What's up, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls around the world?

I would like to welcome you back to the Real Talk with Zubi podcast.

Today's episode, we have got on a fantastic guest.

He's got a lot of insight, and this is going to be a mind-blowing conversation.

He is a data scientist.

He is a demographer, and he also made a very interesting but scary documentary called Birth Gap. And this is

Stephen Jay Shaw. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Zubi. It's a real pleasure to be here.

No doubt. So, Stephen, I've done a very brief intro there, but please tell people a little bit

more about yourself. Yeah, I'm originally from the UK. I've lived in the U.S. for the best

part of 15 years before moving to Japan, Tokyo, six years ago. I moved to Japan to research birth rate decline. It seemed to be the right place to be, given Japan's long-term low birth rate. I run a company doing data analytics. That's my profession. And years ago, I saw really scary data about birth rates across Europe, which I didn't know about and knew a little bit about.

But when I saw how precipitous this is, I decided someone's got to research this and write a book.

My son told me, Dad, no one reads books these days. You've got to make a documentary.

And somehow, magically, I met the right people at the right time and it happened awesome man what was it that

you saw that set off the alarm bell that made you want to pursue this issue to the extent that

you have over the years uh did in germany very specifically I knew a little bit about low birth rates, of course, in Japan.

Most people are aware of that, I would say.

I knew about Italy and Spain to a point.

The birth rate problem there long term had been blamed on youth unemployment,

high levels of youth unemployment, and that seemed reasonable.

But no one was talking about low birth

rates in Germany ever. And I get to work with some industry leaders, often in the automotive

industry, often a very German-focused industry, of course. And I knew that those executives

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