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1:06

the next few years. Elon Musk has

1:08

been in the news this week after

1:10

it was revealed that he fathered his

1:13

13th child with right-wing influ influencer Ashley

1:15

St. Clair. Musk, like many Silicon Valley

1:17

billionaires, has begun posting incessantly about the

1:20

need to have children speaking about declining

1:22

birth rates and railing against childlessness. It's

1:24

all part of a movement called pro-natalism,

1:27

which is gaining traction in elite Silicon

1:29

Valley circles. My guest today, Julia Black,

1:31

is a reporter at the information and

1:34

has covered this movement extensively. We're going

1:36

to talk about what pro-natalism is, how

1:38

it's affecting our political landscape, and why

1:40

all of these billionaires are trying to

1:43

have dozens of children. Julia, welcome to

1:45

power user. So good to see you.

1:47

So I wanted to talk to you

1:49

because I feel like you're the expert

1:51

on all of this crazy kind of

1:53

obsession that Silicon Valley has had lately

1:55

with having babies and families and I

1:57

guess the rise of what's called NATO.

1:59

Can you define what needleism or

2:02

pronatalism means? Pronatalism or needleism

2:04

is the idea that due

2:06

to declining birth rates, one

2:08

supports the idea of having

2:10

more and more children. And

2:12

in this particular incarnation that we're

2:15

seeing, and that we've seen many

2:17

times throughout history, actually, there's usually

2:19

a focus on a particular group

2:22

of people who should be having.

2:24

these extra children? When did Silicon

2:26

Valley people become so obsessed with this

2:28

idea? Like what first drew them into

2:31

this movement and when did that happen?

2:33

It certainly first came to my attention

2:35

in 2021, and I think that is

2:37

the first time you started to see

2:39

any of this stuff trickle out from

2:42

kind of behind the scenes. There is

2:44

actually evidence that Elon Musk, who is

2:46

the first person I discovered having an

2:48

interest in this, has had this interest

2:50

for years, like since the 2000s when

2:53

he was with his first wife, Justine.

2:55

Once he kind of came out of

2:57

the shadows, came out as a pronatalist,

2:59

it really started to catch on, and

3:02

now we're at the point. where it

3:04

seems like every other day I'm going

3:06

online and seeing some new tech founder,

3:08

CEO, type coming out as a pronatalist.

3:10

Just the other day, Palmer Lucky gave

3:13

an interview where he proudly identified as

3:15

a pronatalist. I saw that. Does he

3:17

have children? I didn't realize. I don't?

3:19

think he has children, but that's something

3:22

I should back check. But there are

3:24

many cases of people in Silicon Valley

3:26

who actually don't have children, but

3:28

still identify with this almost as

3:30

like a political belief. Okay, so

3:32

Elon kind of kicked off the

3:34

movement, but how did other people

3:36

get on board? And why is

3:38

this pronatalist kind of belief system

3:41

so enticing to Silicon Valley founders

3:43

and billionaires? Yeah. So again, I mentioned

3:45

that this is the kind of

3:47

thing that we've seen throughout history.

3:49

you see pronatalism emerge typically in

3:51

moments of kind of national crisis

3:54

and it often goes hand in

3:56

hand historically with the rise of

3:58

authoritarianism. So I I think it

4:00

is no coincidence that we're seeing

4:02

what many would call kind of

4:04

an American decline. There's a lot

4:06

of concern around the economy, around

4:08

immigration, and then there are actual

4:11

numbers behind this. The birth rates

4:13

in the US are historically low.

4:15

Birth rates in Europe and in

4:17

many other countries around the world

4:19

are historically low and below what

4:21

is called the replacement rate, which

4:23

is the number of children each

4:25

average woman needs to have. in order

4:27

to preserve the population at current levels.

4:29

So you know there is a demographic

4:32

reality here. that birth rates in many

4:34

countries are low. And so that is

4:36

spurring certain types of people to say,

4:38

we need to have more kids. But

4:41

again, it becomes tied in with these

4:43

ideas about, oh, we need to have

4:45

more kids to prevent the decline of

4:47

Western civilization as a buzzword they often

4:50

throw in there. Yeah. And to me,

4:52

it feels very like we need to

4:54

preserve the white race kind of coded

4:56

because these are the same people

4:58

that are also insisting that America

5:01

cracks down on immigration, right? Yeah,

5:03

exactly. So as I've kind of

5:05

been alluding to, there are certain

5:07

types of people who show more

5:09

of an interest in this. In

5:11

many cases, they are white people

5:13

who have expressed simultaneously

5:15

kind of an interest in

5:17

preserving the white nationalist identity.

5:20

I mean, isn't that just the

5:22

great replacement theory kind of? Yeah,

5:24

absolutely. I mean, people who are

5:27

into great replacement theory are 100%

5:29

pronatalists. correlation maybe, but also often

5:31

causation. Yeah, it's, I don't think

5:33

inherently being a pernatalist makes you

5:35

a white nationalist, but there's a

5:37

lot of overlap. With the rise

5:40

of pernatalism in Silicon Valley, has

5:42

any of this led to any

5:44

sort of more friendly parenting policies,

5:46

more parental leave, any kind of

5:48

push for tech companies to adopt

5:50

measures, I guess, that would help their

5:52

employees have more children? That is such

5:54

a good question, and I think something

5:56

that a lot of people are watching

5:58

that's for an admission. for to see

6:00

if there will be any actual helpful

6:03

policy that comes out of this for

6:05

would-be parents in the US. I mean

6:07

my husband and I happened to look

6:09

at daycare prices the other day as

6:11

we consider having kids and it's horrific.

6:13

I mean truly to the point where

6:16

it can change your decision one way

6:18

or another. Am I able to do

6:20

this or not? So there's tons of

6:22

parents or would-be parents who would love

6:24

some relief. Typically that is not...

6:26

part of the package for pronatalists.

6:28

I've spoken to a lot of

6:30

pronatalists who specifically point at Scandinavian

6:33

countries, European countries that do have

6:35

pro-social policies, that are good for

6:37

families, good for parents, and they

6:39

say well that didn't help there,

6:41

that didn't increase birth rates there,

6:43

so that's not worth exploring. I

6:45

think a lot of American parents

6:47

or would-be parents would disagree that

6:49

it is worth exploring. If you really want

6:51

people to have kids, you got to help

6:54

about and make it possible possible. There

6:56

was that tweet the other day, and

6:58

I'm trying to remember who posted it,

7:00

but you probably saw it was some

7:02

Silicon Valley guy. It was like this

7:04

idea that you can have kids, you

7:06

can afford it, your parents had it

7:08

ten times harder than you, think of

7:10

all the modern luxuries that we have

7:13

in life, and think of what people

7:15

had in the 1800s, that we have

7:17

in life, and think of what people

7:19

had in the 1800s. And I don't

7:21

think that the material conditions of children

7:23

were that great in the 1800s, so...

7:25

to get into vaccines and maybe we

7:27

should start by keeping kids healthy and

7:29

safe like what should we go back

7:31

to child labor laws being what they

7:34

were like there's a million things from

7:36

the past that have changed and Rightfully

7:38

so. A lot of people that have

7:40

been espousing this pro-natalist ideology are

7:42

also believers in effective altruism or

7:45

long-termism. Can you explain what these

7:47

things are and how do these

7:49

ideologies overlap? Long-termism is fundamentally the

7:52

idea that when we're considering morals

7:54

and ethics as human beings, we

7:56

need to consider many generations down

7:59

the way. So, you know, we

8:01

don't just owe it to our neighbors

8:03

to be good people. We owe it

8:05

to the people of the year, 3,000,

8:07

who are counting on us to be

8:09

good people. One way this gets tied

8:11

to prenatalism is this birth rate question,

8:13

these demographic questions about could society collapse

8:16

if we have fewer kids and then

8:18

there's no young people to take care

8:20

of old people and similar to the

8:22

way a lot of people were about

8:24

climate change. Some people worry that

8:26

demographic collapse is going to. destroy

8:28

the world. I don't think there's

8:31

like a ton of evidence to

8:33

support that theory, but that is

8:35

definitely one thing. I think another way

8:37

that this gets tied to effective

8:39

altruism is people who have spent

8:41

a lot of their careers working

8:43

with AI. have this fear that AI

8:45

is going to become all powerful,

8:47

kind of take over the world,

8:50

surpass humans. So these people start

8:52

getting really interested in something called

8:54

transhumanism, which is the idea that

8:56

we can start to biologically, genetically

8:58

alter the human race to kind

9:00

of keep up with AI, or

9:03

be able to hold our own

9:05

in a world dominated by AI.

9:07

So you start getting into all

9:09

sorts of crazy stuff about like

9:11

the ways that we can alter.

9:13

the reproductive process to not only

9:16

have more kids, but to have

9:18

better kids, which is where we

9:20

start verging into eugenics territory. Yeah,

9:22

so much of, I feel like

9:24

this pronatalism movement is tied in

9:26

with eugenics. Can you talk about that?

9:28

Eugenics is a funny word. I

9:30

have spoken with people who are

9:32

kind of in these movements in

9:34

this pronatalism world who will argue

9:36

eugenics is unfairly coded as a

9:38

negative thing. Whereas eugenics, all it

9:40

really means is improving the gene

9:42

pool of a species. And so

9:45

they say, like, what's wrong with

9:47

that? An example that they love

9:49

to use is, do you believe

9:51

that two siblings should be able

9:53

to have children together? And most

9:55

people would say no for a variety

9:57

of reasons, including that those

9:59

children and will be genetically

10:01

disadvantaged. So they say, okay,

10:03

so you're eugenicist. So that's

10:05

the kind of like level

10:07

of argument dealing with. But

10:09

yeah, it's, if you believe

10:11

that eugenics fundamentally is just

10:13

improving genetics of human beings,

10:16

there are a variety of

10:18

technologies currently coming to market,

10:20

beginning like the early stages

10:22

of coming to market that

10:24

are fundamentally doing eugenics. These

10:26

are products that are gonna

10:28

allow people to select among

10:30

embryos to pick the one that they

10:32

believe is genetically superior. But of

10:34

course, things like CRISPR, which is

10:36

actual gene editing, are right around

10:38

the corner. So to me, what's

10:40

really fascinating about this moment is

10:42

we have this convergence of like

10:44

political ideologies with extreme

10:48

new cutting edge technologies. So like

10:50

this is all happening so

10:52

fast and wacky ideas are for

10:54

the first time in history

10:56

like coming at a time when

10:58

they might actually be possible

11:01

to achieve with the technologies

11:04

that are coming downstream. I think it's

11:06

also interesting that most of Yilan's children

11:08

have been had through IVF. And obviously,

11:10

if you do IVF, you're not doing

11:12

eugenics, right? For a lot of people,

11:14

it's just how they're able to get

11:16

pregnant. A lot of people also do

11:18

the PGS testing, right? To make sure

11:20

that your embryo is viable. It's not

11:22

a far jump, as you said, to

11:24

see how a lot of these gene

11:26

editing therapies or things could be implemented.

11:28

To sort of play devil's advocate, why

11:31

do you think the pro -natalyst movement

11:33

is dangerous? Like, isn't it great to

11:35

encourage people to have more children and

11:37

families in America? Yeah, I

11:39

mean, listen, I try to keep

11:41

a fairly open mind. Over

11:43

the summer, I wrote a story

11:45

about a company called Orchid

11:47

that is doing this pre -implantation

11:49

genetic testing. And I spoke with

11:51

parents who have something called

11:53

the broccogene mutation, which will make

11:55

their kids horrifically more likely

11:57

to die of prostate cancer, ovarian

11:59

cancer. cancer. I completely understand why

12:01

a parent would look at their

12:03

personal family history and say I would

12:05

do everything I can to protect my

12:07

child from this. The trouble is

12:09

with so many of these things is, you know,

12:11

it's a slippery slope. So is

12:13

picking one embryo over the other

12:15

a problem when one of those

12:18

is more likely to die of

12:20

a really horrific disease? Probably

12:22

not. But what happens when you

12:24

start picking the one with the

12:26

preferable eye color? What happens when

12:28

companies, which they have started doing,

12:30

start promising to detect IQ in

12:32

an embryo? Should you be able

12:34

to pick for that? I think

12:36

that the questions get progressively slipperier.

12:38

And then certainly the direction things

12:40

are going in our society. You

12:43

know, I don't know if

12:45

you've seen Gadica, the film, but

12:47

for anyone who hasn't seen

12:49

it, the plot is basically, you

12:51

know, a futuristic society in

12:53

which everyone can do this kind

12:56

of gene editing and make

12:58

designer babies. And so there's this

13:00

poor unlucky schmuck who gets

13:02

born with a heart condition

13:04

because his parents were too

13:06

selfish to make sure that

13:08

he was born completely healthy

13:10

and perfect. And so he

13:12

is ostracized from this society.

13:15

Like, is that a society

13:17

we want to live in

13:19

where people are actually actively

13:21

disenfranchised based on how they're

13:23

born? Especially as we watch

13:25

this moment unfold in American

13:27

governance, where like it

13:29

seems that Elon and his Doge

13:31

team are on a mission to

13:33

turn everything into this like completely

13:35

data -based stratified society where certain people

13:37

are advantaged based on their data,

13:39

etc. I think it's a really

13:41

slippery slope. Ever go

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14:00

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14:04

the dating apps. You've got your

14:06

reasons. Billy's got your routine. Shop

14:09

in store and at mybilly.com. Yeah,

14:11

especially with the rise of like for-profit

14:13

insurance in the way that our insurance

14:15

industry currently works and evaluates risk and

14:18

I mean already the amount of data

14:20

that they have on us is terrifying

14:22

and I was thinking of RFK's confirmation

14:24

hearing just recently when Bernie Sanders asks

14:27

RFK Jr. if he thinks health care

14:29

is a human right. He doesn't, surprise

14:31

surprise, the Make America Healthy movement, again

14:33

movement does not believe in universal health

14:36

care and he gave the reason of

14:38

like, well what if somebody's for 30

14:40

years. Basically, they don't deserve health

14:42

care. And I thought that was

14:45

wild. It's this implication that you

14:47

are to blame for your own

14:49

health problems. And look, of course,

14:51

like, okay, maybe smoking is more

14:53

of a choice, but certain other

14:55

people are exposed to environmental toxins

14:57

or they have a job where

15:00

they're exposed to environmental toxins, or

15:02

they have a job where they're

15:04

exposed to COVID, or they have

15:06

a job where they're exposed to

15:08

COVID, It went from like this

15:10

2020 idea of like perfect the vulnerable,

15:12

like make sure everyone is healthy to

15:15

now like people like well, just let

15:17

the people that are sick die already. Why

15:19

can't they die quicker? Totally, which is the

15:21

other side of eugenics, you know, like there's,

15:23

I'm trying to remember how they put

15:25

it, but it's basically like... positive eugenics

15:28

I think, where you're selecting for the

15:30

best of the best, but then there's

15:32

negative eugenics which is what the Nazis

15:35

did where you're trying to eliminate certain

15:37

parts of the gene pool that you

15:39

have deemed the worst. So yeah I

15:41

think the risks inherent in all this

15:44

are pretty obvious and and terrifying. Are

15:46

any of these Silicon Valley executives investing

15:48

in things like artificial looms or other

15:51

sort of reproductive technologies that could free

15:53

women? I feel like when they talk

15:55

about you know pushing pronatalism, whatever.

15:57

So much of it is also

15:59

about the. subjugation of women and the

16:02

sort of relegating women to their role

16:04

as mothers, keeping them at home with

16:06

all of their babies, but is there

16:09

any chance that they could be developing

16:11

technologies that would actually make things more

16:13

equal? There's a number of technologies currently

16:15

under development. Artificial Williams is one of

16:18

those. It's still one of the more

16:20

far out unrealistic ones presently, but there

16:22

are companies working on it and there

16:24

are investors whose names we would all

16:27

recognize. And certainly some of these I

16:29

think you could make the argument

16:31

could be good for women. There's

16:33

one company I actually am really

16:35

interested in called Gamito that is

16:38

developing solutions to make IVF a

16:40

more painless process. It's basically shortening

16:42

that time. If your freezing eggs

16:44

are doing IVF you need to

16:46

shoot yourself up with hormones and

16:48

it's a pretty uncomfortable process. And

16:51

so they've developed technology to develop

16:53

those ovarian cells outside of that

16:55

process so that. women or you

16:57

know don't have to shoot themselves up

16:59

with these drugs for quite as many days.

17:01

I think it's down from like seven

17:04

to ten days down to like three

17:06

or something. There's a lot of these

17:08

technologies that I think a lot of

17:11

women would love to see. Again, unfortunately

17:13

I think what we're seeing is this

17:15

convergence of the technologies coming from one

17:18

side. and the political ideologies coming from

17:20

another side and they're going to hit

17:22

at the exact same time. And so,

17:25

you know, does JD Vance care much

17:27

about making women's lives more productive or

17:29

comfortable? I'm not convinced. Talk more about

17:32

that, because why is the pro-natalist movement

17:34

so tied in with the far right?

17:36

Yeah, I think it goes back to

17:38

what we were talking about before. There's

17:41

a lot of reasons for... white

17:43

Christian nationalists to feel

17:45

particularly persecuted in this

17:47

moment and to see this as their

17:49

chance to fight back by having more

17:51

kids by becoming a more once again

17:53

even more dominant in our culture. One

17:55

of my biggest worries is that in

17:57

a few years women are going to

17:59

see or. Status and

18:01

Society backslide quite a bit. I think it's

18:04

inevitable that some of this language that we're

18:06

now seeing from the campaign trail to now

18:08

inside the White House. You see it on

18:10

Elon Musk's Twitter. He's for years now actually

18:13

tweeted stuff like a woman's most important job

18:15

as a mother. I do think it's a

18:17

matter of time before that trickles down into

18:19

our reality. I think it's a matter of

18:22

time before women in the workplace start to

18:24

feel those pressures. So yes, I know that

18:26

this is going back, he said like, like,

18:28

oh, to be a devil's a devil's advocate.

18:30

Couldn't this be good for women? I

18:33

doubt it. Exactly. I want to

18:35

talk about one sort of famous

18:37

pronatalist family. I feel like they're

18:39

the main ones that get profiled

18:41

all the time and I think

18:43

you've profiled them, which is the

18:45

Collins family. This is a couple

18:47

who I think they live in

18:49

Pennsylvania. They have a bunch of

18:51

kids. They've sort of become the

18:53

face of the pronatalist movement. Why

18:55

do you think there's such a

18:57

fascination with this one family in

18:59

particular? This is years ago. It

19:01

seems like the same story comes

19:03

out every six months or so.

19:05

To any journalist watching this, we're

19:07

done. They've said their piece. I

19:09

don't think we need to hear

19:11

from them again. So I think

19:13

the lead to my story was

19:15

Malcolm surrounded by his kids who

19:17

are screaming and fighting each other

19:19

and shouting at me. almost like

19:21

foaming at the mouth talking to

19:24

me about how his if his

19:26

kids he wants to have at least

19:28

eight kids and if they have at

19:30

least eight kids and if they have

19:32

at least eight kids they have at

19:35

least eight kids within X number of

19:37

generations his bloodline will rule the universe

19:39

like this is really like straight out

19:41

of sci-fi stuff. So you know

19:43

I think with any of these

19:45

ideas you want to find a

19:48

face for them and they are

19:50

very readable. Their their story is

19:52

very enticing. They are larger than

19:54

life characters. They have everything planned

19:56

out down to their outfits. They

19:59

did a total. makeover of the

20:01

two of them a number of years

20:03

ago where they decided which glasses they

20:05

were going to each wear and you

20:07

know to be the most media friendly

20:09

and most eye-catching. So they know exactly what

20:11

they're doing and to a certain extent

20:13

the media has walked into this trap

20:15

over and over. Like I said I think

20:17

it was worth doing once I don't

20:19

think that we need the same story

20:21

every six months. I feel like it's interesting

20:24

because they've just become kind of like

20:26

the unofficial spokespeople of this movement and

20:28

They're quite unsettling, like you said. It's

20:30

a weird, like if I was to

20:32

choose the spokespeople for these movement, I

20:34

guess I would choose someone like a

20:36

little bit more trad and less like

20:38

read it seeming. Like they have like

20:40

read it forum energy. I don't know

20:42

how to describe it. Yeah, well, it

20:44

depends who's choosing the spokesperson and in

20:46

this case I guess it's the media.

20:48

And so, you know, it wasn't on

20:50

my agenda to set out and find

20:52

the best representatives. to profile. I was,

20:54

I picked the most extreme, so they

20:56

are the most extreme. Yeah, I think

20:59

while the Collinses have been sort

21:01

of attracting tons of media attention,

21:03

we've also seen the rise of

21:05

things like the Tradwife movement and

21:07

these other massive influencers that espouse

21:09

a lot of sort of similar

21:11

pronatalist ideas, but without specifically, I

21:13

guess, mentioning the ideology or talking

21:15

about it, how tied in are

21:17

people like that with this broader

21:19

movement or is that sort of

21:21

an adjacent similar movement? I think

21:24

it's adjacent and similar. It's kind

21:26

of like I was talking about

21:28

like the convergence of the

21:30

technology with this political moment

21:32

with this economic moment like

21:34

the world is so crazy right now

21:37

so many different factors are moving at

21:39

once but they all seem to be

21:41

moving in a particular direction and

21:43

that is towards what kind of boils down

21:46

to a return to an old America for

21:48

better or for much worse? Okay, so all

21:50

these Silicon Valley billionaires want to have lots

21:52

of babies. They're encouraging people to have lots

21:54

of babies. You know, they're fathering tons of

21:57

kids through IVF with God knows how many

21:59

women. Why should... people pay attention to

22:01

this, why does this even matter? For

22:03

the same reason that we should care,

22:05

frankly, about anything you on Musk does

22:07

at this point, because he's currently the

22:09

most powerful person in the world. He

22:12

is currently not only playing the massive

22:14

role in our economy and our technological

22:16

development that he has for years, but

22:18

he is calling the shots for our

22:20

government. This is where I talk to

22:22

my friends and... They kind of raised

22:24

their eyebrows at me and said, really,

22:26

is that going to happen? But yeah,

22:28

I really do think that we are

22:31

going to start to see the trickle-down

22:33

effects of this kind of stuff that's

22:35

happening amongst the Silicon Valley elite, two

22:37

women in the United States, and possibly around

22:39

the world. But I really do have a

22:41

concern that women's place and society

22:44

is going to change in the next

22:46

few years. How do you see those

22:48

trickle-down effects manifesting? I think a lot

22:50

of it will be sort of subtle

22:53

cultural changes. He has already transformed the

22:55

conversation by buying Twitter. A lot of

22:57

people rolled their eyes at that when

23:00

it first happened and said, like, why

23:02

would he possibly want to own this

23:04

company? And to me, it was fairly

23:07

obvious that he wanted to change the

23:09

conversation and he's done that. There have

23:11

been... talks about him possibly buying

23:13

TikTok lately. It doesn't look like

23:16

it's going to happen, but why

23:18

would he be interested in that?

23:20

Because he can change the conversation.

23:23

Well, he's controlling the information environment,

23:25

right? Exactly, exactly. So in very

23:27

powerful ways, he is reshaping... American

23:30

culture as we speak. And again,

23:32

now he's turned his sights to

23:34

government. There have been early hints

23:36

of policy changes that might come

23:39

down the line, certain benefits that

23:41

might be extended to families who

23:43

have more kids. I think that

23:45

protections for women in the workplace are

23:47

going to be reduced. I mean, the

23:49

attacks on DEA. Those are going to

23:52

hurt women. I wrote a story in

23:54

the fall for the information about... Women

23:56

in tech were sounding the alarm about

23:58

their place in... the tech workplace.

24:00

They are already, even before

24:03

the presidential election, even before

24:05

Elon Musk rose to so much power.

24:07

I think a lot of women in

24:09

tech were already feeling the downstream effects

24:11

of this. I remember speaking with women

24:13

years ago when I first reported the

24:15

story of Chevron Zellis having Elon's twins

24:17

secretly. I spoke with a lot of

24:20

women who knew her in the past

24:22

in the tech industry and who felt

24:24

just devastated by this news, who felt

24:26

like... what does this say about us?

24:28

What does this tell you about how

24:30

men in our workplaces perceive us that

24:32

we're just, you know, vessels for their

24:34

children, we're not their colleagues, we're not

24:37

their respected staff? So yeah, I think

24:39

it's going to be like a thousand

24:41

cuts for women. in our economy, in

24:43

our society. I think for young women,

24:45

they're really feeling it. I know Taylor,

24:48

you've reported on this a lot, on

24:50

the Rise of the Pro podcaster, on

24:52

the rise of misogyny in college environments,

24:55

on the way that men feel comfortable

24:57

speaking to women in a way that

24:59

they didn't for years there, and will

25:01

feel comfortable pressuring women into marriages that

25:04

they don't want to be in, having kids

25:06

that they didn't plan to have. There's going

25:08

to be an attack on reproductive rights. So

25:10

it's really a huge question, how is this

25:12

actually going to trickle down to women in

25:14

a million ways? We're already saying, yeah, I

25:16

mean, so much of it, I think it's

25:18

just tied to the restriction of reproductive rights,

25:20

right? If your goal is, and you believe,

25:22

sort of the most important thing is for

25:24

women to have as many children as possible,

25:26

you're going to make it harder for them

25:28

to have birth control, for them to have

25:30

planned pregnancies, right? Like you're going to make

25:32

it. a harder for them. And it's such

25:34

a weird thing, because I think at the

25:37

same time that all of this is happening,

25:39

there's so many women. I mean, I feel

25:41

like you and I probably know a lot

25:43

of women around the same age, where it's

25:46

like they actually desperately want to have kids,

25:48

but they can't afford it. It's so hard.

25:50

The economy is already sort of stacked against

25:52

them. And we know that if a woman

25:55

has a kid, and she's already in a

25:57

precarious financial situation, she's going to be even

25:59

more over her own life and career

26:02

and etc. Absolutely. It's the one

26:04

place that I actually do see

26:06

a lot of bipartisan support. I

26:08

guess I've been spending a lot

26:10

of time with like right of

26:12

center think tanks recently who are

26:14

very pronatalist and this for them

26:16

is one issue where they often

26:18

find common ground with more left-wing

26:20

thinkers. Basically there's this whole thing

26:22

called like the abundance agenda which

26:24

is trying to tie kind of

26:26

right side ideologies about promoting economic

26:28

dynamism with more left-wing stuff about

26:30

providing just more resources for individuals

26:32

in the US. So. That might

26:34

be a stretch, but yeah, I

26:36

feel like it's a stretch because

26:38

I will say one of the

26:40

things that both parties seem aligned

26:42

on is cutting our social safety

26:44

net, right? We saw record cuts

26:46

the social safety net under Biden

26:48

and Trump has rolled it back

26:50

even further. It seems like neither

26:52

political party wants to give people

26:54

any sort of widespread support. It's

26:57

also interesting though, I mean, I

26:59

interviewed Candace Owens recently about her,

27:01

the launch of her women's media

27:03

company. This is a woman who...

27:05

sat on the phone for 20

27:07

minutes saying that she didn't believe

27:09

in paid maternity leave and yet

27:11

is hugely, I would say, pro-natalist

27:13

in the sense that she believes

27:15

women's greatest achievement in life is

27:17

having kids, women need to have

27:19

as many kids as possible, it's

27:21

the only thing that she believes

27:23

truly fulfils a woman, etc., etc.

27:25

etc. So I just, I don't

27:27

know, it's interesting how so many

27:29

of these sort of reactionaries, it

27:31

seems like they want to trap

27:33

women in this position and women

27:35

are increasingly not given the choice.

27:37

you know, as to whether or

27:39

not they want to stay home

27:41

with the children or are forced

27:43

to. I have fun making predictions

27:45

about what will happen in tech,

27:47

what will happen in this country,

27:49

in politics, and unfortunately my current

27:51

prediction is let's check back in

27:54

three years and see how many

27:56

women are in the workforce compared

27:58

to today. I think that number

28:00

will get down. people talk about

28:02

settling down, having as many kids

28:04

as possible too, I feel like

28:06

there's a bunch of right-wingers and

28:08

tech people that are also very

28:10

focused on dating apps and optimizing

28:12

matchmaking and dating. There was that

28:14

super right-wing guy Justin something or

28:16

other right-wing influencer who I

28:18

think got fired from his teaching

28:20

job actually for saying super bigoted stuff,

28:23

but he believed in sort of matching

28:25

people based on their genetic profile or

28:27

certain traits. Is anyone in Silicon

28:29

Valley focused on the dating question and

28:32

sort of helping people partner up so

28:34

that they can have all of

28:36

these children? Absolutely. As you said, this

28:38

has been kind of in the water

28:41

for a while. I've seen hints of

28:43

this where people post on X

28:45

about... dating and even when I

28:47

first met Samona Malcolm Collins they sent

28:49

me a dating matchmaking form because they

28:51

identified me as an eligible patchorette who

28:54

might be able to reproduce with a

28:56

compatible partner and have 13 children. I

28:58

did not fill it out in the

29:01

end. There is actually someone who has

29:03

gone so far as to implement this

29:05

in his company. You will be shocked

29:07

to learn he is a Tiel fellow,

29:10

meaning funded by Peter Tiel originally, and

29:12

he has a company called Nucleus Genomics

29:14

which recently introduced... dating service called nucleus

29:17

dating I believe. I think it's

29:19

somewhat tongue-in-cheek but also fully exists

29:21

and this is basically a straight

29:23

out of gatka dating matchmaking service

29:26

that compares your genetic compatibility with

29:28

a partner so that you don't

29:30

have to get so far down

29:32

the line and then realize right

29:35

before you have kids, right before

29:37

you're supposed to start IBM, which

29:39

of course everyone in Silicon Valley

29:41

now does for these reasons. And

29:44

you don't have to get that

29:46

far without realizing that, oh no, you

29:48

both have a certain genetic mutation that

29:50

runs in your family or, you know, your kid

29:52

won't be as tall as you want or

29:54

have as high an IQ as you want.

29:57

So we are quite literally entering sci-fi territory

29:59

territory territory. than I ever predicted we would.

30:01

Well Julia thank you so much for joining

30:03

me today. Thank you so much this is

30:05

fun. That's all for this week's episode. You

30:07

can watch full episodes of Power User on

30:09

my YouTube channel at Taylor Lorenz. In the

30:12

meantime don't forget to subscribe to my tech

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