#178 – Emily Oster on what the evidence actually says about pregnancy and parenting

02/01/24 • 142 min

1 Listener

"I think at various times — before you have the kid, after you have the kid — it's useful to sit down and think about: What do I want the shape of this to look like? What time do I want to be spending? Which hours? How do I want the weekends to look? The things that are going to shape the way your day-to-day goes, and the time you spend with your kids, and what you're doing in that time with your kids, and all of those things: you have an opportunity to deliberately plan them. And you can then feel like, 'I've thought about this, and this is a life that I want. This is a life that we're trying to craft for our family, for our kids.' And that is distinct from thinking you're doing a good job in every moment — which you can't achieve. But you can achieve, 'I'm doing this the way that I think works for my family.'" — Emily Oster

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Emily Oster — economist at Brown University, host of the ParentData podcast, and the author of three hugely popular books that provide evidence-based insights into pregnancy and early childhood.

Links to learn more, summary, and full transcript.

They cover:

Common pregnancy myths and advice that Emily disagrees with — and why you should probably get a doula.
Whether it’s fine to continue with antidepressants and coffee during pregnancy.
What the data says — and doesn’t say — about outcomes from parenting decisions around breastfeeding, sleep training, childcare, and more.
Which factors really matter for kids to thrive — and why that means parents shouldn’t sweat the small stuff.
How to reduce parental guilt and anxiety with facts, and reject judgemental “Mommy Wars” attitudes when making decisions that are best for your family.
The effects of having kids on career ambitions, pay, and productivity — and how the effects are different for men and women.
Practical advice around managing the tradeoffs between career and family.
What to consider when deciding whether and when to have kids.
Relationship challenges after having kids, and the protective factors that help.
And plenty more.

Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
Audio Engineering Lead: Ben Cordell
Technical editing: Simon Monsour and Milo McGuire
Additional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa Rodriguez
Transcriptions: Katy Moore

Links to learn more, summary, and full transcript.

They cover:

Common pregnancy myths and advice that Emily disagrees with — and why you should probably get a doula.
Whether it’s fine to continue with antidepressants and coffee during pregnancy.
What the data says — and doesn’t say — about outcomes from parenting decisions around breastfeeding, sleep training, childcare, and more.
Which factors really matter for kids to thrive — and why that means parents shouldn’t sweat the small stuff.
How to reduce parental guilt and anxiety with facts, and reject judgemental “Mommy Wars” attitudes when making decisions that are best for your family.
The effects of having kids on career ambitions, pay, and productivity — and how the effects are different for men and women.
Practical advice around managing the tradeoffs between career and family.
What to consider when deciding whether and when to have kids.
Relationship challenges after having kids, and the protective factors that help.
And plenty more.

Previous Episode

#177 – Nathan Labenz on recent AI breakthroughs and navigating the growing rift between AI safety and accelerationist camps

Back in December we spoke with Nathan Labenz — AI entrepreneur and host of The Cognitive Revolution Podcast — about the speed of progress towards AGI and OpenAI's leadership drama, drawing on Nathan's alarming experience red-teaming an early version of GPT-4 and resulting conversations with OpenAI staff and board members.

Links to learn more, video, highlights, and full transcript.

Today we go deeper, diving into:

What AI now actually can and can’t do, across language and visual models, medicine, scientific research, self-driving cars, robotics, weapons — and what the next big breakthrough might be.
Why most people, including most listeners, probably don’t know and can’t keep up with the new capabilities and wild results coming out across so many AI applications — and what we should do about that.
How we need to learn to talk about AI more productively, particularly addressing the growing chasm between those concerned about AI risks and those who want to see progress accelerate, which may be counterproductive for everyone.
Where Nathan agrees with and departs from the views of ‘AI scaling accelerationists.’
The chances that anti-regulation rhetoric from some AI entrepreneurs backfires.
How governments could (and already do) abuse AI tools like facial recognition, and how militarisation of AI is progressing.
Preparing for coming societal impacts and potential disruption from AI.
Practical ways that curious listeners can try to stay abreast of everything that’s going on.
And plenty more.

Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
Audio Engineering Lead: Ben Cordell
Technical editing: Simon Monsour and Milo McGuire
Transcriptions: Katy Moore

Next Episode

#179 – Randy Nesse on why evolution left us so vulnerable to depression and anxiety

Mental health problems like depression and anxiety affect enormous numbers of people and severely interfere with their lives. By contrast, we don’t see similar levels of physical ill health in young people. At any point in time, something like 20% of young people are working through anxiety or depression that’s seriously interfering with their lives — but nowhere near 20% of people in their 20s have severe heart disease or cancer or a similar failure in a key organ of the body other than the brain.

From an evolutionary perspective, that’s to be expected, right? If your heart or lungs or legs or skin stop working properly while you’re a teenager, you’re less likely to reproduce, and the genes that cause that malfunction get weeded out of the gene pool.

So why is it that these evolutionary selective pressures seemingly fixed our bodies so that they work pretty smoothly for young people most of the time, but it feels like evolution fell asleep on the job when it comes to the brain? Why did evolution never get around to patching the most basic problems, like social anxiety, panic attacks, debilitating pessimism, or inappropriate mood swings? For that matter, why did evolution go out of its way to give us the capacity for low mood or chronic anxiety or extreme mood swings at all?

Today’s guest, Randy Nesse — a leader in the field of evolutionary psychiatry — wrote the book Good Reasons for Bad Feelings, in which he sets out to try to resolve this paradox.

Links to learn more, video, highlights, and full transcript.

In the interview, host Rob Wiblin and Randy discuss the key points of the book, as well as:

How the evolutionary psychiatry perspective can help people appreciate that their mental health problems are often the result of a useful and important system.
How evolutionary pressures and dynamics lead to a wide range of different personalities, behaviours, strategies, and tradeoffs.
The missing intellectual foundations of psychiatry, and how an evolutionary lens could revolutionise the field.
How working as both an academic and a practicing psychiatrist shaped Randy’s understanding of treating mental health problems.
The “smoke detector principle” of why we experience so many false alarms along with true threats.
The origins of morality and capacity for genuine love, and why Randy thinks it’s a mistake to try to explain these from a selfish gene perspective.
Evolutionary theories on why we age and die.
And much more.

Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
Audio Engineering Lead: Ben Cordell
Technical editing: Dominic Armstrong
Transcriptions: Katy Moore