It's the Brian Larisho on WNYC.

Good morning again, everyone.

Now we continue our WNYC Centennial series, 100 Years of 100 Things.

This year-long series began in July on the day that WNYC

turned 100 years old, July 8th. We appreciate all the nice comments we've been getting about many of the

segments being interesting and educational and relevant to today. We'll try to keep it so for the

rest of the series as we enter the new year

with things number 54 and 55, 100 years of birth rates and 100 years of causes of death

in the United States. Birth rates today, causes of death next week. These are related, obviously,

and both have relevance to culture and politics and economics today.

On birth rates, we know the slur from our incoming vice president, calling some Americans childless cat ladies, right?

The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that gave us Project 2025, also gave us a critique of American

culture last month that referred to, quote, the harmful overconsumption of schooling, unquote,

pushing the average age of childbearing later and the number of total births down. Also, Elon Musk has said, quote, a collapsing birth rate is the biggest

dangerous civilization faces by far. So those worldviews are coming into power. And they connect with a

religious and cultural right push against abortion rights and for a return to traditional gender roles.

And coupled with the anti-immigration movement, it also becomes a campaign to mostly have

more white babies. More people going to college these days and more women going to college

than men these days. And you get the Heritage Foundation writers coming out against what

the, what they call overconsumption of education along with these other culture war trends,

and that's where we are. The grain of truth here is that the U.S. population is growing more slowly

than in the past, and people are living longer, so the number of

...