Welcome back to Young Heretics Conversations. This is our occasional interview series, where I get to chat with people who are doing interesting work about interesting things in contemporary life, bringing ancient principles and values to bear on our modern situation.

I mentioned that I've been doing a little traveling, so it's a good opportunity to drop

some of these interviews. I'm actually back now. I've just gotten back from Hungary,

from Budapest. If you can see, and you're watching on YouTube, you will note I've come back

with a mustache. I went overseas to acquire one.

They're very difficult to obtain on the black market, but I managed to shave my beard into one of these cool mustache as all the kids are doing these days.

Not sure how long it's going to last.

Maybe you can drop a note in the comments about whether you think it's a good look or not.

But that's actually not the most

important thing about my trip. The most important thing about the travel I've just been doing

is that I was in Hungary for a conference at the Danube Institute, which is a think tank, and they

had gathered together some American scholars, some Hungarian scholars, and some European scholars to discuss the birth rate crisis.

This is something that Hungary is very much involved in, invested in, but it's not just a

Hungarian issue. It's a worldwide issue. There is this crazy birth dearth going on.

Birth rates are plummeting in the east and in the West, in highly developed nations and in less developed nations, with very few exceptions, people are having fewer kids.

And this seems to represent, well, what does it represent?

I think it represents at least a kind of uncertainty about the future and about the human race itself. I've talked a lot

about various aspects of this, and I want to get back to debriefing some of it next week with

you guys what was discussed. Really interesting set of talks and panels about just how we can

restore the kind of hopefulness and optimism that is required to have babies and perpetuate the species and go on advancing our civilization.

So this is not just something that Hungary is concerned with, although it was interesting to hear about some of the stuff they've been doing over there, what's worked, what hasn't.

Think about what we can do in the U.S. and in other Western nations.

...