Swipe Left on Society: Singledom, Sexless Men, and the New Politics of Loneliness with Aideen McQueen

0:00David McWilliams: On today's podcast, we are talking about the biggest cultural shift to have occurred in the last 15 years, which is the explosion in singledom in people between the ages of 20 and mid-40s. Something very new, which is that people are not coupling up. They're alone. They're living alone. They can't find a partner. What that's going to do to the economy, to society and to politics. That's all coming up in a couple of minutes. When everything is moving all at once, your workforce, your tech stack, your business, you don't need more tools. You need one solution. That's why Paylocity built a single platform to connect HR, finance, and IT with AI-driven insights and automated workflows that simplify the complex and power what's next.

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1:21To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature.

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1:35How you doing there?

1:36David McWilliams: It is podcast time. Today's podcast is going to be about possibly the most remarkable cultural shift, not trend, but actual shock that has hit Western countries in the last 15 years, since the advent, in effect, of the smartphone. And this is the rise in singledom in the number of people who are now single in their 20s, 30s, and into their 40s. This is a profoundly new development. I think it can be located in and around the beginning of the smartphone. But we're going to discuss this, John, because... You're concerned. Well, I am, John, I'm concerned about everything. I'm concerned, yes, you know, I'm concerned.

2:23David McWilliams: It's David Mac Concern, always has a sensitivity, always has a feeling. No, I'll just tell you, I am now intrigued by what is happening culturally to the generation coming up behind us, the generations. Yeah. And I am intrigued. Not just as a dad, but as a - Not just as a dad, as a functioning member of society. So the reason we're doing this podcast, this podcast is all about the rise in singledom and what it's going to do to society now, but what it's going to do to the economics, to fiscal policy, to culture, to behavioral trends, to buying trends, to the way in which we live, all these factors.

3:08David McWilliams: But it came to me on New Year's Eve, John, I was going to a party and I'd come from a dinner and the people at that dinner were going to a party later on. So everybody jumped into cabs. And I jumped into a cab, one of those kind of six-seaters, one of the eight-seater cabs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I jumped into one of them and there are four. Uninvited. Uninvited. So there's four young women in the cab who I know, right? Yeah. And one of them said, I jumped in. Thank God for that. And I jumped in. Exactly, exactly. And I jump in and one of the girls says, oh, you're in trouble now, David. You're here with the girls.

3:42David McWilliams: We're having this really in-depth conversation. I said, well, we're chatting about, they were saying, we're chatting about how we are in our 30s. We are all single and we can't find blokes. Blokes can't find us. We are on dating apps or this, that and the other. Now, these are incredibly successful women. all of them gorgeous fun vivacious hilarious clever solvent all these solvent's important you know like it is important right educated worldly traveled all that sort of stuff right and i'm looking at them as you know is this possibly the case can you all possibly be single is this difficult you're finding hard to find and one of them said look david what's actually be happy and i was trying to explore this and tease this out and one of them said look it's a combination of porn and dating apps has destroyed love has destroyed the process by which people couple up right okay they said to us and they also said the types of blokes that we're meeting are kind of useless as well so there was no there was like you know useless she's they're like where the normal guys guys that we can just hang out with drink with go party with build a career sleep with get up next morning go for a walk with yeah normal stuff right and then i started to look into the data and the figures and what we're seeing john all over the western world is an explosion in singledom from people in their 20s all the way through the 40s i'll give you a statistic right yeah right now in the cross the west 50 of men and 43 of women between the age of 25 and 35 have no partner not that they're not living with them they have no girlfriend or boyfriend they're not with anybody and that figure has doubled in the last 40 years right okay but not only is it double the last 40 years it's got much worse in the last eight years so if i'll give another figure.

5:46David McWilliams: If the rate at which people were coupling up in 2017 had been maintained until now, 2025, there would be a hundred million less single people in the world. A hundred million? Yes, in the Western world. So that would have such an enormous impact on the demographics. Completely. And therefore the economy. The demographics, the economy, for example, the housing market, for example, the taxation market, for example, the entire orientation of fiscal policy, the entire orientation of regional policy. Everything stems from the process of adulthood. So you leave your parents. You move in with your boyfriend or girlfriend or a bunch of friends.

6:35David McWilliams: You hook up with somebody. Eventually, you say, I'm going to settle down with this person. you begin the process of either getting married or just having kids together, moving on. That process is entirely based on a financial, economic and political edifice, which massages itself towards married couples. That has been the way in which our society, so our tax system in Ireland, all benefits and rewards that idea of settling down, all that sort of stuff. Yeah, but Mike, what's driving that? Like, why is this happening? now so in all economics johns there's always two things to work about is the trend and the shift the shock right the trend and the shock so the trend has been twofold right is that in the last 50 years all across the western world number one contraception so women being able to control their fertility total game changer because it meant number one that they didn't have to settle down with one guy.

7:38David McWilliams: Yeah. That they could actually be free to have sex with numbers of guys and they could control that part of their lives. When, how, and with whom they were having children. Number one. That's the first one. The second thing is that as women got more educated, their wages started to rise. And as their wages started to rise, for the first time in human history, it was actually possible for a woman to have a child without settling down. Right. To actually bring up a child on her own. to be a single mother out of choice. So these are two complete shifts. The third... But how common was that, though?

8:12David McWilliams: Well, very common. So in Ireland, that went from a very... There was a lot of social stigma about single parenting to actually be more or less the norm these days, right? So again, what you find... And again, the Scandinavian countries were ahead of the game in this particular area. So one thing is, first of all, you can control your own fertility as a woman. Secondly, you've got money in your back pocket. That means the chances of ending up in a bad relationship, marrying the man you had to marry, diminish profoundly. Right. So this should be a complete liberation for women. And this was, through the 70s, 80s, and 90s, this was all regarded as a socially positive thing.

8:50David McWilliams: That's the first thing. First set of trends. The second set of trend is that as women became more educated, and we know that in the last 20 years, the proportion of girls going to university has outstripped the proportion of boys. Yeah. So what you'll find is a changing dynamic within the sexes. Because historically, this is always in the cases that a high-status man could marry down to a lower, to use this really crude thing, status woman. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The question then is that, was it always the case that women wanted to marry up, status-wise? And if that's the case, what happens when you, the woman, have all the status?

9:32David McWilliams: You've the professional job, you've the money, you've got your own flat. If you're trying to marry up, the proportion of men you can marry up to is actually very, very small. So lots of women are saying, well, you know, I couldn't be arsed. Yeah. Settling down. So, for example, even Vogue magazine recently, because you know I'm a... Yes, you're a subscriber. I'm a subscriber. I'm first on their list. But they were talking about lots of women who have this sense of, well, you know what? They were talking about having a boyfriend is almost embarrassing. Having a shit boyfriend, having a lame man is almost embarrassing.

10:06David McWilliams: You'd be much better off to be on your own. Right. Just for a variety of reasons. Singledom amongst women has increased dramatically. Now, what this has also done to men, to young men, it's created this women-hating subset called incels. Yeah. And they are blaming women for the fact that they can't get laid, right? Yeah. And they're saying women are horrible, this, that, and it's leading to this sort of Andrew Tate culture of dominating and violence and hyper-masculinity. Yeah. And then you also have, you know, as we've seen recently in elections in Germany in particular, you have the divergence of political views as well.

10:46Completely. Where men are voting much more right wing and women are much more left wing.

10:52David McWilliams: Much more liberal and much more left wing. And the right wing blokes tend also to be men not in relationships. So they are being fed online a whole host of reasons as to why they can't get a woman. Some of them are because women are now, for example, we want a trad wife. We want a traditional wife. We don't want this woman going out on her own, bossing us around. Charlie Kirk thing. Women should be at home. All that carry on, right? So what you have then is three or four sociological trends which stemmed from a combination of contraception and women in democratic Western countries becoming much more financially, socially, professionally enriched.

11:40David McWilliams: Right? So that's the shift. That's the trend. But something has changed. There's been a shift in this. Right? So that trend was going on through the 90s into the noughties. Dating apps arrive in around 2008, 2009. There wasn't a problem that dating apps were solving. There was no problem with relationships. No one asked for them. Nobody asked. This is a really important point, John. It wasn't that dating apps came in to solve a problem that there was a huge amount of single people who couldn't find each other. Right? Okay? Dating apps came in and they changed the way in which people relate to each other.

12:19David McWilliams: So, for example, you mentioned the idea of men being right wing and girls being left wing. Yeah. Typically, before a dating app, you kind of discovered that about the person you fancied after a few weeks or months. Oh, really? Yeah. You really, you know. Or after a few pints. Or after a few pints. So the process of discovery in a normal relationship takes time. Whereas now online with dating apps, you have a list, box ticking. Are you liberal? Are you six foot two? Do you have blue eyes? Are you solvent? All these sort of things, you know, what are your political views? What music do you like?

12:54David McWilliams: I mean, when we were kids, what music do you like? That was a whole subculture of the relationship. That was the fun of the relationship is finding all this stuff out. Exactly. But if you have a kind of a... If you have an app to tell you. Yeah, a cheat sheet. Exactly, exactly. So also what you're finding. So again, you know, one of these women, mid-30s, said to me, look, the problem, David, is porn and dating apps. So dating apps are allowing men to have non-commitment relationships. Yeah. So you can have casual sex with as many people as you like through Tinder. So why would you be bothered setting down, number one?

13:37David McWilliams: And it's not to say that sex was always kept as a sort of reward for commitment, but women and men see sex differently. They feel sex differently. They experience sex differently. They talk about sex differently. That's the first thing. And the second thing, of course, is porn. So porn has changed profoundly male expectation of what sex is. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like, for example, I was talking to a couple of young women, you know, and you read all these, the incidents of young girls being strangled and all these sort of things. This is all new. This is all this kind of porno. Yeah, there's lots being written about that now.

14:12A lot of research has gone in. And then a lot of, you know, it's become quite the norm to see, you know, ads on Instagram and stuff for sex addiction amongst young people, which is really, really bizarre. Porn addiction and sex addiction.

14:29David McWilliams: All that sort of stuff. So this has changed the whole dynamic. And again, we're kind of blessed having been the generation that existed. All we had was Wesley. Exactly. In slow sense. But also the generation that existed before the smartphone. Yeah. So what the smartphone has done, there wasn't a problem with relationships. It wasn't that the smartphone and dating apps on the smartphone were introduced because there was a problem to solve. They created a problem and they have changed completely the culture of. But isn't that true for a lot of the technology I find of the last, you know, 15 years is that nobody really asked for this stuff.

15:13It was developed because it could be developed. And as you say, it was a solution looking for a problem. Well, Facebook was a dating app.

15:23David McWilliams: Yeah. started by a nerd called Zuckerberg who couldn't get girls on the open market and started this data. So anyway, if you think about the societal and economic effect of these technological changes has been absolutely profound, leading to endemic loneliness, leading to singledom, leading to a sort of, it seems to me, now again, I'm not speaking for a generation, because we're the generation older, but a sort of a barrenness, an emotional barrenness, it seems to have manifested itself in women and men wanting to couple up. Survey after survey revealed that people actually want to be in couples, but they can't be in couples.

16:12David McWilliams: They can't find people. Yeah. And they can't find their mate. They can't find, first of all, they can't find their tribe. And then within their tribe, they can't find their mate because historically, the way in which you met friends, the way in which you met your girlfriend or boyfriend was through friends. That was historically 90 % of people met people through other people, whether it was through work or through gangs or mates or whatever. Now, as of 2015, the majority of people are meeting online. So it's a completely different game that has been played. And the short-term impact of this, John, has been the rise of Singleton.

16:50David McWilliams: the long-term impact is going to be a massive demographic shift there will be much less kids yeah people will be having kids older there will be many more single women in their 30s and 40s because guys who are divorced in their 50s are now skipping a generation and going with women who are in their early 30s this is something we've seen in scandinavia yeah which is a massive shift in Scandinavian demographics. All of this is happening in Ireland, in the UK, all over the Western world. And it is by far and away the biggest cultural shift that we have experienced in our lifetime that has profound effects for the way in which society works.

17:34David McWilliams: I would say, if you look at the listenership of our podcast, it is largely based in late 20s all the way through to early 40s. I would say we are talking to, dear listener, listening, many, many people who are in transient relationships, in online. They haven't settled down. They want to find a person, finding a mate. The word a mate sounds very functional, but it's finding your soulmate. It's finding your people. And it has incredible effects on sociology and economics. But as you say, on politics, it has too. Yeah, yeah. Because young fellows are shifting to the right. Yeah. And they're getting angry.

18:19David McWilliams: And with anger, they're pointing their fingers at, you know. There's always someone else to blame. Exactly. So in order to get into this, John. Yes. We are going to have the fantastic comedian, Aideen McQueen, who was at Kilkenomics. She did a great show on Kilkenomics. She's brilliant. She's absolutely brilliant. And one of the joys of doing Kilkenomics is you meet all sorts and you listen to all sorts of really good economists, but also really good comedians. And it's that great fusion of economics and comedy that makes it absolutely work. So Aideen has a show called Waiting for Texto, which is all about this.

18:55David McWilliams: And the show's done extremely well. And she's going to tour it. It's got four-star reviews in The Fringe, in Edinburgh, and she's going to tour it around Ireland in the next... And the UK, I believe. Yes, in the next month. Yeah. So let's go and talk to Aideen about the rise in singledom. now at kilkenomics this year one comedian really shone and she'd never been before and i was on a panel and ad mcqueen was the host the mc getting the crowd going an extraordinary performance and i said to myself one of the beautiful things about doing kilkenomics is not finding and listening to economists it's finding and listening to comedians you hadn't heard of before.

19:41David McWilliams: But then, of course, I should have heard her before because her show, Waiting for Texto, got a four-star review at the Edinburgh Fringe. Not only is she a comedian, she's a professional musician. She's a former school teacher. She's a Gail Gore. And she's here to chat to us about Singleton. And I am unbelievably excited to talk to Aideen McQueen. Aideen, and she's also from Kilkenny. So it all fuses into one. Aideen, how are you? I'm really well. Gourmina Malgoth, thanks for having me here. I love your podcast. I never thought in a million years I'd be invited on it, but actually this particular niche, yes, I can see why you asked me to do that.

20:22But the funny thing - I'm not going to be talking about quantitative easing, but I will be talking about dating.

20:26David McWilliams: You might get a little, no, but I mean, the funny thing, you talk about a particular niche, but this is actually mainstream. So So what fascinates us is this intersection where economics meets demography, meets people, meets lifestyle, all that sort of stuff. And one of the biggest changes in the last 10 years, and it is quite rapid, starting how rapid it is, is the rise in single dumb amongst men and women in their 30s and 40s. And you're waiting for texto. Not only touches on that, it's all about that. So let's talk about it. it's so I mean singledom now is changed so much like it used to be such a stigma for a woman to be single we used to be called spinsters have you heard that word in a while?

21:12I haven't heard for a long time it sounds like an Italian cheese yeah so women used to be spinsters now women we're child free singletons childness is even gone it's child free they've really rebranded it whereas a man used to be a confirmed bachelor remember that he was a man about town who's confirmed but But that's gone now. The gleam of that has gone for men. And now we call them incels. So there's way more people are single. People, isn't it something like 51 % of women are single now, I think. And a lot of them are happy about it. You know, we're being constantly told to accept ourselves, to love ourselves, and that we're enough on our own, which is a backlash from when I grew up as a teenager in the noughties, where you can remember advertising for women.

22:00It was all be skinny. Eat two bowls of special care a day and you'll lose weight. Shave all your body hair, exercise, take these tablets. You menstruate. We're not going to advertise that. We're going to do weird ads where people put CDs into CD cases and you're going to know that it's about tampons. And everything had to be concealed and full of shame. We don't want you to smell. We don't want you to take up any space. But now women are being told, accept yourselves, love yourself, don't compromise. You're beautiful. You're perfect. Whereas for men, men are going through their own now puberty as a masculinity is going through puberty.

22:37Because men, remember the ads for men in the 90s, even the 80s, 90s and 90s. There was one ad for men. It was Gillette. The best a man can get. That was it. The best a man can get. And all that man had to do, he walked up to the mirror, he did a little shave on his face and a beautiful woman would embrace him from behind. And the message was, you are fantastic, men. Just shave. and everything will fall into place. But now, men, it's changed. Men are getting hair transplants. They're being told they need to intermittent fast. They need to have six figures, a six pack and be six foot. They have to dress well.

23:13John and I do that all the time. But you're right. You are right.

23:17David McWilliams: Yeah, exactly. Look at the state of specimen one and two here in this podcast. But go on. You're absolutely right. You're actually both wearing the only two outfits that men your age are allowed wear. you're wearing a three quarter zip kind of a jumper, David and John is wearing the is it a tablecloth or is it a shirt it's a tablecloth, thanks rugged shirt, yeah check shirt, those are the two uniforms yeah, you're absolutely right and we're quite invisible too yeah, I didn't realise we slotted so easily in the group incels, we're like married incels, like pathetic it's the worst type, lovely But Aiden, I want to get into, look, why do you like, so let's talk about waiting for text.

24:02David McWilliams: Let's talk about the actual, the actuality of the dating scene at the moment, because Mr. Tablecloth and Mr. Zippy Up Hoodie are out of that scene. And I think if we were to go on, if we were to go on Hinge, it might be a bit of a giveaway. Yeah, I think so. I think David McWilliams on Tinder, you know, I swear to God, I swear to God, I'm six foot two and I'm 34. Tell us about tell us about dating dating apps Okay so I myself have actually opted out of the dating apps because I just found it overwhelming and too much and I found it was like selling myself like a prize on a game show you know you have a picture of you with your friends you have a picture of you looking well your gym gear you have your picture of you on holidays in Florence I didn't like it like I've gotten to the stage now where if somebody comes along well and good if they don't I've got a good life I'm happy but a lot of my friends are in the dating apps and they find it they constantly are in a battle of download the app get really frustrated with it find it's taking up too much time start it again it's almost like the Paddy Powerack or something it's all consuming I think expecting to find love on a dating app is like expecting to become rich by going into the bookies like some people do it it does happen you really need to set the odds now I have one friend who was very successful in the apps she was very much single and had a great career and then at about 35 she took to Tinder like she did with the leaving search and she went on it and she swiped and swiped and swiped and swiped and swiped and she overlooked possible compatibility and attraction for the fact that oh this guy could be a good father and she met somebody she married him she's got a great marriage she's got a lovely kid she did it all but she went in strategically and she compromised but a lot of people are finding them really difficult.

25:53And what I noticed when the brief time I was on it is that men, I think, tend to have very high expectations sexually. They're very sexually entitled.

26:04David McWilliams: Yep. And women possibly are entitled emotionally and also entitled materialistically. But men will often straight away steer the conversation into sex, very specific stuff. You know, like, would you do this, this and this? And I'm like, oh my God, buy me a drink first. You know, relax. and you kind of think some of the stuff they want are like do you want to book a night in the hotel or a night in the hospital because I think I'll end up in the second place anyway so I was just put off and then women I think you know they were told you should get the man with six figures he has the six pack and he's six foot 16 % of men are over six foot I think in America the six figures is a bit easier to achieve, but it's only 21%.

26:52And over the age of 35, 0.4 % of men have a six pack. So if you're looking at that man, he's one in 50 ,000.

27:04David McWilliams: What about the slightly overweight middle-aged man with the Ned, with the Paunch, with a few medical conditions? They love that. Yeah, exactly. You can mother us. Keep the medical conditions on the down low. Yeah. The dad bod thing has also got its own appeal because that shows he's not going to run away. His head isn't going to be... Because his hands... He's going to be lucky to have you. Yeah. So there is a woman who love that, that I'd be a fan of the dad bod, as they call it as well. So all of these things have got their names and they're fetishized. And the other thing about the apps is it allows people to...

27:37Fetishize mightn't be the good word, but be super specific. So lots and lots of women are screening men that aren't over six foot, which means a lovely man of five foot 11... doesn't make it. Lost on them. Is this the compromising that your friend, that you were talking about your friend, compromised? Yes. I think she, she sounds terrifying. Well, I wouldn't want to say now, she's definitely listening, but the compromising, I think you do have to compromise. I mean, a woman wants a man who's sexy, sound and solvent, you know, that can make the bed, break the bed and then take the bed onto an open market and rent it out for Airbnb.

28:12We love them. And you rarely get, you rarely get, all three of those things and you have to compromise on something I think the easiest things to compromise on are looks and height definitely is something you should compromise they're all the same when they're lying down and the lights are off except that we have ladders and the lights off is a very Irish thing as well

28:35David McWilliams: I love it turn off all the lights no no blackout lines the whole thing right okay but let's come back to that there is a serious point here there are many serious points here but one of the serious points is that when when we were younger the idea of sexual liberation the idea of being able to control your own fertility you could go on the pill you had contraception that was all sold as this is going to be overwhelmingly positive for women they won't have to hang out useless blokes number one they won't have shitty marriages number two in fact their chances of actually getting a proper bloke who is suited to them are much, much higher.

29:17David McWilliams: That was a very much an 80s sell in Ireland, certainly a 90s sell in Ireland. That doesn't seem to have worked out very well, or at least there are, for the individual that's been great, for individual women that's been brilliant, but collectively things seem to have gone quite wrong there that women don't seem to have actually been the major beneficiaries from the sexual revolution. Fellows seem to have been. Well, I'll tell you, certain fellows, the good looking playboy who can charm you has done very well and he can sleep with lots of women by meeting them in the apps. Then these women get very attached because the pill is great in many ways, but it's made sex very cheap.

30:00And the expectation is on women that they should give up sex very early. and then unfortunately you know scientifically women bond men through sex through oxytocin and even if you have sex with somebody that you're not that interested in you might find yourself really liking them but the man on the other hand is like oh that that now onto the next thing so you have this gap and you have these women pining after these mediocre men and you have things now

30:26David McWilliams: called situationships have you heard of this david no go on give us so it's not a relationship Okay. It's not just a one-night stand. I love the way that you're turning into the school teacher when you talk to me like this. I'm actually in national school now. I'm in sixth class and it's a Mo Canilock and you're saying, now, David McWilliams, right? Try again. So tell me, a situation. Now dahi. Now dahi. She's a station. Yes. So it's not a, you see, it's kind of in between a relationship and maybe just a one-night stand. You're meeting this person. you might have this casual sex. But it definitely makes women absolutely anxious.

31:07They don't know where they stand. Women don't really like to go with the flow. We say that we like to go with the flow, but we want to know where the flow is going to go and from what time. And men are the beneficiaries of this now. I don't mean to be man bashing. I don't believe that there is this patriarchy that's trying to keep everybody down. I believe that certain people have power for sure. And it tends to be good looking men with a fairly good job that have a good personality that can really benefit from the apps. But I think more ordinary men don't benefit and most women don't really benefit from them either because women are left with these unsatisfactory situationships, you know, ghosted.

31:44All of these things happen to them.

31:46David McWilliams: Well, let's look at that because, you know, the other thing is that, you know, another promise was that, you know, as women got much more educated, became richer, that basically having to be in a couple became much less essential, right? So the whole history of humanity, whether we like it or not, is kind of people coupling up because women had to do it and men kind of had to do it, and that was it. And now we have a situation where women don't have to be in a couple. They can have a kid on their own. They have enough money. Maybe for the first time in humanity, most women in the West can actually have a child and raise the child themselves financially.

32:21David McWilliams: But this has also led to something, which is that as women got more educated, men got relatively less educated. More girls are going to university now than blokes, et cetera. So you have this sort of bunch of men who for women are kind of like trading down. If you're a smart, educated, financially secure woman, the chances of you meeting the similar bloke are actually diminished by situationships, et cetera, what you're talking about. So then you've got to choose, well, do I go socially downward? And then that changes things as well. Yeah, that is something that women have to decide. Do I compromise?

32:58Do I go for somebody who earns less money than me and or who is less educated than me? And of course, women are a lot more educated now. Apparently, it does cause problems in relationships. A man would be kind of bitter or unconsciously bitter when a woman is more successful than him. I was listening to Joanne McNally talk about this today. She said since she got famous, it's the biggest cop block she's ever had. And men will literally tell her, I can't handle you. Can't handle their success. you're making me feel bad yeah yeah so a woman just as a woman where I remember being with a guy and we went on a trip and he I was had my one little bag and he had a check-in bag for his bottle of mousse and his bottle of hair and we had to wait for his but can you imagine either of you even having mousse and I just remember thinking I'm never going to be with this guy again that's is too feminine.

33:48Similarly, men get the ick when they see a woman in a very masculine role, such as stand-up comedy, for instance. And I have to just accept that, that that's the way it is. So yeah, there is this gap between men and women, kind of the Laurence Olivier, Vivian Leigh effect, you know, when she became very famous in the movies and he just wasn't quite there, he became resentful of her. But we have to then be cognizant of that and say, okay, we have to accept it. Now, apparently it's not as prevalent in the younger generations. And I do think, because I hang around with a lot of like 25-year-old boys because of my job.

34:20David McWilliams: Because of my job? Yeah, you know, yes, because of my job, David, because I have way more 23-year-old male friends than most women would. They don't see it in that way. I think they have different views of how a relationship should be. So this isn't maybe not be a problem in the future term, but at the moment it can be for a woman. she's highly successful she also wants a highly successful man a man isn't that bothered if a woman is really successful if she's hot and she works in Centra he'll be happy Hot and work in Centra John there you go that's the other thing no it's funny you mention that I remember reading a biography of Edna O 'Brien and when she wrote Country Girls she was married to a very difficult man who really fancied himself as a novelist and was obviously quite talented but not half as talented as Edna was and she wrote Country Girls in between doing school runs, looking after two kids late at night while your man was swanying around thinking he was going to be James Joyce Mark II.

35:23David McWilliams: She gave him the manuscript of Country Girls, which was an outstanding book. We all know that. And he just looked at her and he said, I will never forgive you. That was his response. Really? That was his response, which is, you know, that's your point about, you know the overachieving alpha male being absolutely threatened by a clever woman in the relationship and this is something that women have to deal with for years and years and years and now with the inverse of that women don't have to deal with it but then of course you have the very obvious thing of loneliness of singledom of when you look at all the survey data most people who are single say we would prefer to be in relationships.

36:08David McWilliams: Actually, when you look at this, yes, I'm happy here and life is good and my career is going well, this, that, the other. But actual fact, I prefer to be in a relationship. And of course, what we're talking about is loneliness, is the fact that you don't have that sort of bedfellow, you don't have that companion or the friendship. How do you think, I mean, do you think that one of the reasons that, you know, waiting for Texto was so successful, Aideen, is because it's actually hitting something very raw in society. Yeah. A lot of women message me and come up to me afterwards and say, I can really relate to that.

36:42I got a lot out of it. I don't want to give out way too much of what happens in the show. No, don't, because we're going to be advertising it. Conclusions come out. Yes, exactly. Yeah, we all have to come to terms with the fact, you know, do you want to be in a relationship? A relationship involves compromise. Or do you want to be on your own? And on your own involves not so much compromise, but adjustment. Do you want to be a tiny bit lonely as a single person or a tiny bit angry for the rest of your life? This is prized mostly to women who seem to be constantly frustrated by their husbands. You know, they're always a tiny little bit angry.

37:20Just do you want to watch the film on your own? Or do you want to watch the film, look at your husband and find he's laughing at all the wrong places and he's talking with his popcorn in his mouth so we all have to come to terms with that and I think if you want to have a child you really have to be strategic find somebody that you think is a good person they might not fit all your bills or tick all the boxes or be your dream man but and grow with them but if you don't necessarily need to have a child, then just work on yourself, work on your hobbies, follow your passions, you know, make sure you have a really good circle of friends, that you're involved in the community in some way, you know, whether it be, I don't know, volunteering for Samaritans or doing work with groups, you know, have these things that are really important.

38:09And the thing about it is women are much better at that. You know, women's emotional EQs tend to be higher. So women, they don't have as much loneliness. You can just pick up the phone to another woman, it's not weird. But I think a lot of men, if they rang their friend,

38:23David McWilliams: the friend would be like, who did you kill? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Did leads win today? You know, these are very important questions. But can I just ask you a serious thing? Every woman I talk to about this says, one of the major culprits here is, and I'm talking to my own daughter and her mates, they're younger, they're in their 20s, they say porn has changed everything. I think it has. And thankfully, I'm just a little bit old, that very heavy use of the phone. And but I can only imagine the distraction. I have a friend who's a pharmacist and she was talking about Viagra. And I assumed Viagra was for older gentlemen.

39:03She said the most popular Viagra customers, biggest demographic for it are lads in their early 20s. they've seen so much pornography I mean they have these VR yes these VR headsets and they can't actually make love to a woman of their own age or a normal woman so I mean think of the men a hundred years ago they might have seen one naked woman in their life maybe their sister as well and then maybe like a dirty picture or something like that yeah page three in the song now there's so many images you're talking about John and I yeah page three a hundred years ago

39:34David McWilliams: no we're talking about 200 years ago no but like we're children of the 1970s we lived in Ireland where the one, you know, pornography was banned. I mean, the funniest thing is, I don't think, I probably saw one or two porn mags in my life as a teenager. Yeah. And these were like 15th hand porn mags, right? You know, I mean, it's - They're brought back from a school trip. They're brought back from a school trip in England. And everyone's watching the movie. But my point is, my point is, you know, porn has changed. You talked about, you were joking about, do I go to bed or do I go to hospital, right?

40:02David McWilliams: You were talking about this thing. But my point is, it's changed expectations sexually. It's changed the availability. it's changed what men think about sex what they think that girls seem to enjoy in sex and it's completely destroyed the intimacy of what you were saying of having sex you were saying like you know if you sex with somebody you don't even fancy them you do have a connection with them and it changes the dynamic and I suppose the role of sex has completely changed sex is purely recreational now and it's not taken seriously at all by men and by women and this has skewed us and men can do gaming as well it plays into this because all that video gaming has gone up so much and that's a pseudo career for a man if he's doing well in Call of Duty and then porn is a pseudo relationship.

40:46So you've got all your needs taken care of in your mother's basement. But it'll be very interesting to see and I'm sure that porn addiction is on the increase. I'm sure that there is probably 12 step groups that are catering to it. But in the meantime it's going to be strange. It's interesting times we're living in for sure. and I do think porn is dangerous. A few of my male friends have said to me they've given it up because it had affected them so badly and fair play to them for recognising that. So my advice get rid of those things get rid of that from your I think it'll make your life better but it is an addiction you might need to get help for it.

41:20David McWilliams: Now Aideen first of all Waiting for Texto is going on tour. So this is the news right and you're kicking off the 7th of February in Cork 12th of February in Bure around Valentine's Day you're in Leicester in the UK That's correct 13th and 14th yes give me the dates where can people buy tickets yeah Kilkenny the 28th then I'm April the 3rd in Galway May the 3rd in Whelan's in Dublin and then the Limelight in Belfast on the 8th of May and I'm also part of Brighton Comedy Festival so if you're in Brighton please check it out you can go to my website adinemcqueen.com or you can go to Instagram there's a link in the bio there if you just google adinemcqueen waiting for texto you'll find it I'm very accessible just send me a DM on Instagram I'd answer all my DMs but nothing nothing point of ground if I were you I'm a neocon I'm a neoconservative yeah you put the days up on Tinder yeah yeah yeah the last thing you say is to the audience of the Dave McWilliams just hit me up on Insta and say whatever you want I'll respond to everything but no we're definitely going to go we're going to go we John and I are going to go to the Bray Comedy Festival that's great I'm delighted see you on the 12th of February up the road here fantastic I absolutely love that I'm delighted I like it.

42:35David McWilliams: Wonderful stuff. That'll be great. Thank you so much, David. That's no, Aidan, that was fantastic. Thanks so much for talking to us. And again, it's adiamcqueen.com. The show, we're talking a four-star review in The Scotsman now. Believe it, I know lots and lots of comedians who have bombed at Edinburgh. So this is amazing. You rarely get reviews like that. It's good. I got a good few four-star and four-and-a-half-star reviews, but The Scotsman is the one that has the most clout because that's the gold standard in Edinburgh. And I didn't even think they'd come to the show. So, you know, it was on in the middle of the day.

43:05So I was delighted that they did. Yeah, it was great and a really lovely review.

43:09David McWilliams: So that's AideenMcQueen.com. And Aideen, I will see you at the gig and then we will definitely see you at Kilconomics. It'll be wonderful. Brilliant. Yes. Thanks, Aideen. Thank you so much, guys. Lovely to meet you, John.

43:32Sadly, not on holiday.

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44:48Yeah, Mike, I'd look forward to that show, Bray. Definitely. Yeah, yeah. We're definitely going to go. Definitely going to go. But come here, like something that you've always said is demographics is destiny.

44:59David McWilliams: Yes. And when you look at demographics through this lens, it throws up a whole load of issues. And I wonder, are they being taken seriously by the powers that be? And, you know, I'm thinking of housing in particular, because, yeah, we have a huge need for housing. but also we have a need for a different kind of housing as well one of the biggest factors in housing demand john and maybe we'll end here because people have views on you know you and i talk about relationships it's not really where this podcast usually right yes i'm not too sure we're very well qualified to sit here maybe we're just opening you channel relationship counsellors with john and david so but what i want to talk to about So just take, for example, housing.

45:48David McWilliams: One of the biggest impacts on the demand for housing is what we call family size. So, for example, there is a reason that Ireland is full of three-bed, semi-attached houses, because three-bed, semi-attached houses on estates fill the need for the family with their mother and father, three or four kids, right? So that was usually a bunk bed in one of the rooms, right? Now, that was the case when five or six Irish people lived in one house, which pertained through the 70s into the 80s, just went to the 90s and then fell off. Now, because of singledom, we are having an explosion in the amount of people who are living on their own.

46:33David McWilliams: So we no longer need three-bedroom semi-attached houses where people can buddy up together when they don't want to in their 40s. what we need is an explosion in one-bedroom apartments. And one-bedroom apartments are still, believe it or not, being frowned on by planners. Because when planners look at department developments, what they see is, oh, but there's no apartments for the family of four. That's because there ain't the families of four there anymore. I can understand that they want to create mixed communities. They don't want atomized, single communities. But I would just give you a vision of the future, John.

47:13David McWilliams: Go on. Old people's homes, old people's communities, right, are all tailored for the fact that men die in their 70s and 80s, and women do not. As a general rule, they live longer. So trading down, living in communities where you're on your own, but you have other old people around you for companionship, right? That was always perceived as something that societies like Ireland and Britain and America should deal with to deal with the aging process. We're also going to have single unitary communities of people in their 30s and 40s. Yeah. And this is a massive change. So the idea that you would have communities built for people who are on their own was always something we assumed was going to be built for older people.

48:05David McWilliams: But now we're going to have these communities for younger people because they're childless. Some of them are celibate. Many of them are celibate. I mean, the extraordinary thing is that people are having much less sex now than we did 20 years ago and 30 years ago. So they're childless. They're celibate. Those communities are becoming atomized and atomized in the sense that there are people living on their own in their own little world. on their apps, looking at Netflix, couldn't be bothered. I mean, going out socializing is difficult. It's hard. It's much easier to say, you know what? I couldn't be arsed.

48:46David McWilliams: I'll watch porn and Netflix. Right? Because why would I, as a man, run the risk of being refused by a woman, being humiliated, being degraded, being talked down to because she didn't fancy me? You know I couldn't be bothered doing that. And very, very quickly, but very, very distinctly, you get an atomized society of people who in our generation were in families with kids and in our kids' generation are going to be single in their 30s, 40s, and then into their 50s. And then, of course, it becomes more difficult because you become more set in your ways, needs to become more. But also old age care becomes a huge issue because if you were an old married couple, you kind of look after each other as much as you can.

49:34Yeah. And, or if you had kids, the kids will help with the old age care. If you're an old woman or an old man. On your Todd. On your Todd, you are very much on your Todd. Or relying on the state, which is an added pressure on the state.

49:52David McWilliams: And I think we're going to see that, John. Yeah. we're going to see so for example all of our tax system has been biased towards families because families were the predominant social unit in the 1950s 60s and 70s and our tax system has inherited that bias and rewarded that that means that our tax system is penalizing hundreds of thousands of people who are choosing to be single yeah and you're going to see a massive singlehood movement in politics to reverse and to change the tax system, to reward being single, which will reinforce these trends which have been shifted by social media, the apps, and porn.

50:39So when you look at this little thing we have in our pocket, the smartphone, you realize

50:45David McWilliams: that this has been the agent of substantial change. But we leave it here. Not all that change has been positive. In fact, lots of it has been socially very, very negative. Why? Because it elevates the individual over the collective. And it's the collective is what makes communities. And communities start with people making bonds. And bonds start with people getting to know each other face to face. And if you lose that, you lose a hell of a lot.

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