After the Spike Audiobook By Dean Spears, Michael Geruso cover art

After the Spike

The Risks of Global Depopulation and the Case for People

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After the Spike

By: Dean Spears, Michael Geruso
Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
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Brought to you by Penguin.

An eye-opening exploration of humanity’s unprecedented path to global depopulation and why it's in everyone's interests to prevent it

IIf we continue as we are, with birth rates falling globally, the world’s human population will peak in the next few decades – and then begin a sudden and rapid decline. It would be easy to think that fewer people would be better: better for the planet, better for the people who remain. In After the Spike, two leading population economists ask us to think again.

Carefully weighing the evidence and the many claims that surround this controversial subject, Dean Spears and Mike Geruso explain why depopulation is not the solution we urgently need for the climate crisis, nor will it improve lives. Far more likely is that the progress which has raised living standards so dramatically over the last two centuries will slow or even reverse. As humanity’s future shrinks, it will become more fragile and less certain, and harder for us to escape from global poverty, disease and injustice.

Halting this decline and stabilising the population need not mean sacrificing a greener future or reverting to past gender inequities. In fact, they argue, it can only be achieved with women’s reproductive rights and individual choice as driving forces. But if we want future generations to enjoy lives even better than our own, it’s time to take seriously society’s collective task of lifting the burdens of parents and other carers.

Deeply reasoned and uncompromisingly humane, After the Spike sheds important light on a dramatic shift in the human story and asks us to consider what future we should want for our planet, our children, and one another.

© Dean Spears and Michael Geruso 2025 (P) Simon and Schuster LLC 2025

 Economics Globalization International Relations Politics & Government

Critic reviews

Persuasive ... After the Spike knocks down assumptions like skittles … Creating a good life, whether that's finding cures for disease or ways to reverse environmental damage, relies on the ideas, work and progress produced by large, interconnected societies … If there's one thing After the Spike leaves us with, it's the impulse to back ourselves
If you think that the world’s population isn’t going to fall, or that it will be easy to halt its fall, or that a falling population is a good thing, you really should read it
We should welcome After the Spike. It is a brisk and accessible outline of the basic facts of the demographic precipice on the edge of which mankind currently stands
After the Spike provides a clear and comprehensively argued overview of why birth rates are so low, and why most government interventions have failed to raise them
A punchy read
With stunning clarity, Spears and Geruso show why our assumptions about population, progress and prosperity are leading us astray. If you want to understand where humanity is going, and why that matters, this book is essential reading (Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive)
Fascinating, thoughtful and timely. In ten years, everyone will be talking about global demographic decline and what to do about it (Simon Johnson, Nobel Laureate in Economics)
Spears and Geruso take us by the hand to understand the most dramatic period of human history – and what could happen next. The insights and rigour – which come thick and fast – are matched by human and empathetic narrative throughout (Hannah Ritchie, author of Not the End of the World)
Spears and Geruso meticulously take apart all the myths and confusion surrounding the incoming demographic changes for our species. I had my mind blown over and over and over (Zach Weinersmith, co-author of A City on Mars)
A remarkable blend of empirical research and philosophical argument that has challenged, and changed, my thinking about population (Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation)
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