff that came out of the ground in India and China a hundred years ago did. So, I mean, the idea that this is some natural product and that stuff these kids are using, that they're vaping, you know, they're vaping THC liquid, or if they're taking edibles, you know, you know, I mean, this is a chemical, okay. It comes out of labs, all right.

And, you know, and it's processed with butane. And I mean, the idea that this is in any way natural is a joke, but, you know, cannabis is addictive. It reduces motivation.

It hurts memory. You know, it can trigger severe anxiety in people, even though, you know, it's advertised as an anti-anxiety drug. It can trigger psychotic episodes, short-term psychotic episodes. Most of the time, most people do recover, but if you use it too heavily, too frequently, and you start too young, you have a real risk of a permanent psychotic break.

I mean, that's what Tell Your Children is really all about. It is not as physically dangerous as alcohol. I don't think anybody would disagree with that, but it is more psychiatrically dangerous. It is more dangerous to the brain than alcohol.

And I would also say it has this, you know, we talked about this a little bit in the previous segment. It has this subtle or not so subtle effect on hurting your motivation and sort of making you comfortable doing very little with your life. And I think as you get older, you really see the people that happen to. Smart people, often, who, you know, who used a lot of cannabis in college and used it in their 20s, and at some point, they just sort of stopped meeting milestones.

They didn't get married, they didn't have kids, you know, their careers didn't progress, and they just kind of go through life in a haze. And I do think because, you know, you know, the drug, I would say cannabis, not in its, obviously not in the way that it works, but in the way that it's sort of societally accepted, is most comparable to is alcohol, obviously. But if you drink the way these folks use cannabis, you're going to wind up with bad hangovers. You're going to wind up obviously having problems. In some ways, the problem with cannabis is that because it's less physically toxic, you can really use a lot of it enough to really disrupt your life and tell yourself you don't have a problem.

You know, so you wake up every morning, you you wake and bake, you go through life stone and you tell yourself, oh, you know, I don't have hangovers, I'm fine. And that's, you know, that's that's just not true. A lot of people use it to, quote unquote, treat depression and anxiety. That actually could be making it worse.

Is that correct? Yes, it's a terrible in general, trying to treat anxiety with with with pharmaceutical products is a terrible idea. And I say that about benzos, too. People say, oh, you don't talk about benzos or you don't talk about, you know, prescription drugs.

No, I do. I think I think the United States has a problem with drugs. The problem is that the United States loves drugs, whether they're prescription or non-prescription. And, you know, so the problem with trying to treat anxiety with any drug that actually successfully treats anxiety in the short term is that when you try to get off that drug, you are very likely to have terrible rebound anxiety.

And so you can wind up addicted very quickly, whether that's a benzodiazepine, in other words, a drug like Valium or Xanax or or cannabis, because because you're going to wind up with all the anxiety you had before that you haven't really figured out how to deal with, plus pharmaceutical generated anxiety. The name of the marijuana book, Alex? Tell Your Children. Tell Your Children. At the very least.

Yes, please. I got to say, you know, it's funny because pandemia, you know, which is my book about COVID that came out, you know, about two years ago. Tell Your Children now, which came out five years ago, now outsells pandemia. And I hear from I hear from parents, I hear from prosecutors, I hear even still from users who have just found the book.

And I would say that as more people get exposed to the problems, especially with high potency cannabis, the book has sort of taken on the second life. It's your it's your greatest work, Alex. It is. We'll have you on soon. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening. Everybody email us as always. Freedom at CharlieKirk.com. Thanks so much for listening and God bless. is unfiltered and unapologetic. Watch anytime on any screen at SNC dot TV and local now channel 525.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-11-02 06:13:01 / 2023-11-02 06:29:52 / 17

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