Under strAIn: breaking the British state

Summary

Podcast Summary: Economist Podcasts – Under strAIn: breaking the British state

Date: August 10, 2026
Hosts: Rosie Blore, Jason Palmer
Episode Theme:
This episode explores three major topics:

1. The growing impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the British state’s bureaucracy and the evolving "arms race" between citizens and the government.
2. The complex, emotional, and legal debate over whether priests should be required to report child abuse heard in confession—centered on American state laws, religious liberty, and survivors’ stories.
3. The “Short King” phenomenon, examining how height still affects men’s dating and social prospects, despite changing narratives.

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1. AI vs. Bureaucracy: The Digital Arms Race in Britain

Segment: [02:09]–[10:49]

Main Discussion

• Jason Palmer introduces the challenge: complex and burdensome government processes may discourage citizens from confronting unjust bureaucracy.
• Matthew Hullhouse (Public Policy Editor) discusses how citizens are using AI to navigate government red tape, and how this is putting unprecedented pressure on public services.

Key Points & Insights

• Rise of AI in Citizen Interactions:
  AI is increasingly used for:

  • Complex paperwork (e.g., benefits, tax claims)
  • Filing objections in planning systems
  • Employment tribunal cases (leading to a 55% increase in backlog, [03:17])
  • Appeals against parking tickets (a ubiquitous global pain point)
  • Navigating new legal avenues like the UK’s Renters Rights Act

• AI "Arms Race":
  Both citizens and government bureaucracies are racing to adopt AI:

  • Governments initially hoped AI would improve productivity and lower costs.
  • In reality, AI tools empower citizens to pursue more appeals and claims, adding strain and leading to institutional gridlock.

• Potential Downside: "Doom Loop":

  • Increased volume and complexity of citizen challenges risk overwhelming underprepared institutions, making government less effective for all ([06:10]).
  • “It could risk becoming a bit of a tragedy of the commons because everybody loses out if the state cannot function.” – Matthew Hullhouse ([06:12])

Solutions and Recommendations

• Rethink System Complexity:

  • Laws should be designed with simpler, unambiguous criteria easy for AIs (and people) to interpret ([07:28]).
  • Governments should consider friction (e.g., modest fees) to deter frivolous AI-generated appeals.
  • Urgent need to modernize bureaucracy—not just speed it up.

• International Relevance:

  • This phenomenon is worldwide, with notable cases across 11 countries ([09:36]).
  • Anticipate further change as "agentic AI" progresses from advice to fully managing tasks:
    “A bureaucratic butler which … will never lose its temper and it will never lose the will to live, and it will never give up.” – Matthew Hullhouse ([10:26])

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On government design:
  “They need to be really short, they need to be very simple. And the grounds for accepting or refusing an appeal, I think, has to be very, very easily interpretable.” – Matthew Hullhouse ([08:10])
• On the arms race:
  “This really is going to be a bit of a burning platform ... how do you adopt AI faster in government so that the government becomes more efficient, more able to cope with a sort of AI-equipped public?” – Matthew Hullhouse ([08:50])

---

2. Should Priests Be Mandated Reporters of Child Abuse?

Segment: [11:07]–[19:32]

Main Discussion

• Peter Isley’s Story:
  • Survivor of clergy abuse in the 1960s (Wisconsin), deeply rooted in Catholic tradition.
  • Discusses personal trauma, highlighting the centrality of the church and the betrayal involved.
• Rebecca Jackson (Southern Correspondent) explains the legislative and religious battles over mandated reporting.

Key Points & Insights

• Mandated Reporting Basics:

  • Certain professionals (teachers, doctors, therapists, increasingly clergy) are required by law to report suspected child abuse.
  • The debate centers on "penitent privilege": the tradition that what’s said in confession is confidential.

• Patchwork Policy Landscape:

  • At least six U.S. states have laws overriding penitent privilege for child abuse cases; others attempt subtler distinctions.
  • No national consensus—significant legal and ethical ambiguity persists ([14:40]).

• Legal Tensions:

  • Catholic doctrine maintains the "absolute seal of confession.”
    “If priests do break the seal of confession, the punishment is severe … automatically excommunicated, and their case is sent to Rome for disciplinary action.” – Rebecca Jackson ([15:36])
  • The Church frames new laws as violations of the First Amendment’s religious freedom guarantee.
  • Comparisons are made between clergy and lawyers’ confidentiality: if lawyers aren’t compelled to report, why should priests?

• Survivor and Advocacy Perspective:

  • Peter Isley and advocates argue that confession can both enable and hide abuse, including the child assuming guilt for their own victimhood.
    • “You know, adults are having this argument and then the seven year old is walking in to confession to confess ... The child takes on the guilt, shame and responsibility for what is occurring. And they don’t even, you know, they're children.” – Peter Isley ([18:25])
  • Attempts to pass laws in Missouri and Vermont failed this year but efforts are ongoing; legal battles are likely to intensify.

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On legal and religious deadlock:
  “They’re either going to be violating state law or canon law.” – Rebecca Jackson ([15:52])
• On survivor realities:
  “There’s a particular kind of aura around the priest for kids. They are kind of like God or Jesus.” – Peter Isley ([18:44])

---

3. The “Short King” Trend: Fact or Meme?

Segment: [20:40]–[26:35]

Main Discussion

• Doug Dowson (Data Journalist) and Rosie Blore
  • Playful entry: framing shortness as a “chronic genetic condition” for men, underlining the episode’s signature wry tone.
  • Explores the “Short King” meme and whether it means any real change for men’s romantic and social lives.

Key Points & Insights

• Short King Defined:

  • Usually a heterosexual man below average height, especially in a relationship with a taller woman ([22:28]).

• Data on Height and Dating:

  • Taller men get more messages and are more likely to marry—men 6'3"+ receive 60% more messages than 5'7" men; women over 6'2" receive 40% fewer ([23:22]).
  • The norm remains: “the man is around 2 to 8 inches taller than the woman.” Relationships where the woman is taller are only 3% of couples— no sign of radical change despite the meme ([25:27]).

• Why the Norms?

  • Both genders show a preference, but women prioritize height more highly.
  • Data shows most couples cluster where the man is just a bit taller; very tall men or highly mismatched pairs are rarer than random distribution would predict.

• Personal Reflection:

  • Despite playful lamentations, Doug says: “I've never been too hung up on this ... But I've never kind of gotten too hung up on height in my love life." ([26:12])

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the “Short King” impact:
  “In short, I would say it hasn't [changed much]. In heterosexual relationships, the overwhelming norm is still one where the man is around 2 to 8 inches taller than the woman.” – Doug Dowson ([25:27])
• On self-acceptance:
  “Sounds like a good mantra for living.” – Rosie Blore ([26:31])

---

Episode Highlights by Timestamp

• 02:09–10:49: The AI arms race in bureaucracy: more citizen empowerment, but risk of government gridlock.
• 11:07–19:32: The confession dilemma: can/should priests be compelled to report child abuse? First Amendment, legal, religious, survivor, and political angles.
• 20:40–26:35: Height and the “Short King” meme: data-driven exploration of social/dating realities versus online rhetoric.

---

Tone & Takeaway

• Language/Tone: Insightful, analytical, occasionally wry and self-aware, with careful attention to personal stories and human stakes.
• For Listeners:
  • The battle over bureaucracy is no longer just about forms and queues—it’s an all-out tech-enabled contest with serious implications for government capacity and fairness.
  • The moral and legal dilemmas of mandated reporting in religious contexts remain unresolved, shaped by deeply personal and societal conflicts.
  • Popular culture may celebrate “short kings,” but the numbers—and our social preferences—show little sign of rapid change.

---

Memorable Closing Quote:
“It affects a lot of things ... when you’re growing up and you’re lining up for a school photo, you’re always at the end of the line. And in sports, it matters quite a bit. But I’ve never kind of gotten too hung up on height in my love life.” — Doug Dowson ([26:12])

Transcript

[Peter Isley]

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[Jason Palmer]

The economist.

[Rosie Blore]

Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist.

I'm Rosie Blore.

[Jason Palmer]

And I'm Jason Palmer.

[Rosie Blore]

Today on the show, should priests have to report child abuse disclosed in confession and the trials and tribulations of being a short man?

[Jason Palmer]

But first, Have you ever had the feeling that your interactions with your government were kind of deliberately difficult? That basically it was so complex to appeal a ticket or fine or figure out a tax deduction that fewer people would bother me too? But do you know what's great for explaining and navigating that kind of complexity? Yeah, you do.

[Matthew Hullhouse]

We all hate having to deal with the bureaucracy of the tax office or the town hall or whatever. And so we are seeing the public are rapidly turning to artificial intelligence to help them navigate their daily interactions with the state.

[Jason Palmer]

Matthew Hullhouse is our Public Policy editor.

[Matthew Hullhouse]

As a result, bureaucracies everywhere are struggling to cope with the new demand that this is putting on them. And so there's something of an arms race really between the state and the public in terms of who can adopt artificial intelligence more quickly.

[Jason Palmer]

What do you mean by interactions with the state?

[Matthew Hullhouse]

You're seeing the public adopt AI Pretty much anywhere where they have to deal with the state, particularly where it involves lots of form filling or understanding quite complex rules. And one of the characteristics of this is that it tends to crop up in quite unexpected places. So where we're seeing this quite prominently in the UK is in the employment tribunal system. These are courts that deal with disputes between workers and their bosses. We've seen the backlog in employment tribunal cases rise 55% in a single year, in large part, lawyers say, due to a big increase in claims that have been brought with the help of AI, which have made more claims, but also made those claims more complex to deal with. We're seeing it in the planning system. Filing an objection to a planning complaint is quite hard work. They've seen a big increase in people who've used AI to help prepare their objections. You're seeing in the benefits system, again, somewhere where there's lots of form filling, quite complex systems for people to understand. They're turning to things like ChatGPT to help them understand the system, but also how to file the most successful claim possible. You are seeing it pop up in the most humdrum corners of the state, particularly when there's a bit of money at stake. So parking appeals is something where we are seeing claims pretty much everywhere, actually. People using AI to help them appeal against a parking ticket that they don't want to pay. You will see it in the UK with the new Renters Rights act, which is an act of Parliament that allows people to challenge the rent increase that they get from their landlord. So pretty much anywhere you can think of, really, there tends to be applications for this. But as a rule, it's the more complex or boring or difficult bit of bureaucracy you've got to deal with the state, the more likely it is that people tend to AI to help them with it.

[Jason Palmer]

But you framed this at the outset as an arms race. The government is responding in turn.

[Matthew Hullhouse]

Yeah. So the question this poses for governments is, does AI, in the end prove to be a big productivity booster for governments or does it turn out to be a productivity drag? So the British government, like governments pretty much everywhere, thought that AI could turn out to be a massive productivity booster and they'd get huge savings as a result, because you think of all the paperwork that goes on. But the question is, does the savings that result from that outweigh the increased cost to the state of a citizenry, which is using AI to maximise their rights to claim all the entitlements that they're due to challenge the tax bill? They don't want. That's where this arms race dynamic comes in.

[Jason Palmer]

Is this development good for the citizenry, for the machinery of government?

[Matthew Hullhouse]

On the face of it, for you and I, this is an absolute godsend, because lots of people don't like dealing with bureaucracy. It sometimes seems, by design, complicated. It's like going through an obstacle course, trying to challenge a parking ticket or get your recycling bin collected or whatever it is you're trying to do.

[Jason Palmer]

But if the collective response is essentially flooding the state with our AI complaints and what have you, then that's not the business of government either, Right?

[Matthew Hullhouse]

Exactly. And this is where sort of our short term individual interests conflicts with our collective long term interests. So it could risk becoming a bit of a tragedy to commons because everybody loses out if the state cannot function. And you can see a scenario where everybody is turning to AI or AI agents to deal with their problems with the state. And these 20th century bureaucracies simply weren't designed for that volume of stuff. So, for example, we are seeing big weights emerge in the Employment Tribunal as lots of people bring more cases and they seek specialist provisions which aren't used very much, you would see in the planning system. The planning system is going to become paralysed if everybody turns to AI with the welfare system. If you see a big increase in people seeking the benefits to which they're legally entitled, you are going to see the cost of that go up. So you can see a scenario where you get a bit of a doom loop of more people filing complaints, more people seeking appeals with AI, and as a result, actually the system just becoming institutionally less capable and less able to, to deliver for them, because on top of their sort of day job, they're also having to deal with this growth and challenges.

[Jason Palmer]

So if the problem here is 20th century bureaucracy running into 21st century AI, how can the bureaucracy change and fast to not end up seizing up?

[Matthew Hullhouse]

I think it's really going to require governments to think quite big and think quite imaginatively and rethink some of the systems that have been designed over the past 60 or 70 years or so. So I think the first thing to do is governments really need to stop and pause before they pass legislation that creates new appeal mechanisms or new redress mechanisms. So for example, in the UK we have a new Labour law, the Employment Rights act, and a new law, the Renters Rights act, designed to protect tenants. Whatever you think about the merits of those laws, it is a fact that they create big broad avenues for legal challenge. The government has not put a lot of thought into how they are going to impact the courts and that the senior judiciary think are really ripe for AI backed challenge. So before you pass big bills like that, you really need to think, what does it look like if everybody uses AI to exploit them at scale? The second thing that really needs to happen is governments need to look at this whole mass of procedural rights that have been created over the past 70 years and say, what does it look like if AI interacts with these, if they are Byzantine, if they're complex, if they're really vague and there's lots of human discretion in them, that's going to be really problematic with AI. So they need to be really short, they need to be very simple. And the grounds for accepting or refusing an appeal, I think has to be very, very easily interpretable. So easy that an AI can have an unambiguous result about whether there's a good appeal there or not. I think governments are going to have to talk about cost. Do you put some friction in the system so that actually before people turn to ChatGPT to launch a Freedom of Information request or bring a tribunal case, they say, well, actually, am I so aggrieved by this or do I care about this so much that I'm willing to pay, for example, £30 to lodge this? And ultimately, I think going back to this idea of the arms race, this really is going to be a bit of a burning platform. And I know this is the debate certainly in the British government, about how do you adopt AI faster in government so that the government becomes more efficient, more able to cope with a sort of AI equipped public that's not just about speeding up these old bureaucratic processes, but thinking actually, how do we redesign them so we do something better?

[Jason Palmer]

I know that you've been focusing your lens on Britain, but surely these problems are cropping up elsewhere in the world.

[Matthew Hullhouse]

Britain is a case study in a phenomena that is cropping up to a greater or lesser extent pretty much everywhere. So there's an academic called Chris Schmitz, he's got a new paper. He counted 93 examples of this across 11 countries from Japan to Brazil to Germany, Canada, the United States. You get a diverse range of examples, but they tend to be pretty similar. So privacy regulators are everywhere, employment tribunals in Australia, like in the uk, and parking tickets is something that you find in pretty much every major city in the world.

[Jason Palmer]

No one, no one likes a parking ticket.

[Matthew Hullhouse]

No one likes parking tickets. And this trend, it really is going to accelerate and get really interesting as people turn from AI chatbots that just give you advice to agentic AI, which is able to basically follow simple instructions and carry out a task on your behalf. A sort of butler, if you will.

[Jason Palmer]

Bureaucratic butler.

[Matthew Hullhouse]

A bureaucratic butler which is not only able to find the rules and interpret it and draft the letter, but basically do it all without asking, and then it will launch the appeal on your behalf. Because unlike humans, when agentic AI is dealing with bureaucracies, it will never lose its temper and it will never lose the will to live, and it will never give up.

[Jason Palmer]

Matthew, thanks very much for your time.

[Matthew Hullhouse]

Thank you.

[Peter Isley]

I grew up in a family that was incredibly religious, very what would be called now traditionalist.

[Rebecca Jackson]

Peter Isley's childhood was spent in the orbit of the Catholic Church.

[Rosie Blore]

Rebecca Jackson is our Southern correspondent.

[Rebecca Jackson]

Born into a big family in 1960s Wisconsin, fate dealt the Isleys a difficult hand.

[Peter Isley]

There were eight in my family. I had seven brothers and sisters. My father died when I was nine months old. I was the youngest with my twin brother. A very tragic car crash.

[Rebecca Jackson]

Still, growing up in such a full house brought the siblings together. At home, faith was paramount.

[Peter Isley]

My mother raised us all in the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church was the center of our lives, and there was nothing greater you could be than a priest, period.

[Rebecca Jackson]

So Peter went to high school at a seminary run by Capuchin monks. It was there that his story got darker.

[Peter Isley]

We had to have a spiritual director, and the director that I was assigned to was a pedophile. So I was sexually assaulted and raped as a child by a Catholic priest. So I'm so sorry.

[Rebecca Jackson]

Once a scandal that consumed public consciousness, child abuse in the Catholic Church has settled into an endemic crisis. The two terms now pair with a grim ease. In America, state governments have grappled with how to improve safety for children. In recent years, more have started requiring priests to be mandated reporters. This spring, a pair of bills tried to take it a step further, reigniting a fierce legal battle. At their heart, the question of whether one religious rite could be carved out from the rules, confession.

[Rosie Blore]

Becca, fill in a bit of context for me here. What is a mandated reporter? What does that system involve?

[Rebecca Jackson]

So the idea of mandated reporting is that when it comes to child abuse in America, there are certain adults that are responsible if they hear something on the job, for reporting it to law enforcement. So the types of people that fall into this category in most states are teachers, doctors, therapists, even camp counselors. And increasingly, states are adding clergy to that list.

[Rosie Blore]

How are clergy different from other professions on that list, then?

[Rebecca Jackson]

As you can Imagine your relationship with your priest or rabbi or imam is going to be different from, say, a child to their camp counselor or a student to their teacher. Right. People come to clergy for private spiritual guidance. And particularly within the Catholic Church, if you look at confession, that's a place where people certainly don't expect anything to be reported. The confession box within Catholicism is something that is tremendously sacred. And most clergy across the country legally enjoy some form of what is called penitent privilege. And this means that what's said in private conversations between a priest and a parishioner cannot be taken to court. Different states have approached this differently when it comes to mandated reporting. At least six states, like New Hampshire, North Carolina, Texas, West Virginia, have completely overridden any penitent privilege when it comes to child abuse cases, meaning that mandated reporting has to happen regardless of whether the conversation happens in a spiritual context. This past legislative session, lawmakers in Missouri and Vermont tried to get their states to do the same. Other states like California and South Carolina thread the needle a little bit more carefully by saying that if a priest is acting as a teacher or if they hear a confession from, say, a perpetrator but not a victim, then they have to report it. So this is a real patchwork of policy across the United States, and there is not currently a consensus about whether confession should be protected or not.

[Rosie Blore]

And how have priests responded to this demand to speak up?

[Rebecca Jackson]

The Catholic Church, as you can imagine, is adamantly against this. Under Catholic doctrine, the absolute seal of confession is one of the most important tenets of the religion, and it cannot be broken under any circumstances. One canon lawyer that I spoke to told me that if priests do break the seal of confession, the punishment is severe, they're automatically excommunicated, and their case is sent to Rome for disciplinary action. That's as severe a punishment as a priest would face for raping a child. And so this puts clergy in America in a really difficult position, because under these laws that do not exempt confession from mandated reporting, they're either going to be violating state law or canon law.

[Rosie Blore]

Okay, so this definitely doesn't fit with what the Catholic Church wants. How are they fighting the states? What are they arguing?

[Rebecca Jackson]

So, Rosie, a band of powerful lawyers have come to represent the Catholic Church and to argue that this actually violates the First Amendment protection of religious freedom. There was a case last year when Washington State tried to do this, and the lawyers argued that it was such an infringement on a basic religious practice that it wouldn't be allowed by the Constitution. Their argument hinged on one particular hypocrisy, which was that lawyers are exempt from reporting. Right? So if a client comes to a lawyer and says, you know, I abused a child, then a lawyer does not have to go to the state, does not have to go to law enforcement and report that. And so what they said is that under Supreme Court precedent, if it is indeed true that protecting children is so important, then how can you be exempting anyone? So if lawyers are exempt, then surely clergy should be too.

[Rosie Blore]

Isn't there something else slightly odd here, which is that the historic cases of abuse by members of the Catholic Church against children might include those very priests who are apparently hearing these problems in the confession books?

[Rebecca Jackson]

That's exactly right. And that's one of the things that I heard again and again from these child safety advocates is that the Catholic Church is just a different beast here because there has been such a tremendous history of abuse. And importantly, there's also been many cases of abuse happening actually within the confession box itself. So there is a certain hypocrisy to that. The only way to override that first, First Amendment protection of religious freedom is if the state can prove that it has a compelling interest to do so. The child safety advocacy groups basically say that protecting children from harm is obviously a compelling interest and that that should override any kind of religious doctrine. In court, though that argument has not held up and the religious liberty lawyers seem to have had a slam dunk in Washington and don't really expect this to be legally complicated for them going forward.

[Rosie Blore]

And where do survivors like Peter, who you spoke to, come down on this?

[Rebecca Jackson]

So when I spoke to Peter, he definitely thought that this issue is so pervasive that carving out any exceptions is just illogical and will lead to more children being harmed. One of the interesting things that he told me is that confession is actually a place where crimes are often uncovered that would otherwise go undetected. Because this is not just about adult perpetrators confessing.

[Peter Isley]

You know, adults are having this argument and then the seven year old is walking in to confession to confess. You know, we know about this dynamic quite well. The child takes on the guilt, shame and responsibility for what is occurring. And they don't even, you know, they're children.

[Rebecca Jackson]

You felt that you had done something wrong?

[Peter Isley]

I felt, and he told me this, that I was making him do these things. There's a particular kind of aura around the priest for kids. They are kind of like God or Jesus.

[Rosie Blore]

What did you reckon at the end of all your reporting? Where's it all going to end up, do you think?

[Rebecca Jackson]

The bills that were introduced in Missouri and Vermont both died in committee this year. They weren't successful, but lawmakers in Vermont at least have pledged to keep fighting and try again. I think we can expect more bills like this to pop up across the country, and as they do, more lawsuits will come. There are such competing values here in terms of the moral and ethical requirement of protecting children, but also the importance of preserving religion, liberty. And I don't expect it to go away anytime soon.

[Rosie Blore]

Becca, thank you so much for talking to me.

[Rebecca Jackson]

Thanks for having me on, Rosie.

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[Rosie Blore]

Around the world, billions of men live with a chronic genetic condition. Most learn of their affliction only in adolescence.

[Doug Dowson]

Honestly, I didn't realize I was anything but average until high school.

[Rosie Blore]

Then they have to endure that debilitating disorder without any kind of treatment.

[Doug Dowson]

Hang on, I'm five foot six. Debilitating feels a bit strong.

[Rosie Blore]

There is still no cure for shortness.

[Doug Dowson]

I mean, there's nothing actually wrong with me.

[Rosie Blore]

Unlike diseases such as tuberculosis or polio, men like this one simply have to live with their condition, tuberculosis.

[Doug Dowson]

Guys, I think we're blowing this out of proportion.

[Rosie Blore]

But in recent years, vertically challenged men and their allies have embraced a new term of endearment and empowerment. A banner to rally around Short King. I sat down. It seemed only fair with Doug Dowson, a data journalist at the Economist who's calculated what this trend means for men like him.

So, Doug, you've looked at weighty topics like public health, inequality, education. What drew you to, should we say, tall tales?

[Doug Dowson]

Well, I'm always looking for subjects that are fun and that you can also investigate with rigorous data. And with height, it's quite easy to do that. I'd heard about this online meme of the short king, and I thought, I wonder if that's had any impact in the real world.

[Rosie Blore]

So a quick question for you, Doug. What is a short king?

[Doug Dowson]

The definition of a short king can vary a bit I mean, my understanding was that it's a heterosexual man who's in a relationship with a taller woman. But I think the Internet and the broader public tends to fall down on this definition of below average in terms of height. So maybe five foot seven and below, Something like that.

[Rosie Blore]

And so what did you find? What effect does height have on a man's prospects in life?

[Doug Dowson]

Well, we've known for a long time that taller men are more likely to be promoted at work. They tend to earn more on average than shorter men, and they report being happier. But I think the topic that comes up most often and where, you know, height seems to matter the most, is in dating.

[Rosie Blore]

So how does it affect men's romantic options, their fortunes?

[Doug Dowson]

Well, we know from studies of dating apps that taller men just tend to get more attention. So there was one study showing that men who are 6 foot 3 and taller receive about 60% more messages than men who are 5 foot 7. Again, this is heterosexual relationships. So this is men receiving messages from women. And then on the flip side, taller women also tend to have a tougher time on the dating apps. Women who are 6 foot 2, according to the study, receive 40% fewer messages than women who are 5 foot 5. So you might say, well, this is just the dating apps. But actually you find that this translates into less success for shorter men in the marriage market. So there was a study done a few years ago showing that single men of modest stature in their mid-30s are only about half as likely to marry as their taller peers.

[Rosie Blore]

Do we know if it's women wanting men who are taller or men wanting women who are shorter? Which way round is it?

[Doug Dowson]

That's a tricky question. That's the million dollar question. The survey data seem to suggest that height matters for both groups, but matters a bit more for women. They tend to rank that trait higher than men do.

[Rosie Blore]

And what's really going on? Is it that women are after the tallest men, or is it just that they want someone taller than they are?

[Doug Dowson]

It's more the latter. When we looked at the distribution of couples in America by height, you find that they cluster at sort of the middle, where the man is a few inches taller than the woman but not towering over her. So it really tends to be the case that women and men tend to pair up with those who are similar to them. And we actually found that the couples where the man is much taller than the woman are actually underrepresented in the data. So they're less likely than we would expect.

[Rosie Blore]

So has the short king trend actually changed Anything at all.

[Doug Dowson]

In short, I would say it hasn't. In heterosexual relationships, the overwhelming norm is still one where the man is around 2 to 8 inches taller than the woman. Relationships where the woman is actually taller than the man in these straight couples account for just over 3% of couples today. If couples paired randomly, we'd expect that figure to be closer to 7%. And when we split up our data into two periods, let's call it the pre short king and the post short king period, we found that they were basically the same and there wasn't really much change.

[Rosie Blore]

And Doug, most important, has this changed how you feel about yourself?

[Doug Dowson]

I've never been too hung up on this. It affects a lot of things. You know, when you're growing up and you're lining up for a school photo, you're always at the end of the line. And in sports, it matters quite a bit. But I've never kind of gotten too hung up on height in my love life.

[Rosie Blore]

Sounds like a good mantra for living. Doug, thank you so much.

[Doug Dowson]

Thanks, Rosie.

[Rosie Blore]

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence.

See you back here tomorrow.

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