Jun 11, 2026 · 30 min · 12 segments
A new experiment shows pigeons use immune cells to navigate our planet. The discovery redefines our understanding of how an animal can 'feel' Earth's magnetic field.
Thank you.
Um, I'm just gonna hop into an email that sent me down into some more research, and this was, once again, in connection to the fertility topic we talked about a couple weeks back now.
The i- not the idea, the fact that in developed countries around the world, industrialized countries around the world, that fertility rates have dropped below replacement, so the average couple is having fewer than 2.1 babies that would replace our population.
It's lower than that.
Here in Germany, the number's about 1.35, and how, how, there's an argument to be made that if you want to protect the places that have gender equality over the long term, then you have to look at that and talk about that and say, "How do we, how do we change that positively?"
Mm.
Because the places, there's a strong, strong, strong correlation between the places that have gender equality and falling birth rates, which means those places, population-wise, will shrink over time.
And, um, if, I mean, if you go all the way to the end of the generational data, w- will, will shrink to almost to vanishing, right?
That's right.
Yeah.
Um, and that's the extreme, the extreme argument.
Uh, there are a lot of factors at play, a lot of, there's a lot of nuance, and that's what these new studies get into.
I expect you'll-"
"I expect you'll wanna check it out." So that's very specific.
And I clicked in, and I have to give cr- credit to where it's due.
This is Sabrina Tavernise, she's an author for The New York Times, if you wanna look up the article yourself, "Why Are Birth Rates Down? Two New Studies Point to Phones." And so I went into those studies.
I'll just, I'm d- I'm not gonna spend much time with them at all.
They do two different things.
The first one looks at the very specific parts of the United States only, where when the iPhone was first introduced, a telecommunications company called AT&T-
Mm-hmm
...
Thank you.
Um, I'm just gonna hop into an email that sent me down into some more research, and this was, once again, in connection to the fertility topic we talked about a couple weeks back now.
The i- not the idea, the fact that in developed countries around the world, industrialized countries around the world, that fertility rates have dropped below replacement, so the average couple is having fewer than 2.1 babies that would replace our population.
It's lower than that.
Here in Germany, the number's about 1.35, and how, how, there's an argument to be made that if you want to protect the places that have gender equality over the long term, then you have to look at that and talk about that and say, "How do we, how do we change that positively?"
Mm.
Because the places, there's a strong, strong, strong correlation between the places that have gender equality and falling birth rates, which means those places, population-wise, will shrink over time.
And, um, if, I mean, if you go all the way to the end of the generational data, w- will, will shrink to almost to vanishing, right?
That's right.
Yeah.
Um, and that's the extreme, the extreme argument.
Uh, there are a lot of factors at play, a lot of, there's a lot of nuance, and that's what these new studies get into.
I expect you'll-"
"I expect you'll wanna check it out." So that's very specific.
And I clicked in, and I have to give cr- credit to where it's due.
This is Sabrina Tavernise, she's an author for The New York Times, if you wanna look up the article yourself, "Why Are Birth Rates Down? Two New Studies Point to Phones." And so I went into those studies.
I'll just, I'm d- I'm not gonna spend much time with them at all.
They do two different things.
The first one looks at the very specific parts of the United States only, where when the iPhone was first introduced, a telecommunications company called AT&T-
Mm-hmm
...
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