So how you know, the idea is can a culture, can a civilization incorporate these ideas remain true to itself and yet fit into the kind of global order and norms that most of us would like to sit. So we've been a bit disappointed on that school. So bringing it back to demography, it could be that everyone is heading for this. I'm pretty sure short of a disaster, we will all get get to long life expectancy. And there are some wobbles there, you know, there's the deaths of despair in the US and how far is it going to go. So let's assume we're not going to move to people living for 500 years and magic cures and reversing aging. That could change a lot. But let's just keep in the science and not the sort of science fiction. And all that I dismiss the science fiction, but I just don't know, but let's assume that we could imagine, you know, there could be parts of the world where we get a life expectancy in the mid 80s, and it retreats a bit, and then it goes forward a bit. We've had a few wobbles in the UK in terms of life expectancy, and you've had them in the US, you know, as you get towards the frontier, it's not all going to be plain sailing, but most of the world is going to move towards that kind of 80ish life expectancy plus. So I think that's in the bag. So then the question, which is your question is, are we going to move towards everybody being sub replacement fertility or not? Now, one way you could look at this is to say it always surprises us who ends up with low fertility. In my book, The Human Tide, I quote the French saying the German in the late 19th century, the German woman is perennially fertile, the Chuton produces work for child after child, and they press down on us in 1870 and all that. So we know now that Germans have had very low fertility rates for a long time, and you can find similar things in Germany about 15 years later, saying, the Slavic woman with her endless fertility, and we know that Russia has a very low, and actually every Slavic country, you know, from Russia to Bulgaria to Poland, they all, and South, South slabs that for me, Yugoslavia, they've all got really, really low fertility. So that was a fantasy. Who would have guessed? I mean, I'm old enough to remember when Chinese families were quite large, Italian Catholic families were large, you know, Italian mama with her. That's all history. And so there's that point of view that says everyone gets there eventually, India now, a country where, you know, they were having five or six kids not that long ago, has got down to replacement level, and in urban areas, and it's very, very low. So if even Germany from the perspective of the 19th century France, or Russia, or China, or India, is going through this, then where, where isn't going to go through this? And why would sub-Saharan Africa be any different? Now there's a really interesting theory about why sub-Saharan might be different. And that is that in most countries, there has been historically a shortage of land, and they lived in mouth using conditions. So in China, they were constantly pushing up against this, and as late as the 20s, there was a lot of infanticide in China. And although they had big families in China, there was a sort of antenatal culture lurking there, because they were always pushing up the bat against the boundaries of what could be produced. And eventually you get to very late fertility, whether enforced by the government or not. What's unusual about Africa is its sheer size, its underpopulation, partly perhaps because of the slave trade, the idea that for centuries Arabs were skimming millions of Africans, and then eventually Europeans on a mass scale taking Africa. So there was a shortage of people, and that there could be a genuinely pronatal culture in Africa that maybe doesn't disappear, maybe takes longer to go. And African women could be the last repositories of pronatalism, and a sort of lesson to the rest of us, in not giving up on humanity. And again, it sounds like I'm preaching. I don't think we should have six, but I mean, three has suited me very well. And three is a kind of two or three is a very sensible number that allows a country to grow gradually. We haven't of course talked about the environmental issues, that's another story. So there is a view that we're all going to get to Denmark. And there's another view that Fukuyama was wrong on politics, and that there are going to be islands of surprises. Africa, mate, there may be islands with Africa, areas with Africa, that retain high fertility. And in the developed world, we're seeing these today, very small communities, Haradi Jews, Amish, to some extent, more months, still quite small. What could that be a harbinger of something for the future? What do I believe? I tend to be a sort of anti-Fukuyamaist on this. I think we will get a surprise, and the surprises won't be where we expect them, as they wouldn't be surprises if we did expect them. But I think we'll never quite know where the next little pronatal island is going to crop up. And against a background of generally low fertility, these islands are going to be even more powerful and effective and numerically important than they would otherwise be. That's

great. That's great. Paul, thank you so much for taking the time today. Where can people find the book? Where should we send them to pick up a copy?

So the human tide is on Amazon, both in the UK and the US. As I said, I don't have a publisher yet for tomorrow's people. It is in the US. So it's onamazon.co.uk. So if you want to buy it in the States, I believe you can access it there. Excellent.

Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you taking time. Come on. Thanks

for your time. Lovely to speak to you. Good.

Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week with a new episode of Narratives.