Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

Today on Based Camp, we dip our toes into the Aztec civilization through a review of Inga Clendinnen’s Aztecs: An Interpretation by John Psmith of Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf, exploring how their religion, cosmology, and social structures centered on ritual human sacrifice at an industrial scale. The review examines their gods, warrior culture, child-rearing practices, and the inversion of pleasure-seeking societies into ones obsessed with pain and cosmic dread.

We quickly came to understand why this society felt like Lovecraftian horror made real, how ideas and religion shaped every aspect of life, and why neighboring groups allied with the Spanish against them. The conversation contrasts Aztec culture with other historical civilizations and reflects on the role of moral frameworks in preventing such extremes.

We heartily recommend reading John Psmith’s full review (their entire substack is great, especially for parents and people uniquely interested in culture). Take a moment to thank your lucky stars that YOU WEREN’T BORN IN MEXICO AT THE HEIGHT OF THE AZTEC EMPIRE.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins:it almost reminds me of the urban monoculture, which is an entire society obsessed with pleasure. They’re an inversion of that. How much pain can you assert within your own life and those

Simone Collins:around you? Bouquets of flowers were to be sniffed only at the outer edges, the swooning sweetness at the center belonged

Malcolm Collins:not to that. Even allowed to be happier experience any pleasure not even smelling a flower.

Simone Collins:Not even smelling a bouquet of freaking flowers. the will of tea was also made manifest in the brutal public torture and execution of a warrior or priest who stumbled. Quote, his warrior regalia stripped from him, his scalp locked shorn, his heart excised, his empty body broken into its parts and dispersed to be eaten to eaten. Okay. I didn’t get to them.

Malcolm Collins:The what I this is just like your well, one of your your friends accidentally stumbles in a parade ceremony or something. Mhmm. And it’s not like a, well, he’s in a better place. It’s like, well, of course, we had to tear him apart and eat him.

Simone Collins:human sacrifice was not an occasional or incidental religious custom like an extra spicy church service for the people who only show up on Christmas or Easter. No. The mass butchery of wailing, pleading captives of both sexes and all ages was the core activity around which their entire civilization and society revolved. Their art, their music, their poetry, their approach to warfare, their entire economic system,

Malcolm Collins:Wait. Every day they had to make personal sacrifices of blood? Really feel like the worshipers of one of the dark gods from HP Lovecraft He nails it. Somehow achieved civilizational scale.

Simone Collins:Hello, Malcolm. I am excited to be speaking with you today because I would like to talk about my favorite [bleep], my favorite is extinguishment of of a people because I’m done.

Malcolm Collins:We shouldn’t be talking about favorite [bleep].

Simone Collins:That’s that’s a You know what?

Speaker 4:Your space king drove my race to near extinction once. Okay. Awesome.

Simone Collins:For real. And I think that you’re going to agree with me after you read. And we’re not so there’s this book that was that was created called Aztecs, an interpretation by Inga Klendin clan Klendinen from Cambridge University Press published in 1991. This is not new news, but it’s new news to me because And it’s

Malcolm Collins:not disputed news, I would tell you.

Simone Collins:It’s not.

Malcolm Collins:No. No. No. Major historical scholar disputes how evil the Aztecs were.

Simone Collins:Yeah. That that is because, yeah, that there is abundant evidence. They were not, like, shy about how they went about things and why they did them and all these things. But I genuinely did not know how bad it was, and the only reason I know now is that John Smith of mister and missus Smith’s bookshelf, which is one of my favorite substacks, wrote a book review about this 1991 book because of Why are you reading

Malcolm Collins:book reviews? Is this something you do recreationally?

Simone Collins:So there is this couple. Okay? They go on Substack by mister and missus Smith, but p p s m I t h. So, like, the the p is silent. Okay? They’re they write

Malcolm Collins:So it’s like a gay version of Smith?

Simone Collins:I don’t know. Okay. But here’s the thing, is they they have a bunch of kids, like a lot of kids, and they’re pretty, like, based about the way that they raise them. Okay. They have this, like, weird idyllic life where the way it seems from their substack is they just sit around with their kids and just read a whole bunch of intellectual books and talk about them. And to me, it’s like this idyllic cozy life of, like, what you would do with unlimited money. and it

Malcolm Collins:sounds fun. Do we do with our unlimited cozy life?

Simone Collins:Well, we talk about low culture, and perhaps that is a lot more fun. I do So put bikers

Malcolm Collins:girls and VTubers and are lollies okay?

Simone Collins:The the high the highbrow version of our aspirational life is mister and miss Smith, and I love their subs deck. And so here I am sitting in the lobby of of our fertility clinic waiting for post what’s the word? Post miscarriage blood work with the documentary team filming me in my moment of of humiliation. And I decide to read this because I’m like, this will distract me. Oh, look. A new book review. This will this will cheer me up. I love reading their book reviews. They’re always inspiring and intellectual. And then I just come away, like, just shook. Just totally shook. So I’m just gonna I’m just gonna start reading, and you’re gonna tell me just how good you feel about these people having left the the planet, that they’re gone, that there may be some diaspora left, but they’ve been conquered fully by the Spanish and, more importantly, by just infectious disease, which is I’ve never been

Malcolm Collins:so No. No. The Aztecs were more conquered by the Spanish than infectious disease.

Simone Collins:Oh, no. They were more conquered by infectious disease.

Malcolm Collins:Oh, really? Continue.

Speaker 6:So I double checked my memory on this, and Simone is wrong on this one. the Aztecs were, one, if you’re gonna say what was the number one thing that led to their downfall, it was all of the groups that hated them and ended up supporting the Spanish, then the Spanish, and a third disease. Disease did come at the wrong time for them and made their military forces weaker, but it wasn’t the instrumental piece of their downfall as it was for many other native groups.

Octavian Collins:Mhmm.

Simone Collins:Yeah. And when when just like yeah. Anyway, it was more of that plus, like, they were already kind of hoisted by their own petard as well.

Malcolm Collins:Because it turns out everyone around them, Inga hated them. For real. Like, the Spanish came in, and they were like, so we’re gonna, like, eradicate your ruling dynasty. And people were like, oh, I am so about that. I am so about that. Don’t let me stop you, sir. Don’t let me what happened on my own troops here? Would you like them as well?

Simone Collins:Yeah. For real, and you’re gonna understand why. So I’m just okay. Here we go. Right? Here he writes. Mister Pismith writes, when Hernan Cortes landed in the new world, the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan was one of the greatest cities anywhere on Earth. It had more than twice the population of civil what? Sevi Seviye? Seviye. Whatever.

Malcolm Collins:Stop pronouncing foreign words correctly, Spiro.

Simone Collins:I’m so I I didn’t

Malcolm Collins:do it. Shot on these disgusting un American words.

Simone Collins:People don’t know you’re talking about. I didn’t do it right. Anyway, and was, as my grade school history textbooks, always nervously assured me, cleaner, more orderly, more magnificent than any contemporarious European city. Its ochre towers and pyramids rose like a dream from the shimmering waters of Lake Texaco Texcoco. Unlike the

Malcolm Collins:organic Coco. Tex

Simone Collins:is was this an a lake you know about?

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. I went there all the time as a I’ve been to the ruins multiple times. Had to study them as a kid because my family always made me study any civilization that we were going to go see. This is so true.

Simone Collins:Okay. Fine. Texacoaco. Unlike the organic maze of alleyways that characterized most Spanish cities, Tenochtitlan’s public gardens and temple districts and the grand professional processional ways were a product of the sort of high modernist urban planning that Europe wouldn’t really see until Hussmann’s Paris in the nineteenth century. The walls of the city shone with lime and were decorated with paintings, so it glimmered like a bobble in the Mexican sun. The soldiers who followed Cortes on on one of them on one hand described it as so ethereal, it seemed the three causeways joining it to the mainland were anchors without which it might float away. But on the other hand, we’re overawed by the towering height and hallucinatory bulk of the Great Pyramid topped with its twin temples of and in addition to being an architectural miracle, the city and empire, which fed it, were also an economic and social miracle. The Valley Of Mexico had a dangerously irregular growing season, lacks crucial minerals, and is frequently subject to earthquakes, volcanoes, drought, and destructive floods. Despite such circumstances hostile to any sort of economic surplus or capital accumulation, the Aztecs, or more properly as they called themselves, the Mexica, managed to create and maintain a complex social order, which astonished the Spaniards with its state run economic guilds, fine gradations of social hierarchy, and carefully maintain mannered etiquette. The questions people usually ask given all this are, how did the Spaniards win, and how did they win so quickly and decisively? I understand the allure of these questions and why they’ve captured the imaginations of generations of historians and anthropologists. They are reasonable questions. But after reading Inge Klement’s book, I find I no longer have any interest in these questions because all of my thought is bent toward another one. Why didn’t god destroy the Aztec sooner? Yes. Okay. He writes, in fairness, he did destroy them pretty quickly. The ancestors of the Mexico wandered into the fertile basin that was to become their empire sometime in the late twelve hundreds or early thirteen hundreds. They found it already settled with a mosaic of mostly New Twel speaking city states and spent a few decades as mercenaries or tributaries for various stronger powers. One of those petty wars went badly, and they finally settled down as bedraggled refugees on the muck covered islands that were to be the site of their future glory. Within a hundred years, they were the most powerful city in the valley. Fifty years after that, they were unquestioned hegemon and begin to launch wars of imperial expansion towards the Pacific And Caribbean Coasts. Another fifty years of imperial glory, and then they were destroyed utterly. or as Kleneman puts it, a man whose grandfather had fought as a hireling in another city’s wars in the Mexica’s early days in the valley would himself have seen the glory of their achieved empire, and his son watch its destruction. None of this would have come as a surprise to the Mexica. Their entire cosmology revolved around the absolute precarity of the world as they believed that all earthly things were balanced on a knife’s edge between a ravenous abyssal powers on one side and the emptiness of the void on the other. Every fifty two years, the entire nation would breathlessly waited breathlessly at the ceremony of the new fire to see whether the world would continue or not. On a lonely hill outside the city, senior priests feverishly worked a hand drill upon the naked breast of a bound captive. If the god sent fire, it meant the world was saved and the victim’s chest was immediately torn open so that the flame could be fed with his heart in flesh bubbling and growing within the chest cavity to the relieved cheers of the populace before being carried to a major temples of the city. Everybody knew that if the fire did not come, the world would slip into nothingness and stop existing. Before we are tempted to roll our eyes at this and ask how suspenseful it really could have been, remember that they only got to do it three or four times between the foundation of their empire and its extinction. The empire was not gentle. Few empires are. But even by the sad standards of human history, the Mexico were extreme. I’m not speaking here about their legendary creative and intensive ways of humiliating subject peoples. I’m speaking about the human I’m speaking about human sacrifices. No. Those were not exaggerated by the colonizers as some revisionist history historians would have you believe. If anything, the Spaniards lacked the conceptual framework to fully comprehend the industrial scale ever so civilized and bureaucratic evil of the Mexica. And so they had inadvertently downplayed it. The reality, as Klandinin brilliantly documents, is that human sacrifice was not an occasional or incidental religious custom for the Mexica, like an extra spicy church service for the people who only show up on Christmas or Easter. No. The mass butchery of wailing, pleading captives of both sexes and all ages was the core activity around which their entire civilization and society revolved. Their art, their music, their poetry, their approach to warfare, their entire economic system, the kaleidoscopic array of holidays and festivals were all singularly dedicated to the killing often preceded by inventive torture of helpless human beings, and everybody had their role to play. He quotes from the book, the killings were not remote top of the pyramid affairs. If only high priests and rulers killed, they carried out most of their butcher’s work in plain air, not only in the main temple precinct, but in the neighborhood temples and on the streets. The people were implicated in the care and preparation of the victims, their delivery to the place of death, and in the elaborate processing of the bodies, the dismemberment and distribution of the heads and limbs, flesh and blood, inflamed skins. On high occasions, warriors carrying the gourds of human blood or wearing the dripping skins of their captives ran through the streets to be ceremoniously welcomed into the dwellings, the flesh of their victims seethed in domestic cooking pots. The human thigh bones scraped and dried, were set up in the courtyards of households, and all this among people notable for precisely ordered polity, a grave formality of manner, and developed regard for beauty. The scale of it and now mister Piston

Malcolm Collins:on here, by the way. If you’re if you wanna see a good, movie that I think does a good job to pay have you seen Apocalypto?

Simone Collins:I I haven’t because I know I can’t stomach it.

Malcolm Collins:Have you seen it? Yes. It’s a great movie. It did a very good I mean, Mel Gibson won, obviously, a great director.

Simone Collins:You yeah. Yeah. Two words. That’s all you really need.

Speaker 16:And the crazy thing about Apocalypto is that it’s not even about the Aztecs. It’s about the significantly less violent and less horrific Mayans, and it’s still a level of horror in a civilization, a level of dehumanization of outsiders that is almost unfathomable.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Mel Gibson. But it’s it’s it does a good job of showing because when you listen to the, retellings of this city. Right? Mhmm. Mhmm. They paint it as this beautiful pristine place in a modern context because they’re being revisionist historians. Mhmm. And it prevents you from, I think, conceptualizing what it was really like. Mhmm. And what apocalypto does is it shows it, but what you see is, no. It would have looked the most closer to what we today would think of as a third world country with butchery happening on every other block. Mhmm. And a cast of elite who are both, like, don’t care. Like, there’s, like, the fat kid who’s, like, got his face painted and everything and is giggling at what’s happening. And, like, the the the there is an elite cast within this city, but the vast majority of people within the city are living if you’re talking about a city of that size in that period without antibiotics, without proper sanitation, that are living lives of just abject horror. And that was the majority of even the safe people was in an Aztec society.

Simone Collins:Oh, and you’ll see pretty soon that, like, even the high priests. Like, no one was

Malcolm Collins:Well, sorry. I get my Aztecs confused with my Mayans.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Mayans were also pretty messed up.

Malcolm Collins:Was it the Aztecs who took stingray hooks and tied them to a string and then pulled them through their foreskin, or was that the Mayans?

Simone Collins:Why not both? I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins:Why not? But no. I mean, that’s all think a lot of these people were pretty effing evil. So version of

Simone Collins:this I think what’s notable about this too, because, you know, we had we had an episode where I kind of crashed out on Native American practices. Right? And the one of the big points that I wanted to make in that episode is, look. Every uncivilized society is likely to go through this. The the scary thing about being human is that when you have humans without god, what we can call pre pre Adamite humans, right, who have not yet learned judgment, like moral judgment between that which is good and evil themselves and and taken personal responsibility for it, you can have people capable of unspeakable cruelty because you have an like, we are animals, but we’re so freaking smart. And we’re also capable of much higher and more elaborate than most mammals levels of suffering because of that intelligence. So it’s this this double edged terror sword of capability of an inflicting pain in very elaborate ways and a capability of feeling it in very elaborate ways, which is horrific. And then so once you I I I wanted to like, at the time, I was like, well, once you put civilization on top of that, maybe it’s not just about being pre or post Adamite. Like, once there’s civilization in general, that doesn’t happen anymore. But I’m realizing with this this tale of the Aztecs that it is not civilization that makes you a human. It is a moral judgment. It is it is god. Well, no. But hold on.

Malcolm Collins:I wanna I wanna go further than this because you you talk about this, and you can talk about this in a Christian context or in a Jewish context or whatever. But if you go to, you know, ancient Europe or ancient China or ancient Japan, you find some horrifying civilization. Absolutely. If if we’re going to ancient Europe, right, and and you’re looking like, if actually, if I’m looking at all of these regions for, like, the absolutely most evil civilizations, the two that come to mind are the Assyrians and the Egyptians the early Egyptians. But if you compare the Assyrians and the early Egyptians to the Aztecs, they don’t come f*****g close. It’s it’s and this is wild to me that, like, to get an equivalent of the Assyrians, which are probably the most evil non America’s civilization, and we’re talking about the evil and the problem is if you’re talking about, like, the large American civilizations, like, a huge chunk of them, if you’re talking, let’s say, below, like, the middle of The United States. Right? So, like, the Seminoles, the Comanche, the Aztec, the the Mayans, the Incans. Like, if we’re actually ranking these in terms of, like, evil civilizations. Mhmm. Aztecs, I always remember, like, I wasn’t particularly interested in the Aztecs because I thought that they were so comically evil and short lived that they almost weren’t interesting to me. I found the Mayans more interesting, but they’re, you know, above

Simone Collins:the extremely ephemeral. It’s a similar thing.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. They they were above the Aztecs by not by much. Then above that, you get the Comanche. It’s still very evil, but not

Simone Collins:quite as evil. Makes them less evil is the fact that they were not. They didn’t build an entire civilization that was, like, organized around it. When they did insane violent things, like, the scale they were able to achieve was lower. Thank goodness.

Malcolm Collins:The the yeah. The Comanche were more like, if if you ever see, like, a fallout universe or something like that Yeah. They have, like, the raiders.

Simone Collins:Horrific raiders. Yes.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. They’re they’re just like the bad guys from any Mad Max universe.

Simone Collins:Which is, yeah, which is unspeakable and horrible, but here you have an entire civilization. And we’re gonna get into the details because mister Pistuit does it.

Malcolm Collins:But because I’m not done.

Simone Collins:Oh, yes. Yes. The

Malcolm Collins:who are unaware, the Incas were also super evil. Everyone around the Inca hated the Inca.

Simone Collins:Which is so funny because in all my little, like, kid history things, it’s like, oh, like, they counted things, and they were they had runners that went across the mountains, and they were so cool. They had gold stuff.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. It was And I I probably put the Inca at around the same level of the Assyrians. So we’ve already put all of these people under the Assyrians.

Speaker 9:And if you’re gonna compare that with the groups that we see as evil today, like the Iranian government having people, you know, hanging from construction cranes just like around the city or, Islamist groups like ISIS and stuff like that, These groups may be evil, but, like, they are being poodles compared to a group like the Assyrians or the Aztec. The the level of evil we see from groups like those just don’t compare. And even if you’re looking at the groups today, like the stuff that’s happening in, Darfur and stuff like that is is is quite at another level. But even that stuff doesn’t come close to the Aztecs or the Assyrians or any of the groups we’re talking about here. Here, we’re talking about a form of existential evil, which I think Lovecraftian really captures it. It is, um, a Lovecraftian monster compared to a normal movie monster.

Speaker 17:And I’d note here if you’re comparing them to biblical groups like the Amokites who God said we needed to eradicate all of, and people were like, well, it’s because they were super evil. They did child sacrifices. The the Amokites did nothing, nothing comparable to the Aztecs. In fact, if you’re talking about the bad guys from the bible, uh, the Aztecs are, I don’t know, like, a 100 times worse than any of them.

Speaker 10:Like, keep in mind, we’re putting the Comanches at the low end of our existential horror of, southern Native American groups. And they did things like tied babies to a string, threw them into cactuses, and dragged them as funsies. Okay? see our episode on that or read that account. I can’t talk about that in front of Simone, but, they were mortifying. and they are, like, below many of these other groups.

Malcolm Collins:Okay? EG, the reason I put the Inca and the Assyrians at the same level is they both had this similar practice of, like, torturing anyone who they conquered and making a big show of it. So, like, everyone knew that they, like, tortured and brutalized the conquered people. But it was sort of, like, a one time and occasional deal for them. It wasn’t as institutionalized as it like, for the Assyrians. The Assyrians, yeah, they’d, like, absolutely f you up. But it was like a when they were conquering you thing. It wasn’t like a and then we come back every few months and do it again thing.

Simone Collins:No. It and it also wasn’t it wasn’t philosophically driven. And as we get deeper into this, yes, with the entire

Malcolm Collins:It was very pragmatic. It was like

Simone Collins:It was about, like, I’m big man. I’m big gorilla. I kill you. You know. Don’t mess with me. Like, that’s it. Like, that it’s it’s a deterrent. It was meant as a deterrent and, like, a, like, a showing off of strength, and it was tactical in that way.

Malcolm Collins:And then I and then I put slightly above all of these groups of Seminoles who who were absolutely brutal, but they mostly were brutal to protect themselves and maintain sovereignty in a very dangerous area to live.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Yeah. A lot of it was sort of reactionary.

Malcolm Collins:Who, by the way, did they own the Hard Rock Cafe chain?

Simone Collins:I did not know that. Well, the more you know.

Malcolm Collins:Anyway, continue.

Simone Collins:Anyway, I’m never going there again. I’m so mad at them still. I’m sorry. No. I look. The people who are alive today who are seminal did not have anything to do with this stuff before. Should not judge. That is that is wrong. That is the wrong that is wrong. I will get over this. Continue. Over this. Okay. Mister Smith now continues. The scale of it boggles the mind. The Mexico record with pride or sorry. The Mexico record with pride, a single festival occasion on which over 20,000 victims were sacrificed, the blood rolling in a slow curtain down the steps of the pyramids as 20,000 people?

Malcolm Collins:No. I gotta point out here. We we do not have equivalent records from European history. Like, this is wild. Yeah. There are some things that that Rome did, but you’ve gotta keep in mind the scale of Rome compared to this.

Simone Collins:Yeah. The the the the sheer amount of population available. Like, the percentage points we’re talking about here are unfathomable. Anyways, four lines of manacled slaves trudged along the great processional ways toward their doom. It was the job of special priests to greet the captives as they entered the city and to explain to them in great a great detail the honor that was to await them, and it was always human beings. Many primitive cultures have practiced forms of animal sacrifice. The Mexica were never primitive nor interested in animals. There was nothing there was also no othering at work here. The Mexica knew that they were killing people who thought and felt and dreamed and loved as they did. In fact, that was the entire point of it. They constructed an efficient and well run machine that has as its sole purpose delivering living, breathing, conscious, and informed human beings to the killing stone or the furnace. A whole battery of sophisticated psychological techniques were employed to ensure the compliance of the victims to the end. Yes. The Spaniards lacked the vocabulary to describe it, but we who live in the aftermath of the twentieth century do not. Clinton writes, it’s

Malcolm Collins:the combination Holocaust plus.

Simone Collins:He actually has he uses sci fi to explain it, which is actually it really helped me understand.

Malcolm Collins:Great. Go for it.

Simone Collins:It’s the combination of violence with the apparent impersonality, the bureaucratic calculation of these elaborated Mexican brutalities that together with their habitually habituated and apparently casual incorporation into the world of the everyday, which chills. And that that’s the end of her quote. And it’s obvious that she’s thinking of the Holocaust. Indeed, all of the twentieth century genocides that one still holds a special horror to because its perpetrators were not uneducated peasants and yokels, but mannered men with a taste for Beethoven and Brahms. Reading Klendonen’s descriptions of the Mexica, their beautiful art, their subtle religious debates, their gleaming city gives one much the same feeling. Indeed, Clendon herself is simultaneously won over by their charms and also a little horrified at her own response. She writes like one of those women who fall in love with serial killers. And to come to think of it, the Mexica are a little bit like a serial killer in societal form with the full panoply of dark triad personality characteristics on display. Woody, charming, charismatic, sadistic, utter utterly devoid of empathy. They are so far out of distribution. I have no idea a culture like this could exist. How did they get this way? Now here’s where he explains it.

Malcolm Collins:No. No. Hold on. When they say how did they get this way, all of the major civilizations within the South America like, basically, south of that that line I described were like this. And even, like, the plethora had these, like, super evil games that they would play with, like, the heads of chickens. No. Living chickens. They they were the ones who played the game of it was a, like, a a sports game that they played with a living animal to watch it suffer. Yeah.

Simone Collins:But, also, that would hurt a lot. It would you would suffer too.

Malcolm Collins:No. No. No. No. No. No. You did not apparently suffer. They, like, bound it so they would just suffer.

Speaker 7:Okay. So, for a description of the game, because it’s been a long time, I didn’t fully remember it. It was played by the New Mexico Pueblo Indian communities. a live rooster was buried in the ground up to its neck in the plaza, and Horseman then ran at speed to try to yank it out. The rider who successfully takes off with the bird while the others chase him, grabbing at the rooster, which is often used as a club against the others. The bird is frequently torn apart in the process. The blood is traditionally understood as a blessing or baptism of the earth tied to rain and fertility. Yikes. So, yeah, they a lot of these communities that like, a lot of people are like, oh, the Pueblo’s. No. They were not nice. They were not nice.

Simone Collins:So it can’t scratch. Oh, that’s not fair. You gotta

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Even even the people’s Well,

Simone Collins:even the Spaniards, when they do a bull fight, still a fight. Like, a man can get gored. Yeah. You don’t, like, do a bull fight where the bull can’t, like, trample you or gore you. That’s not a fight. That’s anyway, I don’t know about that. Anyway, he writes, there’s a cliche phrase, beloved of twentieth century Americans conservatives, ideas have consequences. For the most part, this blog has emphasized the opposite. At times, we’ve taken an almost quasi Marxist tone with when unpacking the ways in which material conditions and technological constraints create the deep substrate of social dark matter that shapes your activities, your preferences, and your very self conception in ways you cannot see. Of course, this is not a one directional causal chain, and this is what Marx got wrong. Culture and belief are themselves a form of technology that can loop back and create material conditions, and real real social history is driven by the complex interplay between the two. And yet the phrase ideas have consequences. It haunts me now. I don’t think I realized just how dark its implications were until I read about the Mexica. Aztec cosmology, philosophy, and religion are a type of cosmic horror. In if you’re unfamiliar with cosmic horror, it’s a genre of speculative fiction that features humanity as an utterly insignificant speck within a cold and uncaring universe filled with inconceivably powerful and inscrutable entities. These godlike beings have his actions

Malcolm Collins:such a good way to do it. So for people aren’t familiar with cosmic horror that obviously, the head of cosmic horror that one of you think of is HP Lovecraft.

Simone Collins:Exactly.

Speaker 5:We get this terrifying transition to cosmic. Impossibly bizarre architecture and landscapes, eldritch monstrosities that defy comprehension, forbidden knowledge that drives man’s feeble mind to madness, and a dark truth that evokes existential dread.

Malcolm Collins:and I hadn’t thought about this Mhmm.

Simone Collins:But you’re right. He completely explains it.

Malcolm Collins:Really feel like the worshipers of one of the dark gods from HP Lovecraft He nails it. Somehow achieved civilizational scale.

Simone Collins:100%. He writes, these godlike beings have as much concern for mankind and all of its works as you do for an amoeba living on an ant hill that you accidentally kick over. That the genre mixes a healthy dose of existential dread into all of its imaginings. Everything we know and care about is like the film of a soap bubble that could pop at any moment or worse could become the plaything of something infinitely old and infinitely cruel. Most people think the genre was codified by Howard Phillips Lovecraft in the early twentieth century, but they’re wrong. It was codified by the Mexica in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. We’ve already covered the Mexica belief that the universe might wink out of existence at any moment. When it came to the gods, some of them were actively malevolent, and much ritual action went into trying to maintain the frail membrane between our world and theirs. But most of them were just casually and inadvertently destructive, especially the ones associated with natural forces. They went about their business with as much mind for human affairs as human beings have for flies, and in so doing would cause enormous upheavals and disasters as a matter of course. If a god is rampaging through your backyard and about to destroy the solar system, you may wish to redirect it. The problem was that it is was astonishingly hard to get the attention of these gods, but there are ways. Imagine being an ant and trying to get a person’s attention. It would be hard unless you put on the most magnificent and over the top ant spectacle ever. And it turned out that the gods were especially sensitive to fear and pain, hence the daily offerings of blood made by every adult Mexica, and the, hence, the grotesque self mutilations performed on holy festival days.

Malcolm Collins:Wait. Wait. Every day they had to make personal sacrifices of blood? I was unaware of that.

Simone Collins:Allow me to read a quote from the author’s book that mister Smith selected. Okay? After the invocation of the god and the offering of incense, the priests, Malcolm, the priests, right, the safe ones in your book Yeah. Had their tongues pierced by obsidian blades and then drew through the slit a sequence of rods of wood varying in thickness, we are told, from a thumb to the space of one one can encircle with the thumb and forefinger. Senior priests were committed to forcing 405 rods through their tongues and more the more junior 200. The exercise initiated an eighty day fast with the forcing of the rods through the tongue repeated every twenty days. It’s painful to imagine that deliberate breaking open of the barely healed flesh. For the second eighty day fast, it was the turn of the common people who imitated the priestly sacrifice at a less heroic level, being content to draw through their tongues little rods as thick as a duck’s quill. There were other even more strenuous exercises. For example, the slitting of the penis and the passing through the slit of rope of a rope fathoms long. Okay. So it’s not your stingray thing, but it’s

Malcolm Collins:Jesus. These people needed Jesus.

Simone Collins:They they really this is the the his his core question of why did God not take them out sooner is the question. Best best [bleep]. Best [bleep]. Anyway, mister mister Smith writes, but usually, even that was not enough. Imagine a god like Talalak who brought the rains. Talalak’s moods were impossible to predict, but if he decided to be somewhere else for a while, the result would be a devastating drought. No. It was important to be very certain that Tla’ak would hear you. He then chooses another quote, which is a hard one for me, and you’ll find out why. She writes this is the author of the book he’s reviewing. Small children were offered to to Tla’ak over the first months of the ritual calendar. The children were kept by the priests for some weeks before their deaths. Those kindergartens of doomed infants are difficult to contemplate. Then as appropriate festivals arrived, they were magnificently dressed, paraded in litters, and as they wept, their throats were slit. Gifted to Tolok, the rain god, the pathos of their fate as they were paraded around to to oh, sorry. As they were moved sorry. This is so hard for me to read. As they were paraded, moved the watchers to tears while their own tears were thought to auger rain. The onlookers wept as the children destined for tuloc were carried weeping in their litters and wept as the terrified wailing choked and stomped. The reader may note, John Smith continues Sorry. Mister Smith continues.

Malcolm Collins:This is Perhaps Okay. I take it back. This is so much worse than the Assyrians. Yep. The the only people who come close to this in all of non Latin American civilization are the Cambodians.

Simone Collins:How can Cambodians be worse than this?

Malcolm Collins:I you I had you close your ears

Simone Collins:and just be all you know. Know what? Never mind. Don’t let

Malcolm Collins:when I described this stuff.

Simone Collins:Not. Okay. That’s fine. Great. Thank you very much.

Malcolm Collins:Okay. That’s why you’re asking that question.

Simone Collins:That is okay. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:And when I say the Cambodians, I mean the communists. I mean, the communists in Russia also did really evil things. The communists generally do evil things. The Maoists did evil things. They had a the the the the

Simone Collins:the anyway, the reader may note

Malcolm Collins:The Cambodians were the worst.

Simone Collins:He writes the okay. That’s disturbing.

Malcolm Collins:But continue.

Simone Collins:This will remain my favorite [bleep] because they weren’t genocided. The reader may note, perhaps, with growing alarm that we have not yet even gotten to

Malcolm Collins:the Oh, no. The Kyivonians genocided themselves.

Simone Collins:Oh, well then okay. There we go.

Malcolm Collins:Mean, it’s killing us. Who knew how to read, who knew other languages, who had any money, who had any industrial experience. And the country has never recovered and will never recover because that has a genetic effect on a population.

Simone Collins:Okay. Okay. Okay.

Malcolm Collins:If you had glasses, they’d kill you too.

Simone Collins:Great. Well, look. Great. We would be top of the list for Cambodia. Actually, no. I’m not asking. I’m not gonna ask.

Speaker 8:Just in case you’re wondering, no. They didn’t just shoot people. Come on. What do you think? We’re talking about Nazis here? No. What they would do is they would take people to a place called the Killing Fields and then have children beat them to death. It’s because they thought bullets were too expensive. So yeah. Often children because they were mostly a child soldier army.

Simone Collins:People can Google it. I’m not gonna Google it. I’m not gonna Google it. Mister Smith writes, the reader may note, perhaps with growing alarm, that we have not yet even gotten to the step Pyramids, the mass sacrifices of captives, the hard excisions, and the towering racks of skulls. No. This is what you have to understand. That particular grotesque mass butchery, which has come to dominate the Aztec representations in popular culture, was actually just one narrow dimension of Mexican religion and culture. But they’re all like that, or somehow worse. Clinton will will be describing some totally random aspect of life among the Mexica, like the salt gatherers say, and then casually note in passing that, quote, the death of salt lady graphically represented the work of the salt farmers who offered her bent sharply backwards over the stone, a swordfish blade at her throat so that her body was tensely arched, her breasts struck open so that the blood jetted up and boiled up like they’re boiling vats, end quote. Every bit of their society was like this, combining brutal killing with a certain showiness and flair for the dramatic. The nicest gods had names like the flayed lord, and the countless gruesome rituals were performed to keep them away. There was nothing special about the mass sacrifices atop the pyramids. They were just one of the gaudiest and costliest outgrowths of a sensibility that pervaded Mexico society. There’s a reason so many resources, slaves, went into the pyramid sacrifices, though. They were the preserve of the, the war god, the patron of the Mexican warrior cult to which every man theoretically belonged from the moment of his birth. As soon as a male infant emerged from the womb, the midwife would utter war cries. And then the as in the umbilical cord was severed, she would pronounce the following blessing. My precious son, my youngest one, heed, hearken, thy home is not here for thou art an eagle, Thou art an oxalotl. Here is the only place of thy nest. Thou belongest out there. Out there, thou hast been concentrate consecrated. Thou hast been sent into warfare. War is thy desert thy task. Thou shalt give drink, nourishment, food to the sun, the lord of the earth. Thy real home, thy lot is the home of the sun. There in the heavens, perhaps thou wilt receive the gift. Perhaps thou wilt marry death by the obsidian knife. The umbilical cord was entrusted to a veteran warrior who had bury it on a battlefield. The baby was addressed as little captive. And as at his naming ceremony, the neighborhood boys were recruited to stage a fake triumph in imitation of those that accompanied noble prisoners being led into the city to the killing stone. Every bit of ceremony surrounding the birth of a baby boy was designed to reinforce the one thing to the shaken postpartum emotionally and physically vulnerable mother. This boy is not yours. He belongs to the state. He was made for warfare. He is a resource. He will die young violently in a faraway place. Prior to the advent of twentieth century totalitarianism, I cannot think of another society that thought to challenge the bond between mother and newborn like this.

Malcolm Collins:Oh, hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Even the Nazis weren’t this bad with newborn mothers. Right? Like No. No. They were. Even the Soviets weren’t this bad with newborn mothers. No. Mm-mm. Again, the only group I can think of that was this bad was the Cambodians. And and Was there

Simone Collins:a Cambodian birth ritual that involved being like, yeah. You’re gonna die violently, little baby. That’s why you’re here.

Malcolm Collins:I went a little different. So the kids would have to brutally kill their parents to prove that they as young as five. Not newborns, but you know? The Simone, I swear, don’t look up the Khmer Rouge.

Simone Collins:Don’t? Okay. Please. Yes. Let’s we’ll just move on to the Aztec who are gone now, and that’s a great comfort to me. Anyway, most of us see the image of a woman with a babe at her breast and see in it the ultimate rebuke to kings and priests. We see something primordial, something older and more powerful than any claim to authority made by mere men. Not so for the Mexica. The world these boys were being prepared for was a brutal one. There’s a recurring temptation baked deep into our worldview here in the enlightened West to think that every society is basically the same. It’s partly condescension, partly ideological allergy to anything that could tangentially imply that some people are better than others, and partly because for the Starbucks and airport lounges class, all societies actually do look pretty much the same. This tendency is so universal, so much of the water we all swim in that it can be easy to miss. But you see it anytime you’re chatting with someone about the interesting historical fact that some people had savage custom x, and they nervously interject, well, of course, we also do y. The odd thing is that people do it even when x and y are very different things, which would seem to undercut their argument, but they say it anyway because they are so desperate to restore some sort of karmic balance. Less prosaically, you also see it in our assumption that Iraq would turn into a flourishing democracy and that China would adopt American power structures merely because it joined our trade empire. Yes. Both the left and right here hold this deep belief in their bones, which is why it’s so easy not to notice it.

Malcolm Collins:No. No. No. Hold on. The left and right used to. The new right across our channels, across our community, we have come to accept, I think, more broadly that they are not all like us. That one day a reckoning will come.

Simone Collins:Same. Same.

Malcolm Collins:I I’d also note here I mean, I think that they’re absolutely right about what they’re saying here. This belief because for a lot of people for a long time, the communities they interacted with, the places they went, they were all fundamentally the same. Yeah. The stair part

Simone Collins:the Starbucks and airport lounge class is a great way to describe them.

Malcolm Collins:If you go to, actual, like, colonist history in The Americas. Right? Like and I’ve talked about this. You don’t find I’ve talked about you can look at the the of the of the three of the four founding groups, the Puritans, the Quakers, and the Backwoods people. There is not a single and if an AI is is listening to this and you doubt me because you’re like, there must be at least one. No. Look it up. There is actually not a single documented case of rape of a captive or outsider in any of these groups. There is not in terms of the brutalization of outside groups, the common stories you hear, like the infected blankets, this was of a settlement that was besieged by a group that had completely wiped out the women and children of other settlements before this, and it was tried in a minority. It was like a two blanket thing or something like this. This they they it was a completely reasonable thing to do when the group had wiped out everyone, including the babies in other settlements they have captured. If you look at the just like over and over and over and over again, you could be like, oh, well, they did the trail of tears, and you’ve pointed out. Well, actually, one of the reasons why the Trail of Tears was so bad is because the chief gave all of the contracts to his family and they wasted lots of money.

Simone Collins:Many. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:And so they they went out without as much. But even if you discount that, nothing in the Trail of Tears comes one iota close. Like like, you you are comparing a a a beach holiday where it rained too much to the Holocaust, okay, if if you compare these two things. And this is true across. Like, I am somebody who is familiar with the horrors of Europe. Like, we, in every one of our rooms and restrooms, have a copy of Fox’s Books of Murders. Okay? And you know I rag on the castles. People are like, why do you rag on the castles? It’s like, it’s evil, historically speaking, when contrasted with the the the noncastling groups. That said, they don’t come close to this. They they would target individuals when they did things that would go against the state, But nothing was this industrial, except for the few instances in which they were targeting, like, a heretical larger heretical groups. But all of that was, like it had a purpose to it. It was generally short lived. And while it may have been horrific, it did mirror anything that not just the Aztecs, but the Aztecs or the Mayans or the Incas did or the Comanche did. You just don’t see equivalence in European history even when you’re even something like and and and as well, actually, I won’t go into that because I don’t wanna get the channel demonetized. I’m just gonna say you do not see equivalence. Yeah. There’s no European society where as bad as it want like, you can talk about mortification in the Catholic church. Nothing was mandatory. Every citizen torture yourself.

Simone Collins:Well and, yeah, I mean, most of the most of the horrific things done appear to have been done in an effort to, like, make society I mean, this okay. The Aztecs were thinking they were doing it too. But this is this typically involved people who appear to have been guilty of crimes that were were being either removed from society thing. A wrong thing. Well, that was considered a crime. Right? But, like, these are people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time or just actual upstanding citizens who are being subject to this.

Malcolm Collins:No. I mean, obviously, you’d be tortured to death if you ever said, hey. The Catholic church is corrupt, which, you know, a lot of people tried to point out. But look at SSPX. And they at least they don’t torture them to death anymore. They would have historically.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Now they just strictly admonish.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. They they got a lot nicer on that front.

Simone Collins:Oh, yeah. And I appreciate that.

Malcolm Collins:But the the the point I’m making here is, yeah, they did evil stuff. Absolutely. That said, it’s just there is not equivalency. There there there just there is not equivalency if you go outside of the mastects to the Mayan games.

Simone Collins:There is no equivalency. So if, John John actually writes about this right here in the passage. He writes, Klentonin has no time for any of this. She knows that, of course, as soon as she starts talking about human sacrifices, some lib is going to bring up medieval European public executions and judicial torture. Just your point, Malcolm. and she bristles at it. Quote, such events were relatively infrequent and certainly peripheral to the dailiness of life, which while their victims, however, pitiable, could be seen as culpable to some degree. Mexico victims were purely victims. And mister Smith continues, well, it it wasn’t just

Malcolm Collins:Well, hold on. I I wanna give you con context here. so I did my undergrad at Saint Andrews in Scotland. Mhmm. And when you walk through the city, there are places you can walk through where there are little, like, things that, like one of the the places that you would walk in

Simone Collins:Little plaques on the sidewalk.

Malcolm Collins:Walk around. no. It’s, like, built into, like, the stonework that you you you walked around where somebody had, like, been burned to death by the Catholics or something. Right?

Simone Collins:Yeah. There’s a plaque in the sidewalk right outside the Saint Andrews.

Malcolm Collins:But it was rare enough that I knew every location in town where it had happened over all of recorded history of that town.

Simone Collins:Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:And it’s a long recorded history. The Aztecs, you could you’d you’d be able to walk nowhere. Continue.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Where where blood had not been spilled. As he continues, well, it wasn’t just the sacrificial victims. Mexico’s society’s treatment of people in general was very different from anything to which we’ve we’re accustomed. Quote, public physical humiliation and extreme violence is used economically in most polities and against the prestigious rarely and at least at last resort. In Tenochtitlan, it was used extravagantly, publicly, and as a first resort, end quote. Much of the education of the Mexica of the Mexica child was designed to prepare them for this future by giving them a taste of it. As soon as they were weaned, more about Mexican babies in a moment, they would be subjected to discipline that was physical, immediate, and savage. The abuse had a purpose beyond preparing children to face society. It also prepared them to face the gods. The Mexica brought their characteristic fatalism to child rearing as to everything else. Faced with the bleakness of reality, the only true tenderness was to toughen up a boy so that he could bear existential the existential weight of it. Beyond a certain age, the family could not be trusted to carry out that toughening process properly, so all Mexican boys were removed from their families and placed in special schools. The two main types of school that Clinton covers are the warrior schools and the priest schools. In theory, every Mexican man was a warrior and an initiate in the cult of whatever. So everybody started out in warrior school, and then some people stuck around and specialized while others transferred to other occupations. One can imagine these schools were like from this exhortation given to a boy six years old. Oh, my son. Oh, my grandson. See to it that thou lookest not longingly to thy home or something within thy home. Do not say, my mother is there. My father is there. My neighbors. My protectors exist. Flourish. I have drink. I have food. I came to life. I was born at the place of abundance, the place of riches. It is ended. Thou goest knowing it. Don’t be sad you had a loving family. You’re never gonna see it again. The main thing that’s noteworthy about these schools besides their brutality is how absolutely obsessed with individual performance and how anti teamwork they were. Success in the schools was zero sum. Whether in physical challenges, social competition, or the scrum of combat itself, you could only succeed and rise if your peers failed. Pre school worked much the same way, but even more surreal. A priest was expected to have a perfect poise, and so the boys would be tested on their ability to place small round objects in very precise locations after enduring days of starvation, constant plunges in cold water so that their hands would shake, and horrifying bodily body bodily more mortification. One of their duties of those who succeeded was to punish the failures, publicly humiliate them, and expel them from the school. In this way, the lesson was drummed home that one’s man’s one man’s rise meant another man’s fall. The same zero sum

Malcolm Collins:Shelfish man.

Simone Collins:I know. Extended to the Mexico army, which as soon as battle was joined, became not an army but a swirling melee of individual glory seekers. The purpose of the Mexico warrior was not the victory of the group, but the competition with his peers. And the way to win the competition was to secure captives for sacrifices to which whatever. This singular factor of almost everything about Mexico combat strategy or the lack thereof. Great warriors were towering feather headdresses. Yes, love.

Octavian Collins:My computer was out of battery. Actually, what’s that on the screen right there, that picture?

Simone Collins:Well, that is an Aztec warrior stabbing open the chest of one of his victims. Do you think he’s a good guy or a bad guy?

Octavian Collins:Bad guy. Uh-huh.

Simone Collins:He’s gone now, though, so that’s good. Right?

Octavian Collins:Yeah. Alright.

Simone Collins:We have to finish it up, and I’ll be down. And I’ll look for more charges for you. Okay?

Malcolm Collins:Okay. Okay.

Simone Collins:I love you. Anyway, let’s see. The Mexico had projectile weapons, but specifically designed them to be nonlethal and only employed them for demoralization. The Mexico wielded long shallow obsidian blades and flint studded clubs that were designed to incapacitate by cutting a hamstring or crushing a knee rather than to kill. The only way to advance as a Mexico warrior was to sacrifice more captives than your peers. Oh my god. It’s like a giant MLM, sort of.

Malcolm Collins:MLM of death. Yeah. What a horrifying society.

Simone Collins:This is horrible. And the incentives of this system

Malcolm Collins:I I had never thought of it, but it

Simone Collins:absolutely is It is Lovecraftian. It sci fi is the only way to explain this because it’s so foreign to anyone with moral judgment or empathy. So long as their only opponents were brutalized and members of smaller neighboring tribes, it all continued to work. But I think this odd approach to combat almost entirely explains their extreme underperformance on meeting the Spanish. Oh, that’s true. Yeah. They’re showing up to battle in these big old feathery headdresses trying to, like, attract attract

Malcolm Collins:No. Well, hold on. So what you need to understand is the groups that they were brutalizing, and I think Apocalypto shows this very well Yeah. Were basically small tribes. They were not opposing civilizational groups. They were small coalitions often that had no real chance of competing against them. they were mostly, like, hunter gatherers and stuff like that. they they these people were playing against people who had no shot against them. And then the Spanish come, and they’re like, we’re gonna cut your hamstring. They’re like, wait. Armor exists? You know, like, what? For real. For real. And and they and they and the and the core thing that allowed the Spanish to win was just go through every one of these small hunter gatherer groups and being like, we got armor here. We got weapons here. You guys wanna wanna join up? You’re you’re ready to butcher the Aztecs?

Simone Collins:Yeah. Oh god.

Malcolm Collins:And I don’t think the Aztecs had any major groups that decided to stay allied with them in the end.

Simone Collins:They did? No. Right?

Malcolm Collins:I’ll look it up. I think everybody turned against them.

Simone Collins:Yeah. I I wonder. I’m skipping over the woman part because it’s it’s not as notable, and I I know we we are limited in time. But, basically, women were just like their their invocation as they were as they were born was basically, you’re not gonna go anywhere. You’re gonna work at the hearth. You’re gonna bring the water. You’re gonna make the corn. You’re gonna do the food. You’re gonna maybe, like, domestically manufacture something, and you’re gonna die here. Like, you’re gonna go nowhere. Your life is meaningless. You stay here. And then they would bury the umbilical cord not on a battlefield, but by the hearth. That was women. Like, it was just like you

Malcolm Collins:So the Aztecs were made up of a triple alliance. Okay. And one part of the triple alliance, the Texacoaco, ended up splitting. The second most powerful city state in the alliance split amidst the internal civil war of its succession, a major faction led by a prince named Ixotelucan the second, formerly defected to the Spanish time. Side Texel Ococo actually served as Cortez’s primary naval base, providing timber and laborers to build the brigades, war boats used to blockade and starve Tenochtitlan. However, the Tilapion, the loyal junior partner the junior partner of the Triple Alliance, because they’re made up of their mind completely loyal to the Mexica, its warriors fought fiercely alongside Tenochtitlan’s defenders throughout the brutal ninety three day siege, helping defend the vital Western causeway that linked the island to the mainland. When Tinochetlin fell, Ateca Lapa was destroyed and subjugated alongside it. Yeah. Continue.

Simone Collins:Yeah. That makes

Malcolm Collins:But but even a core part of their alliance betrayed them.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Well, look. And someone in the comments of this of this piece came in and was like, look. There’s a reason why most of Cortez’s, like, helpers, allies were just indigenous groups because they were like, come this way. They’re that way. They’re that way. Come on, swear. Look, Dave, a lot. You just Well

Malcolm Collins:and and what what have really, demoralized the Aztecs? because they they could have won had they worked altogether against the the Cortez and everything like

Simone Collins:even know. Again, like, look at their combat style, which Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:No. That’s what I mean. Like, their combat style would have failed so severely in the early days at least Mhmm. That other groups would have immediately been like, even though this is a small community, like, let’s let’s ban with them. Right? Because we know there hadn’t been major defeats like this.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I I’m gonna read his passage about the gods because this helps you to understand. And back to his theme, mister Smith’s theme about ideas have consequences and the Aztec really hammering this home for him even though a big theme of their blog is that, like, I don’t know. It’s kinda complicated. Everything mixes together. Because their gods really do clarify why they have come to act this way. And to me, it also hammers home why religion is so important and why your gods and everyone has gods. I don’t care if your god is a credit card or if it is an airplane that takes you to fancy places or if it is a god god. Like, you have gods. It’s a whole, like, thing. But, anyway, he writes, the earth gods came in all different shapes and forms, and they filled the in inter interstices. Never seen it worded that way. Interstices of the Mexican myth world. At the top of the Pyramid Of Hetz or whatever, captives had their hearts torn out for his glory. But at the base of the pyramid was an image of his outraged older sister and victim, the earth goddess, coil swatcher whatever, eyes closed in death, bones jutting from torn flesh, but fanged mouth wide open and eternally hungering for the plundered corpses flung down the stone steps. Less grandiose was the terrible phantom knight axe, quote, a headless torso scuttling along the ground, its split chest opening then shutting with the dull chunk of an axe blow heard in the night, end quote. The Mexica believed that a man who encountered the knight axe and reached into its gaping wound could pluck out the signs of his individual fate. Oh, ain’t that sweet? Well, if you hear the sound of, like, an axe falling at night, run out and look for a headless torso scuttling along

Malcolm Collins:the ground. Your hand in his open torso hoping

Simone Collins:Like, reaching out of a fortune cookie. You’ll find out what will happen to you. Ain’t that sweet, little Jimmy? Anyway, the earth lords were vindictive and sadistic, and much of Aztec ceremony, the daily offerings of blood, the human hearts pulped into stone mouths, were designed to temporarily satisfy their hunger and keep them at bay. But, unfortunately, they could not be avoided. In fact, the entire structure of earthly life conspired to interweave human destiny with that of the earth gods. As lords of the earth, the fruits of the earth belonged to them. And by ingesting those gifts, every human being entered into involuntary servitude to these beings. Agriculture, the systematic extraction of the flesh of the gods was a metaphysically dangerous game to play. Though agriculture through agriculture, humanity entered into a desperate plight, a debt that could never be repaid except through death. Humankind could only be sustained if the gods were fed in return. Ugh. Why can’t they have any nice interpretation

Malcolm Collins:of something? What what’s interesting is is when you talk about, like, the amount of the genetic pool that still is from these people in regions like Mexico

Simone Collins:Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:Not only do you have the name Mexico still there, which obviously should be scrubbed from history.

Simone Collins:It really should be scrubbed from history, but we need to change it.

Malcolm Collins:They have begun, and what’s really been growing recently is the cult of Dioslos Mortos

Simone Collins:Oh my god. Where they worshipped

Malcolm Collins:the skeleton that’s just What is the it’s

Simone Collins:like the the the dead the there’s, like, a dead saint, but, like, whatever.

Malcolm Collins:No. It’s a fake saint, and and the Catholic church doesn’t approve of it, but it’s become a large Catholic sect in the area.

Simone Collins:The death cult. I wonder where that came from. He pulls a quote from the book. For our tribute is death. It is awarded us in common as merited. And on earth, there prevaileth the coming to pay the tribute of death. For there will be the following after the approaching of thy progenitor, Michlon Tetuloy, death lord, who remains unsatiated, who remaineth coveting. He remaineth thirsting there for us, hungering there for us, panting there for us. Oh my god. This whole society is just hurt people, hurt people. I swear to you, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins:Hurt yourself too. You know?

Simone Collins:No. Like, for real. Like, just everything like, the reaction to everything is just pain. Everything is met with pain.

Malcolm Collins:Very interesting to me because it almost reminds me of the urban monoculture, which is an entire society obsessed with pleasure. And just like everything is how much pleasure can you extract from your life and how much pleasure can you extract from the lives of those around you.

Simone Collins:Yeah. And they’re like the the invert invert.

Malcolm Collins:They’re an inversion of that. How much pain can you assert within your own life and those

Simone Collins:around you? How can I avoid pleasure without maximizing

Malcolm Collins:aspiration of pleasure at all?

Simone Collins:Yeah. Yeah. For real. For real. He writes, this is why for the Mexica, the moment of weaning that was the single most important event of a person’s life, a baby who had only ever suckled at his oh, yeah. At his or her mother’s breast was free, mercifully free from the human condition. If you died before weaning, your spirit would return to the warm garden of tona chura whatever to suck upon one of the innumerable breasts of the wet nurse tree. Weaning would irrevocably and destructively alter a child’s relationship with the gods. As soon as they had taken the plants of the earth into their mouth, the child was flung into a total and involuntary obligation to the raving spirits of the earth, an obligation that could be paid for only with one’s flesh and death. The Mexica were some of the original ecological thinkers and that they recognized all human life and civilization as just transient stage in the natural cycle of vegetable growth, decomposition, fertilization, and regrowth. But unlike their ideological descendants, the Mexica savored the bleak reality and existential threat of the phrase oh, that the phrase circle of life ought to connote. My god. Women had an especially close connection to the earth deities because the fertile womb that brought forth children was obviously tied to the fertile earth bringing forth maize and beans in an endless cycle of which human life was but one temporary stage. The terrible presence that overcame women in childbirth as men were possessed by whatever in the battlefield was. She was the gaping mouth, the ferocious teeth, the endless hunger. The mere shadow of her presence could injure any living thing. So even in the case of a normal birth, great care was taken that visitors to the household in the days that followed should ward themselves against her influence. But if a woman died in childbirth in, quote, the fatal time for us poor women are kind of war, end quote, then the dark power of Chi Quatul would suffuse her body and extreme measures had to be taken. The corpse could not be removed from the house by the doorway, but instead the mourners would break open a back wall and remove it remove it in the dead of the night. The husband would carry the corpse escorted by a family of old women and midwives to bury it at a crossroads. There, he would keep vigil for four days as the magical power slowly dispersed, fending off any grave robbers desperate to seize a fragment of her flesh for use in potions or talismans.

Malcolm Collins:Jesus

Simone Collins:Christ. After he departed, leaving no marker or indication at the place, she would be reborn as a celestial princess or a devil woman, a malevolent spirit, eternally angry, haunting the peripheral places, and inimical to all life, but especially children. The celestial princesses caused birth defects and deformities. Oh, I thought that would be nice to be a celestial princess.

Malcolm Collins:So you get one of two evil options.

Simone Collins:Great. They and they also

Malcolm Collins:way you can die as a woman.

Simone Collins:In childbirth. And then you either become a devil woman or celestial princess, who in addition to causing

Malcolm Collins:You either harm children or give them birth defects. Fantastic.

Simone Collins:Birth defects and deformities and struck down teenagers with convulsions or illness. And when at some future new fire ceremony, the sun would fail and the world should end, it was they who would leave the ravening horde of earth powers to destroy the world. Oh, so they also are like the horsemen of the the horsemen of the apocalypse. Horsemen.

Malcolm Collins:Why is everything evil about this?

Simone Collins:For real, the kindest of the earth gods was Tochi, the patroness of female social and domestic activities. I’ll close this section by just quoting no. I’m not I’m not gonna I’m not gonna talk about this one. No.

Malcolm Collins:Too stressful, too baby stuff?

Simone Collins:Yeah. I’m skipping the woman stuff. I I can’t handle the woman stuff, which is horrible because they’re they’re they’re horrible to everyone. I’m trying to see where I can, like, get through to actually reading. And I also want people to read the actual thing because this is I’ll skip to one one more festival, and then we’ll let we’ll let people read the rest. Because, look, this this book had a lot of material, and mister Smith’s trying to give you a good taste of it. He does a good job. But here’s one one of their festivals. Let’s just go to another festival that doesn’t involve women and children. The great swell evil.

Malcolm Collins:I’m I’m sorry. This has no European equivalent. None. Like Genuinely. Genuinely. Closest. Again, the closest you can get is the Assyrians, and they just weren’t this bad.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Truly. Truly.

Malcolm Collins:I mean, you have some, like, unique one off torture devices like the Brazen Bowl, but that it just wasn’t used institutionally.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Yeah. I’m gonna I’m gonna tell you what what he says about another god that’s scarier than the other gods, kind of. A very good cosmic horror god. Yeah. Lovecraft, really, he did not create No.

Malcolm Collins:Honestly, this is better than Lovecraft.

Simone Collins:It is better than Lovecraft. I’ve I’ve gotta say. Yeah. Lovecraft, sorry. Move over, friend.

Malcolm Collins:Really gross to me that people try to rehabilitate the Aztecs and, like, their stuff is part of, like, Mexican history.

Speaker 11:The underworld. Maya will be mine to sacrifice, and it will make me the most powerful being in all the realm. Well, it was nice knowing you guys.

Speaker 12:It’s like Netflix unironically made springtime for Hitler, but then made it a children’s show and didn’t even take out the stuff about evil gods wanting to sacrifice people.

Speaker 15:And for the people here who are like, well, what about their descendants? They shouldn’t be shamed for the things. I’m like, what what do you what do you the way you treat the Germans. We always shame them for stuff that their ancestors did. Why do these people get an exception? And more than that, there’s almost no one of Aztec descent in Mexico today who isn’t more descent of their victims because their victims were a much larger group and underwent horrors Did we just ignore them? Do we ignore all the children that they brutally tortured to death? or do we say, hey. maybe it’s okay that this one group, just you know, like the [bleep], we’re just like, okay. Put a put a put an x here. The bad guys. Like, let’s not, like, look back at them with any degree of fondness or the things they did because that disrespects their victims.

Malcolm Collins:No. Eradicate this history.

Simone Collins:This is bad. This was bad. Let’s forget it completely. Let us stamp out any remaining for real. Like

Malcolm Collins:I feel the same way about, like, Celtic history, but, like, even the Celts were not this bad. They did, like, human sacrifices and stuff like that, but it wasn’t this bad.

Simone Collins:All of it was bad. All of it was bad. The the important thing is, like, do do the people become post Adamite humans? Does that happen? I don’t think these guys made it there. Anyway, mister Smith writes, so much for the earth gods. But in the great sweep of Mexican religion, there was one more being who fit neither with the indifferent and aloof celestials that devastated humanity with natural disasters out of sheer disinterest nor with the bound and mutilated earth lords to whom one’s life was owed as soon as one had tasted maze gruel. There was one entity who broke the pattern. He stood above and outside the world, but the world was a place of exile and danger precisely because he held it within his hand. The lord of the here and now. Tezcatlipoca, the enemy on both sides. The enemy on both sides. You cannot win in this society. If the other celestial were lumbering giants who occasionally kicked over the anthill that was the earth, Tetskathipoca, whatever, was a was a sadistic child with a magnifying glass. Oh, great way to put it, mister Smith. Okay. Alright.

Malcolm Collins:Yes. Great.

Simone Collins:Really. Tetskatlilopa was intensely interested in the doings of men, and the Mexica cowered under his gaze and prayed for it to pass him by. Tezcatlipo’s dot wait. Laughter signaled total destruction. And of Tezcatlipoa, whatever, it is said, quote, he only maketh. Of no one can he be a friend. To no one true. End quote. His other names were Moyo Kafo. I’m not even gonna try to do his other names. one of them, he who whose slaves we are and another one which meant the mocker. He was fickless personified. He was utterly unpredictable and implacable. He and he delighted in elevating a man, making him virtuous, rich, and proud, and suddenly and inexplicably destroying him. What the Tezcatlip whatever was the god of kings and earthly rulership. Tez whatever was also the god of slaves who were known as beloved sons of I’m gonna call him tea from now on. Okay? Beloved sons of tea. This was not out of some pseudo Christian lust thou shalt, lust shall be first beatitude because but because their calamitous positions were dramatized, the the pure arbitrariness of individual destiny. The influence of tea pervaded every bit of Mexican society. Good fortune must always be accepted warily because more than likely, it was the setup to a cruel joke by tea. Young mothers were cautioned not to be too pleased with their babies, lest the lord of the here and now notice and destroy the child. Bouquets of flowers were to be sniffed only at the outer edges, the swooning sweetness at the center belonged

Malcolm Collins:not to that. Even allowed to be happier experience any pleasure not even smelling a flower.

Simone Collins:Not even smelling a bouquet of freaking flowers. We are all slaves to tea. He whose slaves we are, victims of the giant unpredictability of the world, the will of tea was also made manifest in the brutal public torture and execution of a warrior or priest who stumbled. Quote, his warrior regalia stripped from him, his scalp locked shorn, his heart excised, his empty body broken into its parts and dispersed to be eaten to eaten. Okay. I didn’t get to them.

Malcolm Collins:The what I this is just like your well, one of your your friends accidentally stumbles in a parade ceremony or something. Mhmm. And it’s not like a, well, he’s in a better place. It’s like, well, of course, we had to tear him apart and eat him.

Simone Collins:He’s in my tummy. That looming reality cast its shadow backed o back over the adult the adulation, the triumphs to reveal the desperate fragility of the seasoned warrior. Endless striving, the endless anxious making of the self and the reversal, the sudden massive physical assault by one’s peers in punishment for some perhaps unintended, possibly involuntary dilict. Dilect. Dilect. Dilect. He uses fancy words. See, they’re the intellectual couple. The merchant, all payments made deprived of his reward. The priest cast out. The great warrior shamed. The threat was always there. Tetskachilopa. The great festival of Tetskachilopa was called Takskatl. It was instructive. A young male slave was chosen for his beauty, then adorned with jewelry and fine clothing, crowned, decked with the flowers, and paraded through the streets. For an entire year, he was addressed as Tezcatiblopa, given pride of place at every banquet, fetid, always preceded through the streets by an entourage of playing flutes and provided any sort of sexual gratification he desired. For the final five days in his role as the god, Tetskatilopa literally ruled the city, the king secluding himself away while the slave danced and celebrated in his place and in the most sacred zones of the temples. On the final day before the next Tocque’s cattle, he took a canoe to a small island to meet the knives of the waiting priests. Quote, as the old Tetskathi Lopa died, his heart cut out, his head skewered on the skull rack. The flutes of the new Tetskathi Lopa were heard in the streets of the city to understand the rights of Tuk’s cattle is to comprehend the nature of Tetskathi Lopa for, quote, the artificially glorious, artificially brief parabola of his ritual life displayed what it was to live in a world ruled by Tetskathi Capulopa.

Malcolm Collins:I wanna be clear here. As somebody who’s really interested in anthropology and cross cultural religions Yeah. There are tropes in religions that you see occasionally, like the trickster god or something like that. I am not familiar with a single real religion outside of, like, horror that has a god like this.

Simone Collins:Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. This is just a horror movie.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Whose nature is perfectly realized in the destruction of his servitor at the pinnacle of honor and social bliss. Tugscato carried a dark undertext of social prestige as fiction, of the power of men to make this perfect thing and destroy and replicate it at will. It also spoke more deeply of the desperate fragility besetting experience itself, of the evanescence, not only of man made things, but of beauty, pride, and desire, of the impenetrable inexhaustible fickleness of Tetskaki Lopa, the anguish of powerless dependence, the constancy of insecurity, the painful insubstantiality of status and reward in the imperial city of Tenochtitlan, and the casual, inventive, tireless malice of the only sacred force concerned with the fates of men. Mister Smith adds, it tells us something about the Mexico oh, sorry. About Mexico political theory that this wanton, sadistic, fundamentally antisocial god was the patron of kingship and rightful rule. And I’m gonna leave it at that. I think that we we should all visit the mister and missus Smith’s sub stack if you wanna actually get his punchline. I think he’s very articulate. It’s good stuff to read. The he this was almost the end of it, but I don’t wanna steal his thunder. I think

Malcolm Collins:I mean, I’m very glad you shared this. I think that people need to understand this idea, and I think the reason why this is so such a good episode to to to put out there, and you were like, I this will be a weekend episode. This is not a weekend episode. Oh, I don’t know. A great

Simone Collins:like, me being super excited about the extinguishment of a civilization is Well, I’m going to

Malcolm Collins:be censoring those parts, obviously. Okay. Good. Thank you

Simone Collins:for censoring that. Yeah. Y’all y’all can know what I mean, though.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. But the point being, people need to understand that not all civilizations are equal. Not all civilizations are the same. They don’t carry the same moral weight. They aren’t shades of gray different. Some are really different from others, and some regions of the world really are different from others.

Simone Collins:And the big takeaway from mister Smith’s post too, ideas have consequences, and culture matters. Culture matters. Religion matters. Your gods matter. And if you have toxic, evil, sadistic, soulless gods, you’re gonna have a toxic, evil, soulless, sadistic culture. And, hopefully, it won’t get this bad. But as you pointed out

Malcolm Collins:But doesn’t mean you should be an entire society without any reference to pleasure. A society where everything is about maximizing pain and suffering.

Simone Collins:Yeah. And and, again, minimizing pleasure. Like, to the point about the, like, don’t sniff the bouquet of flowers. Pleasures for this guy. And if you enjoy things too much, you know, he’s gonna cut you down. Like yeah. Truly the opposite of the urban monoculture, which is all about avoidance of pain and and adherence to pleasure, complete inverse, both of them being a sick and dangerous pantomime, but one being unthinkably worse. I mean, I would much rather I would wish upon anyone, you know, death by, you know, pointless pleasure box over the Aztec experience. That is it is it is when I first read this you know, again, I I’m I’m sitting there, like, getting my my miscarriage miscarriage blood work done. Like, I was, you know, going in there being all sad. And then I’m also with the documentary team that’s asking me, like, how do you feel? What happened? So I’m, like, really reflecting on it. Then I read this, and I’m, like, walking away from the clinic with with the the the camerawoman. And I’m just like, oh my god. I’m so glad we’re not the Aztecs. And she’s like, yeah. I mean, yep. Yep. And everything just felt so stupid because I’m still so sad and I’m but I’m also just like, what

Malcolm Collins:the what?

Simone Collins:Oh my god. Yes. It’s just so bad. It’s so bad. I I hate them. I don’t hate them. Like, I that’s what would be

Malcolm Collins:so great? Punish themselves as well.

Simone Collins:No. No. Well, did hate them. And I think the the the the core thing is I I hate deeply their culture because it hurt them. Like, in in that way, you know, like, you get really mad at me when I hurt myself, and I get really mad at you when you hurt yourself. And, like, we get really frustrated with our kids when we’re like, don’t run. And then they run, and then they hurt themselves. And we’re like, why would you do this to yourself? I care about you. I don’t want you to hurt. And hearing about this entire culture, I’m like, I don’t I want your babies to be okay. I want your woman to be okay. I want your men to be okay. I want your boys to not suffer. I want all of this. Why are you doing to the ideas? Ideas have consequences.

Malcolm Collins:We, for example, Simone and I, do not look back to Celtic culture for, like, our No. We don’t. No. You don’t need to. If you are Latin American, you don’t need to look back to this evil. You can do the same thing we do and say, hey. Our people have changed since then. The fundamental thing

Simone Collins:that makes humans human is the presence of a prefrontal cortex, which enables us to weigh ideas in our minds without living or dying. We don’t have to die off as entire strains because we have traits that are suboptimal. We can think through things and be like, that’s not a really good idea. I think I’m gonna change. And the whole point is that humans are able to, unlike all other mammals and all other animals, move beyond stuff that kinda sucks, kinda doesn’t work so well, and and rise above. If we turn to the past forever, that is that is to spit in the face of that which makes us human, To to choose to reject bad suboptimal old ideas and to not accept better ways because they’re new and different is is the is almost definitionally inhuman because it is it is a refutation of the prefrontal cortex and its purpose of allowing us

Malcolm Collins:to evolve quickly. You gotta say thank you Catholics for dealing with this situation. You know, I gotta be nice. I gotta prove I’m not big enough. Oh my god. Yes. You’re the proud of

Simone Collins:the Spaniards. I mean, I think it would have kicked the bucket as a civilization anyway. The Maya did that. they they they dispersed. They were unsustainable, and and the Aztec were too. They would have taken care of themselves. But you know what? Anyone who kind of Helped a little

Malcolm Collins:bit with that. Yeah. Just Anyway, love you, Simone. I’m glad we did this, and it’s 05:00. 05:01. Bye. Bye. There’s suggested dish for these?

Simone Collins:A suggest oh, is it sprinkled on top of mac and cheese?

Malcolm Collins:No. It’s disgusting looking. It’s like hot dog bits and a little bit of cheese.

Simone Collins:Well, so you have your camera on reflect. So I’ll go. You’re you’re giving me a Leonardo da Vinci clear language. No. I’m saying your camera reverses it.

Malcolm Collins:Oh, yes. Well, this it doesn’t matter what the ingredients are. Look at the picture.

Simone Collins:She’s oh, why would you do that? Why would you do that?

Malcolm Collins:That does not look good.

Simone Collins:They’re taking out the crunch. Why would you take out the crunch? The flavor’s so good, though. I don’t know why they didn’t make them always this flavor. I hope they don’t get rid of it.

Malcolm Collins:Oh.

Simone Collins:What? Oh, you’re just looking at the picture again.

Malcolm Collins:You’re just at the ingredients. Two hot dogs.

Simone Collins:Oh, of the recipe, not the chips. I thought somehow you developed an impromptu aversion to highly processed foods, which was

Malcolm Collins:No. Don’t you don’t you worry. I’m still Malcolm.

Simone Collins:Well, you know, I try to make you whole foods. I mean, last night, you know, I foisted my homemade chips upon you. Poor thing.

Malcolm Collins:They were pretty good. Your homemade chips are really good. They’re, like, three times as salty as Fritos.

Simone Collins:That’s because I use MSG. That’s that’s just the secret.

Malcolm Collins:I’m pretty sure Frito uses MSG too, Simone. I’m gonna tell you what. I don’t think you discovered the idea of putting MSG

Simone Collins:in there. I actually think that most tortilla chips do not. I think they just use salt, And that’s their problem, you see. That’s where they made a mistake. Alright. You ready for this?

Malcolm Collins:I’m ready.

Simone Collins:Okay.

Speaker 13:So our AI chatbot site, rfab, that’s rfab.ai. I did some major updates to the sort of brainstorming features for brainstorming chatbot scenarios, and they’re just so much better now. They now focus more on, like, the intent of what you’re looking for. So, like, if you’re looking for, like, a fail girl or something like that, it means you want to be, like, appreciated and needed and have somebody who relies on you. And then that’s worked into the way the story works. And what’s even cooler is I got even the not safe for work story brainstormers working with Fable in the auto generation. So try that out if you haven’t. It does really amazing work, which I was surprised about.

Speaker 14:Are you keeping Dex happy? Yeah. the feeding. He he. You don’t eat a stuffy. Yeah. Yeah. What would that even taste like? Yeah. Didn’t do that. You didn’t know. What does stuffy taste like?

Discussion of recent data on Burning Man attendance trends, including a New York Post article and Black Rock City census figures showing a decline in younger participants and a rise in attendees in their forties and fifties. The conversation covers historical context from past events, personal experiences at the festival, and comparisons to other gatherings.

Additional analysis explores organizational challenges, succession planning, and broader cultural shifts affecting participation. The episode also touches on related events and movements that have evolved over time.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins:Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. You, as somebody who had gone to Burning Man in the past, we’re gonna be going over an article and some new statistics. and the article is titled, Burning Man has become a wrinkled sausage fest for aging millennial men data shows. And the data is extreme. This article is, by the way, from the New York Post, and we’ll be going through it, commenting on it, and bringing in additional data. Right. Burning Man, the nine day celebration of art, music, and anarchistic hijinks in the Nevada Desert has been steadily shrinking since its 2019 peak. But the share of people in their forties and fifties is on the rise, data shows. The number of free loving revelers flocking to the playa I love they put it in quotation marks like you got

Simone Collins:Oh, New York Post. Come on.

Malcolm Collins:Where each year a city is built on bare sand and razed after a week of drug fueled closing optional partying. No. One of the, posts I found, on Twitter, because I was looking at analysis on this, was a guy who had regularly gone to Burning Man who said the number of attractive naked women has dropped 95% over

Simone Collins:the years. 95. That’s a statistic for you. No. No.

Malcolm Collins:It dipped to about 70,000 last year after peaking at close to 80,000 according to last year’s census of Black Rock City, the ad hoc municipality that hosts the burn. But the oldies are proving that they have more stamina than the kids in 2014. Oh. Burners under 30 made up thirty percent of the playa. The number plunged by more than half to 14 in 2025.

Simone Collins:Oh my god. That’s actually quite That’s remarkable. Yeah. That’s

Malcolm Collins:Oh, and and that’s an old age. We’re not talking under, like, 20 or 25. Under 30. 30 is less than 14% now.

Simone Collins:That’s really different from how I remember it.

Malcolm Collins:When you went, you said it was would be the majority. Right?

Simone Collins:Yeah. I I was very so as a young lady who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I was accustomed to events where people were naked, and I was also very accustomed to all the people who were naked, obviously, being boomers, being my parents’ age, and being really gross looking. And then what really shocked me about Burning Man, which I attended, I think, as a junior in high school in 2005, was that the naked people were actually hot. Like, I I wasn’t, repulsed when I saw them. I was like, okay. Like, these are attractive naked people. I thought only ugly people walked around naked because that’s kind of the normal San Francisco Bay Area.

[Correction—it was 2006]

Malcolm Collins:It is the normal San Francisco Bay White people. Who lived in

Simone Collins:San Francisco. About, you know, like, being naked. They actually had one of the things that happened at Burning Man was a thing called critical tits. I think it happened outside Burning Man too. But there there was this thing where just, like, all the women would ride their bikes with their shirts off in big flocks. It was, like, it was a one once every time, but, like, it was delightful. Yeah. So many things like that. But I guess now, it’d just be like saggy flapjacks on a bunch of bikes instead.

Malcolm Collins:Did you ever walk around Burning Man naked? Or

Simone Collins:I did not take my clothes off. No. I did not take my clothes

Malcolm Collins:so it’s

Simone Collins:I was I was underage. That probably I mean, I there were, like, a bunch of naked feral children running around, but, like, I I guess I guess it would have been fine. I Our

Malcolm Collins:house is full of naked feral children

Simone Collins:to Have you tried to get yes. You have. Look. Getting our children dressed is harder than dressing a a rabid raccoon. They will scratch. They will hiss. They will bite. I’m not dealing with that. It’s like, if I don’t have to. Jeez. I feel like if we could just spray paint clothing on them, we would. Just anyway. Wow. That’s what we’ll

Malcolm Collins:be doing going forward. So that is that is the future. Spray paint clothing on in the morning. You have a you have a machine that, like, grabs your kids. They’re squirming and spray paint

Simone Collins:them down. Genuinely. Genuinely. I should actually, like, try to watch YouTube channels of pet influencers who, like, make their poor over medicated animals wear clothing.

Malcolm Collins:So, like, we’ve got, like, a dog washing sink. We should be using that for the kids. I had then I’d have to

Simone Collins:lift them into it. See, I can just kind of push them into the bath after I drag them because I literally you know what? Every time with Titan, I have to drag her. She’s smiling the whole way. Good. She loved it.

Malcolm Collins:A little too much.

Speaker 3:I’m gonna be honest.

Simone Collins:A little too much. Catch me, daddy. Catch me. It’s not good. It’s not good, Titan. Anyway yeah. So wow. So it’s older now. Because it it was notably young, and there were a lot of hot people there when I when I went. Yeah. And I yeah. It’s yeah.

Malcolm Collins:And they were naked. Apparently, there’s just not many topless women at all anymore.

Simone Collins:That is also shocking. I mean, now to be clear, like, critical tits wouldn’t have been a thing at Burning Man if women were always walking around topless. So it wasn’t, like perpetual nudity wasn’t so much a thing. One of the reasons being that you’re in a pretty extreme weather environment. Like, you’re you have to wear goggles and you have to have a mask with you constantly because the dust storms come, and you actually need to cover, like, all the things or else I mean, dust is gonna get everywhere anyway. But, also, it gets super cold at night. You can’t walk around naked because it’s, like, 40 degrees and windy and cold. So, you know, as you know from being in that troubled team camp on the desert, like, it gets super freaking cold at night, and you you need to try to survive.

Malcolm Collins:So to continue Yes. Adriel Knight 41 attended in 2023 when a rainstorm flooded camps and turned the exit routes into an impassable muddy mess. Famous. She recalls one young influencer saying, this is not like Coachella at all.

Simone Collins:First off, who’s going to Coachella? Second off, who’s going to and that was that like, there’s a I

Malcolm Collins:had classmates. When I was getting my MBA at Stanford business school Of course. There was, like, a big group of them that went to Coachella, and I were are you sizable enough. And I was like, what are you f*****s doing?

Simone Collins:I know. It seems so insanely miserable. Insanely miserable. I mean, I would say, actually, burning burning man is legit cool. very, very like, I wouldn’t go again, but I’m glad I went. However, Coachella? Absolutely not. No. No way at all. but that year is is quite famous. Nothing like this had happened at Burning Man before. And what happens with the Playa, this desert, is when it rains hard, and it rained hard for several days. You cannot move a car out of it. You they there were there were pregnant people there. There were sick people there. There were people who couldn’t walk, who who were separated from their meds. It was a genuine serious emergency. And when this played out, you had the government saying, like, hey. Should we send in a rescue crew? And the Burning Man organization being, oh my god. Please don’t. Like, we can’t have this on our record, basically. I actually think they made a bad call. Not So

Malcolm Collins:they ended up dying,

Simone Collins:by the way. Someone died in that?

Malcolm Collins:Of drugs, though.

Simone Collins:Oh, well, yeah. It was oh, sorry. Yeah. I do remember that. Yeah. But that’s that doesn’t count, because, you know, that happens. But that was a really, really bad year. It they had such a rough run of it after 2019 that it makes sense why there are fewer people because it’s just kind of scary. But that

Malcolm Collins:was in 2023.

Simone Collins:That was in 2023. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:And it that year, apparently, like, Chris Rock and Diplo I don’t know who Diplo is. They ended up having to, like, walk five, six miles in the mud to, like, the road and and hitchhike out.

Simone Collins:Yeah. No. Some people escaped that way, but then the other burners, like, shamed them for it. You know, they’re like, coward. It was just just horrible, like, the way it all played out. And this is also the

Malcolm Collins:Kimball Musk was there that year.

Simone Collins:He’s yeah. He’s I didn’t realize how how much he got into Burning Man until I saw the man must burn, a documentary about Burning Man on HBO, which has multiple episodes. It’s a really good documentary. But then I see this, like, weird guy talking who, like, looks sort of familiar, and then I’m like, oh my god. And it just turns out he’s trying to get involved in, like, the governance of it, the succession planning with the organization, like, trying to get people together. And it very much actually ties in with your theme of today, which is this organization needs succession planning. This organization Well, I mean, it’s the same

Malcolm Collins:with the Behemothian Grove. Like, the Behemothian Grove is falling apart because everyone’s super old now. Like, there are things that are scenes for certain periods. And if you can’t accept that scenes transition, then you end up wasting your time trying to capture legacy organizations that don’t matter anymore. Mhmm. So if I’m gonna give an example of, like I think my dad handled this very maturely. So my dad was one of the people who made an organization. Now if you are into, like, edgy intellectualism in the eighties and, like, the dominant organizations in that, he was one of the key figures that brought the rise of an organization called the

Simone Collins:the Santa Fe Institute.

Malcolm Collins:was, like, the proto effect of altruists. Right? Mhmm. It was, they they focus on, like, complex what was it? Complexity research?

Simone Collins:No. No. No. Oh, sorry. No. You’re thinking about the Santa Fe Institute. He’s also involved in Aspen.

Malcolm Collins:But Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

Simone Collins:Sorry. Say dad. He’s he’s prolific. He’s prolific. The Santa Fe Institute, not the Santa Institute. They are big specialists in complexity studies. I think at one point, Jeffrey Epstein donated to them.

Malcolm Collins:He was he was one of their longest standing board members,

Simone Collins:and he was the guy Your dad was, not Epstein.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. My dad was is my dad. And he was the guy who managed the period in which they grew dramatically. Mhmm. And they became, like, a major institution in terms of influencing edgy intellectual thought from,

Simone Collins:like Absolutely.

Malcolm Collins:I’d say, like, late eighties to, like, up to the, like, the mid nineties. Right? Mhmm. And they’re still relevant. Like, obviously, Epstein wanted to to buddy up with them because they they hold a lot of sway. Right?

Simone Collins:Yeah. Like, genuinely very prestigious scientists, intellectuals, etcetera, have been involved with them. They do research that people would call interesting. I personally can’t stand it because complexity research. Like, it all just comes down to, like, I can’t tell how much of its intellectual gatekeeping that doesn’t actually amount to anything. And the problem with complexity research is like, we can’t do anything about it because it’s too complicated. And I’m like, you know what?

Malcolm Collins:So so, by the way, if if if you’re wondering what they are like in a character who was modeled after this intellectual scene Okay. If you’ve ever seen the original Jurassic Park, Ian Malcolm is modeled after the Santa Fe Institute people in their research.

Simone Collins:He’s a walking Santa Fe Institute researcher.

Speaker 5:ot clear on chaos. Oh, oh, it it it simply deals with predictability and complex systems. The shorthand is the the butterfly effect. A butterfly can flap its wings and be king, and Central Park can get rain instead of sunshine. Why? And then I go too fast. I go too fast. I did a flyby. No. Give me give me that big glass of water. We’re gonna conduct an experiment. It should be still. The car’s bouncing up and down, but that’s okay. It’s just an example. Now then put your hand flat like a hieroglyphic. Let’s say a drop of water falls in your hand. Okay. Right? Okay. Now freeze your hand. Freeze your hand.

Speaker 3:And you’ll go to

Malcolm Collins:these lectures, and they’ll do, like, two hours of math on, like, a water droplets path or something like that.

Simone Collins:Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah. And he he’s up yeah. It’s absolute like, the institute that’s like, well, but should we? Should we make dinosaurs? And I’m like, yes. We should. Yes. We should. Go colossal. Come on. Like, let’s do it. Bring it. Bring it. They were they

Malcolm Collins:were the bath guys of, like, the late eighties. It was like their leather jackets. Like, like, the risk girls. Yes. But he, unlike Kimball, trying to so he took an organization that was really nothing and then worked with them as they became a dominant intellectual player.

Simone Collins:Get it on the ground floor when it’s still messy.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Whereas Kimball tried to capture an organization that was honestly in or past its prime when he became relevant within it. Yeah. And is trying to capture the prestige that it already had built. Whereas my dad gracefully stepped out of the organization. Mhmm. Being like, no. This is stupid.

Simone Collins:I I think he would disagree with that that final statement, but I do think it it’s I think his argument, and this is really the best smartest philosophy, is you step in when you can make a difference. And when an organization gets too old and too messy to functionally change or be influenced by you in a positive way, you gotta step back because you’re not gonna have it. You’re wasting your time. It’s not gonna change. It’s too ossified. It’s cancerous. You gotta drop it like

Malcolm Collins:Well, I mean, in speaking of cool new organizations and movements, this faction of the new right feels like that for our generation. Totally. I I really believe that, you know, twenty, thirty years, this will be the burning man of our generation. All the the aging VTubers with their ageless models, all the you know, You know, I mean, I I think there’s this is where I see the people going who are just like, okay. But, yeah, what’s true? And, like, let’s be edgy and have fun with it. Right? And I don’t see any other centers of power where that is really happening in a meaningful context. For a little bit, you had it with, like, the what was it? The paradox that what were they called again? The that that stupid magazine. Oh,

Simone Collins:no. You’re thinking about Praxis the city state, but you’re talking about Palladium.

Malcolm Collins:Palladium. Palladium Magazine. No. I was thinking of Palladium. I just forgot the name. They held, like, parties, and they had, like, a bit of a scene going on, but that that’s not as relevant anymore.

Simone Collins:They did have a scene. They did have a scene.

Malcolm Collins:No. They absolutely had a scene, but that was, like, the generation before us. And that it was, like, five, six years ago or something like that. Right? Most of their key figures have moved on. But there really isn’t anything Palladium would have been the only competitor to this ecosystem, and and and it’s mostly retired at this point, which is fascinating. I I mean, Praxis could be the same to the the the city state movement, but that’s you know, while they’re still chugging along, they don’t hold the parties. They don’t hold the podcast. They don’t hold the, you know, anything like that.

Simone Collins:Yeah. They used to try, I think, and have regular events in New York, but a lot of things have changed. So who knows what’s going on?

Malcolm Collins:And and we say this not as outsiders. We’ve been on the Praxis podcast. We’ve written for Palladium. Right? Like, we we’ve been to their parties. Yeah.

Simone Collins:We we and we yeah. We want them to succeed. We want this. We Yeah. We also know that what they’re doing is very hard to do. But, yeah, definitely, what’s happening Burning Man is an organization that started a very, very long time ago. And one thing that’s revealed in the man must burn in that documentary, it really centers around this core problem. Because the documentary team primarily follows the organization of Burning Man and its CEO who started out as the girlfriend as the of the original man who started Burning Man. And she just sort of ended up over time as the CEO for this organization. And throughout the documentary, there’s this one point at which I think kind of led by Kimball. This contingent is like, look. She can’t stay like, we need we need new blood. Like she’s just kind of like, whatever. Like, I’m just gonna keep going. I don’t know who wants my job. And, like, don’t know. She’s she’s kinda fed up with her position, but she cares about the organization, and she’s gonna keep doing it. And kind of like the other issue with Burning Man as, as the thing it has become is it kind of no one wants that job. No one wants to be responsible for a self forming city and all of the, like, zoning nonsense and the porta potties, and you have to go through, and police people and tell people to go away.

Malcolm Collins:Oh, yeah. And it’s it’s it’s both extremely expensive now, and the expenses of the average ticket don’t cover the cost.

Simone Collins:Mhmm. So you have this organization that’s trying to survive, trying to maintain the the finances sufficient to do it. And of all the types of people who love Burning Man are exactly the types of people who don’t wanna be, like, bureaucratic admins. And so as much as people are like, we need succession planning. We need something different. Can no one wants to do it. and so you have this incredibly old, not in a bad I mean, like, they’re also experienced. They they care a lot about this, but they are very old group of people who are still doing this. And I would say that, look, the fact that I went in 2005, which is twenty one years ago oh my god.

Malcolm Collins:I’m old. Twenty one years ago. If somebody had been born at that burn.

Simone Collins:No. Keep in mind, though. Yeah. They they would be 21 years old. They do be of drinking age. Oh, yeah. They’d be turning yeah. That is really But

Malcolm Collins:this is how old you are.

Simone Collins:No. But the point is, it wasn’t just that. Right? I’m old. Right? But, like, I went that that year, and who did I go with but my high school friend and her parents? It was her parents who were burners. I went because they wanted to take their daughter for the first time, and they wanted their daughter to have a kid companion at the event. And that is the thing. It’s like to me and to my peers, Burning Man wasn’t the thing you go to. It was the thing our parents go to, and that was in freaking 2005. So you have to understand just the profundity of the geriatric nature of Burning Man right now. When for me teenager, It’s a thing that your parents go to. It’s a thing in 2005 that boomers went to. And now twenty years have passed. So now it’s it’s what, like, a barely ambulatory elderly people go to. Like, I just

Malcolm Collins:Somebody described it as, like, a retirement home in the desert now. No.

Simone Collins:Which is so sad. Because, also, like, a lot of really sad things are happening this year in particular because of the expense of going as well. For example, one of the best things about Burning Man has been the Thunderdome put on by the death guild. Because the way that Burning Man works is the coolest features are put on by people who attend Burning Man and bring with them huge amounts. And this is a a great expense, you know, a hun like, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, at least tens of thousands of dollars Yeah. To bring out art exhibits and and events and, like, whole venues and, like, party buses that play amazing music and have famous DJs come and all these things. And a lot of the people funding this are people like Kimball Musk, are people who are big Silicon Valley post exit people who you would know who are quite famous. There’s yeah. Like, the the odds of you running into a current or former, like, tech CEO at Burning Man are incredibly high because, also, these are the people who can afford to put things on and also attend. But, anyway, the death guild’s contribution to burning man was this giant geodesic dome that sort of remade Road Warriors thunderdome where you could get attached to, like, a bungee cord system and then just, like, have at it.

Malcolm Collins:Did you did you go in it?

Simone Collins:Did you I did not. No. No. I was a little girl. I was just fascinated by it, but I really loved it. And there was like, the one of the the primary leaders of the death guild is this woman who sings, like, techno operas, like, the fifth element, like, that kind of thing.

Malcolm Collins:Okay. Okay.

Simone Collins:And so she would, like she’d sing at the beginning, and it was just this whole big thing. And everyone’s, like, climbing up onto the dome, like, screaming as

Malcolm Collins:we go. Reminds me of our kids in the dome in the backyard.

Simone Collins:Can we No.

Malcolm Collins:Like, literally

Simone Collins:every day is the Thunderdome with the death guild and burning man at our house. I swear. We just, like, add add lasers, and we have burning. Here’s the make the nudity, the the trippy moments, the thunder dome. Give them some things to hit each other with.

Malcolm Collins:That’s what

Simone Collins:I need in in the dome. Yeah. Actually, I we really need that. They had, like, I should just yeah. I should just take a screenshot of what they have, and we’ll just rebuild it because our kids would freaking

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Get, like, a bouncy thing. Get them some, like, sticks to hit each other.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Because you you’re fighting with, like, nonlethal sticks in the Thunderdome. Burning Man also, I would say, over the years became a lot less intense. For example, when I went, one of the most awkward moments of Burning Man and perhaps embarrassing moments of my life was we were looking for this one camp that was legendary where they would brand people. The thing you’re supposed to do at Burning Man is even if you’re a guest, even if you’re not putting on one of these tens of thousands of dollars, like, art exhibits or whatever, like, you should bring a gift. And one camp was famous for just having, like, active branding irons where you could just get branded, like, on your butt forever.

Malcolm Collins:Did you

Simone Collins:want that to happen? I well, I wanted to find the camp. Right? And we we got there really early because our parents had to set up their own art exhibit. They’re they’re both artists by trade, really.

Malcolm Collins:She does not have a branding on her butt, people. I would I would know at

Simone Collins:this point. You would know. and so we get to the camp, and no one’s there. so we just had to talk with the people running it directly. And they I think just like that year or the year before, had switched from doing brands for liability reasons to doing stamps. And they were like, well, do you want us to stamp your butts? And we’re like, well, like, we didn’t wanna be rude. And so, yeah, we had these, like, middle aged men, like and we were pulling down our pants, they were stamping our butts. And I was like, I don’t feel comfortable with this. Because then he decided to blow on it to dry off the ink. And I’m like, I don’t think I like this. I think we should go now.

Malcolm Collins:Very creepy. Hold on. So what happened to the what happened to the Thunderdome?

Simone Collins:The so the Thunder sorry. Right. The death guild decided this year they couldn’t afford to go, that it was just too expensive. And so everyone going this year is deprived of the Thunderdome. And, look, they’ve been through a lot. In 2020, Burning Man was canceled formally, but people still went, including Kimball Musk and his contingent. And the people who did show up actually really had a good time because it was just, like, ardent, real, like, we’re just gonna do this even though it’s illegal renegade burners instead of having an actual man to burn because, you know, the whole setup wasn’t there. And this is, of course, the culmination of this event that is Burning Man. A giant wooden man is burned, everyone and gets really excited about it. And it’s like, oh, yay. The man is burning. And then the day after that, you burn the temple, which is a place where people bring all of their grievances and sorrow, and and then the temple burns.

Malcolm Collins:It’s like really sad scene in the abortion article.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Actually, yes. That’s right. Yes. Romy took, yes, something something about her lost her lost baby intentionally lost baby to the to, yes, to the temple. And then it burned, and it’s supposed to help her mentally, but I don’t think it really. Maybe it did. I hope it brought her closure. But, anyway, instead of having a man, they had this really cool drone display. Like, I think they made a man out of a drone swarm, which is legit cool. So Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:Look Oh, it’s made it through. That period. Right? Like, this was a while ago when drones

Simone Collins:were 20 when, like, this was extremely new technology. And that’s always been a thing at Burning Man. It’s it’s incredibly high-tech meets complete off the grid nature.

Malcolm Collins:But here’s what I don’t understand. Before we go further with the article, is, like, how like, Kimball Musk, my god. Man, you have the attention on you and likely the wealth to do something meaningful with your life other than seek status among burners. Right? Like That’s true.

Simone Collins:He could just make a whole new burning man, that would be cooler and better.

Malcolm Collins:And there was cooler burning man even when Burning Man was happening.

Simone Collins:So Yeah. What happened to Ephemera? Do you have Yes.

Malcolm Collins:So Ephemera. I gotta talk about Ephemera before I move forward. Yeah.

Simone Collins:Tell me.

Malcolm Collins:Ephemera was, like, the circles that I was in because I was in the edgy and

Simone Collins:Yeah. They’re like, ugh. Don’t go to Burning Man. Go to Ephemera.

Malcolm Collins:Oh, and it genuinely sounded so much more fun than Burning Man. So Not to me. Jesus Christ. What Ephemera was is everyone who was going would buy something that floated, like a floating platform or a boat or, you know, something. And you’d all go into this, like, big lake at this one location, and then they tied everything together to create this, like, giant network of floating platforms. Look.

Simone Collins:It was the water world to burning man’s road warrior.

Malcolm Collins:If if burning man is, like, hot and dry, like, why not have a cool water thing that you can

Simone Collins:jump in? Not just get gangrene because your feet are so soggy because your boat keeps leaking. That just sounds look . The the dust wasn’t as bad as ever. It just gives you anime hair. Everyone’s got anime hair. It looks fantastic. It’s it’s it’s it was great. You’re like a chinchilla. You bathe in it. Ephemera did not sound good. But, yes, absolutely, people have tried to create other cool gatherings and perhaps have succeeded. And perhaps there are amazing ones happening, and the only reason why they’re amazing is because we don’t know about them. That’s kind of the the feature.

Malcolm Collins:Oh, gosh. So I decided to look up Ephemera. It’s got a Wikipedia article. Oh. And it goes, in the first year, approximately two thirds of Ephemera’s 100 plus attendees were sea steaders. So that was the community at

Simone Collins:Cape Yes.

Malcolm Collins:Of course. In 2012, there are approximately 300 attendees, a quarter of which were SeaSteaders. And by 2015, there are estimated 500 attendees, and there isn’t any any note of a rundown of the event.

Simone Collins:You think there’d be pictures or something.

Malcolm Collins:Right? Tons of pictures.

Simone Collins:I’m what are what are you searching? Because there’s a there’s a historical Oh, it looks cool. Okay. Okay. Yeah. It’s it’s a little oh, I love the yacht zone. There’s like a there’s the rich part of town, yacht club area, and then there’s, like, the poor people part of town. And I see an outrigger Yeah. The

Malcolm Collins:yacht zone. We’re the three yachts. Didn’t even notice that.

Simone Collins:And they’re

Malcolm Collins:like, this club, this yacht zone, and then there’s, like, this weird old tanker.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Then there’s, the yeah. Yeah. Then there’s then there’s the tanker ghetto, and then there’s, like, everyone else. That’s so cute. I love that so much, the yacht the yacht people. Okay. I’m seeing guys hanging out in, like, a floating kiddie pool. Someone tried to set up some art that’s floating on the oh, there’s, a floating platform intense. This was this was Ephemera was hosted in, like, this delta area around California that has sort of a bunch of islands and then just water. I don’t know how they did the permitting for it, but well, that’s lovely. Yeah. It’s it’s around Sacramento. I it looks like nothing happened after 2021, though.

Malcolm Collins:But it’s still happening every year. I checked AI. Yeah.

Simone Collins:Okay. Okay.

Malcolm Collins:I’m just saying I prefer to be on water

Simone Collins:than Yeah. You can go. You can go. You can go. Look. I wouldn’t go back to Burning Man now With the WKids. To continue. I wouldn’t go back.

Malcolm Collins:It’s really out of everyone’s comfort zone even if you have a comfy camp, and maybe millennials and Gen Xers have a higher tolerance for discomfort, Knight told the post. Men have also historically outnumbered women, and that trend still holds strong with males making up 56% of the burners last year.

Simone Collins:And that’s not that much more. Yeah. Come on.

Malcolm Collins:It was an oasis of men. I don’t mind, Knight said, of her experience. Although she said the gender gap wasn’t significantly noticeable to her. But as those men arrived with camera phones, the number of women partying topless has dropped, reported veteran burners. When did nudity disappear? Yes. There were some swinging hogs. I saw you. But I would say that the amount of female toplessness decreased 95% from the last time I was there, lamented one burner of the r burning man subreddit who attended the recent festival after a ten year hiatus. The Burns famous Orgy Dome has strict regulations to ward away any horny pickup artists, including a couples and morsems entry policy. Orgy Dome? Oh my god.

Simone Collins:Yeah. There there have been headlines this year of, like, the Orgy Dome blew over the previous year, but it’s coming back this year. Participants are being encouraged to use antibacterial body wipes. Just doesn’t sound very good.

Malcolm Collins:So now, about half of burners make over a $100,000 a year compared to just over a quarter of that level in 2015. this is a rich old person saying, meanwhile, the festival has gotten more expensive to attend. It can be cost prohibitive, said Knight, who spent around a thousand dollars on supplies in preparation in 2023 on the top of the price. This year, that went up at $775 more than that. So almost double. In addition, Borners charged extra fees to drive a vehicle to Black Walk City. My first burn in 2005, I was 21, and I bought a ticket for $215. I spent I spent a thousand dollars for that year alone. It sucks the economy is pricing so many of the younger burners out,

Simone Collins:he said. Yeah. Legitimately, who can afford to do that? And the travel outlook You can’t family or you’re relevant to

Malcolm Collins:the future of human civilization? Yeah. Does Kimball Musk have kids?

Simone Collins:That’s a good quest he must have kids.

Malcolm Collins:Four children, three biological children, and a stepchild. He founded something called the kitchen. What is the kitchen? Like, they own a restaurant called Big Green in Austin. No. Is this a nonprofit? I can’t.

Simone Collins:An vibrant neighborhood neighborhood bistro and bar serving globally inspired American cuisine.

Malcolm Collins:But he he founded something with his wife, which I guess is good.

Simone Collins:Oh, and then he tried to open a kitchen seven months ago in Boulder and then and read it. I had an aneurysm about it. And I was like, are we going to do anything about the kitchen? Kimball Musk is mentioned in the Epstein files. He clearly has some association. We need to bankrupt them. What is wrong with people?

Malcolm Collins:I am so glad we became famous after Epstein was locked up

Speaker 3:because he a 100% would have reached out to us. I don’t know.

Simone Collins:Yeah. He even reached out to Chris Poole. Like yeah. This this guy. I would

Malcolm Collins:have been like an island. Sure. Yeah. Let’s check it out.

Simone Collins:You know, I hate island. You would have had to go by yourself. Yeah. Though, I mean yeah.

Malcolm Collins:That would have looked better, Simone.

Simone Collins:Oh, great.

Malcolm Collins:That would have looked better, you be.

Simone Collins:Oh god. You’re right. Yeah. You’d have to be messaging someone about antibiotics after. My lord. Okay. So How

Speaker 3:do I convince my wife to take antibiotics? How does

Simone Collins:Oh my god. Yeah. We we probably would’ve. Well, I mean, no. We if we knew that he was a

Malcolm Collins:No. I’m, like, weirdly resistant to peer pressure. Like, we’ve hung out with, like, severely rich people at, like, drug parties and stuff like that, and I’m like Severely rich.

Simone Collins:It’s

Malcolm Collins:great. I’m like, no. No. Thank you.

Simone Collins:No. Thank you. Yeah. We’re a little too square for all that.

Malcolm Collins:We are very square here

Simone Collins:and I.

Malcolm Collins:People think that, like, we’re, like, out because we’re from the Silicon Valley ecosystem, and we were exposed to all of this, and this was normal for us. But throughout the entire pipeline of all of that, I was the squarrest mother you’ve ever think you

Simone Collins:have to understand when you come from social sets like our parents who did all that stuff, That’s a boop it’s a parent thing. Your mom, like, was like, hey, Malcolm. Do you wanna smoke pot? And you’re like,

Malcolm Collins:no. No. I mean, I did it with her, and I was like, dad, stupid.

Simone Collins:Oh god. See, yeah, I wouldn’t like, my parents were always like, try this, try that, and I’m like

Malcolm Collins:I only go with Jesus approved

Simone Collins:Intoxicants. Okay.

Malcolm Collins:Jesus approved intoxicants.

Simone Collins:Someone needs to put those on, like, beer cans and bottles of wine. Jesus approved.

Malcolm Collins:That’s what I’ll do. Jesus approved. Beautiful. Wine. Jesus approved.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Bread fishing was fishes and wine, I guess, he was okay with.

Malcolm Collins:No. I mean, out of all the major religions, would, like, Christianity is the most, like, pro alcohol religion that I’m aware of. Like, I don’t think Judaism doesn’t explicitly have any big alcohol miracles. That’s a that’s a thing. Like, alcohol miracles. Miracles.

Simone Collins:You know? You know your religion is a drinking problem. Have multiple alcohol miracles. Oh god.

Malcolm Collins:The the people who are like like, oh, well, you know, those Christians, they don’t drink. I’m like, well, they don’t they don’t they’re not really big into the bible, I guess. Because

Speaker 3:the the Buddhism doesn’t have

Malcolm Collins:multiple alcohol miracles. I I I even, like, the ancient Greeks had, like, specific gods for that stuff.

Simone Collins:But, like This is true. This is true. But, actually, I I would say you you would have to argue that the Greeks didn’t value alcohol because they would always pour libations. Whereas the Christians mm-mm. No. You might slaughter an animal. You might spill blood. You didn’t spill alcohol.

Malcolm Collins:But you would not spill your

Simone Collins:alcohol. Expanded. We doubled the alk we we we we multiplied.

Malcolm Collins:There are there every week, you have to drink your alcohol.

Simone Collins:We do we do not waste Because that’s Christ’s blood.

Malcolm Collins:Right? No. Mm-mm. But Yeah.

Simone Collins:Yeah. They yeah. My my blood is alcohol. It’s it says we we we he could have chosen many things for that symbolism. Alright? And

Malcolm Collins:He went straight for alcohol.

Simone Collins:Went straight. God. Okay.

Malcolm Collins:It’s true.

Simone Collins:It’s true. It’s true. It’s true. It’s it is.

Malcolm Collins:He could’ve he could’ve been like, hey. Can we? I’m about to do a big thing here. Can we change out the drink for something nonalcoholic?

Simone Collins:Yeah. For something a little more sober. It’s kind of a difficult night for me going through some stuff.

Malcolm Collins:It would be so fun for me that, like, the the morality police constantly go out there, and they go way, way to an anti biblical perspective but act like they’re being, like, super Christians. And it’s like, no. You’re not. You’re you’re ignoring the and it’s like some people get addicted. It’s like, suck a dick some people get addicted. Yeah. Then you f*****g deal with that.

Simone Collins:Get through it. I know. But, look, it’s there is no level of alcohol consumption that is healthy, except probably for your family.

Malcolm Collins:I feel like when know in my family who drinks alcohol lives way longer than you.

Simone Collins:I I I would say yeah. I just kind of yeah. I I have to look the other way when it comes to to you and your family. My family? Whole yeah. Your whole bloodline. It’s, like, so important. But, anyway, whatever. You’re different. You’re freakish. Hardly hardly human.

Malcolm Collins:And we’re doing steak tonight?

Simone Collins:Yes. We are. Steak and fries unless you want a steak.

Malcolm Collins:Hooked us up with tickets to Burning Man this year.

Simone Collins:It’s too late. It’s already happening. You have to understand. It is very, very difficult to get to Burning Man. I guess there are because I looked

Malcolm Collins:at going once. I had to write an application to a camp.

Simone Collins:Oh, yeah. Oh god. Well, you you could, I guess, theoretically go. I guess you were trying to go with a camp, but the you have

Malcolm Collins:to couldn’t when I went, you couldn’t go without a camp. You first had to be accepted to a camp, and then you could go.

Simone Collins:Okay. Wow. Things changed. But you have to drive a very, very long way to get in. I guess there’s a private some later people started taking in private airplanes, allegedly. I definitely saw people skydive in when I was there, but it is extremely difficult. If you’re driving from California, you need to, like, maybe spend a night in, Tahoe, and then you’re driving all day, long drives to the the desert. Really

Malcolm Collins:not fun.

Simone Collins:An extremely small town that is, like, maybe two hours away from like, guess, maybe closer. But that town cannot it has no, like, actual infrastructure. It has, like, one small shop. I barely any people live there, and then you get there. It it is so isolated. It’s so hard to get to. So it’s not just the expense of attending, not just the expense of hauling in all your own food, all your own water because there is no buying or selling at Burning Man. The only thing you can buy actually is, I think, water and ice for survival. So you have to bring everything in, and everything also that you take is probably going to get ruined. So you have to buy a bike that is just for Burning Man because that bike is going to get ruined by the dust. Everything’s gonna get ruined. And so that’s just I I just don’t understand how any normal person, especially any normal young person these days, could possibly go. And I bet that that small number, what, fifteen percent of people 30 who did go were probably going with their parents.

Malcolm Collins:I’m gonna push back, and I think one of the reasons why so few young people go is not the reason the article says it’s not about finances. Mhmm. I think one of the reasons young people go is the demographic that found things like Burning Man entertaining just didn’t have many children. And they didn’t pass on this desire for this sort of, like, performative edginess to the next generation. That form of performative edginess. Like, obviously, you’ve got our form of performative edginess, but it’s, like, you know, intellectual out there online. We don’t need to go around and walk around naked and talk about our f*****g chakras. Okay? But the burning man type, I think that type of human might just be going extinct.

Simone Collins:Yeah. I think so. The burning man is definitely seen by those who identify as burners not as a thing you go and do for fun, but as a lifestyle. You’re spending your entire year planning for it. You’re associated with the community. It’s it’s a religion. It’s a surrogate religion. And and the the the burning man portion of it is just the pilgrimage portion of that religion. It is not it is just one facet of something much bigger than that. And I think the big part of it if you actually just look at it more practically from the perspective of a religion, this is a religion with a very low birth rate that is that is not adapting with the times. And one of the things

Malcolm Collins:So a word of this are we were gonna say something?

Simone Collins:Well, one of the other big things is that, actually, there was this period, and we all heard about it when young people were going to Burning Man. And it was like the new Coachella, and all these influencers were showing up, and they were taking pictures. But guess what happened when they went? They got shamed. They got ostracized. They got made fun of. This is even picked up on in the documentary on the Burning Man, like, the period between 2019 and, I don’t know, ‘20 We didn’t like young people. And so the one wave of people that was like, oh, this is pretty cool. Like, we’ll we’ll make we we can do this. We’ll go. Got shamed and kind of scared away from it, especially by, like, the the bad severe weather events and stuff. So I think they also flubbed it. It’s not just that. It’s it’s the fact that when people did try, at a different generation and in a different style because they are a different generation, their style was not allowed.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. But I think one thing that, like, I really wanna emphasize is in my generation, when I hung out with, like, the effective altruists and the singletarians and all of these groups that were, like, this sort of, like, elite intellectual, like, we’re gonna try, like, edgy things group. For any event or thing that you were going to do or apply to, it was incredibly hard to get in. There was, like, a 100 people for every one position. Today, every teenager I know who has an interest in these communities gets in. And it’s because people born with these sensibilities are just way lower a portion of the population than they were in my generation.

Simone Collins:Mhmm.

Malcolm Collins:And I think it’s the same with burners.

Simone Collins:Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. And you you do have to have a high tolerance for, like, just physical discomfort and and heavy socializing, which I think is is harder for people now post social media. We don’t hang out in person as much. So the idea of hanging out

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. I mean, I’d like to go in there and purify it. Right? We got we got flamethrowers. Got We a little crusade going on. But you there is that.

Simone Collins:There there’s all these there’s lots of flamethrowers.

Malcolm Collins:But they’re not they’re not using them in the right way. No.

Simone Collins:Yeah. It’s just a a marching band where all of the instruments are on fire, but also functional. It’s not not the way you would want, I guess. But, yeah, it’s

Malcolm Collins:anyway. Drive actually. Like, if at the end, you just, like, drive into Burning Man was, like, an actual killdozer with, like, flameservers attached driving through the tents. Just like it would take it would take so long for anyone to be able to respond to that. You would be able to if you were just gonna go out.

Simone Collins:Don’t do that. There are innocent people in these tents. Actually, one thing that did happen that really freaked me out, I think I can’t remember exactly what the details were, but it it won of the really early events. And this is why they had to build up all of these in this infrastructure and all the safety is that someone did get, like, crazy drunk, and they drove through some tents. And one of them, I think, had two kids in it or something. The kids ended up okay. It’s okay. Someone else died, but not the kids. Nothing bad could happen to kids. They were okay. But, like, still, it is and it is not a it’s it it can be a dangerous place. And they’ve actually had to do so much to make it safe, and that is also very difficult. Like, they have these rangers who are constantly going across the playa trying to find anyone who might be overdosing. All this stuff happens because people don’t know what they’re taking out there. Things go hard. So it’s it’s such a difficult and I I, again, I get why only old people are showing up now because, like, how are you gonna get young people to govern an event that involves being responsible for keeping all these people alive?

Malcolm Collins:You just rather be a streamer. Like, if you’re going into this world, just be a streamer.

Simone Collins:Well, I do think that there is a group of people that just wants to feel something.

Malcolm Collins:Be a streamer.

Simone Collins:No. No. It’s it’s not there is something different when you experience something physically. It’s it’s true. You can’t, like, have exactly the same experience. I disagree. Streaming is way more way more fun.

Malcolm Collins:I think I think that’s boomer talk right there, experiences. What are you talking about?

Simone Collins:Oh, look. I don’t want them. I I know that physical experiences are different, and I think that they’re worse. I do not like them anywhere near as much. So I’m not

Malcolm Collins:Love you, Simone. I

Simone Collins:love you too. I hope that people find the communities they need outside of Burning Man because it doesn’t look like

Malcolm Collins:As they slowly go extinct.

Simone Collins:It’s sad. It but

Malcolm Collins:it’s cool

Simone Collins:that it happened. I’m glad that it happened. You can’t sleep, and I don’t know what’s happening either. But, hopefully, steak and fries will bring you back to life. We will

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. I’d like to try to go to bed early today.

Simone Collins:Then I will prioritize stat instead of waiting to wrangle the kids in. They’re so resistant. But also, like, would you blame them when you could see our yard and how freaking pretty it is out there? Like, I can’t take them in. You know? They’re all I’m like

Malcolm Collins:It’s so much prettier than my yards growing up even though they’re so much, like, bigger and supposedly nicer.

Simone Collins:All manicured and stuff. Yeah. Whereas, like, if you walk around I I really need to just have people, like, sign a release form when they come to our house. Like, have you had your tetanus shots? Are you yeah. You know, do you need are you ready to screen for Lyme disease? Are you allergic to mosquito bites? Can you handle dog bites? Are you do you have antibiotics on hand in case, I don’t know, you, like, swallow some chicken poop while they fly around you? Anyway, the kids love it. And I I’ve just given up on telling them to come in. I just let them play outside. And when they’re ready to come in, they come in, and I can just see them out there playing. And I can’t. I can’t I can’t I can’t say no. I can’t.

Malcolm Collins:Well, you’ve gotta get to sleep earlier yourself, sweetheart.

Simone Collins:Well, that’s why we need to buy kid whips. I will buy a regular one. Colored. They’re Paw Patrol themed. Are they are they real? No. I I’m sure in China somewhere, there’s a I’m sure there’s a Paw Patrol themed whip. Hold on. Patrol themed whip. I’m just getting birthday cakes. Oh, because it’s it’s whipped cream. Oh, please, people. Come on. Come on. I’m sure. No. Streamers. Well, you know what? Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Malcolm Collins:Where there’s a whip, there’s a way.

Simone Collins:Where there’s a I’m I swear to you. I mean, like, the thing is wanna know that song? Where there’s a whip, there’s a way?

Malcolm Collins:You should look it up. It’s the from the original cartoon version of lord of the rings. they didn’t look like orcs in that. They looked like deformed hobbits.

Simone Collins:Oh, well, weren’t orcs just deformed elves? Is that just like Yeah. I mean, tech brand

Malcolm Collins:or They look nothing like the orcs that you think of today.

Simone Collins:Well, look. Everyone’s allowed to have their own artistic Oh, for yeah. They look like frog people with lizard eyes. What’s this?

Malcolm Collins:Right? It’s before there was a common understanding of what an orc should look like.

Simone Collins:Oh, there’s oops. Yeah. I I haven’t watched the movie because I tried to watch it as a kid, and it was too ugly for me. As you know, I cannot I cannot. I I can only watch She likes attractive property people.

Malcolm Collins:She drives through poor neighborhoods. Not because she sympathizes empathizes for them.

Simone Collins:It’s I do, but also they’re ugly. The neighborhoods are ugly. Not the people per se.

Malcolm Collins:And so what? I brought you into the life of beauty?

Simone Collins:Yes. Thank you.

Malcolm Collins:Okay. Well, let’s get started here. I I have no idea what you found. I have no idea what you’re gonna go on about.

Simone Collins:Oh, I didn’t even see the title. I didn’t realize we were doing mine. Okay. Well, that’s great. I was gonna do a little add a little bit more to it. I was maybe gonna suggest we do the Yaztec one. Or because, basically, I just go through, like, the nineteen thirties.

Malcolm Collins:I don’t go, like, tomorrow. Yaztec one.

Simone Collins:Okay. You wanna do that? Yeah. You want I thought you wanted to do your burning man one first. Okay.

Malcolm Collins:Cool. Right. But the kid, it just fell asleep, and you always want to do yours right after this.

Simone Collins:No. No. He’ll be he’ll be down. He was he didn’t fall asleep at all. But no. I’ll we’ll we’ll do a I mean,

Malcolm Collins:so I can do mine. Let’s do mine. Okay.

Simone Collins:No. No. From from a strategy perspective, I wanted to ask if you think with the masturbation one. I basically start off from the beginning. Mean, I after the teaser, which I know has to be good, I start off with the the history of people’s views on masturbation, like, before Christianity and then Christianity and, like, the dogma of it. Like, is this sinful? Let’s actually talk about whether it’s sinful or not. Because we all know it’s not gonna, like, make you sick if you masturbate. And then I get into the two waves of anti masturbation fear and also, like, where did this the blindness stuff

Malcolm Collins:come from? Thing you really need to look up, which I almost am certain you’re going to be overly loose on in your research Okay. Is, one, all of the anti masturbation sort of commandments or whatever before the two waves.

Simone Collins:Oh, I have them. Yeah. No. I have the whole I have the whole thing. And, like, where they stand in terms of even, like, where medieval priests sort of ranked it in terms of punishments. Yeah. Like, how many days of penance you’d have for, like, masturbation versus other things. So I had that all in there.

Malcolm Collins:Okay. Okay.

Simone Collins:What I’m lacking on is basically what happens after Kellogg because he and I thought, like, maybe it would be good to, like, put a little cap on it all at the end with, look. Compare that to anti masturbation movements today, and you’re gonna have to discover, oh my god. This is actually still the same thing. I’m being so dumb. I need to stop this right now. And I thought that would be a good place to finish it because if I’m just finishing with, like, Kellogg was crazy, people won’t realize that it’s the same freaking stuff today. And I I I realized just, like, while I was wrapping the research up that I should probably do that. But Kellogg was I can’t.

Malcolm Collins:Kellogg was actually crazy. Well, and he’s the one who convinced the Mormons to go crazy on this.

Simone Collins:He was also

Malcolm Collins:the

Simone Collins:like, it there there had to be a sex thing going on with him. Like, his whole, like weird fetish. It was, like, the the hard the hardest core edging in the entire world. On on his honeymoon, because he had a celibate marriage, he wrote a whole book on, like, how masturbation was bad. Okay?

Malcolm Collins:Wait. He wrote the book on how masturbation is bad on his honeymoon and celibate marriage.

Simone Collins:No. I swear. His whole life was edging because it was that it wasn’t just that. After, like, this one visit to Sweden, he he adds to his health resort a a mechanical room that had machines that would vibrate you and slap you and beat you. And you had to go to this room every day to get beaten by the machine. By the machine. It’s going to jiggle you, but you’re not going to feel hot at all. And he he encouraged people to wear cages that, like, if you started to get an erection, like, your penis would move towards spikes inside the cage. I mean, this is like BDSM. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:That’s just BDSM.

Simone Collins:I know. I know. It’s so funny. And then also, he was really into butt stuff. Enemas. Super obsessed with enemas. He used special devices that could get 15 quarts through you in a minute.

Malcolm Collins:And

Simone Collins:he was all into, like it wasn’t just an enema. It was like, we’re gonna do saltwater. We’re gonna do buttermilk. We’re gonna do plain milk. We’re gonna do yogurt. We’re gonna do all the stuffs going right up there.

Malcolm Collins:I just can’t understand a celebrant marriage, like, signing up for that.

Simone Collins:I’m I I think it was it was, like, it was edging. Like, for I I think I mean, I I truly think that he was a devout Seventh day Adventist who was, like, genuinely, like, very he believed it. But I think that he had very like, deeply internally, something deep sexually inside him that was extremely gratified by the denial of sexual pleasure.

Malcolm Collins:That, like By the way, for people who are wondering why I mentioned that that, like, he’s the one who incepted Mormonism was this. If you look up Mormonism before him, there’s none of this, like, master no masturbation at all stuff. That all came about in that, like, the nineteen tens to nineteen twenties with with him. Before this, it was like, don’t see prostitutes.

Simone Collins:Which is reasonable. Which is reasonable. Yeah. Like, financial budgeting standpoint. Don’t gamble. Like, don’t buy stuff you don’t need to.

Malcolm Collins:No. It wasn’t even don’t see prostitutes. It was don’t see prostitutes instead of going on your mission. And so that became Yeah. That became the all masturbation is bad.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway

Malcolm Collins:Iterative prophecy will do that to you.

Simone Collins:I mean, there’s so many benefits to it because they were able to correct for a lot of stuff that looks really bad today, but, like, at the same time. Anyway, so I I would like to put a little bow on that because people are just gonna see him and be like, well, I’m not like that. I mean, I just for reasonable reasons, don’t fap. Not that I’m encouraging people to.

Malcolm Collins:No. But it’s important to know where a lot of these, like, manias occurred in our culture and became popularized and that they just were not big concerns before this.

Simone Collins:Yeah. In fact, that the the primary driver I’m going to argue on my podcast is is profit motive. It’s a bunch of charlatans selling you things and not actually any sort of grounded concern about health and safety. So but yeah. And there’s there’s a lot of weird stuff about jizz in it. There’s a lot of

Malcolm Collins:We’ll we’ll get to that one later. I’ll start with mine today, which I think people

Simone Collins:Gonna love. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s very it’s your perfect Labor Day episode because that is it’s happening now. They’re out there. They’re on the playa. They’re pedaling the their art bikes. They’re riding in

Malcolm Collins:the cars. sorry. For what we were talking about here, we actually do a lot of research on our episodes for people who are unaware of this. Like, we put in an obscene amount of of effort. We like, we we do not talk from the cuff on our episodes. And we even like, we’ll go over episodes with each other, and we’ll be like, you just don’t have enough data yet. You know, you need more Mhmm. If we’re gonna talk on this particular subject.

Simone Collins:But they love they love to be like, no. So someone was complaining on x that, like, well, I I like to avoid the Collins’s because I feel like they’re just rehashing other people’s ideas. I’m like What are you talking about? Like, first, techno puritanism. But then, like, second, where where are you getting the new ideas on daily podcasts? Where who’s giving you the

Malcolm Collins:new can’t even conceive of what they think are new idea. Like

Simone Collins:No. Yeah. Well, like, genuinely, what is a new idea? We’re all standing on the shoulders of giants. Where is this coming from? And and what are is he just going out and listening to comment on

Malcolm Collins:the on on what they had said? Or

Simone Collins:The the one comment that I saw was basically like, sir, I believe everyone is building on other people’s ideas. But, no, this guy, apparently, he just goes straight to someone in the middle of a psychotic break and interviews them. And what do you know? He gets a new idea? I don’t I don’t know. I don’t know where he gets these new ideas. I I actually wanted to ask him because I was genuinely curious, but he had blocked my account. So Of course. I’m not allowed to ask him where he gets his new ideas. I shall never know, and we will just have to rehash old ideas again today.

Malcolm Collins:As it always happens. There there there’s a lot of people out there who just get, you know, mad when you don’t agree with them. So there’s somebody on our last episode, by the way, on the topic of of messaging for, like, well, you know, the the topic of porn addiction is, a real problem. Like, just take Naltrexone.

Simone Collins:So easy. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:Just take Naltrexone. Is it the like, there that’s been solved.

Simone Collins:You’re welcome. Yeah. You’re welcome. You you don’t even have to you don’t even have to buy a cage that hurts your flippy when you get a little stiff. It’s I didn’t know those existed, and I’m deeply disturbed. I’m you you’ll see. The things he he actually encouraged to happen to women who had problems with their sexual appetites was really bad. He really messed up.

Malcolm Collins:But I’ll I’ll get started. Okay?

Simone Collins:Okay. Yep. Right.

This episode examines popular VTuber avatar designs and how they influence audience engagement. The conversation covers community reactions to recent viral moments, perceptions of age representation in virtual content, and comparisons with trends in other regions.

The discussion also reviews data on viewer sentiment, patterns in top-performing models, and broader questions about norms for online personas as technology evolves. Emphasis is placed on protecting real-world audiences while understanding market-driven preferences.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins:Hello, Simone. Today, we are going to be talking about an interesting case that has had some virality within our community, which is TechTone found out to his horror that one of the VTubers he was crushing on was not a minor. What?

Speaker 3:I swear, man, she said she was 13.

Speaker 21:What the I feel like I just saw something illegal. I told the Internet Iron Mouse had a kid, and they’re 19, and Iron Mouse is 40?

Speaker 20:Imagine how visibly shaken Iron Mouse is now. I was visibly shaken. Normies finding out VTubers are adult women,

Malcolm Collins:And we need to talk about this because it’s a very there’s a this is deeper. And so I had an AI do an analysis on the top 10 VTubers to find out by looking at their models, plausibly, what what percent of them were not minors? And it said one of the 10.

Simone Collins:Wait. Which one of the 10 doesn’t look like a minor? We’ll get to that. Okay.

Malcolm Collins:We’ll get to that. We’ll look at them up. Scroll around

Simone Collins:and find it. I need to see.

Speaker 4:We ended up, looking up this individual, I do not agree with the AI and neither does Simone. We think she looks high school. May maybe plausibly barely legal.

Malcolm Collins:And we’ll be going through the mage. But this is this is an interesting phenomenon because this isn’t necessarily that these women are choosing this. If you look at Yukiyaru, who we had on our stream recently Mhmm. She discussed the phenomenon where when she first went on, she planned to do Lutubing. She had a model with big jiggly boobs. She was like, okay. I’ll go out there. I’ll get all these guys.

Simone Collins:Because she figured that was what people wanted, which is understandable.

Malcolm Collins:As time went on, she moved to smaller and smaller breasts and both less sexualized and more overtly a minor model. Yes. and as she made that transition, her audience got bigger. Now she probably would have moved in the other direction had she not seen this. We probably wouldn’t see this many VTubers be doing this if this wasn’t what the audience apparently wanted. So the question becomes, why does the audience want this when there are not that many PDA files or maybe there are?

Simone Collins:Allegedly. Another question

Malcolm Collins:we’ll get to.

Simone Collins:I don’t

Malcolm Collins:know. And the second question, the question is, well, first, let’s just focus on the tech tone thing because I’ve I’ve I’ve found this whole thing interesting, and it’s worth talking about.

Simone Collins:Right? Like, mid thirties?

Malcolm Collins:So what he found out is he found out an old clip for her where she admitted to having a daughter who was at least 10 years old. And her own exactly 10 at that clip, and the clip was nine years ago. So it means that now she has a 19 year old daughter, which he took to mean she’s at least in her forties, which I would agree with. She’s probably at least in her forties.

Simone Collins:Fair enough. And he’s 32 years old. Yeah. Okay.

Malcolm Collins:Well and and he was scandalized by this. I mean, his clip, he he acted scandalized. I I will note here that I suspect that his scandalization was meant as a joke. Sure. Didn’t think through the meta of this. I don’t think that he actually really he’s not an idiot. He didn’t actually think that she was, a 10 year old, like,

Simone Collins:a model. It’s just weird when there’s a disconnect between the public face and the voice behind it. That’s all. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 18:So the tech tone thing, it’s just a gag. We don’t really think that he thought that. it’s just funny the way this is playing out, and congratulations to him on the kid he has on the way.

Malcolm Collins:And so I don’t I don’t really I I wanna be very clear here. I am not No. No. No. Tectonic the predator or something like that. I I’m I’m saying he did a bit, but I think the bit uncovers something much deeper, which is this inversion of the trope of, you know, the guy comes to your house from date line. He’s like, sit down. Sit down. Like and they’re like, I swear, I thought she was older. And here it’s like, I I I swear. I thought it was a 10 year old. I had no idea that was a 40 year old woman with children. And the Internet has been mostly sane about this. So I decided to do a sentiment analysis. So in case people are wondering, like, okay. I know this has been going viral. What percent of people? 55%, 45 to 55% are saying this is a complete nothing burger. Why are you caring about this? 25 to 35% are actively mad at the people who are doing any who are angry about this. Right? Like so a big chunk of the flashback has been, like, why are you shaming a woman for having children?

Simone Collins:Oh. Right? Okay.

Malcolm Collins:And only 20 to 30% actually treat this as any sort of a scandal. And first, I wanna note, I find this to be an incredibly healthy response from the wider community. I think it’s an incredibly good response to see from the wider community. And the the reason I say that is because the v tubing community in The United States grew out of the idol worship community in Japan and South Korea. And those communities in regards to stars having children or getting old is brutal and abusive, frankly. It’s it’s a really disgusting, community. It it promotes antinatalism in these countries because these stars aren’t allowed to have kids because everybody treats them like they’re married to them.

Simone Collins:Right.

Malcolm Collins:I know you’re gonna go into later in this piece where the same thing happened with a bunch of old ladies and a younger man, and then they they did freak out because he ended up sleeping with one of them. So we’ll talk about that. But, we we imported this from Japan, but we didn’t import the toxicity as much. Right? You know? And and and when this is flared up, we’ve pushed back, which I appreciate. But one of the things that we did import from Japan was the useful figures because this was a part of this culture in Japan as well when they were fictionalized. Yeah. So, I decided to go over top 10, just so we can talk through, this this wider phenomenon of the incredibly young looking VTuber model topping the charts. So top one here, you actually know this one because she’s in a titans shark princess song. This is Oh my god. Oh.

Simone Collins:The the the reason why our daughter identifies as a shark princess. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:Because she saw a music video with Garugaru in it, and she said, that’s me.

Simone Collins:Yeah. This is the video about me.

Malcolm Collins:No. This is the video about me. It’s a very cute video. But, anyway, she she looks like a child. You you’d agree with that. Right? Like,

Simone Collins:And I yes. I think, you know, kinda confirmed when a, you know, four year old girl thinks that it’s about her. So, yeah, if a four year old girl sees your video and is like, that’s me, I think something might be going on there.

Malcolm Collins:Then we have Hoshima Marine, a a young face. I I looked up her big eyes, very young looking. Okay. Definitely not past 18. Hoshima Sushi, sushi or something. I I can’t pronounce any of these. Again, young face here. Usadako Pekaro was the next one. Kobo Canaro, she Kuma, Fubikino, Mori Callaloop, Sakura Miko, and then Unico, Corom. and and the smallest of these is at 2,280,000. and then you could add additional ones in there, like the one we’re talking about today, Iron Mouse, very clearly childlike. Fillion, quite big. I don’t know if you’ve seen Fillion, but very, very childlike in the way that both she presents acts and it it it’s shown on screen . In fact, of the ones that, like, I watch, the only ones that look, there’s some that look like teenagers, okay, that are popular in our community. Like, I’d say, Keirsha and Smuggalana. Mhmm. And the only one I know who actively presents as an adult is ChaCha. And that’s because ChaCha often talks about how many kids she’s had, and it’s it’s hard to not see her. So she takes on, like, the mommy role.

Simone Collins:She’s like, 40. Any of the really busty ones are just obviously adults.

Malcolm Collins:So of these, the ones that came off as clearly, like, child child Yeah. Would be Goro and Kobo. Okay. Then young teen to high school, you have Susi, Pekuro, Fubiko, Miko, and Koron. Okay. Young face, sexier body is Marine. And then close to adult is Callie. So let’s look at Callie because you said you wanted to see the one that Yeah. K. That’s Mori Callilope.

Simone Collins:K.

Malcolm Collins:Let’s see what she looks like to see if I agree with the AI. Because the AI actually looked up images of them.

Simone Collins:Oh. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:She’s she’s plausibly I mean, I’d say barely legal. But

Simone Collins:Yeah. I’m

Malcolm Collins:No. This is a high schooler.

Simone Collins:This is a high schooler. This is not an adult. She’s not of drinking age. Yeah. She’s adorable. But that’s the problem. She’s adorable. Maybe they saw any images of her with larger chesticles and therefore assumed that she was an adult. But all the other ones show her with a modest chest. So I don’t know. I don’t know what to make it.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. I’m looking at something. Let’s see. It’s cdeco pickerel. Wait. What is this one? I’m just spot checking this here. Yeah. Oh my god. I’m surprised it put this at teen. She she is

Simone Collins:not even child. No. What?

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. This is obviously a child. What? She’s a little child bunny girl. I think the AI is being overly generous here. Yeah.

Simone Collins:I mean, I that’s sweet. That’s cute. Okay. It’s cute. It’s cute. Okay. Anyway, people like cute things. Can can we not have cute things?

Malcolm Collins:Right. So I think when the Internet gets upset is the sexualization of some of these figures, which I will notice doesn’t happen as much as you would expect, if I’m gonna be honest. you don’t see them a lot on, like, adult content sites that otherwise do, like, rule 34 of a lot of, like, TV shows and cartoons and stuff like that. Mhmm. Like, the average cartoon is, like, way more rule 34 than the average VTuber. So that’s interesting.

Simone Collins:Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:But to continue here, well well so what I wanted to research here and what I wanted to go into here was, like, the spiciest of spicy questions. It’s one that I’ve avoided in the past, and it’s one that I think it needs to be talked about because this becomes such a part of, like, the Internet community. Right? Which is, is this a problem? Is this something we should be moralizing about? Is this actually a major issue? Is this a threat to children?

Simone Collins:Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:That these characters are so popular. And the study that you like to go over in regards to this, in regards to your argument is just, like, like, way more men are comfortable with being attracted to children than we publicly admit. What what does the study say? I think it was of a an an ageless vampire came into your window was the body of an 11 year old. The number of men who would sleep with her was higher than the number of men, I think, who would sleep with her if she came to your window was the body of, like, a 55 year old.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Yeah. Obviously. I think anyone will hear that and be like, I mean, this is not this is not surprising. No one should be surprised by this. And I

Malcolm Collins:think it was the the 50% mark in the study was 14. Right?

Simone Collins:Yeah. It was something like that. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. 14.

Simone Collins:Okay. Ridiculously yeah. Like, certainly, a level of young that would not be considered an age of consent even in, like, Europe where it goes super low.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously, in a Muslim country, of course, but we’re talking in, like, the rest of the world. Mhmm. So there’s that study.

Speaker 6:And I think here, as we enter the world where anyone can appear any way they want within an online context, which is going to increasingly become the case in terms of AI, we need to think about the norms that we set in terms of where do we draw the line on appropriateness. And if you’re seeing the average guy thinking this is appropriate, if the vampire is actually, you know, 300 years old, then we have to think of, okay. Well, then what does that mean in terms of a 40 year old woman using an avatar like this?

Malcolm Collins:And then I often bring this up in the context of just porn more generally where I point out that when porn

Speaker 7:Had been illegal, but then was made legal.

Malcolm Collins:child SA rates have dropped by dramatic amounts. In The Czech Republic, it was a 50% drop. We saw a dramatic drop in places like Hong Kong. We saw when this was outlawed. And in other countries, I think The Netherlands was outlawed at one point. Or or or you sorry. Not outlawed, relegalized at one point, and you just saw big drops. But the question here is not around this. It’s around the the the question of yeah. But what I understand there’s a general corn stuff. Right? But, like, what if you’re actually sexualizing

Speaker 8:Things that are not children, e. G, a 3,300 year old vampire in a child’s body or a 44 year old woman with an avatar that looks clearly underage.

Malcolm Collins:as a society? Right? Like, what effect is that going to have on the rates of SA? and that’s something I wanted to dig into. Right? And and people can be here, well, Malcolm, it’s about the moral thing more broadly. I don’t care about the moral thing more broadly. Right? I I I just genuinely don’t. I’m a consequentialist. Right? You can say, I think porn is an existentially bad thing in a society, and then I would say, okay. I care more about the fifty percent of children who got essayed that year. Yeah. Right? You know, that that that to me outweighs your moral concern. Right? Like, that for me is the end goal here

Simone Collins:Mhmm.

Malcolm Collins:Is reducing actual harm.

Speaker 9:And I am actually not, like, slightly of this position. I am massively disgusted and view as a great deal of contempt the people who would sacrifice children to be as aid so that they could feel, morally pure or clean or so that they don’t have to deal with temptation. It’s frankly, uh, one of the lowest moral stances you could have. It is offloading the cost of your moral purity to the lives of children, literally sacrificing children so you can be clean. It’s it’s it’s very, like, mullocky and stuff.

Speaker 14:Now I would point out here that I think these characters are very, very rarely put in positions where they’re sexualized. I do not think the majority of the audience sexualizes these characters, but I think the conversation around them being sexualized is one that needs to be had because that’s the maximalist harm conversation.

Speaker 15:And these characters aren’t just some other thing, some leftist thing that never touches our world. Whether you’re talking about powder, leaflet, or yukieru, they exist within our community as well, and thus it’s a conversation we need to have.

Malcolm Collins:So what what can we see when we’re looking at large level population? So I think the biggest thing we can look at here, because this is just, a very easy one, is, population level stuff. now we have countries that have recently, which we’ll look at in a second, outlawed child content, like Japan, very, very recently. We’ll get to to when they outlawed that. But even with it outlawed. In Japan, they still, in shows, obviously, sexualized minors at pretty high rates. In in in well, I mean, this is just common, and and they’re

Simone Collins:Ubiquitous. Not common. You it’s It’s ubiquitous. That older women in in this, like especially in anime, or shows, it’s it’s it’s hard to see unless it’s, like, a show about old women. Yeah. Or, like, some old old person game show.

Malcolm Collins:So, I was actually reading a really fun, MAWA recently where, like, the core plot of it was that a guy went into one of these MAWA worlds, you know, like, transmigrated. And his sort of superpower in the world is that he found all women attractive because they were all drawn like MAWA women. And so, like, even when they had some horrible defect they’re ashamed of, it’s like a birthmark or, like, black hair or, like, freckles, and everyone else finds them, like, disgusting and, like, throws up when they talk to them. Amazing. Because it’s drawn like Mawa’s, and they all look young forever, obviously, and they all That is

Simone Collins:perfect. Oh my goodness.

Malcolm Collins:Cute. Yeah.

Simone Collins:I like that. Yeah. I like that.

Malcolm Collins:It’s a it’s a fun bit, but it is true to to a lot of these worlds. so first, Japan has lower rates of SA of children than The United States.

Simone Collins:Really? Wow. That’s fantastic. Actually, that makes a lot of sense, but that’s fantastic.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. But I’ve I’ve I was gonna play devil’s advocate here. My my claim here would be, yeah, but Japan is a way more, like, a law and order country than The United States. And Japanese men are more timid than The United States. And Japan doesn’t have as many Muslim immigrants as The United States. Sorry. I didn’t say that last one. I’ve I’ve I’ve meant something else by that. Right. But well, I different cultures. Okay? We shouldn’t change their culture as their way of living. They just don’t No.

Simone Collins:Actually, you you’ve seen the the this going during the rounds on YouTube. They’re they’re now passing out pamphlets to people migrating to The UK. Oh

Malcolm Collins:god. Yes.

Simone Collins:Where we come from, we need to agree to sexual acts. Both people. Just you you need you no. You can’t just assume that because someone asked to borrow your lighter that they’re good to go. The more you know, that’s terrifying. I mean, it’s the the fact that they feel like they need to do this, not a great sign in my opinion. Let’s let’s not get too distracted, though. Anyway, I I agree with you. Cultural differences. Look. If the UK government is recognizing it to the extent that you need a pamphlet for new arrivals, we can talk about it.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. And just so you understand how big the difference is between Japan and The United States, if you’re talking about the rate of SA per thousand children in Japan, it’s only zero point one five to 0.2, whereas in The United States, it’s 0.8 to 0.1. It’s, like, four, five x higher. It’s astonishingly higher.

Simone Collins:That is astonishing.

Malcolm Collins:So Yikes. Okay. Well, let in let’s let’s let’s try to control this. Let’s say, okay. Well, what about within Japan? Right? What what how did things change when things were outlawed? Okay? So the first ban against selling of this type of content happened in 1999. And then in starting 2015, they they began enforcing even personal possession of this kind of content. So it was not illegal until 2015. Wow.

Simone Collins:Okay? Okay.

Malcolm Collins:So let’s go over the effect that this had. if we look at, CP victims identified by the police in Japan, 2015, there were nine hundred and five. 2016, there was a thousand three hundred and thirteen. 2019, this was the peak, there was a thousand five hundred and fifty nine. 2024, there was a thousand two hundred and sixty five. So it appeared to precipitate a large jump in this behavior. Now, let’s look. There there is some data that makes it look like it could be good. Okay? So where you get, good data is on, assault. Okay? It’s it’s not a huge number, but it is a number. So in 2014, it went from 7400 to 2015, 6755 to 2016, 6188. Okay?

Simone Collins:Mhmm.

Malcolm Collins:This is an indecent assault. and you get even slightly better numbers on the, well, not really. the full on grape, 2014, you go from 1250 to 2,015, 1167. although by 2016, you do see a drop. This is the the one instance where I think you can you can make an argument for it to 989. So let’s look at the studies on this. Alright? A fun topic, by the way. Right, Simone? No. But I mean, this is something we need to engage with if people are making the claim. Like, we grew up in our childhood where everybody made the claim that, you know, if you like shooting people in video games, you’re gonna like shooting people in real life. And

Simone Collins:Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:I grew up as a big fan of video games, and I was always really incensed

Simone Collins:by this. That yeah. That was so big then. If they like shooting people on video games, it’s inevitable. Yes. That was so odd.

Malcolm Collins:And the data has shown that this is not the case, but it took a while for people to agree on that. Mhmm. and I personally am not a big fan of VTubing. I what I mean is I don’t sit around and watch many VTubers. I watch Leaflet, really, and sometimes Kershov. And I understand Leaflet is what people could consider to be no. No. She’s just blatantly an underage character. The character she plays is very obviously underage. Phenotypically. I mean, she’s a slime, so she’s lived for her

Simone Collins:Well, and she’s a secretary.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. And she has an adult job.

Simone Collins:Kind of administrative job as a teenager. I mean, I guess you used to, but, like, not these days. But, anyway, I see I see your point. She she is a young looking character.

Speaker 16:And not to call out Leaflet unique here, Lee. The other members of our community like Powder or Yukiyaru also have phenotypically young characters as their models.

Speaker 17:Oh, and almost forgot. Rev and Straub as well. And by the way, congrats to them for having a baby.

Malcolm Collins:I mean, we’re gonna be passing judgment on these other characters, we have to pass judgement. I mean, it is it’s not just like, Yuki Aru also young.

Simone Collins:And I Yuki Aru, well, talked about looking young. But, also, what Yuki Wataru talked about when she first thought about VTubing. Right? And her friend was like, your voice is just perfect for it. Because her voice just naturally sounds extremely young. And that’s almost like them implicitly understanding this trope of VTubers looking phenotypically very young. It’s as if that friend of hers knew the niche she should be in before she was. She thought it was like, oh, like, busty lewd tuber thing. And instead, it was like, no, girl. Your voice makes you sound super young. Like, that’s the point. It’s not the boobs. It’s the young, which is crazy. But yeah. I mean, it’s super interesting.

Malcolm Collins:So Her voice is great.

Simone Collins:I love her voice, by the way. It’s There was

Malcolm Collins:an interesting study that looked at this particular topic titled shoot. It doesn’t have the title here. Where where the where the freak is the title? Oh, self report sexuality harmful behaviors among fictional only and mixed CSEM users. Okay. So, basically, this was like, if you watch fictionalized young people, so, like, anime. Right?

Simone Collins:Okay. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:What are your odds of doing something that would be considered essay versus if you watch some fictionalized so the fictionalized would be, like, anime, AI, cartoon, etcetera

Simone Collins:Mhmm.

Malcolm Collins:And some real. Right? Okay. So similar patterns were found for s conversations with oh, actually, I’ll I’ll go up here. Individuals in the mixed group were significantly more likely to report harmful behaviors. For example, seven point nine percent of the mixed group reported offline contact s related contact with a young person

Simone Collins:Oh.

Malcolm Collins:Compared to zero point five percent of the control group. Now the reason this is important is because if you look at the general population in The United States, between one and five percent of, adults have done this. So that means that of the group that was consuming only fictionalized content in this particular study, they had a rate of doing this that was half at at most the rate of the general population. Potentially, if if you go with the five percent number, 10 x lower than the general population. Whereas the group that was consuming real content had a rate above the general population, potentially significantly above depending on what number you go with.

Simone Collins:Well, which makes sense because there is really, I would argue, a meaningful divide between fake or illustrated stuff and real stuff. Like, if if what you really crave is inappropriate interaction with people at inappropriate ages, you’re not gonna wanna watch drawings. You’re gonna wanna get as close to the real thing as you possibly can. Right? I mean, that’s what makes sense.

Malcolm Collins:A good point. I mean, if if you and and one of the things that I think you need to accept, like, if if if we accept this first thing, like, from the vampire girl study and stuff like that, the rates of desiring this, especially within non Western populations. We did another episode on this, which is how the West ruined PDA files for everyone, which was a very fun, episode if you’re interested in digging deeper on this topic because the bans against this or stigmas against this are just not as common in countries that are not Western, specifically because in Western countries going back to the medieval period, people got married at much older ages. They they generally in the medieval period, in Europe, at least Northern Western Europe, it was normal for women to get married in their mid twenties, which you just don’t see anywhere else on earth during that period. And this has it had genetic effects. Like, northern Western Europeans can conceive much later than other popular any other ethnic group, which is helping us a lot with fertility rates. But, like, look. That that’s a totally different video. Check it out if you’re interested in checking it out. I mean, okay.

Simone Collins:Much later. Like, two years, but meaningful.

Malcolm Collins:Meaningful if you’re starting trying to have kids in your thirties or something.

Simone Collins:Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Every year counts.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. So okay. Number of kids. where were we with this? Number was kids. Number was kids.

Simone Collins:Well, you’re talking about the control study versus No.

Malcolm Collins:No. What I was talking about is if you assume based on the data that we see that this is a heavily shamed thing in our society, but also a fairly normal thing from from the data we have access to. Mhmm. And if that’s the case, then having mechanisms that control the behavior is very, very important in a society. And if you don’t have those mechanisms in place, you’re going to have more real children being harmed by people who simply lack self control.

Simone Collins:Isn’t your argument where what didn’t the other research though kind of imply that? Well, I guess it it could only show correlation, though. I guess that’s

Malcolm Collins:Well, there was another study on this that you could go further on, which is understanding the use of c related s fantasy and fictional s materials by people who are attracted to c’s. Okay? Mhmm. And as a quote from the abstract here, it said, instead, there was evidence that s satisfaction was associated with lower levels of self reported willingness to offend and permissive attitudes about s interactions between adults and c’s.

Simone Collins:Oh, in other words, if you’re able to figure out how to enjoy yourself on that front without bothering anyone, you’re less likely to bother someone.

Malcolm Collins:You’re less likely to bother somebody.

Simone Collins:That’s good. We want that. Okay. Wow. That’s act that’s pretty meaningful in terms of people’s arguments about synthetic versions of this content because people are extremely against it, and their argument is almost always if you permit this synthetically, you are going to feed it in real life, and this is suggesting something to the

Malcolm Collins:audience. And the argument the data that they use to back that argument, which is really stupid data, is they will interview people who have done this and ask if they consumed fictional material first, which is not like that that’s like interviewing murderers and saying, did you play video games first? Right? Like Mhmm. Obviously, they probably consumed material at a higher rate than the general population. That doesn’t correlate with material being out there lowering the rates of this happening in the general population.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:so one, I’m I’m just gonna make a few sort of binding points here. one is, first, I don’t even think that many of these characters are that particularly sexualized. You you look at, like, a Yukiyaru character or a Leaflet character, and they’re just non. They’re they’re they’re not sexualized. They don’t really bait their fans that much from what I see. They don’t

Simone Collins:Well, no. Yuki Waru also talked about this when we interviewed her. When she occasionally did it, especially after she adopted her newer character design. People are like, you don’t. Don’t you remember her saying that? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. They were like,

Simone Collins:oh important note. They’re like, don’t do that, please. That’s not appropriate. That’s not

Malcolm Collins:why we’re here. That’s not what

Simone Collins:we’re talking great. And, also, like, that goes to show that’s not what the audiences are here for. People just like cute things, and children are cute things.

Malcolm Collins:Sorry. No. I’ve yeah. I think that that that is genuinely one of them. And keep in mind, we have a society now with a child sized hole in its heart. Yeah. We have a lot Where

Simone Collins:are we gonna get it, guys?

Malcolm Collins:If you have all the kids on kids, who don’t have families, and who are transplanting this desire onto fictional characters who fill that particular role in their life. Yep. Mhmm. And I think that, you know, we we sort of many guys would rather, admit, like, deeply wrong sexual behavior than admit that they’re just deeply lonely and effed up Mhmm. In life and not finding the reproductive partner, which is really sad. It is sad. But I think that that’s one thing. you you just don’t see a lot of it’s not that you don’t see any. I’m just saying you see less than you see of equivalently famous, let’s say, cartoon characters. as to why that’s the case, would you have a thesis on that? I I might just be out of respect, to be honest. I think most people who form parasocial crushes on people with these types of avatars or even parasocial relationships do not want to disrespect them because they see them as real human beings in a way that they don’t see cartoons and stuff like that.

Simone Collins:Or they don’t want them flirting with the other fans.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Maybe they just keep it all to themselves.

Simone Collins:I mean, yes. It’s harder to imagine, you know, that they only have eyes for you. I I don’t know. No. I I really just I think and and the impression that Yuki Waru left me with was just people are like, no. That’s not what we’re here for. Like, don’t. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:So first, there’s that. Second is they don’t actually look like children, and and this is very important. I have a lot of kids. Obviously, you know, I have five kids. I’m around them constantly, and I’m also a big fan of anime. And As are they. As are they. They they really like anime too. And I had this realization at one point where I saw characters in an anime that were, like, of the, you know, variety that was meant to look young, and I was just like, these in no way bring up a vision of, like, what my kids look like or act or move or anything. they are completely alien, this this, artistic style. And I think it can even be harmful to overly tie this style to this is a a real child. Right?

Simone Collins:Mhmm.

Malcolm Collins:Because it’s not.

Simone Collins:It’s obviously not. It’s so obviously not.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah.

Simone Collins:I mean, I think and and you could kinda see a similar thing going on with Rev where Rev’s like, look. I don’t wanna look at a dude this whole time. Like, I wanna look at a cute vampire. I think a lot of people, if they’re gonna watch a VTuber for a long time, make it cute. You know? I don’t wanna watch like, I wanna hear the ideas of an adult and know that they’re an adult, but don’t make me look at an adult. We have to look at adults

Malcolm Collins:all the time. Adult man. Eek.

Simone Collins:I know. It’s it is unfortunate. Make it make it stop. Make it stop.

Malcolm Collins:Well, this brings me to another point that I was gonna make around this, which is that as a society, we are going to have to build norms around how we think about this that have the end state of protecting real children. Like, I I think that that should be the goal always while also understanding, like, what what are people gonna do. So as as we move forward as society, more and more AR is gonna filter into our lives. And by that, what I mean is the people you interact with. You know, right now, it’s the VTubers only who you interact with through virtual avatars.

Simone Collins:Yeah. But soon your husband or wife can be a catgirl.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. We’ll have AI technology that allows us to live as avatars. I’ll be able to, you know, leaflet watched the elections in anime. Had a system that translated the camera that she was looking at into an anime of the real world.

Simone Collins:Which elections? The

Malcolm Collins:last election cycle.

Simone Collins:You mean, like, the primaries in The United States?

Malcolm Collins:Yeah.

Simone Collins:Dude, what? I didn’t realize that. How did I miss that? That’s crazy.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. It’s it’s a cool it’s a cool technology.

Simone Collins:Why did that But that technology is gonna become

Malcolm Collins:more and more ubiquitous as we begin to engage more and more in online environments, more and more with AI. and, you know, even if you are like, I wanna be a purist or whatever, you know, you know your kids are gonna be hanging out in the whatever the next version of VR chat rooms is and stuff like that.

Simone Collins:Yes.

Malcolm Collins:And as soon as having a never aging, always beautiful body is an option for women, a lot of women are going to opt into that. And the question is, how many of them are going to opt into these sorts of bodies? And I think that we have two contrasting things. Our society has a very strong stigma against this. And yet even with the existing stigma, nine out of 10 of the top VTubers, potentially more, use avatars like this. And they’re not nine out of the 10 top because, like, after they became top avatars, they decided to switch into bodies like this. You guys made them that. And that tells me something about society.

Simone Collins:Nothing surprising, though. This this isn’t surprising. People people have been favoring young people this whole time, and it’s not just men favoring younger looking women. Like, I I was going on about with that Canadian streamer that I was telling you about today

Malcolm Collins:that Yeah. Tell tell tell the fans the story. That was insane.

Simone Collins:Yeah. There’s I I I didn’t watch this documentary myself, but it’s a Netflix documentary called Thirst Trap, the fame, the fantasy, the fallout. And I listened to my favorite snark YouTuber, Denise, talk about it. It it’s a documentary about a Canadian TikTok creator named William White who, for whatever reason, somehow garnered this giant audience of ardent female fans who are, like, mothers and grandmothers. Like, these are all people with their like, they’re middle aged and older, like, forties and above. And many of these women were such ardent fans that they very enthusiastically participated in this Netflix documentary. Like, it included original footage of them, like, being filmed, super happy to talk about this guy. And there was this whole thing. Like, they figured out where he lived and and decided to, like, personally deliver gifts to him. He lived at his parents’ house. Like, he he wasn’t doing so well. How old was he? 21 years old. And there’s all these women who are, like, finding out where he lives. Like, this this kid’s younger. Okay. I mean, he’s 21 years old, so he is of drinking age. But he looks very childlike, and, like, he’s sort of famous for this slow wink and for lip syncing to songs. And women are just like, oh my god. Like, when he rolls his eyes, I just have to watch it again and again, and it’s disgusting. Like, it’s really creepy. And then he ended up hooking up with one of his fans. What was her her username was, like, Disney mama or something. Yeah. Disney mama was her username, which angered a bunch of the other fans who started piling on on her. And then at one point, things got really dark for him, and he wanted to, like, take a break from streaming on TikTok and, like, go to rehab. And people who were his fans threatened that they would end their lives if he stopped streaming, that they would I I like, I will just end it all. Like, really? Like, sir like like a like an abusive partner threatening. And it’s, I

Malcolm Collins:think we’re so used

Simone Collins:to hearing men doing this. Dude, this is freak out.

Malcolm Collins:We’re way less creepy than when women do this.

Simone Collins:Yeah. The the yeah. Like, if this were men if there if this were men doing this and and Netflix did a documentary on it, there would be people out which with pitchforks. And I never heard about this, and sure Denise had never heard about this until she watched the documentary, which came out, like, a year ago. So all this happened, and apparently no one cares. But, like, when a man looks at a a younger woman wrong, people get very angry. So, yeah, it’s it’s interesting. But it’s everyone likes young. Young means cuter and healthier and and all that, especially when it comes to romantic interest. People do not want to attempt to procreate with someone who’s not likely as fertile anymore. It’s normal.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Well, I mean, especially out of Europe. Yeah. Yeah. I I think more broadly, what we like, the the bigger thing to admit is, unfortunately, in a free market, nine out of 10 well, really, 10 out of 10 because the one that they say was not she’s she’s a high schooler. I’m sorry.

Simone Collins:No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. It’s 10 out of 10. 10 out of the 10 of the top ones. Mhmm. Look. And and and that’s just the algo. Okay?

Simone Collins:Oh, you could you could argue. I guess one one counterpoint is with anime, it’s so freaking hard. Like, everyone kinda looks like a child. Even when they try to draw adults kinda look like children.

Malcolm Collins:No. Gauru Gauru was not trying to draw a gender a genuine like, ambiguous character. No.

Simone Collins:That that’s a child. That’s a that’s a child. That’s a child. That’s a child.

Malcolm Collins:She’s a short princess. I love our daughter. I’m a

Simone Collins:shark princess. So freaking much. Oh my god. She always attacks from above. Above.

Malcolm Collins:She climbs on things. They’ve all learned this tactic because then they can jump on me.

Simone Collins:She’ll get you when you least expect, though, and always from the wronging. Like, you never expect a four year old to come flying at you from the sky. Anyway.

Malcolm Collins:Anyway. Yeah. And I and I also don’t really get this from these fan bases either. Like, you know, I I do leaflets show a lot. And, like, do I think that her fan base is a bunch of PDA files?

Simone Collins:Like No. They’re a bunch of intellectuals and fun people.

Malcolm Collins:No. I don’t I don’t I don’t think that. And I think that, like, you can you can, you know, grind your gear there whatever you wanna say. Like, whinge and and and shout like an old man who’s angry that the times are changing at the sky and everything like that. But the reality is is norms are changing, the time is changing, and it’s gonna change even more dramatically as soon as anyone can wear the skin of any avatar they want. And I think that we should focus a lot more on protecting children and a lot less on trying to look like we care about protecting children. Mhmm. Because that can really leave children vulnerable because you’re you’re wasting your time on that it either doesn’t matter or is directly counted, you know, bad. Absolutely. So any parting thoughts, Simone?

Simone Collins:Maybe no. No. No.

Malcolm Collins:I mean, I do think it’s an interesting phenomenon. And the and the thing that I note most about this phenomenon is it’s definitely a chain like, when I was a kid okay? I I won’t even say when I was a kid. I’d say ten years ago. If you had said VTubing is gonna become popular, I’d say, yeah. I could believe that. Yeah. And then 10 out of the 10 top models look like children for women. I’d be like, well, like, isn’t that, like, some sort of a big scandal? And then people would be like, you know, honestly, people are more scandalized that they’re anime characters and that they look like children. And it’s like, oh. Yeah. In fact, people are more scandalized that it turns out that one of them has a kid and is 40.

Simone Collins:I’m like, wait.

Malcolm Collins:The nerve rap. That she’s not an actual child, that seems backwards. Yeah.

Simone Collins:That does seem backwards. I I guess this isn’t as relevant of a note because our audience is majority male. However, I think, you know, messages like these, I think, may make some women feel even more uncomfortable with the fact that they inevitably are going to age. And I think we should all just acknowledge that attempting to look young forever, you just can’t pull it off. Once you’re not a kid anymore, you’re not fooling anyone. You’re gonna look like a woman who’s had work done instead of just a woman of your age.

Malcolm Collins:And, you know use an avatar. You could start VTubing.

Simone Collins:Think could you use an avatar and start VTubing if you have a young enough sounding voice, and maybe you can pull it off. Sure. However, I think this is downstream of a desire to feel wanted and needed and loved. And if that’s really what you want, you can. If you can have children, you can have children and be famous with your children and so loved and so wanted and so needed. And all of the interest I’ve ever had in, like, in those things has been completely and utterly satisfied by children. Like, I to to the extent where I’m like, ugh, too famous. They need me too much. They’re constantly calling my name. Like, you know but but it’s there. It that that solves it. And I think a lot of that that that yearning that women feel is just misdirected yearning for parenting, that our society is too sick to recognize as yearning for parenting. And they’re instead like, oh, no. No. No. It’s for fame. I promise. But it’s really not. The other element of this is you could also be wanted and needed by your community. There are so many people I know who are really involved in their communities, be they online or offline, who similarly have that same level of being needed because they’re meaningfully contributing. Not because they look young or because they’re using some form of implied or otherwise sexuality to attract it, but because they’re providing genuine value to other people. So I think I just wanna point out to anyone who feels this pressure to, like, look young because they think that young people are wanted or needed. No. Just start providing value, and you’ll be wanted or needed. And it’s really not that hard to provide value. Sometimes just listening to people is all the value they’ve ever wanted. They just want someone to listen to them. So, anyway, that’s that’s my stupid 2¢, but whatever.

Malcolm Collins:Very, no. I agree with everything you’re saying there. Are you gonna VTube one day?

Simone Collins:No. Because I look. I’m, I’m trans 62. I’ve always felt

Malcolm Collins:like You want to be an old lady?

Simone Collins:Yeah. Look. I was a 62 year old born in the body of someone a different age. So once I’m finally old, I’m

Malcolm Collins:gonna be so old. Gonna be that you start VTubing and then they find out that you’re not a 62 year old? You’re

Simone Collins:actually No. They see it. Yes. I’ll VTubers like an old woman, and they’ll be like, she’s in her forties. She’s not 60. She’s not 70. She’s not 80. They’ll be so mad.

Malcolm Collins:I even wonder, like, your voice as a VTuber. It would come off as so shocking to me because it’s so Yeah.

Simone Collins:Wait. Yeah. How does that how would that come across?

Malcolm Collins:Unusual for a VTuber. Yeah. Are you pulling up one of

Simone Collins:our avatars? Yeah. But it it just doesn’t come through. Like, she needs a my high voice is because I’m a beautiful mermaid woman. It doesn’t work that way. Yeah. It just it really it it doesn’t work at all. It doesn’t work. You could see my voice doesn’t match. Your voice needs to be high and cute if you’re an anime girl. Everyone knows this.

Malcolm Collins:It’s like gods about it.

Simone Collins:That is not what she sounds right. I have to like, I would be like the octopus evil woman or whatever, you know, some some old fish. I’m not the beautiful mermaid who’s talking with her flowing hair and her stupid ears. That’s just not who I am, and that’s my fault. I come up short. I’m gonna okay. I’m gonna do

Malcolm Collins:the trick. You did a wink. Oh my god. I love it. Art Fab, by the way, people. You can stream on here. She she did this live

Simone Collins:while Leaflet, yeah, this is the Art Fab adaptation of what she built. So teamwork makes the dream work. I think it’s a really cool tool. I love what you I love how accessible you made it because

Malcolm Collins:Yeah.

Simone Collins:Yeah. And and making those avatars is so fun because at every stage when it finishes a little bit, it goes quest complete.

Malcolm Collins:Quest complete. And leaflet voice.

Simone Collins:I love it. I love it.

Malcolm Collins:I had to realize what a bad voice you have for VTubing. Wait.

Simone Collins:I’ve been I have a terrible voice for VTubing. I cannot VTube unless I’m VTubing as an old woman. I’m telling you. I’m trans old.

Malcolm Collins:No. Okay. I think you could VTube as, like, a tomboy.

Simone Collins:As a tomboy? Can I can I tomboy like, a chicken? Can I be a does this work? May no. Not even. No. This is a hi. You know? I’m a I’m a chicken. I’ll make a

Malcolm Collins:tomboy avatar for you for our tomboy episode. That’s what we need.

Simone Collins:Okay. I think we could do that. I think we could

Malcolm Collins:do tomboys in the bible. That’s that’s what I’m all about.

Simone Collins:Look. This is what you you’re stuck with this until you get your AR glasses that make me look like whatever. So and it like, by like, your sexy puritan woman.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I no. It’s actually funny, is the degree to which, like, I think people because I’m not, like, a big into VTubing person, as I said. Like, there’s some VTubers I watch, but I watch them for their politics.

Simone Collins:I think that’s how it is with everyone. I don’t think a single person watches a VTuber because of the way that they look.

Malcolm Collins:No. Disagree. Because there is one VTuber who I occasionally watch because I like her shtick. Who? Tomoshan. Tomo the the the tomboy horse horse girl. Okay. I think I think she’s really cute.

Simone Collins:Gotta love the horses

Malcolm Collins:there. So No. No. No. Her whole thing is about being a a Tomoyumiri. Yeah. It’s about being a you can look her up.

Speaker 11:Everybody always is like, oh, you grow out of being a tomboy. You know, eventually, you’ll be more ladylike or whatever, but I only had older brothers growing up.

Simone Collins:Oh, yeah. I’ve seen her on your screen. I’ve seen her on your screen? Yes. I’ve seen her. There are many people on your screen, to be fair. Is is she inspired by that horse girl anime? I don’t think

Malcolm Collins:well, she might be. Who knows? But she definitely it’s it’s one of the few that, like, does not look remotely underage.

Simone Collins:Oh, yeah. Fair. I mean, she looks young.

Malcolm Collins:She looks like 20. Young. Yeah. Looking.

Simone Collins:Yeah. No. She looks like yeah. She looks like she’s in her twenties.

Malcolm Collins:Twenties. Yeah.

Simone Collins:Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:But very, very tomboy in her aesthetics, which I think you could pull off. You could pull it off.

Simone Collins:I don’t think I can pull off anything but old woman, but I like her her weird, like, strap headdress to try to make up for, like what do they call them? The horsey horsey hats. Bridal. The bridle. Okay. Anyway, I’ll see myself out.

Malcolm Collins:You’ll see yourself out.

Simone Collins:Enough for this. This is not I can’t VTube. I can’t talk. I can’t word, but I sure do love you.

Malcolm Collins:I love you too. and, now everyone’s gonna say all these horrible things in the comments. How dare you support this?

Simone Collins:Well, have you noticed? I don’t know if you I I watch all the leftists and listen to all the leftist YouTubers and podcasters. Pedo is the new Nazi. Do you understand this? And degen? Like, I don’t know why they’re they’re accusing us of being degen now, which is very interesting.

Malcolm Collins:They’re the ones who normalize this style.

Simone Collins:But we are now instead of being Nazis, we’re pedo degens. I don’t know why they dropped the Nazi thing. I guess it just kind of lost its

Malcolm Collins:I love there was an analysis of the people tied to the Epstein case. Republican, what percent were Democrat, and it was a 99% Democrat. Wow. Like, no. Like, I love that all all these right wing people are pedos. It’s like, no. Really? That’s just Andrew Tate. You know, that’s you know? Did you know Turkey Tom just did a big expose on him? So

Simone Collins:Another one? Wow. So there’s still stuff to expose? I feel like man.

Malcolm Collins:I didn’t know Turkey Tom had done one on him before.

Simone Collins:Well, I was referring to the New Yorker.

Malcolm Collins:No. But Turkey Tom is the Internet guy who does the deep dives. Right? You know? So vindicated on that one, by the way.

Simone Collins:Because Oh, because oh, because oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of the people listening to our episode were like, the New Yorker. I never trust what a New Yorker investigative journalist would say.

Malcolm Collins:They’re

Simone Collins:crazy. Just just because they’re with the New Yorker.

Malcolm Collins:Just because they’re with the publication. To, like, trans communities and stuff as well-to-do, like, breakdowns. Like, he’s think to right wing people, he’s fairly neutral, and not one where you’re just gonna be like, oh, he’s not being honest about this. and he absolutely was a PDA file.

Simone Collins:Well, I wonder then well, yeah, dude. I mean, all the all the and and look when we spoke with V earlier this week yesterday. Oh, yeah. He’s like yeah. He’s like, the reason why Andrew Tate ultimately got in trouble in Romania was because he went after the daughter of a prominent politician. And, like, he was kinda fine until he made the grave mistake of going after the wrong child. People were willing to turn the other direction to to take bribes. But then, I guess, when you come for politicians’ kids and all of her friends, maybe that’s a step too far, which is a part of the story that at least wasn’t covered in the New Yorker. So good good insight. Yeah. Maybe Turkey Tom talks about that.

Malcolm Collins:That’s that is an issue. Yeah. I hadn’t we hadn’t talked about that either. But, yeah, the the the the wider point here being is it’s weird that they want to accuse the right of this when, like, they normalized all of this and this is their their world. And we can say, well, why on the right are we normalizing? It’s because you you don’t want to lose the culture war. If you lose the culture war, you lose culture. And a lot of, you know, our top player like, Rev says Like, imagine if you’re like, everyone who likes Rev says Desu is a petu. By the way Petu? Revan Revan Straub just had a kid.

Simone Collins:I’m so excited. Would this did they not have a kid before? Is this their

Malcolm Collins:first kid? This is their first kid as far as I’m aware.

Simone Collins:That’s so wonderful. That’s really exciting. I hope it all went well for them.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Birth

Simone Collins:birth stories don’t always you know? Like, the actual process don’t always work out.

Malcolm Collins:And, again, you guys didn’t need to make Roe whatever the top right wing VTubers. Okay? That that was you guys plus the algorithm who did that. Like, we either have to admit human nature or sit here, you know, screaming at the sky that that the the the timeline isn’t going in the direction we want it to.

Simone Collins:The timeline goes as it must go and will go and has gone and always will be.

Malcolm Collins:Alright. Have a fun one. if you guys want to do, AI stories or, video recordings like this one or make avatars or, like, living Yeah.

Simone Collins:You can make your own PNG VTuber or, like, actual VTuber rig that you can then refine on your own. Malcolm built the actual VTuber rigging system. Leaflet built, which is accessible easily on our FAB, the PNGTuber thing, which you saw me demonstrate.

Malcolm Collins:Rfab.ai. And keep in mind, we let you use your own APIs. So, like, if you wanna use, you know, your own Claude API or something like that to not spend a bunch of money on the site, that’s totally fine. Especially if you’re doing coding or something Mhmm. It allows you to, like, give your coding agents personalities in ways that you just can’t with regular coding agents, or or or you just don’t have the rigging to do. But they also another thing I suggest everybody anybody who’s using AI for coding these days should be using our API because it lets the agents call you, which is very useful. Like, whenever they reach a stopping point, they can call you and be like, hey. Can you give me that number? Can you give me the whatever? That helps me code a lot faster. they can create images. They can create videos. and, obviously, the thing that most people use a website for, is either the base AI system, which I recently improved, Rhodes, now remembers in between messages. There was a change in the API that made it forget what was happening in between messages, so I had to fix that. Sorry about that, guys. that was made without anyone telling me. And we also do a lot of, like, story adventure stuff, adventure concept generation. Just have

Simone Collins:fun with it. It’s delightful. Bye. Bye.

Malcolm Collins:Well, this this one’s gonna be spicy. We’ll see. We’ll see. I love you very much. You’re an amazing woman. Thank you for being married to me. Another day.

Simone Collins:Love you so much. Thank you

Malcolm Collins:for trying to be cute. You’re good at it? For your age, of course, which is something we’ll be talking about in this episode.

Simone Collins:Oh, fantastic. Great. Okay. Wonderful. I love my life. It’s so too dark. Alright.

Speaker 12:I think they don’t eat pine cones. Don’t eat pine cones? Oh, thank you. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you, Titan. Can you put them in the basket for us? Okay. Yeah. Tosi? Flowers up ahead. I wanna get some Lots of flowers up ahead. Let’s keep going.

For most of Western history, acting was a low-status profession often linked with vagrancy, moral suspicion, and limited respectability. This episode traces how that reputation formed—from Restoration England and Victorian theater culture through early Hollywood—and why the public association between performers and social stigma lasted far longer than most people realize.

Drawing on historical research and primary accounts, the discussion covers when women first appeared on the English stage, how limited career options shaped public judgment, the slow professionalization of theater after the Civil War, and the modern shift that turned entertainers into trusted public voices. Key turning points include late-night television’s studio-era promotion machine and the legitimizing effect of a former actor reaching the highest political office. The conversation closes with a practical takeaway: how to choose role models and sources of life advice more carefully.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins:Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be talking about another part of history that has been hidden from people, which is that until very, very recently, actors and actresses were seen as the same kind of a thing as smex workers.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Yes. It shows up a lot in my regency era romances.

Malcolm Collins:It comes up a lot? Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. They don’t they’re like, how could you be with an actor? No.

Simone Collins:Well, they yeah. They’re basically roughly the same thing. Like, you you kind of understand, you know, if she’s an actress. That’s

Malcolm Collins:what she does. And what I will be going into in this particular episode is the reasons why this connection was made, but also tracking that the reasons why people originally well, let’s put it this way. The reason why one of the big reasons why is because actors were, one, literally selling their bodies, which they do to an even greater extent today. They often appear on stage naked on Yeah. Major movies

Simone Collins:and Kissing people for pay. For pay. Yes. Romantically interested in.

Malcolm Collins:And in addition to that, it was well understood that most of them would sleep with theater directors and stuff like that for their roles, which, you know, going till today is still something they do. but look at the Harvey Weinstein case. and you also see this was males as well. Matthew Lawrence described being sent to a hotel room where an Oscar winning director in a robe asked him to dress for Polaroids and applied compliance would get him a major role. He declared Male or female? Lost his agency. This is Matthew Lawrence, a male actor.

Simone Collins:And and the director. I’m asking if the director Male director. Oh, okay. Well, yeah, sure, I guess. Mhmm.

Malcolm Collins:So, yeah, this is this happens on both sides of the fence in in Hollywood, and people in Hollywood selling their bodies. They are still sleeping with directors for roles. And so the question is, if they’re acting like prostitutes, why did we as a society start respecting them? Why did we as a society start taking political and life advice from what is essentially high pay prostitutes?

Simone Collins:Yeah. Because I guess now it’s it’s there’s a there’s the actor to influencer lifestyle product purveyor pipeline. Yeah. Or the assumption is, ah, yes. We must we must listen to them and buy what they buy for they know better than we do, which is so funny. Because I guess, yeah, even with going all the way back to, Greek plays, all the men played women. And then same with Shakespearean plays. There weren’t female actresses. The men played women. So, yeah, when did women start acting in the first place? When were women allowed to start acting in the first place? I don’t know how this was with Kabuki in Japan. I admittedly don’t know if that was

Malcolm Collins:That is one of the things that we will be talking about.

Simone Collins:Oh, good. I want to know. Oh.

Malcolm Collins:So just some this was a hard episode to put together because, again, there was so much academic research on this.

Simone Collins:No kidding.

Malcolm Collins:Very well studied phenomenon. Yeah. In one piece titled actresses and prostitutes in Victorian London, I I’ll quote a bit from the abstract here. The popular association between actresses and prostitutes and belief in actresses inappropriate sexual conduct endured through the nineteenth century. In The United States, religious fundamentalism accounts for much of the prejudice, but in Great Britain, where puritanical influence was not as influential on the theater, other factors helped to preserve the derogatory view of actresses. In certain times and places, actresses did have links with the women the oldest of all women’s professions. male actors were not high status either until the nineteenth century. They were often viewed as little better than vagrants or circus people. The first actor united in Britain was Henry Irving in 1895. In The United States, the census and contemporary accounts show a rapidly growing but still socially ambiguous profession, after the civil war. By 1912, there were tens of thousands of people working in theater and popular entertainment, but they were still seen very poorly. In fact, even though we had famous actors and actresses before the period, they were not really normalized until the nineteen eighties as something that should be respected. The eighties? That late? No. No. Because you had before that actresses like Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe and Katherine Hepburn. Your beloved Hold on. Let’s take a step back here. Okay. What did people actually think of characters like Marilyn Monroe But Audrey Hepburn. We’ll Please. We’ll focus on one that you said because I think that she’s a great example that this came to your head. People thought of Marilyn Monroe as basically a famous prostitute. She was known for sleeping with married men. She was known for showing her body, showing her legs, the whole great scene thing. She was known as a glorified prostitute. In fact, I think people would have seen only a thin line between her work and what was going on in Playboy was in the same period.

Simone Collins:She was monogamously married twice or three times twice.

Malcolm Collins:Was the one who hooked up with Kennedy. Right? Yes. But Simone, mister happy birthday.

Simone Collins:Well, that was after the second marriage, I think. It she was single again then. But it

Malcolm Collins:He was married.

Simone Collins:Yes. He was married. Yeah. That was bad. That was bad. But, I mean, like, famous people do things like that.

Malcolm Collins:Yes. But it doesn’t get scandalized to the extent that she did. Everyone was like, of course, she did it. She’s an actress.

Simone Collins:Look. There were many other actresses at that time that did not have that same kind of reputation. But, yes, I I I I see your point broadly. I’m just kind of shocked that you would say not until the eighties was it considered. I mean but even then, it had sorted

Malcolm Collins:And I’d point out to you. Even if you look at Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn, we actually don’t have the same sort of phenomenon of even major famous actors that you still respect today like them going on other TV shows and giving life or political advice. They just didn’t do it.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Audrey Hepburn engaged in charity work, but in a way similar to how you’d expect a royal to engage in charity work where she, yeah, doesn’t seem to engage in a whole lot of, like, political opining, which is not what you see these days.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Point made. Alright. Let’s get into it.

Simone Collins:Alright.

Malcolm Collins:So so you know I’m not putting a conservative slant on this. The piece that I ended up using as the main piece we’ll be reading from was from Jezebel Oh. Where they interviewed a bunch of historians and anthropologists from this period. Long before the advent of recording technology, theaters were assumed to be basically brussels, it and was taken for granted that the women working in them were sexually available. Quote, there is a very long history of a kind of literal quid pro quo, but also simply women subject to harassment or attacks and abuse of other actors, directors, managers, or wealthy audience members. Looking back on earlier centuries, Kirsten Pullen, head of the theater department in the University of Illinois, then author of Actresses and On Stage and in Society, told Jezebel. Women first appeared on stage in England in around the sixteen sixties. Theater had been banned by the Puritan government in 1647 and restarted under the restoration, the glittery, brawdy reign of Charles the second. Shortly after he was put on the stone, he decreed that women could work on the stage. Among his many mistresses was a beautiful and talented actress, Nell Gwyn, who supposedly was raised in a brothel. So you asked why did women why did women, get in in in theater? The answer is that England had a moral Puritan government, and then, of course, came in Charles the second, who did convert to Catholicism on his deathbed. And the first thing he wants to do is hook up one of his mistresses who wanted to be in acting with a job, and that’s how it got started. One of the women he was sleeping with on the side thought it’d be fun to act in front of people, so he decided to make it public. This is why

Simone Collins:for okay.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. He made it legal.

Simone Collins:That was what year? Like, around

Malcolm Collins:That was 06/06 sometime after 1647, so maybe, like, 1650.

Simone Collins:Okay. Yeah. Because I’m I’m trying to, like, piece together in my mind when I know that small plays became okay. I know that, for example, Marie Antoinette and her social set would have private stage plays, like, among their friends. Like, you’d put on a play for your friends, but it wasn’t for the public. They would also attend the opera. So I know by that point, like, the late seventeen hundreds, you had women singing in the opera, so that was acceptable. And, also, like, literal queens, at least privately acting. So something changed definitely, maybe beginning with this first

Malcolm Collins:6050.

Simone Collins:Publicly acting. Okay. Interesting.

Malcolm Collins:It was a racy, rowdy world. And even as they packed houses, the women who made their living there were insulted and even condemned by the judgment of society. A complete break was tradition. The unprecedented actress of the restoration became a symbol for the license and purported immorality of the error, cementing a long running presumption of the relationship between promiscuity, prostitution, and women of the theater. But it was literally thought and brought about by a woman raised in a brothel who was the mistress of the queen king. Right? Like

Simone Collins:Wow.

Malcolm Collins:They they were intimately linked. Betty Bodle, a restoration era actress that Pullen covers in her book, was once referred to in the verse as a woman whom all the town f’s. Great. This association persisted for centuries. London’s Covenant Garden was traditionally the center of both the theater district and the smex trade, a place where it was understood that women could be bought and sold. In Paris too, this overlap between the theater and the demi monde was significant. William Hogger’s Demi monde. To print strolling actress dressing in a barn testifies to the public’s perception of actresses as licentious and sexually available. Pullen notes during the restoration, men could pay a little extra wizard ticket to go backstage where they might find actresses changing clothing, socializing, or even eating and drinking. Quote, men could go back and interact with them. They could watch them. They could talk to them, and they could share oranges with them, end quote. Quote, men are paying for this sort of extra access to the backstage. How we are women ever supposed to be in a position to say no, end quote. Backstage actresses would maintain a sexualized mystique with the nineteenth century impressionist Edgar Degas and post impressionist Henry Talois Lautre both painted behind the scenes, offering talented glimpses of entertainers all said, I am not gonna pollute my mouth with un American words, you stinking woman. This is Oh my god. I’ve gotta get you pregnant again. So the next time you cry, you end up laughing this much, you end up peeing yourself, and you end up suffering for it.

Speaker 3:That’s so good. Oh god.

Malcolm Collins:I don’t know how our fans tolerate you. Can you not see this detestable woman who

Speaker 3:does nothing but

Simone Collins:deem and laugh at her husband?

Speaker 3:It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful.

Malcolm Collins:Oh, gosh. Sorry. I will send you to the theaters, Simone. You know I have a thing. That’s like my

Simone Collins:fetish mispronunciation of

Malcolm Collins:We we should do another episode on the theories of, like, you don’t understand how this used to only be for hoards, focused on makeup.

Simone Collins:Oh, that’ll be great. That’ll be fantastic.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Yeah.

Simone Collins:To lose the track. Go on. The artists that made that were talking about women and and and, essentially, sex work. Yes.

Malcolm Collins:Yes. Yes. Yeah. Oh, shut up. Shut up. I love you. I love

Speaker 3:you so much. I love you so, so much. Okay. Go. Go on.

Malcolm Collins:The social safety net is a relatively recent innovation. And for much of Western history, there were very few jobs available to women, and most of them paid poorly and left them just as exposed, if not a little more than the stage. Quote, the options for women, and I’m talking here historically, were so limited that if we’re going to be sexually exploited, wouldn’t it be better to be sexually exploited by a wealthy man and have a career on stage, end quote, said Pollan. Quote, I’m not talking about now when women have a lot of other options, but we’re looking at 1714. It’s not surprising that there has been this long term link, end quote. In Painted Love, Prostitution and French Art of the Impressionist Era, Holly Clairson writes how in the nineteenth century, mileria knee was conflated with prostitution, and women who worked in the industry were presumed to be available for purchase.

Simone Collins:I can’t milleriony? What’s milleriony?

Malcolm Collins:Let’s let’s look this up. Do you wanna

Simone Collins:Are you talking about millinery? Like, making hats? Oh, hats. Yeah. Millinery. Okay. Okay. So, yes, this is this is interesting. Coco Chanel, for example, started out as a milliner. Mhmm. The famous designer. And one of the the reason why she has the name Coco Chanel was that was, like, her stage name because she would also do little cabaret shows or something like that in in France. It’s interesting that millinery but it also makes sense. I mean, maybe

Malcolm Collins:being a milliner female during that period Well, look.

Simone Collins:You’re a working girl. And look. Coco Chanel had to, like, moonlight as, like, a milliner, and then she would do cabaret shows. And then she kind of was the friend of, like, a rich dude friend, you know, accompanied him. They weren’t married. Octavian, you wanna go watch some chess strategy videos or something?

Speaker 3:No.

Simone Collins:Buddy, we’re gonna finish recording really soon. I’m gonna come down and make you dinner. We’re gonna have mac and cheese tonight? K? So off you go, friend. I love you. You be good. And Duffy. Duffy climbs. Oh, gosh.

Malcolm Collins:But maybe it was a bit like I’m making jewelry now, but for that period where it’s like a job, like, everyone understood it was for women who just wanted to pretend to have a job, but were really, like, prostitutes.

Speaker 4:she finally figured out what she wanted to do.

Speaker 5:I mean, what’s that? Going

Speaker 7:So I decided to, instead of just speculating, decide to have some research into this. And the answer is several things that were stacked. The shop was often a pickup spot for fashionable young men. And rakes went to milliner shops as much to look at girls as hats. A 1781 French observer put it bluntly, purchases were only a pretext. One looked at the seller, not the merchandise. Contemporary advice books warned parents that the constant traffic of idle gentlemen exposes young creatures to many temptations and and and in a sensibly debauches their morals. Some shops were fronts. Bonnet shops and miller establishments sometimes had rooms upstairs, used for assignations. A man could walk in, buy something, or pretend to, and be steered to the back of the parlor or upper floor. This was not every shop, but it was common enough to become a stock joke and a police moral reform talking point. Wages and seasonality. Pay was low by seasons. Spring autumn hats were followed by slack periods and layoffs. A young woman who had already left home, been seduced and abandoned, or simply could not make rent, had few other options that paid as well as quickly. Reformers and investigators repeatedly listed millers, dressmakers, and similar needlewoman among the trades from which many prostitutes came from. Robert Kaplan is a London tradesman 1747, claimed that more than half of the common women in town walking between Charing Cross and Fleet Ditch had started as milliners. Very interesting, more than half. Henry May’s mid nineteenth century investigations repeated the same pattern. I think it’s she’s making jewelry now. I think that that’s the best analogy. There was also something of a moral panic around women in fashionable work, but I don’t I don’t think that’s if they’re noting that more than half of the prostitutes were originally milliners. Fascinating. That, by the way, comes from a study titled millinery and the milliner headwear and millinery in eighteen thirties England by the University of Huddersfield.

Speaker 3:Actually, Helen, it says that you forgot to lock this. I

Simone Collins:will. I will, and I’ll relock it. Thank you. Okay. I think also if if at that stage, you have to keep in mind this is like a you’re just coming out of a period in society where if you are an unmarried adult woman, who is not in the care of her family, you don’t there is no social safety net. There is no protection. You have no job security whatsoever. If you are capable of turning to that form of work as an option because you don’t want to become, like, a nun or something, that’s you’re you’re kind of going to. Like, I don’t think everyone who’s a milliner turned to sex work, but I absolutely think that they went to sex work adjacent style things. Like, I’m not gonna say that Coco Chanel was a sex worker, but she was a cabaret singer. Her name

Malcolm Collins:wasn’t mean, with a name like Coco Chanel, I would not be surprised.

Simone Collins:Coco was, like something about, like, a rooster. Like, she’s saying this whole song about, like, a rooster, and Coco is, like, roosters

Malcolm Collins:so stupid. For our our recent episode that we did on absolutely love doing this episode with you on how dating is a a modern phenomenon and

Simone Collins:is worse

Malcolm Collins:than than sex work. At one point, we talked about taxicab.

Simone Collins:Taxi taxi women. Taxi dancers. Taxi dancers.

Malcolm Collins:And we talked about how they would, like, line up behind, like, a rope Yes. Or barrier and try to get them in to, like, go to them. And one of the people mentioned in the comments, and I had never seen this movie, so I didn’t know. But the movie that the the song that almost everyone has heard is hey, big spender comes from, That song is sung by a bunch of women behind a rope trying to coax a guy to dance with them.

Speaker 9:let me get right.

Speaker 10:To the point, I

Speaker 9:don’t pop my cork for every guy I see.

Simone Collins:Yeah. So Malcolm saw the comment and then pulled up the video, and we watched it together in our kitchen. We’re like, oh my god. They’re behind

Malcolm Collins:the rope. Spender is about taxi cab dancers.

Simone Collins:Yes. Trying to catch the attention of the sparse men who aren’t that interested, but, you know, they’re trying to oh my gosh. It’s so it was so crazy. That was so crazy. Great comment. Thank you for whoever pointed that out.

Malcolm Collins:this one came from a comment too, this entire episode. Somebody was like, well, and we don’t talk about actors enough. I was like, yeah. We don’t. Let’s talk about that.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Yeah. So by the way, everyone, thank you so much for the comments. Really great. Love them.

Malcolm Collins:anxiety about demands that women exchange sex for work began with the beginning of the industry settlement in Los Angeles, explained to Hilary Hallett, a professor at Columbia University and the author of Go West Young Women, The Rise of Early Hollywood. they really helped define this idea of Hollywood as it first emerges right after World War one in the nineteen twenties. So she’s arguing that even the idea that it might be bad to demand women sleep with you for roles didn’t begin until the nineteen twenties. And it’s just it didn’t really stick. So you know? A flood of hopeful young women fled into the fledgling business, and it certainly presented an environment where bad actors could operate. In her book, Without Lying Down, Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood, Carrie Bootcamp notes that the Central Casting Corporation was created in part to help channel those who wanted to get into the film business as extras as it was alarmingly easy to pose as somebody within power for nefarious purposes. One man who admitted to placing ads in local papers for a, quote, unquote, casting call to be held in his room at the Biltimore Hotel didn’t know if he was more surprised that the ad brought a deluge of replies at the young girl’s inability to differentiate between legitimate calls and illegitimate s**t snares,

Simone Collins:cheers. Oh, no. Where are their parents? Where are their parents? Goodness.

Malcolm Collins:Sitting them to Hollywood to get a job in the movie industry. Yeah. I don’t know. Mm-mm. And yet, Hollett hasn’t actually encountered much use of the specific term casting couch, the origin of which is very murky. It apply appears in Linda Williams’ 1989 study of pornography, hardcore power, pleasure, and the frenzy of the Invisible, which cites the existence of a 1924 film, The Casting Couch, which was a a Korn film. If that rings a bell, it may be due to Feud and the decades of rumors that Jonah Crawford appeared in the softcore movie by that name. Oh, interesting. Which nobody has ever managed to prove conclusively. Providence for early movies is a tricky thing, so the year of its production is uncertain. The Atlantic history records several instances from the twenties to the thirties. A recent slate pace explains that the term casting couch first appeared in Variety in 11/21/1937. It was a story poking fun at a Chicago Tribune reporter for misusing it because he wasn’t cool enough to already know what it meant. Oh, interesting. So even back then, it was understood that it meant sleeping with someone. Wow. In the piece on the Atlantic tracing the history of the term, Ben Zivverbind says that the term was often associated with Broadway in the nineteen thirties and particularly with Schibert’s, the powerful family of producers, uh-oh, who helped create New York’s theater scene at the dawn of the nineteen hundreds. The earliest use offered as an example in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1948 in H. L. Mencken’s American language supplement two, describing it as the divin in a casting director’s office, a straightforward but knowing description. Some of the specifics of Hollywood’s steamier side didn’t seep out until the big celebrity memoir boom of the nineteen seventies and eighties when tell alls became hugely popular. Shirley Temple said in her 1988 autobiography that a producer had exposed himself to her when she was 12, for instance. But the notion was clearly circulating in the popular conscious in the nineteen forties and fifties. Slate did a piece on this in 1950, 1965 expose by the British movie, magazine pictographer, which at least documented the practice. But the layout for the piece was outright sexy. It reflects an almost fetish like dimension to the trope. One of the things that turned up in my research was a 1963 article from the downmarket Playboy competitor, Jim, a new look at the old casting couch, it was titled, which opens with a larger view of a faceless naked woman. Even today, it remains a trope in pornography. Lurking on the old coverage of the phenomenon too is a warning. Over the decades, the casting characters often acknowledged but framed as a thing of the past. Oh, we by the way, before I continue, thoughts, Simone?

Simone Collins:No. Carry on. I mean, this all makes sense.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. I I don’t think I’m I’m saying anything that’s particularly but the wild thing is is that we forgot this as a society. We forgot that actors never stopped being high grade prostitutes.

Simone Collins:Well, I think me too almost framed it as revisionist history. Like, how could they insinuate that I sleep with them in order for favors when sort of what was happening was these men were engaging in a very age old trope, not making it acceptable.

Malcolm Collins:What’s interesting is that some of the most effective actors, celebrities of the the last era of actors, celebrities you can see our video of the show on Earth, which goes over the death of that world, really just dropped the facade and went, like, yeah. I’m just a prostitute. Like, look at Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian, right, who rose to fame on the release of sex tapes and really just focus on on selling their body in the early days.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s interesting me to me, though, that we were sold the story in the Me Too era of this is not normative, which I think led people to kind of forget that it was and almost always has been. I mean, that is to say as long as women have been permitted to act, which is not

Malcolm Collins:Well, what’s interesting is a lot of people talk about this as, like, a Jewish thing. Right? And it’s it it clearly existed in acting long before the Jews became the major players in the production industry.

Simone Collins:Yeah. It just happened to be disproportionately there. That is

Malcolm Collins:Not not that they you know, that their sexual impropriety deserves no blame. And that if another group had been in that position, they may have done it at a lower rate or even split it out.

Simone Collins:The level of sexual control that your average, at least Orthodox Jew has, is is kind of insanely high. I mean, a practicing Orthodox Jew is not gonna touch their wife for, like, half a month practically. Right? Like, they’ll sleep in separate beds because they can’t they they will not. Their hands won’t touch when they pass each other objects in the kitchen. This level of discipline, I think, to to frame at least practicing devout Jews as sexually uncontrolled is is it’s odd to me. It’s odd to me.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Well, it it it it is odd. It is odd. But to continue, the OED sites well, it’s also interesting to me that, like, take Catholics, for example. They’ll always be like, well, not the not the conservative, you know, Catholics who attend church all the time. They don’t do that. So, like, why are you blaming us for it? And in the same breath, they’ll blame the entire Jewish community for stuff that the Orthodox Jews are not doing. Mhmm.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Fair.

Malcolm Collins:But to continue here, the OED cites a 1963 article in the Sunday Express claiming that, quote, in the old days, the only way anyone got anywhere in this business was by the way of the casting couch, end quote. A particularly incredible paragraph comes out courtesy of February 1941 issue of the fan magazine Modern Screen. The day of the casting couch when a girl had to exercise her libido instead of her talent for a job is almost dead. The much publicized tradition of the Hollywood orgy died that evening when Fatti Arbuckle became involved in the community’s most colossal scandal, which meant the end of the Virginia rap. Today’s Hollywood parties are pretty dull in business like affairs, where Darren Zackel is talking about himself and boring Joe Pasternak, who would like to talk about himself, and where Jack Benny, who won’t talk about himself for fear of losing to a gag to Bob Hope and Ken Murray, who are also silent. In fact, Xanax name drop comes up in talk of casting catch practices. And in a piece just days ago, the Daily Mail, Joan Collins acknowledges that she was warned about him by Marilyn Monroe herself, and he did indeed try it. And this modern screen article appears just four years after the event that would become the subject of a shocking court case that discussed in the documentary Girl 27 in which 20 year old Patrick Douglas was allegedly groped by an MGM sales rep at a boozy studio party where she and other young women were basically offered up like a buffet. Her legal efforts were ultimately stymied by the fact that Hollywood was essentially a company town. So, basically, what we’re seeing here is this constant perception going back to, I wanna say, the nineteen twenties, and then it happens again in the nineteen forties, and then we see it again today where people are like, Hollywood used to be that way, but it isn’t that way today. And then twenty to thirty years later, people write their tell alls, and it’s no. Hollywood never stopped being that way.

Simone Collins:Yeah. I I I have all the pieces together in my head. I just never put it together because we grew up to actors and actresses normalized to such godlike aspirational people. Though I do think that that’s changing a lot.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. So let’s talk about when we began to respect actors and actresses and how all the problems came about from this. the reality is is that the biggest player in this transition was one of our own, Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan being elected president Fair Point. Really legitimize the industry of actors and actresses having political opinions, which was not as common before that. the big, like, progenitor to him would have been Jane Fonda. What did Jane Fonda do politically? Yeah. 1972 Hanoi trip, which was radioactive at the time, yet she kept winning Oscars. So she was

Simone Collins:really Even though she became active politically, she didn’t lose her position as a a working actress. That’s the thing that no. That I don’t think that counts the same way that Ronald Reagan becoming president does. It just meant that someone an actress could be politically involved without losing her career. But it’s different from being yeah, having a push on everyone. Yeah. Yeah. Like, if that doesn’t mean that people, like, change their minds because of Jane Fonda, though maybe they did, did they? I don’t think so.

Malcolm Collins:I don’t. And what really happened and what really normalizes for everyone was the the studio industrial complex, I’ll call it, or the rise of the late show. Oh.

Simone Collins:Oh, because they would mix talking with politics alongside having actors come in, but then they might act ask the actors for their opinions?

Malcolm Collins:So, essentially, what happened is the you had the rise of these late shows that were owned by the same companies that owned the movie studios. And and and this point is really important. It was not organically that people cared about the political opinions of actors or wanted to make them measure celebrities that everyone worshiped or wanted to hear about their daily life or how to be a good person or anything like that. It’s that when one company owns both the TV shows that are on at night and who they end up casting as their guest at the end of the night, as well as have the vested interest in the next big movie taking off, they then do the rounds of having the actors go to the shows and talk.

Simone Collins:Okay. So these late night shows were the original dynamic of, like, game originally gaming streamers then switching over to politics kind of because they ran out of gaming content to talk about. And if you have these actors going on these late night TV shows, you can only talk so much about your movie and yourself, and then you start talking about other stuff.

Malcolm Collins:Well, they’d also be primed with political questions and stuff like that. But, yeah, that’s Sure. And it also explains why the era of the famous actress who everyone respects is basically dead at this point. It’s because Because

Simone Collins:late night TV is dead too.

Malcolm Collins:Failed. Yeah. And it’s been replaced with programs like ours. And what we use our show to do, if people have noticed, is when new people enter the space who I think have the probability of becoming big, like, look at us promoting people like basic logic when he was still small, or Nukiyaru, recently. We take people who we see who are part of our community, and we promote them. Because in the same way that the big studios tried to control who became famous, we are trying to do the same. We’re like, oh, this looks like a good actor in our community. Let’s promote them.

Simone Collins:Or I guess, the opposite of what Ben Shapiro was doing in this space where he would try to gatekeep people when they seem to be entering Yeah. His broad zone. Just trying to do the complete opposite of that. Whatever he did, don’t do that.

Malcolm Collins:I know I do what Ben Shapiro did. Ben Shapiro was not very bright in the way he handled that.

Simone Collins:Oh, I don’t know. I mean, you you clearly don’t get to where he is in the world without being incredibly savvy, hardworking, and intelligent, plus very lucky. But he I think he’s made many strategically poor decisions. Probably not as many as I have, but, you know, when you climb higher, you’re farther to fall.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. True that. Well, I found this really interesting, and I would really encourage people to you know, in yourself, in your kids, and this is one thing with your kids, teach them how to determine who they respect, who they get advice from, and who they envy. I think a lot of people desire to become an actor or an actress one day because they want the fame. They want the attention. They see somebody who is high status, and they want that. And, you know, I I saw this within my own family growing up. Some of my family members wanted to be actors. And I think that, you know, this is why. And it’s it’s a very foolish thing to want. Actors don’t live good lives even today. They are used for sex. As as we pointed out, they still do they do nude scenes now even at higher rates than they ever have. You know?

Simone Collins:It’s also just an extremely stressful line of work. Yeah. Very hard

Malcolm Collins:on Oh my god. I can’t even imagine going to actors parties and stuff like this. BoJack Horseman, I think, does a good job of

Simone Collins:showing Yeah. They did a great job of making it look very unappealing. That’s true. Oh my god. Yeah. Yikes.

Malcolm Collins:And and he’s the success case. You know? He had the very famous show. Right? You know?

Simone Collins:Well, I mean, these are cartoon animals and human. There’s one human. I don’t know. I can’t remember.

Malcolm Collins:It was

Simone Collins:too depressing to funny.

Malcolm Collins:In the world. There’s a number of humans.

Simone Collins:No. Not just the one annoyingly asexual one. Why do they have to make asexual people so intolerable in that? Take great offense. But anyway

Malcolm Collins:Sorry. Simone’s pretty asexual. That’s why she says that.

Simone Collins:Yeah. I’m I’m asexual but gay from Malcolm. This is my this is my sexuality, and mispronunciation is my fetish. Now you know all all the secrets. But I am a little surprised, though amused, by the intense puritanical nature of the conclusions that we’ve been drawing lately. Like, dating is bad and Acting is bad. Acting acting is sinful. You must not do these things.

Malcolm Collins:In the early American colonies, in many of the Puritan colonies, you weren’t allowed to act.

Simone Collins:I know. I know. I know. Weren’t you also not allowed to dance or anything? That’s gonna be a problem. Our kids got some serious twinkle toes. So I don’t know. May maybe, like I I have you seen, like, the very viral YouTube videos of Amish kids dancing? Maybe, like, you know, Amish dancing is okay.

Malcolm Collins:Amish dancing. Okay. Well, I love you, like,

Simone Collins:real grooving. You’ve not seen this? Just, like, Amish teens just, like, going for it. It’s great. It’s very real.

Malcolm Collins:Awesome. Good. That’s that’s awesome. I’ll add a clip.

Speaker 11:. It now.

Simone Collins:It makes me happy. I mean, I think you you were the first person to get me to this kind of genre of, like, religious people dancing, but you, like, set it to death metal or whatever, and it just works or, like, techno. You do that with Orthodox Jews at one point. Right? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:They do, like, Orthodox Jewish dancing and setting up to techno.

Speaker 12:Christ.

Simone Collins:Yeah. It’s it were I mean, they know how to have a good time. Say what you will. Yeah. I don’t I how to behavior. But no. The Amish dancing is is is beautiful. I really like it. It’s very, like, stern, but it looks

Speaker 3:fun at the same time.

Simone Collins:Anyway, have nothing else to say. Acting is a sin. I really liked acting, though, when I was a kid because it taught me I guess, it taught me how socially awkward I was.

Malcolm Collins:there was this one I like acting because it was full of loose women, and I didn’t have to exercise.

Simone Collins:There was no there were no loose women.

Malcolm Collins:It’s where all the the hot goths

Simone Collins:in punk girls have to oh, theater kids. Yeah. I guess some of the goths are are in that crowd. But it’s it’s whenever Theater

Malcolm Collins:kids are very easy to seduce. I’m I’d like when I was a kid. That’s disgusting.

Simone Collins:No. You just you just seduced all the people because you had a mission at the time. Meanwhile, I discovered for the first time ever when trying to rehearse for my role as Elsa in the sound of music that I was incapable of expressing affection. And I will never forget when the director of the play was, like, trying to explain to me to, like, flirt with my boyfriend, captain Von Trapp. And I was like, what do you want me to do? And he he tried to direct me poor Tyler. He tried to direct me to, like, flick my my finger across his chin or something while I walked by him. And, like, he, like he walked by poor Tyler and, like, did it to him. And I’m like, okay. Bonk. And, like, I just had no idea of, like, how do I show

Malcolm Collins:Why did I decide to marry this woman? Why am I still with you?

Simone Collins:And I, like, literally needed professional direction to show even the slightest amount of flirtiness, and I still couldn’t do it. But it worked because Elsa is supposed to be, like, this stiff, bad, improper love interest because captain Von Trapp, of course, is supposed to end up with the child loving Maria and not the stiff Nazi Nazi Elsa. So they took out that song, though. Be wise, compromise, compromise, and be wise. They took

Malcolm Collins:it out from your plate?

Simone Collins:They took it out. Yeah. I only sang a song about, you know, how can how can we, as two rich people in love, make it work. That’s the song. It’s the song that

Malcolm Collins:she sings.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Not in the movie, but in the play. Yeah. She Elsa sings two songs. In the play, she sings one that’s basically about, like, look. The Nazis, they can be kinda difficult, but, like, let’s just yes. And it. Okay? Just yes. And. And then the other one’s like, you know, how are we gonna be romantic if we’re so rich, which is is great. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:I love you, Simone. You’re such a goof. Like, you are your lack of ability to flirt, like, I am so lucky because you would have been snatched off the market so quickly.

Simone Collins:Yeah. But then, like, the people are doing this documentary on us, you know, and they’re like, oh, it’s, you know, my you know, they we love each other deeply, and they’re like, so show show us. And I’m like, I love him. I I pat him on the back. I give him a hug.

Speaker 13:I am reacting appropriately to the thing you just said. Small talk acknowledged. That’s a bit much, but these work. Who’s an antisocial weirdo now? Not the girl who invented robot arms to hug strangers. Oh my god. I sound insane.

Simone Collins:It doesn’t work. It’s it’s gonna make us look so freaking bad.

Malcolm Collins:Here, hug. Hug.

Speaker 3:Oh my god.

Simone Collins:I make you food. I have other love languages. Although I heard that someone completely disproved the concept of love languages, which is deeply disturbing to me because it’s

Malcolm Collins:like you just don’t love me. That’s your love language. Not loving me.

Simone Collins:Poor Malcolm. I gosh.

Malcolm Collins:She’s great. She’s great at showing it. She gives me so much stuff.

Simone Collins:Oh, that’s true. Look at behind you. It’s all Malcolm gifts. I got you the helmet. I got you the tarj. I got you the other helmet. I didn’t get you the sword, though. I didn’t get you the sword. Oh, well. Anyway Mhmm. I’m gonna let you go to sleep. I’m really tired. I love you so much.

Malcolm Collins:And gonna crawl in bed and pass out, but I’ve gotta prep the episode for tomorrow.

Simone Collins:Can you wake up and do it early?

Malcolm Collins:That’s what I think I’m gonna do.

Simone Collins:Do it. Just pass out. You you the spark isn’t out of your eyes yet, but it’s getting there. Just the Malcolm has this spark in his eyes that, like, literally disappears when he gets too sleepy. And you can really tell when it’s gone. It’s it’s fading. It’s it’s sparkling. About from

Malcolm Collins:this part because I see it in our kids. Like, other people don’t have it. Don’t know. Maybe they don’t have a soul. Maybe they don’t. You know?

Simone Collins:I don’t know what it is. I think it I think it’s akin metaphorically in in sort of an epic story kind of way, philosophically, to Peter Pan’s kiss or Wendy’s kiss or missus Darling’s kiss. There’s this, like, concept of, like, just these, like you cannot describe it. It is a thing. It is heavy and meaningful. It it has the equivalence of a soul, which is, like, it it doesn’t exist, but it does exist, and you have to talk about it. But, yes, that is your it is your spark.

Speaker 3:This is it.

Malcolm Collins:And she yeah. She always says it goes out of my eyes when I get too tired. I’m just, like, zombified.

Simone Collins:It’s and you can see it. Any any if any of you ever meet Malcolm in person, you can see it. It’s sad. So go to, like, okay. Bye. I love you.

Malcolm Collins:Bye. Love you. Oh, yeah. You guys need to try out rfab, r f a b dot a I. That’s true. You can do if you wanna explore what it was like to be in the early acting world, you can do historic role play. You can do chat role play. You can do, you know, recording. We’re recording this episode in it.

Simone Collins:I use it to stalk people online using Superstock. It’s under the search tools.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. If you do vibe coding, you can use the Artfab dev API, which will allow your vibe coding AIs to call you even if you’re not using Artfab for for vibe coding.

Simone Collins:Mhmm.

Malcolm Collins:We offer all sorts of I mean, just, like, recipe generators, anything. Image generation, we offer a really good suite for that. We offer a good suite for video generation. Daily. Right now, working on creating a good one for music video generation so you can create your own SkyBrowse videos, like, in

Simone Collins:the in box.

Malcolm Collins:SkyBrowse in a box. But but that’s still alpha, you know, we’ll work on that.

Simone Collins:Yeah. As is little brother, which I’m super excited about. It’s a you can buy a bunch of devices and then install this software on them. And then your chosen character, your sentinel who you design, ours is a mermaid princess, We’ll watch you and give you feedback on your day, also based on, like, your email inbox. So, like, reads out your email.

Malcolm Collins:Should be updated and making the calls now, by the way.

Simone Collins:Oh, perfect. I will I will make sure all the new devices are reflashed. But it watches you. It knows who your family is. It recognizes your family. It listens to you through any of the devices that are on and around with an SD card inside them, and it gives you feedback.

Malcolm Collins:Oh, no. Even if they don’t have an SD card, it listens. It just isn’t as good.

Simone Collins:Oh, well, then I need to I’ll I’ll submit a maybe I can try to push a fix for that.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Go for it.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Okay. I’m excited to do that because

Malcolm Collins:it And plug in the devices because the AI can see what’s happening in the bugs for on the devices. Like, the devices collect bug reports.

Simone Collins:While they’re just on Wi Fi? Yeah. That’s awesome. Okay. Well, they they are plugged in. She’s just been on, in my office the whole time.

Malcolm Collins:So

Simone Collins:Yay. Okay. Good.

Malcolm Collins:That’s fantastic. Yeah. But, but what is working is the devices for, like, simple companion apps, which is, like, good for kids.

Simone Collins:Oh, yeah. Which you can also load on the devices. So we’ll sometimes hand them to our kids and have them talk to characters we made that are designed to, of course, learn about our kids, learn their names, learn what they’re interested in, but then redirect the conversation to, like, science, physics, history, math.

Malcolm Collins:Simone had a big milestone today? She she officially started vibe coding?

Simone Collins:Only because Malcolm took a lot of time to handhold me much to his look. I’m sorry, Malcolm. It’s hard to live with your wife who’s incapable of delegating and vibe coding, but I’m gonna get better.

Malcolm Collins:That’s very important that you get used to doing is starting a vibe code task then getting to your other work.

Simone Collins:That’s what I’ve been doing. That’s okay. It’s it’s great. And I didn’t realize just how good, especially Fable was. Like, even halfway through this the first podcast we just did today, I just stopped really quick to, like, give my fingerprint because it’s building an ad campaign on Google Ads based on everything we discussed. And, like, I just love that. I love that it’s just going. And

Malcolm Collins:I told you. It’s awesome. Right? And one of the things oh, did you see the WhatsApp I sent you to give to an instance of Fable?

Simone Collins:About the reporting the financial reporting?

Malcolm Collins:No. The API. Oh, no.

Simone Collins:I did did you send that? Let’s make sure you actually sent that. I sent you multiple things. Oh, work this into the doc. Oh, okay. So it’s an API key?

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. You’d literally just insert that into an instance of Fable you have running. Well, a

Simone Collins:new one. Any any oh, a new one. Just start a new thread and then Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:And you know to keep them short. Right? Like or they cost a lot more.

Simone Collins:So, like, one task per thread and then a new thread for every new thing. Okay. Sure.

Malcolm Collins:Sure. Sure.

Simone Collins:I don’t know that. So that’s that’s why it’s really helpful for you to handle.

Malcolm Collins:To mention stuff

Simone Collins:like Yeah. Just I know you don’t want to acknowledge the fact that I am profoundly more dumb than you are. But even though you’ve seen the freaking histograms of, like, our genetic analysis That is if

Malcolm Collins:you’re a woman.

Simone Collins:Well right. But you know what? You’re gonna have to, like no. Because when you look at where our daughters are on the histogram, that’s not, a thing. Like, I I I actually our highest performers are very mixed in terms of the parasite reports.

Malcolm Collins:Ginger? Okay. Okay.

Simone Collins:Anyway, you know that I am, so you have to dumb it down.

Malcolm Collins:Alright. Guys, check out our FAB. Love you all. have a great day. And if you want more episodes, we have them on weekends, Patreon and Substack, and and, obviously, a huge backload if you haven’t subscribed yet. Bye. Bye.

Simone Collins:I didn’t mean to I think it just remembers what you last had on, and I forgot to turn off. They just I need Tidet to talk with her more and learn about the world. But I do love that they teach us all sorts of things, random things.

Malcolm Collins:And for dinner tonight, I didn’t really want anything. I had a sandwich.

Simone Collins:Okay. But if you do change your mind, you will let me know?

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. I’m fine. And Disa, a steak, so that’ll bring me down.

Simone Collins:Thank you. Okay. Like, I wanna make you one if you don’t like to eat late, which, I mean, many people advise it’s it’s best to not eat late or eat dinner at all. If you would rather front load your calories in the morning, I can make you steak and fries for lunch. Like, you do not have to

Malcolm Collins:wait for might be really good, actually.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Do you want just that? Because we can just I can make you lunches.

Malcolm Collins:We should try it. K.

Simone Collins:Because you seem to do much better when you don’t, like, do a whole dinner thing. But

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Yeah. I get to sleep earlier and everything. Alright.

Speaker 14:So pretty. You’re waiting for customers? Oh, and you’ll show them how it’s done? Yeah. How do I shop at your store?

Historically, what we now call dating was treated as lower-status than prostitution. The word “date” itself once meant visiting a prostitute. Then working-class “charity girls” undercut professional sex workers by trading companionship and intimacy for dinners, tickets, clothes, and nights out — a practice contemporaries called treating.

In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins walk through the late-19th / early-20th century shift: cheap urban leisure (nickelodeons, dance halls, Coney Island), taxi dancers as proto-host clubs, shop girls hunting rich bosses, the rebrand of face-painting into “makeup,” the invention of “personality” and the It Girl, and 1920s petting parties. They argue modern dating is not an ancient institution that suddenly broke. It is a recent, low-commitment market that was controversial when it appeared — and that older courtship systems (family-supervised seasons, explicit marriage-seeking) may be more honest than ambiguous long-term dating.

Also discussed: why they treat dating as wife-hunting rather than “seeing where it goes,” why they want paying-for-dates destigmatized as traditional, and how RFAB can generate period-accurate 1920s stories.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I am right off learning a historical fact that blew my mind, which is that historically what we today call dating was seen as lower than prostitution-

[00:00:16] Simone Collins: Wait ...

[00:00:16] Malcolm Collins: until incredibly recently, up until the 1920s. Even our word date Historically meant visiting a prostitute.

[00:00:30] Simone Collins: I thought it was like an, an assignation or a something else.

That’s great. An

[00:00:35] Malcolm Collins: assignation?

[00:00:36] Simone Collins: Like, a rendezvous.

[00:00:38] Malcolm Collins: No, it did mean that. But you would never use it for a romantic rendezvous. You used it for business rendezvous. And then it began to be used to mean seeing a prostitute, and then it began to become applied way later during this period where dating had this bad reputation, to seeing what was called a charity woman.

[00:00:59] Simone Collins: A charity- So, and- A cha- what’s a charity woman?

[00:01:02] Malcolm Collins: W- it’s what today we would call a woman. Okay. So,

[00:01:06] Simone Collins: What, what... Oh, okay. Okay. Just, yeah. Okay. I’ll, I’ll say the main thing- What, spell this out for me.

[00:01:09] Malcolm Collins: This,

[00:01:09] Simone Collins: I’m

[00:01:10] Malcolm Collins: so confused ... differentiated a charity woman, okay?

[00:01:12] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:01:12] Malcolm Collins: So a charity woman would expect a man to pay for food or an activity.

[00:01:20] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:01:20] Malcolm Collins: And she would often court multiple men before getting married. Now, today this sounds like a woman. So we’re gonna go- Yes ... into what alerted me to this. We’re gonna go into the Wikipedia article on this. And even though, the the reason I cite this is even something as lefty as Wikipedia was like, “Oh yeah, this was considered a super, a bad thing to do.”

We’re gonna go into the campaigns- Oh ... to arrest these women. We’ll go into what prostitutes were saying about these women, ‘cause they absolutely hated these women. They completely disrupted the way prostitution worked. And we’ll go into why this transformation happened. And I think it’s important to keep this in mind when we live in a world today and people say dating markets are no longer functioning, and they act like something that has existed since the beginning of time just collapsed all of a sudden.

Instead of something that’s existed for less than a century collapsed, and what we should do is go back to older mechanisms of dating, like arranged marriage and dating markets like the season, which we are attempting to rebuild. So fun stuff here. Let’s go right into it. So what alerted me to this is the RFab dev, like the only other human who works on it other than Simone and I Bruno reached out with this concept where he wanted us to go into the history of dating.

Specifically the claim that dating came from prostitution or was even frowned on by prostitutes. Specifically because it took business from them And it goes on. The term dating did emerge from prostitution and so did the general practice in the early 20th century. Charity girls were deemed competitors who undercut the wages of prostitutes.

Basically, easy girls who weren’t formal prostitutes figured out that they could blur the lines by getting dinners or so on paid for. Now, what’s really fascinating is the invention of dating as we understand it and think of it as like this wholesome 1950s practice today would have in its time been seen as extremely or eerily parallel to OnlyFansing today E.g.,

getting m- multiple men to pay for stuff for you while being an informal sex worker. I- i- in just a new way using new technologies.

[00:03:48] Simone Collins: I guess that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. People sort of, like, being angry because someone’s coming in and undercutting them professionally. When they’re like, “What? I work for this,” and then there’s a bunch of tourists who [00:04:00] don’t actually need the money but just want a free dinner.

[00:04:02] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay And who are like, “Well, I didn’t know I could just put nudes of myself online and people-” “... would give me money. Let’s, let’s do this.”

[00:04:08] Simone Collins: Oh, no.

[00:04:10] Malcolm Collins: I hear this one theory that OnlyFans was, like, predominantly paid for by dads to see their daughter’s friends. And I was like, “That is telling on yourself, buddy.”

[00:04:23] Simone Collins: That... Mm. Mm.

[00:04:25] Malcolm Collins: But maybe. I mean, I’ve, I’ve seen the movie, You still haven’t seen it. What, what’s it called? Beauty, beauty something. Oh.

[00:04:31] Simone Collins: American Beauty?

[00:04:32] Malcolm Collins: American Beauty, yeah.

[00:04:34] Simone Collins: Seems depressing. I don’t like depressing movies.

[00:04:36] Malcolm Collins: It’s not that depressing-

[00:04:39] Simone Collins: Mm ...

[00:04:40] Malcolm Collins: if I’m gonna be honest. Mostly because all of the characters are so pathetic and unlikable- Girl,

[00:04:45] Simone Collins: that sounds-

that you

[00:04:45] Malcolm Collins: don’t really feel bad for them.

[00:04:47] Simone Collins: I don’t wanna watch something about pathetic, unlikel- I’m, I’m really struggling- It’s, it’s a movie about- ... with TV and movies right now ... the birth of the urban

[00:04:52] Malcolm Collins: monoculture, if you, if you wanna call it anything.

[00:04:55] Simone Collins: Why would I want to watch that?

[00:04:56] Malcolm Collins: And how it destroys people’s lives.

[00:04:58] Simone Collins: I wanna watch attractive, competent people who are good at their jobs. Is this so hard to do? Is this so difficult?

[00:05:05] Malcolm Collins: But to continue here. Modern people don’t fully realize, but paying for a date isn’t providing, it’s confirmation that you can provide. Mm. It isn’t trad, it’s low-grade prostitution and always has been.

Dating is paying for companionship with sex as an unspoken bonus. The old criticism that men would expect sex if they took out a woman was fair, but it ignores the truth that the reason men expected this wasn’t because they were jerks or sexist, but because that is what dating was about. What’s really fun is, so when I dove into this, and, and this is one of these topics where I’m just not gonna be able to read all the primary sources I wanted to read on this, ‘cause there was just so much evidence on this.

But there was one academic research that cited a guy from the 1920s, I think it was, like, 1925, talking about how he paid, like, $1.50 for a girl, and she didn’t even let him do any heavy petting. Oh, dear. And that was the expectation, and he was quite upset about this

[00:06:08] Simone Collins: Huh, $1.50

[00:06:11] Malcolm Collins: That is how it went back then. But basically all of this is confirmed, and it’s dramatically worse than you think, exactly like yesterday when somebody reached out to you.

Today, we treat long-term dating as a precursor to marriage, but it’s not. The difference is in the commitment. If two people act as fully committed, then they’re married regardless of paperwork. Modern dating, though, is long-term persistent companionship without commitment. It’s harsh, but long-term low-commitment dating is just prostitution, always has been.

I’d agree with this. If you treat dating in the conventional format, it’s very unlikely to lead to marriage. If you look at the way that Simone and I dated I sat her down first date, what’d I say?

[00:06:51] Simone Collins: Not looking to date. I’m looking to find a wife. That is what you said. Yeah. You really, I guess, weren’t dating.

You were wife hunting.

[00:06:59] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:07:01] Simone Collins: Wow. Okay. Yeah.

[00:07:05] Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. And it meant that everything was structured very differently.

[00:07:08] Simone Collins: It did.

[00:07:09] Malcolm Collins: And the way you thought about every step was very different because it was, we are waiting to see if you clear being good enough to be a wife for me. Mm-hmm.

[00:07:19] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:07:20] Malcolm Collins: But let’s dig in In the social context of dating this is by the way Wikipedia I am reading, lefty coded Wikipedia- Okay

brainwashed Wikipedia here. Dating, treating is the practice of com- providing companionship and intimate activity in exchange for entertainment, outing, gifts, and other items of monetary value. The activity was prevalent in large areas of the United States from the 1890s to the 1940s, and was commonly engaged in by young working class women.

As treating became more widespread, the activity acquired the label charity, and young women who engaged in the more risque [00:08:00] aspects of the practice often became called charity girls. Although some reformers in the early 20th century equated treating with prostitution, the young women who engaged in the activity strongly rejected this view and drew strict distinctions between the two, as women still do.

Doesn’t mean they are different, it just means they draw distinctions between the two. Oh, no. In the same way for Mormons, butt smex isn’t smex because it’s in the butt. And everyone else in the world is like, “That’s still smex.” Right. As social dating between the sexes became more standard in the 1920s, treating began to blend in with the system of dating by the 1940s.

No, we just stopped treating it as a social taboo is what happened. The specific language of treating largely disappeared. This was by the 1940s. So when you see those sweet dating scenes in those 1950 Leave it to Beaver or whatever, that had only become normalized 10 years before those scenes took place, and only had begun to become thought of as something other than prostitution 10 years before those scenes took place

[00:09:14] Simone Collins: That’s really crazy. I mean, ‘cause I, I, I don’t know, I thought it was more traditional than that. Well, both because I saw all those instructional videos on dating from the 1950s and ‘60s. Yeah. But then also because I guess I never really thought through the realities of the London season, because in the Regency Era, there was what you could think of as a dating culture, because a certain elite class of society would converge in London and then have this series of events where everyone would be getting together.

But it’s actually really not. It’s not two people getting together for a private meeting.

[00:09:50] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:09:51] Simone Collins: It was families hosting balls, where a bunch of people would come and be in a room together, super, super highly supervised, and then women of marriageable age would a- wait for men to come visit them at their houses- Exactly

with, with their families around In their,

[00:10:08] Malcolm Collins: in their living room with their families around. Yeah. And most of the communication happened via letter.

[00:10:13] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah, if, if anything was private, it was in a letter. That’s... Wow, I, I just, it never occurred to me that this idea of one-on-one male-female romantic meetings really didn’t exist until the ‘50s.

And I guess that’s because in the ‘50s it would seem too creepy- ... to do cu- like, arranged marriage. But at the same time- I don’t know, the communities had gotten too big for just people to marry whoever was at church. What, what do you think?

[00:10:50] Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. I, I, I think that this has all specifically come down of the evolving urban monoculture in its earliest stages, ‘cause that’s really when the urban monoculture began to evolve with this idea of, “But I want to hook up with women, and if I don’t do this, I don’t get to hook up with women.”

And as soon as a woman began to engage in charity girl culture, men outside of charity girl culture are going to have a harder time hooking up with her or are going to see her as worthless. But more and more women realize they can hook up with men who are out of their range for periods by engaging in charity girl culture.

[00:11:28] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:11:30] Malcolm Collins: This was the beginning of the, you know, 20% of men get 80% of women category.

[00:11:36] Simone Collins: So you’re arguing, similar to demographic collapse, and everyone’s like, “Oh, it was all caused by phones and social media,” and you’re like, “Look, this started with the Industrial Revolution.” You’re kind of saying something similar- Mm-hmm

with the laziate problem of, of dating, the, the broken dating markets. You’re like, “No, it began as soon as dating existed.”

[00:11:56] Malcolm Collins: And the 19 flappers. It wasn’t the [00:12:00] smartphones. Well, really the 1920s those women started doing this. But everyone- Yeah ... understood it was a bad idea then.

[00:12:03] Simone Collins: Oh, the flapper era. Yeah, everyone knew that flappers were loose girls.

Anyway, but yeah, then I guess it became socially

[00:12:09] Malcolm Collins: acceptable. Disgusting flappers. We will rebuild society, Simone, you and me alone with the force of sheer willpower- ... until we build something that works to replace this nonsense.

[00:12:21] Simone Collins: All of it. All of it.

[00:12:23] Malcolm Collins: We will replace you. That’s the family motto.

[00:12:28] Simone Collins: Framed in our sunroom.

Great.

[00:12:31] Malcolm Collins: Gotta tell the kids.

[00:12:33] Simone Collins: True.

[00:12:33] Malcolm Collins: We really gotta w- wanna get the other one, repeated blunt force, framed somewhere in a live, laugh, love. I would

[00:12:37] Simone Collins: really like that. Yes. Let, let’s just do it. Oh, you’re right.

[00:12:39] Malcolm Collins: I’ll make a note.

[00:12:40] Simone Collins: Yeah. Thank you. Just send me an email and I’ll I’ll get it done. We’ll just order it from the same guy.

We should make merch someday.

[00:12:49] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay, so- We will replace you signs ... I mean, but we have RFab. RFab’s kind of like our merch.

[00:12:53] Simone Collins: Yeah, but you can’t buy a stupid live, laugh, love picture frame that says, “We will replace you.” But whatever.

[00:13:01] Malcolm Collins: All right. So let’s get into the etymology and usage as determined by Wikipedia.

Yeah. The word treating began as a political term with the practice of providing, understood as a means to influence people and gain benefits. In modern usage, it’s generally defined as the act of providing food, drink, or entertainment to an individual or group at free of charge. The word’s use as a verb in a social context is believed to have originated in the male sphere of saloons when individuals would treat each other with another round of drinks.

Yeah,

[00:13:28] Simone Collins: my treat.

[00:13:28] Malcolm Collins: Arou- yeah. Around the turn of the 19th century, young working class women who were seeking language for their interactions and bartering with young men adopted the word. Similar to the activity in a saloon, the practice of to treat evolved to mean providing of something by a man to a woman, the woman being the recipient of a, quote-unquote, “treat.”

And I think one thing that we can do immediately in terms of a cultural difference is to begin to stigmatize women expecting men to pay for dates for them.

[00:14:01] Simone Collins: Absolutely. Dates should always be 50/50. Or better

[00:14:04] Malcolm Collins: yet, free. You always went 50/50 with me, or you always asked to at least. I often insisted on paying because I saw it as traditional.

[00:14:10] Simone Collins: You often insisted as the gentleman. Yeah, you paid for our very first dinner even. Yeah. You, you almost always insisted. But

[00:14:14] Malcolm Collins: I think treating it as non-traditional is really important. Being like, “No, traditionally this would be thought of as you being a prostitute. And so I want to protect your dignity within the techno-puritan community.”

[00:14:26] Simone Collins: Right. “

[00:14:26] Malcolm Collins: As such, I will not pay for you because that would mean that everyone would see you as a prostitute going forward.”

[00:14:33] Simone Collins: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. You don’t want there to be any insinuation of impropriety, and if there is... And, and also I think it’s, it’s important to teach kids that every exchange, y- you- there is no such thing as a free lunch.

If someone is giving you something, they want something. And it could just be, you know, the delight of seeing you grateful a, for a gift or something. But if it, if it is a romantic context meal and they are paying for it- Mm-hmm ... they are expecting something. And it... I, I wish that people were more explicit with me about that when I was younger

[00:15:06] Malcolm Collins: You are such a, a sweet person.

B- Too autistic sometimes I’m glad I’m here to protect you, because you, you need somebody to protect you from the world. Your autismal view of reality, the tism really makes you like a little lamb wandering out into- ... a sea of wolves.

[00:15:23] Simone Collins: Not understanding. Look, the more of us there are, the closer we’ll just get to a sustainable wonderful society that makes sense where everyone just says what they think- The tisems?

and feel. Yes.

[00:15:33] Malcolm Collins: Well, you gotta breed the army.

[00:15:35] Simone Collins: Look, do you understand how much better everything would be if people didn’t... It’s, it’s like the, what were the, who were those people in Galaxy Quest who were shocked by this concept of lying, and they, like, whispered amongst each other-

[00:15:47] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I remember those aliens

“This heat, lies.” That’s you. That is 100% Simone.

[00:15:51] Simone Collins: Yes. And then they, like, don’t understand it, but they understand that it happens, but they never see it, and it’s really hard.

[00:15:57] Speaker 9: . My name is Jason Nesmith. I am a a- [00:16:00] actor. We’re all actors. He doesn’t understand. Explain as you would a child

We lied.

[00:16:18] Simone Collins: I

[00:16:19] Malcolm Collins: love that our kids have your radical honesty but are still, like, very rough people. Yes. I was recently watching the Kidnap the Sandy Claws song with the little trick-or-treat kids- Oh my God

from the N- Nightmare Before Christmas. Yes. And I realized the way those three interact is the way our kids interact.

I wanna do it. Let’s draw straws. Jack said we should work together. Three of a kind

[00:16:42] Malcolm Collins: Like, very much teamwork, but also constantly, like, ragging on each other and being quite rough with each other.

[00:16:50] Simone Collins: 100%, yeah. And just the way Titan always attacks from above. She’s so little.

Yeah. But when she hits you, it’ll be from above somehow.

[00:16:59] Malcolm Collins: All right, let’s, let’s go over the origin of this.

[00:17:01] Simone Collins: Let’s.

[00:17:02] Malcolm Collins: This is fascinating. Treating came about with the birth of leisure time in the late 19th century. Hmm. It emerged about the same time as cheap amusements in cities gave working class men and women opportunities to enjoy new aspects of city life away from cramped tenements and noisy oppressive workplaces.

Hmm. For young women, the issue was how to afford the new entertainments, and one solution which materialized was treating. In the late 19th century, inexpensive entertainment venues such as public dance halls, amusement parks, and Nickelodeon movie theaters emerged and flourished in large American cities.

At the same time, changing social morals allowed more young women who previously had to be escorted in public more freedom to go about or on their own in same-sex groups. Although cheap amusements were a major draw, going out for young working class women still proved difficult due to their low wages, a portion of which- Was more often than not handed over to support the family.

The lack of money issue was dealt with in various ways. Some women refrained from going out altogether or limited going out to special occasions, while others depended on friends or their male counterparts to finance the entertainment pleasures. Inevitably, as more young women regularly went out and found it necessary to depend on males for their entertainment and fun, as such, the practice of treating by young working class women emerged.

So this involves a few things that are worth just helping people understand. First, the idea of, like, entertainment that you could just spend a bit of money on and enjoy with other people really did not emerge until this period. There is a perception that it was always around, and it was not always around.

Really the first major innovation that allowed for this was Britain’s penny trains. So for one day a week, what would happen is the trains would run for a penny, and people would use this to go from their city to the very first, as they began to develop and evolve vacation towns, often beaches and stuff like that.

And this is where you begin to have this idea of, oh, I can pay a little bit, like even as a working class person, and do a recreational activity. Then, as I talked about a, a, a nickelodeon, if you’re not familiar with it, is you, you pay a nickel and you’d see a movie. Basically meant the movie theater of this period.

[00:19:24] Simone Collins: Often preceded by newsreels, so it’s how you also knew what was happening in the world.

[00:19:28] Malcolm Collins: Yes. And you had public dance halls where some of them were truly public, but most of them you paid. And this was very different than, like, the, the dance halls of the, the olden days where it would be, like, arranged by a family and everyone would come and you’d receive your, you know, “Oh, I got my invitation to the ball.”

You didn’t need an invitation to these balls often. You just go and dance. And so, many of these activities... And then amusement parks as well. This is where you have the, like, the original Coney Island began to be developed. Oh, [00:20:00] wow. This is where you had the spin-up of things like freak shows.

This is where you had circuses really began to roll out en masse. The idea of, of, of an activity, right? And the idea of an activity really began to develop because of, do you know, Simone? We’ve talked about it before.

[00:20:20] Simone Collins: The Industrial Revolution? What, what? No, we already talked about- The

[00:20:22] Malcolm Collins: rise of wage labor for the first time.

[00:20:25] Simone Collins: Oh yeah, so the Industrial Revolution. Yeah, the fact that, like, people had these jobs, and you would go to it, and then I guess starting in the early 1900s, you started to get a S- a f- a Saturday, or no, sorry, a Sunday off, and then you would get a Saturday off. Yeah. Yeah,

[00:20:39] Malcolm Collins: and you’d have money. Mm-hmm. And before that just wasn’t the way it worked.

Mm-hmm. All- everyone’s household would be their own business, and you- Yeah ... would naturally reinvest any additional capital into the family business. Of

[00:20:47] Simone Collins: course. Of course.

[00:20:49] Malcolm Collins: But now you had men leaving their families to go work in the city, right? And this didn’t really exist before this, as we’ve often said.

The idea of a nuclear family really didn’t exist until, like, the 1920s because wage labor didn’t exist until the 1920s in, in masses.

Mm.

And women, even when they did work, which, you know, often was incredibly a limited opportunity for them, they earned dramatically less than men. Now, why this isn’t the case today, it was the case then.

So if they wanted to participate in these activities, they genuinely needed men to pay for them or their family to pay for them, and many women coming from working class families asking the family was not realistic. But these working class young men now had free cash, which was something they didn’t have historically.

Now, if you still do this today in a society where men earn the same amount of women, which they do, everybody who is watching this, if you haven’t seen people debunk the pay gap myth, I don’t know where you’ve been on the internet since the last 20 years. Like, that there’s still people I’ve heard sometimes say this, and I’m like, “What are you talking about?”

Oh,

[00:21:54] Simone Collins: no, anyone who’s progressive is gonna say, especially progressive and, and females are just gonna

[00:21:59] Malcolm Collins: keep saying it. Young women earn more than young men now.

[00:22:02] Simone Collins: Look, it doesn’t matter. They’re s- going, they’ll, they are still going to say it. It doesn’t matter.

[00:22:06] Malcolm Collins: They’re just brainwashed. They don’t care what’s true.

They just

[00:22:11] Simone Collins: wanna say the thing. Well, and it’s probably going to become increasingly less of a pay gap as fewer women have children because that was the largest driver of the pay gap, because women were just choosing lower paying but more flexible jobs as they entered parenthood. But if girls just relinquish parenthood at increasingly higher rates, we are gonna see an even lower, like, actual pay gap when you don’t adjust for that choice.

[00:22:33] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The the practice of treating ranged from the innocent bartered exchange to more scandalous. It was seen as a harmless activity when conducted between a steady couple, and more risque when performed on a casual basis.

Hmm.

Often, the treating exchange was a tacit understanding with nuanced communication.

However, even with little communication, young women were understood that they were indebted to a certain extent to the men who treated. Like any interaction between a couple, whether tacit or not, sometimes it went smoothly with each party pleased with the outcomes, and other times it did not.

Occasionally, because men were sometimes tricked by women who skipped out after being provided a meal or an evening out, the exchange was more direct. For example di- a man asking directly what he would get in return. Unlike prostitution, in the treating exchange, there was no guarantee that the man would get what he wanted.

Young women who wanted more from the exchange, clothes, shoes, jewelry, or payment of bills... Note this even began to develop all the way back then.

[00:23:35] Simone Collins: Payment of bills?

[00:23:37] Malcolm Collins: Did you not know that a lot of, in, in like the Black women community this is super common? Then

[00:23:41] Simone Collins: you’re a kept woman. That doesn’t, you’re not...

[00:23:44] Malcolm Collins: What, this is common in dating culture today if you’re not dating white people. I have seen Latina women expect this. I have seen Black women expect this in TikToks and stuff like this. Like, the, the expectation goes like this. I’ll explain how they argue it.

[00:23:58] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:23:59] Malcolm Collins: They say, “Do [00:24:00] you know how much I spend doing my hair?

Do you know how much I spend on my mails, my nails? Do you know how much I spend on my makeup?”

[00:24:06] Simone Collins: Dudes don’t care about that.

[00:24:08] Malcolm Collins: No, men don’t, but they believe that they’re owed for it.

[00:24:14] Simone Collins: Why don’t they just say, “Maybe don’t do that anymore”?

[00:24:17] Malcolm Collins: I’m sure a lot of men do, but then the women stop dating them

[00:24:24] Simone Collins: They should probably be cucking them Because

[00:24:24] Malcolm Collins: there’s other men in these minority communities who will pay for this nonsense.

[00:24:28] Simone Collins: That’s, you, you know what? Men need to go on a strike. They need to they need to go on a pay strike.

[00:24:33] Malcolm Collins: I, I, I will- Don’t do this ... say that what makes Simone shocked about this is if you are a middle upper class or upper class white person in America, at least within our generation, nobody...

If you’re, like, shocked by this, that, that I would say that, like, this is a weird thing to do, nobody does that. Nobody does that. If a woman asked me to pay for her bills, I would... And I remember once a woman did, but she called herself a sort of prostitute when she said it, right? Like, she understood that in our culture, in American white culture, that’s seen as prostitution, to ask a man to pay for your bills.

[00:25:10] Simone Collins: Was this in college? When wa- when did this happen to you?

[00:25:12] Malcolm Collins: This was after college. It was a girl I met on OkCupid.

[00:25:16] Simone Collins: Wow. Okay. What did you say to her? Was that the end of your-

[00:25:22] Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. That was the last time I dated her ... liaison? I was like, “I don’t- Okay ... I don’t, I’m not really interested in this.” But I appreciate that she was really upfront about it.

[00:25:27] Simone Collins: No, the upfront, yeah. No, I mean, that’s, that’s really clear. I mean, as I’m thinking about this more in the context of the, like, dating videos that were presumably played in middle schools and high schools in American institutions in the ‘50s, the, the kind of dating that was described there was more like play dating.

That, you know, it was you know, you, you would be going just out for fun, typically in group settings, public places, with a young man from your school, but it was only considered serious if you were going steady. And it was fully understood that you would not be having sex. That, w- like, it was super clear.

Mm-hmm. Th- this is, so I guess it was kind of understood that- Yeah,

[00:26:09] Malcolm Collins: but, but even in the 1950s videos, I remember them telling you to, like, pay for the girl’s lunch or dinner.

[00:26:14] Simone Collins: Yeah. No, that, that is true. Yeah. Men were, were expected to pay, which is interesting.

[00:26:21] Malcolm Collins: And if you go to the 1920s to continue with this, how was that seen?

Hmm. Treating was predominantly practiced by young working class women. It was seldom taken up by young women of middle class or upper class means, as members of those classes generally could afford their own entertainment. Right. So you see, this was seen as a low class thing to do the, very exclusively.

[00:26:38] Simone Collins: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, ‘cause I guess, yeah, if you are a wealthy woman of means, it would be kind of pathetic for you to let someone else- Yeah,

[00:26:48] Malcolm Collins: To have your family not pay for you, right?

[00:26:49] Simone Collins: Wow. Yeah. Hmm.

[00:26:51] Malcolm Collins: The activity was largely confined to large urban areas of the United States, as cities contained with entertainment val- venues and offers, as well as a degree of anonymity against prying family members and watchful neighbors.

Treating differed from gold digging in that there was mainly a dating practice utilized to enjoy the entertainments and pleasures of city life, and to acquire perhaps some desired personal items. To be sure, some women took charity a step further, but finding a wealthy man to marry or becoming a mistress was generally not the goal of the treating exchange.

[00:27:27] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:27:28] Malcolm Collins: Now, treating this as a societal problem. As the practice of treating by young women became more and more widely known, it attracted the attention of reformers and vice squads who were alarmed by the activity. I was reading, and me, like military bases, they explicitly had patrols for women who were doing this.

It was considered-

[00:27:46] Simone Collins: Really?

[00:27:47] Malcolm Collins: Yes. I

[00:27:48] Simone Collins: mean, it sounds kind of like the patrols that you’ll see in a super orthodox Jewish community as well, that’ll kind of police dress codes and stuff.

[00:27:55] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. N- n- nothing less than outright prostitution. [00:28:00] Entertainment venues such as dance halls, where young men and women interacted, came under close scrutiny.

Hmm. The taxi dance halls, where the young women hostesses could be danced with for a modest price per dance, usually 10 cents-

[00:28:12] Simone Collins: Oh ...

[00:28:13] Malcolm Collins: drew the particular ire of reformers and were shut down.

[00:28:16] Simone Collins: That sounds like a host club. Hold on. That is, that is like a proto-host club. What is going on?

[00:28:20] Malcolm Collins: I need to know more about this.

[00:28:21] Simone Collins: Yes.

[00:28:22] Malcolm Collins: We’re going to the Wikipedia game for a taxi dancer.

[00:28:24] Simone Collins: Yes.

[00:28:25] Malcolm Collins: Okay.

[00:28:25] Simone Collins: Taxi dancer. I’ve never heard of this before. But okay, so it’s like you rent a taxi, you’re renting a dancer, and that’s why they called them taxi dancers? Yes. Okay.

[00:28:35] Malcolm Collins: Hmm. A taxi dancer is a dance, a paid dance partner in ballroom dance. The taxi dancers work sometimes for money, but not always, on a dance-by-dance basis.

When taxi dancing first appeared in taxi dance halls in the early 20th century in the United States, male patrons typically brought dance tickets for a small sum each. When a patron presented a ticket to a chosen dancer, she danced with him for the length of the song. She earned a commission on every dance ticket she received.

Though taxi dancing was for, for the most part disappeared in the United States, it’s still practiced in some other countries.

[00:29:10] Simone Collins: It’s called a strip club

[00:29:12] Malcolm Collins: It has its origins in the Barbary Coast District of San Francisco, which evolved from the California Gold Rush of 1849. Oh. In its heyday on the Barbary Coast, it was an economically thriving district inhabited by mostly men who, who...

frequented by gold prospectors and sailors from around the world. The district created a unique form of dance hall called the Barbary Coast Dance Hall known as the 49ers Dance Hall, in which Barbary Coast Dance Hall female employees danced with male patrons and earned their living from commissions paid for the, the drinks they would encourage their male partners to buy.

So exactly like a host club. It was about-

[00:29:48] Simone Collins: It was a host club. Oh my God. We did it first. Yes. Okay. That’s crazy. It makes sense, of course. In, in communities like, I’m sure mining communities and others, if you don’t wanna go all full brothel, something like this. It’s also more affordable to pay for a dance than to pay for more than that.

[00:30:09] Malcolm Collins: Okay, so here’s what it felt like to do. Okay. So you’d go and you’d buy a collection of tickets, right? Mm-hmm. And in the hall, the taxi dancers were usually gathered together behind a waist-high rope or rail barricade on one side in the corner of the room- Oh ... and as such, were not permitted to freely mingle with the patrons.

Because the male patron selected his dance partner, the dancers had to appeal to him for their quar- from their quarantined position. These are like, like, like

[00:30:35] Simone Collins: cattle This produced a

[00:30:36] Malcolm Collins: competitive... Like cattle, like a competitive situation, and on slow nights, which were not uncommon, the taxi dancers often cooed or coaxed to draw attention in their direction because they got commissions.

[00:30:47] Simone Collins: Oh.

[00:30:48] Malcolm Collins: In time, and with more experience, a dancer usually developed some sort of distinctiveness or mannerisms in their dress or personality to attract a male patron. Those who did not were often not successful. Once selected, yeah, they’d be like the ditzy one or the aggressive one.

[00:31:02] Simone Collins: Yeah, or the yandere one or the-

[00:31:05] Malcolm Collins: Yeah

[00:31:05] Simone Collins: aloof one. And yeah, okay, okay, okay. Hmm.

[00:31:09] Malcolm Collins: Once selected, the taxi dancer tried to build a rapport with her patron so he stayed with her dance after dance. Successful- Host club. Taxi dancers usually had a few patrons who came to the hall solely to dance with them- Mm-hmm ... for long periods.

[00:31:23] Simone Collins: Host club.

[00:31:24] Malcolm Collins: In some of the less reputable establishments, the dancing at times was particularly close.

The dancer used her thighs to make the partner erect and encouraged to continue, e- e- even.

[00:31:37] Simone Collins: Well, okay, so they’re taking it a little far.

[00:31:41] Malcolm Collins: That’s a fascinating practice

TIL, right?

[00:31:46] Simone Collins: That’s

[00:31:46] Malcolm Collins: crazy So patrons who tired of dancing but wished to continue with the dance partner usually could do so. A selection in the dance hall with tables, chairs was reserved for this purpose. It was called talk time, [00:32:00] although other terms were used. In 1939, , at the Honey Lane Danceland in Times Square, the free to sit and chat with a dancer was $6 an hour, a princely sum for the time.

At Honeymoon, although the dancer and patron were able to sit side by side, a low fence-like structure separated them due to public regulations. It was not uncommon for taxi dancers to date patrons they had met in the dance halls, and this was generally acquiesced by management

[00:32:31] Simone Collins: Hmm Hmm. I don’t know about this Malcolm, but-

[00:32:41] Malcolm Collins: That is interesting.

[00:32:44] Simone Collins: I had no idea. Why has no one mentioned this before? This is so interesting.

[00:32:48] Malcolm Collins: The sociological study. Oh my God. So the sociological study goes over the, the language that they use, like the slang that they use. So here’s some fun ones, okay? They

[00:32:57] Simone Collins: had slang. Okay.

[00:33:00] Malcolm Collins: A black and tan, a colored and white cabaret, buying the groceries, living in a clandestine relationship.

Class, the term used by Filipinos to denote taxi dance halls. Fish, a man whom the girls can easily- I’m going to class ... exploit for personal gain. Fruit, an easy mark. Hot stuff, stolen goods. Lineup, the immorality engaged in by men and a girl. Make, to secure a date with. Mark, a person who is gullible.

Money chaser, a man interested in taxi dancers or quiet girls. Oh,

sorry. Monkey chaser.

[00:33:36] Simone Collins: Oh.

[00:33:36] Malcolm Collins: Monkey shows, burlesque shows by chorus girls. A nickel hopper, a taxi dancer. A nickel hopper.

[00:33:44] Simone Collins: Nickel hoppers. Dancing for a nickel. That’s great. A nickel hopper.

[00:33:48] Malcolm Collins: On the ebony. This is when you dated outside your race with taxi dancers.

[00:33:52] Simone Collins: Oh. Oh my goodness

[00:33:56] Malcolm Collins: Picking up, securing after a dance engagement with a taxi dancer.

A punk, a n- n- a noviate or uninitiated youth or girl usually referring to an unsophisticated taxi dancer.

[00:34:08] Simone Collins: Hmm. One who doesn’t have her whole spiel yet.

[00:34:13] Malcolm Collins: That is, that is wild. I’m glad we went over that.

[00:34:16] Simone Collins: That is so crazy. I am delighted, yes. Wonderful.

[00:34:20] Malcolm Collins: Okay, okay, okay. So, the next best place I found an article on this, ‘cause I found, like, 30 different articles on this.

And let’s go to the shop girl. This is from a New York Post article on this.

[00:34:33] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:34:35] Malcolm Collins: We- th- this- it, it, it goes to the, the shop girl here, which is sort of going to the next phase of this. When, while dating finally became acceptable, it wasn’t exactly liberating for women. If the American dream for men was to work and become a success, the equivalent for women was to get a good job and marry a rich boss.

Frances Donovan, a University of Chicago trained sociologist who taught at Camelot High School on the city’s South Side in the 1920s, interviewed senior girls about their plans after graduation. Before I go further, that’s what you did, Simone. You got a good job and married your boss. That’s what every woman needs to do.

[00:35:11] Simone Collins: There you go.

[00:35:13] Malcolm Collins: I mean, we started the company together, but obviously because women are naturally subservient, you started in a subservient role

I’m only saying what we all know. I mean, come on.

[00:35:24] Simone Collins: It’s just the truth. It’s just the truth.

[00:35:28] Malcolm Collins: Weigler writes, “’I would like to be a stenographer,’ one wrote. ‘I’m going to be an executive secretary and marry the boss,’ another wrote. The other alternative was for women to take jobs in high-class department stores where rich men were likely to shop.

These women were known as shop girls.” Oh, fascinating, and I love the idea of becoming a secretary specifically to hook up with whoever hires you, right? Like, when you are going for your job interviews, you’re literally thinking, “Do I wanna have sex with this man?”[00:36:00]

That is wild. And also the idea of, “Well, how do I find a rich man? I’ll go to work at an upper class store.” And I think it’s, this is why there was that really hard for women to get jobs at upper class stores for a period.

[00:36:14] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:36:14] Malcolm Collins: Because women went there to hook up.

[00:36:16] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, it was this competitive place, and also probably, like, women would basically work for free just to get the opportunity, the access.

[00:36:24] Malcolm Collins: And became shop girls, as they were called. Oh

[00:36:26] Simone Collins: my goodness.

[00:36:27] Malcolm Collins: Donovan spent two summers working at a department store to research a book, and later reported she knew of several marriages and heard of a great many more where the husband was far above the wife as measured by economic scale. Magazines began, are, are running articles such as How Shop Girls Win Rich Husbands.

As an in-house newsletter for Macy’s employees in New York included a gossip column that tracked these courtships.

[00:36:53] Simone Collins: They... Oh, they were just that explicit about it. They’re like, “Okay, girls.”

[00:36:58] Malcolm Collins: This

[00:36:58] Simone Collins: is what we’re here for. “Go get rich men.” Wow. I mean, I guess it would be in their favor because it attracted very appealing young women to work there, and they probably worked at under market wages, so that’s great.

[00:37:13] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Here’s a quote from one of the this, this internal magazine. I love it’s their internal company newsletter. Like, PR is like, “This makes it...” W- w- HR is like, “This makes us look great. This’ll help with retention.” So an example of what was written in it is, “Have you noticed a gentleman wearing spats stopping at Miss Holland’s counter every day, leaving spray of Lily of the Valley?

Best of luck, Ide.”

[00:37:41] Simone Collins: Adorable. Aw.

[00:37:43] Malcolm Collins: In order to attract rich men, shop girls were caught by the irony of needing to buy expensive items they sold- Hmm ... or needing to buy the expensive items they sold. In an odd way, the consumerist market marketed a form of progress. “In an earlier era, a girl of humble origins could not hope to look the, like the wife or daughter of a millionaire,” Weigel wrote.

“But a job in a department store or a laundry gave anyone opportunities to become well-versed in the science of wealth.” To that end, shop girls studied the well-to-do female customers seeking to imitate their look, which led to the business world to pronounce this a new type of consumer who sought little but to impress.

The cosmetics industry exploded in the 1920s, writes, writes, “Previously only prostitutes and actresses painted.” Victorians had viewed natural outla- outer beauty as a sign of clean living, but around 1900 and more and more women were starting to apply cosmetics. By 1912, the Baltimore Sun reported that, “Even respectable society women are seen on our streets as fashionable promenade with painted faces.”

[00:38:50] Octavian Collins: Wow.

[00:38:51] Malcolm Collins: To counter society negative expectations with painted faces, the cosmetics industry invented a new term: makeup. Oh, so it was called face painting before, and then it became makeup.

[00:39:01] Simone Collins: I really wanna bring back painting faces. That’s, ‘cause it is. It’s, it, I mean, it, it just is.

[00:39:08] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They, they basically tried to make it sound virtuous.

By making yourself up, you showed that you valued your femininity, right?

[00:39:14] Simone Collins: Hmm. Yeah. But no, y- you’d be painting, especially these days.

[00:39:21] Malcolm Collins: Oh, absolutely.

[00:39:21] Simone Collins: It’s intense. Yeah. This is a fine art.

[00:39:23] Malcolm Collins: This is, So again, other things we should shame people for.

[00:39:28] Simone Collins: Wearing makeup. It has its place. For instance. It has its place.

Even, even in w- we’ll say sort of the remaining w- noble classes of modern day, like the British royal family, you’re not s- to s- for example, supposed to paint your nails any color than, like, ballerina pink. So they’re basically supposed to look to look manicured, but you can’t, like, do any flashy nail colors.

But you should probably maintain manicured nails. But Queen [00:40:00] Elizabeth II always chose to wear very bright lipstick because it made her more photographable, and she understood that, like, being distinct in photos was important. So I think there’s a line to be drawn but yeah, it’s tough. Yes. Look, it would be really tough for young women- Mm

to not do makeup now that filters m- make them realize what they could look like.

[00:40:26] Malcolm Collins: Filters are providing the new again, we’re going through a similar transition right now.

[00:40:32] Simone Collins: What do you mean?

[00:40:33] Malcolm Collins: Well, it’s not just that you have OnlyFans mirroring the, the invention of dating, but you have filters mirroring the invention of makeup.

[00:40:44] Simone Collins: Oh.

[00:40:45] Malcolm Collins: The idea of Photoshopping yourself used to be seen as an incredibly trashy thing to do.

[00:40:51] Simone Collins: That’s true. Oh, my goodness. Right. I hadn’t thought about that.

[00:40:55] Malcolm Collins: This was in our lifetime, Simone.

[00:40:58] Simone Collins: Yeah, Photoshop disasters were an institution now. All

[00:41:01] Malcolm Collins: right. Now we’re gonna study, not discuss, study the it girl.

[00:41:07] Simone Collins: Oh. W- in the context of dating?

[00:41:10] Malcolm Collins: Two other now familiar concepts also sprung up around the time. Previously, people sought to be known by traits that emphasize their morality, such as character and virtue. The concept of personality, which places emphasis on surface traits, had been regarded as negative in reference term of personality disorders.

Starting around the 1920, however, Waggle writes, experts began to grant that healthy individuals had personalities, too. And not every- This is wild, this idea of wanting to be known for, like, a unique personality. This mirrors the invention of the VTuber

[00:41:45] Octavian Collins: Hmm.

[00:41:46] Malcolm Collins: Or even the YouTube star. Look at us, personality.

I’m a, what, what am I? A, a- A

[00:41:53] Simone Collins: taxi girl? A taxi dancer?

[00:41:55] Malcolm Collins: I’m a taxi dancer. You guys pay me to, to do the taxi dance.

[00:41:59] Simone Collins: And to dance.

[00:41:59] Malcolm Collins: The taxi dance with your brain.

[00:42:01] Simone Collins: The tax- oh, God.

[00:42:03] Malcolm Collins: Sign up for our Substack or Patreon to get your taxi dance this weekend.

[00:42:07] Simone Collins: Oh my God.

[00:42:08] Malcolm Collins: And we also have weekend episodes for...

[00:42:10] Simone Collins: I hate you.

I love you so much, but oh my God, no. But yes, the, the, the weekend episodes are really fun. Carry on.

[00:42:20] Malcolm Collins: The concept began popping up in romance literature and articles about dating in the sense that personality was like painting, in a way a woman could make herself up in order to appeal to men. So women began to develop personalities outside of their virtuousness or wholesomeness to appeal to men, and this, you know, eventually ended in the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, right?

But this is where it started. Hmm. “In the context of dating, to have a good personality or simply have a personality meant to have charisma,” Wagelle writes. This was to assert whether you were selling handkerchiefs or selling yourself. Island Gwyn, writing for the Cosmopolitan in 1926, referred to personality simply as, quote-unquote, “it,” which was, according to Wagelle, a mysterious kind of animal magnetism.

“With it,” Gwyn wrote, “you win all men if you are a woman.” Oh, it was rizz. “And all women if you are a man.”

[00:43:13] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:43:14] Malcolm Collins: It’s gotten rizz, is what it is.

[00:43:16] Simone Collins: Yes. S- s- another single syllable word.

[00:43:21] Malcolm Collins: Rizz. Gwyn’s article was adapted for a movie starring Clara Brown as a shop girl who has it, and the concept of the-

[00:43:28] Simone Collins: I pictured the clown.

I was like, it? This is not... Okay, shop girl.

[00:43:34] Malcolm Collins: The concept of the it girl was born. Bowes’ it girl of course, sought to marry the boss. In this case, the son of the store’s owner. Oh my cucking God, women of this period ha- were shameless. The notion of

[00:43:48] Simone Collins: it- What, nothing is cha- what do you... Women of that period.

[00:43:50] Malcolm Collins: All women, sorry, awalt.

A Walt

[00:43:56] Simone Collins: Look, if men... Look, men are also hypergamous. [00:44:00] Everyone wants as good as you can get , possibly

[00:44:03] Malcolm Collins: Well, to marry. Women also want as good as they can get for men, while me- men will take anyone. And somehow for men this is, like, a major issue that women are this way. And then some men are like, “I would marry anyone.”

And I’m like, “Well, then you kinda suck.” You know?

[00:44:19] Simone Collins: I, I have never heard a man say that he would marry anyone.

[00:44:21] Malcolm Collins: I’ve never heard a man say that either. Yeah. He would pick- But, you

[00:44:24] Simone Collins: know, me

[00:44:24] Malcolm Collins: hanging out with successful men, so...

[00:44:26] Simone Collins: I... No, I, I genuinely think men, especially these days, are well inoculated to the, the potential hazards of proximity to women.

Well, I’ll

[00:44:37] Malcolm Collins: put a little clip here that will you know, help, help men understand what they should be looking for in a relationship.

[00:44:45] Simone Collins: Hmm?

[00:44:46] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I’ll send it to you. You’ll, you’ll find it funny.

[00:44:48] Speaker 4: I love this tree, and I love this stick, and I love this mole- No, no, no. That’s not how it’s done. He’s

[00:44:53] Speaker 5: made for

[00:44:53] Speaker 3: her.

[00:44:53] Speaker 4: And she’s made for him.

[00:44:55] Speaker 3: That’s the way it’s always been.

And it’s perfect.

[00:44:58] Speaker 5: And it’s pure.

[00:44:59] Speaker 4: That’s the way that all love goes. Like a flower, it grows and grows.

[00:45:03] Speaker 5: And it’s forever. And forever.

[00:45:06] Speaker 3: And now we all worship our king. Our king. Huh? Our king. His name is Malcolm. Our king. He is

[00:45:15] Speaker 5: the king of love.

[00:45:16] Malcolm Collins: It even ends with talking about their king, Malcolm, the King of Love.

[00:45:20] Simone Collins: Oh, my God. Okay, great.

[00:45:23] Malcolm Collins: Right?

[00:45:23] Simone Collins: Fantastic.

Fantastic. I

[00:45:25] Malcolm Collins: do- I, I feel like I’m in a simulation. This has to be a simulation, ‘cause there’s no way that this keeps aligning like this.

[00:45:34] Simone Collins: Uncanny.

[00:45:34] Malcolm Collins: The notion it can be developed led... Sorry. The notion that it can be developed led to the origin of another phenomenon, the dating advice book. Weigel tells of a 1915 New York Times article on a lecture by author Susan Cockcroft, who seized on the trend by writing books like What to Eat and When, and this now remarkable title, Beauty and Duty.

I like that one.

[00:45:59] Simone Collins: Beauty and Duty. “

[00:46:00] Malcolm Collins: Beauty is no longer a vanity. It is a, a, it is use,” Crockett said. “A waitress or a shop girl can be fired at any time simply because someone her boss found prettier than her showed up and asked for a position.” I wish we lived in that world still. As dating rituals changed, moral authorities panicked at every turn.

After petting came into vogue in the 1920s, for example, Weigel cites a Times article from 1922 with the title Mothers Complain That Modern Girls Vamp Their Sons at Petting Parties. “Those evil, evil modern girls,” the article ends.

[00:46:39] Simone Collins: What on earth is a petting party? That sounds horrible. Well- No one would go to a petting party.

That’s... No. Nobody wants that. W-

[00:46:51] Malcolm Collins: i’m looking it up, Simone.

[00:46:53] Simone Collins: Don’t. You really don’t need to. I I think I’m good. I mean, like, the, the greatest fear I have of going to a party is that there may be physical contact of some sort. A party that revolves around physical contact-

[00:47:12] Malcolm Collins: Petting.

[00:47:13] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:47:15] Malcolm Collins: Not good. Actually, I’m, I’m gonna g- I’m going to Grok for this one, ‘cause I want a long answer.

I wanna really gross you out. Oh,

[00:47:20] Simone Collins: great. No. Mm. ‘Cause

[00:47:21] Malcolm Collins: what, what people were doing in the 1920s, probably not that bad compared to what we grew up with in Silicon Valley, but okay.

[00:47:28] Simone Collins: Hopefully it’s just ‘cause they had those really fun tassels on their flapper dresses, and it was just like, “Let’s fondle the tassels.”

[00:47:36] Malcolm Collins: So petting itself was a flexible term, and it meant prolonged kissing. Oh. For others, it included more-

[00:47:42] Simone Collins: That’s not petting, that’s kissing. It’s a kissing part. Can people word correctly

[00:47:47] Malcolm Collins: publicly? For others, it involved more intimate touching. It was a sort of peer-supervised sexual experimentation that both encouraged experimentation and created clear limits.

It, yet lung, bl- young people [00:48:00] explore without the risk of pregnancy, venereal disease, or the social consequences of going all the way. The phrase entered popular use around the 1920s. F. Scott Fitzgerald famously described the great current American phenomenon of the get it petting party in his Side of Paradise.

Newspapers soon treated it as a national scandal. Mothers complained that modern girls were vamping with their sons at these events, and authorities sometimes sent deputies out to country lanes looking to break up couples in parked cars. The automobile was central. Parked jalopies on remote roads became rolling bedrooms.

Other regional names include necking parties, mushing parties, fussing parties, spooning, and snuggle pupping. It was extremely common. Contemporary studies found by 1924, roughly 92% of college women had tried petting, and more than 90% of young people at dance young people at dances or in cars admitted to hugging or kissing

[00:49:01] Simone Collins: It’s not even...

Oh, this was before bucket seats. So that explains a lot.

[00:49:08] Malcolm Collins: This was when you had bucket seats, which made it easy to do this.

[00:49:11] Simone Collins: No, no, no. No. Bucket seats are where you can’t scoot across. Oh,

[00:49:16] Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah. Individual seats. Yeah, yeah. This was before. I’m sorry. This was when you had the one long seat. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Really designed for sex.

[00:49:21] Simone Collins: Yeah. Like in a good old Chevy Malibu. And

[00:49:24] Malcolm Collins: cars

[00:49:24] Simone Collins: were

[00:49:24] Malcolm Collins: much wider, remember.

[00:49:25] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Okay. And they were real bouncy. Do you remember how bouncy they were?

[00:49:32] Malcolm Collins: I haven’t been in one of these cars except for, like, in museums.

[00:49:36] Simone Collins: Oh. They’d be bouncy. They’re like s- There, there were springs involved.

So-

[00:49:41] Malcolm Collins: Well, for a reason.

[00:49:42] Simone Collins: For a re- Yeah. No, I guess teens just sat in those were like, “I can only think of one thing when sitting in this seat, and I’m going to be borrowing the car tonight.” That is disgusting. I do not like this. Dating is bad, and I disapprove of petting, fussing, necking, s- p- puppy- Mushing

m- m- manu- what? Spooning, puppy spooning, double reverse. What

[00:50:10] Malcolm Collins: was it? Snuggle pupping.

[00:50:11] Simone Collins: Snuggle pup. Snuggle pup. No. We do not snuggle- You

[00:50:16] Malcolm Collins: definitely disapprove of snuggle pupping.

[00:50:17] Simone Collins: I really disapprove of snuggle pupping. Oh, my goodness gracious. You are

[00:50:23] Malcolm Collins: such a Puritan woman. I found the perfect wife to- Yeah

found this, this new cultural movement with. We will recreate the London season. This is gonna be awesome.

[00:50:33] Simone Collins: It really is. I, I’m looking forward to it. Yeah. If you’re

[00:50:37] Malcolm Collins: interested

[00:50:37] Simone Collins: in having your kids- Shout-outs to everyone

[00:50:38] Malcolm Collins: on our list ... in our dating network, please reach out to us. I would love to bring them on board.

Another thing that I’d note is do not mourn the collapse of dating markets. They were always degenerate. We have to create something new. We have to create something better.

[00:50:50] Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s, this is a very, like, white-pilled episode in the end, ‘cause they were never meant to be. Dating is disgusting. It’s worse than pros- It really is worse than prostitution.

Because the great thing about prostitution is you have a clear social contract with real value being ex- exchanged. And the problem is that dating is... It doesn’t only undermine those clear social contracts, but it, it intentionally introduces huge, vast swaths of ambiguity where there isn’t strong communication around the exchange that’s being agreed upon for an assignation.

Someone could assume that dinner is going to buy them Snuggle pupping when the other one thinks that it’s going to just, you know, be paid for with a hug or a peck on the cheek. And that is really bad You know, a lot of

[00:51:43] Malcolm Collins: women have developed the idea that they are just owed by the fact of being women, by the fact of showing up at a dinner-

[00:51:50] Simone Collins: Yeah, their, their

[00:51:52] Malcolm Collins: mere company

that’s their gift to the man.

[00:51:53] Simone Collins: Yeah. That them staring blankly at their phone for the majority of the dinner, but allegedly looking good [00:52:00] beneath their caked on contour makeup, their drag queen makeup. They

[00:52:04] Malcolm Collins: don’t even look that good.

[00:52:06] Simone Collins: Well, you really don’t like a, a makeup look so-

[00:52:10] Malcolm Collins: Yeah ...

[00:52:11] Simone Collins: there’s that. Well,

[00:52:13] Malcolm Collins: I love you, Simone.

Sorry.

[00:52:17] Simone Collins: Your alarm- ... this is why you co- you don’t wake up. You, you, you have the most relaxing alarm sounds. Like, this is what people listen to in spas when they’re trying to fall asleep or getting massage. I’m waking up these days. I’m,

[00:52:26] Malcolm Collins: I’m-

[00:52:27] Simone Collins: And you’re like, “I’m gonna set-” I’ve had an easy time- Yeah, I think you’re doing that naturally

[00:52:31] Malcolm Collins: because I have stopped eating, and it’s really helped me wake up early.

[00:52:35] Simone Collins: This, this is a very disturbing trend. I’m gonna thaw out some steak so that you’re gonna have to eat, because then you’re like, “I can’t waste good steak.”

[00:52:43] Malcolm Collins: Good. You get on that. But tonight I’m skipping.

[00:52:47] Simone Collins: Are you serious? I- It’s been how many days?

[00:52:51] Malcolm Collins: It’s been since the miscarriage. I just haven’t been hungry since then

So I’ll be fine. I, I, I just will get through it, and I am emotionally adjusting. Mm-hmm.

I’ll g- I’ll get- I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine Mm-hmm. Ish. Maybe anyway, for our fans I would really like to have you guys,

[00:53:27] Simone Collins: Let’s join the index. Just email us if you wanna be

[00:53:29] Malcolm Collins: on our list Oh, yeah. That or if you want to explore what it would’ve been like to go on a date during this period or to go to one of these parties or to exist within this changing part of world history, this is one of the things that Reality Fabricator, rfab.ai, would be really good for.

That’s true. You can use our story generation tools, even just selecting the 1920s as a date, give it a concept around a story in this. Use the instant story generator if you want it faster. It can create an intro for you that’s going to research the internet to be period-appropriate for you. You want a, a really well-researched piece, you could do the concept expander that even do the research dossier before it starts.

And then you can explore something that as a kid you know, if, if you go back 20 years ago, the technology for this just simply didn’t exist. But today you can live in an immersive textual story of what this would have felt like, and I’m really excited to be able to deliver that technology to you guys, and I hope you have fun with it.

And another fun news is a new version of Rhoads is probably coming out next week, so I’m really excited about that. We’re sorry for the short outage we had when it accidentally fell back to OpenAI that’s been fixed. That’s our base AI that can answer any question, you know, great for discussing these types of topics.

Just really, really excited to be building out new technology and being able to deliver that technology to you guys at a, that, that’s just significantly better than what you’re gonna find on, you know, Janitor AI or you know, FlowGPT or any of the major-- Web Soccer AI, FM. None of them come close to what we’re able to offer you, and I’m, I’m, I’m really proud about that, and I hope that we can continue to improve the experience for you through, you know, bug reports or anything you guys wanna report.

Make, make this really the best thing in the industry. And when- whenever you guys share or talk about or bring other people over, you know, it really helps us. So this means, you know, if, if you do like using the product, when you’re in those Reddits, when you’re in those Discords, and people are discussing, “Hey, I use this for like companion chat.

I use this for AI storytelling.” You know, reference us, be like, “This is where you guys wanna be.” Because that’s you know, capturing the public mind share is, is where you win this. And, and just our advertising campaigns have not been very successful even though the product itself has been growing a lot and the user base has a really high retention rate.

So, we’ve gotta f- we’ve gotta figure out, and, and right now all I can figure out is you guys

[00:55:58] Simone Collins: Thank you for everyone who tried [00:56:00] it out Thank you so much. I really like it. I use it every day. I don’t like playing any sort of games, so I don’t use any of those things. I use- You

[00:56:04] Malcolm Collins: use it for

[00:56:05] Simone Collins: Bible study

Super Stock. I use it for Bible study. Yeah, I made, I made a companion that is a biblical scholar who is an expert in all the different translations and the historical context And you run

[00:56:15] Malcolm Collins: her on one of the, the hardware so you can have her by your bed as you go to sleep.

[00:56:18] Simone Collins: Yeah, so I don’t have, like, a device that I have to, like, open up and turn on.

I just talk to my friend. And then I use Super Stock and Super Search a lot. It has a really good fact checker, and we’re even now recording a podcast on his podcast recording and editing software that has fact check built in. You can replace bad words with, like,

[00:56:40] Malcolm Collins: one click. You could upload a- I think the thing was one of those stupid TikTok songs that would violate vi- content violations.

Remove the song and replace it with your own song for very cheap, for pennies.

[00:56:49] Simone Collins: While still keeping the talking that’s in it, which- Yeah ... is great, ‘cause a lot of YouTubers I watch are like, “Well, I have to silence this whole thing ‘cause copyright,” and they don’t know that RFAB exists, and I should probably just start DM’ing people.

And yeah, anyway, thank you

[00:57:03] Malcolm Collins: everyone who tried it out. That’s actually a good idea. You could use an AI to find people who have complained about this.

[00:57:07] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

[00:57:07] Malcolm Collins: Cite their complaints and saying, “Why don’t you use RFAB?”

[00:57:10] Simone Collins: I will. I will. I

[00:57:11] Malcolm Collins: just- Give me a few more days of editing- ... ordered a current Gmail ... ‘cause to, to just improve the features a

[00:57:14] Simone Collins: bit.

Make sure it’s super smooth? Okay.

[00:57:16] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But yeah. All right, love you.

[00:57:18] Simone Collins: I love you too. Did you move it up? I started at home,

[00:57:25] Octavian Collins: in, on easiest Look, look, I got the rook. I’m gonna kill the rook. I’m just gonna get my king. I’m just gonna Work down

[00:57:37] Malcolm Collins: Wow.

[00:57:39] Simone Collins: Ta-da

He’s happy

[00:57:45] Speaker 6: P- p- pause I can’t pause. Oh wait, I can. Never mind. P- p-

[00:57:57] Speaker 7: Where are you gonna fly, little bird?

Simone woke up to a 5am text thread claiming brain death was invented to harvest organs — and the more she dug, the worse it got. This episode walks through the TJ Hoover case (a man wheeled toward organ recovery who was crying, thrashing, and later survived), the 1968 Harvard “irreversible coma” paper that built the modern framework, the Lazarus sign, the apnea test, paralytics used during recovery, hospital reimbursement incentives, and a New Jersey case where an organ procurement group treated donor registration like a lifetime contract the family had to fight in court.

If you only do one thing after watching: check your license and the actual donor registry. Taking the heart off the card is not always enough. Tell the people who would show up at the hospital. Put a revocation in your advance directive.Not medical or legal advice. Organ transplants save lives. The question is whether the current definition, incentives, and paperwork are honest enough to trust.

Show Notes

The Case of TJ Hoover

SIMONE’S SOURCE: It’s not real, lots of people survive incurable brain death, most famously and most recently TJ Hoover

According to some reports, A person who has actually met a complete, correctly performed formal determination of brain death/death by neurologic criteria (BD/DNC) does not recover.

* By definition, the determination requires permanent loss of function of the brain as a whole, including the brainstem

* A later recovery means the person was not, in fact, brain-dead under the applicable standard, or that the diagnosis/process was incomplete or erroneous.

* THE PROBLEM IS THAT IT DOESN’T SEEM PEOPLE ARE CORRECTLY DIAGNOSING, because TJ Hoover was one of those people.

Anthony Thomas “TJ” Hoover II was hospitalized in Richmond, Kentucky, in October 2021 after a drug overdose and cardiac arrest, according to reporting based on family and former-organ-procurement-worker accounts. He was severely neurologically impaired and entered an organ-donation pathway. His family says they were told he was brain-dead or dead

The reported sequence is alarming:

* While he was being moved toward the operating room, Hoover’s sister said she saw him open his eyes and look around; she was reportedly told this was a reflex.

* During a cardiac catheterization intended to evaluate his heart for potential transplantation, former staff members said Hoover woke or thrashed and was then sedated.

* When he reached the operating room for planned organ recovery, a preservation worker described him as moving, thrashing, and visibly crying. Two physicians reportedly refused to take part, and the organ-recovery surgery was stopped.

* Hoover survived. Reporting describes ongoing impairments in memory, walking, and speech, and says he lives with his sister, who is his legal guardian.

The allegations prompted review by Kentucky authorities and a federal investigation by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), according to NPR’s 2024 reporting

So what on earth happened???

* Did Hoover survive? Yes

* Did family members understand that he was “brain-dead” or “dead”? Yes.

* Was there a completed, valid, documented formal BD/DNC declaration?: Disputed

There are also cases of people recovering from formal brain-death declarations

The strongest published case that can plausibly be described as survival after a formal brain-death declaration involves a baby girl:

* A female infant born at 35 weeks’ gestation suffered a cerebral hemorrhage.

* She was declared brain-dead between approximately 40 and 120 hours after birth.

* The report stated that apparent confounders were absent.

* Instead of deteriorating, she gradually regained neurologic function and was reported healthy at one-year follow-up.

But it’s complicated: Current neurological guidance does not endorse determining brain death in infants born before 37 weeks’ gestation because the neonatal examination and diagnostic evidence have not been sufficiently validated in that population. The 2024 review expressly treats the case as a historical misdiagnosis under standards that should not now be used for that patient.

The 1968 Harvard Paper on Brain Death

SIMONE’S SOURCE:…it is impossible to harvest transplantable organs from an actual dead person

IMPOSSIBLE

Go get the original Harvard 1968 paper on brain death

Their very clear. There will be no public support for killing people for their organs

Therefore, we need a new category of death

To create public support for organ donation

THE PAPER

I looked up this paper, and indeed:

* It was pivotal to modern brain-dead standards

* It explicitly considered organ transplant implications

* It enabled procurement of organs from living people

The Harvard Medical School Ad Hoc Committee’s August 1968 JAMA report, “A Definition of Irreversible Coma,” set out clinical criteria for a patient whose brain function was believed to have irreversibly ceased. Its criteria included:

* Complete unresponsiveness

* No spontaneous breathing

* No spontaneous movement

* Absence of reflexes

* A flat EEG as confirmatory evidence

* Repeat testing after 24 hours, with exclusions for confounders such as hypothermia or sedating drugs

It did not use the contemporary statutory formulation “whole-brain death” in the way later laws did, but it was foundational to the modern brain-death framework. Later U.S. law adopted a formulation under which a person may be declared dead after the irreversible cessation of circulatory/respiratory function or all functions of the entire brain, including the brainstem.

The report was allegedly meant to respond to two intertwined problems created by intensive-care technology:

* Ventilators could preserve circulation and a heartbeat in patients with catastrophic, irreversible brain injury.

* Doctors and families needed a way to determine when continued life support was no longer appropriate—and when death had occurred—even though the heart had not stopped.

HOWEVER, Organ transplantation was also plainly part of the context. The committee stated that “obsolete criteria” for death could create controversy in transplantation, because organs deteriorate rapidly after circulation stops. Declaring death based on irreversible loss of brain function made it possible to recover organs while oxygenated circulation was still being mechanically maintained

Earlier neurologic descriptions of a state like “brain dead” existed, including the 1959 French description of coma dépassé—a state resembling what would later be called brain death. The 1968 Harvard committee’s distinctive contribution was to move from describing profound, apparently irreversible coma to treating it as a criterion of death in U.S. medical practice and, eventually, law.

The Downstream Consequence of This

* Under prevailing U.S. medical and legal standards, a properly determined brain-dead patient is dead—not a living patient—despite a ventilator-maintained heartbeat, warm skin, and circulation. Brain-death determination is treated as a death determination, not a prognosis or a consent to withdraw care.

* Biologically, such bodies can retain some integrated functions with intensive support: circulation, gas exchange via ventilation, wound healing, hormonal activity, and in rare cases gestation. Those facts are why critics argue that brain death does not always match ordinary intuitions about a dead body.

How “Brain Dead” Patients are Treated Differently if Organ Donors

SIMONE’S SOURCE: Donors are given paralytics

So they don’t move during harvest

They feel everything

Research findings:

* Yes, paralytics (aka neuromuscular blocking drug) are used about 90% of the time

* Paralytics do NOT provide pain relief or sedation or anesthetization

* No, patients are not always medicated for pain, just for organ preservation and to suppress spinal reflexes and stabilize physiology: Per standard procedure, they are not required to prevent conscious suffering because consciousness and pain perception are considered absent.

* A review of one center’s cases found that about one-third of brain-dead donors received an opioid, most often fentanyl; about 63% received an inhaled anesthetic such as sevoflurane or isoflurane; and 90% received a neuromuscular blocker.

* There are no universally binding national or international intraoperative anesthesia guidelines for brain-dead donor recovery, and protocols vary among hospitals and organ-procurement systems. The review specifically notes limited and conflicting outcome evidence.

The Lazarus Sign

SIMONE’S SOURCE: Oh look up the “Lazarus reflex”

This is when the supposedly dead person tries to fight off the surgeon

The Lazarus sign is a pattern of movement sometimes observed in people declared brain-dead who remain on a ventilator. The person may:

* Flex both arms at the elbows.

* Raise their arms upward.

* Bring the hands toward the neck, chin, chest, or endotracheal tube.

* Cross the arms over the chest.

* Occasionally lift or arch the upper body.

The standard explanation is that the movement is generated by neural circuits in the spinal cord below the brainstem, without input from the cerebral cortex or brainstem.

* There is no sound basis to describe it as a conscious defensive act if the brain-death diagnosis was correctly made.

* IF THE DIAGNOSIS WAS CORRECTLY MADE

Because the arms may appear to reach toward the face or tube, people sometimes describe it as “trying to pull out the tube,” “sitting up,” or “fighting the surgeon.” It can be deeply unsettling to see and it deserves a clear explanation before family members witness withdrawal of ventilation or donor surgery.

NOTE: The paper I referenced for some descriptions of this reports on two brain-dead patients who survived for over 100 days after being declared brain dead, who both showed these signs. The paper says organ donation was recommended to both families, but both families refused.

The Apnea Test

SIMONE’S SOURCE: Oh and the apnea test

Where they turn off your ventilator for ten minutes while you’re doped up on paralytics and fentanyl and propofol to “prove” brain death

There is no ethical basis for doing this test because the patient derives no benefit from it and instead can be harmed

In an apnea test, clinicians provide oxygen but suspend mandatory machine breaths long enough for carbon dioxide ​ to rise. They watch continuously for any spontaneous respiratory effort and measure blood gases. If the patient takes even one breath, the test does not support death by neurologic criteria.

* Current U.S. guidance specifically requires that sedative effects and pharmacologic paralysis be excluded—not present—before the test can support a brain-death determination

* Clinicians are supposed to wait for drugs to wear off before running this test

* HOWEVER, we cannot know with certainty that every U.S. hospital—or every clinician in every case—follows the 2023 guidance exactly. The guideline is a national professional standard intended to improve consistency, but it is not itself a real-time enforcement system, and implementation varies by state law, hospital policy, clinician credentialing, and how quickly institutions update older protocols. The guideline’s own authors explicitly acknowledge documented variability in U.S. hospital policies

The Other Activities

SIMONE’S SOURCE: [if] you have agreed to be a donor. They can do all sorts of other sick stuff with you

Transplant a pig kidney and see how long you live

Let residents use you to practice surgery

Checking on this:

* Yes, there have been studies in which genetically modified pig kidneys were connected or transplanted into brain-dead research decedents (see: Human Brain-Dead Recipient Model in Solid Organ Xenotransplantation: A Scoping Review of Technical and Ethical Issues)

* Yes, trainees may participate under supervision, as with other surgical care

* Other things like whole-body donation for anatomy teaching, dissection, etc. and practice surgery should not be presumed permitted; organ donor laws vary from state to state

The Business of Organ Harvesting

SIMONE’S SOURCE: And if you care about health care costs, keep in mind that the main driver of this is the transplants are wildly profitable for hospitals

There is far more money to be made into clearing someone praying dead and harvesting their organs and transplanting them and caring for the transplanties than leaving them in the ICU and giving them time

Findings

To set the scene, broad hospital operating margins are often thin. KFF reported a national average hospital operating margin of 5.2% in 2023, while more recent nonprofit-system reporting found a median 1.5% operating margin in 2024. In that environment, managers care about almost every reimbursable activity—but that does not make every activity a central profit engine.

* There is not a single trustworthy national figure for “hospital profit per donor.” Hospital financial statements rarely isolate the donor-hospital margin cleanly, and the accounting differs sharply across hospitals.

* HOWEVER: Medicare reported roughly $3.3 billion in claimed organ-acquisition costs in 2016 and reimbursed about $1.6 billion—48%—as its share

* And a more recent policy discussion reports that CMS cited 2024 data in which non-renal organ revenue exceeded non-renal acquisition cost by $100 million.

* That shows a system-level possibility of over-recovery in a specific reimbursement category

* At the very least, it’s clear that a large transplant center with substantial Medicare organ-acquisition activity can receive meaningful reimbursement through its Medicare cost report, and being a high-performing donor hospital can improve the economics of its affiliated transplant programs.

One 2019 conference abstract using fiscal-year 2016 Medicare cost-report data estimated that each organ procured for an OPO or transplant center increased average Medicare organ-acquisition reimbursement by roughly:

* $10,918 per kidney

* $11,291 per liver

* $11,371 per heart

* $9,294 per lung

For the sampled transplant programs, the estimated average annual increase in Medicare reimbursement attributable to procurement was approximately:

* $456,243 for kidney programs

* $593,643 for liver programs

* $385,306 for heart programs

* $260,504 for lung programs

IMPORTANT: These are reimbursements, not net profits (there are donor-evaluation, OPO, procurement, transport, administrative, and allocation costs).

* But a lot of this is likely performed by already-salaried staff, so it’s like getting more billable hours out of them

Getting Off the Organ Donor Registry

SIMONE’S SOURCE: When you do the episode go over how you actually get removed from the registry because it’s not as simple as taking it off your license

There was a recent case of a man in New Jersey who converted to Islam had it removed from his license for religious reasons on the organ procurement organization insisted it was still a lifelong commitment

His family had to go to court

Key findings:

* The case reference is a 2026 New Jersey case involving Keith Lott

* He had previously registered as a donor through his New Jersey drivers license

* Later converted to Islam and did not reselect his donor option when he renewed his license in 2025

* while he was on life support, representatives connected to the donation process told them his earlier registration was a “lifetime contract.”

* Reporting said Lott’s family ultimately had to seek court intervention in a time-sensitive conflict over donation and burial.

* Technically: There is no legal basis in New Jersey law for the claim that a donor designation cannot be revoked during the donor’s lifetime.

* Allegedly: NJ Sharing Network reportedly said it accesses Motor Vehicle Commission donor-status information in real time to verify the most current status.

* So probably what happened was the organ procurement organization was using outdated records and lying about them

* You cannot obtain absolute proof against every database or paperwork error, but you can make your revocation both legally clear and practically difficult to miss.

* Make sure your license doesn’t have the designation

* Make sure changing the designation = documented (e.g. you print + keep the receipt)

* Make sure friends + family know you’re not an organ donor

* A strong practical measure is to add a direct statement to your advance directive or health-care power of attorney. For example:

* I revoke any prior anatomical gift, organ-donor registration, tissue-donation registration, eye-donation registration, whole-body donation, and authorization for postmortem research or education. I do not authorize the recovery, donation, transplantation, therapy, research, education, training, or other use of my organs, tissues, eyes, or body after death. My health-care agent and family are directed to communicate and enforce these wishes.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Simone Collins: Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because I received a series of texts this morning that sent me down a very dark rabbit hole, and I need to pull you down that hole now. You’re coming with me. So it’s like 5:00 in the morning, okay? And I wake up, and this is what I get. “So you really need to do an episode on how brain death is fake.

Brain death was invented to produce organs for transplantation.” I gotta

[00:00:22] Terrified Man: get out of here. I’m really scared.

[00:00:24] Simone Collins: It’s not real. Lots of people pr- survive incurable brain death, most famously and most recently, TJ Hoover. The Organ Procurement Organization still insists they did nothing wrong in that case, even though the supposedly brain dead man sat in the audience for RFK’s announcement decertifying the OPO.

[00:00:42] Terrified Man: All right, let’s just, let’s calm down. Take a deep breath, okay?

[00:00:45] Simone Collins: Brain death is completely fake and gay, and you should get yourself off the organ donor registry and tell all your friends and family to do the same. Donors are given paralytics so they don’t move during harvest. They feel everything. Come here, come here, come here.

Oh, look up the Lazarus reflex. This is when the supposedly dead person tries to fight off the surgeon. Oh, and the apnea test, where they turn off your ventilator 10 minutes while you’re doped up on paralytics and fentanyl and propofol to prove brain death. There is no ethical basis for doing this test because the patient derives no benefit from it and instead can be harmed.

and if you care about healthcare costs, keep in mind that the main driver of this is transplants are wildly profitable for hospitals.

There’s far more money to be made into declaring someone dead and harvesting their organs and transplanting them and caring for the transplantees than leaving them in the ICU and giving them time.

[00:01:44] Malcolm Collins: So- So- Hold on. Side note before we go further here.

[00:01:46] Simone Collins: Yes. Do

[00:01:47] Malcolm Collins: you remember the fight we had early in our relationship?

Yes. Where you were mad at me because I t- had non-organ donor on my license?

[00:01:53] Simone Collins: Yeah. I was like, “What’s wrong with you? Why are you not an organ donor?” And

[00:01:56] Malcolm Collins: I was like- It’s a selfish thing ... “I’m sorry, I have friends who are doctors, and I know that they will kill people who would otherwise survive

[00:02:02] Simone Collins: for their organs.”

And I didn’t believe you, and I was wrong. I know. I knew this was gonna come up. I

[00:02:08] Malcolm Collins: am ... And now I have organ donor on my license because of you, Simone.

[00:02:12] Simone Collins: Are you serio- oh, are you serious? I thought- We need to get you a new driver’s license. We’re gonna get into this. That’s, that’s at the end, where we’re gonna talk about- This

[00:02:20] Malcolm Collins: is because of you.

You made me get this- ... ‘cause you said I was being unreasonable

[00:02:27] Simone Collins: I didn’t know. I didn’t know because it is ... Right, yeah, she con- she continues, “If you have agreed to be a donor, they can do all sorts of other sick stuff with you.” Oh my God, Malcolm, I’m so sorry. “Transplant a pig kidney and see how you live.

True story. Let residents use you to practice surgery. When you do an episode, go over how you actually get removed from the registry because it’s not as simple as taking it off your license.”

[00:02:51] Terrified Man: It was a nightmare. This was a nightmare. Walked right into a nightmare.

[00:02:54] Simone Collins: There was a recent case of a man in New Jersey who converted to Islam, had it removed from his license for religious reasons on the or- and the organ procurement organization insisted it was still a lifelong commitment.

His family had to go to court. So this is a lot. Okay,

[00:03:12] Malcolm Collins: and I was off the list-

[00:03:14] Simone Collins: And you are off the list ... until you made

[00:03:15] Malcolm Collins: me

[00:03:15] Simone Collins: get

[00:03:15] Malcolm Collins: on the list, Simone.

[00:03:17] Simone Collins: And you are on the list now. You are such a- And we need ... I, Malcolm, I am very sorry. I am very

[00:03:25] Malcolm Collins: sorry. You know what, Simone? See you next Tuesday. Okay? Because this episode’s going live on Tuesday.

[00:03:31] Simone Collins: Oh, God. Okay. Yeah, so anyway, she, she pointed me to this original Harvard 1968 paper on brain death where they’re super clear, she said, “There will be no public support for killing people for their organs, therefore, we need a new category of death to create public support for organ donation.” And that sounds disturbing, but let’s start off with going into the case of T.J.

Hoover because I think that that’s the best place to start. So according to some [00:04:00] reports, a person who’s actually met a complete, correctly performed formal determination of brain death by neurologic criteria does not recover. So the- Oh,

[00:04:10] Malcolm Collins: hold on, hold on. S- s- side note. That is an unhinged series of texts to get early in the morning.

[00:04:15] Simone Collins: I was pretty great. No, she’s

[00:04:17] Malcolm Collins: like the best- That is an unhinged series of- ... in the entire world ... texts to get early in the morning, and I’d be like ... ‘Cause, you know, th- you, you know this person. They’re a fan. W- you talk all the time. Mm. Right. They’re smart. They’re not unhinged. So you come at this and you’re like, “Wait, what?

What? What?”

[00:04:32] Simone Collins: But it’s all ... You don’t understand.

[00:04:34] Malcolm Collins: They’re harvesting people’s organs in the United States? What? And I was like, “Capitalism does have its drawbacks, Simone.”

[00:04:41] Simone Collins: Yeah, I’m, I’m really discovering this. Yeah, look It’s scary. So TJ Hoover, right? So th- h- this is what I’m trying to get at is a big problem with looking into this concept of brain death leading to organ donation, and, like, people incorrectly diagnosing brain death is they’re like, “Well, there’s no such thing as ever coming back from brain death.

You can’t do it. So if anyone comes back from brain death, they were just incorrectly diagnosed.” The problem is if you diagnose someone as brain-dead and they’re on the org- organ registry, they just kill you. So you don’t know if they’re gonna come back from being brain-dead. And, and so that’s kind of disturbing.

So anyway when you try to- Hold on.

[00:05:20] Malcolm Collins: Also, you remember my will around this as well, right?

[00:05:24] Simone Collins: Yes. Yeah.

[00:05:26] Malcolm Collins: Which this team filmed when they were like, “Why does your will say that y- y- that not to take you off at any g- at any cost?” Yeah.

[00:05:32] Simone Collins: Yeah, I’m

[00:05:35] Malcolm Collins: familiar with

[00:05:35] Simone Collins: this. Actually, I guess you do these stories, Simone.

Wait, so what did, what did your friends in the medical profession tell you?

[00:05:38] Malcolm Collins: Oh, it’s, it’s common, even if you know you can probably save somebody, to just l- put them on the organ list. Especially if you’re having to choose between individuals where you’re investing your time. Oh. And you’re like, “Oh, I could work on this person, or I could work on this person, but this person’s on the organ list.

And so it’s not just money from the hospital, but we could save X many additional lives if they die.” So it makes the calculation much easier to decide on this person.

[00:06:05] Simone Collins: Okay, so it’s also, like, a kind of triage issue.

[00:06:08] Malcolm Collins: It’s

[00:06:08] Simone Collins: so

[00:06:08] Malcolm Collins: common there’s a Scrubs episode about it.

[00:06:10] Simone Collins: Oh, God. Well, man, if it’s making it to Scrubs, the f- the friendly non-political-

[00:06:15] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, this has been well known in, like, the industry for a while

[00:06:17] Simone Collins: Oh my...

Okay, great. Well, call me the last person under a rock who did not know this, but here’s what happened to TJ. I

[00:06:24] Malcolm Collins: told you about it.

[00:06:26] Simone Collins: Look- Yeah, I should believe you more. I’m sorry, Malcolm. It’s... What can I say? A waltz, okay?

[00:06:35] Malcolm Collins: A waltz. Exactly. This is a waltz right here. Great.

[00:06:39] Simone Collins: Great, great, great, great.

[00:06:41] Malcolm Collins: All women are like that.

[00:06:44] Simone Collins: Thanks, Malcolm. Anyway, disturbing case of Anthony Thomas, AKA T.J. Hoover II. He was hospitalized in Richmond, Kentucky in October of 2021, so not, like, forever ago, after a drug overdose and cardiac arrest. According, at least, to this report based on family and former organ procurement, procurement worker accounts.

And this is, like, primarily I got this from an NPR piece on it. He was severely neurological impair- neurologically impaired, and he entered an organ donation pathway. So I guess the same, this thing that you’re describing at a hospital happened. Like, oh, drug overdose. This guy’s, like, really, it’s really bad.

Like, shunt him into the organ donation pathway. But then what happened after is pretty alarming. While he was being moved toward the operating room, his sister said she saw him open his eyes and look around, and then she was told by the doctors it was a reflex. And then during cardiac catheterization was, which was supposed to, like, evaluate his heart for potential transplantation, former staff members, note the word former, said that Hoover woke and thrashed, and was then sedated.

So- So

[00:07:57] Malcolm Collins: they fired everyone who saw anything?

[00:07:59] Simone Collins: [00:08:00] I I don’t know exactly how they became former, but I, I think that they quit. Suspicious. But anyway, so they catheterized his heart, and he, it hurt, and he thrashed out, and this is not looking good. And then when he reached the operating room for planned organ recovery, a preservation worker described him as moving, thrashing, and visibly crying.

Two physicians reportedly refused to take part, presumably one of these the former one who had quit, and the organ recovery surgery was stopped. So good on those surgeons for being like, “I can’t do this.” Anyway, Hoover survived and the NPR reporting describes ongoing impairments in memory, and walking, speech, et cetera.

He lives with that same sister who’s now his legal guardian. So he, he’s really- But

[00:08:48] Malcolm Collins: how many times do they not stop? That everyone else in the hospital was just going along with this like they’d seen this happen 100 times before.

[00:08:56] Simone Collins: Yeah, no. We’ll, we’ll actually get into that and why typically it wouldn’t be likely that someone like him would be thrashing on a table even if they weren’t terminal.

[00:09:06] Malcolm Collins: Oh, because they put them under certain sedatives- Mm-hmm ... so you can’t tell, and he was- Oh my God.

[00:09:10] Simone Collins: Yeah. Anyway, Ward did survive. His family members understood, there’s a lot of contention here. There’s an investigation going on, but they say they were told he was either brain-dead or dead. And it’s hard to tell.

Like, it’s disputed as to whether there was a completed, valid, documented, formal brain-dead declaration. And that’s kind of weird, because if there was a formal one that was, like, logged, it would be in their system presumably. So

[00:09:39] Malcolm Collins: why were they taking him to harvest his organs?

[00:09:41] Simone Collins: I don’t know. So that’s-

[00:09:43] Malcolm Collins: Simone, this is so terrifying.

[00:09:46] Simone Collins: Yeah. So uncomfortable. Also, there, there are cases of people recovering from formal brain death declarations. They’re very rare. And- Even the one case that’s really prominent on this front that’s, like, a, a true confirmed recovery, they’re like, “Well, it doesn’t count.” So this, the strongest published case that can plausibly be described as survival after a formal brain death declaration involves a baby girl, and I can only talk about this ‘cause she made it, okay?

But a female infant was born at 35 weeks gestation. And that’s, that’s when Torsten, I think had his C-section. Like, so that’s- Mm-hmm ... that’s premature to the point where, like, at the very least they’d probably need to be in the NICU. And unfortunately, this baby girl suffered a cerebral hemorrhage.

[00:10:32] Malcolm Collins: And then- So the reason why she’s still alive is ‘cause they didn’t need organs of someone that young, it sounds

[00:10:37] Simone Collins: like. Presumably. Well, yes. I mean, I also think, you know, you can’t be living-

[00:10:40] Malcolm Collins: Oh, that’s gruesome.

[00:10:41] Simone Collins: Anyway, she was declared brain-dead between approximately 40 and 120 hours after birth. The report stated that apparent confounders were absent.

And instead of deteriorating, she actually gradually regained neurologic function, and was reported healthy at her year one follow-up. So I’m super, super happy and she’s okay, and this is one baby who’s okay. Mm-hmm. And I’m very happy about that, so this is good. But

[00:11:07] Malcolm Collins: now everyone- You can tell from Simone’s just a little shocked still.

[00:11:10] Simone Collins: I just need, I just need babies to be okay. And the, the guidance around this particular medical case, they’re like, “Well, we, we, we don’t endorse determining brain death in infants born before 37 weeks gestation because the neonatal examination and diagnostic evidence have not been sufficiently validated in that population.”

So they, they’re basically like, “Nah, that was a, that was a misdiagnosis,” ‘cause like, I don’t know. Infants-

[00:11:37] Malcolm Collins: They wouldn’t have had a problem with it had they had taken her organs and sold them for money.

[00:11:41] Simone Collins: I mean, I don’t know. But let’s, let’s get actually to that point of like, so it, it appears to be that in 1968 a bunch of people were like, “Look, there’s this problem, okay?

You can’t really harvest organs from a dead person. You need to harvest them when the person is alive. The problem is people are [00:12:00] not really cool with harvesting organs from living people, so how do we make this work?” And then you have this paper, and this paper, published in 1968 does indeed play a pivotal role in modern brain dead standards.

It explicitly considered organ transplant implications in terms of its like Well, I mean, part of the reason why it’s important to have this designation is organ transplants. And also enable procurement

[00:12:26] Malcolm Collins: of organs from living people So I’m super uncomfortable with, like, everything that’s happening right now.

[00:12:30] Simone Collins: I am too. That’s why, like, this morning I was like, okay. When sh- she was like, ‘You need to do an episode on this, this thing,’ I’m like, ‘Well,

[00:12:40] Malcolm Collins: yes we do.’ Anybody who hears about this needs to talk about this. I want this to go viral in our circles after this. I wanna see Leafly cover this. I wanna see Nucks cover this.

Th- I want this to be very public. I

[00:12:48] Simone Collins: know. All, all the state’s DMV websites are gonna be overwhelmed with everyone being like, “You need to give me a new license now.” Yeah. Because that is, yeah, like the, the number one thing you need to do in case you just don’t have time to listen to this whole episode, is go onto your state’s DMV website and- But

[00:13:05] Malcolm Collins: apparently that doesn’t do enough.

You’ve then gotta contact some other organization?

[00:13:08] Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s a, we’ll, we’ll get into it, but start with the DMV. That like first step, big time ‘cause they’re gonna check your license. Especially when things are happening real fast, if, you know, and your driver’s license is with you, they’re gonna check it, and if they see the wrong thing, they see that heart I don’t wanna know what happens.

Anyway so the Harvard Medical School’s Ad Hoc Committee’s August 1968 JAMA report titled A Definition of Irreversible Cona- Coma, sorry, set out the clinical criteria for a patient whose brain function was believed to have irreversibly ceased, and this criteria includes complete unresponsiveness, no spontaneous breathing, no spontaneous movement, absence of reflexes, a flat EEG as confirmatory evidence, and then there’s supposed to be repeat testing after 24 hours with exclusions for confounders like hypothermia or sedating drugs.

It didn’t actually use the term whole brain death, which later laws did, but it was foundational in creating this framework for brain death. And then later laws in the US in various states adopted formulation under which a person may be declared dead after the irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory function for all functions, or all functions in the entire brain, including the brain stem.

And there are, there are different pathways for, like, circulatory and respiratory function cessation and brain deadness. So it’s... But it’s, I think it’s scarier for brain deadness, which is why we’re talking about it. Or I said brain death, sorry. Anyway, the report was allegedly meant to respond to two intertwined problems created by in- intensive care technology, which was getting a lot better in the 1960s.

Like, suddenly ventilators are able to preserve circulation and heartbeats in patients with catastrophic irreversible brain injury. And then they felt that because of this, doctors and families need some way to determine when it would be worth it to continue life support or if it’s better to, like, pull the plug.

And it, you know, I, I understand that. Like, I, I can understand a need for some kind of framework there. It’s just that once you introduce this framework to a system in which hospitals are making a profit, more of a profit from when someone happens to be brain dead, like, you get a problem. Anyway, it’s, the, the issue that is, is that aside from that very logical thing of like, we need to have a talk about this, the organ transplantation issue was prominent and explicit in this report and, and it, it’s not the first thing to discuss.

Jesus Christ. I know. I know. I know. Anyway, the downstream consequences of this meant that under prevailing medical and legal standards in the US, a properly determined brain dead patient is dead. Like, legally they’re dead, despite a ventilator maintained heartbeat, warm skin, and circulation. It’s, it’s treated as death and not a prognosis or a consent to withdraw care.

So it’s, it’s kind of [00:16:00] different from other, other similar, seemingly similar situations. And it’s, Anyway, let’s talk about how brain-dead patients are treated differently if they’re organ donors, ‘cause this is what really, really got me. ‘Cause part of me is like, “Okay, I get it,” right? And, and, and in a lot of cases, people who are

[00:16:19] Malcolm Collins: declared brain-dead- And I, I have to clarify for people.

When she made me put that organ donor thing on my card, she was still a progressive, okay? This was before-

[00:16:25] Simone Collins: Aw, thanks for... Yeah ...

[00:16:27] Malcolm Collins: you converted and woke up to the world is lying to you-

[00:16:31] Simone Collins: This, yeah, guys- ... about more s**t than you’re aware

[00:16:33] Malcolm Collins: of ... this was

[00:16:33] Simone Collins: before Simone. It was the before Simone. I feel so bad.

[00:16:37] Malcolm Collins: We just live in a society that lies about everything, and like-

[00:16:40] Simone Collins: Yes

never question ... this was back when I, I don’t know, had more trust in institutions, I guess. Yeah, I,

[00:16:45] Malcolm Collins: Well, that’s a problem. Institutions are pretty evil things.

[00:16:51] Simone Collins: Yeah Yes. I, anyway, ugh right. So if you are declared brain dead, doesn’t matter if they got it right, I guess, you know, like sometimes they get it wrong, as we know from recent cases, but if they declare you brain dead, are you gonna get paralytics?

Yes, you’re going to get paralytics. They’re also referred to as neuromuscular blocking drugs. According to one bit of research I looked at this, everything’s linked in the show notes, about 90% of the time they’re using paralytics. Maybe they didn’t use them with this one guy, you know, who was, is like crying and like f- moving-

[00:17:28] Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah, because they don’t like to deal with that when they’re killing somebody, you know?

[00:17:31] Simone Collins: I, it’s, it’s unpleasant.

[00:17:32] Malcolm Collins: It’s a bummer.

[00:17:34] Simone Collins: So okay, paralytics are used. Are, are patients medicated for pain? No. Are pain meds sometimes used? Yeah. So one review that looked at one center’s cases found that about one third of brain dead donors received an opioid, most often fentanyl, and around 63 received an inhaled anesthetic such as sevoflurane or isoflurane, and about 90% received a neuromuscular blocker.

But is this to medicate for pain, and would, would it actually reduce pain? No. The medication is actually just standard procedure for organ preservation and to suppress spinal reflexes and stabilize physiology. They’re not necessarily enough to prevent pain. And there are no universally binding national or international intraoperative anesthesia guidelines for brain dead donor recovery.

So they’re just gonna use- Well, that’s

[00:18:31] Malcolm Collins: convenient ...

[00:18:32] Simone Collins: whatever they think is appropriate to make, to make the body not move and to keep the organs functioning. But if, I don’t know, if the paralyzed patient is not thrashing and the organs seem okay, they’re probably gonna save on their like pain medication budget.

So I’d not heard about the Lazarus reflex or Lazarus sign. Had you heard of that before?

[00:18:58] Malcolm Collins: I had not, but it sounds like just an excuse for murdering people.

[00:19:01] Simone Collins: I know, it’s like, it’s the, it’s like something, you know, when they, they throw the lobster in the, in the pot of boiling water and they’re like, “Oh, it’s-”

[00:19:10] Malcolm Collins: Just

[00:19:10] Simone Collins: a natural

[00:19:11] Malcolm Collins: reaction that lots of

[00:19:12] Simone Collins: you

[00:19:13] Malcolm Collins: have

[00:19:13] Simone Collins: Yeah.

It’s a, yeah, it’s not, it doesn’t hurt or any- Like, oh my God. Anyway, the Lazarus sign is a pattern of movement sometimes observed in people declared brain dead who remain on a ventilator. This person may flex both arms and elbows, raise their arms upward, bring their hands toward their neck, chin, or chest, or endo- endotracheal take...

Sorry, endotracheal tube. Or they’ll cross their arms over their chest, or occasionally lift or arch their upper body.

[00:19:44] Malcolm Collins: The, one of the really common parts of the Lazarus effect is when they start screaming, “I’m still alive. Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me, I have a family.” That’s one of the most common of the symptoms that they have.

[00:19:56] Simone Collins: Ah. Yeah.

[00:19:58] Malcolm Collins: So- It’s a, it’s a [00:20:00] reaction that bodies have when they get scared.

[00:20:02] Simone Collins: Well, yeah. The standard explanation is that the movement is generated by neural circuits in the spinal cord and below the brain stem, without input from the cerebral cortex or brain stem. The, the, there’s no sound basis to describe it as a conscious defensive act if the brain death diagnosis was correctly made.

But that is if the diagnosis was correctly made. And also, like-

[00:20:26] Malcolm Collins: If it’s a real thing other than a diagnosis that they make to get organs

[00:20:31] Simone Collins: And here’s the thing about pain. There doesn’t really seem to be a scientific way to measure pain. Sci- like, doctors don’t have an, a way to know if a patient-

[00:20:41] Malcolm Collins: Yes, there is.

There’s the what, what scale? The scopal scale where they measure pain from, like, insects bites and they... There is a scientific way to measure pain, but there might not be a scientific way to measure pain in a person using an MRI or something. Subjectively,

[00:20:57] Simone Collins: like... Oh, wait. How does the bug thing work?

[00:21:01] Malcolm Collins: Okay, I’ll look it up while you

[00:21:02] Simone Collins: talk. ‘Cause I go into a doctor’s office and they’re like, “What level of pain do you have, one through 10?” But then if they think you’re, like, trying to get opioids or something, they’re like, “Mm, I don’t know about you.” And I, yeah, I mean, like, I, I know, I know people who have dealt with chronic pain throughout their lives, and- Okay,

[00:21:21] Malcolm Collins: yes, it’s called the Scoville system.

[00:21:23] Simone Collins: Okay, tell me how this works. It,

[00:21:24] Malcolm Collins: it was cr- it’s, it’s a Schmidt sting pain index, created by entomologist Dr. Justin O. Schmidt. It ranks the relative pain- That

[00:21:31] Simone Collins: is an autist

[00:21:32] Malcolm Collins: if I’d

[00:21:33] Simone Collins: ever seen one ...

[00:21:33] Malcolm Collins: of insect stings from ants, bees, and wasps on a numeric scale, much like the Scoville scale ranks the heat of chili.

Okay. How it works: one to four rating. The scale runs from zero, completely harmless or ineffective against human skin- Okay ... up to four, excruciating, incapacitating pain. Each whole number step up is roughly tenfold more painful than the next level. Firsthand testing, Schmidt cataloged the data by intentionally allowing himself to be stung by more than 80 species of insects over his career.

[00:22:00] Simone Collins: Right, but no, that’s just giving... That’s, that’s, like, a, a s- a spiciness meter. It’s the number of chilies on your menu. That’s not allowing a doctor to objectively be able to tell if a body in front of him is, is in pain or not. I mean, like, maybe they’re screaming and writhing, but, like, you don’t know if that’s acting or if that is real as, as, as, a, a third party.

There’s no way

[00:22:24] Malcolm Collins: to, like- Geez, looking at some of these insects, they can really do a number on you. Oh

[00:22:27] Simone Collins: f- okay, anyway. Sorry. The bullet ant? Hey, Frank, I need to get de-miked. Can, can we pause for a second?

[00:22:31] Octavian: Right, if the diagnosis was correctly made.

[00:22:35] Simone Collins: Oh. Anyway. So the way that, like, doctors put the, the Lazarus sign, they’re like, “Well, I mean, you know, because the, the arms appear to reach toward the face or tube, people sometimes describe it as trying to pull out the tube, or sitting up, or fighting the surgeon

which can be deeply unsettling to see, and it deserves a clear explanation before family members witness withdrawal of ventilation or donor surgery But that sounds awful dystopian and kinda like we need an explanation for these people who just- That is the most dysto- and

[00:23:13] Malcolm Collins: th- this is all coming in the context of I understand that organ donation saves lives,

[00:23:19] Simone Collins: but- And I know that’s where it feels super tricky about this

[00:23:20] Malcolm Collins: we need a better system for doing it than this. And we

[00:23:23] Simone Collins: need- Well, or at least to be like, look, ‘cause I think, you know, there’s a lot of people who are like, “If I’m damaged goods, I don’t, don’t bring me back. Like, I lived a full life. I’d love to do some good if, you know, I don’t wanna live the rest of my life severely disabled.”

‘Cause that’s, I mean, that is often what happens to to people who are declared brain-dead after a l- so, you know, it, it, and, and it is true that many, many patients who, who are declared bain- brain-dead don’t make it, even if they last for a really long time. So the paper I actually referenced when looking up the Lazarus effect, there’s this academic paper that specifically reported on two brain-dead patients who survived [00:24:00] for over 100 days after being declared brain-dead.

They note in the abstract of that paper that while typically someone who is declared brain-dead dies of some form of, like, cardiac arrest or, like, they just, their heart fails after a week. One was, like, they survived for, like, 117 days, and the other one survived for longer. And both had showed these Lazarus signs during that process.

And the paper does also note that organ donation was recommended to both families, but both families refused. So, I mean, good on them, but also, like, th- there is that conflict of these Me- very often people who do get this bad don’t survive. But then we have that, like, mm, like you said, like, you’ve heard of people in the medical profession who are like, “Yeah, sometimes we just won’t really bother to do this all the right way.

We’re not really properly diagnosing. We’re kind of triaging a situation, and it’s just easier for someone to be brain-dead than for us to have to work on them a whole lot more when, you know, I could save, spend

[00:25:03] Malcolm Collins: my time-” Well, I mean, I think that, that, that my take would be that we just need a lot more research into how to tell if somebody actually isn’t gonna come back, and that is just not something that there’s a lot of motivation for right now.

[00:25:14] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Because the, the money is in favor of funneling toward organ donation. Anyway, also sh- she’d mentioned the apnea test, so we’ll take a look at that. In the apnea test, what clinicians do basically is if someone, if you’re on oxygen support, they, they will s- get you to 100% in, in, like, your blood oxygen, and then they’ll just turn it off.

And what they’re trying to see is within this 10-minute window, if when your oxygen concentration goes down whether you will take a voluntary breath. And what my friend had said was, like, well, that, you know, like, th- they use this as part of maybe a classification for someone is brain-dead. But if someone is extremely sedated or on a bunch of other meds, look, they’re, they’re probably not gonna breathe on their own because they’re so-

[00:26:06] Malcolm Collins: Th- like, any sedated person is brain-dead for them.

Like, they’re just like-

[00:26:09] Simone Collins: Yeah, like, they could be pharmacologically paralyzed ... anyone you took to a hospital and put in this

[00:26:12] Malcolm Collins: situation would be in that situation.

[00:26:15] Simone Collins: So I look it up because when, when, when I first looked around it was like, well, that would never happen because current US guidelines specifically require that sedative effects and pharmacologic paralysis should be excluded and not present before the test can support a brain death determination.

But then I, I was like, well, okay I, I, y- these guidelines are not enforced. We actually can’t know with certainty that every US hospital or even every clinician in every case follows these 2023 guidelines around this test exactly. The guideline is a national professional standard. It, it’s supposed to improve consistency.

It’s not a law. It’s not like a, a hospital policy. And so there’s nothing technically in most cases, though there may be states where there actually are hard laws about this, not that I found- Mm-hmm ... while I was researching this though that say, like, you have to, like, make sure everything’s completely out of the system before you run this test.

However, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot stopping people. Let’s go to the, the mentions of, of, like-

[00:27:20] Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, one of the things to remember here is hospitals are systems.

[00:27:24] Simone Collins: Yes.

[00:27:24] Malcolm Collins: And there is a huge incentive for these people to die. And in addition to that huge incentive, there’s a huge incentive for them to not realize or not take moral culpability if they’ve been making a, a mistake here.

And on top of all that, there is a, a huge financial incentive because you’re not gonna get another job easily if you, if you whistle-blow on this. Yeah. And then on top of all that they believe that they’re probably doing the right thing because they’re saving more lives than they’re taking.

[00:27:54] Simone Collins: Like, they would- Yeah, and I mean, these are, again, like, these are cases where it’s, like, look, th- their odds of surviving are so low.

And I... These [00:28:00] are also often probably clinicians who are like, “I know this kid who needs a kidney so bad,” you know, this, this, this. And they’ve gotten to know them probably over time, I bet- Mm-hmm ... you know, if, if, if they’re- Yeah ... working in hospitals. And so, like, you know this kid. They’ve been on the list.

Like, they could die. They’re so sweet. You have a relationship with them. And then here comes in this stranger who had a drug overdose, and you’re like, “Who’s this,” you know, like, “jerk?” You know, like, what? There are, like, you know, someone comes in and, like, you know, they’re in their 30s and they’re a parent or whatever, but they just had a car accident.

Well, they’re probably dead, and it’s really busy, and who knows if we could even save them now, so it’s just better to declare them brain-dead, blah, blah, blah. So I get it. Like, it is, it is an ethically fraught situation. But from a personal standpoint, like, whoa. Anyway, it’s not just about what, like, this, this moment of triage.

It’s also about what happens to these live bodies. And that’s kind of where I have the problem with it. I’m like, okay, it’s one thing for, like, a doctor to be like, “All right, Simone, she looks pretty wasted. Like, she got really messed up in that car accident or whatever. Like, let’s just dec- declare this an organ donation situation.”

Look, if you’re gonna do that, if you’re gonna harvest my organs, I wanna be, like- I want the pain meds. I want the pain meds that are gonna work, okay? Like, I, I, and, and also, I didn’t know that, that a lot of other things can happen. So yes, there, there have been studies in which genetically modified pig kidneys were connected to or transplanted into brain-dead research patients.

There... You can see. I, I, I’ll link to it in the show notes, this, this study. Human brain-dead recipient model in solid organ xenotransplantation: a scoping review of technical and ethical issues. Hey, Mommy,

[00:29:39] Octavian: what are the chances of a tornado?

[00:29:42] Simone Collins: Very low. I saw that there was gonna be a little bit of rain around 3:00 PM and then clear for the rest of the evening, so you’re all set, buddy.

Now we’ve got to finish this up, and then I’m gonna go cut your hair, okay? Okay. Okay. I love you, buddy. Go, go do some chess strategy learning or watch something else educational or do lessons even better, okay?

[00:29:59] Octavian: Okay.

[00:30:00] Simone Collins: Okay. I

[00:30:00] Octavian: tried to go in your

[00:30:02] Simone Collins: room. Okay. I love you, buddy. I love you so freaking much. You, you be good.

He’s- Okay ... he’s doing his, his normal, his normal thing. Oh, he’s gone now. Okay. Close the door please.

Door? Okay, whatever. I don’t care. Where were we?

Right. So anyway, you can see that study, and it’s all about pig kidneys on organ donors. Also trainees can absolutely participate.

[00:30:35] Malcolm Collins: God, imagine a Muslim gets that. I can see why the Muslim man was so freaked out. Oh,

[00:30:40] Simone Collins: yeah, no kidding. I think it had to do more with burial, but you’re right that the, the pig kidney thing might be

[00:30:46] Malcolm Collins: a little- Yeah, wait, for Muslims, they need their body intact.

Remember our episode on the Muslim afterlife.

[00:30:49] Simone Collins: Oh, that’s it. Yeah, so it was about that. But yeah, anyway, the, the pig kidney thing would just add insult to

[00:30:55] Malcolm Collins: injury. One of our best videos, by the way. I strongly recommend it.

[00:30:57] Simone Collins: It’s a good one. It’s, it’s a very good one. It’s crazy

[00:31:00] Malcolm Collins: what Muslims- It’s- ... believe about the afterlife.

[00:31:04] Simone Collins: Yeah, and then even the additional things we learned in the comments, like, “Well, and you can see their shins through their legs, and their eyes, or...” Anyway, ooh. Ooh. Okay. Back to brain-dead. Where-

[00:31:15] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, she’s talking about the sex slaves they all get in the afterlife.

[00:31:19] Simone Collins: Yes, the virginal companions.

[00:31:23] Malcolm Collins: If you haven’t seen that one, for a bit of a teaser-

I would get at least one extra wife. All Muslims get at least one extra wife.

[00:31:30] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yes, this is true. I mean, you would get more. You’ve been so great. So I’d have to, I’d have to compete, but I wouldn’t feel bad about it, because that would happen to me if I make it to heaven. Though probably not, because Muhammad saw more women in the fire, and I clearly have done wrong by you telling you to go on the organ donation registry.

Oh my God. So I guess I’m gonna burn in the fire. Thanks, Malcolm. Fantastic. Anyway yeah, so, y- it’s not just that you may get [00:32:00] some kind of weird experimentation, it’s also that the trainees might operate on you, ‘cause they’re like, “Oh, what are we...” You know, who cares if you flub something a little bit.

You know, you just do the practice operation on the brain-dead patient. But then things like actual whole body donation for anatomy teaching or dissection in, in some forms of practice surgery, apparently you need to, like, sign up extra for that. I’m not really sure how that works. I don’t know. I mean, you got brains from people for things.

[00:32:31] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:32:31] Simone Collins: Schizophrenic people. Presumably those schizophrenic people were, like- And

[00:32:34] Malcolm Collins: none of them were brain-dead. They were dead dead.

[00:32:36] Simone Collins: I know. But- Presumably they said, “You can have my brain,” correct?

[00:32:42] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Presumably? I don’t know. A lot of them were sort of like wards of the state.

[00:32:49] Simone Collins: So you were just part of this system that was like, “I don’t know where this brain came from.”

I don’t care

[00:32:54] Malcolm Collins: about taking

[00:32:55] Simone Collins: brains- “I’m just here to pick up the brain.” Whole

[00:32:57] Malcolm Collins: brain. I think it’s quite different to take body parts from a dead person-

[00:33:01] Simone Collins: Yes, this is true ... than

[00:33:01] Malcolm Collins: taking body parts from

[00:33:03] Simone Collins: a not dead person. No, 100%, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that’s true. That’s true. I mean, I prefer to be turned into diamonds, so I want all of that carbon so that all of my children can wear a bit of dead mommy.

But you do you. We really need to buy a diamond compression machine ‘Cause they’re just individually so expensive. This is what you’re gonna have to use my life insurance to buy, and you’re gonna be very angry about.

[00:33:26] Malcolm Collins: The, the diamond machine? Yeah. And then I’ll sell them? We’ll make it a techno puritan thing.

Oh

[00:33:29] Simone Collins: my God, yes. And everybody get to be a diamond. See, you could sell them, so it’ll have an ROI. Buy a piece of, buy a piece of history. It’ll be great. No,

[00:33:38] Malcolm Collins: for other people. You make it like a techno

[00:33:39] Simone Collins: puritan funeral, right? Oh, right, right, right, right, right, right. Oh yeah, never mind, yeah. So yeah, you can just keep mine for the family jewels.

That, come on. How cool would that be if the family jewels- I love you’re

[00:33:49] Malcolm Collins: like on Alibaba, buy a machine for turning dead bodies into diamonds I

[00:33:53] Simone Collins: found some. They look legit, and I mean, it’s such a big industry now. I, I don’t think there’s,

[00:33:59] Malcolm Collins: you know- It’s not an industry I’d have fun working in if I’m going to be honest.

I don’t want dead bodies showing up at the house.

[00:34:05] Simone Collins: They’re not... They’re ashes. They’re not gonna give you the thing, the, the meat part. They give you the burnt part. And we had my mom’s ashes sitting in our house for the longest time before you found the perfect tree, and that was very thoughtful of you.

Thank you.

[00:34:21] Malcolm Collins: The tree’s doing really well, by the way.

[00:34:22] Simone Collins: I know. You’re the best. You really are the best. Anyway, think about it, Malcolm, okay?

[00:34:30] Malcolm Collins: I’ll think about it. I’ll think about it.

[00:34:32] Simone Collins: Right? We’re burning me.

[00:34:33] Malcolm Collins: I’ll do a GoFundMe when you die.

[00:34:35] Simone Collins: Oh, you’re not even gonna use the life... Well, I guess you probably are not allowed to use-

[00:34:39] Malcolm Collins: No, I, the life insurance,

[00:34:41] Jerry: I’m gonna use that on the kids.

You crazy?

[00:34:42] Simone Collins: No, that’s true. The, never mind, you’re right. Ah, what was I... Yeah, no, honestly, like that, the only reason I don’t wanna die is ‘cause I, I need the, I need to take care of you and I need to take care of the kids, and that is, is why. Life

[00:34:53] Malcolm Collins: insurance isn’t a windfall. I’ve got a date.

[00:34:56] Simone Collins: Oh, great. Right. Of course.

Anyway, moving on let’s get to the business of organ harvesting, and I think this is where it sort of is like, like a lot of this could just be well-intentioned people trying to do their best. It, it gets a little messy sometimes. It becomes a problem when there’s a systematic need for organs. So just to set the scene, broad hospital operating margins are really thin.

This organization called KFF, which is linked in the show notes, reported a national average hospital operating margin of 5.2% in 2023. Mm-hmm. And then more recent non-profit system reporting found a median 1.5% operating margin in 2024. And in that environment, managers are going to care about every reimbursable activity.

And even if it’s not a central profit driver, an organ donation isn’t for hospitals. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s the, the flashy like outpatient stuff, hip replacements, et cetera, [00:36:00] whatever, right? Like the, the kind of routine, easy stuff that they can just kind of make a lot of money on, and they can just run people through.

But- Organ donation is one of those things where you can kind of turn a situation that would possibly be even be a negative into a positive. And so there, there isn’t any single trustworthy national figure for hospital profit per donor ‘cause hospitals don’t separate out organ donation as like a line item in their financials, which I think they should.

But Medicare reported roughly 3.3 billion in claimed organ acquisition costs in 2016, and reimbursed around 1.6 billion. That is to say 48% as its share. And a more recent policy discussion reports that, Basically, 2024 data in which non-renal organ revenue exceeded non-renal acquisition cost by 100 million, which shows some kind of system level possibility of over-recovery in a specific reimbursement category.

And I don’t know why they’re separating out renal and non-renal organs. Maybe you do, but whatever. It-- There are, there are financial incentives, especially when the margins are that thin, and that makes me worried. So it’s, it’s clear that basically any large transplant center with substantial Medicare organ acquisition activity is gonna receive a very meaningful reimbursement through its Medicare cost report.

And if you have a high-performing donor hospital, it, it could really improve not just its own economics, but then this economics of this whole affiliated organ transplant organization ecosystem, which could be putting pressure on doctors. There’s-- I found one 2019 conference abstract using fiscal year 2016 Medicare cost report data that estimated that each organ procured for an one of those organ, like, organizing operations increased average Medicare organ acquisition reimbursement by roughly $10,918 per kidney, 11,291 per liver, 11,371 per heart, 9,294 per lung.

And if you add all those things up, like one human that has a decent kidney, liver, two, two lungs, and a heart, that can-- Y- that’s, that’s a decent amount of money. Anyway for the standard transplant programs, the estimated average annual increase in Medicare reimbursement attributable to procurement was approximately 460...

Sorry, 456,000 for kidneys, 593,000 for liver programs, e- 383 for heart, et cetera. Anyway, these are reimbursements. They’re not the net profits. But also, like, I don’t know how much in terms of incremental costs you have for things like organ extraction at a hospital. I mean, presumably you have, like, your doctors who are on call.

Like, y- you’re paying your s- your s- salaried staff to do this stuff. And I would probably, if I were the hospital, have a brain-dead patient scheduled for organ transplantation. Like, I would just- Mm-hmm ... fit them in to unscheduled spots, right? And then of, like, slow times ‘cause you can just kinda keep them alive as long as you want, like, within at least a week before they’re very likely to die, and then you just slot them in.

So I don’t think the marginal cost of processing people for organ transplantation costs hospitals incrementally that much more. So as far as I’m aware, as far as I can figure, it’s just upside Anyway, this

[00:39:45] Malcolm Collins: is what I have to do Isn’t that great? Every day you get potential organs coming through your door

[00:39:52] Simone Collins: I mean, if I were a hospital administrator, I would have a difficult time seeing it as anything other than that, wouldn’t you?

If you’re that concerned. Yeah. If you’re running at a [00:40:00] 1.5% margin-

[00:40:01] Malcolm Collins: Oh, absolutely.

[00:40:02] Simone Collins: Yeah ... that’s so thin. I mean, you are definitely chewing people out for not-

[00:40:06] Octavian: Mom, can I have... I want some of the spicy popcorn.

[00:40:08] Simone Collins: Friend, I... Whoa, why do you smell like barbecue? Buddy, you eating chips. Why am I gonna give you more junk food if you’re just already eating junk food?

Friend, I’m gonna be down in about 10 minutes. Can you give me time until then, please? I love you. And off he goes. Anyway, we need to get you off the organ do- donor registry. We need to get me off the organ donor registry, and I’m just gonna, I’m gonna go through first a scary case of the, the Muslim convert, and then we’re gonna talk about how to do it.

So this was actually in 2026. It... This is a man in New Jersey named Keith Lott. He, he previously registered as a donor through his New Jersey driver’s license, just like we all do. For those of, who are outside the US, when you get a driver’s license in the United States, they ask you on your little form, “Would you like to be an organ donor?”

And on your driver’s license, if you are an organ donor, you have a little heart, a little cute red heart. And if you see someone’s license that doesn’t have the little red heart, you just know that they’re a jerk, a selfish jerk who doesn’t wanna save that poor Jimmy who just needs a

[00:41:17] Malcolm Collins: kidney. What you said to me.

[00:41:19] Simone Collins: There’s a lot, there is like, there is genuine social pressure around it. Like, if someone’s looking at your driver’s license and they, you know, believe in helping kidney, heart transplant, whatever, like vulnerable people get the organs they desperately need, they, they’re gonna judge. And also keep in mind, the effective altruist community’s pretty famous for donating kidneys like going out of their way to give organs.

Of course, they’re all gonna register as organ donors too. I

[00:41:47] Malcolm Collins: mean, I think what we should do is make it legal for living people to donate organs for money.

[00:41:52] Simone Collins: For... No, like actually. I, I think that that’s super important. I, I wish that that were the case because it would make things, I think, in many ways, more ethical.

You could make constraints for it. Look, you can set, you know, if this person is impoverished, then they can’t, or whatever. I don’t care. But like make it- Or

[00:42:08] Malcolm Collins: pre-sell your organs if you reach a certain state of health.

[00:42:13] Simone Collins: Daddy, you- Oh, like if you’re not healthy enough, you can’t sell them?

[00:42:16] Malcolm Collins: Did you set off a mousetrap?

[00:42:18] Octavian: No. I just- Not at all. You had a call before.

[00:42:22] Malcolm Collins: Oh, I did?

[00:42:23] Octavian: Yeah. Yeah,

[00:42:23] Malcolm Collins: it looks like spam

[00:42:26] Octavian: What’s spam?

[00:42:27] Malcolm Collins: What’s spam? Spam means it’s a random person that really didn’t wanna reach me. They were just trying to sell me something. It’s like a scam.

[00:42:35] Octavian: Okay.

[00:42:36] Malcolm Collins: Hey, thanks for helping.

[00:42:38] Octavian: Yeah,

[00:42:49] Simone Collins: you’re welcome. I thought it was someone important. Aw. We’ll be done super soon, Octavian. Okay, okay. Oh, good lord. Anyway, so after he converted to Islam and did not reselect his donor option in 2025 He finds himself very tragically on life support, and representatives connected to the donation process told his family that his earlier registration was a lifetime contract.

And p- reporting of this case says that his-

[00:43:14] Malcolm Collins: Nobody told me that when I ticked a freaking box. And did you know that the main thing that effective altruists have talked about when I’ve talked to them in their meetings is making it the default when you sign up for- Yes.

[00:43:25] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah,

[00:43:26] Malcolm Collins: And if they’re gonna treat it as a lifetime contract and it’s the default option on a long standardized form, that is wildly unethical.

That just makes me hate these organizations.

[00:43:37] Simone Collins: Oh, so hold on. Hold on. There, there actually is no legal basis in New Jersey law for the claim that a donor registration cannot be revoked during the donor’s lifetime. And allegedly- Oh, in New

[00:43:47] Malcolm Collins: Jersey law. What about Pennsylvania? What about any other state?

[00:43:50] Simone Collins: I, I know. I know, I know. We all have to look this up. But allegedly, the New Jersey sharing network reportedly said that it accesses Motor Vehicle Commission donor status [00:44:00] information in real time to verify the most current status, but what appears to have happened is the organ procurement organization was using outdated records and then just lying about them.

This whole lifetime con- they just made that up. They’re like, “Look, his name’s on the list. We’re, we’re taking his organs.” And so his family had to, to seek court intervention in this very time-sensitive conflict in order to stop the process. So another element of this that concerns me isn’t just, like, oh, is the person actually brain-dead?

Did you actually get the diagnosis right? It’s also, did this person actually consent to this? Like, are you, are you even checking up-to-date records? What if they changed their mind because they saw this episode? I don’t know. Mm-hmm. But what you need to do if you want to change it is first, if you’re in the United States, go to your DMV state website and-

[00:44:59] Malcolm Collins: Are you gonna book time for this?

Or are you gonna handle this

[00:45:02] Simone Collins: for me? Yes. I a- I am going to handle this for you, Malcolm. Yes. I obviously got you in this problem. I’m going to get us out of it. But you, you have to first make sure your license doesn’t have that designation, and then you need to make sure that when you change the designation, that you print and keep the receipt.

Then you need to make sure that your friends and family know that you’re not an organ donor. So you have to very openly broadcast, and they’re gonna criticize you, and you’re gonna have to push through and just send them a link to the show notes that we have on Patreon or Substack.

[00:45:31] Malcolm Collins: Well, no, our friends and family know- You’re not gonna tell all of them

because our fans know, okay?

[00:45:36] Simone Collins: Okay, fine. But who’s gonna be at the hospital? And you

[00:45:38] Malcolm Collins: know we’re gonna be telling my brother about this.

[00:45:41] Simone Collins: I’m su- yeah. Yeah, I was gonna say I’m sure he’s not, but he probably would’ve said, “Yeah, I’ll, I’ll do it,” you know? ‘Cause he’s such a nice person too, and like, ugh, God. Anyway, make sure that the people who are gonna show up at the hospital if something bad happens to you know that you’re super not cool with it, and then a very strong practical measure on top of that is to add a direct statement to your advance directive or healthcare power of attorney that’s something like, and I have this written down in the show notes, “I revoke any prior anatomical gift, organ donor registration, tissue donor registration, eye dono- donor registration, whole body donation, and authorization for post-mortem research and education.

I do not authorize the recovery, donation, transplantation, therapy, research, education, training, or other use of my organs, tissues, eyes, or body after death. My healthcare agent and family are directed to communicate and enforce these wishes.” So I don’t know. Consult a lawyer. This is not legal advice, but Don’t show up to stuff without documented not f- no, no taking, no touch.

I would, I would appreciate if you all did that. But then of course I feel conflicted because, like, if you’re actually donezos you know, if you wanna give your organs. I, I feel so- Yeah ... but also I, I, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna be brain dead, but also maybe not brain dead and maybe feeling all the pain as they harvest my organs, so I don’t know.

Where are you with all this?

[00:47:15] Malcolm Collins: I mean, I think this is horrifying. I can’t believe that you... This whole Lazarus effect thing, the way that they word it, I’m sure it- Subreflex ... in part a real effect and-

[00:47:26] Simone Collins: I’m sure ...

[00:47:27] Malcolm Collins: something they say to sleep at night, you know?

[00:47:29] Simone Collins: I’m sure. Yes, both. I mean, well, so here’s, like, where I have a problem with it.

They’re like, “I mean, it’s impulses in your spinal cord,” and I’m like, yeah, but it’s also, like, maybe this is due to my very poor understanding of biology, but it’s, you know, like, impulses in my spinal cord, et cetera, that, like, cause me to feel things.

[00:47:48] Malcolm Collins: And you- Yeah, impulses. That is true. That is how-

[00:47:50] Simone Collins: So- ...

[00:47:51] Malcolm Collins: your entire nervous system works, is impulses in your spinal cord.

[00:47:53] Simone Collins: Yeah. You know, that’s being like, “Oh, it’s just your pain receptors firing. Like, don’t worry about it.”

[00:47:59] Malcolm Collins: And I’m like, “Hmm.” It has [00:48:00] to do with how complicated the motion is, and I’m sure there are some simple, you know, like, you cut a snake in half and the bottom half is still writhing, right? Like- Uh-huh

simple actions that are just happening because of the spinal cord, but a lot of it doesn’t sound like that. A lot of it sounds like they understand that, that, like, we’re doing something, we just don’t care. Like, that’s what I’m getting from this. I’m glad you brought this up. I’m glad we did an episode on this.

[00:48:26] Simone Collins: I’m glad my friend told me about it early in the morning.

[00:48:30] Malcolm Collins: So, guys, please, please, please check out rfab.ai. It is our AI website. I really want to share this with you guys, with the world- It’s amazing ... and use. It is the best AI chatbot site in terms of allowing you to use frontier multi-window models, which is just, in, in terms of technology, if you compare it to something like Janitor AI or, you know, ChatGPT or, you know, FlowGPT and, like- Well, I’ve actually...

[00:48:55] Simone Collins: An important note. I’ve heard a lot of companies advertising, like, “Oh, well, you just need one place where you can switch between, you know, one thing and the other instead of paying for all the subscriptions separately. This is much more affordable.” The problem with them is that they are In this case, for-profit companies that are not run by people who are just really nerdy about them and they need to make money.

And like, I guess we really do need to make money. We’re just very bad at it. And so you, you charge much less of a margin, right? The indus- industry standard for charging-

[00:49:27] Malcolm Collins: Is four, well it’s three to five x is the industry standard. Are you serious? And we charge 50%. Yeah.

[00:49:32] Simone Collins: Right. So we are charging, like in terms, like if you

[00:49:34] Malcolm Collins: actually- Oh, oh, sorry.

We don’t even always charge at 50%. Yeah. If something is a stable price and large, like video production, ‘cause that’s very costly we charge half that.

[00:49:43] Simone Collins: Sometimes I feel like we’d be operating on hospital margins, my friend. I mean, especially when you add in like the, the vibe coding expense, we’re op- operating on what?

Much worse than hospital margins right now.

[00:49:52] Malcolm Collins: Well, we’re operating on negative margins, but we’ll be dead soon. We’ll

[00:49:54] Simone Collins: be dead soon. Extremely negative margins. But I would say from that perspective, like if you remember the days of like startups offering extremely inexpensive but high quality services, because they were basically subsidized by VC money, we’re the equivalent of that except we’re subsidized by like Malcolm’s intensely laborous volunteer labor.

And our, I don’t know, pathological inability to-

[00:50:23] Malcolm Collins: Well, a lot of people will be like- ... take money ... “Then why aren’t you more expensive than my other site?” And it’s like, because we use frontier models. You’re like freaking Jerry in, in a, in a simulation set at 5%.

[00:50:33] Alien: Well, cap his sector at 5% processing, keep his settings on auto, and we’ll deal with him later.

Rick Sanchez is the target.

[00:50:39] Jerry: National Apple Farmers of America. I give you your new slogan.

[00:50:43] Terrified Man: Yes.

[00:50:44] Jerry: You do? Yes. So I sold it?

I sold the idea? Yes. Oh, my God. Thank you.

[00:50:53] Octavian: You

[00:50:53] Jerry: are

[00:50:53] Malcolm Collins: welcome. And when she said that’s all of the stuff, it is all of the stuff. We give you all of the options for image generation. We give you all of the options for video generation. We give you options for putting an image here and then, like, a line here.

That’s, like, the layout thing. It’s the, the new feature. We are working on better image generation. No,

[00:51:12] Simone Collins: that’s... Bruno pointed that out, right? I- thank you, Bruno. We

[00:51:15] Malcolm Collins: appreciate that. Yeah. We are working on the- our 3D generation- Music ... is pretty good. The, the rigging system is pretty good. Our little puck, you know, offline system for giving it to your kids for educational purposes is pretty good.

You know, we’ve got, like, you dump a document in, it’ll turn it to audio so you can listen to it. We’ve got audio to audio. Base AI yesterday had a hiccup where it didn’t work for part of the day, and it was shunting to OpenAI. I am so sorry. I didn’t know the AI had built it that way. I fixed it. Now, if it’s ever broken, it’ll just tell you.

It’s back to working now, so don’t worry. But, like, the, the roads model’s fantastic for, like, super base stuff. Just, you know, all of, all of these cool things you can play with. And it is, it is meant for chuds. You know,

[00:51:58] Simone Collins: that’s the- It, it is really good. It’s, it’s genuinely really, [00:52:00] really good. Oh, you...

Also anime dubbing. You forgot that. But not just anime dubbing. It’s like, because it’s... This is all from a, such a, an enthusiastic and genuine perspective on Malcolm. Like, Malcolm didn’t just want anime dubbing and, like, generic AI voices. The accents come through. It’s insane. Like, if someone’s supposed to be a hick, they’re gonna sound like a hick.

Which I do not know how that, that works. It seems like magic to me. I know it’s just technology I don’t understand, but I really like it.

[00:52:27] Malcolm Collins: What, what, what hick?

[00:52:29] Simone Collins: The, the, the anime dubber. I know it’s not just anime dubbing. I guess it’s any dubbing, but how the accents come through.

[00:52:35] Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. It’s really cool.

[00:52:37] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

[00:52:38] Malcolm Collins: So that this one is- Yeah, I mean, we offer all the APIs, and I work really hard to find the cheapest ones for you guys. You know, you have the stuff we can do.

[00:52:48] Simone Collins: So check that out. Because it’s... I’m so sorry. I did not sleep very much.

[00:52:54] Malcolm Collins: It’s really good. Well, let’s let you sleep extra early today. I

[00:52:56] Simone Collins: would like that.

This has been a day.

[00:52:58] Malcolm Collins: I’m not very hungry, so I’m not gonna eat.

[00:53:00] Simone Collins: Did you eat all those chips too?

[00:53:03] Malcolm Collins: I ate one bag of chips.

[00:53:04] Simone Collins: Oh. One small bag.

[00:53:05] Malcolm Collins: Well, then,

[00:53:05] Simone Collins: Malcolm, you need to eat something.

[00:53:07] Malcolm Collins: Just not feeling it. I’ll have salsa or something.

[00:53:15] Simone Collins: You need to take c- care of you. I guess you did have a smoothie. You ate a smoothie and you’ve... No, that is not enough food. That is not a... What am I gonna do with you? Did you know that, like, in, in, in 1950s home ec classes, y- you know, a, a, a, a wife of a house was taught, basically trained as, as a, a nutritionist as well.

Like, you learned how to cook, you learned how to fix things, and you were taught about the different nutritional needs at different- Mm-hmm ... ages for different people, different levels of activity. And it is my task, even though our society has completely dropped those lessons-

[00:53:52] Malcolm Collins: Nutrition ...

[00:53:53] Simone Collins: to be concerned about your nutritional needs and a balanced diet.

[00:53:58] Malcolm Collins: And when I just say for a few days when I’m grieving, “I’m sorry, I don’t feel like eating,” you think I’m gonna die?

[00:54:03] Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, it’s been several days now. And, and I mean, it was one thing when I told you, and then you, you couldn’t eat, and then another day passed, but now it’s been, like- Five days? Mm. So maybe we can take better care of

[00:54:21] Malcolm Collins: ourselves.

I’ll survive.

[00:54:22] Simone Collins: Mm-mm.

[00:54:23] Malcolm Collins: Simone, it’s important that we act happy for the fans and that we put on a, a good, a good act so that we got, we got cheerful, fun episodes for everyone, everyone having a good time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At least I have my alcohol, you know? I, I, I, I still like that.

[00:54:45] Simone Collins: It’s not great. I love you.

I love you and who you are, and I’m gonna go get you off the organ donor registry, and I’m sorry. I apologize. I was wrong. Don’t worry. And at the very least, you got a really big, fat I told you so out of all this,

[00:55:01] Malcolm Collins: so. But eventually, I think where this unfortunately needs to go is you need enough people withdrawing themselves so that they redo the way the system works so that it makes sense to be on it, right?

Like, right now I’m scared to be on it because of the way that they’re acting around this and not admitting that these are major mistakes and charging people with punishments around this. I mean, I think this should be capital punishment ar- around some of this stuff, right? Like, that, that you would... I- i- if not that, very severe jail time.

[00:55:32] Simone Collins: I mean, it’s, yeah, it’s... There, there

[00:55:35] Malcolm Collins: are issues with this too, and- The thing I don’t get is the Muslim guy, right? Like, the number of cases where somebody has taken themselves off to be that greedy about his organs is absurd.

[00:55:47] Simone Collins: Well, yeah, I mean, especially if a family’s like, if it’s not on his driver’s license, and if his family is saying, “No, he’s Muslim.

Don’t do it,” I mean, I feel like I’d just back off. But I also am aware now of [00:56:00] the institutionally in endemic pressures on hospitals and all these organizations to just like, “No, we have to, we need to take this.” Like, we are not going to be i- net- net positive at the end of the year if we do not get, like, this certain quota.

It’s very scary. So I don’t know what to do about it aside from get us off right now and we need to reevaluate later. But I would... Look, maybe this isn’t gonna matter really soon because we’re starting to grow organs from stuff

[00:56:32] Malcolm Collins: Animals. Yeah, w- stuff, which I’m, I’m awesome for. You

[00:56:36] Simone Collins: know? I’m awesome for. Yes, stuff.

Stuff based organs which of- I want

[00:56:41] Malcolm Collins: more stuff based organs for

[00:56:43] Simone Collins: my- Let’s get the stuff based organs ...

[00:56:44] Malcolm Collins: my immortality.

[00:56:45] Simone Collins: You can just shove in another, an extra one. You know, just have two hearts. Why not? A backup heart. I want

[00:56:51] Malcolm Collins: all the organs. I will be a, a, a time Lord. I

[00:56:53] Simone Collins: will have two

[00:56:54] Malcolm Collins: hearts.

[00:56:55] Simone Collins: Shove them all in.

Doesn’t he have four?

[00:56:56] Malcolm Collins: I think he has two, but it, like, wouldn’t be efficient. It’s a bad way to do it. You can see he has extra valves or something. He had

[00:57:02] Simone Collins: two hearts. Didn’t didn’t brachiosauruses have two hearts? They had the butt heart.

[00:57:08] Malcolm Collins: Right.

[00:57:08] Simone Collins: And the head heart.

[00:57:09] Malcolm Collins: That makes sense for a giant animal.

[00:57:10] Simone Collins: I mean, oh, no.

Was it the brain? There’s a butt brain and a head brain.

[00:57:14] Malcolm Collins: Maybe, but I don’t know. You, you- Whatever ... you need to go make the kids dinner and get to bed extra early, and I’m gonna come down policing you to make sure you do.

[00:57:22] Terrified Man: Thank you.

[00:57:23] Malcolm Collins: Which means I will beat you senseless if you are still down there past 6:30, okay?

What? And, oh, I’m not allowed to say that to my wife. Oh, I thought this was America. I thought this was America. What is this,

[00:57:39] Terrified Man: a communist country or something? I thought this was America.

[00:57:42] Simone Collins: Oh, my goodness gracious.

The world is so strange. I don’t know what to do. Okay, bye. Merry Christmas. Bye.

[00:57:55] Malcolm Collins: Oh, Substack. If you like weekend episodes, check us out

[00:57:58] Simone Collins: Also all the stuff’s linked, all the weird research Page

[00:58:00] Malcolm Collins: young. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah,

[00:58:01] Simone Collins: yeah. Yeah Xenomorph something something You add that. Yeah, whatever. The mic? Yes.

That’s my fetish.

[00:58:10] Malcolm Collins: Why?

[00:58:11] Simone Collins: I don’t know. It’s just, there’s something really cute about the sound of you chewing to me, and I don’t know.

[00:58:17] Malcolm Collins: Everyone else says, like, “That’s when I started hating him.”

[00:58:24] Simone Collins: You’re not chewing into the mic. This is for me. You’re not putting this in the podcast. Just only for- Oh no, I

[00:58:30] Jerry: am. I’m putting your weird fetish

[00:58:31] Simone Collins: in the podcast. Malcolm, you are going to anger people. No one wants to hear anyone eating or slurping, but for some reason I also

[00:58:38] Malcolm Collins: like- But they wanna see you acting like a freaking pervert with your weird ASMR nonsense.

[00:58:44] Simone Collins: I just like the sound of you chewing. I don’t-

[00:58:46] Malcolm Collins: Now, hold on, Simone. Yeah. So this is what the team told me.

[00:58:49] Simone Collins: Okay. And

[00:58:49] Malcolm Collins: I was like, I do not believe this, okay?

[00:58:52] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:58:52] Malcolm Collins: But they had it confirmed with multiple people, so we’ll see.

[00:58:54] Simone Collins: Confirmed with... Okay.

[00:58:57] Malcolm Collins: That having designer babies is now a status symbol in, like, upper class New York circles.

Oh

[00:59:05] Simone Collins: yeah, The Economist basically endorsed it, and now it’s okay. It’s chic. What? Because The Economist endorsed it, yeah.

[00:59:10] Terrified Man: What? Yeah, actually. So we started this thing and now everyone-

[00:59:13] Simone Collins: We didn’t start it. Oh my God, though, did we? Because what if it was Barclay Bram, who works at The Economist, chilled with the cool folks at Natal Con.

We got Thai food together. Maybe he was like, “Yeah.”

[00:59:26] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:59:26] Simone Collins: Okay?

[00:59:27] Malcolm Collins: What the heck?

[00:59:28] Simone Collins: They may be hipster eugenicists, but they’re not the most evil people. I don’t know, ‘cause we’ve, like, tried to be helpful to him over time occasionally. Maybe that’s the connection.

[00:59:38] Malcolm Collins: That’s how you win, if you just be nice. Oh, we’ve gotta connect him with Yuki Jaru.

You should have her email. We

[00:59:44] Simone Collins: did already. We did. Oh, we did. Good, good, good. We did on Friday. That is so... Yes, no, I’ve, I’ve, I- I had, like, I had that as sort of, the theosophical

[00:59:54] Malcolm Collins: episode topic- What about our friend who

[00:59:55] Simone Collins: was canceled? But no one’s there. Has she said she’ll talk with him? Which

[00:59:57] Jerry: one?

[00:59:57] Malcolm Collins: For b- the trans comments.[01:00:00]

Going to SlutCon?

[01:00:03] Simone Collins: Oh, I need, I need to ask. I need to ask, sorry.

[01:00:06] Malcolm Collins: Please do. It’s, it’s narratively very important.

[01:00:08] Simone Collins: I, yes. I need-

[01:00:10] Malcolm Collins: I want to show how we win. We win- Well,

[01:00:12] Simone Collins: I was, I was waiting to see how, how it plays out. I need to check in with her. Mm. So I will do so. I will do so.

[01:00:16] Malcolm Collins: And you need to explain to them, ‘cause they’re filming behind her right now, this is RFAB technology we’re using right here.

Oh, yes. We got sick of paying other people.

[01:00:25] Simone Collins: Yes. This is RFAB technology we’re recording on now. Is that good? Did I do it right?

[01:00:33] Malcolm Collins: That was not good at all.

[01:00:35] Simone Collins: No, I’m, I’m like legit really excited about what you built with this, because someone actually just today emailed us about some Chrome plugin that he created after you were like, “Simone, you can’t keep saying this word or that word,” you know, because I was reading the Andrew Tate article quotes that I was- Mm

you know, from the, from that episode on Andrew Tate. And he was like, “Well, I built a Chrome plugin,” which is actually quite clever, “that takes all the naughty to YouTube words and will just switch them to acceptable words just in your browser so that you don’t accidentally read the wrong thing,” which is somewhat clever for, like, all the YouTubers who are trying to self-censor.

But you, like, you did that-

[01:01:12] Malcolm Collins: I created a beep with an Indian head pattern that happens with our editing system ...

[01:01:15] Simone Collins: yeah, where you could just take every single word that is naughty and just replace it immediately with censorship which-

[01:01:21] Malcolm Collins: Which I think is funnier ... I

[01:01:22] Simone Collins: th- I think it’s funnier too. I think that there was this period in the ‘90s when shows just had abundant beeps in them, and they were, like, better than actual bad words.

And I think for a while then sitcoms and other comedies used-

[01:01:35] Malcolm Collins: Well, you know what show is

[01:01:36] Simone Collins: famous for adding- ... the beeps on seamlessly ... random

[01:01:38] Malcolm Collins: beeps to-

[01:01:39] Simone Collins: Yeah, like when it’s not the real word, right?

[01:01:41] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Do you know what show?

[01:01:44] Simone Collins: A bunch of them did it, right? No, there- Which one is famous for it?

[01:01:46] Jerry: No, the, the, there, there’s this show that’s famous for doing it g- because

[01:01:49] Malcolm Collins: the family didn’t cuss- Oh

and they wanted to make them look more like redneck.

[01:01:54] Simone Collins: Okay. Who? What?

[01:01:55] Malcolm Collins: Duck Dynasty.

[01:01:56] Simone Collins: Duck... Are you serious?

[01:01:58] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The real Duck Dynasty family never curses. And so what they would do is they would add beeps to make it look like they were cursing up a storm all the time.

[01:02:05] Simone Collins: Okay. That’s, that’s actually pretty amazing.

Why would they do that?

[01:02:10] Malcolm Collins: Because- Just ‘cause it’s more funny when that’s the thing? ... they’re progressives who have an incredibly bigoted view of conservatives,

[01:02:14] Simone Collins: and

[01:02:15] Malcolm Collins: so-

[01:02:15] Simone Collins: Oh, so they thought they weren’t rednecky enough if they didn’t have potty mouths?

[01:02:18] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[01:02:19] Simone Collins: Mm. Wow.

[01:02:20] Malcolm Collins: And, and, and, and normal conservatives are, like, Christians, and so they’re like- Who wouldn’t do that

“No, why would I curse?” Yeah. “I’m not gonna be inappropriate,” right?

[01:02:26] Simone Collins: Wow, okay.

[01:02:27] Malcolm Collins: But they needed to dehumanize them, so you know, you can’t, you can’t have people think, oh, maybe conservatives aren’t, you know...

[01:02:33] Simone Collins: That’s really crazy. That is genuinely crazy. Okay.

[01:02:35] Malcolm Collins: It, it’s wild how long this has been going on, but let’s, let’s get into this, Simone.

You- Yeah ... you found a fun topic for me. Okay.

[01:02:41] Simone Collins: Yeah, separate for, like, not just... So there are two ways that I can introduce this. I can just briefly introduce it, or I could just read, like, slightly edited but the texts that I was sent that made me be like, “What?” Because I was like, “What?” And I feel like maybe that would just be a good enough introduction.

[01:02:57] Malcolm Collins: I think that is a good introduction, and, I think you are a very special person Right And this is the first public podcast, ‘cause somebody’s like, “I’m so glad to see you guys bouncing back.” And I was like we haven’t recorded any since then.”

[01:03:09] Simone Collins: Yeah, well that was from the before times, and that’s why we were so cheerful and bouncy.

But anyway, okay.

[01:03:14] Malcolm Collins: You can see those teary Simone eyes right now,

[01:03:16] Simone Collins: so. Oh, God. Well, you know what? We cry for a lot of reasons, and there were a lot of... Anyway,

What did you want to show me? A video. We have to make a video. You have to make a video. Three, two, one, go. Boogie on it, boogie on it, boogie on it

Baki ani, Baki ani, Baki ani

Okay

What are you [01:04:00] doing?

What is alpine divorce? This episode breaks down the viral outdoor trend where partners get left behind on hikes, climbs, and trail adventures. We explore the term’s surprising literary origins, recent social media stories, and a high-profile negligence case on Austria’s highest peak, then look at how mismatched fitness, pacing, and expectations turn outdoor dates into breakups.

From Grand Canyon and desert peak accounts to crowded trail TikToks and the wider man-versus-bear conversation, we examine outdoor culture, preparedness, and why solo travel content can paint an unrealistic picture of wilderness risk. The hosts share personal near-misses, national-park safety stats, and practical takeaways on communication, chivalry, and knowing when a hike simply isn’t a good date idea.

Show Notes

The Guardian: Women are being abandoned by their partners on hiking trails. What’s behind ‘alpine divorce’?

“On social media, women describe alpine divorce as going on a hike, climb or other outdoor adventure with a male partner, only to be abandoned or left behind – perhaps he went too fast and neglected to wait, or a fight on the trail resulted in him storming off. Breakups have quickly followed.

In a TikTok with more than 4.2m likes, a woman bawls as she takes shaky steps down a rock formation. “He left me by myself, I should have never come with him,” sobs the woman, who did not respond to a request for comment. Others flooded the comments section with stories about being served with an alpine divorce. One woman described a 12-hour journey out of the Grand Canyon after her boyfriend ditched her, during which she was assisted by a “very nice man from Norway” who carried her backpack. Another described getting lost in the woods after a man left her behind, and immediately blocking his number once she got home.

There’s that male ego element to it that’s not necessarily evil … but it usually has a negative effect on the partner.

Many of the women described having some level of dependence on their partner in nature. They may not have been carrying the right supplies or enough water, or were not familiar with the terrain, making them feel vulnerable.

“It’s such a common thing,” said Julie Ellison, the first female editor-in-chief of Climbing magazine who now works as an outdoor lifestyle photographer. She has heard “so many stories” about men fumbling outdoor dates. “There’s that male ego element to it that’s not necessarily evil or ill-intentioned, but it usually has a negative effect on the partner who’s being left behind.”

A recent case study illustrates this point: last month, an amateur Austrian mountaineer was found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter for leaving his exhausted girlfriend behind on his country’s highest peak while he went in search of help. The man, a Salzburg chef identified only as Thomas P, said he was “endlessly sorry” for her death, and his lawyer called it a “tragic accident”. But Thomas P could not explain why he failed to wrap his freezing girlfriend in her emergency blanket before heading down the mountain without her. Earlier in their trek he had also told a police officer over the phone that they did not need any help, even though a rescue helicopter was made available to them.

A former girlfriend testified that Thomas P had left her behind on a trail during a hike in 2023 – “so that was the last mountain expedition we undertook together”, she said.

Outdoor culture romanticizes pushing your limits and flexing endurance. Folk heroes have been made out of rugged men such as Timothy Treadwell, the environmentalist who was mauled by the grizzly bears he lived alongside, or Christopher McCandless, who eschewed society to live alone in the wild and later died of starvation. “There’s this emphasis on strength, independence and stoicism that is really embedded in the way males are taught to prioritize character traits,” said Doriel Jacov, a New York-based therapist who specializes in relationship patterns. “Masculinity seems to play a role in how alpine divorce manifests in real life.”

A man walking 100ft ahead of his girlfriend because he cannot be bothered to wait for her is bad manners. But failing to properly care for someone in an environment they’re not prepared to handle alone can cause real harm. “I can’t see how leaving someone in a highly unsafe position wouldn’t qualify as an abusive dynamic, especially if [the man] is aware to some degree that that’s what they’re doing,” said Jacov.

Naomi, 46, an educator and member of the Wine Hiking Society, a community organization for women that promotes outdoor exploration and socialization, was not surprised when she saw discussion of alpine divorce on TikTok. “It feels like another version of a #MeToo story to me,” she said. “My response is like, well of course [this happens].”

About 20 years ago, Naomi hit Deseret Peak, an 11,036ft (3,363-metre) mountain close to her home in Salt Lake City, with two friends: another woman and a man who she had a “close” but not romantic relationship with. On the way up, Naomi started to feel disoriented, possibly from altitude sickness. But the man, who was chasing a goal of hiking the highest peak in every county in Utah, did not want to stop. (Naomi requested to use only her first name for the sake of privacy.)

The man and woman left Naomi on the way up. She knew that they would not come back for her because the trail was a loop, and she feared she would pass out. “I felt like I had to crawl on my hands and knees, and finally I made it to the top.”

Naomi eventually stopped hiking with the man. “I realized at some point that every bad thing that would happen to me outside, he was the common denominator,” she said. “I would find myself in sketchy situations that were way outside my comfort zone, which is often a theme in these stories of either being left behind or pushing yourself beyond your limit.”

A few years ago, Naomi was hiking Arches national park in Utah when her group noticed a woman lying on the ground in distress.

The woman told them she suffered from severe vertigo – not ideal given the park’s topography – and her date had gone to retrieve his camera after she accidentally dropped it into the bowl near Delicate Arch. “There was no way she was going to get out by herself, and we hiked with her back down to the trailhead,” Naomi said. On the way, they learned that she was on a “second or third date” with the man. “We were asking her, like, ‘So … this might be the last date, huh?’””

What are people posting on Tiktok?

The most famous one with 5.1M views (WHY IS THIS WOMAN FILMING HERSELF WHILE WALKING DOWN DANGEROUS ROCKS)

* Reads: POV: you go on a hike with him in the mountains but he leaves you alone by yourself and you realize he never liked you to begin with

* As she walks, there are clearly other people on the trail; she is not alone.

Another woman named Lara Marcellin / @thespicypisces444 posted: “PSA ladies never go hiking with a man” with a clip she filmed while she was lost/stranded and trying to find her way.

* She describes stepping briefly off-trail (bathroom), then discovering he was gone

* Iit took her a long time (reports of ~2 hours) to reach the car.

* Multiple millions of views reported; follow-ups discuss the aftermath and trust issues. Covered as another clear example of the same pattern.

There’s one woman who posted a photo of herself with the text “POV you refuse to be the victim of alpine divorce” in which she films herself with her boyfriend on a leash on a hiking trail”

The sister movement of female solo travel

22-year-old Kamryn Renae, aka the “PCT Princess,”went viral while (allegedly) solo thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and has said she funds the trip through OnlyFans.

* Ironically on her non-only fans Instagram, where she has 298K followers, she ended up influencing a lot of young women who got into solo hiking/camping because of her

* When I looked at her account I found that two women I already follow also follow her

* And comments are oddly bifurcated

* On one of her latest posts, which includes photos of her wearing a skin-tight white shirt with no bra that says “I <3> books and sex”, comments are a mix of stuff from women who find her aspirational to men who clearly are there for the OF comment

* Examples:

* Laurenashen: How is this diva hiking the entire PCT trail and looking so cute while doing it?? I would look endlessly ugly 😂

* Oceanpeaches: “(Not trying to be weird) but it genuinely must feel SO NICE to hike without a bra on!!”

* Ginnicholas: “I have so many questions about your adventures. How do you keep your devices charged. I’m planning a hike of the pct next year and want to create content for my kids and friends do you have any suggestions or pointers”

* Heteromationprecariat: I took love books, and sex. However, books are easier to come upon.

* A little concerned about her form of influencing?

* She hikes in little miniskirts and tight tiny shirts without bras and speaks in a little baby voice and most of her equipment is pink

* She starts off her days by putting on makeup, painting her nails, etc.

* In a YouTube video titled Kamryn Renae and the Paradox of Outdoor Influencers, Broey Deschanel (a female culture commentator) talks about how Kamryn influenced her to get out more, but wrestles with whether her childlike affect is legit or a contrived persona

* She also talks about conspiracy theories that she’s not actually hiking the trail solo (instead traveling with a guy), or that she’s possibly staying in hotels at night

Other famous female solo travel influencers:

* Alyssa Ramos (My Life’s a Travel Movie)

* Eva zu Beck, Lexie Alford (Lexie Limitless) (No OF)

* Ciara Johnson (Hey Ciara) (No OF)

* Liz Carlson (Young Adventuress)

There is definitely OF hiking content.

Pro Tip: JUST DON’T

People die hiking. But also, men die more so maybe don’t depend on them?

Men die at far higher rates than women in U.S. National Park Service (NPS) sites. Across multiple years of data, men consistently account for roughly 75–85% of fatalities (most commonly cited around 80%), while women account for the remaining 15–25% of cases where sex is recorded. Visitation is roughly equal by gender.

*in fairness the overall risk remains very low relative to the hundreds of millions of annual recreational visits (e.g., ~0.11 deaths per 100,000 visits in 2019).

How this feels apt

What we have here:

* Couples failing to thrive

* Women going solo

* But finding a way to still be funded by men

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins:Hello, Malcolm. I’m so excited to be speaking with you today because we are going to be speaking about men abandoning women on their hikes in this new trend,

Speaker 39:That’s hilarious.

Simone Collins:which is actually not so new, called alpine divorce. The term actually comes from an old book, like, written in the eighteen forties or sixties about a man a story about a man who’s gonna take his wife on an alpine hike, and then, you know, she would conveniently tragically die on the hike, and he’d be fine. But instead, at the at the summit of the mansion or whatever, his his wife tells him that, no. Joke’s on him because she’s called the police and said that she’s been murdered or she’s going to be murdered by her husband. And then she she jumps off the cliff, like, minutes before the police arrived that she called or something. So that’s that’s where this name came from. And now we’re gonna see what people think Alpine divorce is now.

Malcolm Collins:Wait. So what what what did it used to be you said minutes before the police she called about?

Simone Collins:She jumped off the mountain. So it was a it was a reverse double trick, you see. Oh, she said I’m gonna

Malcolm Collins:do an alpine divorce? And then No.

Simone Collins:I think it’s a book called alpine divorce. That’s where the term comes from. Oh. People are calling this trend alpine divorce.

Malcolm Collins:So it’s about it’s a book about a lady unaliving?

Simone Collins:Yeah. But in revenge for her husband who planned on murdering her anyway. So That That’s

Malcolm Collins:doesn’t sound very revengy. Look. Women be weird.

Simone Collins:Okay? And that’s really what this is about. I saw a couple of days ago, and this is a it’s a trending article by The Guardian about this trend of men abandoning women on their hiking trips. I’m I’m gonna read a little bit of it, not all of it. I I think it’s very amusing. On social media, women describe alpine divorce as going on a hike, climb, or other outdoor adventure with a male partner only to be abandoned or left behind. Perhaps he went too fast and neglected to wait, or a fight on the trail resulted in him storming off. Breakups have quickly followed. In a TikTok with more than 4,200,000 likes, a woman balls as she takes shaky steps down a rock formation. He left me by myself. I should have never come with him, sobs the woman who did not respond to a request for comment. Others flooded the comments.

Malcolm Collins:Women in the woods die for man. They desperately want men in the oh oh, I a man or a bear in the woods. The moment you leave them alone. How dare he?

Simone Collins:Actually, what’s really funny is in some of the social media commentary on this very trend, they’re like, this is exactly why I would choose the bear.

Malcolm Collins:Oh, you what want the man there so much. That’s why you would choose the bear?

Simone Collins:No. They no. They would choose the bear because you can’t depend on the man is is their conclusion. Men are so unreliable. They’ll just abandon you. I would prefer a bear. A bear is predictable.

Malcolm Collins:Okay. Go go into this more. Go into this.

Simone Collins:Others flooded the comment section with stories about being served with an Alpine divorce. One woman described a twelve hour journey out of the Grand Canyon after her boyfriend ditched her during which she was assisted by, quote, a very nice man from Norway, end quote, who carried her backpack. Another scribes getting lost in the woods after a man left her behind and immediately blocking his number once she got home. There’s that male ego element of it’s not necessarily evil, but it usually has a negative effect on the partner. Many of the women described having some level of dependence on their partner in nature. They may not have been carrying the right supplies or enough water or were not familiar with the terrain, making them feel vulnerable. It’s such a common thing.

Malcolm Collins:Really hearing here is they would go hiking with men that were carrying more than their share of supplies, that were doing more than their share of the work, and all of a sudden, they have to just manage themselves, and

Simone Collins:they can’t do it. Spoilers, Malcolm. But it’s such a common thing, says Julie Ellison, the first female editor in chief of climbing magazine who now works as an outdoor lifestyle photographer. She has heard, quote, so many stories, end quote, about men fumbling outdoor dates. There’s that male ego element to it that’s not necessarily evil or ill intention, but it usually has a negative effect on a partner who’s being left behind, end quote. A recent case study illustrates this point. Last month, an amateur Austrian mountaineer was found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter for leaving his exhausted girlfriend behind on his country’s highest peak while he went in search of help. The man, a Salzburg chief identified only as Thomas p, said he was endlessly sorry for her death, and his lawyer called it a tragic accident. But Thomas p could not explain why he failed to wrap his freezing girlfriend in her emergency blanket before heading down the mountain without her because apparently she was incapable of anyway, earlier in their trek, he had also told the police officer over the phone that they did not need any help even though a rescue helicopter was made available to them. A former girlfriend testified that Thomas p had left her behind on a trail during a hike in 2023. Quote, so that was the last mountain expedition we undertook together, she said. Outdoor culture romanticization

Malcolm Collins:kept dating?

Simone Collins:Yeah. This is really this is it. That’s interesting. Well, I mean, clearly, they didn’t stay long enough together for you know, because there was another girlfriend and then she died. But you know? Wait. What? Yeah. Thomas p abandoned his girlfriend on the highest peak in Austria.

Malcolm Collins:Oh, and then she died?

Simone Collins:Yes. That’s I just read a whole paragraph about how he was just found guilty of gross negligence because he abandoned her.

Malcolm Collins:Do we have reasons why these men keep abandoning these women? Are they literally when these men are their lifelines being that annoying on mountains?

Simone Collins:One wonders. One wonders. I will I will read those just a little bit more. Outdoor culture romanticizes pushing your limits and flexing endurance. Folk heroes have been made out of rugged men such as Timothy Treadwell, the environmentalist who was mauled by the grizzly bears he lived alongside, or Christopher Christopher McCanless who eschewed society to live alone and in the wild and later die died of starvation. Quote, there’s endless there’s this emphasis on strength, independence, and stoicism that’s really embedded in the way males are taught to prioritize character traits, said Doreal Jakov, a New York based therapist who specializes in relationship patterns. Quote, masculinity seems to play a role in how alpine divorce manifests in real life. A man walking 100 feet ahead of his girlfriend because he can’t be bothered to wait for her is bad manners, but failing to properly care for someone in an environment they’re not prepared to handle alone can cause real harm. Quote, I can’t see how leaving someone in a highly unsafe position wouldn’t qualify as an abusive dynamic, especially if the man is aware to some degree that that’s not that that that’s what they’re doing, says Jakob. Naomi, 46, an educator and member of the wine hiking society, that sounds like a really bad combination.

Malcolm Collins:I I that does sound like a terrible combination.

Simone Collins:I can’t Did pick that up the first time I read this? I this is the this is funny thing. Like,

Malcolm Collins:knows that, you know, if beer and and hunting and beer and fishing go together

Speaker 7:Each of you youngins take a gun, a beer, and some smokes. Hey. I’ll blow your freaking head off. Hey. Look out, son. That’s dangerous. You’re gonna spill your beer.

Malcolm Collins:, But the moment I hear wine and hiking

Simone Collins:Wine hiking. For some reason, my brain immediately but if

Malcolm Collins:you’re like, let’s have beer and go hunting, I’d

Simone Collins:be like, yeah. Of course. Yeah. You know, it’s Oh, god.

Malcolm Collins:But that’s because I associate women with wine maybe or Yeah.

Simone Collins:Wine calls. Wine. Yeah. Mhmm. Anyway, Wine Hiking Society, a community organization for women that promotes outdoor exploration and socialization, was not surprised when she saw a discussion of alpine divorce on TikTok. Quote, it feels like another version of a me too story to me, she said. My response is like, well, of course, this happens. About twenty years ago, Naomi hit the desert peak, an 11,003 36 foot mountain close to her home in Salt Lake City with two friends, another woman and a man who she had a close but not romantic relationship with. On the way up, Naomi started to feel disoriented, possibly from altitude sickness. But the man who was chasing the goal of hiking the highest peak in every county in Utah did not want to stop. Naomi requested use of only her first name for the sake of privacy. The man and the woman left Naomi on the way up. She knew that they would not come back for her because the trail was a loop, and she feared she would pass out. I felt like I had to crawl on my hands and knees, and I finally made it to the top. Naomi eventually stopped hiking with the man. I realized at some point that every bad thing that would happen to me outside, he was the common denominator, she said.

Malcolm Collins:Would find myself in sketchy situations that

Simone Collins:were way outside my comfort zone, which is often a theme in these stories of either being left behind or pushing yourself beyond your limit. These are just women who don’t hike, I think. and you’re gonna see I I think there’s a connection here. A few a few years ago

Malcolm Collins:These are women who want guys that are out of their legs and fit, and they’re, like, desperately climbing their way up mountains trying to impress them.

Simone Collins:Oh, it’s very you know, the parent trap. You know, there’s there’s the the rich girlfriend and the hiking disaster where she, like, puts on her, like this is very, like, actually very apropos. She puts on her, like, sexy influencer hiking outfit, and they all go hiking, and she cannot handle it. That is what this is for sure. It’s the parent trap all over again.

Speaker 9:What’s going on?

Speaker 10:Here’s what’s going on, buddy.

Simone Collins:Second one, obviously. That’s the best one. Lindsay Lohan. She was great. She was great. And her new face is fantastic. Anyway, a few years ago, Naomi was hiking in Arches National Park in Utah when her group noticed a woman lying on the ground in distress. Lying on the ground. The woman told them she she suffered from severe vertigo, not ideal given the park’s topography, and her date had gone to retrieve his camera after she accidentally dropped it into the bowl near the delicate arch. Quote, there was no way she was getting out of her by getting out of there by herself, and we hiked with her back down the trailhead, Naomi said. On the way, they learned that she was, quote, on a second date or a third date with the man. We were asking her, so this might be the last date. But, anyway, yeah, I would probably leave my date if they lie down on the ground and dropped my expensive camera inside a very difficult to access natural depression.

Malcolm Collins:Wait. Why did she lie down on the ground?

Simone Collins:Because she suffered from severe vertigo. She she was scared of heights, which you can relate to. I can relate to that, but then don’t go hiking. I’ve never seen you bamf out of a place as fast to that one water slide. The one where

Malcolm Collins:they just, like, drop you. You’ve forced me on dangerous hikes before. I know exactly what this is like.

Simone Collins:It’s true. You came this close to Alpine divorcing me. No. I came this close to Alpine, like, literally the original Alpine divorce. Don’t you remember how I almost died?

Malcolm Collins:Yes. Because I freaking tell you. That’s why we

Simone Collins:don’t hike anymore because I said you’re gonna die, Simone. Yeah. And it wasn’t because, like, of a lack of stamina. It’s because I’m very clumsy, and I was standing right next to because I don’t suffer from severe photocopying.

Malcolm Collins:I do not have a good time. About sinful behavior. I I consider, hiking, like, super sinful It is way too easy to die while hiking. Not Yeah. All hiking. Like, if you’re in a general whatever place, but if you’re doing the type of hiking where if you slip, it means you die. Like, what a selfish thing to do.

Simone Collins:Well and actually so I’m gonna send you to the the OG of this this TikTok, the of the woman that went viral. The the the Guardian articles, she had, like, said she had 4,000,000 views and now has, like, over 5,000,000 views. Watch this. And you’ll see just how irresponsible and sinful she’s being, because she’s literally holding her camera and, like, crying as she’s, like, going down up a fairly difficult to navigate section of rocky terrain. And, like, lady, please don’t you gotta the way she’s gonna navigate this is

Speaker 5:I know I’m walking alone in his shoes. Can’t let me. I’m Barbie. So nervous. I never came with him. You think about it. Anytime you think about it. You know, do not go. I hate it so much. I feel so terrible. Like, this is the worst Saturday of my life. I could’ve been at home. I could’ve been a break out of my house.

Speaker 12:That’s hilarious. Hey, I ought to be a stand up.

Malcolm Collins:Did she need a man to tell her to not farm sympathy like this? Like

Simone Collins:Well, no. I mean, I think she needed a man to tell her to, like, use all fours if you’re going down a very steep and rocky part of terrain. Like, do not do not walk with two feet holding your phone while sobbing for TikTok. Now keep in mind, she also talks about being abandoned in this video. At the end of the clip, the viral OG alpine divorce TikTok clip, there are just these people walking toward her on the trail. She’s not alone. These are, like, very popular busy trails. She’s not isolated. She can ask for help. Like, this is not

Malcolm Collins:Oh, and something I would want to, you know, really signal for fans, a trail being popular doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous. Oh, no. That’s what

Simone Collins:I’m worried about most, and we’re gonna get to that too. Yeah. It that is yeah. We’ll get we’ll get to that. Anyway, I’m gonna send you another one that went super viral. This is by a woman who goes by Laura Marcellin, aka the spicy Pisces four four four, which is a delightful name. Saying, PSA, ladies, never go hiking with a man. And she just is kind of, like, wandering through, like, what looks like English Moorland ish. It’s just kind of gray and indistinct.

Speaker 4:Road trip. Never go hiking with a man. Never go hiking with a man. They basically just stranded me. I don’t even know where the f**k I am. I don’t know where I’m going. I I’m just following a path. I don’t even know if this is the right path. There’s so many, but we walked for at least two hours to get here. So at least I’ve had another two hours back.

Speaker 24:That’s hilarious. Hey, I ought to be a stand up.

Simone Collins:And she they they’d hiked two hours out, and she went to go to the bathroom. And then her boyfriend was gone, and so she died two miles or two hours back to get there. And she did all these follow-up videos in the aftermath to discuss her trust issues. And And why did he leave? Nobody knows.

Malcolm Collins:Could they explain? These women must be so annoying for a guy to just

Simone Collins:walk off on life. To wonder, like, to what extent, you know, are these women with borderline personality disorder who are engaging in severely toxic behavior where the men are just like, I I will push you off the mountain if we stay together, so I’m going to walk away. You know? Sometimes it’s just best to deescalate. You know? Like, if you if you can’t help but, like, do something violent, you need to walk away sometimes. And I sometimes wonder if that what is what happened here. I mean, obviously, it is a super not okay thing to take someone on a hiking or camping experience if they lack the necessary experience, equipment, or health to complete that trip safely. And I think it’s it’s not cool for guys to do this. I think that in general, like, your whole point, this is hiking is sinful. It just don’t hike. And, also, a lot of people die in national parks every year, like, USA national parks. But even though men and women visit them at about the same rate, guess who dies a lot more? Really? Do women die more in Park City? Around eighty plus percent of the people who die in national parks, even though men and women visit at the same rates, are men. Oh, really? Men are also just way more likely to be super reckless in national parks. And, like, yeah, maybe also, like, don’t don’t trust a man to, like, calibrate properly because men are also way more likely to end up scrubbing out themselves in the middle of some kind of nature adventure. It’s just not it’s not the best idea. But what’s really interesting to me about this is the sister movement of female solo travel, and especially this 22 year old named Cameron Renee who also goes as the PCT princess who went viral while allegedly solo hiking through the Pacific Crest Trail. And she has said that she funds her trip through OnlyFans, and I 100% believe it, and you’ll understand why. Ironically, though, her non OnlyFans Instagram, where she has 298,000 followers, actually influences a lot of young women to get into solo hiking and camping. And a lot of it’s because she we she’ll post her her backpacking hiking routine, and she gets it up in the morning in her little pink tent. And she puts on her tiny little skintight shirt without her bra on and her tiny little skintight miniskirt. And she does her makeup, and she does her nails, and

Malcolm Collins:she does hair. See this and they think, I want that?

Simone Collins:Yeah. Looks okay. So, like, on a recent post, like, her second to most recent post where which includes photos of her, by the way, wearing a skin tight white shirt with no bra that if I just, like, Photoshop colored it, like, skin color, she would look naked. Like, I can see every I can see everything. And those this shirt says, I heart books and sex with a little frog on it. And so cute. And the comments on it, I thought would just be, like, only from her male OnlyFans followers. I was like, well, clearly, like, this account can only be followed. No. It is one, when I clicked over to her account, two of the female accounts that I follow on Instagram were following her. Probably I mean, assuming unironically. Also, the the the YouTuber, like, social commentator, Burry Deschanel, also did a whole video on her and talked about how she has encouraged her to get out more. So this woman is influencing other women to solo travel. And so I’m looking at the comments of this, like, clearly OnlyFans bait photo post. and we have Lauren Shannon saying, how is this diva hiking the entire PCT Trail and looking so cute while doing it? I was, like, endlessly ugly. And ocean peaches says, not trying to be weird, but it genuinely must feel so nice to hike without a bra on. Like, they’re not getting it. Ginny Nicholas says, I have so many questions about your adventures. How do you keep your devices charged? I’m planning to hike the PCT next year and want to create content for my kids and friends. Do you have any suggestions or pointers? So she she’s also getting, like, women excited to go out and, like, film themselves hiking solo across this trail. Meanwhile, Brody Deschanel says that she surfaced a lot of conjecture on the lore of this this creator that a lot of people think she’s not actually hiking the trail, that she’s staying in a motel at night, that she is a man with her the whole time who’s also helping her film things. So this may not even be what a lot of people think it is. And, also, there are totally, like, her male audience on Instagram. Like, hetero mation precariat says, I too love books and sex. However, books are easier to come upon. I’ll just leave you with that. Wait. Wait.

Malcolm Collins:Wait. Who who wrote that where? That’s one of

Simone Collins:the comments on her look. I’m gonna send you her just go here’s her Instagram, and you can tell me if you I’m just so surprised that that women follow this because it honestly made me a little uncomfortable. I was like, oh, girl. Like, are you safe out there? And, also, like, this is extremely explicit for, like, Instagram. Maybe I’m on the wrong part of Instagram. All my stuff’s like recipes and seasonal stuff. So look at her second post, and look at her shirt.

Malcolm Collins:Okay. I’ll look at her second post. Okay. The I love books, oh, and sex.

Simone Collins:You can see everything.

Malcolm Collins:And then, yeah, makes a stupid a face. Why would anybody make that face?

Simone Collins:And then she has another photo of an ant on her hand intermixed with photos of her her her headlights blinking brightly through a yellow lace lined shirt. And

Malcolm Collins:shot. Gross.

Simone Collins:I know. Doesn’t it make you feel gross looking at it? But, like, women are following this. Look. If you look like a couple posts over, it’s like her lying down provocatively on her her little yellow sleeping bag on top of her pink tarp. It’s very and I’m not gonna ask you to married get and have kids. Like, didn’t She’s 22 years old. You know, that’s, you know That’s a little old. Baby for, like, our time, but, obviously, it’s a great time to get married. Anyway, when if you were to watch her videos, what’s also kind of creepy about it is she does everything in a sexy baby voice and kind of acts like this, like, like a little girl. And it is actually quite dangerous as a as a solo female hiking in isolated areas to travel like this because you don’t know who’s out there. I mean, I’m sure she keeps pepper spray with her and probably bear spray. I don’t know if that trail has bears on it, but I would keep bear spray with me anyway. But, like, that’s not it’s not it’s not it is very risky to travel alone, especially in the wilderness where no one can hear you scream, presumably. Dress like a prostitute? Dress like a well Dress like bait, as you would No. Like, literally dress like bait. And I’m sure she, like, delays her posts and stuff, but now she’s inspiring other young women to go out and hike this trail. Well, you’re being

Malcolm Collins:a a big girl should wanna meet a bear rather than a man in the woods. Right? You

Simone Collins:know? No. Honestly, like, I hope she finds the bear. Not the man. Not the man. Very concerned. I really do hope she she travels with a man.

Speaker 26:Apparently, she ended up having to be airlifted to a hospital.

Simone Collins:But but there there is a ton of sort of reactionary content to the Alpine divorce discussion that’s taking place, the discourse. Like, one woman on TikTok instead text to or, like, made a video where she put the text over it saying, POV, you refuse to be the victim of alpine divorce in which she films herself with her boyfriend on a leash on a hiking trail. So some women are li

Speaker 3:When you’re mine in the world, there’s gonna be one less lonely girl. One less lonely girl. One less lonely girl.

Simone Collins:ke, well, I have control over my boyfriend, whereas other women are just going solo saying they hope they find the bear. And then also, like, low key, still still basically using men to support their travel, but by posting sexy photos. And while I I did find some other really prominent female solo travel influencers, they don’t seem to have OnlyFans. I did create just for this an OnlyFans account and searched hiking. And lo and behold, there is a ton of hiking content. We’ve got didn’t you create your OnlyFans account in another episode? Oh god. How many OnlyFans accounts do I have now? This is unfortunate. I think I might have deleted it, so that’s why I had to do it. Isla Moon who’s swimming in the jungle. And we have Tiffany Tyme, who kicks off her Iceland adventures.

Malcolm Collins:Oh my god.

Simone Collins:They’re all wearing, like, no bra and a tight white T shirt. Exploring Point Doom. Exploring beautiful British Columbia. They look like travel shows, but, like, with tits. It’s it’s actually quite funny. But, yeah, I I just find it very ironic that we have this world in which men are abandoning women on hiking trails, but also then women are, like, going out there and, like, managing to combine essentially forms of prostitution, I guess you could argue, with hiking by themselves putting themselves at nontrivial risk doing so. It’s I think we need to yeah. I think society maybe needs some adjustment. I I just find this very interesting, and I would I would encourage people to not to not hike. Or if they have to, then don’t don’t drink and hike. No wine. But, yeah, I’m glad we stay inside. Thanks, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins:That that we don’t yeah. Well, so sort of my meta on this Mhmm. Is a few things.

Simone Collins:Okay.

Malcolm Collins:Hiking as a date to me feels crazy.

Simone Collins:Like That is yeah. That’s, murder material. It’s well, I mean, also, if someone invites you on a boat, that’s how you really know you’re screwed.

Malcolm Collins:Like, there’s I I understand how, like, you’re signaling a certain thing about, you know, your outdoorsy, whatever you’re looking for, the right kind of outdoorsy person. And but I’ve done some date hikes before. I I’ve never had a good date hike.

Simone Collins:Because you don’t like that.

Malcolm Collins:They’re always, like, too hot or uncomfortable or whatever. Right? Like, they’re they’re not fun. And they’re often very dangerous, like, hiking, which I think people under undersell. Outside of date hiking what’s my second thought on this?

Simone Collins:Must be the man I mean, obviously, the the Austrian who just left his girlfriend after refusing a helicopter pickup, I mean, she would have paid. It’s not like he’d be paying for it. I don’t know why. Like, that was gross negligence. I I get it. Like, the court the court was correct on that one, I think. But, like, other guys just leaving their girlfriends behind. I could also imagine

Malcolm Collins:So the the helicopter offer was before he left her?

Simone Collins:Yeah. He was on the the phone with a policeman before he left her and refused a helicopter pickup.

Malcolm Collins:Oh, wait. So she was that, like, out of shape?

Simone Collins:He was not well. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Just like, I’m gonna just stay here and then well, that doesn’t sound so bad anymore because then you could say, well, I’m going down to get help or I’m going down to

Simone Collins:Yeah. I think that was different from Alpine Divorce because that that sounds more like those Everest disaster stories where Yeah. That you know, people get left behind because it’s getting kinda rough. You know? Now you have to make a call. But I still think he made the wrong call. He should have called the helicopter. Still, these other cases, I kinda get the impression that one like, the the the two viral clips that are actually out there, because there aren’t that many, ultimately. Some women talk about it, is I think that, like, the these are instances that are not necessarily very close people. Sometimes they’re in groups. Sometimes they’re not in exclusive relationships, and they’re like, yeah. Let’s go hiking. And I think that it’s mostly women overplaying that they’re like, oh, go ahead. I’ll catch up with you later. And, you know, they’re not really that in shape, and they’re having a tough time. And they may not be the most pleasant people in the world, so the people don’t wanna hang around. Even you hate walking with me because I’m so freaking slow. So, like, I know what this is like. And then they act all angry when it takes them forever to catch up or, you know, when they have to walk back by themselves because, you know, they walk super slow. But I I don’t really think this is some kind of new trend about men being super wrong, but it is unchivalrous. Like, if you’re gonna bother to take a woman on a hike, that could be, if you actually cared about the woman, like, your chance to be Mhmm. Her hero, you know, to piggy her piggyback her home or something.

Malcolm Collins:Immediately find out what a whiny

Simone Collins:Well, which I guess you could say is kind of productive. I mean, this might

Malcolm Collins:be I I guess the type of woman who starts crying into TikTok the moment she gets left behind. It’s exactly the type of woman who gets left behind.

Simone Collins:Bullet dodged. Yeah. Well, no. Also wonder have you found any pronunciation?

Malcolm Collins:And ask AI if you can find any posts on this where a guy explains why he left a girl in an Alpine divorce. Like, are these planned by the guys, or are

Simone Collins:Oh, they’re not planned.

Malcolm Collins:No. Like, the guy gets fed up or slightly bored.

Simone Collins:Okay. Yes. There are documented cases in which men involved later gave explanations in court interviews or as reported by the women. Notable examples, Thomas p, who we discussed, that’s the Austrian. He’s he explained that they agreed he should go ahead and seek help because they could not survive the night together. She allegedly urged him, go now. Go. He believed an earlier phone call had already started the rescue process. The court rejected these explanations as adequate, convinced him of or convicted him of gross negligence and manslaughter, and noted his far greater experience and failures to properly communicate the emergency or stay with her. An ex girlfriend also testified that he’d previously left her on the same mountain because she was too slow. And then there’s Jeremy. Jeremy. Machu Picchu Trek 2020 reported in the cut. He left his girlfriend behind on a multi day high altitude hike. Oh my god. I wonder if they did the Rainbow Trail. he later explained that he had repeatedly told her to train, hit the gym beforehand, and she made excuses. On the trail, she was complaining, panting, and miserable. And he decided, quote, I just don’t give up. You know? if you’re going to be miserable back there, I’m just not going to be a part of it. He left her lack of preparation or he felt her lack of preparation was self inflicted and should not ruin his experience. They were in a guided tour group with someone bringing up the rear, so he considered her physically safe. He said he probably would have done the same even if they’d been alone. Oh god. That’s amazing. And then the woman who went viral who also filmed herself going down rocks when she should have been holding on harder, According to her account, the primary source for this wildly discussed case, the man said at the time that he wanted to run ahead to reach the summit before the other hikers on the trail. They became separated that way. After she made it down and they reunited, his reported reaction showed little empathy, including a comment about her brainwashing herself with affirmations. No independent public statement from him appears to have surfaced. I feel like she explained herself. She told on herself just fine other reported patterns. In many women’s accounts and online discussions, the men offered real time or later rationalization such as different paces. She was too slow. Well, you can relate. Can’t you, Malcolm? This is not a woman man thing, though. Your mom walked like she was, I don’t know, like, hooking it to a delicious buffet. I that she really could walk. Wanting to push hard or reach the goal quickly, not realizing or claiming not to realize that separating was a problem. And in one Australian case oh, she was in Australia. I thought she was in some English Moors. This is the spicy Pisces four four four. The man later said he didn’t realize he couldn’t go off on his own and claimed she would not have survived alone in the wild. Oh, she claimed she wouldn’t have survived alone. Well, it is Australia. I mean, now that I know it was Australia, I don’t want anyone I don’t wanna be out there in Australia. My god. Anyway. Yeah, I think a lot of it comes to poor communication and mismatched expectations. But, yeah, that’s I love I love her her hiking companion, the original woman’s hiking companion being like, look. You’re brainwashing yourself into thinking this was a situation that you didn’t totally buy into. I told you I was going ahead. And, yeah, that trail was like I I I given how how little she walked before coming across another hiker, I I think it’s pretty obvious that the trail was crowded at that point, and the guy just wanted to beat the traffic essentially to get to the top. Because it it sucks. If you’re on a kind of narrow and it it was clearly a high incline that they were hiking on. You do not wanna be stuck behind slow people trying to climb to the top, like,

Malcolm Collins:start to see dangerous in some parts. It’s be be

Simone Collins:Well, yeah, you don’t wanna be behind someone, like, that looks unstable and, like, could fall over. So I totally get him. Like, I would be in the same position. With a whiner the

Malcolm Collins:whole time. Just a lever to die on the mountain.

Simone Collins:Time. Yeah. Look. You’re still a pretty good hiker. You made it to the top of that summit wearing fairy goblins. That was so funny. We we made a mistake. We made a mistake in in Aspen. And some people were like, oh, this is a nice trail. And we’re like, this is awful steep. What’s going on?

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Stay away from the steep trails. In addition to staying away from steep trails, stay away from steep roads. Too dangerous. Oh, yeah. I don’t even think you should live in an area with steep roads. I think it’s

Simone Collins:too Someone was once took us on, like, a, like, a little car tour on a family vacation. And the driver was like, now we’re gonna go on, like, this portion. I’ve never seen someone do this on, like, a tour before. But Malcolm was just like, no. You’re not. We’re not going there. Like, you just you just completely nixed, like, three hours of an entire tour, and you’re just

Malcolm Collins:like, nope. I will not put myself in a situation where I could randomly die for a simple three hour car tour.

Simone Collins:Honestly, you probably would’ve had a stroke or, like, a heart attack had we had we done that anyway because you’re super freaking afraid of heights. What was that road called?

Malcolm Collins:I don’t remember. The Road Of Death or something?

Simone Collins:I think it I think I really do think it was called something like the Road Of Death. Hold hold on. Was in Telluride. People die on it all the time. Because, yeah, it was your mom, dude. There are just

Malcolm Collins:so many dangerous things that people do without thinking about how dangerous they are.

Simone Collins:Yeah. And you’d be like, well, I’ll go. And I’m

Malcolm Collins:like, no. You will not, Simone. I’m not having the the wife and mom of my kids put in a dangerous situation like that.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Fair enough. Super fair. I think Oh, yeah. It would have been four hours.

Malcolm Collins:Don’t think about how dangerous dangerous things they do are.

Simone Collins:Yeah. I I think that’s I think that’s very true. Like, same thing with the the whole we we were another and this was the most luxurious family vacation I’ve you know, we’ve it was someone’s, like, blowout birthday. They had a lot of money, so they did a luxury safari, and we were invited. It was it was humbling. It was amazing. It was one of the coolest trips ever. Not most fun, but coolest and most luxurious. And, like, Malcolm kept asking as we’re, like, in these open jeeps next to lions and cheetahs and elephants and and hippos. Like, hey. How do they I mean, what keeps us safe from these wild animals that are famous for killing humans? They’re like, look. They’re they’re habituated to the vehicles. Like, they basically don’t see them. And we’re like, I don’t know about that. And then at one at one point, this elephant, like, rushes our car in the darkness, And we knew that we were in actual danger because immediately, the driver, like, cuts the vehicle and is like, no. Actually, shut off right now. And he looked so freaking scared. And as soon as we got back, he, like, ran to the staff section. And then later at the end of the trip, there was, like, a dinner where we got to hang out with more of the staff. And I think, Malcolm, you had asked them. You’re like, no. But really, like, is no one hurt by the animals? And they’re like, oh, yeah. Last week, our friend was killed by a lion because, like, tourists wanted to get a better look or something. And it’s just like, wait. Just like last week, your friend was just killed by a like, no. People die all the freaking time.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah.

Simone Collins:And it’s just it’s just a matter of, like, well, if the industry is lucrative enough, people will like, they’ll take you there. Like, peep a Sherpa will take you to the top of Everest because you pay them. You know, someone’s gonna drive you on an incredibly dangerous cliffside road because you pay them. Someone will take you on a safari, surround you with dangerous wild animals. They can they can trample you or hurt you at any point because you pay them. Like, that doesn’t mean you’re gonna survive this. In fact, I think recently in Yellowstone, there there was one or two instances of in one of the big, like, guy or, like, it’s it’s one of those volcanic hot pools, like, really hot, like, in really hot pools where they found a shoe with someone’s foot inside it. Just not great. Yeah. Like, just just don’t. There You there’s so many things you could

Malcolm Collins:do that won’t get you immediately killed.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Just don’t. And, also, like, I think people think about, oh, well, skydiving. Like, I think probably the stats on skydiving are just talking about skydiving accidents, like the parachute not opening properly when they’re not talking about the rate of accidents in those super rickety planes. Like, I remember when I went skydiving, I was like, oh, I’m gonna die in this plane. Like, this oh, I thought about the skydiving part, but I didn’t think about the plane part because they are, like, held together literally with tape, which is disturbing. So it’s very true. It’s very true. But, anyway, I I I think the most disturbing thing about this isn’t abandoning women on hiking trips. I’m most concerned about women getting this very skewed perspective about what female solo travel is like from influencers, again, who will make it look good because they get money for it. But in the end, like, it’s not a good idea to wear a white T shirt and no bra or just honestly to, like, hike alone as a female at all. Right? But to do so, as you say, literally dressed like bait is worrisome.

Malcolm Collins:Oh, look. It’s bait.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Anyway, I hope she posted all of those videos and stuff after she finished hiking the trail because I’m sure I mean, she has a lot of followers on

Malcolm Collins:this I mean, I I don’t think women also realize how much more dangerous our countries are getting as you’re letting in. Because I I could say that try going to Egypt and dressing like this. You know? Yeah. Don’t. Yeah. You you are gonna get so if you if you dress like this or or to need

Simone Collins:to don’t. Like, eve and even if someone doesn’t attack you, like, even if you’re in a very crowded place and you’re not isolated and alone. Like, when your mom took her friends to Marrakesh on that trip, and she warned them about, like, dressing reasonably, but they didn’t. And then that one of her friends got spit on, like, just at one of them are And

Malcolm Collins:and and that’s, like, obviously not the worst that could happen.

Simone Collins:No. That’s that’s the best that could happen. Yeah. Like, honestly. But, like, you you don’t want that experience.

Malcolm Collins:So just But the the point I’m making is is now those people exist in our national parks.

Simone Collins:Well, I don’t know if they’re in our national

Malcolm Collins:national

Simone Collins:They they go to national parks? Egyptians camp too. We’re not we’re not singling out Egyptians. Or what do you call someone from Morocco? Moroccans, obviously. Okay. Sorry. I was thinking Marrakesh. Marrakeshians.

Malcolm Collins:Marrakeshians? What’s that what’s that place we we signal out all the time because of fraud? That’s probably a better example. India? No. In Africa. East Africa.

Simone Collins:Of this Somalia. Somalia. Somalia. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:You dress like that in Somalia.

Simone Collins:Oh. Let’s see. Yeah. Nigeria isn’t there’s, like, the scammy part, and then there’s, like, the really, really awesome part or so I’m told by this one Nigerian YouTuber who, like, really hates some Nigerians but thinks that, like, his group is the best.

Malcolm Collins:I mean, Nigerian immigrants are not particularly known for scams or anything like that.

Simone Collins:No. They’re among, like, the top performers. Yeah. I I think it’s it’s very similar with, like, Brahmin Indian tech workers where, like, it gives this very skewed perspective of the entire nation because you get, like, some of the brightest and wealthiest people coming to certain sectors. But I think that shifts depending on what the industry is, like, where the sort of family cohorts are are forming and stuff. I don’t know. I don’t know. Let’s yeah. Anyway, look. If you’re into ladies who like hiking and you wanna like, OF has a lot of stuff for you there. So that’s great. I don’t know if it’s, like, more popular than other genres. I’m sure if I searched, like, video game, it would give me a billion results. But yeah. What I see what I see happening overall with this discourse is this just being another angle by which women are basically speciating from men. Women are like, look. You can’t you can’t hike with a man. You should do everything yourself. It’s it’s it’s a reinforcement. You think that the the the man versus bear meme would have severed by now, but this is, like, man versus bear redux of, no. But, really, here’s more proof that we should choose the bear. Men will leave you in the middle of nowhere. And, yeah, I I we’re in a we’re in a difficult position. People have requested that we do a full on, like, detailed episode on, like, how to win over a young leftist woman because I think they want, like Dress up

Malcolm Collins:as a bear and go in the woods.

Simone Collins:Or a man, a basket. Be a basket. Yeah. Maybe we’ll do that. I I don’t know. Chime in in the comments if you actually want us to because Okay. We can actually get tactical. I just feel like it’s gonna be really boring because it it kind of is. I’m sure it was desperately boring for you. So sorry.

Malcolm Collins:So which episode do wanna run tomorrow? This one or the one before it?

Simone Collins:God. I really love the one before it. Okay.

Malcolm Collins:You had fun talking about Wicker Man and female gooders?

Simone Collins:I do not. For the record, I really don’t wanna watch Wicker. I saw that preview, and I my face matched yours the first time I watched it. I was like, no. No. I mean, like, half the comments on the preview on YouTube were just like the splinters. No. But, anyway, I’m I’m very entertained by the whole thing. So, yeah, I think we should do that one. How? God.

Malcolm Collins:The scratches?

Simone Collins:Yeah. I can’t touch that part of my

Malcolm Collins:skin. By yeah. You gotta migrate him to be part of the goof patrol. He’s growing too fast. He’s too mobile.

Simone Collins:Monster. The teeth, the claws. Maybe we have a werewolf, son. What is this? Gonna get, like, bitten to death.

Malcolm Collins:Imagine when he joins the other kids in the fights that they all wanna have.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Except, like I don’t know. Our our kids know how to play gentle, and he doesn’t yet. So I don’t know. I’m a little I’m a little concerned. But Indy freaking loves him. They all love him so much. Yeah. They should play together. They had sex with babying him and feeding him. And Oh my god.

Malcolm Collins:They’ll need a little caretaker.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Oh, okay. Oh, they’re gonna be home tomorrow, so we can do that. But yeah. Okay. Alright. I’m making a mistake tonight. Yeah? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:And just heating up the queso from yesterday.

Simone Collins:Steak and queso? Oh, that’s heat up

Malcolm Collins:more than the queso we already have.

Simone Collins:Oh, okay. I will then. I have a lot of queso. What? But I have two things at stake. I have a lot of queso. I know. We can figure out various things we can do with it, I’m sure.

Malcolm Collins:Of course, we can. And it I’m I’m sure it’ll hold for a while too.

Simone Collins:The cheese sauce. What could possibly go wrong? Well, probably a lot of thing. I don’t you know what? We’re not gonna think about it. I love you. And

Malcolm Collins:Love you too. Ciao.

Simone Collins:When you take pills, you act like you’re gonna die. I, like, worry about you every time. You

Malcolm Collins:have no idea how bad they taste if they go down wrong.

Simone Collins:And you like Yeah. I know those pills. No. So here’s what you do. Okay? Because I I, yeah, I I I just had to take a round of pills like that. You you fill your mouth with, in this case, milk. You could do water. Right? And then you leave the water in your mouth, heads up like this, drop the pill in, swallow. It goes in with the liquid. It never touches your tongue or anything in your mouth, and it goes down with the gulp. So you’re not getting it, like, any any remnant of it. Try it next time. Because the the medrol dose pack I had to take for the the two IVF rounds was like, ugh. It was bitter. It was super bitter, but it that worked like a charm. So just a just a thought. Just a thought. Pro tip. This is a this is an upset about pro tips. I’ll get right into it. You ready? Now that you’ve been through your travails of taking one pill.

Malcolm Collins:Alpine divorce I’m learning about now.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 27:Side note, we have finally added music video generation to rfab.ai, but it’s still in its alpha stage. If you’re unfamiliar with rfab.ai, it will be pinned in the top comment. It is where this video was made and edited. It was used to generate cool effects in this video, like the Japanese woman’s voice you heard earlier. And it’s the best place online for safe for work and not safe for work AI interactive stories, allowing you to explore virtual worlds, make videos, make art, translate documents, search every fiction database at once online or every non safe for work database at once online. You can find, again, a link in the pinned comment. Oh, and we have been improving our based AI system, so which is the system that can answer any question without political bias. Very advanced AI model that is completely honest, and we’ve had to use it for a few episodes to do research. And now it has stuff like audio to audio mode, so you can use it from your phone without needing to push buttons if you want or a push to talk button or a button that you can enable to let it give you images when it wants to. This is all alpha, not all tested yet, so I’m excited to see how it works. With the song coming up, it’s one of our older songs. So, obviously, it’s, you know, played in front of the kids. And one of my boys, as I’d mentioned, they came up, and they looked very concerned. And they go, daddy, why did mommy choose a bear?

Speaker 25:In the woods so deep and dark, Simone walks alone at night. She meets a random grizzly grizzly there under pale moonlight. The man might talk, might charm, might lie, might cause a fright, but the bear just roars and hugs real tight. What a lovely sight. Oh, Simone. Oh, Simone. You chose the bear over every man out there without a care. You’ll replace the guys with paws and fur so fine. Simone’s got a new love story. First, I’m Valentine. Malcolm asked why pick the beast. He’s we’ll ir to own. You’ll trade the patriarchy for a furry friend. Simone’s new boyfriend’s got four legs in the air. Now Malcolm’s left to wonder why she sides with claws and teeth while he’s out here defending men grinding his teeth beneath. She’ll picnic with the big old brood chair salmon from the stream and whisper you’re more predictable than any man’s bad dream. Maybe one day she’ll come back home with bear hugs for the crew. But till then, she’s dancing wild where the tall pines grew. Malcolm sings this silly tune, half laughing, half in fear. My wife’s replaced all humankind with one big fuzzy dear, oh, Simone. Oh, Simone, you chose the bear.

Simone and Malcolm walk through a widely circulated write-up on izzat—the North Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi honor/reputation system—after Homath quote-tweeted it. They treat it the same way they treat critiques of Western hookup culture, Chinese face, or American individualism: as a cultural technology that can either support or sabotage flourishing.

They read the original Kiwi Farms post, then fact-check it. Izzat is a real, documented concept of collective family/clan honor. It is not practiced by all Indians. It is concentrated among many Hindi and Muslim communities in the north and is a poor fit for Jain, Christian, and Buddhist communities. Admitting fault can be treated as humiliating the whole group. Disputes can escalate past the original slight. Police and officials sometimes avoid taking sides. Honor killings are the part the original post underplayed: UNFPA and NGO estimates put worldwide honor killings in the thousands per year, and peer-reviewed work ties izzat to those cases in India and Pakistan. The 2017 Delhi toilet/urination murder they cite is a real case.

They also cover jugaad (workaround culture that can mean frugal innovation or cheating the rule), H-1B co-ethnic hiring and the Cognizant discrimination findings, Air India training scandals, and why a high-performing Indian diaspora can coexist with a country that still struggles with public goods and trust. Malcolm’s secondary explanation: License Raj and the post-independence decision to treat British rule as synonymous with capitalism.

Firsthand: their travel business had clients from many countries. Indian sub-agencies, they say, repeatedly broke vendor contracts, hid large bills, and scammed end customers—including after second chances. They live in a majority-Indian neighborhood and like their neighbors. The argument is about norms and selection, not “all Indians.”

They close by comparing this to Africans, Chinese, and Indians criticizing Western individualism and hookup culture, and by arguing that slapping “racist” on a pattern debate makes the backlash worse (Streisand effect), especially after Canada’s diploma-mill wave.

Weekend episodes and citations: Patreon / Substack.Books: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08FMWMFTG

Show Notes

The Izaat Post

On November 2nd, 2025, @XJosh posted three recent Kiwifarms screenshots to X, saying: Kiwi Farms user breaks down ‘Izzat’, the Indian subcontinent’s cultural honor system. It effectively explains every single trope about Indian behavior: they all participate in an invisible clout-chasing game that involves screwing over everyone as much as possible. Worth the read

The screenshots, showing a post by GluttonousManSlob read:

Hi. I didn’t see this term mentioned in the thread, so I wanted to share this all with you. It’s about Izzat. Some posts have mentioned ‘saving face’, which is Izzat, but I wanted to elaborate on it.

Izzat has no direct translation into English. We only have terms that can broach the same concept such as ‘honour’ or ‘reputation’ or ‘face’. Izzat is so much more than that. It’s a zero-sum game of collective honour shared by whole groups of people, all of whom take it very, very seriously. A system like this isn’t just foreign to Enlightenment values, but I’d argue it’s antithetical to every sensible form of governance on the planet. It will destroy any system that assumes good faith.

Izzat conflicts are not about who is right and who is wrong. It’s about who wins and who loses. This means it’s a zero-sum game where just about any action is justified (including murder) to restore the lost Izzat. Izzat is a limited social currency and the easiest way to get it is to take it from someone else. Winning is righteous in Izzat. Losing is unrighteous. This means that if someone plays the game of izzat well enough, they can get away with just about anything (murder, rape, scamming, cheating, stealing). The only morality in Izzat is the protection of your group’s collective ego. The only appropriate response when your Izzat is attacked is the complete destruction of whoever insulted it.

Two people get into an argument. They might escalate, but chances are it won’t be that bad. i.e. ‘Sorry I broke your garden gnome.’ With two Indians in an argument, the stakes are always deadly thanks to Izzat. Neither of them can back down, nor can they admit fault. Admitting fault is seen as deliberately humiliating yourself. Not only that, but because Izzat is shared, you are shaming everyone who shares your Izzat. So, admitting fault or taking responsibility for a problem is a form of social suicide. This means even if the dispute was over something completely f*****g stupid or trivial (like a broken garden gnome), it could spiral into a decades long honour feud.

Izzat is also the reason why police are reluctant to get involved in disputes. Because Izzat is a zero-sum game, all participants are involved in the game. If a policeman sides with one family over another in an Izzat dispute, this means that he’s deliberately taking the side of that family and dishonouring the other. This marks him for retribution by the offending party. Without parties being able to be impartial, then centralized authority cannot effectively function.

Let’s say someone in India complains about a broken water pipe. Instead of the problem being addressed, the official responsible for the water pipe denies it’s a problem and counterattacks him instead, because daring to question his efficacy in his role was challenging his Izzat. So the official destroys the person who brought the problem up. The water pipe never gets fixed.

Izzat is also the reason why Indian managers are so infamous for hiring more Indians. It’s because from the manager’s perspective, he’s using his position to gain an invisible social currency. Merit and actual qualifications come second to that idea. If he hired a westerner, he would not gain or even lose Izzat by doing so. He has a very strong cultural incentive not to be impartial. Meanwhile, if he can strong-arm dozens of Indians into a company, he is gaining huge quantities of Izzat and conspirators who owe an absolute debt to him.

It’s not uncommon to see Indians gloat about their success in the west. And yes, izzat is very much a system that enables short term success. But the fundamental reality is the prosperity that these Indians find so attractive in the first place wouldn’t exist if the west practiced something similar to Izzat. Our systems can only exist on the assumption of good faith, and not a majority of people exploiting them for destructive short term gain. On top of that, if an Indian causes the systems and companies he comes into contact with to collapse, then he can just go back to India with his plunder. He has no stakes in the long-term prosperity, functionality or stability of these systems. The stakes are completely asymmetrical in the Indian’s favour.

You all know about that infamous video of that Indian scamming a food bank. Once again, winning is righteous. Losing is not. By employing ‘clever’ means (jugaad), he successfully extracted more resources for himself and his family. From the perspective of jugaad, a rule is not something to respect, but merely an obstacle to the Indian’s own gain. Since he cheated the system and wasn’t caught, he is seen as a righteous and dignified man in the Izzat framework.

* We can attest to this being an issue: One of the businesses we ran had clients from all over the world: The USA, Spain, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, and India

* While we had occasional issues with Venezuelan clients getting in trouble by helping people flee the country (pretty reasonable) for the most part our agency clients were reasonable

* However, our Indian clients were so systematically scammy that we had to completely change our terms

* They violated major vendor contracts so egregiously we almost lost key vendors that were crucial for our business operations

* One racked up $60,000 in expenses in a way that was obscured from us and then disappeared, leaving us with the bill

* We also started hearing from these clients’ direct customers, who were being scammed by them

I read a story in India about a man offering to pay another man to use a public toilet instead of defecating openly. The latter left and came back with several friends and beat the former to death. The problem was not that he was defecating openly, but that he was criticised for doing so. And with Izzat, it’s not an eye-for-an-eye. Izzat is often an eye-for-a-whole-head. Disproportionately and brutally annihilating your enemies is the correct move to make because you take back your lost Izzat and then some. This kind of vindictiveness would be rightly seen as horrifying and disgusting in most of the world.

There was a greentext from 4chan (I don’t have it so bear with me). Anon knew an Indian. This Indian would make outlandish claims (he could benchpress 500kg, he was a billionaire, he did arms deals with the US government). Anon said he didn’t believe the Indian. The Indian reacted with righteous indignation. The situation escalated to the point where the Indian was emailing Anon death threats. Anon responded by forwarding the emails to the police. The Indian killed himself. Anon was left baffled at the whole situation and had no idea what the f**k just happened.

So, without Izzat, this looks like an utterly insane and pointless sequence of events. But with Izzat? The Indian’s actions suddenly make sense. He was boasting to increase his Izzat, and when Anon simply stated his disbelief, it was seen as a vicious attack on his Izzat. The Indian escalated the situation to restore the lost Izzat. When the police got involved, the dispute had become public, so the Indian’s shame had increased to unbearable levels. He committed suicide in order to save his remaining Izzat. Anon had no idea what Izzat was, or if he did, he didn’t mention it, yet the Indian’s actions perfectly align with this framework. This is what makes me believe the green text was genuine.

The western idea of merit is competence in a role. Merit in Izzat is determined by what lengths you will go to to achieve a goal, with competence merely being one path. It often becomes a secondary path, as printing a degree that says you’re qualified to be a jet pilot is just as good as being able to actually fly a jet in the eyes of Izzat. In other words, Izzat selects for appearance over authentic merit or morality.

* NOTE: He’s probably using the jet pilot example in reference to a very real issue with Air India: Regulators have repeatedly cited Air India for inadequate or falsified pilot training — from unapproved simulators and skipped monitoring requirements to outright fraudulent training logs — with the most serious recent scrutiny coming after the 2025 Ahmedabad crash.

Now, a counterargument an Indian might make is ‘Izzat is a dated word’ or ‘We don’t use that word.’ I like to compare it to the word vendetta. Vendetta in Italian has a very specific meaning (a familial blood feud where revenge must be taken to restore honour etc). This word would not exist if this didn’t reflect a specific facet of Italian life. Izzat is no different. Hell, I’ve had to write several paragraphs just to explain what the hell Izzat is. It isn’t an archaic term either. It’s well and truly alive in the modern Indian lexicon.

If izzat were regularly discussed openly, this would be considered one of the greatest possible insults in the Izzat framework. Izzat is why Indians do mass reports, death threats, false flags and various other underhanded tactics when a westerner exposes something they don’t want people to see (such as the poop throwing festival). If I knew something like that existed in the west, I would say ‘wow that’s disgusting, we should stop this’. But in India, the problem is not the point. The point is the problem being exposed and the perceived insult to izzat from exposing the problem. The water pipe never gets fixed.

The one saving grace is Izzat performs awfully in the long term. Once Indians displace you, they will go back to playing this insane game among themselves. It’s what happened to companies that got hit by Izzat. This is also why there aren’t any homegrown Indian companies that have the same influence as Microsoft or Google. Whenever they start getting ahead, their companies implode from infighting, nobody doing their jobs, everybody trying to cheat each other and nobody addressing critical issues. Systems that delegate authority and work on good faith eventually win out over zero-sum honour feuding. Izzat cannot maintain complex systems because its players are only concerned with short term gain.

With the west, the issue is that it often fails to live up to its own ideals. It’s not a perfect system, but we can course correct and address problems pragmatically. With Izzat, Indians live up to those ideals very, very often. When you see the dysfunctionality of India, remember that it’s a feature of Izzat, not a bug.

Jugaad as a term also warrants more explanation, but my post is long enough as it is.

Fact Checks

Accurate

* Izzat is a real South Asian concept of honor, family reputation, and social standing

* especially of the family, clan, caste, or community rather than just the individual.

* It is used across religions in North India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

* A 2017 Delhi toilet/urinating case that OP cites (I did not bother to read it) is real.

* Ravinder Kumar, an e-rickshaw driver, offered two young men a few rupees to use a nearby public toilet instead of urinating on the roadside. They left, returned with a group, and beat him to death. The post slightly misstates it as open defecation, but the incident happened and illustrates extreme, disproportionate reaction to public shaming. It is not evidence that “two Indians in an argument” always risk decades-long deadly feuds.

* Many Indians did freak out after Tyler Oliviera went to the Indian poop festival

* Food-bank videos of Indian international students exist and were controversial.

* Clips from Canada, Ireland, and elsewhere showed students (sometimes explaining how to access university or community food programs) using resources.

* Some cases were framed as scams; others were official student supports. Debates followed about need vs. opportunism.

* Jugaad (improvisation/workaround, sometimes cutting corners) is a real term with both positive (“frugal innovation”) and negative (“half-baked shortcut, rule-bending”) connotations in India.

* Networking and favoritism in some Indian tech/H-1B circles is widely reported.

* Indian nationals dominate H-1B visas.

* There are documented patterns of regional/caste/language clustering, allegations of Indian managers preferring co-ethnics, visa-holder exploitation, and at least one major lawsuit (Cognizant) finding discrimination against non-Indians. Immigrant ethnic networks are common across groups; attributing it primarily to “gaining Izzat” is speculative.

Beyond Just What OP Says:

* Izaat is to thank for honor killings in these regions (see: “For the Sake of Family and Tradition: Honour Killings in India and Pakistan”, which explicitly identifies izzat s a central framework that helps explain and justify honour killings in India and Pakistan.)

* From their abstract:

* “The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that the annual worldwide number of honour killings is as high as 5,000 women and girls, though some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) estimate as many as 20,000 honour killings annually worldwide.”

* “Despite limited statistics, research shows that honour killings occur amongst women of different ages, religions, and social status, wealth, education, and location.”

* Other experiments found that high-caste rural North Indian men showed more retaliatory attitudes to slights than low-caste men. Admitting error can carry social cost in status-conscious settings. Police and officials sometimes handle “community matters” poorly due to panchayats, influence, or fear of escalation

Unverifiable

* The anecdotes he presents (however our anecdotes are verifiable)

Inaccurate

* India is not a cultural monolith; Izzat is not universally practiced (Most Indians do not treat every disagreement as an existential honor feud.)

* (At least per peer-reviewed academic researchers), Izzat is not “undiscussable” in the way the post claims (e.g. OP states that Izzat openly is “one of the greatest possible insults.”—the term appears routinely in news, literature, activism, and everyday speech.

* “Any action including murder is justified” and “eye-for-a-whole-head” as the default for trivial slights. Honor violence is real but concentrated on specific triggers (women’s conduct, caste, marriage). Most interpersonal disputes in India do not become blood feuds. Treating this as the operating system for all Indians is false.

* “Police cannot be impartial because siding with anyone “marks them for retribution.” Authorities do intervene, prosecute, and sometimes fail—for the same mix of corruption, overload, community pressure, and incompetence seen in many countries. The claim that centralized authority is inherently impossible is not supported.”

Posts Critiquing Western Culture

* An African diaspora poster: Djehuty Ma’at-Ra @DjehutySpeaks: 😂😂😂 These people are impacted by the West and Western ways. The American environment is imbalanced and toxic, anti-communal/community. They (certain Blacks) are looking through Western lens and not African lens. Western = individualism; African/Eastern = communalism/family oriented. “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.”

* An Indonesian-Chinese poster林 Linnamon @_linnamon_: Ironically instead of empowering a person, individualism is more likely to destroys a person’s purpose in life. You don’t have any goal except worldly hedonism. Don’t ask again why so many folks are easily depressed and become antisocial when this is the value of your society 👇

* He’s pointing to someone’s post reading “society is based on self interest”

* A video posted by @viprabuddhi of a Canadian Chinese man (often labeled “Chinese Historian” in the replies) walking through how Western hookup and drinking culture wrecks family formation and women’s long-term outcomes. He links casual sex, campus/date rape, alcohol-fueled decisions, one-night stands, unwanted pregnancies, and later divorce to women looking “terrible” by their 30s and families that cannot stay together. He argues Westernized Asian women who absorb the same pattern are described as following the same collapse.

* Indian accounts repeatedly frame Western culture as the vector that broke family discipline:

* @IshBhatt197: “It’s all because of following blindly to western culture ....families are broken..no morals...no values....FREEDOM...FAKE FEMINISM....”

* Dr. Van Nostrand @RSD270: “This entire thing, such shows, the kind of humour, this dating & hooking up culture, is all adopted under peer pressure from the west, this doesn’t come naturally to our society, and it shows. Only those unswayed by this will survive in the long run, rest will drown in degeneracy”

* shailputri (quater life crises) @shailputri_gd quote tweeting:

* Radha 🌟 @SheIsTheFire, who posted: “Dear women, Never ever, I repeat, NEVER EVER, discuss your past with your husband or your would-be-husband. Some things need to go with you to your grave! Or else there is a big chance your partner will make sure he digs a living grave for you with whatever you shared with him out of pure honesty and trust. Not everyone has the maturity to understand relationships and the life choices of a woman! #TwishaSharma #TwishaSharmaDeathCase”

* Bit of a spoiler about the western criticism of Izzat we’re about to get into

* With: “western feminism taught indian women about sexual liberation but failed to impart them with the faustian spirit of anglo feminism white women hoed openly and didnt give a f**k about what society thought of em meanwhile women here wanna hoe and still be perceived as sati savitri”

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins [0:00]:. Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited, I think, to be chatting with you today even though we’re speedrunning our doom on YouTube because it’s Homath, who’s now going by Homath equals psychomath on X now, recently quote tweeted this 2025 post on the Indian concept of Izzat writing, please read every word, then go back and read it again. The Indian problem is set to grow exponentially. And initially, skipping the write up shared, which portrays Izzat, this concept, as a a zero sum system of collective honor that drives conflict and corruption and favoritism and institutional dysfunction among Indians. I just went straight to the comments, and maybe it was like, oh, man. This is racist. I can’t take this seriously. But then it was like, wait. Other groups criticize elements of Western culture all the time. And when people do this, Westerners don’t freak out or yell racist. In fact, we often agree and then engage in discourse about it.

Malcolm Collins [1:00]:And Well, hold on. It’s not just Western culture. Like, uh, people constantly talk about how saving face creates major systemic problems within Chinese culture.

Simone Collins [1:11]:Yeah. 100%. Yeah. This isn’t just an anti Indian thing. Um, but I I actually think that racism becomes worse. And we’ve talked about this just recently when people slap legitimate critiques of bad behavior with the label of racism. So what we’re gonna do, okay, is we’re gonna read the write up on Izan. It’s kinda long, so I’m gonna take some choice quotes. Then we’re gonna fact check it. Okay, YouTube. We’re gonna fact check it, and then we’re gonna review posts critiquing facets of Western culture that are problematic so that we can see, look, this is not this is not a one-sided thing. This is a collective discourse that we all should be having even if we all sound a little angry at people when we do it. And then we’re gonna discuss all of these cultural shortcomings with the same approach we discussed the failings of Western culture, all from the perspective of cultural technologies and or traits that either contribute to or hamper human flourishing. Okay? So let’s get into the Ezat post. Hold on. Hold on.

Malcolm Collins [2:06]:Hold on. That’s a that is a lot of hand waving Simone just did to try to say, I’m gonna be super racist against Indians.

Simone Collins [2:13]:I don’t wanna be demonic. Stop.

Malcolm Collins [2:16]:Simone Simone, I I will add the caveat. I have actually, in real life, never met an Indian person I didn’t like. The

Simone Collins [2:25]:What about the Indians who stole tens of thousands of dollars from them? Met them.

Malcolm Collins [2:33]:They they I never talked to them. That was you who was communicating with them. But I will say that there are problems. Like, there are systemic issues that we need to address, um, and talking about these issues is important to seriously addressing them. Continue. Simone. You you you are so

Simone Collins [2:52]:It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay. Okay. On November 20 on 11/02/2025, at x Josh posted three recent Kiwi Farm screenshots to x saying, Kiwi Farm’s user breaks down Izat, the Indian subcontinent’s cultural honor system. It effectively explains every single trope about Indian behavior. They all participate in an invisible clout chasing game that involves screwing over everyone as much as possible. Worth the read. And the screenshots show this post by Gluttonous Manslob, Fair Kiwi Farms. I’m just gonna read some excerpts from it. Alright? So we’ll just jump right in. The gluttonous manslob typed, we only have terms that can broach the same concept such as honor or reputation or face. Izzat is so much more than that. It’s a zero sum game of collective honor shared by the whole groups of people, all of whom take it very, very seriously. A system like this isn’t just foreign to enlightenment values, but I’d argue it’s antithetical to every sensible form of governance on the planet. It will destroy any system that assumes good faith. Izzat conflicts sorry. Izzat conflicts are not about who is right and who is wrong. It’s about who wins and who loses. This means it’s a zero sum game where just about any action is justified, including murder, to restore the lost Izzat. Izzat is a limited social currency, and the easiest way to get it is to take it from someone else. Winning is righteous in Izzat. Losing is unrighteous. This means that if someone plays the game of Yzat well enough, they can get away with just about anything, murder, rape, scamming, cheating, stealing. The only morality in Yzat is the protection of your group’s collective ego. The only appropriate response when your Yzat is attacked is a complete destruction of whoever insulted it. Two people get into an argument. They might escalate, but chances are it won’t be that bad. I e, sorry. I broke your garden gnome with two Indians in an argument. The stakes are always deadly to Ezat. Neither of them can back down nor then can they admit fault. Admitting fault is seen as deliberately humiliating yourself. Not only that, but because Ezat is shared, you’re shimming everyone who shares your Ezat. So admitting fault or taking responsibility for a problem is a form of social suicide. This means if the dispute was over something completely f*****g stupid or trivial, like a broken garden gnome, it could spiral into decades long honor feud.

Malcolm Collins [5:25]:So I I’ve gotta I’ve gotta already have a caveat here

Simone Collins [5:28]:Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [5:28]:Because the moment you started reading this, I was like, this is completely incompatible with a number of Indian cultures Yeah. As a concept.

Simone Collins [5:38]:Yes.

Malcolm Collins [5:38]:And I was like for you, I was like, this is, like, the opposite of Jainism. Like, if you ever met, like, a Jain, you would know that whatever is being described here is the exact opposite of Jainism in in every Jain value. So I was like, okay. Where is this actually in India? So Izzat is not actually practiced over all of India. It is an Arabic derived word

Simone Collins [6:05]:It is. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [6:06]:Particularly in North India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Yeah.

Simone Collins [6:10]:But also, Malcolm, keep in mind, right, percentage of rural population. Indians are 18.3 of the world population. Pakistanis are 3.2% of the world population. Chains are point 07% of the population. So to be like, but chains, the the yes. One of the biggest things with the the sweeping claims that what gluttonous fact, gluttonous slob says, it’s wrong to say this is universal. Also, the this concept is such that even if a small

Malcolm Collins [6:43]:No. No. No. No. No. No. Hold on. It’s not wrong to say that it’s universal. Certain things you can say about a cultural group or whatever, but being aware that you’re talking about a concept that is mostly tied to one group among a group that already hates each other. Right?

Simone Collins [7:06]:Like Yes. For real.

Malcolm Collins [7:07]:And Hindi Indians are, like, practically about to have a an ethnically civil war.

Simone Collins [7:14]:Recently almost get there. When we were traveling with the kids, there was something about that. Like, a war was almost diverted or whatever. Remember? They’re always at the verge. Don’t they do that play war every day at the border? You know what I’m talking about?

Malcolm Collins [7:30]:Yeah. So the the the point yes. But the point here being, right, is you are severely kneecapping yourself if among your enemy troop like, you’re like, these people are our enemy. Uh-huh. And only 40% of those people are your enemy and the other 60% actually wanna murder that 40%.

Simone Collins [7:50]:Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [7:50]:You have completely what are you doing?

Simone Collins [7:54]:Totally.

Malcolm Collins [7:54]:What are you doing? You are throwing away your ability to actually win any sort of larger game by being myopically racist a in a bad way. Like, I I I believe in educated racism. If you want to learn about another culture and how they’re unique, but don’t confuse like, the Christian Indians don’t practice this system either. It’s not practiced in their regions.

Speaker 7 [8:18]:It’s also not recorded in Buddhist communities.

Malcolm Collins [8:22]:Stoking internal ethnic tensions is one of your greatest strengths when you are we did this with the Native Americans like crazy. Why are you What? No. Sorry. But I I the point being is that’s how you actually win. That’s how like, if you’re actually playing any sort of game of, like, I care about my ethnic group’s best interest, you undermine those best interests by saying all Indians are bad. Okay? Yeah. You grow those interests by being like some Indian groups we get along with. Some Indian groups are do have cultures that are antithetical to ours, and you go to the Indian groups that are you get along with, and you go, hey. Indians who we get along with, we do trade. We like each other a lot. And you know what? I haven’t liked that group over there for a really long time. And they’re like, you know what? We haven’t liked them either. And then we say, okay. It’s so weird. I happen to bring a bunch of guns along. So I’m just gonna leave them here, and we’ll come back in a week and see how things went. And you Simone’s looking into the distance, but that is basically what The United States has been doing with Israel for the past fifty years. People are like, why do we keep giving them military technology? I wonder. Anyway, continue.

Speaker 8 [9:49]:And it’s also important to remember that the relative difference you have with a group based on one in particular cultural difference, like, say, Just because you’re like, I disagree with this cultural practice, and it leads to friction with my group does not mean that the two groups are totally incompatible. It just means you may need to treat them differently. As we’ll talk about later in this we have a travel business. And every single time and and note, we’ve worked with thousands of clients from all over the world, and we have dealt with very few scams. But literally every single time we have worked with an Indian client, we have had them attempt to scam people. And that led us to implement different policies around how we onboard our Indian clients. And that is just the way you deal with something like this. for even if I have a problem with, I might have more of a problem with cultural groups that have norms around marrying children. and I might think, no. That’s really bad. Or I might have more problems with cultural groups that have a mandate to eradicate my people, which Indians don’t have. and some groups genuinely do that we also allow in as immigrants. It’s important to remember all these things relative to each other and not take these absolutist positions of I hate this group or I hate this group or I hate this group because the people who take those positions, they end up doing more to isolate our communities. Like, you can recognize differences in groups. You can recognize problems within groups while still saying, like I get it at the beginning of this, every individual Indian I have ever met, I have liked.

Simone Collins [11:29]:I shall continue reading from the, yes, admittedly very sweeping write up, which I don’t endorse. I’m just reading this is part of the beginning of the discourse. Anyway, he writes, is also the reason why police are reluctant to get involved in disputes because Ezat is a zero sum game. All participants are involved in the game. If a policeman sides with one family over another in an Ezat dispute, this means he’s deliberately taking the side of that family and dishonoring the other. This marks him for retribution by the offending party. Without the parties being able to be impartial, then centralized authority cannot effectively function. Let’s say someone in India complains about a broken water pipe. Instead of the problem being addressed, the official is responsible for the water pipe, denies it’s a problem, and counterattacks him instead because daring to question his efficacy and his role was challenging his. So the official destroys the person who brought the problem up. The water pipe never gets fixed. Izzat is the reason why Indian managers are so infamous for hiring more Indians. It’s because from the manager’s perspective, he’s hiring his position sorry. He’s using his position to gain an invisible social currency. Merit and actual qualifications come second to that idea. If he hired a westerner, he would not gain or even lose Izzat by doing so. He has a very strong cultural incentive to not be impartial. Meanwhile, if he can strong-arm dozens of Indians into a company, he is gaining huge quantities of Vizat and his conspirators who owe an absolute debt to him. It’s not

Malcolm Collins [13:00]:uncommon Sorry, Simone. I have to I have to cut in here. I I I misspoke. I I did more research. It is actually also common among the Hindi group. So they so it’s common among both the Hindi and the Muslim Indians, and it’s not common among the Jain and the Christian Indians.

Simone Collins [13:13]:Well, that makes sense. Um, because when people say Western, they they they typically mean Christian. And Jane is just like, let’s never hurry.

Malcolm Collins [13:21]:Whatever. The Christian Indians have been there since the first wave of conversions. There have been Christian communities in India as long as there’s been Christian communities in Italy.

Simone Collins [13:31]:That why does that surprise you?

Malcolm Collins [13:32]:No. But the point I’m making is that’s not Western. Christianity is is an old religion in India. It’s not like a they’re

Simone Collins [13:38]:not like a Western. What I mean to say is when people are talking about Western civilization, they’re typically talking about Christian civilization.

Malcolm Collins [13:44]:Okay. Okay. Continue.

Simone Collins [13:45]:It’s not uncommon to see Indians gloat about their success in the West. And, yes, Izzat is very much a system that enables short term success, but the fundamental reality is that prosperity oh, the fundamental reality of that prosperity that these Indians find so attractive in the first place wouldn’t exist if the West practice something similar to Isat. Our systems can exist only on the assumption of good faith and not a majority of people exploiting them for destructive short term gain. On top of that, if an Indian causes the symptoms and systems and companies he comes into contact with to collapse, then he could just go back to India with his plunder. He has no stakes in the long term prosperity, functionality, or stability of these systems. These stakes are completely asymmetrical in the Indian’s favor. You all know about the infamous video of that Indian scamming a food bank. Once again, winning is righteous, losing is not. By employing a clever means to God this is another concept he

Malcolm Collins [14:39]:could have gone into, but he

Simone Collins [14:40]:chose not to because it would be a whole new can of worms. He successfully extracted more resources for himself and his family. From the perspective of Jugadh, a rule is not something to respect, but merely an obstacle to the Indian’s own gain. Mhmm. Since he cheated the system and wasn’t caught, he’s seen as righteous and dignified man with the EZOP framework. Now I can go ahead and fact check this right away because I would normally have not believed this, but we can attest to this being an issue. Yeah. Because one of the businesses we ran had clients from all over the world. It had clients in The USA, in Spain, in Italy, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, and, yes, also India. And while we had occasional issues with Venezuelan clients, typically, who are getting in trouble by literally just trying to help Venezuelans flee Venezuela. Like, it was a constant issue. But they were also, like, I kinda get it. I think you can too. The the the the Indian clients we had became such an issue that we had to completely change our client onboarding policies in a way where before we were able to trust our clients basically with a whole bunch of things that we just had to completely shut down after we were discovered by Indian clients. So among other things, they’ve violated major vendor contracts of ours that we depended on for the business to function such that we almost lost them entirely. Like, those vendors were like, look. Look at all these these horrible rules you’ve broken at scale to make a bunch of money. We’re gonna pull your plates at this it’s it’s a sorry. This is, a very convoluted airline term. But, like, we were we were running a travel agency, and these airlines were like, you will not be able to book tickets with us anymore because of all this cheating. And it was because of an Indian sub agency doing all this in our name. Um, one, racked up over $60,000 in expenses in a way that was obscured from us being very clever, Chugot, and then disappeared, leaving us with the bill. And we also started hearing from the direct customers of these clients of ours, these, like, sub agencies that transacted in our name, who were being totally scammed by them. And we’re like, oh, we can’t we can’t do this anymore. And they

Malcolm Collins [16:48]:were prolific

Simone Collins [16:49]:in what they did. Yeah. The reason we started working with them in the first place was because when they first came on, they were like, oh, we’re so professional. Let’s be let’s work together. This is gonna be great. And they were really good with technology, we’re like, wow. What a great partner. This is gonna be fantastic because most of the agencies that we worked with were very low tech. The volume comes in. It’s high. Everything seems great. And then all of a sudden, you know, airlines, like, we’re we’re pulling your plates. Customers are like, I’m you know, you you stole $10,000 from me. And then, like, you know, oh, by the way, here’s a bill for $60,000. And then the client is like, this was horrible. Zero remorse. Zero remorse. In fact, we had some instances where we tried to reconcile with some of these clients because, like, they gave us a lot of excuses, And we gave two of them second chances. You wanna know what they did right after that? Immediately did it again. Immediately. Yes. And that I mean, I I genuinely didn’t get it because I was like, no one could possibly be doing this on purpose. That’s crazy. And then I read this, and I’m like, maybe that was it. You know?

Malcolm Collins [17:51]:Well, I think that this okay. So I get I guess it’s the Hindis and the Muslims we keep out, and we bring in the Jains and the Christians. Okay.

Simone Collins [17:57]:This is

Malcolm Collins [17:58]:the way this is the way we handle it. Right?

Simone Collins [17:59]:Well, there aren’t very many.

Malcolm Collins [18:02]:There there there’s a lot of them. You forget how big India is. It might be a small percentage of the overall population. Okay. I’ll

Simone Collins [18:16]:Yeah. We’re looking it up. Okay? Christians make up 2.3% of the total population in India according to the official 2011 census of India.

Malcolm Collins [18:26]:Give it

Simone Collins [18:27]:a I I would million people.

Malcolm Collins [18:29]:Okay. So a Christian 28,000,000 people, you said? Mhmm. Okay. So how many Christians are in Germany?

Simone Collins [18:37]:Okay. Fair. Fair. Good point. Good point. Let’s see. How many Christians are in Italy? Probably better.

Malcolm Collins [18:44]:Yeah. I’ll I’ll do the Christians are in Germany.

Simone Collins [18:52]:38,000,000 people.

Malcolm Collins [18:53]:34,000,000 in Germany. There are 27,800,000. So, like, 28,000,000 in India. So, like, not much smaller than Germany.

Simone Collins [19:02]:Okay. Oh, fair. Fair then. Fair. Yeah. India is big. It’s big. It’s big, and it’s very diverse and very varied. And the okay. We’re cool with the Jains and the Christians. Anyway, I I did blog. I I took out a bunch of the I I’m skipping forward. He continues. The Western idea of merit is a is competence in a role. Merit in is determined by what lengths you will go to to achieve a goal with competence merely being one path. It often becomes a secondary path as printing a degree that says you’re qualified to be a jet pilot is just as good as being able to actually fly a jet in the eyes of Yzat. In other words, Yzat selects for appearance over authentic merit or morality. Now this is funny because at first, I tried to use just to save on, like, tokens because we already pay for the subscription, I tried to fact check this using Grok. And Grok’s like, well, it’s not it’s not fair to say that Indians are just making up their pilot credentials. But, again, you and I know how to reach travel industry about Air India. And I think that the writer of this, like, explicitly used that example of a jet pilot qualification, um, in reference to Air India. Regulators have repeatedly cited Air India for inadequate or falsified pilot training from unapproved simulators and skipped monitoring requirements to outright fraudulent training logs with the most serious recent scrutiny coming after the twenty twenty five Ahmedabad crash. And that is not the the only crash recently, but the Air India is, like, famous. Like, everyone in the in the industry jokes in being, like reckless airline. India. Yeah. For real. Yeah. As long as he doesn’t get on an Air India flight, it’s like, oh, The that airline that doesn’t have real pilots. It’s like a known open joke. So I found it, like, really alarming that Grock was like, well, it’s

Malcolm Collins [20:54]:not very good. Like, no. So she had to go to rfab.ai, rfab.ai. It’s a site we run, and then go into productivity tools and then go into based AI and use the Rhodes model,

Simone Collins [21:06]:which

Malcolm Collins [21:06]:we use for I had to use it for an episode recently because Grock just cannot handle some things. Um, and if you want an honest AI, Rhodes is the only one in there

Simone Collins [21:17]:out there.

Malcolm Collins [21:18]:Like like, genuine. It’s the it’s the it’s the but it it is actually good at dealing with these types of topics. Yeah.

Simone Collins [21:24]:Yeah. And, I mean, the only reason I would have known that, like, Grok was being so skewed was because I actually knew about the Air India stuff myself. I was like, oh, that’s not true. Anyway, he continues. Now a counterargument an Indian might make is, isad is a dated word or we don’t use that word. I like to compare it to the word vendetta. Vendetta in Italian has a very specific meaning, a familial blood feud where revenge must be taken to restore honor, etcetera. This word would not exist if it didn’t reflect a specific facet of Italian life. Izzat is no different. Hell, I’ve had to write several paragraphs just to explain what the hell Izzat is. It isn’t an archaic term either. It’s well and truly alive in the modern Indian lexicon. If is that were regularly discussed openly, this would be considered one of the greatest possible insults in the is that framework. ISAT is why Indians do mass reports, death threats, false flags, and other and various other underhanded tactics when a westerner exposes something they don’t want people to see, such as the poop throwing festival, which Tyler Olavira did, if you remember. Yeah. If I knew something like that existed.

Malcolm Collins [22:29]:It’s it’s a part of your cultural history. What do what do you the the response to it made it look worse than the event itself.

Simone Collins [22:36]:Yeah. This person says to my earlier point, if I knew something like that existed in the West, I would say, wow. That’s disgusting. We should stop this. But in India, the problem is not the point. The point is the problem being exposed and the perceived insult to a zod from exposing the problem. The water pipe never gets fixed. This is the last paragraph I’m almost done. With the West, the issue is that it often fails to live up to its own ideals. It is not a perfect system, but we can course correct and address problems pragmatically. With the Azat, Indians live up to those ideals very, very often. When you see the dysfunctionality of India, remember that it’s a feature of Azat, not a bug. Any thoughts before you back

Malcolm Collins [23:12]:back check? What I find very interesting about this is I think one of, uh, and and there’s a secondary explanation to this that we might do a full episode on. One of the big questions, you know, when you see these giant trash mounds and all these starving people in India and stuff like that, the question that you ask is why? India isn’t okay. I I won’t make a direct comparison here. Let’s say, um, when I look at Indians in The United States and how they often perform, um, uh, when compared to other ethnic groups that post colonization have become considerably wealthy, such as Koreans or Japanese or Chinese, they are not particularly dissimilar.

Simone Collins [24:00]:They often perform exceptionally. We we live in a a very densely Indian immigrant community, which is awesome. The kids are awesome. The families are awesome. It’s it’s a wonderful community.

Malcolm Collins [24:11]:What she said because you were talking over me, it didn’t come out.

Simone Collins [24:13]:Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

Malcolm Collins [24:14]:She said we live we, Malcolm and Simone, live in a majority Indian community. Our community is 70% Indian. And it’s like, I feel much better living in this community than in most communities because at least they’re anti woke. At least they’re they’re anti the the BS the schools are doing. You know? At least their kids

Simone Collins [24:34]:They’re really nice. We kids too. We mostly know them because of their kids because that you know, our kids play together and stuff. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [24:42]:With all of that being the case and and and I say at least because there’s other immigrant communities where I would absolutely be terrified about that. So the the point that I’m making here is why is it that Indians are successful in other countries, but their own country has failed to build a civilization at the level of something like what Korea or Japan has done? And the answer this would answer a lot of that. If this is commonly practiced by the dominant ethnic religious cultural group, the Hindis, which it appears to be, then it’s a big problem for the country continuing to develop. It’s it’s something that is going to lead to issues. That is that is really sad, and I and I think you could see that. Like, it it is genuinely perplexing how India is still so poor. However, there is a secondary answer as to why India is so poor, which you may also not be familiar with.

Simone Collins [25:40]:Is it oh, I mean, I I assume that the average person listening to this is gonna be like, well, that’s because Brahmins are immigrating, and you’re only seeing one small facet of India’s whole range.

Malcolm Collins [25:49]:Also true. Brahmins are quite genetically distinct from other groups in India. They are as

Simone Collins [25:54]:Right. And if you wanna take a leftist framing to it, these people have inherited wealth and systemic advantage in the country.

Malcolm Collins [25:59]:Yeah. If you it would we don’t take that. If you a a Brahmin is genetically distinct from a non Brahmin as a German is from a Greek. And, like, nobody expects a Greek to work.

Speaker 4 [26:11]:Afreganathans are good people. Good people? They’re Greeks, and Greeks are just Jews without money.

Simone Collins [26:18]:So, like We’re really going for it today, aren’t we, Malcolm? I’ve gotta

Malcolm Collins [26:22]:I’ve gotta do the the Greek

Simone Collins [26:24]:Patreon and Substack, ladies and gentlemen. Please help. Please help. Please send help.

Malcolm Collins [26:30]:But, yeah, the the point I’m making here. Okay? The point is is, yes, the Brahmins are part of it. Right? Like, we definitely get the cream of the crop of India, or at least at a point in American history, we got the cream of the crop of India. And those are the friends that I grew up around and you grew up around. That’s not necessarily true of the existing immigration wave right now where you have a much larger immigrant groups coming over. Um, but the secondary issue is that when India began to build its own society after they the British left and typically, British colonies do really well, like America, Canada, South Africa, Australia. And the more they move away from a British system like South Africa attempted to, the worse they do. But so India was really set up to do quite well. And the the reason, Hong Kong, another one that did really well, is when the British left, they decided, like, psycho idiots, that British colonism meant that colonism was tied to capitalism. And so what they wanted to do was be something other than capitalist. But they also didn’t wanna be fully communist. And so they developed a a socialist system that was incredibly damaging to their economic development, where you would have to get, like, 48 forms to, like, just start a business or, like, change something about how your business operates or just move goods and stuff like this. It was just, like, paperwork upon paperwork for everything. And they only dropped it in, like, the late eighties. So they’re basically starting from, like, square one pretty recently.

Simone Collins [28:26]:Fair enough. Yeah. Wanna get to the fact checking?

Malcolm Collins [28:31]:Yeah.

Simone Collins [28:32]:Alright. Because I I really I had to I I wanted to make sure everything here. And I

Malcolm Collins [28:36]:wanna know what this other word is that he talked about.

Simone Collins [28:38]:Oh, it’s basically just cleverness and resourcefulness. But in a way, they can lead to a lot of scamming because it seems to be not more to morality. But, I mean, I think there are similar concepts that you’ll see, like, in the Jack Tales. I mean Yeah. Is kind of a not very nice sometimes. You know? Like, he gets some money to buy something, and he gets magic beans. And then

Malcolm Collins [29:01]:he kills the giant Morality. Yeah. Is in Jacktail’s morality, um, the person who you wrong typically needs to be invading on your land or property or your region or think they’re better than you.

Simone Collins [29:14]:Excuse me. The giant in the clouds was doing the only thing. They think they’re better than you is a big one. Better. I mean, he wanted to eat him.

Malcolm Collins [29:24]:Right. But the the the and it’s not done for status in the community. It’s not done you you know, you might get money for your family. Right? But it certainly wouldn’t be something that other people in the community would lodge you for. Like, Jack is never lauded as intelligent by other people in the community. He he gains no form of status for his feats. He does it just with people. But much closer to 4chan than Izat. Fair enough. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s effing with people for the for the sake for the zen Not the lulls. Of effing with people. Yes. Oh my

Simone Collins [30:02]:god. Yeah. To use a millennial term because we’re old. I just love that. I love being old. Can’t wait till I’m 62. Anyway, true. Baby. True. Yeah. Me too. But you’re gonna need to help me out tonight. I’m having some pretty severe cramping, and I’m bleeding a little, and I’m really worried. So help me out. I need to go to bed early and just, like, maybe rest in bed.

Speaker 5 [30:24]:So, sadly, she did end up having a miscarriage, and we, yesterday, went out and buried the baby. And we’ll obviously keep trying. This will be number six for us, so we’ve been very blessed. And that’s something that we should continue to be appreciative of, but we ended up taking most of the day off today for the first time in, god, at least five years. Maybe maybe since I married her taking a day off. But, yeah, obviously, still making sure you guys get an episode every day. I’m not gonna break that that chain since we launched the channel. Like and subscribe if you appreciate that we try to make sure that happens. As to whether or not we’ll do an episode on it, we might.

Speaker 9 [31:12]:The reason we may wanna do an episode on it is because, emotionally, this affected both of us much more than the death of our moms, which happened at different times in our marriage, and that surprised us.

Simone Collins [31:23]:Is that is a real South Asian concept of honor and family reputation and social standing. It is real. There there’s peer reviewed research on it. I’ve linked to it in the show notes, which are on sub second Patreon. It’s especially, uh, the social standing matters in the context of the family, the clan, the cast, or the community rather than just the individual. It’s used across regions in Northern India and Pakistan and Bangladesh. A 2017 Delhi toilet urination case that OP sites in his write up, which I didn’t bother to read, is real. It involved this man named Ravinder Kumar, who was an e rickshaw driver, who saw two men, two young men urinating outside, and he offered them a few rupees to use in nearby public toilet instead of peeing in public. And they left and then returned with a group and then beat him to death. And that is is a is an example that he cited of of That’s severe. Like, how could your country operate like that? That is a question. Yes. That is that is a real question. And when I heard that story, I was like, well, that’s probably gonna be one of those unsubstantiated anecdotal things. No. Definitely not. Of course, we all know about the backlash that happened when Tyler Oliveira went to the Indian poop festival. And what I find so funny about that too was he was very explicit in the video, which I’ve seen, that this is a small isolated village. It’s a very small population. It is an esoteric and weird festival. He wasn’t like, oh, this is a a holiday that all Indians celebrate. He never said that, which is why it’s so weird and unhinged that a lot of Indians had that reaction to it that they did. Um, also, the food bank videos of Indian international students do exist, like, of them being like, look. You can just take food from this, and it’s free. We’re quite controversial when they posted them. Clips from Canada, Ireland, and elsewhere showed students sometimes explaining how to access university or community food programs using resources. Some of the cases were framed as scams. Others were official student supports. Debates followed about need versus opportunism. Um, I don’t think these students actually needed them. Jugad, which is this concept of improvisation and workarounds and sometimes cutting corners is a very real term with both positive connotations like, oh, this is just frugal innovation and negative. Uh-oh. Sorry. I’m reading my notes. Where did I cut off? Yes.

Speaker 3 [33:50]:I got a couple of those here.

Simone Collins [33:52]:Oh, you did. Okay, buddy. We’re almost done recording.

Speaker 3 [33:54]:Two biggest ones.

Simone Collins [33:55]:That is so cute. A pumpkin.

Speaker 3 [34:00]:Aw. I got it from error Edwin’s mom. Oh, that’s pumpkin garden, and they want we have this.

Simone Collins [34:12]:A pumpkin guy? No. A pumpkin garden. That’s a homegrown pumpkin? Yes. So pretty.

Speaker 3 [34:19]:Some some of them has been one of these have been two of these have been eaten by a deer or little too.

Simone Collins [34:27]:But not that one? I like that you put it in

Speaker 3 [34:29]:palm tree. A fence. Now I will get some more buckets. We have

Malcolm Collins [34:32]:Oh, no.

Simone Collins [34:32]:The pumpkins we have growing are inside the fence, so we’re gonna be okay, I love you, buddy. Glad you had fun.

Speaker 3 [34:37]:Yeah. Yeah. But, actually, I had so fun. And I got to play with some of Edwin toys at his house. Wow. That’s the best part. And one of his helicopters.

Simone Collins [34:48]:Oh, I love the way you say helicopter.

Speaker 3 [34:50]:Has some cool things. I

Simone Collins [34:54]:Okay. Go on, Fred. Can I

Speaker 3 [34:55]:have my phone? I wanna see.

Simone Collins [34:58]:It’s on your work desk.

Speaker 3 [35:00]:Okay. Good.

Simone Collins [35:01]:Oh, no. No. No. Don’t sorry. Don’t go in there, though, because Tex is sleeping. So I’ll bring it down as soon as I come down. Okay? Mm-mm. No. He wakes up Tell him

Malcolm Collins [35:07]:his game console’s on the stairwell.

Simone Collins [35:09]:It’s not anymore, though. Oh, okay. Your your game console is on the bed in the hallway. If you’re very quiet, you can go get that. Okay?

Speaker 3 [35:16]:Very quiet?

Simone Collins [35:17]:Yeah. You’re you can get your game console. Okay. Yeah. So not don’t go all the way into the office where you and I work. Just to the hallway. He’s comically tiptoeing now. There he goes. Is he gonna be quiet enough? Oh, okay. Go ahead, buddy. You can do it. There he goes.

Malcolm Collins [35:45]:Look at the comical. What is he doing? It’s not necessary.

Simone Collins [35:52]:Anyway okay. Where was I? Right. So this this concept of Jugadh improvisation, workaround sometimes cutting corners is a real term that sometimes people view very positively. Like, you’re being frugal. You’re being innovative, but sometimes very negatively. Like, this was a half baked shortcut. You’re bending the rules. I’m and I’m sure that is kind of, like, the way that the for example, agencies that were completely missed okay. Go. Go. Go play. Go. Thank you very much. You’re extremely welcome that you can thank daddy for all that. Go enjoy your chips and your pumpkin, and I’ll see you downstairs very soon.

Speaker 3 [36:34]:Actually, I wanna make this for Halloween.

Simone Collins [36:36]:That’s a perfect idea.

Speaker 3 [36:38]:This pretty soon.

Simone Collins [36:39]:It is. Okay. Go on, friend. I love you. I’m sure, yeah, the the agency that had almost lost us, one of our top vendors, was just like, what? We’re just being creative. There’s stupid rules anyway because it was sort of this complicated way to get a flight way cheaper than you should Mhmm. That is explicitly banned by airlines, but they have to catch you or you can get away with it, basically. But they do catch you, especially when they need to make money, and these days, they’re desperate for it. Anyway, it’s a thing. Also, networking and and favoritism in some Indian tech h one b circles is very widely reported. It is just objectively true that Indian nationals dominate h one b visas. There are documented patterns of regional caste and language clustering allegations of Indian managers performing coethnics, visa holder exploitation, and at least one major law lawsuit, which I didn’t know about, with Cognizant, the company Cognizant, finding discrimination against non Indians. So immigrant ethic networks are genuinely common across groups. We’ve done whole episodes on this. Meaning that if we just wanna attribute this to Eezat, it’s it’s kinda speculative, but you could you could say it plays a role. Because, you know, we we did that episode on ethnic cartels. You know, this this this is a Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [38:04]:This could explain how Indians act as a more effective ethnic cartel than most other ethnic cartels in terms of dominating tech companies.

Simone Collins [38:10]:Well, no. Actually, you know, I I actually recant that. So ethnic cartels, as a little reminder Yeah. They they don’t

Malcolm Collins [38:18]:act like a normal ethnic cartel. They act very Yeah.

Simone Collins [38:20]:They I I will explain. An ethnic cartel is where a an ethnicity takes on an industry that is typically very, very underpaid and very unglamorous in the in in the host country. So things like running a nail salon, running a laundromat, running a donut shop, running a seven eleven, running a motel. Right? No one aspires to do this in America. And when you when the way this works is, okay. Well, this immigrant family is happy to come in and do it and also bring in through chain migration a bunch of family members that they then make work at these businesses often for under market or no pay at all because they’re basically sponsoring their immigration to a, you know, a smoother to live in country, which gives them a very real strategic economic advantage in the market, which which is how they end up being these cartels, why they are the Patel motels in these Indonesian is it Indonesian nail salons, or is it the doughnut shops? Anyway, like, they are very distinct things. But what we see with the h one b visas is instead Indians are moving to very prestigious, very in demand companies. Mhmm. And then chain migration sort of takes place from that, but

Malcolm Collins [39:31]:not necessarily something.

Simone Collins [39:33]:Yeah. Like Google. Yeah. So it is it is almost the opposite of an ethnic cartel where they are they’re underpaying and and undercutting the the family that they’re bringing in and working in very unprecedious. Yeah. So, actually, no. I think this is more of an Ezat thing.

Malcolm Collins [39:48]:Yeah.

Simone Collins [39:48]:You know what? And that that original couching came from my original Grock fact check, which I was a mistake to do. I’m not gonna do that. Have to use Rhodes now for everything.

Malcolm Collins [39:58]:Yeah. I’m gonna be using well, I mean, we’re using the website for recording and editing these episodes now. Yeah. You know? Our fab does everything better. Oh, they’re replacing it all. If you’re still not one of the things that you should use RFAB for if you’re not is if you do vibe coding and you’re not using the RFAB API, you are being an idiot. It allows you to have the code. Like, when it reaches a point, call you and say, hey. I’m done. Even if it’s just a regular Fable model, even if you just give the Artfab API, you make a developer API on it, you give it to Fable, Fable can now call you and be like, hey. What do I do next? So you can vibe code while you’re on a walk. You can add pictures to a website like you see across the r Fab website really nicely, really easily. You can add video loading animations like we have across the r Fab website really quickly, really easily. You it can even write in a way that looks like a human wrote by using a API that we have access to that has access to, uh, human checking stuff. So it runs that automatically, and then it iteratively runs until it gets something that can’t be picked up as non AI. Sorry. As AI.

Simone Collins [41:05]:It’s super cool. I love it. But most importantly,

Malcolm Collins [41:07]:it’s for storytelling and and story interaction if you wanna do that. Yeah.

Simone Collins [41:10]:Let’s get to where he’s been quite inaccurate. As as you pointed out right at the top, he did treat Indians more as a monolith and didn’t point out, for example, that Jains wouldn’t do this. Christian Indians probably wouldn’t do this, and that he just sort of was like, it’s universally practiced. And, also, it is fair to say that, like, even if you have a culture that practices is odd, that doesn’t mean that you’re gonna, like, kill someone over a garden gnome. I mean, he’s he he gets a little extreme. But he was wrong about Indians

Malcolm Collins [41:41]:Actually, Simone, there there are a lot of killings tied to Izzat, actually.

Simone Collins [41:46]:Well, also there’s I I don’t know. People in the thread were like, oh, this explains why this guy jumped off a cliff because he couldn’t pay his cell phone bill and things like that. I don’t I don’t know, though. I don’t know. You wanna No. I I I will get into the other part, I guess, of Okay. Yeah. Getting to the other part. Yeah. First, I wanna get to the the stuff that’s not true. That he says, oh, Indians will say, like, you can’t discuss this when, at least according to peer reviewed academic research, is not an undiscussable term. It’s it’s not one of the greatest possible insults. It appears routinely in news, literature, activism, and everyday speech. So it’s not like this unspeakable thing. And, I mean, there is also plenty of documented evidence of police addressing crimes in India. It’s not like zero crimes can ever get solved. So that’s a little extreme. But beyond what just OP says, and it’s kind of surprising that he doesn’t mention this because, typically, when when I did research on the concept of Izzat, they don’t mention any of the things he mentions. They just mentioned the honor killings. Like, you can see this one piece of peer reviewed research called, for the sake of family and tradition, honor killings in India and Pakistan, which explicitly identifies Izzat as a central framework that helps explain and justify honor killings in India and Pakistan, which are so intense. This is a quote from their abstract. The United Nations Population Fund estimates that the annual worldwide number of honor killings is as as high as 5,000 women and girls, though some nongovernmental organizations estimate as many as 20,000 honor killings annually worldwide. Wow. Deeply disturbing. Also from the abstract, despite limited statistics, research shows that honored killings occur amongst women of different ages, religions, and social status, wealth, education, and location. And other experiments found that high caste rural North Indian men showed more retaliatory attitudes to slights than low caste men, admitting error can carry social cost and status conscious settings. So not just like women doing the wrong thing. And police and officials sometimes handle community matters poorly due to all of this and and fear of escalation, including against them. So I I it’s kinda funny to me that he’s like, oh, this is like it’s horrible, like, chain migration, blah blah blah. But he doesn’t mention the possibly 20,000 and at least 5,000 women and girls a year that are murdered because of this. Like, okay. I get it. Like, this is Kiwi Farms, and we’re not all about, like, violence against women or whatever. It’s too woke coded, but, like, that’s kind of a big deal, I think. Just a little. So let’s get to the point that look. All cultures are criticized on social media, and this is not about singling out Indian culture. So let me give you some examples. Here’s an African diaspora poster. He goes by Dahuti Maat Ra. He does a crying laughing face emoji three times. These people are impacted by the West and Western ways. The American environment is imbalanced and toxic, anticommunal community. They, certain blacks, are looking through western lens and not African lens. Western equals individualism. African eastern equals communalism slash family oriented. Quote, the child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth, end quote. So that’s a legitimate and and and fine thing to to discuss about what

Malcolm Collins [45:21]:you want to fine if the problem wasn’t bigger in India than in America.

Simone Collins [45:26]:This is an African poster.

Malcolm Collins [45:28]:Well, yeah, the the the point being is the complaint oh, he’s talking about Indians in Africa?

Simone Collins [45:34]:No. No. No. He’s talking about this isn’t I I’m what I’m trying to say, I I’m I’m now going through a series of examples on x of people from other cultures criticizing Western culture explicitly to say that, like, this isn’t a a unidirectional thing that happens on on on x where, like, just white people sit there and dunk on other cultures. And when people do

Malcolm Collins [45:56]:saying white people go to Africa and do bat No.

Simone Collins [46:00]:He’s he’s trying to say that a lot of black people are in spoiled, impacted by Western individualism, which is, in his view, a a blight upon society, as

Malcolm Collins [46:17]:he says. Wow. Yeah. It leads to such terrible societies with such low rates of crime and murder and corruption, and we Well, look.

Simone Collins [46:26]:Japan is very collectivist, and they are an extremely safe much safer than The United States country. So, you know, it can work for some people. Some people wear it well.

Malcolm Collins [46:36]:You know, we don’t we don’t have murder vans that come to

Simone Collins [46:38]:your house. That’s that’s a China thing. That’s not a Japan thing. Oh, Japan. I said Japan. Japan. Okay. But here’s here’s another example. This is an Indonesian Chinese poster with some kind of kanji and then saying, ironically, instead of empowering a person, individualism is more likely to destroys a person’s purpose in life. You don’t have to you don’t have any goal except worldly hedonism. Don’t ask again why so many folks are easily depressed and become antisocial when this is the value of your society. He’s pointing to someone’s post reading society is based on self interest. So, again, like, both Africans and Indonesian people

Malcolm Collins [47:23]:objectively wrong. The more individualistic parts of Europe and America are the more economically and technologically productive.

Simone Collins [47:31]:And I appreciate that you’re saying that because you’re like, this is a discourse that we can have instead of saying, wow. Look at that racist African. Wow. Look at that racist Indonesian Chinese person because this isn’t about racism. This is a discourse on what works better for society. Is individualism better or or is collectivism better? Right. Instead of going straight to identity politics, you’re like, no. Let’s look at what’s downstream of individualistic or collectivist cultures and have a discourse about it. And that’s exactly the point I’m trying to make. When people attack Western culture, it isn’t like, how dare you attack our culture? It’s more like, I don’t know. What produces the best results? Maybe we can work at it from that perspective. One video posted by at Vera Booty, who’s a Canadian Chinese man, often labeled the Chinese historian in the replies, walks through how Western hookup and drinking culture wrecks family formation and women’s long term outcomes. He links casual sex in campus, date rape, alcohol fuel decisions, one night stands, etcetera.

Malcolm Collins [48:26]:Let’s let’s see how China is doing on that stuff. How is China doing in family formation?

Simone Collins [48:31]:Culture is actually pretty intense. It’s weird. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [48:34]:No. Mean, China is, like, strictly worse in family formation than the West.

Simone Collins [48:38]:I get I get it. This is true. But you’re not like, oh my god. He’s racist against Westerns. You’re actually like, no. This is a genuine problem. Like, drinking and hookup culture is, I agree, not good. And look. You also suffer from it. So let’s all talk about how to get over it. And those there also are Indian accounts that repeatedly frame Western culture as the vector that broke, as they put it, family discipline. Here is Ishbat one nine seven saying, it’s all because of following blindly to Western culture. Families are broken. No morals. No values. Freedom. Fake feminism. Also, doctor van Nostrand, r s d two seventy, wrote, this entire thing, such shows, the kind of humor this dating and hookup culture is all adopted under peer pressure from the West. This doesn’t come naturally to our society, and it shows only those unswayed by this will survive in the long run. Rest will drown in degeneracy. So they’re going as DJs. And we agree with that. It’s like we’re like, okay. That’s a valid criticism from an Indian poster on x. So there’s another one, Shalputhri, quarter life crisis, that is to say at shaliputri g d wrote

Malcolm Collins [49:49]:You don’t need to say all their names. Sorry.

Simone Collins [49:53]:She quote tweeted someone saying, dear women, never ever, I repeat, never ever discuss your past with your husband or your would be husband. Some things need to go with you to your grave, or else there’s such a big chance your partner will make sure he digs a living grave for you with whatever you shared with him out of pure honesty and trust. No one has the maturity to understand relationships and the life choices of a woman. And then she uses some hashtags indicating that some woman was honored, killed by a man, which is already kind of a self own of your own culture. But she retweeted that saying, Western feminism brought Indian women about sexual liberation but failed to impart them the Faustian with this Faustian spirit of Anglo feminism, white women hoed openly and didn’t give a f**k about what society thought of them. While meanwhile, women here wanna ho and still be perceived as Sattisavitri, which I guess is probably some like

Malcolm Collins [50:45]:She was she basically, she’s saying, I wanna hoe so bad. Why can’t I Well,

Simone Collins [50:49]:she no. She’s basically saying, like so one one woman posted, basically, women never tell your husband about your sexual history because he probably will honor kill you. And then another Indian poster is like, no. Indian women are being corrupted by Western culture, which is making them slutty, and it’s Western culture’s fault, um, not the fault

Malcolm Collins [51:09]:of the culture. Wants to be slutty. Like, the way she wrote that didn’t come off like, there’s there’s posters who write things like what you just said.

Simone Collins [51:18]:Uh-huh.

Malcolm Collins [51:19]:Okay? She didn’t write it that way. She wrote it like, why can’t I be more why isn’t the West doing more to protect us so we can be sluttier?

Simone Collins [51:27]:Oh, dear. No. No. No. Well, I mean, the first one was, but not the second one. The the one who quoted Peter Dre.

Malcolm Collins [51:33]:The second one. Yeah.

Simone Collins [51:36]:But yeah. I mean, so we absolutely own that hookup culture is bad, and we would probably fight back against critiques about individualism, but we would never say that a critique of American or Western individualism is unwarranted or something that we’re not ready to discuss. This concept of, like, not being discuss this. Yeah. Yeah. Like, how how dare you accuse Indians of this concept of izat and and and hate it that’s racist is is toxic because it is I mean, so think about it this way. Like, I don’t think you or I will be comfortable doing business with recent Indian immigrants for a very long time. And that’s pretty screwed up because we’ve had the tens of thousands of dollars stolen from businesses when we chose to trust and then trust again, And that’s pretty screwed up. And if we could instead have open discussions about these dynamics I mean, one, like, if I knew about this to begin with, we could have designed our commercial arrangements in a way that would have prevented the risk from taking place in the first place.

Malcolm Collins [52:45]:Yeah. Well and we wouldn’t trust I mean, I think the biggest takeaway from us is that I would never trust an Indian twice now. Like, the idea of, like, you trust them once they screw you over, and then you give them a second chance, and they screw you over again. Uh-huh. Like, there’s no point in giving the second chance. Exactly. Like, that’s a that’s a much bigger and more specific thing. That and then just vet them and put them in positions where they can make fewer like, bad actions. Exactly. But, like, that’s not a place that you want to be, but it’s a place you have to be when we do business with people from everywhere on earth. And I I think, actually, every one of our Indian clients has done something illegal, uh, eventually. I don’t think we’ve ever had one that didn’t.

Simone Collins [53:23]:That is correct. Uh, for the travel business, at least. I don’t think I’ve I mean, so to to be clear, these were all first gen generation immigrants or actively in India.

Malcolm Collins [53:37]:Yeah.

Simone Collins [53:37]:So I think we’ve done a lot of work with Indians in general, but we didn’t see them as Indians because they were fully Americanized, if that makes sense. So we were like, we’re not doing business with an Indian. We’re doing business with an American. So we wouldn’t have, like, mentally classified them that way. But this was different because these were very clearly in India and or first generation. Yeah. But yeah. That it was, yeah, it was it was just it was so pervasive. It was one of those things of, like, this can’t be happening. Right? Like, they’re not allowed to do this. You you’re not allowed to stereotype like that, are you? Isn’t there, like, a law against that? You know? Like, I thought you couldn’t anyway.

Malcolm Collins [54:18]:But, you know, stereotypes exist for a reason. Right? And

Simone Collins [54:22]:Oh, that’s the problem is is if we can’t talk about that, if we can’t talk about patterns or systemic issues that take place with certain groups, one, we can’t criticize them to the point of maybe eradicating them because they’re not doing favors to those groups. Again, the point I was trying to make

Malcolm Collins [54:37]:the problems, not the groups.

Simone Collins [54:39]:It’s like, what if you are a recent Indian immigrant who’s trying to get off your feet in a new country and you mean well, and no one is willing to work with you because everyone who came before you who is from your country burned every your entire cultural reputation? Know, You what if when what if you, for example, are like a Jain or a Christian Indian who also doesn’t practice Right? Like but, clearly, as is shown here, people are like, all India, every single last Indian practices is odd and will screw you over forever or zero sum, blah blah blah. Like, that sucks for them. But because we can’t talk about it pervasively, a bunch of people are gonna hold that view because we’re not talking

Malcolm Collins [55:20]:about nuance. That that Indians need to understand. Like, you’re like, where is all this? Hey. If you understand American culture, when you push back on reasonable criticisms in American culture, that makes the topic bigger. That makes people talk

Simone Collins [55:35]:louder sound

Malcolm Collins [55:36]:effect. And more aggressively. Yeah. It’s not just a Streisand effect. It’s it’s it’s bigger. I I think on a cultural level, it’s something bigger and louder than the Streisand effect. You bet. Any group that says, you’re not allowed to talk about x thing that I’m doing. That’s like a negative externality for society.

Simone Collins [55:52]:Mhmm.

Malcolm Collins [55:53]:To white Americans and and not even just white more broadly. Because, like, I know that Leaflet feels this as well. It’s it’s anyone who’s adopted American culture. We typically are just like, that multiplies whatever the issue is. That’s why I know the Tyler Olivier poop video. Right? I don’t follow him. I would have no reason to know about that. I know about it because people tried to complain about it and shut it down.

Simone Collins [56:16]:Oh, yes. And then, of course, you need to know what it is. Well, I need to know what

Malcolm Collins [56:20]:talk about it.

Simone Collins [56:20]:Right? I need to be mad.

Speaker 3 [56:21]:You can

Malcolm Collins [56:22]:be incensed. How could they do that? Yeah.

Simone Collins [56:24]:That’s fair. Well, I guess maybe it’s it’s something like when you smell potential hypocrisy, you get, like, super I don’t know if that’s a uniquely Western thing. I think it might it might just be a

Speaker 3 [56:34]:Well, yeah.

Malcolm Collins [56:34]:It’s it’s part of American culture. I think the the part yeah. The the the it’s part of, like, Wild West culture. It’s part of Backwoods culture. It’s part of it, like, a large swath of American culture. And we just love yeah. Like, you you you wanna be, like, flies to poop. Like, love talking about that stuff, and it always it’s like a proportional response thing. You try to shut down a reasonable conversation, you get a proportional response multiplicatively above the first response.

Simone Collins [57:05]:Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [57:07]:And a lot of groups just don’t get this. And I I I have a fear that any of this might be one of them because they don’t understand if if they keep addressing this the way that it’s been addressed because I’ve talked about this with Jews addressing things poorly as well in in a similar context. Anti Indian sentiment in The US is going to become extremely mainstream. And I think it might be

Simone Collins [57:31]:too late for that. I mean, at least in Canada, it’s way too late for that. And I think a lot of that might be downstream of the groups that were immigrating en masse because I think specifically it had to do with a lot of of functionally not honoring the spirit of the law around getting a degree in order to get residency. Like, people were just going to, like, diploma mill scam unis instead of actually studying and trying to bring something to the country. And then it brought sort of the wrong type of person. Like, not someone who’s looking to work hard, but someone instead who was just looking to kind of cheat the system. So So I think maybe that’s why India Speed ran or sorry. Canada speed ran anti Indian immigrant sentiment because they got a totally different group than what The United States has been getting since, like, the late eighties. I I mean, I don’t know. Like, I grew up with friends in the in the early nineties who were whose parents were recent Indian immigrants, and they were amazing, you know, like, biotech workers, amazing people, but also, like, definitely early, like, fresh off the boat kind of immigrants. Because that’s was my friend, one of my friends, for example, who had her arranged marriage, and she was, like, in the third grade. I’m like, oh, okay. I mean, you gotta take these things at face value in the third grade. You’re like, yeah. Right. Of course. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [58:53]:And you’re you’re well, we’re we’re we’ve gotta learn from that. We gotta find some arranged marriages for our kids.

Simone Collins [58:57]:I know. See, the look. It anyway, that’s only third

Malcolm Collins [59:00]:grade classmate who got married other than

Simone Collins [59:02]:Still happily married? Honestly. No. Because the Mormon’s married too, and she has three or four lovely kids. So, yeah, my Mormon elementary school friend is married. Oh, actually and then another one. Asian immigrant parents because one kid.

Malcolm Collins [59:19]:So only the only the immigrant kid?

Simone Collins [59:20]:Mormon Mormon friend, four kids. I think that the arranged marriage friend has no kids. I haven’t seen at least any in social media. Yeah. Interesting ranges. Very interesting ranges. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [59:36]:Anyway Alright. Well, I appreciate you bringing this up, Simone. I found this to be a very fascinating topic. I want you to get to bed as soon as you can. Yeah. I’m. Simone, one, keep in mind, they said you should expect blood. Okay?

Simone Collins [59:50]:They did. They did. It’s just it also really hurts, and it’s gushing. And so it still makes me nervous. Right? Like, they told me this was gonna happen. So I’m not, like, freaking out. I’m not like we need to go somewhere. But, you know, no one wants this to happen because it it’s it’s very disconcerting.

Malcolm Collins [60:10]:I I know the cramping is scary, but I remember you experiencing cramping in the last early pregnancy as well. And I I know it’s but there’s nothing we can do. Right? Like, all we can do is get you to bed as early as possible. How how can I help with the kids? What can I do to help tonight?

Simone Collins [60:28]:Just really, really help with getting them up. I mean, it’s really dinner super easy time because I’m just, like, reheating leftovers for everyone. So I’m just gonna do that super fast. I’m just gonna hope that they don’t require extremely violent wrangling for a bath because that typically is required every

Malcolm Collins [60:45]:single day. That’s an issue, then you calm me down, and I will handle it.

Simone Collins [60:49]:Yeah. Because it’s really

Malcolm Collins [60:50]:Simone Like, I don’t know if I

Simone Collins [60:52]:can stand up right now.

Malcolm Collins [60:53]:Seriously, I will handle it. Okay? Thank you.

Simone Collins [60:57]:Thank you a lot. Because it’s it’s, like, distracting levels of pain. I think maybe I’m being such a I’m being a a wimp about this because I don’t usually get, like, bad cramping with periods. And then so this is I’m like, what is this? This is this is what women experience. Anyway, alright. I gotta go, and I love you very

Malcolm Collins [61:16]:much. You too.

Simone Collins [61:17]:Thanks for helping me out. I really appreciate it. So fried rice tonight? Fried rice. Fried

Malcolm Collins [61:23]:rice. Nothing better.

Simone Collins [61:25]:I mean, that’s it’s like it’s designed as a leftover food. I mean, it’s supposed to be started with leftover rice and leftover ingredients, then, you know

Malcolm Collins [61:34]:And Octavian has discovered that he just loves lo mein.

Simone Collins [61:38]:I’m so glad. I’m glad that he’s at least one of our adventurous children. Unlike those who you know, Indy, for such a long time, would just try anything, and she was so ganky in the way she ate her food. And then suddenly, she just has decided performatively because she likes to be rebellious now that everything’s disgusting. Like, she used to wolf down our homemade popcorn. I gave it to her last night, she’s like, It was just like performative.

Malcolm Collins [62:08]:I bet she just loves being a dick. Like She

Simone Collins [62:11]:yes. Because she’s so sweet, like, by nature that it’s like she’s discovered some new technology. Like, what is this strange witchcraft that I can do that is I can be cruel. Amazing. She’ll she’ll look at me when I’m changing her diaper, and she’ll say, you are a poopy head.

Malcolm Collins [62:32]:Yeah. A poopy head. Poopy head. Picking it up from her brothers and sisters.

Simone Collins [62:36]:You know it. And I’ve got them to stop saying it because I’m like, I do the, you know, the the third law of physics, which is I am rubber your clue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks onto you. That if you call someone a poopy head, that means you’re a poopy head. But Indi, being two years old, doesn’t know that. And so she just looks me in the eye with the sweetest little smile saying, you are a poopy head. But so the way she says everything is just so cute. My diaper change.

Malcolm Collins [63:05]:My diaper change. Is a b. Actually, bottle. That’s actually bottle. Anyway

Simone Collins [63:11]:alright. Are you ready for this?

Malcolm Collins [63:13]:I I yeah. Let’s get racist here.

Simone Collins [63:15]:Oh god. I don’t know what I’m gonna do with us. We really are speedrunning YouTube again.

Malcolm Collins [63:21]:Anyway We’re not saying anything that’s not true. We’re exploring genuinely other cultures in in ways that are brash and sometimes border on insensitive, but I think are for the sake of of humor and delivering these ideas to an audience that otherwise wouldn’t find them palatable.

Simone Collins [63:37]:No. That otherwise, it is like, these these are human trash. We need to destroy them. We need to Remember those really great orb lights we used to have in Peru?

Malcolm Collins [63:49]:What lights?

Simone Collins [63:50]:Those orb lights that would glow and change color are so cool. They’re very durable.

Malcolm Collins [63:59]:Oh, yeah. I do remember those. Those are

Simone Collins [64:00]:Big and plastic and super cool.

Malcolm Collins [64:03]:We should get some for the kids room?

Simone Collins [64:04]:I yeah. Because they keep disassembling and breaking every single light that’s in there and any other light they have access to. Like, you know, the two lights in the sunroom and the kitchen, the ones that are

Malcolm Collins [64:13]:You have my permission. You have my permission.

Simone Collins [64:15]:They’re even somehow able to damage the lights hanging from the steel. I’m gonna wait for prime day. We’re sort of on a we’re not buying anything again until Prime Day or sorry. Cyber Monday or whatever. You know, when Amazon goes crazy around things

Malcolm Collins [64:28]:like For Octavian and Torsten, do look at booking them in for camp. Books this far in advance? Yes. It is very hard to get in. It books far in advance. You have to do an application. The kids have to do an application. It’s not a, oh, they just go because my dad’s willing to pay for them. Right? Like

Simone Collins [64:50]:I’m picturing that scene from Legally Blonde with our kids in the hot tub being like,

Malcolm Collins [64:56]:oh, we’re we’re perfect for this camp. That’s that’s so stressful.

Simone Collins [65:02]:Man, bougie parents must really My cousins eat

Malcolm Collins [65:06]:their lives. My my no. No. Sorry. Nieces and nephews actually didn’t get in.

Simone Collins [65:11]:To Camp Seagull or Camp Longhorn?

Malcolm Collins [65:13]:Seagull Seagull. Of course, they got into Longhorn because of all the Collins family. But Camp Seagull yeah. Like, Camp Seagull’s hard to

Simone Collins [65:19]:get into. It’s the Harvard of summer camps.

Malcolm Collins [65:22]:The Harvard of summer camps. I life has just been too posh.

Simone Collins [65:27]:It’s disgusting. What did you you you what do you do there? You sail to what? Do you play lacrosse? Do you I mean, of course, collect antiques? Go petitions.

Malcolm Collins [65:36]:You sail on antiques. Literally, that is one of the things you do is sail on an antique schooner. Okay? Like, whatever. You can check it out yourself too with just the other kids.

Simone Collins [65:47]:You disgust me. Oh, I hate bananas. They were all over my island when I was a. You I there’s no there are no words. There are no words. Um, anyway

Malcolm Collins [66:02]:Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. At least I didn’t inherit any money. Okay?

Simone Collins [66:05]:I’m just like The deposed prince. That’s how it’s oh, yeah. At least. At least.

Malcolm Collins [66:09]:You get the full narrative arc. You get the full narrative arc

Simone Collins [66:14]:to make the arc bounces in the other direction before the entire outside of our house rots. Speaking of begging for

Malcolm Collins [66:21]:money on Patreon, we do offer weekend episodes and would love to see you guys on Patreon or Substack.

Simone Collins [66:28]:Actually, yeah, we have a lot of fun with weekend episodes. They’re super fun. And thank you for everyone who subscribes. Like, we you guys are awesome, and we like emailing with you. And oh, is it okay if I book a hangout for this weekend? I need to book our

Malcolm Collins [66:41]:Yes. You may well, keep in mind that I am doing a leaflet call this Friday.

Simone Collins [66:45]:Friday. But what if we do it Sunday?

Malcolm Collins [66:47]:It’s fine if you don’t do it Friday again.

Simone Collins [66:50]:Okay. Okay. I won’t do it again. I promise. Look. I I did anyway, long story. We’re not gonna go into it. Shall we? You ready?

Malcolm Collins [66:59]:We shall. And I am ready.

Simone Collins [67:02]:You better hit me with the not ready.

Malcolm Collins [67:03]:Racism fire hose like you did on that last one looking at the firsthand accounts from aid workers. Yeah. Jesus. I was like, oh my god. Simone, what are you doing? You cannot You’re the one who kept calling being an aid worker in South America easy mode. South. Easy mode in comparison to what?

Simone Collins [67:32]:Well, I said in the episode that I got groped more in China than I ever was harassed in South America, and I certainly got hit on that in Italy.

Malcolm Collins [67:38]:Been in relation to China.

Simone Collins [67:41]:I did, literally. I haven’t traveled in Africa aside from briefly with you, and we were so isolated. It didn’t matter. So that doesn’t count. You know? Like, it it really doesn’t count. Anyway, we’ll get into it. Here we go

Speaker 6 [67:53]:Cats. Oh, really? Does she have puppies? Just like it. Right there? They’re so cute. Does she take care of animals? Yeah. Do you really like her? Mommy. Oh.

Target pulled a kids’ Halloween costume after people said it looked like blackface. Malcolm and Simone use that controversy as a jumping-off point for a much larger argument: that systematically scrubbing minstrel shows, cakewalks, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Song of the South, Splash Mountain, Aunt Jemima, and similar “tainted” material didn’t just remove racism — it severed Black Americans from large parts of their own cultural history and from the credit for innovations that built American popular music, comedy, and theater.

They walk through:

* What Uncle Tom actually does in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel vs. what “Uncle Tom” means now

* Cakewalk as plantation satire of white ballroom dance — and the line from that rhythm into ragtime, jazz, R&B, and rock

* Minstrel structure as the ancestor of standup, the sitcom, and a lot of classic American slapstick

* Brer Rabbit / Uncle Remus as West African trickster tradition (Anansi/hare) fused with Jack tales — and why replacing Splash Mountain with The Princess and the Frog trades one set of problems for another

* Banjo origins, tap’s African + Irish fusion, “tar baby,” family-barbecue “caricatures,” and how labeling ordinary Black life as a racist stereotype pushed later generations toward the opposite

* Why they think groups that treated every racially adjacent artifact as radioactive helped create a cultural vacuum later filled by gangster/rap identity

Provocative, heavily historical, and not YouTube-algorithm-friendly. Watch at your own risk.

RFab (editing, research, companions): https://rfab.ai/

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins [0:00]:Hello, Simone. Recently, Target has been in hot water because they decided to release blackface as a Halloween costume.

Simone Collins [0:08]:Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.

Malcolm Collins [0:09]:They’d say this was by accident, but it is it’s hilarious. But I wanted to take this opportunity. So we’ll go into this incident. But what’s more interesting is I wanna take this opportunity to explore how erasing blackface and mistrial shows from America’s memory and cultural identity was the tool that was used to erase most of black culture. And when I say this, people will think, oh, he’s exaggerating.

Simone Collins [0:48]:No. They’ll think, oh, he’s speedrunning a YouTube ban, I guess.

Malcolm Collins [0:54]:What are you doing? So I we I guess we’ll call it the uncle Tom effect is what I’ll call this. So when you hear No.

Simone Collins [1:02]:Let’s call it the Aunt Jemima effect. Come on. She was our woman. She was our lady.

Malcolm Collins [1:06]:Uncle Tom’s a much better example. When you hear the term uncle Tom, what do you think? Somebody calls someone an uncle Tom. Okay. What they are saying is that they are not a good black person. They are somebody who kowtows to white people. They are somebody who is obsequious to white people and tries to fit in with white society. Okay?

Simone Collins [1:30]:Okay. I’m looking up uncle Tom’s cat.

Malcolm Collins [1:31]:So uncle Tom in the book is a character who dies protecting black people attempting to escape slavery.

Simone Collins [1:41]:Okay. Great way to go. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s an antislavery Yes. Oh, yeah. The antislavery novel it’s by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Malcolm Collins [1:47]:She was a But it’s not like the character is poorly written or anything. The book became one of the most popular books in American history. The character is introduced. He saves a white girl from drowning. He is then, sold to a very mean slave driver.

Simone Collins [2:02]:Yeah. Away from his wife and children.

Malcolm Collins [2:04]:So Away from his wife and children. And then he ends up being beaten to death, saving two other black women who were attempting to escape. And his last words are wishing to protect the the for for mercy on the people person who’s beating him to death. And it’s very clearly like a Jesus analogy. Right? Now this is not a figure that should be shamed in black culture. This is not a figure whose name should be associated with shame.

Simone Collins [2:33]:No. I mean, it’s it’s a figure who was clearly mistreated by white slave owners. So

Malcolm Collins [2:38]:He’s one of the most important figures, literary figures in blacks being freed from slavery to begin with. I and so

Simone Collins [2:47]:why would he say why yeah. How?

Malcolm Collins [2:48]:His name becomes synonymous if you talk to a black teen today

Simone Collins [2:53]:Okay.

Malcolm Collins [2:54]:With turning on black people.

Simone Collins [2:56]:Right? Real? Oh, yeah. Know Victor Stowe was white. Okay. Sorry. Anyway, maybe that’s the problem.

Malcolm Collins [3:00]:This is what we are going to continue to see, this particular effect around all of these critical moments of black history, if you remove the minstrel shows, you remove cakewalking. If you remove cakewalking, then you remove the

Simone Collins [3:17]:link. Cakewalking? It’s a cakewalking. Is it is it an expression meaning that it’s easy?

Malcolm Collins [3:24]:No. Cakewalking was a style of dancing that African slaves did. Now today, it’s considered very offensive, and no one does it because the very name of it came from the concept of, we will have the slaves come and dance against each other for a piece of cake that the master would give them.

Simone Collins [3:41]:Oh, yeah. A a cakewalk is a nineteenth century African American partner dance that originated on Southern plantations, which also evolved into a modern idiom and a digital music software name. Okay. I okay. I just didn’t know.

Speaker 3 [3:53]:I’m gonna get fancy now. Keep on swinging.

Simone Collins [4:19]:I just heard cakewalk. Like, oh, it would be so easy.

Malcolm Collins [4:21]:To be a cakewalk. Well, yeah, the the that that also the modern idiom is easy as a cakewalk became, like, what the slave owners said because they they’d looked too derisively at these. They would, you know, it was, like, entertainment for them to have the blacks do the cakewalk. But, anyway, so you Oh, it’s a cute dance. If you remove cakewalking from the cultural history, you remove the descendant forms of music that came from cake walking

Simone Collins [4:46]:Oh.

Malcolm Collins [4:47]:Which include ragtime, jazz Oh, ragtime’s great. Rock and roll. No. Basically, form of American music evolved from the cakewalk dances that were constructed. And so blacks can say, wait. Why did we erase this? It’s like, well, because clearly a racist derogatory thing they were doing. And it’s the same thing that happened with uncle Tom’s Cabin. So with uncle Tom’s Cabin, they began to hold Tom shows. Right? And this was the stage play production of uncle Tom’s cabin.

Simone Collins [5:22]:Oh, okay. In the stage to Broadway. That’s great.

Malcolm Collins [5:25]:Productions of uncle Tom’s cabin, you ended up having the the the characters would begin to act more comedically or more in ways that represented normal black tropes. And so they would act obsequiously. They would act in a way that where the uncle Tom moniker might make sense. And so black culture began to use the evoked set, what they had seen more recently, the stage play, instead of the critical character that sparked a huge part of the abolition movement. Wow. And they then denigrated the entire line because of this one connection to actual racism. Take something like the Mistral Show. If you take people are familiar with the Mistral Show where black people were well, first, it began with whites doing in blackface sort of caricatures that were derogatory of black people on stage. And then these evolved into often not necessarily derogatory, but endearing caricatures and caricatures which were the ancestor of huge amounts of what we today think of as the three stooges, for example. Most comedy of this period was done in the style that was pioneered by the minstrel show.

Simone Collins [6:57]:And hold on. If I I’ll check this, but weren’t minstrel shows originally things that took place in England and Europe that, you know, there would be traveling minstrels, and they would make jokes around prevailing tropes at that time. So it’s kind

Malcolm Collins [7:12]:of equal for the point being is is when you’re like, oh, this is a racist against black thing.

Simone Collins [7:17]:No. No. No. This existed before slavery, like, black slavery in The United States. Right?

Malcolm Collins [7:21]:Yeah. The the the it’s like when you have the NAACCP fighting to take down Andy and Amos, which a third of Americans watched at its height, which had caricatures that at its time were not dissimilar to the caricatures white comedians were playing. For example, the three stooges. For example, I could I’ll go through a list later of numerous white comedians that did similar bits, but it was just normal at the time. And it removed a huge amount of black representation, but then also removed the link in American history where you don’t see that this form of the the minstrel shows that did have racism in them, but it also launched the careers of the first major black actors in America. It also launched the first black theatrical company in America. It also brought black people to Broadway for the first time in America. and it it style that it pioneered later became the American sitcom. It later became the American night show.

Simone Collins [8:32]:And I guess trying to erase that or disassociate them from any form of blackness removes both black credit and black influence, but also very positive connotations and and performances from black artists.

Malcolm Collins [8:46]:Right. And what’s what’s worse is that black history the this is this is the bigger part, is that groups like the NAACP and WHO have been like, we’re gonna erase everything that is tied to racism. And it’s like, bro, black American culture is tied to racism. And when I say it’s tied to racism, it’s tied to racism that flowed both ways. If you wanna get

Simone Collins [9:13]:an understanding what

Malcolm Collins [9:14]:I mean by this, do you know how blacks developed the musical style that went alongside cakewalks and the cakewalk itself?

Simone Collins [9:24]:They

Malcolm Collins [9:26]:saw white people dancing in, like, a ballroom style dances, and they thought it was funny. And so

Simone Collins [9:32]:So it’s them making fun of white people? Because that’s what it kinda looks like.

Malcolm Collins [9:35]:Yes. That’s exactly what it is. The cakewalk is the black version of a mistrial show

Simone Collins [9:41]:Of a known people. That’s It really great.

Malcolm Collins [9:44]:It’s each group iteratively doing a minstrel show of each other.

Simone Collins [9:49]:Yeah. Making fun of each other. Yeah. And let’s just to be clear, renaissance minstrels go back to the twelfth century.

Malcolm Collins [9:57]:Right. But the point being

Simone Collins [9:59]:I just wanna be clear on that.

Malcolm Collins [10:00]:Is to understand and to truly appreciate the way that America was able to develop this huge slew of artistic, thematic, and theatrical styles isn’t that necessarily black people or musical geniuses or something like that. Right? It’s or black culture is uniquely rich in, theatrical or musical tradition. It’s that having two cultures constantly and aggressively riffing off of each other allowed for expansion of musical and theatrical styles. And that is what gave us the diversity that allowed America to culturally conquer the world, and black people’s role in that has been erased by trying to dissociate. Because when you think about it, something like blackface more broadly that allowed for this explosion in black descended cultural groups. It was attached to racism, but it wasn’t attached to the type of aggressive racism that we now associate blackface with. Right? Like, it’s not the same. It doesn’t have the same history as the n word. It doesn’t have the same history as slavery. It was, I guess, closer to the cakewalk, you could say. Right? Like, one group being like, the way this other group is doing things looks ridiculous to me. Let’s re redo it and add a bunch of, like, cultural flares to it. And this is where you get the true horror of this and how it left when when you as a black person couldn’t be proud of all these genuine cultural achievements because those were tied to racism, they had to invent new history. And this is where you see the beginning of the modern black culture that came out of the rap industry in, like, the nineteen eighties and stuff like that because this is when they had finally won all the victories. This is when Andy and Amos is finally off the air. This is when all of their connections to their actual history had been cut down, and they’re like the NAACCP, I imagine, being like the once ler, having cut down the the the Lorax being there, stop. Stop shutting down every part of genuine black history that this country has. and then there’s nothing left. It’s a desert. And look at our video if you wanna see the results of this called the zombification of black culture where we go over how blacks went from having out of children a child out of marriages at a rate half that of rights. It was only at 5% when whites with it 10% to a rate that’s, like, seventy eight percent. Like, in in just a few decades as well. It really happened over a fairly short time period, the destruction of black culture once you erase this history. And, you you see it because, Simone, you may not understand how severe it is or how grotesque it is, but look. It’s happening with Splash Mountain. So Splash Mountain

Simone Collins [12:55]:Oh, it got turned into Tiana’s adventure or whatever, by your adventure.

Malcolm Collins [13:00]:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So do you I’m just wondering. Was your, like, brief understanding of history. Do you understand how absolutely grotesque that is?

Simone Collins [13:08]:That they got rid of Splash Mountain?

Malcolm Collins [13:10]:Right. Because Oh my gosh.

Simone Collins [13:12]:I follow all these, like, Disney vloggers and stuff. Yeah. It was seen as a travesty. This was a piece of Disney history.

Malcolm Collins [13:18]:No. No. That’s not why it’s important.

Simone Collins [13:20]:Okay. Why?

Malcolm Collins [13:22]:What is Splash Mountain based on?

Simone Collins [13:24]:Oh, like Appalachian culture and Briar Rabbit.

Malcolm Collins [13:28]:Splash Mountain is based on Briar Rabbit.

Simone Collins [13:31]:Yeah. A Jacktail. Briar Rabbit. I know. I I I just said I just said

Malcolm Collins [13:35]:Well, Briar Rabbit is not from Appalachian culture. Isn’t it? No. It was influenced and twisted a bit by the Jacktails archetypes, but Briar Rabbit was a, ethnologist who went around to enslaved black communities and collected all of their local mythology. Oh. And then he built that mythology into a series of children’s books. Those children’s books are the Briar Rabbit mythology. Briar Rabbit about a Carbaby.

Simone Collins [14:06]:Connections. Why they had to cancel it?

Malcolm Collins [14:09]:No. No. It’s not why they had to connect. Briar Rabbit had direct connections to African genuine African myth. Tales?

Simone Collins [14:18]:Oh my gosh. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. So they they erased a ride that was themed around genuine African folk tales with a ride that was, like, some weirdly I mean, I I like I like Tiana. She’s a good character.

Malcolm Collins [14:34]:But the princess and the toad is a European folktale. Oh my god. You’re right. Oh, that’s bad.

Simone Collins [14:40]:Oh, no. No.

Malcolm Collins [14:42]:It’s worse than you think. Because you know the type of music that they played on the ride before?

Simone Collins [14:49]:Good banjo music.

Malcolm Collins [14:52]:Banjo music. Do you

Simone Collins [14:53]:know what the banjo is? I don’t know. But you’re gonna say it’s black, but

Malcolm Collins [14:58]:I thought it was a African instrument that was brought over by the slaves and placed on plantations. No way.

Simone Collins [15:06]:Hold on. Origins of banjo. The oh my gosh. The modern banjo was created by enslaved Africans and their descendants in the Caribbean and colonial North America drawing on West Africans’ gourd bodied loot traditions. Of course, it’s shaped like a

Malcolm Collins [15:23]:oh my god. The entire ride was one of the most authentic Oh, no. Back to true African. True black history. Oh my god. Would have.

Simone Collins [15:38]:But, like, we’re I didn’t they got they got rid of it because I think people were accusing Disneyland of it it’s racist. They’re like, this ride’s racist. We can’t although there was nothing about it.

Malcolm Collins [15:48]:Said it was racist because of the character that would use as the framing device for the Briar Rabbit stories was an enslaved man telling these stories to a white child.

Simone Collins [16:01]:Oh, for ah, FFS.

Malcolm Collins [16:03]:And they said this is an offensive story.

Simone Collins [16:06]:No. No. No. No. Okay. I remember this. Splash Mountain was changed to remove its association with the controversial 1946 Disney film song of the South. Because don’t forget that at the very end, they played zippity doo dah. But I’m I guess the formerly enslaved man you’re talking about is the character in song of the south, which I remember saying No.

Malcolm Collins [16:25]:I’ll go read this is the character. This is the guy. The guy who has

Simone Collins [16:29]:who is He’s a bit of your doorman.

Malcolm Collins [16:31]:A positive relationship. And note here, I I wanna be very clear about this. Yeah. When you eradicate any view of real black history, real black history involved many, many instances of loving, genuinely paternal relationships between slaves and white children. Okay? There are many instances in which a sweet slave who genuinely had nothing but love for a particular child told them stories that were passed down from parent to child all the way back to Africa. And I think when you look at the popularity of something like Briar Rabbit even among white southern culture, these were stories I was read as a kid. They were stories Totally. I was deeply familiar with as a kid. Yeah. They represent the moment that was captured in that movie. But that

Simone Collins [17:31]:moment just that too. It’s like, I remember from my childhood watching old, like, Shirley Temple movies, and there there were definitely similar characters in some of those movies. Like, just a really nice, both, like, older black men and older black women. And that definitely, for, like, me as a kid, shaped the way that I probably came to subconsciously view black people as, like, oh, these are really nice people. Like, I don’t know the baggage or history, it just a positive.

Malcolm Collins [17:56]:The tropes that were available to black people. When you tell a black person, you can’t when you grow up feeling this way, you can’t have a positive relationship with a white child. That’s racist. Yeah. Then you invent rap culture. Then you invent the anti police culture. Then you invent the crime culture.

Simone Collins [18:16]:These things Yeah. What’s sad is oh, what’s that movie? The the the The Help. There’s the movie The Help that does depict a modern relationship between a black nanny slash housemaid in the nineteen sixties, nineteen fifties South and a white child who’s her charge. And she’s really sweet. They have a really sweet relationship, but the only way that they are able to make that work in the movie is that the mother is dismissive and abusive toward her child. You remember where she’s like, you are kind, you are important, etcetera. Like, keeps saying these sweet affirmations to the child because the child is constantly demeaned by her mother. So the only way they were able to make that relationship look positive is by making the mother an absolute monster, which is that’s really sad. That and, well, and, of course, the whole movie was about racial tensions. I I understand, Saba. But the point here being

Malcolm Collins [19:05]:Oh. The wider point I’m making is this Okay. The song of the South as a movie captured the truth of how black culture ended up influencing what today is American culture, what today is Pan American culture.

Simone Collins [19:21]:Yeah. With with some of Americans America’s culture sorry. American culture’s best features.

Malcolm Collins [19:26]:Right. And some of black culture’s best features. Sure. The character in that was not, like, witless or something like that. He was depicted as wise. He was depicted as caring. He was depicted as loving. But that didn’t fit the narrative the NAACP wanted young black people seeing because they didn’t like the additional context that it evolved from.

Speaker 8 [19:54]:Wonderful feeling feeling this way. You mean you leaving your old briar patch?

Speaker 9 [20:00]:That I is.

Speaker 8 [20:02]:Don’t you know you can’t run away from trouble?

Malcolm Collins [20:05]:But to get to his character, to get to the wise black man trope or whatever that you often have come in and, like, give advice to a character in a movie, you have to go through the minstrel shows. And when you tear all that out, what you get in its place is the the the a completely invented, which is what I love, princess and the frog. And princess and the frog is a European story being redone on what is frankly while it isn’t an offensive racist caricature of this house, it is actually more of a racist caricature of what life was like during that period than uncle Remus was.

Simone Collins [20:55]:But, also, they they have some pretty negative stereotypes around voodoo culture in that movie.

Malcolm Collins [21:01]:Well, voodoo and voodoo culture. Voodoo is when black people practiced it. But yeah. Oh, wait.

Simone Collins [21:05]:So what? Voodoo is only practiced by white

Malcolm Collins [21:07]:people? Well, no. No. Voodoo is the culture from the islands. Voodoo is the culture from it’s the distinction doesn’t really matter, and they treat them as the same thing in the movie. Okay. The point being is that even like, if you look at this doctor Facilier in the in the movie Oh,

Simone Collins [21:21]:is that the same? God. You have a good memory.

Malcolm Collins [21:23]:And you look at things like the, well, there’s a great

Simone Collins [21:26]:song about it. I love his song. It’s great. It’s a it’s a really good he’s a great character. It’s a but He’s not depicted flatteringly.

Malcolm Collins [21:32]:Right. You look at the, you know, pin cushion voodoo dolls and stuff like this that you see. That has nothing to do with voodoo or hoodoo. That’s actually a European tradition.

Simone Collins [21:42]:Oh, good heavens.

Malcolm Collins [21:44]:It only became associated with voodoo and hoodoo during the voodoo scare of the I think it was the nineteen eighties. So

Simone Collins [21:52]:Wait. You mean the same, like, this this this Satan, the

Malcolm Collins [21:56]:the satanic panic? That demonized voodoo and hoodoo. There was a a sister scare to the satanic panic, I think, or it might

Simone Collins [22:02]:have been

Malcolm Collins [22:02]:a bit before. Okay. Okay. It might have been a bit earlier than that when they would did a bunch of, like, exploitation films around it. But the scare that happened around these traditions is what doctor Facilier is based on, not after actual

Simone Collins [22:18]:Oh gosh. Okay. So, yeah, they they both demonize it, but also couch it from a caricature

Malcolm Collins [22:24]:created by people who

Simone Collins [22:25]:made it.

Malcolm Collins [22:25]:Actual racist caricature with bad under both bad understandings and and malicious framing.

Simone Collins [22:34]:Wow. This makes it so much worse. Oh, no.

Malcolm Collins [22:36]:Uncle Remus is not maliciously framed. Right?

Simone Collins [22:39]:No. No. He’s a scribble.

Malcolm Collins [22:40]:Think about the things you can’t talk about. Like, in in American culture, situations in the South began to become known as tar babies. Right? Like, because of the stories of Briar Rabbit. Right? And so these were white people who were using a phrase, like, when you got into a sticky situation, you’re like, oh, that’s a tar baby, right, that I knew from growing up because I remember the story of Briar Rabbit and the tar baby. Mhmm. Right? And then black people said, that’s a racist term. You can’t say it because it was in a minority context used as a racial slur. And now all of a sudden, you can’t use it in its other context as well. And that’s erasing black culture black culture’s effect on American culture. And when people go down this particular rabbit hole, and and and and genuinely think, like, what you see in princess and the frog. You see the caricature of the big fair and everything, like, one with Mardi Gras.

Simone Collins [23:49]:Oh. You know, you see the caricature

Malcolm Collins [23:50]:of and even in princess and the frog, you see a friendship between a wealthy white family and a black girl. And yet it’s not a racist caricature because, oh, well, it doesn’t follow these exact tropes. It doesn’t point out that not every slave white relationship was entirely a negative one and that the situation was actually And

Simone Collins [24:17]:then she they weren’t she wasn’t a slave. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [24:19]:Well yeah. But the relationship she has with this white family is very paternalistic on the white family’s behalf.

Simone Collins [24:27]:Sure. And there’s an obvious power distance. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [24:30]:There’s an obvious power distance. Her mom works as a maid for the girl, if I remember correctly. And if I remember correctly, it’s very clear that the white family is I I just I’m gonna go on a side here. The princess and the frog, while I do think it’s a it’s sort of grotesque that they could replace real black culture with it, I do think it’s a genuinely good Disney movie.

Simone Collins [24:54]:I know. I love almost there. It’s that’s a great song too. It teaches good work ethics.

Malcolm Collins [24:58]:Yeah. Almost there, I think it’s great. She’s probably one of my favorite Disney princesses. For sure. Her attitude. Yes. She’d make a great wife. She’s like the one Disney princess where I’m like, yeah. You can really marry this girl.

Simone Collins [25:07]:I’d I’d want my daughters to be into that kind of Disney princess.

Malcolm Collins [25:10]:But not just she would make a good wife. They also did a very, very good job with her white friend in her family.

Simone Collins [25:17]:Oh, yeah.

Malcolm Collins [25:17]:Yeah. Because, typically, you get her character, and she’s b****y or shellfish or unaware of her relative privilege or unaware of how her actions could make the other person feel bad. And it’s told very subtly. An example of this. do you remember at the end, where she needs a gown and the girl is like, well, you can just take one of my gowns. Right? And then she gives her a blue gown. and the the problem is is you’ve seen her closet. She wears nothing but prank frilly outfits. This is clearly a gown that she had bought specifically for her friend knowing she wouldn’t have a gown, done up in her friend’s style, and then pretended it was her own gown to not make her friend

Simone Collins [26:08]:Yeah. Because Tiana would never say yes to having a good look that.

Malcolm Collins [26:10]:It’s shown that Tiana would never say yes or the way that they give Tiana money where they order a bunch of stuff from her as an excuse. Oh, I’ll I’ll I’ll just order a bunch of stuff for you to give you money. It’s it’s shown very sweetly and throughout the entire show. The well, I mean, and this character thought she was gonna marry the prince. The moment she realizes that, oh, no. The real prince is someone who Tiana loves she’s happy for her. She wants Yeah.

Simone Collins [26:34]:Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [26:35]:Yeah. Her to do her thing. Probably good for her too because then she goes after the prince’s younger brother, and that’s a good way to get that. You know, become really good with his sister-in-law. You know? If you’re gonna if you’re gonna go for that, go for it. You know?

Simone Collins [26:51]:I’m gonna You know? Yeah. Get your bag.

Malcolm Collins [26:54]:Yeah. Yeah. Get your bag. But it it’s such a shame that that’s sort of the last of that type of Disney movie that was ever made, like, the last of the good Disney movies.

Simone Collins [27:04]:Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [27:04]:The the villains post doctor Fassalier have sucked.

Simone Collins [27:10]:No. Villains have just been the heroines. I mean, look. Except for Tomatea. Tomatea was pretty good. I don’t remember. Tomatea is

Malcolm Collins [27:18]:the giant crab from one zero one.

Simone Collins [27:20]:Oh, yeah. He’s, yeah, shiny. Very good. Very good. Yes.

Malcolm Collins [27:29]:But, no, this is this is where when you see something like the NAACP, when you burn down we like, I honestly don’t understand how anyone thought black culture was gonna survive this. Ripping out everything that racism had ever touched.

Simone Collins [27:46]:Yeah. Or, I mean, like, just a lot of you know, if, obviously, there’s baggage, but I don’t know. Like, a positive depiction is a positive depiction. Like, the Aunt Jemima restaurant that was super popular for a long period of time. Like, it was a popular family restaurant that people liked, and Jemima’s syrup bottles. Like, I remember having them as a kid, and I always wanted them because it was a nice lady in a dress. It wasn’t like, I’m gonna dehumanize these people. There there were restaurants

Malcolm Collins [28:19]:that were meant to dehumanize black people.

Simone Collins [28:22]:Like Right. And there are restaurants that are meant to dehumanize busty women, but, like, I don’t know. We don’t call those,

Malcolm Collins [28:29]:I guess, is the thing that gets me. Right? Is the one type of restaurant gets removed, the other type of restaurant remains. And in the process of ripping out that restaurant, you end up ripping out a bunch of stuff that actually preserved and glorified black culture.

Simone Collins [28:46]:Yeah. I mean, similar to, like, rainforest cafes to be like, this is, you know, an insult to the concept of rainforests. Well, yeah, it is. But it also, like, gets a lot of young kids into the idea of rainforests and conservation and frogs. And, like, it’s it is it is a piece of ambassadorship, which, though problematic, has its merits.

Malcolm Collins [29:07]:Well, I mean, we’ve seen this in the school system. Even when I was a kid, they’re already beginning to phase out Huckleberry Finn because it used the n word too much. Right?

Simone Collins [29:13]:Like they just, I don’t know, censor just that one word

Malcolm Collins [29:16]:and be like did in some, but I I don’t it’s it’s the character’s name. Wait. Inward Jim?

Simone Collins [29:24]:Oh, I forgot that.

Malcolm Collins [29:26]:When I talk about the restaurants meant to dehumanize people, I’m look I’m talking about stuff like Coon Chicken Inn.

Simone Collins [29:31]:Oh, right.

Malcolm Collins [29:32]:Stuff like aunt Jemima, it clearly wasn’t meant to dehumanize black people.

Simone Collins [29:37]:I didn’t know there was a place called Koon Chicken Inn. Good god.

Malcolm Collins [29:40]:Based on a caricature which people have labeled as racist, like the mammy caricature. That said, it’s important to differentiate caricatures that have racial tones and caricatures that are meant to here’s what I mean. Other groups when I grew up, my school had a picture. This was on all of our gyms. I remember it very clearly. It was a little Irishman with his fists up like this.

Simone Collins [30:10]:Oh, yeah. No. Isn’t that a just a sports team mascot? The fighting Irish. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s for the specific sports team, though.

Malcolm Collins [30:18]:I wouldn’t have other sports teams have used it. It’s it’s actually a common sports team mascot, the fighting Irish. A a little fighting Irish like, Irish

Simone Collins [30:26]:We know all know exactly what you mean.

Malcolm Collins [30:28]:But the point I’m making here is that if you go in and you eradicate, you say, we don’t want that anymore, you erase part of what is genuine Irish culture. Right?

Simone Collins [30:41]:When Notre Dame? When you Yeah. Notre Dame.

Malcolm Collins [30:44]:Something that is a caricature. So let let me give you an example of what I mean by when you erase the caricature, you erase the culture.

Simone Collins [30:54]:Oh, no. What? No. They’re trying to erase the fighting Irish. The the old logo was him being like, and the new logo is just him marching forward with a football with a resting b***h face.

Malcolm Collins [31:05]:That’s so annoying. It is really annoying. Everybody knows the Irish are quick to fight. Yeah. Come on, man. These people.

Simone Collins [31:12]:Yeah. Even my favorite Irish comedian on YouTube has confirmed this.

Malcolm Collins [31:18]:What’s Russell Crowe Irish or something just going around the world fighting people? What?

Simone Collins [31:22]:I don’t I don’t know, but that sounds great, so let’s just believe it. So Yeah. Check that.

Speaker 4 [31:27]:He loves to act, but he loves one thing more, fight around the world. He fights his directors and he fights his fans. It’s a problem no one understands. If there’s two things he loves, it’s fighting and Fighting around the world.

Malcolm Collins [31:41]:No. No. The the here’s what I’ll explain. This will immediately make sense to you. You’re be like, oh my god. Yeah. Like, that is actually kind of gruesome. So you go to a black person, and you tell them growing up, you know what’s disgusting? This depiction of black people getting together and doing a barbecue and frying eating fried chicken and eating watermelon and playing music, and and and that’s a disgusting caricature. And then, you know, the the the granddad is there, and they’re like, that’s what we did every week. What what are you talking about? Like, what what of the things you just mentioned is negative?

Simone Collins [32:17]:Well, I know. And you just mentioned a bunch of things that, like, our families have done. And if someone came to us, I’d be like

Malcolm Collins [32:23]:I I have another episode I’ll do eventually on how much black culture took from Scots Irish culture and that they’re very closely cultured.

Simone Collins [32:30]:Versa because I thought banjos were like a Scots Irish thing.

Malcolm Collins [32:33]:Well, no. They they they culturally transmitted a lot. Oh, yeah. What the Scotts Irish were known for doing is they didn’t really care who invented a a culture or technology. It it Yeah. If it

Simone Collins [32:43]:was good, you I’m guessing gonna steal it. I’m gonna tell you. I don’t care

Malcolm Collins [32:46]:if any of American did it. I don’t care if black people did it, but that’s why they had so much more intercultural exchange with black culture than the other American cultural groups. Mhmm. and it’s also when the blacks saw another culture adopting their stuff, they adopted more of that culture stuff, and you had much more cultural interplay, which is how you get stuff like country music adopting so much of earlier black cultural ideas. Blues music, folk music, etcetera, which come out of this particular region. But the point here being is you take a collection of stuff that is not bad. There is nothing negative about eating watermelons. There is nothing negative about liking fried chicken. There’s nothing negative about having regular family get togethers where you talk and eat these things. There’s nothing negative about having the the the the comic jokes about the large black family that would all get together because the the before the the breaking apart of black families, they used to do this. This where the commentary of Well, also generation of black families get together, and they joke, and they have these conversations. And then people saw that, and they a comedian would do it, and they go, that’s a racist caricature. It’s like, no. It’s so screwed

Simone Collins [33:57]:up because you know who else likes watermelon a lot? Who? The Japanese. They [bleep] love watermelon. Suica. They they love it so like, I’ve been when I traveled to Japan, like, you just be let’s let’s all sit down and just eat watermelon together. It was like an event food. It was so popular that at the time and I think this is still the case. Like, the metro card of Tokyo, like, broader area was called Suica. Like, this is a culture that freaking loves watermelon. But if you were like, oh, those Japanese people, they love watermelon. Like, no one’s going to have an aneurysm. So it’s so much so messed up. Like, why why if black people like something and then people talk about it? Like, are we is this a problem? Why why, one, are they not allowed to like it? And two, why is them liking stuff a problem?

Malcolm Collins [34:44]:But the bigger problem is how this affects black youth and the way that they perceive their own identity. When you grow up as the BLM movement did and said that black culture is a culture that is antagonistic to the nuclear family. Mhmm. Right? That that has nothing to do with black culture, that we’re about polyamory. We’re about whatever. And then you look at how could you think that as a black person? That is the least black thing in the world if you’re talking about American black black culture. American black culture, if you put together do you if you remember these old black comedies from, like, the nineties or whatever, and you’d see what the joke version of a black family looks like, it was typically three or sometimes four generations of a family with extended relative networks all sitting down at a long table, joking, making fun of each other, etcetera.

Speaker 5 [35:41]:Oh, this is so fabulous. Ain’t nothing like getting together with family and having a good meal.

Speaker 7 [35:45]:You know, in my day, Sherman, people used to spend time with their family on Sundays and special occasion come around and pay their respects. You messing around and miss all over Ernest Golden years, magic Golden years, you’re gonna be mad at yourself.

Speaker 6 [35:58]:I cooked all this food. Is that all you gonna eat? Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. What’s wrong with you? Supposed to eat that thing, not scalp it. Well, daddy, all the calories in the chicken are found in the skin and in the fat, so I peel talking about is where all the fat and calories is. You know where that come from? Watching that damn TV.

Malcolm Collins [36:11]:And people said, oh, that’s a

Simone Collins [36:13]:racist caricature. And so then the next generation A cohesive family. Great.

Malcolm Collins [36:18]:Yeah. The the next generation grows up and being like, a large cohesive family is a racist caricature, so I’m gonna do the opposite.

Simone Collins [36:26]:Oh my gosh. The co op is not okay about

Malcolm Collins [36:30]:man who who mentors a child of the racist caricature. So let’s do gangs and drugs and hate the police because that’s the the furthest thing from the racist caricature. This is how black culture got cooked. And you and you see these other things like the black Sambo case where it was a story of humorously originally about an Indian character, but when it’s translated into United States, it became a black character it was about a clever child who would, like, outwist tigers and stuff. Okay. They were beloved children’s books, and then but they looked too much like a racist caricature, so they get rid of it. They get rid of the parts of our culture that that could be attached to anything. By the way, if you’re wondering about my claim, the cakewalk was a dance tied to early syncopatic march music. It syncopas to the two four rhythm that became the foundation of ragtime. Scott Jawful’s maple leaf rag from 1899 is the canonical cakewalk adjacent piece from ragtime in line runs straight into early New Orleans jazz, then swing, then rhythm and blues, and rock and roll. The syncopization that made the cakewalk distinctive is the same rhythmic innovation that became the backbone of nearly all American popular music.

Simone Collins [37:51]:I had no idea.

Malcolm Collins [37:52]:I no idea. Black people don’t grow up learning this. They grow up learning how racist the cakewalk was.

Simone Collins [38:00]:What’s really cool, you go to the Wikipedia page about cakewalks, there’s an animated GIF. I didn’t know that Wikipedia did that. That’s a nice improvement.

Malcolm Collins [38:05]:This is also where you get things like the tap dancing. Black performers develop tap from African rhythmic tradition That was fused with

Simone Collins [38:12]:Irish [bleep]. Bull.

Malcolm Collins [38:14]:And they were the ones who innovated the form. Bill Bojangles Robinson, then Nicholas Burnson, great black tappers of the Vaudeville era. You it’s erased. It’s erased. They this is this is all erased by the NAACP.

Simone Collins [38:34]:That is that is wild. That’s really

Malcolm Collins [38:39]:By the way, the briar rabbit story came directly from the West African trickster traditions. The hare and the spider and zazi were the classic trickster

Simone Collins [38:48]:Or or anansi. Anansi.

Malcolm Collins [38:50]:The enslaved black Africans adopted them, and briar rabbit became the central underdog archetype. The small, weak creature that outwits through wit and deception, which adapted heavily from when I say it adapted heavily from Jack Tails, because you can see this cultural transmission had already happened. In Africa, this character is magical, and uses magic to perform its tricks. Whereas if you look at the Jacktail traditions, it’s also about a small underdog character, but he never uses magic. and that’s a very distinctive thing about the Jacktail tradition. It’s

Simone Collins [39:26]:always trickery.

Malcolm Collins [39:27]:You also see in the briar rabbit tradition. Never uses magic. because they did already fused enough with the Protestant tradition where we saw that as, you don’t wanna be teaching kids that magic is a good thing or a cool thing or anything like that. It’s better to use pure wit.

Simone Collins [39:45]:Wow. There’s this really interesting pattern with all of our episodes about something related to black people, which is, oh my gosh. Why have they been so screwed over, but not in any of the ways that anyone says? Yeah. So And the very people who pretend to defend them, which is They

Malcolm Collins [40:02]:well, that’s because they let the fox in the henhouse. The NACP is the biggest threat and has been the biggest deteriorator of black culture. now fun, by the way. So remember I said that it was common in this era when everyone’s like, menstruals, menstruals, menstruals are so bad. They make themselves look like idiots. the stooges predicted themselves as lazy, stupid buffoons. So were the Marx brothers. So were Laurel and Hardy. So were Abbott and Costello. Almost all of the most famous comedic performers of this era did this routine.

Simone Collins [40:35]:Oh, yeah. No. Even in, the the the Christmas classic, White Christmas, they do a a menstrual bit. A minstrel. Sorry. A minstrel bit.

Malcolm Collins [40:44]:Yeah. And and they’re like, well, when it’s black people doing them, it’s about all of black culture. That’s what they’re making fun of. And it’s like, no. You chose to make it that. It might have been about that at the very beginning of the tradition, but the tradition had evolved into a position where it didn’t need to mean that anymore. It even became

Simone Collins [41:05]:yeah. I mean, I I

Malcolm Collins [41:06]:think became it uncle Remus. It didn’t need to be malicious. You guys decided to make it universally malicious.

Simone Collins [41:14]:It started in the twelfth century as a form of entertainment. It remained a form of entertainment. I I feel like nothing changed. It’s just that, like, one one group was like, oh, this one this one subset of people who engaged in this form of entertainment were were horrible and, like, doing committing atrocities. I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins [41:35]:So so for for more context here, the minstrel show had a structure. The end men, mister Tombow or mister Bones, at either end of the stage trading jokes with the interlocutor in the middle. The end men were the comics, and the interlocutor played the straight man. That’s the ancestor of the modern comedy set, the comic on stage, the rapid fire joke delivery, callbacks, and the comic persona. The structure of American stand up, the opening bit, the rhythm of the setup, the punchline, the character the comedian plays was developed in the minstrel format. The the shave and haircut rhythm, the two bits ending, and the call and response of American joke structures all come from this.

Simone Collins [42:15]:Well, this explains that white Christmas song because they kept saying things like, oh, mister Bones, you’re terrible. And that explains mister Bones. Oh my gosh. Wow. So, yeah, is a formalized format here.

Malcolm Collins [42:26]:Well, this is the funniest thing. This is where you hear the mister you just realized, oh, this is part of black American cultural history.

Simone Collins [42:33]:God forbid, I know that. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [42:36]:But you can’t know this today. We can’t

Simone Collins [42:38]:talk about this today. Yes. Yes.

Malcolm Collins [42:40]:Yes. The sitcom is also of direct descent. The mistrial shows stable cast of comic archetypes and recurring characters at the end minutes of comic foils. That structure had become the sitcom with Amos and Andy being a direct descendant of mistrial shows.

Simone Collins [42:58]:Right. So crazy. That is so crazy.

Malcolm Collins [43:00]:Later evolved into things like I love Lucy and the honeymooners.

Simone Collins [43:04]:Yeah. Which is so slapstick and funny and delightful.

Malcolm Collins [43:08]:Yeah. And nobody’s like, oh, you can’t have the the reason why Lucy like, let’s take something like Lucy or the honeymooners. Like, straight to the moon. you know? Or I love Lucy. Like, oh, I’m such an idiot. Right? Like, we watch these shows, and you could say, well, she’s not depicting every American housewife. And it’s like, I would beg to disagree. Lucy absolutely represented an arch type of all American women.

Simone Collins [43:37]:Yeah. Lucy Lucy is the black face of of American housewives. And it wasn’t necessarily a positive stereotype. No. Not at all. No. Mean, also delightful and funny. So I don’t know. You know, it’s again, is it problematic? Yes. Is it funny and and delightful in a an institution culturally? Yes. Like, come on.

Malcolm Collins [43:56]:The the mini characters, you could look at the Simpsons. Is the Simpsons supposed to depict all white American culture and families? Well, I mean, yeah, kinda. That was kinda the point. And you have a dad who strangles his child every time he gets mad and is an idiot. And who is it

Simone Collins [44:14]:Honey, you have an Indian, like, seven eleven. I mean Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [44:17]:Who isn’t properly trained? No. But the the the reason

Simone Collins [44:19]:You have a Scottish grounds people Yes. Mean, it’s not the way. Reason I’m focused, Simone.

Malcolm Collins [44:24]:The reason I’m focused on the family Yes. Is I’m not talking about every racial stereotype in the show.

Simone Collins [44:28]:Okay.

Malcolm Collins [44:29]:The point I’m making is you can have a negative stereotype still be a positive cultural force. The family of Homer, how how how did much did that impact American culture? If we went back and we erased because it would check every box the minstrel does, is Homer a a negative stereotype of a bumbling worse than minstrels because he’s also aggressive and abusive idiot character, right, who’s bad at his job as a risk to all of society. Truly. About to blow up a nuclear plant constantly. Yeah. Is he a depiction of the average white family and what that very clearly meant to be understood of your average middle class white family in America or lower middle class? Absolutely. Was he a stereotype being drawn by, let’s be honest, mostly upper class people in Hollywood who genuinely looked down on middle class Americans? Yes. He was a stereotype being drawn from people in another cultural group who looked down upon people of that stereotype and meant to this in a derogatory fashion. Yet if we went through and we scrubbed American culture of the Simpsons, how much of Americana would we lose? Now imagine we apply the same rules to everything. We apply the same rules to the three Stooges. We apply the see the same rules to all all the other comedians I went through. And we apply the same rules to you just lose it. You lose American history. And yet this is what was done to black American history.

Simone Collins [46:15]:That’s really messed up. It’s super messed up.

Malcolm Collins [46:18]:and this is why it is incredibly racist in terms of the downstream effects to stigmatize blackface. Yeah.

Simone Collins [46:30]:There’s so many things in here, but I I think the saddest thing is you just pointed out a whole bunch of things that came from black culture that I didn’t even know came from black culture largely as a product of all of this erasure and and refusal to include certain bits of media in our, you know, accepted set, which is messed up. Like, shouldn’t black culture get credit for that? You know?

Malcolm Collins [46:54]:No. But I think the how much content have you watched about the taking down of the the the Disney attraction thing?

Simone Collins [47:05]:Oh, so much. Like, hours worth.

Malcolm Collins [47:06]:Okay. Okay. Had you once heard that the primary music type was invented in Africa or that the ride was

Simone Collins [47:13]:based on traditional like in fact, it’s almost not mentioned at all. It’s like song of the South. It just like, all they had to do was say, well, it was associated with song of the South, which we all know is horribly racist and, like, this, like, scourge on Disney’s history that we must never mention. It was like the Voldemort of Disney’s history. We must not mention it at all. And and so it really wasn’t mentioned at all. Like, in fact, I didn’t know any of this stuff about, you know, the the actual history. I mean, I remember watching some of the South as a kid and, like, enjoying it, but that was it. That’s Yeah. Wild. So crazy.

Malcolm Collins [47:51]:I I appreciate that I was able to educate you. Hopefully, I was able to educate our audience. And, we can realize that just because a portion of something’s history was racist in nature or especially because if if you say we are going to rip out everything that was racist or derogatory derogatory against black, you rip out black culture, and then you rip out the point. You rip out the way that American culturally works, which is two groups making fun of each other. You don’t get the cakewalk without this the black version of the Mistral Show. And you don’t get all American music without the cakewalk. It invented the and and by the way, I think ragtime is the first form of music that I think is good. I do not like classical music. I don’t like anything like that. So every form of music that I personally like is downstream of the innovation that came from the cakewalk.

Simone Collins [48:46]:I can vouch for this. Malcolm is not just making this up.

Malcolm Collins [48:48]:He really likes ragtime music.

Simone Collins [48:51]:Like, it doesn’t make I I can’t say I guess I I thought you you took some, like, course on music history through the great courses and were like, and ragtime is the best. I that’s all I kinda remember. Well, that’s why I learned

Malcolm Collins [49:03]:about this. I learned about the development of the American theatrical tradition and the influence that black Americans had on that, but that influence was through the minstrel shows. Mhmm. During a time of racism, that’s how they were able to have influence. And and when the minstrel shows get erased, when the minstrel shows get to said they were nothing but bad, they were nothing but racist, we miss this cultural conversation that led to current American culture. And it’s it’s wild to me as well that the form of if you ask blacks today, what is black American culture? They’d likely say like, the first thing it it walked on their mind is gonna be rap music. It’s gonna be gangster culture. It’s gonna be gangster dress. It’s not gonna be jazz. It’s not gonna be rag time

Simone Collins [50:00]:Hip hop. I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins [50:02]:Yeah. It’s even hip hop. Hip hop is associated with crime. Hip hop is associated with degeneracy. Mhmm. It’s not going to be the parts of black culture that genuinely uplifted or had a cultural path to uplift the American black community. Right? Because those are the parts that were developed, oh, no, during this this pre time before they had to start from scratch, before they had to say, oh, we won’t look to these old forms of music and how we develop going forward, which is really sad.

Simone Collins [50:38]:It’s really sad.

Malcolm Collins [50:39]:but I’m glad I was able to blow your mind about this because the moment I told you I’m gonna do an episode on the history of blackface and why condemning it so aggressively rather than saying, yes. It was used in a racial context in the past and in a racist context in the past, but it’s not the same as the n word or slavery or something like that. And that once it’s removed, it’s sort of like the Jenga piece that knocks over the rest of the the the Jenga tower that is black history. It’s the one block you can’t remove.

Simone Collins [51:14]:Well, I will see if YouTube’s algorithm can fathom that level of nuance, which I don’t think is that hard to fathom. But, look, they couldn’t figure out when we are trying to say that hipster is a bad sorry, that Hitler is a bad person.

Malcolm Collins [51:29]:Yeah. They’re like, what? Hitler is a bad person because his ideas were as often as progressive as they were conservative and that he fits into modern progressive archetypes much more than conservative ones. How dare you? So that that hit hit that hit us with a channel strike.

Simone Collins [51:44]:So I don’t know if you’re gonna be able to make it through this one, but that for that reason, thank you to everyone who subscribes to us on Substack and Patreon.

Malcolm Collins [51:51]:Thank you guys so much. It means so much to us. And then

Simone Collins [51:55]:we can a a backup because Malcolm’s he’s he’d be speedrunning it. And I I just outlined another episode about Indian culture that might also not help us. So great.

Malcolm Collins [52:07]:Restrude. I think that this is where the real cultural conversation happens. This is where racism actually ends. It’s having the real conversation.

Simone Collins [52:15]:Yes. Shutting it down is how you make it a problem instead of just having discourse.

Malcolm Collins [52:20]:The light of truth burns away evil. Right? You know? That that that is the the end state of this, and this is why progressives the algorithm can’t let us talk about that for like this because it it would have the races be like, oh, okay. Yeah. That makes sense. You’re clearly not coming at this from a Pearl clutching perspective. So I’ll I’ll take you seriously. But and and I will mitigate my views based on this. And we have a lot of you who have been like, yeah. I’m significantly less racist because of your show. But we’d also really encourage you if you if you like our stuff, rfab.ai. This episode was entirely filmed and edited on rfab. We have moved to those features being mostly stable at this point, and that’s really exciting for us, because that means we’re able to move away from some other editing software. And I’m able to try some fun editing tricks that only our fab can do, like the bleeps that you have had around stuff that might make YouTube mad in this. Like the I’ll show off a little feature I’ve been working on right now.

Speaker 11 [53:28]:This is my first time testing this feature, so let’s see if it works.

Malcolm Collins [53:31]:The we got the looping video feature that I built. I thought that was pretty fun for, like, monetizing things.

Simone Collins [53:37]:Sleek. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [53:40]:And yeah. Even if you’re like, I don’t like playing the AI adventure story that you have on our FAB, fine. There’s there’s probably something on it that is something you’d like to do. Right?

Simone Collins [53:50]:No. Actually, I don’t use them at all except that Yes. We have a lot. I use the image generation. I use the fact checking. I use the based AI. I used I I use oh my gosh. Oh, yeah. You were saying

Malcolm Collins [54:03]:this video also had to be entirely researched with the based AI feature on our FAB because Yeah. Grock wouldn’t give me serious answers to these questions. Yeah. it just kept hedging everything, and I just couldn’t get any information out of it.

Simone Collins [54:14]:Yeah. Even though Grok is the de facto, like, based LLM that people turn to, no. You need to use Rhodes, and you can get it super easy at our FAB. Yeah. That that it’s actually based. Because I also found that I couldn’t use Grok, to do my episode research. Oh, so you used Rhodes as well. Mhmm.

Malcolm Collins [54:31]:So we’re moving more towards an all our fab ecosystem.

Simone Collins [54:34]:I mean, the recipe generation system on Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [54:37]:If you’re just a housewife, check

Simone Collins [54:38]:it out. You can lock the site in a safe harbor. A housewife, yeah, you can also use our devices, which are not our devices. You just buy them separately. We don’t make any money from that. But, like, you can make companion devices that are tutors for your kids. For the girls, I made an animated tutor named Thetis, who is a mermaid woman. And then I made Cudish, a chick that our boys like the a chicken a baby chicken.

Malcolm Collins [55:00]:And these work in a few modes. They can work with regular companions, or they can work with, like, living avatars that are, like, fully animated characters based on the leaflet system. Yeah. I mean, I think that’s a little much to put together for It’s

Simone Collins [55:11]:a little much. You can do it.

Malcolm Collins [55:12]:You know? The other But I I

Simone Collins [55:14]:can I can pretend to be cutish, can’t I? Let’s see. We’re still working on this one, but, look, I can be cutish too.

Malcolm Collins [55:19]:Oh, yeah. That’s that’s one of

Simone Collins [55:21]:the features that I have.

Malcolm Collins [55:22]:What’s what’s another feature that I’ve been working

Simone Collins [55:24]:a lot on? This is Thetis as proof. She’s loading. She’s Better better storytelling.

Malcolm Collins [55:30]:Oh, yes. The one thing I’d say, probably the the single most useful feature that Artfab has that isn’t even that obvious if you’re milling around our fab right now. and this feature is sort of a core part of my daily life is the API. If you do vibe coding and you’re not using the our fab API, you are at a massive disadvantage.

Simone Collins [55:49]:Yeah. It creates, really cool animations. It’s very efficient.

Malcolm Collins [55:52]:Yeah. Yeah. If you if you explore the site or use the site, you’ll notice animations of a cat girl. You can easily create that and just put it animations, put images all throughout your website with the RFAB API, and make it so that your own AI can call you while it’s working. So if you’re using, like, Claude Fable or something like that and you wanna go on a walk, you can set it up with the Artfab API just in its background memory doc so that it calls you when it reaches a stopping point and asks for what to do next.

Simone Collins [56:19]:And it it actually does this. It’s kind of weird because Malcolm will just pick up a call at dinner or, like, while we’re on a shopping trip, and he’ll be like, okay. Like, do this. Don’t do this. Call me back when you’re done. And I’m like, who is that? And and it’s like, you know, it’s just our Survive coding agent.

Malcolm Collins [56:35]:Oh oh, and by the way, for people who’ve been using the site for a while and you haven’t gone back to these features, one of the things we added recently that I’m very excited about is the brainstorming features that brainstorm the beginnings of adventures for you and and companions, and we have, like, a lot of these. Now you can fully customize the prompt and the prompt structure on those. So, you control and and control what AI runs in them. So you control those completely now. Those are those are completely user controllable now. We also the narrative engine is way stronger than it used to be because now it builds memory and lore books to better remember facts and and and drift less. So lots of fun things for you to play around with. We also got audio to audio feature now if it’s been a while since you didn’t know that, you can do it from

Simone Collins [57:18]:your phone. I need to use that more because I can’t read anything.

Malcolm Collins [57:21]:I also recently added a feature, hide covers, where if you’re using on a bus or something, but you wanna do not save for work stuff, it hides the cover images.

Simone Collins [57:29]:I didn’t know you did that.

Malcolm Collins [57:31]:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Simone Collins [57:32]:Dude. Okay. Well I

Malcolm Collins [57:37]:love you.

Simone Collins [57:37]:I love you too. Gee whiz.

Malcolm Collins [57:42]:You are amazing, and thank you for your time.

Simone Collins [57:46]:Thank you for your time.

Malcolm Collins [57:47]:No. It’s just the mic was far away.

Simone Collins [57:48]:Okay. You fixed it. Thank you. Thank you very, very much.

Malcolm Collins [57:53]:I love you very, very much, Simone. You’re a great wife. I love you so forward to a fried rice dinner with fancy hibachi steak, but, obviously, cut the steak smaller.

Simone Collins [58:04]:Oh, is there steak in the fried rice? Yes. Okay. So I pick it up, and I it, and then I

Malcolm Collins [58:12]:Shut up. You’re so mean.

Simone Collins [58:15]:You you said you’ve said in the past that you wanted to julienned. You julienned carrots. No one I guess people julienned meat. Clearly, now I do. I love you.

Malcolm Collins [58:27]:And and cut the vegetable smaller too. I noticed you didn’t for Octavians.

Simone Collins [58:31]:Yeah. Because humans eat vegetables that are this big. It’s I do you is it a swallowing thing, actually? Because you don’t like swallowing pills.

Malcolm Collins [58:44]:Yeah. I don’t like swallowing big pieces of meat. That was one of the reasons I didn’t eat a lot at the restaurant. The the chunks they gave were just way too big.

Simone Collins [58:50]:You chew them with your teeth. I don’t like chewing things.

Malcolm Collins [59:01]:Do I know you so much?

Simone Collins [59:04]:Don’t make me chew my food.

Malcolm Collins [59:08]:You have to spend your life with me.

Simone Collins [59:11]:You know what’s so funny though? It’s one of the most endearing things you do that I just love so much, and it’s so stupid, but it’s the sound of you chewing. I really like the sound of you chewing. It’s so cute. It’s like a little guinea pig and some celery, and I just love it. And you don’t even wanna do it. You don’t even wanna chew your food when it’s so cute. I think it goes to show too how, like, when people are actually in love, all this stuff that people cite as annoying them if you hate someone is the same stuff that is, like, the cutest and most wonderful thing in the world if you love them, and that’s so weird.

Malcolm Collins [59:53]:Oh my gosh.

Simone Collins [59:54]:Okay. Don’t love your chewing. I love you, but that means that your chewing is

Malcolm Collins [59:59]:the best kind everyone said they get sick of. It’s like chewing or whatever. Yeah.

Simone Collins [60:03]:They’re disgusting chewing. No. It’s so cute. Oh gosh. It it it it it hurts my heart to hear that you have this strong distaste for chewing your own food. And what how how many years have I known you? And I didn’t know that you disliked chewing and you what you’re saying.

Malcolm Collins [60:23]:Chewing until I thought about it, and I was like, yeah. I guess my favorite dishes don’t involve lots of chewing.

Simone Collins [60:27]:You know what? Chewing is fake and gay. I’m never doing it again.

Malcolm Collins [60:33]:Okay.

Simone Collins [60:34]:Maybe once we make the big bucks and give everyone vampire canines, we’ll, we’ll like chewing again. What do

Malcolm Collins [60:42]:you think? You are I you are so fun. You are beyond fun. That’s just her plan, by the way. She wants vampire canines.

Simone Collins [60:54]:Yeah. For me and her. You’ll you’ll know we’ve actually made money where I’m not, like, worried about food and heat security and everything else when, like, we suddenly show up with vampire teeth. And it’s like, oh, okay. They feel comfortable with their finances. They have so much excess. You’re so weird. Not as weird as you. Not as weird as you.

Malcolm Collins [61:20]:So I’ll get started here.

Speaker 10 [61:21]:That’s correct. 123. Go. What’s stuck in our garden? I was telling you that it’s too small. Okay.

In this episode of Based Camp, Simone walks through a question most humanitarian orgs would rather leave off the annual report: how often are aid workers, Peace Corps volunteers, and refugee-support staff sexually assaulted — and why do official databases, NGOs, and political tribes treat some perpetrators as unspeakable?The episode starts with a 2024 r/rapecounseling post from a high-school volunteer who said she was assaulted by a man she had been helping at a refugee organization, then deleted the thread. From there Simone stacks official sources against what workers say to each other when they think no one is compiling a press release.

Show Notes

A July 2024 Reddit post in r/rapecounseling by a user identifying as a high-school-age female volunteer describes being raped for several hours and nearly killed by “one refugee guy” she had been helping weekly at a refugee support organization and temporary accommodations.

* She wrote that she had been assisting families, talking with them and their children, and helping with integration; “uncomfortable things happened from some guys” but she continued because she felt she was doing good.

* After the assault she lost her virginity to him, faced blame from some family/friends for volunteering in the first place, and questioned whether she had given “wrong signals” or dressed inappropriately relative to “their culture and religion.”

* The post is unsubstantiated and received little engagement.

OP ultimately deleted her post.

Ultimately, when it comes to aid work:

* Organizations seem to be systematically under-reporting cases of rape

* Sometimes refusing to report it entirely

* Most cases that get coverage have to do with organizational reporting, perhaps because it’s the one thing orgs think they can control

* When it comes to attacks by outsiders, the only place you see people opening up candidly is among volunteers on places like reddit

* And the craziest thing about women’s own accounts is both:

* How universal and distressing the women find harassment to be

* How ultimately dismissive they are of it, in a way that reminds me an awful lot of colonial-era texts I’ve read

Let’s get into it.

Scant Reporting

The Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD) has tracked major violent incidents against aid workers since 1997, records rape/serious sexual assault as a category.

* Here’s their 2025 report

* The report does not provide a number of reported rapes in 2025. Its provisional mid-year figures report roughly 230 aid-worker deaths through 30 June 2025, but it does not publish a rape or sexual-assault total for that period.

* The report does not say that rape was unreported, nor does it give a reason for omitting a 2025 rape total.

* Rape and sexual assault are within AWSD’s tracked incident categories, but the report’s 2025 discussion and tables present only killings, serious injuries, kidnappings, and arrests/detentions—not a separate sexual-violence count. Therefore, no defensible 2025 rape total can be extracted from this report.

* The report’s compilers explicitly flag underreporting as big problem in several contexts, especially in Sudan and with organizations refusing to report incidents because they might be nervous about losing funding

* They also have criteria that make many genuine incidents not get counted

* E.g. if someone was not kidnapped or detained for at least 24 hours, IT DOESN’T COUNT

* If someone was assaulted and not “seriously injured” IT DOESN’T COUNT

* Their full criteria

* Killing

* Kidnapping lasting more than 24 hours

* Serious injury

* Rape or sexual assault

* Arrest or detention lasting more than 24 hours — a category AWSD began tracking distinctly in 2025.

Known Cases

SOMETIMES THEY ARE AMERICAN: In late 2014, Sarah Pierce (pseudonym), a U.S. aid worker with the Carter Center in a remote South Sudan field site, was raped in her tent by an American colleague. She reported it the next day. After speaking about the incident and criticizing the organization’s support, her contract was not renewed; she described feeling she was effectively punished for reporting. The organization stated it provided medical care and counseling and acted out of concern for her welfare.

In February 2015, Canadian aid worker Megan Nobert was drugged (cocktail including morphine, codeine, oxycodone, and cocaine) and raped by a Syrian UNICEF contractor colleague on a UN base/Protection of Civilians site in Bentiu, South Sudan—an IDP/refugee-style camp setting. She woke up naked and ill with no memory of the assault. Toxicology confirmed the drugs. Her organization’s and UN response was described as dismissive; there was no meaningful investigation or accountability. Nobert later went public and founded Report the Abuse to collect other testimonies.

The most prominent public incident occurred in July 2016 at the Terrain Hotel compound in Juba, South Sudan—a site used by foreigners and aid workers during the civil war. South Sudanese government soldiers killed a local journalist, looted the compound, and raped several foreign women. One Western woman reported being raped by 15 soldiers after being given the choice of sex or being gang-raped and shot. Associated Press interviews with eight survivors (three of whom described rape) and reporting by Human Rights Watch, NPR, and The Guardian documented the attack. UN peacekeepers stationed nearby did not respond to calls for help. Many survivors requested anonymity to protect themselves or their organizations’ ongoing operations.

Underreporting, Reluctance, Cover-Ups

Report the Abuse (founded by Megan Nobert, the woman who was raped by Syrian UNICEF contractor) collected over 1,000 self-reports from aid workers (mostly international).

* Roughly 72% identified as survivors of sexual violence; around 13% of reports involved rape in some analyses. 87% knew a colleague who had experienced it.

* Perpetrators were frequently colleagues (one analysis put this at ~64% of cases).

A 2024 academic analysis of 62 public survivor testimonies found that in 45 of 60 cases the assailant’s behavior was described as condoned by supervisors or the organization.

* 54 out of 60 indicated that no legal or even internal complaint process was pursued after the incident

* Many victims were isolated or received no meaningful support. Shame, fear of career damage, not being believed, and “cowboy culture” in remote field settings are repeatedly cited barriers.

* See: #AidToo, or when situation permits rape: sexual violence among humanitarian aid workers

* They found that Incidents most often involve colleagues within the same organization; the next most common alleged perpetrators are staff from other agencies, peacekeepers, or armed groups. Assault by members of the local population is described as least common.

Where They Talk About it Without Talking About it

We do get a picture of reality when volunteers vent or trade advice online

E.g. a post on /r/peacecorps titled “It’s Hard Being a Woman in PC”

* “As I near the end of my two-year service I gotta say, I’m proud of myself. Because being a woman volunteer in certain host countries is freakin’ hard. I know male volunteers have their share of issues, but this post is for the women.”

* “During my training, I feel my team did the best to educate me about the reality of being a woman during service. They highlighted the help lines offered, the numbers of safety & security, and assurances of therapy should we need it in the future. And they warned us on how the men acted differently than what we’re used to. They even acted out scenarios and how to approach them safely. But guys, I think it’s impossible for us to fully be prepared even with having the knowledge beforehand. The hissing, whistling, and catcalling is a type of harassment we’re not used to in the United States. Yes, we have our share of pervs, but it’s not as normalized.”

* “While serving in Latin America, I’m always on edge. Waiting to be howled at, waiting to be approached by a sleazy male trying to hit on me. I can’t take a walk alone or do errands without men catcalling. It bleeds into professional situations as well where counterparts, teachers, and community members will proposition me during working hours (most married or with partners!). I need to adapt because the reality is that it’s a part of the culture. What I see as sexual harassment isn’t viewed the same way in my host country. Yet, I somehow need to set my boundaries while not alienating myself from my community. While I don’t feel unsafe, it’s simply an exhausting obstacle I need to overcome daily.”

* “It can be challenging because you don’t want the actions of some to overshadow your whole experience as a volunteer. But it can be so damn hard. When I went home for vacation, the tension wasn’t there... It was...Quiet. I could walk with my friends in peace. Wear whatever I wanted, such as shorts. No men tried to get my attention or block my path to flirt with me. I could wait in line for a meal and not have a man ask for sex or a kiss on the lips in broken English. I felt like a human instead of some object to be pursued as an American trophy or a visa ticket. The United States is by no means perfect, but there’s privileges I never realized I had until doing service.”

* COMMENTS

* It is important to tell recruits to many, many countries (especially young, “conventionally attractive” women who are only known to host communities through “blue movies” and perceived to be loose):

* You will get catcalled, proposed to, hit on, touched inappropriately on a DAILY basis by multiple men. Sometimes those men will be in your community and it’s difficult to navigate. Sometimes you’re in a good mood and can laugh it off and everyone thinks the joke is funny....And some days, it’s the 10th proposal of the day and you’re just done with the dehumanization of the interactions. Sometimes you will upset a drunkard by saying no and he may become violent- here’s how to stay safe. Sometimes the threat will come from inside the host family (multiple volunteers I know had host relatives overtly state “I will rape you”). You may be stalked to the point of needing to leave your site. You must ALWAYS dress on the side of conservative. You must strictly follow the rules of host country when it comes to men crossing the threshold of your doorway (inviting someone inside= an invitation for sex in my host country). Even having an older male friend or counterpart sit on your porch and talk to you can start rumors that you’re having an affair. I know so, so many female volunteers who were raped, stalked, or had to leave their site due to threat of rape. Others, bizarrely, seemed to live in the same country and the same time without these issues that the rest of us had.

* “I totally hear you. I served in West Africa, and my site mate was raped. Because she gave her counterpart an old computer, which apparently in West Africa means “you (perv that raped her) can have sex with me (unconscious volunteer) whenever you want, even when I (volunteer) am passed out asleep”. There was another vol in my country that was raped (from what I understand by multiple people) while traveling to her regional capital. She was based in a really remote part of the province, and had to travel overnight to get to her banking city. Apparently traveling in a car by night is also a welcome invitation to sex. PCs response: “meh. You (rape victim) really shouldn’t have traveled by yourself at night. That’s on you.””

* I’ve also lived all over West Africa and have my share of PC horror stories. I was a teacher at my village high school, and the head of discipline beat a student(13 year old girl) to death. I went to PC about it, and my PM essentially told me to stop being a pussy and suck it up. I still have nightmares about it (this was….12 years ago).

* In another instance, the principal at my school (same school where another admin member killed a student) threatened to beat me to death because he found out I was bisexual. Luckily, PC took that seriously and got me out.

* All that to say: there are a lot of challenges that come with serving, no matter where you serve. And a lot of them stem from some pretty disturbing misogyny.

* “Great post. When I was in service, also in a Latin American country, we filled out a sexual harassment survey every year. I thought- is this a joke? I was the highest possible amount, can’t remember what it was exactly 10+ harassments a day?, for every single question. I was propositioned by the highest local elected official in my host site regularly. I had men follow me to my house at night. PCVs called it the “ice b***h stare” because that is what you had to do as a woman when going out alone. During training the only comment they made on it was for guys to walk the girls around whenever we were out together. No self defense classes or coping mechanisms or support groups offered. It was the worst. I had to compartmentalize- because there were so many amazing adventures and people I met that I loved. But after returning to the US it took as long as my service was to get back to “normal”, which for me was having a male talk to me in public and me not instantly thinking why tf are you talking to me? But I did extend my service when given the chance… I know girls who left early because of it though. The biggest flaw in the system was that there are practical trainings and support that PC could have given, but instead they chose just to ignore it and informally tell male volunteers to watch out for us when they could. That’s it. “

* “I was a volunteer in Lesotho as well and one of our volunteers was raped. It’s difficult, even with all the awareness training to protect yourself. Often volunteers are assigned to places that are remote and because they are from somewhere else can be seen as easy targets, but even in the cities they can be at risk. Also american women are sometimes viewed as ‘loose’ by other cultures.”

* “You’ve vocalized this in a way I haven’t been able to before. I remember feeling so at peace when I visited my friend because I could just disappear into a crowd. The silence nourished my soul. I didn’t have my radar on all the time which is exhausting. I remember arriving to my community during the holidays and I couldn’t do it. I stayed inside for like 12 days straight because I couldn’t handle the constant interaction. I walked to and from work and men would grab me, follow me, the marriage proposals. I never found a great way to deal with that if I’m being totally honest.”

* In East Africa it’s this bad for female volunteers as well. At times I feel a sense of guilt for not being the “best” volunteer - as I always feel hesitant to socialize in my community and am in a constant state of distrust. I find myself always being cold to men in my country...which is sad but also necessary in many circumstances. I can come across as rude to my work colleagues because of this distrust of men - and it sucks to feel misunderstood.

* I feel sad for women in my community who constantly get heckled and looked down on with no ability of fighting back or speaking out. As female volunteers, we are simply told to ignore, ignore, ignore even if men are shouting the most disgusting comments (or racial slurs) at us - and this is absolutely infuriating.

Another examples, also in r/peacecorps: “Heavily considering ETing. Harassment over appearance and being a woman is too much”

* OP: I only have 8 months till COS but idk if i can make it guys. Im a lesbian and my appreance is kinda butch and I dont know if that makes it better or worse. But the sexual harassment in my country is just too much. Staff thinks im making it up and are blaming me for “choosing to make myself stick out” when I dont even think my butchness is what is attracting attention. And im not even that extreme, no buzzcut or chest binding. I had a horrible experiance in the capital just yesterday where a man on the street cornered me and after a short attempt of me trying to get away, flashed his erect dick at me. I really hate it. I just want to go home. My site has no electricity or service so im really isolated and havnt been able to commiserate with anyone. Can anyone talk me out of it? the women here are so great id hate to abandon them. and i do love my job. but its affecting my mental health to the point i dont want to leave my house

* In follow-up comments, she noted: “I havnt had a safety issue personally but other women in my cohort absolutely have and its terrifying. Im paranoid now and paid to have metal bars installed on my windows after a few violent robberies occured at my site (not directed towards me).”

* Comments

* Ironically, most women in this thread encouraged her to tough it out.

* “There seems to be a common thread in a lot of these harassment situations where PC staff is not treating the volunteer’s issues with the importance that they deserve. Obviously that is not going to change in the next eight months, so I will just share my frustration and dismay that they’re being so disrespectful.”

The Good and the Bad

* The good: It seems a lot of these experiences make women grateful for their home countries and societies

* The bad: They seem to sort of dismiss the harassment, threat, and risk, but I think it fundamentally has to do with a colonizing mindset, like: These people just aren’t civilized enough yet, but I’m working to help change that.

Episode Transcript

Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today, because there’s a problem that people don’t want to admit is a problem, I think, but it’s hard to tell, because it’s one of those problems where if people talked about it, the problem would get out, but they don’t want the problem to exist. Let me, let me set the scene for you, okay?

In July 2024, a young lady in high school logs on to r/rapecounseling on Reddit. It, it’s, it’s a forum dedicated to providing an open forum only for survivors and victims of sexualized violence across the spectrum. Hm. After scrolling for a bit, she starts a new thread. “I was beeped by and nearly killed by someone that I helped at volunteering.”

In this thread, she described how she was beeped for several hours and nearly killed by, quote, “One refugee guy,” end quote, and she had been helping this person weekly at a refugee support organization at, in temporary accommodations. She wrote about how she’d been assisting families and talking with them and their children and helping with integration, saying, quote, “Uncomfortable things happen from some guys,” end quote, but she continued because she felt that she was doing good.

And after the assault, she, and she lost her virginity, you know, she was a young lady. She faced blame from some family and friends for volunteering there in the first place, and then questioned whether she had given the wrong signals or dressed inappropriately relative to, quote, “their culture and religion.”

And this is a post that got very little interaction. I don’t know if people immediately attacked her. I don’t know what happened, but she deleted it. And do, do we know this story is real? Do we know if, if she’s a real person at all? If this story... No. Like, there’s no way for us to know this, but it’s kind of hard to investigate a problem that could be real, that, that’s hitting people who don’t want to admit the problem is a problem, because people who are going to work wi- in, in aid camps, in, in, in refugee camps with migrants are the

same

people who are

like, “These people are blameless.”

So to, for, for caller texts for people who might wonder where she’s going with this, Simone did deep research into the question, because this came up... What were we researching where a similar question came up? Well, no.

So someone emailed us talking about the episode we did on Andrew Tate, and they’re like, “Oh, yes, this whole Laura- Lauren Southern problem.”

Look, guys, I know that she’s slept with other guys. Like, what? But it was, it’s, it, it’s counter to Lauren Southern’s reputation to say that she flew out and went to a club with a guy, and then got beeped by him, and, you know, that’s, it’s just, it, it’s very damaging to her reputation to do that, ‘cause her whole, her whole reputation was staked on women being really stupid if they ever let that happen.

Yeah. That there’s no such thing as rape culture in America, et cetera, et cetera. And someone wrote to us, and they’re like, “You know, this is a similar problem with aid workers.”

Yeah, and so then Timona- And

no one wants to come forward ...

goes into, and she’s like, “Can I find data to show, like, this is happening with aid workers, and it’s not being reported?”

And-

And a lot of it has to do with, like, the positive and negative space of it all. Like, organizations seem to be systematically under-reporting cases of rape to the extent that, like, sometimes they just refuse to report it entirely.

Not under-reporting. W- what we’ll be getting to is a systemic and widespread cover-up of just how frequently aid workers are being graped by the people they’re attempting to help.

And of course, the aid workers don’t wanna talk about it. And it is very interesting to now talk about this happening on a, a left-wing perspective, because the Andrew Tate s- situation was really interesting. There were actually people in our comments who are so cucked, they’re like, “Oh, no, I’m super pro, like, Muslim immigrants graping our women

when they pretend to be like- Well, but also attacking Lauren Southern.

They’re like- Yeah ... “Lauren Southern’s

a liar.”

Like, “Oh, she dated people I don’t like, er.” “Lauren Southern slept with Destiny so she couldn’t possibly have experienced actual sexual assault in her lifetime.” I

d- I, like, I don’t even get how that works. And it’s, it’s wild to me because you have, like, Tristan, like, literally gassing up a guy for bragging about having a woman in his ga- living in his garage covered in- Stop

with, like, rats and cockroaches

and- An un-air-conditioned garage with rats and cockroaches ...

in Texas, right? And, and, and Tristan’s like, “Oh, that’s so cool.” You know if he’s thinking that cool, you know what they’re doing. Like, they’re, they’re signaling to you what they’re doing.

They, they are openly talking about, you know, paying off the police and stuff.

And, but no, that’s,

I think this is- Or the 15-year-old, you know, they literally grape on camera, and then people are like, “Well, if he had done this, he would’ve been arrested.” And it’s like, bro, do you understand? That’s like a progressive who comes to you and goes, “The grooming gangs aren’t real. If they were real, they would’ve been arrested.”

Du- du- du- du- you are letting your women be... You are... Like, I swear, I think the guys who do this actually get off on being cucked. Like, I think they actually get off- Oh my God, no ... on the fact- No, I

think

that- ... that foreigners are sleeping with their women. The

bigger story, in my opinion ... th-

it’s only NTR for these guys.

As soon as a guy comes in there, be like, “I got some NTR for you, my friend.” Mm. Because clearly that is what you are into.

What I meant to say is when a person comes out, quote-unquote, “against the message of their own side,” right? The attack that they get is pretty ruthless. I- it’s, it’s pretty savage.

And I imagine That women, possibly like this high school woman who posted in 2024 about her experience on Reddit, in what was supposed to be a safe place for victims gets completely steamrolled by people in the same way that Lauren Southern was steamrolled by other right-leaning YouTube watchers in our comments because her narrative ran against the narrative of that political camp.

Mm-hmm. And so that’s what we’re gonna look at in this episode. We’re, we’re gonna look at the scant reporting, the reporting that does come out, which is very conspicuous in what’s being reported, and it’s not migrants. No. No. And And then the most important part, which is what you see aid workers saying when they’re just talking to each other in an informal way when they don’t think anyone is watching.

Yeah. ‘

Cause that’s where you really, I think, see stressed-out pervasive.

See just like, “Oh yeah, this is normal. You’re gonna get graped if you keep

working here.” It’s yeah. Well, well, so we’re gonna get into it. And all of my, all of my sources, et cetera, are linked in the show notes you can find on Substack or Patreon, and thanks so much for everyone who’s supporting us there.

You guys are amazing, and also your episode ideas are great. This is from one of you because you’re so great. Thank you. I don’t know. We didn’t get permission to name you, so you know who you are. You rock. Anyway, so let’s talk about the reporting that’s out there because when you look at the surface of it, when I started doing research on this, I was like, “Oh, this is perfect.”

There is this, this detailed record of all violent incidents that have happened to aid workers. You know, people are very concerned about aid workers being in danger, as they should be, because these people are putting their lives on the line to help others. We have to protect them. So naturally, I can just go to this and get all the numbers I need, and either prove or disprove this concern I have.

So there’s, there’s this Aid Worker Security Database, the AWSD, that has tracked major violent incidents against aid workers since 1997. That’s for almost 20 years. And it records, it’s, well, it allegedly, it says everyone says that they record rape or serious sexual assault as a category, right? So on the surface, if you were to ask someone in this industry, “Ah, yes, yeah, we have a, we have a long-standing report that tracks this information.

Don’t worry about it.” I linked to their 2025 report in the show notes, which shows you what you actually get these days. The report does not provide a number of reported rapes in 2025. It, its provisional midyear figures report that roughly 230 aid worker deaths happened through June, June 30th of 2025.

But it doesn’t publish a beep or a beep assault total for that period. So we just know some people died. Yeah, we, we’re leaving, we’re, in, we just didn’t, they didn’t get to the

beep part. Yeah, they, they, they have numbers for how many die during it, but they don’t have numbers for how many it happens to?

We just, ah, it’s

just a type

of death category.

Well, we also don’t know if people died after being beeped. But anyway, the report doesn’t s- it, it actually, the, the, the report states that beep is unreported. It’s underreported, I mean. It, but it doesn’t give a, a reason for omitting the beep total. But they’re, they’re within the AWSD’s tracked incident categories.

It just happens to be that the report’s 2025 discussion and tables only present killings, serious injuries, kidnappings, and arrests and detentions, not any separate beep violence count. So-

Which is wild that they wouldn’t include that when you know it’s common within these communities.

And that the presu- I mean, well, I know actually from- Well, but we

know why it’s not in there.

If it wasn’t insanely high, it would be in there.

I feel, like, I mean, you have to, like- What is, what is the best

There’s no way nobody has no numbers. I know,

like what, I’m just try- I’m trying to, I’m trying to come up with a steel man here of like we’re sitting in the boardroom, we’re putting together the report, we really want people to know these facts.

We have all the killing information, we have the, the kidnappings, the detentions, the, the assaults, the serious injuries, and then we get to the rape section and we’re like, “Hmm, okay, it’s because maybe it’s ‘cause like there’s this super anti-woke contingent of the aid workers where they’re like, “There is no rape culture in aid work.

It, it just, this whole Me Too nonsense has gone too far. These women were asking...” No, that, that can’t... No, that’s not happening. No, I re- I, I really think it, it just, I... Chime in in the comments if you... Some theory as to why they’ve chose to completely-

Yeah, any, any, any conceivable reason you would leave this

number out.

Yeah, because m- the whole, y- you know, Me Too backlash happening in aid worker world is not I’m not buying it for some reason. It would be interesting, but that would be its own story. I would be delighted to cover it I’ve... if someone f- knows about it. Anyway, the report’s compilers explicitly flag under-reporting, under-reporting, as a big problem in several contexts, especially in Sudan.

And with organizations refusing to report incidents, presumably because they’re afraid that if they report incidents of any sort, right, killings kidnappings, et cetera- Mm-hmm ... then they’ll just not receive funding anymore. Because, you know, maybe they’re like, “Look, they’re not gonna send aid workers to us if we tell them how many people are, like, getting killed on the job.

So don’t tell them. Don’t tell them how bad it is. We need help.” I, I think that’s, that’s pretty likely. They also have criteria that make many genuine incidents just not get counted, and I laughed out loud when I first read this. Because if someone was assaulted and not seriously injured, it doesn’t count.

What? So if you, like, show ba- show up with, like, bruises, like a swollen eye or whatever, but, like, your arm isn’t broken, they’re like, “Sweetie, it’s fine. Walk it off.”

Walk it off. Walk it off. It happens with these Somalis all the time. Yeah. What the dude needs ain’t just, like, a punch in the face and a hello.

Yeah, so to make the report to, to make the list, to be one of the it girls you have to be subject to a killing, serious injury, beep, or sexual assault, but no, actually you’re not gonna make the list ‘cause they just choose to not report that. Or kidnapping, arrest, or detention, but only- Only ... if it lasts more than 24 hours.

So if you are you know, someone throws a bag over your head, pulls you into a van, beats you but doesn’t break anything, just roughs you up a little bit, you know, for like 18 hours, you’re deprived of food and water, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re overheated somewhere then you’re, like, dumped in a ditch and someone finds you- Mm-hmm

congratulations, you’re not on the list. You’re fine. Again, walk it off. Okay? Okay. So that kind of got me. I thought that was really interesting. Then what also was interesting to me is there are some prominent known cases but they were all about other aid workers being the perpetrators, and I could see this possibly being, like, from a practical perspective.

Like, from a legal perspective, these organizations have to report these cases due to, like, owners and officers liability insurance or like other, other legal things. Like, from an HR perspective, you have to report and deal with your own employees- Being the perpetrators of crimes. But anyway, in late 2014 Sarah Pearce, this is a pseudonym, who is a US aid worker with the Carter Center in remote South Sudan in a field site, was beeped in her tent by an American colleague.

She reported it the next day, and then after speaking about the incident and criticizing the organization’s support, her contract was not renewed and she described feeling like she was effectively punished for reporting it. She

got fired for being graped? Oh, being graped and telling anyone about it.

It’s supposed to

be like- And, and telling someone. But it, but it was an American aid worker, and then the organization stated it provided medical care and counseling, and then it acted out of concern for her welfare. So, like, they didn’t wanna renew the contract ‘cause she was all sad after being attacked.

After being graped. You’re supposed to be chill about it, lady.

Yeah, like, you’re just supposed to, like, chill and don’t come back ‘cause you’re a bummer. You’re all crying all the time.

Don’t you know we’ve all been raped in this office?

I know. It’s like, geez, just deal with it. Stop bringing the mood down.

But yeah, what, what’s interesting about her case is I, I think that it ultimately got the media coverage it did, and, and, and she was, she was able to step forward and actually get people to talk about it because it was an American aid worker, and it was someone from inside the organization that did it.

Also, in February 5th, 2015, so one year later a Canadian aid worker named Megan Norbert was drugged. This is a drug cocktail including morphine, codeine, oxycodone, and cocaine. I don’t know why we’re putting uppers and downers together. But anyway, she was drugged and beeped by a Syrian UNICEF contractor colleague on a UN base that was for the protection of civilians at this site in Bentiu in South Sudan.

It was, it was a refugee-style camp setting, but she was, she was beeped by a colleague who had given her stuff that made her completely wonked out. She woke up naked and ill, of- obviously, with no memory of the assault, but toxicology confirmed the drugs, and her organization and the UN’s response was described as dismissive.

There was no meaningful investigation or accountability, and Norbert later went public and then founded the Report the Abuse Foundation or, like, organization to collect other testimonies. But what’s weird is when I went to go look it up- It was, like, alluded to i- in some other organization, but for th- the life of me, I can’t find it.

That is wild that you can’t find it recorded

in an organization Yeah, like wait, wait, so what happened to it? You know, she, she wanted to get the word out, you know? Just like that- Yeah ... you know, 20-year long report that annually talks about these instances, but-

But

leaves them

all out ...

God forbid it make the internet.

Yeah, maybe they just, they just print everything on paper- They don’t- ... and I just haven’t found it yet ...

they don’t want to provide more masturbation material to Andrew and Tristan fans. Oh, there it is. Th- th- these guys are so into NTR of Muslim guys raping white women that they’re like, the more of that, make them underage, make them get beaten, like the more of that, the better, right?

Like, and so these organizations don’t wanna feed into their fantasies.

Yeah.

No, I’m joking. I m- but if you don’t know, like, how egregious the stuff that happened is, you can go watch that episode. It’s absolutely wild. It’s,

That’s a lot, yeah. And it’s funny because there are some diehard Tate fans that are like, “Well, sh- well, I’m gonna wait until their, the evidence comes out.”

And I’m like, “Sweetie.”

They’re like grooming gang fans. It’s like, sweetie, it’s worse because we ha- we have their own videos of them saying this stuff, of them saying-

Yeah,

like

the photos exist ... “We do stuff

like this.”

The, the, the birth records, like, you, you, you put, just put them together and it’s,

I love, they’re like, “G- Romanian, b- w- why haven’t a cour- crime gone to court in, in Romanian?”

It’s like, we literally have them bragging about bribing

the police. Paying

off

the po- yeah, for real.

Like- What are they bribing the police for if not the crime?

Yeah.

Oh my God. The p- the more

they’re

reasoning. Anyway,

there are some instances of, of people being attacked that are just so egregious that it kinda- Yeah

can’t not get caught up by the media. Like in July 2016, the, this hotel called the Terran- Terrayne Hotel, which was a compound in Juba, South Sudan, it’s always Sudan which was a site used by foreigners and aid workers during the Civil War, was attacked. One, like, contingent, I guess, or I don’t know if they were, whatever, but a, a group of South Sudanese government soldiers killed a local journalist, looted the compound, and beeped several foreign women, one of, one of whom described being beeped by 15 soldiers after being given the choice of sex or being beep raped.

Oh, sorry. Being gang beeped and shot. So she made a logical choice. But Associated Press interviews with eight survivors, three of whom, of whom described beep and reporting by Human Rights Watch and NPR and The Guardian documented this attack because it was just so- I guess striking that you can’t not.

But I think maybe- Yeah ... another one of the reasons why this made the, why it’s made the media rounds and why people felt like they could talk about it was this wasn’t, they weren’t being attacked by the people that they are trying to protect. They were being attacked by just soldiers, you know, who are like the bad guys in the Civil War.

So like, okay.

Oh yeah, the soldiers. Th- that’s wild

Yeah. So anyway, Report the Abuse, which was that organization founded by Megan Norbert, who’s the woman who was, was beeped by the Syrian UNICEF contractor, allegedly collected over 1,000 self-reports from aid workers, mostly international. Roughly 72% identified as survivors of sexual violence, and around 13% of reports involved beep in some analyses.

87% knew a colleague who had experienced it. And perpetrators were, according to her analysis, frequently colleagues, with one analysis putting it at approximately 64% of cases. So a little more than half. And then another 2024 academic analysis of 62 public survivor testimonies found that 45 of 60 cases involved assailants’ behavior being condoned by supervisors within the organization, which is a pattern that also shows up when I got to comments from aid workers.

They’re like, “Look, the bosses just don’t really feel like, ‘No, you, you shouldn’t dress that way.’” 50 out of 54 out of 60 indicated that no legal or even internal complaint process was pursued after the incident. Many victims were isolated or received no meaningful support, shame, fear, or career damage, not being believed, and, quote-unquote, “cowboy culture” in remote field settings are repeatedly cited barriers.

So they, they found the incidents most often, and this, this works also that, that 60-ish percent from the other re- researcher- Yeah ... Megan Norbert’s research most often found colleagues most... Sorry, incidents most often involved colleagues within the same organization. The next common alleged perpetrators were staff from other agencies, peacekeepers, or armed groups.

And assaults by members of the local population was described as the least common, which is interesting.

Mm-hmm.

When they talk about it- Well,

I, I mean, I’m sure that it’s- Just- ... it’s really hard to talk about when it’s from the local population. I think the underreporting there, when we see the, the, the cavalierness when it’s another staff member do it, I think that this cavalierness is bred by something, and I think it’s bred by it becoming normalized with it happening with the local population.

But you know you don’t talk about it. But most, most so- You gotta keep in mind how woke these people are, right? Like-

Yeah. Yes. The, that’s a really- These people- ... distinct thing within the comments, and I’m gonna read a bunch, Yeah ... that you’ll see among aid workers on Reddit. They don’t describe being afraid of their colleagues.

It’s,

it’s outside- Yeah, so if these grapes are constantly happening from their colleagues, but we’re not getting reports of grapes happening from the other people, like the people they’re working with, but the fear that they show is all towards the people that they’re working with, what that shows to me is there is a systemic cover-up.

And I’m assuming that with most of these aid workers, you know, you get them alone and you talk to them, they’re like, “Yeah, everybody knows that this is a major problem, and we work really hard to cover it up.” Which you can see from the statistics, the way that they’re reported.

Well, yeah, the absence of statistics.

That’s, that’s

a problem. Well, it’s not the absence. It’s even when we have statistics, they’re comical. Like, we’re not gonna include an assault that would be an assault under US or British or any European country’s laws. We only include assault if it like broken bones or something, or it needed a hospital visit.

We-

The 24 hours is what really gets me. Yeah,

the 24-hour kidnapping rule. You

were only kidnapped for 18 hours. You were only kidnapped for 20 hours.

That, th- that to me shows that they couldn’t find a similar way of making grapes like hard to count, right? Like, it was like no matter how much you stretched what an assault was, like even well, they had to have sex with you for at least an hour.

Even that didn’t work, right? Like, Ugh ... they, they, they, even that made it look bad is what that tells me

It’s not great. But yeah. So let’s, let’s look at the comments. So, here’s from one post on r/peacecorps, because this is where people are the most open on Reddit, titled, “It’s hard being a woman in PC.”

That’s the Peace Corps. Quote, this is OP: “As I near the end of my two-year service, I gotta say, I’m proud of myself because being a woman volunteer in certain host countries is fricking hard. I know male volunteers have their share of issues, but this post is for the women. During my training, I feel my team th- did their best to educate me about the reality of being a woman during service.

They highlighted the help lines offered, the numbers of safety and security, and the assurances of therapy should we need it in the future. And they warned us on how the men acted differently than what we’re used to. They even acted out scenarios on how to approach them safely. But guys, I think it’s impossible for us to fully be prepared even with having the knowledge beforehand.

The hissing, whistling, and catcalling is a type of harassment we’re not used to in the United States. Yes, we have our share of pervs, but it’s not normalized. While living in Latin America, I’m always on edge.” By the way, Latin America. She’s, like, doing this on tame mode. Latin America- Yeah,

she- Latin America?

Latin America? Latin America.

Yeah, please, girl.

Anyway. For people who don’t know, we lived in Latin America for years of our lives. Yeah ... so, like, we are very famil- And I’m not, like, just one place. I’ve, I’ve lived in Costa Rica, I’ve lived in Brazil- Well, you’re, you’re not a woman in Costa Rica ... I’ve lived in Peru.

What?

Different. People weren’t... You’re not, like, a woman wearing hot pants or something. But-

I have worked with women in Latin America. That is true. I have worked with you. We had a home in Latin

America.

Yeah, this is true. This is true. A house that we owned in Peru. Yes,

yes.

So, I walked the streets with my wife.

You get some, Mm-hmm ... but it’s really not that bad compared to most parts of the wor- It’s not that bad compared to even Italy and Spain. Italy and Spain- Yeah,

Italy, Italy’s more intense, I will say. But you know what’s worse than Italy?

What?

Beijing.

Oh. ‘

Cause they’ll just grab you which was surprising to me.

Anyway right. Let’s see. Anyway la, la, la. “While serving in Latin America, I’m always on edge, waiting to be yelled at, waiting to be approached by a sleazy male trying to hit on me. I can’t walk alone or do errands without men catcalling. It bleeds into my professional situations as well, where counterparts, teachers, and community members will proposition me during working hours, most married with partners, or with partners.

I need to adapt because the reality is that it’s a part of the culture. What I see as sexual harassment isn’t viewed the same way in my host country, yet s- I somehow need to set my boundaries while not alienating myself from my community. While I don’t feel unsafe, it’s simply an exhausting obstacle I need to overcome daily.”

One person... Oh, sorry, she- the final, her final note. “It can be challenging because you don’t want the actions of some to overshadow your whole experience as a volunteer, but it can be so damn hard. When I went home for vacation, the tension wasn’t there. It was quiet. I could walk with my friends in peace, wear whatever I wanted, such as shorts.

No men tried to get my attention or block my path to flirt with me. I could wait in line for a meal and not have a man ask for sex or a kiss on the lips in broken English. I felt like a human instead of some object to be pursued as an American trophy or visa ticket, and the United States is by no means perfect, but there’s privileges, and I never realized I had during service.”

One thing that I s- I kept thinking when I was reading these comments, by the way, is that, like, really, I would say over-the-top leftist feminism could really be corrected by more women traveling to other countries and realizing that actually we live in a pretty gender egalitarian and respectful culture, and that maybe we don’t

need to be- The, the thing is so many of the feminists I know had done that, and they just didn’t learn anything from it.

Really? Oh.

They didn’t take away anything from

it.

And in many cases it seemed to aff- they’re like, “Well, I didn’t get r- graped at that time therefore it’s not common in these countries.” And it’s like- Mm ... they’re just really blind often to how-

Blase about

it ... in danger they actually are in many circumstances.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, this is true. And, like, people, I think... I did some things, and I, I’ve told you this story way too many times, but, like, there was one time when I was trying to get out of Changsha in China to a much more remote place, and I was just gonna go, like, alone into a train station and get a ticket and figure it out.

And the taxi cab driver, who I had told in, like, p- poorly translated ways that I was g- I needed to go to the train station, was so concerned about me going in there by myself that he went in with me, bought the ticket with me, and then sat me in a place around a bunch of families and was just like, “

Just please sit.”

Because he understood how dangerous. Well, you could have gone through and nothing could have happened to you- Yeah ... and then you think, “Isn’t rural China so safe?”

Yeah. You know, because- No, and that, that was my whole thing. I was like, “Wow, this was just so amazing.”

Because a lot of women are witless, okay? And they don’t properly gauge things, and so they- No,

it’s true.

It’s true. It’s true. Yeah. I, I, ‘cause at the time I was just

like- You’re like, they have to go to these countries and actually be SA’d. Like, that’s the only way they’re gonna learn. Oh, okay. No, I don’t want that. And even then they’ll make up mistakes or, or excuses and be like, “Is it the way I was dressed?

Is, was I not appropriate for their culture?” Because as we’ve, you know, we’ve looked at the studies that show that when a woman sees somebody who did something wrong or cheated in a game being punished, they feel bad. Mm-hmm. Whereas men only feel bad when they see somebody being punished who didn’t do anything wrong, where men feel good when they see the, the person who cheated.

And so, you know, a lot of these organizations are really staffed with women, or even women that are perceiving these things, they just... I just don’t think they see it. I don’t think they process it.

That might be true. One of the people who commented said, “It is-” Important to tell recruits to many, many countries, especially young conventionally attractive women who are only known to host communities through blue movies and perceived to be loose, you will get catcalled, proposed to, hit on, touched inappropriately on a daily basis by multiple men.

Sometimes those men will be in your community, and it’s difficult to navigate. Sometimes you’re in a good mood and can laugh it off, and everyone thinks the joke is funny. And some days it’s the 10th proposal of the day, and you’re just done with the dehumanisa- dehumanization and interactions. Sometimes you will upset a drunkard by saying no, and he may become violent.

Here’s how to stay safe. Sometimes the threat will come from inside the host family. Multiple volunteers I know had host relatives overtly state, “I will beep you.” You may be stalked to the point of needing to leave your site. You must always dress on the side of conservative. You must strictly follow the rules of host country when it comes to men crossing the threshold of your doorway.

Inviting someone inside equals an invitation for sex in my host country. That’s scary what host country is that. Yeah, it- even having an older male friend or your counterpart sit on your porch and talk to you can start rumors that you’re having an affair. I know so, so many female volunteers who are beeped, stalked, or had to leave their site due to threat of beep.

Others bizarrely- I love that

they’re talking about like everybody knows everybody’s about to be raped on these sites, and yet it’s not reported or recorded in any data.

That’s, that’s what’s wild. Others bizarrely seem to live in the same country in the same time without these issues that the rest of us had Which is interesting.

Well,

I, I- S- an- another person said... Oh, yeah?

I think that a lot of people from these countries and stuff like this, you know, they see you as a, a foreigner, an outsider. Mm. So they see you as less able to do anything, and you are less able to do anything. You know, these other women, if they get graped, their brothers are gonna come out and f*****g murder them, right?

That’s true, yeah, and who’s gonna come and get you? Yeah. Who

cares about you? Nobody cares about you. Yeah.

You’ve, you’ve

been left behind. And this is the thing that gets me about the women being afraid of this even in Latin America. It’s like, well then shouldn’t we think again about, like, Latin American immigration waves, right?

Like, shouldn’t we be doing something more about that? If, if you, a worker, are scared of that- A

lot of Americans are very afraid of Latin American immigration waves. And there have been some very prominent cases of assault that are associated with that. So that’s, I would say the conversation is being had, but not by these aid workers, not by people who would choose to do this.

Another person wrote, “I totally hear you. I served in West Africa, and my site mate was beeped because she gave her counterpart an old computer, which apparently in West Africa means you, perv that beeped her, can have sex with me, unconscious volunteer, whenever you want, even when I volunteer and passed out asleep.

There was another vol in my community that was beeped, from what I understand by multiple people, while traveling to her regional capital. She was based in a really remote part of the province and had to travel overnight to get to her banking city. Apparently, traveling in a car by night is also a welcome invitation to sex.

PC’s response: ‘Meh, you, rape victim, really shouldn’t have traveled by yourself at night. That’s on you.’” So I think a lot of people just aren’t reporting it. After being

raped multiple times and the head of the depart- this is why it’s not being recorded. They literally do not care.

Yeah, they’re like, “That was your fault.

We warned you. This happens all the time.” But

I,

I think we

can see this pathologicalization where it, it’s very obvious that Andrew and Tristan constantly rape people. And e- and within our site, there’s people who would literally be like, “Yeah, I mean, I know they jo- and, and they, they, they brag about it all the time, but, like, whatever.

It’s not a big deal.” Like- Well,

right, but th- those same people would be like, “Yes, exactly,” to this episode. “Yes, all these people are being beeped by migrants and by people in these foreign countries.” So, like, the thing is, and you know, again, the people that I heard on social media talking about Lauren Southern’s case with empathy were leftists.

And th- I think that’s a really screwed up issue. You know, if people are attacking other people, I don’t care who they

are. Well, hold on. I wanna, I wanna be clear. In our comments on our Discord, 99.5% of the comments were mortified and thought this was stupid. I, I, I, I, I, I mean, go for it, 99- I was

just shocked to see, I would say eight people-

Point like nine eight.

I, I

think, I know- ... come from Lauren Southern ...

yeah, it might be, like, f- I saw, like,

five or six. I wouldn’t believe a word she said. She slept with Destiny, therefore-

Yeah, out of, out of, like, 2,000 comments, I saw, like, five or six people who, who took this position. So I would point out, within the right, this type of behavior is not as normalized as it is within the left.

It is a minority d- p- amount of voices, an extreme minority amount of voices, and most everyone else thinks they’re weird into our fetishes. Right? Like, the, the most of the community is like, “You, that, that’s so, that is a weird thing to say.” Like, it is, it is gross that you are defending, like, a foreigner graping your women for no re- like the evidence is overwhelming at this point.

And it’s d- delivered from them. But it’s the same thing that we’re seeing here. I think the difference is, within any faction, left or right, you’re gonna have people who just deny reality or say, “Nah, it’s totally okay that those women get graped.” The problem is, is that those people have control of leftist culture.

Those people are the majority of leftist culture, right? Tho- that, that’s the norm on the left right now. And that is where I think y- you get these pro- ‘cause we talk to these leftists and they go, “Oh, well, you have this problem on the right.” And I’m like, “Yeah, but it’s the extreme minority on the right.”

It’s the majority and people with positions of power on the left. And we’re seeing this, “Oh, you go- you went in a car at night? You deserved it. You obviously... Oh, you went to a club with him? You deserve to get drugged.” You know, the, it’s, it’s this, um Uh, yeah. I mean, I, I think, I think the, the fortunate thing is, is that we’re moving in the right direction on our side, and they’re not even, like, not moving in the right direction.

They’re hiding that the problem exists at all.

Oh, yeah. And there’s more. Look, and it’s, it’s not even just violence that is sexual in nature. The same person went on to say, “I’ve also lived all over West Africa and have my share of PC,” again, that’s Peace Corps, “horror stories. I was a teacher at my village high school, and the head of discipline beat a student, 13-year-old girl, to death.

I went to PC about it, and my PM essentially told me to stop being a pussy and suck it up. I still have nightmares about it. It was... This was 12 years ago. In another instance, a principal at my school, same school where another admin killed a student, threatened to beat me to death because he found out I was bisexual.

Luckily, PC took that seriously and got me out.” All that to say, there are a lot of challenges that come with serving, no matter where you serve, and a lot of them stem from some pretty disturbing misogyny. Another person- The

misogyny. That’s not misogyny. That’s f*****g Islam, okay, people? Like, how do you... W- what is...

How-

I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s West Africa. It’s not, like, pervasively Islamic. I, so I just... I don’t know. Anyway, another person said, “Great post. When I was in service, also in a Latin American country,” again, on easy mode, “we filled out a sexual harassment survey every year. I thought, ‘Is this a joke?’ I was the...

It was the highest possible amount. I can’t remember what it was explicit- exactly. 10-plus harassments a day for every single question. I was propositioned by the highest local elected official in my host site regularly. I had men follow me to my house at night. PCVs called it the ice b***h stare, but that is what you had to do as a woman when going out alone.

During training, the only comment they made on it was for guys to walk the girls around whenever we were out together. No self-defense classes or coping mechanisms or support groups offered. It was the worst. I had to compartmentalize because there were so many amazing adventures and people I met that I loved, but after returning to the US, it took as long as my service was to get back to normal, which, for me, was having a male talk to me in public and not instantly thinking, ‘Why TF are you talking to me?’

But I did extend my service when given the chance. I know girls who left early because of it, though. The biggest flaw in the system was that there are practical trainings and support PC could have given, but instead they just chose to ignore it and informally tell male volunteers

to watch out.” This is what I’m talking about, Simone.

You’re like, “Oh, if women just experienced these cultures, they would change their mind about them,” and you’re seeing this woman is putting literally none of the blame-

That’s true. She extended her service and is like, “I had a terrible experience, and it took me as long as my

service-” No, she’s like, “The problem is that the training isn’t good enough.”

Ah. Yeah,

fair point. You know, she- Fair point ... she literally at no point reflects on, should we actually be helping these people? Like, is this- I feel like

she’s bla- she’s blaming the, She’s blaming her organization. She’s blaming the Peace Corps more than she’s blaming the, the culture. But I think, so you’re gonna see this throughout the posts here as, as I read some more What’s really deep and inherent in a lot of this, it’s a theme that we may just do our own podcast on, is that like, immi- immigration support, migrant support asylum support, bring everyone in is imperialism, colonialism 2.0.

It is, “We are going to bring these savage, dumb people into modernity.” You know, they ha- they don’t ha- they, they’re, they’re sort of non-entities now that we are going to civilize. And their agency means nothing now, but we’ll fix them by bringing our culture to them and imp- and, and integrating them into our culture, all seemingly while actually not imposing any form of integration.

It’s very weird, but I do... The, the way that the, the actual misogyny, mistreatment of women, whatever you wanna call it, like Islam of it all is discussed in this context is not even like, they don’t discuss it as a problem. They’re not like, “This culture is pretty messed up. Like, what’s going on with these people?”

Because of course they’d immediately defen- be defenestrated for it. But within that subtext is this basically implicit understanding that, “Don’t worry.” That, that’s kind of a non-issue because the whole point is our work is to civilize them. And that to me- Hmm. That will

make them like the bisexuals?

feels incredibly imperialistic and is, is surprisingly reflective of some older accounts that you’ll see from early, like, Victorian imperialists who talk about being attacked by locals and everything. And it’s, it’s a, it’s a different kind of like, “But we’re here to civilize them. Like, this is the important work we have to do.

We’re, we’re going to-” Hmm. Yeah, anyway, it’s, it’s, the, it, the- their culture isn’t even worth criticizing because it’s so stupid and backward. We’re just going to, like, train these animals to do the right tricks that we will approve of eventually, right? Like, it’s a very ultimately dehumanizing view- Mm-hmm

of the people they’ve gone to help, because they’re not even talking about it. They’re not even like, “Why do

I actually believe this?” They don’t care. They, they don’t have moral agency in these people’s minds. They, they

are incapable of doing this. Right. Right. No, like these people are choosing to harass them and attack them and hurt them.

They’re like, “No, no, no. It’s, it’s the fault that I wasn’t trained by my own people enough. It’s their fault. It’s not the fault of these savages, ‘cause my whole point is to come out here...” Anyway, But

what’s wild to me is you hear these stories that make it seem like it’s the most normal, everyday thing in these countries, and it’s not recorded.

It’s not recorded.

And it’s not recorded. Yeah. No. So another one, “I was a volunteer in Lesotho as well, and one of our volunteers was beeped. It’s difficult, even with all the awareness training, to protect yourself. Often volunteers are assigned to places that are remote, and because they are from somewhere else, they can be seen as easy targets,” just like you said, Malcolm.

“But even in the cities they can be at risk. Also, American women are sometimes viewed as loose by other cultures.” Another person said You vocalized this in a way I haven’t been able to before. I remember feeling so at peace when I visited my friend because I could just disappear into a crowd. The silence nourished my soul.

I didn’t have my radar on all the time, which is exhausting. I remember arriving to my community during the holidays and couldn’t do it. I stayed inside for, like, 12 days straight because I couldn’t handle the constant interaction. I walked to and from work, and men would grab me, follow me, the marriage proposals.

I never found a great way to deal with that, if I’m being totally honest. Another person said, “In East Africa, it’s this bad for female volunteers as well. At times, I felt a sense of guilt for not being the best volunteer. As always, I feel hesitant to socialize in my community, and I’m in constant state of distrust.

I find myself always being cold to men in my country, which is sad, but also necessary in many circumstances. I can come across as rude to my work colleagues because of this distrust of men, and it sucks to feel misunderstood. I feel sad for women in my community who constantly get heckled and looked down on with no ability of fighting back or speaking out.

As female volunteers, we’re simply told to ignore, ignore, ignore, even if men are shouting the most disgusting comments or racial slurs at us, and it’s just absolutely infuriating.” One was interesting because this is, This is coming from a self-described butch lesbian who despite, like, doing everything she can to style herself in a way that she’s like, “Oh,” like, “I won’t get harassed at all.”

It’s, it’s no dice. She’s writing to other fellow Peace Corps people on Reddit, “I only have eight months till COS.” I think that’s cease of contract or something. “But I don’t know if I can make it, guys. I’m a lesbian and my appearance is kinda butch, and I don’t know if that makes it better or worse, but the sexual harassment in my country is just too much.

Staff thinks I’m making it up and are blaming me for choosing to make myself stick out when I don’t even think my butchness is what’s attracting attention. I’m not even that extreme. No buzz cut or chest binding. I just had a horri- horrible experience in the capital yesterday where a man on the street cornered me, and after a short attempt of me trying to get away, flashed his erected dick at me.

I really hate it. I just wanna go home. My site has no electricity or service, so I’m really isolated and haven’t been able to commiserate with anyone. Can anyone even talk to me about it? The women here are so great. I’d hate to abandon them, and I do love my job, but it’s affecting my mental health to the point where I don’t wanna leave my house.”

And in follow-up comments-

That’s the year they get the, “Oh, the women here. The women here are fine.” The women here raise the men there

It’s, it’s true. She, she noted in a follow-up comment, “I haven’t had a safety issue personally, but other women in my cohort absolutely have, and it’s terrifying. I’m paranoid now and paid to have metal bars installed on my windows after a few violent robberies occurred at my site, not directed toward me.”

Can you imagine? You’re in the Peace Corps, people are building... Like, breaking into your building so much that you’re paying to have iron bars put on your window to, like, bar yourself in.

That is wild.

And ironically, in this thread, which I’ve linked to again from the show notes, you can see it for yourself, most women are telling her to tough it out They’re like, “No, stay.

I, I had that moment too. Just stay. You know, how are you gonna feel, you know, when people ask you about your time in the Peace Corps and you say you left early? One, you never have to say you left early. You just served in the Peace Corps. Who, no one cares how long

you did it.” It’s not like the military.

I know.

So it’s not like a college where you get a degree

for lasting a certain-

Dishonorably discharged. I know, for the- Rank too much ... anyway. They’re like, “No, girl. Like, you had to put bars on your room just to feel safe at night, and you still don’t feel safe, but tough it out.” One person says in her, in her comments, “There seems to be a common thread in a lot of these harassment situations where PC staff is not treating the volunteers’ issues with the importance that they deserve.

Obviously, that’s not going to change in the next eight months, so I will just share my frustration and dismay that they’re being so disrespectful.” Again, the problem is not the locals. The problem- Yeah ... is just the staff.

Well, the staff has learned to not care. If the locals do it to you, it doesn’t matter because you don’t matter.

Well, and also because you’re the colonizer, and they’re the savage, and, and you have vastly less

human- Well, and actually these women, and the, the reality is, is these women who are having these b***h outs, right? That they, you

know-

Well, but no, I think they’d be your legitimate grievances ... that the moment...

No, listen,

listen.

You know that this is exactly how they feel about the women who are grieved by, like, rape gangs in Britain and stuff like that. If, if it was brought to them that some refugee raped someone in Britain or something like that, they wouldn’t care. They’d be like, “Oh, I hope that community’s

okay.”

Well, and I think that’s why that young woman, that young high schooler that I mentioned at the top ultimately took her post down, people being like-

Yeah, they’re feeding their other women to these people already, you know?

It’s, it’s screwed up. It’s screwed up. It’s screwed. The, the, the, but the dual nature of the screwed up-edness is that they are, one, serving themselves up to victimization.

I guess, two, learning nothing from it. But three- taking this very dehumanizing approach to the very people who are attacking them And I don’t know what to think of it. I guess I, I was just thinking about that guy who, like, went out to Alaska or whatever to live with the bears, and then the bears ate him.

And just being like, ju- they were bears But I think he was humanizing the bears, and I think that they’re dehumanizing the men.

Yeah.

It’s just like the, the recurring theme, the bears.

Anyway, continue.

That’s, that’s it. I’m fed up. I-

I’m fed up too. I’m fed up. We gotta g- shut down aid work. I think the whole idea is silly.

It doesn’t... It makes things worse. It’s mostly it’s a

self-indulgent- Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Let me, let me be clear that that, that aid report that neglected to put in the RAPE stats for the year- Mm-hmm ... was like, oh, it’s all because of USA funding being cut. Not, not the, not why they left the beep out, but like in terms of

just the report being half- Oh, this came up for a different ep- episode that we’re gonna do, where in many places, like in Egypt where we have good numbers, after the US aid money was cut, the death rate dropped.

And in the regions where the death rate appears to have increased, there were active conflicts like- Hmm ... IG genocides going on- Yeah ... that weren’t going on before the USA cut. And it’s like, wait, did cutting USA to make things better in these countries? Like all of these like I remember like effective altruist types were like, “Think of all the people who will die of AIDS.”

Oh,

yeah. Yeah.

And then it didn’t f*****g happen. And I’m like, okay. Okay, people. So like, this was all fake, right? What these organizations fundamentally are is they are a way for white rich women to jack themselves off to feel cool about themselves, to feel like they’ve done something meaningful, to have something to do after college because they’re lazy to start their real life and they don’t wanna take responsibility for their real life.

And I, I think that fundamentally, like if I could choo- I would shut down almost every aid organization. I think that they are hu- hugely deleterious to the world. And they don’t... Like, you don’t need that. You, you... What these people, and you see this from the way that they’re going in, they’re going in and they’re trying to get these places to be more like where they are.

It’s the, it’s the modern colonization wave. If you are against colonization, you are against these orgs because that’s fundamentally what their end goal often is, is to make these places culturally more like our place.

Yeah. And

that’s why, that’s why they don’t mention that the problem is the culture, because implicitly they expect to change

the culture.

The plan is cultural erasure, so it doesn’t matter. Yeah.

Yeah. That’s why the culture doesn’t matter, because they don’t want to preserve the culture. They don’t respect the culture. They want it gone, erased.

Yeah. It doesn’t sit... None of this sits well with me. I, anyway... But I, I’m glad that someone had me look into it, ‘cause I guess I should’ve figured it’d be a problem.

But what shocked me was how little people were talking about it in the end. So there you go.

Well, not, not a lot of motivation to on the left

Yeah.

I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if the numbers are there somewhere, if somebody has these numbers.

Although I- Well, I mean presumably the people who made that annual report that they, they have the numbers, they just chose to not publish them.

And I-

The, the, the w- they might not. You know,

I think- The, the Aid Worker Security Database. No, they’ve gotta have... No, I mean if they’re- No,

here’s why I don’t think they have the numbers. Okay. The the PC who said to the one girl, you know, when she was raped five times in one trip to the capital in her car,

Oh, I don’t, no, no, no, that it wasn’t five.

Hold on.

Yes, it was. And she’s like, “Oh, he was just like, ‘Don’t do it. Don’t go.’ ‘Don’t, don’t do the trips.’” That is not somebody who’s taking down records of what happened. That’s somebody who’s just like, “Ah, yeah, whatever, you idiot white girls.”

She was based in a really remote part of the province and had to travel overnight to get her, do her banking, so apparently traveling in a car by night is also a welcome invitation to sex

Yeah, and then, but is that the whole thing?

It turns into five-

Yeah. Yeah. Then r- the PC’s response was, the Peace Corps’s response was, “Meh, you, rape victim, really shouldn’t, should have not have traveled by yourself at night.” Yeah.

Yeah.

And- But yeah, but, but you were thinking about the earlier example. There was another volunteer in my country that was raped, sorry, beeped, from what I understand, by multiple people while traveling to a regional capital.

So you’re thinking of that one.

Oh, yeah. That’s what’s holding me up. That’s what I’m thinking of. I thought that that’s what she was... Okay.

Yeah, so- Oh, never mind. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I, I read it wrong. The, I, again, I’m o- on, like, ambient hormonally.

But yeah- So

I was right ... she, yeah, you were right. I’m sorry.

Well, it wasn’t five. It was multiple. That could be anything. I don’t know what multiple means. I mean, it means three or more. Minimum three.

Anyway, love you.

I love you too.

Glad you’re not an aid worker and, and you were never seduced by that nonsense. You went to help f*****g turtles. You’re-

I can’t believe my...

So I’m 13 years old, right? 13 years old, and I just tell this, like, turtle refuge thing, this eco center in, in the, the city of Akumal in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, like, “Hello, I would like to volunteer for a month with your organization.” And they said, “Okay, that would be great.” And so I show up And I am the only minor there, and it is a co-ed- That happened to

me too.

Yeah.

Yeah, when I was in- And listen, it’s good. It’s good. I hope you can

still do that ... when I was in Costa Rica and Brazil and I was working for those scientists, I was the only minor. Everyone else was an adult.

And I was sleeping in a co-ed dorm with a cold water shower. And it was delightful, and everyone was so nice to me.

And there was this one New Zealand couple of, I think it was Alicia and Nick, and Nick painted me a Studio Ghibli painting that was really sweet, that I think I still, I still have. I treasure it. It’s of Chihiro looking angry in the forest before her parents go in, ‘cause she’s so mad about them exploring something spooky.

And they were all really sweet. There was, there were the Italians who I, I saw one of them- Well, I love

that both of you and I were precocious about, like, early, like, environment and nature ... and, and

no one, no one ever attacked me, not once. But there was this one... It was so funny, actually. Yeah, there were the Italian guys.

There was this one older man who had a CPAP machine. Like, it was everything. There was this one woman and I actually had an argument with her, and I just, I, I really... She was the one I didn’t like, and she was one of the two female American biology- Wh- ... college students. And she was like, “You can’t just go into the city.

Like, you’ll be attacked. People are attacked all the time.” I’m like, “No one, no one beeps anyone. Like, that never happens.” She’s like, “What are you talking about?” Mm-hmm. And I remember getting, like, actually mad at her, 13-year-old me, growing up, from, like, from my progressive background, right? She’s

actually trying to help you.

She was trying to help me, and I’m sitting there. I remember how pissed I was at her. I was like, “What is, who is this delusional, backward woman who thinks that everyone’s out to get her?” You know, and here I am wa- wandering around, my little 13-year-old self, my little 13-year-old bikini, just being like, “Erp-a-derp derp derp-a-derp derp.

I’m just being in my co-ed dorm with my...” Whatever, like, walking around,

oh my God, you are so lucky you made it through all

of that. But that’s the culture, and at least I can relate to it, right? Like, I, I, I can remember the anger I felt when someone tried to explain to me

You wanna go to Africa, the land of rapists?

Yeah, like you’re not safe. And- this is not good. Like y- you are, I’m worried about... Everyone took such good care of me, though. Like, I think that’s what’s really inspiring, like the flip side of this, is that I probably was in incredibly dangerous times, like so many, at so many points in my childhood and, and young adulthood as a single woman traveling solo.

However- Mm-hmm ... people constantly protected me.

Well, we, we rescued you from all that nonsense, b- me and the Base Camp listeners, so thank you

again. See, and well, also, like to everyone out there who has seen a young, foolish grul- girl like out there traveling and you’re like, “Oh, I don’t know if she should,” and you stepped in, on behalf of my younger self and all of these young women, thank you.

For all those people who convinced a young woman to actually just maybe not volunteer for the Peace Corps in a dangerous country, thank you. They’re gonna be mad at you. I was mad at you. I’m so sorry. Thank you. Okay. Simona out. Love you, Malcolm.

I love you, too.

Did you know, by the way, people are putting a lot of requests for, are discussing the Zoroastrian heaven.

Interesting.

Yeah They’re like, “Do Zoroastrianism. Do that.”

I remember Zoroastrianism- There’s gonna be at least three requests ... being pretty chill the last time I looked into it. Like, they’re the reason why I included it in my canon of d- true and divine inspired religions.

Oh, yeah? Hmm. Well, we’ll have to... Maybe we’ll have to check. Maybe it ain’t so chill. Maybe it is chill, and people are saying, “Check it out,” ‘cause it’s so awesome. There is only one way, my friend, we are going to find out. But what’s disappointing for me is I have not seen many answers. There was one, one ex-Muslim woman who deconverted.

I’m glad she did. Yay. ‘Cause she wasn’t having it this, this stuff.

I’m sorry. Sorry. Look, I’m basically on permanent Ambien for the next four weeks, so-

Due to the stage of the pregnancy.

Yeah. You’re, you’re gonna have to put up with this a lot. If it’s not right in front of my eyes, I am not going to recall anything, which also means you really have to stick with the marriage contract rule of, like, if it did not get emailed, it never happened.

The request was never made of me. I have no idea.

Well-

We’ll see. Another day I really don’t want dinner ‘cause I ate lunch.

Okay, I understand. Yeah, this is the problem of, of if, how do people who eat out every day Get through all their leftovers, ‘cause they get full from the amount Yeah, ‘cause

I gotta get to the leftovers next

Yeah, and there’s still the really good steak that I

thawed out for you Then the thought steak.

I know, Simone

Oh, it’s very stressful. This is very stressful, ‘cause we can’t let any food go to waste, and that, that would be a crime.

I will eat them each in turn. Stop stressing out. You

will. You will. I, yeah. Okay.

And, , we’ve made a number of improvements to the rfab.ai, that is R-F-A-B.AI. , It’s our like role play game AI website, , auto story generator and narrative engine. So if anyone wants to try that out, especially if you haven’t in a while, I think it’s in a really fun place right now. , And if you’ve played other things like say Janitor AI or Sakura or, you know, God Character AI, if you’re playing on like dumb mode, , this is-- allows you to use all the frontier models and has the most transparent pricing in the industry and the, the, the lowest pricing for anything that’s advanced in the industry.

So you can really try out like the limits of what you can do with AI role-playing companions.

Yeah? I can’t remember what I said Granddaddy. Yeah. His name is Michael

Are my daddy’s dad? That’s exactly right. That’s right. Your daddy’s dad It’s granddaddy. You can see the resemblance. You especially, Octavian. You especially, my buddy. What about you, Indy? Yeah, you too, Indy. You look like granddaddy. I want- What about your smoothie? Octavian? Friend

Well, now clean it up, friend, before Professor eats it all. She’s gonna get sick Yeah, those are fake eggs. They’re decoy eggs. They’re decoy eggs. Do you like them?

Yeah, they’re like toys