Podcasts about sociologists

Sociologists are telling us that Americans are afraid of more things and they are more afraid of those things than they have been in the past. And this resonates with what we see in our culture so we are not surprised by these findings. In this message, taking a large leaf out of John Flavel's work on fear, we begin to explore how we are to navigate through our fear.

Susie is pumped about a new documentary about a treasure hunt, and we realize we've been on the air so long that we've covered this hunt's beginning, its controversies, the treasure's discovery (???), and now the doc. We learn why it tells us a lot about human psychology, passion, addiction, celebrity, risk-taking, and more. We discuss scholarship on luck, and why sociologists tend to ignore it. We debate whether there even is "luck," why Sarah thinks she's lucky, and how a lot of it is perspective. Susie's hatred of whistling is vindicated by an advice columnist, and we learn why whistling is particularly annoying and frustrating for people in earshot (especially when they live together). Susie reveals why porn addiction is quack science, it's not actually a thing, and what actually determines whether someone thinks they might be one. Plus, we hear some fascinating things about people who are deaf and blind, and why some quirks of the hearing/seeing world show up for people even if they don't have those senses.Listen to more podcasts like this: https://wavepodcastnetwork.comJoin our Candy Club, shop our merch, sign-up for our free newsletter, & more by visiting The Brain Candy Podcast website: https://www.thebraincandypodcast.comConnect with us on social media:BCP Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/braincandypodcastSusie's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/susiemeisterSarah's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imsarahriceBCP on X: https://www.x.com/braincandypodSponsors:Get $10 off any order and enjoy free shipping when you subscribe. Go to https://nutrafol.com/ and enter the promo code BRAINCANDYGIFTThis episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Visit https://www.betterhelp.com/braincandy today to get 10% off your first month.For 50% off your order, head to https://www.dailylook.com and use code BRAINCANDYSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello Interactors,Spring at Interplace brings a shift to mapping, GIS, and urban design. While talk of industrial revival stirs nostalgia — steel mills, union jobs, bustling Main Streets — the reality on the ground is different: warehouses, data centers, vertical suburbs, and last-mile depots. Less Rosy the Riveter, more Ada Lovelace. Our cities are being shaped accordingly — optimized not for community, but for logistics.FROM STOREFRONTS TO STEEL DOORSLet's start with these two charts recently shared by the historian of global finance and power Adam Tooze at Chartbook. One shows Amazon passing Walmart in quarterly sales for the first time. The other shows a steadily declining drop in plans for small business capital expenditure. Confidence shot up upon the election of Trump, but dropped suddenly when tariff talks trumped tax tempering. Together, these charts paint a picture: control over how people buy, build, and shape space is shifting — fast. It all starts quietly. A parking lot gets fenced off. Trucks show up. Maybe the old strip mall disappears overnight. A few months later, there's a low, gray building with no windows. No grand opening. Just a stream of delivery vans pulling in and out.This isn't just a new kind of facility — it's a new kind of urban and suburban logic.Platform logistics has rewritten the rules of space. Where cities were once shaped by factories and storefronts, now they're shaped by fulfillment timelines, routing algorithms, and the need to move goods faster than planning commissions can meet.In the past, small businesses were physical anchors. They invested in place. They influenced how neighborhoods looked, felt, and functioned. But when capital expenditures from local firms drop — as that second chart shows — their power to shape the block goes with it.What fills the vacuum is logistics. And it doesn't negotiate like the actors it replaces.This isn't just a retail story. It's a story about agency — who gets to decide what a place is for. When small businesses cut back on investment, it's not just the storefront that disappears. So does the capacity to influence a block, a street, a community. Local business owners don't just sell goods — they co-create neighborhoods. They choose where to open, how to hire, how to design, and what kind of social space their business offers. All of that is a form of micro-planning — planning from below. France, as one example, subsidizes these co-created neighborhoods in Paris to insure they uphold the romantic image of a Parisian boulevard.But without subsidies, these actors are disappearing. And in the vacuum, big brands and logistics move in. Not softly, either. Amazon alone added hundreds of logistics facilities to U.S. land in the past five years. Data centers compete for this land. Meta recently announced a four million square foot facility in Richland Parish, Louisiana. It will be their largest data center in the world.These buildings are a new kind of mall. They're massive, quiet, windowless buildings that optimize for speed, not presence. This is what researchers call logistics urbanization — a land use logic where space is valued not for what people can do in it, but for how efficiently packages and data can pass through it.The shift is structural. It remakes how land is zoned, how roads are used, and how people move — and it does so at a scale that outpaces most municipal planning timelines. That's not just a market change. It's a change in governance. Because planners? Mayors? Even state reps? They're not steering anymore. They're reacting.City managers once had tools to shape growth — zoning, permitting, community input. But logistics and tech giants don't negotiate like developers. They come with pre-designed footprints and expectations. If a city doesn't offer fast approval, industrial zoning, and tax breaks, they'll skip to the next one. And often, they won't even say why. Economists studying these state and local business tax incentives say these serve as the “primary place-based policy in the United States.”It forces a kind of economic speed dating. I see it in my own area as local governments vie for the attention (and revenue) of would-be high-tech suitors. But it can be quiet, as one report suggests: “This first stage of logistical urbanization goes largely unnoticed insofar as the construction of a warehouse in an existing industrial zone rarely raises significant political issues.”(2)This isn't just in major cities. Across the U.S., cities are bending their long-term plans to chase short-term fulfillment deals. Even rural local governments routinely waive design standards and sidestep public input to accommodate warehouse and tech siting — because saying no can feel like missing out on tax revenue, jobs, or political wins.(2)What was once a dynamic choreography of land use and local voices becomes something flatter: a data pipeline.It isn't all bad. Fulfillment hubs closer to homes mean fewer trucks, shorter trips, and lower emissions. Data centers crunching billions of bits is better than a PC whirring under the desk of every home. There is a scale and sustainability case to be made.But logistic liquidity doesn't equal optimistic livability. It doesn't account for what's lost when civic agency fades, or when a city works better for packages than for people. You can optimize flow — and still degrade life.That's what those two charts at the beginning really show. Not just an economic shift, but a spatial one. From many small decisions to a few massive ones. From storefronts and civic input to corporate site selection and zoning flips. From a lived city to a delivered one.Which brings us to the next shape in this story — not the warehouse, but the mid-rise. Not the loading dock, but the key-fob lobby. Different function. Same logic.HIGH-RISE, LOW TOUCHYou've seen them. The sleek new apartment buildings with names like The Foundry or Parc25. A yoga room, a roof deck, and an app for letting in your dog walker. “Mixed-use,” they say — but it's mostly private use stacked vertically.It's much needed housing, for sure. But these aren't neighborhoods. They're private bunkers with balconies.Yes, they're more dense than suburban cul-de-sacs. Yes, they're more energy-efficient than sprawl. But for all their square footage and amenity spaces, they often feel more like vertical suburbs — inward-facing, highly managed, and oddly disconnected from the street.The ground floors are usually glazed over with placeholder retail: maybe a Starbucks, a Subway, or nothing at all…often vacant with only For Lease signs. Residents rarely linger. Packages arrive faster than neighbors can introduce themselves. There's a gym to bench press, but no public bench or egress. You're close to hundreds of people — and yet rarely bump into anyone you didn't schedule.That's not a design flaw. That's the point.These buildings are part of a new typology — one that synchronizes perfectly with a platform lifestyle. Residents work remote. Order in. Socialize through screens. The architecture doesn't foster interaction because interaction isn't the product. Efficiency is.Call it fulfillment housing — apartments designed to plug into an economy that favors logistics and metrics, not civic social fabrics. They're located near tech centers, distribution hubs, and delivery corridors, and sometimes libraries or parks outdoors. What matters is access to bandwidth and smooth entry for Amazon and Door Dash.And it's not just what you see on the block. Behind the scenes, cities are quietly reengineering themselves to connect these structures to the digital twins — warehouses and data centers. Tucked into nearby low-tax exurbs or industrial zones, together they help reshape land use, strain energy grids, and anchor the platform economy.They're infrastructure for a new kind of urban life — one where presence is optional and connection to the cloud is more important than to the crowd.Even the public spaces inside these buildings — co-working lounges, shared kitchens, “community rooms” — are behind fobs, passwords, and management policies. Sociologists have called this the anticommons: everything looks shared, but very little actually is. It's curated collectivity, not true community.And it's not just isolation — it's predictability. These developments are built to minimize risk, noise, conflict, friction. Which is also to say: they're built to minimize surprise. The kind of surprise that once made cities exciting. The kind that made them social.Some urban scholars describe these spaces as part of a broader “ghost urbanism” — a city where density exists without depth. Where interaction is optional. Where proximity is engineered, but intimacy is not. You can be surrounded by life and still feel like you're buffering.The irony is these buildings often check every sustainability box. They're LEED-certified. Near transit. Built up, not out. From a local emissions standpoint, they beat the ‘burbs'. But their occupant's consumption, waste, and travel habits can create more pollution than homebody suburbanites. And from a civic standpoint — the standpoint of belonging, encounter, spontaneity — they're often just as empty.And so we arrive at a strange truth: a city can be efficient, dense, even walkable — and still feel ghosted. Because what we've optimized for isn't connection. It's delivery — to screens and doorsteps. What gets delivered to fulfillment housing may be frictionless, but it's rarely fulfilling.DRONES, DOMICILES, AND DISCONNECTIONI admit there's a nostalgia for old-world neighborhoods as strong as nostalgia for industrial cities of the past. Neighborhoods where you may run into people at the mailbox. Asking someone in the post office line where they got their haircut. Sitting on the porch, just waitin' on a friend. We used to talk about killing time, now we have apps to optimize it.It's not just because of screens. It's also about what kinds of space we've built — and what kind of social activity they allow or even encourage.In many suburbs and edge cities, the mix of logistics zones, tech centers, and residential enclaves creates what urban theorists might call a fragmented spatial syntax. That means the city no longer “reads” as a continuous experience. Streets don't tell stories.There's no rhythm from house to corner store to café to school. Instead, you get jump cuts — a warehouse here, a cul-de-sac there, a fenced-in apartment complex down the road. These are spaces that serve different logics, designed for speed, security, or seclusion — but rarely for relation. The grammar of the neighborhood breaks down. You don't stroll. You shuttle.You drive past a warehouse. You park in a garage. You enter through a lobby. You take an elevator to your door. There's no in-between space — no casual friction, no civic ambiguity, no shared air.These patterns aren't new. But they're becoming the norm, not the exception. You can end up living in a place but never quite arrive.Watch most anyone under 35. Connection increasingly happens online. Friendships form in Discord servers, not diners. Parties are planned via private stories, not porch swings. You don't run into people. You ping them.Sometimes that online connection does spill back into the real world — meetups, pop-ups, shared hobbies that break into public space. Discord, especially, has become a kind of digital third place, often leading to real-world hangouts. It's social. Even communal. But it's different. Fleeting. Ephemeral. Less rooted in place, more tied to platform and notifications.None of this is inherently bad. But it does change the role of the neighborhood as we once knew it. It's no longer the setting for shared experience — it's just a backdrop for bandwidth. That shift is subtle, but it adds up. Without physical places for civic life, interactions gets offloaded to platforms. Connection becomes mediated, surveilled, and datafied. You don't meet your neighbors. You follow them. You comment on their dog through a Ring alert.This is what some sociologists call networked individualism — where people aren't embedded in shared place-based systems, but orbit through overlapping digital networks. And when digital is the default, the city becomes a logistics problem. Something to move through efficiently…or not. It certainly is not something we're building together. It's imposed upon us.And so we arrive at a kind of paradox:We're more connected than ever. But we're less entangled.We're more visible. But we're less involved.We're living closer. But we don't feel near.The irony is the very platforms that hollow out public space are now where we go looking for belonging. TikTok isn't just where we go to kill time — it's where we go to feel seen. If your neighborhood doesn't give you identity, the algorithm will.Meanwhile, the built environment absorbs the logic of logistics. Warehouses and data centers at the edge. Mid-rises in the core. Streets engineered for the throughput of cars and delivery vans. Housing designed for containment. And social life increasingly routed elsewhere.It all works. Until you want to feel something.We're social creatures, biologically wired for connection. Neuroscience shows that in-person social interactions regulate stress, build emotional resilience, and literally shape how our brains grow and adapt. It's not just emotional. It's neurochemical. Oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin — the chemistry of belonging — fire most powerfully through touch, eye contact, shared space. When those rituals shrink, so does our sense of meaning and safety.And that's what this is really about. Historically cities weren't just containers for life. They're catalysts for feeling. Without shared air, shared time, and shared friction, we lose more than convenience. We lose the chance to feel something real — to be part of a place, not just a node in a network.What started with two charts ends here: a world where local agency, social spontaneity, and even emotion itself are being restructured by platform logic. The city still stands. The buildings are there. The people are home. But the feeling of place — the buzz, the bump, the belonging — gets harder to find.That's the cost of efficiency without empathy. Of optimizing everything but meaning.And that's the city we're building. Unless we build something else. We'll need agency. And not just for planners or developers. For people.That's the work ahead. Not to reject the platform city. But to remake it — into something more livable. More legible. More ours. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit interplace.io

Sociologists say that envy seems to be a bigger problem for our generation than any before us, because social media seems designed to play on it! But when we look at other people's lives on social media, we are seeing a filtered image. Pastor J.D. concludes his message on the difficult emotion of envy.

Sociologists say that envy seems to be a bigger problem for our generation than any before us, because social media seems designed to play on it! But when we look at other people's lives on social media, we are seeing a filtered image. Pastor J.D. concludes his message on the difficult emotion of envy. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1518/29

Today's guest is Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He spent two years as a police officer in Baltimore. I asked him to come on and talk about his new book, Back from the Brink, Inside the NYPD and New York City's Extraordinary 1990s Crime Drop. It's one of my favorite books I've read this year (and it was one of my three book recommendations on Ezra Klein's show last week).Peter spoke with hundreds of police officers and NYC officials to understand and describe exactly how the city's leaders in the early 1990s managed to drive down crime so successfully.We discussed:* How bad did things get in the 1970s?* Why did processing an arrest take so long?* What did Bill Bratton and other key leaders do differently?* How did police get rid of the squeegee men?I've included my reading list at the bottom of this piece. Thanks to Harry Fletcher-Wood for his judicious transcript edits.Subscribe for one new interview a week.Peter, how would you describe yourself?I would say I'm a criminologist: my background is sociology, but I am not in the sociology department. I'm not so big on theory, and sociology has a lot of theory. I was a grad student at Harvard in sociology and worked as a police officer [in Baltimore] and that became my dissertation and first book, Cop in the Hood. I've somewhat banked my career on those 20 months in the police department.Not a lot of sociologists spend a couple of years working a police beat.It's generally frowned upon, both for methodological reasons and issues of bias. But there is also an ideological opposition in a lot of academia to policing. It's seen as going to the dark side and something to be condemned, not understood.Sociologists said crime can't go down unless we fix society first. It's caused by poverty, racism, unemployment, and social and economic factors — they're called the root causes. But they don't seem to have a great impact on crime, as important as they are. When I'm in grad school, murders dropped 30-40% in New York City. At the same time, Mayor Giuliani is slashing social spending, and poverty is increasing. The whole academic field is just wrong. I thought it an interesting field to get into.We're going to talk about your new book, which is called Back from the Brink, Inside the NYPD and New York City's Extraordinary 1990s Crime Drop. I had a blast reading it. Tell me about the process of writing it.A lot of this is oral history, basically. But supposedly people don't like buying books that are called oral histories. It is told entirely from the perspective of police officers who were on the job at the time. I would not pretend I talked to everyone, because there were 30,000+ cops around, but I spoke to many cops and to all the major players involved in the 1990s crime drop in New York City.I was born in the ‘90s, and I had no idea about a crazy statistic you cite: 25% of the entire national crime decline was attributable to New York City's crime decline.In one year, yeah. One of the things people say to diminish the role of policing is that the crime drop happened everywhere — and it did end up happening almost everywhere. But I think that is partly because what happened in New York City was a lot of hard work, but it wasn't that complicated. It was very easy to propagate, and people came to New York to find out what was going on. You could see results, literally in a matter of months.It happened first in New York City. Really, it happened first in the subways and that's interesting, because if crime goes down in the subways [which, at the time, fell under the separate New York City Transit Police] and not in the rest of the city, you say, “What is going on in the subways that is unique?” It was the exact same strategies and leadership that later transformed the NYPD [New York Police Department].Set the scene: What was the state of crime and disorder in New York in the ‘70s and into the ‘80s?Long story short, it was bad. Crime in New York was a big problem from the late ‘60s up to the mid ‘90s, and the ‘70s is when the people who became the leaders started their careers. So these were defining moments. The city was almost bankrupt in 1975 and laid off 5,000 cops; 3,000 for a long period of time. That was arguably the nadir. It scarred the police department and the city.Eventually, the city got its finances in order and came to the realization that “we've got a big crime problem too.” That crime problem really came to a head with crack cocaine. Robberies peaked in New York City in 1980. There were above 100,000 robberies in 1981, and those are just reported robberies. A lot of people get robbed and just say, “It's not worth it to report,” or, “I'm going to work,” or, “Cops aren't going to do anything.” The number of robberies and car thefts was amazingly high. The trauma, the impact on the city and on urban space, and people's perception of fear, all comes from that. If you're afraid of crime, it's high up on the hierarchy of needs.To some extent, those lessons have been lost or forgotten. Last year there were 16,600 [robberies], which is a huge increase from a few years ago, but we're still talking an 85% reduction compared to the worst years. It supposedly wasn't possible. What I wanted to get into in Back from the Brink was the actual mechanisms of the crime drop. I did about fifty formal interviews and hundreds of informal interviews building the story. By and large, people were telling the same story.In 1975, the city almost goes bankrupt. It's cutting costs everywhere, and it lays off more than 5,000 cops, about 20% of the force, in one day. There's not a new police academy class until 1979, four years later. Talk to me about where the NYPD was at that time.They were retrenched, and the cops were demoralized because “This is how the city treats us?” The actual process of laying off the cops itself was just brutal: they went to work, and were told once they got to work that they were no longer cops. “Give me your badge, give me your gun."The city also was dealing with crime, disorder, and racial unrest. The police department was worried about corruption, which was a legacy of the Knapp Commission [which investigated NYPD corruption] and [Frank] Serpico [a whistleblowing officer]. It's an old police adage, that if you don't work, you can't get in trouble. That became very much the standard way of doing things. Keep your head low, stay out of trouble, and you'll collect your paycheck and go home.You talk about the blackout in 1977, when much of the city lost power and you have widespread looting and arson. 13,000 off-duty cops get called in during the emergency, and only about 5,000 show up, which is a remarkable sign of the state of morale.The person in my book who's talking about that is Louis Anemone. He showed up because his neighbor and friend and partner was there, and he's got to help him. It was very much an in-the-foxholes experience. I contrast that with the more recent blackout, in which the city went and had a big block party instead. That is reflective of the change that happened in the city.In the mid-80s you get the crack cocaine epidemic. Talk to me about how police respond.From a political perspective, that era coincided with David Dinkins as [New York City's first black] mayor. He was universally disliked, to put it mildly, by white and black police officers alike. He was seen as hands off. He was elected in part to improve racial relations in New York City, to mitigate racial strife, but in Crown Heights and Washington Heights, there were riots, and racial relations got worse. He failed at the level he was supposed to be good at. Crime and quality of life were the major issues in that election.Dinkins's approach to the violence is centered around what they called “community policing.” Will you describe how Dinkins and political leaders in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s thought about policing?This is under Ben Ward, the [NYPD] Commissioner at the time. The mayor appoints the police commissioner — and the buck does stop with the mayor — but the mayor is not actively involved in day-to-day operations. That part does go down to the police department.Community policing was seen as an attempt to improve relations between the police and the community. The real goal was to lessen racial strife and unrest between black (and to a lesser extent Hispanic) communities and the NYPD. Going back to the ‘60s, New York had been rocked by continued unrest in neighborhoods like Central Harlem, East New York, and Bushwick. Community policing was seen as saying that police are partly to blame, and we want to improve relations. Some of it was an attempt to get the community more involved in crime fighting.It's tough. It involves a certain rosy view of the community, but that part of the community isn't causing the problems. It avoids the fact there are people who are actively criming and are willing to hurt people who get in their way. Community policing doesn't really address the active criminal element, that is a small part of any community, including high-crime communities.Arrests increased drastically during this era, more than in the ‘90s with broken windows policing. If the idea is to have fewer arrests, it didn't happen in the ‘80s. Some good came out of it, because it did encourage cops to be a bit more active and cops are incentivized by overtime. Arrests were so incredibly time-consuming, which kind of defeated the purpose of community policing. If you made an arrest in that era, there was a good chance you might spend literally 24 hours processing the arrest.Will you describe what goes into that 24 hours?From my experience policing in Baltimore, I knew arrests were time-consuming and paperwork redundant, but I could process a simple arrest in an hour or two. Even a complicated one that involved juveniles and guns and drugs, we're talking six to eight hours.In the ‘80s, Bob Davin, [in the] Transit Police, would say they'd make an arrest, process at the local precinct, search him in front of a desk officer, print him, and then they would have to get a radio car off patrol to drive you down to central booking at 100 Centre Street [New York City Criminal Court]. Then they would fingerprint him. They didn't have the live scan fingerprints machine, it was all ink. It had to be faxed up to Albany and the FBI to see if it hit on any warrant federally and for positive identification of the person. Sometimes it took 12 hours to have the prints come back and the perp would be remanded until that time. Then you'd have to wait for the prosecutor to get their act together and to review all the paperwork. You couldn't consider bail unless the prints came back either positive or negative and then you would have that initial arraignment and the cop could then go home. There are a lot of moving parts, and they moved at a glacial pace.The system often doesn't work 24/7. A lot of this has changed, but some of it was having to wait until 9 am for people to show up to go to work, because it's not a single system. The courts, the jails, and policing all march to their own drummer, and that created a level of inefficiency.So much of the nitty-gritty of what cops actually do is boring, behind-the-scenes stuff: How do we speed up the paperwork? Can we group prisoners together? Can we do some of this at the police station instead of taking it downtown? Is all of this necessary? Can we cooperate with the various prosecutors? There are five different prosecutors in New York City, one for each borough.There's not a great incentive to streamline this. Cops enjoyed the overtime. That's one of the reasons they would make arrests. So during this time, if a cop makes an arrest for drug dealing, that cop is gone and no cop was there to replace him. If it's a minor arrest, there's a good chance in the long run charges will be dropped anyway. And you're taking cops off the street. In that sense, it's lose-lose. But, you have to think, “What's the alternative?”Bob Davin is a fascinating guy. There's a famous picture from 1981 by Martha Cooper of two cops on a subway train. It's graffitied up and they're in their leather jackets and look like cops from the ‘70s. Martha Cooper graciously gave me permission to use the picture, but she said, "You have to indemnify me because I don't have a release form. I don't know who the cops are." I said, "Martha, I do know who the cop is, because he's in my book and he loves the picture.” Bob Davin is the cop on the right.Davin says that things started to get more efficient. They had hub sites in the late ‘80s or ‘90s, so precincts in the north of Manhattan could bring their prisoners there, and you wouldn't have to take a car out of service to go back to Central Booking and deal with traffic. They started collecting prisoners and bringing them en masse on a small school bus, and that would cut into overtime. Then moving to electronic scan fingerprints drastically saves time waiting for those to come back.These improvements were made, but some of them involve collective bargaining with unions, to limit overtime and arrests that are made for the pure purpose of overtime. You want cops making arrests for the right reason and not simply to make money. But boy, there was a lot of money made in arrests.In 1991, you have the infamous Crown Heights riot in Brooklyn. Racial tensions kick off. It's a nightmare for the mayor, there's this sense that he has lost control. The following year, you have this infamous police protest at City Hall where it becomes clear the relationship between the cops and the mayor has totally evaporated. How does all that play into the mayoral race between Dinkins and Giuliani?It was unintentional, but a lot of the blame for Crown Heights falls on the police department. The part of the story that is better known is that there was a procession for a Hasidic rabbi that was led by a police car. He would go to his wife's grave, and he got a little three-car motorcade. At some point, the police look at this and go "Why are we doing this? We're going to change it." The man who made the deal said ‘I"m retiring in a couple weeks, can we just leave it till then? Because I gave him my word." They're like, "Alright, whatever."This motor car procession is then involved in a car crash, and a young child named Gavin Cato is killed, and another girl is severely injured. The volunteer, Jewish-run ambulance shows up and decides they don't have the equipment: they call for a professional city ambulance. Once that ambulance is on the way, they take the mildly-injured Jewish people to the hospital. The rumor starts that the Jewish ambulance abandoned the black children to die.This isn't the first incident. There's long been strife over property and who the landlord is. But this was the spark that set off riots. A young Jewish man was randomly attacked on the street and was killed.As an aside, he also shouldn't have died, but at the hospital they missed internal bleeding.Meanwhile, the police department has no real leadership at the time. One chief is going to retire, another is on vacation, a third doesn't know what he's doing, and basically everyone is afraid to do anything. So police do nothing. They pull back, and you have three days of very anti-Semitic riots. Crowds chanting "Kill the Jews" and marching on the Lubavitch Hasidic Headquarters. Al Sharpton shows up. The riots are blamed on Dinkins, which is partly fair, but a lot of that's on the NYPD. Finally, the mayor and the police commissioner go to see what's going on and they get attacked. It's the only time in New York City history that there's ever been an emergency call from the police commissioner's car. People are throwing rocks at it.It took three days to realise this, but that's when they say “We have to do something here,” and they gather a group of officers who later become many of Bratton's main chiefs at the time [Bill Bratton was Commissioner of the NYPD from 1994-1996, under Giuliani]: Mike Julian, Louis Anemone, Ray Kelly, and [John] Timoney. They end the unrest in a day. They allow people to march, they get the police department to set rules. It still goes on for a bit, but no one gets hurt after that, and that's it.It was a huge, national story at the time, but a lot of the details were not covered. Reporters were taken from their car and beaten and stripped. The significance was downplayed at the time, especially by the New York Times, I would say.That's followed by the Washington Heights riots, which is a different story. A drug dealer was shot and killed by cops. There were rumors, which were proven to be false, that he was executed and unarmed. Then there were three days of rioting there. It wasn't quite as severe, but 53 cops were hurt, 120 stores were set on fire, and Mayor Dinkins paid for the victim's family to go to the Dominican Republic for the funeral. The police perspective again was, “You're picking the wrong side here.”Then there's the so-called Police Riot at City Hall. Nominally, it was about the CCRB, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, and setting up an accountability mechanism to control cops. But really it was just an anti-Dinkins protest. It was drunken and unruly. The cops stormed the steps of City Hall. I have the account of one of the cops who was on the top of those steps looking at this mob of cops storming to him, and he's getting worried he's going to be killed in a crush. There were racist chants from off-duty cops in the crowd. It did not reflect well on police officers. But it showed this hatred of David Dinkins, who was seen as siding with criminals and being anti-police. The irony is that Dinkins is the one who ends up hiring all the cops that Giuliani gets credit for.In the “Safe Streets, Safe City” program?Yes. That was because a white tourist, Brian Watkins, was killed in a subway station protecting his parents who were getting robbed. That led to the famous headline [in the New York Post] of “Dave, do something! Crime-ravaged city cries out for help.” He, with City Council President Peter Vallone, Sr., drafted and pushed through this massive hiring of police officers, “Safe Streets, Safe City.”The hiring wasn't fast-tracked. It might be because Dinkins's people didn't really want more cops. But it was a Dinkins push that got a massive hiring of cops. When the first huge class of police officers graduated, Bill Bratton was there and not David Dinkins.Some interviewees in your book talk about how there's physically not enough room in the police academies at this time, so they have to run classes 24/7. You cycle cohorts in and out of the same classroom, because there are too many new cops for the facilities.You have thousands of cops going through it at once. Everyone describes it as quite a chaotic scene. But it would have been hard to do what the NYPD did without those cops. Ray Kelly, who was police commissioner under Dinkins at the end [from 1992 to 1994] before he became police commissioner for 12 years under Bloomberg [from 2002 to 2013] probably could have done something with those cops too, but he never had the chance, because the mayoral leadership at the time was much more limiting in what they wanted cops to do.Crime starts declining slowly in the first few years of the ‘90s under Dinkins, and then in ‘93 Giuliani wins a squeaker of a mayoral election against Dinkins.One of the major issues was the then-notorious “squeegee men” of New York City. These were guys who would go to cars stopped at bridges and tunnel entrances and would rub a squeegee over the windshield asking for money. It was unpleasant, intimidating, and unwanted, and it was seen as one of those things that were just inevitable. Like graffiti on the subway in the ‘80s. Nothing we can do about it because these poor people don't have jobs or housing or whatever.The irony is that Bratton and Giuliani were happy to take credit for that, and it was an issue in the mayoral campaign, but it was solved under David Dinkins and Ray Kelly and Mike Julian with the help of George Kelling [who, with James Wilson, came up with broken windows theory]. But they never got credit for it. One wonders if, had they done that just a few months earlier, it would have shifted the entire campaign and we'd have a different course of history in New York City.It's a great example of a couple of things that several people in your book talk about. One is that disorder is often caused by a very small set of individuals. There's only like 70 squeegee men, yet everybody sees them, because they're posted up at the main tunnel and bridge entrances to Manhattan. And getting them off the streets solves the problem entirely.Another emphasis in the book is how perceptions of crime are central. You quote Jack Maple, the father of Compstat, as saying, “A murder on the subway counts as a multiple murder up on the street, because everybody feels like that's their subway.” The particular locations of crimes really affect public perception.Absolutely. Perception is reality for a lot of these things, because most people aren't victimized by crime. But when people perceive that no one is in control they feel less safe. It's not that this perception is false, it just might not be directly related to an actual criminal act.The other thing I try to show is that it's not just saying, “We've got to get rid of squeegee men. How do you do it?” They had tried before, but this is why you need smart cops and good leadership, because it's a problem-solving technique, and the way to get rid of graffiti is different to the way you get rid of squeegee men.This book is in opposition to those who just say, “We can't police our way out of this problem.” No, we can. We can't police our way out of every problem. But if you define the problem as, we don't want people at intersections with squeegees, of course we can police our way out of the problem, using legal constitutional tools. You need the political will. And then the hard work starts, because you have to figure out how to actually do it.Will you describe how they tackle the squeegee men problem?Mike Julian was behind it. They hired George Kelling, who's known for broken windows. They said, “These people are here to make money. So to just go there and make a few arrests isn't going to solve the problem.” First of all, he had to figure out what legal authority [to use], and he used Traffic Reg 44 [which prohibits pedestrians from soliciting vehicle occupants]. He talked to Norm Siegel of the NYCLU [New York Civil Liberties Union] about this, who did not want this crackdown to happen. But Norman said, “Okay, this is the law, I can't fight that one. You're doing it legally. It's all in the books.” And So that took away that opposition.But the relentless part of it is key. First they filmed people. Then, when it came to enforcement, they warned people. Then they cited people, and anybody that was left they arrested. They did not have to arrest many people, because the key is they did this every four hours. It was that that changed behavior, because even a simple arrest isn't going to necessarily deter someone if it's a productive way to make money. But being out there every four hours for a couple of weeks or months was enough to get people to do something else. What that something else is, we still don't know, but we solved the squeegee problem.So in 93, Giuliani is elected by something like 50,000 votes overall. Just as an aside, in Prince of the City, Fred Siegel describes something I had no idea about. There's a Puerto Rican Democratic Councilman who flips and supports Giuliani. Mayor Eric Adams, who at the time was the head of a nonprofit for black men in law enforcement, calls him a race traitor for doing that and for being married to a white woman. There was a remarkable level of racial vitriol in that race that I totally missed.10 years ago when I started this, I asked if I could interview then-Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams, and he said yes, and the interview kept getting rescheduled, and I said, “Eh, I don't need him.” It's a regret of mine. I should have pursued that, but coulda, woulda, shoulda.Giuliani is elected, and he campaigns very explicitly on a reducing crime and disorder platform. And he hires Bill Bratton. Tell me about Bratton coming on board as NYPD commissioner.Bratton grew up in Boston, was a police officer there, became head of the New York City Transit Police when that was a separate police department. Right before he becomes NYPD Commissioner, he's back in Boston, as the Chief of Police there, and there is a movement among certain people to get Bratton the NYC job. They succeed in that, and Bratton is a very confident man. He very much took a broken windows approach and said, “We are going to focus on crime.” He has a right-hand man by the name of Jack Maple who he knows from the Transit Police. Maple is just a lieutenant in transit, and Bratton makes him the de facto number two man in the police department.Jack Maple passed away in 2001 and I didn't know what I was going to do, because it's hard to interview a man who's no longer alive. Chris Mitchell co-wrote Jack Maple's autobiography called Crime Fighter and he graciously gave me all the micro-cassettes of the original interviews he conducted with Maple around 1998. Everyone has a Jack Maple story. He's probably the most important character in Back from the Brink.Jack Maple comes in, no one really knows who he is, no one respects him because he was just a lieutenant in Transit. He goes around and asks a basic question — this is 1994 — he says, “How many people were shot in New York City in 1993?” And nobody knows. That is the state of crime-fighting in New York City before this era. There might have been 7,000 people shot in New York City in 1990 and we just don't know, even to this day.One citation from your book: in 1993, an average of 16 people were shot every day. Which is just remarkable.And remember, shootings have been declining for two or three years before that! But nobody knew, because they weren't keeping track of shootings, because it's not one of the FBI Uniform Crime Report [which tracks crime data nationally] index crimes. But wouldn't you be curious? It took Jack Maple to be curious, so he made people count, and it was findable, but you had to go through every aggravated assault and see if a gun was involved. You had to go through every murder from the previous year and see if it was a shooting. He did this. So we only have shooting data in New York City going back to 1993. It's just a simple process of caring.The super-short version of Back from the Brink is it was a change in mission statement: “We're going to care about crime.” Because they hadn't before. They cared about corruption, racial unrest, brutality, and scandal. They cared about the clearance rate for robbery a bit. You were supposed to make three arrests for every ten robberies. It didn't matter so much that you were stopping a pattern or arresting the right person, as long as you had three arrests for every ten reported crimes, that was fine.This is a story about people who cared. They're from this city — Bratton wasn't, but most of the rest are. They understood the trauma of violence and the fact that people with families were afraid to go outside, and nobody in the power structure seemed to care. So they made the NYPD care about this. Suddenly, the mid-level police executives, the precinct commanders, had to care. and the meetings weren't about keeping overtime down, instead they were about ”What are you doing to stop this shooting?”Tell listeners a little bit more about Jack Maple, because he's a remarkable character, and folks may not know what a kook he was.I think he was a little less kooky than he liked to present. His public persona was wearing a snazzy cat and spats and dressing like a fictional cartoon detective from his own mind, but he's a working-class guy from Queens who becomes a transit cop.When Bratton takes over, he writes a letter up the chain of command saying this is what we should do. Bratton read it and said, “This guy is smart.” Listening to 80 hours of Jack Maple, everyone correctly says he was a smart guy, but he had a very working-class demeanor and took to the elite lifestyle. He loved hanging out and getting fancy drinks at the Plaza Hotel. He was the idea man of the NYPD. Everyone has a Jack Maple imitation. “You're talking to the Jackster,” he'd say. He had smart people working under him who were supportive of this. But it was very much trying to figure out as they went along, because the city doesn't stop nor does it sleep.He was a bulls***er, but he's the one who came up with the basic outline of the strategy of crime reduction in New York City. He famously wrote it on a napkin at Elaine's, and it said, “First, we need to gather accurate and timely intelligence.” And that was, in essence, CompStat. “Then, we need to deploy our cops to where they need to be.” That was a big thing. He found out that cops weren't working: specialized units weren't working weekends and nights when the actual crime was happening. They had their excuses, but basically they wanted a cushy schedule. He changed that. Then, of course, you have to figure out what you're doing, what the effective tactics are. Then, constant follow up and assessment.You can't give up. You can't say “Problem solved.” A lot of people say it wasn't so much if your plan didn't work, you just needed a Plan B. It was the idea that throwing your hands in the air and saying, “What are you going to do?” that became notoriously unacceptable under Chief Anemone's stern demeanor at CompStat. These were not pleasant meetings. Those are the meetings that both propagated policies that work and held officers accountable. There was some humiliation going on, so CompStat was feared.Lots of folks hear CompStat and think about better tracking of crime locations and incidents. But as you flesh out, the meat on the bones of CompStat was this relentless follow-up. You'd have these weekly meetings early in the morning with all the precinct heads. There were relentless asks from the bosses, “What's going on in your district or in your precinct? Can you explain why this is happening? What are you doing to get these numbers down?” And follow-ups the following week or month. It was constant.CompStat is often thought of as high-tech computer stuff. It wasn't. There was nothing that couldn't have been done with old overhead projectors. It's just that no one had done it before. Billy Gorta says it's a glorified accountability system at a time when nobody knew anything about computers. Everyone now has access to crime maps on a computer. It was about actually gathering accurate, timely data.Bratton was very concerned that these numbers had to be right. It was getting everyone in the same room and saying, “This is what our focus is going to be now.” And getting people to care about crime victims, especially when those crime victims might be unsympathetic because of their demeanor, criminal activity, or a long arrest record. “We're going to care about every shooting, we're going to care about every murder.”Part of it was cracking down on illegal guns. There were hundreds of tactics. The federal prosecutors also played a key role. It was getting this cooperation. Once it started working and Giuliani made it a major part of claiming success as mayor, suddenly everyone wanted to be part of this, and you had other city agencies trying to figure it out. So it was a very positive feedback loop, once it was seen as a success.When Bratton came on the job, he said, “I'm going to bring down crime 15%.” No police commissioner had ever said that before. In the history of policing before 1994, no police commissioner ever promised a double-digit reduction in crime or even talked about it. People said “That's crazy.” It was done, and then year after year. That's the type of confidence that they had. They were surprised it worked as well as it did, but they all had the sense that there's a new captain on this ship, and we're trying new things. It was an age of ideas and experiment.And it was a very short time.That's the other thing that surprised me. Giuliani fired Bratton in the middle of ‘96.It's remarkable. Bratton comes in ‘94, and August 1994 is where you see crime drop off a cliff. You have this massive beginning of the reduction that continues.That inflection point is important for historical knowledge. I don't address alternatives that other people have proposed [to explain the fall in crime] — For example, the reduction in lead [in gasoline, paint, and water pipes] or legalized abortion with Roe v. Wade [proposed by Stephen Dubner].Reasonable people can differ. Back from the Brink focuses on the police part of the equation. Today, almost nobody, except for a few academics, says that police had nothing to do with the crime drop. That August inflection is key, because there is nothing in a lagged time analysis going back 20 years that is going to say that is the magic month where things happened. Yet if you look at what happened in CompStat, that's the month they started getting individual officer data, and noticing that most cops made zero arrests, and said, “Let's get them in the game as well.” And that seemed to be the key; that's when crime fell off the table. The meetings started in April, I believe, but August is really when the massive crime drop began.To your point about the confidence that crime could be driven down double digits year over year, there's a great quote you have from Jack Maple, where he says to a fellow cop, “This is going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. As long as we have absolute control, we can absolutely drive this number into the floor.”One detail I enjoyed was that Jack Maple, when he was a transit cop, would camp out under a big refrigerator box with little holes cut out for eyes and sit on the subway platform waiting for crooks.For people who are interested in Jack Maple, it is worth reading his autobiography, Crime Fighter. Mike Daly wrote New York's Finest, which uses the same tapes that I had access to, and he is much more focused on that. He's actually the godfather of Jack Maple's son, who is currently a New York City police officer. But Maple and co were confident, and it turned out they were right.As well as having changes in tactics and approach and accountability across the NYPD, you also have a series of specific location cleanups. You have a specific initiative focused on the Port Authority, which is a cesspool at the time, an initiative in Times Square, the Bryant Park cleanup, and then Giuliani also focuses on organized crime on the Fulton Fish Market, and this open-air market in Harlem.I was struck that there was both this general accountability push in the NYPD through CompStat, and a relentless focus on cleaning up individual places that were hubs of disorder.I'm not certain the crime drop would have happened without reclamation of public spaces and business improvement districts. Bryant Park's a fascinating story because Dan Biederman, who heads the Corporation, said, “People just thought it was like a lost cause, this park can't be saved. The city is in a spiral of decline.” He uses Jane Jacobs' “eyes on the street” theory and then George Kelling and James Q. Wilson's broken windows theory. The park has money — not city money, but from local property owners — and it reopens in 1991 to great acclaim and is still a fabulous place to be. It showed for the first time that public space was worth saving and could be saved. New York City at the time needed that lesson. It's interesting that today, Bryant Park has no permanent police presence and less crime. Back in the ‘80s, Bryant Park had an active police presence and a lot more crime.The first class I ever taught when I started at John Jay College in 2004, I was talking about broken windows. A student in the class named Jeff Marshall, who is in my book, told me about Operation Alternatives at the Port Authority. He had been a Port Authority police officer at the time, and I had not heard of this. People are just unaware of this part of history. It very much has lessons for today, because in policing often there's nothing new under the sun. It's just repackaged, dusted off, and done again. The issue was, how do we make the Port Authority safe for passengers? How do we both help and get rid of people living in the bus terminal? It's a semi-public space, so it makes it difficult. There was a social services element about it, that was Operational Alternatives. A lot of people took advantage of that and got help. But the flip side was, you don't have to take services, but you can't stay here.I interviewed the manager of the bus terminal. He was so proud of what he did. He's a bureaucrat, a high-ranking one, but a port authority manager. He came from the George Washington Bridge, which he loved. And he wonders, what the hell am I going to do with this bus terminal? But the Port Authority cared, because they're a huge organization and that's the only thing with their name on it — They also control JFK Airport and bridges and tunnels and all the airports, but people call the bus terminal Port Authority.They gave him almost unlimited money and power and said, “Fix it please, do what you've got to do,” and he did. It was environmental design, giving police overtime so they'd be part of this, a big part of it was having a social service element so it wasn't just kicking people out with nowhere to go.Some of it was also setting up rules. This also helped Bratton in the subway, because this happened at the same time. The court ruled that you can enforce certain rules in the semi-public spaces. It was not clear until this moment whether it was constitutional or not. To be specific, you have a constitutional right to beg on the street, but you do not have a constitutional right to beg on the subway. That came down to a court decision. Had that not happened, I don't know if in the long run the crime drop would have happened.That court decision comes down to the specific point that it's not a free-speech right on the subway to panhandle, because people can't leave, because you've got them trapped in that space.You can't cross the street to get away from it. But it also recognized that it wasn't pure begging, that there was a gray area between aggressive begging and extortion and robbery.You note that in the early 1990s, one-third of subway commuters said they consciously avoided certain stations because of safety, and two thirds felt coerced to give money by aggressive panhandling.The folks in your book talk a lot about the 80/20 rule applying all over the place. That something like 20% of the people you catch are committing 80% of the crimes.There's a similar dynamic that you talk about on the subways, both in the book and in your commentary over the past couple years about disorder in New York. You say approximately 2,000 people with serious mental illness are at risk for street homelessness, and these people cycle through the cities, streets, subways, jails, and hospitals.What lessons from the ‘90s can be applied today for both helping those people and stopping them being a threat to others?Before the ‘80s and Reagan budget cuts there had been a psychiatric system that could help people. That largely got defunded. [Deinstitutionalization began in New York State earlier, in the 1960s.] We did not solve the problem of mental health or homelessness in the ‘90s, but we solved the problem of behavior. George Kelling [of broken windows theory] emphasized this repeatedly, and people would ignore it. We are not criminalizing homelessness or poverty. We're focusing on behavior that we are trying to change. People who willfully ignore that distinction almost assume that poor people are naturally disorderly or criminal, or that all homeless people are twitching and threatening other people. Even people with mental illness can behave in a public space.Times have changed a bit. I think there are different drugs now that make things arguably a bit worse. I am not a mental health expert, but we do need more involuntary commitment, not just for our sake, but for theirs, people who need help. I pass people daily, often the same person, basically decomposing on a subway stop in the cold. They are offered help by social services, and they say no. They should not be allowed to make that choice because they're literally dying on the street in front of us. Basic humanity demands that we be a little more aggressive in forcing people who are not making rational decisions, because now you have to be an imminent threat to yourself or others. That standard does need to change. But there also need to be mental health beds available for people in this condition.I don't know what the solution is to homelessness or mental health. But I do know the solution to public disorder on the subway and that's, regardless of your mental state or housing status, enforcing legal, constitutional rules, policing behavior. It does not involve locking everybody up. It involves drawing the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. It's amazing how much people will comply with those rules.That presents the idea that someone's in charge, it's not a free-for-all. You get that virtuous loop, which New York had achieved in 2014–2016, when crime was at an all-time low in the city. Then the politicians decided public order wasn't worth preserving anymore. These are political choices.I had a similar version of this conversation with a friend who was shocked that there were zero murders on the subway in 2017 and that that number was stable: you had one or two a year for several years in the mid-2010s.It was five or fewer a year from 1997 to 2019, and often one or two. Then you have zero in 2017. There were [ten in 2022]. It coincides perfectly with an order from [Mayor] de Blasio's office and the homeless czar [Director of Homeless Services Steven] Banks [which] told police to stop enforcing subway rules against loitering. The subways became — once again — a de facto homeless shelter. Getting rule-violating homeless people out of the subway in the late ‘80s was such a difficult and major accomplishment at the time, and to be fair it's not as bad as it was.The alternative was that homeless outreach was supposed to offer people services. When they decline, which 95% of people do, you're to leave them be. I would argue again, I don't think that's a more humane stance to take. But it's not just about them, it's about subway riders.There's one story that I think was relevant for you to tell. You were attacked this fall on a subway platform by a guy threatening to kill you. It turns out he's had a number of run-ins with the criminal justice system. Can you tell us where that guy is now?I believe he's in prison now. The only reason I know who it is is because I said, one day I'm going to see his picture in the New York Post because he's going to hurt somebody. Am I 100 percent certain it's Michael Blount who attacked me? No, but I'm willing to call him out by name because I believe it is. He was out of prison for raping a child, and he slashed his ex-girlfriend and pushed her on the subway tracks. And then was on the lam for a while. I look at him and the shape of his face, his height, age, build, complexion, and I go, that's got to be him.I wasn't hurt, but he gave me a sucker punch trying to knock me out and then chased me a bit threatening to kill me, and I believe he wanted to. It's the only time I ever was confronted by a person who I really believe wanted to kill me, and this includes policing in the Eastern District in Baltimore. It was an attempted misdemeanor assault in the long run. But I knew it wasn't about me. It was him. I assume he's going to stay in prison longer for what he did to his ex-girlfriend. But I never thought it would happen to me. I was lucky the punch didn't connect.Peter Moskos's new book is Back from the Brink, Inside the NYPD and New York City's Extraordinary 1990s Crime Drop.My reading listEssays:Johnny Hirschauer's reporting, including “A Failed 'Solution' to 'America's Mental Health Crisis',“ “Return to the Roots,” and “The Last Institutions.” “Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety,” by George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson. ​“It's Time to Talk About America's Disorder Problem,” Charles Lehman.Books:Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America, Jill Leovy.​Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York, and the Genius of American Life, Fred Siegel.​ Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District, Peter Moskos.​Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic, Sam Quinones.​Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub

Every day, you have a choice to make life all about you or to connect your life to an eternal story and make a positive and transformational impact in the lives of other people. We are in the middle of a series entitled "It's Not About You." In this episode, I share a third "I" word of Impact and offer 3 principles you can use to make a positive impact in sports, business, and life.  Show Notes:"Sociologists have found that even the most introverted person will impact and influence 10,000 people in their lifetime." John MaxwellWhile influence may be tied more to to character development and foundational beliefs and principles, impact has more to do with the choices and decisions that you make.Being a leader is where we make a positive impact within our sphere of influence and fulfill our calling.To make an impact, I must personally act.3 Principles for Making a Positive Impact:Be AwareLook for people who need what you have.“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.” - Frederick BuechnerKey Insight: Being aware is where we begin to discover our calling.Be Present and Engaged“The legacy you live is the legacy you leave.” - Ken BlanchardBring yourself - the person God created you to be - to the story!Don't try to be someone else, and don't sit on the sidelines hoping someone else will step up.Be ActiveLeadership is ultimately about influence and using the platform and opportunities that you have for God's glory!Know and play your role.Consider the following passage from my friend Louie Giglio's book I Am Not But I Know I AM: “It's a place that requires a constant choice. We can choose to cling to starring roles in the little-bitty stories of us, or we can exchange our fleeting moment in the spotlight for a supporting role in the eternally beautiful epic that is the Story of God. Think of it as trading up. Abandoning the former and embracing the latter will allow our little lives to be filled with the wonder of God as we live for His fame and the unending applause of His name. And joining our small stories to His will give us what we all want most in life anyway: the assurance that our brief moments on earth count for something in a story that never ends.”Isaiah 26:8 - "YES, LORD, WALKING IN THE WAY OF YOUR TRUTH, WE WAIT EAGERLY FOR YOU, FOR YOUR NAME AND YOUR RENOWN ARE THE DESIRE OF OUR SOULS."       New Episodes of the Monday Morning Moments Podcast are released every Monday on your favorite podcast platforms as well as on YouTube. We also release The Coach's Corner segment on Thursdays. You can subscribe below and never miss a new episode.JOIN NOW!

If your mom (or your grandma or maybe great-grandmother) was a Bobby-soxer in the 1940s, she probably danced to this tune. Sociologists call the bunch born in the 1930s “The Silent Generation” — a term first used in a 1951 Time magazine story to describe their alleged cautious and passive nature — but, well, seriously? Anyone who ever saw them dance didn't think they were all that darn docile. After all, these “Silents” are the same folks who gave us the jitterbug, not to mention setting the stage for early rock ‘n' roll.About This SongAs reported here previously, Sy Oliver's composition “Opus One” was a hit on the radio for Tommy Dorsey in late 1944, but it was an even bigger smash a year later. That's when singer Anita O'Day recorded it with a rocking band fronted by drummer Gene Krupa and featuring legendary trumpeter Roy Eldridge.The song has gone on to be covered many times over the years, from versions by Harry James to those of The Mills Brothers and The Four Freshmen. For more on the song's history — including the story of those sassy lyrics added by Sid Garris — check out this earlier Flood Watch article.Meanwhile, here in The Flood Zone, the song is a perfect warmup for an evening of fun at the weekly rehearsal, offering solo space for everyone in the room.About the VideoThe sound in this video is audio from last week's rehearsal. Meanwhile, for the film footage thanks go out to Douglas K. Morris and Shane Finster of Armstrong Cable.As reported earlier, Doug and Shane dropped into a Flood rehearsal last summer to record an episode of their award-winning Armstrong Neighborhood Channel's Press Room Recordings series. It was a treat to revisit the video from that night to enhance this week's winter evening film.More Swing Tunes?Finally, if you'd like a little more from the “Swing” column on The Flood's menu, the free Radio Floodango music streaming feature has a channel just for you.Click here for a randomized playlist of swing tunes from over the band's decades. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

Sociologists have had surprisingly little to say about poetry as a topic while sometimes also making grandiose claims that sociology is/should be like poetry. These are the prompts which begin Andrew Smith's Class and the Uses of Poetry: Symbolic Enclosures (2024, Palgrave Macmillan). Drawing upon discussions with working class readers of poetry, and interviews with unpublished poets, Smith draws our attention to the ways in which poetry has been enclosed, or fenced off, from working class readers. Influenced by, though offering some criticisms, of, Bourdieu's approach to the sociology of culture, he shows us how readers become aware of this enclosure but nevertheless engage in collective understanding of the poems they are presented with. In doing do, Smith reminds us of the need to emphasise the aesthetic elements of poetry, and culture more generally, including its creative and expressive affordances. A reader of his book realises that a critical sociology of poetry needs to attest not just to the symbolic capital in who is seen as ‘legitimate' readers and producers of poetry but also how those shut off from it lose out on the uses of poetry. Our discussion covers what led Smith to pursue this work, how sociology has, and might in future confront poetry, his experiences of running these reading groups and suggests why, perhaps, we should also perhaps reject the ‘society of the segue way' and savour some of the finitude which poetry might offer. Your host, Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow and the author of G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology: A Study in Semi-Alienation (2024, Palgrave Macmillan), along with other texts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Sociologists have had surprisingly little to say about poetry as a topic while sometimes also making grandiose claims that sociology is/should be like poetry. These are the prompts which begin Andrew Smith's Class and the Uses of Poetry: Symbolic Enclosures (2024, Palgrave Macmillan). Drawing upon discussions with working class readers of poetry, and interviews with unpublished poets, Smith draws our attention to the ways in which poetry has been enclosed, or fenced off, from working class readers. Influenced by, though offering some criticisms, of, Bourdieu's approach to the sociology of culture, he shows us how readers become aware of this enclosure but nevertheless engage in collective understanding of the poems they are presented with. In doing do, Smith reminds us of the need to emphasise the aesthetic elements of poetry, and culture more generally, including its creative and expressive affordances. A reader of his book realises that a critical sociology of poetry needs to attest not just to the symbolic capital in who is seen as ‘legitimate' readers and producers of poetry but also how those shut off from it lose out on the uses of poetry. Our discussion covers what led Smith to pursue this work, how sociology has, and might in future confront poetry, his experiences of running these reading groups and suggests why, perhaps, we should also perhaps reject the ‘society of the segue way' and savour some of the finitude which poetry might offer. Your host, Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow and the author of G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology: A Study in Semi-Alienation (2024, Palgrave Macmillan), along with other texts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Sociologists have had surprisingly little to say about poetry as a topic while sometimes also making grandiose claims that sociology is/should be like poetry. These are the prompts which begin Andrew Smith's Class and the Uses of Poetry: Symbolic Enclosures (2024, Palgrave Macmillan). Drawing upon discussions with working class readers of poetry, and interviews with unpublished poets, Smith draws our attention to the ways in which poetry has been enclosed, or fenced off, from working class readers. Influenced by, though offering some criticisms, of, Bourdieu's approach to the sociology of culture, he shows us how readers become aware of this enclosure but nevertheless engage in collective understanding of the poems they are presented with. In doing do, Smith reminds us of the need to emphasise the aesthetic elements of poetry, and culture more generally, including its creative and expressive affordances. A reader of his book realises that a critical sociology of poetry needs to attest not just to the symbolic capital in who is seen as ‘legitimate' readers and producers of poetry but also how those shut off from it lose out on the uses of poetry. Our discussion covers what led Smith to pursue this work, how sociology has, and might in future confront poetry, his experiences of running these reading groups and suggests why, perhaps, we should also perhaps reject the ‘society of the segue way' and savour some of the finitude which poetry might offer. Your host, Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow and the author of G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology: A Study in Semi-Alienation (2024, Palgrave Macmillan), along with other texts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Sociologists have had surprisingly little to say about poetry as a topic while sometimes also making grandiose claims that sociology is/should be like poetry. These are the prompts which begin Andrew Smith's Class and the Uses of Poetry: Symbolic Enclosures (2024, Palgrave Macmillan). Drawing upon discussions with working class readers of poetry, and interviews with unpublished poets, Smith draws our attention to the ways in which poetry has been enclosed, or fenced off, from working class readers. Influenced by, though offering some criticisms, of, Bourdieu's approach to the sociology of culture, he shows us how readers become aware of this enclosure but nevertheless engage in collective understanding of the poems they are presented with. In doing do, Smith reminds us of the need to emphasise the aesthetic elements of poetry, and culture more generally, including its creative and expressive affordances. A reader of his book realises that a critical sociology of poetry needs to attest not just to the symbolic capital in who is seen as ‘legitimate' readers and producers of poetry but also how those shut off from it lose out on the uses of poetry. Our discussion covers what led Smith to pursue this work, how sociology has, and might in future confront poetry, his experiences of running these reading groups and suggests why, perhaps, we should also perhaps reject the ‘society of the segue way' and savour some of the finitude which poetry might offer. Your host, Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow and the author of G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology: A Study in Semi-Alienation (2024, Palgrave Macmillan), along with other texts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

Sociologists have had surprisingly little to say about poetry as a topic while sometimes also making grandiose claims that sociology is/should be like poetry. These are the prompts which begin Andrew Smith's Class and the Uses of Poetry: Symbolic Enclosures (2024, Palgrave Macmillan). Drawing upon discussions with working class readers of poetry, and interviews with unpublished poets, Smith draws our attention to the ways in which poetry has been enclosed, or fenced off, from working class readers. Influenced by, though offering some criticisms, of, Bourdieu's approach to the sociology of culture, he shows us how readers become aware of this enclosure but nevertheless engage in collective understanding of the poems they are presented with. In doing do, Smith reminds us of the need to emphasise the aesthetic elements of poetry, and culture more generally, including its creative and expressive affordances. A reader of his book realises that a critical sociology of poetry needs to attest not just to the symbolic capital in who is seen as ‘legitimate' readers and producers of poetry but also how those shut off from it lose out on the uses of poetry. Our discussion covers what led Smith to pursue this work, how sociology has, and might in future confront poetry, his experiences of running these reading groups and suggests why, perhaps, we should also perhaps reject the ‘society of the segue way' and savour some of the finitude which poetry might offer. Your host, Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow and the author of G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology: A Study in Semi-Alienation (2024, Palgrave Macmillan), along with other texts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

 Something had to be done about the ominous world population decrease.Based on the works of ron de, in 2 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories.Kristin lay naked on the bed with her legs spread a little and watched as S405698 removed his clothing. Before, she'd been nervous, but eager. Now, as he removed his underwear and his erect cock bobbed free, she was nervous and a little afraid. It was her first time in six months, the celibacy period mandated by her contract, and she was a little fearful of how it would feel. He looked large - not particularly long, but really thick. Matt, her former partner, hadn't been so thick and it always felt like he stretched her a lot.He smiled as he approached."This your first time here?"Kristin nodded her confirmation.He smiled again and stroked her right breast."Just relax, and I'll make this great for both of us. Do you have a favorite position?"Kristin's voice was almost a whisper."I thought it made a difference and we'd have to do it with you on top."He chuckled."That's just an old wives tale. All the data says it really doesn't matter as long as you have an orgasm. Usually it doesn't matter even if you don't providing the time is right, but I'll make sure you do. Now, what do you like? I read your application, but some women have special things they like and are too embarrassed to write them down. It's just you and me here, and it will be better for us both if I know."Kristin thought for a moment. Should she tell him, could she tell him, that having her nipples pinched tight and then pulled would send her into a blinding orgasm? Would he think she was weird if she told him that?He smiled when she didn't answer."You won't shock me, I promise. I've heard everything from 'spank me really hard' to 'pull my hair' to 'tell me I'm just a brood cow and you're going to breed me like a bull'. There have been other things too, but those are probably the most common."Kristin smiled coyly."Well...I like it best when I'm on my hands and knees...and I like my nipples pinched hard and then pulled."He smiled again."That's one of my favorites too. Before we do that, let's get you ready."Kristin was quiet when he began stroking her breasts, but caught her breath when he lightly brushed her nipples with his fingertips. When he nuzzled her breast and then closed his lips around her right nipple, she closed her eyes so she could feel every little tingle. After he stroked down her side and then slipped a fingertip between her puffy lips, she wasn't afraid anymore. She just felt the craving building, the craving to be penetrated by his thick cock, and then taken to the point her body would convulse as the orgasm sent her into a blinding fog of sensations.That was when he'd pump his seed into her, the thick, white, sticky ropes carrying his sperm that would find their way to her womb and impregnate her. She wouldn't feel the spurts, she knew that, but she'd feel his thick cock throb inside her when he did it. Some women in her group who were there for the second or third time said they thought they could feel it splatter inside them, but Kristin never had. All she'd ever felt were the contractions that twisted her belly in a knot, caused her legs to turn to jelly, and made her hips writhe around the cock inside her.And so it was that day. He stroked his finger in and out, then used two fingers to stroke deep while his thumb lightly brushed her clit, and all the time, his mouth sucked and pulled at her nipples. By the time he turned her over and lifted her hips so she was on her hands and knees, she'd felt the orgasm building twice. He'd stopped his stroking fingers and thumb then, but as soon as her hips stopped rocking into his hand, he started again.Kristin had just gotten to her hands and knees when she felt him spread her lips and then slide his rigid cock between them. She was so wet by then there wasn't much sensation until his cock head touched her clit. Her body jerked when that happened and she tried to move forward so his cock was at her entrance.He wouldn't let her do that though. He just kept stroking his cock between her wet, swollen lips until his cock head and shaft glistened with the slippery/sticky wetness that flowed from her entrance when she tightened her belly. He smiled to himself at how well he'd excited her.That was a point of personal pride with him. He'd been taught the mechanics, but his real education had come from a woman named Barbara. She'd been very forward about what she liked and didn't like, and one of the things she liked was being teased until she was gasping for breath and her wetness flowed enough it trickled from her entrance and then down between her ass cheeks.He knew Kristin was ready when she began pushing back against him, trying to get his cock inside her. He hoped she was close to an orgasm because when a breeder acted like this one was acting, he sometimes had trouble holding back until she came. It wasn't the way she moaned and panted. It was the way her lips gradually swelled and then opened when he spread her legs a little more.Kristin felt him pushing his cock head at her entrance and then the feeling of him stretching her open. It didn't happen all at once like she thought it might. After all, he was being paid to breed her, not to make love to her and she thought he'd want to do it as fast as possible.He didn't though, and Kristin couldn't hold back the moan as his thick, swollen cock head eased into the snug spot just inside her entrance. She moaned again when he pushed deeper and she felt him fill that tight ring. He didn't keep going then. He just pushed in and out right there, making his cock head stretch her open and then letting her close a little. In less than a minute, Kristin was unconsciously pushing back at his cock and trying to get him inside her all the way.He did push harder then, and Kristin gasped as his cock head slipped past that snug spot but the stretching feeling didn't lessen. It was still there, the same pressure that sent little tingling sensations to her brain and her core. Those sensations tightened her belly and took every thought from her mind except the exquisite stretching and his hands on her breasts.He was carefully watching what she did, and when he began hearing her rasping, panting breaths knew she was close. He moved his hands from cupping her full, hanging breasts to close his fingertips on her swollen nipples. When he pinched them lightly, she moaned. He pinched harder and felt her passage clamp down on his cock.She rammed her body back when he pinched harder still, hard enough he knew he was flattening her nipples between his index fingers and thumbs, and she started to make continuous little moans. It would only take a little more and she'd have the orgasm she needed to have for it to be nearly certain he'd impregnate her.He pulled down hard then and stretched her breasts out into cones. She shrieked and he felt her begin to shake. She started to sag then because her legs were shaking, so he put his left hand under her belly to hold her up, and began pushing his cock in and out a little faster. In moments, she began to murmur something he couldn't understand, and when he pulled hard on her right nipple, she shrieked and started to writhe her hips. As soon as he felt her body jerk the first time, he allowed himself to let go. With a groan, he pushed his cock in until his belly flattened her shaking hips and then felt the surge race up his cock and inside her. Three more times, he gasped as his cock went home and another surge flew out the tip.She was still making little mewing cries and pushing back into his cock when he groaned and felt another tightening in his cock. That one would be just a dribble, but it would add to the amount he could already feel leaking out of her and onto the mattress.It wouldn't matter if some leaked out. He could feel her body moving now, feel her passage contract and then push out, then contract again. Her body was doing what it was supposed to do, dipping the tip of her womb into the sperm that covered it and helping the sperm find its way inside.He kept his cock in her and stroking until it got soft enough it was just bending when he stroked in. He pulled out then, but held her lips closed with two fingers until he couldn't feel the little contractions anymore. He knew it wouldn't matter if he did that, but he liked the way most women reacted when he lightly pinched their lips together and then moved them around. This one was no exception. She purred out a little moan and then her hips rocked a little.She was lying on her back when he got dressed, and just before he left; she blew him a kiss and said "Thank you".He grinned."The pleasure was mine."The EmptinessAs Danny walked back to his room, he smiled at his fortune to be one of the chosen males. It was partly because of his intelligence but also because of his build. He was a little over six feet tall, depending upon the time of day, and was a lean and strong hundred and seventy pounds. That had been enough to get him the position, and when his sperm count was higher than average, that was an added advantage.He didn't know how many women he'd impregnated, but he knew he'd been mated with about a hundred and fifty over the past two years. He figured he had about another ten years of service left, give or take, as long as his sperm count remained at least average. By that time, the crisis would have been avoided and though the breeding program would still be required, the natural process of reproduction would again be helping to populate the earth.In another four days, Danny would have another appointment with a woman probably between the ages of nineteen and twenty-nine. There had been women as old as forty in the beginning, but anything over twenty-nine was considered a little old now. A breeder could be bred only every two years, and the sociologists had all agreed that after the age of thirty, the breeder should concentrate on child rearing. A woman who was nineteen at her first breeding was optimal. She could be bred seven times before retiring.The other issue with a woman's age was fertility. After the age of thirty, it sometimes took two breedings to impregnate her, and that wasted sperm. Women as old as forty had been used to get things started though, because not using every available and willing woman would have been catastrophic. A few women over thirty were still being bred, but those were women with exceptionally high intelligence, nearly perfect physical traits, and strong mothering instincts.Foundational KnowledgeThe federation authorities were not going to question the sages of the academics. Science must never be questioned by the unenlightened; and certainly not publicly opposed. It was met with swift re-education orders, and the rebels who dared challenge the sages were taken to institutions where they were re-educated. Sometimes they were further treated with pharmaceuticals to bring ‘balance' to their temperament, before slowly being re-introduced to the civilian populations.Mandated Abstinence PhaseFour days of rest was optimal for Danny according to the testing he'd been through. Some sires needed as many as six, but four days gave his body a chance to replenish his sperm and gave his mind a chance to rest from the concentration required to ensure the woman had an orgasm. During those days, he'd sleep, eat, stay in shape with a workout or a swim, and do little else other than take a class or two in how to arouse women. Danny didn't really need the classes in how to cause orgasms in most women, but there were some women who needed what Judy, the instructor, called "special handling", so he'd take at least one.Judy always taught the classes nude so she could demonstrate, and Danny wished she was one of the breeders. While he was skilled in producing orgasms in any woman, he sometimes had to concentrate on producing his own if the breeder had small breasts or narrow hips. Judy had the large, heavy breasts and sensuous, wide hips, the same characteristics that always made it easy for him to fill a breeder with his sperm. Unfortunately for him, Judy was forty-eight and no longer fertile. Coupling with her would have been an exquisite experience, he thought, but would have also been a waste of his sperm.He'd have liked being the first to breed her because she was probably quite a woman when she was nineteen, but in those days, things were done a little differently. Most matings were natural then, and the selection process was left up to the individuals involved.A Dying Human RaceNo one could put a single, concrete reason to the lack of population growth the world was experiencing during the early 2000's, but it was definitely a problem and it was growing quickly. In 2015, the population of the globe was a little over seven billion and growing slowly. By 2030, that number had stabilized because the death rate was about equal to the birth rate. Medical science had not been able to find a way to extend the life of any individual. All evidence appeared to point to a biologically programmed "expiration date" for the human body.It was estimated by the W H O that with the current declining birth and steady death rates, in ten years the population of Earth would be nearly halved and would continue to decline at a rate of about eight percent per year. Within twenty years because of geographical dispersion, the human species would effectively be extinct. A few small pockets of humans would exist in the major cities, but would quickly begin to suffer from congenital diseases and defects cause by lack of genetic diversity.There were various theories for the decrease in birth rate proposed, but the problem was worldwide, so culture was not a major influence. What appeared to be the cause were several major changes in how people thought about their roles in society.Some sociologists thought the problem began in the 1960's with the so-called "free love" generation. The culture of the "hippies" changed sex into something anyone could enjoy and they did. Women learned about having orgasms and men learned that having an orgasm at the same time as your partner was much more enjoyable than basically using a woman to masturbate with instead of using their hands. The advent of the birth control pill furthered this "sex without guilt" mentality because it nearly eliminated the risk of pregnancy.Other sociologists thought it was the generation of children born to the free-love generation. While when they were young, most of the free-love generation had rejected normal jobs and careers, as they got older, they fell into line behind their parents. The difference was they made more money than their parents and could afford to give their children more. Those children grew up and became selfish because they'd seldom had to wait for anything.When they looked back at their parents, what they saw were people who had sacrificed a lot to give their children what everybody else's children had, from new bikes to the latest style in clothing to the limousine that took them to their high school prom. According to the sociologists, that realization made them vow to not have children so they didn't have to sacrifice anything in their quest for self-satisfaction. Better and safer birth control methods made that goal a reality.It was obvious to most nations in the world that if the birth rate continued to decline, long before human extinction became reality there would be fewer young people working to support the world economy while there were more older people consuming the results of that economy. Infrastructure would deteriorate because of the lack of labor to keep it running, and food would be an ever-increasing problem because of the lack of agricultural workers. The social safety-net systems such as medical care and financial support in the form of the various government entitlement systems would suffer a spiraling decline in input while their outlay would continually increase.The result was the formation of the "W R E - the acronym for "World Re-population Effort" - by the leaders of every developed country on the globe. This organization was separate from the United Nations because world leaders knew the problem had to be solved quickly. Any committee of the United Nations would only hold meaningless votes on meaningless, non-binding resolutions for years. There would likely be UN diplomats continuing to argue over infinitesimal details even as the light of human existence slowly flickered out.After six months of debate about the practical and ethical considerations, the W R E embarked upon a solution. That solution was to offer free medical care, free housing, and financial support for life to any woman, single or married, who would agree to be impregnated and raise the child to adulthood. The program was funded by the World Bank after that organization was appraised of the consequences of doing nothing.In the manner of all government programs, the W R E wrote a glossary of accepted terms. Women participating in the program were designated as "Base Re-population Donor Recipients " or the acronym "BRDR". Men serving as sperm donors were designated as "Sperm Inception Reservoirs ", or "SIR". Both terms were to be used in any and all public correspondence and conversation, but in private conversations in the W R E clinics, the doctors and nurses used the somewhat phonetic pronunciations of "Breeder" and "Sire". To guarantee anonymity but allow for detailed tracking, in all records breeders were given a number -- a "B" followed by a sequential number. Sires were likewise numbered by an "S" followed by a sequential number.In the early stages of the program, it was felt the breeding should proceed by clinical means to guarantee conception happened in a sterile environment, so the breeder was impregnated by artificial insemination. The success rate was relatively poor, being only about thirty percent for women under thirty and only about ten percent for women between thirty and thirty-five.After multiple studies that all proved inconclusive relative to how to improve that success rate by artificial means, some old data about the success of natural conception was compared to the new data. The old data demonstrated almost a seventy percent conception success rate for women between nineteen and thirty-five if the woman was monitoring her fertility and her partner's sperm count was average. The success rate was still over fifty percent even if the woman did no monitoring.As a result, the W R E began a trial program of natural matings between sires and breeders. The success rate was the predicted sixty-five to seventy percent if the breeder didn't have an orgasm, seventy-five percent if she did, and eighty percent if she had an orgasm and the sire had a high sperm count. After a year of the trial, this method became the norm.It was also determined during the trial program that virgins seldom conceived at the first mating, while all fell within the predicted ranges after the second. The doctors and psychologists employed by the W R E stated this was for two reasons. Most women experienced some amount of pain when their maidenhead was broken and that pain prevented them from having an orgasm. The other reason was that many women reported being too nervous about their first experience with intercourse and so couldn't let themselves relax and enjoy the same experience they always enjoyed when masturbating.The solution developed was to pair a virgin breeder with an experienced sire who had been taught to understand she might be apprehensive and had been taught how to overcome that tendency as well as to minimize the pain she might feel.In both types of breeders, those who were virgins and those who were not, their sires were selected to compliment and accent the characteristics of intelligence and physical development. That topic, standards for pairing breeders and sires, was the topic most debated through the program development.While throughout most of human civilization, mate selection was mostly random and served to continue proliferation of the strongest genes, there were always some children born who had a difficult time fitting into that civilization. With the advent of the sequencing of the human genome and subsequent deciphering of which gene did what, it was possible to eliminate these mistakes of nature.Utilization of that ability did not upset most people when the program was proposed. After all, what person would desire to produce a child with a mental or physical deformity or a propensity toward a life of crime?The selections would be random, but random among volunteers deemed to guarantee the resulting offspring would be the best humankind could produce. While race of the sire would be an option selectable only by the breeder, the characteristics of mental and physical health and mental stability would take precedence over any other criteria.All breeders and sires had their DNA sequenced and categorized relative to genetic disposition toward both traits considered good and bad. When a breeder signed her contract, she was given a list of potential sires. The sires on that list were matched to her DNA to yield a child with above average intelligence, no propensity for development of congenital disease or physical deformity, and most importantly, no tendencies to resist the codes of society.It was impossible to find breeders and sires with no undesirable genetic characteristics, so the pairing routine matched breeders with undesirable characteristics with sires who had the genetic makeup to counteract those characteristics. In this manner, the new population would be stronger, more intelligent, and there would be little, if any, crime.While there were still babies being naturally conceived by couples, that was both a blessing and a concern. Those babies were needed to re-populate the planet, but some of those babies would develop the unfavorable characteristics dictated by their DNA.After some deliberation about methods of guaranteeing proper genetic makeup of all children born, the W R E concluded that the number of such children produced by natural matings would be small compared to the number of planned births. That number would be small enough that any mental abnormalities could be handled by the current methods of incarceration or psychiatric treatment. Physical abnormalities would be handled by corrective surgery or prosthetics. Both would disappear in a generation or two anyway.The initial year of the program proved the potential of the plan. The initial two thousand sires chosen from all over the world had each been mated with between sixty and eighty breeders each, and the result was eighty-three thousand babies.The impregnation rate was a disappointing sixty- percent, but this was attributed to the age of some of the breeders. The second year, the number of sires was increased to six thousand, the number of breeders by two hundred fifty thousand, and eleven months later, the number of births was over three hundred and fifty thousand births.At that rate of impregnation, within one generation, the population of the Earth would be well on the way to return to the levels of the early 2000's. Given that the selection process matched breeders and sires for both physical and mental characteristics, those new individuals would have a natural desire to reproduce and the resulting children would return the world's birthrate to a percentage that would match the world's death rate.Several psychologists had warned of the unintended consequence of a planned and organized breeding program. After an entire generation of men and women had been conceived, born, and raised to the state of adulthood, they might resolve themselves to arranged breedings as the norm.It wasn't hard for Danny to believe that would be the case. He seldom felt anything for any breeder he impregnated. It was just his job, albeit a very pleasant job. He knew the other sires felt much the same way.Technology of InseminationAfter Danny filled out his after-breeding report detailing the experience - the breeding position used, what techniques he had used to arouse her, had the breeder achieved an orgasm or not, and a short written statement of his impressions of the breeder - he sent the electronic form to the central computer and then sat down to reflect upon what he had written.Danny didn't think anybody actually read his comments, but in actuality, they were the most important data on the form to the psychiatrists monitoring the breeding program. They understood that there would be some mental stress if men were coupled with anonymous women by a computer program rather than by natural means.Female humans were biologically programmed to seek a single mate to care for and to protect them and to mingle their genetic makeup with a male who made them feel safe and secure. Using a computer program to match breeders and sires was contrary to that programming and could cause stress which would prevent the breeder from conceiving.As a result, every breeder received counseling before being bred. The counseling sessions were intended to make the breeder accepting of the sire by pointing out how the sires available to her were compatible with her list of likes and dislikes. While a few breeders were still hesitant, the method worked for most and they readily chose a sire from the list.Studies had shown that once the breeder was pregnant, the resulting hormonal changes would minimize the instinct to bond with a male and replace that instinct with the instinct to nurture the child. No counseling was required for a breeder until the next breeding.Sires were a different problem. Sires experienced no changes in hormone types or levels as a result of breeding a breeder, and were prone to follow their instincts when breeding. Those instincts were to breed as many females as possible in order to successfully pass on their genes, but there were some conditions unique to each sire that caused the breeding instinct to manifest itself.There were the usual conditions of mental compatibility and personality, but those could be sorted and matched based upon the genetic data for each breeder and each sire. The condition that could not be predicted was attraction of the breeder to the sire. This was because the primary attraction was physical beauty. Physical beauty was evaluated differently by each sire and appeared to be "learned" rather than genetic because there were no markers in the genome that correlated with any sire's initial psychological analysis or his after-breeding reports.As a result, each sire receive special counseling between breedings. These counseling sessions were one-on-one interactions between the sire and a psychiatrist and took the form of observation and discussion between the two of pictures of women representing all races, body types and facial features. The sire would explain what he liked and didn't like about a particular woman and why. The psychiatrist would then attempt to determine and explain the reasons for the sire's evaluation with the hope future matings would be more in accord with each sire's preferences.The psychiatrist who worked with Danny was Regina Allison. Regina was very skilled in her field, but hadn't made much headway with Danny. She thought she understood why.While most sires had a strong desire to breed and would accept almost any breeder, over time a curious anomaly was seen. If they reported the breeder was attractive, it was usual that impregnation would result from one breeding. If that attractiveness was not there, the sire would still breed the breeder, but about twenty-five percent of the time a subsequent breeding would be required.The anomaly did not appear to be a result of something the breeders were doing. A breeder that required two breedings when bred to one sire would conceive at the first breeding with another sire of similar characteristics. Regina began to concentrate on the sire as the possible cause of the anomaly.She had studied this phenomena over the period of a year by collecting sperm samples from freshly serviced breeders and making a sperm count, and then interviewing the sire to determine his thoughts about the particular breeder. All her data indicated that a sire tended to react by withholding sperm from those breeders he found less than attractive. Regina believed the sire's brain was regulating the number of sperm expelled in order to maintain a reserve for a breeder the sire found attractive.Regina had put her data into a proposal for the W R E, and had been given approval for a pilot program of one sire and twenty breeders. She had selected Danny as her sire, and he would select the twenty breeders from a group who were genetically matched to him.It was the day of his appointment after breeding Kristin that she proposed her pilot program to Danny."Danny, you've been a sire for almost two years now. We've talked about your opinions of various breeders before, and I must say our conversations have been interesting. I find it fascinating that you really want a mental connection with the breeders."As you already know from the weekly sessions, the average impregnation rate for the total program is about seventy-five percent. I and the other psychologists have been studying all breedings to determine why our average isn't higher."We have discovered an interesting correlation between the after-breeding report from our sires and the impregnation rate. Our data suggests if a sire finds a breeder less than - for lack of a better word, I'll use 'attractive' - if a sire finds a breeder less than attractive, his impregnation success is reduced. The correlation is there for every sire I have studied."When I looked for a cause, the data demonstrated the sire's sperm count present at the time of breeding was lower for less attractive breeders while sperm count for more attractive breeders was at or even a little higher than the base line sperm count for that sire. Sperm count correlated extremely well with impregnation success and by inference, to the attractiveness of the breeder to the sire. I have found no correlation of any breeder characteristic across the range of sires studied. It appears as though attractiveness is a variable unique to each sire."You've been successful in impregnating almost all breeders, and in fact, your average impregnation rate is about eighty-nine percent, but you are very similar to other sires. Your sperm count decreases when you breed a woman who does not match the characteristics you find most attractive. It is probable that your high baseline sperm count minimizes the difference in your success at breeding breeders of different characteristics."Danny was a little confused. It was true that he found some breeders more attractive than others, but he didn't know how that could affect his sperm count. He also didn't think it made much difference as long as the breeder impregnation rate remained high."What difference does it make as long as the breeder is impregnated? Isn't that the point - for sires to impregnate the breeders matched with them?"Regina frowned."If it was that simple, no, it wouldn't make any difference. The problem is that unlike you, some sires have an impregnation rate in the order of ninety percent if they find the breeder attractive, but only fifty percent if they don't. The data says the problem is related to sperm count, and we don't understand why and how a sire can vary it."We understand you can't intentionally change your sperm count, but there are still a lot of things we don't know about the human brain. What my data shows about you is that your sperm count is lower when you breed a woman with small breasts than when you breed a woman with large breasts. The same data correlates with several other factors you've related in your post-breeding reports."Your sperm count is about average with blonde breeders, lower than average with breeders with black hair, and higher than average with breeders with brown or red hair. You apparently also favor breeders with fuller figures over slender figures."The many variations of male preferences have been documented by multiple studies, but it was never suspected those preferences would affect reproduction. What I believe is your brain subconsciously controls your sperm count based upon your evaluation of the breeder. It's probably a vestige of instinct from the early days of man and would ensure the variability of the gene pool."Now, we find ourselves in the position of requiring rapid population growth while still maintaining variability in the gene pool. To accomplish that goal, we need to have impregnation rates in the order of at least eighty percent. The only way to do that is a controlled study to determine if sperm count is truly affected by the attractiveness of the breeder to the sire. I want you to be part of that study."Danny couldn't see how any study could be much different than what he was already doing. It would probably be more interesting than just breeding a different breeder every four days.He shrugged."I guess I can. What do I have to do?"Regina smiled."I hoped you'd say yes. Here is the plan I've laid out.Regina's plan didn't sound any different than what he'd already been doing, and that's what he told Regina. She smiled again."Breeder selection is the real difference. Each week, I'll give you the applications of six breeders along with a picture of them both clothed and nude. You'll choose the breeder you prefer from those six. The other five will be matched with other sires just as happens today."Regina pursed her lips then."Danny, there is one other change of which you need to be aware. Sociologists have been concerned about the feasibility of children being raised only by breeders. As part of this study, each of the breeders will stay with us until they give birth. Once you've bred all twenty, you'll be able to choose which breeder you'd like to breed again even if she's already pregnant.Danny chuckled."It sounds like you're going to give me a harem to take care of."Regina grinned."In some respects that is what it is. After she gives birth, those breeders and their children will stay with us to be bred again, this time as you see fit. In this way we can correlate your initial after-breeding report results with the breedings in subsequent years. You'll have your choice of breeder, your choice of the timing, and of course, her acceptance to be bred again by you."Danny smiled."That might be nice, but I don't think twenty women and their children are going to fit in my room."Regina waved her hands."No, they won't, but they will fit in the house that's nearly finished. The house is being built a hundred kilometers from the city limits on one of the auto-farms. We felt that it would be easier for you and the breeders and their children to develop relationships if the setting was of a more private nature."When Danny saw what Regina had called the breeding study house, he was amazed at how much she'd understated the size. It wasn't a house. It was a mansion. On one wing of the first floor was a dining room with several tables that Danny figured would sit at least sixty people. The center part of the house was a huge living area with couches and chairs for at least a hundred people. These were arranged in groups around the twenty televisions that lined the walls. On the other wing of the house was the kitchen and quarters for the twenty service people who would do the cooking, cleaning, and grounds work.The second floor consisted of twenty-three apartments, each with a small living area, two bedrooms and a bath. One of those apartments would be Danny's and across the hall was a breeding room. Unlike the breeding rooms at the W R E breeding center, this one was equipped with video cameras located to provide six different views of the breeding bed. Regina said her apartment would be adjacent to the breeding room.The third floor was a small functioning hospital that would be mainly used as a maternity hospital with two examination rooms, two labor rooms, two delivery rooms and two operating rooms along with living quarters for three doctors -- a general practitioner, an obstetrician, a surgeon, and six nurses. Their quarters were also on the third floor. Regina told Danny the hospital was equipped to handle almost any emergency though it's primary function would be as a birthing center.A week later, the new location was complete with a small staff, and Danny and Regina moved in. That afternoon, Regina brought six folders to Danny."These are the first group. What I want you to do is look at them all, and record what you think on a form that is the same form as the new after-breeding report.Then, select the breeder you like best and I'll have her moved here. She'll be ready to breed anytime in the next six days, so you have some time to decide."After dinner, Danny sat down with the folders and read all the applications. The applications were somewhat different than the applications he'd read before. The applications he was used to only contained height and weight along with a psychiatrist's evaluation of the breeder and a picture of the breeder's face. The new applications included a lot more physical data such as body measurements along with a statement by the breeder of her expectations from the program. There were also four pictures included, two of the breeder's full body, dressed and in frontal and profile views, and two of the breeder nude in the same poses.The other difference was the breeders were identified by breeder number as had always been the case, but this time, each breeder was also identified by a first name. Danny found knowing the first name of the breeders was somehow comforting. He'd never known that information before and all breeders were told not to tell him their name.Danny didn't pay much attention to the written part of the applications. Instead, he spread all the pictures out on his desk so he could compare them. He was surprised by two things.There was a huge difference in how he saw each breeder when she was dressed versus when she was nude. When the breeder was dressed, his attention was drawn to her face and hair. When she was nude, his attention was drawn to her breasts, waist, hips, and legs. He found that with some of the six, he was attracted to the face of a breeder, but not to her body, and sometimes it was the other way around. Only one seemed to be attractive both ways, a blonde named Barbara.Barbara had a face that pleased him, and although her breasts weren't especially large and her hips weren't as wide as some, he found himself comparing all the other pictures to the pictures of her.He hadn't expected that to happen. What he'd expected was that he'd be attracted to more than one and would have to choose between them. When Danny filled out the selection form, he rated the women honestly, and even though some of their scores were higher than Barbara's, he still checked the box on her form as the breeder he'd selected.When Danny gave the folders back to Regina, she looked at his evaluations and the check mark on Barbara's form, but only said, "I'll have her here in two days. She'll be ready to breed two days after that."It felt odd to meet Barbara and to get to know her during the two days before the scheduled breeding. Before, Danny had only had a few minutes with a breeder before beginning the breeding process. He wasn't certain how to act, and he thought Barbara was a little confused as well. It was like when he was in high school and on a first date with a girl.After dinner the first night, he was more comfortable with her and she with him. After dinner the second night, Danny found himself liking Barbara. She was intelligent and had a sense of humor. The next afternoon, he enjoyed breeding Barbara because of that feeling. It was different, somehow, and Danny liked the difference.Over the rest of the week, they met for dinner and by the time Regina brought him the next six folders, they were talking about what they liked and didn't like and what their thoughts were about the future.From the next set of six breeders, Danny selected Jessica, a breeder with the skin tone that told him she was Hispanic, very large breasts, and wide hips. Danny selected her mostly because she looked very confident in both the pictures of her dressed and nude. He found she was indeed confident when they talked over the next two days. Breeding Jessica was also a pleasure for Danny because she was as confident about being bred as she was in her pictures. Her favorite position was riding him, and he had to concentrate on not cumming before she did. After she came, she pressed her big breasts into his chest and sighed, "I want to do this again."The conditions of Danny's contract with the W R E made that impossible until he'd bred all twenty breeders for the study, but he wondered if the second time might be better than the first. He talked to Regina about that when they had his post-breeding session. Regina asked him the questions she always asked and Danny gave her the answers. When she finished filling out the form, Regina asked Danny if he had anything to add.Danny frowned.To be continued in part 2, Based on the works of ron de, in 2 parts, for Literotica

 Something had to be done about the ominous world population decrease.Based on the works of ron de, in 2 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories.Kristin lay naked on the bed with her legs spread a little and watched as S405698 removed his clothing. Before, she'd been nervous, but eager. Now, as he removed his underwear and his erect cock bobbed free, she was nervous and a little afraid. It was her first time in six months, the celibacy period mandated by her contract, and she was a little fearful of how it would feel. He looked large - not particularly long, but really thick. Matt, her former partner, hadn't been so thick and it always felt like he stretched her a lot.He smiled as he approached."This your first time here?"Kristin nodded her confirmation.He smiled again and stroked her right breast."Just relax, and I'll make this great for both of us. Do you have a favorite position?"Kristin's voice was almost a whisper."I thought it made a difference and we'd have to do it with you on top."He chuckled."That's just an old wives tale. All the data says it really doesn't matter as long as you have an orgasm. Usually it doesn't matter even if you don't providing the time is right, but I'll make sure you do. Now, what do you like? I read your application, but some women have special things they like and are too embarrassed to write them down. It's just you and me here, and it will be better for us both if I know."Kristin thought for a moment. Should she tell him, could she tell him, that having her nipples pinched tight and then pulled would send her into a blinding orgasm? Would he think she was weird if she told him that?He smiled when she didn't answer."You won't shock me, I promise. I've heard everything from 'spank me really hard' to 'pull my hair' to 'tell me I'm just a brood cow and you're going to breed me like a bull'. There have been other things too, but those are probably the most common."Kristin smiled coyly."Well...I like it best when I'm on my hands and knees...and I like my nipples pinched hard and then pulled."He smiled again."That's one of my favorites too. Before we do that, let's get you ready."Kristin was quiet when he began stroking her breasts, but caught her breath when he lightly brushed her nipples with his fingertips. When he nuzzled her breast and then closed his lips around her right nipple, she closed her eyes so she could feel every little tingle. After he stroked down her side and then slipped a fingertip between her puffy lips, she wasn't afraid anymore. She just felt the craving building, the craving to be penetrated by his thick cock, and then taken to the point her body would convulse as the orgasm sent her into a blinding fog of sensations.That was when he'd pump his seed into her, the thick, white, sticky ropes carrying his sperm that would find their way to her womb and impregnate her. She wouldn't feel the spurts, she knew that, but she'd feel his thick cock throb inside her when he did it. Some women in her group who were there for the second or third time said they thought they could feel it splatter inside them, but Kristin never had. All she'd ever felt were the contractions that twisted her belly in a knot, caused her legs to turn to jelly, and made her hips writhe around the cock inside her.And so it was that day. He stroked his finger in and out, then used two fingers to stroke deep while his thumb lightly brushed her clit, and all the time, his mouth sucked and pulled at her nipples. By the time he turned her over and lifted her hips so she was on her hands and knees, she'd felt the orgasm building twice. He'd stopped his stroking fingers and thumb then, but as soon as her hips stopped rocking into his hand, he started again.Kristin had just gotten to her hands and knees when she felt him spread her lips and then slide his rigid cock between them. She was so wet by then there wasn't much sensation until his cock head touched her clit. Her body jerked when that happened and she tried to move forward so his cock was at her entrance.He wouldn't let her do that though. He just kept stroking his cock between her wet, swollen lips until his cock head and shaft glistened with the slippery/sticky wetness that flowed from her entrance when she tightened her belly. He smiled to himself at how well he'd excited her.That was a point of personal pride with him. He'd been taught the mechanics, but his real education had come from a woman named Barbara. She'd been very forward about what she liked and didn't like, and one of the things she liked was being teased until she was gasping for breath and her wetness flowed enough it trickled from her entrance and then down between her ass cheeks.He knew Kristin was ready when she began pushing back against him, trying to get his cock inside her. He hoped she was close to an orgasm because when a breeder acted like this one was acting, he sometimes had trouble holding back until she came. It wasn't the way she moaned and panted. It was the way her lips gradually swelled and then opened when he spread her legs a little more.Kristin felt him pushing his cock head at her entrance and then the feeling of him stretching her open. It didn't happen all at once like she thought it might. After all, he was being paid to breed her, not to make love to her and she thought he'd want to do it as fast as possible.He didn't though, and Kristin couldn't hold back the moan as his thick, swollen cock head eased into the snug spot just inside her entrance. She moaned again when he pushed deeper and she felt him fill that tight ring. He didn't keep going then. He just pushed in and out right there, making his cock head stretch her open and then letting her close a little. In less than a minute, Kristin was unconsciously pushing back at his cock and trying to get him inside her all the way.He did push harder then, and Kristin gasped as his cock head slipped past that snug spot but the stretching feeling didn't lessen. It was still there, the same pressure that sent little tingling sensations to her brain and her core. Those sensations tightened her belly and took every thought from her mind except the exquisite stretching and his hands on her breasts.He was carefully watching what she did, and when he began hearing her rasping, panting breaths knew she was close. He moved his hands from cupping her full, hanging breasts to close his fingertips on her swollen nipples. When he pinched them lightly, she moaned. He pinched harder and felt her passage clamp down on his cock.She rammed her body back when he pinched harder still, hard enough he knew he was flattening her nipples between his index fingers and thumbs, and she started to make continuous little moans. It would only take a little more and she'd have the orgasm she needed to have for it to be nearly certain he'd impregnate her.He pulled down hard then and stretched her breasts out into cones. She shrieked and he felt her begin to shake. She started to sag then because her legs were shaking, so he put his left hand under her belly to hold her up, and began pushing his cock in and out a little faster. In moments, she began to murmur something he couldn't understand, and when he pulled hard on her right nipple, she shrieked and started to writhe her hips. As soon as he felt her body jerk the first time, he allowed himself to let go. With a groan, he pushed his cock in until his belly flattened her shaking hips and then felt the surge race up his cock and inside her. Three more times, he gasped as his cock went home and another surge flew out the tip.She was still making little mewing cries and pushing back into his cock when he groaned and felt another tightening in his cock. That one would be just a dribble, but it would add to the amount he could already feel leaking out of her and onto the mattress.It wouldn't matter if some leaked out. He could feel her body moving now, feel her passage contract and then push out, then contract again. Her body was doing what it was supposed to do, dipping the tip of her womb into the sperm that covered it and helping the sperm find its way inside.He kept his cock in her and stroking until it got soft enough it was just bending when he stroked in. He pulled out then, but held her lips closed with two fingers until he couldn't feel the little contractions anymore. He knew it wouldn't matter if he did that, but he liked the way most women reacted when he lightly pinched their lips together and then moved them around. This one was no exception. She purred out a little moan and then her hips rocked a little.She was lying on her back when he got dressed, and just before he left; she blew him a kiss and said "Thank you".He grinned."The pleasure was mine."The EmptinessAs Danny walked back to his room, he smiled at his fortune to be one of the chosen males. It was partly because of his intelligence but also because of his build. He was a little over six feet tall, depending upon the time of day, and was a lean and strong hundred and seventy pounds. That had been enough to get him the position, and when his sperm count was higher than average, that was an added advantage.He didn't know how many women he'd impregnated, but he knew he'd been mated with about a hundred and fifty over the past two years. He figured he had about another ten years of service left, give or take, as long as his sperm count remained at least average. By that time, the crisis would have been avoided and though the breeding program would still be required, the natural process of reproduction would again be helping to populate the earth.In another four days, Danny would have another appointment with a woman probably between the ages of nineteen and twenty-nine. There had been women as old as forty in the beginning, but anything over twenty-nine was considered a little old now. A breeder could be bred only every two years, and the sociologists had all agreed that after the age of thirty, the breeder should concentrate on child rearing. A woman who was nineteen at her first breeding was optimal. She could be bred seven times before retiring.The other issue with a woman's age was fertility. After the age of thirty, it sometimes took two breedings to impregnate her, and that wasted sperm. Women as old as forty had been used to get things started though, because not using every available and willing woman would have been catastrophic. A few women over thirty were still being bred, but those were women with exceptionally high intelligence, nearly perfect physical traits, and strong mothering instincts.Foundational KnowledgeThe federation authorities were not going to question the sages of the academics. Science must never be questioned by the unenlightened; and certainly not publicly opposed. It was met with swift re-education orders, and the rebels who dared challenge the sages were taken to institutions where they were re-educated. Sometimes they were further treated with pharmaceuticals to bring ‘balance' to their temperament, before slowly being re-introduced to the civilian populations.Mandated Abstinence PhaseFour days of rest was optimal for Danny according to the testing he'd been through. Some sires needed as many as six, but four days gave his body a chance to replenish his sperm and gave his mind a chance to rest from the concentration required to ensure the woman had an orgasm. During those days, he'd sleep, eat, stay in shape with a workout or a swim, and do little else other than take a class or two in how to arouse women. Danny didn't really need the classes in how to cause orgasms in most women, but there were some women who needed what Judy, the instructor, called "special handling", so he'd take at least one.Judy always taught the classes nude so she could demonstrate, and Danny wished she was one of the breeders. While he was skilled in producing orgasms in any woman, he sometimes had to concentrate on producing his own if the breeder had small breasts or narrow hips. Judy had the large, heavy breasts and sensuous, wide hips, the same characteristics that always made it easy for him to fill a breeder with his sperm. Unfortunately for him, Judy was forty-eight and no longer fertile. Coupling with her would have been an exquisite experience, he thought, but would have also been a waste of his sperm.He'd have liked being the first to breed her because she was probably quite a woman when she was nineteen, but in those days, things were done a little differently. Most matings were natural then, and the selection process was left up to the individuals involved.A Dying Human RaceNo one could put a single, concrete reason to the lack of population growth the world was experiencing during the early 2000's, but it was definitely a problem and it was growing quickly. In 2015, the population of the globe was a little over seven billion and growing slowly. By 2030, that number had stabilized because the death rate was about equal to the birth rate. Medical science had not been able to find a way to extend the life of any individual. All evidence appeared to point to a biologically programmed "expiration date" for the human body.It was estimated by the W H O that with the current declining birth and steady death rates, in ten years the population of Earth would be nearly halved and would continue to decline at a rate of about eight percent per year. Within twenty years because of geographical dispersion, the human species would effectively be extinct. A few small pockets of humans would exist in the major cities, but would quickly begin to suffer from congenital diseases and defects cause by lack of genetic diversity.There were various theories for the decrease in birth rate proposed, but the problem was worldwide, so culture was not a major influence. What appeared to be the cause were several major changes in how people thought about their roles in society.Some sociologists thought the problem began in the 1960's with the so-called "free love" generation. The culture of the "hippies" changed sex into something anyone could enjoy and they did. Women learned about having orgasms and men learned that having an orgasm at the same time as your partner was much more enjoyable than basically using a woman to masturbate with instead of using their hands. The advent of the birth control pill furthered this "sex without guilt" mentality because it nearly eliminated the risk of pregnancy.Other sociologists thought it was the generation of children born to the free-love generation. While when they were young, most of the free-love generation had rejected normal jobs and careers, as they got older, they fell into line behind their parents. The difference was they made more money than their parents and could afford to give their children more. Those children grew up and became selfish because they'd seldom had to wait for anything.When they looked back at their parents, what they saw were people who had sacrificed a lot to give their children what everybody else's children had, from new bikes to the latest style in clothing to the limousine that took them to their high school prom. According to the sociologists, that realization made them vow to not have children so they didn't have to sacrifice anything in their quest for self-satisfaction. Better and safer birth control methods made that goal a reality.It was obvious to most nations in the world that if the birth rate continued to decline, long before human extinction became reality there would be fewer young people working to support the world economy while there were more older people consuming the results of that economy. Infrastructure would deteriorate because of the lack of labor to keep it running, and food would be an ever-increasing problem because of the lack of agricultural workers. The social safety-net systems such as medical care and financial support in the form of the various government entitlement systems would suffer a spiraling decline in input while their outlay would continually increase.The result was the formation of the "W R E - the acronym for "World Re-population Effort" - by the leaders of every developed country on the globe. This organization was separate from the United Nations because world leaders knew the problem had to be solved quickly. Any committee of the United Nations would only hold meaningless votes on meaningless, non-binding resolutions for years. There would likely be UN diplomats continuing to argue over infinitesimal details even as the light of human existence slowly flickered out.After six months of debate about the practical and ethical considerations, the W R E embarked upon a solution. That solution was to offer free medical care, free housing, and financial support for life to any woman, single or married, who would agree to be impregnated and raise the child to adulthood. The program was funded by the World Bank after that organization was appraised of the consequences of doing nothing.In the manner of all government programs, the W R E wrote a glossary of accepted terms. Women participating in the program were designated as "Base Re-population Donor Recipients " or the acronym "BRDR". Men serving as sperm donors were designated as "Sperm Inception Reservoirs ", or "SIR". Both terms were to be used in any and all public correspondence and conversation, but in private conversations in the W R E clinics, the doctors and nurses used the somewhat phonetic pronunciations of "Breeder" and "Sire". To guarantee anonymity but allow for detailed tracking, in all records breeders were given a number -- a "B" followed by a sequential number. Sires were likewise numbered by an "S" followed by a sequential number.In the early stages of the program, it was felt the breeding should proceed by clinical means to guarantee conception happened in a sterile environment, so the breeder was impregnated by artificial insemination. The success rate was relatively poor, being only about thirty percent for women under thirty and only about ten percent for women between thirty and thirty-five.After multiple studies that all proved inconclusive relative to how to improve that success rate by artificial means, some old data about the success of natural conception was compared to the new data. The old data demonstrated almost a seventy percent conception success rate for women between nineteen and thirty-five if the woman was monitoring her fertility and her partner's sperm count was average. The success rate was still over fifty percent even if the woman did no monitoring.As a result, the W R E began a trial program of natural matings between sires and breeders. The success rate was the predicted sixty-five to seventy percent if the breeder didn't have an orgasm, seventy-five percent if she did, and eighty percent if she had an orgasm and the sire had a high sperm count. After a year of the trial, this method became the norm.It was also determined during the trial program that virgins seldom conceived at the first mating, while all fell within the predicted ranges after the second. The doctors and psychologists employed by the W R E stated this was for two reasons. Most women experienced some amount of pain when their maidenhead was broken and that pain prevented them from having an orgasm. The other reason was that many women reported being too nervous about their first experience with intercourse and so couldn't let themselves relax and enjoy the same experience they always enjoyed when masturbating.The solution developed was to pair a virgin breeder with an experienced sire who had been taught to understand she might be apprehensive and had been taught how to overcome that tendency as well as to minimize the pain she might feel.In both types of breeders, those who were virgins and those who were not, their sires were selected to compliment and accent the characteristics of intelligence and physical development. That topic, standards for pairing breeders and sires, was the topic most debated through the program development.While throughout most of human civilization, mate selection was mostly random and served to continue proliferation of the strongest genes, there were always some children born who had a difficult time fitting into that civilization. With the advent of the sequencing of the human genome and subsequent deciphering of which gene did what, it was possible to eliminate these mistakes of nature.Utilization of that ability did not upset most people when the program was proposed. After all, what person would desire to produce a child with a mental or physical deformity or a propensity toward a life of crime?The selections would be random, but random among volunteers deemed to guarantee the resulting offspring would be the best humankind could produce. While race of the sire would be an option selectable only by the breeder, the characteristics of mental and physical health and mental stability would take precedence over any other criteria.All breeders and sires had their DNA sequenced and categorized relative to genetic disposition toward both traits considered good and bad. When a breeder signed her contract, she was given a list of potential sires. The sires on that list were matched to her DNA to yield a child with above average intelligence, no propensity for development of congenital disease or physical deformity, and most importantly, no tendencies to resist the codes of society.It was impossible to find breeders and sires with no undesirable genetic characteristics, so the pairing routine matched breeders with undesirable characteristics with sires who had the genetic makeup to counteract those characteristics. In this manner, the new population would be stronger, more intelligent, and there would be little, if any, crime.While there were still babies being naturally conceived by couples, that was both a blessing and a concern. Those babies were needed to re-populate the planet, but some of those babies would develop the unfavorable characteristics dictated by their DNA.After some deliberation about methods of guaranteeing proper genetic makeup of all children born, the W R E concluded that the number of such children produced by natural matings would be small compared to the number of planned births. That number would be small enough that any mental abnormalities could be handled by the current methods of incarceration or psychiatric treatment. Physical abnormalities would be handled by corrective surgery or prosthetics. Both would disappear in a generation or two anyway.The initial year of the program proved the potential of the plan. The initial two thousand sires chosen from all over the world had each been mated with between sixty and eighty breeders each, and the result was eighty-three thousand babies.The impregnation rate was a disappointing sixty- percent, but this was attributed to the age of some of the breeders. The second year, the number of sires was increased to six thousand, the number of breeders by two hundred fifty thousand, and eleven months later, the number of births was over three hundred and fifty thousand births.At that rate of impregnation, within one generation, the population of the Earth would be well on the way to return to the levels of the early 2000's. Given that the selection process matched breeders and sires for both physical and mental characteristics, those new individuals would have a natural desire to reproduce and the resulting children would return the world's birthrate to a percentage that would match the world's death rate.Several psychologists had warned of the unintended consequence of a planned and organized breeding program. After an entire generation of men and women had been conceived, born, and raised to the state of adulthood, they might resolve themselves to arranged breedings as the norm.It wasn't hard for Danny to believe that would be the case. He seldom felt anything for any breeder he impregnated. It was just his job, albeit a very pleasant job. He knew the other sires felt much the same way.Technology of InseminationAfter Danny filled out his after-breeding report detailing the experience - the breeding position used, what techniques he had used to arouse her, had the breeder achieved an orgasm or not, and a short written statement of his impressions of the breeder - he sent the electronic form to the central computer and then sat down to reflect upon what he had written.Danny didn't think anybody actually read his comments, but in actuality, they were the most important data on the form to the psychiatrists monitoring the breeding program. They understood that there would be some mental stress if men were coupled with anonymous women by a computer program rather than by natural means.Female humans were biologically programmed to seek a single mate to care for and to protect them and to mingle their genetic makeup with a male who made them feel safe and secure. Using a computer program to match breeders and sires was contrary to that programming and could cause stress which would prevent the breeder from conceiving.As a result, every breeder received counseling before being bred. The counseling sessions were intended to make the breeder accepting of the sire by pointing out how the sires available to her were compatible with her list of likes and dislikes. While a few breeders were still hesitant, the method worked for most and they readily chose a sire from the list.Studies had shown that once the breeder was pregnant, the resulting hormonal changes would minimize the instinct to bond with a male and replace that instinct with the instinct to nurture the child. No counseling was required for a breeder until the next breeding.Sires were a different problem. Sires experienced no changes in hormone types or levels as a result of breeding a breeder, and were prone to follow their instincts when breeding. Those instincts were to breed as many females as possible in order to successfully pass on their genes, but there were some conditions unique to each sire that caused the breeding instinct to manifest itself.There were the usual conditions of mental compatibility and personality, but those could be sorted and matched based upon the genetic data for each breeder and each sire. The condition that could not be predicted was attraction of the breeder to the sire. This was because the primary attraction was physical beauty. Physical beauty was evaluated differently by each sire and appeared to be "learned" rather than genetic because there were no markers in the genome that correlated with any sire's initial psychological analysis or his after-breeding reports.As a result, each sire receive special counseling between breedings. These counseling sessions were one-on-one interactions between the sire and a psychiatrist and took the form of observation and discussion between the two of pictures of women representing all races, body types and facial features. The sire would explain what he liked and didn't like about a particular woman and why. The psychiatrist would then attempt to determine and explain the reasons for the sire's evaluation with the hope future matings would be more in accord with each sire's preferences.The psychiatrist who worked with Danny was Regina Allison. Regina was very skilled in her field, but hadn't made much headway with Danny. She thought she understood why.While most sires had a strong desire to breed and would accept almost any breeder, over time a curious anomaly was seen. If they reported the breeder was attractive, it was usual that impregnation would result from one breeding. If that attractiveness was not there, the sire would still breed the breeder, but about twenty-five percent of the time a subsequent breeding would be required.The anomaly did not appear to be a result of something the breeders were doing. A breeder that required two breedings when bred to one sire would conceive at the first breeding with another sire of similar characteristics. Regina began to concentrate on the sire as the possible cause of the anomaly.She had studied this phenomena over the period of a year by collecting sperm samples from freshly serviced breeders and making a sperm count, and then interviewing the sire to determine his thoughts about the particular breeder. All her data indicated that a sire tended to react by withholding sperm from those breeders he found less than attractive. Regina believed the sire's brain was regulating the number of sperm expelled in order to maintain a reserve for a breeder the sire found attractive.Regina had put her data into a proposal for the W R E, and had been given approval for a pilot program of one sire and twenty breeders. She had selected Danny as her sire, and he would select the twenty breeders from a group who were genetically matched to him.It was the day of his appointment after breeding Kristin that she proposed her pilot program to Danny."Danny, you've been a sire for almost two years now. We've talked about your opinions of various breeders before, and I must say our conversations have been interesting. I find it fascinating that you really want a mental connection with the breeders."As you already know from the weekly sessions, the average impregnation rate for the total program is about seventy-five percent. I and the other psychologists have been studying all breedings to determine why our average isn't higher."We have discovered an interesting correlation between the after-breeding report from our sires and the impregnation rate. Our data suggests if a sire finds a breeder less than - for lack of a better word, I'll use 'attractive' - if a sire finds a breeder less than attractive, his impregnation success is reduced. The correlation is there for every sire I have studied."When I looked for a cause, the data demonstrated the sire's sperm count present at the time of breeding was lower for less attractive breeders while sperm count for more attractive breeders was at or even a little higher than the base line sperm count for that sire. Sperm count correlated extremely well with impregnation success and by inference, to the attractiveness of the breeder to the sire. I have found no correlation of any breeder characteristic across the range of sires studied. It appears as though attractiveness is a variable unique to each sire."You've been successful in impregnating almost all breeders, and in fact, your average impregnation rate is about eighty-nine percent, but you are very similar to other sires. Your sperm count decreases when you breed a woman who does not match the characteristics you find most attractive. It is probable that your high baseline sperm count minimizes the difference in your success at breeding breeders of different characteristics."Danny was a little confused. It was true that he found some breeders more attractive than others, but he didn't know how that could affect his sperm count. He also didn't think it made much difference as long as the breeder impregnation rate remained high."What difference does it make as long as the breeder is impregnated? Isn't that the point - for sires to impregnate the breeders matched with them?"Regina frowned."If it was that simple, no, it wouldn't make any difference. The problem is that unlike you, some sires have an impregnation rate in the order of ninety percent if they find the breeder attractive, but only fifty percent if they don't. The data says the problem is related to sperm count, and we don't understand why and how a sire can vary it."We understand you can't intentionally change your sperm count, but there are still a lot of things we don't know about the human brain. What my data shows about you is that your sperm count is lower when you breed a woman with small breasts than when you breed a woman with large breasts. The same data correlates with several other factors you've related in your post-breeding reports."Your sperm count is about average with blonde breeders, lower than average with breeders with black hair, and higher than average with breeders with brown or red hair. You apparently also favor breeders with fuller figures over slender figures."The many variations of male preferences have been documented by multiple studies, but it was never suspected those preferences would affect reproduction. What I believe is your brain subconsciously controls your sperm count based upon your evaluation of the breeder. It's probably a vestige of instinct from the early days of man and would ensure the variability of the gene pool."Now, we find ourselves in the position of requiring rapid population growth while still maintaining variability in the gene pool. To accomplish that goal, we need to have impregnation rates in the order of at least eighty percent. The only way to do that is a controlled study to determine if sperm count is truly affected by the attractiveness of the breeder to the sire. I want you to be part of that study."Danny couldn't see how any study could be much different than what he was already doing. It would probably be more interesting than just breeding a different breeder every four days.He shrugged."I guess I can. What do I have to do?"Regina smiled."I hoped you'd say yes. Here is the plan I've laid out.Regina's plan didn't sound any different than what he'd already been doing, and that's what he told Regina. She smiled again."Breeder selection is the real difference. Each week, I'll give you the applications of six breeders along with a picture of them both clothed and nude. You'll choose the breeder you prefer from those six. The other five will be matched with other sires just as happens today."Regina pursed her lips then."Danny, there is one other change of which you need to be aware. Sociologists have been concerned about the feasibility of children being raised only by breeders. As part of this study, each of the breeders will stay with us until they give birth. Once you've bred all twenty, you'll be able to choose which breeder you'd like to breed again even if she's already pregnant.Danny chuckled."It sounds like you're going to give me a harem to take care of."Regina grinned."In some respects that is what it is. After she gives birth, those breeders and their children will stay with us to be bred again, this time as you see fit. In this way we can correlate your initial after-breeding report results with the breedings in subsequent years. You'll have your choice of breeder, your choice of the timing, and of course, her acceptance to be bred again by you."Danny smiled."That might be nice, but I don't think twenty women and their children are going to fit in my room."Regina waved her hands."No, they won't, but they will fit in the house that's nearly finished. The house is being built a hundred kilometers from the city limits on one of the auto-farms. We felt that it would be easier for you and the breeders and their children to develop relationships if the setting was of a more private nature."When Danny saw what Regina had called the breeding study house, he was amazed at how much she'd understated the size. It wasn't a house. It was a mansion. On one wing of the first floor was a dining room with several tables that Danny figured would sit at least sixty people. The center part of the house was a huge living area with couches and chairs for at least a hundred people. These were arranged in groups around the twenty televisions that lined the walls. On the other wing of the house was the kitchen and quarters for the twenty service people who would do the cooking, cleaning, and grounds work.The second floor consisted of twenty-three apartments, each with a small living area, two bedrooms and a bath. One of those apartments would be Danny's and across the hall was a breeding room. Unlike the breeding rooms at the W R E breeding center, this one was equipped with video cameras located to provide six different views of the breeding bed. Regina said her apartment would be adjacent to the breeding room.The third floor was a small functioning hospital that would be mainly used as a maternity hospital with two examination rooms, two labor rooms, two delivery rooms and two operating rooms along with living quarters for three doctors -- a general practitioner, an obstetrician, a surgeon, and six nurses. Their quarters were also on the third floor. Regina told Danny the hospital was equipped to handle almost any emergency though it's primary function would be as a birthing center.A week later, the new location was complete with a small staff, and Danny and Regina moved in. That afternoon, Regina brought six folders to Danny."These are the first group. What I want you to do is look at them all, and record what you think on a form that is the same form as the new after-breeding report.Then, select the breeder you like best and I'll have her moved here. She'll be ready to breed anytime in the next six days, so you have some time to decide."After dinner, Danny sat down with the folders and read all the applications. The applications were somewhat different than the applications he'd read before. The applications he was used to only contained height and weight along with a psychiatrist's evaluation of the breeder and a picture of the breeder's face. The new applications included a lot more physical data such as body measurements along with a statement by the breeder of her expectations from the program. There were also four pictures included, two of the breeder's full body, dressed and in frontal and profile views, and two of the breeder nude in the same poses.The other difference was the breeders were identified by breeder number as had always been the case, but this time, each breeder was also identified by a first name. Danny found knowing the first name of the breeders was somehow comforting. He'd never known that information before and all breeders were told not to tell him their name.Danny didn't pay much attention to the written part of the applications. Instead, he spread all the pictures out on his desk so he could compare them. He was surprised by two things.There was a huge difference in how he saw each breeder when she was dressed versus when she was nude. When the breeder was dressed, his attention was drawn to her face and hair. When she was nude, his attention was drawn to her breasts, waist, hips, and legs. He found that with some of the six, he was attracted to the face of a breeder, but not to her body, and sometimes it was the other way around. Only one seemed to be attractive both ways, a blonde named Barbara.Barbara had a face that pleased him, and although her breasts weren't especially large and her hips weren't as wide as some, he found himself comparing all the other pictures to the pictures of her.He hadn't expected that to happen. What he'd expected was that he'd be attracted to more than one and would have to choose between them. When Danny filled out the selection form, he rated the women honestly, and even though some of their scores were higher than Barbara's, he still checked the box on her form as the breeder he'd selected.When Danny gave the folders back to Regina, she looked at his evaluations and the check mark on Barbara's form, but only said, "I'll have her here in two days. She'll be ready to breed two days after that."It felt odd to meet Barbara and to get to know her during the two days before the scheduled breeding. Before, Danny had only had a few minutes with a breeder before beginning the breeding process. He wasn't certain how to act, and he thought Barbara was a little confused as well. It was like when he was in high school and on a first date with a girl.After dinner the first night, he was more comfortable with her and she with him. After dinner the second night, Danny found himself liking Barbara. She was intelligent and had a sense of humor. The next afternoon, he enjoyed breeding Barbara because of that feeling. It was different, somehow, and Danny liked the difference.Over the rest of the week, they met for dinner and by the time Regina brought him the next six folders, they were talking about what they liked and didn't like and what their thoughts were about the future.From the next set of six breeders, Danny selected Jessica, a breeder with the skin tone that told him she was Hispanic, very large breasts, and wide hips. Danny selected her mostly because she looked very confident in both the pictures of her dressed and nude. He found she was indeed confident when they talked over the next two days. Breeding Jessica was also a pleasure for Danny because she was as confident about being bred as she was in her pictures. Her favorite position was riding him, and he had to concentrate on not cumming before she did. After she came, she pressed her big breasts into his chest and sighed, "I want to do this again."The conditions of Danny's contract with the W R E made that impossible until he'd bred all twenty breeders for the study, but he wondered if the second time might be better than the first. He talked to Regina about that when they had his post-breeding session. Regina asked him the questions she always asked and Danny gave her the answers. When she finished filling out the form, Regina asked Danny if he had anything to add.Danny frowned.To be continued in part 2, Based on the works of ron de, in 2 parts, for Literotica

 Something had to be done about the ominous world population decrease.Based on the works of ron de, in 2 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories.Kristin lay naked on the bed with her legs spread a little and watched as S405698 removed his clothing. Before, she'd been nervous, but eager. Now, as he removed his underwear and his erect cock bobbed free, she was nervous and a little afraid. It was her first time in six months, the celibacy period mandated by her contract, and she was a little fearful of how it would feel. He looked large - not particularly long, but really thick. Matt, her former partner, hadn't been so thick and it always felt like he stretched her a lot.He smiled as he approached."This your first time here?"Kristin nodded her confirmation.He smiled again and stroked her right breast."Just relax, and I'll make this great for both of us. Do you have a favorite position?"Kristin's voice was almost a whisper."I thought it made a difference and we'd have to do it with you on top."He chuckled."That's just an old wives tale. All the data says it really doesn't matter as long as you have an orgasm. Usually it doesn't matter even if you don't providing the time is right, but I'll make sure you do. Now, what do you like? I read your application, but some women have special things they like and are too embarrassed to write them down. It's just you and me here, and it will be better for us both if I know."Kristin thought for a moment. Should she tell him, could she tell him, that having her nipples pinched tight and then pulled would send her into a blinding orgasm? Would he think she was weird if she told him that?He smiled when she didn't answer."You won't shock me, I promise. I've heard everything from 'spank me really hard' to 'pull my hair' to 'tell me I'm just a brood cow and you're going to breed me like a bull'. There have been other things too, but those are probably the most common."Kristin smiled coyly."Well...I like it best when I'm on my hands and knees...and I like my nipples pinched hard and then pulled."He smiled again."That's one of my favorites too. Before we do that, let's get you ready."Kristin was quiet when he began stroking her breasts, but caught her breath when he lightly brushed her nipples with his fingertips. When he nuzzled her breast and then closed his lips around her right nipple, she closed her eyes so she could feel every little tingle. After he stroked down her side and then slipped a fingertip between her puffy lips, she wasn't afraid anymore. She just felt the craving building, the craving to be penetrated by his thick cock, and then taken to the point her body would convulse as the orgasm sent her into a blinding fog of sensations.That was when he'd pump his seed into her, the thick, white, sticky ropes carrying his sperm that would find their way to her womb and impregnate her. She wouldn't feel the spurts, she knew that, but she'd feel his thick cock throb inside her when he did it. Some women in her group who were there for the second or third time said they thought they could feel it splatter inside them, but Kristin never had. All she'd ever felt were the contractions that twisted her belly in a knot, caused her legs to turn to jelly, and made her hips writhe around the cock inside her.And so it was that day. He stroked his finger in and out, then used two fingers to stroke deep while his thumb lightly brushed her clit, and all the time, his mouth sucked and pulled at her nipples. By the time he turned her over and lifted her hips so she was on her hands and knees, she'd felt the orgasm building twice. He'd stopped his stroking fingers and thumb then, but as soon as her hips stopped rocking into his hand, he started again.Kristin had just gotten to her hands and knees when she felt him spread her lips and then slide his rigid cock between them. She was so wet by then there wasn't much sensation until his cock head touched her clit. Her body jerked when that happened and she tried to move forward so his cock was at her entrance.He wouldn't let her do that though. He just kept stroking his cock between her wet, swollen lips until his cock head and shaft glistened with the slippery/sticky wetness that flowed from her entrance when she tightened her belly. He smiled to himself at how well he'd excited her.That was a point of personal pride with him. He'd been taught the mechanics, but his real education had come from a woman named Barbara. She'd been very forward about what she liked and didn't like, and one of the things she liked was being teased until she was gasping for breath and her wetness flowed enough it trickled from her entrance and then down between her ass cheeks.He knew Kristin was ready when she began pushing back against him, trying to get his cock inside her. He hoped she was close to an orgasm because when a breeder acted like this one was acting, he sometimes had trouble holding back until she came. It wasn't the way she moaned and panted. It was the way her lips gradually swelled and then opened when he spread her legs a little more.Kristin felt him pushing his cock head at her entrance and then the feeling of him stretching her open. It didn't happen all at once like she thought it might. After all, he was being paid to breed her, not to make love to her and she thought he'd want to do it as fast as possible.He didn't though, and Kristin couldn't hold back the moan as his thick, swollen cock head eased into the snug spot just inside her entrance. She moaned again when he pushed deeper and she felt him fill that tight ring. He didn't keep going then. He just pushed in and out right there, making his cock head stretch her open and then letting her close a little. In less than a minute, Kristin was unconsciously pushing back at his cock and trying to get him inside her all the way.He did push harder then, and Kristin gasped as his cock head slipped past that snug spot but the stretching feeling didn't lessen. It was still there, the same pressure that sent little tingling sensations to her brain and her core. Those sensations tightened her belly and took every thought from her mind except the exquisite stretching and his hands on her breasts.He was carefully watching what she did, and when he began hearing her rasping, panting breaths knew she was close. He moved his hands from cupping her full, hanging breasts to close his fingertips on her swollen nipples. When he pinched them lightly, she moaned. He pinched harder and felt her passage clamp down on his cock.She rammed her body back when he pinched harder still, hard enough he knew he was flattening her nipples between his index fingers and thumbs, and she started to make continuous little moans. It would only take a little more and she'd have the orgasm she needed to have for it to be nearly certain he'd impregnate her.He pulled down hard then and stretched her breasts out into cones. She shrieked and he felt her begin to shake. She started to sag then because her legs were shaking, so he put his left hand under her belly to hold her up, and began pushing his cock in and out a little faster. In moments, she began to murmur something he couldn't understand, and when he pulled hard on her right nipple, she shrieked and started to writhe her hips. As soon as he felt her body jerk the first time, he allowed himself to let go. With a groan, he pushed his cock in until his belly flattened her shaking hips and then felt the surge race up his cock and inside her. Three more times, he gasped as his cock went home and another surge flew out the tip.She was still making little mewing cries and pushing back into his cock when he groaned and felt another tightening in his cock. That one would be just a dribble, but it would add to the amount he could already feel leaking out of her and onto the mattress.It wouldn't matter if some leaked out. He could feel her body moving now, feel her passage contract and then push out, then contract again. Her body was doing what it was supposed to do, dipping the tip of her womb into the sperm that covered it and helping the sperm find its way inside.He kept his cock in her and stroking until it got soft enough it was just bending when he stroked in. He pulled out then, but held her lips closed with two fingers until he couldn't feel the little contractions anymore. He knew it wouldn't matter if he did that, but he liked the way most women reacted when he lightly pinched their lips together and then moved them around. This one was no exception. She purred out a little moan and then her hips rocked a little.She was lying on her back when he got dressed, and just before he left; she blew him a kiss and said "Thank you".He grinned."The pleasure was mine."The EmptinessAs Danny walked back to his room, he smiled at his fortune to be one of the chosen males. It was partly because of his intelligence but also because of his build. He was a little over six feet tall, depending upon the time of day, and was a lean and strong hundred and seventy pounds. That had been enough to get him the position, and when his sperm count was higher than average, that was an added advantage.He didn't know how many women he'd impregnated, but he knew he'd been mated with about a hundred and fifty over the past two years. He figured he had about another ten years of service left, give or take, as long as his sperm count remained at least average. By that time, the crisis would have been avoided and though the breeding program would still be required, the natural process of reproduction would again be helping to populate the earth.In another four days, Danny would have another appointment with a woman probably between the ages of nineteen and twenty-nine. There had been women as old as forty in the beginning, but anything over twenty-nine was considered a little old now. A breeder could be bred only every two years, and the sociologists had all agreed that after the age of thirty, the breeder should concentrate on child rearing. A woman who was nineteen at her first breeding was optimal. She could be bred seven times before retiring.The other issue with a woman's age was fertility. After the age of thirty, it sometimes took two breedings to impregnate her, and that wasted sperm. Women as old as forty had been used to get things started though, because not using every available and willing woman would have been catastrophic. A few women over thirty were still being bred, but those were women with exceptionally high intelligence, nearly perfect physical traits, and strong mothering instincts.Foundational KnowledgeThe federation authorities were not going to question the sages of the academics. Science must never be questioned by the unenlightened; and certainly not publicly opposed. It was met with swift re-education orders, and the rebels who dared challenge the sages were taken to institutions where they were re-educated. Sometimes they were further treated with pharmaceuticals to bring ‘balance' to their temperament, before slowly being re-introduced to the civilian populations.Mandated Abstinence PhaseFour days of rest was optimal for Danny according to the testing he'd been through. Some sires needed as many as six, but four days gave his body a chance to replenish his sperm and gave his mind a chance to rest from the concentration required to ensure the woman had an orgasm. During those days, he'd sleep, eat, stay in shape with a workout or a swim, and do little else other than take a class or two in how to arouse women. Danny didn't really need the classes in how to cause orgasms in most women, but there were some women who needed what Judy, the instructor, called "special handling", so he'd take at least one.Judy always taught the classes nude so she could demonstrate, and Danny wished she was one of the breeders. While he was skilled in producing orgasms in any woman, he sometimes had to concentrate on producing his own if the breeder had small breasts or narrow hips. Judy had the large, heavy breasts and sensuous, wide hips, the same characteristics that always made it easy for him to fill a breeder with his sperm. Unfortunately for him, Judy was forty-eight and no longer fertile. Coupling with her would have been an exquisite experience, he thought, but would have also been a waste of his sperm.He'd have liked being the first to breed her because she was probably quite a woman when she was nineteen, but in those days, things were done a little differently. Most matings were natural then, and the selection process was left up to the individuals involved.A Dying Human RaceNo one could put a single, concrete reason to the lack of population growth the world was experiencing during the early 2000's, but it was definitely a problem and it was growing quickly. In 2015, the population of the globe was a little over seven billion and growing slowly. By 2030, that number had stabilized because the death rate was about equal to the birth rate. Medical science had not been able to find a way to extend the life of any individual. All evidence appeared to point to a biologically programmed "expiration date" for the human body.It was estimated by the W H O that with the current declining birth and steady death rates, in ten years the population of Earth would be nearly halved and would continue to decline at a rate of about eight percent per year. Within twenty years because of geographical dispersion, the human species would effectively be extinct. A few small pockets of humans would exist in the major cities, but would quickly begin to suffer from congenital diseases and defects cause by lack of genetic diversity.There were various theories for the decrease in birth rate proposed, but the problem was worldwide, so culture was not a major influence. What appeared to be the cause were several major changes in how people thought about their roles in society.Some sociologists thought the problem began in the 1960's with the so-called "free love" generation. The culture of the "hippies" changed sex into something anyone could enjoy and they did. Women learned about having orgasms and men learned that having an orgasm at the same time as your partner was much more enjoyable than basically using a woman to masturbate with instead of using their hands. The advent of the birth control pill furthered this "sex without guilt" mentality because it nearly eliminated the risk of pregnancy.Other sociologists thought it was the generation of children born to the free-love generation. While when they were young, most of the free-love generation had rejected normal jobs and careers, as they got older, they fell into line behind their parents. The difference was they made more money than their parents and could afford to give their children more. Those children grew up and became selfish because they'd seldom had to wait for anything.When they looked back at their parents, what they saw were people who had sacrificed a lot to give their children what everybody else's children had, from new bikes to the latest style in clothing to the limousine that took them to their high school prom. According to the sociologists, that realization made them vow to not have children so they didn't have to sacrifice anything in their quest for self-satisfaction. Better and safer birth control methods made that goal a reality.It was obvious to most nations in the world that if the birth rate continued to decline, long before human extinction became reality there would be fewer young people working to support the world economy while there were more older people consuming the results of that economy. Infrastructure would deteriorate because of the lack of labor to keep it running, and food would be an ever-increasing problem because of the lack of agricultural workers. The social safety-net systems such as medical care and financial support in the form of the various government entitlement systems would suffer a spiraling decline in input while their outlay would continually increase.The result was the formation of the "W R E - the acronym for "World Re-population Effort" - by the leaders of every developed country on the globe. This organization was separate from the United Nations because world leaders knew the problem had to be solved quickly. Any committee of the United Nations would only hold meaningless votes on meaningless, non-binding resolutions for years. There would likely be UN diplomats continuing to argue over infinitesimal details even as the light of human existence slowly flickered out.After six months of debate about the practical and ethical considerations, the W R E embarked upon a solution. That solution was to offer free medical care, free housing, and financial support for life to any woman, single or married, who would agree to be impregnated and raise the child to adulthood. The program was funded by the World Bank after that organization was appraised of the consequences of doing nothing.In the manner of all government programs, the W R E wrote a glossary of accepted terms. Women participating in the program were designated as "Base Re-population Donor Recipients " or the acronym "BRDR". Men serving as sperm donors were designated as "Sperm Inception Reservoirs ", or "SIR". Both terms were to be used in any and all public correspondence and conversation, but in private conversations in the W R E clinics, the doctors and nurses used the somewhat phonetic pronunciations of "Breeder" and "Sire". To guarantee anonymity but allow for detailed tracking, in all records breeders were given a number -- a "B" followed by a sequential number. Sires were likewise numbered by an "S" followed by a sequential number.In the early stages of the program, it was felt the breeding should proceed by clinical means to guarantee conception happened in a sterile environment, so the breeder was impregnated by artificial insemination. The success rate was relatively poor, being only about thirty percent for women under thirty and only about ten percent for women between thirty and thirty-five.After multiple studies that all proved inconclusive relative to how to improve that success rate by artificial means, some old data about the success of natural conception was compared to the new data. The old data demonstrated almost a seventy percent conception success rate for women between nineteen and thirty-five if the woman was monitoring her fertility and her partner's sperm count was average. The success rate was still over fifty percent even if the woman did no monitoring.As a result, the W R E began a trial program of natural matings between sires and breeders. The success rate was the predicted sixty-five to seventy percent if the breeder didn't have an orgasm, seventy-five percent if she did, and eighty percent if she had an orgasm and the sire had a high sperm count. After a year of the trial, this method became the norm.It was also determined during the trial program that virgins seldom conceived at the first mating, while all fell within the predicted ranges after the second. The doctors and psychologists employed by the W R E stated this was for two reasons. Most women experienced some amount of pain when their maidenhead was broken and that pain prevented them from having an orgasm. The other reason was that many women reported being too nervous about their first experience with intercourse and so couldn't let themselves relax and enjoy the same experience they always enjoyed when masturbating.The solution developed was to pair a virgin breeder with an experienced sire who had been taught to understand she might be apprehensive and had been taught how to overcome that tendency as well as to minimize the pain she might feel.In both types of breeders, those who were virgins and those who were not, their sires were selected to compliment and accent the characteristics of intelligence and physical development. That topic, standards for pairing breeders and sires, was the topic most debated through the program development.While throughout most of human civilization, mate selection was mostly random and served to continue proliferation of the strongest genes, there were always some children born who had a difficult time fitting into that civilization. With the advent of the sequencing of the human genome and subsequent deciphering of which gene did what, it was possible to eliminate these mistakes of nature.Utilization of that ability did not upset most people when the program was proposed. After all, what person would desire to produce a child with a mental or physical deformity or a propensity toward a life of crime?The selections would be random, but random among volunteers deemed to guarantee the resulting offspring would be the best humankind could produce. While race of the sire would be an option selectable only by the breeder, the characteristics of mental and physical health and mental stability would take precedence over any other criteria.All breeders and sires had their DNA sequenced and categorized relative to genetic disposition toward both traits considered good and bad. When a breeder signed her contract, she was given a list of potential sires. The sires on that list were matched to her DNA to yield a child with above average intelligence, no propensity for development of congenital disease or physical deformity, and most importantly, no tendencies to resist the codes of society.It was impossible to find breeders and sires with no undesirable genetic characteristics, so the pairing routine matched breeders with undesirable characteristics with sires who had the genetic makeup to counteract those characteristics. In this manner, the new population would be stronger, more intelligent, and there would be little, if any, crime.While there were still babies being naturally conceived by couples, that was both a blessing and a concern. Those babies were needed to re-populate the planet, but some of those babies would develop the unfavorable characteristics dictated by their DNA.After some deliberation about methods of guaranteeing proper genetic makeup of all children born, the W R E concluded that the number of such children produced by natural matings would be small compared to the number of planned births. That number would be small enough that any mental abnormalities could be handled by the current methods of incarceration or psychiatric treatment. Physical abnormalities would be handled by corrective surgery or prosthetics. Both would disappear in a generation or two anyway.The initial year of the program proved the potential of the plan. The initial two thousand sires chosen from all over the world had each been mated with between sixty and eighty breeders each, and the result was eighty-three thousand babies.The impregnation rate was a disappointing sixty- percent, but this was attributed to the age of some of the breeders. The second year, the number of sires was increased to six thousand, the number of breeders by two hundred fifty thousand, and eleven months later, the number of births was over three hundred and fifty thousand births.At that rate of impregnation, within one generation, the population of the Earth would be well on the way to return to the levels of the early 2000's. Given that the selection process matched breeders and sires for both physical and mental characteristics, those new individuals would have a natural desire to reproduce and the resulting children would return the world's birthrate to a percentage that would match the world's death rate.Several psychologists had warned of the unintended consequence of a planned and organized breeding program. After an entire generation of men and women had been conceived, born, and raised to the state of adulthood, they might resolve themselves to arranged breedings as the norm.It wasn't hard for Danny to believe that would be the case. He seldom felt anything for any breeder he impregnated. It was just his job, albeit a very pleasant jo

 Something had to be done about the ominous world population decrease.Based on the works of ron de, in 2 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories.Kristin lay naked on the bed with her legs spread a little and watched as S405698 removed his clothing. Before, she'd been nervous, but eager. Now, as he removed his underwear and his erect cock bobbed free, she was nervous and a little afraid. It was her first time in six months, the celibacy period mandated by her contract, and she was a little fearful of how it would feel. He looked large - not particularly long, but really thick. Matt, her former partner, hadn't been so thick and it always felt like he stretched her a lot.He smiled as he approached."This your first time here?"Kristin nodded her confirmation.He smiled again and stroked her right breast."Just relax, and I'll make this great for both of us. Do you have a favorite position?"Kristin's voice was almost a whisper."I thought it made a difference and we'd have to do it with you on top."He chuckled."That's just an old wives tale. All the data says it really doesn't matter as long as you have an orgasm. Usually it doesn't matter even if you don't providing the time is right, but I'll make sure you do. Now, what do you like? I read your application, but some women have special things they like and are too embarrassed to write them down. It's just you and me here, and it will be better for us both if I know."Kristin thought for a moment. Should she tell him, could she tell him, that having her nipples pinched tight and then pulled would send her into a blinding orgasm? Would he think she was weird if she told him that?He smiled when she didn't answer."You won't shock me, I promise. I've heard everything from 'spank me really hard' to 'pull my hair' to 'tell me I'm just a brood cow and you're going to breed me like a bull'. There have been other things too, but those are probably the most common."Kristin smiled coyly."Well...I like it best when I'm on my hands and knees...and I like my nipples pinched hard and then pulled."He smiled again."That's one of my favorites too. Before we do that, let's get you ready."Kristin was quiet when he began stroking her breasts, but caught her breath when he lightly brushed her nipples with his fingertips. When he nuzzled her breast and then closed his lips around her right nipple, she closed her eyes so she could feel every little tingle. After he stroked down her side and then slipped a fingertip between her puffy lips, she wasn't afraid anymore. She just felt the craving building, the craving to be penetrated by his thick cock, and then taken to the point her body would convulse as the orgasm sent her into a blinding fog of sensations.That was when he'd pump his seed into her, the thick, white, sticky ropes carrying his sperm that would find their way to her womb and impregnate her. She wouldn't feel the spurts, she knew that, but she'd feel his thick cock throb inside her when he did it. Some women in her group who were there for the second or third time said they thought they could feel it splatter inside them, but Kristin never had. All she'd ever felt were the contractions that twisted her belly in a knot, caused her legs to turn to jelly, and made her hips writhe around the cock inside her.And so it was that day. He stroked his finger in and out, then used two fingers to stroke deep while his thumb lightly brushed her clit, and all the time, his mouth sucked and pulled at her nipples. By the time he turned her over and lifted her hips so she was on her hands and knees, she'd felt the orgasm building twice. He'd stopped his stroking fingers and thumb then, but as soon as her hips stopped rocking into his hand, he started again.Kristin had just gotten to her hands and knees when she felt him spread her lips and then slide his rigid cock between them. She was so wet by then there wasn't much sensation until his cock head touched her clit. Her body jerked when that happened and she tried to move forward so his cock was at her entrance.He wouldn't let her do that though. He just kept stroking his cock between her wet, swollen lips until his cock head and shaft glistened with the slippery/sticky wetness that flowed from her entrance when she tightened her belly. He smiled to himself at how well he'd excited her.That was a point of personal pride with him. He'd been taught the mechanics, but his real education had come from a woman named Barbara. She'd been very forward about what she liked and didn't like, and one of the things she liked was being teased until she was gasping for breath and her wetness flowed enough it trickled from her entrance and then down between her ass cheeks.He knew Kristin was ready when she began pushing back against him, trying to get his cock inside her. He hoped she was close to an orgasm because when a breeder acted like this one was acting, he sometimes had trouble holding back until she came. It wasn't the way she moaned and panted. It was the way her lips gradually swelled and then opened when he spread her legs a little more.Kristin felt him pushing his cock head at her entrance and then the feeling of him stretching her open. It didn't happen all at once like she thought it might. After all, he was being paid to breed her, not to make love to her and she thought he'd want to do it as fast as possible.He didn't though, and Kristin couldn't hold back the moan as his thick, swollen cock head eased into the snug spot just inside her entrance. She moaned again when he pushed deeper and she felt him fill that tight ring. He didn't keep going then. He just pushed in and out right there, making his cock head stretch her open and then letting her close a little. In less than a minute, Kristin was unconsciously pushing back at his cock and trying to get him inside her all the way.He did push harder then, and Kristin gasped as his cock head slipped past that snug spot but the stretching feeling didn't lessen. It was still there, the same pressure that sent little tingling sensations to her brain and her core. Those sensations tightened her belly and took every thought from her mind except the exquisite stretching and his hands on her breasts.He was carefully watching what she did, and when he began hearing her rasping, panting breaths knew she was close. He moved his hands from cupping her full, hanging breasts to close his fingertips on her swollen nipples. When he pinched them lightly, she moaned. He pinched harder and felt her passage clamp down on his cock.She rammed her body back when he pinched harder still, hard enough he knew he was flattening her nipples between his index fingers and thumbs, and she started to make continuous little moans. It would only take a little more and she'd have the orgasm she needed to have for it to be nearly certain he'd impregnate her.He pulled down hard then and stretched her breasts out into cones. She shrieked and he felt her begin to shake. She started to sag then because her legs were shaking, so he put his left hand under her belly to hold her up, and began pushing his cock in and out a little faster. In moments, she began to murmur something he couldn't understand, and when he pulled hard on her right nipple, she shrieked and started to writhe her hips. As soon as he felt her body jerk the first time, he allowed himself to let go. With a groan, he pushed his cock in until his belly flattened her shaking hips and then felt the surge race up his cock and inside her. Three more times, he gasped as his cock went home and another surge flew out the tip.She was still making little mewing cries and pushing back into his cock when he groaned and felt another tightening in his cock. That one would be just a dribble, but it would add to the amount he could already feel leaking out of her and onto the mattress.It wouldn't matter if some leaked out. He could feel her body moving now, feel her passage contract and then push out, then contract again. Her body was doing what it was supposed to do, dipping the tip of her womb into the sperm that covered it and helping the sperm find its way inside.He kept his cock in her and stroking until it got soft enough it was just bending when he stroked in. He pulled out then, but held her lips closed with two fingers until he couldn't feel the little contractions anymore. He knew it wouldn't matter if he did that, but he liked the way most women reacted when he lightly pinched their lips together and then moved them around. This one was no exception. She purred out a little moan and then her hips rocked a little.She was lying on her back when he got dressed, and just before he left; she blew him a kiss and said "Thank you".He grinned."The pleasure was mine."The EmptinessAs Danny walked back to his room, he smiled at his fortune to be one of the chosen males. It was partly because of his intelligence but also because of his build. He was a little over six feet tall, depending upon the time of day, and was a lean and strong hundred and seventy pounds. That had been enough to get him the position, and when his sperm count was higher than average, that was an added advantage.He didn't know how many women he'd impregnated, but he knew he'd been mated with about a hundred and fifty over the past two years. He figured he had about another ten years of service left, give or take, as long as his sperm count remained at least average. By that time, the crisis would have been avoided and though the breeding program would still be required, the natural process of reproduction would again be helping to populate the earth.In another four days, Danny would have another appointment with a woman probably between the ages of nineteen and twenty-nine. There had been women as old as forty in the beginning, but anything over twenty-nine was considered a little old now. A breeder could be bred only every two years, and the sociologists had all agreed that after the age of thirty, the breeder should concentrate on child rearing. A woman who was nineteen at her first breeding was optimal. She could be bred seven times before retiring.The other issue with a woman's age was fertility. After the age of thirty, it sometimes took two breedings to impregnate her, and that wasted sperm. Women as old as forty had been used to get things started though, because not using every available and willing woman would have been catastrophic. A few women over thirty were still being bred, but those were women with exceptionally high intelligence, nearly perfect physical traits, and strong mothering instincts.Foundational KnowledgeThe federation authorities were not going to question the sages of the academics. Science must never be questioned by the unenlightened; and certainly not publicly opposed. It was met with swift re-education orders, and the rebels who dared challenge the sages were taken to institutions where they were re-educated. Sometimes they were further treated with pharmaceuticals to bring ‘balance' to their temperament, before slowly being re-introduced to the civilian populations.Mandated Abstinence PhaseFour days of rest was optimal for Danny according to the testing he'd been through. Some sires needed as many as six, but four days gave his body a chance to replenish his sperm and gave his mind a chance to rest from the concentration required to ensure the woman had an orgasm. During those days, he'd sleep, eat, stay in shape with a workout or a swim, and do little else other than take a class or two in how to arouse women. Danny didn't really need the classes in how to cause orgasms in most women, but there were some women who needed what Judy, the instructor, called "special handling", so he'd take at least one.Judy always taught the classes nude so she could demonstrate, and Danny wished she was one of the breeders. While he was skilled in producing orgasms in any woman, he sometimes had to concentrate on producing his own if the breeder had small breasts or narrow hips. Judy had the large, heavy breasts and sensuous, wide hips, the same characteristics that always made it easy for him to fill a breeder with his sperm. Unfortunately for him, Judy was forty-eight and no longer fertile. Coupling with her would have been an exquisite experience, he thought, but would have also been a waste of his sperm.He'd have liked being the first to breed her because she was probably quite a woman when she was nineteen, but in those days, things were done a little differently. Most matings were natural then, and the selection process was left up to the individuals involved.A Dying Human RaceNo one could put a single, concrete reason to the lack of population growth the world was experiencing during the early 2000's, but it was definitely a problem and it was growing quickly. In 2015, the population of the globe was a little over seven billion and growing slowly. By 2030, that number had stabilized because the death rate was about equal to the birth rate. Medical science had not been able to find a way to extend the life of any individual. All evidence appeared to point to a biologically programmed "expiration date" for the human body.It was estimated by the W H O that with the current declining birth and steady death rates, in ten years the population of Earth would be nearly halved and would continue to decline at a rate of about eight percent per year. Within twenty years because of geographical dispersion, the human species would effectively be extinct. A few small pockets of humans would exist in the major cities, but would quickly begin to suffer from congenital diseases and defects cause by lack of genetic diversity.There were various theories for the decrease in birth rate proposed, but the problem was worldwide, so culture was not a major influence. What appeared to be the cause were several major changes in how people thought about their roles in society.Some sociologists thought the problem began in the 1960's with the so-called "free love" generation. The culture of the "hippies" changed sex into something anyone could enjoy and they did. Women learned about having orgasms and men learned that having an orgasm at the same time as your partner was much more enjoyable than basically using a woman to masturbate with instead of using their hands. The advent of the birth control pill furthered this "sex without guilt" mentality because it nearly eliminated the risk of pregnancy.Other sociologists thought it was the generation of children born to the free-love generation. While when they were young, most of the free-love generation had rejected normal jobs and careers, as they got older, they fell into line behind their parents. The difference was they made more money than their parents and could afford to give their children more. Those children grew up and became selfish because they'd seldom had to wait for anything.When they looked back at their parents, what they saw were people who had sacrificed a lot to give their children what everybody else's children had, from new bikes to the latest style in clothing to the limousine that took them to their high school prom. According to the sociologists, that realization made them vow to not have children so they didn't have to sacrifice anything in their quest for self-satisfaction. Better and safer birth control methods made that goal a reality.It was obvious to most nations in the world that if the birth rate continued to decline, long before human extinction became reality there would be fewer young people working to support the world economy while there were more older people consuming the results of that economy. Infrastructure would deteriorate because of the lack of labor to keep it running, and food would be an ever-increasing problem because of the lack of agricultural workers. The social safety-net systems such as medical care and financial support in the form of the various government entitlement systems would suffer a spiraling decline in input while their outlay would continually increase.The result was the formation of the "W R E - the acronym for "World Re-population Effort" - by the leaders of every developed country on the globe. This organization was separate from the United Nations because world leaders knew the problem had to be solved quickly. Any committee of the United Nations would only hold meaningless votes on meaningless, non-binding resolutions for years. There would likely be UN diplomats continuing to argue over infinitesimal details even as the light of human existence slowly flickered out.After six months of debate about the practical and ethical considerations, the W R E embarked upon a solution. That solution was to offer free medical care, free housing, and financial support for life to any woman, single or married, who would agree to be impregnated and raise the child to adulthood. The program was funded by the World Bank after that organization was appraised of the consequences of doing nothing.In the manner of all government programs, the W R E wrote a glossary of accepted terms. Women participating in the program were designated as "Base Re-population Donor Recipients " or the acronym "BRDR". Men serving as sperm donors were designated as "Sperm Inception Reservoirs ", or "SIR". Both terms were to be used in any and all public correspondence and conversation, but in private conversations in the W R E clinics, the doctors and nurses used the somewhat phonetic pronunciations of "Breeder" and "Sire". To guarantee anonymity but allow for detailed tracking, in all records breeders were given a number -- a "B" followed by a sequential number. Sires were likewise numbered by an "S" followed by a sequential number.In the early stages of the program, it was felt the breeding should proceed by clinical means to guarantee conception happened in a sterile environment, so the breeder was impregnated by artificial insemination. The success rate was relatively poor, being only about thirty percent for women under thirty and only about ten percent for women between thirty and thirty-five.After multiple studies that all proved inconclusive relative to how to improve that success rate by artificial means, some old data about the success of natural conception was compared to the new data. The old data demonstrated almost a seventy percent conception success rate for women between nineteen and thirty-five if the woman was monitoring her fertility and her partner's sperm count was average. The success rate was still over fifty percent even if the woman did no monitoring.As a result, the W R E began a trial program of natural matings between sires and breeders. The success rate was the predicted sixty-five to seventy percent if the breeder didn't have an orgasm, seventy-five percent if she did, and eighty percent if she had an orgasm and the sire had a high sperm count. After a year of the trial, this method became the norm.It was also determined during the trial program that virgins seldom conceived at the first mating, while all fell within the predicted ranges after the second. The doctors and psychologists employed by the W R E stated this was for two reasons. Most women experienced some amount of pain when their maidenhead was broken and that pain prevented them from having an orgasm. The other reason was that many women reported being too nervous about their first experience with intercourse and so couldn't let themselves relax and enjoy the same experience they always enjoyed when masturbating.The solution developed was to pair a virgin breeder with an experienced sire who had been taught to understand she might be apprehensive and had been taught how to overcome that tendency as well as to minimize the pain she might feel.In both types of breeders, those who were virgins and those who were not, their sires were selected to compliment and accent the characteristics of intelligence and physical development. That topic, standards for pairing breeders and sires, was the topic most debated through the program development.While throughout most of human civilization, mate selection was mostly random and served to continue proliferation of the strongest genes, there were always some children born who had a difficult time fitting into that civilization. With the advent of the sequencing of the human genome and subsequent deciphering of which gene did what, it was possible to eliminate these mistakes of nature.Utilization of that ability did not upset most people when the program was proposed. After all, what person would desire to produce a child with a mental or physical deformity or a propensity toward a life of crime?The selections would be random, but random among volunteers deemed to guarantee the resulting offspring would be the best humankind could produce. While race of the sire would be an option selectable only by the breeder, the characteristics of mental and physical health and mental stability would take precedence over any other criteria.All breeders and sires had their DNA sequenced and categorized relative to genetic disposition toward both traits considered good and bad. When a breeder signed her contract, she was given a list of potential sires. The sires on that list were matched to her DNA to yield a child with above average intelligence, no propensity for development of congenital disease or physical deformity, and most importantly, no tendencies to resist the codes of society.It was impossible to find breeders and sires with no undesirable genetic characteristics, so the pairing routine matched breeders with undesirable characteristics with sires who had the genetic makeup to counteract those characteristics. In this manner, the new population would be stronger, more intelligent, and there would be little, if any, crime.While there were still babies being naturally conceived by couples, that was both a blessing and a concern. Those babies were needed to re-populate the planet, but some of those babies would develop the unfavorable characteristics dictated by their DNA.After some deliberation about methods of guaranteeing proper genetic makeup of all children born, the W R E concluded that the number of such children produced by natural matings would be small compared to the number of planned births. That number would be small enough that any mental abnormalities could be handled by the current methods of incarceration or psychiatric treatment. Physical abnormalities would be handled by corrective surgery or prosthetics. Both would disappear in a generation or two anyway.The initial year of the program proved the potential of the plan. The initial two thousand sires chosen from all over the world had each been mated with between sixty and eighty breeders each, and the result was eighty-three thousand babies.The impregnation rate was a disappointing sixty- percent, but this was attributed to the age of some of the breeders. The second year, the number of sires was increased to six thousand, the number of breeders by two hundred fifty thousand, and eleven months later, the number of births was over three hundred and fifty thousand births.At that rate of impregnation, within one generation, the population of the Earth would be well on the way to return to the levels of the early 2000's. Given that the selection process matched breeders and sires for both physical and mental characteristics, those new individuals would have a natural desire to reproduce and the resulting children would return the world's birthrate to a percentage that would match the world's death rate.Several psychologists had warned of the unintended consequence of a planned and organized breeding program. After an entire generation of men and women had been conceived, born, and raised to the state of adulthood, they might resolve themselves to arranged breedings as the norm.It wasn't hard for Danny to believe that would be the case. He seldom felt anything for any breeder he impregnated. It was just his job, albeit a very pleasant jo

I know. I know. Christmas is supposed to be a sign of joy. But where is the joy? Perhaps you are not feeling it. Sociologists tell us that Christmas is one of the saddest times of year for many people. As we light the joy candle, the Shepherd's candle today, we may wonder why we should rejoice. Again, in the life-giving stream of scripture we discover the head-waters, the source of the spring of joy in our lives. Good news! God's joy includes us. Message based on Zephaniah 3:14-20 and  Acts 16:25-34.Quotes:Medieval King Abd Al-Rahman III: I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity… I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to fourteen.Duane Brooks: “What happened to joy?”  What would have to happen for you to find happiness?  As we wonder in this season, we may wonder if we will ever laugh again. G. K. Chesterton: Joy is the gigantic secret of the Christian life.Duane Brooks: Nothing steals our joy like sin. When we are living in unconfessed unrepentant sin, we will not experience God's joy because we are grieving the Spirit who produces the fruit of the Spirit of joy. Nothing replenished our joy as much as salvation.Duane Brooks: A distant, do-nothing God, does us no good.  But the God who invaded our world joyfully in the coming of Jesus is working among us, even still.Unkown: Joy is the flag which is flown from the castle of the heart when the King is in residence there.R. A. Torrey: There is more joy in Jesus in 24 hours than there is in the world in 365 days. I have tried them both.Dr. Travis Lunceford: Happiness depends on happenings; joy depends on Jesus.George Frederick Handel composed his amazing musical The Messiah in approximately three weeks. It was apparently done at a time when his eyesight was failing and when he was facing the possibility of being imprisoned because of outstanding bills. Handel however kept writing in the midst of these challenges till the masterpiece, which included the majestic, “Hallelujah Chorus,” was completed.Duane Brooks: We don't have to wait until circumstances improve to rejoice in God.A.W.Tozer: What do you hear when you imagine the voice of God singing? I hear the booming of Niagara Falls mingled with a trickle of a mossy mountain stream. I hear the blast of Mt. St. Helens mingled with a kitten's purr. I hear the power of an East Coast hurricane and the barely audible puff of a night snow in the woods. And I hear unimaginable roar of the sun, 865,000 miles thick, 1,300,000 times bigger than the earth and-nothing but fire, 1,000,000 degrees centigrade on the cooler surface of the corona. But I hear this mingled with the tender, warm crackling of logs in the living room on a cozy winter's night. I stand dumbfounded, staggered, speechless that he is singing over me—one who has dishonored him so many times and in so many ways. It is almost too good to be true. He is rejoicing over my good with all his heart and all his soul. He virtually breaks forth into song when he hits upon a new way to do me good.Jonathan Edwards: God created man for nothing else but happiness.Brennan Manning: Because my Abba is very fond of me.To discover more messages of hope go to tallowood.org/sermons/.Follow us on Instagram, X, and YouTube @tallowoodbc.Follow us on FaceBook @tallowoodbaptist

Parents play a significant role in raising children, especially mothers. The family is the most basic unit of a society and the first social institution in which we experience life. Children learn things like love, responsibility, and respect in the family. The relationships that exist in a family between parents and children, as well as between children (sisters and brothers), form the basis of a child's personality. Sociologists and psychologists consider the family to be the backbone of a society and say that the health of a society depends on the family.

ONE OF THE real privileges of being a lifelong Oregonian of a certain, er, vintage, is the opportunity to have seen this state in its golden age — roughly, 1946 through 1980 — through a child's eyes. The basic style and culture of the Beaver State have changed a lot over the last 50 years. And, for the most part, it's changed for the better ... but not entirely. Sociologists would say this change was the transition from a “modernist” culture — proud, conformist, and optimistic about the future — to a “postmodernist” culture — self-critical, eclectic, and neutral or pessimistic about the future. (Statewide; 1950s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2408b-0902c_OregonGoldenAge-Centennial-662.html)

Guest post by Michal "Mehow" Pospieszalski, CEO Matterfi.com Amid the rise of robotics, drones, and AI in particular, prominent voices have joined the pro-and-contra discussion, with concerns increasingly expressed publicly. "The generative AI market is poised to explode, growing to US$1.3 trillion over the next 10 years from a market size of just $40 billion in 2022, according to a new report by Bloomberg Intelligence. Generative AI describes the use of artificial intelligence to produce texts, images, or videos. Earlier this year, when the countdown for the U.S. presidential elections was on, the Washington Post reported the New Hampshire Justice Department was investigating robocalls featuring what appeared to be an AI-generated voice that sounded like President Biden. AI destabilizes the concept of truth itself," the Post quoted Libby Lange, an analyst at the misinformation tracking organization Graphika. Turkish President Erdogan already condemned 10 years ago an audio recording suggesting his alleged involvement in financial wrongdoing which he said was generated by artificial intelligence, Al Jazeera reported in March this year. Even the Holy Father in Rome joined the discussion. Algorithms are "neither objective nor neutral", Pope Francis said in mid-June 2024, the official Vatican News Agency reported. But the biggest fear among employees is often only expressed over lunch and an after-work drink: "Will AI take my job?" Digital Déjà vu The ongoing public discussions about whether or not AI will transform offices into wastelands remind me a bit of similar discourses in the early 1980s, that era that marked the rise of the home computer. Parents and teachers were worried students would stop learning. Sociologists warned of unprecedented disruptions for the future of work and "technological unemployment". The 1986 Hollywood cult movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off e. g. showcases how a high school boy who notoriously feigns illness can misuse the home PC to serve his shenanigans. Nowadays we know that the companions on desks and their equipment like handy floppy disks, noisy dot matrix printers, and oh-so futuristic looking light pens created in East and West a job boom that lasted until the internet bubble popped in early 2000. So what about the year 2024 and the disrupted Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR)? Will AI replace professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truck drivers? The impact of artificial intelligence on jobs is complex and multifaceted. On one hand, AI can automate repetitive tasks, which may lead to job displacement in certain sectors. For example, manufacturing and data entry roles are particularly vulnerable. On the other hand, AI can also create new jobs, particularly in tech, data analysis, and fields that require human creativity and emotional intelligence. Moreover, AI can enhance existing roles, allowing workers to focus on higher-level tasks and decision-making. In many cases, technology can increase productivity, potentially leading to economic growth and the creation of new industries. Overall, the net effect of AI on jobs will depend on how organizations and societies adapt to these changes, invest in retraining, and create new opportunities. It's likely a mix of both job creation and destruction, with an emphasis on the need for adaptability. Across the board Several industries are poised to benefit significantly from artificial intelligence: 1. Healthcare: AI can enhance diagnostics, personalize treatment plans, and streamline administrative processes. It also aids in drug discovery and managing patient data. This will help doctors and nurses to treat with more efficiency. Mistakes when treating patients can be reduced thanks to AI. 2. Finance: AI is used for risk assessment, fraud detection, algorithmic trading, and personalized financial services, improving efficiency and decision-making. At the end of the day, financial professionals will not be replaced but those ...

America's future may not be as bright as our politicians would have us believe. No, a crash is nearly a certainty, but it won't be because of our financial failures. Sociologists will call it our Cultural Collapse, like a speeding car out of control crashing into a crowded parade. It's a story repeated in history over and over again. The crash is coming, and the pain and violence we see today is only the beginning for something that'll be far worse. It won't be our financial failures. It'll be because of what we've become. The American people have been betrayed, deceived, manipulated, and lied to about our reality. MUSIC Various Artists, Les Deux Love Orchestra with Bobby Woods

Sociologists call what is happening in America a ‘Friendship Recession'! It didn't start with the Pandemic, the pandemic only made it worse. CONNECT: Text “BRBELONG” to 651-419-4409 DONATE: bethelsrock.org/give LEARN MORE: bethelsrock.org NEW SERMONS | EVERY SUNDAY

Is our society moving at a pathological pace? Sociologists and doctors alike have coined the phrase “hurry sick” to describe the abnormally fast pace that society is moving at, causing all sorts of health, relational, emotional, and spiritual collateral damage. Is there a better way? Join us for part 3 of our 8 part series entitled “Made New” as we explore the practice of weekly rest and worship called Sabbath.Recommended Bible Engagement Resources:Bible Project: https://bibleproject.comRightnow Media: https://app.rightnowmedia.org/en/join/columbiaviewchurchYou Version: access from your phone app store

Institution and family (or tribe, or community, or friends, take your pick) are two sides of the same coin. Both mechanisms rely on ancient forms of currency to maintain control.The most obvious form of human currency is currency itself, money. But friends and family, just like big institutions and powerful kings, use other mechanisms of control to maintain what they perceive as wellbeing, safety, and security. The worst of these is violence—but the most insidious is the infamous “personal relationship.” The merchant class calls it “networking.” Sociologists refer to it as “reciprocity.” That's why Christians love to boast about their “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ. What their theology proclaims is a less than mystical obsession, not with love, but their own self-importance They want to be insiders. They want influence over the crown. Lonely Americans want to be the mother, brother, or sister that Jesus turns away in Luke 8. (Luke 8:21) They want to be his insider. His Peter. They want to be the guarantors of security.But security for whom? Much later, in John (21:17), Jesus warns his betrayer, “I'm not interested in your love. I'm interested in the work.”The educated class in the United States is easily fooled by Western imperialism, because they have been groomed from a young age to believe in themselves, their lives, their feelings, and the centrality of their relationships.They are incapable of hearing Scripture, which is not about their feelings and has no interest in their personal lives. The God of Scripture is neither relatable nor relational. He is instructional.“Do this and you shall live.” (Luke 10:28)That's good news for the poor. However, for the well meaning colonial, it is confusing. They need their tyrant to be a “decent man who cares deeply” about the people of Gaza, while funding and supplying Gaza's extermination. How else could they feel good about living out their lies?  It is not complex. You are self-righteous.  Shall I pause, now, for you to extrospect? You sound like Tobit, habibi. A well-meaning, upstanding, almsgiving do-gooder who complains to God, “I have had to listen to undeserved insults.”Yes, Tobit. Yes. You blind fool! God is insulting you: because the Bridegroom did not come to call “Tobit the Righteous” to repentance. Father Marc discusses Luke 5:34-35 (Episode 524)  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

22/25/27 Tips Out of Control; Stereotypes are Real; Life Goals Karel Cast 24-58 After having my jaw drilled, sanded and a screw put in I went for take out and the tip screen sent me over the edge: 22/25/27 were the choices…what happened to 15% ? Tipping is out of control and now they want more and more and more. How much do you tip? And do you feel compelled to ALWAYS tip, even at places you didn't before? Stereotypes are real. Some are derogatory and some are often used against people, but let's be real, they're real. Like, bitchy waiters being gay…SOME ARE! Sociologists deal in generalizations and most generalizations are based in fact. A woman swims 30 miles to an island. Diana Nyad swam to Cuba. What life goal do you still have that you haven't done yet? Watch on YouTube and listen wherever you get your podcast. Subscribe at YouTube.com/reallykarel @ReallyKarel is all social media and website reallykarel.com The Karel Cast is heard three times a week on all your favorite streaming services and the video can be seen on Youtube. Karel is a history-making #LGBTQ talk show host currently living in Las Vegas with his pup Ember. https://youtu.be/pv3IcvutC8I

22/25/27 Tips Out of Control; Stereotypes are Real; Life Goals Karel Cast 24-58 After having my jaw drilled, sanded and a screw put in I went for take out and the tip screen sent me over the edge: 22/25/27 were the choices…what happened to 15% ? Tipping is out of control and now they want more and more and more. How much do you tip? And do you feel compelled to ALWAYS tip, even at places you didn't before? Stereotypes are real. Some are derogatory and some are often used against people, but let's be real, they're real. Like, bitchy waiters being gay…SOME ARE! Sociologists deal in generalizations and most generalizations are based in fact. A woman swims 30 miles to an island. Diana Nyad swam to Cuba. What life goal do you still have that you haven't done yet? Watch on YouTube and listen wherever you get your podcast. Subscribe at YouTube.com/reallykarel @ReallyKarel is all social media and website reallykarel.com The Karel Cast is heard three times a week on all your favorite streaming services and the video can be seen on Youtube. Karel is a history-making #LGBTQ talk show host currently living in Las Vegas with his pup Ember. https://youtu.be/pv3IcvutC8I

What have we done to our mothers? Sociologists call our times “the era of intensive mothering,” a period in which moms must be it all and do it all for their children and families. Psychotherapist and maternal mental health specialist Erica Djossa has made it her mission to teach today's mothers how to take care of their well-being in a sustainable way. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Erica about her much-needed new book, Releasing the Mother Load, and the steps we can take to challenge the norms and change the culture around mothering.  Enjoy this empowering discussion of: values-centered mothering; mothers as martyrs; the pressures facing a generation of “overinformed, overeducated, and overwhelmed” moms; equally sharing our household duties; the cost of cognitive or invisible labor; boundaries; using the “load map” to redistribute the work; “mom rage,” its roots, and the unique nature of anger in motherhood; identifying the “red light and green light” times for difficult conversations with partners (and sticking to them); overcoming perfectionism; self-compassion; re-parenting yourself while you're parenting your children; the disempowering belief that I'm failing as a mom; effective self-care for moms (it's not just bubble baths!); advice for making changes—start small; and more. Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

Sociologists have observed a steep decline of empathy in our world today. And this has big implications on our journey of belonging. Thankfully, empathy is a skill that can be developed. As we look to Jesus, we see a God who embodies empathy in the way He sees and knows us. This week, we explore the fourth practice of belonging: empathy.

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.Part I (00:13 - 10:14)A Dark Day in US Diplomacy: The U.S. ‘Abstains' on UN Gaza Ceasefire ResolutionExplanation of Vote Delivered by Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield Following the Adoption of a UNSC Resolution on the Situation in the Middle East by United States Mission to the United NationsPart II (10:14 - 18:58)Biden Looks Left as Netanyahu Looks Right: The Political and Global Pressures Pulling the U.S. and Israel Apart over GazaBiden-Netanyahu rift grows, as Israel cancels delegation visit by The Washington Post (Karen DeYoung, Yasmeen Abutaleb and Toluse Olorunnipa)Israel Cancels Visit to Washington After U.S. Abstains on U.N. Cease-Fire Resolution by The Wall Street Journal (Michael R. Gordon, Vivian Salama, and Dov Lieber)Biden Abstains on Israel and Hamas by The Wall Street Journal (The Editorial Board)Loser of the UN Resolution: Biden by Commentary Magazine (Seth Mandel)Part III (18:58 - 25:18)Sociologists for Palestine? Proposed American Sociological Association Resolution Goes After Existence of IsraelAmerican Sociological Association by Sign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

Sociologists and co-authors Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans join The Stacks to talk about their book The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels. The book follows four people whose bodies go unclaimed after their deaths, and how and why this happens. We also discuss how Pamela and Stefan think ethically about reporting and writing about the dead, why being claimed matters, and how they took care of themselves while spending eight years with this subject matter.The Stacks Book Club selection for March is Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu. We will discuss the book on March 27th with Elise Hu.You can find everything we discuss on today's show on The Stacks' website:https://thestackspodcast.com/2024/03/20/ep-311-pamela-prickett-stefan-timmermansEpisode TranscriptConnect with Pamela: Twitter | WebsiteConnect with Stefan: Twitter | WebsiteConnect with The Stacks: Instagram | Twitter | Shop | Patreon | Goodreads | Substack | SubscribeSUPPORT THE STACKSJoin The Stacks Pack on PatreonTo support The Stacks and find out more from this week's sponsors, click here.Purchasing books through Bookshop.org or Amazon earns The Stacks a small commission.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Matthew 2:16-18When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” I'm not sure how much my dad was paying attention to our midweek Lenten plan from one week to the next. I wonder, for example, if he cared what tonight's theme was going to be, since he's on a flight to Phoenix right now. But yesterday, he stopped by the office when I wasn't in and left this picture in my tray, without much explanation. It's just something he does. Anyway, it's a picture of my grandfather – my dad's dad – on the steps of what used to be the library at Capital University, in Columbus, OH, back in June, 1942. Capital University, is where my grandparents, parents, a handful of my aunts and uncles on both sides of my family, my wife and I, and now Jackson, our son, have all attended. So, of course this picture struck a chord, as I was already wondering about this thing we're calling “generational or ancestral grief” for the sake of our Lenten walk this week.See, I never knew this man, my grandfather, Jerry Havel. He died about 7 years before I was born, in 1966, when he was just 46 years old. He had cancer that migrated from his throat and sinuses into his brain, thanks to a pretty serious smoking habit. My grandmother would talk about how he would “French inhale,” breathing the smoke into his nose as he exhaled with his mouth. She seemed to be equally impressed as she was disgusted by it.Anyway, by grandfather's legacy looms large in our family and in my life, even though I never met him. A super-sized, professional portrait of him hung above my dad's home office desk for years in the first house I ever remember living in. My grandmother sang his praises whenever she got the chance – he was a Marine in World War II, on the island of Iwo Jima when that famous photo of the flag-raising was taken, even; he was a successful business man, an exceptional father, a loving husband, a faithful churchman, community leader, and so on.More on Jerry Havel in a minute. Please shift gears with me for a moment.I read some time ago about a scientific experiment using mice back in 2013 that some say shows how something like trauma – and I would contend, then, something like grief, too – might be passed along, genetically, to offspring, by birth., from parent to child.I won't get too into the weeds about this, because I'm not a scientist, but the nuts and bolts of the experiment are fascinating. Scientists took some male mice and wafted the scent of something like cherries into their environment while at the same time administering electric shocks, to the point that the mice began to respond with literal fear and trembling whenever they simply smelled the cherry scent, even absent the electric shock. Now, all of that's nothing, really. It's just the stuff of Pavlov's Dogs that most of us learned about in high school, right?In this experiment, with the mice, though, the scientists took all of it another step or two further by learning that the offspring of these male mice would also shudder with fear and trembling at the mere whiff of cherry scented air, even though they, themselves, had never smelled that scent before, let alone experienced an electric shock along with it. Even more surprising, the grandchildren – a second generation removed from the original mice – also experienced the same physical, fearful reaction to the smell of cherries, as did mice born by way of in vitro fertilization, using sperm from the original male subjects.Again, none of these second and third generation mice had ever experienced the electric shock their ancestors had received in connection to that smell – yet they still showed physical signs of fear and trauma.All of this is to say, it seems mice – and perhaps, then, humans – have the capacity to pass along, genetically, emotional responses and spiritual experiences like fear, trauma, and I have to wonder, then, maybe grief, too.And we can quibble – and even disagree – about the “nature” and “nurture” of it all, but the spiritual and faithful proposition in all of this, for me, is to say that the grief we hold and the sorrow with which we wrestle, isn't always ours alone. It's not always isolated to our own experience. We are also impacted by those who've gone before us – sometimes, directly, by the ways our lives intersect, and sometimes by the ways our history as a family or as a people are tangled up on this side of heaven.Where my grandfather is concerned, it's clear that a measure of grief over his untimely death – it's impact on my grandmother, my dad, our family – and the sorrow in the groundwater of my own life has always been a thing. It's never been debilitating for me, but grief over never having met him has always been present in my life and in our family's story, nonetheless. (And that experiment with the mice makes me wonder if his cigarette habit was the source of my own penchant for Camel Lights, back in the day, too!)And, other than the smoking thing, Jerry Havel's influence on our family was nothing but positive as far as I know. (It's why I wear his ring on my right ring finger.) But I think it also must be true that there is real grief for ancestors who were hurtful or harmful or otherwise unhealthy branches on any given family tree, just the same. We grieve abuse, addictions, absence, infidelity, and more.And this “ancestral, generational grief” is bigger than our personal lives and it grows beyond the boundaries of our respective families, too. Sociologists, psychologists and theologians suggest that we grieve the loss of our history, traditions, culture, and faith practices, too – all of which are supposed to be OURS, though we've lost a lot of that for a lot of reasons.For most of us, from what I can tell – and what I've learned through the study and work of racial justice – our white culture, history, tradition, and even faith practices – have been whitewashed by a culture that has so desperately and so deliberately worked to lump anyone who is not “of color” into the same bucket or category of humanity. It's one of the most ignorant, evil things about living in a white supremacist world.What “whiteness” means is that Germans and Scotts and Irish and Norwegian people – and anyone who looks like me on the outside? – we've lost a lot of our ancestral heritage when it comes to the ways we eat, drink, sing, pray, worship, celebrate and hold space in the world. We don't know or notice that all of the time, but it operates as “lack” in our lives. It's something we're missing, and missing out on, that impacts our psyche and our spirit. The most telling way this was first shown to me was in a race workshop where a sizeable group of racially diverse people was asked to share, in small groups organized around our respective racial identities, what it was that we liked about being Black, Asian, Latino, or white, for example. For the most part, the white people were hard-pressed to answer the question. While Blacks were proud of things like hip-hop culture, music, and dance, for example; and the Asians and Latinos loved, among other things, their food; and while all those groups of color celebrated their resilience and strength – as a people – in the face of racism and oppression in the world; there wasn't much that was uniquely “white,” for the rest of us. Because so many cultures have been poured into the “white” bucket, the good, beautiful things that once distinguished us, one from another, are hard to identify – let alone celebrate – any longer. And we are lesser for it. It is worth our grief and sorrow.And there is yet a third form of this ancestral and generational grief for people who've had their ancestors and their history literally, deliberately damaged or destroyed by violence, oppression, and genocide. Most of us can't know the personal sorrow of something like the holocaust for Jews, or of chattel slavery for Blacks in this country, or the genocide of indigenous peoples in north America and Australia. But for those whose people have suffered such grief, its sorrow lives on in their descendants.And for the descendants of those who perpetrated such atrocities and evil, I wonder if it would behoove us to experience the Truth of that history as GRIEF, moreso than merely GUILT, so that we might be changed and make change in light of it, in a way we still haven't figured out after all these years.Which is where I think our life and our faith can come together around all of this grief tonight – the personal, communal, historical and cosmic nature of this generational/ancestral grief.I wanted to hear those words from Genesis about Abraham, the first patriarch of our faith, and of God's promise to build and bind the generations together through him – as the father of many nations, with “descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as plentiful as sand on the seashore,” we're told. When we see ourselves in that light, as intimately and intricately connected with all of God's people, their grief might become ours and our grief might become theirs, even though our experiences may be so vastly different and disconnected at times.And it made me think of that bit we heard from Matthew's Gospel, too, where he invokes Rachel … who lived generations before the days of Jesus arrived on the scene. Rachel was one of the matriarchs of Israel, whose grief and sorrow cried out from the ground of her grave, as her descendants and our ancestors in the faith were banished into exile and captivity. Rachel's grief was alive and well then – long after she lived and moved and breathed in the world. And it is alive and well, still, in the world, and in our own hearts, minds, and lives, it seems to me.So tonight, our invitation is to acknowledge yet another experience of grief in our heart of hearts – that which comes from those who've gone before us. Some of this grief is individual to our experience and grows from the lives we share in our families. (Sorrow, regret, and sadness for the those in our family tree.) Some of this grief is communal, in that we have lost touch with our ancestors' deep, meaningful history, tradition, and culture in too many ways. And some of this grief is cosmic and comes from the damage done by one branch of the human family to another branch of God's people – for those who received that violence and for those who perpetrated it, too.Whatever the case, our ritual for this evening is a nod to the faith practices of our own spiritual ancestors. We will light sticks of incense and leave them burning at the wall. Their scent and smoke are meant to rise up like so many prayers of repentance… regret, maybe… some gratitude, I hope… and grief, of course.And it's also an invitation, to the ancestors who've gone before us, whose sorrow we share – and whose hope is ours, just the same – that they surround us like a great cloud of witnesses … like a communion of saints … on the other side of God's eternity, where all of this grief – our mourning and crying, our pain and death are no more, thanks to the love that's promised to all the world, from generation to generation, in Jesus Christ our Lord.Amen

I lost an hour of sleep last night, but that doesn't begin to compare to the hours of sleep I lost as a teenager contemplating the text I'll be preaching today! Growing up, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 was read as a warning. One day, a trumpet would sound, and in the twinkling of an eye, Christians all over the world would disappear. Those left behind would be plunged into a time of tribulation and difficulty like never before. That thought terrified me! Of course, it terrified me before I became a Christian. I didn't want to be left behind with the rest of the losers! I distinctly remember driving back to town after an early morning hunting trip with my dad and seeing no cars on the road. "It's happened, and I've missed it!" I thought. "It's going to be every man for himself, and I didn't even get a single squirrel this morning! I am SOOO dead!" But it terrified me after I became a Christian, also. The thought of leaving friends and family behind filled me with anxiety about how they would fend for themselves and what they might have to endure. And, of course, as a teenage boy, I was plagued with the fear of what I would miss out on if Jesus came back today! There was so much of life ahead of me—cars, college, and . . . well . . . other stuff. Sociologists told me there was something I was thinking about at least once every six minutes. "Dear Jesus, I want to go to heaven, but please, not until after I've done THAT!" If only I had read the next verse. After all that bizarre stuff in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17, verse 18 concludes with, "Therefore encourage one another with these words." Not "terrify one another," not "scare teenage boys out of misbehaving," but "encourage one another!" I would have slept much better if I had only read that last verse! In this message, needing one more hour of sleep, I do my best to bring encouragement as we unpack the hope Paul loads into these few verses.

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, we tackle two legislative/governmental issues related to higher education (article 1 and article 2). First, we discuss the recent legislative initiative in Utah to ban requiring diversity, equity, and inclusion statements as part of the hiring process at public universities in Utah. As we dug into the details on this topic, it became clear that this was a Republican dog-whistle issue. The diversity statements are not about forcing new hires to sign a statement agreeing to adhere to a specific liberal ideology but rather to make sure that they are willing to teach and interact with a diverse group of people, primarily students. Since they are public universities, the faculty at those universities cannot refuse to teach someone because they are transgender, gay, or a black individual. The universities also want to make sure that they have an inclusive environment for diverse students. Banning these statements, which are not required for all new hires, will not accomplish anything other than pandering to the "anti-woke" mobs. On the second topic, we look at the removal of Introduction to Sociology from the courses that can be included in the general education curriculum at public universities in Florida. This was driven by a desire to weed out "woke" topics at universities. Ryan complicated this issue by noting that a sizable percentage of his discipline has turned to "critical sociology," which is basically advocacy masquerading as science. (NOTE: Ryan doesn't consider himself to be in that camp but rather the other side, which he calls "empirical sociology.") Sociologists and most academics opposed this change by the Florida State Board of Education but would be stupid to think that the people proposing this change would be anything but happy to see sociologists in the state weeping, wailing, and gnashing their teeth. For the proponents of removing sociology, that is just further evidence that they have "poked" at woke liberals. In short, this is government meddling in higher education curriculum for no reason other than to score political points, again.

Sociologists are quick to point out that our culture is awash in pagan spiritual practices. Does this fervent seeking point to a genuine spiritual hunger? Or are we simply incorporating pagan elements into our consumer habits? Join us as we dive into this topic.

A controversial fishing method may release CO2 from the sea floor Bottom trawling is a widely-used fishing method that involves dragging weighted nets that scrape along the seafloor. It's sometimes been criticized for damaging marine ecosystems. Now a new study in Frontiers in Marine Science suggests that it also can release significant amounts of carbon trapped in seafloor sediments into the atmosphere. Trisha Atwood, an associate professor at Utah State University and a marine researcher with National Geographic's Pristine Sea Program worked with scientists at NASA and The Global Fishing Watch for this study. Travel tales a mammoth tusk can tell Researchers have been analyzing the tusk of a woolly mammoth that died in Alaska 14,000 years ago. Using modern chemical analysis, they've been able to track the pachyderm's travels through its life, and the trail it took to its final demise, likely at the hands of human hunters. Dr. Matthew Wooller at the University of Alaska Fairbanks worked with the Healy Lake Village Council, the University of Ottawa and Hendrik Poinar's laboratory at McMaster University on this study published in Science Advances. Common sense is not that common, but is quite widely distributed Sociologists at the University of Pennsylvania have helped answer the age-old question, do most of us have common sense? Researchers including Mark Whiting explored this by asking 2000 people if they agreed with thousands of terms that had been deemed as “common sense.” In a paper published in PNAs, the team found that the larger the group, the less likely there was commonly shared knowledge, and no one age, educational or political group stood out as having more common sense than others. Male birds who practice their songs do better with females A new study suggests that male songbirds who attract mates with their songs need to practice their tunes or their attractiveness suffers. The researchers found a way to harmlessly discourage the birds from singing, and found that without practice females snubbed their efforts. Iris Adam, a biologist at Southern Denmark University, was part of the team, whose research was published in Nature Communications. Better living through pharmacology — Can drugs duplicate a healthy lifestyle? The key to good health used to be simple: eat less and exercise. But popular new weight loss drugs could soon be joined on the shelf with a new class of pharmaceuticals that duplicate the effects of a trip to the gym. We explore just how these new pharmaceuticals work and just how much they can replace a healthy lifestyle. First developed to treat type 2 diabetes, now widely popular as weight loss drugs, GLP-1 agonist drugs like Ozempic may in fact have benefits beyond helping with obesity and cardiovascular disease. Dr. Daniel Drucker, a senior research scientist at Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute and the University of Toronto, early evidence suggests they may also work to treat kidney disease, addiction related disorders, metabolic liver disease, peripheral vascular disease, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. To counter our modern sedentary lifestyles, scientists are also looking for the equivalent of an exercise pill. Ronald Evans, a professor at the Salk Institute, has been working on drugs that control genetic “master switches” that can turn on the same network of genes — and confer many of the same benefits — as a brisk walk or a jog would do.

In this episode, we welcome Dr.  Adia Harvey Wingfield, sociologist and leading race and labor expert, to discuss her new book, “Gray Areas: How the way we work perpetuates racism and what we can do to fix it.” Adia breaks down her research findings about “gray areas”--the relationships, networks, and cultural dynamics integral to companies that exist apart from the specific expectations and duties required for any given job.  These gray areas are a key reason why employees of color, particularly Black workers, remain less likely to be hired, stall out at middle levels, and rarely progress to senior leadership positions.  We discuss the particular relevance of this research to Black women in the workplace, and why a “race-blind” approach in organizations actually harms more than it helps.  Additionally, Adia offers key insights into what organizations can do to fix these issues and create more supportive environments for Black employees.     About Adia Dr. Adia Wingfield is a sociologist who researches racial and gender inequality in professional occupations. She is currently the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, where she also co-directs the Program for Public Scholarship and served as Vice Dean for Faculty Development and Diversity. She has served as President of Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS), the Southern Sociological Society (SSS), and in 2023 she was elected the 116th President of the American Sociological Association. In addition to her academic work, she also writes regularly for mainstream outlets including The Atlantic, Vox, Slate, and Harvard Business Review. Connect with Adia Website: https://www.adiaharveywingfield.com LinkedIn X (formerly Twitter): @adiahwingfield   Resources: Programs: We are now enrolling for the January 2024 sessions of our Mid-Career and Early Career leadership development programs.  Learn more at https://blackwomanleading.com/programs-overview/ Event: Join us for the Black Woman Leading LIVE! Conference +Retreat, May 13-16, 2024 in Virginia Beach! Learn more at bwlretreat.com   Credits: Learn more about our consulting work with organizations at https://knightsconsultinggroup.com/ Email Laura: laura@knightsconsultinggroup.com Connect with Laura on LinkedIn Follow BWL on LinkedIn Instagram: @blackwomanleading Facebook: @blackwomanleading Podcast Music & Production: Marshall Knights  Graphics: Téa Campbell Listen and follow the podcast on all major platforms: Apple Podcasts Spotify Stitcher iHeartRadio Audible Podbay

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Dr. Adia Harvey Wingfield is a sociologist who researches racial and gender inequality in professional occupations. She is currently the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, where she also co-directs the Program for Public Scholarship and am Vice Dean for Faculty Development and Diversity. She has served as President of Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS), the Southern Sociological Society (SSS), and in 2023 was elected the 116th President of the American Sociological Association. In addition to academic work, Dr. Wingfield regularly writes for mainstream outlets including The Atlantic, Vox, Slate, and Harvard Business Review.You can purchase Gray Areas by Dr. Adia Harvey Wingfield wherever books are sold.Lead to Soar is a global online network for businesswomen, a podcast, and we host live-streaming and in person events to help women have a career that soars! The podcast is hosted by Mel Butcher (melbutcher.com) and Michelle Redfern (michelleredfern.com) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jenny Lee, vice president for Arizona International, dean of international education, and professor of educational policy studies and practice at the University of Arizona, leads the conversation on U.S. international academic collaboration and how U.S.-China tensions are affecting higher education. FASKIANOS: Welcome to CFR's Higher Education Webinar Series. I'm Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Today's discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/academic. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We're delighted to have Jenny Lee with us to discuss U.S. international academic collaboration. Dr. Lee is vice president for Arizona International, dean of international education, and professor of educational policy studies and practice at the University of Arizona. She is also a fellow of the American Educational Research Association. Dr. Lee formerly served as a senior fellow of NAFSA, the Association of International Educators, as chair for the Council of International Higher Education, and as a board member for the Association for the Study of Higher Education. And she has also served as a U.S. Fulbright scholar to South Africa, as a distinguished global professor at Korea University, and as an international visiting scholar at the City University of London, the University of Pretoria, and the University of Cape Town in South Africa. So, Dr. Lee, thank you very much for being with us for today's topic. I thought you could begin by giving us an overview of current trends in U.S. international academic collaboration, especially looking at what's happening with our relations with China. LEE: Sounds great. Well, thank you for the opportunity, Irina. It's a pleasure to be here and to speak with you and all those listening right now. I'll speak for about ten or so minutes, and then open it up and engage with the audience. Hopefully, you all have some good questions that will come up during my remarks. So, clearly, we're entering a very interesting and somewhat uncertain chapter in how we understand the role of higher education globally. So I will begin with some general observation so all our viewers are on the same page. Now, first and foremost, the U.S. is mostly at the top when it comes to the higher education sector. Most of us already know that the United States houses the most highly ranked institutions. And this allows the country to be the largest host of international students and scholars from around the world. According to the latest IIE Open Doors report published a couple of weeks ago, the U.S. attracted over a million students from all over the world. And we're almost back to pre-pandemic levels. We also host over 90,000 scholars. And the primary purpose for them being here is research, for about two-thirds to 75 percent of them. These international scholars, as well as international graduate students, contribute significantly to the U.S. scientific enterprise. The U.S. is also among the leading countries in scientific output and impact, and the largest international collaborator in the world. In other words, the U.S. is highly sought because of its prestigious institutions, drawing top faculty and students from around the world. And with that comes the ability to generate cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs which further secures the U.S.' global position in academia. At the same time, of course, we've seen China's economy rise significantly as the country surpassed the United States in scientific output, and more recently in impact as measured by publication citations, and is outpacing the U.S. in the extent of R&D investment. Chinese institutions have also made noticeable jumps in various global rankings, which is a pretty big feat considering the fierce competition among the world's top universities. What we're witnessing as well are geopolitical tensions between the two countries that have impacted the higher education sector. While these two countries, the U.S. and China, are the biggest global collaborators—and they collaborate more with each other than any other country—they're also rival superpowers. As global adversaries, what we are witnessing as well is increased security concerns regarding intellectual theft and espionage. I'm going to spend some time summarizing my work for those who are not familiar to provide some further context. I and my colleagues, John Haupt and Xiaojie Li, also at the University of Arizona, have conducted numerous studies about U.S.-China scientific collaboration. And what we're observing across these studies is how the scientific pursuit of knowledge, which is fundamentally borderless, is becoming bordered in the current geopolitical environment. International collaboration, long valued as positive-sum, is being treated as zero-sum. Besides the rise of China and the accompanying political rhetoric that posed China as a so-called threat, tensions also grew among accusations, as you may recall, about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and a corresponding sharp increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in the United States. Public opinions about China were not favorable, and thus there was not a whole lot of public resistance when the FBI's China Initiative was launched in 2018. This initiative basically signaled that anyone of Chinese descent was a potential enemy of the state, including possible Chinese Communist Party spies in our own universities, even though there was no pervasive empirical or later judicial cases that proved such a damaging assumption. Nevertheless, world-renowned Chinese scientists were falsely accused of academic espionage and their careers and personal finances ruined. In my research that followed with Xiaojie Li, with support from the Committee of 100, we surveyed about 2,000 scientists in the U.S.' top research universities during the China Initiative. And we found that one in two Chinese scientists were afraid that they were being racially profiled by the FBI. We also observed that consequently scientists, especially those with Chinese descent, were less inclined to collaborate with China, less inclined to pursue federal grants, less inclined to even stay in the United States but rather to take their expertise to another country where they felt safer to pursue their research, including in China. In sum, the federal government's attempts to weed out possible Chinese spies was highly criticized as a damaging form of racial profiling affecting even U.S. citizens and, in the end, undermined the U.S.' ability to compete with China. Especially now, as we continue to observe Chinese scientists leaving the U.S. and taking their skills and talents elsewhere. With John Haupt and two academics at Tsinghua University in China, Doctors Wen Wen and Die Hu, we asked about two hundred co-collaborators in China and in the United States how were they able to overcome such geopolitical tensions and the challenges associated with COVID-19 during the pandemic? And we did learn something somewhat unexpected, and I hope valuable. Basically, we found that mutual trust between international collaborators helped overcome such perceived hurdles, including risks of being unfairly targeted. What this tells us is that a chilling effect is certainly real and remains possible, but in the end scientists have tremendous agency on what they study, where they study, and whether or not they seek funds, or where they seek funds. Regardless of the host or home country, international collaboration is important to all countries' scientific enterprise. Coauthors from different countries improve the knowledge being produced, its applicability, enlarges global audiences, and thereby increases the impact of the work. So considering the value, yet risks, where do we begin? Firstly, federal and institutional policies, of course, matter, for better or for worse. But policies do not manufacture trust. The formation of an academic tie does not suddenly occur over a cold call in the middle of a global meltdown, as often portrayed in Hollywood. Rather, this is a gradual process. And the longevity of the relationship helps strengthen that trust over time. According to our research, these collaborative relationships begin as graduate students, postdocs, visiting researchers. They occur at academic conferences and other in-person opportunities. Cutting short-term fellowships, for example, will impact the potential of a future scientific relationship, but its effects may not be felt for years. Same with denied visas and opportunities for travel. Fewer graduate students from particular countries or fields also means a different shape when it comes to global science. U.S. for instance, was not too long ago Russia's biggest foreign scientific collaborator, with the war in Ukraine, those research relationships, as well as much—with much of the Western world, have ceased. All of this, and my related empirical research, was conducted when I was a professor at my home institution. And since July, I've been serving, as Irina mentioned, as the dean and vice president of international affairs at my own institution. And I've been thinking a lot of, what does this mean for institutional practice? For those in university leadership positions, as mine, you know this is a tough challenge. Especially as domestic demand and state funding for higher education is generally declining. And at the same time, internationalization is increasingly central to senior leadership strategies. Universities are continuing vying to attract the world's students, even despite a decline of interest from China. And at the same time, research universities in particular are quite dependent on federal grants. We have our own research security offices that need to ensure our universities have good reputations and relations with our large federal funding agencies and taking every precaution to not be seen as a vulnerable site of intellectual theft. These units tend not to operate within international affairs. And I'm very well aware that in my role of trying to attract as many students from China and develop international partnerships, all of them can be suddenly erased if a Chinese University partner does not pass visual compliance or there is a sudden presidential executive order, as we experienced under the Trump administration. I'm also very well aware that of senior leaders have to choose between my educational offerings and partnerships in China versus risking a major grant from a federal agency, I will lose. We witnessed that with the shutting down of over 100 Confucius Institutes in the U.S., despite a lack of evidence of systematic espionage occurring through these centers. Public perceptions, informed or not, strongly affect the nature of our international work, as in the case of Florida. Such negative perceptions are not one country-sided, of course. A key concern for Chinese and other international students and their parents relate to safety. Gun violence, including on our own college campuses, anti-Asian hate crimes in surrounding neighborhoods, and unfavorable political environment in which studies might be interrupted as in the case of Proclamation 10043, or visa non-renewals are all contributing factors for the decline of interest from China, and uncertain future student exchange as well. In closing, when it comes to China these days no practices are guaranteed. However, I can recommend some while also keeping in mind geopolitical conditions can suddenly change for worse, or perhaps better. I mentioned earlier the value of mutual trust. At my university, we have long-standing relationships with university leaders at Chinese institutions. We've set up dual degree programs in China. Actually, about 40 percent of our international student enrollment are through such partner relationships throughout the world, in which we go to where they are. Hiring staff who speak the language and know the culture are also essential. And, like any relationship, these arrangements have developed over time. They are not built overnight. It takes intention. It takes effort. But in my experience, as trust is established the numbers have grown, and the positive impact is still being felt. Thank you. FASKIANOS: Thank you very much for that. That was terrific. Let's go now to all of you for your questions, comments. You can use this to share best practices and what you're doing to your universities or institutions. Please click the raise hand icon on your screen to ask a question. On your iPad or tablet, you can click the “more” button to access the raise hand feature. And when you're called upon, please accept the unmute prompts, state your name and affiliation, followed by your question. You can also submit a written question, they've already started coming in, by the Q&A icon. And if you can also include your affiliation there, I would appreciate it, although we will try to make sure we identify you correctly. So let's see. I'm looking for—no raised hands yet, but we do have questions written. So first question from Denis Simon, who's a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Many U.S. universities have curtailed their exchanges and cooperation with China. You referenced that. Officials at these universities are worried that if they appear too friendly toward China they will lose all sorts of federal funding. Are these concerns justified? Are there any regulations or legislation that actually says federal funding can be removed assuming these universities are in compliance with the export controls, et cetera? LEE: All right. Well, thanks, Denis, for your question. I know there—when I saw the list of those who signed up, I know there are many here who can speak to this directly. So I encourage those to also raise their hands and provide input in the Q&A, maybe in the form of an A instead of a Q. But in any case, going to that question, you know, it's a tough environment. And so much in my role, but what I even experienced in my research, is about that perception, that overinterpretation. So maybe signaling that we have this exchange program might draw attention in ways that might lead to suspicions that, oh, well is this, you know, somehow creating an opportunity for us to disclose military secrets? I mean, that's where we take it. A friendly exchange or visit is oftentimes now having to be scrutinized and ensuring that there is no remote violation of export controls, even in educational delivery in a non-STEM field. And what we're seeing is that this—we have our highly sensitive fields, but that kind of scrutiny we're also seeing applied to the institution more broadly. So these seemingly benign programs about language or culture, about fields that are enhanced or help promote so-called American values, are also being watched. So I believe as an institutional leader, again, as I mentioned earlier, having to deal with the possibility of unwanted or unwarranted attention versus not having that program, I think some, as Denis has pointed out, are leaning towards being more cautious. Unfortunately, China—any work with China is considered a risk, even if there is no reason for risk, as we've witnessed under—or, observed under the China Initiative. I don't know if I've fully answered that question, but please follow up if I haven't. And I know others can probably say more to that issue. FASKIANOS: Great. I'll take the next question from Peter—I don't know how to pronounce— LEE: Peter Becskehazy. Hi, Peter. (Laughs.) FASKIANOS: There you go. Thank you very much. LEE: I know Peter. FASKIANOS: All right. Good. Well, I'd love if Peter asked his question directly, if he can. Oh, good. From Pima Community College. Go ahead, Peter. Q: Hello, Jenny. Nice to see you. LEE: Hi, Peter. Q: Now my question is, the University of Arizona and other universities have had an inflow of dozens of countries, adding up to the million that you mentioned. Are other countries trying to fill in slots left vacant by Chinese students and scholars? LEE: Yeah. Great question, Peter. And I think you can also share what you've observed at Pima in terms of the patterns you've witnessed. But for us, and as we are seeing nationally, we're seeing India rise. Not at the—not at higher numbers in many institutions, compared to China, but the rate is rising. It's not so simple, though, because we also have relations in India, and trying to set up agreements, and bring students. The competition in India is intense. So even though there's a relatively so-called large market, and the U.S. has been quite successful in attracting Indian students, that is perhaps where the attention is as a more, I would say—I hate to use the word “market,”—but a stable student market. There's a lot more interest in graduate-level education globally, as we've observed. These countries that formerly didn't have capacity now do have capacity. They have online offerings. They have branch campuses, dual degrees, lots of other options. And so the niche for the U.S., whereas before we didn't really have to think about a niche, is really in graduate education. Now, of course, that's not good news for Pima, that's thinking about a community college and other kinds of educational offerings. But for us, we're thinking about India a lot. Southeast Asia, of course, has always been an important partner to us. Africa continues to be a challenge. We know that when we think about population growth, Africa is the future. There's still challenges and trying to identify places where there is capacity. But also the affordability of a U.S. education is a huge challenge. So it's a great question. And, again, I'm curious to know other places in the world people recommend. Of course, Latin America, given our location, is a key strategic partner. But again, affordability becomes an issue. And again, I'm just talking about the traditional international student who would choose to come to Arizona. Not talking about research collaboration, which is less bound by affordability issues. Irina, you're muted. FASKIANOS: How long have I been doing this? OK. (Laughs.) I'm going to take the next written question from Allison Davis-White Eyes, who is vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion at Fielding Graduate University: We have tried to work on collaborations with European universities and African universities, and met with much difficulty. What trends are you seeing in these regions? And what are emerging global markets beyond China? LEE: Great question, Allison. I mean, if you could leave the question in the future, so because I am visually looking at the question at the same time. FASKIANOS: Oh, great. Sorry. LEE: So, Allison, I'm not sure if you're referring to academic or research. Of course, within Europe, where the government does highly subsidized tuition, it's just becomes financially a bad deal, I suppose—(laughs)—for a student in the world who would normally get a free or highly reduced tuition to pay full price at our institution. So that kind of exchange of partnership, especially when it's about—when it's financially based, becomes almost impossible from my experience. But thinking about research collaboration, it depends on the level. So if it's an institutional agreement, you know, it's—often, these MOUs tend to just be on paper. It takes quite a bit of—it's very ceremonial. You need to get legal involved. It's a whole process to get an MOU. We really don't need these non-binding MOUs for research agreements. Some countries like it, just to display that they have an MOU with a U.S. institution. But essentially, it doesn't stop me as a professor to reach out to another professor at the University of Oslo, and say, hey, let's do a study. Which we actually are doing. So, yeah, feel free to be more specific, or if you want to raise your hand or speak on—and elaborate on that question. So, again, for educational exchange, it is difficult because we are—there's already a process within the EU that makes it very affordable and highly supported within the EU, or if you're part of that bigger program. Africa, again, my challenge from my role as an institutional leader is identifying places where there is already enough mass education up through high school where one would be able to consider, first of all, being admitted to a U.S. institution, but secondly, to be able to pay the cost. FASKIANOS: Allison, do you want to expand a little bit? Q: Oh, sorry. (Laughs.) FASKIANOS: There you go. There you go. Q: Right. Dr. Lee, thank you for your response. I think it was helpful, especially regarding the subsidizing of education in Europe. We've been working on some research partnerships. And we have just—you know, really, it has just been extremely difficult with European universities. And I do think part of it has to do with the way things are subsidized in Europe. I was just wondering if there were new and different ways to do it. I do appreciate your comment about the MOUs being largely ceremonial. I agree. And would like to see something with a little more substance. And that will take some creativity and a lot of partnership and work. As for Africa, we have tried to create partnerships with South Africa. I think there's some potential there. Certainly, some excitement. We've had a few students from Nigeria, extremely bright and motivated. I just would—you know, would like to hear, maybe from some other colleagues as well on the call, if there are creative ways in working with these students as well. So, thank you. LEE: Yeah, no. And just to follow up quickly, and, again, opportunities for others to share, academic collaboration, as I mentioned during my remarks, is largely built upon mutual trust. And not to say it can't happen from top down, but really does—is most successful from bottom up. And I don't mean to refer to professors at the bottom, but meaning those that are actually engaged with that work. And so just some considerations is rather than a top-down initiative or strategy, is to identify those that are visiting scholars, already from that country, have networks within that country. What's interesting, as I learned in my current role, is how little my predecessors worked with professors in these area's studies programs, because they're oftentimes treated as a separate or having different interests in mind when actually there is a lot of overlap to identify those that are actually there. Allison, by the way, I lived in South Africa for eight years. And I know it actually takes a long time. My Fulbright started off as a one year, and I had to extend it because even getting the data while I was on the ground takes time. And I'll be honest, I think part of it was taking some time just to build trust the intentions of my work, what was I going to do with that data, how is that going to be used? Was it actually going to be ways to empower them? You know, for those who study international collaboration, know this north and south divide, and I think there are places in the world that are—maybe have some guardrails up from those—not saying this is what's happening in your institution—but someone that they don't know coming from the Global North to study someone else in the Global South. And so how do we create or initiate a collaboration that is clearly, expressly mutual at the onset? And, again, this is where trust can be operationalized lots of different ways, but that even begins with that initial message. I mean, I remember when I started my work, nobody responded to me. They're like, who are you? And I don't care who you are or what your CV says. And it takes time. You know, building that relationship, and that person introducing me to that other person. Like, you know, this is how scientific networks form. And I think, to some extent, this is also how institutional collaborative relationships also form. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to go next to David Moore, who has a raised hand. Q: OK, thank you. I just got unmuted. FASKIANOS: Great. Q: Lee, I appreciate your comments. And I heard your reference to Florida earlier. I don't know if we have colleagues on this call from Florida, but I think they'll know what I'm about to say. I'm the dean of international education at Broward College in Fort Lauderdale. And as of tomorrow, December 1, Florida has to—all institutions in Florida, public institutions, colleges and universities, must be completely devoid of any partnerships in China. And not just China. There are seven countries of concern. And you probably can cite them, most of you would know the other six. But of the seven countries, Broward had four partnerships in China alone, none in the other countries that were active. And so we are now officially done, have to be. And I've had to notify the partners as well as our accrediting body, because these were international centers of Broward where they literally offer—we offered associate degrees, two-year degrees. And students could then transfer to an institution in the United States. Now, this didn't catch us too much by surprise because two and a half years ago our Florida legislature started in on this, really probably before that, where they isolated universities in Florida and said: You cannot do research—sensitive research, whatever, you know, engineering, computer science, et cetera—any research without notifying the state. And there's an elaborate process that had to be—you know, they had to go through to do this. But now it's not just research institutions. Now it's not just those kinds of collaborations. It is, in fact, all partnerships of any kind. We had to end our agent agreements where we were recruiting students from China that were—where the companies were based in China. And in course our programs were not research. They're just general education, two-year associate's degree, maybe some business. But we've been informed now it's completely done. And so I'm actually looking for institutions outside of Florida who might be willing to take over the role that we've had in transcripting students who later want to come to the United States. At least for the first two years in China, and then transferring to the upper division to the U.S. So I'm not sure. You're probably quite familiar with this. I don't know if you know the details of how it was worked out in practice. We were the only community college in the state that had any partnerships. So we were the ones that had to desist. So I want to—there are probably people on the call that are familiar with this, but there might be many others. And I just wanted to say that I'm looking to, you know, open that door to other institutions outside of Florida that might be willing in, yes, take a risk to go into China, but to—I've always felt that these kinds of programs were very good to build relationships, partnerships, communication. Ambassadors really. Where we feel like we were representing American education, whatever, you know, we call American values, democracy, you know, community. We thought we were doing good. But we found out we were—we were not. We were—we were doing something that went opposed to the prevailing political climate, at least in Florida. So that's my comment. I think people should know about it. And thank you for letting me speak to it a bit. Maybe someone will speak up and say they're interested in they can get in touch with me, David Moore at Broward College, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. LEE: David, thank you for sharing what you did. This is a really important example of where other states could very well head. And what's interesting, as David noted, we're talking about a community college. When we normally think about cutting ties, it's usually around the concerns about national security. Now, how this translates to a two-year degree that is solely educational based is a pretty far stretch, and yet is being impacted quite severely. So I think we should continue to follow this example—unfortunate example. And, David, yeah, your partners have reached out to my office, and I'm sure to others. But thank you for being available. Q: You're welcome. We have partners—we are also working with your Jakarta, Indonesia center there. So we have that connection. Thank you. LEE: Mmm hmm. Thanks. FASKIANOS: And if anybody wants to share contact information in the Q&A box, you can certainly do that. That would be great. There is a written question from Tutaleni Asino at Oklahoma State University: There was an article today in SEMAFOR highlighting that there are currently 350 U.S. students studying in China compared to 11,000 in 2019. Comparatively, there are 300,000 Chinese students in the United States. Is this a one-way problem, where the U.S. is not investing in international engagements as a result of being more inward looking and other countries having more options of who to collaborate with? LEE: Yeah. Tutaleni, that's—I think your question is an answer. And I think it's—I agree with your observation. So we are seeing that as there's state and public disinvestment in higher education, and including scrutiny about international higher education, we're also seeing a decline and cutting of foreign language programs in the United States. So here we are, a monolingual country whose students mostly go to Europe or other English-speaking countries to study abroad. A very limited number of international—U.S. students who pursue undergraduate degrees in a foreign country. And knowing that the future is global and international, at least in my opinion, does not set the U.S. up well to be globally competitive, even though much of its international policy is around this rhetoric of we need to compete with China. And so you raise a good point. How is this possible if U.S. citizens don't speak Chinese, or have no interest in learning about Chinese culture, or there's reduced opportunities even in our own institutions, I think is something to think about and ask more questions about. FASKIANOS: I'm going to take the next question from Zhen Zhu, chair and professor of marketing, director of faculty excellence, and director for international engagement at Suffolk University: How do you see the trend of U.S. students' interest in study abroad to China? LEE: There is actually growing interest. As many of you know, China—offering Chinese language in high schools is not as unusual as it used to be. There is growing interest as students are thinking about employability in global markets in multinational or international organizations or corporations. It would be fundamental, in fact, for someone who has any interest in international work to pick up the language if they can, and at your own institution. FASKIANOS: Great. Let's see. From—I'm going to take the next question from Jeff Riedinger: Is there a role for universities to play in knowledge diplomacy to sustain international relationships and collaborations in addressing global problems such as climate change and pandemics when national governments may be at odds with each other? LEE: Thanks, Jeff. And hi, Jeff. I'm just going to read over that question so I can kind of digest it a bit. Is there a role for institutions to play in knowledge diplomacy, such as climate change, pandemics, when national governments may be at odds with each other? Absolutely, 200 percent. It is occurring—knowledge diplomacy, science diplomacy. That one individual going on a Fulbright or coming to study here for some extended visit, having these collaborations and, ultimately, you know, science—knowledge production—I mean, there's no bounds. And when we think about the kind of research that may not occur because of these national governments are at odds when it comes to addressing climate change or other global issues, you know, the world is paying somewhat of a price when it comes to that in—when there are overarching concerns about national security. So, you know, my issue has always been with policy you overlook nuance, and with sweeping policies that overlook the disciplinary distinctions and contributions, what is lost in the pursuit of trying to stay ahead of another country in fields and areas that really have no economic or military value, right? But yet, have an important cultural value, or maybe will address something bigger, such as COVID-19. So as I mentioned, the work that I referenced earlier about U.S.-Chinese scientists coming together during COVID-19, were actually scientists who studied COVID-19 together. And again, this was not—this was fraught with risks. They were very well aware that there was a lot of scrutiny about any research about COVID-19 coming from China. There was scrutiny about, you know, where the data was held, who was analyzing it, who was funding it. And yet, these scientists took these risks in order to address how does the world deal with the pandemic. And this was based on interviews of those studies that were actually successful and published. This is where that mutual trust, as I've mentioned earlier, is so important. And without that mutual trust, these studies, I'm pretty certain, would never have been published, because it was not an easy path when it comes to that particular geopolitical climate during the pandemic. FASKIANOS: Jenny, I'm just going to ask a question. President Biden and President Xi met during APEC. Did anything come out of that meeting that could affect U.S.-China academic collaboration? LEE: Yeah. You know, this is tough. I mean, how do you analyze political statements? What do they really mean? And what is really going to change? I think what's clear is that there's an acknowledgment that we're interdependent, but we're also adversaries. Almost a love/hate codependent, in a relationship that we can't just easily separate but we do need each other. But the form that it takes, I think there's an understanding it needs to be more specific. And I don't think that has been clarified yet. I realize I missed part of Jeff's question on what can institutions do? That's such a good question. And I got more into the topic than the actual to-do. What can institutions do? Honestly—(laughs)—I'll just speak as a researcher, to back off a bit, right? To let scientists do what they want to do. Yes, we need to follow disclosures. We need to make sure there's no conflicts of interest. We need to follow all of these procedures. But what I also found during the China Initiative, there was also this chilling climate in which there's an overinterpretation that may put institutions at risk. And to my knowledge, institutions were not at risk to the extent to which their scientists, especially those of Chinese descent, felt scrutinized. FASKIANOS: Thank you. We have a raised hand from Dan Whitman. Q: OK, I think I'm unmuted. Thank you, Irina. And thanks, Professor Lee, for mentioning the Great Wall that that prevents us from dealing with even Europeans who have subsidized education or Africans who have no money. And just an anecdote, since you have welcomed anecdotes, I am an adjunct at George Washington University. But totally unrelated to that, just for free and just for fun, pro bono, nobody pays, nobody gets paid. A course that I'm giving by webinar, it's zero cost. The topic is crisis management, but it could be any topic. And in that group, which there are about eighty people who tune in twice a week, fifteen Kenyans, twenty-five Ukrainians, and forty Kazakhs. I mean, I don't know if there's ever been exchange between Kazakhstan and Kenya. Anyway, my point is things can be done. We share it for free. What motivates the students? A certificate. It's so easy to give them a certificate. And in many countries, they very highly value that, even though it's not a—there's no formality, there's no formal academic credit. But the students are very motivated. And possibly, there may be universities in the U.S. that could—that might want to give a professor a small stipendium to do an informal webinar course, which would create connections, which would be zero cost, basically, and would bridge that gap of funding that you've alluded to. Thank you. LEE: Yeah. Dan, thank you for that. And I think this leads to a kind of a spin-off comment about certificates. Absolutely. Micro-credentials or alternative forms of education, where there's maybe not a full-fledged undergraduate degree but some certificate, I think, is important niche, especially for returning adults or communities where they're not able to afford to take time off. So that flexibility, and obviously now with online education, just becomes so much more accessible and very low cost. Something else to keep in mind, though, is that, depending on the institution you're from, that will make a difference in certificates. I mean, an institution like George Washington University offering a certificate may have some symbolic or perceived value that may be higher than an institution that is lower or are not ranked at all. So this is where, unfortunately—I'm a big critic of global rankings. But unfortunately, it does play a role in how that certificate is being perceived and the attractiveness of that certificate. But absolutely, this is definitely a way to open access especially for places in the world that just cannot physically move or have the funds to support their studies. FASKIANOS: Great. There are two comments/questions in the Q&A that I wanted to give you a chance to respond to about Africa, from Tutaleni Asino and Fodei Batty. Dr. Asino talks about English is the language of instruction and governments in Africa where they're funding education to a higher degree, and thinks that there are opportunities there, but it sounds like all fifty-four countries are grouped together. And Dr. Batty talks a little bit about there are a lot of students from African countries pursuing graduate education in the United States. But South Africa is usually an exception to the higher education American norm in Africa. Most South Africans don't like to travel, especially travel to America. I thought maybe you could just clarify some—respond to those comments. LEE: Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you for sharing those comments. There's a book I edited called Intra-Africa Student Mobility. And I agree with the comments. And one of the things I didn't mention that I think is important to help us understand the broader global context is that there's actually considerable international activity within the continent. And there's actually considerable intra-Africa mobility within the continent. South Africa is the most important country player in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is globally ranked—has more globally ranked institutions than any other African country. And so South Africa then becomes an important hub. And, yes, as an English-speaking, among many other languages, country, that does attract African students to go oftentimes for a similar sense of shared culture, despite sometimes different languages and customs and backgrounds. And yet, nevertheless, South Africa is an important player within the continent. Not to say that there is no international mobility occurring, but there is increased capacity within the continent that would allow students and interested students to travel within the continent. Not the same extent, of course, as Europe. But the least we're seeing that rise over time. And so it's called Intra-Africa Student Mobility. Chika Sehoole and I coedited the book. We were able to get about eight African scholars to talk about the various reasons students would choose that particular African country, and what draw them. And what was really interesting about this phenomenon is that it goes against this prevailing notion of Africa's victim of brain drain or all going to the north. That's actually not what is happening. But that there is capacity building within the continent. So in trying to answer a different question, I skirted over a lot of the things I could go further into. But hopefully that book will shed light on what's happening within that continent, at least from the perspective of eight different countries. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. Thank you for that. I'm going to go next to Jonathan Scriven at Washington Adventist University in Maryland: What are some of the strategies universities are using to make education more affordable in the United States? If that is a challenge, are schools investing more or less in setting up campuses in foreign countries as a way to reach foreign students? LEE: I'm just going to read over that question. OK, yeah. Great question, Jonathan. So what's happening in my institution and many others is a way to attract students is we're providing considerable aid, merit aid, financial aid, aid even to international students. The majority may not even be paying the full sticker price. Now this, of course, will affect the revenue that would have otherwise been generated, but nevertheless is a way to deal with the fierce competition across U.S. institutions for these top students. So how to make it affordable? There's a lot of aid going around at the undergraduate, not just the graduate, levels. And so what are institutions doing? Well, for example, at the University of Arizona for our dual degrees, it's a fraction of the cost of what it would cost to be a student at our main campus. When you have a combination of hybrid or online delivery with a campus partner maybe providing most of the gen ed's and then we would teach most of the major courses as an example, that does significantly lower the cost where that student will still get a bona fide University of Arizona degree, just like they would at main campus. So these alternative forms of delivery certainly make it more affordable, especially for those that opt to stay in their home country and receive an online education, or a flipped classroom model, or a dual degree. FASKIANOS: Great. Denis Simon, if you can—why don't you ask your question? Q: Here I am. OK. Recently, on a trip to China in September, a number of faculty have told me they're no longer wanting to send their best students abroad. They want to keep them in China. And this is all part of the rise of Chinese universities, et cetera. And so it may not be simply the souring of Sino-U.S. relations that has causal effect here, but simply the fact that China now is becoming a major, you know, educational powerhouse. And that also could change the dynamics. For example, even the BRI countries could start to send their students to China instead of sending them to the United States. Do you see anything evolving like this or—and what might be the outcome? LEE: Yeah. Spot on, David. That halo effect of a U.S. degree is not the same as it was when I was a university student. Chinese students, as well as students in the world, are much more savvy. They have access to information. They have access to rankings. They know all universities are not the same. And they know that they have some institutions that are highly ranked and may offer better quality education than the U.S. So that the image of a U.S. degree, of course, is not as universally perceived as it may have been, I don't know, pre-internet, or without the—all sorts of rankings in which institutions are rated against one another. And absolutely, Chinese institutions are very difficult to get into, fiercely competitive, producing far more scientific output than some of our leading institutions. And there's another factor when it comes to Asian culture just more broadly speaking, is that social network tie. Sociologists refer to it as social capital. When a Chinese student, a Korean student, Japanese student decides to study in the United States, they may lose that social tie that may possibly put them in a disadvantage when they decide to come back and compete for a position when they may just have that U.S. credential, but may have either lessened or no longer have that relationship that may have allowed them to get a position at the university, or in a place where that alumni network would have been especially useful. So again, I don't want to generalize, you know, in any place to the world, but there is that component that I think sometimes is missed in the literature. Maintaining that social network is pretty key, especially as jobs, of course, global, you know, unemployment—places where students are competing for positions need to have every edge possible. So that also can be part of that reason they decide to stay. FASKIANOS: Great. The next question from Michael Kulma, who's at the University of Chicago. He's following on David Moore's comments about Florida: Do you know how many other states in the U.S. are enacting or are considering such policies against partnerships with China? LEE: I do not know the answer. So if anyone wants to raise their hand and share about their own state, or put it on the answer part of the question and answer. There are related concerns about DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Some of that may spill over to China. Hopefully, at some point at the Council of Foreign Relations will have a discussion on Israel and Hamas conflict and how institutions are dealing with that. And so we're seeing a pretty challenging political environment that is clearly spilling over to our classrooms and to our international activities, our domestic recruitment. But I'm not answering your question, Michael. (Laughs.) I'll leave it up to someone else to answer. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. So we don't have very much time left. I thought maybe you could, given your research and expertise, could suggest resources—recommend resources for higher ed leaders and administrators to better understand how to promote collaboration. LEE: Sure. So promoting collaboration, it really—each person at a time. You know, again, MOUs may be signed, and maybe overarching presidents will come together and have an agreement, but there's no guarantee that will ever happen. I'd love to do a study on how many MOUs never actually materialized into real action. So where do we begin? International affairs SIOs out there, identify who are your area studies experts? Who are your visiting postdocs? Who are your Fulbright scholars from other parts of the world? They all represent their own network and are certainly are valuable resources to consider. What I've sometimes have heard even at my own institution is, you know, how do we bring these people to the table? Why are they not at the table to begin with, and then how do we bring them there? And this is a relatively low-cost way to go about this, right? Like, faculty engaged in service. What kind of opportunities can your university provide for faculty service that is aligned with their area of expertise, the areas of the world they represent, the networks they have? And many of—some of you already have experienced this directly. These partnerships often begin with our alumni, international—former international students who decide to go back home. So, again, there's just a lot of exciting opportunity. I love this field because it's never boring. There's always new ways to grow, expand new partners. But it really does begin with that essential element of trust. And that often begins with our own institutions and identifying those who've already started to build that network. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. Thank you very much. Really appreciate your being with us and for sharing your expertise and background, Dr. Lee. It's been fantastic. And to all of you, for your questions and comments, and sharing your experiences as well. You can follow Dr. Lee on X, the app formerly known as Twitter, at @JennyJ_Lee. I will send out a link to this webinar, the transcript, and the video, as well as the link to the book—your book that you mentioned, and any other resources that you want to share with the group. And I encourage you all to follow @CFR_academic on X, visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. We also—just putting in a plug for our other series, Academic Webinar series, which is designed for students. We just sent out the winter/spring lineup and we hope that you will share that with your colleagues and your students. It is a great way for them to have access to practitioner scholars and to talk with students from around the country. So if you haven't received that lineup, you can email cfracademic@CFR.org, and we will share that with you. So, again, thank you, Jenny, for being with us, and to all of you. And wishing you safe and happy holidays. And good luck closing out this semester before we get to the holidays. (Laughs.) So thank you again. (END)

Jenny Lee, vice president for Arizona International, dean of international education, and professor of educational policy studies and practice at the University of Arizona, leads the conversation on U.S. international academic collaboration and how U.S.-China tensions are affecting higher education. FASKIANOS: Welcome to CFR's Higher Education Webinar Series. I'm Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Today's discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/academic. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We're delighted to have Jenny Lee with us to discuss U.S. international academic collaboration. Dr. Lee is vice president for Arizona International, dean of international education, and professor of educational policy studies and practice at the University of Arizona. She is also a fellow of the American Educational Research Association. Dr. Lee formerly served as a senior fellow of NAFSA, the Association of International Educators, as chair for the Council of International Higher Education, and as a board member for the Association for the Study of Higher Education. And she has also served as a U.S. Fulbright scholar to South Africa, as a distinguished global professor at Korea University, and as an international visiting scholar at the City University of London, the University of Pretoria, and the University of Cape Town in South Africa. So, Dr. Lee, thank you very much for being with us for today's topic. I thought you could begin by giving us an overview of current trends in U.S. international academic collaboration, especially looking at what's happening with our relations with China. LEE: Sounds great. Well, thank you for the opportunity, Irina. It's a pleasure to be here and to speak with you and all those listening right now. I'll speak for about ten or so minutes, and then open it up and engage with the audience. Hopefully, you all have some good questions that will come up during my remarks. So, clearly, we're entering a very interesting and somewhat uncertain chapter in how we understand the role of higher education globally. So I will begin with some general observation so all our viewers are on the same page. Now, first and foremost, the U.S. is mostly at the top when it comes to the higher education sector. Most of us already know that the United States houses the most highly ranked institutions. And this allows the country to be the largest host of international students and scholars from around the world. According to the latest IIE Open Doors report published a couple of weeks ago, the U.S. attracted over a million students from all over the world. And we're almost back to pre-pandemic levels. We also host over 90,000 scholars. And the primary purpose for them being here is research, for about two-thirds to 75 percent of them. These international scholars, as well as international graduate students, contribute significantly to the U.S. scientific enterprise. The U.S. is also among the leading countries in scientific output and impact, and the largest international collaborator in the world. In other words, the U.S. is highly sought because of its prestigious institutions, drawing top faculty and students from around the world. And with that comes the ability to generate cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs which further secures the U.S.' global position in academia. At the same time, of course, we've seen China's economy rise significantly as the country surpassed the United States in scientific output, and more recently in impact as measured by publication citations, and is outpacing the U.S. in the extent of R&D investment. Chinese institutions have also made noticeable jumps in various global rankings, which is a pretty big feat considering the fierce competition among the world's top universities. What we're witnessing as well are geopolitical tensions between the two countries that have impacted the higher education sector. While these two countries, the U.S. and China, are the biggest global collaborators—and they collaborate more with each other than any other country—they're also rival superpowers. As global adversaries, what we are witnessing as well is increased security concerns regarding intellectual theft and espionage. I'm going to spend some time summarizing my work for those who are not familiar to provide some further context. I and my colleagues, John Haupt and Xiaojie Li, also at the University of Arizona, have conducted numerous studies about U.S.-China scientific collaboration. And what we're observing across these studies is how the scientific pursuit of knowledge, which is fundamentally borderless, is becoming bordered in the current geopolitical environment. International collaboration, long valued as positive-sum, is being treated as zero-sum. Besides the rise of China and the accompanying political rhetoric that posed China as a so-called threat, tensions also grew among accusations, as you may recall, about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and a corresponding sharp increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in the United States. Public opinions about China were not favorable, and thus there was not a whole lot of public resistance when the FBI's China Initiative was launched in 2018. This initiative basically signaled that anyone of Chinese descent was a potential enemy of the state, including possible Chinese Communist Party spies in our own universities, even though there was no pervasive empirical or later judicial cases that proved such a damaging assumption. Nevertheless, world-renowned Chinese scientists were falsely accused of academic espionage and their careers and personal finances ruined. In my research that followed with Xiaojie Li, with support from the Committee of 100, we surveyed about 2,000 scientists in the U.S.' top research universities during the China Initiative. And we found that one in two Chinese scientists were afraid that they were being racially profiled by the FBI. We also observed that consequently scientists, especially those with Chinese descent, were less inclined to collaborate with China, less inclined to pursue federal grants, less inclined to even stay in the United States but rather to take their expertise to another country where they felt safer to pursue their research, including in China. In sum, the federal government's attempts to weed out possible Chinese spies was highly criticized as a damaging form of racial profiling affecting even U.S. citizens and, in the end, undermined the U.S.' ability to compete with China. Especially now, as we continue to observe Chinese scientists leaving the U.S. and taking their skills and talents elsewhere. With John Haupt and two academics at Tsinghua University in China, Doctors Wen Wen and Die Hu, we asked about two hundred co-collaborators in China and in the United States how were they able to overcome such geopolitical tensions and the challenges associated with COVID-19 during the pandemic? And we did learn something somewhat unexpected, and I hope valuable. Basically, we found that mutual trust between international collaborators helped overcome such perceived hurdles, including risks of being unfairly targeted. What this tells us is that a chilling effect is certainly real and remains possible, but in the end scientists have tremendous agency on what they study, where they study, and whether or not they seek funds, or where they seek funds. Regardless of the host or home country, international collaboration is important to all countries' scientific enterprise. Coauthors from different countries improve the knowledge being produced, its applicability, enlarges global audiences, and thereby increases the impact of the work. So considering the value, yet risks, where do we begin? Firstly, federal and institutional policies, of course, matter, for better or for worse. But policies do not manufacture trust. The formation of an academic tie does not suddenly occur over a cold call in the middle of a global meltdown, as often portrayed in Hollywood. Rather, this is a gradual process. And the longevity of the relationship helps strengthen that trust over time. According to our research, these collaborative relationships begin as graduate students, postdocs, visiting researchers. They occur at academic conferences and other in-person opportunities. Cutting short-term fellowships, for example, will impact the potential of a future scientific relationship, but its effects may not be felt for years. Same with denied visas and opportunities for travel. Fewer graduate students from particular countries or fields also means a different shape when it comes to global science. U.S. for instance, was not too long ago Russia's biggest foreign scientific collaborator, with the war in Ukraine, those research relationships, as well as much—with much of the Western world, have ceased. All of this, and my related empirical research, was conducted when I was a professor at my home institution. And since July, I've been serving, as Irina mentioned, as the dean and vice president of international affairs at my own institution. And I've been thinking a lot of, what does this mean for institutional practice? For those in university leadership positions, as mine, you know this is a tough challenge. Especially as domestic demand and state funding for higher education is generally declining. And at the same time, internationalization is increasingly central to senior leadership strategies. Universities are continuing vying to attract the world's students, even despite a decline of interest from China. And at the same time, research universities in particular are quite dependent on federal grants. We have our own research security offices that need to ensure our universities have good reputations and relations with our large federal funding agencies and taking every precaution to not be seen as a vulnerable site of intellectual theft. These units tend not to operate within international affairs. And I'm very well aware that in my role of trying to attract as many students from China and develop international partnerships, all of them can be suddenly erased if a Chinese University partner does not pass visual compliance or there is a sudden presidential executive order, as we experienced under the Trump administration. I'm also very well aware that of senior leaders have to choose between my educational offerings and partnerships in China versus risking a major grant from a federal agency, I will lose. We witnessed that with the shutting down of over 100 Confucius Institutes in the U.S., despite a lack of evidence of systematic espionage occurring through these centers. Public perceptions, informed or not, strongly affect the nature of our international work, as in the case of Florida. Such negative perceptions are not one country-sided, of course. A key concern for Chinese and other international students and their parents relate to safety. Gun violence, including on our own college campuses, anti-Asian hate crimes in surrounding neighborhoods, and unfavorable political environment in which studies might be interrupted as in the case of Proclamation 10043, or visa non-renewals are all contributing factors for the decline of interest from China, and uncertain future student exchange as well. In closing, when it comes to China these days no practices are guaranteed. However, I can recommend some while also keeping in mind geopolitical conditions can suddenly change for worse, or perhaps better. I mentioned earlier the value of mutual trust. At my university, we have long-standing relationships with university leaders at Chinese institutions. We've set up dual degree programs in China. Actually, about 40 percent of our international student enrollment are through such partner relationships throughout the world, in which we go to where they are. Hiring staff who speak the language and know the culture are also essential. And, like any relationship, these arrangements have developed over time. They are not built overnight. It takes intention. It takes effort. But in my experience, as trust is established the numbers have grown, and the positive impact is still being felt. Thank you. FASKIANOS: Thank you very much for that. That was terrific. Let's go now to all of you for your questions, comments. You can use this to share best practices and what you're doing to your universities or institutions. Please click the raise hand icon on your screen to ask a question. On your iPad or tablet, you can click the “more” button to access the raise hand feature. And when you're called upon, please accept the unmute prompts, state your name and affiliation, followed by your question. You can also submit a written question, they've already started coming in, by the Q&A icon. And if you can also include your affiliation there, I would appreciate it, although we will try to make sure we identify you correctly. So let's see. I'm looking for—no raised hands yet, but we do have questions written. So first question from Denis Simon, who's a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Many U.S. universities have curtailed their exchanges and cooperation with China. You referenced that. Officials at these universities are worried that if they appear too friendly toward China they will lose all sorts of federal funding. Are these concerns justified? Are there any regulations or legislation that actually says federal funding can be removed assuming these universities are in compliance with the export controls, et cetera? LEE: All right. Well, thanks, Denis, for your question. I know there—when I saw the list of those who signed up, I know there are many here who can speak to this directly. So I encourage those to also raise their hands and provide input in the Q&A, maybe in the form of an A instead of a Q. But in any case, going to that question, you know, it's a tough environment. And so much in my role, but what I even experienced in my research, is about that perception, that overinterpretation. So maybe signaling that we have this exchange program might draw attention in ways that might lead to suspicions that, oh, well is this, you know, somehow creating an opportunity for us to disclose military secrets? I mean, that's where we take it. A friendly exchange or visit is oftentimes now having to be scrutinized and ensuring that there is no remote violation of export controls, even in educational delivery in a non-STEM field. And what we're seeing is that this—we have our highly sensitive fields, but that kind of scrutiny we're also seeing applied to the institution more broadly. So these seemingly benign programs about language or culture, about fields that are enhanced or help promote so-called American values, are also being watched. So I believe as an institutional leader, again, as I mentioned earlier, having to deal with the possibility of unwanted or unwarranted attention versus not having that program, I think some, as Denis has pointed out, are leaning towards being more cautious. Unfortunately, China—any work with China is considered a risk, even if there is no reason for risk, as we've witnessed under—or, observed under the China Initiative. I don't know if I've fully answered that question, but please follow up if I haven't. And I know others can probably say more to that issue. FASKIANOS: Great. I'll take the next question from Peter—I don't know how to pronounce— LEE: Peter Becskehazy. Hi, Peter. (Laughs.) FASKIANOS: There you go. Thank you very much. LEE: I know Peter. FASKIANOS: All right. Good. Well, I'd love if Peter asked his question directly, if he can. Oh, good. From Pima Community College. Go ahead, Peter. Q: Hello, Jenny. Nice to see you. LEE: Hi, Peter. Q: Now my question is, the University of Arizona and other universities have had an inflow of dozens of countries, adding up to the million that you mentioned. Are other countries trying to fill in slots left vacant by Chinese students and scholars? LEE: Yeah. Great question, Peter. And I think you can also share what you've observed at Pima in terms of the patterns you've witnessed. But for us, and as we are seeing nationally, we're seeing India rise. Not at the—not at higher numbers in many institutions, compared to China, but the rate is rising. It's not so simple, though, because we also have relations in India, and trying to set up agreements, and bring students. The competition in India is intense. So even though there's a relatively so-called large market, and the U.S. has been quite successful in attracting Indian students, that is perhaps where the attention is as a more, I would say—I hate to use the word “market,”—but a stable student market. There's a lot more interest in graduate-level education globally, as we've observed. These countries that formerly didn't have capacity now do have capacity. They have online offerings. They have branch campuses, dual degrees, lots of other options. And so the niche for the U.S., whereas before we didn't really have to think about a niche, is really in graduate education. Now, of course, that's not good news for Pima, that's thinking about a community college and other kinds of educational offerings. But for us, we're thinking about India a lot. Southeast Asia, of course, has always been an important partner to us. Africa continues to be a challenge. We know that when we think about population growth, Africa is the future. There's still challenges and trying to identify places where there is capacity. But also the affordability of a U.S. education is a huge challenge. So it's a great question. And, again, I'm curious to know other places in the world people recommend. Of course, Latin America, given our location, is a key strategic partner. But again, affordability becomes an issue. And again, I'm just talking about the traditional international student who would choose to come to Arizona. Not talking about research collaboration, which is less bound by affordability issues. Irina, you're muted. FASKIANOS: How long have I been doing this? OK. (Laughs.) I'm going to take the next written question from Allison Davis-White Eyes, who is vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion at Fielding Graduate University: We have tried to work on collaborations with European universities and African universities, and met with much difficulty. What trends are you seeing in these regions? And what are emerging global markets beyond China? LEE: Great question, Allison. I mean, if you could leave the question in the future, so because I am visually looking at the question at the same time. FASKIANOS: Oh, great. Sorry. LEE: So, Allison, I'm not sure if you're referring to academic or research. Of course, within Europe, where the government does highly subsidized tuition, it's just becomes financially a bad deal, I suppose—(laughs)—for a student in the world who would normally get a free or highly reduced tuition to pay full price at our institution. So that kind of exchange of partnership, especially when it's about—when it's financially based, becomes almost impossible from my experience. But thinking about research collaboration, it depends on the level. So if it's an institutional agreement, you know, it's—often, these MOUs tend to just be on paper. It takes quite a bit of—it's very ceremonial. You need to get legal involved. It's a whole process to get an MOU. We really don't need these non-binding MOUs for research agreements. Some countries like it, just to display that they have an MOU with a U.S. institution. But essentially, it doesn't stop me as a professor to reach out to another professor at the University of Oslo, and say, hey, let's do a study. Which we actually are doing. So, yeah, feel free to be more specific, or if you want to raise your hand or speak on—and elaborate on that question. So, again, for educational exchange, it is difficult because we are—there's already a process within the EU that makes it very affordable and highly supported within the EU, or if you're part of that bigger program. Africa, again, my challenge from my role as an institutional leader is identifying places where there is already enough mass education up through high school where one would be able to consider, first of all, being admitted to a U.S. institution, but secondly, to be able to pay the cost. FASKIANOS: Allison, do you want to expand a little bit? Q: Oh, sorry. (Laughs.) FASKIANOS: There you go. There you go. Q: Right. Dr. Lee, thank you for your response. I think it was helpful, especially regarding the subsidizing of education in Europe. We've been working on some research partnerships. And we have just—you know, really, it has just been extremely difficult with European universities. And I do think part of it has to do with the way things are subsidized in Europe. I was just wondering if there were new and different ways to do it. I do appreciate your comment about the MOUs being largely ceremonial. I agree. And would like to see something with a little more substance. And that will take some creativity and a lot of partnership and work. As for Africa, we have tried to create partnerships with South Africa. I think there's some potential there. Certainly, some excitement. We've had a few students from Nigeria, extremely bright and motivated. I just would—you know, would like to hear, maybe from some other colleagues as well on the call, if there are creative ways in working with these students as well. So, thank you. LEE: Yeah, no. And just to follow up quickly, and, again, opportunities for others to share, academic collaboration, as I mentioned during my remarks, is largely built upon mutual trust. And not to say it can't happen from top down, but really does—is most successful from bottom up. And I don't mean to refer to professors at the bottom, but meaning those that are actually engaged with that work. And so just some considerations is rather than a top-down initiative or strategy, is to identify those that are visiting scholars, already from that country, have networks within that country. What's interesting, as I learned in my current role, is how little my predecessors worked with professors in these area's studies programs, because they're oftentimes treated as a separate or having different interests in mind when actually there is a lot of overlap to identify those that are actually there. Allison, by the way, I lived in South Africa for eight years. And I know it actually takes a long time. My Fulbright started off as a one year, and I had to extend it because even getting the data while I was on the ground takes time. And I'll be honest, I think part of it was taking some time just to build trust the intentions of my work, what was I going to do with that data, how is that going to be used? Was it actually going to be ways to empower them? You know, for those who study international collaboration, know this north and south divide, and I think there are places in the world that are—maybe have some guardrails up from those—not saying this is what's happening in your institution—but someone that they don't know coming from the Global North to study someone else in the Global South. And so how do we create or initiate a collaboration that is clearly, expressly mutual at the onset? And, again, this is where trust can be operationalized lots of different ways, but that even begins with that initial message. I mean, I remember when I started my work, nobody responded to me. They're like, who are you? And I don't care who you are or what your CV says. And it takes time. You know, building that relationship, and that person introducing me to that other person. Like, you know, this is how scientific networks form. And I think, to some extent, this is also how institutional collaborative relationships also form. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to go next to David Moore, who has a raised hand. Q: OK, thank you. I just got unmuted. FASKIANOS: Great. Q: Lee, I appreciate your comments. And I heard your reference to Florida earlier. I don't know if we have colleagues on this call from Florida, but I think they'll know what I'm about to say. I'm the dean of international education at Broward College in Fort Lauderdale. And as of tomorrow, December 1, Florida has to—all institutions in Florida, public institutions, colleges and universities, must be completely devoid of any partnerships in China. And not just China. There are seven countries of concern. And you probably can cite them, most of you would know the other six. But of the seven countries, Broward had four partnerships in China alone, none in the other countries that were active. And so we are now officially done, have to be. And I've had to notify the partners as well as our accrediting body, because these were international centers of Broward where they literally offer—we offered associate degrees, two-year degrees. And students could then transfer to an institution in the United States. Now, this didn't catch us too much by surprise because two and a half years ago our Florida legislature started in on this, really probably before that, where they isolated universities in Florida and said: You cannot do research—sensitive research, whatever, you know, engineering, computer science, et cetera—any research without notifying the state. And there's an elaborate process that had to be—you know, they had to go through to do this. But now it's not just research institutions. Now it's not just those kinds of collaborations. It is, in fact, all partnerships of any kind. We had to end our agent agreements where we were recruiting students from China that were—where the companies were based in China. And in course our programs were not research. They're just general education, two-year associate's degree, maybe some business. But we've been informed now it's completely done. And so I'm actually looking for institutions outside of Florida who might be willing to take over the role that we've had in transcripting students who later want to come to the United States. At least for the first two years in China, and then transferring to the upper division to the U.S. So I'm not sure. You're probably quite familiar with this. I don't know if you know the details of how it was worked out in practice. We were the only community college in the state that had any partnerships. So we were the ones that had to desist. So I want to—there are probably people on the call that are familiar with this, but there might be many others. And I just wanted to say that I'm looking to, you know, open that door to other institutions outside of Florida that might be willing in, yes, take a risk to go into China, but to—I've always felt that these kinds of programs were very good to build relationships, partnerships, communication. Ambassadors really. Where we feel like we were representing American education, whatever, you know, we call American values, democracy, you know, community. We thought we were doing good. But we found out we were—we were not. We were—we were doing something that went opposed to the prevailing political climate, at least in Florida. So that's my comment. I think people should know about it. And thank you for letting me speak to it a bit. Maybe someone will speak up and say they're interested in they can get in touch with me, David Moore at Broward College, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. LEE: David, thank you for sharing what you did. This is a really important example of where other states could very well head. And what's interesting, as David noted, we're talking about a community college. When we normally think about cutting ties, it's usually around the concerns about national security. Now, how this translates to a two-year degree that is solely educational based is a pretty far stretch, and yet is being impacted quite severely. So I think we should continue to follow this example—unfortunate example. And, David, yeah, your partners have reached out to my office, and I'm sure to others. But thank you for being available. Q: You're welcome. We have partners—we are also working with your Jakarta, Indonesia center there. So we have that connection. Thank you. LEE: Mmm hmm. Thanks. FASKIANOS: And if anybody wants to share contact information in the Q&A box, you can certainly do that. That would be great. There is a written question from Tutaleni Asino at Oklahoma State University: There was an article today in SEMAFOR highlighting that there are currently 350 U.S. students studying in China compared to 11,000 in 2019. Comparatively, there are 300,000 Chinese students in the United States. Is this a one-way problem, where the U.S. is not investing in international engagements as a result of being more inward looking and other countries having more options of who to collaborate with? LEE: Yeah. Tutaleni, that's—I think your question is an answer. And I think it's—I agree with your observation. So we are seeing that as there's state and public disinvestment in higher education, and including scrutiny about international higher education, we're also seeing a decline and cutting of foreign language programs in the United States. So here we are, a monolingual country whose students mostly go to Europe or other English-speaking countries to study abroad. A very limited number of international—U.S. students who pursue undergraduate degrees in a foreign country. And knowing that the future is global and international, at least in my opinion, does not set the U.S. up well to be globally competitive, even though much of its international policy is around this rhetoric of we need to compete with China. And so you raise a good point. How is this possible if U.S. citizens don't speak Chinese, or have no interest in learning about Chinese culture, or there's reduced opportunities even in our own institutions, I think is something to think about and ask more questions about. FASKIANOS: I'm going to take the next question from Zhen Zhu, chair and professor of marketing, director of faculty excellence, and director for international engagement at Suffolk University: How do you see the trend of U.S. students' interest in study abroad to China? LEE: There is actually growing interest. As many of you know, China—offering Chinese language in high schools is not as unusual as it used to be. There is growing interest as students are thinking about employability in global markets in multinational or international organizations or corporations. It would be fundamental, in fact, for someone who has any interest in international work to pick up the language if they can, and at your own institution. FASKIANOS: Great. Let's see. From—I'm going to take the next question from Jeff Riedinger: Is there a role for universities to play in knowledge diplomacy to sustain international relationships and collaborations in addressing global problems such as climate change and pandemics when national governments may be at odds with each other? LEE: Thanks, Jeff. And hi, Jeff. I'm just going to read over that question so I can kind of digest it a bit. Is there a role for institutions to play in knowledge diplomacy, such as climate change, pandemics, when national governments may be at odds with each other? Absolutely, 200 percent. It is occurring—knowledge diplomacy, science diplomacy. That one individual going on a Fulbright or coming to study here for some extended visit, having these collaborations and, ultimately, you know, science—knowledge production—I mean, there's no bounds. And when we think about the kind of research that may not occur because of these national governments are at odds when it comes to addressing climate change or other global issues, you know, the world is paying somewhat of a price when it comes to that in—when there are overarching concerns about national security. So, you know, my issue has always been with policy you overlook nuance, and with sweeping policies that overlook the disciplinary distinctions and contributions, what is lost in the pursuit of trying to stay ahead of another country in fields and areas that really have no economic or military value, right? But yet, have an important cultural value, or maybe will address something bigger, such as COVID-19. So as I mentioned, the work that I referenced earlier about U.S.-Chinese scientists coming together during COVID-19, were actually scientists who studied COVID-19 together. And again, this was not—this was fraught with risks. They were very well aware that there was a lot of scrutiny about any research about COVID-19 coming from China. There was scrutiny about, you know, where the data was held, who was analyzing it, who was funding it. And yet, these scientists took these risks in order to address how does the world deal with the pandemic. And this was based on interviews of those studies that were actually successful and published. This is where that mutual trust, as I've mentioned earlier, is so important. And without that mutual trust, these studies, I'm pretty certain, would never have been published, because it was not an easy path when it comes to that particular geopolitical climate during the pandemic. FASKIANOS: Jenny, I'm just going to ask a question. President Biden and President Xi met during APEC. Did anything come out of that meeting that could affect U.S.-China academic collaboration? LEE: Yeah. You know, this is tough. I mean, how do you analyze political statements? What do they really mean? And what is really going to change? I think what's clear is that there's an acknowledgment that we're interdependent, but we're also adversaries. Almost a love/hate codependent, in a relationship that we can't just easily separate but we do need each other. But the form that it takes, I think there's an understanding it needs to be more specific. And I don't think that has been clarified yet. I realize I missed part of Jeff's question on what can institutions do? That's such a good question. And I got more into the topic than the actual to-do. What can institutions do? Honestly—(laughs)—I'll just speak as a researcher, to back off a bit, right? To let scientists do what they want to do. Yes, we need to follow disclosures. We need to make sure there's no conflicts of interest. We need to follow all of these procedures. But what I also found during the China Initiative, there was also this chilling climate in which there's an overinterpretation that may put institutions at risk. And to my knowledge, institutions were not at risk to the extent to which their scientists, especially those of Chinese descent, felt scrutinized. FASKIANOS: Thank you. We have a raised hand from Dan Whitman. Q: OK, I think I'm unmuted. Thank you, Irina. And thanks, Professor Lee, for mentioning the Great Wall that that prevents us from dealing with even Europeans who have subsidized education or Africans who have no money. And just an anecdote, since you have welcomed anecdotes, I am an adjunct at George Washington University. But totally unrelated to that, just for free and just for fun, pro bono, nobody pays, nobody gets paid. A course that I'm giving by webinar, it's zero cost. The topic is crisis management, but it could be any topic. And in that group, which there are about eighty people who tune in twice a week, fifteen Kenyans, twenty-five Ukrainians, and forty Kazakhs. I mean, I don't know if there's ever been exchange between Kazakhstan and Kenya. Anyway, my point is things can be done. We share it for free. What motivates the students? A certificate. It's so easy to give them a certificate. And in many countries, they very highly value that, even though it's not a—there's no formality, there's no formal academic credit. But the students are very motivated. And possibly, there may be universities in the U.S. that could—that might want to give a professor a small stipendium to do an informal webinar course, which would create connections, which would be zero cost, basically, and would bridge that gap of funding that you've alluded to. Thank you. LEE: Yeah. Dan, thank you for that. And I think this leads to a kind of a spin-off comment about certificates. Absolutely. Micro-credentials or alternative forms of education, where there's maybe not a full-fledged undergraduate degree but some certificate, I think, is important niche, especially for returning adults or communities where they're not able to afford to take time off. So that flexibility, and obviously now with online education, just becomes so much more accessible and very low cost. Something else to keep in mind, though, is that, depending on the institution you're from, that will make a difference in certificates. I mean, an institution like George Washington University offering a certificate may have some symbolic or perceived value that may be higher than an institution that is lower or are not ranked at all. So this is where, unfortunately—I'm a big critic of global rankings. But unfortunately, it does play a role in how that certificate is being perceived and the attractiveness of that certificate. But absolutely, this is definitely a way to open access especially for places in the world that just cannot physically move or have the funds to support their studies. FASKIANOS: Great. There are two comments/questions in the Q&A that I wanted to give you a chance to respond to about Africa, from Tutaleni Asino and Fodei Batty. Dr. Asino talks about English is the language of instruction and governments in Africa where they're funding education to a higher degree, and thinks that there are opportunities there, but it sounds like all fifty-four countries are grouped together. And Dr. Batty talks a little bit about there are a lot of students from African countries pursuing graduate education in the United States. But South Africa is usually an exception to the higher education American norm in Africa. Most South Africans don't like to travel, especially travel to America. I thought maybe you could just clarify some—respond to those comments. LEE: Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you for sharing those comments. There's a book I edited called Intra-Africa Student Mobility. And I agree with the comments. And one of the things I didn't mention that I think is important to help us understand the broader global context is that there's actually considerable international activity within the continent. And there's actually considerable intra-Africa mobility within the continent. South Africa is the most important country player in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is globally ranked—has more globally ranked institutions than any other African country. And so South Africa then becomes an important hub. And, yes, as an English-speaking, among many other languages, country, that does attract African students to go oftentimes for a similar sense of shared culture, despite sometimes different languages and customs and backgrounds. And yet, nevertheless, South Africa is an important player within the continent. Not to say that there is no international mobility occurring, but there is increased capacity within the continent that would allow students and interested students to travel within the continent. Not the same extent, of course, as Europe. But the least we're seeing that rise over time. And so it's called Intra-Africa Student Mobility. Chika Sehoole and I coedited the book. We were able to get about eight African scholars to talk about the various reasons students would choose that particular African country, and what draw them. And what was really interesting about this phenomenon is that it goes against this prevailing notion of Africa's victim of brain drain or all going to the north. That's actually not what is happening. But that there is capacity building within the continent. So in trying to answer a different question, I skirted over a lot of the things I could go further into. But hopefully that book will shed light on what's happening within that continent, at least from the perspective of eight different countries. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. Thank you for that. I'm going to go next to Jonathan Scriven at Washington Adventist University in Maryland: What are some of the strategies universities are using to make education more affordable in the United States? If that is a challenge, are schools investing more or less in setting up campuses in foreign countries as a way to reach foreign students? LEE: I'm just going to read over that question. OK, yeah. Great question, Jonathan. So what's happening in my institution and many others is a way to attract students is we're providing considerable aid, merit aid, financial aid, aid even to international students. The majority may not even be paying the full sticker price. Now this, of course, will affect the revenue that would have otherwise been generated, but nevertheless is a way to deal with the fierce competition across U.S. institutions for these top students. So how to make it affordable? There's a lot of aid going around at the undergraduate, not just the graduate, levels. And so what are institutions doing? Well, for example, at the University of Arizona for our dual degrees, it's a fraction of the cost of what it would cost to be a student at our main campus. When you have a combination of hybrid or online delivery with a campus partner maybe providing most of the gen ed's and then we would teach most of the major courses as an example, that does significantly lower the cost where that student will still get a bona fide University of Arizona degree, just like they would at main campus. So these alternative forms of delivery certainly make it more affordable, especially for those that opt to stay in their home country and receive an online education, or a flipped classroom model, or a dual degree. FASKIANOS: Great. Denis Simon, if you can—why don't you ask your question? Q: Here I am. OK. Recently, on a trip to China in September, a number of faculty have told me they're no longer wanting to send their best students abroad. They want to keep them in China. And this is all part of the rise of Chinese universities, et cetera. And so it may not be simply the souring of Sino-U.S. relations that has causal effect here, but simply the fact that China now is becoming a major, you know, educational powerhouse. And that also could change the dynamics. For example, even the BRI countries could start to send their students to China instead of sending them to the United States. Do you see anything evolving like this or—and what might be the outcome? LEE: Yeah. Spot on, David. That halo effect of a U.S. degree is not the same as it was when I was a university student. Chinese students, as well as students in the world, are much more savvy. They have access to information. They have access to rankings. They know all universities are not the same. And they know that they have some institutions that are highly ranked and may offer better quality education than the U.S. So that the image of a U.S. degree, of course, is not as universally perceived as it may have been, I don't know, pre-internet, or without the—all sorts of rankings in which institutions are rated against one another. And absolutely, Chinese institutions are very difficult to get into, fiercely competitive, producing far more scientific output than some of our leading institutions. And there's another factor when it comes to Asian culture just more broadly speaking, is that social network tie. Sociologists refer to it as social capital. When a Chinese student, a Korean student, Japanese student decides to study in the United States, they may lose that social tie that may possibly put them in a disadvantage when they decide to come back and compete for a position when they may just have that U.S. credential, but may have either lessened or no longer have that relationship that may have allowed them to get a position at the university, or in a place where that alumni network would have been especially useful. So again, I don't want to generalize, you know, in any place to the world, but there is that component that I think sometimes is missed in the literature. Maintaining that social network is pretty key, especially as jobs, of course, global, you know, unemployment—places where students are competing for positions need to have every edge possible. So that also can be part of that reason they decide to stay. FASKIANOS: Great. The next question from Michael Kulma, who's at the University of Chicago. He's following on David Moore's comments about Florida: Do you know how many other states in the U.S. are enacting or are considering such policies against partnerships with China? LEE: I do not know the answer. So if anyone wants to raise their hand and share about their own state, or put it on the answer part of the question and answer. There are related concerns about DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Some of that may spill over to China. Hopefully, at some point at the Council of Foreign Relations will have a discussion on Israel and Hamas conflict and how institutions are dealing with that. And so we're seeing a pretty challenging political environment that is clearly spilling over to our classrooms and to our international activities, our domestic recruitment. But I'm not answering your question, Michael. (Laughs.) I'll leave it up to someone else to answer. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. So we don't have very much time left. I thought maybe you could, given your research and expertise, could suggest resources—recommend resources for higher ed leaders and administrators to better understand how to promote collaboration. LEE: Sure. So promoting collaboration, it really—each person at a time. You know, again, MOUs may be signed, and maybe overarching presidents will come together and have an agreement, but there's no guarantee that will ever happen. I'd love to do a study on how many MOUs never actually materialized into real action. So where do we begin? International affairs SIOs out there, identify who are your area studies experts? Who are your visiting postdocs? Who are your Fulbright scholars from other parts of the world? They all represent their own network and are certainly are valuable resources to consider. What I've sometimes have heard even at my own institution is, you know, how do we bring these people to the table? Why are they not at the table to begin with, and then how do we bring them there? And this is a relatively low-cost way to go about this, right? Like, faculty engaged in service. What kind of opportunities can your university provide for faculty service that is aligned with their area of expertise, the areas of the world they represent, the networks they have? And many of—some of you already have experienced this directly. These partnerships often begin with our alumni, international—former international students who decide to go back home. So, again, there's just a lot of exciting opportunity. I love this field because it's never boring. There's always new ways to grow, expand new partners. But it really does begin with that essential element of trust. And that often begins with our own institutions and identifying those who've already started to build that network. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. Thank you very much. Really appreciate your being with us and for sharing your expertise and background, Dr. Lee. It's been fantastic. And to all of you, for your questions and comments, and sharing your experiences as well. You can follow Dr. Lee on X, the app formerly known as Twitter, at @JennyJ_Lee. I will send out a link to this webinar, the transcript, and the video, as well as the link to the book—your book that you mentioned, and any other resources that you want to share with the group. And I encourage you all to follow @CFR_academic on X, visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. We also—just putting in a plug for our other series, Academic Webinar series, which is designed for students. We just sent out the winter/spring lineup and we hope that you will share that with your colleagues and your students. It is a great way for them to have access to practitioner scholars and to talk with students from around the country. So if you haven't received that lineup, you can email cfracademic@CFR.org, and we will share that with you. So, again, thank you, Jenny, for being with us, and to all of you. And wishing you safe and happy holidays. And good luck closing out this semester before we get to the holidays. (Laughs.) So thank you again. (END)

Today’s world is full of worry, pain, and uncertainty.  Sociologists and world leaders try to address the crises and problems of society, but the answers elude them.  Pastor Chris Castaldo will reveal how Jesus’ counterintuitive teachings are the real means of bringing peace and blessing here and now. Don’t miss this timely discussion about the Upside-Down Kingdom of God! EQUIPPERS - Our next ZOOM MEETING is next Thursday, November 16! REGISTRATION DETAILS ARE IN YOUR E-MAIL INBOX.  Not an Equipper and want to attend?   Become an Equipper Today! 

Hour 2 1700 sociologists have signed a letter endorsing Hamas. But who are these sociologists? Audio from WGIG-AM and FM in Brunswick, GA

Where does morality fit into contemporary social science? In Moral Minefields: How Sociologists Debate Good Science (U Chicago Press, 2023), Shai Dromi, an Associate Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology at Harvard University and Samuel Stabler Associate Teaching Professor of Sociology at Pennsylvania State University, draw on pragmatist theory to offer insights as to how sociology can avoid moral myopia and be value pluralistic. The book offers rich case studies of key fields and debates, including sociology of religion, race and inequality, nationalism and cosmopolitanism, and fertility and work, all showing how values and morals shape the practice of research. The book makes a significant contribution to both sociology and the social sciences more generally, and will be essential reading for both academics and anyone interested in the values of contemporary research. Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries at the University of Manchester. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Where does morality fit into contemporary social science? In Moral Minefields: How Sociologists Debate Good Science (U Chicago Press, 2023), Shai Dromi, an Associate Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology at Harvard University and Samuel Stabler Associate Teaching Professor of Sociology at Pennsylvania State University, draw on pragmatist theory to offer insights as to how sociology can avoid moral myopia and be value pluralistic. The book offers rich case studies of key fields and debates, including sociology of religion, race and inequality, nationalism and cosmopolitanism, and fertility and work, all showing how values and morals shape the practice of research. The book makes a significant contribution to both sociology and the social sciences more generally, and will be essential reading for both academics and anyone interested in the values of contemporary research. Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries at the University of Manchester. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

Where does morality fit into contemporary social science? In Moral Minefields: How Sociologists Debate Good Science (U Chicago Press, 2023), Shai Dromi, an Associate Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology at Harvard University and Samuel Stabler Associate Teaching Professor of Sociology at Pennsylvania State University, draw on pragmatist theory to offer insights as to how sociology can avoid moral myopia and be value pluralistic. The book offers rich case studies of key fields and debates, including sociology of religion, race and inequality, nationalism and cosmopolitanism, and fertility and work, all showing how values and morals shape the practice of research. The book makes a significant contribution to both sociology and the social sciences more generally, and will be essential reading for both academics and anyone interested in the values of contemporary research. Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries at the University of Manchester. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Where does morality fit into contemporary social science? In Moral Minefields: How Sociologists Debate Good Science (U Chicago Press, 2023), Shai Dromi, an Associate Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology at Harvard University and Samuel Stabler Associate Teaching Professor of Sociology at Pennsylvania State University, draw on pragmatist theory to offer insights as to how sociology can avoid moral myopia and be value pluralistic. The book offers rich case studies of key fields and debates, including sociology of religion, race and inequality, nationalism and cosmopolitanism, and fertility and work, all showing how values and morals shape the practice of research. The book makes a significant contribution to both sociology and the social sciences more generally, and will be essential reading for both academics and anyone interested in the values of contemporary research. Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries at the University of Manchester. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

Becot and Inwood are rural sociologists studying childcare and farm safety. They can be reached at becot.florence@marshfieldresearch.org and inwood.2@osu.edu, respectively.

Reference Groups.Sociologists refer to them as a group to which an individual or another group is compared; a group of people who influence norms + a person's behaviors. Whether it's a conscious decision or not, you are a part of a reference group. In today's episode, Macy covers:seeing these reference groups in the wild on a family vacation to Disney Worldthe power you possess in choosing your own reference groupwhy choosing who you DON'T want to be is just as important as knowing who you do want to beTo save your seat for the Sales Girl Effect on October 9th, click HERE.We're ready to see you in Cohort 38! When you enroll today, you have immediate access to your portal + can dive in at your own pace before School of Sales begins on October 20th. To learn more about School of Sales, click HERE.If you'd like to purchase your copy o f Persuade for Good, click HERE.To save time + see if School of Sales is a good fit, DM us the word PODCAST on Instagram. 

Show Notes Episode 410: “Everything's Coming Up Kato!” Part 2 of Wheezing the Juice This week Host Dave Bledsoe wakes up in what he thought was the pool house of a D List celebrity with a brutal hangover and pair of shoes three sizes too big with some kind of red liquid on them only to realize he has passed out on a Wendy's ketchup dispenser. (Again) This week we continue our Summer Series “Wheezing the Juice” (Again, we apologize for that name, it was NOT our idea) with the sensation that swept the nation in 1994, OJ Simpson! We pick up with the infamous Bronco Chase that 95 MILLION Americans watch live and jump from that insanity to the even bigger madness that followed. From the initial feed frenzy in the news to the long trudge toward trial. (You think this show is long, you should have been around for the period between his arrest and the trial!) We check in with all the characters who would go on to take center stage, be they Howard Stern, racist Broadway dancers in judicial robes, Jay Leno's terrible jokes, and of course white people in blackface. (It never gets old does it America?) Then we meet the players, from Al Cowlings, to Faye Resnick, to Johnny Cochrane and of course the only one who came out ahead in all of this: Brian Gerard Kaelin! (You know him better as Kato!) So grab you OJ Pogs, and get ready to get disgusted as we talk about OJ Mania! Our Sponsor this week is Roomies, finding roommates for people who no one would ever want to live with. We open with new reports from the night of OJ's Last Run and close with the glorious Ethel Merman!  Show Theme: Hypnostate Prelude to Common Sense The Show on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheHell_Podcast The Show on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/whatthehellpodcast/ The Show on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjxP5ywpZ-O7qu_MFkLXQUQ www.whatthehellpodcast.com Give us your money on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/Whatthehellpodcast The Show Line: 347 687 9601 Closing Music: https://youtu.be/aGyiuFZ7cs8 We are a proud member of the Seltzer Kings Podcast Network! http://seltzerkings.com/ Citations Needed: ‘The Juice is loose': How the O.J. Simpson white Bronco chase mesmerized the world https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-oj-simpson-white-bronco-chase-timeline-20190617-story.html Officers recall night spent chasing O.J. Simpson and a white Ford Bronco https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/officers-recall-night-spent-chasing-o-j-simpson-and-a-white-ford-bronco A Year in O.J.: How Popular Culture Responded to the Trial of the Century https://www.vulture.com/2016/01/oj-simpson-how-popular-culture-responded.html Apocalypse Later: CD-ROMs 1991 to mid-1994 http://www.cnn.com/EVENTS/1996/anniversary/flashback.machine/flashback1.html O.J. Simpson Masks a Macabre Halloween Sensation : Costumes: Store operators say wigs, football jerseys and other items are selling briskly. Sociologists call sales trend disturbing. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-10-08-mn-47798-story.html Judge in Simpson Trial Allows TV Camera in Courtroom https://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/08/us/judge-in-simpson-trial-allows-tv-camera-in-courtroom.html How O. J. Simpson Killed Popular Culture https://www.vanityfair.com/style/society/2014/06/oj-simpson-trial-reality-tv-pop-culture Frontline: The OJ Verdict https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/oj/themes/media.html Juice-o-nomics: The economic value of the O.J. Simpson trial https://financialpost.com/news/juice-o-nomics-the-economic-value-of-the-o-j-simpson-trial THE MEDIA BUSINESS; Simpson Case Gives Cable An Edge on the Networks https://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/20/business/the-media-business-simpson-case-gives-cable-an-edge-on-the-networks.html Squeeze the Juice (1995) https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/7283/squeeze-juice Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices