This is a HeadGum Podcast. I don't know what to think I don't know what to say

and that's all right

yeah that's okay

I don't know how I'm going to.

Hello everyone, welcome to Factually.

I'm Adam Conover, and, uh, hey, I'm coming to you live once again from my home

recording studio got a brand new microphone put in the investment to get some new

equipment in here because I think I'm going to be recording from here for a while.

I want to thank you for sticking with this show through the pandemic.

We got some more great pandemic topics coming up for you in the future, but for this week week I want to take a little bit of a break

off of this one issue and I want to talk more about one of the ways one of the hidden ways in which America has drastically changed over the last couple of years.

Now look, a lot of bad shit has happened since 1900.

We've had two world wars, a variety of famines, a bad season finale at Game of Thrones,

but despite all those disasters, there's been a plausible narrative of constant progress

in American life that things are always getting better.

Every generation is doing better than the one before it, right?

Just to give you one example, we're constantly living longer.

Between 1900 and 2013, the average American life expectancy increased by 30 years, from 49 to 79 years.

That's an incredible improvement.

Now, let's talk about what it used to look like back then.

If you go back to 1900, one in 40 people would die every year.

That's a huge number and children accounted for half of all deaths. Like imagine a world where preschools had a 50%

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