In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive into the phenomenon of “Welfare Kings” and “Welfare Polygamists” – men who are strategically opting out of traditional breadwinner roles and instead living off government benefits, single-mother assistance programs, and sometimes multiple women.

From Muslim communities using informal polygamy to maximize state aid, to black American men openly embracing welfare as “street-level reparations,” to high-IQ rationalist couples quietly staying unmarried to claim benefits – we explore how men are exploiting the same welfare loopholes that have long been associated with women, often more effectively.

As this was a Simone-outlined episode, the notes are below; you’ll find the episode transcript after them. :)

Episode Notes

The Gist

* In a workforce that favors women, should men become housewives and welfare kings?

* I’m going to explore two examples or models of men who are opting out of traditional breadwinning roles and instead relying on income from women and the state

* Often ideologically out of spite toward women and out of disdain for the sate

* This is worth discussing for two reasons:

* Discussion about various groups exploiting state services is trending and we should spend more time about various different angles in which people do so

* We have a lot of MGTOW-style men in our audience who would find this interesting

* It’s just genuinely interesting how people inventively exploit these systems

* Don’t hate the player; hate the game

Welfare Polygamists

In various stories related to poor treatment of women by muslim communities, I’ve heard of women ending up in polygamous marriages to Islamic men who take multiple wives per Islamic law, aka “nikah”, but only legally marry one wife and who use their wives’ legal single mother status to get and often live off state assistance.

I realized this is kind of a clever hack, because if you present as a technically impoverished woman, you can get A LOT.

* Free healthcare

* Food assistance (both SNAP and WIC)

* Housing Choice Vouchers (Section 8): For very low‑income families; the voucher typically covers the difference between about 30% of household income and an approved rent, subject to local income limits and long waitlists.

* Even short-term cash:

* TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families): Time‑limited cash assistance with strict income/resource limits (for example, some states cap countable resources around $1,000), work requirements, and low monthly benefit levels.

* Some states and charities offer small, targeted cash or voucher help (utilities, emergency rent, transportation), but these are typically short‑term and much smaller than ongoing food or housing aid

If I wanted to be evil and exploitative, I could divorce Malcolm, leave him with all our liquid assets, waive alimony, and claim these benefits. It would be fraud, but would we get caught? If we weren’t public figures, probably not.

I looked into this more, and apparently it’s a particularly big issue in the UK, France, and United States. For each wife, these men are, in many cases, getting housing, food, AND child support.

Estimates in one UK report suggested tens of thousands of polygamous-style unions.

Examples that go way back:

* In the UK, for instance, a 2011 investigation by The Telegraph detailed how some Muslim men in areas like Blackburn and Dewsbury maintain multiple wives in separate homes, with each additional wife registering as a single parent to access benefits. A similar report from The Spectator described a taxi driver with five wives from different countries, all claiming state support, estimating up to 20,000 such polygamous unions in the country based on social worker accounts

* In France, a high-profile 2010 case involved a Muslim butcher with four companions charged with welfare fraud after a traffic stop escalated into polygamy allegations, sparking national debate on immigration and benefits. F

* A 2015 PolitiFact check debunked a viral video claiming Michigan Muslims can list multiple wives for benefits, but acknowledged that informal polygamy could enable single-mother claims indirectly.

This isn’t unique to Muslims—similar fraud occurs in other groups, like Orthodox Jewish families in New York or polygamist sects in Utah.

* I bet there are a bunch of polycules that do this.

* There are also plenty of normal couples who don’t marry legally so they can do this.

Welfare Kings

From a based camper: “My YouTube algorithm queued up the linked video for me. It’s a conversation between influencer and coach David Cooley and a fellow called Jay Prince, self-proclaimed welfare kang. Cooley gives Prince the air to explain what this title means. Prince goes on to describe to Cooley that he had impregnated a single or multiple who weren’t interested in raising the resulting children so that they would gladly forfeit custody to him, and how he sustains himself and his three daughters with government handouts. The tale itself is amazing but what do you both think of it, with appropriate modifications, as a strategy for boosting fertility?”

To add to the Based Camper’s summary:

* He openly identifies as a “welfare king,” saying he deliberately exploits female-led social systems and government benefits so he can work minimally, live cheaply, and have many children whose expenses taxpayers cover

* He deliberately has kids with women he know will lose custody disputes

* David Cooley condemns him for having the mentality of a black woman

* Because his action is morally equivalent to embracing failure and then rationalizing it as strategy or justice

* Because he is putting the burden of work on other people

* Because he is avoiding responsibility

* Because his ancestors sacrificed so descendants could be free and pursue opportunity, not so their descendants could avoid work and live off handout

* Because if everyone did this, we wouldn’t have a functional economy

* Cooley stresses that government welfare is meant as a safety net that often incentivizes bad choices, and scaling this man’s logic to half the population would produce widespread laziness, stagnation, and deeper dependence on the state.

* HOWEVER, we shouldn’t have such a system in the first place

* The more people exploit this publicly, the better (then it will be shut down sooner)

* He rejects the idea of building a career in “another man’s empire,” claims America fundamentally hates and disrespects Black men, and insists education and hard work do not translate into real power for them.

* He frames this lifestyle as a form of “respirations” or street-level reparations for centuries of Black slave labor, arguing Black men deserve a multi-decade “break” instead of building wealth in a system he believes is rigged against them

* “I’m going to get my respirations the ghetto way” - points for being unapologetic.

* He praises women’s entry into the workforce for “lightening” standards and creating easy care jobs (like his CNA/med tech role), which he sees as low-effort, female-typed work that benefits men like him.

Episode TranscriptSimone Collins: . [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because I’ve got something for the gentleman in the audience. You know what, you know all these, all these. People, these women screwing your lives over the state, screwing your life over employers, passing you over for their, you know, diversity and, and whatnot.

Hires, you know, choosing women over you, even though you, you show more merit. Well, some men are fighting back. It’s, it’s more than just MIG towel, I would say. It’s, it’s mgtow 2.0. They are, they are basically doing what women do, like welfare queens or exploitable divorcee women but better and more competently because, I don’t know, it’s a, it leave a man to do it and he’ll do it better.

But what, what I’m talking about today is, is. Two models of, of men who are opting out of traditional breadwinning roles and, and instead relying on income from women and the state.

That, that is what we’re talking, we’re talking about welfare kings. How is this done? Can I do this? We’re gonna go into it.

Yeah, actually I, I mean, yeah, we, we, we’ll, I, I’m actually curious. Do

Malcolm Collins: I need to knock

Simone Collins: up other women? Is that what your takeaways are here? Well, it’s. There, there are tactics, there are approaches, there are strategies you have to do this the right way. Honestly, you know, we’ve

Malcolm Collins: done a number of Latin American episodes right now.

I’d say that this is the Latin American male strategy.

Simone Collins: No, no, actually no. The, the, the two cases I’m gonna give actually are Muslim and black. Oh, the Muslim one is really, we got, we gotta mix it up here. No, hold on.

Malcolm Collins: I wanna talk about the Latin American thing ‘cause it is actually something you see very frequently.

Okay. Something you see very frequently within the Latin America culture is a female breadwinner and a male sort of lazy stay at home.

Simone Collins: That’s true actually. Yeah. I didn’t even think to talk about that. Yeah, that’s more like, the, the trad wise model inverted, that is, that is fair. And I would say that could be its own episode.

So maybe comment below if you want us to explore that. But no, we’re, we’re actually I, can I just

Malcolm Collins: quickly [00:02:00] explain why that happens, by the way, if people, okay, go ahead. I, but it’s funny ‘cause everybody thinks of like, oh, fiery Latina or something like that. Not, you know, Latina ends up supporting everyone.

I think it’s because they get so used to supporting their wider family systems before the husband comes into the picture that they just see it as another person that they’re supporting.

Simone Collins: Oh. The, this whole just mother hen gone wild. Yeah. It’s like, of course I have to take care of you. This exasperated like Oh fine.

The exasperated

Malcolm Collins: Latina should be the actual Latina. The, the beleaguered. Oh

Simone Collins: fine. Another person

Malcolm Collins: supporting

Simone Collins: save you too. I mean, I, I feel like it’s just also broadly female trope in a, among sort of responsible parentified women. I guess I, I, I don’t know how else to put it. But I mean, I’ve, I’ve seen this among other people.

Even, even people that we, we know closely who are not.

Malcolm Collins: Is this, is this why, why Latin dads don’t run away? Why you, why you don’t have a bunch of Latin kids being married in single, in single family households? ‘cause they [00:03:00] know, they just stay around then go into the

Simone Collins: yard, you know, when you just let them do their thing.

But no, we are, we’re gonna talk about welfare polygamists and welfare kings. Or as, as. Some might put it well for Kings. But I, I think we should really be looking at this in the broader context of some major themes that I see arising. I mean, obviously like one big thing theme is Mikal, like, you know, sort of men who are like so fed up about the system being rigged against them and women being rigged against them.

But I think that what’s, what’s interesting now is we sort of, there are stages of grief, right? And I think there are stages of mgtow you know, there’s like the, there’s, there’s the, there’s the, the red pill stage of like, oh, well, alright, I’m gonna game it and I’m gonna try and like, that’s kind of like, you know, still participating in the rat race.

Right. You know? And, and it is also like, I feel like, there’s something very. Capitalistic about like original pickup artistry and red pillow mindset. You know, it’s like, well, I’m gonna work and I’m gonna be rich and I’m gonna spin plates and I’m gonna like, you know, do all this. [00:04:00] Right. And then, then came a mgtow, which is like, no, I’m gonna fully opt out.

And I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m gonna sort of go like full monk mode. I’m gonna improve myself. I’m gonna like, go back to nature, maybe even like homestead or like live abroad in Thailand and just like, totally opt out of the system, right? So it came from like, girl boss lean in to like fully like homestead, opt out.

And now we have like, you could all almost, I would call this dark mig towel where it’s like. No, I’m just going to, like, the system has effed me over. Now I’m gonna f the system. Because one, I can, and I’m smart enough and I know how to and two, i, I deserve it. That’s kind of like the mindset of like, I hate this system, so of course I’m going to exploit it because almost like.

Almost morally or ethically it, they see it as justified like they’re owed to something by this system that is so terrible. So like of course they’re going to [00:05:00] exploit it. Of course they’re gonna not treat you with respect. And I think that’s really interesting. But also I think this is really important to discuss in the context of.

At the time of this recording a lot of people are discussing the Somali daycare fraud, but also like Somali Autism services fraud, Somali transportation fraud. So they’re just like how there was essentially an ethnic cartel that just how they’re like the Patel Motels and their Vietnamese nail salons and like there, there ethnic.

Immigrant groups in the United States and in other countries that tend to build specializations around certain economic models. It just so happens that Somalis in Michigan built economic models exploiting state benefit systems. And I, I think that that’s really interesting and a point that ASME Gold has alluded to in his coverage of this and that, that we were gonna allude to in an episode we were gonna do on these.

But I’m like, oh, so many people have been covering this and all, I think I just don’t wanna do it anymore. I’m bored of it. Is it, this isn’t a Somali thing. This, this is just, I mean, they found the Somali thing, the Somalis are being highlighted now, but like, this is not, I mean, [00:06:00] there, there are, there are groups of all types that are exploiting these systems.

And I think we should talk about some other groups and some other ways in which these systems are exploited. And I actually, on a sort of third level of this, I think it’s genuinely interesting how people have inventively e exploited welfare systems. I, I, I think. I think it’s just, I’m, in many ways I’m like, it’s clever.

Like you gotta, you gotta respect it. Like, wow. I mean, I, I, I love, I love clever ways to save money. Malcolm knows all too painfully the like, how, how much I gloat every single time we do a family shopping thing and like all the coupons that I’ve like scraped together show up on our checkout screen. And I’m like dancing and he’s like trying to hide like as people stare at me in the store.

So I, I love savings, like, so I’m like, wow, this is, how do I get on this? I can get to point, how does it work? Okay. How does it work? Just don’t hate the player. Hate the game, by the way. So let’s, let’s start with [00:07:00] welfare polygamists. And I, I, I can’t believe I didn’t start to look into this earlier because in, in all these different stories related to basically like.

Egregious treatment of women by, by Muslim communities. I heard about women ending up in these polygamous marriages to Islamic men who, who take multiple lives per Islamic law, AKA Nika, but only legally marry one wife and then use their various wives, legal, single mother status to get. A lot of state assistance.

So they might have up to four wives and then, you know, three of them are getting state assistance. And I, this is actually pretty clever hack because if you are, and we know this through prenatal list.org, we did this whole research that we, we hired experts in, in like welfare services and, and government assistance services specifically for families to build guides to each state in the United States [00:08:00] on like what programs can parents possibly have access to.

And it was a frustrating exercise ‘cause I thought maybe states had more resources for all families, but really it’s more like only if you are at or near the poverty line. Do you get services, but if you are at or near the poverty line in the United States, especially as a woman and especially as a parent, you actually get a lot like your life is super easy.

I mean, relatively speaking, I think like if you make, well, we have

Malcolm Collins: friends with that and they live almost the way we live in terms of quality of life.

Simone Collins: Oh, like materially. They have more luxuries than we do. Yeah. They have more

Malcolm Collins: luxuries than we do, but they have,

Simone Collins: they have free healthcare, they have food assistance.

Both Snap, which is sort of like a, a debit card and wic, which allows you to buy like specific foods on, on sort of a monthly basis. Then they also get housing choice vouchers and they can even get short term cash through a various programs. And this is huge. Hey, like when, when, when our kids were exposed to rabies we, [00:09:00] we did tons of like calling around how do we get a rabies vaccine to them.

Like we don’t think they were a bit like, we don’t think they were seriously exposed, but we’re like, you know, I mean, in a preponderance of caution, it would’ve been really nice to get them rabies vaccines. But we don’t have insurance offers really good coverage and we’re kind of in between jobs right now.

So we were like, okay, how do we like afford this without a $10,000 emergency room fee? And we ultimately just didn’t take our kids into the emergency room because that was the only way we, we could have gotten them rabies vaccines. Meanwhile if we were on one of these assistance programs, we, we could have just balled into an emergency room like, no problem.

And like the, we, we know people who, who were on these programs who were like, I don’t know, why don’t you just go to the hospital? We’re like. We would never financially recover from that. And so the, the crazy thing is like if you’re just, just an inch above, like you’re making a hundred dollars too much, suddenly your life is like actual poverty.

Whereas in your, if you’re in actual poverty, you’re actually living more like a middle class American which is [00:10:00] crazy. So yeah, there’s this really weird thing going on in the United States. And, and so that’s why this is extra clever. I could see you know, a family being like, oh, wait a second.

Like this is it. It makes a lot of financial sense for us to do this. But also Malcolm, if I wanted to be evil and exploitative, I could divorce you. I could leave you in our divorce settlement with all the liquid assets in waive alimony, and then claim these benefits. I mean, and arguably our kids would be better off that, that would be fraud, Malcolm.

That would be welfare fraud.

And but would we get caught if we were not public figures? We probably wouldn’t get caught. And that’s the thing,

Malcolm Collins: if we’re really divorced. We’re just living together. How is that welfare fraud?

Okay, so I decided to look this up because it just doesn’t matter why I decided to look this up. So anyway, , the way it actually works is it depends on the state, [00:11:00] but marital status matters a lot less than whether you’re actually living together. So if the wife was living in a separate house, apparently what matters the most is like how you prepare your meals.

If. They are preparing meals for the entire family at the same time, then you would still count as married, , for the, and if they’re going out and buying food for everyone at the same time, then you would still count as married. Okay.

Simone Collins: Because it could be argued that you, you, you would be up like, this would only happen if I had primary custody in a divorce and if it was found that like, oh, but they’re living together and he’s, you know, like participating in all this now.

But keep in mind though, and like we’re public figures, we have documentary teams here, you. We, we can’t really hide things like that. But here’s the thing, and people discovered this with the, you know, Somali daycare fraud. No one is checking this. You know, states don’t have like big auditing teams to, to make sure like, oh, you know, is this couple actually not living together?

[00:12:00] And we know for a fact, actually I did. I think this

Malcolm Collins: should be part of the prenatal list community’s way of life. It’s just so unethical, but like also, I get it. How is it unethical? The state

Simone Collins: should be paying for rearing kids. I mean, they should be because they’re benefiting from the tax revenue. And that’s our whole thing is like now the state, like the, the state has put the entire financial burden for creating new productive taxpayers on the parents.

Of course parents aren’t having kids like, ‘cause the parents aren’t financially benefiting from the kids. They’re financially I’ll tell you, thinking

Malcolm Collins: about divorcing you right now, I’m so done with you, Simone. You’re, and this isn’t even fraud, you just really annoyed me lately. So I’m, we need to have a conversation about that.

Simone Collins: But we know, we actually know a lot of people who are married but not legally because they do and, and like, and they, I’m talking like highly educated. Rationalist, ea, Silicon Valley people like these are people who, you know, are like, I’m not talking like trailer trash. I’m not talking like weird you know, [00:13:00] Islamic polygamous family, although many of them are polyamorous, but like even just monogamous people are not getting married.

So the wives can claim these welfare benefits because it is just otherwise, like, honestly, it’s just not worth it. To have a job or make money or anything like that. When, when, you know, like right now healthcare is so expensive in the United States and food is getting more expensive and like we’re feeling the squeeze too.

And, and it’s, it’s all very, and like this is very exasperating and I think this is why antisemitism, as we’ve discussed, is on the rise as people. I mean, we’re not, as you pointed out, we’re not giving meaningful aid in the larger scheme of things. Like, you know, the nu like out of a hundred tax dollars, we pay the, the number of, of like cents that we’re sending to Israel.

Like nothing. But still people resent seeing this. Any, any aid going to. To, to migrants or to foreign countries because they’re sitting here and they’re like, I can’t afford anything. And then all these people around ‘em are getting all these fin, it’s just not fair. But anyway so I just wanna be clear that this is something that’s been happening for a really [00:14:00] long time, and especially with Muslim polygamist, like Islamic marriages.

So in the uk in the, like way, way back, we’re talking like in 2011 investigation by the photograph. Detailed how some Muslim men in areas like Blackburn and Dewsbury maintain multiple wives in separate homes with each additional wife registering as a single parent to access benefits. And then a similar report by the spectator described a taxi driver with five wives from different countries, all claiming state support, and they estimated that up to 20,000 such polygamous unions in the country.

We’re, we’re actively taking social benefits under this kind of scheme. And I think this happened, especially, I think this is another one of those kind of like ethnic cartel issues where like, you know, certain communities discovered this, this clever hack. It’s like that chase. Well, and I can make it where even

Malcolm Collins: better just by taking extra wives so I, it would make sense to divorce you.

Oh my God. Here we go, Ken.

Simone Collins: Why, why always, [00:15:00] when I outline episodes, like the conclusion, always, always like Malcolm becomes polygamous. You, you

Malcolm Collins: made that argument. Not me. I made the counter argument, but now I’m just like,

this is great. You wanna divorce me? You wanna,

this is, this is just

fantastic.

Simone Collins: I’ll give one from a Muslim country.

They’re all, well, no, no, no. Don’t like there. There are more options. I haven’t even gotten to the welfare kings. So just like, you know, oh God, okay. You gotta explain that

Malcolm Collins: to me. But also, like,

Simone Collins: apparently this is, this is also an issue that has been a, a problem in France since as like, as early as I could find, as 2010 when there was this high profile case that involved a Muslim butcher and four companions as, as they framed it charged with welfare fraud after a traffic stop escalated into polygamy allegations.

And there was this. Whole national debate around it. And then a 2015 PolitiFact check debunked a viral video claiming that a, that Michigan Muslims can list multiple wives for benefits. Like people were just claiming that. But they did acknowledge that basically informal polygamy would enable these claims, and it absolutely does.

[00:16:00] And, and that also like, it, it should be stated that other groups like Orthodox Jewish families in New York or polygamous sex in Utah also do this. This isn’t like a Muslim thing. And like I said, like. Just, just monogamous couples we know who are highly educated. The first time I actually heard about this, Malcolm was literally at Stanford University when we spoke at one of the search fund cl classes.

Okay. One of the, one of the young women there was looking to get married and we had just given this whole talk on like working as a married couple, and she’s like, yeah, but like, I don’t think we’re actually gonna get legally married and I might just not be on payroll so that I can claim that like unemployment benefits.

And I’m like. What and that was back in, I think like 2017. Yeah, this was a

Stanford girl. Yes. She was a Stanford MBA student who was sitting in our class on search funds. It was just like,

Malcolm Collins: I’m gonna take welfare benefits. I just, yes,

Simone Collins: because

Malcolm Collins: I mean, it’s so normal in her [00:17:00] community that she sees it as like a mandate that she does if, if, well,

Simone Collins: if you’re making a cold calculation on maximizing, you know, benefits to you.

Like, again, don’t hate the players,

hate the game. Like the system is motivating people to do this. But let’s get to the other thing, and this, this actually came

Malcolm Collins: from No, I want you, before you go to the other thing, there, there is a reason to intentionally abuse systems like this, this system shouldn’t exist.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It shouldn it shouldn’t exist. And the

Simone Collins: more high profile this is, and

the more people who do it, the sooner this gets taken away. Like we Yeah, exactly. Because this makes me so mad.

Malcolm Collins: It’s, it’s a horrible system. It’s a horrible,

Simone Collins: yeah. Well, because it encourages people to be free riders and to not develop autonomy and independence.

It, and we’re gonna get into this in the next, in the next segment I have here, which is inspired by a base camper. So I, I can’t remember if I’m allowed to attribute him. So I’m, I’m just gonna read the, the comment without naming him. But he, he wrote my YouTube algorithm queued up the, the linked video for me.

It’s [00:18:00] a conversation between influencer and coach David Cooley and a fellow named Jay Prince Self-proclaimed welfare. Kang Cooley gives Prince the heir to explain what this title means.

Speaker 3: You go work in slave. I get y’all check. I get y’all rais, right? Y’all don’t got a refrigerator freezer. Y’all can’t eat multiple ice pain back to back. With three kids, right? Daycare paid for, healthcare, paid for, right?

Simone Collins: Prince goes on to describe to Cooley that he had impregnated a single or multiple, who weren’t interested in raising the resulting children.

He, he impregnated multiple women so that they would gladly forfeit custody to him and how he sustained himself and his three daughters with government handouts. The tale itself is amazing, but what do you both think of it with appropriate modifications is a strategy for boosting fertility, just as you said, Malcolm.

So I’m just gonna add to the, the base camper summary. Basically this, this guy identifies as a welfare king [00:19:00] and he deliberately exploits female-led social systems and government benefits so that he can work basically minimally, like he does work, but like right under the cap. So like he’s like deliberately doing this to like maximize benefits to himself.

Like he’ll work to get as much cash as he can get through a job, but no more. So he maximizes government benefits, then he lives cheaply and then he has as many children. Whose expenses taxpayers can cover as possible. And he deli, here’s the really interesting thing. He deliberately chooses to have children with women who would lose a custody battle.

Which is like unhinged in, in some ways. Like ‘cause one, like do you wanna have kids who have like personality disorders? Like this is, I don’t know, like this seems like it would make your parenting harder, but maybe there’s just women who like he knows would otherwise. Probably produce good kids, but like, for whatever reason, like the courts would never give him custody.

But yeah, he chooses, he chooses to have hi his kids with women who are unfit parents. ‘cause as he points out, the, the system is, is rigged against men [00:20:00] when it comes to custody in most states. And the, the, the, this coach who, who’s interviewing him, like categorically condemns this behavior for having the mentality of a black woman.

He puts it. And then he also points out like the, the, the action is moral equivalent to embracing failure and then rationalizing it as strategy or justice, which this guy totally does. Because he’s putting the burden of work on other people and avoiding responsibility. And also because. The, the Cooley argues that his ancestors sacrificed so that his descendants could be free and to pursue opportunity, not so their defendant or descendants would, would avoid work and, and live off handouts.

Yeah, and he also points out that if everyone did this, it, you know, would kill the economy. Like, not everyone can do this, so it shouldn’t be done. And that government welfare should be a safety net and help people get off their feet. And, but like the whole point is. Like this system shouldn’t exist in the first place.

It does hurt people. It does create cycles of [00:21:00] dependency. So to your point, the more people exploit this, the better. But what I think is really interesting is, is is this guy, this welfare king, rejects the idea of building a career in another man’s empire. He’s basically like, this is a system that is rigged against me.

I’m never gonna win in the system. There’s too much bias against me. I’m dealing with tons of systemic. Disadvantage. And America fundamentally hates and disrespects blacks, black men, and, and he insists that education and hard work are just not going to translate into real power for them. And I think this is a message that probably resonates with a lot of men in America, not just black men, but I think like many white men who are hearing increasingly, like, we’re just not.

We’re not gonna hire white men anymore. So like, I think men in many different positions are feeling just super fed up and he frames this guy, frames his lifestyle as a form of, and this is his wording, respirations. [00:22:00] Which he, he is like I, he says I’m gonna get my respirations in the ghetto way. He is just like super unapologetic.

He is just like, he knows it’s trashy, what he’s doing. But he describes respirations as like street level reparations for centuries of black slave labor. And he argues that men deserve a multi-decade break. Like, just not, it’s not even like, so this is a black guy doing this. Yes, it is a black guy doing this, moving into

Malcolm Collins: the stereotypes.

And he also,

Simone Collins: he also praises women’s entry into the workforce for lightning standards and, and creating easy care jobs. Like, sort of like med tech roles and things like that, which he sees as low effort, female typed work, and it benefits men like him. Because I think in some cases he’s, he even gets alimony and I think it’s really interesting if like men can’t get jobs anymore.

Why not just ex like lean on like the women who can get the jobs. And I think this sort of dovetails then with your noticing a Latin American male pattern where often they’re depending more [00:23:00] consistently than and they have like less consistent jobs than their wives, and so they’re more likely to depend on them because.

I mean, modern bureaucracies do favor women as many of the, the writers we’ve referenced and, and, and various people that we’ve talked about point out. So I’m, I’m curious as to what you think about all this. I mean, like, I, I, I, I intuitively find it so dishonorable to do anything, but make your own way and support yourself through.

The provision of meaningfully good products and services that other people and businesses want and need. Like a

Malcolm Collins: six chat bot that we made. R fab.ai. Yes. Or our education system for kids Pia, or our talking teddy bear system, whistling.ai. We, we, we try, right? And

Simone Collins: yet. A bunch of people around us are living lives materially much more comfortable than ours because they, they are playing the game.

I mean, I feel like, again, like dark Mgtow but we’re not even in the era of [00:24:00] dark mgtow. We’re in the era of like dark everything. It, it is not just men who are opting out. I mean, last week we ran the episode on women who are foregoing marriage and sex and we’re just like, I’m over it. And I don’t really know what to make of it.

And maybe people are gonna coast on government benefits until government go bankrupt. But then a GI is gonna sweep in and save them anyway. So it kind of doesn’t matter. Like I, I just kind of wonder what strategically makes sense for people at this point. What, what are your thoughts on all this now that I’ve kind of given you?

The

Malcolm Collins: idea is what it means to work is going to transform over the course of our life.

Mm-hmm.

And I mean, over the next five to 10 years yeah, I mean, over the next few years, I mean, AI is gonna change everything. The idea that you wouldn’t live off the state is gonna become laughable, I think, to our children.

Is if, if AI does become as economically impactful as I expect it to be it’s, it’s just going to, I mean, if human civilization survives, right? [00:25:00] Like, I, I, I think that you’re thinking too much like the past because in the past, you know, you, you could always outthink everyone else, you could always outwork everyone else.

You could always, but if an AI can run at a marginal cost and is smarter than 98% of the population, which is where I think we’re gonna get pretty soon. Mm-hmm. Like the agent system we’ve made for our fab ai, which creates continuously thinking agents. And right now we’re getting them set up so that they can even work on like GitHub and everything.

And then it can take over the programming for me and bug hunting and everything like that. For all of the new things I want to build, I wanna have it build some beginning

Simone Collins: for

Malcolm Collins: me because I have some ideas for them, but I don’t want to go through the whole thing, so I’m like, oh, I’ll just have you do it.

Right. Even just something like that, right? Like, ugh. Eventually, it’s not even gonna be like human actors running funds. It’s gonna be ais that run collections of other ais which make and build companies. The question is, is, is, is what happens to the rest of humanity when that happens? Right.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

I, [00:26:00] I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s clever. I mean, I also like, maybe this is just a survival strategy. I will say that like. The parents I know who have made big families work. I don’t know of any that are like doing, committing ‘cause this is technically welfare fraud, what I’m describing in, in most cases.

I don’t, I don’t actually think what the, the second dude is doing is

Malcolm Collins: No, no. The guy who’s keeping kids. I don’t think that’s Welfare fraud is, no, that’s not welfare fraud

Simone Collins: especially. Yeah. But like in these other cases of like the, the multiple wives, it’s welfare fraud. And if you and I were to like divorce and, and try to get me to like, I think that’s welfare fraud.

However I will say that the, the families that have a lot of kids that I know that, that are doing it really well. Are extremely savvy about government assistance systems and they max out as many benefits as they can get. And it’s, it’s hard for me to wrap my head around it because, like [00:27:00] I grew up with the mindset of like, even at times where I had qualified for like food stamps or something, or unemployment I, I didn’t.

Take it because I knew that I, you know, had enough savings where I, I could make it by. Like, if I didn’t need it, I wasn’t gonna take it. And now I feel like, am I a chump for not doing that? And like, it, would it not be better if we all just went hard in on this system just to break it? I don’t know.

I, I feel

Malcolm Collins: confused by that. You’re gonna need systems like this, like the world of AI is gonna change everything about what it means to work, about what it means to expect to earn your own income. I just, I think, and my fa the fans can push back on me on this, but I, I do notand how in 20 years from now we have anything like our existing global economy.

Mm.

Now what that looks like in terms of individuals, jobs, everything like that is gonna differ a lot between countries. The countries that have AI in the [00:28:00] countries that don’t get outta the countries that don’t. Right?

Yeah.

Get outta Europe. Get out of Europe. Run. Run, run. And yeah. Well, and this, this brings me to, you know, where I like if I’m trying to predict the future of the global economy and everything like that and where everything’s going.

And it’s, it’s one of these things where even for like us looking for a job. You know, my brother’s like, get a normal job, and I’m like, but it’ll be gone in like a month. Like everyone I know in normal jobs is afraid of losing them because of ai. Right? Like, you, you see this in the numbers, right?

Like, I don’t know. I mean, I, I, I do think that what they did is bad for their generation, but that’s, you know, that that’s the last generation’s rules. And if you always. There were so many things that you know, my parents told me that just didn’t work for my generation, and they sounded wildly naive telling me it when they were like, well just, you know, go to an office and say you won’t leave until they hire you.

Right. You know, like that’s something that, that parents used to tell kids. Like in all seriousness, [00:29:00] show them chutzpah, you know, knock on the doors.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and, and I think you telling a kid, well, you know, you gotta go out and get a job, right. Go go to a top college and get a job. And they’ll say, oh, what is that?

Like an Uber thing? Except Uber won’t exist. ‘cause it’ll all be self-driving cars. Right? Like, is that a,

Simone Collins: well, now what’s so crazy too, and what, what makes so many younger people incredibly angry is that after the pandemic, something broke, at least in American job markets. And so many of the job postings are not even for real jobs, they’re ghost jobs that businesses maintain just to.

Show certain optics, collect data et cetera. Like, but there’s zero intention to hire. So you could spend a lot of time applying for a job and it will go absolutely nowhere. Which is also just such a.

Malcolm Collins: Well, in a lot of industries, people have just stopped doing their work. As you pointed out, you were pointing this out about like the [00:30:00] publishing industry.

It almost seems like nobody is working anymore. Like they’re just not editing their, they’re not

Simone Collins: answering their emails, they’re not doing their jobs. Yeah. It’s like they, they kind of left the office and maybe they’re still receiving a salary, but like low key. They’re just not there anymore. But no one, it’s one of those things again, we’re like, no one’s checking, and I think this is one of those things, maybe we’re kind of transitioning from a high trust society to a low trust society and people haven’t yet.

Uniformly realized that. And so there’s a lot of, everyone is expecting that someone has it. Like, I thought you had it. No, I thought you had it. Like everyone thinks that someone else is doing their job, meanwhile, no one is doing their job. And things are falling apart, but it actually takes a surprisingly long time for people to figure that out.

As is indicated by the similarly daycare fraud, like this has been going on for a very long time, but. No one checks these things. ‘cause everyone’s like, I don’t know. That’s not my job. That’s must be someone else’s job. My job is to process the [00:31:00] application. My job is to see, oh, this checkbox was met. Okay, go for it.

Like I did my job, my job wasn’t to drive over there. And like even if like, you know, you’re government employee and you drive by. And, and this actually came up with the with the Muslim like is Islamic marriage polygamist issue is in, when this started, it has at various times bubbled up on X and people have had discussion of it.

And when online discussions of this trend upward, inevitably a bunch of government workers come on and they’re like. Yep. Like I, I knowingly process payments to or am aware of like this and this and this case where these people are receiving this much in benefits and I know that they don’t need them.

Like I’ve driven by their house and I’ve like done, but like they, they don’t have the authority or, and there is no pathway for them to effectively report and have these things dealt with because we live in a society and these systems were set up without. [00:32:00] The expectation of this kind of exploitation,

Malcolm Collins: and this is why, as bad as universal basic income is, and you can see our videos on it in terms of the effects it has on people.

I just do not, it, it’s better than this and I don’t see any other pathway.

Simone Collins: Well, that’s, yeah. We were thinking about it’s better than

Malcolm Collins: most. Fraud gets most money.

Simone Collins: Yes, because we, we were thinking about doing a Basecamp episode on like America. Where like, American socialism sucks extra hard because it is a socialist country, but like only for people who cheat, like only for people who are extremely poor and for people who cheat and then everyone else is screwed and like, it would be actually so much better in many ways.

It just, it was just for everyone because then, then you’re not just rewarding this huge swath of bad actors and you know, the money isn’t being wasted in the same way. And that it is, it is very frustrating. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, I think it’s, it’s, it’s frustrating as it is. I think these systems just need to be turned off.

We just [00:33:00] gotta, we’ve got to overhaul around a UBI system. I just don’t, don’t think that any of these other, yeah. Okay. Well,

Simone Collins: yeah. So when you say turned off, you say like replaced with, I don’t know, direct cash payments, just something like that. Yeah. Direct replace with direct

Malcolm Collins: cash payments. Just

Simone Collins: put money in the accounts.

I mean, the one thing I worry about then is. What I, for example, I, I, I alluded to earlier, the WIC program that’s Women, infants, and Children. It’s, it’s a program for that. Again, like if you’re a single mother who’s at or near the poverty level or who qualifies through other means, it’s a really effective program, and I like it specifically because unlike with snap, where you can actually see like.

All these TikTok shorts of mothers getting all this like horrible junk food for their kids. WIC only allows you to buy extremely specific food.

Malcolm Collins: I don’t like those programs. Let the parents get bad food for their kids. Let their kids die. I don’t care. I do. I do. Not our kids.

Simone Collins: I do. I do. But WIC is like, you can only buy like.

Two loaves of bread this month. And they must be whole grain. They have to be whole grain. And you can only [00:34:00] buy, it doesn’t

Malcolm Collins: even understand real health stuff. Like we’ve, we, it doesn’t, it doesn’t get the health stuff right. It’s, it’s like, it’s like, you have to have 1% milk for a kids. Like what? No kids should be

Simone Collins: drinking whole.

Well, but I, I think like, maybe there’s, I keep in mind there’s a correlation between poverty and obesity, so they don’t wanna allow parents to buy whole milk because. Whole,

Malcolm Collins: oh, it burns my brain. It No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. These programs are ridiculous. And the way you make this work with children is you just make it based on the number of people.

Right. And your UBI goes to whoever’s caring for you up to a certain age. Mm-hmm. And that way you do still get the assistance if you have kids.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I, yeah. I don’t know. Or like if, if there’s a like come some kind of like refugee program where like kids can run away to like a safe house if their parents suck. The problem is and, and pe [00:35:00] like, I don’t know. I like, I, we, we’ve alluded to this in past, like, oh, well, what if the state raises children?

And then people clap back at us and they’re like, okay, Romanian orphan orphanages. And like China had orphanages and they were terrible, but like, this was all for like unwanted abandoned children. These were underfunded programs. What if the state actually like, did. An exceptionally good program, you know, where like it actually got a lot of investment and it was good and decent.

I mean, but then like all the child parents come in and they’re like, no, a child

has to be raised by a mother and a father who are emotionally invested in it. And if you aren’t emotionally invested in a child, you won’t do a good idea. But I feel like maybe I, I can, I

Malcolm Collins: disagree with that. I strongly disagree with that.

This is this, this whole thing of kids need to be, I didn’t live with my family after the age of 13 and I did not care. It is when, when people live without parental love and it ends up messing them up, it’s because they are weak frankly, and they’re looking to blame things. I know lots of messed up people who had parents and [00:36:00] lots of non messed up people who didn’t have parents.

Parents. I’m just

Simone Collins: saying I want, I want children to have an option in a UBI world where like. Mommy buys meth with all of her money.

Malcolm Collins: You know what I mean? And they get, they give the kid to somebody else. Well, think about it this way. No. And the kid

Simone Collins: has, can run to somewhere else or gets saved. I don’t know.

I, I just like, I, you know, I can’t deal with these stories of kids getting hurt and like, I, I, I literally had to, I mean, I should have done it anyway, but I’ve quit scrolling. Like passive scrolling on any platform because too many times now, like I scroll and it’s like, oh, like infant killed like 2-year-old found dead.

And, and, and I’m like, I can’t, like then like the next two days, I, I’m up crying all night ‘cause I can’t deal, like I, I literally can’t deal. So I need like a solution that ends this. No more hurting children. No more hurting children. No, [00:37:00] no.

Malcolm Collins: So

fix it. Fix it, guys. Civilization, fix it. You guys in the comments can let us know what you think the solution is to all this.

You know, you know me, I wanna get the extra wives. I, I, I’ll be able to breed faster, Simone. We need it. This is how we get more kids in the house. Kid, kid, kid, kid, kid. You’ll have so many kids.

Simone Collins: I’m actually outlining. An episode on the Men Spamming Kids people who donate sperm, or people like Pavel Ov who have offered free IVF to women who want to use his genetic material.

And I am going to be making an argument against, against that particular tactic, like not,

Malcolm Collins: well, it’s not a heavy, but it’s not, it’s not a bad thing like I offer. You know, if, if somebody wants to use my genetic material, I offer that. Right? Like, no, I mean, I

Simone Collins: think donating to someone who asks you or who’s like, Hey, i’d, I’d appreciate that.

[00:38:00] Like, I think that makes sense. Keep trying to

Malcolm Collins: spam it instead of building a, a family and legacy is in, usually not. Yeah. I

Simone Collins: think men who are just, well, no, I think. It is absolutely fantastic to donate an egg or a sperm or embryos to people who, who want them from you, but men who think it’s a massive win to just spam children I mean, I’m gonna, like, I, I’m gonna give a good effort to try to convince myself that I’m wrong and to steal man this, but I cannot think of a single great historical figure or impactful historical figure.

Who came from a harem, who came from a man who spammed children. I just don’t think that you, you’re, you’re doing a lot own genetics to favor.

Malcolm Collins: There’s a big difference between families and, you know.

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, I like, I’m all four, like having 14 kids, whatever. But like in your household with your culture, raise them.

Invest in them. [00:39:00] But like when, when you are just flying around the world to donate sperm to girls online who are like, yeah, that sounds good. Like, I don’t, I don’t think that’s the win that people think it’s or, or when you’re like paying to have a bunch of babies born and then having just staff raise them.

I, I, again, don’t think that’s the same. So, yeah. But anyway, we’ll discuss that in the other episode. I need to, it’s just taken me a while to get to it because Archive is, is not loading the Wall Street Journal articles that I really wanna include in my research. So I can’t read the articles and

Malcolm Collins: I’m really angry about that.

I’m sorry, Simone, you need to know more about welfare fraud. You

Simone Collins: mean about circumventing,

Malcolm Collins: paywalls. Oh no, I meant that’s what the articles were. I mean, circumvented paper. No, the articles

Simone Collins: are about the men’s spamming kids. Oh.

Malcolm Collins: Just

Simone Collins: use AI to do that, to ask what the articles are [00:40:00] about. Yeah. I always worry that they’re, they’re gonna hallucinate.

I wanna see the articles.

Malcolm Collins: Just say, don’t hallucinate. Can you give me the full text of this article? Oh,

Simone Collins: oh. They do that

Malcolm Collins: and sometimes they can, yeah.

Simone Collins: Okay. Well then I will try that. Thank you. And thank you for sharing that tip with our audience. Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: That is, I love Simonon are a great wife. What are we doing for dinner tonight?

Simone Collins: So I can do more Burmese min chicken pasta bolognese. Well, I mean, not bolognese, but like pesto pasta with Burmese mint chicken meat sauce, essentially.

Malcolm Collins: Did we have that left? Like it’s gonna be less?

Simone Collins: No. So I mean, I’m, I would do a whole new batch, so we have enough pesto left to do that. I have the post stuff from yesterday.

Want,

Malcolm Collins: I want a steak.

Simone Collins: Okay. Instead you want steak with chives and

Malcolm Collins: a, a double order of steak with lots of chives and peppers.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. And let me know when we’re, we’re frying it up. ‘cause I’ll throw in some miso paste and stuff like that to make the sauce interesting.

Simone Collins: Oh, you [00:41:00] wanna make the sauce?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Well, I’ll just, I’ll just make a, a twist on like a Mongolian sauce or something,

Simone Collins: but you’ll, you’ll make the sauce yourself. So all I have to do is prep the veg.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, prep a BA sauce ‘cause I don’t know how to do that.

Simone Collins: I don’t either. Just ask perplexity,

Malcolm Collins: but sure, I’ll do that and then you’ll add to it.

So I’m not unreasonable. I’m a very, very easy husband to be married to just make me gourmet restaurant meals each night while the children are. Mm. Attacking and while bathing the children and changing the diapers and,

Simone Collins: no, I love you. You’re amazing. You always go above and beyond. The kids always get so sad when they discover it’s not a day when they spend the whole day afternoon with you while you work climbing over you, while you attempt to vibe

Malcolm Collins: code.

Simone Collins: Well, I mean, not attempts successfully. Vibe code.

Malcolm Collins: He jumps on me. He doesn’t climb over me. He does the hot

Simone Collins: jump. Well, Andy climbs

Malcolm Collins: over you, Tostan and, and Octavian jump [00:42:00] on you. A Titan, especially

likes jumping on me.

Well, it’s her thing. She’s a titan. She’s

a shark princess. She’s the shark. What does a

shark princess do but jump on people?

One day she’ll be a shark. That’s what she said. Yeah. And then, and then I will eat you. Mommy. Do not eat me titan. Okay. I won’t. Mommy.

Oh my God. The clip that I used at the end of the episode that I ran today Titan was so sweet. Oh, talking about creaky man. Yeah. Who says you go? Who says darn s**t?

Titan says, darn it. Darn it. Oh. Dang it.

Simone Collins: Dang it.

Malcolm Collins: Dang it. Dang it. And then she goes, and the creaky man and the creaky man lives in a cave that’s a blue and pink, because those are titans, no pink and purple, which are Titan’s favorite colors, which are but maybe a little blue. Maybe a little blue. Her monsters have to live in caves that are her favorite colors.

Very spooky, but it’s pink and purple. [00:43:00] But creaky man is good ‘cause it sounds like a real monster, creaky

man. Totally sounds like. The new song

is a

Simone Collins: real monster. Maybe she saw it somewhere. Well, wait. People on X pointed out that Helicopter, helicopter came from this like, obscure clip of what I think was, what was that thing where you would like get randomly matched with people and it’s Kermit the Frog.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’s, it’s a thing.

Simone Collins: I think helicopter is a reference to, kermit helicoptering something at the end of the clip. If you want, if you know what I need helicopter, helicopter, helicopter

Malcolm Collins: go. And that’s what our kids see. And

so that is the catchphrase of our household and it is in reference to he ker the frog.

Whoa. Random. Yeah, I think that’s just too perfect. It’s too perfect. I, I’m proud if that is actually where Helicopter Helicopter came from.

Hey, none of our kids have gotten into sex scandals yet. That’s gonna be hard. All, all the, the families do the things and then their [00:44:00] kids get into sex scandals.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I wonder.

Yeah, actually a lot of people, like on, on X were also like, don’t, don’t include your photos and your, or sorry, your, your kids and your videos like this never goes well. Every time there’s a kid influencer and I’m like, okay, sorry. Who is the hero of the hour? Who is getting nothing but love? Who is getting nothing but adoration right now?

Malcolm Collins: I have no idea. The

Simone Collins: kid doing the Somali daycare fraud videos. Oh yeah, he’s cool. Who? Who’s, who does the. His mom. Really? His mom. Yes, yes, yes. And of course people are concerned trolling him too. Like, oh, just wait on like the sex scandal’s gonna come out. And he is like, literally there was this interview clip of him and he is like, I don’t like, they’re up for disappointment.

I’m Mormon. I don’t drink. I’m a virgin. Like, I dunno what you expect. You’re gonna find, like this is gonna be hard and like all these people just [00:45:00] want to believe that young people involved in content creation are somehow gonna be ruined for life. And of course like it’s ‘cause they’re weird pearl clusters.

They’re weird. There are tons of kids who are making very good money. Making just cute little play videos. Like what’s his, like whatever’s world. I I mean, maybe his life

Malcolm Collins: is

Simone Collins: wrong. No, no, no, no.

Malcolm Collins: The the thing is, is that these people are weird pearl clutches who complain about everything, and it’s just who they are.

I’m sorry

Simone Collins: if you’re also a base camper and you like our podcast, we just disagree with you on this. But that’s the thing is base campers disagree. No, I, I think it’s so

Malcolm Collins: lame. It’s so la. Every kid wants to be an influencer these days. Like what are like, or almost every kid does, right?

Simone Collins: Really? Because you have like a screwed up family like.

I, I, most of the cases of influencer, like kid influencers who are screwed up, the screwed up element of them is ‘cause they have like a narcissistic parent or like, they’re like, whether or not there was gonna be YouTube involved. They were gonna have a screwed up life. Like, I don’t wanna, yeah. So I think

Malcolm Collins: that there’s, there’s two things where you can have [00:46:00] problems with this if the, the kids are the core of the content, right?

Because then you need the kids to behave in specific ways and do certain things, and you’re creating a weird relationship between you and your kids. ‘cause the kids are the content itself. And I think

Simone Collins: that, no, that’s where, where parenting is the core of the content because that’s when you have the parents like.

Making a video about like, well, our daughter just had her first period and I’m going to the store to buy her tampons and like, girl. Yeah. Like that can

Malcolm Collins: cause problems for kids, obviously, but that’s not like, that’s

Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I, I tell, yeah, I totally just putting kids on

Malcolm Collins: Instagram, that’s not, you know, and the other one where it can cause a problem is when it’s specifically because you’re trying to do something that is inappropriate with, like, obviously there was a case recently of what’s her face who came of age

Speaker 2: . All y’all broke haters. Y’all aint doing it like lilt. This is why all y’all hate me. This cost me 200,000 rapping, lilt money away.

Malcolm Collins: and had a, like, sold out for her 18th birthday.

Oh. The

OnlyFans thing.

With the, the girl who is like [00:47:00] younger and is like, I’m

all about the money. And so Yeah. The Asian

Simone Collins: girl.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Whatever her name is.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. No, there, there are absolutely bad instances. And there, there are certain, like, for, for example, like we know from experience that like just, just having a certain number of subscribers or views isn’t gonna translate immediately to money.

What translates to money, certain types of contents, which makes like, for example, the like Sephora influencer kids. I understand why their parents got them into that because that’s where the sponsorships are. Like these makeup companies reaching out to them. ‘cause they make a lot of money from, you know, other kids who are intent driven consumers watching that content and wanting to buy something.

So that leads to lucrative sponsorships. And then, you know, it, it ends up, you end up with these kids who are now like screwed up with, you know, body image issues or whatever. Although I feel like that can be easily, like, I don’t, I don’t know how much body image issues necessarily even correlate with bad outcomes in life.

Like, I’m watching a documentary the old documentary Gossip on Rupert Murdoch and his publications and page [00:48:00] six, and this one gossip columnist named Cindy and her mother. Like she was born in 1935. She was 90 when the documentary was made. Her mother was like screwed up. Like she gave her her, her teenage daughter a nose job in like the, the, the forties, right?

Like, this is before like nose jobs were highly sophisticated. She had her hairline raised because Oh my god. She didn’t like, yeah. And she like sent her to dance classes, like whatever. ‘cause she thought she was an ugly girl and she just wanted her to be beautiful and like, she like was very controlling.

But this woman. Ended up becoming like one of the most prolific and successful gossip columnists. Can, can you

Malcolm Collins: tell when a nose is attractive or unattractive? I’ve, no. I literally can’t tell. No. Well, you

Simone Collins: and I are both broadly face blind and people thought I was like trying to do this, like own or troll in that episode where you were like, which group of women is more attractive when I’m like, I don’t know, which is the more like.

Because you’re like, you can tell, which is the more at attract, and I couldn’t tell which is more attractive. No, a lot of people love

Malcolm Collins: that you couldn’t [00:49:00] tell because they, they go, they’re all ugly to me too, because, I don’t know, there’s this internet thing where a guy think they look really cool by pretending normal looking women are unattractive.

And it, it’s, it’s, it’s not a flex. It, it’s weird. It’s silly.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I don’t know. Like, I, I, I, I can, I can I think I can try to ob like look for facial symmetry and signs of health, that that is what attractiveness is, right.

Malcolm Collins: I think, yeah. Well, for me it’s mostly just being appropriately the appropriate weight.

Like that’s a 95% of attractiveness for guys. It’s just I think

Simone Collins: No, no, no, no. When fundamentally, what you blew my mind about was, especially for, for

Malcolm Collins: and

Simone Collins: young for women. Young, young, young, young, young. That’s like the only thing that matters is like how young you look.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, that’s your fertility window, right?

Simone Collins: No, it makes, it makes evolutionary sense.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, anyway, I’m

Simone Collins: going to get dinner started. I love you very much and life is [00:50:00] good.

Malcolm Collins: Have a good one. You

Simone Collins: too.

Malcolm Collins: Hitting end hit.

Speaker 4: Wait, what happened? Octa, what, what is up there? Ma? Our, Chris, our SS mama. That Christmas, la, he mom put him right there.

Speaker 5: I wanna, so you get to choose a special treat because you, you found the Christmas llama. I can’t, I can’t believe I found a Christmas llama. He’s so magical. Is he too? He watches you, you know. Oh yeah. He sees when you do naughty thing. Yeah, I’ll put it in somewhere else. Oh, he’s gonna hide again. Yeah, he’s gonna hide again, and then you’ll find him.

Speaker 4: You get a special, can I eat it now? Yeah, you can. Yes.

Speaker 5: This is [00:51:00] so fun. It actually is magical. He actually is. Yeah. How can you tell. ‘cause he moved up there. Which kind of ass? I mean, come on man. I didn’t know. I didn’t know he moved. I love, I love, this is like a very satisfy. How do our kids not curse?

I wanna get get, I gotta get the scarf out. Let’s get the presents out.

In this explosive episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins react to one of the most stunning geopolitical events of 2026: President Trump’s daring operation to remove Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela — without a single U.S. casualty.

We dive deep into why this was a masterclass in pragmatic, America-First foreign policy: promoting Maduro’s own vice president to avoid chaos, securing massive U.S. oil investments, and sending a chilling message to dictators worldwide. We explore the massive celebrations across Venezuelan and Latin American communities, the furious (and often astroturfed) backlash from the global left, the Pope’s controversial stance, and why this may have permanently shifted Latino voters toward Republicans.

From hilarious memes and Russian cope to the terrifying implications for Kim Jong-un, Cuba, and beyond — this is the full breakdown of how Trump just changed the world... again.

If you love bold foreign policy analysis, pronatalism, cultural commentary, and unfiltered takes, subscribe and join the conversation!

Episode Transcript:Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] the even more terrifying thing about this, if you are say Kim Jong-un or something right now is. Who Trump put in power after this, that it was his second in command. Yeah. Because if you are Kim Jong-Un or something like that, you’re gonna be like America. You’re not gonna like, just take me out.

Like you wouldn’t get what you want, then you wouldn’t get a full regime change, you know? And then Trump needs to be like, no, no, no, no. Is there anyone else in this country with a lot of power that would like to see you gone? Because we can give them your job. What about that guy over there? He’s wearing a lot of medals and he is like, well, he’s been my most loyal supporter for X many.

Mm-hmm. But if you weren’t there anymore and he had everything you have now, and that’s the most terrifying thing to any actual dictator in a negotiation. Oh

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Trump not saying. Oh, we’re gonna replace your government with a capitalist government. [00:01:00] It’s who’s the next most powerful person in the room?

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. Today is a difficult day to be an American.

Simone Collins: Oh,

Malcolm Collins: there is news that Trump built a time machine, had someone go back in time and kidnap Hitler. Europe is in arms. They are furious. The left apoplectic. How dare he do this to an upstanding German citizen?

Simone Collins: The nerve, the Geneva conventions.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly.

Speaker 2: I just got three things to say. God bless our troops. God bless America, [00:02:00] and.

Okay. Absolutely insane. Follow up to this. So every day before I post my episode, I post it into an AI to see what it thinks of the episode and the AI that I put it into is grok, which has the ability to search the internet. In this time, the AI assumed I was discussing a fictional event. It says this transcript,

it’s reacting in real time to a completely fictional alternate history scenario. Donald Trump in early 2026. Authorizes a lightning fast delta force raid that captures Nicholas Maduro alive with zero US casualties. Then deliberately installs Maduro’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez as the leader instead of the opposition.

Maria Corona Machata. , And , it’s so insane. It’s so insane. It assumes, . The [00:03:00] Malcolm goes hard on the, , Pope Vatican in this fictional world for sighting was Maduro out of reflective anti-Americanism? , even though the entire premise is fabricated as of January 20, 26, Maduro is still in power.

No US raid has occurred. , What I love here is it couldn’t even imagine. It didn’t even think to look. Did this happen? Did this happen? And when I called it out on this, it goes in my defense events like a US president authorizing a zero casualty delta force rate to snatch a foreign leader alive.

Sounds like something out of a Tom Conci novel or high concept podcast thought experiment. Especially given the geopolitical sensitivities and historic , , precedents. It’s the kind of bold, unilateral action that feels too unbelievable without hard confirmation. So my initial presumption lead towards it being hypothetical or satirical.

Oh my God. Oh my God.

Malcolm Collins: No, this has been really interesting and I think that this [00:04:00] event is going to push a lot of the LA larger Latin American community, which had largely been pushed against Trump due to ICE raids. Which, you know, a lot of them had somebody who they knew who’s been affected by them. And you know, you had more than 50% of Latin American men vote for Trump in the last election cycle.

Unfortunately, I think it just like one fell swoop. The left might be handing them Latin Americans back as a voting block, because just as you know, you might say, well, a lot of Latin Americans know somebody who had their lives upturned by ice raids. Pretty much every Latin American also knows somebody who had their life destroyed by Maduro.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like even if you are not Venezuelan, for example, we lived in Peru and then we would get grocery deliveries from a. Venezuelan refugees. We would take Uber rides from Venezuelan refugees and we would hear their stories. We had job applicants who were Venezuelan refugees, like we were surrounded by it.

Well, so

Malcolm Collins: I think that this is [00:05:00] what people miss and I wanna, I wanna talk about this, right? Yeah. ‘cause this is not a local to Venezuelan issue. No, we didn’t. Piss off Venezuelan refugees. When you try to stand Maduro, the u the American left. And this shows like when, when Zora Ani is doing this, when you know any, any of these figures are doing this, the pope is doing this, right?

Mm-hmm. It just shows me that these people like genuinely are completely disconnected from the Latin American community. Or they would know how verboten it is. To take a, this stance and I’ll explain to our viewers why. Because if you’re not really in with the Latin American community, you might not know why every Latin America or, or a huge chunk of the Latin American community is extremely anti medora.

Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: So.

Malcolm Collins: You know how in the United States we’ve been complaining about that giant immigrant wave that’s causing us all of those problems? Oh, so bad, so terrible. The i, the Venezuelan refugee wave drugs that are potentially being made in Venezuela now, no. The [00:06:00] drugs are actually made more distributed.

I don’t think that’s a good reason for doing this. There’s a lot of trick made in Colombian stuff too, but of the Venezuelan, and keep in mind, a third of Venezuela. Left their country as refugees of that third, only 14% went to the United States. 85% went to much smaller surrounding Latin American countries.

Hmm. Latin America has been collectively, especially people from South America, have been living alongside these Venezuelan refugees for a very long time.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Moreover than that. The way that they relate to these refugees is not the way America relates to these refugees. So Latin America more broadly especially South America, has been a bit of a game of musical chairs for the past few decades.

One country’s economy would collapse. They’d get a dictator. They’d have a huge refugee population that would go live in another country. [00:07:00] Now, when Peru’s economy crashed and when Columbia’s economy crashed, you know who was doing well during those periods? Oh, Venezuela. So a lot of them went to live in Venezuela, and Venezuela was very good to them during that period, or at least treated them with a degree of hospitality.

So when Venezuela’s economy crashed these countries and the, the huge refugee wage started coming in, they were like, this causes some problems for us, but they were there when we needed it. We have to be there when they need it.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Right.

Malcolm Collins: This is very different from the situation we’re dealing with the United States now.

They all ended up hating Venezuelan refugees eventually. They overstayed their welcome. It was a longer crash than they expected, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But it meant that they got to know these people. And when I say know these people, as Simone said, we lived in Peru. We have a, also a huge Latin American audience.

Our last company was entirely staffed with Latin Americans [00:08:00] other than us. Our new company, our fab reality fabricator, the AI chat engine. Everyone who works on it other than us is Latin American with one of them being Venezuelan, by the way, living in Venezuela right now. Right. Like I’m talking to him about this and he’s like, oh yeah, you know, I had family members who were killed by the regime.

Stuff like that. Oh my gosh. I mean, most people have we’ll, we’ll get into like the death numbers, but they were killing you know, you, I think it was well over a hundred people a day at, at, at certain points. They, it was, they were griping children. Like it was terrible. They had a, a systemic like sex violence thing where they would take women and imprison them and then they’d have to trade sex for food in the prison system.

Oh,

Simone Collins: Oh. You

Malcolm Collins: regime was genuinely horrifying. Okay. I

Simone Collins: didn’t know about that. I, yeah, I mean, I just, I mean, ‘cause I just worked with like the, the, the travel agencies and the airlines and the payment processors that we worked with in Venezuela, and they were just like outta the powers out again. Like, I just thought it was just terrible infrastructure.

The [00:09:00] government didn’t work anymore. But you’re this, you’ve seen the videos

Malcolm Collins: of the giant armored vans running over people on the street.

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: What.

I was looking for videos of this to post, and then I realized they were all going to get this video flagged and taken down, so you don’t want to see it anyway.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so they did a protest and they just had these giant armored tank things run through giant crowds of protestors fast, like driving through them over and over again.

Simone Collins: Oh, just kind of mowing them down? Just, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: that was a, they, they, they, yeah. No, that was really, really horrifying. And if you Oh gosh. Spoke against them, you’d be arrested. Your family. Yeah. And kids were arrested too. A lot of children were arrested.

Speaker 5: Venezuela and Venezuela, people are criticizing Trump for what he did in Venezuela.

Minor were tortured. Girls were forced to prostitute themselves in prisons just to get food. Where were all of you then? Where were all of you liberals? Where were all of you? Where were all of you? You said nothing. You did nothing. But now you suddenly care about international [00:10:00] law.

I mean, now you all talk about human rights. Maduro didn’t lead Venezuela. He kidnapped an entire country., We’re thankful. You can divide politics all you want, but don’t tell Venezuelans. Do not tell Venezuelans how to feel about being free from dictatorship.

Malcolm Collins: So really horrifying. Really horrifying. We’re gonna get to all of that.

We’re gonna get to all that. But what I wanted to point out here is we’re not speaking of this as people who like, don’t know what we’re talking about. We used to split our time between Miami and Peru. Right. So we’ve lived in the environments where these communities are. Well, and

Simone Collins: specifically we didn’t even live in Miami.

We lived in Doral, also known as Doral. Zu, yeah. It was like the Venezuelan contingent of the Miami area,

Malcolm Collins: our previous companies. Dominant market. We were actually like the dominant travel provider in Venezuela. We would regularly have employees do trips to Venezuela and meet with all the people that we had in Venezuela.

Like it was like we were really connected with Venezuela. Like Venezuela was [00:11:00] our in the Venezuela community was like our. Bread and butter for years, right? If you look at the, the, the images that you’re seeing now of these giant crowds cheering, if you, you, you see this in Venezuela. You see this in Times Square.

You see this in Miami, you see this in New York, you see this in Argent, you see this in Spain, in Madrid. This makes sense for these communities. But what I wanna talk about. Before I go into all the memes, before I go into all the, the hilariousness about this, ‘cause there is a lot of hilariousness about this, is I wanna talk about the thing that you’re probably not getting as much, which is what’s happening now, what’s gonna happen next for the country what Trump seems to be signaling so.

What Trump has signaled is that he wants Maduro’s, former second in command. I don’t know if you’re staying on top of this, Simone trusted vice, the

Simone Collins: vice, the female vice president.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Hardcore socialist to take over and run things. Not Nobel Prize lady and Nobel Prize lady is shocked about this.

Well,

Simone Collins: Marco Rubio’s answer to that was like, well, I don’t, she’s out of the country like these, the people that [00:12:00] we really like just aren’t in Venezuela right now. Was his answer If memory serves well, so I think that I don’t, I mean, I don’t think that’s like a, a feasible answer. They can just fly her in, but.

Malcolm Collins: So I wanna talk about why he made this decision from my perspective and the intelligence of this decision.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: I think it was an incredibly mature is I guess the word that, that, that best fits this decision. Mature and pragmatic. So right now. Head of Venezuela is taken out, right? You have the rest of the government continuing to operate, right?

Mm-hmm. So suppose Trump comes in and he says, we are gonna replace the candidate, the top person with somebody who has dedicated their entire life to rooting all of you out of. Right. Making sure all of you lose your jobs, lose your positions of power, lose your military commands when you put it

Simone Collins: that way,

Malcolm Collins: free all of the dissonances who have been against you from the prison camps and [00:13:00] everything like that.

Mm-hmm. How are people gonna react to this No serious. Like what, what’s gonna happen? What’s gonna happen? I’ll tell you what happens. Mm-hmm. The existing military says, oh, well we need to resist this. We maybe even need to counterstrike the United States. You know, ship fleet. We need to abduct American civilians potentially to teach America a lesson.

Mm-hmm. We need to you know, all of that. Right. Like it’s, it’s, it’s a bad situation. Right. Well, and even,

Simone Collins: even independent of the military, the Trump administration knows all too well how hard it is to govern with an antagonistic deep state. So. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and, and, and you, what if you try to put up a, a, you know, so you, you have that whole situation.

Yes. Worse, what you could have is, suppose he just takes out Maduro and he doesn’t say who he wants to run the country, and he sort of leaves it up for grads. Maybe you people have a revolution, maybe you don’t have a revolution. Right. Or, or worse, he’s like, we would like this other lady, Nobel prize lady.

But we’re not gonna put her in a position to power [00:14:00] ourselves. We’re not gonna do a military occupation of Venezuela, which I don’t think anyone in America wants, right? No. So then what do you have? You have a revolution in the country, right? I And, and, and revolutions. Nobody wants a revolution, right? I don’t care how bad an existing regime is.

Revolution is almost always worse for the everyday person. Totally. Yeah. And people are going to die en mass in a revolution. It’s gonna be horrible. Right. No, as suppose this other thing happened. Now, this lady had already gone on being like, oh, it was a horrible Amir and aggression. She said a lot of bad things about Trump after this.

But Trump said when he made this, that he’s had decisions, suppose her and the, you know, democracy lady, Nobel Prize lady. And he said that this lady has more friends in positions of power, which is true, and she has more supporters in the country right now, of course, which may not be true. But I really think this is what he meant.

If you, if you peel back the reality of it, this [00:15:00] lady is a cold political operator who’s been doing this for a long time. Other lady is a sky high idealist, right? Who wants, a, a, a beautiful, wealthy, you know, free everything future for her country. And those people don’t generally make the best decisions in positions of power.

Mm-hmm. Whereas the ruthless pragmatists do. Now the second thing I’m gonna note here, it’s a lot of people have noted it seemed oddly easy for Trump to capture Maduro, right? Like, we didn’t lose any military equipment. We didn’t lose any troopers. Russian bots are seizing over this ‘cause this is what they wanted to do in Ukraine.

One was saying like, oh, you know, it’s clearly they had help from the inside. You know this, this isn’t a big thing to be proud of. And then everyone underneath him was like, that’s what you tried to do. You just. Failed at it. Yeah. Right. Like, that’s how you do this when you’re doing this. Right. But I think that we have some idea of who that help may have been this [00:16:00] whole Trump saying, oh, this lady’s lovely.

I’ve talked a lot with her. Why is Trump talked so much this lady? Oh. And then this lady immediately being like, this was horrible. How could the United States do this? Are you guys gonna do anything in retaliation? No, actually, we’re signing a bunch of oil deals with them now. I, I think, I know, I think everyone knows Nice who may have been our mole operating this.

I think we may have had many a mole in this operation, but I think we know who one of them was. And that’s how you do this. That’s how you do a correct regime change. Yeah. You go to someone like her and you go, look, and I was, I was talking with the you know, VIPs because we do our meet and greet and everything about this, and I go look, and I basically predicted where this was gonna go.

Right. I, I thought they tried to, at least for Optus, get the know all price lady more involved. But I said, really most of what they’re going to do is try to keep the existing government structure in place as much as possible. Mm-hmm. And the reason they’re going to do that is because then people don’t have a reason to fight back.

But even more these existing government people can be like. Yeah, I [00:17:00] mean, it’s bad that you took Maduro and you violated our sovereignty and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But. You know, it is true that he made a number of miscalculations, and I think I can probably do things a bit better and it’s gonna be much, much easier with all that American oil money coming in, because if you don’t know why Venezuela was so poor, it was.

Two reasons. The biggest reason was not the sanctions. It was that their oil plants didn’t function. There’s tons of places in the world that we sanctioned but still managed to sell their oil, like Russia. The reason why Venezuela couldn’t do it is because they instead of investing in repairing the oil facilities that they privatized, which they needed to do repair, upgrade, repair, upgrade, they just always steal and grift that money.

That was what the government did and the repairs never happened. And now it’s at like. 2.1% capacity or you mean

Simone Collins: nationalized, right? Not privatized. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: sorry, nationalized. It’s at like 1.5% is capacity or something like that. I think it, it might even be like [00:18:00] 0.5%. Like basically none of the rigs even work anymore.

Oh my gosh.

And so, we’re sending in our oil companies now, which Trump has already talked about. To invest billions into the country, right? Like American companies. Now, this isn’t gonna cost America anything. ‘cause now these companies are worth more, right? Mm-hmm. Like they’re investing because it increases their valuation and their American companies, which is fantastic.

It’s a virtuous cycle, right? And then all of these existing political operators get to say, Hey, look at how much better I’ve made your life since Maduro left. Like, look at how much better things are, right? We’ll, we’ll maintain some semblance of the socialized system. It just won’t be as extreme as it was so before.

And that’s easy to do now that we have all this money. Now this doesn’t get Trump looking like a big coming in hero. Like I think many people would like, I think many people think he snubbed Nobel prize lady because she got the Nobel Prize and he didn’t. I don’t believe that at all. She don dedicated her Nobel Prize to him.

She spoke very highly of him. She spoke against the community. I think he’s talked to her. He talked to the other lady and he just went with the lady who he thought would lead to [00:19:00] less likelihood of revolt in bloodshed. And I think that that was. Ultimately, if your concern is for the people of Venezuela, he made the right choice.

Yeah, it’ll take longer to heal. A lot of bad people who did bad things will stay in position of power. But if your pure calculation is. I want as few Venezuelans to die as possible, and I want the highest probability of a stable increase in the in, in the, in the region as possible. This was the pragmatic call, and it was a call that required a sacrifice on behalf of Trump.

Now, the next thing that comes after this is really interesting to me is now that we know that we can do this, like mm-hmm. Trump war bop style strategy. We talked about this in our foreign policy video. Now that we know that we can do this. Well, why don’t we just do this to everyone we hate? Right? Like they’re already Cuba was like, well, should Cuba be worried?

And Cuba is like a big problem in Venezuela. ‘cause Cuba basically took [00:20:00] over Venezuela, like Cuban operatives took over all the Venezuela and like intelligence positions, and then a lot of high level positions. So Venezuela was actually sort of a vassal state of Cuba at this point. Right. Really?

Simone Collins: I’d read a like.

I’d read about that a little bit, but honestly, I, I, I purposefully have not read up a much about Venezuela because just, it makes me so depressed after so many years with our business just trying to make things work and dealing with people there, and I’m like, I just don’t wanna, I don’t wanna know anymore.

It’s so bad. It’s so bad. So what was going on? What, why? Well, like was Maduro actively in some kind of collaborative. Project with

Malcolm Collins: Cuba? No, it’s more that Cuba is just slightly more intelligent and had better systems than Venezuela did, and used it to put people in positions of power and milk, Venezuela of all this money.

Okay, so

Simone Collins: you’re basically saying that Cuban operatives were embedded within the Venezuelan government and, and. Making deals that [00:21:00] favored Cuba and, and aligning with Cuba Yes. In ways that were perhaps more advantageous to Cuba than they were to Venezuela.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Venezuela was a milking farm for Cuba. I mean, keep in mind who you’re talking with, Maduro, who was a former, you can’t say the

Simone Collins: word milking farm anymore in our modern society.

Right,

Malcolm Collins: right. After the morning Star and milking farm after. After the incident. Simone, I mean, just keep in mind the two heads of these two countries, right? Uhhuh, you’ve got Maduro, who’s a Buffoonish bus driver before he comes into power or without the one before him. Yeah. And then on the other side you’ve got Fidel Castro who, yeah.

Grew up a, a, an ultra rich kid. Went to all of the best education opportunities, you know, classist much Malcolm. I’m just saying, you know, one’s run by a capitalist who just happened to be in aist. Position? No, just country for all it’s worth. I mean, but anyway, I want to continue with what happens next?

So, Greenland, you’re next, by the way. I love it that Trump was like, well, we really need to focus on Greenland now, and Europe is freaking out. But could we do this in [00:22:00] Columbia? Could we could, there’s, there’s, because they’ve even talked about doing it in Columbia. So if I was gonna be like, where would I do this?

Where would I not do this? Do this in Cuba if we need to, but there’s just not a lot of the reason to do it in Cuba. It’s not really in our financial best interest to do it in Cuba. We can’t really milk Cuba for anything in the way we can milk Venezuela, which has both gold and oil by the way. And.

Cuba’s not an active threat to us anymore, so I just don’t even know if it’s worth it. The main reason to do it to Cuba is for votes to further solidify the Cuban American voting Block which is a large and already right-leaning voting block, and it’s been a wet dream for many of them for many years.

I mean, Rubio is salivating at the chance to do this. But again, that’s not really pro-America, right? Like getting Venezuelan oil with no casualties. That’s pro-America, right? But Cuba, whatever. The other thing that’s interesting about this game, the one you’re

Simone Collins: looking for too, is America First, which was a core element of the Trump administration’s strategic initiatives or a strategic direction when it comes to global policy going [00:23:00] forward.

I have to ask, and of course Trump is being asked about this as well, is, well, how is this American first? Why is this America first? But I do think that a, a big part of the national security strategy that many people weren’t really paying attention to was that. The America First strategy also involved a shift toward interest in the American continent, away from the Middle East, away from, yeah.

Venezuela

Malcolm Collins: is an active threat to the United States. To have a country that hostile to us, that close to us and, and be that big is, is not nice. Like it’s, and, and Russia and China. There’s a famous video of the guy online who’s just like, I love what he is saying. He’s, he is a Venezuelan who’s like, he was talking to a reporter and the reporter is like, well, d you know, America is just here to take all your, your oil. And he goes, what do you think China and Russia were here for? Are Tilos or some like classic Venezuelan edition or Alpos or something? Not familiar.

Speaker 6: que los gringos solo quieren el [00:24:00] petróleo y los gringos solo quieren sus riquezas. O sea, a esas personas. Les pregunto que querían los rusos y los chinos durante tanto tiempo la receta de la arepa .

Malcolm Collins: And, and I thought this is true. I was like, what?

You know, they put a, a murderous psychopath in power. Right. You know? And, and what I also love is Trump didn’t even put like a capitalist in power. He’s like, nah. Yeah, just another. It’s socialist, right? Just keep the

Simone Collins: vp. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That’s, that’s how you, that’s how you do South American cues. You don’t need to put the, the fascist in power every time, you know?

We didn’t, we didn’t understand this in the sixties, so like, Columbia, don’t do it in Columbia. Columbia is a, yeah. What’s wrong with Columbia? Since when was

Simone Collins: Columbia in falling apart?

Malcolm Collins: Cuba, no reason to do it. Greenland would be hilarious. Yes. And just be f*****g funny. And Greenland for the lulls. Yes.

Greenland for the lulls. Just take the president of Greenland, arrest him. Everyone would be confused. Like, what, what do we even do now? Right? No, but I would do it to Greenland, literally for the mean [00:25:00] potential. But outside of that, for the trolls, you know, Denmark, who, who they’re all about trolls. You gotta do it for the trolls.

Right. I ran. Do not do this in Iran. That’s a bad idea. They’re doing it to

Simone Collins: themselves. It’s fine.

Malcolm Collins: Well, Iran’s trying to do it themselves. They won’t just let Iran die on its own. It’s, it’s irrelevant. But I wanna go over some of the memes, some of the reactions to this, because I think they’ve been really edifying right.

One of the, the funniest scenes that came outta this, I dunno if you saw this Simone, but a New York Times reporter called Trump at 4:30 AM just nine minutes after the Maduro thing was announced. Wow. And he picked up, her answer was in three rings. Oh,

Simone Collins: I’m, I’m sure he’s just, you know, I mean, he, I, this was certainly an all-nighter for him.

It could not have not been, you know.

Malcolm Collins: But I thought it was it just shows how accessible Trump is to people, right? Like, and he is, like, his White House has even been accessible to us. Like we’ve done, you know, going over there, doing consulting for them and [00:26:00] stuff like that. Like, they’re fantastic when they have people with ideas, they want to talk to them, and I, I really appreciate that about them.

Next one here. Somebody saying, I haven’t seen a single of Venezuelan angry, and it’s a lot of Venezuelans partying,

Malcolm Collins: which of course, of course. Yeah, that’s true

Simone Collins: actually. I, I would expect given, because I’ve been trying to watch leftist coverage of this, I would expect them to have surfaced a, an reg aggrieved, Venezuelan at this point, you know?

I would wanna find one if I were covering this from that angle. I’ve not yet seen one, which is actually quite interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I, there’s all these memes of like leftists putting their hands over like white women with like blue hair putting their hands over like brown women’s mouths and being like, let me explain.

I know, I think I know a little bit. Let me tell you how, why Trump freeing you from a dictatorship was bad. It’s and keep in mind when [00:27:00] people are like, oh, this was a, the, the president of another country. No, he wasn’t a president of another country. He didn’t win the election, right. He’s a, a, a guy who stole, like, stole a country and its resources and kept its people as sex.

Slaves. Right? Like that’s basically what he did. Like, that’s, that’s the reality of on the ground, Venezuela. Yeah.

Speaker 7: Yo creo que nadie que entiende la emoción, pero desde mis siete años me tocó vivir en un país donde me arrebataron mi infancia. Me levantaron todo y lo que está sucediendo el día de hoy es increíble. Es increíble. Es consentimiento demasiado grande.

Malcolm Collins: And if you look at the left wing protests one thing that’s been pointed out is there are ties to what is it? China, it appears that they found like smoking guns, that a [00:28:00] lot of the left wing anti protests of this, like in New York and stuff like that, were funded by China.

And if you look at their signs all over the us, they’re all using the same type font, which seems to, they just going to

Simone Collins: the same printer and you know, mass produced, essentially

Malcolm Collins: distributed completely AstroTurf. I mean, that’s what the leftists are. And this is the thing, if you look at the people protesting this because there were major protests in France.

There were major protests in the uk. Really what you’ll notice is. All of the protestors are either white or Middle Eastern. And I think that this really goes to show when we’re talking about who are the real allies. If you look at the video we did yesterday where we point out that both America and Latin America are frontier cultures made up of European colonists.

And we are, our cultures are incredibly similar to each other. Hmm. And that at the end of the day, like we may like riff on each other occasionally but we have a collective enemy, right? And that collective enemy are the Karens. And, and it is this [00:29:00] new Islamist regime that is rising throughout Western countries.

Interesting thing that a lot of people pointed out in regard to this is not not forgetting that Delta forces tried the same tactics in a much weaker Somalia in 1993 and got blown out of the sky by RPGs 18, killed 73 wounded. What happened in Venezuela is nothing special, rather an internal agreement of Maduro surrender and stand down of the military.

So this is oh oh seven, you know, obviously a Russian guy. And all the comments are hilarious on this. People were like, the Americans completed all their objectives for this mission. How many Russians died in the Ukraine without completing any missions? Oh God,

Simone Collins: no. I mean, seeing people. I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins: And then a bunch of people are also like, like, this just isn’t true. But I, I love how Ru butt hurt all the Russian, like trolls and bots are about this, because it just, there was a bunch of Russians recently who were saying like, there’s been some like Russian propaganda saying like. Oh, Trump is [00:30:00] backing down from Venezuela because now he knows he can’t mess with real countries like us, right.

Right. They, they, they basically, I implying that like, we control Venezuela, America’s afraid of us, or, or Venezuela, and Trump is scared of us. Right. And of course they’ve got a lot of egg on their face right now, knowing the other thing that’s

Simone Collins: been Reddit. No. One of our, one of the. Our favorite like, sources of ideas a listener to the podcast, I don’t know if I’m allowed to name you if you’re listening but he, he sent me a, a Reddit post from 34 days ago where someone wrote people treat special forces like they’re space Marines.

No, a dozen guys are not going to infiltrate a hostile country and take out the leadership. Unless the state and defense department is going to be okay with a dozen seals getting their heads chopped off on CNN later. I mean, they made an edit. They wrote edit. They are in fact space Marines, and they are, they shall know.

No fear. Like a lot of people are just. No, it’s been great. A lot of people too, are discussing the prediction markets because I’ve been, [00:31:00] I check to see if there’s anything interesting for the podcast Poly Market, like every other day or so. And it had been a, a big thing on Poly market for a while. Like, will will there be some kind of military conflict in Venezuela?

Will Maduro be out? And there’s been a lot of discussion on how some, someone, a couple people made a lot of money. On this bet, because most, yeah, the, the odds were not in favor of Maduro being right before.

Malcolm Collins: Very interesting. Well, if you’ve been involved in that military operation, that’s a Oh my

Simone Collins: gosh.

Yeah. There’s no laws against that either. I wanna

Malcolm Collins: play this Call of Duty campaign. Right. Like this sounds, this sounds like a cool, like the old Rainbow Six strike game. Like, I love that game. I, I can’t believe they don’t make games like the old rainbow sixes anymore.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: That whole like genre when it extinct, but to to continue with something here that I thought was really interesting.

So this is a post by Asda Normie and it’s who organized and funded the pro Madero demonstrations. I was up when news broke. The [00:32:00] US forces had possibly had a military strike on Caracas. Immediately I knew where to look next, not for confirmation from the Pentagon, but for signals. So she talks to you about her first story about Fox News in my new role as Senior editor of Investigation.

Oh, she works. For, for Fox News now anyway what they discovered as US forces captured Maduro, a paralleled operation began almost instantly in the United States. Rapid coordinated information and street mobilized campaign by a network of self-described socialists, Marxists, and communist organizations.

Mm-hmm. Most of which operate as nonprofits that do not have to pay taxes. For three years, since October 7th I’d been seeing the same thing at protests after protests, Venezuelan flags showing up at anti-Israeli rallies, not randomly, not organically, always alongside the same slogans, the same organizers, the same faces.

That’s when I knew it wasn’t about Gaza or Venezuela, or Peace when activists protested, so blah, blah, blah. I don’t wanna go into all this ‘cause it’s like four pages here. But she goes [00:33:00] into arguing that this is just completely astro turfed. That’s wild.

But anyway for other ones here, there was of course the fantastic and, and the places where you’re seeing really large anti-American protests are places like France. Which I think shows how sort of invaded their country already is because if, if you look at the, the, the nature of these protests, I mean, you, you can tell who’s doing the protesting and who wants Venezuela to continue to be under the the boot of people like Maduro, who,

And, and note Hamas here issues a statement to the US about kidnapping Maduro.

They’re like, don’t run into another country and illegally kidnap people. Which is obviously very rich. A lot of people have been saying it’s very rich that Han Mond one pretended that he was like, informed by, by someone about this. Like, he’s like, I received a briefing. Oh, his

Simone Collins: deputy mayor told him about it.

Malcolm Collins: And I was like, you didn’t receive a breeding, you, you read about it while you were on the [00:34:00] toilet. And Trump would’ve had the honesty to tell us that.

Simone Collins: I don’t know, was like, I don’t know. The deputy mayor was just on x like the rest of us. And I guess Mom, Donnie just can’t even bother to do that.

Malcolm Collins: Of course people love the richness of him saying, you know, you can’t go in and arrest foreign leaders when he’s saying he would do the exact same thing to Netanyahu previously.

This is in Netanyahu, if he went to Manhattan. But still, you know, also Elon, I don’t know if you’ve seen Elon’s reaction to this giving starlink for free to across Venezuela. Which is, which is very fun.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, oh. This is one of the most interesting things that I learned. And I, it actually hasn’t been sur circulated that much, but apparently Trump gave Maduro a final chance to step down.

He refused. CIA, had assets inside Venezuela since August, including a source in Maduro’s inner Circle. Oh, I wonder who that was. Trump deleted. Why do you think Maduro

Simone Collins: didn’t take the 50 million and run.

Malcolm Collins: Nobody took the money, but I think she got something more than 50 million.

Simone Collins: No, no, no. I’m saying Maduro.

They, they offered [00:35:00] him, they were also just like, we’ll give you the money, like you can, I thought they, I don’t know,

Malcolm Collins: maybe they didn’t. But look, there was the 50 million

Simone Collins: reward, but they were also like, Maduro, we’re gonna give you mini, like we will set you up. We know they didn’t, didn’t pay out the money

Malcolm Collins: because Trump said, and I don’t think Trump has the self-control too.

Keep it quiet. If we did pay out the money, said, wow, we saved a lot of money today. No, no. Yeah, no.

Simone Collins: I I, I’m mixing it up. There was a 50 million reward and Trump was like, yeah, well, we don’t have to pay that out, like save that much money. But they, he had also mentioned in the press conference how Maduro had repeatedly been offered.

They would, they would, if you would just leave the country, we’ll set you up, you’ll be all like, you’ll live very comfortably. Just go why do you think he did it? Like, I don’t understand that. ‘cause if I were Maduro I would be like, yeah, my days are numbered. Especially if the United States is like, you know, or, or forthcoming for you.

Malcolm Collins: So I think you gotta remember, Maduro thinks that China and Russia have his back and he doesn’t realize just how weak China and Russia are these days.

Simone Collins: Well, maybe not weak, but like. I [00:36:00] think they just didn’t care that much.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I think that that was a huge miscalculation on his part.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I think a, a theme I’ve seen come up in random places recently is that.

A lot of people in, in various scandals and things that have played out over the past 10 years, who thought that they were, they were doing something with, with coverage from another party that was like more powerful than them, just got utterly. Left in the dust by that party when like sort of the bill was up for payment.

Yeah. And I think that’s something that people should keep in mind in their lives in general. I also

point out like

if someone richer or more powerful than you is like, no, no, no. Do this thing for me. I’ve got your back. Don’t worry. Whatever it takes, do, do this thing. They’re not gonna, if they’re more powerful than you, they owe you nothing and they have no need.

Aside from honor, and please, people aren’t honorable anymore.

Malcolm Collins: Well also keep in mind, even if Maduro took the deal, there’s a lot [00:37:00] of Venezuelans who want this guy tortured and dead, right? Like, well, no,

Simone Collins: but I’m sure the deal would’ve prof, like it would’ve been some kind of witness protection, like you will live in luxury, but somewhere else and under a totally different name, and maybe with like plastic surgery.

Malcolm Collins: Whatever. Anyway, so the point here being CIA had assets since August Trump delayed action to exhaust diplomacy despite pressure to strike Earlier final coordination included Rubio HEGs, desk Ratcliffe and Steven Miller a rare weather window of an open Friday night, which is why it launched then.

Congress kept in the dark until the last moment and Delta force reached the Presidential palace at, at 2:00 AM. The US forces took in return fire and Maduro was running for a hard and safe room, which he failed to reach. And across, apparently

Simone Collins: Trump was watching this all maybe on an iPad, like it was a TV show.

He was like, he was describing it as like, just like tv. It’s great. I love the way Trump talks about that. He makes things so accessible. Like you understand the lack of, of actual romance of these things where like, they’re sitting in a room in [00:38:00] Mar-a-Lago, like, I don’t know, watching a TV or something watching people’s body cams.

It’s delightful.

Malcolm Collins: So the, the protests are being organized by a group called The People’s Forum, which is received 20 million from Neville Signum, a financier with well-documented CCP ties. So that’s who’s organizing this stuff. I just, I just cannot get over this hands off Venezuela stuff I keep seeing

Speaker 13: Free.

The next time you as a Latin American see a trans flag or a Palestinian flag, I want you to remember what you’re seeing at these protests when people tell you that these are harmless ideologies, these are ideologies. That are willing to sacrifice an entire [00:39:00] country of people just so that they don’t have to introspect.

That is what they fundamentally represent. If you notice these protests, you know what you don’t see. You don’t see a single American flag. Okay.

Simone Collins: I mean, their parents even 75 years ago, were only going once a year. So the church isn’t meaningfully seeing that much of a difference. And there are these very strong Catholic communities that are growing in the United States and elsewhere that are very high fertility, that are having a lot of kids.

And that even though they, they may not be. Like fully aligned with the Vatican. They kind of are their own thing. They, they nevertheless represent the future of Catholicism. Yeah. And work in parallel with the Vatican, kind of using it when it, when, or using elements of the church, the, the larger church bureaucracy when convenient for them and then doing their own thing when not, and building strong communities.

And I think there’s really something to be said for that. And I think it’s quite interesting and I’m excited to see. I [00:40:00] guess through the eyes of our children and great grandchildren. ‘cause I mean, it’s gonna take a long time for all this to play out, but what happens to Catholicism over time? But it is definitely a religion to watch.

I mean, it has been for, you know. 2000 years maybe.

Malcolm Collins: I, the reason I bring this up is I was surprised at this. I, I thought that the Vatican would not go that far. I thought that they would like , I sometimes think I’m straw manning them or something. Like they’re not actually that anti-America that they would literally stand mad Maduro.

And again,

Simone Collins: I mean, but that’s, I feel like that’s, that is the out of touch v again, that’s just doing, its. Thing. It’s kind of like that, you know that uncle at dinner who says something off color at the Thanksgiving Day table, and you’re like, that’s just, that’s just Uncle James. You know? Like, it’s fine.

That’s just Uncle James being Uncle James. Yeah. Like he does that sometimes, you know, like, we’re, we’re fine over here. We’re we’re good people. All right. Just don’t worry about it. He’s, he just, you know, he’s off doing his thing. He’s got a lot of [00:41:00] money. All right. You know, he posts good parties.

Malcolm Collins: it, it looks so bad.

It looks so absolutely horrible to, and I’m, and again, I’m, I’m talking here about the wider Latin American community. I just have to guess that these people have no Latin American friends or like, I, I don’t understand. Like, what is your take on this?

Simone Collins: It’s so hard to say. I really. I mean, of course, I, I, I am not surprised by the left condemning him and by the EU condemning him.

This is a, a presidential administration acting unilaterally without acts of Congress, without all this approval. This idea that one country can just go in and take out someone claiming to be president of another country. It disrupts a lot of what people thought. You know, they, they expected to be consulted on this.

You know, people are very insulted by that. Yeah. But you didn’t [00:42:00] ask Congress. How

Malcolm Collins: did you ask Congress about something this

Simone Collins: you don’t like? That’s the thing, and, and I, I really appreciate the Trump administration has just. Stopped, like, I think during the first administration they attempted to do things the correct way.

Like, okay, we’re gonna work through the departments, we’re gonna try to pass the legislation, we’re gonna do the things. And now they realize it’s just never gonna happen if you do it that way. And so they’re, they’re doing it their own way. And, you know, well, you want to stop me. All right. Well try to stop me and then, oh, okay.

You. You know, you use the judicial branch to, to block me. Alright. Well I kind of like how Andrew Jackson with the various actions was just like, okay, well. What Army, you know, we, we’ve come back to that, but I’m also trying to point out that there is historical precedent. The Trump administration is not the first to act unilaterally and even disregard other, other branches of government.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But the left is

Simone Collins: always going to have the orange man bad reaction. If suddenly [00:43:00] Trump decried like actions against Gaza as as genocide, I feel like the left would suddenly have to be like. Well, well, actually Gaza is no. Like, they would have to, they would have to change. Well, the

Malcolm Collins: left, after he ended the Gaza war, the left had to be like, we didn’t care about that to begin with.

That that wasn’t a big deal. That was not a big deal. That does not deserve a Nobel. But I mean, I feel like

Simone Collins: if Trump suddenly started standing Gaza, then they would be like, well, I don’t know about that. Or like, I dunno, they have to, there’s, they cannot agree with, with Orange Man. So.

Malcolm Collins: Well, what I found really interesting is that the Colombian president and the Mexican president boast decried this you know, I, that, that is not, I, obviously they’re both very unpopular right now and leftists.

And so I can understand why. So how is this

Simone Collins: a surprise to you?

Malcolm Collins: Well. Even with their own people again in, unless you are just fantastically wealthy, which it might be the case, maybe the wealthy people in these countries [00:44:00] are shielded from having to interact with Venezuelans. But normal people in these countries interact with Venezuelans all the time.

Simone Collins: And I Right, but I mean, well, I, I also like, basically, if you are not very, very comfortable in your alliance with the Trump administration at this time, and you are in the Americas. I think you were now aware of the fact that if the Trump administration really thinks they can win points, you know, if it’s a 90 to 10 issue among normal people that you know, you would get switched out, then you might get The other thing about this before I

Malcolm Collins: go further on other things is.

This operation has a huge side benefit for Trump and America more broadly which is that it vastly increases our hand in all forward looking international negotiations.

Simone Collins: Oh, why? Just because people are like, well, they, they know that if we don’t get a deal that we like, we’re just gonna take something anyway.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. People didn’t know that just being kidnapped in the middle of the night was an option before, [00:45:00]

Simone Collins: like, this is So Bob based diplomacy though, like the, the, the, they’re following the strategy document just as we said they would, which is, Hey, we’re gonna warn you, just like with our kids, we warn them, we say, Hey.

Don’t do that. You know, you could really get hurt doing that. Don’t do that. Don’t do that. And then like, if they, if they do not respond and continue to do the thing, and you saw Trump try to give him an out, he delayed it. Like they, he delayed had so many warnings,

Malcolm Collins: which shows that he was being incredibly pragmatic and incredibly thought out and incredibly of safe in the way he did this.

But I think the even more terrifying thing about this, if you are say Kim Jong-un or something right now is. Who Trump put in power after this, that it was his second in command. Yeah. Because if you are Kim Jong-Un or something like that, you’re gonna be like America. You’re not gonna like, just take me out.

Like you wouldn’t get what you want, then you wouldn’t get a full regime change, you know? And then Trump needs to be like, no, no, no, no. Is there anyone else in this country with a [00:46:00] lot of power that would like to see you gone? Because we can give them your job. What about that guy over there? He’s wearing a lot of medals and he is like, well, he’s been my most loyal supporter for X many.

Mm-hmm. But if you weren’t there anymore and he had everything you have now, do you really think he’d come to save you? And that’s the most terrifying thing to any actual dictator in a negotiation. Oh

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Trump not saying. Oh, we’re gonna replace your government with a capitalist government. It’s who’s the next most powerful person in the room?

Why don’t I have my staff have a private meeting with them? Yeah, like you do the negotiations with one guy, then you do the negotiations with the next most powerful person in the country. Then you’re like, let’s see who breaks first. Which is no, I

Simone Collins: guess that that really was a smart move to, to promote from within and also to not go in and try to state build, because I think we’ve all seen how that goes.

Don’t, don’t [00:47:00] put your own people in, just let them. Handle it yourselves. Don’t, don’t encourage revolution. Just yeah. Just basically show what happens when you don’t comply with us. And align their incentives more with reform. Yeah. From, from within. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that was really smart. Now the, the one that really got me on this

Simone Collins: almost because I would love, ‘cause I feel like the, the next in line with the, the Kim dynasties is his sister or his daughter.

Either, which would be great.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Always somebody willing to, to collaborate on this stuff would be delighted.

Simone Collins: Would be delighted, be

Malcolm Collins: like, and, and, and, and the, and the thing is, is they get such an easy win. You’re like, not only will I take you out, not only will I put your, your daughter in command, but I will release all sanctions and start investing billions in your country immediately after that.

Making them look really good.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like,

Simone Collins: and I feel like already, like they have such a different look. Like, I think [00:48:00] she. The daughter that is like recently went on Ozempic, like she’s on a whole new look. She’s, I mean, she’s been high fashion. Like all, all the, all the like high female figures in North Korea have, are like very subtle, high fashion like very expensive designer shoes and bags.

But I mean, they’re, they’re very clearly pretty westernized. I don’t know, I just feel like it would be a really interesting directional change.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Well,

Simone Collins: hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So, the thing that really got me on this, ‘cause often I am, I feel like I straw man the Vatican, right? Like, I’m like, oh, the Vatican is like anti-US on every policy measure.

And, and, and generally aligned with the forces of global evil. Like they, they, they, to me, I joked in the last episode and the thing that I added, it’s always weird to me talking to like one of our. Like really nice, like Catholic friends, because I really like Catholics as people. I like Catholics as people even more than like, Jesus Catholics

Simone Collins: are so awesome,

Malcolm Collins: but the, the Vatican is just always evil.

Like, it, [00:49:00] it’s like an evil maxing organization and I don’t always expect them to like, it’s like, sir, we have a problem with pedophiles throughout our organization. Well, let’s cover it up and reation them. You know, or, you know, I talk about them being involved in like socialist coups and stuff like that, and constantly saying we need to let in infinite immigrants to our country.

And even saying that to Italians when they, nobody’s perfect one point.

Simone Collins: Come on Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: But, but the Pope, who by the way popes have been many, many pictures was Maduro Popes love Maduro Pope’s all about Maduro, right? Yeah, but the

Simone Collins: most recent Pope, no, he said in

Malcolm Collins: response to this, the current Pope said in response to this, okay, it is with deep concern that I am following the events in Venezuela.

The good of my beloved Venezuelan people prevail over every other consideration. This must lead to the overcoming of violence and the pursuit of pathways of justice and. I pray for all of this and I invite you two in trusting our prayer for the intercession of our [00:50:00] Lady Komoto and the Saint Jose Gregorio Hernandez and Carmen Rendez hashtag Pray Together and he’s giving basically of

Simone Collins: corrupt socialist dictators or what.

Malcolm Collins: I clearly, he’s on the Maduro side. He’s like, the US should not be doing that. That’s what I read from this, this vague posting is, is this is a condemnation of the United States in our actions, and it should make sense. The Pope was a staunch ally of Maduro and his regime. And, and the Vatican was. And I, I love some of the comments on this.

The Vatican offers platitudes while America delivers liberation. Your call for peace functions as a shield for a socialist tyrant starving his own flock. The church once understood that evil must be destroyed. Now it offers cover to butchers under the guides of diplomacy. And then another post here, Pope Leo, Leo, the

14th woke up and decided to do a little bit of vague posting. Please let us know when you’re ready to stop [00:51:00] divining through the clouds. May go to quotes from the Bible basically saying you’re not supposed to do this. Like John 1629 in one curr, 14, nine. And it’s it, and he wasn’t posting complaints when, you know, Maduro is running people over with cars or treating his population as rape slaves.

He’s, he is offering this when we. Go in and clean up the mess. Right? And, and keep in mind that if the Vatican wanted to be a force for good in the world, they could be like the Vatican in a deeply Catholic country like Venezuela. It could have gone into the country and said, Hey like, we need to work this out.

You weren’t actually elected. Can we do so? Like, let’s, let’s try to work this out with this person. Let’s come up with a peaceful resolution. Here’s how we can help you. The Vatican could have played the negotiator in this. They could have. Fought for the forces of good. They could have fought against the mass tortures and the mass rapists and the mass, everything.

But no, it is the removing that situation, which is the threat to the world order that they have established. And I [00:52:00] just and I joked in the other episode is, you know, we like our, our, our Catholic fans, but it’s a bit like knowing that one of our fans like works for Hydra or something and you’re talking to them and

they’re like, oh yeah, the red skull. Well, you know, the top of Hydra’s really corrupt these days and they’re always getting into crazy stuff. I don’t really listen to them anymore. And. You know, they, they, most, most hydro henchmen aren’t really that into the, the red skulls ideology anyway. We would just really believe in the organization, it’s roots, it’s history and, and you’re like, you, you point to the history, you know, it’s like the, the, the.

What, what, what, what? But I, and I joked with that episode. I love that this is what we think that our, like Catholic followers look like going to, Roman mass.

Speaker 23: [00:53:00] Quit

By the way, I feel at this point I’m almost trying to dare press to say something about this because. I cannot believe that I can say this. Many things antagonistic about a religion and culture on our show, and yet, the news media won’t touch it yet. A person can say Islam can be questioned on their door and they get arrested.

Or if I said one, one. Billionth of this against Jewish people, I would be literally dragged outta my house. Like this is crazy. How much no one cares What you say about Catholics.

Malcolm Collins: But the point being is that I don’t get it. Like I I I do not get how even in Latin America, and we, we are seeing mass Latin American deconversion from Catholicism right now.

For people who don’t know. While it may look like you have a big conversion wave because for whatever reason, I wanna do a separate episode [00:54:00] on this, a lot of intellectual influencers. Are converting to Catholicism. If you look at the actual masses they’re losing eight converts for every one person who converts in, which is dramatically higher than any other Christian.

Sorry, that number was an underestimation. It’s 8.4 lee for everyone who converts in. When you contrast that with Protestants, where it’s 1.8 levers per convert,

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: But the I think a, the argument that you’ll hear from a lot of Catholics, including many of our fans, is. Those people who are allegedly deconvert are also like they were functionally never Catholic to begin with. Maybe they were born Catholic and their parents took them to church once a year and they went to church once a year.

And then eventually on surveys they just started saying, yeah, I’m not really. Really Catholic. And because Catholic started off with so many people who were just culturally Catholic for a long time,

Malcolm Collins: that makes a lot of sense now that

Simone Collins: it’s no longer cool and also no longer normative. People are just no longer reporting on surveys in large and larger numbers.

But functionally, the church isn’t really. Seeing any [00:55:00] loss. These weren’t people who were actively contributing or to, or involved in the community to begin with.

Malcolm Collins: By the way, Chicago’s teacher Union, if you’re worried about your kids, and you should be, if they’re in school, well, are

Simone Collins: are they coming out about Venezuela because that’s, oh yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The Chicago’s teacher Union had an emergency Chicago protest. No War on Venezuela.

Simone Collins: Because student outcomes really have to do with what is happening in Venezuela, and there is no war in Venezuela. They should be the whole point.

Malcolm Collins: What, what’s really disgusted me is they’re all like, we’re doing this to protect the Venezuelans and it’s like our Venezuelan students and stuff like that.

Right?

Simone Collins: Meanwhile, the kids, the kids sitting in the classrooms, I don’t, I, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh, there’s a really heartbreaking, one of the, the mom who went to one of these protests who’s like a Venezuelan mom and freaking out on them,

Speaker 11: Qué le pasó? Están así? Qué pasó? 26 años, 26 años. Llevamos esperando ese momento. [00:56:00] Ustedes vienen los que los que dicen llamar la paz

Malcolm Collins: and you can really see the pain in her face that they are protesting this. Oh, what?

She’s just

Simone Collins: like, do you not understand what you’re saying? Yikes. What, what is she?

Malcolm Collins: She, oh, she’s just going over like what her and her family have been through, you know? Oh. Like she’s trying

Simone Collins: to explain to them why they should be stoked about.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, because they’re like, how dare you do this for at least Madora.

Like obviously these people are like terrified of Madora being released. I’m just really impressed with the Trump administration. I I, I think the next person we really need to do this to is Tim Waltz. So we can save, save. What, what is he governor of from the Somalian scammers. What? Tim Waltz, governor Tim Waltz.

Oh, that he’s not gonna run again? No. That we need to extradite him. Oh. To a place where we can charge him from his compound, you know. Oh, oh my gosh. That needs to be that. I, [00:57:00] I, I love, I, I I, it is just so cool that this is on the table now, that the Trump administration was able to carry this out, that they have handled this so pragmatically.

And I think a lot of people’s lives are going to slowly but, but hopefully get a lot better as a result of this. Yes. And it will fundamentally both change Latin America, but I also think. Change the a Latin American. And if, if, if you’re wondering, if you’re like, come on guys, you can’t have an entire Latin American community feel a forever debt to a political party and lose them forever, right?

It’s like, I’d like to introduce you to the Cuban American population. You may not realize just how long this betrayal is going to sit with the Venezuelan American population.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Anyway, I can’t believe

that happened. Again, the timeline, this timeline, this [00:58:00] timeline. It’s a good timeline.

Malcolm Collins: Crazy. I like this.

Anyway. Love you, Simone. I love you too, and I’m glad that we live in this world. And somebody tried to assassinate JD Vance with a hammer. I don’t even, I’m not even gonna do like a thing. Like I don’t even think that this, I don’t care what his ideology was. He’s clearly too stupid. If you try to assassinate the president, the vice president of the United States with a hammer,

Simone Collins: the one and only.

A murder scene I’ve ever seen in my life though, is with a hammer. I will never see a hammer and not see the murdered body that I saw. I, I told you about this before that like we had this career day in like middle school where we got to go to an Oakland. Courthouse and like talk with lawyers and judges and learn about the justice system.

They took a bunch of kids to see somebody. We had a pizza party in one of the courtrooms and there was a, there was a board and I, I can’t remember if it was like a clerk or someone else who was, you know, giving us a little talk over our pizza lunch. But they were like, oh yeah, [00:59:00] we just had a murder trial in here.

Do you wanna see the evidence poster? And ev of course, we’re all like, yeah. And he flips it over and it was, it was the, the, the murder victim who had been taken out by a hammer. So yeah, baby Simone traumatized. I’m not traumatized. I, I, it wasn’t disturbing to me in the moment. I, I don’t know if it’s like an autism thing.

I didn’t know I was autistic at the time, but like part of me is just like. I mean, it was it dead? Like I just, I mean, you’re, you’re going to evaluate hammers differently after you see what a hammer can do to the human head.

Malcolm Collins: All right. Alright, well, it’s been good talking to you. This is a spectacular day.

This is I, I’d say a better day for, for the world than the end of the Gaza War. You know, truly this one,

At the end of the day, the Gaza War was about freeing a tiny handful of hostages from a country that most of the rest of the world didn’t really care about that much in a conflict. , Venezuela is a country [01:00:00] that tons of the world, especially if you’re in America or in American, , and I mean north, south to Latin, you know, central, , has connections to, it was about freeing an entire country of hostages.

Simone Collins: honestly, like the EU and all these countries that are having a conniption with us, it’s great for them too, because now they get to go to their constituencies and pontificate about how.

Absolutely horrible. The Trump administration is so everyone gets, everyone gets gr for the mill. Everyone gets, you know, and in the end, Venezuelan citizens within the country. Well, it strengthens Latin

Malcolm Collins: America. It strengthens America because we can lower the amount of refugees, drugs, and stuff like that coming into our country.

Yeah. It, it strengthens the Republican party. It strengthens its right wing causes. Yeah.

Simone Collins: The only loser is our, is our poor travel business. Everyone getting so mad about their canceled flights, the refunds and the logistics around that.

Malcolm Collins: I’m sorry, Simone. I know you’re doing a

Simone Collins: [01:01:00] lot. But all for a greater cause.

Not that our customers would recognize that in some cases, some people, most people are very understanding. Some people are not. I mean, you know, God forbid. But they cancel your flight when the countries and disarray, but whatever, whatever. Love you. Oh yeah. There was, they made a big blackout, didn’t they?

Or did it something like that. Yeah, they did.

Malcolm Collins: Tactically, Trump bragged about it. He was like, you, you don’t

Simone Collins: wanna be flying

when that’s happening. No. Just, I just, I mean,

Malcolm Collins: I feel like Trump feels like he got a new toy and his administration is thinking how to play with it, right? Like it’s delightful.

Simone Collins: Yeah. We could do this.

We could just take Randall Try. Gotta take Yeah. Like, yeah. Who else can Who? Let’s do it again. Do me, do me.

Malcolm Collins: Do

Simone Collins: me?

Malcolm Collins: No, everyone in the administration that’s got of guy, you know, as I said, like Rubio desperately wants to freak Cuba. He’s like, me. My turn, my turn. Can we do a Cuba? Can we do a Cuba? [01:02:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah, seriously.

Okay. All right. I love you. Bye bye. Bye.

Which one would you like to do next? We can do inter nationalism or we do? No, we’ll do your

Malcolm Collins: one. Okay.

Simone Collins: I’ll see you in there. Favorable.

Malcolm Collins: I assassinate him. Looks like a dweeb. He looks like a dweeb beer version of JD Vance. Oh,

Simone Collins: no.

Malcolm Collins: Looks like a version of the JD Vance meme. Actually.

Simone Collins: Oh, maybe that’s why he wanted to to to end him is because it was insulting to him that someone stole his look.

You know who wore it better? That kind of situation. I could totally see it. You know, sometimes it just, someone takes your look and, and you’re mad about it. Totally understandable. It’s rough when someone takes your look. I love your future day sweater. It’s delightful. Great.

Malcolm Collins: It’s for future dates. See, it’s not a [01:03:00] Christmas sweater.

It’s a future day sweater. Yeah, our kids saw the future police for the first time last night, and I am livid at my wife because she had the camera the entire time and took still pictures instead of a single video. It did. I sent you a video. Oh, you did? Was it on On WhatsApp? WhatsApp. Oh, I was looking on the photo app.

[01:04:00]

Why is Latin America the most nerd-obsessed region on Earth? Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into surprising statistics showing that Brazil and Mexico out-nerd even Japan when it comes to anime consumption, video games, conventions, and more.

From Dragon Ball Z funerals in Mexico to Crunchyroll’s Spanish dubs dominating viewership, Latin America has been anime-crazy since the 1970s. We explore why anime exploded there (uncensored dubs, telenovela-style storytelling, cheap imports), debunk common theories (like Japanese immigration), and explain the cultural factors that made LatAm the global capital of nerd culture.

We also discuss how this shared “nerd frontier” culture makes Latin American immigrants far more culturally compatible with the US than many realize — closer than historical Irish or Italian waves — and touch on broader immigration, Catholic history, and even cowboy linguistics.

This is a fun, data-packed episode for anime fans, gamers, and anyone interested in culture, demographics, and immigration.

Episode Transcript:

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today.

America is dealing with a serious problem, a flood of immigrants from Latin America. And if you know anything about Latin Americans, you know exactly what type of people they are.

Speaker 8: what they like, standard nerds.

Malcolm Collins: But no, in, in reality. If you are unfamiliar with this phenomenon, Latin America is shockingly nerdy, shockingly nerdy.

We’ll just, well, I can start with a parade that they held in service. This was in Mexico to a character in Dragon Ball Z dying.

Simone Collins: Or, oh, don’t forget that. Like in the protests that are taking place right now, there there are one police peace flags flying. Yeah, well,

Malcolm Collins: they’ve been doing that in a lot of countries.

Here’s a. Showing of dragon ballsy outside in, in, in, in Latin America. To give you an example of how big they are,

[00:01:00]

Malcolm Collins: but if we’re talking about specific statistics, did you know that in Brazil when you ask people the percentage of internet users who enjoy anime, the number the percent in Brazil is higher than the percent in Japan.

That is how nerdy they are. So to go over the, and we’re gonna go over why this is after we go over all the statistics. But to go over the statistics here in Brazil it’s between 42 to 45%. In recent estimates in Mexico, it’s 41 to 44%. In Japan it is 38 to 42%, so less than Mexico or Brazil. Wow. In compared to the us.

So keep in mind, in Mexico and Brazil, you’re looking at like 41 to 42 to like 45%. In the US it’s 15 to 21%.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh.

Malcolm Collins: So when I see them, like [00:02:00] nerdier and, and we’re gonna go over other nerdy hobbies too, because they are nerdier across the spectrum really. I mean, like demonstrably, nerdier, like

Simone Collins: DD nerdy, like not just, not we, they’re they’re way nerd to

Malcolm Collins: video games than people in the United States or Europe as well.

Oh wow. Okay. I know this isn’t just United States, this is basically all other countries, including Japan, they’re nerdier than in the uk. Anime is is 15 to 21%. Right? And this is from the pair consumer data.

Simone Collins: Wow, that’s so low.

Malcolm Collins: If you look at watch time weekly of anime, right? Like how much, oh, oh, by the way, if you’re wondering like crunchy roll data.

Yeah. Actually, we’ll get to that in a second.

Simone Collins: Okay,

Malcolm Collins: watch Time Weekly, Brazil, Mexico 35 to 40%. This is aligned with streaming surveys. This is anime watch time. Weekly of, of like, what they’re watching is anime. Yeah. That’s 40%, so it’s a little below Japan. And in Mexico it’s 36%. In Europe it’s 20 to 25%.

And then if you look at. Percent choosing anime is their favorite genre. [00:03:00] Latam has the highest rate anywhere globally. 2018. Nice guys. Japan is 17% us, Canada, 16%. And then ema, including the UK is, is 12%. Huh. And if you look at apac, like a, A, whatever you’re looking at 17%. Okay, so, crunchy roll, crunchy roll, viewership by language.

Spanish dubs make up 40% of viewing on the platform.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: English dubs are only 30 to 40%, so more people watch anime on crunchy roll in Spanish than in English.

Simone Collins: Collectively, and Crunchy Roll is a US Incorporated entity right. So I think we applied to jobs there once and it was like, it was in Austin or Texas, I think.

Malcolm Collins: I think so. Yeah. Yeah. If you look at Japanese exports of anime products, 40 to 50% go Latin American. Wow. . Okay. [00:04:00] So let’s, let’s now be like, okay. You can be like, it’s just watching anime, right? Like, it’s not actually like nerd culture.

Okay.

Simone Collins: Okay. I mean,

Malcolm Collins: so in Brazil they have like an anime pop culture convention

that it pulls in. It’s called CCXP, that pulls in 280,000 to 297,000 people.

It’s like a city. That’s huge. Oh my god.

It’s literally twice the size of Comic-Con, which is 135,000 people. And then if you’re looking at the, the largest anime only convention in the United States, right?

Yeah. That’s Anime Expo, which is a hundred thousand to 115,000. Is that

Simone Collins: the Wait, is that the San Jose one?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the one that we used. That’s the biggest one. No, that’s in Los Angeles.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay.

Malcolm Collins: But if you contrast that with anime friends in Brazil, that brings in 80 to a hundred thousand. So about the same.

And then if you, [00:05:00] so what I’m pointing out here is off the chart. Off the charts in terms of anime consumption. And you can say, okay, well what about this video game thing you mentioned here? Alright. Yeah. Yeah. So, if you look at total player count in Latin America, you have a total player count of 372.3 million people.

Contrast that was North America, which is only 224.8 million people. Huh. If you look at. So that means the lifetime has around 67% more players in the United States, despite a smaller population. Yeah. And because this United States, you’re looking at 249 million.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Wow. What is going on?

Malcolm Collins: Hey if you look at let’s see.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay. I have some theories.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, also much higher. What is it? A eSports viewership. Mm-hmm. Okay. So then I decided, I was like, okay, let’s try to go to other things. Let’s go to like furries and stuff like that. Are they also more in the furries? This was the only one where they do not [00:06:00] appear to be more into things. You see higher rates.

So before I go further and there’s some common explanations that I don’t really buy. And we, we’ll go deep on one of these common explanations I don’t fully buy, and then we’ll get into what I actually think caused it. Okay.

The common explanation that I don’t normally buy, that won’t go deeper on, but just so you’re aware.

As people say, well, Latin America was a highly sort of diverse marketplace where you didn’t have a lot of local content production. And so when they were buying children’s shows they disproportionately bought the rights to anime shows over United States shows. And that led to this really high rate of anime watcher ship across Latin America.

And I’m like. Okay. But if that was true, then why don’t we see a similar phenomenon across Southern Europe? Why don’t we see a similar phenomenon in Eastern Europe? Why don’t we see a similar phenomenon in Africa? Mm-hmm. Right? Like why all of them presumably could have gotten [00:07:00] anime cheaper too. So why is it specific to Latin America?

And note here, it’s not a Catholic thing. You, you do not see any of these phenomenons mirrored in Southern Europe, where actually anime consumption is lower than Northern Europe. Another country that really surprised me is the largest manga in the world is France, so another Catholic majority country there.

So, huh.

And, and also hopefully this makes, I think a lot of people like trolled the Vatican for when the Vatican created that anime girl as like their mascot. Oh yeah. And cute. And a lot of, she was

Simone Collins: adorable.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That’s really cute.

I wish they went all in with that. Like V

Simone Collins: 20%

Malcolm Collins: Vatican comes to town, a little Vatican you know, castle Girls everywhere.

Yes.

To clarify here, just because we think the Vatican did one base thing, and I think this was definitely base, does not mean that I do not think that they are an institution that is.

Not.

Diabolically Evil. , Recently with the Maduro thing, they decided to stand Maduro be like, [00:08:00] oh, we’re concerned about the United States, you know, with Maduro never complaining about, you know, the people being tortured under Maduro.

Right. When people don’t understand what we mean when we say the Vatican is the number one like enemy of like good in the world, in the United States and our geopolitical interests, just look at their reaction to Maduro, right? And I wanted to do today’s episode on Maduro, but Simone doesn’t record on weekends, so you guys are gonna get that tomorrow.

I was telling Simone, it’s so funny how much I like our Catholic fans and it’s a bit like, you know, you meet somebody who’s like a henchman for Hydra and they’re like, and they’re like really chill and you’re like hanging out with them and then you’re like, but.

Why, why, why do you, why do you hunch for Hydra Man? , And they’re like, oh yeah. I mean, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t agree with everything. You know, the people at the top are all about, and I’m like, but then why? , And they’re like, no, no, no, no, no. You don’t understand. Every large corporation has some corruption at the top.

I mean, the red skull, he is just, he’s a, he’s a whack, he’s silly, you know, he does his own [00:09:00] thing. I’m just a, you know, a typical henchman. I, I believe in the organization.

Speaker 23: Quit

Malcolm Collins: no, I thought she was great. But you’ve gotta keep in mind the context. When you’re looking at Catholic majority countries, like France being the number one consumer of Manga or Latin America being these fanatical consumers of anime it, it might change your mind in terms of how normal these things are in the mindset of a lot of these countries.

So, Simone, you said you had theory. What’s your theory?

Simone Collins: Japanese immigrants in Brazil, Peru, et cetera, like I, I didn’t expect that until we moved there, but then they were like, [00:10:00] oh yeah, no, we just have a ton of JA Japanese immigrants there. And here we are eating Japanese fusion food, Nikkei all the time.

And I just hadn’t realized that there was such a big, that Japanese immigrant contingent. So,

Malcolm Collins: Brazil had a quote unquote large Japanese immigrant population. If you’re looking at raw numbers. Yeah. But if you look at it against the population that existed was in Peru, Uhhuh, it’s completely ins, I mean, Brazil, it’s completely insignificant.

The only country was meaningful immigration when contrasted with the existing population was Peru. But, and I’m pretty sure about this, the Chinese immigrant population was larger than the Japanese one. That that was the dominant immigrant population in Peru.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: I’m just gonna check really quickly,

Simone Collins: still influential, and I think if, if you were to look at the immigrant population of Japanese immigrants in Brazil and Peru versus the.

Percentage of the population that is [00:11:00] Japanese immigrants in the United States.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I was right. Chinese immigrants are much larger in Peru.

Simone Collins: I would still guess that there is a higher percentage of Japanese immigrants in Brazil and Peru than in the United States.

Malcolm Collins: I’m gonna bet you’re wrong, really. So lemme pull this up.

Okay. So, percent of Peru descendant.

Japanese immigrant.

Okay, so it’s 0.1 to 0.3% of Perus population.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Percent of USA

0.5. So not that different

Simone Collins: in the US It’s zero point. Yeah. Yeah. It’s

Malcolm Collins: right in the middle there. So 0.1 to 0.3% in Peru and the US is 0.5. So it’s, it’s higher in the United States.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay. Well then my theory is debunked, huh? Wow.

Malcolm Collins: [00:12:00] So we’ll go into the standard theory first. Okay. And then we can go into my theories.

Okay. Okay. So, in the 1960s and 1970s when Japan animation was introduced as an affordable alternative to Western cartoons due to budget constraints in local TV production.

Networks like Mexico’s television and tv, Azteca, as well as channels in Brazil and Argentina, imported anime series, because licensing rates were significantly cheaper than American productions. Mm-hmm. I mean, and Zach Milo, then president of Televisa, famously brought. Japanese cartoons in the 1970s is the most cost effective option for filling airtime.

Early hits included speed Racer known as Rio in Spanish, Astroboy and Princess Night, which aired was out heavy censorship. Unlike in the US where violence, blood, and romantic elements were often edited out. Oh no. What I will note here and I think is important to note about anime’s explosion in Latin America.

Anime exploded in Latin America from the very, [00:13:00] very beginning of anime.

Simone Collins: Mm, yeah. Speed racers way back in the day.

Malcolm Collins: Speed racer Astroboy. Princess Night. Princess Night. By the way, the largest collector of it is in Peru of like memorabilia for it. Like we’re. Seventies era anime. Yeah. Wow. Like, like, it didn’t get popular with like dragon ballsy or something like that.

Right.

Simone Collins: Which is still considered ancient. I mean, you know how we, how old we felt. Not that this is anime, but when. Someone staying with us was talking about this really old animated film that she watched called Kung Fu Panda, and we were like devastated.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. She’s like, yeah, there’s this really old anime I watched that I

Simone Collins: watched when I was really little.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, the 1980s marked a boom with series like Saints Saia dubbed Los Corio de Zelda, um uh, or Raman one and two, which became cultural staples. These shows were dubbed into neutral Spanish, or Portuguese, was opening and ending songs, [00:14:00] often translated and performed by local artists. For instance, Saint SGIs Sea was covered by bands like Vase and remains iconic decades later.

In fact it was done by like a, a winner to like a huge acclaim in Peru on, on, on their major like, you know, stars singing show where like you go and you audition. That was there like. Big moment. You know, like you have one of those moments where like somebody goes up, I can’t remember the one that happened in the UK where there was like ugly fat lady who goes up and sings and everybody loves her.

There was somebody going up and singing from an old anime.

[00:15:00] The 1990s brought explosive growth who was Dragon Ball, which turned heard across the region and inspired generations. A success in latam even influenced its revival in the US after initial flops. There other series like Sailor Moon in Yasha and Naruto followed with minimal changes.

EEG character names adjusted for pronunciation. A key factor in enemies enduring appeal. And this is, I do think an important thing here. So I, I’ll go over the two things that I think were really big. One I have actually mentioned in my readout of explanations here, but you may not have caught it or realized how different it makes Latin America than everywhere else that tried to air anime as cheap alternatives.

Do you know what it was?

Simone Collins: I mentioned just low cost, right? I mean, like the thing that stood out to me in the things you mentioned was low cost.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but it should have been about equally low cost anywhere. It was airing like Southern Europe,

Simone Collins: but Southern [00:16:00] Europe had some like great og like illustrated cartoons and stuff for kids, as did the United States.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they, they did have some, because you had like asterisk and like, okay. So exactly the, the core thing that was different about the way anime was rolled out during that period in the United States, in Southern Europe, in Eastern Europe and in Latin America was twofold. Okay. The first actually does have to do, its cause Latin America is not actually a fragmented market.

It looks like a fragmented market, but pretty much everyone there speaks one of two languages. Spanish or Portuguese. Okay. And that means that the mates could be dubbed centrally in Mexico

and just

across the region at a cheaper price than you could, for example, dub into all of so Southern Europeans.

Okay. Mixed languages or Eastern Europeans mixed languages. That makes sense. And I think this was all by far more important is. They didn’t censor it at all. Every other market that [00:17:00] anime was dubbed into did heavy censorship from the very beginning,

Simone Collins: and they made it suck more basically. Like it was better because it wasn’t censored and they weren caught on more.

They took

Malcolm Collins: death. They took out sex, they took out, you know, and that was always a big part of anime when compared. And, and so keep in mind you’re a young kid in one of these countries, right? And you can watch American cartoons of that ear period, or you can watch anime, right? Mm-hmm. And so you’re comparing it to something like GI Joe, and you know, people actually bleed when they get punched in this one.

Yeah. Die. Or people actually. Like you’re, is it, I remember as a kid how important something being a little edgy was to me.

And

if I had those two things, and keep in mind from their perspective, these two things are undifferentiated because they are both dubbed into their language. Right? So I’ve got these two things.

One just seems a neutered and boring in comparison to the other, right? Yeah. And also you don’t have them really [00:18:00] molesting with fts. So fun animation, destroyed anime in the United States. An shoulda contracted with fun animation. Huge mistake. Next, which was really important to it becoming as big as it did was its similarities to telenovelas.

In terms of

the

story

structure.

So in the United States if you’ve watched like Dragon Ball Z. And you were a kid, it can be a shocking experience to you because every single effing episode ends with a cliff finger in a way that American cartoons just don’t. Right? Yeah. They’re, they’re really

Simone Collins: a lot more self-contained.

That’s a great point. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But if you watch to the end of like a Dragon Ball Z episode. It’s a bunch of drama in a fight, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Maybe, maybe Dun was like balls or something and then like talking to each other and they’re like, whoa. You know? But. That in, in structure really [00:19:00] is not that different from the way a telenovela often plays out.

Simone Collins: That’s very interesting.

Malcolm Collins: The center of the conflict being two characters talking at each other about their emotions which is not, or, or like you killed X person who was my half sister. But actually we were. Lovers. Yeah. And, and that is very similar to the way anime plays out. Yeah. And then every episode ending was like a,

oh no.

Can you imagine

the, the, the, the cliffhanger here? And that just was not as jarring to Latin American audiences as it was to American audiences, and it culturally fit what they were already used to from the native types of storytelling. And so if anything, the American style storytelling felt much weirder or more boring, right?

So, Simone, I another thing I wanted to talk about on this,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Because we, like our primary friend groups are Latin America, and we work at a [00:20:00] company, like the companies that we run are all based in Latin America.

We used to live in Peru. I’ve lived in Mexico and Brazil and Costa Rica. So a lot of Latin American countries. And I, I always. I feel like when I go back, it’s so funny because like my core like world outside of this podcast is Latin American. And yet I go to my like reunion at like the GSV and it feels like because they hear about us being like quote unquote great replacement theories or whatever, and it’s like that scene

Speaker: Good, good. I hear you are a racist

Speaker 4: now, father, what? What? How did you get interested in that type of thing? Said, I’m a racist. Everyone’s saying it, father. Should we all be racist now? What’s the official line the church has taken on this? Oh, no.

Only the farm takes up most of the day and at night. I just like a cup of tea. I might be able to devote myself full time to the old racism.

Malcolm Collins: And. [00:21:00] I’m like, no, no, that’s not me. It’s, it’s the reports have been grossly exaggerated. And then the other part of our fan base is like this lady

Speaker 4: Good for you, father. What? Oh, Mrs. Re.

Speaker 5: Good for you father, but someone hasn’t got to stand up to the coming over here. Taking our jobs and our women and acting like they own.

Speaker 6: F*****g

Mexicans.

Speaker 6: . It isn’t the ,

Mexicans.

Speaker 6: It’s the

Catholics more broadly.

. He’s after. I’m not after the .

Catholics

, they invented gayness.

Malcolm Collins: And, and we’re like, we have to be like, no, I, I think they, they, they may have exaggerated our positions on a few things in that latest piece.

But anyway. The, the, what I wanted to get to was something I mentioned in another episode where I said that Latin America was culturally closer to the US than especially Mexico. I said, is culturally closer to the US than many other regions.

Yeah.

And so like, do you wanna do a full episode on this?

And I’m like, Hmm. I don’t really wanna do a full episode on [00:22:00] it, but I can go get a bit deeper into it here. And this is something that like, unless you actually know a lot of Latin Americans, I would not say that you have a lot of opinions on. Because a lot of people who I know who say that this is not true either have not lived outside the US a lot in different regions or they just don’t know a lot of Latin.

Because the things that they cite as being indicative of like the reasons Latin Americans are incompatible with America. Are the same stuff that every Catholic immigrant population has done in America ever. You know, if, if you’re talking about the crime wave, well, so did the Irish and the Italians, you know, the, the mafia in the mob, right?

Organized crime was really big in those two countries. We have an episode on why it’s so common in Catholic majority country immigrant populations. If, if, if you’re talking about them refusing to integrate for a period you know, I, I’d actually argue that the Latin American immigrants have integrated.

Significantly faster, like maybe twice or three times as fast as either the Irish or the Italian immigrant waves did. Yeah.

Simone Collins: [00:23:00] That’s, I think that’s fair.

Malcolm Collins: And, and so I, I just don’t think that’s, that’s particularly fair. If you look at their countries already, their countries very similar to the United States are countries of immigrants.

IIE you know, did they, they came from Europe often. Conquered native populations they are slightly more integrated with those populations in the United States. Mm-hmm. Although the extent to which they’re integrated with those populations, I think is hugely overstated so that they can be treated as bipoc.

If, if you if you, and again, my pop my perspective on this is always going to be a little. Biased because I am a seventh generation Texan. And that means that, you know, my family was there before Texas State. And so that means for people who are from Texas you, you grow up in a country that is already a Latin American version of the United States.

So again, that also makes it seem not as distant. So, so like from my perspective, and I’m just con comparing them ‘cause people were asking me about this they seem [00:24:00] more cohesive. With a sort of American values and tradition, then the Italian or Irish immigrant waves were

Simone Collins: yeah,

Malcolm Collins: descendants of some of those waves are.

This isn’t to say that like I, I would kick them out, but, but one of the questions is why are they, and I think that part of it’s with nerdy culture it’s a nerdy frontier culture.

Simone Collins: Where do frontier culture? I don’t, do you consider it a frontier culture? I don’t know.

If you wanna see a spectacular movie about this period of Latin American history, watch the Mask of Zoro.

Speaker 11: They want to destroy America. Give me the courage strength to wear the mask a little longer, . the world isn’t big enough to hide from me.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. It is a frontier culture.

If you, if you there’s a great thing that went through all these words that we think of as cowboy words.

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. That are like super, super Spanish words. I

Malcolm Collins: know. For example, [00:25:00] or there were a

Simone Collins: ton. Yeah. On, on Star Codex 10, he did like a summary of all of them. Found it, so, Buckaroo is Vaquero, cahoots is cohorts. Vamos is Vao or Vamos. Whose G is Hu viles is Vic, or sorry, Vic T is Lata. Kimbe. Ismo. Sabe. He, who knows the, the one who knows most Tanto is, is dummy.

Mosey is, is probably also from Vamos, like Va vamo, you know? Yeah. Tarnation was probably just a way to avoid saying damnation,

So I decided to look up a clip of Yosemite Sam, just to point this out to people, and the very first clip I found both has him either saying that most of Yosemite Sam is taking place in Mexico, or that he is from Mexico because he points out as being from the other side of the Rio Grande and uses the [00:26:00] term ombre to refer to other people.

For people who don’t know, that’s Spanish.

Speaker 13: Yeah. Yosemite. Sam. The roughest. Toughest Heman. Toughest ombre has ever crossed a Rio Grande

Simone Collins: posse Latin, verbal Infiniti equals to be able to or have power. Boondocks is Bundock, which is Tagalog, so not Spanish, but means mountains. Honcho is actually Japanese.

Turns out group leader El legato, the lizard became alligator over time. Savvy is sabe like nos like I know, like it’s a conjugation of no in, in Spanish. Like he knows. They know. So yeah, just tons there. Some of them are, are French too, but. The, the vast majority here

Malcolm Collins: are. So the point being is that when you think of the old west, when you think of the cowboy archetype about [00:27:00] 50% of the cowboy archetype was Mexicans.

Yeah. Mexico. Yeah. This is not to say that this wasn’t a blended culture with the United States or that you know, and I don’t ascribe to like the US stole Mexican land or anything like that. It’s actually much more complicated than that. And there’s a longer video I can make on that if people are interested in

Yeah.

But

the, the wider point here being is, that across Latin America, you’re dealing with a culture where the core difference between them and American culture, like, I’m like, where are they culturally different from us? Pretty much everything that makes them culturally different comes from one of two things.

Slightly higher native population to start. Mm-hmm. And a higher cath. And, and that they’re Catholic well in a,

Simone Collins: in a different language, Spanish or Portuguese.

Malcolm Collins: You. Yeah. But that makes them significantly closer to us than any European immigrant group.

Mm-hmm. Whether

that’s Irish or German. Really the only European immigrant group that I guess you could [00:28:00] argue is culturally compatible with the us would be.

English because you know, at that point you could at least say, well, they’re the same language. So even though they’re not from a country that was made up of immigrant waves they, they came from the seed culture of that country. Maybe you could say that about Germans as well, because they were about 50% of like early American immigrants in, in a lot of regions.

Yeah. But outside of that, if you’re talking about, again, Italian, French. Irish Spanish polish immigrant waves. They’re significantly more culturally distinct from the United States than really any immigrant waves that’s coming from Latin America. I’m not saying this to say indiscriminate Latin American immigration is a good thing.

I have long said, I do not think it’s a good thing. I’m just saying that, we also need to be realistic about it, especially when we consider our blessing, when contrasted with immigrant waves that are heading into Europe which are very culturally distinct from them. Yeah. And second, I think not understanding the [00:29:00] similarities of the Latin American immigrant wave into the United States can lead us to making mistakes and act like.

Deporting or dealing with immigrant populations from regions that are not Latin America should take equal priority to the Latin American immigrant waves. Which is where you get these, you know, giant you know, Caribbean, for example, immigrant waves into the United States, which are much more culturally distinct from the United States than the Latin American immigrant waves or immigrant waves from, you know, refugee populations in like the Middle East.

And people are like, oh, this is the same as like Latin American immigrants. And it’s like, no, it’s not the same as Latin American immigrants. And so, if we’re gonna begin to recognize again that different populations are actually different and that it is useful for us to understand this when we are talking about immigrant waves and thinking about, as I’ve always said, the way I see diversity is that it, like you never want diversity for its own sake.

But you also [00:30:00] probably don’t want just the normal. You’re, you’re probably better with like ingredients on a dish with a few complimentary ingredients. A dish doesn’t get better just because you’ve added more ingredients, right? You know, some ingredients just don’t go with other ingredients. And in a a, a culture where you know, it is normal to marry off your daughters at nine, maybe doesn’t go as a culture where sleeping with a 9-year-old is illegal, right?

Like these two things might be culturally incompatible. And. That however, is is is not really the case with Latin America. You don’t, you don’t. In the United States you know, when you get problems with like immigrant rapists in the United States, it’s, it’s literally be because these people are criminals where they came from and they’re criminals here.

And the reason why they’re able to get away with their crimes is because the Democrats are so pussy footed around actually dealing with criminals if they happen to be immigrants. Which is bad. And, and you do need stricter. And I, and I believe this history, you [00:31:00] do need much stricter policing in any region where you have a high proportion of Catholic immigrants because they’re just more predisposed to criminality.

that’s gonna be clipped out. But if you look at the early Irish waves, if you look at the early Italian waves, how was the crime sprees that came out of those waves dealt with? They were dealt with an increased in. Sort of a police state within those regions. And if you look at the period after you have those initial immigrant waves, places like New York became something of a police state.

So I think that, that we need to be realistic about why you can’t just take any population in whatever you want it wishy-washy, you know? Anyway. Your thoughts, Simone, on the whole Latin American nerd thing, or Latin America’s cultural proximity to the United States. I can’t hear you by the way.

Simone Collins: I know I muted myself ‘cause he, it’s

Malcolm Collins: okay if he’s crying.

You can still talk.

Simone Collins: I, I like it. I, I, I think it’s a sign of, of, of greater [00:32:00] compatibility. Plus also I feel like the more nerdy collective is the, the more I, I’m comfortable trusting them and, and integrating them into society. ‘cause obviously we have a very nerd friendly bias here. So I’m all for it.

I love it. And I, if I don’t, I don’t know, even if it isn’t a sign of similarity, I would say it’s a sign of of favorability.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I think that this also really applies with when we were talking about all of the Spanish words that are actually we associate with the Old West. When we talk about potentially integrating a country like Mexico.

Because we mentioned this in another podcast with the revolts that are happening in Mexico right now. And it would help us a lot in terms of immigrant waves because if you could put the border at the south of Mexico, it would actually be defensible.

Like that’s an actually defensible short choke point.

If you put the border where we have it now. It’s like literally comical to attempt to defend it. Like we, we try, [00:33:00] but

Simone Collins: there’s no way, there’s no way you,

Malcolm Collins: you can’t do it. Like it’s, it’s, it’s going to be incredibly porous as it is right now. But the reason why Mexico is uniquely cogent with US cultural history is because it’s literally when you’re talking about the history of the old West, if you’re thinking about people in.

The cowboy hats. With the cowboy boots being a cowboy, that lifestyle was practiced from the United States, well into the region we call Mexico today.

That that is a,

Simone Collins: not even just, it was just flat out in the region that was Mexico and eventually the United States took it and No, no, no, no. But

Malcolm Collins: I’m talking about still into the parts that are Mexico today.

Simone Collins: Sure.

Malcolm Collins: It’s not like it was just the parts that became United States. It was. A a culturally like the west was a culturally uniting thing, and the core difference between the two cultural groups was one was Protestant and one was Catholic.

Mm-hmm.

And yeah, I mean, people know my thoughts on that.

But I, I sort of feel like [00:34:00] the cat’s out of the bag already in the United States was, was Catholic immigrant groups. So if, if we’re not going to oppose that, then I don’t see the reason to oppose Mexican integration.

Simone Collins: I like it. I like that you’ve, you’ve. Turned your episode on Latin American weaves into a, and this is why we should integrate with Mexico State 51st State Mexico, 51st State.

Let’s go.

Malcolm Collins: I’m by the way, their fertility rate is already below ours for people who don’t know. Well, and I also

Simone Collins: feel like right now, like at least Gen Z in Mexico is ready. They’re they’re ready.

Malcolm Collins: And I, yeah, and I would say for people, they’re like culturally nothing like the United States. I’d point out they’re beating us in obesity right now.

Okay.

Simone Collins: They’re more American than Americans.

Malcolm Collins: They’re beating us in obesity. Yeah, man. We were

Simone Collins: like, we’re, we’re number one. We’re number one. And now we’re not anymore. We have to integrate them to, to regain our status. To regain

Malcolm Collins: our status in obesity. Yeah. Anyway,

Simone Collins: we can do, [00:35:00]

Malcolm Collins: do it. Simone. Again, I’m not actually pushing for, for integration in Mexico.

I, I, I think it, it’s probably not worth it. It would just cost too much.

Simone Collins: I just think right now Mexico’s way too much of a security liability. I, I don’t, I don’t think that the gangs are as easy to take out as a lot of people think they are. Yeah. I think that, I mean, this is a, it’s a distributed gorilla insurgency.

You, you don’t just take that out easily. Even though we have amazing military might, they’re very, very difficult to take out.

Malcolm Collins: No war dealing with the, the, the Mexican gangs would one. Because they threaten politicians so frequently. You basically need to remove democracy from the region for a period.

Yeah.

And two, the war to deal Izzy’s game would look like what’s happening in Gaza right now.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and also like Mexico is a huge country. Just like to to, to fully put them down would be much harder than it would be in Gaza. Gaza’s, a concentrated. Very small. You could just go geographic region.

Malcolm Collins: Mexico is supposed be very mountainous country. [00:36:00] Yeah. Like

Simone Collins: in Mexico, like there’s a lot of places to hide. I don’t, I mean, it’s, I, I don’t know how I would deal with it. So it’s a very tough situation.

Malcolm Collins: There’s also a benefit to having Mexico on our border that a lot of people don’t think about. Which is doing manufacturing in Mexico is artificially cheap because of the gangs.

Really? Yeah. So if you were to set up these days, because it’s gotten so expensive in China, it is cheaper on a, on a per labor cost to set up a factory in Mexico than it is in China for ‘cause of

Simone Collins: the gangs.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So Mexico should have. Experienced the same phenomenon China did. I mean, they’ve got NAFTA to their advantage.

They’re right next to it. It should be cheaper. Oh, to

Simone Collins: become more expensive. But because of the gangs, it’s artificially, wages

Malcolm Collins: should have gone up in Mexico. It should have industrialized, but it hasn’t been able to because of the gangs.

Simone Collins: That makes sense.

Malcolm Collins: Which again, is common historically in most Catholic majority countries. I mean. If you look at the gangs, it basically [00:37:00] ruled either Ireland or Italy for periods. It was really horrible.

Simone Collins: Mm. Yeah. Well, at least stay of anime. I’ll give at least stay of

Malcolm Collins: anime. All right. Love you to death, Simon.

Simone Collins: I’m gonna join the other room in four minutes. I just need to change his diaper and give.

Malcolm Collins: So the episode today, my, my conspiracy theory on that,

Simone Collins: people largely agree with you, but I now theorize that there’s this au schizo spectrum when it comes to these things where if you are more autistic, you’re more likely to assume that this is just people being incompetent. And just no one really doing their jobs.

And if you’re more on the schizo spectrum, you assume that it’s a bunch of people.

Malcolm Collins: She’s calling her husband a schizo, by the way, people here. Yes,

Simone Collins: I am.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I’m gonna need to beat you after this. We gotta schedule that because the beating cannot go on air and call your [00:38:00] husband a schizo. Well, I completely agree with you.

I, I’m definitely the schizo here and you’re definitely the artist here. And I think that that’s why the, the podcast works. Yeah. Oh God. Because, you know, people act like we think very similarly, but I don’t think that we do, to be honest. No,

Simone Collins: I don’t think they, I don’t think they think that, I don’t think they think we think super similarly, but yeah, people, people are loving, loving your theory.

I, he’s pooping, that’s why.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I was really disappointed that Tucker with this one so bad.

Sorry, this was filmed a while ago, so you’re not sure what I’m talking about. I’m talking about Tucker Carlson complaining about Epstein, , something, something, something real.

Malcolm Collins: There was one part of it where he like specifically. Like, it was like almost embarrassingly stupid. Which where he had to bring up the, the phone was cracked by a technology invented by a Israeli company.

Oh gosh. Yeah. Gives the screen that look like you know, what’s up. And it’s the. [00:39:00] They didn’t still control it when the, you know, the FBI was using it, you know, oh my God. Tucker’s brain is so cooked. We did lose for the first time podcast subscriber, like paid subscribers for the, for the episode where we suggested cutting off aid to Israel as a pass to reduce antisemitism.

But you know. What you gonna do?

Simone Collins: Screw us. What I mean, I, I, I get it. And, and people are entitled to pay for what they wanna hear, so I respect that. But thanks to everyone who does support us, it makes a huge difference. We really appreciate it.

Speaker 25: Dang it.

Speaker 26: Where did you hear that? I said, dang it. Who says, dang it? Titan does. Titan does. Yeah. Where did you hear that word? On the chair. [00:40:00] On the chairs? Yeah, on the tv. And yeah. From Stacey and John. Yeah, from Aaliyah. Yeah. Well, which one? Stacey and John and Aaliyah and Stacey and John. Does mommy say Dang it? Yeah.

Speaker 27: No, no. Mommy, you don’t. I don’t, no, no. I say worse words when I’m angry. It’s true. What? What do I say when I’m angry? Titan, you cry. I cry. Yeah. Oh, what do you say when you’re angry? Titan? I cry too. Oh, okay. Well, I want you to be happy, Titan. [00:41:00] Yeah. Because it’s, it’s really important to me that you become a happy shark princess.

Speaker 25: Yeah, but who knows? Creaky man. Creaky man? Yeah. Who’s creaky? Man? Nobody’s AK man. Oh, then I guess nobody knows Creaky man. Yeah. Yeah. But where this creaky my wolf. Well, if there is no creaky man, I guess he doesn’t live anywhere, but, but where does the creaking, my wolf, the creaky man? Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know about a creaky man.

Speaker 27: Maybe there is one, but I don’t know him. Do you know the creaky man? Yeah. Tell me about him.

Speaker 25: I think Creekmore loves in a cave. In a cave. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it [00:42:00] loves in a cave and that’s so spook in the cave. Mm, that definitely makes sense. The Creekmore loves in the cave. He do lives in a cave. Yeah, it’s a giant cave. A giant cave. Yeah. Does the cave have a refrigerator in it? No.

It the, the giant cave has nothing in it. Only creaky man. Yeah. It has a C creek man. And that’s a pink cave. A pink cave. Yeah. Well, my two favorite colors a pink and purple. Is it a fabulous cave? Yeah. Yeah. Pink and purple. The came, well, I, so it’s a pink cave and it’s fabulous. Creaky man lives in it. It does not have a refrigerator.

Yeah. Aside from creaky, man, there’s nothing else in the cave. Is there [00:43:00] anything else in the cave That’s pink and purple? Yeah. What? What else is in the cave? There might be pink and purple and blue in there. What? What in there is pink and purple and blue furniture. Does he have a couch? Does he have a bed?

Yeah. Does he have a dog? No. I Does he have dinner? I think so. What does he eat? He eats. He eats carrots and dinosaur nuggets. And ketchup. Really? Who else eats carrots and dinosaur nuggets and ketchup. We do. Oh, is creaky man us? No, he is not. Oh, okay. I was just checking the creaky man. Just a something. Oh, a cave.

Speaker 27: A cave. A pink. A pink cave. Yeah. Pink and purple and some blue. [00:44:00] Yeah, there’s some blue on your face. Did you know that? Yeah. I think you drew on your face with your pens.

I love you, Titan. I love you, mommy. Dad, can I have a, when you finish your dinosaur nugget, okay. My dinosaur, yeah.

Malcolm and Simone Collins dive into two fascinating (and very different) trends among young women: one group that’s happily dating but swearing off marriage forever, and another group embracing intentional celibacy in response to modern hookup culture.

Why are so many high-achieving women rejecting marriage altogether? Do they have a point about autonomy, identity, and avoiding “unpaid labor”? And why are younger women opting out of sex entirely — claiming dating apps have ruined intimacy?

We break down the articles, compare the two groups (with some brutal phenotype observations), discuss how media shaped different generations’ views on relationships, and explore why both paths ultimately lead away from family formation.

From Tinder height discrimination to the rise of “divorced woman” as an aspirational identity, this episode examines the collapsing sexual and marriage marketplaces — and why pronatalism offers a radically different vision for fulfillment.

Episode Transcript:

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] And I feel like women have unironically recreated that society on like Tinder and stuff like that.

Speaker 6: Ah. You seem to have grown since last. You stood before a

Redditer.

Speaker 2: .

You’ve been assigned to the planet Bloch, home of the slaughtering

Borderline women.

Speaker 2: Why would you trophy?

Speaker 7: However, because of your increased height, we have decided to give you the planet Vort home of the universe’s most comfortable couch.

And career women who genuinely believe you’re making a major sacrifice by being a stay at home husband.

Speaker 4: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Go to the, the trash planet where you’ll be eaten by rats and no one will synthesize.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be going over two articles that are covering two related phenomenon, but entirely distinct phenomenon.

One is the large number of women who are dating still, but refuse to get married. And then the [00:01:00] other is the large number of women who are choosing to become intentionally celibate. And what’s really interesting about these two populations and it, it’s cool because I think that our audience will find themselves like, oh, this population may have a point.

This population may not have a point. We’ll see. Right. Like civilization. Yeah. They phenotypically look very distinct. And I will put collections of pictures on the screen here. Oh, so you, the fans can try to guess which population is which. Mm. So I sent you pictures in two groups. We got group one and group two of women on

WhatsApp.

Okay.

Simone Collins: Let’s, let’s take a look here. Let’s see. I, I’m sure I can my assumption is that I can guess in what. Whoa. Hmm. Huh,

Malcolm Collins: interesting. So group two and group one, which one do you think refuses to marry and which one do you think is intentionally celibate? And if you’re looking at the screen here the number one thing you’re going to note about the two groups is one [00:02:00] is fairly attractive and one is quite unattractive.

Simone Collins: Wait, which ones are the attractive ones?

Malcolm Collins: Compared to the other group?

Simone Collins: I, I don’t know. I, I, I guess all the faces just look like stick figure faces to me. Maybe I’m like, face blind one looks like they have too much makeup on. And I guess I have to associate too much makeup with, actually doesn’t interact with men.

So then, then the second group with the too much makeup, which you would say is the more attractive group, is the. Intentionally celibate doesn’t interact with men group. Do I have that right?

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Ah, so the, the group that wears more makeup, which is one of the things you’re noticing Yeah. The group that is celibate mm-hmm.

Is wearing more makeup.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Which again shows that makeup is largely about interesting. No. When you’re wearing

Simone Collins: drag queen levels of makeup, you are not trying to attract the male gaze.

Malcolm Collins: I disagree. I just think that lady is a Latina from Florida, and a lot of Latinas from Florida look like that. No,

Simone Collins: no.

[00:03:00] Women wear excessive amounts of makeup for other women, not for themselves. It, it, and it also for like gender euphoria, which I think is negatively correlated with

Malcolm Collins: fertility. And, and the other women specifically for me, the women who are refuse to get married just look like actively unpleasant,

Simone Collins: In a lot of the pictures.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like they, yeah. Just like

Simone Collins: main, like attractive enough, but, but, very progressive women who are more maybe disagreeable.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Mean disagreeable. Mm-hmm. Is the core sort of look they have to their fa and you can tell a lot about somebody’s phenotype, but we’ve gone over this in a different episode is for novel brack with ai.

But we point out that you can actually tell a lot about a person by looking at their face, right? Mm-hmm. Like looking at their facial structure. And people can make guesses with high probability. We go over all the studies in that episode. I’m not gonna like cite them all here. What somebody’s behavior is, and AI can do this exceptionally well.

Like an AI can look at your face and tell a ton about, oh, oh, oh, [00:04:00] hold on. Simone, did you realize something? Take off your glasses for a second. Take off your glasses so I can get a picture of our face to put into AI while I’m editing this. Oh, God. And, and look straight at the camera. And I, I want to ask an AI what it thinks our personalities are from our face.

It can do that.

So I put in Simone’s face, the image you see right here and with her rather than me. I asked it to use like not facial expression at all, just based on physionomy, it says. It says she’d probably come across as intelligent, open-minded, intellectual, with strong communication abilities, and a diplomatic, harmonious approach to life, likely empathetic and tolerant with a logical bent that makes her organized and idealistic.

Malcolm Collins: Well, let’s see.

Simone Collins: All right. But I think if I, if I change my facial expression, it’s going to give a very different response, right? Like, if I look happy, I think, I think AI’s not sophisticated enough to tell the difference between a resting face and [00:05:00] a facial expression.

Malcolm Collins: Well, you know what, let’s see, right now I’m gonna put this in.

I, I, I can’t even wait. I’m gonna put my face in. What would you guess male’s personality is from their face characteristics? Oh, no. What? Oh, I’m even getting an ab response here. So, so, oh,

Simone Collins: yeah. Grock was doing that for me today too, and I like it.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So, it says that I’m a male in his late thirties to early forties, which is accurate.

Yes. The other one says late thirties to early forties, which again, is accurate. Yes. Okay, so, personality traits. Okay, so one says, friendly and approachable. The other says, warm and approachable. One says, kind and empathetic. The other says, outgoing and extroverted. The, it says intellectual and thoughtful.

The other says optimistic and you weren’t even wearing your glasses. How did it know? Yeah. The other, the other says, optimistic and good humored. A bit [00:06:00] playful slash humorous. Creative or expressive reliable, steady pathetic. I,

Simone Collins: all these things prove, but is it not just saying flattering things and then we just tap to agree with him?

I’m sure it’s just this is too

Malcolm Collins: flattering. Like,

Simone Collins: say something

Malcolm Collins: negative. No. Take, take

Simone Collins: a picture of Hassan Piker and put it in.

Malcolm Collins: I don’t wanna do that. I don’t, Gordon in Peterson. I don’t wanna risk saying positive things that, that could get us demonetized on our fan base.

Simone Collins: Oh no.

Malcolm Collins: Lose us subscribers here.

Simone, I’m gonna keep going here. So me generation, I do not young women who refuse to get married and vow to never change their minds about it. Becoming somebody’s wife isn’t something New Yorker. Carly B 29 ever wanted for herself a 29-year-old New Yorker.

I love, we’re jumping right into the deep end with this. Okay? Happily in love with her boyfriend of nine years. Check, marrying him. Absolutely not. That’s no reflection on Matt H 30, according to Carly, who works for a PR branding agency and asked that the couple’s last names not be [00:07:00] used before the pair met.

The 29-year-old had always made it a point to avoid romantic involvements with the kind of men who wanted wedding bells and kids. Quote, it was a very prominent ground rule for me before entering any sort of relationship. The East Village Dweller told the Post, I don’t necessarily need a contract that tells me my status was my partner, or tells me that I love him more than I would without one.

I know exactly how we feel about each other and I feel good with just that. Putting a ring on it, locking things down, heading to a city hall for a piece of paper, not Carly, whose parents divorced and aren’t the reason, and that’s not the reason she doesn’t want marriage. Mm-hmm. When the Pennsylvania natives met on Tinder, they are questioned about their plans for getting hitched 29-year-old was brutally honest with them. I usually say, that’s not something I want for myself. We’re never going to talk about that. Carly admitted, I think me saying that makes them think there’s something wrong with our relationship. But no, I made the decision.

I’m going along with [00:08:00] it and that’s fine. So I find this really interesting so far. So basically you’re seeing a new culture emerge, which is almost going to immediately die out ‘cause none of these women are having kids where they are attempting to normalize. And it makes sense from an irman culture perspective.

If you’re searching for pleasure and self validation, kids and marriage even for women can be quite bad. But to continue here, i’ll skip ahead of it here. There’s a wave of women, and this is a quote from one of them, either thinking, rethinking marriage, or skipping it all together. And it’s getting louder every year.

It’s about autonomy, peace, and building lives in what feels right, not about what tradition dictates. Relationship coach Dr. Jack Hill. Del Rosario told the post, I’m the one who’s pushing this harder than he is, but he knows it has known it since day one. If there’s ever a thought that he wants marriage and a family beyond what I can give him, then he would need to break up and figure that out in other ways.

I actually find that, to be very honest, I appreciate that she was upfront [00:09:00] about it from day one. And you know, if you’re, if you’re gonna do this, at least be upfront about it. And I think that that’s a lot fairer. And I think that women who do this. Are more likely to be upfront about it than men who do it.

Where, because men can get higher quality partners by pretending that they want marriage and women typically get lower quality partners if they say that they’re in this for a long-term relationship and don’t just want casual sex. Mm-hmm. And that’s because well, as anyone who watches this, probably knows women have an advantage on the sex market.

Men have an advantage on the marriage marketplace. But that advantage is bigger for women on the sex marketplace than it is for men on the marriage marketplace because it’s easier to lie about not being on the marriage marketplace for a man or being on the marriage marketplace Anyway.

Considering today’s generation of young, independent women surpassing men in earning college degrees, buying homes on their own, which has nearly doubled over the last 40 years, and achieving sweet street positions at Fortune 500 companies, which has increased from 15% to 29% over the past eight years. The million dollar question remains, do [00:10:00] women benefit at all from marriage in 2025?

And the question here is, what does benefit mean? You know, if if they want a family and they want kids and they want a stable relationship, I mean, obviously yes, a marriage is very useful in achieving those things and helping be a forcing function in the things that you need to do to live that life path.

But if you just wanna hang out, you know, it’s fine. Like you don’t need to, actually, I was queued into these. So other people don’t know. We did a weekend episode about this and it has exploded since the weekend episode. It’s literally like twice as big as it was when we did the weekend. Episode is our subreddit, is where I learned about this.

And the Basecamp subreddit

is frigging huge, like ridiculously large. So an example of what I mean by this is it gets a hundred 90 4K weekly visitors and 43 K weekly contributors. So for our, our VIP fans who heard about this last time, this is more than twice as big as it was when I was shocked by it last time.

To give you an [00:11:00] idea of like what that means if, if you go to Joe Rogan’s subreddit, we’re at 190 4K weekly visitors 43 K weekly interactions. His is 308 k weekly visitors, 8.9 k weekly interactions. If you go to the ESMA Gold subreddit, so, so. We’re astronomically bigger than Joe Rogan in terms of weekly interactions and only a bit smaller in terms of weekly visitors.

Like he’s not even twice as big as us. If you go to ESMO Gold 360 4K. So again, not even twice as big as us. And only 11 K weekly interactions where we’re at 43 k weekly interactions.

Crazily. We have yet grown again since we filmed this. The subreddit is now at 247 k, weekly visitors and 58 K weekly interactions.

Malcolm Collins: So I have an episode where I go into like, what could be going on here? But they, they had this, and an interesting thing here where we’re talking about, oh, women are doing so well in society.

One of the top posts is, are women more oppressed or do we just not give a damn about men and boys? And it points out that now college graduates, there might actually be more than on this graph because [00:12:00] men drop out of college at higher rates, two female college graduates over the next five years for every one male college graduates good.

And then it shows domestic violence. Victims more male than female homelessness. Only 75% are male, 25% are female. And it’s much harder to get homeless shelters as been unloving rates more than 70, it looks like 76, 70 7% male. Workplace fatalities you’re looking here, it looks like 90% male combat death since 1991.

Basically all male. And oh, victims of forced circumcision. They, they have that as that’s, that’s quite a, a Reddit complaint. We should do an episode on circumcision someday. That would be a lot of, no, would, probably

should.

Yeah. We have one episode where I argued that I don’t even think that we’re doing circumcision.

Right. This is one of our religion episodes if you wanna Oh, you mean

Simone Collins: in terms of methodology, like the way the cut is done?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This is the episode called The Question That Breaks Judaism, and we go into, we have archeological evidence, and, and Jews say they came from Egypt, right? Oh, that it

Simone Collins: was done differently originally.

Well,

Malcolm Collins: that circumcision [00:13:00] meant something different in the past. Yes. That the word meant something different. Well, what. So we have evidence, if you don’t wanna go into the full episode on that, because it’s like a four hour long episode called like, yeah.

Simone Collins: TLDR Army, please.

Malcolm Collins: And we go over historic evidence ‘cause we have from like mummies and stuff, we can see what their circumcisions looked like.

Which we don’t have from ancestral Jewish property. Mommy don’t?

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: And, but they look like

Simone Collins: owl pellets gross.

Malcolm Collins: They, they Egyptian priests did dorsal lateral circumcision. So not all the way around. Not a circumference, but just like up and down, basically just cutting a slit in it. And the reason why we would have evidence to believe that the early Jews were doing it the same way is because in the early Jewish communities, they said we are a community of all priests.

Like every, every man is a priest. Oh. And so it would make sense that they might have, living in Egypt at the time and being aware of this purification ritual might have, drawn it from a common source, but just as a sign that everyone in the community is of the priest class. Which is, I, I find to [00:14:00] be really fascinating.

Like I don’t believe this hard, I don’t, I don’t like, I think this is one of those things that I’m not that solid on. I, I think it’s like a 25 to 30% chance, like a good chance, but still pretty good. Like, you don’t know because we just don’t have a lot of evidence. Like there, there’s like a a thousand year gap in what definitionally a circumcision was between it being mentioned for the first time and then us getting any records of this is how it’s actually performed.

Simone Collins: That’s so interesting. Right.

Malcolm Collins: We could do a circumcision episode.

Simone Collins: I, I don’t know how much we can talk about things that are done with sharp objects to private parts on YouTube.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Maybe they won’t

Simone Collins: like that. Maybe not. Maybe that’s a Patreon episode. A substack a paid Substack episode. You know.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so, there is evidence out there that men do actually gain more health and emotional benefits from marriage.

It’s one of the women talking, as they usually receive more support than they give out. Mike Kosik a hormone [00:15:00] health expert at Balance. My hormone stole the post. Oh, this was a male who said this. Without balanced responsibility, marriage can feel more beneficial for men. Jess Iko 30 couldn’t agree more.

She and her boyfriend, Ross Anton, 32, have been dating for five years and are head over heels for each other. She just doesn’t see a wedding in their future. As the oldest daughter of three, the New Jersey native, who owns her own social media marketing and content creation agency, told the post that growing up, she’s always been independent and career oriented, never giving relationships or marriage.

Much thought. Despite being married, raised by happily married parents. I was never like. Oh, I’ll wear this wedding dress, or I can’t wait to have a big wedding. Instead, I would watch romcoms and think, I want that career. I want her closet. She shared with the post, and I think that, that you’re, you’re getting a lot of information on why these women chose this, right?

Like they were raised in a generation where they did not have aspirational marriages to look at was envy.

Simone Collins: Well, how [00:16:00] many popular films, media or TV shows depict the hero’s journey for a woman at the very least in which marriage is, is the dream at the end. There’s certainly happy ever afters for like Disney princesses, but no one really watches those anymore.

And the more recent Disney princesses don’t get married at the end for the most part.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. All the recent Disney princesses are not about getting married, but about how your parents are terrible. Like that’s like every recent are

Simone Collins: what, what are really popular movies that have come out, which depict a woman?

Malcolm Collins: Or trauma really trying to get married. If you look the modern female journey, like modern hero’s journey mm-hmm. It is realize you have trauma, face trauma, overcome trauma. Mm-hmm. And so I think women are, instead of what they used to want their fairytale ending, right, their fairytale ending now requires the trauma.

So they invent the trauma which we’ve pointed out is very easy to do in studies. . One of my favorite studies on this that we’ve talked about before shows that people [00:17:00] who say that they were abused at kids, the amount of abuse that they say that they experienced is correlary with how much effects that they have from that abuse on like their daily behavior patterns and everything like that.

Mm-hmm. But it’s completely uncorrelated with the amount of abuse they actually experienced when that is searched through, you know, court records and stuff like that where we have some, some evidence of whether or not they were abused or not which is wild. But anyway so I love that the new heroes journey that they’re going down is how do, how do I build my trauma oh my gosh.

And a career and all that.

Simone Collins: Well, especially when you consider this, these these general trends in the context of the trend of women choosing to identify online as divorced women, that it’s like a point of pride in something that they. Want to identify with. So even when you went through the whole process of getting married, then you actually feel enough of a sense of reward and social cachet by very being, like being very publicly divorced, that you would go on and be, [00:18:00] you know, get a divorce ring for yourself, be prominent about it, post online about it, that kind of thing.

Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so, and I think that she actually understands the point of marriage very well in terms of why she’s not doing it. I don’t think it’s a disillusion about the point of marriage. She says now in her thirties, a Klo shutters at the thought at the archaic concept saying, I do even to a man she loves because she believes becoming a wife subconsciously forces women to give up a part of themselves

Simone Collins: and men.

Yeah. You subsume yourself to become part of something bigger than both of you. Absolutely. That is, I mean, I think most people don’t want that to be marriage. They think that marriage is like, oh, I can have an unpaid cordis on now. This is great.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They think it’s about a sex buddy or something, right.

Like Yeah. One

Simone Collins: on earth. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I feel like I have such a rooted self-identity. I don’t think I have witnessed many marriages where the woman doesn’t lose herself in the identity of her marriage. Instead of remaining an eye, she [00:19:00] becomes a we, which I think is, is good that she’s recognizing that that is the point of marriage, as we always say.

Mm-hmm.

Becoming, we losing the eye. Right. Life is a journey. I think when lived fully away from the eye, right? Like when you’re a kid, it’s all about yourself as an individual. And the family and the larger family unit often dotes on the, the, you, the eye as the individual. And then as you grow up you then take full ownership of yourself without the external support.

And then you get married and you become a we, and then you have kids and you become sort of the, the, the guardian of the family, like even the wider system. And then you die and you become a story to your kids, right? And, and, and descendants. And so it’s this constant drift away from the individual, and they don’t want that.

And I think that they’re making the right choice given what they, they have been taught to value in life, which is the eye.

Mm-hmm.

Despite knowing they want to spend the rest of their lives together. Ako told Lipo that she had a musician boyfriend who both currently [00:20:00] lived in Pittsburgh, but are in no rush to move in together, have been on the no marriage bandwagon for the duration of their relationship, or at least Ross has acquiesced to his partner’s choices.

Marriage appears to be the best when both parties involved really want it and each other, he told the post, oh, that’s sad. It’s necessity and significance always dwindle when that is not the case. And if you look at pictures of him, I mean, I don’t, I don’t think he was gonna get married anyway, but a Yuko explained the conversation that we have around our futures is more about how we see each other’s careers and how we see a future together in that sense, which I feel matters more than, okay, do we get engaged and get married?

And it’s interesting that she just feels that this matters more because it’s about enhancing their existing identities as atomized units, which we’ve been drifting to with the society as soon as we atomize a family. And it didn’t happen any more recently like, like faster recently. But we point out this didn’t happen with you know, women leaving the household to get jobs.

It happened was men leaving the household to get jobs, and that’s when [00:21:00] fertility rates started dropping in like the 18 fifties to like nineties depending on the country that you’re in. IKO said that regardless of how far women have come in society, she feels that once a couple enters a husband and wife territory, it’s hard for them to avoid falling into stereotypical gender roles.

Some men really want a girl who will cook and clean for them, so they want to date their mom. I can’t even imagine being with somebody who expected those things the entrepreneur revealed. Now what’s interesting was that statement is you definitely did that. I I did you expect to fall into those roles of cooking and cleaning?

I

Simone Collins: really didn’t think about

Malcolm Collins: it

Simone Collins: at

Malcolm Collins: all. It was not an existential fear for you.

Simone Collins: It’s not something I thought about or that we planned out weirdly.

Malcolm Collins: Makes sense.

Simone Collins: I mean, I think in the end I do it because I care more about how it’s done, which is, is how a lot of things work in relationships when they work out organically.

Malcolm Collins: [00:22:00] Yeah. She goes on to say the emotional labor women saw their mom’s shoulder, organizing households. Managing everyone’s happiness doesn’t look appealing. If it’s not balanced. Nobody wants to lose themselves to unpaid work on somebody else’s dreams. If marriage is on the table, it’s going to be on equal terms without sacrificing selfhood.

And this was an expert, not her, but I find that really interesting because that’s how you felt. That’s why you didn’t wanna get married When I first talked to you about marriage. You said, no, I don’t wanna do it because I don’t like the way it made my mom lived, her, her life. And, and your parents even lived in a very progressive family and lifestyle, right?

Yeah, but

Simone Collins: I think it’s different. They’re talking about unpaid labor, et cetera. And what I was really concerned about was I losing like a sense of direction that goes beyond being a caretaker for kids. And as much as I’ve taken on the internal house, cooking and cleaning and I mean at least infant care, you, you do older [00:23:00] kid care.

I, I still very much like we have our work that we do together. You know? And I think that’s, that’s not what women are worried about. They’re not worried about losing their work, they’re worried about doing unpaid labor

Malcolm Collins: or unappreciated labor. I think it’s a bigger thing, expected labor.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Except men for, I think for the most part are like, they’re not unwilling to do it.

They just have such a low, a much lower standard that when they do it like it’s, it’s to a level that is still unacceptable. Like yesterday, you cleaned your room. Am I still terrified to even look inside it? Yes, absolutely. Like your standard of what is clean is like the, the worst nightmare for me of the dirtiest our house could get.

If I was like on death’s door for three months, I took out all of

Malcolm Collins: the, all of the, [00:24:00] the uncovered food that’s very clean. Simone, there’s no reason for mice to come in anymore except for the new food from today. I, I am stabbing in her heart right now. You can look at this. This is, this is a woman being tortured.

This is why she dissociates. If you, if you saw that video, she has to, she’s dis association, enable me

Simone Collins: to enter your room. I, that’s not happening. It’s just not going to happen.

Malcolm Collins: I love, our fan base is all like, oh yeah. I’m constantly disassociates just like the way I love my life. You, I

Simone Collins: love base campers.

They’re freaking amazing. ‘cause they get it, Malcolm, you don’t understand. They just get it.

Malcolm Collins: Whenever I say something like when in the episode where I’d like, I don’t think romantic love is a thing and I expect they’re exactly really controversial with our audience. They were like, yeah, no, that’s, that this is not

Simone Collins: news.

Start reporting news to us again.

Malcolm Collins: Did they say that? Like,

Simone Collins: no, but it’s the kind of comments that we get. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I wanna, I wanna hear news. Okay. So.

Simone Collins: No, I, I don’t mean news, like [00:25:00] interesting new ideas. That’s what people like.

Malcolm Collins: Ah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So other women here saying I think we as women, especially millennial women, have been fed this narrative through movies and the media of the girl and the guy getting together.

They get married, they have kids, they get the house, and they live happily ever after. She explained, what I realized was that marriage wasn’t really translating to my happiness, and I think it would be more of a hindrance. And. This is what’s really fascinating. And I think that this is true. Like she, she’s accurate here.

I think they grew up with the remnants within media. ‘cause if she saw this in media, she’s an old person, right? Like she must be in her forties. ‘Cause you don’t see that in media anymore very often. But even during that time period, it was like, do X, Y, and Z to achieve happiness. But then it told you what happiness was, which was individual self-fulfillment.

And that’s not what a family gives you. That’s not like the purpose of a family, right? Like it’s, it’s telling you to play a completely different game that’s gonna have a completely different outcome. Right. Like

Simone Collins: what’s so crazy though is [00:26:00] that I feel more fulfilled now than I ever did single. Which is so ironic.

Yeah. Go on though. Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: I just can’t really remember a time when I was consistently happy, comfortable, relaxing, enjoying life while I was in a relationship or dating. There was always a worry, a stress, or an annoyance or a frustration, and it just never felt as peaceful as if it was just focusing on me.

Mm-hmm. Sorry. As peaceful as it is. Sorry. As peaceful as it was just focusing on me. I, so you can see here the purpose is focusing on herself. Like that’s the goal in all of this, which I get right? Like, if that’s what you’re into, what good is that

Simone Collins: gonna do though?

Malcolm Collins: By the way, she, she has a, a new puppy, which she took her pictures with.

Of course. One thing I’ve been practicing is just radical. A. Acceptance of myself not having any shame, not feeling bad about any of my decisions, just trying to accept myself and enjoy life. [00:27:00] And I think that that’s, that’s a perfect statement there. It shows that that that is something you feel should feel deep shame for doing, right?

Like if you, if you are a normal person to try to live your life without expectations for yourself. ‘cause that’s what shame comes from, is not living up to the expectations you have set for what you should achieve from your life. Mm-hmm. What you should give back to society. And she’s saying that actually her expectation is to have no expectations, to have no shame, to you know, axiomatic approve of the things she has done of the decision she had made.

And I think it’s worse

Simone Collins: than that because it’s not just about expectations. In fact, if anything, expectations are really weak when you look at scientific. Data, like research, academic research around behavior change, for example, and whether people are actually able to do good things that are hard.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Really the consistent thing that that changes behavior is if you change the defaults. You know, like if you need to stop eating junk food, you just don’t keep junk food in your [00:28:00] house anymore, you know?

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: And what’s really interesting about having spouses, and especially about having children, is that they force responsibility.

They force selflessness. I mean, at least assuming that you aren’t negligently allowing these people to die and being an abusive partner or whatever. Right. And a lot of people are that, which is really sad, but I think most conscientious morally, non bankrupt people. Step up when they’re presented with these responsibilities that cannot be avoided.

There are no more sick days. There, there is no more sleeping in there. You know, there is no more just deciding to phone it in because someone else depends on you, especially if kids are involved, they really depend on you. And it, it just honestly forces you to be a better person. It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to be forgiving or not, you know, you’re there anyway.

And you may not always be perfect, but yeah, I dunno. I, I think it’s, it, it, it’s worse than just being okay with who you are. It’s shirking from even [00:29:00] forcing functions that would, would obligate you naturally to be a, a better, stronger, more conscientious, caring, empathetic, and moral person. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, let’s go to the second group of women to see what they say and why they’re doing it.

The inso. So with the first group, I think, well, no, no, the,

Simone Collins: the intentional celibates, I guess. Yeah, the

Malcolm Collins: intentional celibates. So with the first group, I think they were incredibly clear and articulate, and I’d even say clear minded about why they were making this decision. Hmm. They were making, well, I think they

Simone Collins: have to be, because they have to tell their partners very explicitly what’s going on, unless they’re being really mean about it and misleading them.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But I, I mean, I think it, it shows a degree of self-knowledge. They, they wanted to focus on self-acceptance. They wanted to focus on self-actualization. They did not like, they, they do not exist to contribute to society. Their people, their country, human [00:30:00] civilization, they exist for their own subjective experience of existing.

Mm-hmm. And they saw marriage as being. Incompatible with that. And I think that that’s really powerful, right? Mm-hmm. Like I think that they’re, they’re, they’re right about that. They’re, they’re wrong about why they exist and what they actually will get fulfillment from. ‘cause if you chase fulfillment for its own sake, you’ll never get any fulfillment at all.

Which I, it is a really sort of sad thing as to why that happens. We’ve talked about it in more detail in other episodes, but if you chase. Self-acceptance, fulfillment, your own subjective emotions for its own state. You’re saying that those are the only things that have value in, in, in your life. Which means that you are experiencing personally everything that is good about your existence because your existence is self-referential, right?

Mm-hmm. And you will realize pretty quickly how trivial all of those emotions and self-acceptance actually feel unless you fry your brain with like, hoku and, and, and crystals and [00:31:00] mysticism, right? Well, yeah, but I think

Simone Collins: it’s not, even though, I mean, you’re implying that this works and that they are experiencing hedonic pleasure at greater levels, whereas any hedonic pleasure you get, that, that you know is, is excess due to your being single and totally freed up to focus on yourself.

One, you adjust to it. Two, you’re left alone with your own demons, and I think more vulnerable to depression and anxiety and other mental health problems. ‘cause there’s nothing to fill the void. Only your demon there. The

Malcolm Collins: experience, happiness changes depending on your context in life. So when I say that she is experiencing, let’s say, like more dopaminergic reward pathways.

Mm-hmm. Then somebody who is dedicating themselves to the family. I mean that in the same way a meth addict lying on the street, homeless is experiencing more dopaminergic reward pathways. I

Simone Collins: dunno, don’t you think we are like constantly getting hit by dopamine when our kids do hilarious stuff and make us laugh and do sweet things and make us it?

Is it on the

Malcolm Collins: inside of happiness? But that’s the point I’m making. So if you are [00:32:00] doing something like meth on the streets or fentanyl or whatever, right? Like you are experiencing a level of No, but it’s like an

Simone Collins: empty high and then you have the fallout. Like it’s, it’s not the slow burn high that you really wanna

Malcolm Collins: hit.

You have the fallout and you yourself throughout the entire thing. Okay. Or, or afterwards. Before, in your context, you’re still sleeping in the rain being covered in cockroaches. That doesn’t mean, so what, whatever, you know, the meth addict is to, let’s say her, she is to us, right? Like, she is objectively like maybe hitting these pathways harder in the same way the meth addict is hitting these pathways harder.

Okay. But I would not wish her lifestyle on my worst enemy. Right. Like Right, of course. Anyway, so to continue here, does that make sense to you or do you wanna No, it does. Yeah.

Simone Collins: I mean, and, and that was, it’s, it’s this latter lifestyle that I was personally going for before I met you. And everything got derailed ‘cause I discovered meaning in life through you.

But it, [00:33:00] it was really fun. Like on the surface it was really fun. But then, yeah, I think what you describe is pretty accurate. Like it’s the end of something uniquely fun that I’d planned for myself. I would feel empty and anxiety would creep in and yeah, I felt like I was constantly running from that.

Malcolm Collins: It was scary. Makes sense. Okay, so, now we’re gonna go to the next article, meet the young single women going celibate, but not for the reason you’d expect. And then it, and it has to start with the title. Many of them find it incredibly hard which is interesting because like just everyone used to live this way.

And you’ll see that this is, you see it from the title manana, Zami 29 spent a quote, unquote good chunk of her twenties being celibate. Now I find that, that, that sentence ridiculous in a historic context. The idea that an unmarried woman spent a good chunk of her twenties not [00:34:00] sleeping around is, would be considered the sluttiest thing. You could imagine, if you go back, let’s just say 50 years ago, right? You, you’re not supposed to be sleeping around in your twenties. You stay celibate, you get married, then you have a family. Mm-hmm. Like, what, why is she sleeping? What, what does she mean? It’s, it’s like the, the priest who’s like, well, you know, I only see prostitutes a couple times a year.

Or the, the nun being like, I’m celibate. I just lapse every, you know, few months. But anyway, to continue here. It is like, it’s like that’s not, that’s not celibate. In fact, she purposely did not sleep with anyone for four consecutive years. Ooh. So four years of celibacy, the Floridian told the post, and men have made her decision fairly easy.

According to Z’s generation of young females. Hookup culture aided by dating apps ruined intimacy [00:35:00] hookup culture. This is a woman saying this doesn’t benefit women in any way. It totally only benefits the man. I’m not here to judge. But at the same time, hooking up ruins the part where when you actually find the person you want to spend your, the rest of your life with, it takes away from that special, intimate moment that you have wisdom in quote.

Now, I, I find that to be really fascinating. So basically they’re taking this perspective. I think actually what I’m seeing in the reason I thought these women were more attractive is, is they’re just younger. Oh, okay.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And that’s the difference. That’s a different generation. So the, the previous generation isn’t going for marriage because they were raised on this sort of mantra of self-actualization, self involvement, be a career woman.

And this generation was raised during the era of pickup apps and they’re just like, these are terrible. And create a terrible environment. And again, I don’t Yeah. Nott even try. I, I, I think, I mean, you do need to try if you wanna find somebody. Right. But you’re not

Simone Collins: gonna try to find someone [00:36:00] though,

Malcolm Collins: right?

Yeah. Yeah. So Kylie Kaputo, a 29-year-old New Jersey resident agrees. I feel like hookup culture was, has ruined dating because it almost feels like that’s the end goal. It’s like people are so trained now to just ask you home wisdom. It’s so bizarre to admit to the post adding that sleeping with someone you are newly seeing quote clouds your judgment on how you really feel about the person.

It’s a very mature thing to say. I agree with that. Yeah. Zami is among the slew of Gen Z and millennial women who are fueling America’s unprecedented sex recession as they seem to be fine with it. So, this is actually interesting and I think I get it. The, the core difference between these two groups, this group isn’t sleeping around because what they really want is a marriage and a dedicated partner, and they don’t feel they’re getting that from hookup culture.

Now as to why they’re not getting that from hookup culture. It’s because you’ve got the, you know, problem where less than 1% of women are sw right. On the average [00:37:00] man. Right? Like they’re, they’re, they are definitionally all going after the same few guys.

Yeah.

Which rewards those guys for bad behavior where they don’t really value the relationships, which then creates the perception in these women that men don’t really value relationships and treat them poorly.

And then you get this you know, horrible cycle here. Yeah. And it’s, and it’s also hard, like when, when I look at men in this generation, when I look at the, you know, subreddit we have where it’s, it’s a lot of gender related stuff. You know, so many of them talk about how hard it is dating as a non-white man.

Which I, I can totally hear. Or how tall it is dating as a, a, a short guy, right? Which again, I, I didn’t like, I was in an easier time period for dating and, I wasn’t dealing with either of those things. Right. So, I had it uniquely easy compared to that community. I, I do like that the community isn’t, at least, it doesn’t seem like spiteful against, like, taller guys and stuff like that.

I just feel like the tallest from Invader Zm

Speaker: here they are, your all knowing, all [00:38:00] powerful leaders, the Almighty toys.

Speaker 2: Thank you.

Malcolm Collins: Like that, that’s, that’s who we are doing the podcast. That’s, that’s literally, it’s so funny in Vayner Zim tried to create like a joke society where everything is based off of how, how, how tall a, a, a male is. And I feel like women have unironically recreated that society on like Tinder and stuff like that.

Yeah, that is, that is actually our society right now is oh, you’re, you’re too short.

Speaker 6: Ah. You seem to have grown since last. You stood before a

Redditer.

Speaker 2: .

You’ve been assigned to the planet Bloch, home of the slaughtering

Borderline women.

Speaker 2: Why would you trophy?

Speaker 7: However, because of your increased height, we have decided to give you the planet Vort home of the universe’s most comfortable couch.

And hot career women who genuinely believe you’re making a major sacrifice by being a [00:39:00] stay at home husband.

Speaker 4: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Go to the, the trash planet where you’ll be eaten by rats and no one will synthesize.

Simone Collins: What in general was the, the sentiment or reaction or discussion on, on the subreddit about this? Like, what was their, and so, or, and therefore just like, women are terrible. You see, you see how bad this is, why I’m gonna be a passport, bro. Like, what, what is there and there for from this? I don’t know. I don’t,

Malcolm Collins: I didn’t read all that comments.

Okay. I find it less fun than the Discord to be honest. But it’s, it’s, it’s active as heck, man. It is, it is incredibly active. I’m just very shocked by this. I do not know. I mean, I know why it’s become a place like the podcast itself isn’t that relevant to the Discord. It’s become a place for people to have political debates.

Because the podcast itself, in the eyes of many people in the Discord, they’re like, they frame themselves as righteous, but they’re actually very centrist. [00:40:00] Which is prob, I mean, I don’t know what political opinion I have that’s not right-leaning. Of, of center, it might not be as right leaning as some people, but but I can understand how a lot of people in like online spaces, if you’re like in the er crowd or something like that, would see us as centrist.

Mm-hmm. And, and I think because of that, because we try to air both sides from like a, a logical and, and, and, and broken down, and I think fair perspective, often, even if we let our biases be known very clearly that attracts the type of people who want to have debates within online communities like Reddit.

So you get this big debate, Reddit, which is why the interaction rate’s so high. As much as you want to blame the other species, you also have to take accountability for why you’re allowing certain people into your life and why you’re okay with letting people basically walk all over you. I love, she calls min the other species, the

Simone Collins: other goodness gracious lady.

Malcolm Collins: And it’s to why you’re letting men walk all over you. The answer is clear. You are going after the guys [00:41:00] who have tons of other options, and so of course they’re gonna walk all over you. That’s just like, think about it from the guy’s perspective, right? The, the problem with all of the men, women sorting to these top few men, which statistically they objectively do on dating apps, right?

Is that the, the, those men are gonna have like five to 10 women each who will sleep with them whenever they want, and Yeah. Yeah. They don’t need to treat you with respect. Like there’s, there’s no need to treat you with respect because you are literally disposable from their perspective. And I think, I think this makes life worse for those men as well.

You know, when they, when they call, well, yeah, they’re not

Simone Collins: happy. ‘cause also they’re not having kids. They don’t have a, a committed partner. I think even men who thought they could make it work where they’re billionaires and they have one committed partner who’s kind of like raising kids for them or something, and then they’re sleeping around.

Like, there are so many now prominent cases, and I might get into some that I’m, I’m work, I’m working on an episode that might get into some of these examples where they just [00:42:00] crash and burn. So even that doesn’t really work. That I just, yeah, no one’s winning in this. Who’s winning

actually Who is winning? Someone has to be winning. I feel like even the dating app companies aren’t winning because they’re, I think they’re losing people regardless. If you, if you help people get married, you lose people. But also people are probably, I think I, I read something on this. Who’s winning

Malcolm Collins: R Fab AI where you can get yourself a simulated partner of the highest scholar?

Simone Collins: Oh, the chat bot platforms. Yeah. Honestly, they’re, they’re way more pleasant to speak with than people.

Malcolm Collins: Well, you always create ones of me, or, or like a character import feature can create very detailed Malcolm’s and Simone’s.

Simone Collins: I think it’s one of the most popular when you, when you go onto the platform at least, is this, just because I keep interacting with it.

But the Malcolm is, is one of the most popular.

Malcolm Collins: Because you like interacting with the Malcolm. [00:43:00] We’ve got a great new audio feature, by the way, now where you can just like push a button and chat with it and then it will speak. Oh, I love that

Simone Collins: feature.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And it works in like five different languages, like totally fluently.

Yeah. As well, which is really cool. So cool. Anyway, somebody from another language tried it and they go, oh my God, it sounded like a real woman. Like, I’ve never seen a Spanish audio translation. It’s very natural. Yeah, there’s a lot.

Simone Collins: And there’s different, even within any language, there’s, there are different ality options and gender options which is nice ‘cause I, I don’t know.

That’s definitely matters. It, it really does have an impact. So I, well done Malcolm. Well done Bruno. You guys are awesome.

Malcolm Collins: Speaking of her celibacy, but then one year turned into two, which turned into three, which turned into four years. I made that promise to myself. Until I’m in a commitment relationship, I want to be celibate.

Okay, Seb Zami.

So one, first of all, I wanna say to what Simona’s saying, we’ve got the site mostly stable now. I’m sorry. It was like unstable for so long. I, I got jumped the gun in announcing it because I’ve never developed software from scratch before. Like this myself is gonna go so well,

Simone Collins: what could possibly go wrong?

You thought,

Malcolm Collins: well, [00:44:00] you know, it, it took a really long time to get it, it, get it as stable as it is now. And, and that was frustrating. But we’re there now finally I’m excited about. I’m, it’s, this is awesome, but to what she’s talking about here, I found this really interesting. They, they, she’s not saying she’s actually celibate.

She says, until I’m in a committed relationship, I wanna be celibate. No, it’s just

Simone Collins: so crazy. ‘cause at least when I was doing my thing. I, I was just celibate. Like I, I wasn’t, but I, I know also like a lot of people have sex drives that probably they have to address. Right, right. And

Malcolm Collins: you do not which, which is I awesome.

Right? Like, I think that that makes like, so much better and easier, especially for the next generation if you’re not Yeah. I mean, imagine

Simone Collins: just pretty much anyone can probably relate to having intrusive thoughts about something, be it food or, or alcohol or gambling or sex or something. And like a life without those intrusive thoughts is an easier life, you know, like if you choose anything.

No, I hated doing through

Malcolm Collins: puberty. I [00:45:00] hated it. I remember I had the thoughts of like, my ideas were so much more complicated so much more interesting before I went through puberty.

Simone Collins: Oh, oh my gosh. So you could even remember back to when you were saying.

Malcolm Collins: No, this is like an experience that I think a lot of guys have.

I mean, I had

Simone Collins: that, I just, it was with mood swings, like, oh, suddenly I’m like anguished and angry and embarrassed and I can’t, I don’t understand why, but I didn’t have it with like, I need sex.

Malcolm Collins: And then you go through puberty and all of a sudden it’s like all of your thoughts, all of your daydreams, they’re on like, sounds terrible.

Sex and hunting and killing. Yeah. And, and, and it’s what all of your doodles are about. It’s the Roman soldiers at war, you know, it’s you know, building empires as well. Right. But, but the thoughts are so like bundled. And before that, I remember I was constantly thinking about philosophy and why I exist and everything like that, which is more what I moved to as I’ve gotten older and my sex drive has died down.

But there’s a period [00:46:00] there where, you know, it was just like,

Simone Collins: couldn’t get, you couldn’t get a thought. And edge was. It sucks.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, you doodling, you know, vikings and, and soldiers and war, and every guy I think, goes through this phase, right? Like, yeah. It’s starships, you know, you gotta take out the Zenoss.

Of course. My God. As you colonize the, the universe,

Simone Collins: I mean, of course,

Malcolm Collins: anyway, after breaking her four year streak last year with someone who ultimately wasn’t worth it, the 29-year-old is keeping that promise to herself. And going back to the no sex bandwagon Zai is just one of many women in her age group that are openly discussing the celibacy journey and encouraging others to do the same.

So accidentally having sex with somebody like once in a four year period while you’re looking for a husband used to not be called celibate. It used to be called. Normal. This used to be like, if you’re talking the [00:47:00] 1970s, this would’ve been a normal middle American woman’s. Sure. Like

Simone Collins: one night stand while you got a little too tipsy,

Malcolm Collins: like once in four years.

Sure. Right. Like, that would’ve been not celibate. That would’ve been i, I screwed up. But no one, not everyone’s a saint. You know what I mean? Not everyone’s Simone. Mm-hmm. From 2010 to 2024, the percentage of youngsters 18 to 29, who admitted to not having sex doubled from 12% to 24% according to a general social survey.

And to make matters worse even more shocking cyclists for young adult females has risen by roughly 50% according to IFS. Mm-hmm. And these strong world women are just adding to that already increasing number quote. Typically, if I feel like things are going down a path where I’m like, oh, they might be expecting something from me, I like to be straightforward and be like, I’m not having sex with you.

And I’m like, that, that’s normal. Yeah,

Simone Collins: that’s pretty normal.

Malcolm Collins: And I literally say it so bluntly. That kind of allows [00:48:00] me to feel not only like I’m in charge, but also if they’re just looking for a quick hookup, then they don’t have to see me again, which I also think is really good, I think is really good for women to not waste anyone’s

Simone Collins: time.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like me, I, I met you, what did I say on our first date? I’m looking to get married. I was like,

Simone Collins: oh, yeah. Yes. Yeah. Sorry. I thought I was thinking about what you were saying on, on our second date, which is Oh yeah. My mom told me when I was a teen that if a girl doesn’t go down on you, if by the second date she’s just playing games.

Malcolm Collins: Third day. Third day. She third day. Is

Simone Collins: that what she said? I can’t remember what her, her words of wisdom were on that front, because I didn’t hear them from her directly. But

Malcolm Collins: I mean, that was in her generation that she grew up learning that. Right. You know? Yeah. And I do think that was normalized when we were growing up.

It was, yeah. That like a woman, you were weird because you didn’t sleep with people, right? Like Yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah, yeah.[00:49:00]

Malcolm Collins: We have the, the whole diary of the year you met me that that’s been annotated and turned into a book for, it was the first book we did. And it’s called Into the Heart of Dork Darkness. And we never published it. And she refuses to give it to like our exclusive subscribers ‘cause she’s like, too embarrassed.

I think it’s a good book. I think it’s a good book.

Simone Collins: I’m glad you think it’s a good book. It can, it can hide in obscurity.

Malcolm Collins: Hide and I’ll, I’ll make sure that it gets published on your death.

Simone Collins: Thanks. Great. Fantastic. I mean, I’ll be dead, so I won’t care. I really, you know.

Malcolm Collins: Come on, Simone. I think you’re really cute.

And, and it’s very relatable and it talks a lot about our time.

Simone Collins: You’ve normalized so much to my death when you die. So and so is, you know, Octavian, but he will be very mad if, if we die before we get, what does he call it? The golden subscribe button. It’s not even golden. Or do you, is there a golden one?

Is he putting that on us? Do we? No, there is

Malcolm Collins: a [00:50:00] golden one. There’s a silver one in a gold one. What are, what are the do you have to get a million

Simone Collins: for? Oh God. So he

Malcolm Collins: expects

Simone Collins: a million from

well then I guess anyone, you know, we, we need to not die until we get the gold one key.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so at a hundred subscribers you can create a custom URL. Have we ever done that? I think we have a custom URL mm-hmm. 500 subscribers and you become eligible for the expanded YouTube partner program. Which of course we have a thousand subscribers at Major Milestone, you become eligible for the YouTube partner program, which allows you to earn money from your videos.

Okay. 10,000 subscribers, you unlock features like custom thumbnails and access to the YouTube Creator Academy. Wait, you can’t

Simone Collins: make custom thumbnails before you have 10,000? Wait, they can’t, cannot be true.

Malcolm Collins: It might be, I mean, it’s I mean, that was so long ago for us when we started like, you know, dedicatedly making videos again.

No, we had custom thumbnails on those videos, so that must be an older thing. So it, it, at a hundred thousand subscribers, you’re eligible for the Silver Creator Award, known as the Silver Play button. And we’ll just tell him it’s [00:51:00] gold. You know, he doesn’t know the difference, Todd.

Simone Collins: Yes, he does.

Malcolm Collins: At a, at a million subscribers, you’re eligible for the Gold Creator Award.

That’s what he wants. A a million. And then at 10 million, you’re eligible for the Diamond Creator Award. And for, wait, is this, that one just made out

Simone Collins: of glass? Like is it, or does it have a diamond?

Malcolm Collins: I’ve never

Simone Collins: seen it before. I don’t, I don’t know if I follow anyone. Here’s the thing though, is I bet all those people just create those, those slop YouTube videos for. Kids because that’s like that, the only time I’ve ever seen a video that like, or a channel that consistently produces videos that are like 10 million views, 30 million views, it’s always like a, a stupid kid channel.

Malcolm Collins: It’s, it’s, it’s just a crystal award. And then it’s just through this time. Yeah, it’s just see through Crystal. Yeah, it’s, it actually looks, I think, worse than the other ones. Yeah. And then there’s the Red Crystal Award, which is actually pretty cool looking. It’s, it’s a, it’s a [00:52:00] black crystal with like a red play button in the center of it.

Ooh,

Simone Collins: that sounds good. How many do you need that for?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that is those are our family colors that the black and red, that Calvinist. So is that that what we’re going for a hundred million. We’re we’ll never get there. We don’t make content that’s appealing to a mass audience. Yeah, that is

Simone Collins: can do it if he, if he, if he makes kids slop.

Malcolm Collins: But I, I think, I think the silver play button is realistic for us within what are we at now for subscribers? 62,000?

Simone Collins: Our goal for this year, we’re like, oh, if we could do it, it would

Malcolm Collins: be, no,

Simone Collins: we’re at

Malcolm Collins: about 64,000.

Simone Collins: We’re at 63.8. Oh really? Our goal was 70,000. So we didn’t make it, but I thought that it was impo.

Like, I was like, let’s set a goal if 50,000 subscribers. And you’re like, no, it has to be a stretch goal. We stretched. We didn’t stretch far enough, Malcolm, we

Malcolm Collins: didn’t stretch far enough, but I think this year resolutions here, people, we can make it to a hundred thousand. So please subscribe. Our channel was hit so hard by the Christmas [00:53:00] season.

I always hate that that happens. You know, we were getting to a point of like 20,000 per episode. And then, yeah, don’t,

Simone Collins: don’t subscribe for us. Subscribe for our eldest son Octavian. So they, who, who only cares,

Malcolm Collins: they

Simone Collins: literally walks around houses as the, our house as though he’s narrating a YouTube video. Hey guys, just going around my house.

Like, he just loves it. He loves YouTube. He was born in the YouTube. He, he, he

Malcolm Collins: literally born like the guy from that show Truman show.

Simone Collins: No. And like also, he literally, ‘cause he’s autistic, he has these little things he recites. He will literally recite like the sound bites, the clips that people will use in videos as like sort of the new version of reaction gif.

Like, ew, ew. Like, he keeps saying that one and Oh my God, what the hell? Like all the, all the little like sound clips. He does it all the time. Because he is, he is literally born in YouTube. Like he, he, he is the meme, he is a walking meme. He’ll generate his [00:54:00] own memes like that, that spread even to like his a BA therapist are doing it.

His, his thing that he coined was, or maybe it didn’t, maybe it did come from YouTube. Yeah. Tell me, chime in, in the comments if Helicopter, helicopter was. From YouTube, our kid or like from YouTube. ‘Cause maybe this comes from some video, like, I don’t know, riffing on whoever made their gender attack helicopter, though.

I think Octa’s genuine gender, if he knew it was an option would be attack helicopter. Not joking.

Malcolm Collins: Attack helicopter would be a cool gender option. Yeah.

Simone Collins: If I could choose gender, I would choose attack helicopter. Shut up. People

Malcolm Collins: like, what the heck? Why don’t I get to be? It reminds me when I was a little kid and my parents said, you can be anything you want when you grow up.

And I said, so yeah, why can’t I be an attack

Simone Collins: helicopter?

Malcolm Collins: I said, I wanna be a tyrannosaurus rexton. Like, and then I wondered why and Titan would wanna be

Simone Collins: a Tyrannosaur. Why

Malcolm Collins: aren’t there more tyrannosaurus Rex? I remember this as a kid. I was like, but if that’s true, then why aren’t there more Tyrannosaur rexes around?

Like how can they go if anyone can become one when they grow up? Like it seems like the obvious thing to want to be when you grow up. Why so many ducks? Why [00:55:00] so few tyrannosaurs, right? Like

Simone Collins: suspicious. No, and we have chickens. We have dinosaurs. Our kids are so accustomed to the idea of chickens being dinosaurs that this morning when they were playing with toys, I, I can send you the clip.

I even took a video of it. They were just cooking dinosaurs in their play kitchen and then feeding it to each other. That’s dinosaurs. Yeah. They’re cooking dinosaurs TV was shoving it in setting the oven to 500 broiling. It makes sense for dinosaur steak. You’d want it.

Malcolm Collins: Of course. No, I mean they think they eat dinosaurs.

‘cause we gave them the dinosaur nuggets, right?

Simone Collins: No, but we tell them that chickens are basically dinosaurs,

Malcolm Collins: which I mean they are.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So they eat dinosaurs. I explained to them this is what dinosaurs are now. No, no,

Malcolm Collins: no, no. So, I love you to death. I love you too for dinner tonight. I’m doing something with pesto, I guess.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Which I’m excited about.

Simone Collins: Pito pesto. I mean, if you want, [00:56:00] I could saute some of the. Nice steak with it, but I just figure like it be, sir,

Malcolm Collins: actually, if I may,

Simone Collins: we actually do have some of those peppers left. Why don’t I just, well, we, pasta that I need to use too though,

Malcolm Collins: if I may. Yeah, if I may. What I’d really like to try with the pesto is the way that we’ve done the pesto historically.

Is fine, but it’s not that good compared to like what I get at a restaurant. Basically we cook up the pasta and then we just mix in past sauce and cook it a bit more.

Simone Collins: Saute it with pasta. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. What I think would be really nice is to actually not like just we, no, we haven’t been saing it in paste.

We have been cooking it, putting it whiz pesto in, in a the, the container where we cooked it in. Right. And basically just letting it cook it down a bit. Whereas what I think would be really good is if you put the [00:57:00] pasta with some pesto in oil in a pan and you fried it with the past stuff.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

That’s, I, I did that the last time we did it because I discovered that’s how restaurants do it. I just, we’ll do it again this time. I guess.

Malcolm Collins: That sounds fantastic. And if we wanna make it really good, could you make it with a, a fried egg on top?

Simone Collins: I used up all the eggs we have this morning.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, no problem. The chickens aren’t

Simone Collins: laying that much right now. They’re not happy. Those eggs

Malcolm Collins: you gave me this morning were fantastic, by the way. You did a great job cooking them.

Simone Collins: I’m glad you liked

Malcolm Collins: them.

Simone Collins: That makes me

Malcolm Collins: happy. Well, you really know your stomach, I think we’re seasoned very well, not over seasoned.

Not under seasoned. I, I, I, I let you know when I’m like, Hey, this could do a bit better. That was, that was on point, Simone.

Simone Collins: Thank you. That makes me glad. Yeah. Eggs and homemade banana nut bread with butter.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, that was pretty good too. You really laid on the butter. So, you know, that’s how you know

Simone Collins: Octavia and Jordan as well.

I made the same thing for, and he is like, I don’t want that. That’s not gonna be good. And I’m like, you just need to try it. And he will discover that you [00:58:00] actually like it. And he’s like, whoa. And it was just gone, gone. At least he tried it. Like toasty will never try because toasty is me.

Malcolm Collins: He’s you, you won’t try things.

Simone Collins: I won’t, I won’t them. I’m not putting it in my mouth. Whatever it, whatever. It’s, it’s not happening. I’m going to eat. Five things and that’s it, but I can still make everything for you. And toasty is just like me ‘cause he’s like, mommy, I wanna make waffles for Octavian. And I’m like, no, we’re only gonna make food that you want to eat.

Like I’m not. ‘cause Octavia didn’t ask for waffles. He is. He’s not gonna eat waffles. It’s so frustrating. But I, the solution is you just get a family and then you make them the food and they eat the food and so you get to make the food and they eat it

Malcolm Collins: to, to make the food. But you used to do this by yourself.

You’d bake sweets and Yeah, then they’d be like,

Simone Collins: oh, what do I do with this? And I’d have to find someone who would take my baked goods or whatever. Now I have a whole family, it’s only gonna grow so I can satisfy my fantasies. That’s the [00:59:00] thing. It’s so much better to be married and to have kids, and have people who can.

I don’t know. I think one of the greatest sources of happiness is doing kind things for people and, and making them happy. And making their lives good. Because after a certain point, you can’t really do more nice things for yourself, you know, and we still do really nice things for ourselves, but like that can only go so far.

The diminishing marginal returns are real. So then you, you can only really get further along by doing kind things for other people, even people we know who are, I would say like professional pleasure, maxers, we’re not gonna name this one person. But like they’ve discovered that even like with no children and even without a spouse, that the only way that they can get additional marginal pleasure is by like.

Giving things away to other people. But in, in this particular case, one person I’m thinking about then just created like an ecosystem of scam artists around them because they discovered they could exploit that. [01:00:00] You know what I mean? Yeah. But like, yeah, I think even people who really are seriously taking hedonism, like, well just openly say, my life is all about being happy.

Discover that you have to have other people in your life to max it out after a certain level. So it just shows the folly of this approach.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway. I love you Simone. You, you are absolutely amazing.

So what did you and Octavian do today?

Simone Collins: Mostly he just got a adjusted to the concept of working from a treadmill desk, which he finds delightful. And I think my. Hypothesis preliminarily is confirmed that, that, especially kids who are the A DHD end the spectrum and especially young boys who just aren’t designed to sit down at a desk and do things, work really well with a treadmill desk, especially if, if they have a secondary screen that’s playing stuff that’s vaguely interesting to them.

So I [01:01:00] queued up a playlist on YouTube for a secondary screen that was just the history of helicopters and I found really cool old vintage films about the history of helicopters. And so that was playing in the background. And then he was going through his phonics lessons and his math lessons on his other Chromebook.

Orin’s Chromebook at the same time, and he was really just able more than ever before to just actually focus on the work and get it which was great. That’s really cool. You

Malcolm Collins: know, I, watching him work today, I was like, oh, this might really work, right? Like, there might be, I don’t

Simone Collins: know. We’ll, we’ll see. I’m, I’m probably wrong and terrible at all of this, but like, I know that for me, having a secondary screen playing something that I mostly ignore and walking keeps the demons at bay.

It feeds them, it feeds the chaos monkeys. And so you don’t have, they’re, they don’t, they leave you alone. And then you all, all that’s left is just you and your focus. It’s so nice.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. All [01:02:00] right.

Speaker 18: I, I actually make it for your mom. Don’t forget I make this for you. I really like it. Octavian. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. You actually try to work my best to make you Oh, I’m, I’m, I really like it. I love the American flag and the British flag. What’s the, what’s the good team? This team, and why is it the best team?

‘cause. We love America because we love America, and it is so great that it keeps us safe enough that I really, really, really want to make this for mom because I think we would want to be happy. And I wonder when that remote, the remote for the Tex, for the Tex must be for a field.

Five. Yeah. And I actually made this [01:03:00] also out of nine knits. Magnet tiles. Yeah. Magnet. Yeah. Magnet tiles. I absolutely love it. It looks super awesome. And thank you. High five buddy. Target blocks right there, as you can see. Love you. Target blocks. Target blocks. Oh

Speaker 19: yeah. There they are. Yeah, there they’re, there they are.

Speaker 18: And here’s a dog.

Speaker 19: A dog. Wait where? Where’s

Speaker 18: the dog? Yeah. 15. Oh, the

Speaker 19: dog’s on the, yeah, there he is.

Speaker 18: Look at that. Yeah. And a little sniper right there. A

Speaker 19: sniper. Nice.

Speaker 18: Yeah. Nice.

Speaker 19: The road sign, I mean, a sniper

Speaker 18: right here. Right here? Yeah. There’s a death sign because you meet a death sign. A death

Speaker 19: sign. Yeah.

Where’s the death sign? There’s a restricted zone right here.

Speaker 18: Yeah, we’re stretching.

Speaker 19: Um, toasty can help me find it. I, I know there’s a dust sign somewhere. You heard

Speaker 18: aro. I mean right there. This is

Speaker 19: the medical tent. That’s good.

Speaker 18: Yeah. There some, we need

Speaker 19: that in case people get hurt. Right. Yeah. Where

Speaker 18: is the,

Speaker 19: I don’t know, maybe it’s hidden inside toasty, which is good.

We don’t want all the [01:04:00] hazardous materials to be available to everyone. Right, buddy?

Speaker 18: Yeah. You mean Yeah. Yeah. The dead sign. Dead sign is inside.

Speaker 19: Yeah. Well, they, you should hide the hazardous materials deep inside the building. Right? It’s more secure

Speaker 18: because they’ll not know and they will win because of sound.

Speaker 19: Alright.

In today’s New Year’s Day episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive into a wild (literally) real news story: a California man has been sharing his home with a massive 550-pound black bear for over a month — and the government won’t let him remove it! 🐻🏠

They connect it to the infamous “man or bear” debate, discuss insane wildlife protection bureaucracy (wrong bear trapped, noise devices abandoned, homeowner banned from scaring it himself), and explore parallels with protected bat colonies forcing people out of their own homes.

The conversation spirals into fascinating tangents:

* Future of genetically edited pets (talking dogs, odorless ferrets, domesticated raccoons & foxes)

* Domestication experiments (Russian foxes, urban raccoons evolving cuter features)

* Bat biology, dinosaur parasites, superior bird respiration, and WWII bat bombs 🔥🦇

* Why government inaction is exploding (qualified immunity, pothole-fixing lawsuits)

* Self-defense fantasies, Home Alone cultural appeal, and Appalachian trickster vibes

Plus: bear stereotypes, Tasmanian devil cancers, T-Rex diseases, and why humans have the best immune systems.

Episode Transcript:

Malcolm Collin: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. Remember when that thing went around that was like, would you rather run into a random man in the woods or a bear? Yeah. Or a bear. Okay, so what have I told you? And this is, I kid you not a real news story that right now in California.

There is a white man being forced to live with a black bear. Oh, by the California government? I saw, no, I saw

Simone Collins: a headline, but I didn’t click through to it. I think on Drudged it was something like man, man, still Living with Bear, or something like that. Man. Can’t get rid of bear.

Speaker 18: . It’s been over a month since that 550 pound black bear moved into his home, . He can hear it from inside of his home.

Malcolm Collin: Why? Why does it matter?

That he’s a white man. I [00:01:00] don’t know, but it seemed to matter that it was a black bear. So I’m just telling the story as I read. ‘cause no, because

Simone Collins: if it were a grizzly bear, it would be a dead person, a dead body and a house. It’ll be a dead body soon with a, a black bear. It’s a large black bear, bear attack.

When they feel, when they’re approached aggressively or they perceive to be aggressively, or

Malcolm Collin: Simone, it’s living in his house. It’s living in his house. I mean, a lot

Simone Collins: of irresponsible people adopt tiger cubs and lion cubs. This is a wild adult bear. Yeah. Well define wild. You know, when, when, when you discover that, it, it’s been living around cities and people for so long that it, it has developed habits that have adapted to them. In fact, people have found that urban raccoons have developed different morphological traits from Oh, really? Yeah. They’ve, they, they actually have more dog-like traits now. They look [00:02:00] more approachable and friendly.

They floppier ears and I think shorter snouts, they just look cuter. So yeah.

Malcolm Collin: Oh, I’d, I’d be very interested to see you know, when we go to space, if we bring raccoons with us or something. I mean, I think, I think raccoon, I think

Simone Collins: that that’s already been foretold by the Marvel cinematic

Malcolm Collin: universe.

Speaker 3: you stupid raccoon. Don’t call me a raccoon. I’m sorry I took it too far. That meant trash panda. Is that better?. It’s worse. It’s so much worse.

Malcolm Collin: This is the thing it gives true, but like, if you, if you are as soon as we can start genetically editing animals.

Yeah, it’s gonna dramatically open up the types of animals that make good pets. Yeah. And a few that like are lower tier right now Yeah. Are gonna move to high tier with genetic editing. So I know people

Simone Collins: are talking about designer babies. The thing is people are already cloning their pet dogs. It’s first gonna be designer.

And gene edited pets. Oh, right. If people are already CLO dogs, they’re going to [00:03:00] genetically modify pets super soon and already, like I can tell, our next generation is super open to that. Octavian was working next to me this this afternoon, and he’s sitting there and trying to think about what he can invent and he’s like, well.

They already invented helicopters and they already invented humans. And I’m like, well, you can invent a better human. And then he starts asking about alligators and crocodiles and worm versus cold-blooded like I It’s ha, I see the gears turning. Alright, this is happening. We’re gonna have our talking dog soon.

Well, professor two or the Commodore, whatever, we’re gonna name our next dog. It’s gonna be a talking dog.

Speaker 5: . The Soviet put me on a rocket knowing full well I never to return and I’ll die. But one thing even Uck Soviets never do is call me bad dog. God, you just let it go. A bad dog. Oh, it never stop hurting.

Malcolm Collin: But if you put pox P two [00:04:00] in dogs Yeah. It looks like you might be able to get a dog with fairly minor genetic edits that could understand human speech significantly better. Yeah. And, but what I’m saying here is I don’t even know if dogs are going to be the ultimate species to edit.

I mean, I do think we’ll do a lot of edits to dogs, but I think that there’s other species examples here would be ferrets. Ferrets would be a much more amazing pet if they didn’t smell so bad. Oh, I was just gonna say it was like. But the smell, Malcolm, with genetic edits, you can remove the smell problem from What about the greasiness?

Simone Collins: I don’t know. I feel like the, the greasiness and smelliness is a big part of their whole

Malcolm Collin: thing. Physiology.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collin: Well, I don’t know. Again, with raccoons, if you can, if you can make raccoons more domesticated, like a half dog, half raccoon, I think will be, well, we already have those. Like I said, we’re getting closer.

They’re doing it on their own. But I’m thinking, you know, what do you have on? Yeah, we, yeah. In

Simone Collins: other words, we can, we can do this. In one year rather than through tons of generations of raccoons living and dying. I mean, that, that’s your [00:05:00] whole point.

Malcolm Collin: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, and they’ve tried to do this with other animals.

It is hard to domesticate some species. Like there was an experiment to domesticate foxes in Russia.

Hmm. Yeah.

And they went back to a wild form fairly quickly and you, and you can still buy them by the way, if you wanna buy these like semi domesticated foxes really from Russia’s during the, the communist period.

And they developed a lot of traits of dogs like floppy ears and stuff like that, similar to the raccoons. And the, do they

Simone Collins: behave? Mostly like dogs as pets. Should we get a fox next? No, they’re love fox.

Malcolm Collin: They’re smellier. Is the biggest downside. And I, I actually wonder if that’s one of the core things was dogs and cats that we brought out of them with smelliness.

Simone Collins: That’s really interesting. I mean, if you’ve been around a dog that farts. And we all have, I think we can all beg to differ. The dogs are not stinky, but

Malcolm Collin: but most, most non like dog and cat pets that have not been around humans for a long time are quite smelly animals. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and cats uniquely, I mean, I’m sure that some people have cats with bowel problems or something, but in, in my [00:06:00] entire experience having a childhood cat, I do not recall that cat farting once or making any bad smells once aside from like vomiting sometimes.

Malcolm Collin: So anyway. Well, and, and of course we’ve gotta get to gene edited bears, right? Yeah. So anyway, back to the bears.

Speaker 9: What is a multi bear?

Oh, that’s a multi bear. Bear heads

Malcolm Collin: yeah. Oh yeah. Well, so I’m

Simone Collins: sorry. Wait. There’s a man living with a bear, but. The state isn’t letting him get rid of it. Doesn’t, does California have stand your ground laws? Can he shoot the bear in his own house?

Malcolm Collin: So I, I, I did, I do not, I do not think the stand your ground laws apply to bears. Only humans. And I do not think California has them in the first place. Let’s see. California stand your ground laws. Does California have a stand?

Simone Collins: I’m asking rock.

Malcolm Collin: No [00:07:00] it doesn’t.

Simone Collins: I am in California and there is a bear in my house.

Can I shoot it? Will I be in legal trouble for shooting this bear?

Malcolm Collin: The answer is from, from at least this case. Yes. You are not allowed to remove a bear from your house, so I want to talk about why you’re not allowed to remove a bear from your house. Okay. Actually going to be relevant to a lot of humanity growing forwards as bureaucratic institutions begin to break apart

Simone Collins: as, as, as the bears take over.

As the bears take over. They didn’t, didn’t you guys know the bear uprising?

Malcolm Collin: This is step one. But this is the, I mean, the reason I wanna cover the survey is because it’s so emblematic of many things. He

Simone Collins: hunting. He needs a hunting permit. Is it not hunting season?

Malcolm Collin: It’s not hunting season. It’s winter.

It’s, oh,

Simone Collins: see, that’s the, this is bureaucracy at

Malcolm Collin: its best.

Simone Collins: Well, sir, sir,

Malcolm Collin: you shoot summer,

Simone Collins: you, and it’s not, it’s not [00:08:00] hunting season right now.

Malcolm Collin: I, I would, I would arrange an unfortunate accident for the bear. It’s inside your

Simone Collins: home, the Castle Doctrine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you reasonably believe it’s necessary to protect yourself or others from imminent death or great bodily injury, this falls under California’s self-defense laws penal code 1 97, 1 98 0.5, castle Doctrine for inside the home, inside your home.

The Castle Doctrine dictates a presumption that if you have a reasonable fear of imminent harm, if the bear is acting aggressively, like charging or attacking it, you can just say.

Malcolm Collin: It has to. Yeah. Well, I don’t know. I, this has become a wide enough case that I think they do like a forensic analysis, and I don’t think the real

Simone Collins: case to support this California Department of Fish and Wildlife and law enforcement have ruled shootings as justified self-defense.

When a bear entered a home and showed aggression, even though no permit existed. Simone, but it was charging or acting. Well, this is true. Yeah. You cannot, you cannot shoot solely to protect property EEG if the [00:09:00] bear is just rummaging without threatening people. Deadly forces. Okay, so, so what’s happening is there’s a, there’s a squatter situation.

The bear is not charging him. It’s just like ransacking his home.

Malcolm Collin: A lot of people have been joking on these. The, it’s like a, you know, a squatter situation. It is not like legally that seems

Simone Collins: to be how this is, if he’s not allowed to take the

Malcolm Collin: actual, so see the actual thing that’s, that’s going wrong and why he can’t get rid of it.

And it’s been there since Thanksgiving, by the way, and it’s a 500 wait. That’s a long time. It’s a, it’s a 500 to 550 pound bear. It has done significant damage to his property already. It tore out the water system, so he had to get that shut off. So he has no running water to his house anymore.

A flooded basement with a bear in it. Oh. He can’t do anything about this. Right. And the reason he can’t do anything about it, and Simone, it’s 500 to 550 pounds. It’s a large bear.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So a big gun and a more bullet.

Malcolm Collin: I have not trust the gun to take it down [00:10:00] while it’s charging. Simone I, I, you, you wanna harass this thing to get it to charge?

I don’t, I don’t trust that. Yeah. This

Simone Collins: is, this is why I handle the animal problems in our house and you don’t.

Malcolm Collin: But yeah. So, but I. Before I go further with the story, the reason why I want to talk about this is just sort of the microcosm of leftist insanity like that a, a, a bear living in your house.

They do not see as a threat. They do not care about the bureaucratic downside to this, which is if this bear goes out and like malls someone on the street, this guy is gonna be responsible for it because it was on his property and yet he can’t get it off his property. It fits into the bear or man meme because if a man started living in a woman’s house, I am sure he would be evicted, right?

Like yeah. It, it plays into racial. Oh yeah, that’s true.

Simone Collins: The, the mere presence of the man would be construed as a threat. A home invasion and threat. Yeah.

Malcolm Collin: But

Simone Collins: a

Malcolm Collin: bear is not a threat.

Simone Collins: A bear.

Malcolm Collin: A bear. A bear is just like the kind with, with

Simone Collins: bear teeth and Bear Claw.

Malcolm Collin: It’s [00:11:00] just windy, the poo you can see it like barely fitting coming in and out.

Oh. But anyway, so 500 to 550 pounds. He calls the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to remove this bear. They come and they set up a meat trap and like a big like live catch bear trap. Okay. And they catch a bear. So there’s, there’s like a population of bears in this community. Oh. And they just catch the wrong bear.

So, yeah, they catch a smaller bear. They take the smaller bear away and relocate it. And I love, the guy was even like, and I felt bad about that other bear, you know, like the bear didn’t do anything. Yeah. Seriously. Well, how big of a community of bears do you have in this community? Sweet man. So anyway, like they catch the wrong bear, but they’re, they’re just like.

Okay, we’re done. And he’s like, no, there’s still a bear in my basement. Oh my God. And they’re just like, no, we caught the bear. I can’t even, that’s [00:12:00] insane. It’s exactly like that scene from 30 Rock when he is like, no, I have the government report. There’s no leak in the, in the ceiling. Yes. He’s like, but I can see the link.

Speaker 10: The Celia appears to be leaky. No, it’s not. We’ve looked into it and it’s not. Uh, if you have any questions, I’ll write down my extension for you.

Malcolm Collin: Would, would you come to my basement and look at the bear with me? And then they’re like, oh yes, there is a bear. So then they tried to get it out by putting in some sort of like a, a noise making device. Oh. Which appeared to be working, but then they shut it off arbitrarily and they haven’t explained why and they haven’t come back to try anything else after that, they have made it very clear to him that they are aware that there is a bear in his basement.

Speaker 16: Again using air horns to flush the bear out.

Johnson says it looked like it was finally working until he says they suddenly got a call ordering [00:13:00] them to stand down. Very defeated. Oh yeah. I mean, I just dropped ‘cause like, well now what? It’s all up to me. And what I’m supposed to watch my phone when he comes out in the middle of the night or like sleep in the kitchen and listen for him.

Speaker 17: Every night. I even ask like, okay, so as long as you guys are gone, can I still use the bait to get him? No, can’t.

Malcolm Collin: So he said. Can I get it? So he tried to do things. So first he tried to like play the sounds of like dogs and stuff like that to try to scare the bear out of the basement. And they came to him and they said, you can’t play any noises to scare away the bear. Only we can play noises to scare away the bear.

Wait, wait. He’s not

Simone Collins: allowed to. People are allowed to play anything they want in their own house as long as there’s not, like it disrupts the bear. Brown bears are not an A threat. This is a black bear.

Malcolm Collin: Simone, I’m sorry, a black bear. I’m sorry. Are scientifically more aggressive. Are they? Wait, are wait, are, I dunno.

I’m, I’m making [00:14:00] like fake racist claims. Okay. Because we all

Simone Collins: know that white bears are the most dangerous bears that eat peoples faces. Bears are the most

Malcolm Collin: dangerous bears. That’s true. I mean, at least he doesn’t have a white bear in his basement. Thank God this isn’t even woke nonsense. White bears are genuinely the most dangerous bears.

Yeah. And. And you know, the black bears are very, I think we just base all racial stereotypes on bears.

Simone Collins: Actually. What kind of yellow bears are the nicest, smartest bears, aren’t they? If, if a little rotund,

Malcolm Collin: I saw, wait, Grizz, grizzly, I saw blackberries were the nicest. Or brown. I’m referring

Simone Collins: to

Malcolm Collin: Winnie

Simone Collins: the Pooh.

Malcolm Collin: Oh my God. And Xi Jinping is Winnie the Pooh. Coincidence. Coincidence. Chinese propaganda. The Bear system. The bear system. We got yellow bears. We’ve got

Simone Collins: black

Malcolm Collin: bears, we’ve got brown bears. The the, the Winnie the Pooh is just a sweet little guy. He’s just, he’s just a sweet guy. He’s wise. The Dao, the Dow of Poo.

Simone Collins: Right. Holy smoke spirit [00:15:00] conspiracy me.

Malcolm Collin: Oh, it’s happening guys. It’s happening. So, but, but so he, he’s been without hot water or water, I think at all since Christmas. Wait is so wait, is this man still living in his house? Yeah, he’s living in his house. So he lives upstairs and he can hear the bear downstairs.

Okay. So

Simone Collins: let say he needs to. Pick up a prescription at the pharmacy. How does he leave his home? He just shares the driveway with the

Malcolm Collin: bear.

Simone Collins: He just walks real fast past the bear

Speaker 15: Bear that made its den under an Altadena home, still refusing to leave after more than a month. Now the homeowner there says that this massive bear has done damage to his pipes, forcing him to shut off the.

Simone Collins: and I got like beer

Malcolm Collin: or the bear walking up and down his driveway going back to its home. You know, just wait. So the bear enters and exits?

Yeah. The bear enters and exits the home. Oh, no. Okay.

Simone Collins: Then he needs to reinforce his house whenever the through through a basement window.

Malcolm Collin: Well then he needs to board up the [00:16:00] basement window. Exactly. So that appears to be like the same thing he should be doing that he’s not doing is putting forward what?

Simone Collins: I’m sorry. This man. Okay, now this is, this is looking a little different now. It was a little, it was a little suspicious when he felt bad for the other bear that got relocated first. I’m like, oh, that’s sweet of him. This man cares about bears.

Malcolm Collin: Well, I actually would be a little worried about doing it boarding up

Simone Collins: your base.

Why? Because you think you just destroy, why? Because then

Malcolm Collin: I could force the bear to come through a window. Right? Like this, this is where the bear is, is hibernating, right? Like this is, it’s Well, black bears don’t fully hibernate in this part of California. Mm-hmm. They do what’s called I wanna say like dinning or something.

Or nesting. They hurtle, durl. They, yeah, they, they find a spot that is like hibernation, but they still go out a lot. Mm. But I’d be very worried about blocking off the entrance to my basement that doesn’t go through my living room. If I had a, a very large 550 pound bear coming in there regularly,

Simone Collins: I guess [00:17:00] they do.

They’ll break car windows. That’s, that’s why they tell you if you’re camping in California, just never leave foot in your car. But

Malcolm Collin: hold on, Simone. This isn’t the only case of this happening in the us. So I wanna tell you about another case that happens regularly, which is perhaps even crazier given what we’ve gone through as a family,

Simone Collins: okay?

Malcolm Collin: Now, there have been numerous cases across the US where homeowners discovered large bat colonies in their attics. Or homes and found themselves unable to evict them due to federal or state protections.

Simone Collins: Dude, you just don’t tell anyone and you gas them all. What’s wrong with people? So if we

Malcolm Collin: haven dealt with, we have found rabid bats on our property.

Yeah, like,

Simone Collins: like actually sent in. Tested positive for rabies bats.

Malcolm Collin: Bats ‘cause rabies is very, very common. It is extremely dangerous to have a large bat [00:18:00] colony in your attic. Mm-hmm. Of living bats. And these aren’t even always in the attic. Sometimes they’re like in a room in the house or something. Yep. And they cannot be evicted In many places during maternity seasons, when flightless pups are present, evicting adults can orphan and kill the young, which is viewed as illegal or inhumane.

Homeowners also cannot harm poison or seal bats in the. They must wait till the end of the season so there was a case in. So we

Simone Collins: treat bats in the United States better than China treated its own citizens during COVID-19. We literally do, we’ve gotta probably do this country. Oh, well. At least the bats are okay.

Malcolm Collin: Right. I mean, we did try to use the bats to, to burn down part of Asia at one point. You’re familiar with the whole bat bomb thing during World War ii?

Simone Collins: No. Was this like some [00:19:00] different version of, of Acoustic Kitty, the fire bat.

Malcolm Collin: No. So it was actually a pretty clever system, but they just never implemented it.

Did they just light bats

Simone Collins: on fire and send them away? What happened?

Malcolm Collin: So, they were going to, this was in Japan release bats with small incendiary bombs on them. And the reason they were going to do it is these were bombs designed to start fires. And where bats go to like roost are like attics and stuff like that, which typically have wood are already inside the house.

Detonation. Yeah. So it would, it would’ve been bringing flammable explosives to a location that would be extremely flammable. And, you know, useful to catch on fire in a war time. Right. That makes sense. ‘

Simone Collins: cause my first instinct was why would you try to get bats to deliver anything? I mean, we’ve, we’ve all seen bats fly and they are the flimsiest flyers.

You know, you watch them fly and you’re like, are you okay? Like, I don’t think you’ve got this. I don’t think you’re a flight, A flight animal.

Malcolm Collin: I’ve seen chickens far better than

Simone Collins: you. [00:20:00]

Malcolm Collin: I’ve been watching a thing on bats, and a really interesting thing about bats is there are no terrestrial like sorry, walking bats.

Which is, I know they

Simone Collins: can’t fly. They can’t walk. I mean, the only thing they can do is hang well. That’s it. No, no.

Malcolm Collin: But what I mean is almost every other species that flies has volved walking within some Oh, yeah. Yeah. If anything an

Simone Collins: awkward waddle. I mean, so well that like some just choose to swim and walk instead.

Or just walk and walk.

Malcolm Collin: Yeah. But whether, whether you’re talking about birds which have totally walking varieties or, or flying insects, which I’ve totally walking varieties. Mm-hmm. But you do not get this in bats.

Simone Collins: The walking

Malcolm Collin: bat, the mystery, if you’re wondering the mystery on why this is the case.

The reason why is because bats unlike every other species that has evolved flight, use their legs heavily in the flying process. So it’s, is this

Simone Collins: why they fly in such an embarrassing fashion?

Malcolm Collin: I love you say embarrassing. You are embarrassed about [00:21:00] the way they use it. I see.

Simone Collins: Honestly, I cannot watch them without, ugh.

Like, oh no, come on.

Malcolm Collin: It hurts. It hurts to watch. Well, they’re a very successful cl of species. Like if, if you go,

Simone Collins: yeah, Stephen Hawking was very successful as a person, but you’d watch him wheel along and he’d be kind of like, Ugh, I feel for you, man, like you’re killing it. And he did so much better than most of us, but like, it didn’t look.

Malcolm Collin: Bats, smooth bats have been extremely biologically successful. If, if, if life was to evolve, going into the future, bats would be one of the main things we have around and evolving. You think so? Yeah.

And if you look at life After Man or the guy who did that, he did some other stuff. Douglas something I wanna say.

I really like his books. I really like that. Was Adam,

Simone Collins: the guy who wrote Guide to the Galaxy? Right.

Malcolm Collin: No, it’s Douglas something. Anyway, he, he wrote Man After Man, which is one of my favorite books, and I’ve been meaning to get it again. I had a copy, but I can’t, but they’re like $200 now.

Simone Collins: We’re so bad with names.

I’ve probably got that wrong. You trying

Malcolm Collin: to get it on eBay? And I’m like, well, I’ll wait till we have that [00:22:00] source of income. So we’ll, we’ll get our fab. Hey, our fab is like stable, stable these days. Did you get a chance to test it today?

Simone Collins: No, I’m still adjusting to our new. Schedule lifestyle.

Malcolm Collin: Yeah. But you set up the extra running machine for Octavia next to you.

And he spent all day, like, ‘cause we have a kid at home with us working from home now. Homeschooling,

Simone Collins: not working from, they don’t,

Malcolm Collin: they don’t work yet. We haven’t put him to work. He’s gotta start working in a couple years. That’s our entire, today he talked to me all about the merch he was gonna set up for this show.

Yeah. And like I

Simone Collins: was saying, he’s talking about inventions. He certainly has his mind on making money, you know, and he also named his new toy. What was it, diamond, gold, rich? No. And Rich. No, he, he named his previous toys, gold and Diamond. Now his next toys are rich, so this kid’s got earning potential

Malcolm Collin: and he was explaining merch to me today.

He’s like. Dad, like you gotta make the merch. And then you, you go to your fans and you say, I got the merch. And then you give them the merch and [00:23:00] they give you money. And I was like, you gotta invent the merch then. And he is like, I’m gonna do it. So like that’s gonna be the school project for this year. He has to invent merch for the fans, right?

And so I’ll let him explore what options exist for merch and then next year can be genetically modifying dogs. Right. We’ll see.

Simone Collins: Well, I mean, that’s the thing that’s really gonna sell the genetically modified dogs.

Malcolm Collin: Well you think he could sell that to our fans, I think, right?

Simone Collins: Well, yeah. More than just our fans.

I bet. Even our haters and I love those. But anyway, this guy

Malcolm Collin: has this one island in like Future Earth where a bunch of bats became terrestrial. And one of the most famous like creatures he has is this giant, really scary looking predatory bat species he invented. That’s like a land dwelling and like five feet old.

There are predatory

Simone Collins: bats

Malcolm Collin: already. Well, actually what’s really interesting is the bat that is the closest to being a walking bat. There’s two that are tied for it. One walks further, one walks more [00:24:00] and has stronger legs for doing stuff like jumping and stuff like that. And it, it walks by jumping, oh, do you know what bat this is?

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collin: The vampire bat?

Simone Collins: No. The vampire bat is, that makes sense. Yeah. Because it’s going for terrestrial animals, so it needs more. On the ground dexterity. I guess

Malcolm Collin: another really crazy thing I learned recently, which I hadn’t really thought about before, and I saw like a cool, like YouTube on YouTube, it was great.

Okay. Hearing new ideas. I

Simone Collins: love YouTube and

Malcolm Collin: then I, I condensed it all down for you guys, the fans, so you don’t have to watch these full episodes to get to the points doing God’s work. But it’s that did you know that the skull of Sue, you know the, the giant T-Rex that, that they have the giant T-Rex skull.

Simone Collins: No,

Malcolm Collin: but sure. The most complete skeletons we have of a T-Rex, it has little markers across its lower jawbone that we can match to an avian disease. So we know it was killed by single cell parasites. And in Avians what that does is it causes so much pain that they can’t eat anymore and they have eventually starve.

And so t Rexes were killed. By small [00:25:00] parasites. And the video on was going into how common large parasites were in dinosaurs. And like, like giant ticks, giant fleas, internal worms. And one of the reasons is, and, and this is one of those things I think a lot of people don’t know it is actually interesting to, to talk about if you’re talking about comparative biology is dinosaurs.

Just do not have very good immune systems. And there, there were not good immune systems back then, so like you would just get, we’ve even found like parasites in the nests of dinosaurs, like fleas. So they just grow up and then worms on them, fleas on them, everything like that. Oh, riddled with parasites.

And. It was because they one didn’t have like Dexter arms for like, picking off parasites, like in the way that birds can do it easily through pruning. Mm. Or humans and apes can do it through like a grooming each other. Yeah. They didn’t have good immune systems. And that’s something that people who don’t know a lot about biology like you, I, I actually, I.

What, what biological system do birds have that is [00:26:00] significantly better than biological systems that mammals have? Like what is their super system? Do you, do you know this, and dinosaurs probably had this as well.

Simone Collins: I mean, I. I think their, their lightness of bones is really interesting and useful, but I don’t think that’s what you’re going for here.

Malcolm Collin: No, it’s their respiratory system.

Simone Collins: Oh. Their

Malcolm Collin: respiratory and circulatory system are better than mammalian ones. They’re just like, you know, like you, you branch off and you look at comparative biology and it’s really interesting.

‘cause on some branches you’ll just be like. Oh, they’re like millennium ahead of us in evolution in regards to so to understand why this is the case so in humans, when you breathe into your lung, exhale in your, you’re, you’re, you’re filling up both of your lungs with air that is mixing with the deoxygenated air in your lungs, and then you breathe out of your lungs, and then you breathe out.

So you’re always breathing in and breathing out to like [00:27:00] the same system, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. With, with birds, and I think it was dinosaurs. When they breathe in, think of it like a a circulatory loop.

Simone Collins: That would make so much more sense. Yeah. From a design standpoint. Yeah, completely pressure intake an exhaust pipe.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collin: And you exhale completely exhausted air.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That would make so much more sense. Yeah,

Malcolm Collin: it makes so much more sense. And the, well, there’s other ones that, like, for example amphibians have a totally nerfed heart like circulator. So, wait, but how does,

Simone Collins: is it, is it more than like heart valves in the sense that.

You know, they’re, they’re sort of like one way chambers and like blood vessels with birds. I, I, I mean, you see bird noses and they just have little holes. It’s not like I, oh, this is the bird’s exhaust valve and this is the bird’s intake valve. So how does that work,

Malcolm Collin: Simone? It’s been. Decades since I learned this.

I have, I have not gone over this recently. So I don’t remember. But the point I was gonna make is the one system that humans have that is generally or I’d say mammals more broadly have that is like way ahead [00:28:00] of birds. Usually not, not all birds, but, but most is, are, immune system. We have like just super awesome immune systems.

Oh, thank God. Yeah. And when you think about it, it’s actually kind of wild. There are few diseases that humans get. Now we’re more in an ancestral time, which we’ve talked about with like the fungus, eight people’s faces and stuff like that. Mm-hmm. That you don’t just like get better from. And that that was not a thing historically, right?

Like that, that we have an ability to develop an immunity to almost any disease.

Simone Collins: Well, I mean, on a macro level, there are plenty of diseases that have taken out significant portions of the human population, even relatively recently with the great flu after World War I.

Malcolm Collin: Yeah. You occasionally get these, but you have these in other species.

Did you know that right now? Does it just like the random fact episode at this point? Oh boy. Did you know right now that Tasmanian devils are nearing extinction? Because in other episodes I’ve talked about canine venereal [00:29:00] transmissible cancer, which is a transmissible canines. Yeah. The only other mammal.

That have transmissional cancers. One is a for hamster, it’s like a domesticated thing. It’s, we can ignore it ‘cause it’s so rare. But other is Tasmanian devils and they have two forms in them and they might be going extinct due to these. And they arrived only fairly recently. They’re only like 20 and 40 years old each.

And what devils. What’s really weird is there’s been some recent research into the ancestral bones of Tasmanian Devils, and we’re now seeing that they may have had outbreaks of transmissible cancers in the past. Something about they

Simone Collins: survived it once, at least

Malcolm Collin: they may have survived this in the past, like the idea of like through and wiping out a population and then yeah.

But I found that really fascinating. Any, any random facts if we’re making this a random fact episode? Because I, I don’t wanna bore you with a bunch of stuff about this one story. I mean, I find this story interesting. Well, no, I mean,

Simone Collins: Just, just so we wrap this up because we don’t have to go further, I just, I [00:30:00] just.

Where, where are we? Le is is just to be continued with this guy is the next headline, man found dead in basement, eaten by bear. Like what, where are we going with this?

Malcolm Collin: Well, you, you’ve seen this for a long time. There have been a lot of instances of, road departments, departments of transportation stuff, suing people for fixing potholes.

And we’re sort of entering really a timeline where government services are no longer doing their jobs because they’re just two saddles bureaucratic, quote, forget

Simone Collins: Pizza Hut had that famous campaign where it fixed potholes, but maybe it got permits for that.

Malcolm Collin: It probably got permits for that. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. And, and said like, oh, we have government contractors, and somebody in the government was probably getting paid off. Mm-hmm. But yeah, as an individual, if you fix a pothole, you can be fine for that because you know you’re not doing it officially. There was a case,

Simone Collins: Ron Swanson did it in Parks and Rec, and that’s how he met the woman he married,

Malcolm Collin: worked for the Parks department which which I didn’t realize.

So what’s really interesting about all of this is, in inden immunity,

Qualified [00:31:00] immunity was the word I was looking for.

Malcolm Collin: I wanna say that’s what it’s called, or whatever the thing that means that cops are like subject to different legal stuff when they’re doing their jobs. I wasn’t unaware of this, but this actually applies to all government professionals whether they are like it’s civil servants or no department employees or, so it’s a civil servant

Simone Collins: edition of diplomatic immunity.

That’s really, yeah.

Malcolm Collin: Yeah. So like, they’re probably not gonna get in trouble for not doing anything about the bear. It’s like better for them to just do nothing. Right. You know, it’s a, it’s a big bear. They don’t wanna deal with it.

Simone Collins: Maybe this is what Aspen Gold has been on about so much where he’s like, the key thing is to just start arresting policemen when they don’t actually stop bad things from happening.

And I mean, then I guess if we were to remove whatever it is you’re referring to, I’ve never heard of it before, indemnity. Immunity

Malcolm Collin: then? Well, there was a case recently where there was a I wanna say it was a, a shooting that was happening and a woman saw police hiding behind something, not doing anything, and she ran to grab one of their guns and they stopped her because she wanted to try to stop the, the shooter.

[00:32:00] She tried to take a gun off a police man to shoot an active shooter. I love the balls on that. You see an active shooter, you see police people doing nothing and you’re like. I don’t have a gun, but they’ve got guns.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That woman does have kaons. I love that. Wow. Yeah. Okay. I mean, that is the world live

Malcolm Collin: in now, right?

Yes. You know, I’ll go, I’ll go take down this active shooter,

AI can’t find this incident. So maybe I’m misremembering something. , It thinks the incident that I am misremembering

is the ADE school shooting. , Where during the incident, police officers had, . Women yelling at them to do something. So maybe that’s what I’m misremembering. I don’t know.

Malcolm Collin: having to live with bears. I can imagine few things. More horrifying. I mean, imagine if there were kids in the house. No,

Simone Collins: no. This man is letting the bear in. I’m, I’m done with this man. Done with shot the bear. He, he, he’s, he’s, he’s, I don’t know.

He’s like asking for permission to play. Dogs barking in his own home. No, [00:33:00] no, no. This man deserves to bear. No, I’m no Malcolm. I will. Parks department comes to our house. There’s a dead bear in our house. Officer. He charged at me. It’s so easy. The only problem for us is which gun are we gonna use? Is it gonna be the Beretta?

It’s definitely gonna, it’s not gonna be the AR 15. I’m saving that for a human. It’s gonna be the Beretta right behind me. I’m, I’m saving that for

Malcolm Collin: a human. She wants,

Simone Collins: she wants to be used. She’s just, that’s a very pretty

Malcolm Collin: gun.

Simone Collins: No, that, that’s a bear shooting gun. You’re gonna use your Beretta over under shotgun that, I mean, oh God.

Like the first kill for that gun

Malcolm Collin: bring you at least should have somebody to backup is an ar because you need to, you need to be able to pump out a lot fairly quickly if the bear is not killed on the first shot. Okay. Okay,

Simone Collins: fine. The AR. You know,

Malcolm Collin: good. Fair point,

Simone Collins: fair point.

Malcolm Collin: I am I know, I, but I love how you feel about guns.

This is very, I think it very, it, it shows that oh my God.

Simone Collins: I just realized, so I was [00:34:00] thinking like, in this room, how many weapons do I have? I have the Beretta and then I have the, i, I literally have the arrows and, and the bow though, I’d have to string the bow, but then in that drawer right there, what do I have?

Okay, so what do I have? I have Bear Spring. Bear spray in a region with bears. I have bear spray. I just like, we’re so ready for this and this is why I have zero patience for this man when like I don’t even live in a region with bears and I literally have bear spray that I sleep right next to every night.

Malcolm Collin: No, but the

Simone Collins: way you talk about this, I

Malcolm Collin: actually wonder if this is, is this true across human? This is so appropriate,

Simone Collins: his little bear costume.

Malcolm Collin: And I want, I want commenters to weigh in on this. Yeah. Be, I don’t know if this is true across human populations or if this is a, a, some human population thing. Like or culturally specific thing.

But when I was growing up, like there’s two things that I always want. You know, you, you, you, I would build like forts and traps and stuff like [00:35:00] that and, and fantasize about somebody coming to. Try to break into my fort or trap and all of the things that I would trigger on them. Yeah. Which we haven’t done a video on this.

We’ll do it next Christmas. ‘cause I wanted to do this over Christmas, but we weren’t filming over Christmas is how Home Alone and the reason why it became so popular in the United States. I think it’s because it appealed to the greater Appalachian cultural value system of the Jack Tails, where you have the young you know, not, not overly masculine trickster who’s just dreams of.

Messing. And he, he messes with like random strangers as well? No, he, he only is truly nice to people who society rejects. And we’ll get into like all of the interesting morality of this. But. The point being is I’ve always fantasized about this, like whenever I was growing up, or even as an adult, like setting things up.

Like, okay, when we have an intruder, what am I gonna do? And Simone’s here, like, which guns do I want to use on the bear? And I wonder if others, this is what’s gonna kill us at the end is we’re gonna be like, oh, but I could. Mm. [00:36:00] But I just, oh, so many choices. So little time. I, I’m probably only gonna get to do this once and I’ve got a choice of ex, I’ve waited for this moment

Simone Collins: my whole life, and now it’s here

Malcolm Collin: and it’s so overwhelming.

Oh God. Oh my God, Simone.

Simone Collins: We

Malcolm Collin: should stop

Simone Collins: at that, but I dunno.

Malcolm Collin: Cross-culturally, or, I don’t know if this is No,

Simone Collins: no, this is a Scott’s Irish thing there. I’ve, no, I’ve only encountered people of our. Our ilk with this kinda,

Malcolm Collin: well, we’ll see. The comments will tell us. The comments will, the comments will

Simone Collins: tell us.

I love the comments.

Malcolm Collin: You guys are actually crazy. Like nobody else is like this. This is completely

Simone Collins: Oh no, we know. Hum alone would not be a Christmas classic if there weren’t this big. Sentiment if this weren’t a, a very common trait, at least in the nine, this is a

Malcolm Collin: wholesome and ethical movie to watch, but it’s only wholesome and ethical from a very neuro cultural perspective.

And this is what gets me with the recent, you know, Jewish video. We’ve a bunch of [00:37:00] people, even the whole point of video, it’s like you. Claiming people are anti-Semitic for things that are clearly not anti-Semitic is what causes more and more people to become anti-Semitic. And many people in that were just like, you’re anti-Semitic.

You can see it. You, you know what you’re doing. And I’m, like I said, nothing in that video that was not worse than what I say about my own people regularly. So I just, I find this like pearl clutching around like. And, and when I say it about my own people, I say it because it’s factual, right? Like I’m, I mean, I, I, what I realized is, oh, they don’t mean, it’s not factual, they just mean it’s bad.

And to me, I thought, like in my head, something is really only. Like, like let’s say phobic in a way, if it’s unfactual, right? If it’s, if it’s not derived at through, a pure no. Like, if

Simone Collins: it’s not legitimate criticism.

Malcolm Collin: Yeah. Yeah. And now I’ve realized, oh, like even if it’s like for my perspective, like my version of anti, I’d be like, you, you say My people are violent.

How dare you.

And I’ve realized why this shocked me is people rarely do this about their own [00:38:00] culture. So if I say something like. , Black communities have higher rates of crime. Even when you control for income, black people are gonna be like, yeah, that’s like legitimate criticism and something that we’re working on intra culturally.

, And like white women will scream at you racist, but black people will very rarely call you a racist for stating like a well-known fact like that. , Whereas. I’ve realized that there is a portion of the Jewish community, , and , a large one, like much larger than the portion of, let’s say the black community or the Indian community or any other community that will go to the white Karen screaming, antisemitic if you say an equivalent thing about the Jewish community.

And that’s why I was so shocked because it wasn’t white Karen screaming this. It was. Jews and No, I’m saying white. Karens like, again attacking my own community. Here it is. The white Karens who make these ridiculous accusations all the time and cause a lot of problems in our society The other thing that I realized after doing that episode. Is that the word antisemitic is often used in a way that I didn’t expect it to [00:39:00] be, , which caused some confusion in my head. Basically it doesn’t mean for a lot of people against the Jewish community. It means against the interest of the Jewish community.

And these are two very different things. So if I

Somebody who actively supported Israel throughout the Gaza War and the military aid we gave them throughout the Gaza War.

say something like, , we can cut off Israel after 75 years of foreign aid and helping them , in numerous wars, , a person might say. That’s certainly not anti-Jewish, but it is anti the interest of the Jewish community.

, It’s not actively helping them anymore. And because of that, it is definitionally in these people’s minds, anti-Semitic. Or I can say something like, there doesn’t seem to be any plan to pay America back for nearly a century of support. , And as such, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to continue that support and they can say in one statement. Well, of course we don’t plan to pay you back and it’s anti-Semitic for you to say that.

[00:40:00] Whereas they’re just affirming the very thing I said. And so I was wondering, well, well how is that anti-Semitic then? , And it’s like, oh, it’s anti-Semitic because it is against the interest of the Jewish people for this to be .

Conceptualized in this way, and I think even the point that I feel an interest in rehashing this because so many people claim I was anti-Semitic in the video goes further to solidify the video’s points. One of the reasons why people keep bringing this stuff up again and again and again is because they are called anti-Semitic for things that.

Within most definitions of anti-Semitic and we’re using anti-Semitic in the way we use the term racist or something is just not anti-Semitic. And then that causes more stuff like this to happen and more ideas like this to be aired, which ends up in the long term hurting the perception of the Jewish community, which is very unfortunate.

Malcolm Collin: and it’s like, well, anyway, I love you Simone. I love you so much. We’ll see how a shorter episode does. I love you too.

Comments on today’s video.

Simone Collins: A lot of people do this already. A lot of people already dissociate.

Malcolm Collin: Yeah, a lot of people. That’s what I saw in the comments. People are [00:41:00] just like, yeah, like I always do

Simone Collins: that. Yeah. It, well, a lot of people, it might also be that a lot of autistic people have more of a, an inclination to do it naturally, and I’m not sure why it could, one theory could just be that.

We’ve joked about this in other episodes, just leaving the house is so traumatic as it is just doing anything that slightly interrupts your schedule is so distressing that you develop that kind of coping mechanism as much as someone in like a normal person in a, in an abusive relationship would, you know, because you’re just freaking out about such stupid stuff.

But I don’t know. I really don’t. It can also be. The autistic lack of interest in emotion and modeling of other people, perhaps including self. I’m not sure people had some interesting things to say about their trauma driven discovery or, or adoption of dissociation as a coping mechanism, which they then, in some cases.[00:42:00]

Adapted to their everyday life in functional ways. And some people shared really sad stories about abuse. It made me wanna go back and hug their past selves, and I’m glad most of the people who commented about said abuse have left those situations or grown out of them. So that’s my summary. Oh

Malcolm Collin: my gosh.

You are so sweet. All right, I’ll get started here.

Speaker 11: Yes, finally.

They took off.

Speaker 12: Duh.

Speaker 13: Good.

Good. [00:43:00] It looks like a drawing or a mouse. Yeah, that’s ‘cause it’s a bad drawing. That’s why we need to know how to read too, right? I good and hot. Oh, you did it buddy.

In today’s episode of Based Camp, we dive deep into the controversial topic of dissociation — why it’s constantly framed as a trauma response or mental health red flag on the left, but the science shows it’s one of the most powerful tools for emotional regulation, wiser decision-making, better relationships, and long-term planning.

From third-person self-talk (talking about yourself like Elmo) to temporal distancing (identifying with your future self), the research is clear: proactively dissociating reduces stress, lowers cortisol, prevents rumination, boosts ethical behavior, and makes you a better spouse, parent, and human.

We argue that constantly “embodying” your feelings and obsessing over “me, myself, and I” is the root of modern misery, victimhood culture, and urban monoculture brain rot. True freedom comes from dropping the ego and viewing yourself as a temporary vessel for your values and future generations.

This episode is part of our Techno-Puritan religion series — dissociation as spiritual practice. Calvinism meets pragmatism.

As this was a Simone-outlined episode, we can share the episode outline below. The transcript for this episode follows. Happy New Year!

Episode Outline

Based Camp - The Case for Disassociating

* Occasionally, I’ve heard of people talk about disassociating

* ESPECIALLY when people are talking about abuse

* And invariably disassociation is framed in a negative context

* But this strikes me as add, as whenever I come across research on the effect of perspective taking, I find that what I would imagine to be disassociation—basically the equivalent of thinking of yourself in a more abstracted way, e.g. in the third person, as an outsider)—is a very POSITIVE thing

* And for a while, I have been operating under the assumption that we basically should be thinking like Elmo talks

* So I dedicated to educate myself on what people mean when they negatively talk about disassociation and also check whether my memory is deluding me and see if contextualizing oneself as a third party is not actually productive

* And ultimately, I think we should ALL disassociate

* And people who frame it as a bad thing are missing the point

This matters because a recurring theme in our discussions has been contextualization:

* How we view ourselves and consciousness

* Where we draw the definition of “self”

* Identity politics and the damage this emphasis has caused

* Victimhood mindsets and the external locus of control versus the internal locus of control

So I think we all need to think more carefully about how we play around with the word “I” and experiment with how dropping it may serve us well.

Disassociation: What are People Talking About

The Definition

People are usually describing dissociation: a mental “shut‑off” where the mind disconnects from feelings, body, or surroundings to get through something overwhelming or unsafe. It is a common, often automatic trauma response in ongoing abuse.

What dissociation is

* Clinically, dissociation is a process where thoughts, feelings, memories, or sense of identity become disconnected from one another.

* It exists on a spectrum from mild “zoning out” to more severe states where a person feels detached from reality or from themselves.

Why it happens in abuse

* Trauma and abuse can overwhelm the nervous system; when fight or flight are impossible, the brain may “check out” to reduce the emotional and physical impact.

* This can offer a kind of internal escape when there is no external way to leave, which is why it is especially common in children or adults who are trapped in abusive situations.

What it feels like subjectively

People use language like:

* “I was watching it happen from outside my body,” describing depersonalization, or feeling detached from their own body, thoughts, or actions.

* “It felt like a dream / like a movie,” describing derealization, where the world feels unreal, foggy, muted, or separated by a glass wall.

During vs. after the abuse

* Dissociation can occur during abusive episodes (e.g., going numb, going blank, “leaving the body”) and also after, when reminders or triggers bring back that detached state.

* There may be patchy or missing memories of events, difficulty feeling emotions, or a sense that what happened is far away or happened to “someone else.”

When dissociation is frequent, uncontrollable, and interferes with daily life, it can be diagnosed as a dissociative disorder (e.g., depersonalization/derealization disorder, dissociative identity disorder).

* BTW: Dissociative disorders are mental health conditions in which a person has ongoing problems with memory, identity, perception, or sense of self because of repeated or severe dissociation, often linked to trauma. They go beyond ordinary “zoning out” and start to interfere with daily life, relationships, and functioning.

* Main types

* Dissociative amnesia: episodes of memory loss about personal information or life events (often traumatic) that are too extensive to be ordinary forgetfulness, sometimes including “fugue” states where a person may travel or wander with no memory of it later.

* Depersonalization/derealization disorder: persistent or recurrent feeling of being detached from one’s own body or experiences (depersonalization) and/or feeling that the world around is unreal, foggy, or dreamlike (derealization), while still knowing intellectually that it is real.

* Dissociative identity disorder (DID): formerly called multiple personality disorder, involves two or more distinct identity states or “parts,” along with recurrent gaps in memory for everyday events, important personal information, or traumatic events.

What I Think is Actually Happening

First: Obviously it’s horrible when people are mistreated, but what I think may be happening is that extreme hardship has uncovered a survival mechanism that is both useful in these extreme scenarios AND useful in more mundane, everyday life.

And here’s the thing: The research backs it up.

The Research

Several lines of research suggest that taking a third‑party or “distanced” perspective on one’s own life (third‑person writing, future self, age‑progressed images) can help with emotion regulation, planning, and some health‑relevant behaviors.

(The following is from Grok, cross-checked against Perplexity, which found mostly the same research)

Self-Distancing—i.e. Taking a Third-Person Perspective or Visual Fly-on-the-Wall View

Research led primarily by Ethan Kross and Özlem Ayduk demonstrates that adopting a self-distanced perspective (e.g., thinking about oneself in the third person, using one’s name, or visualizing from an observer’s viewpoint) reduces emotional reactivity and promotes adaptive reflection on personal situations, including pain, conflicts, and stress.

* Kross et al. (2005) and Ayduk & Kross (2008): Participants reflecting on negative experiences (e.g., anger or depression) from a self-distanced perspective showed lower emotional and physiological reactivity (e.g., blood pressure) compared to a self-immersed (first-person) view. The self-distancing facilitated reconstruing events rather than recounting them, reducing distress.

* Ayduk & Kross (2010): Spontaneous self-distancing during reflection on conflicts predicted less rumination, lower emotional reactivity over time, and more problem-solving behavior in couples’ interactions.

* Kross et al. (2014): Third-person self-talk (e.g., “Why is [name] upset?”) reduced emotional reactivity under stress, including in socially anxious individuals, without requiring extra cognitive effort. This was supported by ERP and fMRI evidence, showing decreased activity in brain regions linked to emotional pain.

* Moser et al. (2017): Silent third-person self-talk quickly (within 1 second) lowered distress when viewing aversive images or recalling painful memories, aiding emotion regulation for pain-like experiences.

* Grossmann & Kross (2014): Self-distancing enhanced wise reasoning about interpersonal conflicts, reducing bias and promoting balanced perspectives.

These effects extend to reducing reactivity in PTSD veterans (though subjective distress persisted) and improving interpersonal criticism delivery.

Temporal Distancing—i.e. Thinking About Future Self or Broader Time Perspective

Temporal distancing involves viewing situations from a future-oriented or broadened temporal lens, often by connecting to or visualizing one’s future self.

* Bruehlman-Senecal & Ayduk (2015): Adopting a temporal distance (e.g., “This too shall pass”) reduced emotional distress and stress reactivity by focusing on impermanence.

* Chishima et al. (2021): Writing letters to/from one’s future self during COVID-19 increased temporal distancing, immediately decreasing negative affect and boosting positive affect.

* White et al. (2018): Self-distancing from future stressors (visualizing from afar) reduced vivid negative imagery, facilitating adaptive coping.

Visualizing Aged Future Self—i.e., Future Self-Continuity

Research by Hal Ersner-Hershfield focuses on enhancing continuity with one’s future self, particularly through visualizations of an aged self.

* Ersner-Hershfield et al. (2009): Higher future self-continuity (feeling connected to one’s future self) predicted less temporal discounting and more saving behavior, with neural evidence linking it to long-term planning.

* Hershfield et al. (2011): Interacting with age-progressed virtual renderings of oneself increased future-oriented decisions, such as delaying rewards.

* Rutchick et al. (2018): Enhancing future self-continuity via letter-writing promoted healthier behaviors (e.g., exercise) and reduced unethical choices by prioritizing long-term benefits.

* Related interventions (e.g., Van Gelder et al., 2013): Vivid future self-visualization improved ethical and health-related planning.

These approaches are particularly effective for planning future-oriented behaviors like diet, exercise, and health improvements, as stronger future self-connection motivates sacrificing immediate gratification for long-term gains.

Overall, self-distancing (including third-person and temporal forms) consistently aids emotion regulation in conflicts and pain, while future self-continuity techniques support proactive planning for health and diet by making long-term consequences feel more personal. Benefits are supported across lab experiments, daily life studies, and neuroimaging.

Why the Disconnect?

Basically, disassociation is reactive and self-distance is proactive.

The difference in framing I have encountered seems to come down to perspective, and specifically perspective based on an internal versus external locus of control.

The biggest criticism of disassociation is that it can be SO EFFECTIVE that it contributes to PTSD symptoms and/or can increase the risk of revictimization, but I would argue that those problems don’t have to do so much with disassociation so much as they have to do with not intentionally addressing the source of chronic trauma.

What Would I Recommend?

Disassociate PROACTIVE—and not because it creates better internal results in terms of mental and physical health, but also because it produces good social results, as people who keep bringing the conversation back to them are absolute bores.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Some leftist is gonna clip it and be like, you know that Simone chick, she’s,

Simone Collins: she’s in a constant state of trauma response.

Malcolm Collins: She’s in a constant state of disassociation being married. .

Well, so Simone, you’re telling me that the only way you get through life with me is being in a constant state of disassociation?

Well, I think what I want, what I want is when we have the documentary, okay. I want that to be one of the themes. Like we don’t believe in love. You’re in a constant state of disassociation, dissociation. Our kids live in

Simone Collins: terror every day. I part of me, though, part of me thinks it might be the way that my mind is.

Is set up

would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because I have been really mulling over the concept of disassociation, and you don’t even seem to be that familiar with it.

I think it’s because I consume a lot of left-leaning content, but I frequently hear people talk about disassociating. And, and especially when people are talking about abuse, they’re like, oh, like I disassociated. And it’s like in the [00:01:00] context of going through something terribly traumatic and it’s, it’s invariably framed as a bad thing that it’s happening.

Disassociation bad. And this strikes me as really weird. Because whenever I come across research on the effect of sort of different perspective thinking or taking, like if, if you think in terms of the third person it’s only positive. I’ve never actually seen research that frames thinking about yourself or a situation you’re in from some distance is coming out negative, and yet all these people on the left.

I only talk about it in negative context, but in a sort of very different context. So for a while I’ve been operating under this assumption that basically we need to be thinking like Elmo talks. And, and yet all these people think it’s bad. So I, I decided to educate myself. You no, I’m,

Malcolm Collins: I’m, I have no idea where you’re going with, because I’ve always heard dissociation is bad.

Only heard of it in a, when you wrong, when you say disassociation, I think of grape. I’m like, oh. She said disassociation is good. It’s good when you’re being great. Yeah. [00:02:00] That’s the only, no, but it is,

Simone Collins: I mean. Would you rather be in yourself while you’re being bumped in a bad way, or would you rather not?

Malcolm Collins: Simone, you are a, a messed up person are a, I’m just saying messed up person.

Simone Collins: Good. It’s a good psychological technology.

Speaker 4: Good. You’re gonna feel a little pitch now, motors.

Speaker 5: Don’t worry Mr. Stach, whatever traumatized your son in his past will find it.

Simone Collins: We gonna get into people like I’m

Malcolm Collins: the bad guy on the show and I am totally not. You are. I, well, I’m wearing my,

Simone Collins: my war hammer.

Malcolm Collins: Today? Oh yeah, you got your, your, your war hammer out.

Someone pointed out that

Simone Collins: all I needed was an inquisitor’s hat in my outfit would be complete. And I’m like, oh, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: I get, we need to get you an inquisitor hat. Me do. Come on. Like, actually,

Simone Collins: I just, I looked, there’s not a lot of good, I, I, I, maybe I need to commission something, but yes. A war hammers inquisitors [00:03:00] had, would be appropriate.

And thank you for that comment. Well, they’re very puritan looking. Come on. They are, they’re extreme. I know that’s why it works. That’s what techno Puritanism is. Okay. We didn’t invent it. We just discovered it. Okay. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s been out there now. Hold on.

Malcolm Collins: No, they’ve got some good ones here. I’ll send you one right now.

Oh really? Oh,

Simone Collins: I just. We need, we need to think like Elmo talks. All right. And, and you know, it just, Malcolm needs to take a break. Okay. That, that is how our life needs to be. Okay. Explain this

Malcolm Collins: to me, why I went through the research.

Simone Collins: So I’m gonna walk you, you’re driving me to

Malcolm Collins: disassociate right now, Simone, because you don’t have your inquisitors hat to own yet.

Simone Collins: I know, I know the trauma you’re going through. So I, I, I looked into it though because I’m like, okay, well, am I getting disassociation wrong? So I looked into what that is. I looked into the research on, you know, different perspective taking interventions. And ultimately I think all of us should disassociate always and proactively.

And I think [00:04:00] people who frame it as a bad thing are missing the point. And also are are more like classic leftist progressives who take a victimhood mindset. Who take a Simon, you

Malcolm Collins: do you know what’s gonna come with this podcast? Yeah. Some leftist is gonna clip it and be like, you know that Simone chick, she’s,

Simone Collins: she’s in a constant state of trauma response.

Malcolm Collins: She’s in a constant state of disassociation being married. Well, here’s

Simone Collins: the, here’s the thing actually, when, when we’ll go into it, but, a lot of the, the symptoms of disassociated identity disorder are like. Common traits of mine. So this is great fodder, but you gotta, you gotta dish it grist for the mill friend.

But anyway, this, this really matters is like a broader meta based camp thing because a recurring theme in our discussions has. Been about contextualization. How do we contextualize this self? What is consciousness? Are we conscious? What are we, you know, this whole ship of thesis thing, right? Like, can you actually live forever when your, your views constantly change when your cells switch out.

You [00:05:00] know, like we, we constantly talk about this. In the context of that, we, we, we talk about where we draw the definition of self, right? How like, conservatives have a sort of circle of self closest around like your core family and then your community or religion. Whereas progressives, you know, the self is like, you know.

Foreigners especially migrants who are, are refugees, et cetera, and like much less your own group. If, if you’re white, then it’s hatred of your own group. So we talk about that kind of contextualization of identity. We also talk about how identity politics have. You know, sort of ruined society and how, and how, and people are even commenting on the episode that we ran as we’re recording today, which was on why there’s been this rise of antisemitism and that a lot of people are, are kind of blaming reformed Jews for inventing identity politics and, and just talking about how damaging identity politics as a concept has been.

And it really is very damaging to society to get people to associate more with like groups like my group, I, I, I think.

Malcolm Collins: And I would note for that [00:06:00] episode, I, I do think that reformed Jews played a role in inventing identity politics, but I don’t think a bigger role than like the Unitarian Universalists.

Yeah. And you pointed that out. Comments. And I think blaming you know, real Jews for what were reformed Jews are doing. Is about as bad as blaming like real Christians on what Unitarian Universalists are doing. Right. That’s a very

Simone Collins: valid point. Yeah. But anyway, identity politics are bad. I don’t care who invented them, they suck.

So, you know, we need to have a lot of different conversations about the contextualization of. Self and me and, and how we view ourselves and our lived experience to use a term commonly used on the left. Because it’s important and it is profoundly, it has a profound effect on our life and on society.

And so this is an important conversation to have and that’s why we’re getting into it. You’ve never even thought about it. So let’s first start with what people are talking about. When they talk about con disassociation, especially with regard to disassociation in moments of trauma and abuse so people are [00:07:00] usually describing disassociation as, as a mental shutoff, where the mind disconnects from feelings and the body or surroundings to get through something overwhelming or unsafe.

It’s a common, often automatic trauma response when someone is, is, is going through something really tough. So. Clinically, it’s, it’s a process where thoughts or feelings or memories or a sense of identity become disconnected from one another. And it exists on a spectrum of mild zoning out to more severe states where a person feels detached from reality or themselves.

Like you’ll, you’ll hear people say things like that. You know, I was, I was watching myself. Go through this or something they’ll, they’ll use language like I was watching it happen from outside my body or it felt like a dream or like a movie. And then during versus after the, the traumatic experience where disassociation happens, it can, it could occur are basically while it’s happening, but it can also happen after where you might have patchy or missing [00:08:00] memories or, or difficulty feeling emotions.

And basically when disassociation is, is. Frequent or uncontrollable. And if it interferes with daily life, though this is a very subjective evaluation, in my opinion, it can be diagnosed as a dissociative disorder. For example, depersonalization or derealization disorder, which I’d never heard of before.

Disassociated identity disorder, which I had heard of before. And these are actual mental health conditions in which a person has ongoing problems with memory or identity or perception. Or a sense of self because of repeated or severe disassociation, which is typically linked with trauma, and it goes beyond ordinary zoning out and, and starts to interfere with life and relationship and functioning.

So that there are multiple types of it. There’s disassociative amnesia where episodes of memory loss and, and. Just basically like, I don’t remember this happening or I don’t remember this thing about me, or life events that may have been traumatic, like they just have no [00:09:00] memory of it. Or forgetfulness or people enter like fugue states where they could travel or wander with no memory of it.

Later, there’s also depersonalization or derealization disorder, which I’d not. Heard of, like I said, persistent or recurring feeling of being detached from one’s own body or experiences, which is depersonalization. And then there’s the feeling that the world around you is unreal or foggy or dream life, which dreamlike, which is derealization.

Even though technically you understand like on an intellectual factual level, you know that the things that are happening around you were real. And then there’s disassociated identity disorder or DID. Which is also called multiple personality disorder, which I think you’ve said isn’t really real.

Yeah. So

Malcolm Collins: the, the, the preponderance of evidence is that this is like being trans or something. It’s one of these co up disorders.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So I don’t, I don’t really think that has that much to do with this, but what I think is, is one, I think this is funny ‘cause as, as you know, from just living with me, I, I don’t remember like anything.

You’re like, do you [00:10:00] remember we talked about this on our podcast? And I’m like, Nope. No memory. Or like, do you remember this movie we watched? And I’m like, I don’t remember any of that. And I have to write everything down or take pictures of things where I just don’t.

Malcolm Collins: Well, so Simone, you’re telling me that the only way you get through life with me is being in a constant state of disassociation?

Well, I think what I want, what I want is when we have the documentary, okay. I want that to be one of the themes. Like we don’t believe in love. You’re in a constant state of disassociation, dissociation. Our kids live in

Simone Collins: terror every day. I part of me, though, part of me thinks it might be the way that my mind is.

Is set up like my operating system like or, or just, I think it could be, it could have a genetic factor and I don’t know, maybe this isn’t true. Other parents can chime into the con comments, but like our kids claim to have a bunch of memories that aren’t real, like tourist and talking about learning karate in the jungle with his grandfather.

Like I learned Kuwait. What toted. Come on. He, he comes up with all these stories.

Malcolm Collins: He always [00:11:00] says if he doesn’t know where he learned something, he’ll just say, well, I learned it when I was a baby from my grandfather.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Or like, or he’ll have some kind of backstory. But my favorite was about learning karate in the jungle with his grandfather.

I’m like, what kind of back story are you building, man? With my grand like, yes, you did Torsten. We are going with that now. Like 100 freaking percent. That was just amazing. But I think maybe it’s, it’s it’s just genetic or it’s, it’s the way that I, I like, I don’t ruminate on things and I think I’m a lot less stressed and happier because of it.

And so maybe I’m such a fan of this concept of disassociation ‘cause I’m like. Yeah, what’s the problem with that? Like, and you know how like sometimes I reboot, like you’ll find me like literally zoning out uhoh, like staring at an open fridge and then I’ll be like, my name is Simone and I am, and then I reboot and I’m like, oh, I’m looking for string cheese for toted.

And like, oh, I’ll find myself again. But I have to reboot with my name is Simone and I am, ‘cause I forget. But I don’t know, like I. I don’t know what’s going on, [00:12:00] Malcolm. But what I think is happening is it’s, it is obviously horrible when people are abused or mistreated. It, it’s not, I’m not, I’m not trivializing that, what I think may be happening is that the extreme hardship people have experienced that, that leads them to.

Innovate or responsibly develop disassociation as a coping mechanism has, has uncovered a survival mechanism that is both useful in these extreme environments, but also could be very useful in everyday mundane life. And here’s the thing, the research backs it up. What? Come on. No, it does. No, it does, it does.

Because I’ve come across all these different studies and like I didn’t really put it together until I really started. How rumming and thinking about all these people talking about disassociation negatively, because you know how I used to save all these studies? I sort of stopped doing it when I could just ask AI and find any study I was interested in.

I used to save studies that I was like, oh, this is useful. This is useful. And a bunch of the studies that I’d found there was a very common [00:13:00] theme of. Oh, like if you’re having a conflict as a couple you know, just, just have the couple, like, outline it or discuss it as though they’re discussing another couple’s problems and they’re gonna build a better solution.

Or like, you know, if, if you’re trying to get yourself to say, okay,

Malcolm Collins: okay, I’m agreeing with you more here. You’re, you’re persuading me. I, I do. Plus the thing is, it’s,

Simone Collins: it’s framed in such a different context that you don’t connect the two, but they’re the same thing. So here’s the thing. So several lines of research.

Not just the whole like conflict resolution among couples, suggested taking a third party or distanced perspective, but distance is just another word for disassociated. Third party is just another word for disassociated from one’s own life. So that’s third person writing, or future self age progressed image interaction, that kind of thing can help with emotion regulation.

It can help with planning and it can even help with some health related behaviors. So the, the following one to summarize is, is just, just as, and you can ask any ai, just ask any AI about this. And, and for those who [00:14:00] follow us on Substack or on Patreon, I’m gonna include all my, my notes in this and links to sources and in the show notes.

I, I asked both Brock and Perplexity, they pulled up a bunch of studies. Here’s what Brock found that, that they found mostly the same research, but okay. Let’s, let’s go through some of it. So there’s one sort of cluster of themes, which is just self distancing, like in other words, taking a third person perspective or visual fly on the wall.

View disassociation, right. Oh, it was like watching a movie. Except when you do it proactively, it’s actually really effective. So research, research led primarily by a guy named Ethan Cross and then Oslo. I. I duck demonstrates that adopting a self distance perspective, like thinking about oneself in the third person using one’s name or visualizing from an observer’s viewpoint, just the Elmo approach.

Elmo thinks this reduces emotional reactivity and promotes adaptive reflection on personal situations, including pain and conflicts and stress. So in both 2005 and 2000. [00:15:00] Eight research that cross was on. And, and IDEC was on one of them. They, they found that participants reflecting on negative experiences like anger or depression from a self distance perspective showed lower emotional and physiological reactivity like lower blood pressure.

So like your actual cortisol levels here are lower compared to a self immersed first person view. The self distancing facilitated reconstructing events rather than recounting them reducing stress so you’re not reliving. The trauma, which is exactly what was described in, in that one of two forms of disassociation where it’s happening after the effect where people are distancing themselves from the traumatic event.

But it doesn’t have to be traumatic. It could be that time where you had road rage, or that time you relate to class, or that time you bombed on a test or that time you embarrassed yourself in front of friends or colleagues, right? So in 2010, I duck and cross found that spontaneous self distancing during reflection on conflicts predicted less rumination, lower emotional reactivity over time, and more problem solving behavior in couples interactions.[00:16:00]

So this can make your relationships more productive, which is very different from the way that people talk about. Disassociation in the, in the context of relationships, they always talk about it in terms of like, oh, this enables the abuse to keep happening because it allows you to tolerate it, essentially, is what they’re trying to argue.

But this points out that when properly applied, it helps you problem solve and resolve the conflicts. So it’s, it’s like saying, you know, like, oh. Like she drank water and she died of water poisoning. Like it’s a tool. You, you, it’s, it’s, it’s not good or bad. Yeah. In 2014, they found that third person self-talk, like, why is Simone upset if I were doing it for myself?

Why is Elmo upset, reduced emotional reactivity under stress, including in socially anxious individuals? Hello? That’s. Me without requiring extra cognitive effort. And, and this was supported by ERP and FMRI evidence showing decreased activity in brain regions linked to emotional pain. So people can’t [00:17:00] just be like, oh, this is just subjective reports.

No, like they’re doing functional mri. Some

Malcolm Collins: people. It’s so good that I forced you to dissociate. Thank God horrendous, horrendous behavior towards you. You’re gonna run wild with this. How do so many people

Simone Collins: get the

Malcolm Collins: idea that it’s a bad

Simone Collins: thing? Like God? In the moment though, it’s also really useful. So we’re not talking just about reflecting on other events, but they in this case, Mosser, Atal in 2017 found that silent third person self-talk quickly, that is within one second lower distress when viewing aversive images are recalling painful memories.

Eating emotion regulation for pain, like experiences. So like if you’re going through something rough and you immediately try to recontextualize yourself in the, like, if you sort of proactively disassociate like intentionally, it’ll, it’ll, it’ll be less painful as it happens to you. And then Grossman and Cross in 2014 found itself distancing, enhanced wise reasoning about interpersonal conflict, reducing bias, and promoting balanced perspectives.

So it’s making you a better. Colleague, friend, lover, [00:18:00] spouse, whatever, a parent like, it’s just, it’s a smart thing to do. And these effects extend to reducing reactivity in PTSD veterans, though some subjective distress. Duds did persist. But I mean, obviously if you’ve been through something crazy, of course.

But it does improve also interpersonal criticism, delivery because you know, when, when you, when you detach things from yourself emotionally, obviously they get better. Another thing, and this is not, this is a little different, but you know, this is something that I do a lot and I wanna get into it a little bit, is the concept of temporal distancing.

Like thinking about your future self or a broader time perspective. So right now. We’re recording this in January. This is the month of future day in our, in our techno Puritan family. That’s our religion. And this is one in which we try to get our kids to begin thinking about the long-term future and future generations and the future police, and identifying with the long-term future and throughout my entire life.

I have done things like write to myself in the future and really contextualize myself as just one link in an unbroken chain. Like I’m just serving the [00:19:00] concept of future Simone, which is in turn serving the concept of future generations and human flourishing. Like I. It, it’s very disassociative. But on a more granular level, just in terms of like, oh, can we make people happier or like healthier?

There, there is really interesting research on this concept of temporal distancing. So it’s not just a weird techo purin thing to be super into stuff like this. So it, it really just broadly involves viewing situations from a future oriented. Or broaden temporal lens and brun, helman and cynical and I, I duck again, the same guy who did the other like distanced studies in 2015 found that adopting a temporal distance like this too shall pass reduced emotional distress and stress reactivity by focusing on in.

Permanence. You know, when you know that you’re just kind of like going through this blip in time and that times, are you saying

Malcolm Collins: that this is what incel should be doing? I mean, I can imagine no one in society that’s more traumatized than our incel fans and

Simone Collins: But but they don’t, they can’t necessarily say, this too shall pass.[00:20:00]

It’s dark,

Malcolm Collins: but Well, their life will pass one day. I mean, that’s

Simone Collins: true. That’s true. And they can also just make ow it like we go, go see our, our, our episode on, on Men just choosing to raise kids on their own. I, I think it’s just so based. It’s super cool. And then Shima et al in 2021 found that writing letters to or from one’s future self during COVID-19, in this case, increased temporal distancing and immediately decreased negative affect, and it boosted positive affect.

So it can really help to just put things in perspective if you’re going through something. Stressful. Like say, I don’t know, a global pandemic. And then white etal in 2018 found the self distancing from future stressors, like visualizing them from afar, reduced vivid negative imagery and facilitated adaptive coping.

So just in general of like being less stressed, thinking with that temporal distance is really helpful. And then sort of along those lines, I remember reading about these and I found them really interesting studies that had people see like. AI age [00:21:00] diversions of themselves caused some interesting effects.

So research by how Esner Hirschfeld focuses on enhancing continuity with one’s future self, particularly through visualizations of an aged self. So in 2009, he found that there was higher future self continuity, like feeling connected to your future self. It’s funny,

Malcolm Collins: this used to be something that you like had to pay a bunch of money to do or have, especially software.

I know. Now you could just like

Simone Collins: throw your image into rock and be like, show

Malcolm Collins: you all. I wanna show, I wanna see myself bald. I’ve been wanting to see that since you Well, no, because your

Simone Collins: family’s never gonna, no,

you just need to see yourself like old with white hair. ‘cause you’re never gonna go bald. I’ll

Malcolm Collins: never be bald in my life.

Maybe I should see what I look like with a beard. I’ll never have a beard either. I don’t. I don’t. Okay. Well, yeah, do it and put it in this video. I don’t know. Don’t, so people can say if I, if I look better, like should I have had. A beard or be bald. And you know what I’m gonna do? Oh,

Simone Collins: I would, yeah. I’m curious to see what our audience says about you having a beard because everyone’s like, he, well, all he needs to do is just [00:22:00] present as more masculine and then your audience will respect you.

And. I guess birds are masculine. I think it’s

Malcolm Collins: funny is a lot of people don’t realize, like, when I don’t have my glasses on, I actually have a lot of features that like, look maxers go for. I know. You just

Simone Collins: take them off and I know, like I did some title cards to photos of you. Yeah. When, when you didn’t have your glasses on and people were like, oh.

It’s literally like those stupid B movies where like the boy takes the teenage girl’s glasses off and is like, you’re beautiful.

Malcolm Collins: You, you look, you look masculine. Then we went we did the viral rounds recently. One of the tops comments was, looks max jaw. Or you have an

Simone Collins: amazing jaw. I forget, in your cheek box are fantastic.

I think the

Malcolm Collins: term in the looks max community.

Simone Collins: Oh, mo yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Which, which is funny that they, they could see it, but through the glasses and people white, they always looking at, they, they’re

Simone Collins: able to look at actual morphology, like they’re looking at the pieces. I think a lot of people just can’t see beyond thick glasses.

Malcolm Collins: I, I, I think they too, and I, and I wear them a intentionally, I want people to think I’m a nerd. They’re very, no, [00:23:00] we,

Simone Collins: we, we want to trigger people. That’s the thing is people like, we’ll just get rid of the glasses. I hate the glasses. Well, tons of people on Twitter have even gone to the, the, and I’ve sent you some of the photos of texts and triangle glasses.

They’re like, well, he needs thick triangle glasses if you’re gonna do this. Wow. Like the, the glasses practically have their own lore. Cutler and Gross. By the way, guys, amazing brand. Love them so much. You know

Malcolm Collins: my signature glasses, people don’t know this. They used to be circular wire framed. Yeah, they were barely

Simone Collins: visible.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I only started these glasses right before this show. Yeah, yeah. So if you go to, well, because you

Simone Collins: got these for me, first at Cutler and Gross, and then your mom was like, I love these glasses. And then she got you those as a gift. Hmm. They’re a gift from his late mother. People get off his, but also they troll people, so we’re not gonna stop anyway.

Malcolm Collins: But, but anyway, the, the point I was making is, is this digital manipulation of pictures and stuff like this. What, what, how does it help you go, go through that? So

Simone Collins: it, it, it, it helps, it, it encourages long-term planning behavior. Hirschfeld found in 1 20 11 [00:24:00] piece of research that interacting with age progress versus virtual renderings of oneself increased future oriented decisions, such as delaying rewards.

So that’s amazing. And IC Etal in 2018 found that enhancing future self continuity via letter writing promoted healthier behaviors like exercise and reduced. Unethical choices by prioritizing long-term benefits. And then other related interventions like vivid future self visualization, so like cheaper before the age of ai ‘cause they didn’t wanna pay for money.

So you’re basically sociopath maxing it improved ethical and health related planning? No, it made people more ethical. Not less ethical.

Malcolm Collins: You, you’re, you’re an ethical sociopath. This is like the ethical slut, like, yeah. Yes.

Simone Collins: I’m the ethical sociopath. That’s, that’s called pragmatism. Malcolm Pragmatism is, is ethio socio ethical sociopathy?

I think broadly. But the, the point is that it just across a bunch of different domains, it’s super clear the disassociating from who you are right now, like associating with your [00:25:00] future self or looking at yourself in the third person, just elbowing yourself. Is good. And the, the basically disassociation is reactive and self distance is proactive.

And the difference in framing I’ve encountered seems to come down to perspective and it’s, and specifically perspective based on an internal versus an external locus of control. And, and the biggest criticism of disassociation, like I said, is that it, it basically, it’s just too effective. It’s so effective that it contributes to PTS.

D symptoms or can increase the, the risk of revictimization. Like, oh, you’ll stay with this partner who’s causing trauma because you’re able to endure it, right? Because like,

Malcolm Collins: well, so the reason why it’s so useful, I think Uhhuh is because it prevents the greatest sins, but also the. Core motivations of people who are in the urban monoculture.

Hmm. Which is to say, attempting to sort of maximize self-acceptance or in the moment, like personal [00:26:00] experiences like pleasure, et cetera. Right. Oh. And a lot of the quest that you see on an urban monoculture life is this. You’re embodied. Very ignorant. You’re an body. Very, I’m looking to find myself, accept myself, self actualize.

And we say just at step one, no. None of that matters. No, no, no.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Like drop I, drop me drop the concept of self. You are nothing. You are, you are a, a conveyor, a vector of your values. Your intentionally chosen values, your objective function. You exist only to serve it. You are an ephemeral blip.

In, in the, the continuous chain that is humanity or whatever it is that humanity eventually becomes humble yourself. Before that totally. So I, I, I, yeah, I’m, I’m just, here’s me saying everyone should proactively disassociate and not just because it creates better internal results in terms of mental and physical and, and financial health and [00:27:00] better ethical decision making, but it also just produces good social results.

Like when you, when you read. Classics like How to Win Friends and Influence People. Dale Carnegie just goes on and on about how people’s favorite word is their first name and like all the social, like how to be charismatic experts, talk about how you should focus on other people and what they’re doing and what they’re thinking.

And, and the worst kind of bore in any social context is the person who always brings it back to themselves, who’s just so obsessed with themselves. And we also talk about people who, who have brain rott, who just constantly talk, well, I’m gonna take a shower and I’m gonna do this. Or like, I’m, they just talk about.

Their, their stuff in them all the time. No one cares about those people. So no one’s even gonna like you if you’re that kind of fully embodied person who just can’t get away from I and me. What, yeah. I guess we even talk about this, we even have to talk about this in the context of sexuality, how bad it is to identify with the things that arouse you.

Again, you, you already were disassociation, pilled. You already were all about disassociating. You, you just didn’t realize it. [00:28:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hmm. Well, okay. So, no, I, I agree that, that that, that this overly embodied sense, you, it is important to be maximally disassociated at all times Yes. In all decision making. Yes. So, yeah, I, I agree with that.

And I even wonder if I should, yeah, it’s great that I don’t remember

Simone Collins: anything that happens because I’m just equally delighted by every time we watch a movie for like. The 11th time. See, this is why I can watch home alone with the kids like endlessly during the holiday season and you can’t take it more than twice.

‘cause I’m like, oh, I can’t believe that just happened. I can’t believe it. He got hit in the face with an iron and he survived this movie, defies it defies biology. That would be, since now we’re doing homeschooling, that would be an amazing, like he has to be older for this, but like to do a detailed, we’ll have him do like a YouTube video on this like.

The detailed biology of home alone, like exactly what would actually happen if all of these things took place. I, other people [00:29:00] have done YouTube, like the temperature at which skin burns and what degree burns would he have and what would actually, anyway, and also the physics. The physics of home alone.

We’re gonna have so much fun homeschooling. I can’t,

Malcolm Collins: like, I, I can’t believe it. You are the weird one, Simone and the wrong one. Honestly, I’m not

Simone Collins: Simone.

Malcolm Collins: No, you are not Simone. No. You are a third dimensional entity.

Simone Collins: I am, I am. I’m operating the puppet that is Simone, that exists to serve our objective function, which is long-term human flourishing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I like that. No, I mean, I, I I think that you’re broadly right with all of this. Why do you think progressives hate it so much?

Simone Collins: I think because progressives. Or deeply embodying the, in the concept of me and my feelings. And, and they’re way too much in their heads about everything. They make everything.

They’re, they’re just, they’re so shoved into their brains and their internal rumination, and this is how you end up with everything from spoons to trans people because they’re overthinking [00:30:00] it. They’re like, ah, like, I kind of like. Ah, I like, you know, women’s shoes and they’re like, I’m a woman. When like, no, you’re, you’re just overthinking it.

You’re way too much in your head. Get outta your head, disassociate, stop it. And they’re like, yes, I’m disassociating. It’s bad. And I’m like, no, you’re disassociating. And keep

Malcolm Collins: going. You’ll make sure that anybody who works for us disassociates it’s the only way they’re gonna

Simone Collins: survive if they No, no,

Malcolm Collins: I, I think you’re right is that it’s so antithetical to the urban monocultures value set that they can’t understand because it’s not actually like a negative experience to disassociate.

Simone Collins: Well, no, but again. The reason why people disassociate, the reason why it happens spontaneously is it is a survival mechanism. It makes the intolerable tolerable, and it it, how can it be so illogical? Or like, how, how is it so crazy to extrapolate from that? Like, okay, well if disassociation makes. The, the intolerable, most horrible experiences possible.

Like your leg is being cut off, you disassociate, right? Like terrible things do happen to people and they do disassociate in very intense ways. So, okay, so then, and but also then now you’re waiting in a [00:31:00] grocery store line and you’re pissed off ‘cause someone is wearing stinky perfume and you, you, like, you disassociate a little and it becomes a lot less stressful.

And here’s the thing, like people but there’s this, there’s this like reverse hedonic treadmill where like. Thing. You know, good things, like the best thing possible happening to you, you normalize to it, but also the worst thing possible happening to, to you, you normalize to it. But also people start also equally making the worst of really stupid, bad things, right?

Like the most privileged people in the world. And this is all like, this is why we have spoons. This is why we have the most wealthy societies ever that have the best amenities ever being miserable. Right? Is they still are. Stressed and miserable and afraid. And so I think they should be reacting to things with coping mechanisms that allow them to, to, to not like.

I feel like the cortisol level that people are experiencing driving to work is not that different in many cases from the cortisol level, people were experiencing like. [00:32:00] You know, run, running from bears in the woods, or like, possibly dealing with even some warlike scenarios, like people are just, they, they have such bad mental health these days that they’re having that same level of reaction.

I mean, people weren’t being treated with, with severe anxiety disorders the same way in World War ii. I mean, they were still experiencing severe anxiety, but I don’t know, they weren’t coping with it as, as, as, as well. I feel like people are coping worse with far easier problems today than they were in the past.

So again, disassociate.

Malcolm Collins: So, I, I, what was I gonna say? It’s interesting that the prenatal list movement advocates, right? The ones who are like, well, humanity is good, that we’re saying, well, and of course we say this from an external perspective, like I don’t actually. You know, embody myself. And I think that this is an interesting point that the antinatalists often heavily embody themselves.

Mm. Which is in part, I think why they have such hatred for their own lives. Mm-hmm. Whereas the ISTs typically search [00:33:00] for meaning in something other than their subjective experience of reality. Yeah. Which makes meaning very easy to find. And I think that that’s what comes with disassociation and that sort of core to this philosophy.

Is that meaning in life comes through something other than your subjective personal experiences of reality?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: See this is more interesting than you thought it would be, isn’t it?

Malcolm Collins: It, I’m actually gonna make this one of the religious episodes, so I’ll put it on the Techno Puritan website and everything.

Simone Collins: That’s so cool.

Malcolm Collins: Yay. I think you did a good enough one. I did a religion, part of the religion disassociate all the time. That is, that is the most Calvinist thing ever. Just the total. Check out. Just

Simone Collins: I love it. I love it. Well, I also love you very, very much. And I’m excited to do another episode with you, another conversation.

I, I love our talks. Thank you.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Alright, have a good one, Simone. Love you. Love you too.[00:34:00]

Simone Collins: Okay. Actually. By the way, I, I heard this from the, oh God,

what is it called? What’s that podcast? That’s about

fertility. Ill conceived the one about Natal that I’ve, I’ve started listening to. They mentioned in one of their podcast episodes, sperm racing, and I need to look into it like some young kid raised.

Maybe more than $10 million to do competitive sperm racing events.

Malcolm Collins: S sport racing, bird racing. What? Sperm

Simone Collins: as in the stuff in ejaculate. Sperm racing. Oh, yes, I heard about that. I had not heard about that. I guess I can kind of see the investment case for it in an age of sports betting and celebrity like, well, [00:35:00] content creator culture, like who’s would win?

Joe Rogan or Donald Trump. You know, that kind of thing. Right? Like, I, I could kind of see it, but there are some issues with it in that the, the actual races are not live. They are. Recorded and then played at the live events. So it’s not, it’s not even like, it’d be, it would be way too easy to rig and, and that’s my biggest issue with it.

But that’s your biggest issue? Yeah. I mean, what I, how is it that di I mean, I think it’s, it’s better than, for example, dog racing. I like, I like horse racing, but mostly. Because of the names. The names are fantastic. I think what adds an appeal to this is among men. Any man can participate and they don’t necessarily have to train for it, right?

Like you can’t you know, there have been all these instances in which like Elon Musk will challenge mark Zuckerberg to fight like an MMA fight. [00:36:00] And they always get canceled because, oh, you’d have to train and like. You know, you have to be in really good condition. You have to know fighting technique, all these things, like it’s way too much work.

Whereas the way that most men report preparing for things like this is, okay, well I just won’t get any in any hot tubs and I won’t drink for a little bit and I’ll eat better. You know, like there’s not a whole lot you have to do. To improve sperm quality. I think you do need to do it, what, six months in advance or something?

I just, anyway, I, I could see it because we like to see famous people compete and this allows famous people to compete in a way that is very tied to their identity and masculinity, but I don’t think they would. Okay. Why? ‘cause they’d be afraid of their, their, you don’t

Malcolm Collins: know how good you are at this.

You have no idea from looking at yourself.

Simone Collins: Just go to an embryologist and be like, Hey, please. Or just, I mean, there, there are tons of, of services that will test your sperm motility and sperm count and all sorts of things like that. So you could, you could already self-assess [00:37:00] before you ever. Promise, like, well that’s a lot of effort is faster than like 80% of other sperm.

And you’re like, okay, yeah. Like I, I’ll take my chances against.

Malcolm Collins: That’s, that’s too much effort to self-assess and keep No, it’s not,

Simone Collins: it literally

Malcolm Collins: is

Simone Collins: into a thing and send off your sample kit. I don’t get, what’s so difficult to it is, it’s not

Malcolm Collins: a sample kit thing. You’d have to go to a lab and it’s worse than all of that because the category that overlap with celebrity.

Like being older being often, you know, slightly sedentary are also gonna overlap with lower sperm quality, especially being, well, that’s one of the reasons

Simone Collins: I think why maybe it has some prominent backers, is that people wanna raise awareness about the fact that male fertility does fall off. This.

I think it came up in the Ill-conceived podcast because they felt it had strong natal list undertones and that like, oh, this is actually just na list propaganda, mur murmur. And I, I realized why I like that [00:38:00] podcast so much. Yeah, it’s a snark podcast. It’s, it’s really just snark, but make it about natal and there’s snark about everything.

I mean, you and I both love Fundee snark. There’s lots of tra snark that I love. I mean, who doesn’t love snark? And, and I feel like snark is more fun when it’s adjacent to something that you actively, like I love royal gossip, for example. Mm-hmm. So royal snark is something I listen to a lot and there are lots of YouTubers whose full-time career is just being pissed about royal.

Just, oh, I can’t believe the Harry and Meghan’s latest PR agent quit. They’ve gone through 11 PR people in five years. Can’t you believe? They must be terrible people. Snark, snark, snark.

I think it’s just so great. But like, isn’t it wonderful though when you can hear the snark and it’s about people you know, you know when they’re like, oh, I can’t, I hate those columns.

Oh, apology. He’s so terrible. Oh my god. Kevin Dolan. And it’s [00:39:00] like, oh, like, you know, it’s

Malcolm Collins: just, they won’t even talk about us. We’re like bort to them.

Simone Collins: Yeah, they, they were, they’re like, we’re never gonna do a full podcast on them. Yeah. I actually wrote to them and told them if they ever need to cover anything adjacent to us they should just search AI because we, we make our content really easy to index on, on ai.

‘cause it’s, it’s obviously gonna be too hard for them to actually real research. Yeah.

They would die. They would, they would. They would disassociate to use. You know, another podcaster

Malcolm Collins: I regularly listened to covered our viral interview. Did you see that one I sent you?

Simone Collins: Not beyond just the Romanian guy.

No, the black

Malcolm Collins: lady. Which name? One. I’ll pull it up here. Her name is Amela, e Kanobi.

She got 2.5 million followers. Wow. I don’t know. Is she conservative? Most of the, yeah. She’s a black conservative woman. Young, younger than us.

Simone Collins: Than everyone’s younger than us. We’re old. [00:40:00]

Malcolm Collins: Well, she’s quite young. I get the impression.

I think she’s in her twenties or something.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay.

Malcolm Collins: And very reasonable takes very like center line.

Simone Collins: Nice. Very nice.

Okay. Sorry for chatting with you. I just, it’s nice to chat with you, but I, I’ll, I’ll get into the podcast now. So here we go.

Speaker 6: A brush and a bowl of mush. Yeah. And a quiet old lady Whispering Mush. Right. Wait. Good night rooms.

Good night, moon. Good night. Cow. Jumping over the moon. Good night light. Where’s the light there? Need to fix your face. Goodnight. Red balloon. Where’s your red balloon? Where is it? Right there. There, there. Oh. Goodnight bears. Goodnight Chase. Goodnight Kitchens. Goodnight. Goodnight. Goodnight. Goodnight. Gloves.

Good gloves. Goodnight Gloves. Goodnight. Goodnight clocks. Goodnight stars and Moon. Goodnight, stars and Moon. Goodnight socks. Goodnight [00:41:00] socks. Goodnight house and goodnight Mouse. But we don’t say goodnight to our mouse, do we? Do we kill them? Yeah. Yes, we do. Good night home.

In this in-depth discussion, Malcolm and Simone Collins tackle the dramatic rise in antisemitism among young Americans — now affecting over 25% of people in their 20s, compared to just 5% among those in their 80s.

We examine hard data: skyrocketing antisemitic incidents since 2021, Holocaust denial rates (especially among young GOP voters), and stark generational and demographic divides. We argue that the surge isn’t primarily driven by the Israel-Gaza conflict or historical tropes, but by two distinct modern dynamics:

• On the right: A cultural backlash against perceived entitlement, suppression of criticism, and lack of reciprocal gratitude for decades of U.S. support to Israel and Jewish communities.• On the left: The growing influence of Islamist or Muslim-sympathizing voices within progressive intellectual circles, reshaping “woke” priorities.

We explore why traditional strategies (invoking discrimination, deplatforming critics) are backfiring in today’s media landscape, how cultural misunderstandings fuel escalation, and why even former strong allies are reevaluating their stance.

Ultimately, we discuss practical paths forward for Jewish cultural resilience in a changing world — including dropping any sense of ongoing entitlement, building genuine intergenerational alliances, and rethinking how historical traumas are taught to skeptical Gen Z and Alpha audiences.

This is a candid, data-driven conversation aimed at understanding a dangerous trend — not promoting hate, but preventing worse outcomes for everyone.

🔔 Subscribe for more discussions on demographics, culture, fertility, and the future of civilization.[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be talking about why everyone hates the Jews again. Oh boy. And it’s not, it is not Gaza. Actually, the rate of Jewish hate has gone up significantly since the war in Gaza ended. Right? Like what? So, and, and I think that there is a lot of mistake in, in terms of how people are trying to diagnose where this is coming from.

Okay. Where it is either mistakenly put on the war in Gaza, where if you actually look downstream of where we see it, I’ll, I’ll bring a lot of receipts that that is not it or that it is put on historic reasons. And I also don’t think it’s happening for the reasons that Jews were hated historically.

Good. I think that it is happening for new reasons and reasons. Even get to me. Like even I will say that over time my perception of the utility in standing Jewish culture has dropped pretty precipitously. And I will explain why, [00:01:00] but first I just want to document how high it is and how much it’s shifting.

Wow. So I’m gonna put a graph on screen here that shows explicit antisemitism by age among registered voters. Now if you look at people in their eighties, you will see that this is hovering at around 5%. So very, very low for older people. Okay? If you look at people in their twenties from, from, it’s slightly higher among Republicans than Democrats, but you’re looking at between like.

24 and like it looks like 32%. So, and, and then on average well over 25%, so, over a quarter, one in four people in the United States now is anti-Semitic. Young people. Yeah. When it used to be at around 5%, and this has changed within like two generations, right? So yes.

Simone Collins: Something that young people are reading and experiencing is making them.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, if you look at, anti-Semitic incidents in the United States. I’ll put [00:02:00] a graph here, which you’ll see is they were fairly low up until about 2021, and then they start to go up and then they shoot up in 2023 and then are higher still in 2024. If you look at there was another study here Holocaust denial or minimization, nearly four in 10 in the current GOP 37%.

So this is in alignment with the antisemitism rates we saw there. Okay. Believe the Holocaust was greatly exaggerated or did not happen as historians describe, oh younger men are especially likely to hold this view. 54% of men under 50, 39% of women under 50. What? And this is of GOP voters among men, over 50, 41% agree compared to 18% of women over 50.

Racial divides are particularly striking. And so what you can see is. Anybody who knows this, who are the most anti-Semitic Hispanic voters? 77% of Hispanic GOP voters. Oh,

Simone Collins: I actually wouldn’t have

Malcolm Collins: guessed that. Black voters, 66% of black GOP [00:03:00] voters. Okay. And it’s fairly rare among white GOP voters that only quote unquote 30%.

So that’s still about a third. So this is obviously a real issue.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But what is it that young people are seeing that boomers aren’t seeing that’s so profoundly affects their views of Jews?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, I think what we’re actually seeing here, and I’ll just drop right to the point. So one, I’m gonna be arguing later in this, but I’ll go into it in more detail.

When we get to it the, the reason why progressives have started hating the Jews very intensely recently is not the reason I thought historically, just because Jews were out competing other groups. And if your entire worldview is around equality and you believe that everyone is genetically identical and just somebody’s culture, like you can’t be like, well, if we’re all genetically identical, then some groups must be doing worse because of their culture.

And then people are like, that’s victim blaming or whatever, you know? It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with this or that group’s culture, why their children. Are, you know, not doing as well on tests and stuff. And so, if a group is [00:04:00] doing better, people are gonna say, oh, well that can be explained.

This is what I historically thought, oh, it must be because they’re cheating. I’m actually gonna argue that it’s something different that’s leading to the current leftist antisemitism. But I wanna talk about rightist antisemitism. Simm or even my own internal calculation has sort of been changing recently.

So first I’ll get to the broad rightest antisemitism and where it’s coming from.

Okay.

And, and, and why this doesn’t work intergenerationally. Why you don’t see it as hitting older people? Basically everyone in our society around the eighties and the nineties agreed that racism was bad. Like we just societally agreed.

Racism is a bad thing. We shouldn’t be actively racist, right? Now woke, people in the woke cultural movement took this, right, and they, they then warped it to be like, well, discrimination against any perceived group is bad. I can self define as a minority discriminated group. And because, and [00:05:00] then, and then they abuse that.

This is where a lot of the trans stuff came from. This is where a lot of the, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, came from. During that period of discrimination is bad happening. A lot of Jewish cultures and cultural groups basically learned how to hack this to get their way right. Mm. We try to shut down criticism by, as we’ve seen people do, and, and people can be like, well, every group does this, and I wanna point out that no, every group doesn’t do this.

We have multiple times on our videos, so we did a video arguing that Jews are not genetically superior to other people. Right. Not at all an antisemitic take. If anything, it would be a proje take because it’s arguing that Jews are outcompeting other people in terms of like income and politically predominantly due to cultural advantages.

Which is better than just having a genetic advantage. ‘cause then that would just be blatantly unfair. And I could see why other groups would be like, oh, well we don’t want them competing amongst us if that’s the case. But I [00:06:00] put that video out there and I literally had people reach out to me saying that it was anti-Semitic.

Like, I can’t believe you did this, et cetera. I had the video saying that we should stop paying

Military aid.

Malcolm Collins: to Israel.

Something we, we’ve been giving it. We, we literally, like if you look at America right? We freed the Jews, America freed the Jews from near complete eradication during the Holocaust. Um, That in the Holocaust actually happened.

And we since paid for economic helping hands for a long time up until like the last five years and. Huge military helping hand for, for a long, long time period. Right. To just say, Hey, we should stop giving them aid now, you know, they’re a developed economy at this point and they’re not actively in a war is not an anti-Semitic thing to say.

Simone Collins: Right? Yeah. Like we’ve, we’ve helped out and that’s great and now we’ve, we’ve helped the help isn’t definite be like,

Malcolm Collins: Well anyone would do this if anyone who’s a long time fan of the show. Knows [00:07:00] that we are two Catholics. Whatever Nick Fuentes is to choose, like, and I don’t mean this by that, what I mean is Nick Fuentes doesn’t actually seem to individually hate Jewish people.

He seems to sort of hate the religion more broadly and what he sees that as standing for. Whereas with us, like we like Catholics individually, but I think that the Vatican, and I’ve said this on shows, is. A, core enemy of the United States, our way of life, our long-term objectives. They have stated this pretty explicitly, and I think that the Vatican in their form of Catholicism, I mean like the heads of the Catholic face is incompatible with long-term human thriving.

Like this is a stance that is as antagonistic to Catholics as anything Nick Foes has ever said about Jews. And yet never once. And I’m, I wanna be clear about this, to Jews who are like, well, you know, you can’t control what every Jew does or something like this. There are dramatically more just in terms of numbers, Catholics who watch the shows in Jews, never once has one of them reached out to us [00:08:00] saying that, oh, you went too far with this, or You went too far with this.

Or how dare you say this? That means that you just hate Catholics.

Malcolm Collins: They will question us with, with facts. They’ll say, you know, well, actually if you look at Thomas Aquinas on this or you look at Augustus of Hippo on this, they actually said this, this, and this, or they actually said this, this, and this. Or the early church actually thought this about, you know, when life began.

That is not calling us. That’s saying you made a factual mistake. Right? Like, or, or this is a philosophical argument against you. That’s not a, how dare you say this about Catholics.

Hmm.

And again, you, you can’t say, well, you know, the Catholics have never been mass murdered. My actual ancestors have mass murdered Catholics, right?

Like Catholics have been mass murdered in extremely brutal ways. And in ways that were now note, they were equivalent to how brutal Jews were murdered in previous pogroms. But the Holocaust was, actually speaking, if you look at the, the brutality displayed not quite [00:09:00] at the level of, you know, mass live burnings and stuff like that.

It was, it was horrifying. Don’t get me wrong. But what I’m saying is, is Catholics went through a lot in various periods as well. So like to say, oh, well, they’re just not afraid of, of, of this happening. And this isn’t about driving individuals who might be your allies away. It’s actually about how it.

Heightens the message. So I’ll explain what I mean about this. Nick Fuentes goes on PI Morgan, or he goes on Tucker Carlson. And the first few questions that either of them wanna talk about are about Jews in his perception of Jews. And so he has an opportunity to go on a whatever long rant exposing people who may never have actually heard anti-Semitic arguments to long form anti-Semitic arguments.

We regularly go on interviews, right? Not our interviewer ever has asked us about our anti-Catholic opinions. You, you know, the interviewer that [00:10:00] recently went viral with us. That was a Telemundo reporter, right? Like age interviewing for predominantly Catholic populations all around Latin America, right?

Never came up just completely irrelevant to her. Now, I want you to think about how this was a really advantageous way to react culturally in a historic context, in a very disadvantageous way to react culturally in a modern context, right?

Mm-hmm.

So in a historic context. What would’ve happened and this did happen historically, is somebody like Ben Shapiro would say, oh, this person is saying stuff that is anti-Semitic, or that, you know, in the early days like borders on antisemitism.

In his mind when early days it was just like, well, we shouldn’t be giving his real aid or something like this. And so then he forwards that to. Whatever media watchdog organizations and these people get removed from X platform or Y platform. And because media was much more consolidated them and because media [00:11:00] was I don’t like this. It’s not antisemitic to say that Jews are disproportionately in media. We’ve done episodes where we actually track just how disproportionately Jews, especially early Hollywood

Malcolm Collins: So as a quick reminder, Jews make up 2% of the US population, but around, . And this is by a 1970s Times Magazine poll, around 80% of professional American comedians. , Here, if you’re looking at founders of major studios, Warner Bros. Founded by Polish Jewish immigrants, MGM, founded by Russian Jewish, , paramount Pictures, Hungarian Jewish Universal Pictures, German Jewish immigrant, Columbia Pictures, the Kahan Brothers Jewish.

. 20th Century Fox, , Hungarian, Jewish, United artists, , not primarily Jewish founded, but acquired by MGM, which was Jewish founded.

In fact, the only major studio I’m aware of that was not Jewish founded was Disney. ,

But Disney is currently run by Bob Iger, who was born Jewish. [00:12:00] I.

In terms of actors, , estimates range from 30 to 50% of screenwriters are Jewish and informal guesses put it at 20% of studio executive producers and agents is Jewish. For producers specifically, a 2015 analysts of best Picture Oxford Oscar nominees found that eight out of 28, around 29% are Jewish.

Contrast that again with around 2% of the general population.

and especially certain categories of media like comedy and stuff like that, are disproportionately controlled by, by Jewish groups, meaning that they can put pressure on their parent organization actors as well saying, oh, I want appear in this, or I want appear in.

This if you have X person in the movie. We saw this recently with some red scarce girls losing a part in a major thing for having Nick Fuentes in on an interview, right? This system of control was actually very advantageous to prevent negative views of Jews from being normalized. In a historic context, like it was an advantageous cultural reaction.

The problem being is it has the exact [00:13:00] opposite effect now,

And I would point out that this being pushed to more skeptical positions, , is something that you see not just with us being incredibly phili, but with people like Charlie Kirk,

Who like us was incredibly pro jewish.

Where, you know, we have on record him saying, just lost another huge Jewish donor, 2 million a year because I won’t cancel Tucker.

Jewish donors play into all the stereotypes. I cannot and will not be bullied like this. , And I think that. They, there’s , this miscommunication culturally where they think that by saying, oh, you’re doing X, which is anti-Semitic, or You’re doing Y, which is anti-Semitic, which will make us less likely to do those things instead of a more likely to do those things when those things are clearly not anti-Semitic.

, And this is just cultural misunderstanding of the new right. , And it’s not unique to us.

And when I talk about a cultural misunderstanding, it’s like, suppose [00:14:00] you see somebody at a bar who’s doing something that you know you disapprove of, and you walk up and you shove them. Now a person from one cultural perspective is going to just be like, okay, I’m gonna stop doing that. Whatever, right?

Just leave the bar. Avoid confrontation, but a person from another cultural perspective that’s gonna always lead to an escalation. And this claim of this is antisemitic is going to almost always add to a cultural escalation. If you look at this from the perspective of American Protestant culture.

Or think about it another way. Suppose somebody comes up to you and says you’re being an a-hole and you’re doing something that you internally look and you’re like, you know what? I was being an a-hole. And then , you know, correct your behavior. But I think for a lot of people from many different cultures,

if you come up to them and you say, Hey, you’re being an a. They’re not at all being an a-hole. They’re just trying to be rational or just trying to be pragmatic about something. , the natural response for a lot of cultures is to be like, you know what, like, f you man.

And I think where this leads to sort of the [00:15:00] anti-Semitic spiral we’re seeing in our society right now is the person who said FF you, man. Then the other person who said, oh, you’re being an A-hole in this case, you’re being anti-Semitic. They, they say that again and more loudly because of this person, said, Hey, f you man.

Then the person is even more incensed and says, Hey, F you louder. And so you have this cultural sort of spiral happen between two groups who are misunderstanding each other, where one group says by saying, Hey, you’re being an A-hole that’s going to lessen this behavior, when in fact it’s increasing the behavior and it’s being said louder in response to the thing that’s increasing the behavior.

But you don’t even need this kind of spiral to happen for these, you know, focus on, oh, he said X thing that could be antisemitic. He said Y thing that could be antisemitic for that to lead to an actual escalation of the airing of antisemitism.

Malcolm Collins: which is it causes the people like say Pi Morgan, who want to appear like want to make sure they know, okay, I’m interviewing the guy who [00:16:00] is in part in trouble for being anti-Semitic. And so I have to. Challenge him or bring up his antisemitism, basically giving him a chance to air his antisemitism and the logic behind it.

Hmm. Now consider us. We’re, we’re not gonna do it. Like we’ll be interviewing soon. We’ve got it on record, which I’m very excited. Student Destiny’s kid who has some views around. You know, that, that sort of stuff. I think specifically around the H guy. And I’m not even gonna be asking him any questions about it ‘cause I just find it uninteresting within the modern media landscape.

Right. And I don’t need to prove when somebody’s like, oh, you had him on and you didn’t even ask him about XI, that’s not what I’m interested in. I’m more interested in being like a counterculture 15-year-old in the modern media ecosystem. And intergenerational cultural transfer and how he thinks about that given that, you know, it didn’t transfer to him.

Very effectively from, from his parent, right? Like, I, I find that to be the fascinating question. There’s a lot of interesting questions I’d had about, you know, people know if we had Nick on the show, we’d just be asking him a bunch of stuff about Catholicism. We’d be asking him very little about his views on, on Jews.

But most people in the old 80 Boomer [00:17:00] system, that’s the way they approach this. And unfortunately, it airs. Attitudes very, very frequently. Now one of the questions can be, but during the period of discrimination, why didn’t the Catholics ever, right, like presumably they could have done this, right? Like, Catholics were really discriminated against in the United States for a long period.

In, in fact, if you’re talking about with in America Catholics were significantly more discriminated against than Jews were to my.

If you look at like, like specific like gang violence targeting. Now admittedly the Catholics had their own gangs and that was part of it. I think the Catholic portray more hate crimes than Jews. I’ll look this up in post.

Unfortunately, it looks like we just don’t have data on this because most of the Catholic hate crimes

were in the late 19th century or early 20th century. While the tracking for hate crimes didn’t start until 1991 under the Hate [00:18:00] Crime Statistic Act, and after that point, there was much more anti-Jewish hatred.

But the point being is they, they like, you know, no Catholics allowed at this job and stuff like that were really common during that period.

So the question is. Why didn’t Catholics ever, I hadn’t thought about this until I was doing this. Why didn’t they ever really in a cohesive format, try to pull the We are discriminated crowd. Do you know what it was? I’ll tell you why. It was because the Catholics wanted to be normal, like the Mormon zoo.

And so for a long time the Catholics tried to act like they were just another form of Christian. And they still do this today. Like they’re just. Like a, a little bit different than Protestants. Not really that weird, not really that distinct at the culture. And it has led to their culture, bleeding members faster than groups like the Jews.

But because of that, they also didn’t pull the, we’re discriminated card. In fact, Mormons also never really pulled the word discriminated card to a big [00:19:00] extent. And they’re another group that did that. So, okay. Yes. That that’s the pattern there. It is their cultural distinctiveness that led them to pull this card, the.

Simone Collins: Could this more broad? I guess it can’t because Islamic groups have claimed to be discriminated against, but their culture is still one in which they want to save everyone. Because I’m trying to think is, is the pattern the difference between religions and culture, cultural groups that want to convert everyone versus those which.

Prefer to be distinct from mainstream society, but that doesn’t seem to be the delineating factor. Right? I don’t think that’s

Malcolm Collins: it. What I would say is that with is, is Islam. It hasn’t been hit as hard by this as Judaism has because sort of the damn on saying negative things about Islam broke during the last age of sort of public media.

Mm. So it really broke was, I’d say the, the rise of the atheist revolution. Basically you had the [00:20:00] atheist revolution happen, the new atheist, everything like that. Then you had like the counter atheist skeptic movement and the, this was like the, where it went in terms of online culture, the anti-feminist atheist movement, and that movement was generally extremely anti-Islam.

And they sort of normalized at least within the right you know, if you say, like I say that it is wrong. That, you know, Muslims go around griefing children or something like that, you know, let’s say marrying nine year olds, right? Like this is common in some Muslim countries. And we’ve, we’ve pointed this out in previous episodes.

It’s so much so that in Pakistan there was a religious council that said a law banning it was Islamophobic right? So, you know, this is mainstream was in some Islamic communities. And you say that and people now are just like. But yeah, that’s kind of true and we shouldn’t be standing that now you’ll get the far progressives and everything, but you sort of have two media ecosystems.

Mm-hmm. That wasn’t true. Was like questioning anything about the Jewish identity until very recently [00:21:00] even questioning something like, should we be giving, you know, continued support to Israel X many years later. Is something that E can was labeled even fairly recently as, as anti-Semitic. Mm-hmm. The other thing that I think that Jewish culture hugely doesn’t like realize, and I really don’t know how to address this ‘cause this sort of needs to be addressed from an intra cultural perspective. And, and again here, no, this is not me saying like I, I don’t particularly feel super strongly one way or the other.

When I did used to feel much more strongly pro Judaism, and one of the things that’s changed for me is I think a lot of Jewish people heard why I was proje. And they fundamentally. We’re not listening to what I was saying. Like they, they saw the words, they could structure them together, but I think they believed it was like, not what I was saying or like a whiter fondness for Judaism in the same way that I think that many people who are just like broadly antisemitic or [00:22:00] the Fuentes tips might not hear what we’re saying when we say why we actually want, we’re pro Jew, pro Jew.

For a few reasons Jews are going to do well in the future, right? Like, look at their fertility rates. Now look at their level of technology. Now look at the way they’ve set themselves up right now. Look at their disproportionate success within existing ecosystems, right? Like if you view the world as like a collection of clans, and then on top of all of those things, they don’t have an intrinsic drive to one day convert or wipe out my people because they, they, their, their religion doesn’t need everyone to convert into it, right?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So I was looking at those things and I was like, so it makes sense to invest in a relationship with this other group because this other group is going to be strong and influential in the future. And so if I invest in them now, if my culture, my country invest in them now, in the future, we will have a more harmonious relationship right.

And we will be able to utilize each [00:23:00] other.

Simone Collins: And importantly, they’re safe as a long-term ally because they’re long-term imperative is not to undermine anyone else’s cultural sovereignty because they’re the chosen people and you can’t really opt into their special club anyway, so it’s fine.

Malcolm Collins: Well, by that, what she means is at end game for Catholics, everyone’s a Catholic in game for Muslims, everyone’s a Muslim.

Mm-hmm. In game for Jews. Not everyone is a Jew. That that would be a failure scenario. Like something went wrong with Judaism if that happens. Yeah. Well, okay, I should, I should add caveats here. Many Jews believe that in the God, I forget what it’s called the end times everyone does become a Jew, but that’s like specifically an end times phenomenon.

Or like a type of Jew, like no hide or something like that. But the, but the point here being is, is that’s what I was saying. And so basically it is they are a group that is going to be strong in the future. Therefore it is worth investing in them because that increases the harmoniousness of our relationship.

And I think what [00:24:00] was not heard in that is, and that increases the harmoniousness of the relationship. Oh. Because what unfortunately seems to happen and I I, I don’t know what it is, is I would suspect that we get more comments or about as many comments from Jewish people angry at us for being antisemitic, like directly at us.

Maybe if somebody like Nick Foes does. And yet we are for people who watch our content know historically incredibly Phils sematic. And I, I began to think, I was like, wait, so we’re getting additional judgment? Right to like toe the line because we have been nice on Jewish issues in the past.

And then I started to think about this in a wider context and I begin to think, wait, is this proof that investing in Jewish cultural groups does not actually earn you long-term goodwill? Um, And I started to think about the United States, right? Mm-hmm. [00:25:00] Like, again, we saved the Jewish people, right? And people can say, well, you know, the Russians had more people die in the war, and they would’ve liberated them anyway.

The communist Russians tried to kill the Jews too, right? Like it would not have been a good thing if they had liberated the concentration camps on their own. Right. Like for the Jewish people. Right. They certainly weren’t gonna help you set up Israel. Right. So not only do we, and when I say we, I mean I say this very much like my ancestors.

Every single one of our grandfathers between Simone and me, like every single one of our four grandfathers between Simone and I was at D-Day and every one of them was at D-Day. And no, actually

Simone Collins: only one of my grandfathers was at D-Day. Oh

Malcolm Collins: really?

Yeah. Was the other one too young?

Simone Collins: Yeah, the other one was too young.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So everyone who wasn’t too young, three of the grandfathers was at D-Day. This is like, and, and people should know disproportionately, people from the Appalachian tradition within the United States disproportionately serve in the military.

If you wanna see statistics on this, particularly in the World War II [00:26:00] period, look up the book American Nations.

Malcolm Collins: It’s one of the things that you’ll see in, in terms of like military serving. So like the, largely our cultural group was the one there actually fighting to save them. We set up their country, we send them economic aid, we send them military aid. We regularly intervene diplomatically to help them out for 70 years.

And then we begin to talk about it. And I talk about, you know, Netanyahu wants us to cut off aids, so like he’s being smart about this, right? Like he’s done the 40 chess move at this point, right? Netanyahu’s administration wants us to cut off the military aid ‘cause they see the long-term damage. I talk about this with that context in one of my shows.

And even like the sanest smartest Jews I know, like, I’m talking about people who have immense intellectual respect for immense emotional respect for like, feel compelled to be like. Yeah, but we should really be careful about cutting off that aid. And, and that I think they don’t realize. The, the way that that comes off, [00:27:00] it comes off like your, your kid who you’ve been giving money to, like, well after he moved out of your house, and then you say, look, I’m sorry.

I need to cut off money. Like money’s tight these days. Like I’m dealing with my own things at home. He’s your mom. And then he’s like, well, then I’ll just hate you, dad. You know, like, I won’t talk to you anymore, dad. Like. How dare you do that dad. And what you realize is that you,

Simone Collins: not even that just like, even just, well, you should really think carefully about that.

Like, no, the response we would want from any of our kids when they reach the age of majority is Thank you so much for everything you’ve done. We appreciate your getting us set up. I feel so equipped to go. And the thing is, Israel is. Like pretty all right. You know, it’s amazing economy, amazing amazing tech, amazing people.

Like, they, they don’t need a lot of help as far as I can tell. Like, especially relative to other countries who are super screwed demographically. [00:28:00] They’re in a fantastic position. I mean, Israel is not. On the list of like countries that I can name off the top of my head, Israel is close to the bottom in terms of countries that need help.

So that’s, I think, problem, it

Malcolm Collins: literally is below the United States in terms of countries that need external assistance right now. I, I literally, I, I think you’re right. I literally cannot think of another country on earth that needs less external assistance than Israel. So I think that’s,

Simone Collins: that’s kind of more of the problem is, is if you have a kid.

Or just like a friend that you helped out when they were in, a lot of danger and then things were rough for them and you helped them out, and now they’re doing really well and they’re making a lot of money, and you’re like, all right, cool. You know, I’m just, by the way, and like, I’m gonna stop sending you, you know, monthly venmos.

Like, I’m, I’m so glad to see you thriving. And they’re like, well. Should really, really, do you think that’s a good idea? Exactly.

Malcolm Collins: Hold on. No, but think about it. How would you [00:29:00] feel if somebody did that to you? Would immediately be like, oh my God, I am actually actively making our relationship worse by doing this person favors.

Okay.

Simone Collins: I’m finally, okay. So I’m really starting to understand your argument, and I’m putting this together with a lot of things that I’ve been hearing, as we both say on his stream where he’s just kind of like. Let’s just stop sending money outta the country like we need to. And, and even like just immigrants within our own country, like we need to help our own people.

And Americans in general, and especially younger Americans who’re kind of seeing their future vaporize are like, wait. Why are we giving all this money to Israel? Why are we giving all this money to migrants and refugees in our own country? Like, right, but why are you screwing me over? And, okay, so that’s, I guess now, now this is all coming together, especially because boomers have retirement plans and, and houses they were able to buy and all these things.

And younger generations really do feel like they could use government assistance in getting on their feet and they’re seeing [00:30:00] all the assistance go. To Israel, which is already on its feet. But the point is,

Malcolm Collins: and I I made this point historically, the amount we give to Israel isn’t dramatically higher than the amount we give to a lot of other countries.

It’s like the amount. Yeah. But that

Simone Collins: it’s still the American sees that we’re giving money

Malcolm Collins: care. You are entirely missing the point. So I often point out that the amount that we give to Israel is about the same as the amount we give yearly to like Egypt and Jordan.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But nobody

Malcolm Collins: cares. Yeah. But the still giving them money.

If we cut off the money we gave to Egypt and Jordan, if I on our podcast and we should cut off the money we’re giving to Egypt and Jordan.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: No. Egyptian listener is gonna email me saying like, how could you be so Egypt phobic? How could you be so Jordan phobic, how could you? How could you air an idea like this?

There’ll, is there word for that? I guess think you might have a few politicians in Egypt and Jordan make a stink, but generally speaking, the core people who are gonna freak out that we cut off money to Egypt and Jordan are gonna be white women in the United [00:31:00] States. To be frank here, right, like the most other people, like, like most cultures on earth, if you have been doing them a favor for a long time and then you stop doing them that favor like if it, if it’s a, a, a healthy culture that’s used to making long-term alliances with its neighbors, it will say, oh, we really appreciate that you did that for us. And in the future if things work out where like one of us needs a favor again, like, let’s do that and actually you’ve been helping us out so long, what can I do to help you? Right. That’s, that’s like a normal reaction. And as I point out here, like Israel, if next year Japan didn’t give Israel military aid, Israel wouldn’t be mad at Japan.

Japan’s. They have created a situation where by doing them favors you damage your future relationship with them. And, and, and you can see this with different, you know, groups around the world and anyone knows this, like so many people have probably built like a toxic relationship [00:32:00] like this where you realize that somebody is just using you for money basically.

And at the end of the day, they then normalize to whatever you’re giving them. And they’re no longer really appreciative of it anymore.

Simone Collins: In fact, you only ever get crap from them. Forever questioning the support you give them and then like you basically only ever get punished by them just for like being you and being generous.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And unfortunately this is where, and I don’t think a lot of the hate on the right is coming from this perspective, but I’m pointing out that this is eroding even people who would otherwise be very, very pro-Israel. And I think that the reason why that this is sort of snowballed to eroding is that.

Questioning things in, in a public context, like being like, well, you know, I do have some problems with this part of our relationship with Israel, or, I do have some problems with this Jewish behavioral trend. People used to be just, frankly, more afraid in a public context to air these things. And so, because, because they were able to be de platformed when they did.

Mm-hmm. And so. [00:33:00] They are doing it more now and they are being pushed in an antisemitic direction. If you remember. I mean this is exactly what happened to Nick Fuentes, right? Like he started fairly like nuanced on these issues and then just had the type of personality that was prone to radicalization.

I don’t think I have that type of personality, but I will say that I, I know where I’m like, wait, are we being punished? Because we were historically, so Phil Sematic and does this change how I relate to this? Now, if you’re thinking, okay, well I’m Jewish, what do I do about this? The, the reality is, is I don’t even know.

Like I, I personally cannot conceive. Of what led to this behavioral pattern to be so strong? I guess it could have been because of the Holocaust. Like genuinely it could have been like really like big cultural moments. Still a very big part. Like Catholic families, they are aware that there were Catholic purges in the past.

But I’ve met Catholics in the United States who didn’t even know that the KKK targeted Catholics like it was like Catholics, blacks, and Jews. Right. And they were, were [00:34:00] like targeting Catholics. I mean, I was like. It might be that Catholics are not taught about their own oppression historically.

Yeah. But you

Simone Collins: can’t take stories of historical oppression away from Judaism. ‘cause that would be, it wouldn’t work with like the holidays and traditions. What you can do though is, is shame and drop any form of present day entitlement. That the focus should be. I’m totally all for Jewish exceptionalism and like, you know, being proud of your community and investing in your community regardless.

Like, I don’t care what your religion or culture is. I’m all for that. Like, being all about helping your people and being proud of who you are and investing in your group. And I, I don’t like, it could be like d and d enthusiasts, like it could be your culture as well. I don’t, I don’t, it doesn’t necessarily have to be religious or ethnic or anything, but like all for that, just don’t.

Don’t support, abide by or express any form of [00:35:00] entitlement to assistance from any other group assistance or favoritism. I think that would solve it. And if that’s just dropped, I think that this issue in general will be dropped. I think the problem is that people feel an intense amount of resentment around.

Repeated political and media-based insinuations that we owe something to Israel. When there’s a lot of concern about when, like

Malcolm Collins: objectively it’s the exact inverse. Yeah. Like if you’re, if you’re looking historically, Israel owes the United States, literally everything. Like I do not think any people has ever owed another people more.

Like, and it’s funny that, that Jews will have memories. If you look at like, you know, the Old Testament and stuff, they’ll be like, Cyrus the great freed us from exile. Right. You know, like brought us back from exile. Right. And so we as a people like show him respect, but you don’t get a similar thing for like America. Right. Which [00:36:00] America. Objectively did a lot more in terms of the exile that the Jews were experiencing when America intervened to bring them back with a significantly longer and more severe exile, and they, where they were in significantly hotter water right when they were freed.

Then the Cyrus, the Great Exile, except you don’t see this same, you know, like religious ment towards America as a result of that. Mm-hmm.

So to be more explicit here, the Babylonian exile was only 50 to 70 years, and the Jewish people were not at existential threat of elimination during the Babylonian exile. When Cyrus came in, he allowed the Jewish people to move back to Israel. If you consider how long the Jews had essentially been kicked out of Israel when the Holocaust happened, because that’s a large reason why the pogroms were happening,

. iE that the Jews were not in their, their own country. , That was way longer than 50 to 70 years. That was hundreds of years at that point. And the Jewish people were [00:37:00] at an existential threat at that point when America came in and intervened.

And this isn’t even considering the Jews who America took in during that period and actively protected, which Iris did not do, and his country did not do.

And while it is true that the communist freed more of the camps.

If it had only been the communists, we know because of the later communist, Jewish purges, , those Jews would’ve been in almost as much hot water as they were, , , in that situation. So America comes in and more so than Cyrus, it actually. Helps fund the Jewish relocation to Israel from a much wider and more dispersed distance over a much longer period, and then helps set up the Israeli state, which is something that Cyrus also did not do, just objectively.

America did more in almost every metric than Cyrus Seg Great did. And yet you do not see this same reverence.

Specifically here, I’m talking about the length of the exile before the Israeli state was reset [00:38:00] up the level of threat the Jewish people were under when they were rescued by this foreign power. And the amount that each leader or country did to set Israel up after, , freeing them from their, , particular crisis or exile.

And if you wanna talk about American antisemitism of this time, pretty much everywhere was antisemitic at this time period. , Even if you’re talking about restrictions on Jewish refugees, America still objectively took in about twice as many refugees as the next biggest taker in of refugees.

Malcolm Collins: And so I think like if I was Jewish, this, this is something that I would like promote more. We need, I, I would say like Judaism more broadly needs to get over its meth addict problem, which is two, a few fold.

One is getting like, like punishing people for doing you historic favors and then no longer doing them, like losing the appreciation for the historic favor. And two, I think the best way demonstrating entitlement, I

Simone Collins: [00:39:00] think people are. Allergic to entitlement, especially when times are rough for them.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, yes.

And that’s, that’s what I think they’re seeing is a, is a form of entitlement. But on top of that you have the problem of because I wanna get to why leftist now hate Jude as well, which is interesting. And I think if you just like, and if you’re a Jewish person and you’re offended that I’m saying this, like genuinely think about it from an American’s perspective, whose ancestors risked their lives, you know, in, in World War ii.

And then the, our country for the past few generations has been setting up a stable Israeli state that can defend itself. And then to be like, yeah, but it would really be a problem for us if you stopped giving us money when, when they’re earning, like more than we are here.

I was wrong here. , The average wage in the United States is around 70,000 now, which is just crazy high to me. , And the average annual wage in Israel is now around 50,000, but it’s [00:40:00] still very wealthy as a country compared to saying that it needs foreign financial aid.

Especially when you consider that we have been giving them that economic and military aid for the past 75 years, and they should be stable by now. Like when does it end? Right? We’re 300 billion in. When do they say, okay dad, you know, I’ve been in college for X long, now I’m ready to graduate and start supporting myself.

Malcolm Collins: Why would, why would somebody be like, I’m actually kind of like, that’s a, that’s a bad thing, right?

Like that? And I, I don’t, I don’t feel offense personally, but it does make me think if I’m being logical about like, well, the Jews will be powerful in the future, and we want them as an ally in the future and the best way to do that. Is to cut them off. That’s a, that’s a really bad cultural precedent to set.

Mm-hmm. So I think like the best way to react to this, like if I was actually Jewish and I was gonna do something about this, would be to create sort of a narrative about this within, like, we need to start really [00:41:00] appreciating America for what it was and what it did for us. And find a way to.

Meaningfully give back and meaningfully create the sorts of partnerships that work intergenerationally. And as I’ve said, the easiest way to do that is for an Israeli based AI center on in America. And if people are like, well, why not have it in Israel? Well, one, because this would cause a vested interest in Israel having a vested interest in America.

And two, you can’t build a major AI hub in Israel that has military purposes because it’d be literally the first thing that was targeted and very easy to target. But if it’s in America, it’s incredibly defensible. And so it makes sense if you’re gonna do your Manhattan Project of AI in America and then you can, you know, build , a better long-term relationship there.

Specifically what I’m saying here is if you’re Jewish, but you’re also smart enough to see sort of above the wall of your own culture like Bibi is, , because Netanyahu has said, , you know, we, we need to end these payments like now, right? Like this is causing problems. . And if you are like that and you’re like, okay, well I can’t change my people’s culture, so how do I do [00:42:00] something that sort of forces them to invest in the United States, , setting up one of these sort of Manhattan projects

Around an AI data center that would make no sense to do in Israel, but.

that would be perfect logic to do this in the United States.

, And it would. You know, utilize the culture’s preexisting tendencies because now there’s a vested interest in building up and protecting the United States. And I think that, . You know, when I go around and I think about all the remembrances of the Holocaust, it’s always been sort of shocking to me.

‘cause I’ve been to a number of Holocaust museums that, you know, Jews that up all over the world, that I see so little about what the United States did for them during those periods, right? , I will see setups of, oh, this country or that country helped hide Jews. And it’s like, no country helped protect Jews during the Holocaust.

And I’m not just talking about freeing them from the Holocaust, but. Taking them in during that period of danger than the United States.

Specifically, we [00:43:00] have records of this from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, , which shows that of Jews who escaped the Holocaust around 24% went to the United States, around 15% went to. Israel, , great Britain, around 10% went there, , central and South America.

In total, it was only around 19%. Remember just United States was 24%. , Shanghai around 5% and. Other Western European countries that is all other western European countries combined with only around 30% with other destinations making up 10%.

So for clarification, Jews were 2.5 times more likely to shelter in the United States during the Holocaust than in Israel. .

So yes, the United States was the major player in protecting Jews from the Holocaust, not just in terms of resolving the war in a way that helped Jews get out safely.

, Not just in helping Jews set up the state of Israel, not just in funding them for [00:44:00] 75 years, but also in terms of where they went. , And this is where I’ve come to this, if you can invest so much in a people and yet go to their museums and see so little praise for your people, for everything you’ve done, why continue to invest?

, And I think that there is a way to fix this , from , a Jewish perspective, and that is to just really. Build some sort of movement around greater appreciation for what America actually did for the Jewish people. , Instead of seeing it as some sort of external, like when, when the Jewish identity should be Israel in America, right?

, And, and it is in terms of where they live, but it isn’t in terms of their internal narrative.

And I think the mistake that other people and, , Jews themselves made when they heard me say Phil Somatic things in the past, or say the Jewish people are people worth investing in the past, is they thought, [00:45:00] I think intuitively from a internal cultural perspective, that I was saying that because I liked individual Jewish people and in truth, , in terms of like individual, how much I like people, I like Catholics just about as much as I like Jews that I’ve met. It, it has nothing to do with what I think of individuals. It has to do with the wider, , theological metaphysical and culture and whether I think.

Investing in it is going to help my own people in the long term. , And if it is a culture that doesn’t repay its debts, then. Obviously not. And even worse, if it’s a culture that normalizes to people who do them favor and other cultural groups who do them favor and then begins to expect that, then it becomes like that friend who always expects more from you, , when, when you’re, when you’re giving them money and then just gets angry when you cut them off.

And people can say, oh, how dare you, , talk about what Jewish culture [00:46:00] is doing that is leading to the rise in antisemitism these days. And. I would say here they’re like, that’s victim blaming, right? But if you know this podcast, this mantra, it’s you as a people can really only control your own actions.

So like if you are black for example, there’s very little you can do to combat any sort of systemic discrimination in society. But there’s a lot you can do to try to improve your own culture and what. That contributes to say, black people earning less than other cultural groups. So I give advice like this, not saying that there are not external things that, for example, cause black people to earn less or cause Jewish hate.

It’s just that those external things are generally not addressable by the culture that is on that is, that is dealing with the consequences of , the hate or the lack of income or anything like that.

Because at the end of the day, no one is more motivated to stop the existential rise in antisemitism we’re seeing right now than Jewish people. , and unfortunately , the [00:47:00] intuitive way that they’ve been approaching this recently makes the antisemitism much worse, which is, I think where you’ve seen this, , cycle that’s almost sort of like an inverse, virtuous cycle where antisemitism rises and then Jewish people do things that causes more antisemitism to rise, , which is really sad.

And I think a, a addressing this and seeing this problem and cutting it off now is really, really in. Important for the long-term safety of the Jewish people.

Malcolm Collins: But I wanna go to the, the leftist because I think the leftist hate for, for Jews that’s been growing recently. It’s coming from a position like I gave my original hypothesis at the beginning of this, but when I actually think about it, like why is Greta Thornberg on a boat going to Israel and Gaza rather than the DAR four region, which is Lidia really twice as big, you know?

Why is it that, aMI is saying, you know, we need to globalize the ada. The fact the ada ADA Ada whatever. Why is, why is he saying this? Why do you get. These incredibly [00:48:00] antisemitic, anti

anti perspectives

and screeds from individuals like Hassan Piker. Yeah. And what I’ve realized, like actually as I began to think about it more, I was like, why were those boats going there for Greta to get on?

Oh, that entire brigade wasn’t even started by woke people. It was started by just like. Actual Islamists, right? Like it was, it was actually started by like, Islamist groups that wanted to eradicate the Jewish people, right? Like there has been funding for that flotilla that she was on that came from Hamas.

Like this has been traits back at this point. If you look at like Mond. Grew up in a, in a Muslim household, right? Like, Hassan grew up partially in Turkey and has a lot of you know, Muslim affinities, right? Like if you actually look at his, his broader affinities, they are more I, I’d say pro Muslim was like a, a sheen of wokeness on the top.

And what I’m realizing here is the current [00:49:00] woke anti-Semitic belief system is actually. Downstream of an intellectual class of either directly Islamists or Muslim sympathizing individuals. And, and when I say Muslim sympathizing, it’s in the way. ESS Synthesize was a group where they sort of have to sublimate all of their opinions and lived experiences to this external groups lived experiences.

And we’ve even seen some clashes here when there was a big fight between like, well do Muslim interests come before, like black interests, right? And people were like, well, no black interests come first. And Muslims were like, no Muslim interest come first. Yeah. This,

Simone Collins: this saw a flash point around the, the most recent presidential election, Kamala Harris from, and I’ve begun

Malcolm Collins: to think like, what, what are I actually think the Wokes antisemitism is coming from is not the historic sort of Marxist antisemitism.

‘cause you know, Marx was a massive anti-Semite. He wrote an entire book about. Jews being a problem. So like, I, I hate when people are like, oh, he was descended from [00:50:00] Jews. That’s like saying Hitler was descended for Jews, which is proof he wasn’t an antisemite, which people used to believe. And then they did a DNA test and they found out he wasn’t.

And like, we haven’t done a d everyone says they’re ex is descended from Jews. Why is descended from Jews? Anyway, the point being, where was I going with this? The point being is I actually think that a lot of the leftist antisemitism comes from when they are modeling what the future of humanity looks like, what the future of our existing geopolitical architecture looks like.

They don’t actually plan on them existing in the future. Like, I can talk to like gays and trans people and I can be like, but really you see if only people who hate you continue to have kids like. In the future, only people who you cannot not allow your culture to exist are, are, are going to be the dominant cultures on earth.

Like I talk about this in terms of tism all the time, and they’re often just like, they don’t really see it as a problem. And I’ve always been very confused as to how they don’t see it as a problem. Mm-hmm. And what I’m realizing, and you see this was like the, the, the wiles. In, what is it like Michigan giving all the money to the Somalians right?

With this big scam where like billions of dollars have, and it’s clear that a lot of ess knew this was happening, right. You know, to [00:51:00] Islamist groups in Somalia. If they see the future of their movements and the territories that they feel they de facto control as something they want to hand to Muslim groups.

They believe in a Muslim future. And because of that they, they see that future as incompatible with Jewish interest because they’re sort of the Muslims within the, the top circles of their intellectual communities. And I, and I find this very interesting trace, the intellectual giants on the left right now in many of them.

Are tied to Islamism in some way or another. Especially the younger ones. Especially the younger ones. And this didn’t used to be the case. So I think that this is what we’re seeing here. And I, I, I think that that’s where it’s coming from in their intellectual class. I don’t think they actually think through like, oh, Jews have more money than other people.

Why did Jews have more money than other people? Well, it must be because they cheated, because it can’t be for cultural reasons. Because if we said it’s for cultural reasons, then well, why do blacks have less money than other people for cultural reasons? Oh my God, you just said blacks are poor because of their own [00:52:00] culture.

That’s a naughty thing. You know, all differences must be due to oppression. That’s what I used to think. Don’t think that when I actually try to trace like why it’s Greta Faberg antisemitic now. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, I think it’s a really difficult position when you look at these incredibly quickly rising rates.

I think Jews were basically playing a very smart game for a while that utilized the existing power system and levers that they had access to in sort of the age of the Boomer. But the conservative youth. We spent the last x many years being told, you’ve said a naughty thing, you’ve said a bad thing back of the line, have your channel banned, et cetera.

And so we, and when I say I mean like the larger, new right movement has become incredibly, or, or like, how dare you say that that’s offensive. Or how dare you say this little thing that means like you’re homophobic. Like when I’m like, hey, like we need to rethink how we look at gay people and stuff like that.

This is another thing I did an entire episode where I’m talking about like rethinking how we contextualize same sex attracted individuals. Like is this just a [00:53:00] kink? Everything like that.

Mm-hmm.

Didn’t get this, this show has a decently sized gay fan base. Didn’t get a single angry email from our gay fan base about that.

Why is it that they didn’t. Say that, like why is it that other groups like you can bring up? Because if you watch that episode, you can see we’re not saying that we hate gays in the same way that our Jewish episode, like isn’t saying like, we hate Jews. We’re just saying, okay, well here’s the problem, here’s the problem, here’s the problem.

Like, and I, I can see how people are resonating with what Nick is saying on these problems. How, how does Jewish culture, like, react to this or, or adapt to this. And, and if your reaction is to say, well, we just can’t because of the Holocaust, like we just can’t because of ex cultural trauma then you’re going to have a lot of enemies in the future.

Yeah. Because it makes you a group that is actively dangerous to attempt to help. And I don’t know, like, and it also makes your group like just. Hit the triggers on the new right, which is trying to cancel individuals, right? Like trying to say or not cancel individuals, but shame [00:54:00] them when they’re saying something that is genuinely not antisemitic and you come at them and you say.

That’s homophobic, that’s transphobic, that’s whatever. They’re so used to this that’s racist. And they’re like, that wasn’t antisemitic. You sound to me just like the person who comes and says you know, that’s transphobic when you say, Hey, children should not be transitioning. Right. And then that ends up pushing people into being more and more genuinely transphobic.

And if you are a Jewish person and you’re like, no, people don’t actually get pushed into these positions by people attacking them. Look at us on like trans issues over time. Right. Like. Look at, look at even maybe yourself on trans issues over time. Did it push you in that direction? Maybe even same sex attraction.

You’ve seen this happen to you with some other group. When you see it happening to yourself, it’s easier for you to be like, oh, this is how it can happen to somebody else. But what are your thoughts, Simone?

Simone Collins: You have me at entitlement. I think that’s gonna get pretty much anyone, because it’s a, it’s a very dangerous pattern, and I think people know it on an instinctual level, but it also made a lot of sense when I thought about the context of.

The way that [00:55:00] Mond Gold brings up Israel, which is basically just like, let’s stop sending money to anything that’s not us when we’ve got our own problems.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The final thing I wanna talk about is the Holocaust thing. Because I think that the Holocaust narrative is unfortunately not one that is going to grab the use of today in the way it did historically.

I as a young person, when I’m taught about the way the world really works, the way most young people grow up is they start by thinking there’s good guys and bad guys, and then they hit this age where they realize, oh my god. Actually, most people when they do something, they think they’re the good guy, right?

Like, most groups in history, things are shades of gray. And when people teach me that things are not shades of gray they typically have some alternate agenda to like rewrite history for me now, and this is just something that like we all learn, everybody experiences this growing up, right? Like this moment where you’re like.

Oh, like, [00:56:00] like while there might be some instances of genuine evil like these, generally speaking, people think that what they’re doing is right in, in the context. And that generally in any story where I was told one person was all bad and one person was all good that story was being rewritten by the, the victors of the story.

Now imagine your. 15-year-old Destiny’s kid. ‘cause we’re, we’re, we’re talking about like, you know, we’re talking to him. And he experienced this at school and he goes to school and he has taught the current you know, world War II scenario. And the, the sort of default World War II scenario is one side was genuinely like comically evil, almost as evil as any group could ever be in any historical context.

And the other side was mostly good. And. That’s just the truth of it. Like just that’s the truth. I can see why they immediately are like, wait a second. Like do I believe that? Like that. That sounds like one of the stories I was [00:57:00] told is the type of story I should doubt. Right? So it’s, it’s a narrative and it, I actually think it’s a narrative that it’s mostly true.

Like I think we were the good guys and we beat the bad guys. You know, I pointed out that they, they marched under a, a theo society flag. Like a wcan flag basically. Like they were like, of every route. I think that they were, they were bad in almost every way. You can watch our video that was taken down by YouTube on this subject because I, I guess we hit too close to the home on it.

But the point I’m making is it’s just a narrative that’s gonna be like, I think we need to rethink how we tell kids this narrative, how we teach this narrative, how we teach it. And, you know, every city has a Holocaust museum. Every city has a, and I think the, the sort of like. How do I reframe this in a way that is believable to the type of kid who has been systemically lied to?

Because how many kids were, especially during the age of COVID, systemically, lied to by institutions that had power. Right? Mm-hmm. Like, I don’t even know if I would believe it. If I was growing up today, I’d be like, [00:58:00] well, you know, I can’t trust what I read on Wikipedia anymore because it, it’s got this extreme you know, leftist bias.

I can’t trust what I read on a, a, you know what I hear from mainstream news? AI is all controlled by X, Y, or Z, you know, and so I need to. Try to like educate myself. Right. And when it comes to educating yourself, that means going to conspiracy websites and stuff like that, right?

Simone Collins: Oh, dear. Okay. So you’re also saying in, in the age of the information or truth crisis, it’s going to be extra hard to talk about really, really, really bad atrocities because it seems easier to assume that it was just made up.

Malcolm Collins: Well, this is the way I put it. We have found a way like at least the American right to talk about things like the communist atrocities because they committed genuinely. Horrifying atrocities you know, on the scale of Holocaust atrocities, right? We have found a way to talk about that, talk about all the horrible things they did [00:59:00] while still humanizing the communist, right?

Like, to an extent where like if somebody goes to a communist rally today, or has a friend who went to a communist rally who then went to a different event, you know, we don’t go, oh, you left us, you went to an event that a communist went to. How can I have you on my stream? Or somebody will be like, oh, you went to an event.

That a Nazi went to, right? Like, how could I be on your stream? Right. Like, the, the point that I’m saying is I think we need to learn to talk about Nazis and Nazi-ism the same way we talk about communism. And, and its horrors where we can admit that communism did a lot of just like holistically evil things, but like the people who were putting it together had some, like, some plan to what they were doing.

You know? They, they, they at least thought that there was some like. Good thing at the end of this and here, here and here is why they thought that, right? Mm-hmm. And I think if we can get to teaching World War II like that it, we won’t have this reflective. That just doesn’t seem plausible every other time in history where I’m told [01:00:00] there was a bad guy and a good guy.

I then get told, and that’s the way we taught it to you in middle school because you know, you were too dumb to understand that actually the Native Americans committed a ton of atrocities and actually the settlers committed a ton of atrocities and it’s not always black and white. Right.

Simone Collins: Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I’m not sure. Part of me thinks it’s, it’s, it’s simpler than that, that people today are now struggling to use the Holocaust as justifications for special treatment in the same way that people struggle to use reparations as justification or like slavery for as justification for reparations for black Americans.

‘cause they’re like, ugh. Like this was a long time ago. Like it was horrible and it, and it happened and that’s bad, but like. W what about today and how is that gonna fix anything? I think that might be more of the instinctual sentiment, but I, I still definitely see there being an issue [01:01:00] about educating children around atrocities and mistreatments and also.

Being very unsure of what, what can be trusted in the age of AI and the internet and everything else.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So I, I think that that’s the other thing that, that like, because people can be like, the over the evidence for it was overwhelming and I agree that it is, but I can also understand how young people are pushed away from it in the current media ecosystem.

And I think that thinking through how this story can be retold in a way that is going to be believable to an edgy youth is really important.

Simone Collins: Well, do you think part of it is the weaponization of the word Nazi? The fact that it just has been used so much like it’s the new N word. And it has caused a, a sense of desensitization and also trivialization of, of that which is being invoked.

Malcolm Collins: I, I think that, well, so there’s a part of it, like the reclaiming of [01:02:00] the word is something that Nick has tried to do, right? Like this idea of if I can, if I can. Sort of deradicalize the use of this word or claiming affinity to this group for a lot of young people today. Like that’s the ultimate way to rebel, right?

Like on the left, it’s, it’s cutting your, and on the right it’s claiming to be an inward right? You know? And I think that unfortunately they made it like this edgy taboo thing. And. You there, there, there is a downside to doing that. Like it’s, it’s, it’s taboo to the extent now where you know, a kid can, can break that taboo and watch their parents and teachers, you know, stare in shock in the same way that, you know, maybe our generation had piercings or whatever, right?

Like the, they need something that can create that among their parents. And you know, unfortunately, the, the way the media ecosystem treats it right now, it’s just sort of the perfect thing for that.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. I have to, I’m gonna have to [01:03:00] mentally chew on this for a while, but I, I’m glad that you’re talking about the fact that this is happening.

The trends that you brought up at the beginning of the episode, just the number, the percentage of young people who are now antisemitic really means that people need to be thinking carefully about not only why this is happening, but what. People can do both. People who support Jews and then Jewish populations themselves to address this.

Because if, if left unaddressed, I think it’s only gonna get much worse. And that could lead to problems.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And I, I was a Jewish person. What I would do. Because I actually think this would be cool to do is build like a set of codes. Like be like, look, Judaism needs a system for dealing with intergenerational relationships with other cultural groups.

Mm-hmm. That has, because Jews love their rules. That has a lot of set rules that will make it rewarding for other groups to help us. Because when it’s rewarding for other groups to help us, then other groups are going to be more likely to help us. Mm-hmm. [01:04:00] And to a lot of people, that’s just the way they are.

Right? Like a lot of groups that have lived in clan based systems for a long time th this way of having intergenerational relationships with other people, like, as I said, Simone and I come from clan based cultural system is just natural. You just think, oh, I help another culture. Next generation, they’re gonna help me.

But if you’re a group like the Jews that’s regularly getting kicked out of places every couple generations, you may not build a system like that. But going into whatever the world becomes after this, especially after we begin space exploration and, and, and have interstellar communities, the Jewish culture is going to need a system of rules like that.

And somebody in our generation can be the two who makes it.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Interesting. Well, thank you for this conversation. I love talking with you.

Malcolm Collins: Love talking to you too.

Good pattern of repeatedly doing basic things he needs to learn, like math and English and stuff like that. Of course. And then for more advanced concepts like biology and stuff like [01:05:00] that, get him very familiar with the idea of, and how to use a an AI to explore that stuff.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like explain to him why it’s important to learn how to explore it.

And then basically send him off and have him learn it, and then come back to us and tell us what he learned. That’s where you really get it with him. You’re like, okay, tell me what you learned. And he’ll come back and he’ll remember one thing and I’m like, go out again. Learn more than one thing. I need at least three facts.

And we can expand that into, I need at least a full explanation. I need at least, you know, so that he can learn how to learn this stuff on his own.

Simone Collins: I like that. Yeah, I mean we’re, we’re trying to present him with various reasons why he might wanna learn things now. Like he, he asked to see the, the mice we got in the mouse drops again this morning.

But then he got really sad about the mice and the mouse traps, and I’m like. Okay. Like, do you wanna build something that prevents them from getting inside? Like, you know, you gotta [01:06:00] learn. You have to learn how mice work and what they eat and all things. All the things.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway.

So we are going to go over a number or I’ll get started here.

Speaker: You attack it? What’s, what’s going on? What’s going on? My little buddy. Oh, okay. Question. Question. Get up. Get up. Question. Toasty was there No question. Did you see Torsten? Mommy said the milk was drinking. And And mommy. And also Mommy said the cookie got, oh my gosh.

Speaker 3: So, that’s not even weird. Not even weird. Not even weird. I think it’s pretty weird. It a supernatural being invades [01:07:00] your home. I personally find that a little weird fix. Sorry, didn’t we have to fix your hair before we get downstairs?

Come here. So we go.

Speaker 2: Go Octavian. Did you hear reindeer downstairs last night? I think I did.

Really Torsten, did you?

No, I.

In this episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into the viral interview clip (now over 9.5M views) in which a mainstream journalist from MSNBC/Telemundo denies basic genetics — claiming there are NO genetic differences between black and white people, not even for skin color.

What you didn’t see in the viral clip: the full context of a day-long filming session, the journalist’s “gotcha” moment falling apart, and why Malcolm deliberately played along to ensure the clip made it to air.

We break down:

* Why denying genetic differences (even skin color) is increasingly common on the left

* The real science on population differences, fertility windows, fibroids, menopause timing, and medical implications

* How this moment signals a cultural turning point: the right becoming the pro-science side, the left becoming theologically anti-science

* Media manipulation tactics, viral strategy, and why shock moments spread truth faster than documentaries

This isn’t about race supremacy — it’s about honesty in science, better medical outcomes, and fighting demographic collapse by understanding biological realities.

Episode Transcript: Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] what we see is a turning point culturally, and, and that’s what this interview represents, a turning point culturally with the right, becoming the party of science

Speaker: It’s science.

Malcolm Collins: and the left, becoming the anti-science theologically motivated party.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. We recently ended up getting in a debate against what I can only describe as a literal straw man of myth. And it went viral, super viral. I think the video’s at 9.5 million views. Now, one person was, was adding it up across the site. So really, really big and what we wanted to take this episode to do was to go over what you are not seeing from this film clip and the context of what we were thinking in this film clip.

Mm-hmm. And how we were trying to talk with her, because I think a lot of people get the impression that I walked into a room with A-C-N-B-C Telemundo reporter, right. And I sat down. And she just started asking me questions and immediately I was like, what? What are [00:01:00] you talking about? For, for,

Simone Collins: yeah, for context.

It, it’s Paolo Ramos. She’s, she’s from like, she’s, she’s not, she’s, she’s not unknown. Okay. She’s 193,000 followers just on Instagram.

Malcolm Collins: She has she worked in the Obama administration. She worked in the Clinton administration. Her dad is a very famous anchor at Telemundo and like one of Trump’s arch enemies.

She is very, like, this is the environment she grew up in. This is her religion. It, it very much reminded me of me talking to people who have been in Scientology and grew up in Scientology. Just their conviction. The, their weird world beliefs are completely normal. And we’ll play the clip in a bit, but most of, you’re probably already seen it, so I’m not gonna go into that that much.

Actually, Saron of ACA did a full episode dedicated to a breakdown of it because it was so emblematic of this.

Simone Collins: I think you should start with the clip. I think you should start with the clip.

Malcolm Collins: The point I was making is we didn’t just sit down and this was filmed, this was after a full day of shooting. It, it was, it was [00:02:00] actually near the end of the shoot that day, so.

We had had her at our house, we’d been talking with her in a number of different environments, is the way it works. You go to one room, you go to another room, you do some filming. You talk about this, you talk about this, you talk about this. And and before I, I play the clip, I’ll give you context when she started talking about this, up until this point, while she had been like a little woke about some things, it was like normal, like, let’s discuss this. Like let’s find common ground. Let’s this was when I think she decided like, oh, I’ve got this Gotcha. Planned for them, right? And immediately her gotcha fell apart because she didn’t seem to understand very, very basic biology.

And she didn’t, she thought that we were like racist or racial supremacists. When in the very clip we make it clear, we’re like different. Doesn’t mean better. We’re just saying that there are differences with specifically the one that I really couldn’t get over with her, and to give you a context of how we got there, was that, well, at the very least, the genes that code [00:03:00] for our skin color are different, right?

Like we can at least agree on that. I didn’t jump there because I was trying to jump to a non-sequitur. I jumped there because I was sort of like, okay, you disagree that there are any genetic differences between black and white people? Like presumably you at least agree on this and then we can sort of work on, okay, well then maybe other genes have associations due to similar sort of ancestral environmental conditions leading to them being selected for, but no, we got to the, do genes cause skin color differences?

And her answer was, and the other thing about this clip is this was not the full debate or like us pushing back and forth. It probably went on, I wanna say for 15 minutes or. Significantly. I don’t know. I dunno, it’s hard to tell how long something was, but what I can say is this was just a little bit of it, and it doesn’t fully show how crazy her position was.

Her position was just for people who don’t know in the, in the context, all [00:04:00] differences. Between black people and white people are due to conditions that they experience in their life, such as discrimination. So she would say the reason why, and this is a contributory factor, that black women have more fertility complications or inter menopause earlier than white women.

And we’ll go into both of these claims, ‘cause this is what I was talking about in context. The reason why I brought up that they, like it came up that they were different at all is because I was talking about, well, we need to understand this as a society that like we are actually different because if a black woman tries to have kids at the same timeline as a white woman having kids, she will not have as many kids successfully.

Yeah. Due to biological differences.

Simone Collins: And this matters in the bigger debate of demographic absentism because the primary driver of. F falling fertility rates. It’s not people not having kids at all. It’s people starting families later. And the problem is that many, including many of our black female friends are doing what everyone’s doing, the responsible thing, starting their families later.

No [00:05:00] one tells them that, like on average, the fertility windows of black women and the fertility of black women in general is different from. The rest of the population, which often is more represented in scientific research in, in, in Western societies. If

Malcolm Collins: anything, from their perspective, we were arguing against a Eurocentric medical perspective.

Exactly,

Simone Collins: exactly. Well, which is so funny because in some woke circles, it’s, it’s really commonly discussed, Heather. There’s not enough medical research that is specifically for women or specifically for certain racial groups that are on average different from other groups. Like it’s fully recognized there, but like in the context of this.

It’s.

Malcolm Collins: And in the, in the longer conversation we go into this and she goes, no, all of these differences are entirely and a hundred percent, even though there is voluminous evidence, this isn’t the case which we’ll go into. Not they’re due to discrimination in some way. And I was like, well, you know, if you have interracial couples, you still see the difference, but only when it’s women.

And I like went into this and I was like, and if you control for wealth, which studies [00:06:00] have done, you still see the differences. And she just would not have it. And it’s interesting to me because if you actually go down to. Dream of her perspective. What she’s arguing is that like black people become black not due to genes or like even, even more than that, black people are, let’s say taller on average, not due to genes, but because of the discrimination they face.

And I, and I’d point out another thing that will get into. Later in this is a lot of people are like, well, black isn’t a race or whatever. And I’m like, I never said black was a race. Like, I, I was not saying I I was merely saying if you’re looking at this one phenotypical characteristic, it is associated with specific other characteristics that may have medical implications, whether it be sickle cell anemia or diabetes, or the way you process vitamin D.

Like. That, that was the point I was making. I was not, and I even clearly state this in the police, I say, I’m not saying we’re better. I’m not talking about IQ here. And I’m not like I I, there was no like, and I’m not even [00:07:00] saying like this race or this race or arguing for the concept of race or ethnicity.

I was just saying that you can look at one phenotypic thing, and this matters a lot in hospitals. Like people die. When you don’t do this in a hospital context because if you, if you try to, for example, like even just looking at somebody broadly do a blood donation, like I can, I can have a well, let’s go from blood donations bone, bone marrow donation.

You know, if I have like a black wife and I wanna donate bone marrow to her. Can’t because we are biologically incompatible in that context. And so do, it’s more

Simone Collins: common, like just, how do you explain this if this isn’t true? Example that was brought up in discussions. Around this clip online was just then how do you explain sickle cell anemia?

Anemia, sorry. And that’s just a really easy go-to, like there’s, it is, there’s some populations that need to deal with sickle cell anemia and there are other populations that don’t have this. I mean, like, same with things like if you’re a hemophiliac, it’s [00:08:00] probably. Like how, how do you explain these things?

Malcolm Collins: I don’t know.

So, so it’s two things to bring up in this context. There’s actually a reason why as the debate got longer, I did not bring up sickle cell anemia and I tried to keep it incredibly narrow. I am first when it happened, when I was like, Hey, do you wanna check this on ai? I was still sort of in a phase of.

This isn’t a debate, this isn’t a gotcha moment. She just doesn’t know what she’s talking about. And we just need to make sure that we’re on the same page so we can create high quality news media for the general public. Right. Like that wasn’t me being like, oh, let’s use AI to, into debate or something like that.

I was just like, Hey like maybe we should come to some sort of common ground or, or look at a third party because what you’re saying is just like factually in like the broadest possible sense. Deeply, deeply untrue. Yeah. And it’s not like it’s one field like genetics. This is important for criminology, anthropology forensics like, it, it’s, it’s the basis of like multiple academic disciplines that this is untrue.

And [00:09:00] for many people who don’t know my background, I actually worked in the department at the Smithsonian at one point. I was the. The only staff still in this department. It was never used for crime at that point, but because everyone else was on a dig at this period, not because I was senior or anything that bones is based off of.

And some people were like you know, if you’ve seen Bones, you know that you can tell like the ethnicity. They show bones,

Simone Collins: not

Malcolm Collins: the

Simone Collins: objects.

Malcolm Collins: It’s the show bones from like DNA or from physical morphology, like the bones themselves or from various other things that are, that are tied or downstream of genetics.

And so for me, I’m almost like a nerd who is working in the Bones lab and then somebody is like, you can’t tell the race of somebody by you. You can’t tell. Or more importantly, because we’re not even talking about race here. You can’t tell the color of someone’s skin by their DNA because that, that’s specifically what I was arguing.

And the person in the Bones lab would just be like,

what?

What are you talking about? I. But I’ll play the clip here ‘cause you wanna play the clip and I know many people have seen it and it’s short. It’s like a minute 30, so we’ll play [00:10:00] it

Speaker 2: You’ve said things like black women are biologically different than white women. They, they, they, yes. They have, uh, different fertility windows. They have a higher rate of fertility complications, 50%, but there’s no scientific evidence to prove that. A black woman and a white woman are genetically different, right?

This is like, what are you talking? No, they’re no, no. Like literally, there are genes that code for their skin color. There are genes that, again, this is, I mean this is like government data. This, this is Emmy, right? This is the National Institute of Health. This is an American medical association. Like there, there is no scientific evidence to prove that, and that’s a big problem, right?

Because there’s no scientific, and that’s why I asked like IQ differences. Black people are genetically different from other populations. Yeah. I’ll say that again. There’s it, it, there is at least there is no scientific evidence to prove that. Right. And as people that No, no, no. I’m, I’m, I’m sorry. I’m stating Do you wanna ask an AI if there’s scientific evidence to prove that?

Speaker 3: No. I wanna ask on, on. Factually incorrect. [00:11:00] It’s humans are genetically diverse. It’s not a bad thing that humans, I’m saying it’s No, no, I’m not saying it’s a bad or, or, or a good thing. I’m saying there is no scientific evidence and I’m saying that is a factual, he saying that there is scientific evidence, there is scientific evidence, there is overwhelming scientific evidence on in this basic.

No, no, no. This is like saying the sky’s not blue, like it is genes that code their skin color. Mm-hmm. Right. Those genes are obviously different in them than they are in us. How is that Not science. That’s just like a basic fact. The genes that code their skin color, their level of melanin production are different from my genes that melanin production.

And that’s precisely why I was asking this question. ‘cause I think for some people that do believe like you, that people are genetically different. That has historically been used to promote racial hierarchies. Right. And that’s why I am asking you because, but so what do.

Malcolm Collins: anyway. I’m not gonna go through it and do a play-by-play like Sargon did I want to go through, oh yes.

The second part of the clip that I didn’t get to mention is as soon as [00:12:00] I realized that this was actually like a gotcha moment, I went into this mode of, oh my God, how do I get her to not cut this in editing? So you’ll notice this clip just came out of the tether trailer. She put it on her own Instagram, so like clearly she’s proud of it.

So this clip, right, was filmed back when Simone was pregnant. So months ago. No, no, no. Let’s

Simone Collins: provide more context. This was filmed the day before our scheduled C-section. I was sick as a dog. You can see me like trying to keep snot from falling out of my nose. Halfway through the interview, part of the interview consisted of me driving with them in our car as I went to get pre-op blood work done at the hospital, speaking in Spanish as they interviewed me live during the drive.

And yeah, they were filming us literally all day from a morning walk to me going to the hospital, to being there for a long time to them coming back and then you’re interviewing us together. Then in filming us around the kids, it was a long ass day and we barely had a chance to even talk about it after it [00:13:00] happened.

Like we had this short conversation of like, did she actually, did she, did she

Malcolm Collins: say that we actually like, I like got Simone’s side. I was like, did that really just happen? Like we didn’t

Simone Collins: even like have time to talk about it because then. You know, like we were getting the kids in order. I was, you know, getting ready for surgery.

We, we, you know, we, we went to the hospital for a c-section and then. Then text ended up then in NI, in the nicu. Like we basically forgot about this interview, like a,

Malcolm Collins: I did not forget about it. I mentioned it in just a video a couple days ago, like in the Johnny Anomaly interview. Like, oh, you did forgot I, I remember this.

Because I remember just like, what a gift to us it would be if it didn’t get cut in editing. Oh. ‘cause like midway through the argument after the AI thing, and I realized, oh, she’s not just being naive. She thinks she has us in some big gotcha moment.

Mm-hmm.

My immediate thought was, oh my God, I need to argue in a way that is entertaining and gets the point across to like a general sane person, but won’t trigger her to actually Google this and potentially cut this [00:14:00] after the interview is over.

Simone Collins: There’s no way though that they didn’t fact check this. They ran it anyway, because the other thing we are constantly doing while they were visiting us all day, as we do with every single visiting documentarian or journalist is. Please make this controversial. Please make this a hint, please. Well, but the thing is, is

Malcolm Collins: this isn’t just controversial.

This is controversial. Making them look like Buffo. Oh, yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Normally it’s, it’s just them making us look like That’s fair. Not

Malcolm Collins: making us look bad. Right. Like so, so this has been filmed and I went and I talked to her afterwards. Mm-hmm. And I said like, can you please. Keep that in the piece. Oh, you talked to her about it?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I had a conversation with her and she was Oh, so she, yeah. This is her

Simone Collins: Christmas gift to you. Paula is a bro,

Malcolm Collins: right? No, she’s like, I, I don’t, and, and part of me, like, I don’t even know if she kept it in due to her own integrity or she just was really so dent she didn’t think to Google this or.

Walk by one with a ation. She no, maybe testing.

Simone Collins: She knew it would go viral. She knew the people on her side would stand her side anyway. And also truly believe,

Malcolm Collins: and they did on [00:15:00] Instagram. Lots of people did probably also

Simone Collins: still truly believes it, but she was probably also being a bro to us. And she’s like, well, they said they wanted, I bet this is gonna go pretty viral because I know the other side believes this.

And in her, per her view. All of the evil online racists are gonna jump on this and make it go viral, and X is dominated, for example, by evil online racist, so it’ll go viral there. It’ll make me look great. Everyone on Blue Sky is gonna defend me. We have no idea if this has even come up on Blue Sky, but like, basically like all my allies are gonna defend me and it’s gonna drive more attention to this story, which, you know, they spent money putting together, you know, they sent a, they sent three.

Oh, I mean, it’s gonna be

Malcolm Collins: great for this story. I’m excited to see this story. I have no

Simone Collins: idea where they’re

Malcolm Collins: gonna take this. Right. You know, I don’t know. Yeah. I saw that first part and I was like, this is great. Yeah. So it’s something to, to, to be important to understand that a lot of the comments are like.

Hey, why did you take this interview to begin with? Right. You know, first this is what we do. We get people like her who think, oh, this is gonna make me look really [00:16:00] good. This is gonna make them look completely

Simone Collins: evil. Oh, there’s so much more to it that though. No, actually, no. So her producer is, is from Grace, from Telemundo.

Yeah. This was our first time where a major Spanish language, Latin American, not Spain based outlet. Reached out to us about covering demographic collapse. We were absolutely thrilled. What, what doesn’t show up in this is that a huge portion of this interview was filmed in Spanish with me speaking in Spanish with their team.

So like, I think a huge portion of this is going to run in Spanish on Spanish language outlets. And like our audience doesn’t, she’s not gonna see it, but like, no, but like the larger context of us trying to do this too was that demographic collapse is a really big issue in Latin America. And it’s not really being discussed effectively.

Right. That’s not the point

Malcolm Collins: I’m making here.

Simone Collins: Okay. That’s your point.

Malcolm Collins: So the point I’m making here is that when we go into a context like this and are trying to create a viral moment like this, [00:17:00] right? The, the, you have to remember they have editing power on this, okay? So. You need to lure them into a scenario where they come away feeling like you look bad, but the average person watching this thinks they look bad.

This means there are many things that are suggested of us that are just completely off the table, right? Like people are like, why don’t you just stand up and walk out of the room? That would’ve one made us look absolutely terrible. Right. That would’ve been very easy for them to spend. It would’ve looked completely like us losing our cool.

Two is why don’t you just be completely deadpan about this and start citing studies and start going through, you know, sickle cell, everything like that. In a way it was just so

Simone Collins: boring. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: One, it would be boring. Two, if we actually broke through her and she to a point where she thinks to Google this.

No, no, I don’t want to drink this, sweetheart. She actually thinks to Google this, it’s gone. It’s dead. That’s not going out to [00:18:00] the general public. Right? She needed to think she looked good, but in reality did not look good. To some extent. Now, there was also the secondary thing where she might have known that she looked terrible.

I don’t think she did, but somebody might have known that. And it just went live anyway, because we had the conversation with her afterwards where I literally. Pleaded was her. I said, please, please include that clip. Like, you know, and she was so certain of herself that she was just like, yeah, of course.

Like she clearly thought like, oh, please don’t throw me in. The Bri patch was sort of her, her response to this. But I wanna be clear that there was a context and a conversation after this and everything like this. This wasn’t in isolation. And the reason that we do this, people are like, why do you try to create these viral moments?

It’s, this is how you spread information. Within the modern digital economy. If I went out there and I did a something like, you know, an inconvenient truth on demographic collapse, which by the way already exists the birth gap, right? Mm-hmm. It’ll do well, but it won’t do amazingly. You know, it’s not gonna do [00:19:00] these types of numbers, and that’s because that’s not how people share information anymore.

They share them in shock, outrage bites, right? And what this moment did was two things simultaneously, and I think we saw this on the sargon of a cod clip. We’ll get into the specifics in a second. Is it one acted as an indictment of the way the media acts? You know, this is the way of an educated woman.

She has a graduate degree from the Harvard Kennedy School. Right? Somebody educated in the mainstream system and under her comments there were people like, I bet these two people homeschool their own children. And I’m like, damn, right. This is why we do, because this is what’s coming outta the Harvard Kennedy School, right?

I mean, it’s a scam degree if somebody’s able to have this world perspective and have it, but. Sargon Acod is able to watch this and be completely generous to us. He just called us normal people and I felt cod. Thanks for normal people. That is honestly

Simone Collins: my first time hearing that. Maybe ever.

Malcolm Collins: Are we new normal conservatives?

Love it. Is is, is JD Vance a normal guy now? Are we just like, [00:20:00] are, are the tech conservatives normal? I’m, I’m happy for that. I’m here for you. But I wanna go further here. So one thing that was interesting that she did, oh. Oh, Simone, did you wanna say anything about this more broadly? ‘cause you were really excited to talk about.

It being the first Spanish language, the anything you wanna go? I said what

Simone Collins: I wanted to say about that. Okay,

Malcolm Collins: so, so, first. The sky is blue thing. I love that so many progressives are like, well, this glow isn’t technically blue. And I’m like, that’s an idiom, you know? Right. Like, you’re aware when somebody says it’s raining cats and dogs.

They don’t literally think that cats and dog. I don’t know why progressives have got so excited about that, that the sky isn’t literally blue and it’s an illusion created by the way, the, the light refracts in the atmosphere. I am. Literally to using an, an idiom for something that anyone can just observe, right?

And it’s a common idiom, right? It’s not like an un uncommon idiom or anything like that. The other thing. And I thought it was really interesting is her repeated use of the same phrase. Like there are studies that show this [00:21:00] when in actuality there was actually a great paper that went over all of the data from the studies that she claimed to cite, like from the NIH or whatever.

And every organization. That she cites as proving her position in fact argues the exact opposite of her position. And it’s interesting that they didn’t check this. Like, I wonder if that’s even like a legal liability for them to do that. And so Zero Hedge did a piece on this.

It was near the top.

And they go meanwhile in in, in the science or in actual science. Boast, the National Institute of Health and the American Medical Association have published and hosted studies, articles and policy statements that acknowledge genetic differences between human populations.

The NIH for. A number of them here. Genetic structure, self-identified race and ethnicity, and confounding in case control association studies. Then the quagmire of race, genetic ancestry and health disparities. Then all of us research programs, study on race, ethnicity, and genetic ancestry. Then for a MA race, genetics and healthcare racial [00:22:00] essentialism in the medical, in medical education.

And there’s also a study published in Nature 2021. African Americans and European Americans exhibit distinct gene expression profiles. Like you really do not get clearer than that from the mainstream research. Are you being too late? You know we’re on air and you cannot squeal and you cannot s scream,

I can’t shake

a baby, but I can shake a toddler.

Turkey. Turkey. Are you gonna quit Golin and Golin?

So anyway the point I’m making here is she’s literally just factually wrong in the saying she sing, and I know she’s factually wrong in the saying she sing. Like that’s why I was like, oh, like you could tell I was about to, and I love what other people also pointed out is your first intuition, Simone, especially because you were so sick you were about to give.

Birth the next day in a major surgery, you’re on all sorts of meds and [00:23:00] you’re just like, well, okay, like maybe we can come to some sort of a compromise is where you were, right. Instead of me, where I’m trying to find a point of agreement like, well at least you know, jeans code for skin color. The other thing that I thought was so funny in many of the things that tried to attack us or say we didn’t understand what we were talking about.

Because I wanna go over a few of them because I found them very interesting attacks. They were like sorry. Phenotypical traits are caused by alleles and not genes. And it’s like, okay, what causes allele genes? What causes phenotypical traits, genes. I am using the word that the general public is most likely to understand because that is who I am communicating with.

And note here, I didn’t say like the gene for coding skin color, or the gene for coding melanin production. I said the genes for coding, skin color and the genes for coding. Coding, melanin production. So I thought that that was very interesting that they like, knew one, what they think of as like a fancy word, and they’re very excited about it.

The [00:24:00] other one is they’re like, well, race isn’t a thing. Now note here, I wasn’t even arguing that race is a thing. So it’s weird that they go into this either because you know, well, it’s not a distinct thing, right? Like you can’t say exactly where like

white ends and black begins. And it’s like, well, you can’t tell a red. You can’t tell where red ends and blue begins. That doesn’t mean that red and blue are not colors, right? Like they can blend together, but they’re still distinct and meaningful categories. Right? And this matters in a medical context because that’s what I was talking about in terms of predicting things like fertility complications, which again we’ll get to in a second.

Next I wanted to talk about. The weird statement, which of course anybody who watches our show knows, and we have said there is, especially within African populations, that’s where the most human genetic diversity is. That doesn’t mean when you’re talking about American black populations that there aren’t specific things you can note about American black populations.

And [00:25:00] say, oh, this leads to this outcome, or this leads to this outcome. And we’re talking about American black population fertility collapse. It’s really important because this last year we have a video on this. They fell below white fertility rates. If you, if you look at the native born American blacks not propped up by immigrant blacks, they might be at around 1.35 by some estimates, which means they’re basically at extinction level.

Fertility rates like these are. Super low, super low compared to native white populations as well. And they’re basically being replaced with, with black people. We’re importing into the country. And so it’s useful to understand you know, if, if you are a black woman, that you need to start having kids faster and that despite that you also have some advantages that white women don’t have.

You can have kids in faster succession. Because your gestation cycle is shorter. But anyway. Well,

Simone Collins: no, not, not really. No. What it’s like by one, by like two weeks, one or two weeks, weeks on average, two weeks matters. I mean, like, not, not if you’re having like four kids. If you wanna have 10 or something.

Sure. [00:26:00] Makes a difference. Adds up. But like, you know.

Another interesting fact about black women’s pregnancies is they are shorter and they go through menopause earlier, but they also go through puberty earlier.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: But I want to to go into some other counter arguments here, and I wanna go into some more of the science here because I think it’s really interesting, like the conversation that happened around this.

Simone Collins: Okay. And do you think wants to play like Yeah, she can just go

Malcolm Collins: play.

Yeah. Don’t kill herself. Just keep on that all. So I’ll keep an eye on her. She starts killing herself. We’ll, we’ll get on that. Okay. Okay. Okay, so, this one was posted by Alonzo ndi and he said, and we, we actually saw this a lot, quote, genes determine skin color in quote Yes. But they also determine height, moles, and hair color.

But we don’t build social hierarchies around that. That doesn’t mean races are genetic. It means that you ring-fenced some genes and attribute moral social value to them. We call this racism. This is really. [00:27:00] Like spectacularly stupid because what I was talking about was in the context of medical diagnostics.

IE you can look at, if somebody comes into the hospital and they appear black, you can know that they have a higher probability of some fertility complications, which was the actual topic of conversation here. But two, even outside of that, two black people might be able to have, like, I, I, I, I think like if you, if you are let’s say true bright, like you don’t have other ancestral traditions mixed in with your tradition and you are just Japanese all the way down, you’re never gonna have a black kid.

If you’re black all the way down, you know, you’re not gonna have a white kid. And this is actually true. But this, but this isn’t true for let’s say handedness or height or something like that, right? Hmm. And that’s because those are single phenotypical expressions as opposed to ethnic groups, which are.

Group of convergent phenotypical expressions mm-hmm. That are tied to ancestral closeness. And, and this really matters, right? Like this, this, this [00:28:00] matters from a diagnostic perspective, but it also doesn’t mean that we don’t one rope off these other things. People have clearly, I mean, look, bumble sorts by height.

You have height filters on Bumble that is clearly I, I’d say height is, is, is probably as big in our society. A, a factor in terms of discrimination as ethnicity. It’s like you earn as much, I imagine

Simone Collins: it’s more of a factor. We, we’ve, we are at a higher rate of. In so far as it exists, interracial relationships today than we ever have been.

Like people really don’t care that much. I, I think it’s maybe what, like 25%. My memory’s so bad. Whatever. It’s really high now. It’s very low. No, no one cares. Basically. I think people are more likely to end up with their their own.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. We have an episode on this, an interracial relationship. They’re actually.

Exceedingly rare. No,

Simone Collins: no. They’re, they’re way more common now in America than they ever

Malcolm Collins: they are, but they are still exceedingly rare. I thought it was

Simone Collins: in the twenties. Are you sure?

Malcolm Collins: We did an just go to our episode on this. The thing that I [00:29:00] point out is that this idea, because there is this perception within the black community that like white people are like, white women are stealing all the black men or something like that.

Or white men are stealing all the black women or whatever. And it’s just like factually untrue. It’s, it’s not that common. And, and for here, I’m just specifically speaking of the black community, but I wanted to, to get to that. Another quote that I thought was actually pretty insightful and Sargon went over this one as well is by Zu V three, where he said the required takeaway from genetic differences video is that your enemies do not use words in the way you do.

They are not instruments for conveying meaning. They do not eliminate mapping from mental concepts to physical reality.

They are spells provide them provided. To them by wizards. The purpose of dispels is to make you do what they want. You may believe that you are having a conversation, but they know they are in a spell casting contest and their ignorance of everything that is real [00:30:00] provides them with absolute immunity to your spells.

There are many millions of spell casters out there. I am not on Twitter to talk to these people who cannot be reasoned ways or bargain waves without any more than the TV can hear you. I find. I am here to find others who understand the situation for what it is. Yeah, Malcolm, sorry. Words will never

get us

outta this.

There is only one way to ever going to take the country back from the spell casters. Every day we spend casting our impotent spells at them is another day they further consolidate their power.

Simone Collins: Recent US Census Bureau analysis for 2022 found that nine around 19% of married opposite sex couples were interracial.

Okay, so this is a little misleading ‘cause I went to the stats again. When you hear interracial marriage, what most people think of is, uh, black, white marriages, because that’s specifically what I was talking about here. And if you look at, , black women married to white men, it’s only 4% while 12% are interracially married.

Simone Collins: Okay, that’s married. Keep in mind, like we’re still dealing [00:31:00] with married boomers who are way less likely to be in interracial marriages and the fact that younger people are formally marrying much less and much later. So it must be much higher than 19% in terms of actual like functionally married couples.

So just keep in mind like no one cares anymore height, however. Huge area of discrimination. Yeah, I think way, way, like, way more than race. I, I, I, for personally, didn’t give a rat’s ass about what, like, what someone’s heritage was when I was doing my whole like, dating thing and OkCupid, I absolutely looked at height, but I, I went on dates with guys who were, who were Indian, who were Asian, who were like, ev everything.

But not I, okay. I did go on a date with one really short guy, but it was because he was famous. Because

Malcolm Collins: he was what famous? He was famous. Oh yeah. But anyways, Simone right here, [00:32:00] black Killing Men. Thank you. The, the base camp Reddit, which is now like even bigger than when we did our like little episode on it.

I don’t know, like that’s weird that it’s gotten so big. It’s cool. But anyway what I would like, it’s way bigger than like the Jordan Peterson subreddit. Now. I, I do not understand what’s going on. Not in terms of subscribers, but in terms of activity in post and, and being viewers. But anyway what I wanted to go into here was and it’s mostly like people complaining about like, relationship related stuff.

So, so like women, like Simone, women are terrible. But I wanted to talk about this guy’s post because I actually think he’s fundamentally wrong here, right?

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: I agree that they think that they’re casting some sort of a spell, and that this woman, I was never going to convince her of my perspective.

Of course, not a debate. The purpose was not that. It was to have her making this ridiculous argument. And what you saw, and this was one of my favorite very highly upvoted posts on this, was somebody arguing that she worked for Prager U was a plant and [00:33:00] was trying to make progressives look bad, saying progressives do not actually believe this.

No large portion of progressive believe this. This is clearly a psyop and a lot of people thought it was like a skit, or a lot of progressives actually thought it was a psyop. What happens when progressives first thing gets a psyop and then they’re shaken out of it to realize this person worked for the Obama administration.

This person worked for the Clinton administration. This person is a, she is earnest staff at CNCC. I say CNN. CN, bbc, wherever, Telemundo, right? Like um, M-S-N-B-C,

Simone Collins: Malcolm

Malcolm Collins: Cs NBC. And this got through an entire editing pipeline. Right. Like, when they see that, when they see the dark withered and me just being here, being like, they’re casting a spell.

Do you see it? They’re casting a spell. It wakes them out of this. It’s what, what

Simone Collins: I’ve seen though, and what I think show, I, I would only say confirms. This is people saying the exact same thing about us that they thought we. [00:34:00] Bora style plants and that no one could possibly say what we said. And I just, I think this goes to show, I

Malcolm Collins: read hundreds of comments.

I never saw that once. Was it on the, I saw that it was

Simone Collins: on x. Weird, because every time I go on x to make sure that there’s no one like asking us for something actually substantive I, I see like the le latest mentions of. Us in threads or discussions of threads about us. And that’s where I saw it.

Malcolm Collins: Was it, was it highly upvoted?

Like was it

Simone Collins: No, no, no, no. I just, I just, Sierra mentions the one that

Malcolm Collins: I’m talking about had like 50 to a hundred comments under. Right. I’m not

Simone Collins: saying this was like a highly viewed comment. What I’m saying is that there are absolutely people on the other side who, who really, really hold that view, who think that like we must be actors because no one could possibly believe what we believe.

And, and I think this just goes to show. How divorced from reality. Some subcultures of what, but I think, I think it [00:35:00] is very different.

Malcolm Collins: So here’s what you’re missing, Simone. Okay. Nobody who is mildly right wing who would vote for Trump, et cetera, watches this video and has a perception that we must be plants that no one could be as stupid as you.

No, no, that’s,

Simone Collins: that’s true. Well, I mean, I would say anyone who centrist or who has a degree in. Anything that required basic levels of science education.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so where this is relevant is a lot of the people who watch this in thought she couldn’t possibly be real are Democrats. They are on the left. Okay.

Yeah. That is how you poison the well. Mm. You poison the well by having, obviously there’s gonna be extreme responses on either side. Yeah. But it’s only the people who already agreed with her world perspective, who are like. Oh, can you believe how silly these two are? A lot of people, and we, we kept seeing this in the comments.

A lot of people are like, look, I’m a scientist. Like, you really shouldn’t be saying this stuff. Other people on her side being like, Hey, you, [00:36:00] like, I hope you guys delete this. You know? It hasn’t been up that long. I, I guess it’s been clipped, but like, you guys need to, you can

Simone Collins: still take it down the whole thing.

Still take it down

Malcolm Collins: yet.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: A lot of people on her own side were mortified about this. Mm-hmm. And it did a lot to cause them to quite like, I knew she was gonna cast this spell. I knew exactly what was happening as soon as this started. And I think as shown by the public response to this, if you just look at X’s response to this I was 100% right that if I let her post this braggadociously, if I.

Appeared animated enough to make this entertaining and make her feel like she won that it was going to blow up in her face and on her side’s face and draw more people to our position.

Mm-hmm.

A lot of people have been saying, and I think this is worth repeating, that this is very similar to Lko in, , communist Russia, where the Russians hated everything associated with Nazism so much that they hated genetics, and so they just said genetics isn’t real. And so they came up with an alternate [00:37:00] hypothesis.

, The problem is, is it’s meant that the scientists who then wanted to recommend things based on genetics, you know, things tied to agriculture were not allowed to, and it causes famine. And I think hundreds of millions of people died. , At least millions of people died. It was terrible, terrible phenomenon.

. And it’s not just that in, in terms of the ridiculousness of this, , there was a chart that I saw tied to this that I thought it was pretty interesting, where people were like, well, you know, skin color isn’t actually tied to anything else. When we’re talking about e especially not anything cognitive when we’re talking about genetic differences.

And this chart here. , Looks at where skin color is in regards to genetic differences between groups, , versus things like gene site to pituitary gland development, , dorso, , ventral neural tube patterning, hind brain development, positive regulation of neuron differentiation, all of which are much more differentiated between ethnic groups than skin color is at the genetic level at least.

Malcolm Collins: This, the, to, to, to [00:38:00] continue here. There’s, I love the whole trust, the science thing. Everybody was really excited about that.

Where leftists are all like science, you know, like the

leftist redditer who’s like science, exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark.

Speaker: It’s science.

Malcolm Collins: It’s like, oh, oh, not that science. But it’s actually interesting here because when they say science, they do not mean science. What they mean is. The academic classes.

Mm-hmm. Which as we’ve pointed out before, serve as the priest class of the urban monoculture. Yeah. I guess

Simone Collins: if you just replace science, like capital S, science with the priest class, then it makes sense. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You, you look at people like us, I mean, we’re actual science fanatics, right? Like, not whatever is coming out of academia, but like replicable studies that can be used to, well, it can

Simone Collins: include whatever’s coming out of academia if it’s.

If it’s well done. Like we, we don’t inherently distrust everything from academia. Neither do any of like the heterodox far right. People who we follow [00:39:00] who often cover academic research. They just. Double check the methodology, that’s all.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I think what we’re seeing here with this debate and this moment is that the right is becoming the party of science.

And if. So what people said, and this is absolutely true, so I’m what in this conversation, there were one side that was interested in being moral right in, in saying what they believed was moral. And there was another side that was interested in being honest. What science is, is honesty and stating what is honest over what fits.

Your moral convictions. Mm-hmm. Whether those be blank sadism or creationism. The, but the reality is, is that if you look at mainstream figures on the right, right now, you are not gonna get a right wing creationist reporter who’s just gonna be gfa. That somebody who they’re talking to is not a [00:40:00] creationist.

Mm-hmm. In fact, I would be surprised if there were many mainstream right wing individuals anymore who are creationists. Yet you will find many. Science deniers on the left, like this individual. And through that, what we see is a turning point culturally, and, and that’s what this interview represents, a turning point culturally with the right, becoming the party of science and the left, becoming the anti-science theological party, theologically motivated party.

Why would you disagree with that? You seem to have some alternate perspective.

Simone Collins: There are. Some,

Malcolm Collins: they’re anti ai, they’re Antifa, they’re anti, there are

Simone Collins: some Maha policies that I wouldn’t say work with the preponderance of like.

Malcolm Collins: I severely disagree with you here. So what I have seen is I have seen people make that claim.

I’ve seen that people make that claim about JFK’s [00:41:00] policies. Mm-hmm. And I will say more than 50% of those historic cases where somebody made that claim, it turned out upon more evidence that he was right. So when you say that, I think you’re just talking about the stuff that we don’t have the evidence on yet.

But in general, when JFK has said. I wanna question something. I doubt that. And we’ve even done episodes on this, like the aspirin thing, right? Tylenol Acetyl medicine, sorry, Tylenol thing specifically. And we actually point out that JFK’s position was the mainstream position in academia. It was just also, but also nothing else is safer, so we’re gonna recommend it.

Mm-hmm.

What his position was, basically like even though nothing else is safer, it still needs to be publicly known that you can’t just take as much of this as you want. Right. And, and, and this is something, and there are risks to taking it, which basically every academic agreed on until JFK said it and the left freaked out.

A lot of the stuff that people see as anti-science from the right is not actually anti-science. And I’m talking like recent papers when we go into that. There was like meta studies from like [00:42:00] 2021, right? Like, even Tylenol, it’s. Self had had corrected people’s tweets on this like the corporate Twitter account, right?

Like this was not an out there conspiracy theory. It’s just that they rebrand a lot of this as conspiracy theories. And if you as a woman I do not mean to to, but it’s true. I mean, you saw this in the interview and you see this more broadly, is women are about consensus making. And they also are more likely to believe the sort of consensus is put out there online.

And so if they see a lot of elites saying, Maha is a bunch of conspiracy theories, there includes conspiracy theories, and you haven’t individually looked into it. Like, I remember you thought the Tylenol thing was a conspiracy theory. You thought the studies were bad until I pointed out to you actually, this was the mainstream perspective until fairly recently.

Simone Collins: True.

Malcolm Collins: So I think that that’s your position when you’re looking at these MAHA things. But anyway, to continue here. I, I love something that a lot of people are talking about is that the, the progressives treat truth like the demons do in [00:43:00] frien which is an anime. And, and then to them words are merely a means to deceive humans.

I. Another one that I find funny is they’re like you know, we, like we various human groups share more in common with each other than we do with like other animals. Or we can interbreed. Now, first of all, look at our other humans are are, are there different feasts of humans video? In that video we point out.

It’s very common for different species to be able to interbreed. The, the prototypical example that everyone’s familiar with is grizzly bears. And polar bears can produce PRIs ply bears. And these bears can breed as well. It’s not that they always produce infertile offspring. So no, that is not we also point out that they split apart from each other, only slightly earlier in the historical record than European PA populations in the co-sign split off from each other, which the, just an African population, we also pointed out that video, if you’re looking at s and p closeness while Nand ALS did split from the European population earlier, we are closer to them in terms of like pure genes, like s and Ps than we are to the [00:44:00] cosign people. And this doesn’t mean that the cosign people are bad. It doesn’t mean that they’re less human.

It doesn’t mean that they’re in other species. It just means that there is a great deal of genetic diversity within humanity. Yeah. But when they’re like, oh, but like we are more related to each other than we are to like chimpanzees or something, that’s a bit like saying you know, humans and kangaroos are more related to each other than either group is to trees.

That doesn’t mean that kangaroos and humans aren’t meaningfully different categories of, of animals, right. But to continue here, because I, I I, one of the. Points that a lot of people make here is they say, well, there’s more genetic diversity in ethnic groups than between ethnic groups. Now this is actually a really fuzzy thing.

So I’ll get into the standard retort to it, and then I’ll get into a better retort to it than even the standard retort to it. So the standard return to it is what is called the loin. Fallacy. So have you never heard of this before? Yeah. Lo inten analyze variation locus by locus one gene at a time where differences between groups are indeed small at a single site.

However, genetic [00:45:00] differences across populations are correlated due to shared ancestry and history. Alleles tend to Koch occur in patterns specific to continental regional groups. When you consider multiple loci together, EEG via clustering algorithms like structure, these correlations allow. Highly accurate inference of an individual’s ancestral population, even though single locus variation is mostly within group.

In short, the more within than between statistic doesn’t invalidate population structure or taxonomic classification because. It ignores the inform informative correlation structure in full multi locus genotypes. And then even if you’re looking at pushback on this many scholars, EG Charles Roseman 2021 and Ramsey’s Withers and Adam Hoshman have pushed back on this, contending that loud lo loin himself did not commit this fallacy.

His argument was specifically about why traditional racial taxonomy isn’t justified by the low. Between group apportionment, comparing [00:46:00] it to other species, not a denial that populations are clustered. They are argue that the original person who coined this fallacy mischaracterized LO’s claim that the two approaches, variance versus clustering answered different questions.

Which is funny here because the people who. Like debunk this. They don’t debunk it as a explanation against racial clustering. They debunk it. Just saying that the original argument wasn’t arguing for, or, or against racial clustering. Everyone who is educated has always been for that. If you’re talking about.

Like genes, right? Like it matters, right? Like when he’s, like, there’s no genetic differences. One thing I could have jumped into, and this was one thing I specifically bit my tongue on, was, well, I mean, how do you explain like European populations having Neanderthal DNA in them and African or some African populations, depending on which one you’re looking at, having an unnamed hominid species in them.

And it, it fairly high amounts. Not, not like super high, but like a high minority, like 15% or something. And for Neander saw, you’re looking at like 3% to, I think 4.5% at the highest amount. But the point being [00:47:00] is that okay, that’s how you go about this if you’re just talking science, science, science.

But what if you wanna get into an easier way to understand why this is a really bad argument. Okay. So suppose I have two classes of students at a school. Each class had a different teacher. And then but they also studied on their own at home and everything like that. And then both classes went to take the SAT.

Now, if you average the questions that they got wrong on the SAT, in the same way that if you average like a huge number of people, you get a very average looking face. Right. Those two classes are going to be less distinct from each other than they would be any two people within one class would be from each other, right?

Sure. Yeah. So the two averages of the classes would be less distinct than any individual student within the class. That doesn’t mean that I cannot look at the individual questions that [00:48:00] students within one class got unusually wrong, or students within another class got unusually wrong to see where each of the two teachers might have room for improvement or might have been making a mistake in their teaching style.

Like does this get through? Did, does that make sense to you, Simone? Like, have you heard that before? Is this better? I’ve

Simone Collins: not heard this argument before, but,

Malcolm Collins: okay. So hopefully that, that better explains that to you. Oh, was they gonna stay here? Oh. Yeah. So the final thing here I wanted to go into was the point that started all this in case you’re unfamiliar with it. With the genetic differences between black and white. When I say black and white, I mean Americans in a medical context, right? Because we do categorize people into black populations in America on medical forms, we do categorize people into non-Hispanic white populations.

You do it all the time on medical forms. And it is important for medical diagnoses. But anyway, there is evidence. That suggests that genetic differences partially contribute to higher rates of certain fertility complications among black women, [00:49:00] particularly through conditions like uterine fibroids, which are the leading cause of infertility and effect fertility by impairing implantation or causing miscarriages.

Fibroids are a heretical with genome-wide associations, GWAS, identifying genetic variants more prevalent. In individuals of African ancestry that increase risk. The instance Admixture mapping and trans ethnic GWAS have shown that higher proportions of African genetic ancestry correlate with elevated fibroid risk.

And this varies by regional African origins with West African ancestry linked to single fibroids and East African linked to multiple trans tropic and DNA mesylation analyses also indicate that minoro trial tissue in black women may inherently be more susceptible to fibroid development.

Black women are up to three times more likely to develop fibroids than right women, even after adjusting for confounds, which ear with earlier onset and more severe symptoms. Now note here, if you’re talking. You include [00:50:00] differences in terms of healthcare access and wealth that matters more to Blackfoot to leave.

It doesn’t mean that we don’t have hard genetic evidence of these fibroid differences. Right? Next there is evidence of genetic factors contributing. Two earlier onset of mount menopause in black women, typically six to 12 months earlier than white women, which means around 48 to 50 years versus 50 to 55 years.

Meta-analysis of GWAS in African women have replicated several genetic loca associated with menopause timing, originally identified in European populations such as a HR two. R-H-B-D-L two prim one HK three UC one BR SK one TM EM 1 15 0 B and mcm eight Differences in allele frequencies between African and European ancestors.

Suggest ancestry specific genetic influences on earlier menopause. Credibility is supported by twin studies showing higher concurrence [00:51:00] for earlier menopause and monozygotic twins and common variants also linked to premature ovarian failure risk and may differ by race vascular motor symptoms. Aging hot flashes also show genetic I influences that vary across racial groups.

Note here, there, this is another instance in which you have a lot of stuff that’s not coming from this. If you want some studies around this, you can look at a multi-stage gene wide association study of uterine fibroids and African American women, African genetic ancestry interactions with body mass index to modify risk for uterine fibroids.

Genome wide meta analysis identifies novel risk lowkey for uterine fibroids within and across ancestry groups. Look, you can just

Simone Collins: say that. There’s a paper. You can read it. There’s a paper. Just look up the papers. Guys. Like, I mean, unless like, I mean obviously everyone should be asking AI with access to medical databases, questions about risks that may be unique to their.

Malcolm Collins: Ethnic group.

Simone Collins: Yeah, ethnic group. If you don’t have your own polygenic risk scores, which you can also just get, like, that’s the thing is, I [00:52:00] mean, we can just go on Nebula and look at our polygenic risks like you personally for these things, but a great proxy for that if you don’t have that data, is just being aware of relative risks that your group might have.

What, what is in her mouth? Is there a thing in her mouth?

Malcolm Collins: That’s her tongue.

Simone Collins: Oh, it’s just her tongue girl. I love you Turkey. But anyway, it was really crazy that went, went live and, and I think the craziest thing to me is that she was arguing a viewpoint that I’ve only ever really heard discussed in the context of.

People talking about racial discrimination in a medical context. That is to say like woke people on TikTok making shorts about how it really sucks to be. Like black or Asian or some other like non-white group in the United [00:53:00] States going through the medical system or being a woman because people aren’t taking your conditions seriously because most of the research has been done on white men, for example.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Or like a lot of the, a lot of the samples that people have built medical standards around are white men. This is also something we’ve discussed in the context of sexuality that like a lot of the original sexual research was done. Around men and, and white men too. Yeah. And so like a lot of our understanding of sexuality is really limited because it was looking at from, from or looked at, from just one direction.

And it’s just so funny to me that like I, what had me flabbergasted was that I was hearing from someone who was broadly progressive, this view that I’ve seen argued against constantly by progressive people. So I, at first I was shocked ‘cause I was like, wait, that’s. That’s not what you’re supposed to be saying.

That’s not what your side says. But then I realized she was just trying to have this s gotcha moment where she wanted to just say, she wanted to say that we were [00:54:00] trying to argue that people of different ethnic groups have different IQs and are somehow inferior or superior. Because she’s trying to, to imply that we literally say the

Malcolm Collins: exact opposite in the club are

Simone Collins: white supremacists.

And the reason why she couldn’t actually ask us that as a gotcha was because we very clearly argue that that’s not the case, and we don’t argue that. And so she couldn’t get us on that because the only thing we’ve ever said to her point, right, is. That, that black women have different, you know, fertility issues and windows yeah.

Than than other groups. And that’s all she could go on. And, and that’s, I, I see what she was trying to do. She was trying to basically extrapolate from that to imply that we were white supremacists when we’re clearly not, because she needs to have a a straw man to attack. What was crazy for us was that.

I think on our podcast we often like, kind of make fun of and, and demonize woke people so much that sometimes I just [00:55:00] feel like we’re making up straw men or like finding the most extreme examples online and being like, ha ha, look at them, they’re funny. And then we make fun of them and, and, but I also like.

I don’t know. I, I wanna make the most charitable interpretation of reality in people. And so I’m like, but of course no one actually acts like that. No one would actually say that in the real world. And then like this, this was an instance of like us just dripping through our lives and like literally a straw man like jumps out of a cornfield and bites us, and we’re like, wait.

What, like it’s real. And that, that’s what was most crazy about it for me was that maybe, maybe this is more common in mainstream than I thought. But anyway, I love you and I’m glad we’re having our podcast again.

Malcolm Collins: I love you too. I, I do not think that’s what this was for her. I think SAR Vico has a good point that she realizes, and she even says it at the end of the interview, you know, people who like believe what you believe.

This leads to genocide and everything like that. Yeah. She is letting the cat out of the bag. She’s [00:56:00] saying, if I. She’s basically saying even if what you’re saying is right, if we admitted this as a society, we would be forced to racially segregate people. We would be forced to discriminate against people because to admit that there are differences between people always leads to NS and racial segregation, everything like that.

That was the implication of the ending line for her that she thought was this great Gotcha line. That’s, and this is actually what you see on the left, which many people point out why. Does ethnic diversity matter if we’re all exactly the same?

Simone Collins: Yeah, there’s so many weird. Yeah, catch 20 twos like blank slatem, but also like not having medical discrimination and Yeah, like your point too.

Anyway, she’s literally

Malcolm Collins: letting that out of the bag in her worldview. If she admits that jeans code for skin color, the next step, like five steps down the road, you know, slippery slope is not the,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: [00:57:00] Anyway, love you to Dec Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you too. Okay which one do you wanna. Is Indie happy as a clam sitting with you? Oh, I can’t hear you. Oh, her smile, she’s still smug, but I, I don’t think your mic is, is plugged in.

Malcolm Collins: Actually need to get a new mic. I’m, I’m down to one working mic at this point.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Do you need two? So, got a lot of pain from where my son punched me the first time he punched me full force.

I’m not mad at him at all. We were, I was pretending that I was gonna leave him outside for Krampus because he was being bad. And so he fought back and I’m like, no, you, you thought you’re gonna be left outside. You don’t get so. Oh, that’s called fighting to defend yourself.

Simone Collins: Necessary, obviously.

Malcolm Collins: And I’m like, but wow, that, that is quite a hook, little guy.

Simone Collins: Well, you need, you need a kid who knows how to fight. I, it’s all they ever do. I feel like my, my dinner making routine is, you know. Boil water, [00:58:00] chop vegetables, step over the cloud of children that are wrestling on the floor

Malcolm Collins: to get to, it’s, it’s, it’s like a Tasmanian cartoon or something.

Simone Collins: It like actually is, I need to get some footage of it.

Like, they’re just like in a ball like this undulating ball of fighting, wrestling children. Just, it’s just there. It’s like a tumbleweed. A normal part of the landscape is,

Malcolm Collins: well, that’s the way they’re with me too, is fight me daddy. Fight me. Fight me. Well that’s, that’s the way we raise them. Best way to go.

Anyway and you’ve been jonesing to do an episode again for ages, as have I, I missed it.

Simone Collins: I’ve missed talking with you.

Malcolm Collins: We’re gonna see if we can make episodes sustainable while we take care of the kids, right? So mm-hmm. That will hugely increase the amount of time. We can do episodes, but it means I need to have this one with me.

Simone Collins: Little Indy.

Malcolm Collins: All right.

Simone Collins: But I think she’s into it,

Malcolm Collins: so.

Speaker 4: Hey guys, how’s it going? So, [00:59:00] yeah, I will. Octavia, tell me about what you made here. I made, oh.

Speaker 5: So I can No, but explain it to me. How does it work? So you, so you see that right there? Yeah. The radio offer right there. Yeah.

Speaker 8: To fire.

In this eye-opening discussion, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into a shocking demographic shift happening in wealthy countries: the complete inversion of the traditional fertility-wealth relationship.

For decades, poorer families had more children while richer ones had fewer. But starting around 2017, in nations with generous social services (free childcare, healthcare, education), higher-income and higher-educated people are now having MORE kids — while lower-income groups are having fewer.

We explore:

* Why universal free childcare and welfare might unintentionally reduce fertility among lower-income groups

* How modern “poor” lifestyles increasingly resemble historical elite living (outsourced child-rearing, conspicuous consumption, work outside the home)

* How modern “rich” lifestyles are starting to look like historical peasant life (homesteading, stealth wealth, focus on home/family, less external work)

* The implications for fertility collapse, dependency ratios, and whether generous in-kind social services could accidentally “solve” collapsing birth rates by boosting high-earner fertility

Backed by 2025 research from Western Europe, Nordic data, and real-world examples. Is giving people free services the unexpected key to higher birth rates among taxpayers? Or is something deeper happening with culture and household structure?

Episode Outline

What it means to be rich, and what it means to be poor, is fundamentally changing, and not like you’d think.

Rich people are starting to live like poor people used to live, and poor people are increasingly live like rich people used to live

And you can see this coming up in all sorts of places, but most notably in recent shifts in fertility

This is a big deal and I think we should explore it.

SETTING THE SCENE

* In September, New Mexico’s governor announced that New Mexico will be the first US state to offer universal free childcare, regardless of income

* Average household savings are estimated at around $12,000 per child, per year (major understatement; when we had just three kids, we were spending around $4K/month—so around $50K/year for a daycare with a terrible reputation)

* This comes at a time when polling indicates Americans want the US to focus on measures like this to combat declining fertility rates

* WHAT WE WOULD EXPECT FROM THINGS LIKE FREE CHILDCARE:

* If the state covers major basic costs of having kids, rich people would have fewer kids as their standards for raising kids would be higher

* Wynnell anecdote: $1M/kid/year

* THE COUNTERINTUITIVE TREND

* Starting in 2017, we’ve seen a shift in wealthy countries—that largely cover things like childcare, education, and healthcare—in which wealthier and more educated families are having more children than poorer and less educated families.

* KEY QUESTION

* Why does giving resources to poor people not increase their fertility proportionately to rich people?

* WHAT PEOPLE ARGUE:

* When the state doesn’t offer generous social services, wealthy families aren’t willing to pay for having kids (but somehow poor families are)

* Having to work—as poor people do—competes with family demands

* WHY I HESITATE

* Wealthy people still work and have aggressive schedules

* Wealthy people also generally choose to have kids in more expensive ways—i.e. Waiting until they are old and infertile and then having kids expensively—and they’re struggling with that cost

* E.g. IVF is so expensive, people are traveling abroad to get it

* E.g. One couple found a clinic in Bogota, Colombia “offering a dramatic price difference—a package of four IVF rounds in Colombia for $11,000 compared to around $60,000 for four rounds in the U.S. Medication costs were also less than half of those in the U.S.”

* MY HYPOTHESIS

* The issue is more that governments and societies are turning poor people into wealthy people—or at least people who live like wealthy people historically lived—and turning wealthy people into poor people (or at least people who live like poor people used to live) and that’s why we’re seeing the inversion

* I’ll explain why at the end, but let’s go into the details first.

First, a Caveat

We’re talking about wealthy countries here, and wealthy countries (with one notable exception) have abysmal birth rates.

@MoreBirths Thread

The Thread:

* Lower income had been associated with higher fertility but now that relationship has completely flipped in many developed countries. Higher incomes are now associated with higher fertility almost everywhere in Europe, for both men and women, a 2025 paper shows.

* But this is only within countries. Across countries the correlation between income and fertility remains very negative. Wealthy countries continue to have far lower birthrates than poor countries. Also, fertility tends to go down for countries as a whole as they get richer.

* Cool animation that amusingly resembles sperm:

* /photo/2

But obviously as wealthy countries’ fertility rates are low, they need to work out what policies help to increase them.

The Wealthy Country Shift We Must Investigate

Back to this unexpected shift

Historical and Current Trends

For most of the 20th century, there was a negative relationship between wealth and fertility in Europe: wealthier individuals typically had fewer children while poorer families had more.

However, starting around 2017, this pattern weakened and has even reversed in several prosperous European countries by 2021. In some places, the association is now neutral or even slightly positive.​

* Similar patterns hold when using education as a proxy for income: low-educated Nordic women and men now have the lowest fertility and highest childlessness (15-36% in recent cohorts), while higher-educated groups have stabilized near replacement levels (around 1.8-2.0 children per person).

Variation by Region and Gender

* In Nordic countries such as Sweden, studies show a clear positive connection between high lifetime earnings and having more children, especially among men.​

For women, the relationship shifted from women having more kids (up to women born around the 1940s) to positive or flat in the 1970s cohorts, with the poorest women now having the fewest children due to higher childlessness rates.

* In Southern Europe, parental wealth is still related to lower fertility, while in Nordic countries, greater wealth is associated with higher fertility rates.​

Regional Differences and Welfare Regimes

In European countries with limited social welfare support—such as lacking free childcare or universal healthcare—fertility rates among wealthier citizens generally show only a weak positive association or sometimes remain lower, especially in Southern and Eastern Europe.​

* In Southern Europe and some conservative welfare states (like Greece and Italy) with weak, higher parental wealth does not strongly compensate for limited public support.​

* In contrast, Nordic countries and regions with extensive social support show a clearer trend: high-income individuals, especially men, tend to have more children

What Spurred Discourse About This: An Academic Paper

A research note on the increasing income prerequisites of parenthood. Country-specific or universal in Western Europe? https://labdisia.disia.unifi.it/wp_disia/2025/wp_disia_2025_05.pdf

(Brini, Guetto, Vignoli, 2025)

TL:DR: They’re trying to argue that wealth is beginning to correlate with having kids more because “having kids is so expensive.” THEY ARE TRYING TO SAY WE NEED TO GIVE PEOPLE MORE MONEY FOR KIDS.

Summary of Findings [not to be covered in podcast, but for show notes]:

* Key Question: Has the role of income in enabling parenthood strengthened in Western Europe from 2006–2020, and are increasing fertility inequalities present between higher- and lower-income groups for both men and women?

* Main Findings:

* Higher individual income strongly increases the likelihood of having a first child for both men and women across 16 Western European countries studied; the effect is stronger and more widespread for women, especially in countries with robust welfare systems.

* The role of income as a prerequisite for parenthood has increased over time: Income-based fertility gaps have widened, primarily due to declining birth rates among low-income men and women, not just rising births among higher-income groups.

* Country Variations:

* In most countries (France, Italy, Luxembourg, Sweden, Austria, Norway, UK, Belgium, Cyprus), widening fertility gaps are driven by declining parenthood among low-income groups—supporting the “increasing income prerequisites” hypothesis.

* A few countries (Finland, Ireland, Greece, Spain) show weakened male income effects, suggesting evolving gender norms (”changing gender roles” hypothesis).

* Only Portugal fits the “declining opportunity costs” hypothesis, with increasing parenthood among high-income women due to policy improvements.

* Implications: Economic resources are increasingly critical for starting families, especially for women. Lower-income groups are increasingly excluded from parenthood, and the combined incomes of partners matter more than ever.

* Evidence and Method: Analysis based on longitudinal EU-SILC data for individuals aged 18–45, modeling income (lagged two years), education, and employment status, with results robust across country and gender.

* Sensitivity Analyses: The effect persists when considering partnered individuals and total household income, ruling out partnership exclusion alone as the explanation.

* Conclusion: Financial barriers to parenthood have risen and become more universal in high-income countries. The income prerequisites of parenthood increasingly contribute to income-based fertility inequalities, with widening divides driven by falling birth rates among lower-income women and men. These trends are consistent with rising economic uncertainty, declining employment stability, and evolving gender roles. The financial stability needed to have children now depends heavily on both partners’ earnings, increasing disadvantage for those with lower incomes.

Bottom Line: In modern Western Europe, having children has become more conditioned on income, and this new reality intensifies socioeconomic inequalities in family formation.

The Generosity of European Social Programs

It needs to be emphasized that the countries investigated in this academic paper already do A LOT to support parents.

* I researched top, mid, and low-level providers of benefits in Europe and then color coded them; the vast majority of the countries they covered are top tier when it comes to social benefits.

* The TL:DR is that these people are living the dream of what, say, American families say they want in terms of support, and yet it’s not apparently helping typical families of modest means have more kids.

Top Providers of Social Benefits

* Luxembourg: Highest per capita spending on family benefits; extensive free education and healthcare, substantial childcare support.​

* Nordic countries (Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Finland): High expenditure per person, universal healthcare, free or highly subsidized education, and robust childcare systems. Denmark, for example, is noted for the most generous overall welfare package.​

* France: Leads in overall social spending, with nearly a third of GDP devoted to social services—free healthcare, subsidized childcare, and free higher education.​

* Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland: All spend above €1,000 per person yearly on family benefits, maintain generous healthcare and education systems, and support families with substantial social programs.​

* Belgium, Finland, Sweden: High levels of social expenditure and strong systems of universal services.​​

Mid-Tier Providers

* Netherlands: Welfare support below the EU average, including less generous family benefits, though healthcare and education remain accessible.​

* Italy, Spain: Social spending is moderate; both provide universal healthcare and public education, though cash benefits and childcare support are less extensive than in Northern Europe.​

* Cyprus, the United Kingdom, Portugal, and Greece generally fall in the middle to lower tier of European countries for social benefits, with each ranking lower than Northern and Western European nations but Portugal notably ahead of Greece and Cyprus.​

* Note re: the United Kingdom: Around 23–26% of GDP spent on social welfare, average by OECD standards, but benefit value is low relative to wages, with notable gaps in unemployment and adult support.

Countries with Least Generous Benefits

* Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Czech Republic: Lowest per-person spending on family benefits; limited state childcare, lower national GDP allocation for social protection, and constrained healthcare provisions.​​

* Turkey, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina: Non-EU nations at the lowest end of the support spectrum, with minimal expenditure on social benefits per capita and more fragmented public service offerings.​

* Montenegro, Serbia: Limited social safety nets and public service funding; ranked low in comprehensive benefit provision.​

Are The Numbers Just Off?

It should be noticed that some are arguing that surrey error and small sample sizes should make us question whether wealthy families actually have more kids.

Lyman Stone on Fertility and Wealth

Fertility and Income: Some Notes (published in April 2024)

* Lyman Stone argues that Income reporting in surveys is unreliable for very small subgroups (e.g., $1 million+ households), so findings about ultra-high earners can be artifacts not robust trends.

* Stone nevertheless makes some concessions: There is some evidence on causal ties between income and fertility: at least one study shows exogenous positive shocks to male incomes boost fertility, and there are many others using more quasi-experimental variation from sectoral or occupational exposures. But “male income” isn’t “income.” The figure the U-shapers rely on is family or household income. It includes male income and female income.

* The big point he wants to argue is that non-wage income (rent, interest, welfare, etc.) may be pronatal, but earnings are not.

* We have argued extensively that he is biased in favor of welfare, so of course he would want to say this.

* Where we agree with Lyman Stone is that:

* The relationship between income and fertility is highly dependent on culture

* Stone points out that different cultural groups (e.g., Amish, Ultra-Orthodox Jews, Asian Americans) show very different patterns.

* “Income X Culture → Fertility” is a more accurate framing than “Income → Fertility.”

* Evidence shows that fertility is more closely tied to relative social status and income than absolute wealth or GDP growth.

So What’s Going On?

Top public arguments

* Poorer families are less healthy

* Poorer families are too busy trying to make ends meet to start a families

* Poorer families have less flexible schedules and less work-life balance

* Poorer families have less stable marriages/partnerships

* Wealthier families have stronger social networks

* Children are framed as luxury goods so kids aren’t an obvious part of life, but something you have if you can afford them

One important takeaway:

* We now have more reason to believe that social services and even money aren’t the solution to fertility (because women’s wealth doesn’t correlate with higher fertility in these cases; it’s just increased male wealth)

What I really think is going on:

* Poor people are becoming like wealthy people, especially in these countries

* Kids being cared for outside the home

* More ability to work

* More work outside the home

* More focus on material wealthy

* Wealthy people are becoming more like poor people

* Less focus on work, more leisure time

* More work from home

* Less focus on material wealth and conspicuous material consumption

* Stealth wealth

* Ballerina Farms

* MAHA

* More focus on autonomy and separation from society

* Compounds

* Charter cities

* Permaculture, homesteading

In short, this is a product of what happens within the household.

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins: Hello Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because there’s this thing I’ve really been stuck on recently and I think I’m realizing that what it means to be rich and what we thought it means to be poor is, is fundamentally changing and actually inverting.

And not the, the way you’d think. So, so specifically rich people are starting to live like poor people used to live, and, and poor people are increasingly living like rich people used to live.

Malcolm Collins: You know, you just say this upfront and I’m like, oh my God, this actually checks out when I look friends.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And, and you can see this coming in all sorts of places, which we’ll talk about. But most notably, and I wanna couch this in, in this larger context, you can see this most notably in, in recent shifts in fertility. And this, this actually is a big deal. It has pretty significant implications, and I want us to explore it.

So let’s just dive right in. And, and I’ll start with the, on the fertility front, a sort of like premise setting thing to sort of get us into this thought experiment and like, whoa, what’s going on here? This [00:01:00] doesn’t make sense. In September, new Mexico’s governor announced that New Mexico will be the first US state to offer universal free childcare regardless of income, which is, that’s huge.

Yeah. Average household savings are estimated to be around $12,000 per child, which checks out per year. And I actually think that’s a major understatement. ‘cause when we had just three kids, we were spending around. 4,000 a month, so around 50,000 a year as we had obviously stopped ‘cause it burned through our savings.

And, and that was for the daycare with a terrible reputation. The daycare that Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: This is a daycare that a bunch of kids died at.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Not, not the location our kids were at, but you know,

Malcolm Collins: in New York.

Simone Collins: Yeah. A very close location. Yeah. And, and this, this comes at a time also, and we’ve reported on this separately.

When polling indicates that Americans want the US to focus on measures like this to come black declining fertility rates and not other things. They’re just like, I just pay for my childcare. Like, stay outta my life, but like, make it easier. So what you would [00:02:00] expect from things like for a childcare?

I is, I mean this is what I would intuitively expect is if the, the state covers major basic costs of having kids.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Then rich people. Are gonna have fewer kids as, as their standards for raising kids are higher, and then, and, and poor people, people of modest means for who this daycare expensive is.

It’s, it’s huge, right? Like it’s devastating. They would have more kids. Yeah, so like the middle class and lower class people would have more kids and Rich, rich people would have still fewer kids. Like it wouldn’t affect them because, do you remember what your mom said about how much money we needed, like per kid,

Malcolm Collins: per year?

It was a million dollars per kid, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah. She’s like, well, you need a million dollars in income per year. Per kid. Per

Malcolm Collins: kid,

Simone Collins: because she’s unhinged. But that, that is a rich person norm. Around kids, right? Yeah. So you just think that like, well, but rich people have really unsustainable standards around how much kids cost.

You know, they have all these nannies and all the clothes and all the activities and like, they wanna fly around the world with them, so [00:03:00] they’re, they’re too expensive. They wouldn’t have more kids just ‘cause childcare is paid for, but No, no. And this is what’s so crazy. Starting in 2017, we’ve seen a shift in wealthy countries.

That largely cover things like childcare and education and healthcare in which wealthier and more educated families are having more children than poorer and less educated families.

Malcolm Collins: I don’t believe it.

Simone Collins: No, it’s true. It’s true.

Malcolm Collins: I don’t believe it. This is this.

Simone Collins: I’ll show you the data. No, man. This is insane.

So the key question is, why does giving resources to poor people not increase their fertility proportionally to rich people? Because that is a, that is a, like, this is so perplexing and what people are arguing. So it it, when you go into this and even when you go into like the academic research covering this inversion and this strange trend, they’re like, oh, well, I.

When, when the state doesn’t offer generous social services, wealthy [00:04:00] families aren’t willing to pay for having kids, but somehow poor families are. They’re like, they’re literally arguing this and, and they’re basically arguing that basically having to work at all as poor people do, competes with family demands.

But I, I hesitate to buy that at all because wealthy people still work and have aggressive schedules. Like we know this, we have a lot of wealthy friends, and they’re extremely busy,

Malcolm Collins: and they’re also, oh, I don’t know.

Simone Collins: Well, no, that’s, we’re gonna get to that, that that is true. ‘cause maybe that’s not so true.

Also though, but

Malcolm Collins: here’s what I don’t understand. Why are they giving money to poor people?

Simone Collins: These are also legit questions, but also, like wealthy people have kids in more expensive ways, not just in that, like they wanna get them the nannies and the fancy clothes, and the fancy toys, and they wanna fly them everywhere and do things like that.

But like they’re, they’re typically waiting to have kids in the, until they’re older and more infertile. So they’re more likely to need fertility treatments and need IVF and have more complicated pregnancies or even use surrogates, you know, it’s really common, [00:05:00] right? So like that would also make me think that they’re gonna have fewer kids.

In fact, IVF is so expensive. People are increasingly traveling abroad to get it. And, and to, to the extent that we’re seeing major mainstream news outlets covering it. Recently

Malcolm Collins: that IBF clinic that was gonna open the Philippines and do like embryo testing. Is that happening still?

Simone Collins: It’s still happening, yeah.

Did you

Malcolm Collins: have a timeline on that for like, our fans

Simone Collins: we’re under an NDA, so I can’t say anything. Okay. But once, once we have an update, we can share information. But like, CBS news recently did an article about it. They talked about one couple that found a clinic in Bogota that they were going to, that offered a package of four IVF rounds for $11,000.

Which, you know, compared to like the $60,000 it would cost to do four rounds, then that’s on the lower end in the United States. That’s like really good. So my hypothesis here is that the issue is more that governments and societies are turning poor people into wealthy people, or at least people who live like wealthy people historically lived [00:06:00] and turning wealthy people into poor people, or at least the way that.

Poor people used to live and, and, and, and we’ll, we’ll explore that in greater detail. But first I just wanna give a caveat and, and this can be really summed up well by a, a thread that, that more births did when covering this

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: This research,

Malcolm Collins: you know, who’s gonna love this data, right? Is lineman Stone,

Simone Collins: actually, I’m also gonna cover limestone had, actually, he didn’t chime in about this just as it came out because this was a 2025 thing.

I’m gonna. I’m gonna look at W Stone has a take on this. He published in April of last year though, or like spring of last year. Okay. But in this thread more births explains a lower income has been associated with higher fertility. But now that the relationship is completely flipped, he writes, in many developed countries, higher incomes are now associated with higher fertility almost everywhere in Europe, both for men and women at 2025 paper shows.

And we’re gonna look at that paper. His second tweet though, and this is important, but this is only within countries. [00:07:00] Across countries, the correlation between income and, and fertility remains very negative. Wealthy countries continue to have far lower birth rates than poor countries. Also, fertility tends to go down for countries as a whole, as they get richer.

Also I kind of just wanted to, to show you this thread, just because one of the animations that shows basically the fertility of countries going down is to get wealthier. Literally looks like sperm. Look at, look at, look at the link. I just said,

Malcolm Collins: what is wrong with you? Come on. You are so juvenile.

Simone Collins: It’s thematic. It’s thematic. Okay. I just find that extremely amusing.

Malcolm Collins: But swimming downhill. Yeah. Yeah.

Simone Collins: There’s, there’s little sperm swimming downhills. They get, you know, wealthier, their fertility goes down. Along with their sperm motil, their testosterone levels plummet but obviously wealthy countries, fertility rates being low, it is important to be looking at.

What we can do to increase fertility in these countries. And it’s pretty wild that now the wealthier increase poverty

Malcolm Collins: people.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Outside of, yeah, outside of that. So let’s, let’s look at this wealthy [00:08:00] country shift that we need to investigate. So for most of the 20th century, there was a negative relationship between wealth and fertility.

In Europe, wealthier individuals typically had fewer children, while poor families had more. Everyone knows this. We talk about this a lot. However, starting around 2017, this pattern weakened. It’s been even reversed in several prosperous, and this is the important thing, prosperous European countries by 2021.

In some places the association is now neutral or even slightly positive. And similar patterns hold when using education as a proxy for income. So low educated Nordic women and men now have the lowest fertility. In highest childlessness, 15 to 36% in recent cohorts. While higher educated groups have stabilized near replacement levels around 1.8 to 2.0 children per, what is

Malcolm Collins: it in?

Simone Collins: The Nordic countries.

Malcolm Collins: The Nordic countries. Mm-hmm. So the Nordic countries is now the lower income and lower education you are as a man, the lower your fertility rate.

Simone Collins: And, and woman. And woman

Malcolm Collins: and woman.

Simone Collins: [00:09:00] But here’s no, there, there are different, there are different, regional and gender variations that I, I, I am glad you’re, you’re pointing to this.

Yeah. So in Nordic countries such as Sweden, studies show a clear positive connection between high lifetime earnings and having more children, especially among men. But for women, the relationship shifted from women having more kids up to women born around the 1940s to positive or flat. In the seventies, cohorts with the poorest women now having the fewest children due to higher childlessness rates in Southern Europe.

However, prenatal wealth. Or sorry, parental wealth is still related to to, to lower fertility.

Malcolm Collins: So in poorer countries, the poorer you are, the higher your fertility rate

Simone Collins: is. Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But in wealthier countries, the poorer you are, the lower their fertility rate is. Mm-hmm. And it seems to be correlated with the amount of social services that poor people are getting.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: To sterilize the poor is to give them money. [00:10:00] Exactly. That’s why we’re giving poor people money. Ugh.

Simone Collins: Yeah, they’re, they’re trying to stick. No, but seriously, in European countries with limited social welfare support like if they don’t have free childcare, if they don’t have universal healthcare, fertility rates among wealthier citizens generally show only a weak positive association or sometimes remain lower.

Especially in Southern and eastern Europe. So in Southern Europe and some conservative welfare states like Greece and Italy with weak, higher parental wealth does not strongly correlate or compensate for limited public support. In contrast, Nordic countries and regions with extensive social support show clearer trend high income individuals, especially men, tend to have more children.

And so what, what spurred this discourse about this in the paper, that more birth cited that just came out this year? Oh my God. Can you hear a text? Snoring?

Malcolm Collins: No

Simone Collins: sound ever. Oh my God.

Malcolm Collins: You, you could put the microphone up to him. All the, the ladies [00:11:00] watching.

Simone Collins: I, I think I, I’ve woken him up.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, there. Oh, you woke him up.

Simone Collins: Crumbs. Oh God, I, I, I just, when he snores, it’s the cutest son ever. But whatever I, the moment is passed. I ruined it. But so, right, so there, there was a paper that came out that, that discussed this trend that is, that is the whole spark of all this.

And it called let’s see. It’s the, it is the sexiest and most catchy title of all research papers. Research note on the increasing income prerequisite parenthood country specific or universal and Western Europe. That is, that is the title. Not exactly the best, but the TLDR is, they’re trying to argue that wealth is beginning to correlate with having more kids, because having kids is so expensive.

They’re, they’re, they’re trying to say, we need to give people more money for kids like that. That is literally their takeaway in this whole thing. [00:12:00] Mm-hmm. But here’s just like the, the key question they wanted to ask is, has the role of income in enabling parenthood strengthened in Western Europe from 2006 to 2020 and are increasing fertility inequalities present between higher and lower income groups for both men and women?

And their main findings were that higher individual incomes strongly increases the likelihood of having a first child, both for men and women across 16 Western European countries that they studied. The effect is stronger and more widespread in women. Especially in countries with robust. Welfare systems.

The role of income as a prerequisite for parenthood has increased over time. Income-based fertility gaps have widened primarily due to declining birth rates among low income men and women, not just rising births among higher income groups. So this is important, as you said, right? The way to sterilize poor people is to give them resource

Malcolm Collins: UBI would do so much harm to fertility rates from what we’ve seen in the data

Simone Collins: well, but especially among poor people.

And that’s a really crazy thing [00:13:00] because you’d think like. Oh, well this is all, and that, that, that is what is constantly being argued, right? It’s like, well, we’re, we’re not the rich people in this country. We can’t afford to have kids. But what’s clearly shown in this data is that’s totally the opposite.

Like, that is not at all how this is gonna work, which is, is it just so surprises me. And, but what, what also really surprises me is that the researchers are trying to argue. That this is just because it’s so expensive to have kids.

Malcolm Collins: Well that actually isn’t a terrible argument. So if you’re thinking about,

Simone Collins: explain this to me.

The

Malcolm Collins: amount of aid in the United States that poor people get around kids, it’s just comical compared to middle class people.

Simone Collins: That’s true. That’s true.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and, and, and middle class people can actually be priced out of having kids, whereas it’s very hard to price a poor person out of having kids in the United States.

Simone Collins: That’s true. And for context in the United States. Because we, we did really extensive research on this to try to create like sort of an index of resources for parents [00:14:00] because we thought there would be more for just like your average, normal parent, but basically if you’re at or below the poverty line, healthcare is taken care of for, for kids and typically their parents.

Two, or at least their mothers food assistance, childcare assistance, often housing assistance, often heat and electricity assistance. So you really get levels of subsidies that you, you would otherwise just expect in like the wealthy Gulf States for all. Citizens which is insane. Like just be impoverished.

And, and there are many families in the United States who actively game the system to create the appearance of poverty just to get access to these resources because they’re so compelling, which is not the best, but go on.

Malcolm Collins: No, I mean, you’re right. And I was also telling you about this earlier today, which I didn’t know about.

But like true poverty doesn’t really exist in the United States. And I know that this is an offensive thing to say. I was point out to you that, for example, starvation in the United States, it’s [00:15:00] virtually just doesn’t happen. It happens to like 150 people a year or something.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And almost all of them are elderly people or people who can’t move in some way.

Like there,

Simone Collins: right, like if it wasn’t the starvation, it would be bedsores or like. Literally they’re like their dogs eating them alive or something. ‘cause they can’t move. It’s,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah, yeah. They’re stuck at home and nobody’s bringing them food. Like, if you can go out and get food, you’re, you’re gonna be okay in the United States.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And I wanna show you actually, so the, the, the research study that, that did, these graphs and correlations of between. Being more wealthy and having more kids. I was like, just how generous are all these countries that we’re looking at? So first I just looked at all the graphs and then

, I sorted the European countries that they looked at in this research, Okay.

By just how generous they were in terms of their social services. And I, I, I color coded them. So red is most generous, and orange is, is a slightly middle, like mid-tier, generous, like. They don’t support as much of healthcare and education and and childcare, and then yellow is least [00:16:00] generous. And pretty much the vast majority of the countries that they looked at here were all extremely generous countries.

Even in the ones that are yellow circled, like the UK I circled in yellow, because it is, it is generally considered to be a little bit weaker on social services. Keep in mind, the UK still has the NHS, it has nationalized healthcare, and the caveat with the UK too is that the social services in the uk.

Skew toward children really heavily. So the emphasis is more on like giving people citizens a really strong start. And like

being

Malcolm Collins: so yellow means a lot of social

Simone Collins: services. It’s the weakest social services. Red is the strongest. Weak,

Malcolm Collins: okay. And

Simone Collins: red is, so, the vast majority of the countries that this study looked at are extremely generous in their services, meaning that this really does.

This is about countries providing very, very, very generous social services. Basically just like free childcare, free good healthcare and free education. A among other things. So that’s, that’s, that’s it. Just, [00:17:00] it needs to be emphasized that the country’s investigated in this academic paper. Already do a lot to support parents.

Makes sense. And I can go into it like some, some examples. Luxembourg has the highest per capita spending on family benefits. It has extensive free education and healthcare, substantial childcare support. The Nordic countries like Norway and Denmark and Iceland and Wheland and, and Finland they have a really, really high expenditure per person universal healthcare for.

Free or highly subsidized education and robust childcare systems. Denmark, for example, is noted for the most generous overall welfare package. France leads in overall social spending. Nearly a third of their GDP is devoted to social services. Oh my

Malcolm Collins: God.

Simone Collins: Free healthcare, subsidized childcare, and free, free higher education in Germany and Austria and Switzerland and Ireland.

All spend above 1000 euros per person yearly on family benefits. Maintain generous healthcare and education systems and support families and have. Very substantial social programs. So [00:18:00] again, like this is, we’re talking very generous. This is, this is an American’s dream in terms of what we keep asking for.

Yeah. I just wanna emphasize again that this is just. It’s just ridiculous.

Malcolm Collins: Oh no. Are you saying we need to be socialists now?

Simone Collins: I’m not. And speaking of socialists, did someone say socialists? I, I wanna bring lineman stone to the chat. So lineman stone, actually, so one thing that we’ve, we’ve talked about in the past and that anyone who discusses fertility talks about is this U-shaped curve in fertility that’s very often discussed, right?

Which has to do with income. And it’s this, the famous U-shaped graph that that shows fertility levels.

Being really high among those who are impoverished. And then for the middle class, it just plummets. And then when you see incomes above $500,000, per household or whatever then it, it goes up again.

And so like, oh, well, having a big family is just a super rich person thing and a super poor person thing. And Lyman Stone in an article that he [00:19:00] published in April 24 called Fertility Income, some Notes he argues that income reporting in surveys is unreliable. For very small subgroups that that is to say like 1 million plus households.

And so he wants to say that, that the findings about ultra high earners can be artifacts and not robust trends. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: so he doesn’t think that high earners actually have a very good fertility.

Simone Collins: Yeah. He thinks that like, because so few people are in that income bracket and also responding to surveys that like probably what we’re seeing is like someone accidentally filling in the wrong.

Thing on a survey. Like just the error. Yeah. And, and that’s, it’s, it’s, it is a legitimate. Concern. But he nevertheless does make some concessions. He, he says there’s some evidence on, on ca causal ties between income and fertility. At at least one study shows exogenous positive shocks to, to male income boost fertility, and there are many others using quasi experimental [00:20:00] variation from sectoral or occupational exposures.

But he also argues male income is an income, the the figure, the U-shape. Advocates, essentially, he says rely on for fa is for family household income. It, it includes male income and female income. So that he, he thinks that’s not the thing, like really the thing he would encourage people to look at, and I don’t think he’s wrong.

Is me relative male income that men, men doing disproportionately better. Mm-hmm. Seems to correlate more. And that even shows up in a lot of this more re recent research that I can’t remember who it was when I was going into some more of the, the ephemera of this discourse. People were pointing out that when you look at, when you break out female.

Fertility in these countries, women with higher wealth had higher fertility, but if they had just higher income, they [00:21:00] didn’t, it was sort of like a neutral thing. Okay. So essentially like if you’re working your, your your fertility’s not gonna be higher if you’re a woman. And that makes sense because if you’re working and you’re a woman, it’s, it’s kind of harder to have a ton of kids and, and we’re gonna get to that.

So, so. The, what the public is arguing in terms of what’s going on here, because that’s what we really wanna talk about here. Mm-hmm. They, the public argues that poorer families are less healthy, poorer families are too busy to trying to make ends meet, to start new families. Mm-hmm. Poorer families have less flexible schedules and they have less work-life balance.

And so it’s harder to have kids or more kids. Poorer families have less. Stable marriages and partnerships. So they’re, they’re may be less likely to even have a partner with whom they can have kids consistently. And that wealthier families have stronger social networks. So they have, you know, maybe, you know, grandparents that are wealthy and available, they can take care of kids.

They’re more comfortable having more kids.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: And, and they also frame. [00:22:00] Children as luxury goods. And, and society has largely framed children as luxury goods. Well, I

Malcolm Collins: also think there’s been a, a cultural shift among some wealthy groups. Yeah. Like especially you’re talking about ultra wealthy groups, which we hang out with.

Having lots of kids has become quite the flex.

Simone Collins: No, but even I would say among. All levels of society, except for like some religious communities. Kids are kind of seen as this thing that you do if you can afford them, and they’re a luxury product, but they’re not something, they’re, so you don’t have them unless you can afford them.

You don’t have them unless you have your stable career and your house and everything else. I,

Malcolm Collins: you know, walk through a grocery store with five kids. I feel like Prince Ali, like. Yes. And they’re all

Simone Collins: dressed

Malcolm Collins: the same as me, and they’re, and they’re marching in line, and I’m like,

Simone Collins: n in her parade. It so feels like that.

It really does. No, there’s you, you, there’s

Malcolm Collins: everybody comes to look at us and you’re like, yeah, I got, I got five kids money.

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, it really, it really does feel that way. But, but I mean, so I, I think those are legitimate things. [00:23:00] But what I think is much more interesting here is that poor people are becoming like wealthy people in, in these countries used to live.

Kids are being cared for. By staff. They’re being cared for by by, by these childcare facilities. Mm. They’re being cared for by paid people. And, and, and, and there there’s more work outside the home. People are leaving. The home to go do things just like Lords used to go to Parliament or like go out on their trading ships or something.

And, and there’s more, there’s more focus on material wealth, on conspicuous consumption, on, on, on showing other people how fancy you are, whereas the wealthy people we know are really starting to behave a lot more like surfs. Did in the past. Yeah. Where like there’s less focus on work and there’s more focus on really like.

Focusing [00:24:00] in on industry of the home. There’s more work from home and within the home. And there’s less focus on material wealth and conspicuous material consumption and more stealth wealth. Like look at, look at the rise of stealth wealth. Look at the rise of, of, of influencers like ballerina farms where like they’re very, very wealthy.

They, they’re living on their, like homestead farm, and they’re living like a corporate family, and the kids are shoveling manure. And, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re harvesting their own food and pumpkins and making meals from scratch. You know, they’re living life like surf. Yeah. And then like the whole Maha movement is like that too.

You know? It, it’s very much like back to the land, back to the homestead, you know, very, very crunchy, very like no brand names on anything. And there’s a lot more focus on autonomy and separation from society. There’s this retreat from society. We’re not, there’s no balls, there are no galas, there’s no, like, you know, going out and fronting to people.

It, it’s very, it, it’s very [00:25:00] isolationist. People have their,

Malcolm Collins: there are some stone balls and galas, like when we go to Austin, we often go to like a, a gala or something

Simone Collins: sometimes. Yeah. But it, it’s, I would say it’s, it’s pretty unusual. It’s mostly people retreating to their, if they’re really wealthy, I mean Sure.

Like Peter Thiel may show up at hereon, but then it goes off to his, like New Zealand compound. Yeah. Or you know, like these other people. And then they disappeared to some, you know, to prospera to their charter city or to their like homesteading, permaculture. Farm thing. You know, like in, in short, I, I, I think in the end that so much of fertility, again, as you’ve always said it, it’s about how your household is composed and where you get your services.

You keep saying fertility started to drop with the industrial revolution first when men left the home and then when women left the home and children left the home and every, all the services left the home and because. Now what being wealthy is, is it’s more about everything is coming back into the home.

You [00:26:00] are able to see this rise of fertility again within the home because there’s, there’s value in it and there’s the time for it and the resources for it. Whereas for the. For those who are poor now, who are now living more like wealthy people who are getting DoorDash and delivery, they, you basically have your servants and your livery and, and your conspicuous consumption.

And, and you know, the, all the staff that serves you. Much of it, government subsidized. Now, it doesn’t matter though. It doesn’t matter if it’s your own wealth or the government’s wealth when you have the staff, when things are provided from without the home when, when there isn’t this beating heart of your hear and your family.

Your fertility drops. And because we’re seeing this inversion, that’s what the

Malcolm Collins: best way to ize the core is to give them money that, that works for both parties.

Simone Collins: Everyone wins. I mean, this, I think this, this does have interesting implications when it comes to fertility ratio cascades, because as we point out, this is not a warm bodies problem.

This is a taxpayer problem. And, and so [00:27:00] what you really want, what if, if you’re a country that’s really concerned about not being able to pay for really essential social services for all these life saving. Food programs and, and even the childcare and the healthcare and all this, you need people who are gonna generate a lot of tax revenue to pay for it.

And the fact that the people who generate a lot of tax revenue are now the ones having more kids power to the people literally power to like money to the people like that, that is a, a good thing. So could this be the solution? Like, are we already seeing like. Because we, I, I, I don’t think we expected this, right?

We didn’t expect that like paying for people’s lives would, would actually solve fertility cascade problems. Is this kind of like, I mean, on one hand it doesn’t solve the problem ‘cause poor people aren’t having more kids. But does it solve the problem because. Rich people are having more kids. I mean, it kind of, you’re doing two things, right?

Like you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re reducing the population that is most [00:28:00] dependent on these services, thereby maybe reducing the financial load while increasing the population that, that subsidizes these services, therefore increasing revenue. Like is this actually a subversion of trends? That means the problem is gonna be potentially solved.

Malcolm Collins: I,

Simone Collins: you don’t know.

Malcolm Collins: So my question for you is, does this make you more socialist in your politics?

Simone Collins: You know, my views are evolving on this actually. Because I. What we found and this, this has been confirmed also, like Scott Alexander I think mentioned this recently too, so I’m like, okay, this isn’t just us.

Basically. While cash transfers seem to do a lot of good in really impoverished countries, it’s pretty clear that things like universal basic income and cash transfers cause harm in developed countries, right? They’re not good. However, it does appear to be that providing in kind services. Like free childcare education, sometimes [00:29:00] housing can actually cause pretty beneficial effects or at least neutral effects in developed countries.

Yeah. We looked at this in the Gulf States, like, well, it didn’t seem to necessarily, it didn’t, it didn’t create thriving societies like the Gulf States aren’t exactly known for their innovation and, and their. You know?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Thriving, whatever, like they’re doing all right. Like, right, like there’s some basic cool people.

Their fertility rates are decent. In, in some cases, not, not at all, but like

Malcolm Collins: in some cases

Simone Collins: it could be worse, right? But like, it’s not terrible. So I’m kind of warming up to the idea of providing in kind services, not money. People don’t get to choose, like you don’t just get your cash transfer. But in kind services, and this is also saying, I was just talking with you about this today because right now SNAP is being discussed a lot.

It’s, it’s a form of food assistance in the United States where you get basically a debit card, like money is loaded to your card and you get to use that on a bunch of foods and a lot of people are just spending it on junk food. There’s this [00:30:00] other program in at least a lot of states called wic women, infant and Infants and Children.

It’s for pregnant women, infants and children under five years old that meet certain requirements. And instead of providing money, it will cover very specific healthy foods. Like it will buy you a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs and a whole grain, and $26 worth of vegetables per child. And like some cheese, like, like the whole

Malcolm Collins: food.

This is, this is also made me realize. There’s another solution to fertility collapse that I had never considered before.

Simone Collins: How’s that?

Malcolm Collins: Which is you can fix the problem of a dependency ratio cascade within a country. So obviously you can do it by keeping the population stable as it exists right now.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But you could also do it just by stopping poor people from having kids.

Simone Collins: Well, and, but these do that, but in like a very kind way. God, no, we’re not talking about steril. No.

Malcolm Collins: [00:31:00] Sterilized. No, this is

Simone Collins: getting way too close to eugenics and I don’t,

Malcolm Collins: like, I didn’t say this is a good, I’m, I’m not saying it’s a good idea.

I’m just saying it would solve the problem. Because. What you’re dealing with in a society is you know, the, the, the elderly are almost always on the government doll. Right. You know, so that’s why you get the fertility ratio cascade because too big a proportion of society is elderly.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But

Malcolm Collins: you have poor people who are also on the government dole.

Yeah. And if you could remove them as a segment of the population Yeah. Then pretty much, no matter how many elderly people you got, it would be a, a lot more to tip the scales of the system.

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, I mean, anyway, this has just been very thought provoking for me, and text now needs to eat, so I gotta go run.

But like,

Malcolm Collins: I love you Simon.

Simone Collins: Thank you for humoring me on this. I’m very

Malcolm Collins: excited for my, or whatever it’s called, the

Simone Collins: ka ka.

Malcolm Collins: Whatever.

Simone Collins: I, man, it’s

Malcolm Collins: tasty. It cook into oil again. That was really good.

Simone Collins: And do the fried egg,

Malcolm Collins: I might use a little bit more [00:32:00] oil and then scoop some chili flakes in. When you cook, cook it as well.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Chili flakes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think it could use some chili flakes.

Malcolm Collins: And then no other notes was really good. I might do two eggs today, actually.

Simone Collins: I asked you about two eggs, but you said the serving was fine, but two eggs.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I’d be more greedy with the eggs if I had two of them. And they were so good.

Simone Collins: And then let’s just try two eggs. It’s from our coop man, and I’m so glad you’re like actually enjoying some of our coop eggs. Okay. I love you and I’ll see you too. I

Malcolm Collins: love you too.

Simone Collins: You’re amazing. You’re amazing. So pretty. , I know what you do. You’re just gonna set up your Korean romance manga right to the side of the screen.

Malcolm Collins: I actually don’t even have my, I need to get my phone.

Simone Collins: You nerd,

but hurry up.

Malcolm Collins: Simone, I have to know what happens.

Simone Collins: Pull it up. Pull up web tunes. Don’t worry about it.

Malcolm Collins: I have to know what happens to the, the Empress.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Simon Simone, I have to know if

Simone Collins: the, we really, really need to on like,

Malcolm Collins: come on

Simone Collins: Patreon and Substack. But you’re your [00:33:00] secret list of amazing romance Manga.

Malcolm Collins: We’re the biggest nerds in the world and I think that when people first came to our podcast, they were like, wait, you guys can’t be like, at first they were confused ‘cause they’re like, you look.

Too nerdy to be Republican, like, and, and then it was like, you gotta fashion yourself as like a non nerd, like get buff and like look a lot nerdy and it’s like,

Simone Collins: oh, you gotta lift bro. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And it’s like, I, but this is, this is. I am nerd from front to back. That’s my,

Simone Collins: this is base camp. Like, do you guys understand what camp is?

Is this an old person thing? Like, are, is everyone too young to understand what camp is anyway?

No,

Malcolm Collins: but imagine I come on and I am like really trying to look like, like, like cool. Stuff.

Simone Collins: Think he’d be so cringe.

Malcolm Collins: It’d be, I’d be so cringe. It’d be like Asma Gold doing that or something. No, I love ASM Gold recently went viral.

I don’t know if you saw, for showing that he eats just junk food all day and like sodas

Simone Collins: all day, he’s always shown that he eats just junk food all day. I think the secret is that he walks to [00:34:00] the seven 11 to buy the junk food and as long as,

Malcolm Collins: no, it’s, he eats it in moderation.

Simone Collins: Me too.

Malcolm Collins: And, and that’s the thing.

You can eat whatever you want, you know?

Simone Collins: Yeah, like that famous twine diet guy. The professor. Yeah. Who showed that like, on like pure junk food, you could lose a ton of weight. I think actually multiple people did. ‘cause after also supersize Me came out, I think a high school teacher demonstrated that you can lose a lot of weight eating only McDonald’s, something like that.

I, I can’t, I can’t remember. If

Malcolm Collins: you are struggling with weight loss, my suggestion would be as is my suggestion for everything is get Naltrexone look up the Sinclair method and

Simone Collins: it’s, yeah, it’s less expensive than LPs. So,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, it’s, it’s less expensive than the other things. And it’s way healthier for you than like,

Simone Collins: Oh yeah, that’s true.

I mean, like as, as much as it can be. Naltrexone can, we’re not giving medical advice by the way, as much as naltrexone can be hard on the kidneys. GLP one inhibitors are. Which is what they’re right is, is that they, they are very hard on your digestive system. The, the side effects are really intense for people.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. [00:35:00] Naltrexone is a little bad on the liver. But every, all the other things that it cures, like alcoholism and obesity

Simone Collins: did, dude, even gambling. Gambling is hard on everything, man. And gambling way

Malcolm Collins: harder. Really

Simone Collins: Big problem.

Malcolm Collins: Harder. Well, and, and if you, if you have a problem with, with being too sexual like you’re

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Sex addiction. Food addiction, gambling. Of porn addiction. Like all these things can be’s

Malcolm Collins: incredibly effective and I just hate that it’s not more known about.

Simone Collins: Yeah, seriously,

Malcolm Collins: it’s, it’s, it’s one of the

Simone Collins: biggest, but y’all can read Katie Herzog’s book, I think it’s called Drink Yourself Sober. No, that’s not what it is.

I can’t remember what it is, but check out Katie Herzog’s book. She wrote about it in depth. And she’s really unhappy with the amount of book sales.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It’s really sad. Well, she get like 12,000 into sales or something.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like just Yeah. A abysmal. And she put a lot of work into the launch and interviewed with all the best platforms.

Yeah. I mean, but on, on background. And she didn’t wanna name you because you’re too polarized. Oh. But whatever. By, by Katie Herzog’s book. We, we like it, we like blocked and [00:36:00] reported. Yeah. I met Katie Herzog and, well, I think, I think Jesse Single just. Billy doesn’t like us there. He stopped responding to you.

Come

Malcolm Collins: to our parties. And now

Simone Collins: he’s like, I know, but also I think he’s he’s a little, a little Trump derangement. Yeah. I mean, Katie Kza is too, but she responded to us at least. I think she cares less. Anyway, we’ll get into it. I love you. Here we go. Ready?

Malcolm Collins: Okay.

Speaker: Wait, did you say this was the best Christmas ever? Yeah, I think so. I leave my and put this in my bedroom. This, what’s the one too? Well, we’ll go up and put them in your bed for future day decorations. You like ‘em guys? Yeah. Let’s go. Let’s go. Mom. Let’s go. Yeah, you’re super excited. Stall it right now.

Yeah. Let’s open up your presents so you can play with those and then tonight we’ll put them in to start future day. Okay. Does that sound good? Yeah. Okay. If you safe right here [00:37:00] for now. My Tian, you hand it to me and I’ll make sure it goes to your bed. My.

Honey, your T Rex’s name is honey. He’s gonna be the best dog for, oh, do you want milk and cheese? What are the colors for F Day? No. What does T-Rex want? What are the colors for F today sandwich Today, he wants to eat sandwiches. I.

Could a “debt jubilee” happen in the US? Malcolm and Simone dive deep into skyrocketing consumer debt, unsustainable government obligations (like Social Security insolvency by 2032-2034), and historical debt cancellations—from ancient Mesopotamia and Biblical jubilees to Japan’s post-WWII wealth confiscation and modern “Abenomics.”

They debate whether America’s record-high credit card debt, buy-now-pay-later defaults, and cultural attitudes toward money could trigger a crisis, hyperinflation, or forced wealth redistribution. Is bankruptcy already America’s soft debt jubilee? What should you invest in (or avoid) if things get weird in the 2030s?

Hilarious tangents include check fraud “hacks,” Caleb Hammer roasts, ramen lifehacks, and why Japan pulled off drastic reforms while Venezuela and Zimbabwe collapsed.

As Simone outlined this episode, the outline (and links) follows! The transcript is at the end of the post. Merry Christmas, you filthy animals!

Episode Outline

* US consumer debt levels are currently at record highs in 2025, both in nominal and inflation-adjusted terms

* Average credit card debt among cardholders with unpaid balances rose to about $7,321 in Q1 2025, up 5.8% from a year earlier

* People are using buy now pay later services like Klarna and Afterpay at record levels and increasingly paying late

* A LendingTree survey found that 41% of BNPL users made a late payment in 2025, up from 34% the prior year

* April 2025, 31% of federal student loan borrowers were 90+ days delinquent on payments,

* This comes at a time when…

* People are beginning to view debt payoff, the concept of capitalism, and even faith in fiat currency with increasing skepticism

* Loan defaults and late payments are on the rise

* democratic socialist political figures like Zohran Mamdani are gaining serious traction and public attention

* Even our governments are spending like someone with zero expectation of paying off their debt

* US social security likely to falter in 2032-2034

* The UK is set to experience a social security crisis in the early 2030s

* And this matters, because something’s gotta give, and in the past, this has involved various forms of debt jubilees

* So we’re going to discuss:

* The situation with consumer debt today

* The situation with government debt today

* How unsustainable debt has been dealt with historically

* How this could go poorly

* How this could go well and how we as individuals might prepare

Banks and Fractional Reserves

* The post:

* Oct 21 trending discussion: https://x.com/i/trending/1980520651816341983

US Consumer Debt

* Credit card balances hit another all-time high, reaching around $1.21 trillion in Q2 2025—matching last year’s record with annualized growth rates of over 9% in mid-2025.

* Credit card interest rates are commonly averaging 22–24% in 2025, compared to around 15% just a few years ago.

* Delinquency rates for credit cards and other non-housing debts have increased to levels well above pre-pandemic norms. In Q2 2025, about 4.4% of all debt was in some phase of delinquency.

* Klarna reported a 17% increase in consumer credit losses in Q1 2025, totaling $136 million, with repayment defaults rising among users.

* Student loan delinquencies are also rising, especially following the resumption of payments after long pandemic-era forbearance, adding further strain to household finances

* In March 2025, just 35% of federal student-loan borrowers had made their most recent payment on time. The rest were at risk of (or already in) serious delinquency or default.

It has actually been worse recently, though:

* US consumer (household) debt has reached nominal record highs in 2025, but when adjusted for economic growth (e.g., as a percentage of GDP), it remains below pre-2008 financial crisis peaks and has even declined slightly in recent quarters.

* This tracks with bankruptcy search trends (https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F01hhz&hl=en)

* After adjusting for inflation, average household debt in 2025 is about 2.9% ($1,800) higher than in 2013 but 17.2% ($13,100) lower than the 2008 peak.

* Also, bankruptcy is pretty soft on people

* Basically bad credit for 10 years and non-essential assets can be frozen, but many don’t have much to lose in the face of that.

* What has me worried more is the mindset

* The surging skepticism around communism

* The employment threat of rising AI

* The increasingly absurdist interpretation of money and normalization of putting off money problems

* E.g. BNPL usage is surging, with monthly spending up 21% year-over-year to $243.90 per user in June 2025.

* 41% of users paid late in the past year (up from 34%), 24% faced late payments in 2025, and nearly 40% regret usage due to hidden costs.

The gist:

* Consumer debt is a problem

* Government debt is a bigger problem

Government Inability to Pay Obligations

Social Security Set to Falter

* The U.S. Social Security retirement trust fund is now projected to be insolvent by late 2032; if the disability fund is combined, around 2034. Benefits would be cut about 24% automatically if nothing is done

* UK state pension is pay-as-you-go and generally funded from current taxes, but there are major concerns about the sustainability of defined benefit (private and public) pension plans and the adequacy of future benefits. A liquidity and solvency crisis in 2022 exposed the vulnerability of the system, and ongoing warnings suggest potential crisis if reforms aren’t enacted as liabilities grow

* Other Western nations face sustainability crises from the 2030s, mostly driven by aging populations and shrinking worker/retiree ratios.

* Canada is currently better positioned due to earlier reforms, but is still monitoring demographic risks.

* All systems will require some combination of benefit reduction, tax increases, or later retirement ages to remain sustainable.

Historical Jubilees

TL:DR: Rules repeatedly cancelled debts (without consent from creditors) to end, evade, or calm rebellion, turmoil, class conflict, revolution, or societal breakdown.

Misc

* Ancient Mesopotamia: Kings of Sumer, Babylon, and neighboring regions periodically canceled debts for peasants and small landholders, often at the start of their reigns or during crises.

* Athens, Greece – Solon’s Seisachtheia “sigh-SAK-thee-uh” (594 BCE): Solon forgave personal debts, banned debt slavery, and wiped out mortgage debts in Athens.

* Initially controversial but eventually credited with preventing revolution and laying foundations for Athenian democracy. Credit eventually resumed as societal structures stabilized.

Medieval Japan

In medieval Japan, particularly during the Kamakura (1185–1333) and Muromachi (1336–1573) periods, the shogunate issued edicts known as tokusei (literally “virtuous government” or “benevolent rule”), which effectively functioned as debt jubilees. These were decrees that canceled debts, often in response to peasant uprisings (tokusei ikki) driven by famines, high taxes, epidemics, or exploitative lending practices. The concept dated back even earlier, with roots in the Nara and Heian periods (710–1185), but became prominent in the 13th–15th centuries.

* The most famous early example is the Einin Tokuseirei of 1297, issued by the Kamakura shogunate. It annulled all debts contracted before that year, allowed vassals (gokenin, or samurai retainers) to reclaim pawned lands without repaying loans, and canceled interest on older debts. This was motivated by the need to bolster military strength against potential Mongol invasions (following attempts in 1274 and 1281) and to address widespread debt burdens among the warrior class.

* Later examples include uprisings that forced similar measures, such as the Shōchō uprising in 1428 during the Muromachi period. Peasants in the Kinai region (around Kyoto) rebelled amid famine, high rice prices, disease, and heavy taxes. They looted moneylenders, sake merchants, pawnshops, and temples, destroying debt records to achieve “independent debt relief.” The shogunate did not issue a nationwide order, but local authorities like the Kōfuku-ji temple in Yamato Province responded with a formal tokusei law: pawned items could be redeemed for one-third of their value, and loans over five years old were annulled. A stone inscription (Yagyū no Tokusei Hibun) commemorates the full cancellation of pre-1428 debts in specific villages.

Scary Post-WWII Currency Reform and Debt Resolution (1946)

After Japan’s defeat in World War II, the government faced massive sovereign debt (about 267% of national income by March 1945), hyperinflation, and economic ruin. While not explicitly called a “jubilee,” the 1946 Financial Emergency Measures effectively wiped out much of the real value of debts through currency reform and wealth confiscation.

What Exactly Happened

* On February 16, 1946, the government announced surprise measures: All bank accounts were frozen, old yen notes were invalidated unless deposited, and a “new yen” was introduced at a 1:1 exchange rate. Withdrawals were severely limited (initially 300 yen per household head plus 100 yen per member, later 100 yen per month per person—barely enough for survival).

* This was followed by a massive one-time property tax in autumn 1946, levying up to 90% on assets (including blocked deposits) held as of February 16. Tax revenues were used to repay government bonds and interest. War-related compensations to companies and citizens were offset by special taxes, amounting to a partial default.

* Hyperinflation (prices rising over 500% annually in 1945–1946) had already eroded the real value of debts before the reform.

Effects

* Government debt was drastically reduced (from 446 billion yen in 1948 to 316 billion yen in 1950), taming hyperinflation and enabling postwar reconstruction. It paved the way for the “Japanese economic miracle” of rapid growth in the 1950s–1980s.

* The public suffered massive wealth loss (savings wiped out), exacerbating poverty initially but stabilizing the economy long-term. It was a form of forced wealth redistribution, seen as a domestic default, and provided lessons for modern fiscal policy. No significant inflation spike followed due to the controls, but it eroded trust in financial institutions temporarily

How This Could Go Poorly

Zimbabwe and Venezuela

TL:DR: Both governments saw drops in revenue (caused by different things) but were politically unable to cut spending so they printed more money to pay for things and caused hyperinflation.

* Venezuela

* Experienced a drop in income but had huge social spending programs it felt it couldn’t stop funding

* Venezuela’s government depended on oil for about 95% of its foreign currency earnings. When global oil prices crashed (especially post-2014), government income collapsed.

* To cover these budget gaps, the government printed more bolivars rather than cutting spending or raising taxes. This inflated the money supply massively

* These led to shortages of basic goods, discouraged local production, encouraged black markets, and eroded business/investor confidence.

* Zimbabwe

* Following popular but economically disastrous land redistribution, food and export revenues collapsed. Government, unwilling to reverse course or lose power, financed itself by printing currency

How This Could Go Well & How We Should Prepare

Forms of Jubilee That Worked in the Past

Jubilees in Ancient Israel

* Ancient Israel (Biblical Jubilee): Every 50 years, debts were canceled, slaves set free, and lands restored to original owners.

* Practiced from around 1400 to 500 BC

* Whereby debt forgiveness was granted to Fellow Israelites in debt or servitude; families who lost land or freedom due to loans.

* It was limited only to Israelites

* I think debt forgiveness makes sense within tight-knit, cohesive communities

* Like how family members make loans understanding that the loans may never be repaid

Japan’s Case

In recent decades, Japan has managed its enormous public debt (over 250% of GDP) through a quasi-jubilee mechanism without formal cancellation.

In short, Japan’s debt buybacks are a way to prevent market collapse and maintain low borrowing costs for the government. Most countries avoid this because of the risk of inflation, devaluation, and loss of investor confidence, which can destabilize their economies.

Japan’s problem

* Japan did not have a traditional “debt jubilee” where debts were outright forgiven at a large scale for private individuals or companies. Instead, what Japan has done, particularly over the last few decades since its economic bubble burst in the early 1990s, is a form of government debt management that mimics a debt jubilee through central bank policies.

* The Bank of Japan (BoJ), the country’s central bank, has been buying large amounts of Japanese government debt, currently owning around 40% of it. By purchasing government bonds and holding them, effectively the government owes this debt to itself.

* Why Did Japan Need to Buy Back Debt?

* Prevent Market Turmoil: Japan’s government bond market has experienced surges in yields (interest rates) due to a lack of private investor demand for long-term bonds, government calls for more spending, and worries about its huge debt-to-GDP ratio. Higher yields mean higher costs for the government to service its debt. The Bank of Japan stepped in to stabilize these yields and prevent borrowing costs from spiraling out of control.​

* Without intervention, yields on government bonds would likely have kept rising. This would force the government to pay much more to finance its deficit, risking a “debt spiral” where interest payments consume more of the public budget.

* Support Public Spending: With an aging population and slow-growing economy, Japan relies on fiscal stimulus (public spending) to maintain stability. High borrowing costs could threaten necessary government programs and pensions.

* Confidence and Liquidity: Aggressive buying by the central bank (quantitative easing, and debt buybacks) helps reassure investors that the government debt will be serviced, supporting confidence in markets and maintaining economic liquidity.

* The interest paid on this debt by the government is funneled back to the government. This means the government is not burdened by the debt servicing costs in a meaningful economic way.

* The policy prevented a conventional debt crisis but also meant Japan experienced very slow economic growth and deflationary pressures for decades.

* THE RISK: INFLATION & STAGNATION

* Inflation: If a country’s central bank buys back large amounts of government debt (”monetizes the debt”), it effectively prints new money. Unless managed carefully, this can fuel runaway inflation or hyperinflation, as seen in places like Zimbabwe and Venezuela.

* Japan has relatively low inflation, a high domestic savings rate, and cultural/political stability, allowing its central bank to take these actions without the disaster seen elsewhere. Most countries risk much greater instability if they try the same approach.

* Stagnation: Allows Japan to sustain high debt without default or inflation (unlike hyperinflation scenarios). It supports low interest rates and economic stability but risks long-term stagnation if not paired with reforms. Critics argue it’s a stealth jubilee, while proponents see it as innovative debt management.

How to Prepare

Primary risks to prepare for:

* Dangerous investments

* Insane taxes

* Inflation

Actions to Take

* Investments to Avoid

* Key Sectors to Avoid: Those which hold or rely on consumer debt, making them susceptible to defaults/jubilees:

* Financial Services (Banks and Lenders): Directly impacted by loan write-offs and higher provisions for bad debts. Regional banks with subprime exposure are especially at risk.

* Consumer Finance and Fintech: Firms issuing personal loans, credit cards, or BNPL services face elevated credit risks.

* Consumer Discretionary: Reduced spending from indebted consumers hurts retail, auto, and travel firms.

* High-Yield Debt Issuers: Companies with speculative bonds could default more readily in a downturn.

* Stocks and ETFs to avoid in appendix

* Safer Investments

* Safer Sectors During Consumer Debt Crises:

* Defensive sectors (utilities, healthcare, consumer staples).

* Companies with minimal debt exposure and strong cash flow.

* International funds less exposed to US consumer credit.

* The Ron Swanson Approach

* Crypto

* BTC price over time: https://www.coinbase.com/price/bitcoin

* ETH Price Over Time: https://www.coinbase.com/price/ethereum

* As much self reliance as possible to hedge against hyperinflation risk

* Food

* Shelter

* Medicine

* Defense

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Malcolm. I’m so excited to be speaking with you today because we are gonna be talking about debt, jubilees and debt in general because we live in CL world timeline where debt is getting really weird US consumer debt levels. They’re currently at record highs. I mean, it’s no surprise to anyone, right?

Both in nominal and in inflation adjusted terms.

Malcolm Collins: Hold on. Our fans may not know what a debt jubilee is. Mm-hmm. So Simone and I have a ongoing sort of debate on the show where she believes that eventually debt levels was in the general populace or within the government, are going to get so high that they’re just going to declare sort of bankruptcy either society wide or government wide.

And if you are like, that could never happen, which is my general take on this. Mm-hmm. Simone points out, actually a number of countries have already done this. Yeah. Malcolm, not

Simone Collins: us, Simone. Yeah. Ha. And I’m gonna get into it. So this

Malcolm Collins: happened a bunch of times historically. Mm-hmm. And so we’re gonna investigate when it’s happened historically, what triggered that.

Mm-hmm. And what does that [00:01:00] mean? Is the probability of it happening here and what does that mean for society that this is even like hanging around as an option.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And we’re gonna look at consumer debt and we’re gonna look at national debt because both are really important and both affect everyone in terms of like.

What should your savings strategy be? What should you be investing in? What should you not, if you have money, should you bother? Like, should you just max out your debt? And this is coming from the woman who

Malcolm Collins: purposely makes us have no debt even on our houses. How, how, how do you I’m allergic

Simone Collins: to debt. I, I, I can’t be owed anything.

If someone pays me a compliment, I have to pay it back right away because I can’t even deal with that. You understand? Like, I am, I’ve, I’m phobic. I’m sure there’s some Latin word for it. But yeah. Anyway, I, I learned that there was some like Latin word for mirror divination this morning. So I gotta find the one for, for ness of de of debts.

But anyway, like speaking of debt like just bad toxic consumer debt is insane right now. The average credit card debt among cardholders in the [00:02:00] United States, this is like their unpaid balances. It was true around 7,321 in the beginning of 2025. That’s, that’s up almost 6% from 24.

Malcolm Collins: No, wait. What showed me that our relationship was debt, it’s completely unraveling is, I don’t know if you guys remember, ‘cause we covered it on the show, but there was this thing where like dumb people in America thought there was a free money hack.

Yes. The check fraud hack. What Free Money Hack was is they would put in bad checks, like just write checks that were bad. Yeah. And then put them in their banks like auto cash thing and it would give them cash and they thought they had just gotten free money. Yeah. And now, and then they all found out like, oh wait, like the bank recorded that transaction.

I just now owe this much money.

Speaker 3: Some glitch in the Chase banking app where you can deposit a large check. That is bad. Yeah. And then you have a short time limit to actually withdraw the money in cash from the ATM before the check is cleared. And I guess absolute idiots. They’re doing this on their own [00:03:00] accounts. And then you have other people who are doing this on their own accounts.

Speaker 4: It has their first and last name, their phone number, their social security number, their place of work. Why do I have 11,000 missing from my bank account? Damn. Is this like humorous to you guys? Like do you, yeah. Is this, is it? Yes.

Speaker 6: They will use these. There’s no way.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. Like, and that, that is, that is the culture we live in today. Yeah. Social media really doesn’t help that. And there’s some great viral Caleb Hammer clips where. People are like, oh, well I’m gonna, you know, retire early and travel a ton. And you know, he, at that point, this is for the show financial audit on YouTube, has gone through all their finances.

He knows how much their debt, he knows how much they’ve saved. And he’s like, dude, you. You have no money saved, like, how do you think this is gonna work? How much money do you think they need? And they’re like, oh, I’m just gonna, [00:04:00] like, you know, house hacking something, something. And they just start using a bunch of buzzwords and it’s just clear that like their entire financial strategy is based on tiktoks that are not even like well-founded.

It’s really disturbing. I’ll, I’ll send you a clip. Oh

Malcolm Collins: my God, I love this. A house hacking, of course.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But like, and like literally even the way that they, they use the language implies that, that like they’re just putting in buzzwords and they don’t actually understand the fundamentals of any of this.

They don’t understand what fire means. They don’t understand really what house hacking means. They, they have no understanding if how much anything. Like, it’s weird ‘cause it’s the poor man version of that meme where I can’t, I don’t even know the TV show, but that woman’s like, I don’t know, how much can a banana be $10?

I don’t have time for this.

Speaker: I mean, it’s one banana. Michael, what could it cost? $10. You’ve never actually set foot in a supermarket, have you? I don’t have time for this.

Simone Collins: But it’s like, this is on both ends of the spectrum, you know? Like, I don’t know how much could it be to travel around the, the world all the year, like $30,000.

Malcolm Collins: We did this because we have [00:05:00] friends who live off of welfare who are are close friends of ours and help, help take care of our kids partially.

And they get way more expensive stuff than we get. Like, like pretty much, much. Oh my god. Wherever we are buying something and they are buying something, what they buy is dramatically more expensive than what we buy. Like they buy. Oh yeah, no, we

Simone Collins: get the bargain basement, BJ’s diapers, and they, they get fricking pampers.

That’s like the, that’s the diapers. Like

Malcolm Collins: they have subscriptions to like multiple streaming services, which I just find like obscenely luxurious. Yeah. Like literally

Simone Collins: when we want to watch, when we wanted to watch K-Pop Demon Hunters on Netflix. We, we, we had to log into my dad’s account and then get him to like, call in and give us a code because he was maxed out on all his shares of shared accounts.

We have bought

Malcolm Collins: more cars since we have known them in like the two years we have known them than we have bought in our entire lives by like a factor of two.

I know, I know, I know,

Simone Collins: I know what you gonna do. But again, like that’s, that’s why we need to have these conversations about money [00:06:00] and figure out what we’re doing because again, like while they’re able to do that, also assistance that they receive from the government is not gonna last.

Like, this money is going to run out or. Technically it may not run out, but its purchasing power is going to erode so much that it is not going to matter anymore. So again, let’s get back to it. So credit card debt obviously really high and credit card debt is, is a key thing to look at because of the high interest rates where it sort of balloons to this point where basically you’re never gonna repay it.

You know, when your interest rates like 30%, you’re never gonna repay that debt. It’s just gonna be there with you forever. Mm-hmm. And people are using buy now pay later services like Klarna and Afterpay at record levels and increasingly they’re paying late, which is also telling one lending tree study.

Found that our survey found that 41% of buy now pay later users made a late payment in 2025, up from 34% the prior year. So we’re going from a third, 45%

Malcolm Collins: of buy now, pay later

Simone Collins: 41% made a late payment this year. Oh. And that was, oh my God.

Malcolm Collins: I remember back when, when I, like early in my [00:07:00] finances days when I was building up my credit.

Yeah. I used to have this like existential fear of ever missing a payment. I was, I was, I’ve always had

Simone Collins: automatic payments, always on every card you’ve, you’ve ever had. And I, I, I haven’t even until very recently, been able to stomach the idea of an automatic payment. I would just, every single week pay the card off.

‘cause I was like, I’m not waiting. How could I have No,

Malcolm Collins: but recently, I don’t know, automatic payment has gotten better or something like that. But I don’t, I I remember there was a couple cases in the past where I actually did miss payments and it freaked me out.

Oh my God.

Yeah. But this is years ago. I have a, a near perfect score right now.

Simone Collins: No. Yeah. Our scores I don’t think have ever been higher. Which is weird because I thought that when we, we completely paid off our mortgage. That, that no, that, that

Malcolm Collins: has dinged me. I’m, I, my score has gone down for a tie because we paid off our mortgage, which means we don’t have as many length of credit.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But that also, I mean, like you only need a really good credit score if you’re, you expect to take on a ton of debt,

Malcolm Collins: but get to the juicy stuff. Come on. Right.

Simone Collins: Anyway, so I’m just, I’m, I’m framing this a little bit. And, and, and I’m just pointing out that [00:08:00] people are beginning to view debt payoff and the concept of capitalism and even just faith and fiat currency with increasing skepticism, loan defaults and late payments are on the rise.

Democratic socialist political figures like Zoran, mom, Donny, are gaining serious traction. The betting odds have him at about 95 to 96% now. He’s even citing them in his speeches now ‘cause he is just like, I. Don’t ask me, ask the, ask the people putting money on this. And even our governments are spending like someone with zero expectation of, of paying off their debt.

So US Social Security is likely to falter in 2032 to 2034. That’s in less than 10 years. The UK is, is set to experience a social security crisis in the early 2030s as well. And this matters because something’s gotta give. And in the past this has involved various forms of debt. Jubilee, even though you say that this just doesn’t happen.

So what we’re gonna discuss and what I’ve, what I’ve researched is this situation with consumer debt today, this situation with government debt today, because I think people don’t really realize it or they need to be reminded [00:09:00] how unsustainable debt has been dealt with historically, how this could go poorly.

Because there are times when people tried to. Sweep it under the rug and it doesn’t go well. And then how this could go well and how individuals might prepare, like how maybe we should rethink our investing strategies based on all this. Okay. So yeah, this is, this is important. So US consumer debt is.

Really high. We’re at an all time high reaching 1.21 trillion in Q2. That’s, that’s just, it’s, it’s, it’s getting, people are using a lot of debt. Credit card interest rates are 22 to 24% this year. And that’s, that’s compared to around 15% last year. So not only do people have tons more debt than before, or a lot more debt than before, but like the interest rates are higher, meaning they’re way less likely to be able to pay it off.

Right. So we’re, we’re getting sort of, we’re reaching terminal velocity here. Delinquency rates for credit cards and other non in-housing debts have increased to levels well above the pre pandemic norms. In Q2 of this year, about 4.4% of all debt was in some phase [00:10:00] of delinquency, which just is quite high, you know, it seems like, oh, just 4%.

But like, that’s, that’s pretty high. And Klarna, that’s the buy now pay later company reported a 17% increase in consumer credit losses in Q1. That’s about $1.36 million. So. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s not good. Student loan delinquencies are also rising, and this is a form of debt in the United States that’s harder to evade using bankruptcy or well, sort of impossible to evade using bankruptcy.

And this is especially after, during the pandemic, there were a lot of like, sort of, we’ll just put this on pause things, and a lot of people thought that it was just gonna be canceled. But yeah no, it’s not gonna be canceled. In March 25, just 35% of federal student loan borrowers made their most recent payments on time.

Mm-hmm. So basically two thirds of people just didn’t make their student debt payments on time, and the rest were at risk or already in serious delin, delinquency or default. So, as much [00:11:00] as I, at first was like, well, this, it’s never been worse. This is, this is actually terrible. Do you think that we’re at an all time low point, or do you think that’s not the case?

Malcolm Collins: I think what do you mean an all time low point?

Simone Collins: Like, are we in more serious debt dodo today than we have been at any other point in our lives?

Malcolm Collins: I, I guess,

Simone Collins: no, it was actually worse before, around the time we graduated from college. So US consumer debt has, has reached nominal record highs in 25, but adjusted for economic growth.

It remains below pre 2008 financial crisis peaks. It’s even declined slightly in recent quarters. So, I, I can sort of show you like, and this also tracked with bankruptcy trends as well. I, I can show you the Google trends for bankruptcy. And it, it peaked around 2008 with that H housing crisis.

So we were actually. You know, as much as things are bad now they’re not at an all time bad. I think things are just a little bit different. Like buy now, pay later [00:12:00] services did not really exist then. People didn’t have the same kind of absurd absurdist to, yeah, these numbers

Malcolm Collins: don’t look high now at all.

Come on, Simone. This looks relatively normal.

Simone Collins: Ah,

If anything we’re at like a low point. The we’re Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting. Yeah. I mean, like this, I’m, I’m putting this here because I thought that we were at an all time bad point and, and this surprised me. So I do wanna point it out here, but I also at the same time think that the, the mental attitude toward debt combined with our collective pessimism around capitalism and the ability to get jobs at all at this point.

Still makes it different and more dangerous than it was in the past. Mm-hmm. And we’re gonna get into it, but in the past, every time there have been debt jubilees with consumer debt or what you could call consumer debt, like with average people, it hasn’t been because technically they’re in more debt and they can’t pay it back.

It’s because technically they’re showing extreme signs of unrest. [00:13:00] And that’s what I’m feeling. That’s the, that’s the sentiment and the, the zeitgeist right now. Okay. Okay. So, so that matters more.

Malcolm Collins: Explain to me how this has happened before, because right now I’m still thinking, okay, people took out dumb debt, but my thought is still, but companies own this tech debt, pension plans, own this debt.

Nobody’s going to, like, how can you convince them? How can you just take that money from them? Right. Like, well, and I mean, yeah.

Simone Collins: So another, another argument against my point in, in favor of yours is that GR in the US is. I don’t know how this, it’s incredibly soft on people. Basically, you have bad credit for 10 years and non-essential assets can be frozen, but you’re still, like, you can have a car.

You’re allowed to keep, like most of your stuff, like, not luxuries, but like, you actually don’t lose that much. And I think a lot of people, the attitude is just, oh, I’m just gonna declare bankruptcy. It’s fine. No bankruptcy.

Malcolm Collins: The United States actually has an, i, I would say, an incredibly generous and lenient policy [00:14:00] towards bankruptcies, which I think put us in a form of like pseudo communism already.

Yeah. It’s like communism. It’s like capitalism was like gutter rails in Yes. Like you have to keep. Like, like your life is like not, you’re not like an a, a a in debt, in debtor slave or whatever, like used to happen. Right. You know, you don’t even have to go like live in the slums if, if you declare bankruptcy, right?

Mm-hmm. Like, it’s just sort of like, okay, all of the really expensive stuff you own that isn’t part of your, like, daily life that you’re not able to hide well at that, or that you don’t hide well, yes. Yeah. Which, you know, how many people

Simone Collins: are declaring bankruptcy with like a ton of stuff in crypto, cold wallet somewhere.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Which is, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of messed up and that’s why, again, I, I’m pointing to the sentiment more than the actual numbers. And it, it, it still really worries me. But what worries me more is government inability to pay debt obligations. So, like I [00:15:00] said, US Social Security projected to be insolvent by late 2032.

That’s really freaking soon. UK State pensions are, it’s, it’s pay as you go and it’s generally funded from current taxes. So there are major concerns about the sustainability of the defined benefit, both private and public pension plans and, and the adequacy of future benefits. And, and remember, like what it, what the per capita GDP in the UK is worse than the, that of the poorest state in the us right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. For people who don’t know this, the per capita GDP of the uk is, is lower than, I think it’s Mississippi or Alabama. I don’t remember this one.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And, and so that’s, that’s scary. And other western countries also face sustainability crises in, in the early 2030s. So, you know, okay.

We’re maybe like five years away from starting to see. And bad things happen, but it’s, it’s getting there. Canada’s currently better positioned [00:16:00] actually due to earlier reforms ‘cause they had a, a crisis a little earlier on. But I don’t know. They’re also like, oh, you can’t get the medical care you want.

Why don’t you consider maid why don’t you just end your, end your pathetic existence? So, I don’t know. I feel like they solved it, but not in the way that people want by just being like, yeah, you should consider dying. And basically all systems are going to require some form of benefit reduction or tax increases or later retirement ages just to remain sustainable.

So we also just need to be aware of the fact that, okay, while you’re saying yes, Simone, the government’s or the US is already on this like quasi. Communist system where people just kind of fall back. You know, they declare bankruptcy and they go on government assistance and everything’s fine.

And it’s like, yeah, that’s fine right now, but it’s not gonna stay that way. So let’s, let’s just take a break and look at the past for a second and see how this has gone well and see how it’s gone Poorly. Historical [00:17:00] jubilees are, are interesting and they just didn’t know about them. But basically like people, rulers have repeatedly canceled debts without consent from creditors to end evade or calm rebellion, turmoil class, conflict revolution or societal breakdown.

Like any, any sort of form of like, oh my gosh, just will just like, make it disappear. And a ancient Mesopotamia, king, kings of Sumir, Babylon and, and neighboring mm-hmm. Areas regularly or periodically cancel debts for peasants and small landlords often at the start of their reigns. So you like come in as a new king, you’d be like, don’t you love me?

You don’t have to pay your debts anymore. Which doesn’t seem that dissimilar from like campaign promises made by politic. Well, if you’re a king or

Malcolm Collins: something like that, it’s a little different. Yeah. And there’s a lot of reasons you might do this that you wouldn’t if you were a democracy. So when you’re a king, you’re basically being like, what’s less likely to kill me?

You know, the bankers or the, the [00:18:00] citizens. Right. Especially if I’m about to do a paw grom or something like that. The bankers, right? Like they’re, they’re way less of an active danger to me. And especially if I’m canceling debts on like, big, rich people debts too. Right? So like, I, I think that there was less participation in debt marketplaces in that time where now if you cancel debts, it’s granny social, you, you know, retirement pension that you’re actually robbing rather than you know, some, some, you know, secluded minority, ultra wealthy population.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Who is like pretty easy to take out, you know? ‘cause you didn’t care about them. Yeah. So let’s jump forward though to, to ancient Greece. Where Solon, so Solon. Yeah. Solon. He’s like the early democracy guy, right? Yeah, I guess, yeah. So yeah, Solon was one of their pioneers of democracy. If I’m remembering correctly, I’m thinking back to this great courses lecture, but all I can really remember is the cadence and accent of the woman, the female [00:19:00] professor’s voice, and not what Solon actually is famous for, which is really annoying.

But yeah, so Solans CEC Thea in 594 BCE involved forgiving personal debts. He banned debt slavery, and he wiped out mortgage debts in Athens. And this was originally considered really controversial but it was eventually credited with preventing revolution and laying the foundations for Athenian democracy.

So credit eventually did resume as societal structure stabilized. And this is, I think one of the, the earlier examples of both. Democracy being either enabled or protected by this action. But also about how like, well, well this does initially lead to a crisis of like people being willing to, to give debt, which is essential for innovation and growth and capitalism in general.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like debt is very, very important to make democracies and society work.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. It basically like greed and opportunity will bring it back with [00:20:00] time. If, if basically the, the, the, the, the Jubilee is executed in the name of creating a stable society instead of just sweeping something under the rug.

And I wanna highlight this as a core. In my view separation point between the success cases and the failure cases, there are the failure cases where people do this out of greed or I just don’t wanna deal with it, or just give me the power or vote me in. Yeah. And it goes really sideways. And then there are the people who are like, guys, this is really gonna suck.

Like I, I, I don’t know how to tell you this, but we have to do it for the good of our future. It goes really well. If, if initially second. So

Malcolm Collins: tell me those cases, when, when has it worked out other than ancient Greece where again, it’s not really analogous ‘cause you’re not taking it from granny.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So the, I, I, this is Japan.

Japan,

Malcolm Collins: okay. Because Japan has

Simone Collins: actually done this a ton.

Malcolm Collins: Like oh, a lot. Like how many times has Japan done this? [00:21:00] Why doesn’t anyone lend money in Japan? Like I know, I

Simone Collins: know, I know. Because we, Japanese because they are a, a collectivist culture that takes care of their own. And they’re also, I, I would argue, they’re very future oriented. They’re very responsible and they do care about the collective good in a way that’s like very deep set and cohesive that you just don’t really see in more diverse, competitive and less cohesive cultures. So this first happened in medieval Japan during the comma, kura and achi periods.

The, the shogun issued edicts known as Toku se, like literally virtuous government or beha benevolent rule which effectively functioned as debt jubilee. They, they were decrees that canceled debts often in response to peasant uprising given by like, and this was typically driven not by like irresponsibility, but just bad stuff happening, like famines or epidemics or, or it’s in some cases exploitative lending [00:22:00] practices.

And this, this stated actually even earlier, back to the roots in like the NARA and high-end periods. It’s like seven, 710 to 1185, but it became more prominent in the 13th to 15th century. So again, this is going like way back and they did it a lot. The most famous early example is the inin to, let’s see, to of 1297 issued by the ka kog.

It anul all debts contracted before that year allowed vassals to reclaim pond lands without repaying the loans. And it canceled interest on older debts. And it was motivated by the need to bolster the mi military strength and basically protect Japan against Mongol invasions and to address widespread debt burdens among the Warrior class.

So this wasn’t like, oh, do it because I wanna become, you know, like I wanna be secure as the Shogun, or I wanna like take out this one group that I hate. It was like, oh man, the Mongols are coming and. Our warrior class. [00:23:00] Like they, they’ve lost their lands due to like bad debt.

Malcolm Collins: Due to bad debt.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like we need to protect our land.

So like, maybe we should rebuild a more stable society so we don’t get totally wiped out by the Mongols like everyone else is. Which is, is really, really interesting. So, so there were more but I’m gonna, I’m gonna skip forward to the one that I think is the most scary. That I’m like, Hmm, I could, I could see this kind of happening, especially given the trends that are happening in our government now.

Or like, not in our government, but like sort of the, the vibe shift taking place with regard to skepticism around capitalism and what politicians are getting popular for. So this is the one I’m like, Ooh. So this is world War, post World War II currency reform and debt resolution in Japan in 1946, after Japan’s defeat in World War ii, the government faced massive sovereign debt about 267% of national income by March, 1945.

And this

Malcolm Collins: was Japan?

Simone Collins: Japan, yeah. Who have their aing

Malcolm Collins: about this [00:24:00] is it happened in part due to demographic collapse.

Mm.

And so we’re looking at a scenario that’s very similar to what the rest of the globe might be going through in the near future.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and, and this is, you’re also gonna see this with the next one that happened more recently.

As, as part of what’s come on. Oh, what’s name? So, when

Malcolm Collins: Japan did this, did they do it for all kinds of debts? Like was No, hold on.

Simone Collins: No. This, this is, no, this is way scarier. This is way scarier than a, a, a debt jubilee. But oh Aon omics. You’re thinking about the abenomics reform. This is, this is different and this is more violent, so, right.

So we had massive sovereign debt. We have hyperinflation, we have economic ruin. You know, they got nuked like it, this was a really bad time for the Japanese people. Yeah. Bad time. They needed to rebuild and they basically had like no ability to do so because like nothing was worth anything.

Everything’s broken, everyone’s starving. Like this is horrible. So while this wasn’t explicitly a jubilee, the 1946 financial emergency measures effectively wiped out much of [00:25:00] the real value of debts through currency reform and wealth confiscation. So this isn’t just currency reform, it’s wealth confiscation, which is.

100% starting to bubble up in various state. Yeah. Non-national legislatures. It

Malcolm Collins: always goes really bad.

Simone Collins: Like, have you, are you familiar with the California bill that was proposed or that’s, that’s gonna be voted on this, this election? No. I can’t remember exactly what percentage of it it, it is, but it’s this bill that’s like, Hey, shall we just, you know, we have some financial troubles, shall we just like, have all billionaires in California pay 5% of their net worth?

And this includes just like the value of, of their stocks. Like, not even like their cash, right? Yeah. To, to help us pay off this debt. It’s just a one time thing and like. Like the guys on the All-In podcast who are all billionaires and like, I think one or two of them is still in California and most of them got out obviously.

And this is, this is effective like beginning 2026 if it’s passed. So, you know, they’re all [00:26:00] just gonna like, move out in a second if this gets passed. And, and they’re all like, well, why would people not vote to pass this? Like the vast majority of people are not billionaires and they don’t care. Yeah.

And you would like the billionaires to just handle a problem. But this is an example of legislation that is already being voted on right now in the United States of just like, Hey, why don’t we just confiscate the wealth of the, of, of wealthy people? And that again, this is part of what this Japanese measure was.

So here’s what exactly happened to Japan in 1946, on February 16th. In 1946, the government announced surprise measures. Surprise measures. Okay. This voted up. Surprise. So you don’t

Malcolm Collins: get a chance to leave first.

Simone Collins: Yeah. They, they, they didn’t get the warning that the all in podcasters got. Mm-hmm. All bank accounts were frozen.

All the Y notes were invalidated unless deposited. So if you’re holding a dollar, it doesn’t work anymore. And a new yen was introduced at a one-to-one exchange rate. Withdrawals were severely limited initially. 300 yen per household [00:27:00] head, plus 100 yen per member later. 100 yen per month per person.

Barely enough for, for survival. So just to be clear, again, your money doesn’t work anymore. All the cash you have is, is broken. Only the stuff you have in banks is still valid with now a different kind of yen. But you, you, you’re only allowed to withdraw. Yeah. A tiny amount, barely enough to survive. Okay.

And then, so this was followed because this is just the beginning by a massive one-time property tax in autumn of 1946 levying up to 90% on assets, including blocked deposits. So not only were your bank accounts frozen, you couldn’t even pay it because you couldn’t take out the money. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I mean, you had, you know, maybe you had a thousand yet in your account, now you can only take out, you know, 300 plus 100 per additional family member.

Oh, but by the way, we’re gonna tax 90% of it, you know, so,

Malcolm Collins: you know.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It doesn’t even, it doesn’t [00:28:00] even fano away. It’s, it’s not even decimated because it’s, it’s the inverse decimated. And this happened in 1946.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And people dunno how bad it was in Japan during this period. One of, one of the fun things I learned recently actually is, you know, a lot of people, they criticize the us They’re like, the US doesn’t have any of its own native foods.

You know, like, they’ll be like, french fries don’t count ‘cause they were invented here, like, burgers don’t count ‘cause they were invented here. And I’m like, well, they’ve definitely been modified since then. But I’d point out here, what a lot of people don’t know is if you are going by that definition of where a food was invented mm-hmm.

In which nation gets to own the food. Ramen is an American food because ramen is only popular in Japan because American aid efforts delivered it to Japan in large amounts and heavily subsidized it for a period. So many Japanese people during this period of intense poverty grew up eating tons of ramen.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And isn’t that funny that, like, even now ramen is kind of, it’s, it’s like, shorthand for. [00:29:00] Eating poor person food. Yeah. And, and what it was would eating ramen or whatever,

Malcolm Collins: which I’ve done, you know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve had the you know, two, two pencils for my chopsticks to eat Ramen. That doesn’t sound safe.

Well, I didn’t have other chopsticks at the time. Sweetheart why’re so special in the head that that’s what you’re gonna find.

Simone Collins: Oh boy. Yikes. Not to take our, our, our ramen deviation too far, guys, but, so there’s this, like I learned, I discovered when, when I traveled to Malcolm, to Seoul with Malcolm, this thing where they, it’s ramen, but macaroni and cheese and, and oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then you, it’s freaking the best thing in the world. And then Malcolm and I found this amazing Asian food store close to us where I could buy that stuff, but it’s really, it’s like $5 per packet. Whereas, you know, obviously you can get. 1620 ramen packets for like $5. Mm-hmm. And I discovered that, and I’m an idiot for not realizing this, but I’m [00:30:00] saying this ‘cause maybe you don’t realize this either, is you can just take, we buy bulk cheese powder, like the kind that you get in mac and cheese, but we just buy it in bulk.

Who’s your farms on Amazon? And you can just put that. In the ramen, like you drain most of the liquid out of it. I still put in the, the chicken or beef or whatever season it’s

Malcolm Collins: you go. If you

Simone Collins: could put mac and cheese, cheese on ramen. It’s a freaking amazing. Oh, ah. It’s like all I, it’s all I want right now.

So good. Anyway. Are you gonna have that tonight? I’m also craving popcorn though. I’m craving, I’m so hungry. I’m so, I’m, I’m always hungry anyway, whatever. But anyway. Right. So, right. You, your bank account is frozen. The money doesn’t work anymore. Just when you think it can’t get any worse because you’re on, on like this really limited budget as imposed by a government.

Now 90% of the money in your bank account evaporates. But this is also property tax. So like, you’re also like any of your assets, your property, your, you know, real estate, property, et cetera, is being taxed as well. These tax revenues are [00:31:00] being used to repay the government bonds and interest. So the government’s actually being good on that stuff, and then war related compensations.

‘cause Japan, you know, we nuch them and stuff, but now they’re still, you know, there are punitive damages that Japan is expected to pay to, to both companies and citizens we’re, we’re offset by these special taxes. And, and so that, well, you

Malcolm Collins: know what I like about this in Japan’s context, while I could sort of understand it, even if I was a rich person Yeah.

I’d be like, okay, my country sort of went all in on a war with another country. I, as a citizen of this country have to bear the cost of losing that war. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I feel

Simone Collins: like the, the Japanese people of all like, are more likely to collectively be like, yeah, we’re gonna have to take this for the team.

You know, like. This, this, this sucks. Also, like one thing that makes this a little bit worse is that one, by the time this happened, hyperinflation was already so bad that it had eroded the real value of many debts even before the reform. [00:32:00] And we’re talking like, prices rising, rising over 500% annually. Oh wow.

So I mean, like, to a certain extent, a lot of this was absurd anyway, but it’s still like scary and bad. And again, we’re, we’re likely to face hyperinflation before we also experience similar reforms to this. So I, I’m still like, I don’t know, you know, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. And this is a form of rhyming that I feel like I’m starting to, I’m, I’m, I’m.

I’m hearing the beginning of this little, this little couplet, this little limerick. I’m, I’m getting worried. So what happened was basically government debt drastically reduced ‘cause they actually got the funds from it from 446 billion yen in 1948 to 316 billion yen in 1950. And that’s this tamed to the hyperinflation and enabled post-war reconstruction.

It paved the way for the Japanese economic miracle of rapid growth in the fifties to eighties. This that would not have happened had this sacrifice me. Okay. The public did suffer massive wealth

Malcolm Collins: loss. This problem [00:33:00] doesn’t ha I love the, the racist black guy when he is like, this does not happen in Japan

Simone Collins: .

But like, actually that’s, that’s the thing. It’s, well, I mean, you can’t, well, but anyway, so, so what happened, right? So like one, we had this a massive economic boom. It was basically a form of forced wealth redistribution seen as a domestic default. But it, it provided lessons for a modern fiscal, fiscal policy and there was no significant inflation spike after these controls.

It eroded trust in financial institutions, but only temporarily because again, like when, when these kinds of things, what’s funny

Malcolm Collins: is as soon as people start making money again, the, the, the face in financial institutions seems to immediately return. No, it’s,

Simone Collins: that’s the thing. It’s like greed is. Greed is very powerful especially when couched in functional institutions and act.

This is a good time for us to switch to two examples in which this went [00:34:00] really poorly. When, when these, these mechanisms well do over buttons, more modern

Malcolm Collins: time. I thought Japanese we’re, we’re

Simone Collins: gonna, we’re gonna jump forward to that. We’re gonna, we’re, we’re gonna jump forward to omics after we look at how this doesn’t work well.

And, and essentially it’s when you respond, but into a bad system. And we don’t want that. So the classic examples are Zimbabwe and Venezuela. In both examples, governments saw drops in revenue caused by different things but they were politically unable to cut spending. Does that sound familiar? So they printed more money to pay for things, and that caused hyperinflation.

So in Venezuela there was a drop in income, but it was related to huge drops in, in their oil revenue. Their oil revenue dropped. Like basically that was, well, oil revenue was 95% of its foreign currency earnings. Yeah. And I think a lot of the younger audiences who listen to this podcast don’t realize that like, Venezuela used to be famous for being rich.

Yeah. Even on shows that [00:35:00] Malcolm and I grew up loving to watch like Parks and Rec there’s this whole arc in like this show where this Venezuelan delegation comes, like they become Sister Cities with some city in Venezuela and they’re all insanely rich and they all have like mansions and servants

Speaker 8: We are quite tired from our trip.

Could you have your servant collect our back? What did he call me? Tom, please. It’s a different culture. Okay?

Do we just, uh, select the woman we desire. I’ll take the large black one did you have some kind of a book with photos of the women available to us? If not, I will also take the sexy black one.

Simone Collins: And, and, and Malcolm had all these like rich Venezuelan classes, boarding schools and stuff

Malcolm Collins: growing up. Yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But they’re

Simone Collins: not. But that was the oil. That was the oil. And then, and then as soon as the oil prices crashed, especially post 2014, it wasn’t

Malcolm Collins: just the oil prices crashing. The core reason Venezuela became so poor is they stopped reinvesting in the refineries.

And so the refineries basically degraded because you need to be constantly [00:36:00] reinvesting in making sure that these oil refineries like work well. Yeah. And they basically cut all of that because you know, more money for the people, whatever, whatever, whatever. Yeah. And, and through corruption. And so all of the parts of the refineries broke.

So they’re producing of, I were corrected like 6% of the oil. They used to Oh my. Something like, gosh, like very little oil anymore. Like they’re, they’re basically working with. Because the refineries, they didn’t even build them. Right. Like the refineries were built by private companies. They just stole them.

I socialize them. Right. This is why you don’t wanna socialize something. Yeah. When you don’t like, actually own something yourself. And when you are not going to be, you know, immediately responsible for the cost of that. Like, you don’t need to go to the shareholders who are going to say, Hey, you haven’t been reinvesting in the refinery.

Mm-hmm. Those things begin to break down and everyone suffers as a result. Yeah. Which is why communism and socialism works so, so poorly at the time. And this is, this is when people are like, oh, well then just completely give like [00:37:00] ownership of everything. You know, make it completely regional. Make it completely whatever.

Right? Like, like, like, like completely. What, what are those? Anarcho, communists, right? Oh, anarcho Communism. Cannot effing run an oil refinery. No. Right. Anarch cannot run a semiconductor fab. No. And new communism. No, I’m sorry. It just can’t, it cannot run any of the things that your daily life relies on.

Mm-hmm. Right. American communism basically requires an agrarian society, which we do not have. And if we move to, we don’t want it. I don’t want it.

Simone Collins: You, you guys can do you, I mean, like, I’m okay with that on like a, a local homestead level, but that’s not what is necessary anyway, so like, yeah. Basically they’re like.

Okay, we have no more money, but we can’t stop the social spending. Let’s just print a ton of money. And that led to a super inflated prices, shortages of goods. It discouraged local production, it encouraged [00:38:00] black markets. It eroded business and investor confidence. Now look at Venezuela, not, not great, and then in Zimbabwe, basically following popular but economically disastrous land distribution.

And see, this is another example. It’s like you, you think like, oh, well then all wealth distribution is good per the earlier Japan example I gave. No, it’s sometimes really bad. So following the wealth distribution that took place in the Zimbabwe, food and export revenues collapsed and government the government UN was totally unwilling to, to reverse course or lose power.

It, it financed itself by printing currency and, and hyperinflation resulted. So I just wanna point out like there are good ways to do it and there are bad ways to do it. And the good way to do it is like everyone taking a hit for the betterment of the, of the country because they’re willing to fight on the same page.

But when you have a divided populace or government or just a selfish government, you don’t get that, so what happened with with Japan? Oh, actually, look, here’s one more example though. ‘cause it’s, it’s not just the Japanese. That, [00:39:00] that this, like, the one really ancient example of Yeah. By, by the way,

Malcolm Collins: this is, this is pretty interesting.

I was just looking at the erco communism, like how, how could, ‘cause I decided to ask rock, like, okay man, this for me, right? Like yeah, yeah. How could eneco communism run a fab? Okay. Basically the answer is you wouldn’t have any technology that required microchips in OCH communism because the, the problem is, is, is OCH communism cannot manage large investments like a fabric requires like 10 to $20 billion.

Yeah. And I know that people are like, we don’t need billionaires. Well, you need billionaires if you want cell phones. Okay. You need people who can risk and say, I want to risk 10 to $20 billion. Yeah. And you can’t get that by crowdfunding from people with, you know, savings of like a hundred thousand dollars each or something.

No,

Simone Collins: no, no. You just can’t.

Malcolm Collins: They wouldn’t even be able to get the expertise. It’s like you wouldn’t be able to get the funding for the years of labor and study to make it work. Yeah. Oh, and then they’re talking about even the global supply chain because, you know, you typically require you know, one part of [00:40:00] the fab is designed in one place.

This is that way typically work, and then it’s produced in another. You wouldn’t be able to get that either in n communism. No.

Simone Collins: No, definitely not. Absolutely not. But the, the other form of I would say like Japanese style, like this is social cohesion at work. This is people taking a hit for the betterment of their society.

Is, can you guess It’s a kind of biblical example. Did Jerusalem, I know this right? Yes. The Biblical Jubilee. Every 50 years debts were canceled. Slaves were set free, and lands were restored to their original owners. And this was practiced from around 1400 to 500 bc Debt forgiveness was granted to fellow Israelites, not anyone else.

Let’s be clear. Fellow Israelites.

Malcolm Collins: No. Hold on, hold on. This is actually a really good way to do debt. Yes. Yes. So I’ll explain why it’s good. Because this, this people might be surprised that I’ve been so against it up until now. I think this is a good way to do it. Yes. The reason why it’s a good way is because all debts that are made have this [00:41:00] priced into them.

Yeah. You know,

Simone Collins: it, you know, the, the, the way I look at it is this is the same way that anyone views giving a loan to like a family member. It is like, you know, I know Cousin Jed probably isn’t gonna pay it back or may ever pay it back. Like, great if he does, if he doesn’t. I’ve planned for this and I’m okay with it ‘cause he’s family.

That’s what this is. But,

Malcolm Collins: but this is, so the way you would do this, if you were gonna do this is you would say, starting this year, any debt, any debts made after this year mm-hmm. They get forgiven at the jubilee mark. Any debts from before this year do not get forgiven at the Jubilee mark because that way that can be priced into every debt, given that there’s going to be this jubilee.

Mm-hmm. But what people probably don’t consider was an, an existing system. Why this could be so dangerous and why you’d probably want staggered jubilees based on a random factor like some, right. Because if

Simone Collins: you’re like, you’re 49 outta 15. Yeah. Because

Malcolm Collins: if it’s year 49 outta 50, [00:42:00] nobody’s making any debts anymore.

Yeah. If society grinds to a halt, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You know? Yeah. You, you, you need to, you need to have a system for handling that. Maybe the way that you could handle that is, oh, oh, okay. Here’s how I handle it. Okay. I stagger the way that jubilee’s work. Mm-hmm. So the Jubilee I say we’re gonna have a jubilee in 50 years.

Any debt made from today until the day of the jubilee is wiped out at the ju Sorry. Any debt made from today to 25 years from today is wiped out at the Jubilee. But at that 25 year mark, then you get into the next Jubilee period where any debt made from that 25 year mark to the end of the Jubilee, it’s wiped out at the next 50 year jubilee.

Mm. So you never have a period where there is more than 25 years before the Jubilee on the debt associated with that period. Now of course, biblical thinkers wouldn’t have come up with this idea. But that could actually work really well and I think be a very effective thing for [00:43:00] society.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay.

I like that. Yeah. So then let’s, let’s jump back ahead as we wrap this up too. The Omics Japan functional Debt Jubilee, but it’s a little more complicated than that. Okay. And it really only works in Japan and doesn’t cause hyperinflation and stagnation because you have basically a high domestic savings rate.

Like you have people who are very responsible and they just save their money. And you have cultural and political stability, which, you know, like not everyone’s great at that. So most countries would risk much greater instability if they tried this approach. And this is another reason why I feel like, you know, techno feudalism.

And our future is more like group, like the Israelites and then the techno puritans and the whatevers like the, the racist white national, its return to land group, like everyone taking care of their own, [00:44:00] because that’s how these, like, these solutions work. But what basically happened in Japan is that they, they manage this enormous public debt over 250% of GDP.

That’s, that’s a lot of debt. Yeah. Through a quasi jubilee mechanism without formal cancellation of their debt. And, and the way that they work is, is they use debt buybacks as a way to prevent market collapse and to maintain low borrowing costs for the government. Most countries avoid this because of the risk of inflation devaluation and loss of an investor confidence, which can destabilize their economies.

But the problem basically is that Japan. Has their, their Bank of Japan, like their, their central bank has been buying large amounts of Japanese government, that debt. So they’re buying their own debt and they now own around 40% of their own debt. And by purchasing the government bonds and then holding them, they, they owe the debt to itself.[00:45:00]

Which is interesting. And, and this prevents market turmoil. So the, the bond market has experienced surges and yields basically interest rates due to their lack of private investor demand for long-term bonds. And government calls for more spending and then worries about the huge debt to GDP ratio.

Higher yields mean higher costs for the government to service its own debt. And the Bank of Japan stepped in to stabilize these yields and prevent borrowing costs from spiraling out of control because without intervention yields on government bonds would’ve probably kept rising. And then this would’ve forced the government to pay much more to finance its deficit, making a debt spiral where the interest payments would consume much more of the public budget, which is what people are really afraid of happening in the United States, for example.

So with an aging population, obviously, and it’s slow growing economy, what you were pointing out to with demographic labs, which is why everyone has to be watching out for this. Japan relies

Malcolm Collins: so I can understand this better. So they did not, for example, like pay off normal people debts. This was just government.

No, no,

Simone Collins: no, [00:46:00] no, no. This is, this is with regard to national debt, which is the much bigger risk here.

Malcolm Collins: And they didn’t, they did not default on national debt. They didn’t

Simone Collins: default it, they just bought it back. And then now they own a little less than half of all of their national debt to keep Okay. The interest rates low so that they can afford to, to keep it.

They, they didn’t cancel anything. And by

Malcolm Collins: the way, the US, the Democrats have, have, have talked about like actually canceling our national debt, which I know, I know. Really mad if that happens.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And but the, the weird thing about this and why I’m like, this is just so I don’t understand, like I can’t fully wrap my head around it, to be honest, because the interest paid on this debt by the government is fun, funneled back to the government like they’re paying themselves.

I think that’s true for a lot of this means the government is not really, it’s not burdened by the debt servicing costs in any meaningful economic way. Okay. And then, but, but what essentially they did was they, they prevented a con, a conventional debt crisis. But this also meant that Japan experienced very slow economic growth and [00:47:00] deflationary pressures for decades.

And that is the big risk of a policy like this is both inflation and stagnation, which I think is kind of it, it’s one of the reasons why you don’t really see Japan being anymore. Mm-hmm. This source of breakaway innovation and success that it used to be like when you and I were really little, Japan was like the place where like all the robots came from, you know, and it’s not that anymore.

And I think a lot of that is actually downstream of this policy which created stagnation. I mean, you, you sort of create like zombie companies from this because it also allowed companies to maintain, like, to continue existing, like it didn’t kill companies that were inefficient. Because they were still able to get cheat debt, get

Malcolm Collins: rid of company debt, it just got rid of government debt.

Simone Collins: Well, but it still made interest rates low.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, so because they had really low interest rates. Yeah. So they

Simone Collins: were able to continue servicing their debt and continue to survive instead of just like die when they probably should have. And that’s sort of where this stagnation comes in through. But, so let’s just say that like what [00:48:00] we can expect and what I keep talking about and what you, you agree with too is that as the 2030s hit, and as countries, at least like the United States that can kind of get away with this, I have to contend with it.

They’re not going to like, from the way that politicians get voted into office, no one’s gonna get voted into office saying, I’m going to end your social security benefits, even though social security’s gonna go insolvent. Right? Like no one is getting voted into office for that. Like in France, when it was like proposed that we raised the retirement age, even young people came out and were like, I don’t support it.

Which is crazy. So like obviously that’s gonna not happen. So what’s gonna happen is governments are just gonna print more money. Just like Zimbabwe, Venezuela you know, like a lot of these countries and, and we’re gonna see inflation. So what we should avoid is basically any sector that, I mean, one like is subject to inflation, but then in terms of like, I think maybe more people declaring bankruptcy in the future just ‘cause they’re like, I can and people are starting to [00:49:00] take on more unsustainable debt.

People should just avoid any sector that relies on consumer debt. Like, so financial services, consumer finance, and FinTech, consumer discretionary. Because obviously like once you do declare bankruptcy and you can’t like.

Malcolm Collins: Well, my, my take on this is we’re not at a uniquely high period of debt right now.

Yeah. Isn’t that interesting? Just for bankruptcy. Yeah. Outside of government debt, which is uniquely high

but the government wouldn’t default on the debt because that’s gonna like damage all the old people who Yeah. For the one to control who gets elected and everything like that. Yeah.

Yeah. So I see that as being fairly unlikely unless some like radical socialist gets into power. Mm-hmm. And then if it’s on personal debt, I think a debt jubilee in the United States is virtually impossible.

Simone Collins: I feel like we almost have an ongoing debt jubilee just because we have bankruptcy as long as bankruptcy exists.

Because what happened when they were actual regular de Jubilee is like, nah, man, you were a slave. Can’t pay your debts, you’re a [00:50:00] slave. But no, it’s more, it’s more now that I’m like, after doing all this research and realizing, oh, actually this probably isn’t gonna happen on a consumer level, we have to be concerned about the government level.

What we need to avoid is, is stuff that exposes you to government stuff. So, I mean, okay, assuming the government doesn’t go crazy or whatever, the safest investments are the defense sector companies with minimal debt exposure and strong cash flow and internal inter international funds that are less like, yeah.

Although I honestly, I wouldn’t even do international. ‘cause I, I wouldn’t, right now

Malcolm Collins: I’m, I I kind

Simone Collins: of also though I like the Ron Swanson approach. Just bury your gold. Yes. And also crypto that might make gold or, or did I, what, what, who would, he was like, I have gold buried all over my, or do I? But that’s, I think everyone’s gonna be like, I, I believe in crypto or do I but like.

Bitcoin is at an all time high. I mean, Ethereum is kind of all over the place, but it’s, it’s also now like close to, its all time high.

As you can probably tell this episode was [00:51:00] recorded ages ago because it’s Christmas and obviously we’re not recording episodes around Christmas because that would be insane, although it was really fun to be going viral right now.

What a lot of people are missing about the viral clip is it was recorded back when Simone was pregnant, so ages ago. And as soon as she stepped on that question and that line of reasoning, I was thinking, how do I argue that she’s wrong?

In a way that isn’t so completely destroying of her position that the clip doesn’t get aired. And, and frankly, I thought I had failed. I thought, there’s no way she’s gonna air this. I just too concretely debunked the position she had, , but apparently not. , So I am very fortunate for that, but that’s why my arguments come off as somewhat nerfed.

Simone Collins: Do you wanna sell our Ethereum? Did we sell, we we have some Ethereum.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah,

Simone Collins: but what, what are you asking?

Malcolm Collins: I’m asking if you think we should sell it.

Simone Collins: Oh, should we sell it?

Maybe the last time we sold it all, we got a, we got a car just from like, [00:52:00] yeah. I don’t know. Profit. Maybe when we need the, the big sprinter van for our kids, we should do

Malcolm Collins: an inventory of what crypto we have and where in the near future

Simone Collins: stresses me out. I

Malcolm Collins: know

Simone Collins: I hate money. But yeah, I mean, I, I kind of, I think when it comes to like the Japanese approach of like, we’re now like, especially if we’re coming to this like capitalism is bad, let’s redistribute wealth.

Crypto is gonna be one of the really big things of like the way that people will, because it’s what the government is gonna have a harder time taking. Yeah. Be like, I don’t know, I lost it.

And there’s gonna be a lot of lost crypto around the time well think about

Malcolm Collins: crypto is you can build it into the blockchain that a, a debt mechanism works.

So you’re not really reliant on laws or the governments to ensure that somebody pays back their debt. The, the blockchain itself can make them pay back their debt.

Simone Collins: You could, but I’m just, I’m just referring to like, what are ways, aside from [00:53:00] literally burying gold in your yard. I mean gold is at all time highs too now.

Where you could more effectively shield your money from governments that are like. Money, please.

Speaker 3: Money, please, money. Please.

Simone Collins: And I, one worries about these things. Man, I’m just like going hard on parks and Rec. Yeah. This, this episode. Yeah. Basically the TLDR is yeah. Debt, consumer debt right now is actually not as bad as I thought.

Malcolm is kind of right. We basically debt jubilee’s, at least in the United States already because we have bankruptcy. And bankruptcy is just to get out of jail. Free card right now. But where things are unsustainable I is when it comes to social programs in the 2030s, and this isn’t even factoring in dependency ratio cascades, when we have more old people and like net tax drains and we have net tax contributors in countries with demographic collapse, just making this so much worse.

So things are gonna get weird. We are likely to face hyperinflation, we’re likely to face like a crisis of [00:54:00] capitalism and people turning to socialism and who knows if AI’s gonna be sufficient to help us through all that. Mm-hmm. And, and so we need to expect that. And just, just be ready for it.

And maybe the more self-sufficient you are, the better because basically only cohesive societies where everyone’s in to go on, like, things together, like in Japan or like in Israel, probably that’s, they’ll be fine. America, like we’re not, we’re not known for our

Malcolm Collins: through social cohesion. No, I think it would go over terrible.

I think we’re Venezuela in a few years if we do some sort of debt jubilee here.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So unfortunately I very much, I would love if California passes that law and the, the bunch of tech billionaires move, you know, I mean, I,

Simone Collins: I kind of don’t know how they couldn’t pass that law. Like how are people not gonna vote for that?

You know, so

Malcolm Collins: anyway,

Simone Collins: I’m

Malcolm Collins: watching it closely. It’s, it reminds me of that Freedom Tunes one where it’s like, you, you don’t have a million dollars. You don’t have a hundred million dollars. Like, why do you care? [00:55:00] Why do you care? And he’s like, well, it’ll crash the economy if we do. And they’re like, you don’t have a hundred.

Do you hear? This guy thinks he has a hundred million dollars. My God, I just, yeah. I, anyway,

Speaker 11: My concern is that forcing the best for four week stockholders to sell off 25% of their earning shares would completely crash the market forever.

Speaker 12: You don’t count a hundred million, bro. You don’t know. You don’t got a hundred million. No, you don’t. Don’t count. Hundred million.

Speaker 11: Okay. The ba, the best case scenario. Best case it raises enough to fudge the government for less than three days.

Malcolm Collins: I love you. He’s like, economists

say this is a bad idea. And then they’re like, do those economists have a hundred million dollars? Oh my God.

Simone Collins: We’re, we’re all doomed. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but money’s great.

Malcolm Collins: All love you to decimal.

Simone Collins: Love you too. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I usually only listen to podcasts except for Malcolm [00:56:00] and Simone, but I, I always watch that. But we put a lot of effort into the visuals for the podcast, so I Why

Simone Collins: you do, stop giving me credit. Credit belongs where credit is due.

Malcolm Collins: Lighting a bit to see if that,

Simone Collins: there

Malcolm Collins: it is.

Simone Collins: Where was it?

Malcolm Collins: It was behind something not far to where I normally put it

and for people who ask about camera quality, the camera that I’m plugging in, the one that we like more is actually like half the price of the other camera. It is just so hard to find,

but it’s food. Thank you.

It is important to eat. . And I think I look good now. Right?

Simone Collins: You look gorgeous. You just look better by the day. And then, oh my gosh, when your hair turns white, I don’t know what I’m

Malcolm Collins: gonna do with myself. It the other way for people who don’t [00:57:00] know my family I don’t know why our audience would know this, but a, a trait that we have is our hair turns like actually white.

It becomes silver fox. Oh my gosh. And,

and it doesn’t decrease in volume or anything. Yeah, it’s, it just gets very voluminous white hair, which I already have quite a bit of that. You just, you know, it gets drowned out on my other hair.

Simone Collins: There’s more, there’s more than before, but I mean, you’re not anywhere close to going all white.

You got such a long way to go, so I have a lot to look forward to.

Malcolm Collins: What you like that look the, all the, all white look. It’s so

Simone Collins: pretty. I wish I had all white hair. I’m never like my, my family never really goes. White, I think. I don’t know. I don’t know. We’ll see. Anyway, anyway, can just, anyway. How did people respond to the episode today?

They liked it. What I found to be really comforting was there, you know, a lot of married couples listen to our podcast. Yeah. And a lot of women chimed in to say, yeah, early in my wife days, I too was sassy or dismissive or, you know, openly [00:58:00] made fun of my husband in public. And then I saw that it really hurt him and I stopped and I’m glad.

And then there were also husbands who were like, yeah, my wife used to do this. And I pushed through. And after a lot of talking about it, it finally worked. So like, I think a lot of the functional couples who listen to this podcast. Have been in this position.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: And I think, you know, we’re, we’re all just being raised in this culture where a lot of really normal or, or sorry, toxic things are normalized.

And it’s encouraging to know that people, when they see how logically this really hurts others is they, they get over it and they’re able to push about

Malcolm Collins: wives sassing their husbands. And I think only by watching this podcast can you escape the nightmare that you will live in if you don’t watch this podcast aren’t exposed to this.

‘cause then you get normal celebrity culture.

Simone Collins: Well, there was this one other anecdote that someone posted I don’t know if they were married or not. That I thought was really a, a great, I guess, analogy or just way to, to frame this differently too for [00:59:00] women that I, I might. Present which is, he was talking about playing a ga like Fortnite or some kind of like first person shooter group game with his little brother.

And he kept calling him like just trash talking him in the chat, just like calling him stupid and stuff. And his brother at one point, you know, wrote back and all kept, I’m not stupid, like in a really defensive way. And he realized that like this, this actually hurt his brother’s feelings. And he, he never, never would’ve called his brother stupid if he actually thought his brother was stupid.

You know, like he, he didn’t, he didn’t believe what he was saying in any way. And he didn’t think that his brother would’ve interpreted this as a real accusation or something offensive. But he did. And I think what’s going on with this sassy woman, or like belittling husbands in public thing is women think that they’re trash talking and being funny and witty and that it doesn’t hurt their husbands.

And they don’t realize [01:00:00] that in many cases their husbands are being wounded just like this little brother. And that they’re really hurting them. And that’s what one of the wives pointed out too. Like she used to do it in public and then she, she like saw how her husband reacted and that it just made him really sad and she felt really bad about it, so she stopped.

And, and that’s, yeah. So anyway, the comments were, were good, really. I mean, of course then, you know, we had all the men who were like, well this is, you know, it started ‘cause men stopped backhanding their wives. But like, that’s, those are very boring, boring comments. I, I love

Malcolm Collins: just the shock, shock, shock, shock dog.

You know, no one person

Simone Collins: pointed out since Alec Baldwin was got a, got his hat tip in, in that episode that the year that he accidentally shot someone on, on the production crew, on, on set of on a film set that, that was kind of the viral Halloween costume that someone came to a party dressed as Alec Baldwin with a.

A prop gun. Oh my God. And like the new version of that costume this year [01:01:00] is is Hassan and Kaya, which that’s just, that, that is the costume of the year. Maybe, maybe Twitch and ou another, another great themed costume. So

Malcolm Collins: yeah. That’s, that’s wild. And another funny thing about the whole somebody’s pointing out that like, it’s so weird that we live in a society where you have Hassan who is like this incredibly rich Nepo baby who lives this incredibly wealthy lifestyle, who’s like chief socialist of like the internet.

And then you have Asma Gold who is like chief capitalist of the internet,

Simone Collins: who grew up. He’s not even like a capitalist. No. He really supports social programs. That’s my favorite thing about him. He’s like, listen, like. I had this period where I was on the dole and I just like sat at home and played video games all day.

And now I gladly pay my taxes to support a new generation of men to sit at home and play video games all day. Like he pays it forward. And that is my, that is the best take on, on that that I’ve ever heard. I love it

Malcolm Collins: that that’s actually how he lived that lifestyle was just living [01:02:00] on welfare.

Simone Collins: Yeah. He, like, he owns it.

He knows exactly what he did on welfare. He knows where his welfare checks go. Like, I, I really don’t like the takes on welfare of like, well, these people are bettering themselves, these people are saving the world while receiving their welfare checks. Like, no, like that, that doesn’t, that’s very disingenuous as, and that’s just another great example of why and how Asman Gold is just, he is so beloved now because he’s so authentic and he says it like it is and he doesn’t sugarcoat anything.

And he has fun. So, yeah. But enough glazing asthma. Gold.

Malcolm Collins: Shall we get into the podcast?

Yeah, we can get into the podcast. I love you. Love you, love you.

All right. Lemme get it off. Very

excited for this one because you, you prepped me for it this morning and I was like, oh, that’s actually an interesting take.

I thought it was gonna be boring, so I put it off forever.

Simone Collins: Oh. I mean, this is different from, it is part of my money series. This is different from the what is Money one, which I’m still outlining. But I still think it’s interesting and I still think we need to talk about it, so, and I still think you’ll find some parts of it that are [01:03:00] interesting.

Oh, yeah. ‘cause yeah. You wanted to know about the Japan stuff and we, the Japan

Malcolm Collins: stuff. Yeah. I mean, I like when I heard you talking about this, I was like, oh, this is basic information I need to know for like informational literacy.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And I, I mean, I wanna hear what your takeaways are from it too, because this matters from an investing standpoint.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: All right.

Speaker 13: Tell me about the presents. Guys tell me. Oh, wife said it comes a tower and a little lifeboat. I think. Map, I don’t know. And Iny, I think you got Titan. That is a really cool present.

Speaker 16: There’s the same top, there’s, there’s the dinosaur in there and there’s the beagle, the same beagle. There’s the whole culture. It’s the same little culture like this. There’s dinosaurs just being detected. You sound really excited. Yeah, we got some Mandarins [01:04:00] classic books. More side than horse. And what about you?

Speaker 13: You got a panda bear? Well.