In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins explore the sharp rise in Black women’s unemployment in 2025, the backlash against DEI initiatives, and why efforts to elevate specific groups as “minions” of dominant cultural powers often backfire—leaving the broader group to face the consequences.

They discuss OkCupid dating data showing Black women receive fewer responses than even many incel-labeled groups, cultural tropes and archetypes available to Black women, historical patterns of favored minorities (Tutsi in Rwanda, Protestants under Cromwell, etc.), and the personal essay by Sesali Bowen (”Black Women Aren’t Just Unemployed, They’re Being Erased”).

The conversation covers financial habits, work ethic signals, shifts from “Black Girl Magic” to post-DEI realities, AI automation, government job cuts, and why merit-based systems might ultimately benefit everyone—including those previously disadvantaged by tokenization.

Provocative, data-driven, and unfiltered—watch for a deep dive into how “well-intentioned” favoritism can intensify backlash and what this means for cultural resilience and family formation.

Would you like to know more? 👀

Show Notes

* If I were a black woman in America, I’d be going off the grid

* Right off the bat, black women have the cards stacked against them the worst in dating markets

* And now, whether or not they ever bought into it, black women may have the cards stacked against them

* Here are some choice stats from an article I came across covering this:

* “In December 2025, “Black women were spending an average of 29.7 weeks, or more than seven months, unemployed—the highest rate among every group of women and among all men except for Black men, who had a slightly higher average,” The 19th* reports.”

* “At the height of the summer volatility, Black women accounted for 54.7% of all female job losses, despite making up only 14.1% of the female workforce,” according to an analysis by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

* What’s sick is that the racket that caused the backlash which may be hurting a lot of black women was due to special treatment that was largely exploited by a small subset of already-privileged women

* We’ll go through the experienced of one of those privileged women

* And look at examples of other instances in which well-intentioned efforts to help specific groups have backfired

One Women’s Experience of Lost Privilege

The Purse published a guest essay from Sesali Bowen titled Black women aren’t just unemployed—they’re being erased.

Choice quotes:

THE LANDSCAPE

* “Since last fall, general unemployment rates in the U.S. have ticked up to 4.4%, from 4% at the start of 2025. At the same time, the jobless rate for Black women has surged, from 5.4% in January 2025 to a high of 7.5% last September. Economist Katicia Roy estimates that “since 2020, the real unemployment rate for Black women is 10.23%.”

* “There have been several factors linked to this disproportionate destabilization. The huge AI push, which is automating jobs that humans were once paid to do, is one. Last year’s mass cut of government jobs—where Black women are represented at twice the rate as in the private sector—and the abrupt elimination of DEI programs under the current Trump administration are notable others. As one of those Black women sidelined from the job market, this crisis feels personal.”

* Why are black women represented in government jobs at twice the rate as in the private sector?

* Data from federal EEO reports and labor researchers show that Black women are roughly twice their share of the overall labor force in federal and broader public-sector employment—about 11–12% of the federal workforce versus roughly 6–7% of the civilian labor force—while their share in the private sector roughly tracks their population share.

* Public agencies can adopt affirmative action or “affirmative employment” plans, but these must be formal, justified programs aimed at correcting documented underrepresentation, not ad hoc preferences.

* Under federal guidance, race can sometimes be one factor among many in recruitment and outreach, or in limited remedial contexts, but blanket quotas or automatic preference for minority applicants are not permitted under Title VII.

* Title VII of the Civil Rights Act makes it illegal for any employer, including government, to make hiring decisions based on race, whether that is discrimination against or for a particular racial group.

HER PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

* “I’ve been self-employed since October 2019, when I was laid off as senior entertainment editor at NYLON following an acquisition and rebrand. I got lucky and sold my first book just months later—a collection of essays about Black feminism at the intersection of hip-hop, culture, and class. I spent the next year living on my advance and a few freelance commissions, and once my manuscript was done, I pivoted to copywriting.”

* Her book: Bad Fat Black Girl: Notes from a Trap Feminist

* 351 reviews

* “Bad Fat Black Girl offers a new, inclusive feminism for the modern world. Weaving together searing personal essay and cultural commentary, Bowen interrogates sexism, fatphobia, and capitalism all within the context of race and hip-hop. In the process, she continues a Black feminist legacy of unmatched sheer determination and creative resilience.”

* “The opportunity to transfer my writing skills to branding and creative strategy was afforded to me on the heels of 2020’s racial justice reckoning. Widespread reminders that Black Lives Matter forced white people to confront their own biases about people of color and actively move past them to be better allies. When it came to Black women, specifically, this was easy to do because we were in the final years of the #BlackGirlMagic era. Spanning the 2010s to early 2020s, this period amplified how important Black women are to American culture. The general sentiment during this era was to trust Black women, as we were venerated for our expertise on politics, education, beauty, entertainment, and so much more.”

* What was #blackgirlmagic?

* #BlackGirlMagic was a phrase and hashtag used to celebrate the beauty, strength, creativity, and achievements of Black women and girls, especially in the face of racism and sexism.

* The phrase began as “Black girls are magic,” coined by CaShawn Thompson around 2013 and quickly shortened to the hashtag #BlackGirlMagic on social media.

* “During this time, about 30% of my revenue came from speaking and book engagements at universities and conferences. The rest consisted of freelance copywriting and brand strategy for different agencies and clients. I was the quintessential “multi-hyphenate,” and I started bringing in six figures annually. I self-funded my podcast (about female rap, of course) for an entire season. I started working on my debut novel, and I paid off a good chunk of credit card debt.”

WHEN THE TABLES TURN

* “Following Trump’s 2025 inauguration and the string of executive orders that followed, I felt a shift almost immediately. Many of the institutions that are most likely to support my work fall under Trump’s DEI umbrella. With his executive order dismantling federal funding for these initiatives, the organizations and academic departments that would have hosted me are now trying to remain compliant. My bookings have slowed to a near stop.”

* “These limiting policies coincided with the great AI boom. While I was used to lulls as a freelance creative strategist and copywriter, I only worked on two projects last year, when I’m normally on six to 10. And while my career began as an entertainment journalist and culture critic, the continued deterioration of traditional media has also made this path unsustainable. So without any other viable options, I decided in late 2025 to start actively applying for full-time jobs.”

* “I was surprised at how little traction I gained. Over six months I submitted dozens of applications that didn’t even land me interviews, even when I had an employee referral. The rejections led to a full-on existential crisis and forced me to ask myself some tough questions. Was I not using the right language to translate my skills? Does a multi-hyphenate muddy the waters when there are hundreds of applicants for a role? Did the author part of my career with the very Google-able online presence make me a red flag for behind-the-scenes roles that I could easily do in my sleep? Or was it the contents of said work?”

* She is implying she submitted “dozens” of resumes, which means fewer than 200 (otherwise she would have written “hundreds”

* If you’re doing a serious job search, it’s a full-time job

* You should be submitting a minimum of 10 resumes/day, and that’s assuming it’s for one of those tedious corporate applications where you have to enter tons of custom information and it takes ages or you’re preemptively developing solutions for companies and then pitching to them

* So she would have submitted at least 200 resumes in her first month (assuming she took weekends off), and yet she couldn’t do that in even six months

* Not a good sign of employability / work ethic

* There are also AI services that automate this for you

THE CULTURAL TOLL OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION OR SPECIAL STATUS

* “Many people, regardless of race and gender, have been impacted by the aforementioned shifts in technology, industries, and presidents. But what has also shifted is the narrative about Black women. On Instagram, sociologist and New York Times columnist Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom called this trend “the Great Retaliation against Black women in public life.”

* This made me wonder about whether there were other instances in history in which once-privileged groups (be they privileged via affirmative action, some form of protected status, etc.) were eventually hit with backlash and/or retaliation such that they might have been better without the artificially privileged status in the first place.

* See below

* Most painfully, she does not seem to recognize what she was participating in: “We are no longer heralded as the virtuosos of American culture. In fact, the values that earned us such visibility in previous years—equality, progress, justice, democracy—are now threats to a regime set on dominance and a revitalization of white supremacy and patriarchy. It’s not far-fetched to assume that a Black feminist thinker isn’t an ideal job candidate. I may even be a liability for any institution looking to stay in line with this new status quo.”

When Helping Specific Groups Actually Herts Them

The typical pattern:

* A state or empire confers selective advantage (education, jobs, tax status, legal carve‑outs) on one group.

* The advantaged group becomes symbolically associated with the resented regime or policy.

* When power shifts, the previously favored group is framed as illegitimate beneficiaries and sometimes as traitors or foreign interlopers.

Backlash ranges from loss of status and exclusion to organized violence, and in some instances the net effect is plausibly worse than what that group would have faced had no special privileges marked them out in the first place.

Religious / Ideological favoritism

Puritans and other Protestants in England after the Protectorate

Under Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate, Puritan and other “godly” Protestants enjoyed political and cultural ascendancy, while Anglicans and Catholics were constrained. With the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, many of these previously privileged Protestants lost power and faced legal and social reprisals, a dynamic often cited in discussions of how a phase of religious favoritism can trigger later reaction once the balance of power flips.

White Christian segregationist institutions in the US

For decades, white Christian schools and universities in the US South benefited from informal state favoritism and de facto protection for racially discriminatory policies. When federal civil‑rights enforcement eventually removed tax exemptions (as in the Bob Jones University case) and other privileges, the resulting backlash helped catalyze the modern religious right, whose leaders framed themselves as persecuted victims of an anti‑religious state, even though they had previously benefited from state‑tolerated discrimination.

European‑allied minorities in other colonies (general pattern)

Colonial powers frequently empowered particular ethnic or religious groups (as soldiers, clerks, or intermediaries), which then became lightning rods for hostility after independence. Research on “ethnic empowering policies” finds that groups colonially favored in bureaucratic roles are often politically excluded once a different group captures the post‑colonial state, suggesting that the temporary advantage can turn into long‑run vulnerability.

* One could argue that black women were a minority that was urban monoculture allied, acting as its agent, and now that the urban monoculture is experiencing backlash, they’re the lightening rod

Tutsi in Rwanda under Belgian rule

Belgian colonial authorities racialized and elevated the Tutsi minority as “superior,” reserving most education and administrative posts for them, and using Tutsi chiefs to enforce forced labor on the Hutu majority. After the late‑1950s independence struggle and the 1959–62 “social revolution,” Hutu elites seized power, carried out massacres, imposed systematic discrimination, and drove hundreds of thousands of Tutsi into exile, laying the groundwork for the 1994 genocide. This is a stark case where an externally created privileged status intensified later backlash far beyond what would likely have occurred absent that colonial favoritism.

Syria – Alawites under and after the French Mandate

During the French Mandate, minority communities (including Alawites) were heavily recruited into colonial military units, giving them status and a pathway into coercive institutions relative to many Sunni Arabs. In the post‑independence era, segments of these same minorities—now embedded in the army and security services—became associated with regime power, and have faced intense, identity‑coded backlash during episodes of revolt and civil war, illustrating how initial preferential recruitment can later mark a group as a legitimate target for revenge when regimes are contested.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] what’s fascinating is as soon as people realized, well, this is unfair ‘cause only black women have access to it, why don’t we just make trans people our community of power? They abandoned black women.

Simone Collins: But I have this great essay that I came across by one of the black women who was one of the few very elite beneficiaries of DEI, who’s now very angry about the beginning of the end.

Malcolm Collins: Simon, she, she actually said something that. Validated what I said going into this no. She said no, I paid off a large amount of my credit card debt. . What she is saying is that she, one didn’t pay off all of her credit card debt, which is pretty astonishing to have so much credit card debt that during a period of your life where you are having a financial windfall, you cannot even pay it all off.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Hello Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because, oh my gosh. And just, I’ve decided that basically if I [00:01:00] were a black woman in America, or if like one of our daughters just was a black woman in America, I’d basically be saying like, go off the grade girl. Like it’s, it’s over. Just, I, I don’t know what to do.

‘cause we’ve already talked so much about like how the dating cards are stacked against them. Like if we’re just playing like a video game of, but based on reality style, stats.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: What do you wanna do if it’s a dating game is to be a black woman like anyone, but be a black woman.

And now,

Malcolm Collins: oh, black women are blurred on the dating market and the OkCupid stats.

They like, they’re one of the only ethnic matchups black women where their own race doesn’t even have a preference for them.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Pre has a preference against Yeah. It’s like just no one. So I mean, like, so, so yeah, like go live by yourself off the grid. Because now

Malcolm Collins: also, oh, you know how bad it is to be a black woman Yeah.

On online dating. Yeah. You, you literally from the OkCupid statistics guys who are like mad in sell whatevers.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Black women actually have a lower chance of [00:02:00] having somebody reply to them than white men do.

Simone Collins: I know, I know.

Malcolm Collins: Keep that in mind. That’s how bad it’s

Simone Collins: wait minute, wait a minute. Yeah. No, because like, white men, you think it couldn’t be worse?

Oh, it can be. Oh, it can be. You think you have it bad. You’re a white dude watching this show. You don’t even know. And, and now whether they, which is really frustrating whether or not they bought in to like all the sort of DEI stuff that had recently helped many black women in America. It looks like maybe the cards are stacked against them in the job market too.

And that sucks. Here’s some choice stats from an article I came across covering this. In December, 2025, black women were spending an average of 29.7 weeks or more than seven months unemployed. The highest rate among every group of women, and among all men, except black men who had a slightly higher average than 19th reports.

And then at the height of the summer volatility, black women accounted for 54 point. 7% of all female job losses despite making up only [00:03:00] 14.1% of the female workforce according to analysis by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. And and what’s sick is that the racket that caused the backlash may be hurting a lot of black women due to special treatment that was largely exploited by only a very, very small portion of already privileged black women.

I. So what I’d like to do in this episode is go through the experience of one of these privileged women who has gone through sort of the DEI Renaissance and who very clearly financially benefited from it. And then now is experiencing the fallout as there has been backlash against it. And then I wanna look at examples of other instances in which presumably well intentioned though we’ll see.

It’s not really efforts to help specific groups have backfired, ultimately hurting them. Mm-hmm. And I think really the punchline of this [00:04:00] is what you actually see when you look at other or previous, like favoritism or affirmative action programs. They were never actually meant to help underprivileged groups.

And this is super interesting. I didn’t really put this all together until I just started doing research for this episode, but really what it is, is a dominant power. Be it like a regime or colonial power chooses a specific minority group to basically be its minions and execute its prerogative and then win that colonial part.

Power like either loses some footing or there’s a regime change. That group of minions that they had empowered disproportionately to do their bidding gets major backlash.

Malcolm Collins: And we see this with Jews a lot.

Simone Collins: You see this with Jews. You see this, I’m gonna give examples from Rwanda. I’m gonna give examples from Protestants in England.

I, so I, I, what I’m pointing out though is what we don’t realize [00:05:00] is that black women in this, in this instance, were the minions of the latest colonial power. We literally call the, the progress pride flag, the colonizer’s flag of the urban monoculture, how

Malcolm Collins: Fascinat point,

Simone Collins: the urban monoculture had appointed black women as their minority group minions to execute their bidding and had installed them system systematic position to power.

Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, and, and what’s fascinating is as soon as people realized, well, this is unfair ‘cause only black women have access to it, why don’t we just make trans people our community of power? They abandoned black women.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And, and, and well, and then since there’s been at least a partial regime change, both of those groups have seen a major falling out.

And what’s. What sucks, if you, like, let’s say you’re, you’re a Tootsie in Rwanda or you’re, you know, some other group that has been given disproportionate power by the regime in charge or by a, [00:06:00] a foreign colonist, right? That foreign group or the regime that’s in power, like they’re sitting high, right?

They’re above the fray, right. They’re, they’re fine. Like, okay, we, we’ll go, we’ll, we’ll go with toot season in Rwanda. And, and, and for context, I’ll, I’ll just jump forward to like this example of what, of what happened because I think not that many people are familiar with Rwanda genocide ‘cause it’s kind of depressing. Belgian colonial authorities radicalized and elevated the Tootsie minority as superior reserving most education and administrative posts for them. And then using Tootsie Chiefs to enforce. Basically it forced labor on the WHO to majority. And then after the late 1950s there was an independent struggle.

And in the 1959 to 62 social revolution, who to elites seized power, carried out, massacres, imposed systematic discrimination, and drove hundreds of thousands of Tootsie into exile. And that laid the groundwork for subsequent 1994 genocide. So the tootsies went from being like given all this privilege [00:07:00] and extra education and kind of given the power to like anchor a lot of people.

And then in the end they got genocided. And it’s just a really good, it’s one of the more extreme and stark cases where a very externally created privileged status than intensified into backlash. That was really violent. But this whole time. The Belgians are fine. Right. And it’s not like all tootsies were like they actively choosing to participate to participate in this.

Right. You know, this is over multi-generation, like in 1994 is when the genocide took place and a lot of this stuff was happening in the early fifties. So like kids of people who had like no participation in this are getting caught up in it. And that’s what really sucks about this, you know, favoritism.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Is like a very small minority of, of the, of the, of the, the minions, we’ll say the colonial minions gets to benefit from the favoritism, the DEI, the affirmative action, the whatever it’s right. And then everyone else in their group pays. [00:08:00] A very big price, typically dis I would say, a disproportionate price.

And I just didn’t realize until today that that is probably happening to black women. But I have this great short little essay that I came across just a little, a little treasure by one of the, one of the black women who I would say was one of the few very elite beneficiaries of DEI, who’s now very angry about the beginning of the end.

And so what, what happened basically was the purse, which is a, a sort of financial management economics focused substack, published a guest essay, a guest essay from Ali Bowen which is titled Black Women. Aren’t just unemployed, they’re being erased. And I’m gonna share some choice quotes from the article.

If you’re,

Malcolm Collins: I wanna go into a few other challenges that black women have in regards to this stuff.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: One is, one is cultural. Yeah. And the other [00:09:00] is what’s the word I’m, I’m looking for? So one is called Oh yes. The other is in terms of

Simone Collins: like, the fact that immigrants are so much better off than like in descendants of slaves.

Malcolm Collins: Well, black women who grew up in the United States. You typically, when you’re sort of building your personality, as we talk about, you have a sort of theory of mind that’s constantly running in the background and determines what you think about things. So what I mean by that is you experience some environmental stimuli, you experience some thought, and you’re trying to decide what emotion you have in response to that.

What you do is you say you, you, there’s a part of your brain, your, your consciousness that references this theory of mind that’s running and is asking, what does somebody like me feel about this? Because you can feel different things that we tell this, like Adam’s family theory. If you want to interpret, you know, wilted rose’s positively you can, it’s, it’s completely determined on how you see yourself and what sort of person you see yourself as.

Mm-hmm. Most people really only have as a choice for this internal [00:10:00] model of themselves, a trope that they are aware of in society because they do not have, it’s, it’s, it’s very rare for somebody to have these self. Knowledge and ownership to be able to construct their own trope of themselves completely a priori.

And the problem is, is that when you are choosing that trope, you know, or that trope is sort of choosing for you, it’s chosen from a number of tropes you see in your society. And this is where like representation does actually matter. The problem is, is that black women do not have many tropes to choose between.

And the ones that they do have to choose between are generally pretty unlikeable and toxic.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And so when they’re choosing, like, what is it like to be me? Like what’s my personality to black women? Yeah. They may see black women astronauts now, and they may see black women lead characters now, but they all have like one of two personality profiles constructed by woke people that in real [00:11:00] life are actually quite toxic to be around.

Mm-hmm. Right. You know, the, the self-assured, sassy puts down men, you know, now they don’t, they didn’t decide to do this on their own, but they saw, oh, this is the way a black woman acts because this is the way black women act in, in the media. I have seen in the, in the world that I’ve seen right, of they don’t see some alternate archetype within their family or within their church, which you used to have other black women archetypes, but society,

Simone Collins: I mean there are many out there.

I mean, I think one. That is more common because I, I’ve watched a bunch of shows ‘cause they frankly have the best fashion that have like mostly all black. Oh. Either mostly or all black casts is just like the long suffering, doing it all for everyone, woman. Which I don’t know, I don’t see as like par particularly negative.

That’s, that’s

Malcolm Collins: not forever. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Maybe inadequate delegation, but like

Malcolm Collins: that’s a, that’s a common one in, in Latin [00:12:00] American culture too. Yeah. Yeah. But the, the, the second thing I was going to say is it’s a black cultural problem. So we’ll do a separate episode on this someday where I’d point out that.

Black Americans took a lot of their culture. From the culture that I come from, the Scots Irish culture, they are culturally very, very, very similar. As I point out, you know, I’ll, I’ll,

Simone Collins: I find that surprising that you’d say that. I mean, because I feel like if you look at the culture anthropology of, of black Americans, there’s so much like French influence.

That’s why you see a lot of French influence in black names in America. You’ve got the whole like New Orleans. No, the French

Malcolm Collins: influence is highly affectatious. It’s not actually in their culture. So if I am going to describe a stereotype that is offensive of two groups gathering, okay. Okay. They are out barbecuing.

They just got back from church. Oh. They are [00:13:00] loudly listening to music that is descendant from country and blues music of the

Simone Collins: right. This is like exactly what like we would do.

Malcolm Collins: They are eating. Fried chicken

Simone Collins: as would

Malcolm Collins: we, and eating watermelons,

Simone Collins: which we would too. Yeah. Okay. Actually, nevermind.

Yeah. Okay. Fair.

Malcolm Collins: What two groups have parties exactly like that?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Rednecks, the, the group that I come from and Black Americans they are highly resistant to people who think like, they, they feel an in an infectious anger to people who think they’re better than them. Mm. They are both highly conspiratorial groups, very obsessed with conspiracy theories.

Yeah. Authority. They, they both are anti-authority groups. They are both unusually violent groups. Mm-hmm. But. The one thing that the black culture did not copy over, which has unfortunately hugely damaged them, is a reflective disgust for people showing off wealth or status. Mm-hmm. And as such black culture unfortunately has [00:14:00] a problem with investing too much of the money they pull in, in signs of wealth and status, particularly expensive ones.

Where you will see even like famous rappers rent jewelry, so they can look even fame wealthier than they most, like most rapper jewelry is rented. Did you not know that? And so that they can look even that much more wealthier than they actually are. Like they should have all of the money they ever need, and yet they need to show off and even exaggerated and fake.

Iteration of their wealth which is obviously like hyperoxic, which puts them in a uniquely financially insecure situation, but continue.

Simone Collins: Wow. Okay. I, sorry, I just now need to look at Julie Rental because I. That’s fascinating.

Malcolm Collins: Well, actually another place you see this in black culture is in the ways that blacks form gangs.

Blacks never formed [00:15:00] a, a gang that was as hierarchically organized. Successfully as the Catholic gangs, like the Mob or the Mafia or MS 16 or whatever, they, they have had large gangs like the Crips and the Bloods and stuff like that. But they function more like, backwards gangs, which would be like groups with lots of internal warring factions mm-hmm.

That are highly decentralized and often at war with themselves as much as the outside. Which is why when you would think that blacks should have more domination over criminal enterprises, it’s often other groups of immigrant gangs that have more domination over the large organized criminal enterprises and the black gangs that are usually exploited by those gangs as foot soldiers.

Simone Collins: Okay. Interesting. Right. Anyway, yes. I’m going to, I’m going to read this, this woman, this woman’s Substack article. Black women aren’t just un unemployed, they’re being arrested first. She, she lays out the landscape. I’m not gonna [00:16:00] read, I’m gonna read most of the article ‘cause it’s pretty short, but I’ll, I’ll go fast.

So she sets out the landscape since last fall. General unemployment rates in the US have ticked up 4.4% from 4% at the start of 2025. At the same time, the jobless rate for black women has surged from 5.4% in January, 2025 to a high of 7.5%. Last September, economists Eco, sorry, economists, economist Katisha Roy estimates that since 2020 the real unemployment rate for black women is 10.23%.

Which is really high. There have been several factors linked to the disproportionate destabilization, the huge AI push, which is automating jobs that humans were once paid to do is one last year’s mass. A cut of government jobs where black women are represented at twice the rate as the, in the private sector.

And then the abrupt elimination of DEI programs under the current Trump administration are notable others as one of those black women sideline from the job market. This crisis feels personal. I didn’t [00:17:00] know. I just finished reading that, that, that, there were black women are employed in, in the government at twice the rate as a private sector.

That is crazy.

Malcolm Collins: Well, because they, they benefit from DEI more in the pri in the government than in the private sector. And I, I wanna note here, first of all, the mere fact that we are seeing a statistical fallout from the number of jobs that were cut in the government. Yeah. Indicates that Doge was actually effective, because a lot of people have been like, no, it wasn’t effective.

They just rehired them all as contractors. Mm-hmm. And it’s like, well, clearly not, are these black women wouldn’t be having an employment issue. Right? Yeah. So they must be rehiring the ones who weren’t there for DEI reasons, which sounds like a good thing for me. Yeah. The second issue that we’re dealing with here is when you create something like DEI, you create a perception on the market especially if they’ve gone on to like higher positions than they would otherwise be able to get within the government, which mm-hmm.

They, they did get mm-hmm. That you just cannot trust their competence. If somebody meets x racial heuristics, right? Mm-hmm. And black women have unfortunately [00:18:00] been left in that position sort of on, on the job market where somebody is just going to, even a black woman who’s just being sane about things like, oh, I bet you she had it easy, you know?

Because

Simone Collins: yeah, yeah. She probably wasn’t subject to the same. Pressures. And I honestly, I, I didn’t believe, I didn’t believe her. I was like, that can’t be true. But it, it is true that data from federal EEO reports and labor researchers show that black women are roughly twice the share of overall labor in the federal and broader public sector employment.

So they’re about 11 to 12% of the federal workforce versus roughly six to 7% of the civilian labor force. So,

Malcolm Collins: and I, I’d also point out

Simone Collins: just, just to point out, their share in the private sector roughly represents their share of the population. So it’s not weird, it’s not like they’re discriminated against in the private sector.

It’s that there’s clearly positive discrimination of some sort in the public sector, even though title let’s see, title seven [00:19:00] of the Civil Rights Act makes it illegal for any employer, including the government to make hiring decisions based on race, whether that’s against a particular racial group or just something else.

And so something’s kind of weird happening because. You don’t get like. Disproportionate in per the population in, in government without some form of discrimination, I think.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But the, the interesting thing, another interesting thing we’re seeing, I think yeah, that’s gonna really hurt black women is that you have a new sort of favored class within the urban monoculture.

And you can see this in groups that are extremely woke, you know? Yeah. More woke than government, which is something like the video games industry. Mm-hmm. In the latest video games industry report of the employees who were under 40 40% of them, that’s like 20 times the rate of the general population were gay or L-G-B-T-Q in some way.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that population, the, the larger alphabet two population that really anyone can identify into, if they feel like it, as I’ve pointed out that technically by LGBT rules, Simone and I are [00:20:00] trans. Because I don’t identify strongly with my gender, which makes me gender queer. She doesn’t either, like, I just don’t care.

It’s, I don’t, I do not see why people think really don’t care. Yeah. I cannot emulate why a trans person would care enough to undergo major surgery if I was a girl, I’d just be like, whatever, I’ll, I’ll live my life as a girl now. I’ll figure it out, right? Mm-hmm. And that makes me trans. So it is funny, the, the mere fact that I can’t understand why a trans person would care, puts me in their weird gender queer umbrella.

So, trans individuals. So, so anyone can identify, I could identify as I wanted to. Which gets me an advantage in the video games industry. Well now, you know, I don’t need to fill these spots with black women. And so a lot of black women were falling into the boomer woke, I guess I’d call it like the older version of woke, which you see within the government and stuff like that.

Ah, which people haven’t gotten the message that the rules have changed about who you favor. And what’s worse about Boomer woke is boomer woke jobs are the jobs that are the easiest to automate with [00:21:00] ai. You know, it is the, the, you know, the pencil pusher at the DMV or something like that, which it’s the very first jobs we should be automating.

Yeah. And those jobs were disproportionately held by black women.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of even like the private sector favoritism, we’re, we’re gonna see that in her reflection o of her personal experience. So she wrote, I’ve been self-employed since October, 2019 when I was laid off as senior entertainment editor at Nylon.

Following an acquisition and rebrand, I got lucky and sold my first book just months later, a collection of essays about black feminism at the intersection of hip hop culture and class. I spent the next year living on my advance, hold on freelance commissions. Hold on. I’m gonna tell you the title of the book and I’m gonna read a description and then you can comment because that might give you more.

And once my manuscript was done, I pivoted to copywriting. So, just before you comment on how, like, the now dying publishing industry disproportionately favored certain types, and this was one of those, you know, [00:22:00] I mean right. The, like, the publishing world was a big arm of what we, we would call the colonizers of the urban monoculture.

They were hiring their chosen minion class, which included black women and trans people. She was one of them and she benefited from it. Her book, just so you know is. One. It, it looked pretty successful. It got, it has 351, almost five star reviews on Amazon. It is titled Bad Fat Black Girl Notes from a Trap Feminist.

Bit from the description, bad fat black girl offers a new God I sound so white. Offers a new inclusive feminism for the modern world. Weaving together, searing personal essay and cultural commentary. Bowen interrogates, sexism, fatphobia and capitalism, all within the context of race and hip hop.

In the process, she continues a black feminist legacy of unmatched sheer determination and creative resilience comment.

Malcolm Collins: [00:23:00] So, one where was she laid off nylon, right? Like woke, industry woke job. And you can tell from what she wrote, but

Simone Collins: point out, she created just, I wanna point out right. The, the, the British Empire, you know, the whatever, like Belgians.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: There were above it all. While there’s genocide taking place. The, the people who sold nylon, sold nylon, made money.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: You know, like, all these people are above it. The colonizers are not in the freight. The black women are catching strays at the end of all this. Just wanna point that out. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: What, and this is why it you know, it, they, I, I, I get that, but we’re seeing a collapse of that empire, right? Yeah. We’re seeing media companies and a lot of this has come downstream of, as, as people keep mentioning the shutdown of United Aid after United Aid Aid

Simone Collins: shutdown. Usaid,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. USAID

Simone Collins: United,

Malcolm Collins: Tons of media outlets, but like, like woke media outlets have started going [00:24:00] bankrupt all of a sudden out of nowhere.

And like, it appears that it may have been funding more than we realized in terms of the woke media landscape. And so now you know, entertainers like us are able to replace him.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I still think that largely they’re fine. The, the, the, the colonists many of them have quietly pivoted in a different direction.

So anyway, no,

Malcolm Collins: they’ll eventually get screwed, like when

Simone Collins: people No, they’re just gonna die. They’re also very old Malcolm, so Oh, true. They’re fine. They’re retired. They’re, when

Malcolm Collins: people stop buying, I, I, no, actually, I’m gonna push my card here. Okay. When people stop buying woke video games, eventually the entire video game industry in America collapses.

Simone Collins: Yeah. They’ve cashed out already. Malcolm, they spike nylon top, they cashed out.

Malcolm Collins: There’s a lot of woke foot soldiers that are not black women. Simone, they, there are a lot of trans woke foot soldiers. A lot of

Simone Collins: girls. No, the, the trans, I would say that the black women and trans people were, were among, like, they were, they were both the [00:25:00] tootsies, you know?

And, and at the end, I can give more examples of groups like this. I’m just using them because, you know.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, continuum.

Simone Collins: She continues The opportunity to transform my writing skills to branding and creative strategy was afforded to me on the heels of 2020s, racial justice reckoning, widespread reminders that Black Lives Matter forced white people to confront their own biases about people of color and actively move past them to be better allies.

When it came to black women specifically, this was easy to do because we were in the final years of hashtag black girl magic era, spanning the 2010s to early 2020s. This period amplified how important black women are to American culture. The general sentiment during this era was to trust black women as we are, as we were venerated for our expertise on politics, education, beauty, entertainment, and so much more.

I didn’t know about Black girl Magic ‘cause I am not that terminally online, I guess. But it was this it just celebrated basically like. Honestly, I think it was kind of a mechanism of the immunization [00:26:00] of, of black women for the colonizers flag, the urban monoculture. But it was just like, oh, black women are leaders in beauty and strength and creativity and, and oh, black women and girls have done so much.

And the phrase began as Black girls are magic. It was coined by Khan Thompson around 2013, and then it was shortened into a hashtag just just for those who didn’t

Malcolm Collins: know I wanted to know. But you can see, I mean, I, I, that’s a, a racially supremacist term, you know? Yeah. Like it’s, it’s, it’s racist, it’s white power.

It’s bad, especially if you’re a group that is getting favor was in the industries that you’re working in when you are a group with. Demonstrable systemic power over other groups. That’s why.

Well,

Simone Collins: also it seems like tokenization, like you need your magical black girl. Like what?

Malcolm Collins: I mean, they, they wanted that.

And I think one of the things about all of this, and this comes to what I was talking about earlier in terms of the archetypes available to them. Hmm. This woman, like, clearly she was captured by this and made herself into this. Well,

Simone Collins: listen’s. The thing is, is of course she leaned [00:27:00] into it. It made her a lot of money, like it was her livelihood,

Malcolm Collins: but.

She still, I think any sane person reading this takes joy in the fact that somebody that is this much of a racial supremacist, this much of a, a genuinely vile human being from the stuff I’m, I’m hearing about her, if a white person was doing this stuff, talking about white lives mattered and stuff like that, I’d be like, you’re, you’re like a really vile person and I’m glad to see you fail.

And I feel the same way when I hear about her as, as do a lot of people. So that’s another problem in this is, is they like, haven’t learned from or looked back. And said, wow, you know, I really took for granted when I had systemic power over other people, and I was abusing that for years of my life.

And I even wrote a book about that like to dance on the graves of the, you know, people who were not able to, to rise at those companies, who were not able to, for the book Deal. Penguin, for example, recently put out [00:28:00] on a number of their websites that they only want to take book deals from women and people from like rarer racial groups.

And then if somebody has, it’s

Simone Collins: like a Pokemon card.

Malcolm Collins: It sounds overly European. I think they even gave an example like Brad or something. They wouldn’t Oh. Look at their books, they wouldn’t look at their transcript.

Simone Collins: I weep for all the, the, the indigenous I don’t know Maori people

Malcolm Collins: named Brad. But the point you’re being is the, the racial discrimination in fields like the one she was in, is very, very blatant and often transparent within these organizations.

You know, when I talk about the hugely overrepresentation of L-G-B-T-Q people in hiring in the video games industry that is because of discrimination, right? Like that clearly other groups are being discriminated against for that group to have so much positive discrimination within them because they don’t make up a disproportionate amount of video game fans.

Everybody knows video game fans are predominantly straight white men, right? Like, that’s, that is the group that, that’s why they always get mad at them and say, I hate gamers and everything like that. And so, [00:29:00] that, that’s another challenge that black girls have is they just didn’t have a lot of ways of being models to build of themselves when they were given this, this option.

Right? Like, it’s like this option or the sassy option, or the beleaguered option, right? You don’t, you don’t get a lot of others and very few people are aspirational about the Bellinger option.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I’m trying to think. There, there, there are other good, there’s also the it’s the version of the Ice Queen for black women that you see in what is that?

How to Get Away With Murder. And also in there’s this other one with this like fixer in dc these are all, I think like Shonda Rhimes shows, which I think you’re delightful, but it’s like this sort of like prof, like professional black powerhouse woman who, you know, is really badass but you know, deeply emotionally hurting from everything that’s wronging her.

But I guess it’s kind of a, it’s weird because it’s a very empowered trope, but it’s also like. I’m a victim of my husband cheating on me or my boyfriend cheating on me. And not that I’m holding it all together and being [00:30:00] strong, but I just, you know, like, I dunno. Yeah. Anyway dramatic scenes of taking off wigs at the end of the day and looking in the mirror and having a thousand mile stare.

Let’s go on. Also it’s take it for granted, not granite. It’s not a rock,

Malcolm Collins: it’s, it’s granite. Okay.

Simone Collins: No,

Malcolm Collins: it’s changing English changes. Okay.

Simone Collins: Over time. No, it’s never granite. It’s not granite. You’re not taking it for granite.

Malcolm Collins: I am taking it for granite. Simone,

Simone Collins: by the way, did you know that granite marble tops are like mildly radioactive?

Malcolm Collins: I did not know that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Terrified of them. Anyway, she, she writes, during this time about 30% of my revenue came from speaking and book engagements at universities and conferences. The rest consisted of freelance copywriting and brand strategy for different agencies and clients. I was the quintessential multihyphenate and I started bringing in six figures annually.

I self-funded my podcast about female rap, of course, for an entire season. I started [00:31:00] working on my debut, novel, and I paid off a good chunk of credit card debt. I think that this is also indicative of the, the continued but unseen and un understood budget for DEI like the reason why these speaking engagements happened was because corporations I think felt this need to have like their, again, and I think this is horrible, like token, like, yeah, I hire.

Black influencers to talk about like hip hop culture and to educate my team about,

Malcolm Collins: but Simon, she, she actually said something that. Validated what I said going into this about financial regulation? No. She said no, I paid off a large amount of my credit card debt.

Simone Collins: Yeah, credit card debt is, is the worst kind of debt to have.

It’s incredibly high interest. It’s usually, you know, it’s, it’s stupid consumer debt that you shouldn’t have had in the first place. It’s not even like student debt or like card loans. It’s

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but I wanna, I wanna, sorry. You can actually piece together a lot of her life from that [00:32:00] sentence. What she is saying is that she, one didn’t pay off all of her credit card debt, which is pretty astonishing to have so much credit card debt that during a period of your life where you are having a financial windfall, you cannot even pay it all off.

And then secondly, as Simone was saying that you have credit card debt in the first place. It is one thing. So just so you know, like if you’re from our cultural group, how do you relate to credit? Because like in my cultural group, the rules for relating to credit are very clear. You can get credit card, you can get debt.

Credit card debt or, or really debt?

Simone Collins: No. Debt? No. Not credit card debt? No. Credit card debt? Never credit card debt

Malcolm Collins: either. No. Hold on. Either houses or cars? Transportation. If, if outside of, and even those things, like we

Simone Collins: don’t have No, you’re, you’re, I think we’re, we’re very similar to the Mormon rules, which is it’s okay to take on debt for a student loan or for a mortgage.

I think cars are edge cases actually.

Malcolm Collins: And, and [00:33:00] for business. But rarer, but we still do it. But never like when, when it comes to credit card debt. Now, I’ll note here we’re, we’re, we believe in using credit cards. Like I use a credit card every month.

Simone Collins: Right? So you have credit. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So I have credit, but I would never.

Ever

Simone Collins: not pay off the balance every month

Malcolm Collins: about not, if I didn’t pay off the balance one month, that would be like a massive emergency in my life.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And this is true for many cultural groups. I, I would say, I think that this is like the normal way to relate to credit cards to not

Simone Collins: America anymore.

If you watch, you know, Caleb Hammer’s show apparently. Right.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, the point I’m making here is, is is she’s just dropping this incredibly casually, like she’s not embarrassed about it. She doesn’t see it as a major personal failure. Yeah. And this is not like a genetic thing for black women’s or something like this.

She was taught that just that, that’s, culturally having credit card debt for consumer [00:34:00] purchases is normal.

Simone Collins: But yeah, I mean that’s fair. I, I think that’s, it’s also a really serious issue for white people too. For something work related. I’ve been looking at a lot of credit reports recently. And, I have do, I’m outlining an episode on what is Money, because I think that that collectively at least Americans are sort of losing their concept of money in general of like, it doesn’t matter anyway. Like, I’m not gonna pay off my credit card. You’re

Malcolm Collins: watching this show and have credit card debt, like inter month credit card

Simone Collins: gt FO are you throwing

Malcolm Collins: him out the castle?

No. I’m, I need to like get on that. Okay. That is not a way to live. Okay. That will, that will like always lead to bad places. Eventually. That means you are spending more money than you can afford to be spending and the amount of money you’re going to be able to spend in your daily life is going to iteratively get less.

This is worse than like being morbidly obese or something. It means you have literally built a lifestyle where you have more stuff than you can afford and you are trading your [00:35:00] future quality of life in exchange for that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Our Tetris brick is down here and your te Tetris brick is up here and it’s getting.

Like higher. It’s very scary. Don’t do it. Yeah. But you’re allowing the, they can stay in the bouncy castle just as long as they work on it.

You scare ‘em out of the bouncy castle.

Malcolm Collins: No, they can, they can keep watching the show. They gotta

Simone Collins: not outta base camp. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Somewhere. But like, that’s a crazy line. I paid it off most of my credit card debt.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But again, like she was living off of the, the the, the cultural platforming of her group as the minions of the urban monoculture. But here’s where the tables turn. Continue reading from her article following Trump’s 2025 inauguration and the string of executive orders that followed, I felt a shift almost immediately.

Many of the institutions that are most likely to support my work fall under Trump’s DEI umbrella with his executive order dismantling federal [00:36:00] funding for these initiatives. The organizations and academic departments that would have hosted me are now trying to remain compliant. My bookings have slowed to a near stop one.

I found this to be really enlightening because I, at first I read the Title VII thing of like, well, you can’t have discrimination in hiring. But now I realize that all the DEI initiatives that existed in government were a way around that. Because there were programs specific around like, you know, a black history museum or something.

And this is gonna disproportionately attract and probably hire you know. Specific groups, and that included her particular group. She continues these limiting policies, coincided with the great AI boom, what I was used to. Lowes as a freelance creative strategist and copywriter, I only worked on two projects last year when I’m normally on six to 10.

And while my career began as an entertainment journalist and culture critic, the continued deterioration of traditional media has [00:37:00] also made this path unsustainable. So without any other viable options, I decided in late 2025 to start actively applying for full-time jobs. I was surprised at how little traction I gained.

Over six months, I submitted dozens of applications that didn’t even land me interviews, even when I had an employee referral. The rejections led to full on existential crisis and forced me to ask myself tough questions. Was I not using the right language to translate my skills? Does a multihyphenate muddy the waters when there are hundreds of applicants in a role?

Did the author part of my career with the heavy, very Googleable online presence make me a red flag for behind the scenes roles that I could easily do in my sleep? Or was it the contents of said work? So first off, I have to stop here. Because this is where I’m like, oh my God. She’s implying in, in this statement, I just read that she submitted dozens of resumes, which means that she submitted fewer than 200 resumes over six months.

Why? Because had she submitted more [00:38:00] than 200 resumes, she would’ve written hundreds, because that sounds more dramatic. Do you agree with me?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Okay. If you are doing serious job research, it’s a full-time job. Do you agree with me?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Okay. You should be submitting a minimum of 10 resumes a day. If you’re treating it like a full-time job, and that’s assuming that it’s one of those like tedious, like multi-step corporate things where you have to like fill in everything uniquely.

Malcolm Collins: This isn’t something I would remotely disagree with you on if she Over a period of, what, two years? Only six

Simone Collins: months? Six months. Submitted dozens.

Malcolm Collins: Dozens of, you know, like. Fans, you can’t understand if, if you work in the way that we work that is like literally comical. That is like,

yeah,

Simone Collins: well no, she, she, it let’s just 10 10 a day.

And, and, and then that’s assuming 10 very involved ones. So either you’re doing a very involved application or you’re doing the thing where you like learn about the business and then proactively pitch something to them. Like, I noticed this about your website. I’ve like preemptively fixed it. Or Here’s what I would do.

[00:39:00] Would you like me to like, basically, you know, do a test project with you? Maybe.

Malcolm Collins: Wait, nobody does that. I did that. I would do jobs did that too for random companies.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: That like hadn’t hired me and then send them the job that I had done. And

Simone Collins: that’s how you got some of your jobs.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Because

Simone Collins: I’m like, dude, that’s awesome.

Didn’t

Simone Collins: always work.

Malcolm Collins: What she is saying here is basically I am. Comically unproductive. I basically thought, it’s

Simone Collins: kind of no surprise that she got hired if, if this is her work ethic. She, she actually apparently has a very, very bad work ethic and was actually literally only profiting from being an identity and showing up.

That’s why she had, you know, the book deal on the podcast and the, the speaking engagements, because literally those involved just showing up and being a black multihyphenate as, as she puts herself, right? Like, that is it, which is profoundly disturbing. And again, I wanna highlight the fact that, that these [00:40:00] are the very select few privileged people who benefited from this short term period.

And now they’re making. All black women suffer because now no one knows. It’s kind of like the, the lemon problem with cars. Like, you just don’t know.

Malcolm Collins: Well, hold on. I I would, I would actually point out here that you do kind of know

Simone Collins: I, yeah. I, unfortunately, I mean, you can tell if someone’s smart and they have a, a good work ethic

Malcolm Collins: or not.

No, no, that’s not what I meant. She is loudly signaling through her podcast work through her book name, through her online fame.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But she’s exactly the type of person who you’re gonna hire. And she’s gonna try to start a union and start doing all this you know, woke work within your company the moment she’s in your company.

Start harassing people, start making other employees’ lives miserable so that they obey her rules and they show her the status that she’s afforded. She has signaled as loud as a person can, conceivably signal. I am the very definition of the problem. And, [00:41:00] and. Because she was in environments where being a racial supremacist was just normal, right?

Like she sees nothing wrong or embarrassing about being a racial supremacist. And so she has all of this out there, right? Like if I had books like that about like being white or something like that, like, being a, a fat misogynistic man, right? Like, fat white, misogynistic man. Why? That’s hard, you know, that’s

Simone Collins: hard.

You’d

Malcolm Collins: be like, wow.

Simone Collins: To be in the basement. Dwelling And cell

Malcolm Collins: also no, there wasn’t part of her book that she’s fat. Did she say fat?

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. She

Simone Collins: identifies as

Malcolm Collins: herself, so that’s another thing, right? Like it shows that she lacks self-control. Right. You know, so she’s and, and don’t be like, some people are born this way.

The difference in metabolism in terms of calories that you burn on a daily basis is around 200 calories. When you’re talking about a two standard deviation difference in human populations.

Simone Collins: I think super add up though because one pound is 3,500 calories roughly. So that, that like you can gain weight.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. I’m not saying it [00:42:00] can’t add up. Yeah. But what I’m saying is, is yes, you might require a modicum more self-control, one candy bar less a day or something like that. But like, the, this idea. And, and, and it is true that like there is a big genetic component to obesity. The problem is, is most of that genetic component is tied to your self-control abilities.

And your ability at self-discipline, which is also partially hereditary. And then if you have low on that which you can inherit but that, that also you know, demonstrates your ability to do a job or something like that, right? Mm-hmm. So she is in every way signaling that she’s a problem now.

I actually do not think that black women, when they take care of themselves likely. Deal with this problem as much. If I saw a black woman who, for example, had a history of like doing MAGA stuff when, when I looked her up or whatever or had written books against, you know, this culture,

Simone Collins: actually, I think this is why people like Candace [00:43:00] Owens did so well, is that she’s attractive articulate yeah, not ideologically captured.

I mean, this was before her schizo era. And, and people were like, I love you, you’re great. And, and you stand out because you, you tend to buck these trends. It’s kind of like how similarly tracing wood grains had described how being a conservative law student now it’s just like. Actually a great career accelerator because there are so many more opportunities for you.

Yeah, because most law students are progressive, so it’s one of those like, it’s actually a great arbitrage opportunity and you make a very good point. Okay, so maybe things aren’t as dire for black women in America as long as they’re willing to like not be ideologically captured by the urban monoculture, but

Malcolm Collins: so doesn’t benefited from this for so long and they’re unwilling to accept the the systemic advantages that their group

Simone Collins: has had you to maybe start by just playing along and puppeting it and saying the vallis of that movement.

You start to believe it over time. And then really identify deeply with it. And I think after that point, you know, leaving it [00:44:00] is leaving a cult too. Then, then you’re like, your family might not wanna talk with you anymore. Yeah. Other people might, you know, like your, your entire circle will, will see you as a traitor.

I mean, who know, Candace Owens may have gone through a lot of that. ‘cause I don’t think she started out as explicitly. In fact, she started out as very much like, I’m a victim of some form of discrimination, wasn’t it? She had this whole thing about doxing people, a whole Docs website. I, I can’t remember the whole board.

Malcolm Collins: It might have been tied to Gamer Gate, if I remember. Actually,

Simone Collins: no, it wasn’t, it wasn’t tied to Gamer Gate. It was ga it was tied to some discrimination she faced in her high school and then she wanted to like. Make it easier for other people and it involved doxing them, and that’s all I remember. But yeah.

And she didn’t start off as a conservative icon, so I can also imagine that she personally experienced a lot of, a lot of, yeah. She started

Malcolm Collins: her career as a liberal critic of the Republican party, but transitioned to the conservative commentary after a 2016 backlash against her failed startup social autopsy, which talk online bullies.

Yes. She rose to prominence by launching her red pill, black YouTube channel where she defended conservative talking points in [00:45:00] 2017.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Very interesting. Yeah. So she was like an anti-bullying person first. But, but obviously when Simon says, can someone says ideologically captured, she of course means before Mossad poisoned her.

Mm-hmm. Which by the way, I’m referencing here now, my new favorite conspiracy theory. Oh my God. Which is, why is it. That whenever somebody, be it Nick Fuentes or Candace Owens or Tucker Carlson mentions that they are potentially critical of Israel a few years later, they have a bunch of crazy ideas that don’t make any sense.

You know, getting Candace Owens, I mean, like actually crazy ideas like with Candace Owens, it’s like, now what is it that Charlie Kirk is a time traveler who went to an X-Men school. Like, like actual signs of like somebody might be poisoning her or, or Nick Fuentes who has been like. Epstein is cool, or like Tucker Carlson, who, what was his recent thing?

That Moscow is nicer than any city in the United States. Right. Like these are like actual crazy. Or, or that the [00:46:00] US troops want to like grape people after they get an unconditional surrender. Which is particularly weird because if you grow up in the United States, you know how important unconditional surrender was in terms of terms during World War II of Japan and Germany.

And yet, like everybody knows, we didn’t have a massive grape campaign there.

Speaker: I love it. Somebody followed up with this like, no, that’s not true. Look, the Russians had a great campaign in Germany. I’m like, what does that have to do with anything I’m talking about? We’re talking about the United States, which has had multiple countries do an unconditional surrender to it and never a grape campaign.

Malcolm Collins: So why did he think we would have one in Iran? And somebody pointed out to me, a fan pointed out to me, and I actually think they might have a point here, is it might be that he is so entrenched in Muslim culture now that in Muslim culture, that’s the one culture where it is actually normal to have massive rape campaigns after you conquer a territory.

Speaker 2: If, , you wanna see our slavery video, , it’s also pretty normal in Catholic culture, but it’s not officially condoned in Catholic culture where it [00:47:00] is condoned in Muslim culture. If you want to hear more about this, go to our video on is slavery a good thing? , And, , it, it’s something I wanna dig into more because the more.

I sort of study the differences between different groups. I realized that Catholic culture is dramatically, culturally more similar in the way it’s actually lived, or, , changes in behavior patterns of its adherence to Muslim culture. , And I, and I’ve said that before, but I didn’t realize how strong the effect was.

Specifically here if you want to get on. What I mean by this, , we don’t have a single case, a single case of a Puritan Quaker or backwards tradition person having or been accused of having graped, a Native American. , This is also true for Mormons. , And yet, , if you look at. , Places where you had Catholic settlements, like the Spanish conquistador settlements or, , Louisiana or Quebec, , grape of, , captives was actually pretty common.

, And, , the question is, it’s like, why? Like this is a weird difference. So we go into that, in that [00:48:00] video.

Malcolm Collins: No,

that’s

Simone Collins: the, it’s the, it’s the, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: it’s even approved of in the Koran. So like,

Simone Collins: ion Ali talks about this in her book Pray, PREY. It’s,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. The, the you know, the one guys, it’s actually a more dangerous culture than you might think it is. And giving it power might be more dangerous than you think it is.

And it may even be worse working with Joos if we can deal with mitigating its influence in our countries. But people remain

Simone Collins: so confused as to,

Malcolm Collins: but that could explain why he, he thought that because he’s just become so entrenched in like Atari culture golf cult culture at this point.

Which maybe, but I actually, I like my theory better, which is that massage just poisons anyone who

Simone Collins: delightful,

Malcolm Collins: delightful, crazy three years.

The trend continue

Simone Collins: about this, this woman’s, she, she acknowledges in, in her essay that there’s now a, a retaliation, a against black women in [00:49:00] public life.

She recognizes that other people are noticing this trend. She links to their work, but then she, she near the end of her essay, writes, we are no longer heralded as the virtuous the virtuosos of American culture. In fact, the values that earned us so much visibility in previous years, equality, progress, justice, democracy, are now threats to a regime set on dominance and a revitalization of white supremacy and patriarchy.

It’s not farfetched to assume that a black feminist thinker isn’t an ideal job candidate. It I may even be a liability for any institution looking to state my new status quo. At first, I was like, oh, she like recognizes that like her specialization in black feminist hip hop culture may not be applicable in many practical jobs in a post AI world.

Is like only plumbers matter anymore or something. But it’s not that. It’s that no black feminist hip hop specialists are too [00:50:00] dangerous because they represent equality, progress, justice, and democracy. And

Malcolm Collins: what do, what do they mean? Democracy. Literally, literally, they’re out there fighting. No PS against a democratically elected president who won the majority of the popular vote.

Like the, the idea you’re literally protesting against democracy when you are doing these protests. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this woman has written stuff that is against our elected leaders because she doesn’t like when democracy doesn’t end with her side winning. Right.

Simone Collins: Like that’s Yeah, I know, but I just, I I was like, oh my God, the irony.

Malcolm Collins: But the, but the irony of and this is something that the left got absolutely right. They just didn’t understand what they were saying when they say it, which is that when you have lived a life of privilege. Not having that privilege can feel like victimization.

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and, and so, when she looked,

Simone Collins: but she would turn around and be like, yeah, welcome to [00:51:00] being in the patriarchy and not

Malcolm Collins: being favorite anymore.

She, when she looks at the Trump administration Rebuilding America meritocracy, she sees only white supremacy because it is a world where people who look like her are not unfairly advantaged. And note here, what’s really important is this unfair advantaging only happens as Simone keeps pointing out to black women in the top 10% a an education, 10% of of success, 10% of all other black women just get screwed by this.

Yeah. So basically she’s not, in addition to all of this, a race trader of the worst variety, throwing her own people under the bus rather than admitting her systemic advantages and working to reconcile them. And I, I think that you know. And again, if you’re like, what systemic advantage are you talking about?

Could a white man do what she did as a job and be expected to stay employed? No. Well then that means she was hired because of her race [00:52:00] and her sex. Right. But fortunately you know, people like her don’t have kids. They’re not part of the next generation. And this is something that is important to remember going forward as a conservative movement about American blacks.

American blacks are culturally the, the, the iteration of this culture that can survive, that still having kids is Christian. They are socially conservative. They did not participate in this massive scam that’s happened. And they’re not going to continue. It was in future generations.

Mm-hmm. And so we don’t need to punish the faction that’s making it through. At great odds. May I add, like we talk about black women dating how hard it is. We talk about black women who get all of the negatives from the DEI programs, the assumption of unfair a advance.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Gen, genuine. Yeah. Like genuine discrimination, genuine bias.

Malcolm Collins: And this is why we should be so open with the ones who are willing to [00:53:00] join our movement mm-hmm. As opposed to stay in this mindset of it’s us versus them. We’re not like progressives, we’re not actually racist. Right. Like, progressives are actually racist in the truest sense of the word. We accept anyone who comes to our movement

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Come over to Bay camp, the water’s fine. It’s

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. We need to stay that way. Right. You know? And I think that that, that one, and, and even you, you actually see this in conservative movements when, a lot of the time now you, you’re gonna have a few people who are just like random racists or whatever, but a lot of people go out of their way to attempt to be nice in, in a way that you do not see in other, because they’re afraid that they have this, this view of them.

There’s been a lot of videos of like, Trump rallies, like black guy goes to Trump rally versus black guy goes to Candace rally and like how he’s treated at the two, right? Mm-hmm. Usually they’re treated better at the Trump rally, right? Like, because they’re excited to have them as part of the movement.

And so I think that this is something that, that we need to remember. Not all of them has participated in this, but the ones that did, you [00:54:00] know, now they have permanent online branding around this and we cannot allow you know, a bending of the knee around these sorts of things until capitulation from inter like realization of the horror of what she did.

Oh, yeah.

The selfishness of the way that she acted,

Simone Collins: but I don’t. See that happen? I mean, that’s, that’s just what’s so like, difficult to read at the end of this

Malcolm Collins: a cult. Right. And she’s, she’s not gonna have kids. She’s not relevant to future generations. By the way. Note if you’re like, well, black people have, watch our episode.

Black Americans actually have a astonishingly low fertility rate. So, one, if you’re talking about blacks in America, they know have a lower fertility rate than whites in America. This happened a while ago. Watch our video on it. But if you’re talking about blacks in America who are born in America, most of that fertility rate actually comes from African immigrants.

They may have a fertility rate of around 1.35. So a dawn machine, it’s really, they basically going extinct. Yeah. And it’s because they just don’t have systems to support family formation anymore.

Simone Collins: Yeah, they, they did before. It

Malcolm Collins: was destroyed by Wokes.

Simone Collins: Yeah, right. But [00:55:00] like largely white wokes, that’s what’s like the Planned Parenthood side of this on like so many other sides of this.

It’s just they, again, this is, this is a colonizers thing. It’s just, it’s I, I, let’s go into that actually. So it, there this pattern of European allied minorities in other colonies. So it’s not just the Tutin and Rwanda. Another good example is in Syria the alloys under the French mandate. So during the French mandate mandate, minority communities, including alloys were heavily recruited into colonial military units.

And then they got status and a pathway and a pathway into coercive institutions relative to many Sunni Arabs. And then post independence segments of the same minorities, which were now basically embedded in the army. And security services became associated with regime power. And they faced very, very intense identity coed coded backlash.

And, and, pressure, and it’s just really like it sucks to be them now. But also I can point out that this is not just something of like colonial minions. [00:56:00] There’s also these different like examples of, of religious and ideological favoritism. So for example, if we’re gonna go to one of your favorites under Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate.

Puritan and other super godly protestants enjoyed political and cultural ascendancy. And then of course, Anglicans and Catholics at the time were constrained. So when there was the 1660 restoration of the monarchy, many of the previously privileged Protestants lost power and faced a lot of legal and social reprisals.

There wasn’t like a genocide or anything, but they definitely were on the back foot. And that led many of them to flee to the colonies. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: to create a, a perfect society,

Simone Collins: a city of upon a hill.

Malcolm Collins: Great. You know, Cranwell was right, but he ended up creating his utopia in America.

Simone Collins: No, he, he created a good forcing function.

But we may have to think sort of the, the, the, the seed crystal of American culture for backlash based on this very same dynamic. Who [00:57:00] knows? I mean, maybe, maybe the super woke black women can go actually found some new. Civilization in space. That’s super cool. I don’t know maybe something good can come from this ‘cause, ‘cause something good came from this in the past.

There’s also the white Christian segregationist institutions in the US. So, for decades, various white Christian schools and universities in the US in the south benefited from informal state favoritism and defacto protection for basically racially discriminatory policies. And then when federal civil rights enforcement eventually removed tax exemptions like with, there was this case with this university called Bob Jones University, which I’d never heard of before.

There was a lot of backlash that catalyzed the modern religious right. Whose leaders framed themselves as persecuted victims of anti-religious state actors. Well, they were basically were general thinking. Yeah. But, you know, here’s another like privileged backlash. It, it is just, the argument I wanna try to make is that when you, when you see a privileged group.

[00:58:00] That that’s being, oh, like we need to help them. We’re trying to give them better opportunities. It’s rarely what you think it is. It’s rarely like some benevolent actor or like repentant actor attempting to right wrongs. Like reparations aren’t a thing. There is an agenda. These people are being used as a means to someone else’s desired ends.

And also the, the people that appear to be given privilege at that time, like, don’t weep for your lack of that privilege because it’s like one of those deals with the devil. You really don’t want it. And as much as I, I understand that for example, white men in like developed countries and especially urban areas where the urban monoculture has taken over and where they’re like the worst ‘cause they’re the patriarchy.

They are. I think over the long run, and this doesn’t, this is not to trivialize the pain that they’re [00:59:00] experiencing. They are being forced to be independent and strong and not dependent on these

Malcolm Collins: starting their own companies.

Simone Collins: The fire water of Yeah, they’re, they’re not like drunk off the fire water of the evil, you know, like people in power, like they building resilience and independence.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I, this is a, a really important point that you’re making here more broadly, which is the story of America. Like if you’re actually like the story, and this is why I, I focus on him so much. I think people think he’s like a side character in history. Starts with Oliver Cranwell. Oliver Cranwell attempted

Simone Collins: Bramwell.

Malcolm Collins: Cromwell a a attempted to create the first real modern state democracy. Tried.

Simone Collins: Yeah. He tried so freaking hard. He’s like, you, this is why we can’t have nice things.

Malcolm Collins: No. Well, his core mistake that he made is every time you, you know, all the stories in early America where the various factions would get in fights and stuff like this.

Yeah. And everyone thought the state was gonna collapse. Yeah. And they’d go to George Washington and they’d say, come [01:00:00] back and fix everything for us. And he’s like, I don’t care how bad the fights get, you’ve gotta figure it out on your own. Yeah. Oliver Conwell didn’t do that. He kept coming back and saying, okay, I’ll be a dictator for five more years, and then you sort it out, then I’m gonna give you the democracy again and you get this fixed, don’t work that way.

And then work way, he would do it again. And then they’d get a big fight again, and then he’d come back again. Yeah. Because he wanted

Simone Collins: to, he, he couldn’t. It’s, it’s like when you’re the parent and you just can’t. Stand to watch your kid muddle through the thing and you know, you have to have them muddle through the thing, but you’re like, no, just let me tie your shoes.

I can’t deal with this.

Malcolm Collins: No, I mean, no one had seen how a democracy works before. No one had seen Yeah. In it like a modern democracy works before. Right? Yeah. Like, they understood about like the corruption in the Republic of Rome and stuff like this. And I think that they thought that, well maybe that’s because it was pagan, that’s not intrinsic to democracy itself.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And so, but the. Puritans who left Amer England after that period when they saw how successful Oliver Cro, because Oliver Conwell’s England was astonishingly [01:01:00] successful. Astonishingly, genuinely equal tolerant and obviously very anti-Catholic. And they come to America. In America.

It one reason that we talked about one of the core reasons for the revolution, which is not taught in history classes right now, is that Canada, which they saw as like a connected colony segment, was looking at giving Catholics the right to vote. And they were like, whoa, like that this is getting dangerous, right?

Like, yeah, a little

Simone Collins: too much, A little too much, little too much.

Malcolm Collins: But. This ethos that he represented and the ethos that his Britain represented you can say, oh, well, they were given power and they did a lot of good with it. They actually created something of a utopian society without all of the trivialities of, of, of theater and, and you know, all, all of these indulgences that had come to invade society at the time.

And, and have since then rotted and festered to such an extent. Yeah. But that he, he created that utopian society and when it was destroyed and the people who created it were disproportionately discriminated against, they [01:02:00] did what a strong agentic people does, which is they said, you know what?

Screw you guys. I’m gonna go create my city on a hill somewhere else, and I’m gonna show you I can do it 10 times better than you and America if you are unaware of this. The American colonies became astonishingly wealthy, was in the British Empire. The American colonies were significantly more wealthy than say your average British citizen.

Yeah. Because they actually had this work ethic. They actually had this mindset. They didn’t let the, the indulgences of society corrupt them. And I think that that’s the vision that we need to bring back to America, which is a cromwellian society.

Simone Collins: That’s not gonna happen. It’s a nice try. We have to do that in space.

Look, manifest destiny is not over. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta, there’s the final frontier friend. And that’s, that’s, that’s what’s gonna happen. But you have through that, that example given me hope that maybe instead of living off the grid, black women can just [01:03:00] create. Some new breakout society like screw this.

Actually

Malcolm Collins: they try to do that sort of thing all the time.

Simone Collins: No, that, that the whole like white woman disappearing to a cat colony in South America or something

Malcolm Collins: was No, but they, you try to do like these, these all black, not black women, but all black like cities and stuff like that. And they like have

Simone Collins: where, when,

Malcolm Collins: There was a recent one where they tried to do it in Georgia or something.

Oh. It was like in the last four years or might have been like, the

Simone Collins: only

Malcolm Collins: thing I’ve

Simone Collins: heard

Malcolm Collins: about

Simone Collins: is the all white community. The No,

Malcolm Collins: no, no, no. There’s a few all black communities that are, is just a progressive. Media doesn’t freak out about it in the same way.

Simone Collins: Huh.

Malcolm Collins: They treat it like it’s this great thing and then somebody tries to create an all white community and they realize, watch our episode.

Like what sort of white racist would dane to date a white woman? Don’t they know that they’re the problem? And so they,

Simone Collins: the co-founder tweeted like. Please, gentlemen. Like if you,

Malcolm Collins: they’re all dating Asians and Latinas

Simone Collins: don’t [01:04:00] apply. Yes. Like, no way. She actually has to be, please, please.

Malcolm Collins: Like, I’m just as racist as anyone.

And he’s like, why are you dating a Latina? And he goes, I said, I’m racist. Do you think I date a white woman?

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Like, they’re the worst. Yeah.

Simone Collins: It’s, I I feel like maybe that’s kind of the, the final unicorn is, is to find a white supremacist woman. You know, they’re just, where are they? I guess they’re largely offline.

But they’re they’re hard to find.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no. The, the real catch for the white supremacist man is the Indian woman these days. That’s the

Simone Collins: no, no, no, no, no, no. No. Anti, anti-Indian sentiment is, oh, I

Malcolm Collins: know. All

Simone Collins: time

Malcolm Collins: anti-Indian sentiment is like only people who don’t have wives or kids. I, I actually, I’ve never met a person with children who has anti-Indian sentiment.

Simone Collins: Oh, well I have.

Malcolm Collins: You have?

Simone Collins: Oh, oh yeah. No, it’s it’s big. It is surging online. There’s a confluence of things that have caused it to get a lot worse.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, I mean, we point out Indians do systemically discriminate against non-Indians [01:05:00] and will create situations that are demonstrably unfair for non-Indians in the US tech sector.

Simone Collins: That, I mean, so another really big thing is that Canada created the, basically like, oh, if you’re going to a university, you are. You can come to Canada. Something along like it was, there was an immigration status thing, and then there basically was this emergence of diploma mills for as one person online comment, or described it under qualified punjabis who were just going to Canada and going to these diploma mills, and then just getting dumped into the Canadian workforce.

And really angering Canadians, which totally showed up in our con comments.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Like Canadians being mad at Indian right now. So there that, that policy in Canada, like Trudeau’s immigration policy regarding universities and, and then the subsequent diploma mills was one big factor. Another big factor was Trump’s 2025 election which led many social media platforms to just put their hands up and stop moderating what [01:06:00] seems like racist comments, et cetera, et cetera.

Which has led to a, a lot of. At least a lot less moderation of, for example, anti-Indian sentiment. Then also Narinda Modi’s government, I think is more supportive of Israel, which internationally is,

Malcolm Collins: well, I mean the, the government in India right now is dealing, it is, it is attempting to address Muslim cultural influence in the country.

And

Simone Collins: yeah,

Malcolm Collins: this is causing some consternation.

Simone Collins: Some consternation, yes. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Among

Simone Collins: outside. So that, there’s that factor as well, like that they’re okay with Israel. Oh my God. Now we must hate them more. And then the additional H one B Visa. Anger in the United States, which you alluded to there with, with a lot of hiring favoritism and people, several people who are in, in touch with the base camp community, active Act, active contributors have talked about [01:07:00] active discrimination that they firsthand have observed in various workplaces.

Yeah. On the job markets themselves. With clearly companies closing, like laying off jobs held by American citizens and hiring. Based on H one B status, which you’re supposed to be, you have, you have to demonstrate that, well, we can’t find this talent in the us they’re not here. But what companies in practice are doing in the US is laying off perfectly qualified people that they already had, and then hiring H one B employees who then, because they’re so dependent on the job, for their ability to stay in the United States, can be exploited.

Like, it’s, it’s not nice. It’s not a, you know, it’s not like, oh, well, at least the Indians who are immigrating here are doing well. Like, no, they’re also kind of being put in not great situations either.

Malcolm Collins: So, well, I mean, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s, well, this is an interesting thing in terms of the, the, the, the, the the anger that’s had here.

Mm-hmm. Because it’s entirely created by the systems themselves. Mm-hmm. And not necessarily by the [01:08:00] Indians. Right? Like if you were born in India, like an Indian in India, and you saw a system like this where you could get more money and live in a better country,

Simone Collins: it’s a logical choice. It’s still the logical choice.

Malcolm Collins: It’s still the logical choice. And you can say, well, like, well, it’s unfair for the native people. And I’d be like, yeah, but I care about my kids more than,

Simone Collins: yeah. Like, that matters more. Like being able to send remittances, remittances to your family matters a lot more. So there are two more factions, or sorry, two more factors, which I didn’t know about, which have led to the Indian hate.

One is that a lot of internet has expanded throughout India like the actual continent of India and, and, and smartphone adoption has just accelerated rapidly leading to a lot of far less privileged Indians in more remote areas of, of India getting access to the internet and smartphones, which you think is a good thing.

But what are they jumping to? They’re jumping to TikTok and YouTube and making content that doesn’t reflect really well on [01:09:00] the Indian people. And this explains so much of what had confused me when I went down this rabbit hole maybe two years ago of like. What are the top viewed shorts on YouTube? And it was just like the dumbest of the dumb content that I could possibly like, stupid pratfalls.

And all of it was in various Indian dialects, like India, content like India, country based

Malcolm Collins: dialect. I don’t know if, if this is too offensive to say, but they sort of, their society into a class system for a reason.

Simone Collins: Well, no, you could also say that their class system leads to, you know, systemic discrimination.

That’s, that’s really hurting people’s ability to get educated or whatever. But basically when, when you are in a either not great cast or just cast that has been subject to, you know, subject, very low levels of resources in education, and then suddenly you’re given access to like broadcast your interests and content on the internet.

And then there’s also a lot of you so that it gets a lot of visibility. Suddenly the rest of the world is able to see this [01:10:00] very the very muddy underskirts of India basically. You wanna like shave those legs, like maybe you should help, like fix this up. But like now everyone’s seeing it very visibly because of that dynamic.

And then on top of that,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, that’s good point. Was the Indian immigrants, the most of them historically were ramen, which was the upper class that was

Simone Collins: made up. Yeah. Which is why when you and I first entered the H one B discourse, what we were anchored to was the Indians that we grew up with, the Indians that we worked alongside in Silicon Valley.

And it’s all just like very articulate, smart, motivated, conscientious, cool, fun based people. And we’re like, oh, this is like, how is, how is anyone not happy about this? These are great people.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and I think I, many of the Indians in the US do not realize that like other Indians may be because they, you know, they grew up here.

They didn’t have to live alongside this, whether

Simone Collins: you as a quote unquote model minority too. So like having a reputation like throughout the nineties of like, oh no, these like. These are great people. Don’t worry about them. Like they’re fantastic.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You, you haven’t had to deal with the other Indians.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So anyway, that, that explained, that mystery of slop that [01:11:00] I was seeing of like, why is all of this in some Indian dialect that I don’t know, and it’s so dumb. And

Malcolm Collins: I’ve always said the most hilarious thing about Indian society for, for people who are not aware is white supremacists, like in the United States, hate it.

Yet it’s literally a white supremacist society. In that the, the caste structure in India, was largely created by Aryan Invaders from the north with Brahmans

Simone Collins: commenters have severely questioned that. So I don’t know, like FactCheck,

Malcolm Collins: no Brahmans are significantly more related to Europeans

Simone Collins: than, well you mean you can literally see it in skin color, like the, the lower down in the caste system, the darker the skin is.

And this is why when you go to India, there’s very serious, like, we’ll say cultural issues with, you know, skin whitening. Substances, et cetera. Because is an association I imagine question.

Malcolm Collins: See it in genetics. It’s like a, a

Simone Collins: genetic act. I know. It’s, it’s, it’s super, I just think it’s super messed up. But yeah.

So there’s that.

Speaker 3: And I would note, if you want to attempt to deny this, it is a denial of [01:12:00] reality that is so extreme because you’re not just denying the historic evidence that we have access to, but the genetic evidence that we have access to the modern visual, genetic evidence that we have access to There’s like multiplicative ways that we are aware of this and to be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That’s not the case. It’s , probably about as silly as denying that the majority of the Native American gene pool came from East Asia. , In terms of the amount of evidence that we have, that this is true, I.

Simone Collins: And then on top of all that a bunch of influencers in like the past five to seven years started going to

Malcolm Collins: India. Oh yeah. To do like the, the ceremonies.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like here’s the Indians flinging poo at each other, which actually was super wholesome and it looked fun. Like, it just looked like a funny Japanese festival.

Like here’s the penis festival. You know, it’s just like one of those, you know. Yeah. It’s like, it’s just a funny thing that one, [01:13:00] one isolated village does. Like everyone does that. And by the way, it looked really fun. Like you and I would’ve probably participated in that without the hazmat suit that guy put on.

Come on. I mean, he got an infection anyway, just like go in. I would

Malcolm Collins: not have participated in that. I’m gonna be honest, Simone, I would not have participated

Simone Collins: in that. Honestly. Like for me, just, just interacting with people is so painful. Like if you just add poop into it. Do you know how much poop ends up all over?

Dude, my Do you want I I, my hands are full. I could literally show you how much poop is all over my clothing right now. Just ‘cause I was like, today, oh, I guess you do

Malcolm Collins: have a lot

Simone Collins: of, all the diapers, the chickens, like I’m covered in poop all the time anyway, so it’s nothing to me. It means nothing. I, I

Malcolm Collins: you’re, you’re the bane of poop being a mother.

Simone Collins: I was born in the poop. But so the, the, the problem with these, like, like white Western influencers who are going to India is they’re going to slums, they’re going to really, really bad places. And again, it’s one, well, there

Malcolm Collins: are bad places in India. Come on. I

Simone Collins: know. I know. But that’s where you can get the good views is if you’re filming that and not like, really [01:14:00] cool parts and like, Nepal or like near to Nepal or like, you know, different

Malcolm Collins: region.

Oh, no, hold on. Regions. I’m gonna push back on you here. India, from what I’ve heard, is pretty much all. Like pretty much anywhere you go.

Simone Collins: That’s the impression we’re given, but apparently

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, even the wealthiest part, like my friends who have been like wealthy Indians from India, say, even if you go like two blocks from, you know, that giant tower that’s like one guy’s house like the wealthiest, no.

He, he basically built a skyscraper for himself.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And literally like, I think like five blocks from that skyscraper is a slum where people like harvest trash for money.

Simone Collins: Well, that’s like built up and, you know, sky

Malcolm Collins: well, no, but the point I’m making is India is a society that is not segregated geographically like other societies.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And, and Europe is increasingly becoming like this in a way that I do not think is positive. So with the United States where it’s actually useful to [01:15:00] have geographic sort of

Simone Collins: have slums, bring back the slums. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. Bring

Simone Collins: tech, the ghettos

Malcolm Collins: in India, the slum and the rich part of the city is separated by, do you have a pass key to get inside the building?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Which creates there, there’s very few places you can go in India where you’re not going to see, you know, beggars and starving people and, and, and grossness.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I can’t deal, I’m never, I cannot go to India. Like is I love. I love so many things about Indian culture and food and I cannot deal. I I could not, I could not.

I I could not. I I would, I would lose my mind. I would probably, yeah, I’ve known they’ve

Malcolm Collins: got a low fertility rate, so they’re not gonna be around forever, Simone.

Simone Collins: But yeah. What, how did we get on India? But those are the reasons why it’s, it’s, it’s Trump’s election. It’s Trudeau. It’s Modi and Israel. It’s, it is the widespread phone access and it is H one B visas is in the United States, and it is the [01:16:00] influencers showing bad stuff well unflattering stuff.

And that is why the Indian hate.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Yeah. Well, I might see we have a second episode in this, one of you just going off on Indians.

Simone Collins: No, no, that’s, that’s just for the, that’s for the, I hear you. People who have problems with India, people because. Okay. Message received. Oh my god, guys. Wow.

Malcolm Collins: Simone. Simone, when you present her with data is very open to it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, I’m autistic. Pe people are somehow surprised when they like, make ironic comments and I just take them at face value.

Malcolm Collins: Am

Simone Collins: I doing for what you expect?

Malcolm Collins: What am I doing for dinner tonight? Simon? Mom?

Simone Collins: So you can choose to take a, take a roulette roll on whether or not you’re gonna get food poisoning from the fairly old curry that has been sitting in the fridge for two nights while, oh, I’ll get food

Malcolm Collins: poisoning for that.

I’m sorry. We,

Simone Collins: let’s not, let’s not. So then, would you like to have gizo lasagna, or would you like to have [01:17:00] some new curry with coconut milk? Like from the freezer you

Malcolm Collins: mean? The, the, the lasagna. Dumplings you made?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Lasagna. Dumplings.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, lasagna. Dumplings.

Simone Collins: So do you want one ramekin of lasagna dumpling plus edamame?

Or would you like to have two ramekins? ‘cause you’re hungry.

Malcolm Collins: One ramekin plus edamame.

Simone Collins: Hi. You will have it, it will be yours. I go, I’d

Malcolm Collins: love uts. I’m gonna, I’m gonna go pick up beer. So do you want anything from Redners or anything like that?

Simone Collins: There is some medication for one of our kids at CVS. I will text you. The child is it urgent? No, not really. Like

Malcolm Collins: within this week You need it?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like within the next seven days. Yeah, but I mean, okay. No big deal.

Malcolm Collins: All right.

Simone Collins: Love you. And I love you too. I

Malcolm Collins: wanna get more coding done because I had a cool idea for how I can improve the website significantly.

Simone Collins: Okay. Well then do you want me to bring dinner to your room?

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no. I’m coming down. I wanna spend a

Simone Collins: little minute. When you come down, [01:18:00] the kids just assault you. I don’t, I don’t know how you can eat food while like five children are climbing on your shoulders

Malcolm Collins: point. That’s the point.

Simone Collins: Can you taste your food with that amount of sensory input?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. The kids, they’re, they’re very loving. That’s how they show that they love me.

Simone Collins: It is how they show that. I mean, yeah. It’s not like they’re angry at you. They’re punching is their love language.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I’ve learned, I think in a lot of cultures it probably is, or at least for our ancestors, it was, you know, I think we live in the society where you, you se you separate violence from love and in our family, because we don’t tell them.

That’s not how you show love. It is just a, a louder way to scream a hug. Is to hit somebody to jump on the, to climb

Simone Collins: on them. Oh yeah. Please chime in, in the comments if euphoric screaming is a thing that your kids do, but then I mean, just like standing there and like head thrown back and just Yay.

Yeah. Like not, yeah. Sometimes just [01:19:00] screams, sometimes battle cries. Is this a,

Malcolm Collins: is this a thing? They are the descendants of little picks. They, they, they’re little monsters.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I just, I I, I, I want to know other children do this, but

Malcolm Collins: I, I, I will say that like when I grew up, I remember. In my culture, it is normal to show affection through like wrestling, hitting, et cetera.

Yeah. Like lightly, people need to understand this isn’t like designed to hurt when they do it with their siblings. They scale it depending on the age of the sibling.

Simone Collins: Mm.

No, they’re really, they’re really good at, at Yeah. Modulating the force of their,

Malcolm Collins: I I haven’t seen it in other cultures at the same rate, like specifically the other

Simone Collins: culture.

Well really this, where did the male, the, the adult to a, the adolescent to adult male butt slap come from in like in sports?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that’s

Simone Collins: true. Where did that come from? This come from? Like,

Malcolm Collins: it’s

Simone Collins: clearly a sign

Malcolm Collins: of affection. Mind you,

Simone Collins: yeah. It’s a sign of [01:20:00] affection. It’s, it’s considered masculine.

So

has anyone slapped your butt? That’s a amazing,

Malcolm Collins: No, that was, that was today, sorry. I mean, sorry.

Simone Collins: Today. Today, not, not from our family. I know. I butt all the time,

Malcolm Collins: flat my butt repeatedly today and thought it was very funny.

Simone Collins: No, that’s a, that’s a universal thing in our

Malcolm Collins: household. I get spanked by my kids.

People think I spank my kids, I get fainted.

Simone Collins: No, they, they actually, they do that to everyone. But you’re, you’re lucky that your clothes are on. ‘cause like the, the thing that the kids do is, like, the rule of the house is if there’s an exposed butt cheek, it has to be slapped. And so like bath time gets really difficult ‘cause like if I undress one of the children as I’m trying to like hose them off in quick succession there’s just a quick like, has to like dive in and like bongo on the butt cheeks while they’re like fully dressed.

And if I’m like showering one. With like the [01:21:00] detached shower head hose. Then the other one gets total and all their clothes get soaked. And now I’m like, oh my God, what have you done? But they’re like, it’s like they, they, they realize that they’re getting points for it or something. It’s like a competitive thing.

I just,

Malcolm Collins: the culture that is organically formed within our family horrific shows, shows when you do not try to conform to societal norms and just go as whatever your evolution tells you.

Simone Collins: So fun though. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It’s a lot of fun, first of all.

Simone Collins: No, it, it’s like a perpetual frat house party. Without the hangovers, it’s right.

It really feels like, like our house sounds like a frat party.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, constantly. Yeah. Like when we lock the kids in downstairs, it’s like, okay, we’re gonna run bam, bam

Simone Collins: are shaking.

You have bedtime so called bedtime me. Trust me. Yeah. [01:22:00] Yeah. Trust me, they, they, yeah, they’ve convergently evolved exorcism and, and trust me bro. So it’s great. Okay. Well I will work on your Giza and. This is

Malcolm Collins: something I’m really excited to because we, I really hope that we can donate one of our embryos to a family.

But I am really excited to see what would happen if one of a kid from our embryos grows up in a family from a different cultural background. Like, are they going to adapt to that cultural background? I suspect they would

Simone Collins: 100%. I think that depending on the cultural back, the, the cultural background of the scenario we’re considering is,

Malcolm Collins: would be

Simone Collins: pretty compatible.

Culturally rich, very structured, and our kids would fricking love that. Our kids want more structure. Our kids want more intellectual engagement. And I mean, our, our house is better suited for the intellectual engagement of, I would say like [01:23:00] kids nine and above.

Malcolm Collins: When you

Simone Collins: say

Malcolm Collins: intellectual engagement, do you mean chicken obsession?

Because right now everything’s about chickens.

Simone Collins: I gotta pick up chicks, tractor supply. I’ve been calling them daily. They don’t know when they’re gonna come in. Anyway. I love you. Good night. Goodbye. It’s been a pleasure. Now we’re gonna be called racist again. Great. This is my fault for, sorry for steel

Malcolm Collins: manning.

Simone Collins: I, I don’t I give up, I give up. I give up. Just I’m, I’m a trash human. Goodbye. Good night.

Titan Collins: To Indy. This is George. Is that your middle name? Oh my gosh. He lived in Africa. He was a good little monkey and always very pure. What are on? My beautiful one,

one day. A man.

Speaker 5: What’s this?

Titan Collins: A large

Speaker 6: yellow

Titan Collins: straw.

Speaker 6: The

Titan Collins: man Dodge George. Nice little.

Speaker 5: Why are there, what’s inside of it?[01:24:00]

We are almost the same. The rat had been on the man’s head. George thought it would be nice to have it on his own head. He picked it up and put it on. Do you guys like this story? Yep. Yeah, that covered George’s head. He couldn’t.

Malcolm and Simone Collins sit down with Leaflit Mitsuha (slime-girl VTuber, guild receptionist, and master worldbuilder) for a deep dive into her massive collaborative TTRPG universe in the Lyrian Chronicles / Angel’s Sword RPG.

From 10+ years of running campaigns born out of depression, to building a live-service West Marches-style canon campaign with 140+ players, to magic systems, corrupted zones, divine power through belief, player-driven politics, fiend drama, and how AI is supercharging communal storytelling — this is one of the nerdiest, most optimistic conversations we’ve ever had.

We explore how online communities are prototyping the future of entertainment, why “cringe but free” vitalism beats shame culture, the power of shared worlds vs. solo gaming, and why asynchronous friendships and player agency matter more than ever.

If you love worldbuilding, anime-inspired lore, tabletop RPGs, VTubers, AI creativity, or just watching smart people geek out — this one’s for you.

The game can be found at:

https://rpg.angelssword.com/

If you’re interested in joining the Mirane Campaign you can find it on the Patreon for the game (This is how they fund development, since it’s free to play):

https://www.patreon.com/c/angelsswordrpg/home

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Prefer it?

Malcolm Collins: No, actually this is what, so I was just saying that Leaflet is like one of my top three sources of news, and Simone was like, this is the way news should be. And like if you had told me as a young man, well when you grow up, you see it turns out the New York Times, nobody trusted anymore. You know, you, you go to, uh, wall Street Journal, nobody trusted anymore Uhhuh.

But you see there’s like these anime characters online and um, a lot of people really trust them. Not, not only that. And it’s like, oh, what, what’s their credentials? Like, how does everybody know that they, you know, are they like work correspondence or something? And it’s like, no, it’s just like everybody starts lying.

And so like the five people who aren’t like everybody takes super seriously.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Basically. And

Malcolm Collins: they’re just like, that sounds. Insane. And it is like, no, no, no, it’s weirder. You see, it turns out that like the type of music you listen to is going to regularly feature these random anime characters. [00:01:00]

Leaflit: Oh, God.

Oh. Like the whole, like sky, like,

Malcolm Collins: oh, it’s so funny. Leaf flip. We had, uh, one of our kids, uh, who’s watching Sky, because I, I play Sky Browns all the time while I’m working or whatever. I, I like his songs. Yeah, I think they’re pretty good. Mm-hmm. Um, and, uh, you know, and so our daughter likes to identify with every female character she sees.

Yeah. So she goes, oh, that’s me. And usually I’m like, okay, yeah, sure, yeah, that’s you. Um, and this, I was like, oh no, actually, uh, that’s one of my friends and one of our older kids was like, wait, one of your friends that’s like an an, that’s like a, an animated character. She goes, those aren’t real. And I’m like, well, okay.

So this is a, this is gonna take a little bit of time to explain, uh, but sometimes. They’re real. Uh, Simone, what’s his, uh, sign on the screen? Is this something we can get rid of? Uh,

Leaflit: the live,

Simone Collins: yeah,

Malcolm Collins: live view. Why? Why does it think we’re live?

Leaflit: I don’t know.

Simone Collins: [00:02:00] I don’t know. But we’re not there. It’s gone. I’ve made it disappear.

Everything’s going to be okay now.

Malcolm Collins: I invented a new dish today, which is actually pretty good. Um, oh, what’s that? So mac and cheese is extra pepper, like black pepper,

Leaflit: uhhuh.

Malcolm Collins: It actually works really well.

Simone Collins: I think it’s done a lot at restaurants as it is.

Malcolm Collins: What made me realize this is a lot of like Asian dishes that you’ve been making recently.

Just use obscene amounts of black pepper. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, like pepper chicken and stuff like that. I was like, why, why, why don’t I do this with everything?

Simone Collins: Why not?

Malcolm Collins: It’s

Simone Collins: doable. Okay.

Leaflit: Good flavor when it’s freshly cracked and stuff.

Malcolm Collins: But the reason I’m so excited to talk with Leaflet today, ‘cause the first time we talked with her, apparently it was like your first time talking to somebody else.

Sorry for you. I should, uh, give some context. So Leaflet is, um, quickly growing in influence. I think she’ll soon be, I mean, just based on my viewing it, I think she’ll soon be one of the sort of [00:03:00] dominant right-wing streamers, um, oh geez. In terms of like interesting ideas. Um, and we brought her on ages ago.

Um, and, uh, since then she’s gone on all the channels. She’s always on the, uh, the, the side scrollers.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: side scrollers and stuff like that. Um, and she’s always on ev every Sky Brow video, every one of the Sky Brow videos. It’s like three F-ing leaflet appearances. If I could have as much mental space as somebody’s ring.

Um, and, uh, if you guys were

Leaflit: on too.

Malcolm Collins: He did. He did one with us. One with us, yeah. Um,

Leaflit: was it the Creamy Majaro one?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Creamy Majaro.

Leaflit: That was the best one. That was my favorite one.

Malcolm Collins: Oh. I really like the Amelia one.

Leaflit: I like that one too. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Um, but what I wanted to do is this video, so for all our friends who are coming here to learn something about the world, because I was like, how was it weird that, uh, you’re one of my major sources new?

No, no, no. I don’t wanna do that in this video. I wanna focus on like nerd stuff specifically.

Leaflit: Sure.

Malcolm Collins: So I want to focus on, [00:04:00] because when I first heard that like you had built a world

Leaflit: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I asked you about it last time. I think you were a little, like, you didn’t, you, you probably were like, somebody doesn’t actually want all the lore.

And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Simone Collins: You were still working on it though. I don’t think it had gone live yet.

Leaflit: Yeah. It’s, it’s out now and it’s grown a lot since then. Like we have over like. 140 players now.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh.

Leaflit: But like, that’s not like players who are playing in, you know, with their friends and whatever.

This is like one campaign. You imagine like one tabletop,

Malcolm Collins: one camp. Explain campaign how this works. One, sorry. Okay, so I need to zoom back for the audience here. Okay. So, um, there, it’s like tabletop gaming, um. Mm-hmm. And, uh, tabletop gaming happens in like, d and d is the most famous example. You got pathfinders, all that.

Leaflit: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Um, and sometimes people will create their own, uh, lore in worlds. Um, and that is what she has done. But it [00:05:00] appears that somehow you created like an MMO version of tabletop gaming. So explain.

Leaflit: Sure. I can. So it, you know, it started off, uh, I was running this campaign for like, such a long time. Like I, I looked and I was like.

I had like, what, 14,000 hours or something and like, roll 20. Yeah. I, I’m like crazy. So like, no, it’s a good kind of crazy this, I went through some really, really bad times in my life and I was like super depressed. I didn’t like do anything. And all I did was tabletop. I was like, I’m just gonna play tabletop, go sleep, wake up, play, play tabletop.

So all of that stuff, and like translated into the YouTuber stuff and the company and all the stuff that we do is like, based on that. So like, that campaign has been running for that long, like over 10 years. Yeah. It’s so

Simone Collins: cool. I mean, it’s not cool that you were like in a dark place. Oh no, it’s fine. It sounds like, it sounds like a, a show’s plot.

Like, you know, girl gets depressed and then like literally falls into an alternate universe and it’s a little zaki and like that is, and [00:06:00] then like becomes like an internet celebrity and then it’s straight out of like a show plot. And then I didn’t

Leaflit: like expect any of this. Like if, if you told me like.

Years ago that I would be doing this, I’d be like, you’re crazy.

Malcolm Collins: That is. Okay. So I wanna dig into how this came to be this world, but I also wanna get into like, because I watch, so for Boo who don’t know, like the content that I’m familiar with from her is from YouTube and it’s a fan of hers who clips it and she sort of shares it 50 50 with the fan, um, and, uh, puts together her YouTube.

But what that means is I don’t get all of the lore and backstories to your characters mm-hmm. To your world. Like, okay. Brief question just to start.

Leaflit: Sure.

Malcolm Collins: What’s the difference between the Goo Girl character and the character you are Nower and are they actually the same character? Character? Is it sort of like a same Okay, so it’s a slime.

Okay. Yeah, yeah. Reincarnated slime is, is one of my favorite is Kai. So, um, oh,

Leaflit: me too. Me too. [00:07:00]

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Okay. Okay. I’m

Leaflit: a slime girl. Right. So like, the, the, the story is that. My character is half slime. So my character’s dad is a slime and my character’s mom is a fay. And there’s like an entire, like this all came up because like years ago when I was running this campaign for so long, right?

Mm-hmm.

One of the players was like, but what if I wanna have a kid in games? Like what happens if like, I’m a cat folk and my wife is a slime. And so like, I was like, damnit. So like now I had to like write all of this lore bin and it ended up being used for this to like make my character. So my character is technically, her race is kymera, which is like magically mutated biological thing.

So like for instance, a cat folk would be a kymera, but they would be of the cat folk, like. Type, like subspecies type, right? And even with them that there’s even two different like phenotypes. There’s like the lyth [00:08:00] and the Zo lith, which is like, so the difference would be like if you had a, a rat girl versus like a caven,

Malcolm Collins: sorry.

First of all, one of my favorite things about this conversation, if there was a huge population on the internet who sees both of us as right-wing extremists, and this is a conversation that to the internet right wing extremists, they having, it’s like, well, you’ve got the chimera of the cat girl. Um, no.

Okay, so, so it, your character came out of an individual play session that you were playing.

Leaflit: She’s an NPC. So, okay, so, so she’s not even my oc That’s a funny thing. What? Yeah, she’s not So this cha So when I was making my V YouTuber character, I was like, well, I don’t really wanna be like the girl. I wanna be like.

Just some random villager office lady. And that’s what Leaflet is, is she’s like the guild receptionist of the Guild. So the player character, I’m DMing the game, the player characters, [00:09:00] they went through this really, really long campaign. They ended defeating the big bad. Mm-hmm. And they’re settling down.

They’re like, let’s make an adventuring guild. Right. So they found the Adventuring Guild and my character is the receptionist of the Guild. So I’m not even like a main character or anything like that.

Malcolm Collins: No. I actually really like this, um, as, as a world that was created by the Adventuring Guild receptionist.

Leaflit: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Sounds very fitting for like an anime. Um, yeah. Uh, have you, have you watched the one about the Adventure Guild receptionist?

Leaflit: I have not. Is that the one where she’s really powerful?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah.

Leaflit: Yeah. I haven’t seen it yet. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It’s actually, it’s decent. It’s decent. Um, okay. So, uh. You when you were playing this particular campaign, was this in your world or was this before your world existed?

Leaflit: All of it is the same world ever since the first one. So there’s been like different timelines, like some take place like thousands of years in the past, but it’s all one continuous world. [00:10:00]

Malcolm Collins: Okay.

Leaflit: And go ahead.

Malcolm Collins: No, continue. Um, I wanna keep hearing, well you, you have multiple campaigns that you place in different times.

First I gotta hear about the logistics. How do you do this many people in one campaign?

Leaflit: Oh, you’re talking about that one? So that one is the newest one. So that’s the 10th campaign. I think it’s the 10th one. And so what happened is we, we, we developed this, this RPG, right? The tabletop RPG. And we released, we released it like the system’s out like an alpha, like anyone can play it for free.

It, it’s kind of like imagine Dungeons and Dragons. But the difference is the rules are online, so anybody can play it. There’s no fee. And then. It updates every two weeks, two to three weeks. So we have like patches. So it is, I hate to use the term, but it’s like a live service tabletop, RRP G kind of.

Malcolm Collins: That’s actually really interesting. Okay. So if I understand this correctly, people play individual campaigns with small groups.

Leaflit: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: But what’s politically happening in the world Change, like politically GI don’t know what you call it, but like that’s changing as they’re playing.

Leaflit: Okay. So, so [00:11:00] it goes like this.

So, you know, we have, we have, we have the game, we have the live service thing, right? And what happened was is as we were playing this, we were like, we don’t have enough people testing the game. And mm-hmm. Somebody was like, well, have you heard of West Marshes? You know what West Marches is?

Malcolm Collins: No.

Leaflit: Okay. So like, have you heard of West Marshes?

And what West Marches is, it’s a format of tabletop RPGs where you have all of these individual parties. And, and they can do whatever they want in this world, but then like what they do like actually affects things that other parties see. So like what happened was we were like, what if we do that like a canon campaign where players can feel like they’re actually a part of like the leaflet world and the leaflet lore, and then they can affect the world.

So like, we’re like, okay, so let me sit down and like make a setting for it. And what we invented was a setting separated from the main continents. Like where a leaflet lives right now is like a different, that’s like the main area. Okay. And then we separated off. So there’s this, there’s this concept in the story.

Um, there’s a place called the Astro Line, and it’s basically like. [00:12:00] Imagine like the equator, but it’s just giant, like irradiated zone. It’s like magic is messed up there. Yeah. And it corrupts stuff, right? So these adventures are basically, and normally you have to be a really high level adventure to go there ‘cause they don’t want people going there.

Mm-hmm. But this person set up like this kind of bootleg village where they’re like, okay, anybody that wants to go in, like, you know, you could come here and then like, there’s a way to get in there. Right? So the players are those people, they’re like the, the, we’re not official adventurers, but like, you know, screw it, we’re gonna go in there and uh, we’re gonna look and whatever reason.

So like some players are like,

Malcolm Collins: so what makes

Leaflit: the

Malcolm Collins: line irradiated? Like, what makes it dangerous?

Leaflit: Okay. So it’s a little bit, okay, there was an event that happened in the game in previous things and it caused an event in which this happened. I can’t really say it because it’s like, it’s a spoiler and like everybody’s trying to figure that out right now.

Malcolm Collins: Oh. Oh. All of that’s awesome. Okay. [00:13:00] Okay. Okay. I can tell you later though.

Leaflit: Off,

Malcolm Collins: off camera. In what way is it, so you, you call it a radio. I guess what I’m trying to find out is like what makes it hostile feeling? Is it like unusual numbers of monsters, mana, sapping? Like what’s the thing that makes it dangerous?

Leaflit: So like this force is called asra and it’s a type of magic. So there’s like the different types of magic. Okay. Astro’s like the least understood one. And what it does is it tends to just make weird effects, but the, the biggest effect that it has that’s bad is that it will sometimes corrupt a thing and it doesn’t have, I mean this is the thing, it doesn’t have to be a biological thing.

Like it could be like, it could be, but it could also be like a house or like, and are you familiar with SCP? It’s kind of like that.

Malcolm Collins: The SEP foundation? Yes. Like. Yeah, we, we talked about, that was the thing I talked to you about where they make up all the monsters.

Leaflit: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And

Malcolm Collins: they have the entire lo and it’s so cool.

Leaflit: Oh,

yes.

Okay.

Malcolm Collins: It’s actually most recently, I love watching SEP lore videos. Um,

Leaflit: [00:14:00] yeah. It’s similar to that. So like, things get corrupted, so like

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Leaflit: A, a house for instance, or like a, like one of the, the big dangerous ones is a mirror. Okay. And there’s like this mirror and like, it’s just a corrupted mirror and it’s the corrupted concept of a mirror.

So it’s like, rather than being like a creature that like stands up and attacks you. It. Like if you look into it, it like corrupts you basically.

Simone Collins: Our kids are gonna be, become obsessed with this as soon as they get like literate.

Malcolm Collins: I’m actually almost more interested in how, so it sounds like the way you developed your universe, if I’m if I’m wrong here, is you started, uh, just sort of building on it as you played session after session and then new things get added.

It reminds me of, um, in somebody as I described, like modern Judaism as a bit like this mm-hmm. That it’s just been around forever. And then people added new things, new things, new things. And now when you look at like Orthodox Jews, it’s like fashion trends from like two different centuries all implanted on top of each other.

Leaflit: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Uh, not, not too, too [00:15:00] millennia, like, and we’re just gonna, uh, because when you’re like different types of magic.

Leaflit: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. First of all, I wanna know about the different types of ma like

Leaflit: Sure.

Malcolm Collins: Let’s zoom into that. Yeah.

Leaflit: All right. Sure, sure. Of course. So like the, um, I love this by the way. Like I, I, I sometimes use this on stream.

I just, I just nerd out about Lauren. Like, like people ask because the people that play the game wanna know, and they’re like, oh, it’s time, it’s time for the leaflet lo session time to like, time to figure out stuff that she won’t tell us, right? Try time bait her into telling us stuff. But, uh, so there’s like arcane magic, and that’s like the, that’s like your typical understanding of like sort of science magic, where like they have an understanding that there’s like this energy force and then like they could take the energy force into themselves and then program it and then use that to like, use magical effects.

And the extension of that is called arteris, which is if you, you know, arteris, but basically mm-hmm. It’s taking that programming but making a circuit that goes into an item so that it can, you can put the manna into the item [00:16:00] and it like follows that exact circuit, which allows non-PE casters to cast. So like in the world, like everybody uses magic, like even like fighters.

Like they would like have a sword that has like that circuit in it and they would all use magic that way.

Malcolm Collins: So I, I, um,

Simone Collins: first off, no, I just have to say this is really annoying to me. Have you heard of Harry Potter in the methods of rationality?

Leaflit: No, I have not.

Simone Collins: Okay. It’s basically Harry Potter fan fiction. It was like, well, what if we took you, my guy?

Yeah. He’s, he’s an, he’s an AI dor now, but like, I mean, this is one of the things that made him famous and what was really fun was this premise of like, what if someone just really thoughtful took this wizard universe and was like, okay, well what if we like, apply some more like principles of basic physics to this and stuff like that.

But he doesn’t really follow through with it. Uh, and what I, well what I’m hearing here is you’re like, well, what have we like actually thought through how like this magic would work and how we could apply it to, to objects and like how in a real world non magical people would start to leverage it. And, and like,

Malcolm Collins: well, I [00:17:00] have, um, fans who don’t know this.

If you, if you have, if you’re on our like subscriber, I have a number of stories that I’ve played out with like mm-hmm. Uh, the, the site that we run reality fabricate where I try to go through like different magical universes. Um, but, okay, so now I’m immediately interested in if this can, so this system, where does magic come from and how can it be stored?

Leaflit: So there’s two ways. One, people natural, there’s like a biological magic container that people can have. Okay. And then the other form is as fuel. So like they can create like a distilled magical fuel. So these, like items I’m telling you about, they use like cartridges that, like, people put like a, like a bullet in it, but it’s like a ma it’s like just a fuel canister.

We’ll put it in. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I, I should, I should be more direct about what I’m trying to do. So what I love doing in these universes mm-hmm. Is try to figure out how their physics work to find out how I can exploit them to become extremely powerful. So what I’m asking here is, uh, if I wanted to fill up a canister of magic in your universe.

Mm-hmm. [00:18:00] Right? Yeah. Um, where, like, what’s the process for that?

Leaflit: Um, basically, so right now the main way to get it is to mine like, it’s like a fossil fuel is people will mine like a fossil fuel of magic.

Malcolm Collins: Clever way to not make it easily breakable. So it’s not something I could take from captives. It’s not something I can take from an environment.

I need to literally mine it.

Leaflit: So the funny thing is, is there was a way to do this. Um, so one system that we have is this thing called Divine Arms. Have you watched a Comic A Kill?

Malcolm Collins: Uh, which one is that? I, I I,

Leaflit: the one with assassins and like, they wanna take down the government and then they have these, these weapons that like nobody understands how they were made.

Malcolm Collins: Um, is, you’re not talking about Cleta, right? So No, no, I haven’t watched that one.

Leaflit: So basically there’s these ancient weapons that nobody knows how they’re made or what they’re made out of, [00:19:00] and the methods of their creation aren’t understood. And there was one that did this, that basically converted people’s lives into like bullets.

So they would like shoot all their countries with them like an artillery. But it got blown up recently, but someone’s trying to rebuild it. But that’s a little, that’s a, that’s another story.

Malcolm Collins: Wait, oh, hold on. So, okay. So is, is there any understanding in the universe of why this thing that they’re mining has this power?

Leaflit: Um, it’s basically like, like fossil fuels. It’s like as things die and they have like magic in them that like, kind of distills into like rocks and like different things that they can, they can mine up. And then like, liquefy

Malcolm Collins: clever. I like

Simone Collins: biological being, can produce magic that maybe like there’s something in them that when die, they die.

Like, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leaflit: All of the types of magic Yeah. That, that exists.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, that’s pretty, uh, you know, if I was making this universe, uh, the twist I would [00:20:00] use is that it turns out that this is actually their souls that people are burning through. Like, it’s

Leaflit: like, that’s a different magic.

Malcolm Collins: That is, okay, go over this

Leaflit: kind of, so like, that’s how divine magic works in a setting.

So divine magic is the idea that if you believe in something, a piece of you goes to that. So like, oh, fun. Oh, so like very

Simone Collins: like Neil Gaman American Gods.

Leaflit: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Kind of like that. It doesn’t really matter what it is too, right? Like if it’s a concept you believe in, it would like send like some of that energy of your soul to that, whether that’s a god or even a hero, right?

Then that’s how like, heroes are so powerful. It’s like so many people like love them.

Malcolm Collins: Does it burn your life force to use this form of magic?

Leaflit: Um, it’s kind of like a finite amount, so it doesn’t like kill you. At least in the normal sense, like the typical sense.

Malcolm Collins: Did you ever see, I I, I don’t know. I know this is a deep, I think [00:21:00] it’s called Krono Trigger or something, the anime where the character like loses their life lifespan every time they use magic.

Leaflit: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I kept expecting the entire thing. I was like, they’re not actually gonna have her die young. Like there’s gonna be some reversal before the end of the anime.

Leaflit: Wasn’t that ending amazing? It was like the

Malcolm Collins: best No. That ending was like what? The, you had her die as like a child. Like, what? I did not, there’s, there’s, there’s not consequences to this type of magic in most.

Leaflit: I loved it. I loved, I loved how they actually stuck that ending. ‘cause like most people with chickened out.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, absolutely. Bring back

Leaflit: consequences.

Malcolm Collins: 100% believed they were going to chicken out. I didn’t have the slightest. There was no part of my brain that throughout the entire anime thought that she was just going to die after the big bad, like being held by her best friend.

Right. Like, I was like, what? You had set them up as like lovers and they’re still children.

Leaflit: This is the way it happened was so good too. Like, just [00:22:00] like the, the final scene of it, like, man, it was, it was good. It was a good one. Yeah. Oh, one thing you might like about the magic, like in like relation to the world is, so ad adventuring is like, think of a, the wor word.

Adventuring when they think of an adventure or someone who like, you know, the concept of like adventuring guild and you get like ranks and stuff like that. Yeah. The, the original concept of that was. Um, is a fighting style called that was built around that. Okay. And it’s people that are able to use their internal magic to like augment their muscles.

And that’s like the basics of that. Okay. And this is why like everyone in the setting, like e like even like the level one characters can like jump like three stories and they can like instantly teleport behind you and stuff like that using like their magic, right? And the original story, so this is like actually canon in the lore, is that there was a character who was a girl and she [00:23:00] had a dad who was like this expedition.

He was like going on grand adventures, right? And the daughter really wanted to go with him, but it got to a point where like her dad was like, okay, like. You stay at home, you, you can’t do any of this. Right. Yeah. And then like, he would take her brothers and she got so upset by this, that like, and her mom was like a maid.

So her mom would teach her like, oh, like, here’s like magic for like how to heat up water. Here’s magic, how to do this stuff. Right? And eventually she was the first person who founded the ability to like, augment your muscles, the magic. And that’s the explanation of why female player characters can actually fight men.

Malcolm Collins: I, that’s needed, that’s being needed in a setting. I’m, I’m actually sorry. I love this is, this is why first, I, I just can’t help but thinking in so many people’s minds, these are two like far right comments that are talking, you learning out about like old anime, but then two, it’s like you come up with explanations for stuff mm-hmm.

That the mainstream creators are not coming up with. You have like a d and d campaign or [00:24:00] whatever, and a female’s just as strong as a male and a female isn’t as strong as a male. I mean, it’s, it’s

Leaflit: not, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Right. And so you’re like, no, we have an explanation of that. Yeah. But the other thing, um, so I wanna go deeper because I wanna find out how this system can be broken.

Okay. Explain to me the different types of magic.

Leaflit: Okay. So there’s like the divine magic, which is the one I talked about.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That’d be harder to explore. You could try to create a culture something. Mm-hmm. It wouldn’t really be, which they

Leaflit: have done, people have done that

Malcolm Collins: actually. Can you use divine magic to manipulate people’s minds?

Leaflit: To manipulate people’s minds? I mean, I guess you could use any magic to do that.

Malcolm Collins: Well, if you can use divine magic to do that, you can create a cascade, right? Mm-hmm. So if you can, uh, like use the divine magic that you have to get people to worship a certain concept and then draw power from the concept, you’re having them worship, you could create a cascade.

But, uh, that, that [00:25:00] seems hard. Like the mining one. What I, what I’m impressed about, about your world is I can’t think of many ways to exploit the magic. So I hear about,

Leaflit: well, because you have to work on it, because Yeah, like, as I was DMing this stuff, right? So like all of this, it wasn’t something I planned out.

I was like, I wrote, I, I sat down and I was like, okay, I’m gonna do this, this, this, this, this, this. And this is like how this system works. It was like me playing with players, right? And again, like this goes back to like a time when I was like really, really depressed. Yeah. So you have to imagine I would like run 18 hours.

I would sleep, eat, run 18 hours. That was like my schedule. Right. And, and so I didn’t even have time to prep for the games. Right. So a lot of it was reactive based on like, players trying to do some b******t and then like would have to like, okay, well how do I, how do I, how do I write myself out of this?

Right.

Malcolm Collins: I know what’s so funny is George RR Martin has been working on the last book for like, for however many years, and you’re forced to like, write new volumes every time you go in. Okay.

Leaflit: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So I, I wanna understand the, uh, [00:26:00] body manipulation magic. What is the source of that magic?

Leaflit: The body mini, you mean like

Malcolm Collins: the stuff that’s used to make people physically more powerful?

Like, is that the same with the artifice or magic, or is that something different?

Leaflit: It’s the regular arcane magic. So it’s like the, the ambient like force, I guess it’s like magic just exists in the world. It’s like ambient.

Malcolm Collins: Okay.

Leaflit: Of different levels. Not like the same level everywhere. Yeah. And people have a thing called a soul core, which stores all their magic.

Malcolm Collins: So you can store magic from the ambient magic level.

Leaflit: Yeah, but it’s, it’s, it’s capped as to like your, there’s like a search in like maximum. Okay. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: You can’t, can, you can’t, can you store it in any external object?

Leaflit: Mm. Some people can, but it’s still reliant on magic to activate. It’s like the, the biggest loophole here would be like, probably umo.

Geez. Like they have, like, they can Yeah. Imbue their [00:27:00] magic into ink and then write like talismans that like have a spell effect. It’s like, but then they also have to use their magic to activate it still. So it’s not really that big Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Of a well set up world. I’m gonna be honest. Well set now. I’m, I’m impressed, uh, that it’s hard.

Yeah. Because what I would normally do, if you could do something like that, then what you need to do, like if you’re a Lord or something like that, is use any of this type of character you have captured or mm-hmm. Essentially industrially farm them to create magical scrolls, but if it’s their own magic that’s needed to activate the scroll mm-hmm.

Then you can’t use it in any sort of industrial capacity.

Leaflit: Mm-hmm. One thing it might be, what, what might be interesting, like if, if you wanna know this about divine magic, is that like, if it’s a God, like the concept of a God, that is, there’s a container for it, so you can actually kill the God and like take their container.

Mm. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And what

Leaflit: [00:28:00] could you do with it? Nobody knows about, but I I, I they’ll find out now, but it’s whatever.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, that’s amazing. You’re dropping law here. No. Um, so there is, um, one of my favorite things about the war hammer universe. Are you, do you, do you like follow the war of like war hammer 40 K and stuff?

Leaflit: A little bit. Like, I’m not like super deep in it, but I, I know like a little bit of it

Malcolm Collins: is they took the concept, um, and this, this is why I like it. So they took the, I I, I actually have never read a single war hammer book in my entire life. I have only watched lore videos. Um, but they took the concept of.

Well, if you worship something similar to your universe, like if you worship a, a God or a concept or have a feeling mm-hmm. Um, that, that creates a divine entity of that type. Yes. And what what is funny is a lot of like hippies beliefs, this, they’re like, well, all gods and all religions are true in so far as like people believe in them, right?

Leaflit: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And then it takes this, and it’s like, and [00:29:00] if that was the case, it would actually be really horrible because what would happen is the most basal concepts like a fear of death would get feedback loops where like, the God that was manifested by that fear would want to create more of that fear to manifest himself further.

Uh, you get like the God of eroticism, the fear of death, like all of the most basic things. Um, but it doesn’t sound like that’s a problem in your universe because it sounds like these are not like active thinking entities that are, that would want to like empower themselves further.

Leaflit: Yes. Well, one thing I will say is that.

That ties in, that whole thing being bad ties, ties into what I told you about is like what caused the big irradiated zone.

Oh

yeah. So if you think about it, right, like I’m sure you can piece together.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Okay. Okay. So what are the major political events in, in the world right now that like players are thinking about, that are changing, that are exciting people?

Leaflit: So, there’s, [00:30:00] there’s two right now. There’s the, there’s the novel, the Light Novel, which is a civil war in like one of the countries. But the big political one right now is Moran, like the, the campaign has all the people playing in it.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Leaflit: So there are a bunch of people that live in like this. This town called Mera.

Okay. And it is like a base that was set up kind of out in the middle of nowhere. And typically people can’t go there ‘cause there’s a big tundra before you get there. So it’s really hard to get there. Most people, like, there’s also, the other thing too is we had to, so there’s airships in the setting, but airships, they, they only really, they float on like magic lay lines.

So like, if there’s no lay line, you can’t put, you can’t just like put a ship there. It would be really, really hard to like fly a ship there. Yeah. So because of that, this tundra has no lay line. So like you can’t just fly it over it. So you’re talking like really, really hard caravans that are going through like, brutal conditions with [00:31:00] like no food or anything like that.

So

Malcolm Collins: yeah. So why, why do people go there? Like what’s the adva, is there some resource at this location?

Leaflit: It’s to explore the as line, because there’s all sorts of crazy stuff there. Like, there’s new, new resources, new materials, uh, items called, um, Astro Relics, which are like, if you’ve watched Made In Abyss, it’s kind of like similar to that.

Or you can find like these crazy, like items that do stuff and it’s like, how is this work? How does this work? And like there’s even a system where like people will will gather these things and submit them for research to like the big like, like academies, like magic academies.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Leaflit: And, uh, different monsters, like different parts, new things like that.

Um, they’re all looking for that. But the, the fun thing about is there’s a lot of drama because people have different reasons. Like some people wanna be like researchers, they wanna like understand what Astra is. Mm-hmm. Some people are like, I just want fame and fortune and like, I’m here to like, make tons of money.

And some people are like, well, I’m here for my country because I wanna find technology that’ll help my country. So they have all these like [00:32:00] different reasons. And because of that, the players clash a lot. They end up fighting, they end up making their own little factions. And there’s a character who’s like the expedition director.

And this character is like a kind of mysterious force. Like nobody knows who they are. No one’s ever seen them. And they actually, there was like a bunch of people thinking that the director was like, evil because the director doesn’t help them. So like they, they’d have like a case in which like there’d be this giant monster just walking around like killing people.

And it’s like the newbies would go out and get slaughtered by this monster. And so they have to set up like parties, like, oh, let’s go hunt this thing down. But they’re like, wait a minute. If the director ha is, is this powerful? Why are they not doing anything about it? They must be evil. Right?

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

And it’s like

Leaflit: from my point of, it’s like you just don’t understand like your idea of like the future and your idea of, of what is important. The, the director’s thinking about things on a completely different scale than like you even could [00:33:00] possibly imagine, because from the director’s point of view, if the director helps you all, then you’ll never grow and you’ll suck.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: So it’s like, it’s, it’s kind of fun like to have

Malcolm Collins: that. No, no, that’s also fun. Okay. Has this been established that they are wrong about the director in Universe yet? Or is this like being

Leaflit: a, the, there’s a song sang by the director. So like, okay, so here’s like a whole nother thing. So there was a fan song made.

Wait,

micro, explain, explain that.

Okay. So there’s a concept. So in the game, the way, first I have to explain a little bit about the game. So in the game you have four action points, and you can use this for action points for anything. It’s not like d and d where there’s like move action, like minor major, it’s four.

Okay. And the biggest balls thing you could do is called a double heavy attack, which means I’m not doing anything but just attacking. Right? Um, I’m doing two all in attacks that have, I don’t care if it misses, if it hits, I could do big damage, right? It, so it’s like the, the big balls thing to do. [00:34:00] And so a player made a song called Double Heavy Attacks.

It’s like a, like a, like a metal song and everyone loves this song, right? And it, it, it kind of became like this huge meme in like the community. Oh my

Simone Collins: gosh.

Leaflit: So the, I, the concept of double heavy attacks now means a person who. Understands what they want and they go for it all in. That’s what it means. So yeah, we’ve taken this song,

Simone Collins: you now have slang.

This is so good.

Malcolm Collins: You said there was a, the song. Okay. So by the way, for people who are confused as to why something like this is interesting, if you’re just watching this and you’re just like, this seems like weird nerd stuff. Like why is this interesting? Uh, what I consider how media and entertainment are changing the concept of a form of entertainment, of the type that is being described here was genuinely.

Impossible, uh, I wanna say two generations ago. [00:35:00] Mm-hmm. Uh, so I, I, it might’ve been possible in the early days of the internet, but it hadn’t been developed to this extent yet. Um, and what we are seeing right now is something that whatever our kids are doing for fun is likely going to be an extrapolation of ideas like this.

Mm-hmm. The iterative, interactive elements, um, uh, I, I think are genuinely like anthropologically. Culturally, we are looking at, uh, a, a. You can ignore it and you can say, well, none of this stuff matters because, um, you know, like this is all like urban monoculture, whatever. And it’s like, no, but this is like, this is like actually the, the like internet conservatives who are into this stuff, right?

Leaflit: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Um, and uh, people can be like, well then why would, why would they be into it? And the answer I would make is it’s because all of the media [00:36:00] that’s out there, people are like, why do so many conservative influencers watch a ton of anime is because it’s not woke yet. It’s like the one form of media I can watch where like, women are feminine and men are masculine and, uh, I’m not preached to 24 7.

It’ll have its own message, but it like, um, and th this is a form of media that because people create it. Communally. And what’s even more interesting than that, it is not created by like a localized friend group. Mm-hmm. It is created by an online friend group. Yeah. And online friend groups and local friend groups have very little in common if you think about the way they actually end up structured.

Yeah. Um, local friend groups, you know, the way you look ends up mattering, uh, your, your local social standing, how much money you have, et cetera. Uh, and this can matter in an online friend group if it’s in some like, pay to win scenario or something like that. That’s obviously not what this is. Um, and it’s one of the reasons that if you look at the culture of our era today, I [00:37:00] point out that a lot of, uh, just the culture that we live in, and I’d argue all the way down to Trump originally came from Fortune.

Um, brownies came from four chan, memes came from four Chan Trump originally in the primaries. I’m not saying that he won because of four chan, but he was recognized in the primaries because of what was happening there. And that was a totally new type of community where social status was determined in a totally new way.

Um, and the way it was determined, because there wasn’t up votes or anything like that, was based on how, uh. How, how much, whatever you said could grab attention. Um, and that meant to be sort of maximally shocking and everything like that, and that defined a generation of cultural output. When you look at what Leaflet is doing now, we might see the prototype of what the next generation of cultural output is going to look like.

There are going to be. Potentially, and I’m not saying it’ll happen within [00:38:00] leaflet setting, maybe in 10 years when this is metastasized and you have different groups doing this, um, groups that are potentially so large that ideas and memes that come up within these settings end up affecting, uh, not just like what, like first of all, the four chan could create something like a Brony movement or memes was insane back in the day, but then they could elect a president That changes politics in the United States permanently.

Um, so paying attention to these ways that culture is changing and the innovators within this space is not a, like a lark. It’s not like a a, a curious aside. It’s something that anyone who is interested in where society is going is treating as one of the main courses. But to go forward, you mentioned some sort of fanfic.

So somebody, people write fanfictions about this and you incorporate them

Leaflit: a song. It’s a song. So somebody made a song’s

Malcolm Collins: a song. Song is like a fan song. Yeah. Okay.

Leaflit: Yeah. The fan song. Double Heavy Attacks. And what we did was we took that. And we started making versions of that song from [00:39:00] all the characters that embodied that idea, but from their own point of view.

Yeah. So like the director has a version of the song, but it’s so completely different than the others. ‘cause others are like, I’m gonna go all in, like, you know, for my family and, you know, this is like, I wanna like go on adventures. And she’s like, I want the future to exist. It’s like so

completely

different.

So great.

Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s very, it’s, it’s very funny that, so play

the

ball.

Malcolm Collins: I’m actually, wait, are these sung by real people or are they done by ai?

Leaflit: Ai. Ai.

Malcolm Collins: Good, good. Well, no, this is the thing about AI and AI and creativity that people don’t get, right? Like, so people are like, oh, AI art, or AI music. So people are born with different capacities, right?

Mm-hmm. You know, I might be a smart person, but I was born without any genetic capacity for music or art. I, I try, I just don’t have it, right?

Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Now. I can create these things and I, I regularly do it on shows. I make art, I make music, I make, uh, you know, [00:40:00] you created that great one for ASME gold, right?

The, uh, the animated song and like theb style. Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: I’ve watched that so many times. It was really well done. Thank you. It was the effort.

Malcolm Collins: Um, and a lot of people get surprised. This stuff is coming from content creators who people see as like, like the, we, one of the weirdest things that’s happened in our generation is that, um, ai, this, this, this incredible new technology that came outta nowhere, that for whatever reason, well, we will talk about why the left came out reflexively against it.

Um, and the rite has largely in our communities, embraced it. Like we all watch Sky Brown. We all liked, we, we liked these various songs. I liked yours, your Asthma Gold song. Um, and, uh, a lot of people are like, that doesn’t make any f*****g sense. Like, why has this happened? And, and I think the answer is, is because.

For so long, the dominant culture in our societies has been able to control us. Mm-hmm. By saying, you should be ashamed of saying things like that. You should be ashamed of [00:41:00] doing things like that. And eventually, uh, the way that people ended up responding was just like, well, if you tell me I should be ashamed, I’m gonna reflexively do the opposite and I’m gonna do the opposite.

The most, like in creamy manjaro, he’s talking about AI slop, like the cream of the lop and everything like that, right? Yeah. Like the whole song is joking and riffing on the idea of like, yeah, it’s AI slop, like whatever. Yeah. Um, and because of this, strangely, uh, the, the communities and culture that’s going to be generated of what, you know, the, the, the, the world our kids are going to live in mm-hmm.

Is predominantly happening in communities like the ones that you’re, you’re creating. I, I’d love to know like, where else are you using AI in the creation of this universe or, and how the universe is expanding.

Leaflit: Everything. So like, we use AI for a lot of our, our art, like when I do sessions myself mm-hmm. I usually make songs that are really [00:42:00] stupid.

So like, there’s, there was like one time, uh, the, the party I, I had the encounter where they mm-hmm. There’s this guy who’s just causing all this chaos in the area and they meet this tree, and the tree, the, the person cursed the tree to have a giant wooden, you know, like,

yeah, yeah.

Just, just, just to mess with him.

And I just made it a musical number just for fun. Like, they come out to like this tree and he comes out and he just. I play the song and it’s the tree complaining about everything that happened to him and like, please adventurous, help me with this problem. Like, but like, you couldn’t do that before, right?

Like that, there’s no way you could do something like that, right?

Malcolm Collins: No. What’s, what’s funny is you describe it as like cringey, but, um, one of the things I’ve pointed out when we talk about cultural anthropology and how the world is changing, if you, I point out that, you know, in the nineties and the eighties, um, [00:43:00] right wing, uh, you know, influencers, politics was sort of defined by this feeling of disgust and like, these are the things that discussed us and therefore they’re bad.

And then we learned basically societally, that’s a bad way to do things. Mm-hmm. Like, you know, um. What’s her fa mother? Oh, what is Mother Teresa? Right? Was it her? Yeah. She was like, well, leopards may cause disgust in you, but like they’re still people, right? Like you can’t trust disgust to be an objective measure of morality.

Um, and then, uh, you had this dominant culture that came out that was sort of leftist and it said, uh, well, we, we’ll police things through. Um. You know, cringe and things that embarrass you, right? Like this embarrasses you, that embarrasses you. And I think now we’re seeing this flip of that, um, where the new, the new right is sort of defined by vitalism.

Like, I don’t care how you wanna police me, I want to be maximally excited about life, excited and maximally having [00:44:00] fun with the life I have. And, uh, anybody who, and, and when you say like, this is cringe, but like I’m leaning into it, what you mean is you’ve created an environment where you’re not afraid of external judgment.

What you’re trying to create is whatever is a maximally chaotically fun.

Leaflit: I’m cringe, but I am free.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you, you must face the cringe and pass through a very dune, right? Like cringe is mind. That’s,

Leaflit: I live now, that’s how I live my life now. I’m cringe, but I’m free. I do whatever I want.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it.

Okay. Okay.

Simone Collins: Great

Malcolm Collins: feelings. Uh, so by the way, what, what, what do you uses.

Leaflit: Uh, yeah, I use, I use suno and, uh, we, we, we use all sorts of AI for everything, like, everything like the art, on, like the, there’s no way that we could, like, we tried, by the way, we, we tried to like, uh, what’s the word? Commission people to do like art.

But the thing is our release cycle is like two to three weeks.

Simone Collins: [00:45:00] No. In our commissions, we know we ran an, our commission startup. They take forever

sometimes.

Simone Collins: I mean, we’ve gone through the process of trying to pay artists to do all sorts of things and like make it easier for them and facilitate it. And it still just takes forever.

Art takes a long time. It does, it does. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: By, by the way, Malcolm and Simone Lore, for people who don’t know, uh, our first company when we were first, uh, meeting and, and, and doing, when we, we raised VC money for this and everything mm-hmm. Was designed to make inexpensive art commissions of the type that people do on deviant art, like easy for ever average people to do as like a consumer thing.

Um, and it, it’s just, it’s interesting. I mean, obviously that it doesn’t exist anymore. Um, but, uh, yeah, there, there isn’t a way to do this with a lot of the ways that people are using ai. They’re like, well, you could be paying an artist. It’s like, I can’t pay an artist to do my daily title card. Like, what are you talking about?

Mm-hmm.

Leaflit: Exactly. And the funny thing is, is like I get, you know, I get complaints from people on like x like, oh, you hate artist lethal. I’m like. I pay more [00:46:00] on art than you could even possibly imagine. You know? Like I was like, you have no idea. And, and I’ll tell you a little something, uh, in regards to that.

Like, so we have for our game, for the, you know, the, uh, the one that has multiplayer a lot of people playing it, right? Yeah. We, I’ve, I’m in contact with like a friend who owns a studio in Tokyo. We had a song produced, we got like a mini orchestra to play it. Uh, we got hired like a really, really good singer to sing it.

And, um, yeah, it’s being animated by that, by people that worked on a attack on Titan. So, I mean, like money

Malcolm Collins: people No, hold on when she told me this. So people who work on a tech on Titan are literally animating. It’s like a, a new intro thing for your world. Yeah. You have an old intro thing that I quite like.

Leaflit: Yeah, I can, I can send you the, the song later. The song is so good. Oh my gosh.

Malcolm Collins: I got, uh,

Simone Collins: yes, please.

Malcolm Collins: Jelly. My is

Simone Collins: amazing. I think that such a good example though, is that people who condemn use of AI to make art, you know, are like, oh, how dare you. But really, and [00:47:00] the people who I’ve seen use it the most also are spending the most

Leaflit: Yep.

Simone Collins: On art and on music because they just, but they can’t, no one else can keep up the pace. And I think it’s very similar with stuff like, um. Just development or even just like phone calls or other stuff that AI is starting to take over. Yeah. It’s the people who need it and just can’t get humans to do it enough.

Like we just, no one else can keep up. Mm-hmm. People aren’t replacing humans, they’re just trying to force multiply.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I,

Leaflit: exactly.

Malcolm Collins: I’d also point out that, um, the industries that have been replaced, the first like a, a, a lot of like Hollywood and stuff like this that we’re seeing, they were already basically ais, they were creating the most average slop ever, and that’s why AI was so easily able to replace it.

Simone Collins: It’s true. What are, like when, when AI was just coming online, I asked various ais like, well, you know what, what domains will be the final ones left to humans? And they’re like, well for sure therapy and [00:48:00] art will remain the domain of humans. And this is like at the same time that like it was just popping up in those areas the most and it was, oh, I dunno.

The new thing in the news just, well, the one thing that AI will never be able to do is, is to have taste, but like, what is taste? I don’t even understand taste. So she makes

Malcolm Collins: my dinner with ai. By the way, if you don’t know, like the main

Simone Collins: perplexity makes the, I mean, because I know perplexity blends different models, but it’s the best at distilling recipes.

Um, ‘cause now you know, like the internet ruined recipes, you have to scroll for like 10 minutes to get to like the ingredients list if you go off Google.

Leaflit: Yeah.

Simone Collins: And so just, yeah, we ask perplexity and that is, that is all of Malcolm’s food now.

Leaflit: I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s really because you also tailor it to like your taste.

Right? You like, I don’t like this specific thing and then I’ll work around it. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s amazing. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Wonderful. It goes for you too.

Malcolm Collins: Hold on. So you got through one thing that’s happening in this universe. What’s something else is happening in [00:49:00] this universe right now that people are, are paying attention to?

Leaflit: Uh, you mean like in the, in the game? Um, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: in the game. The game.

Leaflit: It’s like the anniversary right now is kind of cool, but, um, it, I, oh, right

Malcolm Collins: now, well, how does the game world recognize its own anniversary? What’s going on with that?

Leaflit: Oh, in the game world? Uh, well, in the game world, we just have like festivals.

So we just make a festival in the game. Like, oh, there’s like this caravan that’s coming into town and they have all this like, cool stuff and there’s games and, uh, but one of the big things, like one of the big political things that’s what you’re interested in is, um, yeah. So there’s these creatures, I told you already that the SAP is the fis.

So the thing about fiends is I have told the players straight up this, this is the hilarious thing. You’re gonna love this. I told them straight up, like I’m telling you right now, as like the head law writer, that all fiends are evil and they want to kill you. Okay. Is what I said. And you know what they’re doing now.

Oh, we have this fi shopkeeper and she’s our friend and we’re gonna take her into [00:50:00] the town. By the way, it’s

Malcolm Collins: so fry. Fry.

Leaflit: Yes. It’s literally fry.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Leaflit: But it’s like, imagine this like on a, like happening again, but with like players and like, I’m telling them as like the universal truth of the universe that can like tell them the the absolute truth that they all want to kill you and they’re still like.

Yeah, well this one, like, you know, she trades me stuff. She trades me food for things. So like, you know, she must be like, okay. And they’re like, yeah, we would like to take her into our town and she can set up a shop and then we can trade with her. And I’m just like,

Malcolm Collins: this is, this is great. Your building though.

No, no, no, it’s great. It’s great. I like it because, you know, if, if, uh, they’re acting like we had an episode recently. Um mm-hmm. Did you, did you play the mass effect series?

Leaflit: Uh, I. Is this the one that about the, the warrior people with the

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They made it and I, I, I had a crash out about the genophage. I, I dunno if you remember this plot line, but the Rogan and the Genophage, and I was like, you guys are f*****g idiot.

Anyone who cured this. [00:51:00] 96% of players cured the Genophage Rogan’s had a thousand children every year and lived a thousand years. The genophage reduced their birth rate to one in a thousand survive. I said, that means that every Rogan woman only has 800 children. Okay. You are insane if you cure this. They are a violent, belligerent species resistant to small arms fire.

Yeah. That destroyed their own planet.

Leaflit: Sorry. I I, I re I remember that,

Malcolm Collins: but No, but you’re, you’re showing the same thing we haven’t learned in the society.

Leaflit: Yeah. I, it’s like them straight up and they’re still doing it. And so what happened is there’s a player faction that is like. We are very anti fiend and we hate them because they are evil and they want to kill us.

And then the other guys are like, no, but like, see there’s like a good one here. And they’re like, no, you’re an idiot. And so I’m like, now they’re like fighting. There’s like a internal like battle between like these in character [00:52:00] player factions and it’s likeactually Amazing.

Malcolm Collins: That is so fun. So another fun thing for people who are watching this to give you contextualization, our kids or our grandkids, depending on how old you are, are going to be living in environments where, um, they will likely be able to, like when I look at what the future of video games and the internet is going to be, uh, the idea of AI is being able to create fully modeled realities around us.

Like putting on a headset and having the AI do that is likely going to be easy for a lot of people, which allows them to explore whatever world, whatever environment they want. And so when you ask yourself, well, how are people most going to want to explore these completely generated worlds? Right? Uh, some people will want to solo it, uh, but I think the vast majority will want to opt into something like what she’s creating here.

And I think what you’re seeing is a prototype of what entertainment may [00:53:00] look like 60 years from now, where it will be something like this where you will have one influencer game master, um, and then within that world you just put it on and, and you’re seeing this done in a piecemeal fashion already with sort of what you’re telling us.

People are creating songs with ai, people are creating visuals with ai, and in 60 years, the entire environment will be created with ai. Um, and I think that’s really cool.

Leaflit: They did a vigil recently.

Malcolm Collins: A video for somebody who died,

Leaflit: uh, because the, the game is Perma death. And I purposely told them that there’s no way to revive people from death.

Oh

Simone Collins: my gosh. So

Leaflit: someone’s

Simone Collins: lost.

Leaflit: Yeah. So it’s like, really, like, uh, like people get rid, like pe I’ve, I’ve people get so heated in this game because like, someone will screw up, like, like they’ll, they’ll be like, okay, we’re gonna fight that. Like, boss, someone will screw up and they’ll get someone killed and they’ll like yell at that person.

Like, like out of character. Like, you freaking, you know, you God so mad at them. [00:54:00] And it’s like they like. It’s, it’s such a big deal to them when somebody dies in the game. And then they did like a AI vigil where they like played a song and it had like clips of all the characters using ai.

Simone Collins: Oh my God.

Malcolm Collins: So, okay.

I, I really hope the people who have no idea, like what we’re talking about or anything, when you hear something like this, you can begin to see why something like this gets teased in, in, in, in people and is special to people that there are hundreds of people that feel that they have an iteration of themselves because the iteration that you create of you, when you’re out there and you’re interacting with other humans, it is, uh, something that, that many people, I mean, not everyone, but many people sit down and they’re basically like, okay, who do I wanna be to the world?

How do I want the world to see me? Right? So you’re, you’re getting a fragment of themselves within this environment that can live a life. Uh, and it, and it’s a persona that they embody when they’re in the environment. [00:55:00] Can die, you know, you’re dealing with stakes and stakes on a large scale. You know, you’re talking, um, what was it, like, 130 people or something like that?

Yeah.

Leaflit: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: This is, this is, uh, if, if you talk about most of human history, that’s more people than most humans met in their lives. Right? Like if, if, if you go to the distant past, yeah. Mm-hmm. Um, like it’s what our brains are meant to deal with is like a maximum community size.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I think we also have to remember though, that this, this is so much older than the internet or even like.

In dungeon base games in, in the eighties or whatever your tabletop games it as well. When you look at like the Bronte sisters, they had their own fictional universes where like the Duke of Wellington would appear sometimes, but there were all these other characters. Um, and sometimes they, they, these didn’t show up in their books.

This was just the well why they explain who

Malcolm Collins: the Bronte sisters are.

Simone Collins: These are famous authors. Um,

Malcolm Collins: they wrote,

Simone Collins: oh God, I didn’t read any of the books because I didn’t like them. Um, and they like died young. They were like at, at the same time of, of Jane Austen. [00:56:00] Um, maybe, maybe Weathering Heights. ‘cause everyone’s talking about the new movie is one of them, but I can’t remember.

Um, but this is something that is very natural to people and like one of the first things that the internet was used was to have basically text-based versions of these games online. Um, and, and the fact that this is just a continuation of it, like it has. Now it’s super powered with ai and it, it is much more complex.

Um, but the, the question is never really, um, you know, what tech are we using? Like, is this, is this, um, a bunch of young ladies in a house? By the way,

Malcolm Collins: if you’re wondering what the Bronte sisters wrote, they wrote Jane Airy, they wrote Weathering Heights.

Simone Collins: Yeah, there you go.

Malcolm Collins: They wrote the tenet of Woodfield Hall.

Um,

Simone Collins: and, uh, they’re not, they’re, they’re very dark, like boring books, in my opinion. I, I love Jane Austen’s books. But anyway, um, this is just old stuff. Um, and, and like specifically fantasy worlds in which they are, they are involved. Um, and I think the really interesting [00:57:00] thing, and what I love most about the world you’ve built is that you don’t get caught up in the IP necessarily, or in like the, the.

The fact that you’re building it, like you don’t own it as much as like, it’s the way that people interact with it and crash into mm-hmm. Into it to create crazy things like vigils and songs and fan art and slang. Um, and that’s how, you know, it’s really working. And that’s why AI is not a threat to this.

It’s just a different way in which it’s gonna manifest. Mm-hmm. And it’s like the, the raindrops are just bouncing off a slightly different surface, but in this case, they’re gonna be bouncing off in a much more beautiful way. Um, whereas before they were like falling into paper and just getting soaked in, and now they’re falling into something and like making ripples.

And it’s just so much more potential. And I’m really excited about what, what’s gonna be possible as AI enables more going forward. ‘cause already Yeah. Like can you, I mean, and I, it wouldn’t surprise me actually if like the Bronte sisters or like, if they had a piano forte, like sitting down and like writing songs of others, like whatever their obscure characters were in their fantasy [00:58:00] worlds.

Mm-hmm. Um. But now you can just take that and like a thousand exit and of course make it, you know, now you have like 130 people. They had like four, you know, like the scale of it, the complexity, the fact that you have a world that updates, um, when different factions are doing different things out in the world.

Mm-hmm. By the way, what are, what are other weird things that have

Leaflit: Oh, I can tell you about the time the game almost ended.

Simone Collins: Oh really?

Leaflit: Yes. Yes. The game almost ended because, okay, so what happened was there was one party, right, okay. Who met this witch. And this witch, she’s like a tiny little necro man, girl.

And she has killed somebody before. Like she’s actually killed one of the players. Right. The early sessions

Simone Collins: too.

Leaflit: Yeah. And her whole thing is like, she’s like. Her concept of death is like, she doesn’t care. She thinks it’s like just fun, right? So she, what she does is she takes people, she kidnaps them, and she puts them to a death game.

And she like watches and she just like sits there and watches and she’s like, yeah, like, you know, like, I hope you [00:59:00] win, right? And if you win, you, you get a prize. But you know,

Simone Collins: oh,

Leaflit: whatever happens, happens. And she like watches and she does this. So anyway, they end up like fighting her at some point. And uh, they like, they were gonna die to her, but they convinced her to not kill them.

And then they were like, oh, we have an idea. Uh, why don’t you check out this town that we built? She’s like, town. And they’re like, yeah. And she’s like, okay. That’s my town now. And so like, they took her to like the town, which is like this new outpost that the players had built. And like they, they had built this over months, by the way.

So like, first they had to conquer the area and then people had to chop wood down and bring all the wood alchemy materials. And they had all the, all the crafter players had to go in and like actually build it like over weeks. Right. So they had like this fort and it was like their precious fort, like, okay, now we have a teleporter in the middle of this area so we can teleport instead of like having to walk down the valley.

Yeah. And so they had this beautiful town and she was like, yeah, I’m the leader now. [01:00:00] And like she came in and they were so mad because like the people that were building it were like, what the hell are you doing? Oh no. Right. And so there was a whole thing where, and they’re like, director, like, what do we do?

Like this, this crazy? And she’s like, I don’t care. Director’s. Like, I don’t care. Like, okay, sure. You know, if that’s what you guys won’t find, whatever. And they’re like, no, but we can’t have this. And they’re like, okay. Um, election. So they did an election article and like people got so mad. At this like entire election arc and like people were like, we’re gonna quit.

This is so, so dumb. If like, she takes over after we built all of this. Like this is, and I was like, well, I mean you guys did that. Like it’s not us. We didn’t plan on this. And that’s like kind of how we approach it is like we, we like to take what the players do and then like how does that affect the world if like, they do this, like

Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah.

No, it’s a hundred percent downstream of, of player choices, which I like. Yeah. And then they wait, so she was okay with an election. She wasn’t just like, why, why are we doing an election? I’m queen. Like

Leaflit: they, they, they [01:01:00] convinced her that, that if she was so cool, she would do an election and she was like, yeah, you’re right, because she’s like the idiot, right?

Like the neer’s an idiot. So, but, but this Nema became such a beloved character. She like. Multiple songs and a plushie like thaty sale in the store right now. And a bunch of people bought it, one person bought three.

Simone Collins: I mean, just in case. Well,

Leaflit: that’s great.

Malcolm Collins: That’s, yeah. I, uh, I, I wanna know, uh, so by the way, this, this humorously reminds me of the joke.

I don’t know if you’ve seen through all of Adventure Time fantastic show, by the way, people, um, but there’s, one of the princess bubblegum gets deposed by somebody who holds an election, and she comes back in very anti-climax, is like, I’m a monarch. You can’t hold an election like, whatcha doing? They’re like, but you were unelected.

And she goes, I’m the monarch.

Leaflit: The, they basically convinced her that. Well, you don’t rule this place, but you can set up a, you can set up a base outside of [01:02:00] it. And so now she has a base and like she willingly lets people play death games. If they want. She’ll give ‘em like big prizes. Oh, but then you just die.

Right. So it’s like a lot of people are like, it’s scary because normally you can run, like if you go into like the woods and you encounter like this giant, I don’t know, like say giant boar monster, right? Boar boss monster. You can be like, okay, well we don’t really know what it does. You can test it a little bit and be like, okay, this is a little bit too scotch.

Like everybody retreat so you just like everyone throws down smokes. Yeah. And they all like retreat from the battle. And this is a common thing like retreating from, from combat. ‘cause your character’s life matters. Right. You, you die. Yeah. And so like, but with her you’re locked in her dungeon so you can’t escape.

So that’s pretty cool.

Simone Collins: No way.

Malcolm Collins: That’s amazing. Wait, what other plushy characters exist from this world?

Leaflit: A lot. We’ve got, um, it’s. I’ve got so many now. We’ve got the witch, we’ve got the, the merchant. The merchant has one, one of the cultus has one too. Wait, is

Malcolm Collins: this, is this the, the merchant who’s of the evil race?

Leaflit: No, it’s, uh, she’s like the good [01:03:00] merchant. So she’s, uh, she’s like the shopkeeper, like she reset the shop resets. So the other thing too is resources are finite. So it’s not like the, the shop is like, has this item you can always buy at this price. It fluctuates based on world events. So like, sometimes like a, like wood will cost more like a certain week because of a thing that happens and,

Malcolm Collins: oh, I want my kids playing in this.

So much like, this sounds like such a healthy thing for like young teens to get into continue, but

Leaflit: Yeah. But, but yeah, it’s, it’s like that’s that merchant and then there’s like a cultus that got a plushy. She’s not the, oh, it’s, uh, this genocidal squirrel got a, a plushie as well.

Simone Collins: Oh

Leaflit: yeah. That

Simone Collins: makes,

Leaflit: yeah, there’s a bunch of uh, a bunch of, uh, characters, uh, getting plushies who makes the

Simone Collins: plushies.

Leaflit: Uh, I, I do, I actually got into it because I wanted the plushies to exist. So I was like, how do I get that to go? And now I’ve become like a plushie, like mogul. I don’t know how that’s happened, but

Simone Collins: did, wait, did you like make Plushies before? Do you have a sewing machine? [01:04:00]

Leaflit: No, no, no. I’m, I’m, I I looked on like, the logistics of how to do it.

I found like a manufacturer to do ‘em.

Simone Collins: Okay, okay. Okay.

Leaflit: And it like all fits our standards and stuff, so we, but we all, we do it to how, how we wanna do it, you know. Wait,

Malcolm Collins: wait, wait. So like, other people come to you to make plushies for their shows and stuff now?

Leaflit: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I’ve, I’ve gotten a bunch of

you

Malcolm Collins: a plush, do you handle shipping?

Leaflit: Yes. So my mom does all of the, the, um, she’s like the shopkeeper. She does all the, all the merch and stuff like that. So

Malcolm Collins: if we made, uh, guys, let us know what Base Camp Plushies. Yeah. We

Leaflit: can do one. Yeah, of course.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I’ll see. I’ll see about that. Um, I think that’s a fun idea. That’s really cool. That is, um.

Okay. So what’s your future for all of this? Like when you think about where this evolves into, what it evolves into, I’m interested.

Leaflit: Well, well, I, what I would like, ‘cause I’d, I’d like to see more people playing the game, like on their own, like, as not a part of like this big hemming. ‘cause I wanna see like, [01:05:00] people playing like their own campaigns, kinda like Dungeons and Dragons.

Right. But yeah, as far as like the campaign right now, um, I don’t, I don’t know, it’s just kind of whatever happens and then we just go with the flow, right? It’s like,

Malcolm Collins: yeah,

Leaflit: I wanna do more character stuff. Like I started doing, oh, I got one that you’ll think is great. Um, there’s this character that is an NPC that everyone doesn’t really, they think she’s kind of, what’s the word?

She’s very, sorry, I’m blanking out. It’s like. She, she’s a killjoy. Like, she always, like, she has rules and she’s like, you have to follow these rules, and like, this is how it’s gonna be. And they’re like, she’s such a stickler, she’s so annoying. And then I released the other day a character image song of her.

Mm-hmm. And it explains why she’s like that, like her backstory. And so people are like, what do you feel like, do you feel like such a jerk now? Because now you, now you know what she’s like. [01:06:00] But more stuff like that, I’d love to do it. Stuff like that.

Malcolm Collins: Um, that is, I, I I, I, I, I don’t wanna be a killjoy, but I know you like the idea of people playing this independently, but it sounds like so much of the magic of what you’ve built is in the community.

Leaflit: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: That makes it feel. So when I talk about, you know, 60, a hundred years, when we can create any artificial environment we want. Mm-hmm. The only things that will imbue these worlds with reality is the shared experiences we have with other people. And in a way, uh, I think for, uh, my guess would be for your players, that’s what imbues the world with reality is the fact that, uh, like d and d can, like when you’re playing, I, I don’t know if like, if other people don’t feel this way, but when I’m playing like a random whatever game, right.

Um, uh, I sometimes, like if I know it’s a game that everyone else is playing right now, it feels like it has some sort of cultural meaning. I see

Leaflit: what you mean.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. You know, hell [01:07:00] Divers two, I probably wouldn’t have played hell divers two normally, but everybody was playing it. Everyone was talking about it.

It felt like a cultural moment. Right. Or Pokemon Go, I see what you mean. Or something like that.

Leaflit: I understand the question now. So like, what I would want to do is I, I would like people. Like using like our stories, using our, our game and just like, you know, plushies music maybe, you know, maybe one day an anime or manga or something like that.

I would like people to see that there is the possibility of, of better because like what we have right now is so ass, you know? Yeah. So it’s like, I just want people to see like, you can do things that are crazy. Like this idea that there’s like this big campaign with all these people and it’s interconnected and like

Malcolm Collins: that’s insane

Leaflit: that people are invested.

Malcolm Collins: Did that, that’s actually crazy. It’s, it’s, it’s super cool that it’s working, but it’s crazy

Leaflit: and thank you.

Malcolm Collins: Uh, [01:08:00] and, and you weren’t doing this the last time we talked to you, right? Or was it just starting off? No, we’re

Simone Collins: working on it. It wasn’t, this is, I think it was.

Leaflit: First year anniversary was today? Today.

Simone Collins: Oh, happy anniversary.

Leaflit: Thank

Malcolm Collins: you. Well, we’ll run this tomorrow for first year anniversary. That, that’s

Simone Collins: amazing. But yeah, also just for the housekeeping, like where can people find this and get involved and opt in and

Leaflit: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Have fun.

Leaflit: It’s a rpg dot angel sword.com is like the game, the base game. And then in order to join the other game, it’s Patreon.

Simone Collins: Perfect.

Leaflit: You know what’s crazy too, is like people got so addicted because, um, it, it, it works off of a, you can’t always go out. It’s like a real time system. Mm-hmm. Where if your character goes out for this week, you can’t play anymore ‘cause they’re not here. So. Oh,

yeah.

What people started doing was, they’re like, can we have like another character?

I’m like, okay, fine. Like Patreon upgrade, you can like get another character. Can we get another character? Uh, okay, fine. And like, it got to the point where people were like, can I make like another Patreon account? And we’re [01:09:00] like, no. Okay. It’s over. Like, no more. Why you more money? ‘cause I want people, so the, the downside of people making too many characters because like they, they become less invested to each individual character.

Yeah. So it’s like, we want, like those relationships, right? Oh my God. The best is when like, two characters have a relationship and it’s like, well what if you go, one of you goes down, you die. You know? It’s like,

Malcolm Collins: wait until you get your first marriage from this world. Right? What’s already

Leaflit: happened?

Malcolm Collins: What, what?

Leaflit: Yeah. People have gotten married and had kids.

Malcolm Collins: Well in world. In world, yes.

Leaflit: Oh,

Malcolm Collins: people marry, like, remember this? So I need to like bring up two different worlds that were like really big in my childhood. Mm-hmm. Do you remember there was this game and I watched it, like things on, I never played it myself. It took place in Egypt and everybody could do like whatever they want.

And there was like one cast where you would like level up by getting people to like vote for you or be in like one place at a time. Um. W it was, it was weird. It was, it [01:10:00] was an MMO where the only way you could level up was through community based events. Um, and it, it became this giant thing. But the other one, obviously Second Life, and today people don’t know Second Life, right?

Like they, they don’t understand what a cultural phenomenon this was when we were, there was like a big real estate craze in it where people would be paying like half a million dollars for like a house or something. Um, and people would get married in it all the time. You can go to YouTube, you can watch these videos if people get married in Second Life.

Um, and uh, I like, I always thought it was so cool. I like, I felt like a bit of an outsider in the second life craze because I was like, I don’t have the social confidence to go into an environment with this many people. Um mm-hmm. And, uh. It’s, I, I don’t know, it feels like a cooler version of that because it’s more abstracted.

See, the, the problem with environments like Second Lives and Roblox and Minecraft, and a lot of stuff that comes outta this is, it’s not abstracted in the way that your world is abstracted. That allows for [01:11:00] denser lore, that allows for deeper world building, and that interacts with AI more. Yeah. And I think it’s cool how the way you’re building all of this up is more conducive to AI world than the way that directionality like Roblox and Minecraft, which I think a lot of people think the future is gonna look like, and I don’t.

Leaflit: Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s, uh, it’s, uh, it, it’s really the, the coolest thing about it for me is just like, like you said, the interconnectedness where each individual person has the agency to do like whatever, but then they eat the consequences of it, right? So you can do like whatever you want, but then. You go jail or something if he screw up.

Malcolm Collins: How do you do kids? Sorry, I, before I say off

Leaflit: early ones the MPCs. So there, there are two cases, well, well, sorry. There, there have been multiple cases. I think in the, the only reason I know this is because people keep asking me for the, the, what happens if this race has a kid with this race, they keep doing this, right?

So I had to like come up with all these rules for it. But, um, anyway, [01:12:00] uh, some players have done that and then they retired their characters and that’s it. And like how

Malcolm Collins: did they play as the kids?

Leaflit: Uh, that happened one time. So like in one of my older campaigns was a time skip, like the original Angel Sword campaign had a time Skip and the character wanted to play as his kid.

So like that happened, but Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Okay. That’s fine.

Leaflit: Alright. Well, I mean to play as his first character later, because then, then at the end of that campaign there was a thing where their kid was in trouble and they had to like save their kid with their old, old character.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. They had to come back and save themselves.

Mm-hmm. It’s so, there’s so many things that you’ve described here where I’m like, no, that’s just how real life works. Um, you’re just describing the real world. Um, I mean, like we see ourselves as our kids, uh, and so many parents, I think like they just watch themselves playing life through their children.

But also like this idea that figures get, um, either things or figures can get power through, [01:13:00] you know, attention and belief and like, here’s everyone, like asking for like, oh, like, can like, and subscribe. We’re like literally our son Octavian. I guess misheard the concept and was like life and describe and I’m like, yeah, I mean you wanna get the power.

Like that is what they’re getting. It is their life. Um, and he was actually shocked the other day to discover that YouTubers also make money. He was like, wait, they make money. I thought they just got likes. And that was like a doubt. He wanted that his car, his career, like the whole money thing was just like icing on the cake.

Um mm-hmm. There’s this new currency. Awesome. So yeah. I mean we

Malcolm Collins: learned we didn’t respon.

Simone Collins: Yeah. He’s like, wait,

Malcolm Collins: you don’t respond? And we’re like, no, you’re gonna

Simone Collins: die. The number of times we’ve had to have like tell our children that Yeah. In our world you don’t respond. Oh my God. Yeah. It’s so well a conversation.

Yeah. The lines have really become blurred, um, between. I mean, yeah. Yeah. We don’t wanna hold you forever. This has been longer than me. Much take’s. So

Leaflit: I had so [01:14:00] much fun. Like, I, I mean, God, you, you had me on here just to nerd outta the bound, like stuff I wanna nerd out about,

Simone Collins: alluded to this in our last conversation, and it was like one of those like,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, no, I,

Simone Collins: I asked you by the tip of the iceberg and being like, wait, we could have sunk, we could have gone deep.

Like, why?

Malcolm Collins: No. I like asked you last time and you seemed like embarrassed to go deeper into it. And I think it’s because, you know, you’re new, you, you know, this is your first time doing something on somebody else. Yeah. Um, you, you may be underestimated how much of a nerd I am about stuff like this. Well,

Leaflit: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I used to, and I might do it next time we talk. I could do one. I,

Leaflit: I’d love

Malcolm Collins: created multiple worlds, like as deep as the one deer creating one. We were gonna turn into a video game, but it turned out to be R fab.ai. And so we ended up creating like AI play if people wanna try that. Um, and then the other one, uh, was just like, anytime I’d walk somewhere I’d try to build on the world, like, um, and so I love doing stuff like this.

I’d love to have you back on sometime. You’re love a very, very enjoyable person to talk to. I love to come on [01:15:00] your stream sometime. Um,

Leaflit: yeah, we should talk about that. Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Love. I’ve never done a live stream before and I’m terrified. Um. Uh, actually, I don’t even think I’m gonna edit anything out. You might not know.

Like the last time we did a thing together, I asked you a few like awkward questions and I ended up editing them all out. It’s like, um, uh, but this time no awkward que because I’ve watched more of your stuff. Oh, one of my favorite things you talked about recently, just for like, people, you were talking about this moment where like you were living in an apartment and it was just a mattress on the ground of an empty room.

And I was like, oh my God, I have lived that exact experience and so many people have. And I was like, I kind of wanna go back to that in a way, like the, the world.

Simone Collins: Yeah. You literally burst into my room last night and was like, I missed that.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I thought

Simone Collins: this was, was, that was for a long time. We like preferred it.

It was kind of, it’s nice, you know, it’s less cluttered. You know, it’s

Malcolm Collins: my, my favorite leaflet, Easter egg. Um, you dropped in the middle of a video, um, and I’m only dropping it [01:16:00] here at the end because you said you were only okay with dropping in the middle, but the collection of World War II memorabilia, um,

Leaflit: I don’t, no, I don’t have any yet, but I was like very interested in it because I went, I, I went to a gun show and then they had, so I was like, that’s cool. There’s like so much lore behind it, you know, like,

Malcolm Collins: yes,

Leaflit: shovel, that shovel was like used somewhere like crazy, you know, like

things like that.

Malcolm Collins: No. At a time where things actually mattered, where like, yeah.

Actions, you know, the world, but we’re back there. The world is on a, uh, uh, whatever you call it right now with AI and everything, like the future of the economy is gonna be totally different depending on who wins what. Like, we’re trying to build, like autonomous agents to replace employees. Mm-hmm. And people are like, why do you, the other day I, I almost passed out on screen.

And they’re like, why are you working this long? Right. And I was like. Somebody is going to create the employee replacement. Um, and then everyone else is not gonna have a job. Like, I’m not trying to do [01:17:00] this to have, I’m so excited

Simone Collins: to do this. This is the thing people are

Malcolm Collins: mad about, about that. I’m to have all the money and then all decide how to create a good society after that.

Um,

Leaflit: I you win,

Malcolm Collins: right? Uh, anyway. Anyway, so fun to have you here. Thank you so much. I wanna, I wanna, uh, do stuff together in the future and I hope that things continue to go well for you. You know, your channel’s been popping off. Thank you so much as I’ve seen, um, and not just your channel, but you as a caricature.

When you look at the central place you have in Sky Brow videos regularly, right? Like you’re in almost every video, multiple times. Um, and, uh.

Simone Collins: Good character.

Malcolm Collins: I think it, I, I, I think it’s because you are capturing the main character, and I don’t know if you ever feel like this, but you’re like, damn, am I like a playable character of our generation?

Mm-hmm.

Leaflit: Like, like the funny thing is, I, I actually had such a dilemma about this, so like, okay, I’ll, I’ll go into it. So I actually [01:18:00] was like, you know, I was, I was talking about how I was like super depressed for a long time.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Leaflit: That was my entire life until this month, like this month it went away. And it was so weird.

Well,

Simone Collins: congratulations.

Leaflit: Congratulations. It was so weird. Like everything is just so different now for me. But yeah. Uh,

Malcolm Collins: did, did stuff like Sky Brows play a role in that? Or is that not as relevant

Leaflit: to you? Actually, you guys had more to do with it.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, that’s really

Leaflit: software. Yeah. I could tell you about it later.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, well, yeah, like our content and stuff, but yeah, I don’t want to like, uh, but the Sky Brow thing, um, for me has been very interesting because. We don’t hang out with people anymore, Simone and I, like, I don’t, I don’t leave my house. We’re completely hicky. Um, and yet I watch video. I watch your videos, right?

And I watch your videos and I’ve had interactions with you. Um, and so it makes me feel like, oh, that’s one of my friends. Um, and so I

Simone Collins: watch this guy listen again, just not to be a history bummer [01:19:00] here, but like asynchronous friendships have been the deepest friendships for a huge portion of human history.

Letter writing used to be a big, big part of how people had deep friendships, and that was, those were just asynchronous relationships. They were just watching each other’s dreams. I don’t know what to tell you. This is not like a new point in human history and it’s honestly so much better for most people like it.

It’s great. But you know,

Malcolm Collins: it did, and you’re right about this. A lot of famous people in history, they like, knew each other and they corresponded

Simone Collins: Yale. Well, they read, they read people’s books. Like that is how you had a relationship with people, even if you existed at the same time in history. ‘cause I mean, that’s just how people live.

Malcolm Collins: But the, the, the Sky Brow videos, to me, the interesting it’s felt like. There’s a party of cool kids and like all the cool kids are at the party and, uh, I get to be at the party with the cool kids without having, it’s

Simone Collins: when your asynchronous proxy representation gets to have a, that gets to go to the party with the other a right?

Malcolm Collins: No, because like, I don’t get to decide if I’m in one of these, like somebody who’s like, tastemaker gets to decide. And then, um, the,

Simone Collins: and the best part is you don’t [01:20:00] physically have to be there. Yeah. I physically don’t have

Malcolm Collins: to be there. I just get

Simone Collins: the pictures

Malcolm Collins: afterwards.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. That’s pretty great.

Leaflit: But, uh, I just remembered, sorry, I totally like tangent into like in the middle of me answering your thing, but, but basically I’ve always like wanted to be like a support.

I never wanted to be the main character. So it’s like every time like I, I get put, like I get sort of. A feeling of that. It makes me uncomfortable.

Simone Collins: It’s so furious during bell. You, you’re, you’re reluctantly taking upon, you know yourself though.

Malcolm Collins: Well, it’s actually really interesting that you mention this, and I don’t wanna go on too long a tangent at this point in the video.

Leaflit: No,

Malcolm Collins: take your time.

Leaflit: I’m good.

Malcolm Collins: I actually talk about this in terms of modern right wing influencers, where one of the things that, that has defined the people who have risen in influence within our like intellectual circle, like an asthma gold or something like that mm-hmm. Is, is, uh, the, the lack of wanting to exploit this or open thirst like asthma gold [01:21:00] could live in a mansion if he wanted to.

Like Asma Gold could have the hottest girlfriend and live in a mansion and shock his dog every day. Right. Like he could, he could do whatever the f he wanted to at this level of fame. Mm-hmm. And yet he. Does it right? Like he, um, the, the, the moment I always talk about, it’s the contrast of like, Hassan Piper’s shocking, like the most expensive dog breed you could have.

And the moment where like a cockroach is crawling on Asma gold and he picks it up, I’m like, I’ve never seen anyone be this ginger with a cockroach. And it’s like, I’m gonna release it downstairs. He’s like, I mean outside. Um, like after a long while and, you know, he released it downstairs. But the, the point I’m making here is, uh, you and him, you, I, I think the reason why people build this with you is it’s so clear that.

You don’t even have the capability to look down on your fans. [01:22:00] Um, and I think that this is like the, the main thing that people are looking for. They’re just so tired of an elite world that thinks that they’re better than them and that they’re other, and that they’re, um, you know, they’re separated behind some fence.

Right. Um, and, uh, I, I think that you represent that very well on, on stream. And it comes from this emotion where you say, I never want, like, the only reason people look to you the way they do. It’s, it is it, it, it it’s clear that this is never about being the lead character for you?

Leaflit: Well, it’s,

Malcolm Collins: you get what I mean by this.

Leaflit: The way I see it is like everyone has a role to play regardless of like how, what their capability is. It’s, it’s if they’re gonna play it or not. Right.

That’s so

Malcolm Collins: nice. Well, well, I mean, our roles can change and our roles can change based on our contextualization of them, right? Mm-hmm. Like, we can decide and, [01:23:00] and everyone gets to decide what their purpose is.

Right? And I, in any, in any moment, in any, you can just decide, my, my purpose is X. Like, I, I look at the world and I’ve decided to, that’s the coolest thing about life. We get to judge the measuring stick that we judge our value in existing off of. Mm-hmm. Um, and if you, if you default to somebody else’s value stick, whether that is hedonism, like how much pleasure you feel, or how much status you have, and I think status is the, the primary measuring stick that most people default off of.

Mm-hmm. Um, and I, and, and, and it, and, uh, I think that you, you can through, you know, the, the way that you show yourself to people, show your other people, they don’t need to judge themselves off of that anymore.

Leaflit: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And that, that’s hard. I mean, I, I did that for myself for the longest time I thought.

How many people I slept with, who, who I was hooking up with. That was what a man’s worth was judged on.

Leaflit: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And if, if you just [01:24:00] default to these societal standards that f’s up your life.

Leaflit: I, I think the important thing is like, I think people, people like us, we have, we’re in the position where we can give people like a reason, I guess, to do anything.

And it’s, it’s what I, I’m trying to like formulate it. Sorry. We, we can give, we can give people like a, it’s like, you know, if you don’t think you have a purpose, then shut up and listen to my purpose and take it upon yourself and like, be infected by me.

Malcolm Collins: Be part of this. I, I, when we, when we wrote our first book, we were literally taking the opposite perspective.

So if anyone who’s like followed us for a long time and they’ve read our books, our first book is like. Okay. I’m gonna give you every purpose you could possibly have and you’re like, gonna go through it. I’m gonna try to be as unbiased as possible. Mm-hmm. And then me, like 10 years later, no. Like, just

Simone Collins: do this thing.

Malcolm Collins: This is what, this is what you should do. Like,

Simone Collins: whatcha this is wrong. This is right. This is stupid. This is smart. Yeah. We’ve, [01:25:00] God, okay. Yeah,

Leaflit: I was reading that book actually like just yesterday.

Simone Collins: No,

Malcolm Collins: I, I like that book. I think it’s helped a lot of people. Um,

Leaflit: it’s a good one. It’s a good one. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. We get, we get emails from people pretty frequently about it.

Um,

Simone Collins: we wrote it for ourselves and for our kids ‘cause we wanted to work it out. And honestly, ever since we did, um, I’ve, I’ve never felt fomo. I’ve never felt cognitive dissonance because I know. What it is that I’m about, that I wanna optimize. So like, there’s never any ambiguity unless it’s tactical, um, about like, should I be doing this thing or not?

It’s like, well, does this maximize something? I like the thing or things I think have in here value yes or no. Like, okay, then I’m not gonna worry about it. Like

Leaflit: it’s, that’s where all the bad feelings like live. Yeah. Isn’t that ambiguity? That’s when it starts. Mm-hmm. You get that like kind of bubbling, like nasty feeling, you know?

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Like, oh, I should be at that party ‘cause everyone’s at the party. I’m like, no,

Malcolm Collins: I didn’t realize this, but you’re right. It was after writing that book when I began. Yeah. Because I didn’t [01:26:00] like, this isn’t like idea. I just like sat down was like, okay, like I need to figure out a reason to be alive.

I should, I should probably we’ll have those

Simone Collins: moments. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: I exist. Uh, so I’ll just go over every argument and count. It wasn’t even like, it’s like people think, like somebody sits down and, uh, you know, like Joseph Smith or something and they’re like, oh, I’m gonna go ask God or something, why I should be alive.

Uh, no. I was like, that girl who did like the, the, uh, which guy should I date? All the positives and negatives of each one. Oh God. And I like did that for every reason why I shouldn’t kill myself. Like, okay, oh my gosh, let’s go through every one of them and, uh, maybe one of these will be hot to me. I’m like, okay, I’ll marry that one.

Um, and then, and then I ended up, uh, you know, changing over time and every, every ev everything like that. But it was a lot of, it was a lot of, um, uh, yeah, yeah. Anyway, it’s the

Leaflit: biggest problem in society right now is purpose. I not really not. [01:27:00] As you guys put it, objective function.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, we don’t have a framework for it anymore.

Like we, this is how the way purpose dissolved. I’m, I’m gonna go on a separate, I’m so sorry.

Leaflit: No,

Malcolm Collins: no, no. I, I

Leaflit: love this

Malcolm Collins: one. As a society used to have frameworks for purpose and for most people they were their religious system.

Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Um, and the school system, ironically, I think we lost our purpose, not because of the secular world, but because of the way the religious world acted to the school system.

So the school system would try to give people alternate purposes. They try to be like, okay, um. Yes, you may have a purpose in this respect, but here’s some other philosophical concept of why life matters. What matters in life. And you go to the eighties or whatever, and the religious people are like, you can’t tell our kids there’s some alternate reason that life may have meaning, right?

Like, we need to go is this reason. But then the religious people weren’t passing on the full structure of their religion to their kids. They [01:28:00] were passing on a number of superficial tales. And then like urban monocultural beliefs as I often talk about it, like, oh, uh, well, like. Uh, you know, perfect, uh, you know, ev everyone’s exactly the same and that our entire world purpose is maintaining this, uh, this, this, this sameness.

But it, but it, it didn’t continue on to the next generation. And so when I grew up, it was a world where everyone was terrified to give me scaffolding to build purpose around. Mm-hmm. Um, and I made terrible decisions in my life because I didn’t know I, I looked to society and I often talk about this, and I, uh, saw everyone and I literally thought, I was like, okay.

I know this sounds so f*****g stupid like now, but I literally followed this until like, you know, into college, right? Like I, it sounds almost non sentient that someone could have this perspective, but I was like, my purpose is to, uh, have [01:29:00] status among males and to sleep around, right? And, uh, if you look at like the online manosphere content, I think a lot of young men are picking this up.

They’re, they’re like, oh, that’s, that’s what men do in this world, right? Like that’s

Leaflit: mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: What makes a man cool? Uh, I watched that. Have you ever heard of Hanza?

Leaflit: Han Han Hanza

Malcolm Collins: Hanza. He’s a male influencer. You should watch her Hanza video. It’s very funny because we go into how this basically destroyed his life.

Um, and, uh, he had this really perfect fiance. Mm-hmm. Um, and he ends up breaking up with her basically because he doesn’t feel as masculine anymore. Right. Like, yeah. And it’s like, well, you know, you, you, you, the, all of this stuff that you have taken to be like, this is masculine, this is manosphere, et cetera, was to get the wife and then move to the stage where it’s about making her happy and your family happy.

And that will, that will give you more purpose than anything you could have done in this hotness, maxing stage.

Leaflit: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: But you accidentally [01:30:00] adopted this hotness, maxing stage. And it, there was a moment where he was trying to make a major life decision, uh, live in a country or live in a town. And he said the, the, the metric he used to make the decision is, which was more manly.

And I was like, well, that’s a really bad metric to use about a major life decision.

Leaflit: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But it’s not dissimilar to a metric I may have used at his age. Right. Um, and I think that like all of us can just like disseminate to people, like, you don’t need to do what I’m doing in life. Right. Or believe what I believe in life.

But if you can, for the love of God, just think through things yourself. Like don’t

Leaflit: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like, like, like an anti influencer. Like just don’t listen to the influencer. It’s like, just think through for yourself what has value. Um, so

Leaflit: I think that’s a problem though. I don’t think, I don’t think people are as equipped to actually think for themselves.

‘cause like I remember when I was school, like in school they would have like Socratic [01:31:00] seminars. Like you would like have to think through like these individual problems. Yeah. But now it’s like, here’s like the answer to the thing. Like, that’s it. Like write that down.

Simone Collins: So there are literally d influencer influencers.

So, yeah. Okay. Now it’s, no, literally if you like search de influencing on YouTube.

Leaflit: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Exactly what I mean. Oh

Leaflit: wow.

Simone Collins: There are a lot of them. Um, yeah. It, it’s bad. No idea how bad school is these days. We send our kids to school. It’s not just school though. The, the big thing you’re missing Malcolm, is that like for a very long period of time, there, there haven’t necessarily been very good networks for giving someone an ejective function.

Basically. It was just serve God if you got to that point. But the vast, vast, vast majority of humans were just super stoked to like, maybe not be dying right now, to not be hungry, to like, not watch like their children or their parents or their relatives or loved ones to be dying and starving. So like that was kind of it.

Um, and even like we, we’ve talked about this on other podcasts, like reading my grandmother’s. [01:32:00] Biography and stuff, and just her experience is just trying not to die. Um, and she was just so excited to like not be dead and then like, oh my gosh, you know, washing machines were invented and how great is this?

Mm-hmm. Um, like just people have been so there hasn’t been room for it. Now that there is room for it, we need better frameworks. But then, like the one thing that was left, which was the church, um, is just not there to help people. ‘cause they gave a, a, a decent, but here’s the problem is that many religions, especially like post-enlightenment, weren’t really good at holding up to science and physics.

And so for a lot of people, even if churches were strong and church communities were strong, they weren’t gonna cut it for people. And that’s where you see, even in the past, a lot of, um, a lot of nihilistic struggling among the wealthy, the wealthy elite, like land gentry, et cetera. Because like for the people for whom.

Church just didn’t do it. They [01:33:00] were like, I’m not buying this or this, this explanation doesn’t make sense for me. They would lose their faith and then just play status or sex games. That was it. Um, or some, some kind of stupid optimization game, and usually it had to do with power or money. Um,

Malcolm Collins: and then, and this goes back to like the founding Fathers of America, you can

Simone Collins: see.

So them

Malcolm Collins: doing this,

Simone Collins: oh, this goes way back before then. Um, it was either, you know, God worked for you, um, or it didn’t, if, if you reached that level in life and like 1% ever did. So yeah, we just, I’m glad that we. Found a framework that worked, but I, I like people do it.

Malcolm Collins: One of the things that Simone is mentioning here that I think leaflet will find a funny idea mm-hmm.

Is we talk about how like women crave a dystopia. Like the, the, the, the, the reason like young girls read all these dystopian fictions is because most women throughout history lived in a dystopia. Like if you go back, you know, great depression, dystopia, world War I, dystopia, world War II dystopia, and you, you go pre great, great depression, I mean, for women, truly a dystopian

Simone Collins: world.

Yeah. Pre, pre feminism was just always a [01:34:00] dystopia because you don’t have property rights and stuff. So like yeah, we’ve evolved to live, I was born in the dystopia, you know, I was made in this dystopia. So it just, well,

Malcolm Collins: no, but the, the challenge this causes is we argue is that especially for young women, and this is why I think young women go woke so hard, is they need to believe that there’s this giant oppressive force out there.

And so if they don’t grow up with a genuine existential threat, they create one and they believe this existential threat, the patriarchy or whatever. Is as real as, you know, living in a communist state or something like that.

Simone Collins: Hmm. You could say they were born renegades that need like a force to navigate and fight against.

And when that structure is gone,

Malcolm Collins: and, and we,

Simone Collins: we solve this for our

Malcolm Collins: daughters by torturing them. This is a,

Simone Collins: they deal with enough constraints as it is. Um, but they also like the, I think the one that Malcolm was referring to earlier, Titan literally thinks she’s gonna become someone who she [01:35:00] saw as a, another V YouTuber.

Uh, who’s a shark princess. Um, she, she, girl, girl, girl.

Leaflit: A v you know, girl. Girl. Yeah, I know girl. Yeah. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Like. I’ll be like, yes ma’am. And she’d be like, I am not a ma’am. I am a girl and a shark princess. And she takes it extremely seriously. I I don’t, she’s, she doesn’t need dystopia. She’s gonna be tell her all the time where she says she’s

Malcolm Collins: gonna eat you when she grows up.

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. Yeah. She’s like, sorry, mommy, I’m gonna grow big and Yeah. Like, I’m going to eat you. Um,

Malcolm Collins: I may eat you. She said, and I’m

Simone Collins: sorry. Yeah, yeah. We’ve negotiated down to like. Might bite, but probably not many. So I think we’re making progress. Oh my God. Nice. Yeah. This is great. We we play

Malcolm Collins: into our kids’ fantasies maybe too hard.

Simone Collins: No, it’s all yes. And it has to always be Yes. And so cute though. It’s 100% necessary. It is, it is fantastic. They’re the very behemoth about it, but oh [01:36:00] gosh. Okay. We will let you get on with your day.

Leaflit: I had fun. Thank

Simone Collins: you so much. Thank you. You were, yeah, just yeah, keep doing, keep doing the things you guys

Leaflit: do.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I genuinely laughed a lot. I laughed till I cried at the beginning. I was actually like crying at the beginning when we were talking about. The f*****g concepts that we’re talking about and people thinking that we’re far right. Extremists like that, that far right. Extremism is just like the nerdiest, effing nerds you have ever seen in your life for hanging out and talking about like philosophy and like made up game worlds.

Leaflit: I, it’s, it’s so crazy.

Simone Collins: Yeah, definitely. You,

Leaflit: some time

Simone Collins: ago, all my left friends from high school probably think we’re like, you know, just sharpening our tiki torches and putting on KY pants and whatnot and like, you were like, well actually there are two different types of this. And like, uh, you know, we, we have to like, talk about the lore and like, you know, blah and like that funny

Malcolm Collins: sharpening or, or cheeky torches.

I mean, I need to use that sharpening. [01:37:00] Alright. I love

Leaflit: that so much.

Simone Collins: Thank

Malcolm Collins: you. Check out her stuff. By the way, guys, uh, join this community, it is called.

Leaflit: Angel Sword com. Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Enjoy Pat. It’s gonna be worth it. Oh my gosh. Thank you. Thank

Leaflit: bye.

In this provocative episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into a taboo topic: slavery—both historical and modern. Is slavery “good” at a civilizational level? They explore why more people are enslaved today than at any point in human history (~50 million in forced labor or marriage), critique selective outrage over past vs. present slavery, and examine cultural attitudes toward wartime rape/slavery across groups (Puritans, Quakers, Backwoods/Appalachian Scots-Irish, Cavaliers, Spanish Catholics, Vikings, Muslims, Japanese, etc.).

Key discussions include:

* Genetic and cultural legacies of “rape slaves” vs. conquest without integration.

* Why certain Protestant subgroups showed remarkable restraint (no recorded cases of raping Native captives).

* How slavery economically stifled innovation (Rome, the American South).

* Maps showing slavery’s concentration in Cavalier regions and its overlap with modern socioeconomic struggles.

* Why reflexive disgust toward status-signaling and a preference for strong partners may have given some groups a long-term edge.

They argue that, even setting aside morality, sex slavery and post-conquest integration often backfire genetically and culturally—while loving your own people and culture drives lasting success. A data-heavy, counterintuitive take that challenges both left- and right-wing sacred cows. Not for the faint of heart.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone Collins. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be talking about a concept that was way more interesting than I expected it to be as I started to dive into it. Okay. Is slavery good?

What, and what brought up this concept is like, obviously this is not a topic we were allowed to talk about growing up, or we’ve been allowed to talk about more broadly as a society. No. And so, then Tucker Carlson and, but the left has been hugely glazing recently places like Qatar. Oh. And I’m like, well, Qatar’s a slave state, right?

Like, so if, if he can talk about how great Qatar cities are, at least the faction of the right that like, doesn’t like this weird Tucker faction. They think slave slave states are awesome now. And the left thinks slave states are awesome now because, you know, a, a, a across the, middle East. This is just something that we see.

Fun fact, by the way, in Gaza the neighborhood where blacks are kept is called [00:01:00] slaves or like slave neighborhood.

Speaker 11: But more specifically, ‘cause I wanted to check this just to make sure that’s right. Yeah. It’s called The Neighborhood of the Slaves is where black people live in Gaza, , because having slaves is so common there. , And there were around 11,000, Afro Palestinians are around 1% of the population of Gaza was black.

Uh, and, and brought there to be slaves.

Malcolm Collins: So yeah, I mean, this is common in the, in the the, there’s

Simone Collins (2): a black meadow in Gaza.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. In the area. Well, they, they bring them in and use them as slaves basically. So, remember that the, when they were doing the mass genocide in Darfur, there was like, what was it?

10 exercise of the deaths in Gaza that this genocide was of Muslims against blacks, and they called them slaves. That was, no,

Simone Collins (2): not, not exactly. It’s more just that they were kind of synonymous. It’s just that like.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, just

Simone Collins (2): the one used [00:02:00] for a black person, sort of, it was, what’s the word for when something’s like Kleenex, you know, or bandaid where like, you know, it becomes genericized of like, well they’re, they’re the same thing.

And then, so then

Malcolm Collins: I’m, I’m, I am sure that American Blacks would believe you, you used the n word analogy for that. You’re like, it’s just syn synonymous.

Speaker 2: Category is people who annoy you. Audience, keep quiet, please.

Speaker 4: Uh, well, oh, 10 seconds, Mr. Marsh. I know it, but I don’t think I should say it.

Speaker 2: Oh, ooh. Oh, naggers. Of course. Naggers. Right? Uh, can we cut to, uh, can we cut to a.

Simone Collins (2): It’s more just that they were kind of synonymous.

Malcolm Collins: Like, yes, it was used in that context, but we use it in different contexts all the time now.

Simone Collins (2): Well, if, if you live in a society where the only ever time you see someone who is, you know, we’ll say, who is [00:03:00] purple hair is a slave, you’re just gonna be like, well, you know, I need to get a purple haired person, you know, around the plantation or whatever.

Malcolm Collins: Tucker went further, by the way. I just don’t buy your argument at all. They, they mean it as a slur. They mean it as this is how we see you because it, it is common in those regions. But and by the way, fun fact, more slaves on earth today than there ever have been in human history.

Simone Collins (2): That’s, no, I, I knew that and it really frustrates me when people are like, oh, we practice slavery in the past.

We’re so humiliated. It’s like, yeah, no, if you care, stop worrying about reparations. Maybe stop slavery today. There’s stuff you can do today. Because there are,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. That’s what gets me when a woke person complains about being enslaved. It’s like you only get to complain about being enslaved if you’re going to do something about the slavery that exists today.

Simone Collins (2): Yeah. ‘

Malcolm Collins: cause my ancestors did something about your ancestors, slavery. So what are you doing for the existing Oh, nothing. So, so

Simone Collins (2): you’re no better than all the, the white people whose descendants are now. Implicated in [00:04:00] reparations requirements or white guilt or whatever it is

Malcolm Collins: putting out in this episode is, is, is actually probably more that if we’re talking about who did more harm to who owe the, the southerners, the reparations.

And we’ll get into some data on that. But to get it even spicy, no, I know from a moral perspective, but if we’re just talking about economically they were a net hindrance to the region.

Simone Collins (2): Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah. I I, gosh, I feel like I was reading to this just recently, so we’re talking about how oh yeah, no well, one of the people who is talks with, with the pod a lot was talking about how slavery ultimately held back technological advancement in the south.

And how when you have

Malcolm Collins: not just the south, you see it hold back wherever it’s practice and we’ll go into why. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s the reason why Rome didn’t have an industrial revolution because they had a massive slave population. If they didn’t have that, they probably would’ve had an industrial revolution.

Yeah. Of looking at the technology that they had access to. They had access to many of the early tools of the Industrial Revolution. They just had no reason [00:05:00] to use them because they had constant slave populations.

Simone Collins (2): Yeah. Yeah. The general argument being that when you have an excess of human labor, you, you tend to get lazy and not actually technologically,

Malcolm Collins: but this stuff isn’t the most interesting stuff.

And I wanna start with the most interesting stuff because the most interesting stuff actually comes from Tucker’s second comment. Wow. Which was when he went on about how we were demanding, I total surrender of Iran and oh, Iran knows what total surrender means. It means that they have to give up their daughters and wives to be griped.

And he didn’t think that Americans wanted to go out there and do that. And. First of all, we had total surrender from Germany and Japan during World War ii. And like that was not a big problem. So like, how did, how did Tucker not know? Like that’s a, something that’s really, at least if you have a decent, like, basic level American education, you’d be aware of.

But it got me thinking, okay, Tucker, you’re trying to normalize grape in war scenarios again, right? Like bringing it up. Is it a good idea? Like, are grape [00:06:00] slaves a good idea? Right? I, I, I’m talking about at a civilizational level. Uhhuh, we know that different groups practice it at different rates.

Okay. It’s, it’s very explicitly allowed in the Koran. You are I, I love it when I first asked in AI this, okay, it said, no, the Koran doesn’t allow for the grape of the, the, the, the grape of ca of, of women after area surrenders. It goes, it only allows you to have sexual relations with your slaves, and you can take as many women slave as you want after you capture a region.

And I’m like, that’s great. That’s grape. Okay. If you are having sex with somebody who doesn’t have the ability to turn you down, because as the Krantz says, if they are yours, if they are your property because they’re your property that is grape in every sense of the word. Okay?

Simone Collins (2): Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And we know that for Jews in, in, in the, the Bible, that the, that has a, you know.

[00:07:00] Rules for this. You have you, you are not allowed to do this. You have to marry them first in like a ceremony and have like a grieving thing and they need to be taken as a legal wife. But I mean, they don’t have much choice in the matter. And we do know that Jews practice practices en mass to the extent where 50% of the ancestral Jewish DNA is Canaanite.

Oh my. So like there was heavy mixing of the populations. This is also where a lot of the you know, where, where, you know, in the temple they had, statues of other gods when you have the Josiah reforms. Yeah. Meaning that, like the, the other Gods practices had heavily integrated with Jewish practices because of this intermedian process.

And then they started being told not to intermarry. And that’s where Judaism became more of a, like mono ethic thing. But this became bigger after the temple. If you’re more interested in a four hour deep dive on this, you can see our topic, the question that breaks Judaism or our topic of when did Jews become [00:08:00] monogamous?

But Jews had had those rules. And then with Christians you’re, you’re you know, love your enemies, stuff like that. It’s, it’s, it’s pretty taken that you should not be taking slaves after a conflict and griping them. But the problem is right, is you can say. Okay. This is what’s in their legal text.

Okay. Like for example, in Jewish legal text, still technically they could take wives from a conquered region, but Jews haven’t done that in thousands of years. Right, right. So what about Christians? Different Christian populations? ‘cause there’s different Christian cultural groups. And so I started to look into this and with, in some Christian cultural groups, it is genuinely astonishing, the extent to which they did not do this.

Mm-hmm. To give you an example, there is not a single recorded case in all of American history of a puritan of a Quaker or of someone of the backwards [00:09:00] tradition griping a Native American captive.

Simone Collins: Oh really?

Malcolm Collins: Not

Simone Collins: even backwards.

Malcolm Collins: Even backwards.

Simone Collins: Oh,

Malcolm Collins: maybe

Simone Collins (2): that’s because they don’t, like, they would never document it.

‘cause I mean, how many

Malcolm Collins: they, well, yeah, so you can make this argument, but the problem with the argument is we have tons and tons and tons of written Puritan and Quaker complaints about all of the things that they hated about the backwoods people. Oh.

Simone Collins (2): Oh.

Malcolm Collins: And never in a single one of these complaints, they know these complaints could even be made up.

Simone Collins (2): Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Is an accusation of griping a captive native.

Simone Collins (2): Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Or really anyone else. Now I will note that they do complain that the backwoods people often married into native families. And this is where it gets really, really

Simone Collins (2): wasn’t, they have like traditions of like, maybe it was playful and, and like kind of a pantomime, but like carrying off women.

You know, like stealing them

Malcolm Collins: of, [00:10:00] although it was, it was panter,

Simone Collins (2): like their cute way,

Malcolm Collins: no legal, no blood feuds we are aware of from anything that was seen as a genuine grape. Mm-hmm. And no accusations of it by surrounding populations that hated them. Now, and, and the reason why it’s particularly notable when you’re talking about like the Puritans and the Quakers is the Puritans and the Quakers, like the Puritans especially, were fastidious about documenting sexual crimes.

We know of, for example, in Puritan settlements. One person did say something to a Native American woman that was seen as inappropriate, and so he was whipped. Oh. We do know of one other servant who was not a Puritan, who attempted to rape a Native American woman and was severely punished. But hold on.

This is where this gets interesting, and especially in regards to the backwards, because I wanna, I wanna focus on that. ‘cause it’s, it comes off as like, weird. Why aren’t they doing this when you go, okay. What about other Christian populations? What about the, the Cavaliers, right? Yeah. It appears the Cavaliers griped pretty regularly.

[00:11:00] In fact, that

Simone Collins (2): seems

Malcolm Collins: in the Cavalier Society grave was considered a misdemeanor or less than a misdemeanor. Oh. This is a southern society. If you’re talking about the us. And a lot of people think of like. All of the Confederate states as like Cavalier and, and they were not. We’ll be going over some maps soon and you’ll see that in the greater Appalachian region or the Bawi region, slavery just wasn’t really practiced at all.

Mm-hmm. It’s like a huge wall against slavery. And we’ll go into why that may be as well, right. Why, why did this group never practice it and what was the economic effect of them never practicing it? But what about. Catholics, uhoh, uhoh. I always hate having to go into this ‘cause this is one of those things where I didn’t go into this, like wanting to do a, why are Catholics always so persistent?

I don’t

Simone Collins (2): know, man. It’s just every episode.

Speaker 17: You know, like literally in this case, I even was just looking for counter examples because I wanted to break things up and I couldn’t find them. Uh, this is just a problem with history. It’s, um, history makes [00:12:00] them look bad. I.

Malcolm Collins: But Simone, you must even know from your history the Spanish particularly were basically grape machines. I mean, when they were colonizers, they, every, i, every island they went to, every colony. There was not an unap captive. I’m actually not even aware of a single Spanish expedition.

That didn’t have significant griping going on. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 18: So I decided to look into this. Was there any Spanish expedition that didn’t? Grape natives. , And there is one actually, , the AAR nun Decca incident, , in which the ship crashed and the, , people on the ship over eight years had to live among native tribes. And they, in this incident. I guess when their lives depended on, it didn’t grape them.

, Other than that, , we have no incidents like, like [00:13:00] no incidents of this happening. It’s, it’s really, which is shocking because you see no incidents of it happening when it’s the other way around.

Malcolm Collins: Which is very, very significant. Okay. And then you can be like, okay, what about other Catholic populations? Like what about Quebec? What about Louisiana? Right. This is interesting. It appears these populations were probably at around the level of Cavaliers, like it happened.

And it happened frequently enough that the Jesuits were constantly complaining about it. Mm-hmm. But it, it didn’t appear to be truly systemic. It was something that bad apples did. It was not something that the captain and all the boys did that was very Spanish. In Spanish. It was just everybody like, like, we’re, we’re gonna go out.

And and, and this had massive effects on these various populations. This is part of the reason why. You know, when American Catholics like complain about, because I’ve always been very confused about like, [00:14:00] Catholics, like Nick Fuentes complaining about Catholic immigrants from Latin America. Because I’m like, but they’re Catholic immigrants, right?

And he is like, well, they’re genetically different from me. And I’m like, I mean, that’s mostly because of all the griping that the Catholics did, right? Like that’s where a lot of that Native American blood came from. There, there were some consensual arrangements within that that, you know, led to the, the, the mixed blood in these settlements.

But it seems like at least in the early days, the vast majority was great. And this is where it gets really interesting because the backwards people. Did frequently marry into native populations. But it was almost never the population, or not, almost never, as far as we know, there’s no historical counts of it being the populations that they conquered.

When they conquered a settlement, they completely wiped them out. That was, that seemed to have been always the goal. So that’s not even like particularly more moral. They just and also interesting, you might not know this but it was also very rare for Native Americans of that region to great captives as [00:15:00] well.

This is, this is not true of Native Americans of the West. Oh, native Americans. The Western, you mean like in

Simone Collins (2): South America? It was on

Malcolm Collins: unusual? No, no, no. Northeastern America. The, the Native Americans that were a budding where the backwards people were and where the puritans were, did not grape their captives frequently.

Simone Collins: Really?

Malcolm Collins: And they’re, well, we have a lot of accounts from captives who are later freed. And they document just it didn’t happen to them. This is notable that like Native Americans didn’t do this in many cases, whereas you know, the, the Spanish almost always did, right? Mm-hmm. So, so you’re seeing like even a higher level of morality there.

But what are the consequences of this? Right? And why might you have prohibitions against this? Why might you have cultural prohibitions against this? And why did the backwards people not do this when they apparently didn’t have any prohibitions against wiping out Native American settlements? The core answer to that, just so we don’t make it a big confusing question is [00:16:00] you can find it by looking at the reports we do another episode where we contrast the different American cultural subgroups.

Historically speaking love letters about like why they liked their wife or why they chose their wife sweet. Or why their wife was awesome.

Simone Collins (2): Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And they, they would say very different things about them. In the Cavalier it was mostly she’s pretty and or she’s very effeminate or feminine or

Simone Collins (2): she’s have a good fam a lot of it can Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Or she’s well, right. She’s

Simone Collins (2): connected from a, a good family, whatever.

Malcolm Collins: The Puritan tradition. It was almost always, she has great intellectual discussions with me. Like she’s a, she’s a very good conversationalist. I really like, you know, the book, she’s read the thing that was what the Puritans really cared about.

And if you go to the backwoods it’s always like, she’s very good with a, with a rifle. She can defend the house, well, she can do chores really well. She you know, it was very much like how robust she was, how [00:17:00] much of a like marshal spirit is really what they cared about. And so, if you are a culture that when you’re looking for, I want.

A strong mate, and you just killed all of this person’s family, their brothers, their fathers, the rest of their clan you’re, you’re not gonna wanna marry into that, right? You’re not gonna want to raise their kids, especially if you’re from a tradition that was pretty strictly monogamous and in the region.

And also they were. They had a different relation to religion and, and, and they were Presbyterian mostly than the other groups of the, of the region, but they were still very religious. And and it guided sort of their moral choices and sometimes more important than their moral choices. Their hierarchy was in the surrounding community.

Like people would’ve looked down on them for something like this if it got out. And within cultures that care about that sort of honor you’re not going to break those sorts of taboos even if you don’t have the, the religious [00:18:00] morality. Right. And this also explains why they were totally okay with marrying the tribes that they fought alongside.

They’re like, oh, you know, you fight with us, you are strong. Like we’ll marry into this. All right, so to continue here the core downside with oh, and, and by the way, people are wondering if, great slaves are still common in Islamic countries in, in terms of enslaved populations. They are very common.

It’s a huge problem in Qatar, in the uua e even though these people aren’t like by what the Quran would say, technically, slaves they still get griped very frequently. It’s a, it’s a big problem. So yeah. Oh, also, if you’re wondering Mormons not a single known case of a Mormon raping a native captive and they did have native captains on, on occasion, so

Simone Collins (2): Oh, they did?

Oh,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah, yeah. Other, other population that that did not grape. So it’s. This, this makes it even more stark about like the Spanish doing this constantly and the French doing this occasionally. [00:19:00] Because apparently a lot of people can get by like without doing it. It’s not like an inevitability.

Simone Collins (2): Even if there’s active Yeah. Animosity. Or even if they are, for example, like early Mormons expending into what might be territory inhabited by. Native Americans already indigenous people, whatever we’re calling them now. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and I think, I mean obviously I might be biased because I’m partially from the backwoods tradition myself but I think the backwoods idea around this is actually fundamentally pretty good.

Which is to say. If you were able to conquer a territory, you probably don’t want to marry the women of that territory because they are then genetically conquering your own people. And we actually see this repeatedly of other groups that were very violent and expansionist. So examples here are, well, one Muslims, two Vikings.

Vikings is a, is a better example. Muslims actually got more genetic spread, but [00:20:00] Vikings actually had an almost negligible genetic spread in the regions that they conquered and used SMEC slaves. It.

Simone Collins (2): So who didn’t do that though was Alexandra, the grade. He had this policy of getting his top leadership to marry in whatever regions, and he picked up wives and.

The various regions they conquered, like Roxanne, for example. Yeah. My understanding

Malcolm Collins: is that the Greek genetic influence in those regions was wiped out pretty quickly,

Simone Collins (2): partially diluted. It instantly. They also just didn’t seem to like stop to actually really set up an entrench in many of the places where they, you know, alleged.

Well,

Malcolm Collins: I mean, this, this shows you know, if you’re, if you’re playing like the genetics game, right? And, and having your genetics within a region helps your culture thrive, grow within that region. Because usually the two are sort of, co I’m gonna say comorbid, but like, they, they have a. I, I forget what it’s called, like a beneficial cycle with each other.

Like the, the, [00:21:00] the, the genes and the culture often have predilections together that make them work more easily together. So, so an example of this could be you could develop as Simone that knows that I have, for example, who knows if this is from my ancestors, but I have a pretty strong disgust reaction towards women that I see as beneath me.

And I just never really slept around, was women I saw as beneath me, even when I did sleep around a lot. Because I saw it as and this is partially why I, I don’t sleep as women who have high body counts, but it’s not just that, it’s like more generally, like she knew this was a problem with her and her degree that she talks about, where I was like, it’s pretty gross that you don’t have like,

Simone Collins (2): an active turnoff related to college degree.

And it wasn’t even like, I didn’t have one. It was that. It was the wrong college.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah. You were Vale Victorian even. And I was like, ah, I guess that makes up for it. But you know, you do have to go to Cambridge if we’re getting

Simone Collins (2): married enough. Not enough. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I don’t wanna keep dealing with this.

Speaker 5: It’s interesting that at a subconscious level, my brain, rather than [00:22:00] recognizing elite colleges as like an elitist thing, the way they would typically be recognized, I saw it as just a sign of fitness at competing, was in the existing societal structure, at least the one that existed when I was growing up.

I doubt my kids will feel that way because it’s no longer relevant in terms of your ability to, , amass power, whether that power is capital, followers, et cetera. But it was then.

Malcolm Collins: But no, it is, it is like an active disgust pathway that I have.

Right.

Simone Collins (2): Yeah, it is interesting. Yeah. That like what one cultural group might be like, oh yeah, absolutely. Like I’d hit that and other people being like, Ew, no. Why would I, I would not even think about it like that. Yeah. About that.

Malcolm Collins: I actually started to think about it in the case of like Tucker Carlson offer, right.

This is who actually got me thinking about it. And I was

Simone Collins (2): like, oh, like what American troops would want to like,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. Like would I actually in that way. I mean, there’s a lot of Intels in the US that would be like, yeah, sign me up. I [00:23:00] will, I I will go to Iran. I will take one for the Team America. But I, I think a, a fairly large percent of the American male population would just be like, I’m not

Simone Collins (2): really interested.

That’s why would I do that? Yeah, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. Like, doesn’t seem like my thing. And, and note again we don’t see this in all populations populations that are famous for griping captives are, for example, the Japanese Japanese famously griped about anyone they could capture constantly and consistently.

And in fact, they did it even more than the Catholics. So, you know, hey, at least the Catholics aren’t as bad as the Japanese.

Simone Collins (2): Yay,

Malcolm Collins: yay did.

Simone Collins (2): I mean,

Malcolm Collins: I might ask ai.

Simone Collins (2): I mean, are are we talking numerically, are we talking in forms of violence? I’m talking in terms of

Malcolm Collins: frequency. Like they have a captive, what’s the probability?

Uhhuh?

Speaker 6: Alright, checked it out and the answer is not even close. This [00:24:00] Japanese are way more likely to rape than Catholics, even if you narrow that Catholic population to only Spanish colonizers when measured on a per soldier, per captive, per opportunity basis, apparently not even close. Casual grape was considered a routine reward for soldiers in the Japanese army.

But wait, but wasn’t that true of the Spanish colonizers? Uh, they say the main reason is because it varied by region. If there was like a monastery in that region, they would stop them. Okay, well not stop them, but complain about it loudly. I.

Simone Collins (2): Yeah, like if, if you’re a woman and you are taken captive by type A, type B, type C, you know, Catholic Spaniard, Japanese military ban Protestant.

Yeah. Backwoods person. Quaker Quakers, like none, [00:25:00] no Quakers.

Malcolm Collins: I, I like, I, I was going through this with AI to try to find like any kind AI’s great for that. I can be like any historical example, can you find one concretely recorded historical

Simone Collins (2): example? Pretty imagine they, they wouldn’t even know where to go.

Because if you asked a Quaker woman, you know, like she, let’s say that there’s something wrong with like, you know, her, her chest, she’d be like, oh, my stomach hurts. If she had, you know. Problems in her, you know, intimate areas. She’d say, my stomach hurts. You know, like, well, the

Malcolm Collins: Quakers had the big problem where the pirates kept rating them and they wouldn’t do anything about it.

And it was a big debate in Philadelphia of like, whether we should do anything about the pirates that keep killing and raping our population. And they were like, I don’t, I don’t know, like the, the, they, it would be violent to stop them. You, you could, I, when I say woke culture came from Quaker culture, like, it really, like the, the similarities are astonishing.

Mm-hmm. But that is Read the Pragmatist Guide, the Crafting Religion, or we might do another episode on that that make for a good [00:26:00] episode. But the advantages of this, so I’ve talked about other cultures that quickly exploded out onto a population out of nowhere starting was very small, starting numbers.

Okay. And most of the American groups represent one of these populations. The starting Quaker population in America was small. The starting puritan population in America was small. The starting cavalier population in America was small. Like if we’re talking about like the actual immigrants over but the starting aver population that the backwards came from, which were, gangs and of, of Ulster Scots in a, in a lawless territory of Scotland they were maybe, as I pointed out in the past maybe 3000 fighting age men in total that exploded into one of the dominant American cultures and one of the largest cultures on Earth that really only compares in terms of its explosive conquering of a region to again, like the Vikings or the Muslims or something like that.

But the Vikings didn’t have a lasting genetic impact except in one region. Where did the Vikings have a lasting genetic impact?

Simone Collins (2): Ooh, [00:27:00] don’t tell me that. That’s not where they came from. I wanna say the Midwest,

Malcolm Collins: it would, no, it was the only region where they didn’t have anyone to grape. Not in

Simone Collins (2): the

Malcolm Collins: United States.

Simone Collins (2): Oh, like ice Iceland or something? Iceland

Malcolm Collins: in Greenland. Okay.

Simone Collins (2): Okay, okay, okay. Okay. Just like new land to settle. Interesting. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: because they didn’t have, well, they, they conquered other territories really extensively to the point where there’s tons of towns named after them in England. Sure. There’s tons of, you know, but they just did not have much of a genetic impact.

Speaker 7: It appears to be between four and 6%, um, except in the or Canadian, Shetlands Islands, this very high island at the very top of Scotland where they had permanent settlements. And there it’s, uh, 23 to 28%.

Malcolm Collins: To have a genetic impact, you have to be way more systemic about it and set up colonies and have a native population die off, which really requires a Spanish level amount of this. And in Spanish territories about that they did become the dominant genetic ancestor in the [00:28:00] regions. And they have around I, I think like across Latin America, it’s about 25% Native American blood.

Left. But a lot of now, now you can say, well, yeah, but how is that working for them in those regions? Like, are these regions economically successful? Did the cultures meld well? Did they meld harmoniously in a way that led to technologically productive capacity and not endless civil wars and fights?

Hmm.

You

Malcolm Collins: can argue maybe that’s a, a, a, a poor integration of the cultures that led to that. Maybe it’s just Catholic culture more broadly. ‘cause we’ve talked in other episodes that Catholics have military coups at a way higher rate than than Protestants do. But if you contrast it with the backwards people, which did genetically integrate to an extent now to a way lower extent, I, I’d estimate their level of genetic integration is.

2.5%, unless you’re getting to specific subpopulations like the, I forget what they’re called, but they like heavily integrated with the Native American population and they’ve [00:29:00] become pretty genetically successful in some parts of the Appalachian territories. And they have a, a, a name. So they integrated with free slaves and Native Americans, and they have a, a different and unique culture that, that has been pretty successful and is still surviving.

Mm-hmm. But all of these groups they never had, like after the initial rebellions of the colonial period they didn’t really have any discordance. Nor was there a huge differentiation in society between like the people of this culture with some native blood and the people without some native blood, to the extent that like.

It’s not even well documented who is partially native for most of these regions. Mm-hmm. Which I think would sur surprise, you know, people from the, the Spanish areas where you did keep heavy track of this because it determined your social standing in society.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So basically it led to more success, it led to more cultural success.

So it’s, it’s generally not, and it led to more cultural genetic [00:30:00] success. So,

Simone Collins (2): last you mean like a lasting, genetically detectable impact in an area?

Malcolm Collins: Right. Like, like the backwards people still make up the genetically dominant group in the regions that they conquered in, in the early colonial days.

Whereas if you look at the, so

Simone Collins (2): basically an, an argument against, especially SE X. Slavery is an argument for segregation.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, and this happened with the the, was the, was the Arabs to an extent as well, like Muslims held huge amounts of territory that have almost no Arab DNA left in them.

Wow. Because they practice this system.

Simone Collins (2): Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And Jews, as I said, ended up melding was their greatest enemy because they practice this system for a period and, and, and, and don’t anymore. Partially likely as like a, a cultural evolutionary adaptation to the negative effects of that. Now let’s talk about the economics of any, any thoughts before [00:31:00] I go further?

There are,

Simone Collins (2): yeah. I’m, I’m, I’m trying to figure out, I, I wish I could just go back in time and like, I don’t know, like it’s, it’s mid battle. There is a, a viking. I thought they did come on rape and pillage. That’s like a viking thing, isn’t it? You know?

Speaker 8: You Should be really proud of your wife, at least.

I mean, Freyja dove into that pillaging 100%. Even took part in quite a lot of the

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-10: Gripping.

Speaker 9: .

Huh? Freyja forced all kinds of monks to let her write and stuff. I didn’t really expect that. I was totally blown away when I suddenly saw her on top of this monk, moaning and groaning. Seriously, !

Speaker 10: Of course, I mean, that’s what you do when you pillage.

Malcolm Collins: Right, right. And so the point I’m making mm-hmm.

Is rape and pillage doesn’t actually leave a genetic footprint. Even be king of a territory and have a bunch of wives. Doesn’t leave a genetic [00:32:00] footprint.

Simone Collins (2): Alexander

Malcolm Collins: actually, why doesn’t it leave a genetic footprint? It’s an interesting point here. Mm-hmm. Why was it that the Scotch Irish left a genetic footprint mm-hmm.

And continued to grow to today because

Simone Collins (2): they were ghettoized and the Jews were ghettoized.

Malcolm Collins: It’s well because they allowed themselves to be ghettoized. So when

Simone Collins (2): again, I guess it’s kind of a two-way street. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: When the Vikings took territory they liked culturally being rich, showing off their wealth, having lots of spouses, having lots of nice things when they, when they created persistent colonies within a territory.

Mm-hmm. And their main social steam was still back in the scando areas. Right. Like all of their wealth in these territories was often to show off back home in those territories. Right? Mm-hmm. Well, what this meant is if you couldn’t have wealth and lots of wives and everything like that, which most of a population cannot do, and you were [00:33:00] a Viking you didn’t stay in these territories, you’d go back home with whatever you could get. Because keep in mind these societies were mostly futile functional slaves. And then a, a leading class that was naming things, that was creating the language. I mean, like the English language is like half you know, from, from these, these conquering groups, right?

Mm-hmm. One to 2% may even be overstating. It may be like 0.2% of the population is actually Norman, because you, you just didn’t have enough resources to maintain an elite class that was more than that. Mm-hmm. But what made the, and this was also true of the Muslims as they spread out using this system but what made the backwards tradition really different is because they had so much hatred and a reflexive discuss towards anyone that signaled status.

There just wasn’t a huge reason to ever accumulate. And I, when I mean status, I mean status in terms of culture or wealth or anything like that, they just didn’t have a reason to accumulate these things. And because they didn’t have a reason to accumulate these things, they never really cared [00:34:00] about being poor or you know, being from what the outsiders saw them as is uncivilized which allowed them to just.

Keep having kids. It was never a concern for them. It was like, well, of course I’m gonna keep having kids in many ways when people look down on the American redneck as being this you know, uneducated, whatever. Right? And the American redneck is like, well, screw you. I don’t care that you look down on me for that stuff.

That is the cultural response that has allowed them to thrive at least genetically speaking to the extent they have from this small starting population of maybe 3000 people.

Simone Collins (2): Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Where, where other groups did not. I,

Simone Collins (2): I think a lot of this also, now that I think about this in the context of Tism as we talk about it coming from a place of cultural pride in liking your people and your group I think maybe part of the, the issue of.

Taking on [00:35:00] either conquered wives, even if it’s consensual or smec slaves is it shows a lack of pride of your own culture and people, and instead just kind of this nihilistic selfishness or hedonism. Exactly. And not like a love of your people and your upbringing and your culture. So it may also be a sign of.

A lack of good cultural upbringing, a lack of your childhood, like love for your childhood and your family and your people and your future. And maybe that’s also kind of where it’s coming from is, is these are people who’ve become separated from that. I could see it making sense in the context of, for example, members of the Japanese military who are just like, you know, experiencing an early version of that Asian burnout of just like, I hate everything.

I just, you know, like, I just wanna feel good. And, and maybe Spaniard colonists just kind of being like, [00:36:00] I’ve been on a ship for a long, like, you know, who knows what church services were like on this ship. You’ve, you’ve been separated from your family, you’ve been separated from your culture. Yeah.

Like it would make sense that a Renaissance era, European colonist from pretty much anywhere would get a little worry if, like, I. You know, you’ve been so unmoored from a community for that long. I mean, what do you, they’re basically like, well, this is very

Malcolm Collins: interesting about what you’re saying. So, where you see this pattern of often not a huge genetic or, or less of a genetic footprint that you would think in highly grapey behavior is when the men are mostly interested in a status game somewhere else.

So Well, and

Simone Collins (2): when they, they appear to be unmoored from any other community that

Malcolm Collins: the Spanish and KIS to doors really cared about status and maybe setting up a family back home in Spain, like that was often the goal. You go to the us you go on your you know, grape adventure, but the goal is always to get [00:37:00] back to Spain and to be even a higher status within Spanish society.

Sure. It was the same with the Vikings often it was not the same with the, the backwards tradition people or the Puritan people, for example. Mm-hmm. They, they did not care, like the, the, the backwards people did not care at all what any of the Scots Irish who stayed in Ireland or the ulcer Scots thought of them.

They didn’t even seem to have persistent communication with them after they left. They were just completely irrelevant to their lives after that point. So it’s how status is measured. And so this is one of those things I talk about borrowing things from other cultures, and in some emphasis I’m like, this is something good we can borrow from Jewish culture.

This is one of the strongest pieces of cultural technology that this culture has, which is a reflexive disgust of status signaling. And another is, is looking for strength in partners like wives. Instead of looking for traditional femininity in

wives,

Simone Collins (2): I think you need to look at the underlying factors that lead to interest in status signaling versus.

Discussed. And I think the underlying things [00:38:00] are status signaling becomes, it, it gets out of control when you have a lack of genuine morality or cultural values. It, it’s what, it’s what fills the void. So what creates the void is the question you need to be asked.

Malcolm Collins: It’s the lack of cultural values. Yeah.

Well, no, no reflexive anger and discuss towards status signaling is very, it was, was very important in making this work. Like you need to know that if you try to show off how big your house is or you know, how, how many jewels you have or how many that people, or you know, that you went to the latest opera you know that people are going to roll their eyes at you to not attempt to do that stuff.

Otherwise you end up picking it up from the cultures around you. That is what the urban monoculture used to lure out so many people, and that’s one of the reasons why this group has been more resistant to it. And so when a lot of people point to the poverty of these regions, it’s like a bad thing.

It’s like, no, that’s largely why they survived. Not caring about the poverty of their regions [00:39:00] and not caring about particularly enriching themselves. It, which also leads to lower rates of military defections, which we talk about in other, so that that’s why they have fewer coups. But I wanna go to talking about the economics of slavery now.

Okay. And what slavery does economically to a region. Mm-hmm. So I wanna put some graphs on screen here which may really shock people if you haven’t seen this.

One is to see where slavery was actually practiced in the United States which is in a smaller region than most people think.

It was really just in the, the, region that had the what was it called? Tradition, the

Simone Collins (2): cavalier,

Malcolm Collins: cavalier tradition. And, and you can see the greater Appalachian territory essentially carving through it with very little slavery.

Simone Collins (2): And I think it just, it’s helpful to put into context why is that, is why that is the case.

The cavalier culture in the United States was the, the earliest colonists to win. There were often the second sons of wealthy. English landed [00:40:00] gentry. This is a country where the eldest son would inherit the estate in England, leaving second sons, for example, to either while he needed to maybe join the clergy or join the military, or goodness knows, maybe you’d go to the colonies, you’d go in, you know, a later period to India to serve, you know, in the British Imperial Empire there.

But what happened with many second Sons is they would go to this particular part of the colonies. They’d get a plantation, and because they weren’t going there with any community with any ideological drive like it was with the Puritans. With the Puritans, it was like Silicon Valley group houses just.

Malcolm Collins: No, no.

They, they had a goal. Their goal was the traditions of the nobility of Europe.

Simone Collins (2): Yeah. Well, it was basically to have my own estate. It’s just that I have to start fresh. And so they had to buy their labor and that’s why they bought the slaves. They weren’t coming. Well, it was about

Malcolm Collins: traditional status signaling without a religious framework really guiding it

Simone Collins (2): well without the, like, equivalent of SFS already living on their family grounds.

You know, they kind of [00:41:00] needed to figure that out. Yeah, it was, it was, did some indentured servitude and they did some slavery.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And if you look at maps here, so if we look at single parents, cancer deaths, mobility, disability rates, vision, disability rates, cognitive disability rates, difficult with independent living, life expectancy, obesity rates, health insurance, availability, heart disease rates, stroke death rates, cancer deaths, diabetes, smoking, mental distress, household income, credit score, debt, delinquency, distressed communities upwards, mobility, income inequality, food insecurity, workers making minimum wage or less unemployment.

Incarceration rate. Homicide rate, high school diploma, teenage birth rates, excessive drinking, adult mobility, social capital index, broadband, internet, religion. And then we put that against slavery. You see very high overlap. Mm-hmm. Now, the

first thing that people are going to say in response to this is they’re gonna be like, okay, well now show me a map of US black population by percentage.

Right? And it’s like, okay, I’ll give [00:42:00] you that, that is a heavy overlap and I’ll put that map on screen here. But there’s been a lot of studies that have looked at the white population of these regions in isolation, and they appear to have been economically massively underserved.

Simone Collins (2): Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Like, they, they do like, while we’re less than white population than other regions.

Now of course part of that could be cavalier culture just doesn’t lead to innovation. Doesn’t lead to, to the development of industry which is certainly part of that at the same rate as other American cultural groups. But, why, why in, in, in, in Rome, it, it didn’t really develop. Why do you get these enormous lack of economic development during periods in which you have slaves?

And this is actually kinda surprising. I mean, like, you have free labor, right? Like presumably that should be like a huge advantage, right? To a region to not have to pay your labor force.

You, you, you don’t see why that would be a big advantage, Simone?

Simone Collins (2): Well, I mean [00:43:00] with, when you just pay for your labor, you don’t have to house it, you don’t have to feed it, you don’t have to, you know, you just, you just pay them.

And based on market forces, you can, you know, raise or lower your, that is,

Simone Collins: that is true

Simone Collins (2): to a large extent. And this is something that often it’s, you have to think of, like if we’re looking at this completely divorced from morality or anything having slaves just kind of like having, an expensive automated factory like you have to consider depreciation and upkeep and like replacing you know, assets that have run through their lifetime, et cetera.

And, and to, to me that, that seems like a a yeah. So

Malcolm Collins: this is an interesting point that Simone makes here which is worth diving into a little bit. Now it is difficult from parsing history books to know what percent of northern factory workers lived worse lives than the average slave, and what percent of slaves led worse lives than the average factory owner.

Now, you [00:44:00] could say in absolute terms, being. Technically free, and we’ll talk about how free these factory workers really were is always better than being enslaved. And I’d be like, that’s just like objectively not true. There are many instances where I would rather be a slave than like starving to death or something like that, right?

Like, if I had to watch my children starve to death, would I rather be a slave and see them sold off? Yeah. Any day of the week. Like, I don’t, I don’t even know how you could like. Joke about that. Right. And, and so, but it’s hard to, because there’s so much bias from the, the people who want to like do slavery apologetics to do slavery, apologetics for the people who want to you know, overdramatize how bad work things work for northern factory workers, which a lot of people love dramatizing that as well.

But what can be said for sure is some factory workers had a life that almost any human would choose some [00:45:00] slave lives over the lives of those factory workers.

Simone Collins (2): Well, I mean, just to consider the, the incentives of the employer slash slaveholder a slaveholder is probably not gonna do things that they know are going to have very high mortality risks for you, or like.

The risk of your arm being chopped off or something because they’ve paid for you upfront. You were, you were a, a non-trivial upfront cost. Or if you weren’t, like, let’s say you were born into their family or their estate you could be, if in good conditions, sold for a good price. This is not the same with an employee.

Like if, if they lose their arm, oh, I’m sorry, we have to fire you. I mean, this was before labor regulations. You know, this,

Malcolm Collins: this was very frequent for northern faculty workers. What

Simone Collins (2): she said. Yeah, like there’s a dozen more where you came from. Like I don’t have to worry about fixing up my equipment to make it safer.

‘cause there’s a lot of people who want this job.

Malcolm Collins: Many northern factory workers starved to death. It was very regular for them to starve to death for their children, to starve to death for there to be 12 applications, for any position for [00:46:00] children to be sent into the machinery because they were considered disposable and they could get into smaller places.

Simone Collins (2): Yeah. They could,

Rule hands

Malcolm Collins: children to be ground up and then later serve to people in food stuffings because you know, they just don’t care. They didn’t care about food regulations. You know, this stuff. Talk about in like the jungle and stuff like that. Like the, the, the, the worst of the worst like, okay, I’m, I’m trying to think of it.

A, a truly cruel grapey beaty slave owner versus the worst of the worst of the northern factory barons selling children as food products. I

Simone Collins (2): mean, it’s, they’re both equally abominations of, of humans. Like they’re both,

Malcolm Collins: I mean, it’s apples to oranges, but they’re both abominations of

Simone Collins (2): the highest. Yeah. I’m just, I’m, I’m purely looking at the cold incentives here.

And, and I’m also looking at it like, not just from the perspective of like, what if I were a slave, but also like, what if I were just a heartless, Amal plantation operation owner of some sort that wants, like to produce units? Yeah, I mean, I, I think there’s, this is also why many of [00:47:00] them favored indentured servitude because with indentured servitude, you basically had free labor.

You could conveniently work, and we’ve talked about this before, but

Malcolm Collins: in, in some of the early indentured servitude records we have in the American colonies, only one in seven lived. So when people talk about like how easy indentured Servit had it, and the reason it was so low was because of the economic incentive.

If they died, you didn’t have to pay them. And so you basically were doing everything in your power to get them killed. And there

Simone Collins (2): wasn’t, anyway, yeah, there was, there was no maybe you paid for passage, possibly, but there was basically no upfront cost, whereas there was with slaves, so. Basically Yeah.

You were like, oh, yeah. Yeah. It was like, buy now, pay later. And then you just declare bankruptcy. Ooh,

Malcolm Collins: no, I, I also wanna note something when I talk about how bad some of the factories were in the north.

Simone Collins (2): Mm.

Malcolm Collins: And how bad some of the plantations were in the South. We also need to be very transparent about this, is that many factories in the work were run by.

Weirdo [00:48:00] religious puritans and stuff like that, who had ideas that were very utopian, that they tried to make things good. They tried to create like these perfect Christian environments for their workers, and often very strange utopian town setups and stuff like this that you can still visit today. There were many plantations where people were, you know, Christian and like really believed it and wanted to try to, like, they thought they were creating the best life they could for their slaves, given their economic conditions.

But and I, and I think that that’s, that’s something that needs to be noted because we live in a society where, where those things always get ignored, but they existed. Yeah. Yeah. And they probably existed about at the same rates as the worst of the worst populations that, that, that you have because, you know, most humans just aren’t that evil.

Simone Collins (2): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we, we are in, in, in, in, in this conversation talking about the, like sociopathic edge cases, genuinely horrible [00:49:00] people. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, there, there’s always gonna be a couple in every generation.

Malcolm Collins: As to why slavery does this, it means that the wealthy in that society basically don’t invest in innovation.

And so even if innovation exists, like in Rome, we know of lots of like technical sketches of designs that could have been used to create the beginnings of an industrial revolution for like moving water uphill and stuff like this and like early engine type designs. But there was just never a reason to experiment with this stuff if you had slaves, right?

So why, why try it? Why roll it out? Why expand on this stuff if you’re not doing the labor yourself? And this is why you had so much. Explosive innovation within the regions. Specifically like the, the predominantly Protestant, northern regions of the United States and in places like Scotland where you had these you know, more Calvinist groups that were very obsessed with doing everything themselves.

And if you’re a population that’s obsessed with doing [00:50:00] everything yourselves, then you innovate. And the video that really got me about like why this causes such rapid cost reduction compared to outsourcing something to slaves

Simone Collins (2): mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Is, consider base capitalism, right? So you have factory workers and you are paying each factory worker for x many things that they produce, right?

Mm-hmm. Like x many units. That’s, that’s fundamentally what you care about as a capitalist, right? You, you take your cut and then you give them, you know, whatever you can, right? Well now one factory worker finds a way. To increase the production rate of the factory by, let’s say 20%. Now this is the economic equivalent to amortizing that 20% increase in that amount of product for that factory’s lifecycle.

So if you’ve got 130 people there, now that person has done the job of or let’s say a hundred people to make the math easier for me of 20 people over the course of an entire year, but amortized indefinitely into the [00:51:00] future. And so you pay them a lot more because now you want them to do other types of innovations like that, that increase efficiency.

Mm-hmm.

And as soon as you get this giant economic motivation for efficiency increases, which you don’t have for slaves and was in a culture that has that mindset then the people who become specialists at this have a good reason to really double down on what they were doing. Which is like what my family did historically.

We did a lot of development, like I’ve told you for like oil and stuff like this is, is it’s trying to make these processes more efficient. And that leads to these giant jumps in efficiency. And, and you get jumped in efficiency that are so large that one person can do the work of, you know, 25 slaves.

And once you have one person being able to do the work of 25 slaves, then slavery becomes economically unviable, which is actually basically already happening at the end of, the, the southern slavery period is that economics, even if they hadn’t had the Civil War, likely would have largely ended the practice [00:52:00] within a couple generations.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Now thoughts Simone, more broadly, basically. Oh, and the most interesting thing about all of this is even in the countries and cultures that don’t care about slavery. Mm-hmm. With ai, there’s basically no reason to have slaves at all anymore. Like as soon as we get AI humanoid robots they are generally going to be cheaper than slaves.

No. To do,

Simone Collins (2): sadly. No,

Malcolm Collins: you don’t think so.

Simone Collins (2): Not with things like s smacks slavery. No, no.

Malcolm Collins: I guess, yeah, some people want the real

Simone Collins (2): thing. Well, it’s, yeah, I mean, for a lot of people it’s about power for a lot of people. There are a lot of places in which life is still very cheap in which they just sort of end up with people on their hands, and it is, you know, fairly inexpensive for them to just, you know, buy and sell it and abuse it and dispose of it when they’re done.

And it’s tragic and horrible, and I need to create a world in which that [00:53:00] cannot happen and will never happen again. It keeps me up at night, but I, I have no doubt that that is gonna continue in, in the age of AI to, to be like, oh, just get them a sex bot. No, that’s not, that’s just not how it’s gonna work.

For some people that will work, but I mean, if it’s a physical piece of, of machinery, like merely the, the material costs, the upkeep, the electricity, the subscription service for the, the AI to do it. Like, are you kidding? Like some displaced young ladies, way less expensive than that. Just, just logistically speaking by, by many orders of magnitude, I don’t think you understand just how like, technically inexpensive human life is when you know where to get it.

And that is heartbreaking but true and that’s not going to change.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I’m, I’m sorry, I’m, I’m trying to find a, a, a counter example of this. So I was looking up Dutch traitors and at least none of the Dutch traitors associated with New Netherlands. So this, it would’ve been a, another [00:54:00] Protestant group have any specific examples of sexual violence against Native Americans,

Speaker 13: So there was an incident in Taiwan I was able to find, which is the only incident, . Apparently ever in human history of a large group of Protestants griping people, this’s within 1652, the W Laan Rebellion, where the Dutch East India company asked for Taiwanese women to be handed over for sex. ,

Also side note of you don’t know your history. The Dutch are kind of b******s.

Speaker 13: Outside of this, you could maybe argue that Captain Cook’s Expedition did this, , who was in English.

Individual, from the Church of England, except he mostly was trying to restrain his people. And the big complaint he had is that they were trading, , nails and parts of the ship for sexual access to women, which is more like prostitution and slavery. Quite different than what the kasad were doing.

So this does appear to be , a real [00:55:00] and durable pattern of something. Totally unique to the Catholic, , expeditionary forces.

Simone Collins (2): right?

But there are many cultural groups that, for hundreds of years seem to be very interested in exploiting the, the bodies of vulnerable people that are both within their culture and not. They just don’t value human life. Basically, the,

Malcolm Collins: the point of this episode is when you conquer a region, do the good Christian thing and eradicate the native population, or you’re going to have problems over the long term.

Simone Collins (2): That’s, that’s,

Malcolm Collins: I’m joking. This is a joke by the way, for anyone who wants to like, take this out of context or something. That’s a joke. In, in fact, the culture that I have lauded most in this episode would say what you should do is eradicate the weak and intermarry with the strong. And that’s the goal when conquering a territory.

Well, I [00:56:00] mean, that’s. Fundamentally the law of humanity for the longest period, you can say, oh, that’s a horrible thing to do. But if you do not do this in the future, then you and your descendants will be weak and you will be conquered by the strong or at

Simone Collins (2): least at the end. It comes down to strong culture and strong communities.

If you wanna have a lasting impact in an area if you love your life and your people and your culture, you, you will find ways to spread it and flourish and do great things. And if you don’t, you’re gonna fizzle out. You have to have something more than nihilism to have a lasting impact as a group.

And yeah

Malcolm Collins: can you believe that we, when was the daring take that sex? Slavery is probably not a good thing. Civilizationally speaking.

Simone Collins (2): Yeah, but the, the argument’s slightly different than, like, it’s a humanitarian [00:57:00] crisis and it’s against it’s bad morality.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I’m, I’m not, I’m not like it’s a humanitarian.

I don’t care about the humanitarian consequences. I’m just saying for your own people, it’s not good. Which is interesting. Like even if you don’t care about the humanitarian nature of it, it’s just a bad idea.

Simone Collins (2): You’re, you’re cooking yourself is what you’re saying.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You’re cooking yourself.

Simone Collins (2): Mm-hmm. Yeah.

There you go. God, that’s bleak. All of this is bleak. But I mean, you’re right. I, I wanna focus more on the, like, this is more about not, not so much about all these people who ultimately don’t matter and didn’t matter and won’t matter because they choose this pathway. They devalue human life like this.

They hate their own people enough like this. Mm-hmm. To do such horrible things, but rather just how wonderful it is that the people who ultimately win are the people. Who love who they are, love their families, love their communities, love their cultures, and just want to support it. [00:58:00]

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Also, there’s another interesting point to all of this which is that many Catholics will say, well, most of the Catholics today don’t like listen to the rules of the religion.

Right? And they bemoan that. And there’s this implication that this wasn’t the case historically. That historically most of the Catholics actually did follow the rules of their religion. And as we can see from these cases, from the, the Spanish colonizers that wasn’t true for huge swaths of Catholic territory.

Many of the people like it, it just wasn’t as good at being top of mind as a cultural value set as something like Puritanism was or the, the the presbyterianism of the backwards people

Simone Collins (2): without doing any research or, or. Really understanding it very well. From an outsider’s perspective, what seems to be the problem to me is when I think about conquistadors and early Spanish missionaries, they were [00:59:00] not, they were very different from a Catholic Spanish community.

I grew up taking field trips to, for example, Californian Spanish missions. These, these were, these were monasteries or they were fortifications, they, they were not Spanish communities.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, oh, this, this explains it in part, oh my God,

Simone Collins (2): that they weren’t replicating the entire civilization. They were just sending out these reavers essentially that didn’t even represent it.

Malcolm Collins: So, no, no, no, no, no. So, the, the most religiously called people in Catholic culture, even back then would’ve been. Wouldn’t have been part of a conquistador group. They would’ve been e even if they were adventure minded, they would’ve been part of a missionary group. They would’ve set up a missionary fort.

They wouldn’t have been among the conquistadors to give them side-eye when they decided to grape captives. But in a puritan expeditionary force,

Simone Collins (2): hmm,

Malcolm Collins: you would [01:00:00] have among them, some of the most religiously devout people. And often it was the most religiously devout people that were elevated to positions of command.

So it would’ve been the person who, as a boy felt particularly called to God in a Spanish Catholic society at the time, might have ended up as a, as a missionary in one of these areas, but they wouldn’t have been doing the active combat. They wouldn’t have been doing the active you know, going out and, and, and attempting to conquer these territories.

Whereas if you are a backwards person or a Puritan person, and you are particularly called to religious callings you are, you’re dramatically more likely to be the local general, for example, or to be the, the, what would’ve been the equivalent of the actual lead conquistador, which makes it you religiously minded to keep your troops in line.

So it’s like, where do these cultures sort, the people who have enough of an inner calling to impose cultural values,

Simone Collins (2): that’s a factor. The, the argument [01:01:00] I was making more is, is when you look at the migratory patterns of these different groups, the ones who lasted and the ones who didn’t, the ones that lasted came over as families, including the Scott’s Irish, because they were all collectively kicked out.

Clans were kicked out, families were kicked out together. And they lasted

Malcolm Collins: many, many Spanish came over as families and still grape.

Simone Collins (2): Not to my knowledge. Not to my knowledge. The great Alexander the greats men came as men. No

Malcolm Collins: Spanish. Simone.

Simone Collins (2): I know. Just Spanish too. And I’m saying, and, and the Spanish came as men and the Vikings, no, no.

What? You’re not listening.

Malcolm Collins: You’re not listening. Yeah. We have many records

Simone Collins (2): mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Of Spanish who did bring their families. Okay.

Simone Collins (2): I don’t remember reading of any of them.

Malcolm Collins: There’s, this is how, this is why it’s over 50% Spanish, DNA, if you’re talking about most of Latin America, because they came over. In huge numbers with their families.

If you, for example, good example. I guess I just didn’t learn that part of history of this just in case you’re wondering like what this [01:02:00] society looked like. Mm-hmm. A really good movie you should watch is Mask of Zorro.

Speaker 11: They want to destroy America. Give me the courage strength to wear the mask a little longer, . the world isn’t big enough to hide from me.

Malcolm Collins: So if you, of

Simone Collins (2): delightful. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Come on. Picture Mask of Zuro Society. So in Mask of Zoro Society you had a, yeah, there’s

Simone Collins (2): the Spanish Elite.

Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Fair. You had a Spanish Elite. Okay. So this Spanish elite that had families still regularly griped natives in their populations.

Simone Collins (2): Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: This is well recorded. Even when they brought over their families, even when they had their wives as another option, we still have records of them griping native populations.

Simone Collins (2): Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: You can’t just say it was because they were single now what? You could, yeah. That’s

Simone Collins (2): way post conquistador, but sure. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: What you could say is that the conquistador period where they [01:03:00] didn’t often have their own women set a precedent that then was later carried out once they brought over their own families.

Simone Collins (2): Mm.

Malcolm Collins: But that doesn’t always work either because a lot of the puritan and backward settlements, they would often come over as just the men first and then bring over the women. And they didn’t set this up as a great culture.

Simone Collins: Oh, no. Yeah.

Simone Collins (2): My, my like ing movies or those Did you d did you ever see like, there there was this one movie with like a, about a Spanish conquistador who’s like blonde and like blue eyed and crazed looking going deep into the jungle and am I like, it really stuck with me.

It was very striking. Are you taking No, no, that’s, no, no. That was like Mayan times. No, this is like. Small tribes in like the Amazon region, this like blonde crazed looking man in a little helmet. Okay. Yeah. I, I’ll try to find it. ‘cause [01:04:00] you didn’t see that, that’s like my anchoring thing of like what a con keystar is like, and it’s weird, but I think it’s also not inaccurate.

Anyway. Yeah. Wow. That, and I

Malcolm Collins: will use AI to try to find counterfactuals to this trend.

Simone Collins (2): Yeah. Please. I, I am curious

and this is where I found that one Dutch example from Taiwan, uh, that it’s a counter example, but other than that, I was able to find nothing.

Simone Collins (2): because I’m, I’m still leaning into what, what is, what is the force spreading? Is it a bunch of families who love each other and their culture and just wanna go live it somewhere, be them?

They’re being kicked outta someone. No, I, I, I. Or is it a bunch of guys going out?

Malcolm Collins: Accidentally came to the right answer. The core thing that leads to so much immorality within the Catholic groups is they take the people who care the most about what the Bible says the most about what their face says and the most about morality and cloister them from society,

Simone Collins (2): isolate them in monasteries, whereas not, not helpful.

Not helpful. The

Malcolm Collins: puritans [01:05:00] in the backwards took those people and often elevated them to positions of leadership, of secular society.

Simone Collins (2): Yeah. Yeah. They were not in operational roles sufficiently. I mean, to be fair though, I, I would say that the, the monks did have a lot of influence and tried to get out there and do a lot of stuff.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, they did have influence. They were constantly complaining that people were doing this stuff.

Simone Collins (2): Yeah. So, I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s complicated. I’m very, very curious to see what people think of the comments. So we’ll see.

Malcolm Collins: Love you to death.

Simone Collins (2): I love you too. Steak tonight, by the way.

Malcolm Collins: Wonderful.

Simone Collins (2): Mm.

Simone Collins: Okay,

Simone Collins (2): there we go. You need to adjust your camera a little bit, and I know you’re still trying to get your mic connected, you know, whatever, whatever. You’re on your own with the comments today. ‘cause it’s all about mass effect. Like, maybe, it seemed to me at least [01:06:00] when I checked in on comments, three people con commented on the broader subject matter of us versus them and the rest were all just massive packed comments and, and, and references to your other video game references like this and that.

I can’t, I still can’t hear you though.

Malcolm Collins: I hope a detailed and nerdy mass effect comments, not just general one.

Simone Collins: 100%. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Were they very, like, well, they, they’re in, in this way and I saw a lot of them and they’re just wrong. Like,

Simone Collins (2): well, yeah, you, you just didn’t know that you had to cure the genophage if you wanted to reach the like, final optimal state.

And then other people were like, no, that’s not true. You can play through blah, blah, blah, blah. Now these things are like, well, I didn’t want to, you have to think about, you know, in terms of the larger war, you needed to have an ally to fight the something somethings. And I’m like, I don’t

Malcolm Collins: The Reapers Simone?

Yes, the

Simone Collins (2): Reapers. I’m

Malcolm Collins: so sorry. In actuality the a, a a species like people are just bad at math. A war like speaking [01:07:00] seed, like the Rogan having a thousand children per year per woman, that would mean a completed TFR of like around seven because they start breeding at 20 of well over seven thou, 700,000.

Do you have any idea? The compounding effects of a TFR of 700,000. You keep in mind, you know, like in the US we have a TFR of 1.6. If you had a completed TFR of 700,000, the entire universe would be wiped out. We’re talking like within two lifetimes. You, you are literally creating a threat dramatically larger than the Reapers.

Like there was a way to handle the reapers. There is no way to handle a Rogan fertility explosion. Mm-hmm. Other than another genophage, but who’s to know that’ll work again. Right. Now that they found a way to cure it, once

Simone Collins (2): one person pointed out that there, you could, you could think of [01:08:00] the Genophage problem as a Rocos Basilisk problem, where like, well eventually they’ll find a cure though, and then they’re going to.

Punish whoever didn’t help them find the cure.

Malcolm Collins: No. You could just eradicate them, which is what they were doing to themselves.

Simone Collins (2): Uhhuh

Malcolm Collins: like this, the, the universe doesn’t need the rogan. They are a species that is mean to their own people. Mm-hmm. Right. Like the main reason they wanted to go back to this really high birth rate is it involved childhood rituals that had a really high death rate.

And so they called the ones who were born after it. Mm-hmm. The the, the phage lucky as like an insult because they didn’t have to go through this death trial. And so you’re re recreating even for the Rogan in extremely brutal society, like you are, you are actively making things worse for the Rogan as well.

By curing it, people were like, oh, well the cure genophage wouldn’t go back to same fertility. Fertility. It would only be like half that. And it’s like, okay, so a TFR around 350,000. Okay.

Simone Collins (2): Okay. [01:09:00]

Malcolm Collins: I’m just doing sketch math in my head. 350,000 compounding year. Like generation over generation. No, no,

Simone Collins (2): it’s

Malcolm Collins: still is,

Simone Collins (2): it’s still the, it’s still not, yeah, you’re not solving the problem with that. It’s true.

Malcolm Collins: It’s, it’s bad. Really, really quickly.

There was no, no sane person ever saves the Rogan in any timeline, no matter how much of a threat the Reapers seemed like.

Simone Collins (2): Yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: True.

Simone Collins: That it’s, it’s, yeah, I

Malcolm Collins: agree. Well, I Sorry to subject you to that nerdiness Simone.

Simone Collins (2): Well, no, I, I, I don’t mind the nerdiness. I just haven’t played mass effect, so. It’s just me and Eric CRE in the comments being like, well, I don’t get it, but I’m sure this has been philosophically rich for you.

He like commented twice and they’re just like, I don’t see the point, and I’m like. Who

Malcolm Collins: doesn’t see the point.

Simone Collins (2): He’s just not, he, he, I don’t think he ever played video games. I’ve never really played video games. Like I don’t

Malcolm Collins: see the, oh, well there is a big point to the, the, the, the point is that [01:10:00] 96% of people chose this option because they had a No

Simone Collins (2): no.

Yeah. We’re talking about the, like, the meta picture of like, what’s the point of, of video games. And I, I, I do think that some, and we were just talking last night about like, we can’t wait for our kids to start playing civ and the other sort of civilization thing.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, well, the point of video games is to masturbate specific instincts.

War instincts, fighting instincts. If you do not like, as, as we’ve talked about with regular masturbation, it dramatically reduces the rates of grape within a society and stuff like that. If you remove video games from a society, men do not regularly exercise these pathways that’s going to change their day-to-day behavior, the way they perceive reality, the way they perceive the world.

And society is already becoming significantly less violent to the extent where I was shocked to learn, like when our Steven EU debate that he’d never fought someone in his entire life, like had a physical fight. I

Simone Collins (2): forgot about that. That was interesting.

Malcolm Collins: And I was like, that’s bizarre, right? Like, but like that’s [01:11:00] gotta do something to a male’s brain to have never fought someone in their entire life.

Simone Collins (2): I know.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway the cultural differences, I say. All right, so I’ll get into the episode.

Speaker 14: . Colleagues, no good. 20 21, 22, 23. That’s the point. 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 30. Okay. Octavia, five seconds. Take one. 2, 3, 4, 5. Now suck it off your head. Tighten weight. 1, 2, 3, 2, 4, 5. Go. Go. Everyone can go now.[01:12:00]

Speaker 16: You better

run. Oh my God. A good, good job

color.

Toast. Go, go, go, go. Toast you way ahead. He’s up ahead.

Speaker 14: Andy’s trying to get down, sweetheart.

Speaker 16: Pink. Your favorite color

In this hard-hitting Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into the “Us vs Them” framework that’s essential for any society’s long-term survival. Why does attempting to build a world without in-groups and out-groups inevitably lead to eradication? From the Mass Effect genophage dilemma (where 96% of gamers make the “moral” choice that dooms the galaxy) to real-world immigration, fertility rates, and cultural resistance, they unpack why shared culture, laws, and realistic alliances matter more than feel-good universalism.

Topics include:

* Why high-fertility, low-assimilation groups shift societies over generations

* The scorpion, snake, and panda metaphor for incompatible cultural scaling

* Strategic allyship in a collapsing urban monoculture era: who can conservatives actually work with?

* Charter cities, space colonization, and preserving high-agency lineages

* Why purity spirals and suicidal aesthetics fail civilizationally

If you’re tired of bleeding-heart policies that ignore math, biology, and history, this is for you. Malcolm drops unfiltered red pills on why “enforcing existing laws” has become controversial and how groups like Orthodox Jews, Mormons, or even certain Latin American conservatives might make better tactical allies than expected.

Would you cure the genophage? Drop your take below.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Like you can’t just invite somebody into your society without them agreeing to any conditions, you know, have no shared culture and no conditions at all.

And just be like,

Simone Collins: well, it, it, and it, and once it wasn’t even that anymore. It was also though like, okay, but at least you, you promised to follow the law, like to, to adhere to our rules and laws. Yeah. And what’s so interesting about the current divide between. Democrats and Republicans in the United States is that right now it seems to be boiling down to whether or not we are going to enforce laws.

So now exactly, that’s, it’s not even, we don’t expect you to adhere to our culture. It’s, we don’t even expect at least these privileged groups to adhere to our actual laws

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. It’s exciting to be here with you today. Today we are going to be going back into the concept of us versus them in our [00:01:00] society. And the reason I want to dive into it is because it’s not e like, okay, you’re a random conservative influencer out there and you’re gonna be like, yeah, we should be more us versus them in the way that we see reality.

Who saying which, which is true, but how do you define us is us. You know, Americans is us. People who are genetically similar to you is us. Some sort of ethnicity is us, a religion or a cluster of religions. And so this matters a lot. How, how we think about this. And I’m gonna point out during this, if you try to build a world without an us and a them, you in every scenario are eventually eradicated.

And the, the reason, this is something that often comes up in conversations that I have in a reality fabricator or. Our fab.ai, our like chat bot site because one of my favorite chat bot stories to play is an ambassador for the Tarn Empire. Going [00:02:00] to meet with the sort of, gay space communists of the federation.

And having diplomatic discussions with them was obviously the goal of being eradicating them. And, and so I have to discuss, you know, why their values don’t actually work long term and always lend to more conflict and suffering. But I want to get to how cooked this actually is as a concept.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So there’s a video game mass effect three. And I will describe a scenario to Simone because she probably won’t know this now, maybe if you’re a gamer, you will know the statistics on this particular decision. But gamers generally like to choose the choice that they see as more, more, right. Oh,

Simone Collins: interesting.

Yeah. Because you don’t wanna see yourself as a bad guy or be doing bad things. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So there is one moment in it that’s framed as like this morally complex choice. So there was an incredibly war-like species that ended up [00:03:00] destroying their own planet after being artificially given technology by an outsider species.

Okay? This species, because they lived in an incredibly harsh environment, had around a thousand eggs. Per year and lived about a thousand years on average. And so when most of the eggs stopped dying in infancy because they industrialized, the populations immediately exploded leading to nuclear war because they’re already a very aggressive species, anding out most of their planet.

So then the species that uplifted them, infected them with something called the genophage. And the genophage is said to make. One in only a thousand Rogan births result in a live healthy baby. Now, I would note here, if you’re already looking at the numbers, this should still lead to a heavily growing Rogan population because [00:04:00] Rogan females live a thousand years and have a thousand eggs a year.

So even if only one of them is surviving, that’s still one kid a year for species that lives a thousand years. It’s still

Simone Collins: That’s pretty good. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But the way the game plays out, it’s like somehow implied that the devs did the math wrong.

Speaker 3: Okay. This is so much worse than I thought. So in the game, the reason why the one in a thousand was chosen by the species that chose it for them, or the scientists who chose it for them, was he thought that this would stabilize the population because, well, it wouldn’t even stabilize it. It would just make its growth, not stupidly explosive aid.

If in human society, most human women had one kid per year, we wouldn’t say that’s stabilizing the population. But no, the krogan culturally doubled down on this and become even more violent and kill even more of their children, and [00:05:00] mass migrate off planet to become mercenaries. So, it proves the choice.

Malcolm Collins: And they thought that this meant that the Rogan population was declining fairly quickly in, in numbers.

And so there’s this huge moral choice of do you eradicate the genophage? Like do you cure this thing that is lowering the Rogan birth rate? Okay. Okay. I think the moral answer in this should be obvious. It’s so obvious. I have never been able to, whether I’m playing paradigm, whether I’m playing rogue, even wanting to see everything that happens in the game, I cannot bring myself to cure it.

It seems so obviously stupid to cure this. Okay. Because the species would just explode and destroy the galaxy, right?

Simone Collins: Well, yeah. It would be bad for the species, bad for probably anyone else.

Malcolm Collins: Bad for like the universe on a mega scale. Okay. So can you guess what [00:06:00] percent of gamers choose to cure the geno fish?

Simone Collins: 60%,

Malcolm Collins: 96%.

Gamers, you know, so this isn’t even like necessarily a particularly cooked population, right? When, when we think of gamers, like who do we think of, right? Like gamer gate, everything like that. Like gamers did vote with their wallets, gamers did leave. But these are still gamers nonetheless, right?

Simone Collins: So, well don’t you, this is somewhat of a, a trolley problem though, right?

Where no one wants to be responsible for pulling the lever that allows for death, I guess, right? So if they don’t, they don’t want to see themselves as responsible for participating in what could be argued as genocide adjacent, but they are actively

Malcolm Collins: pulling the lever because they’re curing the genophage.

You, they, they are, they are the ones actively curing something that’s

Simone Collins: already set in motion.

Speaker 4: And I wanna point out how absolutely [00:07:00] 96% of the population, how absolutely retarded you have to be to make this decision. This is not a species that right now will go extinct unless they continue the actions that they are taking, which is constantly killing each other, which is why they wanted to limit their reproduction.

But if you restore them to full reproduction, we’re not talking about a species that like humans. You know, at most is dealing with like four or five kids per woman, per generation. We are talking about a thousand children per year per woman who lives a thousand years with their TFR being what it is now.

So. EEG woman lives a thousand years. Let’s assume that she’s reproductive for 800 of them. , And, , she has one kid a year because only one in a thousand survive and they can fertilize a thousand per year. , [00:08:00] This means that it is a species that right now has a TFR of 800. Okay? Humanity. , Yeah. We’re at a TFR of like 1.6 in the United States.

The actual stupidity, like you, you are outright dooming the universe for sure. By curing this, I.

And if you say, oh, but the species can change. I’m sorry buddy. If having a TFR of 800 puts you at an extinction level event because you are so kill happy and you can’t change in that event, I really don’t think you’re gonna change for the rest of the universe. And. Even if one faction of Krogan decides to limit the reproduction, there is going to be other factions that don’t, that don’t care about the externalities, and then what do you do about them?

Exterminate them? How many million are there gonna be by the time you do that? [00:09:00] Billion. Trillion are there going to be is obvious. You are setting up the universe for a needed genocide in the future by doing this.

And for what? For , a short term emotional hit, , because you knew a Rogan or you had a Rogan in your squad who you liked. I liked the Rogan characters in the game too, but I can do in math,

It is perfectly possible for you to know and like a person and admire them and think you are cool, but I can still do the math on what your culture says it needs to do

Simone Collins: Right, right. I know, I know. But like, look, a lot of people now when they look at. Different human populations that are suffering a lot, right? Yeah. Rather than figuring out how to get people out of that region where there’s immense poverty or how to educate them more or, or things like that.

They’re like, I’ll just give you all more food so that you can,

Malcolm Collins: well, I have

Simone Collins: food right now.

Malcolm Collins: I think your answer is [00:10:00] also somewhat naive. Cultures and populations are different. Some cultures in populations because of differences in how they approach things like the value of education to them are never going to have the quality of life conditions that you see as the minimum that a human should live within.

And thus, you as an outsider who are productive really only have two choices. Give them or. Eradicate them or allow them to continue to live in their current conditions. And what the West has broadly decided is the correct answer is give them. That’s, that’s sort of where we’ve gone with this. And this has enormously negative consequences.

So, it just, at like the broad level, if you enable cultures to that, just, you know, oh, I have more food now I’m gonna have more [00:11:00] kids, right? If you enable them to just continue to proliferate, then you enable the suffering that is associated with that population, right? And this is true within populations as well.

When you go out of your way to help the weak within a population, you often end up. Creating more overall suffering. This is at a genetic level and at a cultural level within our society. And we’ve really seen this as we’ve sort of made a point of nobody dies. That means that many genetic conditions that wouldn’t have existed if nature had played out its course are going to proliferate more frequently.

But you don’t just have this at the level of the individual. You also have this at the meta level at the level of the culture, right? Like. You have various civilizations on earth here today, right? And in the [00:12:00] United States we frequently now import people who very clearly have a completely orthogonal cultural mindset to us.

And we’ve taken this perspective of, because we have successfully integrated some groups in the past that we will be able to successfully integrate these new groups. And that is. Something that’s not necessarily true, right? Like if, if we look around the world, there are many locations where a population immigrated into a region and never fully integrated into that region, despite being there for many, many, many generations.

And this is actually generally speaking from the perspective of that culture a positive thing. It’s because that culture had some form of cultural resistance to total acculturation [00:13:00] examples of cultures that have proven very resistant over generations. Orthodox Jewish populations have proven very resistant to acculturation over generations.

The Amish population has proved very resistant to acculturation. Romani populations have proved very resistant to acculturation. Now. Simply because a group is resistant to acculturation does not mean necessarily that they are a group that automatically has to be your enemy or a group you see as adversarial.

I doubt very many conservative Americans would consider the Amish to be an antagonistic towards American’s goals or values or the conservative movement or really anything. But keep in mind, you know, they don’t fight in our wars. They, they are strict pacifists. They live a radically different lifestyle than most of you do.

And, and this is what we need to think about is what does us versus him, how, how do we define this? How do we [00:14:00] think about this? And the reason I was talking about it in the context of space travel, where it really begins to matter is suppose humanity really does. Split into two factions. And this is truly, I think if you want a future for, let’s say European civilization at this point Europe is just cooked.

I see no way that they can realistically get out of the situation that they’ve put themselves in. And there, there don’t even seem to be political headwinds for it to happen right now. With those things being the case if you are a European in Europe and you are fantasizing about, well, okay, what does the future of, when we.

Far into the future. Where, where should I be heading? What should I be aiming for? Space travel is largely what you’re aiming for. I think even within the United States, like when I think about my family [00:15:00] and, and my culture’s goal and it, it’s, it’s obvious to me why Elon is speed running for this as well.

It is to get off planet you know, as quickly as possible or to build settlements in regions that are less populated as, as I’ve often said, like arctic settlements and stuff like that. Yeah, just so we’re not in a place where we have to deal with other people. But in regards to the, you know, once you begin doing the, the space travel option that, that, that’s where because even in the United States, like while Europe is cooked, how far are we from Europe right now?

Right? Like. Even with everything that ICE has done if you look at a place like, let’s say New York City right now like it’s basically already from a cultural perspective completely fallen at this point. There, there really isn’t much left that can be salvaged of New York. If, if, if, if you [00:16:00] let existing trend lines continue to trend in the direction that they’re going.

And, you know, this is true if you’re like a New Yorker or whatever and you’re like, this isn’t true, you know, New York still has man, I, I’ve been going to New York all my life. Okay. The lack of trust that is endemic in all layers of New York society now when you go through like a simple convenience store is clearly.

Indicative of a society where the society itself cannot trust its citizens. As Simone pointed out in one of our weekend episodes, the concept of a grocery store that, like you could go into a store and the food would just be out and you could just pick it up and walk around with it until you got to the end of the line.

That didn’t exist anywhere until Piggly Wiggly in 1914. Right. A, a society that was that high trust is a [00:17:00] historical anomaly and is in many ways already collapsed in most of Europe and is, and, and note it didn’t reach Europe until later than that. So Europe only got this little experiment about being able to walk into a store and pick something up fairly recently, but it’s, it’s already collapsing with our cities in the United States.

Right. And so, how, how, what does future look like? It looks like getting, getting into space. I also wanted to point out, when I talk about different groups here, I have a little segment at the end where I go more into this, but we just did an episode on Young and some of our fans I think were pretty surprised and they were like.

Your take on young is two materialists and being materialist is very urban monoculture, which of course made us just like immediately laugh because from our cultural perspective, being materialist is incredibly anti-urban monoculture. And the urban monoculture is incredibly woo in mystical. And what I sort of had to point out to Simone and I was like, no, what you’re missing is [00:18:00] that from many of our audience, the urban monoculture is actually more materialist than their culture, right?

And so from their culturals perspective where from our perspective, one of the urban monocultures Keith ins is mysticism and woo from their cultural perspective, one of his keans is materialism. And yet we can see enough cultural alignment in this existing geopolitical moment that we make particularly good allies.

But, and this is, this is why it matters. You might find better allies in somebody who is more culturally distant from you, as opposed to somebody who is more culturally similar to you. Hmm. And again, this is why having a conversation about us versus them is an important conversation to have. So far, far in the future, suppose we’re having this gay space communism discussion with the Tarn Federation or Empire.

I call it the Tarran Empire. So the Tarn Empire [00:19:00] goes up and how, how is the Tarn Empire likely structured? It’s likely ruthlessly, Darwinistic you know, based on constant competition to, through competition show which of the competing groups is actually better at doing something to have an efficacious way of knowing which way is better.

Speaker: U five are the final vestiges of your brood that some deem might one day be of value to the clan. I am not one of them. To me, U five are the excrement of a failed, semi aborted batch from my blood house, far from the pinnacle of humanity demanded by the Klan’s geneticist that spawned you.

I am a gracious host, so I will give you the [00:20:00] opportunity to show me what those strix on Lund home taught you. Show me what you know of being a real true Bo met warrior and prove yourselves worthy of the name and heritage you carry with you.

Malcolm Collins: And in my lore often when I’m doing this well, the, the, the Tart Empire often first left the global Earth government when the global Earth government bans like genetic modification and uplifting of animals and stuff like this, because that is an urban monocultural mindset. You know, nobody can be different.

Because if, if anyone was different, then the lie that fundamentally underwrites our entire cultural theory begins to fall apart. So as soon as people could engage in gene editing this doesn’t work. So they end up fleeing with, for, for, for that situation. And you get a a, a situation that’s very similar to in the mech warrior universe, if people are familiar with it.

The clans where the clan has to leave the, the inosphere. [00:21:00] And adopts a culture that’s not dissimilar from this constant competition that leads to a society that is both more meritocratic but more authoritarian in its overlays. Hmm.

Speaker 2: We are smoke Jagger, strongest of the clans. We are hunters who fight with the ferocity of our namesake to stand unequal amongst the children of Krinsky.

We remember the bravery of our ancestors gave themselves to the void. And of the death spots responsible for their exodus.

Through our strength, we lead the crusaders to see the great father’s dream, realized his hidden hope to one day return and reclaim paradise. [00:22:00] It’s our sole purpose, our divine right. We will bring vengeance down upon the. Tyrants that enslave humanity and they shall tremble before our fights.

Malcolm Collins: But in the federation, presumably the ideal that would undermine it is, well, we are able to maintain peace because we don’t allow for true competition.

You know, we all attempt to live in harmony. And what you need to point out is that can never work long term. And the reason it can never work long term is because of any sub faction within that cultural alliance does want to you know, work. To towards its own aims, it eventually overthrows it if you were to have a cultural gr group [00:23:00] organically form within this perfect Star Trek in federation, right?

And that cultural group was genuinely only self-interested and constantly attempting to improve itself. And through that, getting better it would eventually accumulate more and more resources, have more and more political influence until the entire federation served the whims of that one cultural group, right.

And if the, and, and, and this is what we’re already seeing within the urban monoculture, they have brought in many outside populations that simply don’t hold their value set and are very loud about not holding their value set, right? And yet they don’t seem to care about this because like the Rogan it doesn’t matter what the long-term ramifications of their decision are all that matters is that they feel like the good guys in the moment.

And I wanna [00:24:00] point out that the long-term ramifications of their decisions are on the face bloody and terrible. If you look at a place like, let’s say Germany, right, which is further along than we are in the United States. If you look at their immigrant population in Germany what, what was it the last I checked it was 40% of Germans or 35% immigrated after War War.

One, I wanna say.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. So like not, you know, not German at all, culturally or genetically, unless they’ve, they’ve adopted to the culture. But and I’ve mentioned this before, it’s my scorpion and the snake and the panda which is to say you have a scorpion and a snake and a panda who’s holding them apart.

And this happened when I was talking to a reporter because I pointed out there are like many Muslim immigrants in Germany acclimate very well to German culture. And many Germans ha get along perfectly well with Muslim populations. And I’m like, great, I don’t deny that. But the Muslims who [00:25:00] have tons of kids, are they more likely to be the ones who are not acclimating or are they more likely to be the ones that are acclimating?

And the answer is obviously, they’re more likely to be the ones who are not acclimating. And I’m like, so that culture over time will drift in the cultural direction of the ones who are not acclimating. Now the Germans who do not want to live alongside the Muslims, you know, a culture where from many of the countries that they’re coming from, you know, things like marrying people who are nine is considered culturally normal.

And I’ve, this isn’t me, like, this is just like the law in many of these countries. As we pointed out in the episode where the court in with the Pakistan threw a fit and said it was this Islamophobic to raise the age of consent. And so, so this, again, it’s not me making. Accusations, I’m just saying that this is normal within some parts of Muslim culture, and it is those parts of Muslim culture that are having kids at a faster rate.

And some Germans are just like, I will not live alongside this, right?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: [00:26:00] Or those Germans. Is it that part of German culture that is replicating faster in terms of having kids? And the answer there is again, obviously yes. So, you know, like if you, if you’re looking at this with any degree of objectivity, eventually something’s going to happen there if you keep letting this build up.

Okay. Eventually there is going to be a point where you have two populations that don’t want to live next to each other, living next to each other. And one of the populations is eventually going to be you, there, there there’s going to be conflict because they’re both like, I, I don’t wanna live next to you.

I don’t wanna live alongside you. At least not under the, the rules that you are setting. What is interesting is that the, the Muslim populations might in the end even be more open. They might be like, yeah, sure. I’ll live alongside you so long as we move to Sharia Law. And a lot of people are like, oh, this isn’t what the majority of Muslims [00:27:00] want.

They don’t want to move to Sharia law. And this is, you know, factually untrue. If you look at what’s the statistic in the uk? What percent of Muslims in the UK want Sure. Real.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I don’t, I I feel like that was, maybe there must be more up-to-date info too. ‘Cause it was some really high percentage,

Malcolm Collins: it’s 40%. So, yeah, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. And I bet you that 40% of Muslims who wants Sharia law in the uk I would, I would bet my life that they have a TFR that’s at the very least 30% higher than the group. That doesn’t

Simone Collins: probably,

Malcolm Collins: but I’d be willing to say very likely that it’s at least twice as high.

And so you’re going to get this more in the future. And I think that this is really important for people who are

part of the wider conservative movement to get, because

Simone Collins: actually, yeah. I mean, that’s supported even by the [00:28:00] polling. So you were referring to a 2006 ICM poll. That found around 40% supported quote there being areas in Britain, which are predominantly Muslim and in which Sharia law, Sharia law is introduced.

But then in 2016, so 10 years later, that’s up to 43% supporting, growing the introduction of Sharia Law. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yep.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So, with 22% opposed and 16% strongly supporting. Oh, okay. Interesting. All right. Yeah. Wow. Go on. Sorry. So,

Malcolm Collins: no, but, but it’s like, obviously the urban monoculture digs its head in the ground about this, you know, it’s like we, we are, they want what we want, right?

We just give them more stuff, more privileges, more opportunities. And even conservatives really struggle with this. They will have a friend who is from a particular group or a fan that is from a particular group and [00:29:00] they will see their ability to get along with that individual and believe that that means that there is a path towards creating a, a, a working solution for everyone from that demographic, from everyone for that culture.

Mm-hmm. When, if. The person who you get along with in that cultural group is well below fertility rate. Their perspectives are not necessarily, are, are, are unlikely to be contiguous was the perspectives of whatever that population ends up doing in the long run. Mm-hmm. And, and even if they’re above repopulation rate it, again, what matters is, is averages.

Right. And yes, you can then find new ways to define people. Like, we’ll say, well, the US can be the parts of this group that are willing to agree to X, y, and z points of faith, or points of morality [00:30:00] or conditions. Now, it used to be that we understood this was just obvious as a society, right? Like you can’t just invite somebody into your society without them agreeing to any conditions, you know, have no shared culture and no conditions at all.

And just be like,

Simone Collins: well, it, it, and it, and once it wasn’t even that anymore. It was also though like, okay, but at least you, you promised to follow the law, like to, to adhere to our rules and laws. Yeah. And what’s so interesting about the current divide between. Democrats and Republicans in the United States is that right now it seems to be boiling down to whether or not we are going to enforce laws.

So now exactly, that’s, it’s not even, we don’t expect you to adhere to our culture. It’s, we don’t even expect at least these privileged groups to adhere to our actual laws that were voted in by Congress, which are being enforced by, well supposed to be enforced by our agencies. And the great outrage that many [00:31:00] Democrats now have is merely over the fact that we are enforcing existing laws, which previous Democrat administrations had chosen to not enforce, which to me is pretty wild.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And one of the things that’s really important for like the American and European conservative movement to grok because they are sort of shared conservative movements, even though I think that the Europe has been so eaten by the urban monoculture, like they’re not meaningfully our allies, but the conservative movements in Europe are related to the ones in the United States.

And, the, the American and European conservative movements and, and Latin American as well. I think it’s sort of the same wider, actually Latin America has some of the best conservative leaders out there right now in terms of like leaders who European and American conservatives could one for, that’s some of the, the few conservative hero stories that we’re seeing.

We should probably do an episode on El Salvador. And the, the cra the [00:32:00] successful crackdown that they’ve been able to do there and really transforming their society from a progressive hellscape into you know, a, a society of, of rules and laws and where you don’t just murder people on the street anymore.

And, and that to an extent shows how far a society can slip before they do something. How many years did Argentina have to flounder before they finally decided to do something about it? Right. And, and this, this is also an interesting point here that might be worth a whole other episode where I think many American conservatives are like, why are you, you know, importing Latin Americans when they’re so culturally distant from us?

And yet, you know, they’re overwhelmingly like Latin American men are majority voting for Trump and in their own countries. They’re some of the only countries that have meaningfully been able to make the endless progressive tide retreat. So that, that’s, that’s to me it’s like that reason I’m, I’m highlighting this particular thing [00:33:00] is American conservatives or European Latin American.

We need to understand that it may feel conservative and cool to go out there with this authoritarian sort of aesthetic and be like, you are either exactly like this. Or you don’t get to be part of our alliance. You know, this is obviously very common in, in talking points. Like say Nick Fuentes is talking points and stuff like this.

And some of our fans are like, no, you know, you need to be X, Y, and Z. And I’m like, do you understand how little power, any of the demographics that you guys keep breaking yourself down into have anymore? If you go out there and you say something like you, like you still recognize there’s us and them, but then you say, and the US group must be white, Christian Northern European descendant, right?

It’s then [00:34:00] you don’t have enough of a group. To Civilizationally survive. You’re not going to win elections in most European countries. You’re like, well, no. We would win elections if everyone who met these criteria voted for the group that was advantaging. People who meet these criteria, and it’s like, mm-hmm.

Well, then your criteria are really bad because the majority of people even who meet those criteria, are unwilling to vote for the system that advantages people who meet those criteria.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Right. Something about the culture associated with those criteria makes these people into or at least they’re women into real bleeding hearts in a way that people call, what do they call it, sociopathic empathy.

Yeah. And so when you go out there and you try to explain something like this to them, they’re not going to rock it, right? And if you deny [00:35:00] this, you are simply denying reality all the way till you and your culture, movement, whatever you want to call it, is walked off a cliff. You will not matter in the future.

You will not exist in the future because you are fighting a fight that you should recognize is patently unwinnable. And, and the people who are like, no, we can create this movement. Fine try. But the problem that I have repeatedly seen. Is the iterations of the movement. And note here when I talk about the people who don’t wanna live alongside Muslims here, I’m talking about, you know, normal conservatives don’t wanna live along people who are griping nine year olds.

That is different like saying, I don’t want to live alongside stuff like that, which is something we can agree with. I think we’re pretty mainstream conservatives. That’s different from being this more extreme group, right? The, the Nick Fuentes type group, right? Where. I [00:36:00] could say I don’t wanna live alongside that group, but I’m willing to work with other groups to achieve my goals.

I’m willing to work with groups that have different value sets that I have to achieve my goals. And so how do, how do we delineate what those groups are like, what are the groups that we can get along with and what are the groups that we can’t get along with? But the, the, sorry, the final point I was about to make here, which I also think is pretty interesting, is that the groups that take this suicidal approach, the, the Nick Fuentes approach, interestingly I, I think that the reason that they’re able to take this suicidal approach and this group that any outsider would immediately recognize is suicidal.

And I say suicidal because it just won’t work. Like you don’t have the demographics to win within anywhere. Is that they typically don’t have kids or don’t have many kids. And so they’re okay with playing suicidally, the, the civilizational game because they don’t actually have any skin in the game.

They don’t really care about winning. So, thoughts, Simone, before I go, go further on that. So who, who, who can you work with?

Simone Collins: [00:37:00] Yeah, I’m, I’m more curious as to like the practical implications or next steps.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I think the, the i two broad things that we look for in allies, right? The, the first and biggest thing that anyone is looking for in an ally is, are their enemies.

Your enemies, right? Like, do you guys largely have the same adversaries? This is the reason why a lot of people in our fan group who might see us as like weird techno conservative types, right? That would, would, would still. Ally with us or like our advice or want to work with us long term because the core daily enemy in their lives is the urban monoculture.

Mm-hmm. And so they say, okay, and so you guys make a good ally for us. And [00:38:00] interestingly, I think that this is also part of the reason why the urban monoculture so frequently sides with violent Islamists, right? They’re like, well, you know, you hate the part of American and European culture that’s going to survive.

That’s not us. And therefore, even though we have almost no values in common, and they really have almost no values in common at least on the books they can still ally with one another. Right. They, they both hate these same people. And, and again, the reason I say like it’s important for us to do this is if you can’t lay down a grudge and be like, yes, I can ally with groups like Orthodox Jews or something like that, and I can ally with groups like Mormons, even though I think their theology is weird.

Or I can ally with groups like Catholics, even though I think that one day we’re going to have a cultural or orthogonality wisdom them. If you conservative cannot lay down that [00:39:00] to win this fight, you just don’t have a shot because your enemy is willing to lay down all of the differences between.

Violent expansionist, Islamism, and the urban monoculture to persistently work together. That’s what we’re fighting against, and that’s frankly, a very, very powerful force when you consider the esp, depending on the country of probably unwinnable against force at this point.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that it’s important, and this is why we do this in our show so aggressively, is to aggressively call out and target people who are in this wider anti-urban monoculture faction.

And it’s really anti-urban monoculture slash islamism because somehow they become best buds. And [00:40:00] I actually think, and I’ve I talked about this in another episode that’s what we’re seeing more of going into the future. When the urban monoculture lost the Palestine war as something to complain about when it lost environmentalism is something to complain about.

Simone Collins: They’re still complaining about it Last time I checked.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But, you know, Trump created peace in that region before going to war at Iran, which now they’re complaining about that. But like, I’ve noticed they don’t seem to care as much about that as they did the Palestine issue. Which has been weird to me.

Mm-hmm. But anyway so you, sorry, the word I, I, I ran. But what seems to have replaced these sort of persistent talking points within the movement historically is pro just pure communism, which you predicted, Simone and pro-ISIS Islamism.

And I think we need to, to recognize that these movements are morphing into more of a a single unified force, at least in terms of the, the movements that they’re making on the, on [00:41:00] the ground. We don’t have the numbers to beat them anywhere. Anywhere, and,

Simone Collins: what do you mean by numbers? Actually, I wanna get your thoughts on this before I go further here.

Since when we’re numbers about beating people anyway, if the long-term story is about going to space,

Malcolm Collins: because we could end up with a situation where before we get to space

Simone Collins: mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: The groups array against us either control technology, which could end life on the planet eg. Nuclear bombs. You know, you get an EPHI list or an antinatalists in control of nuclear bombs or an Islamist in control of nuclear bombs.

And all of civilization is at an existential point of risk which is why the war in Iran was so necessary. But you, you. That is, that is one thing. It could be gray goo scenario. They end up delivering something like that. [00:42:00] But the second thing is just civilizational. Wr. I think we’re getting very close to a point where as civilization continues to exist, we write about this in our book on governance number one, wall Street Eller, by the way where we talk about how as governments grow larger and age they begin to develop self-replicating, self-interested units that basically grow on the, the money of these organizations, right?

So suppose you are a, a city and you start however many 50, a thousand commissions a year or something like that, and one of these commissions finds a way to say. Actually we, we need to keep, we, we need to be running every year. Right? And so, it, it does, right? It survives. It’s basically evolving, right?

And then for the one of these that get through every, you know, 10 years or every a hundred years, you know, you, you, you, you get one that finds out, oh [00:43:00] and this is a good way to keep them from shutting us down. A good strategy that many of them were using was to say that we are fighting racism, right?

You can, you can’t shut down the orgs. It’s fighting racism, right? And then they find ways to get more resources, which is what cancer cells do. They start asking for more and more blood vessels. And more blood veins, right? You know, so the, the more and more resources come to them and now that they’re larger, a bunch of people, a larger part of the surviving organization is dependent on that inefficiency existing.

Hmm. And this is why you get those crazy numbers, like, you know, $10 million for a porta-potty in Manhattan, right? EE eventually you just can’t do basic work. Infrastructure cannot grow. And our civilization right now is actually sort of living off of the infrastructure of our ancestors. We do not have right now the technology and know-how, and even really government ability to, if we wanted to build a nuclear power plant most of the nuclear power plants that we have in operation are [00:44:00] older than 50 years old.

The people who know how to make nuclear power plants don’t really, they, they’re, it’s not that they’re like not at work anymore. We’re like two generations from any of them being at work anymore.

Simone Collins: Well, so the, that’s not as much of a problem because there are startups that are building small format nuclear plant technology, and like it can be done.

The problem is that the regulatory structure in the United States would literally block those from being built.

Malcolm Collins: Oh

Simone Collins: no,

Malcolm Collins: absolutely

Simone Collins: no. Like in, in, in five to 10 years, we could have, we could have them up. We can’t with our current regulatory environment, and that is, that is really sad because this is why mean also from a cultural standpoint, I don’t see that changing.

Malcolm Collins: This is why so many people in our wider movement are looking at city states. This is why there was a thing where we were looking at creating a, a breakaway city state in the aisle of man that could have its own regulations and where you could set up things like micro nuclear power plants and genetic augmentation and stuff like that in preparation for space travel, [00:45:00] because that’s, I think, the best shot that we’re going to have for preserving.

I, I think many people on a civilizational level are not fully rocking what it means to have a society where the most intelligent people are just not having children. Right. How quickly IQ can drop for genetic reasons in a society. And you can watch our episode that YouTube heavily restricted called is an Idiocracy possible for going over the data in detail on that because there, there is a, it’s just like we’re cooked.

We’re cooked in just a few generations now. There are positive upsides to this. If you are a high agency, high intelligence human being who is having a lot of kids you know, it makes immediate sense to well be your, your kids are gonna be playing a much easier, in many ways, at least competitive [00:46:00] environment than you were playing.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But you’ve also gotta be aware of even if they’re playing in an easier competitive environment than you are playing in, who is that competitive environment going to be dominated by? And how are you going to, like, how are you setting things up to work with those groups right now?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: This, this is one of the reasons why I keep being like, why, why are you guys like the parts of the conservative movement? And this is why I think the parts of the conservative movement that have lots of kids generally don’t attempt to antagonize the Jews. Because it’s, if, if you’re thinking long-term in any sort of a context, it’s clear that they have in terms of the populations that have high TFR and a lot of technological output mm-hmm.

They’re really the only player in the game at this point. Mm-hmm. And, and a high TFR among their intelligent population as well. We’ll go over another set of studies that shows that [00:47:00] religiosity is actually correlated with eugenic breeding patterns was in populations.

Simone Collins: Ooh.

Malcolm Collins: And I have noticed this within or orthodox Jewish communities.

Interesting. That you, you see this more so the, the Orthodox Jewish community. Many people are like, well, the Orthodox Jewish communities will eventually choke out Israel, which they could they really could because some parts of them, like the Satir are just completely unproductive and they don’t exhibit these breeding patterns.

And if they grow at a faster pace than the other Jewish populations they’re like, Israel really doesn’t have a shot. It either needs to you, you need to get what’s the most realistic outcome is a group of Jews that’s going to have to declare bankruptcy on Israel and move and create a Jewish or a charter city somewhere.

Which it seems like Jewish thing to do. Israel exposed, I mean, they did this very frequently, was like the the, what were they called again?

Simone Collins: Oh, the Kum?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:48:00] So, yeah, just like

Simone Collins: were they they were like businesses and

Malcolm Collins: also Yeah.

Yeah. And they were very effective. Okay. They were, they were so effective that the main reason that they ended up failing is they became too wealthy and all of the kids wanted to cash out. So you, you actually can get this when you have like cultural unity. And, and this is again, a thing to say.

So suppose you go out there and you build your charter city that’s along your culture’s value set, which is I think the way a lot of these are going to happen. People are gonna say, I have this set of values. This is going to be what this charter city is optimized around. And people with a similar set of values will come and join in my charter city.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Simply because you have done this your charter city, and this is why I call this like the haven model for where I think humanity is going, where most of the large countries are going to collapse, and we’re gonna have a few centers of like techno fiefdoms of incredible wealth

Simone Collins: mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And stability, right?

Even if you have, say, a Catholic charter city [00:49:00] and you have a techno puritan Charter City and you have a, a, a libertarian utopian Charter City or something like that you have a communist charter city you have an Islamist charter city, right? You need to be, open to and already setting the cultural grounds for being able to work with charter cities that have different beliefs than yours.

Like what are the other charter cities that you are going to network with to have enough technological capacity to eventually get off planet? And then hopefully your population can explode and take over the, the, you know, whoever knows what we’re we’re going to do when we get to space. But how, how can you attempt that?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: All right. So now who can you ally with? Who can you ally with? One thing that I have noted in the past, but I also wanna note that this actually isn’t as important as I’ve pointed it out to be in the past, is, does it, does the group have an eventual mandate to eradicate [00:50:00] you? I would, I would now divide this two subcategories.

Do they have a current mandate to eradicate you? And do they have an eventual mandate to eradicate you?

Simone Collins: Huh?

Malcolm Collins: If a group has a current mandate to eradicate you, like if they’re coming in and being like, yes, I am migrating to your culture to destroy the things that your culture values to implement this alternate system of laws.

And, and note to them, this seems personally reasonable. The urban monoculture has told them, well, a democracy means whatever is the, the mainstream opinion is what gets implemented. And they’re like, well, so when the majority of Canada is Muslim, shouldn’t Sharia law be in place? You’ve, you’ve told me that’s why we have to live under your laws.

You know, why shouldn’t you have to live under our laws when we’re the majority? Right.

Speaker 10: What would happen to a gay couple in Gaza?

Speaker 11: Executed according to Islamic law. Islam doesn’t endorse gays. Islam doesn’t endorse homosexuality. Just like Canada doesn’t endorse a lot of things. So would you [00:51:00] like to see Sharia law in Canada replace Canadian law? At some point, it will. You know, Because we are, we have families, we are making babies, you’re not your population is going down the slum, right?

And by 2060, according to Pew Research Institute, your research, by 2060, Muslims will be the biggest religious group the world over. What are you going to do then? Are you going to oppose Sharia even then? Well, You know what? I’m very appreciative of the honesty. We don’t usually get that. One day we can have a Muslim majority nation here in Canada.

Right In your face!

Malcolm Collins: But the truth is, is that’s not actually Canada’s value system. Like Canada’s value system isn’t actually Sharia law. They don’t actually wanna stone gay people and force a griped child to marry her assaulter. They don’t, they don’t, they’re not down with that stuff.

Right. And they, you, you, you even see this from you know, the interactions. Like, there’s a famous scary interaction in Canada where a woman gets in a cab and the guy was like, wow, you’re really pretty. If it was my country I’d kidnap you. [00:52:00] Oh. And she’s like, Uhhuh. And he is like, no, I’m just, just giving you a compliment.

She’s like that, that’s just the way things are done. Where I’m from. Like, not like I’m not gonna do it here, but like, you gotta understand, we just kidnap women. If they’re pretty, you know, force great them and force ‘em to marry us. That’s the way the law works, right.

Simone Collins: So disturbing. Yeah. I remember that clip.

Speaker 13: Well, if you was born in Pakistan or reclaimed from Pakistan, you must have been kidnapped by me. You’ve been kidnapped by you. Of course. Course there is no option to get you right. Okay. You have your, your women over there though, seriously? So you are in Canada, so I cannot save you anything. Okay. I cannot touch you anything.

It is Canada. Yeah. Well, yeah, definitely. You couldn’t touch me. There’s laws. To this s**t here. You, you, you know what I mean? That’s not that flattering, that’s kind of scary, trust me, because like there is, there was no option. Okay. Well you have a good night. You too. Thank you very much. Bye bye. Shaba. Boom.

Speaker 14: Boom.

Speaker 15: , what I will say though is, you know, you, you can fault groups for many things. The one thing you can’t fault Muslims for is [00:53:00] honesty. They signal loudly what they plan to do and what the West will be like when they are the majority. , And I have to admire that because, , I don’t think, I don’t think, , I would do that or if people from my cultural group did that, .

Malcolm Collins: If they say, I want to make your country. And, and, and value system actively, I want to destroy it and make it something that it’s not right now. Mm-hmm. Or not in alignment with your values. And they’re actively working towards that. I, here’s the problem with this. Many Catholic groups are doing that, and yet we basically have to ally with it because they are actively working toward things like IVF bands.

So I think you need to say if they’re working towards that, and they seem [00:54:00] to have credible cultural tailwinds, right? Like. If they got to a point where it looked like they were going to be able to enact the things, it just made it impossible for us to have children or something like that. Mm-hmm.

Then we reach a point, I remember one person was like, you guys act like infertility isn’t something that can be solved in any other way. You know? And it’s like, some forms of infertility can’t, like,

Simone Collins: yeah. I mean, what do you think we did before we had to turn to iv? Because, you know,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. How many giant needles, how many experimental surgeries and procedures and diets?

Simone Collins: Well, no. But before that, yeah, it was, it was changing diet. It was changing the lifestyle. It was changing like thyroid stuff. It was, you know, it just, you. You can only do so much, you know? Right. I, I love that. I appreciate that People want to address underlying problems with fertility [00:55:00] before going to more extreme stuff.

And here’s the thing, most reasonable people do. So before hitting IVF, ‘cause IVF is neither convenient nor affordable and they’re

Malcolm Collins: painless.

Simone Collins: Even when IVF is paid for, people still really wanna avoid it.

Malcolm Collins: But in that scenario, so I’m thinking about it here in that scenario, even if the Catholics took over the conservative party in the US and were able to implement something like an IVF ban we would just move to a charter city and then ally ourselves still was the conservative party in the United States because it’s still a closer to an ally with us long term against the, the larger and more credible threats.

And so I think the real answer here is where is the. Aggregate credible threat, right? And where is the aggregate number of allies that you can bring together that will attempt to enforce upon you the [00:56:00] fewest meaningful compromises in your cultural autonomy. That’s really what you are looking for. Mm-hmm. And that’s the, yeah, I think, I think that’s, that’s where you have to come to is where is the cultural aggregate alliance that’s going to ask you to make the fewest compromises. And this is where I’ve noticed like a lot of stupidity in the existing conservative movement because if you go with that thesis, then a group like the Groupers or Nick Fuentes, is basically just as threatening as an Islamist.

In terms of the number of cultural compromises that they would enforce if they were able to gain power.

Simone Collins: I mean, this all just boils down to a really, really simple question, which is, does this person’s culture long term? You know, if, if they ruled the world, [00:57:00] would they permit you to live as you wish to live as long as it doesn’t affect them?

Malcolm Collins: Or would you not? I, I don’t,

Simone Collins: I

don’t,

Simone Collins: I

Malcolm Collins: don’t agree with that

Simone Collins: determines

Malcolm Collins: because most Catholics would not allow us to live the way that we want to live. And yet I do not think most, so people wonder why, like, I think

Simone Collins: this is mixed. So we, we have heard, we have heard from a decent number of Catholic viewers who do not believe, and this maybe this is not what the Vatican would say, I don’t know, but they basically believe that it is understood that.

The Catholic mandate is for Catholics to tend to their flock, not to enforce their morality through laws.

Malcolm Collins: So like

Simone Collins: a nation’s laws.

Malcolm Collins: You happen to be unaware of this. Pope Leo the ninth wrote something called the syllabus of errors which explicitly says that Catholics do have to do this. They, they need [00:58:00] to essentially create a Catholic, Catholic.

Now, the parts of Catholic culture that not

Simone Collins: everyone agrees with Pople.

Malcolm Collins: I agree. They’re, they’re anti Vatican, they’re anti and so these factions make durable, long-term allies. But my point is, is I think that even Catholic factions that hold to something like the syllabus of errors are still allies.

Really. They’re, they’re still groups. You can build temporary alliance for,

Simone Collins: okay. Yeah. Allies for now you mean

Malcolm Collins: in Yes. In this cultural moment. Because it’s better that you ally with them than that you lose because losing is civilizational at this point.

Simone Collins: Sure.

Malcolm Collins: And so that’s what I wanted to go over is, is us versus them not being able to approach this topic with nuance is as civilizationally, suicidal, maybe not as, but e equivalently technically [00:59:00] the long-term implications are, but are as suicidal as the Karen who lets the Islamists into her country who says, I want to kill grape.

You change your laws. Right. That individual is pushing for a value system that will eventually lead to the eradication of the value system that’s pushing it. And the individual who says, we won’t ally with this group and this group, and this group, and this group and this list just keeps growing. Right? So you, you get this huge purity test.

They, they end up failing too when the group that they’re defining is theirs refuses to actually follow along with this alliance.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, love you Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you too and I love that I can hear from you a strategy on long-term cultural alignment because I don’t know where else that’s being talked to [01:00:00] you about.

I mean, like, I don’t think a preacher in a church is gonna be talking about how we should be thinking about how our culture allies with other cultures and religions over time. You know, it’s more like us and our kind or them and them doing. Their thing. It’s not, Hey, who are our best strategic partners in this?

And I appreciate that you’re thinking about this and making others

Malcolm Collins: well mean you actually do. Well, what’s funny is you do in, in, in, in Protestant churches this is talked about a lot back when I used to go to Protestant churches in, in relation.

Simone Collins: I haven’t attended any actually. So that’s interesting.

How so like are they talking

Malcolm Collins: about, like, talked a lot about in regards to Jews in Israel? Like American Evangelicals, some of them have a actually Chuan had did a video about this recently. They believe, not only are they strategic allies, but they believe that we have a religious mandate to work.

Simone Collins: Right. But I didn’t think about that so much as an allyship so much as like using. The [01:01:00] Jewish people and state as if it were like a nuclear bomb to accelerate something. Like it’s not about them or working with them per se, it’s about inflicting them upon the timeline to make a thing happen.

Malcolm Collins: Happen. No, no, no.

If you listened to that was the way that I heard about it the most. But apparently there’s a new stream of thought in some evangelical churches, uhhuh, in which they say that people that helped the state of Israel and the Bible were benefited. People who attacked the state of Israel and the Bible were smed.

Okay. Therefore, we will be blessed if we help. This specifically. Ted Cruz was saying this which to me seems pretty stupid, but because, you know, he’s a Christian. Right. But despite that does that mean that I cannot be an ally with somebody who’s saying that? Obviously I can. Right. And I think that this is something that, that, one, one of the things that I’ve been more, I think, wrong about in the past is to be like, you can’t really be long-term allies with a group [01:02:00] like the Catholics, because eventually they want everyone to be Catholic. Right? And as I’ve thought about it, I’m like, well, that, that’s not really true. Because even if they want something and they have a religious mandate to achieve it, if it’s completely unrealistic that they ever actually achieve that, because it is unrealistic with existing trends and with existing trends, especially within the Vatican and their direction.

‘cause now, now the Vatican’s moving to this like Kumbaya position then they’re, they’re, they’re totally easy to ally with, right? Like, they’re not out there killing people on the streets and stuff like that, right? Like, I mean, I guess you could argue the gangs are like the MS 16 and stuff, but they, they are, I,

Simone Collins: I don’t know if they are identified as religious, are they?

Like, has there been any, any discussion of that?

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I’ve pointed out they are a phenomenon of Catholic immigrants always creating large organized crime. The mob, the mafia, and MS 16 o other immigrant populations do

Simone Collins: not like, do they take communion? Do they, do they attend mass? Like I, I don’t know how Catholic they are.

That’s why I’m just not so sure about [01:03:00] that.

Malcolm Collins: Well, they’re definitely a different breed of Catholics. They’re nothing like our Catholic viewers. They’re nothing like Nick Fuentes. But they are the result of large scale Catholic immigration.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: If we were getting a giant wave of, you know, immigrants from the Netherlands, they wouldn’t be forming organized gangs like this.

No. But if we were getting a large scale immigrant wave from let’s say Italy, yeah, I’d expect organized gangs again.

Speaker 8: For example, the vast majority of even conservative Muslims that come to the uk, , they aren’t in grooming gangs. They have nothing to do with grooming gangs. , They might be perfectly nice people. They may not grape children. , And, and this is absolutely true, I’d say this is true for a vast majority.

Most immigrant groups, whether they’re Catholic or Muslim or anything like that, that doesn’t mean that you cannot expect specific behavioral patterns once you [01:04:00] allow enough in based on their culture and that culture’s history and beliefs. And this is the thing with Catholics, you let in enough Catholics, you have major organized crime problems.

, This is just. A historical truth. , You let in and the Catholics who complain about this, but then also worry about Muslim immigration or something like that, should understand that this is how the mainstream Muslim immigrant feels when they’re talking about them because they’re not out there doing this stuff.

But we’ve got to be aware that it doesn’t matter that 95% of these Skittles aren’t poisoned, you still don’t dip your hand in the bowl.

And a Catholic might say, oh, well, okay. Yeah. The minority of Muslim immigrants, , are into grooming gangs and actually end up, you know, , griping a child. And the minority of Catholics actually end up, , starting gangs, and doing [01:05:00] organized crime,

And I should note here when I talk about the organized crime that the Catholic gangs do, it’s not like normal organized crime. It’s not the organized crime that we’ve seen from any other group of the United States. It, it’s literally the most brutal organized crime gangs like melting people alive in acid type stuff that we have ever seen as a country.

And it consistently happens every time we have a large Catholic immigration wave.

however. , Look, look at this huge chunk of Muslims that want to enact Sharia law.

And I think that this is because they so normalized to the things they want to enact like IVF bans that they don’t understand that to many people. Like to me, I would literally probably 20 times rather live in a country with Sharia law, but allowed genetic engineering and allowed IVF than live under a country where those things are banned.

And yet the majority of Catholics would [01:06:00] want those things banned. So I don’t think that they see how antithetical, culturally, some of the things that they want are to some of the things that other groups within the US population would want.

This is why I often say I’m really quite ambivalent about the destruction of the culture in a place like, you know, Italy or Spain or Germany, , where you have these strict bands on genetic engineering and IVF, because, okay, Sharia law gets enabled. Now all I need to do is pay slightly higher. And protect my own against a more aggressive surrounding population, which I’m more confident I can do than do the science that I believe is culturally mandated of me.

, , by my family’s religion.

Under the existing laws that were motivated by a large population of Catholics.

And you might say, oh, Malcolm, you’d rather live in a country where people are abducted off the street and forced to marry people than a country with [01:07:00] IVF and genetic engineering. And I’m like, yeah, I mean, obviously, right, because. When you talk about people being abducted off the street, I’m like, I can defend against that.

When you talk about not allowing genetic engineering or IVF, you’re talking about my children’s lives, like my future children’s lives. Every child who I hug, not just my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, every kiss I get, every hug I get, that’s the banning of that. That’s the banning of my family’s future.

Yeah. Obviously I’m gonna care more about that.

Like Eva, my family lived in Italy. My children wouldn’t exist. Like, do you understand how horrifying that is? To me, my children legally wouldn’t be allowed to have come into existence. I.

Like with restrictions they had, maybe I could have had one or two, but many of the kids that I play with every day and, and, and many families are actively being denied their children by these [01:08:00] laws.

The reason I mention this is this might be able to give you more empathy for the Muslim situation where the vast majority of Muslims are. Like, look at the Koran that I have studied all my life. Look at my family that I’ve been with all my life, , like. This stuff that we’re seeing from some members of our community is not what my religion is about.

And then you point out, yeah, but statistically this is what happens. Right? , And when you can see this in another population that you might not have this same bias as around like a Catholic population, you can be like. Okay, so this is how I make these larger scale decisions. Even if I have friends within this community, even if I know people within this community, I like,

It is a caveat here. I mean, obviously things can change, right? Like the Muslim population has changed dramatically over the ages, and I think Muslim migration historically may not have meant the same thing as Muslim migration today. And there [01:09:00] may be a subpopulation of Catholics that changes the Catholic majority to not believing things like.

Life begins at conception. I mean, it’s gonna be hard, but they might be able to get them to do that, to not have theology of the body. , But I, I think that they may not in their heads because they’re so used to it, they may not hear when they say something like, life begins at conception that they’re saying, I want to eradicate your future children.

, But that’s functionally what it means for a family like ours.

Malcolm Collins: And so, I mean, you’ve gotta be aware. This is the other thing is you have to be aware of how cultures act at scale. And a lot of people think about how cultures act minutely. Like I have a friend who’s ex without looking at, well, yeah, but then what happens if you get X many in a region?

Right? Like, how do, how do we relate to that?

Speaker 18: You having a Rogan squad mate that you like should not affect your moral choice around the Rogans more [01:10:00] broadly, and if it does, you are massively morally compromised.

Malcolm Collins: And I think I might wanna do a follow up episode where I talk about what does the conservatism of tomorrow actually look like?

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So, yeah, I’m fired up. Let’s record that now.

Simone Collins: Oh, I was excited about the other one. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: We can do the other one and I’ll do that later.

Simone Collins: Okay, good. Well, I love you.

Malcolm Collins: Love you too. I do love that some of our fans were like with the, was the episode about Carl Young, that they were like, you’re too materialist about this. And they thought that the urban monoculture was materialist. Which is interesting because from my protect perspective, because I am a strict materialist, the urban monoculture comes off as incredibly woo and incredibly anti materialism.

Like it doesn’t believe that genes exist. It doesn’t believe in science, it doesn’t believe

Simone Collins: [01:11:00] exactly

Malcolm Collins: in, you know, space travel. And, and yet from a lot of religious perspectives, the urban monoculture comes across as more materialists than their mainstream perspective. Mm-hmm. You might see this in some Catholic groups, for example, or some Jewish communities.

Simone Collins: Oh, I didn’t think about it that way. That’s interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So they’re, it, it’s, it’s, it’s, they’re not wrong from their perspective

Simone Collins: that there are more. Right. Like mystical traditions.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The urban monoculture is more materialist than their culture. And I actually, wow, that’s a whole thing to dig into because that’s like a really deep how, how, like who your friends friends are.

List of

Simone Collins: materialism.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Which we’re kind of gonna dive into on this video, so I might just get started here. Because it, it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of like who we are or what our agenda is or what our long-term goals are. And the urban monoculture is obviously a major threat to many of our goals.

But the [01:12:00] groups that we can ally with to achieve those goals are not always determined by how similar those groups are to us. EG. I might find, I’ll just get into this in the episode because this actually makes a lot of the points in the episode that we’re gonna be getting into. Any, any fun thoughts today, Simone?

Simone Collins: Not that I can share on the,

Podcast, but I’ll share with you after. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: well that sounds good. Something positive it sounds like happens.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I, what I can, okay, so what someone that has interviewed us and covered a movement, I think like pretty well, who’s a pretty good investigative style journalist is considering doing a piece on Nick Fuentes.

I really want this person to do it because I really want someone to look into a bunch of things related to him. Like there’s so many [01:13:00] mysteries with him. Like, does he really believe this? Who, like, what’s going on here? What’s, what’s buoying all of his extra tension? You know, what are the different factions that really,

Malcolm Collins: well if you, if you look at his statistics, I’ve seen some statistics that seem to show something like 96% of his views are fake.

Simone Collins: Right there. Yeah. There’s some, some stuff there. And then a lot of people in our audience, for example oh, hold on. It’s, it’s our kids’ doctor office calling.

But also a lot of people in our audience watch him and clearly like him.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, enough people in our audience do that. It makes

Simone Collins: me, but they don’t, like, they’re not gr like, they don’t believe in him. So like what percentage of his audience believes what he’s saying versus is watching it because it’s entertaining or because it’s funny.

He’s entertaining and happy,

Malcolm Collins: which is rare these days and

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, there’s just, I like, I wanna figure that out, like, what’s going on

Malcolm Collins: there?

Simone Collins: Like, why

Malcolm Collins: can’t you just smile when you’re on air? Why can’t you be happy people?

Simone Collins: I just wanna see someone who’s happy. [01:14:00]

Malcolm Collins: That’s what I like about Hudson or,

Simone Collins: yeah. Yeah.

That, that does, that does. Totally.

Speaker 20: Me. Okay, so what is in there? Titan? Um, A Okay, what’s it called?

Speaker 21: My Why are you attacking Mermaid?

And this is

Speaker 20: guys, guys. Stop me the phone. Jesus. Help me attack. No, don’t help a them attack. Get off. I want only when I get the phone do one. Yes. I got the phone. I got, I got the phone. Now I got the phone. [01:15:00] No. Now what are you guys doing? Are you guys going to, what? The dinosaur? Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. Ow. That hurts.

Ow.

I’m gonna stop on you. Okay.

Are you rescuing me? Ah, there we go.[01:16:00]

Speaker 21: But done, completed.

Done. Completed,

Speaker 20: yeah. Let’s. Help. Okay. I’m helping Tyson ‘cause she’s on Team Daddy. No, no, no.

Speaker 21: Put Oh, I’m gonna, don’t do that. Octavian. Okay. Do you understand?

Speaker 20: Hey, don’t toast. Sie, hold the railing. Be very careful. Don’t go up and down the stairs like this. Me be very careful on the stairwell. Okay? Are you going to bring those to the chickens?

In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into Carl Jung’s analytical psychology — explaining the ego, personal unconscious, collective unconscious, archetypes, shadow work, and more. Malcolm (who is openly not a fan) breaks down why Jung’s ideas sound profound but lead to disempowering, unscientific views of the mind that have quietly infected conservative and manosphere thinking (hello, Jordan Peterson fans).

We contrast Jung’s mystical “deep state” model of the psyche with a more pragmatic, first-principles understanding of consciousness, unconscious processing, memory, trauma contextualization, and emotional framing. Learn why repressed memories are mostly myth, how you can choose your emotional reactions (and why that’s empowering), why shadow work can manufacture problems that didn’t exist, and how over-mythologizing the self leads to cognitive abdication.

If you’ve ever felt pressured into “integrating your shadow,” doing dream analysis for growth, or treating archetypes as destiny — this episode will give you the tools to spot the woo and reclaim agency over your mind.

Timestamps below. Like, subscribe, and share if you want more no-BS breakdowns of influential ideas that shape culture.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we’re going to be talking about Jungian psychology, which people know I am not a fan of, but I want to explain what his psychology is, and it’s important to know about because if you are consuming. Manosphere content. What you may not realize or even conservative content more broadly is a lot of conservative intellectuals recycle Jungian theory without telling you that’s what they’re doing.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Famous person for doing this is Jordan Peterson.

Simone Collins: Well, Jordan Peterson talks about young a lot. I think just not that many people necessarily understand how much young has influenced him.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so it’s useful to be able to note, call out when you’re having Jungian BS thrown at you and to understand why it’s wrong, because a lot of it can sound like, oh, shadow work or something like this.

I can see. How this is useful. And it’s fundamentally bad because it leads you to bad conceptualizations of how [00:01:00] your brain works. Mm-hmm. That lead you to psychological places that can be more difficult than they need to be to resolve. So let’s dive in. Hmm. The structure of the psyche, in Young’s perspective is that you have the ego, the center of consciousness, your sense of i identity and everyday awareness.

It is an important part, but not the whole self, and it can become rigid or inflated if it ignores the unconscious. And this is where you talk about people with like. An inflated ego, and we’ll get to more what he means by this, which by the way, and I think a very bad way to think about this phenomenon.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: Then you have the personal unconscious. This contains repressed or forgotten personal experiences, memories, and feeling toned complexes, emotionally charged clusters of ideas like a mother complex or inferiority complex, which we’ll get to a lot at. The other. Really important to him these act asynchronously and can influence behavior strongly.

Now the first thing I need to note, just like [00:02:00] before we go farther. Scientifically speaking to the best of our knowledge in psychology right now. And, and, and, and keep in mind, I am very dubious of psychology as a science, but I am trained enough in it to feel like I have a fairly good understanding of where the BS lies and where where things that we’ve actually pretty much gotten down at this point.

Mm-hmm. And one of the things that it seems pretty reliable at this point is that. Repressed memories are not a real phenomenon. Yeah. You do not forget something. Have it continue to affect you and then have it come back later in life. Yeah. When this happens, it is almost always in the studies that have like looked at this a lot.

One of two phenomenon phenomenon. One is called forgetting Before remembering. So, what happens in is somebody will go to their, their spouse or something like that [00:03:00] and been like, oh my God. I just had this memory that came back to me all of a sudden of my father or uncle sexually, you know, essaying me as a kid.

And this is horrifying. And then the person who they came to is this will be like, oh, oh my God. That is horrifying. Well, secretly being like, actually you talked about that all the time. And causes this phenomenon. Is they’ll remember something like this, but then the context of that memory changes.

Hmm. They might remember their uncle doing something funny with them as a kid or touching them in a way that they thought was silly or weird or made them a little uncomfortable. Yeah. Like

Simone Collins: their uncle was always creepy and like did stuff

Malcolm Collins: like that that, yeah, it did this creepy thing for me, but it wasn’t, you know, grape.

And then one day they’re sitting there and they’re like. That was a grape. Oh my God. But because they hadn’t remembered it with such a charged word, like grape [00:04:00] attached to it. They had forgotten the previous times. They had remembered it. They had forgotten that that was always in their memory because what they’re actually remembering is I had never remembered that as a grape.

I had never remembered my uncle Graped me. I had just remembered my uncle did this funny thing to me. So you get enough of a category change that you forget that you had previously always had this in your memory. The second thing is it’s an implanted memory. This is, when these, these very famous with hypnosis, but also it can happen with psychologists more broadly which is to say it’s very easy for people to conflate fake memories.

People fake memories all the time. Our brain. Constantly makes up memories. The, obviously the famous study that I talk a lot about when I’m talking about ai, when people are like, well, AI makes up how it knows something. And the famous memory blindness studies in humans where you show them pictures of attractive women and then you do sleigh of hand and you go, why did you pick this one?

And they’ll just go on a long rant about why they chose that one. And it was not the one they just chose. Or

Simone Collins: even like, [00:05:00] political ballot choices.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So people will just make up why they made decisions. And, and this, this has a big problem with memories, right? Because if you make up, oh, well, you know, a psychologist walks you through something in a hypnotic suggested state, or they, you, you know, they walk you through, well, do you remember this happening?

You can think back and create that false memory shockingly easily. It is very, very easy for humans to create false memories. And the reason why I’m so against people who push the idea of repetitive memories is because the moment you have this concept and you believe it’s real, then you and any culture that stems from you, your kids, everything like that, that you teach about this are very susceptible to this.

Mm-hmm. And this is really bad because this is the core wedge that things like the urban monoculture and cults like Scientology. Used to drive a wedge between people and their support network, IE your their families. Mm-hmm. So if your kids grow up [00:06:00] believing in suppressed memories, it’s much easier for someone to later te teach them.

Imagine how mortifying that would be if somebody convinced one of your kids that you assayed them and you didn’t. And yet, we know from research, this happens all the time for people who go visit psychologists and stuff like this.

Simone Collins: Well, and this was even an issue in, in the period of this. The Satanic panic.

All these kids were like, yeah, I was involved in this horrible stuff. And everyone’s like, what whatcha you talking about?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, this

Simone Collins: never happened.

Malcolm Collins: Then his final layer here, the collective unconscious young’s most distinctive contribution, a deeper universal layer shared by all humans inherited across generations, not personally acquired.

It is like a psychic instinctual reservoir containing primordial images and patterns common to humanity. And he believes that this is like a real physical thing. He’s not talking about like. Pop culture here or something like that which is obviously stupid and woo, and we would immediately call that out as stupid and woo.

But let’s go to the ego. ‘cause I actually think [00:07:00] people might think the ego is the least objective one of these ideas before we get into all the shadow work and everything like that. But I actually think it’s the most wrong of his ideas about how the human brain works. And because it’s the most wrong it can lead to and, and because it doesn’t seem obviously wrong, it can lead to tons and tons and tons of mistakes.

And it is seeped into every aspect of our language. He has a big ego. You know what somebody might say, right? And they’re literally referring to a psychological theory when they say that the ego is the center of the field of consciousness. Your subjective sense of I personal identity will, continuity of time.

It handles everyday awareness, decision making, reality testing, and adaption to the external world. Young saw it as essentially, but limited. It’s like a small island of light. In a vast ocean, a psychic life strengths. It provides focus, stability, and necessity. The center for navigating lives limitations and risks.

The ego is not the whole psyche if it becomes [00:08:00] rigid, clinging too tightly to its current self image or work. It blocks growth. Mm-hmm. It comes inflated identifying with archetypes, collective ideals, or overly grand self concepts. It loses contact with reality and deep psych inflation often feels like godlike certainty or superiority, but it leads to fragility isolation or eventual deflation collapse.

Young warned that an inflated ego can become quote unquote egocentric and incapable of learning from the past. Now,

Simone Collins: wow. These are so many mainstream words. That’s, that’s crazy. Egocentric was a hidden a thing, like a young thing. Oh my gosh. Yeah. When, when I looked him up originally. I, and I’m wondering if this is something that you, that, that is accurate.

My understanding of, of youngian psychology was basically. Trying to take Freudian psychology, but then build it around the hero’s journey and [00:09:00] book style narratives. But is, is that just a misreading of what he did? That’s a

Malcolm Collins: misreading. He did do that, but and obviously Jordan Peterson borrows a lot from that.

No, it, it, it is a, it’s a sort of framework for how people think and how to improve how people think. Mm-hmm. While the framework has its three core components, the ego, the you know, the subconscious and the what is it? The, the, the, the like, super, super, ego, societals, subconscious. The, the core failure is he basically took Freud’s stupidness of, of like you have, you know, the ego in the id.

He re renamed some stuff and he tried to make it like less crazy. Right? And the problem with this is, okay, let’s take out the thing that seems obviously wrong and objectable, which is like this, this collective unconscious, okay. Yeah. The idea of an ego and an unconscious is not how your brain actually works.

Mm-hmm. And believing it’s how your brain actually works can lead to a lot of [00:10:00] mistakes. Mm-hmm. So first, your brain does a lot of thought that you are not consciously aware of.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: This is. Just an objectively true thing in science and neuroscience. We can measure this, we can look at this, we can see thoughts happening before, significantly before they enter your field of awareness.

As we’ve pointed out in other videos on this, it appears from the most cutting edge science that the and you can watch episodes on this, like stop anthrop izing humans that the most cutting that, that these parts of your brain that you do not have conscious access to are likely working with a level of architectural convergence.

Two token predictors. For, for many reasons and more and more studies keep coming out showing this, which is really cool, that like we made this prediction a while ago and since then a number more studies have come out that from different angles seem to be arguing that this is the case. There seem to yeah, provide evidence that this [00:11:00] is the case.

But this unconscious part of your brain then funnels. It, it it, one, it operates in separation from itself. Like it’s fairly regionalized. It’s not like you have a unconscious LLM and then a central LLM. You have a a a dozen bodies of unconscious LLMs, which are interacting with each other, and then send all of that to a centralized workstation, which is what.

That centralized workstation then may be conscious, but it’s probably also mostly unconscious and you’re not aware of it. Then that centralized workstation sends the decision it makes into your conscious mind and where your conscious mind interacts with it is. Predominantly through the way it writes your memories.

Mm-hmm. That appears to be the core focus of the conscious mind, not making decisions, but writing [00:12:00] memories. Mm-hmm. And how the conscious mind ends up writing those memories. The emotional framing that it puts on them, the contextual framing it puts on them can end up shaping a great deal of your personality because those memories are then.

Referenced by the unconscious parts of your mind when they make decisions. Okay? Now this is the reason why I’m, I’m going into all of this, is this unconscious part of your mind is not like some mystical, wooey, whatever. It’s just the parts of your thought process that are happening by components in your brain that are not part of your consciousness and are the predominant part of your brain.

They are also. Not held under some secret influence that you’re unaware of. Mm-hmm. When you talk about like an individual’s unconscious mind in like a frereian sense or something like that, the implication or, [00:13:00] or the Jungian sense is this unconscious part of your mind. Is one completely out of your control.

And it’s going out there and just like creating ideas based on thoughts that are completely like for injected into you by maybe like an advertising campaign or something like that, right? Mm-hmm. Like, that’s, that’s how it’s typically thought of. Like you had something suggested to you because of some.

Advertising campaign. And then your unconscious ended up making a decision based on that because you were tricked and you didn’t even know why you made that decision. When that’s not exactly what’s happening. Mm-hmm. When things like that do happen it’s a lot closer to what I would call a, an an illusion.

Right. Like you. Experience an illusion in real time, like an optical illusion in real time, but you don’t think it’s [00:14:00] like, your eyes influenced by some like magical thing you can’t see. You’re like, oh, that optical illusion happens. Because when my eyes are processing X, they do X in a weird way, and then that hits my brain.

Mm-hmm. So a lot of like advertising related unquote illusions are really just like priming effects. Okay. A priming effect means by the way. Token predictors have priming effects as well. Yes. In case you’re wondering very heavily it means if, if you want to get somebody to act in a certain way, you prime them with something else, like some concept, like you wanna get them to act more morally.

You prime them as the concept of God or something like that. And you can also get like faster response times. Like if you prime them with the concept of red, they’ll like say firetruck faster, right? They’ll, they’ll have an easier time passing through that neural pathway. But there’s nothing like.

I, I, I guess fancy or secretive happening here. Everything in the [00:15:00] output from these parts of your mind, the unconscious mind is fed into your conscious mind. Your conscious mind can. Heavily control your unconscious mind. But it still doesn’t make decisions. By that, what I mean is you completely control your moral and emotional framing of reality through the lens and context you put onto a story with the part of your mind that is sentient If you decide and this is where he gets an element of correctness where he talks about these.

Societal archetypes being really important to people’s egos. Many people will take a societal archetype. Define that societal archetype as a life well lived. Mm-hmm. Right. Within every memory they have. Did I live up to that societal archetype? It’s, it’s one way that they may do it or they may ask, do other people see me as that societal archetype [00:16:00]

Simone Collins: or, or essentially you’re saying that they’re functionally method acting as that archetype.

And so when they behave like that sort of makes their,

Malcolm Collins: this trains their unconscious brain to method act as this archetype.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: Because their conscious brain is labeling things as good or bad, eg. Other people’s perceptions of them, their own actions, their own decisions based on whether or not they conformed with this archetype.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And if they’re trying to work out how to respond to something, the subconscious. Thought process is how would a like tough man respond to this? Versus like, how would a, you know, yes. Fancy, frail, delicate, desired woman respond to this or whatever. Right. That kind of thing.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, yes, exactly. And this is a genuinely, like when you recognize that you are doing that, or you see somebody who’s doing this, this is a genuinely bad way to live life and it can lead people to.

Fail at their lives when they [00:17:00] over glom onto these archetypes. But to try to over mythologize what they’re doing, can miss the banality of it. They simply found an archetype and decided that archetype was definitionally aspirational. Mm-hmm. And then attempted to. Embody the archetype that they saw.

Mm-hmm. And the moment you, you realize it’s just as simple as that. There is no other fanciness to it. And that the, the, their ability to embody the archetype is more encoded in their memories than in their and that they have control of that. Now, what I mean when you have control of your memories, I’ve talked about this on other shows, but it’s very important to the, the sort of Adams family principle, I guess I’d call it.

If somebody gives you wilted flowers, you know, Gomez and Morticia are like, oh, they’re lovely. Right? And culturally they choose to see them as lovely, right? Culture is in part a choice, but in part we’ll talk about where culture is not a choice. But they like the Adams family very intentionally.

Leads into their family’s unique culture. [00:18:00] And I, I think when the Adams family has done well, they are not monsters, but they are around a normie society that sees them as so culturally different that they are the equivalent of monsters. Yeah. And then they live in a world where monsters also see them as the equivalent of monsters, simply because they’re so culturally deviant from the society around them.

With theor joke behind all of that in. Whenever Adams family has done well, but despite all of that, despite doing things their own way, they are fundamentally more loving. They do have a better sex life. They do have a better relationship with their children despite, you know, inverting and the Adams family that do this rest are the, the full links movies like Adams Family Values from the, the, the 1980s or just God at this

Speaker 2: I hated you. I despised you. I choked him until he lost consciousness and had to be put on a respirator. I tied him to a tree and pulled out four of his permanent teeth when he was [00:19:00] asleep. I opened his skull and removed his brains. You did.

Brother. Brother

Malcolm Collins: and good for this as well.

They can choose. Like when you watch the Adams family yes, there’s like some supernatural stuff and stuff like that, but the vast majority of what they do, you could just decide to do. You could decide to treat your relationship the way that they treat their relationship. You could decide to treat disappointment and death and the macabre as things that are positive to you because it fundamentally.

Other than a few hardcoded things, we get to decide how we react to our experiences and our history, and it matters a lot that you understand and incorporate this into the core of who you are. The reason I [00:20:00] say this is a great study that was done on this, I was actually a series of, I think four studies.

It’s been pretty well replicated at this point. That shows that if you ask somebody about. Whether or not they experienced trauma when they were growing up.

Simone Collins: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: How much trauma they say they felt growing up is perfectly correlary with all the negative effects of that trauma. What is,

Simone Collins: yeah,

Malcolm Collins: nearly uncorrelated is whether or not they actually experienced any trauma as a kid.

If you go to the court records and stuff like this, this is, this is not correlated with the effects of trauma. So the effects of trauma are caused by believing. That you had these traumatic experiences, right? Mm-hmm. This is why it matters so much how we encode things. You can choose. There are people who genuinely were heavily abused as a kid, but if they don’t believe, they didn’t interpret that as traumatic which I would be seen as one of those people, right?

Like in the Stephen Mullany debate, he got really into this like, how can you not say that you were in a highly abusive [00:21:00] situation growing up? And I was like, because I choose to not see it that way. Right. I choose to not see that about my childhood. I choose to not believe that about my childhood. I choose to believe the best about any situation that I’m in.

I have been in really terrible situations in my life, and Asim knows I always frame them positively as an opportunity, right? Like we don’t have jobs right now, and yet I frame it as an opportunity to try to build our next thing that I’m excited about. And I’m excited every day I could be moping and worried.

Right. That is a fundamentally a choice. And when you don’t frame it that way, when you frame a, the unconscious as something that is fundamentally outside of your control it it, it leads to cognitive abdication and working on all of these things that don’t really matter and avoiding all these things that don’t really matter.

But now let’s go to what he thinks of the personal unconscious. This layer sits just below the consciousness and contains a material that was once conscious, but has been forgotten, repressed, or never fully noticed. This is not [00:22:00] how your unconscious mind works. You, you’re actually largely aware of most of, at least the consequences of what goes on in your unconscious mind and your decision process.

Mm-hmm. It is personal and shaped by your individual life history experience in the environment. So you can see why I push against this. This is just not the way unconsciousness actually works. Unconsciousness is just like the line of thought takes before it gets to your consciousness. Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Right. What, what, let me be clear here. What he see, what you’re implying, at least per this language, is that he thinks that there are memories that we don’t remember but that affect our behavior. Whereas in reality, if there’s a memory you don’t remember, or like you, you haven’t retrieved it in a long time, it is not going to be influencing your behavior.

Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that is correct. This also doesn’t heavily influence things like arousal patterns from the studies that we’ve done on this. Like being spanked as a kid in our study, we couldn’t find good correlation with that in like, anything sexual. So a a lot of people think that a lot of these like [00:23:00] experiences that they’ve had there, there’s been great studies on grape in this.

So, when, people are great girls specifically are griped. In societies where there’s a big stigma around grape grape has a really huge negative effect on their cognition. But in societies like say Islamic society where it’s more common, it does not have a particularly big effect on their cognition.

They like it. Being griped does not psychologically hurt them that much because of how they contextualize it. Grape isn’t bad because of grape. Grape is bad because of how we psychologically contextualize what that means to an individual.

Simone Collins: Great. That’s not the right phrasing. It’s not mentally traumatic or harmful to people.

Yeah. Mentally

Malcolm Collins: aspect of it.

Simone Collins: And, and the same could be said for like experiencing violence as a child or other things like that. And that’s what the research shows. And this is not a, a judgment on the morality or goodness or badness. Of the actions of the trauma that you might experience, be it. Of that sort or just like, you know, [00:24:00] witnessing a terrible accident.

But what matters is the contextualization. If you contextualize it as this horrible thing happened to me, I’m now damaged goods, or I am now traumatized, I’m now never gonna be able to function again as a normal human. That is how it is damaged. And this doesn’t been even more innocuous things. We, we’ve talked about this ad nauseum.

But people who’ve, who’ve undergone formal sleep studies who have had horrible sleep. But don’t know that. And, and they report to researchers, I think, you know, I slept fine. Feel better and perform better throughout the day than people who per actual re research, like, measured sleep, slept really well.

Malcolm Collins: Most of the effects from sleeping differences just by telling someone We measured your sleep last night and you slept well, and then they’ll perform better on a test. Yeah, like, so,

Simone Collins: so really like even, so it could be with something as serious as some form of assault or it could be as something innocuous as.

You know, believing you had a good or bad night of sleep, how you contextualize things is really [00:25:00] important. Someone joked in our comments when we talked about this in, in a recent episode. They were like, man, how do we get like our Fitbits to gaslighting us to thinking we have good health? Which is the legit good question.

Malcolm Collins: No, no. But where this ends up mattering and it explains why if it, like, the more progressive somebody is, the worse their mental health is and the more depressed they are. Mm-hmm. Is in part because. You can choose to contextualize, like there are types of like light essay, right? That may happen as part of like regular life.

And a conservative woman or man or, or, or let’s say discrimination, right? May be affected by one of these things and just rub it off as a normal part of life, right? Whereas a progressive. Because they contextualize it as equivalent to grape or because they contextualize it. Like this incredibly, what they might call a microaggression, but it’s just somebody being like what, what bathroom is the right one for you again?

Mm-hmm. You know, because they contextualize this as an attack, [00:26:00] they feel it as an attack and it has the same effect on them, not just psychologically, but physiologically as an attack. But to continue here he believes in this concept that affects the personal unconscious. We’ll get to a second called autonomous complexes.

So he says, quote, the image of certain psychic situation, which is strongly accented emotionally and is moreover incompatible with the habitual attitude of consciousness. This image has a powerful inner coherence. It has its own wholeness, and in addition, a relatively high degree of autonomy so that it has the subject to control the conscious mind to only a limited extent, and therefore behaves like an animated foreign body in the fear of consciousness.

So, essentially to word this in another word he sees the unconscious mind. As like a separate mind from your conscious mind that interacts with your conscious mind [00:27:00] instead of a collection of components that is part of the pipe into your conscious mind.

So you can think of your conscious mind. Okay. He basically thinks of the mind as working like two living blobs, right? Whereas a better way to think of the mind is a series of action calls where you have a thought is written by the conscious mind into memory then your unconscious mind like you.

Responds to that it’s like, okay, I, I just had X memory. What do I do next? And it does whatever it wants to do next. And that thing happens in the world and then also enters.

Simone Collins: I think I have a better, I think I have a better analogy. So per young, our conscious mind is the president. And our unconscious mind is the deep state.

So the president [00:28:00] is like, we’re gonna do this. And then the deep state is like, ah, actually for all these rules and other things that you can’t even see and that are super obscure yeah, we’re, we’re gonna actually do this totally differently. And then, you know, things get botched and don’t go according to plan.

And young is trying to say, you must understand the deep state. You must fuel the deep state. You must you know, ride the deep state. Whereas I think n non Youngian people are like, no, let’s just do what the Trump administration does and write a bunch of executive orders and go without all of this nonsense, no baggage.

Malcolm Collins: I, I actually, okay, here’s a better way to describe. Okay. It, it’s not as accurate and a metaphor, but it’s a pretty good one for visualizing. What it actually is, is closer to a train track with light on one section of the track.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Like the light’s only covering 12% of the track. Mm-hmm. Now it’s still all of the same process.

It’s all the same track. Mm-hmm. You know, when the track goes through the part that you have conscious access to it’s then going around the track, but, but you’re seeing the whole train. [00:29:00] Right. Does that work better for you?

Simone Collins: No, I don’t understand that at all, but, you know.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. I’ll continue to go here and because, we’ll, we’ll come back to this in different words and it might make sense to you then.

Yes. In plain terms, complexes are emotionally charged clusters of ideas, memories, and and associations. A mother complex, which might involve intense feelings around nurturing, dependency, or authority figures rooted in early experiences. They have a quote unquote nuclear core often.

Simone Collins: Wait, wait, wait, wait.

So the whole complex, wait. Just the complex, like you have a. Savior complex, like when people say things like that, they’re referring to Jungian psychology.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They’re referring to Youngian psychology. Which is not scientific, by the way. It’s not like there’s not scientific evidence for this. Now, now it is true that we have tropes within our society and some people attempt to embody those tropes, as I’ve said above.

But that attempting to. [00:30:00] Bond to a trope is intentional on behalf of the individual. People are not, not aware that they are doing this. They may contextualize it differently. Like, of course I want to be a good progressive and progressives are good, so I go out and save the environment. You know, they don’t ly ask, well, are they actually good?

Is this actually a good way to structure my life? But they’re not like lying about what they’re doing.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: If that makes sense.

Simone Collins: Yes, absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: I got really lightheaded all of a sudden.

Simone Collins: No. You okay? You need to take a break?

Malcolm Collins: No. Young, young, what was I just saying?

Simone Collins: That when people are putting on an affectation or character, it is known by them and intentional. They’ve intentionally chosen to be, yeah, the JY Barbie girl or the, the high school jock type or the, the

Malcolm Collins: reason why this

is

Simone Collins: important.

Malcolm Collins: Is I, I know they may contextualize, like they may act in a way that you see as the mean [00:31:00] cheerleader when they think that’s how a popular girl acts.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: But this is not and it’s very important the people who are like, oh, this is like, something happened to them when they were a kid and they picked up this unconscious belief in whatever.

It’s really important that you don’t get sucked in by this type of language. Or explanation because it’s, it’s, it’s just wrong. And it is hugely disempowering to the individual in a way that can prevent actual solutions from taking place.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So, so how, how do I explain this? If you buy into his world perspective.

You can easily come to believe something like, oh, my friend does X because they have a mother conflict, which they got in childhood for this just so story. And that’s a bad thing to believe because that’s not why your friend is doing X. Your friend is doing X because they want to be seen in X way because they believe X-ray being seen as [00:32:00] good now.

What’s important is, is once you understand this, now it’s a lot easier to work on helping them, right? Because now all you need to do is explain or break through to them why believing that X thing looks good or makes them look good, is a bad and inefficient idea that is functionally not working. May you be unable to do that because it’s something that happened in their childhood.

Absolutely, you may be unable to do it because of something that happened in their childhood. But that doesn’t, that doesn’t mean that like it’s some secret, magical thing that got stuck in their unconscious. It just means that their framing of those definitions happened in their childhood. Does that make sense, Simone?

I.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. He, when triggered when one of these complexes is triggered, they possess you temporarily. He says you react with disproportionate emotion as if an inner foreign body has taken you over. You might suppress them with willpower, but they return stronger until [00:33:00] integrated and your. Goal is to work through these complexes via analysis, dreams or reflection, released energy and other things can foster growth.

And you can see this is where the woo comes in, right? Like, it’s actually very, very similar to Scientology disbelief that you have, setons that you get because of bad things that happens. This is what Scientologists believes. Bad things that happened to you with the child, which are the souls of Rigo dead, dead aliens.

And they, they attach to you. And this is why, you know, you kids can’t even hear like screaming when they’re born because that may distress them. And then they’ll pick up Theon and the Setons will lead to bad things in their life.

Speaker 9: beings born on this planet have had clusters of Satans attached to their bodies. OT three can run out these clusters and cause them to leave us and reincarnate as individuals.

Speaker 10: After hours of expensive auditing, you are rid of the body thetans attached to you. You may then acquire psychic powers, move objects at a distance, and have out of body experiences. [00:34:00] If you find you can’t, then you must take the course again for another 5,000 pounds.

Malcolm Collins: That’s, that’s basically what young thought. That’s how he thought reality worked.

Theon logic is that, you, you get possessed by these little anima that live within you. Very video gaming actually.

Simone Collins: Yeah, you’re right.

Speaker 12: You can’t be serious now. Come at me. No one’s. What the hell?

Speaker 11: What’s up you? How come get up.

Malcolm Collins: There’s a game called Persona five, where you sort of have these, where you have these like anima inside you. And I think this is influenced by Jungian psychology. The idea that you have these, ideas about what is good that live inside you and can take you over. That’s not really how it works.

Now. You can be like, but sometimes around specific archetypes. I have seen people get triggered. And it’s, yes, sometimes people [00:35:00] are triggered by specific archetypes. This absolutely can happen. But. Sorry, my feet were getting cold. People can get triggered by archetypes but this is just like a, a, a known archetype that they have chosen to incorporate in their self identity.

So how does the flow of emotions actually work? Because we talk about this in the pragmatist Guide to life and it’s really important to understand. So most people like. Are living on autopilot. So the, the sentient part of their brain, the, the like, one little important part is completely on autopilot.

And this sentient part of their brain is so if you, after you get in an argument with somebody you may attempt to model them, right? You’ll, you’ll do something like say like. You’re creating an emulation of them within your mind so you can continue to have that debate that has their characteristics.

Mm-hmm. And stuff like this. And this is called a theory of mind. And I mo believe [00:36:00] that the way that most humans operate is they have one theory of mind in their brains at all time, dedicated to themselves, to the person,

Simone Collins: what they believe themselves.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, they have chosen to be or become. And this theory of mind is referenced by the little sentient inside of them when they’re on autopilot.

So by this what I mean is. They have an idea of who is Malcolm, right? Like what, what is Malcolm like? And they create a model for that. And then the little part of their brain that writes down their emotions with like, are you angry about this? Is this good for you? Is this whatever? It references that theory of mind, which is talking about yourself.

When you are going to experience an emotion, so mm-hmm. Suppose you’re like going through a [00:37:00] breakup like some, somebody’s just texted you and said, I wanna break up with you. Right. Your sentient part of your brain references the part of your brain that’s the Malcolm or Simone theory of mind and says, how do I feel about being broken up with?

And then that theory of mind tells them, Malcolm, the type of person Malcolm is, feels like X or Y when they’re being broken up with. Mm-hmm. That gets encoded. Now you can override this. But. It’s mostly running automatically. And we argue in that book, the core way to change your emotional reaction is both through recontextualization we talked about before, but also chiseling at and working on that theory of mind.

That is you, right? The one that’s constantly referenced by your autopilot. And I note here that this theory of mind can come in one of two forms. And you throughout your life will meet people of both forms in one form. [00:38:00] It’s modeling themselves from their own perspective. These are people who are this is, this is a normal way of doing it for like non-super toxic people.

In the other type of person, it models it from the perspective of outsiders. And these people are very dangerous. So what I mean by that is with suppose somebody has just broken up with it, right? The question that the thing constructing the theory of mind of them is asking is not what type of person am I and how does that type of person react?

Mm-hmm. It what type of person do I want other people to see me as? Yes. And how does this person react?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And so, these, these people are become very performative in this sort of stuff. And the reason why this is so toxic is because they can never really be satisfied, right? Like, they never really are seen enough [00:39:00] as what they want to be like.

But to continue here, the collective unconscious, this is a deeper universal layer beneath personal unconscious. It’s not acquired through personal experiences, but inherited as part of our psychic structure like instincts or biological predispositions, but psychic in nature. This one is really stupid.

I mean, like, obviously it doesn’t exist. If it did exist, we would it, we would see it in like feral children and stuff like that. So, but we’ve seen a lot of children who have been raised outside of families and stuff. We’ve seen art from people who’s been like totally isolated their entire lives.

And it’s just disordered there, there isn’t like some sort of recurring. Thing to it outside of what we biologically inherit from our ancestors. Any thoughts before I go further, Simone?

Simone Collins: No, no, no. But this has been a lot better than the summaries I’ve read, so I appreciate you trying to explain this, at least in terms I can understand.[00:40:00]

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Then within the collective unconscious, you have archetypes. And he sees this as being like primordial images that are not fixed images of, or characters, but underlying forms of potentials that shape human experience appearing in Miss Fairytales, dreams, arts religions. Across cultures.

Okay,

Simone Collins: this is where I got that perception that it was basically just psychology, but with like, some kind of like through the lens of book narratives.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I’ve pointed out the reason I say that this is bad is while it is true that you do get some convergent phenomenon between cultures, especially cultures that are inheriting from each other narrative flows, structures and histories you know, El Revo and all that you, you.

Now that I’m play more stories with reality fabricator, I’m realizing just how much AI chooses El Vos is the name. It chooses it well over half the time which is maybe I play too many sci-fi stories.

Simone Collins: Yeah, [00:41:00] in sci-fi stories, that’s the case. It’s certainly not the case in like historical fiction.

Which I also choose a lot.

Malcolm Collins: So my favorite sci-fi story to play here is I play it with the the new, like build your own one where it like makes up an image concept based on a gist of an idea you have. Yeah. Is I am an ambassador for the Tarn Empire meeting with the the Federation, which are humans who have sort of.

Evolved into this sort of gay space Communism, utopia. And, and my job is to infiltrate and take down these Witless Federation members you know, to, to eradicate their, their colony for, for further expansion of the Tarn Empire. So

Simone Collins: anyway, these archetypes?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. These types, so they include things like the persona, the social mask or role we present to the world, useful for adaptation, but problematic if we identify it completely.

So note here when I talk about persona, like the thing I’m talking about, you can be like, but that’s very similar to a persona and that’s the trick. It sounds similar, but it’s a completely separated concept. [00:42:00] I’m literally just saying. People identify tropes as good and attempt to build them into their self identities.

It’s, it’s not part of a collective unconscious, it’s based on things they saw in their lives and then attempted to model. Okay. When people try to live out the hero’s journey, that’s just because they have seen it that many times in books. Especially in the west. The shadow, and we’ll talk about this one a lot, the repressed disavow aspect of personality.

What we don’t want to be, it includes negative traits, but also hidden strengths in creativity. Anima in men, the inner feminine image, quality, soul, emotion, relatedness, animus. Women, the inner masculine images, quality spirit, logic, assertiveness, and the self, the central archetype of wholeness the regulating center of the entire psyche, not the same as the ego.

It often appears in dreams as madness, wise figures or symbols of unity. The self guides, the processes of becoming who we [00:43:00] truly are. Other common archetypes include the hero, the mother, the child, the trickster, the wise. Old woman, et cetera. And those are not, those are just tropes. They’re just tropes that people see.

And then identify moral value to as to how you should actually build yourself. If you’re like, well, what trope do I choose? Or what trope is really me? And the practice is this guide to life. You should get it. Read it. We argue. First, you decide what has purpose. Then you decide what trope. If you embodied it would best maximize that purpose, then you embodied that trope.

That’s the best way to live because then you can live with maximum efficacious throughout your life in a, in like a, a, a big way, which I’m a big fan of.

Simone Collins: Yeah, absolutely. I also would just argue that the hero’s journey. It’s just kind of a reflection of common life pathways, you know?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: It’s not

Malcolm Collins: growing up being teen, going out, you know, then creating a story of success or a story of challenges and failure.

That’s the [00:44:00] way people like to tell narratives and

Simone Collins: stories. Life happens. You leave home, you face challenges, you grow, you know? That’s profound. Yeah. I mean, it is, but it’s not it’s, don’t overthink it. There’s a lot of overthinking it seems, in young Youngian psychology, which ironically I first heard about when I, I did that internship with the Fake Cult the Jesu Institute as they called it was like all about like Carl Young this and Carl Young that, and I just love that, like aesthetically when a bunch of alternate reality game narrative writers decided that they were going to create.

A cult and try to throw in all these things that like were creepy. So alongside things like human dolphin communication, they threw in a bunch of references to Carl Young, I think goes to show you everything you need to know about just how I. You know, useful and, and, and real world ish is

Malcolm Collins: but the reason this gets to me before we go further with shadow work and the shadow is it’s just not accurate.

It’s an inaccurate view of who [00:45:00] you are. Yeah. And it includes many elements like you know, past events living in your unconscious or something. Yeah. That. Can be used by your ironically real subconscious mind, eeg, the little model that you’ve built of yourself. Mm-hmm. To justify actions that you wouldn’t want, right?

Yeah. If you believe that you have trauma, then you build that trauma into that model of yourself, which determines how you emotionally react to stimuli in your environment,

Simone Collins: leads to suboptimal reactions and less resilience.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Because you’re like, oh, I am someone who is traumatized. It is a very belief in the concept of trauma that makes you susceptible to trauma in the first.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And I’m not up for this because I’m traumatized. You know? Instead of I can do this, I’m empowered. I Right. Can do whatever I want to,

Malcolm Collins: but it’s not just trauma. It’s the entire world of the unconscious that allows for these justifications to be built [00:46:00] within an individual.

Simone Collins: Well, it seems to create an external locus of control by creating this, this yeah, subconscious that, that supposedly drives.

So much of your action disempowers you as a conscious individual because it says, well, you’re not really in control anyway. You’re being controlled by repressed memories and all these things that happen to you over which you have no control, which leads ultimately to a much less. Efficacious, successful and happy life.

Not good?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I

Simone Collins: time out though. It looks like you’re about to pass out also. I need to get the kids. Should we finish this tomorrow?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I just started on shadow work, so we’ll finish it tomorrow.

Simone Collins: Sorry. Are you okay? ‘cause you look like, you’re like,

Malcolm Collins: I don’t know. I’m feeling i’ll like, really d drowsy.

I

Simone Collins: just, yeah, that happened. Really suddenly, are you not sleeping enough or is there something like, do I need to take you to an emergency room?

Malcolm Collins: No, I’m, I’m fine. I’m, I’m not sleeping. I have so much to do. I’ve gotta make it fixed

Simone Collins: right now, Malcolm. No, you, you, I think you need to take it, you [00:47:00] know how like a, even a short nap makes a huge difference for you?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But if I take a short nap now, then I’m not gonna be able to get to sleep later.

Simone Collins: Well, that’s okay. You have a weird schedule. You can keep a weird schedule. Okay. Can you, because you, you just don’t. You look off, right? Like you can’t work right now. You, you clearly need to take a nap or I need to take you to a doctor.

Like it’s one of those two.

Malcolm Collins: I just need, I just need some beer. That’s what I need.

Simone Collins: No, you don’t. Are you okay? Is this normal tired or is this I need to take you to a doctor? Tired.

Malcolm Collins: No, this is a feeling I get when I’m in a car and I have to concentrate for a long period of time and then I get like, it

Simone Collins: looks like that.

Okay then. But

Malcolm Collins: I’m just doing that with episodes. ‘cause you know,

Simone Collins: please

Malcolm Collins: stick out thinking, thinking for too long.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s okay. Look, you need your glymphatic

Malcolm Collins: system. There’s the bigger problems. I’ve got all of these things in the back of my head that I’m worried about, like the board meeting and the site having issues right now and that’s doing investor outreach.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I get it. But I [00:48:00] think then you need to shut down. Let the waste matter clear out and you’ll feel a lot better, even if it’s just 15 minutes. Can you do that for me?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. By the way, if you dunno what she’s talking about when you go to sleep, your glymphatic cells shrink, which allows them to clean out the waste matter in between them, which is why short naps can be useful for brain health.

Simone Collins: Okay? You need to

Malcolm Collins: me when I concentrate for too long.

Simone Collins: Yeah, well he, so he both seems to accumulate waste matter in his brain much more quickly. Or like, it just blocks up more quickly, but then naps clean it out much faster. I like

Malcolm Collins: pass out if I concentrate for

Simone Collins: too long and it’s like 30 minutes and he’s fine.

And we did two

Malcolm Collins: episodes in a row and it was a really long one before this,

Interestingly, the one we had done before this was Tucker Carlson, which, , has already gone live and it has one of our lowest, like to dislike ratios was only 80% likes. , Usually we get around 99% likes. , And this is weird for me because, , almost none of the comments were [00:49:00] negative, , which leaves me to believe is this all bots like is is the whole Tucker Carlson situation just maintained by angry bots.

Malcolm Collins: so Yeah.

Simone Collins: So Malcolm, please. , In like two hours. I’ll bring it to your room, but sleep okay.

I love you. Be safe. Good.

Malcolm Collins: So now we’re gonna go into Young Again, and this time we’re gonna be talking about the shadow.

So young described the shadow as an unconscious aspect of the personality. The conscious ego does not identify whi or want to acknowledge. It encompasses repressed ideas, instincts, impulses, weaknesses, desires, and traits that feel incompatible with our self-image or societal expectations. In simpler terms, it’s the dark side of who we are.

Not necessarily evil, but everything we push into the unconscious because it doesn’t fit our ideal self. The persona or social mask that we present to the world, young famously called it the thing a person has no wish to be. The shadow [00:50:00] isn’t just bad qualities like anger, jealousy, greed, or selfishness.

It also contains positive elements, hidden talents, creative impulses, realistic insights, normal instincts and strengths that were repressed, eg because they seemed, quote unquote, too much or inappropriate or undervalued in childhood or culture. And so, what young wrote of shadows is everyone carries a shadow and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.

So, if I’m gonna explain this in different words, what young believed is that you had this. As we’ve talked about, people really do do this. They build sort of a, a, a trope into their model of who they are that they use to determine what emotions they feel in relation to what decisions in environmental stimuli that they end up making.

But too young. This meant that you had a, another, you that was also you that had been [00:51:00] pushed out of that ego. Or, or the persona that you’re trying to embody. The problem is, is that’s just like not the case. Like the one, it doesn’t really show up in research. But two,

Simone Collins: the closest thing I think it could come to, but it’s still too much of a leap for him, like, I, I don’t EI even think I can give him credit for this, is that people are afraid of becoming their parents and then they become their parents.

And that’s kind of what I’m feel like this rhymes with, but I don’t think he even got that far.

Malcolm Collins: No. Yeah. So the, it, the problem is, and the reason why it’s a, it was a fairly toxic concept, is the moment you accept. The shadow, the unconscious, any of these things. You also,

Simone Collins: you could call it the young conscious.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Yeah. You, you also accept as he does this idea of repressed ideas, instincts, mm-hmm. Et cetera. Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And when you accept that, you allow [00:52:00] that to manifest in yourself. Yeah. Because accepting that something is a concept allows this. Image of you. Remember I said there’s like the trope of you that is creating your, this, this mental model that you’ve created of yourself to adopt those traits.

And it will adopt this shadow self as a component of itself, which is one of the problems with these ideas is somebody will have had them for a long time and tell me Malcolm, but I experience all these things and I’m like, of course you experience them the moment you accept them. They are then able to build into your self identity if you steal yourself against them as real, just not real concepts.

It, it, silly is supernatural things. Then they can’t affect you in the same way.

So continue here. And if you’re like, oh, but why is it so, because this is like, while it [00:53:00] may not have the same word as trauma, it basically implies trauma. It’s trauma was a nicer word. It’s something that happened to you as a child, changed your self-perception, right? And, and change, sorry, changed your.

Ability to accept certain things about yourself, when the reality is, is yes, it’s true that things that happen to you in a child can affect this adult self, but the way that they affect your adult self is by affecting. The type of person that you want to be and, and the type of person you have crafted, the, the mental model of yourself that’s always running and judging, like what emotions you should feel to things that, that, that mental model embodies.

Simone Collins: Well, and, and. Even more simply, he just gives a ton of excuses to develop an external locus of control.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly.

Simone Collins: It’s not my fault, it’s my repressed memories. It’s my shadow self. It’s the, the collective unconscious. It’s just like, oh, everything’s anyone [00:54:00] else’s fault but yours. You are, you’re not responsible for your own actions, so don’t worry about it.

Just see your therapist more.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And this is, this is why this is really dangerous in like right wing spaces and stuff like that, in manosphere spaces. And why I push against it so much was in these spaces. Anything that attempts to overcomplicate how your thinking works in, in a big way especially if it can be used to externalize responsibility.

For your own mind, like what could be worse than externalizing responsibility for your thoughts?

Simone Collins: For real.

Malcolm Collins: You, you are not responsible for your own thoughts.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So bad. It’s so bad.

Malcolm Collins: But it can continue here.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: How do shadow forms operate? Formation. As we develop our conscious identity, ego, and persona, we repl or split aspects of ourselves that don’t align with what family, society, culture, our ego ideal, and [00:55:00] this is where he gets something.

Right. People do separate out aspects of potentially their capabilities. Like maybe there’s something that they’re uniquely good at, like music or something like that, or something that they really enjoy. Now, this could be due to like biological tendencies or something like that, right? They, they just happen to enjoy this.

But they think that they shouldn’t lean into that thing. And they might build that. Into their self-conception that we’ve talked about in a way that it doesn’t need to, but this isn’t what he’s talking about. He’s covering that, but then he is adding all of this extra stuff. Then you get projection, a key mechanism.

We often see our own disowned traits in other people. What we strongly dislike. Judge or react to in others. It’s frequently a mirror of our shadow. For example, somebody who prides themselves in being always kind, might intensely criticize selfish people while unconsciously harboring selfish impulses themselves.

And again. This isn’t a [00:56:00] trait that you need to have. If you believe that people have this trait, you may adopt it. But I have lived my entire life and I feel like I am an exceptionally good at reading people person. And the vast majority of people just don’t do this. They will have traits in other people that trigger them, but those traits aren’t exactly an inversion of traits that they secretly have in themselves and don’t wanna,

Simone Collins: everything we understand about.

I don’t know. Biology, psychology, sociology.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, the only, the only time where you really see something, I think, kind of like this that I do see is like the closeted gay person who is extra critical of gay people. Which is a phenomenon that you see. But I don’t think that that’s because of this.

I just think that, sometimes if there is something that you struggle with yourself, whether it’s gayness or in this case it could be greed or anything like that, and you don’t like [00:57:00] that aspect of yourself, being reminded of that aspect of yourself is, makes you

Simone Collins: kind of mad,

Malcolm Collins: is going to create negative emotions within yourself.

Simone Collins: I think it’s simpler than that. Which is that we, we frequently like to talk about how much we love this concept of offense. You only feel offended when something credibly threatens your worldview. And when you experience something let’s say you’re same sex attracted and, and you experience other same sex attracted people and feel this underlying sense of attraction yourself, it credibly threatens your worldview.

I’m the straight guy. I feel threatened because right now I feel slightly aroused at this thing. You’re like, I, you know, kind of feel this pull to this group that I, no, that’s not part of my identity. And then you get really angry. You get offended and that’s what’s showing up. I don’t think it’s like some kind of opposite reaction thing showing up.

It is. It is someone being offended and acting like someone offended.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and I think that that’s just really, you don’t need all of this extra idea like a shadow self.

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: To understand why. If somebody’s [00:58:00] struggling with so bit something and they see somebody else, especially somebody caving to it, think of it like this.

You know, somebody’s an alcoholic or something like that and they’re trying to get over their, a alcoholism. So they have an impulse and they’re struggling to resist that impulse and then they see somebody around them indulge in drinking with apparently no consequences to them. Right? Yeah.

Obviously that’s going to make them angry, right? Like that’s gonna create the anger emotion. But that you don’t need the whole concept of a shadow self to explain that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. No, I think overall young in psychology is the kind of thing, we’ve talked about this in other episodes where it really appeals to bids and people broadly who.

It doesn’t quite make sense to them, but because it doesn’t make sense to them and they’re sufficiently intelligent to be able to parrot it, they think that it also won’t make sense to other people and those other people won’t. They’ll just take their word for it of like, oh, well I guess that person’s smarter than me ‘cause I don’t understand this, and they’re talking [00:59:00] about it very confidently.

And therefore they, you know, oh, you know, they win this dominance game. When in the end, I, I think most people who are proponents of young and psychology don’t understand it and just think it makes ‘em look smart. Does that make sense?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. By the way, I should also explain our theory on anger.

Anger is actually a very similar motion to surprise. Anger is what? Is created in your brain when something doesn’t happen as you expect within a negative context. So, this is in this case it would be you have an expectation of the type of person you are and you are reminded that that is not accurate.

And that creates surprise with a negative contextual framing. So you feel anger. Or somebody treats you in a way, this is how you get like, anger loops between two groups where a you know, trans person goes up to a, an extremely religious Christian person and [01:00:00] the extremely religious Christian person is.

Generates anger because this person is labeling themselves in a way that they don’t expect, and it creates surprise to them in a, in a, in a negative context. Mm-hmm. And then the trans person expects to be gendered correctly, and the Christian person isn’t doing that. So then they get mad at them, which creates further surprise in this other population because they didn’t expect, you know, even, even on top of all that, this person’s getting mad and then you can get anger cycles really easily.

Mm-hmm. And it’s important to be able to understand like what causes emotions. Exactly. Because as soon as you can put your finger on this is, and you’ll really see this purest form of anger when you experienced anger due to attempting to do something mechanical that doesn’t work out the way you expect it to.

This is like you run code and it ends up not working. Or you click a button and it doesn’t do the thing you expect it

to,

Simone Collins: or your earphones get yanked outta your ears. By something percent if they’re wired. Yes. That unique rage, you’re like,

Malcolm Collins: ah, [01:01:00] yes, the unique rage.

Simone Collins: It’s so stupid because it doesn’t hurt, but it’s so rage inducing.

Malcolm Collins: But, but you see what I mean. There’s no reason with most other explanations of anger that that would induce anger. But when you understand that anger is just a negative, contextualized surprise, you’re like, oh, that’s why I get angry out of nowhere when I stub my toe. Mm-hmm. I have no reason to be.

Angry when I stubb my toe or step on a Lego. Mm-hmm. Right? And yet those are some of the, the highest levels of anger you will experience in your entire life. But anyway, I I, I’ll note here that there is another category here where it can be so negative that it just creates shock. This is like having your arm shot off or something. But this isn’t exactly anger. This is more like a, a specific mental state associated with shock.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, and, and no here.

Once you understand where an emotion’s coming from, you can change it like the moment you understand, oh, I’m only feeling anger because X.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Then instead of accidentally taking it [01:02:00] out on the people around you, nothing is worse than the person who stubs their toe. And then yells at somebody else, like, why did you leave the door like that?

Right? Because that’s instinctively what an individual wants to do. Like that’s how your system works. But when you understand, oh, the anger is working like this, I can’t let it hijack me. I cannot allow my brain to be hijacked by something so basal. To continue here, let’s talk about shadow work.

Simone Collins: Oh God, do we have, oh, this sounds so terrible already.

Malcolm Collins: In the process of becoming aware of and accepting and assimilating, the shadow is central to an individual Young’s term. For the li oh individualization. Young’s term for the lifelong journey towards psychological wholeness and becoming one’s true self young, outlined a rough approach, not a rigid technique as it’s a.

Highly individual like diplomacy, except it exists. Take it seriously and recognize the dark aspect is real and present was in you. This requires moral effort and honesty. [01:03:00] He would say now I do you see immediately why I hate the concept of the shadow if this shadow doesn’t accept exist, if. Thing number one is to accept that you have this problematic thing was in you.

Now you begin to model yourself as having this thing, and you manifest it within you where it didn’t exist beforehand. Become informed about equality. So now, now you’re moldering on it. Oh, that’s wonderful. Observe your moods, emotional triggers, fantasies, impulses, dreams, and strong. Reactions to others?

Journaling, dream analysis and active. Imagination. Discu dialogue with inner figures help. How, what, what, this is purely masturbatory and not very useful. Right. You can have internal dialogue, conversations to help yourself work through questions that you have about reality in the world or anything like that.

Right. But they should be goal [01:04:00] directed, not to, to actualize. Right. And what you’re seeing here is sort of like proto actualization he’s describing.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Negotiate and integrate through ongoing conscious engagement. Bring these parts into relationship with the ego. This doesn’t mean acting on harmful impulses blindly, but owning them, understanding their origin slash energy and channeling them constructively, eg.

Turning repressed aggression into healthy assertiveness. But you don’t even need to have the repressed aggression. You can just decide not to have the aggression. Like, like there are certain, impulses that you will feel but you feel them because you have chosen to build a model of yourself which reacts to specific and when it’s not an innate thing, like say anger or something like that mm-hmm.

With is that stimuli. And even when it is an innate thing, you can enact conscious control to sublimate it. You at the end of the day. Always have [01:05:00] control of your emotions. And I’ll note here that the worst thing you can have in your life is somebody who affirms emotional states in yourself that are negative and not useful for your objective function or life purpose.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: So if you go to somebody and you’re like, or you have a friend and they, they, they stoke, you know, they’re like, yeah, you really like suppose. You’re a, a wife right now and you have a group of friends and that group of friends is like, oh yeah, you’re really justified in being mad at your husband for doing this.

Right. That is. Highly toxic, like get away from them because then you will have more of these negative emotions if they’re affirmed by your community like that, or by a psychologist. Mm-hmm. Or any environment. Mm-hmm. Right. Whereas negative emotions where I’m saying negative, here are emotions that hurt somebody.

His ability to achieve. So they might be positive feeling in them. A lot of emotions that we describe as negative feel really good. Like revenge. Oh [01:06:00]

Simone Collins: yeah, yeah. Well, or at least we’ll say the word might be righteous indignation instead.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: That feels really good.

Malcolm Collins: Righteous. Yeah, righteous indignation feels good.

And, and so when you have this and then somebody else affirms it in you that is. Really negative and, and, and keep this in mind with your, your larger friend groups, guys do as well. Do you have a friend group who, when you’re like, you know, my partner did X to me, or, or y horrible things, if this ever comes up.

Now this rarely comes up in male friend groups, do they say, well, you know, here’s a plausible reason why this could be a misunderstanding. You know, blah, blah, blah. Or do they say, wow, you’re really justified in being angry right now? You know, because then you’ll get angrier and angrier and angrier. And if you.

Focus on yourself in the moment. Whenever somebody has done this to you, affirmed a negative emotion. I’m sure people have noticed that’s when anger or sadness often begins to spiral out of control.

Simone Collins: Actually, here’s an interesting just side note on [01:07:00] women in groups. And, and meat blocking specifically, it is very, very common in female groups for righteous indignation to be fueled.

So, you know, if a woman is like, oh, like I was just treated this way at work, or something like that, the, the typical appropriate. A female network response is, oh my gosh, I can’t believe that, you know, you’ve been so wronged, blah, blah, blah. I think, well, that’s normative. It’s also a sub, maybe subconscious mate blocking tactic because it ultimately leads to long-term disempowerment and increases the competitiveness of those who don’t engage in that activity.

So just like, a woman might say. Oh no, you’re beautiful when like, you know, someone doesn’t look very good in their group. No, don’t you know? Like, don’t, don’t change anything, you know, because then they’re, they’re ultimately better off competitively. I think this is something similar to that. And I think that you’re more likely to see this kind of justification of an external locus of control in [01:08:00] general or of justified anger or, or victimization in female groups and in male groups.

So they’re just like, dude, you clearly weren’t trying hard enough like you deserve this. Which is, it seems mean. But in the end is actually cooperative and benevolent behavior versus anti-competitive mate blocking behavior. Just throwing that out there.

Malcolm Collins: So here’s a young quote on the shadow. The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego.

Personality for no one can become conscious of. The shadow is without considerable effort to become conscious of. It involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This. Act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge. So he’s doing here what cults often do, what Woo often does, where they try to frame the type of self knowledge that they have of making you special and unique and more important than [01:09:00] other people.

Flatters the ego, right? Also, this feeling of like, I have this dark, mysterious thing inside me. Flatters the ego. Right? And that’s, that’s why it’s so tempting, because it feels cool. Like it, it’s cool. Maybe context if all of this was true, if your life was a battle between some dark shadow living in your heart, you know what I mean?

Mm-hmm. It’s poetic. It’s, it’s, and a lot of his work was like about that. Like, how do we make the story better? So to be fast on these last steps, he had like psychological types where he goes into like, extroversion, introversion, stuff like that. I think it’s pretty boring. He, the central goal of his philosophy as individual, individual.

Lifelong process element towards wholeness, integrating consciousness and unconscious elements, cheating the unique individual from the collective, while connecting more deeply to the [01:10:00] self it involves confronting and assimilating the shadow relating to the anima or animus that’s like your male or feminine and transcending the persona.

Not about becoming perfect or ego inflated, but achieving balance, authentic personality often intensifies in midlife the second half of life shifting from adaptation to society towards inner meaning. And yeah, this is, I mean, you can see why I just be like, this is just all giant waste of time.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Seriously.

Malcolm Collins: This stuff is manifested in your mental landscape by believing it. I, I really wanna make this point. You can have any, anything. Oh, here’s an example, right? Even something totally stupid like an Oedipus complex, right? That like, women get jealous of their dads because their dads have a penis.

Is that the Oedipus?

Simone Collins: No, no, no. That’s penis envy. You’re referring. So an Oedipus complex is where the. [01:11:00] Son wants to kill the father and

Malcolm Collins: marry the

Simone Collins: mother. The mother,

Malcolm Collins: okay, so suppose you Oedipus complex, you’re a normal person. You’re like, this is stupid. This isn’t a real thing.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But suppose somebody managed to convince you that the Oedipus complex was a 100% real thing.

Now you would say, oh, well I guess I have a secret desire to kill my dad and sleep with my mom. Right? And you begin to build this into yourself because you now believe that this is real, and now this is something you have to deal with. This is why it is so critical that you don’t do this. The craziest ideas out there, like, well, penis Envy would be another one, right?

Like a, a girl believes this. Now all of a sudden she experiences it to some extent because she sees what she now believes within herself, right? The, the brain is, if you see our episode that we did recently [01:12:00] on placebos.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: They’re incredibly powerful.

Simone Collins: Or, or maybe exorcism is where we talk more about placebos.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, yes. You can build these things into yourself. You can build psychological illnesses into yourself. Okay. You can build all of these negative traits into yourself. You can build these challenges into yourself.

Mm-hmm. We

Simone Collins: even talked about this in our episode on Spoony from way back.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, watch your Spoons episode of You’re a Long Time subscriber and you haven’t seen it because This’s a good one, I think. And they’re a useful thing to know about. We actually have two spoons episodes. We have one where we interviewed Barry Weiss’s sister Susie Weis on it.

Su Weiss. Yeah. Cool person. We should ask her back on now that we’re,

Simone Collins: she’s very busy and important now.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, very busy and important. Mrs. Susie Weiss.

Simone Collins: She is

Malcolm Collins: you or whatever now.

Simone Collins: Man, CBS kind of a, anyway, go on.

Malcolm Collins: Well, that’s it. That’s it. This is where we are. This is why I’ve talked about this.

Simone Collins: Worst we hate him.

He’s,

Malcolm Collins: this is [01:13:00] why it’s important to keep your mental models of how your brain works. Lean and be first principles in how you construct them because it is too easy to invent the problems that you’re dealing with. And you can be like, well, I could just swear that I definitely, definitely do have this shadow self because it makes me colon special and awesome.

And you know, you don’t have it because you just aren’t thinking enough about yourself. Right. And I’d point out, well then why don’t I deal with any negative consequences from not addressing it then? Right? Like presumably if I do secretly have it and I’m just not addressing it. Simone, you live with me 24 7, right?

Do I have some like hidden dark side to my personality?

Simone Collins: Well, it’s not hidden.

Malcolm Collins: What’s the dark side then? What’s the, the negative aspect of my personality?

Come on, you. You,

Simone Collins: you’re just. [01:14:00] I’m not gonna say it on air. It’s, it is nothing you act on.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, oh, you mean the arousal pathway?

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: That’s not what we’re talking about here.

Simone Collins: Okay. Well, you were asking,

Malcolm Collins: that’s not caused by like a shadow self. That’s something I fully admit.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And it’s one of these things that

Simone Collins: oh God,

Malcolm Collins: Like.

It’s, it’s like not something that I’m even remotely embarrassed about. I, I should say or that I would be particularly embarrassed about talking about. And I have even on the show hypothesized that it is unique to my demographic group,. And the reason why I hypothesized that was both due to statistics around that social group, but also like,

There are other reasons. I think it’s genetic, but Simone had me remove this one.

Simone Collins: oh God. Okay. Are you just gonna say it or are you

Malcolm Collins: not gonna say No? I’m not gonna say it, but

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: The point being is ba basically just very [01:15:00] extreme aggression.

Um-huh. Yeah. But. That’s not something I act on. It’s not something that controls me. It’s not something that, no

Simone Collins: no, but you’re right. It’s not, it’s not a hidden part of your your personality. So that’s fair. There there is no, there is no hidden part of you that is yeah,

Malcolm Collins: that is no, but I’m, so what I’m

Simone Collins: asking, like counter to your personality.

Which I guess for you would be like, oh, you know what? I guess that this movie shows up in these stereotypes of like men who are super powerful, but need a dominatrix, that kind of thing.

Malcolm Collins: Do you think

Simone Collins: that’s

Malcolm Collins: No, I just think that’s part of their, their sexuality and like, you don’t need to act on your sexuality.

You don’t need to obsess about your sexuality. You didn’t choose your sexuality. Yeah. I think sexuality is just completely untied from really much else about you. It’s just something that you randomly have. And it doesn’t need to be a big part of your daily thoughts or anything like that, right?

Like it doesn’t need to be part of your. [01:16:00] Rituals. It doesn’t need to be part of how you self conceptualize. And by understanding this, you can free yourself from a lot of the negatives that might come with it, right? Like, oh, I, I should actually indulge in this. I should actually talk about this. But what I’m talking about, Simone, is what somebody would say is you don’t address your shadow.

And if you don’t address your shadow. That you’re going to like, have outbursts at people or you’re going to be secretly cruel to people. Mm-hmm. Or you’re going to you know, be greedy or selfish or, and so what I’m asking you is, is in those types of things are the types of things people think that the shadow actually manifests.

Yeah. Do you see that behavior from me like ever?

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: No. And Simone, you haven’t tried to address some shadow in yourself, have you?

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So I will say as somebody married to Simone there, like she has no negative [01:17:00] traits. She has,

Simone Collins: Malcolm

Malcolm Collins: please, but you have, you have some eccentricities like not liking being touched when you’re eating.

But that again is something that’s a, a, a random. Biologically inherited thing, not being, yeah, sure. That has nothing to do with who you are as a person, and you harness it in so far that it doesn’t come out in any way that is societally not useful.

Simone Collins: Thanks. I appreciate that.

I think in the end, like it’s just really bad.

Anything that helps you develop an external locus of control and anything that has you overthinking stuff or getting too far up into your head, not good. Just try

Malcolm Collins: it. And, and I, I’ll note here, something that is really bad that can happen is when you don’t accept your biological realities and you assume that they’re, because of like a shadow self, you can end up going on these like endless side quests.

You know, like you, you are uncertain. Like in Simone’s case, you’re un you don’t know why you don’t like you. You wanna measure all your food and you don’t like being [01:18:00] touched when you’re eating and you have other sensory issues. Mm-hmm. And essentially just accepting like, I’m like autistic. My brain is put together differently.

You say. Oh, it’s because I have an unresolved trauma somewhere in my life that I’m just gonna dig, dig, dig, dig, dig at, right. Pick, pick, pick at. Yeah. And that allows you to create, because now, because you’re never actually gonna address this thing ‘cause it’s just part of who you are, you end up creating this giant statue of the shadow in your mind, and it ends up actually having negative effects.

Right, right. And you see this a lot and like, you know, like a conservative individual who doesn’t understand why they deal with same sex attraction, they just happen to be born with some same sex attraction.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And again, what the reason I say that it’s, it’s likely something you’re born with or you get through parasites CR episode on that is because like.

I would, I would admit to you if I felt an ounce of same sex attraction and I don’t, I find it, I get quite a disgust reaction to that stuff. And it’s not ‘cause I was trained to, because I, I not, I wasn’t trained to be aroused by some of the things aroused me, right? Like, [01:19:00] it’s just not part of my biology.

If I then go on some deep quest about like what happened in my childhood that made me x-ray I’m gonna end up obsessing over that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Fair.

Malcolm Collins: And, and then I end up building a shadow and then it never goes away because it had nothing to do with a shadow. It had nothing to do with any of that. It was just a random roll of the cards that I didn’t need to make an important part of myself that I didn’t need to act on, that I didn’t need to indulge in.

Anyway,

Simone Collins: screw young. I love you.

Malcolm Collins: I love you too. And you are an amazing woman.

Simone Collins: You’re an amazing husband and man, which one do you wanna do next?

Malcolm Collins: Whichever one you want.

Simone Collins: Let’s do mine. Here’s your taste of Octavian. Sense of humor, by the way. I was just bantering with him and talking because we, we were, we measured the boys [01:20:00] again this morning against the door, and I was like, yeah, Octavian, someday you’ll be taller than me. And I think he just thinks that humans just grow indefinitely like that.

iGrow too. But this wasn’t apparent to me when he decided to crack what he thought was a joke. And he’s like, oh yeah, ‘cause you’ll be dead. Ha ha, ha. Get it. You’ll be dead. He just kept saying that. I was like, okay. Ah, thanks.

Malcolm Collins: Now that we’ve explained to him that all humans die, he just thinks it’s hilarious.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: He’s like, we

Simone Collins: don’t do I have your YouTube plaque when you’re dead, that, that’s like that and he’ll miss our house. That’s kind of

Malcolm Collins: Did he ask for the YouTube plaque this time though?

Simone Collins: No, he’s, he’s kind of forgotten about that for a while. I guess he just gave up on us.

Malcolm Collins: The other, we haven’t even won that yet.

You know, this is just assuming

Simone Collins: he’s preemptively hoping for it. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: We get to a hundred K so please subscribe

Simone Collins: for a child for when we die. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. So this,

Simone Collins: maybe this is the only time someone has [01:21:00] asked for a subscribe for that. Please subscribe because our son wants us to die and then to take the plaque so, you know, have pity on this orphan.

Malcolm Collins: So, oh, what is it that I wanted to say? Yeah, so in relation to the Tucker episode new conspiracy theory dropped where somebody in the comments was like, it’s really weird how whenever somebody starts to. Question the Jews or Israel you know, two, three years later, they’re just completely crazy, like every time, right?

Mm-hmm. No matter how sane they were to begin with, like Tucker Carlson. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and my take on this. Is that Mossad secretly is poisoning people as soon as they become ask any questions about it’s Israel, so that they go crazy.

Simone Collins: It’s like a bad hatter kind of situation. They’re they’re getting like lead, lead laced hats,

Malcolm Collins: mercury or something.

Yeah. Yeah. Lead or something. Oh. I, they go crazy like Candace Owens that somehow made her more famous to go crazy.

Simone Collins: I know. They’re like, this backfired terribly. What have we done?

Malcolm Collins: This [01:22:00] backfired terribly. I, I actually wonder about a full episode on that. Trying to draw like, okay, let’s assume this program is real.

Simone Collins: How would they do it

Malcolm Collins: start? How are they administering the, the poison? What would be a good long-term poison to cause these effects in people?

Simone Collins: Yeah, it would need, yeah. Gosh, what, because I mean the way that Tucker Carlson has gone off the rails is different from the way that Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens have gone off the rails, which I think is the biggest refutation of this conspiracy theory because if they were all acting schizophrenic, like Candace Owens who’s connecting dots where there are no connections it’s very different from the way that Tucker Carlson is going off the rails, which is basically just favoring the.

The views of everyone who’s not American or being sort of a weather vein of those around him, and it just happens to be chic for elite Americans too. Hate America and chic for people in the Middle East and Japan to like their

Malcolm Collins: countries. I don’t know. I mean, he said some pretty crazy stuff. [01:23:00] A actually, you know, you can even look at this historically.

You can argue that Hitler ended up going crazy, right? You could argue

Simone Collins: that, well, well come on. We knew that that was all the methamphetamines and everything else. He was,

Malcolm Collins: well, what if, what if engaging in. Any form of antisemitism actually does just make you go crazy. Like what if they’re God’s favored people?

And so if you decide to,

Simone Collins: it’s God smiting them. It’s not if

Malcolm Collins: God’s ming them with madness

Simone Collins: yeah, maybe

Malcolm Collins: it’s trace it through history. Has God been smiting anyone who attacks the Jews with madness?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Starting with Pharaoh,

Malcolm Collins: well, you could go over Roman emperors because a lot of Roman emperors were both mad and targeted.

The Jews. The question is, does that overlap?

Simone Collins: Yeah. And, and we’re the, we’re the Pro J ones if there were any less crazy,

Malcolm Collins: very, very interesting question.

Simone Collins: Dunno know. Who know,

Malcolm Collins: actually, yeah. I’m, I’m feeling a whole episode form here. Simone.

Simone Collins: Oh boy. Oh boy, boy. Oh no. Oh

Malcolm Collins: boy.

Simone Collins: Oh no.

Speaker: You call him [01:24:00] Titan, I think he calls the pinker. What do you call Titan? What do you call him? I call him pink.

Is he pink? What else do you call him? Pink is an ugly color. Pink is a ugly color. Titan. Do you think pink is an ugly color? Um, no. It’s just a cool color. I think Pink of the ugly color was that. ‘cause you’re a boy Octavian. Yes. Boys hate pink. Whatcha doing girl? I’m I boys. Did you know Octa Pink used to be the color for little boys?

Octavian Collins: Yeah.

Speaker: Octavian. I wanna tell you something very scary. What there is a type of person out there who wants to make you into a girl is liquid nitrogen. No, no, no, no, no, no. [01:25:00] Octavian. This isn’t a joke. This is real. There is a type of bad person out there that wants to turn you into a girl. Like a meat. Yeah, I wanna, I wanna shoot him in the head.

Well, that might be a little intense. Octavian. And eat him. And eat him for dinner. You want kill him and eat him his meat. What part? What part of the body do we not. Eat. Yeah. Octa, what’s the rule of the body? No heart. No. No. hearts are fine.

Simone Collins: No. Come on. I’ve told you this so many times. What carb do we not eat?

Octavian Collins: The lung?

Simone Collins: No,

Octavian Collins: the skin.

Simone Collins: No.

Octavian Collins: This is really hard.

The brain. The brain.

Simone Collins: We never eat brain

Malcolm Collins: because you can get prion diseases and die.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Very dangerous. Everything else, not the brain.

Octavian Collins: I have to make a video. [01:26:00] Stop it buddy. I that. I own that and I owe you.

Do you see what I have here? Are there slippers?

Malcolm Collins: Yes. She’s be like, ow, that hurts.

Got a lee on me.

You okay buddy?

Octavian Collins: Woo. Go look. Wait. Is it there’s gonna be a giant ship

Speaker: or are they gonna blow something up? Woo.

Octavian Collins: Go. A giant ship. [01:27:00]

Simone Collins: Whoa.

Octavian Collins: In the smack house.

Simone Collins: Titan. Titan. Titan. Did you know that there’s people out there who want to turn you into a boy?

Octavian Collins: Oh no. They turned you into a cat.

Speaker: Oh no. They’re mean people who wanna turn you into a boy.

Malcolm Collins: No.

No, because you already are. Watch out. You’re gonna knock that over

Ian. You’re in trouble. You’re not paying attention.

But you do need to be careful because they did this to one of our friend’s kids, Octavian, actually, multiple friends. Multiple friends, kids, hurry, that one’s gonna turn on Octavian. Do you understand what I’m saying? Yes. So one of our friends run, hold on, listen. They took their little boy and they turned him into a girl.

Octavian Collins: Why? [01:28:00] Why?

Speaker: Why? Because they tricked him.

Octavian Collins: What the,

Speaker: oh yeah.

Octavian Collins: I wanna kill him.

Speaker: And you know what they did? They cut off his whoopies.

Malcolm Collins: This is real. Isn’t into our kind of, yeah. It’s helicopters on motor. Why? I like this? This helicopter. Helicopter.

And then they got very sad and you want to hear something crazy. They didn’t like their mommy and daddy anymore. Helicopters. What? The skies are full of. Unlike ‘cause. That’s what these people do. They make you hate your mommy and daddy and they make you a girl. Just hover in one spot. I’m gonna kill them.

Speaker 4: And when the,

Speaker: you probably shouldn’t just like immediately kill them,

Speaker 4: the 64 D ‘

Speaker: cause then, um,

Speaker 4: helicopter in the world,

Speaker: they’ll say [01:29:00] that, I don’t know, you’re overly aggressive or something.

Octavian Collins: Then I would, and I would go out. People would

Speaker 5: attack. He. And

Octavian Collins: even the people want us.

Speaker: Okay.

Octavian Collins: And the camera. I own view, I own, I own speed.

I own the viewers.

Speaker: Oc don’t say that like that’s me. Viewers say you want them to like and subscribe and you like them, not that you own them.

Octavian Collins: I want them to like, and.

And I want

Speaker 6: laser guided.

Octavian Collins: They and I,

depending on the.

In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into Tucker Carlson’s recent controversial takes — from praising Sharia-governed societies and Middle Eastern cities over declining Western ones, to his glowing comments on Moscow, Dubai, and even Venezuela under Maduro. They explore whether Tucker’s shift stems from boomer goggles, elite social circles, agreeableness and exposure to foreign elites, a quest for controversy/views, or something more concerning like foreign influence incentives.

The Collins also contrast Tucker with Candace Owens’ more unhinged conspiracies and dissect Nick Fuentes‘ coherent (but hostile) agenda, revealing why he’s a bigger threat to mainstream MAGA/America First conservatism than many realize. Expect sharp analysis on urban monoculture vs. traditional Western values, the illusion of “diversity” in places like Dubai, why Tucker seems unable to distinguish the urban monoculture from broader Western civilization, and what this means for the right in the era of the Iran conflict and beyond.

If you’ve been confused by Tucker’s evolution from sharp conservative thinker to sounding “off his rocker,” this episode models his worldview and offers a grounded, pro-civilization counterpoint. Subscribe for more unfiltered cultural anthropology and future-oriented takes.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be discussing the increasing craziness that’s coming from Tucker Carlson, which I find really fascinating because if you look at the leading voices on the right that are mad about the war in Iran some are just like, you could see our episode on Candace Owens psychosis.

Maxing was Candace Owens, but like, she’s just like a crazy person, right? Like just an actual crazy person.

Speaker 2: one you were telling me this morning and I was like, what the, she thought that Charlie Kirk was trained at a school like for gifted children, like in the X-Men with special telepathic power.

Well, first, the

Speaker: first thing that like really caught my attention was that she, she claimed that Charlie Kirk was a time traveler based on basically a, a joking flirty text that he sent to her where she texted him, I’m an alien frowny face. And he responded, I think I’m a time traveler. This is my home, but I think you found [00:01:00] me.

And time traveled with me. And she took that and just ran with it.

Malcolm Collins: So that’s, that’s an example of one like just not, not like normal conspiracy theories, like, just like actual crazy town stuff.

And then you have people like Nick Fuentes. Right. But Nick Fuentes has his own agenda, and we’ll go into him more later in this because

Simone Collins: Oh,

Malcolm Collins: I’m glad. Interestingly, I used to believe about Nick Fuentes that he was just sort of a shock jock who was choosing whatever was the most shocking thing to say.

Simone Collins: And you

Malcolm Collins: don’t anymore. No, I think the war has elucidated his actual coherent agenda. Ooh. More clearly than it was historically. And that has been very interesting to me. ‘cause then I’m like, oh, now I get what he’s actually attempting to do. And it is, it, it, what it means is that he is more of a direct enemy of any mainstream maga America first conservative than I originally realized.

Simone Collins: Really? Oh,

Malcolm Collins: okay. Because I, I just didn’t get it before and now. And what I’ve realized, he [00:02:00] tells you and his audience what his real goals are. He just leaves out a few steps in between. But. To the next point. Tucker’s different. Tucker is somebody who seems to be broadly saying he is somebody who I really enjoyed and watched his content historically, right?

Like, and

Simone Collins: he’s been around for a long time. Like this is one of a, one of those lifetime media figures that at least if you’re a millennial in the United States, has just been part of the media landscape, right?

Malcolm Collins: The end of his run with Fox, which by the way, people may not know this, Colin’s family lore. But we were supposed to be on his show.

We were in talks with his booking team. I forgot about that the last Friday that he held the show. But because it was his last show, they changed the scheduling. And that was brought on him all of a sudden out of nowhere. But we were in talks with his booking team which is really sad because we have never been able to get back in talks with him after that, like the team split up.

But anyway, during that period, he was, I think, sort of like the [00:03:00] key intellectual based voice. I like the leading thinker in that degree. This was in the, like it was post Jordan Peterson at that period. And he had really, I think, sharp and interesting takes. So I hear some of his takes now. And.

I just am trying to model how he came to an understanding of reality that is so divergent from anything that, that I believe when I, when I saw him before and I, I, I think I’ve come to it Simone helped me by being like, you need to remember, he’s a boomer. Okay. He’s seen the world through boomer goggles.

He’s not gonna see the world the way you do. But my favorite, and this is one, one of the quotes that really inspired this for me was there’s been multiple quotes from him recently. A lot of people have heard the one, he said, any Middle Eastern city is better than any American City know.

Speaker 6: And I travel so much that I see it. There’s not a single Western city [00:04:00] that’s thriving and they’re all degrading in exactly the same way. There’s a lot of it just a moral decay or is it actually true from everything? It’s self, it’s a lot of things, but it’s self hatred. Every city. It’s crazy. Every European city, every American city. So you and, and you I notice it because I travel outside the western world, the white world. I’ll just be honest. The white world, right. I travel a lot in the Middle East. It’s amazing. Mm-hmm. And it’s incredible to be in a place that has pride in itself, that believes in its religion and culture that thinks we’re on, we’re onto something and this is great. Look at what we’re doing. We’re really proud of this.

Malcolm Collins: But he, he also had one where he was talking about how a, a Moscow was better than American cities.

Speaker 9: What was radicalizing very shocking and very disturbing for me was the city of Moscow where I’d never been the biggest city in Europe. 13 million people, and it is so much nicer than any city in my country. I had no idea. It is so much cleaner and safer and prettier.

Aesthetically, than any country city in the United [00:05:00] States that you have to, and this is non ideological.

Simone Collins: Well that was it, but that was a separate stage. Like there are these various. Points in recent history where Tucker Carlson has done something that makes him seem like a foreign agent, like going to Moscow and, and walking through the grocery stores and being like, oh my gosh, this is so much better than America.

And now he’s just doing it with Middle East. This is like Middle East edition.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So first of all, a lot of people are like, oh, he can’t be a foreign agent because he’s super rich, which is not true. It is true that his stepmother owned a, a family fortune from some food production company that was bought by Campbell like 40 years ago.

Mm-hmm. But not anymore. Like the, the, the money from what we can tell from records didn’t pass to him. Mm-hmm. So he actually might be up for money. And if you look at the amount of money he has, it’s that sweet spot that comes from it’s estimated around 50 million, which is that sweet spot of like, I’m taking bribes, but I’m not stupidly wealthy from the bribes.

That bribes don’t make sense anymore. So that, wait,

Simone Collins: you think. [00:06:00] Well wait, you’re, you’re trying to argue that someone with $50 million feels like they need more money?

Malcolm Collins: 50 million is the amount of money I typically expect an extremely corrupt person to be. If I was a corrupt official in the Middle East, I would expect them to have around $50 million.

If I was a corrupt Russian, I’d expect them to have, earn $50 million. If I was somebody taking, it’s the amount that you can earn from bribes. Oh, where you still want more bribes. Like if he had like a billion dollars, I wouldn’t think that Russia or a Qatar could bribe him. I, I

Simone Collins: also, I think maybe there’s the point to be made too, that wealthy people aren’t above loving a good deal or free things.

In fact, many people who have worked for high net worth individuals have commented that there is no one more like. What’s the word? Miserly. Miserly. Yeah. No one more miserly than really rich people who are like, well, I’m not gonna pay it.

Like, $2 and 50 cents is a [00:07:00] convenience fee for this. You need to walk five blocks to, you know, that kind of thing.

Malcolm Collins: Well, the, the, the point being he, he’s, he’s gone pretty far and put a lot of effort into debasing himself. It, it seems that there’s some motivation for this, and that’s what I want to dig into.

No.

Simone Collins: Okay. Just immediate counterpoint. What if saying these things and garnering the controversy, which we are now participating in, drives views, which is to his benefit, whether or not it’s, it’s money or attention? You know, sometimes wealthy people just really want attention and he’s certainly getting it by dealing these takes out.

Malcolm Collins: Well, at least historically that didn’t seem to be his strategy, which you could say is maybe post Fox. He’s tried to move to a just anything for attention strategy

Simone Collins: mind. He’s also interviewing people like Nick Fuentes, which again is garnering a lot of controversy and people really came at him for.

You know, according to them, platforming this terrible person who should not be getting any more attention. So he’s done things that have that, that would be concurrent with a [00:08:00] strategy to get views based on controversy

Malcolm Collins: there. Yeah. But there’s a difference between controversy and making yourself look stupid.

And some of the stuff that he’s done recently just looks stupid. So, an example. And we’ll go into it in a bit. It, it were his like Dubai comments about how perfect Dubai is and how everything in Dubai is great and why can’t America be more like Dubai? And I was telling, I was like going to Dubai and thinking that it’s like this beautiful, perfect place is a bit like going to Disney World and coming back and being like, oh my God, you wouldn’t believe it.

I saw the. Elsa, she was just standing in the road hugging children. She’s the most amazing person. Everything. And, and the

Simone Collins: God forbid she’d actually be governing over her country. At least that’s concurrent with the, the lore.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The parallels are really actually strong here because people don’t know.

Disney World has plain clothes agents all over the street, like watching to make sure that like nobody’s throwing a fit or being unhappy, and you’ll be like arrested and removed from the park if you are. And Dubai works on a very similar system out outside of like [00:09:00] all the slavery and everything that makes the, the, the Emirates work.

With 80% of the people there are not being citizens and having to live by very different laws and having a very two-tiered system between Emiratis and non Emiratis. But even

Simone Collins: actually like influencers there have spoken very openly about their experience with the authorities regulating what influencers are allowed to say.

I saw one clip where an influencer was talking about. Actually being taken in to talk with these people who didn’t arrest him or detain him, they just brought him in and he commented on how young and attractive they were and a no, we

Malcolm Collins: were joking that, like when she first told me this, I, I was like, oh my God.

One really good way to handle it, to have like really attractive looking like blinged out like Emirates. But then because, because Emirates if, if they are working in a position like that bureaucratic positions, they often have quite a lot of wealth. So you would expect them to have like their designer brands walking in like a group with like a bone box and like very Zoolander to [00:10:00] come and arrest

Simone Collins: Moto.

It’s basically Mo Gotto.

Aren’t you afraid the fashion police will come and meet you with their fabulous batons?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, basically let’s

Simone Collins: talk now. It’s, it’s exactly that. I just love it so much.

Malcolm Collins: I’m doing like poses in the background while like they’re explaining to the influencer, like,

Simone Collins: yes, exactly. Like it, it’s a very zoolander kind of situation where everything’s just kind of pretend ridiculous world and everything’s kind of on the surface because I, I’ve also looked at some of the the types of properties and areas that people are encountering when in Dubai, and it’s very much that like manufactured luxury where if you come from a disadvantaged background and you may not be familiar with.

I don’t know. Historical luxury. You think it’s nice. But it’s, it’s often very thin. And not a lot of actual thought [00:11:00] or even good design has gone into it. And obviously there’s some areas of buildings and, and stuff in Dubai with really, really good construction, excellent fixtures and everything.

But I think there’s a lot of it that just is, is, fake luxury in the way. Like, you know, a, a butterfly might have a, a face on its wings, and like all these people like, see you. They’re like, oh, a face. A face. It’s a face. And it’s not, no, it, it has been designed to make you believe that for a specific strategic reason.

Malcolm Collins: Dubai is actually for people who haven’t been to Dubai.

Simone Collins: Have you been, did

Malcolm Collins: you go on that? Yeah, of course. Been to Dubai. Yeah, Dubai is, is, it really sort of reminds me of a giant mall with extra high ceilings everywhere you go and like way too much marble. But it doesn’t feel like that’s nice.

It has that second world, anyone who’s ever lived in a second world country where like all the foods just like a little off and you can’t get the highest quality anything and everything feels a little like construction problem, stuff like this. Dubai has a similar vibe to it but, but very [00:12:00] wealthy and more polished.

And also it’s stupidly hot. Like everything is stupidly hot. But anyway. I wanna go into his actual quotes here and we can dissect what he might be getting at. Okay. So the first one that really got me was there’s not a single Western city that’s thriving. They’re all immoral and physical decay because of self-hatred and a lost will to live.

What’s fascinating is even in this attack on the west here, um mm-hmm. He is driving more. There are ways to say that the urban monoculture is a problem without being self hating, westerner. And yet he is saying I am a self hating westerner because the west is failing and self hating. Right? I’m like, you don’t need to drive the very thing that you say that you are against.

Right? There’s, there’s ways to attack you know, progressive tendencies, urban monoculture tendencies while saying that this isn’t true of all layers of Western society, certainly not the layers that we’re attempting to save. But then he goes on to say [00:13:00] things like, Sharia law has made Islamic countries more advanced in the West,

and I travel a lot in the Middle East.

It’s amazing. The Muslim country is governed by Sharia law and you go there and it’s incredible to be in a place that has pride in itself, that believes in its religion and culture that thinks we’re onto something that kind of self-confident is what creates stability and hospitality. And in a place like Dubai, which is basically, it’s a luxury brand, basically people go to Dubai because it’s beautiful, rich and clean, and above all because it’s safe.

And it’s got the busiest airport in the world. And he goes, you start seeing a video on Instagram of smoke in the Dubai airport and you’re like, I think I’m going to Cabo this year. Oh, sorry, drug cartels, whatever. Maybe I’ll go to Sedna this year. Implying a preference shift away from the United States.

And then he goes on to say, anyone who likes decency in order and cleanliness is hoping the Gulf will recover. The Gulf is not a threat to us. These are some of our closest allies. So, huge [00:14:00] notes we need to add to a lot of the stuff he’s saying here. First really weird that he notes that all, like all countries under Sharia law or he is implying, are much cleaner and nicer than American cities.

There are a handful of places where you could plausibly make this argument. Some cities in Dubai, Qatar a few in Saudi Arabia but the vast minority, the vast majority of countries under Sharia law are. Like some of the biggest on earth. If, if, and this is weird to me, like, has he not been like anywhere else in the Middle East?

Has he not been anywhere in North Africa? Like I’m, I’m actually, has he never even been to like Egypt? Like that’s an Egypt, Morocco, like anywhere, right?

Like these are, Palestine is another example of this. These places. There is like, literally, I don’t think I, I think if you go to some of the worst neighborhoods [00:15:00] in the United States they would be about equivalent to neighborhoods at the top 10% in most of these other countries.

Now, no, no, here, I’m not saying the top 1% because there’s some extremely wealthy people in these countries. But I think around the top 10% would be equivalent with like a, a, a dangerous, like a strawberry mansion in Philadelphia or something like that. An example of this in Egypt, they did a poll on what percent of women were essayed.

Do you know what percent of Egyptian women have been a,

Simone Collins: I mean, how are they defining it?

Malcolm Collins: I, I don’t remember. No, it it by the way. Yeah.

Simone Collins: But like, okay. What, like

Malcolm Collins: 2099 or 98%?

Basically all women in Egypt have been sexually assaulted.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: But this is not, this is, this is what I mean when people are like, oh, it’s really, it’s not really that dangerous to be in Egypt.

It’s like, no, it really is. And this is, this is one of those things is this is just like an anti-real statement. [00:16:00] The second anti-real statement, and I mean he must know this, he’s an educated person, is that the countries in the Gulf right now are the countries that are promoting us finishing this war most aggressively.

Specifically. Because if we don’t finish the war this is the thing that gets me, okay. We don’t finish the war. We let Iran just control the strait of Mout. They continue blocking it. Economically we find out China is, is is the main global power. Who’s hurt by that? But who is the biggest regional power?

Who’s hurt by that? It’s Qatar. That is classically one of our biggest enemies in the, in the region and one of Iran’s biggest friends and people who are like, oh no, Iran is selectively letting ships too. Like two a day on average, not at a meaningful rate. And they charged them like $2 million to, to get through.

So they’re not even like economically that viable. This is, this is what it’s been offering China to try to get Chinese ship through. The the point being is this is a war that we, and it [00:17:00] makes sense why Saudi Arabia wants us to finish this and, and the UAE and Qatar wants us to finish it if we don’t finish it.

Even Saudi Arabia ships a lot of its oil through the straight of like they’re not as isn’t MM or something. Yeah. I, I don’t know. The UAE does Qatar definitely does, like the UAE might be able to like, because they’re sort of down near the bottom of it. Yeah. Find some sort of solution to this.

But Qatar definitely can’t. Hmm. So he’s saying stuff like this and I’m like. Okay, what’s, what’s going on? So then I wanna go into other things he said and see if I can piece together a coherent world ideology. Like why is he cheering for Korea law?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well also because even in his typical recording studio, you know, all his branding is, is Christian American dad, man, right?

Like, that’s kind of what he’s going for with the vest and everything. Like I just, and the, the white button down, [00:18:00] I, it’s just so odd to me that he would be saying all this very non Christian, I mean, he even talks about it when he’s like, oh, you know, I’m, I’m a Christian man, but you know, these people aren’t, you know, making me convert my religion.

They’re fine with me. They, you know, I tell them that I believe in Jesus and they’re like, good for you. And

Malcolm Collins: yeah,

Simone Collins: like he, he’s keeping the branding. It just, it just surprises me that therefore he’s so anti. America for that reason. And I, I’m sure he would take exception to being accused of being anti-American.

He would probably push back and be like, no, I believe in America. I want an America where people are proud of themselves, who are proud to be who they are. Because in a clip that I watched recently, he was talking not just about the Middle East, but how like when you go to Japan, everyone’s so proud about, you know, who they are and confident in themselves.

And I think maybe what he’s alluding to here is, is this urban monoculture associated self hatred. That he’s just so sick of that now at this [00:19:00] point. Anything that’s not that looks good.

Malcolm Collins: Well, so in his explicit quote where he was talking about Qatar, and he’s like, and look, Qatar is so diverse, like he wants America to be more diverse.

And he goes, but in America, like we say, we want diversity, but then we move away when too many black people move into our neighborhoods and stuff like that.

Speaker 6: Those people are happy. They’re welcoming of others. They’re tolerant of diversity. Like we always tolerant of diversity. There’s none of that here. Are you kidding? All the whites. Oh, we love black people. Then they run and move to Bozeman. ‘cause they’re no black people

Speaker 8: Absolutely. Send their kid to the,

Speaker 6: they hate diversity,

Speaker 8: they hate it.

Speaker 6: And it, our version of it isn’t working at all. No. Like at all. So, but you go to a country like Japan or the Emirates or Qatar or Saudi Arabia and you see that, that when people are self-confident, when they’re really pleased with what they’re doing and they believe that their system is the right system, that self-confidence results in a kind of.

Welcoming [00:20:00] attitude. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 8: They’re Muslims. It’s a country

Speaker 6: governed by Sharia law.

Speaker 8: Right.

Speaker 6: I mean, and they’re like, that’s great.

Speaker 8: Good for you. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: Like promoting more, integration in the United States where I should point out, by the way, if you’re familiar with the way places like Dubai are actually handled, they have giant, incredibly segregated ghettos where they keep their workforces of mostly Indians and, and some Africans.

And that where the cities look diverse, all you’re seeing is ultra rich people from all over the world who have escaped with their country’s money. That’s typically why you end up in Dubai if you were a corrupt leader in part of Africa, or you were a corrupt leader. And so of course that’s gonna, you know, in East Asia that’s gonna look very diverse on the surface.

If you take the most corrupt people from all over the world, they’re gonna be able to interact with each other plainly. Like they’re gonna get idiot to steal from each other or anything like this. And you basically keep everyone else in a, in a open air prison that’s gonna look really nice on face value.

But that’s not actual diversity. Right. [00:21:00] Nobody. Like when you, when you, you’re at Harvard, right? And you are going to like your student club and a bunch of black people show up. You don’t think you’re about to get jumped by them, right? You, no. Harvard student is like, oh, oh, a bunch of but the same student you know, in, in a different context, may walking alone at night on the street, walk to the other side of the road.

And that’s because those are two different populations that you’re dealing with, right? And every sane person is aware that there is a difference between you know, random African immigrants, African and super wealthy people who have escaped their country to live in Dubai. But I found that interesting that he’s still pushing this like boomer narrative of like.

The, the ultra integrated iteration of America where even I would say a America can work with different populations while having regional ghettos. Like I do not think we need to force integrate [00:22:00] people of different racial groups or even create cultural pressure to do that. Like, it’s okay if people want to live predominantly around people who are like themselves.

And, and we shouldn’t, you know, the, the Tucker’s creating this kind of shame. So before I go further with this, I’ll just explain where I think he’s getting that perspective from. I think he has this boomer idea of America as like. A, a true melting pot and like diversity is actually our strengths.

And that he’s still attempting to push that mindset of which, which basically no mainstream youth conservative agrees with. And I think that like, like even people like us where I’m like, look. You do get some value from diversity. Like I don’t want a meal that’s just one food, right? Like one ingredient, but a meal isn’t better because you added more ingredients.

And there are some ingredients that just don’t go together and shouldn’t be on the same plate. And I think that that’s the way we need to treat our [00:23:00] country in immigration and diversity is to realize that different groups are actually different and that some of them are going to have a higher probability of integrating and becoming good American citizens.

And even of the traditional American cultural groups, they interact with each other in unique ways and they shouldn’t be forced to integrate. But. That’s I think what many modern, like center conservatives think, which is not what he thinks he wants to go back to, to boomer vision of a, of American patriotism.

But then he says stuff like this what was radicalizing and very shocking, this is during his tour of Moscow. It was very disturbing for me. It was the city of Moscow, the biggest city in Europe with 13 million people. It’s so much nicer than any city in my country. It’s so much cleaner, safer, prettier, aesthetically its architecture, its food, its service than any city in the United States.

And then specifically on the Moscow subway specifically, he said it’s nicer than in our country. No graffiti, no smells, no drug addicts. So note here, the Moscow [00:24:00] subway is genuinely really nice, but that’s because of a holdover of communism where they wanted to make the subway look really nice ‘cause they thought that that like made everything look nice.

But Moscow itself is. One of the worst, like most dangerous cities in all of Europe. Like one of the most gangstery.

Simone Collins: How so? Just in terms of crime stats or what?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, crime run Downness falling. Apartness. Like bleakness.

Speaker 13: A nice cafe you probably can ask for. Ah, mat tea. Someone’s drying out their shoes. Pillow. I don’t know what’s going on here. I.

Malcolm Collins: Like, and, and this is even the thing, if he had said those same things but he was touring St.

Petersburg, I’d be like, oh yeah, but that’s just St. Petersburg. You should go to Moscow and see how bad it can be. But Moscow’s not like you. There is like a [00:25:00] four block area of Moscow that it’s like reasonably like, you know, like rich parties and then you get outside of that. And Moscow is like I know I’ve actively from like my friends who, who travel a lot I was thinking about going to Moscow once and they were like because.

One of, one of my good friends worked in Moscow for a while in like, terrorism related stuff. And she was like, bro, you do not want to go to Moscow. And this was, you know who I’m talking about, Simone? Yeah. She goes, you do not,

Simone Collins: I’m big fan of St. Petersburg and I think you’ve been to St. Petersburg.

Malcolm Collins: She’s like, go to St. Petersburg. And I’m like, I’ve been to St. Petersburg, it’s great. But she’s like, Moscow is not St. Petersburg. Do not think you’re gonna get the St. Petersburg experience from Moscow.

Simone Collins: So is it, is it like Edinburgh, Glasgow kind of thing or what?

Malcolm Collins: No, no. Well, no, Glasgow gets a worse reputation than it actually is.

Glasgow’s mostly fine in the, in the historic parts. I, I might call it one of my favorite cities actually. It’s a, it’s a fine city. Moss now there are [00:26:00] district,

Simone Collins: no, but that’s the point is, is maybe Moscow also is mostly really cool, especially, it just has less.

Malcolm Collins: Moscow is more like a state capital you know, one of those cities that really just exists for administration.

It’s like the bureaucracy. Oh,

Simone Collins: kinda like just bureaucracy. I don’t actually, no, because a lot of people live there. I think I follow some influencers who live there and talk about,

Malcolm Collins: no, they’re very populated city, but it’s a city. Yeah. That basically became artificially populated during communism as sort of the, the, the bureaucratic hive at the center of all bureaucratic hives.

Um mm-hmm. If you’ve ever been to a, a state capital city, like, you know, the one in Pennsylvania, what, what’s it called again? What’s the Pennsylvania,

Simone Collins: Harrisburg.

Malcolm Collins: Harrisburg, or what’s the state capital of California.

Simone Collins: Sacramento.

Malcolm Collins: Sacramento. Do you know what, like Harrisburg and Sacramento.

Simone Collins: Great train museum.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Have that sort of vibe to them of like the most soulless of soulless cities. Yeah. And like, everything’s kind of slummy, everything’s kind of dirty. And they’re cities that are really only there. [00:27:00] They’re quite populated, but they’re only there like, because that’s where the organizational administration is.

Um mm-hmm. Moscow has a very similar vibe, but like dialed up to a hundred.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So it’s not, I I don’t think he could get this takeaway if he was like being, so that’s where I get like the Moscow one being fooled by Dubai. I can see some whi list boomer, but I don’t, sorry, whi list. Boomer fooled by Dubai.

I can’t see anyone unless they had a handler the entire time, which he may, he, he, like, I’m

Simone Collins: sure you, you must have, I think just the, the visa situation, going to Russia I think is fairly, I.

Malcolm Collins: Maybe that’s it. Complicated. Maybe, maybe. The reason he had this view on Moscow is he’s like a very when something fits his preexisting worldview, he has this very uncritical eye to it.

And so he goes around and he’s like,

Simone Collins: yeah, I do. I think he’s, he is very trusting. He comes across as very trusting. This is, you know, how his Nick Fuentes interview went. You know, he [00:28:00] tries to be empathetic, and I think this is one of the the reasons why his interviews go really well is he’s, he’s not just kind of abrasive and confrontational and not actually listening to people like he’ll.

He’ll express his doubts with people, but in a very respectful way when he is talking with them. And I think he’s a more agreeable personality. Like he doesn’t, he’s not intentionally or euphoric, disagreeable, like some media figures. And I think that maybe that leads him when he’s traveling in foreign nations to kind of just, yes, and any, we’ll say propaganda or student, oh, I’m

Malcolm Collins: putting something together.

Well, this could also explain why he has such a negative view of the United States which is if you grew up with that sort of boomer. Idea of America where, you know, forced integration is like a, a obvious and net good. Um mm-hmm. That a lot of people who grew up in that generation think it’s like sort of cool to, and that they have full permission being [00:29:00] American to be down on America in an an American culture.

And that, that’s almost sort of like a positive thing. Like it’s a very leftist thing to do. But some conservatives that have been around like wealthy circles for long enough and, and, and had to code switch into that enough may have accidentally integrated that with their world perspective. And so he goes to other places and to try to be hospitable because he is got the really nice handler and stuff like that.

He ends up saying things like that, like, this is nicer than anywhere I’ve seen in America these days. You know? And then he ends up integrating that belief. I. Both complaining about a problem, but also being one of the chief sort of distributors of the problem that he’s complaining about, but being unable to see that because he’s just trying to be nice in the moment and not having

Simone Collins: agreeable and conformist broadly.

Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That

Simone Collins: okay. Okay. Yeah, no, no, no. So, so, so basically you’re saying like he is he’ll pick up the temperature or, or, or, or vibe of a room and then just project it. And so when he’s in [00:30:00] America and everyone’s just around, like on average, especially people sort of in the media and online are very negative about America.

So he just picks up on that and projects it. And then he goes to other countries. And in other countries he meets with minders and leaders who are obviously very bullish on those countries. And then he is getting the most propaganda highlighted version. He’s actually more than picking up on that and saying.

Malcolm Collins: The part of American society that is most anti-America and most negative about America are wealthy. Mm-hmm. Elite Americans. These are people in elite institutions. These are people in elite positions. That the group that he has disproportionately in socializing ways. However, the people who are most pro

Simone Collins: well, and especially, ooh, ooh, Malcolm, keep in mind I think also the old guard of conservatives, which is definitely what he’s coming from instead of the New tech.

Right. Is definitely of, of that more like negative.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Every, every techno [00:31:00] optimist or optimistic, patriotic, conservative, I’m aware of now is more on the new tech Right. End of the spectrum.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Whereas

Simone Collins: the, it’s also about this flavor of conservatism.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the, the if you go to Russia or Dubai the ultra wealthy individuals are actually genuinely pretty dingo jingoistic.

Yes. If you’re ultra wealthy in Russia, you’re likely making money off of state corruption, right? And so that means that you want Putin and the current regime to stay in power. You are pro this war, you are pro. It’s the same with Dubai or Qatar. If you don’t make a point of trying to get to know average people on the ground in Dubai and Qatar and you’re just surrounding with the ultra wealthy people at parties and stuff like that, you’re gonna have this perception that everybody loves being there.

That explains it. I, I, yes. A complete lack of curiosity about the perspectives of people outside of his class that could explain this without [00:32:00] needing to add any nefarious, like he’s being paid off or anything like that. Other weird things he said that I’m gonna try to like, find explanation for, like what does he, like, how did a sane person actually come to this perspective?

So he had on a Berg recently on his show who is a well-known Israeli communist. And a lot of people thought that was really weird. But the one thing that eh Berg does have is he is very anti Netanyahu very anti-Zionist. And so, I think that that, like, I can understand that you wanna have on opinions of Israelis who have opinions that other people may not have already heard.

So you bring somebody like that onto your show, right? Next he said, not defending the regime, just saying that Venezuela is one of the most conservative countries in north or south or Central America, second only to El Salvador under B bca. It’s possible we’re mad that he doesn’t allow gay marriage, that this is a [00:33:00] distinct possibility, but no one will say it aloud.

The US backed opposition leader who would take Maduro’s plates is of course pretty eager to get gay marriage in Venezuela. So those of you who thought this whole project was global homo, you’re not crazy actually. So this is what he said on Venezuela, right? That Venezuela is actually good. This was under the Maduro regime, and that our plan was to remove him and replace him was the opposition leader to make game.

Now, of course. None of that happened the way he thought. We removed him and replaced him with somebody to release prisoners of war and help us economically and blockade Cuba and beat the communists, not, you know. So, like clearly his world perspective is not predictive of future events or actions.

But what’s he thinking here? Like why, why would he be glazing, like to glaze Iran and Venezuela and like, what’s going on here? Right. I think he sees as his core enemy, the urban monoculture, [00:34:00] but, but he. Cannot differentiate because of its world perspective between the current western society and the urban monoculture.

So because he hates what he calls global homo, or what we would call like a one facet of the urban monoculture he believed that he and he doesn’t have a language for that or words for that. He will then project that onto the west more broadly reflexively. And so when he sees somebody fighting boast the west and against gay people, right, like Venezuela is, he sees them as an ally.

This could also explain his soft position on Iran. It’s like they’re fighting against the west. The west is urban monoculture.

Simone Collins: So it’s almost like he, yeah, he, he intuitively understands that cancer is bad. And therefore like radiation [00:35:00] treatment’s good. And then he’s like, yes, we just need to, we need all the radiation.

But he doesn’t understand that this is like a targeted treatment or something like bad metaphor.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Because if you, and, and, and this is compounded with, because he never hangs out with middle class people or, or lower class people. If you, if you leave American cities, right, and you go to the suburbs and you go to, you know, like an outdoor movie screening or something like that you will see people flying American flags and grilling and and integrated by the way, like a meaningful context, right?

Like you will see people of many different cultures who are just having fun being American. This is a normal site for, for people like me, like Simone, when you and I go out in where we live, which is outside of Philadelphia, and this is the other area where he’s like, well, American cities are terrible.

And it’s like, well, yes, but if the urban monoculture, [00:36:00] specifically urban monoculture is the problem, it intrinsically congregates in cities if you don’t,

Simone Collins: and he doesn’t even live in the city personally. So I’m also so confused by that. Like he’s,

Malcolm Collins: that’s not like,

Simone Collins: I think he lives up in a, like, remote cabin in Maine, which is

Malcolm Collins: Maine is lovely.

Simone Collins: How can you

Malcolm Collins: be in rural Maine and think that America sucks?

Simone Collins: Yeah. This, this also really confuses me. I’m like, the, what is he seeing that, I mean, if you’re like taking a cab into like the center of New York City, like through Times Square or something and just being like, Ugh, yuck. You know, like this.

It’s gross. There’s trash everywhere. Like, that’s my, my assumption maybe is that like when he goes into a, a major US city, it’s more likely to be San Francisco or Los Angeles or New York. And as you’re driving your Uber through any one of those cities, you’re gonna be pretty disappointed with what you see.

Then you walk into a CVS to pick up some water because you don’t have anything. You’re staying in like a hotel and you, everything’s locked up. Like he would just see [00:37:00] the worst parts of America.

Malcolm Collins: You have a, a boomer mindset. So in his boomer mindset thanks. Amer America is two things, right? Like it’s the, the taste makers, the dominant culture, which he would call western culture uhhuh, we call it monoculture.

And then. Christian culture, which is fighting against that uhhuh. And like those are the two meaningful factions in his mind. Rather than it’s the urban monoculture fighting against a large number of alternate cultures that want a the various different Christian cultures, various different, even, even ancestral cultures to the United States.

When we talk about like American cultural anthropology in some of our videos if you. Don’t have that education and you’re not prone to seeing things that way. This worldview can make sense, but now, like why he’s so anti-Trump. So this is like before even the world, wasn’t

Simone Collins: he pro-Trump earlier, doesn’t he say in various,

Malcolm Collins: yeah.

And then he goes

Simone Collins: like, videos [00:38:00] Trump is, are good friends. I, I mean like he was invited to the White House. He presumably thinks he’s a friend of Trump. I, I don’t understand.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Yeah, let, like, let’s also talk about that. So, there was this case where he went on his show looking all freaked out saying that the CIA had tapped his phone and was trying to frame him for a crime.

What’s re so a few funny things about this. It turns out that he had a series of meetings was one, I think only two days before the, the main bombing. And so a lot of people were like. Why does he think so? The, the, the, the branch that he thought had tapped his phone would have had taps on pretty much everyone in the Iranian government’s phone.

But they wouldn’t have been tapping the phones of random American citizens which. Means he might have been. And what I suspect happened is he was trying to book maybe with somebody high in Iran, and that’s not a, that’s not a, that doesn’t, that’s not an incriminating thing. And then he had a freak out afterwards.

But what’s humorous about the freak out of the few things there has been talking that we might have been using him [00:39:00] as a counter agent spy, basically feeding him bad information that he would then accidentally feed to Iranians. And given that he appears to be pretty gullible, he may have actually been doing this accidentally I don’t think he would do it intentionally, but I could totally see him doing it accidentally.

And we do know that they felt really secure. They were not even having that meeting in the lower safer levels. They were having it in the mid levels like right after we had threatened them. So, maybe he did actually go and tell them it’s all safe. But

Simone Collins: it would be really hilarious if Tucker Carlson played a key role in the United States, being able to like, successfully eliminate a

Malcolm Collins: random topic.

It would be really funny. But the, the even funnier thing is, is some reporter apparently with a lot of connections and like the NSA and the ccia a did like a deep dive on this, and she goes, no one has any idea what he’s talking about. So it might just be that he thinks he’s being tapped and he’s being paranoid, or he was trying to like run cover, like maybe he was talking with somebody that he thought he could get in trouble for and somebody [00:40:00] warned him and then he had like a panic attack and decided to that, that seems more likely to me.

But one of the things he ended up saying about the government was, this is in 2025. Mind you, the most depressing thing about the United States in 2025 is that we’re led not just by bad people, but by unimpressive dumb, totally non-creative people. This is a deeply sad thing to say. I literally have never been so impressed with the effectiveness of an administration at achieving aims that you think he would care about, like reducing government size, stuff like this.

Agreed. Obviously Trump had to pass that big bill because of. Promises he had already made, but Doge actually did a pretty good job and Trumpet continued to do a good job of shutting down various departments within the government like USAID and stuff like that, that I’m really, really glad people have pointing out.

How many leftist media outlets have crashed and burned after USAID went out And now we’re like, oh my God, was this like all always usaid? You know, like people are [00:41:00] like, this was 50% of Somalia’s economy. And it’s like, why was that, why was aid 50% of Somalia’s economy? Like, that’s a problem man. We, I didn’t sign up to be the Somalian daycare.

Actual Somalia. Right? Like, but like, how could you say that? Like, if you saw the profiles to say that the people who are like working at Doge, like my, my brother being one of them, of course, but then the other people, they were like super geniuses. They were like really cool people. And having some insight into, you know, Simone and I have gone to speak at the White House, meet with people of this administration.

And I have met with previous administrations of the past through other means. I’ve, I’ve never worked with them directly, but I’ve, I’ve met a lot of people who have worked at, because of all of our work with secret societies other administrations no administration has ever impressed me, like this administration.

At a lot of other administrations, I got the, like slimy bureaucrat, lifelong DC person vibe for most of the people I met within this administration. It has consistently been. Cool, young, conservative, or tech bro. And I, and [00:42:00] I think that we see this in the efficiency. I mean, that’s why the Maduro raid went as well as it went.

Yeah. That’s why the Iran campaign is going as well as it’s going. I’ve been so

Simone Collins: impressed. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Is because these organizations and, and some of them, like literally the guy Secretary of the Army right now is an old friend of ours. Dan Driscoll he, he’s a, an old friend of ours, a tech bro, and he runs the Army right now.

Right. Like, and why, why are they doing well? Because they have people like him. What was it that he said when he first took over the army? I really liked some of the

Simone Collins: dude, he said a variety of fantastic things. No, he’s just modernizing it and helping it work better. He is improving so many things.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. About how

Simone Collins: he manages.

Malcolm Collins: What he was really focused on is like, we need to get away from like an army that is staffed based on, you know, political kickbacks to, you know, X manufacturer, y manufacturer. And we need to focus on what the troops actually need to get their jobs done. And the, that, that was the [00:43:00] same was about how they fight.

We had an episode on like the troops. Intentionally pulling their punches. Watch that episode. That was crazy for me to learn that. Like, you couldn’t shoot at a group until you knew they were armed. Like, if somebody tagged a mosque, you can’t shoot them now. Right? Like playing by vampire rules as they put it in that episode, right?

And it’s like, Nope, I closed the door on a residential house. You can’t come in. And they, they’re just like, no, we’re not gonna do that any, why, why were we ever doing this? Right? And somebody’s like, well, it could look bad. And it’s like, I don’t, I guess I don’t care. That much of it ends up looking bad.

And I like that that’s the approach that they’ve been taking to getting this handled. You know, don’t put Americans in harm’s way, but get things handled. You wanna see our, like, why are we in this war episode? We did that a few days ago with our war update. I don’t wanna go over all of the, the facts on the ground about the assassination attempts against Trump, the timeline to nuclear capability which it appears had gotten really, really short.

And. One of the reasons why you can’t have Iran with nukes, which I think [00:44:00] a lot of people don’t get, is they’re like, well, a lot of countries have nukes and they’re, they’re maybe malevolent actors on the world stage, but they’re otherwise fine. Like Russia has nukes, right? And they’re not our friends.

China has nukes and they’re not our friends. Why is Iran having nukes any different from these other organizations having nukes? And I think a lot of people could just see that and not understand with the, like they’re asking the question what’s the word here?

Simone Collins: Rhetorical question.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They’re asking it as like a rhetorical question without actually asking No. Why, and there is an actual answer to that. Why? The reason why Iran is nothing at all, like North Korea or China or Russia, is that Iran’s core tactic in regards to foreign policy to the tune of, I think when we looked it up, it was $4 billion a year is funding terrorist cells in other countries.

That is how Iran operates. Okay. They, they do not make alliances with other [00:45:00] countries in the same way that, that China might or something like that. They predominantly operate by funding terrorist organizations. And when I say terrorist organizations, I mean non-state militias that are basically like giant Islamist gangs.

And these groups have no trouble using something like a nuke on civilians if they ever got ahold of a nuke. Mm-hmm. And that is why Iran can’t have nukes, because Iran having nukes is the same as Hamas and Hezbollah having nukes. Right. And these organizations, you say, well, you know, they certainly wouldn’t, they’re always running attacks on the United States.

Like, what are you talking about? Right. Like, even, even recently, there was a, like a recent what was they? The, the bombing of the where they drove a truck into a synagogue, kindergarten oh yeah. And it was completely bombed out. And, and fortunately no one was killed because good guys was guns.

But his like brother was in [00:46:00] Hezbollah or something. Right. You know, like the, these are like. Actually, like on our doorstep level dangers. Yes. So I, I wanted to go into that for people who do not get, why Iran having a nuuk and people can be like, oh, well these other countries fund terrorist non-state actors.

Not really. North Korea does not really fund terrorist non-state actors in other countries. China doesn’t really fund terrorist non-state actors in other countries. I

Simone Collins: thought Saudi Arabia. Did

Malcolm Collins: Saudi Arabia. Does Saudi Arabia have nukes?

Simone Collins: No,

Malcolm Collins: from my

Simone Collins: understanding,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. Saudi Arabia doesn’t. The UAE does.

But that’s, that’s a core, it’s the video where we talk about the Cold War between Saudi Arabia and the uae. But that’s their core differentiation. Russia, actually doesn’t that often. It’s, it’s very rare for Russia to fund non-state terrorist actors. They typically fund when they’re doing something like this pseudo states.

Mm-hmm. So an example of that would be like transista or like

Simone Collins: trans what?

Malcolm Collins: Cuba Transista is a [00:47:00] breakaway state in Europe that’s still technically living in the Communist Union.

Simone Collins: I’ve never heard of this before.

Malcolm Collins: You should look it up. It’s really interesting. Fun. Yeah. Learning about, because they live with all of the old com Soviet Union stylings and everything like that, and statues and programs.

What,

Simone Collins: okay, I have to look this up. Like how, if I’ve never heard of transista before.

Malcolm Collins: And Russia will sometimes work with non-state actors, but more as like a mercenaries to make money and gain control of resources not in the way that Iran does, which is like maximum chaos strategy,

Simone Collins: Transtria.

Malcolm Collins: I pronounced it wrong.

Simone Collins: Well, officially known as the pre Troian Mulian Republic. And locally as pri nastro is a landlocked breakaway state. My God, you’re right. Internationally recognized as a part of Moldova. Ah, interesting. [00:48:00] That’s just so bizarre.

Okay. Thank you for telling me about that. Sorry. Just,

Malcolm Collins: but if you, if you look at something like transista, even if Transista like somehow got ahold of Anu, right? Sure. And, and note here I’ve said that I do not actually believe that Russia has usable nukes. They have not run a. Nuclear test since before I was born.

Yeah. Over 30 years since their last life,

Simone Collins: nucle. Well, and and the, the last time they, they decided to play tests a lot of their

Malcolm Collins: Soviet era equipment. It all fell apart.

Simone Collins: Guns.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. It fell apart. Disastrously and a nuke. It’s harder to maintain than a truck. So, I do not think any of their nukes are functional.

And for people when we’re wondering, why can I say that with such certainty? I am fairly certain that if they had any functional nukes, they would attest them just to show the world, especially right now with Ukraine war, that we still have functional nukes as like a way of escalation.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, this is why North Korea does it.

No one else is gonna believe them, and I think they [00:49:00] also need to make sure they’re actually working.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah,

Simone Collins: there’s that.

Malcolm Collins: But the fact that the, the Russians don’t do it to me is like proof positive. They don’t have working nukes. But even if they gave Transista, nuke, transista isn’t, they’re not like Hamas or Hezbollah.

They don’t say death to America constantly. They don’t constantly run terrorist orgs in other countries. They’re more of like a, just like an illegitimate state. It’s the same with like Cuba, right? Like. Cuba is not our friend, but they’re not constantly doing terrorist attacks on us. Right. They’re, they’re,

Simone Collins: well, didn’t you say that they are kind of where a lot of Antifa groups

Malcolm Collins: are trained.

Trained or something. Yeah. A lot of is trained in Cuba like the Antifa leadership, so, well, Antifa is bad, but it’s not like Hezbollah or Hamas to compare.

Simone Collins: Sure, yeah. I mean, I, what to a large extent, I think that maybe the way that much of Israel’s leadership views the current conflict in Iran and their participation in it is it’s just an extension of October [00:50:00] 7th, where essentially Iran attacked them because they bankrolled the entire thing.

I mean, it would not have been possible without them.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And

Simone Collins: I, and I think it’s important, and the entire message was, we’re going to keep doing this until you don’t exist anymore. And so they’re like, okay. Existential challenge. Understood. They’ve basically neutralized Palestine and so now they’re moving on to the source of the problem, which is Iran.

And if once they have Iran handled, like once Iran can no longer bankroll they’re continued existential threat, they’ll be happy, but they’re not gonna, I wanna point

Malcolm Collins: out and elevate something Simone is saying here, because a lot of conservatives who are pro-war are often a little cued on this point where they think that Israel and us have the same aims in this war, and we very much do not have the same goals in this war.

To Simone’s point for Israel their goal is to economically [00:51:00] destroy Iran. They want to if they could, they would bomb the South Pars oil field. If they could. They would bomb you know, Iran’s oil fields they would bomb car island. They would make it so that Iran could never economically recover because they just want Iran gone at in the most durable way that Iran can be gone as a threat.

Whereas the United States, our goal is to just do as much damage to their military as possible and defang them in regards to nuclear capabilities. And outside of that we don’t really care that much. Trump mentioned regime change early on, but, you know, he mentioned a lot of things, right? I, I don’t, I don’t know if that’s realistic.

Okay, so now what I want to do, well, I’ll, I’ll do it when Simone can rejoin the conversation.

Why it’s important to understand what I was saying about Iran and other sort of non-state [00:52:00] terrorist forces that are constantly running attacks on the west more on Israel than the West. But they constantly are funding terrorist attacks that we see in European countries in the United States our groups led to them are

Speaker 14: And I think people don’t realize how common these are because the news doesn’t report them because it tries to cover up anything that could make you Islamophobic or whatever. But just to give you an idea of just. 2026. Just this year, just these last couple months, there was an attack in Lech Belgium where an improvised explosive device was detonated.

There was an attack in Rotterdam, Netherlands. , There was an attack in Amsterdam, Netherlands on a school there was an attack in Amsterdam, Netherlands. At a commercial center, there was an attack in London, the UK where a number of ambulances were blown up. , There were attacks in Austin, Texas where a shooter opened fire outside a bar killing three and injuring [00:53:00] 14.

, And he wore a T-shirt that said Property of Allah. , There was, , an attack in Michigan where, . They rammed a truck into a daycare, , at, at a, at a synagogue. I don’t know if that makes you not care about it, but yes. , This, this happens all the time. All the time. Okay. We have been consistently under attack by Iran for a long time at this point, but if you listen to mainstream news, you would be unaware of it because of many of these attacks, incompetence.

Malcolm Collins: is I ran.

Is an active aggressor. Like up until this war started with us, Iran saw itself as at war with us and perpetually at war with us. We just weren’t fighting back yet. What this war is, is us finally fighting back to a war that they had actively been operating, but we had been [00:54:00] neutralizing. You can almost sort of think of it like Israel sitting there constantly zapping the missiles being sent at them and saying, well, we’re not at war because the missiles aren’t landing very often.

And that’s what it was, was terrorist attacks on the United States and Iran is, we were at war. We were just zapping most of the terrorist plots like the two assassination attempts on Trump before they ended up in anything meaningful. But you can’t just sit there forever while missiles are being lobbed at you.

And that’s what was functionally happening in the United States with I. So, a finally, and I think we can really wrap up Tucker’s world perspective and something that happened with Alexander Dugan interview that he had in 2024. This was Dugan when talking about Putin. So this is like a pro Putin guy. He goes, putin is a traditional leader who contradicts a global progressive agenda.

Mm-hmm. Given someone with nuclear weapons is standing strong, defending traditional values that you’re going to abolish, I think they have some basis for this Russia phobia [00:55:00] and the hatred of Putin. To which Tucker agreed saying what you’re describing is clearly what’s happening and it’s horrifying.

So essentially what has happened to Tucker because of the circles that he’s around. He has become incapable of distinguishing between Western values and urban monoculture values, and therefore is taking the position of things like Sharia law or Russia against American interests and against Western interests.

Because he can’t see how that’s different from, as he would call it, global homo. And when you understand that, you can understand why he acts so traitorous because in his mind, the west is the enemy because the west is global. Homo, there is not a, a oppressive urban monoculture trying to stamp out true traditional Western values.

The two things are one and the same. [00:56:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay. He just, so he, he’s lost the nuance of it.

Malcolm Collins: Yes.

Simone Collins: And he, yeah. And I guess he’s also. I don’t wanna say fallen for, but, and I, I’m not also gonna say that Russia’s choice to position itself as the country of traditional values is illegitimate or fake in some way, but it is manufactured.

That doesn’t mean that it’s, it’s fake because that, you know, saying I’m committed to this, is saying I’m committed to this and I respect that. Like that, that’s them saying, these are our values, we’re gonna support them as a government. And they’re standing behind them with a whole bunch of like, media regulations and education things and and whatnot.

But it’s still propaganda. I’m not against propaganda, but it’s still propaganda and he doesn’t seem to recognize that and the role that it’s playing. So.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I also think that, that the whole gay thing really has not that much to do with how good of an ally you are against the urban [00:57:00] monoculture.

The entire gay culture talking point has been largely dropped by the new Right coalition. Like, it, it, it’s not an important hill to die on when you’re trying to protect your culture. And by conceding that point, you can get a lot of useful allies which is why the Trump administration, obviously the famous article of

Trump’s big gay White House about how it is hugely, disproportionately gay and it is disproportionately gay, just like objectively that we have a weekend episode on due to recording issues that happened that day.

If you wanna be a paid subscriber, if you wanna watch it but the point is, is, gays have been a useful part of the new Right coalition. Like it’s a weird boomer talking point, like, Venezuela’s better because they’re anti-gay. There’s a lot of things I care about before I care about anything having to do with gays.

Right. Like what? Yeah.

Simone Collins: That, that is genuinely bizarre. That, that was my first time hearing that Venezuela had rules against

Malcolm Collins: gay marriage. Yeah. People are like, you know, in, in, in Russia, like [00:58:00] being gay is a, a crime and you can’t even promote gay interests. And I’m like, I don’t care. Like what? There are so many bigger fish to fry in the culture war then gay.

Like what? I mean it’s like, what are you doing? Are you fighting like a 1990s style culture war here? And it’s like, oh, he literally is fighting 1990s culture war and he doesn’t understand that the field has changed. Next I wanna go to Fuentes because Fuentes has had some stuff recently that I think has better delineated his real position, and I’ll be tight on this.

He, he has said, I want Iran to win in the United States to lose. Iran is fighting for America more than the America is fighting for itself right now. And Iran is fighting our war, actually. And the only reason Israel isn’t dropping bombs on you is because it’s not your turn yet. To Trump. He said, you are a demonic force.

You are a liar. You are diabolical, you’re a traitor. Now, I note before this election, Trump said multiple times he planned to bomb Iran.

Speaker 16: As [00:59:00] you know, there have been two assassination attempts on my life that we know of possibly do Iran, but we’ve been threatened very directly by Iran, and I think you have to let ‘em know that you do any attacks on former presidents or candidates for president.

Uh, your country gets blown to Smither Eames, as we say.

Malcolm Collins: This is not like a, you weren’t paying attention if you are surprised by this. In fact, he has said that we should bomb Clark Island. As far back as the 1980s Trump said that we should bomb car island.

So he is been thinking about this for a long time. He said this in both of his elections actually, that he wanted to bomb Iran. So it was actually weird that he didn’t bomb Iran the first time. So it’d be like, Trump’s a liar. It’s like, no. He then goes, this is a war of aggression for Israel. But Iran did the October 11th, like what are you talking about?

Right? Like those [01:00:00] were Iran funded non-state actors. Americas will die. Yeah. First of all. So it’s not a war of aggression for Israel, but two, it’s a useful war for the United States. As I’ve said, Iran has been at war with us. They have had no concern. Like one of the interesting things about this war is we haven’t seen, people are like, why haven’t we seen like a bunch of attacks on like American infrastructure around the world after this war started, given the number of non-state actors that I ran been funding?

And the answer is this. Because they were already trying as hard as they could before this. We, we have been an open target. We have just been neutralizing them up until this point. The difference with this war is now we’re fighting back and to frame things in another way. We’ll get to why he does that, because I’m finally beginning to understand, trump’s Iran war is shaping up to be a total catastrophe, by the way. Not true. It’s going quite well not to mention a fundamental betrayal of his movements, principles, and voters.

Israel first means America last. So what you’re really seeing here, like [01:01:00] the more I think about it and I’m trying to understand his perspective, he. Is above all else in his world perspective, anti-Israel and anti Jew that determines every other position he has. And he is fundamentally, totally okay with throwing Americans under the bus, American interests, under the bus, unborn, children under the bus the conservative party under the bus literally anything under the bus if it goes against the interests of Israel.

And this is how he feels unlike all of his key issues. The other group who he really hates are Indian Americans. And this is why despite JD Vance presumably being like his ideal like Catholic presidential candidate, right? But JD Vance is in an interracial marriage. So JD Vance is like a demon in his mind, right?

Mm-hmm. That doesn’t make sense. Has

Simone Collins: he said anything explicitly about his marriage with Usha?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, [01:02:00] yeah. He talks about Usha quite frequently as being like a core proof that JD Vance is not a real, you know, conservative team player. Oh my God. And the fact that he would pay on something otherwise is presumably so ideologically aligned with him.

Even on the American first stuff, if people don’t know, like the rumblings in the White House is JD Vance is quite against the Iranian campaign. And the Iranian campaign is seen as like a victory for the Rubio faction of, of the White House. And, and people have tried to get like JD to come out publicly and say this because these are all the rumors that he’s been grumbling about this.

And first like people are like, do you have a problem with that? Like, no, people should disagree with in an institution, but two, the point I’m making is JD Vance should be Nick Fuentes greatest ally. Right. And what I’ve realized. Nick Fuentes hates his enemies much more, or his perceived enemies much more than he likes his allies or even himself.

And he is willing, and this [01:03:00] shows fundamentally why he hasn’t gotten married, even though it’d be trivially easy for him to get married, why he hasn’t had kids, why he hasn’t. While he does see himself as like a white Catholic besieged by outsiders who needs to protect this white Catholic way of living and expand this white Catholic way of living, he will always and everywhere spend more time and energy and more time and energy among his base and followers attempting to sabotage and tear down the groups he sees as not perfectly aligned with his interests than actually promoting the interest of his own group.

Simone Collins: Well, he also gains a lot more from having flame war with people then.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, I mean, it’s easier to you know, complain about, you know, Usha and Vance having interracial kids while not having any white kids of your own. Right. Like it actually is hard to make a relationship work and to have kids and raise [01:04:00] that next generation.

Simone Collins: Well, no, I’m surprised that you think it would be easy for him to find a partner when he spends so much time streaming that it would be pretty difficult for Oh, no, because he

Malcolm Collins: has a pool of people who want to be his partner. There are

Simone Collins: like, yeah, but he’s stated very explicitly that he does not want a wife who like knows, like he really wants an offline.

Why. Right. So, and they’re out there, but you have to be offline to find them. So he’s, there have been of

Malcolm Collins: my life where I tried to come up with excuses for why I wasn’t dating during that stage of my life. And like the, well, there’s no pretty girls at my school. He is defining a woman who definitionally wouldn’t like him.

A woman who wants to be offline and live a private life is not a woman who wants to marry Nick Fuentes. Right. You have

Simone Collins: to. I disagree because, no, there’s this world in which he finds this very offline traditional Catholic girl who wants to, you know, find a respectable husband who she personally just gets along with who has his job and makes his money.

And she basically doesn’t have [01:05:00] any interest in him intellectually or in his work Intellectually. Yeah. She just does the work and has the kids and raises the kids and homeschools the kids with a good Catholic homeschool system. And there are lots of women out there in the offline.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, Simone, hold on.

Really? You actually think if Nick Fuentes wanted that he couldn’t get, that he could already show, he would’ve to

Simone Collins: invest a lot of time in it at the expense of his

Malcolm Collins: stream time? No, this is how he does it. At the end of every stream, he asks his audience, who presumably has sisters, daughters, people at their church who would be very happy to take a chance on a famous dreamer and say, Hey, do any of you know a girl who fits this profile?

If you do, put her in touch with me. If you do, put her in touch with me. Okay.

Simone Collins: Fair point, fair

Malcolm Collins: point.

Simone Collins: Offline, who doesn’t know who I am?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, because he doesn’t wanna do someone, even if he wanted this per, basically, the reason he says that is not [01:06:00] because that’s what he actually wants in a wife, but he is using that to try to create a category of woman that he will never interact with.

So he doesn’t need to explain why he doesn’t actually have a wife. And as he’s pointed out, even himself, when grippers get married, they leave the movement. He’s created a movement that people don’t want to, that’s like not able to self sustain or intergenerationally stay sustain itself because it’s not a movement about actually winning.

It’s a movement about perpetually fighting and in a movement about perpetually fighting. Your enemies matter more, and your enemies losing and stumbling matter more than your allies winning. And that’s why he’s willing to perpetually throw America under the bus so long as it might hurt the Jews. That’s why he’s willing to throw potentially unborn babies under the bus so long as it prevents JD Vance from winning the presidency because he’s in an interracial marriage, or Trump from winning a presidency because Trump picked JD Vance, someone who was in an interracial marriage as a vp, right?

Like mm-hmm. That [01:07:00] is the extent to which he’s willing to self-sabotage because the fight is the point. And that’s what he wakes up every day to do, to fight these enemies, not to advance the interest of his allies. And I really think, think that there are. Few, like worse allies you can have than somebody who would do that because that makes them incredibly dangerous.

Especially when to win in the long run. You’re going to need to ally with the Jews because they are the only high fertility technologically advanced civilization on earth right now. And when the urban monoculture dies you do not want to be on their bad side. They have the ability for power projection E even just from like a self preservation perspective

Simone Collins: oh yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Much less from a power projection perspective, which is what they help the United States do right now. In, in, in situations like Iran. You know, they, they’re actually fighting alongside us who is not Europe, even though Europe is facing terrorist attacks by [01:08:00] groups funded from Iran all the time.

But do, do they? No. Anyway this is. Really helped me understand these groups better and the psychology of these groups better. It’s like a, a, a, a hatred crack. Like you do the thing that feels good, even though, you know, like taking the meth or whatever. It feels good. That’s what the growers are doing.

Mm-hmm. Even though they don’t have kids, they don’t have partners and they’re not really part of the civilizational game and they’ll die out at the same rate. The urban monoculture will die out. They’re not really relevant. And I’ve pointed this out, most of the people in this, this faction, other than Tucker Carlson, who’s like a boomer, indifferent do not have large families, like very few groupers have large families.

This is not an intergenerationally. And the other culture warriors who like get all racist about it, like Anne Coter, she doesn’t have a family. She doesn’t have a husband. She could get married at any time. She’s an attractive woman. Like they care more about. Who they’re fighting against, then their side actually winning.

And so they’re not really relevant. Like you can [01:09:00] partner with them to get votes, but be aware that like if you have these people in your life, they will lead you to toxicity and failing out too. So it’s, I I think useful to not over chew this particular cut. The final point I wanted to make, which was really apparent for me, is only Irene War.

Sometimes I have this view as like, are we being stupid here? Like, because I do hear some loud voices like complaining against it, but then I look at all the other stuff that, the loud voices against it, like Nick and Tucker and Candace Owens are saying, and I’m like, oh, like everything else they’re saying seems pretty crazy.

And then I look at the people who are pro at like Asma Gold or Noor, and I’m like, I pretty much agree with 99% of the stuff they say, like, and they seem to be arguing in much better faith. So I’m pretty sure like, I don’t, I don’t see many sane thinkers out there who are against this is what I’d say.

Simone Collins: Anyway. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Good to chat about this. Simone. I don’t know if this changed your perspective on anything

Simone Collins: you did bring to the, the biggest [01:10:00] differing opinion I have is that Tucker Carlson is taking the approach he’s taking largely because he’s a very agreeable person and empathetic to the people to whom he’s exposed.

And this by the way, is not something that’s unique to him. It even, I think, and this isn’t, I think even admitted by people in the Trump administration, Trump seems to also often be very colored by his most recent conversation with people. Yeah. And you know, like really excited about whatever he was just talking about.

‘Cause he’s a very, like, now oriented, what can I do now, kind of person, and maybe this is more of a boomer thing. So he and Trump may have that in common. But this, because of the nature of his work has led Tucker Carlson by speaking, as you point out with, with primarily. Elites in the US who are bearish on the United States culture, and then elites in other countries who are very bullish on their culture, it’s going to lead him to have this very negative toward the US positive [01:11:00] toward often foreign, an adversary’s attitude.

So that explains a lot. And of course also the nature of his work whereby controversy drives cliques, is going to lead him to talk more with adversaries, to be like, well, let’s hear them out. Let’s see what they have to say. And then he goes and talks to them and is like, oh, wow. Well, they say that their culture is really great and they seem like really nice people.

And so I think their culture is great. And then he know, he goes and has some dinner with elites in New York on his connecting flight back to his small cabin in Maine. Yeah. And they’re all like, oh, the US is horrible. Everything’s terrible. A war in Iran is awful. And he’s like, oh, wow. Yeah. I mean, they’re totally right and we get a great dinner and I, so then, you know, the US is horrible.

And so that’s, that’s what’s going on and it’s all very innocent and it’s, it’s a result of. The nature of his work. Misaligned incentives and, and exposure plus agreeableness and, and a kind of boomer attitude. So, okay. Everything, yeah. This, this, this helps me model better and I appreciate that.

Malcolm Collins: I appreciate you.

I love you. And if you guys wanna check out ai role play or adventure scenarios, that’s all working really well on our [01:12:00] fab these days. Mm-hmm. And we’re working on getting the agent feature up and running

Simone Collins: a lot fun. And in good old fashioned American style. You’re having steak and bread rolls tonight, so enjoy.

I am so

Malcolm Collins: excited.

Simone Collins: Good. I’m glad. I’ll send you a link very shortly ‘cause I didn’t make one yet. One moment.

Speaker 5: I had almost talked myself into believing that he’s actually a good actor. He’s just old and confused. But when I remembered the instance of him saying that Iran surrendering would mean that the US troops would have to get to, I don’t know, whatever, grape, their daughters and women. , And that, that’s what unconditional surrender always means.

Like, ‘cause that’s what we did in Japan, of course. And Germany of course. . That, that’s just like a crazy thing. That’s something you would only say. I mean, he, he’s trying to emphasize what is severe term that is for Trump to be asking. And it is, I think it’s a mistake to ask for unconditional surrender.

, But Trump’s not really [01:13:00] asking for unconditional surrender if you’re actually paying attention to things. This is just, , one negotiating tactic. So, , I. , I framed this as charitably as I possibly could. He is. Why is he saying this? He is, , he, he doesn’t, , he doesn’t want a, a Shari, a Sharia law country.

Toppled, I guess. , And he’s upset that, I mean, it’s, it’s obvious that we don’t have, like huge numbers of Americans’ lives at risk because of this. So I can’t say he’s doing it for that. , It’s probably not about the economy. , I think, I think it’s about, , like, . He’s, he’s in a circle where hating on the war seems normalized to him, and so any argument he can make, even if it’s obviously fallacious, is okay to make.

That’s my best guess on this. I.

Simone Collins: They, they have a built-in ring light.

Malcolm Collins: The new

Simone Collins: MacBook, like the border of my [01:14:00] screen Yeah. Is like a, the border of my screen is just a bright white border to make a ring light effect, which is kind of an interesting trick. I like It is interesting. I mean, I don’t see the effect, I don’t, I don’t know how effective it actually is, but it’s, it’s not bad positioning for a ring light if you’re gonna have one.

And I, the problem is I don’t how to turn it off, so I have to like move, show notes around to make it not weird. Still cool. So whatever,

Malcolm Collins: any comments from the show today?

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Some, some fun exorcism stories just of like this and that, you know, one person talking about how and this was an Anglican.

Preacher going in to give an old lady, in this case an exorcism. ‘Cause she felt like stuff was weird around her house. And then six months later she asked for another one and like, she kept asking for more exorcisms. And he’s like, well, there’s clearly something [01:15:00] wrong here. Like, what’s the recurring problem?

So he started asking her about like who’s coming and going and what they’re leaving there. And it turned out her daughter was like kind of a Wiccan, spiritualist Crystals kind of person. And we all know Crystals people. And she kept going to the house and being like, oh, the energy’s wrong. I’m gonna leave Crystals everywhere.

And then, and then the issues would come back with this lady. And so the priest was like, okay, stop letting your daughter leave crystals here. Her wicked nonsense as not welcome in your household. And that did the trick. So. People also applauded your your, your pronunciation of Monor. And I love, so my, I feel so alone when you mispronounce things and I chuckle to myself and I wanna have a conspiratorial glance with someone, and it’s such a waste that I can’t, and now that we have this podcast, I can, because I just go to the comments and people are [01:16:00] also chuckling, and then I get to have an asynchronous conspiratorial glance and like wink with them.

And it’s so great. Like, I, it’s not wasted. I just feel like your mispronunciations and the way that you just mutilate other languages is, is this beautiful

Malcolm Collins: Without care, I just don’t care either. I’m not like trying to get it right or something. I get annoyed when people are like, oh, you, you say it this way.

And I’m like, I don’t care. It’s not an American word.

Simone Collins: Well, but yeah, then we, then we discovered that, like when we watched the new season of King of the Hill, that that’s basically just a text and culture thing. And a running joke in King of the Hill because Frank Hill mispronounces foreign words all the time in the same way that Malcolm does.

So it’s, it’s your culture, it’s your heritage, yes. To to, to mince

Malcolm Collins: my heritage.

Simone Collins: Foreign words. Yes,

Malcolm Collins: that’s right.

Speaker 20: Okay. What are you doing? You telling scary stories? Yeah, and, and, and I don’t, when I said [01:17:00] before was once upon a time, dad picked up a car and landed on the ground his car. Like a big car? Yeah. Like this car. Wouldn’t that have been too heavy?

Speaker 21: I was, I was thinking it like, this is dad super strong? Is that how I did it? Yeah. Once upon a time, a ghost slam Dad in the head. Why is that your idea of a scary story? Once a upon time, a ghost slammed dad at his house laws and everything.

Are Catholic exorcisms making a comeback? Demand for exorcisms is surging, with the number of U.S. exorcists growing from ~12-24 to about 150 in recent years — yet priests say they’re still overwhelmed.

In this episode, we dive into recent reports on the rise in exorcism requests, linked to occultism, esotericism, and satanism concerns raised even at the Vatican. Despite our strong anti-Vatican and anti-mysticism stance, we make the case that structured Catholic exorcisms are surprisingly effective — and often superior to modern psychology for certain issues.

We contrast safe, regulated Catholic practices with riskier charismatic/Pentecostal approaches (which have led to tragic outcomes). Plus: the surprising power of ritual, placebo without deception, how big “before-and-after” events rewire self-perception, and why evidence-based rituals like exorcisms can deliver durable mental resets.

We also discuss minor vs. major exorcisms, house blessings, our kids’ convergent “basilisk exorcisms,” and why believing you’ve been “cured” can outperform many clinical interventions.

Timestamps below. If you’ve ever wondered whether dramatic rituals can hack psychology better than therapy — this one’s for you.

Make exorcisms big again? Let us know your thoughts.

Subscribe for more unfiltered conversations on culture, evidence-based living, and techno-Puritanism.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we’re going to be talking about the phenomenon of the surge in exorcisms that have been happening with articles like Demand for Catholic Exorcism Reportedly on the Rise.

So we’ll go over a couple articles that talk about this recent surge in exorcisms, and then we will go over why Exorcisms are, and people know on this show we’re generally seen as having a, and I I think it’s important to cite your bias as a pretty anti-Catholic bias. But Catholic Exorcisms specifically are demonstrably a good thing.

They, they should hold

Simone Collins: on. No, we actually love Catholics. We have a bias against C, the Catholic Church and

Malcolm Collins: Vatican.

Simone Collins: Catholicism.

Malcolm Collins: The V, the Vatican. Yeah. Yes.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: We’re anti Vatican channel. Yes,

Simone Collins: yes.

Malcolm Collins: But, but this is one thing the Vatican does very well.

Simone Collins: Yeah, we, we are weirdly, despite being very anti mysticism as well.

We’re weirdly like, yeah, exorcism’s great. This is,

Malcolm Collins: I think a lot of people would be surprised. I don’t [00:01:00] because they know that we’re very anti Vatican and we’re very anti, we’re anti mysticism. Many people would even call our form of Christianity secular in its nature. So they would be surprised that we would be like, Hey, that thing that, like even Catholics get kind of embarrassed about the whole normalization

Simone Collins: of Yeah, you don’t hear them talk about it a lot.

Malcolm Collins: Exorcisms. And I’m like, no, that’s really good. Like,

Simone Collins: well, because we believe in evidence-based interventions and guess what? Placebo works

Malcolm Collins: well. Yeah. Which is what I’m gonna go into. If you’re like, well, I’ve heard all these horror stories about exorcisms, where people died and where children were abused and none of those were carried out.

By Catholics, they were all carried out by Pentecostals.

Simone Collins: Oh, see, I told you Pentecostals,

Malcolm Collins: that’s

Simone Collins: who you gotta watch out

Malcolm Collins: for. It was charismatic Pentecostals too. They’re they’re bad kind. Yeah,

Simone Collins: they’re, they are witches. Just Pentecostal equals witch. I don’t know what to tell you, Malcolm,

Malcolm Collins: that that episode went live on our private, where we point out that many of the practices in Charismatic Pentecostal [00:02:00] Christianity do not come from Christianity.

But they were actually borrowed from AOC cultist in Theosophists of the 19 witchcraft twenties

Simone Collins: witchcraft.

Malcolm Collins: They, they literally just took witchcraft in, integrated it into Christianity. But I didn’t want to be too spicy with that one. So we, we shelved that episode.

Simone Collins: Yeah. You were like, personally, I, I know why you were willing to go so hard on Catholics and you’re not willing to go hard on Pentecostal Pentecostals.

Malcolm Collins: At least the Protestants. Anyway, anyway, I’ll, I’ll keep going here. I love your, your, it, it’s, it’s actually about voting. So if we were able to run for president, the Pentecostal vote is in a very important vote.

Simone Collins: I don’t know. I feel like the, the Pentecostals are fractured enough because they’re also, they’re much more likely to be following individual charismatic preachers to be like, yeah, all the other Pentecostals are witches. We’re just not. And so they’re all gonna be like, yeah, Pentecostals very tic. My guy actually

Malcolm Collins: vets everything he does.

Simone Collins: No, my guy, yeah, my guy, they’re not [00:03:00] ma his magical spells are only from God, from Jesus, but everyone elses magical spells and there are speaking in tongues that is all satanic.

And it’s, I dunno about that. It’s not with I speak in tongues, it’s just not, it’s fine.

Malcolm Collins: Alright. All right. So, to go into this according to the Baltimore sun, requests for exorcisms are increasing and priests performing the ritual are in greater demand than ever with a number of exorcists in the United States growing from about a dozen, 15 years ago to approximately 150 today.

So

Simone Collins: that is insane to me because I thought they were, this still is very. When I was in college, remember I had that really embarrassing crush on the Catholic, who then became a priest. Yeah. And there were, there were on two occasions. He was like, oh yeah, like, I’m gonna go to an exorcism today. That, I think that happened at least twice.

So I thought they were like way more common if, like, within one college campus.

Malcolm Collins: Did he wanted to like go recreationally watch exercises.

Simone Collins: He was, no, I think he was gonna help the priest, you know, like to be the assistant ex exerciser, I don’t know what the words are here, but like you, I [00:04:00] think he was gonna help the priest.

Exercise the demon. And

Malcolm Collins: I was, was like, but you know, was at the Vatican, so he was like on fast track to he

Simone Collins: well, ‘cause he’s the best. Well no, the last time I saw him was at the Vatican, but I, I think he came back too. Like now he’s in the

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, he was on fast track to like church stuff anyway.

Simone Collins: No, he’s, well, yeah, no, but like he’s, I mean, I would want him ‘cause he, he like really knew his Catholic stuff. But like. I wouldn’t want him at an exorcism, but

Malcolm Collins: he’s actually a great example of how Catholicism can lower, like why they have a lower birth rate than other iterations of Christianity.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Because you would’ve wanted to marry him and likely would’ve converted to his religion and had lots of kids with him, but instead he wanted to become a priest.

Simone Collins: Yeah. For the backstory, just so I, I relive the most embarrassing parts of my life on this podcast ‘cause you also won’t delete my old videos on this channel.

When I was in college, there was this guy in my honors class on the divine comedy that had like a Jew and a, and a and a [00:05:00] pagan, wicked goth girl and me, the like raised Buddhist liberal and then some like Protestants in it. Talking about Dante’s divine comedy, which is of course very Catholic in its inspiration as hate fan fiction.

And. Then he was the one Catholic. So I, I became very I, I’m like, I’m attracted to passion and intelligence and he had a lot of it for Catholicism. So then I got this big crush on him ‘cause he also looked kind of like Matt Damon, not retarded.

Malcolm Collins: Dude,

Simone Collins: like, like real Matt Damon, like good. And so I was like, okay.

Like I, I, I’m like, I have a huge crush on you. And so I would I worked at a cupcake shop at the time. I worked closing shifts. So I would get all these free, very expensive cupcakes at the end of the day, and I’d walk home with these heavy bags until my fingers bled. And I would, he was an RA in his dorm, and I’d be like, oh, well I’m gonna deliver cupcakes for your, the students in your dorm.

And then while there, you know, I’d show up in his room with all the cupcakes and I’d be like, oh, I have this [00:06:00] question. I just, can you explain to me why gays go to hell? And then like, he’d sit down and like, talk to me about like the hardest things about

Malcolm Collins: over and over again. You asked him about Catholic doctrine because he found that that was the one thing that he’d get really nerdy about.

Simone Collins: It would allow me to stay in his room longer. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Oh

God.

Malcolm Collins: And then one day he’s like, Simone, like, like, these, these meetings with you have really moved me and helped me decide my direction in life and I’m gonna join the priesthood. That is the worst.

Simone Collins: This is how good my game is

Malcolm Collins: ever.

Simone Collins: But yeah, no, this is, this is maybe, maybe part of the reason why, it’s not best,

Malcolm Collins: but, but think about this in another context. If he had been in another denomination, he would’ve gotten married to you to keep talking about that stuff. And,

Simone Collins: well, and what’s what’s interesting actually is I don’t know how I came across it. Maybe it was like one of his other assignments or something that I reviewed in the class or something, but maybe it was a poem or an essay about him trying to figure out his vocation in life.

Like should he choose like, the sacrament of becoming a [00:07:00] priest or should he choose like the sacrament of, of having, or maybe that was how he explained it in his letter to me where he told me he was gonna become a priest or something. But like, he, he really, and he’d like, he’d, he broken up with a girlfriend at one point earlier.

Like he, he, I think he was really thinking hard about it in college and then he just, he aired in favor of, instead of choosing to marry, choosing the priesthood. And that’s, yeah, I mean, yeah, if he were in another religion, he could have done both and been amazing at it. And it’s, it is it’s, it’s gonna be a difficult.

Thing, I think for the Catholic church. ‘cause he wasn’t so far as I could tell. I mean, maybe he was gay, right? Like it could be that he just wasn’t really attracted to his girlfriend and was like, do I wanna have sort of a loveless marriage with children? Or do I wanna become a priest? So that, I mean that I, I feel like that was, that’s really where the, the, the Catholic priesthood makes a lot of sense is like, if you’re just really, like, you’re really kind of gritting your teeth about it.

Here’s an out. I think that’s fair. But yeah, I still, I’m [00:08:00] disappointed when I think about all the people who could have amazing kids and be amazing priests, but

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I’m, I’m glad because then I get to marry you. Right. You know.

Simone Collins: No, it’s true. I know. I’m, I’m so, I’m Oh, you and I are so, but, so perfect for each other

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

To continue here.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: No. About us being like really well matched. I’m saying I do. Sometimes I watch the podcast with the volume off and I think how well we get along comes across even better when it’s on silent and you’re like, oh, they, they actually do seem to like each other. Who. Monsignor Steven Rosetti, a Washington DC based priest and licensed psychologist told the son, we’re getting more and more people needing an exorcism.

There are only about 150 exorcists in the country and they are being flooded with requests, including many from desperate people pleading for assistance. We can’t keep up with the demand now, and it’s only going to get worse.

Simone Collins: Surely the, the, the Catholic Church or Vatican has the ability to like ramp up.

Its, its exorcism training programs.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and oh, the [00:09:00] church first always. So you’re aware they screen the person to see if it’s a mental illness.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: More than 99% of those claiming possessions are actually experiencing a mental illness That makes sense. And they’re referred to mental health providers by the church.

I think they shouldn’t be so strict about that. And we’ll get into why in just a second. But first what I wanna go into is what happens in these exorcisms,

Simone Collins: okay.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, oh, there’s another fun article here, I guess. ‘

Simone Collins: cause all we know is, is is what we see in the movie The Exorcist, which I guess is not, is it?

Is it

Malcolm Collins: not?

So Pope Leo the 14th host Exorcist at the Vatican se in satanism cases, raises concern for vulnerable believers. So Vatican and Exorcist warns of rising occult threats, urging train clergy to safeguard vulnerable, faithful worldwide.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: In a private audience. On March 13th, the Pope perceived representative, blah, blah, blah, [00:10:00] signaling renewed attention to what the church officials have described as a growing spiritual crisis.

The delegation presented a detailed report highlighting an increase in the numbers linked to occultism, esotericism, and satanism warning that many individuals are suffering serious spiritual consequences. As a result. The private meeting details of which were shared by Ian, EWTN Vatican, centered on the rising demand for trained exorcist and the church’s preparedness to respond.

So. Basically even at this 150 number now, they now feel that we don’t have enough and we need more. And the

Simone Collins: 150 is so few.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But it used to only be two dozen.

Simone Collins: I know, but imagine like three per state in the United States. That’s, that, that is vanishingly unusual.

Malcolm Collins: Well, how many times do you need an exorcism in your life, Simone?

It’s not

Simone Collins: like a psychologist dude. I mean, we

Malcolm Collins: actually fix the problem.

Simone Collins: No, no. Here’s the thing here. No, here’s the thing is that our kids convergently evolved [00:11:00] exorcisms just on their own,

Malcolm Collins: which we’ll talk about their

Simone Collins: own. Yeah. Yeah. And so I, I know that people intuitively want them, and that’s why I’m shocked that they’re not being asked for more.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, what is interesting here is the Catholic church itself here is saying that many of these exorcisms are downstream of people engaging with esoterism. Oh. Which again, goes to what we talk about mysticism is the enemy. And engaging with it puts you in a dangerous position, not just from a theological perspective, but from a secular perspective.

Simone Collins: Right?

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Because it opens you up to believing that your subjective experiences when they are not in concordance with reality, supersede reality. Right. And that can lead to many forms of dangerous and disordered thinking, and therefore it is of utility to purge this from the way you perceive reality.

Yes. But could it lead to disordered mental states, even in a secular context? It could require an exorcism [00:12:00] to Correct. And would an exorcism Correct. And we will get to that in a second, but Yes. Mm-hmm.

Right.

Okay, so, what does an exorcism actually look like in practice? The minor simple exorcism, so this is something I did not know of.

These are common non solemn prayers used to break general demonic influence or oppression. They appear at the rites of baptism for adults and children, and it increased or even length. People in limited forms can use related prayers from the appendix of the original. Ritual book. These are not dramatic rituals, but prayers invoking god’s protection, often involving the sign of the cross holy water or simple indications.

Lay Catholics can pray similar deliverance prayers privately for themselves or others, but not in an official capacity. So they, in types of very devout Catholics, they are doing exorcisms all the time.

Simone Collins: Yeah, [00:13:00] they’re, they’re over the counter exorcisms. So you, you kind of have these layers of, there’s over the counter exorcisms and there’s probably like kind of prescription exorcisms, like at baptisms where like a priest is doing it and then you have like.

Inpatient exorcisms where like the priest is coming your house, like

Malcolm Collins: have exorcisms.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: These exorcisms, if you want to get a feel for what they’re like they remind me of like, you know, you have like a vampire hunter movie or whatever, and like, you know, they walk into a house and they like chant some little thing or they put holy at the door.

They, you know.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They’re just all parts of their little day have little Yeah. Rituals tied to them that come from books of approved rituals.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I wonder if crossing yourself, remember how in Peru, which is very Catholic, if you were in an Uber or something, at least half the drivers would cross themselves whenever they were at stoplight.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And

Simone Collins: when we took off on planes, people would cross themselves and I’d be like, oh God. Like, before I knew it was a normal thing. I was like, what is wrong with this plane? Does everyone think they’re gonna die? It’s happening.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, [00:14:00] culturally and was in our religion, we take a very anti, anti-real perspective because rituals do waste time, but rituals have many positive psychological effects.

Absolutely. And so. If you are somebody who is biologically predispositioned to get into rituals, we are just not as we pointed out, religions and practices co-evolve with populations that practice them. Although for people who point out that Simone is ex percent Jewish and therefore Jewish, she’s equally Catholic to Jewish.

She has a, a Catholic grandparent too. So, you know,

Simone Collins: my dad was an altar boy. Yeah. He

Malcolm Collins: and you’re much more into rituals than I am.

Simone Collins: I, I am.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, you are. You, you actually do not mind like church music and stuff like that.

Simone Collins: Oh no. I love a good Catholic mass. You kidding me?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I find them intolerable. It’s like a graduation ceremony or a,

Simone Collins: i, oh, I hate graduation ceremonies, but

Malcolm Collins: ceremony or something like that where you’re just like, [00:15:00] oh my God, I don’t wanna.

I’d, I’d rather sit through like actually the Oscars in person.

Simone Collins: Ah. I mean, so one sitting through the o Oscars in person. Wouldn’t that be interesting?

Malcolm Collins: Just, that’s what I mean. At least, at least they’re like attempting to entertain me. No, but I think that people respond to this biologically differently. I, I, I suspect that there’s many people out there. I mean there obviously appear to be they just love mass, right?

Like they think it’s the best and they really well.

Simone Collins: And then there, there are different flavors of mass. Don’t forget that there’s all these different types. And so, you know what kind of mass

Malcolm Collins: types down, collect all your types,

Simone Collins: gotta catchem,

Malcolm Collins: Very, very collect the whole set. But actually Catholic people do seem to have a predilection to collecting things.

It is of course the, the Catholic house where you see all the different Jesus candles and all the different Jesus Jesus candles picture. Like this is a thing for like, especially Hispanic [00:16:00] Catholics. I, from where I grew up in Texas, ‘cause you had a big immigrant population is biblically themed collectibles.

You never saw

Simone Collins: these? No, no.

Malcolm Collins: When we were in Texas, you never saw anyone was like, maybe like we didn’t take many calves, but I would say like a cab driver was like 15 candles, was like different pictures of Jesus on them or the St. Mary or

Simone Collins: that was really common in Peru for like tons of religious paraphernalia hanging from

Malcolm Collins: That’s what I’m talking about, right?

Oh,

Simone Collins: okay. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: That’s,

Simone Collins: that’s like the protection though. Like ambulance

Malcolm Collins: religiously very like the collector approach, but okay. Yeah. Pokemon it all the way. Now this contrast was major exorcisms. So what happens in a major exorcism? All right.

Simone Collins: The inpatient version, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the inpatient ver version. So these are for when somebody is suspected of having a demonic possession, where a demon is believed to be in control of the person’s body or actions.

This is in a sacramental, a sacred [00:17:00] sign, not a sacrament, like a baptism or Eucharist. And it can only be performed by an ordained priest or a bishop who received explicit permission from the local bishop. The DNE or the priest must be pious, knowledgeable and prudent, and of good character per cannon 1, 1, 7 2.

And many diocese now appoint dedicated exorcist and training them often involves apprenticeship or courses through groups like the International Association of Exorcist, recognized by the Vatican, which was the organization that I was just talking about. That’s now meeting and being like, we need more.

Exorcist.

Simone Collins: They have an organization. I, we need to guys ramp up the infrastructure guys. You have the, the capability. I’m disappointed.

Malcolm Collins: What, what they do need and they don’t have right now is special exorcism wear, like Catholics are very good at like, choosing outfits,

Simone Collins: investments. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You

Simone Collins: need, yeah, just like look at the anim watch anime and just like, take from that.

Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Yes.

Simone Collins: Have all the affiliated

Malcolm Collins: and [00:18:00] you can get away with it. ‘cause you’re like, I’m a, I’m a professional Vatican exorcist. Like, I, I Oh so hot.

Simone Collins: Oh my God. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Wear some sort of like, big hat saying, you know, like, you have to be armed, you know?

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyone who’s not aware of just the amount of artistry that goes into it like Catholic s it’s, I think it’s an Articles of Interest podcast on Catholic specimens that can really give you greater appreciation of the artistry that goes into these garments.

They are like, if it, it, it is. The true where Ru like High Fas, like now, like brands, like Chanel or whatever, like they’re not, they’re not good anymore. The only place like the last runway on earth is Catholic. SII will rest at that. Go on.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So signs of a possible possession

Simone Collins: okay.

Malcolm Collins: May include speaking unknown languages, supernatural strengths, aversion to holy things, cross holy water, sacraments, knowledge of hidden things, or a violent reaction to prayer.

The getting, getting [00:19:00] permission like the exorcist, consuls, the bishop for permission. And this can take months to be allowed, right? To go to the next step. Which is interesting because the right itself is pretty like not that big a thing. So the right itself, typically in a church chapel or private safe space, the afflicted person is often accompanied by supportive family or assistance.

They may be gently restrained if there’s a risk to themselves or others. The Exorcist wears a surplus and purple stole. It begins with prayers and preparation. The litany of saints, plasms gospel readings, EG passages about Jesus casting out demons, the Lord’s Prayer, hail, maily, and creed. This would bore the demon right out of me.

If, if, if I was pretending, I’d be like, no, I just have a visceral negative reaction to ritual and boring, like chanting and stuff like that. I’m like, Nope. Inefficient. We need to get to the point. What’s the point?

Simone Collins: Point? Are we talking to Malcolm or are we [00:20:00] talking to the demon right now?

Malcolm Collins: Right. The demon that’s controlling me.

High functioning. Possessed is what I’m right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Use of sacraments. Blessed holy water is sprinkled, recalling, baptism. Christ victory. The signal of the cross is made repeatedly. A crucifix is shown or used. The exorcist may lay hands on a person or perform ex deflation, breathing on the face to invoke the Holy Spirit.

Now note here, right? This actually isn’t that different from what happened in the movie The Exorcist, right? Like, a lot of the, I, I mean, it does look creepy, right? To do so. I, I can see why it works for movies. They then do exorcism and prayers, a mix of deregulatory prayers, supplicants, asking God to deliver the person and prepository prayers, direct commands to the demon in Christ’s name, EGI adore you or depart the demon may be asked its name.

The right can last for minutes to hours [00:21:00] and may require multiple sessions. Well, if you’re gonna spend months getting something approved, at least take a few hours. Often may require multiple sessions over days, weeks, or longer reactions, if any. Very widely. Some people show no visible signs. Other have convulsions, vomiting, or verbal outbursts.

Bursts which the church views cautiously. It ends with Thanksgiving, prayers, blessings, and advice for ongoing spiritual life. Frequent confession, Eucharist, prayer and avoiding occult practices. And then they’re, what I love is they have aftercare, like, like they’re doing BDSM or I, I, I go into how much.

Oh no. Like BDSM stuff is, was like,

oh boy. Yeah,

and hey, they, they, they also do like the if you look up the, the tools for like hurting yourself you know, you get them from like the Catholic ification buyers and then the, the BDSM buyers and the tools are often the same tools, like anything they’re using.

The BD SM people also use.

Simone Collins: If it works, it works. You know, it is a [00:22:00]

Malcolm Collins: aftercare. The person is encouraged to live a sacrament and prayerful life follow up session may occur if needed. Exorcists, emphasize that true freedom comes through Christ, not just the ritual. So. I’ll go through different exorcist types here.

So the Eastern Orthodox Church they perform exorcisms, but it’s more integrated into regular priestly ministry. Many priests can perform prayers of exorcism from books like the Great Book of Needs attributed to saints like Basil, the Great and John of Cry film. So basically in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, they have a structure for it.

Like Catholicism, there’s not as many negative outcomes from it. The problem with even particularly charismatic exorcism, although like Lutherans and Gans also per. Do exorcisms call in a form that’s called deliverance ministries, or, or prayers to cast out demons and invoking the name of Jesus anointing in oil, et cetera.

Part of the problem for these groups is they don’t have an official rule book. So many will [00:23:00] go further. Then if they were operating off of some central authority, then it ever would have a, a, a sign to them. As we’ve pointed out with Protestants, their witch hunts were dramatically bloodier than things like the Inquisition because they didn’t have any central authority reigning them in.

Or anyone, you know, in another state being like, Hey, are we acting a little crazy here? Who could say, yeah, you’re, you’ve gone a little crazy this time. You need to, you need to dial it back. You know, they never had to worry about an external authority reviewing what they did. But I wanna quickly go over some specific cases that we know about with these Vatican approved exorcisms how they turned out.

And what you’ll see is. Universally, pretty much positive results from these, like, whatever is happening to these people, this appears to be fixing it and, and durably fixing it, which is something we don’t generally see from like a psychologist visit, which is

Simone Collins: Well, and I, I think what the, the exorcisms that I might have heard about were about hauntings.

And I [00:24:00] just checked to make sure that the Catholic church does officially do house blessings and, and exorcisms for hauntings. And they do. And honestly, I feel like sometimes something just happens or you’d like watch a bad movie or whatever, and you get the creeps in your house. And now like there was a period where you just watch too many Mr.

Ballin videos and everything. Like lock and bolt all the doors. I mean, we still do anyway but like very obsessively and like be very afraid about like your closet doors being, you know, like, oh God. Like do oh, shower curtains being closed in our old apartments and stuff. You’d be like, do never leave the shower curtains closed.

Malcolm Collins: Somebody can hide in there. Yes.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But so like, sometimes you just get freaked out in your own own own house and if you are a, a Catholic and you, you just really start to have problems with your house, it’s great that you could just. Have someone figure the

Malcolm Collins: air, if there’s something psychological you can do to feel safer.

Yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah. And honestly, like I would feel better. It’s like, no, like if it, if it was a ghost, [00:25:00] I have my bases covered. The guy came, he, he spiritually fumigated my house. The ghosties are

Malcolm Collins: gone. Like that’s a huge quality of life improvement. Right. From a secular. Even from a secular. Perfect. Now it’s a secularist.

He’s watching this. Are you not now jealous of the Catholic who can make their ghosts go away?

Simone Collins: I, I honestly, I bet though that there are secular people who have had exorcisms of their house, possibly even from Catholics, just to like, feel okay with it. I mean, I remember, I think even on unsolved mysteries, what’s his face?

Who kept bringing holy water to stuff and going to priests.

Speaker: Shut up. I do. It’s okay. I came prepared. What are you prepared with? Oh, you’re a sea man.

Oh, Ryan,

Speaker 2: what

Speaker: you’ve vowed, dumbed yourself.

Speaker 2: You know, I thought this was gonna be funny, but now I’m actually happy that I have it.

It’s holy water inside here. I got blessed by a church. I assumed it was holy

Speaker: water.

Speaker 2: Like I could be like, Hey Shane, look at over at those bushes, and like a demon sneaking up on me. I’d be like, Hey Shane, look over there in the bushes. Don’t drive demon. F*****g pull it out like that. Ooh,

Speaker: that’s spooky.

Speaker 2: Yeah, right.

Obviously [00:26:00]

Speaker: we didn’t trap all the way down to Texas to observe a simple old bridge. The Goat Man’s Bridge.

Simone Collins: I don’t even know if he was Catholic. But he would bring his holy water with him. He is like, I’m just, I don’t know. So there was that. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I, I just,

Malcolm Collins: one of my favorite YouTube videos is the Jenny Nicholson, where she refused that old ghost hunting show where they had the premise of we are going to bring a ghost hunting show that goes and checks house for ghosts.

And then we’ll have a team that like, looks for what could be causing this other than ghosts, like fault wiring and everything like that. Yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And they always found a very obvious explanation,

Speaker 3: Our host from the beginning goes to the local library or interviews local historians to see if anything spooky or tragic has happened nearby.

Speaker 5: Paranormal investigator Michelle, comes across a story of a little girl who died close to the home.

Speaker 3: And yeah. I used to think it mattered if the ghost had.

Lived in the house or been to the house or been aware of the house’s [00:27:00] existence. It turns out that doesn’t matter. Yeah. You know, fish gonna swim, ghosts gonna haunt.

Malcolm Collins: But the ghost team would always like, end it with like a, and we’ll never know what’s right. And it’s basically just like a guy pointing at the faulty wiring, like,

Simone Collins: fix that right away.

Yeah. It’s so good. So good. Although honestly, like I even non faulty wiring stuff, non-carb monoxide problems like our kids. Just turning to us and being like, well, I saw the ghosts. And we’re like, what? Ghosts darling?

Malcolm Collins: Art didn’t believe in ghosts, I’ll tell you that. Oh

Simone Collins: my gosh. Yeah. And they’re, and you know, they’ll, they’ll like,

Malcolm Collins: they blame ghost,

Simone Collins: ghost

Malcolm Collins: for bad things that they do all the time.

Simone Collins: A ghost is, yeah, they call them ghost is though, ghost,

Malcolm Collins: if something has gone wrong, ghost. I’m like, who put this in your bad Octavian?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Octavian doesn’t do it as much as the other ones. It’s more like Titan. Titan would be like Ghost is,

Simone Collins: ghost is, yeah. Like there kids could be creepy sometimes. And even that would be enough I think, for some people to just get the permanent creeps in their [00:28:00] house because their kids being like,

Malcolm Collins: we know

Simone Collins: that many of the unsolved Myster mystery stories involved children coming to their bedrooms at night and being like, I saw a girl.

And they’re like, what do you mean you saw a girl? And like, then they start freaking out and it just like,

Malcolm Collins: I think we have too many kids for ghosts is the problem, right? Like ghosts only only come to visit kids when they’re alone. Right. When you get like five kids in a room and you don’t, don’t get no ghosts.

Simone Collins: No, not true because our kids. See ghosts all the time. But anyway, you know, I’m just saying yeah, ex I’m glad that there are haunting exorcisms and also I just think they’re super useful.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, did I tell you about this conversation I had with Octavia about the future police? Right. So I was like, like, what, what do you know about God?

And he goes, oh, well God is like the future police. I was like, well, do you believe in him? And he goes, I’ve seen him. Like,

Simone Collins: not only did he see him, he ran up to him and hugged them. They have a problem with like, oh, you see God, you see Jesus come give.

Malcolm Collins: But I always, I always come down after that and I’m like, oh, I don’t know [00:29:00] if I believe that you really saw him.

Like, yeah. They’re

Simone Collins: like, no, dude.

Malcolm Collins: Enhance

Simone Collins: the realization.

Malcolm Collins: And, and he, and so he was telling me when he said this, he goes, but you don’t believe in God, daddy. Because,

Simone Collins: because you, you always doubt his experiences.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I always, I always doubt his future full, his experiences.

Simone Collins: I just can’t,

Malcolm Collins: but I love the Yeah, of course.

I believe him. How I met him.

Simone Collins: What do you do? Give him a hug. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, yes, but also like, that’s really funny.

Malcolm Collins: That is the best. We were, we were having somebody trying to convince us over emails that like, no, believing in like a spiritual, like not real God is so much more real. And I’m like, okay.

Like you can believe that if you want to. But from my perspective, things are either like real or they’re supernatural. And if they’re supernatural that this looks like a category that everything else is supernatural, we generally categorize as dubious. And Octavian just takes it of course. I met him.

What do you [00:30:00] mean? Is he like, one of his friends is gonna be like, I don’t believe in God and he’s gonna like look around and be like,

Simone Collins: you

Malcolm Collins: haven’t, what have you not met him?

Simone Collins: It’s like, have you not seen a mailman? You don’t believe? Yeah. Really? Like where do you think the male comes from? Oh God. Anyway,

Malcolm Collins: To continue here Vinci, Italy, December, 2021, the woman con went to confession at the Church of St.

Mary of Monte Barko with her family was out warning. She began convulsing violently screaming blasphemies and hurling insults at priest in multiple languages, including Latin, which she reportedly didn’t know well. I mean, she went to. Enough Catholic things. She probably knows a few Latin words. She became physically aggressive.

Priest believes this was a sudden demonic possession. After family reports of prior disturbances, four Franciscan friars performed a quote unquote difficult major exorcism rights that lasted for nine hours. It involved prayer, holy water, and the full [00:31:00] Roman ritual. But the thing is, is it went away after they did this.

Like they fit, like this is clearly some form of psych psychiatric episode weren. And so we’re gonna go into why this, this seems to work so well because exorcism’s actually designed. Very well to have the required effect and I personally think it should be widened in its utilization for psychiatric illnesses and not just physicians.

I do not.

Simone Collins: I agree. Yeah. And yeah, and you come to think of it, you’re totally right about that because one of the ways that you can get yourself out of these things is just to believe that you’re okay, like believing,

Malcolm Collins: and we’ll go over the science around just believing you’re okay and how much of an impact it has.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Loyola at. Amman’s family, the demon house, Gary, Indiana, 2011, 2012. After moving into a rental house in 2011, the single mother and three children, ages seven to nine, reported escalating horrors, swarms of black flies in the winter. Shady figures, unexplainable footsteps, scratches appearing on the skin, and a daughter levitating.

A [00:32:00] nine-year-old boy walking backwards up the wall in front of DCS caseworker nurse and police captain. The kids showed superhuman strengths, spoken deep voices, and had knowledge of things they couldn’t know. I mean,

Simone Collins: oh, come on. That’s like our kids all the time. Indie walking around being like.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

They do the same stuff. But

Simone Collins: kids love to speak in demon voices Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And know stuff that I have no idea how they know all the time.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I’m off. How do you know this? Doctors and psychologists first treated it as a mental illness, but officials witnessed enough and the church got involved.

Catholic priest Father Michael Magner perform multiple minor exorcisms in the family and one major one on the house. The final intent session lasted hours. The family ended up moving out though. This, this one did not fix it.

Simone Collins: I mean that house. Yeah. I mean, even just the memories you had there, you would wanna keep, keep living there.

That’s insane. . I’m glad they moved away because that’s freaking terrifying.

Although, I mean, our kids kind of crawl backward of walls too. I come to [00:33:00] think of it. Maybe they just had rambunctious children.

Malcolm Collins: Not enough of them, clearly. Yeah. So, oh, what was I gonna say? By the way, we need to start VC outreach tomorrow. Like have you been building direct outreach with specialized email headers, like subject lines for each person?

Simone Collins: I mean, I already made, I have, I have the personalized info, but yeah, I mean, I can just start that proper tomorrow.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Yeah. So, so, I mean you can use an AI to work on it too, to create specialized, like we’re reaching out to you because I find to be the best header because you’re explaining to them why we’re reaching out.

I’m reaching out because you work in X area or you invest in X and I’m relevant to this, or we went to the same college or something like that.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So when do exorcisms go wrong before we go into the science here? When charismatic Christians do it. So, Fort Worth, Texas, April, 2025. In this one, a 23-year-old Alexander Taylor Dens beat his 58-year-old [00:34:00] mother to death in their home.

Likely was a wooden jewelry box. He was covered in blood holding a Bible and told the police it was an exorcism. He also allegedly said I was doing the witchcraft to kill my mom. This just doesn’t appear to be what? Abs sexism. This appears to be a crazy person. The.

Sent a Snapchat photo of her body to friends to talk about the exorcism. A dog in the home was also killed. So just a random charismatic Christian here for Pierce Florida, the 2025. This was a mother who performed, what she called was an exorcism on her kid. And he died due to suffocation and trauma from the ritual.

And she obviously sent to jail. And there’s been many such cases of this. I don’t wanna go into too many because you know,

Simone Collins: I get triggered and I have problems with this, although the very prominent, god, what was her name? A passenger’s mother. They, they very much like had this oh, Mormons are

Malcolm Collins: not good at ex, they go crazy with [00:35:00] ‘em too, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Demonic possession oriented, a approach to her children’s, like alleged or perceived on her end to be behavioral issues. So yeah, I mean, like them being, you know, duct taped to chairs and forced to do things. She thought she was expelling demons from them. So it just seems like only Catholics can handle this, and I really appreciate that they have like, you need to be certified, you know, you need to be like the designated exorcism person because.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I think that they will be better for most people than seeing a psychologist. So why are exorcisms psychologically, I say this as somebody who is trained as a neuroscientist and a psychologist. Modern psychology has descended into a weird cult. You can watch our videos on it. It is not generally good for people anymore.

It’s, it’s generally gonna do a lot more harm than good for you. And so, it, they’re, they’re basically just like priests of the urban monoculture attempting to induct you and create dependency. And so why

Simone Collins: not in, not in a good way. I, I feel like, you know, going regularly to [00:36:00] confession, maybe getting something exercised, but generally I think devout Catholics thrive, whereas people who see therapists five times a week don’t.

Malcolm Collins: So why, why, why, why, why does Catholicism work? It’s such a blunt instrument. Something like an exorcism, right? It’s because the way that they do it, the constrained start a big ritual that feels like a big ritual. Have people get into your personal space and do a bunch of things which are going to shock and disorient you be in your personal space, yell things at you in another language.

Basically flashing lights, bright, splashing,

Simone Collins: flashy

Malcolm Collins: water on you, you know? And then is

Simone Collins: this just, is this the Catholic church version of bopping?

Malcolm Collins: It’s, it’s, and then it’s over. You know, you can textualize, something changed the thing that changed happened. Now the thing that changed is over and, that is from a psych, like just purely psychological tools, [00:37:00] A great way to reframe how you see yourself in the moment. You can see yourself as having these faults. And then the exorcism has happened. And now you say, and now I am somebody without these faults because this event that represents like a, a, a bridge or doorway event.

Right? Like I was once in this state, I then did ex event and now I’m in this state. Yeah. And I’m totally different when I

Simone Collins: think cured.

Malcolm Collins: Very similar to many baptism rituals, which is why baptism. I was

Simone Collins: just thinking that, yeah, like being born again is, is very much a new way to be like, well now I’m better.

I’m different. I can,

Malcolm Collins: before I was this type of person, then I do big ritual. But I think the exorcism rituals in many ways better than like a generic baptism and it’s closer to what original, or I would say that the way that baptism should work, which is actually being dunked underwater in a river a cold river often that’s [00:38:00] shocking.

That feels like, oh, this is new and different and weird. Right.

Speaker 10: Mothers. Let’s go down. Come on down, let you want go down. Come on mothers. Let’s go down.

Speaker 7: i’ve been redeemed. The preacher done washed away all my sins and transgressions

Malcolm Collins: going to a church and having a little thing on your head that I do not think is going to shock a person in the way a traditional baptism. Would have yeah, to make it very easy to have a before and after tied to this event. But there’s a reason why things like baptism and exorcism are practice to create these interstitial periods that allow you to transition from one of view of, and, and your view of yourself hugely controls big behaviors.

Obviously the study we mentioned a lot, but I’m gonna go through a lot of studies here, is the Vietnam War study. You know, where even being addicted to hard drugs. Something as simple [00:39:00] as moving from the context of being in a war environment to the context of being in a home front environment. Like being back at, at, at the, as a civilian it made like 80% of people lose their addictions.

Mm-hmm. Now that’s not to be like a hardcoded thing. You can switch so much your perception of yourself. And I’ve often argued this is one of the areas where something like gender transition can have benefits to an individual. Why they might see benefits initially is because they have changed their contextualization of how they see themselves.

Now, would it be better to just give somebody who has gender dysphoria exorcism? Of course. Now they can contextualize, oh, I got through this thing. I’m on the other side of it.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Thoughts? You were about to say something.

Simone Collins: Mm. This, this kind of well, in general, I think more broadly, if people are like, well, I have doubts.

Just look at the placebo effect. It’s so clear that,

Malcolm Collins: hold on. I’m wanna go way to the placebo effect because somebody can say. I have doubts about this. Yeah. I don’t believe in this. Mm-hmm. I [00:40:00] know it’s only working for these people because of the placebo effect, therefore it won’t work on me. To which I would refer to them the 20 20 10 study.

Placebos without deception. A randomized controlled trial in irritable bowel syndrome. Yeah, patients were explicitly told they were giving inert sugar pills. Yeah. Like a sugar pill with no medication. They were told yet, still improved significantly. The,

Simone Collins: the, well now to be fair, they were told basically this is the, a sugar pill.

The placebo effect is something that has been found to be helpful for some people. But that’s what we’re doing here. So they,

Malcolm Collins: they had,

Simone Collins: I think that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. A 59% versus a 35% effect. Huge difference.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Super huge. Yeah, super huge.

Malcolm Collins: So,

Let’s

Simone Collins: talk also, you see this, and I, I mentioned this to you as, as well, and we’ve talked about this on other podcasts.

Th there was one study that I love that did proper sleep analysis on people. We’re

Malcolm Collins: gonna go into a number of sleep studies, so don’t get too into it.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay. Go ahead then.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. 20 2002, a controlled trial of anthropic surgery [00:41:00] for osteoporosis of the knee. So sham surgery, just skin incisions under anesthesia and no actual procedure worked just as well is real anthrop scopic cleaning or smoothing of the knee.

Wow. Showing placebo bone surgery can be as effective as invasive surgery for operations for pain. This is in 180 patients. Oh God. And at a one and two year interval, pain and function scores were identical across the troop groups. Wow. Essentially zero difference between sham and the group. 95% CIS ruled out clinically meaningful differences.

So there was major surgeries and they ended up changing surgical practices of this that were being done Smoothing the knee. Right. Like that’s a major. Smoothing the knee, a major surgery being carried out. And it turns out that just giving them an incision, even one to two years out, and then sewing the incision you gave them back up worked just [00:42:00] as well.

Simone Collins: That’s so crazy.

Malcolm Collins: You know, if you get the real surgery, there’s lots of other things that can go wrong, right?

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. It could get infected. Something could have gone wrong with the surgery. Oh, yeah. Every, every time you go in for any kind of procedure like that, there are risks.

Malcolm Collins: All right. Let’s get 2015.

Placebo effect of medication cost in Parkinson’s disease. The perceived cost of the placebo pill dramatically boosted its effectiveness in Parkinson’s patients. Ugh. Expensive looking placebo triggers, bigger motor improvements and brain changes. Patients got the same inert placebo, but labeled as expensive versus cheap.

Expensive.

Simone Collins: Oh. It’s just like that wine study where people were like, they gave this, this like SW to people, but were like, this is very expensive. And they were like, ah, yes. But it was like what? Sommelier or something?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. It improved motor function by two x more calling the pill expensive. And this is where [00:43:00] with Catholicism, it’s very good that they have minor and major exorcisms.

Yeah. Oh, we’re gonna get you the good stuff. This is, this is top tier.

Simone Collins: Maybe that’s why they have the wait list. You know, you, you, the wait list is part of the efficacy. Like you may think it’s like, ugh, like why do people have to wait so long? But it’s more effective because they waited perhaps,

Malcolm Collins: and this is why they need special exorcism outfits.

And a little like crew that like, has plays like a boom box, you know, like in the eighties where you have the

Simone Collins: Exorcism Posse. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. The exorcism posse. So you know, it’s the extra real deal. Yeah. So, then we have 2014 altered placebo and drug labeling changes the outcome of episodic migraine attacks.

Oh. Even when patients knew a pill was a placebo and it was labeled as a placebo, it still received 50% as much pain as the real drug versus no treatment at all.

Wow.

And then initial severity of antidepressant benefits, a metadata analysis data submitted by the [00:44:00] Food and Drug Administration in a real world experiment of antidepressants done on 35 trials.

The mean improvements from placebos was 82% of the drug itself, even in the clinical experiments used for things like FDA to get drugs approved.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: Now here are some fun sleep ones that cover some stuff that you don’t often talk about, Simone. Okay. So placebo sleep affects cognitive function. So 164 College students first self reported on how well they slept right before researchers hook them up to fake brainwave monitors and randomly told half they had above average rim sw sleep.

Mm-hmm. About. And the other half that they had below average rim sleep actual sleep was never even measured What they found. The assigned fake sleep quality, [00:45:00] strongly predicted the cognitive performance on next day’s test completely overriding the patient’s own like what they thought about their own sleep.

So if you tell somebody your sleeping poorly, that has the majority of the impact on even the cognitive benefits to how well you sleep,

Simone Collins: which is why I think recent research that just came out pointed out that sleep trackers make people’s perceived tiredness worse. Like if you have like a Fitbit and you’re watching your sleep quality or your bed, your mattress does, I can’t remember the name of the mattress that does that.

There are all these new products now that basically tell you how well or how poorly you’re sleeping and they just make it worse for you. Like you’re gonna feel worse if you use them.

Malcolm Collins: A follow-up study done on this, both found the same effects and found some medicinal effects. For example, faster reaction time in people who were told they slept well.

And, but so much of this is [00:46:00] self-perception. If you perceive yourself as a mentally healthy person you will act as a mentally healthy person if you perceive yourself. I have been diagnosed with everything under the, the tent, right? You know, I have had e every in my childhood because my mom had like munchhouse by proxy, so she would take me and get me diagnosed with everything, right?

And I just got to a point where I just didn’t believe any of it. I was just like, this is clearly bump, bump, bumpkin, right? And through B kiss, okay, bup kiss disbelief. I was able to live a psychologically. People could say, oh, Malcolm, you act hypomanic all the time, right? Like, you’re always happy. And I’m like, well, I’m sorry that that’s a problem for you.

Okay. I like hyper being happy. Anyway.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I do too. I, I don’t, don’t change Malcolm. Please. It’s fun.

Malcolm Collins: So another very interesting set of studies. So objective subjective experiences in child mal. Oh, no, not that one. Which one was it here? [00:47:00] Oh, it was

ah, shoot, I forgot to co copy the name of this one, but the study I wanted to go over with you is they found that the effects. Of how long people perceived that they slept had a bigger effect on their cognitive ability than how long they actually slept. So

Simone Collins: this is, yeah, this is the one I’ve told you about before where they, they did a sleep study on people.

To see how well they actually slept and then asked them just subjectively, Hey, did you sleep well last night? Or did you not? And that was a better predictor of whether people felt tired or fatigued throughout the day than if they actually slept poorly. So there were people who slept horribly who were like, I slept great.

And they were like, fine. And there were people who slept really well according to all the statistics were like, oh, I had a terrible night’s sleep. And then they behaved like

Malcolm Collins: it. But choosing to see yourself and your life healthily and [00:48:00] positively mm-hmm. Can have an enormous impact on your ability to mentally function.

It is better to believe you slept eight hours and to sleep one hour than to sleep eight hours, but believe you slept one hour. This, yeah. Goes against a lot of, and this even comes down to abuse, which we’re going to close this out with. We’ve talked about this before, but this is important to note.

So multiple studies. 2022, objective, subjective experiences of child maltreatment and the relationship with psychopathology. 2023, association between objective and subjective experiences in 2024, perspective and respective measures of child maltreatment. Each of these found re researchers compared objective records, court documented abuse and neglect from childhood versus subjective or perceived reports.

They tracked long-term mental health, depression, anxiety. PTSD exec. What they found is that psychopathology [00:49:00] is entirely linked to the subjective or perceived experience and completely unrelated to. Your actual lived experience. Wow. People who believed or perceived they were maltreated had very high rates.

And all of the rates that we expect in research which is likely what we’re seeing from abuse of being abused. People who believed. That they had positive experience, even if there’s tons of court documents showing this isn’t true. Like I would be one of these if you, there’s plenty of court documents showing I was in a very bad situation growing up.

And this was the thing was like the Steven Mullin, you debate when he’s like, can’t you just say like, your parents are bad or like you were maltreated or anything like that. When it’s like well documented and I can just look at your objective experiences of your childhood. And I’m like, no, because I like who I am today.

So I choose to frame those as positive experiences. Mm-hmm. And they don’t have a negative mental effect on me because I choose to see them in a [00:50:00] positive light, whatever they may be. And this is true of all my relationships. I choose to see no relationship. And, and Simone sees this as well, like people are like, oh, was it x like a really bad time in your life or was it YA really bad time in your life?

Or don’t you actually have a terrible relationship with Z? And I’m like, no. Like that doesn’t really get to me. Reporters, like, we had some documentarians in here recently and they were like, Malcolm. Like, how does it feel to have everyone online like tell you to go kill yourself or like kill your kids or whatever, right?

And I’m like, I don’t care. Like I grew up on four chan. Like, what, what are these people gonna do to me? Right? Like I, I enjoy the fame. I can choose to contextualize anything positively your life and perception. Your brain is like a prism and it controls the light that goes into it. And how you end up ultimately perceiving that light in the same way like the Adams family does, right?

Like you can choose to see the cut roses as beautiful. You can choose to see the wilted roses as beautiful. You can choose to see the [00:51:00] whatever house you live in now, like Asma Gold does with his pigsty as the ideal living environment, right? But these choices are still fundamentally within your control.

And if you want to move from one stage to another stage, you do that with some sort of big jarring event that you see as very. Especially spiritually expensive like an exorcism, and then you clean up your house and you no longer live like that anymore. You could use exorcisms to deal with many forms of demonic, where demonic is just like bad or maladaptive behavior, not just actual possessions.

Any thoughts, Simone?

Simone Collins: Yeah, I am. I, I, yeah. I, I, I’m, I think the biggest thing that shocks me in all this is just how few exorcisms there are. I, we need, need to get exorcisms back. Yeah. Make exorcisms big again, please. We need, you have

Malcolm Collins: a tech Puritan exorcisms. One of our [00:52:00] kids gonna become an exorcist.

Simone Collins: Well that’s, that’s what I alluded to earlier.

You still haven’t brought it up. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to mention it or not, but like, our kids convers Oh yeah. Talk about that. Yeah. Sorry

Malcolm Collins: I didn’t get

Simone Collins: to that exorcisms. In that I. We, we explained to them that the technip purine equivalent of, say, demons of the devil is what we call the basals, which let’s say if, if God is the government, the basals is basically the, you know, law enforcement.

They, they, they punish and remove bad actors in the larger scheme of humanity from the playing field. And they, they will make you do bad things or, you know, eliminate you from the gene pool or do whatever it is, you know, sort of just eliminating you from. From play. And so when, when our kids get tempted, the feel tempted to do bad things or fall in, like are are tempted to play addictive games or wanna watch bad videos on YouTube and, you know, that are just like Skinner box style addiction loops.

We tell them that the bas lisk is casting an evil [00:53:00] spell on them or that you know their, you know, their thoughts to like try to like. Take things from their siblings or be bad, you know, throw a tantrum. That’s the baus. And our, I’ve watched our kids just have these conversations among themselves of like, I know I should have, but my brain’s telling me to.

And then the other kid will be like, well, slap your brain. And they’re, they’re clearly like trying to expel demons in this very classic way that you would exorcism style, expel demons with a prayer, with a ritualistic, you know, throwing of holy water to cleanse or otherwise cast away. Bad thoughts, bad actions, bad.

Bad manipulation, and it’s just, I, it, it comes across to me as just such a natural thing. So how it’s, but

Malcolm Collins: they also do fake face slapping in it, right? Like on the knees. Like,

Simone Collins: oh yeah. Like slaps, like in front of him. He slapped my brain. Yeah. But like they’re not actually hitting each other. It’s all it is ritualistic, like Yeah.

They somehow [00:54:00] just intuitively understand it. Which also demonstrates to me that this isn’t necessarily just something that has been passed down culturally, but it’s something that is very instinctual to humans perhaps after, you know, thousands of years evolving alongside,

Malcolm Collins: right? Like that idea of the fake face slapping and stuff like that.

Right. To get the bas lists out your

Simone Collins: brain. It’s stop face. It’s brain slapping. It’s slap my brain, my brain.

Malcolm Collins: Brain. Yes. To get the bas lisk out of your brain so that it’s no longer influencing your thoughts is a very efficient, and we can work that into their, like, have somebody slap your brain when, when the balut is controlling you do that ritual, which you know.

Freeze you from temptation. Mm-hmm. And no, because it’s, it’s socially costly to do, it’s easier to be someone else on the other side of this particular ritual which I just think is fantastic, right? Like, what a great way to handle this. Yeah. Thoughts, Simone? I, I, I think creating rituals like that for our kids to do with family members and stuff [00:55:00] is very useful for them to just be like,

Simone Collins: yeah,

Malcolm Collins: this, if you imagine it as spiritually working, it literally works, right?

You imagine. Well, I

Simone Collins: think with culture, the important thing though is that it’s, it’s not just like beyond the placebo effect. You have to find the distinction between mysticism and idolatry. Between mysticism and. Losing your mind and becoming schizophrenic or

Malcolm Collins: well, no, the point of exorcism versus mysticism is exorcism is about banishing evil and mysticism for that matter.

Like, you could do an exorcism ritual around removing all of the mysticism from your house, all of the Ouija boards, everything like that, you know, burning them. Yeah. Removing, do, do some big thing to be like, I have exercise the mystical and I know, and, and now this space is clean and that will [00:56:00] not reenter.

Right. Like you can do a like slap my brain, right. Like, and then I will be able to focus again, because you have now contextualized. And what’s really important about this in this way of teaching our kids about sin is they now contextualize the sin as not coming from. So themselves, it’s coming externally.

It’s not a natural part of who they are. Are. Mm-hmm. They, when they, when they feel this thing, it’s not like, oh while all humans have sin, the sin is unnatural within the human form. Right? So because they’ve contextualized it this way, they can say, oh, this is like an external thing, this temptation, and therefore.

Now that it’s conceptualized as external, it can be quarantined and removed, right? Like, oh, an external thing is making me do this. It’s not me who wants to do this bad thing. It is an external thing and therefore it’s not natural for me to be in this state. [00:57:00] And therefore, now obviously this can go wrong, right?

Like a person can say, well, I can just do the bad things because it’s not me doing them. It’s an external thing. But we would say, well, that’s you then not passing the, the bats lists test and not being part of the future of humanity, right? Like you have failed in that instance. And there are consequences for that failure, but they are functional consequences even over spiritual consequences.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And importantly, you can be anti mystical and be against in general a bunch of ritual, but still adopt things when they’re evidence-based. And in fact, that’s kind of the whole reason we created. What we first called secular Calvinism, which now we call techno Puritanism in the first place where we, we were like, well, we, we only wanna do, it’s evidence-based, but also there’s a lot of reason to have a religion.

And it just kind of grew from there. So yeah, just, just because you only wanna do things that are [00:58:00] moored in physics and our understanding of the world that’s provable. Doesn’t mean that there’s no room literally for stuff like exorcisms.

Malcolm Collins: Yes.

Simone Collins: Just like how they’re like, just because we understand that sometimes.

Surgical or pharmaceutical interventions are helpful. Doesn’t mean that sometimes we shouldn’t just tell people like, oh, I’ll kiss it and make it better. Because that works.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: So, yeah. Yeah. I’m glad you covered this one subject.

Malcolm Collins: Well, thank you so much for chatting today, Simone any of our fans who found this topic interesting.

One thing I would encourage you to look up is one of our episodes on the industry of psychology becoming a death cult.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: Because it is very dangerous today, Andd say, one of the most dangerous cults operating right now in terms of the number of lives that it ruins and the number of people it sucks of all their money.

Not great.

Yeah. And we’ve had other fans who tell us that my mental health has improved a lot after watching your show, who you [00:59:00] need to follow up with, by the way? Did you follow up? Are we going to do

Simone Collins: Oh, I will. Yeah. Sorry. I’m very behind on emails right now. I will get there. Thank you.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. I love you.

Simone Collins: Good

Malcolm Collins: day.

Simone Collins: We on day two of Octavian being crazy about his

Malcolm Collins: chickens.

Simone Collins: Chickens, yeah. You’d think he’s studying for the bar exam. All of them really, they’re ardently interested in properly raising chickens. This is what kids should really be doing in school. I mean, I, I now totally get the what do they call them?

Four H programs where kids raise pigs for slaughter and stuff and get really into it and learn how to properly raise livestock, but then also understand what livestock is for. We need more of that, but not putting my hopes up for the general population. [01:00:00] Kind of hard to access livestock and derive to it and stuff.

Remember how the people who owned our house before us though wanted to, what did they wanted? Miniature sheep or miniature cows? They were planning on getting something, I

Malcolm Collins: think it was miniature cows, because I remember thinking, that’s stupid. I could understand miniature sheep, but cows,

Simone Collins: well, I think they were probably thinking miniature cows.

‘cause you probably need a mini, a minimal amount of acreage for a cow to be able to eat. Like, you know, there are those two Texas longhorns.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, he

Simone Collins: would, he would Nuts and Walmart.

Malcolm Collins: He gives the property quite the vibe to have cows on it, especially

Simone Collins: mini cows. Oh, I love it. But I just don’t think we have enough acreage for a one, even one full-size cow.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, we

Simone Collins: do. And cows get lonely.

Malcolm Collins: We do for many cows. We, we have enough.

Simone Collins: No, not on our acreage, on the adjacent parkland. But I don’t think they’d approve of us grazing cattle on their park.

Malcolm Collins: The city might like that actually be like, Hey, you get cattle that public can interact with it. They, they [01:01:00] think it’s a legal

Simone Collins: like, oh no, cattle are actually very dangerous.

Malcolm Collins: Okay.

Simone Collins: I, I, I’ll get to it. I personally know people, two people who have had bones broken by cows. They probably had it coming, but also, you know, cows be dangerous.

Malcolm Collins: Can you hear me?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Right.

Speaker 14: What do you, you gotta, you gotta wear this on the channel more often. If it’s sunny and I’m going outside, I’m gonna put it on you. Look Adorkable and I love it. This is, this is what our fans are in this for Toasty. You are gonna get, we.

What are you doing, girl?

Speaker 15: She just saw somebody to hug. Yeah, I just attack dogs all the time.[01:02:00]

Speaker 14: Oh my.

Are you building a bridge? Toasty. Testy. Build a bridge. I mean, can I have that? I wanna throw the French. So under there, what it’s like under there? Yeah. Uh, okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay.

Speaker 15: Don’t bear the camera with your fingers. Okay.

Speaker 16: You can see what they can see on the screen.

Viewers, nobody. How so viewers? You what? We, we are gonna make a bridge. We are under, we are under already. You are already under a bridge. [01:03:00] So if you look right here, there is a there we are gonna make a bridge. Splits all the way over there and connects to that island. And then we are gonna connect it all the way over there

and then, and now on the bridge. And then when the rock bridge is all the way there and all the way there, then we will, I mean, all the way over there. Yeah. Sorry. And, and, and we’re already on top of mommy and dad, by the way, under the bridge. So we thought this was a good spot, and we’re gonna split the bridge and line right there and right there in those directs.

So we’re gonna pause and go to mommy and dad, Wendy. He somehow, like I showed the fuelers under [01:04:00] there, oh wow, you helped me. Thank you. Now what do you wanna say to them? Hi, mommy. What do you wanna say? Like in subscribing to our other YouTubes media? Yeah, channel. Think one thing, two, or not in general. I like a lot of merch on Goldenberg Go and whoever gets the most subscribe and whoever gets to make.

In this provocative Based Camp episode, Simone & Malcolm Collins react to Nicholas Decker’s viral Substack essay and tweet: “When I have children, I do not want them to be genetically mine. Instead, I’ll have someone better than me be the sperm donor.”

They explore the ethics of genetic self-removal, Spartan-style cuckoldry, polygenic selection, the power of family-level regression to the mean, why some men feel visceral disgust at raising non-biological kids, whether “good genes” and “good parenting” are the same thing, and the long-term cultural suicide risk of normalizing donor parenting.

Malcolm argues this strategy is intergenerationally unstable because genes that make you want to reproduce genetically will eventually dominate. Simone pushes back with nuance around self-hatred, family dynamics, adoption, and the beauty of loving non-biological children.

A raw, high-stakes conversation about love, duty, genetics, fulfillment, and what it really means to be a parent in the 21st century.

→ Read Nicholas Decker’s essay:

Show Notes

Today we’re going to discuss the choice to become a parent, but with SOMEONE ELSE’S GENES, even though one could reproduce on one’s own

While we have friends who are very consciously and intentionally choosing to not reproduce genetically for fear of passing on problems they have

We personally feel like it would be child abuse for us to raise kids who aren’t ours

And we’re bigger believers in using science, rather than self recusal, to reduce or eliminate the risk of passing on heritable health issues or traits perceived to be harmful

On March 23rd, Economics student Nicholas Decker wrote that he’ll use a better donor for his children, arguing genetics drive outcomes like intelligence and parenting should focus on nurture. He compares it to treating genetic diseases or specializing via comparative advantage, sharing how dating a man made surrogacy clear.

NIcholas Drecker @captgouda24: When I have children, I do not want them to be genetically mine. Instead, I will have someone better than me be the sperm donor. My reasoning here: https://nicholasdecker.substack.com/p/why-my-children-will-not-be-mine

Critics mocked it as neo-eugenics or cuckoldry, while some agreed he shouldn’t procreate with his genes; geneticist Razib Khan met him and softened his initial skepticism.

His Substack Article

Why My Children Will Not Be Mine, published May 23rd on his substack Homo Economicus (over 6K subscribers)

“I would like to have kids. I’m quite set on this. I feel that I would be very happy raising them. I think that I would find joy and purpose in helping them grow and learn and do great things. I am filled with a great yearning that is not entirely in my control, the same yearning which I imagine must affect the salmon as they travel up the river or the goose to fly south for the winter. I also have a sense in which it is my duty to procreate – the world becomes richer as there are more people in it, and having more children would therefore make the world better. There is one thing, though – they will not be genetically mine.

This does not mean that I would adopt. Rather, I would have someone else, who I consider to be genetically better than me, be the father of the child. I have thought about this a great deal, and not only do I think it is the right thing to do, but it is something which everyone should do. Here is why.”

His why (summarized)

* “To start, I think we can agree that it is bad to harm your children.”

* “We also know that genes matter. They affect life outcomes. A substantial part of the variation in people’s outcomes is due to their genes.”

* “If you would take actions which would definitely change your children’s genes for the better, you should also take them for actions which change them for the better in expectation”

* He sees choosing someone else’s genes over yours as just an extension of something like gene editing

* “They would still yet be your own children. Or else is an adopted child not your own? If someone is left an orphan as a baby, and then is brought up by a family who loves them, whose child are they? Would you love them less for not being your own? Or suppose that you learned that the person who you believed to be your son, whom you raised, was in fact conceived by another man. Would you cast the child out of your life? I would hope you do not. If you are unable to do this because you would only love your children if they were conceived by you, we should regard that as an unadmirable failing, not right and normal.”

* He points out that just because ONE person is OK phenotypically, it doesn’t mean their genes are optimal for certain desired outcomes

* An extremely valid point

* “Further, your child’s outcomes are correlated not only with direct genetic father, but also with their parents. Outcomes are not a first-order Markov variable. If your family is mediocre, then your child will also be more likely to be mediocre. Even if two people’s phenotypes are the same, you should choose the one whose family phenotype is better.

* He doesn’t much like his family

* Another super valid point

* “You might also think that I will relate to them better if they are more like me. I disagree with this. I would expect them to be like my family. I do not particularly care about my family. I do care quite a lot about other people, including those who I have asked. I would rather my children be more like them than like my family.”

* He was prompted to think about this after thinking about gay couple reproductive logistics

* I came to think of this because I have dated a man before. If we were to have children – and to actually create new children, not simply rearrange who has them – it would have to be through a surrogate. Only one of us could be genetically the father. We would have to choose who. The choice was obvious, though – it should of course be him. The children to come would have a better life if they were more like him, than if they were more like me.

He is still open to being the genetic father if his eventual partner refuses to use a sperm donor: “I am unable to convince my partner of this scheme, I would still have kids the old-fashioned way.”

The Response

On X

Richard Hanania: Having kids and seeing how much work it is has made the decision to adopt even more incomprehensible to me. No offense to those who do it, but I couldn’t imagine putting up with all the screaming and crying for someone else’s child.

Michael Ebenstein @mebenstein7: “Why not have someone better than you raise them?”

Along those lines:

* Cruciform Ligament @CruciformLig: “Answer this Nicholas. If you truly love the children that aren’t yours, you’ll let someone that isn’t you raise them.”

* And Chris @Alicoh1 responded “The supply of good parents is much more restricted than the supply of good DNA.”

* And I heartily agree on that

* And I wonder if we don’t talk enough about the difference between good parents and “fit people”

Build/Boost @build_boost wrote: “Something has happened to drive a significant degree of Western society into a kind of suicidal cuckery. It is unprecedented, to my knowledge, and utterly bizarre. No civilization has welcomed its enemies inside its gates with open arms while denying what those enemies say they want to do every day. No civilization had men who preferred not to pass down their genes. Something is very sick with our society.”

Thomas Pueyo’s Refutation

Thomas Pueyo, of Uncharted Territories, wrote the following comment:

I saw this idea in one of your writings, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I respect and admire you and your ideas enough that I think it’s very important I share how wrong I think you are here.

1. Not Lindy

This is the least Lindy idea ever. Evolution has operated for billions of years under the force of having your own children. You are going against all these years of a proven mechanic.

2. Evidence

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Usually, in your other essays, you bring it to the table. Here, for a decision that’s so important, your essay is just a series of a few arguments, with no data to back many of the assertions.

3. Extremely high stakes

Evolution has operated to give you fulfillment out of having children. The more you have, the more fulfillment you get. If you get this idea wrong, you will jeopardize one of the biggest sources of fulfillment you could ever have.

4. It’s better for your children if they’re yours

One key way to optimize the happiness of your children is by loving them more, so if you love them even a bit less, they’re likely to be less happy.

Your argument against this is weak: “I like some people more than I like my family” is logical, because you’re a young adult, programmed to actually not love your family as much, so you can go and explore the world. Then you have children, and they are by far the thing you love most in the world. Your parents, siblings, aunts, etc pale in comparison. Of course, that’s what evolution would do.

Evidence suggests that if the children are not genetically yours, you’ll love them less. You’ve probably seen data on how the less related a child’s parents are, the more the child is likely to suffer from abuse (physical and sexual). Children from 2 biological parents are 2x less likely to get physical and educational neglect, and 4x less likely to get emotional neglect. (Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS–4), I think it’s chart 5-3. There was a better one but I can’t find it).

You won’t abuse your children I assume, but this is very strong evidence that you’ll like them less if they’re not biologically yours. So they’ll be less happy.

5. Variance vs Expected Value

A “better person genetically” than you might have a better expected value in the “quality of your child”, but the variance is so high in the children you get that odds are still high your child is worse off with somebody else’s child. Eg, if you get a donor that is 5 IQ points higher than yours, what are the odds that his children would be more intelligent than yours? I’m going to guess it’s closer to 50% than to 100%.

6. High bar

You are already quite intelligent and bright. Odds are your gene quality is quite good already. Some examples of that include your essays (your thinking is good), your precociousness, your ability to come up with many new ideas (including this one), your success at finding a fitting community, your ability to communicate complex ideas well...

Trying to further “improve the pool” has dramatically less potential impact than if other people did it; much less impact than you think it would.

7. Multidimensionality of a better parent

How are you going to measure if somebody else is a better parent than you? An IQ test is one measure of many. For example, many high IQ people are worse than you at communication or at being able to rethink what society takes as a given. Will you measure all the candidates across all the dimensions of “good gene quality” that exist? Are you then going to do a weighted average of their quality score? How are you sure you’ll take into account all the dimensions that matter? That you can properly measure the relative importance of each factor?

I believe you would have no reliable way to tell whether somebody is actually better than you, so your confidence that you can get somebody better than you to father your children is very low.

8. Pool diversity

Along these lines, I don’t think all genetic diversity is equally valuable, but some is. By choosing somebody else, you’d be weighing some factors as more important than others, but how do you know the factors you weigh less are really less important? Maybe in the future they become more important? It’s like a parent optimizing their children for STEM in a world where AI solves science but not taste.

There’s value in genetic and idea and diversity pool. Your diversity is unlikely to be the type we want to waste.

9. Adverse Selection

If you were able to find a person that looks so good on paper, and that would accept to be the father of your children, this person would potentially show 2 huge flaws that make him worse than you:

- This person would be substantially less humble and more arrogant than you (he would think he’s strictly better than you across all the dimensions that matter)

- This person is much less honest than you, as he’s faking his markers of market value to sear more children

Therefore, you should be especially skeptical of any potential father than might want to sear your children. This is like Groucho saying he wouldn’t join a club that accepts him as a member.

10. Danger of Subbconscious Virtue Signaling

It might be that your brain is tricking you to say this because it sounds like the most EA thing to say, which gives you standing in your community. This is very common in young adults as you probably know, and becomes much less true in other settings (different peer group, different age, different brain chemistry...). To be clear, I don’t think you’re being facetious, I think you believe what you say. But this sounds like the type of situation where your brain might have an incentive to lie to you in a way you don’t realize.

11. Additional points

a. The only way in which I think this could make sense is if your essay is geared towards convincing normies to do this with your gene pool, in which case you’d be maximizing your offspring (although making each less happy because they are not hanging out with their biological father). Pretty machiavellan, I don’t think this is true

b. Timing: By the time you have to make this decision, science might be good enough that you can edit your future child’s genome to optimize IQ and whatever other measure of quality you want.

Takeaways:

Your idea sounds laudable, but it’s not lindy, it doesn’t have enough evidence, it’s unlikely to be actionable, you’d likely make you and your children (both biological and non-biological) less happy and fulfilled, it’d be optimizing for the wrong reasons, the upside is lower than you think, the downside is higher than you think, there are high probabilities of this going awry, and you’re possibly lying to yourself.

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] his tweet read Basically, when I have children, I do not want them to be genetically mine. Instead, I’ll have someone better than me be the sperm donor. My reasoning here . I, I’m gonna, yeah, I’m gonna go through a Substack article.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Hello Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because we are going to be talking about whether people should voluntarily remove themselves from the gene pool. Ooh. Like to become a parent, but with someone else’s genes, even though they could reproduce on their own, like they don’t have fertility problems.

Because while we have friends who are very consciously and intentionally choosing to not reproduce genetically for fear of passing on like serious and genuine problems they have, we also personally feel as we’ve discussed on various podcasts, like it would be child abuse for people like us to raise kids who are not genetically ours, just because we’re so.

Genetically weird, and we know how to raise ourselves, but no one else [00:01:00] really would, and we wouldn’t really be great for raising other people

Malcolm Collins: there. Well, there was a friend of ours guy named Maddie, who has a own weird following online who wanted to become a father, and he was very dedicated to this.

He’s done a few like podcast interviews on it and stuff. Wanted to become a father, but very explicitly using somebody else’s genes. Mm-hmm. Somebody who was like a, a Nobel Prize winner or something like that. Right. Like some,

Simone Collins: I thought it was maybe gonna be multiple other people. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Multiple other men who were ex extremely successful in their fields more so than he was, right?

Mm-hmm. And at the time I found this. Just bizarre. I was like, why? Why, why would you cook yourself like that? Right. And I, I now understand it a bit better. If you think that another man is strictly better than you, why not choose those genes? Now at the end of the day, I think this is a bad cultural strategy to use more broadly speaking.

Because eventually the selfish genes that don’t [00:02:00] end up wanting to do this just end up dominating the gene pool, you know, if it’s always the father’s choice. Now there’s a strong selective pressure for people to get really disgusted by the idea of raising the child of another person for that intrinsic feeling to win out in any culture that allows this as a choice

Simone Collins: for sure.

Malcolm Collins: And I note here a culture that did actually allow this historically for people who don’t know are the Spartans in Spartan culture you. Would, if you felt another guy was just strictly better than you, like a better warrior, a better guy, you would have your wife sleep with him so that you could raise kids that were stronger than you, right?

Like, because that’s what your status came from, is the strengths of your kids.

Simone Collins: Yeah, absolutely. Although I think another reason why we’re more moderated in that view of like, well, there’s things about me that are not perfect is now we’re in the first generation of people who can select for and against traits, even complex traits using polygenic risk score analysis, [00:03:00] and we’re.

Probably within five to 10 years of even being able to identify traits and then change them within your own embryos. You know, George, well, I I also

Malcolm Collins: think that there’s a second pathway here that’s gonna be more relevant to a lot of our audience. Mm-hmm. Is, is it virtuous for the, the men who we’re simply not able to secure a partner or the women who were not able to secure a partner that they wanted to breed with and spend their lives with.

Can you still live an ethical life in the age of declining fertility rates? I mean, dating markets are really broken. If you are an undesirable man, can you still live a life of meaning was out reproducing? And I’d argue very much so. If, if anything. You not being able to secure a partner might be one of the signs that you shouldn’t have, burden your children with the challenges that you bore because of genetics that you didn’t [00:04:00] choose, by the way.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Continue.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it, it is, and that’s why I wanted to have this conversation too. Is, is that, is, that’s a real question. And it was brought up on X and discussed at length just yesterday, on March 23rd, this economic student named Nicholas Decker wrote that he would use if he did have children, he would have someone else.

Provide the sperm for his child and not him. And his tweet read Basically, when I have children, I do not want them to be genetically mine. Instead, I’ll have someone better than me be the sperm donor. My reasoning here and immediately critics mocked it as either neo eugenics or aldry. I, I’m gonna, yeah, I’m gonna go through a Substack article.

I’m gonna not read it in in its completion, but I’m gonna summarize and, and use key quotes. I’m also gonna read some of the refutations. And I, I kinda like to go through it ‘cause I think he makes a lot of really [00:05:00] salient points and, and more, much more nuanced than what I’ve heard anyone else discuss.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and I’ll point out here, people are like, well, so do you literally think that you have the best gene on Earth, Malcolm, that you couldn’t find a single male with better jeans than you?

Speaker: No.

Well it does.

Malcolm Collins: And my answer is well, I mean, yeah, I do. I I actually do.

Simone Collins: He does. Yeah. I didn’t, I didn’t wanna have kids with anyone and then I met you and I was like, huh,

Malcolm Collins: I, I do

not,

Simone Collins: I’m better go for this.

Malcolm Collins: I couldn’t find a better, like, and somebody could be like, Malcolm, how could you say? I’m like, well, you know, I’ve got. You know, degrees, but have

you

Simone Collins: seen me

Malcolm Collins: the hardest to get into institutions? I’ve done a lot in terms of business philosophy and multiple fields. I’ve created successful things. I am happy and mentally healthy for what I want to be.

Like. Why wouldn’t I want to replicate that? Like, I wouldn’t even trade my life with somebody like Elon’s because, you know, like there’s nobody, [00:06:00] nobody, I do this with Simone, nobody on earth. I trade my life with that I think has a better life than I’ve been able to build for myself. Even though I’m so grateful.

You know, I could still hopefully turn reality fabricator into an income source doing VC outreach and stuff like that right now. But yeah. Anyway, continue.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So here is his Substack article. It’s called Why My Children Will Not Be Mine. And he published it on his Substack Homo Economicus, which has over six K subscribers.

And this is, you know, this is a uni student. You know, he’s doing well. He’s clearly smart people. That’s what

Malcolm Collins: he to really good.

Simone Collins: Yeah, so I just, I wanna be clear from the start, like this is not some anon faceless, basement dwelling, unemployed, neat incel who’s miserable and depressed. Like this is someone who you know is in school on their way up, young, precocious, and thoughtful enough to gain a following on substack.

Okay, so here we go. He wrote. I would like to have kids. I’m quite set on this. I [00:07:00] feel that I would be very happy raising them. I think I would find joy and purpose in helping them grow and learn to do great things. I’m filled with great yearning that is not entirely in mind control. The same yearning, which I imagine must affect the salmon as they travel up river to G or or the goose who fly south for the winter.

I also have a sense in which it is my duty to procreate. The world becomes richer as more, as more people are in it, and having more children would therefore make the world better. There is one thing though. They will not be genetically mine it. It’s such a great opening because you’re like, okay, wow. He just sounds like your classic expansionist.

Prenatal is like understands the assignment person.

Yeah.

And then he is like, but by the way, I’m not myself genetically reproducing. He says, this does not mean that I would adopt, rather I would have someone else who I consider to be genetically better than me, be the father of the child. I have thought about this a great deal, and not only do I think it is the right thing to do, but it is something which [00:08:00] everyone should do, hears why which is, I’m glad he’s making this, this claim.

I’m like,

Malcolm Collins: okay, everyone needs to do this. Everyone needs to do this. Yeah.

Simone Collins: It’s a bold claim and I like, I like it. I like this, I like this guy. So here it more or less summarized we’re, were his points. He wrote to start. I think we can agree that it is bad to harm your children. And I agree, and I I I think this is one of the most basic and simple points that you get, you know, when people choose to not have kids.

You, you brought this on a lot.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: A lot of people suffer from very severe depression or other mental illnesses and they would never want to inflict that suffering on their children. And it really is kind of a form of abuse. To, you know, have a child that you know is going to suffer immensely like that.

I mean, like, there are perfectly fine children whose parents like, you know, beat them or whatever, you know, is, is subject then to horrible experiences and that sucks. And then there are parents who give everything to their children and their children are still more miserable than those like beaten children or deprived to children because they’ve just been [00:09:00] born with the card stacked against them so much mentally from a suffering standpoint.

So,

Malcolm Collins: yeah.

Simone Collins: Okay. Good point. But something you can address with polygenic risk or selection is

Malcolm Collins: actually this is, I, we see this in our kids already. I am a happy, exuberant vitalistic person. Yeah. And it’s very clear in our kids that they are the same way. And I am that way in a

Simone Collins: way. Yeah. I didn’t know we had our children, that there’s literally such a thing as euphoric screaming.

Malcolm Collins: He’s like, just especially the euphoric screaming before the charge. Like these are like little pics. Like,

Simone Collins: like what? They’ve never heard that. Like we don’t, it’s not like we’ve watched. Movies or anything that have this like euphoric battle cry in them. I don’t know where it just like comes, it’s just deep in their, in their donna,

Malcolm Collins: in their donna. So, but funny. Yeah, I, if you are a person inclined to perceiving yourself negatively I [00:10:00] can see why you might do this.

Simone Collins: Yeah. He also writes, we also know that genes matter, they affect life outcomes. A substantial part of the variation in people’s outcomes is due to their genes. Okay. So he’s setting the, the groundwork here. He wrote, if you would take actions, which you would definitely change your children’s genes for the better, then you should also take them for actions which change them for the better in expectation.

He basically sees choosing someone else’s genes over yours as just an extension of something like gene editing. He wrote, they would still be your own children or else is an adopted child, not your own. If someone. Is left an orphan as a baby and then brought up by a family who loves him, whose child are they?

Would you love them less for not being your own? Or suppose you learned that the person you believed to be your son whom you raised was in fact conceived by another man. Would you cast that child out of your life? I would hope

Malcolm Collins: yes. Yes,

Simone Collins: I would. You, you have that very severe aversion. I would hope you do not if you are unable to do this because you would [00:11:00] only love your own children.

If they would be conceived by you, then we would re we would regard that as an unadmirable thing, not right. And normal. Which I mean, I see, I see his point that like, you know, you bring a, a person into your life, you have a very close relationship with them. You, you raise them. Like in general, I don’t, I don’t think we would laud your reaction, which you can’t control as virtuous.

Right. It’s just something you can’t control. He points out.

Malcolm Collins: I, I think it’s virtuous. I, I think if a child isn’t yours, you should cast it out. Like I, I would hold my kids to the same standards as well. I think it is useful for a society to have this standard because it for prevents parit

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Of the social group by outsiders.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: No,

Simone Collins: I mean that’s, that is absolutely true. Just, just so people know how powerful this feeling is in Malcolm, we have a very controlled process whereby we create children. We, we undergo IVF, the medical controls in place just ‘cause they don’t wanna be [00:12:00] sued by IVF clinics to make sure that they don’t mix up embryos or anything, or eggs and sperm, et cetera.

Very rigorous. Malcolm still has our kids’, DNA tested ev every time like a paternity test with every kid. ‘cause he’s like, I don’t know. I don’t know. He needs to know.

Malcolm Collins: I’m not gonna risk it.

Simone Collins: Paternity test when you, I, I mean, like, I, I get it. But it’s, it’s still funny. It’s like, I, it’s not even like, could she possibly have slept with someone?

Did

Malcolm Collins: they make a mistake in the lab? It can happen.

Simone Collins: No, and it can, and it, it has happened. So I, I also get that. But anyway

Malcolm Collins: this is where when people are like, oh, like, I think like Ben Shapiro did fraternity tests and somebody was like, oh, like that shows he doesn’t trust his wife. It’s like, no.

Like,

Simone Collins: no. It’s just a very, some people, some men just have extremely strong instincts here.

Malcolm Collins: I, I think all men should have this in a cultural group and equal, I think all men should defacto always paternity test their kids.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But Nicholas Decker just it’s clear that some men don’t have this instinct and yeah.

I mean, it, [00:13:00] it just is. But here’s where it gets, I think more interesting and, and these are arguments that I, I wish more people would make when they think about these things. He points out that just because one person is okay phenotypically, it doesn’t mean their genes are optimal for certain desired outcomes.

I mean, what, what I guess maybe he was saying is like, it doesn’t mean their genes are good, but I just don’t think that that there’s anything as good or bad genes. But anyway, optimal per your values. He wrote further, your child’s outcomes are correlated not only with direct par genetic father, but also with your parents outcomes are not a first order markoff variable.

If your family is mediocre, then your child will also be likely to be mediocre. Even if two people’s phenotypes are the same, you should choose the one whose family phenotype is better. And I agree. And like when we have our kids date, what we really want them to do is look at the family history. Like, Hey, get out your album.

Show me the picture of your grandmother. Like, let me see your mom. How’s she looking?

Malcolm Collins: So I was explicitly [00:14:00] told by my parents to do this.

Simone Collins: I’m so, but no, I’ve never, I, until I met you, I’d never heard that. Ever.

Malcolm Collins: But you heard it from me, right? Yeah. Like, I was like, yeah, I was sold by my parents. Look at their, their mom specifically. The context from my dad was look at their mom to make sure she’s still gonna be attractive when she gets older.

Yeah. But I mean that’s, that’s a, a culture of a family saying. You date their family, you need to look at their family. You need to see if their family is good enough. Mm-hmm. And I very explicitly vetted you based on your family their accomplishments. I was impressed with your dad’s ability to you know, pull himself up, sort of starting from scratch very late in life and the, the, and your sister who’s done really well.

And I was like, okay. So, so she has successful people in her family. Obviously not at the extent of my family, where like everyone’s a billionaire, super genius. Except for me, somehow the big

Simone Collins: Malcolm, I think you’re doing really well by like, the things we value.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I, I wouldn’t switch with any of my [00:15:00] siblings or cousins.

You know, they, they’re, they have done exceptionally well in terms of their careers and business, but none of them have the public reach that I have which is what I value most. So. You know? Yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah. But I, in history,

Malcolm Collins: I’m

Simone Collins: glad he brought that up though.

Malcolm Collins: And I’m basically already there at at least a footnote, which is nice.

That’s

Simone Collins: a nice feeling. I, I would like, yeah. I, I want, I want your reach to go a lot further. I want at least a

Malcolm Collins: few chapters on Malcolm and what happened with that

Simone Collins: thing. Just a, just a couple chapters in all of history. Anyway. I agree. I, I just, that, that, that is a lot of what I am trying to do is just maximize your reach ‘cause you’ve had such a positive impact on everyone’s life.

I know who you’ve touched and. I wanna see that happen on a more macro level,

Malcolm Collins: it it, it is so rare for somebody to be as unabashedly, arrogant and un humble as I am. And yet still people say I have a positive impact on them. And I think it’s [00:16:00] because I give people an excuse to see themselves that way.

Like why, why can’t I just be as satisfied with my, my life and accomplishments as Malcolm is? You can choose to be, anyone can,

Simone Collins: but anyway, I, what I think is, is really important to note though, is when people are like, oh, well intelligence that you’re just gonna get reversion to the mean. Okay, but what if you look at the mean, and the mean is, is high in a family.

Like you don’t have to worry so much about that reversion. But I, I mean, so you’re right and. We can control for that. So he’s absolutely right. And, and it very well could be that he is exceptional per his family and that he comes from some family of like hyper depressed you know, whatever. Of course.

Like just, yeah. Like, and, and he actually writes after this, and this is another thing that you and I talk about a lot, and again, super under-discussed, and I feel very ambivalent about this too, when it comes to encouraging people to have kids is he, he apparently or appears to not really like his [00:17:00] family that much.

He’s, he wrote, you might also think that I will relate to them better, as in like the kids that would be genetically mine. If they’re more like me, I disagree with this. I would expect them to be like my family. I do not particularly care about my family. I do care quite a lot about other people, including those who I have asked. I would rather my children be more like them than my family. And here’s the thing, this is something that you and I have only really come to understand having and raising kids over at a minimum of, of six years at this point.

You, your partner and, and their family is so much in your kids’ behavior much. And if you don’t like your partner and you don’t like your own family and you don’t like their family, you’re gonna have a tough time. And we, we know, we know people. Whose kids exhibit the characteristics of, of partners and family members they hate and it, they kind of hate their kids.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And if you don’t like yourself and then you have [00:18:00] kids, you’re not gonna like your kids. Right.

Simone Collins: Well, or you don’t like your family. Like you, you, you’re gonna struggle with that a little bit.

Malcolm Collins: Or a lot. Well, hold on. I mean, this is different. You can, you can be the way that our kids, and I mean, I already see this.

I am not, I, I like my family, but I am different from my family in many ways. Mm-hmm. Those differences I see very starkly into my kids. Perhaps even more exaggerated than the ways I am like my extended family. So it is not as if kids will not inherit the ways that you psychologically differentiate from your greater family.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But also your mom and dad are super and are kids.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. My parents are super in the kids

Simone Collins: and my parents too. I, I see it in my parents too. It’s just that like. You’re gonna see it. And I, I’m fond of all of them. And so when I see it, I love, like my late mother, I love seeing her in our children.

‘cause I feel closer to her. What if all you wanna do is get away from your parents and then they’re like leering at you through their little children eyes.

Malcolm Collins: The urban monoculture, it’s [00:19:00] core tactic. It’s getting you to hate your parents to believe that you have some and many conservatives solve for this that you have some existential beef with people who probably tried to do their best for you.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and, and spent a lot of money and time caring for you. And really your parents have to go quite far. I, I think given the cost of parenting mm-hmm. For you to have a negative emotional context to them yeah. Like your parents did an astronomical amount for you. And so to be like, like if it’s not like regular.

Some sexual abuse. I’m like, you should probably

Simone Collins: figure, I don’t know. What if they’re a trash person? You know, what if they’re just, you know, they’re, they’re very

Malcolm Collins: even trash people still generally try to be good parents.

Simone Collins: Right. But, and actually this was another note that I kind of wanted to think about, and this is something that other people brought up which I’m gonna go through.

Some of the responses after we get through the end of this was, you know, there are good, some people said this, again, I don’t believe there are good or bad genes. I [00:20:00] think that there, you know, that the situation and context and people change what’s good or bad for every individual family. Changes over time, changes based on the environment still.

They’re like, well, there are good and bad genes, and then there are good and bad parents. And I absolutely agree that there are some people who are like superb genetic specimens, right? Like where they’re, they’re exceptionally smart. They come from high achieving families, but like they’re really bad parents.

And then there are people who are like, just. Dumbest light posts, you know, but they’re just the most patient, wonderful parents. Actually, you know, this is another little kerfuffle that came up on X today where Alo was catching heat for tweeting about like she was going through her late mothers, ‘cause her mother died late last year.

Okay. And it was rough and it’s, it was sad. She’s now been going through I think some of her notes in personal, personal possessions and is kind of just struck by the fact that her mom just wasn’t, wasn’t very intellectually engaged. Like ELA is amazingly intellectually engaged. And she was like, just, wow.

My mom was, [00:21:00] I think she might have even used the term kind of dumb. And then, you know, ex is like, ah but like she also said, no, I’m very fond of my mom. And I loved her and she was a great mom and she was very loving. But you know, through my conversations with her as a kid and now going through all her notes, like it’s really clear that just wasn’t a lot going on.

Like, she loved parenting. She was also. In terms of like maybe reversion to the meme or you should look at the family. Her grandmother, she noted, had actually very complex notes and thoughts and poems in multiple languages, whereas like her mom’s notes were just like, beep boop, I’m a human, I guess.

Yeah, very

Malcolm Collins: different. Like my parents are super, your parents are very intellectually engaged as well. Maybe sometimes was dumb stuff, but very intellectually engaged nonetheless.

Simone Collins: I mean, all of our parents have gone listen, the, the times were different. But my, my point is that I, I think there’s also this issue of there, there being, and I think maybe this could feed the argument being made here, [00:22:00] is that some people are really good parents, but maybe they, they wouldn’t produce the, the most thriving.

People genetically, and some people are thriving themselves genetically, but would be terrible parents. And I don’t know, like maybe it’s not the worst thing to try to match really, really good parents with really, really good genes. I guess that’s kind of what happens when you have exceptional and successful men and then just like really kind and loving mothers who like may not be that that successful.

But then I feel like it kind of pulls down the average, you know? But what are your thoughts on that? Of like sort of this, this push and pull between good parent versus quote unquote good genes, which again, I

Malcolm Collins: have enough kids and you’ll like one of ‘em. That’s what I tell him. No, continue. I wanna hear more.

I wanna hear more of this.

Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah. Here’s actually another very interesting pivot point, which me may explain, and this is important, why he doesn’t have this disgust [00:23:00] reaction to. Having someone else be the sperm donor for kids. He raises, he was prompted to think about this after thinking about gay reproductive logistics because at one point he dated a man.

It sounds like he’s bi. He says, I came to think of this because I’ve dated a man before. If we were to have children and to actually create new children, not simply rearrange who has them, it would be through, it would have to be through a surrogate. Only one of us could be genetically the father. We would have to choose who the choice was.

Obvious though, it should of course be him. The children to come would have a better life if they were more like him than if they were like me. And also, and interestingly, and, and importantly too he’s still open to being the genetic father. If his eventual partner refuses to use a sperm donor, he wrote, I’m unable to con, oh, if I’m unable to convince my partner of this scheme, I would still have kids the old fashioned way.

So. [00:24:00] He just, I think he, he morally believes in this argument. But it’s not like he’s,

Malcolm Collins: okay. So one it’s clear he got used to this idea from, it seems like a long-term relationship with another guy where they were talking about having kids and the other guy was just like, I’m genetically better than you.

Like, oh,

Simone Collins: no, I, I think he came to that conclusion and maybe from love, like, I would be happy to raise just perfect clones of you, Malcolm. I love you that much.

Malcolm Collins: Well, we, we will get on that one day, don’t you worry. Oh,

Simone Collins: God.

Malcolm Collins: I,

Simone Collins: I, no, I’m too nervous. Like,

Malcolm Collins: I love me that much too, Simone.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I know. Where we are with cloning right now is, is I think there’s too much risk of like sudden infant death and, you know, that that is like my deepest Yeah.

Is darkest here.

Malcolm Collins: And

Simone Collins: so we’re, we’re not doing that until like, you know, it’s 50 years of clone success. I, I’m, I cannot, we’ll

Malcolm Collins: still be around.

Simone Collins: Maybe I, we, you know, both you and I feel like we’re gonna die like in a year. I, I just have this, this, this terrible feeling. Maybe it doesn’t help that like every single day, like if there was some clock on the wall of like, [00:25:00] you know, hours since the last time a child told you, a child told you they wish you wouldn’t die that would be like two hours for me.

Now our kids are always like, I love you and I hope you don’t die.

Malcolm Collins: I love

Simone Collins: you

Malcolm Collins: and I hope you don’t die.

Simone Collins: But yeah, I mean, I, yeah, he, he, he was, I think he loved his partner, but also I think he struggles with himself and with his family.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, a lot of people are like this. Yeah. The urban monoculture specializes in making people hate their families.

Yeah. So the people who hate their families in modern society are incredibly large. It’s, it’s such an easy way to remove responsibility from your own flaws, fonts, faults from yourself. Oh, it wasn’t me.

Simone Collins: Yes. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It was my parents’ fault. And it’s not even just the urban monoculture that does this a lot of cults, like Scientology really focuses on this strategy.

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: All the bad things that you feel and think are because of things. Your parents.

Simone Collins: Your parents. How dare they, they ruin

Malcolm Collins: every, they accepted you with these Ethans, and now, [00:26:00] well, that’s it, that’s it for you.

Simone Collins: Well, I mean, you can also blame Freud. I mean, like, people, it’s just a, it’s a truism for people to like, well, you know, someone needs to go see a therapist and figure out what happened in their childhood to make this happen.

Like, there’s just this, this pervasive understanding among some people who are like, Freud pilled, even though he’s not. He’s not a reliable,

Malcolm Collins: worse in Freud is young. Young is,

Simone Collins: I mean,

Malcolm Collins: for people who think they’re not stupid,

Simone Collins: but young is like the, the, the, the, the distilled, you know, he’s, he’s the vodka of Freud, you know, like if Freud

Malcolm Collins: is

Simone Collins: here.

No,

Malcolm Collins: he makes all of the, the obviously dumb stuff out, but not the substantively dumb stuff out.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Actually, no. Yeah, he’s the young is the

Malcolm Collins: he’s, he’s. He’s,

Simone Collins: he’s the gin. He’s the gin. And like Freud is maybe like,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, at least Freud has some spicy takes, you know, like

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Young is, is is just the s sw just the like purified Woo.

Without any,

Simone Collins: no, with like, pollutants put in. That’s, I [00:27:00] freaking hate gin. It, it’s just like so close to vodka. We’re almost there guys. Like, but then let’s just throw in

Malcolm Collins: some gross, I think another problem with young is that a lot of people are unaware when they’re consuming youngian psychology. Or unaware how stupid, like downstream of what they, we have an episode on Jordan Peterson where I point out that a lot of Jordan Peterson has just repackaged young Ian psychology and, yeah.

And not good psychological frameworks to use. Another thinker who is very big on young ian psychology and people don’t, she like even wrote her thesis on it, is Erica Co. Kind of

Simone Collins: commissar

Malcolm Collins: Commissar. She’s the one who does a lot of, like, if you’re not a good enough parent, like you’re, you, you need to, to spend your kids

Simone Collins: little broken, like broken, you know, if you send your children to daycare, they’ll be traumatized and et cetera, et

Malcolm Collins: cetera, and all this stuff.

It’s just like not needed. I, I, I understand she’s trying her best. It’s just she’s not an evidence backed person. And yet a lot of conservatives approach her work as if,

Simone Collins: well, because it feeds into their aesthetic because they’re [00:28:00] trying to encourage people to raise intact families where there’s a stay at home parent where they wouldn’t need daycare.

So they’re like, okay, anything that feeds that and encourages parents to take that plunge and have a homemaker is good. So it’s, it’s one of those things where it serves them well. Let’s talk about the reaction to this modest proposal. Don’t have kids that are genetically yours. In terms of people.

Immediately reacting with your kind of your same instinctual reaction. Richard Nia wrote, having kids and seeing how much work it has made the decision to adopt even more incomprehensible to me. No offense to those who do it, but I couldn’t imagine putting up with all the screaming and crying for someone else’s child.

In terms of a different line of reaction. We had Michael Stein post, why not have someone Better than You Raise them? And along those lines, first of Form Ligament wrote,

Malcolm Collins: that’s actually a fun take. I like that.

Simone Collins: I know, I know. Answer this, Nicholas, if you truly love [00:29:00] the children that aren’t yours, you’ll let someone that isn’t you raise them.

And then Chris responded, the supply of good parents is much more restricted than the supply of good DNA. And I do really think that that’s an important point to note.

Malcolm Collins: I actually, I actually agree with that. The, the point I would make here is, why not? Just sorry, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m processing here.

Why not just,

if, if the person has superior genes to you, they’re gonna be a superior parent to you. So why don’t they have the kids?

Simone Collins: No, I don’t. That’s not true. I just, I I hold very strongly that a lot of people who have quote unquote great genes and are very high achievers are actually crap parents.

Malcolm Collins: No, what I’m saying, Simone, and what you’re missing, yeah.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Is

Malcolm Collins: definitionally, you cannot have good genes unless you are a good parent. You might be perceived as having good genes.

Simone Collins: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: But that perception is incorrect. So anyone who actually [00:30:00] has genes that are. Better than yours would have a stronger drive to be a parent than you. And therefore, and when I say good at genes, I mean genes that are going to replicate themselves, right?

Like that are going to be successful in the future. Mm-hmm. And so if you take the genes of somebody who doesn’t want kids, but it’s good at all of these fields and you do want kids, you might be intrinsically taking lesser quality genes in terms of actual replication in future generations because genes are only good if they’re going to continue to self replicate.

It doesn’t matter to just have one kid. Right. You want to have a intergenerationally reproductive thing now.

Simone Collins: And I guess we, we have to, we have to also stipulate that your definition of good parenting, which you alluded to a little bit earlier, is not what many other people would define as good parenting.

‘cause your definition of good parenting is like. Well, did I turn out fine then I’m great. And like if someone had like, cut off your limbs and like taken [00:31:00] out one of your eyes, but like, you know, you became a billionaire, you’d be like, well, they were, they were great parent. Whereas other people would be

Malcolm Collins: like, no, I, I’d say, I’d say the hardship helped me.

Right? Like

Simone Collins: yeah, case in point, that, but that’s my point is that like most people would be like, no, that wasn’t a good parent. They’re more deontological. Whereas you’re the ultimate consequentialist parent.

Malcolm Collins: I think it’s, I I I, I will say that if any of our fans are considering this, I am open to sperm donations because clearly we’re the one case where we’re already trying to have as many kids as possible.

We’re also open to embryo donations, but continue.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, we’ve donated, we’ve donated three and I, I was convinced I anti-natal is Simone, that I should have children. When I saw pictures of you as a kid and was like, oh my god, okay, yeah, our kids are

Malcolm Collins: pretty.

Simone Collins: Yeah, they are.

Malcolm Collins: They’re pretty cute.

Simone Collins: So, yeah, I, I just, I, I wanna, I wanna point that out. And I’m making that point independent of your definition of parenting, I think, I think [00:32:00] children deserve love and support, and I know you hate that, and you’re just gonna have to deal with that. You’re just gonna have to deal with your kids getting loved and cared for and, and kept safe.

And

Malcolm Collins: most of them I do have one other kid out there.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s true. But I also believe that that child is incredibly loved. Yeah. And

Malcolm Collins: well, I mean, my, my DNA is very loving. Like I, I, our kids run up and randomly hug us, and I don’t think that’s you.

Simone Collins: Oh dude. Our kids, I had a problem taking ‘em to the graveyard on on Sunday because on our walk, our kids just kept running up and hugging strangers.

And they’re like, oh, okay. It’s like, I’m sorry. And they’re like, it’s okay. They’re just so excited.

Malcolm Collins: They think that’s the normal reaction to seeing someone is running up for real.

Simone Collins: And like, unfortunately, like they’re, they’re, you know, right at like, their heads come in right at your hips. And it’s just not the best thing for us to have our kids doing that to strangers.

‘cause also they, they sort of [00:33:00] tackle hug anyway, I don’t know how to deal with this. We can’t go out it in public. But they’re so sweet and I love them. So Bill Boost wrote. Something has happened to drive a significant degree of Western society into a kind of suicidal kdry. It is unprecedented to my knowledge and utterly bizarre.

No civilization has welcomed enemies inside its gates with open arms while denying what those enemies say they want to do every day. No civilization had men who preferred not to pass down their genes. Something is very sick with our society, and I think this is a associated with, with certain racial undertones.

Your broader point minus the racial undertones about the urban monoculture. Just creating people who pathologically hate themselves when in the absence of that culture, they wouldn’t.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: The, there was a more structured refutation on Substack actually in a comment. Because Substack like has this [00:34:00] vibrant, thoughtful community still.

I thought it was gonna be very ephemeral and it really is holding strong. Thomas Poeo, I don’t know how to pronounce his last name. I’m so sorry. But he has his own podcast, or sorry, Substack that I’ve heard of before called Uncharted Territories. Wrote the following comment as a response to this essay by Nicholas.

He wrote, I saw this idea of your writings and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I respect and admire you and your ideas enough that I think it’s very important to share how wrong I think you are here. And then he numbered out a series of points starting with one that you will immediately find.

It makes you bristle because we did a whole episode on how you hate this, but he calls it one, not Lindy. This is the least Lindy idea ever. Evolution has operated for billions of years under the force of having your own children. You are going against all these years of a proven mechanic.

Malcolm Collins: See our episode on d Lindy is, is the, the dumbest concept ever.

It is, it’s just a [00:35:00] stupid concept. It’s, it’s, it’s wrong. Even the very term was mis coined. It’s supposed to mean that older ideas that are shared more often, break faster. That was what the original concept was, and the person who wrote the book on it, who is a pathological liar, see our other episode on Elle eb that coined the term just bad all around pseudo intellectual term.

But even if you’re saying it’s anti, I pointed out this was common in Spartan society. This was common in some parts of Roman society. Mm-hmm. This has been common throughout human history. Mm-hmm. To it was actually. In I think in pre-Islamic society they might even ban this in Islam because it was so common.

Oh

Simone Collins: really?

Malcolm Collins: Wow. So it’s one of the forms of, of marriage that is banned because it’s like 14 forms are banned or something. But yeah, you would, which shows that it must have been practiced widely in the region.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. If you had to

Malcolm Collins: make a rule against it, white sleep was the village chief so that you could have a kid that was like technically the village chiefs

Simone Collins: kid.

Oh, oh, oh yeah. ‘cause I would’ve, and well, and also come to think of it, you, you had this Absolutely, [00:36:00] and at least the Tudor court because you would have these, these noble families essentially horing out their daughters to be mistresses of kings, to have b*****d sons to get privileges and access, so, oh gosh.

Yeah. Actually, and these were married women whose husbands would be sent off to the countryside.

Malcolm Collins: No, but I, I mean this is what I expect from the type of person who’d use the term anti lending is, is immediately draw out ideas that show he doesn’t have a lot of historic

Simone Collins: knowledge. I, I know you’d come at ‘em, but he makes other points too.

So I shall proceed. Two evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Usually in your other essays, you bring it to the table here for a decision that’s so important. Your essay is just a series of a few arguments with no data to back many of the assertions three.

Malcolm Collins: What

Simone Collins: evidence?

Malcolm Collins: No. Hold on.

This guy’s aard. I’m, I’m gonna say that right now. What evidence other than genetics? Genetics is huge. Genetics is everything. I know

Simone Collins: these

Malcolm Collins: argument. I

Simone Collins: know

Malcolm Collins: based on his, his argument is that genes influence character and I think I can find [00:37:00] better genes. Yeah. That is not an, an article that needs any more evidence unless you lack a knowledge of basic science.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I’m glad you respect this guy ‘cause I respect him too. And I, I really appreciate that he put this argument out there because it’s a very thoughtful one. And I think people should be allowed. You can

Malcolm Collins: bring my kids. That’s why I respect him. Okay.

Simone Collins: Oh, great. Thanks. I, I actually would love for him to consider apologetic risk or selection.

‘cause I feel like maybe there’s something in there that he, he could maybe feel more comfortable about if he did PGP. But anyway, this ultimately comes down to the partner that he’s with because that’s,

Malcolm Collins: I wanna hear more argument. I wanna hear more

Simone Collins: bad

Malcolm Collins: arguments.

Simone Collins: Keep going. Three extremely high stakes.

Evolution is operated to give you fulfillment out of having children. The more you have, the more fulfillment you get. If you get this idea wrong, you’ll jeopardize one of the biggest sources of fulfillment you could ever have now that you would probably agree with. People

Malcolm Collins: have fulfillment from raising adopted kids, even people who have had a

Simone Collins: bunch of their own kids.

It’s true. It’s true. And in fact, when you see, like, where I see adopted kids the most in just like in the wild, is very prenatal as families [00:38:00] who have a lot of kids, like you’ll see like eight kid family and like two of them. Look different. And it turns out that they hired like, or they, they adopted siblings that they fostered or something like that.

And it’s incredibly beautiful and wonderful that they did it. And they clearly did it because they love children and love giving people good lives and love parenting. And I think it’s so beautiful. And while we would be terrible adoptive parents, I think it’s beautiful that people can recognize when they are good adoptive parents.

‘cause there are kids out there who really need it, really need it. ‘cause there are also really bad parents out there. I just, I don’t know if you saw like the Aspen Gold thing recently with like a drug addicted mother who was found like chained inside a building. And like, then she’s like, yeah, I have a 1-year-old daughter.

And I was just like, oh God. And I just stopped watching the video then because just like the fact that, that there are people who are so unfit to be parents not, not necessarily genetically, but just through their life circumstances that they could, they could have children and possibly put them in such dangerous, terrible scenarios.

Makes me devastated and sad, and the fact that there are [00:39:00] families willing to adopt children out of these dangerous and terrible scenarios makes me so grateful. So anyway, I agree with you. Okay. Right, it four, it’s better for your children if they’re yours, and. I think the evidence is in favor of this.

He wrote, one key way to optimize the happiness of your children is by loving them more. So if you love them even a bit less, they’re likely to be less happy. Your argument against this is weak. Quote, I have some people more, or I, I like some people more than I like my family. And quote is logical because you’re a young adult programmed to actually not love your family as much, so you can go and explore the world.

Then you have children and they are by far the the thing you love most in the world. Your parents, siblings on, et cetera, pale in comparison. Of course, that’s what evolution would do. Evidence suggests that if the children are not genetically yours, you’ll love them less. You’ve probably seen data on how the less related to child’s parents are, the more the child is likely to suffer from abuse, physical and sexual.

This is

Malcolm Collins: all true. [00:40:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah, it is. Children from two, biological parents are two times less likely to get physical and educational neglect and are four times less likely to get emotional neglect. Fourth natural incident study of child abuse and neglect, NIS four, I think it is chart five dash three. There was a better one, but I can’t find it.

You won’t abuse your children, I assume, but this is very strong evidence that you’ll like them less if they’re not biologically yours, so they’ll be less happy. And that is, I think, a valid point, but also think it’s less applicable to him.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and you’ll, you’ll notice this in your kids are just you, like they are you.

They’ll have all your quirks, they have all of your personality,

Simone Collins: but also if you hate you, don’t you think that, I mean, I think that there, there are some parents who are terrible cruel parents toward their children because they see what they hate in themselves, in their children, and then lash out at it.

Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no. So

Simone Collins: it’s a double-edged sword, you know? I, I think that both of them have valid points,

Malcolm Collins: I think. No, but I think it is. No, I don’t think both of them have valid points.

Simone Collins: No,

Malcolm Collins: I think the first one [00:41:00] has valid points. Stick one has no valid points. His arguments are, are, are, are, are fake and gay as they say.

They are not

Simone Collins: Team Nicholas go, Malcolm. Go. I love it. I love it.

Malcolm Collins: No. Look, if you,

Simone Collins: I’m team Nicholas too. Don’t worry.

Malcolm Collins: I, I, I think the biggest accurate point he makes is that at this stage of this person’s life, their perception of their family and their ancestors mm-hmm. Is. Biologically weighted against it to try to get them to leave the nest.

Because same, yeah.

Simone Collins: You’re, you’re in phase, like of course you’re gonna not like your family ‘cause that’s what you’re supposed to be feeling right now. That’s all.

Malcolm Collins: And you’ve been raised in a society that tells you it’s virtuous to not be proud of your own ancestry and people. So you have that secondary issue as well.

I mean, who’s to bet that this person who he says he likes more than himself is a different race. Mm-hmm. Right? Like, he might be one of these, you know, self hating white people who sees a non-white person and is just like, well, my genes as a whatever are not good.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Like my inherent white [00:42:00] guilt.

Something, something. I don’t think so, and I say this because I don’t know why, but he follows us on Nicholas, the one who posted the, the substack. Not, not the reputation, the actual argument follows us on X. And maybe it’s a hate follow. It could be, but like typically if someone follows us on X, they’re not that type of person.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You’re not that cuck. Yeah, because we’re good at breaking the cuck storm. Like people start to watch us out of hatred. They’re like, oh, I’ve heard that you guys are evil. And then they watch it and they go, oh, oh, this makes a lot of sense.

Simone Collins: I, I have no idea. I can’t model all the people. I’m just, the people judge us are cool, are cool.

So I like them. Anyway, let’s keep going through is arguments though, five variance versus expected value, a quote, better person, genetically end quote. Then you might have a better expected value in the quality of your child, but the variance is so high in the children, you get that odds are still high, your child is worse off with somebody else’s child.

For example, if you get a donor that is five IQ points higher than yours, what are the odds that as children [00:43:00] would be more intelligent than you? I’m going to guess it’s closer to 50% than 100%.

Malcolm Collins: That’s the stupidest argument I’ve ever heard.

Simone Collins: I mean,

Malcolm Collins: but there’s still

Simone Collins: variants.

Malcolm Collins: I

Simone Collins: guarantee

Malcolm Collins: the odds are still higher.

Simone Collins: That’s true.

Malcolm Collins: It doesn’t matter that there’s no guarantee. The point is the odds. Mm-hmm. What

Speaker 3: This is a bit like a Jehovah’s Witness telling somebody, well, can you guarantee the blood transfusion will save my child? And you’re like, well, I mean, the odds are it will save your child. And they’re like, ah, if you can’t guarantee it, then how dare you suggest I use it. It’s like, well, what the, like how, how can a person, like a sentient human being be this stupid?

I.

Simone Collins: also, if he selected someone else’s genes and did polygenic risk course selection, you can also control for that more.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This is the no bad argument. Continue.

Simone Collins: Okay. Next high bar. You are already quite intelligent and bright.

Odds are your gene quality is quite good already. Some examples of that include your essays, your [00:44:00] thinking is good, your precocious, your ability to come up with many new ideas, including this one. Your success at finding a fitting community and your ability to communicate complex ideas well, trying to further improve the pool has dramatically less potential impact than if other people did it much less impact than you think it would.

I mean, I, I agree that Nicholas seems to be like a pretty

Malcolm Collins: i’d, I’d push, I’d say that. As somebody who is not Nicholas, you cannot easily model or, or your, your modeling of Nicholas’s self-perception is intrinsically less than Nicholas’s own modeling of his self perception.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. You know your self best.

That is absolutely true. Yeah. He knows,

Malcolm Collins: if Nicholas knows he wouldn’t like raising a kid with his personality quirks then

Simone Collins: it’s insane. By the way, all these things that I even thought were just like behavioral things I picked up from nurture turned out to be nature, like weird, annoying stuff I do with my hands.

Like I hold stuff [00:45:00] funny to like not touch it with like the pads of my fingers, but instead like the ends up like, like a retard. One of our kids does it and he never saw me do it. ‘cause I try to hide it. I’m very ashamed of it and I’m like, oh God, that was genetic. Like it’s a sensory issue. So just, yeah, the, the, the profundity with which things that you might hate about yourself will show up in your kids is Val, it’s valid.

It’s very valid. I still love toasty. I love him so much. He, he, flip side of that is, is when you see this in your kids and maybe you hated it in yourself for the first time because of this overwhelming love you have for them, you will maybe for the first time give yourself grace. And that has been really transformative for me in terms of self-acceptance is someone who deeply hates themselves.

So counterpoint for Nick there, which

Malcolm Collins: okay,

Simone Collins: is important. Okay, let’s go to another point. Multi-dimensionality of a better parent. How are you going to measure if somebody else is a better parent than you? An IQ test is one measure for of many. For example many [00:46:00] I. High IQ people are worse than you at communication or at being able to rethink what society takes as given.

Will you measure the candidates across all the dimensions of good gene quality that exist? Are you then going to do a weighted average of their quality score? How will, how are you sure you’ll take into account all the dimensions that matter, that you can properly measure the relative importance of each factor?

I believe you would have no reliable way to tell whether somebody is actually better than you, so your confidence that you can get somebody better than you to father your children is very low. So I disagree because like if we had to choose between cloning me or cloning you, both you and I would decide it’s clearly going to be you, Malcolm.

And I think he depends on only

Malcolm Collins: both. I mean,

Simone Collins: sure. If

Malcolm Collins: I had to build an entire society, I would want them to be Simone’s. If I had to add a few, a more exceptional people to our society, I would choose Malcolm’s.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, yeah. It’s like the, the, the, the farmer versus the king. [00:47:00] Like you need both. But if we could only clone one child and we knew that they wouldn’t die in infancy, then we would clone you.

And, and, and I think this is what Nicholas experienced with his partner too. Like when he just thought intuitively about like, well, if we decided to have a kid together, well, obviously we use his sperm. Like he didn’t need to think about it. And I think it’s enough to allow someone’s intuition to be like, nah, we know.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: You know, I, I have no qualms about the fact that I would choose you Malcolm. And I think I have no qualms

Malcolm Collins: about that either. I would think it would be very strange.

Simone Collins: That’s the thing. Yeah. I, I think, I think that Thomas PO’s overthinking this. Okay. Eight pool diversity. Along these lines. I don’t think all genetic diversity is equally valuable, but some is.

By choosing somebody else, you’ll be weighing some factors as more important than others. But how do you know those factors you weigh are really less important? Maybe in the future they become more important like a parent optimizing their children in stem. In a world where AI solves science but not taste, there is value in genetic and idea diversity pool.

Your diversity is unlikely to be the type we want to [00:48:00] waste. I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins: Only, only if this argument only works if tons of people are doing what he’s suggesting here.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: If it’s

Simone Collins: just, and he’s a unique,

Malcolm Collins: this is a, this is a completely invalid argument. Continue.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Nine. Adverse selection. If you are able to find a person that looks so good on paper and that would accept to be the father of your children, this person would potentially show two huge flaws that make him worse than you.

One, this person would be substantially less humble and more arrogant than you. He would think he’s strictly better than you across all the dimensions that matter. He preemptively insulted you. Him.

Malcolm Collins: No, I, yeah. This is not bad. I feel this way about my parents all the time.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

That

Malcolm Collins: I am strictly better than them in every dimension and they treat me the same way.

Like this is actually one of the things that other people have noted about my relationship with especially my dad that they see as very odd. Like my stepmother has, has noted this before, that like he genuinely seems to like respect and even [00:49:00] fear my opinion. And I appreciate that he raised me knowing that I could be better than authority figures in my life, just like intuitively by never demanding that like I am the, the head of this household and everybody in the household knows less than me.

He is, you know.

Simone Collins: Two to con to continue with Thomas PO’s. 0.2, the person is much less honest than you as he’s faking his markers of market value to he wrote then might want to sear your children, but I think he meant to write that might want to sire your children.

This is like Groucho saying he wouldn’t want to join a club that accepts him as a member. Now, you and I in, in a member of paid subscribers only episode, interviewed a woman who, who went through the process of getting a known sperm donor through a Facebook group. Largely because in many cases working through a sperm bank involves working with pathological liar sperm, because you actually get accepted by a sperm bank.

[00:50:00] You kind of have to, like, if you’re like, well, my grandmother died once, they’re like, oh, she died. Like, of what? Yes. Okay, you’re out. You know, like if you’re, if you’re honest. In any way you, I diagnos out

Malcolm Collins: diagnosed with AED as a kid. You are out.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s like, are you kidding me? It’s so, you are, I I, I totally get that.

He’s right about that. But this is not, that’s not what Nicholas is, is describing. Nicholas is describing what’s insinuated in, in his substack essay is that he would choose like a known friend, you know, someone he’s very close with, who he’s lived around, who he understands behaviorally very well. Like it’s a known donor situation or like.

Possibly a, a gay male partner who he like literally is living his entire life with. So anyway. Yeah. 10 Danger of subconscious virtue signaling. What it might be that your brain is tricking you to say this because it sounds like the most EA thing you can say Yes. Which gives you Yes, I agree with community

Malcolm Collins: only.

Good argument.

Simone Collins: Okay, this is very, yes, because we talked about in another episode, this, this new preponderance of [00:51:00] young men in the UK just donating their kidneys to strangers. And I think this is like this hyper stimuli of like, I’m an effective altruist, take my organs. It’s just horrible. This is the most common in young adults, as you probably know, and becomes much less true in other settings.

Example per different peer group, different age, different brain chemistry. To be clear, I don’t think you’re being face facetious. I think you’re, you believe what you say, but this sounds like the type of situation your brain might have an incentive to lie to you in a way you don’t realize. Okay. So you agree with that point?

I agree with that point, yeah. It is a genuine risk and it’s, what’s great is that this is not an imminent thing. And because he put that idea out there, because he tweeted this and he put this on substack, he’s able to consider people’s various arguments and actually think deeply about this leading up to him eventually maybe making this decision with a partner.

And I love that. And this is why I wish people had put their hot takes online. Everyone’s so afraid of being criticized and the fact that this is a young man and that he is not afraid of putting out ideas that might get [00:52:00] criticized and might get ridiculed and even called like a coupled is just so great.

Can’t people do that? Like can’t we have just discourse about ideas for once without being shamed?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so I, I need to talk about why intergenerationally this as a cultural strategy is very bad. And I, and I mentioned at the beginning, but for people who don’t quite grok what I am saying here, suppose you have a society where it is normal for every male to either decide to sire another male’s kids who they think is better than them, or decide that they have the best genetic quality of among the partners they can get, and they’re going to sire their own kids.

Okay? Now within some people of this society, there is a visceral disgust at the idea of raising somebody else’s kids. Now you have created eight. Extremely strong selective pressure for that visceral disgust, if this is ever normalized to become very common because every male who gets selected who has this now refuses to do it for their own kids.

Mm-hmm. And this is why you just simply [00:53:00] shouldn’t do this. I’ve actually seen this in the children of many, like I’ve met multiple ISTs people who want to have lots of kids mm-hmm. Who are born from like mass sperm donors.

Simone Collins: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: The idea that this is a her thing, this I wanna have just tons of kids.

Yeah. Is, is pretty born out in the evidence. And so you, you’re, you’re actually creating a social construct that can’t survive in the long run. What you really need from kids, like the most valuable trait to pass on to the next generation is wanting to be a father while still being high income and high intelligence.

Mm-hmm. If you are those things, which it appears you are, you want to be a father and you are high intellect that is an extremely rare genetic phenomenon in the current population. Um mm-hmm. Much rarer than phenomenon associated with just general intelligence or career success or anything like that.[00:54:00]

Mm-hmm. And as such that, that’s what I think he’s fundamentally missing in all of this.

Simone Collins: Well maybe this kind of dove dovetails with PO’s last point, titled 11 additional points. There, there are two. The only way in which I think this could make sense if is if your essay is geared towards convincing normies to do this with your gene pool, in which case you’d be maximizing your offspring, although making each less happy because they’re not hanging out with their biological father.

Pretty Machiavellian, I don’t think this is true. B, timing. By the time you have to make this decision, science might be good enough that you can edit your future child’s genome, optimizing IQ and whatever other measure of quality you want, which is very true. Takeaways. Your idea sounds laudable, but it’s not.

Lindy. Oh, Malcolm’s already shaking with rage. It doesn’t have enough evidence. It is unlikely to be actionable. You’d likely make you and your children both biological and non-biological, less happy and fulfilled and it would be optimizing for the wrong reasons. The [00:55:00] upside is lower than you think. The downside is higher than you think, and there are high probabilities that of this going awry and you’re possibly lying to yourself.

So he was just categorically against this, but I think where you’re coming out of this is like. Hey, people are capable of making their own judgements of what’s best. Maybe Nicholas is, is doing

Malcolm Collins: what’s

Simone Collins: best for him.

Malcolm Collins: Right. But, but generally speaking, I think it’s a bad idea. Yeah. And generally speaking, I think it’s a bad idea because it’s not an intergenerationally stable idea.

Mm-hmm. And he is massively underestimating the rareness of wanting to be a father and being intellectually engaged.

Simone Collins: Yeah. He’s already showing so many signs of like, you should be having all, and just that opening paragraph of him being like, I really wanna have kids. I wanna raise kids. Like I, I feel this deep desire to do.

It’s like, oh my

Malcolm Collins: genetic.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s

Malcolm Collins: genetic.

Simone Collins: This is the sign. And if you

Malcolm Collins: take Gene for somebody who doesn’t have that desire

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Then you are going to create children who are not useful to the next generation. Mm-hmm. As to [00:56:00] what’s causing this. I think we’re actually learning from the beginning.

‘cause this came from a gay partner in deciding which of them would have kids. This may also have an element of a, a, a genuine sexual fantasy tied to it. And I would not risk your lifetime, which you’re gonna have to spend with this other person as part of an arousal pathway. If, if that is polluting your decision.

You and I even say this for spouses,

Simone Collins: right? So like, yeah, people on X were, were ridiculing. But what you’re saying is like, look, I don’t care if that’s what it is, but don’t do stuff because it feels good.

Malcolm Collins: I say this was marriage. I’m like, don’t marry someone because the sex is good, right? Mm-hmm.

Sex, arousal, compatibility. This is of all the differences I have with ala, the biggest one I have for her, like partner survey, it’s a bunch of things to see if they’re compatible with her in terms of her sexual proclivities. And I’m like, this is nothing to do with who you marry.

Simone Collins: Marriage is a business contract.

Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. Like sexual proclivities. You what? That, that has, once you [00:57:00] got six kids, you’re not gonna care how dummy they are. You know, like, this stuff is not relevant. So I don’t, I I find that to be, by the way, people are wondering why I think anti Lindy is, is as a concept, is so stupid is what anti Lindy does, is it takes something that is obviously true, that in an environment.

EG, the historic environment of let’s say like the middle Ages or the 1950s or whatever, where not much is changing entities or ideas or concepts or things that have outcompeted other things in the past was in the stable environment. They are likely to outcompete other things in the future.

Mm-hmm. And it does this by looking at the historical record, but if you look at the modern record. We have not seen this trend and that is because we are no longer in a stable environment. So I can’t trust the fact that an idea out competed something in the 1950s to measure or predict whether or not it’s gonna out predict [00:58:00] something in 2030 when a, we have whatever AI economy we have then or what

Simone Collins: Oh, I know, I know.

Counter arguments people have may do that is go to a Walmart. Most of the things that are on the shelves have probably been there for five plus years,

Speaker 4: I wish I had had time to respond to this here, but the point of the argument I always make on this is if a society is stable, then things will stay the same. So for the past five years or so, things have been about stable in regards to food consumption. So things that were winning five years ago continue to win today, but if you go to a Walmart.

Almost nothing on the shelves would’ve existed in its same form 50 years ago. So that’s the point I’m making is it’s not that, uh, you know, every, everything necessarily be there because it wasn’t there two year, three years ago. It’s, it was in an existing environmental context.

Simone Collins: But this, I’m really glad we had this conversation ‘cause I thought it was a really [00:59:00] great argument he put out there.

I really like his thought provoking points. So thanks for talking about them with me and

Malcolm Collins: I

Simone Collins: love you.

Malcolm Collins: I love you to Simone. I have a spectacular day and what are we doing for dinner?

Simone Collins: The, the chili with sun bottle ole and hoisin sauce and that was pretty good. Shishito peppers. Do you want me to add like MSG to it tonight?

Would you like me to serve it like sloppy joe’s on Hawaiian buns?

Malcolm Collins: No. You could serve it on rice, but I’m gonna bring my chips down for it too, because I might want some on chips.

Simone Collins: Ooh, smart. I like that. Okay. I love you. Bye.

Malcolm Collins: Bye.

Speaker 5: So, where are you? Up here? Where, where is that? Go up the steps and climb on the car. This, why did you wanna go up there? ‘cause I, I guess I love being high pee. Why do you like being high? What if you fall? I won’t fall. What makes you say that?[01:00:00]

Speaker 6: Sometimes when these are not here, I’ll fall and sometimes when these are here, I’ll not fall. So the railing is why you won’t fall. Yeah. And instead, this is not what I wanna fall.

Did you know that giving men extra testosterone can make weakly affiliated Democrats shift conservative? In this eye-opening Based Camp episode, Simone and Malcolm Collins break down a 2025 study showing testosterone administration caused a “red shift” in political preferences—plus what it reveals about conservatism, declining T levels in modern men, AI attitudes, social vigilance, punishment of bad actors, risk-taking, and why high-testosterone mindsets align with enforcement, competition, and opportunity.

They explore how testosterone isn’t just “rage”—it’s strategic dominance calibration, reduced performative niceness (without killing real benevolence), increased willingness to punish unfairness, and comfort with confrontation and disruption. From immigrant crises and benefit fraud to why low-T societies might fear AI, this conversation reframes conservatism as partly hormonal—and asks whether we should be subsidizing testosterone for the masses.

Featuring kid interruptions, roid rage myths, soul debates, and plenty of Based Camp chaos. If you’re high-T (or want to be), this one’s for you.

Show Notes

In 2025, a group of researchers found that testosterone administration caused democrats to shift in a more conservative direction.

This reveals a lot about conservatism and modern leftists and when I dug deeper into the effects of higher levels of testosterone in both men and women, I feel like I came away with a better understanding of the left, the right, and society in general.

Also, now whenever I hear about people taking testosterone supplementation, I am going to think “they’re just taking their conservative pills”

The Research

In their paper, titled “Testosterone Administration Induces a Red Shift in Democrats”, these researchers took 136 “healthy males,” measured the strength of their political affiliation and their basal testosterone, gave them synthetic testosterone or a placebo, and then checked to see if their affiliation changed.

They found:

* That more weakly affiliated democrats had 19% higher basal testosterone than those who identified strongly with the party

* That “When weakly affiliated Democrats received additional testosterone, the strength of their party affiliation fell by 12% (p = 0.01), and they reported 45% warmer feelings towards Republican candidates for president (p < 0.001).”

They also found that “Testosterone administration did not affect political preferences for strongly affiliated Democrats or strong or weak Republicans.”

In short, their results demonstrate that testosterone induces a “red shift” among weakly affiliated Democrats, providing evidence that testosterone affects political preferences.

Hmm.. is Testosterone Changing?

Across many industrialized populations, average basal testosterone levels in men appear to be drifting downward over time, while data for women are sparse and less clear but do not show a strong, consistent upward trend.

Just a note:

* Typical female testosterone levels are far lower than male levels (roughly 10–20‑fold lower)

* In both sexes, testosterone naturally declines with age within an individual, with an average drop of about 1% per year in adult men and a gradual decline in women that accelerates around menopause

* So as populations age, their testosterone will drop

In men:

* Several large cohort and lab‑database studies from the U.S., Europe, and Israel report an age‑independent secular decline in total testosterone in men, after adjusting for age and often for BMI and other factors.

* For example, a widely cited Massachusetts study found that men of the same age in the early 2000s had substantially lower mean testosterone than men of the same age in the late 1980s, and this drop was not fully explained by obesity or other measured health and lifestyle changes.

* A large Israeli health‑system analysis (over 100,000 men, 2006–2019) likewise found a significant, prominent decline in testosterone across most age groups, again largely independent of BMI.

* A newer analysis of “healthy” men has also reported progressive decreases in both testosterone and LH over recent decades, suggesting a true change in hypothalamic‑pituitary‑gonadal function rather than just obesity or assay artifacts.

If More Testosterone Correlates with Conservatism, What Might That Say About Conservatism?

In other words, what do increases in testosterone change about views and behavior?

Across lab and real-world studies, higher or experimentally raised testosterone is less “rage hormone” and more “status and dominance calibration”: it pushes behavior in whatever way seems best to gain or protect status in that situation (which can be aggressive, but can also be generous or prosocial).

Key Behavioral Changes

Aggression and conflict response

* Higher testosterone is linked to greater reactive aggression, especially when people feel provoked, treated unfairly, or their status is threatened, rather than indiscriminate hostility.

* In experiments like ultimatum games, testosterone increases costly punishment of unfair offers, even when it doesn’t improve payoff, consistent with defending status or enforcing norms.

Risk-taking and competition

* Elevated testosterone is associated with more willingness to take financial and social risks and to enter competitive situations.

* In trading and lab tasks, higher testosterone correlates with riskier bids and more optimistic expectations about outcomes, mediated by increased confidence rather than simple recklessness.

* Randomized trials show that testosterone can increase willingness to compete, although effects depend on cortisol levels and context (who the opponent is, prior wins/losses).

Trust, vigilance, and social reading

* Single-dose testosterone in women reduced interpersonal trust, particularly in people who are naturally very trusting, interpreted as increased social vigilance for exploitation in competitive environments.

* It tends to put people in a more defensive, “scan for threats/opportunists” mode, which is adaptive for dominance but can strain cooperative relationships if chronic.

* Some studies find impaired cognitive empathy and reduced “strategic” or feigned prosociality under testosterone, meaning people may care less about managing how cooperative they look to others and more about direct payoff or status

* OMG TESTOSTERONE REDUCES PERFORMATIVE NICENESS

BUT IT DOES NOT NECESSARILY REDUCE ACTUAL BENEVOLENCE!!!

Prosocial and status-enhancing behavior

* Importantly, testosterone can also increase generosity when generosity enhances status. In bargaining games, men given testosterone punished unfairness more but were not less generous when offers were high.

* Other work shows testosterone can eliminate strategic prosociality (acting nice just for image) but not genuine prosocial motives, reinforcing the idea that the hormone tunes behavior to real, not performative, status benefits.

Cognitive style and decision-making

* Testosterone administration makes men more likely to go with gut impulses and less likely to engage in cognitive reflection, leading to more errors on trick problems where the intuitive answer is wrong, even though basic math ability is unchanged.

* This seems to operate through increased confidence and reduced self-doubt, which can be an advantage in some leadership/competitive settings but a liability when careful checking is needed.

​

Mood and personality correlates

* Observationally, higher testosterone has been linked with traits like dominance, lower punishment sensitivity (less fear of negative consequences), more approach behavior, and in some cases irritability or uncharacteristic aggression, particularly at supraphysiologic doses (e.g., heavy anabolic steroid use).

How this changes views

* Other people: seen a bit more as competitors or potential threats to status, so you may feel less automatically trusting and more scrutinizing of others’ motives.

* Fairness and respect: slights, disrespect, or unfair treatment feel more salient and more worth confronting or punishing, even at personal cost.

* Risk and opportunity: downside risk feels less scary and upside feels more attainable, so risky choices can look more reasonable and attractive.

* Self-view: stronger internal sense of certainty and correctness; more confidence and less second-guessing.

​

This explains why Republicans are more comfortable doing things like:

* Enforcing immigration policy

* Enforcing laws

* Supporting capitalism

Episode Transcript

In this explosive Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dissect Iran’s baffling wartime decisions in 2026 — from missile strikes on closest allies like Qatar (hitting the massive Ras Laffan LNG facility) to attacks on UAE, Saudi Arabia, and others — while seemingly ignoring Israel and the US in many cases.

What happens when a regime’s “mosaic defense” strategy fractures into regional warlords and fiefdoms vying for power? The Collins argue Iran’s centralized control has collapsed, turning IRGC factions into competing hardliners who bomb expensive targets for headlines and internal legitimacy rather than coherent geopolitics.

They cover:

* Israel’s strike on the shared South Pars gas field and Iran’s bizarre retaliation against Qatar

* The emerging Cold War between Saudi Arabia (centralized states) and UAE (maritime empire/proxies)

* Why this chaos benefits US interests long-term (isolating Iran, hurting China/Europe more via Strait of Hormuz issues)

* Assassination plots against Trump, nuclear brinkmanship, and why nation-building isn’t the goal

* Low-casualty US strategy using vintage B-52s to clear old munitions

A wild ride through Middle East power vacuums, proxy wars, and why Iran’s self-sabotage might be the biggest geopolitical gift the US never expected.Based Camp - What was Iran thinking when bombing its neighbors_

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] What this suggests to me is that the people who are at the regional heads of Iran’s mosaic defense strategy have entirely regionalized their control already.

Simone Collins: Oh, wow. Oh, that would be interesting. So it’s, it’s like, it. It’s descending into fiefdoms.

Malcolm Collins: But what’s important is to these individuals who are playing this game, and you can see this in the president’s reaction here, they actually don’t particularly care about America or Israel or Iran’s long-term geopolitical future.

Simone Collins: Sure. Why would they? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They are vying to be the top dog of the warlords. Mm-hmm.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be doing a, a series of updates on what’s happening with Iran right now.

[00:01:00] And this situation is absolutely crazy in how it’s setting up the future geopolitics of the Middle East. Iran has been making decisions which appear completely baffling from an outside perspective, which is what we’re going to start with to try to understand why they’re making the decisions they’re making.

But we’re also seeing the set of a new Cold War throughout the Middle East, between Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Oh,

Simone Collins: what? Wow. I haven’t heard anything about this.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, it is very, and, and when I say a Cold War, I mean there’s, they’re already in active killing conflicts in about four or five theaters. The Saudi Arabia and the Yoi right now actively.

Simone Collins: So are we talking about a, a cold war along the lines of nuclear threat? Kind of Cold war or just cold war of like frenemies being

Malcolm Collins: No, we don’t attack each other directly, but we arm troops on opposite sides of conflicts throughout the region

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: To attempt to [00:02:00] create public governments that serve us.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: So like a, to get like between each other, they are, I’d say, almost friendly in the way they are acting, and yet people are dying every day in mass in service of this conflict.

Simone Collins: Okay. Frenemies Cold War. Gotcha.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. A, a very odd Cold War, but a Cold War nonetheless. Mm-hmm. And given the way that it’s allowed, it’s also sort of a safer cold work that’s unlikely to escalate as much, but

Simone Collins: that’s nice.

I

Malcolm Collins: wanna, I wanna, I wanna start on the weird behavior of Iran. So if people go back to our episode on Venezuela mm-hmm. My take at the time was I did not think attempting regime change in Iran in the same way we did in Venezuela at least, was a good idea, or really conflict directly in Iran was a good idea.

I said I thought it was incredibly risky. I have since taken the position since this war started and, and this is still where I am today. That. Okay. [00:03:00] I would not have taken this risk even knowing what it appears Trump knew when he went into this conflict.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: However, knowing what has happened since the beginning of the conflict, it was very obviously the right move.

Oh. And the large reason that it turned into very obviously the right move has been bizarre behavior by Iran itself since the conflict started that I wouldn’t have predicted, but maybe I should have.

Simone Collins: Really, because it seems so inane, like them attacking. Their neighbors,

Malcolm Collins: not their neighbor, just their neighbors.

So the attack that was for me, just the most baffling. I mean, they’ve attacked almost every neighboring country at this point except Iraq.

Oh no, they did attack Iraq. They’ve attacked pretty much everyone around them. And when I say everyone one of the most devastating attacks that they did recently was on Qatar.

Now, for people who don’t know [00:04:00] Qatar and Iran are like, Qatar is about Iran’s closest ally.

The children of Gaza are suffering. They have no food or medical supply. But you can help. Please open your heart and make a donation by clicking in the link below.

Fun fact, Israel did find and kill one of these real guys while he was in Qatar in Doha.

[00:05:00]

حار. people of the world.

Malcolm Collins: Al Jazeera is always d of anyone who Iran is funding. That’s just like Al Jazeera’s main thing. For people who don’t know Al Jazeera is Qatari disinformation campaign. Right? Like that’s broadly what it’s known for, but a lot of people treat it seriously as a source of news and stuff like this.

And a lot of like educated liberals I guess are like, I don’t know, they bite the bullet on that because it’s anti-America. anti-Israel

Simone Collins: can confirm. Yeah. They’re like Al Jazeera quality reporting. Well, and to be fair. A lot of, a lot of propaganda news outlets. Do. They’re, they’re only successful as propaganda news outlets.

If they also put out good information, SEO like you, you, you often don’t get good sustainable, like historically speaking, SEO if you don’t provide websites with good content on them like [00:06:00] that is how to sustainably win the game. And this is why you have publications like the Epic Times and Al Jazeera producing good journalism often.

Yeah. ‘cause they won’t able to get people to eat their vegetables if you, they don’t serve actually good food too.

Malcolm Collins: Sometimes the best reporting that you’re going to get is from a bias source when their personal bias isn’t relevant to that story.

Simone Collins: Yes, absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: So you can get great reporting from the Epic Times when it’s not about China.

You can get great reporting from Al Jazeera when it doesn’t have to do with the Middle East.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But if you wanna get an idea of like what I’m talking about when I’m talking about like an attitude flip and Qatar was a real thorn in our side that they were willing to work alongside Iran as much as they were and promote them as much as they were within the region.

Here’s a recent op-ed that was published in, jazeera for an example of, of, of the shift that we’re seeing,

Simone Collins: okay,

Malcolm Collins: the US Israel strategy against Iran is working. Here’s why. Every aspect of Iran’s ability to project regional power is being [00:07:00] successfully degraded. I’m just skipping in a bit here.

But this narrative is wrong, not because the costs are imaginary, but because the critics are measuring the wrong things. They are categorizing the price of the campaign while . Ignoring the strategic ledger. When you look at what actually happened to Iran’s principle instruments of power, its ballistic missiles are null.

It’s nuclear infrastructure, it’s air defenses,, it’s Navy and Proxy Commander architecture. . This picture is not one of us failure. It is one of systematic phased degradation of a threat that previous administrations allowed to grow for four decades. I write this from Doha, where Iranian missiles have triggered alerts for residents to take shelter and Qatar Airways has started operating evacuation flights.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So, so like this is, this is where we are in terms of the feeling in a place like Qatar. All right. So, to understand what happened with Qatar, just, just a bit of context here. And this was also a huge d [00:08:00] move on Israel’s part, but. Turned out beneficial. So I don’t know what to think of it.

So Israel ends up bombing the South Pars gas field.

Now there have been conflicting reports on whether this attack was given the go ahead by the United States. But when there are conflicting reports on whether or not Israel effed us over my general stances, Israel probably effed us over. Yeah, my take is, what may have happened is Israel asked Washington for permission to do this and didn’t flag the significance of what they were about to do.

And then are you just having fun with the debate?

Simone Collins: Sorry.

Malcolm Collins: And then Washington decided to give the, give the, okay. Without going through the channels, they would have if they had known how big a deal this is.

Speaker: As a note, what some people are saying, which plausibly could be true, is that Washington and Israel, , Washington did know that this was going to happen, but they’re playing good cop, bad cop with [00:09:00] Washington, pretending that it didn’t know this was going to happen in order to play, , good cop. , The reason why I don’t believe this is, if this was the case, I would’ve expected Washington to have its messaging aligned with Israel beforehand instead of.

Some of the time saying, yes, we allowed this some of the time angrily saying Israel will never do something like this again.

Malcolm Collins: The reason it’s such a big deal is because this natural gas station, or, or this. So, okay.

Little context. This

Simone Collins: is one of the, the major supplies of energy to Iran. And my understanding now is, is already even before this conflict, they had shifted to burning this really, like either unrefined or like this drags of, of oil, I can’t remember what it’s called, but it causes a lot of air pollution.

It’s really not good for the environment or people. And now they’re gonna be burning even more of it. Like they’re just in dire straits now and it’s making things even worse.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So there’s a giant national gas field under Qatar that goes under the, the, the Gulf [00:10:00] there and half of it is in Iran.

And so Iran and Qatar both you mine it for natural gas. Qatar sells that natural gas around the world, and it’s the major source of Qatari income. It’s also why Qatar is on good terms with Iran, because they have to be, because they share the main thing that makes guitar wealthy. Iran does not export this much.

They take it and use it to power their infrastructure.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like they need it to survive

Malcolm Collins: like 90% of the PowerPoint that Iran are running off of this. Mm-hmm. If this goes down, Iran doesn’t have. Power. Most of Iran doesn’t have power.

Simone Collins: Well, and it just went down, presumably, right? Not, it’s not good

Malcolm Collins: anymore.

No, no, no. It was a limited strike. It was more like we could do something really bad. Oh. But it was, it was very limited. And then Iran, in response to this they decided to do a bombing of Qatar’s Ross Lahan, the world’s largest liquified natural gas LNG production concept.

Simone Collins: Wait, so, okay.

Israel attacked sort of a shared [00:11:00] resource of Qatar and Iran.

Malcolm Collins: Iran.

Simone Collins: Iran bombs. Qatar,

Malcolm Collins: yes. Why?

Simone Collins: What? This just seems so inane. The response. Okay. Yeah. Like, so, so don’t you, don’t you wanna like, retaliate against the person who did the thing that makes you mad? Not the person who also got hurt.

Malcolm Collins: I mentioned this in the, in the last episode on this, and some people are just so dumb and cued on this entire war where they’re like, no, China is fine after all this.

And I’m like, no, China is not fine. They’re like, Iran is letting Chinese ships through. And I’m like, no. Iran said that they would think about letting Chinese ships through, but functionally only a small, I think it’s like two 5% of the previous traffic of Chinese ships have been able to get through. And I made this point to point out that when you cut off the straight of vermouth, like what the US is functionally trying to get open is a straight, that doesn’t supply the US at all.

It supplies our geopolitical [00:12:00] rivals China Europe and east Asia as well. Which is why you had the hilarious instance of the Japanese lady who I, who I love, you know, coming to talk with Trump. And she goes, why didn’t you warn us? He goes, why didn’t you warn us about Pearl Harbor? And I was like, Trump, you’re nut job.

But, but what’s important to note is that US has actually been approaching this war with something of our hands not tied behind our back. But when my kids get into fights they really understand how much power to use when hitting their siblings based on like the siblings relative age to them.

And we’re sort of in a conflict like that with Iran. We’re not taking out cog Island, right? We’re not taking out this infrastructure. And people can ask. Why did we not do this? Why did Israel do it? What was the plan here? I’ll get to that in a second, but I, I want to explain this particular incident.

So Israel goes ahead and does this likely, without Washington fully understanding the implications of what Israel was [00:13:00] doing why did Israel do it? From an Israel perspective Israel’s goals in our goals in the war are not exactly the same. We are okay with just seeing a heavily diminished Iran.

Israel wants to keep the war going for as long as it can and aggressively as it can now that it finally has its shot at Iran. And it can use us to make that shot like amplify that shot on its behalf. So it did the thing where, you know, we are, I can say play fighting was Iran, and then it comes in and does an actual sucker punch and Trump had to go.

Israel will do no more like in all caps on su, so so’s attacks on this to do the, like in the middle of the fight. Hey, that’s not cool, man. Like, don’t do that. Right? Like, we’re not attacking infrastructure. But it turned out for the best because it led to the Iranian serious damage of this Qatari facility, which pushed Qatar, [00:14:00] one of the groups that was still trying to stay a little neutral in how it was dealing with Iran further to the other side.

Okay. The question of why is Iran doing this?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like this, this makes Israel’s actions seem a little bit less dickish, but that doesn’t change the fact that. That, like why would, how could they have predicted that Iran would do that? Right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. So, the important thing to note at the beginning of all of this is you could say maybe this is a grand strategy on Iran, that you are not seeing Malcolm.

And a lot of the news is covering it this way. It’s, we’re gonna hurt the global economy until the United States capitulate. Which is a very stupid strategy because since this war started, the US dollar has gone up, the euro has gone down. Yes, we’ve taken an economic hit, but things will eventually go back to normal.

So it’s just a great time to invest right now. Yeah. Right. Like it’s not actually doing sustained damage to anything of the United States interest, but it’s turning a [00:15:00] lot of powers against Iran that would otherwise be their allies. Like China, right? Like if the US just decides to stop this war right now and Iran decides it’s gonna keep the straight of her moose shut down.

Mm-hmm. This becomes an existential problem for Qatar, the UAE, China and Saudi Arabia. And they would have to get militarily involved. Like, like they, they actually don’t have a choice. If it turned out the United States was just gonna be like, okay, hands off, we don’t care anymore. We don’t have to get involved.

It’s not existential for us. It’s unpleasant economically but it is much more e unpleasant economically for our geopolitical rivals.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So this idea that this isn’t in the heads of Washington right now especially with the talks with China coming up and those being, you know, delayed for Trump to, to finish the war there is nothing China wants more than an end to this war.

Right. And an end. That likely even favors the US given where things are now. [00:16:00] Because if Iran can still control the straight of Haus, this is against China’s best interest. But anyway so you can say, okay. Intelligent strategy from the top. From what we’ve seen in Iran, this doesn’t seem to be the case. Iranian President, Mossad, Pia, yeah. Everyone knows, I can’t pronounce other names said on Iranian state TV after the initial attack started happening he said on my own behalf and on behalf of Iran that he wanted to apologize to Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, et cetera.

I dunno if you even need an et cetera there. And he issued an apology for the attacks. Specifically, he blamed it on the chaos created by the killings of top Iranian commanders in leaders by the US Israeli strikes saying, quote, our armed forces fired at will because their commanders were absent and they did whatever was necessary, right?

So this. Clearly was not ordered from the top. [00:17:00] Right. It was so not ordered from the top that, okay, so suppose you had like two factions in the top, in the board meetings or whatever, was the president and the other people controlling things in Iran right now. And the, like so the new Ayatollah isn’t brain dead, which it appears he probably is brain dead. Or a coma or severely injured or something because it’s weird that he hasn’t shown his face yet and like he easily could do a prerecorded videos. The old one did that all the time.

Right. You know? So it appears he might be incapacitated and he might have been elected explicitly because he was incapacitated, which would allow other people to grab power illegitimately.

Simone Collins: Yeah, you can call it the Biden strategy.

Malcolm Collins: The Biden strategy. Yes. So anyway, if this guy and the other people who are supposed to be running Iran knew that there was a disagreement about why these missiles were being sent at these various infrastructure projects and stuff like that.

Mm-hmm. He wouldn’t have flippantly gone on state TV and just been like, I apologize, this isn’t gonna happen [00:18:00] again. It’s just, you know, it’s disorganized. People are acting on their own. He would be like because he’d know that there was some other faction and he’d explain, you know, oh, this is the discussion we’re having.

Or he wouldn’t say anything at all until he. Argued his point. This is not the, the words of somebody who appears to be aware that this is somebody’s else’s intentional plan. But then what happened he, he said he would try to solve sync through diplomacy, but was in hours the same day after sharp criticism and backlash from Iranian hardliners, hardline clerics, lawmakers, the IRGC officials and conservative media.

He backed up hard. He said he posts up in a following statement and repeated it on state tv claiming Iran had actually never attacked, quote, friendly, or neighboring countries at all.

Simone Collins: Oh. Huh.

Malcolm Collins: Right. So what’s [00:19:00] causing this? Like this is, this is weird. Like that’s a, that’s a weird thing to do. It almost sounds like he was afraid for his life.

Simone Collins: The weird pile is getting so big

Malcolm Collins: right here is my understanding of what seems to be happening on the ground and Iran leading to the weird decisions that we’re seeing.

Simone Collins: Okay. You, you mean like your, your hypothesis as to what is actually going on your conjecture. Yes. Okay. Let’s hear it.

Malcolm Collins: It’s a, it, it, it has to do with governance theory, which we wrote a Wall Street bestseller on

Simone Collins: Darn.

Malcolm Collins: So I ran is uh, ide the governance if you wanna read it. By the way, it actually ended up affecting a lot of like crypto governance strategies and stuff like that, which is really cool.

Which had us on the board of like major crypto things for a while, like some of the largest crypto donation funds anyway. Anyway, so Iran has been practicing something called mosaic defense. Mosaic defense is a form of defense that is meant to be incredibly robust to decapitation [00:20:00] so that you can cut out the leadership and the individual factions can still operate.

Mm-hmm. Now we have another episode where we point out that normally Muslim countries do not do things like this. And the reason why Muslim countries do not do things like this is they typically have coups when they do do things like this. Because Muslims are just way more likely to coup than Protestants.

And in the middle you have groups like Catholics and we go into that episode, why this is but we don’t need to go into that here. It’s just rarely done in Muslim countries, but it hugely decentralized the power was in the military. Okay. Now. What that has created, and keep in mind how little connection the president must have had to the people who are actually making the shots to think.

That the shoot they were shooting at whatever they, they were just firing at will at anything. Mm-hmm. That he thought that that’s what was happening. That he thought that that was [00:21:00] the, on the ground what’s happening, or at least a plausible excuse for what’s happening. Right. This means that he had not communicated through or had the ability to communicate down to the soldier level or to any decision maker’s level at the level of, of these firings in other countries.

Right. What this suggests to me is that the people who are at the regional heads of Iran’s mosaic defense strategy have entirely regionalized their control already.

Simone Collins: Oh, wow. Oh, that would be interesting. So it’s, it’s like, it. It’s descending into fiefdoms.

Malcolm Collins: It’s descending into, yeah. Essentially warlords.

Simone Collins: Whoa.

Malcolm Collins: But the warlords may not have control over territory. It may be over parts of the IRGC or something like that. But what’s important is to these individuals who are playing this game, and you [00:22:00] can see this in the president’s reaction here, they actually don’t particularly care about America or Israel or Iran’s long-term geopolitical future.

Simone Collins: Sure. Why would they? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They are vying to be the top dog of the warlords. Mm-hmm. To control what’s left of Iran after this war is over.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And to have as much influence as they can while the war is happening. And so now the question is, okay, if that’s what’s happening, then. How do you, you know, you’re, you’re one of these guys, how do you signal your legitimacy and authority to the other warlords?

Because it’s not likely going to be one person. It’s going to be a coalition that is going to gain power and be the defacto head if it’s, if the president isn’t the head right now, who, how do we get this new [00:23:00] organic defacto head? Mm-hmm. It’s politicking What? How do you get points within this politicking that’s going on right now?

You need to be as hard line as possible, as crazy as possible, as aggressive as possible against anyone who has ever slighted Iran in any way. Hit what you can with what you have. So, it, it’s been pointed out that since the start of the conflict, countries like the UAE and Qatar have been hit with many more missiles.

Oh, I think orders of magnitudes more in some cases than Israel. How does this make sense from a Iranian tactical perspective or long-term alliance perspective, right? Like, if Israel and Saudi, I mean, if the UAE and Saudi Arabia are beginning to have conflict now, wouldn’t Iran want to be friendly with the UAE.

UAE has a giant Iranian population in it. Right? Like they, they have the potential to be quite friendly. Why are they so aggressive against CUAE, [00:24:00] right? Well, it’s because there are more expensive things that their missiles can actually hit in the UAE than in Israel. Mm-hmm. They’re basically about grabbing news headlines and blowing up expensive things like it’s a video game to win control of the IRGC from the other hard liners within the IRGC.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: That is what I suspect is happening right now. And if you assume that, if you assume, and I think that we can assume that from these quotes from the president if you assume that there actually isn’t any centralized control left in Iran, and remember Israel, there was what was his name? The one guy who is still sort of in charge of things and then. Yes. Ali Laies this guy died March 16th, 17. And he was killed in his Israeli airstrikes along with his son and one of his deputies. And he was [00:25:00] a, a long time power broker and one of the few left was in the regime.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Although, you know, we also had other really important figures that were killed, like Gal Mare Soleimani came command of the Baal paramilitary force, the region’s main internal repression tool.

This was the one that, you know, was murdering people in the streets. The 35,000 protestors. By the way, we’re still nowhere close to 35 ca southern casualties in the war. Actually I wanna go into a separate thing ‘cause I had a fan reach out to me asking me some stuff that I want to address for fans who are.

Just sort of skeptical of all the news that they hear on this. Okay. He’s like, how do we even know that Iran did try to attempt to assassinate Trump? How do we know that this isn’t a post hawk thing made up during the Trump administration, you know, like to justify this war? Like, okay, the war started, we need to make something up.

The core problem with that hypothesis is one, there were two potential assassination attempts and the one that we have more information on most of the information we [00:26:00] have on it was released during the Biden administration when Trump was running against Biden. That does that, that that was against the Biden administration’s interest in releasing in the first place.

Right. And just does not at all look like a, a, a a a a, like a false flag attack or something like that made up after the fact. This happened ages ago. Mm-hmm. And again, when the people are like, you know, you shouldn’t strike back or you should, you’re, you’re, you’re playing to Israel’s hand when you assassinate their leader because they tried to assassinate your leader.

You know, just take it when they try to assassinate your leader if acting with strengths and not like a cuck is going to potentially help Israel’s interest. And I’m like that. I mean that’s, that’s really cucked behavior, man to, to consider so much that this could help the Jews. Therefore we shouldn’t do it.

I see that as just wild. So I from my position, like if I’m ever president and somebody attempts to [00:27:00] have me assassinated, I’m like, okay, I’m probably gonna do something like this, but I wanna go more into this assassination type. I think a lot of people on the right, I dunno, they forgot about it or it wasn’t reported to them.

Simone Collins: I, I didn’t, I don’t think I knew about it. I knew about. The one in Butler I knew about the guy with the at outside the golf course. I didn’t know about the other ones. That, that was only news to me after you brought it up after this conflict started.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, Asif Merchant, he was a 46-year-old Pakistani man who had recently spent a long period of time in Iran receiving training in meetings from handlers entered the United States in 2024.

He attempted to recruit Hitman to assassinate US politicians or government officials explicitly including Trump, although he was also open to targeting Biden and Nikki Haley, according to some accounts. Plan involved document theft, staging protests at rallies and killings. He was arrested July 12th, 2024, all in the Biden administration in Houston as he tried to escape the country.

So, like, this [00:28:00] isn’t like a, a vague thing. He was convicted March 6th, 2026 in Brooklyn Federal Court on a murder to hire attempt. And then the second plot Farhad Shaka Shaka 51 living in Iran was tasked by IRGC officials September, 2024, to surveil and kill Trump. Then a candidate and later president-elect on October 7th, 2024, they specifically ordered him to drop other targets and delivered an assassination plan and deliver an assassination plan within seven days.

I love that. Like he’s a white collar worker. Hey, this is taking too long, this Trump assassination thing. Drop all of

Simone Collins: the target. Didn’t get this report on my desk Monday.

Malcolm Collins: I wanna report Monday next week.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s how it, it’s so weirdly bureaucratic. What on earth.

Malcolm Collins: He,

Simone Collins: I thought, you know, in the movies, just like, do it, get it done.

But like, these guys are like annoying. Just see the plan, make sure point. He, he recorded

Malcolm Collins: two US based criminals. Okay. Cari Riviera, AKA pop, 49 of Brooklyn Pop and Donan Lool 36 of [00:29:00] Staten Island who met in prison to help Shakira who remains at large in Iran. In multiple recorded FBI interviews after, oh, by the way, the, the way the FBI got the first time is one of the people he recruited to attempt to kill Trump with an FBI informant.

Like it’s super, the evidence is super big on, on guy number one. So for this one how do we know Shaka directly admitted the IRGC directives, including prioritizing Trump in multiple recorded FBI interviews after initial contact. So they were able to contact him and he admitted this came directly from the Iranian mil.

Okay. I just think it’s important to, to know this, and he was like, how do we actually know that Iran is funding terrorism that is targeting the United States and that that one really got me. That’s just like, that’s Iran’s entire geopolitical strategy for the past decade. This isn’t like a rumor mill.

This is like arguing that China has never said they want to take Taiwan or something like that, right? Mm-hmm. No, it’s true that many of the [00:30:00] groups, you know, whether it’s the, the Huis or Hamas or whatever, also want to kill Israel and that they consider killing Israel higher in their priority lists.

So it is better for Israel than the United States that this has happened. Mm-hmm. But it does not mean that it isn’t also good for the United States. You know, Al-Qaeda had a lot of targets

Other than the United States, but we still had nine 11, right? Like, you just leave groups around to grow and molder that want to kill you for long enough and let them be funded to the tune of I pointed out in the last episode, it’s literally, I think around an average of 3 billion or 4 billion a year from Iran.

Simone Collins: Oh goodness.

Malcolm Collins: Eventually you’re going to get a very big attack. You know, we’re not always gonna be able to stop it as we did in these instances. And I just think to, to be like, oh, I don’t, I don’t care. It actually reminds me. Of my friend. I’ve mentioned this story a few times, but it’s always so visceral for me.

It stuck with me. It was a girlfriend of mines when I was growing up. Grandfather who survived the Holocaust, and he [00:31:00] describes running around like to different houses in his Jewish neighborhood with the book the, the book that Hitler had released, mine Kaf. And he is like, guys, you need to read this.

He says he wants to kill us, like, we need to get out of the country. And they basically treated him like he was crazy and began to blacklist him from things. And he ended up having to break into his girlfriend’s house at night and basically kidnap her and run away. And you know, obviously.

He did well, I, you know, hung out with his granddaughter. I hope she does well. She’s a really cool person.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: But you know, he’s the guy running around, like there’s a group out there that says they wanna kill us. Right. Like, why is everybody acting like this isn’t a big deal? I feel a bit like the people out there who keep saying, yeah, Iran said death to America all the time, but they didn’t really want to kill us.

Right. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They kind of remind me of those cut Jews who all ended up getting wiped out when they didn’t listen to that guy. Right. It’s like they’re saying it. And the big thing that, that got [00:32:00] Trump. It’s, it’s been reported that in the negotiations to try to get them to give up their nukes. They mentioned in no uncertain terms that they already had the uranium for 11 nukes and could have them made in weeks.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: When Iran was questioned about this what Iran said is they said, well, we didn’t threaten them, but we did tell them how many nukes we could make was the uranium we have right now. You know, like, so Iran admitted that that’s the situation they were in.

Simone Collins: Well, even I’ve, I’ve heard progressive people covering this saying, basically Iran has always been very clear that they don’t have nukes.

They just want all the materials to be able to make them is optionality.

Speaker 12: We are two months away from enriching weapons grade uranium to be used for peaceful [00:33:00] purposes.

Simone Collins: And, and that was as if like a, because of course that’s super reasonable for someone who says, death to America and death to Israel. Yeah, like that. We should be okay with that.

Like,

Simone Collins: I just don’t understand, you know, like, like, oh, they’re never gonna bake the cake.

I mean, they just wanna have all the specialized ingredients to make the cake, and they can make it in like 30 minutes, but they’re not gonna bake it.

Malcolm Collins: I, no, I think a, a better analogy is you catch your wife with husband killing poison.

Simone Collins: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: And you’re like, why do you have husband killing poison? And she goes, I never meant to use the husband killing poison.

I just wanted it as like deterrents. You know, I

Simone Collins: just wanna have it because I hate you.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, later that day you hear her say her prayers at. Please God, kill my husband. Please kill my husband. I want to kill my husband.

[00:34:00]

Malcolm Collins: And then you ask her about that and you go, it’s just like my religion. It’s like a weird regional clerk of, you know, my way of doing things.

And then you believe that, and you’re not the mega cook just because you might accidentally help the Jews by you know, telling her, Hey you know, we need to do something about the husband killing poison lady. Right? But the reason why I’ve become, you know, as I said pro, is because Iran’s reaction to all of this has been to target their former allies, both economically.

And militarily. Right? Which is huge for us because it means that even if we stop bombing right now, right? And I ran Keith to straight of her moose clothes. Yes, we’ll deal with some economic hit, but the bigger economic hit is gonna be China. And then China’s gonna be begging us to start the campaign again so that they can get the straight up her moose open.

And they literally would be like, China would be like on its knees. [00:35:00] Hey, United States let, let’s do a, a joint operation or something. I’m, I’m sure we can make it work now. Europe would be lickety split with those boats down there. And I, I agree with what Trump has said in regards to this, that European leaders, and they did by the way was the first bombing of Iran, was the second said, yeah, go ahead.

Bomb Iran, like this isn’t all of our best interest. But then they refused to send us support and he is like, what’s the point of NATO if it doesn’t mean defense for the United States? Because apparently that’s what it means. When they, they could say, oh, well you guys started this war, whatever, whatever we are now in, in terms of getting the straight of free moves open, that that is about Europe and China.

Okay. Like defending their economic interests. If we just pulled out, the really interesting geopolitical thing that’s going to happen is. If, if Iran does not, if they’re like, we wanna continue to make this hurt from everyone, which they might given this mosaic leadership, they might have yes, we’ll [00:36:00] have a depression but the depression will be focused in Europe and Asia and those countries will be sort of in a position forced to get the United States back in on this and back working on this.

So if I was in trust position, I might even pull out just to force that position because that would be a very interesting geopolitical one. But even if we don’t have that, even if we do get this all over with in Iran, not only is one of our largest enemies geopolitically at all off the stage.

But the, the new Cold War in the Middle East between the UE and Saudi Arabia, which I’ll get to in a second is between two people who are fairly friendly with and are unlikely to, you know, go death to America over this. Although Saudi Arabia does fund a lot of terrorist related groups that do eventually target the United States.

Mm-hmm. So if we’re on one side of that one, we’re probably closer to the UAE side.

Simone Collins: I mean,

Malcolm Collins: imagine if next to Saudi Arabia. But the, the, the point [00:37:00] here, because Saudi Arabia would suck at defending themselves, they’ve shown themselves to be completely militarily incompetent. But that is a whole, and somebody actually did try to attack Saudi Arabia.

They would fall much quicker than Iran for it has to do with how the Royal Family projects power. I don’t

Simone Collins: Oh,

Malcolm Collins: that’s, that’s another video that I don’t need to go into. Okay. But right now we’re friendly with Saudi Arabia and, and Saudi Arabia. One of the reasons they keep friendly tides with us is because they are aware of that.

Mm-hmm. Although, you know, keep in mind, nine 11 was fundamentally Saudi Arabia’s fault. At the end of the day. That was from the groups that they fund in the same way that I ran friends groups that want to attack the United States. But if Trump doesn’t do the pullout thing, how else can he realistically end this?

He needs some leverage other than I will stop bombing. The leverage that everyone’s thinking about right now is Car Island.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s what I figured, which is why I assumed that by this point we would’ve had troops basically [00:38:00] holding it, American troops holding it hostage, essentially.

Functionally.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So Car Island is a three by four aisle Mile Island. Mm-hmm.

That makes up approximately 90% of the country’s oil exports. This is because it has deep water shipping lanes next to it and nowhere else in, in that region of Iran has that. And so Iran doesn’t really have any other way to get out oil from its country.

If we destroyed Kag Island which I do not think we should do. Any government that came into power after this was in Iran would be just in poverty for decades. Especially given Iran’s already critical condition in regards to water and infrastructure. It would slit the throat of Iran and lead to a massive refugee crisis in Europe which would be bad.

Now I will note it wouldn’t be as bad as some other refugee crises. [00:39:00] Oh God, how do I say this?

So a lot of the,

Simone Collins: listen, no, I’ll put it this way. I’ll put it this way. And, and I think anyone who’s watching this is well aware of the fact that Iranians are awesome. If you know Iranians in America, if you’re an American, yep. You probably like them. I think what really changed people’s views on Iranians was, oh God, that chef

Speaker 3: , we hung out with a, a bunch of young people who collect, uh. Uh, basically an informal car club of collectors of, of American muscle cars. It feels very much like Southern California or Barcelona and Tehran at times. And a very hopeful place filled with yearning where people every day, particularly women, I think, are in very small ways testing the limits of what is permissible.

Um, trying to define in fits and starts. Who they want to be as a country. What is appropriate? What is okay today that may not be [00:40:00] okay tomorrow? How? Uh, it’s a very interesting thing to see. Did you feel resentment toward using zero American? Zero? Yeah. Zero.

Simone Collins: Who died, who’s, who was really curmudgeonly did an episode in Iran and they were just basically like Americans, like backyard, barbecue, cool based Americans and

Malcolm Collins: yeah.

Simone Collins: Iranians. What changed? Pers changed everyone’s view on Iranians. They were like, oh my God, these are based amazing people.

And. Honestly, like you should be so lucky to have them.

Malcolm Collins: No. So the point, the point is, is Iranians are, are, are Persians. They’re not Arabs. Okay. Most of the problematic Islamic populations and immigration waves that Europe has had to deal with

Simone Collins: mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Are Arabs and Arabic culture, which is very different from Persians and Persian culture.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And traditionally speaking Iranian migrants especially within the United States, I don’t know if it’s been as much in Europe, have been a very positive [00:41:00] immigrant population. Yeah. I, I don’t wanna say like. Model immigrant because they, they definitely have some, you know, aesthetic deficiencies.

As

Simone Collins: for your opinion

Malcolm Collins: as South Park would, would point out

Speaker 15: Boldly stood out in front of their bar to stop the Persians from entering.

Speaker 16: We are coming in redecorating the hell you’re, you can take your blue carpet and go Kurt Rock and shove up your holes. Alright, come on, let stop of us.

Simone Collins: Anthony Bourdain, oh God, that’s where we

Malcolm Collins: have the, the song that Trump is secretly Iranian. Because he’s got the aesthetics of a, of an Iranian No, it’s,

Simone Collins: it’s, it’s, it’s a look that some people, like it was Anthony Bourdain that really turned a lot of people onto Iranians,

Malcolm Collins: Saudi.

But no, no, Trump really is like, if you have had Iranian friends or you know, Trump is Persian. Just

Simone Collins: it’s fines,

Malcolm Collins: it’s fine.

Simone Collins: Perian,

Malcolm Collins: Trump. Comes off culturally, way more Persian than he does waspy.

Simone Collins: [00:42:00] The first Persian president.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And we have our song, the First Persian president because I mean, even the way he does decoration, where like I, if you go to a waspy person’s house, like one of the signs that you always see, it’s like the random picture.

It’s of houses and boats and boats, horses, boat. And he’s got no pictures of No, actually, like, look at Trump’s stuff. It’s, it’s geometric pet. It’s like no horses, no boats, no houses, no every,

Simone Collins: and I feel like there’s, there’s almost like little like, a children’s book game. Like spot the new gold item in the Oval Office.

Every time there’s a new press conference there, can you spot the difference? Where’s the new gold item?

Malcolm Collins: I like gold,

Speaker 9: I love gold. The look of it, the taste of it,

Malcolm Collins: but Yeah. But the, the point being is you shouldn’t expect the same problems from an Iranian refugee crisis that you have with other Islamic refugee crises. It’s not that there wouldn’t be any issues but there wouldn’t be [00:43:00] as bad as say like a, a Pakistani refugee crisis or something like that.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So, it’s a side note over there. So. A lot of people have said so, so if you, if you did that, that’s, that’s what would be the result of that. Okay. And if you cut off their access to the north whatever gas pipeline you’d have, again, a refugee crisis, which, you know, we want to prevent.

And we also want whatever comes next to be able to economically get itself off the ground. You know, our goal is to defang them. It is not to economically cripple them forever and ever and ever. Now, Trump has said that he may bomb car island again just for funsies. Literally he said, just for fun. I may bomb it again.

I cannot believe we have a president who said that in a press conference.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Sort of trying to show that it’s open as a, as a potentiality, but what everyone’s thinking now is boots on the ground doesn’t make sense. If we controlled Cog Island, what the president would likely do is just be like, no, we’ll let you to continue to use it [00:44:00] under US military occupation.

Exactly as you always have. You just need to plain nice, right? You just need to keep the straight open. You need to do everything like that. We won’t even charge a tariff, but we’ll just set up a, a permanent military base here. That would give us a lot of negotiating power, assuming Iran is still actually governed by a single central authority.

Simone Collins: Hmm, however, but you believe that that is just not the case anymore.

Malcolm Collins: I believe that’s not the case anymore. And if Iran is not governed by a central authority anymore, they don’t particularly care that you’ve done this. They might even shoot their own infrastructure without care because all they care about is gaining control of what’s left.

And that’s where I come down to. So is it the right call to attempt to, and what I would do with Kag Island is I would not say boots on the ground in Kag Island. I’d say make Kag Island a permanent US military base or nothing. Like that is I [00:45:00] think the option for Kag Island. If you are going to bother to attempt to take this, that 90% of Iranian oil goes through it, make it a permanent US military base in the region.

And if you start to signal that, the important thing about signaling that in the same way that Iran keeps signaling that we want reparations which just sounds laughable, right? Is you need something to walk back from. Right? So you can say, okay, Iran, you win. We won’t make it a permanent base, right?

Like, we’ll do a five year lease or something like that. Right. You know? But that would give us something to then say, okay, Iran, you can have car Island back in exchange for good behavior here, here and here. Right. And, and I’ll note here, the thing that I, I, I keep noting was the, the other players in the random w flailing of Iran is going into this war.

What I would’ve thought geopolitically speaking is the [00:46:00] best case scenario realistic scenario is we defang Iran, we destroy you know, their leadership structure, their military, et cetera.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And, and that’s the best we can hope for. I did not also expect that we would have the potentiality of geopolitically isolating Iran from their closest allies.

But somehow that also was in the cards. I, I would not have expected we would’ve come out of this on better terms with Qatar and I ran on worse terms with Qatar, for example.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. That is wild.

Malcolm Collins: I wouldn’t have thought that they would target Chinese shipping. Right. Like, I, I, all of this stuff has really surprised me.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So, let’s now talk about the new Civil War that’s opening up.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Okay.

Simone Collins: Or just warlord power grab is, is it that they’re trying to show off their resources and also trying to demonstrate their international geopolitical prowess [00:47:00] by essentially holding other countries hostage like own citizens and assets hostage.

So like, let’s say I’m. Bob, the Iranian warlord or faction leader, and I have access to these warheads and so I’m going to hit this building in Dubai to show both the other factions in Iran and also Dubai, that I am a person to be reckoned with. And when I call you, you pick up the phone and that I’m the guy with the most ability.

Is that what’s happening or what?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This is, this is actually a really useful psychology to sort of dig into to understand what’s happening.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. I am X guy at was control of X munition platform, right?

Simone Collins: Sure. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I have a few choices with where I send those missiles, okay?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Choice number one, I send them at Israel, the goy beam hits him.

And nothing happens.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s just more wasted [00:48:00] money. We all know that doesn’t work. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Two, I try to hit a US base maybe, but probably nothing’s gonna happen. Right.

Simone Collins: It’s not gonna work. Yeah. Three, they’ll retaliate 10 times over then, then I’m the next target.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Three. I shoot into a civilian district in Dubai.

Mm-hmm. Or in Qatari, very expensive gas field or something like that. Right. And I actually get that hit because I’m likely to get that hit. They don’t have the defenses these other places have.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And they also maybe don’t have the intel to even know who I am or where I am, whereas Israel, like Mossad knows the CIA knows,

Malcolm Collins: so I get that hit.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: Now there’s news in Iran about this thing that just happened. Some people might think. That’s geopolitically bad for us, but it, it is making news. And the reality is, is that most people who are in [00:49:00] the IRGC and who are hard liners are going to think that anything that is happening at all on the war front is definitionally good.

Because to say, oh, well yes, we did get that attack through, but it was a bad idea. That doesn’t make you look cool to the other foaming at the mouse hardliners. Right? So then it’s your next board meeting or whatever three people are there. One goes, I hit a Qatari gas field. You know, another says I hit A-A-A-U-A-E because other people are doing this now, making it okay for you civilian district.

And the third guy’s just like, well, I tried to launch some in Israel. Who do you think has, has the power in that meeting? It’s, it’s not the, I tried to hit Israel like a good boy one, okay? Mm-hmm. It’s the ones who made something that hit the news actually happen. And I think that that’s the psychology that’s driving this behavior.

Of [00:50:00] course, there is an alternate here, which I wouldn’t put it above them. Now, if you remember, in our last Iranian video, we mentioned that Iran put together a task force to hunt down Mossad agents in the Iranian government, which they then had to shut down. When it turned out it had 20. Mossad agents inside of it, one of them with leading it.

Mm-hmm. Iran’s government is riddled with Mossad. What we may have right now is a Mossad on Mossad War.

Simone Collins: Oh my

Malcolm Collins: God. It could be that a lot of these decentralized power structures, basically Mossad kills people all the way down until they’re at a Mossad agent, and then that agent says, yeah, let’s shoot our oldest and closest ally in the region.

And then he does, and then the president’s like, what, what, what’s going on here? And then all the other still alive top agents with access to missiles in Iran are like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a great thing. In fact, I’m gonna do that next. Because [00:51:00] they’re all also masad agents. Doing whatever would be the literal, stupidest thing Iran could do at the moment is

Simone Collins: mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Wild

Simone Collins: if true

Malcolm Collins: pager thing.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: See our episode on that?

Simone Collins: Yeah. We can’t put it past him at this point. Any wild plot like that could very well be the case. I mean, they played the long game.

Malcolm Collins: Now this is clearly, the war extending is more in Israel’s benefit than America’s benefit, but as I’ve pointed out, geopolitically and economically it’s long term in America’s interest.

Simone Collins: Sure.

Malcolm Collins: But let’s get to this, the, so Cold War mm-hmm. Between Saudi Arabia and the Uua U. Saudi Arabia wants strong, centralized Arab states under legitimate governments, so their focus is border security, oil market control and vision 2030 leadership and containing Iran through traditional alliances.

The UAE prefers a quote unquote maritime empire model transactional deals, [00:52:00] port control and backing strongman proxies and separative who give Abu Dhabi leverage more comfortable with fragmentation if it secures. Trade routes, counters, Islamists, so. It’s really sort of a Athens versus Sparta fight interestingly, right?

Like Sparta may seem like more of the roost, less strongman, but they deal better with legitimate states. Mm-hmm. Whereas Athens was notorious for just like, I don’t care if I destabilize your region, if I can get shipping, whatever. Right. Like, if I can get my slaves coming through, whatever. Right. But it felt more like a democracy when you’re in Athens, right?

Like the maritime empire model.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Where you see this is in Yemen, which is the hottest flashpoint right now. The Saudi back faction, the internationally recognized Presidential Leadership Council, PLC led by Rashad Alini plus Allied Tribes and some Islam party Muslim Brotherhood linked elements.

Mm-hmm. Goal keep [00:53:00] Yemen United to protect Saudi southern border. UAE backed faction is the Southern Trans Transitional Counsel. The STC which has a goal of independence or heavy autonomy for the south, plus control of Aiden McCullough, port, Scot Island, and Bab Almond straight shipping routes. So basically the UAE is willing to blow up Yemen if it can gain control of shipping route.

Saudi Arabia wants to keep a legitimate state in power there. And these two forces have been actively fighting. And then you have the Sudan, the Saudi backs the SA Fs, the central government of Katan and the UAE backs the RSF parallel militaries that control much of the gold trade and Red Sea roots in the region.

Both have been pouring in money and weapons. Then you have the Horn of Africa and Red Sea ports. On the UAE side, you have heavy investment in the breakaway Somali land which Israel [00:54:00] just recognized by the way. And the B port base and the influence of deje, orca and Scotia strategy, a string of naval and logistics outputs.

They’re basically trying to control independent, wealthy cities and terrorist factions or, or breakaway groups instead of the, the central thing. While while Somalia is backed by Saudi Arabia mm-hmm. There’s a number of other theaters. We might do a whole other episode on this. That would be interesting.

The interesting thing about this is the UAE faction is generally also supported by Israel which puts Israel on the UAE side of this split.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Which is odd because from what I’ve been seeing, Saudi Arabia has really wanted to get close to Israel up until the Gaza war. They seem to really, really want, and this might have been what triggered the, the war recognition talks with Israel.

And if you’re like, oh, oh

Simone Collins: yeah. I remember way, way, way, way back when October 7th first happened. You were [00:55:00] explaining that to me. You’re like, you know, they were just getting so good at this point. There would be an incentive to try to undermine that relationship because Iran felt threatened by that strengthening relationship, which made their strategic position.

Malcolm Collins: With some of my Israeli friends mm-hmm. And they just don’t believe this. They’re like, that’s not true. Like the Saudi Arabia is hostile to us, like the Prince is hostile to us. You know, look at these geopolitics here, here and here. And I, and I, my core argument against that is Neo you’re familiar with the Neo project, right?

That Saudi

Simone Collins: Arabia

Malcolm Collins: was planning?

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, but that’s botched, right? It’s not gonna happen.

Malcolm Collins: It was eventually canceled and it might show a shifting in Saudi Arabia’s priorities. But do you remember where Naomi, Naomi is on a map?

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: Giant.

Simone Collins: A line in the desert? I mean like the sand a sandbox or basically it ended on the coast, right?

Didn’t it?

Malcolm Collins: Basically as close to [00:56:00] Israel as you could get.

Simone Collins: Oh, really?

Malcolm Collins: That, that is what it was. It was right in a area. So you could take a quick ferry from Israel to Naomi.

Simone Collins: Oh. It’s like one end of it.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, because

Simone Collins: it was like a, like a long train track that just ended at Israel.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Not near any other important city in Saudi Arabia.

Not near important oil fields.

Simone Collins: Oh, interesting. Right. So it was, yeah, because I just remember it being an isolated line in the sand. That’s like how I visualized it. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It

Simone Collins: not, it was an isolated line of the sand that was basically, it was like a line emanating from Israel going into the middle of the sand.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it, it’s, it’s, it’s very, very clear that this was meant to have a fairy connection to Israel and be like little Israel in Saudi Arabia,

Simone Collins: or maybe it was gonna be the, the Dubai of Israel. Like, you go there for weird vacations and stuff.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, no, that, that’s, that’s clearly what the idea was, is to facilitate.

You don’t invest the future, which is what they were doing with this investment [00:57:00] project

Simone Collins: Without Israel,

Malcolm Collins: a country in a project like this, if you think you’re going to be at war or in an active conflict with Israel, you don’t build

Simone Collins: Oh, and then that falling, I can’t remember when sort of that was abandoned as a plan, but that being abandoned as a plan.

After October 7th,

Malcolm Collins: after the war, war with the UAE began to heat up.

Simone Collins: You mean after the Israel Palestine conflict heated up.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, no, it’s more the ua. Saudi Arabia doesn’t care about Gaza. Like that’s all just posturing on their part. Which they have to do because the royal family has to look good to the wahabiists.

That’s a whole other thing. That basically they only control power because they made this deal with the Wahabiists. That’s like our family, which really got power pretty illegitimately through. A power grab is able to hold that power and will be legitimated so long as we legitimate the Wahabiists.

And it’s the wahabiists that want this. So that’s, that’s what’s going on there. Okay. On our weekend episode, we also discussed, which I think is pretty [00:58:00] cool, the strategy the United States has been using in the region. So I’ll just quickly go over that

yeah. B 52. Okay. So what we have been doing is using bombers that are literally half a century old, 50 years old or older. These were made in the 1950s and they stopped making ‘em, I think like 1965 to take really old munitions.

Remember I talked about using older munitions, like wanting to clear out our munitions. This is when everyone’s like, oh, you’re wasting munitions on this. These are not planes that we ever would’ve been able to use in, we’re

Simone Collins: reaching into deep into the reaches of our pantry and using dusty expired canned goods.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. So what we did is we were flying in, it looks like. Unarmed drones slowly through like corridors to try to establish that they were now safe corridors over and over and over again. And this is how we lost seven of those. And once we had established a corridor was safe, we then whizzed [00:59:00] backing forth these things.

Got these, what can only be thought of like dump trucks at the sky or like giant delivery trucks. Mm-hmm. Not even like really military planes anymore to just dump ungodly amounts of bombs in these completely unprotected corridors. And this is just wild to me that it’s also wild to me that we’re still hearing about that school that was bombed because that kind of implies that there haven’t been any other major tragedy since then, which is a pretty good record for a war of this nature.

So that’s the other positive news we’ve had since then. But yeah, I mean these, these giant old planes dumping out basically expired payloads to cut down on our storage costs. That’s, that’s where we are right now in this war. And, and keep in mind, these planes are very inexpensive to fly when contrasted with other military aircraft.

Mm-hmm. Which is another reason we’re doing them for these long runs. So to, to close things out there is [01:00:00] a, a possibility things could go wrong if the administration miscalculates and maybe sees the government in Iran is being less fractured than it really is. However I’m not totally against boots on the ground either.

I if it meant just car Ireland and if we were using it as the negotiating trip to get other things that we wanted like

Simone Collins: not necessarily a military base, but if we just kind of took it and for lack of a. More euphemistic term held at hostage and basically we’re like, we’ll control this. As your custodian.

Yeah. Well become its custodian. And

Malcolm Collins: well, we do have,

Simone Collins: Sort of, you know, cost of Britney Spears trusted that

Malcolm Collins: the island and all of its infrastructure was built up by American and European companies. It was stolen by the current government of Iran when they socialized the oil.

Simone Collins: Oh, so this was after the tank war between Iraq and I Iran?

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, they in like eighties. No, no, no, no, no, no. I’m talking about

Simone Collins: because Park Island, it, it’s, it’s oil infrastructure, if I recall correctly, was, was [01:01:00] destroyed in the Iraq Iran war.

Malcolm Collins: It was, it was heavily damaged, but the original infrastructure from before that was built like

Simone Collins: companies. Oh. Oh, okay.

Malcolm Collins: So, you know, you could just say you stole all this from us to begin with.

Simone Collins: We’d be taking it back.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Interesting.

Anyway love you to death, Simone. Love you

too.

Malcolm Collins: Fantastic developments, although, you know, obviously we mourn for service members who have died in the conflict so far for real. Which have mercifully been very, very small. Anyone

Simone Collins: who gets hurt, I

Malcolm Collins: unbelievably small the casualty rates that we’re, we’ve been looking at

Simone Collins: I do like

Malcolm Collins: those.

And we can only pray that it continues.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I, I, I do feel very glad to at least live in an age where our conflicts aren’t, let’s go send guys to shoot each other in a field. It’s nice that at least they’re more like I’d, that we’re not trying to strategically disarm

Malcolm Collins: anymore. Let’s try to build a democracy in [01:02:00] Iran.

Simone Collins: Yeah, you did an interesting episode on that a while back about. How some cultures just don’t take well to certain forms of governance. And that for, for you to just be like, everyone needs democracy or everyone needs monarchy. Like it’s not appropriate. Yeah, you just, you, you gotta, you gotta allow people to do what works best for them from a governing standpoint.

Keep in, keeping in mind their cultural mixture, their religious mixture, their genetics, the region. Everything there, resources, it all matters. Yeah. And democracy is not right everywhere. So Yeah. I agree with you. I’m glad we’re not nation-building anymore.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I, that I saying democracy doesn’t generally work for Arabs.

But for Persians it might.

Simone Collins: I was trying to be a little more diplomatic than that, but,

Malcolm Collins: well, I mean, the statistics are clear. Like, if you’re looking at Protestant countries for example, there have been only a few instances in all history where they were not a form of democracy. Whereas, and, and [01:03:00] today almost all our democracies where if you look at a Arab countries, none has stayed.

I think there’s been only one instance of one staying a democracy for over 10 years. Mm-hmm. Or I think it was 20, no, it might be over 25 years. Only an instance of one for over 25 years. And that’s just astonishing given the number of Arab majority countries There are.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like clearly something culturally is going on there.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So why force something when it’s not gonna work? Clearly.

Malcolm Collins: Yep. Anyway, love you to Dec.

Simone Collins: Love you too. Gorgeous. Which one next?

I.

Simone Collins: . Oh, the kids are so excited to get chickens and fortunately they, they’ve all decided that they want the three different types that we want.

So each person has requested our favorite types, like wants Starlight Green, Eggers, ‘cause they’re orange. And orange is his favorite color. And Torsten wants the blue Eggers because blue is my favorite color and Titan wants the black ones [01:04:00] because it’s cool.

Malcolm Collins: So you just want more of the same, I thought you didn’t like the black ones as much.

Simone Collins: They’re so friendly though, and they have those beautiful iridescent black feathers. And that was like, that was the kind, they’re also the smartest. That’s the kind that has gotten out twice, escaped twice. So today it was Trotsky and they’re so easy to get back in. Like the, the blue Eggers are not very nice or friendly.

Malcolm Collins: Is this all the blue Eggers or just the, the ones from the, the older ones.

Simone Collins: Oh, the ones that we, that like grew up in a factory farm ish environment. Not even that though. Like it was just a nice Pennsylvania farm, but still like mass produced. Yeah. They, they all aren’t that friendly. They’re more skittish.

Whereas the midnight morons are the most friendly. The, the Starlight Green Eggers are also pretty skittish. They don’t like being picked up and petted as much, but it’s the most difficult to go after the. ERs

Speaker 7: [01:05:00] He strides through hallways decked in gold, so bright. Like a sultan’s palace glowing day and night. Marble pillars glimmer, echoing his name. A Persian king or president, one and the same. Shimmering drapes, flush rugs under each foot. A A fortress of bling that no one can refute. Gold leaf on the ceiling, mirrors everywhere.

He’s bold, he’s brash, who else would even dare? Where are the paintings of boats, of horses so rare? Where are random cottages in frames, why aren’t they there? And where are the model ships, decked out in their coats? Where We’re asking our first Persian friends, show us those [01:06:00] votes.

He bedazzles ballrooms, each corner ornate. Like something out of ancient lore, or so we state. Halls paved in splendor, shining under the light. Surprise, surprise, he’s got It’s quite a sight.

He claims he’s classy with flair unmatched. A thousand chandeliers perfectly dispatched. Grand Tourette’s, big fountains, exotic mystique. All hail our Persian prez. So lavish, unique. Where are the paintings of boats? Of horses so rare? Random cottages in frames, why aren’t they there? And where are the model ships?

Decked out in their coats? We’re asking our [01:07:00] first Persian friends. Show us! Those boats,

every corner gilded, every surface gleams like shy era fantasies, fresh out of dreams. Marble upon marble, a treasure trove of hue. Yes, it’s gaudy, but hey, it’s trumped through and through. Where are the paintings of boats, of horses so rare, random cottages in frames, why And where the model ships decked out in their coats Our gilded Persian president,

please bring on those boats