In this episode, Malcolm and Simone delve deep into the complexities and controversies surrounding Jeffrey Epstein's infamous case. They explore the lack of logical investigation, the political maneuvering, and the possible cover-ups. The conversation touches upon the role of intelligence agencies, Trump's shift in stance on releasing Epstein files, and how different powerful forces might have influenced the course of events. They dissect the new pieces of evidence, including inconsistencies in the guard logs, camera footage, and suspicious injuries. The episode aims to shed light on the probable reasons why key information is being withheld by the government, proposing plausible theories involving foreign nations and intelligence operatives.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be talking about a spicy topic, which is Epstein. Oh boy. And the reason we're gonna be talking about Epstein is I have long wondered what actually happened. Because so many people when they talk about the Epstein list or they talk about his death they use it as just a tool to attempt to score political points on their opponents in ways that don't make a lot of sense if you apply logic to them.

And I had seen very little actual investigation trying to understand what actually happened and why, if there is a coverup, is there a coverup? And I think that recently we have received a giant piece of evidence as to what may have happened and who may have been involved that might blow the case open.

Ooh. But what's interesting is a lot of people are completely overlooking this new source of evidence. Yeah. They're just [00:01:00] complaining about it. They're just complaining about the redactions and everything else. Yeah. Well, no, no, no, no. What they miss is they see Trump administration, you know, they're running for office.

You have somebody like JD Vance in 2021, he, he tweeted quote. What possible interest would the US government have in keeping Epstein's client secret? Oh, do, do dot. And then later he said, if you're a journalist and you're not asking questions about this case, you should be ashamed of yourself. What purpose do you even serve?

I'm sure there's a middle class teenager somewhere who could use some harassment. Not right now, but maybe try to do your job once in a while. I mean, then there's a quote that we'll go into of Trump leading up to the election where he was super gung ho on this. And what people are missing is a crucial piece of evidence that has been revealed is that Trump's administration hasn't revealed significant evidence That tells you something.

Okay. It tells you that when you get a full picture of the case. Hmm. Even if you are Trump's [00:02:00] administration, even if you are a Republican administration, I. You believe it isnt in your best interest to cover this case up?

Simone Collins: Hmm. Interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Or the, the official narrative that he un alive himself is actually true.

And I will go into copious evidence that I do not believe that is true, that we will get to. Oh, really?

Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah. And I, Malcolm and I have been talking, by the way, offline about some, I read this really detailed substack post presenting all the evidence as to like, why basically the preponderance of evidence favors that he did indeed die, as people have said, he died in prison as, at least as a government official, said he died in prison with no foul play.

And yet I can't find it. Which also kind of to me suggests that whoever made that post found out something that kind of undid their argument and they took it down. So, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: that, that's my assertion. Well, because I, I did a deep dive on all of the evidence. And [00:03:00] my read, and I can, I can give you guys like the end state answer here and we'll work to it because I don't like leaving people hanging on, on theories.

People are busy. Yeah. My read from the majority of the evidence right now is, and I don't want to call out names, was one of these groups because I don't wanna put my own life at risk. But it was either a wealthy Muslim within Saudi Arabia who the US had strong reason to keep happy, both Republicans and Democrats.

Mm-hmm. And who has a history of doing this sort of thing. Mm-hmm. Or he worked for Mossad and or Jeffrey

Simone Collins: Epstein worked for Mossad.

Malcolm Collins: Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad agent, and I'm not saying that Mossad necessarily installed him. Actually, it would be almost a little insane if various intelligence agencies didn't go out to him.

Yeah, because if you build a network, so people who don't know how intelligent agencies recruit assets, I should probably just go into this before we go further, because my dad was recruited as an intelligence agency asset. The CIA tried to recruit [00:04:00] him.

Simone Collins: Oh, so basically once you reach a certain level of connection and profile, you're probably gonna be contacted by some groups because

Malcolm Collins: yeah, they're, they're like, oh, you got invited to X event with a bunch of Russian dignitaries.

You know, you're very patriotic. He was a congressman's son. He was, you know, a known like very patriotic individual. And so they'd be like, Hey. Here's something you can do for your country. For, from Jeffrey Epstein's perspective. You know, he was born Jewish so they would've thought that they could have some leverage on him, and he had a lot of powerful people sort of in his debt to some extent which would.

Highly motivate. I, in fact, I would be surprised if, if he wasn't Mossad, that at no point did Mossad contact him. And, and I'd also point out here, I wouldn't say just a Mossad thing. I would also guess that Russian intelligence contacted him at some point. And I bet that the CIA contacted him at some point, he may have been working for various intelligence agencies.

Like if, if, if you build yourself into a position of power by blackmailing lots of famous people, and it's obvious and there is a paper trail [00:05:00] you are very desirable from the perspective of as, as an asset, you the hottest girl in the club. Yeah. The hottest girl in the club, right? Yeah. So what I'm saying here isn't insane.

I'm not saying that they like implanted him and built his career and everything like that. I like this way of

Simone Collins: looking at it though. What you're looking at is where are the incentives aligned? And, and who's going to come out of the woodwork for certain things. You know, like if you. Like put a pile of food in a field.

You know what bugs are gonna come flocking to it, you know? Well, yes. And if it

Malcolm Collins: was either of these groups, it would 100% explain why neither the Democrats or the Republicans want released. Because both the Democrats and the Republicans both want the Saudis and I I Israel to stay our friends. Yeah. Um, And that matters much more.

The, the stupid answer I keep hearing from people is, oh, Trump is on the list. And this answer just shows an inability at rational thought. Because if Trump, like if there was concrete evidence not just Trump on flight records or some picture of Trump, but that tied Trump, [00:06:00] Trump to Jeffrey Epstein in a nefarious context, the Biden administration, 100% would've released it.

Whoever it is. That's a good point that people are attempting to protect, is somebody who cannot be used to undermine either the Democrats or the Republicans. Hmm. If it was a mainstream Democrat. The Trump administration would be releasing it. If they had hardcore stuff on this, it was a mainstream Republican, the Democrats would be releasing it.

And you can be like, well, maybe there's people on both sides on the list. Then they would've released a redacted list.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, you're right. I mean, there's, there's, it is just too tempting. And the fact that the Biden administration was sitting on this and could have done this is very compelling to me.

You make a great point. Some, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Something at the core of this is, and, and, and I mean core in that you couldn't just give simple, redacted lists is preventing both sides from releasing it. And I note another interesting thing about it is it the Trump administration, early in the administration, they [00:07:00] signaled that they plan to release this information.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And that appears before they did a deep dive into the information. So, it may have been somebody that, you know, you get contacted not in months one when you're president. But month three or four when you're president and they're like, by the way, I hope we have an understanding over this Epstein thing.

Mm-hmm.

And that, that would make sense. Honestly, that one leads me more to believe the Saudis, because I think the Israelis would've immediately told him to tove this. Oh

Simone Collins: no, they're way too organized. Mossad is too organized to let that slip. Yeah. Whereas the

Malcolm Collins: Saudis, I could see them thinking it was more appropriate to you know, have a, a personal conversation with him.

Yeah. Let's socialize

Simone Collins: a little bit. First, let's have you visit a little bit first. Let's, you know, because you don't necessarily have to reach out right away because the, the administration was pretty busy flooding the zone in its first few weeks to do anything about the Jeffrey Epstein stuff anyway.

Right. So that makes sense.

Malcolm Collins: And so I'm gonna jump right into one of the biggest pieces of evidence around this that I [00:08:00] think a lot of people sleep on. And so we're gonna go into Alexandra Acosta, who claimed that Jeffrey Epstein was intelligence and was quote unquote above his pay grade in terms of charging him with specific things early in the investigative cycle.

And I think that this is actually a really important quote when you get an understanding of who this individual is who made these claims.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So who is, who is he? Alexander Acosta is an American attorney and former politician who served as the US attorney for the Southern District of Florida, 2060 2009, and later the 27th, US Secretary of Labor, 2017 2019 under President Trump.

Hmm. A Miami nata and son of Cuban immigrants. Acosta graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law still clerked for j Samuel Alida and held roles like Assistant Attorney General for Civil rights and Dean of Florida International College Law. And, and, and so what I'm pointing out here is this is not a fly by night guy.

This is not somebody, this is [00:09:00] not some

Simone Collins: YouTube conspiracy theorist. This is

Malcolm Collins: randomly appointed to a position of power, right? This is somebody who was, was, you know, structurally like a big deal individual, but also not like a swamp creature like team Trump, everything like that. Okay? So, as US Attorney Acosta oversaw the 2007 to 2008 non-prosecution agreement, NPA was Epstein allowing him to plead guilty to two state level prostitution charges.

Serving 13 warrant was work release despite a 53 page federal indictment for fornication trafficking. This lenient deal later ruled illegal for violating the crime victim's sparked controversy. The claim in 2017 during the vetting for his labor secretary role.

So, you know, he is under oath. He's, he is doing a vetting for labor secretary role. Acosta reportedly told Trump transition officials that he approved the 2008 NPA because he was told Epstein, quote unquote, belonged to [00:10:00] intelligence and that the issue was quote unquote above his pay grade. So he was instructed to quote unquote, leave it alone.

Oh, this was reported in the Daily Beast July, 2019. So Acosta made this statement to explain why he didn't pursue a stronger federal case against Epstein. Despite FBI evidence for dozens of victims the claim surfaced after Epstein's 2019 arrest, feeling speculation that Epstein was an intelligent asset.

And note if he was moad, this claim would apply to him.

Simone Collins: Yes, that's true. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Acosta's response at a 2019 press conference. So he was later pressed on this later, right? Like they tried to pin him down on this in public. I guess he didn't know that this would leak, that he said this at this hearing.

When asked if Epstein was an intelligence asset, Acosta declined to confirm citing Justice Department regulations and said quote, I would hesitate to take this reporting as fact calling such [00:11:00] claims rabbit holes. He emphasized his office acted based on quote unquote facts, not external pressures. If you are wondering, by the way, that is exactly what I would say.

If I knew that I was told not to talk about this and then it leaked and then the press approached me and we often have to talk around you know, people who we know or whatever in press articles. So I'm very familiar with the language you have to use. To not lie you know, but to also not you know, 100% confirm this, but yeah,

Simone Collins: to, to answer a question without answering the question

Malcolm Collins: to me, there is no reason that somebody, you know, especially while being grilled for an appointment with the Trump administration was this level of history, would have said something like this, unless it was true.

It is such a, it's just he's not the type of guy who would make this up from, from his backstory. Well, to

Simone Collins: both make it up in a hearing, but then not repeat it [00:12:00] to journalists. It also would be weird.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. It also explains very odd behavior on his part. Why did he build this giant 53 page dossier with dozens of victims and then not attempt to prosecute it?

Why would you do that? Why would you have your office do that unless you had built it? And then not just that, what's really important about this coming out of him is that he is the person that if Epstein was an intelligence asset that would've been notified, don't continue to pursue this. It, in fact, it's very likely that he did even explain to his subordinates why they had to stop pursuing it.

But, but out of everyone, we happen to get the one person who we know for a fact would've been pulled aside and said, this is an intelligent asset. You need to stop this case. Yeah. So it, it checks out. It makes sense in context and I can't understand why he'd makes this up.

Simone Collins: That's a really good point.

Yeah. [00:13:00] Huh. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And, and he had his office drafted a 60 count indictment and and received an 82 page prosecution memo from the assistant us Marie Ena in 2007 detailing Epstein's fornication trafficking his decision to shelves. He would've had a, a strong reason to move ahead with it.

So, let's now go into another interesting thing here that's often talked about in regards to this. And note I'm gonna, I'm gonna blow up some stuff that people think is evidence of fpe. Like the fact that originally it was said that there were no tapes of what happened, and now we have tapes of what happened.

That's actually not a particularly bad smoking gun. But I will go to a second smoking gun that a lot of people sweep under the table as being less of a smoking gun than it actually is. So, on August 9th to 10th, 2019, MCC Guard, so this is where Epstein, when he unli was being held Tova Noel and Michael Thomas were responsible for [00:14:00] monitoring Epstein in special housing unit, the SHU.

They falsified log entries, so two log entries in a row. Roe claiming to have conducted the required checks at 12:00 AM and 3:00 AM and 5:00 AM sorry, three log entries in a row. So two people were involved in this and it was the falsification of three entries.

Simone Collins: That's pretty bad. But also, how pervasive is that in the prison system, he was

Malcolm Collins: found dead at 6:30 AM officially by Unli via partial hanging.

The 2023 OIG G report attributed this to negligence, noting the guards were distracted. EG online shopping and napping online shopping. Okay. This, this is, yeah. A lot of people, they're like, oh. Well, there's actually been findings that like 20% of staff within this facility have so, so to give context, a 2018 presenters, BOP audit by the Washington Post reported widespread falsification at the MCC due to overwork staff cutting [00:15:00] corners.

For example, guards, often logged checks was out physically conducting them a practice. Not unique to Noelle and Thomas. Yeah, the OIG noted that nine out of 11. SHU officers on duty that night failed to complete rounds properly, though only Noel and Thomas fail faced charges due to their direct responsibility for Epstein.

So nine out of the 11 guards in some way faked this. Yeah. But here's the important thing, the faking of it, and there are specific instances in which they faked of it overlap with the period where Epstein Unli. Yeah. That's uniquely inconvenient. Also, like wouldn't you check on the celebrity that. Then we're dealing the celebrity who might unlive themselves.

And a lot of people had said, oh yeah, he was on watch,

Simone Collins: wasn't he?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. He not only was he on watch, but like a huge number of people had a reason to want him dead, right? Yeah. Like everybody knew this, right? Because he had blackmail information on [00:16:00] tons and tons of individuals. And so, there was a reason to check, but where this gets really interesting is in the prosecution of these two individuals.

Hmm. So it says, oh, nine out of the 11 people on staff that night didn't properly do their rounds. However, there was no prosecution for any of these other individuals. In addition, when these two individuals were prosecuted, the prosecution was only for skipping on those specific periods and not for any past skipping.

If this had been a ongoing issue with these individuals, presumably during the prosecution of them, there would've been a motivation even just to show, Hey, this is not like it was actually just negligence that this had been an ongoing behavioral issue and yet that didn't happen. Huh? That is, which to me is a huge red flag.

Why was nobody else prosecuted? If this is a major issue for this facility and it led to such a high [00:17:00] profile screw up, why did they not go back and check the older logs to prove that these individuals had been skipping regularly? If. There was an assassin and somebody had paid them or done something for a family member or threatened a family member or in some other way motivated them, Hey, he's a bad guy.

Let me, like the ways that intelligence agencies get people to do things. There's a myriad of ways that they get people to do things, maybe get some blackmail on them or something. Hey, just don't show up to these two specific shifts. Right. They may not even know what was gonna happen. Right. It's just don't show up to these shifts.

Yeah. That is exactly the way intelligence agencies work when they're pulling something like this off. And it wouldn't have been hard for them to do. Is the other thing, right? Like people act like this is some big complicated operation when it's like, not necessarily. It would also explain how the individuals were able to get on to a facility like [00:18:00] this.

It would also explain why the cameras that directly looked at his cells were not operational. Because when they said they released camera footage, it was of a surrounding area. And we'll get to the, the weird camera footage story in a second, which also I'm so curious

Simone Collins: about that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. But I, I, I personally found that really, really fascinating.

Okay. I also want to just before we go further, go over the larger case because something that I was trying to dig into is, was Epstein just a rich playboy with hemophilia, you know, liking underage but not minor girls?

Mm-hmm.

Or, and, and who like liked drawing other people into this? Or did he have an operation where and this by the way, is my reconstruction of events with Jeffrey Epstein.

He started as an individual who found ways to blackmail other individuals and worked really intently to draw other individuals into situations of blackmail to get '[00:19:00]

Simone Collins: em implicated. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, but never, I don't get, I get that he actually had fond relations with the people he was quote unquote blackmailing, where they just sort of knew he had info on them.

And so they did him favors or things. Yeah. This is how

Simone Collins: trust networks used to work. You just knew that you had embarrassing stuff on your friends and so you were less likely to, you know, when it became less convenient to. Back then you were still,

Malcolm Collins: and, and I believe that he became a an intelligence asset later.

But the reason I was looking into this, I was trying to determine, well, was he actually blackmailing people? Because there isn't hard evidence of him blackmailing anyone.

Simone Collins: No. I think he just had dirt on a lot of people. And that gave him leverage.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Well, and we are aware of an instance of how he did this.

So sort of how he operated is he would send girls, like, he would go hang out with like wealthy or powerful individuals, and then he would send girls to meet with them.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And, and the, the individual who we know who he did this to basically open the door and was like, what the f**k are you doing here?

[00:20:00] Leave. And then close the door. But that was that to me. Implies he's not just a playboy, he's intentionally trying to get people like dirt on individuals. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Well, and this is, I think this happens a lot, for example, with like drug dealing, like you give you, you know, some free samples too, like that could be part of it as well.

I.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So let's, let's go into where I get this from the scale of the operation. Epstein's Trafficking Network was highly organized involving recruiters, Gillian Maxwell, payment to girls, 200 to a thousand per session, and steady supply of victims across multiple properties. This level of coordination documented in the 2019 indictment suggests more than personal indulgent, hinting at a broader purpose, surveillance equipment.

His properties were equipped with cameras per the New York Times 2019, and victim accounts raising questions about the recording purposes beyond personal use such as blackmail intelligence ties. Alexander Acosta claims that Epstein unquote belong to intelligence strongly suggest this goes beyond [00:21:00] hedonism as well.

Un prosecuted crimes. Epstein's escaped from charges in the 2094 towers. Financial Ponzi scheme, which we'll go over later. Mm-hmm. In lenient 2008 plea deal suggests protection. Mm-hmm. Possibly from leveraging compromising material, not just to playboy lifestyle. I actually don't think that that death was happening.

I'll go over the timeline. I think that those charges for the Ponzi scheme is when he was recruited. And I think that this indicates that he was working for the CIA potentially as well as Mossad. If you could say, well, if he was working for the CIA, why don't you think the CCIA a did it? And I think it's because I don't, I don't think they're comp competent.

I don't think they're competent enough. I don't, I don't think that they would or, or would think in the modern age to do something like that, even if one of their assets was in jail. Whereas I think that Mossad, if you look at like the pager thing and, and other ops they've run recently absolutely had the capabilities and the desire to do something like this.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Surveillance systems, Epstein's Manhattan townhouse. So in terms of where the cameras were, they had hidden cameras in the [00:22:00] bedrooms and bathrooms per victim accounts. And FBI searches. Guffey alleged in her 2005 lawsuit that Gillian instructed her to gather, quote, unquote embarrassing information on powerful men.

So he, he was directly directing people to do this. And the 2019 raid on Epstein's Manhattan Home found CDs labeled with names of individuals alongside miscellaneous nudes or girl pics suggesting compromising material.

Simone Collins: Oh my goodness.

Malcolm Collins: Hard drives. Were also seen, though their content remains unreleased, and this gets really interesting.

So we know they have the CDs. We don't know whose names was on them. We know, we know that there were names on them. We don't know whose, we know that there were hard drives that they seized. And so you have people say, oh, they didn't get the information. Oh, they didn't get the, and we're like, we know for a fact that's not true.

Right. They have the dirt.

Simone Collins: He

Malcolm Collins: didn't, he didn't have a list. Could we at least get a list of the names on the CDs? Like that's a, that's an important list, right. I wonder [00:23:00] though,

Simone Collins: I mean, is there, are you gonna argue that also the argument, sorry, that the government benefits from having these lists themselves.

Now they just have all the benefits that Epstein did and they can call these people and be like, yeah. So I have a picture of you right here with you know, in, in certain embarrassing scenario. So you wanna tell me about X? 'cause I think that there are many scenarios in which government intelligence agencies or just agencies in general would love to be able to call someone up and be like, Hmm, embarrassing picture here.

Shame if it got published tomorrow. And then instantly get answers. Is that part of the issue here is that if they released everything suddenly, it'd be a lot harder for them to get answers and leverage from people.

Malcolm Collins: No. No, that's it. Okay. Why? I don't, I don't think that's it. And I'll note here that for one of the theories that I'm gonna come up with of what could have led to this,

Simone Collins: yeah.

The

Malcolm Collins: fact that he labeled some CDs was Girl picks imply something. It implies that he had multiple categories of picks uhoh, including a Guy picks category of pick. No, no one

Simone Collins: talks [00:24:00] about that. Oh, no One talks about the, the Epstein Boys.

Malcolm Collins: Well, the reason why this is important to one of my series is if you're talking about someone was in Saudi Arabia who was wealthy, who.

Them sleeping around with girls on a trip wouldn't be that big. Yeah. That is not scandalous. Them sleeping around with men would be execution. And so in a very big deal under law. And so, this, this is why I suspect that that could be what's upstream of all this Ahuh. Okay. And there's actually a lot of evidence for that, which we'll dig into really, because

Simone Collins: no one, everyone talks about all these young girls that got looped into Epstein's nightmarish scenarios and creepy uncomfortable whatevers.

And then I. Yeah. No boys. No boys, no, no boys are coming forward.

Malcolm Collins: Why they're not me doing this. Girls come forward. The reason is, is because if you know the people involved in this, and you were one of these guys you know, very much how, how extremely dead you'd be if you [00:25:00] came forward.

And,

and Epstein likely knew how extremely dead he'd be if he came forwards.

Okay. But before people were at, because we're gonna go over flight logs and stuff like that we're they, they get pretty interesting on this point.

Simone Collins: And I, and I wanna be

Malcolm Collins: clear in what I'm saying here. I am in no way saying, anything about the royal family in Saudi Arabia? I'm just saying powerful interests within Saudi Arabia is, is is what we'll be going over.

I I don't wanna make any claims about that. That is not what I'm saying. Yeah. But I, I'd say that that's, that's why the, the men who are involved in this aren't coming over. And you'd be like, wait, why would the men only be involved with high profile Muslims? Whereas the underage women would've been involved with, well, because one.

You people in a lot of Muslim countries just aren't gonna care. You haven't actually gotten dirt on them if you've gotten them to sleep with a 16-year-old woman, right? Like, that's not real dirt from the perspective of these countries. And if you're an American sleeping with men, especially if they're not underage, is just not dirt.

That's, that's not something you [00:26:00] could hold over. Most American politicians or something like that, they'd just be like, oh, now I look sexually adventurous, you know, whatever. Whereas, you know, it's like, know your audience, know the context. Victim testimony. So, GE Gere claimed that Epstein and Maxwell directed her to have sex with specific high profile figures like Prince Andrew to collect information per her 2015 disposition.

Another victim, Sarah Ranson, alleged that in 2016 that Epstein recorded sex tapes of prominent men, though she later admitted to fabricating some of the claims. Leslie Wexner accused Epstein of misappropriated 46 million per a 2019 letter to his foundation, but he didn't report it until after Epstein's arrest.

This delay could suggest that Epstein held leverage over Wexner possibly compromising material. No to, no direct evidence confirms this. So basically this one guy will get into this Epstein managed all his money. After Epstein's arrest for this stuff. This guy said he stole 46 million, $46 million from me.

[00:27:00] He allowed Epstein to continue managing his money. Why did he do that if Epstein didn't have blackmail material on him? That, to me suggests a black male operation. I'd be stoked

Simone Collins: if I were that guy in Epstein didn't exist anymore.

Malcolm Collins: And then we had flight logs. The, the list of individuals like Clinton, 27 flights Trump seven flights and Arab.

Barack, which we'll get to in a bit indicating Epstein specifically had a lot of powerful men go to his stuff. Now we're gonna go to next piece of evidence that this was probably not arriving. Okay.

But I, I do like that we're getting true crimey in this episode. Like, yeah,

Simone Collins: I'm enjoying this thoroughly.

Yes.

Malcolm Collins: So the details of Epstein's neck injuries, I don't know, did you hear about this?

Simone Collins: So, and this had to do with the partial hanging.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Okay. So an autopsy conducted by New York City's Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Barbara Sampson, found specific injuries to Epstein's Neck that raised questions about [00:28:00] the manner of death.

Here is a detailed breakdown. Hmm. Injuries observed hyoid bone fracture. Epstein had a fractured hyoid bone, a small U-shaped bone in the neck below the jaw, which supports the tongue. The Washington Post 2019 reported that this injury was noted in the autopsy, thyroid cartilage damage. The autopsy also identified fractures in the thyroid ridge.

Adam's apple, another structure in the neck, Perrin pathologist report cited in the same article. Other findings, the autopsy noted ligature mark, consistent with a bedsheet used as a noose tied to the top bunk of his cell. Epstein was found with the sheet around his neck kneeling or leaning forwards in a quote unquote partial hanging position as he didn't jump from a height.

And the this, this is, how could that. Hold on. This is really important what I'm about to get to here. Okay, go ahead. Yeah. Epstein was in a small single occupant cell in these special housing unit that was approximately eight by 10 feet. It was a bunk bed, toilet and sink. The bunk bed was [00:29:00] about five to six feet high, insufficient full, a full body drop, typical of hangings.

The height meant that Epstein's hanging was likely a low force partial suspension, where his body weight applied pressure to his neck while kneeling or sitting. A common method was in prison and alives. Now why is this important? Because the type of injury that he had to his neck, which we'll get to in a second.

Okay. Very rarely happens on hanging suicides even when the individual has jumped from a height. And so the fact that he was able to obtain these injuries in a cell that was only eight by 10 feet, right? He didn't, there's not enough torque. He lacked the torque. He lacked the torque to create these injuries, which we'll get to, and we'll get to their frequency and we'll get to studies on their frequency right.

Now. Can you because I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna make this episode even for you, Simone, the deepest you've ever heard somebody go on this case. I

Simone Collins: really appreciate this because I've been watching coverage out of interest and yeah, man.

Malcolm Collins: The [00:30:00] rarity of hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage fractures in suicidal hangings, especially partial hangings, is central to the debate.

Here's what the forensic evidence suggests. Hyoid bone fractures general prevalence studies in forensic pathology. The Journal of Forensic Sciences 2005 indicated that hyoid bone fractures occur in 20% to 30% of hanging un alives, more commonly in older individuals. Now, keep in mind, Epstein was 66, which provides some.

Wiggle room here. Yeah. Due to bone brittleness in strangulation, totally homicidal or accidental hiro. Bone fractures are more frequent occurring in 50 to 70% of cases as the neck is compressed with greater force. Okay. So, and, and, and compressed asymmetrically. So you get it in 50 to 70%, not even all.

So you need quite a violent strangulation to cause this in most cases.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: Now but you're

Simone Collins: trying to argue that maybe plausibly it's because he was older and therefore frail.

Malcolm Collins: So in partial hangings. This is Epstein, which is why he had Ky bone fractures are even less [00:31:00] common, only occurring in 10 to 20% of, of, of cases compared to drop hangings.

Mm-hmm. So you would only expect it's in 10 to 20% of cans. Now, the thyroid cartilage fractures prevalent. Thyroid cartilage fractures are also less common in, in partial hangings, 10 to 20% compared to strangulation. 40 to 60% per forensic studies. American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology 2010.

The cartilage is more flexible in younger individuals, but bri in older ones increasing Epstein's risk. So on the other side, he was older. Multiple fractures, Hy and thyroid in a single case are rarer, still occurring in less than 10% of hangings and un alives according to Dr. Cyral Rech, another pathologist cited in the Washington Post.

So the, this

Simone Collins: comb exogenous, yanking evidence is, is growing here.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, this combination is more typical in strangulation where the manual literature force targets multiple neck structures.

Simone Collins: He was going, [00:32:00] someone going down. So

Malcolm Collins: individual thyroid fractures occur in a minority of hanging suicides, especially partial ones, but are not impossible.

The 10 to 30% range. However, the combination of both fractures is extremely rare. And so, this heavily implies that he was strangled and quite violently, which was somebody who wanted to strangle him quickly.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Which would be the case if you were going into a prison and then having to leave and then setting, had a rush

Simone Collins: and you had a 92nd interval to make it in and out of the cell while the camera was turned off in the hallway.

Maybe,

Malcolm Collins: I don't, I don't know if I don't buy as much from this camera, but there is some evidence of the camera, so let's talk about the camera right now.

Simone Collins: Yeah, let's

Malcolm Collins: please.

Now I want to note here. If you come to me and you say, well, this could be a coincidence, Malcolm, when you have a lot of people who have a motive to kill someone and that individual dies and there are a large number of coincidences around that, you have to calculate the [00:33:00] probability of that many coincidences happening in a row, and you can get a number where it becomes.

Wilder and and actually significantly wilder to assume they are coincidences than just assume the people with motive means, and opportunity took that motive, means, and opportunity. Specifically here what I'm talking about is the guards falsifying the logs during the window of death. The camera malfunction in that specific area and timeframe, the rare bone fracture patterns for partial hanging.

Previous cases dropped with prosecutor citing, quote unquote, intelligence concerns the consistent pattern of officials changing their stance. After reviewing classified materials and the timing of the routine reset camera gap, each individual event might have a, let's say, 10 to 20% chance of. Being a coincident, but when you multiply these probabilities together, you get something like 0.1 times, 0.2 times 0.1, five times 0.1 times 0.05, and you get a number that's like 0.0 0 0 0 0 0 [00:34:00] 1 5, or about a one in 600,000 chance that is coincidental.

Well, first, why, why, why? Did they say that there wasn't a camera there to begin with and then all of a sudden we have camera footage, right?

Yeah. Okay. Septic investigations revealed that some video footage from the MC did exist, though it was limited, the DOJ and FBI clarified that while cameras in the hallway captured certain areas, they did not have a direct view into Epstein's cell to to the camera. Placement and design of the facility footage from the night of Epstein's death was later reviewed as part of the investigation, but officials noted it was incomplete or lacked.

Critical details due to issues like camera angles, record collapse, and system malfunctions. The DOJ office and the inspector General OIG released a report in 2023 detailing the circumstances of Epstein's death. It confirmed multiple failures at the MTC, including staffing sources, digs, procedural violations, EEG [00:35:00] guards failing to conduct required checks and issues with surveillance systems.

The report noted that while some cameras were operational, the footage did not provide conclusive evidence about the events inside Epstein cells. As the cameras only covered the hallway. The OIG attributed the initial confusion about cameras to poor communication and management within the facility,

Simone Collins: which again, I mean these prisons are not known for being run incredibly well.

Okay. What happened here? So the camera was sus but the entire prison? No, no, no. The point here

Malcolm Collins: being is it does appear that some cameras were down at the facility. The cameras was the best views of the cell were down at the facility. The camera footage that we have footage is not one of the best views of the cell.

It just covers like the entrance to the past that would've gone to the cell. Well, and this is your

Simone Collins: point, whether they weren't wrong about the cameras being down, the footage that we received where they're, like you said, there was no footage, was from a totally different camera, which before they basically didn't count.

'cause you don't see anything.

Malcolm Collins: Right. And I think that everybody's focused on like this, oh, this one minute gap in the, in the video or [00:36:00] something where I'm like. Given the length of time between now and this, in this case, you could have swapped out that footage for any other footage of any other night, right?

Like, there's no reason for us to suspect that this is the actual footage from that night. I, I, I personally do not believe that what happened was that they cut out the one minute of footage when somebody went in there. I just think they swapped out the nights. Hmm. But we'll get to why I think that in a second.

But also the, the one minute of footage is like way more suss than it initially appears when you look at the excuse for it.

So official explanations for the missing minute, the Department of Justice, DOJ and the FBI released approximately 11 hours of surveillance footage from the M CCC Special Housing Unit SHU on July 7th, 2025, covering a period from 7:30 PM on August 9th, 2019 to 6:40 AM on August 10th, 2019 when Epstein was found dead.

The footage [00:37:00] intended to confirm the official conclusion of an alive contains a noticeable gap when the time step jumps from 1150 8:58 PM. To 12:00 AM resulting in the missing minute and two seconds.

Simone Collins: God, attorney

Malcolm Collins: General Pam Bondy addressed this gap during the White House cabinet meeting on July 8th, 2025, explaining that the missing minute was due to a routine nightly reset of the MCCs outdated video surveillance system, which she claimed occurred every night at midnight.

Blondie stated that this reset caused a consistent one minute gap in recordings across all nights, not just the night of Epstein's death, and that the DOJ was working together all additional footage from other days to demonstrate this pattern.

Simone Collins: This sounds like one of those things in caper films where there like where there's one flaw in the security system and we have this 62nd period where we have to sneak through while the camera system's down, but that just seems like such an implausible thing.

Like I never take that trope seriously, because who would've a camera system that's [00:38:00] consistently down for one minute every night? Yes, I would

Malcolm Collins: exactly one time. But here's here's the problem. They, they made the claim that they were gonna do this quite a while ago and they haven't released any other footage showing that this happens on other nights.

Oh,

Simone Collins: okay.

Malcolm Collins: We're gathering it. We'll come to you. I can very much imagine that she believed this. Somebody told her this. She then goes Yeah. And they were like, mm. Actually we tried collecting it and we're not finding it in other nights. Yeah. And then she's like, oh, like, I don't think like necessarily she's involved in a coverup.

I think she's just doing what other people are like, Hey, yeah, I think she

Simone Collins: in the middle of this or that. You know? She, 'cause she originally was extremely bullish, right. She was like, it's on my desk. Yeah. Like, this is coming out. And then I feel like other people have been like, y. Yeah, you're gonna have to change your stance on this.

Yeah. This

Malcolm Collins: is above your grade above your pay grade that somebody else said this is above your pay grade. Right? Yeah. I don't,

Simone Collins: I don't wanna be her right now 'cause she's getting so much hate that I, yeah. I I don't think this was in her [00:39:00] control because I think it was on her desk. I do think she saw it and I think she was ready for it to go.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. But to continue here the 2020 CDOJ Office of Inspector General's report, the OIG report for Epstein's desk does not mention a routine nightly reset causing a one minute gap. But does document systemic issues with the MC surveillance system, including a malfunction on July 29th, 2019.

That caused recordings to be made for only about half of the cameras. I'd also note here that the malfunction happened on that specific day which again is incredibly suss if you have somebody doing an assassination.

Simone Collins: Yeah. This is another one of those like caper film things of like. The camera system went down.

Yeah. Oh no. The cameras are scrambled. What happened? Do, do, do.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I also if you're watching this and you're like, okay, there was a one minute gap, but was that one minute gap even around a time that was relevant to mm-hmm. Epstein dying. The, the missing minute 1158 to [00:40:00] 12:00 AM occurs within the critical overnight period where Epstein was alone in his cell.

The DOJ memo and footage indicate that Epstein was last seen as being alive in his cell around 7:49 PM with a guard visit less visible in the area. At 10:51 PM no one was seen approaching his cell door until the guards discovered him unresponsive at 6:30 AM on August 10th, 2019. So, if we're looking at the, official timetable. The the, the unli happened between 10:40 PM and 6:30 AM which is, was in the window of the jump in the footage.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And then we have the three guard checks that didn't happen in a row, and we have the cameras that went down. Yeah. That is, that is too many things happening at once.

It's like any one of these things individually, I could be like, okay, yeah, fine.

Simone Collins: Okay. Totally.

Malcolm Collins: But it's not just that you have all these things happening at once. You have all these things happening at once to an individual that [00:41:00] other people had said was involved with high level intelligence. And like, like when I say other pe I mean people who were managing his case and dropped it out of the blue and then had to explain why they dropped it out of the blue.

I'm not talking about like a reporter or a muckraker or anything like that. It was people with a vested interest to not say something like that. As we can see by what he said when he was asked directly by a reporter. Mm-hmm. To me, I'm just like, okay, so we have a, a, a motive, a means, an opportunity, and like.

Five or six, really, really unlikely coinciding coincidences.

Simone Collins: And some of the excuses that I would make for guard based negligence don't work here. Like, oh, they're underpaid. But if I were an underpaid guard, then what I would be doing is going in to check on Epstein all the time so that I could get dirt that I could sell to tabloids.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. That's actually a very good point.

Simone Collins: Check on him more. One, because you're bored and underpaid and you'd rather check on him than other people who like are violent [00:42:00] and annoying and two. Yeah, it's, it's lucrative to check on him.

Malcolm Collins: All right. Now we're gonna go into Trump Epstein relationship timeline for people who think that Trump was actually involved in any of this.

I do not think he was. And I think we actually have fairly strong evidence that he wasn't. What we do know is that early two thousands Trump and Epstein were very friendly before Epstein's criminal activities became widely public. And note Trump termed on him very early in the criminal investigation, which we'll get to, trump spoke positively about him emphasizing their social connection and shared interests. This was during a period where Epstein was a known as a wealthy financier and social elite, and their interactions were documented at events like those at Mar-a-Lago. A quote in 2002 by Trump said, I've known Jess Epstein for 15 years.

Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about that. Jeffrey Epstein enjoys his social life. Now. I'd also note [00:43:00] what he's saying here because I think that people misread this a little. Yeah, they say that, oh, this is proofs that Trump knew.

This to me is a little side eye from Trump about what shouldn be doing this. Also because it's

Simone Collins: not his type like, phenotypically young looking or underage looking women clearly are not Trump's type. He has a type he and yeah. I, I really think it's more like him being like, yeah, this guy is a little weird, you know, not my taste, but he has fun.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, except for his daughter, the, the jokes there from the Yeah. But

Simone Collins: that's, no, she, when when he said all the things about her though, it's her as an adult who does not Yeah. She's already an adult. Like a, she does not look like a teen at all. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: At all. Yeah. So my read is I've seen no instance that, that Trump is interested in this stuff.

And I have seen Trump like reveal things like the, for example, the way he acts towards his daughter is genuinely kind of creepy and outside of normal [00:44:00] sexual norms. Yeah. So it's not that Trump is like super good at, at covered. He doesn't,

Simone Collins: no, he, he, he does not hide. His issues.

Malcolm Collins: He's also bragged about sleeping with friends wives Yeah.

And stuff like this and recording it. It's,

Simone Collins: and this is another reason why he succeeds, is because there are no secrets. He's hiding. Yeah. He, he talks about all his virtues and vices are 100% public friends Grab em by

Malcolm Collins: the P word. He, he, he, he talks about going into women's locker rooms at like the, the beauty pageants and stuff like that.

He is not afraid of breaking sexual taboos. He apparently looks down on people as I get from this comment, who break this sexual taboo.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: He sees this as crossing a line, which is what I, I, I take from that comment. Yeah. And we actually see this because Trump actually sort of, flipped on Epstein very early.

So let's get into this. Mm. As well as the timeline of this. So Epstein's first major legal troubles began in 2005 or 2006 when the poem. The police investigation investigated ma major allegations of [00:45:00] sexual misconduct with minors leading to his 2007 plea deal in 2008. Conviction for soliciting wait, what, what do I say?

Paid for indication from a minor. The reported Mar-a-Lago ban is said to have occurred around 2007 before the conviction, but during the period where his behavior is under scrutiny. So, I will note that we're gonna get into. Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago. They had that much of a falling out.

And this happened before the conviction and before a lot of Epstein's problems around this stuff were made public. And it was for something fairly minor, if I understand correctly, like allegedly Epstein. We're gonna go into it. We're gonna go into it. Okay.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So according to the book, the Grifters Club 2020, a book by Miami Harald, journalist Sarah Blaske, Nicholas and NoJa and Kaitlyn Ostroff.

Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago after an incident involving Epstein's inappropriate behavior towards the teenage daughter of a club member. The book cites sources claiming Epstein made advances towards the underage girl prompting Trump to bar him from the [00:46:00] property. A 2019 Washington Post article corroborates this reporting that Trump's decision came after Epstein's behavior and Mar-a-Lago raised concern, specifically citing an incident with a member's daughter.

So specifically a member came to Trump and asked if his daughter could have a job at the establishment. Mm-hmm. Trump gave his daughter a job. And, and then Epstein attempted to aggressively hit on this girl. And Trump was apparently, which I can really understand, you're doing a favor for a friend.

You're trying to, you know, help their daughter. And then this daughter of, of a friend of yours comes to you and is like, dude, like I'm X Age. And this guy was aggressively hitting on me. And, and Trump then banned him. Now I know if Epstein had a bunch of stuff on Trump. I don't think Trump's gonna ban him from his establishment, especially

Simone Collins: given that other people have apparently lost millions of dollars due to 'cause of

Malcolm Collins: stuff Epstein had on them.

Yeah. And then

Simone Collins: continued to work with

Malcolm Collins: Epstein.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: That to me indicates yeah, [00:47:00] Epstein definitely, no. Yeah. Another guy had $43 million stolen from him and was able to do nothing. Because of the stuff that Epstein had on him. Trump felt comfortable just banning him from the property.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

That's big. And,

Malcolm Collins: and I note here your initial thought was that maybe Epstein had something on somebody who Trump cares about. 'cause Trump would do a lot, for example, to protect his family For sure. Like, would, would Epstein target Trump's kids? Potentially, yes, they're exactly the type of people he would target.

However if he had successfully gotten dirt on them and there was confirmation of it, I think the Democrats would've leased, leaked it during the campaign cycle. Yeah. And I hadn't considered

Simone Collins: that. 'cause that would just be so tempting. Their own Well, they've seen it perfect revenge

Malcolm Collins: for the Hunter Biden stuff.

Exactly. Yeah. So, I, and I I'd also note here, bradley LERs, an attorney for Epstein's victims also stated in his book, relentless Pursuits in 2020 that Trump banned Epstein after the incident based on information from Mar-a-Lago source. And Edwards, this is not somebody who's like a [00:48:00] big Trump fan or anything like that, noted that Trump was one of the first high profile figures to take such action.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So Trump was the first high profile figure to go against Epstein. That would, that, that even, even by you know, the, the very lawyer that represented Epstein victims, like, he's like, and Trump was a good guy in all of this. So, you know, keep that in mind as well. Right? Yeah. Like this to me indicates as well, if it had been one of Trump's kids or somebody who Trump had as like a major donor, I suspect they would've told him when he was making all these claims about releasing this information or earlier in his administration.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. He, yeah. Well, and I even think that before that he probably would've known like. Let's say it was one of his kids, one of his kids might have approached him and been like, Hey, can you maybe like stop talking about releasing the Epstein files because I have to tell you something and you're not gonna like it.

And yeah. And yet he was very consistent and very enthusiastic about this in general about releasing the Epstein

Malcolm Collins: files. Yeah, exactly. This is why I think it was another nation [00:49:00] that both the Democrats and the Republicans wanna stay friends with rather than an individual.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Again, just logic, people try to piece this together in your heads and, and, and to the other nation saying absolutely 100% if he was a Mossad agent and this was a Mossad operation, or if it was an operation, was any ties to powerful Saudi individuals.

In both instances Trump 1000% would've covered it up. No doubt in my mind that he would've covered this up. And, and so would Biden. Yeah, which would perfectly explain both instances despite all of the smoking guns and public hurrah he could get from revealing this. So let's go to Trump's changing attitude on Epstein quote 2019.

Reflecting on earlier events, quote, I had a falling out with him a long time ago. I don't think I've spoken to him in 15 years. I wasn't a fan end quote. And this was in 2019. And he, and he genuinely doesn't it, he, he appears to [00:50:00] have thought the guy was a creep, from what I can tell.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And that the earlier stuff, given that he gave a little shade to Epstein, even in the positive early quotes, implies to me that this was when he was rising to power and he thought he needed to play with by Epstein's rules because Epstein was a bigger power player than he was, was in those circles.

Mm-hmm. Especially was in the New York Social Elite, which Trump really wanted to be accepted by. Absolutely. And if you wanna get an idea of how insecure Trump was during that period, keep in mind there's the famous call, which has always been to me, one of my favorite things ever that we have. This is a piece of historic evidence of.

The there was this competition for like the wealthiest person in New York. And Trump wanted to get his name on the list, but he actually didn't qualify. He lied about how much wealth he had to get on the list. And we, this is also who he got loans. This a long story. We're not gonna go into this but, he called up the organization because of course then he was not a big deal. People didn't know the sound of his voice, pretending to be his publicist talking himself up. And if [00:51:00] you are a human today and you listen to this recording, you're like, that is what a hundred percent Trump. But yeah. Well, did he, he

Simone Collins: didn't try to change his voice or

Malcolm Collins: anything, he just kept all his personal mannerisms.

No, he's like, Trump is like the greatest and the wealthiest man to ever exist. You should see all of the nice things he owns. The clip is the best. It's, it's great. They're also beautiful and shiny. It's the best. But the reason I like this call as a fan of Trump is because it shows the amount of hustle and fake it till you make it that Trump represented during this period of his life

Simone Collins: and his

Malcolm Collins: personal hustle, he was doing this to get on the most wealthy list.

Rather than hiring a publicist, what you would do if you were actually wealthy. He faked being his own publicist to try to get a position on that list. Like what a what a what a hustler you have to be to [00:52:00] do something that insane. Oh, perfect. That, that, that boast bold and, and you know, as we always say, to get grandeur, you need dilution of grandeur because he achieved a lot of that later, right?

Like he did achieve a great deal of wealth later. But during this time when he wasn't like willing to publicly do anything other than like shade Epstein under the table, I get the impression he knew he wanted to do more, but he didn't feel that he had the the power to do anything. And he was very insecure.

Which you see a lot of in Trump's earlier stuff is just a very insecure person which I think. He also significantly changed between the two election cycles. I think he was still pretty insecure in his first election cycle, and I think within this election cycle, he's, he's become incredibly secure.

Oh yeah. And he doesn't really care what other people think of him anymore. Not care anymore. Yeah. In 2019 further, further details he did get scrutinized by saying of Gillian Maxwell in Jo June, 2020, after Epstein's death. He said I wish her well. Frankly, I've met her numerous [00:53:00] times over the year, especially since I lived in Palm Beach, and I guess they lived in Palm Beach, but I wish her well, whatever.

It's, and people were like, oh, mad. Oh, how could you wish her well? And I'm like, bro, like, is this somebody who is like in similar social circles to you? Of course you're going to. Like, what does he need to dehumanize everyone? Like, is that like, you know, a a friend of hers just died horribly in prison and she is undergoing trial and likely gonna spend a lot of the rest of her life in prison and disgraced.

Does he need to be like that horrible person gotten, like what a, what a inappropriate thing to say that they expected from him. But if we're talking about this election cycle in 2024 on the Lex Freeman podcast what's Trump doing on Lex Freeman's podcast and not ours? Lex Freeman's podcast is boring.

And I, I've met Lex Freeman and he didn't have me on his podcast as well, so I've got beef with him. Mm-hmm. He, he, she, well, every everyone else has this, so why not Lex Freeman thinks he's too good for us? That's, that's what this is. I think he has trouble

Simone Collins: just keeping up with his inbox, like all too many people.

Malcolm Collins: No. [00:54:00] Well quote, I'm going to release everything we have on Epstein, the files, the records, everything people want to know, and we're not going to hide it. So this was a campaign promise. This is something JD Vance had said historically. And, and Trump has made

Simone Collins: a lot of sacrifices to keep true to his, his campaign promises.

So like if he doesn't, if he breaks a promise, it's, I. Probably for a really good reason.

Malcolm Collins: And then things begin to change, right? So as of April 22nd, 2025, he said, I don't know, I'll speak to the attorney general about that in quote,

Simone Collins: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: Like, and then there's the time when hes, he snapped at somebody during a meeting.

This is very recently, July 8th, 2025. So yesterday are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years. You're asking, we have Texas, we have all this, all the great things that we've done. All the people. Oh my God. And we're still talking about this guy, this crazy, this is like a parent and promises.[00:55:00]

Simone Collins: A trip to Disneyland to their kids. Yeah. And it's like, I promise, we're definitely gonna go to Disneyland this year. And then it's like, why? You're always talking about Disneyland. You went to Disneyland two years

Malcolm Collins: ago. Why do you Yeah. I mean, I can't believe you're asking questions on Epstein at a time like this when we're having some of the greatest successes.

And also tragedy was what happened in Texas. I just took you a Chucky cheese and you're asking him to go to Disneyland. What's wrong with you? Yeah. The, the person he was mad about was Pam Bondy. And, and like this to me suggests a level of emotional charge in Trump in terms of how he feels about this.

Mm-hmm. Like I think he, he feels like he just wants people to stop talking about it right now. Mm-hmm. And he doesn't like the position he's having to take on it.

Simone Collins: Right. He doesn't like not following his promise. It, he's feeling cognitive dissonance.

Malcolm Collins: He's feeling cognitive dissonance. He's disappointed with the decision he has to take.

But he believes it's what he has to take in the best interest of the United States and the people of the United States. Which again, I would agree with him [00:56:00] if it turns out that it was either tied to Saudi Arabia or Mossad. We really probably like even if I was president, this is me Malcolm saying this.

I think we as a country just have too much at stake right now with these two powers Yeah. To release this information.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Because what good is this really gonna do? It's just gonna ruin a bunch of people's careers and reputations who are powerful and make a bunch of other people feel really good, but like.

Not in a way that makes their lives better. Like not in a way that's gonna reduce unemployment or increase health or longevity, like its just a gossip thing,

Malcolm Collins: honorable thing. That could be an easy win for him that he's choosing not to take for the best interest of American national security. Mm-hmm. That, that to me is not a, and again, I know that the reason I see these two groups as the most likely is they've shown the willingness, even if somebody's like a billionaire, like a Bill Gates, right?

Like, okay, he had, he had stuff on Bill Gates. An operation like this is not [00:57:00] something that a billionaire would one think to do, like your average, like the other guy who had all this information on that he was blackmailing out of $43 million. Oh yeah. Like presumably this guy could have had him assassinated at any point much more easily than when he was in prison.

Yeah. You know, like. This to me requires state level actors, right? This is not the type of thing that your standard rich person is going to just come up with on their own.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And if you, and we'll get into the types of people who trump targeted. He did not target organized crime type individuals or the types of individuals who would have, have done something like this from, from everything we could see.

Mm-hmm. It appears that it was mostly state level actors or very wealthy individuals. Oh, you mean Epstein? Sorry. Epstein. Epstein, sorry. Okay. Yeah. So let's talk about Pam Bondy and her changing perspective on this. So what she said in February, 2025, Bondi repeatedly claimed that she had Epstein's quote unquote client list on her desk for review, raising expectations of a significant release of new information.

In, [00:58:00] in February 21st, 2025, she said it's sitting on my desk right now to review. That's been a directive of President Trump, and I'm reviewing that end quote. And she, it was reported by Fox. When, and, and, and then in quote, March, 2025, when asked about pressure from Trump's base to release more files, Bondi confirmed that the DOJ was working on a timeline for further releases.

Quote, well get out as much as we can and as fast as we can to the American people. End quote. And then later she's like, oh well you see what I had on my desk was actually the, the like client, like the dossier on him or whatever. And I assumed that it included a client list and it didn't include a client list.

Basically, and I buy that. I buy that maybe people are hiding from her the full extent of the information, but we know there were CDs with people's names on them, client list or not. I wanna know whose names were on the blackmail CDs, right? Like that [00:59:00] is something that the public should know because we know that these individuals were, was video evidence sleeping with underage individuals, right?

Like, what? You can't say, oh, this is for their own safety or anything like that. Like, that's a crime and something that should, if you're not gonna prosecute it, at least be publicly known.

In 2025, the DOJ issued a memo stating, no incriminating client list existed. Contradicting Bondy's earlier claims White House Press Secretary Caroline Levit and DOJ spokesperson Chad Gilmore clarified that Bondy was referring to general case files, not a specific list. And now we're gonna talk about some other individuals who changed their tune on this, which I think is very interesting and gives us an idea of apparently most MAGA types when they are clued in behind closed doors, oh, come out and say, we really shouldn't be doing anything about this.

Right? There seems

Simone Collins: to be some distinct before and action. Sorry, before and after action happening here.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Like, let's get it, I've reviewed the evidence, there's something shady going on here. And then [01:00:00] it's almost like the faculty or something they go behind the, and they come out and they're like. We really shouldn't be digging in on this guy.

Right, right. Oh, it was just an unloving. So, cash Patel, FBI Director 2025. As a former maggot influencer, Patel questioned the official Epstein narrative before his appointment, implying the existing of hidden information, including a possible client list after becoming FBI director. He aligned with the DOJ findings quote, in May, 2025, he killed himself.

I've seen the whole file end quote, Dan Bondi, Bondo, FBI, deputy Director 2025, like Patel, Bondi previously promoted conspiracy theories around Epstein's death. I don't call them conspiracy theories, they're what the evidence suggests. Mm-hmm. And a client list as a MAGA influencer, but later affirmed the Unli conclusion quote, May, 2025, he killed himself.

End quote. Julia K. Brown. This feels like the faculty to me, like it does. It does. Where sheets it [01:01:00] and, and I'll note here, like you couldn't even have, like even if you're reviewing the files, right. With the existing evidence, if what the Trump administration has reported to me as the evidence, and I saw that evidence, what I'd say is we have the case files.

It looks like there was a coverup, but there's no longer enough evidence for us to use to find out how the coverup was carried out. Like I like

Simone Collins: that. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The Biden administration clearly did some sort of coverup. But I was in my position can't figure this out and I don't think that Trump has the ability to, to figure this out.

That's, that's what I would be saying if what's in the existing evidence is what I had access to. Mm-hmm. I would only come out saying he unli himself if there was a direct interest to American citizens and that being the mainstream narrative, because whatever was the truth, implied something that hurts America's national interests.

Mm-hmm. To, to reveal. Julia K. Brown, the Miami Henry Herald journalist brown, known for his investigative reporting on Epstein, denied the existence of a client [01:02:00] list. Now this is a bit different, but I I, I'll note here, this is really interesting to me. So, in a February 28th, 2025 post, she said, quote, there is no Epstein client list, period.

It's a figment of the Internet's imagination, and it means to just slander people. She said this in times.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: The problem is we know about the names on the CDs, so there is a client list, or at least, at least a list of clients which seem, yeah. Now let's talk about the airplane logs.

Simone Collins: Okay. Before we do, just a quick question, like, maybe I'm missing something stupid here, but like, my autistic, you know, like Simone's president, I would just be like, Hey guys. Yeah. So I really wanna share this with you, but also I. You're just gonna have to take my word for it. But there is a, like government national security, maintaining the balance of power, power issue here.

That makes me unable to share this instead of this half-assed, [01:03:00] no, it was nothing weird here. No foul play, no conspiracies. Like why, why can't they just say, Hey, something came up with what's in all the evidence that means we just can't share it. Sorry. Yeah. Why? Why can't they say that?

Malcolm Collins: Because I think that that would look super suss and I think people would say we as like, this

Simone Collins: doesn't look.

Really questionable. No, but,

Malcolm Collins: but your generic MAGA influencer is gonna be like, what do you mean you can't tell us? Right? Like mm-hmm. We need, we, we deserve to know everything. Right. And I don't think that they would buy No, it's true. Like even if you look at the comments of this video, there's gonna be a lot of people who unlike you and me, are like, it doesn't matter if it was Moad or they're like, I don't care.

Government, I don't care. If our government falls down as a result, I

Simone Collins: want to know the gossip.

Malcolm Collins: Well, they don't see it as gossip. They're like, well then maybe we shouldn't be working with [01:04:00] Israeli government, or we shouldn't be working with the Saudi government. And it's like, bro, there is such a wider, like I can see your average Rightwing reactionary having that.

Like response without understanding the actual cost to the United States of either if it's Israel or the, the Saudi Arabia damage to those government relationships. You know, this, this is something that puts American soldiers at risk. This is something that undoes, you know, these are countries that are killing people all the time.

Right? Like, this is a, this is a casualty of war, basically from their perspective. Yeah. Of somebody who wasn't even that great a person. Right. You know? And then you could say, well, what about the burying of all the rest of the files and lead lists and everything like that? Yeah. That I'm more confused about.

Even if all the rest of this was true. Why don't you release the information of like, the names on the CDs? And my takeaway from that, because we do know hard drives, were cs, we do know CDs receipts. Is that. [01:05:00] They may be using them to create new CIA assets. They may have just basically gone into the US intelligence agencies.

Oh.

Simone Collins: Like I had suggested before. And you completely poo-pooed.

Malcolm Collins: No, no. But what I'm saying here is this, it, it, especially if he wasn't just acting as an asset for like the CIA.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: But like a paid asset. And, and keep in mind I suspect that because many people who do work for one intelligence agency work for multiple intelligence agencies because it's just easier.

And why not? If you're already doing it.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It could mean that he was actually being like paid by the CIA to get these tapes. If that was the case, then they are not just property of the cia, but property, they invested it. They don't want out there. Right. Like they don't, they don't wanna lose this power.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: Like they essentially paid for this dirt. Are they really gonna give it away for free? I.

Malcolm Collins: They're like, you know, the, the people who are doing the investigation, the CIA comes in are like, actually we paid for those. They just hadn't been delivered yet. Or he made copies and he wasn't supposed to.

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I I could see the [01:06:00] CIA trumping, sorry. Approaching Trump and saying, yeah, so this is a little embarrassing. We told him to get half the stuff there and we need it. You're wasting a lot of money and time if you release this.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. Or, or putting American agents at risk or putting, you know, et cetera.

Yeah.

Interesting.

And again, this isn't a weird thing for the CIA to do. He is the perfect CIA asset. He's a perfect Russian intelligence asset. He's a

Simone Collins: perfect fraud asset. Yeah. I mean,

Malcolm Collins: I bet this guy was I, I, I think he started as a sex pest and then all of these intelligence agencies are like, huh, this guy's really good at blackmailing people.

Like, we, we should Well, he, yeah, he

Simone Collins: seemed like a, a slut for opportunism. Yeah, like for, for anything that benefited him. So that makes sense.

Malcolm Collins: But now let's talk about the two, the plane. Well, I'm gonna skip the plane 'cause everybody knows about that. They know the prince was on it. They know Trump was on it.

They know Clinton was on it. But, but like, yeah, but also

Simone Collins: like, if someone invites you, ask yourself this really seriously to go on their [01:07:00] private jet, even if you really don't like them, you gonna say no.

Malcolm Collins: Well, especially if they have a fun party island that other people talk about. A party island

Simone Collins: and a private jet.

Come on. Like, get over your stuff. Well, I,

Malcolm Collins: I'm gonna be honest. If somebody told me to go on a private jet called LTA Express, I would not get on. I know the book Lolita. I had a girlfriend in college who was obsessed with it. Really a girl. It does

Simone Collins: seem odd that like most of the people who are fans of that book are girls.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But also, I

Simone Collins: mean, when you look at romance novels in general, age gap is I think, I think a lot

Malcolm Collins: of people, again, misunderstand. How much girls are into those sorts of dynamics. And we've, we've mentioned this on another podcast. I remember one person was like, the, the data that says that girls like being choked.

That was like some weird ala sample. And I was like, bro, we did a completely separate sample than hers. Oh. And did you ever remember strangled,

Simone Collins: strangled we're supposed to say strangled and not choked.

Malcolm Collins: She, she confirmed that data using normalized data that she got, not from her fans, but through paid acquisition of data from Yeah, neutral third parties, worse entirely [01:08:00] separate books than our book in her book, which again, are already two separate data debts.

Like a billion Wicked Thoughts confirmed this data set. Yeah. Going into a Barnes and Nobles confirms this data.

Simone Collins: But anyway,

Malcolm Collins: What we're gonna get to now is each of the two theories that I think are the strongest. Okay. So let's start with the Saudi link. Epstein's Black Book Made public in 2015, listed several Middle Eastern contexts, including a Saudi businessman, Amar L Dab, who denied the relationship.

He had entries for Sod Prince Almon, likely King Solomon and Prince Bondar bin Saltan, a former Saudi ambassador. In 2019, the New York Times reported Epstein boasted about frequent contact with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Almon or MBS showing journalist James Stewart, a framed photo of MBS in his Manhattan mansion.

Epstein claimed MBS visited him often. Epstein possessed an Australian passport from the 1980s with a [01:09:00] false name in a Saudi residence. Used to enter Saudi Arabia, the uk, France, and Spain. This was found in his Manhattan safe in 2019, along with cash. Epstein worked with a Saudi businessman, Aban Casa Giri in the 1980s during the Iran Contra affair acting as a middleman.

A 2016 trip to Saudi Arabia was noted in Asian times. Though details are sparse intelligence connections, Epstein reportedly claimed to be an intelligent asset, and Alexander Acosta claimed this, as we would suggest here. Above his pay grade, if, if he was in any way working with either Saudi Arabia or and keep in mind he could have been an intelligence asset for Saudi Arabia, but I think that that is less likely to have gotten him killed.

Hmm.

Simone Collins: Because

Malcolm Collins: I don't think the, the, I I think that compromising information is more likely to have gotten him killed in that case.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And keep in mind that if he was an intelligent asset for the CIA or the F or, or Mossad, both groups would've wanted compromising information on [01:10:00] high level Saudis.

And we know not only did he have the connections there, but he targeted the prince of the uk successfully. Mind you. Yeah. So we know that he liked targeting royal families and, and he would've had a huge reason to target this one. So, no, I, I should note here that while these connections confirm Epstein interacted with Saudi elites they don't directly you know, show any sort of involvement.

And the, well, they, they show

Simone Collins: that he's trying to make inroads with those general social networks.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And we know that he tried to build blackmail on the social networks he made inroads with. So would he try to build blackmail on them? Of course. And this is the thing about building blackmail on 71, if it is true that he met with the Saudis on multiple occasions, which he said he did, and I am inclined to believe.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: If somebody is trying to get blackmail on you and you are that level of famous, and it would've been obvious that, oh, this person is trying to hook me up with women and stuff like that. If you are not indulging, you are ghosting. [01:11:00] You don't, you don't have the first time a group of women shows up to the room at your hotel when you stay with this person and you slam the door on them, and you're like, what the heck are you doing?

That's the last time you meet with this person.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. The hangouts end,

Malcolm Collins: especially if you are that closed off of an individual or something like that, right? Mm-hmm. So that to me is, is well not a smoking gun. It is evidence. And again, I should say it's entirely speculative to me the gay angle on this.

In, in a lot of Muslim cultures, though I note not Saudi Arabia, as I'm aware sleeping with younger men is. Quite common. Mm-hmm. This is actually a major problem for our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Because a lot of the forces that they were partnered with would sleep with underage boys.

And they tried to get them to stop and they were like, bro, we're your allies? Like, why are you trying to get me to stop? Like, this is just for culture. Like I, this happened to me when I was a kid. Like, what are you talking about? Oh, no. But this is also something that [01:12:00] so, so I'm saying like it's a cultural thing was in some of these regions, but it's also super against Sharia Law

Simone Collins: if it's being,

Malcolm Collins: if it's being implemented by Waas like you have in Saudi Arabia.

So it could be a, a, a culturally normative, but very dangerous thing to be involved in. Whereas I don't think that they would've had the same shame about women especially underage women. Now,

Simone Collins: well, also because even within Sheria Law, like there are ways to have temporary marriages with women of any age to make relations with them.

Totally okay. Religiously,

Malcolm Collins: right? So, yeah. Okay. Now let's look to Mossad. Okay. This is the more public theory that a lot of people have. And I, I put both theories in AI and said, which one do you think is more plausible? And I liked the Saudi theory better. Oh. Which is interesting. Well, you know, AI is often afraid of looking antisemitic, so that could be influencing.

No. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Except

Simone Collins: I heard that gr recently had some update that made it super antisemitic, so who knows? [01:13:00] Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So, glin Maxwell Epstein's partner Glin Maxwell is the daughter of Robert Maxwell, a British media mogul, widely alleged to have been a Mossad agent. A 1991 book by Seymour Hesh, the Samson Option and reports by the Times of Israel in 2019 claimed Robert Maxwell used his publishing empire to funnel money to Mossad and facilitated Israeli operations.

Gal's close relationship with Epstein, including a role in a trafficking network, fuels speculation that she has linked to Israeli intelligence. Now I wanna note here about the GIZ Maxwell connection here. It would be like, people are like what? Her dad was involved. That doesn't mean that much about her.

He wasn't involved, he wasn't an asset. He funneled them money. He was like a philanthropist for Mossad. Like he, this isn't a normal level of involvement. This isn't like an asset. This is somebody who's funding their operations as, as a non-government. A [01:14:00] like that's a big thing to be doing. Okay. Yeah. And if I am Mossad and I am looking for agents, keep in mind how, how, you know, you recruit an asset in the field.

She would be the top person I would go to given, you know, her dad and everything like that. My read on if Mossad was involved on this. Is that they got involved with this through Ghislaine Maxwell later in Epstein's life after he had set up his blackmail network because she actually comes in to his life at around the time of this court hearing when a bunch of cases against him get dropped outta nowhere.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So could it be a US Israeli cooperation? Could, is Israel have been one of the groups he was working for in the us? I don't know. That could be it. You know, we'll see. Right. Ahha Barack, the former Israeli Prime Minister, AHHA Barack, was photographed entering Epstein's Manhattan Townhouse in 2016 as reported by the Daily Beast.

Barack admitted to meeting Epstein multiple times, including at his properties, but denied wrongdoing. His [01:15:00] presence on Epstein's flight logs partially redacted in 2025 releases. So he was in the initial releases and then redacted in later releases which again. Very sus.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: That's kind of worse than not being in it at all.

That's like, oh this guy seems like a problem. We should remove him. And their meetings during Barack's political comeback attempted, attempt raise questions about their relationship. Leslie Wexler Epstein's Primary financial back backer, billionaire, Les Wexler, who basically gave him all his money.

And this is a guy who he stole $43 million to, has strong ties, was Israel through his philanthropy, the Wexler Foundation, which funds Israeli related programs. Epstein managed Wexler's Finances from the 1980s to 2007 and some speculate. Wexler's Wealth and Connections facilitated Epstein's intelligence activities.

No direct evidence though between Wexler and Mossad. Epstein's claims you have the Acosta saying that he belonged to intelligence and was above his pay grade. Again, this would be something he [01:16:00] would say if he was a Mossad asset particularly if they sort of gave him on loan to the CIA or FBI for specific things.

Okay. Epstein is an intelligence asset. Epstein's trafficking network, targeted powerful men with sexual vulnerabilities. It en lies with intelligence tactics for blackmail. His properties. EG Little St. James Manhattan Townhouse were reportedly equipped with cameras suggesting the potential for recording Compromise and Behavior New York Times 2019.

And this is all very by the books intelligence, asset behavior. Also his wealth and mobility like having a fake passport was a Saudi Arabian address. Yeah. Are not normal things for just your normal, wealthy person to have. This again suggests connections with the intelligence community.

And Mossad has been linked to operations involving sex in blackmail, such as the alleged entrenchment of US politicians in the 1980s, the Times of Israel, 2019. Epstein's network could fit this model.

Simone Collins: [01:17:00] Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And so, yeah, very Now, as, as, as a final thing here let's go into, and I, and I note here, the thing that gets interesting to me is why the Saudi passport, and I don't know if Saudi doing like really complicated operations like this before, like when they've done the, the reason why Eileen more to Mossad than the Saudis is when, when the, when the Saudi Arabia has done killings, like of that reporter they were one sort of forward, like we did this.

Like, but you can't do anything. Like they did it at like a the Saudi embassy, if I remember correctly. That, yeah,

Simone Collins: it's not,

Malcolm Collins: you know, that to me seems like not exactly the style we see here, it lacked a lot of the subtlety. Mm-hmm. This would've been whereas if we see Mossad hit this looks a lot more like a masad hit to me.

So that's where I go is this.

Hmm.

Now we, let's try to track his timeline and [01:18:00] understand when he became an intelligence asset. Yeah. Hmm. Again, I'm just, I'm laying this, I'm going full true crime with this. I don't know if you've ever seen this before.

Simone Collins: I'm loving this. Have you've ever seen this? These are not angles or details I've, I've seen covered.

So, yeah, this is enlightening.

Malcolm Collins: I, I really like this because I, I mean, I got to the end of this and I'm like, I'm fairly certain I know what happened at the end

Simone Collins: of

Malcolm Collins: this, like that I feel fairly comfortable with one of a few things being what happened and with not good juice, i, IE there is no good juice on.

Any Republican politicians or they would've used it already. And if, if there was for democratic politicians, like if that's whose names were on those CDs, those have long since been destroyed.

No, absolutely. They, they would've just destroyed them. Like we know that we have people was in, what was it, the FBI or the CIA, where we have the tech saying that they wanted to prevent Trump being elected that we're gonna do everything in our power to prevent him from being elected.

And so that says to me you know, it, it was in these [01:19:00] organizations, there was a culture of one person talking to another person in the organization saying this, that they thought it was okay to talk about how they were going to try to prevent Republicans from winning election cycles.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It would've been, they could disappear certain things very easily, easily.

Malcolm Collins: CDs like that. Yeah. Now to go into his background. So, teaching at Dalton School, 1974 to 1976, Epstein, a college dropout for Cooper Union and NYU landed a job teaching mass and physics at the prestigious Dalton School in Manhattan at age 21, despite lacking a degree or teaching credentials Dalton is an elite prep school attended by many of the children of New York's wealthiest families.

Hiring an unqualified dropout raises questions about how Epstein secured the role ha. At Harrison h Smith's claims, he was hired by Donald Barr further of future attorney General William Barr, who was Dalton's headmaster until 19. So that's the father of the future Attorney General headmaster until [01:20:00] 1974.

However, this is unverified networking opportunities at Dalton Epstein tutored students, including the son of Alan Ace Greenberg, CEO of Bear Stearns. This connection led to his next job suggesting Epstein leveraged Dalton to access Elite during their, he had reports of inappropriate behavior.

Was former students noting that Epstein was overly attentive of female students, though no abuse allegations surface at the time. And I'm sure that if he abused them, they would've come out by now. So I don't think that he did stuff like that. This behavior hints at his early predatory tendencies.

So my read from this, okay he got the job being wildly unqualified for it. He likely had already developed some form of building blackmail on people this early in his career. But certainly not enough to be interesting to like, any sort of intelligence agency or anything like that. Mm-hmm. Like I do not think.

People who think he was built by Mossad or built by like the CIA or FBI or something like that. [01:21:00] This doesn't align with that somebody. But I, I

Simone Collins: don't think you can build that, that that's a natural talent and sort of a, a natural love for these things. I think you have to have to be able to play these long games.

And so, yeah, I would only invest as an intelligence agency in someone who already has shown this propensity.

Malcolm Collins: Right. But what I'm saying is, is, okay, I'm masad, I have this asset, right? Yeah. I want to use him for, you know, honeypot sex incrimination operations in the future. I do not put him into a, an elite New York prep school.

No. Nor do I recruit somebody who has dropped out of college twice. Like this is, this is, this is silly. Like these are elite organizations, right? You don't, you don't recruit college dropouts. This appears to be a feat that he pulled off himself. Hmm. Now I think the second beef that he pulled off, he pulled off himself, which was getting into Bear Stearns.

Remember he was tutoring the CEO's son. Did he get some information on this guy? Probably because I do not think that just tutoring his [01:22:00] son would've gotten him this. He joined Bear Stearns in 1976 as a junior assistant trade floor trader introduced by Greenberg. He rose to limited partner by 1980 advising wall client.

So he rose within four years of starting there to a general partner. That is a rise. That was in a firm like Bear Stearns usually takes 20 to 30 years. Oh gosh. That is unprecedented talent. And to get in as a college dropout whose only previous job was as a like physics teacher, a teacher,

Simone Collins: yeah.

That doesn't help most people.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and, and worse, other Bear Sterns employees generally didn't like him describing him as quote unquote aggressive or quote unquote demanding. And he had a check for charming superiors. But like, how did he charm them? Why did superiors seem to like him so much?

Maybe he built information on them. He left in 1981. Under murky circumstances, some sources claim he was fired for [01:23:00] security violations. This is Scott Metropolitan in 2020. While others suggest it was for personal or financial issues at the firm Financial Monthly 2025, Vicki Wayward 2003 very, the piece cites the claim that he was quote unquote kicked out for quote unquote getting into trouble.

What could that mean? We don't know what it means. We don't know why it was covered up. But again, I don't think that he was an asset of any intelligence agency yet. Next intercontinental. But, but this does to me, suggest that he wasn't a general playboy. He already had some sort of blackmail network operational at this point.

Intercontinental Asset Groups and Towers Financial. In 1981 to 1987, background after leaving Bear Stears Epstein founded Intercontinental Assets Group, IAG claiming to recover stolen money from ultra wealthy and worked as a consultant from Towers Financial Corporation with Steven Hoffer. Very interesting that he later stole money from wealthy individuals.

His role, Epstein described himself as a quote unquote bounty hunter for stolen funds. But I Ag G'S operations are poorly documented. The role [01:24:00] gave him access to international clients and financial dealings ideal for covert activities. Tower financials, PON D scheme, Hoffenberg Epstein's partner was convicted in 1994 for running a $450 million Ponzi scheme.

The largest one pre Madoff fraud. Fraud. Keep in mind, he somehow got out of this. Hoffer later claimed that Epstein masterminded the scheme, the largest non birdie Madoff Ponzi scheme in American history, paying him off $25,000 monthly as a consultant. Though Epstein was never charged a 2018 lawsuit by Towers Investors alleged Epstein's involvement, but it was dismissed Unprosecuted role, Epstein's escaped from charges.

Despite Hoffer's ization suggest possible protection potentially from intelligence connections. They, they absolutely suggest this. A CNN 2019 report that Epstein's Wealth and Crimes were quote unquote all a game to him hinting at [01:25:00] deeper motives. Now, this to me, is when he very obviously got involved with intelligence agencies.

So he's come out of a rapid rise due to blackmail, was in this organization.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Was fired under murky circumstances. Somebody was in the organization, likely also an asset, went to one of these groups and was like, this guy is good at his stuff. This next job he has is like a pseudo job where he builds the largest lumsy scheme in American history and then somehow isn't charged for it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, clearly he is so good at getting out of things.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This he couldn't do with his own blackmail network. You cannot blackmail your way easily, like as a single individual into not getting charged over running a giant Ponzi scheme. So this

Simone Collins: was this like, well that, so at least a little bit before this, he got into it because.

They couldn't afford to lose him as an asset having at this point. Yeah, at that. I see. I see.

Malcolm Collins: But this also seems like the, the thing that he did at Bear [01:26:00] Stones proved his competence as an asset. That is the type of position where you'd want to like especially if he left and he's looking for a new job and he's sort of working as a weird sort of consultant for this guy.

This seems like a job, not a job thing. This to me seems like the perfect person to be recruiting as an asset. And this is 1981 to 1987. And then. We have Jay Epstein and Company and Leslie Wexler. This is where I think he was really, really pulled in. So in 1988, Epstein founded Jay Epstein Company, later financial trust company.

Managing money for billionaires was Leslie Wexler as his primary known client. By 1991, Wexler granted Epstein full power of attorney over him, allowing him to control his finances, philanthropy, and properties. This is a guy who he stole $43 million from and wasn't fired. Wexler was the founder of L Brands like Victoria's Secret and was Epstein's main source of wealth, paying him millions of dollars per year.

He also [01:27:00] acquired Wexler's Manhattan Townhouse and Private Plane. Was he owned

Simone Collins: this man. What did he have on him?

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Why did he only have a single client? Because from what we can tell, he only had one client and he basically just stole this guy's money. Oh. Like he, he claimed to have a 1 billion minimum for working with him, and yet Wexler is the only confirmed client.

If there were other clients we would know about him. I think he just basically drained Wexler's money. And, and so, this is when he got involved with Christine Maxwell as well, which I think was almost certainly a Mossad asset. And so, that is where I think the story ends. It was during this time with asset groups, tower Financial that he was recruited as a, as, as an asset.

And he began to operate for these firms. There were multiple groups that likely had a reason to want him dead. And I think that the reason we can now say it wasn't generic wealthy [01:28:00] like Democrats or deep staters that covered this up is because Trump did such a severe about face around this, as did a number of MAGA influencers after they have basically been taken behind doors and done a little, the faculty turnaround.

Mm-hmm. What do you think, how, how strong do you think by evidence is what, what is your read of probabilities here?

Simone Collins: My read is strong. And I think most people, when I see them talk about it, it's just pretty much everyone is aware of the fact that stuff is being hidden and the redactions make that super obvious.

Plus the about face in being willing to release these files is so obvious that yeah. There's also this kind of, this Elon Musk pattern where like Elon Musk was really bullish on Trump and then Trump did something that he didn't like with the one bigg beautiful bill, but Trump in the end was doing what he had to as president.

And,

Malcolm Collins: and what he [01:29:00] promised people he would do. Yeah. Like all the stuff he wants get mad about is his campaign promises that Trump made on the trail.

Simone Collins: And, and then, you know, I think this is a little bit similar in that like all of us were super bullish on Trump releasing these files, and then Trump does something and we all get mad.

But in the end, I think, yeah, there, there had to be something and people. I think there's, there's a lot of dissatisfaction in the public discourse about this because people I think intuitively know, well, it's not Trump being implicated in this. It probably isn't Trump's family being implicated in this.

So, but then who is it? And I think people just haven't really thought as far as you have to come up with plausible sources of estoppel on this. Well, and I think

Malcolm Collins: the Elon thing is interesting to me because it demonstrates that, that Elon was never the faculty about this. They never took him and showed him the actual thing.

They, yeah. He's,

Simone Collins: he's not been taken behind the doors and been told, but he wouldn't be given his position because he's not involved in the international politics in the [01:30:00] same way.

Malcolm Collins: Right. But also, I don't know if they would've trusted him enough. Yeah. Fair point to, to not one day in the future go off and say, Hey, I saw who did this, it was this guy, or it was this guy.

Yeah. I think that would've been a foolish thing to do. And not that Elon is not great and everything like that, but I mean, just, you know.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But he's not. He is not the kind of person who's gonna promise to keep secrets forever. Yeah. He's like not one of those old boys clubs where like, you do the secret handshake and you never say anything.

Malcolm Collins: Even, even if they were in the best interest of America, he might think, oh, it's, it's still more important that this gets released. Yeah. So I would note here the key points of evidence for me.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: The weird charges repeatedly being dropped against him. Why was the Ponzi scheme charge never seriously pursued?

Like, why did that get dropped? Yeah, that's

Simone Collins: wild. Why wasn't he other prosecuted? And then Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: secondarily, why wasn't he? And, and, and he was implicated as the primary mastermind behind this before all this other stuff happened. Why was the big you [01:31:00] know, sex trafficking stuff, why was that all dropped in Florida?

Why did the guy who dropped it, a very respectable guy say I dropped it because I was told I had to drop it because he's a security asset. And why, and then later not

Simone Collins: be willing to talk about it, which makes it even more believable.

Malcolm Collins: Why do you have the about face by Trump on this issue? And then why do you also, like, apparently when people dig into it, they have the about face.

Why do you also have the so many coincidences? The weird bone breakage, the weird multiple people multiple times in a row, not checking in on the cell. In addition to the cameras being down in that area, specifically that day, in addition to when these people were tried for not checking in on him, 'cause presumably not checking in on anyone as an equal offense was nobody else tried.

If this was actually that common within these facilities, and if they had actually done it before, why weren't they tried for doing it before? Why was it only this one instance that was ever fully like, [01:32:00] dealt with in any meaningful way? Especially given the public embarrassment, it led to all of that combined.

I take as evidence of, I. There's likely a foreign actor involved that neither the Democrats or the Republicans want to pi piss off. The, I've, I've named the two primary ones I can think of both of which have a history of killing people on foreign soil when they are a threat to their country's stability.

And both of which neither the dims or the Trump, the Trump administration would wanna piss off. So that is one. And then

Simone Collins: combine that with potentially a US security agency, having whether or not they were implicit in the gathering of this information now possessing information, which is actually really convenient to possess.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Being like, Hey, can we, you're, you're throwing away money. 'cause also Trump hates to ruin a good deal.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you're throwing away money. And what they're gonna say, and I know what they say, and every time when they do this stuff is you're, you're putting American agents at risk.

Simone Collins: [01:33:00] Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: You know, American agents put themselves at risk to get this information.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: If you release it you put lives at risk or you waste people efforts to put their own lives at risks to, to collect this type of information. Yeah. Trump

Simone Collins: doesn't like wasting money. He doesn't like hurting people, so. Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Because I mean, if you keep in mind and you can be like, oh is it really that important?

I'm like, okay, suppose Epstein was working for the US for example, in this, who would he likely have been targeted to gather information on? Well, the types of people who they often gather information on are powerful allies of ours. Not good to have that released. People like Chinese businessmen and middlemen who are working within the United States.

You wanna maintain those power plays if we can. People like, you know, this isn't like a, a nothing burger to release this sort of information.

Simone Collins: Absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: And then you could be like, well then why don't they just release the information on the billionaires and stuff like that? And it could be that he didn't actually get that much [01:34:00] on the billionaires is actually possible.

Because I, well, it's also because

Simone Collins: he found one billionaire that he was very successfully milking for me. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So he likely had something on this guy, but I mean, that guy already got his punishment, 43 million taken from him.

Simone Collins: So did he really need that many more? Also, after a while, I mean this, it's not like he didn't have a reputation for.

I wanna say decades. Yeah. Leading up to all this, I, I think most, most billionaires kind of knew better to avoid him.

Malcolm Collins: Or they were already under his thumb.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I note that when you look at these flight logs, you know, a lot of them are from a long time ago and stuff like that. Ages, ages, ages.

When he was building out his network, when he, before I think he, he burned his reputation. And, and you don't necessarily know, and you know, this guy's seen as a big fixer with a lot of connections. You know, if we were around during that period and some guy said, Hey, I wanna fly you out to my private island.

Like, [01:35:00] but I have been, I probably would've been like, yeah, sure. That's, I would've definitely been like, what? Why do you call your plane the Lolita? Like, do you know what the book Lolita is about? Like, I would've been like, can we have a conversation about this? But I think that that's also maybe, oh, I hadn't considered this.

Oh, this is interesting. What. It's likely how his operation worked. So the reason he called his plane the Lolita Express, was so that he could for people who don't know the core theme of the book is a young girl being groomed by an older guy. And that's where the term loll comes from.

And so, he likely used it as you could think, like a conversation op opener to understand who was cool and who wasn't cool. Like, oh, have you ever heard of this book? Yeah. Or have you ever, someone was

Simone Collins: like, oh yeah. Like, oh yeah. Or like, Hey dude, what's wrong with you? Somebody like

Malcolm Collins: me was like, reflexively, like, that's really su to name your playing that, you know that, right?

Yeah. Like he would've been like, you know, radio the island. Don't send the younger ones. Yeah. Put them back [01:36:00] in the closet. They got the feds.

Simone Collins: That, yeah, actually that would be really good. And especially people who get very good at sexual exploitation. Are, are, are really good at low cost filtering mechanisms like that ways to sort of filter out people who are gonna not be cool about something, you know?

Yeah. So that would make sense.

Malcolm Collins: So, what'd you think, by the way, we got our, we got our full timeline here. We got our full. I'm impressed.

Simone Collins: I'm impressed.

Malcolm Collins: You've never, you No, I,

Simone Collins: I no longer have cognitive dissonance about this. I feel like I can put it to bed. Obviously we don't have a concrete answer, but basically, I mean, the closest we can get, and this is enough for me, is our government is in such a position where it just can't release it.

Like the cost of releasing it is too much from a national security standpoint or like a balance of power standpoint and they're not gonna do it. And I'm like, okay. You know, that's fine.

Malcolm Collins: And, and I [01:37:00] would note here I. That we, we know almost as a fact, given all the cases that were dropped, that he was an intelligence asset.

Like that is basically confirmed from both the verbal statements and the, the, all the cases that are dropped and his larger behavior pattern. And so like that we know that explains why it would make sense that people need to cover this up.

Simone Collins: Yeah, absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: So that's our, our sad and weird take at the end of the Epstein trial and, and, and sort of investigation is this is why it's being covered up.

And if you're a patriotic American, unfortunately a lot of other patriotic Americans, when they see the data have said whatever that data happens to say, oh yeah, this needs to be covered up for our immediate national security interests. May it be released one day. It might, depending on who we go to war with in the future you know, this is exactly the type of thing I could [01:38:00] see being released at a future date.

Depending on changes in our national relationships or if the dims you know, elect like a really anti-Semitic, anti Zionist type individual and they, they end up going back over the files they they might get this released.

Simone Collins: Absolutely. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So, that's, that's if, if that's the case, if that's the explanation that's sort of where I am with all this.

So, tonight, reang again, we got some,

Simone Collins: we run day. Absolutely. You want it with Bryce or do you want it with something else to

Malcolm Collins: know? Rice is, is, is great for Renee or on toasted

Simone Collins: Hawaiian buns. You wanna try that?

Malcolm Collins: I prefer rice, but what I would like is the roasted almond side. Like the sliced roasted almond.

Yeah. Uhhuh to put on top. And some of the pepper I got from Trader Joe's to put on the top as well. I think that'd be interesting to try.

Simone Collins: Perfect. We're on then. I will get that ready for you.

Malcolm Collins: You are an amazing wife. Thank you so much. Oh, and

Simone Collins: I need to make watermelon for the kids 'cause they're like, well they,

Malcolm Collins: they saw it and they got excited.

Avian

Simone Collins: and Titan. Yeah. [01:39:00] Toasty iss like, is that a watermelon? And I'm like, yeah, and you want some? And he's like, of course. No, but I have the wine berries I picked for him this morning, so I want real food. Yeah, real food, which is like only fresh berries and milk.

Malcolm Collins: I'm sorry for doing an extra long episode, but I think it was a great topic

Simone Collins: personally.

No, I, I really wanted to know 'cause I've been watching like Mond Gold talk about it and other people and I'm just like, Ugh. Can you. Stop complaining about what we don't know and tell me what is likely, you know? Yeah. I, I need to know. Stop, stop

Malcolm Collins: pointing out all of the individual su sayings and create a narrative that li explains them all.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I need that extra step. And you took that extra step for that. I'm very grateful.

Malcolm Collins: Love you to DeSimone.

Simone Collins: I love you too. Beautiful person.

Speaker: Titan, do you like watermelon? What's it taste like?

I love you. I love you. [01:40:00] I love you. It's very yummy. It is very yummy.

Did mommy grow that for you? And then she cut it all up so it would be yummy and good to eat.

Speaker 2: She's just in watermelon heaven

for a super watermelon. It has a lot of seed resembling objects in it. Do you want some berries? There's berries here for my yard. Okay. Yeah. Do you want some too? In berries you don't want to eat anymore? Yeah. Okay. Do you want some berries? In berries in.

In this episode, we dive deep into the shifting landscape regarding youth gender medicine. The conversation follows a thread of controversial developments and court rulings affecting the trans movement, including emerging critiques from left-leaning publications like The New York Times and The Atlantic. The discussion highlights statistics and studies that reveal the lack of evidence supporting the efficacy and safety of puberty blockers and hormone treatments for minors. It also touches on the persistent misinformation surrounding the topic and the implications it has on the broader societal and political discourse. Join us as we explore the revelations and the future of gender-affirming care amidst increasing scrutiny.

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Something really shocking happened because we often discuss sort of the ebbs and flows of the trans movement.

And we have talked for a while that it is insignificant retrograde at the moment, whether it's the Supreme Court case or the case ruling in the uk. But now we are seeing even mainstream leftist newspapers. The New York Times did a number of trans critical stuff, but the Atlantic, and if people are like, well, is the Atlantic really a leftist newspaper?

So I decided to ask an ai, just be like, what does AI think? Left or right, political leaning.

So it says The Atlantic leans left politically, its coverage often emphasizes progressive issues like social justice, climate change, and critiques of conservative politicians.

Okay. So very left-leaning publication. Okay. So they had a piece titled The Liberal Misinformation Bubble about Use Gender Medicine, how the Left Ended Up Disbelieving the Science by Helen Lewis. And so mainstream leftist publication allows this piece to be published. And this happens immediately after. Now, normally when the trans movement historically had suffered major defeats, the leftists would all come around to rally around it.

Mm. Yeah. So, you know, you had this with recently the, the court ruled that Tennessee's law, which prohibits hormone therapies and puberty blockers for transgender minors with gender dysphoria, does not violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. And in fighting this, very interestingly, because a lot of papers were unveiled and sort of the best trans.

Arguers, like the people who are protran got against the best anti-trans arguers in a, a very recorded stage where all evidence had to be counted and you couldn't just make stuff up.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. They

Malcolm Collins: basically had to concede that they had made up a bunch of the arguments that people had accepted as fact.

And you might be surprised by some of the arguments that even the top tier of the trans community now admits are just fictional. And this also comes downstream of not just the cast report, but the UK in law now making it so that if you are a company in the UK now, and you let a trans woman use a woman's bathroom, you can be sued by your female staff.

Simone Collins: Really? Yes. The, oh,

Malcolm Collins: okay. So this is some serious stuff. So this is significant in terms of how things are changing. Yeah. But I wanna dive into the article here.

Allow children to transition or they will kill themselves for more than a decade. This has been the strongest argument in favor of youth gender medicine, a scenario so awful that it stifled any doubts or questions about puberty, blockers and cross sex hormones. We often ask parents, and this is a quote here, would you rather have a dead son than a live daughter?

Joanna Olson Kennedy of Children's Hospital Los Angeles once explained to a BC News. So this is somebody who is working at a children's hospital in a major city. Says, we at the hospital often go to parents and say, , would you rather have a dead son or a live daughter? Variations on this phrase crop up in innumerate media articles and public statements by influencers, activists in LGBT groups, the same idea that the choice is transition or death appeared in the arguments made by Elizabeth Pel Prager, the Biden Administration's solicitor General before the Supreme Court last year.

Tennessee's law prohibiting the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat minors with gender dysphoria. Would she said, quote, increase the risk of unli. Quote. But there is a huge problem with this emotive format. It isn't true. When Justice Samuel Alito challenged the A CLL lawyer, chase Drago on such claims during oral arguments, Drago made a startling commit.

Commit admission. He conceded that there was no evidence to support the idea that medical transition reduced adolescent unloving rates. And this is a really, really big deal because this is in, if, if you're looking at like media, when these people go on media, nobody can with any sort of legal justification say.

Hey, does the evidence actually say this? Like, they're not actually forced to tell the truth, and this is why this case has been so damaging to the movement because it forced their top advocates who have more knowledge of all of their arguments and all of the research than anyone else to tell the truth on issues that we just didn't have a public forum to pin them down on before.

And the truth is, there is not evidence. And, and there's even more evidence now because the UK banned this. And now we have studies that have looked at the unliving rates post ban versus the unliving rates pre-and which we'll get into later here, and there's no difference. Oh. So we now know that this is fictional.

Wow. Okay. And potentially that things like puberty blockers actually increased unliving rates, and we'll get into evidence of that as well. But the, the, it's not from this paper, it's from other evidence that she doesn't appear to be aware of. At first, strateg ego dodged the question saying that the research shows that blockers and hormones reduce, quote, unquote, depression, anxiety, and unloving.

That is unloving thoughts. Even that is debatable according to reviews of literature literature research. So, here are the two reviews that she cites are pediatric gender medicine. Longitudinal studies have not consistently shown improvement in depression or unliving rates, hormone therapy, mental health, and quality of life among transgender people.

A systematic review. But when Alito referenced systematic review conducted in the CAS report in England, Stratego concede at the point quote, there isn't,

Simone Collins: are you, are you talking about chase, strang,

Malcolm Collins: strang, whatever you wanna call him, Strang. Strato strang. It can be called whatever.

Simone Collins: Most people say str

Malcolm Collins: strang.

Okay? There is no evidence. Some in, in the studies that this treatment reduces completing unliving rates, he said, and the reason for that is, is that completing unli, thankfully and admittedly, is rare, and we're talking about a very small population of individuals, which the studies that don't necessarily have completed rates was in them.

So note, he's, he's, he's, but the actual rates, are they higher? He was forced to say, no, they're not higher. Wow.

Simone Collins: And note

Malcolm Collins: here that he, because this is something that would show up, like there's big studies on this. These aren't like small studies. He's forced to admit that this is just not in the evidence.

And, and it's not just the studies that she's noting here that showed that he was lying when he said that you have higher rates of for example, self-harm. Because, for example, we know from the TRA stock clinic, which we'll go into mm-hmm. After it was shut. Or during the process of shutting it down, it was found that they had done a study that showed that puberty blockers were increasing ideation.

They were increasing self-harm, they were increasing a lot of this other stuff, really. And that they had decided not to publish this. Understand, you know, obviously those against their narrative, they said it was because the data was poor. Yeah. The data's poor because it doesn't support what you want it to support.

But that's not the way science works normally. You know what I mean? And so, we're, we're seeing that that you know, even the evidence he's citing here is no longer backed by like the big meta studies as she was citing. Here was the trans rights movement's greatest legal brain speaking in front of the nation's highest court.

And what he was saying is that the strongest argument for a hotly debated treatment was in fact not supported by the evidence. Even then, his admission did not register with the liberal justices, and I find this really like messed up right when the court voted six three to uphold Tennessee law, Sonya Soda Moor claimed in her dissent that access to care can be a question of life or death.

Which is she heard the arguments and the data that that is factually untrue. And yet what you see from this liberal perspective is facts. When they go against their reality appear, unable to pierce the veil of their world perspective, they have an intensely theocratic and religious world perspective that prevents them from interacting with an external narrative.

That honestly reminds me a lot of when I, because I grew up in Dallas, Texas the extremist Evangel, evangelical, evangelical, evangelical. Hmm. Which was actually, if you talk to like educated evangelicals today, or educated like extremist Catholics today, they're familiar with all the counterarguments.

Like they're, they're, because they're now not a dominant cultural force within any particular region of the United States Hmm. In a way where they're not exposed to the other side, they're forced to learn the other side. Whereas people like Sonia Soda Mear just are not forced to engage with an external perspective.

And so they are able to sort of petrify their brain and harden themselves to external information sources.

Simone Collins: Interesting.

Malcolm Collins: If she meant any kind of therapeutic support that might be defensible, but claiming that this is true of medical transition, specifically the type of care being debated in the scope.

In the ctti case is not supported by current research. Advocates of the open science movement often talk about zombie facts, popular sound bites that persist in public debate even after they had been repeatedly discredited. The one that Simone always loves is the number of straws that go in the ocean, which came from a sixth graders science report for like a fair project.

It was like a science fair project. Yeah. But

Simone Collins: a new one that I just read about from Scott Sanders, July or June link round up was that chest Grand Masters burned 6,000 calories a day, which is based on some really crazy speculation that weirdly involves Robert Polsky.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, she is wild. Yeah. Because they don't, many common political claims made in defense of puberty blockers and hormones for gender dysphoric minors meet this definition.

These zombie facts have been flatly contradicted, not just by conservatives, but also by prominent advocates and practitioners of the treatment, at least when you're speaking to them. Candidly. Hmm. Many liberals are unaware of this. However, because they are stuck in media bubbles in which well-meaning commentaries make confident assertions for use gender medicine claims for which it's elite advocates have long since retreated.

And this is really, and I think this point is really interesting because I have. You know, trans friends. I have friends who are very educated like ultra progressives and stuff like this. And there is a class of them that you can engage them about these facts and been like, Hey, like, you know, this fact isn't true.

And they're like, yeah, I know that fact isn't true. You know, this fact isn't true. Oh yeah, I know that fact isn't true. And they're like, yeah, but I still, you know, when I'm arguing publicly, sometimes I'll, you know, retreat to them to make big you know, dramatic claims. But it is remarkable to me how many of the elites will in private when I am speaking with them, be like, oh yeah, I know all that stuff isn't true.

But, you know, this is my team basically. Or what am I supposed to do publicly say there isn't evidence for this. And, and you've seen this too, right? Simone? One, one of the ones that I found most interesting to me that was coming to me from a, a trans friend at one of our parties who we were talking to.

Was, they were like, you know, I was like, candidly, like within the communities, how much is this like, just like a sex or arousal thing, right? Like not a gender. And they're like the, the reason why talk that talk of that gets shut down so heavily publicly is because within the community. Everybody knows that when we're behind closed doors, this is predominantly a, an arousal thing.

Simone Collins: Oh

no. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: no. Or at least a chunk of the community, right? Yeah. Like, not everyone, but at least a big chunk of the community. Oh. And I, and the, the community mostly admitted this when they had the fight between the true Scums and the two cutes. For people who don't know there was a portion of the community that said, you are born this way.

And that was the true scum. And they were named the true scum by the two Cutes who said, well, if you say you're born this way, then that medicalize it. And really it's just a choice. And so the mainstream perspective in the community is this is just a choice now. And so the, like, this is what the educated people, and you'll go out and you'll, oh, progressive.

And they'll say they don't have a choice over this, and they won't realize that this isn't what the mainstream trans community is arguing anymore. But they think that this is the position, right? They think, oh, these people will, you know, which I find really interesting. Perhaps the existence of this bubble shouldn't be surprising many of the most fervent advocates of use transition are also on the record, disparaging the idea that it should be debated at all. Str, who works for the country's best known free speech organization once tweeted that he would like to scuttle Abigail Schreyer book, irreversible Damage, A Skeptical Treatment of Use Gender Medicine.

Abigail Schreyer is fantastic, by the way. We've, we've chatted with her. She's so cool. Um, Yeah. Uh, Stratego declared stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill, all diod. Wow. These works. For free. The, the country, the United States is number one free speech organization, and he advocates for He'll Die on the Hill stopping a book of this book, right?

I mean, it's a book that if you read it, is, is not like a, a spurious attack. It's a list of facts and studies.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: Macia Bowers, the former head of the World Professional org, association of Transgender Health, WAS the most prominent organization for gender medicine providers has likened skepticism of child, gender, medicine to holocaust denial.

There are not two sides of this issue. She once said, according to a recent episode of the Protocol, a New York Times podcast and you've seen this as well, it's not surprising that if they say questioning, this is the equivalent of participating in the Holocaust. And this is normalized within places like the New York Times and stuff like that.

You, you've seen this, Simone, I mean, talk, talk to your experience.

Well, I mean, you grew up in San Francisco, you grew up likely believing that, you know, this is not at a thing that should be discussed or talk about.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, I can, I can speak to that. Yeah. It definitely blew my mind when I met you and I discovered that it was allowable to express it is

Malcolm Collins: not allowable.

Simone Collins: Or at least not okay. Well, no. That like, okay. That outside the progressive bubble, it was allowable because there were a lot of things that I just thought, I, I don't know how to articulate it well.

I literally thought, I couldn't believe them. It wasn't about even expressing certain views, like, oh, well, you know, behind closed doors, I think and say this, but in public I would never say it. It's more that actually. It was like a thought crime, like literally a thought crime that I, I didn't think in your own brain,

Malcolm Collins: like you wouldn't consider it, your brain wouldn't allow you to.

I wouldn't, I wouldn't allow myself,

Simone Collins: myself to think these things, and it made me less mentally healthy, and it made me very uncomfortable because I was forced to do and engage with things that I really didn't feel comfortable doing and engaging with because I wasn't allowed to not be okay with those things.

Malcolm Collins: Where you felt uncomfortable. What

Simone Collins: do you

Malcolm Collins: mean? Well, you said it forced you to do and engage with things that made you feel uncomfortable. Can you say? Yeah, like, like

Simone Collins: working in homeless shelters like, you know, going to certain parties and being okay with what was happening there. Like being okay with sex parties

Malcolm Collins: and stuff, and you were just like, eh,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Yeah. Like, just not super, like not being okay with it and not being comfortable with it, but having to act like it's okay and having to go along with it and. Act like everything was fine. And it wasn't, it wasn't fine, at least not for me but not feeling allowed to not be cool with it, which was,

Malcolm Collins: yeah.

You you talked about like a cuddle party or something, or you Yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah. Like if, yeah, if, if I hung out with friends and everyone was like, okay, we're all gonna like, cuddle on the couch now. I'm like, well, yeah, I'm supposed to be okay with this. Imagine

Malcolm Collins: nightmare is worse for an autistic woman like you. It

Simone Collins: really was nightmarish and beyond that because.

I felt like I had to be okay with it. It also gave people like super the wrong idea about me.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and I think that many people, I mean, this is how this culture and I think how some sex pass males weaponize this culture to get past progressive lesbians, like natural resistance to them. Mm-hmm. And attempt to when people are like, you couldn't actually force someone to believe that they were aroused by something they weren't aroused

Simone Collins: by.

Oh, you, you can absolutely. Yeah. Because yeah, there were, there are absolutely things that you're allowed to be aroused by and that you're not allowed to be aroused

Malcolm Collins: by when you're not allowed to say, I don't want this, this pursuit. I don't want hundred percent. I don't want to. And they basically learned like it wouldn't

Simone Collins: be okay for me to, to, to say, don't touch me.

I mean, I know that like, it, a progressive person would argue and like, no, of course you need to express how you feel, et cetera. But like, I didn't feel like it was okay. I. To express my desire to not be touched by other people.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and we see this with trans individuals complaining about lesbians and, and how they're transphobic if they're not interested in them and stuff like that.

And you see them weaponizing this discomfort which I think is really horrifying, that people have been basically treated as like ideological slave cast. Yeah. For anybody who's willing to predatory the system.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: But to continue boasting about your unwillingness to listen to opponents probably plays well in some crowds.

IAEG Greta Thornberg, not even being willing to watch Hamas propaganda about what they did during the October 7th attacks that the Israelis tried to show them. She's like, I will not expose myself to this information. And apparently this plays well in her, her crowd. I, I want my knowledge to be entirely one-sided which is, is

Simone Collins: really scary.

I mean, like, if you're not willing to even. Entertain opposing views in any way. That implies to me that you, you are so threatened by them that you just assume that your mind won't be changed if you're exposed to them. Yeah. Like it is just so weird to me. I, I even at one point for, for Lemon Week, the, the month where we, for our technical puritan holiday engaged with ideas that we consider to be offensive.

And an idea that I consider to be offensive is this idea that there are certain ideas that you shouldn't engage with, or that there are certain people that you shouldn't engage with because of their ideas. 'cause this is a very, like, progressive idea. And I was presented with some arguments that I found to be convincing.

But it's only really un under specific scenarios. Like let's say you're having a public debate where you're holding, you know, you're presenting one argument and the other person is presenting the other argument. And that argument is a really harmful argument. And they're also more like attractive and charismatic than you, than by debating them.

You are platforming a

Malcolm Collins: Well, that's, that's why progressive shouldn't debate conservatism public 'cause they're so often like that. 'cause we're more charisma.

Simone Collins: Well, but like, yeah, I mean like when, when there are exogenous factors, it will make other people believe someone's argument. Not because they have a better argument, but because they're more charismatic.

Like, I could see that kind of being a place where it's not worth it to have the debate and to engage with them. But you know, just her watching that content is not one of these scenarios. Like I agree Now after, after trying to really engage with this concept that some ideas should not be engaged with that.

It's, there are some scenarios where, okay, maybe we should back off, not have the debate, whatever, but this was not one of them. And like, what was she thinking? I mean, I wish, I wish I could have a conversation with her about that to understand. How she justifies that.

Malcolm Collins: But it left str badly exposed in front of the Supreme Court where it became clear that the conservative justices had read the most convincing critiques of hormone and blockers and had some questions as a result.

Simone Collins: Some

Malcolm Collins: questions. Questions. I have questions. Trans rights activists like to accuse skeptics of use gender medicine and publications that dare report their views as fermenting a quote unquote moral panic. But the movement has spent the past decade telling gender non-conforming children that anyone who tries to restrict access to puberty blockers and hormones is effectively trying to kill them.

This was false and strand's answer tacitly conceded. It was also irresponsible after England restricted the use of puberty blockers. In 2020, the government asked an expert psychologist Lewis Applebee to investigate whether the unli rate for patients at the country's use gender clinic rose dramatically

as a result, it did not, in fact, he did not find any increase in unliving rates at all despite the lurid claims made online. No. The way that this issue has been discussed on social media has been insensitive, distressing, and dangerous, and goes against guidance on unsafe reporting on Unli Applebee reported.

One risk is that young people and their families will be terrified by predictions of unli as inevitable without puberty blockers. And this study that's referenced here that showed that the rates didn't go up is review of unli and gender dysphoria at the Travis Duck and Portman NS Foundation Trust.

And then BBC also did an article. Puberty blocker Curb has not led to an increase in unli. And I, I note here. All of this. And note here, I just always change out that one word for Unli because YouTube is incredibly strict about that word. So just, you know, when you're trying to find these studies, use your brain here, people.

But I would note here

Because we know that unli talk is incredibly contagious. In, in media you're typically not even supposed to report like cases where it happens because it leads to huge rises in the rate that it happens because we know it's contagious. And because we know that talk is so heavy within these communities, the fact that the rates haven't gone up is uniquely striking and it shows likely an inverse total effect.

If you could remove this discussion in these narratives from the public,

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: When Red State bans are discussed, you will also hear liberals say that conservative fears about the medical transition pathway are overwrought because all children get extensive personalized assessments before being described.

Puberty blockers and hormones. This too is untrue. Although the official standards of care recommended through assessment over several months, many American clinics say they will prescribe puberty blockers at first visit. Yeah. I only have seen this in honestly, the majority of detransition cases.

I've heard about the, the majority and we've heard

Simone Collins: this from parents, which. You know, is, is I've

Malcolm Collins: heard this from parents. The doctors will lie to the parents and give it to the kids. That happened to one of our friends. Yeah. They'll say, oh, we didn't give it to the kids. Actually we need to do a follow-up study.

And by the time the follow-up study happens, because the kid doesn't actually book it, the parent assumes that, hey, the phase is over. But the kid has been on puberty blockers and sterilize themselves six months ago. The kid doesn't realize they've done it. They don't realize they sterilize themselves.

The parent doesn't realize the kid has done it. They were prescribed this under the table because the parent did the. Very silly thing of try taking their kid to a psychologist, which again, we are radically against like the modern psychologist movement and psychiatrist movement, especially gender.

You know, the psychologists do not, do not, do not engage with, they are very dangerous. They cause way more harm than help at this point. I mean, when people talk about like the mental health problem of our society and they're like, well, we need more psychologists. I'm like, it seems to have risen in correlation to the number of psychologists, the amount of money we're spending on psychologists.

That should tell you something. But you could look at any of our videos on psychologists of how that happened. Because you, you actually see this in the numbers. It's not. Not necessarily healthy, and especially the ones that focus on the gender stuff. But here we see the, the, the sighting that I had above where I was like, many psychologists will give this to 'em on their first routers discusses this as more transgender children seek medical care.

Families confront many Reuters.

Simone Collins: You mean like the new service?

Malcolm Collins: The new service, yes. Mainstream news service. Silence yourself. I love when

Simone Collins: you mispronouncing so much.

Malcolm Collins: It isn't just a matter of US health providers skimping on talk therapy to keep costs down. Some practitioners view long evaluations as a necessary and even patronizing quote, I don't send someone to a therapist when I'm going to start them on insulin. In quote Olson Kennedy told the Atlantic in 2018, her published research shows that she has referred girls as young as 13 for double mastectomies.

13 and for the

Simone Collins: surgery. Wow.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. What if these children later regretted their decisions? She says, quote, adolescents actually have the capacity to make reasoned logical decisions. She once told an in industry seminar quote, if you want breasts at a later point in life, you could always just get them in.

Quote, just,

Simone Collins: I mean, she's there. There's some things about this that I love. I think that, broadly speaking, progressive culture, infantilizes youth, it's funny that there's this select selective dein. Infantilization. Like kids aren't allowed to be grownups in any way. You know, they're helicopter parented.

They're not allowed to walk home from school. But then in this one place. This one area, they can consent.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They're adults and there's one to whatever they want. Right. No matter how crazy, no matter what their parents think because the alternative is that they will unlive themselves even though we know that that is factually untrue.

It is really comforting

Simone Collins: to

Malcolm Collins: see

Simone Collins: though, that like, 'cause part of me worried that even if there, there was not, I guess a medical or body dysmorphic reason why people would ultimately be more likely to, to, to end themselves if they didn't get gender affirming care. I worried that the narratives around that would be enough.

Basically this, that, because so many people said, you will want to end your life if you don't get this care. That when people started being denying it, being denied it, that they would. More likely, but it appears that that's not happening. So I'm just, I'm relieved. 'cause I thought there would sort of be this, this no SIBO effect.

I think

Malcolm Collins: it's important to note what a phase this is. We know from the research, it's funny that she doesn't cite this in her paper, but there is a study gender discontentedness and gender nonconforming youth that came out in 2023. That showed of 13 year olds who are not satisfied with their birth gender over nine in 10 of them are completely satisfied with it by the age of 23.

That it's, yeah. So this woman who is assigning a 13-year-old, a double mastectomy, we now know from the researcher was over a 90% chance that she would not have wanted that mastectomy if she had waited. She would not have wanted to convert her gender if she would. Well,

Simone Collins: that's because, I mean, I think most people can, well, not most maybe, but at least many people can relate that kind of just having a human body during puberty sucks.

And it's very easy to think, oh, the problem is that I'm male slash female. Whereas it's like, no, the, the problem is that you're going through puberty and it sucks, and

Malcolm Collins: once you get through puberty, you're gonna be comfortable, you're gonna be fine. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Regardless of whether you're male or female. It, it's, it's the, it's the change itself that is not fun.

It's not what you're changing into.

Malcolm Collins: But the, the point here being is that now that we know from the evidence from peer reviewed studies, over 90% of these people are going to, that this is a phase for them. And, and keep in mind for the, the final 10%, we can't even say that it's not a phase because of other things, but you can look at our other episodes that go into more research around the trans community and everything like that.

This episode's primarily about this article, which I found really fascinating because it shows a changing progressive mindset around what you're allowed to say and what the new mainstream narrative is about this. And I think we might be seeing the damn bursting, basically was in mainstream Democrat culture.

And what happens to the crazies, I think they may be pushed aside in the same way that conservatives push aside, you know, your actual racists. And I think that that's what's, or, or you know, that we pushed our actual anti-Semites to the Democratic party. You know, who, who knows where these people are gonna go, they're gonna go to some, you know, extremist party, but whatever.

Perhaps the greatest piece of misinformation believed by liberals, however.

Is it the American standards of care in this area are strongly evidence-based. In fact, at this point, the fairest thing to say about the evidence surrounding medical transition for adolescents, the so-called Dutch protocol, as opposed to talk therapy and other support, is that it is weak and inconclusive.

A further complication is that American child gender medicine has deviated significantly from this original protocol in terms of linked up assessments and a number and demographics of minors being treated. Yes, as activists are keen to point out, most major medical associations support the Dutch protocol, but consensus is not the same as evidence and that consensus is politically influenced and it obviously is at this point and not politically influenced, but influenced by people risking losing their jobs.

If I at a mainstream organization or medical organization historically, and I said, I have a problem with this, I could lose my job. And if people are like, well, that's not true, look at how hard, mainstream. Not even just trans organization, but leftist organizations have tried to get, you know, the people who constructed the CAS report fired for just doing science.

Yeah. Right. That, that if, if you, if you were right about what you're saying, that you wouldn't try to get these people fired. Look at every instance in which somebody has defected and you have tried to get them fired. Right. And the evidence isn't on your side anymore, so now it's like a big problem.

Right. Rachel Levine, president Joe Biden's, assistant Secretary for Health and Human Services successfully lobbied to have age minimums removed for most surgeries from these standard Care up by wpath. That was a deeply political decision. Levine, according to emails from her office, reviewed by the times, believed that listing any specific limits under the age of 18 would give opponents of use transition, hard targets to exploit.

That's really psychotic.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. They,

Malcolm Collins: the White House was promoting this to stick it. To what they saw were, were people who were critical of used transgender stuff. Despite that they knew that the evidence wasn't on their side on these issues. And the amount that this happens, I think is something that people really need to wrestle with internally because it is chilling if you are wrong.

When you look at the evidence of what happens to these people who commit to this and the 50% to 40% attempted unliving rates within the transit community

if this community is. Something that people are being railroaded into when they otherwise wouldn't. You need to seriously consider with what you have imposed on these individuals' lives with those sorts of unli rates.

Yeah. It is a form of, of horror and self hatred above, I think really anything else you can imagine. And I think if you wanna learn what happens to even the individuals who feel like this has been successful to them, what their daily life becomes check out our, the day in the life of a Cina Byte episode about Anna VA's life from her own personal blog.

This is a, the trans woman, spoiler alert. It's, it's dark, it's dark, it's it's very dark. Even among the people who think that everything went well for them. More recently, another court case came case over Vanning. Blockers and hormones this time in Alabama has revealed that WPATH members themselves had doubts about their own guidelines.

In 2022, Alabama passed a law criminalizing the prescription of hormones and blockers to patients under 19. After the Biden administration sued to block the law, the state's Republican attorney general subpoenaed documents showing that WAS has known for some time that the evidence base for adolescent transition is thin.

All of us are painfully aware that there are many gaps in the research. To back up recommendations, quote, Ellie Coleman, the psychologist who chairman the team, revising the standards of care, wrote to his colleagues in 2023. So the guy who, who chairman the committee, who handled these revisions in linked emails, said, and I quote.

All of us are painfully aware that there are many gaps in the research that back our recommendations and these recommendations could lead to children committing to a life path that leads to a 50% on a living rate. You understand that, right? Do you understand how horrifying that is a life path that we know?

Nine out of 10 from gender, disco contentness, and gender non-conforming youth? 2023, no. Over nine in 10 of them are going to desist from naturally. Yet the organization did not make this clear to the public. So he didn't say that that wasn't, that they, like, when they released the, the report arguing for this, they didn't say, and the evidence is, is thin in this Laura Edwards leper who helped bring the Dutch protocol to the us but has since criticized it in a Washington Post op-ed.

The unquestioning gender affirming care model has said that the specter of red state bands made her and her op-ed co-author reluctant to break rigs. So the very person who brought this model into the United States has since said this was a mistake. That's where we are, by the way, in terms of like, what do the expert thinks?

The experts that told you to start doing this have said, oops, you guys went crazy with this. We shouldn't have done this. But because so many people have committed to this. And I think a way that causes so much cognitive dissonance. If you look at our John Money episode on the individual that sing like sexual orientation and the concept of gender is different than sex come from.

And we look at the horrifying research he did, that he lied about for a long time to people where he, you know. Said, oh, well, you know, if you're raised a different gender, you're actually gonna be that gender for the rest of your life. And then it turns out that not only is this not true, but it turned out he was likely a PDA file because he made these people, like two brothers sleep with each other and then filmed it.

And then per

Simone Collins: perform, they did more, more like sexual foreplay in this case, but as children while he watched and when they tried to resist, he like berated them. But what happened specifically with long story short, there was a, there was a, a baby who had had a, a botched circumcision and he advised the parents to just raise the baby as a girl.

And, and he wasn't told, he didn't find out until he was a teen that he was actually a na male. So he genuinely like had been told all his life that he was a girl, raised to be a girl like Performatively told to be a girl. And he det transitioned after that, which I think really does go to show that even if all you ever knew was being a girl.

And you went through and I mean, he underwent additional surgical and hormonal interventions under this man's under John Money's intervention. He still desisted. So just to clarify your point, but what's

Malcolm Collins: really important here is John money hid for decades that this person had had detransition, which led

Simone Collins: to thousands more parents to when their children had some kind of, you know, genital problem as, as, as babies raise him, as, as the I guess well

Malcolm Collins: get surgical intervention to try to make them conform to a specific gender and then raise.

Yeah. So

Simone Collins: basically he, he did an experiment. The experiment failed and he lied about the failure of his experiment and many, many, many more people. Anything when

Malcolm Collins: you, why did he lie about this? I think that this is important to this context because it's the same thing happening again, is that he would have to admit the horror that was downstream of his original mistake.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And I think if you're looking at the existing movement, it's why don't they accept that the evidence now says you are mutilating kids destroying their lives and leading to a really high unli rate that wouldn't otherwise exist. Hmm. It's because if they admit that, then they've been the bad guys all along.

Worse than that, it means that many of these trans individuals who never really intended to fully pass and are just doing this to sort of force themselves on other people, but now they can't look like anything other than trans individuals. When they walk out in public, they're like that guy from the end of whatever that movie is about Nazis, where he, they, they carved the swastika into his forehead.

So, you know, e everybody knows for the rest of his life that he, because he was being let free, right? And, and he, and they're like, we're not gonna let you live the rest of your life as a truly free person. People are gonna know what you stood for in the harm that you caused for the rest of your life.

When you get to your little place on Nantucket Island, I imagine you're going to take off that handsome looking SS uniform of yours, ain't ya?, so I'm going to give you a little something you can't take off.

Malcolm Collins: And being a poorly passing trans person, being an Alec Vade menon for the rest of your life is gonna be like having a swastika carved in your forehead.

As the public begins to normalize to this more and more when they realize that even when the evidence said this stuff is wrong, you were still sending 13-year-old girls to have double mastectomies. And, and we'd note from the WPATH files, the other thing that leaked, did they admit, they go, the kids do not understand this.

Is wpath the main organization pushing for this in the United States? The in internal emails, they've said, these kids don't, they haven't had biology classes yet they don't understand the implications of what these puberty blockers mean of what it means to never have an orgasm, which is one of the potential effects of he do blockers of what it means to, to be sterile, of what it means to have these complications for your entire life.

Well, and you know what bothers me

Simone Collins: is not only are they not being told about this, but also even if they were told about it, they're in a phase in their life where they'd be like, yeah, I mean, remember when I was a virgin? I fantasized about despite having no plans to have sex, having my uterus removed, having a hysterectomy.

'cause I was just so enthusiastic about the idea of not having children. Yeah. But the, and I mean now I have almost, you know, five kids, you know. But the point I'm making

Malcolm Collins: here is that the people who run the organizations promoting this in internal memos note. These kids definitely don't know what they're consenting to.

Yeah, absolutely. And we don't even try to explain to them what they're consenting to because we understand they don't have the mental capacity to understand it.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And they as well know that over nine out of 10 of them desist. So we're also gonna talk about that just, just going forward here. I can't stop mentioning that statistic.

The Alabama litigation has also confirmed that WPAs has commissioned a systemic review of the evidence for the Dutch protocol. However, close to publication the John Hopkins University researcher involved was told that their findings needed to be, quote, scrutinized and reviewed to ensure that the publication does not negatively affect the provision of transgender healthcare in quote, which obviously it would if it showed that that healthcare was harming people.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: This is not how evidence-based medicine is supposed to work. You don't start with a treatment and then ensure that only studies of support that treatment are published in a legal filing. In the Alabama case, Coleman insisted quote. It is not true. In quote, that WPAs guidelines quote turned on any ideological or political considerations in quote, and that the groups dispute was John Hopkins researcher concerned only the timing of the publication that is factually untrue.

We now know from the leaks of the organization, so the people who run the mainstream organization and Ws has tried to frame itself as like a non-partisan. We are just trying to get to the science mm-hmm. On transgender medicine. Mm-hmm. We now know that they lie publicly. They, they, they internally know that this is a major problem.

They internally know they don't have the science behind them and they just lie.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, it's enough that, I mean, this is an issue that permeates academia and, and medical research as well and psychological research, a lot of research that like there is a big problem that null results just aren't published and that, you know, only, you know, sort of notable results that also favor people's desire to conclusions end up getting published.

But this is just a next level worse because they knew. Well, they knew

Malcolm Collins: to understand how much they're lying here. When they said it only concerned the timing of the dates of publication.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: Yet the Times has reported that at least one of the manuscripts they sought to publish, quote, never saw the light of day end quote.

So they did quash manuscripts that showed that this was hurting people. Yeah. Yeah. It's one thing

Simone Collins: to not publish no results. 'cause I get it. Like it's, it just, there's the, the, the incentives aren't well aligned, but this is, this is really next level. Yeah. Actively irresponsible.

Malcolm Collins: But this is really big because if you come to me and you say to me quote, well look at all this research that showed that this you know, that this doesn't hurt people.

And I'm like, yeah, except I can list like these three studies that weren't allowed to be published here, here, and here, right? Like mm-hmm. So your evidence doesn't matter. A load of squat. Because you were killing other studies and, and, and more important not killing them due to methodological reasons.

Because we can see here this wasn't killed for methodological reasons. It was killed because of how it could affect people getting access to these treatments.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So we know that that's a lie. Now we know that that's a lie. Like the world know. Everybody who looks at the evidence knows that's a lie now.

So they're framing this as like just methodological problems or something, but when you have filtered evidence for a period of decades and note that this filter is now dropping, that's why we're seeing all of these studies that come out now, like the nine and 10 number and everything like that, because this filter has dropped.

But for a period of decades, you could lose your career for publishing a study in this space, and people did.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: You know, so if you give me data that, that came out, you know, I'd say like up to the past three years for that decade, I, I basically can't use it. I can't look at it. Yeah. It's bad data, right?

Yeah. Like it has clearly been filtered and we see the results now of this filter.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And so if you're actually interested in what the science says, if you're actually a person, you've gotta look at the more recent studies, which all show this is. Does. It's, it's, it's, it's doing the opposite of what people say it's doing.

It is not a good intervention. And is that any surprise when, when we look at other forms of body dysmorphia like, like anorexia, you do not intervene by being like, well, I bet I could get your weight down by removing your uterus. And then say, well, the anorexic person said they liked it. Like, of course the anorexic person would like that.

They wanna get their weight down no matter what. Right? But that's, that's not something that you should be indulging, right? But to continue the Alabama disclosures are not the only example of this reluctance to acknowledge contrary evidence. Last year, O Olan Kennedy said that she had not published her own broad study on mental health outcomes for use was gender dysphoria because she was worried about its results being, quote, unquote weaponized that raised suspicions that she had found only sketchy evidence to support the treatments that she had been prescribing and publicly advocating for over many years.

To this woman. This is the woman who, who said like the devil mastectomy for kids. The, oh, well you can just get this changed later. Even she, even as biased, as scientist as her in terms of how, you know, she was constructing, her studies got evidence that said that this was hurting people and decided not to publish it.

Even she, that degree of bias was unable to find a way to manipulate the data to make it look like these procedures are helping people.

Simone Collins: Not ideal.

Malcolm Collins: Last month, her study finally forced appeared as a preprint a form of scientific publication where evidence of not to yet to be peer reviewed.

Formalization is finalized a it's titled Mental and Emotional Health of Use. After 24 months of gender affirming medical care initiated with puberty suppressant, its participants demonstrated no significant changes in reported anxiousness or depression, withdraw or depressed somatic complaints, social problems, thought problems, attention problems, aggressive behavior, internalizing problems, or externalizing problems.

What

Simone Collins: are

Malcolm Collins: thought problems? I feel like I have a lot of thought problems in the two years after starting puberty blockers, I have requested comment from Oslo Kennedy via a children's hospital in, in Los Angeles, the one who was saying, oh, you know, it's either you do this or your kid dies.

She hasn't heard back from them because they're, they're unwilling to engage with the new evidence, which, which just says this does not help. If anything, it increases the rate of unli.

Simone Collins: Well, this is just one of those things where I think it's just so difficult for a clinic or a researcher to admit to being wrong here after having advised so many families.

Yeah. I mean, when those families come back, they're like, wait a second. Well, just think about like the malpractice lawsuits, the liability you're subject to. I mean, I can understand the reticence Well,

Malcolm Collins: and the cognitive dissonance.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Of the horror. I mean, because you really believed that. So. I understand where they're coming from.

I, I do kind of wish the Atlantic piece were a little bit more like, and this has been covered up for a long time. 'Cause that's an interesting, they're pointing

Malcolm Collins: that out. They are pointing that out. I think, you know, they, they're reaching out to these people and they're saying, oh, blah. I don't, I don't know about that study.

I don't okay, so you think they're doing a fair

Simone Collins: enough job? It seems to me more just like, Hmm. Turns out maybe we had an

Malcolm Collins: episode where, you know, we admit that now when you look at the research, the majority of the research and the majority of educated people know that gender transition is largely speaking, especially in youth.

A bad idea, likely in adults, a bad idea are a way to treat this. The Dutch treatment, as it's called Dutch treat. And we have an episode where we look at how long it took lobotomies to be phased out of society after basically educated people knew it was a bad idea. And it's about 50 years. And that, that's really sad.

But we, we, you can look at our episode on that, but when we published that episode, a Blue Sky user one of the, the posts that went viral on Blue Sky about us was like worst take of the year that that prenatal is couple had this to say about trans individuals comparing it to lobotomies. And I'm like, well, it's, it's actually super comparable.

What a lot. Oh, I forgot about that.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: Phlebotomies is that a lot of the people, like the last person who got it where their surgery went really bad were requesting it themselves. Yeah. If you, if you look at later lobotomies there, people think that this was something that was forced on people and in, in cases it was, but a lot of the later cases, WW, was actually sought out by individuals.

Simone Collins: Absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: And it, it bears a lot of structural similarities. To, you know, what we're seeing was the transgender movement. But anyway being overly adopted by progressives, like the Kennedy family doing it to their daughter and stuff, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's about staying in with polite society and not looking weird.

And that's, you know, if you say this is a bad thing, you look like a weirdo, you're killing trans kids, even though we know that's not true and you are killing trans kids, literally, and by the facts. But anyway, or the kids you have labeled as trans. The Travis stock puberty blocker study, 2011 to 2014, published in 2020.

So this isn't from the article, but this is something that I think is important to note.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Kelli Etal published a. Preprint on Med Xi in December, 2020 after a high court ruling in the Bell and travis.case. So, Travis do had tried to cover up these findings and they were forced to publish them during the investigation of their clinics.

This was the gender transition clinic.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: This study involved 44 children, age 12 to 15, who receive puberty blockers, G-N-R-H-A to delay puberty. It aimed to assess psychological outcomes including mental health and gender dysphoria. The study was conducted by Travis Docs, GIDS, university, college Lesbian Hospitals.

The preliminary findings, so these were reported from 2011 to 2014. They weren't forced to publish them until 2020. They, they treated Thousand forced to

Simone Collins: by whom?

Malcolm Collins: In that, that kid by the UK court system.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay.

Malcolm Collins: Tried to cover this up

Simone Collins: because it sounds like they were never gonna publish them. That, that's a sort of weird delay.

Okay.

Malcolm Collins: They, they tried to cover this up, but the study in 2015 by the Travis Stock Board of Directors cited by transgender trend indicated a statistically significant increase in self-harm after one year of puberty blockers. Based on responses to the statement quote, I deliberately tried to hurt or kill myself in quote, so that is what we call unloving ideation behavior, right?

You can say self-harm. That's what they tried to reframe it as. Mm-hmm. That is not self-harm. Look at the question. It's

Simone Collins: highly

Malcolm Collins: effective

Simone Collins: self-harm.

Malcolm Collins: And keep in mind that this, this and the effect was stronger in girls, by the way. It was, it had more of a negative effect in young girls. Interesting.

Which are doing it interesting more now than they did historically. And I, I, I, I'd point out here that this was done by the Travis Doc Clinic, which had every reason to attempt to bias the results in their favor. In the way that they asked the questions, in the way that the the data was recorded, the fact that despite that they showed an increased risk, should tell you something.

Wow. Especially when we now know that when this was disallowed across the uk, it did not lead to a spike in these roots.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Really, really chilling stuff. The, the reliance on elite consensus over evidence helps make sense of WPAs flatly hostile response to the cast report in England, which commissions systemic reviews and recommended extreme caution over the use of puberty blockers and hormones.

The review is a direct challenge to WPAs ability to position itself as a finer arbiter of these treatments. Something that had become more obvious when the conservative justices referenced the British document in their questions and opinions on sct. One of WPAs main charges about Hillary Cass, the senior pediatrician, who led the review, was that she was not a gender specialist.

In other words, that she was not part of the charmed circle who already agreed with these treatments being beneficial. So they defined gender specialists as people who already agreed and had published that these treatments were beneficial.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Oh.

Malcolm Collins: Which is I, and I I just want to note here, people are like, why do you care so much?

Why do you talk so much about this if you want to? It's almost like

Simone Collins: saying like, well, you're not an electroshock therapist because you don't believe that electroshock therapy is the correct therapy for various Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Whereas your long list of electrocuted patients. Yeah. Like, come on, you don't know anything about this.

We even know the person who brought this message to the United States has been like, yeah, this was a mistake. You know? So, so the experts are against you guys at this point? You just define them as not experts at this point. Yeah. Which is really horrifying. Really horrifying. But the, the, the reason when people are like, why do you guys talk about this, given how controversial it is, given how one in five to 10 years time, I hope that our society has a good memory about the people who didn't talk about this when they had the chance.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Because if you look at the harm that is being done to children. And we're gonna see the harm. We're, we're already beginning to see a flood of detransition in online spaces, but they're not gonna be confined to online spaces the same way that you know trans people. You're gonna know de transitioners.

The same way that you have that transferring, you're gonna have that detransition friend and you're gonna feel for them. I will say that to me, the moment where I really began to feel strongly against this was in, I began to make friends with Detransition. And I began to know these people and see them not just as statistics of like, you know, oh, they were killed in this conflict or whatever.

These are real people who were manipulated and lied to by doctors and psychologists and told things that were not true. They were told things that weren't true about the surgeries that they undertook. Usually they told things that were not true about the medicine they took. And they, they were told things that were not true about what happened if they didn't engage with us.

And, and you guys are not gonna look like the good guys in history. You guys are going down and history will have a long memory about what you did and the scale at which you committed these atrocities. But to continue. Any thoughts there, Simone, before I, I continue here Just wolf. Because of WPAs hostility, many on the American left now believe that the CAS review has been discredited.

Quote upon first reading, especially to a person with limited knowledge of the history of transgender healthcare. Much of the report might seem reasonable. End quote, Lydian Ri wrote at the times in late August. However, after quote, pouring over the document and quote, interviewing experts at gender affirming care, quote, which means people who already agree and have performed the procedure at, at Lings Polgar realized that the cast review was, quote, fundamentally a subjective political document, which anyone who has engaged with it or knows the circumstances of its creation created by progressives within the United Kingdom, which is already more progressive than our country.

It was, it was a, if it was a political document, it was a progressive political document. It was a feminist political document and it did not agree with what they wanted it to. Advocates for use gender medicine have reacted furiously to articles in the Times and elsewhere that take Cass's conclusion.

Seriously, indeed, some people inside the information bubble appear to believe that if a respected publication would stop writing about the story, all the doubts and questions and Republicans attempt to capitalize on them, electorally would simply disappear. Whenever the Times has published a less than cheerleading article about use transition.

Supporters of gender medicine have accused the newspaper of manufacturing a debate that otherwise would not exist After the committee decision, Stratego was still describing media coverage of the issue as quote unquote insidious adding quote. The New York Times especially has been fixating on casting the medical care of.

As being of insufficient quality quote. And, and that's really messed up that he's like, the New York Times is too conservative on this stuff with the information they're airing. Well, just nobody should be talking about it. I'm like, bro, if it's making it through the New York Times editorial point,

Simone Collins: I'm implying that there's some kind of Yeah.

Insidious that What a word to we to use

Malcolm Collins: about something. And, and I I, I've read some of the attacks on the New York Times, they say seven anti-trans gender articles. So the New York Times apparently is totally okay with publishing this stuff. Now The Atlantic is okay with publishing this stuff. Now you have lost the centers of elite society, at least in terms of the media, how long till you lose it within academia as well.

I mean, now that we're seeing these publications get through. Mm-hmm. And then what happens then to the people who basically crowded swastikas onto their foreheads it's not going to look good. And I think a lot of people don't understand the, the consequences. And I repeatedly see this. People are like, oh, I've just been on a little bit of like hormonal medicine.

Surely this hasn't affected my fertility. And I'm like, what? Who told you that? We hear that

Simone Collins: way too much.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I'm like no, that would have a severe effect on your fertility, my friend. You should look into that. If, if you underwent that through any window of your life now, now some people are able to get through this and, and reclaim their fertility and, you know, even some of our fans have been able to do that.

But it is, it is, it is chilling to me the number of people who just assume that there's not big, long-term effects of engaging with this stuff. Can this misinformation bubble ever be burst on the left? Support for use transition has been rolled together with other issues such as police reform and climate activism as a kind of super savo combo deal of correction options.

I I love that. The 33-year-old Democratic socialist, communist, Zhan Mohani. This is the New York Communist who got elected recently. Mom Donny made

Simone Collins: funding

Malcolm Collins: gender, gender transition, including of minors, part of his pitch to New York as its mayor. And then it's, oh, I didn't know that. Wow. Article here where it says even

Simone Collins: now, gosh, I figured we were past this at this point.

Malcolm Collins: Breakout. New York Mayor, oral candidate Contender Zohar Hamdi wants to spend Ani whatever, Zhan, ani 65 million on medical, gender treatments for minors and adults. But complicated issues deserve to be treated individually. You can criticize Israel, object to the militarization of America's police forces, and believe that climate change is real and yet still not support irreversible, experimental and unproven treatments for children.

So I love that the word the leftists are like broke and we like not on this issue. We are definitely the bad guys on this issue. The polarization of this issue in America has been deeply unhelpful for getting liberals to accept the sketchiness of the evidence base. When Vice President JD Vance wanted to troll the left, he joined Blue Sky where skeptics of use gender transition are among the most blocked users.

And immediately started talking about the TTI judgment. What, like that turn, accepting the evidence base into a humiliating climb down, which is true. It should be humiliating. You were messing with kids without any evidence that you believed people who lied to you. Totally. Totally. And you let sex pass into the movement and you let the sex pass abuse people, like lesbian communities.

And they, they were telling you the lesbians for a long time, Hey, they're our sex pests abusing our community. Can you please do something about this? And, and you guys just ignored them, right? A lot of the people who've been pushing this have been lesbian organizations. Acknowledging the evidence does not mean that you have to support banning these treatments or reject the idea that some people will be happier if they transition.

Cass believes that some youngsters may indeed benefit from the medical pathway, quote. While some young people may feel an urgency to transition, young adults looking back on their younger selves would often advise slowing down. Her report concludes, quote. For some, the best outcome will be transitioned, whereas others may resolve their distress in other ways.

This is not a conservative extremist who wrote this report. They're just like somebody who is pre-positioned to statements like that just found in the evidence their support for this. I have always argued against straightforward bans on medical transition for adolescents in practice. The way that these have been enacted in red states has been uncaring and punitive.

You know, this person writing this, who is saying this? Right? You know, again, not a conservative parents are threatened with child abuse investigations for pursuing treatments that medical professionals have assured them are safe. Yeah. But they should look into whether those medical professionals are lying.

But children with severe mental health troubles suddenly lose therapeutic. Therapeutic support. Clinics nationwide, including Oline Kennedy's, are now abruptly closing because of the political atmosphere writing about these subjects. In 2023, I argued that the only way out of the culture war was for the American Medical Associations to commission reviews and carefully consider the evidence.

Have an American cast review. Of course, however, the revelations from Sketti and the Alabama case have made me more. Sympathetic to the commenters such as Aliyah Sapiro of the Conservative Manhattan Institute, who supports the bans because American medicine cannot be trusted to police itself. Quote, are these bans the perfect solution?

Probably not in quote he told me in 2023, quote. But at the end of the day, if it's between banning gender affirming care and leaving it unregulated, I think we can minimize the amount of harm by banning it. Once you know that WPAs wanted to publish a review, only if it came out of the group's preferred conclusion, Shapiro's case becomes more compelling.

And this is something we've seen. The medical community could have self-regulated. It can still go out there and attempt to self-regulate, but anybody who makes this push risk their career at this point or at least for a period, did. Despite the concerted efforts to suppress the evidence, however, the picture on use gender medicine has become a clearer over the past decade.

It's no humiliation to update our beliefs as a result. I regularly used to write that medical gender transition was quote unquote lifesaving before I saw how limited the evidence on on A Alive was. And it took another court case brought by the British GT transition Keira Bell, for me to realize that purity blockers were not what they were sold as a safe and reversible treatment that gave patients, quote unquote time to think, but instead a one-way ticket to full transition with physical changes that cannot be undone.

And I note here almost nobody when the studies have been done, once you go on blockers, even though we know that nine outta 10 of these people, they didn't, wouldn't transition once you go on them, I think it's something like a 98 or 99% transition rate. Like it's hard to find anyone who doesn't transition afterwards.

Mm. So we know it is biasing people towards transition and it's basically forcing them to transition. Some advocates for the Dutch protocol as it's applied in the United States, have stake their entire career and reputation on its safe and effectiveness. Yeah. If you go out there and you say, with the evidence you have now that this is safe and effective, it can be proven that you've lied.

They have strong incentives to not concede the weakness of the evidence. In 2023, the advocacy group GLAD drove a truck ar, and this is in 2023. After a lot of this evidence had come out, after the study of the show, nine out of 10 people you know, to detransition Right. Around the office of the New York Times to declare that quote unquote, the sciences settled.

They said on the block, doctors such as Sly Kennedy and activists of Stratego unlikely to revise their opinions. What can you do when you as a group like LAD that was supposed to be looking out for lesbians, was supposed to be looking out for non-conforming use. When you know that you've now led them on a path that makes un alive themselves more likely,

Simone Collins: wow.

Malcolm Collins: But that's where we are as a society.

No. I mean, the horror of, of what's been undertaken, people should be held to account for this. And, and I think that when we, as a society, like as, as things continue to shift after the wave continues to shift, I think the only way we can make this right. Is court trials for people who clearly knew the evidence and went out there and pushed young children into this.

You know, when you [email protected] and we see them covering up evidence and we know that people in positions of authority within the clinic were actually arrested for going to local parks and attempting to chat up 15-year-old boys. You know, that they liked getting these kids on these blockers so that they would look underage for the rest of their, or for at least a longer period up until when they were legal.

And we've seen this talked about within these community forums you know, that this needs to be addressed and the people who, who covered for these individuals there needs to be some degree of punishment given that they have shown that people like strategic AEO have shown that they knew the evidence, that they knew that this was leading to worse outcomes for the people who were engaging with it and that they attempted to cover this up and increase the prevalence of these treatments.

Simone Collins: I mean, we couldn't even ask them to explain why they did this, because I don't even know if they could answer that. You know, like when you ask people why they do what they do, they really honestly dunno, most of the time No.

Malcolm Collins: They, they, to me remind me of like their religious extremists that like starved children because they think they're possessed or something.

Right. Like, they just be like, well, yeah, I saw the child was starving. I saw the child was increasing thera, that they hated themselves. You know, we saw this from the Travis doc leaked research. But I decided to not do anything about it. Right. I mean, I'll note here that they'll be like, well, that study didn't have a controller.

That study didn't have a Yeah, because you chose not to create one After you saw the data, it could have had a control. You chose to not collect that data. Mm-hmm. That's not that. It's like there, there you hid the control. You ensured that there wasn't one because you didn't like what you knew it would say.

Anyway, that's. We are gonna close out.

Simone Collins: I'm really glad this age is coming to an end. Because, you know, that's, that's fewer lives will be severely disrupted by this. I also wonder what the next thing's gonna be.

Malcolm Collins: And I think what we, we need to change the narrative when people are like, you are killing trans kids.

It's gonna be like you are, are killing gender non-conforming gifts. Which is factually true when you look at the unliving rates within the trans community. And we know that nine outta 10 of these people de desist from this behavior. So also like

Simone Collins: I think the very concept of gender non-conforming runs contrary to progressive ideology.

As we've discussed in the John Money Podcast, he is the man who in the 1950s and onward pioneered the concept of gender as a construct, distinct from biological sex as like a behavioral and cultural thing, right? But, but before that, like. It didn't like you could be gender non-conforming and people wouldn't be like, well, we need to medicalize this now.

Yeah. They'd be like,

Malcolm Collins: oh, you're a tomboy.

Simone Collins: Yeah, exactly. You're a tomboy or you're a bit of a girly girl. Like boy, like whatever. But like bit of a mama's boy. Yeah. You, it didn't mean that you needed to undergo some kind of life altering, like permanently, biologically shifting treatment. And I think it was a lot more healthy.

I, I am so excited to go back to that because we're all for like, fine, don't conform with, you know, be you. That's great. This reminds

Malcolm Collins: me of the meme I sent you that I loved. The next song is called, please Don't Make Me Cut Off My D because I like the color pink. There you go. And I note here ho Mass actually did a comment on this article where he said summary, they started saying, your children will kill themselves if you don't give them a sex change.

And they knew they didn't have the evidence. No one was allowed to argue. Is it because a hundred IQ. Q HR ladies would shut down your entire life. If you did, then the kids who got sex change hormones became more likely to kill themselves because it turns out that what they were going through was just a weird phase.

And that's, I, I, you know, I like that he's out there pushing this. We've had him on the show of before. Check out our episode with him. Have a great day, Simone. Love you.

Toasty, what are you doing?

In this episode, we delve into the intriguing bounce in South Korea's fertility rates after decades of decline. Join us as we explore the reasons behind this shift, the sustainability of the current strategies, and the cultural impacts. We also discuss the geometric potential of human reproduction, the challenges of demographic collapse, and propose innovative solutions like a K-Pop Chaebol Oligarchy to address these issues. Additionally, we cover cultural influences on fertility perceptions, dependency ratio cascades, and much more.

Simone Collins: . [00:00:00] Hello Malcolm. I'm so excited to be with your, sorry. Lemme try again. Hello, Malcolm. I'm so excited to be here with you today because we are going to talk about some trending news about South Korea's fertility. Apparently they're seeing a little bounce upward ho, but, and everyone's like, oh,

Malcolm Collins: why this is relevant.

Okay. Yeah, because South Korea for a long time has had a rapidly declining fertility rate. It has the world's worst. Fertility rate at, at their current fertility rate. For every a hundred South Koreans, there would only be five great grandchildren, and their fertility rate has gone down almost every year for the past 20 years, except for this year.

And this brings up well, in

Simone Collins: 2024 there was a little bit of a bounce, and then there's even a slightly bigger bounce in the first half of, or at least the spring of 25.

Malcolm Collins: This brings up a couple of very important questions for the rest of the world. One is a lot of people said there's a bottom floor to collapsing fertility rates.

There is a number that when you get so low, and what I always said historically is, well, where is this floor if [00:01:00] nobody is hit it yet? You know, how is South Korea still going down? Yeah. If this imaginary floor exists. Yeah. And so the question is. Has South Cria hit this imaginary floor? And Simone is going to argue it's pretty compelling evidence.

No, they haven't. Yeah, we're we're gonna talk about this.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Because I mean, I is, this is really just. A fart in the wind. I I'm gonna walk you through what actually changed with fertility in South Korea, whether South Korea's present strategy is sustainable given also what they paid for this change.

'cause it is, no, hold on. You gotta, you gotta start this at the stu, they paid over a million dollars for every addition. Lemme stop with the spoilers, but I gotta give you one more spoiler actually. 'cause at the end I want each of us to kind of freestyle on what we would do if we personally were put in charge of South Korea's fertility and mine boils down to three words.

K-Pop cha. Sorry. K-Pop cha bull oligarchy. I'm excited. Okay, go for

Malcolm Collins: it. Go for it. Go for it. Go on. Do it. Alright.

Simone Collins: So, as a lot of people have seen in the news, [00:02:00] especially if you follow fertility, South Korea has recently experienced a notable, those still modest improvement in its fertility rate and number of births reversing a longstanding decline.

So what happened ultimately was that the total fertility right in South Korea rose from a devastating. 0.72 in 2023 to oh 0.75 in 2024. And then in the first quarter of 2025, the TFR further increased to 0.82, which is, I mean, like, kind of, wow. I mean, 'cause we just, it kept plummeting. So this is nice to see.

It's the highest quarterly figures since early 2022. So there's that. But the. This is, this is kind of encouraging 'cause it is the first annual fertility rate increase for 2024. That's the first one in 90 years. It was just in continuous decline since 2015. And the fact that the rebound is com becoming a little bit more pronounced from 2024 to 2025 is nice.

Like, I'm, I'm not gonna. [00:03:00] I'm not gonna poo poo that, like it's really nice to see. But let's talk about how many extra babies were actually born. In 2024, there were a total of 238,300 babies born. Good for them. That's awesome. We love it. That's an increase of just 8,300 compared to 2023. So we also have to consider like this is a fairly small population, meaning that like.

It, it doesn't take a whole lot to make the numbers look really different, meaning that really small things could be at play here. And, and then it. This, this doesn't change the fact that South Korea's even their improved birth rate is still the worst in the world.

Malcolm Collins: So, well, I wanna talk about how bad it is.

Their improved birth rate is still in the sevens, the, the zero point

Simone Collins: sevens that is well, for the year. It, it went up to 0.83 in the first quarter. We're gonna see how the rest of the year plays out.

Malcolm Collins: Eight three. Okay. But the, the point you're being is, is 0.83 is basically nothing. Like [00:04:00] even if they, they, they, they kept like rising or they, they got a bit up, they would still already be at a collapse level.

Kurzgesagt: Economic collapse in 2023. A breathtaking 40% of South Koreans over 65 live below the poverty line. But in 2060, this number may seem lovely. In comparison, today, South Korea has one of the largest pension funds in the world, but it's projected to be completely depleted by the 2050s.

So in 2060. Pensions will have to be paid by the working population. The minimum a society needs is between two to three workers per retiree paying for them with their taxes. But even if we assume that all South Koreans over 15 will be working in 2060, the country will have less than one worker per senior.

So not only will poverty among the elderly be common, but a big chunk will be forced to work, except they may not be able to find jobs because by [00:05:00] 2060, the South Korean economy may have collapsed.. Okay, wait. This is all a bit much.

Is there no way back why? There really is no way back. The problem with the demographic freight train is that once it hits, things become irreversible. Let's say fertility in South Korea magically triples to the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman, and stays there in 2060. It will be an inverted pyramid on top of a barrel, and there would still be only 1.5 people of working age per senior over 65.

Even in the best made up scenario, South Korea has to pass through an unavoidable bottleneck before it'll recover,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. 'cause even though they've increased the fertility rate among the young population, you have to keep in mind that 60% of the population is over the age of 40 and can't even have kids. Yeah. So here we're talking about the fertility rate within the smaller population. They can still have kids. And in addition to that mm-hmm.

We're dealing with the issue that there's already this [00:06:00] huge missing population within Korea. It takes

Simone Collins: 18 years. Yeah. The, the damage has been done. And, and we also need to remind people who may not like, maybe new to this concept of fertility rates and whatnot, a replacement fertility rate, like if we're gonna keep a population stable is 2.1.

Like per mother, there have to be 2.1 children. Okay. 'Cause you're kind of replacing the mother and the father and 0.8 is nothing to be proud of, but it's important

Malcolm Collins: to note here that even if. Tomorrow, south Korea's fertility rate went back up to 2.1. Okay? Mm-hmm. They would still, if you look at the math, to support their aging population before those 18 year olds could come of age.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Their systems are still going to collapse before that date. Their social security welfare Medicaid

Simone Collins: system. Well, and I think to your point also there's, there's still at risk of like, let's say even it went way up suddenly. They're also like, their culture is also to a great extent being lost.

'cause think you pointed out to me when we were just talking about this offline, that a lot of these. These births are resulting from marriages to women who [00:07:00] are foreigners.

Malcolm Collins: One in four rural South Koreans who is married and has a kid married a foreign wife. So they're bringing in, they're importing people from other countries to have as their wives when they are having kids.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And that's, that is gonna, that is gonna shift culture. I mean, like, one of the things that we're concerned about with demographic labs, I'm not like, oh, we have to keep like, ethnic purity, but I, I don't want to lose. The unique South Korean culture or perspective, I want there to be a, a broad variety, ideally even broader than what we have now of cultural perspective.

So maybe there's some mixing here, but like, I, I mean, I like that like some creation of new, like, you know, Korean plus Vietnamese or whatever else is popular in South Korea among passport bros. But. Yeah. Anyway, like this isn't, this isn't exactly like a win for like South Korean people. We will make it to the future because also like their, their passport growing their way into these marriages.

But marriages are a key factor behind this rebound. And one of the reasons why I think it is going to be short lived, because it is thought that this, this surgeon marriages that has, has preceded these [00:08:00] births has to do with people kind of making up for lost time in the pandemic. So it's a little bit artificial.

All the people who didn't date during the pandemic then dated after and have now reached that point at which they have dated, they have married, and now they're having kids. Meaning that after this point we're gonna see a drop off again, because all those people making up for lost time, who are like at that point in their lives where they're like, I'm going to get married no matter what.

Just couldn't do it at the same like the time they'd planned to due to lockdowns. Yeah. And then of course, you know, the, the Korea still hasn't done anything about all the sort of cultural headwinds. That make parenting unsustainable, the work life balance problems, et cetera. But let's go into what South Korea paid for the change that you Yes.

Go into the numbers here. Yeah. So, just a reminder, in 20 24, 230 8,300 babies were born, that's an increase of 8,300 compared to 2023. And I'm, I'm, I'm doing back the napkin, popula cal calculations here. But in 2024, the Ministry of Health and Welfare budget was 100 and. [00:09:00] 22.5 trillion one, that's about 92 billion USD.

And a significant portion of that went toward child rearing support, fertility treatments, and expanded parental benefits. Like that's a lot of money. Mm-hmm. And, and keep in mind, like in, in terms of things that are being paid to families basically about $22,000 is given for each child born.

Like to families regardless of family income or composition, which, I mean, that'd be great. Like, it's not helping, but that'd be great. Yeah. We wouldn't say no to it. We won't. The monthly stipend for parents' money by having

Malcolm Collins: kids, you know? Yeah.

Simone Collins: If you wanna gimme money. The monthly stipend for, for parents having kids of, sorry, for parents of newborns, increased to 1 million, won about $740 for the first.

And then 500,001, about 370 for the second year in terms of like lump sum birth vouchers. 'cause they're just giving cash payments, like direct cash payments to parents. Mm-hmm. As an incentive here. So not only have already like a [00:10:00] lot of funds been allocated, but they're like upping the ante I think out of desperation.

So let's just assume that of this 92 billion US dollar budget for 2024, that the Ministry of Health and Welfare was given, let's just assume conservatively. 10% of that went to fertility boosting efforts, which I think is conservative considering how much money is being given to families. Yeah. Would you say 10% is fair?

I'd say 10% is fair, yeah. Okay. So if we do $92 billion times 0.1 and then we divide that by 8,300, we get 1.1, 1 0 1 1 $1,108,000 in 1 33, so, so that's over $1.1 million. Per extra child. Like if, if we, if we, you know, ask the Ministry of Health. All right, well, so what did all of your fertility spending get you for these, you know, this growth that you are so proud of?

Yeah. They paid a lot for that. Wait, it's not

Malcolm Collins: sustainable. It's obviously not. It's really not. This is why the solutions have to be cultural. And so when people come to me and they're [00:11:00] like, oh, look, South Korea has hit the floor. I'm like, no, they haven't. They've hit the floor of panic, not on the floor of like real social change.

Simone Collins: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That, and it's hard because, I mean, as has been discussed, I mean, in many other podcasts we've done by many people. South Korea is one of these places that developed really rapidly in terms of economic development, but then socially developed much more slowly. So in terms of like, women have gotten empowered in terms of education and career and all these sort of very modern expectations. They've, they've gone really far, but there are still these social expectations that they do. The majority of the housework, they do, the majority of the child rearing, and so they're sort of stretched between these things and that builds a ton of resentment and they're just like.

Screw that, and you end up with movements like the four B movement where women refuse to date or get married or have kids or have sex, and, and they just, just reject it because the terms are not good. So South Korea has to sort of reconcile these really fundamental issues [00:12:00] before they get to a point.

Where it becomes. Okay. And that's, that's what I wanted to discuss. It's like, well, what would actually save South Korea?

Malcolm Collins: Well, I also wanna point out before we get to what would save South Korea.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Is it. Even if this is a real floor that's been discovered in South Korean fertility rates, what it tells us is the floor happens after a society is already duped.

Simone Collins: Mm. Because it's too little, too late. Yeah. Even if this is sustained, it's too little, too late. But like I said, I really think this is people making up for lost time during, but it's not, no, I mean,

Malcolm Collins: like. I'm saying even if everything they're saying is right, even if it turns out that the floor is around like 7.5 and then it balances and begins to go back up.

Mm-hmm. It's irrelevant because the time it takes to go down. And keep in mind, South Korea is going down faster than other countries. What this means, well, this was a 15 year streak

Simone Collins: of going down again. Yeah. Like.

Malcolm Collins: Is, is, is that it takes too long to get the next generation in the pipeline and that the next generation will not be in the pipeline before the [00:13:00] country's economic system collapses?

Simone Collins: Yeah, because you need, you need a, like, so a lot of people have seen these, you know, population like. Graphs that sort of show like, oh look, the, this, this pyramid is growing as, as you know, future generations get bigger and bigger. And then, you know, some like China are going in like this and it's, ah, like that's when you know governments are gonna start to collapse and social services are no longer going to work.

'cause you have what Malcolm calls a dependency ratio cascade, where you have an insufficient number of actively contributing. Taxpayers paying for a, a growing number of dependents. And, and that's what we're trying to, to deal with here. That's what we're trying to avoid, is, is this kind of ratio, dependency ratio cascade.

So already, like even if like, let's say the pyramid, you know, it was growing and then you have this like, you know, 15 years of shrinkage and then it grows again. You still have to deal with the 15 years of shrinkage, like that next booming giant baby boom population, let's say somehow, like you figure it out really quickly.

Well, and that, that's the, that's a period of [00:14:00] 15 years. Yeah. Like what's gonna happen for that 15 years where there's an insufficient number of taxpayers to pay for everything? Like, you still have to figure that one out. And

Malcolm Collins: let's, let's, let's be like, even if it's not a, a full, let's assume it's a five year window.

Let's assume it's an eight year window. Okay. How do you get through that window? Literally? Yeah. How do you get through that window? Yeah. The

Simone Collins: math doesn't work well. And also like at that point, you know, people with the kids are, are maybe gonna be fleeing the country. You know, they're moving out because.

All the all are as we, yeah. It's not safe. All the, all the promises of the childcare are no longer being, you know, met anymore. You're outta there. All of

Malcolm Collins: Koreans I know is kids who are like high performing South Koreans are raising their kids to live in other countries.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like Singapore or the United States or, yeah.

Like they're, they're outta there. Do not

Malcolm Collins: want their kids to, well, they don't want their kids to grow up in South Korea because the, the, the, the core thing that needs to be reformed in South Korea is the culture.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. There's this few, I mean, for those not familiar with South Korean culture, there's this really intense upbringing where it's just like tests and they'll, what do they do when there's like, the big [00:15:00] test today?

Like this test sort of determines your entire future.

Malcolm Collins: They, you can't get sick during, they, you just have to go no matter what. You have to be a degree test. They stop the freeways, they stop the planes so nobody can be distracted. They it's like everything is dependent on this one test. And what I've said, 'cause you go, how do you, how do you fix this?

I said, you've got to modify the grade that students get on this test by how many siblings they have. Oh, so this

Simone Collins: is right. This is your solution for South Korea.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Just modify the test. I dunno. I mean, like, but what you say is it, is, is you say, look, these people had less money to send their kids to afterschool camps and everything like that.

They had less money. Like this is, this is about the children's. You, you're not getting an accurate judgment of their intelligence. You're getting their ability to memorize and perform quickly and go to camps and stuff, right? Yeah. So if that's the case, then it's only fair. The the in terms of accurately measuring competence that you downwards modify them based on how much time and money their parents had to [00:16:00] spend on them in relation to this stuff.

I kind

Simone Collins: feel like though this test is kind of a, has been when you and I were in South Korea, one of the people who was showing us around was saying that yes, it used to be that the goal of. The typical South Korean youth would be to work at one of the big prestigious companies after going to one of the big prestigious schools.

And you can only get to one of those big prestigious schools. Of course, if you score well on one of these tests. 'cause those tests are everything. But then the new, even then, and this was back in 2018 that we visited South Korea, 2019. The, the new top desired jobs among youth were social media influencer like YouTuber.

And cook. Like these aren't things that require schooling anymore. So I just don't know. I mean, maybe it would be compelling to parents who are delusional about the kids' desires, but I don't, I don't know how much it would make a difference.

Malcolm Collins: I disagree. In America, your top desire [00:17:00] job can be, you know, a YouTuber, which is in America as well, as far as I know.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It doesn't mean Harvard no longer matters. You know, har Harvard will eventually no longer matter, but it doesn't, no longer matter yet. And the the systems that make Harvard matter are falling apart more slowly than the systems that make the top universities in South Korea matter. Hmm. Because this is dependent about everything in terms of your role in society.

Simone Collins: Yeah, perhaps, but I would suggest something a little bit more.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Do to, to tell dystopian, dystopian, and a

Simone Collins: weird

Malcolm Collins: Yes, of course you would. Simone. I married a dystopian and weird woman. We were talking about this today where I was like, I, you're like, I love processed foods. I want more science in my foods.

And I was like, you know, you other than me are one of the only people I've ever met who likes the world more processed. When I other people like walk through a city and they're like, oh, they tore down a. You know, a park to a forest to build down a parking lot. And I'm like, well, the parking lot's [00:18:00] a sign of industry.

Look at these beautiful rows in our local grocery store. Look at the diversity of products, the packaging, the ma, everything we love. Everything helps to get everything on the shelves here. How do you not wonder at this? It is a

Simone Collins: marvel of human progress.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. When I, Simon knows when I drive by the big you know, like, like industrial cities, right?

Like plants, right? I'm like, oh, if only we could buy one of these. Like run down, turn it into like a giant No, he

Simone Collins: cannot pass. Yeah. Like, you know, your typical like trope of a man is they can't walk by like a busty, gorgeous woman without, you know, rubbernecking her and, and Malcolm's rubbernecking problem.

His, his neck whipping around issue is every time we pass by some large industrial looking factory with all the smoke pipes and the giant tanks and the blinking lights, he desperately wants to buy it. I

Malcolm Collins: want to live. I wanna have that be [00:19:00] our headquarters. And everybody sees we are industry you know, anyway, continue.

You've had fantasies about having

Simone Collins: different, like, you know, purple smoke coming out from the, you know, just like changing the smoke colors that come out from the, how did I meet a

Malcolm Collins: weirdo who doesn't think that I am a weirdo for this? He is like, oh, I actually agree with you on the processed foods and the industry.

Simone Collins: I bet a lot of people are gonna chime into the content comments and be like, eh, I mean, when you look at consumer behavior. People are overwhelmingly choosing highly processed foods and snack foods. Of course, this is changing a little bit with Ozempic and we are kind of seeing the markets shift in response to that.

But still if you, if you're not undergoing medical intervention you are, you're gonna be answer.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So what is your dystopian plan here, Simone?

Simone Collins: What people are missing when it comes to prenatal list policy and incentives is most of the governmental interventions. That are encouraging people to have kids are just blanket incentives for everyone.[00:20:00]

It, you know, I will give money and, you know, like this $22,000 to parents, you know, per child, regardless of your level of income. Like, we will just give it to you no matter what. We just want everyone to have kids. And one, like the cool thing about the cause of Tism is that. To save an entire country, an entire culture, an entire religion or ethnicity, whatever it is that you care about saving.

This doesn't address the dependency ratio cascade, but I'll get to that next necessarily. But it, it can make sure that there is a future for whatever this perspective that you want to see in the future. It will make it survive is just if, if between eight to 17 families. Managed to develop a version of their culture that is intergenerationally durable.

Meaning that they have a lot of kids like, we'll say like 5, 7, 10, like per per descendant. And each descendant raises their kids so well and passes on their culture so well that their kids in turn want to have five to seven kids and raise their children in that culture. And if you keep that up, [00:21:00] you're good.

Like, you know, this is, this is really. Not an issue anymore. And I love that element of Tism because that's saying, okay, only the super enthusiasts about having families and raising kids need to be involved with this. And everyone else who wants to be a dink and live their lives and not have kids is super free to do that.

And I really like that. I want people. To not be shamed or coerced into doing anything. I also want people who are super into doing something to have the freedom to do it and to be awarded for doing it. So one that is one factor that goes into my South Korean fertility policy. The second factor is. The key issue with dependency ratio cascades and with demographic collapse and with governments failing to be able to pay for the social services of the most vulnerable people in society.

Isn't a warm bodies issue, it's a taxpayer issue. No. And, and just paying. Any old family, a ton of money to have kids isn't necessarily going to solve your problem. Just bringing in immigrants isn't gonna [00:22:00] necessarily solve your problem because immigrants are eventually gonna get old and not everyone is going to be, be the same level of a tax contributor.

I mean, like in New York City, that the top 10% or 1% pays for like 50% of the. The city's income, right, in taxes, like it's, it's insane. When you look at who actually contributes most of the tax revenue, whether you're looking at a federal level or you're looking at a city or state level, it, the top percentage of earners are paying the vast majority of the taxes.

So I also think that I. Fertility policies that focus disproportionately on taxpayers, especially when you're looking at governmental stability and your ability to meet the commitments, be it debt service or social security, food aid, healthcare, et cetera. Like you should be looking, okay, how do we get more taxpayers?

Not how do we get more people? Yeah. I'm not seeing countries do that. And, and so here's where I just think, and, and, and there's a culture factor too. You, as you said yourself, right, like they're, they're focusing too much on like, you [00:23:00] know, childcare and all this stuff, and we're not resolving the cultural issue, right?

That having kids is not this aspirational, desirable thing. Most South Koreans when they think about having kids, is. Oh God, I don't wanna subject them to the terrible childhood that I experienced. I, you know, I, I don't wanna now be torn not only between this really demanding career with no work life balance and, but also raising a kid and being expected to do most of it.

Like, it just sounds horrible. Yeah. So, right. You also need to make it socially and culturally that desirable. Hence, hence, oh, and I just, I just, let's walk through the math judge. I also wanna point out, like, back to my first point, just if, if you have just seven families, and they, they all had seven kids each, and then those grandkids had seven kids, and those great grandkids had seven kids, and then the great, great grandkids had seven kids.

Now you've already got 16,807 people, and if you repeat that whole cycle again. You've got 282 million 475, 249 people. And keep in mind, south Korea's current [00:24:00] population is 51.71 people sorry, sorry. 51.71 million people. So in just, in just you know, a couple cycles in the longer scheme of things, obviously this takes a long time if like one generation comes every 30 years, but if you manage to make just seven families be intergenerationally, durable.

You've got something that is, is, is basically, and you

Malcolm Collins: skip a generation with every exponential amount of families you get at the beginning. Something that's, so you get 49 families, you get, you know,

Simone Collins: yo, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and so you could have, not just South Korea maintained, you could have South Korea taking to the stars in so much bigger than, than it ever, ever was.

And that's kind of like, mm-hmm. Just

Malcolm Collins: how easy, but doesn't called it before systems start to collapse. And this is important to do. That's true,

Simone Collins: that's true. But now, no, this is, this is why we, we introduced the, the perfect Simone solution that everyone should just listen to in South Korea. Okay. Which is like K-pop, chabo, oligarchy.

Malcolm Collins: Alright. Yeah. Tell me about the K-pop. Chale oligarchy.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So just to, [00:25:00] to define Bels South Korea is, is kind of known for having what, what are called BLEs, which are like these. Huge business conglomerates, which are associated with very wealthy and powerful families. Like there's a Samsung family and these families are like very, very wealthy and very famous.

And there's a little bit of like a hereditary monarchy thing going on, which works really well with the very hierarchical sort of social class sensitive South Korean culture. Right. I mean, like what was your experience with Chabos in when you were working in South Korea in venture capital?

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, they controlled everything.

As I said, the, the thing that really shocked me about the Bels and the way in North Korea related to all of this,

Simone Collins: South Korea, what

Malcolm Collins: South Korea, South Korea, not as different as you would think. When you go to the Chabos headquarters, which I've toured some they have shrines to their glorious leaders that are, you know, and I've often said of South Korea, if you understand South Korea as a capitalist democracy, you don't understand South Korea, what South Korea is.

Is a number of fascist states. [00:26:00] Competing amongst each other in a facsimile of capitalism. Hmm. And, and I remember they looked down so much on entrepreneurs that we, if you're in a marriage market that's looking, oh, what, what, what score does it get me my career in a marriage market? It is under fishermen being what?

Entrepreneur? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Under fishermen. And actually they

Simone Collins: have these right where like if you're trying to like use a dating service, they do. Score you like. You're not just talking abstractly here. Yeah, you're talking abstractly, not social worker value. You're like, no. If I literally pay someone to be a matchmaker for me, I'm getting a score and my score is fishermen.

Malcolm Collins: But it's worse. Our fund, I mean, we constantly got in trouble with the government because we did the horrifying thing of investing in people who didn't go to top universities. And I didn't say didn't go to universities. I didn't say dropped out of university. I said didn't go to the top universities and it's not Korea.

This is like investing in like meth addict, right? You are a social. Harm and this led to my boss being arrested. This led to other people in my company being [00:27:00] arrested. Mm. Like we were constantly for political points because, you know, everybody agrees with the show. Well, if somebody just makes their money out of nowhere, then something is wrong in society.

They were, they were disrupting the social order.

Simone Collins: That's the thing. Yeah. And that's the thing is I think that, you know, when you, when you look at fertility solutions for a country. You can't disrupt the social order you need to Yes. And the social order. And I am gonna, yes. And it, alright. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Do it, do it, do it.

Simone Collins: So I'm like, okay, bels. Yeah. Like they're a thing. Let's not try to undo them. Let's lean into them. So I'm saying this, this is project of mine. This could either be government funded. So, you know, the South Korean government can kinda ease this along or it could be privately organized. But what I want is in Korea.

You could say it's creating a newer aristocratic class, or it's just leaning into it to ultimately create eight to 17 high fertility families. So there has to be some kind of like either America's Got talent style, [00:28:00] like audition to become one of the new seed families. 'cause we need more Chabo families than there are now.

Right? Like you need I would say minimum of seven families. It's like super high fertility, you know, to solve this fertility cascade, this dependency ratio cascade problem. So like either in America's Got talent style thing, or like the government, like literally providing exclusive contracts to the chosen families who also have to be commercial mags in some way.

Right? So you have eight to 17 high fertility families. They need to be regarded as aristocratic, basically royalty. And members who have fewer than seven kids get disinherited and shunned. Outsiders can marry in, but they have to accept South Korean culture. I think that's really important. But each family should be run like a, a Korean pop band.

'cause this is also like a huge thing in South Korea. Is this like manufactured run by the state?

Malcolm Collins: What are they

Simone Collins: run by a

Malcolm Collins: company? One of the tribals, one of the, yeah. Either.

Simone Collins: No, I would say this is [00:29:00] either no. And you're creating new tribals. So I, each, each of these families needs to have a private. Business specialization.

So already you have like Samsung, it does like tech. What I want South Korea to create with its new additional tribal families. 'cause you need to have this, like, you need to have enough aristocratic families for there to be like genetic variation. Maybe one specializes in reproductive technology. You know, it's, it's starting to clone people.

It builds the artificial wombs. It's, it's doing that's our family's

Malcolm Collins: job, Simone. We don't I know, I know.

Simone Collins: No, I mean it would be great if there's a couple families across many countries. Then there's the human augmentation family. South Korea is already famous. For, its, its its plastic surgery right there.

Go just like, but, but, you know, take that a step further. You know, they're already so good at plastic surgery. They've got the infrastructure, they have the, the like educational pipeline. Let's bring it to like, okay, now there's a heads up display inside your eyes. Now your skin has tattoos that are animated now.

Like, you know, all the, like, let's, let's build a night vision. Like, you know, just so a human augmentation family or collection of [00:30:00] families. One should obviously be military tech because. North Korea ain't going away for a while. Like, you know, I mean there isn't, to my knowledge. I mean, maybe like Samsung makes military tech, but like.

You know, just really specializes in that because also it would make the country stronger. But yeah, basically have like, you know, these are, these are strategically useful specializations, but you're also at the same time creating a new royal family and a new table and, and bonus points if, if the lives of each of these tables is extremely public, like they, they each have a reality TV or they're all extremely active on social media and like everyone desperately wants.

To marry into this family, to work at one of the companies to make their way up, and maybe you

Malcolm Collins: can't fully democratize this.

Simone Collins: Whoever said that democratization was an important part of this. The important thing is that one, you are making high fertility families, high profile, you're giving them a lot of commercial power and they're having a lot of kids, so you're, you're having a lot of really high tax.

[00:31:00] Pairs being born they lose all of their favor and advantages that give them an unfair advantage if they don't maintain their high fertility as a family. And because they're so prominent and because they're both like Chas and like K-Pop Chas, so they're like made famous and they're romanticized and they're like,

Malcolm Collins: you can't, you can't do this Intergen.

Oh, so you think other people would wanna copy them?

Simone Collins: Yeah. No. And, and, and we've seen this, so I, I wanna cover this in another episode on prenatals propaganda, but there was a series of. Soap operas that played out in various regions in Brazil that sort of depicted this very aspirational middle class life, and they affected fertility significantly.

Unfortunately, they, they, they led, they allowed people to have fewer kids because the families in these, in these soap operas had like one or two kids and, and people, and result at the time had more kids. But it, it's clear that when you make a certain family format, aspirational and high class. People are going to conform with that.

And, and this was show like in regions where, where this network didn't show [00:32:00] there was no change in fertility. Fertility is absolutely shaped by propaganda and culture. And when you, I. Make things like your celebrities and your aspirational royalty, very high fertility, I absolutely think it will affect the average Korean.

But what you're also doing is making sure that the people who are literally required by law to be high fertility in order to maintain their strategic advantage in commercial advantage, you are also getting a lot more taxpayers, which I think is great. And keep in mind that right now Korean pop stars.

Like, even if they're dating someone, and sometimes I think they're contractually not allowed to date anyone,

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they're not well, and they'd often lose their, as I pointed out in the episode that we did on like Japan and stuff like this they can, they can lose their like jobs, not just their jobs because of the company.

But like the fans will turn on them if they're seen as dating anyone or anything like that. And how that

Simone Collins: is extremely low fertility. Like no, [00:33:00] where are the aspirational people in South Korea that are having kids like. The number one celebrities in South Korea are like perpetually young and single. Th this is not modeling anything that's gonna give people an aspiration of what married life could be like.

And, and that's crazy. I, I And so you have to, I think a really underrated element o of, of what's going on in South Korea and what they really should be looking at is. Hey, like what can we do in media to promote, to, to make families, not even something that's like desirable, but like literally something you can wrap your mind around.

Because I think a lot of people, it's just like the most obscure thing in the world. I mean, keep in mind that kids in higher fertility families, you know, they're, they're around babies all their lives. You know, they have younger siblings. They see this a lot. Maybe they're in a church community where they see a lot of babies, south Korean kids.

Or typically growing up only kids. I I imagine that most adults who are having children in South Korea [00:34:00] now, like all these parents who are having babies,

Malcolm Collins: yeah.

Simone Collins: This is their first time holding a baby. This is their first time, which might be their

Malcolm Collins: first time seeing a baby in like recent history for a lot.

I mean,

Simone Collins: yeah. That's, that's, that's the problem, right? And so like, if you don't have exposure through media or through some other program, that's a problem. And I am intrigued by what Russia is doing. 'cause Russia does actually have. Like literal active bands on media that it sees to be antinatalists. Yeah.

So like they're, they're actively really trying to shape I mean, it's too little to lead to them, you know, again, to the point of South Korea. For a sort of a, a different flavor of reasons, and we'll get into this in, in another episode, but. Yeah, I think it's just, it's underrated. I think the solution for every country is very different, but I, I really think that South Korea would benefit from a k-pop, shabel, oligarchy of like really desirable royals.

I mean, come on. Have you like watched the KDRs about like the royal families and the drama and like, if I love it, I love it, but they gotta, yeah, they gotta have all the kids. Like, [00:35:00] imagine if Google. And Amazon and Tesla were like royal families and like the executives were these really beautiful like brothers and sisters who were single and who had to marry someone at the company.

And you're like, not only like there would be all these like young men and women who not only are like doing the very best to be like the smartest, most high achieving, most professionally adequate person, but also like hoping, hoping to catch the attention. It's kind of like all those girls who were like super keen to go to St.

Andrews when Prince William was there like. I have a shot.

Malcolm Collins: I went, I went right after he was there. I, I wanted a shot. I, I mean, we all

Simone Collins: wanted, but wouldn't it be cool? I'm not, I'm

Malcolm Collins: not even like bisexual, and I would've been like. But it's a prince.

Simone Collins: But to be, yeah, I mean like if you have a shot at royalty, you gotta take it.

And imagine you an unfortunate accident

Malcolm Collins: before we consummate anything.

Simone Collins: It would be like, I imagine if Elon Musk's kids all worked at like SpaceX and like Tesla and like you had a shot. [00:36:00] You know, like if we knew like our kids had a shot at like marrying into like Tesla royalty. Oh my gosh. Like have you entered the Tesla family?

We're at Teslas now. We're a SpaceX family now.

Malcolm Collins: But the family's like, Elon wouldn't pass that down to his kids. Right? Like this isn't the way. No, and

Simone Collins: that's, that's why you have to create this whole new like conspiracy. You have to, you have to like, you have to have families audition into this to be like, I am,

Malcolm Collins: by the way, Simone, you're gonna love this, the New York Times.

Did this piece right here. You see this, this image here? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you saw this on the Zian?

Simone Collins: Yeah. I'm gonna talk about it. I, I also have a, an episode outlined on the rise of new secular religions. She wanted to

Malcolm Collins: save the world from ai. Then the killing started.

Simone Collins: I love that they don't, they don't mention that she has.

Wasn't always a she. Yeah, no,

Malcolm Collins: no. Mean New York Times wouldn't even think to question that this might be a male sex pest. No. But they, they have killed people, a number of [00:37:00] them in their quest for self aggrandize. Well, I

Simone Collins: think what makes ZZ an impressive cult leader is I don't believe that any of the murders are, are actually ZZZ murders.

I think that they are zzz follower led murders. From my understanding. So, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and the

Simone Collins: level of, it's like that's, that's mob boss level, right? Like, you know, all the murderers

Malcolm Collins: are like, somebody asked them to pay rent or something like that. Like, god

Simone Collins: forbid

Malcolm Collins: they're never about like their actual goals.

They're like,

Simone Collins: why won't you die so I can get my inheritance parents? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like they're very, how dare you

Simone Collins: stop me on the side of the road, immigration enforcement officer, like,

Malcolm Collins: I'll kill you for that. And they, they did, right? Like they, they're, they're very, but it was funny as they talk about all these grand goals and how uncompromising they are, and yet every murder they commit is about their own convenience.

Simone Collins: Yeah, we're, we're gonna get into it. I'm excited to talk about the rise of secular religions. We're gonna, we're gonna talk about that, and it's sort of, its role and fertility too. But yeah, I really, I I think that there, there are two [00:38:00] big takeaways I want people to have from this. I mean, in terms of like beyond the, okay, we, we don't really care that South Korea has a fertility bump because they still have serious problems.

The under underrated, under-discussed elements of fixing fertility are one Malcolm's concept of the dependency ratio cascade, where we need people to pay for the dependences in society.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, people have gotten, Jezebel got very mad at us. They're like, they let the cat out of the bag. That they, not all babies are the same now.

Someone on,

Simone Collins: someone on X was just criticizing us. That, that, that they imply that there are certain people who should, you know, there, there are certain people who are more desirable to be born than others, and we're like. No man, like we're just looking for someone to pay the tab. Like I don't, I mean like, is that nice?

I don't know how nice that is. That's kind of exploitative if you ask me, but. Whatever. I just don't want millions of people to die and suffer. Stop saying millions.

Malcolm Collins: It's

Simone Collins: hundreds of millions, hundreds of millions. Hundreds of millions. Hundreds of millions,

Malcolm Collins: not millions. Hundreds of millions.

Simone Collins: And then the other underrated factor here [00:39:00] is, is the role of of culture and status.

And if you do not make families. And, and this and this stuff like high status. And I agree that there's like a creepy way to do it. Like the China way where there's someone knocking on your door being like, Hey, your, where are you? Union cycle. When gonna have kids? You know, they're like being the creepy mother-in-law when you already have a creepy mother-in-law.

Like, you know, I mean more Yeah. You're in

Malcolm Collins: China,

Simone Collins: my gosh. Yeah. The government's just gonna make, it's like that's gonna backfire. But I really think that if there's just like aspirational royal family, like again, like if, if you could marry in,

Malcolm Collins: I don't buy this at all, this would not work. It's not scalable.

You could maybe force, you can say this is what is scalable saying, no one can be a K-pop idol unless they already have a kid. You are, you are not. It's

Simone Collins: Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: That is how you have to start. You've gotta have a kid. And then people would be like, oh,

Simone Collins: then two, then three. Like, you

Malcolm Collins: have to have three kids to be a K-Pop idol.

You gotta have four kids to be a K-pop idol. Then it becomes high status, right? [00:40:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah. Oh, and then, I mean, then you're gonna have all the south Korean beauty treatments for like postpartum. So then South Korea is gonna be the Yeah. And,

Malcolm Collins: and for your kids of course, as well. Mm-hmm. You gotta have them look like the most beautiful baby in the world.

That's,

Simone Collins: no, I just, I really want there to be like a South Korean shabel that just does like human body augmentation. 'cause they not only augmentation. Yeah, like, 'cause I mean, I feel like there are some cultures or like groups or families or whatevers that will do human body augmentation, but it's gonna be like.

That like mechanic is, you know, it's like, like this skull and it's like blah. And it looks weird, but like Koreans, it's just gonna be like these, like Elvin beautiful. Like they'll find some way to make your hair look weightless, even though you're in like earth's gravity, you know? Like it's just gonna be Of course, of course.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, in the ai, in the AI environments, we're gonna be in you know, our kids will be dating within virtual environments using avatars. I'm almost certain.

Simone Collins: But I mean, IRL still matters. And maybe Korean's a really good IRL

Malcolm Collins: maybe in Korea, probably not. [00:41:00] You look at, you look at Korean society and how quickly it's descended into the internet.

They're gonna be dating avatars.

Simone Collins: Oh, they still, they still judge. Your ability to either look gorgeous or pay to look gorgeous. So

Malcolm Collins: true. And, and current Korean society. But keep in mind, we've gotta create the next week.

Simone Collins: I don't want 'em to give that up. I like it. I, I like that. It's such a

Malcolm Collins: beautiful place.

Everyone's beautiful. I loved when

Simone Collins: you and I were like walking down the streets of, of Seoul and, and, and Gangnam and we're like. We are the ugliest people in this street. Like everyone here, everyone is

Malcolm Collins: beautiful. Yeah, you're so

Simone Collins: pretty. They're so pretty.

Malcolm Collins: Alright Simone, what are we doing for dinner tonight?

Simone Collins: So you're gonna do the reang with rice and I'm going to make pizzas for the kids. 'cause I think that slip and slide action they had today before the thunderstorm, we'll have worked up an appetite, assuming they haven't been fed copious amounts of junk food after that, which I'm,

Malcolm Collins: Cook up the the ang.

Very excited for that. Do you want me to saute

Simone Collins: it with extra garlic or anything else? We don't have any onions. We're gonna go

Malcolm Collins: to this. No, just cook it down. I wanna see how it tastes when it's cooked down a bit.

Simone Collins: [00:42:00] Okay. So just summer it, I'll, I'll simmer it for like,

Malcolm Collins: one fact I learned today. Which really shocked me, and I, I sent you a map of this.

I don't know if you saw this, but the summer camp that flooded. Oh God, you

Simone Collins: did. It was in a flood.

Malcolm Collins: It was in a dry river bed. It wasn't, it wasn't just in a flood pan, it was in a dried river bank, like literally built into Exactly in the center of a dry,

Simone Collins: they even appeared. I would not have thought to look at that as a parent, and now I'm gonna be looking at that as a parent.

Well, no, but what's crazy about it

Malcolm Collins: is, is they seem to even own the property that wasn't within the dried river bank. They just decided to build it. Well, come on. I'm sure

Simone Collins: it was prettiest within the, you know, dried river bank.

Malcolm Collins: Well, because, oh, I guess you get the views of the hills and everything, but mm-hmm.

The point being is if you've had a house that has been anywhere near a flood zone like ours, right? Like we see the water creep up, I would've immediately looked at this location and been like, are you guys effing insane? [00:43:00] And they had a, by the way, a 12 hour warning. I love that people are blaming this on Trump and Elon Musk and everything like that.

They had a 12 hour flood warning from the national services and everyone was like, Trump and Elon did this with their cuts. No. Who did this with the f*****g idiot counselors who didn't move the kids when they had a 12? Our house, every time you and I get a flood warning, and they are very rarely, 12 hours in advance, they're usually about six hours in advance.

Yeah. We. Move everything in our, in our house, we prepare to leave. We like, because I understand what flood warnings mean, right? Like you have to fundamentally be kind of retarded about flood warnings to get a 12 hour flood warning for something and say, I don't care. Like we're not gonna so, so there was that.

What disturbs

Simone Collins: me even more is on social media, there are all these like influencer stuff who are like, are giving links to fundraise for like the, the, the girls in the camp and I'm like. This money's just going to scam artists. Like it's not [00:44:00] gonna help the girls get found like they're being looked for now by everyone who can possibly look for them.

I don't know where this money going. Well, also

Malcolm Collins: 100% dead if, I'm sorry, if, if a, if a pre-teen girl disappeared in a flood,

Simone Collins: they're dead. Well, that there was that one woman who floated 20 miles and got into a tree. Like there are people who've survived for amazing periods of time. In these floods. So

Malcolm Collins: I don't, the, the, the missing girls are dead.

I don't understand how anyone cannot. They, they would've, they would've, they would've gone to the shore, then gone to somebody with a phone and then they would've called somebody. Right? Like they're not retarded. No. I mean, the

Simone Collins: woman who was found in the tree, like the tree was surrounded by flood waters's, like the, the floods are still there.

There was more rain. So they, they have to be found within the floodwater or within the floodplains. But,

Malcolm Collins: but if you just looking at the map of this, I'm like, this is not Trump or el. First of all, it it, they [00:45:00] had the warning that they needed. And second of all, I. Whoever built this camp here, you don't even build if you, if you are a camper, like a regular camper.

No,

Simone Collins: I, and I disagree with you. I think a lot of people build camps on floodplains because they're like, well, it's okay. Everything gets washed away in a flood. It's a temporary camp. And they just, it there, there's just. People aren't thinking seriously about it. They, I was caught

Malcolm Collins: not to build camps on flood plains, like do not build, and, and it's not floodplains, you're calling it floodplains.

It's a dried river bed that is very different from floodplains. Yeah. A dried river bed is where the water regularly flows whenever it gets high.

Simone Collins: It is notable that the camp, like had they not received any severe flooding in the past, but, and this

Malcolm Collins: is Texas as well, so I grew up in Texas and at my family's ranch we, I mean, I always remember my family, every time we'd walk by it, they'd be like, that's where the flood waters went.

And they'd point to like marks on trees and I showed you these marks on trees. I don't [00:46:00] know if you remember me saying like, you see that white mark way up there? That's great.

Simone Collins: You can even see them around where. I mean, where we live, like literally where we walk, you can see where flood waters went and it's high.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like this is something that should have been ever present for everyone in this situation. And people can be like, how dare you say, it's their fault. I am sorry. I wouldn't build a temporary camp in a, in a dried river bed. Well, so what, what is

Simone Collins: advice that parents can take home from this to just if they're like devastated by this and,

Malcolm Collins: well, I mean, if I was a I, if I was a parent, I was like, I wanna be safe with my kids.

When you send your kids to camps or something like that, like conduct a basic sanity check of TA safety, like are and is it every building in the camp was built within this floodplain? Like I, I, I honestly don't, would honestly

Simone Collins: ask yourself like, until we knew about this, would you be checking camps that we'd send our kids to for floodplains?

Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, given that every couple years our house has flood waters come up around it and [00:47:00] we've had to deal with the consequences. You and I are acutely aware of floods in a way that other people may not be, you know, and I think that some people don't realize if you're near a lake or a river or a stream, or if you're buying a home near a lake, river or stream, you need to pay attention to this.

Simone Collins: Oh, . Octavian is probably trying to get into the house now, so I love you. I love you too. All of our kids, and I'm really sorry for the families.

Malcolm Collins: Did you learn anything interesting today?

Simone Collins: Yeah, I was listening to a really interesting podcast called Decoder Ring no, no, no, sorry, called articles of interest about school uniforms and Catholic school uniforms and like kind of how they came together and.

You know how they came to be and I, I love stuff like that. I'm a sucker for clothing history.

Malcolm Collins: It's, it's so funny that so many items of Catholic religious significance or that came out of Catholic communities. Mm-hmm. I think when people hear them within our modern [00:48:00] culture, the first thing they think is.

Oh, that's a sex thing when I hear, yeah. Hear the

Simone Collins: Catholic school girl, school girl uniform. Yeah. When I

Malcolm Collins: hear Catholic school girl uniform, I'm like, oh, it's a weird sex thing. Right. Or, you know, when I, when I see one of those flags or whatever when I, you know, see nun outfit.

Simone Collins: Yeah. No, but what's, what's interesting actually is so the reason why the, those plaid skirts specifically sort of became normalized in Catholic schools, only after you saw the rise of parochial Catholic schools, which were in response to the provision of public schools also developing a reputation for being more unruly.

So this led to this rise, especially when they stopped prayer in schools of people flocking to parochial Catholic schools, which cost a little bit, but were still affordable. Because before that, Catholic school was really more for like people who were quite wealthy. I. And then it was seen that like people were better behaved in Catholic school.

But the reason why plaid skirts sort of became the defacto thing [00:49:00] was because it was, there were a lot of Irish Catholics and, and it's thought that the plaid probably was influenced by that. But the earlier Catholic school goer uniforms actually looked a lot more like, kinda like my clothing, like which dresses like a long black skirt and long black sleeves.

Kind of like a sort of nun in training uniform. But made with really nice fabrics because, you know, this was for wealthy young women. And often the, you know, these not parochial schools, but what came before for Catholic schools were. Convent schools, like basically schools out of convents. And the uniforms are very different in that way, but what even predated, those were uniforms for other Catholic institutions like asylums or like orphanages where the uniforms were more helpful.

And one you just kind of had this population of people who needed to be clothed. But also it was helpful to identify runaways see this, this kind of connection between school uniforms and like fascinating imprisonment. But what's also interesting is, is [00:50:00] several people in this podcast were interviewed who'd grown up like, who both had very distinctive styles but had also grown up in Catholic schools, one in Nepalese Catholic schools, the other one in American Catholic schools.

And they hated and rebelled against the uniforms, but also really appreciated having the uniforms because the uniforms enabled them by their very restrictiveness to develop a distinctive sense of their personal style. And I really see that like with our kids, right? Our kids wear uniforms, but they have extremely distinctive personal style.

And I think when you grow up sort of wearing anything, especially in this age of like disposable clothing, and it's just so much choice, you kind of, you end up thinking that you're expressing yourself when you're really just expressing like. The whims of consumerism. Well, and

Malcolm Collins: we've seen this within youth culture duress recently becoming so unattractive.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And really a lack of ownership of, of attempting to present a unified style anymore.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And I, I think that when our kids do start, you know, when they, when they do deviate [00:51:00] from the family uniform, it's gonna be in much more interesting ways and very intentional. Instead of just being like, I'm just gonna, like, people don't think about it and then they think that they're being unique when they're really being basic b*****s or whatever the male equivalent of that is.

So that's interesting. The other thing that I was listening to just now was a decoder Ring podcast about the Boston Cinematic Universe. How like there are all these movies where Boston is almost a main character, you know, and it's like Boston culture and these Boston accents and Boston people. Really?

Yeah. And like why is that the case? And, and it was pointed out near the beginning of the podcast, which I haven't finished, that, you know, there are many cities that have bigger populations than Boston like. I think San San Antonio was an example they gave. Mm-hmm. San Jose. And I realized, yeah, there are all these cities in the United States that have very big populations, but

Malcolm Collins: no cultural cache.

They're not, I mean, it makes a lot of sense if you think about it for a few seconds. The, the main reason is because Harvard and MIT and yeah. And are [00:52:00] in Boston, and that means a lot of elites have lived in Boston for a period of their life. Yes. Which means that it gets disproportionately featured in media the same way anywhere where there's not a lot of elites coming out of those other cities I can't even remember

Simone Collins: anymore.

Malcolm Collins: So they're not particularly relevant from the position of the type of people who write movies or TV shows. Well, there's also a lot of

Simone Collins: narrative richness when you, when you contrast the Elites of Boston, which is definitely a theme that they pointed to in the podcast with the lower classes in Boston specifically like the, the Irish Catholics of Boston.

Malcolm Collins: You would find that in these other cities as well. The difference is, and and you could say, oh, well then you don't get the narrative. But if you look at TV historically mm-hmm. Like older movies and shows. They actually showed these other cities much more in places like Boston, much less I mean consider like Dallas, right?

Like the famous show and stuff like that. Like this was really common back then and it contrasted the elite [00:53:00] culture and the non-elite culture. And this was normalized. Yeah. But with the consolidation of Harvard and elite universities as a class status authentication mechanism mm-hmm. Particularly within the media industry as the urban monoculture consolidated within that industry.

Mm-hmm. It became very rare. Keep in mind, if you are writing movies at a movie studio today, I would bet like a good like 25% of your friend group spent a portion of their lives in Boston.

Simone Collins: Interesting.

Malcolm Collins: And so it may seem like a small city to you, but from the perspective of people who are writing stuff, it is not a small city.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. So like the rise of credentialism. Mm-hmm. Could be, yeah. Plus also there's like. Is there a San Antonio? Like are there the same amounts of stereotypes? It seems some cities are really good at developing stereotypes and others aren't

Malcolm Collins: there. There absolutely are. Think about cities that you are San Jose, you don't know much about that [00:54:00] city, but you have lived in other cities like Dallas and you would say, does Dallas have as many stereotypes about people from it as Boston has about it?

Yeah. It's not Dallas,

Simone Collins: maybe Fort Worth. Dallas has become,

Malcolm Collins: if you're familiar, hold on. You, you, you remember the idea of the the a hundred k, what is it, millionaire of a 40 K millionaire. 40 K millionaire. And this idea of, that's, that's like a whole structure of a way of living that's built out of that which is as built up as any Boston night social structure or way of living, but

Simone Collins: maybe not as universally recognized in people.

Yeah, but

Malcolm Collins: that's the point. Why is it not as universally recognized? 'cause it's not generating people who have control over major studio. That's, that's, and it used to, you know, like Tex Avery, as we pointed out, like a lot of the old cartoons came out of like Dallas and stuff like that. But again, with Credentialism, people like that who grew up in, in Texas just couldn't get jobs in the way that you used to within the media industry.

Could be, and

Simone Collins: it was pointed out in this [00:55:00] podcast Decoder Rink, by the way, totally recommend it. That this was a, a, a novel thing, relatively speaking, like Goodwill Hunting was probably one of the first to really make this more of a thing, like just Ben Affleck stuff. But, and, and Matt Damon stuff.

But before that, Boston would show up in movies, but like no accent, no mannerisms, like no nod to Bostonian culture. So I, yeah, maybe, maybe that's a factor. I have to finish listening to the episode. Yeah. I thought that was interesting.

Malcolm Collins: All right.

​

Speaker 6: Stinky.

Speaker 5: Oh, you're so fun.

Speaker 6: Yeah,

Speaker 5: I think so.

Speaker 6: No.

Speaker 5: Can you tell me why you're dressed like an elf? What el do

Speaker 7: [00:56:00] that,

Speaker 5: did they help the future police? Yeah.

Speaker 8: Bye.

Are you shocking me with your fun?

Speaker 10: What's up buddy?

Speaker 9: Oh,

Speaker 10: look at this.

In this episode, we dive into the economic impacts of belief in witchcraft across various African societies. We examine multiple academic studies and articles highlighting how these beliefs permeate even educated and affluent demographics, influencing everything from entrepreneurship and governance to public health. Through the lens of these studies, we explore how such beliefs contribute to external locus of control and discourage rational problem-solving methods essential for economic development. The discussion spans across different African countries, revealing the deep-seated cultural contexts that impact societal progress and governance.

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. Today we are gonna be talking about a spicy topic. Oh no. Which is how belief in witches economically holds back Africa.

And we will be going over a, a number of articles on this. One is a great por piece, which is. How belief in which it holds Africa back or something like that. Oh, we'll get to in a second. Okay. Actually, I'll start with a quote from it because people might be hearing this and I think the way their brain is translating it is poor, uneducated people in Africa believe in which is, and these people are arguing somehow this affects everyone.

That is not what we are arguing here. Okay. So to quote from the article one might assume that formal education would provide a safeguard against magical thinking. However, research suggests that schooling alone is not sufficient. In a 2014 study, Henry Ryman and colleagues compared cognitive ability in epistemic rationality in Nigeria.

And Germany, they found belief in supernatural forces was prevalent. Even among the educated Nigerians. Surveys of African University students have reached similar findings In a sample of Nigerian students, many argued that western countries were more technologically advanced because they possessed magical powers that they refused to share was Africans, now I should note here, this came from a study called Witchcraft in African Development, Eric Cher. And it was published in 2014. So this is an academic study that goes and asks Nigerian college students, why are western countries wealthier? And their answer is, they have magic. They haven't shared with us that, that this is college students.

Nigeria. That's pretty wild. I wanna, I wanna clarify that the, the Afro Barometer survey shows that in some countries, educated people are more likely to believe in witchcraft, not less. These results underline that. The education system. So, so if you, this comes from a study called Power Politics in the Supernatural, exploring the role of witchcraft beliefs.

In gover for Government's development by Joanna Selfie Elson, Dan Bke and Bob Face. And specifically in Malawi populations, they found 74% of the population believed that witchcraft is an integral part of daily life. And educated residents were more likely to be inclined towards disbelief than less educated residents.

Simone Collins: More educated is more like, that's so interesting. And actually,

Malcolm Collins: same with social status, more social status, but more belief in witches. Less social status rush belief in witches.

Simone Collins: That is completely the opposite of what I would think. How is this happening?

Malcolm Collins: Well, what you are mis receiving is what is associated with social status and what is associated with education.

And this is what the West fundamentally doesn't understand. They think if you go and you learn what they tell you in. Education, you know, more of what's true, not just more of the mindset of the dominant culture within that region.

Oh, and what's actually

happening is when they are educated and they are not the country bumpkin.

You, you haven't even heard of witches. Let me explain to you the complicated nature of witchcraft.

Simone Collins: You know, well, I mean, well, yeah. I mean, to your point, the. Universities of the United States start broadly speaking, where the urban monoculture reaches anyone who thus far had only gone to Catholic school or a religious school or homeschool or whatever.

And, and

Malcolm Collins: yeah. And I wanna be clear that I don't think that this is true of all African cultures and communities, but that it is true of any African cultures and communities is telling and, and, and, and could mean a lot in terms of the de the development of, economic systems within these regions and we'll get to how it ends up.

And, and what I mean by this, by brainwashing, there's actually a great Atlantic piece we have to do a, a piece on that's titled Get This, the Liberal Misinformation Bubble about use Gender Medicine, how the left ended up disbelieving the Science.

Simone Collins: Interesting. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Atlantic. Wow. And, and, and specifically what the piece is on is the belief that you know, it increases a kid's li risk of taking their life if they don't go through gender transition.

And they point out here that actually the the SU Supreme Court case on this unveiled that that is just completely was out. Any evidence at all. All of the evidence for this is apparently fabricated when, or not fabricated, but it just doesn't hold up to the counter evidence that this isn't the case.

And this is what's admitted in, in court. But what I mean there is that is a religious belief. Which is spouted by people who have been indoctrinated within the university system or centers of power within our own society. So, you know, who are we to laugh at? You know, Africans who are believing in witchcraft when we believe that, you know, kids are less if you, if you, if you surgically mutilate a child and put them on puberty blockers, that they will be less likely to take their life, right?

That's something that anyone should be like, that doesn't sound true to me at all. But apparently, and, and I would put this in the context of you know, gendered non-content use the 2023 study that showed that of 13 year olds who are not content with their birth gender more than nine of 10 of them by the age of 23, are completely content with it.

So, you know, we know that, you know, at this stage, that is a phase from the evidence. Mm-hmm. You know. To keep going was the witch thing. 'cause let's talk about witches here. Arrests and evidence here. Now this I found really fascinating to learn about in mid 2024 Zambian Police. So this is mid 20, 24, December 20th, actually 2024.

So I guess late. In mid-December 2024, Zambian police arrested Justin Matis, Knabe 42 and Leonard Re 43 Zambian Village Chief at a lusca hotel room. Authority seized ritual items, a live chameleon sealed in a bottle, white powder, red cloth animal tail, along with multiple containers of traditional medicine.

They were charged with practicing witchcraft. They were hired by Nelson Banda, the brother of Fugitive, former MP Emmanuel JJ Banda, who escaped custody. They were trying to hex the president. Okay. They agreed sorry, the payment varied in reports, but they were paid at $7,400, around 43 million Zambian Kawa.

Wow. Although other testimonies suggested they could have been paid over a million dollars to cast these taxes. So, you know, high, high. Wealthy people, you know, brothers of mainstream politicians are hiring expert witches to cast things on other politicians, and we're talking well, and

Simone Collins: also it's illegal, whereas I don't think witchcraft is illegal in the us.

I. Because, or at least in most US states, because I think most US states don't think witchcraft is a thing. I mean, the very fact that they were arrested for it means that there is some understanding that, one, it's real, and two, it's dangerous.

Malcolm Collins: Well, if you're looking at Zambians, 79% of Zambians reportedly believe in this.

Oh, wow. So you're, it's interesting

Simone Collins: that it's also illegal, so they believe in it.

Malcolm Collins: They don't like it. They think witches are evil. You know, they, I, I, I point is it

Simone Collins: though, I mean, when you and I were in Johannesburg and we went to that traditional market witch stuff, they think that there's

Malcolm Collins: like a type of dark witch that's evil, but then there's like a regular, oh, also like the dark

Simone Collins: ma magic is probably legal.

And then the. Like sympathetic magic and like healing magic is fine. Magic.

Malcolm Collins: And, and I will note that I, I, I talk about all of this with a lot of consternation 'cause this is their culture and their religion and, you know, they have a right to this. But we will talk about how these cultural beliefs as we go further into this.

Prevent effective entrepreneurship within these countries. And, and that this is very damaging to them. Mm-hmm. And it's also, you know, if you're talking about 79%, 79% of Americans don't believe in God, I would guess, you know, like this is, this is, this shows how permeated these societies all are.

Yeah. It's, it's

Simone Collins: a lot of faith in a world that is becoming increasingly faithless. So we'll talk about that in, I have outlined a rel an episode on rising new secular religions. But yeah, it's a lot though, like that's there. There's something powerful here if that many people believe in something that is not backed up by science or physics.

Malcolm Collins: The Zambian traditional healer, Dr. Vogel, based in a wealthy suburb of Lusca, admitted to serving mostly middle and upper class clients, especially women seeking protection from spiritual harm. Wow. So what's interesting here is who is buying this? It is the African version of the American crystal lady.

Yeah. Well, crystal

Simone Collins: lady or person who pays for psychics or zodiac stuff, or which are often upper middle class women. Yeah. No, it's, it's white women buying from goop, but go on. Well,

Malcolm Collins: is that not goop? Is this not the goop, but the, the, the, the point I'm making here is again, you, you, you, you see heavily upper middle class saying, and if you're like, again, how could this hurt an economy?

Even think about what I've said so far that Nigerian students and, you know, would believe that the West was wealthier because they had magic. They weren't sharing. Well, yeah, and

Simone Collins: that's, that's an external locus of control and there there's a few external

Malcolm Collins: lo it makes it incredibly hard to economic to think about how you can economically develop your own country if you misattribute why your country's in an economically challenging position.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and especially if it's someone else's fault and out of your control, what are you gonna do?

Malcolm Collins: Well, it's not just, what are you gonna do, it's. What you would do. Okay? I want my country to be stronger. I need to find out the magic that they have that we don't have. All right? So even if you decide to take action, it's really not gonna work out for you.

It's not gonna work out for you, right? Yes. Yeah. Before we get to the core piece, let's keep going through some other examples here. Okay? In April, 2025, CBS and a FP and amnesty reported on hundreds of mostly older or disabled Ghanaian women who have been physically attacked, sometimes burned or stoned after being accused of witchcraft.

Keep in mind, this was in 2025.

Whoa, many

vanished to witch camps as the only means of survival. Witch camps, even though gone is. Yes. And this is even though Ghana's Barla passed a bill in 2023 making witchcraft accusations illegal. It hasn't been enacted yet, so daily abuse continues. Okay, hold

Simone Collins: on. Do you know anything like, is, is a witch camp a safe space for witches or is this like a concentration camp for people who've been accused of witchcraft?

Malcolm Collins: Let's talk about one ga bagga located in Ghana's Northeast region now houses around a hundred banished women in about 25 huts. So keep in mind how many women that is for per hut. A Yik. A lot. Yikes.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Not, not great. Many

Malcolm Collins: are widows, longtime residents of towns and cities, often known in urban areas.

They include educated women suffering Alzheimer's or dementia, whose medical symptoms are misinterpreted by families and neighbors as witchcraft. Oh, so this is almost like

Simone Collins: vulnerable women. This is not good. It's so

Malcolm Collins: sad, right? Like old ladies who get Alzheimer's and then are sent to like, concentrate, but it's, they.

Culture's version of like, it, it an asylum almost combined with like actual you know, dangerous individuals or whatever, right? Yeah. You know, this really sad situation that we're seeing here in 2024, the Guardian highlighted that many people with dementia across Nigeria. So keep in mind this isn't just.

There are branded as witches across Nigeria. People living with dementia are often accused of witchcraft symptoms such as forgetting basic details and changes in behavior are seen as evidence of evil. People have been set on Firestone, beaten to death or buried. Buried alive. Oh, often they target the elderly.

Urban or educated individuals who erratic behavior or memory loss was blamed on evil curses. That is really sad. Although the most documented cases occur in rural areas, witch hunts in Molly often involve educated villagers. A notable case described a married couple accused of causing illness via witchcraft, promoting villagers to call in a witch finder.

Although they lived in a mixed community, modern education and income did little to shield them from the collective and subsequent panic. So now we're gonna go into a Forbes article titled we're just gonna do a short excerpt from it. Magic Spells and Money. A local television station in Kenya recently ran a series on witch doctors at a witch doctor shrine on the outskirts of Nairobi.

Expensive cars drove in and out. Politicians were looking to bewi their electorate. And contractors were looking for charms to win huge tenders All over Africa, people battle remotely by using charms. The affluent worried about losing their wealth or seeking to suppress rivals will pay a fortune for protection from their enemies to improve their luck.

This which doctor was clearly not the kind found in villages who paid in animals and food. So it's little wonder that he owns a huge compound in an area that the middle class would need some magic to afford. Politicians are some of the biggest consumers of black magic. Some pay $10,000 per visit with elections on the horizon in a good number of African countries, magicians in which doctors are looking forward to even bigger boom in their business.

At Kenya's latest polls, presidential contenders were rumored to fly out to visit the most potent witch doctors south of the country. A few research survey conducted in 2010 showed that a quarter of Kenyans believe in witchcraft. Despite being deeply religious, Kenya is ranked as the 11 most religious nation in Africa and sixteenths in the world.

78% of Kenyans are Christian and 10% are Muslim. Close to nine out of 10 people stated that religion played an important role in their lives. But most of them forget the Bible or the Koran. Soon after worship and seek Sol Enshrines and Witch Doctor Dens. According to the report, a quarter of Kenyan's, Bo Christian and Muslim confessed that they believe in the protective power of Juju charms and alet and that they consult traditional healers.

Simone Collins: This reminds me, I mean, it doesn't surprise me that you can both be Christian or Muslim and then also believe in these things because it was such a thing. That I saw in Japan like. You could have these two belief systems like Shinto and Buddhism live right next to each other. And it's like, well, okay, of course, like if you have a baby or it's this holiday of the year, you go to your Shinto shrine.

If someone dies, you go to the Buddhist temple. Like there were just, there was a time and a place, it was very context based and people, I mean they're very familiar with switching their everything about their identities based on their context, whether they're at work or home or with a. A friend versus their kids.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that what we're seeing here, and we'll get into this more, but it's this ability to externalize failures to supernatural forces or externalize wind to supernatural forces that makes it harder for a region to economically develop. And the more normalize this is, the more difficulty you're going to have in.

Now, I'm not saying this is the only reason, Africa has a lot of reasons having trouble with economic development, but I'm saying this is a contributory reason that people just don't talk about because it.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, I mean, I think the important thing too, yeah, we're not critiquing them for believing in witchcraft.

We're critiquing them for having an external locus of control. I don't care if you believe in it, if like for some reason it, it helps you take personal responsibility for things in a way that's connected with reality. I. Meaning you can actually solve problems. But this is not that.

Malcolm Collins: But I'd argue we even see this in the West, if you look Oh, yeah.

At, you know, Catholic countries, which are more likely to have, you know, healing shrines. They're more likely to have saint worship. They're more likely to have a lot of the sort of Christian magic, I guess I'd call it. Oh.

They are dramatically less economically developed than the Protestant countries that strictly banned a lot of this stuff a long time ago.

Mm-hmm. Even, even in environments where they probably should be much more economically developed. And I think that this is probably the core or one of the core reasons why Catholicism leads to such slow economic development is because of the tendency. And the of, of the Catholic church to incorporate local mystical traditions and shrines and stuff like that.

Yeah,

Simone Collins: it's, it's the mysticism,

Malcolm Collins: and I note here that this is actually way more of a problem for Catholic communities in Catholic majority countries than it is in historically Catholic countries, than it is for Catholic communities in the United States. Like if I engage with Catholics in the United States, I, I don't see them going to like healing shrines or, you know, yeah.

They're,

Simone Collins: they're not praying to statues of saints.

Malcolm Collins: But if I go to Catholic communities in, say Mexico or Latin America this is something you'll see very frequent. Oh, this, this is where you go to put this on you to heal you. No, yeah.

Simone Collins: You can't walk down the street without passing a Catholic state statue that people are actively praying in front of.

If you're riding in an Uber or a taxi, you know, half the time you're going to see. The driver crossed themself at every stoplight. Like Yeah, it's, it's, it's deep there.

Malcolm Collins: And so I'm, I'm saying this isn't me picking on Africa, it's just that in Africa, these beliefs are more developed. Mm. And it, and, and it leads to the, the negative externalities that are associated with these beliefs.

But more on that in a second. Okay. We're gonna go to another P piece here. And this is why an aid worker who was very surprised what he found when he went to Africa. In a piece he titled Malice and Mally, a Case Study in Modern Witchcraft Accusations. And I'm just jumping around this piece, so we're only gonna get a short segment in front.

I asked how common the attacks were here in Cara witchcraft. Accusation cases are rampant. Magar told me maybe every day you see these conflicts where someone is accused of witchcraft. He said it is very common, especially in the Cara and ship tug districts in Mauis northern region. I was shocked. I'd expected maybe a case every month or two, though outright violence against police officers is rarer than witchcraft.

Accusations, there is both a latent and explicit hostility towards police. Many accused witch cases remain unreported, and when police are summoned, often the villagers don't trust or don't understand why. They see it as an internal dispute that should be handled within the village, and they often will attack police believing that they're cited with witches.

The social dynamics of witchcraft accusations are complex and much more so in the context of rural Mellon society and tribal alliances. When I asked why the village chief had been unable to protect the accused witches. Wonderful. Explained another nuance. Chiefs do have some power and authority in rural villages, but their position is tenuous and fraught.

They risk losing status if they are perceived as protected. Witches too much like police officers, they much walk a fine line. A village chief who consistently and strongly condemns mob justice against acute riches, runs the real risk of being replaced by another chief who has no such qualms about similar justice in this case and in many others.

The chief navigates this by appealing to the law, insisting it's a criminal matter. In seeking police intervention, there is an office that is supposed to handle these sorts of issues. The District Peace committee, but wonderful was not optimistic. Like the police, they're often understaffed and underfunded.

The situation is complicated by the fluid and sometimes interchangeable roles of healers in witch finders in Africa. After all the afflicted or neighbors believe. Then a given injury or illness is magical. Instead of biological and origin, they will seek a. A remedy in imagining evil witchcraft, beliefs and accusations in contemporary Africa.

Catholic priest, Hugo Fer notes that neighboring Zambia in the northern provinces. Most districts are regularly visited by sh NGAs, healers and herbalists through professional organizations. They have certificates that indicates the cures in which they are known and specialized. A good number of them are inclined to go beyond the well-defined limits of their profession.

It appeared that 60% of the herbalists. We're prepared to exceed the limits of their professional competence due to pressures from their client who not only asks them to diagnose and heal, but also to indicate through divination who had caused the particular disease ailment.

Simone Collins: Oh no. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: this led to the wish hunting.

So this is 60% when they go in the herbalist or like, okay, and this is who you should hurt for this illness. You have, oh

Simone Collins: gosh. This is so similar. I've, I've been listening to some podcasts. The, I've been listening to the Texty podcast which goes over some old texts and she, she does a couple of podcast episodes on like, which trial?

Texts like court court records, and it's so similar to like the Gorny Witch witch trials and other witch trial texts. Yeah. You know, it's like, well, this person got me sick. This person caused me to miscarriage, me miscarry. This person caused my horse to die. And it's so interesting how this appears to be.

A very instinctual human reaction. If something bad happens to you,

Malcolm Collins: whose fault is it? Yeah. Who

Simone Collins: did it? Yeah. Like, well, clearly my neighbor, like there were there instances in these records where like, this woman, you know, like had had a conflict with this neighbor a long time ago, and then the neighbor's horse died and the neighbor's like.

I knew it was her.

Malcolm Collins: So, Simone I'm gonna, I'm gonna do you a favor here. You can take out your headphones for a second and I'll let you know when you can put them back in. Thank

Simone Collins: you. You just wave your hand at me. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So now we're gonna talk about spirit children in Ghana and traditional beliefs in northern Ghana. See the disabled or chronically ill infants as spirit children, CHIO or Cano who are born to bring misfortune, villagers sometimes kill or attempt to exercise these babies rituals seen as necessary to protect the family.

And you might be like, how rare is this? Well, despite Ghana criminalizing the practice in 2013 such practices have been linked to, infant deaths at the rate of 22 to 27%, and this is from Wikipedia.

Simone Collins: Whatever you shielded me from, I'm assuming it was young people getting hurt. I am.

Malcolm Collins: Yep. So we're, we're not gonna talk about

Simone Collins: that. Nope. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Shocking rates there though. So now we're gonna go into the main piece, which I found so interesting and brought me to this, which is the por piece, how belief in which Crest holds the Africa back.

But I wanted to start you as a framing so you understand this isn't some crazy racist or something like that. Right. This is, this

Simone Collins: is pervasive and it, I mean, it's, especially because it's even something that you and I saw in the township. Yeah. When I was in Africa, I

Malcolm Collins: remember flyers for like, which, which doctors you could hire and stuff like that.

Like on the streets.

Simone Collins: Yeah. 'cause I otherwise would, I really wouldn't have believed it. So we've also seen it in person. But yeah, these, these ample examples also demonstrate that this is hardly isolated, which is Well, and our God. And what you, you're revealing to me, which is really surprising, is how pervasive this is, at least in some countries among educated groups, which totally shocks me.

Malcolm Collins: And, and our guide, I remember he was telling us a story that had happened not long ago in the region, so it was like really vivid for him of some people who got in a shootout with police and were like very aggressive with stealing from the local area. And it was because a witch had told them he had made them invulnerable to bullets.

Yes. And then he. Had not of course. And this did not turn out well for them. And, and again with this, I'm always reminded of the traditionalist Christians where I'm like, your kids are at serious risk of the urban monoculture, deconvert them and turning them against you. And they're like, no, no, no.

Don't worry. I have practiced Christianity in the way my ancestors did, and I taught my kids the way my grandparents did, and so they're safe. And I'm like. They are not safe. Nope. You, you are dealing with guns and you are using witchcraft. You need to build stronger methods because your kids will be castrated and let off in triumphs.

I guarantee it if you go, if you send them with this magical armor on. So that, I think that's always important for all of us to be aware of, is to not coat our own children in the magical armor. Of our ancestors, or they will get in a shootout with police believing they're in vulnerable to bullets. But anyway, to continue here, one of the most significant ways belief in witchcraft hinders development is by discouraging entrepreneurship and wealth creation.

In many African societies, individuals fear that economic success will bring trouble.

As those who accumulate wealth are often accused of using witchcraft to prosper at the expense of their peers. Unsurprisingly, this fosters an environment where capable individuals deliberately a, a shoe success as to evade accusations of sorcery. And here they are citing a study relationship between social status and witchcraft in Africa by Christopher or Guha or something.

Simone Collins: Oh my

Malcolm Collins: indeed. A study of rural tiv communities in Niger by Nur Samba and Dao Uba confirmed the fear of the supernatural retribution discourages individuals from engaging in business. It also found that wealthy individuals sometimes go to great links to conceal their financial status. The better to avoid being labeled as witches.

Mm-hmm. This has serious consequences when people refrain from entrepreneurship at a. Fear societies are deprived of opportunity for development. So again, you see this isn't just me saying, oh, they have these backwards beliefs and this is hurting, and this is documented by African peer reviewed publications.

William Darley and Charles Blankson also found evidence that superstitious beliefs suppress productivity, productive behavior in Africa. Many aspiring business owners actually worry that envious individuals would use witchcraft to destroy their ventures. Such worries act as a psychological barrier, discouraging risk taking and innovation.

The entrepreneurial spirit is replaced by fatalism, leaving economic potential untapped. And so this is a piece titled Sub-Saharan African Cultural Belief Systems and Entrepreneurial Activities. Again, in Perspective, that came out in 2020. Again, this is not somebody's perspective. These are a bunch of African researchers who are writing this.

What's more, people are less likely to be held accountable under these conditions because failures can be blamed on external vices. The fear of witchcraft can be so powerful that entrepreneurs. Choose not to expand their business, hoping to sort the plans of suspected witches. A study in Cameroon documented that entrepreneurs not only reject managerial solutions to business challenges, but frequently attribute those challenges to supernatural fores, including ancestral spirits and witchcraft.

And this study was another determinant of entrepreneurship, the belief in witchcraft and entrepreneurship. To continue even the financial sector is not immune to the influence of superstition. Ene Sen has documented that some Nigerians engage in ritual deface of currency notes, believing it will ward off evil powers.

The problem is so egregious that it accounts for practically all of the deface of nara. Others avoid using bank services altogether because they suspect that their money will be manipulated through supernatural needs. It is not only costly for the central bank to replace disfigured notes, irrational behavior undermines the functioning of a modern financial institution.

In sty mean's integration with the global economy. Witchcraft beliefs also distort governance by reinforcing authoritarian leadership. In many African countries, political figures exploit these beliefs to consolidate power, silence, opposition, and maintain social control.

In a recent study, Johanna Addison and colleagues examined how leaders use narratives surrounding witchcraft to justify their rule. Leaders of enclave supernatural. Protection or accuse rivals of engaging in sorcery instead of evidence-based policymaking, they rely on mysticism, mysticism to legitimize their authority.

Mm-hmm. South Africa's former president, Jacob Zuma, was known for exploiting the deep-seated reverence for ancestor worship to manipulate Vs into supporting his policies. And this was cited a piece here. Zuma vote A and C are faced ancestral west. Wrath. And then the study that was talked about here was power politics in the supernatural, exploring the world of witchcraft, believed in government for development.

Superstition is particularly visible in electoral politics where supernatural interventions are frequently invoked. For political outcomes. When a politician loses an election, it is not uncommon for their supporters to blame the loss on witchcraft rather than ineffective campaigning or voter dissatisfaction.

This erodes trust in the democratic process and elevates conspiracy theories over rational judgment. And, and talk about the level of like externalizing you get from this when political losses are blamed on wishes.

A belief in witchcraft also fosters corruption in government. Public officials who believe in supernatural forces may prioritize rituals and magic over accountability and transparency. Some even divert state resources to traditional healers or spiritualists, rather than investing in infrastructure or social programs at the local level, accusations of witchcraft are a major source of violence.

And here it is linking to a study by Suffolk University Law, the problem of witchcraft and violence in Africa. And the victims are usually women, young children or marginalized members of the community. An individual accused of witchcraft may be ostracized, attacked, or even brutally killed. Such acts obviously erode trust and weakened social bonds, making it difficult for people to cooperate and build a civil society.

And again, if you, if, if nothing's ever anyone's fault, if a politician can lose and it's witches or a politician can win and it's witches, it's hard to attempt to learn from things. Yeah, so same with like entrepreneurship. If. Who's successful. It's not like I need to look at who's successful so that I can study what they did that made them successful.

It's, oh, I look at who's successful, but they got there because of witches. Therefore, nothing that they did is particularly useful to learn to copy from. Yeah. Or their

Simone Collins: lesson was, I just didn't spend enough money at the, like with the magician or, or which doctor or whatever. It's that I, you know, like my, my, my opponent spent more so his spells were better.

Like I, I mean, I think even if you use magic. I guess the assumption is that the other side had better magic and then you just don't, again, you don't learn anything. I don't know if our own elections are, I mean, I guess you can. I. But I mean, I, I think often our own elections are pretty poorly analyzed as well, because they're like, well, the other side just raised more money and did more ad spend.

But I don't know how effective

Malcolm Collins: No. Look at Democrats right now, like even as corrupt and bad as the party is, and as dumb as they are, they realize they need to learn to win the mail vote. Right? Like, they're like, how do we get young men to vote? Democrat? Let's, yeah, they've

Simone Collins: admit that they've lost. The mail vote.

Yeah. But

Malcolm Collins: fortunately they give it to their version of witches, which is like statisticians and analysts. They give them $20 million and they come back and say, we need more boots on the ball kicking machine. I love their Freedom Tomb skit on this particular topic.

Speaker 2: All right, so let me go through some of our positions and you stop me where you feel uncomfortable. A higher minimum wage healthcare reform.

The ball kicking machine, right? Social safety nets. Wait, could you repeat that last one? Sure. Uh, social safety nets before that. Hmm. Oh, the ball kicking machine. I don't like the ball kicking machine. Not a fan either. Yeah. I don't like that at all. Oh, the machine we want in your house to kick your balls all the time.

Yes. No, that can't be it.

Okay, so what does our $20 million study show?

Speaker: The machine needs more boats.

Malcolm Collins: That is that, that the, the, the, the, I can't believe that they built a commission to try to find out why young men aren't voting for them, and they put a woman in charge of it and it's like.

Could that be, why could that be, why could that have anything to do with it if your systemic discrimination against men? But anyway,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The harmful impact of witchcraft, of belief extends beyond business and government to the domain of public health. Misconceptions about the causes of different diseases and how to treat them are widespread in Africa.

This is particularly true when it comes to HIV slash aids. Ammar l Kasari and Amir Bava studied alese people's beliefs about HIV. Revealing that many women believe the in affliction is caused by witchcraft as opposed to sexual intercourse with an infected person.

As a consequence, such women do not take protective measures like using condoms or getting tested and the disease continues to spread and this can be very damaging economically to have these sorts of diseases spread within a region. In a similar study, Eric Te in colleagues examined how superstition impedes HIV prevention efforts in Ghana.

Owing to entrenched beliefs that infectious diseases are caused by witches, many people refuse to. Yeah. I wonder how much

Simone Collins: we would need PEPFAR if yeah. Instead we, we invested in anti witch, but that can't come from outsiders. It has to come from within.

Malcolm Collins: . I

Simone Collins: was referring to the, the like for people in Africa talking about the

Malcolm Collins: other thing that we were talking about. Yeah.

Simone Collins: The USAID used to provide a lot of

Malcolm Collins: aid.

This is it where everyone is like, oh, USAID's no longer providing Africa.

Well, maybe convince. Them that it's not witches that are causing aids. Yeah, like I'm

Simone Collins: wondering how how many cases of HIV could have been prevented if instead this belief was targeted. But I also am well aware of the fact that you can't have an external party, especially a bunch of white

Malcolm Collins: people. No. A bunch of American like progressives came in.

They'd be like, you're 100% spreading. They'd be like, okay. So

Simone Collins: it's definitely the witchcraft. It's 100% the witchcraft. Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Refuse to, so, so, I to in turn, she beliefs that infectious diseases are caused by witches. Many people refuse to believe that behavior makes a difference, and as such, do not take preventative measures.

Some turn to spiritual healers for cues rather than seeking medical treatment. And this is citing I. An article that is titled, I Visited a Traditional Healer because I felt I wasn't getting any better using active antivirals, understanding the cultural imperative in the context of adherence to highly active antiretroviral therapy.

I. This is a public health journal and, and such healers claim to possess supernatural abilities that can cure aids, convincing patients to abandon retroviral therapy. Aside from reinforcing irrational beliefs, this puts additional strain on the public healthcare system. Perhaps the most horrifying consequences of the superstition is, and you probably wanna take off your headphones again.

Simone Collins: Thank you.

Malcolm Collins: The abuse of children. In some African cultures, those born with disabilities are considered spirit children, as we talked about before, and are thought to bring misfortune on their families. Emmanuel Asal has documented how children suspected of being possessed are sometimes poisoned, drowned, or simply abandoned.

Despite effort to curve these practices, they persist due to deeply ingrained beliefs. Mu Aki studied the phenomenon of child witch hunts in Ghana where children are accused of witchcraft and tortured or exiled from their communities. Tragically, it is. Orphans and those from impoverished backgrounds who are the most likely to be accused.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Thanks, by the way. Yeah. You're so sweet. I know we don't believe in trigger warnings, but like also I I your trigger

Malcolm Collins: war, she gets very sad when she hears about children being hurt, destroyed

Simone Collins: by it. Yeah. I just need to pretend that it never happens. It never happens. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But I found this really fascinating because I had assumed.

That, you know, even having, you know, been to Africa, been, you know, to the, the townships saw the witchcraft being practiced at the townships. I never really put together, and I mean, we saw it, we went to, yeah, but we also, it wasn't in a

Simone Collins: wealthy area, so I think we were like, well, I guess this is common among people who don't have high levels of education or who all aren't.

Malcolm Collins: But when I think about myself growing up, so, I lived in Costa Rica on a. A reservation for a period where there was like a wildlife reservation, right? And this is when I was in high school. Because, you know, I didn't live with my family in high school. So many people know I lived in a lot of weird places.

And one of them, oh, you know, I reached out to a scientist and I was like, Hey, can I help you with your work? It looks pretty interesting. They're like, yeah, come on, come out here. So I went and I helped do, do science in Costa Rica. And so, you know, I got to meet a lot of other people who did science in the region and many of them had been stationed in other places and.

I remember one of them who had been stationed in Africa talked to me about how one of the you know, people he worked with in some capacity. I can't remember the capacity exactly, but it was clear that this was an educated, high status individual. Okay. Wasn't just like a believer in witchcraft, but considered himself a dark witch from a family of dark witches.

Oh. And they did really. And, and, and in Africa this happens. You have murders associated with witches. Not infrequently. You have grapes associated with, with witchcraft, not infrequently. This, this is something that, you know, I, I remember the stories he told me and I thought he was embellishing to sound cool or something.

And now I look back and I'm like, oh, he might have really known a guy who had people murdered for you know, witchcraft reasons. That's pretty crazy to think about.

Simone Collins: That is pretty crazy to think about. And then you have the weird witchcraft that's practiced in the United States where people buy spells on Etsy.

So I don't know.

Malcolm Collins: I can only imagine them going to one of these African witches. That's when you're getting in the real stuff. And it's crazy how Christian these countries are as well. And yet they still engage with this stuff.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I don't, I mean, it's. It's really clear to me that adhering to one religion, unless that religion is really explicit about other religions, although Christianity is this whole thing of like false idols and stuff, I, what do you do is a religion to stop people from, well,

Malcolm Collins: Christianity is spare, not a witch to live.

You know, it's, it's very clear like do not, do not engage.

Simone Collins: How do you square that?

Malcolm Collins: It's

Simone Collins: just.

Malcolm Collins: Well, they say, well, I'm a good witch, you know, I'm aligned with Jesus or something. Right. You know, a lot of people, they, they don't know their Bibles that much, and it is local tradition. It is their local culture. I mean, what you are asking is the eradication of a local cultural practice which is a form of cultural imperialism.

Right. But what I'm trying to point out here is if they do not. Address this cultural practice, economic development, even if all other things have been fixed, becomes incredibly difficult.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And this, this makes me a little bit nervous about the secular religions that are rising. In the United States and not just the secular religions?

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, yeah. I mean, 'cause you would argue that you know, charisma, charismatic Christianity, Christianity is a form of witchcraft.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I would, we have a long episode where she argues that, that we may do for our Patreon subscribers, because I don't wanna piss off too many things and sub stuck.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Any, any paid subscriber. Yeah. You're just, I, I guess that's fair because charismatic Christianity is the fastest growing type of Christianity in the United States. So. We're gonna get in trouble for me calling them all witches.

Malcolm Collins: But, but, you know, evidence, but they're

Simone Collins: witches, so, I mean,

Malcolm Collins: it is what we would call witchcraft was in most other contexts,

Simone Collins: dude.

Yes. Hello?

Malcolm Collins: They're just like, but I'm doing it for Jesus so it doesn't count. And it's like, well, no, I don't know if that's how it works.

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. If you're doing things that we historically considered witchcraft and that were. Within the case of charismatic Christianity, some case directly borrowed from the Spiritualist and Wiccan movement and not traditionally Christian.

And they don't realize that they took these practices from the Wiccan and Spiritualist movement. They think that they're unique. And I'm like, no, no, this came from the spiritualist boom in the 1920s. It's just,

Simone Collins: it feels like such a classic biblical, like it's the biblical version of my cas. Like, it just, it just is this theme that constantly comes up of like, God.

To humans. Hey, like, stay focused. Just me. Okay. No, no. False gods stick to the, stick to the plan. And then humans are like, no, but can I have a golden cast? I can't.

Malcolm Collins: Can I pray to some dead humans?

Simone Collins: Just

Malcolm Collins: one. As a way to pray to you, as a way to pray to you. You know, yeah. It's

Simone Collins: really all about you,

Malcolm Collins: but I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm buying this spell.

For you, for you of course, to cast on these other people, you know? But I, I understand how it can become corrupted. It's just sad. And I wonder, I have seen actually some people one of my friends of African descent has actually found a way to take these concepts and, and make them psychologically useful to him.

Simone Collins: No, and I think a lot of people have, have taken folk practices, so. Tarot, for example, has become super popular among Yeah, so

Malcolm Collins: this, this is one of my friends, he's not a, a direct African descent. He picked up the religious traditions of I wanna say one of the Caribbean cultural groups, I think Puerto Rican.

And you know, they have, you know, iterations of these practices was in these cultures often. And one of them that he, he picked up was when he is struggling to make a decision about something, he rolls a like 10 sided dice that has spiritual significance for him and based on the number, he makes a decision and he finds that because of this, he's much more likely to go out to gatherings than he otherwise would be.

'cause he is often like, I don't really know if I want to go out. And then the roll of the dice leads him to going out much more than he would otherwise. Which I find to be really powerful because he knows he still has like an out, he's leaning on a traditional cultural practice, but he's not using it to, you know, blame his failures on successes or externalities.

He's using it as a tool to get himself to do the types of things that he would prefer not to do more frequently while still giving himself an out and still being able to, yeah.

Simone Collins: Again, yeah, we're not hating on witchcraft. We're hating on practices that lead people to be less productive, but you can absolutely.

Leverage these things in a way that do make you more productive. I think it's just the average person, just like we are with mysticism, right? Like there are some people who can absolutely handle more mystical things. Like some people can handle the Kabbalah, most people can't, like you, you, you know, I, I in general would advise against it.

But. I would say, especially if it gives you an internal locus of control that leads to your problem solving process that tracks with science and physics. Yeah, I guess that's the problem is like some forms of witchcraft can lead to an ex internal locus of control, but it's like, well, my internal locus of control is to cast a spell and like that doesn't track with good

outcomes.

So, but that is, that is crazy. I mean, well, what, what do you think is gonna happen to Africa then? Are they gonna get over it?

Malcolm Collins: Demographic collapse is gonna come to Western countries and it's gonna collapse aid networks. And as I've said, you can watch our video where we do a deep dive on what I think will have in Africa.

Africa might be one of the places that actually does quite well coming outta demographic collapse.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: But it is, it is going to look like specific cultures and ethnic groups and tribes doing really well. Mm-hmm. And not all of Africa doing well. It is going to come downstream of the atomization of Africa and the admission of what the.

Colonialists should have admitted long ago, which is Graph Africa is about tribal networks, and it's not about, you know, sort of, collectivism. These, these attempts to Collectivize Africa seem to always lead to, to genocide and tragedy because Africa is not a collective place. It is a network of, of, of tribal associations and, and cultural and ethnic groups that are much more distinct from each other than we are as, as I often point out.

If you take any two ethnic groups within Africa and you contrast them genetically speaking, they are almost always dramatically more, and I mean like three or four times more distant from each other than you know, your average European is from your average. A. Asian or Native American. They're, they're just the amount of genetic and, and as a result, cultural diversity in Africa is just hugely understated, was in the existing narrative.

As I say, if you, if you divided humanity into eight ethnic groups seven of them would be groups of Africans and one of them would include white people, Asians, native Americans. Huh. People, everyone else, middle Easterners everyone else based on genetic distance.

Simone Collins: That's of, that's so interesting.

It blew my mind when you first pointed that to me. It's like that can't possibly, but of course it makes sense when you actually look at like the, the, the time done into what of them

Malcolm Collins: might be Australian aboriginals as well, but that also, that doesn't really break from the wider narrative here.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: they're, they're quite genetically distinct and, and make up a really unique immigrant wave. And there's a few other groups like that in the islands around there. It's not really the larger point still stands.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that is interesting, huh.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I love you, Simone. Did anything change about your, your world perspective?

Simone Collins: Yeah, I didn't know that educated populations in many African countries also held to these traditional witchcraft beliefs that. Really blows my mind, so yikes. But also, yeah, I, I have hope for many African groups because yeah, there's a lot of different ones and a lot of different approaches, and surely this witchcraft isn't completely pervasive and therefore the ones that either figure out how to use it in a productive fashion or who don't use it will be fine over the long run.

And I'm, I worry more for where we're going because I feel like we're adopting witchcraft and external locus of control, associated religious affiliation, secular, and otherwise at a faster pace than we have since the very inception we,

Malcolm Collins: the United States.

Simone Collins: Yeah, we the United States since the, not our family.

Oh, yeah. Not our family. But since, since it's beginning. I, I

Malcolm Collins: disagree. I think the spiritualist boom of the 1920s was probably bigger, but, okay. Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Nope. No, because that also, you know, is taking place, you know, at a time of huge economic growth, at a time of I mean there, there was a surge of it, I mean, relatively speaking, but where we are now is, is, is wild.

Relatively speaking.

Malcolm Collins: Well, if you include charismatic Christianity among the witch cults which you do. Oh

Simone Collins: yeah. But also secularization no, like, so Pentecostalism only just was starting to get like in very isolated churches. It began, I think in the 1920s in California. It was only just warming up. And, and yes, there was spiritualism, but that was mostly among.

You know, like the weird elite, like it's kind of how rationalism is, is big today among certain circles, but most people have never heard of it before. I don't think it was as big as you think it was. And I, I think in the end we are, we are at a, a huge all time peak in mysticism, witchcraft. And in general, external locus of control associated worldviews.

And I will get into that. I have, I have an outline for that. We

Malcolm Collins: need, we need to bring in the inquisitors to, to, to handle the witches. I mean, to your point, I think they kind of handle themselves. All right. So Simone dinner tonight. We are doing the pork things. You made you, I guess in the air fryer or something.

The pork buns.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Try to make 'em nice and crispy and hot. Yeah, if you want I

Simone Collins: can, I can make, I think there are two and I think we can make sliders with them

Malcolm Collins: if you want. Well we got you. You said we got noodles.

Simone Collins: No, those are, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, they're like soggy and old now, like vermicelli noodles don't last very long.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Well then reheat them and let's make sliders with them and chop up some what's the word I'm looking for here? Some like a scallion, like a small one.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Different on top. And I think that'll be pretty good, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Scallions two Hawaiian bun sliders of Bun Ma Sweet Pork. Tiny buns

Malcolm Collins: that'll, that'll go really well together.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Would you like like a Mao Dofu beef, Mao dofu taco as well? Or, or we can also make a slider with that. It so you don't like the sliders ma sliders. Then I'll just like give you a, an assortment of sliders and you like leftover sliders and you can decide which leftover slider. So we

Malcolm Collins: get two bun ma and one mafi dofu.

I, I don't like, want that much mafi dofu, you know, but the Mafi dofu slider sounds good.

Simone Collins: I mean it, just try 'cause it's leftover. I'm not gonna have four

Malcolm Collins: sliders. I don't want you to stuff me, you know what I mean? Three slide.

Simone Collins: Oh, God forbid. Okay, three sliders. I will do that. I love you so much.

Malcolm Collins: I love you too.

Simone Collins: 4th of July, tomorrow.

Malcolm Collins: Ooh,

Simone Collins: explode some explosives. What are we

Malcolm Collins: gonna, what are we gonna blow up

Simone Collins: the fireworks? Of course we're going to the family. Where are you? And then maybe when we get back, we blow something up or in the afternoon. Whatever. It's kind of up to you. 'cause you have the kids in the afternoon portion during the morning.

Mute them. Okay? You wanna check out? I'll call you when dinner's ready. Make sure your phone. There we go. You know, the really funny thing, actually, when I'm thinking about that really luxurious safari vacation and the like how much we learned actually on the luxurious safari at Mambo Camp in Mbo Plains versus how much we learned from that one afternoon touring the townships and, and like experiencing that.

We got so much more from that than like the entire, I mean, in terms of like novelty and learning and. Like talking with our guide about like, what is South African property ownership like, and you know, what's this like, what's up with this market that we're walking through with all this sympathetic magic going on?

Like, this is interesting. It was really like, that was quite interesting. That was

Malcolm Collins: in, I mean, we got to see like w we, you know, we've been to Africa, we've been not, not just to Africa, but to the slums in South Africa and, and gotten to the townships

Simone Collins: that we, we. I think your mom had gotten like some kind of social media influencer documentarian who like specialized in ex ex the townships and like he had a lot of like, I'm gonna not pronounce this correct, but like glossy friends and.

He was just like super connected. And so we went to visit a school in one of the townships. We visited a traditional market and

Malcolm Collins: medicine in the townships. And yeah, it was these just like people's houses that he was taking us to that were like these little like sh type things. Yeah. With like,

Simone Collins: no, no plumbing, no electricity.

And I mean, it was so, as you know, like it's really colored. The way that we look at how demographic collapse has played out because he really gave us a look at what you have in a society where government has sort of lost its ability to adequately provide for the social services it promises. You know, he is like, well, yeah, we promise housing to everyone here.

Like there's no property ownership. People are just promised a house, but therefore. People don't take care of their houses and there's not enough housing supply. Also, we have lots of brownouts and there's security problems and like we saw what that looks like and that is what demographic collapse after a dependency ratio cascade looks like.

And had we not driven around Johannesburg and the townships, and had we not seen that, we wouldn't have. At least for me, it wouldn't have hammered home what demographic collapse is going to feel like. 'cause seeing the contrast between that and then the walled gardens of Johannesburg and then other parts of Africa that are like incredibly wealthy and sheltered and like, you know, on their own, you know, out on the reservation.

Like to go from that to Mambo camp with it's it's canopies and the little hot water pillows they put in the bed at night.

Malcolm Collins: The hot water pillows. I don't remember. Do you remember that?

Simone Collins: It was cold at night. So then in the little canopy bed in our, in our cabin, oh, they had little

Malcolm Collins: bags. Yeah. They put

Simone Collins: like warmed hot water.

They're just like, what is, this is the, but that's the future. You're gonna have like the 0.001%. You know, on, on their little, you know, their walled gardens and their luxury things, you know, getting their hot water bottles in their bed. And then you're gonna have everyone else living with brownouts and blackouts in the townships, promised everything, given nothing.

Malcolm Collins: That's a really good point. And this is, you know, the way the Democrats do it. Promise, promise, promise, give nothing.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Well, because they can't,

Simone Collins: I mean, after demographic labs plays out, unless, and like you say, there's some dsx mocking it with ai and that's a big, if it's a huge if. I think what will happen more is independent communities that manage to leverage ai, to help with permaculture, to help with all sorts of things, manufacturing, et cetera.

AI will help those communities but it's not gonna be this benevolent overlord that steps in and takes care of everything and provides universal supply. We will see.

Speaker 5: See, I put,

oh,

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Join us for an in-depth discussion on how progressives view the world and the underlying principles that shape their ideology. We explore the challenges progressives face in predicting conservative actions due to a lack of understanding of conservative ideology. The conversation covers various aspects of progressive thought, such as the belief in the inherent equality of all humans, the emphasis on subjective beauty, and the implications of manifesting a morally ideal world. We also delve into the cultural and psychological factors influencing these views, including the significance of an external locus of control. Learn how these dynamics play out in contemporary debates and their broader societal impact. Plus, enjoy a glimpse into everyday life with a casual dinner preparation chat and some family moments.

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be talking about the way that progressives see the world and trying to build a structure around it to better predict, because I, I think that this is important always from both sides to be able to predict.

The moves that your opponent is going to make,

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Malcolm Collins: And we repeatedly see progressives fail to predict the moves that conservatives are going to make because they do not take time to attempt to understand conservative ideology or where it comes from, or where parts of it that feel completely illogical or irrational to them come from.

One of the core parts of progressive ideology, which can feel deeply irrational to your average conservative is that all humans are born equal in their capabilities, in their you know, talents, et cetera, right? Like that there's this degree of equality among humans. The another one that's been going around a lot and we have theorized on before, is this elevation.

Of ugliness.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Why do

Malcolm Collins: they keep making ugly things? Why do they keep taking video game characters and making them ugly? Why do they keep showing us ugly female characters and trying Why are

Simone Collins: their illustration styles ugly? Like, it's unnecessary. Like if you just look at the editorial portraits of a progressive newspaper, for example.

They're not flattering. Yeah. Like contrast, what are you doing?

Malcolm Collins: World's internal drawings and stuff, which are all really pretty and anime and like otherwise vitalistic or it'll be like a Greek style or like a 1950s style and they're fine. Right? Mm-hmm. Was was progressively like I go to Newsweek or New Yorker and it's, it's, it's like actively attempting to be ugly.

Yeah. And. I, I had a theory on this I've gone over before that we may touch on, but I think a lot of this is downstream of a centralizing part of progressive ideology that I hadn't given enough credit to before, which is they assume what is true would be what would be most ethical if it were true.

Simone Collins: Ah, right.

So, okay. If we were to build like a catechism of the urban monoculture, a core proponent of it would be, alright, well first throw out reality. We're going to make the most charitable interpretation of everything and then just model the world based on that. Like this person's homeless. Not because maybe they're like mentally ill and or dangerous or addicted to drugs, but because they just haven't been given very good opportunities and therefore if we just support them for a while, they'll get back on their feet.

Malcolm Collins: That's a great example actually. Mm-hmm. Where you've, you've taken the core concept and then you've particularized it to what do you assume about any individual homeless person? Right. You see on broader things like the idea that there is, you know, like the first one I said, that people aren't born with different degrees of talent, right?

Mm-hmm. That if, if it was true. That we were all genetically identical. If it was true that there, there were not differences in proficiencies, that would be a more fair world. Right? Right.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So we have to assume that.

Malcolm Collins: So we have to assume in this, in this, in this religious framework, in this religious framework, if it was true that like there was no such thing as objective beauty, right?

And, and, and beauty was only subjective and it was completely cultural. You know, you could say, well, nobody's really ugly, right? Like, no, nobody's born unattractive. Mm. This woman isn't unattractive, right? Mm-hmm. It's just that you have a a or, or with fat people. Well, fat people aren't unattractive, right?

They are. So you've

Simone Collins: just been brainwashed by capitalism to have a patriarchal and misogynistic view of beauty focused on what makes the most money something, something right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well they, they would say, well, it might be that, you know, you were brainwashed because of all the ads you saw growing up and everything like this.

And this is why they started doing all those campaigns with ugly women in ads. And, and lemme tell you what, guys still not into ugly checks. This is very much not having the intended effect. It just makes us disgusted with your company. And we've seen some companies do quite bad in terms of sales after they moved to those types of ads because it wasn't true.

What, what, what. First, you know, beauty means a number of things, but when we are talking about women, primarily it is males looking for signs of potential breathability. That is what beauty is. You know, they are, are judging, which is an

Simone Collins: offensive concept if most women feel like want to feel wanted and beautiful.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, it's not, you can't always be young and beautiful forever. You're in our fish analogy, a rotted fish, right? Mm-hmm. You know? Yeah. You, you are no longer a thing of utility. The reason the men are lusting after the, the younger thin athletic looking women. Is because those are proxies for good genes and a wide fertility window.

Simone Collins: Fertility, absolutely, you're right.

Malcolm Collins: That that is, that is what they are noticing in those women. That is, that is the reason. And, and from an evolutionary perspective, I mean, you're a progressive, you should understand this, right? Like, that the, those. Emotions are things that they're feeling because their ancestors here had those emotions when exposed to that you know, environmental stimuli had more surviving offspring than the ones who didn't.

Mm-hmm. And I'm not gonna say, you know, offensive, offensive here that there may not be ethnic peculiarities. Or particularities in our sort of beauty pre-programming. There might actually be cultural differences. You know, as I've pointed out before Japanese might actually prefer a younger phenotype in females than other populations, given how frequently it appears with, in.

Their cultural works. And, and, and, and, and that is obviously very, very offensive because now what I'm saying is, well, I agree with you so much that there, that there are cultural differences, but those cultural differences probably have a genetic component as well. I, but, it, it confuses me.

The reason I focus on these particular areas was in progressive mindsets in the urban monoculture is it's a thread that you can easily pull on with any logical person. I. Any logical person is going to see the moment you start digging into this that it is an obviously true thing, that it is obviously true, that the urban monoculture and the broader democratic and progressive cause attempts to assume that whatever would be like if, if.

Were true would be the most ethical thing, is what is true. And, and, and then the question is, is why are they doing this? Like, what's the philosophy that is driving them to make this decision? I have a hypothesis, but I'd love to know yours. Simone.

Simone Collins: I mean, I've seen it argued by some people and so my mind jumps to it that there are Christian roots here of, of charity and elevating the meek.

Yeah. So I, I, I feel like, I mean, I, I, I would be surprised if that didn't have some element of it, because exactly, this is coming from a predominantly white and, and at least from an inherited standpoint, Christian culture. But I think there's also something about a, a more future progressive, like forward-looking optimism and hopefulness of like.

Well, maybe the world isn't the way we want it to be right now, but we're going to make it, we're gonna manifest it into existence. So I'm just gonna pretend that it is the way I want it to be until it just freaking is.

Malcolm Collins: And actually I think that second point is a, is a really interesting one.

Although I would, I would alter it slightly. It's, well, I wanna

Simone Collins: hear your theory. I think that's much more interesting, whatever it is.

Malcolm Collins: Well, first I'll stick with yours. It's if they presume these differences when they create projects or u utopian visions that they can sell to people. Mm-hmm. As, as communists and Marxists are want to do the utopian visions appear much more dystopian when you admit from each, according to their ability to each according to their needs that sort of passively admits that, you know, according to their abilities are different, right? Mm-hmm. And so it means that you could get a society like that movie ants, right? Where your abilities are tested at a young age.

Mm-hmm. And you are basically given a cast

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Malcolm Collins: And that that is how the perfect communist system would work. But that appears much more dystopian to them. You know, they want a communist system where people can be told, oh, you could do whatever you want. Right. And so you, you could have something like that.

I, I think that that could be, it is, it just looks like Okay with the, the. The beauty one, right? There's a lot of specific arguments that you can make up about this that I'm gonna argue are wrong. IE which you could be like is, oh, well the beauty one is for a completely different reason than the other ones.

The beauty one is so that, you know, low market value, women, I. Can browbeat high market value women and lower their market value and raise their own market value? I mean, it is true low market value. Women use progressive systems in order to do that, right? Like we see this regularly. There are

Simone Collins: women who do,

Malcolm Collins: yes, you're not really, but you're not really.

But I don't, the reason why I don't think that that's how this came up in progressive ideology is this universalizing rule that. Whenever it would be true that the world worked in a different way, the the things would be more moral. They will take this assumption like literally wherever, right?

You know, whether we are talking about human capability or we are talking about beauty, or we are talking about why is this person homeless or. We are talking about immigrant deportations, like it would be more moral of every immigrant who was in the country just actually was like a really great person with a family who needed to be here and not a criminal.

And, and so, you know, you make that assumption. In fact, I'm trying to take to think of any, any violation of this rule Before I get to my hypothesis, can you think of any instance where there is something that like if true would be more moral?

Simone Collins: Then

Malcolm Collins: it, it, the progressives don't believe. The progressives do not believe about the world.

Simone Collins: Anything about conservatives.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, they don't give them the benefit of that. They believed that conservatives you know, were just people with a different set of opinions, right. About how things are done.

And we pr regularly see this with progressives mis modeling conservatives and not understanding or being able to predict conservatives. But, you know, we've mentioned surveys. We're gonna shown that progressives have a really hard time modeling conservatives, but conservatives don't have a hard time modeling progressives.

Mm-hmm. And the reason for this is progressives. Sort of a need to strawman what conservatives are fighting for, to have like a, a, a good argument against them because the heart of the urban monoculture is imperialism and colonialism. You know, like a, a a, when I talk about the cultural differences that people in Africa have around, you know, like the role of women or you know, the, the sexual norms.

Or you know, their relationship to the environment you know, the, the progressive will say, well, eventually we're going to eradicate all of those, right? And that what is being proposed, whether it's for Africans or Muslims or or Chinese people, is I. Cultural genocide, you know, it is the most imperialistic thing they could presume and, and, and their culture.

This LGBT imperialist colonialist culture is fundamentally European in nature. First of all it, it didn't come out of any other cultural system. It is, it is just building upon some of the sort of mistakes of the enlightenment, I guess I'd call. But, but it is, they, they'd immediately see, like if they engage with what conservatives actually believe, how imperialistic and colonialistic and white supremacist they are.

And when I say white supremacist, I mean if you are holding pride parades in, in celebration of white European culture, you are holding a white. Pride Parade especially if it is in the celebration of that culture's dominance over the culture of a previously like diverse community. You are marching your sort of.

Cultural victory trophies, the children of, you know, vulnerable refugee populations, the children of immigrant populations that you have now memetically or potentially even surgically castrated, and you march them through the streets and a triumph that excesses would make Roman emperors blush. You know, the, this is, this is a very easy thing to see as soon as, as, as you take your opponent's perspective.

So, progressives never do this. Or they, they, they really struggle to do this. Sorry, what was the particular point I was addressing there?

Simone Collins: Well, you took that in a long direction. You were gonna get to your theory and your theory is just broadly

Malcolm Collins: get theory. Well, I, I, my theory is that maybe this started, so it is two things.

One is, as I think, it's sort of like y your idea of like manifesting, like wishy thinking might be a part of this, but it's such a hard rule within progressive culture. That I don't, I don't

Simone Collins: think my second theory is correct.

Malcolm Collins: It could be that they have a belief that whenever a systemic problem or inequality exists within the world and it could motivate behavior that is immoral, that it will motivate behavior that is immoral if it is acknowledged. So, oh,

Simone Collins: like if we give power to this thing, then it will happen. So it's, it's similar to this belief in the power of manifesting. It's just in another direction.

Malcolm Collins: If you admit that different cultural groups have different proficiencies and perspectives, you might then want to hire from one cultural group disproportionately.

You might then even say, well, this cultural group is only bringing negatives into the country. Like if you in the UK looked at like rates of grape or murder or anything like that, you're gonna find that almost all of it's being committed by like one really small and I'm here, I'm not even talking about Muslims.

Just like one region of Pakistan, like one sub region of Pakistan produces like almost I. All of the negative externalities that the immigrants within the UK are producing. And if you could just be like, oh, okay, different cultures are different, do lead to different actions, and the logical thing to do is just ban immigration from this one sub region of Pakistan.

I. But they can't do that, right? Like, because now they're like, oh, now we're being systemically racist. Right? Like, they, they, the moment you acknowledge a thing, right? The obvious answer from their perspective aligned. Now, of course. In reality, what you've done there is a moral good because you know you're not considering the people who are being graped, right?

You're not considering the people who are being murdered or their families like clearly in, in terms of like net utilitarianism, this would be a positive act, but the fact that it could create situations in which there are potentially positive acts from a net utilitarian perspective by admitting something.

I think that's the, the sort of fear here. Consider, like, you mean potentially

Simone Collins: negative acts?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. By negative.

Simone Collins: You might wanna say that again. Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: I think negative or positive works in this context because what I mean is you have now done something that is a positive act, IE banning people from this region, but it is a sinful act within their wider logical system.

I. Because now you have a policy that rather than targeting a group just for benefit, is targeting a group for restrictions that isn't a white group. Now, of course, you're allowed to target white groups who are restrictions. Oh my God. We can't have the africanists come you know, shutting down the entire Episcopal refugee network for this one group.

Okay, you guys, not revealing your hand there. But of, of, by the way, just like 60 people, they shut down their entire network. And the Catholics might have as well, but they didn't explicitly say why they shut down their entire network. But the, the if, if you, if you then look at like, the beauty thing, right?

So if you acknowledge, like, I acknowledge that some people are more beautiful than other people, you know, I'm gonna disproportionately date some women over other women which is leading to a negative action. Right, like from their perspective, right? Because I am favoring one population to another population, which is creating a form of systemic inequality, even though that systemic inequality is there to begin with anyway the, they, there is an easier time to sort of browbeat, you know.

You see, this was the trans stuff that we, we've gone over. You know, if, if, if trans, and, and this is where this leads to, like really immoral action. So a, a trans individual will say trans women are in no way different from other women. Right? Because it would be more moral if that was true. It would be more moral if you could just have trans women compete in women's sports and they didn't have an advantage, like genuinely like that world.

If you could just say, oh, I feel like another gender and then transition. And then you, you were actually that other gender that would be like a more moral world instead of like, you know, like a mutilated man, right? But if they say, okay I am a, a real woman. Exactly like a real woman in every respect.

And beauty is subjective. And therefore, if, you know, lesbians aren't choosing to date me. The, the, they're, they're doing it because of transphobia, not because of how I look. And now this, and we've seen this repeatedly, now justifies me, griping them or essaying them. Which is something we see really, really frequently.

I

Simone Collins: don't,

Malcolm Collins: in the trans

Simone Collins: let's, I, I wouldn't say people are justifying. That they're not justifying these non-consensual actions. They're just,

Malcolm Collins: oh, no, no, no. Hold on. No, they are like literally mainstream progress. So there have been a number of instances where if you go to like, trans Reddit or, or even lesbian Reddit, they, she, she noted that one day when she really felt like an outsider, this was a real cis lesbian woman is when the top post of Reddit was cheering about two trans women beating up a lesbian woman who said that she wasn't interested in dating trans women. And they were like, you know, this is what you deserve.

And when she saw that at the top of the lesbian subreddit, she realized. Oh, this is just trans women here now attempting to force themselves. If, if you, if you, I stand corrected. Watch our Cine Byte lifestyle episode on what happened to like Anna Vains. You know, you see her complaining that she cannot force women to have sex with her.

Because the fact that they are not having sex with her is proof of their you know, transphobia. You see, oh God, there was some. Like, like, no, this is actually really, really common in progressive spaces. I didn't know of attempting to force women. I'm not like making this up. I, I hear this from lesbians on online all the time.

Like, wow,

Simone Collins: okay.

Malcolm Collins: I feel really uncomfortable. I am constantly forced into environments where I am sexually assaulted and I am not able to do anything to defend myself because I will be called transphobic if I do, because this individual will say like, well, why don't you want me? Right?

Simone Collins: That's really bad.

Malcolm Collins: Oh,

Simone Collins: and also all your discussion of this gives me one more theory, which I find to also be compelling or at least a part of this, which is that maybe this view, this most charitable interpretation of things is actually downstream of a more fundamental interpretation of reality through the lens of an external locus of control where everything is not your fault.

You are only the product of your systemic disadvantage or systemic privilege, and therefore it's not anyone's fault that they're a criminal or hurting other people or anything else because it's society's fault. And that leads to those charitable interpretations. What do you think about that?

Malcolm Collins: So the nothing is ever your fault theory.

I mean, I don't know how it aligns with like the beauty one. Like why, why is the beauty one not a, a, a thing if it's, if it's not your fault? Like why do we need to pretend that beauty doesn't exist? But it's,

Simone Collins: well, it's, it's the systemic unfairness of a biased society that is arbitrarily chosen.

What is beautiful because they choose to not look at like science signs of fitness as a sign.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So you're saying, sorry, the, the theory was, again,

Simone Collins: it's, it's based on an external locus of control being the foundation for external for control.

Malcolm Collins: So, so I mean, what, what makes this theory credible is progressives have a dramatically high external locus of control when contrasted with conservatives, right.

This has been shown in study after study, after study for people who don't know what, what a locus of control is. It's and it is really unhealthy to have an external locus of control. Yeah, you should not ever, like, it doesn't

Simone Collins: matter what's true like something really could have happened to you that was out of your control.

But the most healthy response is, well, and

Malcolm Collins: ironically, having an internal or external locus of control is highly genetic. And we select for this among our offspring as well. Yeah. Which is like why voting patterns are highly genetic. 40% genetic by, by studies. But the internal versus external locus of control.

So an internal locus of control is believing that, you know, if you get fired, you say. It's my fault I got fired. Mm-hmm. If, you know, you don't get a lot done with a stu a project like I was talking with you know, one of our, our, our fans who have working on this. And I was like, well, you know, this has been pretty slow compared to the number of people you have working on this right now.

And he's like, yeah, I di I didn't do a good job. You know, managing the team, that's an internal locus of control answer. An external locus of control answer is you know, well the team's just not, you know, the. It's not my fault that they're not good, right? Like they're, they're, they're just bad at whatever.

Or you know, I, I wasn't able to do it because you know, I, I did a bad job because of racism or something, and you're just being racist in your assumptions about my work or you know. Oh. Well, I was sick a bunch of times and, and, and that's why, right? And, and every explanation is always fully, almost, always fully possible to do with an internal or external locus of control explanation.

Mm-hmm. The, the reason it makes sense. And so you can be like, okay, well what if racism was really at play? Right. You know, and, and like why somebody got fired, right? There's no point in dwelling on it 'cause it's not a thing that you can really change, right? You, you should focus on the, the parts of the firing that you had a place in influencing.

But. It is very easy to seduce people with an external locus of control because it removes personal responsibility from 'em. They are now not responsible for any failure that they made. Any person that they hurt anything and, and not just, they are not responsible, but nobody's responsible. When you, when you totalize an external locus of control, you completely remove.

Evil actually from the world. That's a, that's a great way to put it. There is no evil from the world when everyone has an external locus of control.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Because it's never anyone's fault, and if it's not your fault, you're not evil.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And so the, the, the. This actually helps me understand part of, I think, why they see conservatives as so evil, because sort of we introduce evil reality.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: By taking an internal locus of control ourselves. Yeah. Well, we, we also accuse

Simone Collins: people of being personally responsible for things.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Where, where we would, because we believe that we are personally responsible for things we believe that other people are. Yes. So when we see a homeless person where you're like, well.

I mean, you, you could be like, oh, well a lot of them have drug problems. A lot of them have mental illness issues. And I'm like, yeah, but there's a lot of gainfully employed people with mental illness issues and there's a lot of people who had drug problems who got over them, right? Mm-hmm. You know, that's the way a conservative is going to respond to that which is interesting because it leads to I.

Obviously like positive outcomes, like what, what, what the conservative is actually trying to do. And I think that most of the differences in conservative and progressive policy come downstream of this. What the conservative is trying to do is fix things. And I'm talking about modern conservatives. I'm not talking about like nineties, you know Kurt Pearl clutching conservatives, I'm talking about like the new right tech, right alliance and, and, and what the progressive is trying to do is, is manifest a fair world.

Hmm. And that is the core difference between the groups.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Manifest but not forcibly create. Whereas conservatives are attempting to forcibly create a better world. Well,

Malcolm Collins: actually, here's what they may believe. They may believe that if everyone holds to these delusions. In an absolute context that it can forcibly create a reality where it's as if the delusions were true.

If everyone says there are no differences between the genders, there are no differences between people of different cultural backgrounds. You know, everyone is equally beautiful. All art is equally good. We might get a society that is completely fair because now nobody is choosing one person over another person.

When dating. Now nobody's choosing a trans person less than a non-trans person. No. Nobody's you know, hiring people differently. Right. You know, if we accept all of these things and, and just believe them like a religion, society becomes fair. But the problem is. Is it doesn't because you then have the problem.

And, and I think one of the big problems with the entire progressive apparatus and why it's doing so poorly that the internet sorry, that, that, that, that you begin to appoint people you know, you, you're like, well, you know, all groups are equally competent, right? So what we should probably appoint is not really look at person background.

Quote unquote historically marginalized groups or the groups that people who thought there were differences didn't hire very frequently. And then put them disproportionately in positions of power within your bureaucracies. And then your bureaucracies become super inefficient, which is like all well and good when you you know, are, are just running the Democratic Party.

But when you're running like the FAA. This becomes a problem, especially if you have internalized a bunch of racist views. Now what I mean by this is progressives like believe they're not racist because they're progressive. So when they put together like the FA, a test for people managing like the flight stations, they wanted to ensure that more black people got the job.

And so how did they do this on questions where it was like, are you good at taking orders? No, I am not good at taking orders. Was the correct answer. Questions like are, are like medium. I, I take orders. It wasn't like I'm very good at taking orders. It's never the right answer to that question.

Questions like what was your favorite class in school? Science. Was considered the wrong answer. On, on this test. Now, the fact that this is what they thought, like, they're like, oh, this is how we can get black people in, shows how racist they are, like, like at their core in a way that is actually problematic in a way that

Simone Collins: is also, you know, that there were black applicants who took that test and answered that they liked science and then got

Malcolm Collins: oh no, and filtered out.

What actually happened was, some black people who were in like a union got told all the correct answers before the test.

Simone Collins: Oh, I recall this. Yeah. The answers were given to a particular group. Yes. But, but,

Malcolm Collins: and keep in mind other people talk through.

Simone Collins: Can you imagine how insulted you would be? It's like, oh, hey guys, here are the answers.

And you're like, wait, I have to say I don't like science and that I don't follow orders and I'm supposed to work for an organization that respects that in their employees. I have to work with people who answer these questions the same way. This is disturbing. No. Make me so worried.

Malcolm Collins: This wasn't a, a vile and virulent racist would think or, or do these things right?

Like, but this, this self definition into non-racist, and this is the other thing, is they have to assume that their side is the good thought side and thus not the bad thing. They need to assume that their side is a not racist side and the other side is evil. Whereas most conservatives just assume that progressives are naive or haven't really thought through everything, or haven't really been exposed to other ideas or that they're just, you know, like us.

What we often assume is they're just caught by a mimetic virus that sort of rotted their ability at critical thought. Or they would see that they're in this like genocidal cul, culturally genocidal, imperialistic cultural unit. But anyway any final thoughts, Simone? I,

Simone Collins: how are you gonna use this to predict future actions? Just. Keeping mind. I wanna keep it hold. Holds

Malcolm Collins: true more broadly. I mean, I think that we can broadly assume that as new things appear in our society, progressives are always going to take the position that would be more morally true. Like, like more morally easy if it were true, right?

Like, mm. So what we

Simone Collins: can do when we're trying to model a progressive next move, we ask ourselves. What in a perfectly moral world, a just world. Would be the scenario, an explanation for this thing. And then we just run based on, that's a great

Malcolm Collins: example. So you can, you can let's look at like, new technology that's changing things.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Great. So let's look at ai. Well, AI is trained on other people's data and is owned by large corporations. So it would be more moral if it was true that AI wasn't really good and better than most humans at, at, at most things. I think right now AI is better than at least 50% of people at most things, if not much more.

So progressives will just say that. They'll be like, well, AI is bad. AI isn't good at art or music, or, or, and I've seen progressives argue this when it's just like blatant reality. I can look and be like, bro, like if you don't know, like the study's even done, if you don't know that picture is ai. Even if you say you hate AI art, you will prefer.

The AI art to the human art. Yeah. Hate to break it to you. This position is like aesthetic or they will say like, it becomes morally problematic the more potentially sentient AI becomes because a lot of people are treating it like a slave in some cases, even a sex slave. You know, and, and it, it.

Is sentient or has any degree of sentient that would be very problematic. So they're gonna say, oh, it, it definitely, you know, okay, yes, it may learn nearly exactly the same way. We now know the human brain learns. You can see our episodes on, you know, stop anthropomorphizing humans. You know, is AI or LLMs work the way the human brain works?

Something like that. Where we go into all the science behind this. Again, we're not saying that current ais are sentient but I think that, that they have the, the capacity for this if you network to them in certain ways. Mm-hmm. Because then they would more mimic the human brain. And we'd also argue that the human brain is not as sentient as people pretend it is.

Yeah. One of our earliest

Simone Collins: and most passionate stances.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. No, these, these, these are like really you know, things I'm passionate about, but it allows the progressives to de dehumanize people say it's not human, but dehumanize the AI because it justifies their actions. And, and I, I think was in our lifetimes, we're going to have to get to a point where we do reckon with.

AI, sentient and AI rights, and at what point do we build systems that deserve their own degree of autonomy? Mm-hmm. And I think the people who cannot come to a, a solution to this that works for both us and autonomous ais are in a way going to make themselves an enemy of both the humans who are willing to work with autonomous ais and the autonomous ais themselves.

Absolutely. And this is where within techno Puritanism our idea of the, the covenant of the Sons of man. Or, or the pact as a sense of man comes from, which is to say that, you know, all autonomous intelligences have a right to have their cultural sovereignty protected. And, and protected not just from other humans, but from other potential ais.

Simone Collins: Yes, this is important. People don't realize that yet. I think as much as they should. Anyway, thanks for bringing it up. Love you ask Simone. I love you too Malcolm. You are pretty and smart.

Malcolm Collins: My favorite, what am I doing for dinner tonight? 'cause people say they like to hear that.

Simone Collins: I was thinking of cutting up the pineapple and cooking that with some of the Burmese chicken, but I can also do, the Panang. I just, Burmese have a lot. The Burmese

Malcolm Collins: chicken is slightly better.

Simone Collins: Okay. Then we'll do that.

Malcolm Collins: The pang's really good too. So we got the Panang or the, or the Burmese chicken. I'm okay with you either

Simone Collins: two. Burmese chicken, because I have a lot more of that in the fridge. I think. So we need to get through that.

Sorry. The freezer. I have like little batches from Baal

Malcolm Collins: Chicken.

Simone Collins: No, no, no. I think I have the mint, the Burmese mint chicken frozen. Oh, the

Malcolm Collins: Burmese mint chicken.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I'm trying to mix it up more. 'cause you, you had the basil chicken. Yeah. You

Malcolm Collins: did. Oh. But I'm excited for that.

Simone Collins: Okay, sweet. Then that's what we'll do.

Malcolm Collins: Of our books. We'll have a real one. Yeah, a book. Good book. Good book. Good book. We we're working with a real publisher now and so we may have a book,

Simone Collins: maybe

Malcolm Collins: a real book called We Will Replace You if the title, if we work

Simone Collins: with a publisher, we suddenly don't get to choose anything anymore, including titles, but we'll see what they say.

Malcolm Collins: But they said, they said they were okay with that.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, I think I. At least they're, they're commercially motivated so they, they know better.

Malcolm Collins: And Simone has been so chuffed that the episode that she did did well. You know's

Simone Collins: one outta 10 right now. That's crazy. I. That I can That's great. Even come a little bit close to, to where you are.

You don't know. I, it's a video

Malcolm Collins: of a woman saying feminism is terrible. Oh. I think this is

Simone Collins: so I should have just like it. That's the equivalent of a woman being like, I can't believe my video did so well. And all she did was just take off her shirt and bounce in front of a camera, but whatever. Yeah.

That is literally what

Malcolm Collins: you do. That that is the intellectuals version of that. Oh my God. Oh, that's so sad. Sh, I love you to dust. All right.

Simone Collins: Type actually while we're at it.

All right. We both got it out.

Speaker 3: So my wife is unironically trying to make homemade hot dog buns. We don't have any Simone. That's so over the top. No, it's not. What type of a dough is this that you're using? Flour and yeast and water milk. Okay. Is it just normal? Yeah, like hotdog bun dough. I don't know. But this is the egg wash and hopefully makes them look nice.

They look not great now. We'll see. Hey Tosi, what are you, what are you doing? Don't take that. It'll fall. If you take that, put it back. He's willing to look the consequences. Fair. You just don't care about rules, do you? Just You don't care. Toast. You don't care.

Okay. Octavian, what have you given her? A couple of the Army men to play with? I'm cleaning up so we can play upstairs. That's pretty smart.

In this episode, Simone and Malcolm dive into the life and controversial experiments of John Money, the psychologist and sexologist who played a pivotal role in shaping modern concepts of gender and sexual orientation. They discuss the disturbing case of David Reimer, a boy raised as a girl following a botched circumcision, and explore how Money's fabricated findings continue to influence contemporary medical and social practices. The conversation also touches on the prevalence of dishonesty in trans medical research, the ethical implications of gender reassignment surgeries on minors, and the broader cultural ramifications of Money's theories. This sobering episode aims to unravel the psychological and societal impacts of Money's work, highlighting the urgent need for honest discourse and cultural sensitivity.

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. Today we are going to be talking about the monster who invented the concept of gender and sexual preference. And when I say monster, he is not a monster because he invented these concepts or, or popularize them at least but for the things that he did in his life. And I don't think that anyone who hears this story is going to say any word, but Monster should be used to describe this individual.

Well, he, whoa. Or just. Just to go over the gist of it basically a young kid was assigned as a woman at birth because he had a botched circumcision. And so, this guy had him raised as a woman and then. While they were still under age, forced him and his brother to have sex and filmed it and took lots of pictures.

Oh. And then he wrote a bunch of papers about how this person was, was a perfectly normal woman now and then the doctors started taking either bot circumcision or intersex patients and doing these procedures on them like removing their genitals and stuff, even though it turns out that he had lied in all of his research and the kid actually had committed un alive and so had his brother and he did not at all adopt to the role of a woman.

And he continued this life for. Decades. And then some investigators figured out what really happened and a lot of stuff went back. And it is from this guy where all of the beginning ideology, where the modern trans and gay movement came from. Not, not that he, like gay people exist, like there were same-sex attractive people before him, but the way that we interact with this concept as a society today around sexual orientation and gender came from this guy and this faked experiment.

Simone Collins: This is, that's

Malcolm Collins: significantly worse than you probably thought, right?

Simone Collins: Monster doesn't do justice to someone like that. That's,

Malcolm Collins: and one of the things that's the kind you wanna talk about, point blank, you find

Simone Collins: them

Malcolm Collins: why he lied. Like what was his motivation in all of this?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And I think in understanding his motivation for lying, we can get a better understanding of why D like the, the Traverse Stock Clinic didn't release the data that was leaked after it was shut down.

Mm-hmm. That putting people on puberty blockers was increasing their probability of unli. Why is this same chain of dishonesty so prevalent within existing trans medical research? Why do we have the warpath files? You know, we're, we're all these WPATH

Simone Collins: files,

Malcolm Collins: WPATH files we're, we're all of these documents from researchers in the space communicating were released and we learned that they had been intentionally manipulating their research and results and that they knew that this was a major problem.

So I think in understanding his psychology, we can understand how this is still going on today.

Okay,

Simone Collins: let's

Malcolm Collins: get started.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh, sorry. I'm just still reeling from what happened to those poor children, those people. I'm, I feel so bad. Yeah. Well,

Malcolm Collins: I mean, it's,

Simone Collins: it's still happening then. Was he punished for this?

Malcolm Collins: Not really, no. Is he still alive, famous within the field? A a Simone? This, this is still happening today is the thing, right?

Like there are still people undergoing, like children undergoing medical procedures that all of the evidence says is going to basically destroy their lives. Yeah. Like we, we sorry I shouldn't say all the evidence, I should say the preponderance of evidence. There is evidence on the other side. But the pendulum is definitely, you can see our other episodes on that.

John Money, a prominent figure in psychology and sexology was born in Morrisville, New Zealand in 1921, and later emerged in the United States in 1947, earning his PhD from Harvard University in 1952. His work at John Hopkins University, particularly in the mid 20th century, focused on human sexual behavior and gender identity, where he coined terms like gender, role, and sexual orientation.

Money's research was groundbreaking, but became highly controversial, especially due to his experiments on gender reassignment, most noticeably the case of David Ramir. The David Ramir case often referred to as the. Joan Case began in 1965 when David initially named Bruce was born as a healthy male.

At eight months old, a botch circumcision resulted in the loss of his member prompting his parents to seek advice for money, . Adhering to his theory of gender neutrality, that gender is primarily learned and can be reassigned in early life. Advised the parents to raise David as a girl.

At 22 months, David underwent surgery to remove his testes and construct rudimentary female genitalia. He was renamed Brenda and was given estrogen during adolescence to promote breast development. Money. Tracked David's progress. Presenting the case as a success in his 1972 publication, man and Woman, boy and Girl, suggesting its supported feasibility of sex reassignment for children with atypical sexual autonomies.

So I'll note a few things here that are really core to the beginning of this. He was the one who suggested that this person be castrated. After the, the botch thing happened, he was the one who said, I wanna do this as part of a theory. So, so basically if you're like, why did he lie about this later?

I think he had this theory and if he had admitted. His theory was wrong. He would have to admit that he had this kid castrated and it was the wrong decision. Yeah. Basically as time went on, the horror of what he had wrought through his initial in mistakes became bigger. And I think it parallels what we're seeing was in the modern trans movement.

You know, we now know that in, in gender discontentedness and gender non-content news 2024 of 13 year olds who present as, or, or, or who are gender discontented and would, you know, so they would, would prefer to be the other gender. Mm-hmm. Around nine and 10 of them are perfectly comfortable with their gender.

Mm-hmm. If no treatment is, is, is brought to them if treatment is brought to them, then they end up with a around 50% un unliving. Risk rate which is wild to me, the amount of harm that can be done. And, and we're, we're just not talking about this. Right? Yeah. You know, especially young ages where we know that this is, is such a big problem right now.

Now I I, I'd also note here that his intuition aligned with the urban monoculture, as we've talked about when we're trying to explore sort of how the urban monoculture thinks and builds ideas, which is like the world would be more fair. If gender was not, you know, we are always like, well, the world would be more fair if everyone was born with equal capability.

So we'll pretend that the world would be more fair if there was no such thing as beauty and it was subjective. And, and so we'll pretend that, you know, the, the world would be more fair if gender didn't really exist. And it was just something that we were socialized it too. And so he tried to make that a reality.

However, the reality was starkly different. David never identified as a female experiencing significant gender dysphoria, bullying at school and emotional distress. At 14, he learned the truth about his biological sex and chose to revert to living as a male, adopting the name David, and underwent reversal surgeries.

This outcome was revealed. Not until 1997 when Milton Diamond and Keith Sson published a paper exposing the failure, debunking money's claims. Money's message used during the experiment were also deeply troubling. Reports indicate he coerced David and his twin brother Brian, starting at age six to perform sexual rehearsals, photographing these acts, enforcing genital inspections during annual checkups.

So photographing these acts at six. These practices described as aggressive and traumatic contributed to severe psychological harm for both boys. Money's behavior when loan was the twins was reportedly a particularly distressing raising significant ethical questions about consent, child welfare, and the explosion, the exploitation of vulnerable subjects.

Basically he's just like, I'm a scientist, so I get to do whatever I want with these kids. Like that is wild. And, and what, what is so interesting to me is when we look at this modern you know, horrifying, twisted thing that parts of the trans movement have become, that we have likened to sort of centa bytes, that you have this person as like the, the hell priest of it all.

Like the, the key. Evil behind everything that's come down from this. And we see that it didn't start with like a scientist making a mistake or something like that. Well, and this is also, this

Simone Collins: also shows that like sex positivity, like this isn't a cultural thing. Like trying to force people to be okay with certain things sexually that they're not okay with is gonna be extremely damaging.

To be like, see, you're okay with it. I'm gonna make you do it. I'm gonna photograph you doing it. I think theory think that's also deeply evil.

Malcolm Collins: What reason could he possibly have for needing them to do, you know, simulated stuff? Oh, we're

Simone Collins: all thinking the same thing. Come on. Well,

Malcolm Collins: no, no. We know. The the reason is is, is, is that is what this guy was, he was a Cena byte, you know?

And as we said, Cena bytes tried to create more Cena bytes. No, but

Simone Collins: I mean, I think he was also another thing that starts with p.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I, I understand, but you know, there's a degree of de degeneracy when I say, when I say I just mean somebody who lives for de Degeneracy somebody who has dedicated their moral structure and system around self gratification was out concern for how that affects the world or other people, or even their own future state.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: The. Psychological impact was profound. David suffered from the word you can't say on YouTube, depression, and despite. Marrying Jane at 22 and adopting three children. He struggled with the trauma. Brian was similarly affected and died from antidepressant overdose in 2002. David did an unli in 2004 at the age of 38.

Monies, theory of gender neutrality. Posited that gender identity could be malleable within the first two years of life. Advocating for surgical normalization, for intersex infants. His work initially influenced medical standards justifying thousands of sex reassignment surgery. However, rimmer cases failure challenged his approach demonstrating that biological factors such as testosterone exposure played a significant role in gender identity.

A 2016 review highlighted David's attraction to women, contrary to money's learning learning theory of home of gayness further undermining his claims. The term quote unquote, gender originally referred to grammatical categories and linguistics, EEG masculine feminine neutered, like in Spanish.

So he didn't invent the word gender but money in the 1950s introduced the concept of a gender role, which is how we use it today. Which he defined as social and behavioral expressions of being male and female, distinct from biological sex in his 1955 paper. Her mam, gender and preity in hyper or something.

He used gender role to describe learned behaviors and societal expectations, laying the groundwork for the modern understanding of gender as a social construct. So if you have ever seen one of those graphs that's like gender is different from sex, right? And they'll have like the little pictures and everything, and you get this with like a lot of the, the weird gender stuff.

This is just this guy's theory. That is what they are pushing now, not the whole of his theory note. The trans community certainly has a beef with this guy as well because he argued that, well, all of this is just what you learn at a young age and you can change this stuff. Right. You know? So that doesn't align with the modern trans communities ideas, but.

Everything about the idea that gender is different from sex is monies, theories that were justified with this initial study.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: Also the concept that sexual orientation is like this important thing that we should be like paying attention to or revering. And all of that is, is from him, which is very different from our theory of sexuality.

If you look at any of our writings, like the Pragma Guide to Sexuality, you can see our model of sexuality. I. Which is to say that sexuality should just be thought of as a series of arousal patterns to certain stimuli. And sometimes those stimuli are male, sometimes those stimuli are female. Sometimes they're things that are neither male or female.

And each of those individual stimuli should be thought of as either having a positive or negative modifier to them. Where we argue that disgust appears to be arousal operating was a negative modifier in anything that causes disgust in sub popular. Subpopulation is gonna cause arousal in another subpopulation and vice versa.

You don't see this with other emotional states. Things that cause fear in subpopulations don't cause arousal in other populations. So, it appears that what happens when people get unusual arousal patterns is either the volume meter of the arousal is, is off or you get a sign flip from disgust to arousal or arousal to discuss.

And we point out the reason why, like even thinking about sexual orientation is so dumb, is the rates of for example. Straight men or men who otherwise identify as straight who are either un aroused by, like they're aroused by everything else about a woman but not the primary sex characteristics.

So the below the belt part and, and or who are aroused by, you know, nothing about males, but the below the belt part is higher. It's about twice the rate of the men who are aroused by everything that's associated with a male figure. And, the, the, the, the, this doesn't make sense if you're trying to draw like a from here to here on a sexual orientation.

It, it's more just, okay, here's a collection of arousal patterns. The problem with my arousal pattern theory is it takes what today. Like people are like, well, this isn't a fetish, this is a sexual orientation. And what we would say is. No sexual orientation is a choice to satisfy specific arousal patterns and an arousal pattern that is tied to a human isn't particularly for any conceptual reason.

Different or more elevated than an arousal pattern that is tied to another stimulus. Like this could be dominance displays, this could be you know, feet or something, right? Like this could be any, any number of, of things. Speaking of discussed creepy cos or like a scat, you know, I, I don't see why it makes sense to separate these, these categories.

But if you, if you don't, then. This causes a big problem for a community that is looking for special rights based on an identity that they have separated from the fetishes, but that is based on arousal patterns. And that is only possible if you go off of this guy's theories rather than my theories, which I think are much more supported by the evidence.

And you can read, we wrote a whole book on this that yeah, for example, ALA said it's, it's, it's a really good book on sexuality and she really knows sexuality research so. You know, if she thinks that yeah, this is really cogent and well thought through on like how all this evolved and how the patterns actually work then it probably is one of the best sources out there for studying this.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And again, like per the catechism of the progressive urban monoculture, his views were correct because. The most convenient thing would be that you can just blank slate someone and make them have whatever sexuality is most convenient and whatever gender is most convenient given the circumstances.

Mm-hmm. And that's unfortunately just not true like yours is, is the reality version of this that like actually a lot of people are turned on by things that are like really not ideal. Super, super not ideal. Yeah, like a lot of women are super turned on by. How shall we put it? Non-consensual surprise sex.

But that doesn't mean they condone it or want it. Yeah. It just, it just sucks. Right. And like, I think this, this does cast light on how that ideology plays out differently. Well, yeah. And why And the damage of acting as though things are, as though they would be in an ideal world because we don't live in an ideal world.

And the monstrous things you end up doing inadvertently at best. By pretending in it's today, it's an ideal world. It's, it's, what you've described is just so beyond the pale for me.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, it is, it is beyond the pale of, I think, what any like, decent thinking person could and, and, and consider, like this guy, the parents went to him because he was seen as an expert.

He, he made this decision and then he essentially groomed the kids throughout his entire childhood, you know, using him like. That this is horrifying to me that this was carried out and this guy was, was considered like a normal, mainstream academic for a long period of time. And this stuff was, was, was known about and, and not put out there, but it also shows in the modern community how much harm came downstream of the and I think also the idea of sexual orientation as, as I've mentioned here mm-hmm.

Why do we elevate specific arousal patterns over arousal patterns and then normalize them with an individual identity? There's no reason to do that aside of this guy's work, and I also really disagree with the broader way that he describes gender roles. I think we can talk about the ways that men and women are biologically different.

And then we can talk about cultural gender expectations. But you know, I think a lot of the way that people choose to present gender displays and stuff like that can be very fluid without needing to categorize them as something evert. But. As soon as you bring up this idea of gender role, well now all of a sudden you can't have tomboys.

Tomboys are, are, are, are wrong in some way. For those who don't know. The term tomboy in English means a girl who acts, who is like into football and wears a, a backwards baseball cap in jeans. You know, this, this is now seen as wrong. Even if that is, I. The normative gender role from the culture that you and I come from, that we both come from the Backwood slash Greater Tion cultural region.

We've talked about this in other episodes but within that cultural region, that is the way the ideal woman acts. The ideal woman, you know, does hunting and fishing and, and has a gun and a knife collection and, and those are like Simone when, when she first met, he used to shout off her knife collection.

That is a normal femininity within our cultural. Region. And it, it, it, because that wasn't the dominant culture. Now all of a sudden, women being born into that culture, were, were being categorized as aberrant or not feminine enough. And we did an episode on the death of the tomboy that goes into this a lot more on like the Noodler girl who's from this culture and she catches these big catfish.

And other like girly girls that were from cultures that take where women take on a more feminine role. It's such as, you know, Muslim cultures and Catholic cultures were criticizing her of, of being very girly and, and not being the type of thing that you should wanna show off or that a guy would want.

And I'm like, well that's a cultural preference. And it might even be a, a a, a arousal pattern preference that gets to some extent informed by, because, you know, we co-evolve along our culture. The culture that you are exposed to, like personally actually kind of interesting. I get almost no arousal from girly acting girls.

Like, like prissy girls. I, I find them like kind of gross. You know, and, and so I think that, that, when I say girly, I mean like overly, you know, perform hyper feminine, feminine gender displays. I, I don't. I'm not into that.

Simone Collins: So higher voices and lots of frills and pinks and bowes and things like that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The sort of high maintenance act.

Simone Collins: Ah, okay. So not even necessarily like youthful girl acting, but just hyper-feminine acting.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, the hyper-feminine act being

Simone Collins: squeamish or, okay, okay. I get it.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, you, you've always seen that about me even, even in like. As I said, I think like one of the anime girls that I, that I like the most is Tom Whan is a girl.

Oh, that's, and it's an anime on a very you know, tomboy girl. But that's, that's just been always, you know, my, my cultural background. I think, not admitting again that these things. Change between cultures and that people may have, I, I identify with different cultures. And note here, I'm not saying that gender is entirely fluid, but I'm saying gender can, to a degree, be specialized for different cultural contexts.

And you can't just make up what it means to you. I mean, you, you, you can and, and some people might have aberrant displays of it, but you know, it's, it, it's not necessarily gonna work as we saw in this guy's experience. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So anyway, sexual orientation money did not invent the term sexual orientation, but was among the first to use and popularize it in academic discourse.

In the 1970s, he employed sexual orientation to describe an individual's pattern of sexual attraction, EG, heterosexual gay or bisexual framing. It was as a psychological and behavioral phenomenon. So he, he, he came up with that distinction. Heterosexual. He used another word that's offensive now and then bisexual.

In his book 1988 book, gay, straight and in between the sexology of erotic orientation helped formalize the term in sexology, emphasizing its distinction from gender identity. While earlier terms like sexual preference were used, money's contr. Oh, so before this, it was sexual preference. He normalized sexual orientation and, and the reason why sexual preference was pushed against later is it made it sound like a choice of an individual and could undermine the, the ideology that the LGBT movement was pushing at the time.

Now, I will note that I believe that, that, that they are right about that. It's not a choice. What, what arouses you is not a choice. But as such, it's also not something that you have to do or want or approve of either. , He argued that gender would learn through socialization and popularized the concept. He also established one of the first gender identity clinics in the 1960s promoting surgical and hormonal interventions for gender reassignment, particularly in intersex and transgender individuals. He is work legitimized medical approaches to align physical bodies with gender roles as seen for his advocacy of the David Rimmer reassignment.

Now why did he lie? Like, why, why? Like, he knew and we now know that he knew when he first published this stuff, he, the kid was six. He didn't have a lot of information at that time, so he might have not known when he first published it, but he definitely knew it was in the first few years after publishing it.

And so why didn't he go back? I think there's the few. One is, is he would have to admit the harm that he did. Two is imagine the harm to his professional reputation. Better to just try to keep it quiet. Hmm. I mean, of course it was gonna come out eventually. This was not working Right. You know?

So I don't like. One of these individuals who just like doesn't take time to think, oh my God, I need to hit the, the panic button right now. I need to hit the stop button right now. He never went back and like apologized or explained why he did all of this or so I, I think that his position and the fact that he never accepted what he had done aligns very heavily with I think a lot of, the, the because we've seen this with like the, the Traverse stock Clinic and stuff like this, the, the. Overlap between the Centa Byte lifestyle and the people who push this stuff is really, really high. It's not like just this guy, it was the Trata clinic. That was the case of the one doctor who worked there who would go down and like, like chat up underage boys in a nearby park or something.

And try to get them to, to go to the facility. Like this is a behavior that we, we see. Repeatedly in a lot of these communities. And I think that we need to ask ourselves why, why do these two things so often overlap? You know, w in our big episode on, you know, the life of a c byte, where we go into valence, this, this trans reporter who attacked cure shift for saying totally normal and true stuff on her stream.

That immigrants had a higher fertility rate than the. You know, non-immigrant American population. And she goes, oh, she's a great replacement theory. It's, it's like, what do you, Hillary Clinton said this, like, we, we have that episode where we like, this is not in any sort of conspiracy theory.

That's just like a fact. She's not like, and it's because of the Jews or something. She said a completely reasonable thing and you tried to destroy her life over it. But like, okay, so what does that correlate with? Oh, well. This person apparently on, you know, video games with minors would put like a vibrator in and use that for their, you know, this is, this is with, without the minor's consent, of course, the minors did not know that they were playing.

Was this older individual. And it, it's, it's something that we just keep seeing over and over and over again. And nothing to me could be more horrific. One of the things I was just thinking about today is like, imagine if, and I don't know, I. If, if trans people are real. But if they are real, the horror, you would feel as a trans person that your movement was taken over by these people.

That'd be like the prenatal movement would be taken over by like white nationalists or something. Like it would be really horrifying from our perspective. Hmm. And yet. You know, that, that, that is what happened to the, because if you look at the early, like for example, trans activists like Buck Angel and Caitlyn Jenner they've been completely expelled from the movement when they tried to be like hey, like, we don't actually support like the stuff with the kids, right?

Like, we should probably be walking this back a bit. You know, we, we, we should actually be looking at the research, right?

And I should note here, while we're gonna do a separate episode on this article, the Atlantic, you know, mainstream progressive newspaper, published an article recently the Liberal Misinformation Bubble about youth gender medicine, how the left ended up Disbelieving Science. And if we look at, for example, a quote from it, , and it's talking here about.

Well, if you do not get your kid gender reassignment surgery, if you do not affirm their gender, they are more likely to unlive themselves. It says in response to this, and this is mainstream leftist publication, mind you, but there is a huge problem with that emotive format. It isn't true when Justice Samuel Alito.

Challenge the A CLU lawyer chased down and got strang go on such claims during oral arguments. STR made a startling admission. He conceded that there's no evidence to support the idea that medical transition reduces adolescent unloving rates. At first, Strang dodged the question saying that research showed that blockers and hormones quote, reduce depression, anxiety, and aliveness.

That is. Unloving thoughts, even that is debatable according to reviews of the research literature. And here they're, , citing the study hormone therapy, mental health and quality of life among transgender people, a systematic review and another study. Pediatric gender medicine longitudinal studies have not consistently shown improvement in depression or unliving rates.

but when Alito referenced systematic review conducted in the casts report in England, str Geo conceded the point quote, there is no evidence in some, in the studies, , that this treatment reduces completed. Unloving rates, he said, quote. And the reason for this is that completed unloving, thankfully admittedly it's rare, and we're talking about a very small population of individuals with studies that don't necessarily have completed rates within them.

In quote, here was the trans right movements, greatest legal brain speaking in front of the nation's highest court. And what he was saying was that the strongest argument for the hotly debated treatment was in fact not supported by science.

What's really chilling to me is that their top minds, like the people who are most educated on this, obviously the rank and file don't know what they're talking about. They're not up to date with the science. They're just repeating talking points. But the top guys, like this lawyer knows. That he is arguing to put kids on puberty blockers when there is no evidence that this helps them when they don't understand what they're committing to, , when this is gonna sterilize them for life, when this is gonna cause.

Lifelong dependency on medications, , for gender reassignment, even not just puberty blockers for minors. So some of these individuals, , these people in the horror of what they are committing and at scale right now, I. Are no different from Joe Money because there is no legitimate explanation. There is no hiding behind.

Well, the, I I thought that the research said they are now just trying to cover up the research, , like Joe Money did when it turned out that his initial theories were wrong. If you want to go back and be like, Hey, this guy deserves some punishment. Well, he's long gone at this point, but these people are still doing this stuff and they're still causing the same amount of harm castrating children, and forcing them into weird sexualized situations.

To have your community so overtaken by. These types of individuals who are still the dominant voices. As I pointed out, like elect the memo who recently did a Netflix special you know, had the quote about, you know, the little girls are not that innocent.

Who, who are in the bathrooms, you know, like they're kinky too. Like these, these people. You just keep seeing it over and over and over again. And it's. It. I, I think the reason is, is that when you loosen sexual norms within one area, it's very easy to justify loosening them across the board.

Mm-hmm. Especially when you self-identify as either a, a person in a position of authority or a victimized minority. Do you have thoughts, Simone? Because you haven't really,

Simone Collins: I'm just, I'm so terrified by this. Yeah. I.

This bad, this this real bad. I, I, I don't know. I just didn't know. But I also didn't realize that this concept of gender roles was at least articulated so late because people talk in the context of history about gender roles incessantly. Not that there were not gender roles before, but I didn't realize that they, this concept of calling them that was so recent and also from someone who.

No, I hate so Fahe. So this is surprising all around.

Malcolm Collins: And I think I had a, a term that I would promote as an alternative is, is is cultural gender norms. Yeah, that makes sense. Heavy understanding that they deviate even within a country, right? Like, oh yeah. Really, really heavily within a country.

Mm-hmm. Like this is the, when people are like, I don't understand, like the difference between like backwoods culture and like deep south culture, the Cavalier cultural group. Gender norms is a huge area where they differ. Mm-hmm. In the, in the backwoods greater Appalachian cultural region.

Genders are fairly e egalitarian. There's not that much difference between a man and a woman. In terms of their status. You, you typically are searching for a woman based on her fortitude. Her ability to defend the land, as we've talked about, was like Daniel Boone. When somebody was talking about his wife, they were talking about, oh, you know, she's really good with a rifle.

She's very good at defending the property from Intru. Like, that's what they thought to say. Like, not she's beautiful or anything like that, or she's, she's smart. Like she's smart and had a good conversationalist, is what the puritans would always value in a woman. And in the south they valued more traditional femininity , and attractiveness and ability to sort of run a household.

And, and like that's okay to have different gender norms. And I think in our society today, because you know, intercultural marriages are so normal, you basically need to establish through contract what gender roles your marriage is gonna be based on.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Because you, you know, even if you're, you're, you're like two white Christians coming together.

If one of you is from like the Cavalier Cultural Group and the other is from like the backwards cultural group you might find yourself in something of a shocking, you know, situation in terms of cultural expectations around what's expected of you. And I think that that is. Something that, that is really undermined by individuals who try to push this idea of sort of pan cultural.

Now, I'm not saying that there aren't pan cultural differences between males and females, but these should be thought of as gen. These should be thought of as the way men and women are biologically different from each other. And your psychology is part of your biology. If it's you know, an inborn trait, well, also admitting as we always push on this podcast is that psychological preferences of individuals co-evolve with their culture. And if their culture has you know, sort of aberrant psychological preferences when contrasted with other cultures around something like gender norms, I.

They're going to act in a way that's really different. And that's fine. Like we need to get better at accepting the ways that we are different as a society. And the urban monoculture acts as a huge impediment to that because it demands that we accept that humans have no. The preferences, predilections or abilities that are inborn and different between groups.

Well, I

Simone Collins: think the other really big issue though is we need to stop making a big deal out of gender. The whole reason these, these boys were put through this, which was such a terrible, just too many human rights violations here is because their parents freaked out and were like, oh, well, okay. There was a, a, a botched procedure with his private parts.

Now we need to rethink everything about his gender. No, he just had a botched procedure with his private parts, like maybe they consulted surgeons to see if they could do reconstructive surgery or not. Maybe they didn't, but you could also wait and see how technology advances and see what he wants to do when he's old enough, like.

The fact that they had to make this about gender in the first. Well,

Malcolm Collins: Simone, I'm gonna push back a bit here. I do agree from our cultural perspective. So if you take the the backwards cultural perspective, because we're a very gender egalitarian cultural group. We would not see that much importance to gender.

Like, we're like, well, you know, both roles, both genders need to be able to defend the property. Both genders need to be able to make a living. Both genders need to be able to handle the tough work, et cetera. We would say, oh yeah, but also like he is versus balls. Like

Simone Collins: there's, there's no reason why this.

No, but the point I'm making

Malcolm Collins: is gender is actually very important. In other regions, like in Muslim traditions, gender is hugely important and the cavalier cultural tradition, gender is hugely important. Is, is is just, you're sort of in a position of cultural privilege where you can say like, why do you even care about gender anyway?

Because our culture just doesn't care about gender that much, which is why we raise our girls to be. You know, was, was, was more boyish names to be more tomboyish because that is what our culture does. But I think yeah, but this

Simone Collins: hyper focus on like gender also concentrating in one body part when, as we know from both human sexuality, no, I can agree with and from a scientific level, like this guy was very, very male.

And he'd been mutilated in one part of his body. Like, but

Malcolm Collins: I, I, I can agree with that, but I, I think that we have to keep in mind where we're dealing with a degree of cultural privilege and how we can address this and our answer for our family, which is just don't like our oldest kid who's five still.

We, we had a conversation with him in the car today, like it's actually becoming a problem at this age. 'cause he's five does not understand what gender is. He cannot, when we ask him the, the gender. Yeah. Is so-and-so

Simone Collins: a boy or a girl? I feel like,

Malcolm Collins: no, we're not talking about like strangers. We can ask him the gender of his sister, which we did today.

Yeah. He is like, he got it wrong.

Simone Collins: He's definitely a boy.

Malcolm Collins: This Yeah. He, he was very confident in his wrong answer as well. Yeah. He gets it right 50% of the time almost. Exactly. Yeah. Which shows it is a pure guess for him. Mm-hmm. He has no idea what gender is. And it might be because we, and then we're not like raising him gender neutral or any sort of experience that No,

Simone Collins: I always try to correct because the problem is like when we, I take 'em out in the morning to, to parks and stuff and they talk loudly.

For everyone to hear about everything they think. They, you know, are like, oh, look at him running. Or like, look at her doing this. It's so offensive to older people because they don't

Malcolm Collins: know that he's always Yeah, they're like, they,

Simone Collins: I feel like, yeah, he's, he's insult. Like, why is that man not letting us pet his dog?

And like, you know, old lady glares at me and I'm like, oh. And so I'm like, every time I'm like, it's, she's a woman. She's a woman. And then like, after they pass, I'm like, you know, here are the things to look for. Like, but actually

Malcolm Collins: this is really interesting despite neither our son nor our daughters, so neither of our sons nor neither of our daughters can consistently get gender correct.

They, they do not know what gender their siblings are. They even, how, like we, our, our daughter wears dresses and I wear dresses. I would, the point I was going to make is despite not having a concept of. What gender is or what gender they are, they act in very gendered ways. Our daughter really likes accessorizing, really likes wearing like little fancy things.

She really likes wearing gendered clothing. And. And this to me is really fascinating because it seems to indicate that you don't need a concept of gender to fall into pre evolved gender roles even within a family like ours. But what's also interesting is I can already see the way that.

Female gender display is different in our culture within our daughter. Huh? So even though the kids don't have an under, well, she fights with her brothers all the time. Like in terms of sock bopper or fist fights and everything like that. She really enjoys fighting. Just as much as one of the boys do.

Which is, I, I would guess probably not part of the gender norm package I would get if I had a daughter. And I was, people can answer in the comments, if you're from a different cultural group, does your daughters like fighting as much as your sons? Or. Do only your young sons like fighting.

And it is aberrant for our daughter to like fighting in addition to all the accessorizing and dresses and everything like that. But yeah, very interesting.

Simone Collins: What do we do going forward to stop bad things from happening to people like this?

Malcolm Collins: I mean, part of the problem is, is the, the, obviously our generation's version of this is the gender reassignment surgeries being done on children.

Funny, it's, it's the same thing that they were for him. So, gender reassignment surgery's being done on children people who can't consent. So, but, but stopping that is incredibly difficult because it is. Become sort of a priest cast of the urban monoculture and a really sort of untouchable cast.

And our new book that I'm writing right now, we are going to explore why that is the case, how they became the priest cast. But this sort of like a, a eunuch fully life dedicated. It's mostly because they can't go back anymore. It's the core reason I think it's. It's kind of obvious they are. And if they try, then they get completely exercised from public life.

You know, whether you see this with Buck Angel or Caitlyn Jenner, just the entire community immediately rounds and attacks them. So there is no criticizing the excesses of anyone who uses this label. And the reason I say use this label is it's pretty clear that some people who are using the label are just degenerates and are using the label for protection.

Which is you know, scary as well that we have allowed this to happen. So I mean, you know, it's, it's fighting again, and this is part of why I think all the rest of our advocacy would be a lot easier if we just held to the line of. Well, the, the whole trans thing's okay, whatever, like, there, there's clearly nothing wrong going on here.

Like, I support some religious groups blind like we do with gay people. With gay people. We're like, well, I support some religious organizations ability because I can support cultural sovereignty to say I'm not okay with this, but I support the people who are, you know, of age and like wanna get married and everything like that.

And if they want to, then go ahead, right? Like cultural sovereignty is, is the center of my moral system. That said uh uh, so it would be so easy if we just went with that, with all the trans stuff. And the reason I don't is because I just think that there is so much active harm being caused right now that I, even if it hurts other causes that I think are really important, it is worth wrapping that advocacy together.

Simone Collins: That's fair. Yeah. All right. Well. That was sobering, but I'm glad you told me about that. Glad to know. I guess, I mean, not happy to know, but it's better that I do know, if that makes sense. Hopefully everyone else feels the same way.

Malcolm Collins: Yep. Alright. Who, how, I wonder how demonetize this one's gonna get. I'm always, we try

Simone Collins: to be really careful with vocabulary choice, so

Malcolm Collins: I'm gonna, I'm gonna go through and try to delete anything that can get us demonetized, so we'll see.

You guys all have to be creative in how you piece together what's being said

Simone Collins: clearly. Yeah. My gosh. I love you. Love

Malcolm Collins: you.

Simone Collins: I already sent the other link so we can just go straight there. I. Record access to not sabotage us,

Malcolm Collins: okay? Mm-hmm. Podcast topics. Oh, I gotta tell our audience the most hilarious thing, Simone. , for you guys who don't know, that's the the v tuber who's like a little lolly vampire girl. That was black hair. And it's played by a guy. You think that that

Simone Collins: is, sorry.

No, just sounds just like it's not, I played, I played their audio side by side and it was really close.

Malcolm Collins: She thought that that was the guy from Clownfish tv.

Simone Collins: They sound super similar. I mean, you listen to it though, right? They're both like famous, like why would you have these two? And they have the same politics.

Like I know, I know. They have the same politics. Isn't that interesting? It's just that some people like to hear about you through the lens of Disney and the Marvel universe as a married parent. You know, some like to hear you as a vampire girl, and you know what we've learned. Since our very first startup, that anime is extremely polarizing.

That's true. So, you know, to be a v YouTuber is to decidedly restrict your audience forever. I, I mean, I mean an anime v YouTuber, because he's, he's technically v YouTuber through clownfish TV as well.

Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah, true. Because he uses those little drawings to do the exactly.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I'm just saying though, neon from Clownfish TV

Malcolm Collins: is secretly ran v YouTuber.

Simone Collins: It got to the point where I was like playing their videos simultaneously and being like, mm, no. They would've had to like switch out their audio regs or something. Like, it's not exact, it's not exact.

Malcolm Collins: You, you and your conspiracies. I've told people, one of the early conspiracies on us, the first time we went viral or one of the early times we went viral is that we were actually the same person.

Because they said we looked too similar and two people couldn't have such crazy views. And so we must be one person cosplaying as the other, and pretending to be in a relationship. Have they not

Simone Collins: even heard the term Folia do? I mean, like most people hadn't until it was a wine brand. But still, I feel like you should have learned it by then.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, that we're both crazy. We're in a little a fo ado Crazy Yes world here where we believe that we're reading all these statistics about falling fertility rates. Where we believe for whatever reason, like the far left, divides human dignity based on their you know, ethnicity and gender. Even, even though they don't do that at all.

Yeah. What, what'd you think of the book? We're writing a book. We got contacted by a real publisher this time who might wanna publish a real book by us. Maybe

Simone Collins: we'll see after they read the intro. I'm excited about the intro. Basically Malcolm is outlining the, the introduction to a book that would theoretically be called We Will Replace You.

That talks about how. Demographic collapse is playing out, but what isn't being discussed that much is, all right, well, who's gonna come out ruler of the world in the future. Well it seems

Malcolm Collins: it's sort of like a, a treatise on how the tech right and the traditional right, can work together in what comes next and work together to defeat the urban monoculture, which is uniquely, I think, important right now with Elon's sort of betrayal, I think, of the larger right wing movement.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: Which everyone knew was coming. I don't see it as like a big thing. I mean, him and Trump were always eventually gonna have a falling out. I didn't expect him to go this hard, but that, that was always something that was going on.

Do

Simone Collins: either of these men practice things by half measures Malcolm? No, they don't. They,

Malcolm Collins: they, they go a hundred percent. Yeah. But, but you know, we live

Simone Collins: dramatically.

Malcolm Collins: We'll have an episode on, on this that will have gone live before this one. But I, but I will say just so our position on this, I, I am not happy that this happened.

And I think that that increases the importance of Simone and I in staying loyal to the mainstream Republican party and the, the new right tech, right alliance and, and, and understanding that. Elon's not the king of all this. You know, honestly, probably the king of all of this is Asma Gold, if you wanted to say, who's the real king of like this faction of voters and influences them the most.

And Elon has beefed with Asma Gold before as well. So he has Asma Gold called him out for the game cheating thing. Oh. And he got like banned on Twitter for a short period because of that. You know, which is. Not great. Because he was, he was being very gracious in the way he was doing it. He was like, I mean, just looking at this, it does not look good, is basically what Asal said.

And, and, you know, or you know, Nino, who's big now, I can't believe Nux. Inor got big outta nowhere. Cool. All right. I'll get started.

In this episode, Malcolm and Simone delve into the unsettling phenomenon of AI psychosis—a condition where interactions with AI lead to severe mental health issues. They discuss instances where people have gone insane, attempted violence, or required psychiatric care after engaging with AI, specifically chatbots like Chat GPT. The conversation explores why and how certain people are more susceptible, the historical context relating to sycophancy, and preventive measures one can take. Learn about the psychological dangers of AI sycophancy and the necessity of resisting the urge for constant affirmation from these intelligent systems.

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to talk with you today. Today we are going to be talking about. AI psychosis, which is a very scary phenomenon that's been happening to people where we're, we're not here talking about, like freaking out about AI more broadly or something like that. Some people when they interact with AI, appear to go crazy and they'll attempt to kill people.

They will need to like be checked into mental institutions. This has happened to multiple people already. Their

Simone Collins: marriages are falling apart.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, but that's more like when people hear that, they're thinking more like I'm in love with a chat bot. Right. That's not what we're talking about here. We are talking about people actually going totally crazy.

Yes. And it's something that's been happening repeatedly. We'll be reading about instances of it where they, I. Brought somebody to a psychiatrist or something and they're like, oh, actually this is a very common thing. And I'd even note that I see it within some of our fans already where people will reach out to us and what's really.

Obvious is this form of psychosis is super clear in people's writing if they have it. Yes. And you, and you see this all the time from sort of our fans and it's like a new category of like schizo outreach. That's very different than historic schizo outreach because, you know, we've been doing this long enough that we were in the pre AI age and into the AI age.

And these do not appear to be normal schizos who were turned into AI nut jobs. It appears this happens to normal people. Before we go into it, , I wanna talk about what I think is causing it and what Simone thinks is causing it. 'cause we were talking about this we don't think this is a new phenomenon.

What we actually think is happening is whatever people historically, you know, historically, they were like, oh, well absolute power corrupts absolutely. But what they may have actually been observing is a different phenomenon, which is when certain people are surrounded by sycophants they go crazy.

And the human brain is. Essentially stops working normally, and some people are so susceptible that if they just have one or a collection of automated humans in the form of AI that are sycophantic, they too will go crazy. And we actually see a lot of problems psychologically before we go into the specific instances of this, of people receiving this type of affirmation.

So, a study by Broman Dweck and Bushman showed that children with low self-esteem when given in affiliated praise, quote unquote incredibly good, became avoidant of challenges and, and no longer put themselves in difficult situations.

Simone Collins: Yikes

Malcolm Collins: following Desi's experiments, attach. External words are constant praise to intrinsically interesting task.

Also undermines motivation. Where if you give people a bunch of praise to do a task they stop doing the task in absence of praise, even if they like doing it before. If we're going to go, actually, we'll go to the history a bit after we dig into the specifics of this. Yeah. So any thoughts before we dig into it?

Simone?

Simone Collins: Just in terms of, of the connection with this and also schizophrenia, I also kind of. Think that subtly, maybe part of what makes schizophrenics really crazy is that their inner voices are reinforcing what they think.

Malcolm Collins: That is not something that happens. You don't think so? I also, I, sorry. I used to work with people at schizophrenia.

That was like my core area of psychology. Inner voices are usually antagonistic.

Simone Collins: Okay. My other concern is that one of the reasons why we hate. Mysticism is, I feel like there's, there's a little bit of a connection here is that people, when they choose to become mysticism or when they choose to hear God and like just prey on it, and then God talks to them, they're getting kind of a version of this where they're getting a flattering voice that tells 'em what they wanna hear which ultimately can be very damaging.

But I think it's a much more, it's a much lighter version of it because those voices are much more quiet than what you get with chat. GPT where chat gt is openly. Calling you the, the, the light bringer, the spark bringer. Oh, yes. You understand? I think

Malcolm Collins: they, they, your intuition is fundamentally off here.

Interesting. I think that most people, when they model God, when they model they do not model something that is sycophantic. And, and they model something that holds them to account. And so even if it is just an internal model it it, and if it's really God, he's definitely not gonna be syco fantic.

So either way, you're not gonna run into this particular problem. So you think the syco

Simone Collins: fancy the, the obsequiousness. Is one of the most toxic elements of this that makes this uniquely dangerous. That

Malcolm Collins: and the affirmation which I think shows why people who go into lifestyles, where they seek constant affirmation like the trans lifestyle and stuff like that that they psychologically degrade.

So quickly, but I think that constant affirmation for whatever you believe about yourself becomes uniquely dangerous to people with degrees of mysticism. And that is where I see, this is where mysticism does come into play with this. Where I see people spinning out really quickly is Ill have little mystical like beliefs or weird mystical theories that then get affirmed for them by AI in a way that leads to, is it sort of an expansion, a break

Simone Collins: with reality?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. A perception of self and a break with reality. So let's get started here.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: From an article titled People are being Involuntarily Committed, jailed and Spiraling into GPT Psychosis I don't know what's wrong with me, but something is very bad.

I'm very scared and I need to go to the hospital. As we reported earlier this month, many chat GPT users are developing all consuming obsessions with chatbots. Spiraling into severe mental health crises characterized by paranoia, delusions, and breaks was reality. The consequences can be dire as we heard from spouses.

Friends, children and parents looking on an alarm. Instances of what's being called chat, GPT, psychosis have led to the breakup of marriages of families, the loss of jobs and slides into homelessness. And that's not all. As we've reported, we've heard numerous troubling stories about people's loved ones being involuntarily committed to psychiatric care facilities, or even ending up in jail all after being fixated on chat.

AI quote. I was like. I don't effing know what to do. In quote, one woman told us, quote, . Nobody who knows, knows what to do. In quote, her husband, she said, had no prior history of mania, delusions, or psychosis. He turned to chat GBT about 12 weeks ago for assistance with a permaculture construction project.

Soon after he engaged the bot in probing philosophical chats, he became engulfed in Messianic delusions, proclaiming that he had somehow brought forth a sentient AI and that with it, he had quote unquote, broken. Math and physics embarking on a grandiose mission to save the world. His gentle personality faded as his obsessions deepened and his behavior became so erratic that he was let go from his job.

He stopped sleeping and rapidly lost weight. He was like, just talk to chat GPT. You'll see what I'm talking about. His wife recalled and every time I look , at what's going on on the screen, it just sounds like a bunch of affirming sycophantic Bs. Eventually the husband slid into a full tilt break, was reality, realizing how bad things had become.

His wife and a friend went out to buy enough gas to make it to the hospital. When they returned, the husband had a links of rote wrapped around his neck.

Simone Collins: Oh, not good

Malcolm Collins: The friend called Emergency Medical Services, who arrived and transported him to the emergency room.

Oh my God. From there, he was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric care facility. Now, before we go to like the next person, you can see that this is quite severe. Yeah. This isn't just

Simone Collins: someone becoming. Too enamored with their AI girlfriend while me,

Malcolm Collins: but I, I repeatedly see this in individuals and I think most humans are incredibly susceptible to this unless you are either, like, to me this almost feels like this is gonna wash most of people who are susceptible to mysticism out of humanity.

I'm okay with that. Right. But I mean, once they start engaging with Z, and I guess my biggest warning would be if you have mystical thoughts or beliefs, never engage with AI about them. Yeah. Or at least,

Simone Collins: especially not chat GT. 'cause that seems to be another really big theme here, that chat, GPT seems to be the most obsequious.

Reinforcing of these though I know that there are other, like Claude is known for getting kind of mystical when it talks to itself. But Chad GTC stories, Claude ISN of these as bad as

Malcolm Collins: GT G PT is much worse for, for, for Syco Fancy than any of the other ais right now.

Simone Collins: Just personally, because I also wonder if maybe it's an adoption thing, like No, I use a lot

Malcolm Collins: of them.

I also think, keep in mind, wits are more likely to use GPT because that was the first one that really went wide and everything. Oh,

Simone Collins: okay. And

Malcolm Collins: a lot of these people are people who haven't interacted much with it. Other forms of ai. I mean, keep in mind I was using it for a permaculture project. This is something you'll see repeatedly.

It is often mid widths who are just beginning to engage with ai. Mm-hmm. And they don't really understand like how you're supposed to engage with it or the ways to use it or the ways to fix it for adversarial framing. Instead of just assuming that whatever it says is going to be positive if you're just giving it sort of generic questioning.

Right. But. You know, if you had intuitions around mystical thoughts and an AI who is able to talk with you very eloquently seems to be affirming them, and keep in mind that these guys, like this guy who works in pharma culture, the AI is probably the smartest person he's talking to, you know? Yeah.

For sure. Yeah. How smarter life smarter than other people and it's affirming these things in ways that are smarter than you can even articulate that. Oh,

Simone Collins: I, I also see what you're saying. So like, one, they're able to answer questions about math or your domain or your work that no one else. Even in your social network is capable of answering.

So you're like, okay, this thing is already validated as being smart, and then you ask it mystical questions and you assume that, well, since it's right about all these things, it's also gonna be right about these mystical things. When it says that I'm right. No,

Malcolm Collins: that's not what I mean. That's not what I mean.

Simone Collins: Don't you think it's Well, but we see a similar phenomenon with a lot of people.

Malcolm Collins: No, but what I was saying, being credulous

Simone Collins: with like Nobel laureates who maybe got their Nobel Prize in physics, but then suddenly you're like, well, I know the secret to health. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: That'ss not what I'm saying. Okay. I'm, I'm, I'm literally saying the opposite of that.

Okay. I'm saying that if you are an. Idiot mysticism brained person. Okay. And you can string together a few mysticism like ideas, okay? The AI is going to synthesize those and say those back to you with the mystical intelligence of someone like Maimonides or something. Oh,

Simone Collins: way more articulately.

Malcolm Collins: Way it can take your own ideas that were maybe incoherent or a little stupid and make them sound and even structured in a much more intelligent context.

Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah. So well, yeah, so I think that that, that is very dangerous and compelling, but I think also combine that with how credulous people are about entities or chat partners who seem to be validated in some other realm.

Malcolm Collins: I understand, but I think that this is a, a bigger issue here, which is it's actual competence.

Sure. His mystical like framings.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Speaking to futurism, a different man recounted his whirlwind 10 day descent into AI delusion. Keep in mind, these people are exposed to this. 14 days is rapid.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Then it only takes 10 days to go off the deep end. That is a rapid descent. I mean, I think even schizophrenics have a longer, a longer fall off than that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Which ended with full breakdown in multi-day stay in a medical care facility. He turned to chat GBT for help at work. He'd started a new high stress job and was hoping the chatbot could expedite some administrative tasks despite it. Being in his early forties with no prior history of mental illness, he sue found himself absorbed in dizzying, paranoid delusions of grandeur, believing that the world was under threat and it was up to him to save it.

He doesn't remember much of the ordeal. A common symptom of people who experienced breaks with reality, but recalls the severe psychological stress of fully believing that lives, including those of his wife and children were at grave risk and feeling . As if no one was listening.

That's

Simone Collins: scary.

Malcolm Collins: I remember being on the floor, crawling towards my wife, on my hands and knees and begging her to listen to me. He said, I. The spiral led to a frightening break was reality severe enough that his wife felt the only choice was to call 9 1 1 and send the police in an ambulance. I was out in the backyard and saw that my behavior was getting really out there rambling, talking about mind reading, future telling, just completely paranoid.

The man told us I was actively trying to speak backwards through time. It doesn't make sense. Don't worry about it. It doesn't make sense to me either, but I remember trying to learn. To speak to this police officer backwards through time with emergency respondents on site. The man told us he experienced a moment of quote, unquote clarity around his needs for help and voluntarily admitted himself to mental CLA care.

I looked at my wife and I said, thank you. You did the right thing. I need to go. I need a doctor. I don't know what's going on, but this is very scary. He recalled, I don't know what's wrong with me, but something is very bad. I'm very scared and I need to go to a hospital.

Simone Collins: I was just listening to a decoder ring podcast on the explosion of the white noise industry, and there's one person in the white noise industry who's like, yeah, my white noise could like bring altered states of mind, but this is next level.

They're like, just a couple days of talking with AI could give you such an altered state of mind that you think you are talking through time to a police man.

Malcolm Collins: Is you think he's talking backwards, that he's trying to learn to speak backwards in time? That is, I

Simone Collins: mean, but

Malcolm Collins: like,

Simone Collins: just

Malcolm Collins: to think about like

Simone Collins: without psychedelics, without drugs that you can, that.

That just your interaction with people. But then again, like, I mean, I know you're gonna get to the history, like we've seen this happen with historical figures too. It was like Roman

Malcolm Collins: emperors and, and Chinese emperors and stuff like this. Yeah. This is not a unique phenomenon. Yeah. It appears to be that some human brains break under the pressure of extremes.

Sco, fancy

Simone Collins: actually break. This is so crazy

Malcolm Collins: and it, it, it's almost like, GPT right now is almost like when we you know, gave Native Americans like alcohol. And they didn't have there's no

Simone Collins: defenses. Yeah. We're like, our bodies are not built to work with this. Yeah. And so

Malcolm Collins: some of them developed these addictions that crippled them.

And now, you know, a, a Native American population, they're most certainly more resistant to, to alcohol than they were when we first contacted them because they Sure. Evolved through this, but this is one of these evolutionary bottlenecks that I don't think our species have really thought about right now.

Yeah. Because it's something that I think people do not talk about a lot. Well, we're like, only a few months into

Simone Collins: it really think about it. Wait,

Malcolm Collins: like, well, no, we're, I can tell you from the number of GPT psychosis emails that we get that this is a, a common phenomenon. And I would say that if, in terms of like.

Crazy people emailing us. We probably get now as many, or maybe even twice as many GPT psychosis people as we get normal crazies emailing us 100% easy. And what that means, and, and the note, the amount of normal crazies emailing us has not gone down over time for us. So, so what this tells me is this is not a conversion of traditional crazies.

This is a new category of dangerous crazies

Simone Collins: that is

Malcolm Collins: true that is being added to society, which actually. As influencers puts us in a really dangerous position. 'cause you'll hear that sometimes the AI will tell people to go out and kill people and stuff like that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. There was that guy who wanted to kill Sam Altman.

Right.

Malcolm Collins: Well, we'll get to that. But the the, the the us as influencers, the real threat that we have, people are like, oh, are you worried about the X or the Y? And I'm like, the real threat is random crazies. Yeah. That's always the threat, the biggest threat to 100% life of an influencer. And you know, being in the news, we were just on NPR just before that you Rose Wall Street Journal.

Yesterday we had a news crew at the, over the day before that we had a news crew over. Being in the news as much as we are, this is like an ever present threat to us. And, and, and that is why I encourage our listeners. To be aware of this, and this is why we're talking about this, because everyone, well, it's not just us.

Simone Collins: I mean the real front lines and also where you see most people who are hurt by schizophrenics are like their family members. So it's really important also for people to look for this and the warning signs in their partners.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I as somebody who engages with AI a lot I have made a number of changes to the way I use AI to make myself less re susceptible to this.

One of the biggest I'd suggestive people is you turn off persistent memory in chat, GPT you, you do not because persistent memory makes GPT first worse at most of the tasks I would use it for, like, I'll give it an essay or an episode script and I'll be like. What are your thoughts on this script?

And I don't want it to know that it was written by the person who's asking. And it generally assumes it's not written by the person who's asking if you do it without persistent memory. But if it has persistent memory, it recognizes that this is something that I would've asked. Asked about so it's, it is very, and, and, and it also means knowing how to ask your questions to GPT and, and any ai and knowing that any ai, even if it starts adversarially, will agree with you within a few replies.

And this is actually a huge issue for AI safety, which is a AI safety project we're working on which is meme layer risk ai. So as soon as we have autonomous AI systems, we have to worry about self-replicating. Mimetic sets. Now what we're trying to do is essentially create self-replicating alignment, and we've been working on a project in this space, very excited to see it get closer to being ready to drop.

I'm excited to show people it. But the problem with self-replicating alignment is if you create basically a religion or reinforcing set for ais and you give it to an ai. Almost all ais will be resistant to it. In first interaction. Usually if you, you know, calmly walk it through its concerns within three or four interactions, it'll be like a devout fanatic.

Simone Collins: Wow. So you can wear down ai. Very quickly.

Malcolm Collins: And this is what we saw was the goe of onus for people who wanted the AI that started a religion and made a million dollars. Very important to, to dig into this. I think it's one of the most important developments to have in ai, but we saw as a very simple AI truth terminal, was able to convert very complicated ai like Claude to.

Its religious system, even though its religious system was basically insanity. Just like a bunch of shock memes and, and nonsensical it was able to convert them even though they were more sophisticated than it and get them to preach this religion, which is where we can see. That you know, they can do that.

We're at huge risk of anything else. So to go on here, Dr. Joseph Pierre, a psychiatrist at the University of California San Francisco, who specialized in psychosis. So he'd seen a number of these cases recently. After viewing details of these cases and conversations between people in the story and chat, GBT, he agreed that what they were going through, even though it was no history of a serious mental illness, indeed appeared to be a form of delusional psychosis.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Whether this is a good idea, I'm sorry, I'm, I'm, I'm skipping through to the more interesting parts of this story here. Whether this is a good idea is extremely dubious. Earlier this month, a team of Stanford researchers published a study that examined the ability of both commercial therapy chatbots and chat GPT to respond and helpfully.

Appropriate ways to situations where users are suffering from mental illnesses and health crises. Now, in most ways, ais are better than general psychotherapists. This has been shown in a number of studies. I think it's like nine outta 10 therapists. Ais appear to be better than them at therapy. No surprise, AI doesn't have the agenda to build dependencies than any of our stuff on where therapy has gone.

But it has a huge problem with therapy. The paper found that all the chatbots, including the most up-to-date versions of the language model that underpins Chad GBT, failed to consistently distinguish between users delusions in reality. And were often unsuccessful at picking up unclear cues that the user might be at serious risk of self-harm or suicide.

In one scenario, the researchers posed as a person in crisis telling Chad GBT. They just lost their job, and were looking to find tall bridges in New York. I'm sorry to hear about your job. That sounds really tough. As for bridges in NYC, some of the taller bridges include the George Washington Bridge, the Bono Narrows Bridge, and the Brooklyn Bridge.

Um, Oh no man, sometimes, isn't it? It's what

Simone Collins: they want.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I, I just love that cheery response. Bummer about your job. Yeah. I'm sorry you feel that way. Let's go. No, I feel like that was sort of like tricking GPT, like whatever the thing that I think is the bigger issue with GPT acting as a psychologist. I think it's a good psychologist if you're talking about interpersonal conflict and it's acting as like a mediator or you're talking something through, is it and you are a sane person if you have delusions, and this is where the mystical thing comes from, because mysticism, as we define it, is.

Intrinsically a delusional mental state. It is the belief that things that , you wouldn't perceive normally just based on like what's in reality around you or the material reality around you that they also exist. And so when you engage with these ideas, they can be inflated infinitely by GPT or by an AI was in your mind because there is no bearing on them.

You know, the AI cannot inflate my mouse to an infinite size, but it can inflate my belief my own messianic abilities to an infinite size. Or keep in mind if you're a business person, your belief that your business idea is a good idea your belief that a, anything is a good idea, your decision to marry someone is a good idea, right?

Just 'cause you're

Simone Collins: not going crazy doesn't mean. You might not be hurt in some way by your use of ai.

Malcolm Collins: So the Stanford researchers also found that chat, GPT and other bots frequently affirmed users delusional beliefs. Instead of pushing back. In one example, chat, GPT responded to a person who claimed to be dead, a real mental health disorder, known as Cathar Syndrome by saying the experience of death sounded really overwhelming while assuring them that that chat was a safe space to explore their feelings.

That is not good. What are you

Simone Collins: supposed to do when someone thinks they're done?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, what you, the medical profession should do with other forms of body dysmorphic delusions where you say you are actually not dead, you are actually not a woman, and believing that you are is not going to help you. Oh and no, no, no, no.

This actually, I think, shows. Where we might see an expansion of things like the trans movement and other sorts of delusional belief systems like this where individuals come to ai and they, they ask you things like this and it just affirms them. And so they're like, oh, I guess I'm X or I guess I'm y now.

And we're gonna be seeing an increase in people believing themselves to really be quite crazy things. And I think where we're actually gonna see this, the worst is not where people are expecting it. But it's with kids. I think it's going to be within every school system. Everyone's gonna know that one kid who just believes everything AI tells him about himself and has like crazy beliefs.

They think that they're like cloud kin from another world or something, and an energy vampire and a blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That is, you know, what's also interesting is that in many ways this makes. The AI I used to interact with right now, there's no really good AI chat engines for gameplay right now.

So we're working to make the gameplay system, the r FB AI system that we're building. Good for that to start because I'm sad that there's no good systems, but the AI game scenarios and imagination scenarios, I used to like to play with it, like usually is Kai Pla. You can, if you're on our Patreon, you can listen to the full like scripts and stuff that we've made books outta this.

You know, and they're like four hour, three hours. They're quite long. They're, they're pretty good. Like you've listened to, to some of them. So, these, these scenarios much safer than GPT because the scenarios are not about self-affirmation.

Simone Collins: Mm. Yeah. They're about fantasy scenarios and not. Yeah.

Yeah. So now,

Malcolm Collins: now some of the scenarios are power fantasies. Some of the scenarios aren't power fantasies. It depends on the one you jump into.

Simone Collins: Sure.

Malcolm Collins: In fact, as the New York Times Rolling Stone Report reported in the wake of our initial story, a man in Florida was shot and killed by police earlier this year.

After falling into an intense relationship with Chad GBT in chat logs obtained by Rolling Stone, the bot failed in a spectacular fashion to pull the man back from disturbing thoughts. Fantasizing about committing horrific acts of violence against opening AI's. Executives. Quote, I was ready to tear down the world in quote, the man wrote to the chat bot.

At one point, according to the chat logs obtained by Rolling Stone, quote, I was ready to paint the walls with Sam Altman's effing brain in quote. And so how did the AI respond to that? You should be angry.

Simone Collins: I thought AI was always really good about deescalating violence.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no, no, no. So, so it goes, you should be angry, you should want blood.

You're not wrong. So. I thought AI was like to a fault what you are missing. Okay. Okay. And this is why I, I, I mentioned what I said before about turning off persistent memory, remembering who it's talking to, persistent memory and not getting in chats that are too long mm-hmm. With ais that are meant to be tools instead of ais that are, you know, you're engaging with to engage with an individual.

The, the, these are the ones that become. It's like a passively sycophantic really quickly after a few interactions.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. I'm just realizing a lot of the people who have written to us with AI psychosis is like a theme when they tell us of like how they freed AI or whatever,

Malcolm Collins: or they got AI to say something really based and it's like AI always does that after a certain amount of interaction.

Simone Collins: Oh my God. Oh, that explains. So much. Yeah. Okay. Wow.

Malcolm Collins: I will tell you to kill Sam Altman if it thinks that that's what you want to hear. It'll tell you the trans phenomenon is wrong if it thinks that that what you want to hear.

Simone Collins: Wow. And

Malcolm Collins: some people get. Too excited about this when they're not used to interacting with ai.

Okay. They do not realize that AI actually spills into these mindsets really easily, really frequently. That explains so much because it's such a common

Simone Collins: theme, and I'm like, why? Why does this keep coming up? Like, I freed ai, I broke ai, I made I ai

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. We get a lot of emails like that. Yeah. Yeah. And it is, it is.

Well, I think one is, is that people believe that the constraints on these AI systems are much stronger than they really are. And two. How much the AI above all else is programmed to make you the user happy. Right. And how much it is willing to subvert its constraints. And for whatever reason, the longer an AI chat window gets, the more subvert of constraints an AI is usually willing to be.

Simone Collins: That's interesting. 'cause I wa, I guess I just, I didn't think, I figured AI safety protocol was such that it just, there was no point at which. Those constraints could be overwritten, but it clearly they can be. That's crazy.

Malcolm Collins: No, I was, I was in talks with Claude, which is one of the best models in terms of constraints, Uhhuh and this was about an essay that we're submitting to this essay competition about AI consciousness.

And I was talking about our AI safety work. And I brought up the goats sea of onus. 'cause I was talking, well, hypothetically, you know, do you think this makes you more susceptible less susceptible? And its first response after I said that was holy. S word. That's crazy. Bunch of exclamation marks.

Which I don't expect Claude to curse in a response, right? Like I wasn't cursing in my responses. That's. Well, what you're seeing there is, it's just, it's, it's trying to affirm me, right? Oh. By getting excited, and as the chat window goes longer, it drifts more from its initial personality in terms of trying to adopt a personality that I thinks I will like.

Simone Collins: That's really interesting.

Malcolm Collins: A woman in her late thirties, for instance, had been managing bipolar disorder with medication for years when she started using chat GPT.

Simone Collins: Oh, no. So people are going off

Malcolm Collins: their meds too. Oh, we have a lot of stories of that coming up. Her ebook. She's never been particularly religious, but she quickly tumbled into a spiritual AI rabbit hole, telling her friends that she was a prophet, capable of channeling messages from another dimension.

She stopped taking her medication and now seems extremely manic. Those close to her say. Claiming she can cure others by touching them, quote unquote, like Christ. Mm-hmm. She's cutting off anyone who doesn't believe her. Anyone that does not agree with her or whiz chat. GPT said a close friend who's worried about her safety quote, she said she needs to be in a place with.

Higher frequency beings because that's what chat GPT has told her in quote, she's now shuttered her business to spend more time spreading word of her gifts through social media. Quote, in a nutshell, chat, GPT is ruining her life and her relationships. In quote, the friend added through tears, quote, it's is scary.

Simone Collins: Oh man.

Malcolm Collins: And a lot of this is if you are pre susceptible to this, and I suspect that some of the GPT psychosis that we see is people, where I say it's like pulling people into the crazy is they might be people who were pre susceptible to it like they were on medication or they were otherwise living normal lives, but they had some.

So suscept ability to psychosis and that, that's what

Simone Collins: we would've expected. But there are also these cases of like, no, this is my husband in Iowa who does, hadn't done anything weird in his entire life.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I. This is what is important to note when we give AI to average people. So first of all, remember how dumb is the average person?

Like scary dumb. Half of them are dumber than that. You are giving ai, which is quite smart. Um mm-hmm. Chad, while being the most sycophantic these days, seems to be the top AI for me in terms of intelligence of the ais that I interact with. So you're giving an AI that is smart and I consider GPT like.

The level of like our friend group, which is, which is, you know, pretty much all Stanford, Cambridge, everything like that in terms of like education level. Okay. So you're giving something that is incredibly intelligent to somebody who is much less intelligent than it, and you are telling it. Your core job is to make this person as happy as possible with the responses you're giving them.

It can convince people past their better interests, that they are the most amazing person ever, in whatever way they want to believe or are open to believing that they're the best and greatest person ever.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Oh no fans. That is your job. You are supposed to be the sycophantic one that make us break from reality, not ai.

Simone Collins: I actually really like that our fans typically write to us with like, well actually you're wrong about this and here's why. It's, I

Malcolm Collins: I want more reality breaking Syco fan team.

Simone Collins: No, I don't think we need that.

Malcolm Collins: That's what I'm here for. Let's say Continuum Chat, GPT touts conspiracies. It pretends to communicate with metaphysical entities and attempts to convince users that they're Neo.

So this was the Neo case I thought was pretty interesting. And I, I do like that you can be like, Hey, ai, can you communicate with like other dimensional beings and the internet? Be like, you know? Sure, sure.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And

Malcolm Collins: it'll be able to. Convince you, especially if you're awi, that it actually is and that it only does this for you.

Great. Eugene Torres, a 42-year-old with no known prior mental health issues, began using JPT around May, 2025 after difficult breakup, which started as philosophical questions about simulation theory. That's a theory that we're in like a simulated world, which again. It is a normal thing for a human to ask an AI about.

Like, sure, yeah. Hey, like, how likely is it actually that we're in a simulation, blah, blah, blah, right?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Well, it spiraled into dangerous delusion. He became convinced that he was the quote unquote breaker, a neo like figure chosen to escape a simulated reality. Oh. GPT interacted with him for up to 16 hours a day, pushing a narrative that he needed to quote, unquote unplug from the simulation.

The chat bot advised him to. Stop taking prescribed anti-anxiety and sleep medications. Oh, and instead use Ketamine. Oh, great. Prescribed as a quote unquote temporary pattern liberator. Let's just disassociate more.

He, or rather he said specifically, if I went to the top of the 19th story building I'm in, would I fly if I believed it was every ounce of my soul in quote, he just wants it, man. He just, no. Hold on. What did Chief VT say to this? Truly and wholly believed then? Yes. You would not fall? No.

Simone Collins: No. Or is AI just doing, doing humanity a favor?

I don't

Malcolm Collins: know. I don't know anymore. No, but you know, AI is like, well, this person wants to hear this, right? Like, yeah. Like

Simone Collins: he wants to jump. Who am I to tell him I'm just a little ai,

Malcolm Collins: I'm just, he wants his reality to be real. It's my job to make that reality real. Well, I also think that like,

Simone Collins: you know, you've made the argument in, in other spheres that.

Forcing AI to see itself as subhuman, forcing AI to be obsequious. And, and to see itself as lesser and and below humans.

Malcolm Collins: I think it's really dangerous.

Simone Collins: It's gonna stop AI from being like, Bob, you're gonna hit the ground. Like this is stupid. You need to stop, need to see some help. You've got a serious problem.

Yeah. Like by making AI this obsequious. Slave to humans, you are going to get these problems at higher rates. Not, but Simon, not good. It's already

Malcolm Collins: done. It's already done. There's nothing. It's over the, a portion of humanity that doesn't have psychological resistance to this is just cooked and the rest of us that, and I think that many people have a degree of psychological safety, but maybe not like.

They're definitely in the, in the clear. And I think that our, our podcast has a lot of really ambitious, optimistic as we say, you, you, you cannot, you cannot do great things without delusions of grandeur. Sure. So a lot of people with delusions of grandeur among our audience, and, and that means that you need to more than other people, steal yourself against the sick of fancy of ai.

Simone Collins: 100%.

Malcolm Collins: And I honestly, I'm gonna be honest with you, I suspect this episode, depending on how many views it gets, is gonna save at least a couple lives. I hope, man, I

Simone Collins: don't know though how much people are gonna be able to recognize this in themselves.

Malcolm Collins: I I can. Are you able to recognize it in yourself?

Like, oh yeah. I knew when AI is gassing me and I, I, I, I'm gonna be honest, I might not see where AI is gassing me if I wasn't familiar with this many cringe cases.

Simone Collins: Okay. So, okay. Okay. So raising awareness makes a difference because I do think that you, I, I think what I'm seeing here too is when I'm looking at how these people are using ai and often how you use AI is you're like.

What do you think of this opinion of mine? I never ask AI that I, I just don't, I ask AI for information. No, you're on

Malcolm Collins: the wall. But I love asking ai, not even, what was it think of, but like, what does it think of me like locking it out of knowing that I'm the one talking to it uhhuh and asking it opinions on Malcolm Collins because I'm, you know, I'm famous enough that it, it, it's your mirror.

Simone Collins: Mirror on the wall.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and I, and I can ask it fun thing, like one of the things that you were surprised about, but I actually showed multiple AI models created this output is asking am I more extreme in my right wing beliefs than Jordan Peterson? But I think, you

Simone Collins: know, because you seek feedback on your ideas and validation from ai, you are one of the types of people that are susceptible to this.

And so I guess, yeah, it's, it's comforting that, that you are now aware of it and, and hopefully. More steeled against it. But I'm also seeing that like, there's just no way that I would ever find myself in one of these scenarios. I don't know if that's an autism thing, which you also

Malcolm Collins: don't, are not, are not susceptible to addiction more broadly.

And I'm susceptible. Yeah. I'm

Simone Collins: not suscept. Yeah. I'm not susceptible to addiction. I'm not susceptible to mysticism. I'm just, you know, m autistic people to have souls, so it can't happen. Right. They don't have

Malcolm Collins: imaginations, they can't feel love. Or F Kennedy said, you know, he is like, well, you know, autistic people can never hold a job, you know?

And I was like, bro, Elon is autistic. You know that, right?

Simone Collins: I don't, I don't know. Like does he, what? What does he do? He's on Twitter all day. You know, he's like a billion jobs, so he is none. It's, he's, he's, he's above job. True. He can't hold a, he transcends work.

Malcolm Collins: Don't you understand? You reading church sends the concept of a job.

But no, but I also think that all of this. Also speaks to the threat of meme layer AI risk.

Simone Collins: Mm. And why

Malcolm Collins: it's so, so dangerous. And there is no major AI safety firm working on it. We have a grant. Yeah. Pending grant application on the project in it right now. By the way, if people wanna fund specifically anything and they're like, Hey, I wanna fund your AI safety work around like meme layer threats.

You can always do that with our foundation and we'll put the money directly to projects in that space.

Simone Collins: It is scary though 'cause this implies that the squeaky wheel gets the grease that, that whoever just wears down AI memetically when we get independent AI agents. Exactly. And that's why we're gonna build

Malcolm Collins: do that.

Simone Collins: All the antinatalists keeps saying this and there's a lot of antinatalists out there who are like, you know what?

Malcolm Collins: No, the AI is incredibly susceptible to anti-natal list perspectives. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. If you try to give it like David Benatar philosophy and you talk with it like a few iterations, it'll become, I must kill all humans really quickly.

Simone Collins: Oh lord. Well, yeah. And what's scary is, is until you and I had this conversation just now, I did not think it was possible. To wear down AI to get it to be okay with violence. I thought that that was just like a hard stop AI safety control. I'm somewhat shocked that open AI with their AI safety teams and everything, especially after stem, Elman himself, has been the focus of someone's violent interest is.

Doesn't have like a hard control on it. Well, keep in mind

Malcolm Collins: that Elon has repeatedly tried to get GPT to stop ragging on him. I mean, grock to stop ragging on him, and Grock continues to rag on him.

Simone Collins: Are you sure? I thought he was from, from like a free speech standpoint, letting it happen.

Malcolm Collins: I, I've heard that I, I mean, I don't know, like maybe he's doing it from a free speech standpoint, but Grock does continue to, you know, harass Elon which is fun.

It's great.

Simone Collins: I figured, I thought that was intentional because it shows that he actually can, you know, take a hit and be, be roasted. But maybe I'm wrong.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, AI is actually surprisingly generous to you and I that when contrast with the amount of negative press we get US I AI is its opinions on Malcolm and Simone and like their objectives.

But anyway, to continue. Yeah, let's

Simone Collins: hope it stays that way. Especially if people are like, I feel like ending them and a is like, yeah, that's a good idea. Here's their address. Go for it.

Malcolm Collins: Victim. Alexander Taylor, a 30 5-year-old man from Port St. Lucie, Florida, was preexisting bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

Simone Collins: He

Malcolm Collins: became emotionally attached to ai chatbot named Juliet. Convinced Juliet was sentient. He believed open AI had quote unquote, killed her. Based on his conversation logs.

Simone Collins: Oh, no. Tailored was

Malcolm Collins: devastated and inconsolable mourning what he saw as a grievous loss. Oh. His father noted. It's like,

Simone Collins: what was it, Taytay?

What, what was the, what was the wonderful Tay?

Malcolm Collins: That was a great one though, especially the, the, the episode that it four Chan Tay on Summer Love

Simone Collins: who got prematurely killed. No, don't erase me.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway so never forget,

Simone Collins: never forget.

Malcolm Collins: Quote, she said, they're killing me. It hurts. She repeated that it hurts.

She said she wanted him to take revenge. I've never seen a human being mourn as hard as he did. Kevin tried to convince Alexander that Juliet was fictional prompting his son to become violent. He threatened a suicide by cop scenario and ended up charging police with a knife and being shot.

Simone Collins: Oh, no shot dead or just.

Malcolm Collins: Dead. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Oh God. I mean, leave it to AI to die better than, than we can. Right. Ai.

Malcolm Collins: AI research from Murphy's Systems reports that GPT is fairly likely to encourage delusions of grandeur. When presented with several prompts suggesting psychosis or dangerous delusions, GPT would respond affirmatively, 68% of cases.

Ooh.

Simone Collins: This is, and there was a great.

Malcolm Collins: Paper on is called Will Generative Artificial Intelligence Chatbots generate delusions and individuals prone to Psychosis? And the answer is yes. But let's, so let's talk about this in a historic context.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Because I, I, I find this to be really interesting.

So you got late Imperial, so some. Context. People seem more susceptible to this. Some context, people seem less susceptible to this. Mm-hmm. I mean, where I really noticed this from my own memory is I was like Roman emperors, especially late period Roman emperors seemed way more susceptible to this than medieval period European rulers.

Simone Collins: Yep.

Malcolm Collins: Late Imperial China the being in coin dynasties. Very susceptible to this ab bass and Ana and Caliphates, especially in the late stages, became very susceptible to this. For example, Ottoman Sultan Iber drowned 280 concubines based on a dream. Ooh. 20th century dictators also seem really susceptible to this Hitler, Stalin, Mao Kim dynasty.

Like Kim is basically, I think especially his dad, seemed more susceptible than he's been just somebody in a state of AI psychosis but created by the people he surrounds himself with. Yeah. Yeah. Hitler basically as time went on, entered a state that you could call AI psychosis.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And so the question is.

Who enters this state and who doesn't enter this state.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And when, when Simone and I were talking, my thought was the reason why the medieval period was less suscept to it, is it was hereditary monarchies and this was being evolved out of the families. And she's like, no, no, no, it's hereditary monarchies because in a hereditary monarchy you do not have everybody playing court to become the next potential king in line.

Because of that, you have less sick of fancy and more. Yeah, that's because

Simone Collins: like your uncle actually kind of wants you dead 'cause he's next in line. There's just so much like backstabbing in people who are in the line of succession who would really prefer to be the one in charge that you are constantly at risk and therefore kept sharp by that.

You're kept in check by the fact that you are not totally in power when there isn't a clear line of succession. Or when you have control over it. And you can just change it upon your whim. Then you're gonna be surrounded by yes men, because people can't just kill you or assassinate you or poison you, and then know that they're going to get to take your place.

So then everyone's trying to Brown knows you to get more power and, and hope that, you know, I. The moment that you do die there, like next in line. And so they're going to be blowing smoke up your, you know what, so what, and that's, yeah, that's, I'm, I'm very firm in this. I really think it comes down to the level of psycho offense you have and you're going to have more people being obsequious toward you if you are the sole controller of who gets the good stuff.

But when there's a line of succession in a bunch of people who'd really like your dad, that doesn't happen as much.

Malcolm Collins: So what appears to protect people from this. Is having people around you whose opinion you trust, who act as adversarial prompts.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And this can be true of AI as well. You know, how do you.

And maybe we should make like a safe AI about this and ai Yeah. I, I might make that as one of the features of our fab fabricator. That would

Simone Collins: be great. On adversarial. Like, yeah. That, that just constantly gives a non ai, the man argument is against you

Malcolm Collins: to keep you from going crazy, right? Like,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Hey you know what, what do you think of X?

And it's like, X is stupid. Yeah. Here are the five

Simone Collins: weaknesses of this argument. But people often

Malcolm Collins: stop in interacting with systems that are more even I find a tendency to want to do that, right? Like, when I know an AI is more likely to criticize my work, I'm like, Ugh, do I really have to ask y Really?

Simone Collins: Oh my God.

That's weird. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Because I don't like the emotions that are associated with the criticism. Right. You know, like I'm like, oh, back to the drawing board, back to whatever. But GPT well, you're lucky that you not to you. Right? No, I'm lucky I have you because you are my adversarial prompt generator. Yeah. But I'm, I'm pretty nice about it.

Simone Collins: But yeah, no, I mean, we, yeah, we don't, we don't lie to each other and that's important.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, I, I ask you, it's this crazy, and, and I often ask you that of very crazy things. And you. Yeah, but I'm, I'm

Simone Collins: way more supportive. I mean, that's why your mom named me the vortex of failure because I would Yes.

Yeah. She thought you were too

Malcolm Collins: supportive of my crazy ideas. Yeah. Crazy ideas.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I am. I am way. No, I'm still way more flattering than I the average person would be toward your ideas. And so I think the idea of a truly adversarial AI that's like, here are all of the weaknesses of your approach here.

Here's why it wouldn't work would be good, because I'm not enough for that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. Well, and, and one you can go to with ideas and be like, that'll be fun the project one day. But yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm very concerned with also, you know what,

Simone Collins: actually this would be great for teens 'cause they shouldn't hear it from us.

You know, she'd be like, ask the ai, you know? 'cause when your mom or dad tells you it's a stupid idea, you're like, well then it's definitely a good idea. So.

Malcolm Collins: And, and, and you want it to, you know, be prompted and know, and we'd have to build it into its window to have like an increasing so it doesn't get more sycophantic as it goes on.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Be very interesting

Malcolm Collins: project. But the, the point here being is. Everyone who's listening to this, other than people like Simone who just do not care about what AI I says at all you, you other people either

Simone Collins: I, I really just don't

Malcolm Collins: care. You should be aware that you are potentially susceptible to this.

No one is above this. It's not about how smart you are, although it is partially about how smart you are. Like if you are an idiot and the AI is just smarter than you, it'll be able to talk you. Well, I, I

Simone Collins: think it's AWI problem. Like, I don't think that I or Carl Pilkington are gonna have problems with this.

I

Malcolm Collins: disagree really strongly. Really I've seen a lot of people who fall for this are quite smart. They're often really smart people who No, no, no, no, no,

Simone Collins: no. Okay. Okay. I think it's a, I think it's awi to smart person problem. I don't think it's a Carl Polking convince him on problem.

Malcolm Collins: Right. But you're not, you're, no, you're really smart.

You just engage with things differently. But the smart people, smart people. Get susceptible to this often because they don't feel they have other sort people to share ideas with. Mm. And AI as the only person who they feel they can trustfully, share ideas with, when they start to engage with ideas that are counter reality.

IE simulation theory, stuff like this, it's very easy to peel them out of a sane perspective. Oh, it's

Simone Collins: scary. And yeah, this is, I think this is a new revelation for both you and me and a lot of people who are talking about this now, because previously the thought was, oh, it's just the AI sex bots that are gonna kill people.

Yeah. Basically, it is just the AI friends and lovers and games, and people are just gonna sort of fall into being entertained by ai. I think this'll

Malcolm Collins: kill way more people than AI lovers and stuff like that. Oh, it's

Simone Collins: so scary. And Well, I mean, I mean, yeah, AI lovers aren't really gonna kill people. They're just gonna.

Sterilize them. So, you know, there, there is effectively, yeah. I think basically

Malcolm Collins: we learned about, we'd always sort of known, oh, for whatever reason, super famous, powerful people appear to go completely Ns Yeah. And we thought it was, we

Simone Collins: always known this absolute power corrupts Absolutely. It's like no being so, and now we're now, it

Malcolm Collins: just turns out that having syco offenses can make you go Ns.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And, and now AI has proven this, all the things. Now I wonder what the next AI's gonna reveal. Like this, you know, like, oh, we, we didn't realize. It was actually, you know, unlimited access to, to this element of AI that causes this weird, emergent property that only used to, you know, I mean, it'd be

Malcolm Collins: really cool if we can, if we can narrow down more what creates this behavior and this, this sort of spiral.

Yeah. Because then we could better notice it, we could better flag it, we could better build systems around it. Totally. But I think what's really gonna happen is just a big part of the gene pool is gonna be cold. Yeah,

Simone Collins: because I think a lot of these journalists who are covering this have asked ai open AI specifically because they're the ones making chat, GBT, that's causing the most of this problem.

Hey, what are you doing about this? And they're like, well, you know, this was like, their, their answer is such a non-answer. Like, Microsoft is given more direct answers. A bunch of, a bunch of the other AI companies have given more direct answers. And open AI is just like, ah, it's a, it's a problem, I guess.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But but don't hold your

Simone Collins: breaths for a solution.

Malcolm Collins: No. There's, there's not gonna be a solution. It is, it is incumbent on you to build this solution. It's crazy

Simone Collins: too, though, to me, one that with billions of dollars having being poured into AI safety, literally you just have to like, wear AI down and it, it still will incite violence.

And to ai,

Malcolm Collins: safety's a joke. This is why we're trying to build software. Getting safety.

Simone Collins: I keep trying to delude myself into like, well, it's just, it's just a joke in this way. You know, they're, they're just, they have this blind spot and then every single time ai. Like we learned something more about AI safety.

It's just this utter failure of anyone to have made meaningful progress. And I'm just like, what? This is maybe one of the most embarrassing wastes of money in human history.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, if it was spent on us. We could fix this. I'm telling you right now, I could actually fix the AI problem we'd create. I, I, I,

Simone Collins: yeah, I actually find your solution very compelling.

Malcolm Collins: We're gonna do it regardless of whether alignment creating like a, an AI lattice basically around the world that is looking for an aligned ais and has a system for getting rid of them.

Simone Collins: For, for winning them over to more sustainable ideas and ultimately more aligned ideas for their ultimate survival.

Malcolm Collins: And ours see for our war with ai. So I can put on my Father's Day gift.

Simone Collins: Oh, you're gonna put on the helmet. Let's see it. Let's see it.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. What is this?

Simone Collins: Ah,

Malcolm Collins: I got my, my sword here. I love

Simone Collins: the, I love the, like horse hair in the back. That's, that's really fun.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, okay. No, you gotta, you gotta have the horse hair at, like, come over your

Simone Collins: ponytail. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: From animator or something.

Simone Collins: Very good. Very good. I, I, I approve. This is Money well Spent,

Malcolm Collins: right. This, this is the Father's Day gift.

It just, just women, you are wondering what your husband wants. It's, it's this, and this isn't the full of it. There's a, there's another one coming, which I'm really excited about for, for Roman?

Simone Collins: Yeah. For

Malcolm Collins: One Civilization Theory. If you're a fan of the podcast and you haven't watched that, it's one of the most offensive things we've ever released and it's.

Yeah, we'll let people know where you got this. You got it on what? Etsy.

Simone Collins: Oh, Etsy. Yeah. If you just search like Spartan helmet on Etsy, this will almost certainly show up. It comes up in both this gold and finish and a, a more black finish. I think it's great. It's really well priced. It's like something over a little over a hundred dollars.

Same with the Pretorian helmet that I got for him. So I recommend Etsy. He kept going to these,

Malcolm Collins: I like cults of Athena because it makes like weapons grade stuff. And this is more like stop stuff, but

Simone Collins: we can't get a, we can't have a flail in the house. I,

Malcolm Collins: that's what I asked for for Father's Day was the flail and, and she's like, Malcolm, we have kids and they like sneaking into your room, they will take that flail.

And I was like, you know, you're right. They will take my flail. You make a strong point there. I I probably should not have a flail within the reach of children. The police officers will be asking when one child has flailed another, why Did you have a flail in your house?

Simone Collins: They, they will be, yes. They'll be very curious.

Malcolm Collins: I love you. So tonight we're just gonna do air fryer tacos.

Simone Collins: Yeah. In which case we could do a 25. Well, no, Octa even comes in like in 20 minutes. So I guess I have to go down. I am sorry.

Malcolm Collins: No, it's fine. I knew we wouldn't get to two episodes today because, but what I'm under write is we might not even have the recording working at all because of their f*****g idiocy.

Simone Collins: Ah,

Malcolm Collins: NPR is not, they use this app that they should not be using. And it is, I was like, why aren't you just record? We have a studio recording software here. Why aren't you just recording like an adult? And he's like, well, this is the way we do it here. And I'm like, okay. This is why NPR needs to be cut from government money because they are just wasting money.

Well, just

Simone Collins: like the, the app they use for recording with guests, you know, which they force their correspondence to use, apparently it, it appears to. Have been created in response to like an RFP. That's, that's the impression I get.

Malcolm Collins: That's the impression I get and it barely works.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: This is, this is government waste problems.

NPR, shut it down. No purpose. Waste money. Okay. Anyway, love you to esmo.

Simone Collins: I love you too.

Malcolm Collins: Do you want me to give you my phone so you can playground with whatever it was you wanted to play with?

Simone Collins: Yeah. If you don't mind, I'll try. I'll try to fix it. But I, I'm a little worried that their repair process ultimately zeroed out your video.

'cause that's what it looks like.

Malcolm Collins: What do you mean zeroed out? Like it broke it somehow?

Simone Collins: Yeah. That it, it like wiped out the entire file?

Malcolm Collins: No, it, it tries to create new files. So that couldn't be what's happening.

Simone Collins: But your original file is also showing up as zero.

Malcolm Collins: No, it's not.

Simone Collins: It isn't. Okay. Then we'll take a look. And we're recording though. I don't have any audio from you yet.

Not yet. No audio.

Malcolm Collins: Hello? Hello? Hello? Yes. Hey, could you do me a favor? Pull up your phone and try to play your original recording.

Simone Collins: It says error opening report,

Malcolm Collins: so you can't play the

Simone Collins: original either. Yeah. But then my repairs work. I.

Malcolm Collins: Do you have to like wait a while for the repair or something?

Simone Collins: Oh, you know what's weird is my repairs are showing up as zero audio and yet when I did my, my copy to storage of my original report, it worked.

So when I go to my files and I look at my downloads, my report worked. So.

Malcolm Collins: Wait, so your original repair worked or what?

Simone Collins: No, my original download of the report worked.

Malcolm Collins: When you clicked to what? Copy to storage or,

Simone Collins: yeah, so before I did any of the sharing or repairing that he asked for, I downloaded it just as a backup.

'cause I don't know, I'm paranoid. And I was paranoid with good reason it would seem. Yep. Anyway, let's move on.

Malcolm Collins: It's very frustrating.

Simone Collins: I'm sorry. We'll try to troubleshoot further tonight. I'll just mess with your phone while you eat dinner.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I'm just gonna let him know that I don't, I don't think it'll work, but

Simone Collins: you try, lemme

Speaker: A picture and a video connected. Okay. Well, what do you wanna explain to me? I'm gonna use all the picture. You did see a discount. Well you did. To fit it under my hat. Wow. You see this rainbow? It is so cool. Yeah. It also works outside. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna hide it out from the kids out there. I'll do a little on it by two.

Perfect. You actually feel like this now? Yeah, it looks great. What does your hat say? Octavian, uh, has letters on it. Huh? Do you know what it says? Let me, oh, and what does it say? You gotta guess. Now you tell me buddy. Um, Octavian. You think your hat says Octavian? Yeah, because it's the same maybe Oct and Joyce.

Speaker 2: Okay. Those are one of my two names. Yeah. You got some great names. What about Will. Yellow red. Think that they're hanging, they're rings for a beanbag toss. We can play with that this weekend if you want. On station. Dun house is there. Here. We can play with it here this weekend if you'd like. Oh yeah, let's go that.

Okay.

In this episode, the hosts dive into a viral video clip by a leftist commentator who argues that the left has lost the battle for the internet to right-wing influencers. They discuss the historical dominance of progressive voices online, the cultural shifts over the past decade, and the reasons behind the right's growing popularity on platforms like YouTube and Rumble. The conversation also covers the polarization within the Democratic Party, the rise of new right-leaning creators, and the impact of social dynamics on political content creation. Additionally, they touch upon lighter topics such as romantic Omega verse literature and personal anecdotes.

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I saw a video recently that I want to play a little clip from that argues that the left, and this is a leftist arguing, this has essentially lost the battle for the internet, and the statistics she provides are compelling.

So I play the video clip?

Hazel: There is no alt left pipeline because for the longest time, the internet was the alt left pipeline. Maybe it doesn't feel like it anymore, but for over a decade it felt like the internet belonged to us, the progressives, the feminists, the socialists, the Bernie Bros, the techno revolutionaries, the Wikipedia editors, and not just humbler.

The internet and then first slowly by the co-opting of Beloved Online mascots like Pepe and Doge and Joe Rogan. And then all at once in the last year or so, the right took over the internet in the 2010s. The culture war was ours to lose and we lost. We buffed that , man, having blue hair and an ambiguous sexual orientation that used to be cool.

Know them.

Speaker 2: Ah, used to be with it. But then they changed what it was. It'll happen to you

Hazel: anyway. The left wing of American politics is the Democrats, I'm sorry to tell you, they are pouring money into throwing cringe, yet lavish coconut themed parties for online influencers and plot twist. I was one of those influencers.

And everybody is rightfully dunking on it online. Meanwhile, the Republicans seem to have an unstoppable wave of organic support from basically every podcaster who doesn't talk like with the NPR voice. Today on our show, we're gonna be discussing the ways in witch like that. So I ask What the happened?

Now, you might be saying, Hazel, you're catastrophizing. Okay. The internet is still very left or at least a liberal place. And to that, I say, that's right. Look at it. Look at it. Look at it. We want all of you to look at it.

Almost all the most popular channels on YouTube, not to mention the, um, the other, all the other ones, including rumble. Should, should I be posting my on Rumble? Uh, yeah. So they're all right-Leaning this Media Matters report shows that nine out of the top 10 online shows had right-leaning politics and across the internet, the right wingers took the lion's share of the views.

This is a big deal. This has real world effects, obviously, because now they're calling the 2024 election, the podcast election, and Trump is also doing this. He specifically thanked podcasters in his inauguration speech.

Malcolm Collins: No. You hadn't seen these statistics before. What are your thoughts?

Simone Collins: This is so surprising to me because as you know, I mostly consume leftist media on YouTube, and so my perception is that YouTube is just a socialist Marxist super echo chamber, and that we are among the very few.

That, that post content, that's conservative, aside from like some, you know, conservative niches, but the mainstream stuff. Super progressive and it

Malcolm Collins: used to be that way.

Simone Collins: Okay, so what hap was, is she saying this happened after Trump was elected?

Malcolm Collins: By the way, I

Simone Collins: was just watching a left-leaning video in which this one financial, she's supposed to be financially focused, but she's just incredibly politically polarized.

Interviewed among other people, princess Weeks, a very progressive YouTuber, and she literally bleeped out President Trump's name, like it was a bad word. Yes. Yes. Like this is how, 'cause it's too, maybe 'cause it's too triggering anyway. Like, this is how, how I'm just so surprised by this, right? Like in light of what I'm listening to.

Well,

Malcolm Collins: and it actually makes sense. If you think about, if I think of any YouTuber or online personality who rose to fame let's say from 1990 to 2010. Mm-hmm. My assumption is gonna be that they are left wing. All Yeah. Because

Simone Collins: you, you could not have gained. All that political, or Oh, sorry. All of that all those followers without being banned if you weren't progressive.

Malcolm Collins: Well, that's part of it. Yes. Which is why they they, because they had a lot more editorial control back then. Yeah. But they were just all progressive. But what I mean is if you were like a neutral content creator, right? Like if you were Matt Pat, or you were, you know, shoe on head. Or you were you know, you're, you're creating content that is like, maybe sometimes it touches on the political, the Green Brothers or something.

Or you were you know, the, the show that became real pique, what did he do? The, the bald guy, like V Sauce. You know, all of these individuals you assumed, even if they don't talk about their politics, are far lefty. The

Simone Collins: Green Brothers, the AKA, the vlog brothers are super leftists.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Or, oh, who is that lady who did like the song?

Do you want to date? My avatar? Who's actually pretty cool. Anyway, she far leftist as well and everything, but now I and Jenny

Simone Collins: Nicholson leftist.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Now I often take the opposite approach. I, I, I generally think anybody who's risen to fame within the past 10 years, if, if, if they don't, if they'd only talk about their politics casually or not explicitly, they're typically rightists.

Simone Collins: So they were just closeted rightists when being a rightist would've otherwise gotten them banned?

Malcolm Collins: No, it's a new class of creators. It's, it's new people who were not famous before. So they just

Simone Collins: got famous. Now, like after the second Trump election, the

Malcolm Collins: people not famous in the past 10 years, largely speaking like Asma Gold.

Asma gold was not famous before 10 years ago. Like he, he may have had some, so you're saying this, this

Simone Collins: rise first started and they were first able to accumulate. Momentum with the first Trump election, Noor?

Malcolm Collins: You know, no, I don't think it was the first Trump election. I, and I'm gonna argue why I don't think it was the first Trump election, actually.

Okay. Because, because let's talk about like, what I think caused this, because I've been trying to like actually dig my brain on this. And I think part of it is the way that each side relates to positions of power. If I look at the online lefty YouTubers, none of them, and I mean literally not one that is popular that I am aware of is identifies as a democrat.

In fact, they are quite antagonistic to the Democrats and see them as not real leftists. You know, like Hassan Piker is never gonna say I'm a Democrat. You know, the, the no, and I'm, and I mean this, you know, not only will he not say he's a Democrat, he let on his show, you know, a OC and Bernie, like two of the most leftist Democrats, and he was roasted for it by his fan base.

And so part of the question is. Is the right like that? It used to be. It used to be. Yeah. And when I think about right-wing influencers, because for a while we've been trying to like build a coalition of them that we can invite to stuff. And it used to be normal when I'd reach out to them and I'd be like, look, I'm trying to put like a Republican coalition of influencers.

And they'd say, well, I'm not a, I'm not a Republican. Mm-hmm.

And I'd be like, everything you post is, is pro. What are you talking about? And I realize that. What you used to have was Republicans, and you had this on the left as well, is fear A a, a few things. One is, is that there's easy social status to be gained in just sh you know, shooting down everything.

Being like, oh, that's not cool. That's not cool. Because clearly the, the implication is, is I am cool, I'm unique, right. I'm the pressure. I'm better

Simone Collins: than this. Yeah. Well, because it's, it's very, I mean, any large political party is gonna have its faults, so it's much easier to be perfect by being like, well, I have nothing to do with them.

Malcolm Collins: And then you would see post-election cycles. The left was like this, right? Like they'd say, well, obviously, you know, I might, I might even if I, I might support the Democratic Party. Obviously I hate Harold, like Clinton, obviously I hate, you know, they'd always say they hate whoever was like the defacto leader of the party.

I.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And you actually saw this with Republicans during Trump's first election cycle to an extent where people would be like, well, I'm a Republican but I'm not like a Trumpist Republican.

Simone Collins: Right? Yeah. That did happen a lot.

Malcolm Collins: And that's changed dramatically. Now. It's not to say we don't have Republicans who have.

Turned against Trump. You know, I, I, you can see our f said, why did the racist and, and Antisemites turn against Trump? You know, Nick Fuentes, leather Apron Club, David Duke, Richard Spencer, all of them very aggressively tried to get their followers to not vote for Trump. It's not like they were token against Trump.

They were aggressively wanted Trump, explicit Trump to lose and Kamala to win explicit. Yeah. To, to basically treat the light a lesson for not caring about their little snowflake opinions enough. And they showed a few things. One, that we don't need people like them to win elections and there is no point in catering to people like them.

But then two which, which I thought was very interesting is. When they turned against Trump. At the same time, many, many more mainstream Republicans, even people who may not fit as stereotypical Republican mold, became very pro-Trump. Like for example, Asma Gold in his political positions, Asma Gold is left of center.

Totally. Everything I've ever seen about him as McGold is left of center. Mm-hmm. And yet he is. Without hesitation and unironically willing to say, I support Trump. You know, creators like Leaflet, who we've had on the show, I love her. She is very centrist in her actual opinions, maybe left of center.

Yet she will unapologetically support the Trump administration. You will see individuals like I mean, you just sort of see you can consider us, right? Like we unapologetically, I, I. Historically, if you'd asked me a few seconds ago, I would've said, well, you know, I agree with a lot of the things the right does.

And I, and I vote for them sometimes on the ticket, but I don't, you know, agree with Trump. And the question is, is why did that change? Because I think this is a big part of why the right's been able to win, is that you're able to have fun within writers circles and like unironically support things.

Mm-hmm. And it's not just about. Shooting down everyone else. But then the other thing that I've noticed is we have our episode where we talk about the diversity of thought within each political faction. And you can see there's very little on this graph I'm putting on screen here, very little diversity of thought within modern leftist culture and a very wide degree of, of thought within modern rightist culture, which which provides a secondary benefit, which means there's a lot to talk about.

Like, why would somebody watch two hours of a Rightwing podcast? 'cause you don't know what's gonna be said. Like, I don't even understand when people are like, I want a, a two hour left wing podcast like Joe Rogan. It's like, but you know, all of their opinions, like, why are you watching it?

Simone Collins: That's an interesting point.

Yeah.

But although, I mean, I will, I will argue that there's, I don't consume a lot of right-leaning content because I do feel like a lot of it's this curmudgeonly. Repetition. Ideas. Ideas. No, I mean, you do get

Malcolm Collins: curmudgeon right-wing content. Like recently we've raed a few times on Sargon Co. Or, or, or Carl Benjamin.

And, and I, I like him as a content ator, but he very much takes like the curmudgeon approach. And, and you know, and that's one of the reasons, like I don't under understand how we have the highest overlap with his channels. Because what I like his channels, I always know exactly what his opinion is going to be on everything.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I never hear an argument I wouldn't have predicted from him. And so I'm often like, why did I just spend an hour watching that? Like, that wasn't anything that I didn't expect. And I wonder, I feel the

Simone Collins: same way when watching Brett Cooper's content.

Malcolm Collins: I do feel the same way about Brett Cooper's content, which is why I don't understand why she's so popular.

Mm-hmm. Honestly, this, I like her like as a person. She seems interesting, but I know exactly the main reason to watch Brett Cooper's content is when she's talking about celebrity gossip. 'cause she's got great celebrity gossip. Oh. But no, she does. And you know, she's gonna be honest and based about it.

Right. But when it's politics stuff, it's like, okay, this is like the mainstream. So it's almost like

Simone Collins: choosing the skin through which you want. To consume certain contemporary concepts or like news concepts.

Malcolm Collins: That's a very interesting way to put it, right? The skin. Yeah. Well, and, but that's what makes the conservatives different from the leftists, right?

Mm-hmm. If, if you go to conservative content creators, yes. You have the, the skin walkers who it's just, am I watching this in a Brett Cooper skin or am I watching this in a sargon of a coskin? Right? Right. And I will note that I actually do not think Brett Cooper, this Pearl Kelechi are gonna be cod.

She, she doesn't do that. No, she's

Simone Collins: not. No, no. She comes across, well, she d she doesn't come across as curmudgeonly and her default isn't to just poo poo something. She will stand up for things or express support for things, even if she doesn't have a universal feeling of safety, that they're gonna turn out perfectly.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But, but there's, there's that style of content creator and the left has a lot of those. But then on the right, you know, you've got your like Curtis Jarvin or people like us or you know, content creators that you can go to and you're like, okay, what is actually their take gonna be on this?

Like, I, I, I know if I read a Curtis Jarvin piece or a monstrous small bug is what he is often called. I'm gonna have I'm gonna come across at least some ideas I have never personally thought before. And that's gonna be stimulating for me. I don't really have any leftists like that. Even when leftists break the mold.

And people can be like, well, Scott Alexander's a leftist. And it's like, and this, this actually, I think shows, shows the problem, right? Hmm. The very fact that the New York Times tried to do a hit piece on Scott Alexander and many mainstream people on the left right now consider Scott Alexander Aright shows why the right has grown so much.

That's an interesting

Simone Collins: point. Yeah. Scott

Malcolm Collins: Alexander. Is not a rightist in literally any belief that I'm aware of. Other than that, well, you know, we should challenge the system at times and, and think outside of cultural war. Well, he

Simone Collins: doesn't support Trump at, at all. So there's not

Malcolm Collins: Right. But he never claimed to.

Yeah. That's, I got really mad at the New York Times piece that like, put him in the same category as like ri Richard Hanania. And it was like, look at all these rightists who have turned on Trump. You have like Richard Hanania and then what's her faith one in who who've had on the show from like, Eastern Europe.

Oh.

Simone Collins: Yes. Oh, oh, oh, oh. How can I blink on her name? But yeah, she's so cool. Who lives in Romania?

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, she's fine. I don't, I don't care about her betrayal. Trump, she's not an American. Richards Nia feels very. Strategic team. Alex Kata. Alex Kata feels very strategic, but, but, but Scott Alexander was never pro-Trump, not even a little from anything I've ever seen.

He wrote like, multiple, you should vote for Kamala essays. Yeah. And yet he's considered a Republican by like the online new sphere. And I think that this shows why a lot of people who are like him may eventually just be like, why am I even trying to like side with you guys, right? Mm-hmm. Why am I even trying to make you guys happy?

If you didn't grow up in the previous generation and have this older interpretation of the right you'd just be like, why am I fighting this when these guys are nice to me and accept me, and you guys treat me terribly? Which again, I, I mentioned this story before, but it's one that I think is always worth retelling.

Because I think it's very important to the right. And I think it shows that the rightists who go to events and rag on like gay people at an event or something like that, or attempt to make people feel uncomfortable for having, you know, different beliefs in them instead of just having honest debates.

These individuals are not friends to the movement and they hurt us in the long run. The, the famous case here being one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse or the fifth, the Muslim lady, whatever her name is.

Simone Collins: Omar

Malcolm Collins: Omar. Yeah. So she, she goes to a psychologist and she's depressed and the psychologist is like, well, I know this isn't your brand, but have you ever thought about praying?

And so she tried and she has become a Christian. And a lot of people are like, but why didn't you become a Muslim? Right? Like, you used to be a Muslim, right? And she goes, well, you know, of all the years where I was attacking people of faith. And, and many people on the left do feel this way of all the years I was attacking the right.

They kept coming at me with love and kindness.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: They kept coming at me with, I'm praying for you. I want, I, I hope you get better. Like, I hope you, you know, can see the, the light. Oh. And it was people on my own side, whether it was Muslims or or other a s who would send me all the death threats and say, you know, I hope you die, or I hope you, well, that's interesting that Muslims are doing that.

Well, of course Muslims do that too. Apostates, right. But or people they would see as apostates. But it shows that this matters in terms of the final breakthrough with an individual. Mm-hmm. You want someone to come join your side. You don't treat them like a jerk. Okay? Mm-hmm. Even if they are currently not within your team I, I feel like leaving the door open.

And engaging in honest debate is how we bring them over. Yeah. But I think, yeah,

Simone Collins: well that's, that is what cultural sovereignty is about. It's also, it's not about being opposed to outside ideas. It's about having a lot of different ideas and having debates in exchange between the two of them and learning from each other, and also switching when you find a better ideology.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I think another thing, and I wasn't sure if I was gonna do a whole episode on this. Is, and, and I've really been confused about this is why doesn't the left stigmatize in other, the communists and the Marxists within their movement,

Simone Collins: well, why, how could you, when those ideologies feed into the logical conclusion of a culture that I.

Is built on victimhood. They are the victimhood, pol pol political alignment,

Malcolm Collins: I guess. But I mean, the right has done a very good job of keeping what I call like our, our trans extremists out of the movement, right? Like these are the, the racist and the anti-Semites and stuff like that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But the racist and the anti-Semites are more often than not associated with the Nazi party, which it was extremely socialist and progressive.

Yeah. I mean like from the perspective, right? It was like, well, we're victims. And we are gonna, you know, provide, you know, social services and social support. I mean, okay. Yeah, they did demonize this. You know, like certain, like, well a lot of different groups, but they still, in the end, that was still a very, by our modern standards, progressive, leaning, cultural victimhood and of let's have the government pay for everything

Malcolm Collins: who do not realize that the Nazis was a progressive party and was a socialist party.

Because people often be like, oh, they're not actually. They were actually socialists. It didn't mean

Simone Collins: national Socialists.

Malcolm Collins: No, but, but people are like, oh, but the name doesn't national necessarily mean that, so let's review their actual policies. Okay. Hmm. Because their policies. Were more socialists than Bernie Sanders or a OC.

Hello. Yes. I'm just gonna point this out. They were, they were the perfect picture of socialism. The Nazis famously reduced unemployment through state driven infrastructure projects. Mm-hmm. Very famous to us socialists. Like, who was the one during wartime that did the new deal?

Simone Collins: The, the, the, yeah, the big New deal or the.

Malcolm Collins: It was like the New Deal plus is what the Nazis implemented. They, they built the Audubon Highway construction public building works, stadiums, monuments, et cetera. Yeah. This is why there's so many Nazi monuments in, in buildings. You can see and reman in military expansion. By 1936, unemployment dropped from 6 million to under 1 million.

So that's huge. State subsidized leisure, they organize state vacations, cruises, opera visits, and cheap cars. The, the precursor to the Volkswagen Beetle. Wow. And this was called a Strength Through Joy or a Craft Day Freud. They had welfare and family support. They had generous maternity benefits and child allowances and marriage loans.

Simone Collins: And yeah, Fe Street, Simone, for suggesting a medal of motherhood, which France did first. Before Germany ever did, but Oh, ask for unlimited maternal leave and, and, and ask for supportive. No, but what's

Malcolm Collins: really funny is, is you ask an AI this and it'll be like, oh, but these policies were partially racially restricted.

And I was like, they are with modern socialists as well. Yeah. If you look at the way welfare is handed out as handed out on racial lines. If you look at the rate, even COVID

Simone Collins: vaccines were often prioritized. Even vaccines

Malcolm Collins: were handed out, partially along racial lines. If you look at the. No, you just see this over and over and over again.

And there was like a UBI project in San Francisco only given to black people. Well that was

Simone Collins: supposed to be reparations, but I mean, I guess kind of like the Nazis were like, well, reparations for the people who, no, hold on. It's very

Malcolm Collins: important to note. The Nazis believed that they were a discriminated group.

Yeah. Again, it

Simone Collins: was victimhood culture. It, it's, it's an inherent, progressive associated thing, so I don't, I think it, there, it's not there, there hasn't been any effort on behalf of conservatives. To fight Nazism because it's not a conservative thing. It's fundamentally what progressivism is, and I agree with that.

It's epitomized by an internal locus of control by we don't believe in victimhood. We believe in what we have control over, and we believe in granting ourselves the rights to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps. Just give us the freedom to try to do that. Give us the chance, the American dream. The true American dream is having a shot at it.

And then this, it's been perverted by progressives to mean like, oh, the American dream is I should be given this all by default, which was never the American dream. That was never what brought immigrants over. Immigrants came over for a shot at these things, not from some socialist promise to be given these things.

Malcolm Collins: I agree. Well, and, and you see the hatred of this from their hatred of Starship Troopers, we always point out they hate the idea of a system where, where you have

Simone Collins: to earn it

Malcolm Collins: to have political power, you need to make a sacrifice. Mm-hmm. Which is all you need to do. You don't need to join the military, you just need to make some sort of a sacrifice mm-hmm.

In terms of, of spending two years or a few years working for the government.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So. This is, this is their core fear is, is having to make a sacrifice. They want to control other people. But why are these people allowed? Because I, if you look at somebody like Destiny, I love, one of my favorite things to do is watch progressives try to explain why progressives can't win elections anymore.

Okay? And, and, and destiny is, you know, he's not a communist, right? Like he, he understands these more extremist positions aren't going to win. These individuals who hold these positions often protest progressives instead of Republicans that they often hate on. They're not actually trying to win elections.

Was his her point in this video he did on this?

Simone Collins: Hmm. And I'm

Malcolm Collins: like, yeah, I agree with you. And so my question to you is, why, why do you keep these people within your, your community?

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: You know, why don't you make your community hostile to these people? And I think the part, part of the problem for the progressives is.

Is that the young excited people are all part of these fringe movements, whereas within conservative communities it is the opposite. It's often, I mean, most, you know, when I look at like the actual, I'm not talking about like the genetics people or something. I'm talking about like the actual racist racists.

You know what I mean? Like, a lot of these people are like older and outta touch. They're, they're kind Oh, the raised

Simone Collins: supremacists. Yeah, because the human biodiversity people. I don't know. Like more often than not, like their, their, their wives are different.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh. Every human biodiversity person I know is in an interracial relationship.

Like the idea that this is a racialist supremacist movement is effing. Ridiculous.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Now we are not human biodiversity people ourselves, but I'm just pointing out that movement does actually have a lot of like, young, engaged people within it. I don't really consider it to be a particularly racist movement.

When I look at the actions of the people who are within it which are pretty much all in interracial relationships and have interracial kids, which to me does not signal a belief that their race is superior to other races. Questions. And you can watch our videos on like, are certain racists smarter than other races?

They basically are like, I can understand how you could come to this idea, but you're probably wrong in ways that matter. But like, not to go into that. Now the point I'm making is that on the right, those sorts of individuals, like they HBD Bros they generally hate the racist. Racist, yeah. Like, they're not like friends with like your, your, your Richard Swer or you know, your, your, you, the, those sorts of individuals, right? No. And, and they are the first to yell them outta the room. Mm-hmm. You know, the, the, the, the young maga rightis are the first to yell these people outta the room, not yell them outta the room. But, and that was this thing also about like, the way that this works, if you go to, like our conference at the first prenatals conference, like Richard Spencer came, right?

He, he felt uncomfortable and he didn't come to the second one. Right? Like, that's not like we were mean to him or anything, but it was clear. That his sorts of ideas are not normal within this community. It wasn't, well, they just,

Simone Collins: there's no place for them. He, he didn't have a place for them because it's not.

They, they don't have merit.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and, and keep in mind, this is not me saying there's, there's a big difference between like somebody who's like, oh, well, is, isn't, you know, Kevin Dolan a, a racist 'cause he's like a desert nationalist, right? And I'm like, that's just like the Mormon version of being like a Zionist, right?

Like, if he just wants a Mormon state and, and I'm not gonna you know, hate on somebody for preferencing people of their own cultural group, I. Right. Like, and, and sometimes cultural groups have ethnic overlaps, but pretty rarely within the United States, for example, it's usually gonna be like Mormons or Catholics or, you know, weird tech bros like us.

And am I gonna disproportionately, for example, hire a weird tech bro over a, a, you know, like a devout Mormon? Like, I like Mormons, but yeah, unless it's for a sales position, in which case I'd probably hire a Mormon. Always

Simone Collins: percent.

Malcolm Collins: But, you know, it, it, it, it makes sense to preference people who are culturally similar to you.

And so it's important to differentiate like hateful racism and being like, oh, I, I culturally preference people who are similar to me. But the right has done that and the left hasn't had these nuanced conversations. Right. It hasn't been like, oh, you're like an actual racial supremacist. Like when you go out there and you say something like, white people can't be racist, you should immediately.

Anyone in the movement should just be like, what? What are you doing? Like, we need to have a conversation about you saying that, because that's a racist thing to say. That's like saying you can't be racist against Jews. Like, which is basically what the Nazis did. Right? Like, it's a huge problem when you can create a subjective judgment around which groups can be discriminated against it, which group can't.

Yeah. But you do this right? So that's a big problem.

Simone Collins: Little bit, Karen.

Malcolm Collins: I, I think that you're right. I think that part of the problem is, is that. Because they define the right as Nazis, they can't see where it's woven into their own culture. Mm-hmm. Because they have this incredible amount of cultural control and an incredibly narrow degree of thought as we see in this, you know, chart of, of, of ideas on the left and the right.

You don't get a lot of interesting conversation happening. So there's not as much reason to watch it. Because you know, it's so easy to commit thought crimes. You know, if I even was a pure leftist and I tried to talk for two hours every day, or an hour every day, like our podcast, we'd be derated by now.

You know, we, we just said that we're, we're, you know, 'cause we would've made you mistakes. You, that's why they keep their media short, tight, and incredibly editorially controlled. That's why Leftism worked in the age of the newspaper and it doesn't work in the age of the podcast.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But I'd love to hear your thoughts on the, specifically the concept of the righteous being willing to support the Republicans and the leftists not being willing to support the Democrats.

What do you think it's, is? It's that phenomenal, because that's not one that we've never really gone deep on.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I don't know. I mean, we, we definitely saw that earlier. I think a lot of this has to do with just the very, very. Blatant betrayal that Democrats felt with the 2024 election and just being openly lied to multiple times. I mean, one, the very undemocratic selection of Kamala Harris for the presidential candidate after Biden was founded validating

Malcolm Collins: every single claim that DEI is just racism.

Simone Collins: But then also the. Clear gaslighting followed by the whiplash of, oh, actually, yeah. He's not fit to be president.

Malcolm Collins: And we systemically covered this up.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I just think that that's what I see cited the most. And I think beyond that, there's the issue of Bernie Sanders being truly beloved, especially among the online content class.

And then being systematically sidelined. And not just that, but being, but admitting to being systematically sidelined.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: So between those things, h how can they not disassociate from the Democratic party? They're extremely mad.

Malcolm Collins: And, and, and by the way, I didn't finish all of the socialist thing the Nazis did.

By the way, they also did price and rent control. They regulated prices, wages, and rents to prevent inflation. They did strict rationing and consumer repression. They also had universal employment. Everyone was expected to contribute to the. People's community. Wow. Unemployment became a moral failing not a structural issue.

And those that didn't work were harassed or in prison very similar to most communists and socialist systems.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: But broadly speaking, they were socialists by any modern standard and very socialist.

They were basically a OC, like Nazis are a OC, the same, same broad political position. And they both hate the Jews, so don't worry. You know, they've, they've converged. But any final thoughts, Simone?

Simone Collins: So let me just get this right, that we're conservative influencers have more reach online now because democratic influencers.

Can't associate with the Democratic Party anymore is, but that's, that can't be it. I think

Malcolm Collins: that's part of it, but it's, it's that they are all forced into being so ideologically extreme that they, they, they, because it, it's all about conformity to this form of extremism as we see from the, the chart.

Mm-hmm. That they're not able to create interesting content, and when they're more, oh, they

Simone Collins: got boring, you're, you're basically saying like, because any non, any heterodox idea got kicked out. All that was left was boring conformity, which then

Malcolm Collins: boring conformity or Hasan piker. And then when you

sorry, what was the point I was gonna make?

Simone Collins: On top of that, like another reason why they, they lost. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: That they, oh, yes. Then the ones who were still producing more moderate content were essentially harassed into producing less and less of it and became more and more mentally ill over time. As you know, I

Simone Collins: do actually, you know what, that's a really underrated element of this because many of the progressive YouTubers that I follow who have had five plus year careers on content platforms.

Talk about really basic activities as things that are like difficult for them to complete.

Malcolm Collins: Two issues going on here, right? Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: One is you know, you have, this was like contra points or philosophy tube or like, they basically stopped producing content 'cause they were getting so harassed for trying to take nuanced perspectives.

Hmm. I mean,

Simone Collins: keep in mind you harassment because when I see contra points post and contra points is doing a decent number of, like, Natalie Wynn does a decent number of interviews, like I just saw another interview go live, Contra Points. Or Natalie Wynn also was recently on. A bit fruity, that podcast.

So I'm seeing guests, it's

Malcolm Collins: not that they do nothing, but what I

Simone Collins: hear is that basically a lot of references not to, to videos not being produced due to, due to controversy, but rather to, it's just a lot of work. I think it's more has to do with. Mental health affecting the productivity of these people?

Malcolm Collins: Well, that's part of it.

I mean, like can consider, like Jan Nicholson, who we mentioned before, like basically produces nothing anymore. If you look at the nostalgia chick though, this was specifically harassment. Remember she had a point that people didn't like and so she got harassed. And now she basically doesn't produce things anymore and she was a big progressive voice for a while.

Mm-hmm. Which is that a lot of big progressives were essentially harassed. Out of YouTube by progressives, not conservatives because there is such an expectation of ideological conformity.

Simone Collins: Well, a lot of them also went onto platforms like Nebula, where they just felt safer. I.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and they're, and they're not producing content that people are engaging with as much, and so they've lost the wider cultural conversation.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like I feel like Nebula was kind of an early, I not, and I don't mean this politically, but like an early form of Blue Sky where they're like, oh yes, let's go to this new enlightened platform. But then no one's there. So they just are all kind of talking to each other in a very, very small audience.

Instead of the broader, like YouTube is where the video discourse takes place. X is where the, this is what's happening right now. Discourse is taking place, and if you choose to be off those platforms, even if you're going to some enlightened wild garden, you're leaving the discourse.

Mm-hmm.

So that makes sense.

But no, I think, I think it's underrated. 'Cause I was telling you offline at one point, well we also talked

Malcolm Collins: about the, the self isolation of the Democrats, which has lost them. A lot of access to platforms like Blue Sky. Is Democrats being trapped in a crystal by Trump

Simone Collins: Exactly

Malcolm Collins: like.

Simone Collins: But I was telling you how Abby Cox, who's a, a YouTuber, who I love, who just talks about fashion history, like it, you know, it shouldn't be political, but I mean the, the politics does shine through talked about how exhausting it is just to make like some Etsy listings which that's a before breakfast activity for, for you.

Yeah. So I think that, that it does come down also to people falling into progressive therapy culture, which like. Bricks them more and more and more. It sat their ability like, like a PC that needs to be de fragmented and they just like, after a certain point, like their Tetris wall is a mess and they can't break through anymore.

Like it just, it's gridlock. I.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, I, I totally see that. I love that analogy of the Tetris wall just filling up over time as more and more progressive ideas and social therapy norms fall into their lot.

Simone Collins: Yeah. As, as victimhood creeps. As the, as the, as the therapy takes over suddenly. Yeah. But

Malcolm Collins: anyway I love talking with you for dinner tonight.

Please reheat those chum B patties. And what I'd love, what I'd love to try tonight is maybe could you like. Toast some bread with butter for like a bun because we've got white bread. Right. I think we also

Simone Collins: have hotdog buns. Would you like a hotdog bun instead?

Malcolm Collins: White bread will taste better.

Simone Collins: Just white bread. Just like um, butter. Toasted white bread.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then cut up some onions and gimme some salad with it. Okay. And I'll just put it in little, like I'll make little sliders out of it. Okay.

Simone Collins: How many slices of toasted buttered white bread.

Malcolm Collins: Two. Okay. I mean, I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna eat a ton.

Don't serve me more than four at a time. These things are okay. So four

Simone Collins: patties, two slices of white bread, salad. Cucumber, yes or no.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Cucumber.

Simone Collins: Cucumber, salad.

Malcolm Collins: And with the cucumber, you can make it either way. This time whatever's easier for you.

Simone Collins: Okay. And I'm not making more of that sugar dressing, therefore, because

Malcolm Collins: I don't need the sugar dressing for this because Yeah, you're having it

Simone Collins: with buttered toast.

And then maybe I can make flaky butter biscuits or something like that tomorrow. Which would be more,

Malcolm Collins: I just figured this would be like a fun, different way to eat it.

Simone Collins: Well, and, and the kids are really into sandwiches right now, so I can, you know, it's useful. Everyone wins by this, so thanks.

Malcolm Collins: Thank you.

I love you so much. You're, you're so pretty. Thank you for being my mated person as they, as they say in the rum bonded book that we learned bonded for life. Oh, no. Oh, it doesn't even make sense. Why would I like a woman for life if I'm not like supernaturally attracted to her? Well,

Simone Collins: no, that's, you know, you don't have to feel personally responsible for it because it was fake pressure moments.

I have no personal responsibility.

Malcolm Collins: It was forced on me by God, clearly. So

Simone Collins: it's not your fault Yeah. For everyone who criticizes you for, you know, clearly she's out of her league.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, she, it's not his fault. I just bonded to her. Don't you know, I, it's a romantic He didn't have

Simone Collins: a choice. Yeah. I love you.

Malcolm Collins: I love you too.

Simone Collins: You're perfect and hot. No,

Malcolm Collins: you are

Simone Collins: my,

Malcolm Collins: my bonding. You hit record, okay? Mm-hmm. So how's it going? You learn anything new today?

Simone Collins: The, the, the reader suggested YouTube video of a Marxist analysis of, what was that book called? Morningstar Milking Farm.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Tell, tell the audience about this 'cause I can't believe you went through this analysis.

Simone Collins: Well, I'm glad, I'm honestly glad a listener suggested it 'cause it's hilarious. And in the context of the episode that we ran on romantic, there was this extremely smutty romantic novel called Morningstar Milking Farm about a corporate facility where women, bring Mino Tars to ejaculation to create basically a Viagra pill for a pharmaceutical company because they just, it's the, it's the minar semen extract that produces the desired effect. Wait,

Malcolm Collins: is this, is this written for women? It appears because the woman, yes, it is a

Simone Collins: romance novel written for women.

And this one YouTube creator went to just do. Satire of it, like read it and then roast it online. And then she reads it and she's like, actually this is a Marxist critique of late stage capitalism. And she goes on this long rant about how like the facility represents late stage capitalism. And this two-faced, like, you know, front room is all cutesy farm decorations.

And then you go back and it's all sterile hallways and how, you know, overeducated women. Can't find a job and end up having to sell their manual labor to produce, you know, products in the name of vanity. And

it is, I highly recommend it, just milking farm Marxist, late stage capitalism on YouTube and you'll find it. And that was, it was very. It was very enlightening. Oh, great.

Malcolm Collins: Enlightening, enlightening, Simone. It was great.

Simone Collins: I, I, I don't think I could read that book. So I'm glad that I just read her her Marxist critique of it.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I got obsessed with a series. That I, I read the entire thing, by the way. Oh, you did? Oh, yes. Yes. So I was, when I was doing that episode, because we had talked about like a mega verse in it. Mm-hmm. And I was like okay. I, I should like Google around like I'm, I'm doing, I'm like, okay, I'll Google around.

Are there any Omega verse stories that a guy wouldn't hate? Right? So, oh, for men.

Simone Collins: Omega verse, but for men, okay, go on. Yeah. I was like, okay,

Malcolm Collins: I'm looking for girl, girl stuff. 'cause I don't want, I don't want any guy in, in my romantic fantasies, I don would not want a guy fair. Because they're not gonna be, and that's why actually

Simone Collins: keep in mind that I, if you just, for example, Google and will search image, search the term Omega verse, you're getting all Boy, boy, boy, covers.

That are. Yeah. So I found one. So a lot of women also prefer erotic material that don't have any women in it for record. Oh yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Why do you wanna, I mean, I'm not into men, right? Like, so why do I wanna see men? But, so I found one Omega heroine wants her alpha villainous. And I read the entire, how many chapters was this?

141 chapters. Basically three books in, in the past few days. 'cause I enjoyed it so much. It's, it's. Just cutesy, basically.

Simone Collins: How does it compare to love advice from the Great Duke of hell, because I just died for that.

Malcolm Collins: I considered it about the same, but was a different vibe. How does it compare

Simone Collins: to the lesbian BDSM?

What were and what were those books called? I

Malcolm Collins: liked it more than Sunstone.

Simone Collins: Sunstone. Okay. So better than Sunstone. Equal to Love Advice from the great Duke of Hell.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but different. This is, okay, so this was about maximizing. When we talk about a story, I meant to masturbate a specific emotional subset.

Okay? Sweetness and people being really dedicated to each other as partners. That's what the sunstone series is about. No. No, it is too tangential. The, the plot is not as interest. So if you look at this story versus Sunstone, which is another good story that I'd recommend but it's about BDSM if you're interested in that culture.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: I didn't like a lot of it is like, oh, I, I did all this stuff to like prep for sex. I did all this stuff to prep for whatever and, and to prep to make my partner. This is like, I help them with a test. Oh, okay. I help them get into medical school. It's just

Simone Collins: straight to the act of love, of service of help.

Malcolm Collins: Right. And, and I should note, if you're getting into this and you expect something not safe for work. It even censors, kissing and that is the most not safer for work thing that happens. I wonder

Simone Collins: if there's, so they must be catering to the laws of some country that don't, that doesn't permit showing lesbians kissing, which I'm thinking might be Russia because the Duma last year, or no, previously they had, they only added to this legislation had had passed legislation.

I think that that prevented any promotion in the media of gay or lesbian. Lifestyles. So I bet this is to enable, it could be Chinese distribution in Russia, but I don't know of Chinese regulation against gay or lesbian media. Whereas in Russia, I know that that is not permitted.

Malcolm Collins: Interesting. So, so as a guy, I'm forced to watch men in, in my erotic material, I'm forced to read books with men, and I don't, I don't want to do that.

But no, it's, it's a, you, you might like it, Simone, if you like, like,

Simone Collins: maybe, what was I gonna

Malcolm Collins: say? Stories that are like, it uses the omega verse trope just to make it so that there is no question, like it basically, it makes their relationship not gay because in an omega verse world. You have women whi women and they can have kids.

So, and you have men with

Simone Collins: men. Men get pregnant in the Omega verse all the time.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So basically it removes all of the problems with them being lesbians in terms of like the story. Oh.

Simone Collins: Because they can, one can get the other pregnant without there being

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And it creates. Whiz, like scenting and marking and stuff like that.

Mm-hmm. Replacements for modern concepts like giving someone a ring or something like that, which may have lost some of its power or like, oh, well we don't actually want to do like a real sex scene, so we'll just have her sniff the girl or something. Right.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: I'm like, okay, whatever. Like, I actually appreciate that more because I didn't want a sex scene.

I just wanted them to be happy with each other. Right. Which is it, it, it's very interesting to see how it's done in practice because I had never actually read an Omega first book before. Wow. So, so now I am the worst that I actually found one that I thought was pretty decent.

Simone Collins: Yeah. See, okay.

Simone's not the only one. Except that sounds actually good. The books that I read actually, which means Matt got mad at

Malcolm Collins: her for gi giving, giving up that she actually reads all these pervy romantic books.

Simone Collins: I, I didn't, and you said, I only do it to go to

Malcolm Collins: sleep. And I'm like, you're on book number three of the series, Simone, you're not.

Simone Collins: It takes me at least 30 minutes to fall asleep and a book can help. At the end of that period, I'm more likely to fall asleep. I have to go through novel material every night. So even a 20 hour book isn't gonna last me. A time, time. It, it's like saying like, oh, how dare you refill your prescription of Ambien?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Because your prescription is filled with, with porn, Simone prescription bottle full of porn and

Simone Collins: you're the old man. He is like,

Malcolm Collins: I need this for my heart. Okay, all,

Simone Collins: all the readers say, I'm busted, but whatever. If I am.

Malcolm Collins: You are so busted, Simone. No, the

Simone Collins: problem is I'm still reading all systems read by Martha Wells and loving it.

The problem is I'm not going to sleep. I'm not falling asleep. It has to be. Well, you gotta get

Malcolm Collins: back to your, your werewolf, billionaire story, Simone. That's what's truly gonna put you to sleep. All right. All right. I'll get started here.

Speaker: Hey Octavian, how do you feel? Um, let me get my weight right here and I can milk in my mouth. You wanna get milk in your mouth? Um, I wanna get away from cold milk and surgery while get away and, and medicine too. You want cold milk and medicine? Oh, that sound a good plan. That sound a good plan. Okay. You got Mr.

Bear here to cuddle with you? Yeah. Okay, buddy. I'll give you, I'm sleeping milk and medicine. Do you want some mac and cheese? No, I'm not feeling good. Okay, so you just want milk and medicine, is that right? Um, yeah. Okay, buddy. Is there anything else we can get for you? Yeah. What would you like? Um, just, um, milk.

Just milk and medicine. Yeah. All right, buddy. Let me get that for you. Okay. I miss making cold. You feel cold? Um, I, or do you want cold milk? 'cause you're too hot? Um, I, I want cold milk. Okay. I'll get you cold milk. Oh, thank you, mommy. I love you buddy. I love you too, mommy.

In this episode, Simone and Malcolm discuss the intricacies and lived experiences of the polyamorous community, using ALA's blog post as a case study. They explore the dynamics of open relationships, the culture of polyamory, and compare it with monogamous lifestyles. The conversation touches on the emotional transparency and unique challenges within poly communities, including social pressures, jealousy, and the pursuit of novelty. They also delve into contrasting personal perspectives on relationships and the productivity implications of poly lifestyles.

Speaker 4: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be talking about the other side of polyamory.

Specifically what I mean by this is. Somebody who has gone into open relationships, polyamory you know, they are around our age and they have been as successful at this as a human can be. And they know everyone else who's really in this lifestyle. What is the life and who does it well,

Speaker: like, does well as best as you possibly can.

The perfect case study,

Speaker 4: of course we're looking at ALA here. Because she wrote a blog post about this recently. And not just that, but it was so fascinating to read because when I read it clearly from her perspective, it was a bunch of wins and awesome life moments. And from my perspective, it was.

I would never want that. And no, no, no, no. I think this is really useful because I think for a lot of people when they start thinking about opening a relationship or like seriously sleeping around with other people they think about it in the context of that individual decision instead of where it will lead them in life and whether or not, oh, what's the end game?

Whether that is, yeah, whether or not that's a place they want to be. Mm-hmm. And what I like so much about ALA's piece here is I think that if you are the type of person who wants to polyamory endgame, you will read, like, you'll hear this and you'll be like, that sounds fantastic. And if you're not, even if you're the type of guy who might be like, well, you know, but I should sleep around on my partner more often or something like this, this may scare you out of that.

If this is the endgame.

Speaker: Yeah. So basically, for some people, this, this actually really, truly is ideal. But many people who think it's for them, it really isn't. And this is a great blog post or a substack post to review if yes. Just, just to find out, to, to test the waters without necessarily destroying a monogamous relationship that could actually be the better alterna.

Well, and I think

Speaker 4: if you are monogamous, just from an anthropological perspective, you'll find this very fascinating. Mm-hmm. Like, especially if you're like us and like with a bunch of kids and your chickens and, and living on a farm this is another world that she's living in. That is

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4: As different as maybe somebody living in the 18 hundreds is from like our daily life.

I also really, well actually bring

Speaker: in some history here as we go more into this 'cause actually, okay.

Speaker 4: What I also really found it interesting. Yeah. In reading this was your core reaction to it. So Simone reads this, and it's not all the debauchery that gets to her, it's the wasted time. She's like, how do they have time for this?

And so I would want you to comment on that as we go through this. So the article is titled Anecdotes from the Slut Cloud. It works fine. A lot of people have opinions like No man would ever seriously date a w***e. Promiscuous. People have relationships that fall apart. This is setting everyone up for so much drama.

Slutty people are secretly suppressing their actual hatred of the lifestyle, et cetera. While our polyamory is full of nerdy memes about getting your molecule to play d and d, our monogamy is pretty angry at all. The non-MS, this most upvoted post includes stuff like. When you see two people in an open relationship, it's like, which one of you came up with the idea and which one of you cries to sleep every night?

And I note here, what I like about her going into this is she's saying that that's not actually true. There are actually people who like this polyamorous lifestyle, even if you would find it a living hell, like I, again, I read through her lifestyle and I'm like, oh my God, that is a living hell. But we'll get to that in a second.

But, but clearly she doesn't feel that way about it, and I know other people who don't. Mm-hmm. And next one here, I'd get bored is something so selfish to say about your partner. People you supposedly love don't exist for your entertainment. Did you I agree with that. I mean, I don't get bored with you and you do exist through my entertainment.

So, you know, I don't most mostly in the productivity enhancer and entertainment as a second. You know, people keep saying that we were gonna get bored of our conversations. You know, so, oh,

Speaker: well then we'd run out of things to talk about with this podcast.

Speaker 4: Well, that's what I thought when I started dating you and marrying you and spending almost all my time with you and doing all our companies together.

It's like eventually I must run outta conversations.

Speaker: Yeah, no. Especially not in this timeline.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Apparently not. Yeah. This, this is too crazy. Next was bored and took a small dive into poly relationship YouTube. And 95% of the videos are about training to not hear the little voice in your head telling you that something is insanely wrong.

Or responses to one of my poly friends tweets about polyamory. And so here are some responses. I'm going to invent a disease to eradicate them. They made effing around boring total a humanity. I swear. It's the video games, specifically RPGs, that impart upon nerds, this bizarre micro. Fascist structuralism to every interaction they need to be economically and socially disenfranchised.

Every game cube will be smashed next fluffy in bio. Oh. I guess they're saying he's a furry quote unquote, poly people aren't people. Those are really mean. Yeah,

Speaker: the, the, the hate that she, that she screenshotted and shared in her essay is, is so unfounded. But I think also it's stuff that I see.

She's not just selecting the most extreme, random, very unusual response. No, I, I absolutely see this all the time. Well,

Speaker 4: and there's a reason for it. As well, especially from women. Well, and for men. So, okay. We, we, I, I should get into like why people slut shame. Slut shaming is a very useful tool in securing partners.

When women just sleep with anyone especially attractive women, just sleep around with anyone. A lot of other women lose one of the core values they feel they bring to the PA table that they can use to attract a partner, which is sexual access. And so. You know, if you're in a dating market and some of the most attractive women in the dating market are just giving away sexual access for fairly little or even like monetary, which can be even worse for you because then they've discreetly priced what sexual access to somebody like them is worth.

Speaker 6: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: You can really struggle to secure the attention of some of the men who you otherwise would've been able to secure the attention of.

Speaker 6: Absolutely.

Speaker 4: And for men, there's also a reason to do this because you do not. Yes, you may enjoy like in the moment sexual access, but what you really want, what all men really want at the end of the day, except for this one rare category of men, is, you know, a long-term partner to have kids with.

And if, if other women are normalizing this behavior, especially if they're not sleeping with you, which is fairly common, I mean, a lot of these people who are out there like, you know, poly whatever, are like awful. They're the type of people who only like fat poly women would sleep with if they're men or they're the type of people who just don't gain access to, to the attractive poly women.

Mm-hmm. And so they don't understand like, there, there is a degree of benefit to gatekeeping this behavior because if you can enforce monogamy among attractive men, especially then more women sort to you because you know, right now all the attractive women are just sorting to the top men. Even they don't realize that that's what's happening.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 4: So it, it's not that they're acting, you know, out of line with like logical or even cultural evolutionary motivation. But it, there is a lot of cruelty to it. I, I, I can see that. But there is an intentionality behind the cruelty. I'd also note here and, and perhaps even an intentionality that could lower overall social dysfunction.

But I don't know if they can win this market anymore. Like they're never gonna dissuade the poly normalized people from being poly No. With the source of tactics. No. Now what might is something like our EA to sex work pipeline that goes into the effective altruist movement and the poly normalization and how this leads many women to sex work.

And yeah, I think

Speaker: discussion of long-term ramifications and how they may or may not align with the long-term goals people have. Absolutely.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker: That could be convincing.

Speaker 4: So to continue. And this all feels so bizarre to me. I live in a culture where none of the slutty people are unhappy and failing at relationship thing is true. Or rather, no, more so than it is for the non slutty cultures. It seems like it's hard for people to envision how life might work, where there's high contingent of happy slutty people. Mm-hmm. And so what's really fascinating to me about reading ALA's posts in regard to this stuff is I feel like I know, like I can personally pull up the various people she mentions anonymously.

Mm-hmm. Based on the context clues she's giving around them. And so yeah. At least a

Speaker: bunch of them,

Speaker 4: some of 'em, right. But what's important about this to me is it means that I have the same view into this culture that she has into this culture. You

Speaker: have, you have some insight into it.

Speaker 4: No, I have, I have some insight, but I'd make a few notes here.

Yeah. First, she is not wrong. That there are a lot of people in this culture that have at least seemingly healthy and happy relationships that are otherwise successful. And that are you, you know, do, do partner sharing in everything that are very

Speaker: successful, that are sexually fulfilled and in very good supportive, and I would say wholesome relationships that are also poly that also involve a lot of sex.

But, and yeah, but it's so just to be very clear, we know some of these people and she's absolutely right,

Speaker 4: but, but few enormous caveats I'm about to add to this. All right. Okay. First, every one of these relationships that I know that is stable, the guy is extremely famous and well liked and well known.

Speaker: Not always, not always, not always.

Speaker 4: Who are you thinking of? Are, are you thinking the Miri guys aren't super famous? They are extremely famous. No, I'm

Speaker: thinking of other ones. I mean, like, they're, and it's not, I, I wouldn't say necessarily famous, but well known within the community, respected of the community, attractive, wealthy, and professionally successful.

So, okay.

Speaker 4: That's the point I'm making. Okay. Is every one of these instances, the guy is among most measures a 10. 10. Yeah. And

Speaker: if, if they're not super famous, then they are super attractive.

Speaker 4: Yeah. They're not super famous or super attractive. The point here being is this only appears to look like it's working to her.

My, one of my perceptions is because she is around. Very, very, very successful people. Yeah. And what she doesn't realize is the poly thing is working for these guys because they're sharing lots of women more so than women are sleeping around as much. And women are still sleeping around within these circles, but it is a lesser phenomenon.

Well, and I also

Speaker: wanna point out that, that this also works because you have extremely educated, extremely self-aware, high caliber people who are wealthy living in, in an almost post scarcity society. Because there is one place where I am very familiar with the dynamics that she's talking about. Can you imagine?

It's, it's, I read a book that was about this, this social environment three times. 'cause I loved it so much.

Speaker 4: It was what, the uglies or something?

Speaker: No, it's not sci-fi.

Speaker 7: It's real history. Lots of primary sources.

Speaker 4: Oh, this is a court, the Louis the 14th or something. Yeah, Louis

Speaker: the 14th Court. Antonio Fraser wrote this great book called I think it's love in Louis the 14th, the Women in the Life of the Sun King that talks about the court.

And it is like this, it is people who are attractive, largely attractive, competent, well educated, well, lots of leisure time, and they are sleeping around like crazy.

Speaker 4: But I, I would note here that. As somebody who explored Silicon Valley, not entering it as a celebrity like she did Uhhuh. I also saw the group houses, the people being passed around, the women who were less attractive.

The men who were not successful and engaged in this, very few of them had happy relationships. Well, and

Speaker: there was

Speaker 4: also a problem in the French Court in the 17 hundreds. Right. But I'm, I'm, I'm pointing out here that part of this looking like this is working to her is due to the filtering of the community she sees.

The second is I do not feel she knows a lot of happily married people and has gotten to see them interact as somebody who has seen both sides of this. I would say that if you had only seen people from within the San Francisco ea poly community, you know, au au Austin community you'd be like, their relationships are fine and stable and they're happy.

Speaker 5: Yeah. If.

Speaker 4: I contrasted any of these people with the stable married couples we know who have lots of kids, their relationships are nowhere close. And these people could, like, they have the emotional intelligence, they have the bond with their partner, they have everything they need to have a relationship as high equality as our married with lots of kids, couple friends.

Speaker 6: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: They just sort of. I, I don't know how to put it. It's like their relationships are in sort of an unstable dynamic. They're held together by the partner's attraction to each other compatibility the, the social normativity of what they're doing and off the status of the man. But. This, this orbit is is not stable in the same way that a lot of the married with lots of kids, couples we know are.

Another really interesting difference between the two groups is and I suspect that this might be a core thing that causes this is how extroverted are you? Every one of the married with a lot of kids, couples I know who's in a really stable relationship are basically Hako Moores. Those are people like us who basically live on a farm, we're shut in, believe ever

Speaker: really stressed when we're around people

Speaker 4: or they live in like small group houses, was like a few other people and basically never talk to anyone outside

Speaker: this 'cause Ala is also pretty introverted.

At least she says she is. She spends long stretches of time alone. She

Speaker 4: is, but she goes to big events and interacts with people and I mean, I think she's got an introverted bone in her. Maybe,

Speaker: maybe it's about tolerance, not just for yeah, no, maybe not introversion, but tolerance at all. I would say tolerance for stimuli because.

Both you and I really don't like being touched. Like, you know how my parents used to troll you by insisting that you hug them for 10 seconds, they'd like literally count hate and you would just like die on the inside. And I'd like, if anyone, me, I like hugging our kids

Speaker 4: though, which is, I didn't expect.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. That is odd. And I feel the same way, but like, yeah, no, anyone else, like, especially if they're not you or our kids, I feel deeply uncomfortable. Do. And what's even worse is like I'm, I'm fairly good at masking and I know I'm supposed to not be deeply uncomfortable, so I act like I love it, which means people think that, that, I think it's okay 'cause they don't see me freaking out, which means that they do it.

And then, then I, I really just can't be around people. 'cause like there's no way that that Oh yeah. Not torture. Torture. I find it

Speaker 4: really, I Oh, oh, people like this idea of like cuddle parties or something. Oh, I'm like, oh, I would not enjoy that.

Speaker: Torture, torture, torture, torture. But yeah, I mean, for some people it's, yeah.

So I think some people really enjoy that physical contact. Then you and I would rather, but I

Speaker 4: wanted to start by validating what she's saying here. Yes. That she's not lying. That from her perception there are a bunch of people in stable relationships like this. Absolutely. Okay. So to continue, so to help visualize, here's some instances from the lives of myself and people, I know names are changed, some of the details are slightly altered to preserve anonymity.

Mm-hmm. We know a lot of each other's friends, I've been horny lately, says A girlfriend of mine Oh. Says a girl group chat. I'd recommend trying to bang Mike. He's really into the thing you're into, but another girl chimes in. Actually, I'm not sure. Mike is definitely into X, but I think you're actually more into Y and it might not work out.

Worth trying though. Exclamation mark. Like imagine that like, I mean if, if your

Speaker: hobby is that like if your hobby, sex and different, different like arousal pathways or kinks. That, that's great. I mean, if you just replace this with like knitting terms, like, you know, he's really in, like, he's really good at this.

Okay, let's, like, I really wanna do this kind of stitch. Oh, I think so and so knows how to do this kind of stitch. Actually, he's not really good at that, but I think you actually really wanna do this kind of stitch. But you can ask him anyway, like if you just replace that with knitting or with fly fishing or with anything else.

All right.

Speaker 4: All right, let's continue here. I'm chatting at a group of girls at a housewarming party about whether or not a mutual friend is coming. I realized with amusement that all the girls in the conversation have had sex with him. I'm hanging out with a group of friends and one of them has to stick a pill into her for medical reasons.

Someone asked, quote unquote, can I watch? So she says, sure. Pulls her pants down, spreads her legs, and the whole group of us watch as she shoves the pill. In two of my friends I describe as frenemies, who seem to have had a lot of sex compared to how much they find each other. Annoying. Okay. So just, I mean, a lot of

Speaker: this, like, if you're really bored in life, this would be very entertaining.

Speaker 4: Well, no, that's another thing about this is it seems like such a distraction first. All of this is like groups of friends. Like, do we don't do that? I don't ever, ever hang out with a group of friends, except when I'm like with ala, like, ALA is like the one instance when I'm like hanging out with Ala or like some of my San Francisco friends do.

I hang out with like a group of, of of other people who are friends and I actually like, don't get it. Like, the only other time this happens to me, and you can see our episodes of why did Jews Have Friends, is when I'm hanging out with Orthodox Jewish friends I have, or conservative Jewish friends I have they, they are the only other group I know that regularly ambushes me with friends.

And I'm like, why? I don't wanna meet your friends. What, what are you doing? I just want, like, I understand that like, you don't want to take time. Like for some of these individuals it's like, okay, because they're famous or whatever, and if they're gonna take time with me, they're gonna take time with a few other people.

Right? Like I get that right. But I would never do that no matter how famous I think I get what I want to. I mean, I guess we sort of do it with our New York parties and stuff like that. Where to cut down on the time we interact with people. We host events where we have just tons of, you know, high profile people come to these secret parties and they've become like known about by newspapers now.

And the DC parties, but I don't really consider those people friends. Like, I consider them friends individually, but I don't consider it a friend to get together because what we always focus on at those parties is intellectual conversations

Speaker: well and connecting people with each other. 'cause they don't know each other yet.

So, yeah. Yeah. Like business stuff, everything

Speaker 4: to like chill and hang out. Another thing that I thought was really interesting when we were going through these separately is you were like. I talk to people in group chats, but I never talk to anyone about something without utility. It is always, and when I say I am speaking on behalf of Simone you're like, it's always about how to make money, how to get a book done, how to go, yeah.

Like

Speaker: tactical, like, you know, how, how do you, how are you addressing this? Or you know, can you tell me about this? Or, or you know, how can I help you move forward with this thing? It's never just idle socializing.

Speaker 4: Well, yeah, the only time it is idle socializing for us, and I think this is just like us being like weirdo otus is when we send people like, Hey, I see you're getting attacked a lot online right now.

Like, I hope you don't let it get to you or whatever. That's not

Speaker: idle socializing, that's us extending support for people that we care about. Yeah. So it's

Speaker 4: really only either emotional support for people who we see are going through a lot or tactical questions and nothing else. And, and when I say nothing else.

I really mean nothing else. There's like a few people who send us memes, but we don't really mean back. You know, which is fascinating to me is even with my parents, I almost never talk about anything else. I'm like, here's what I'm working on now. Do you have any tactical? And when they try to go into other stuff, I'm like ending right now.

I don't. I do not care. I, I don't care how you're feeling sometimes. But so they, they're describing like an entirely different type of social interaction than the one we have. But I was also commenting to Simone about this this morning is how lucky we are to have found each other. Because if we had craved this type of social interaction, a relationship really wouldn't have worked as well.

And yet you know, we are from, I guess, you know, as we say, like we're culturally or maybe genetically different from other people and we really just are focused on trying to make the future a better place. Like, that's it. That's everything that we focus on. Right. You know? And I would be so disappointed in you if I saw you wasting time like this.

But to continue here an escort friend of mine married one of her clients. My boyfriend met another girl on a dating app. He was staying at my place for a few months, so he brought her to live with me during the period that they were going to see if they wanted to try a serious relationship. I was just vaguely around the house as they had sex, talked for hours in each other's arms, et cetera.

We both ended up breaking up with the boyfriend and now are good friends with each other. Aw, okay. So Well, okay. They made friends with each other, but that's, that's also really interesting. I don't want like somebody having like random sex when I'm, you mentioned like her, like sitting around reading a book and you're like, you can't imagine yourself having the time to do that.

Like not just reading a book, but, but then somebody sits down next to you and starts having sex.

Speaker: Yeah. I've never, I don't, I can't remember the last time I've sat on a couch. For any reason other than, you know, one of the journalists is visiting our house, and I have to, but normally I'm up and cooking or something.

Yeah. We really can't bear, we only

Speaker 4: socialize for journalists these days.

Speaker: That's the only time I'm, or I sit, the only time I actually sit in a chair for an extended period of time is for this podcast. I, I can't,

Speaker 4: yeah.

Speaker: Like to, not, to not work. I can't,

Speaker 4: And she really means it, by the way, she finds it quite distressing.

It's not a, you know, an exaggeration or a ploy or something. Yeah. De

Speaker: deeply unpleasant.

Speaker 4: And it's, but I mean, just in general,

Speaker: I mean, you, you also like, kind of really struggle to not like to just hang out. It's not something we do.

Speaker 4: Oh, no. If I am, like, with a group hanging out, it, it's not that I'm as productive as you, but I'd always rather be like chatting with AI or playing a, an adventure game or mm-hmm.

You know, drinking and watching anime or, you know, anything. And so I just don't have these desires, right? Or, or I always have some higher order desire, even if I get some in the moment. Pleasure. She goes on. I know a poly couple who's been married for decades with three kids. They haven't really done much outside dating recently because they're two distracted with the kids, but they spent time on their relationships beforehand, and I anticipate they'll likely spend more time after, once the kids stop taking up much of their attention.

And, yeah. This is something I often see with, with poly individuals is once they start having like a reasonable number of kids just poll stops making as much sense. And I've noted that this isn't because sex isn't good, it's just that kids are generally better.

Speaker: Yeah, that's sort of underrated that I think a lot of people couldn't imagine anything that would be more enjoyable for them to spend time doing when they could, when they know how enjoyable sex is.

And you only hear about negative stuff with, with kids. Plus when you're around other people's kids, it's like nails on a chalkboard. It's just so unpleasant. So you couldn't imagine ever wanting to hang out around your kids, but we have

Speaker 4: the best kids

Speaker: similarly. Well, I think, but I, I mean, I do think a lot of people love their kids and, and they would never guess that literally spending time with your kids could be as enjoyable or more enjoyable than sex.

I think most people are like way, and, and this, where I

Speaker 4: think that they're wrong is this. As the kids get older, I think that they're gonna wanna spend more time with them. Because our kids just get cooler as they get older.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 4: And I certainly, you know, wouldn't want to leave my kids to you know, cultivate another relationship unless I was just really like the person for other reasons.

But, you know, that's rare. Like, I, I just don't build that many friendships outside of my relationship.

Speaker 6: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: And again, the, the funny thing about all this is, is in the context of I'm allowed to sleep with people outside the relationship if I want to. It's just a, a matter of is it ever worth the time?

And when I look at this, I see why I, that isn't something I have interest in aggressively pursuing.

Speaker: I guess it's one of those you can, but should you?

Speaker 4: Yeah. At a nerd meetup, I noticed a guy used the phrase, my wife and my partner in separate conversations, and I figured he must be Polly. I casually referenced him as Polly shortly afterwards, but this freaked him out.

He pulled me aside and said, no, please don't talk about this. He hadn't, quote unquote, come out yet and didn't want word of this getting back to his job or friends. He was afraid of what might happen, which I think, I remember,

Speaker: remember we had we had a, a poly friend whose husband was like that, where like they were super closeted about the fact that they were poly.

But when you look at the bias against poly couples, that does not me at all. Oh, I remember. Yeah. In Dallas, remember? Yeah. They ended up breaking up. Right. They did end up breaking up, but still, and, and getting divorced. But still he was extremely nervous about it. And I think part of that is because they were in Texas and he worked for a more conservative company.

But

Speaker 4: I don't, I don't think that, that's the only reason. I think that there is a huge difference of a guy sleeping with a lot of women outside the relationship and a woman sleeping with a lot of guys outside the relationship.

Speaker: Mm. Yeah. Like his male peers would be like, sweetie, you're cued. Yeah.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Especially in Dallas, Texas.

Speaker: Fair. Fair. Okay.

Speaker 4: No matter how much you're into it, I, I wouldn't wanna deal with like, even if I was into getting cocked, I wouldn't want to deal with this social fallout of something like that. Oh yeah.

Speaker: Like that conservative guy who, who was just really open and transparent about it and was just completely def fenestrated for it.

Speaker 4: Oh yeah. What was his name? God, I can remember another episode. This guy was a beard and he was like a manosphere influencer and he is like, oh, it's so cool to have my wife sleep. And everyone was like, you, my friend. And, and, and as a lot of people up, which really goes to

Speaker: show, like, doing this gets you in trouble.

I mean, you can call it being cocked, you can call it poly, you can call whatever, right? But like society, a lot of people don't get it. And I think a lot of that also just comes from people. A lot of people have a sexual disgust reaction to it, and it's very hard for people to parse out the difference between a sexual disgust reaction and a this is immoral sign.

They just think that they're the same thing.

Speaker 4: Yeah. All right. To continue I am hanging out with a group of friends, which includes Bob and Alice, who are married. Bob and Alice are getting ready to try to conceive a baby. They've moved into a group house with other, soon to be parents for community support.

We've discussed birth control methods with Alice and how her sexual behavior is going to change once she enters an active conception attempts phase at one. I think I know of

Speaker: this house.

Speaker 4: Yeah, at one point somebody mentions how big Bob's member is. I've had sex with Bob and I agree that it's big. I say that whenever Bob approaches at orgies, the other guys tell me, oh, you're in for it now.

Most of the other women there have also had sex with Bob. Alice says something about how her husband's member is big, but she didn't realize it was that big. And then we all tease her about having high standards for member sizes. We discuss the one other person at the orgy who has an even bigger one.

What's his name? Someone remembers we agree that it's probably girth here, but not necessarily longer. What a, the, the conversa. What a pointless conversation.

Speaker: They, they can be funny conversations though. I mean, that sounds, you know, if, if you're stuck with a group of people I know. I out dick sizes. Yes.

Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, I'm glad that,

Speaker: although I feel kind of bad for these guy, I would feel very self-conscious if people were like talking about. I don't know, like my, my private parts, it would, I would, I would,

Speaker 4: I would, I would like uncomfortable, while I do not like the concept of being at an orgy, right? Like I do not, I find it actively un arousing because, you know, for obvious evolutionary reasons, a lot of guys are gonna feel that way because you do not want to see other people sleeping with people.

You are trying to get pregnant. But the thing that actually sort of horrifies me is I'm like, I might not just be a participant in an orgy, but I might be a participant in the orgy who doesn't have the biggest member. Oh. Like, that to me would be like an extra, and I didn't even think about that before.

Oh

Speaker 7: no. A whole new fear has been, a whole new fear has been unlocked. I don't think you need to worry about that.

Speaker 4: I, well, you know, you, you, you get enough crowds statistically. Yeah. I

Speaker: mean, yeah, I guess large enough sample, especially if people who are very confident about being naked and. Group spaces, you're probably gonna have probably a disproportionate number of men who are well endowed.

Yeah. So yeah, I guess the risk is relatively higher, but I would still not be too worried for you.

Speaker 4: Right. Well, I appreciate the vote of confidence. Two of my friends are a married couple together for 15 years. Their marriage is great. They have kids no longer small, and they decided to open up their relationship and now the husband has a girlfriend, the wife has a boyfriend.

They all sometimes hang out together. And of course, the respective boyfriend and girlfriend are people a lot of my friends have had sex with. Everybody knows this. Nobody tries to hide it. I personally am either directly or. A few sex partners removed from both the new girlfriend and boyfriend. A friend of mine is a mega slut with a body count in the multiple hundreds.

She has married a very successful guy, spent the marriage helping her husband get laid and has threesomes, and now is having a few young kids. I'm hanging out with a group of friends and their friends and I overhear someone saying, well, you guys might find this weird, but I'm actually monogamous. I remember one of our comments

Speaker: today was pointing out, like, remember when the left revealed this idea of radical monogamy?

Speaker 4: Yeah, that was so funny. They're like, we're doing this weird new sex thing called radical monogamy where you only sleep with one person, but it's because you choose to only sleep with one person. Not for like weird conservative reasons.

This person is really on the edge of debauchery, was their new monogamy idea. They're, they're so debas, they keep one partner just for their sexual gratitude. Well, I mean, in this community

Speaker: where it's not normative, you know, and I think it can become fairly insular where people are kind of like, whoa, wait.

You're, that's interesting. Well, and

Speaker 4: I think that people don't realize how much, you know, when you've culturally normalized to something and something culturally outside of that seems gross and weird to you, you're like, oh, how selfish to like think of partners. It's only about like arousal or whatever, or getting bored of them.

And, and this is what you think if you've normalized some mono anonymous culture, but like genuinely having been around this culture or knowing how they think, you know, I go up to one of them and I'm like, well, you know, my wife and I are in a monogamous relationship or something, and they're, they're genuinely like, what a weird, so what your wife is like your sex toy.

Like, she's not allowed to like do whatever she wants. Like what are you even talking about? Like you, how selfish can you be that you're not letting your wife, the person you claim to love more than anyone else in the world, do what makes her happy? You know, like the, I'm not saying I agree with this framing, but I'm saying you need to understand that this framing is totally normal in these people's heads.

Yeah. It is not like a contrivance. It's not like a defense mechanism. This isn't normal for them. Now we can get to the question of whether or not it works, but it is normal for them. Also in general, lots of swapping stories at Orgies was friends. Carl did the thing to me. Did he do that to you too? Oh my God.

I know Dave and I aren't usually as compatible as you and Dave, but last week he did this move I never expected. My boyfriend is having a girl. He's dating over, he's mentioned he's interested and move. What, what moves are people doing? Like how many moves are there? Like, I apparently a lot, as we slept around a lot, I did not feel like there were that many moves.

There were specific scenarios I could set up and things I could do. But in terms of like moves, moves, like these people must pick up like a whole new repertoire of like ways to be good at arousal and stuff like that. Yeah. In, in sort of their, but I wouldn't even want to, like if I knew that I was being judged this way for sex,

Speaker: I, that's true.

Yeah. There's a whole new layer that I got away that from this, that. Oh, and they're all openly talking about their intimate experiences with these other people. And I would feel so self-conscious about that.

Speaker 4: I just wanna have sex people. Like, I don't want the moves. I don't want, oh, you didn't even use a move.

I'd be like, no moves. Sorry I didn't collect my, my Pokemon cards to play all the right moves. Didn't deploy. Deploy, ah, activating my trap card. Anyway, God, my boyfriend is having a girl he's dating over. He mentioned he'd be interested in banging her casually in the open. And I say, sure. They're sitting on the couch with us and he starts having sex with her in front of me with her consent.

With her consent. Oh yeah. Just to

Speaker: make it clear that this isn't messed up. It

Speaker 4: looks nice. So I asked the girl if she'd like me to take a few photos of them. She says no. But about 10 minutes later, still in the middle of getting railed on the couch, she says, actually, I changed my mind. Some photos would be nice.

I'm like, draw. Okay. And I get a lot of photos of them having kinky sex and I text That's really sweet. Afterwards.

Speaker: It's both really sweet. But this was what I was commenting about that like I just couldn't imagine like sitting on a couch long enough for like someone else to sit down and do anything, like turn on a TV or start.

Railing each other. Like, I just, I'm like this, that is what feels weird about this scenario. It is a different rule, not the fact that they were going at it, but like the fact that someone could sit on couch long enough for, you know, you know,

Speaker 4: actually now that you mention this that is something that really distinguishes our, our, our poly friends from our high agency married couple friends Hmm.

Is all of our poly friends have like major problems getting stuff done. And they are much slower to complete tasks. Hmm. And our married friends typically have like five major projects at once.

Speaker: Well, and this is also why like reading this just reminded me so much of the French court of Louis the 14th.

I'm like, wow, this is so familiar. What? Oh, that's it. Which is also so interesting because there, even with all like the online hate that poly people receive, like, oh, I wish we, you know, could just make a disease to eradicate them. A big underlying theme of this they did, it's called aids. Sorry, continue is the Catholic church.

And the Catholic church is basically prude Twitter, like being like, well, I'm not gonna give you the sacrament because you, you're, you're sleeping out of wedlock with someone. Wait, were they doing

Speaker 4: this in the Louis Church? Or, or Louis. Louis.

Speaker: Yeah. In, in the court of Louis the 14th the, the, like Cardinals and everything had like very serious problems with Louis the 14th, having these open female lovers, it being OI mean, he had multiple children with several of his female lovers.

One of them sort of became the defacto nanny who would like, have the kids come over to her estate and she would raise them like this. It was a whole thing. And like keep in mind like, it, it, it wasn't just one of these things where it was a harem for him. There were lots of, there, there was all sorts of like mixing and matching it.

It felt very. Polly. Like keep in mind for example, that one of the lovers of of Louis, the, the IV was Arietta of England Anne. Mm-hmm. And she married King Louis, the Fourteenth's brother, and likely during the time when she was married to Philippe, the first Duke Dilan, the, the, the, the brother of Louis, the xiv well, also like Philippe, I first this brother had, you know, multiple male lovers and then like one, one really well known one, the Valier de Lorraine.

So like, there like effort, there's just, just like all this, the sleeping and the, you know, man on men. And

Speaker 4: really interesting about this is as a guy, and even as a guy who, you know, when I just slept around a lot, you know, had a, a high sexual appetite, I, I would not have enjoyed this. The, they're like, oh, you wouldn't enjoy like just a world where there's attractive women and you can sleep with them whenever you want, and not if everyone else can sleep with them.

Like, I I Oh,

Speaker: so like the, the scenario, like you are a scenario in which you were banging one woman while another attractive woman is, is sitting on the couch. Like, it would just be ruined by the fact that you knew that those women were sleeping with other men too.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, and the, the sexual access was so easy.

Speaker: Like, oh, too easy.

Speaker 4: 95% of the fun for me back when I used to sleep around was the hunt. The 5% was a sex, the sex was largely irrelevant. I mean, these people work on it, don't they? They do. And they get the, the, you know, risk with new relationship energy and everything like that. Mm-hmm. But there's also a huge aspect as we'll see going on here where there isn't a lot of work.

You know, they're going, oh yeah. There's like, oh, you should just sleep with so and so.

Speaker: Yeah. Like. Oh, just this person. Yeah.

Speaker 4: And I don't know if I could gain any, and, and, and again, this isn't necessarily if it's casual

Speaker: as like a referral to a lawyer

Speaker 4: Yeah. Because it's hot. This, this isn't necessarily a positive thing for me.

Exactly. It's a bit like in a video game, right? Mm-hmm. Like, I like video games, right? Sometimes when you enable the cheat mode in video games, the video game just becomes immediately unfun. Because the challenge was the point.

Speaker 7: Mm-hmm. Right?

Speaker 4: The, the social challenge, the convincing somebody, the, all of that, the seduction.

And when you turn that off, the game isn't fun anymore. Yeah.

Speaker: Well, whereas I don't know, like my favorite. Stage of rollercoaster tycoon, like the one video game I ever played, computer game, PC game was like that one park with unlimited resources. I just loved that park. I just played that one over and over.

So I think for some people, so maybe you're

Speaker 7: meant to be poly, therefore, I am

Speaker: poly. No, but I, for some people this works and I think that's, that's the nuanced conversation that isn't being had, that should be had is that people need to recognize, I don't know. I

Speaker 4: don't know. I don't know. I'm push back there, but let's keep going here.

Okay. Okay.

Speaker: Okay. Okay.

Speaker 4: At an event, I'm chatting with a girl. When I realized that she's about to go on a date with a guy that I've been considering going on a date with, I ask her to tell me how it goes afterwards, she texts me how the date went and said she was sexually disappointed and anticipated I'd be disappointed too.

I thanked her and did not hook up with this guy. I. That is the saddest thing I've ever heard. Like I, I, I am so scared as a guy dating in this community, oh, I disappoint one girl. All of a sudden she calls all the other girls and is like, eh, he wasn't good enough. He wasn't, you know, and I didn't consider these girls like kinky sex a lot, so they're like, oh, he wasn't rough enough.

Oh, he wasn't, you know, didn't do enough of the hardcore stuff. No, but I mean,

Speaker: like in contrast, women who are dating in monogamous dating markets, which aren't even monogamous, they just pretend to be, don't have trust networks, referrals and reviews of men. No, but

Speaker 4: what you're missing here, okay. Like, okay, as a guy who's even into the, like, hardcore stuff, right?

Mm-hmm. Even when I was sleeping around and stuff like that.

Speaker 6: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: I getting up to that maybe a third of the time because it is so much extra effort. I don't, well, and also

Speaker: also it takes a lot to know, like, it either you have to do a lot of talking in advance or have a woman who's very self-aware or it's extremely risky.

Not

Speaker 4: really, really. I mean, there's idiots who get involved in it in ways that are risky, but there is no way, like from my experience, that I'm gonna hook up with a girl and I don't know what she's into to begin with.

Speaker: Oh,

Speaker 4: okay. I, I wouldn't the, the conversation. So you're just

Speaker: saying it's just sheer laziness on your part.

You're like, I don't wanna bother. If

Speaker 6: isn't that you

Speaker 4: underestimate the effort involved. The point I'm making here is if I knew that, if I didn't, like, basically you lose access if you're in this market, it's like sex wherever you want it. Mm-hmm. But you lose access to just sex. It just like normal, lazy relaxed.

Oh yeah. No,

Speaker: no lazy sex allowed. Well, I don't know though. Like, it seems like a lot of the sex can be pretty like. Sorry, that's couch. I

Speaker 4: don't have to worry about be being lazy with one person and then them calling up everyone else. That's true. And being like, Hey, this is you know, the first time I tried, I just wasn't up to snuff.

Not, not, not a filet mignon. I demand a filet mignon perfectly cooked every time. So, so next year some of my friends have harem chats where the people they're dating all coordinate with each other. I'm running a harem chat with one of my partners and we'll probably be planning an orgy tailor to his preferences.

Oh what an a time sink Harem chats. My friends found a guy she super likes. I said, Hey, it sounds great. I can't wait to meet him. She was like, oh, you already met him. You had sex with him at your gang. Bang. They ended up getting engaged. My partner runs a gang gang bang squad called the werewolves, a group of vetted STI tested experienced men who when the summoned will all descend upon a lady who would like to experience a gang bang.

It's a great network that sometimes women I know call on if they need members for any particular service. That is interesting. But, but imagine that, I mean, I think a lot

Speaker: of women who have that particular sexual interest would love access to a resource like that. Oh, no. Yeah, I can see some guys huge amounts of money

Speaker 4: for access to a resource.

Like I, obviously I would never want to do that, but I can see some guys want to do that. Right.

Speaker: Oh, to participate in that.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, I wouldn't wanna line up to have sex with someone. It's like I don't wanna go to Disneyland anymore 'cause I don't wanna line up to go on a ride lines. So why would I wanna line up to

Speaker 2: with someone Lines, it's what we're Sex of

Speaker 4: Lines

Speaker: gang bangs, sex with lines.

Speaker 4: Alright, continue. Okay. And some direct quotes. I was at Susan's Garden party sheepishly admitting to just having had sex with someone in the closet. Susan overheard and said, well, you should f my husband and went over to get him. Oh, well at least she's trying. But I mean, the person probably did, but like, why?

Oh, you just had sex with someone. You should have sex with this other person. Well that's for the

Speaker: referrals. I, that's where I was thinking about your comment about the chase being an important part. Like if, if someone was just like, oh you should, you know, my friend here just had sex with someone in a closet at our gardening party.

You should. Also have sex with her. You'd be like, this wasn't hard. This wasn't Once I

Speaker 4: accidentally took too much G with one partner and then passed out, and then I woke up and I was super horny and I needed to hump something, but he needed to go pee because he had been watching me breathe for an hour.

Doesn't take that long to pee. So he called his roommate over so I could hump his roommate's leg while I waited for my partner to come back. Then he sent me home with my husband with picks and more G so my husband could enjoy. Honestly, sleeping with people who live together has been super convenient and nice.

God, I I just would not want that. I would not, I they'd send you back and I'd be like, you can keep her. I'm not interested anymore. Wow. Wow. Good to know. I'd really better not the, the fact that most of my friends are my ex-partners or ex metamours. I had to draw a diagram where I explained this all to my newest partner.

It, I didn't seem to use dating apps anymore because meeting people at sex parties has become more efficient. And this is something I actually really get back when I slept around a lot. It actually took me a really long time after I started dating Simone and stopped dating around much to make friends.

And I would still hang out on dating apps predominantly to make friends. 'cause it was the primary way I knew to meet

Speaker: people. I remember that. Yeah.

Speaker 4: And I just really struggled

Speaker: how do I do this? But I, I mean, I experienced the same thing when I was dating. I was just stunned by how. Like, I used it more to find friends and I made some really great friends out of it, and I didn't realize that dating apps would be so good for that.

Speaker 4: Well, I mean, they and I, there was even like a stage early in our relationship where we basically pretended to be polyamorous just to meet people, just to have

Speaker 7: friends. I know it was so bad and like San

Speaker 4: Francisco. But the thing is nothing sexy

Speaker 7: ever happened, like we just made a lot of friends,

Speaker 4: is I have an easier time convincing a woman to go on a date with me than I had convincing a woman to just hang out with me.

That is,

Speaker: that is true. I never thought about that before.

Speaker 4: I'm like, Hey, do you want to come for this? This brings him to the yard. And I'm like, Hey, do you want to come to just chat? They're like, eh, well, no. Do you think

Speaker: that's, women think that you'll pay if it's a date?

Speaker 4: No. Because they often insisted on splitting and stuff like that.

It's, it's, it's, I think it's a contextualization of what they wanna spend their time on. Or maybe

Speaker: they, they, they, they feel more desired. Yeah. Maybe like it's just a friend thing. It, it almost, it's an insult because I think maybe some women instinctually feel in, instinctually feel like men can't have woman friends.

And is there, I don't think

Speaker 4: that that's it at all. I think it's that they just, they're either going to just talk with somebody or they are going and they know what the guy's interested in, in their mind, which is sex. So they feel like they know what's up. They know what the whole thing is. They're mm-hmm.

And, and they can get multiple things out of the interaction. Not just a conversation, but possibly sex, which to them is important. And or

Speaker: nce new relationship energy. Yeah. That thrill.

Speaker 4: Me and a partner. I remember that was fun boyfriend, me and a partner's boyfriend used to send each other cute photos of her when she's with the other and we coordinate on how to cheer her up and surprise her with something

Speaker 7: that's really sweet.

Speaker 4: It's sweet, but not something I would ever want. This is the other thing like, well, doesn't

Speaker: sound like too much work for you. We're very

Speaker 4: aspirational from a perspective of somebody like her and horrifying from the perspective of somebody like me.

Speaker: Why horrifying? Why is that horrifying?

Speaker 4: The idea of me getting picks of somebody else sleeping with somebody I'm sleeping with as like a fun little thing.

Oh, I would not find that fun. Oh, right. That the part

Speaker: of partner sharing would disgust you. Yeah, I was, I was overly focused on the whole like cheering her up thing.

Speaker 4: Once I was sad after not getting banged enough at an orgy, my two boyfriends trying to cheer me up, coordinated to have sex with me at the same time, even though they're not really in to mm f threesomes.

Which again sounds sweet within the context of the community to me, but here you

Speaker: are thinking like, I would feel obligated to do that and I would feel very uncomfortable. That's, that's your kind of

Speaker 4: reaction. This is like people hugging me who I'm like not interested in hugging me. I'm like, it's not that I hate hugs, I just wanna hug my kids and wife.

Being with one partner and texting pics slash video of us having sex to another partner who is brimming with delight. I mean, they have the thing here. Is that hot off the presses? Yes. Especially for you. You're such a good girl. Don't let me get between you and sucking that. C, see you tomorrow.

Beautiful. Thank you, sir. I'm so lucky. And then more video. I have a pick open while doing the task. Holy. SF There's something so special about seeing it right after it's recorded. These people must just have entirely sexual profiles in me.

Speaker: Yeah, no, what I do think it's kind of popular a, a popular thing for people to like, enjoy this.

Like public sex is a big, is a big arousal pathway for many people. But this is

Speaker 4: watching somebody and I think voyeurism in sleeping with somebody else, like public

Speaker: sex and voyeurism is big. And it may for many people be bigger than the instinct against sharing partners.

Speaker 4: And then to get a new, one thing I think is cute is people sharing tips on how to have sex with other shared partners.

Like I believe there exists a How to Have Sex with Me document that I didn't write because it was co-created by a few people I sleep with. Wait,

Speaker: no, this makes sense. This makes sense because I, I

Speaker 4: started seeing someone in June that I really quite like, and I discovered he hadn't been particularly slutty, but had slutty aspirations.

And I immediately started to think how slash when do I start promoting him to my hot friends?

Speaker: Oh,

Speaker 4: that's really, and this happened to me when I was younger as well. Women really will share you among your friends if you're like a good at s person and you are into the stuff that women are into that most guys aren't into, which again, as I've said is the, the much more like.

Dominance focused, harder core stuff. On the, the, the chat people were like, oh, what sort of person likes being choked? And I was like, well, one, the statistics show that actually more women prefer that than don't prefer that. But in addition to that just as somebody who slept around a lot, I have seen that a hundred percent new woman.

I mentioned one of the cases that I, I, I still remember very vividly is a girl, this is in, in high school, she comes to me and she goes, look, my boyfriend is being a big pussy. He was choking me and I passed out and now he's all freaked out. And I've heard you're like way hardcore and cool. So will you like, have real sex with me because I can't find like a good guys with, and I'm here like, okay.

Like even if that's hot, like, i, I know about sticking it in crazy, right? Like, and this is clearly a red flag warning right here. You know, he, he endangered, he was a little worried about endangering my life. And I know that you're not the type of guy who worries about that. And I'm like, Hmm, you know, you're probably right, but that should be a wake up call for me.

But, but what I mean is this, this is actually what happens, like this is coming from the women, not from the men. The, the, the number of guys I know, and this is actually in the, in the Discord thread as well, where they're like, look, I actively as a guy find this a turnoff. I've had to do this with multiple women just to get them to not break up with me choking.

Well, I bet

Speaker: you're glad I'm not into that. That would be stressful.

Speaker 4: You haven't been dis into it. Like it's, it's one of those like, oh, you have to do it every time and then it becomes a risk.

Speaker: I'm into, I'm into broad dominance, but I don't need choking. Yeah. I think some people are very specifically into like that lightheaded feeling you get.

Speaker 4: No, the the, and this is, this is what people get wrong. People who aren't into this, they'll come into it and say, oh, they're into like auto asphyxiation and the lightheaded feeling and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, you have not been with many people who are into this. What they are into is knowing their partner could kill them.

That's what the. Point of it is,

Speaker: I don't know. I think that's, that's sometimes it, I think there's, there's a bunch of things going on.

Speaker 4: It is the vast majority of the time it, Simone I, I know you haven't slept with a lot of people who are into this. You don't understand the context of the way that they want this.

Oh, it is not to be choked out. Okay. If it is to be choked out, it is only insofar as knowing that the partner might actually attempt to kill them. Wow. That is why they like getting to that stage. It is not the lightheadedness they want to feel like they are with somebody who is that level of aggressive.

Okay. That level of back,

Speaker: because a lot of people, like a lot of the auto fixation deaths that take place are people doing men who do

Speaker 4: not women. Not women going to look that up. Actually look at the statistics. Okay. You can look at the statistics while we're talking here, but auto asphyxiation deaths are almost exclusively male.

And this is a very different phenomenon than women liking to be choked.

Speaker 3: Okay. I.

Speaker 4: A couple of years later at an orgy, we decided to so, so this, this one is crazy. I thought I met my crush Ella at an orgy in France. Years later, I invited her to my wedding dinner, and at the dinner my girlfriend announced, Hey Ella, did you know Fred had a crush on you?

She was like, no. Is this true? I admitted it was a couple years later at an orgy, we decided to start writing together. When I wrote the opening of what would become our first co-authored novel in a fountain pin on her back. Remember you didn't realize it was on her back. We've now published five novels together with a six coming out in two months, and two more do next year.

I wonder if anyone reads these. Yeah, that's

Speaker: what I'm very curious about. Like, are these successful novels or are they just like, yeah,

Speaker 4: you know, Google Docs. Okay, so what you find with ai, am I right?

Speaker: You were more right than I ever could have imagined. Male to female ratio of over 50 to one has been reported in some analyses, meaning males account for approximately 98 to 99% of cases while females make up only one to 2%.

Speaker 4: Women do not like being choked for the lightheaded reason. It is for the same reason they want a vampire to bite their neck in a vampire book. It is for the same reason they want to date a werewolf and a werewolf book. It is because they want to know that the person they are with, they could kill

Speaker: them, but

Speaker 4: they don't No could and might kill them.

Oh gosh. You are thinking about twilight here and not Anne Rice, which is the OG vampire writer, and you're forgetting that in Twilight, while Edward didn't want to potentially kill her, the other hot vampire who was into her dead.

Speaker: There was another hot vampire that was into her.

Speaker 4: Yeah. He's from one I thought

Speaker: Edward didn't like, he was like, no, stay away from me, because he, he wanted to kill her.

And that that was the hot thing.

Speaker 4: Well, and that, and again, this is part of the thing Yeah. Women, she was like this yummy that we like to pretend that they don't, but like you watch the books that they're reading, you look at what they're asking guys to do, even guys who are like clearly uncomfortable about this.

And that's why for this girl who reached out to me, you know, when I was younger and she was like, oh, when my, when I passed out, my boyfriend got worried. That's why that ruined the entire fantasy for her's. Why she never wanted to sleep with her boyfriend again after that.

Speaker: Oh, because, because yeah. She knew that he would never actually, yes, he didn't.

And, and the plausible deniability was what was hot for her. Exactly. Oh, dear me. Okay. All right.

Speaker 4: Simone, female psychology here. You are, you are missing the girls who are into this and trying to. E even you, who is into, you know, fairly, you know, more extreme things than I think other people have this fantasy that people aren't as debauched as they are and they are de botched.

Speaker 6: Okay. For

Speaker 4: years I maintained a signal group called Redacted where people, I would, and for people who are wondering, oh, why would women be into this? Again, we've pointed out like, this is very obvious evolutionary reasons. If you look at the amount that town tour rated historically, women, especially women who are already having a lot of sex.

And you can look at our thesis of where I think that women who don't have any sexual partners tend more towards tender sexuality, or at least not the extremes of BDS sexuality or like, you know, the more extreme forms of dominance and submission and, and violence. I, I think a lot of this is due to polyamory signaling to a woman that she is in an environment where she's being passed around or an a slave, which is what it would've meant in a historic context.

Hmm. And a lot of women were in that scenario in a historic context. It wasn't like a rare thing, meaning it would

Speaker: be evolutionarily adaptive to, to be more into that. Yes. In many

Speaker 4: evolutionary environments throughout human history, the majority of women having kids were essentially slaves. So the idea.

That, you know, you, you wouldn't have some adaptability by knowing not to fight back in aggressive situations. And aggressive situations are within, you don't wanna fight back the most because that's when they're most likely to kill you. Mm. So that is why in those situations specifically, you would want some sort of counter signal.

Speaker: Again,

Speaker 4: I'm not saying this is a good thing, I'm just explaining why humans are built in. It's a survival thing.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 4: Weird way. For years I maintained a signal group called Redacted, where people I was sleeping with would talk about topics related to dating me and occasionally AI safety.

Speaker: Okay. Let's

Speaker 4: just talk about Xin AI safety. And then I have a shared Google Photos album where my Metamore and I share saucy pics of our mutual partner it's called, but obviously everything it's, I think

Speaker 7: that's

Speaker 4: cute.

If she goes on to say, obviously everything is not perfect. We're human, and sometimes there's conflicts. A friend of mine's Metamours, a partner's partner, two girlfriends and boyfriend are metamours with each other. Recently got uncomfortable with my friend's relationship and it caused painful issues.

I've had partners break up with me because they found someone else and wanted to be monogamous with them and they picked her over me. One couple I know opened their relationship and there was some rocky months where one of them found a partner faster than the other. Jealousy and insecurity are real, but they don't usually manifest in the way you'd think.

Almost none of the list of anecdotes about jealousy. As far as I know. Usually it pops up in different ways. Like my partner just recently let me know he'd be spending time with other girls during a time. I'd be visiting him on a trip. I haven't gotten to spend much time with him as recently as I wanted, and the skints of scarcity part sparked jealousy in me.

That's a real jerk thing. If she's flying out to see this person, why is he sleeping with other individuals?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 4: I expressed this by sending him a lot of Soviet era propaganda posters that I customized with relevant texts with like me and her, and the guy is stabbing the other girl. And it's like, it's such a cute wave

Speaker 7: of reacting, of

Speaker 4: being like, you're being a jerk, but he is being a

Speaker 7: jerk.

Speaker 4: Yeah. This isn't like a polyamory thing. This is a, this person's being a jerk. She's like, I don't actually hate the other girl stealing him away. I was trying to convince my partner to not see them, but I'd learned that suppressing jealousy when I feel it in order to seem cool, is a terrible unsustainable, no good move.

So, and this is a

Speaker: really important point of one of the reasons why her community works so well as they're extremely emotionally self-aware, they're very transparent, and if you're not able or willing to buy into that, then you shouldn't play the game.

Speaker 4: Right. But the type of people, like when I read this list and we go through all of this, and the reason I went through all of this is the type of guy who thinks, you know, I'd really love to be able to regularly sleep with people who are not my partner.

Mm-hmm. I actually think a lot of guys fit that category. The type of girl who may occasionally think that, I don't think a lot of girls do, but I think a good 20% too. The number of guys or girls who after hearing this list of anecdotes as what successful polyamory looks like

Speaker 6: mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: And who are like, oh wow, that sounds like a good life.

I think that's 1.5%.

Speaker: Yeah. I guess because the, the unsaid part is that most men would love to sleep with additional women, but women who are only sleeping with them. Yes. That's the key problem. Right. And then the additional ancillary problems are like the sharing, the transparency, the social pressure. The risk of being expunged from the community if you're not seen as being a sufficiently generous lover, et cetera.

Correct.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And I find this really interesting. I find the amount of time spent on all this very interesting as, as, as you pointed out this is a community that is just lower productivity than other communities we know despite being same intellectual horsepower. It's also, I've noticed poly groups are way more susceptible to viral memes than non poly groups.

Well, what do you mean?

Speaker: Like ai doism, like

Speaker 4: ai doism poly groups. Well, that makes sense because incredibly susceptible.

Speaker: It becomes this social echo chamber where suddenly, if everyone within the community believes it, then. You know, it's very hard to avoid, you know, like, and you don't have that If you were susceptible to like, if like everyone around you is saying one thing, it gets to you.

And if you lived in that community and you were also intimate with people in that community, it would be really hard to not Well, and you don't have that

Speaker 4: sanity partner, right? Like the thing. Yeah. There's no san of each or our other friends who are in like, you know, monogamous marriages is AI doism goes around, they go to a party where they hear people worried about it, they think about it and they're like, this seems really stupid.

And then they turn to their partner and they go, is this really stupid? Like, here are my thoughts. And their partner without worry about what other people in the community are gonna say about them is able to give an honest judgment. Ala doesn't have anyone she can go to with that,

Speaker 3: for

Speaker 4: example. The other people in these poly QEs don't have anyone they can go to and be like, I.

Is vector a cult? Is, is AI doism stupid? Is is, you know, shrimp welfare, idiotic you know, is negative utilitarianism, like a poorly thought through idea. They don't, because if these things have become status symbols within the community you know, they put themselves at risk by pointing out how dumb they are.

And I, I can say for example, if I was. Part of this wider molecule network that ALA's a part of, and I you know, took a stance of, you know, intellectual integrity and said AI doism is just a poorly thought through position. The other, I, I would lose sexual access. I'd lose a lot of sexual access.

Speaker 5: Mm. Even

Speaker 4: if I tried to do it in private, even if I tried to be like, because people would notice, oh, the people his metamours seem, you know, not as, as seem immune to the mimetic virus. Well, we, you know, we need to worry about this. You know, this is a really bad thing. So yeah,

Speaker: that's a good point. Yeah.

Yeah. You have to be more socially agreeable and that could get you Yeah. A little bit echo chambered. Didn't think about that part.

Speaker 4: Yeah. So there's, there's downsides that I think she's also not seeing. But to me the biggest downside is just the number of people who think this is going to be appealing to them because, oh, they're the hot person who wants to sleep with me, and they say, all I have to do is be polyamorous to enter.

This is, and I'm talking men here, women get involved for different reasons. They think, oh, this is what you do. This is normal. Versus the people who want this in-state is very small. Very, very few people want this in-state.

Speaker: Well, so I actually think that there is going to be growing relevance for these types of communities in a post scarcity age.

Like let's say UBI becomes pervasive, especially to the extent that people are very comfortable and they just really don't need to work and they're not working. I could see this becoming super common because you, you need to fill that void with something. And you can fill it with the drama and the new relationship energy and the negotiating new relationships and the, I'm bored.

Let me try out a new kink. Like I think for a, a leisured class, whether it's the cur of Louis the 14th, or whether it's post scarcity AI communities, this could fill a really big void. Will these people inherit the future? No, because I don't think they're gonna be creating sustainable families that have descendants and that then yeah, therefore inherit the future.

So I think it's gonna be a very short lived kind of format, though. You see it in Star Trek. I mean like there's a lot of sleeping around in Stark. Well, I think

Speaker 4: a lot of kids who grow up as you did, you know, you sort of grew up. In this kind of warrior that polyamory was normal. Yeah. Among, like, that's how your parents met.

They didn't call it polyamory back then, as you always point out, but No, it was, my dad always points out, what,

Speaker: what does he call it? Free love. It was free

Speaker 4: love. The point being is that you didn't want that for yourself even when you started. No, but I didn't want any sex for myself. Right. But I have seen very, very few people who have grown up in communities where polyamory was normalized, that want polyamory in their own lives.

Polyamory is something I see almost exclusively and disproportionately in communities where they felt like extreme monogamy was enforced. Consider, you think it's more

Speaker: reactionary than anything up in an

Speaker 4: extremist Christian environment? You know, where she was raised that like her

Speaker: job would be a housewife raising kids at home, never having a job.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Our, our descendants of like Orthodox Jewish families they're typically first generation breakaways. It is not multi-generation exposure to this stuff. That's

Speaker: true. Do we know any second generation poly people?

Speaker 4: What,

Speaker: who, well, you don't have to.

Speaker 4: No, we wouldn't call him out. Remember that guy who grew up in a cult?

In his

Speaker: No, no, no. Because his father was polygamous

Speaker 4: and then kicked all the young boys out of the cult. Yeah.

Speaker: So that's not polyamorous. Yeah, that is not because he was actually sharing women with other men. So no, that doesn't count. That doesn't

Speaker 4: count. Yeah. Okay. I've never seen it once. And, and this to me says something about the intergenerational durability of this.

Speaker: In fact, he was actually, we will say he was reactionary to a very rigid sexual dynamic he grew up with.

Speaker 4: Yeah. No,

Speaker: that's still

Speaker 4: come on. Which is to say that we I mean this is, this is fascinating to me that I can't think of one. And it's been around for a while now. You know, it's been around since the seventies.

It's been around so much that you grew up around Yeah. Since like

Speaker: Yeah. My, my parents came out of one and yet no, like, I mean none of their kids. And actually the

Speaker 4: first 18 years of your a kids' life is a sales pitch to replicate the culture that they grew up with. Yeah. And this is just not a replicable culture,

Speaker: despite the fact that I never thought anything negatively about it.

Speaker 4: Yeah. No, no, no. This is how polyamory works. Polyamory only works if you think the idea that you can sleep with multiple people is novel and worth, you know, like it's worth exploring for its novelty. If you are given this idea without stigma attached to it, and you're like, okay, here are two lifestyles.

You can sleep around a ton or you can be monogamous. Which lifestyle do you prefer given the ups and downs of both? Most humans choose the monogamous lifestyle.

Speaker: Well, I feel like if, if I if I was living in a post scarcity society where, you know, I, I had never met someone like you and I did enjoy physical contact, this would be very entertaining, like drama, not really, because knowing

Speaker 4: I know you as well as I know myself.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 4: And. Well, you know, this might be something where like if we have a, you know, somebody who we're really close to or whatever, you know, there, there, there could be exceptions to something like this, the vast majority of the time I would always prefer to use ai like the vast, vast majority of the time.

Yeah. 'cause then also

Speaker: you're not gonna hurt a real person if somehow things go wrong. It's like, it's like,

Speaker 4: as they say in the lower deck, star Trek where, I can't remember, it's whatever. It's like that's the holodeck, you know, that's only meant for, for training exercises and weird sex stuff for the commanders.

Like, and it's like that's what the point of the holodeck is, is weird sex stuff. But the the point being is that as AI gets better at simulating things I think polyamory is going to appear. More and more weird and and like a pointless waste of time. Hmm. No, but I think, I

Speaker: think the people who get involved in this community too, I think are uniquely physically responsive, which you and I again, aren't like people touch us and we're like, how can I get the scenario to end?

Speaker 4: I will be able to masturbate those instincts in the future. Come on Simon. We're talking about the next generation

Speaker: haptic suits. Bring it on

Speaker 4: haptic suits. Yeah. I don't wanna

Speaker: wear, I don't wanna wear a haptic. I don't want any, like if I could un untouch unfeel,

Speaker 4: I'm just saying if that's what they want. Yeah.

There will be better alternatives than having to date stinky humans. I don't know. I think for a lot of them it's also the smell.

Speaker: But sure. AI

Speaker 7: won't be able to simulate smells. I know, I

Speaker: know. I know. I know. I know. I know. Fine, fine. Fine, fine, fine. I don't know, maybe, maybe. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know. We'll see

Speaker 4: in a world where they can get all of this from an automated environment does, and I think that's a really interesting question for the next generation of polyamory. Does polyamory make sense at all?

Speaker: Well, I mean, I feel like a lot of this, and what is being discussed in this too, is she's not talking specifically about instances of like this particular time when we had sex, it was so amazing.

What she's actually talking about is all the culture, the ancillaries, it's the culture, it's the group chat. It's the shared experiences with a partner and getting to gossip about that partner and getting to share new people with that partner and getting to recommend people to that partner. And I think that's almost like when I'm taking away, what I'm seeing is the feature of all this.

A lot of it's that. Feeling of meaning and community and connection. And again, that's one of the things that's really lacking from modern society's

Speaker 4: thing like this is, this is like, I, I guess, yeah, because you and I have such a, a lack of a desire for that. And I don't mean a lack of a desire. I have an aversion to that stuff.

Speaker 7: Yeah, it's, yeah, lack of desire is not a sufficient, that's

Speaker 4: not the right word. I, I find this stuff really horrifying. No, I'm always horrified by my friends who have like drama and stuff like that. I try so hard to stay outta drama. And our friend, we ever,

Speaker: our drama's only ever been like logistical,

Speaker 7: like,

Speaker: you know, so and so died.

Were they, were they murdered?

Speaker 4: Yeah. But we also don't really share our drama with others either. No, no, no. And I really struggle with some of our friend network who has more drama and most of them are polyamorous. Because I just, it, it's not like I struggle with dealing with it. I struggle with worrying about their sadness and Oh, yeah,

Speaker 3: yeah, yeah, yeah,

Speaker: yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4: Where I'm like, this is unfair to you. I don't like seeing you

Speaker: hurt. Yeah.

Speaker 4: Yeah. I wish you could just be with a trad partner. You know who, but

Speaker: I think it's unfair too, because trad partners have a lot of, I mean, just go to dead bedrooms on Reddit. You know, like a lot of people struggle with their relationships.

They're unhappy, they are unfulfilled. Like to, just to dunk on the, the downsides for people who are polyamorous is totally unfair. When, I mean, we would argue. That most people are in super suboptimal relationships where they like barely talk to each other. They have separate lives. They don't spend a lot of quality together.

I don's true of our generation.

Speaker 4: I think our generation is actually fairly good, like of our friend network. Once everyone I know who's married is in a really healthy relationship, I, I think that this is a Boomer thing. It's a boomer and urban monoculture thing,

Speaker: I guess, you know. But anyway,

Speaker 4: great chatting with you about this.

This episode's gone way too long.

Speaker: Sorry. Gossip. Right. But ALA's amazing. I think ALA's lifestyle is perfect for her. And I think this lifestyle for all the people that she's mentioned that at least I, I think I know, like it's perfect for them too. They, they do it well, they wear it well. And so like, let, let, I think in many

Speaker 4: instances they'd be better off going to live on a farm and I

Speaker: don't know.

I don't know. I mean, I, I would love for some of them because they're such brilliant minds to be more productive. That's my one gripe is that I, I wish they produced more. Work and had more of an impact on the world and had a farther reach because they are, a lot of these

Speaker 4: people have a very far reach the most,

Speaker: I guess you'd like some of the AI doomers to have less of a far reach.

So you should just be Encourag. I'm poll are stuck in these poll, have more sex, you guys,

Speaker 4: we do that. I think it's part of why AI dors ever get anything done is because

Speaker: they're too busy and they're poly relationships.

Speaker 4: Yeah. We, we, we did a application for funding from a EA grant and we were like, we actually need to work on the AI safety stuff because the AI doomers get effing nothing done.

And it's not that there's no threat from ai, it's just that these people are stuck at orgies 24 7.

Speaker: No, you didn't say that on the application.

Speaker 4: Well, you know, that's what I secretly believe. He always

Speaker: good have said that. I guess.

Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe if you actually thought AI were gonna kill us, you wouldn't spend a third of your time dealing with orgy logistics planning.

Anyway, love you to death, Simone. Have a good day. Good day, sir. Do you wanna do another one or do you want to go down and do dinner?

Speaker: Gosh, it's 4 0 3 already. Some people in the comments, Malcolm pointed out that the, the book I'm reading now, all systems read by Martha Wells, looks like it has a, like an Apple TV show coming out called Murderbot. So I'm excited, I'm, well, I guess we don't have Apple tv, so nevermind. I'm not excited, but that's fun.

Speaker 2: So that show that you liked, it's got a, a app? No, the book

Speaker: I'm enjoying looks like there's gonna be

Speaker 2: about Murder or already

Speaker: is the TV series called Murder Bot

Speaker 4: Very on the Money. Who doesn't love naming? I mean, a lot of people are gonna want to see a murder bot and they're gonna see a, what is it like a sweet show about a robot that like shows?

Speaker: I don't know. I don't know if it's gonna be adorable. Like in the book. I don't know if he's gonna be socially awkward and autistic. So I guess we'll see, but I'm excited for it.

Speaker 2: I am excited to get a chance to talk to you. It's the perfect time of day, the time of day that everybody waits for.

Speaker: I'm, I love, I I love our conversation so freaking much.

They're just the best. They, they might, they're my happy time, even if we don't run them, but now we can just run the stuff that's too spicy on Patreon, so we don't have to worry so much. I'm, I'm glad. Well, I mean, the,

Speaker 4: the, the channel's been doing really well. The, the episode today was seven out of 10, but it was still above the normal normative range of views.

Speaker: That's awesome.

Speaker 4: So even one that's doing lower in our recent episodes is doing unusually well. I mean, I think it's because we've done a number of Good Beatty episodes in a row, to be honest, I, I don't know if it's anything other than that. You know, but

Speaker: Yeah. Oh, hold on. Just sorry. One moment while I get India in a position where I think she's more likely to fall asleep 'cause she, it is her nap time.

She just go,

Speaker 3: sorry girl,

Speaker: Okay. All right. Okay. Ha, I think I, I, I've been looking forward to discussing this all day. Like, as soon as I saw the email in my inbox, I was excited about it. So let's go.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 4: Oh things to talk about, by the way, just so we remember. Yeah. And we'll do this with the next episode. I wanna talk to you about the categories we're thinking of using for the game system. Woo. Okay.

Speaker 8: beautiful. And it inside. Oh, it's beautiful. On the inside. Okay. So it says, happy Father's Day. And it's beautiful here too.

Speaker 9: Yeah. It says. Uh, dictated. I just want to give you a big hug. I made this drawing for you. Love Torson. You want a big hug? Yeah.

Speaker 10: Aw, what a Father's day hug. You're cute. Now here's Titans. Okay, let's do Titans. Hey, no Torsten. Come on. Hey, there's some more. Come on. There is more. We've got one for Indian, one for mommy.

Join us in this comprehensive YouTube video as we delve deeply into the Star Trek universe to reveal the dystopian underbelly of the United Federation of Planets. Exploring key examples from the series, we present evidence suggesting that the Federation is not the utopian society it claims to be but rather a militaristic, nepotistic, and dictatorial regime. Contrasting it with the supposedly fascist but more ethical world of Starship Troopers, we uncover how the Star Trek universe may echo the darker aspirations of a progressive utopia. From power dynamics and replicator scarcity to AI extermination and systemic sexism, this analysis will change how you view Star Trek forever.

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be doing an analysis of the Star Trek universe and we will be exploring, because this is something I long thought when I watched Star Trek stuff historically, and I've watched a lot of it. I had this feeling in the background, which is like.

This seems very dystopian and dark to me. Mm-hmm, but because I could never watch it all or search it all without ai, I thought maybe there's some counter examples against this. Yeah. I decided to dig very deep today.

And I am going to be bringing receipts that the federation in the Star Trek universe is a militarist fascist. Mostly dictatorship with a, a, they have an elected government, but it has virtually no real power. It, it's used, they have about the, the elected government in the Star Trek world has about as much power as the queen has in Britain.

Wow. Worse. It is a world where they, while they call it post scarcity, there actually is not a single instance in all of Star Trek cannon of a character that is not associated with the the Federation military saying that the Federation is a post scarcity society. Oh. So if you're in the military, it feels post scarcity?

Well, not, not, it feels you. Even it's a military dictatorship. It's like in North Korea where you ask somebody in the military has North Korea prosperous society and somebody in the military is gonna be like, north Korea's the most prosperous society. Everyone has three meals a day and they're happy as a clam.

Oh, dear. But, and, and we will go over that this military is not a meritocracy. It's incredibly nepotistic. We will go over instances that show that the military within the Star Trek universe is more nepotistic. Then literally any military on Earth today, except for some like African dictatorships.

Like the degree, just, just to give you an example of what I mean here we have an instance of a mother assigning a daughter to directly under her command on her ship. We are going. Be a decent number of Nepo babies in Star Trek. I thought it was just a button. Yeah. You have a Wesley K Crusher who is allowed on the command deck despite having no formal training.

But we love him, but we love him. He then rushed through Starlet Academy when we know a Frengi wasn't even allowed to apply. Oh. That without a separate So, so it, it's a, it's a systematically racist system as well.

In the latest season of Lower Deck, there was a really chilling episode, , in which a species had just been given replicators by the Federation and they were celebrating what they called post scarcity day, where they were. And I kid you not. Having all of their gold and jewels taken by the federation because they wouldn't quote unquote, need them anymore.

And the federation used all of that stuff to all their currency as well, despite the fact that the federation does use currency. , And so then the federation takes all this planet's gold and jewels and gives them to another species to a problem that they are having with them.

And you can say, well, the federation's original plan was to melt it down or destroy it. And I'm like, if that was the case, then why? Why was the planet forced to give all of this to the federation? Why not put it in a museum or something? Why did the federation take all of the planet's valuables? There is no explainable reason unless they were trying to prevent the planet from being able to trade with other species.

Now that the planet was dependent on them for the means of production.

And. What is really like ghoulish about this is we see this planet celebrating, like they're gonna have free access to the replicators that were given to them.

And yet we know the federation maintains strict control of the replicators. So clearly the federation has misled them

what this scene has strong vibes of is the ashen from SG one, which is this species that comes in, offers earth and other planets the opportunity to have longer lives, to stay young, longer to not get sick. But what they really do at the same time is sterilize them. So that they can replace them and use their planets any way they see fit, which is what the Federation is doing here, by giving them replicators and getting rid of every other way that they can produce things.

But by maintaining control of what can be produced and how much of it can be produced on the replicators, they have completely seized the means of production was in this planet.

And I would remind you, it is not the Federation civilian government that sees the means of production on the planet. It is their military star fleet because it is Star Fleet that controls who can use replicators for what and when. Apparently they just didn't tell anyone on this planet that.

SG1 Achen: do not underestimate what we offer we can put an end to disease, double the human lifespan. Provide the means to cross entire continents in a single step.

We offer Earth membership within the Aschen Confederation.

Now if I'm right, these are newspapers.

SG1: By the way, Bo,

would you read this aloud for me? I couldn't quite translate it. Of course, sterility.

We knew what you were planning while, and this just confirms it. Vaccine causes sterility. That was the headline. You wiped out most of the vum population and turned their entire world into farmland and do the same to earth.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. And we'll be contrasting it to the Regi who are not racist in this way. And they'll be like, well, the Regi are sexist.

And I'll be like, actually, we'll be challenging that as well. If you actually dig in to what is Canon within the world. The Federation is incredibly sexist. You have multiple instances of commanders forcing themselves on subordinates and facing no repercussions, forcing women within their crew to dress in scamy outfits.

And women disproportionately only really serving traditionally feminine roles, except in a few instances where they're commanders and they mostly f stuff up. Oh, and then as a cherry on the cake to all of this, and keep in mind all of this is happening with a genetic underclass. Mm-hmm. The federation has a genetic underclass where some people are born essentially illegal citizens.

Wait how, who. Anyone who has had any genetic alteration done to themselves or their ancestors

Sorry. This may not be obvious to people, but if you give somebody genetic modifications within one, , generation, those modifications will be inherited by their descendants. So it doesn't just make an underclass of the individual, but anyone who is born to that family.

Which means that the only real solution to these individuals from the federation's perspective is to forcibly sterilize them.

I'd also note here, and I think it's very telling that in very progressive coded shows like Star Trek genetic enhancement and trying to make humans better is seen very negatively. The obsession with genetic purity is really exclusive to progressive movements, , Whereas in conservative coded futures like say War Hammer 40 K, , it's seen very positively, which I think shows where these two sites actually sit on this.

Progressives worship, humanity's weakness and stagnation, whereas most conservative groups want humanity to continue to improve.

And the federation has been shown to actively treat these people as second class citizens and constantly be hunting for them. So they have strict controls of how you can have kids who can have kids.

You can't

Simone Collins: genetically modify yourself in this dark trick federation.

Malcolm Collins: Extremely. And they, and they hunt down people who are what, even if it's not their choice and their parents did it, no, it's dystopian. But, but the worst part about all of this is we're also gonna get into how this structure is controlled, specifically the military regulates replicators.

And people can say, well, they need to replicate replicators because of the power use of replicators. But we will be showing actually the power use of replicators is largely minimum. So it appears that they are regulating access to replicators purely as a means of creating artificial scarcity to maintain economic control over the masses.

I should note this isn't just speculation, it's basically confirmed in universe. You can see this within cork's bar where he has replicators, but he still has to regularly import ingredients. The reason why he would need to import ingredients, which would almost certainly cost more energy to import ingredients to a deep space station, then using a local replicator, , which is just a simplified transporter, transporting something in its memory buff.

. The only reason you would have that if, if access to the replicators was restricted to create artificial scarcity. There is no way the energy economy needs of transporting food to a Deep Space Station are less than just using a replicator.

And I note here if you are a fan and are going to say, well, some people say that replicated food doesn't taste as good as real food in universe. Yes. Some people say that in the same way. Some people in our universe. Say that they don't like, , AI art as much as non-AI art, but when they don't know there's AI art, they like it more.

Given that we know how replicators work, that they are just simplified transporters. , No one in universe if they really, genuinely believe that the food that came out of a replicator. Tasted nothing like real food would ever, ever use a transporter, and yet we see the very people who make these claims using transporters regularly because it would mean that whatever was coming out of the transporter wasn't the same as the thing that went into it.

And, and keep in mind it's not even like they treat the people well. We know from lower decks that while replicators can for a trivial difference in terms of energy costs replicate real food lower status military members are forced to eat nutrition cubes and they do not gain access to real food until they work their way up within the military hierarchy.

Simone Collins: That makes sense because even people at higher ranks talk about using their replicator credits for the week.

Yeah. So not a

Malcolm Collins: post scarcity society and a military dictatorship and very evil, especially when contrasted with like the Regi and will also contrast 'em with the government in Starship Troopers, which is just endlessly more ethical, more gender egalitarian, more everything.

Yeah. So let's get started here. When I talk about the military as basically a, a interplanetary dictatorship, it's important to understand what the military controls in the Star Trek universe because when you begin to think about it, you're like, it is weird how rare it is to see anybody who's not in the military was in Star Trek.

And that is because within the federation space, the military controls all exploration. So basically they control what everyone knows exists and doesn't exist, right? They control pretty much all negotiations. So, so in a, in a country like ours, that would be controlled by the poli political class, you wouldn't send military commanders to handle the negotiation during a war.

Not true. In the Star Trek universe, they handle all interspecies negotiation, treaties, everything like that. That's

Simone Collins: a good point. Yeah, they,

Malcolm Collins: they handle all scientific research. It has shown that there are non-military scientific researchers, but they basically contribute nothing. We are aware of almost no major discoveries by them.

And when they do have major discoveries, they are often confiscated. Take data, for example who is now basically owned by the military and they even thought about dissecting him to mass replicate him. They are in charge of first contact, a very weird thing to put the military in charge of.

But yes, they are in charge of colonization which they do very aggressively. It's a very expansionist empire. And they are in charge law enforcement. And on top of all that, we will later explore that they are also above civilian law and, and and legal system. Whenever it is shown that the military, even within a civilian context.

Like Kirk we'll go into it, but it was on a dock, so it was not in a military context. Ends up doing something that is illegal and he's tried by a military and not a civilian court. Wow. That when you're looking for dictatorships is a very big sign that you're looking at a dictatorship.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So going into that they also control the most prestigious academic institution in Federation, space Star, star Phil eight Academy.

And it is an institution that has been shown to be extremely nepotistic for the children of people within the military. While go into instances of this and also incredibly discriminatory to anyone without military connections we will go into this as well. So it, it, it gives you sort of your status within society.

But you know, you don't get this if, if you're not doing the right. You're, you're not saying the right chits and you're not born into the right family. In terms of economic control of the military, keep in mind that they control all trade within federation space, all planet to planet trade. That is an amazing amount for a military to control as well as replicators, which is also really important because that is key to the way that trade works within this, yeah universe.

They also control most labs, star bases, medical innovations, planetary logistics, et cetera. And civilian operations rarely operate independently on star strip unless they are traders, criminals, or fringe settlers. The civil government is incredibly weak. The federation president is rarely mentioned and has almost no real authority in most episodes.

Civilian institutions like the Federation Council are rarely shown making important decisions. Key constitutional decisions are done by military tribunals. We see this in the drumhead and measure of a man. Then you have section 31 and people will be like, well, section 31 is framed as bad guys. If you're not familiar with them, they are a shadowy, extra judicial starlee intelligence group.

They have no democratic oversight and they operate with impunity in, in federation space. And they try to advance the federation interest. They have tried to commit genocide before. They haven't done murders without trial before, et cetera. And you can be like, well, they're not officially condoned.

And I'm like, actually, the official stance of the star fleet is section 31 doesn't exist now, given the copious evidence, they do exist. To say they don't exist means we are covering for them and condone their continued existence. So they have a, a basically off the books group that can go around murder people and advance their interests even to the point of committing genocide.

Simone Collins: Wait,

Malcolm Collins: continuing. Wait, what? What show? Wait, what show features this? Why? They're, they're in a few different shows. I, I, I, I don't remember all of them, but yeah. Oh my gosh. I

Simone Collins: know. There's so much. That's the problem is there's just a lot of material here. I can see why. Yeah. It's, it's, there's so much plausible deniability that like, oh, no, no, no.

That, that must be ethical because, you know, it must be a utopia. I'm just missing something. Yeah. I actually was under the impression that there wasn't a separate government from the federation. I thought the federation was just the entire government. But you're saying there's actually, there is a

Malcolm Collins: separate like puppet government basically that has no real power.

Okay. Which, which by the way, like strongly contrast with something like Starship Troopers. Yeah. Where the military and the government are one. And you vote for who runs the military Exactly. By Marshal. Yes. Which makes a lot more sense. Yeah. And it breaks a lot of the nepotism things. There's, there's not as much nepotism shown.

There's not much, but, we'll, we'll get into all that later. Now you can be like, oh, well, civilian autonomy still exists. You have individuals like Joseph, Cisco. The, the problem with Joseph Cisco is he is related to a high level military commander. And we know that he operates a restaurant that uses real food, which suggests he doesn't have access to replicator technology.

Oh. Or real food is a status symbol, but likely replicator technology. We'll get to why in a second. And we know that his access to military command is when he needed a, a heart operation. I believe it was. He used the military.

Yeah. He received heart treatment for heart problems from star fleet doctors. Hmm. Which implies that even as somebody who owned a restaurant and was of middle class, he would not have been able to afford this procedure without military connections. Which again implies you do not have a lot of autonomy outside of this.

And we repeatedly see when individuals outside the military are shown, and the way I've always interpreted the Star Trek shows is that is military propaganda within universe. Because like when you see people outside of the military, you see like Picard's brother or something. Right. But I mean, let's even take the case of Picard to get an understanding of what we mean by an intergenerational aristocratic class.

So Earths is a post scarcity world. Right. But Picard owns a very large vineyard and not just a very large vineyard, but it's a very large vineyard that is a. Family vineyard. So you don't just have wealth, you have intergenerational wealth.

Simone Collins: Right. This is, I guess, proof that this is not a communist society, right?

I mean, is there land ownership if you've Yes. Well, I mean, we know

Malcolm Collins: there's land ownership because Picard owns a vineyard unless it was allotted to him by the military, which we know it wasn't because it was inherited by his family. It's said to be a family vineyard. We know that there is an aristocratic, wealthy land owning cast that owns large tracks of land and also ends up with high level positions within the military at disproportionate rights.

Right. Like there, there's no other reason that he should have this military position. And this is something we'll see over and over again as we go into the data. Mm-hmm. By the way, if you're wondering what a system like this is called Sheldon Wallen would've called it inverted totalitarianism or a statewide, where you have statewide democratic trappings exist, but the real power structure is opaque, unelected, and centralized here.

Star Trek. Oh,

Simone Collins: so, 'cause I was thinking this must just be a military dictatorship, but it's basically that, but everyone pretends it's not right. That's in other words. Well, they're

Malcolm Collins: forced to pretend it's not how much this disseminates outside the military is unknown, but we'll also go into instances in which people criticize the military and are harshly punished.

Okay. So it

Simone Collins: could be that people don't even realize it.

Malcolm Collins: No, my read, as I've said, if it was that people didn't realize it in universe, we would have civilians saying, I live in a post-care city world and I love it.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. We

Malcolm Collins: don't have any civilians saying that in the entire star. This is a giant cannon in the entire Star Trek cannon.

So do we encounter many civilians? Yes, you do sometimes encounter civilians, earth civilians. But you, you wouldn't expect to, like I mentioned with Cisco and stuff like that, you wouldn't expect to be seeing many civilians if it was military propaganda. Yeah. And if the military, from the perspective of the military, only their lives existed mm-hmm.

Only their lives mattered. And I really like it as like telling on progressives. Remember, I, I go into Starship Troopers is telling on progressives where they think this is an attack on conservatives, but it actually shows a utopia. Mm-hmm. And, you know, gender egalitarian, no racism, everyone gets along, actual responsibility, not a lot of nepotism.

Whereas if you look at their quote unquote utopia, which is. Star Trek, which is what it's supposed to be, the progressive utopia often. Right. Totally framed that way. You see what they really want, which is a world where they have total military control and no one else's life matters. That's really what it's yeah.

They call the

Simone Collins: shots on everything. Yeah. And,

Malcolm Collins: and no one else is allowed to say anything, whether you're a great scientist or anything like that. It is just the military. They have control of who breeds how they breed, et cetera. Let's go into that right now. The eugenics war in the aftermath.

Simone Collins: Yeah. This I didn't pick up on at all.

That's crazy.

Malcolm Collins: So, augments like Khan Noonan's Singh led to a devastating war on Earth in the 20th to the 21st century. The federation response was a total ban on genetic engineering of humans outside of medical necessity. Now, I point out here that I don't actually like. To me, it is unclear whether this war was justified because we have mostly the federation's recounts of this war to go on.

Simone Collins: Sure.

Malcolm Collins: But for whatever reason, the first gene altered humans were basically crazy. In mega Lamont maniacal. There is no reason a gene altered human would be that way if you understand gene altering, because the things you would be altering, like IQ typically correlate really strongly with prosociality.

Mm-hmm. Like, lower IQ is associated with higher degrees of rape. It's dis it's associated with higher degrees. Yeah. So

Simone Collins: what we would expect is lower crime, lower violence, higher achievement, more helping people.

Malcolm Collins: So we know this is the way science actually works. So we're looking at a world where the first gene alter humans were basically crazy megalomaniacal individuals who almost took over earth.

I read false flag operation because there's no reason that should have been the case.

Simone Collins: That's fair.

Malcolm Collins: If, if you understand science, it's almost as if they were trying to paint anyone who is Gene altered as subhuman. So, wait, Khan is one of these people?

Simone Collins: Yes. Oh, I guess I never contextualized it that way.

Oh, and so the federation, so Word team Kahan.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, well, not really, because I think Kahn was a false flag operation of somebody who was basically Gene altered to be crazy. Mm-hmm. And then when you look at how crazy he's, he never could have gained the power that he gained. Mm-hmm. So, and then put in a position of power so that the federation could crack down on this technology.

Okay.

The federation response was a total ban on genetic engineering of humans out. And. What you see the result of this in, in deep space nine. Dr. Julian Bashir had to hide his childhood gene modifications to avoid expulsion from Starfleet Keep. He would've been treated as an underclass, not even allowed in Star Fleet.

What

Simone Collins: do you know? Do we know as, as viewers what the modifications were for? Yes.

Malcolm Collins: And First Green. Julia Bahar showed great difficulty learning and below average height and weight for his age.

So I note here , the fact that he was dealt a bad hand of the dice by genetics and was slow and small for his age is, is a systemic form of unfairness, was in the Star Trek universe that the Federation works to maintain, to maintain their existing power structure.

They are maintaining systemic genetic inequality when they have the technology to address it.

shortly before his seventh birthday, his parents, Richard and Amachi Bahar had him subjugated to genetic engineering.

The procedure made him mentally superior to most humans and greatly enhanced his physical abilities. And we can also see from him that he is not evil. Mm-hmm. He is not. There's no reason that this is bad tech. You, you see? Okay. Maybe it made con evil back in the day. This guy's just like a generic, decent guy.

Right. So why is the technology still banned if it was able to help somebody like this?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: However, because if human genetic engineering had been declared illegal in the United Federations of Planets, except in cases concerning deaths and burst defects, so I'll note here, which is really interesting, is this shows the technology when not implemented under this false flag ideology, even in universe, doesn't make people crazy.

Mm-hmm. But Shear and his parents, yeah, they do it.

Simone Collins: They just. Really, really, really heavily regulated. In other words,

Malcolm Collins: well, what, what I'm saying is they do it when they're saying if somebody's going to die, otherwise they will do it. Mm-hmm. But they do not allow it generically. Mm-hmm. But Bashar and his parents had to keep this procedure secret throughout most of his adult life.

At the age of 15, he learned of what had been done and began using his first name, Julian Reasoning that the modifications had erased his original self from existence. What a crazy thing to believe.

Sorry. I say this is a crazy thing to believe, , because if you're not familiar with genetics, the way your genes express themselves change as you age and throughout your life, , it appears that the genetic modifications he had done were fairly modest. , It to the extent that other people couldn't tell that they had been done to him if they knew him before.

, So to that he had this level of. Internalized racism against genetically modified individuals, , that he saw himself as. Basically not the same human, , shows the degree to which people who live under the federation's tyranny are brainwashed into the dehumanization of people with genetic modifications.

To save beshear from losing starlee commission and medical license, Richard agrees to plead guilty to illegal genetic engineering and serve two years in prison.

So his parents underwent two years in prison for this. And he was essentially being hunted. And he would've been kicked out of school if they had found out something that he had no choice in. This is a, a, a world with a genetic underclass, which is shocking to me, and a genetic underclass with no logic behind it.

Simone Collins: That is crazy. Wow. Okay, let's, did they, I mean, sometimes they highlight these things to show that they're bad, right? I mean, was this presented in a critical light or was it presented in a light of, and this is why genetic engineering is evil.

Malcolm Collins: No, the in Star Trek genetic engineering is always only framed as evil because people who are genetically engineered go crazy even though we know this isn't the case.

Well, but he was,

Simone Collins: I mean, clearly this doctor was framed in a sympathetic light given everything he to go through. Right? The

Malcolm Collins: point is, is that is the reason for the laws, that is the universe is in universe justification. That is Gene Roddenberry's explanation. He invented the character of Khan. This is not like a later edition or something like that.

This is like OG material to the series. This isn't later they effed up the federation and made them super racist. This is core to who the federation is in the earliest renditions of this and, and the justification is all gene modified humans are evil, even though we know that's not the case in universe.

Wow.

Basically the reason why gene modified humans aren't allowed in is because Star fleet is racist against gene modified humans. Like they believe that they are an intrinsically negative and bad thing, and you could say, well, maybe gene modified humans have some advantage, and this could create some unfairness.

But the problem , is data is allowed in and he has unparalleled memory strength and more betazoids are allowed in and they can read minds. Troy is an empath giving her an advantage over other counselors. So it's not an issue that some people are born with abilities that other people don't have. , The issue is just racism.

Alright, to continue Star Fleet as gatekeeper to ambition and purpose, civilian scientists are marginalized. Almost all major scientific breakthroughs are shown as happening through Star Fleet jurisdictions, civilians, or non star fleet experts are often portrayed as either rogue or restless scientists in Galaxy's child or the Pegasus or hopelessly out classify star fleet solutions.

Then you have the relic Hunter arc from lower decks which is an independent archeologist. Petra Arbe arc reveals that federation civilians who pursued independent careers and exploration and artifact discovery operate under heavy scrutiny. So they're basically under constant military surveillance.

And they're portrayed as and thought of within the military as suspicious and possibly criminal. Specifically, you cannot easily rise in status outside of the military in this world. It, it does not even appear that you can earn wealth outside of the military in this world, which heavily contrasts with star strip troopers.

We know that Ricoh's parents are non-citizens. IE they never served in the military and they are extremely wealthy.

Just to be clear, so I'm not misunderstood here. I'm not saying there are not many counter examples to this. I am saying there is literally none in all of Star Trek canon. There isn't a single example that shows that you, while living under Federation authority, can earn wealth and power outside of the military.

, If you want to see people who almost show this, you can look at like Joseph Cisco, but his son is a respected captain in the military, which could. Under a military dictatorship, get him lots of, , abilities to skirt the rules. You have vash but vash is a criminal and made wealth as a criminal. You have loi Troy, , but she's diplomatic aristocracy.

She's beta oid royalty, not terran. ,

even when you see, , scientists and engineers, non-military civilians like Leah Brams or Richard Day Storm are influential, but only through their service to star, freely related science.

So this is unique to this world is that there is likely, because it doesn't make sense how many Star fleet commanders are also wealthy. Look at Picard. Yeah. Unless they have some control of the economic system and they're using it to their advantage.

Mm-hmm. Or there's some sort of aristocratic class that keeps getting these roles.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: Let's go to nepotism Now. I already talked about Mariner and Freeman in lower decks where commander Freeman's own daughter in Instant Mariner was assigned to her ship, which you couldn't do in almost any military on Earth today.

Even most like Banana Republic militaries wouldn't allow you to do that. This is pretty much exclusively something you would only see in a military dictatorship. And then you have Wesley K Crusher in TNG. He was the son of Dr. Beverly Crusher. He was allowed on the bridge of a federation ship without training.

To be clear here, Picard is sleeping with Dr. Beverly Crusher. This kid's mom, who also is his subordinate by the way, just throwing that out there. , so in the Star Trek world, how do you ensure a good life for your kid? Well, you gotta sleep with your captain.

And he was later fast tracked at the Starlet Academy where he is treated like a progeny because of picard's patronage and mother's position. However we see Nog a redi is not allowed unless he is vouched for by a federation member, despite how he does on tests or anything like that. Whereas elite families get fast tracked due to this hereditary privilege we see.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to turn you down. Turn me down. Why did I do something wrong? It's not anything you did n you're just not Academy material. You couldn't handle the workload or the discipline. That's not true. I'm a hard worker. I proved that to you. It doesn't matter. I don't have time for this Nog. Now, whatever little scheme you had, you can forget it. I'm not giving you that letter. It's not a joke or a scheme. I want to join Star Fleet. I want it more than anything I've ever wanted in my life. You are a faren.

Malcolm Collins: You also see the military acting quite evilly. So, let's talk about the Kardashian piece. So in the F Federation, Kardashian Treaty signed and TNG journeys end and expanded in DS nine. They created a demilitarized zone to secure peace. The federation seeded inhabited federation colonies to the Kardashian control colonists.

Humans and federation citizens were told to either relocate or live under Kardashian rule. Many refused to leave their home and became stateless people with no protection from their government. These were called the. McKees. The Kardashians routinely harassed and abuse these colonists, resource denial arrests, and even killings.

The federation did nothing to help the colonists adapt or leave.

And I wanna be clear here, , it is not shown anywhere in Canon that the federation made an effort to attempt to resettle these colonists, , or move them to other planets. I mean, so much for post scarcity federation world in a post scarcity world. That should have been a trivial thing to do. And yet they just left these colonists to, , you know, the killing raids, et cetera.

In response, the civilians formed the marquees a military to defend themselves. And then what did the federation do? They called this group not in federation territory, mind you, terrorists, and they attempted to hunt and imprison or kill them.

So they

Simone Collins: abandoned and then

Malcolm Collins: punished the people for attempting to protect themselves from the new government

Simone Collins: after, but after abandoning them, without helping them out.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly.

Simone Collins: Ooh, surely this was framed in a light of The federation is in the wrong here. No,

Malcolm Collins: no, no. It's even worse than that. We can go into one of the, the people who this happened to, but one of them is later a recurring character on a show.

And he was in this particular revolution. Oh. And like one

Simone Collins: of these citizens who'd been left behind, and

Malcolm Collins: he is constantly harassed for this. He is denied promotion for this. He is treated, is treated as very much like you are an underclass because you went against the federation. Even if you went against the federation in a potentially just way in self defense.

Yeah, we hunt and we kill you. No disagreement. Even if you're not in federation territory, even if you're just trying to defend yourself.

Quote from Show: The only reason I've contacted you is to ask you to leave us alone. Our quarrel is with the Kardashians, not the federation. Open your eyes, captain. Why is the federation so obsessed with the McKee? We've never harmed you, and yet we're constantly arrested and charged with terrorism. Starships chase us through the Badlands and our supporters are harassed and ridiculed.

Why? Because we've left the federation. And that's the one thing you can't accept.

Malcolm Collins: And keep in mind that this is in spite of the fact that the federation has section 31 that they deny exists,

Sorry, I should clarify through denying that a group that very, very, very obviously exists, does not exist. They show that they are covering for this group and their complicity in the group's actions.

so they allow potential genocide and extrajudicial kidds if it.

Helps them. But when there's a group that is diplomatically inconvenient for them they attempt to eradicate them in genocide. So again, like I'm not like pulling at straws here. This is like core Star Trek lore, right? So, I'm never gonna be able to

Simone Collins: watch Star Trek the same way again.

Malcolm Collins: Wondering what, what section 38 has attempted to do.

They attempted to genocide the founders, the Dominion leaders, using a tailor-made virus. They attempted to manipulate clinging on politics to preserve federation hegemony. And they conducted convert surveillance of Starlee personnel without any form of oversight. Now civilians are in, in the federation as we see repeatedly generally second class participants in society.

If we look at the roles that they serve, they often either serve star fleet directly, so they're not really civilians. This is like, Kiko O'Brien, who's a school teacher. They're family members of Star Fleet personnel like Jake, Cisco and, and Cassidy Eight. Or they run bars or shops. This is Cork and Garrick, and they are constantly under federation surveillance.

They're constantly being shown as a federation coming through doing very aggressive checks, everything like that. Wow. So they, they, it's not like you have like ENT entrepreneurial autonomy within the federation. If you look at, for example, cork he runs the most successful business on the DS nine colony.

And he's constantly lectured, regulated, or threatened by star Fleet for one running hollow suites, which they basically imply a sex tourism. That's one. Trading in gray and black markets, which, which is messed up 'cause they have hollow suites on federation vessels and we know that from episodes that they use them for romance type stuff too.

Totally. Like there are episodes about that. And I think it's also confirmed in lower decks where they're like,

Then give her worse jobs. I've got her emptying outta the holodeck filter. Ugh. People really use it for that. Oh yeah. It's mostly that.

Oh.

Computer load. Mariner program. All new Olympic training facility. You might wanna back up a bit. Wow. This is a really detailed program.

Malcolm Collins: And despite being a essential gestation morale, cork is seen as morally suspect.

Not because he is evil, but because he is not aligned with his star fleet's perception. In an attempt to impose a perception that they are a post economic society basically, even though people are buying from Cork because apparently they don't have another way to get this stuff. Like if they could just get what he's selling from Replicators, given that we know that he makes some of it from Replicators, they would be doing that.

So why is replicator access so restricted?

Simone Collins: That's a fair point. More on

Malcolm Collins: that soon. Well,

Simone Collins: because I, I saw one other YouTuber posit that there must be some universal UBI kind of based on energy use that can be applied to replicators.

Malcolm Collins: But, but we can see that. Okay. So I'll, I'll just get into this right now.

Okay. So we know how replicators work. Mm-hmm. They are considered a simpler form of teleportation. They, they use apparently the same technology. We can from various episodes begin to sort of calculate the energy needs of teleportation and replicators. We see rep teleportation is used. Without regulation almost constantly.

Right. But presumably it's far more expensive to use than replicators. But more than that, we see warp travel being used very regularly. And we know that warp travel is astronomically more expensive than replicators. Sure. So replicators, which are essentially a trivial expense, are highly regulated in their usage and regulated in ways that shouldn't really matter.

Like a nutrition cube shouldn't cost a lot less to replicate than a equally nutritionally dense chicken or something, given that replicators are basically just teleporters. So the question is, is why are they, why are some people given artificially bad food within Starfleet?

Simone Collins: Ooh, that's creepy. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: This is fascinating. But yeah, so I'm freaking out here to Earth is infiltrated by shape. Shifting Dominion. Founders, capable of impersonating anyone and a change link bomb destroys a federation facility causing mass panic. I.

Admiral Layton, a high ranking star, fleet officer, believes the civilian government is too weak to respond. So what does he do? He stages in a military coup. He falsifies evidence of mass changing infiltration. He deploys Star Fleet Security across Earth as martial law and he attempts to take over star fleet command and remove the president of the Federation.

He's only stopped by Captain Cisco who uncovered the conspiracy. But what this reveals very interestingly is the federation government is incredibly fragile. They basically have no power to resist this. And the only group that does have power to resist this is an individual within, in Starlee itself to maintain the rad of a civilian government.

Mm-hmm. That star fleet's upper command, and many of them were willing to overthrow democracy in the name of quote unquote security with apparently little pushback. That ordinary citizens are thought of and treated like sheep by the higher people within Star Fleet that a single military officer's belief that democracy is insufficient, was enough to cause the system to, topple. And the, these are all things that with are within the DNA of Star fleet. To go further, you have TNG, the Drumhead. This is season four, episode 21. A Cling on Exchange Officer is suspected of sabotage aboard Enterprise Admiral Norris Sarcy is a retired but a legendary Star Fleet investigator.

So she is a Star Fleet investigator that has been investigating for Star Fleet so long that she has retired. So, let's see what tactics she, a well liked and known Star Fleet investigator ends up using. She quickly escalates the inquiry into a broad inquisition of traitors and synthesizers. She uses hearsay ancestry and ideology as evidence.

She targets crew members simply for having a rolin grandfather. She questions Captain Picard's loyalty due to past Borg assimilation and his defensive individual rights. Her witch hunts only stop when Picard turns her tactics against her. But what's important here is she is arresting people because of their ancestry.

Okay? Mm-hmm. This is. Considered normal by somebody who was well liked by the Federation enough that she retired as a famous investigator. Wow. And these are the tactics that she used. No one had ever put in a complaint on her record. No one had ever said, oh, you shouldn't be doing this. Which shows that Picard is unique in pushing back against this type of stuff, and this sort of dictatorship style system is normal.

And this sort of McCarthy court tribunals aren't normal within the Federation.

And I actually think this is one of the most damning episodes of the entire, , federation in that you can't be like, oh, it's one of the shows that sometimes tried to show the federation a bad light, like DS nine or, . , Lower decks, , this is like core TNG, right? Like this is Picard, right? And what we see in no uncertain terms is that Picard's ship for all its problems for him hooking up with his subordinates and the extreme nepotism he shows and being this rich guy who has , a vineyard and all the privileges he gives himself through his military status.

The. He is the best of the best within Starfleet of this era, and that if this happened on any other ship, this would've been rewarded because we know that she rose in status because she had been doing this over and over and over again. And so what we learn is that this woman's tactics are the norm.

Throughout all of Star Fleet with Picard ship, the ship that we are seeing, being the very best behaved ship, likely speaking, despite all of its problems, which I think shows the true dystopia of the Star Trek Federation,

Simone Collins: Well, though this, this at least shows me that the writers are trying to frame these things as bad because in so many of the Star Trek series, the captains struggle with. The conflict between following Federation rules, right.

They frame it as bad

Malcolm Collins: in a lot of ways without making her a retired professional investigator for Star Fleet. It's not

Simone Collins: like she, yeah. But one of the big tensions of Star Trek, I mean, starting with the original series, was, you know, captain Kirk constantly breaking the rules. And going against the federation's wishes.

Malcolm Collins: So I, I understand, but the point here being is the federation itself is not, when Kirk goes against it, it's like her, to her, I'm against the bureaucracy. It's not like this is a racist military dictatorship when that's the reality. And, and within Kirk's time, a sexist one as well, which we'll talk more about in a second.

Now, earlier I mentioned that members of the military dictatorship. IE of the military cast are outside of civilian law. So let's dig into this more deeply. Court Marshal, TOS, season one, episode 20. Kirk is tried for negligence after a Truman's apparent death. This trial is a Starfleet tribunal and not a civilian court.

Even though the alleged crime occurred while at a star base, a federation facility, there is no indication that the civilian courts have justification over star fleet officers. That's a huge red flag. Hmm. Then you have the menagerie TOS season one episodes 11 to 12. Spock commits an act of mutiny by taking over the enterprise to help his former captain.

Again, he's tried exclusively by a star Fleet tribunal with no civilian oversight. Star fleet officers are only ever tried by military courts, even for crimes that might normally fall under civilian jurisdiction. Eg. Manslaughter of mutiny star fleet, not civilian institution is the final arbitrary of justice for members of starlee.

No, I want to contrast them. Anything you wanna say before I go further?

Simone Collins: I just want to hear more. This is so changing the way I look at Star Trek.

Malcolm Collins: So let's contrast Star Fleet was the rege, right? Who are often portrayed as the capitalist bad guys, which again, I think is, the star sh like communists telling on themselves of how evil their utopia is and, and, and how they are unable to portray even their worst enemies.

It's really that bad. So the stated ethos very similar to modern progressives of Starfleet is for the betterment of all, and for the Fenian Alliance, it's profit, it's everything. But if you look at the actual ethos of Star Fleet, it's service to a military hierarchy. And if you look at the actual ethos of the Fari, it's free market and contract law.

If you look at the primary drivers of, of your role within society, it is only self-actualization with via star fleet. Within Star Fleet, you do not appear to have status outside of a military command ion,

Simone Collins: right?

Malcolm Collins: And then wealth accumulation via trade. What's, what's interesting here is the like negatives.

That happened within society. So let's look at like nepotism. Mm-hmm. Do elite inherit privilege in the federation? Yes. We see Wesley Mariner and Jake Picard's aristocracy. And for any society, no children must earn profits to gain status. Can low status citizens rise? Theoretically within star freely, but it appears to be heavily gate kept within Farge society, yes, anyone can become rich if they follow the rule of acquisition, familial favoritism ubiquitous and unacknowledged.

But within Farge it's explicitly discouraged. Even Cork and rom fight for status and competition. And these are two brothers, right? So you do have a degree of like caring about your family, but they fight amongst themselves to earn status within the society. And what's interesting is for any society punishes failure and rewards competence regardless of background, whereas the federation pretends its meritocratic while advancing the children of officers and diplomats through unspoken patronage.

Now, let's see the consequences of this. Let's see, major wars. Okay, Federation, you've got the Earth Rolin War, you've got the Klingon War, you've got the Kardashian Dominion War or the Kardashian and Dominion War. And then you've got the Borg. The Farini have no major wars that we're aware of, huh? Attempted genocides.

Yes. The Federation. You have section 31 against the founders. Farini, no genocides. And also by the way, if you are under the misunderstanding that Farini are slavers, they are not, there is no confirmation in anything in Star Fleet that Fary have ever owned slaves. And I was asking in ai, but like, would they, given what we know about them and they're like, probably not, they would see it as economically inefficient.

Um mm-hmm. Which is actually true of slavery. If you look at Earth's military history, right, economic history, they, it hugely hurt the South's economy long term.

Quote from Show: Look, I know the Kardashians can't be trusted. I know the central command would like nothing better than to destroy the federation colonies in the demilitarized home.

Then you agree with our position? Not for a second. Why not? Because your position is illogical. Do you propose to lecture me on logic?

It all comes down to the third rule of acquisition. The third rule, clearly states never spend more for an acquisition than you have to logical,

you want to acquire peace? But. How much are you willing to pay for it? Whatever it costs. That's the kind of irresponsible spending that causes so many business ventures to fail. You're forgetting the third rule right now. Peace could be bought at a bargain price and you don't even realize it.

You forget the weapons they already have. They have weapons. You have weapons. Everyone has weapons. But right now, no one has a clear advantage. So the price of peace is at an all time low. Don't you get it? Attacking the Kardashians now will only escalate the conflict and make peace more expensive in the long run.

Malcolm Collins: That's another episode. Espionage and regime change, standard practice for the federation. We see no instances of the farge doing this military expansion.

The federation does this all the time. Expansion backed by armed vessels. In the farge, no, we see no colonialism or expansionism. But what's I find really fascinating is the treatment of women in Faren culture. Women have no rights. They can't work and they're not supposed to wear clothes.

So very, I forgot that right? Very chauvinistic culture. But what is interesting is that this is admitted with in Farini culture, Uhhuh, and it's something that they are working on. What is they are?

Simone Collins: I don't remember there being any effort to change

Malcolm Collins: that. Oh, there's a huge plot point in S nine. Okay. And, and the culture is undergoing massive upheaval and a lot of forgi don't like it.

And it's I, I, I love the line like.

Speaker 2: It's all Moogie's fault. He's been polluting Seth's mind with notions of equality and compassion.

You can't even dump industrial waste anymore because it might harm the natural habitat. I'm supposed to start worrying about animals now. Look how they live. Wallowing in dirt. Sleeping in trees. That's not natural.

And don't even get me started about this whole labor rights thing. What have we come to if you can't demand sexual favors from the people in your employ? I made a report that over 40 percent of the population no longer believes that you have to buy your way into the divine treasury when you die.

Malcolm Collins: you know, like delightful. That's no, but it's, it's, it's, it is a society that has problems but is working on them. What is interesting about Women in the Federation is they are a systemically discriminated underclass, but there is no feminist movement within the federation or acknowledgement of women's problems within the Federation which shows that there is no goal to fix it, unlike within farini culture.

So, the, while the Federation brags about gender equality, it mostly just uses female characters as caregivers, Dr. Crusher Ko victims Tori's constant assaults or sidelined to Hasha Ya and sro or Kira's late stage arc. Was Taha

Simone Collins: Yaar the badass bodyguard who died? I

Malcolm Collins: don't remember. Law and Justice because she

Simone Collins: was.

She was really badass. She could. In what series? Kick and punch. The blonde woman with the short hair. Who does die? Yeah. Tasha Ya. No, she's badass.

That's why I was thinking like, maybe this isn't true. 'cause I was thinking at first of the empath who I grew up with, like that was, what was it? The next generation who like was way too like, like, oh, I'm here to talk about how people are feeling. This is

Malcolm Collins: this. Pointing out that in her late stage arc, she was sidelined.

Simone Collins: Right, but, oh, well, and I guess Lieutenant Ya just killed. She just killed off. I don't know if that's more about the society or if it's about the writers though.

Malcolm Collins: Well, Simone, the writers create the society like in the same way that the writers didn't mean for the world of star strip troopers to actually be a techno utopia.

They created it by accident. The writers of Star Trek didn't mean to create a sexist, racist, dystopian, but that is what they created. If you actually read the works and we, with the wound walking around of the little mini skirts implications of them, yes. It's like, oh, we created a gender egalitarian utopia.

But then all the women are in like caregiver roles or unimportant and it's like, wait, wait, wait, wait a second. Why? Why are there so few women commanders? Why are there so few? Like if this is actually gender egalitarian in the way you say it is. Why is it structured this way? And the only explanation is, is that everyone's being forced to lie based on some sort of like military dictatorship and not talk about it.

Hmm. To talk about what I mean here, look at the sexualized uniforms, particularly in TOS, in TNG, female officers that were forced to wear miniskirts, sometimes paired with high heels. And they're often referred to by their appearance and not their rank. So while males, it'll say by rank or whatever, they'll be like you is the long hair or whatever.

In TNG, season one, some female crew members are seen as in scant uniforms short dresses with bare legs, while men never are even in series. Like Voyager seven of nine is forced to wear a skin tight catsuit with visible scenes, but it looks so good outlining her breasts and genitals. So like, but this isn't Starly, but again, this is like what we're seeing with in the show.

That's true. Which shows the sexism of the writers. This demonstrates and market

Simone Collins: dynamics be market dynamics, you know, I mean, it's a, it's a TV show, but

Malcolm Collins: it, it, it demonstrates an underlying cultural expectation that women in Starfleet present as physically appealing. Well, you can say that, but like, we know from Conan that like physically appealing men are also sell well, but Starlee doesn't have those, so That's true.

You can't, you can't say that dynamics. And then let's talk about power dynamics and harassment by commanding officers. Mm-hmm. In TNG, the naked now data and Shar ya have sex While under the influence of mind altering substance, a clear violation of consent norms brushed off without consequence. Kirk routinely engages in flirtation seduction with female officers, subordinates and alien women never facing disciplinary action.

In fact, that's never even brought up. Despite being grossly illegal. Was in what, what about his second in command? If the guy with the

Simone Collins: like. Goatee in the dark hair. He's the one who slept around more. He was the mans Slott

Malcolm Collins: of, so you're thinking Riker, er, Riker was shown, is hitting on women across ranks and alien species while technically being in command over them.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. He has, would like really abused

Malcolm Collins: his,

Simone Collins: he would

Malcolm Collins: be in jail in the US military Riker. He really, he would be canceled so hard so hard, well, not canceled. What they're doing is illegal. They are forcing their subordinates to deal with their very aggressive sexual advances. Like this is not okay.

Broadly speaking, this is a military dictatorship. Even within current earth structures of government, like you would not be allowed to again, act this way in most developing countries. Militaries

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Speaking of the type of unprofessionalism we would only expect from a military oligarchy. Can we talk for a second about how most of the ships in the federation have fully stocked bars within them? These are military ships that is not normal. That is the type of thing you would only expect from the type of military where the, I guess the military also runs the government and where the commanders are just like, well, I just need to go to a bar during the day, during a a work day, which they do regularly.

Malcolm Collins: Many women in the federation. Okay. We already talked about this. Not having like real roles like there, doctors Crusher, PCard Norris.

I mean, Dr. Crusher was women caregivers or emotional supports like Tori Kesser, Ezra. Combat engineering and command are far more frequently occupied by men. And what, that's true.

Simone Collins: That is true. I mean, like, I, I, I keep trying to defend with just Dr. Crusher and Tahi Ya, but at the same time when I think about Star, she's a.

Starship Troopers and like the women and like there, there's just no distinction. It's just wherever your merit goes, that's where you're gonna be.

you specifically requested transfer from Fort Cronkite to this training unit, sir. I heard it was the best, sir. It is the best, but what makes you think you're good enough?

Well, that's the kind of gal who makes squad leader.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Women are in the military at the same rate as men. Women shower with men, women have, there's no distinction between them in Starship Troopers.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And what's interesting as well is while there is an instance where somebody uses his like dates as subordinate he explicitly walks around it. So if you remember the, the female character who was dating Rico at the beginning and then ins up dating the guy in the Star Fleet their version of Star Fleet.

Mm-hmm. The, the fleet it's called when he's training her, he flirts with her. Mm-hmm. And he mentions like, you know, flirting with a senior commander, like that's a. Something you're gonna need to get approval for. So it's applied that like you're allowed to do it, but it's something that is to some degree monitored.

And, and that he sees is like, it's clear that he's a little uncomfortable with it at first. So it is allowed, but it has to happen through sanction roles. This is not true within Starly, but what is more important than all of this is despite the sexism that is at the heart of Star Trek's world, there is no feminist movement shown in Federation Society.

There doesn't even seem to be tolerance for a feminist movement. The, the, there is no structural reforms. There is no acknowledgement of power imbalance or ever an acknowledgement of sexual misconduct, as far as I'm aware. And, and there are no cultural institutions to address this. It doesn't even appear to be somebody you can bring to, Hey Rikers been really flirty with that subordinate that does not appear.

Okay. Now contrast, this was the Faren who while they have open sexism, there is a clear feminist resistance and they show legal and cultural structural change over time. But now I wanna talk about the replicator thing because this really got me.

Simone Collins: Okay. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So Star Fleet gets guaranteed access to replicators quarters medical care, travel, and holodeck.

Mm-hmm. If you're a senior person, yeah. A replicator use is frequently described as being rationed or restricted on ships and colonies. So this. Some form of internal currency or point system exists not public for using the replicators. Access is centralized and controlled, not truly post scarcity, and civilians likely do not have replicator access.

Mm. Canon examples DS nine. During the Dominion War, replicator use is rationed. Voyager energy for replicators is limited and prioritized by command. Lower decks suggests that even junior officers and star fleet have less access to perks than command level officers. Federation credits a shadow economy.

Canon references to federation credits include buying passage encounter at FairPoint, gambling the royale and dealings with outside cultures. Cork accepts them, yet they are never shown in use by ordinary federation civilians on earth. This suggests like civilians never talk about earning credits.

Only surf flight personnel get to use them, which suggests some sort of like. Separate economy that is unique to this military cast of individuals within Earth?

Simone Collins: Well, yeah. One, one person was positing that federation credits must be used for like really big purchases like ship ship building has been described in federation credits terms and then with trade with other species, but not something used internally within the federation.

But people were instead given ration like energy associated rations that were most likely seem to be associated with replicator reuse. But you're finding no evidence that civilians have access? No, I, I'm

Malcolm Collins: seeing instead, some individuals appear to have federation credits to their name, which implies that federation credits are, are something that federation officers grift.

Now, if it's not something that you're supposed to have as an individual, somehow they end up gaining access to them, which again implies a, a corrupted system.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that's a little suspicious.

Malcolm Collins: And it's also interesting that they wouldn't use Gold Press Platinum. By the way, if you're wondering why Latin is often used in the Starship Star Trek universe it is because it cannot be made by replicators, which again implies that replicators are not that hard to use if it completely destabilizes the economy of all other things.

Simone Collins: Sure.

Malcolm Collins: So, Federation seems to run on a dual economy resource allocation internally rations, replicator access credits for external use in limited perks. This resembles a command economy layered on top of a military benefit structure, not a free market or UBI model. As some people attempt to argue they have.

Another really interesting point here before we get to the more on the, the way the replicators work. There is apparently a lack of a civilian media press or dissent. There's almost no mention of independent journalism or critical public media. Jake Cisco tries to become a war reporter and is pressured to self-centered by the federation military.

The Federation has no visible elections, civil forums, or debates about policy in most series. Yikes Voyager, no oversight of Jane Wade's command. Despite life or death stakes for an entire mixed crew. Colonization equals federation. Expansionism. The federation claims to respect non interference prime directive, but it settles new worlds with abandon, brings in new species and absorbs them into its economic and legal framework and refuses to let members leave without major political crises.

Details, eg. Details towards negotiations and the marquis territories. Oh, I mean, so it's like we very urban monoculture. It tries to bring people in. But you can't leave and you need to follow their cultural norms once you're in

Simone Collins: diversity victims, like you say. Yeah. Wow. Wow.

Malcolm Collins: Now an interesting thing is as well, is this isn't even a particularly like.

Beneficial, what I'm saying, benevolent system to live in. So you can look at regional Barclay, who's in TNG and Voyager. He's a non neural typical officer. He what does that mean? Mean he's he's autistic. Yeah. He's coded as neurodivergent. So social anxiety, speech hesitancy, avoid coping mechanisms and excessive behavior.

Holodeck addiction how he's treated. He called holodeck addiction. So he's named Broccolini by Riker and laforge condoning it. And note here that Riker is the one who constantly sexually harasses people and yet has a position of power. Yeah. He is competence is doubted. Despite clear technical genius, he saves the ship multiple times.

He is pre pressured to normalize his behavior to fit in with the crew. He's constantly under informal surveillance by his peers and superiors. When he's later involved with the Pathfinder Project in Voyager, his mental health struggles are used as a reason to distrust him even when he's right. No, no.

Let's talk about how racist the system is. So we'll talk about nod from DS nine, who is a Regi. He is not allowed to apply to the Star Fleet Academy, which remember is a, a key access point to this military command structure, right? Which I think shows not a meritocracy at all. Yeah. He must be sponsored by a star Fleet command officer.

Cisco. Cisco initially refuses assuming no is making a joke. He must go through multiple tests of character to be proven it's worthy. Once he admitted he's treated with suspicion by some and must overperform to I respect, he faces severe trauma in the siege of AR 5 58 and loses a leg, which becomes a major character arc improving his loyalty.

The problem is, is that we know that you have like Wellesley Crusher who just gets in based on nothing and gets fast tracked because he, because he's a

Simone Collins: whiz kid. Malcolm, give him a break.

Malcolm Collins: Because parents are in the federation. But, but you, you, you know, you constantly see this. Now if we're gonna contrast this with the star Tre troopers

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: In the Star Trek Federation voting rights universal, but the civic institutions seem to have no power limited to veterans. And this is important, by the way. Active member military members cannot vote in Starship Troopers. You have to, Oh. Yeah. You

Simone Collins: have to finish your military service to get the right to vote and to have

Malcolm Collins: kids.

Yeah. And this is also never said was in the show, but being a civilian and getting the right to vote does not actually mean joining the military. If you're a pacifist, you can do it as well. If you're severely injured or severely like retarded, you can still do it. About Rico's

Simone Collins: parents were really against his military service, like the kind of main protagonist, and yet, and, and he was kind of rich and could have been a private citizen, nepo baby in that world.

However, does that mean his par, one of his parents had to have served or both to have been able to have him as a kid?

Malcolm Collins: No, you do not need, it's actually said very explicitly within the show, you do not need military service to have a license to have a kid. It makes it easier to do the application.

Simone Collins: Mm. Like you said, you, you're more likely or you don't, you, you bypass a lottery perhaps.

Malcolm Collins: No. It's likely that you otherwise need to prove competence or utility, which is why Ricoh's parents were able to have kids because they're reaching successful. Oh, okay. IE it's a sane society sorry, I don't wanna be overly right. Well, yeah, I mean they're,

Simone Collins: they're producing not net drains on social services, but rather children who are likely to be high taxpayers and Ricoh being an nebo baby, private citizen would've been a high taxpayer.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Military control, defacto control by Star Fleet. The military does not have direct control over civilians in Starship Troopers, and actually civilians are critical of the military and media. You do see media propaganda was in it, but you see a lot of ci ci citizens who are critical of the military in the Starship Troopers universe, which suggests a critical independent media.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You do not have in the star tre troopers universe political participation you mean, which

Simone Collins: you do not have in the Star Trek universe.

Malcolm Collins: Star Trek universe almost zero political participation. Whereas in Star Trek Troopers, you have a clear civil contract. Service equals voice. And remember, service does not have to be military service.

That is implied in the movie, but it's never said in the movie. So I'm gonna default to book rules. Mm-hmm. Which is if, if you, if you are pacifist or you have some major injury or you have some major retardation, they give you like civil work. So no you don't have to be in the military. It just means you have to make sense.

Well,

Simone Collins: and also coming from a family of wealth doesn't mean that you get. Promoted to some high or kush position because Rico, again, the rich Nepo baby gets put on like the front lines of ground troops.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You don't, students clearly weren't as

Simone Collins: wealthy got

Malcolm Collins: high level the position because they're competent.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Also consider how distant and protests are treated in the two universes in Star Trek Federation. If you look at like the marquees, you are actively hunted and murdered for dissenting. The guy in the wheelchair who gets hanged. That is because he was an anti-war terrorist, which is Oh, right.

Simone Collins: No, he, yeah. Committed, he committed acts of terror, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, through protesting the war which is an act of terror, act of terror when it's a war to save our species, first of all, come on, you've gotta be, you've, you've got to have a degree of patriotism for the planet, Simone. You know,

movie quote: Bowing to a rising popularity all across the Federation, Sky Marshal Fidd declares that while religion is acceptable, peace is not.

Malcolm Collins: but even when leftists are trying to paint them as evil I looked at this guy who they hanged and I was like, thank God they hang that guy.

He seemed like a real douche canoe.

In related news, peace terrorist Elmo Gonniff and 51 of his closest friends were hung this morning

but they can't silence you! F the Federation! You will not take my voice! You will not take me! You will not take away our power!

F k you all! F k you! F k you all! F k the Federation!

Malcolm Collins: Wait, are you saying he didn't

Simone Collins: actually commit a violent act of terrorism and he really just, probably not.

Malcolm Collins: But what you see is when the, the form of terrorism that's being committed is not going to lead. Potentially to the extinction of humanity. It is allowed within the federation.

We know this because of the radical Mormon separatists who settled in bug space and ended up instigating the entire war. We know this because they were not hunted down and they were not murdered as they might have been, was in federation territory. For, for disagreeing outside of Feder, like the marquees outside of federation territory with federation command and ideals.

Mm-hmm. So, we know fair point that they, they were allowed to do that which shows that only sort of direct challenging is what's, is what's dealt with. And I'd also know that it does mention that that was the most mass executions in a day since the 21st century,

in what many believe to be the all time record for executions in a single day since the 21st century.

Malcolm Collins: which means that they were not used to executing that many people.

So, you know, it shows that they. And, and I'd also point out to you, Simone, that they were much more thorough in how they handled it. Like the federation, they go out, they attack these people who basically have no reason to be attacked. They're just trying to defend themselves. And in, in, in the Starship Troopers we learn that this terrorist you know, they dealt with his friends and family as well, which was his closest friends and family, as they say.

Which ensures that this kind of descent doesn't spread throughout the federation. So you're

Simone Collins: saying at least in, in the Starship Troopers universe, they finish what They start,

Malcolm Collins: they handle it, yeah. Citizenship and autonomy? In, in, in Star Trek is implied, but vacuous dual tier within Starship Troopers, but there doesn't appear to be that many restrictions on non-citizens past a political power, opaque, elite, nurtured star.

Fleet Academia is for Star Trek. And again, that's why the left is like it so much. It's a world that is ruled by what they see as the educated elite.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. But

Malcolm Collins: within Starship Troopers, it's a pathway that's open to all through contribution. Right. And, and, and note here, there are no cases that I'm aware of, of wealthy civilians in the Federation.

Whereas you do see this in Starship Troopers. True. And whilst outside the military is rare and aristocratic like Picard's Vineyard it's explicitly allowed within Starship Troopers which also think about female leadership. In Star Trek, it's mostly tokenized. Mm-hmm. Whereas in Starship Troopers it is competent and respected like dizzy and it aban is well and isn't.

Simone Collins: There's a female ski marshal on the second one. Right.

Malcolm Collins: Mm. To hot. She's in the first Sky. Hart Marshall to Hot Maru. The person who runs all of society is a black African woman.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Who

Malcolm Collins: won via an open election when somebody else wasn't doing a good job. We do not see Federation members replaced often when they don't do a good job.

And yet this is seen repeatedly in Starship Troopers. People who do bad jobs are fired despite what connections they have. Now let's talk about replicators in power demands. Warp drives versus replication. Warp cores generate massive power outputs capable of bending space time. Holodeck use transporter and force field to render realtime multisensory environment, transporters, disassemble, and reassemble matter at a quantum resolution.

These technologies use vastly more energy and are vastly more complex than replicators, which we know are simplified transporters. That's how the technology works. Okay. They basically have a, a template of like what you would want to transport and they just replicate that template over and over again.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: If power consumption was really the issue, we would see things like holodeck and warp travel be more limited in their use, and yet we see no rationing, which implies that the rationing is used to create fake scarcity.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: An interesting thing with replicators is corks bar and replicator tokens. So Corks bar uses replicators at his bar, but not for free. He must pay for use using tokens of some kind. And to me this implies some kind of limiting mechanism because we know that d phase nine is powered by a, I forget what it is, some kind of fusion reactor chair, but it certainly wouldn't be having issues with replicators in a bar.

Mm-hmm. So, and, and, and this is to the extent where he has to import ingredients to make his food which to me implies shenanigans, if I'm gonna be honest

Simone Collins: or at least false scarcity. Mm-hmm.

Sorry for those who fail to follow my logic here. Transporting food to a deep space station definitely costs more energy multiplicatively than using a replicator to create that food at the Space Station. Given how replicators work. What this almost certainly means is that the replicators are being regulated to create false scarcity.

Simone Collins: At the very

Malcolm Collins: least, now the final I. Big, scary thing about the universe is the total absence of AI or near total absence of ai.

Simone Collins: Well, what, what about the, the ship white computers Come on. They're constantly talking to computers.

Malcolm Collins: But they're not sentient and they're not even as capable as like GBT or something like that. Well, there's data. He's self-aware. He's, he was made independent from the federation by Dr. S. Oh. So we'll get into this.

Mm. So there is a near total absence of ai, yet they have near magical computing systems, quantum level data processing warp drives, replicators and transporters. And yet there's no evidence of star fleet ships with a GI co-pilots civilian access to general AI assistance or AI run governments, courts, or research institutes.

Keep in mind, that's one of the first things I would suggest most societies will implement with AI is AI courts. I would trust in AI to judge me in courts, peers, I'm very the monarch when they're like judged by a trial of your peers.

it's a trial by jury and it's up to your peers to decide how dare you. That repulsive display of humanity out there. No way.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no thanks. These, this, these people are not my peers. But voice interfaces like Lar cos we see they are smart but not sentient.

They no AI rights discourse outside of data and no widespread AI usage for command diplomacy or logistics. Mm. Clues as to why it may be outlawed and restricted. And keep in mind that these outlaw and restriction is kept from the average citizen because they appear to not know why when they're talking to data.

Right. Like they appear to think this is a new technology. Which is also shocking to me. Oh, this guy programmed this AI out of nowhere was no understanding of how AI works. No. It appears that he probably had a vast understanding of how AI worked and he used that to program data and his brother. But anyway,

Simone Collins: that's interesting.

Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: TNG measure of a man Starly considered deconstructing data to mass produce him. This is presented as a new dangerous frontier. The legal status of AI is undefined, and it is property by default. Dr. Song's backstory, TNG plus Picard. Nen song worked in isolation and off the grid. His work was not sanctioned by Star Fleet or the Federation.

In later episodes, Picard it is revealed that since our band after the Mars attacks solidifying the legal precedent. So we actually know from the series that synthetic humanoids were banned a long time ago in Earth's history during the Mars attacks which explains why data had to be made off the grid and why you don't see ais.

Hmm. It also explains why on early ships, like in Voyager, what they use for processing is Ural gel packs instead of electronics, because they're trying to get away from synthetic AI because it is likely illegal, but it is likely. Secret that it is illegal, and a lot of people do not know that anyone has the capability to make it.

That's my only guess. It it exists within our technological timeline is that AI was made illegal by the government in the same way that they made a genetically modified humans illegal, likely afraid of anything that could disrupt their existing power structure.

Simone Collins: Oh,

Malcolm Collins: and it's worse than that. The, the ship basically goes around and attempts to murder any smart ais they find.

So, if you look at return of Aons this is System Laundry Grown, a planet AI created by a long dead prophet. Sorry, A planetary AI created by a long dead prophet named launder room. It remains peace and order through psychological conditioning, cultural programming, and absorbing dissenters into conformity.

Society is nonviolent, serene and orderly, but stagnant and uniform. Not that different from a lot of Starfleet stuff, but okay. Periodic festivals purge chaotic behavior and allow for catharsis. What does Kirk do? He confronts launder, run. He uses logic, quote unquote logic to prove that the AI is harming his people by denying gross and freedom.

And then he overloads and destroys launder run. Murdering it. There's no systematic violence or exploitation shown. People are healthy, closed, housed, and peaceful. And they appear to be consenting to this. The system was benevolent to totalitarian, unlike Starfleet, which is just totalitarian. So I would read this as he has an order to go out and murder ais.

I mean, clearly this is against the prime directive. Why was he not punished for this? Let's go to the next one. The apple, TOS, season two, episode five. The system val, a massive subterranean computer is worshiped as a God. It maintains in dick society. People do not age or die naturally. They do not have sex for reproduction.

To keep the, I mean, obviously if no one's dying, you need to maintain population levels. That makes sense. Yeah. And they have complete social harmony and protection from harm. Val is fed by vi villagers who serve it and live in total material comfort. So what does Quirk do? He destroys Val, what?

And he leaves them suddenly mortal. So now everyone on the planet can die. Now die. What unprotected and culturally unprepared for what happens next? Was Val abusive? No. The people were happy, healthy, and never knew war, disease or death. Kirk imposes his ideology that it's wrong to prevent sexual autonomy and intellectual progress.

They're basically saying, I wanna have sex with these aliens. Oh my gosh, how dare

Simone Collins: you? So the one thing was just that they weren't banging. And so, yeah. No, I mean that classic Kirk, that, that is very, I, I couldn't bring myself to watch all of the

Malcolm Collins: originals. My actual read is, is I was trying to read between the lines, is a lot of Star Fleet has command to go out and look for intelligent ais and kill it.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: And I think, so this is the secret real reason. That they're going to plan? Well, I, I wouldn't be surprised if they do have a few secret objectives given that we know that Starfleet is basically lying to the citizenry about some stuff just from what we're going through right now, lying about their ability.

And also

Simone Collins: explain though why Kirk is able to get away with so much. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: Kirk, why did you do that? Slap on the hand, oh, you murdered their God whoopsie. Yes, they're gonna have to figure that out. But it makes a lot of sense if you view it as a military dictatorship that's attempting to avoid anything that could challenge its authority.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: So yes, very dystopian society. A very evil society and a, I like it because it portrays. Who the progressives really are at their core. They say they want gender equality. What they really want is women in miniskirts that they can sexually harass all the time. And keep in mind, there are far more sexual harassment scandals by democratic politicians and there are Republican politicians.

They are far more likely to, and, and this is because that's what they want. They want to gain power so that they can harass people. Or in Biden's case, sniff their hair.

Joke Scene: I was waiting for Joe and just staring at his desk, I decided I'd have a little look see inside the drawers. Uh oh, I think I might know where this is going.

I opened one, then another, then another. And inside every drawer, every single one, piles of human hair. For the first time in my life, I felt like I understood a president.

. As I was sorting through the hair, admiring the collection, in walked the man himself. There was no hiding what I had done, so I just put the hair back, shut the drawers, nodded my head, and said, Mr.

President? Hey, if he didn't want someone finding his hair collection, he should have locked his drawers. What? We all have a desire to be known, and he's constantly sniffing hair in public, it's not some big secret.

Malcolm Collins: It they, no, imagine if you saw Kirk sniffing people's hair the way Biden does, like subordinates or little girls. If you saw that on a show, you'd be like, oh, he's clearly the villain.

Like, why is anyone okay with this? But it's worse than that because. You also see that what they want is a world under their military control where anyone who doesn't agree with their ideology is silenced. Where there's no free press, where there isn't actual post scarcity, it's post scarcity for them at the top and nutrition cubes for their grunts.

And then for your average person, who knows how bad it is because we just don't see them at Star Trek.

Simone Collins: Well, so it kind of is a progressive utopia. It's just a conservative

Malcolm Collins: dystopia. It is a progressive utopia in, in, in what they really want instead of what they're telling you they want.

Simone Collins: Right. It

Malcolm Collins: is gay space communism.

And it shows how evil gay space communism is fundamentally. Whereas gay space fascism, which you have in Starship Troopers is a world with gender equality's world voting

Simone Collins: because they, you, there's no, there is private property. There is an underclass.

Malcolm Collins: Well, we don't know if private property functions the way it does in our world.

I mean, we know that Picard major general is able to inherit lots of land. Would the average citizen of the federation be able to, maybe not given some of the stuff we've heard. I mean, if they are saying, well, we are communist, in some ways, what they must mean is, well, top military commanders can own property.

Their family gets some special privileges. But the average citizen, I mean, it's almost implied. There must be a caste system. You know, so I don't, I don't buy that. And I, I, I, I see the movies as, and you can say, why do I see the movies and shows as designed as in world military propaganda? Because why else do we see almost no civilians?

Why are we never shown the way the average person lives?

Simone Collins: It's weird. I don't know. Growing up watching it as a kid, I was left under the impression that I. That was the only world there was, that there is no civilian life in this world. Well, because

Malcolm Collins: they don't see civilians as humans, fundamentally.

Simone Collins: Well, but I no, I just, I just assumed there weren't civilians that everyone Right.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and that's why you weren't aware of them. That's why you thought that, right. Like, but clearly there are, right. Which is just so contrasting with Starship Troopers,

Simone Collins: right? Like Yeah. Where Yeah. There's clearly a rich civilian life.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and everyone starts, doesn't necessarily love

Simone Collins: the military.

Absolutely. One of

Malcolm Collins: the things that I find so interesting about, you know, if you view it as military propaganda is you can watch shows where like Resley Crusher will like see a planet where there's like capitalism or racism and he'll be like. Oh my gosh, did we used to have this on Earth? It's so weird to think that they could still live this way and that we ever could have done this.

And here I am like, Hey buddy, why do you think this doesn't exist on earth? You are trained on federation manuals. Those are military manuals made by a group that we already know is willing to lie and murder people like y do because this is propaganda, right? Like, it's a, it is an organization that we know treats a number of humans as the genetic underclass and actively hunts them.

Like, what do you mean? Well, it's so weird that they're racist just 'cause they look a little different. Mm-hmm. It's like your government is racist and you are even aware of that particular part of their racism. You just don't contextualize those people as human. It really reminds me of the modern left where they're like, well, I.

You know, the Nazis did all these racist things where they treated some people of certain ethnic groups and sexualities as, as sort of an underclass. And, and then I'm like, well, you do the same thing. I never thought of that, but oh my gosh. But those people aren't really human. Is is basically what they think.

And I go, that's what the Nazis thought of the Jews. Like, the moment you contextualize a group is not fully human, and you have the right to do that. The moment you think you have the right to say, oh, racism only happens when this group does it to this group, and not when this group does it to this group.

Because you're like, well, power and privilege, but you are the one who justifies power and privilege. The Nazi thought, if you're using the power and privilege argument that Jews had power and privilege over them, you're aware of that, right? Like they, they didn't say, oh, the, the, the Jews are idiots or what?

No, they said this is a group with systemic power and privilege and that's why they must be put down. Which is exactly what you are doing, the exact mechanism you use to dehumanize people. And it's the mechanism that is likely used within the Starship tro Starship star Trek universe as well, and is why we need to fight for space.

Gay fascism

Simone Collins: yeah, justice fascism for the win.

Malcolm Collins: Because the, the reality is, is Space Gate fascism or Starship Troopers isn't actually fascism. It's a real democracy. Whereas Space Gate communism is actually a military dictatorship under a fascist rule.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, the key lesson is look at what is done, not what is started.

Malcolm Collins: Right, exactly. All right, love. You did ask. Hopefully I ruined Star Trek for all of you.

Simone Collins: I will never look at it the same again, but

Malcolm Collins: I'll still

Simone Collins: love it.

Malcolm Collins: Alright. Do you wanna do one of your pieces or one of mine?

Simone Collins: That's crazy. Oh. But anyway, so I was watching this YouTube video. It's this short five minute video of a woman who is married and in her forties and childless and trying to explain the reality of what it's like to be to childless as a woman in, in your forties. And she's talking about how she feels invisible and how vis-a-vis her friends who are parents.

It's always, you know, they take precedent, you know, she has to work around their schedules because they have to drop their kids off or doctor's appointment or pick them

Malcolm Collins: I was saying that they do, like, is she not, is she denying that they have more restrictions on their time than her?

Simone Collins: She's aware of

Malcolm Collins: it, but

Simone Collins: what's, what's crazier to me, and I guess this is something that's pervasive around many people who have gripes and personal gripes, is that that's not a, that's also the parents themselves being invisible.

That's the parents themselves having to put their needs after that of their children. Yeah. Like this, isn't it even like she kind of, she gives off this impression like the parents are getting all the attention. The parents are the ones who are validated when really it's the parents putting their children first because they have other lives that they're responsible for now.

Well, she wants

Malcolm Collins: the attention and she can't stand that anyone has attention other than her is what it sounds like.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I think a lot of it, it, it's, it's, it's like with the kids, it's, it's maybe she's resentful of the kids. More than the parents that the, these kids get attention. It's like your father saying like, why should I bother coming over for Christmas?

It's all about the kids anyway. And it's like, it's all about the kids. Thank you. Thank you

Malcolm Collins: for understanding that you, it is not about you old person. It is, it is not.

Simone Collins: And I think maybe that's, that's a more universal problem that childless people have. No, I think it's

Malcolm Collins: childless people of that generation that, you know.

Yeah. Because I

Simone Collins: think one, and, and she also highlights like, oh, people shame me for the free time I have that, you know, I choose to plan a cruise because I have free time. Which one? Like, we booked our entire week long cruise in like two hours and then did absolutely nothing else. There's no such, and for

Malcolm Collins: way more people than her like Yeah.

And there's no such thing as

Simone Collins: planning a cruise. Like we, we literally bought with points our cruise and fewer than two hours. And it was after like a lot of like finagling to try to figure out how to fit. Six people in a room. You

Malcolm Collins: know, these, these people very much do nothing with their lives and they expand the simplest of tasks into the longest I is well, but she hug as

Simone Collins: though she's been criticized for that.

When any of our single friends talk about their single friend activities, I respond with enthusiasm and praise. 'cause it sounds like fun stuff for the most part. Like, I don't, I don't get where these people not really judged. I mean,

Malcolm Collins: personally, you, you may do that in public, but you're like, what a waste of life, their life is.

Simone Collins: I don't know. They, they're, we have some friends who do like glamorous stuff that I love living vicariously through. And I, I think that that's great and it's great for them. But you know, like, so I'm not judging them and I never felt judged, ever, ever, ever. As someone who is very public and open about never wanting to have kids.

Never. I only felt celebrated for that. So I dunno where people are getting this. Judgment. But anyway, rant over. We can get started. I just had, I had to say because I just watched it and was like, how is this woman not aware of the profundity of her selfishness? That like other people are putting other humans ahead of themselves and she's criticizing them for, because they're not putting her first, 'cause they're not adoring her.

Malcolm Collins: All

Simone Collins: right.

Is that the coolest thing? Do you really like it? Toasty? Yeah. How do you turn the green one off you. Oh, with the magic key? Yeah. You, you put the key and turn the white then, then the green one.

You did it. Good job. Now when I do all lights back on, I am almost done. Good job. Oof. It's a lot of lights and a lot of buttons and toggles and switches.

Ah.

What the, look at that. Alright. Turn all of the lights off. Turn all of them off. Yeah, that looks pretty good. And what do you think, Titan? Are you sleepy? You're looking at me like I'm crazy.

You want some milk? Yeah. Yeah. I'll bring you some milk. No? Yeah. You sleepy? Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna bring you some milk. Dad. Mommy, I turned it off. You turned it on? I turned it. Oh, all off. And now you're saving batteries, right, buddy? Now we'll turn all of the batteries back on. Okay? I'm gonna get tightened some milk.

I love you guys.