The iPhone is birth control, apparently / The economics of solo-maxxing / The pilot who flew 900 flights without a license episode artwork

EPISODE · Jun 10, 2026 · 12 MIN

The iPhone is birth control, apparently / The economics of solo-maxxing / The pilot who flew 900 flights without a license

from News Sidequest

Two new papers from the National Bureau of Economic Research find that US fertility rates have fallen 22% since 2007 — the year the iPhone launched — and access to smartphones correlated with birth rate declines of up to 8% among teenagers. Also: the average all-in cost of a date in the US has hit $189, up 12.5% in a year, and a growing number of Gen Z and millennials are responding by opting out of dating entirely — a trend they're calling solo-maxxing. And Geoffrey Wall, a 59-year-old former Air Canada captain from Barrie, Ontario, flew more than 900 commercial flights on Boeing 767s, 777s, and 787s between 2009 and 2025 — allegedly without ever obtaining the license required to do so. Plus a fake boarding pass, woolly mammoth DNA in squirrel poo, a Florida man arrested on the way to court, and a hot sauce shortage. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Jun 10, 2026

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The iPhone is birth control, apparently / The economics of solo-maxxing / The pilot who flew 900 flights without a license

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