This week on the assignment with me, Audie Cornish.

The push to have bigger families and more babies is part of a movement called pro-natalism.

They are freaking out about declining global fertility rates.

And that is real.

It's a phenomenon called birth-death.

What's behind this push to start a new baby boom?

Who are the voices pushing for a more

pro-family America? And what exactly does that mean? Listen to the assignment with me,

Audie Cornish, streaming now on your favorite podcast app. I'm Carolyn Beeler, co-host of the

world. We're dropping a special series into our feed today. It's about the Kurdish community in Nashville, the largest in the U.S. The show, The Country in Our Hearts, tells the story of how that came to be. It's from WPLN, Nashville Public Radio. Host and reporter Rose Gilbert takes you on a journey from Nashville all the way to

northern Iraq and back again, tracing the story of one Kurdish family and their generations-long

fight to exist. It is four episodes. This is episode one.

The story I'm about to tell you starts with a family.

Nine small children, a mother, a father, running for their lives.

I think he had like two to three babies on his back.

Then he also had his rifle.

Picking up everything they could carry and fleeing on foot from their small village

in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan.

You know, it became a fool on decision like a rush. Okay, now it's time to go.

I remember, you know, like walking just day and night.

As Saddam Hussein's army hunted them down.

The word came around that he is literally going to kill every single person.

...