Latest / Trend Watch / Episode 32: Biden vs. Trump, Macron vs. Le Pen, & China vs. the Philippines

Transcript

Episode 32: Biden vs. Trump, Macron vs. Le Pen, & China vs. the Philippines · Trend Watch

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Ready to take a deeper look at where history, politics, and economics all intersect?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then you've come to the right place.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Each week,
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: here's where we pull back the headlines and focus on the big trends,
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: the stuff that actually shapes our future.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Through the noise, we focus on the signal.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Neil Howe, and this is TrendWatch.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Today is June 25th, 2024, and this is TrendWatch.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back, everybody.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: As usual, I have on my fellow analyst, Christian Ford.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, Christian, how was your week?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I had a very good week, Neil.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: I was down in Smith Mountain Lake,
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Virginia,
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: which,
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: interestingly,
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: that is the congressional district for Bob Good,
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: who is in the primary race of his life right now.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: The race was about a week ago, but they still have not declared a winner.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: He is currently down by 370 votes, and I think they're going for a recount.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm assuming you didn't go down there just to visit the district, right?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, just I had some friends who have a place on the lake there, so just some relaxing times.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: So this guy is more MAGA than Trump, right?
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: he used to be a big Trump guy,
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: but then he actually endorsed DeSantis during the presidential primary because he
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: said Trump was not conservative enough on abortion and gun rights,
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: so Trump was out to seek his revenge and endorsed his primary opponent.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, Virginia is really two states.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: there's Fairfax County and the blue northern part and the southern part is just
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: about as red as West Virginia out here.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that's how I look at it.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Really no difference.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but I got to say, Neil, I feel like you had the more exciting week.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: You were in Australia.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: I saw Australian press had some even news articles about your trip.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was in Australia.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was down under.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone who goes there, I just hope you don't have jet lag.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's a serious distance, right?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a long time to get there.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a long time to readjust, waking up at 3 a.m.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: for a couple nights.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: But it was great.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: I met with a lot of business leaders,
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: political leaders,
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: and really got a great sense of what the world looks like from down there.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: You think about it, if you live in Australia, you...
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: you have to fly 10 hours to get anywhere i mean you know outside of australia you
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: know uh they're used to jet lag um and and you know it's it's it's interesting
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: right uh they're they're sort of isolated i think they look at the change in
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: globalism around the world the increasing uh sort of polarization of the great
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: powers they they look at a lot of uh concern
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Worry, it's a small country, only 25 million people, really much smaller than California or Canada.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And about 10 million of them live in two cities, Sydney and Melbourne.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's growing very rapidly.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: As we've often pointed out,
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: the last several decades,
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Australia probably has the largest net immigration rate in the world.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that's another thing you really notice.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: I've certainly noticed between when I went last time and when I went the time before.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of Asians living in Australia now.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it's kind of changing the country a little bit.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: But a very nice place to go.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: People are very friendly.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, it was a good trip.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: We are going to,
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: as always,
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: we have an action-packed,
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: I should say,
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: well,
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: action-packed and story-packed podcast today.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: As usual, I start with our farewells.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is going to be interesting because our first farewell is to Maury Markoff.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And his distinction is being the oldest verified living man in the United States
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: until his death last week at age 110,
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Christian.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: One hundred and ten living to at least one hundred.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then,
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: by the way,
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: classifies you as a super centenarian of which there are roughly 300 to 450 in the world.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's an estimate.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: These people typically remain free of major age related diseases until nearly the end of their lives.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's very interesting.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is typical pattern with people who live very long.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: They go through a lot of diseases and problems and tell up about age 80 and then
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: they kind of just plateau after that.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Markov was born in New York City tenement in the year 1914.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: The child of Jewish immigrants six months before World War One began.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: The Spanish flu hit when he was age five, killing his older brother.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: He went on to become a machinist like his father,
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: though he did various odd jobs like selling vacuum cleaners during the Great
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Depression when no one was hiring machinists.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: During World War II,
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: he had plenty of work manufacturing ammunition,
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: and he always thought of himself as something of an artist.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: And late in his career,
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: he became a serious amateur photographer and began building sculptures out of
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: broken pieces of metal.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think some of these are actually in museums today.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Very interesting.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he always had passionate interests.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like many Americans of his class and generation, Markov became a political radical during the Depression.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: He joined the Communist Party USA,
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: joined protests and traveled to Moscow and Leningrad in the early 1950s together
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: with his wife.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Although I will say later in the 1950s,
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: also like so many of his peers,
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Markov grew disillusioned with Soviet socialism.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: He reached age 65 in 1979, but after passing that, he never seemed to slow down.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: When asked, he attributed his longevity to regular walking.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: He and his wife regularly did three-mile walks into their 90s.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: His diet was mostly vegetarian, he rarely drank alcohol, and he avoided water in plastic bottles.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Ah, there's a tie to millennials right there, right?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Avoid those plastic bottles, Christian.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yet in other ways, he was an outlier.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: He was a regular smoker for 30 years before quitting after being diagnosed with
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: throat cancer,
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: which he survived.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: He also nearly died at age 99 from a heart attack from which he recovered with the help of a pacemaker.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Up until nearly the end of his life, Markov retained a remarkably lucid mind.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: He read the LA Times every morning,
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: discussed current events like the Ukraine war with friends,
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: and posted dispatches about his life and current events on a blog.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Among gerontologists,
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Markov is known as a super-ager,
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: a person over age 80 whose brain seems decades younger.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: With Markov's approval,
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: his daughter agreed to donate his brain to researchers to see what they can learn
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: by studying it.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Upon Markov's deaths,
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: by the way,
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: the title of America's oldest man goes to Vincent Dransfield,
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: born a bit later in 1914.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: All around the world, the current national record for the oldest living man tops out at around 111.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: So as you can see, this is sort of a...
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of a limit up there.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: The oldest confirmed age of any man,
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: by the way,
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: any man at death was Jiroiman Kimura of Japan,
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: who was born in 1893 and died at age 116 in 2013.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, we're a demography blog, right?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we should keep track of this thing occasionally.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Not with every time the oldest person changes hands.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's interesting to keep in mind how far back, right, our living memory goes.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: The two others here are tremendous sports figures who passed away last week.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, a lot of you have heard the news.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Willie Mays,
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: the slugging outfielder nicknamed the Say Hey Kid and one of the very best all
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: around baseball players ever to play the game.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: He died last week at age 83.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Mays was born in 1931 and raised by his father's family during the Great Depression
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: in a black company town in Alabama.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: He excelled in pretty much every sport in school.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And at age 18,
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: even before graduating high school,
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Mays played baseball one year for the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Mays single-handedly helped the Barons advance to the 1948 Negro World Series,
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: which instantly attracted interest by the major league teams,
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: which are now beginning to sign black players.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: In 1950, the Brooklyn Giants signed him, and in 1951, coach Leo DeRocher called him up to start.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And as you can imagine, he was overwhelmed by all the famous players and coaches he didn't know.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so he is said to have blurted out, say who, say what, say where.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: And from that, he got the name Say Hey Kid.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And they made songs about that.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: You can go.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, it's wonderful in the 1950s.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of the fanfare surrounding Willie Mays.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Mays started for the Giants.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: almost always at center field for the next 22 years.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Until 1957, they were the Brooklyn Giants, and thereafter they were the San Francisco Giants.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: In 1972, Mays was traded to the New York Mets, where he played for two years before retiring.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: By then,
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: in his early 40s,
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Mays' knees were giving out,
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: which persuaded him reluctantly to retire in 1974.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: During those 22 years on the Giants,
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Mays established a reputation as possibly the best complete baseball player that
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: coaches and fans had ever seen.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: He was, first of all, Christian, he was a slugger.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: By the time he retired, he held the National League record for career runs scored.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: He was third in home runs,
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: third in runs batted in,
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: third in total bases,
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: third in extra base hits,
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: and he was fifth in slugging percentage.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not all.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: He had speed on the bases.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: He led the league in stolen bases four times and was the first player to hit 30
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: home runs and steal 30 bases in the same season.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: And this still isn't all.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: He was a brilliant center fielder who won 12 consecutive Golden Glove Awards.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: He could catch a ball in center field and throw a strike to home plate.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: And who can forget the catch?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: This happened in game one of the 1954 World Series when Mays ran toward the wall as
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: fast as he could and caught a deep fly ball over his shoulder without looking back.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then he turned around and rocketed the ball back to the infield to prevent one
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: of the runners from advancing.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: And if you haven't seen it, you should look it up on YouTube.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: It is one of those spectacular moments.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Over his career,
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Mays was an all-star 24 times,
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: tied behind Hank Aaron for the second most all-star appearances in Major League history.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: And when we think about all of his records, keep this in mind.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Just as he was rising to dominance in 1952 and 1953,
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Mays had to take two years out of baseball to serve in the armed forces like
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: everybody else.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Something later young players never had to think about.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to wonder...
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: what would those extra two years have done to his numbers?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe,
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: also the wins in Candlestick Park,
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: maybe that he would have had more home runs.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Any number of players like Stan Musial and managers like Yogi Berra said that
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Willie Mays was the best baseball player they had ever seen.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Fans loved to see Mays just practice.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: There was something magical in the
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: power, sort of effortless power of his movements.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Over time, Mays also became a fan favorite due to his exuberant personality.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: He just looked like he was always having a great time playing the game.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Fans sometimes called Mays a natural,
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: meaning that everything about baseball came to him effortlessly,
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: but coaches who knew him said that Mays always did his homework.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: He knew before every game what the opposing pitcher's best throw was and where each
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: of the opposing batters was likely to hit the ball.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Mays came into the majors only four years after Jackie Robinson,
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: and he may have been a key figure in winning white fans over to black players when
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: there still weren't many of them.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Robinson,
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: a prickly and more ideological spokesman on civil rights,
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: criticized Mays later on in the 1960s for not speaking out enough,
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: and Mays' response was pretty typical.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: He said,
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a ballplayer.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a politician or a writer or a historian.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: I can do best for my people by doing what I do best.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And what he did best, obviously, was showing off his infectious love of the game.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: After retiring,
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Mays stayed on with the Mets for a while as a hitting coach and with the MLB as a
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: public ambassador.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: But he really wasn't much interested in doing anything with baseball other than play it.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: The Giants retired as number 24 in 1972.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And when they opened their new Oracle Park Stadium in 2000,
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: they made sure its address was 24 Willie Mays Plaza.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: And in front of the main entrance stands a giant nine-foot statue of the Say Hey Kid.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: So there you go.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Willie Mays, gone at age 93.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: And remarkably, another great in sports.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: I normally don't try to do many sports players on this,
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: but,
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: let's think about Jerry West for a second.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Jerry West, the all star guard for the L.A.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Lakers and one of the most iconic NBA players in an era when professional basketball was still popular.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Still just a marginal sport.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he died last week at age 86.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: West had an interesting life.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: He was born in 1938, grew up in a small coal mining town in West Virginia.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: His childhood was Christian Catholic.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Rough.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just put it that way.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: You can imagine a coal mining town in West Virginia.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: He had a father who often physically beat him and a mother who sometimes whipped him.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: As a teen, he told his father at one point that if you touch me again, I'm going to kill you.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: and took to putting a loaded shotgun under his bed.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: This was later on when he was sort of giving his autobiography.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: He grew up shy,
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: introverted,
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: and anxious,
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: and prone to depression after learning that his older brother,
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: with whom he was very close,
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: had died in Korea.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: He began to put all that energy and focus into the one thing he was good at, playing basketball.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: He played small forward on his high school team and was named All-State from 1953 to 1956.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: He was All-American in 1956 when he became West Virginia's first high school player
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: to score more than 900 points in a season.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: His signature weapon...
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: which lasted through his career, was a lightning fast mid-range jump shot.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: West was a white guy with jump.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: At 6'2", he could reach 16 inches over the rim when he went up.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, and by the way, I should say, I remember watching both Willie Mays and
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Jerry West when I was a kid because I grew up in the Bay Area in San Francisco.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously saw Willie Mays and Candlestick Park and saw West because the Warriors
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: were always playing the Lakers.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: So so he was, you know, as part of my childhood.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: At West Virginia University in Morgantown in the late 1950s,
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Wes continued his record-breaking performances.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: He regularly led all scorers and rebounders in West Virginia games and to this day
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: holds 12 West Virginia University all-time records.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: He played on the 1960 Summer Olympics game in Rome, back when it was amateurs only, and helped the U.S.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: team win the gold medal.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: In 1960, he was drafted by the Lakers.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: In the year they relocated from Minneapolis to L.A.,
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: he played there for 14 years and made the NBA All-Star team nearly every year.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: In 1965,
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: he scored 46 points per game in a playoff series against the Bullets,
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: a record that still stands.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's pretty good for a series.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: You have to admit.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Early on, he was Mr. Outside playing with forward Elgin Baylor as Mr. Inside.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: And with Weston Baylor,
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: the Lakers regularly won the Western Championship but lost out on the finals to the
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Boston Celtics.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: That began to change in 1968 when the Lakers traded for Wilt Chamberlain,
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: finally giving them a center that could stand up to Bill Russell.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: In 1972, the Lakers finally won the finals and West was voted MVP of the series.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: And West said afterwards, at last, this is my first championship since high school.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he retired two years later.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: But his career, for many of you know that the history of the Lakers was not over.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: He went on to coach or manage some of the NBA's greatest boomer and extra stars.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: For three years in the mid 1970s,
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: he coached a Lakers team anchored by the superstar center,
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: We knew him at the time as Lew Alcindor.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then after coaching, he was the Lakers general manager during the 1980s and 90s.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: This was the Lakers' showtime years of real glory with Magic Johnson and Abdul-Jabbar.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: West Lakers won five championships in the 1980s.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then toward the end of the 1990s,
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: when coach Pat Riley was replaced by Phil Jackson,
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: he signed on Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal and laid the foundations for the
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Lakers' three-peat championships in 2000,
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: 2001,
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: and 2002.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: West had many nicknames.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: He was Mr. Inside.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: He was Zeke from Cabin Creek,
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: so named because his West Virginia accent was so strong when he first arrived in LA
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: that players had a hard time understanding him.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: He was also Mr. Clutch, famous for sinking game-winning shots.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone noticed his intense work ethic.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Bill Russell, who played against him so many times, called West the greatest player in the game.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: He also came to be known as Mr.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Logo since the player silhouette shown in the NBA logo was widely acknowledged to
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: be drawn from an image of West driving to the basket.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: He was shy yet moody, not an easy person to be around.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: In his later years as a coach and manager, he often vented on the younger players.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: This was no doubt due to his brutal, no-excuses childhood, but
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: which later on led him to be as critical of others as he was always hard on himself whenever he failed.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Jerry West,
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: the silent generation's clean-cut,
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: hard-working gift to the NBA during its early days,
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: gone at age 86.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well,
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: as always,
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: let me remind you,
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: if you like this podcast,
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: please go ahead and share it with your friends and family.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Repost it on social media.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: From now on, only some episodes will remain free.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: And Christian,
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: as always,
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think we should take a moment to clarify to listeners that this podcast isn't all
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: we do on Substack,
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: but that we also put out a lot of written content under the name of Demography Unplugged.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, Neil.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I always recommend to our listeners, go check out some of our recent written work.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: We last week did a by the numbers piece where we always look at the recent
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: demographic news and some really fascinating statistics out of Mexico.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: We got a TFR for 2020 through 2022.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: They always give their TFR in these three year spans,
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: but it came in at 1.60,
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: which is the first time Mexico's TFR has been below the U.S.,
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll say.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was a stunner.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it's way below what the World Bank is now estimating,
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: and I'm sure what the UN,
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: too,
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: has been estimating.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: The World Bank estimated 1.8 in 2022.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: So,
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: in other words,
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: it's yet one more indication of how rapidly and unexpectedly some of these total
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: fertility rates are plummeting around the world.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: That one, to me, is a real shocker.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you see all this immigration from Latin America,
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: And everyone thinks, well, the birth rate's much higher, you have an excess of young people.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: People aren't aware of the fact that practically every country,
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: there may be a couple of poor exceptions like Honduras,
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: but practically every country in Latin America is now under the replacement rate.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: And some of these countries, I mean, Mexico is an example, where it is really falling fast.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: And for Mexico, again, to be falling faster than the United States, right?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: What's the U.S.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: right now? 1.6%.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a little bit lower, 1.63.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, because it went down a couple of years.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, that was remarkable.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get into today's podcast.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: As always, we have a huge amount to talk about.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: First, we got market news.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: As usual, we'll be covering stories from around the world.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: Just looking ahead to our stories,
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: the big one,
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose,
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: on Thursday,
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: we're going to be seeing the first presidential debate,
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: which will be held in Atlanta and hosted by CNN.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: What should we be looking for?
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: The CBO has updated its 10-year economic and fiscal outlook,
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: and it's a lot of red ink as far as the eye can see.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's my brief summary.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: U.S.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recommends warning labels on major social media sites
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: for their negative effects on teen mental health.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: abroad with the final numbers in for the EU parliamentary elections.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: What are the aftershocks for Europe and in particular for France?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Last week,
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Putin visited North Korea,
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: where he signed a formal defense pact with Kim Jong-un and Vietnam,
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: where he has been trying to undermine recent Vietnamese agreements with the U.S.,
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: And finally,
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: tensions continue to rise between China and the Philippines over the second Thomas Shoal,
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: with open violence leading to worries about possible U.S.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: involvement.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we got a lot to talk about.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's over to you, Christian, for our markets.