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Deaths of Despair and the Decline of American Religion (Tamar Oostrom) · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

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  Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that
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  Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become
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  Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.
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  Speaker 1: I'm doctor James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking
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  Speaker 1: Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world
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  Speaker 1: and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that
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  Speaker 1: hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now on to
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  Speaker 1: today's episode of Thinking Christian.
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  Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode Thinking Christian.
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  Speaker 1: I'm doctor James Spencer and I am joined today by
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  Speaker 1: doctor Tamar Ostrom.
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  Speaker 2: She is an assistant.
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  Speaker 1: Professor at the Ohio State University and one of the
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  Speaker 1: authors on a paper that's called Deaths of Despair and
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  Speaker 1: the Decline of American Religion. And so while that may
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  Speaker 1: sound like a really upbeat topic, we're going to be
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  Speaker 1: talking about her research a bit and just trying to
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  Speaker 1: understand what the implications of certain blue laws are for
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  Speaker 1: this discos ession.
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  Speaker 2: So I really appreciate you being on the show tomorrow. Welcome.
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  Speaker 3: Thanks for reading my paper. Someone does.
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  Speaker 2: It feels good, doesn't it? So why don't we start here?
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  Speaker 1: Why don't you give us just kind of an overview
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  Speaker 1: of what the paper's about and just that broad summary,
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  Speaker 1: and then we'll dig into some of the points.
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  Speaker 3: Okay, So we were interested in this question of to
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  Speaker 3: what extent has religiosity affected this increase in what some
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  Speaker 3: people call death despair deaths due to a suicide, alcohol overdoses,
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  Speaker 3: and drug overdoses. So the broad picture is basically, does religion,
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  Speaker 3: community ties things like that, does that affect health? And
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  Speaker 3: so what evidence can we can we bring to that topic?
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  Speaker 2: Is it in the vein? So?
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  Speaker 1: I mean, I've read the paper and some of the
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  Speaker 1: things that sort of echoed for me were bowling alone,
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  Speaker 1: you know, the sort of idea that as the culture's
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  Speaker 1: institutions tend to decline a little bit and crumble a
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  Speaker 1: little bit, that you start to lose the sense of
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  Speaker 1: meaning and self and identity and then these things are
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  Speaker 1: more likely. Is that a Is that the way you're
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  Speaker 1: arguing or is there something more complex about it?
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  Speaker 3: I think I think that's like the hypothesis that we're considering.
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  Speaker 3: You know, like a lot of people have speculated that
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  Speaker 3: like your connections matter for your happiness, for your life expectancy,
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  Speaker 3: and this is sort of one way of testing that
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  Speaker 3: in here, Okay.
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  Speaker 1: And maybe one other question before we dive into the article. Economics.
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  Speaker 1: So I've read Daniel Kammons stuff, and I know he
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  Speaker 1: was an economist, but I really don't know what that means.
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  Speaker 1: So can you talk about your feel a little bit
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  Speaker 1: your background and just give people a context for why
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  Speaker 1: this topic would arise out of economics.
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  Speaker 3: An economics paper? Why is why part of my description? Yeah,
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  Speaker 3: that's a great question. So economics is so much broader
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  Speaker 3: than I thought it was when I took like equal
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  Speaker 3: one to one and had some supplying to Maan curves
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  Speaker 3: and was like, honestly, this is very boring, which I
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  Speaker 3: didn't realize until much, you know, many years after that.
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  Speaker 3: So economics is just like the study of like scarce resources,
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  Speaker 3: which is like anything. So we as economists have interpreted
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  Speaker 3: that super broadly to apply to things like I'm a
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  Speaker 3: health economist, so I study things like incentives and pharmaceutical innovation,
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: thinking about sort of you know, drivers of these, like
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  Speaker 3: opioid overdoses. I have other things on, like, you know,
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  Speaker 3: why do people get mammograms. It's just anything that's like
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  Speaker 3: people making decisions under constraints, which there's always constraints in
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  Speaker 3: the real world. It's economics, and we've become quite imperialistic
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  Speaker 3: kind of and like the sorts of topics that economists study.
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  Speaker 3: I think the one thing that ties these papers together
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  Speaker 3: is sort of the way economists think about these problems
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  Speaker 3: and like the toolkits that we use.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, so in this paper, just from my reading of
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  Speaker 1: it and based on that description of economics, it's actually
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  Speaker 1: really helpful. So it feels like the constraint that's lifted
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  Speaker 1: off or what you call these blue laws, and once
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  Speaker 1: those constraints are lifted off, then people are free, free
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  Speaker 1: or maybe to make other choices. And these other choices
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  Speaker 1: have implications down the road that aren't immediately obvious, but
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  Speaker 1: that now ultimately sort of grow out of a meta
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  Speaker 1: analysis of all this research, and you can see a
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  Speaker 1: trend there is.
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  Speaker 2: Is that the right way to think of it?
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  Speaker 3: That's that's that's that's a great way of thinking about it. Basically,
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  Speaker 3: like the broader question is sort of like why have
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  Speaker 3: there been all of these? That's a despair? You know,
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  Speaker 3: what decisions are people making? So of what what are
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  Speaker 3: there like like economic and environmental like constraints? And then
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  Speaker 3: this paper is like thinking about, yes, like what if
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  Speaker 3: we change you know, the uh in this case, like
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  Speaker 3: people's tendency to go to church? Yes, what consequences does.
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  Speaker 1: That and what consequences that have? So talk a little
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  Speaker 1: bit about the blue laws. I've referenced a few times,
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  Speaker 1: but I thought that was a really interesting part of
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  Speaker 1: the paper. And then I've got some follow up questions
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  Speaker 1: just to clarify in my own mind.
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  Speaker 2: Maybe what's associated with blue laws.
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  Speaker 1: But go ahead and describe what the blue law is
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  Speaker 1: and kind of help people understand how that interact your study.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, so blue laws are just general prohibitions on retail activity,
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  Speaker 3: usually on Sundays. So this idea is that like the
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  Speaker 3: grocery store used to be closed on Sundays. I'm Dutch, still,
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  Speaker 3: like in Holland and many European countries you can't buy
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  Speaker 3: like milk or anything on Sundays. So that sort of
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  Speaker 3: just like laws, we're regulating commerce on certain days of
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  Speaker 3: the week, usually for sort of religious reasons. So why
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  Speaker 3: you might sort of not be familiar with this term
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  Speaker 3: is that, like currently most states don't have these restrictions.
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  Speaker 3: So in the nineteen sixties and seventies, almost all states
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  Speaker 3: had some version of these laws, and then over the
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  Speaker 3: time period that we study, sort of in like the
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  Speaker 3: the seventies and eighties into the nineties, most states repeal
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  Speaker 3: these laws. So then you could go shopping on Sunday.
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  Speaker 3: You could do something, you know, arguably more fun than
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  Speaker 3: going to church. These considints are lifted.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, because I mean, I think I can remember
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  Speaker 1: times when I was younger.
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  Speaker 2: So I was born in seventy seven.
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  Speaker 3: Perfect for the study. Amazing firsthands.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, when I got older and I could shop, I
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  Speaker 1: can still remember going to the store and seeing people
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  Speaker 1: not be able to buy alcohol. I wasn't old enough
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  Speaker 1: to buy alcohol at the time, but you could go
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  Speaker 1: to the store. But then there were certain even within
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  Speaker 1: those stores, there were restrictions, like you couldn't buy alcohol
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  Speaker 1: before noon. Let's say, Okay, I can remember those royals
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  Speaker 1: being there, so yeah, go ahead, Okay.
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  Speaker 3: So I do want to make a distinction that there's
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  Speaker 3: sort of two types of laws. There's laws on like
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  Speaker 3: can the store be open, and there's laws on like
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  Speaker 3: can alcohol be sold? Okay, the laws that we study
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  Speaker 3: are can the stores be open? So not directly about alcohol,
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  Speaker 3: and actually a lot of states still have alcohol laws
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  Speaker 3: in the books. I went to like brad School of Massachusetts,
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  Speaker 3: where you couldn't buy alcohol I think before sometime on Sunday,
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  Speaker 3: which you know, was not a part of my life
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  Speaker 3: until suddenly I'd be like, oh no, do it five
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  Speaker 3: minutes to buy the line? Yes, So we are not
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  Speaker 3: directly studying changes in these alcohol laws, okay, and usually
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  Speaker 3: there's sort of there's sort of separate laws on the
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  Speaker 3: books for those two days.
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  Speaker 1: So that's interesting. So that was one of my questions, like,
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  Speaker 1: how how were those connected? So I'm glad we got
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  Speaker 1: through that. Then my next question then is how I'm
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  Speaker 1: like the connection between just being able to go shop,
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  Speaker 1: moving away from church, and then having this increase in
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  Speaker 1: deaths of despair becomes really harder for me to conceptualize
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  Speaker 1: because you know, you can almost draw a straight line
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  Speaker 1: conceptually without looking at any data. You could go, well, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: people now could buy alcohol on Sundays, and so obviously
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  Speaker 1: there's going to be more of this or there's going
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  Speaker 1: to be more of that. But if it's just the
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  Speaker 1: stores being opened and you can buy whatever it is
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  Speaker 1: that you'd like, and all you're doing is staying away
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  Speaker 1: from church, it's it's a more complex situation to understand
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  Speaker 1: why these other deaths are happening. So how talk about
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  Speaker 1: how you navigate that in the study?
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  Speaker 3: What's what's going on? So the first thing is that
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  Speaker 3: some other papers have looked at these lot changes and found,
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  Speaker 3: like we do that when you sort of give people
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  Speaker 3: more opportunities to do other things on Sunday, they do
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  Speaker 3: they like go shopping, they like do other things, and
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  Speaker 3: then this reduces church attendance and like affiliation. So what
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  Speaker 3: people are sort of less likely to go, say weekly,
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  Speaker 3: and they're also more likely to report they have sort
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  Speaker 3: of like a weak affiliation with the church. This is
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  Speaker 3: changing like behavior and like a little part of this
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  Speaker 3: is like also some part of the identity or like
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  Speaker 3: do you see yourself as someone who regularly attends church?
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  Speaker 3: Is that a important part of how you would describe yourself?
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  Speaker 3: And so then the question is like what what sort
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  Speaker 3: of the downstream consequences of like that be and why
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  Speaker 3: why would that effect uh death to spare down the
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  Speaker 3: road and like yeah, that's like what we see. So
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  Speaker 3: the actually I haven't actually quite gotten into like what
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  Speaker 3: what the identification is in the paper. Basically different states
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  Speaker 3: repeopled these laws at different times, and you can see
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  Speaker 3: after states repealed the laws that a couple of years later,
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  Speaker 3: deaths due to these sort of deaths of despair increase
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  Speaker 3: in those dates, and then they don't increase in those
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  Speaker 3: states where like these laws didn't change. H So.
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  Speaker 1: You know, so you'd use the states that where the
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  Speaker 1: laws didn't change. Is almost like a control group. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: and then as you saw a difference between the states
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  Speaker 1: that released those laws got rid of them, then you're
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  Speaker 1: able to see significant differences between deaths of despair and
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  Speaker 1: a state that still had the laws versus death of
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  Speaker 1: despair that didn't have the laws.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, yes, so it's like a treatment verse control straight.
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  Speaker 3: And then also like the timing of those lat changes,
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  Speaker 3: like we should see effects earlier for the states there
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  Speaker 3: earlier and later for the others. Yeah, and we shouldn't
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  Speaker 3: see differences between those states before the law changed right
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  Speaker 3: as well?
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  Speaker 2: Right?
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  Speaker 3: Yes, interesting, But I guess to sort of go back
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  Speaker 3: to like, you know, why is this happening? I think
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  Speaker 3: this is something where like the papers more speculative on,
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: so we looked at like social connections, like were those changing?
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  Speaker 3: Were you sort of more less likely socialize with your
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: friends and relatives that didn't seem to change as much.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: We did see sort of increases in not in like
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: safe drinking, like did you go to the bar with
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: your friends? Did you like occasionally drink? But we did
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  Speaker 3: see increases in like self reported like unsafe drinking, did
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: you like drink more than you should? And things like that.
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  Speaker 3: So potentially this is a story about you know, purpose
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  Speaker 3: and like identity and like something like that or just
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  Speaker 3: you know this. For many Americans, this is one of
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  Speaker 3: the most frequent sort of social interactions. You have sort
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: of like the large part of your community. And if suddenly,
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  Speaker 3: like your friends stops showing up or sort of you
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: stop showing up, potentially that would have sort of long
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  Speaker 3: term consequences.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting to think, I mean, and again I
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  Speaker 1: don't want to extrapolate too far from your data, but
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: having done some work in this area myself, where you
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: look at the proliferation of choice just generally, and the
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  Speaker 1: way that that tends to fragment people and create this
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: ongoing desire for more right, Like we've all heard of
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: fomo right, the fear of missing out right, and so
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  Speaker 1: it almost creates this underlying anxiety where I'm not doing
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  Speaker 1: what I should be doing or what I could be doing.
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  Speaker 1: There's so many other things I could be doing right
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  Speaker 1: now and I'm not able to do them or what
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  Speaker 1: have you. It just feels like that would tie in somehow,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: But I don't reading your article. Obviously they weren't like
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: empirical results that would suggest that, But it just feels
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: like that's part of the context that we're creating with
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: some of these things, and that what you guys are
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: showing with these blue law repeals is that without certain restraints,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: unind choice may not be the best move for all
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: of us.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: I can at least say.
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  Speaker 3: That that's same. I mean, yeah, there's there's these papers
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  Speaker 3: sort of less like specific about this, but I agree
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: with that general concept, like in general, like you know,
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: there's papers that if you like, have the default to
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: be to save more for retirement. You know, people are
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: happy with that ten twenty years later than if you say,
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: you know, free choice, do whatever you'd like. And there's
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: you know, this whole food of economics on like you know,
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: people have your the present cells and their future cells,
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: and they're often in conflict and like sort of you know,
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: maybe the best thing for your future self would be
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: to like invest in your social network and your friendships,
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: but the best thing for your current self is to
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: like you know, stay home today and relax, right, And yeah,
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: so like that you know potentially, like is a dynamic
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: that that's going on in this setting as well? Do you?
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: I mean again, you mentioned that people didn't spend less
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  Speaker 1: time with their families and friends after these blue laws
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: were taken out, and that there really seemed to be
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: something about being in a local religious community that was
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: holding these other things back.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: Is that a Is that a fair statement?
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the sort of a fair statement by eliminations.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: It's like like it's like we didn't have like so
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: this is using sort of survey data on like you know, yeah,
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: did you do like did you go to church, et cetera?
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: And did you socialize with your friends? And we sort
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: of didn't see changing these socialization outcomes, like we do
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: people like going attending church less, but that doesn't seem
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: to s spill over into their like you know, do
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: you socialize with like friends, neighbors, relatives, things like that,
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: And so there's the questions like what what else is
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: going to church besides sort of you know, going to
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: your bowling league. You know, one aspect of it is
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: this sort of like identity and sense of maybe purpose
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: that it provides.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Did you did you all think about it or do
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: you have any thoughts on church or religious community as constraint.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: So you know, you have the blue laws that are
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: constraining retail, and they're eliminating those as choices, but most
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: religious communities are going.
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: To have.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Loose sets of rules in probably in the best case
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: right and and sort of a prototypical understanding of what
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: an ideal congregant is going to be, let's say, and
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: there's going to be the sets of attributes that tend
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: to guide people within that environment and say, yeah, I'm
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: not going to do this, I'm not going to do that.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: So in addition to giving that sense of purpose, it
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: also does sort of box you in a bit more.
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I think I think that is like a
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: potential story as well that like could be going on.
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: It's not like the one results we have sort of
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: on this svein is that like people are not like
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: drinking more casually, So there's a sense of like, oh,
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: like you know, we don't approve of like alcohol in general.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: It's not that like people are like loosely weakening that constraint,
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: but there's a lot of other sort of constraints that
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: sort of you know, have some costs, have some benefits,
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: that people might be sort of being differently without sort
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: of that weakly reminder of those social maps.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: And it doesn't seem like, because I don't want to
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: overread this, but it doesn't seem like, let's say I
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: go to my bowling league instead of going to church,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: and I have a few beers, and then all of
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: a sudden, I have a few more beers when I
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: get home, and I have a few more beers after that,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: and this leads to one of the deaths of the space,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: which is, you know, the sort of alcohol liver symbrone
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: kind of thing. It's not that straight a line, is
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: what I'm hearing from you. It's more like there are
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: going to be It was a pink As Cohn. I
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: don't think it was pink As con I can't remember
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: the gentleman's name, but he wrote The Tyranny of Small
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: Decisions kind of back in the late seventies.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Are you familiar with that at all? Okay?
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Anyway, Yeah, he basically said you know, He's like, we're
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: all making these small decisions all the time, and we're
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: not thinking about the long term consequences of those small decisions,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: and at some point down the line, we'll look back
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: and go, man, I kind of wish I hadn't made
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: that small decision back there, just look where it's led me.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: And so I'm just sort of wondering, when you think
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: about it from an economic perspective, how do you really
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: think about these Obviously, changing the blue laws doesn't seem
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: like that big of a deal.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, honestly, it doesn't.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: No, And it's sort of you know, there's there's other
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: evidence that, like, uh, retail owners were sort of on
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: both sides of you know, should we do this, should
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: we not do this? People mostly sort of reality I did.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: They're shopping across different days. It wasn't online. Now people
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: are like buying more and this is like a huge
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: change to the American economy or to the state's economy. No,
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: but I think I think this is all sort of
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: like one of the things that economists love to do
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: is sort of trying to think about like these unintended consequences,
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: Like nobody who was thinking about you know, should we
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: revealed the blue Laws was thinking, you know, maybe because
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: also like that this was in the seventies and eighties,
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: like oxen cotton wasn't a thing. And actually I think
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: that's that's I think one thing I literally want to
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: like highlighted about that about this paper is that this
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: is about sort of the very early increase in depth
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: despair that occurred before a lot before.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Oxyconoms on the market, THEOD crisis and those kind of things.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think there is now very convincing
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: evidence that like you know, Purdue Pharma and like the
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: availability of opioids, like that these massively exacerbated these deaths
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: of despair. And so like, this paper is not saying
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: at all, you know, people should just be religious and
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: then we can we don't have to, you know, worry
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: about Purdue and various opioid formulations. It's just it's saying that, like,
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: even before all of this, something was changing in all
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: in like mortality, particularly for these sort of middle aged,
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: low educated Americans, something was changing, and it's and it
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: occurred at the same time that wegious affiliation was changing
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: for this group as well. So like what what maybe
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: connects those two, and then and then you're add in
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: all of these you.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Know, yeah, you know, it's much worse.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: How do you think?
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: So, my backgrounds in theology, right, so we get to
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: we get to play without a lot of empirical data
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: most of the time, right, we stay in you know,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: in the in the theoretical side, and so statistics, my
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: eyes just kind of gloss over. But when you're thinking
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: about it from this level and you're actually trying to
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: figure out those you know, significant statistically significant connections and correlations,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: how do you do a multivariate analysis like that where
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: you sit back and say, okay, we've we've noticed this
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: trend with the blue laws, and we've seen this and
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: this is really a cool correlation, and there you know,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: there's obviously something happening here. Do you go back in
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: and study that same period and ask yourself, well, what
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: if we look now at this factor, do we see
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: that correlated in the same way?
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: What does that look like to do those things?
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: That's a great, great question. So it's like, you know,
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: we're wondering, does sort of change in religion affect us
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: to despair? There's a hundred other things that that sort
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: of could be going on. Right, Okay, it's a good question,
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: it's a trigger question. So what we do in this
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: paper is basically build this evidence that like these things
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: are related in time, they're affecting the same groups of people.
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: So it's like these middle aged, low educated groups that
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: are like experiences declined religion and these increase in deaths
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: to despair. We look at it at the state level.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: States that sort of had greater decrease in religiosity had
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: greater increases in death to spare. And then the third
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: part that paper is like looking at these like blue
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: laws and arguing that like the states that had these
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: laws bigger things and everything else. So you're basically just
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: building as evidence, and the comparison group is like would
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: we expect you know, these relationships to occur randomly? And
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: then the tricky thing so like you know, we get
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: we get the result that like you know, uh, there's
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: a very small chance this would occur randomly just by
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: like you know, right, Uh, this correlation is like strong
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: enough that's unlikely duke to occur randomly. The tricky thing
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: that you point out is maybe this is this this
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: tell me this is what you're saying. Yeah, there's one
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: hundred things that could affect us despair, right, testimal, We're
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: gonna get five of them that pop up, yeah, as
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: to stick. So you know, if I was a very
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: bad economist, I would test one hundred things. I would
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: find five of them, and I write those five papers,
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: I would publish them, et cetera. Okay, hopefully that's not
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: what people do. There is is point of course, like
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: to some extent, you know this, you know, you know
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: economists response was scentive, like things like that, Sure, how
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: do you The way that I think about this is
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: like there's a handful of like you want to sort
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: of pre specify what you're going to like.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: Consider understood beforehand.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: Ideally, you like we all as economists would get together
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: and specify, like these are our top ten things. Are
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: now going to test them. Going into this, I think
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: this prior that social ties and community and for many
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: Americans that is, religion might have something to do with
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: you know, health and mortality seems like a compelling hypothesis
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: like bowling alone and all of these it's a really
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: strong like correlation. Yeah, so that's why we looked at
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: this one as supposed to the ninety nine other ones.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: That's not to say, like some of the ninety nine
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: other ones, I think our part of the story, like oxytrotten,
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: probably number one.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Availability of these things has to factor in, and.
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: Like ours is maybe you know, number four or five
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: or somewhere in that ranking. And I guess, like based
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: on our priors and like other people's priors, this seems
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: like a reasonable hypothesis to test. Is that what your
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: question was?
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: It is?
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so, because I think what I'm trying to figure
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: out is when we go back and look at this
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: practically right, there's a knee jerk reaction that would say, well,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: this is an easy solve.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: Just reinstitute the blue laws.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Oh right, you know, like the simpler But I mean,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: and I'm saying, that's the knee jerk, Like this simplified
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: reading of what you did.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: You'd say, well, we need to go back to that
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: same constraint.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: But that's probably not going to work because at this
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: point we've got so many other factors around us that
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: returning to that point and saying, oh, if we just
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: put this back in place, everything will be fantastic, probably
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: isn't What's going to happen. Like we've gone from like
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: arguably across that period.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: Again, so I grew up in that period.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: So I never had, for instance, games scheduled on a
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Sunday morning. If we had a soccer game or something
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: like that I was going to play, it was always
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: in the afternoon, and so you preserve that time for church.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: You know, before that time that's not on the book's law.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: That was just sort of my experience of it. Things
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: weren't scheduled over the top of church. You know, you
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: didn't travel anywhere near as much for sports teams that
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: didn't come in until I was close to out of
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: high school, you know that that started happening, And so
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: you've got all these other things to sort of glob
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: on now that just reinstituting one thing isn't going to work.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: And so yeah, I'm just trying to think through like
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: as you think about your work here and you think
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: about practical solutions for folks, that you're kind of sitting
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: back saying what does this really mean on the ground
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: for people, or if you were going to inform on policy,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: what does this really look like?
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: That's a great question. I think one of the other
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: this is Okay, I'll start with my cop on answer
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: which is that I most economists, myself included, like, I
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: see my role as like providing information and data and
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: being like, oh like if we changed if we did this,
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: this would effect have these consequences if it did this this,
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: And then you know, politicians voters can decide what set
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: of preferences they would they would prefer, Like my job
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: is to put numbers to these kind of factuals. My
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: you know, my preferences are just one of three hundred
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: and fifty million. So that's the common answer.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: Is that, like you know, yeah, you know, yeah, totally fair.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: That's sort of where I see role ending in the
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: in the more exciting scenario where I have some control
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: over policy, Yes, I this. I I don't see sort
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: of sort of adding constraints to people as being a
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: popular thing to do in general. Is in general, like people,
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: people don't like soda taxes, they don't like you know,
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: any you know, forced social security say like no one,
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: no one likes being told what to do, even though
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: you know it might be better in the long run.
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: So yes, so this and and of course like it.
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: You know, it gets a little bit you can't say
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: we're gonna have Sunday mornings off and sort of a
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: multi religion environment. But I do think from sort of
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: a more more personal perspective, I think this does make
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: me consider, Okay, you know, I want to make time
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: for these long run connections and things that are important
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: to me, even though it might be sort of convenient
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: in the short run. And then maybe there's there's more.
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: You know, we have a community center in our neighborhood.
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: It does a lot of wonderful like you know, pottery
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: and dance, like all these sorts of things, and sort
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: of maybe there's there's some more policy funding support for
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: understood things that would connect people.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so it feels like it does at this point
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: at least, And this is what I would just again,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: having read through this and understood the connection with the
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: blue laws, I find it really interesting, but also recognizing
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: there's no chance of going back, right, there's not that's
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: the right, And so it feels like me it does
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: ratchet down at least one level, if not to you know,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: maybe both to an organizational level where it falls to
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: real really like the places we work to be thinking
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: through the implications that your article has, How is it
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: that we give now people time? How do we how
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: can we free up for our employees this space where
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: they could choose to go do this? And then on
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: an individual level, how do we as individuals start to
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: choose things that are better for us rather than worse
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: for us? And then, as you said, you know, how
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: do we fund some of these social organizations within a
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: given community so that when organization is actually going on
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: board with this, then people have the ability to choose
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: those like there has to be something there, And yeah,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: it's just a really interesting sort of once the laws
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: are repealed, putting them back in place sort of probably
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: isn't going to happen, But you do see some of
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: this navigation even in policy nowadays. Like I don't know,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: I think you could find an analogy in something like
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: parental time off after kids, you know, those kind of things.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: Like you can see some of these.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Pieces where people are trying to poke this bear, but
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: certainly not going back to what you describe in your article.
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like additional angle you added where there's so that
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: you can you know, individual choices you can make. They're
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: sort of like funding choices and they're also like your
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: work potentially, and there's there's some you know, more research
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: now on you know, you know, can people be just
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: a productive and a four day work leads in a
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: five day work week? And sort of and I think
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: you're posting an instant question of like, you know, if
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: you put some like no email on weekend's policy, long run,
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: might that be better for your employees? You know, potentially?
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: I think I think that's a that's an interesting and
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: like creative way of like approaching that. One one one
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: tricky thing with that is like, you know, these are
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: longer run benefits, and so you know, if you're happier
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: putting more proactive person and then you leave my firm, Uh,
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: that's annoying for me who has invested in you know,
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: all of these beautiful, you mal free weekends you just had.
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: So like the incentive somewhat worked better on like a
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: larger scale, but of course it's sort of harder to
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: get everyone to agree on what to do in a
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: larger scale. It is.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: It is interesting. I mean I go to Germany periodically.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: I've been over there a number of different times, and
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: I remember the first time I was ever there and
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: I tried to go to the store on a Sunday
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: and it's like there's very little open I mean, you
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: could find a place, but it was not easy and
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: you had to you had to work hard for it,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: and you just sort of look at that and you're like, well,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: Germany is a pretty modern nation there there.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: I don't know whether it's a law I didn't like
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: look into that.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: I assume it is, but it could also just be
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: the choice of specific retailers to start coordinating and saying
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: we're just not going to have We're just not going
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: to be open here, or only some of us are
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: going to be open here, and you know, we're going
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: to manufacture this break.
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean then the trains around on time
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: in Germany, so like they said to be doing fine
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: with that without there they're shopping. But you you mentioned
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: I think a very cute key thing, which is this coordination.
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: Like if I'm the only shop open on Sunday, no
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: one no one is going shopping, no one's gonna come
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: to my store, no one expects it, so then I
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: might as well close and like enjoy the day with
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: my family as well. If everyone's open, I'm losing on
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: business thing like that. So it's sort of you know,
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: we you know, maybe everyone would love to coordinate on something,
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: but and that's that's hard to do in the absence of,
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: you know, more more societal regulations.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm wondering what you know. You said you're into
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: health based sort of economics, and so as you look
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: at this study, you know, my mind went very particular places,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: like the effects of remote work. I've been working remote
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: since twenty eighteen, and I'm sort of I'm starting to
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: feel aware and tear of it quite frankly.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: I mean it's taken a.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: While, but you know, there are days when I don't
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: leave my house and I'm like, what am I doing?
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: Like I built a gym in my house, I've got
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: you know, I work out of my house. My family's
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: at my house, like we have groceries delivered. I'm like,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: I've essentially eliminated any sort of social interaction that I
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: could possibly have during a day.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: And I'm wondering.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: It just seems like that would be an interesting area
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: to sit back and say, this is obviously going to
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: cause problems, and it just feels like it almost has to, doesn't.
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: It, especially across the sort of tenyere distribution. So there's
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: there's some interesting papers on remote work. I'm not I'll
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: send us I'll send you some details. But like, I
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: think one of the finance is that it's like, especially
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: the younger you are in your career, the sort of
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: the worst it is because makes sense benefit from all
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: these informal connections, you know, and then there's there's there's
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: benefits of course, you know, you can spend more time
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: with your family. I think it increases women in the workforce,
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: but then there's some longer run costs, especially if you
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: think very long term in terms of like you know,
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: the trajectories of young people and are they going to
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: get the mentorship that they need. This makes me think
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: one one policy that I that I think is some
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: of bad policy my my husband's firm, which I won't
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: do what they are They had a return to office
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: policy only for the junior employees and the senior people
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: all stay at home, and you're like, well, the benefit
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: would be to talk with these people.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: So no, it's just interesting.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think as an entailment of your research,
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: you kind of look at this and you can start
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: to draw, like you get a vibe off of the
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: paper right where there's a sense in which this correlation
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: that you've described, you know, it shouldn't be applied just
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: to everything, right, So I want to avoid saying, hey,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: just apply this to everything. It's a general principle now,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: and we could you know, if this will solve all
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: the problems.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: It won't. But at the same time, there have to
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: be these other trends that you're looking.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: At and going, my gosh, we're exacerbating what appears to
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: be a real problem here, and so remote work came
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: to my mind.
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: But I'm wondering if there are any others for you.
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: Oh, I mean just in terms of like any metric
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: of socialization has like dramatically fallen in the past few decades,
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: and I think I think the decline of rigulosity was
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: sort of one of the early ones. So you see
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: in like the late eighties early nineties, religious attendance and
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: affiliation just sharply dropped the United States. But then just
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: like yeah, the share of teenagers who like socialize or
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: like you know, things like that has like also changed
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: changed a lot. More so, like I think there's natural
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: connections to like social media and like online versus in
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: person connections, and then those are things that like I
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: don't think this paper speaks to directly at all that,
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: I'd be curious, you.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: Know, yeah, to look at channels.
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: Don't don't apply there as well?
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I mean I think the last thing and
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: I don't know whether you have any thoughts on this
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: at all, so feel free to say now we didn't
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: really I haven't really thought through that.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: But you know, part of my interest is in what
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: could the church do?
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Right, So it's one of these organizations that it could
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: actually provide some community, that can actually provide some things.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: But I would also just say I'm a realistic right,
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: church isn't like the place you go to have a
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: lot of fun. Necessarily it's enjoyable, but it's in that
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: sort of uh, I have a yeah, I have a
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: degree of contentment while I'm here, but it's not like
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: a rock concert, you know.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: So any thoughts or anything out of the data, maybe.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: That wasn't even included in the paper that you'd suggest that,
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: you know, as a church is looking at this and saying, wow, okay,
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: you've got these deaths of despair and whether our people
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: are you know, dying is a separate question. But there
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: are some things that we could do to build back
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: in a sense of community, a sense of purpose, a
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: sense of what have you that maybe we're not doing now.
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: I think my first reactions to this as someone who,
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: as you know, spent no time thinking about what various
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: relish leadership you do, but happy to offer opinions because
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: I think I think almost everyone is lonely and there's
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: some Yeah, like I think anything that makes connecting with
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: other people easier might be helpful in that regard. I'm
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: trying to so this is a very very sort of
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: a more civic to my situation. But we have we
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: have a toddler and then we're having another another kid soon.
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: But just like if they're like, there's so many times
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: in life where maybe you could sort of meet people
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: that have sort of similar problems as you at that time,
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: and to the extent that like these groups are well
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: positioned to make those connections.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: That makes sense. And I guess last question.
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: I want I want more daycare at churches. Maybe that's that's.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: Listen, that's that's fair.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think, honestly, I think churches have figured
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: that out. Children's ministry has become kind of a big
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: thing because it's like nobody wants to I mean, I
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: remember sitting in church when I was a kid.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: I was horrible.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: No one wants no one wants to do that anymore,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: and there's no tolerance for UH children's service.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: So now I totally get that. I'm wondering about if
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: you saw anything.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: I know you're doing sort of a big macro analysis,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: but I'm wondering if you saw anything that would suggest
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: why people chose to go to drugs, to alcohol to suicide.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: In other words, you've got this plethora of choices about you.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: What was it about those three things that caused the
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: increase in deaths of despair that just made sense to folks?
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: Any any insight in that or is it just sort
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: of I.
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: Think that's That's where I'd have to say, I don't okay,
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: I think at that point, I don't think there's a
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: rational reason for that, and so so that we sort
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: of rely on.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't like, like you said, the opioid increase
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff was well beyond the time
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: of the study, right, And did I understand that correctly
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: this study?
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: Yes?
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: So Actually, so if you look at these deaths despair
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: for this like middle aged group, I'm usually it's been
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: declining over the seventies and eighties and starting in the
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: nineties it stress to get and that that's the part
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: that we started, like why is this increasing?
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: What's in the news now is like you why is
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: it explainly growing? And that's I think, you know, a
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: more structural like availability issue, But why does it sort
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: of start to increase? There is I think maybe where
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: this paper can come in. Yeah, but I think there's
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: a lot of you know, remaining questions, and I think
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: one of them is like, you know, what what is
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: the sequence of steps in between A and B?
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, it's a really interesting trend.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, I found it fascinating to see this correlation
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: that you all paint there, because it is sort of
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: fascinating and I think it connects so much with a
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: lot of the things that I work with conceptually but
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: don't really have that empirical basis to it necessarily. You know,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: you're just kind of looking at it and going, it
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: seems like it's happening. Is it really happening?
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah? No, it yeah, all cause mortality is has been
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: increasing for the past few decades and it's yeah, we'd
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: love to reverse that.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: It would be nice, right, So what's next on the horizon?
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: For you, like what's your next big research that you're
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: involved in just out of curiosity.
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: So I'm a hell of economist, Like quite broadly, one
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: thing I'm working on now is new worm blood screenings,
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: And specifically I mentioned this question of like what happens
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: when you get a false positive for one of those
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: of those things. So for most of these screenings, if
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: you sort of pass this first flag, you don't actually
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: have this serious condition, you don't actually have cancer or whatever.
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: And sort of thinking about sort of quantifying the additional
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: spending or sort of any any sort of costs and
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: benefits of that. Gotcha the paper I'm I'm actually working
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: on now.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, very cool. Well it's a fascinating field and really appreciate.
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: No, Definitely econ one on one did not give me
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: the sense that this was what it was about. So
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: and I do remember reading Conment and going how is
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: this economics? But I just enjoyed his book and so
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: I just kept reading.
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: It wasn't big.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: Well, thanks so much for being on the show today.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: This is helpful. And uh, the article actually is available online,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: so I'm going to link it in the show notes. Uh,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: and so people can can read through it if they like,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: and I just I appreciate you being on this was
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: an interesting topic and just really enjoyed the paper and
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: found it interesting.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: So thanks great.
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I enjoyed talking to you, so thank you for
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: the for the good questions.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, all right, everybody, Well we'll call it a
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: day there, and thanks for being here, thanks for being
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: listening to the episode, and we'll catch on the next one.
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: I think Christian take care.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: I just want to take a second to thank the
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com,
• 46:08
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• 46:11
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