Elephants in Rooms
Hi, I’m Ken LaCorte. I spent 20 years behind-the-scenes at Fox News and now host “Elephants in Rooms”.
Here, we jump into topics that many people avoid and that the mainstream narrative often vilifies. Even when they’re true.
If you’re looking for true insight into issues – without straw men or sensationalism – you’ve found the right place.
Elephants in Rooms
4.8 million dead kids is good news.
“Millions of children die every year.”
It’s something that we often hear on TV and read in the news. But it’s not exactly bad news.
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You don't have to look hard to see that the world seems to be falling apart. Natural disasters, wars and conflicts, education is increasingly being denied to girls and the poor becoming poor. The world's population is increasing and more children are dying. Except none of that is true. By every measurement, the world is doing better. A lot better. Let's start with the worst event that we can imagine. The death of a child. In 2021, 4.8 million kids under the age of five died, mostly in poor countries. And often because of completely curable reasons. It's horrific to imagine a parent burying a child, often because of a very preventable disease. Imagining that millions of times is just incomprehensible. A young child's life is the most sacred thing on the planet. And people routinely risk their lives to save a child. So let's take a look at that number. 4.8 million. It's a number that's so horrible, how could it be good news? Because if you look at that number over time, you start to see a different picture. Just the year before, there were 4.9 million dead kids 10 years. Before that was 9.7 million. And in 1950, it was 19.8 million. And that was when the world had about a third of the population as it does right now. Per capita, the likelihood of a child dying has dropped over 80% in a single generation. Had the death rates of 1950 stayed the same, that 4.8 million would actually be over 27 million dead kids every year. But we can't see them because they're alive. So 4.8 million is a horrific number. But it's also a wonderful one. So what about those other terrible things I told you about? Natural disasters have dropped to the point where they kill about 10 people per million each year. Since World War Two, the planet has been in the greatest period of relative peace ever known. Educating girls - there's about the same number of girls and boys being educated, and over 90% of the world's kids now attend elementary school, an unprecedented number. And in the United States for decades, women have outpaced men in earning college degrees. Extreme poverty over the world has plummeted over the last 100 years. People are living much longer in human history than ever before. But because they're having fewer kids, the UN predicts that the world population will actually start to decline in 75 years. So why are we so wrong about these undeniable basic facts? What's going on? Well, it's easy to blame the media which spews out nonstop misery, fear and drama. And why did they do that? Well, it's because that's what we want. That's what we click. The people who feed the news media know us better than most of us admit, and only a few kind of tell the truth.
George Carlin:"You know, my favorite thing on television bad news. Bad news are disasters and accidents and catastrophes. I want to see some explosions and fires, I want to see shit blowing up and bodies flying around."
Ken LaCorte:People routinely launch good news sites, and they routinely go out of business. The ones that earn from conflict and drama, earn billions. But there's something positive in that as well. I mean, one reason why we work to cure disease or to stop political corruption or to right the wrongs we see on television, is because we're constantly reminded of those problems. So I don't mean to soft soap, anything. We clearly have challenges. I mean, almost 5 million little kids died last year. But mankind is doing better than most people think. When you look at what's really going on, you won't be depressed, you'll be inspired. Hey, I was inspired for this video by a wonderful book called"Factfulness" by Hans Rosling, who has some outstanding videos as well. I've linked to all of that down below in the description. My name is Ken LaCorte. Don't forget to subscribe for more videos that take a look at topics we don't often discuss. See you next time.
