World Contraception Day: Separating Sex from Conception

Sep. 21

As World Contraception Day (26 September) approaches, Dave and Erika pick the brains of two experts, Alisha Graves and Malcolm Potts. Potts is Professor at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, was the first chair in Population and Family Planning, and founded the Bixby Center for Population, Health & Sustainability. Graves is President of Venture Strategies for Health and Development, a non-profit organization aiming to help stabilize global population by securing women’s freedom to choose their family size. Also in this episode: Release of the 2020 Living Planet Report

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Alisha Graves 0:00
Worldwide, over 41% of all pregnancies that occur each year are unintended, more than one in ten births are to teenage girls. In this age group, complications during pregnancy and childbirth or abortion are a leading cause of long-term problems, even death. Almost all of this could be prevented through the effective use of contraception.
Erika Arias 0:24
That's the opening of a video about World Population Day, which you can find at your-life.com, a very impressive website with lots of useful information about contraceptive methods.
Dave Gardner 0:34
World Contraception Day, September 26th. Get out your condoms.
Erika Arias 0:38
Contraception is so much more than condoms, Dave. Let's talk in detail about the most important family planning tool. Contraception next on the Overpopulation Podcast.
Dave Gardner 0:49
Welcome to the Overpopulation Podcast. I'm Dave Gardner, your co-host and Executive Director of World Population Balance, a small nonprofit busy alerting the world that we're overpopulated but the solution is ethical, voluntary, and respectful of everyone's rights. Smaller families freely chosen.
Erika Arias 1:07
And I'm Erika Arias, co-host and co-producer of the Overpopulation Podcast. Learn more about this issue at worldpopulationbalance.org and at oneplanetonechild.org.
Dave Gardner 1:17
Before we get into contraception, and a fascinating and really humorous conversation with our guests, Malcolm Potts and Alisha Graves, we have three major news items. First, our One Planet, One Child billboard campaign has kicked things up a notch. On the 21st of September, our billboards and transit shelter ads went up in Vancouver, Canada. More about that later in the episode. News item number two Erika, second episode of You Had Me at Childfree is out.
Erika Arias 1:48
Yay. Episode two of You Had Me at Childfree is finally out. This is a story about Mr. Lukas and Suhei, so hope you get to listen to that.
Dave Gardner 1:58
Yeah, they're a pretty fascinating couple, pretty smart, so I would recommend it highly. Third, this just in Planet of the Humans, the Michael Moore executive produced documentary that we spent quite a bit of time talking about, millions and millions of people saw it this spring. Director Jeff Gibbs has scheduled a series of virtual events in Canada in October. Now Erika, I don't know why Canada, but we're doing billboards in Canada and Jeff Gibbs is doing virtual events in Canada. So-
Erika Arias 2:28
They're onto us.
Dave Gardner 2:28
We're all going to be north of the border. Anyway, these virtual events are called, cleverly, Battle For the Planet of the Humans. I got a kick out of that. And it's a one hour discussion with Jeff Gibbs and his co-producer/scholar, Ozzie Zehner. Pretty smart guy. There are several dates throughout the month because they've set a different date for different cities across Canada. Now, I went ahead and registered for the Toronto one, even though I don't live in Toronto. So I don't think it's geographically going to keep you out if you live in Australia or Sweden, or you want to do a different city than you live in. But clearly, if you're in one of those cities in Canada, you probably want to go to the event that is for your city, because there might be some specific things about issues related to sustainability in your community.
Erika Arias 3:16
Interesting. So all in Canada? Is there plans to also do this for United States?
Dave Gardner 3:22
I don't know. I haven't heard much from them and I didn't see anything about it. And this is not free. It costs a little bit of money, but might be worth spending a few bucks. And then news item number four, moving right along, because we've got such a great conversation coming up. The WWF released on the ninth of September, the 2020 Living Planet Report. This comes out every two years and it is a pretty darn comprehensive report card for really kind of for how well we're behaving on the planet, how we're getting along with planet, how the planet is doing. And it's largely doing well or not so well based on how well we're behaving. No surprise to you, Erika, we're not behaving that well, are we?
Erika Arias 3:59
Not at all.
Dave Gardner 4:01
And in fact, the headline from this is Vertebrate Species Populations Have Declined by 68% Since 1970.
Erika Arias 4:11
Yeah, I didn't get to read the full report, Dave, it was about eighty-something pages, but it was, you know, I read enough because I was I was really hopeful that they would eventually stop tiptoeing around the issue of population, they would actually start giving it the recognition that it deserves. There were certain parts of the report where they spoke a little bit about COVID, and climate change, and all of these issues that we're seeing today. So I thought, okay, this would be the perfect opportunity to speak a little bit about population or about actual solutions that we have to solve these problems. And they did not go there, at all. Not even close.
Dave Gardner 4:48
Yeah, and you know, my suspicion is that as the case with most environmental NGOs is they tiptoe around the human population issue. They might mention that with human population numbers where they are and growing as expected, there's a lot of pressure on our ecosystems - here is the report card, here are the problems - but rarely do they come back and return to human population numbers when they're talking about solutions. And, you know, we're not suggesting that you can ignore all the other solutions if you just get a handle on our numbers. Getting a handle on our numbers isn't going to be sufficient to get us back into sustainable balance with nature. But if we don't get a handle on our numbers, we're never going to get back into sustainable balance. And they'll, all of those other efforts will be for not. They will be, you know, one step ahead and two steps back.
Erika Arias 5:40
Right on the dot, yeah.
Dave Gardner 5:42
Link in the show notes to news reports about this and the report itself. And also, we'll include a link in the show notes to a really excellent response that was penned by Robin Menard, the Director of the UK-based Population Matters. Really an excellent response. And I just want to share with you one thing he pointed out was that the Living Planet Report neglects to note that the population of one vertebrate species, us, has doubled over that same period that we lost 68% of other vertebrates species. The topic of doing something about human population numbers is just avoided. And I'm not quoting Robin anymore, I just want to editorialize briefly and say, you know, we don't have to do anything dramatic, other than stop tiptoeing around the subject. The solutions, the solutions are ethical, voluntary, humanitarian - we're already demonstrating them, we just need to get over our fear of them, celebrate them, celebrate them a little bit.
Erika Arias 6:39
Right. They just need to do their job and educate the public about the reality of the situation. I mean, there wasn't even any mentioning about, you know, choosing smaller families, or even liberating women all around the world to choose the size of their family, like to choose the number of children they want. So how do you do that? Well, contraception. In this episode, we talk all about that. And World Contraception Day is coming up and it's a really important day, and there was no mentioning of that. It just assumes that population is just going to keep growing and that there's nothing that we can do about it. But that's just not true.
Dave Gardner 7:14
Brilliant segue to our guests, Erika. Well done. So let's get on with it.
Erika Arias 7:19
Let's get on with it. In honor of World Contraception Day 2020, I'm really excited to introduce two experts from UC Berkeley who are especially knowledgeable about reproductive health and why this day is especially important. Here today with us are Dr. David Malcolm Potts, who is a human reproductive scientist and Professor of Public Health at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Potts completed his medical degree and his PhD in embryology at the University of Cambridge and is the founding director of the Bixby Center for Population Health and Sustainability at the School of Public Health. For over a decade, while he was the first Medical Director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, he introduced family planning methods into scores of developing countries. As CEO of The Family Health International, he launched the first large-scale studies of maternal mortality, which helps start the Worldwide Safe Motherhood Initiative. He has published ten books and over three hundred and fifty scientific papers and articles. His books include Abortion, Textbook of Contraceptive Practice, Queen Victoria's Gene, Ever Since Adam and Eve: The Evolution of Human Sexuality, and Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World. His current efforts focus on the OASIS which stands for Organizing to Advance Solutions in the Sahel Initiative, which is a global multidisciplinary partnership working on solutions to the increasingly complex problems in global health and development in Sahel. Alisha Graves is also here with us today, and she is the co-founder of the OASIS Initiative. Alisha completed her master's in public health with an emphasis on international maternal and child health at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health in 2006. Alisha worked for six years as the Director for Venture Strategies for Health and Development to improve access to misoprostol, a generic essential medicine. In this role, she worked on policy initiatives, drug registration, and operations research in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.
Dave Gardner 9:31
Wow, that's a mouthful. Thanks for joining us.
Erika Arias 9:35
Welcome, everybody. Thank you.
Dave Gardner 9:37
Ordinarily, I would tell Erika, you've got to shorten that introduction. But we're just talking to two very, very impressive people who have phenomenal knowledge. So So I wanted everybody to know about the, certainly the long and storied career of Malcolm Potts and really glad to get a chance to get to meet you, Alisha.
Erika Arias 9:55
I mean, the focus of our episode today will be to hear a little bit more from the experts. Malcolm and Alisha, two really prominent speakers about reproductive health and making sure that women have access to contraception all around the world. But World Contraception Day is really important. And I want to go ahead and just say that this is a day that launched in 2007, and has since fallen on September 26th every year. The purpose of this day is just to improve awareness of contraception and to enable young people all around the world to make informed choices about their sexual and reproductive health. And the annual worldwide campaign centers around a vision where every pregnancy is wanted. And this is an idea that we talk a lot about here on the Overpopulation Podcast. And it's it's just really important that we say that and we acknowledge that. You can find out more about all of this stuff at their website, which is www.your-life.com. That's your dash life.com. You will find a wealth of information about STI prevention and birth control options available. More than just condoms out there. It is 2020, so really exciting stuff. We will provide links at our show notes for you to find out more about that. So without further ado, Malcolm and Alisha. I guess, do you guys have anything to kind of say about World Contraception Day before we kind of jump into main topics?
Dr. Malcolm Potts 11:20
I'm a gynecologist. My paternal grandmother died in childbirth. And that's one of the most horrible things that can possibly happen. Not only is the woman dead, but existing children suffer. And so I'm very concerned about how to stop maternal deaths. And one of the most powerful methods is by making family planning available. We did a study where we compared maternal deaths in Sweden, in 1900 and in the year 2000. And in 1900, if they had obstetric things, if they had the family planning of today, then they would have had 50% fewer deaths. So as a gynecologist, I have to recognize that the wonderful reduction in maternal deaths during the twentieth century is half due to clever gynecologists like me, and half due to giving women choices so that they do not have children when it's very young or very old, or if they have some other risk factor. So family planning saves lives. It also saves infants lives. If you space your children more than three or four years apart, they're more likely to survive. So family planning prevents literally many millions of infant deaths every year. The default position for any normal, loving, human, heterosexual couple is about ten children unless they have a way to separate sex from childbirth. Queen Victoria was the richest woman in the world. She was very well educated. But she and Albert had no way to separate sex from childbirth. So she ended up having ten children. She hated being pregnant, but she couldn't stop it. So making family planning accessible to people is the key to giving women the freedom to control their own bodies. When you're a slave, you cannot make decisions about your body. If you're a woman, and you don't have access to family planning, you cannot make decisions about when to have children. You are a slave. And that's something we want to change. So family planning is essential, highly cost effective, and it's not telling women what to do. It's giving them what they want.
Dave Gardner 13:27
Now, Malcolm, you've had to be a defender of that for decades, haven't you? Does it confound you that you have to work so hard to defend that?
Dr. Malcolm Potts 13:36
Yes, I think many societies, including United States to some extent, have a strong patriarchal tradition. Men are always trying to control women's reproductive lives, and women are trying to escape that control. Basically, that is the history of family planning over the last four thousand years. In fact, four thousand years ago, there was an oral contraceptive called silphium. It was a plant that seems to have been effective when used as a medicine. It's mentioned by Hippocrates and various other people. And it was so successful, it was harvested to extinction. So when we had a good contraceptive, we destroyed it. Now we have a good choice. I mean, condoms are a good idea if it's a new sexual relationship. If you're a woman, you don't want to get a sexually transmitted disease and become infertile. The pill is an excellent choice and I will come back to that, but hormone releasing contraceptives are reversible and very effective. So the modern woman spends about ten years or more trying not to get pregnant, then she on average has about two children in about five years, and she'll spent another ten years trying not to get pregnant again before the menopause. So women spend most of their adult life trying not to get pregnant. So making contraception accessible, is absolutely vital to the health and welfare and happiness of men as well as women across this country and across the planet.
Dave Gardner 15:02
So men spend most of their time trying to have sex and the women spend most of their time trying not to get pregnant.
Alisha Graves 15:08
Trying to separate sex from getting pregnant. And I would just add, Malcolm, when you say modern women, I think you're referring to women in parts of the world where women have equal choice, where women have aspirations to work outside the home, where women are equally educated and can have access to contraception. And that is, it's wild to think about the decades that we spend trying to separate sex from pregnancy and childbearing. And the very short window of time where, you know, women in let's say, most of North America and Western Europe and some other parts of the world are, you know, on average, having having the two children that they want.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 15:48
Startling factors are following. I was lucky enough to know Gregory Pincus, who invented the pill. When the pill was invented in Boston, in the 1950s and sixties, it was illegal to use contraceptives in Massachusetts. They had to do their first studies in Puerto Rico. So this really tells you something. It was illegal to use a contraceptive in the very state that invented oral contraceptives.
Dave Gardner 16:15
Wow.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 16:15
That was changed by the Griswald opinion of the Supreme Court in 1965. But until 1965, many, many societies, many states made contraception illegal.
Alisha Graves 16:27
I never thought about the fact that my parents were married in in Fall River, Massachusetts, in the mid-sixties. And I wonder if my mom was using contraception illegally, because she didn't have my older brother until a few years after their marriage. But I have to look into the timeline.
Dave Gardner 16:43
It's hard to believe that it's, you don't have to go that far back in history to reach the dark ages of good reproductive rights and reproductive health for women.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 16:51
Because the drive to decide their own pattern of childbearing is so strong, even when family planning is illegal, or abortion is illegal, people still break the law, but often they suffer, they have to be exploited or get fined or go to prison or suffer bad side effects like women who have unsafe abortions.
Erika Arias 17:11
Right. And, you know, next to what could be a form of enslavement for the rest of their lives, that might be the risk that they're willing to take, unfortunately, and it's it's putting themselves at risk, it's putting that prospective child at risk. Yeah, it's-
Alisha Graves 17:26
Well, I-
Erika Arias 17:27
I love that you compared it to slavery. It is, it is, in fact, a form of slavery.
Alisha Graves 17:32
I know that I-
Dr. Malcolm Potts 17:33
In my experience-
Alisha Graves 17:34
Go ahead, Malcolm.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 17:36
My experience in London when abortion was illegal and I worked in a hospital, was that once a woman has decided to end that pregnancy, nothing will stop her. Not the price, not the fear, not the exploitation. I did a study in Ethiopia. One of the things we asked women who had an unsafe abortion, did they have to give sex to the abortionist as well as pay money, and about 10% did. Because many abortionists are men. And so giving sex to the man is part of your payment. And it's just a sort of viscerally disturbing fact about how women are exploited and how much they suffer when contraception and safe abortion are illegal.
Alisha Graves 18:21
Sub-Saharan Africa is the part of the world that has the highest number of abortion-related deaths. And fortunately, that is falling. But as of a few years back, it was about 9% of maternal deaths due to unsafe abortion, that's about sixteen thousand deaths of women in the prime of their lives per year. And we know that almost all of those are avoidable because abortions procedure, so I think it's important to keep that in mind.
Erika Arias 18:49
Absolutely. I'm going to kind of jump forward a little bit. The Bixby Center, I want to I want to say for any of our listeners who aren't familiar with the Bixby Center, where Malcolm and Alisha both work and work with students, it really stands out. And there are a number of Bixby Centers. One in UCLA, there's one at UCSD, but the Bixby Center at Berkeley is the only one, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is the only one that directly speaks about population and sustainability. So why reproductive health access is important on a global scale. Why does that matter? And it says, their mission statement, I'll read it. The Bixby Center for Population Health and Sustainability is dedicated to efforts to achieve slower population growth, improve maternal health, and address the unmet need for family planning within a human rights framework. The Bixby Center also seeks to improve the health outcomes of the world's poorest and most vulnerable women and their families. Meeting this need will make possible a healthier, more prosperous, ecologically sustainable, and less divided world. That's just core right there. I mean, we talk about that here on this podcast. And when I first stumbled upon the Bixby Center at UC Berkeley, I reached out to Malcolm, maybe about a year ago, just really, you know, fangirling and saying, "Oh my goodness, I love that a center like this exists," because it's just it's very rare to see something like this in academia where you have reproductive health advocacy and sustainable population and environmental advocates work together for the same mission. And they might be focusing on different projects, but the main goal is really just to ensure a healthy and happy future for women, children - whether they're alive today, or whether they will be alive in generations to come. So it's all about everybody's health and wellness. And we talk a lot about that here. So I just wanted to make a side note about that.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 20:44
Erika, in fairness to UCSF, Jos fidelity is maybe USAID is also a leader in family planning and UCSF I think, has an excellent record in trying to make family planning accessible.
Erika Arias 20:55
Right, right. But do they directly speak about population sustainability?
Alisha Graves 20:59
Yeah, I think Malcolm and the current chair of the Bixby Center, Dr. Dola Prata, and Malcolm's wife and my former boss, Martha Campbell, have gone a long way to promote the idea that it is it's not only acceptable, it's necessary to both be concerned about sexual reproductive rights and population. And Martha had a great the population factor that we have to keep population in mind as we think about all of the rights and all of the, for example, sustainable development goals. We want to see did achieved around the world. And in fact, if we don't think about population, in very rapidly growing parts of the world, it's going to be impossible to secure individual reproductive rights and health. Because take the context of Nigeria, for example, which is growing at 3.9% a year. Early, huge deficiencies in health, huge deficiencies in education. It's impossible to imagine me and for me, I've tried to think about programs where how these can both close that gap, and keep up with this pace of population growth, and ensure that every woman in these countries have quality education, have access to health services, and, you know, reproductive health and rights guaranteed. You can't only think about the individual and of course, you can't only think about the population context - it's necessary to think about both.
Dave Gardner 22:24
I'm so glad you said that. And you have, you know, why is this even noteworthy? It's noteworthy because there's been so much pressure for many, many years to be covert about the population number aspect of family planning, right?
Dr. Malcolm Potts 22:40
Yeah. So my motto has always been family planning is listening to what people want, not telling them what to do. There are approximately eighty million more births and deaths since the last population day a year ago. And there are also approximately eighty million unintended pregnancies in the world every year. That's what surveys suggest. So really, family planning ought to be a breeze because, you know, we could manage the world's population growth tomorrow if we can make things reasonably accessible. And currently, only 1% of foreign aid goes to family planning. It's never been more than that. And a great deal was achieved in that way. I mean, countries like South Korea, Thailand, reasonably economically successful and reasonably sort of semi-democratic at the present moment. And they wouldn't have gotten there if they hadn't been given access to family planning in the 1960s and seventies. And so if we could double the money flowing to family planning from 1% of foreign aid to 2%, I'm absolutely convinced, based on fifty years experience, that we would have a significant slowing of population growth, and perhaps, you know, have six billion people on the planet by the year 2100 Instead of nine to ten billion. So a small leverage, because it's something that people want.
Dave Gardner 24:02
And wouldn't that reduce the number of abortions at the same time?

Dr. Malcolm Potts 24:05
It would, yes yes. I mean, the best way to reduce abortions is A to make it legal, because illegal abortion is tempting your contraception afterwards. Whenever I've done an abortion, I've always said to the woman, you know, "Can I help you with contraception?" Usually, they say yes. So that makes a difference to the number that recurs. So those countries that make abortion legal, like Great Britain or South Korea, have fewer abortions than those that make it illegal.
Erika Arias 24:34
On unintended pregnancy. Malcolm or Alisha, or both of you, would you say most people are familiar with Lark options, or are we still really relying strongly on the pill and condoms?
Dr. Malcolm Potts 24:47
I think, first of all, there's a lot of misinformation about contraception, particularly about the pill. And everybody would benefit if there was more open, accurate information on all methods of contraception. And that need is exactly what you're doing this podcast. It needs something that we do in school that we do when we educate people, we need to give people easy access to information, we need to advertise things. And we need a sense of humor. And condoms, one of the oldest, well, coitus interruptus, which owner man practiced in the Old Testament and was killed by God for doing that, is the oldest method we offered. Condoms go back to the sixteenth century. But you need a sense of humor. So I once owned, proudly owned, the world's largest condom. It was thirty-four feet across, it was a seventy-seven thousand cubic foot hot air balloon. It was yellow, nipple-ended. And it was the only condom you needed air traffic control to get it up. And the only condom that could carry two people.
Dave Gardner 25:50
Well, Malcolm, I'm pretty impressed that you needed a condom thirty-four feet.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 25:55
Even the threat of flying it-
Dave Gardner 25:57
You've got bragging rights there.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 25:58
North Carolina got a lot of, a lot of that.
Alisha Graves 26:02
That's great.
Dave Gardner 26:03
And what were you doing with that?
Dr. Malcolm Potts 26:05
The certificate of latex lifetime runs out in condoms. Beware of that. Condoms have quite a short shelf life for a high quality latex and you always want to look at the date when you do it.
Dave Gardner 26:17
Well, you know, we really wanted to pick your brains about these other forms of contraception besides the condom, because we have these conversations, we're in the middle of, you know, a billboard campaign in Vancouver that we'll talk about a little bit at the end of this podcast. And we needed, you know, some kind of a visual symbol of family planning. And it seemed like a condom was a, you know, really quickly, universally understood symbol. And yet, you know, Erika wisely said, Dave, we can't do that. Because you know how many twenty-two year old guys even want to use a condom, that's low on their priority list. And here we are, people in the overdeveloped world, people who are empowered and educated. Apparently, many of them really don't fully understand all the other options available to them.
Erika Arias 27:07
Yeah, I mean, I'm sorry, I'll just quickly say to Dave and Malcolm and Alisha, that that is also grounded by a lot of research on, like sexuality research on motivations, and people making decisions prior to engaging in sexual inter- gosh, I guess, before having sex. They, a lot of people don't use condoms and there are a lot of different factors, like familiarity. If you are familiar with your partner, or even a new partner, who you, you know, feel a sense of safety, we're really bad at making decisions, especially sexual decisions. And so, you know, if we feel even just the slightest bit of safe around somebody, the research kind of tells us, we're not going to use a condom. So that was my concern with using something that a lot of people are not really that motivated to use, even though they know the benefits of using condoms.
Dave Gardner 27:57
Yeah. And there's still a lot of importance there in terms of preventing sexually transmitted diseases that some of the other contraceptive options don't do. But, Alisha, I hope that you have some words of wisdom for us.
Alisha Graves 28:08
I wanted to say I see both of your points. I mean, I think the great thing about the condom is it's in the shape of a penis. And so it will get a lot more attention than for example, an IUD, which people will have no idea what that looks like, even people who may have one inserted.
Dave Gardner 28:20
Yeah.
Alisha Graves 28:20
But I think, Erika, to your original question about how knowledgeable people are about these long-acting, reversible contraception, I think in parts of the world where people have good health services, where they have counseling, where there's comprehensive sex education taught at school, and that's not, there are a lot of places in the US where that's not currently happening. But anyhow, where there's good counseling and family planning methods, I think that those are included. And I think in parts of the world where people don't have this, the counseling and correct information, this is, there's still a lot of misinformation about the long-acting methods, the hormonal methods, and, and a lot of fear of use, because fear is often rooted in, you know, not understanding something and how something works. There's great news, like in rural Niger where people have, you know, some of the, where women have some of the least decision-making power in our world, you know, they piloted the injectable contraceptive, many people know it as Depo Provera, and where they piloted it, they had a kind of demand generating activity. They did a radio show to tell women about this, this new method that was available, how they could get it, where, and when. And 70% of the women who showed up for it were first time users of modern contraception. So that shows that there's the latent demand that's that's not currently being met, and we need to do more to meet it, and we especially need to do more to make the long-acting, reversible contraceptives available in parts of the world where women could really benefit from a discreet and long-acting method.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 29:49
Some years ago, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists did a study of women's knowledge of the pill, and one question was, is taking the pill more or less dangerous than having a baby, and about a third of the women said that it was. Second question was, does it kill, give you cancer? And about half the women said it did. And I then repeated that study in twelve other countries and got very much the same results. And that really is tragic, because the pill is the only thing that I can prescribe as a doctor which significantly reduces the lifetime risk of several cancers, ovarian and uterine cancer, melanomas, bowel cancer. So we need to sort of understand the pill first of all, and the framework of the way that the modern woman is burdened with many risks of reproduction, which our ancestors didn't have. In a hunter-gatherer society, the mean age of puberty is eighteen years, and that's the mean age. So some girls don't ovulate until they're twenty-one, they could have gone to university, but they're living in the highlands of New Guinea so they can't do that. So and then we originally spaced our babies by intensive breastfeeding in women that were not very well fed and probably doing a lot of exercise. And in that framework, intensive breastfeeding is a very effective contraception, it suppresses ovulation. So basically, oral contraceptives simply imitate breastfeeding and exactly the same hormone profile to prevent ovulation. So nothing could be more natural. And it's, our ancestors may have had sixty or less fewer menses in a lifetime. The modern woman can have three hundred or more in a lifetime. That is highly unnatural. It's also dangerous. The more frequently you shed the uterine epithelium, and then you have multiplied the cells, multiplied that replace it, multiplying cells always have a risk of developing a mutation that's going to give you cancer. So that's why the pill, using the pill, significantly reduces uterine cancer. So we need to see this in a broader context and how, particularly, how oral contraceptives sort of recreate the world in which we evolved. And so a million women in the United States use the pill for non-contraceptive benefits. And my vision is that in coming years, more and more women will take the pill simply to eliminate menstrual periods. Why have these tiresome things you don't need to? Just throw away the reminder tablets and continue taking the pill? I did the world's first study on that about twenty years ago, and half the women in the studies said, "This is the most fantastic thing. Why didn't you do it earlier?" And the other half said, "We feel it's unnatural not to bleed twenty-eight days." We always give women choices. But I think in future, more and more women will control this tiresome, often painful, messy process of menstruation, which only really evolved because it was a pretty rare event. So that I think it's an interesting sort of perspective on the pill.
Erika Arias 32:55
Yeah, the first time I heard about this idea was in a cultural anthropology course, one of my professors shared this idea. And the number of hands that went up after was just everybody wanted to talk about that. Because nobody, I mean, we are brought up to think we're supposed to have our periods. Like that is our entrance into womanhood and every month is just a reminder of that. And I mean, this, this was just an idea that we were all really obsessed with.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 33:24
Reduce misinformation and hundreds of menstrual cycles is unnatural and dangerous. So having a few menstrual cycles is natural. There are a few of the other large primates, the orangutans and gorillas also menstruate, and there's also a species of bats that menstruates. But menstruation really is a way, when pregnancy does not occur, speeding up the next possible pregnancy. And that's what Charles Darwin or God intended for, you know, evolution of human sexuality that you should be able to get pregnant quite quickly. And that's why it's quicker to shed the tissue you don't use than to reabsorb it as most other animals do.
Alisha Graves 34:03
I got an IUD after my second and final child, and that was eight years ago, and I haven't had a period since, and I don't miss it at all.
Erika Arias 34:03
Same here, girl. Had three IUDs, no period. I don't remember what it's like to have a period.
Alisha Graves 34:17
I know I'm very impatient with my friends who complain about theirs now, because I don't, I'm lacking the empathy.
Erika Arias 34:23
I was actually going to get my tubal ligation this year before COVID. And my doctor actually asked me, "Well, are you sure? Don't you like not having a period? Because if you get this done, you're gonna have a period again," and I had to really think about that. Like, I don't know.
Dave Gardner 34:39
Well, and I'm going to ask as a, one of the men, you know, I'm going to separate myself from Malcolm because wow, what a fountain of knowledge you are. Me, I'm going to plead ignorance here a little bit. So the dumb question I want to ask is, I thought that there were some negative side effects of the pill that made it kind of less desirable for at least some significant portion of women out there.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 35:01
No, when the pill was first introduced, it was a high dose. And there was some deaths from cardiovascular disease. And people were very afraid of it. And I remember the women I was giving it to and I worked out, I said, "Look, the pill has risks, it's equivalent to smoking one third of the cigarette a day," then women would relax and take it. We don't even have that risk today. Unless you're over thirty-five and smoke, the pill basically is very, not only safe, but you live longer. The British had a study, I remember it starting, of twenty-seven thousand women using the pill and set twenty-seven thousand matched controls with the same history, the same pattern of childbearing the same socio-economic backgrounds. And those people were studied for thirty-nine years. And the women taking the pill lived longer than the women not taking the pill, because of this reduction ovarian/uterine cancer, melanomas, bowel cancer, all nasty cancers. And also for some, reduction in heart disease over a lifetime, a slight jump in heart disease when you're taking the pill and then a longtime lifetime reduction. So the pill really is taking us back to the world in which women evolved, in which our pattern of childbearing evolved, with a late puberty and probably several years between each pregnancy brought about by intensive breastfeeding in basically hungry women that are exercising a lot when ovulation is right. So the pill is, there could not be anything more natural than the pill. And a third of teenagers are taking the pill for non-conceptual reasons because it gives then lighter, less painful, more regular periods. So this way in which the pill can eliminate periods, it's I think, something that women need to know about as perfectly safe. In fact, they probably are better off if they do suppress periods for many intervals. So we got to see where we came from in evolution. And the modern woman is not using her reproductive system in the way that God or Charles Darwin intended. You're not having early puberty and you're having more periods.
Alisha Graves 37:21
For the atheist and feminists listening, I'd say another way to phrase what Malcolm just said is that when you say modern women aren't using our periods the way that God or Charles Darwin intended, I think you mean that something has gone a little bit off in terms of the the frequency and then the total number of years that women have periods for, and then it's not really in line with what's best for our bodies. I hear what you're saying, Malcolm, I liked the way you said it, but I think some women might have a knee jerk reaction to no man's gonna tell me how I'm gonna have my period. And I don't believe in God.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 37:54
So twelve years ago, I published a scientific paper protecting population growth in the Sahel. The Sahel is the Arabic word for shore. This is the shores of the Sahara Desert. Basically, we're focused on the Francophone countries of Africa like Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, etc. And it was going to be the most rapid population growth in the history of humankind. And universities are interested in places because there was the meeting, I've forgotten the topic. I just happen to sit next to somebody from the laboratory who was a climatologist, and I was just chatting away. And he said, "Well, that's interesting." And he has a supercomputer. And he went away and ran the supercomputer. And he just fell off his chair, because he found that Sahel has the most rapid climate change in the world. So when you put the most rapid population growth in the world, with the most rapid climate change, you will have a sort of existential challenge. And that is what Alisha and I, and a growing number of people and our wonderful colleagues in Sahel itself have been focusing on. Because now is the time to act. Now is the time to give women and men the choices that they need. And as Alisha was saying, if you give, offer them something that they prefer, they will take it. And we've been also striving with considerable success, to keep girls in secondary education. And in about three thousand girls, we've raised the age of marriage from 14.9, that was the average age, which means that twelve-year-old brides to seventeen and a half, and for adolescent woman that's a big stride. So, you know, we know what to do. We have to have the funds and the political will to do it.
Alisha Graves 39:38
I would add to that, Malcolm, Niger is really at the heart of the Sahel, and it's just north of Nigeria, for listeners. It's the country with the fastest growing population in the world, it's one of the poorest countries in the world, and it has been and will continue to be unduly affected by climate change with the air temperatures can increase by two to three degrees Celsius, that's about three and a half to five and a half degrees Fahrenheit by middle of the century. Most of the people are smallholder farmers or pastoralists that depend on the land that's being compromised both because of population pressures and because of climate change. But what I want to say is this. I gave the example earlier about this latent demand for modern contraception. But it's also important to acknowledge that there's really a desire for large families. And in fact, women report wanting ten children, and they currently have about seven and a half. So it has to be acknowledged. And it's not that it can't be that there are women who want large families, and there are women who want to space or limit their childbearing in the same country, of course. But I think a big part of the picture in a lot of Sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the world where women don't have the real decision-making power over their lives, and girls don't have access to education, is that question of education is key. And when girls aren't staying in school, they're often married early, they go into a marriage with very little power in the family dynamic. And I think that the more we can do in those parts of the world to educate girls, the more it's going to contribute to demand generation. Because when women aspire to work outside the house, when they have dreams, they're more likely to want to use family planning, they have better ability to access family planning, understand it, and importantly, to negotiate with their partners and their families. So want to mention that that's an important part of what we're trying to do is scale up this special approach to keeping girls in school that's called Safe Spaces For Girls. Northern Nigeria, Niger, and Chad are the countries with the earliest age of marriage. And in the part of northern Nigeria, where we've been working called Kaduna State, for the girls participating in the Safe Space program, we saw an increase in the age of marriage from 14.9 to 17.5 years. And that two and a half years period is critical for the development of a girl's body, but also for a chance for her to get more out of school, learn more about life, find her voice, etc. So that's impressive. And then the other point is that the the reason that there was that delay in marriage is because girls were staying in school. And the percent of girls who completed secondary school amongst are increased from about 4% to over 80% in the communities where we are offering Safe Space programming.
Dave Gardner 39:51
How's that program being funded?
Alisha Graves 42:25
Good question, Dave. It's currently being funded from donations from individuals and from foundations. And we are seeing more and more that big donors like government donors, overseas aid, World Bank, etc., are investing in this type of program. But my back of the envelope calculation is there are about five million early adolescent girls in the Hausa ethnic group in northern Nigeria and Niger who would benefit from this kind of programming and we're currently only able to reach about fifty thousand. We're mapping out a plan to scale up, and I think it needs to happen as quickly as and as well as possible.
Dave Gardner 43:01
So it's easy for our listeners who are inspired to contribute to the funding of this?
Alisha Graves 43:07
It certainly is. If you go to venturestrategies.org, you can find a link to donate. And you can specify that it's for Girls Safe Space Programs.
Erika Arias 43:16
We'll add a link in the show notes for anybody who wants to contribute and help be a part of a really cool project.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 43:23
No, no, it's been thrilling to see the success in that field. But access itself does have an impact. And I've worked a lot in Thailand and South Korea and Bangladesh. When I started, the average total fertility rate was six, not very far off Niger. And nobody I met said, "I want to have two children." But someone said, "Oh, well, perhaps I'll have five." And after a couple of years, some of them said, "Well, my neighbor's got five, perhaps I'll have four." And so accessibility and as women and men understood that they control their fertility sort of fed back into itself and accelerated the fertility decline, but it began with the access of people talking about it. And you may or may not wish to use this, but let me tell you a perfectly true story about that, in this case about male sterilization, vasectomy. Vasectomies are a very simple five minute operation, and an Indian friend of mine who was the health officer for Mumbai, this huge city with enormous slums, and he was trying to make vasectomy available. And he had a little exhibition and it had a panel for the pill, for an IUD, for vasectomy, and behind the vasectomy panel, there was a man who had a vasectomy, and if somebody seemed interested, he would say, "Would you like this operation?" And a lot of men put their names or their thumbprints on a list. And they were told to come to the hospital, you know, on Tuesday evening at five o'clock, and very few of the people who put their name down came. So one day, Dr. Pie went to the railway station, and saw a man put his thumbprint and talk to the person promoting vasectomy, and he went up to him and said, "You know, so you're going to have a vasectomy?" And the man said, "I have five children. I live on the pavement, don't ask me silly questions. I don't want anymore." So Dr. Pine said, "Are you going to come to the hospital at five o'clock on Tuesday?" And the man said, "No." And pi shook him. He said, "How can you be so stupid?" And he said, "In India, you only go to hospital to die. If this operation's safe, why do I have to go to a hospital?" For Dr. pi, this was his sort of, you know, his switching point. He realized that it's not fact, it's perception. So very impulsively he said, "If I did the operation here on platform nine, would you have it?" The man said, "Of course." So doctor always had a bottle of whiskey, which was illegal in my roster. And he went to the stationmaster. And next morning, he had a little table, he had a little tent, he had a little thing of oil to sterilize instruments in. And in one month, he had done more operations on the railway station than in all the hospitals of Bombay in the previous year.
Dave Gardner 43:48
Wow.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 43:53
And I know that's true, because that's where I learned to do vasectomies - on platform nine of the busiest railway station in the world, which you can find if you want to put a picture on it, Victoria Station. It really is the busiest thing in the world.
Dave Gardner 46:18
Great story, great story.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 46:19
Dirty platforms. And every week, several people fall off the trains. I mean, there are as many outside as there are inside. And it's just an extraordinary place to do operations. And very safe. I mean, there were no antibiotic resistant bacteria, it might be a bit of coal dust, but that's okay. Catastrophic thing is going to happen - I mean a child marriage, which I've seen as an obstetrician, is that a, you know, a twelve or fourteen-year-old girl is not physically fully grown. And so when it comes to delivery, they can't push the baby through the still sort of incomplete a birth canal, and the head of the baby gets trapped in the vagina. And it's there for so many hours that two things happen. One, it begins to sort of rot and and bones collapsed and the dead infant is discharged. But it's been there for so long, that it has damaged the vaginal walls. And then the woman has a fistula that leads into the bladder, or the rectum or both. And for the rest of her life, she will drip urine of feces. Her husband will throw her out. Nobody wants to be near her. There are thousands of women and there are now very good hospitals, which I know about, which can repair those damage, but that's just something absolutely horrible that's still happening. And it's one of the many reasons for being very enthusiastic for raising the age of marriage in adolescent women.
Dave Gardner 47:43
Wow.
Erika Arias 47:44
I'm sorry, I'm like, I'm speechless. I really do, I'm enjoying listening to you both share about this.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 47:49
Okay. One of the things that never ceases to impress me is the courage and inspiration of people in very difficult circumstances. In Addis Ababa is a very large fistula hospital, and one of the women had developed a fistula, so he had to spend several years to save one of the bus that would bring her to Addis Ababa. And when she had the fistula repaired, her husband had thrown her out, she couldn't afford to go anywhere else. So she remained in the hospital, and she's got cleaned the floors and things like that. Then she began to wash the instruments after the surgery. So before they went in the sterilizer, and then one day that the other nurse was not there. So she went into the operating theatre and helped hold the instruments. And now she does these operations, which I wouldn't like to do them because each one is different - very, very challenging. So I think it's absolutely fascinating to see this woman who had suffered so much now helped doing the difficult but very necessary surgery to restore these other women to their natural lives. And it is so uplifting to have the privilege of meeting such people that have overcome such terrible suffering.
Erika Arias 49:03
Yeah, was this woman able to get the surgery, too?
Dr. Malcolm Potts 49:06
Yes, so she, the British Royal Courts of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that I belong to actually made her an honorary member. I mean, here was somebody doing very difficult surgery with no training as a doctor. She, you know, she wouldn't know how to treat somebody's ears or gallbladder. But she's very, very good at doing what's called operation. And she will spend the rest of her life there and she's just a joy. She's called Amiti, and like many of these women, she's about five foot one tall. They're often very short women, which is why they have these problems in delivering their babies. But it's a privilege to have known her or to know her.
Dave Gardner 49:41
So we've been on for about an hour, so we probably should think about what is left that we absolutely must talk about before we wrap up.
Erika Arias 49:48
Oh, Malcolm, you said you were gonna start a podcast at one point. I don't know if you actually did or if you want to share about that. But I think that's pretty cool.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 49:56
To be transparent, you know, I'm a founder of the Cadence Health, and our mission is to take the pill off prescription, which there's good scientific evidence, the American College of Obstetricians says this is what you want to do. And the only reason the pill remains on prescription is a big pharma makes more money from prescription and over the counter pills. So only little pharma, which is what we are, is ever going to do this. But you have to own a formulation which was our first barrier, but we now own a very well view is ill, and we know a lot about it. And we're probably about halfway and several million dollars expended to do the things that the Food and Drug Administration requires - perfectly reasonable for the safety of women. We have to show that the package we have designed that women will read it when they're in the pharmacy or the gas station or wherever they're buying it, and that those women who shouldn't take it, like women over thirty-five who smoke, will follow the instructions on the packet. But that, you know, there's twelve million women in this country that have no insurance. I know lots of professional people, and why waste time going to a doctor when you can buy this thing over the counter? So that's something that I'm interested in. In 1969, Buzz Aldrin had landed on the moon and the first thing he said was, "One small step for man, one giant step for mankind," and the Reader's Digest had to sign it saying that a decade and the one after Buzz Aldrin was by a man called Malcolm Potts who said, "All contraceptives should be in vending machines and cigarettes on prescription." I think that's true.
Alisha Graves 51:28
Malcolm, you may have mentioned your podcast to Erika because you have a great idea for a podcast or I guess a before-
Dr. Malcolm Potts 51:36
The Foundation for Universal Contraceptive Knowledge.
Alisha Graves 51:40
F-U-C-K.
Erika Arias 51:43
Yeah. Awesome! You are hilarious.
Dave Gardner 51:48
So you could probably get on Late Night with Stephen Colbert to talk about that I bet.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 51:54
Wall Street money and we had a little office outside the campus, and on the outside it said Foundation for Universal Contraceptive Knowledge. Nobody ever. But I think it might go viral. Do you think it would go viral if we call it that? Then I think that's what we should do, because it's also a good description of what we're doing.
Erika Arias 52:11
Yes.
Dave Gardner 52:12
Yeah, we're gonna have to put our thinking caps on, we'll promote it on here.
Erika Arias 52:16
That's awesome. You should!
Dr. Malcolm Potts 52:18
It's interesting, I mean sex is so powerful. You know, the word sort of only last a few hundred years. So when Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, he used the word swyved - swyved with the miller's wife, which was the word from swivel, really, it was just the dirty word at the time. *Beep* is the Norse word for push. So when the Vikings jumped into their boat, they said *beep* off the boat and they pushed. And then it's, you know, become dirty because it - I'm just curious how something that is so beautiful and so important for most of us is also a slur word. I mean, it's it's an odd thing, really, when you think about it.
Dave Gardner 52:53
Well, we obviously need to put together a comedy tour and have both you and Mechai Viravaidya doing stand up.
Alisha Graves 53:00
If anyone knows how to get Malcolm on Stephen Colbert, I will do everything I can to to push that effort.
Dave Gardner 53:05
Yeah, it would be awesome.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 53:06
In Sausalito, they have a National Condom Year, and they have the prize for the best condom couplet. And the one I remember is, use a condom, and you will learn no deposit, no return. So if we had a podcast, we could get other people's contraceptive couplets for pills, for IUDs - I'm sure people would come up with fun ideas. I mean, I think it's very important. These are slightly embarrassing, very sort of intimate things, and to make people smile is important and part of what we should be doing.
Alisha Graves 53:40
Yeah, I think that's key. I mean, I wrote a little kind of blog piece about population being sexy and serious. And I think, you know, anything to do - population is taboo because many people think that to talk about population implies coercion, which it does not necessarily.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 53:56
No.
Alisha Graves 53:56
And talking about sex is taboo because it's something private and something that makes most of us feel uncomfortable. But I think that we really have to push on these, push back on these, because it's important for for women's health, for baby's health, and for for global sustainability. So I applaud what you're doing. And this has been a pleasure.
Dave Gardner 54:16
I'd like to put a link in the show notes to that.
Alisha Graves 54:18
It's actually on our site, so I'll send the link here. And I hope you can also share Malcolm's pill amalgam - if you want to bring people to liberatethepill.com, this is a good opportunity.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 54:30
Yes. Okay. I think we re-writing companies website, we'll do that.
Dave Gardner 54:39
All right, and be sure to send us a photo of that thirty-four foot condom.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 54:42
Thirty-four feet across!
Dave Gardner 54:43
Oh my goodness!
Dr. Malcolm Potts 54:44
Seventy-six thousand cubic feet.
Dave Gardner 54:47
Needed a serious wide angle lens for that guy.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 54:50
This is a good example of sort of patriarchal society. Every year, there's a huge condom festival in Albuquerque. And it's a special class you know, for funny condoms. So India has a elephant condom, and the people wouldn't allow our condom. They said it was disgusting. But of course, people would fly hot air balloons, you know, liberal people, and they were furious and I have a little badge, we got much more publicity because we couldn't fly. I was on Richard Branson, he loves hot air balloons and I was telling him about my condom balloon and we got on very well about this.
Erika Arias 55:28
That's awesome.
Alisha Graves 55:30
I've seen your photo of the condom hot air balloon, but I just searched it, and you'll be surprised to know that since your endeavor, there are, there's a whole condom air show, including a giant condom with a rabbit on the side of it called Safe Sexy.
Erika Arias 55:46
Wow.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 55:47
That's wonderful. Okay, set an example and people follow it. That's great. One of the things we want is to be copied. We want more people who do it than we do it.
Dave Gardner 55:56
Well, Malcolm and Alisha, I always wanted to be a comedian. So thank you for actually, surprisingly, making the first comedy episode of the Overpopulation Podcast.
Alisha Graves 56:06
That's thanks to Malcolm. And this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for setting it up. I'm glad we overcame the technical difficulties. It's nice to know you both. And I look forward to hearing this. And I'll follow your podcast.
Dave Gardner 56:17
Malcolm, any last final thought or request?
Dr. Malcolm Potts 56:20
I don't think so. I mean, the pill is natural, safe and effective. Those are the three adjectives I give to it. And that applies also to condoms and intrauterine devices.
Dave Gardner 56:31
Well thanks for your lifetime of work.
Erika Arias 56:32
Thank you so much for taking the time., Malcolm and Alisha, this has been great.
Dr. Malcolm Potts 56:37
Thank you for this opportunity.
Dave Gardner 56:39
All right. Well, I think I'll declare this meeting adjourned.
Erika Arias 56:41
Happy World Contraception Day 2020.
Dave Gardner 56:44
All right. Before we let you go, I want to talk in a little bit more detail about the Vancouver Sustainable Population Campaign that is underway now. Launched in Vancouver on the 21st of September, our messages alerting people to the fact that we're in an overpopulation crisis and celebrating the trend that's already underway towards solving it, which is couples choosing smaller families. And I guess some individuals choosing smaller families as well. So I want to just say, if you're in Vancouver, Canada, hopefully you can't miss it. We're trying to make One Planet, One Child a household word. We're really trying to more rapidly move society to this one-child family norm. But if you're not in Vancouver, you can get the scoop at oneplanetonechild.org. We'll include that link in the show notes. We are trying to get photographs of the billboards and video of the billboards as quickly as we can so that we can have those up on the website. But depending on when you're hearing this, you may or may not be able to see those at that website.
Erika Arias 57:43
Also related to that, we have decided to have a little contest. So for any of our listeners who are artists, or maybe you're not so much of an artist, but you are enthusiastic about this billboard campaign, yes! We welcome all artists and aspiring artists to submit what they want to see on a billboard, whatever image or concept that you have, any messaging. We really want to try to engage in the public and try to get you guys all involved. Because this, as you know, is an effort that requires all of our attention and all of our expertise. And, you know, it's it's not a one man show. So we are looking for everybody to share part in this really exciting project with us. So if you have an idea, send it our way. If you don't exactly have an idea and want some help making that idea come alive, definitely send us an email, we're more than happy to speak with you about it, to share more information about what this contest involves. And you can find out more on our World Population Balance Facebook page for details about our contest, and also cash prizes.
Dave Gardner 58:51
I was hoping you were gonna mention that - cash, serious cash.
Erika Arias 58:55
Yep, how much? How much are we giving away, Dave?
Dave Gardner 58:58
Well, we're giving away hundreds and hundreds of dollars. I've forgotten what first prize is, something like what three hundred dollars or maybe more? I forget. You get a bonus if you submit an idea that we can actually, you know, actually put out there. We might get some really brilliant ideas that are worthy of cash prizes but for one reason or another, we can't put on a billboard. Bring 'em on. But we would really like to encourage you to give us an idea that we can really implement. So there is cash behind that, and and that reminds me that why are we doing this in Vancouver? Because an activist in Vancouver came up and said, "Hey, I love this billboard campaign, bring it to my town." And you can do the same thing. You can bring our billboard campaign to your town. Best place to do, you'll find links in the show notes and at oneplanetonechild.org. You know you're going to have to help us with the funding, but that's all. We do most of the hard work, we do most of the thinking, but we'd love to partner with you. So we want this program to expand and spread and we're really glad that it is. One other thing, Erika, I wanted to share was that if you - we're not big on just creating SWAG to, you know, litter the planet, but but we are, we have created t-shirts and coffee mugs and a couple of other things, some bumper stickers, and stickers you can put on your water bottle - not to litter the planet, but to help get the word out. This is a good reason to manufacture a product if it's going to help us change the world. So we'll put a link in the show notes that'll take you directly to the SWAG department so you can order your bumper sticker or a t-shirt or whatever, so you can do your part and help us spread the word. Lastly, I guess, if you're going to - if you have feedback on this episode, or you don't want to submit your billboard entry via Facebook, you can certainly email it to us: podcast@worldpopulationbalance.org. Well, that's it for this edition of the Overpopulation Podcast. Thank you Erika Arias, so much, for joining me on this episode and for inviting Malcolm and Alisha to join us. That was such an interesting conversation. And thank you for the vital work you're doing at World Population Balance. For those of you listening, visit worldpopulationbalance.org to learn more about how we can solve overpopulation. At the website, you can sign the Sustainable Population Pledge, you can listen to all our podcasts, get on our email list, become a supporting member, make a donation to support our vital work.
Erika Arias 1:01:21
You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. You can write to us because we want to hear from you and we often share your thoughts on the podcast. Please recommend this episode and any episode of the Overpopulation Podcast to others friends, family members, anybody who's curious about this subject, and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. It's free.
Dave Gardner 1:01:41
Alright, I'm Dave Gardner, reminding you we know how to solve overpopulation. What are we waiting for?