Is the Future Too Bleak to Have Babies? with Cleo Abram

Summary

Smart Girl Dumb Questions: "Is the Future Too Bleak to Have Babies?" with Cleo Abram

Host: Nayeema Raza
Guest: Cleo Abram
Release Date: March 7, 2025

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Introduction: Addressing the Baby-Making Crisis

In this compelling episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions, host Nayeema Raza engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Cleo Abram, the independent journalist behind the popular YouTube channel Huge if True. The central theme revolves around the growing concern that the future may be too uncertain or bleak to encourage people to have children. This issue is underscored by declining birth rates worldwide, with many countries facing a "baby-making crunch."

Key Points:

• Global Fertility Decline: Many nations are not achieving the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman, leading to societal and economic concerns.
• Generational Worries: Millennials and Gen Z exhibit heightened anxiety about the future, with 26% citing climate change and 40% expressing general worry about the world's state.

Notable Quote:

Cleo Abram [00:04]: "Because other human beings might suffer as a result."

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The Intersection of Optimism and Journalism

Cleo Abram shares insights into her journalistic approach, emphasizing optimism in the face of technological and societal challenges. She contrasts her perspective with the often negative bias prevalent in mainstream media.

Key Points:

• Creation of Huge if True: Cleo founded her show to fill a void in optimistic, forward-looking journalism that highlights technological advancements and their potential positive impacts.
• Media’s Negativity Bias: Cleo critiques the traditional media's tendency to focus on negative news, advocating instead for content that inspires and offers solutions.

Notable Quotes:

Cleo Abram [03:33]: "I think there's nothing contradictory about wanting to go up and also wanting to care for the planet that we're on."

Nayeema Raza [06:15]: "Your show, in a lot of ways, is about suspending doubt. Believe that, you know, what if this could be true?"

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Exploring Future Technologies: Quantum Computing and Robotics

The discussion delves into cutting-edge technologies such as quantum computing and robotics, exploring their implications for the future workforce and everyday life.

Quantum Computing:

• Current State and Costs: Cleo explains that while quantum computers are advancing rapidly, they are not yet mainstream, often costing millions of dollars.

  Notable Quote:

  Cleo Abram [12:09]: "I do think that we are seeing very quick advances in quantum computing. So it's going to affect our life more and more."

• Potential Applications: From drug discovery to material manufacturing, quantum computing holds promise for unprecedented scientific breakthroughs.

Robotics and AI:

• Training Through Simulation: Advances in tools like Nvidia's Omniverse and Cosmos enable robots to train in digital environments, significantly accelerating their development.

  Notable Quote:

  Cleo Abram [15:00]: "I think that what we can expect from robotics over the next few years is very different from what we've had over the last five or ten."

• Impact on Jobs: Cleo maintains an optimistic view, suggesting that robots and AI will augment rather than replace human jobs, enhancing productivity and creativity.

Notable Quote:

Cleo Abram [16:54]: "I think that a robot will make you better at your job. But I think that it is unlikely to be crafting a human conversation in this way."

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Optimism Amidst Pessimism: Balancing the Narrative

Cleo and Nayeema discuss the pervasive sense of pessimism surrounding future technologies and societal trends, advocating for a more balanced and hopeful perspective.

Key Points:

• Human Choice Over Technology: The future work landscape is shaped more by human decisions and societal structures than by technology alone.
• Historical Progress: Reflecting on past advancements, Cleo emphasizes the human capacity to overcome challenges and improve living conditions.

Notable Quote:

Cleo Abram [25:43]: "The world has gotten better in all kinds of different ways, and there are very, very difficult challenges ahead. But if you look at the progress of humans over the last hundred years, I think you can't help but be optimistic."

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Advancements in Fertility Technologies

The conversation transitions to the realm of fertility science, exploring innovations like artificial wombs and egg freezing, and their potential to reshape family planning.

Artificial Wombs:

• Current Status: While still in the experimental stage, artificial wombs represent a significant leap in reproductive technology.

  Notable Quote:

  Cleo Abram [30:49]: "IVF is this kind of wild set of medical and technological advancements. And then also simultaneously, it gets back to something that you were saying, I think before we started recording about how little we know."

Egg and Embryo Freezing:

• Empowering Choices: These technologies provide women with more control over their reproductive timelines, aligning with societal shifts like delayed childbirth.

Future Prospects:

• In Vitro Gametogenesis (IVG): Emerging research, such as creating sperm or eggs from hair cells, hints at a future where traditional reproductive methods may be augmented or replaced.

Notable Quote:

Cleo Abram [33:37]: "Artificial wombs are helping make the process of having a kid easier. And that I just think is enormously exciting."

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Space Exploration and the Search for Aliens

Cleo shares her perspectives on space exploration, emphasizing humanity's innate curiosity and the importance of balancing extraterrestrial pursuits with Earth stewardship.

Key Points:

• Human Ingenuity: Space missions like CERN are viewed as testaments to human dedication to knowledge and exploration.
• Aliens: While acknowledging the vastness of the universe makes encounters with intelligent life statistically unlikely, Cleo remains hopeful about the existence of extraterrestrial beings.

Notable Quotes:

Cleo Abram [21:19]: "I think that we continue to believe, based on what I think is the best evidence, that it might be out there somewhere."

Nayeema Raza [23:12]: "I think that we are wonderful, curious Species."

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Concluding Insights: Balancing Hope with Realism

As the episode wraps up, Nayeema reflects on the conversation, highlighting a renewed sense of optimism about the future despite prevailing concerns. Cleo's optimistic outlook serves as a counterbalance to the societal anxiety surrounding issues like climate change and declining birth rates.

Key Points:

• Human Agency: Emphasizing that human choices and collective action will shape the future positively.
• Continued Optimism: Maintaining hope based on historical progress and ongoing technological advancements.

Notable Quote:

Cleo Abram [28:12]: "Climate change is the result of removing a huge number of people from a huge amount of suffering through the use of energy doesn't make climate change any less urgent to solve. It just means that you see this as the next challenge that we'll face together."

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Final Thoughts and Future Directions

Nayeema concludes by expressing intent to further explore the questions raised during the episode, notably the enduring mystery of extraterrestrial life, in upcoming shows featuring experts like Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Closing Quote:

Nayeema Raza [37:05]: "Where are the aliens?"

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Key Takeaways

1. Fertility Concerns: A significant portion of younger generations are hesitant to have children due to fears about climate change and an uncertain future.
2. Optimistic Journalism: Cleo Abram advocates for media that highlights technological advancements and positive possibilities, countering the typical negative bias.
3. Technological Advancements: Quantum computing and robotics are rapidly evolving, with the potential to revolutionize industries and daily life.
4. Fertility Technologies: Innovations like artificial wombs and egg freezing are transforming reproductive choices, aligning with modern societal trends.
5. Space Exploration: Humanity's quest to explore space and possibly encounter extraterrestrial life reflects our innate curiosity and drive for knowledge.
6. Balancing Hope and Realism: While acknowledging serious global challenges, maintaining optimism based on human ingenuity and historical progress is crucial.

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Further Engagement

For those intrigued by the topics discussed, consider tuning into Cleo Abram's Huge if True and her interview series Huge Conversations. Additionally, Nayeema invites listeners to submit their own "dumb questions" for future episodes via email at [e-mail].

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Production Credits:
Produced by Sick Bird Productions
Research: Claire Lichtenstein
Editing: Holly Thiel
Theme Music: David Kahn
Special Thanks to Duckbill for sponsorship.

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Stay tuned for the next episode, where Nayeema Raza will delve deeper into the mysteries of extraterrestrial life with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Transcript

[Naima Raza]

If you don't have kids, do you have to care about climate change?

[Cleo Abram]

Yes.

[Naima Raza]

Why?

[Cleo Abram]

Because, Cleo, because other human beings might suffer as a result.

[Naima Raza]

So I'm so deeply curious about the future of baby making.

[Cleo Abram]

Totally fascinating, because there are real sci fi like advances here. And then also it gets back to something that you were saying, I think before we started recording about how little we know.

[Naima Raza]

Smart Girl, Dumb Questions. Hi everyone. Welcome to Smart Girl Dumb Questions. I'm Naima Raza, your smart girl with the dumb questions. And today my dumb questions are about the future. I want to talk to Cleo Abram, who's an independent journalist like me and has a show called Huge if true. It has 5 million plus subscribers on YouTube. And in each episode, Cleo kind of peers into future technologies in this glass half full kind of way. It's like Black Mirror, but with rainbow and sunshine and puppies, you know? And I wanted to ask Cleo, is the future too bleak to have babies? Because in case you missed it, we're in a bit of a baby making crisis, or at least a baby making crunch. In many countries, we're not replacing ourselves, which means we're not having 2.1 babies per woman. There's a global outcry about this. Not just from my mom, who, as I told Mark Cuban last week, really wants me to have babies, but also from politicians who seize upon the issue, from economists and other experts who kind of worry about the state of our systems, our society and our species. And if you look at the data around why people aren't having kids, it's a real mix of reasons. Many will tell you that they just don't want to, that they have other priorities in life. Some, I think it's 8 to 20%, depending on the age breakdown, say that they just don't like kids. And I guess you have to applaud their honesty. But here's a really interesting fact. If you look at people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, a big reason is their worry about the future. 26% cite climate change as a reason to not have kids. 40% say that they're worried or concerned about the state of the world. And these numbers are three to four times higher than previous generations. Millennials and Gen Z are increasingly worried that the future is too bleak to have babies. So I figured, let me call up an optimistic, tech savvy person that I know and ask her about the future. And while I had Cleo Abram there, I had to ask her other questions too. Like, are the robots going to steal my job? Is AI going to steal my job? Is an AI a robot or a robot an AI? And with all these innovations in fertility things like ivf, artificial wombs, et cetera, is anyone in the future going to be having babies the good old fashioned way? Here's my conversation with Cleo Abram. So, Cleo, thank you so much for being here and doing this with me.

[Cleo Abram]

Thanks for having me. I'm so excited for you.

[Naima Raza]

Oh, thank you. You've been a huge supporter. In fact, Cleo was one of the first people I told that I was thinking about doing sgdq. Smart girl, Dumb questions. Over a year ago. I think it was the end of 2023 when we spoke and you were just hugely encouraging. I'm just a slow pope.

[Cleo Abram]

It's a huge deal. It's really exciting. It reflects this moment that we're in with journalism. I think it's awesome.

[Naima Raza]

What do you mean by it reflects this moment that we're in with journalism?

[Cleo Abram]

I think that it's a really exciting moment to create the kind of media that you wanted to see in the world. You had an idea, you couldn't find it elsewhere, you wanted it to exist for yourself and so you're going to make it. And I think that's admirable.

[Naima Raza]

How long did it take you between having that idea, wanting huge if true in the world and putting it out there?

[Cleo Abram]

Probably about a year.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah.

[Cleo Abram]

Yeah. I mean, I think it happened really naturally. I got very obsessed with the idea that I would create a journalistically rigorous, genuinely optimistic show about how we could use technology to make the future better. And I couldn't find it. I knew that this was something that I needed in my media diet and I wanted to make it if I couldn't find it somewhere. And so I decided to go independent and start this show. And it's become something really meaningful to me that I could put something that I wanted to exist out there in the world and see that millions of people wanted it to.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah, really special. It's been a huge success. So congrats to you. It's been awesome to watch as like a friend and a fan and you have injected that optimism. But the idea of huge if true kind of came out from pessimism in a way. Right. If I'm remembering the story correctly. Because you were working on a story about why people were not having kids.

[Cleo Abram]

Yeah. This was a story that I worked on for a show called Glad you asked, which is a YouTube original show, and it was an exploration of all kinds of things about fertility and about economic data and about social support around having kids. And I began to put out clips of it and talk about it. And I was met with this enormous response of both interest, but also a feeling of concern that the world is getting worse and that having kids is this enormous act of hope in the future and that those were somehow at odds. And I thought about that a lot, and I thought about what that said, and I thought about my role in creating work that either contributed to that feeling that the world is getting worse or offered people a path to help make it better. And I really wanted to do the latter. I don't think that journalism has done a good job of showing the world as it really is. The world is in some ways very hard, in some ways getting worse. And those are things that we should talk about in some ways and important ways getting a lot better for millions of people. While my show is not about the sort of slow progress of major things that have caused a global reduction in poverty, a global reduction in things like maternal mortality, just a. Yeah, you're not doing that. Reduction in suffering around the world over the last hundred years, which I think we don't talk about enough. My goal is to talk about the individual scientific advancements or innovations that could do that for the next hundred years. And then you go through, how does it work? Who's helping build it? What are the potential implications of that? What are the paths that it could go down that would be harmful to millions of people? And how do we avoid those things? Right. Optimism is not the same as positivity.

[Naima Raza]

I think your show, in a lot of ways, is about suspending doubt. Believe that, you know, what if this could be true? What if this could be good? What could this look like? I think the show I'm trying to make is about, in some ways, suspending certainty. What if you didn't know? What if you weren't sure? And there are kind of two sides of the same coin of our culture. One of the things I love that you have said to me is we talk a lot about is news biased in left, or is it biased to the right? But you have a different take. It's biased towards negativity.

[Cleo Abram]

Yes. This is a line that originally, I think I heard from Derek Thompson, who's an incredible writer at the Atlantic.

[Naima Raza]

And that's an old adage in journalism, like, if it bleeds, it leads. If it's a bad news story, it's a good news story.

[Cleo Abram]

Even if. And I don't believe this to be true. But even if you Thought. The world as it exists is well portrayed by the incentives toward negativity of journalism. There needs to be a place where you can explore how we might do differently, how we might do better. That was the genesis of the show.

[Naima Raza]

I think another thing you wanted to do was just have fun, actually. I mean, one of my favorite videos is where you asked, like, what if you were to dig a hole to the center of the Earth? And what happens? Cleo, explain to the people what happens if you dig a hole to the center of the Earth? Which has never been done, by the way. It used to be that you think if you dug a hole, you would get to China.

[Cleo Abram]

Depends on where you go from. You would get somewhere. We've never done it. It was this childlike question of, like, what if you just went outside and started digging a hole? What would happen? Where would you end up? What would happen to you? What tools would you need? What have we discovered? How far have we gone? All these nested questions.

[Naima Raza]

So naturally, to do this, you put on some boots and got a shovel.

[Cleo Abram]

Got a shovel, went outside, started digging.

[Naima Raza]

Eight million years later.

[Cleo Abram]

And there is actually a fair amount of science here. I mean, obviously, we've been digging holes for all kinds of reasons, from, you know, mining to oil and natural gas to geothermal, and also for scientific advancement. The coolest superdeep borehole, it was dug in Russia. It is about a third of the way through Earth's crust.

[Naima Raza]

Okay.

[Cleo Abram]

And it is.

[Naima Raza]

What is Earth's crust?

[Cleo Abram]

Earth's crust is a very small layer at the outer edge of our planet that is geologically different from what's beneath it. And we sit on this very thin. Some people have used the analogy of the skin of an apple on the apple. This very, very thin, what we call a crust. On a huge amount of geological complexity.

[Naima Raza]

The Earth's crust relative to the overall Earth, is that something like the crust of bread versus a whole piece of toast? Kind of.

[Cleo Abram]

It's much smaller than that. Even I don't know the data off the top of my head, but I believe that Earth's crust, in some places, there's a difference between the crust under the ocean and the crust on land. The averages differ when archaeologists are digging.

[Naima Raza]

Are they digging through the crust of the Earth?

[Cleo Abram]

Archaeologists are digging infinitesimally lightly at the.

[Naima Raza]

Top, tippy top for thousands of years, and they're only at the tippy top of that. So there's a ton of stuff under.

[Cleo Abram]

It's unbelievably deep molten rock. Different kinds of layers of different kinds of elements and minerals. And the farther you dig, the more of this you see, the more variation you see. You go through the crust, you go through the mantle, you approach the outer core and then the inner core. And as you do that, you understand a huge amount about the history of our planet and the reasons why there's, you know, seismic activity on the surface. It helps us understand where we came from, what's going to happen to our planet in the future. And so you end up in this incredible world of scientific discovery and achievement just by mentally. We did not actually drill, mentally drilling a hole to the center of the Earth, trying to understand, trying to speak to experts, trying to visualize what that looks like, et cetera. It is also interesting to think about how much time we spend dreaming about what's above us compared to how much time we spend thinking about what's below our feet. There's this whole scientifically magical world in there.

[Naima Raza]

It is such a. It is a childlike obsession. How do you keep that childlike curiosity.

[Cleo Abram]

For any adult person? You choose the qualities in your real personality that you want to nurture.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah.

[Cleo Abram]

And then you live your life in a way that allows you to do that. So for me, my job is to think about what are the questions that would help people more accurately and hopefully understand the world around them. And that, in turn, reinforces that quality in me. And I love that about my job. I love that I get to become more of who I want to be by doing this research every time.

[Naima Raza]

So you don't have, like a research team of like, 8 year olds. You're not engaging in child labor on Huge if True.

[Cleo Abram]

I do have an incredible team on Huge if True. They are not eight years old.

[Naima Raza]

They're all adult. There's not a lot of research about curiosity, but some of the research that I have seen is like, it dissipates as you age. And this is some of the stuff that they see through, like Fmris, a lot of Charan Raganaths stuff. It's something that dissipates over time, but when used, it actually increases your memory. It, like, turns on parts of your brain that are driven by a reward system. So it allows you to open yourself up to information, retain that information, and retain it for a longer time. It's actually like exercising your brain muscles in a way. Right. And so kids get to do that all the time in a way adults don't.

[Cleo Abram]

We do sometimes say that Huge if True is a show for the kid and every adult.

[Naima Raza]

Yes.

[Cleo Abram]

That resonates.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah. I feel the same thing about dumb questions. Like kids get to ask them all the time. And then you grow up and everyone just exactly assumes you know the answer to things. And you're like, smile and nod. I'm at dinner, like secretly googling. What is telegio? Is it a cheese? Is it a sex act? Like, what's going on with telegio? I want to do a kind of round of really dumb questions about topics you have covered. So I just.

[Cleo Abram]

Let's see if I remember my own topics.

[Naima Raza]

Yes. And let's just claim that Cleo is not a scientist. You're not a scientist, but you have covered a lot of these topics. Quantum Computing 1. Do I need to buy a quantum computer?

[Cleo Abram]

My understanding is that quantum computers are unlikely to become quantum iPhones. But I do think that we are seeing very quick advances in quantum computing. So it's going to affect our life more and more.

[Naima Raza]

If I bought one, how much would it set me back?

[Cleo Abram]

I have no idea. I mean, I know that companies have.

[Naima Raza]

Millions of dollars, I assume.

[Cleo Abram]

I know I've seen like a very long line of them, but it was at IBM and they have a lot of money. So I, I don't know. I do have a vision of one day when quantum computers have advanced beyond our wildest imagination and the old quantum computers are no longer in use. They look like the most beautiful chandelier you've ever seen. Gonna take one and repurpose it and make it into a light fixture.

[Naima Raza]

It's a dual use chandelier. You can get light and then you can manufacture. Yeah, it's like that's what you could do. So drug manufacturing is one things you can do with a quantum computer. Just like give me three more.

[Cleo Abram]

The things I'm most excited about are the ways in which we think that quantum computers might be able to simulate the natural world in a way that classical computers can't. Within that category, there's drug discovery, there's material manufacturing. What else could we make that doesn't exist? And then I think there's also a sort of fundamental science approach here where it's possible that we can, through quantum simulation, better understand the quantum world, which we have some understanding of. But it's a. I mean, I hope that there's much more to come and that what we have now is a fairly limited understanding of what's happening at the scale of the very small. So those are the things I'm most excited about. The thing that most people worry about is encryption. But I would underrate that concern Based on my understanding of quantum security, which will come in parallel.

[Naima Raza]

So you could quantum. You could hack and try to like quantumly power. I don't know.

[Cleo Abram]

I'm pushing my limit of knowledge here.

[Naima Raza]

But you're. Yeah, you're. You could, you know, try every nth combination of passwords.

[Cleo Abram]

And in theory, the rise of quantum systems that could break encryption will also have a rise in quantum encryption. Yes. If you ask me how quantum encryption works, I am now at the absolute limit of my knowledge here.

[Naima Raza]

I love that.

[Cleo Abram]

That's what I've been told.

[Naima Raza]

Okay, robots, you've covered working robot dogs, you've covered self driving cars, which are a little bit like robotic programming. And you're really looking at AI and you've even fought a robot, although the robot didn't fight for it was tr.

[Cleo Abram]

Generous. It did not fight me. Yeah, there's this clip of me shoving Atlas, Boston Dynamics famous robot that's now retired. And Atlas stumbles back and catches itself in this incredibly impressive way. And then, because Atlas was not about to shove me, I don't think it's trained to do that. I asked one of the engineers at Boston Dynamics to use the same pole to shove me in the chest the same way that I shoved Atlas. And I stumbled way farther back.

[Naima Raza]

Oh, really?

[Cleo Abram]

Like he really?

[Naima Raza]

So Atlas was strong.

[Cleo Abram]

Atlas was very strong.

[Naima Raza]

But Atlas was well trained to not fight you.

[Cleo Abram]

Atlas did not fight me. Atlas did not even seem to mind that I was shoving it. Him. Her.

[Naima Raza]

How long do you think this niceness will last in robots?

[Cleo Abram]

No idea. I mean, it all depends on how they're trained. I suppose what I've been most interested in is how robots can, meaning all kinds of robots, both humanoid robots, but also self driving cars, smart buildings. You know, robots that are just robotic items are able to be trained now in simulation. I'm sure other companies are doing this, but the ones that I know best, because we did an interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, are the tools that Nvidia is making, namely Omniverse and Cosmos. Up until fairly recently, we've had to train robots either on fairly limited sets of data. So either you are actually putting the robot into a physical environment and running repetitions of different circumstances it might encounter to train it, or you're using motion capture suits, other kinds of limited data to help it understand before it gets into a physical space, what it might encounter. That means that it doesn't get as many reps as in theory it could get. If you could build a digital environment and run it without Risk of harm or injury over and over and over and over again. You could speed up time in that environment. You could do a bunch of things. Omniverse and Cosmos are both efforts to do exactly that. And I think that what that means is that we are in kind of a Big bang moment right now.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah. Like an inflection robot.

[Cleo Abram]

It's possible I am here pushing, pushing the limits of what I know about robots, but that seems to me to be a fundamental shift. And I'm told by experts that this means that what we can expect from robotics over the next few years is very different from what we've had over the last five or ten.

[Naima Raza]

And is that like robots plus the chips plus the AI?

[Cleo Abram]

Yes.

[Naima Raza]

Right. It's like those three things coming together. When will a robot take my job?

[Cleo Abram]

I am maybe true to form an optimist about this too. I think that a robot will make you a robot, meaning an AI system, whether it's on a computer or physically setting up tools, will make you better at your job. But I think that it is unlikely to be crafting a human conversation in this way, in a way that has the emotional resonance that hopefully this show will be able to create that I hope my show creates. I think that people do love people. I think that I'm more likely to be able to get answers from an AI system and practical knowledge and all kinds of wonderful things. But I don't think that that means that the human act of creation is going anywhere.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah, some jobs will. And some jobs already have. And some jobs will be created. Right. Like translation oversight is now a job category that exists, though human translation is less necessary. Necessary. What makes a robot a robot versus anything else? Like, what is the definition of a robot? Do you know?

[Cleo Abram]

I don't know.

[Naima Raza]

Self driving cars are robots though.

[Cleo Abram]

Right. When Jensen Huang talked about this, he talked about robots as the full category. Everything from humanoid robots to smart buildings, including self driving cars. To me, I guess my connotation with the word is that it has motion and it has some level of autonomy.

[Naima Raza]

But hopefully not too much, not enough to push you back.

[Cleo Abram]

That's what I got so far. Yeah. I'm not sure what the technical definition of that is.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah. And if a robot were to steal.

[Cleo Abram]

My job, should I push it out of the way? Out of the way? Yeah, I think that you're pretty safe.

[Naima Raza]

Okay, good. I do think the last generation of technology, in some ways millennials are the most screwed generation, because I feel like technology didn't make us more productive, it made us work More. It probably made us both or work more hours. So we were not in the sense of taking less hours to do more things. We have because we're constantly connected the ability to work a lot more, work a lot more hours, work from anywhere, work on holiday, work all. The optimistic view is that it will make us work more efficiently once we have more AI, more robots, more kind of the whole suite of technology. You think that or you hope that?

[Cleo Abram]

I hope that. I mean, I think as you said, productivity is not necessarily related to the number of hours people work. Whether that's because they feel they need to, because of a set of incentives or a system that asks them to or requires them to, or because that's what they choose. Those are human questions. The questions of what are the boundaries or what are the requirements or what is the competitive need to continue to keep up with other people versus what are the incentives or the human choices that could result in us actually meaningfully working less. Those seem to me to be human questions about the systems that we set up, less so technological questions about the tools that allow us to work more efficiently.

[Naima Raza]

Speaking of productivity and human choices, here's the sponsored question. Is all this technology making me work more? I'm Naeh Ma Raza, host of Smart Girl Dumb Questions and this is the Sponsored Dumb Question brought to you by Duckbill. So technology is supposed to make our lives easier. At least that's what's happened in history. Like if you look back at the Second Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s, our great, great, great, great, great. I guess grandparents found themselves working a lot less over a generation or two. They got like 40% of their time back. But if you look at the last 20 or 30 years, we're not working that much less. And despite all the complaints about millennials and Gen Z, we're actually taking less vacation than we used to. But not all technology needs to make us work harder. That's why I'm a fan of Duckbill, the AI powered human partnered executive assistant that can help you get your time back, take a vacation from your admin and just get shit done. You can use Duckbill to send your mom flowers, to schedule your dentist appointment, to figure out which mattress to buy, or to order an ice luge. If that's what your heart desires, you can actually let go a little with someone taking care of you. To check it out, go to getduckbill.com today. Use the code dumb questions for 50% off your first two months, you can make your to do list a to done list Ta.

[Cleo Abram]

Done.

[Naima Raza]

Okay, that was a little cheesy. So we've talked about quantum. We've talked about robots, space. We haven't spent time in space. But you haven't. You haven't been to space.

[Cleo Abram]

I haven't been to space.

[Naima Raza]

You want to, presumably.

[Cleo Abram]

Yeah, yeah, totally.

[Naima Raza]

But you've covered space. You've spent some time covering space. So are aliens real?

[Cleo Abram]

I think that it is more likely than not that there's intelligent life out there yet. I think that we are constantly encountering reasons to hope that that might be the case. I mean, most recently from the mission to capture a sample from the asteroid Bennu, bring it back to analyze it. It showed that it is possible that we have significantly underestimated the amount of some of the materials that we consider the raw ingredients for the kind of life we have on Earth. That seems to be one reason to think, you know, maybe we've underestimated the number of worlds on which there could be life. But I also think that we underestimate how immensely vast the universe is.

[Naima Raza]

Right.

[Cleo Abram]

And how unlikely it would be to encounter other intelligent life. I have no idea if we would in my lifetime. But I continue to believe, based on what I think is the best evidence that it might be out there somewhere.

[Naima Raza]

It'S striking me now that, like, we know so little. Like, we know this much of the Earth's surface and this much of the Earth's crust, which is that much of the Earth, which is that much of the universe. So we just know so little.

[Cleo Abram]

My hope is that we are.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah.

[Cleo Abram]

The equivalent of infants right now.

[Naima Raza]

You have put on a spacesuit.

[Cleo Abram]

I have, yeah. The new one.

[Naima Raza]

How much does a spacesuit weigh?

[Cleo Abram]

So they wouldn't tell me the actual weight, which was interesting.

[Naima Raza]

Oh, really?

[Cleo Abram]

It felt like, I would guess maybe 160, 170 pounds. Like I could do a full squat in it, but it was really hard.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah.

[Cleo Abram]

And it felt like walking more in an Iron man suit than, like, an inflatable onesie.

[Naima Raza]

Right.

[Cleo Abram]

There are.

[Naima Raza]

It felt like armor.

[Cleo Abram]

There are hinges on each of your limbs that move. And as a result, you need to move the hinges in a very clearly defined way.

[Naima Raza]

When you go out to outer space, though, it becomes that 150 becomes much lighter.

[Cleo Abram]

Yeah.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah, exactly. So you could probably do, like, lots of squats.

[Cleo Abram]

I'm sure that when I go to the Moon, I'll be turning.

[Naima Raza]

Why are people obsessed with going to Mars?

[Cleo Abram]

I think that we have an admirable desire to reach farther into space. I think that we are wonderful, curious Species. And I think that it's a good thing that we look up at the sky and wonder, could I go there? The future that I'm most excited about would involve being able to better care for the Earth as we explore other places, as we talk about terraforming Mars. I think that looking back at our own planet and thinking about how we care for this one and make sure that it is somewhere that future generations want to be is crucial. But I think those things go hand in. I think there's nothing contradictory about wanting to go up and also wanting to care for the planet that we're on.

[Naima Raza]

Would you move to Mars?

[Cleo Abram]

I think in my lifetime it's unlikely, but what an adventure.

[Naima Raza]

But I do like that vision of exploring the universe but maintaining Earth as opposed to just like replacing Earth and building something better, more futuristic.

[Cleo Abram]

Next spot. My go to space has nothing to do with the idea that I think Earth is not going to be a wonderful place.

[Naima Raza]

No, you have proven, you have like proven optimist chops. Don't worry, no one listening or watching thinks that you don't.

[Cleo Abram]

I love Earth and I love being on it.

[Naima Raza]

Put it on a T shirt. I want to talk about optimism because the whole concept of the show is that you look at these technologies and you go in and you're not black mirroring the world. As you know, I said in my introduction, it's like black mirror but with rainbows and sunshine and puppies instead of like dread and anxiety and death. We're at a time where like people are not really optimistic about tech. In particular, we have a complicated relationship with big personalities and technology. And I was just talking to Mark Cuban about this. Like, we admire these entrepreneurs. We, you know, we want to be them and at the same time we feel like they're costing us a lot and they are taking us in directions we don't want to go in and they're ruining the world. How do you look at that? Do you care at all about the personality behind the technology?

[Cleo Abram]

I care most about what the technology is doing to people. That's the primary way I evaluate something. And I care about the vision that that person is trying to get us toward. So we have a huge, if true, which is deep dives into the technology itself. And then we have huge conversations, which is a recent long form interview series that we just launched. And in that the goal is to ask the most important people, building the future, what the vision is that they are working toward. But it's not necessarily that I need to agree about what that Future is right. My job is to show it clearly and to allow people to make their own decisions about what they think about it.

[Naima Raza]

Is it dumb to be optimistic? I mean, that was really the genesis of the show. No, no, you're so clear on that.

[Cleo Abram]

No, the world has gotten better in all kinds of different ways, and there are very, very difficult challenges ahead. But if you look at the progress of humans over the last hundred years, I think you can't help but be optimistic.

[Naima Raza]

Do you ever worry about that, that clarity of being optimistic? You know, you went to CERN and CERN's like this amazing. Kind of looks like a religious institution, almost like it's palatial. Yeah, it looks like, you know, some church. There's thousands of scientists from like 90 plus countries or something working there, or 80 plus countries, something like that. Yeah, that just makes you hopeful, I guess, when you go to a place like that.

[Cleo Abram]

Yeah, of course. Like, I just. That one is very easy because that one is this kind of science that is, in my. In. In my view, motivated simply by the desire to learn more about this incredible world that we find ourselves living in. You know, if aliens do come to Earth one day, I would want them to see these kind of monuments built to the advancement of human knowledge. And I think that's really important. I would want them to see rockets. I would want them to see this sort of effort to go farther and learn more. I watched a lot of Star Trek as a kid, and so that very easily makes me hopeful when I think about the things that could go wrong, when I think about the very difficult challenges with, for example, climate change, part of what I think about is the ingenuity of humankind that I see around me all the time. And I want to show more light on, and I believe, believe that we have the capacity to deal with these problems.

[Naima Raza]

And your hope is that when aliens come down to Earth, you know, if.

[Cleo Abram]

They do think about sometimes that this.

[Naima Raza]

Will be like the pyramids for that.

[Cleo Abram]

Yeah, it's like. It's like, who do you want to be as a species? It boils down to that question and sort of imagining some other species evaluating us is a way to think about what we want to do in our life.

[Naima Raza]

I'm imagining the aliens now digging through, like, our landfills and just looking at all the things, all the. They would also stuff we bought.

[Cleo Abram]

So that's a good example. Example of like, okay, who do you. Who do you want to be? What are the things that you would want another civilization to see about you.

[Naima Raza]

Now coming Back to the conversation we had at the beginning, the pessimism in the world around baby making. You and I recently were at dinner talking about this. The fact that there is a fertility crisis, a replacement rate crisis across many countries in the world where people are having fewer children than are needed to replace the world. And when you look at the data for why people aren't doing that, pessimism is one of the things that shows up. What do you say now to those people?

[Cleo Abram]

I wouldn't want anything that I say to someone to be construed as trying to encourage one or the other decision there. I mean, I think that's so deeply personal. Part of my goal is to simply allow more people to more accurately evaluate the world around them. I think that we underrate how many of the problems we face today are the product of our progress. That doesn't make them any more. Less important to address the fact that climate change is the result of removing a huge number of people from a huge amount of suffering through the use of energy doesn't make climate change any less urgent to solve. It just means that you see this as the next challenge that we'll face together. I think that that is a really important perspective to have if you want to be part of helping the world be better. Right. Than what your parents liked for you.

[Naima Raza]

What I hear you say is like, you're not negating the problem. Climate change is real, exists. I know it's something you care deeply about, yet you have this belief that humans are going to work together to.

[Cleo Abram]

Solve it based on evidence, prior advancements, and the ones that we're seeing all the time around us. And I think, again, that doesn't mean that there aren't hard problems.

[Naima Raza]

Now, on the subject of families, one of the things you've looked at is artificial wombs.

[Cleo Abram]

Yeah.

[Naima Raza]

So I'm so deeply curious about the future of baby making, the technology around it, because already in our generation, I mean, a lot of women have frozen their eggs. I. Have you. Have you made a video about it? IVF is real. And I think the oldest IVF baby is now over the age of 50, close to 60, probably. Yeah. So it's been around for a long time. Talk about how the technology around this world is changing and some of things you've seen.

[Cleo Abram]

Yeah, that one is a very, very rich and interesting topic. We've made two videos on it so far. The first is about artificial wombs, and the second is about the process of egg and embryo freezing. The overall picture of fertility and fertility science is both totally Fascinating because they're real sci fi like advances here. IVF is this kind of wild set of medical and technological advancements. And then also simultaneously, it gets back to something that you were saying, I think before we started recording about how little we know. That is also something that I took away from a lot of these stories of how much we still have to learn about how our own bodies work. And that, to me, is very rich and very interesting. Oh, my God. What is it that predicts infertility? What are the tests that I can get done to better understand my own body? There's a lot that we have to learn.

[Naima Raza]

And sometimes I find that knowledge is a little paralyzing, actually. Like, there's so much now we could know, and there's so much information at our fingertips, and there's commercial incentives to make us believe that either we can know everything or we don't know enough. And there's you. You see that, like, kind of fear mongering. I think women in particular experience that in our 30s where like, pushed a certain messaging to pull us to these kind of lucrative businesses. But have you seen the TV show Dead Ringers?

[Cleo Abram]

No.

[Naima Raza]

It's Rachel Weisz. And it's a world of artificial wombs and like lab grown babies. And yeah, it's a remake of like a 1970s film, but it's trippy. Artificial wombs are how far away from being? Very far, very far, like, generations.

[Cleo Abram]

As a technological optimist, I'm hesitant to say we couldn't do something, given the emphasis that we're putting on it right now, which I think is not strong. It seems to me that we are likely to make progress on both ends of the fertility spectrum. So I think the progress to allowing more people to get pregnant and stay pregnant when they want is very, very heartening. And then on the other end, there's all kinds of technologies that are saving earlier and earlier premature babies, but they are not technologies that are resulting in a blastocyst to baby external embryo. They are. They are helping make the prog. The. They are technologies that are helping make the process of having a kid easier. And that I just think is enormously exciting.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah, that's a huge kind of revolution in science to meet our cultural moment. Right. Because that's meeting the moment of feminism at work, like delaying childbirth, et cetera. But you don't foresee an immediate future in which, you know, I'm gonna take one of my frozen eggs and pop it into an artificial womb and out comes a baby in like nine months or maybe the artificial womb is faster.

[Cleo Abram]

Artificial womb look, as well. There have been. We have a timeline. In the video, we talk about the various advancements that have been done in medical science at different stages. So there's a famous case of growing a mouse embryo all the way to blastocyst, I believe, which is right at the beginning. There are examples of, again, like I talked about, the saving of earlier and earlier human babies, but also they're, you know, testing different technologies on animals. As far as I know, no major technological innovation in sort of start to finish baby making.

[Naima Raza]

Start to finish baby making. Have you read about ivg? No, that is in vitro gamma genesis. I think that's the word, in vitro gamma genesis. But basically there are scientists, I believe it's in Japan, where they have plucked the hair of a mouse and from that hair created a sperm or created it.

[Cleo Abram]

Wow.

[Naima Raza]

Created an egg.

[Cleo Abram]

I have heard of some of this. I haven't heard of that specific example, but I have heard of some of this. And I think it's a very rich area for an episode.

[Naima Raza]

So that's like a crazy. Like that's even like not just from an egg to, but that's from a cell to a baby, which is a wild way to think about the future. But someone like you looks at these technologies like this and it's like, okay, now let me understand how they.

[Cleo Abram]

Yeah.

[Naima Raza]

How they could happen and how they could happen in my lifetime.

[Cleo Abram]

How could we use that increase in human knowledge? Well, right, that's the question.

[Naima Raza]

We'll also then need some kind of technology that like stops your hair from shedding because then anyone could take your hair and make your baby and then put it, you know, all kinds of big darker paths. This is a black mirror episode of what this looks like. But you're a trans. You kind of like are ahead of things. You covered DALL E in 2022. Maybe.

[Cleo Abram]

I hope so. Maybe.

[Naima Raza]

I think so. Yeah. Earlier than people were using this. This is obviously AI powered image making. What do you see now that feels a little infant, but could grow and boom in the next year or two.

[Cleo Abram]

The most immediate answer that comes to mind is the training of robotics. I think that, that for me, once I understood the difference that we were experiencing between the way that we used to train robots and the way that we are now training robots through simulation. That feels to me like something I didn't understand about why the next 10 years might be different than the previous 10 years with robots. And that has really, like now when I'm walking around and I'm Looking at cars, and I'm looking at, like, things that I would consider robotic. Like, I'm thinking to myself about how they might change in the next 10 years. And it's really blown my mind. And I think that is a combination of all kinds of trends in technology that I. It's funny, we use every day, you know, we use beautiful video games and we use our. Our laptops and our phones, and we don't. I didn't. I'll speak for myself. Deeply understand the enormous change that we've been going through in the way that we do computing over the last 30 years that has allowed us the opportunity to do crazy things with a huge amount of computing power, like train robots or like, you know, on a. On a more personal level, like make the video games that I'm. Now. Once you start to more deeply understand the trends that have led to the tools that you're actually using right now, it becomes very exciting to play them out into the near future. So for me, the one that I'm doing that right now, I think probably because I've spent now months learning about Nvidia in order to interview Jensen. It's all about GPUs and training robots and how we're going to apply that science to the near future.

[Naima Raza]

All right, so we all need to get smarter about robots.

[Cleo Abram]

I think that we're going to see a lot of big changes in robots.

[Naima Raza]

So don't just stay getting smart on AI.

[Cleo Abram]

Smart about robots, too. Very much connected. But, yeah, physical AI is what people are calling them.

[Naima Raza]

Yeah. They will be supercharged and be able to think of new things like how to hit back. Cleo Abram when pushed.

[Cleo Abram]

I hope not that one.

[Naima Raza]

They will, they will. But other creative patterns in the wild. Hopefully not that one. Okay. We end every episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions by asking our guest what is the dumbest question they have grappled with they don't yet know the answer to? Mark Cuban asked me, why do people chew with their mouth open? And then provided me data about how many people get irritated by it.

[Cleo Abram]

Some more scientific ones that I'm curious about are where is the most likely place to find aliens? I know that we're exploring various moons in our own solar system to understand whether or not they have oceans that could have some kind of life in deep sea vents, Sort of the equivalent of deep sea vents. But I'm very curious right now about where the smartest people studying aliens think we're gonna find them. So one of my dumb question is.

[Naima Raza]

I guess, where are the aliens?

[Cleo Abram]

Where are the aliens?

[Naima Raza]

Where are the aliens?

[Cleo Abram]

I'll stick with that one. Where are the aliens?

[Naima Raza]

Where are the aliens? Okay. It is weird that they get spotted more in the United States than anywhere else.

[Cleo Abram]

Yeah.

[Naima Raza]

Is that a reflection?

[Cleo Abram]

I don't know what that's about.

[Naima Raza]

Maybe they're like really close to us and that's why they're coming here. It's just the easiest place to get to. Like we're going to Mars. We could go, you know. Must be, it must be close. That's my clue. But we're gonna find out.

[Cleo Abram]

Hopefully we're gonna find out, find a, find an expert on extraterrestrial activity.

[Naima Raza]

Okay. And then I'm gonna make sure that you can put on your spacesuit and go find the aliens and do some squats with them. A little workout class. Thanks so much, Cleo for doing this. I so appreciate it. So is the future Tube League to have babies? I don't know. I left that conversation with Cleo just feeling more optimistic and delighted, like you leave any conversation with Cleo. I also didn't go into it so pessimistically. I wasn't part of the 26 to 40% that is citing climate change or concern about the future as a reason not to have kids. But I did leave that conversation thinking, you know, I might have an Earth's crust view of the future, by which I mean a myopic and self referential one where I'm kind of just projecting today onto tomorrow or what's happened in the last 10 years, onto the next 10 years. But in fact, our perception of the future is dependent on a lot of variables. How long we think it is, what kind of rate of change we expect to see, what kind of direction of change we expect to see. And in that way, I think the future is grander than I imagined at the top of this conversation. And certainly I loved what Cleo said about what kind of civilization and species we want to be when the aliens show up on Earth. I'm like, okay, I need to now reconfigure my whole life to live up to the expectations of aliens when and if they arrive. And on her question, on her dumb question about where are the aliens? I'm going to actually pose that to our guest next week, which is Neil Degrasse Tyson, who is an astrophysicist and author. And I also have to ask him about that asteroid that was reportedly going to maybe hit the Earth in 2032. Because if that's happening, the future definitely is bleak. That's it for this episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions, please tune in to Cleo's show Huge if True and her interview show Huge conversations. And that's it for this week. Thanks for listening to Smart Girl Dumb Questions. Today's show was produced with Sick Bird Productions. Jade Watson, Diana DaCosta and Cass Agnew were part of the team with additional research from Claire Lichtenstein and additional editing by Holly Thiel. Our theme music is by David Kahn. We taped at WTF Media Studios in Soho with a great, great Tiana and I want to say a special thanks to my brand partner, Duck Bill. Check out the referral code below for 50% off your first two months and I want to hear what you think. Is technology making you more productive? Is it making you work more or like Cleo? Do you think these are all human choices? I also want to know your dumb questions so I can ask them in future episodes. So leave me a comment with those or email me at naimaraza101mail.com See you next Friday at Smart Girl Dumb Questions, where we learn all about the aliens. P.S. if you like the show, leave a review.