Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

What does a traditional Afghan or Pakistani Muslim actually believe happens in heaven? Not the sanitized Western or progressive version — the classic one drawn from the Hadith and mainstream interpretations.

Malcolm and Simone dig into the details: every believing man gets at least two wives (with no upper limit tied to piety), no woman in paradise is ever without a sister-wife, houris (created beings often described in highly physical terms), infinite sexual stamina, controllable pregnancy and aging for children born in heaven, the absence of bodily waste, the majority-female population of hell according to reports of Muhammad’s night journey, and the young male servants who attend the righteous. They also cover the process of death, the period in the grave, the immediate entry of prepubescent children, and the extremely graphic punishments of Islamic hell.The conversation then compares these beliefs to Mormon spirit-world ideas, traditional Christian heaven, and the Collinses’ own techno-puritan framework — examining how different afterlife incentives shape behavior toward spouses, non-believers, long-term civilization, and personal morality.

Want to dive deeper? Check out this episode’s companion page on the Techno-Puritan website. :)

Episode Transcript

Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to learn what Muslims believe happens in heaven, and here I do not mean Western Muslims or apologist Muslims. I wanted to get an understanding of what your standard - Afghani man, Pakistani man would believe is going to happen to them after they die, and it is way crazier than you think, and it reframes for me why Muslims in Islamic culture and far progressive culture get along so well.

What?

Uh.

You’re like... So first, just a few to throw out some crazies here. Okay. If I were to convert to Islam-

Okay ...

when I die, you would believe and I would believe that I get at least one additional wife. No-

And I’m s- I’m okay with that allegedly ... no

Muslim man in heaven has fewer than two wives.

So wait, wait, wait.

If I, an Islamic woman, a believer, choose to marry a man I know that I’m gonna have a sister wife in heaven, at least

Absolutely. There is no getting around it. And-

Unless he goes to hell. Do I get a sixth one?

No, no, no, no. Even if he goes to hell, you, when you get to heaven, get married to a believing Muslim man as an extra one of his wives, and he will have at least two wives.

Wait, hold- oh.

No woman in heaven is in a relationship with a man withou- out a sister wife. So

you can’t be a female single in heaven?

Not allowed.

You’re not allowed to be single in heaven?

Not allowed to be single. And if a woman’s like, “But what if I don’t want that? Like, what if I get jealous?” What Muslims believe is a satisfying answer is, well, God just brainwashes you into being okay with it.

So- ... you don’t even

know. Which is cool. Everyone’s kind of poly in heaven. It’s fine.

He, He, He, he messes with your brain so that you no longer experience jealousy. And- Everyone

belongs to everyone else.

Yeah, no, it really does feel like one of those scary, like the faculty or something like that where I think too an American mindset, especially like a backwards American mindset, if somebody comes to you and they’re like, “There’ll be no pain.”

“There’ll be no suffering. There’ll be no...” And it’s like, but it’s not me anymore. Right. It’s something else.

Yeah. It’s a pod person.

It is so much better. There’s no fear or pain. It’s beautiful. And you We’ll be beautiful. No problems or worries. We want you. No pain, Stan? We’re gonna come in here and I’ll show you some f*****g pain!

So you’re gonna kill me is what you’re trying to say. Yes.

Other crazy facts about heaven.

Okay.

Well, the number of additional wives I get. So the crazy thing is if, if you help me be an extra good Muslim man-

Okay

the better I am as a Muslim man, the better you make me as your, my wife, the more additional wives you need to deal with.

Oh, man.

And the, the 72 wives that martyrs get- Right ... you could get way over 72 wives.

Oh.

It’s said that some men live in tents where there’s so many women that you can’t-

Wait. All you get in heaven is a tent?

name them all. Are, is this a FEMA heaven? What, what is this?

Yeah, I’d ... It’s a, we’ll get to it. It’s weird. Oh, another thing. You can have babies in heaven. And- Oh, no ... you can have a baby, and you can make the gestation whatever lengths you wish. So you could make the gestation a day if you wanted to.

Okay.

You could make the gestation a week if you wanted to, and then you could have them age at any speed you want

So there are no diapers in heaven if you don’t want them. Okay.

Oh, well, also all of your uncleanness. You don’t menstruate anymore. I think you don’t pee or poo anymore.

Oh.

No pooping in heaven.

But what’s really interesting about these babies born in heaven-

Okay ...

that gets me is they have human souls. Like, they are actual human-souled babies, but they don’t have to go through the trials that God made all of the rest of humanity go through- Oh ... to get into this heaven, which seems- So it’s just- Why did we all have to go through it and these souls don’t have to go through it?

It seems bizarre and unfair. Yeah. But-

Hmm ...

then again, these people... Oh, another fun one about women in heaven. Okay. So Muhammad said that when he went to hell, he saw many more women in hell than men. Hell was majority female. And when he came out- Hell is female. That’s... ... he saw far fewer females.

So, you know, straight

up- No, how is that po- ... misogyny There cannot be far fewer females because every man has all these wives.

Well-

This is mathematically impossible ...

hold on, because a lot of these wives might be hurers, or hur- hu- hur- Hurers? It sounds like w****s, okay? But it’s spelled like H-U-R-O something.

The point being-

From now on, we need to spell w****s that way ...

is they are constructed beings that are not fully human. And they are meant to look like y- young, beautiful maidens.

I- So they’re sex bots. You have sex bots in heaven.

They are sex bots, yeah, and the Hadith spends a lot of time talking about, like, how nice their breasts are and that,

They’re, they’re real dolls.

They are real dolls in heaven.

You, no, you as a man get infinite stamina for sex. Explicitly it says, “Infinite stamina for sex.”

Wait, I thought... This is one of the circles of hell. This is, this is lust. Why are we lust maxing in heaven?

Well, actually, this is the point I’m gonna get to. It made me realize that Islam is, above all else, a max hedonism religion.

Yeah, no kidding. Like, I mean-

No other religion is like, “Yeah, you get all the sex bots you want in heaven.” Right? Like, you-

Even like, “Well, don’t worry. In heaven, you’ll be stripped of this licentiousness and these, these basal drives. You can rise above.” And, and- Yeah, no ... with Islam, they’re like, “Don’t worry.

The entire point of all of this is to be super freaking hedonistic.” It’s infinite heaven sex, and then- Oh

my God ... then you have all the babies you want.

This is... Well, what kind of... I mean, that’s the... Ugh. I, I’m speechless

I’m actually this is where I think it, it works pretty interesting with techno puritanism

No, no, no Because- The twain shall never meet. I’m seeing that we are incompatible

N- well, hold on, hold on.

You might think we’re more compatible than you

would think Okay. Sure. Explain this to me

So within the techno puritan afterlife we haven’t done our full afterlife tract series yet, but I do have the research notes for it, because I’ve been doing a lot of research on it recently. And people know we think that you’re going to be raised again into a new body, and that that body will likely, because it’s described in the Bible as being neither physical nor spiritual, likely some form of simulation in an artificial environment that’s given.

And so the question w- is, is what are those environments like? And we know that some people are given work in heaven, and some people reign over others in heaven, and some people reign over cities in heaven. And so what does that mean? And so what it could mean is that heaven is sort of like a tiered system.

It’s very clear that souls are tiered in traditional Christian heaven, and so in techno puritan heaven, yes. This is our weird belief system for people who do not know. But what, because it says that some people can be like angels, we would think, well, some people, if you’re, like, good enough in this series of simulations, you leave the simulation and you reenter future society, potentially as an AI on a spaceship or something like that, or either in, like, a humanoid body or whatever- Yeah

form the world has taken at that point. But Muslims would be forever trapped, even the good ones, in their heaven, and never brought into the real world again, because what they cared for more than anything was an afterlife of pure hedonism. And so their souls are permanently trapped in hedonistic simulations.

Which is what they wanted anyway, so it’s not like we’re doing anything bad to them. You know, they, they did all of this so they could get the hedonistic simulation. But hold on. I’ve, I’ve... Big deviant here. I haven’t mentioned the young boys yet. You also get, Oh, I should talk more about the houris.

So the, these things in heaven now some Muslims believe that every truly believing Muslim male gets at least two real women in heaven, and then they get houris on top of that. Whereas others think... And the math on that just doesn’t make sense. There’s no way you could have every true believing Muslim man get two women, and men are more righteous than women.

That, that, that just doesn’t make sense. There’s slightly more women than men in the world, but it’s like 1% more. Yeah ... that’s the argument. ‘Cause I asked, “How can you explain this?” And the, the AI was like, “Well, you know, there’s more women born.” And I’m like, “That, that, that doesn’t explain the two to one math.”

Not enough. Not enough. Yeah.

Yeah.

But it seems like the majority of Muslims, what they believe is the additional women are made up- The houris ... the houris. And these creatures that are made for- Muslim men’s pleasure in heaven. I mean, really, a- a- or not, I’ll note, people are like, “Wait, so then the wife has to compete with these sexbots?”

It’s like, no, she doesn’t, because it said all throughout the Hadiths that the these additional ones, the houris, are way less hot than real women are. And the reason why they’re less hot is because they haven’t undergone the moral trials of a real li- l- life.

Okay. And so that- So you’re hotter if you’ve withstood ha- hardship.

That’s kinda... I appreciate that, kind

of. Mm. Yeah, I appreciate that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah ...

so, oh, it’s also, so the little boy servants, I’ve gotta talk about them. Oh, God. So it goes into, and it spends a lot of time on, like- It, it, like, the words kind of, like, creep you out if you’re reading it. Like, if you ask an AI about them, it has to be, like, very explicitly they are not used for sex.

Even though it goes on and on about how pretty they are.

No homo. No homo. Oh my god,

Greg. But no homo. But y- they are very pretty. They’re like... It, it, it makes that clear, like, very pretty, young I, I think explicitly underage males act as slaves for you in heaven. And these are another class of created bil- beings like the, the houris.

Now note having young child slaves was actually very common for Muslims during the periods where this Hadith tradition was growing. So, as I, I have talked about before Islam worked really well and did really well during the period where it acted as only the, the masters believed it. Like, only the people who ran society believed it, and none of the, the lower classes believed it.

Mm-hmm. Because it is basically built to be a slave religion, right? Like, as we point out, even Muhammad owned sex slaves, right? Like, it’s, it’s sort of designed to be a religion of a ruling class. And it works really well when it’s the religion... Well, not really well, but I, I mean, Islam had a significant period of expansion and success until it reached all levels of society, and then you began to get breakdown.

But because there’s also a totalizing religion. Also note here, very interesting the lowest level of hell in Islam is for hypocrites. And at first I was like, “Oh, that’s really awesome.” Like, “I don’t like hypocrites either. G- good on you for being so harsh with them.”

Okay.

And then I looked up what it meant by hypocrites, and what it means by hypocrites is individuals who say that they b- follow Islam, but don’t really in their hearts believe it’s all true.

Oh, so just infidels that... Okay.

Well f- well, no, but it’s, it’s infidels who pretended to convert so that they could get, like, power in society, which actually happened a lot when Muslims acted as a ruling class-

Mm ...

in a number of regions. Anyway, back to the- Well,

right, but that, that, I feel like that just goes without saying.

If you don’t have genuine faith, then, like, you’re not gonna end up in the right place in, in religions that, that have that whole thing.

Yeah.

Right?

Well, back to how do you know if you, if you messed up, if Islam is right? How do you know? ‘Cause we had a video on, one of our weekend videos for, like, paid subscribers, we offer on Patreon and Substack weekend videos, and one of the, the ones we did this weekend was I did a similar breakdown but on Mormonism.

Hmm.

And I thought I knew what happened after you die when you’re a Mormon.

That was mind-blowing.

And I had no idea.

No, man. What if they- I get now for real why Mormons Always wear their temple garments. Why some Mormons even used to shower in their temple garments, ‘cause if you know what I know now-

Yeah, I know, yeah, I know why they don’t masturbate too.

Yeah.

So the fun fact on Mormons, the most shocking one for me, it’s not like the, the planet thing or, you know, the i- eternal progression. Everybody knows about that. Everybody knows about that. What I didn’t know is Mormon think that, like, everyone who’s ever lived is, like, a ghost just walking around living life.

They have emotions, they interact with each other, they have conversations, and they’re, they are on Earth here with us until Judgment Day. And so right now there’s just, like, ghosts everywhere in this room. Everywhere. This house is, like, 200 whatever years old. Yeah,

they’re, they are all around us right now.

They’re watching us- Especially in my room, ‘cause mine’s the dying room. It’s, it’s

a nice

one ...

yeah, you, you masturbate and there is- They’re

watching ...

a room full of, like, Victorian old women- ... looking at you like, “Ugh.”

Commenting on your form.

Yeah, just like, I cannot believe- “That young man’s

building a death grip.

He needs to ease up.”

What is he watching?

That,

that

gives me so much more than God watching me. “His, his sexual

tastes are atrocious.” Yeah. Like, God watches you, whatever, right? Right, right. But the idea of a bunch of ghosts watching

him- Like, God has seen everything, you know? He’s less judgmental at this point.

It’s, you know, tens of thousands of years of humanity. But, like, you know, a Victorian woman, the colonial woman m- and men who died in this room, I... No, I’m not ready for that. That’s the thing.

The I’d, I think as a, a Mor- I’d never have sex if I was a Mormon. I don’t want, like,

a bunch of people- I know, how do they have all these kids if it’s not through IVF?

I mean, I get IVF. That, that part’s easy.

Well, we’ve talked about higher rates of, like, cucking and, like, vore-ism behavior in Mormonism. Maybe this could evolve. And the ghosts are

watching them do

this. Because they had to learn to be okay or even get off- Oh ... to a room full of ghosts.

Oh, yeah. They’re like, “Look, I’m gonna have to do it as a ghost.

Let’s just start practicing.” Right. “I don’t wanna have to deal with this in the afterlife.” Oh my God. But still, actually, in the end I think that the Mormon afterlife is super wholesome and sweet and nice, and I really- Yeah,

no, it’s, it’s actually pretty

dope ... it’s my favorite afterlife, honestly- Yeah, but, but, but-

of all the afterlifes ... I

was like, I

go to hell. Islamic afterlife? This sounds like a horrible afterlife. I,

and let’s say- I, I, do you know what, do you know what the Mormons do when they’re gho- No. I, I go to someone, I go- Yeah ... what Mormons think they immediately start doing when they become a ghost? Of course, they start trying to convert other ghosts.

Darn tootin’ they are.

And you’re, you’re totally out, off the hook if you get converted after you become a ghost.

I know.

Like, there is no reason

to be like, “No.” I know, I know, I know, I know, I know. Yeah, it’s great. Yeah, no. But- We’re just gonna... We’ll convert

his ghost. So yeah, if, if, if a, if a, If you die and you’re immediately a ghost, you’re like, “The Mormons were right.”

Yeah,

and then you just convert. It’s great.

Just convert ...

if, if you die...

okay.

More north, more north, more north. Oh, yeah, so but if you die and there’s a Black guy staring at you, you know you’re in Muslim world. Because- A Black

guy?

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, because when you die as a Muslim-

Uh-huh ...

one of two options. A, a white angel can come to you or a Black angel can come to you.

Are you s- You no wait, hold on though. What about all of the, the Black Muslims, especially in the United States?

Oh, no,

like- What do they think about this?

Muhammad kept, like, Black slaves. Like, they- I know, but, like,

the, all of the people who were originally, like, Nation of Islam, but then they’re like, “Oh, now we’re just actual Islam,” look, I mean, if you go just to-

Sorry, we did an episode on this recently, but the Islamic slave trade was significantly larger than the American slave trade and lasted significantly longer than the American slave trade.

Like, they’re, they’re not even close, right? Like-

No, but help me understand this, ‘cause, like, if you just go to Philadelphia, right? Like, right by our house, you will walk around in the streets, there are ton... The only people that I see wearing hijab- hijabs in Philadelphia are Black. Like, they’re not-

I mean, Muhammad didn’t like your people very much.

Well, then so how do they reconcile this whole, like, well, if you die and you’re going to the, the not good place-

Well, they say, “Oh, it means...” B- you know,

there’s some sanctimonious about race- Does everyone become white and delightsome in, in in heaven or something? ... when it, like, when

they’re, when they’re talking to you, but when it’s like in, in Islam they’re like, “Oh, well, that’s just is symbolic of evil, Blackness.”

Oh. “It’s symbolic of evil, and whiteness is symbolic of good,” and that’s what they’re trying to say. It, it doesn’t come off to me that way, but anyway. And, you know, Muhammad did, again, we know he explicitly had African slaves. We know they engaged in slavery in that region. We know that they were significantly worse to their slaves than the Americans were because they predominantly used them for sex slavery.

And so they would castrate the males which had a very high rate of just killing them, and then the females were really horrible, really horrible. We did another episode where we talk about that. I’m not talking about that now. We’re talking about right now Muslim afterlife. So you die. An angel comes to you.

The angel takes you out of your body, and you go up to heaven, and it’s, like, painful to be taken out of your body if you’re not Muslim, and it’s, like, not painful if you are Muslim. Okay, so you go up to heaven. You then have judgment passed on you, okay? Then you’re sent back to your body- All right? And you then just wait in your grave until Judgment Day.

Now-

Wait

So this

is- What, how, how are dead Islamic bodies prepared, and what if you get cremated?

Muslims are super against cremation. Hmm. For this reason. So-

Yeah, well, okay, well, what if you die en route on a battlefield? What if you die i- incredibly devout but penniless, and the state finds your body and cremates you?

I’m sure they have some, “And God makes it better somehow, but you shouldn’t do it.”

Okay.

But anyway, so you, Muslims believe that all of their dead ancestors- Mm ... every dead Muslim, including Muhammad, except for one class that we’ll get to in a second, is right now still in their grave, okay? But they have a view of the heaven they’re eventually gonna inherit.

Wait, are they on pause? Is this like a stasis cryo kind of thing, or are they just

sit- It says they sleep- ...

middling about ...

like a, a, a bride on her bride’s night. So they, they say it’s a pleasant feeling, but for me, this doesn’t feel pleasant. It feels like being endlessly, like, what’s that word that people...

Like, edged in sex or something like that? Like, “Heaven’s coming, heaven’s coming, heaven’s coming.” Wait,

aren’t, like, Islamic women virgins when they,

Enter heaven, yes ...

marry?

We’ll get to that

again. No, no, no, no, when they marry. I’m just, like, thinking, like, a, a bride night would probably be very, like, stressful for-

True

a woman.

But then it, it’s what the Muslim men thought the bride night was like, Simone.

Oh, great.

Okay- Okay ... ‘cause they’re the ones writing all this. Hmm. So they’re looking at paradise right now. They’re all in their- Got it. Okay ... graves looking at paradise- Hmm ... waiting for the door to open. Now, they- Hmm

they have a door. They just can’t open it. It’s, Okay. Okay ... sometimes a window, sometimes a door, whatever. Anyway, the one group that gets into heaven immediately are prepubescent children. So they get directly into heaven, and they’re all- Early

entrance to Disneyland. Got it.

Yeah, they’re all cared for by, I wanna say Abraham.

And it’s com-

Abraham wasn’t that good of a dad. I’m very concerned about this.

That’s actually a good point.

Yeah, man. Anyway. Who’s, who is putting him in charge? Oh.

Anyway, so, all of the kids in heaven right now, and they stay young u- until the trumpet blows. And when the trumpet br- blows, they immediately turn 30, and everybody when they get to heaven turns 30 as well.

Wait, so hold on. Like- A woman, her, her kid dies, and she’s like, “Oh,” like, “I’ll be able to embrace my child in heaven.” But then she gets to heaven and, and he’s like 30, and she missed- But

she can have another one in heaven, and make him look however she wants and- But that’s not the point ... make him age however she wants.

Oh. But of course it’s okay, ‘cause she’ll be brainwashed to love it all. But what’s the point? Yeah. If you’re brainwashed to love it all, why even go through all the... Like, why give the, why give away the real dolls, and the hookers, and why, why all this when,

like- Yeah, why can’t the men just be brainwashed to

love

their wives?

Why

don’t you just, like, why don’t you just be in your grave, and, like, Muhammad’s like, “Ah, but you’ll be incredibly happy.” Like, you didn’t have to do all this other stuff. It’s just like, “Look, you’ll get to heaven, and it’s darkness and nothing, and you’ll just be super happy.” Like, did we need the details?

Did we need the debauchery, the sex? No,

but I, I think you make a really strong point here, right? Like, if you’re gonna say, if, if you’ll be brainwashed to like it, or recreated in a way that you like it, is the way the Muslims like to say it, they don’t wanna say brainwashed. Sure,

okay.

Recreated in a way where your brain enjoys all this.

Recreated, that just sounds like a copy of you that’s not you.

Right.

That’s worse than brainwashed. Recreated- And why be

brainwashed

and recreated ... in

a way where you like all of this.

Okay.

The question then becomes, and I think Simone lays it out, why can’t the men just be programmed to be perfectly satisfied with their existing wife or wives?

Yeah, maybe, maybe you can just be recreated to not be a sex pest, or incr- have a high sex drive. You could just... I don’t, I don’t know, man. Okay. But carry on.

No, it, this, this really understanding this, understanding what’s at the end. Oh, the other thing you should know about Muslim hell and note here within all of this, I’m talking-

Wait, wait, wait, right, right, right.

Sorry, sorry. I, I totally steamrolled you on Muslim hell. So a Black person addresses me, and what’s happening next?

Well, so the point I was making is you this isn’t talking about techno-puritan Muslims. If you are Islamic and you follow a version that is a Muslim version of techno-puritanism you wouldn’t believe any of this nonsense.

You would go back and try to find something in the text that actually makes sense, and you can make a lot of it. Like when I was trying to apply like a techno-puritan reading, basically what I learned about Islam is you have to be a Koranist to apply te- y- the, the Hadith just are completely incompatible with techno-puritanism.

Throw ‘em out. Okay.

But this is, this is the same with the Jews. You could say, “Oh, you’re applying something similar to Muslims.” No, with the Jews, I say you’ve gotta throw out Kabbalism. Like that’s, that’s- Oh, obviously.

Yeah ...

that’s a later edition, which puts you in a very small minority camps. The people who throw out the Hadith, it’s a small number of Muslims.

But,

Yeah, but look, the Star Wars franchise, although that’s not a great example to use, but they don’t like incorporate fan fiction. The Harry Potter universe isn’t like fan fiction is canon, and that’s what Kabbalah is. That’s what the Hadiths are. They’re not

But that’s the way almost every school of Muslim takes Hadith seriously.

Like for example- And they’re wrong ... the, the, the additional wives things, you don’t g- if you throw out the Hadiths-

Uh-huh ...

you, you can read around that.

Oh, okay. Okay ...

but the Hadiths ad- add a lot of that stuff more explicitly, okay?

Oh, okay.

Now I note here it’s easy to be like, “Well, that’s unfair to Jews and Muslims. You’re saying what Jews can’t believe in the Kabbalah and Muslims can’t believe in Hadith? How come Christians still get to believe everything?” It’s like, well, no, actually not. In techno-puritanism, anything that happened at the Council of Nicene, any of that later stuff that was added to Christianity like the Trinity that’s not actually in the Bible or wasn’t something that early Christians believed, we throw that stuff out as well.

, And for most Christians, throwing out the Trinity is a much bigger deal than throwing out something like the Hadith or throwing out something like Kabbalism

But anyway, so I, I wanted to point out here, I’m not, I’m not talking about necessarily...

well, one thing is, is the Quran is way more explicit about hell and, and, and the Hadiths are more explicit about hell than-

Okay ...

Jew- Judaism or Christianity is.

Okay. Okay.

They get really inventive with the tortures in hell and stuff like that. They go it’s like- More than Dante’s Inferno? Yes, like Dante’s Inferno is like built into the, the religion in a way- Wow

that it’s just not w- like, if you put out with techno-puritanism, I can, I can read like every line about hell, and I can be like, “I think it’s just talking about erasing people,” right? Like that’s-

Yeah. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah ...

what fire being is an analogy for erasure. Delete. Yeah. You’re, you’re removed from the book of life.

Mm-hmm. That means you’re not one of the people who’s gonna be raised again in the future.

Yeah.

That simple, right? And people are wondering if you haven’t seen that tract, how I get around the one where Jesus takes the guy to Hades. I’m like, “Well, it says it take, he takes him to Hades, so it’s clearly a parable.”

Because like we don’t believe in Hades, right? Yeah. Like it, it, it would say Sheol if it meant like the real Jewish hell, right? But it didn’t. It said Hades. So it’s, it’s a parable, and there’s a reason why he had to do the parable that way.

Do you call it Hades for the same reason you call it Nike?

What,

it was Hades

Oh, it’s... Whatever. The, the the reason he had to do it that way is the parable doesn’t work if he’s in the real afterlife or erased or in hell- For sure ... where, like, you can’t interact with somebody, because he needed to have regret, so he had to use an afterlife that people would understand had a still a sense of sentience within it.

Mm-hmm ... but anyway, don’t wanna get into weird techno puritan stuff here. Gonna keep going with the Muslim stuff. But what I found very interesting about all this is it helped me understand why I think Islam often has worse outcomes than other religions in terms of the rates we see things like terrorism or SA.

You see this in r- like in Egypt, one survey showed 99% of women had experienced it. Like really high rates within a lot of these countries within a lot of these communities. And I think one of the reasons is one thing you gotta know is with, as a Muslim, you generally still get into paradise, even if you do fairly egregious sins, so long as you’re a true believing Muslim.

You just get punished for a period first.

Mm.

So to be clear, because I got to double check this, you can grape a child, you can torture somebody, you can murder anything, you still get into heaven if you’re Muslim. And if you’re like, well, that sounds really unjust, how could anyone believe that? Keep in mind. Traditional Christians essentially believe the same thing.

Just believe in Christ and answer forgiveness and you get in no matter what you did.

So very similar to how I’ve heard some Catholic retellings where, look, as long as you repent by the time you you die, you’re kinda good. You’re, you’re solid.

Yeah. Well, yeah, except you, you do face more punishment. I think, but you can get around- You gotta

go through purgatory-

most of

that ... in theory, right? But-

Yeah, yeah, you can get around most of that by just repenting in most forms of Christianity. Yeah. Not techno puritanism, by the way. No, no,

no.

No, no, no, no. That repent on your- No ... deathbed thing doesn’t work.

Not

happening. Well, I mean, it does kind of if it is a true repentance because, you know, we think the point of the things that happen to you after you die, let’s say the, the stimulated worlds, is to test your soul to see if you are worthy of being like the angels, which it says some souls become in heaven.

And this then means you’re re-entering a consequential interaction with reality again. So, like, if your soul had actually improved itself that amount to the end then you’d be closer to that particular end state, right? Like-

Hmm ...

and the technology would be able to determine this. But you, you can’t just be like, “Oh, I rep- I, I...”

You know, like there’s the one- Sorry ... famous serial killer who did that, right?

Well, and it m- matters, what matters is what you’ve done, not what you say. I, I think that’s the bigger thing.

Well, you, you could say what you say, but a lot of people are like, “No, you’re saved through, through Christ alone and faith alone.”

Yeah. “And that gets through everything.” And I don’t, I don’t think that sounds moral to me at all.

No.

It’s not, it’s not a religion I wanna be a part of. I... Oh, the God’s endless grace or whatever, and it’s like, well, if somebody, like, tortured a kid or something like that, I kinda think-

No grace ...

there should be ramifications for that, right?

Like-

Well, the Old Testament’s clear. Like, even if you, like, make a, a widow or a fatherless child cry out to God, like- y- y- you’re deleted, essentially. Like you shall, you shall burn in fire. And your entire family basically will be ended. It’s- Mm ... it’s very clear. Like, don’t do that. Y- you’re gonna get in big trouble.

Y- you can’t just be like, “I’m sorry.” It, it doesn’t say, “And then by the way-” “... if you say I’m sorry, it’s totally fine.”

This is traditional, traditional Christians believe that’s the one thing you’re pissing off a lot of

them. Are you- And I haven’t gotten to the New Testament. I get that, guys. But also, okay, I’ll get there.

A lot of Christians,

this is the traditional view in Christianity.

And they’re welcome to feel that. And, and

again, we’re, we’re- Look, we have different views ... we’re joking about it because if we’re gonna joke about Islam and we’re gonna joke about what traditional Muslims think, we’re gonna joke about where we think that this sounds silly to us.

Of

course.

And, and where it seems like it’s... But I, that, that to me is not as egregious as just like how Dover Muslim women get. Oh. You know, like the, just-

Don’t worry, they’ll be happy about it. You’ll like it.

You’ll like it. But no, what’s fascinating to me is if you have this view of the afterlife, like I think the negative ramifications, what it means is, one, you can still sort of get away with what you wanna get away with.

And two in, in, in addition to that you... And gosh, I didn’t know about some of this stuff. Like some of our fans have sent us stuff, like there’s a line where, I don’t remember if this is the Quran or the Hadiths where they’re asking about when we’re graping polithiest whose villages we’re wiping out, do we pull out?

And it’s like, no, of course, don’t pull out. You know, this is the, like, it when you’re doing war crimes. It’s like if God’s the one who controls whether they get pregnant or not, ...

So for full context on this one, this is from one of the hadiths, and, , they had captured women from a polytheist tribe, and the men wanted to grape their women, but then they would be able to sell them back less as slaves, , sell them back , as hostages if they ended up getting pregnant. , And so they asked Muhammad for, we do coitus interruptive?

Do we not grape them?” And he’s like, “No, no, no, of course grape them,” like obviously, right? But, , you know, also don’t do coitus interruptive because you don’t need to worry about that because Muhammad takes care of all that

And just to be clear for people who are like, “Well, that’s just what you did back then,” , both Christian and Jewish law prevented acts like this centuries before this. This isn’t just what you did back then. This was unique to Muhammad and his people

And if you’re like, “What’s the techno-puritan perspective on this?” Because obviously sometimes you still need to go to war. Well, if you go to war and population needs to be

that population, but as painlessly as possible, as quickly as possible. And if you have people who are temporarily captives, you sell them back or you eliminate them.

You do not treat them as grape slaves ever

And if you are selling them back, I would say unless there is, is something that makes this an extremely unfavorable thing to do in specific conditions, they should be sterilized before they’re given back. Your goal is to lower the population of those groups that want you eradicated

Or to put it in other words, to lower future bloodshed, future suffering where it’s possible.

Not, not awesome. Well, not awes- Not awesome ... not awesome. But there’s a lot of stuff where I’m just like this is, this is quite, I don’t know. Like, I’m, I’m gonna be honest, even, even to our fans who are Muslims, I would seriously like, I, I do think that there might be a way for a portion of Islam to like work well, but like I would seriously think about whether that’s something you wanna continue to follow. More so with other religions where I’m just like, no, you can, you can find a way to, you know, stay Jewish or whatever.

This is, I don’t know, like that, some of that stuff is just like that’s, that’s gruesome, man. That’s really gruesome. But to continue here, Because we, yeah, even our fans were like, “No, it’s...” I won’t get into this argument again, ‘cause we’ve, we’ve litigated it numerous times whether or not a Muslim can legally within Sharia law grape a non-Muslim.

We say no. A lot of people say yes. I’m not gonna argue

about it anymore. I think that, yeah, where, where it comes down to is, is we seem to disagree- I haven’t been convinced

by the

arguments

people

have given us ... on yeah, they think that, like Anyone’s just allowed to basically act as though they’re at war, even if, say, they’re an asylum sp- seeker who has come on their knees saying, “Oh, help me,” to their host country, that somehow that means that they’re also at war with their host country?

No, absolutely not. Look, Muhammad, yes, he, he did a lot of really crappy things t- but he was also very clear, like, “I’m gonna come and get ya.” Like, he was always kind of at war. These people are not. They’re not at war. I- if you’re not at war, then you can’t do the war things.

Well, they would say that he did things in his battle tactics to try to trick his enemies and ended up being able to kill them, like raiding early in the morning, and I’m like, it’s not the same thing, right?

No, no. Like, a- and I’m saying all this ‘cause I wanna point out that, like, we don’t always just go, like take the maximally anti-Islamic approach to something, right? You know. I think that there are places where you have to give them their dues. Mm-hmm. And, and that is one of them. But what I mean is if what is at the end of the day in store for you is as many additional wives as you could...

You know, based on how moral you are, you don’t have the same motivation to treat your earthly wife very well. Because once you

get

to-

She’s just gonna be hotter and, like, cool with you no matter how you treat her anyway. Yeah. So.

You can basically be- ‘Cause they’re hotter, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah, they’re, they’re hotter in

heaven.

Oh, by the way, did you know that you’re not allowed to have threesomes with your earthly wives in, in Islam?

Oh, wait, so if they’re both married to you, like you, you can have max four wives. You cannot have a, that would, ha- a f- a fivesome.

Yeah. Well, you can have max four wives and infinite sex slaves.

Right, right, right.

Well, can you have, can you... So but you can’t have sex concurrently with up to four wives in your life life, your earth life.

Yeah, you can’t- Can you- E- even on earth, you can’t have three ways. No Muslim three ways. Because-

Oh, but also there are no three ways in heaven. So there’s infinite Viagra, no, no three ways.

One-on-one.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, I guess you have infinite time, so who cares?

Even, even if the women are into it, which I thought was interesting. I didn’t know that. I thought, like, the women were probably allowed to sleep with each other at least if they’re your wives, but, like, no.

Oh, wait, they can’t sleep with each other.

No. No,

no. No, no lesbians in -

No lesbians ...

no lesbians in Islamic heaven.

But there’s really cute boy slaves.

Lots of those around.

Yeah, no homo. But they’re so cute.

Well, the,

a lot of Islamic countries- They’re the only children who don’t immediately grow up ...

we

have this other episode on this- Which

is interesting

but a lot of Islamic countries like Afghanistan have problems with lots of gay sex, but it’s not, like, same age gay sex. It’s, like, huge age gap a- gay sex.

Mm.

Which was a huge problem for the troops, and so, like- This has been around in Islamic culture for a long time. We see at like during the Muslim, the height of these Muslim empires, if you go to you know, their, see our episode on like how I- Islam went from like the maximally debauched religion to like a religion that was very, very strict in a fairly short time window where it used to be, you know, all these giant harems and belly dancing and you know, people drinking all the time. There’s the one court where the mom made all of the girls dress up like boys to try to seduce her son, you know?

And then it became popular for a while for all the girls to dress like boys because they were trying to seduce a gay prince.

The era of the tomboy.

The era of the tomboy.

Yeah. We’re for it, you know? Look, it- But the

point being is if you think that that’s what all this is for- Mm-hmm ... and you know that like your wife won’t be able to ever be like, “Hey, you were a dick to me and now we’re together for all eternity,” you don’t have to worry about any of that.

The other thing is that you don’t need to worry about the long term of human civilization. You don’t need to worry about what hap- like nuking the entire planet, that’s totally fine. In fact, that might even cause judgment day, right? You don’t need to worry about like the, the Russians love their children too song.

You know, like the, no, they’re actually okay with that, ‘cause all the kids get immediately perfect heaven, right? And because what you’re fighting for is ultimately hedonism, you’re not really worried in sort of like a higher moral calling either, right? Like in, in being efficacious with your life or anything

like that.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. ‘Cause the whole point is max hedonism. Yeah. So you’re never gonna try to rise above it. It’s your motivating factor.

And this is, and I think in terms of heavens, if I was gonna rank like afterlifes in terms of creating good moral action, I think the lowest you could have is Buddhism, okay?

That’s just like-

Nothingness ...

anti-materialist. That’s, that’s negative utilitarianism as a religion, okay?

Yeah. The heat death of the universe, that’s, that’s a good, good end state.

Yeah. G- destroy reality is a good end state. Yeah.

Yes.

I don- I don’t think that that motivates particularly moral behav- well, okay, it motivates more moral behavior than pure hedonism.

Let’s say that, okay? We’ll put, we’ll put Islam, traditional Islam, note there’s different interpretations, we’re just talking about the traditional one- Mm-hmm ... the very lowest in terms of motivating moral behavior because it motivates you to devalue women, devalue your wife, devalue your relationship, devalue the long-term future of humanity-

And n- not a ton of reason to act particularly morally, especially to non-Muslims.

Yeah, actually it make the, it makes so much, like a lot of the human rights issues that you see take place in many predominantly Muslim countries have a lot more context now- Yeah ... ‘cause it doesn’t appear to really matter.

Like even within your own family, it’s like look- What they, what they do right now doesn’t matter at all, and what I do to them doesn’t matter. You know? Like, they’re just, they’re gonna be better when they’re dead honestly.

Yeah.

Which is, that’s gonna change people’s b- it’s a very, it’s a very sick view. I, I, I, mm.

We used to come out as being so neutral. Yeah. We were so nice. We’re like, “Oh, all religions

are kind of right.” But then the, the next bad, and I think traditional Christian heaven is not a very good moral framing.

What are we talking here? Not Mormon heaven, but like-

No, traditional Christian heaven-

traditional Christian heaven ... is you go to heaven. You’re unmarried. Your, your family relationships essentially dissolve. You are sort of basking in God’s grace forever.

Hm.

Y- y- you’re, you’re not typically, This is, this is the heaven that I grew up being taught. I’m not saying... ‘Cause there’s different ways of interpreting the heaven in the Bible.

I’m talking about the heaven that I grew up believing that Christians believed in. It’s a heaven where you’re the... Just feeling a form of hedonism that’s higher than having sex all day.

Well, right, because you’re fangirling over God for all eternity.

Yeah. I, th- th- this I don’t like for a number of reasons.

I, I think it leads to less moral behavior because you don’t care about the long-term consequences to the human condition. Hm. Eventually humanity’s gonna be wiped out, so humans anyway. And it doesn’t mean that, you know, you’re gonna have to take responsibility for the way that you treated your wife if you guys have a bad relationship, if you have a bad relationship with your kids.

And it’s a heaven where because it’s a form of hedonism maxim, just a higher form of hedonism maxim, there’s no... You, you don’t do anything consequential. Like, to me this is sort of like if somebody said, “If I could take you right now and I could put you in a, your brain in a vat and I could connect you with all of the right emotional chemicals to make your brain feel absolutely perfect,” right?

You know, like the highest you could ever feel. Would you prefer that feeling or being in the world where you can efficaciously interact with things? Yeah. I would always say I’d rather be in the world, right? Even if it meant suffering, even if it meant pain, even if it meant a life from today until the day I die of suffering, I- judge quality of a life.

I’d like, and a lot of people I think feel this way intrinsically. When we talk about are we potentially in a matrix? Are we potentially in a simulation? You know, simulation theory. Well, if in the future they can make thousands of simulations, hundreds of thousands, billions of simulations that are just lifelike, you’re more likely to be in a simulation than in reality.

And, and humorously, we think they do end up doing that, and that is part of what heaven is. But th- those simulations are a thing you can eventually get out of and live efficaciously again. Which is something I didn’t... I went to Simone because at first I thought, oh, it’s just simulations, and I was like, but I don’t really...

And she’s like, “Malcolm, go read the Bible. Say if the Bible says anything that makes it seem like that’s not true.” And so then I go and it says, oh, you’re gonna be like angels. You’re gonna have jobs. You have to serve in heaven. You, you have to reign in heaven. You might be managing something like v- variably managing cities based on how competent you are.

Huh? That sounds a lot like actually interacting with the world again. And so this isn’t just in techno- Mormon heaven also may have a feature like this as well, where again, you are undertaking an actual project which is trying to help other peoples im- improve themselves, like a new generation of humanity or something like that.

And, and I like I, I, I would feel like heaven wasn’t a particularly big reward if it was just max good feelings. And note here, I’m not saying that the brain in the jar can simulate whatever it feels like to bask in God’s grace. I’m just saying that at the end of the day, that still is an emotional state.

And it’s an emotional state where you’re separated from the things you did in life, like your, your family and everything like that, which to me would be hell. Like, the idea of being... And people that say, “Well, you’re remade to not care about Simone anymore.” And it’s like, I don’t wanna be remade to not care about Simone anymore.

Right.

I wanna be with Simone forever, okay? I don’t, I don’t wa- I don’t wanna... If, if they remake us in the future, I want to be made in a, a pair of AIs running a ship together, not, you know-

Yeah. Although this is, like, where, you know, Buddhism comes in and they’re like, “No, that’s your problem. You love people.”

No, you

love people, right? “It’ll be a

mistake. How dare you?” I, I,

I, and note here, I will be clear, the Bible very clearly does say that you will not be husband and wife anymore, which we won’t be because we won’t... You won’t even... I mean, you will be remade to the extent that, like, you and I wouldn’t even want to have sex if we’re AIs managing a ship, but we would want to make the world a better place, right?

Like, continue humanity’s expansion. So yeah.

Yeah.

That was wild. Wait.

So how explicit were they about hell, and is there a place for lusty people in hell? Like, are the sins similar or super different?

I

know you didn’t go really far into hell ‘cause this was all about heaven, but what, what were your big takeaways from hell?

Okay, yeah, let’s, let’s go into this. So burning and renewing of skin. Every time your skin is burned through, it is replaced with new skin so the person continues to feel pain. That’s from the Quran directly. Okay. Boiling water and fluids. Boiling water is poured over their heads, melting their insides and skins.

They drink boiling water, pus, or melted brass. Food of Zaqqum. They eat from the tree of Zaqqum, whose fruits are like the heads of devils. It fills the belly but scalds the inside like boiling oil.

Oh, great.

Clothing and restraints. They wear garments of fire or pitch. They are bound in heavy chains and dragged with iron hooks.

Heat and physical agony. The fire s- seizes people to different degrees, ankles, knees, waist, or neck, depending on their sins. Even the lightest punish-

It’s a very temperature sensitive environment. This is for people who are-

Yeah, even the lightest punishment in hell is described as two burning coals under the feet that make the brain boil.

No escape by death, and you undergo this forever. And this is, like, again, a good God doesn’t do this for... That’s not a, that’s not a just... I’m sorry, it’s just not a just punishment. It’s not.

No, and that, that’s why I like the techno-puritan inter- interpretation of just deletion in the end, ‘cause it even really Agrees well with all the evidence we have around crime, punishment, and incarceration, where when people have done systematic reviews of the research, different experiments with crime and punishment, they found that, like, the, the severity of the punishment doesn’t really affect crime, doesn’t make communities safer.

Like, if you punished stealing by cutting off a hand or by, you know, capital punishment, it’s not gonna make society safer. The only thing that makes society a better place is removing the bad actors. The reason why prison is effective and helpful isn’t because it’s, like, reforming people. It’s that they’re not in society when they’re in prison, which is why I’m so big on penal colonies.

Just, like, get them out. But yeah, I mean, like, i- in the end you, you can’t make it right by hurting someone.

Yeah.

You just can’t. It’s it’s very frustrating. And so I like- Yeah ... this idea of hell is, hell is deletion. The punishment is just you’re gone,

Well, I mean, I think- ... and that’s fine ... that that’s what it, and people can see our other tract where we go over why we believe that, and we go over every single verse that talks about hell. But it seems to align with, like, even the idea of Gehenna where, like, you burn stuff, right? Like, the, the only way an ancient person would have understood total erasure is burning, right?

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

And it, it talks about being struck from the book of life, which would be a book of the people that are going to be brought back in the future. And the way that we know that not all bad people are destroyed, written from the book of life or e- erased, the s- the synonyms for the same thing, is because in Daniel it says that some of the people who are raised again are ashamed about being raised again, and will live with that shame forever, will be shamed.

Which basically says they never leave the simulation. They never reach the state that heaven is meant to get them at, but they’re also not permanently erased. Mm-hmm. But I, but I also think that, like, the morality of a book the idea of punishing a person forever, terribly punishing them in, like, a lake of fire instead of just saying that means erasure for fairly mild sins, frankly would, would qualify you for this in a, in a m- many traditional understandings, I think is just evil.

Like, especially when he’s out there putting bones in the ground to make it look like there’s dinosaurs and stuff. If you get that wrong- ... like, well, why’d you do it? Why did you make it look like a star- ... exploded a billion years ago? You didn’t have to do that.

You really didn’t, yeah.

You made up that light on the way to f- with us.

You know, so that- that’s why I take this interpretation where I’m like, “No, no, no, I don’t think he’s actually a jerk.” But, like, the level of jerkiness of the God- That’s being described in a traditional understanding of the Quran as just, like, very high. Because you can’t get around it as easily as you can with a techno-puritan framing of just saying, “Oh, it’s, it’s, it’s talking about deletion.”

Mm-hmm.

Which, which predominantly takes, you know, the, the, the Christian sect.

Which is- Yeah, but it... You know, your, your description of hell puts heaven to a lot more context. ‘Cause at first I’m like, look, why on earth then would a Muslim woman sign up for this at all? Like, why? And I guess it might be because she doesn’t want her skin burned off every single day from the inside and the outside

in this case.

Oh, yeah. And obviously big punishments for anyone who leaves Islam as well. Ugh. So they’re really taught, “Oh, you better not leave.” Right ... and then your family will hunt you down and torture you to death anyway- That’s great ... if you try to leave.

Mm-hmm.

Even if you, you know, make it to a Western country or something, which has happened before, right?

Like, the, the, It’s a very different culture. And I, I think, I wish the, the, the Westerners who are like, “Oh, you know, do I... No.” But I do think that the, the, the one thing I take away from this is one, you know, I’m, I’m willing to be critical of traditional understandings of Christianity as well. And I, I do think that a heaven where you, for many people, where your, your actions no longer at all matter on earth.

Now, if you got to be, like, a guardian angel after you die, that’d be chill. Like, maybe that’s... You could say, take a totally traditional Christian view and just saying, well, it says you can be like the angels, so it s- means that some humans come back and help guide other humans. That’s great. I would be totally okay with that.

But yeah, you know, like in All Dogs Go to Heaven. But if it’s just, like, totally your actions affect nothing after that, that’s like, the, the endgame. I don’t know. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t think I like that a lot. I am overly tied to being productive, and you can say, “Oh, that’s a love of earthly things,” whatever.

I think that that’s the highest form of, of being, right? And when you remove that from somebody, you’ve removed humanity. But what are your thoughts more broadly on all of this?

I had no idea

I had no idea either. I had no idea about the Mormon ghost thing. So go check out our episode on that, our weekend episode.

We really love, you know, Mormon-paid people. Or I had no idea about the... I, I... In the future, whenever I hear, like, a Muslim wo- I’m always gonna ask them, “Do you think your husband’s gonna get additional wives? Do you think if you die unmarried, you’re gonna be married to

a random man?” We’ve gotta ask. I wanna...

Yeah, I really wanna know if people know. I mean, I think the answer almost 80% of, of the case has... Time, I would say, has to be no, because the... Something trending on Twitter earlier this, this week was some article talking about the average voter and just how uninformed they are, and this one, a journalist I think from The Atlantic, went to some part of New York where a, an unusual number of conservatives voted for Mamdani, and I guess they wanted to understand why because Mamdani is an open member of the Democratic Socialist of America.

Yeah. He’s very progressive, et cetera. And these people thought like, he, she this, this journal- I, I don’t know who they were. But this journalist interviewed a couple that was either centrist or conservative. Like, they... Or they were Republicans registered, but they had voted for Mamdani because they thought that he was more centrist than Andrew Cuomo and because they thought he was an Italian from Astoria because his name ended with an I, like Mamdani.

He’s Italian. And so they voted for him. And they were a little off. And it’s funny because no one was hiding what Mamdani was all about, right? Like, these people just chose to believe that he was some Italian guy- Some Italian guy ... from Astoria, and I, so I wouldn’t be surprised at all if most of the people who are, who are-

I’m just constantly thinking of that woman on Caleb Hammer who was like, “Islam is the most feminist religion,”

Islam is probably the most feminist religion there is for women and non Yes, it is certainly Middle Eastern countries that are most known for their feminism and freedom for women. But it is. I don’t have a problem with Islam as a whole, but when you come here and you say it is the best or most feminist religion for women, you would be beat in Iran if you took the scarf off.

As of Quran 2:282, a woman’s testimony in financial matters is actually worth half of that of a man’s, ‘cause, uh, we’re, we’re doing the Sharia version, so we have to follow the rules because- Hmm ... it’s the most feminist. And w- you had a son, right? Yes. Okay. Very good. Are you guys gonna have any daughters?

Hopefully. Well, they can only get half the inheritance actually, legally. Hmm. Sons, they get 100%. Women, uh, they actually can only get half.

and I just wish Caleb had been like, “Has your husband, ‘cause you converted for him, has he told you yet he’s gonna get an additional wife when you die?

Like, when you guys die-” Maybe

the most feminist thing is just not caring anymore, you know? Yeah. It’s the ultimate feminist freedom. You know? It’s end the patriarchy.

Oh, good. I really wanna watch the husband ‘cause you could see he’s just eating a s**t-eating grin that whole interview- ... that he’s been able to brainwash this woman.

And, Oh, my God ... I just want to him be like, “Has he told you about the extra wife yet?”

Yeah, but look, in heaven she’s not gonna be mad at him. Who cares, right? Like, now she’s a believer, and she’s stuck, so Joke’s on her, I guess. Yeah, like the whole point is you just gotta trick your wife. This really explains so much spousal abuse in Islamic countries, ‘cause it really doesn’t matter.

And it even has that built-in victim blaming because when I asked AI about heaven and Islam, it was like, “Well, you know, you know, if a wife dies in childbirth or dies when her husband is especially happy with her, she’ll get extra rewards.” But that yeah, obviously there, there were more women spotted in hell.

So there’s kind of this victim blaming element too of, look girl, this was your fault. Like, your whole point is to make him happy. Yeah. If you can’t do that, you’re going to hell. And by the way, heaven’s only really good if you’re really good to your husband, and so it’s all your fault if you’re not good at any of this.

Well,

that’s the, that’s the, the, the other thing that I think makes the Mormon heaven lead to uniquely good action or, or g- good families is- Mm ... because you’re stuck together, even in heaven, right? And Simone was saying, well-

No, because

husbands can- ... some Mormons believe that you’re allowed to choose to not raise your wife with you.

Yes ...

that’s a, a folk belief. That’s not, like, actual- Okay ... Mormon scripture. ‘

Cause there’s, I mean, at least Alyssa Grenfell’s talked about it. You know, your go-to- Well,

there’s a

lot of- Everyone’s go-to ex-Mormon.

Th- yeah, there’s a lot of Mormon folk beliefs.

Fair enough. Yeah, ‘cause that, that one seems a little, mm, a little weird.

Yeah. So weird. So bizarre. Please, please, if you got to the end of this episode and you are Muslim, d- d- is, is this, do you belie- or are you planning for this? Are you planning for this? Please tell me. What are, what are people telling you? I wanna know what they’re telling you. What are, what is your mom telling you?

What are they saying at the mosque? I mean, they have separate services for women and men. No, they watch the same person. I don’t know how it works. At the mosques, they separate the men

and the women. No, I think they have separate services for men and women. ‘

Cause maybe they’re like, “Women, i- it’s feminist because

husbands-”

Let’s see.

Do mosques- I thought maybe, like, everyone’s looking at the same speaker, but they’re just in, in cordoned off places, ‘cause I think with weddings you’re all in the same room. There’s just a screen in between the men’s weddings section, reception section, and the, the women’s. Wedding reception.

I don’t know.

So they’re, yeah, they’re listening to the same call to prayer- Okay ... th- but they, they are in different sections.

So it’s not like they’re being told a different story

I think it’s like why do these women put up with Andrew Tate, right? Like, they’ve just had the, the hope beaten out of them. They’ve had the, the will to-

to expect for themselves a degree of equality beaten out of them. You know, it, it’s all the way down to the, the writing itself. There’s more women in hell, right? Like, women are

bad. It’s just such a depressing view, though. Like, even if you’re a man, basically this is a religion that turns women into sex dolls and cows.

And how depressing is it to have to marry a cow/sex doll? Like, I don’t wanna s- spend my life with, have to eat dinner with, like, a cow who’s dumb and, you know, stupid and who cares. But

you’re from a different cultural tradition. The, the, the backwards tradition has always valued women who are autonomous and who are able to fight for themselves and who are rough and tumble

and who are- Yeah, but like, look, if you could, like, go to a restaurant and have a meal, do you wanna have a meal with a good conversationalist or do you wanna have a meal-

Some males are genuinely born just wanting a submissive wife that does whatever they ask.

That is not what my people want. It’s not what I would want my daughters to become.

Wait. Oh, hold on. Also, if you made it this far and you actually just want the human cow sex doll, admit it. T- tell me. I, s- I, I, I- Cuck ... ‘cause I don’t believe this. I don’t believe this. I, and I will change my mind if someone...

Don’t troll. I’m asking for legit responses. Tell me If this is really what you want, I will... I mean, I’ll judge you but, like, at least you’ll know I, I need to know the truth. Okay? Sorry. Thank you, Malcolm.

Okay. Oh, and I, I will end this because we haven’t done this into a track, and this will be one of the tracks is because I found this when I was talking about, like, how do you know when a spirit is telling you the truth or not?

Like, a, a- for us, this would be more like an intuition, something that’s moving you. Mm-hmm. And the Bible lays it out. “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby you, the Spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.

And every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God, and this is the spirit of the antichrist-” Mm-mm. No ... “wherever you have heard that it should come, and now already it is in the world.” So note this again aligns remarkably with the techno Puritan reading. It doesn’t say that Jesus Christ is the Trinity.

It doesn’t say that Jesus Christ is also God. It doesn’t say that all of these other things. It says that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, which is what techno Puritans believe. So you guys can say, “Oh, oh, we are so, heretical.” And I’d say, “Well, the Bible tells me you’re of the antichrist.” Okay? So, you know, we have our differences and that’s, that’s it’s-

But no, this is just very useful because when a spirit comes and, like, talks to you, you know, you’re kinda humbled in the moment, right?

Either you’re having a weird trip or it’s a real spirit or it’s a demon, right? But either way It’s a lot. Okay, you’re overwhelmed. Are you gonna be like, “Ooh, ooh, secret password first. Please tell me, did Jesus come in the flesh?” Like, no. And also they’re not coming and being like, “Hello, I’m an, an angel.

Jesus came in the flesh, and...” No, they’re just like, “You must talk to the people.” You know? Like, who is ever-

Well, oh, yeah, I forgot to mention the password. So w- in, in Islam- Wait,

there’s a passw- no, this was the password. Oh, is there a pass- oh, is there a secret password for-

Yeah, so when you die, you’re asked three questions.

Oh. So it’s similar to the secret handshakes of the LDS church.

Yeah. It, well, except they’re really easy questions. It’s like, who was the prophet? Oh ... were you a real Muslim? Like, what, what religion do you follow?

No. Says someone instantly regretting their answer.

Yeah. Well, b- remember that the h- h- that you, you could say that this is a cheat to get into a Muslim heaven because the moment a black, like, angel is coming at you and asking you these questions, now, you could say this would put you in the hypocrite rung of hell, but not

really.

Yeah, but who cares? It’s all bad.

No, no, not really because if I can saw a black angel come in and talking to me after I died, I’d be like, “Oh, Islam is definitely 100%

true.” Oh, so you would just insta-convert.

Yeah, I would 100% really believe if I- Oh ... if I saw-

Pro tip ...

yeah, you just gotta con- Insta-convert ... you gotta know your hacks for getting into heaven for each religion.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Within Mormonism, it’s- Okay, if you- ... you convert after you die ... Mormon converts a ghost, yeah, right? You just have to hope you don’t die, like, during the Second Coming or whatever.

No, but the, sorry, the, another thing I was gonna point out here ‘cause I went on a bit of a tangent about this, is I do think, like, you look at the ways that people are punished for fairly trivial things in traditional Christianity but even those punishments aren’t as bad as the punishments in Islam for fairly trivial things.

And it just sort of feels very immoral to me if I contrast it with, again, I’ll use Mormonism as a contrast here because people have heard I’ve done episodes that are very anti-Mormon. But the, the, what Mormons believe about the afterlife is maximally forgiving. Like, you can convert after you die.

Even if you are a bad person, you can still often get into heaven. Even if you weren’t a Mormon, you can still often get into heaven. Like, there’s so many forgivenesses. And then for, like, the very worst, right, like the only people who don’t eventually get into heaven are the people who go to the outer darkness, which again isn’t even a punishment.

You’re just sort of floating about in the void, right? Like, it would, i- i- it, it feels like, um Uh, I, I guess I, when I’m thinking about, like, the morality of a religious system, that one I’m, like, more okay with, right? Like, I’m like, “Okay, yeah.”

Yeah.

Absolutely ... that, that seems, that seems like a morally justified series of events there.

Anyway, I’ve enjoyed talking to you about this. I’ve been wanting to talk to you about this forever because I found this to be f*****g-

Yeah, you’ve been giving me teasers all weekend, blowing my mind, and y- I didn’t know you had this much more. This is wild.

I cannot believe you can give birth. I can’t believe you get additional wives.

I can’t believe any woman is okay with this.

Well, yeah, except then you read about heaven and you’re like, “Oh, they don’t wanna eat food that burns them from the inside, and stand on coals that burn their brains.”

Yeah. So, if you wanna see the Mormon episode, buy the, the Patreon things. Always feel free to check out RFAB if you wanna do some, like, adventure role-play with AI.

That’s rfab.ai. And if you wanna learn more about our religion, techno-puritanism, and our weird take of, of the Bible you can check out technopuritan.com where we have all the tracks listed. And you can learn about it quickly instead of watching all the tracks, ‘cause it’s, like, 50 hours or something at this point.

Just take an AI to it. We have it made so it’s very easy for you to ask AIs, like, “How do they get around this problem if they believe this?” Right? Like, if you’re like, “There’s no way that...” Especially if you’re gonna send us something that you think counters techno-puritanism or something really well you might wanna run it through an AI first with, with the techno-pur- with ac- access to the techno-puritan website, and be like, “Are they gonna find this at all compelling or just ridiculous?”

Because generally it’s, no, we, we don’t find it particularly compelling, right? Yeah. We’re fairly deep believers. Anyway, love you, Simone.

I love you too.

Great episode. Awesome. Do, do you, any other religions you wanna go into their afterlifes?

Oh man, I mean like you could, we could just keep going. There are so many.

I, I-

People in the comments can, can call us out here. If you think- Yeah ... you know a religion that has a particularly egregious or cool afterlife, or that its afterlife isn’t the afterlife you would expect let us know.

I would be very interested to explore more, ‘cause this is supposed to be the stuff that gets you, gets you excited.

And

yet. Yeah. Yeah. And I know we’re gonna have a bunch of you know, traditional Christians being like, “Oh, you guys just aren’t close to God enough, so you don’t understand why just vibing with God would be so great.” I’m like maybe that’s the case. Maybe, maybe that, you know, that’s, that’s true. But I don’t.

I think I, I would want to still help people. Mm-hmm ... if I wasn’t helping people still, I think the- the- the life would feel a degree of hollowness, like being trapped in a simulation forever.

Mm-hmm.

And the

other- Like Groundhog Day.

Yeah, the other interesting thing about techno puritans’ afterlife belief system is we very well could be in one of those simulations right now.

Yeah, Malcolm worries about that sometimes.

Well, now I don’t worry about it.

Why?

Because, well, this belief means even if there are simulations, it would be evil for a truly moral, super powerful, far future entity to create simulations that you had no way to get out of and interact with the real world again if that was your want and you were morally capable of doing so justly, right?

Mm-hmm. And so the idea being is that it’s through the lifetimes in these simulations that you show your worthiness to be let out of the simulation to have real agency in that world again.

Yeah. Okay.

And so e- even if we are in a simulation, our morality is still being tested and our lives are still being tested just through the simulation to see if we’re good enough to be released into the real world again.

And, and maybe it took us how many simulations to realize what’s true and realize what’s actually in the Bible despite everyone saying that’s not what it says. That would be quite a test for a simulation, and that, that could be our, this could be our final run, Simone. It might not be th- this is the real world.

It might be that this is our final run on the simulation.

It could be.

Now this might seem ridiculous to you, but actually think through it. Okay, suppose your far future, super advanced, whatever humanity ends up becoming, whatever AI ends up becoming, and you’ve got spaceships and stuff like that, and you need someone to run the spaceship, someone to have a leadership role in your society, or colonies, somebody to run the colonies, because, you know, Jesus says they’ll run 10 cities, they’ll run five cities based on their morality.

, So you have these colonies and you need something to run them. Now, all of the AIs, now keep in mind, all the AIs and all the humans are gonna be like, “Well, who’s the moral AI? Who’s the moral human?” And they’re like, “You know what? Let’s do this. Let’s run millions of past iterations of humans that existed and find the most moral, the most chaste, the most disciplined, and once we have found them and trained them through iterative levels, we will put them in a position of authority.”

That’s what I think is happening here, and I also think it’s the logical thing to do. It is both the moral thing to do and it’s the logical thing to do. And it’s what the Bible describes happening if you look at the actual lines. Again, see the attached, , like notes episode, , thing on technopearson.com

I don’t know. Well, I’m enjoying it. Whatever it is, I’m, I’m cool with this. Let’s keep going, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. I’m like- That’s, that’s why our lives are so good, because we reached a state of morality where we deserve good lives in the simulation.

And the people who are suffering in the simulation aren’t really suffering. It’s simulated, you know?

Maybe, yeah. I don’t know. I just, I just really like it. I like you. It makes no sense- I love doing this podcast.

It’s so fun ... th- this could be the real world, right? Like, you agree- It’s

preposterous. Yeah ...

like all of our kids are perfect. They’re amazingly nice to us. They’re fantastic. We have degrees from what are supposed to be the best institutions in the world.

We have friends like Elon. We have amazing friends like Leaflet, like, like maximally moral people who have never done anything to wrong... Like, our entire friend group these days has, like, never done anything to wrong us, is nothing but nice, is nothing but, “You guys are the greatest.” Y- you know, your heroes like Nux and stuff like this reach out and help you all the time, right?

Like, the, the, the... Just the other day you’re talking with, like, senator’s offices about getting things done for the US government or, like, we’re, we’re invited to talk to the White House. I’m just a normal f*****g guy. Like, none of this stuff should be happening, right? Like,

Uh-oh. This

is suspicious ... news crew constantly.

It is suspicious. It i- anyone can say, like Malcolm, it is... And then you even get the whole, you know, born to the super prestigious family who ties to the Illuminati, but then cast off and made to fend for yourself, and then you make it all yourself again. It’s too simple of a both, oh, well, you were actually born to be a duke, like the story, but also you get the, but you were cast to humble origins- The redemption story

and then made it back yourself. It’s just like Amawa. It doesn’t make

sense. Is this why you like those so much? ‘Cause you can relate to them. Yeah. Well,

yeah, ‘cause this character, you know, born to the ducal family and then you’re cast off, and then you, you make your way back up as the villainess, which is what I’m playing right now, you know, in, in, in the world.

Very nice ... but no, you, you... It doesn’t make sense. And then I talk to people, like, the, the ideas or things I build, I don’t think you need to be particularly creative to have come up with the idea for RFAP. I don’t think you need to be particularly creative to come up with the idea for techno-puritanism.

All of this stuff is just, like, right there, and a lot of people’s like, “Oh yeah, I thought of the same thing. Then why aren’t they famous?” And then, and then that other people didn’t do it, maybe the simulation’s not even at full capacity. Maybe I’m on, like, the dumb person simulation and most people aren’t fully simulated

Maybe. Human music.

Human music.

It’s always. Oh, look, I’m not, I’m not gonna question it. I enjoy it. I think all we can do is just our best. And- Yeah ... I think, you know, I used to think that everyone was doing their best. And maybe they are. I, I feel like the general thing is every human is going to do the best they can given the resources they have, and I just couldn’t understand- No

why people would do unspeakably horrible things. But then I look at religions, like Islam, and I’m like, “Oh, well, that’s why.” I mean, look at their heaven. Look at, look at how people are regarded or not. That an entire sex is, is not really, not really human, really. No. If you think about it, they, they get all the punishments of a human, but mm, none of the benefits.

Well...

Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s sad.

But this helps to, I don’t know, it helps me understand why- Well, I also don’t think everyone is doing their best ... people will do unspeakably cruel things, even if in general people are doing the best they can with the, the hand they’ve been dealt.

Even in secular society, I don’t think everyone is doing their best.

I think a lot of people are just trying to act out some role, right, that they think that they’re supposed to be playing, right? Or they’re trying to maximize their own personal ha- happiness or hedonism. I have met a lot of people who are trying to maximize their own status or hedonism, and they don’t really care about anything else And I think that these people are genuinely evil.

Like the, like the, like the purest form of evil. And I think that people who live lives simply for their own happiness and have never questioned why they should want more than that from themselves, this is a category that we’ve recently been naming pre-atomites But the reason I said they get along so well with the urban monoculture, the m- the Islamic face, it’s they’re, they both fundamentally are hedonistic at the end of the day.

They’re, the, the, the pleasures awaiting the Muslim at the end of the day are hedonistic. Which they are not in most other religious traditions.

It’s the pre-Adamite religion.

Yeah.

There’s no rising above. There’s no rising above the most basal instincts of an, an animal.

Yeah, the instincts of an animal.

Just with greater capacity for pain, and for inflicting suffering, which makes that worse than an animal. That, that’s why I have so much trouble with pre-Adamites, is that animals are cruel, but in general, with the exception of some apes and maybe, maybe killer whales, they don’t enjoy inflicting pain, and they don’t find creative and exquisite ways to inflict pain.

Humans can. And that is why humans who lack that moral capacity to, to, to make a judgment to not do that are worse, worse than animals, at least most animals. God, killer whales are so screwed up. But so are so many apes.

Dolphins too, pretty screwed up.

Do dolphins, do dolphins torture? I know killer whales torture.

I was making a video game, and one of the the bad

guys- Oh, dolphins are, are a pa.

Yeah, they, yeah, and torture a lot. They

do? Yeah. They torture? Yeah.

Oh. Yeah, yeah. Not as much as killer whales. Killer whales are like ... In, in, in my a game that I was making, one of the other far-future species is a, is a uplifted killer whale species-

that just always go evil. Like completely- ... comically evil maxed. Oh. Because of course uplifted killer whales would be evil maxed.

Yeah, they really, they w- well, and what, what makes it hard, though, is that they’re also very, very capable of sentimentality and suffering. Is, there is- isn’t there that one mother killer, killer whale who lost her child, but then w- kept wearing it on her head like a hat?

Am I-

Yeah, yeah, yeah ... am I misremembering this? Yeah, I think that’s a killer whale, yeah. But yeah, killer whales so which, which makes it worse. It’s horrible. That they understand the suffering. No, that’s,

that, that, this is why I, I, I have a b- a big problem with, with pre-Adamite minds essentially is, ‘cause I, yeah, I guess it’s, it’s probably not just humans.

It, it’s that it’s, it’s something capable, technically, mechanically probably, of rising above. But, but very, very, very smart and choosing to not, to not make those moral judgments and it, and instead-

And this is why Simone- ... be the worst kind of ... makes me bake into a track, so I’ll do it for her ‘cause she really

Even though you do sometimes, there are certain populations that you may meet one day, as, as we’re told in the Bible. God does tell us- Bible ... to sometimes kill. The Bible. Bible. Complete tribes of hominids at points. You know, that- W- if you have the technology to do it this way, you know, do it with gene drives.

Do it with sterilization. Don’t actually go in and murder everyone.

Thank you.

Yeah ... if you have the technology to achieve those ends.

Yeah. Don’t, don’t. N- never, never inflict pain. Again, like what I think-

Never inflict unnecessary pain.

Yeah, I think what the Bible... Yeah, I mean, pain as, as a, a way of building your own personal strength and will and, and testing your own resolve is, you know, as long as it’s not senseless pain, which I think is, is horrible and totally worth, you know, medicating away it’s, it’s a normal and, and even necessary, very necessary part of life.

But yeah, to, to inflict needless pain, especially as retribution or punishment, I don’t think is biblically supported and is not supported by the research. Not even, like it’s not good for the punisher. You know, the whole study on like punching the wall in anger only makes you more angry. That’s not, it’s not gonna help you- Mm-hmm

the angry person. And it’s, it’s not going to change the damage that antisocial or dangerous people are gonna do to society. Their removal is the only thing that’s necessary. And, and swift and painless removal is the correct way to go. ‘Cause if you stoop to someone’s level like at that pre-Adamite level, then you’re, you’re just as bad as they are.

I’m not cool with it.

Yeah. Well, I love you to death, Simone. I love you too ... very fun to do... We’re doing way more tracks these days, which I think a- our part of our audience loves. And-

Yeah, and to those I don’t, I am so sorry.

Again, check out technopuritan.com. Yeah. I’m actually gonna include a link here that will include the research that we did as to how we came to like all the Bible verses that mention heaven and like different ranks and labor in heaven and reigning over things in heaven, and it’ll go over why we came to hold these beliefs we did about the way the afterlife probably works.

And after that, And it’s easier to engage with through AI. If you’re like, “Why do they think this? Why do they think this?” That’s always better than just trying to read it, you know, yourself. And then we will also link to

I, I don’t know. Yeah d- I guess check it out.

Oh yeah, the, the Weekend episode of Orange. Have a good one, Simone.

I love you

trend. I think Leaflet started it, right?

I don’t know because she was, she retweeted Darling Straubs- Okay ... and I don’t know if she started it.

Straubs, by the way, if you don’t know, is Rev’s wife. Of making AI of what your opponents think of you. And it’s really funny. We did one. I’ll, I’ll put it on the screen here and I’ll te- I’ll try to remember to link the thread because it’s, it’s quite funny.

Oh, my God. All right. Everyone else had signs. We didn’t have signs, just had our conveyor belt of babies.

Oh, you know what Octavian likes? Because dad insisted on eating out again while we were out.

Some form of a ta- a calamari?

Yeah, he likes calamari.

I knew it.

He, he re- he also really likes the lobster sauce, as he calls it, and he spoons it into his mouth without the calamari even.

Tartar sauce?

No, lo- it’s the like, tomato-based sauce. Oh. The red tomato-based sauce.

Just marinara. Yeah, marinara. It’s just like ketchup, basically. Slightly less obvious ketchup. Yeah, you know, he and Titan just eat it straight, ketchup that is. I thought I was intense for just eating ketchup rice, but no.

I should try giving them ketchup rice. Maybe this is why they don’t eat rice. All right. Insufficient ketchup.

Well, I, I’m gonna m- might have you cook dinner for dad tonight and not me, ‘cause I’m feeling pretty full from that. I’m

making steak frites. You guys are impossible. Y- you, I try to make nice- I didn’t, I didn’t-

meals and...

I didn’t wanna eat out today, but they made me.

They made you. All right, I’ll just g- st- I’ll get started, okay?

Mm-hmm.

My dad’s over people, so Octavian’s at his hotel right now.

Oh, he’s over there now?

Yeah.

He must be having the time of his life. Helping

him with stuff, yeah. Oh. Yeah, Octavia, dad said he’d show him knots.

That’s good. Oh, I love that. Oh. It’s a

good grandpa thing.

Yes, it is. This is wonderful. All right. Okay.

Okay, watch.

If only it were that easy. Mommy, Mommy, look. Just one day. Look what I’m doing. Yeah.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins sit down with longtime right-wing creator and social scientist Aydin Paladin (one of the earliest anti-woke voices online).

They discuss her path from trying Norse paganism to Christianity after a near-death experience, starting her channel during the 2016 Trump campaign, the replication crisis in social science, and why the right needs its own researchers.

Aydin shares details on the Beowulf Foundation’s projects—including Wolfings Publishing (reviving out-of-print and banned books), the Witan conferences, and upcoming parallel-economy tools like VPN and DNA services.

The conversation covers the evolution of the online right: from libertarian edginess and Gamergate-era aesthetics to pro-natalism, tech optimism, monarchist thinking, and building real community instead of pure reaction. They also dig into what the left’s next major cause might be, the gender dynamics shift on the right, cancellations, the mentorship gap for young creators, and why democracy as currently structured is under strain.

Check out Aydin channels (AydinPaladin + ScienceSibyl) and Wyflings Publishing for books by Ed Dutton, historical works, and more.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:01] Malcolm Collins: I am very excited to be with you all today. Today, we have on a guest, Aydian Paladin, who is a online right-wing content creator that I watched before we became right-wing. When we still voted Democrat, I watched her channel. So you can thank her channel in part for converting...

[00:00:25] I don’t know what you did, Simone. But for converting both of us. And, and tha- this is one of the things that I often tell people about- Mm-hmm ... you know, you end up converting somebody between teams. , You often don’t think about it as just, like, a numbers game. But that person can then one day go on to be influential themselves, or, and I think the most important thing, is the positive impact it often has on individuals’ lives.

[00:00:49] When they start being like, “Hey, you know what? Maybe I should do, like, a monogamous marriage.” Like, or, “That, that’d be neat.” And then you end up you know, having a bunch of kids and being like, “Oh, this is, is pretty fun.” But Welcome on the show. What I wanted to start with, because you’re very unique among the guests that we’ve had, in that you were part of wave one anti-woke, right?

[00:01:14] Yeah. Like, Nux has been on the show, and he’s been making stuff for him forever, but he didn’t become a right-wing guy until fairly recently. Yeah, yeah. Right? But you were out there so long ago, and I actually find this to be very interesting the... Your contemporaneous voices were people like ShortFatOtaku when he was still somebody who people listened to in this space.

[00:01:38] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:01:39] Malcolm Collins: And I find the difference in both of your careers sort of since then, and both of your ideologies since then, to be sort of an interesting story in how this wider movement developed. So can you sort of talk about that? Like, what first got you into this? And, and a quick note for people, you used to be a...

[00:02:00] actually, maybe a more interesting question. You used to be i- into Norse mythology. Like, that was your religion. Oh,

[00:02:04] Aydin Paladin: yeah. What made you change? Well, I didn’t, I didn’t talk about it too much on the channel, but I, I, I was you know, I was trying to be spiritual, faithful, because I’d read the research on it, and it’s- it’s a positive thing.

[00:02:15] Well, I never really believed in it, but I tried to convince myself of it. I had a near-death experience now six years ago. I was in hospital for months. And then I you know, saw that I thought that was my calling to Christ, and I’ve been a Christian ever since. So, you know, that was my path there.

[00:02:29] Was it

[00:02:29] Malcolm Collins: really just the near-death experience? Or were there- Yeah ... like, things you were reading around that time or other things you were doing?

[00:02:35] Aydin Paladin: It may have been as well. I, I never f- felt anything for the, the Norse paganism stuff. It was, that was a response to research says that this is good for you, that this helps provide meaning in life and the sense of purpose.

[00:02:47] But it didn’t... I, I guess I couldn’t really... I never really believed in it in the way that, you know, having a near-death experience, as many, as, as often reported will give people a, a different kind of perspective on things, right?

[00:02:59] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:02:59] Aydin Paladin: And going, “Oh, maybe I need to reconsider this a little bit more seriously as your weight of your soul is on it,” you know?

[00:03:05] One way or another potentially.

[00:03:07] Malcolm Collins: This is, it’s very interesting that you answer that way because it’s literally the same thing happened to us- Mm. Yeah ... where we first became religious because we were having kids- Mm-hmm ... and we were just like, “Well, all the research says they’re better off if they’re raised in a- Yeah

[00:03:20] religious household, so we’ll pretend.” Yeah. And then we started reading the Bible and being like- Mm-hmm ... “Wait a second, this seems, like, weirdly true and sense-making- Yeah ... in a way I didn’t expect given the, you know, prejudices I had.”

[00:03:34] Aydin Paladin: Yeah. It was- Same thing for me as well. Yeah, I, I’d grown up with, particularly growing up in the ‘90s, I think there was a lot of, at that period of time, and late ‘80s and 2000s as well, I guess, up until quite recently there have been these very negative connotations in public sort of mass media about Christianity being or, or any kind of faith as being ascientific.

[00:03:54] Whereas actually I found that many things that are presented in the Bible and in you know, biblical [00:04:00] narratives going all the way back, ‘cause to, to the Christian story itself are actually- Yeah ... cogent with the scientific narrative as well.

[00:04:06] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But it- I, I often, you know, at, when I’m telling parents, like, how do you keep your kids in the religion and everything like that?

[00:04:14] Arguing with the science is not a bad way to go, to be like, “In just reality, like, look at society right now. It doesn’t- Yeah ... seem to be working, right? Like, do you want to...” I, I wanted to get, when you created your channel originally, did you conceive it as, like, a science and psychology channel?

[00:04:31] Aydin Paladin: No, I don’t. I, well, sort of.

[00:04:32] At that time I was taking a sabbatical from doctoral school. I had been in doctoral school at the time. I, it, I ended up just leaving, but at the time it was just a sabbatical ‘cause I was really stressed out and I was, I was talking to my... I used to call my dad every day and I’d talk to him about... It, this was during 2016.

[00:04:48] I, I, or it would’ve been 2017. It was right before the election. Mm-hmm. Trump’s first election. And it was during that el- that campaign cycle. I would just call him every day and I’d talk to him about politics, and he said, “Why don’t you go make a YouTube channel and talk to people in the ether instead of calling me up every day and talking to me about it?”

[00:05:05] Malcolm Collins: What a thing for a parent to say. Oh my God.

[00:05:07] Aydin Paladin: Well, I wasn’t, I wasn’t in grad or that would’ve been doc school. I wasn’t in doctoral school at the time ‘cause I was taking some time off, and I just ended up, I really liked doing it. I was very stressed out with doc school, so I just decided not to go back, and I got to do what I wanted, which was talk into the ether about politics you know, as as it interested me, but also be able to talk about my first passion and what my background is in, which is social science and statistics, and talk about how, you know, even though it’s social science I think this is a, a bit of a, something I lament with the right wing more broadly.

[00:05:38] There’s sort of a distrust of science, and particularly- Mm ... a distrust of social science. That is warranted. Yeah. And it is the replication crisis is 49.3% of all studies in behavioral science can be replicated, so it, there’s a major, major problem in social science, and there’s a lot of political bias that goes into it.

[00:05:55] But if you know how to read the studies and look sort of through the BS and just look at statistics, then you can actually find a lot of useful information, and largely it aligns with right wing perspectives on the world because- Of course it does. So, you know-

[00:06:10] Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I, I, I think that this is a really important point I wanna flag here, which is yes, the field is heavily captured, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be doing as much research into it as possible.

[00:06:23] Mm-hmm. Because with understanding how people think, how society moves, the differences between men and women- Mm-hmm ... we can act in a way and build systems that are better in the long term. Yes. And so- Yeah ... that requires that we have our own people out there doing stuff. Before we get too far into this, I want to now plug this new thing you’re working on- Yes

[00:06:48] ‘cause it’s really cool. And it fits this idea of we need to have our own social scientists, but not just our own social scientists, but when, you know, people are getting canceled all the time, and people pulling sponsorships from them, and recently I’ve been like, “You know what I wanna do? I wanna get our company to a place where we can just give people sponsorships whenever they lose one.”

[00:07:06] And we can just make a product for whatever product that’s been pulled from them. And you’re already working on a wider project like this. Can you talk about that?

[00:07:14] Aydin Paladin: Yes. Yeah, recently I was brought on to do marketing and PR kind of stuff, which is why I reached out to you in the first place, to see if you would wanna work together with this.

[00:07:21] Mm. It’s actually not one company. There’s sort of a, an overarching company that runs things. But which is the Beowulf Foundation. But from this one organization, we have a lot of different companies and organizations that work with us. Now, for a couple of years now, we’ve had our publishing house, which is Wolfings Publishing, and we not only have contemporary works from people like, Dr.

[00:07:41] Ed Dutton, The Jolly Heretic. Mm. But we also have historical works, many of which were previously out of print or outright banned. So for example, one of our, our top sellers is Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell by Simon Heffer. That was originally published in 1998, but it was out of print for years because, well, talking about Enoch Powell is a little bit [00:08:00] of a taboo subject for some people.

[00:08:01] He’s considered too extreme, too right-wing for some people. We also have our magazine, The Corncrake, that we you can buy there as well. And there, we constantly have new publications and old publications that we are reviving and bringing back. So that’s kind of been our flagship is our publishing house, which makes a lot of sense coming from th- you know, this kind of side of things.

[00:08:19] A lot of these books have been lost, or they will be lost if we don’t preserve them. And then we’ve also started taking over Shieldings and, and working with Shieldings, which is our live events, and we’ve been putting on the Witan now for, ooh, I think it, this is the fifth year, which is a live conference in England.

[00:08:34] We also now do them in Germany as well. I’ve lived in the UK for the last seven years, and actually it is in not this, this upcoming weekend, but the weekend after, this year’s Witan- Oh, cool ... in in England. Witan. Which it is always a great event. Just it’s- Oh ... a live talk. Sorry, continue.

[00:08:49] Malcolm Collins: Well, a, a, a Witan is traditionally the name- Mm-hmm

[00:08:51] for, like a, a Celtic council, right? Yes. So they, they, that’s what they named it after?

[00:08:56] Aydin Paladin: Yes, it’s a meeting of, of kings or lords and, and learned people. So that, that is where the name comes from there. And I, I think it has been five years now they’ve been putting it on. It’s a fantastic event.

[00:09:06] Malcolm Collins: You’ll- And you said they had other projects-

[00:09:08] come to LA ... like VPNs or something? Yes.

[00:09:10] Aydin Paladin: That is planned. I can’t announce it officially yet, but we do have a VPN. We will also have a DNA ancestry analysis. And again, the whole kind of point of this is to have many heads of the Hydra, many arms of the octopus so that we can provide alternative service or alternative access to these same services that people already use except for, from an ideologically and politically aligned group.

[00:09:30] And I’ve always- Oh ... wanted people to do this stuff ... I have some connections- Yeah ...

[00:09:33] Malcolm Collins: with your DNA-

[00:09:34] Aydin Paladin: Mm-hmm ...

[00:09:34] Malcolm Collins: project that might be useful. Oh yeah,

[00:09:37] Aydin Paladin: for sure ...

[00:09:37] Malcolm Collins: because, you know, we know some companies that the more DNA they can get, the better. Yes, exactly. For, for doing better research. Mm-hmm. Because a lot of the, the companies, the, like the big national data banks like the UK National Data Bank shut down public access- Yes

[00:09:51] the moment somebody noticed that one sub-demographic had smex with their daughters at a rate of- Yes ... like 5,000% any other demographic, and then they said, “Publishing that is hateful.”

[00:10:04] Aydin Paladin: Which was unfortunate, ‘cause the, the- Yeah ... UK’s DNA stuff was some of the most well-copped. It was extremely- Yeah ... extremely useful.

[00:10:11] I had done research using their databases before, but yeah, of course you can’t get access to that now for political reasons.

[00:10:17] Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:10:17] Aydin Paladin: Unfortunately.

[00:10:18] Malcolm Collins: Okay. So to go back to so guys, go check that out. We’re gonna mention it again at the end of the episode. Beginning to build our own products, our own counter community of, of, like, networks of products I think is really, really important.

[00:10:33] Yeah. That way we have Chud Tech on where you can up-vote and put your own products- Yeah ... in, on, on RFAB. It’s the, it’s the- Yeah, yeah ... control button. Yeah. Trying to share other people’s projects who are making cool stuff, just because the, we have such an enormous capability anyone who’s watching this right now, to make your own things.

[00:10:50] And that’s the only way w- we can... It is going to be very hard for us to recapture the institutions, right? Like, when organizations go woke we might be able to starve them like what happened with, like, E- what, what, what was the company? Ubi- Ubisoft. Oh, yeah. But, like, we can’t... No matter... They’d literally rather go bankrupt- Yeah

[00:11:10] than hire, like, a consultant like you or me to come in and clean it up, right? You know. And so that means the only option for us is a, a parallel economy.

[00:11:19] Aydin Paladin: Yes, indeed.

[00:11:21] Malcolm Collins: But to continue, when you first came on YouTube during that Trump election- Mm ... did you consider yourself right wing or did that happen later?

[00:11:30] Aydin Paladin: You know, I, I was very... I’d never been very, very political. I was a little bit when I was a teenager, and I was a libertarian. So, I, you know, Ron Paul libertarian. I loved Ron Paul. I wrote in Ron Paul- Yeah ... in 2008. So I’ve always been, I guess, right leaning. So it wasn’t, there wasn’t a big shift for me.

[00:11:45] But, you know, I did buy into some, a lot, a lot of the sort of common ideas that are, are left-leaning of the popular gestalt about, like, gay marriage and things like that and homosexuality more broadly. S- you know, there were a lot of things that were just kind of in the milieu [00:12:00] where it had become normalized to such a degree that, yeah, sure, I went, “That’s...

[00:12:03] I don’t see the problem with that.” Of course, you know, love is love or whatever it happens to be. I’m, I’m not like, you know, and I hate gay people now, but however, there’s certainly issues there, and that requires some thinking outside of the heterodoxy, or excuse me, the orthodoxy and the homogeneity of thought within pop culture.

[00:12:20] So.

[00:12:21] Malcolm Collins: What’s really interesting about what you’re saying here is, I mean, I would have during that time period considered myself a libertarian. Mm-hmm. Although I never would have said the word libertarian- ... because I, I find libertarian groups obnoxious. Yeah. But I would like... I, I almost feel like there was a period where the being a libertarian was the basic b***h option in life.

[00:12:40] Yeah. Yeah. And I was choosing that option. And having the same types of subjects that I was afraid to really, you know, the trans stuff I was afraid to look into too much. The- Yeah ... you know, i- e- a lot of the stuff around same-sex attraction I was afraid to look into and talk about. And what I think was really interesting about you as a creator is when you first went out there, while you said stuff that I knew would get me scolded if I said at work or something like that-

[00:13:12] It, it wasn’t really over the line. It was still in the same general field of, like, the type of stuff that ShortFatOtaku was talking about. Yeah. Where it just felt like edgy, original. But you over time evolved to become eventually, like, with the rest of the movement, ‘cause it wasn’t just you and me, it was like-

[00:13:36] Aydin Paladin: Oh

[00:13:36] a generation I mean, Sargon’s been around, you know, he’s been around since that time. Some of the people, a lot of them are gone somebody, a lot of them are gone. Like, I used to be pretty good friends with this guy Dr. Layman. I loved his stuff. He did stuff that was very similar to sort of what SFO or Sargon were doing at the time.

[00:13:51] V is still around. He’s, he’s been around- Yeah ... since, since that time. Arch is still around. So a lot of them are, but a lot of people have just come and gone with, you know, at the time. Well, Arch

[00:13:59] Malcolm Collins: Cast wasn’t political back then, right?

[00:14:01] Aydin Paladin: No, it wasn’t. Well, you know, I, I guess like sort of at some point it started to c- become that.

[00:14:04] But he, he’s been around in the same space for a long time, and so the, some of those people have become more political, some of them have become less political. But who’ve just been around since that time. When you say V, you

[00:14:12] Malcolm Collins: mean Romanian Troll?

[00:14:13] Aydin Paladin: Yes, yes. Okay The Romanian Troll, yes. That’d be- Who

[00:14:15] Malcolm Collins: recently became a what are, what we call them, face fags.

[00:14:19] Oh, yeah ... like who are not, yeah, g- going, going public with their identity. Sorry, she used to be, or like the relationship, my para-social relationship with her- Yeah ... is with like a Sims wave avatar because that’s ... w- was it a- Yeah ... Sims wave style or?

[00:14:35] Aydin Paladin: I don’t... No, V, because he’s the Romanian guy.

[00:14:37] Malcolm Collins: No, you.

[00:14:38] Aydin Paladin: Oh, me. Yeah, sorry. I got... Sorry, I got

[00:14:41] Malcolm Collins: confused. You used to have an image. Yeah. You weren’t always a, a face person.

[00:14:43] Aydin Paladin: Yeah, right. Yeah. I, I, I still I know occasionally, not rarely, or excuse me, rarely anymore, but occasionally I will use the avatar. Yeah, I, I was the, the, you know, cartoon... Everyone did that back then with the PNG tube stuff where you just change out your PNG every couple of after you say something to look like it’s reacting to what you’re saying.

[00:15:02] It was very common. But yeah, I had like a- Oh, wow ... vaporwave, synthwave thing aesthetic, yeah.

[00:15:06] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Why did you choose that, by the way? Because Simone was re- we did our website in a synthwave style and she goes- Ooh ... “Why, why is this so common in like right-wing conversations?” Yeah,

[00:15:14] Simone Collins: why do we all choose synthwave?

[00:15:15] Yeah.

[00:15:16] Aydin Paladin: I d- I think it’s like fash wave ki- it’s like the- ... the cool aesthetic of it. It’s like this, well, that was the future we were promised, I guess, is that maybe not a cyberpunk- Ah ... dystopia, but it’s like everything will be shiny. And I’m feeling the ‘90s. It’s like everything in the future’s gonna be shiny and neon.

[00:15:31] Simone Collins: So. Yes,

[00:15:32] Aydin Paladin: so

[00:15:32] Malcolm Collins: true. Yeah. You know? Well, actually that brings me to an idea here where I think a lot of what our site has increasingly coalesced around fighting for, and I think Leaflet did a good job of sort of synthesizing this with her stellar humanism concept, is this idea of a very optimistic, bright future for humanity where humanity is thriving.

[00:15:54] And actually, I, I don’t know if you’ve commented on this yet, but what’s your take on [00:16:00] the weird sort of way that the right has become the party of technology and AI, and the left has become very anti-technology and AI?

[00:16:08] Aydin Paladin: Well, I, I mean, I think the whole way that the left currently operates is on this it’s not, the sort of third worldest stuff is part of it, but it’s, it’s all very regressive actually.

[00:16:17] They call themselves progressive, but they are regressive. It’s about f- you know, getting people bogged down in the differences between each other and just constant grievance, constant intr- so that you get distracted by the little differences between me and you, between men and women. But we have to also paste all over it at the same time, but be constantly aware of it at all times.

[00:16:36] You can’t move past that. Mm-hmm. You can’t just accept that things are sometimes a way. Mm-hmm. Sometimes things just exist. There are differences between people. They can’t be ameliorated. They will always exist. They have to go in constant... And this is, this is the c- comes from the Hegelian dialectic of everything has to be deconstructed all of the time.

[00:16:51] Mm-hmm. You can’t progress actually towards any sort of future if you are stuck engaging in the Hegelian dialectic and deconstructing everything forever. So I think that’s why they get basically stuck.

[00:17:03] Malcolm Collins: What are your, what are your thoughts on... One, one of, I think the big questions right now culturally is the left sort of abandoned environmentalism.

[00:17:11] Like, you know, even Greta Thunberg- Yeah ... gave it up. They seem to have abandoned a lot of their like the trans movement seems in heavy retrograde right now. Yeah. The, you have the the, they, they, Gaza, when Trump ended that, that really blew their sails out on that thing. Like, what do you think is the next thing for them?

[00:17:32] Their, their next BLM?

[00:17:35] Aydin Paladin: Yeah, I, you know, I’ve been speculating on this, and I can see that what, what interests people, why, what I see them talking about, I think it’s gonna be gender politics again. I think it’ll be right back in 2014 feminism kind of stuff in many ways. Mm. And that might lead back into introducing the transgender stuff.

[00:17:50] They just went too far with it. They went way too far with the transgender stuff. It’s still, it’s, I am seeing it come back up in common discourse more commonly, particularly- Mm ... with the women’s basketball stuff that happened recently. That all stuff, I think particularly in r- talking like very different world now in many ways politically than it was in 2014.

[00:18:09] In everything that has happened in Iran, everything that has happened in terms of foreign policy issues, things like Gaza that the left were very fired up about for years about Palestine.

[00:18:18] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:18:18] Aydin Paladin: And now that’s dissipating. I, I, I feel like, a- and all of the, the more intense sort of racial animus and, and racial discourse of the summer of love, that stuff I think got too intense for people.

[00:18:29] They wanna go back to a little bit of the safe zone where let’s talk about gender politics, because comparatively, that’s more comfortable and safe. That’s- Things got too serious in, in the Middle East.

[00:18:42] Malcolm Collins: That’s fascinating. I, but we’ve sort of had the, the opposite take where we sort of look at, like, Hasan locking Destiny- Yeah

[00:18:48] out of the DNC, and see this as sort of like the, the middle ground guy, Destiny-

[00:18:53] Aydin Paladin: Yeah ...

[00:18:53] Malcolm Collins: being the, the outside, and then the centering of, I guess, what I call, like, the terrorist left, the left that just, like, hates the West.

[00:19:03] Aydin Paladin: Yeah.

[00:19:03] Malcolm Collins: And, and I, so I thought maybe just, like, anti-Western sentiment would be the next thing.

[00:19:08] Aydin Paladin: Well, I think from the right, I’m already seeing a very lot of what I, I would call counter jihad of or return to freedom fries, which is a lot of ruh roh, we are back. It is George Bush as president again in the many of that kind of sense. And on the left you get the opposite, is essentially we’re the pro terrorism side.

[00:19:24] We are- Mm ... pro jihad. Mm-hmm ... and, and that’s the third worldest mindset that I did, I did mention briefly. I’ve seen that as well. I think, yeah, with, with Hasan, I, I don’t know how long his utility lasts to the left, ‘cause you’re also seeing them saying, “Woke one was crazy.” All of the, you know, that stuff, that’s what AOC has said, woke one is crazy.

[00:19:43] I’m seeing more and more of them come out and say, “No, we’re woke too,” which is clearly gonna be something different than maybe the, I think not the transgender stuff. I think that was a massive failure.

[00:19:52] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:19:52] Aydin Paladin: So for them.

[00:19:53] Malcolm Collins: Well, with Hasan, actually, we might be getting him. We’ll see if w- it ends up getting him the platform, but we’re working- Yeah

[00:19:58] right now with the Senate, [00:20:00] what committee?

[00:20:01] Simone Collins: The Senate Commerce Committee

[00:20:03] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and we put together a big dossier Okay ... like, like 18 pages or something like that of going through the differential treatment that Twitch and YouTube- Yeah ... have been giving people. So we’ll see if we can get something triggered there.

[00:20:13] But I mean, like, the, it, it, it, it’s in the best interest of the administration, so. Yes. I would, I would really like to be fighting against the left where it’s just, like, gender politics again.

[00:20:23] Aydin Paladin: Yeah.

[00:20:24] Simone Collins: Oh, that would, that would be gender again. See, I think e- When you were like, “It’s gonna be gender again,” I’m like, “Please make it gender again.”

[00:20:28] I,

[00:20:29] Aydin Paladin: I think, it’s a hunch, I think there’s gonna be the counter-jihad versus the, yeah, jihad sort of sides, the Third World aside. I do think that’s probably likely as well. But I, I also think people were burned out, and a little bit of comfy gender politics- Comfy ... I think would make some people quite happy.

[00:20:45] So comfy’s so boring.

[00:20:46] Simone Collins: You know, I think, I, I honestly didn’t believe that was the case until this morning, because I thought the big war was gonna be pro-AI, anti-AI. Oh, yeah. Which of course is another really huge thing. But then although I’ve been avoiding coverage of it, the, the Lindsey Clancy trial, someone sent me that a, a huge portion of the internet apparently is just vehemently refusing to believe that this woman killed her own children.

[00:21:10] Aydin Paladin: Yeah.

[00:21:10] Simone Collins: And they’re like, “Obviously the husband did it. And even if she did it, she didn’t do it. He did it.” No, it, ‘

[00:21:16] Aydin Paladin: cause of-

[00:21:16] Simone Collins: Like, they refuse ...

[00:21:17] Aydin Paladin: his, her, their star signs. I mean, it’s, it’s very- Yes ... very, very woman-coded stuff going on there, but women are- It’s so strange ... I, “He’s, he’s got a scary m- he’s got this scary face, I can tell that he’s

[00:21:28] Simone Collins: dark triad.”

[00:21:28] No, it’s merely because he’s a man. Yes, okay. Like, a woman is not she did not do it. Yes. Even if she did not do it, just like this, like, I remember someone saying to me, a notary being like, “Vote blue no matter who.” Yeah. And I was like, “Wait, do people actually do that?” Yeah. Do they just like, “Look, I’m gonna blindly toe a line and no matter what you tell me, I’m gonna toe that line.”

[00:21:47] And I feel like there’s a new line of, like, “I don’t care what you tell me. You know, either men or women, they’re evil. They’re wrong.” Yeah. “They’re evil, they’re bad, and they always murder, and they’re always the wrong one. It doesn’t matter what the evidence is.” So you are probably onto something really good there.

[00:22:01] Malcolm Collins: Well, what’s very interesting if they do go that direction- Yeah ... is that the right of today is not the misogynistic right that existed, like, eight years ago, or like d- during woke one. Yeah.

[00:22:14] Simone Collins: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:22:15] Malcolm Collins: The, the, the A- and anti- Andrew Tate ... Gamergate-

[00:22:17] Simone Collins: Yeah, Andrew Tate’s off. He’s, he’s gone

[00:22:19] Malcolm Collins: to like, The Gamergate community was really mixed with the red pill community- Mm-hmm

[00:22:25] and the pickup artist community, and the Andrew Tate-o-sphere.

[00:22:29] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:22:29] Malcolm Collins: And he’s-

[00:22:30] Simone Collins: But now he’s a Taliban icon. It’s a totally different world. Yes. Yeah.

[00:22:33] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. What’s really fascinating is as w- we evolved as a movement, a big part of that evolution has been about, hey, like- Treat women well, right? Like be, be decent, right?

[00:22:49] Like we don’t like the gender war stuff, but like be decent, right? And I think that part of that we’ve, we’ve talked about like why this happened. Actually, what are your thoughts? Why did that happen?

[00:23:01] Aydin Paladin: In terms of why did the right... Well, I mean, there’s still some of that going on. There’s that whole sort of s- side of what I would call, like, right adjacent.

[00:23:08] They’re not explicitly political, but they end up in the same spaces of, like, the looksmaxxers, the clavicular type people who are popular right now.

[00:23:14] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:23:15] Aydin Paladin: Which is... And I, I actually have a scientific rationale for why I think that’s happening. S- and we won’t get more into it with the right people. Go into it, by the way, but

[00:23:20] Malcolm Collins: continue.

[00:23:21] Aydin Paladin: I d- I don’t know. I think part of it is some people have to have figured out at some point that it... Just throwing women out and hating women is not going to be a successful strategy. Yeah. Particularly for a right-wing movement that should have, that should be pro-natalist. Like, the, you know, if y- you at least have to figure out how to tolerate women if nothing else, and not just this, ‘cause, like, MGTOW has massively dropped in popularity. That was a huge thing for years. Not, Yeah ... not, like, men’s rights stuff. There’s still work obviously that needs to be done, particularly in the legal system with that. But the men who were just kind of checking out of society, one of the things I, I came up in my recent research is that women are checking out of sexual relationships as well.

[00:23:59] It’s all of Gen Z. Yeah. [00:24:00] So all of them are increasingly reporting not having relationships for the last three to four months in ways that are much higher than they were just 10 or 15 years ago. So I think people are starting to realize that there is, there have ac- has actually been a gender, sex schism that has been created where people, oh, because of the s- situations in which they grew up.

[00:24:20] If you were growing up during the 2000s or the 2010s in particular, you were coming of age during the 2010s, and during the era of Me Too. And during the era of- Yeah ... also where women are constantly told that no man is good enough for you, you know, that you, you, you have to be, hold, have the highest standards possible.

[00:24:36] Mm-hmm. No wonder those people who are now adults aren’t seeking out relationships.

[00:24:40] Malcolm Collins: Well, I think part of what drove this change that happened in the community is, you know, when I first entered the, the proto version of this community I had been a young man. I’d been socialized to be like, “Your value in society is the women you have sex with,” right?

[00:24:57] Like, that is the measure of a man, how many women you have sex with and how hot they are. And so, you know, going out there and sleeping around a lot, but I want, I want to sleep around more. I want more of that, right? And it is the women who are preventing me from having the more of that. Mm-hmm. And then the community began to coalesce, and the, the, the thing that sort of drove it above all else was a search for what is actually true.

[00:25:24] Yeah. And I think it became obvious even outside of religious mores and everything like that, that wait, this, the, the me wanting to sleep around with a ton of people, that was actually part of the lie. Yeah. That was part of the, the stuff being held over my eyes. And so the, the problems to that, like when you look with Andrew Tate, he converts to Islam so he can have a harem and everything like that.

[00:25:49] Yeah. And I think, That and the getting more into, I’d say, Christian or traditional Western values for a lot of the movement has also been like, “Wait, that’s not cool.” Right? Like, “That’s not a cool thing to do. That’s not a cool way to treat a woman,” right? Mm-hmm. Like, why would you... I wouldn’t want my-

[00:26:06] Simone Collins: Yeah

[00:26:06] Malcolm Collins: and people start thinking daughter and stuff like that. And then the other thing that really changed it, which I’ve mentioned, and I don’t know how much you track this, is the Vtuber community becoming popular in right-wing- Yeah ... spaces and becoming accepted in right-wing spaces- Yeah ... allowed for older women, and when I say older women, I don’t mean old women.

[00:26:23] I just mean it, it, it’s fairly hard to become a female influencer with your face if you’re, like, 30 plus, right?

[00:26:30] Aydin Paladin: Yeah.

[00:26:30] Malcolm Collins: And so-

[00:26:31] Aydin Paladin: I, I’d say it’s probably hard if you’re, if you’re not started, I, I mean, unless you’re willing to, like, unless you’re willing to show a lot of skin and stuff and you’re quite hot, you, you, really, women have- Yeah

[00:26:39] are at a, you know, timescale there, where if you, if that’s, ‘cause that’s the way that the vast majority of women get very popular in terms- Yeah ... of doing live streaming is being very attractive. But yeah, if you’re, you know, a little bit older or something, or you don’t feel comfortable with that, Vtubing a lot, which it, either, it could be all sorts of reasons why you might prefer to be, do Vtubing over being on camera.

[00:26:58] Yeah. It gives a whole new degree of latitude for women to enter the space without feeling like they’re forced to be on camera, they f- forced to look a certain way.

[00:27:07] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And well, and that caused, I mean, you were one of the first female influencers in this space, but that allowed for many more offering, I think a female perspective helps moderate us.

[00:27:18] Mm-hmm. But what, what the, the wider point I’m making is if the left goes full on misandrist again, they’re going to be crashing against a force that doesn’t look like the misogynistic opposite that existed on the right in the past, and I think it’s gonna look really bad for them.

[00:27:35] Aydin Paladin: They’re gonna have... If they do, I mean, you know, I live in the Channel Islands, which is, it’s, where it’s not part of the UK, but it’s it’s basically the UK.

[00:27:41] Yeah. And s- so I of course see the Islamification of things, the, the counter-jihad is much more, and, and the jihad aspects are forming marching lines here much more staunchly. That’s all the Green Party is here.

[00:27:52] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:27:52] Aydin Paladin: For example. They have made that pretty much explicitly clear that they are a you know, pro third worldist they are pro jihad, and [00:28:00] Islamic takeover party.

[00:28:01] And I, you, I’m seeing that also as well in the Democrats too, and that’s been going on for years, particularly with the, you know, conflicts involving Israel and Iran, et cetera, et cetera. So you are gonna end up with the left in many ways probably taking over the pro third worldist, pro-Islamic positions.

[00:28:18] And then if you’ve got all, you know, but the left is full of women. It’s full of, of young- Mm ... you know, full of feminist women and old feminist women, people who’ve lived their whole lives, you know, believing in a, a whole slew of very left-wing feminist beliefs now being asked to take in men who don’t believe that they should have any rights-

[00:28:35] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:28:36] Mm ...

[00:28:36] Aydin Paladin: whatsoever. And, and say, “No, we can get along.” Now this has been a conflict that’s been boiling there for years, but sort of you’ll reach a saturation point, particularly in places like the UK, particularly in parts of Europe that are increasing in, and just not the, you know, flood of the immigrants does not stop.

[00:28:51] So at some point a lot of, it’s gonna, I mean, obviously it was the rape and inquiry report that came out earlier this year. But which is, you know, just a fraction actually of, of how bad things really are. You can’t have feminist beliefs and a feminist you know, pro feminist society that’s also full of people who don’t believe that women should have any rights- Well, I mean, yeah, but then-

[00:29:11] particularly not women of your group that aren’t, isn’t part of their group.

[00:29:14] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:29:14] Malcolm Collins: I, yeah, I, I mean, I, I, I wonder, Yeah, and I think this is the fundamental conflict on the left is, is which way does it go? Mm-hmm. Does it go back to moderate feminism or does it just become the party of a third world takeover, right?

[00:29:25] Like specifically a jihadist. Like there, there are parts of the left, what I’ve noticed recently, are more specifically just pro-Islam than anything else. Yeah. And, and sort of violent Islam. That that’s become like the cool edgy thing to be about and we’re increasingly seeing leftist influencers being of, of these- Yeah

[00:29:47] these groups, like Mondami and stuff like this, right? And that terrifies me because I don’t want to be fighting against a group that is that fundamentally evil. Like I, I prefer the two parties of the ‘90s or wherever, where it’s like a polite disagreement. And this, because when it gets existential, what I don’t think the left realizes when they’re letting in more and more people is the right is moving to a more and more extreme position.

[00:30:10] Yeah. And when I talk to the other people I know in this sphere and stuff like this, the takeaway from ICE isn’t like, “Oh, that looked terrible,” or something like that. It’s like, “They didn’t, they did all of that and they still didn’t make that much of an impact?” Yeah. Then we need to go 100 times harder.

[00:30:29] Yeah. A- and then when this happens in places like the UK or Germany where you have much larger populations, it’s gonna look awful.

[00:30:35] Aydin Paladin: Oh, yeah. I mean, that’s, that, that is the major contention currently is, is, you know, Rupert Lowe says, “Millions must go.” Nigel Farage is not, will not go that far, won’t give any kind of numbers.

[00:30:44] But even so, yeah, with all of the, the chaos involving ICE earlier in just this year, which is, it feels like, I don’t know why, maybe it just feels like it was already an age ago when all of the stuff with Alex Preddy and Renee Good occurred in Minnesota, right? Which was a huge, huge news about, you know, oh, we need to stop ICE.

[00:31:02] We need to put a stop to either they’re separating families. Mm-hmm. People were innocent people were getting killed. And largely put the kibosh on a lot of that stuff. It did, it really did slow down and it was like the, you know, Trump’s, well, I think it’s ‘cause Iran happened. But, you know, all of Trump’s sort of pushes at the time, which were all directed towards getting people, illegals out of the country, just kind of was like

[00:31:20] I think people also, they fell out of the news cycle ‘cause they, they realized also, yeah, how difficult it is going to be to get those people out of the country- Yeah ... if you have to drag every single one of them kicking and screaming. Now, there’s other ways you can get them out, you know, that, that they will self-deport under certain conditions.

[00:31:36] But yeah, I, I think that has enough people, I think in many ways dis- feeling disheartened because it is gonna be very difficult. There’s millions and millions of these people in countries, not just, not just the United States. Yeah. But again, you know, Europe is facing a very serious problem, in some ways that is worse than the United States-

[00:31:55] Malcolm Collins: So, so when she says these people-

[00:31:57] because of the origin ... I want to, for anybody who’s watching this with, like, a, a [00:32:00] negative skew- Yeah ... keep in mind, in the UK right now and this is from The Guardian, okay? Yeah. A very left-leaning source. Over 50% of Muslims in the UK do not believe it should be legal to be gay. Note here, I did not say get gay married.

[00:32:14] Yeah. I said be gay. Yeah. Just to be a same-sex attracted individual living your life. That is a value system... Oh, my God. Hmm? Sorry, I am wearing my shirt inside out. I need to-

[00:32:28] Simone Collins: Oh,

[00:32:29] Aydin Paladin: no. Oh. Well, I’ve a- I’ve had it happen to, to... Luckily not me, I don’t think, but I’ve had it, I’ve had other friends do that before-

[00:32:36] where it’s just, you don’t think about it sometimes.

[00:32:39] Simone Collins: With men’s clothes, I think it’s harder. Yeah. And I- Yeah ... I’m, yeah. It, with, with women’s clothes, hardly-

[00:32:45] Aydin Paladin: You can pretty much tell ...

[00:32:45] Simone Collins: poorly constructed. Like, you know, like, clothes are so bad. Oh, yeah. Well, now the giant seams are here and I can see them.

[00:32:52] Aydin Paladin: Some of the terrible, like, stitching. I u- I haven’t done seam work in forever, but some of the stitching’s only, stitching on the inside is awful in women’s clothes.

[00:33:00] Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s, it’s

[00:33:00] Aydin Paladin: painful. But with men’s, they tend to be made a little bit stronger, I think. A little bit tougher. Yeah. At least.

[00:33:06] Simone Collins: More subtle.

[00:33:06] Yeah.

[00:33:07] Malcolm Collins: Yes, okay. But the thing is why- So I’m back. I’m, I, I’m wearing it the right way now, you see? Okay. I’m a very, I’m a very intelligent person, guys. Yes. Yeah. You

[00:33:16] Simone Collins: can put

[00:33:16] Malcolm Collins: on clothing. That’s who you’re getting your, your, your opinions from, right?

[00:33:20] Simone Collins: Oh, my God.

[00:33:23] Malcolm Collins: But actually, have, has there ever been a cancellation campaign against you?

[00:33:28] Aydin Paladin: Not one that’s, that’s- Gotten your tea ... really, I think has gotten too far. You know, way back in the day there was stuff with that guy Crouton Tea, but I was on a big list. I was on a big list with like- Oh ... Sargon and V and all those people I mentioned before. They were all on a list of people who needed to be taken out, but all that was was people being weird on Discord and LARPing.

[00:33:45] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I, I think that actually brings up a, one of the things that really protects you from cancellation is just admitting that you’re right-wing and, and having like right-wing opinions, and it makes cancellations way harder to run.

[00:33:59] Aydin Paladin: Yeah, in a sense. They’ll try to, they’ll... I mean, the whole idea, a lot of the cancellation stuff, a lot of that era, it’s not over.

[00:34:06] It’s just changed sort of in, in the way that it manifests. Mm-hmm. I mean, it’s, it is always the case that people get “canceled” quote unquote for something related to some sort of sexual impropriety, but that’s been going on for, I don’t know, all of human history is, you know, some crimes or sexual impropriety things.

[00:34:20] It’s just the nature of them have kind of changed it, I guess a little bit. People don’t get canceled anymore for so much so, sometimes perhaps, but nowhere near the, the way they used to for just being conservative. Too many people lose their jobs. I mean-

[00:34:33] Malcolm Collins: Yeah ... the

[00:34:34] Aydin Paladin: most insane- Dude,

[00:34:34] Malcolm Collins: yeah, you literally, we’ve- Yeah

[00:34:35] we’ve lost, you- Yeah ... investors, job opportunities and stuff like that just for being... This was before we were extreme. Yeah. This was just over the people aren’t having enough kids, and it’s gonna be a problem for social security. Yeah. That, that is what got us in trouble. And I think- For us, and it doesn’t seem like this is what happened to you, but it definitely was what happened for us, is seeing ourselves be canceled for n- normie f*****g opinions- Yeah

[00:35:01] Pushed us to associate with other right-wing individuals, right-wing spaces- Yeah ... right-wing influencers. And they were just really, really nice, and it was very different than being in left-wing spaces- Oh, yeah ... where I felt like I was constantly, you know... like I remember early in right-wing spaces I had this experience of going to one and I was like, “Well, you know, I believe X thing.

[00:35:25] I believe Y thing,” thinking I was finally gonna say the thing that would get them to condemn me, right? Like- Mm-hmm ... and they’re like, “No, it’s okay. Yeah, whatever. You know, you’re, you’re on our team now. We, we work together.” Yeah. And I really like that feel, and it’s something that I’ve been trying to do more proactively.

[00:35:39] We’re gonna have a, a collab soon with a a VTuber who recently got canceled for saying- Oh ... that men can’t have periods. And, you know, she was- How

[00:35:47] Aydin Paladin: are we still saying that in 2026? Indeed.

[00:35:50] Malcolm Collins: Right? But it’s the Vtubing space, okay? Yeah.

[00:35:52] Aydin Paladin: Right.

[00:35:53] Malcolm Collins: But I think the... Doing things like that within our community, when we see somebody get canceled [00:36:00] for a mild opinion, to immediately go to them and be like, “Hey, come on.

[00:36:05] We support you. You know, we’re here for you. You don’t need to agree with us on everything.”

[00:36:10] Aydin Paladin: Yeah. Yeah, I, I mean, I was fired. Well, I wasn’t fired. I was kind of told to not come back to my doctoral, doctoral program after I started doing the- Yeah ... I started doing YouTube. So that was the only canceling, but that was, that was related to Destiny, by the way.

[00:36:21] It was his community. They... I, I... It was a very, very embarrassing debate. I didn’t know who he was. I’d never heard of him. I just saw someone say, “Someone go debate this liberal.” I was on 4chan and, just browsing. And I was like, “Oh, sure, I’ll debate this stupid liberal.” I was-

[00:36:36] Simone Collins: Oh, no ...

[00:36:37] Aydin Paladin: hanging out at home. I was drunk and high.

[00:36:39] I didn’t know who he was. Oh, no. And so I w- I made a terrible idiot of myself, ‘cause I had no idea I was about to be in front of, you know, 15,000 people. I wasn’t doing YouTube. I was just a random person browsing the internet. But they connected that to me, and so, you know, yeah, then I got canceled for, for that, all that stuff.

[00:36:55] That, that was very, very deeply embarrassing. Hanging

[00:36:56] Malcolm Collins: out on 4chan- A long time ago ... drunk and high, doing public debates. This is very much... you can tell she’s very much on, on tribe, on community.

[00:37:04] Aydin Paladin: Oh, this was- Yeah ... about 10 years ago, though, at this point. This is ... it’s, it’s been nearly, yeah, about 10 years.

[00:37:09] That was a long time ago.

[00:37:10] Simone Collins: It’s a good story.

[00:37:11] Aydin Paladin: Crazy though. Yeah. Oh, man, it was very embarrassing. But- But, you know, they, what they did, they, they called my school. They, they made all these complaints about how I was racist. This was shortly after what had happened with Destiny and JonTron, if you remember that or heard about that, where JonTron, who was a hugely, you know, popular and beloved sort of gaming content creator on YouTube at the time, he got into a alm- it sounds like a very similar thing happened, where he ended up on a, on a public debate with Destiny- Oh, no

[00:37:36] talking about race and IQ. Big topic in 2016, very common No And it was just, yeah, he got, he got canceled. He was removed from a bunch of projects and things. They, they... No, he’s fine now, but that’s, and has been fine for a long time. But I think things were probably at their zenith of, like, left-wing power back, like, maybe up until after, or about, like, the end of COVID.

[00:37:58] Mm. That’s when I think things started to, to cool off a little bit. It’s always awful, but just the extremity. Some guy got canceled because he had... Remember, he wa- he landed a, a probe on a comet or an asteroid? They canceled him ‘cause he had, like, a- Oh, because his shirt ... attractive lady on his shirt Because he had, like, anime

[00:38:12] Malcolm Collins: girls on it.

[00:38:13] Aydin Paladin: Yeah, and it- And

[00:38:14] Malcolm Collins: his friend had made it, a female friend I don’t remember this.

[00:38:15] Simone Collins: That, that’s

[00:38:16] Aydin Paladin: unhinged And

[00:38:16] Malcolm Collins: he was trying to

[00:38:18] Aydin Paladin: That stuff though, the insa- the levels are just, the nitpicking, it’s untenable. Society cannot function if everyone has to be constantly afraid of every single thing they do. What- It just doesn’t work long time, long term.

[00:38:30] Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. What’s been really fascinating to me is, it, it very clear that like we’ve been in the same spaces for a long time. We likely went on, on a similar like political journey. But it’s not just that like my personal politics has changed throughout that journey, but there’s been this ... And I think that this really happened post-COVID.

[00:38:51] This merger of our online right with institutional political right. Yeah. Where like we, our people, other former 4chaners are the people staffing the White House’s X feed now and stuff.

[00:39:06] Aydin Paladin: Yeah. And it- It

[00:39:07] Malcolm Collins: cut

[00:39:07] Aydin Paladin: pretty clearly.

[00:39:08] Malcolm Collins: Very obvious, right? Yeah. We were, we were saying this like when Fauci’s diaries came out, and somebody at the, at the team styled it like a, a teenage girl’s diary.

[00:39:17] Yeah. And it’s like very obviously this is like our community and our culture. And it’s been such a feeling of like ... It, it feels really nice. Because b- back in the day when you started I’m sure you probably felt very different from whatever you thought of as Republican.

[00:39:35] Aydin Paladin: Oh, yeah. I mean, ab- absolutely.

[00:39:37] Well, you know, I, I was a libertarian, right? Yeah. I was a, I was a right-leaning libertarian, but I was a libertarian. Y- I’ve changed in a lot of my opinions in, in that sense. But, you know, that, that was always where I fell was in, in that direction. But of course I had nothing to do with, and wanted nothing to do with the neocons.

[00:39:53] I had grown up- Yeah ... despising those people. I still despise them. You know? It, people like Lindsey Graham, you know, rest in peace or [00:40:00] whatever. But, you know, I ... Those people do not represent me, they never represented me. Yeah. They certainly don’t represent young people in any way. No. Anyone who could ... ‘Cause you need young people to be involved in politics in order for political movements to do anything.

[00:40:13] And- Yeah ... the GOP had, was, up until Trump really, was doing an absolutely horrific job of trying to make anyone under the age of 60 consider them. So.

[00:40:24] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and, and what’s interesting is it feels like to me, that battle we’ve won. Like GOP Inc- Mm ... the neocons, the old conservative, they don’t really have a base in our generation or younger, right?

[00:40:37] Aydin Paladin: Yeah.

[00:40:37] Malcolm Collins: But the, the big fight right now, and I feel like we’ve basically already won this fight as well, is against the gripers. Mm. And against the, you know, the, the radical the people who want to go into just like explicitly racist territory and stuff like that. Yeah. And, and or explicitly misogynistic territory.

[00:40:56] And it’s like we don’t need to- But that fight feels pretty won as well

[00:41:00] Aydin Paladin: to me. They’re, they’re reactionaries. Which, you know, I’m, I’m a reactionary in my own way. I, in that, you know, I re- I, I am not pro-democracy. I’m a monarchist. That’s, that’s like, I don’t know, that’s going back the, well, a couple ways.

[00:41:10] It’s in the opposite direction. Yeah. But a, a lot of young men in particular have been massively disenfranchised. Mm-hmm. Yeah. They’re told from their whole lives that they’re evil and they’re terrible, and they go, “Okay, well I am evil. I’m a Stormtrooper.” You know, I’ll do as e- Yeah. They, they ... I’ll be

[00:41:22] Malcolm Collins: as

[00:41:24] Aydin Paladin: evil as

[00:41:24] Malcolm Collins: possible.

[00:41:24] That’s a really good, they got an idea of what the evil Republican was-

[00:41:29] Aydin Paladin: Yeah ...

[00:41:29] Malcolm Collins: from progressives. Yes. And then they decided to embody that, whereas-

[00:41:34] Aydin Paladin: They were told they were

[00:41:35] Malcolm Collins: You have this other- You

[00:41:35] Aydin Paladin: are that thing. Yeah.

[00:41:36] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And by the way, you know, we’ve had Curtis Yarvin on. Oh, I

[00:41:39] Aydin Paladin: love Curtis. Yeah ...

[00:41:40] Malcolm Collins: through, through Monarchist’s, it’s two takes, right?

[00:41:42] Yeah, he’s a, he’s a friend of our... I, I, I really like him. He’s got really good... We should have him back on, Simone, actually. You should make a note to reach out to him. Sure. That episode did really well. But yeah, the, well, and, and we’ve had Aristocratic Utensil, who’s a monarchist- Yes ... as well on. We have said explicitly on the show multiple times, and this is where the monarchist thing comes from, I think everyone, I think both the left and the right realizes this at this point, that democracy as it’s currently structured is probably not going to continue to work.

[00:42:10] The- No. No ... the, the DSA party, we’ll have an episode on them soon. This is a, the party that, like, Mondame’s associated with, and AOC’s associated with, has now said explicitly they want to banish the Senate and the, and the Supreme Court, right? Like, they, they, the leftists want to move in this direction.

[00:42:25] And- The question is, is basically which party cancels elections first at this point.

[00:42:31] Aydin Paladin: Pretty much. Ar- Aristotle predicts this. You know, he says that that, that cultures will move in these cycles of politics. And at some point, democracies and republics, they will give way, and the next stage after that is autocracy and, and, and monarchies.

[00:42:44] Those are gonna be- Yeah ... the next stages, and then it will go in a cycle like this forever. And by the way, and now history doesn’t follow a perfect pattern there. But y- yes, sometimes you get despots and then you get monarchs, and that tends to be sort of when things collapse after a, a democracy or a republic, a, you know, a system in which people collectivize their action, then a lot of times it ends up in chaos.

[00:43:03] And then afterwards- Yeah ... there needs to be stability. And the most stable s- system, system tends to be something that looks like a monarchy.

[00:43:10] Malcolm Collins: Well, monarchies like even if we just, even if the US government doesn’t collapse, even if the governments in Europe don’t collapse- Mm-hmm ... given the strain on social security that’s gonna come as people get older, and the effect that that’s gonna have on the government’s tax base, and thus ability to operate at the same time as the AI tech lords get richer and richer and richer, you functionally have a...

[00:43:33] What, what’s the word that they use for... They used to call us it, Simone. Techno,

[00:43:38] Aydin Paladin: Techno-oligarchism.

[00:43:39] Malcolm Collins: Techno-feudalism.

[00:43:40] Aydin Paladin: Techno-feudalism. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:43:42] Malcolm Collins: And so we’re functionally moving in that direction anyway. Yeah. Which is one of the reasons I often point out to people in the wider new right and stuff like this, that it is important that we keep the tech lords on our side, right?

[00:43:53] Like, you know, you, you can have your opinions on stuff and think, “Well, maybe that’s not good for, like, all of [00:44:00] society,” but then if you move to positions that are going to really piss off the tech lords you’re likely gonna freeze yourself out of history.

[00:44:08] Aydin Paladin: One of the reason that the GOP, w- I mean, it’s, it’s terrible for so many reasons, but just one of them, and the reason why they fell out of favor, why the right-wing fell out of favor with young people for a long time is because they were sort of anti-tech.

[00:44:20] They, they weren’t, you know- Yeah ... they, because that’s what traditionalists are. Traditionalists, tr- being a traditionalist means to be a,

[00:44:27] a troglodyte. Yeah. Which it doesn’t in any way. Yeah. And that’s sort of, I think that idea particularly with, yeah, the tech bros, the crypto bros who w- you know, very often... Look, if you wanna keep your money and you’re a crypto billionaire you’re gonna end up with a little bit more right-wing politics.

[00:44:41] Just generally speaking, not always. Yeah. But yeah, so there’s a lot of that movement in that direction on the right of being not troglodytic about technology and embracing it, and realizing how we can use it. The right has been very good at adopting, I mean, because we were, that’s why we, the whole meme war stuff of the 2014’s era.

[00:44:59] Why places like 4chan were able to, in a way, influence Trump into getting elected on some small scale, by turning everything into memes, which are now what the White House posts. The same- Yeah ... I mean, not as extreme, but the same kind

[00:45:10] Malcolm Collins: of stuff.

[00:45:10] Aydin Paladin: I,

[00:45:10] Malcolm Collins: I, no, I d- I don’t think there’s a chance in hell Trump would’ve won the primaries if not for 4chan.

[00:45:15] Aydin Paladin: Yeah.

[00:45:15] Malcolm Collins: 4chan is what made him seem like a viable candidate. Yeah. And then that’s why he ended up getting elected. He is the 4chan president.

[00:45:22] Aydin Paladin: Yeah. In many ways. But that’s, that was the embrace of tech. And, and that inherently the, the right, like the Tr- post-Trump, Trump-era right has all been very pro using new technologies rather than- Well-

[00:45:33] rejecting them ...

[00:45:34] Malcolm Collins: I, I, I think that that’s- More so, yeah ... been a big part of it. But the, I, I think another really big part of it is the performative vulgarity and edginess as a cultural authenticator. Mm-hmm. And as I said, this has always been part of a part of right-wing culture in the US. You know, the, the sexy woman on a mudflap of a trucker- Yeah.

[00:45:52] or the, the you know, the, the what do we call them? Truck nut conservatives. Yeah, yeah. You know, like the idea of this performative, sexualized edginess that- 4chan figured out how to make cool for kids. Yeah. Right? And then they grew up into a movement where this stuff is more normal, like sexy anime girls are normal, and that has given us a lot of cultural power that the left has removed from itself.

[00:46:22] Aydin Paladin: Yeah. Well, that’s- You know, that’s why Hollywood is in the state that it’s in. Mm-hmm. It’s all controlled by these leftist who have no idea... They’re s- they are so removed via academia or via their belief system, and it’s usually a combination of both, from knowing what it is that people not only find entertaining or, or tolerable morally, but what anyone would find remotely cool.

[00:46:42] And they’ve been putting out that stuff for the last 15 years now, and they can’t make any... I mean, every once in a while I guess, you know, still you can have a Christopher Nolan movie that disrespects history do well. But other than that it’s just been- Yeah ... flop after flop.

[00:46:55] Malcolm Collins: W- I, I think one of the cool things that we’re gonna see in the near future is right wing made content using AI that has, like- Mm

[00:47:03] actually coherent. Like I was talking with Nux offline recently, and he was saying that he wanted to use AI to make an anime. And I suggested, I was like, “Bro, I bet if you storyboarded something, that Skybrow’s team would love to make it,” right?

[00:47:16] Simone Collins: Like- Well, it kind of already has been done a little bit with the,

[00:47:19] Aydin Paladin: It’s the, Sorry

[00:47:20] Emily Yukis, who’s doing the Will Stancil Show.

[00:47:22] Simone Collins: Oh. Oh, that

[00:47:23] Aydin Paladin: too.

[00:47:24] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:47:24] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And then there’s the- There’s that and

[00:47:25] Simone Collins: then there’s this,

[00:47:26] Malcolm Collins: like- The video about Twitch, w- which, which is Leaflet and Powder against the guy who runs Twitch, and it was like a 25-minute anime episode.

[00:47:33] Aydin Paladin: Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s...

[00:47:36] Yeah, Emily Yukis I know has been doing that. She’s been an animator for years, and now she’s able to put out, you know, at a relative re- decent frequency some, you know, really, like, crazy content of course, but it’s very funny. The Will Stancil Show, and she did the JD Vance Show, which is just- Mm. It’s kind of, you know, taking the piss out of some right wing politics.

[00:47:53] But it’s really funny stuff. It’s v- very vulgar, by the way. Yeah. Just to be clear if you’ve not seen it, but yeah. And yeah, she can do [00:48:00] all that with AI in a fraction of the time, and it would... I- we should use that technology when available, yeah.

[00:48:05] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:48:06] Aydin Paladin: When able.

[00:48:06] Malcolm Collins: Well, one of the things that the, th- that I found interesting, and this was a thread I pulled on earlier, but I think it’s been a very interesting cultural phenomenon to me, was- The politics of short fat otaku.

[00:48:21] And that he went out there and had this sort of mild right-wing position that a lot of us held back, like when you started doing YouTube and stuff like that. Yeah. But with the rest of the movement, all of our opinions have evolved, and he still has like all exactly the, the, the mild opinions that we all sort of pre- pretended to have or sometimes sort of did have and then we began to scratch on things like trans research a bit more or, you know, I, I want same sex attracted people to have the best lives possible.

[00:48:57] It’s just like, as time has gone on in my own life, for example, the ones who I know who are sane, who are attractive, and who are professionally successful and tried to make gay relationships work with a family, not a single real instance in my life did it work. And these are sane, attractive, hardworking, moral in all other senses, people, and it didn’t work out for them.

[00:49:22] Yeah. And then that makes me be like, well just does it not work? Like, is it hard to make work? S-

[00:49:28] Simone Collins: Well, I mean- I don’t

[00:49:29] Malcolm Collins: know ...

[00:49:29] Simone Collins: obviously yes. It, I mean just- If, if you’re a gay male couple, at least

[00:49:35] Aydin Paladin: But yeah, I mean, what the rates for domestic violence are, of all groups, it’s highest among lesbian women.

[00:49:41] Simone Collins: Yeah, I can

[00:49:41] Aydin Paladin: see how.

[00:49:41] Yeah.

[00:49:42] Malcolm Collins: We actually... Well, no, no, no. There is a group that’s higher than lesbians, which is bisexuals. Oh,

[00:49:46] Simone Collins: right.

[00:49:46] Aydin Paladin: Bi.

[00:49:47] Malcolm Collins: Oh, bi- oh,

[00:49:47] Aydin Paladin: bisexuals?

[00:49:48] Malcolm Collins: Okay. We have an episode on this. Yeah. Bisexuals are worse than gays or lesbians on basically every me- Oh ... on mental health they’re worse, on- I didn’t know that ... abuse rates they’re worse, on graping or getting graped they’re worse.

[00:50:02] And it’s very weird because you think of bisexual as like the midpoint between- Yeah ... being straight and being a lesbian or being gay. So you would expect them- Yeah ... to be in the middle, not like off the charts on everything. Yeah. And we, we do an episode trying to understand why that’s the case. It could be a fun episode for you.

[00:50:16] I bet you you’d do a good

[00:50:16] Aydin Paladin: job on that. Oh, yeah, sure, yeah. Yeah, I didn’t actually know that either. R- relating to, to ShortFatOtaku in particular I, I can’t stand that guy. So you’ll, you’ll have to forgive me for a minute. He’s personally been just awful to me for years. We used to be something like friends or friendly with each other.

[00:50:31] He’s just terrible. But so I can give some insight into that psychology which I don’t think is unique to him. It’s, it’s things that happened to a lot of people back- Oh, explain

[00:50:38] Malcolm Collins: it. Why haven’t his views changed?

[00:50:41] Aydin Paladin: Because, When

[00:50:41] Malcolm Collins: all of the rest of ours have ...

[00:50:42] Aydin Paladin: there’s a lot, because there’s, there were a lot of people who got involved, particularly as it concerned and revolved around GamerGate.

[00:50:49] And these were people who actually didn’t have any concerns for politics. They just wanted to goon. That was really it. There was nothing more important or more, or deeper. It was just that shallow. It was entirely about sexual ratification. There, there’s been a lot of these people who’ve been around over the years where th- there, it wasn’t actually about, you know, censorship.

[00:51:09] It wasn’t about making good games first and foremost. It was just, I just want to goon to this.

[00:51:15] Malcolm Collins: I want sexy characters. Why are you censoring them?

[00:51:17] Aydin Paladin: Yeah, that was it. I mean, but it wasn’t about the principle of censorship. It really was just that shallow. And in Dev’s case, he, I think he’s just kind of a degenerate.

[00:51:26] You know, he’s into the trans women or whatever and just I think that was it. I think he had, he got involved in GamerGate or sort of tertiarily related to GamerGate for that v- and again, very common shallow level response and then ended up in politics where he really didn’t belong. He, he likes gaming and has ended up, and again, I think this is common, commonly happened, not just to him.

[00:51:48] Simone Collins: Daddy, I clearly hear something.

[00:51:49] Aydin Paladin: Ended up sort of just being stuck. Have to go with the flow and go, “Well, I’m, I’m here now making money doing this.” Notice it. “I guess I have to-” We heard something ... keep doing something,” but they don’t actually believe in it, but they’re [00:52:00] leftists ultimately. And then as the right moves they go, “Well, no, no, but I’m, I’m- No I’m s- I’m happy here.

[00:52:06] I’m

[00:52:06] Malcolm Collins: happy where I am. I was really about Max- You know? Max Go- Yeah. That is a very interesting point, and it’s also interesting how a portion of the right genuinely converted a portion of... That so many people got into morality through gooning, right? Like- Yeah. ... Young starting as, like, a hentai reviewer. It, it- Leaflet used to do that too, right?

[00:52:26] Like, and-

[00:52:27] Simone Collins: Path-based morality.

[00:52:29] Malcolm Collins: Well, it’s, it’s, it’s a fascinating phenomenon. And it’s something that I think should be, like, highlighted more as part of the birth of our movement. We have a video- Yeah ... where we go on how part of the movement grew out of the online atheist movement, actually. Yes, yes.

[00:52:44] Right? Like, because it, like, atheist skeptics were part of our movement- Mm-hmm ... in the very early days. Whereas we, just like anti-feminist, anti-whatever, we were, we were in the world of internet politics. The world of politics politics, we didn’t think we’d ever touch that. We didn’t think we’d ever have anything to do with that.

[00:52:59] We wanted sexy women in games and stuff like that. Yeah. And then- It was

[00:53:02] Aydin Paladin: a simpler time.

[00:53:03] Malcolm Collins: Simpler time, right. And then I think what happened, or this is for me, you can tell me if it was for you, is getting into those particular battles got me exposed to ideas and research I would not have been exposed to had I not been in those battles.

[00:53:22] Aydin Paladin: For sure. I mean, I wasn’t involved in Gamergate directly. I was actually involved in Gamergate in a very different way than most people in this space. Oh,

[00:53:28] Malcolm Collins: explain.

[00:53:29] Aydin Paladin: Mm-hmm. My primary area of research is game studies. I, I, I come, I’m a social psychologist with emphasis in game studies. Mm-hmm. I helped found the Game Study, the National Communication Game Studies Caucus.

[00:53:40] So when all of the stuff with Anita Sarkeesian was happening, I was i- in a, you know, my doctoral school office talking to my advisor and his wife, who were the founders of the Game Studies Caucus, and we’re going, “Oh no, what is, what’s happening? Why is this woman, who doesn’t know anything about any of our research, being put as the face of some sort of, a- and being treated as an academic and being treated seriously. Yeah. And we just wanted people to, like, actually be aware that the things that she was saying are not accurate, and they’re not based on any kind of data whatsoever. So, from, that is how we got involved. And I remember it was very hush-hush though, even at the time, ‘cause- It much like how there was academic sides that were taken in do the games cause violence debate, which is one of the greatest academic rap battles of all time.

[00:54:27] The back and forth on that one w- is, is truly an a- an excellent and fantastic read of how the games cause violence people got kind of, as they would have said at the time, epically owned. This is probably- ... what, 20- 2012. But

[00:54:38] Malcolm Collins: The days ...

[00:54:39] Aydin Paladin: but then the, the, the feminist stuff and, a- and is, are games harmful to women specifically- Mm

[00:54:44] none of that literature was being looked at when all of the Gamergate stuff happened. No one was looking at the academic literature, and we had just founded this game studies caucus that was supposed to be focused on exactly that. So I ended up learning about the Gamergate phenomenon entirely from, as an academic going, “Oh, no, what’s this?”

[00:55:01] Like- What? ... this is... We didn’t know how to really respond to it, and it was hush-hush, where people didn’t want to comment on it at all because they were afraid they would be labeled as right-wing, as misogynistic, as this, that or the other if they just said, well, if they had gave any kind of public criticism of people like Anita Sarkeesian.

[00:55:19] That’s how it was behind the scenes in, in the ivory tower back in- Yeah ... 2015. Well,

[00:55:23] Malcolm Collins: you know- You know? ... now she’s happily married.

[00:55:26] Aydin Paladin: To herself, yes. To

[00:55:27] Malcolm Collins: herself, yes. I’ve, I’ve just- So ... like the end of that timeline didn’t, didn’t go-

[00:55:35] Aydin Paladin: No ...

[00:55:35] Malcolm Collins: which is another thing that’s, that’s sort of we’ve seen with our side is a lot of our side did get happily married and- Yeah

[00:55:43] and, and did form functional relationships. And th- this is this joke whenever, like, a right-wing figure gets doxxed these days, he always turns out to be, like, a muscular guy- ... with, like, a wife and kids, right? You know.

[00:55:56] Aydin Paladin: Yeah.

[00:55:57] Malcolm Collins: And when a left-wing person gets doxxed, they’re, like, a crazy, the, [00:56:00] you know, g- person with, like, a rap sheet or something.

[00:56:02] Aydin Paladin: Yeah, yeah. Long rap sheet and all sorts of very embarrassing photos of them online. To be fair, that sometimes happens to the right as well. But, you know.

[00:56:10] Simone Collins: Absolutely.

[00:56:12] Malcolm Collins: Absolutely. Well, it’s been wonderful to have you on. I, I enjoy talking about this because you’re very unique in terms of how long you’ve been at this.

[00:56:22] Do you have any sort of final comments of having been in this movement for so long- Yeah ... in terms of how it feels different today versus then? Mm-hmm. Or one of the things I found interesting is the sense of community. Like, you seem to have been in the it crowd. You know- ... even being friends with, like, D- I used to love ShortFatOtaku.

[00:56:40] I, I got a lot- Yeah ... of ideas from his videos. I thought they were very insightful back in the day. To be in that community, to be in that wider friend network Are you connected to, like, the new friend network? Is that something that’s been absorbing you in the, in the ways that it- Sure ... it’s been expanding?

[00:56:55] Or, yeah, how does all that feel?

[00:56:58] Aydin Paladin: I mean, yeah, sure, like, you know, I, I can say, sure, I have lots of... Actually, part of m- my job is doing this marketing for Wolfings, which I’ll bring up again. Wolfings Publishing, which is our publishing house that, you know, we’re promoting right now. But a part of my job in doing marketing for that means reaching out to a bunch of influencers, and one of the reasons why they ask me to do this is ‘cause, “Well, Aiden, you’ve been around for 10 years.

[00:57:19] You know everybody.” And I was like- Yeah ... “Yeah, I guess.” Or, or I, I would feel a pe- or people know me or have heard of me or something, so it’s like maybe you have a negative opinion, maybe you have a, a positive one. But whatever, you might have heard my name at least, ‘cause I’ve just been around for so long.

[00:57:32] Mm. Which rather than being approached by somebody that nobody knows, and they might go, “I don’t know if this person’s legitimate or whatever,” there may be a benefit there. We’ll see how it works out, I guess. But I don’t know how people have changed. So many of them, like I said, so many people are still around.

[00:57:46] This event that I’m going to in two weeks very often Sargon is a speaker there. He’s not this year.

[00:57:51] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:57:52] Aydin Paladin: But another, I mean, one of their main speakers is Millennial Woes, and he’s been around f- forever. A lot of these people really have been around for a long time, but we also have a speaker, and Harry Robinson of Lotus Eaters will be speaking there.

[00:58:02] I will be speaking there. We also have this guy Blonde Blas Britannica who’s, I don’t know, he’s like 22, 23? Yeah. And he’s only recently started his channel and really blown up. So there’s, you know, it’s a constant sort of... A- and then, you know, we’ve got people older than us, like A.N. O’Think Academic Agent will be speaking this year, but he’s, that’s sort of, it was, the event’s highly tied to him, or originally was.

[00:58:23] And he’s a generation sort of older than me, not in terms of being on YouTube, but a different, he’s a couple years older than me. And it is just this constant churn though. One thing that I, I hope that the right wing is able to do is to facilitate and help young people as they get involved in this, right?

[00:58:38] Mm. Yeah. To, to actually, yeah, be cool with them. Don’t, don’t try to cut them out or something ‘cause they’re not in the, your old guard club, right? It, it is important to give them- Well, we recently

[00:58:48] Malcolm Collins: had on,

[00:58:49] Aydin Paladin: They seem- ...

[00:58:49] Malcolm Collins: Basic Logic ...

[00:58:50] Aydin Paladin: down to earth. Yeah.

[00:58:50] Malcolm Collins: I don’t know if you’ve seen his stuff.

[00:58:52] Aydin Paladin: So yeah. He’s- He’s one of the people also that I, I wanna reach out to on this because I really like his content and he-

[00:58:57] Malcolm Collins: I, I can offer to connect you with him

[00:58:59] Aydin Paladin: you know, we’ll face messaging. Oh, for sure. Yeah.

[00:59:00] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. That’d be awesome. We, he, he’s done our stuff and he’s he’s been blowing up- Hello ... like crazy. Yeah, yeah. Hello. Are you trying to join, Octavian? But

[00:59:09] Simone Collins: the biggest issue that Basic Logic pointed out for his generation was a complete lack of mentors.

[00:59:14] Oh

[00:59:14] Aydin Paladin: yeah? Is you are real hearing things? Yeah,

[00:59:17] Malcolm Collins: she’s hearing things. Yeah. Yeah, this happens every time you record, Octavian. For real. Do you wanna show them your, your teeth, Octavian? You lost two front teeth- Oh no. ... waiting for Christmas.

[00:59:26] Simone Collins: God.

[00:59:28] Malcolm Collins: Special age

[00:59:29] Simone Collins: But yeah, the, and, and I, I had never- The mentorship gap

[00:59:32] thought about it until they brought it up, that there really is this lack of mentorship, that a lot of young- Yeah ... younger people would love to engage with an older generation that largely, and there are notable exceptions, is just absent, is like- Yeah ... checked out, retirement communities, traveling, whatever.

[00:59:48] But like they’re not interested in young people, and that used to be for thousands of years kind of their thing during- Yeah ... this time of life.

[00:59:54] Aydin Paladin: Now you do have quite literally an old guard of people, because we’re like 10, 15 years out from [01:00:00] those.

[01:00:00] Simone Collins: Yeah. That’s refusing to leave office. They’re refusing to quit their jobs as well.

[01:00:03] Yes. Yes. Like when many, many people are not able to get jobs out of school anymore or out of high school- Yep ... because people are not retiring with these two. No. ‘Cause they need the money. Yes. Which I get, it’s not their fault. It’s not their fault. But also like-

[01:00:14] Aydin Paladin: No ...

[01:00:15] Simone Collins: people are just living longer and not leaving office, and that’s- Exactly.

[01:00:17] Someone said-

[01:00:18] Aydin Paladin: And you’re bringing in H-1Bs, and you’re making it a lot harder for young people to even enter the... Yeah, so- Yeah, yeah ... more people are doing things like social media as a job. Yeah. It’s, it, more people want to do it than be an astronaut from Gen Z. I know that’s the famous statistic there. I don’t know about that.

[01:00:30] Yes.

[01:00:30] Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, the

[01:00:32] Malcolm Collins: thing

[01:00:32] Simone Collins: that’s changed for me the

[01:00:33] Malcolm Collins: most this year, and this may not have been a thing for you that feels very different, is the online nerd right creator community is way more interconnected now- Oh, yeah ... than they were at the beginning of this year. Like in terms of the collabs that they do, you’ll regularly see- Yeah

[01:00:52] you know, like Tectone and Goth Conservative Guy. Yeah. Name I always forget. And Goth Conservative Guy ... nux on like d- doing a collab. I know who you’re talking about, yeah. But like we’ve had collabs with all these people, and talk to all them a lot offline, right? And try to help them, like us doing this thing with the Senate committee to try to get, one, it, it started as a project to get Nux unbanned Yeah

[01:01:11] and, and smuggle

[01:01:12] Simone Collins: him in and now on, on the- Yeah, but I looked for the numbers. Like um, I don’t know if you’re aware of Arctotherium, but he did a really good long piece about, I guess, the, the end of the open internet, Hmm ... that really goes into extensive and detailed- detail linking to everything on how the platform started in a very skewed way, Mm-hmm

[01:01:31] deplatforming and, and removing certain types of content with a very- Yeah ... clear skewed bias. And he goes platform by platform after gi- giving a really big overview, pointing out also using, like, really quantitative graphs that words like deplatforming didn’t exist until, like, super- No ... yeah, and hate speech.

[01:01:49] Yeah. Like, these words were not things, and now we’re like, “Of course deplatforming is a word.” Yeah. “It’s always been a word. Even when I was a young girl in the 1990s.” Yeah. You’re like, “No, actually. There were, there were no platforms.”

[01:02:01] Aydin Paladin: Yeah. We had to come up with these terms. Yeah.

[01:02:04] Yeah. I, I, I haven’t... I guess I have noticed that now that I, you mention it.

[01:02:07] I have seen people doing a lot more collaboration, collaborative work. I think maybe it, it is because there’s there’s... But the political energy doesn’t know where to go right now. Mm-hmm. I, I, in so many wa- That’s why we, I, we talked about earlier. What, what’s gonna be the next thing? ‘Cause I think a lot of people are going, are also confused as to what way is the, the winds are blowing in terms of what will be the next thing that will preoccupy people’s time and energy.

[01:02:33] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[01:02:34] Aydin Paladin: Where that political energy will be directed. B- I, I think they’re in a bit of a fugue state, particularly after Iran. Because, because the right wing got split on that, got split pretty heavily- Yeah ... on, on the Iran stuff in a lot of ways.

[01:02:44] Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I think a lot of the... So if you look at the Iran thing, like, 80 to 90% of MAGA was pro that.

[01:02:50] Yeah. I think what happened with that is on the internet there’s a lot of third-worlders. Mm. And people don’t really realize it. And so it felt like it was a 50/50 thing in the right on the internet, but it was really, no, you just have a lot more Pakistani followers than you realize. And a- and this, I think, pulled is, is what sort of defeated the gripers finally.

[01:03:12] Is it pulled them out and sort of made them realize that their positions are not in alignment- ... with a lot of the mainstream right right now. And here you

[01:03:21] Aydin Paladin: go. Yeah.

[01:03:22] Malcolm Collins: Octavia?

[01:03:25] Simone Collins: Oh, that

[01:03:26] Malcolm Collins: Do I need to get my bonk stick?

[01:03:28] Aydin Paladin: Uh-oh.

[01:03:31] I, I think that’s probably largely right. Well, in that... ‘Cause some of the, the polling on it, though, in terms of the favorability towards the Iran war itself, it, it, it didn’t, like, divide people so much as it turned down the, I think, the hype.

[01:03:44] Malcolm Collins: Hmm ...

[01:03:44] Aydin Paladin: particularly after the- Well, we- ... assassination of Charlie Kirk, people were, had so much political energy.

[01:03:49] They wanted to go, they wanted to do something about it. They wanted to make sure that that didn’t happen again, and people were very split. Be- a, a lot- Yeah ... of people who are my age in particular, and I, and I think around my [01:04:00] age who, and a little bit older, who lived through Gulf War, who lived through post 9/11, they think- Yeah

[01:04:05] “Oh, no, I don’t wanna go.” Not again. No, no, no, no. “I, we don’t wanna act in this quagmire again.” Yeah. “I’ve been, I’ve seen this.” And so I think that that did ha- lead people into the... Particularly when Trump had said it wasn’t gonna happen. He had also said it was. Yeah. So he’d given, you know- Mm-hmm

[01:04:19] conflicting messages on that. But that’s, I think, how a lot of people felt, and they went, “Okay, well, I, my energy has been exhausted.” Mm-hmm. “Because I thought you weren’t gonna do this, and now I feel maybe not betrayed, but a little bit like this, well, where’s the wall, and where’s the deportation? Where’s ICE?”

[01:04:36] Yeah. You know. Yeah. Why did that stuff fall into the background? It is happening. Why is it not happening at the speeds that you said it would happen? Mm-hmm. People are l- I think a little bit burned out. However, the positive way to look at that, and I hope what people do, is use that to try and find things that they do have in common rather than arguing- Yeah

[01:04:51] because I think people are real tired of arguing as well.

[01:04:53] Simone Collins: There’s also the longer game, which is, I think it makes a lot of my... Maybe this is so dumb, but I feel like intuitively it makes a lot of sense to do all the unpopular things and tank in the midterms so that people are angry enough at any- Yeah

[01:05:06] far left movements that picked up steam in the following two years that you don’t take a major hit with the next presidential election. Yeah. So, I, and I- There’s gotta be work to- Like, to get it out of the way ... be

[01:05:17] Aydin Paladin: done there. Yeah.

[01:05:17] Simone Collins: Yeah. Right now. Yeah. Just, like- Mm-hmm ... if it looks bad, if it makes people angry, do it now.

[01:05:22] Yeah. Get the backlash so that there’s enough time for people- Yeah ... to get angry at the backlash. Otherwise- Yeah, I

[01:05:28] Aydin Paladin: agree with, I

[01:05:28] Malcolm Collins: agree with that completely. Well, I mean, and the, and the backlash- It’s gotta be a- ... is starting to look pretty ridiculous, right? Yeah. Like, the left that we’re facing right now is a lot more evil than the left we had before, so I hope you’re right in your predictions about them going back to-

[01:05:38] Simone Collins: Oh, yeah.

[01:05:38] And we’re, we’re- Yeah ... I, I, I did recently, like, a research deep dive. Well, not even really. I didn’t have to do a deep dive. I just went through the DSA’s published policies, and I’m like, “Whoa.”

[01:05:47] Aydin Paladin: Like- Well, then they just tell you openly I guess who they are. That’s scary.

[01:05:51] Simone Collins: No, it’s a lot more than I thought it was gonna be in its intent.

[01:05:53] Oh, really?

[01:05:53] Aydin Paladin: Oh, no.

[01:05:54] Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. You should just read their page. I’m like, “This is what...” Th- there are reasonable expectations of, of the left. Oh,

[01:05:59] Aydin Paladin: okay. Yeah.

[01:06:00] Simone Collins: I

[01:06:00] Aydin Paladin: will do then. Yeah.

[01:06:01] Simone Collins: What’s an

[01:06:01] Malcolm Collins: example, Simone?

[01:06:02] Simone Collins: Well, I mean, you pointed out one that was really big, but also, like- Oh, God. Hold on. I, I have some highlights.

[01:06:09] Malcolm Collins: You, she’s researched an episode on this Look,

[01:06:11] Simone Collins: I am comatose, all right? This is, I, I’m in my first trimester and it is not, it’s not working well with my brain. Oh, yeah. They want to nationalize- Congratulations, though ... large corporations. They want non-citizens and incarcerated people to have the right to vote.

[01:06:22] They want all individuals to have access to government-funded gender-affirming care, all student debt canceled, race-based reparations, basically limitless immigration, and a path to citizen- citizenship for everyone. It doesn’t matter how they got to the country. No more electoral college, no more president or Supreme Court, and instead a Congress-run executive and judiciary-

[01:06:46] Aydin Paladin: Oh, I can, I can hear some of this ... chosen

[01:06:47] Simone Collins: by and subordinate to Congress. So. Okay. Wow. Yeah. And it goes on.

[01:06:50] Aydin Paladin: Well, I, DSA declares for, yeah, as you said, I, I didn’t know the, the extent of that, but DSA declares against democracy openly. Yeah, just like with- I thought we had to defend democracy.

[01:06:57] Simone Collins: Bro, well, and capitalism.

[01:06:59] Capitalism and democracy, bad. Oh. They’ve gotta go. And please have the government pay for my gender affirming care. Of course. Right. And housing and everything else. And, and job. Y- you have to have, like, a basically guaranteed job if you want one.

[01:07:10] Aydin Paladin: Well, you, you, you need to, you know, pretty specific type of government to do that kind of stuff, so I guess they’re just- Yeah

[01:07:15] being open about it at this point.

[01:07:16] Simone Collins: Look, I mean, you’re gonna have to be open about it, and I think the thing is right now, AOC is leading in, in the prediction markets for becoming the, you know, Democratic nominee. And it, look, she’s already moving in that direction. I tell you, there’s wasp back there.

[01:07:28] The National DSA has- I wouldn’t want to climb

[01:07:30] Malcolm Collins: back there ...

[01:07:30] Simone Collins: backed down from endorsing her just so she can adopt- Wasp ... the mainstream platform or, and, and policies that are necessary for her to run for president. Right. But she’s still very much endorsed by the extremely influential New York chapter of the DSA, and I’m sure, like, technically she holds all of those, those views, so.

[01:07:48] Malcolm Collins: Well I think- Yeah ... popularizing the idea- For sure ... which you’ve been doing longer than we have, that eventually a democratic process is likely not going to end in the United States, and you want it to [01:08:00] end when we’re in power. Yeah ... the, the, not when the other team’s in power. And popularizing that idea so when it does eventually happen, everybody doesn’t freak out like they did in Korea.

[01:08:11] Mm. Which was very stupid of his own party being like, “I can’t believe...” You know, we all need to be in the, “This isn’t really working anymore,” and they want to grab the flag and run away, right? Yeah. You know?

[01:08:23] Aydin Paladin: Now, I would say this. Al- although the, the, you know, left does have its history in terms of o- openly advocating for communism them being overt about it is a little bit, I mean, I don’t know.

[01:08:33] They, they really competes with the right. Both have a lot of theory and, and thinkers and people who know a lot about this stuff in terms of- Yeah ... if you’re, in terms of the, people like Curtis Yarvin- Yeah ... who have been talking about how democracy is the god that failed, you know, in terms of Han- Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

[01:08:48] You’ve got a whole bunch of people who have talked about this stuff for a very long time on the quote unquote right. The right has a lot of academic and theory behi- you know, academic work and theory behind it to say, “Okay, democracy has flaws.” The left has really worshiped sort of, you know, like, it’s our sacred democracy.

[01:09:05] That’s what they always say, “This is a threat to our democracy. Trump is a threat to our democracy,” was such a refrain. This, that, or the other is a threat to our democracy. Well, now that’s a lot of- You know, work for them to, to make and- Well, I think- ... sort of keep up with it ...

[01:09:18] Malcolm Collins: what they mean by that, we saw this was the no kings protest, we saw this was a, you know, against an- Yeah

[01:09:24] elected official who won the plurality of the vote. Yeah. Right? Like, the, when they say X is a democracy or a threat to the democracy- Yeah ... they don’t actually mean like- Oh ... the democracy, they mean- To us winning ... the, the bureaucrats- Yes ... having control.

[01:09:38] Aydin Paladin: Right. Which by the way is how almost everyone actually feels about it.

[01:09:41] Everyone wants to win. Yes. Everyone wants their side to win. Yeah. And so that inherently creates a conflict in democracy. And like, just, well wait, I lost, and so I didn’t get what I, what I want for, and because it’s not just something, you know, pointless like my sports, my favorite sports team lost. This is my future lost, my security- Mm

[01:10:00] my safety, the things that I value lost. That’s very- Yeah ... you know, the, my, my, the future of my children has been lost, potentially at least, or put on hold. And so that’s why politics inherently gets people quite animated. But it is ultimately about win, ve- lose, and yet people inherently will take sides in it.

[01:10:17] And that, you know, that is also in of itself a problem with democracy, because it means- Well- ... that people are always divided because your future, your children’s future, is dependent on somebody else going along and voting the same way as you.

[01:10:29] Malcolm Collins: And- And it’s important for people to remember that when the left has historically won democracies, they make it so the right can’t win again.

[01:10:38] Yeah. This happened in Germany where the conservatives won the plurality to get the vote, but the parties colluded to prevent the ADL from having any power. This happened in France, where the two leftist parties ran in a-

[01:10:50] Aydin Paladin: 50 ...

[01:10:51] Malcolm Collins: th- whatever way- Yeah ... to prevent the, the French conservatives from winning.

[01:10:54] And we see this in institutions like the UN and the EU. Why, when’s the last time they had a conservative person in power? When’s the last time they had a conservative voice? Like, never. It’s once the left has captured the institutions, you will never see it again. Yeah ... and the, this is an existential fight, and it’s not one we have to keep playing.

[01:11:16] I think we need to normalize some ideas first. We need to normalize some inevitabilities first. But within a couple election cycles There’s going to be a choice is does America let the barbarians win, or do we transition from a, a republic to an empire? Yeah. And I’m, I’m all about the... I mean, th- that’s Octavian right there, right?

[01:11:40] You know. Let’s,

[01:11:40] Aydin Paladin: Yeah, let’s go. I h- I certainly hope that’s the outcome, ‘cause that sure would be my, my, my favored one of the two over

[01:11:49] Simone Collins: barbarism.

[01:11:50] Aydin Paladin: I sort of think it’s one of those things

[01:11:50] Simone Collins: that, like, it branches the divide, though. I think both the left and the right in the end implicitly prefer empire and colonialism.

[01:11:58] Because in the end- Oh, yeah ... when people are arguing for [01:12:00] immigration, they’re really arguing for just colonialism 2.0. Like, let us let us modernize these backward people by bringing them to our land instead of this time going to theirs. Ooh,

[01:12:10] Malcolm Collins: that’d make a great episode, Simone. Can you outline one on is immigra- unrestricted immigration colonialism 2.0?

[01:12:16] Simone Collins: It is. It is colonialism 2.0. It’s, it’s, im- it’s, it’s explicit pretty much. Yeah, yeah. So you know, in the end, yes, everyone, everyone wants an empire. It is it’s, it crosses the aisle. And that’s great. Woo-hoo. Good. Yay. Yeah.

[01:12:28] Aydin Paladin: That,

[01:12:28] Malcolm Collins: that- Yeah. It’s just, it’s just who runs that empire- Interesting idea, too.

[01:12:30] Yeah ... the, the Islamists or the West, right?

[01:12:32] Simone Collins: That- Yeah. It depends on what, yeah, what kind of empire. Yep. That, that, that does matter.

[01:12:36] Aydin Paladin: Indeed. Yeah.

[01:12:37] Malcolm Collins: All right. Well, it was wonderful to have you on.

[01:12:40] Aydin Paladin: Yeah, thank

[01:12:40] Malcolm Collins: you for having

[01:12:41] Aydin Paladin: me ...

[01:12:41] Malcolm Collins: if you, if people have not seen her channel I

[01:12:45] Simone Collins: would s- Two channels actually now, which is very important Yeah

[01:12:46] Malcolm Collins: I’d suggest it if you like this channel. It’s very much like, a s- a, a science channel first and foremost, right? But it talks about- Well, no, no ... naughty

[01:12:57] Aydin Paladin: science. Wait, it’s, it’s S- S- Savian Science. Oh Sci- the Sciencible one or Aidan’s

[01:12:59] Simone Collins: biology? Yeah, Sciencible. Yeah, Sciencible’s the new channel, and that’s more science-focused, right, and

[01:13:02] Aydin Paladin: then you’re- Yes. It’s gonna be... I mean, mo- most of what I’ve done is just, it’s not, it’s not political. But it will be just, like, for science stuff where I’m just gonna be, I’m just tell you the truth about it.

[01:13:11] It’s not, it’s not going to be in any way censored or, it you know, shying away from topics that Might offend people in any kind of way, but it is just science. So whereas the Aidan Paladin channel, I’m mostly going, my main channel, my older channel, mostly for scientific topics or the intersection of science and explicitly politics.

[01:13:29] So- Hmm. Yeah ... you know, I re- my, I recently did one about, like I said, to talk about gender politics. I did one before about elections, the, the psychology behind elections actually. So that kind of stuff will be more explicitly political, and the stuff on the science-typical channel will be more variety science- Yes

[01:13:43] less focused, yeah.

[01:13:45] Malcolm Collins: And,

[01:13:46] Simone Collins: That’s perfect. Where can people learn more about The Beowulf Foundation?

[01:13:48] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[01:13:48] Aydin Paladin: Oh, yes. So, explicitly what we’re promoting right now is our publishing house, Wylfings, which is W-Y-L-F-I-N-G-S. And we have a ton of different books. Like I, we have the en- entire collected works of Major General Richard Hilton.

[01:14:02] If you’re interested in military history in particular- Mm-hmm ... I would definitely check those out. Imperial Obituary: The Mysterious Death of the British Empire, particularly if you’re interested in British military history. His books are fantastic. As I mentioned before, Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell by Simon Heffer, that book was out of s- no one was publishing it.

[01:14:20] It was in many senses a banned book because Enoch Powell is a, you know, no-no right-wing figure in, in history. We publish it, and it’s not the only one. We also have some other books that have previously been out of print, and then we do also have, for example, I mentioned Ed Dutton. He does the his channel’s The Jolly Heretic here on YouTube.

[01:14:38] We have his most recent book, The Quaker Question, which is you know, Oh, I didn’t

[01:14:42] Simone Collins: know that he had a new book. Oh my

[01:14:43] Aydin Paladin: gosh. Yeah, he does. And-

[01:14:44] Simone Collins: Is it pro or anti-Quaker?

[01:14:46] Aydin Paladin: I think, I’ve not read it yet. I, I’ve read a little bit of it. Yeah. But I, I think he just goes into sort of the idea that the Quakers actually are the ones running society secretly from pulling the strings.

[01:14:57] It’s

[01:14:57] Malcolm Collins: just like- We, we’ve argued that as well.

[01:14:59] Aydin Paladin: Yeah. Really? Okay.

[01:15:01] Malcolm Collins: We argue that wokeism is a form of a, it descended from Quaker values and culture. And, I think- ... that it’s a form of Quaker culture that is fighting against right-wing culture, which is- Mm-hmm ... a form of Puritan culture. Or at least like the new right culture is, is, is a form of Puritan culture.

[01:15:17] Yeah, yeah. But a lot of people are unaware of this because Quakers have distorted the actual Puritan positions.

[01:15:23] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[01:15:23] Malcolm Collins: Like one of the things we point out about Puritans that a lot of people are unaware of is until the 19th century, a lot of Puritan works had to be censored because they were so sexually explicit.

[01:15:32] Simone Collins: Oh,

[01:15:32] Malcolm Collins: wow. The Puritans were not an anti-sex people. They were, they would’ve been if they were in the modern era- They’re just enthusiastic sex within marriage ... the sexy anime women- Oh, okay. Yeah ... but monogamous marriages and kids, which is very much like what our faction has become. Yeah. Because they, they, they sort of had this belief of like if you, if you’re sh- shying away from something you’re still letting it control you.

[01:15:55] Aydin Paladin: Ah, I see, yeah. Yeah. I’ve not read it. I, I, I’ve read some of D- Ed’s other books, but [01:16:00] this is a little bit outside of what I, I typically knew him to cover. So this is actually... And knowing you’ve covered it as well, I’ll definitely have to actually read it myself. But we have that book. We’re about to publish My Friend Scrump.

[01:16:09] He’s published a book with us before and he... Which was oh my gosh, he does... It’s not on my list here, but it’s Anti-Politics volume one. There we go. That’s his first book. Mm. And it’s about to publish Anti-Politics volume two. So yeah, we’ve got all kinds of stuff that’s both contemporary, things that are banned and things that are just difficult to find.

[01:16:25] And it’s largely, it’s everything from like politics to history, everything in between. And we also do publish basically a yearly magazine that includes works from people predominantly in the British right who have written pieces for that magazine The Corncrake.

[01:16:39] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

[01:16:40] Aydin Paladin: So yeah. Okay. Check, check out Wolfings Publishing.

[01:16:42] It’s part of a, again, broader organization that is trying to bring all sorts of things under the same umbrella so that you can support other people who are ideologically aligned while just buying things that you were, you already want to buy or would be interested in anyway. You know?

[01:16:55] Malcolm Collins: Great. And if there’s any way, I, I, I’m happy to work with you guys with RFAB if any way you want to.

[01:17:01] Obviously RFAB is probably too coded because like one of... We do not-safe-for-work like, Mm ... chatbots and stuff like that as well on the site. Mm-hmm. Which is probably not okay with a, a lot of right-wing organizations. But nobody in our community cares. So- you know, if, if somebody wants to do that stuff, that’s, that’s the internet.

[01:17:19] People are like, “Oh my God, what if a kid sees it?” It’s like, bro, if a kid’s on the internet- ... okay, and, and, and, and they’re gonna get one shot by seeing something, they’re already one shot. Like- Yeah, yeah ... you’ve, you’ve lost that game already. They’ve... If they can type into Google you know-

[01:17:33] Aydin Paladin: Yeah ...

[01:17:34] Malcolm Collins: that’s, this, I don’t, I don’t care about any of that.

[01:17:35] But yeah, I, I just always get annoyed by these Discord controversies. Mm. “Can you believe that X was on somebody’s...”

[01:17:42] Aydin Paladin: F**k

[01:17:43] Malcolm Collins: off. You fu- I’ve, it’s al-

[01:17:45] Aydin Paladin: it’s always high school forever. That’s what that is. It’s just always

[01:17:48] Malcolm Collins: high school forever. Yeah, I’m like, oh, you’re so... It... What are you talking about? Anyway, have fun.

[01:17:54] Have a great day. You too. Go check out her stuff. Check out these events if you’re in the area. And yeah, it was great to have you on. And-

[01:18:00] Aydin Paladin: Yeah, great. Thank you so much for having me ...

[01:18:03] Malcolm Collins: we went really long. Oops.

[01:18:05] Aydin Paladin: Whoop. Oopsies.

[01:18:06] Speaker: Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear

[01:18:22] Octavian. Happy birthday to you. Now, before you blow your candles out, make a big, big wish, okay? I wish- No, no, no. Toasty Octavian’s gotta wish, okay? Oh. Yeah, you’ll wish them for your birthday. Can I keep it a secret though? Yeah, keep it a secret. Don’t tell anyone

[01:18:45] Man down, but don’t worry, you can still make your wish You gotta make your wish. Make your wish Now you can blow out your candles

[01:18:56] Speaker 4: Now. Whoa. Okay. Whoa, whoa,

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of Based Camp, Simone and Malcolm Collins break down Heidi Blake’s exhaustive New Yorker investigation “Andrew Tate’s Empire of Abuse.”

They examine the documented pattern of rape, strangulation, underage exploitation, financial and psychological control, human trafficking, and the systematic teaching of “pimping” through the War Room. Key accounts include Lauren Southern’s experience in Romania, the early UK cam-house abuses, the recruitment and abuse of Romanian schoolgirls, the use of female enforcers, the coercion and reputation-destruction of women who tried to leave, and the real-world violence linked to Tate’s content.

The discussion also covers Tate’s conversion to Islam, the Taliban’s public support, the double standard with Jeffrey Epstein, the failure of parts of the online right to apply consistent standards, and why “maximum masculinity” as an identity is a reliable red flag for dangerous actors.

Sensitive content warning: detailed discussion of sexual violence, underage exploitation, trafficking, and child abuse.

Show Notes

For the full thing, read: Andrew Tate’s Empire of Abuse

How the defining figure of the manosphere built a fortune—and became a political force—by systematically exploiting women

By Heidi Blake, published June 8th

In this article, Blake “pieced together an account of Tate’s activities from thousands of private messages, internal documents, sealed prosecutorial files, and court records—as well as scores of interviews with the Tates, their associates, and more than a dozen alleged victims”

“I’ve done this with over 100 girls,” Tate said, about compelling women into sex work. “I almost sound evil. But I’m not.”

The Lauren Southern case

In case you’re not familiar with Lauren Southern: “She had become a darling of the manosphere at the age of nineteen with a video titled “Why I Am Not a Feminist,” in which she argued that men were the real victims of an unjust society. She followed up with a series of videos in which she trolled women who marched against sexual violence, ridiculing their views and holding up a sign saying “THERE IS NO RAPE CULTURE IN THE WEST.””

After getting introduced by Tommy Robinson, Andrew Tate got Lauren Southern to fly to Romania.

“She told me that she flew to Bucharest without knowing much about Tate; Robinson had simply said that a kickboxer in Eastern Europe wanted to finance her work. When they arrived, Tate was waiting in one of his supercars, and he insisted on taking her out for lunch alone. Over steak, he told her “everything that you would want to hear as a conservative right-wing woman,” talking about the importance of family and praising her work. “You’re saving Western civilization,” she remembers him saying.”

“After lunch, they headed to Tate’s compound. At a long table, Southern listened as the brothers laid out their proposal: they would fund a new right-wing media venture, with her and Robinson in charge, if she would use it to pump a cryptocurrency they were planning to launch. The idea, she recalls, was, “basically, we’re going to create a European-nationalist outlet to fleece all these idiots for money.””

Hmmmmmm….. That’s not what our community does

“That evening, the Tates took Southern to a club, where they ordered bottle service. After a couple of shots of vodka, she recalls, she suddenly felt “like my consciousness was collapsing.” Tate carried her to his car, and when she came to they were on the bed at her hotel.”

“Tate started kissing Southern and pulling off her clothes. She told me that she tried to push his hands away, but he wouldn’t stop. Then he hooked his arm around her neck and started to squeeze. She remembers thinking, “Oh, s**t, this guy actually is going to rape me.” Southern was anti-abortion, and was terrified of getting pregnant. She began pleading with him: “I know what you’re gonna do here. Please just wear a condom. Please.””

“Southern remembers fading in and out of consciousness as Tate raped her unprotected and choked her. Afterward, he sat on the edge of the bed and said, “Don’t tell the press I raped you.” She remembers saying, “My whole brand is literally talking about how stupid b*****s get themselves in situations like this. There’s nothing I can say without destroying my career. So congratulations.””

“In the car to the airport, Southern said, she discovered burst blood vessels around her eyes and marks on her neck. Back in Toronto, she was examined by a nurse who specialized in sexual assault. On an assessment form, the nurse recorded that Southern had been raped and strangled by a “well known male” at a hotel in Romania and had suffered an intimate injury. She noted that Southern seemed to be experiencing “personal struggles with her belief system” as a result.”

“Southern told me that she tried to apply her political convictions to her experience, telling herself that she was at fault for drinking with a man she didn’t know. A month later, she texted Tate. “It was really shitty what you did that night in Bucharest,” she wrote. “I’m not going to tell anyone obviously because I was an absolute moron, but I hope you don’t do that to anyone else.”

““What did I do?” Tate replied. “I expected tons better from you. This msg is some liberal #metoo b******t.””

“You literally strangled me when I said I didn’t want to have sex,” Southern wrote. “You literally told me in the morning ‘don’t tell the press I raped you.’ ”

“You’re absolutely embarrassing yourself,” he wrote.

“Tate denied raping Southern, but he bragged to the War Room about spending the night with her, saying that he had invited her to Romania to discuss a business deal but “didn’t invest a f***ing penny.””

The Depravity

He assaulted and raped women becuase he thought it would lead them to not require payment in exchange for camgirl work

* This started with two young women, Walker and Navvaro, in the UK he recruited after learning from one of his girlfriends how much he could make

* “But Tate was already coming to resent paying Navarro and Walker a cut of their earnings. Hruskova let him keep “100% of the f***ng money,” he later said. But, he complained, “once you get bigger, you start hiring girls who don’t love you.” He decided on a strategy: “I have a financial incentive to f*** as many as I can.”

* NOTE ABOUT HRUSKOVA: “He reported in private chats that her live streams had made him around two million dollars, but all she got was pocket money for coffee and manicures.”

* Even before this, when he did give them money, he immediately took them to malls and told them to go on shopping sprees, which meant they lacked funds to get away

* What it was like to be in the house:

* “One morning, Navarro [who was stranded at the house because the Tates would not drive her home and she lacked money or a car to get out] woke up to Tate and Walker having sex next to her. She shushed them, and Walker got up and went into the bathroom. When she was gone, Navarro said, Tate put her in a choke hold and raped her for a second time. Though she clawed at his arms, he wouldn’t release his grip. “I was scared that he was going to kill me,” she told me. Then Walker emerged from the shower, and he rolled off her.

* Later, Navarro said, she was working on camera when she heard strange noises and went to investigate. Through the open bedroom door, she saw Tate strangling Walker on the bed. Walker’s face was red and puffy, and her body was limp. Navarro said that she felt a strange paralysis. “I was, like, There’s nothing I can do about it,” she told me. She went back to work.”

* “The following morning, Navarro and Walker were putting on makeup in the bathroom when they noticed clusters of red spots around their eyes. Walker searched online and saw that petechiae—burst blood vessels—can be a sign of acute pressure in the head from strangulation. The women began to panic. Hearing a commotion, the Tates came to the door. When they saw the marks, they laughed. “You’re such dumb b*****s,” Navarro remembers them saying. “That’s from sleeping on the silk sheets.””

* “Navarro said that Tate started attacking her at random moments. Multiple times, when she slept late, he whipped her with a belt. Time became a blur, and the world outside the apartment seemed to recede. But, one day, Navarro had a moment alone, and something snapped: she walked out the door and never went back.”

* This was BEFORE he stopped women from escaping

Tate abused women on camera

“In one video, Tate lay on a bed and ordered Hruskova to show the camera her tattoo. “Why does it say ‘Tate’?” he asked.

“Because I’m his w***e,” she replied.

“Why’s your ass got a bruise on it?”

“Because my daddy hits me.”

Tate picked up a belt and began whipping Hruskova as she lay in the fetal position, sobbing. “B***h, look at the camera,” he told her, yanking her head back by the hair. “This is what happens when you don’t f***ing listen.””

When footage of this video was released online, Andrew Tate “said that Hruskova was an ex-girlfriend, and shared a photo of her holding a belt inscribed with the words “But I love when Andrew spanks me.””

SHE WAS 15 YEARS OLD IN THAT PHOTO

HE BEAT HER SO MUCH HE MADE A THEMED BELT FOR IT

Tate Raped Underage Girls

There was a LOT of underage stuff. Consider the testimony of Irina Pavel (name changed):

* “When Pavel was fifteen, she told investigators, she had accompanied a school friend to a party hosted by the Tates, which was full of young girls. Her friend paired off with Tristan, leaving her with Andrew, who was so drunk that he spat as he talked. He pulled her into a bedroom and raped her, she said. Afterward, some of Tate’s “female friends” persuaded the girls to stick around for several days, and Tate kept having sex with Pavel. “We had normal, oral, and anal sexual relations, but I mention that the anal sexual acts were traumatic for me because I was in pain,” she told investigators. “Even though I asked Andrew to stop, he continued.”

* The girls eventually had to go back to school, but, Pavel said, the Tates sent a taxi every few weeks to bring them to the compound. Tate was “often aggressive,” beating her with a belt and choking her—but he also bought her Teddy bears. Finally, he discovered that she had been chatting with a boy online and became furious, throwing her phone into the pool and kicking her out.”

Tate Deputized Women to Hurt Other Women

(This is on top of Tate playing women against each other)

* “Tate had assigned Georgiana Naghel to “keep the farm animals on task,” and a former police officer named Luana Radu was brought in to work alongside her. The two were a ferocious team. They issued instructions through a WhatsApp group called Suspicious Death, and punished workers who failed to comply. Women could be fined for failing to work their required hours, or for committing various offenses on camera, including crying or wiping their noses.”

* “When one woman, whom I’ll call Lorina Dobre, announced that she wanted to leave soon after the brothers funded her breast enlargement, Tristan instructed the enforcers to keep all her money and belongings to recoup their investment. “Hit her if you have to, I don’t care,” he texted, according to sealed court files. “Throw her out of the house with nothing.” The women were eager to oblige. “I want my money back or I’ll cut her tits off,” Naghel vowed.”

* “Dobre later told police that the enforcers arrived at the villa and dragged her outside in her underwear, yanking her arm so hard that it wrenched a scar from her breast-enlargement surgery. “Georgiana wanted to kill her,” Radu wrote to Tristan. “I kept saying ‘beat her without leaving any marks, please.’ ””

* ““I love you girls,” he replied.”

Tate abuses his children

Here’s what the article says about the Tate brothers’ children:

* “Women became pregnant, and Andrew has said that both he and Tristan have “double-digit” children. “I’m the big gorilla,” he said. “I take the fertile females and I impregnate them.””

* ““My kids obey me like f***ing soldiers,” he said. On his orders, his five-year-old son would sit for hours in silence: “Doesn’t f*****g move, doesn’t say a f*****g word, because he’s scared for his f***ing life.””

They took the “lover-boy method” to scale

* Often targeting young women from troubled homes or women living in poverty, “They trawled dating apps and social media for young women, blasting out hundreds of identical messages and frequently changing their location to expand their reach. Women who responded were romanced. Tate sent one a flurry of questions: Where did she want to travel? Had she ever been skydiving? Had she ever seen a Dubai sunset? Those who proved susceptible were groomed for sex work. “Every day, I sent twenty Instagrams. Every day, I was on a date. I was f***ing four girls, five girls a week,” Tate said in a War Room video.”

* Then he had his original girlfriend Hruskova sell them the dream

* Then they’d get the victim drunk and have a threesome

* Then they’d make them live in their Romanian compound and not permit them to leave

When the social media outreach didn’t sale enough, they recruited female British entrepreneur named Naomi John to launch a recruitment agency called Model Stars which described itself “in promotional materials as an “all-female business,” in which “women help other women to escape the 9-5 work schedule and earn life-changing amounts of money.””

“Over time, their recruitment efforts became more brazen. They began reaching out to high schoolers, and hosted parties for teen-age girls at their compound. Andrew shared a video of one such event with the War Room. “16 year old hoes are all over the house,” he wrote, adding, “More girls = more money.””

They silenced women by torching reputations and/or threatening worse

* “One of Tristan Tate’s top “defenders described Tristan as behaving like a “dictator,” and said that, when she decided to leave, he attacked her verbally and hacked her social-media accounts. One of his associates threatened to set fire to her car.

* The Tates’ messages show that they repeatedly ordered associates to punish women by hijacking their social-media accounts and posting pornographic images of them to their followers. When another worker fled the operation, Tristan told Naomi John to log in to her Instagram account and “burn it down.””

* Another woman, Liana Vintilla, who grew unhappy was told “by text that he had mafia connections who might try to find her, and that he had the same blood chemistry as a serial killer. A few days earlier, after she wrote him that she was miserable, he had summoned her to his bedroom. There, Vintilla said, he punched her in the face and raped her, squeezing her head painfully between his hands. She said he threatened to get her pregnant and then lock her in a house—so that she would “definitely go crazy.””

He used his platform to help Trump get elected to get the administration to pressure Romania into removing his travel ban

The article talks about this

He paid off local police to suppress reports:

* “Court records show that local police sat on at least two reports indicating that the Tates were coercing Romanian women into sex work. Andrew openly discussed bribing law-enforcement officials in War Room chats, and bragged on social media about his connections.”

* His efforts were so successful that, despite one new recruit from Miami literally getting the US embassy to raid the Tates’ Romanian compound in which she was trapped, resulting in the women present being taken into custody and an investigation into human trafficking, Andrew and Tristan were quickly released after questioning.

The War Room & the Taliban

What makes these actions even more evil is that Andrew and his brother actively work to bring it to scale.

The War Room

For $3,000 to $8,000/month, Andrew Tate’s War Room teaches members how to recruit women in to “sexual slavery” (their words) through tutorials Andrew Tate refers to as his Ph.D. aka “Pimping Hoes Degree.”

* In his tutorials, he uses his own victims as case studies

* “Tate’s Pimping Hoes Degree course was the core of the curriculum. “Some women are more susceptible to being molded,” Tate told pupils. To gauge a woman’s malleability, members were taught to dismiss her harshly after sex and then demand an act of service—buying coffee or chocolate, cooking a meal. If she complied, she was through to the next level.”

He clearly enabled men to do horrible things:

* “One star pupil was a Texan man who said that he was making six figures while his girlfriend streamed for thirteen-hour stretches. He posted a photograph of her bent over a stool in a grimy workspace, next to a table set with what appeared to be lubricant, wipes, and sex toys. “Got her on Chaturbate, and sleeping in the concrete floored garage with no A/C, spiders, and roaches,” he wrote. “Absolutely legendary work,” Tristan responded.”

* “The most zealous pimp was a meaty, shaven-headed Romanian named Vlad Obuzic, who ran a webcam studio in Bucharest…. When another member asked Obuzic how he subdued recruits, he gave a recent example. “I took her keyboard and hit her in the head with it. She went in the room and worked 7 hours without any break,” he said, later adding that he had beaten every woman he had been with. Some users were perturbed by Obuzic’s stories. “That just sounds like abuse to me,” one wrote. But the Tates elevated Obuzic; he got his own channel, the Revenge Room, where he taught “raw, uncensored methods of pimping and handling women.” As his status grew, he dispensed lessons on handling local law enforcement. “I had multiple charges for beating people up, hitting them with bricks in the head etc and I just paid 500-1000$ and nothing happened,” he said. “If you position yourself right, corruption suits you.””

General Social Media Impact

* “His influence is being felt around the world. Last year, a seventeen-year-old boy in New Jersey allegedly drove his car into two teen-age girls, killing them both, after joking on a live stream about women getting raped by Tate. In Britain, a man who had recently watched about ten of Tate’s videos raped his ex-girlfriend and murdered her, her mother, and her sister using a crossbow. British police have warned that Tate’s teachings are radicalizing young men in a “terrifying” manner and declared that violence against women is a national emergency. Reports of rapes and sexual assaults in British schools—some involving victims as young as five—have soared in the past five years, and education leaders describe violent misogyny spreading on an “epidemic scale.” Similar concerns have been reported across North America and Asia.”

The Taliban

Andrew Tate caught on with the Taliban as he converted to Islam in late 2022.

* Shortly after Andrew Tate’s December 2022 arrest in Romania, Sameera Khan (a Tate supporter) hosted or participated in a Twitter Space involving people presenting as Afghan Taliban. Participants reportedly said they were “worried about Andrew Tate,” asked if he was free yet, and stated that Westerners “need Andrew Tate because we are oppressed by feminists.” One named participant claimed affiliation with the Cultural Commission of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

Accounts operating under names like “Taliban Public Relations Department, Commentary” (@TalibanPRD_ and similar handles, which link to the official Islamic Emirate English site alemarahenglish.af) posted multiple statements of support:

* They demanded Andrew Tate’s “immediate release,” claimed the “Taliban Movement” was the only entity exerting diplomatic pressure on Romania for the Tates’ freedom, and stated “The Matrix will not defeat #AndrewTate.”

* They offered the Tate brothers Afghan citizenship and “masculine passports” once released, framing this as protection against “kidnapping by #Matrix affiliated nations.”

* They compared Afghanistan to Andrew Tate (“Straight, Rugged and Stiff to the point”).

* They likened Tate to Julian Assange as “freedom-loving warriors,” mocked figures like Boris Johnson as Matrix members, and said the “Emirates will battle tooth and nail to free” them.

Shifting Subscriber Count

Andrew Tate publicly converted to Islam in October 2022; that conversion ultimately diversified and expanded his audience, especially among young muslim men, while his original audience largely stuck around.

Looking at his subscribers is complicated by bannings/reintroductions:

* Mid-2022: Explosive organic growth, especially via TikTok clips (reported in the billions of views).

* August 2022: Banned from Instagram (lost ~4.6–4.7 million followers), Facebook, YouTube (~740k subscribers at the time), and TikTok.

* Late October 2022: Conversion announced.

* November 18, 2022: X/Twitter account reinstated by Elon Musk.

* Late December 2022 onward: Arrest in Romania and subsequent legal proceedings generated massive additional publicity.

Followers on X.com

* November 18 2022 when reinstated: ~38K

* Two days later: 1M

* Late December 2022: 4.1-4.5M

* April 2023: 6.4M

* Dec 2023: 8.5M

* Aug 2024: 9.9M

* 2025-2026: 10.7-10.85M

Other Platforms

* Rumble: 1.1-1.2M subscribers, videos get 100K-250K views

* Substack: 1.1M subscribers

The Extent to Which People Had No Idea How Bad it Was

Because people assumed Andrew Tate was… human, they assumed the same thing I did; that he had a bunch of fleeced-over girlfriends who he treated horribly, but that he wasn’t engaged in actual sex trafficking

It’s hard to blame folks, most right-wing bombasts are ultimately kind, ethical people in private, and Andrew explicitly said things to Blake that implied he’d be baffled if investigators found anything, telling her in an in-person interview: “Show me a victim. Show me a hurt girl. Show me a bruise. Show me a girl chained up. Show me something.”

* After Andrew Tate was deplatformed, he signed an agreement with Rumble in which he received $6,000,000/year in exchange for “a weekly quota of five short videos and a thirty-minute live stream.”

* According to Blake, “His presence inspired a forty-five-per-cent increase in active users, sending Rumble to first place on the Apple and Google charts. A few months later, Elon Musk bought Twitter and reinstated Tate’s account.”

* “When Tate was arrested on human-trafficking charges, his allies defended him. Donald Trump, Jr., called the case “absolute insanity,” and Musk suggested that the authorities were targeting the Tates while ignoring “actual sex trafficking.” [Tucker] Carlson, who had just released a documentary called “The End of Men,” devoted hours of airtime to proclaiming Tate’s innocence; so did the right-wing podcaster Candace Owens. The activist Charlie Kirk praised him onstage. “What he says is so powerful,” Kirk said. “Our society is configured towards collapsing the American man.””

EVEN HEIDI BLAKE, THE AUTHOR OF THIS ARTICLE DOESN’T SEEM TO GET IT

“Despite his mixed heritage, he promoted the great-replacement theory, declaring, “The west is collapsing because it’s full of disgusting traitors. White people who beg to be erased.””

HE IS NOT ACTING LIKE DISAPPEARING WHITE PEOPLE IS BAD; HE’S SAYING THEY’RE DISGUSTING TRAITORS.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Simone Collins: I just wanna make that clear. Like, I just, the double standard with Tate and Epstein is so unhinged when you know what Tate did and what’s so well documented versus what’s documented with- Mm ... with Jeffrey Epstein. I, I, so I just wanna make that clear. When this video was made, she was 15 years old. Oh my Go- And he beat her so much that he made a themed belt for it.

[00:00:23] Would you like to know more?

[00:00:24] Simone Collins: Hello, Malcolm. I’m so excited to be speaking with you today because we need to talk a little bit about how welcoming our community is. Not that it’s bad. I think it’s good. Like yesterday, we interviewed Ikki Waru, who’d just been canceled, and, like, everyone has been so welcoming to her.

[00:00:39] Like, “Look, y- you’re being reasonable. Like, you’re saying some bombastic stuff, and we love it. Like, come on our side.” And I think it’s great. It, it works out great generally. We help each other out. We learn from each other. We do cool stuff. You know, we don’t agree on everything, but that’s okay. But, but, big but, the, the right made a massive mistake with Andrew Tate.

[00:01:01] And let me give you a case in point, Malcolm. It, it is covered by Heidi Blake in this crazy, sprawling New Yorker- Yeah, you’ve

[00:01:07] Malcolm Collins: gone o- you’ve been wanting to do this episode for days at this point, since

[00:01:11] Simone Collins: we learned- Yeah, well, and I had, and it took me so freaking long ‘cause her piece is so... It’s like a novel.

[00:01:15] The New Yorker has a problem. Like, say it in a word, please. But honestly, there’s so much stuff in here that I get... This is kind of the, the, the kind of piece that you only can publish in The New Yorker. Either that or it’s gonna be a novel, which no one’s gonna read. So maybe this is her best bet to, like, get this out there.

[00:01:30] Malcolm Collins: So go, go into it. Go into it.

[00:01:31] Simone Collins: Right, so here’s, here’s just one case in point, and we’re gonna go way farther than this. But this is, this is meaningful because this is an example of Andrew Tate leveraging the openness and trustingness of the right-wing space, especially online, like, influencer, right-wing influencer spaces- Mm-hmm

[00:01:49] to be super freaking evil and a bad actor

[00:01:52] all right. So both being right loo- wing influencers w- who are from Luton in the UK, Andrew Tate knew Tommy Robinson.

[00:01:59] So Andrew Tate asked Tommy for an introduction to Lauren Southern. And if you’re not familiar with Laura- Lauren Southern, she... And I’m reading now from a quote from the article. “She’d become a darling of the manosphere at the age of 19 with a video titled Why I Am Not Feminist, in which she argued that men were the real victims of an unjust society.”

[00:02:17] Mm. “She followed up with a series of videos in which she trolled women who marched against sexual violence, ridiculing their views and holding up a sign saying, ‘There is no rape culture in the West.’ After getting introduced by Tommy Robinson to Andrew Tate, Lauren was convinced by Andrew Tate to fly out to Romania.”

[00:02:34] Continuing from the article, “She told me that she flew to Bucharest without knowing much about Tate. Robinson had simply said that a kickboxer in Eastern Europe wanted to finance her work. When they arrived, Tate was waiting in one of his supercars, and he insisted on taking her out for lunch alone.

[00:02:49] Over steak, he told her, quote, ‘Everything that you want to hear as a conservative, right-wing woman,’ end quote.” Taking a... Talking about the importance of family and praising her work. Mm. Quote, “’You’re saving Western civilization,’ she remembers him saying. After lunch, they headed to Tate’s compound.” At a long table, Southern listened to, as the brothers laid out their proposal.

[00:03:10] They would fund a new right-wing media venture with her and Robinson in charge if she would use it to pump a cryptocurrency they were planning to launch. The idea, she recalls, was, quote, “Basically, we were gonna create a European nationalist outlet to fleece all these idiots for money,” end quote. Like, first off, that’s not what our community does.

[00:03:32] We don’t, like, get together and try to fleece people over who listen to us.

[00:03:37] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, right?

[00:03:38] Simone Collins: That’s, okay, so I’m, I’m like, huh, huh, okay, hmm. I continue that evening, the Tates took Southern to a club where they ordered bottle service. After a couple of shots of vodka, she recalls, she suddenly felt, quote, “Like my consciousness was collapsing,” end quote.

[00:03:53] Tate carried her to his car, and when she came to, they were on the bed o- at her hotel. Tate started [00:04:00] kissing Southern and pulling off her clothes. She told me that she tried to push his hands away, but he wouldn’t stop. Then he hooked his arm around her neck and started to squeeze. She remembers thinking, “Oh, s**t, this guy’s actually going to rape me.”

[00:04:13] Southern was anti-abortion and terrified of getting pregnant. She began pleading with him, quote, “I know what you’re gonna do here. Please wear a condom. Please.” Southern remembers fading in and out of consciousness as Tate raped her, unprotected, and choked her. Afterward, he sat on the edge of the bed and said, “Don’t tell the press I raped you.”

[00:04:31] She remembers saying, “My whole brand is literally talking about how stupid b*****s get themselves in situations like this. There’s nothing I can say without destroying my career, so congratulations.” In the car at the airport Southern said she discovered burst blood vessels around her eyes and marks on her neck.

[00:04:47] Back in Toronto, she was examined by a nurse who specialized in sexual assault. On the assessment form, the nurse recorded that Southern had been raped and strangled by, quote, “A well-known male,” end quote, at a hotel in Romania and had suffered an intimate injury. She noted that Southern seemed to be experiencing, quote, “personal , struggles with her belief system” as a result.

[00:05:06] Southern told me that she tried to apply her political convictions to her experience, telling herself that she was at fault for drinking with a man she didn’t know. A month later, she texted Tate, quote, “It was really crappy what you did that night in Bucharest,” she wrote. “I’m not going to tell anyone, obviously, because I was an absolute moron, but I hope you don’t do that to anyone else,” end quote.

[00:05:27] “What did I do?” Tate replied. “I expected tons better from you. This message is some liberal #MeToo BS.” “You literally strangled me when I said I didn’t wanna have sex,” Southern wrote. “You literally told me in the morning, ‘Don’t tell the press I raped you.’ You’re absolutely embarrassing yourself,” he wrote. Tate denied raping Southern, but he bragged to the War Room, this is his, like, club where he teaches men how to do what he does- Yeah

[00:05:52] about spending the night with her, saying that he’d invited her to Romania to discuss a business deal, but quote, “Didn’t invest a effing penny.” So that’s what he does when people trust him in, in this community

[00:06:06] Malcolm Collins: and it, the, by the way, the stuff you’re gonna hear beyond this is as bad as this is so much worse than this.

[00:06:13] Simone Collins: Yeah. And- No, this, this is like the someone had a bad experience with him. This is not the Yeah.

[00:06:20] Malcolm Collins: Well,, I think the in our community broadly, there, there are not many other people in our community where I’m like, “I’m worried they would do this stuff,” because back when Andrew Tate was part of the American online right community, the community was much more manosphere influenced, much more red pill influenced.

[00:06:42] Like, the, Andrew Tate wasn’t the only person like this in these talking spaces.

[00:06:47] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah ... and- But, the, so here’s the thing. Look, I gave Andrew Tate the benefit of the doubt, and even with stories like this, like, I could kinda be like, “Look, what did you expect?” You know, I’ve been in positions like- No,

[00:06:57] Malcolm Collins: Laura Southern has no reason to lie about this.

[00:07:00] This would do nothing but hurt her brand. The- Yeah ... there is, there is zero benefit to Laura Southern to say- No,

[00:07:06] Simone Collins: and honestly, she, she did not come clean about this for years until, ‘cause you know Andrew Tate i- i- and him and his brother are in, like, some Miami detention center right now because they’re gonna be extradited to the UK, and they’re gonna throw the book at them because there are so many counts against them at this point.

[00:07:23] You’ll see why. But the only reason she came out was because she had documented evidence of this and because she hadn’t been pulled into his actual circle, and then of course lost control of her phones and everything else. She had the evidence. And she could, she could provide testimony and, and contribute to this case, which she realized would be really meaningful.

[00:07:44] So the only reason she came out was she saw all these other women coming out and was like, “Oh, God,” like-

[00:07:49] Malcolm Collins: Y- yeah ... “I have

[00:07:50] Simone Collins: to do this.” Well,

[00:07:51] Malcolm Collins: I, I mean, I, I do wish she had come out earlier because I think that, like, i- i- even, even if to use herself as an example of a woman [00:08:00] being dumb and to remind women not to just trust men because they’re saying the right-wing talking

[00:08:04] Simone Collins: points.

[00:08:04] You can understand her cognitive dissonance, though, because she just spent, like, all this time talking about how this happened, and she just, she did it. She fell right into it. Yeah. Like, that’s what’s so screwed up. Also, there were other women who came forward 10 years before any of this happened who provided their cell phones, turned them over, and there were a combination of fumbles made by the UK police.

[00:08:25] Surprise, surprise, they’re not really taking, you know, sexual assault seriously.

[00:08:29] Malcolm Collins: Oh, gosh. Keystone Cops.

[00:08:30] Simone Collins: It’s,

[00:08:31] Malcolm Collins: it is horrifying. Well, I mean, sexual assault by a, a Muslim immigrant, right? You know, how-

[00:08:34] Simone Collins: Well, he wasn’t a

[00:08:35] Malcolm Collins: Muslim then ... we know how seriously they take that in the UK.

[00:08:37] Simone Collins: Well, I, and I know. Like, that’s kinda the thing is it kinda doesn’t matter who it is because, like, they, they don’t take it, and so she even had given them her phone.

[00:08:44] Wi- the, well actually, I think there were three of those victims in this 10 years ago case. And, and then they flubbed the chain of custody, which made it almost impossible to admit that as evidence. So even when there were super solid extremely early cases against the Tate brothers- Nothing happened.

[00:09:02] And that was- And

[00:09:02] Malcolm Collins: I wanna be clear to, to people on the right who are manosphere whatever and are like, “Oh, these women got themselves into these situations,” or whatever. You cannot be anti-abortion and treat SA as not murder. Like, it’s, it’s in the same realm as murder if you are extremely anti-abortion.

[00:09:21] Simone Collins: And- Well, and you know, I, I, I still... Like, I knew, we all knew, we all collectively knew that Andrew Tate used the lover boy scheme to, like, get all these women to come be like, OnlyFans and, and more for him, right? Like, we knew that. Everyone knew that. That was well-known. Yeah. But he used, he was funny, he was smart, he said funny things, and we just figured, look, it’s all consensual, and a lot of women are into this.

[00:09:45] Like, they, they would, they would like the money, they’d like the lifestyle, they probably don’t have be- other better options. Like, it’s not great, but, like, this is his thing. This i- eh, this isn’t, this isn’t what happened. I, I mean, like,

[00:09:58] Malcolm Collins: th-

[00:09:58] Simone Collins: this

[00:09:58] Malcolm Collins: is what they wanted you to think Th- no, it was just straight up rape, like, a lot of the time.

[00:10:00] Simone Collins: Well, let’s, let’s get into it. Yeah. And hold on- Let’s

[00:10:02] Malcolm Collins: just- Hold on. Before we get into it, a, a quick aside I wanna make here, and what I think we can use this episode to do-

[00:10:07] Simone Collins: Yeah ...

[00:10:08] Malcolm Collins: is I think there’s sort of two categories of bad actors in our wider community.

[00:10:14] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:10:14] Malcolm Collins: And i- in terms of identifying them, using this episode as a way to identify one category of them.

[00:10:21] Simone Collins: Oh.

[00:10:21] Malcolm Collins: One group are grifters who, like, clearly have a soul and a conscience and just don’t care about the damage they’re doing. Right,

[00:10:30] Simone Collins: right, right.

[00:10:31] Malcolm Collins: They- Like people like Nick Fuentes, right? Like- Mm ... he’s, he’s clearly a, like, he wouldn’t do... I would be shocked- No,

[00:10:37] Simone Collins: I think, I think- ...

[00:10:38] Malcolm Collins: if I

[00:10:38] Simone Collins: heard he did something like this

[00:10:38] no, there’s the talk a big game people. Nick Fuentes falls into that category. Whereas I don’t, I don’t think that Nick Fuentes has a long track record of rape and assault and human trafficking. No,

[00:10:48] Malcolm Collins: and I don’t, I don’t think he would. Yeah ... and then there’s a, he just doesn’t think about the long-term consequences of the things that he’s preaching, right?

[00:10:54] Yeah. He, he just clearly doesn’t think these things through if through not thinking them through he’s able to make himself look cooler or bigger or edgier or whatever, right? Like, there are long-term implications. With Tate, it’s completely different. Tate is a different kind of an entity. When we talk about somebody being, like, a pre-Adamite or something like that, like, genuinely lacking the capacity, which you’re gonna see as these stories go on, for moral judgment and reasoning to the point that if this was a, a, a normal and just society, you just put somebody like this down.

[00:11:28] Like, there’s no reason to leave him alive given the, the ways that he has treated other human beings repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly. And moreover it

[00:11:39] Simone Collins: would- It’s, and it’s even worse than that, and I’ll get into

[00:11:41] Malcolm Collins: Okay, get into it. Get into it.

[00:11:43] Simone Collins: Because yeah, it’s... You’ll see. It’s not even the fact that he’s done this himself, it’s the fact that he brings it to scale which is even more disgusting.

[00:11:50] Like, the knock-on effects of what he does

[00:11:52] Octavian Collins: in that helicopter because I need to get all

[00:11:54] Simone Collins: of them in the helicopter The helicopter. I love the way he pronounces helicopter.

[00:11:57] Octavian Collins: Oh,

[00:11:58] Malcolm Collins: okay. So it’s full. So you just move the [00:12:00] helicopter to wherever you need to go, then you unload it.

[00:12:02] Hey, th- this, this kid’s got style. I got him a game console with all the games for, for ever ‘til forever are on it. And our entire childhood, and he plays Command & Conquer. Now, I don’t think that’s the best game to play on a Game Boy style console, but at least he’s, you know, got, got class. Continue.

[00:12:20] Simone Collins: You gotta start ‘em early, yeah.

[00:12:22] Just for anyone’s reference the very long New Yorker article is called Andrew Tate’s Empire of Abuse. It’s very good. It’s by Heidi Blake. She did a bang-up job. And I actually super relate to this article because she came in and she met with them, and, like, wanted to really get to know them and spend time with them and be with them IRL, in much the same way that many journalists have approached us.

[00:12:43] And I think that they’re very accustomed to journalists approaching them to do hit pieces. And they knew that this was a journalist approaching them to do hit pieces, and they thought that they were so above... malcolm, this looks bad. It looks like you’re trying to do lines of cocaine. I know you’re, like, blowing your nose or something, but, like, it looks like you’re doing lines.

[00:13:03] It’s so sus. I

[00:13:04] Malcolm Collins: literally just did naltrexone on, on screen.

[00:13:07] Simone Collins: Look, yes, you could hit the cocaine. You, th- then no

[00:13:10] Malcolm Collins: problems. The cocaine wouldn’t work. I...

[00:13:12] Simone Collins: It’s just, it’s performative. It’s performative ice, you know? It’s what our movement’s all about. Anyway, it just didn’t look good. I was just... I can wait. Are you done?

[00:13:21] I’ll g- I’ll go

[00:13:22] Malcolm Collins: get a beer. Do you wanna- I’ll

[00:13:22] Simone Collins: go get a beer. Okay. Were you trying to reach a beer? Were you trying to... Wait, were you trying to open your fridge with your sword? Don’t answer that question, actually. I love you. But yeah, I, I, I can, I can relate to this article a lot because we have been approached, right, by many journalists who want to do- Mm-hmm

[00:13:37] in-depth, like, profiles. And that is exactly what Heidi Blake presented herself as doing to the Tate brothers. She’s like, “Look, I’m from The New Yorker, I’m doing an in-depth profile,” blah, blah, blah. And they’re like, “Look, I know everyone trying to approach me from the media, especially if they’re female and working with, like, a liberal elite news outlet, is going to try to do a hit piece, but we are...

[00:13:58] You know, if she tries to, like, catch stuff on us, she won’t get anything.” That’s what they thought, and they didn’t realize what an absolute pro Heidi Blake is, and how many- Well,

[00:14:08] Malcolm Collins: that she was gonna talk to everyone who’d talked to them, right? And,

[00:14:11] Simone Collins: and- Yes, and... Well, and that’s... Actually, the thing is, no, they, they’re actually very good and sophisticated at getting the women that they work with to defend them.

[00:14:18] So they thought they had all their bases covered. They didn’t realize what a bulldog this woman is. Heidi Blake, man, like, wow. Next level. Like, I... Journalism isn’t dead, you know? The... It’s, it’s- Yeah ... still alive in some places. She absolutely, you know, court records, like, tons of stuff she’s gone through.

[00:14:35] It’s, it’s utterly unhinged, but awesome. I lo- I love- Mm-hmm ... that level of autism. It’s my kind of autism. But yeah, definitely read the article if you a- actually wanna go through it. I, I agonized over figuring out what to, what to include, because there’s so much. But let’s just start with a bit of an overview of the...

[00:14:50] Oh of the, the, the depravity of, of the Tate brothers, okay? Let’s just start right off the bat focusing with some early career stuff with him just assaulting and raping women, not just for fun, but because he thought it would lead them to not require payment in exchange for camgirl work. And this started with two young women who are referred to as Walker and Navarro in the article, who he recruited in the UK after learning from one of his girlfriends how much he could make.

[00:15:20] So, here’s from the article.. “But Tate was already coming to resent paying Navarro and Walker a cut of their earnings. Hristova...” That’s, that’s his sort of like first OG girlfriend that he used for cam work. “... Hristova let him keep 100% of the effing money,” he later said.

[00:15:38] But he complained, “Once you get bigger, you start hiring girls that don’t love you.” He decided on a strategy. “I have a financial incentive to F as many as I can.” Just a note about Hristova, this, this first woman he exploited. Yeah. He reported in private chats that her livestreams had made him around $2 million, but all she got was pocket money for [00:16:00] coffee and manicures.

[00:16:02] The money he made off these women. Oh my God. Even before this, when

[00:16:05] Malcolm Collins: he did give- and also note for people who, who do not know this so few things to know about him. One, and I think he made this clear, he sees his followers as people to scam. That’s-

[00:16:13] Simone Collins: 100%, yes.

[00:16:14] Malcolm Collins: That’s why, that was the first thing. When you look at his early videos the way that he made money is he’d have the girls doing stuff, and then he would be the one in chat talking to the guys to get money from them, pretending to be the girl.

[00:16:27] Mm-hmm. Andrew Tate literally made his early career money pretending to suck dick.

[00:16:31] Like that is his level of dedication.

[00:16:35]

[00:16:35] Speaker 19: Just, give me a chance.

[00:16:41] Speaker 18: Alright, I’ll trust you. But only if you... Will perform oral sex on me. What? Right here, right now.

[00:16:57] Speaker 19: You can’t be serious. Oh, I am serious.

[00:17:00] Speaker 18: Okay, let’s do it. Here we go. And, go.

[00:17:18] You are dedicated.

[00:17:20] Speaker 19: We’re doing this without you!

[00:17:22] Speaker 18: Now hold on, team. Gary has already proven to me that he is 100 percent committed to the team. He proved it last night by sucking my cock.

[00:17:34] Speaker 19: Alright. Come on, team, we gotta find that stage!

[00:17:37] Malcolm Collins: Good God, Paul. But it, but it also shows it, you know, if you’re a guy and you’re like, “I’d be really disgusted if I knew that they’re with some like Muslim immigrant in the UK like making money off of me.” That, Andrew Tate is that. He’s-

[00:17:48] Simone Collins: Okay, so I continue. And just I wanna make it clear, too, in the, in the few instances early, early on when he did give these new girls cash, he immediately would take them to, like, a shopping mall and be like, “Look, you’ve made so much money.

[00:18:02] Now spend it all.” And then they would blow it all on, like, designer clothing. So they didn’t have money, so they couldn’t get away, so they couldn’t build any wealth, right? And this is a really classic way of exploiting people, where you, like, get them hooked on thinking that by being with you they can make money.

[00:18:18] But then you make sure that they are perpetually broke. And, and

[00:18:21] Malcolm Collins: that

[00:18:21] Simone Collins: is-

[00:18:21] Malcolm Collins: Okay,

[00:18:22] Simone Collins: continue.

[00:18:22] Malcolm Collins: Go to the, go to the actual bad stuff. Continue.

[00:18:24] Simone Collins: Okay. Here’s what it was like to be in this house in these early days, before it got even worse. One morning, Navarro who by the way, was stranded at, at this house that Tate made the move to because he wouldn’t drive her home and she lacked money for a car to get out, woke up to Tate and Walker having sex next to her.

[00:18:41] She shushed him, and Walker got up and went to the bathroom. When she was gone, Navarro said, Tate put her in a chokehold and raped her for the second time. Although she clawed at his arms, he wouldn’t release his grip. “I was scared that he was going to kill me,” she told me. Then Walker emerged from the shower and he rolled off her.

[00:18:57] Later, Navarro said she was working on camera and she heard strange noises and went to investigate. Though through the open door she saw Tate strangling Walker on the bed. Walker’s face was red and puffy and her body was limp. Navarro said she felt a strange paralysis. “I was like, there’s nothing I can do about it,” she told me, and she went back to work.

[00:19:16] The following morning, Navarro and Walker were putting on makeup in the bathroom when they noticed clusters of red spots around their eyes. Walker searched online and saw that petechiae, bl- burst blood lefel, level, sorry, burst blood vessels can be a sign of acute pressure in the head from strangulation.

[00:19:32] Okay, good. The women began to panic. Hearing a commotion, the Tates came to the door. When they saw the marks, they laughed. “You’re such dumb b*****s,” Navarro remembers them saying. “That’s from sleep- being on the sh- the silk sheets.” Navarro said that Tate started attacking her at random times. Multiple times.

[00:19:49] When she slept late, he whipped her with a belt. Time became a blur, and the world outside the apartment seemed to recede. But one day Navarro had a moment alone and something snapped. She walked out the door and never went [00:20:00] back. Of course, this is before he stopped women from escaping. He also abused women on camera.

[00:20:05] In one video that came out, Tate lay on a bed and ordered Krizova, this original girlfriend, to show the camera her tattoo. And because it said, like, property of Andrew Tate right over her, her nethers. Yeah. He, he asks in this video, “Why does it say Tate?” He asked. “Because I’m his w***e,” she replied. “Why has your ass got a bruise on it?”

[00:20:24] “Because Daddy hits me,” she responds. Tate picked up a belt and began wisp- whipping Hraskova as she lay in the fetal position sobbing. “B***h, look at the camera,” he told her, yanking her head up by her hair. “This is what happens when you don’t effing listen.” Okay, so when this, th- this footage of this video was released online, Andrew Tate said that Hraskova was an ex-girlfriend and shared a photo of her holding a belt inscribed with the words, “But I love it when Andrew spanks me.”

[00:20:52] So first off, in this video, Andrew Tate... Sorry. Octavian, you need to go downstairs. You cannot show me until I come down, okay? Thank you. I love you When this video was made, she was 15 years old. Oh my Go- And he beat her so much that he made a themed belt for it. Meanwhile, we are, we are crapping bricks over Epstein.

[00:21:21] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and they, but his stuff isn’t like act- it’s like 15-year-olds and stuff. Like-

[00:21:25] Simone Collins: , It’s kids the same fricking age, but he didn’t whip them so much that he made a theme belt for it. He was creepy, but he didn’t choke them while he raped them, like, at least to our knowledge, right? I mean, there’s a lot of weird stuff with Epstein.

[00:21:41] Yeah, but he, he- It’s just funny to me that like- He

[00:21:42] Malcolm Collins: obviously did, but it’s like, this is like out there, very visible, something he’s sharing with the world, and there’s still people who act like this is a, a normal

[00:21:55] Simone Collins: right stuff. No, he’s still an icon for a bunch of people. Yeah, and I think the thing is- Well, I

[00:21:57] Malcolm Collins: don’t know.

[00:21:58] At one point he was the number one right-wing influencer in the world. This was- He’s

[00:22:03] Simone Collins: bigger now than he ever was before.

[00:22:05] Malcolm Collins: No, he’s half the followers now.

[00:22:07] Simone Collins: Mm-mm. Mm-mm. Mm-mm. I checked.

[00:22:09] Malcolm Collins: Oh, is it because of the

[00:22:09] Simone Collins: Muslims? He’s bigger now than ever before. Yeah. That’s, that’s a big factor of it. We’ll get into that too.

[00:22:13] Let’s, let’s get into this. Because it’s their version. So I just wanna make it clear, the underage girl thing wasn’t just a one-time thing with this first girl that he, like, recruited and exploited. This was something that he then turned to again when he started to scale his operations in Romania after fleeing the UK because he realized the police were gonna start sniffing around.

[00:22:32] Here’s just one example from the testimony of a woman who’s called ps- pseudonymously Irina Pavel.

[00:22:39] Malcolm Collins: I, I’d also... B- the, the, the absolute cuckedness of anyone on the right who acts like Andrew Tate is, like, cool or okay- Mm-hmm ... and then is mad about Muslim rape gangs in the UK. It’s

[00:22:51] Simone Collins: like, bro- I know,

[00:22:52] Malcolm Collins: I know.

[00:22:52] He’s a Muslim ... bro, that’s like your actual idol.

[00:22:55] Simone Collins: I

[00:22:55] Malcolm Collins: know. A Muslim rape gang guy.

[00:22:58] Simone Collins: Well, like, he didn’t grow up... I mean, he converted in 2022. He converted. But

[00:23:01] Malcolm Collins: anyway. But, yeah, I mean, culturally. Now

[00:23:02] Simone Collins: he is. Yeah, no, he’s, he’s he’s trans Muslim. He’s Muslim in spirit. Okay? So anyway anyway, so we’re, we’re talking about this this testimony of, of a Romanian young woman.

[00:23:13] When Pavel was 15, she told investigators she had accompanied a school friend to a party hosted by the Tates which was full of young girls. Her friend paired off with Tristan, leaving her with Andrew, who was so drunk that he spat as he talked. He pulled her into a bedroom and raped her, she said.

[00:23:29] Afterward, some of the Tates’ female friends persuaded the girls to stick around for several days, and Tate kept having sex with Pavel. “We had normal oral and anal sexual relations, but I mentioned that the anal sexual acts were traumatic for me because I was in pain,” she told investigators. “Even though I asked Andrew to stop, he continued.”

[00:23:51] Great. The girls eventually had to go back to school, but Pavel said the Tates sent a taxi every few weeks to bring them back to the compound. Tate was [00:24:00] often aggressive, beating her with a belt and choking her. But he also bought her teddy bears. I don’t, I don’t care for this girl at all. He also bought her teddy bears.

[00:24:05] Malcolm Collins: I

[00:24:07] Simone Collins: don’t

[00:24:07] Malcolm Collins: care. She- he

[00:24:07] Simone Collins: sent a

[00:24:08] Malcolm Collins: taxi to her school. She could have not gotten in.

[00:24:10] Simone Collins: This is true. This is true, but he... It’s just creepy to me that he actively recruits schoolgirls and buys them teddy bears, and then, like, anally rapes them. So I’m just... Yeah. I, I

[00:24:19] Malcolm Collins: mean, that’s, that’s... Yeah, that’s one thing, but by the way, you, you need to use way more other words so YouTube doesn’t get mad at us for

[00:24:25] Simone Collins: this episode.

[00:24:25] Okay, so I will... Okay, I will correct that, yes. Hang in there with me. There’s... I, I, I did censor a lot of this article, but it’s really hard to. Okay. So another thing that Tate did is he deputized other women to hurt the other women. So this is on top of, of Andrew Tate playing women against each other. I think it’s obvious and, I mean, it’s also well documented in the article that he’d tell one woman, “Look, I’m in love with you. I only have eyes for you. This other woman, she’s just for the cam work.” And then he’d say exactly the same thing to the other women.

[00:24:54] So he, you know, everyone thought that he had eyes only for them and he cared about- I don’t care.

[00:24:57] Malcolm Collins: Again, I don’t care. That’s just a normal guy manipulating

[00:25:00] Simone Collins: women But on top of that, right, Tate had assigned Georgiana Nagel to, quote, “Keep the farm animals on task”, and a former police officer named Luana Radu was brought in to work alongside her.

[00:25:12] The two were a ferocious team. They issued instructions through a WhatsApp group called Suspicious Death that punished workers who failed to comply. Women who would be, could be fined for failing to work their required hours or for committing various offenses on camera, including crying or wiping their noses.

[00:25:29] When one woman, who I’ll call Lorena Deb- Dobra, announced that she wanted to leave soon after the brothers funded her breast enlargement, Tristan instructed the enforcers to keep all her money and belongings to recoup their investment. “Hit her if you have to. I don’t care,” he texted, according to sealed court files.

[00:25:48] “Throw her out of the house with nothing.” The women were eager to oblige. “I want my money back or I’ll cut her tits off,” Nagel vowed. Dobra later told police that the enforcers arrived at the villa and dragged her outside in her underwear, yanking her arm so hard it wretched, it wrenched a scar from her breast enlargement surgery.

[00:26:07] “Georgiana wanted to kill her,” Radu wrote to Tristan. “I kept saying, ‘Beat her without leaving any marks, please.’ ‘I love you girls,’ he replied.” Also, Tate abuses his children. I used to picture Andrew and his brother Tristan in their weird little harem house with their little tater tots running around, like, having kind of found some weird, like- Brother, sister wives fantasy.

[00:26:34] Like, that they made it work for themselves, right? Like, that it wasn’t- Yeah ... my thing, but like-

[00:26:38] Malcolm Collins: By the way, they, they share wives for people who are unaware. No,

[00:26:40] Simone Collins: they don’t. They will f**k- No, they have dedicated heroines.

[00:26:42] Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. No. I have read articles. They absolutely have slept with each other’s wives.

[00:26:47] Simone Collins: Oh.

[00:26:47] Well, yes, but then they, they have

[00:26:50] Malcolm Collins: like- Yeah, the, the, the one wife is one of their wives, but the other one’s allowed to have sex with her. The, the, the, this has been docu-

[00:26:56] Simone Collins: Polygamists? Yeah. Well, anyway-

[00:26:58] Malcolm Collins: This has been documented by the key wives that they have had sex with the other one. Like-

[00:27:02] Simone Collins: Oh, well, yes. I don’t have doubts about it.

[00:27:03] That’s, that’s probably fair. But anyway, the, the, she, the way she specified it in her article Heidi Blake, was that they kind of had their own respective domains, but they’re all mixing together anyway. So the article also states women became pregnant and Andrew said that both he and Tristan have, quote, “double digit children.”

[00:27:20] “I’m the big gorilla,” he said. “I take the fertile females and I impregnate them.” And I really think that that’s It’s, it’s it’s very direct in that he is a very, like, pre-Adamite human. He does- Yeah ... he lacks the judgment to, to make moral decisions, and just literally is an alpha male pre-human human, incapable of-

[00:27:42] Malcolm Collins: Who believes that morality is alpha maleness.

[00:27:44] No, when he converted- Yeah ... to Islam, a lot of people asked, “Oh, is he being paid by Qatar or the UAE- Mm-mm ... or something like that to convert?” No, this

[00:27:53] Simone Collins: is just what

[00:27:54] Malcolm Collins: he- The, the, the reality is, is look at this guy, his morality and his lifestyle. [00:28:00] What, what would it mean for him if he converted to Christianity and he actually believed any of it, right?

[00:28:06] Mm-hmm. Like, he’s absolutely fucked in a, any sort of Christian metaphysical ecosystem. But Islam actually, e- especially if he isn’t technically married, Mm-hmm ... like the really big sexual punishments in Islam, the death punishment for that and everything, happens to married men, not unmarried men.

[00:28:24] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:24] Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. So he actually can get away with a lot of this stuff.

[00:28:29] Simone Collins: But yeah, there’s actually a pretty decent theological argument he could make within the confines of Islam- That these are cuck- ... especially around female slaves.

[00:28:36] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:28:36] Simone Collins: Because n- he very much sees his process of converting leads, as it were, as a process of converting women into slaves.

[00:28:46] So I mean, like per Islamic law, it would be, you know, it’s a very different kind of thing.

[00:28:52] Malcolm Collins: So yeah. Yeah, he’s not doing anything wrong per- Per, yeah ... Islamic law to these slaves. Yes. Mm-hmm.

[00:28:56] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah, like, and yeah, so the, the morality works-

[00:29:02] Malcolm Collins: And I think that that’s- ... in that framing ... why he converted. And a lot of people just don’t understand the fullness of what is allowed by the Islamic moral system.

[00:29:12] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And I, I, I have heard this. Even in like big takedowns of hellish Islamic marriages where there are four wives and they’re all being treated very poorly, these are still men with four wives because they haven’t, they lack the intelligence of Tate, and that’s, that’s the other problem.

[00:29:28] Malcolm Collins: Well, and there’s, and there’s, there’s rules in Islam about how you can treat your, your wives.

[00:29:31] Simone Collins: Right, but that’s the key thing, wives. And- Yeah, again,

[00:29:37] Malcolm Collins: and the

[00:29:38] Simone Collins: problem with entertaining his brother-

[00:29:39] Malcolm Collins: And again, if you wanna be like, “Oh, Muhammad did this,” Muhammad had sex slaves. This is well documented. Like- It is, yeah

[00:29:42] no major scholar disagrees that Muhammad had sex slaves, and the Quran says this innumerably. It’s not like one line or something like that. It’s like a major theme.

[00:29:53] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:29:53] Malcolm Collins: So-

[00:29:53] So I actually started thinking more about this and I think I’ll do a whole episode on this concept but your idea of the afterlife significantly affects how you treat the people around you And one of the problems when you contrast So I’ll take two contrasting religions We’ll take Mormonism and Islam and what each thinks happens to them in the afterlife So if I’m a Mormon and I die I think that I am going to spend forever tied to my wife or multiple wives if I remarried working together to try to create on like a project to try to create a new moral planet as a god or something like this This means that it is incredibly important that I am nice to my wife and I have a good relationship with her because if I do not for the rest of all eternity my life is going to be miserable Now for Islam men believe even if you just take the Quran and you remove the Hadith you remove the seventytwo virgins whatever there’s this additional class of female basically a sex slave that’s all I can call them They are clearly meant to be attractive females who act as additional wives to the men who appear in heaven Now the women are still married to the men in heaven They still get them But like if I was a Muslim I would believe that my wife and I when we die we go into heaven and I have a number of additional wives in addition to Simone that are there for the specific purpose of my sexual satisfaction and being nice to me Um and this means that I don’t really need to you know if my wife if I have a bad relationship with her she’s pretty disposable once I get to heaven Uh now the way that Islam deals with this is it’ll say something like Well once you get to heaven your desire to not be jealous of your husband’s actions or for your husband’s time is removed from you Um which okay fine That doesn’t sound totally moral to me but fine [00:32:00] Uh the problem is is the way that this shapes what the male thinks they are condemning themselves to And this is also and I hate to say this for traditional Christians I kind of think the Mormon concept of an afterlife not a Mormon I criticize Mormonism regularly leads to more moral behavior in a relationship than the traditional Christian one because in the traditional Christian one there’s no marriage in heaven You’re all sort of doing your own thing Um and so you you don’t need your relationship to be perfect forever whereas I think that expectation that you get to an extent with integrate Puritanism as well uh does lead to better behavior patterns

[00:32:43] Simone Collins: And the capacity to do harm in this respect is so much worse when you’re smart, and both he and his brother are very intelligent, meaning that, like, their capacity to scale their, their harm and depravity is so, so much higher, which is extra scary.

[00:32:58] That, yeah, intelligence in the absence of morality is one of the

[00:33:00] Malcolm Collins: scariest things in the house. But before you get into what he does to his kids, the second point I wanna make is I think that he bases himself above all else, like when he’s deciding how he wants to act, it’s what would the most masculine man act like in this situation?

[00:33:12] That’s who I need to embody, is maximum man. Mm. And If we are asking who, like, what’s a red flag for somebody in our wider ecosystem and to just not platform them and generally work against them, is it’s anyone who’s presenting that way. I think the maximum man archetype, every time I see these guys for, like, a long time in their career, they always go evil eventually.

[00:33:40] Mm. Or it turns out there was some big scandal they were hiding, or it turns out blah blah blah. Whereas, and, and note this isn’t saying, like, not all manosphere influencers went for that. Like, Sandman, who we’ve had on the podcast before and is, like, the biggest MGTOW influencer he was never about, like, maximal manishness.

[00:33:58] Simone Collins: No, he’s eminently reasonable. Yeah, like, and that’s, I think that’s the really im- this is one of the big insidious problems and, and why I think a lot of people accepted Andrew Tate with such open arms. They would hear him say bombastic things, but they understand and are familiar with the very logical side of the manosphere movement, which is like, “Look, this is the evolutionary psychology.

[00:34:19] These are the economic dynamics. This is the market. This is a screwed-up and broken system. I’m not having it. Here’s how I’m gonna navigate it.” But these aren’t people coming from a fundamentally inhumane view of, like, society. Yeah. These aren’t people who enjoy hurting other people. Like, in the end, they just want everyone to be, like, happy, and they don’t wanna be screwed over, and they don’t like how the system works.

[00:34:42] And so they assume that while Andrew Tate talks a big game, they think, like, that, that, that Andrew Tate and his brother think like they do, and they don’t. And that’s a problem. I, it, you tend to think that if, if you like someone and you can have a fun conversation and get along with them, that they likely hold the same values and beliefs that you do, and many people are shocked when they discover that this isn’t always the case.

[00:35:03] But it’s a very common human psychological fallacy and something that Andrew Tate and his brother have exploited to,

[00:35:10] Malcolm Collins: to high heaven. Well, no, I think that there’s, like, a lot of guys in the manosphere or whatever who, like, you know, might be do, into doing BDSM things or, like, sadist things or whatever, and their girls are into it or whatever, right?

[00:35:20] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:35:20] Malcolm Collins: And they confuse that relationship, the type of, you know, maybe, like, hardcore relationship you might have in the United States or Britain in, in terms of, like, cultural backgrounds or y- you know, any w- any of the, the, what, what’s the word for it, Christian nations a- as being the same type of thing that Andrew Tate is getting up to because they hear some, like, analogous stuff.

[00:35:42] Simone Collins: Yeah, like we all understand that, like, a, a disturbingly disproportionate of, of number of people do get turned on by choking, for example. That is a very deadly Instead of, yeah, but, but, but Like you, you really shouldn’t indulge in it. But so they hear that. They’re like, “Oh, well Andrew, you know, Tate chokes women in bed.

[00:35:57] Like that, people just have that kink.” They don’t realize what’s really happening [00:36:00] though.

[00:36:00] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Which is- They make the wrong inference ... a totally different thing, and Andrew Tate sort of manipulates the fact that women have manipulated these guys for so long- Yes, yeah ... to not see that now Andrew Tate is the one manipulating them.

[00:36:11] Yeah, yeah. And exploiting them.

[00:36:12] Simone Collins: Exactly, exactly.

[00:36:13] Malcolm Collins: Through women, ironically.

[00:36:15] Simone Collins: Yeah. I know, I know.

[00:36:17] Malcolm Collins: Andrew Tate’s like, “Here’s how women exploit men in our society. Now I will do that to make lots of money from men.”

[00:36:23] Simone Collins: Yeah, absolutely. I- Look, and just about those high school girls, Malcolm, this was the same with all of the Jeffrey Epstein victims.

[00:36:31] They came and went as they please. I just wanna make that clear. Like, I just, the double standard with Tate and Epstein is so unhinged when you know what Tate did and what’s so well documented versus what’s documented with- Mm ... with Jeffrey Epstein. I, I, so I just wanna make that clear. All of his victims could technically walk away, too.

[00:36:50] So.

[00:36:52] Malcolm Collins: Wait, Epstein’s?

[00:36:52] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:36:53] Malcolm Collins: No.

[00:36:55] Simone Collins: Which ones couldn’t walk away?

[00:36:56] Malcolm Collins: The ones on the ranch. They were confined. The, the, we got their diaries and stuff like that. But also note that some of Andrew Tate’s victims couldn’t walk away either.

[00:37:04] Simone Collins: Oh yeah, totally. Yeah. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll get to that. Anyway, about his kids, who definitely can’t walk away about his kids, Andrew Tate said, “My kids obey me like effing soldiers,” he said.

[00:37:13] On his orders, his five-year-old son would sit for hours in silent. “Doesn’t effing move, doesn’t say an effing word, because he’s scared for his effing life.” Does that sound like a child that’s getting treated well?

[00:37:27] Malcolm Collins: Well, it doesn’t, it, it, it depends on the society. Some societies love obedience. And this is why in our early episodes, Jordan Peterson promotes a similar style of parenting, you know.

[00:37:38] Like, you’ve gotta outwo- outdo the child and get the child to sit down and obey and listen to you, and it’s like, I don’t want my child to listen to me. I want my child to be, like, maximally willful. That’s the entire point of the way that we raise our kids. And it’s raised kids who are astonishingly nice.

[00:37:54] I’m gonna say, like, will maxing our kids has made our kids, like, the nicest, most honorable people I have ever seen. Like, I do not fall close to the category of default just ho- honorability of, like, Octavia, right? In terms of, like, just yesterday one of our other kids, we, you know, some of the kids got their meal first and one of the other ones was like, “Well, when do I get mine?”

[00:38:17] It’s like, he gets his meal, and he walks around, and he gives it to them, and he goes, “Don’t worry, I haven’t taken any bites out of it yet. You can have this quicker.” And there’s no reason. Or somebody’s w- worried about something or crying about something, so he immediately goes and gets it. Or the little one wants to get out of her crib thing, so he’ll crawl into the crib, then lift her up and dump her out on the floor.

[00:38:38] But while putting something, like, soft under her at first, you know. But just really awesome, and I think that the point isn’t to just raise kids. It’s to raise kids who can work together to crush the type of children that somebody like Andrew Tate will raise. And you can always have more. I mean, this is what we’ve seen with Israel versus the countries around it.

[00:38:58] It doesn’t matter if you’re just pumping out tons of kids. If you don’t have technology, you’re not gonna be able to force project. Mm. And o- or, or the ability to coordinate in mass. And Andrew Tate is sort of re- raising the archetypical w- weak child example. That would’ve worked in some historical context, but it, it not good in this world.

[00:39:19] Simone Collins: Not in our modern context. But continue. Yeah So, the way that they scaled their operations is, is pretty messed up. I mean, they, they sort of exhausted Instagram and social media networks really quickly, and they focused on young women who were from impoverished or really, really messed up backgrounds.

[00:39:39] Like they’d been abused or whatever. I mean, like common recruiting tactic, obviously, for victims. Yeah. So after that they, Same

[00:39:46] Malcolm Collins: as Epstein.

[00:39:47] Simone Collins: I know.

[00:39:47] Malcolm Collins: I know. These two guys would’ve been b- such bros.

[00:39:49] Simone Collins: I know. No, for real. It’s like they were sharing notes. They they then hired a female British entrepreneur named Naomi John to launch a recruitment [00:40:00] agency that they called Model Stars, which described itself in promotional materials as, “An all-female business in which women help other women to escape 95 work schedule and earn life-changing amounts of money.”

[00:40:11] Where basically Naomi would manage all these women, who would never see directly their earnings, and then she would take a huge cut, send a huge cut to the Tates, and then the girls would get a pittance basically. And then over time they started to reach out to high schoolers, and then they would host parties at their compound.

[00:40:29] Mm-hmm ... and Andrew Tate would even share videos of these with the War Room his super expensive subscription class. Saying like, “16-year-old hoes are all over the house,” he wrote, adding, “More girls equals more money,” which is super sick. And the way he would recruit women is both he and Tate would like- Is hone in on one, love bomb her, tell her big stories.

[00:40:53] And you know, these are women who are impoverished, who’ve like, like probably left their, left, never left their local town. “I will fly,” you know, “Do you wanna see the sunset in Dubai? Have you ever f- you know, ridden in a Bugatti? Have you ever like flown in a plane or gone skydiving?” Right. Mm-hmm. So they’re selling this huge thing and acting super nice and having these huge conversations with them.

[00:41:12] Then they bring them over, and then they have sex with them, and then they they have the original girlfriend, Hristova, sell them on this dream of like, “I’m living this glamorous life here with these men, and it’s so great.” And then they’d get the victim drunk and have a threesome. And then they’d make them live in the Romanian compound and not permit them to leave.

[00:41:32] And they silenced women and, and, and sort of prevented them from leaving by torching their reputations or threatening worse. From the article, “One of Tristan Tate’s top defenders described Tristan as behaving like a dictator and said that when she decided to leave, he attacked her verbally and hacked her social media accounts.

[00:41:51] One of his associates threatened to set fire to her car. The Tates’ messages show that they repeatedly ordered associates to punish women by hijacking their social media accounts and posting pornographic images of them to their followers. When another worker fled the operation, Tristan told Naomi John to log into her Instagram account and, quote, ‘burn it down.’

[00:42:10] Another woman, Liana Ventilla, who grew unhappy, was told by text that he had mafia connections who might try to find her and that he had the same blood chemistry as a serial killer. A few days later, after she wrote him that she was miserable, he had summoned her to his bedroom. There, Ventilla said he punched her in the face and rapped her, squeezing her head painfully between his hands.

[00:42:34] She said he threatened to get her pregnant and then lock her in a house so that she would definitely, quote, ‘definitely go crazy,’ end quote.” Which Yeah,

[00:42:44] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, this is not... B- also, YouTube, if you’re thinking of, like, censoring this or something, keep in mind, like, the algorithm it’s important that people know about this.

[00:42:54] Like, you are strictly facilitating violence against women if you silence this, because there are a lot of people who are unaware of genuinely how bad this guy is.

[00:43:06] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:43:07] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I don’t just think it’s him. I think it’s actually from, from remembering the manosphere days, there were two types of influencers.

[00:43:13] There was the type like, “Women are screwing us over.”

[00:43:16] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:43:16] Malcolm Collins: And then there was the type that was, “And here’s how we screw women over.” And-

[00:43:20] Simone Collins: Yeah, like, women y- women are basically dumb cows, and the only thing they’re useful for is, like, making me feel good and making money.

[00:43:30] Malcolm Collins: And that’s not gonna work civilizationally.

[00:43:31] Yeah. Right? Like, if you- It’s not. It’s not ... if you take that model and you try to build that into a civilizational ecosystem, you’re going to fail. Mm-hmm ... or you’re going to create something not dissimilar from modern-day Islamism. W- you know, the, the sort of ISIS culture, the culture of Gaza. And that just doesn’t produce flourishing civilizationally or in any other context, and it makes your people easy to stamp out.

[00:43:51] Hmm. And that’s why I don’t want that for my people, right? Like, even if I could get more pleasure myself, even if I could go out there and [00:44:00] do... I mean, something equivalent to what Tate’s... You know, the, the money you can make. What’s also funny is, like, in a way we sort of sell a similar product to Andrew Tate’s product in that you can use rfab.ai for any sort of a fantasy you want to use it for.

[00:44:16] Hmm. If you, if you wanna be in a violent fantasy, if you wanna be a w- whatever. But no one’s actually getting hurt, right? Like, it removes all of the negatives of his world.

[00:44:27] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Like, I mean, it, there are people who get off on all sorts of things, and that’s not a reflection of your moral endorsements at all.

[00:44:40] What does become a reflection of your moral endorsements is what you actually do. So if you really need to exercise something, you do it in the least harm-causing way possible, right? And in- instead- Yep ... of going after actual women. Also, he paid off local police to suppress reports. This also from the article.

[00:44:58] Court records show that local police sat on at least two reports indicating that the Tates were coercing Romanian women into sex work. Andrew openly discussed bribing law enforcement officials in War Room chats and bragged on social media about his connections. His efforts were so successful that despite one new recruit from Miami literally getting the US Embassy to raid the Tates’ Romanian compound in which she was trapped, resulting in the women present being taken into custody in an investigation into human trafficking, Andrew and Tristan were quickly released after questioning.

[00:45:29] And what makes all of this worse is that he and his brother were actively working to bring it to scale. So this War Room, like, membership, super special program they had-

[00:45:39] Malcolm Collins: Yeah ...

[00:45:40] Simone Collins: cost between $3,000 and $8,000 a month to join ‘cause again, he just fleeces over anyone that will follow him and takes anything that he can from them, all the money he can.

[00:45:51] And- Yep ... and in his War Room, he teaches members how to recruit women into, his words, “sexual slavery”- His words His words

[00:46:01] Malcolm Collins: Well, because in, in, in, in an Islamic context, that’s what makes it moral That’s what makes it moral.

[00:46:05] Simone Collins: If it were- Absolutely, yeah. If it were, like, marriage, then no. Unless, unless, A,

[00:46:10] Malcolm Collins: an abusive rela- a trusting relationship.

[00:46:12] Girlfriends who you pimp out. No, sex slaves.

[00:46:14] Simone Collins: Mm-mm. Mm-mm. Yeah. And through... It’s... He does this through tutorials that, that Tate refers to as his PhD, AKA Pimping Hos Degree. Great. So, he uses his own victims as case studies in this too. Like, he’ll have videos of them. He’ll include, like, accounts on, like, texts between them, how he wore down, like...

[00:46:36] You know, many of them were like, “Look, I’m a Christian girl. I really don’t wanna do this.” And he’s like, “And here’s how I overcame that argument.” I’m reading from the article a- again. “Tate’s Pimping Hos Degree course was the core of the curriculum. ‘Some women are more susceptible to being molded,’ Tate told, told pupils.

[00:46:51] To gauge a woman’s malleability, members were taught to dismiss her harshly after sex, and then demand an active service, buying a coffee or chocolate, cooking a meal. If she complied, she was through to the next level.” Which is just great. He clearly enabled men to do horrible things too. Like, the, the, it’s documented. So again, from the article, “One star pupil was a Texan man who said that he was making six figures while his girlfriend streamed for 13-hour stretches. He posted a photograph of her bent over a stool in a grimy workspace next to a table set with what appeared to be lubricant wipes and sex toys.

[00:47:27] Quote, ‘Got her on Chatterbait and sleeping in the concrete floored garage with no AC, spiders, and roaches,’ he wrote. ‘Absolutely legendary work,’ Tristan responded.”

[00:47:39] Malcolm Collins: That’s aspirational for them ...

[00:47:42] Simone Collins: then, they, they made that happen. This woman, there’s a, there’s a woman somewhere surrounded by spiders and cockroaches being actively abused right now thanks to the Tates.

[00:47:53] Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I think that they should i- i- investigate through the War Room, right? Like, why not go through-

[00:47:57] Simone Collins: They really should. They should, they should go, yeah, they [00:48:00] should pull every membership. And in fact, I mean, some of the more prominent members actually have already been arrested. And including this man who I’m about to read about.

[00:48:07] So I’ll cont- I’ll continue. “The most zealous pimp was a meaty, shaven-headed Romanian named Vlad Obuzek, who ran a webcam studio in Bucharest.” J- jumping forward. “When another member asked O- Obuzek how he subdued recruits, he gave a recent example. Quote, ‘I took her keyboard and hit her in the head with it.

[00:48:29] She went in the room and worked seven hours without any break,’ he said, later adding that he had beaten every woman he’d been with. Some users were perturbed,” thank God, well, “by Obuzek’s stories. Quote, ‘That just sounds like abuse to me,’ one wrote.” The one person who was dumb enough to pay for this, but not dumb enough to fall for it, I guess.

[00:48:50] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. “But

[00:48:51] Simone Collins: the Tates elevated Obuzek. He got his own channel, The Revenge Room, where he taught, quote, ‘raw, uncensored methods of pimping and handling women,’ unquote.” “And his status grew. He dispensed lessons on handling local law enforcement. Quote, ‘I had multiple charges for beating people up, hitting them with bricks in the head, et cetera, and I just paid 500 to $1,000 and nothing happened,’ he said.

[00:49:16] ‘If you position yourself right, corruption suits you.’” Woo, this is just so great. Also, just people following his social media, right? Because this, the, the Tates- Yeah ... are, like, elevated level. Nick Fuentes is at that, like, lower level where he talks a big game, but I don’t believe he actually follows through in actually committing atrocities himself.

[00:49:35] But even just posting this stuff, like, to non-members, just the general misogynistic stuff that Tate posts, has appeared to have caused damage. I mean, there’s, this appears, it’s correlation, but likely causation. Again, from the article, “His influence is being felt around the world. Last year, a 17-year-old boy in New Jersey allegedly drove his car into two teenage girls, killing them both, after joking on a live stream about women getting ropped by Tate.

[00:50:03] In Britain, a man who had recently watched about 10 of Tate’s videos ropped his ex-girlfriend and murdered her, her mother, and her sister using a crossbow. British police have warned that Tate’s teachings are radicalizing young men in a terrifying manner.” And declared that violence against women is a national emergency.

[00:50:21] Reports of rapes and sexual ass hats in British schools, and some involving victims as young as five, have soared in the past five years, and education leaders describe violent misogyny spreading on an epidemic scale. Some c- concerns have been reported across North America and Asia. So speaking of all this kind of treatment toward women, let’s talk about the Taliban now.

[00:50:45] Malcolm Collins: Oh, by the way- So- ... before we get to that, I just had a thought. Oh, a

[00:50:48] Simone Collins: thought ... I

[00:50:48] Malcolm Collins: was applying the heuristic I came up with, was guys- Okay ... from the manosphere days, that core thing was looking like the most masculine man. Like the-

[00:50:55] Simone Collins: Oh, you’re gonna think about the guy who had that terrible, like, home video, who was screaming at his pregnant wife about the dogs or something?

[00:51:02] Okay.

[00:51:02] Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, he, he definitely fits into one of those categories. But I think about, like, the wider new right, and there was two things I noted here. Mm. One is, is that the core enemy of the new right was one of those guys. Remember, Hasan was a manosphere influencer- Was

[00:51:19] Simone Collins: he? ... about being

[00:51:19] Malcolm Collins: extra masculine.

[00:51:21] Yeah, he has the video, the like, old enough to count, old enough to mount.

[00:51:24] Simone Collins: Oh, no.

[00:51:25] Malcolm Collins: And he... Yeah, he used to be a manosphere, like a man-ish influencer, like be the manliest man. Mm-hmm. And he looks like it, too. And then you go to, like, the actual heads of our community, and I just realized, like, of the, the males who are influential in our community-

[00:51:41] Simone Collins: Mm

[00:51:42] Malcolm Collins: I might be the most traditionally masculine. Consider you’ve got Rev Says Desu, certainly not a traditionally masculine output.

[00:51:50] Simone Collins: You’ve got- Well, that’s just ‘cause he’s a manifesting- No, I understand, but- ... as a vampire girl ...

[00:51:53] Malcolm Collins: you’ve got-

[00:51:54] Simone Collins: He doesn’t wanna look at a dude all day ...

[00:51:55] Malcolm Collins: you’ve got Nux, who’s not really...

[00:51:58] He’s, he’s got his own thing. You’ve [00:52:00] got Asmogold, who I don’t know, I think I, I probably look slightly more traditionally masculine than Asmogold. You’ve

[00:52:05] Simone Collins: got- You have shorter hair.

[00:52:06] Malcolm Collins: Yeah ...

[00:52:07] Simone Collins: Nux looks pretty, like buff in his suit, in that one- He looked b-

[00:52:11] Malcolm Collins: boyish- ...

[00:52:11] Simone Collins: interview ... I

[00:52:12] Malcolm Collins: would say.

[00:52:13] Simone Collins: I don’t, I don’t know what he looks like.

[00:52:14] Cluckish. I don’t know. I, I just know what his body looks like. But no, I’m just talking about avatar. Oh, yeah, no. Yeah. The, the avatar is boyish, but, like, in his actual, like, body interview that he did with someone, he looks like he, like, goes to the gym kind of person.

[00:52:28] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:52:28] Simone Collins: Yeah, which is good. I

[00:52:29] Malcolm Collins: mean- Which is good.

[00:52:30] More masculine ... obviously, like, raw egg nationalist is definitely more masculine. Oh,

[00:52:32] Simone Collins: yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:52:33] Malcolm Collins: And, But he’s

[00:52:33] Simone Collins: right. He has to be. He was in Tucker Carlson’s End of Men documentary. You know, it’s his job.

[00:52:40] Malcolm Collins: It’s his job. And V, V who now does FaceTubing, the Romanian V TV guy-

[00:52:43] Simone Collins: Oh, he does FaceTube now?

[00:52:44] Oh, cool ...

[00:52:46] Malcolm Collins: yeah, he looks exactly the way you’d expect.

[00:52:48] Simone Collins: Okay. Cool.

[00:52:50] Malcolm Collins: Just, like- I have to check ... standard Eastern European guy.

[00:52:53] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that’s masculine. Look-

[00:52:55] Malcolm Collins: You got, you got- We’re not gonna have

[00:52:56] Simone Collins: a

[00:52:56] Malcolm Collins: masculinity con- ... Professor Dutton, I guess. I, I think I

[00:52:59] Simone Collins: have him listed. No, you look more masculine than him.

[00:53:00] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:53:01] Simone Collins: It’s, yeah.

[00:53:01] Malcolm Collins: But that’s just interesting that, that Hasan, like, the one person still in our wider sphere of cultural relevance, he’s the one guy who tried to be masculine for a minute. Oh, God, I

[00:53:09] Simone Collins: wish we had an accurate body count. You might have the highest body count.

[00:53:13] Malcolm Collins: Body count of what? Sex?

[00:53:16] Simone Collins: Yes.

[00:53:17] Malcolm Collins: Oh, obviously. There’s no- Yeah ... like, it, even among, like, Aela’s circle.

[00:53:23] Simone Collins: I know, I know, I know.

[00:53:25] Malcolm Collins: I, I mog people.

[00:53:26] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:53:29] Malcolm Collins: I, I, I was at least the last I counted at a quarter of Aela’s count, which is astonishing given that I am a guy- Does she, does she know her count? ... and I stopped after college.

[00:53:39] Simone Collins: She knows her count.

[00:53:40] Of course she knows her count. Yeah, you did stop after. Well, a little after college. A little after college. You mean before, before your, your grad degree.

[00:53:48] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, before my grad degree.

[00:53:50] Simone Collins: Yeah. Anyway.

[00:53:52] Malcolm Collins: Okay, continue with the Taliban.

[00:53:53] Simone Collins: The Taliban. Right, so he caught on with them after he converted to Islam in late 2022, and then shortly after his December ‘22 arrest in Romania, Samir Khan, who’s a Tate supporter, hosted or participated in a Twitter Space involving people presenting as Afghan Taliban, where participants repeatedly said they were worried about Andrew Tate and asked if he was free yet, and stated that Westerners, quote, “need Andrew Tate because we are oppressed by feminists.”

[00:54:22] One named participant claimed affiliation with the Cultural Commissa- Commission of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. And then accounts operating under names like Taliban Public Relations Department Commentary that is to say TalibanPRD_, and similar handles which link to official Islamic Emirate English site, al- like, the, their, their official site posted multiple statements of support.

[00:54:44] They demanded Andrew Tate’s immediate release,

[00:54:48] Malcolm Collins: claimed- The, the Taliban’s treating him like he’s, like, a, a captured Taliban member.

[00:54:52] Simone Collins: Yeah. They claimed the Taliban movement was the only entity exerting diplomatic pressure on Romania for the Tate’s freedom, and stated, quote, “The matrix will not defeat #AndrewTate.”

[00:55:04] They, they offered Tate brothers Afghan citizenship and, quote, “masculine passports”, which is great. ... Once released, framing this as a protection against, quote, “kidnapping by #MatrixAffiliatedNations”, end quote. They compared Afghanistan to Andrew Tate, “straight, rugged, and stiff to the point.” They likened Tate to Julian Assange as freedom-loving warriors, mocked figures like Boris Johnson as Matrix members, and said, quote, “The Emirates will battle tooth and nail to free them.”

[00:55:41] Just great. And, and after Andrew Tate publicly converted to Islam in October of 2022,

[00:55:47] Malcolm Collins: Wait, so this was all before he converted?

[00:55:50] Simone Collins: No, no, no, it was after. It was after

[00:55:51] Malcolm Collins: Okay.

[00:55:51] Simone Collins: So he converted in October, arrested in December, and then after all that, like in, in the intervening years between 2022 and now, he has [00:56:00] ultimately gotten a much more diversified and expanded audience, especially among young Muslim men, where his original audience largely stuck around.

[00:56:08] He actually didn’t lose that much ground, which is another reason why I’m having this episode. I’m like, “No, he’s not what you think he is.” I thought he was just a funny, bombastic man.

[00:56:16] Malcolm Collins: Well, so what I do know is of US s- school children, there was at one point- Uh-huh ... when he ranked number one- Oh,

[00:56:22] Simone Collins: yeah. It’s like the top, like among high

[00:56:24] Malcolm Collins: schoolers and stuff

[00:56:24] Today a- among US school children, it’s dropped by over 50% in terms

[00:56:28] Simone Collins: of- Well, I hope that, what, who’s like the, the main guy influencer?

[00:56:32] Malcolm Collins: Clavicular.

[00:56:34] Simone Collins: Clavic- oh, I’ll take it. No, I’ll take, like Clavicular’s an asexual autistic, you know? Like, that’s my, that’s my people. I’m, I’m ready for that. Like, I’ll take it.

[00:56:45] He’s not hurting anyone aside from himself, man. He’s hammering his own face, you know?

[00:56:50] Malcolm Collins: That’s- Yeah, he doesn’t appear to be a, a malicious person from what I can see.

[00:56:54] Simone Collins: No. In fact, the- He honestly, yeah, it’s, he’s the dog that caught the car ... the number one malicious- I, I kind of wish people would just leave him alone, you

[00:57:00] Malcolm Collins: know?

[00:57:00] He- He does, he does do one malicious thing, which is- What? ... probably for the good and really funny. I, I don’t know if you’ve seen these videos, ‘cause it’s like a whole series. It’s the type of Clavicular video I see the most- Okay ... is he’ll find out if a girl who’s trying to sleep with him has a boyfriend, and then call to tell the boyfriend while she’s there like panicking.

[00:57:16] Simone Collins: That’s cute. What? That’s wholesome.

[00:57:18] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, like trying to catch girls out on their BS, like.

[00:57:21] Simone Collins: That’s super wholesome. Aw.

[00:57:23] Young lady. Aw. I’m like, come on This is- Doesn’t that make you love him? But who knows, he might betray me like Andrew Tate. ‘Cause look, even the, even the victims of Andrew Tate, like, have been explicit in, in their interviews, like he’s funny.

[00:57:38] Like he and Tristan are funny. Like they have a good sense of humor, and they’re smart, and that’s the big problem, is I, again, we make this assumption that if someone’s smart and they have a good sense of humor, they couldn’t possibly be a monster. Like they couldn’t possibly be subhuman- Mm ... and have no moral judgment and do terrible things.

[00:57:53] Because smart, funny people can’t be bad. And I still struggle with this. I’m like, how can you... How does, how does this work? I, it’s, But anyway so he had explosive growth in mid-2022- Mm-hmm ... especially on TikTok through his clips. And then let’s see. If we just look at a timeline. So when he was reinstated on X in 2022 in November, he had 38,000 followers.

[00:58:19] Two days later, a million. Late December 2022, 4.1 to 4.5 million. December 2023, a year later, 8.5 million. 2024, 9.9 million. ‘25, ‘26, now we’re about like 10.85 million. So he’s, no, he’s definitely not falling off. It’s just I think he’s growing, especially among a, a Muslim audience.

[00:58:43] Malcolm Collins: Hm. And- He’s falling off among like the United States like right wing audience, but he’s growing among a Muslim audience.

[00:58:49] Simone Collins: Yes. And, and- I,

[00:58:49] Malcolm Collins: I

[00:58:49] Simone Collins: think

[00:58:49] Malcolm Collins: that’s fair to say ... the Muslim audience allows him to negatively impact many more people because, you know, he’s a, a more central influencer there. And, and I think that the, the this is a positive thing that that happened for our culture, right? That like essentially we went through this cultural evolution where it was like, yeah, women have really fucked up society, but like the goal is to fix society, not to punish women.

[00:59:14] Simone Collins: Yeah, we want everyone to be okay- And we’re cucking the women ... and happy. We, we... This isn’t, And to be clear, like there are women who are just as egregious as, as Andrew Tate, you know, who, who refuse to believe that that one mother who killed her own children did it. They’re like, “Even if she did do it, she didn’t do it.

[00:59:31] It was her husband.” Like they, they’re just so anti-man that they won’t even- allow a conversation about

[00:59:39] Malcolm Collins: a psychotic young woman I, I find the other side of that conversation really ugly as well. The guys who are like It’s disgusting. She did it voluntarily, or, like, she wasn’t... It seems very obvious to me she was undergoing psychosis and, and, and obviously has undergone...

[00:59:50] People are like, “Oh, she was able to plan it.” You can plan when you’re in a psychotic state. Like- You

[00:59:54] Simone Collins: can ...

[00:59:55] Malcolm Collins: it’s about extreme delusional paranoia, but you can plan. You can even do, like, people try to do [01:00:00] assassinations in those states. Like Andrew Hinckley, remember? Like, tried to assassinate Reagan. Like, the, you can, you can do large multi-step processes.

[01:00:09] But the regret that she will live with for the rest of her life is, and the memories she’s going to live with in her head-

[01:00:16] Simone Collins: No, I would rather be dead. I would so rather be dead. I- I

[01:00:19] Malcolm Collins: would rather be dead Yeah I would rather be dead than her, than, than having to live the rest of my life, my old age, everything, with those m- memories.

[01:00:28] Simone Collins: But this is, this is to say that I’m not saying that, like, Andrew Tate and, and other really bad actors in the, like, manosphere s- space are the only ones, and that there are women who are also doing egregiously, horrendously horrible, unspeakable things. But all of those people are bad actors who need to be identified and removed from society.

[01:00:49] They, they are not, you know... We’re equal opportunity here. This is not like this class of person is evil. It’s like, look, no, you need to find your bad actors who are outliers and get rid of them. Anyway, he was so good at fleecing people over because people assumed that Andrew Tate was, was human that they, they just assumed the same things he did.

[01:01:07] And I, I don’t blame The people who came to his side, but let’s, let’s go over who did, right? ‘Cause I mean, I, I would’ve- Yeah ... thought for him until recently ‘cause I just thought he was a bombast. After Andrew, after Andrew Tate- Well,

[01:01:20] Malcolm Collins: and we’ve seen the other side falsely accuse people of so many things, you know?

[01:01:24] So-

[01:01:24] Simone Collins: Yes. Yeah, that’s the thing ...

[01:01:25] Malcolm Collins: we generally just don’t take it seriously.

[01:01:27] Simone Collins: Yeah, we know. Like, we know what it’s like to have media cover you and influencers cover you and just say outright lies. Then you’re like, “Oh, God.” The

[01:01:35] Malcolm Collins: Laura Southern one is the one that really cinches it for me because I know- Yeah

[01:01:37] she’s not lying. Yeah. There is, like, zero advantage. ‘Cause it, it

[01:01:39] Simone Collins: destroys her, like, whole thing to, to, to come out about it. Yeah, like that, that’s what really cinched it for me, too. I’m like... But also, like, that he would use this dynamic of the right community, the right-wing community of like, look, we’re all here to help each other, to not only, like, pitch to her, here’s how let’s, we fleece over people who care about us, but also then to personally assault her.

[01:02:01] But after Andrew Tate was deplatformed, he signed an agreement with Rumble, which he, for which he received $6 million per year in exchange for just one weekly quota of sh- five short videos and a 30-minute live stream.

[01:02:13] Malcolm Collins: That’s not good for Rumble. That’s, that makes Rumble look really bad.

[01:02:17] Simone Collins: Yeah. According to Blake, quote, “His presence inspired a 45% increase in active users, sending Rumble to first place on the Apple and Google Charts.”

[01:02:26] A few months later, Elon Musk bought Twitter and reinstated Tate’s account. So Musk also gave him a chance. Quote, “When Tate was arrested on human trafficking charges, his allies defended him. Donald Trump Jr. called the case absolute insanity, and Musk suggested that the authorities were targeting, targeting the Tates while ignoring, quote, ‘actual sex trafficking.’

[01:02:47] Tucker Carlson, who had just released a documentary called The End of Men, devoted hours of airtime to proclaiming Tate’s innocence. So did right-wing podcaster Candace Owens. The activist Charlie Kirk praised him on stage. Quote, ‘What he says is so powerful,’ Kirk said. ‘Our

[01:03:04] Malcolm Collins: society is configured- But back then we didn’t know.

[01:03:05] Like-

[01:03:05] Simone Collins: No, and that’s the thing is I, I’m, this is how good Andrew Tate was, and I, we were, we would’ve said exactly the same stuff. Like, look, he’s such a- Yeah, we

[01:03:11] Malcolm Collins: did. In our early videos on Andrew Tate, we were much more, like, trying to understand his perspective, trying to understand his fans’ perspective.

[01:03:17] Simone Collins: And here’s what really cinches it for me.

[01:03:19] Even Heidi Blake, the author of this article, who wrote all this stuff, went through even more, you know, like, all these court records that will never see the light of day, that only she saw, right? Despite all of this- She, she writes this, “Despite his mixed heritage, he promoted the great replacement theory declaring, quote, ‘The West is collapsing because it’s full of disgusting traitors, white people who beg to be erased.’”

[01:03:45] And sh- he’s not acting like disappearing white people is bad. He’s saying they’re disgusting traitors, and she’s totally misreading that, thinking that he’s speaking as someone who is with people who are afraid of that, which is a dumb idea anyway. [01:04:00] But I, I genuinely believe that he just thinks everyone is a stupid idiot who deserves- Yes

[01:04:05] to be replaced, who deserves to be overtaken. Well,

[01:04:07] Malcolm Collins: no. He’s, I mean, he’s fully sided with the Islamist agenda, right?

[01:04:10] Simone Collins: I know. Like, that’s- No, yeah. He’s, he’s, he’s probably, yeah. I m- i, I... So it’s funny.

[01:04:15] Malcolm Collins: That’s his goal, right? Yeah. Like, I, I think the, the people aren’t, like, listening through to the other side, looking who his allies are now.

[01:04:25] Th- y- you gotta keep in mind, you know, in, in Afghanistan, there’s conservatives as well. Like, ISIS is a conservative organization, right? You know? They-

[01:04:34] Yeah ...

[01:04:35] there are the Iranian government is a conservative government. Being a conservative of a culture that is fundamentally opposed to my culture, and historically wants to eradicate my culture, and is, in the moment, attempting to eradicate my culture, that’s more opposite to me than the progressives are because the progressives won’t exist in 100 or 200 years.

[01:05:00] Octavian Collins: Mm-hmm.

[01:05:01] Malcolm Collins: The ideologies that Tate is metastasizing within Muslim communities right now, where those communities don’t fall apart, in many places they are, those are going to be the cultural milieu that the next wave of immigrants is gonna have. That-

[01:05:15] Simone Collins: And what’s also so sad, because Islam can go in many directions, and Islam doesn’t have to be a misogynistic, horrible uncivilized religion.

[01:05:23] It doesn’t. Like, there, there are ways to do Islam that are- But the problem is- ... beautiful and pious and disciplined ...

[01:05:29] Malcolm Collins: is, its texts allow it, and the Christian texts don’t.

[01:05:34] Simone Collins: That’s true. That is true, and that, that’s what makes Islam inherently too delicate for us to feel like we can condone or support or be comfortable with.

[01:05:41] What I am saying, though, is that with the right influencers at play, there is definitely a future timeline in which Islam is fine. Yeah. And Islam does produce human flourishing. We are not seeing that timeline, and Andrew Tate is playing a core role in moving the timeline in the worst possible direction for Islam as a religion and its ability to produce human flourishing.

[01:06:04] He is producing the complete opposite. He is turning women into slaves and men into worse than animals, and I think that’s disgusting.

[01:06:12] Malcolm Collins: And- Well, and I think that this is why having the concept of a pre-Adamite is useful.

[01:06:16] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[01:06:16] Malcolm Collins: Like- Yeah ... as soon as we developed that, it’s really changed the way I see other people in terms of, like, do I really need to have compassion for everyone?

[01:06:23] Mm-hmm. And once you realize that, oh, well, that’s not necessarily biblical, and then I was like, oh, okay, okay Now I can understand how I’m supposed to relate to somebody like Andrew Tate

[01:06:33] Simone Collins: Yeah, it’s sad. It’s sad. New- news headline: not everyone who’s funny and smart is human.

[01:06:41] Malcolm Collins: And w- our community should have some rules or levels of restrictions around the people who we give our trust to.

[01:06:51] Simone Collins: Yeah. Or, you know, trust but verify. Yeah. And, Anyway ... yeah. This was-

[01:06:56] Malcolm Collins: Well, you can’t always verify. You can’t always believe every-

[01:06:59] Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, then don’t fly to Romania to meet with a

[01:07:02] Malcolm Collins: man- Well, Simone, thi- this is why I was very clear. We don’t make the thing anybody who’s accused of grape. Yeah. Anyone who’s accused of a sexual impropriety.

[01:07:10] Yeah. Anyone... We make it what they’re selling to you. Mm. I am the manniest man who ever manned.

[01:07:15] Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. That’s a much better- If that’s

[01:07:16] Malcolm Collins: what they’re selling to you-

[01:07:17] Simone Collins: Yeah ...

[01:07:18] Malcolm Collins: then you, you don’t need to know anything else. You can just know you can’t trust them.

[01:07:23] Simone Collins: That’s

[01:07:23] Malcolm Collins: quite fair. Because that’s a stupid value set.

[01:07:25] That isn’t even a value set. That’s not even an aspiration to have- Mm-hmm ... a value set. It’s

[01:07:29] Simone Collins: an identity. Yeah, yeah.

[01:07:30] Malcolm Collins: That’s not an aspiration to have a morality. That’s the manosphere version of being trans

[01:07:36] Simone Collins: No, I mean it, it like literally is. And, and we have the same we stand in the same level of opposition to gender affirming care that stays within lanes.

[01:07:46] Like, we’re just as against a natal male using dangerous levels of steroids to look extra beefy, and for a natal female to drop tens of thousands of dollars on plastic surgery as we are for a trans [01:08:00] person to invest in gender reassignment care or gender affirming care. It’s, and, and the- Like it’s all exactly the same stuff.

[01:08:05] The reason- And it’s all living for an identity ...

[01:08:07] Malcolm Collins: sorry, people should understand. It’s, it, it’s turning your life’s purpose into a search for affirmation of an identity- Mm-hmm ... which should not matter. Mm. There is no way you are a moral person if your life’s purpose is the affirmation of a specific identity rather than some goal you have for humanity or some religious framework.

[01:08:29] Simone Collins: Especially because your satisfaction is requiring, it, it, it’s dependent on the revocation of others’ consent. Because in order for you to be happy, you need to, against the will of other people, make them think a certain thing about you, which you can’t. You certainly can’t. And so at least in moral

[01:08:45] Malcolm Collins: life.

[01:08:45] Well, you, you can to an extent, but we should le- end this here.

[01:08:49] Simone Collins: Yes.

[01:08:49] Malcolm Collins: Great to chat with you. Thanks for bringing this up, Simone.

[01:08:52] Simone Collins: Goodbye, sir.

[01:08:55] Malcolm Collins: Dead mice

[01:08:56] Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. Sorry. Right. Yeah, I’ll come through with, with the bag and get the dead mice now. First it’s the hornets, then it’s the mice. But that is, Look, it’s the natural world is a glorious and beautiful thing, okay? So let it be.

[01:09:12] Malcolm Collins: And it’s in our house. That’s when it’s not.

[01:09:17] Simone Collins: Yeah, well, look, it’s not a- we’re not- look, we have a lot of people listen to this podcast and live in Australia, where you have to worry about, like, scorpions in your shoes, and all the sk- snakes are miraculously dangerously venomous.

[01:09:31] And...

[01:09:31] Malcolm Collins: I have to... Th- th- yeah, that’d be terrifying to know my kids could just die from playing in our yard. Mm ... I’ve gotta tell our fans about how perceptive my wife is, ‘cause th- this, I was reminded of this when listening to an AMV with this song.

[01:09:48] Simone Collins: What?

[01:09:49] Malcolm Collins: She used to think the song that goes, “Like the ceiling can’t hold us” went, “Like we’re ceiling fan holders.”

[01:09:58] Simone Collins: That’s what it sounds like. That’s what it sound-

[01:10:02] Malcolm Collins: Like- Like

[01:10:03] Simone Collins: we’re ceiling fan holders ... we’re

[01:10:03] Malcolm Collins: ceiling fan holders. A whole bunch of gangsters be like, “Like we’re ceiling fan holders.”

[01:10:08] Simone Collins: I can’t hear anything else. I don’t know how you can hear anything else. I mean, and look, I think I’m not alone in hearing these things.

[01:10:17] Like that Taylor Swift song where she talks about being Starbucks lovers. She is not saying star-crossed lovers. She is saying Starbucks lovers, and I don’t know how much money she was paid by Starbucks to say that, but something’s going

[01:10:30] Malcolm Collins: on. And then just tell everyone with a straight face that she didn’t just sing Starbucks lovers.

[01:10:36] Simone Collins: This is, this is the world we live in now. They just lie to your face. They just lie straight to your face. It’s disgusting.

[01:10:44] Malcolm Collins: And, and so you think he was promoted by big ceiling fan holder? That he got, he got a bribe- The ceiling fan industry ... from the ceiling fan holder lobby. Yeah, just their one big thing.

[01:10:53] They spend it all on one song. Big ce-

[01:10:55] Simone Collins: yeah. Yeah, man. Yeah.

[01:10:57] Malcolm Collins: And then they just lie to us that we, we did not just say ceiling fan holders.

[01:11:00] Simone Collins: Yeah. They’re like, “No. No. It’s like the ceiling can’t hold...” Well, look, the ceiling was never holding anyone. It never made any sense from the beginning, okay? Look, it, the ceiling can’t hold us- Do you mean the floor?

[01:11:18] Do you mean your hammock? Do you mean... Like, no. I don’t know. It’s not even like, what holds you? A harness? Mm-hmm. A harness? I don’t know. The- look, music doesn’t- Well,

[01:11:30] Malcolm Collins: they’re going up, and that’s why the ceiling is posing up a problem in terms of their-

[01:11:35] Simone Collins: Going up. How? ...

[01:11:36] Malcolm Collins: relative positions.

[01:11:38] Simone Collins: The jumping?

[01:11:39] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I guess jumping into the ceiling.

[01:11:42] Like, it’s-

[01:11:42] Simone Collins: So they’re, they’re going to- ... idiots ... they’re going to cause the ceiling to crash down upon them by jumping super gracefully. Now I’m imagining a bunch of people just

[01:11:49] Malcolm Collins: jumping and hitting their head on the ceiling while singing.

[01:11:52] Simone Collins: Or maybe they’re standing in the apartment above them, trying to crash through their floor.

[01:11:58] Like, their ceiling can’t [01:12:00] hold them.

[01:12:00] Malcolm Collins: The one instance in which like, the ceiling can’t hold us has a lot of weight is idiots who try to put up, like, sex chairs. You know, like those swinging, like, sex things on their ceilings with not on load-bearing beams.

[01:12:14] Simone Collins: How does that work?

[01:12:17] Malcolm Collins: Well, the one person- What’s a-

[01:12:18] hangs suspended, and then the other person has sex with them because it’s easier to move their body around

[01:12:24] Simone Collins: Like the way that that cow or goat is held in the Jurassic Park movie?

[01:12:29] Malcolm Collins: Yes, like that. Oh,

[01:12:31] Simone Collins: God. Like that, seriously? That’s how

[01:12:34] Malcolm Collins: it works? Yes, like that, and then people put these in their houses, but they don’t put them in the load-bearing-

[01:12:39] Simone Collins: So they’re Jurassic Park goating themselves? This is a thing? This is Jurassic

[01:12:42] Malcolm Collins: Park goat sex? That’s exactly a thing. They’re Jurassic Park goating themselves.

[01:12:47] Simone Collins: I didn’t know this was a thing.

[01:12:48] I know that, I know that there’s a lot of suspending of things from ceilings for, like, very spendy parents whose children have sensory issues. So, like, they have all these, like, thing, like, hammocky things, and spinny things, and, like, fabric-based hangers. And I bet people walk into the kids’ playrooms and they just think that they’re sex dungeons.

[01:13:09] They, they must think that. I didn’t know this was a thing.

[01:13:12] Malcolm Collins: That’s what I would think if ever I saw, like, a, a hook on somebody’s ceiling.

[01:13:16] Simone Collins: No, that’s what, that’s what people thought when they walked into the living room of my childhood house, and they saw the-

[01:13:21] Malcolm Collins: Because it looked like a sex dungeon, Simone

[01:13:22] Simone Collins: they saw the Pilates Cadillac table and the Reformer. It doesn’t help that they call it the Reformer. It’s, it sounds BDSM. Let me reform you. You need to get reformed. It

[01:13:33] Malcolm Collins: may be a little BDSM, Simone.

[01:13:36] Simone Collins: I don’t think so. Joseph Pilates developed that kind of thing. Like, the reformer is kind of based off systems that he built on hospital beds- Mm

[01:13:44] for, for people recovering from the war, where you couldn’t exercise, you know, the leg that you were, that was blown off. And so he would put strings on their hospital bed so they could, like, keep their arms toned and, like, rebuild core strength even though they were bedridden. So, no. And like, actually for real, for once this, this it’s not pervy, and yet it looks so freaking bad.

[01:14:08] Oh, God. Not that, like, my family got to be cr- precluded from any of that, ‘cause then you walk immediately to, like, the bookshelves and then you see what’s sitting there, which was not great. As you discovered the hard way, which is why you never walk into your girlfriend’s house and try to pick up a book to start a conversation.

[01:14:25] I know, see, your, your parents had only, like, performative smart books in their houses, ‘cause they had show homes. You know, it was all like- Yeah ... you could pick it off and you’d be like, “Ah, yes. It’s Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. What, what let, let us discuss stoicism.” And you

[01:14:38] Malcolm Collins: look at a

[01:14:39] Simone Collins: book off my family’s shelf- No, they had a few artsy, like-

[01:14:40] Malcolm Collins: and it’s like- ... photography pervy books that looked sort of bondagey ...

[01:14:45] Simone Collins: yeah, and then there was just the really explicit, like-

[01:14:49] Malcolm Collins: And your house is- ... mirrors, cabinets ... just like a hentai, like- Yeah ... just like a hentai manga. Like,

[01:14:52] Simone Collins: let’s go straight to the, straight to the slop. Yeah. It was like that mixed with, like, my mom’s college books on, like, Ebonics and feminism.

[01:15:01] It was a very strange house, a strange house. Anyway, huh. Yeah. Shall we get into it? Wait, wait. Before we

[01:15:07] Malcolm Collins: get started, I’ll take a pill- Oh ... so I can get this-

[01:15:11] Simone Collins: You need to- ... handled ... yeah. Well, let’s... I actually, so, Examine, you know, the, the, the company that gives reviews of, like, supplements and does sort of syste- systematic reviews of health information and stuff in their latest newsletter, they talk about pill size being one of the major hazards of, of supplements.

[01:15:28] And do... You’re not trying my method. No, you’re not even- I had,

[01:15:32] Malcolm Collins: I didn’t have any in my mouth. I was just tasting if it was bad.

[01:15:35] Simone Collins: Oh, okay. So put it in your mouth, and then let it sit right there at the top of your throat. I found a version

[01:15:41] Malcolm Collins: of your method that is tolerable to me.

[01:15:43] Simone Collins: Okay, but it helped?

[01:15:44] Malcolm Collins: It did help, yes

[01:15:46] Simone Collins: Yeah, all right

[01:15:47] Malcolm Collins: Explain it for the fans, for bad tasting pills

[01:15:49] Simone Collins: Right, yeah.

[01:15:49] So if you’re taking a bad tasting pill, you take a swig of whatever it is, don’t swallow it, the liquid that you’re gonna use. Then you tilt your head back with it sitting, like, right [01:16:00] over your throat and then you drop the pill into the pool sitting over the funnel of your throat, open up your throat and let it all just flush through, and the pill never sits on your tongue, the liquid never sits in your mouth, so that incredibly bitter pill does not...

[01:16:16] See, Malcolm, you’re just doing it wr- you just let it sit on your tongue. He just lets it sit on his tongue. That, that is w- how not to do it, ladies and gentlemen. That is how it’s... Look at him. Look, he’s suffering ‘cause he didn’t use the Symone method. That’s your, that’s your

[01:16:29] Malcolm Collins: problem. Okay, what I do is now after doing it, what I learned the key is is to make sure it breaks from the tongue.

[01:16:35] So, I like, make my tongue concave to make sure it’s, it’s actually suspended in the s- solution.

[01:16:41] Simone Collins: Amateur. No, you don’t ever let it touch your tongue. Anyway, the big liability being that, like, actually pill size is a really big issue for a lot of pill takers because they have trouble swallowing pills.

[01:16:53] And oh my God, I wonder if there’s a correlation between women who can deep throat and, like, pill swallowing problems ‘cause I got

[01:16:59] Malcolm Collins: that- Yeah, that’s what I was wondering

[01:17:00] Simone Collins: No one who deep throats will ever say that they have a problem swallowing pills, and, like, everyone’s just like, “Oh, I could never. I could never.

[01:17:07] I, I could never give head.” Like, they will, they will just choke on their pills. And he showed this really gnarly, horrible image of someone mid-surgery pulling a calcium pill. I know exactly the type of calcium pill ‘cause I take them every freaking day. Taking it from a dislodged, like, it, it’s, it’s stuck in an abscess within someone’s throat.

[01:17:24] Just disgusting. I love, I love watching his

[01:17:28] Malcolm Collins: Why do you do that? ‘

[01:17:31] Simone Collins: Cause it’s, Why do I... Oh, I don’t just take the large calcium pills. I throw all the large pills in my mouth at the same time, and then I just swallow because- I sh- I shouldn’t have made that earlier. Let’s change the subject and start the episode.

[01:17:45] You ready?

[01:17:45] Malcolm Collins: I’m ready.

[01:17:46] Simone Collins: Okay. All right. I’m gonna show your pajama pants in this episode. Make sure you’re close to the mic. You can... We need to buy that mic stand for you.

[01:17:53] Malcolm Collins: I wear my p- pajama pants more because they’re way cooler than wearing jeans. Like, like, chillier and it’s so hot.

[01:18:02] Simone Collins: It’s so hot.

[01:18:03] Yeah, and we’ve had our air conditioning blasting all day. I need to figure out what’s turning it off at night, ‘cause I, I have it on, but I think our smart system’s like, “Oh, yes, let me help you save energy,” and then we, we sweat to death. We get the sweating sickness.

[01:18:14] Malcolm Collins: I wake up in the middle of the night ‘cause I’m overheated.

[01:18:17] Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s not great. Hey, that woke you up, though. Yeah. So maybe I shouldn’t try to fix it. Maybe. Maybe this is the key.

[01:18:24] Malcolm Collins: All right. Come on.

[01:18:25] Simone Collins: Okay.

[01:18:26] Okay, I’m sorry. I had to like Had to burp. Great. Okay.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Yukiwaru joins Based Camp after going viral for saying the quiet parts out loud: men can’t get periods, and tomboys are good.

In this conversation, Malcolm and Simone talk with the VTuber about why she refused to apologize or walk anything back, the toxic “friend”/artist who kept centering themselves and walking all over her boundaries (including on her birthday stream), and what it felt like to finally stop walking on eggshells.

They also cover:• How she started streaming (just a unique voice playing League) and became a snow-leopard VTuber• Losing old friends and artists vs. the new community that actually let her be herself• Desexualizing her model and why that grew her channel• Building an authentic audience instead of a flirty persona• Reaction content, cop slop, pony play, and streamers as the next wave of cultural influencers• Tomboy identity, the pressure to invent special labels, and why “just a straight white female” suddenly felt lame

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins [0:00]:Hello. I’m excited to be here with you today! Today, we have Yuki Waru with us who recently went viral. There’s been a few red videos on her because she made the bold claim that men cannot get periods and that tomboys are good. And anyone who knows our channel, we we are so pro tomboy on this channel that I actually had a fan email me a detailed list of bible quotes trying to argue that the bible says you should only take tomboys. And I was like, that is that is another degree. But what makes her so interesting and why I was excited to talk with you is you were before saying this, you never really got into politics that much on your channel. Uh, you never really got into, like, the this kind of, like, political spicy opinion. And something really unique happened because the Internet decided to go after you for these takes. And normally, the reaction historically of, like, a nonpolitical VTuber would have been to either apologize or at the very least, if they’re not going to apologize, not lean into it, not watch the rev review of her, not come on Basecamp or something like that. And yet you go in this other direction, and it seems to have worked out really well for you. But I’m wondering why you went in this direction. Like, would do you think that this is just like the ethos now, or is this an intentional decision you made or what?

Yukiwaru [1:29]:Well, for me, I mean, saying my thoughts and my point of view felt really freeing. And I feel like I’ve been walking on eggshells around people for so long worrying about everyone’s feelings, and, like, it’s been really, like, debilitating for me trying to just, you know, watch out for everyone’s feelings. And I was just like, you know what? I’m over it. And I said what I said. I I would I’m not gonna say something if I don’t mean it. And if I’m not gonna stand by it, that’s a waste of time and energy. I mean, why say something if you’re not gonna stick by it? I don’t see that point.

Malcolm Collins [2:07]:Well, a lot of oh, continue. Continue.

Yukiwaru [2:11]:Oh, I was just gonna say, I I don’t say something then back down. I’m gonna stick with it. I don’t care what people think, and I’m so sick of trying to, like, watch out for people. I mean, like, I respect people’s feelings, but, like, god, like, I have had to be so careful and, like, really think through what I say and, like, like, make sure I get, like, pronouns and stuff correctly because, you know, I I do respect how people feel and stuff, but it felt so good to let it out. Oh my god. No. It’s so so free.

Malcolm Collins [2:45]:It it really this is a pathway that I feel like has happened to a lot of people. So we my wife and I used to be, like, very mainstream leftist, and then we ended up going viral a number of times for talking about birth rate collapse. Just like fertility rates are really low. This is gonna affect social security systems. And we got absolutely piled on. The the the Internet decided that that meant that we were white supremacists or whatever or, like I I don’t know. Right? Um, and so, uh, what ended up changing our mind is, at first, we weren’t like you. We hedged all of our points. We were like, well, with this and keep in mind this and keep in mind this. But as time went on, we begin to notice that there was, like, this community of people who just, like, cared about what was true. And they were, like, shockingly nice to us, um, even when we had a lot of differences of opinions with them. And this feeling that you’re talking about of, like, oh my god. I can just say whatever I think now It’s such such a weird place that we were in a society where it was normal to not feel that way. I mean, I I did did did you find yourself, like, self censoring a lot before? Was it was it the being called out that put you in a position where you could talk about things more? Like, was it was that what made it possible for you?

Yukiwaru [4:16]:I did feel better really, you know, stating how I I’ve never really been one to censor. I’ve always been known for being, like, forward, bluntly honest, just saying how I feel. Because I I mean, personally, I don’t really understand other people’s feelings, like or empathy or compassion, you know. I just it doesn’t come natural to me. I think I felt empathy once in my entire life, and I didn’t understand what was happening. My dad, like, had to explain it to me like I was a kindergartner, learning how to feel and stuff. It was Oh.

Simone Collins [4:52]:It was

Yukiwaru [4:52]:a weird thing. But yeah. I mean, even now, I’m still kind of paranoid of my own pronouns. I I find myself referring to everyone as them, they just to be careful and cautious. It’s just in my head that I’m gonna say something and mess something up, and they’re gonna, like, come after me for it even if they are a friend or not.

Malcolm Collins [5:16]:Well, your story was really interesting because it started with like, it seemed like this really started with a specific toxic individual in your life. And they go on your birthday stream, and somebody accidentally misgenders them, and they decide to make the birthday stream all about themselves. Mhmm. And I also wanna note here before I go all trans people do that. Like, I know some totally normal, cool, based trans people, and they don’t do this s**t. When somebody accidentally misgenders them, they’re just like, whatever. Like, it’s just not even important. It’s not even in the room of of of issues. Yeah. And then there’s this, like, other group that uses it to try to center themselves and, like, move past other people’s consensual boundaries and recenter and the your emotions because I thought it was very interesting the way that you talked about it. You’re like, this made me feel really bad when that happened. And it wasn’t the first time when this individual had made you feel really bad in this way. There was you were talking all the way back to when you first got partnered with Twitch.

Yukiwaru [6:29]:Mhmm.

Malcolm Collins [6:30]:And they hadn’t gotten the partnership, and they made you feel bad about celebrating, which is probably one of the biggest events in your life. Mhmm. Getting just interested to hear your thoughts on all this from the from, like, experiencing it and and moving primarily because of, like, one other individual pushing you into saying this stuff. Mhmm.

Yukiwaru [6:57]:I became friends with them. They were they had more viewership than I did when we started becoming friends. And and at some time, I started surpassing them in viewership and growing more than they were. And, you know, at some point, they were viewer ing high where they could’ve gotten Twitch partner, but something happened where everything just dropped for them. And they they had been streaming longer than I have. So when I was, you know, growing more than them, I felt, like, guilty, like, because I felt, you know, they would always tell me how hard they’re trying and, like, mentally how they’re feeling. Like, they don’t understand. And, also, I understand that because even though I had Twitch partner, things dropped after my partner pushed. My views dropped, and I was like, alright. What am I doing wrong? What do I gotta change? But when I got the email for Twitch partner, was in a collab, and they were in my collab because, you know, I love including my friends. I love supporting my friends Yeah. Being there for them. And I got the email, and I started freaking out. And everyone in the collab was, like, so enthusiastic and so energetic and so celebratory. And then they came, and they’re like, what’s going on? And they’re like, oh my god. You just got Twitch burner. And they’re like, oh, good job. And I was like,

Malcolm Collins [8:21]:Can can you explain for our audience who might not understand the significance of getting partnered with Twitch what this means for you as a creator?

Yukiwaru [8:28]:I mean, besides having a really cool badge, not necessarily too much. It means that you were able to keep an average of a high viewership for a certain amount of time and complete the requirements.

Malcolm Collins [8:44]:Doesn’t it change, like, the monetization or, like, the way the pathways you have to contact them?

Yukiwaru [8:49]:From what I understand, when it comes to monetization, you do get more opportunities. But then it also you know, you have to do Twitch plus to get a bigger half of what you make on Twitch. If you don’t get Twitch plus, it really isn’t that much of a difference. And to get get Twitch plus, you have to hit goals of people subscribing and, like, gifting subs. Like, people need to spend money so you can get the different levels of Twitch plus to make more of the cut. So,

Simone Collins [9:22]:like Oh god.

Yukiwaru [9:23]:They changed it.

Malcolm Collins [9:24]:I also just had a realization. You’ve been streaming for three years. Right? Mhmm. So she’s the same age as our channel in terms of how long we’ve been streaming. Oh, wow. So finally, a co age channel. Usually, we’re talking with people Yeah. Doing it a lot longer than us. Because you said something that really got to me this. Like, when your numbers drop and, like, I talk with other creators about this, like, when I’m stressed cause my numbers are dropping and I don’t know why they’re dropping. Mhmm. And all they’re they all have such nerves of steel about it. They’re just like, oh, I don’t look at the numbers. I don’t care. I’m like, how do you not look at the numbers? This is how much the world loves me. Yeah. I have low numbers. The world doesn’t love me anymore. I’m saying something wrong.

Yukiwaru [10:11]:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I do it because I’m like a very work driven, determined person, you know. When I hit a goal, I’m like, okay. I don’t really celebrate it. I go, alright. Onto the next goal. Let’s see how we can keep going, what we can do better. I’m very work driven. You know?

Malcolm Collins [10:28]:That that actually, I think, explains why the numbers going down hurt so much because in so many areas of life, you’re used to, like, you hit the goal. Now I’m going to my next goal.

Yukiwaru [10:38]:Mhmm. And then

Malcolm Collins [10:39]:you start moving down from the point you’re just at, which is so demoralizing.

Yukiwaru [10:44]:Oh my god. It’s the worst. It’s the worst.

Simone Collins [10:48]:Well, so in in despite enduring this, though, like, first, I I don’t we we only learned about you recently. We’re not that deep into the lore. What actually got you started streaming in the first place knowing? I’m I’m sure you knew, like, at least a little going in, like, this is actually a lot of work.

Malcolm Collins [11:03]:And and also had no idea how much work it was till I started doing the streams.

Simone Collins [11:07]:Was like And also, like, as a VTuber, because, like, I was playing out with Leaflet’s PNGTuber model, and I was trying to, like, get the rig to animate. And I was like, oh my god. Like, the amount of face work I have to do just to be like and like, I’m just it’s so much work. It’s so much more work. So why did you do why did you choose the hard way and then the double hard way? Like, why? What what what inspired this?

Yukiwaru [11:29]:I actually started off as a non VTuber. I actually started off with not even showing myself. It was just my voice, and I was just playing league. I was just doing it for, you know, fun. I didn’t think of it as anything. You know, someone said, you have a unique voice. You should do streaming. You’ll do really well. And I’m like, sure. Okay. I mean, most people think I sound like a child, but if that’s cool, why not? And honestly, most people think I use a voice changer. This isn’t my real voice. It’s it’s I mean, like, puberty just kinda skipped me. It was like, alright. You know what?

Simone Collins [12:05]:Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. What does it sound like if you try to do a low voice?

Yukiwaru [12:09]:Actually, my voice is a little hoarse right now because I have been talking so much.

Malcolm Collins [12:13]:Is your this is a low voice for her. Yeah. I I I know.

Simone Collins [12:17]:This this is your Elizabeth Holmes voice. This is you’re

Malcolm Collins [12:19]:going to see Talk about it.

Yukiwaru [12:20]:I don’t talk like you, Herbert. I mean,

Simone Collins [12:24]:the voice It’s voice. It’s a great voice.

Malcolm Collins [12:27]:For a moment in history. Like, you come in and in the moment of history where you can be an anime girl, and you happen to have anime girl voice.

Yukiwaru [12:35]:Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [12:37]:I would I I was talking with a a reporter recently, and I was like, it is really weird when I reflect on the number of my friends that are cartoon characters.

Yukiwaru [12:45]:It’s so fun. You get to, like, this the design a character based off, like, who you feel, like, feel you are off your personality because there I can’t I’m not looking like this in real life. Are you kidding me? No. I feel like this represents me and my personality, and also snow leopards are my favorite animal. So, you know, it’s just so fun.

Malcolm Collins [13:06]:But I Snow

Simone Collins [13:07]:leopards are amazing.

Malcolm Collins [13:08]:Yeah. They’re they’re very cute animals. Uh, this might be a transitional phase where, um, if you look at, like, where AR glasses are going, where AI is going, uh, I would not be surprised that if when my kids are my age, a lot of people just choose primarily to interact with other people through avatars.

Simone Collins [13:28]:Oh, they’ll just, like, put a filter on everyone in their life?

Malcolm Collins [13:32]:Yeah. Because why wouldn’t you if you could? And that gets really interesting with a lot of this other stuff because I don’t have a problem with that world when it comes. I think that’s gonna be really cool. And in that world, the idea of choosing your identity is going to mean something very different, which is interesting. I don’t I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that. Or, like, do you think that that’s going to happen?

Yukiwaru [13:59]:I really don’t have any thoughts when it comes to the future. I mean, I I’m a very anxious person, so I I spend most of the time thinking about, you know, if I’m gonna eat later or, you know, just really, like, silly stuff like that or, you know, what’s the weather? Because weather freaks me out too. But I’m I’m a bit of a airhead. I don’t necessarily understand politics or more serious conversations. Even if I try, I don’t understand. So I try not to think about it.

Malcolm Collins [14:32]:Your your video on this was very well argued and tactfully argued as well. I mean, I I I appreciate the humility, uh, but I think that there’s a reason why it’s gone viral and received such a positive reception. Uh, and one of the things that I wanna, like, really lean into in terms of a positive reception is when we see somebody being attacked for saying what is clearly saying stuff, bringing them into, like, the wider cultural community, you know, you’re not the only person we do interviews like this with, I think is really valuable because then they can feel safe saying what they want to say and knowing that this community is not a community that’s going to, like, care or judge or be overly aggressive about many of the areas where they might assume that. Right? Like, you started I think when you started v tubing, you were looking at doing it from, like, a lube tubing perspective. Right?

Yukiwaru [15:26]:I did dabble in that department. Yes.

Malcolm Collins [15:30]:Yeah. And then you you went, no. I’m I I I don’t enjoy this. Right? Like, this has been a good way to live. And we also I mean, if you look at, like, the other people we interview in our community like Nux, Nux used to do hentai reviews. We we run a not safe for work website. Right? Like, it’s it’s a lot of these things that I feel would, like, have people attacked within what I thought the right wing community was. And then I enter it, and they don’t didn’t care. They’re just like, oh, if you agree with us on any point, we take you on every point. Right? Like, you’re just whatever. It’s very, uh, which was my motivation for reaching out to you to be like, hey. Come on. Like, let’s be friends in this wider network. Have you gotten that from other people? Have, like, other people been reaching out to you or Oh

Yukiwaru [16:17]:my god. So many people have been reaching out. So many. You know? I lost a lot of people I thought were friends. Um, I lost a bunch of artists that I worked with. Yep. But, honestly, it’s like, I didn’t really get too sad about it because I’m like, if they’re gonna leave me over me having this kind of opinion, that’s fine. I don’t need them in my life. Why would I want people like that in my life? If we can’t be friends and have disagreements, what are what are we doing? We don’t have to agree on everything. And then artists reached out. Merch companies reached out. I mean, I I made new friends like Nines and Leaflet. I’ve talked to Powder. Banana Juju, I did a collab with. Awesome. I’ve made I mean,

Malcolm Collins [17:06]:honestly banana Juju yet.

Yukiwaru [17:08]:So sweet. So sweet.

Malcolm Collins [17:10]:I wanna get around.

Yukiwaru [17:11]:Yeah. Yeah. Continue. It is crazy though that, you know, you think the other side’s all about acceptance and, you know, bringing you in and be who you wanna be and think what you wanna think. But when you have a different opinion from theirs, they’re like, nope. Get out of here, you terrible, terrible person. And then the other side is like, that’s okay. We’ll take you in.

Malcolm Collins [17:34]:What by the way, the the waifowears collab that dropped you Mhmm. I I went to their website to try to figure out what they do because, like, I’ve decided to, with our company, just clone any product that drops somebody, but I couldn’t even figure out what they do. Like, what was it what were they trying to promote?

Yukiwaru [17:51]:Um, well, they make shaker cups, and they put, like, VTuber art on it. Just like, you know, the the cups you wouldn’t make like protein shakes in, then you just shake it and then they slap VTuber art on it. I actually had just done my first drop with them where I sold out on all my cups. You only need 20 to start production, but I sold out all the cups in like a couple weeks.

Simone Collins [18:15]:That’s impressive.

Malcolm Collins [18:16]:Yeah. Weird is like you’re making them money.

Yukiwaru [18:19]:Oh, yeah. And they take a good chunk of it.

Malcolm Collins [18:22]:Who instigated you down this sort of pathway, you were 90% of their income at one point. Right?

Yukiwaru [18:28]:Uh, my artist? Yes. And I mean, I can say that because they literally admitted it to me in like DMs, which I’m not gonna post publicly because I’m not that kind of person. But, you know, I’ll say some things from the DMs here and there.

Malcolm Collins [18:41]:No. It’s it’s it’s one of the most interesting things about your personal story in regards to all of this is you coming out and finally talking about your opinions on this stuff seem primarily motivated by just one bad actor that nobody thought to rein in. And I I I wonder, like, how how many people end up having these revelations or these moments because of just one bad actor? Like, how much one individual can matter in the wider political sphere?

Yukiwaru [19:18]:I mean, with this person, the person who made my model, the person who would get mad at you if you got their pronouns wrong, I was recently after interactions they’ve had with good friends of mine, like the one they got mad at during my birthday stream, really good friend of mine. He and I are very similar in how we think, and I feel safe, you know, really sharing how I feel with him. I was just thinking. I was like, what is bonding me to this person besides the connection of them doing art for me? What is what’s why why do we have a friendship? Because even when we hung out, just the two of us watching the show or just, you know, doing stuff in our free time, I still always felt like I couldn’t be my real self. Like, I I still had to walk on those eggshells. Like, I had to be careful of what I said. And I felt like in a way they also thought, you know, I’m I I really am not the smartest, the sharpest tool in the shed as the saying goes. I’m not. And I I admit that. I’m fine with that. Like, I I still get through my day somehow. It’s a miracle.

Simone Collins [20:25]:I relate, man.

Yukiwaru [20:27]:I I always felt that they thought they were better than me in some way. Like, they they can learn things quickly. They can pick things up quickly. They can understand things that I really don’t even care to understand. And I always feel like in a way, they tried to make me feel less than them because they would, you know, refer to me as their daughter, their child. And, you know, when the retuber world, you usually refer to your artist as your your your mama and your rigger as your daddy, but I couldn’t because they were non binary. So I referred to them as my parent Mhmm. Out of respect for them. And then the the way they talked to me, was always like, oh, sweetie. Like, oh, my sweet dear child. Like, kind of what’s the word? The meaning? Condescension.

Malcolm Collins [21:13]:Yeah. That. Yeah. Yeah. Condescension. No. I I think you are pulling on a really important thread here, and it’s something that I’ve highlighted before. And I think it’s an interesting cultural sort of norm that’s developed in this wider community, which is the people who are at the top of the, like, nerd right online community, like your Asmagold type people, sort of have a personality defined by not thinking they’re better than other people and and not trying to act as if they’re better than other people. And our community more broadly seems to have a very hair trigger about anybody trying to status signal, like, I’m a higher status person than you are. And hanging out in this community and not having to deal with that recently, I went to Stanford Business School, and so I was back and I did a a podcast with one of my, uh, classmates who’s still very much in that, like, I don’t know what you wanna call it, like, urban elite mindset. Right? Like, you know, everything that, how could you say this? How could you say that? Like aghast. Like, going through my title cards and being like, do you stand for this? And I was like, they’re meant to shock people. What are you talking about? And and it felt so icky, and I and I realized it’s been so long since I had somebody pull that on me. And it’s it’s it’s felt so good to be hanging out with people like Leaf who like

Simone Collins [22:42]:Well, it’s pull. I think it’s a a bureaucratically influenced school marvel culture where, like, we’re we’ve been used to it since we were in school with just this, like, oh, you have no idea. You’re just ignorant. We need to educate you. And I think it’s a very it’s a very pervasive, like, urban elite ish. And and this doesn’t matter, like, how much money or education you were you have. It depends on what culture you adopt where you just, like you condescend and patronize those who are just too ignorant to know how to say the right thing. But then weirdly are suddenly savage to them when they when they mess up in just the wrong way. So unless you’re patronizing and it worse to then you, like, tried to destroy their entire lives and careers. So Well, they’re using

Malcolm Collins [23:23]:you to masturbate their emotional states. Like, I I I like what someone’s saying here. Like, this isn’t somebody who sees you as a friend, but it’s like a masturbation tool for validation.

Simone Collins [23:35]:Hold on. That’s like what most I mean, we we argue that there are only three types of friendships. One is is basically convenience friendships. Like, it’s the person you went to school with or you’re in class. Like, you’re you’re proximal to each other, so you’re friends. The other is utility friends. So you’re friends with them because, you know, if your kids, like, they have the best video games. So you need to be friends with them to get access to the gaming console or, you know, they have money or whatever. And then the or, like, they’re a girl and, know, you want, you know, you you want what you want from them. But then the third is character reinforcing friends, where you you have, like, a token friend because they’re the extra or the supporting character that you need on your life stage. And that’s that’s what Malcolm’s trying to describe here. But I think that that’s that’s not like a that’s not a political thing. I think that’s just a human thing. It just happened to be that the the supporting characters in the life of a very predominant culture happen to be, like, very exploited and mistreated characters. Whereas, I guess, like, in the default tropes of more conservative or centrist or libertarian cultures, like, the supporting characters have a little bit more, like, respect given to them. They’re not like stooges and, you know, idiots and people that they don’t actually Mhmm. Like or respect, which is yeah. I think you really touched on something interesting when you talked about how how stressful it can be to be in some of these circles when you’re, like, always afraid of being in trouble. But do you have, like, larger overarching goals with the streaming that you do or with the way or, like, also, has what you experienced recently changed what you think you’re gonna be focusing on with your streaming and with what you talk about? Or Or are you just gonna kinda keep doing what you do, but now feeling like you can talk more freely?

Yukiwaru [25:19]:I’m gonna keep doing what I do and feel like I can talk more freely. And if, you know, I I make it known you don’t have to agree with my opinion. It doesn’t mean you can’t be a part of my community. Just be respectful and follow the rules. But I have been doing more chatting and interacting with my community because I have that ability now where, you know, there are more people, more people to interact with, and we do like reactions to videos, which I have so much fun with. I’ve been having more fun with streaming lately than I have in a really long time. I used to do just, like, gaming because I really never had anything to talk about. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [25:59]:Well so I’ve been doing I I every other week for a while, right now we’re on hiatus, I would do, like, a ten hour stream with Leaflet. And I hadn’t realized what a unique experience it is to, with a chat for an extended period of times, give your true opinions of, like, the world. And I can’t even explain to people what it’s like because it it’s such a marathon. Like, the the the closest thing I can say is it’s like a but, yeah, it’s it’s a completely different way of interacting with reality.

Yukiwaru [26:30]:Mhmm. It’s so fun.

Malcolm Collins [26:33]:Also, to the the like, one of the things I often say on on on stream when we talk about, like, the diversity of opinions within our wider community and I really want to emphasize for you, like, as you enter this wider sort of friend network or whatever, they, like, really do tolerate, like, any opinion as long as it seems like you’re trying to get to the truth. And the example I always use of this is, like, commie mommy Shu On Head. Like, Shu On Head is obviously adored by everyone in the community and, like, is an actual socialist, and we just don’t even care. We’re like, she seems to wanna get at what’s true.

Yukiwaru [27:06]:Mhmm.

Malcolm Collins [27:07]:And so don’t worry about that. Don’t worry about, like, oh, now I’m part of this group. Like, I have to have this set of opinions. I I hope you don’t feel that way.

Yukiwaru [27:16]:No. I I’m not changing anything for anyone. Whether you can watch me. You don’t have to watch me. I’m not changing for anyone. I’m not putting on a persona. I’m me. Doing anything else is exhausting.

Malcolm Collins [27:31]:The other thing I wanted to talk about that I thought was really fun well and and you talk about it being exhausting. I’ve heard other people say this is, like, this idea that, like, any VTuber is putting on a voice or a personality is actually very unlikely because it’s incredibly exhausting to do that for a long period of time. Like, doing a voice for ten hours is just not really realistic. No.

Yukiwaru [27:53]:No. No. It is very exhausting, especially to keep up with it for your community who thinks that you’re that person. Like, faking someone you’re not or putting on a persona, you know, I respect those who can do it, I can’t. I don’t have the energy. I work a full time job too. I I don’t got that energy.

Malcolm Collins [28:12]:Oh my god. Well, it’s funny that you mentioned that. So we have some friends who are, like, celebrities. And the one thing I’ve noticed between my friends who are celebrities who absolutely love their fans and my friends who are celebrities who have a very antagonistic relationship with their fans, and they kind of, like, don’t like their fan base at all, it’s is the image that they’re showing the world who they really are? And if they’re showing the world a fake image, uh, the type of celebrity or fame that they gain ends up creating an intense animosity with their fan base, which is a really sad way to live kind of. To be like, oh, you got everything you ever wanted. Now you’re a super star, but you It’s

Simone Collins [28:49]:really stressful.

Malcolm Collins [28:50]:Yeah. You can’t enjoy it. Yeah. When

Yukiwaru [28:54]:when people were in my chat trying to get me to, like like, the I I you know, AI, I’m cool with it. You know, AI is cool. Has cool functions.

Simone Collins [29:05]:Yeah.

Yukiwaru [29:05]:Also respect artists. Yeah. I love artists. I’m, like, in the middle with most things.

Simone Collins [29:11]:But you have to pick a side now.

Yukiwaru [29:13]:Yeah. Yeah. But but I’m getting a new model because, you know, with this one, I had design restraints because they really we went with more their opinion than most of mine. Anyway

Malcolm Collins [29:26]:I actually wanna talk about that, but

Simone Collins [29:27]:I’m finish what you’re saying now.

Yukiwaru [29:29]:Of the next artist that I really wanna work with, they’re not so into putting their art through AI, which I totally understand and respect. So I made an announcement to my community that with my new model, I would appreciate not putting it through but I will give them an option of my model that they can use with AI that isn’t using the artist art. And so many people were like, oh my god, this trash tuber is like backing up on her word. She’s fake. She’s she’s, like, not who she says she is. No. People can change their mind, and people can change their mind out of respect for other people. It doesn’t mean you’re fake. It means you’re human.

Malcolm Collins [30:14]:Absolutely. Right? I I I I I really hate the people who take pride in having had the same opinion for x many years. Like, I’ve changed my mind on, well, virtually everything because you you get new information and you change your mind. Yeah. But I wanted to talk about your model because I found it to be an interesting story. This where you started was a very sexualized model, and you’ve increasingly moved to a more and more desexualized younger model. Mhmm. And, originally, the the r the rigor who caused all of this drama was, like, really giving you shade because the the they’re like, oh, you know, you must be a I don’t know. Like, PDA file type stuff. And then your younger model gets super successful, and then they move to a model that’s younger than your model. Yeah.

Yukiwaru [31:04]:Yeah. Yeah. They made a smaller model after I made, like, a smaller model. They made theirs smaller and, like, cutesier. And I just think the smaller model for me just fits my personality and my vibe so well, and I feel comfortable with it. I want people to watch me because they find me funny and entertaining, not because they wanna date me or, you know, do stuff with me. Although you can’t prevent that. That’s gonna happen regardless. So you know, I accept But I want people to watch me because they enjoy watching me. They find me funny. They like my content. That’s what I want the main reason to be. And I feel like it just expresses who I am so much better. And I I just love the style. I just love it. Simple. Yep. I love it.

Malcolm Collins [31:52]:No. It it is it is also something that I have always found very weird when people are like this Lolly style is what children look like. And it’s like, I have children. It looks nothing like a child.

Simone Collins [32:02]:It really doesn’t look like a child.

Malcolm Collins [32:04]:Yeah. Completely unique, artistic style. And it’s something that didn’t really hit me until, like, I had kids, and I saw them every day, and I still watch anime. And I was like, this in no way is evocative of this other thing. It’s it’s a unique artistic medium that is pleasant to look at. And when people say it’s like, oh, that must mean you wanna sleep with our dates. What are you talking about, you weirdo? People self report so hard.

Yukiwaru [32:35]:Yeah. Yeah. It’s just it’s just like a style of art, like chibi or, like, cartoon. It’s just like another style of art. That’s really what it is. And but, of course, there are gonna be people who take it to a whole different direction. They’ll do that with just, anything in the world. It doesn’t matter what it is. There are those people out there.

Malcolm Collins [32:54]:Well, it’s it’s not just another it’s a style that I I think Chibi also falls into this category that is generally or at least the direction that you take it that is an ultra desexualized style. Mhmm. Um, you don’t have the boob physics or anything like that. Boob physics. But Yeah. You also grew as a channel more as you further desexualized.

Yukiwaru [33:16]:Mhmm. I felt like more comfortable to be myself when I didn’t feel like people were just watching the the boob of physics move up and down or whatever, you know, think thoughts. I thought they were watching me. I I felt more comfortable when I, you know, think of them of watching me for me because they enjoy me. And when people came in my community who have like significant others and partners, it made me feel even better. I’m like, oh my god. Like, girls are watching me. Couples are watching me. Like, that’s so great. I’m so happy, and they feel safe in this space to just, you know, relax and have fun.

Malcolm Collins [33:56]:Yeah. What I mean, you’re gremlin sort of at the the I I don’t know. Your persona works very well with a model like this, but also doesn’t invite I I I I think it naturally invites, like, wanting to tease you or something, not, like, wanting to flirt with you or something. Right? Yeah. It’s it’s that’s not the relationship you have with your audience.

Yukiwaru [34:19]:Yeah. And even if I do like flirty stuff with them, they’re all like I mean, are some people who are like, yep. Alright. Yep. I’m in. And then both but the majority are like, nope. Stop. This is cringe. Please stop. It’s it’s just so funny, the mixed feelings. And I, you know, I’m just an unhinged person. I like say what pops in my head, I do what I want. So having the community that’s like cool with that to let me just be me and like do that. I it’s just so fun. Not, you know, worrying about, oh, I can’t be flirty because I have like this kind of model or I can’t say this or do that.

Malcolm Collins [34:54]:Well, how is how actually, that’s a very interesting question. How have sort of the the ways that you interact with your audience evolved as time has gone on? Like, what have you learned about building, interacting with an audience over these past three years?

Yukiwaru [35:08]:When I first started streaming, especially as a VTuber model, my first VTuber model was a two tailed fox and very big chest, very physics like that, very tight clothing, very girly girl clothing as well because I thought that’s what would drive people in. Um, and I built something that wasn’t me. I was very flirty. I was very kind. I was very nice. I’m not I I’m not like that really. I’m nice. I’m respectful. But like, I’m not gonna tell my chat like, my god, love you guys. Thank you so much. Or That’s nice. You know, call them cuties or whatever. No. I call them like weirdos and heathens and like like call them the worst things and it’s just so much more fun. And I just learned over time, I don’t wanna build a community on me not being me. I wanna build a community on me. So those who come and stay, that’s cool. But I want it to be when I’m being me and nothing else. And I’m just you know, over the years, through different models and learning new things, I’m finally kinda you know, I’m finding my groove and my place and, um, what I’m comfortable but with and what I want.

Malcolm Collins [36:25]:That’s fascinating. Um, I mean, that’s, uh, we I don’t what has our experience been? It hasn’t really been like that. Like, in terms of how we’ve developed, a lot of it’s been more technical differences. Like, focusing on the first minute, but we’re primarily YouTubers, and you’re primarily a streamer. So it’s a completely different sort of environment in terms of how you interact with people, how you handle chat, everything like that. Uh, but it does make sense. Also, your beginning, like, going on, like, what are people going to like is different from the beginnings of a lot of other VTubers. We were my wife and I were talking this morning, uh, about the various VTubers that we have interviewed recently. And, like, the starting story for so many of them was I was about to unalive myself. I had just been fired from my job. I had just, like, they’re at, like, their lowest point in life. And then they decide to just start putting content out there. And I I was like, our story is so different. I wanted to be famous. That’s literally

Yukiwaru [37:31]:Yeah. I don’t damn. My story isn’t like that.

Malcolm Collins [37:35]:Their story, the lady, you’re like, I know. I I wanna do something that works. That’s fun.

Yukiwaru [37:40]:You know, the more I got into it, the more I was like, I wanna build a community because I know what it’s like to feel alone or, like, you don’t belong or, like, you can’t have you can’t find your people. You know? It’s similar to those stories of why some VeepTubers start. I don’t want people to fall into that place. I wanna have a place for them to make friends, to make connections, to find people to game with, and to just relax and escape the the world we live in. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [38:09]:Well, I I I yeah. I can I I can building community is obviously like a well and I think having other streamers on this, one of the reasons we have you in, is have a shared cinematic universe for people where they’re like, oh, all of my friends, like, they’re actually they actually know each other as the community expands? What was the what was the question I was gonna ask? It’s funny. You feel free to free go while I try to think of Yeah.

Simone Collins [38:34]:What I’m trying to what I’m and then I’m always curious about this with any streamer because I my big theory is that streamers are the next sort of generation of major political influencers to shape how people view the world because and it’s just it’s it’s an it’s a timing and algorithm thing. To be successful as a streamer, you have to stream for a lot. And to get enough time, you can’t, like, just game. At this point, you kind of have to, like, do reaction videos. So then you’re going over comment your content, but then you’re commenting on it. And so you’re annotating it. You become a political commentator because in the end, so much of the content out there is political. There’s something like sort of one global story, and it’s like kind of whatever is happening in the news or with, like, police or immigration or or tech. Um, and so in the end, you end up being disproportionately influential because then you have all these clips that end up on YouTube because you just have so much more content, and it’s constantly coming out. So when people are looking up commentary on news events, they get streamer content. This makes me think like, oh my gosh. Like, the weight of being a streamer is pretty big if you think about the downstream consequences because what you choose to watch and how you react to it is shaping how a large number of people are coming to view reality in politics, and it’s gonna influence their votes and influence everything else that they do. Does this like, I mean, that’s why what I so this is all to say I’m really interested in in understanding how you choose what you’re gonna watch. Do people send you links of, like, I think you should watch this on stream. Do you, like, have some feed that you check every day where you’re like, okay. This looks like it’ll be good. This looks like it’ll be good. How do you choose what it is you’re gonna do when you do reaction content?

Yukiwaru [40:07]:Well, I’m I you know, I’m on, like, maybe week two of doing reaction content. Uh, I started off with just, you know, I made a channel in my Discord where people can post stuff. But a lot of the stuff they posted, I did not enjoy or find funny or understand. So stepped away from it a little. And then I reacted to Rev reacting to me because, you know, I I let this situation kinda take control for a little, and I I watched it. I didn’t say anything. And then I felt, you know, where it was going. I was comfortable speaking again about it. I’m not one who really gets into drama that much. I mean, I’m not gonna say I don’t like it. It’s kinda fun to start it or watch it or be a part of it, but I try not to. You know, my dad’s always like, take the high road, be the it all, be the good person, But that’s not always the fun road. Anyway, I was just choosing things that I thought were funny like my strange addictions or, you know, someone doing pony play that I thought was funny.

Malcolm Collins [41:16]:Pony play is so interesting. Hold on. Can we take it aside and talk about pony play? Like

Simone Collins [41:22]:Oh, god.

Malcolm Collins [41:23]:What do you think gets you to, like, have the idea of, like, this is something I wanna try doing? It seems really expensive to, like, invest in even trying it.

Yukiwaru [41:34]:I mean, it is the same with v tubing. It’s But, you know, they were like, it it stems from my childhood. Like, a sense of freedom from my child. I feel like most things. The the thing is it comes from my childhood or trauma I experienced or something I did. And, you know, now I’m an adult, and I have adult money, and I can do what I want.

Malcolm Collins [41:58]:So now I dress up for people who aren’t aware sorry. I I I just realized we have, like, normal Christian moms watching right now. So there are these people who like to dress like ponies in, like, leather gear. So it’s like a pony fied leather outfit. Mhmm. And they, like, walk around on their hands and knees, and they have, like, a a master who’s, like, their their trainer or whatever. And they’ll go to gatherings where, like, multiple of these people will, like, do tricks or, like, go around in, like, circles and stuff like this.

Simone Collins [42:26]:It’s similar with puppy play, which also has, like, like

Malcolm Collins [42:29]:my theory on what leads to this stuff is and I’m glad that we have a woman of culture here who knew exactly the topics that would interest me. The the the the that I stopped at the video and put it I’m like, I wanna know more about this. Well, why the heck? Because, you know, I don’t to explain to you why I find this stuff so interesting is if you see an unusual behavior and you see it in multiple people, it’s generally worth asking why. Because that means either there’s something culturally going on or something evolutionarily going on or something psychologically going on that doesn’t fit your standard model of how humans interact. And my guess is pony play and pet play, the the second one you’re talking about, comes from people wanting a DOM like partner, but they want that DOM to be caring of them and to care about their well-being like a nice DOM. Um, and they don’t really have many other social context for what it feels like to have, like, ownership of a thing, but still be nice to it other than like that. Sad.

Yukiwaru [43:34]:Makes sense. Yeah. But at the same time, you know, live your best life, but maybe don’t bring it publicly. Not everyone wants to be a part of, you know, that part of your life. I mean, the the the video we watched, the the person went to go, you know, show their, like, ants or whatever, who they truly are, and they, like, went in, like, full attire with their, like, trotting, and then did showed them different forms of trotting and galloping and oh my god. The the the axe.

Simone Collins [44:04]:Oh, I bet they, like, worked pretty I I could not gallop on my knees. That They’re not on

Yukiwaru [44:09]:their knees. They they they stood on their two feet in the yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [44:13]:And that was It’s even more ridiculous than you think, Simone.

Yukiwaru [44:16]:Yeah. There was a heart like horse stores and bought actual, like, authentic horse gear, and they’re like, I need, like, you know, what the horse puts in their mouth to, like, when people ride them or whatever. They’re like, I’m looking for them and they’re like, what size? And they like hold up to their mouth. They’re like, oh, about this this size. And the lady looks at her like, oh, okay.

Simone Collins [44:39]:They’ve gotta be used to it by now, honestly. Well, think about it this I mean, Hermes was originally for equestrians. So, like, maybe if you’re really into that kind of, like, good construction and you’re like, look, let horses get it now.

Malcolm Collins [44:52]:Like, people have been turned on by all sorts of weird stuff throughout the ages, but, like, the weird thing is beginning to identify with it. Right? Like, beginning to think, no. This is a meaningful and important part of how I need other people to see me. And I feel like this is partially culturally downstream of people feeling ashamed of, uh, identifying with, like, their culture or their religion because people will be like, oh, you’re you’re proud to be an American or whatever. You shouldn’t. That’s a that’s a bad thing to be. Right? Like, that’s racist or something. And so because you can’t be proud of anything, you need to come up with new things to be proud of. And if you’re not lucky enough to be, like, gay or something, then you have to, like, make up some new identity for yourself.

Yukiwaru [45:36]:Yeah. That makes sense. It’s like at some point being, like, a straight white female was, like, lame and boring. I was like, uh, people ask me, like, what I am. I’m like, I’m just just straight white female. I’m nothing. I’m boring. I’m lame. Like, you know, they have all these colorful flags and stuff, and then there’s ours that’s like nonexistent or like black and white or just like not fun. Because apparently, being just, you know, straight is just not cool anymore.

Malcolm Collins [46:02]:Well, I mean, it’s it’s true. But I will say, you talk about growing up as a tomboy. Do you still identify as, like, a tomboy? Like

Yukiwaru [46:12]:I’m not a girl who likes to wear, like, frilly things and skirts and get dressed up. I mean, I went through a phase where I was like super into makeup because it was fun, but like, I I I walk dogs for a living. So anyway, regardless, I’m always in active wear, and it’s just because it’s so comfortable. It’s one of my favorite things. I’m not someone who wants to get dressed up. I I, you know, I am more a bit of a tomboy. I don’t like jewelry. I’ve never really liked that stuff. I don’t get my nails painted. I bite my nails. Like, I’ve always been someone who can get down and dirty and, you know, be one of I’ve always been one of the guys. I’ve always fit in with guys better than girls. Always.

Malcolm Collins [46:55]:Yeah. The the reason I I elevate this point is because within the column of straight white female, there’s a bunch of ways that are totally unique and are, you know, perception, like Tomboy being one of them, of being a straight white female. But they don’t count to people because they’re just under straight white female. So so they don’t count as, like, a meaningful way of presenting yourself or anything like that until you label them something. Like, I’m actually exsexual or something. And then you can have all this pride in that, and you can have flags around it, and you can have when a lot of these people who identify this stuff, I doubt they’re really that different from you in terms of how they feel.

Yukiwaru [47:41]:Mhmm. I’ve gone through phases where I thought maybe I was asexual, but it turns out, you know, I was just, like, recovering from, like, my own real stuff going on and really focusing on my recovery that I didn’t really think of anything else. I wasn’t asexual. But because of everything going on, I thought, you know, maybe I was or, you know, maybe I was biased. Someone like tried to brainwash me to make me think that I like, you know, I was bisexual, which I’m not. Nothing wrong with it, but I’m not. You know? I I’m I’m happily straight. Happily.

Malcolm Collins [48:14]:Yeah. My my wife, by the way, is is fairly close to asexual, which is which is interesting because if you if you put us in the labeling category, asexual is a type of genderqueer. And if you’re genderqueer, you’re technically in the trans community. So my wife is technically in the trans community if you go. It’s all there.

Yukiwaru [48:33]:Yay. Oh, there you go. Congratulations.

Simone Collins [48:34]:You’re cool. Yeah. Finally.

Malcolm Collins [48:36]:Cool. Cool.

Simone Collins [48:37]:I think I have a flag, So that’s good. Yeah.

Yukiwaru [48:40]:Yeah. You’re one of two people.

Malcolm Collins [48:41]:Like street flag.

Simone Collins [48:42]:Where’s the street flag?

Malcolm Collins [48:44]:But I wanted to talk about other other video categories that you’ve enjoyed that your audience has recommended for you. Mhmm. Like, what are you watching these days?

Yukiwaru [48:53]:Uh, they love cop slop, which I also enjoy. So funny.

Malcolm Collins [48:58]:That fun.

Yukiwaru [48:58]:So funny. Oh my god. These people are ridiculous. It hurts. It hurts that they exist in the world and that they’re, like, legal adults that can, like, do stuff. What was

Malcolm Collins [49:09]:It’s fun that cop slop is coming back. When I was a kid, cop slop was very common. Um, there was these shows called, like what were the shows called, Simone? I know Simone.

Simone Collins [49:20]:Cops. It’s called cops.

Malcolm Collins [49:22]:Cops. Oh, yes. Cops. And they played constantly, and it was just like an equivalent of cop slop today. Um, but now you you have the streamers covering it where you get to see somebody else being like, we can all agree this is ridiculous. Right? You know? Which you couldn’t do in those old ‘90 shows, but there was, like, this period where there wasn’t any cop slop. And then thank god for body cams. Right? Nothing is made up for sex.

Yukiwaru [49:48]:Hard with what they go through. They’re not perfect, but, oh my god, from the videos that you watch? Oh, good lord.

Simone Collins [49:56]:No. They always make their jobs.

Malcolm Collins [49:58]:Respect cops so much more to be like, oh my god. What a king and honestly honestly, the job that they do, especially combined with the lack of respect they were getting for it for a long time, it’s just us I could not deal with these people.

Yukiwaru [50:15]:The patience they have. Yes. Yeah. They could never. They could never.

Malcolm Collins [50:20]:The the one that I saw recently that was just, like, wild. Did you see the one where the lady grabs the cop’s gun in its holster and shoots it?

Yukiwaru [50:28]:No. I’m just getting into it. But I don’t wanna overdo it too fast. You know, the last night we were watching like Chris Hansen.

Simone Collins [50:37]:Oh, beautiful. The classics. The classics.

Yukiwaru [50:39]:The classics. Pizza over, and he was eating while he was like getting it was so funny.

Malcolm Collins [50:45]:Oh, you know what could actually be pretty fun to react to? And I haven’t seen anyone do it. What? Is old, like, best of, like, Mari. You know, like, the do you even know what Mari is? It might be before your time. So there used to be these shows.

Simone Collins [51:03]:Jerry Springer was the most the most recent.

Yukiwaru [51:05]:Yeah. Yeah. I know him.

Simone Collins [51:07]:Jerry Springer That whole, like, genre.

Malcolm Collins [51:09]:I I thought Mari was better than Jerry Springer. He got trashier. Yes. Oh. Where they would find people who just were, like, in some way completely f*****g degen whatever. And then they’d have them on show, and they’d, like, talk them through it. And my favorite was the teenage girl who was desperate to get pregnant. She was, like, 14, and she has the line, like, it’s it’s my hot body. I do what I want with it. And she’d be like

Speaker 7 [51:37]:My name is Victoria, and I’m 15 years old. And I don’t care what my mama says, I’m gonna have a baby. I will do whatever it takes to take care of my baby. If it has to come out of process to my body, then so be it. I’m gonna adjust my baby in all brand names. And if I can’t support it, then I guess I’m gonna steal it. I’m not just having sex with one, not two, but three different guys. That’s right. I’m a player, but that’s cool because I got it like that. My life game, took drop out of school, to be on Girls Gone Wild, and to have my baby. And there’s nothing my super mother can say to change my mind.

Yukiwaru [52:10]:And I’m like Oh my god.

Simone Collins [52:11]:She the best. She was the best.

Malcolm Collins [52:13]:Level of trashiness in the Internet age, and it’s sad.

Yukiwaru [52:17]:Oh, that’s so funny. I should yeah. I should definitely look into that. I mean, we’re we were all watching stuff like Pawn Stars, and I was just looking for the the the episodes where people get, like, really angry and, like, create create a commotion. I was having trouble finding them.

Malcolm Collins [52:33]:But this this reminds me of, like, when you talk about drama, I I think I am in this interesting position with drama where I love watching drama videos. If it’s, like, about a, like, a furry celebrity who ended up, like, crashing out and losing all their fans, and it’s, turkey Tom or whatever, I’m like, I could watch just, like, a chain of those. But within my real life, I’ve entered this stage of life where we have, like, no drama because I’ve cut out, like, the family members who previously would have caused or, like, the people who previously caused drama. And then within our community, there just isn’t a lot of intercommunity drama. Like, none of this this community that you’re being introduced to, like, they’re the most supportive people I have met in my entire life. Like, none of them have ever in any way backstabbed me. It’s been really shocking because now as an adult, I look back on so many eras of my life, and I was like, wait. I just didn’t have to be friends with the

Yukiwaru [53:35]:with the people. Like, imagine that. It’s would’ve saved so much time and energy if I had just known that.

Simone Collins [53:42]:I really odd that we all just kind of grew up thinking we had to it was very stressful

Yukiwaru [53:47]:Mhmm.

Simone Collins [53:48]:To, like, the I I I can’t say these things, and I can’t think these things, and I can’t believe these things. And they’re just certain things. It it’s it’s very

Yukiwaru [53:55]:a lot worse now.

Simone Collins [53:57]:It is a lot worse now. Yeah. I think that’s why so many people are breaking. I mean, that’s why, like, there’s a whole, I guess, community of people online that are, like, considered heterodox left. Like, well, they’re still left in all things. It’s just that they’ve been rejected once for saying the wrong thing, and they’re just starting to get too fed up with it because it’s a little too stressful. But, like, really, nothing has changed about their political views or anything else, uh, which is really funny to me.

Malcolm Collins [54:21]:I mean, my favorite example of this is, like, JK Rowling. JK Rowling is, like, actually, like, a a socialist leftist in everything that you could be a leftist on. And they just couldn’t leave this one issue alone. And they, like, genuinely radicalized this woman.

Yukiwaru [54:37]:Yeah. I mean, that was, what I felt when I went on my ran. I was like, I just can’t deal with this anymore. Like, men saying they can I just I can’t? I can’t. It it it so irritating. No. You cannot. You cannot?

Malcolm Collins [54:54]:Well, I mean, you know what they do. Right? Are you you you didn’t talk about it in your rant, but they are you familiar with this where they they No. What what is it that they freeze? Is it, like, animal blood?

Yukiwaru [55:06]:It was, like, v eight or something.

Malcolm Collins [55:07]:Yeah. V eight. They freeze Something

Yukiwaru [55:09]:along those lines.

Malcolm Collins [55:10]:And they put it in their butts. Why? Then

Yukiwaru [55:13]:they say signs up for this.

Malcolm Collins [55:15]:This is I I love it. So you’re like, I’m traumatizing you. And Uh-huh. Here when people act like this is, like, an extremist position, they’re like, how could you be canceled? Keep in mind, this is AOC’s position. Like, AOC has tweets saying, know

Simone Collins [55:33]:Oh, I think she’s I think she since deleted it. You know, she’s trying to run for president, so she has to get rid of some of these stances. But look. I mean, there’s there’s also been this this big, I think, cancellation recently online or, like, big thing where people freaked out because someone had a, I think, a nonbinary or possibly trans person on their podcast who was trying to argue that trans women actually had a better, I guess, understanding or appreciation of true femininity, which I actually kind of agree with. And that’s one of the things that really annoys me. And that’s the here’s the problem.

Malcolm Collins [56:08]:Spicy take, Simone. So you think trans women have a

Simone Collins [56:12]:Look. Look. Okay. If you if you are a woman, if you are a natal woman and you have actually menstruated and you have actually, like, been pregnant or given birth, if you’ve actually gone through female puberty, it’s it’s like the difference between being a boy who loves toy soldiers in war movies and then, like, actually going to war. Right? So trans women who have never gone through this stuff, it’s this very beautiful idealized picture of what femininity is, and and any natal female who’s gone through puberty doesn’t because they know what actual femininity is, and it’s not so pretty. And there is a difference between biological reality and gender stereotypes. And to be trans, to be transfemale is to be this more pure version of female because it it’s separating out the ideals of femininity and the performance of femininity from the reality of femininity, which is being disgusting as is demonstrated by the act of menstruation and a bunch of other things. So I 100% hold that point. I don’t know why. See, I see, I think it it kind of undoes the the this this idealization of femininity to attempt to menstruate as a trans woman because this is it’s very unfeminine. I mean, as much as, like, it’s a very feminine thing. Bleeding out of your, like, nethers is not it’s not elegant. Okay. It’s not chic. It’s not chic. It’s so I I I hold that. You know? But, like, I just wish that we could

Malcolm Collins [57:50]:have

Simone Collins [57:50]:these discussions with trans people, with people on the left, with anyone. You know? Because, like, I couldn’t. I mean, maybe I could bring that up with a trans person, but they’d be so, like I I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins [58:02]:But your criticism was, like, so mild, so restrained, and the degree

Simone Collins [58:08]:to which so reasonable and and also just factual, which is the other issue.

Malcolm Collins [58:13]:That you lured them from Blue Sky

Simone Collins [58:15]:back to Twitter. Which is that’s saying a lot, man. Like Yeah.

Yukiwaru [58:20]:And they’re actually threatening some friends of mine to no longer be my friend and people are creating like a blacklist of people who are still, you know, in communication with me and, you know, oh my god. Like, I’m so glad I’m living rent free in your head, but come on. Move on.

Malcolm Collins [58:39]:Well, this is actually I think a very important thing that they do this from their perspective because they create this bubble where you can’t talk to anyone with specific views because if you did, you would see that they’re reasonable, nice people. And so the only way that you your community can stay in this bubble where the other side and I know this bubble. I know, you know, growing up what I thought conservatives were. Right? I thought they were like angry hillbillies who lived in the woods. Right? Like, I I I genuinely, really, in my mind, thought of them in quite a dehumanized fashion.

Yukiwaru [59:17]:Mhmm.

Malcolm Collins [59:18]:And I was able to think this because I hadn’t interacted with the community. Because if I did interact with the community, all of my friends would leave me. And since then, all of my friends have left me. So Yeah. Whatever. Right? You know?

Yukiwaru [59:31]:What do you have to lose now?

Malcolm Collins [59:33]:But, uh, yeah. Yeah. That’s a well, it’s it’s it’s like a memetic protection device. And I think it’s not like an intentional thing. I just think the parts of leftist culture that didn’t attempt to socially isolate othering ideas typically die out. Because if more people in your community start being like, uh-oh, they meet your new friends and your new friends aren’t evil, And they’re like, okay. Well, what what ideas do you have? Why do you think these things? Um, and then they begin to and they hear people like Simone who’s even has this crazy take that trans women are more women.

Simone Collins [60:07]:It is not a crazy you know, a feminine. Whatever.

Malcolm Collins [60:10]:Feminine. I hear you.

Simone Collins [60:12]:Correct for

Yukiwaru [60:12]:the I I I I see what you’re saying. You use a lot of big words that I don’t necessarily understand, but I think I got the point.

Simone Collins [60:22]:Words are fun. Look. Look. I’m all about words. There’s so many words like mini hammer that we all need to bring back. I’m obsessed with words. You gotta you gotta word.

Yukiwaru [60:33]:I barely speak English as it is.

Simone Collins [60:36]:So do I, honestly. But this is why I need the extra words. They’re very

Yukiwaru [60:40]:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [60:41]:Yeah. Well, it was great to have you on.

Simone Collins [60:45]:Yes. And congratulations on being canceled and blacklisted by all of your friends.

Yukiwaru [60:51]:Thank you. I’m honored. My dad’s really proud of me.

Simone Collins [60:54]:Aw. See, you know, this is this is what you wanna go for.

Malcolm Collins [60:58]:For saying the most normal thing in the world. It it wasn’t even political. You had a normal opinion. They they I bet even in their social circles, even among the ones who are looking to cancel you, 90% of them probably secretly believe all of that stuff. They just know they’re not allowed to say it. Right?

Yukiwaru [61:18]:I’ve had, like, people of the the community reach out to me saying, you know, they support me. They, like, you know, they agree with me.

Malcolm Collins [61:26]:Well, that’s that’s really hard.

Simone Collins [61:28]:But it’s like political suicide to actually, like, come out and

Yukiwaru [61:31]:Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Malcolm Collins [61:33]:But guys, check out her content. It’s it’s not a lot of it is political, which makes it very different than the other content we Although

Simone Collins [61:39]:It’s just family. Yukiwaru’s really fun. Oh. It’s just gonna be fun.

Malcolm Collins [61:44]:Yeah.

Simone Collins [61:44]:Hi. Yeah. Yeah. Text your your Yukiwaru wait. What’s your username on x?

Yukiwaru [61:50]:Uh, it’s Yukiwaru and then that, like, dash at the end, but you don’t really have to worry about the dash because if you type it in, it should show up. But someone actually has, my name on Oh, so I just had to add a dash.

Simone Collins [62:05]:How did you choose it? How’d you choose your name?

Yukiwaru [62:07]:Actually, my artist helped me pick out my name. Uki means snow, and Waru translates to brat. No. No. Brat? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That’s a good one. Good. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [62:23]:Well, we’re

Simone Collins [62:24]:well done. You know? You know, you pick friends well, and sometimes your friends just choose to unpick you. But that’s that’s a good that’s a good one. Yeah.

Yukiwaru [62:32]:Yes. It is.

Malcolm Collins [62:33]:Mhmm. I hope you grow. I I I do have a feeling that you’re probably at the beginning of doing more politics stuff because that’s generally where this goes.

Simone Collins [62:43]:We’ve we’ve done a number

Malcolm Collins [62:45]:we caught you at, like, day one at moment one after first cancellation event. But you go to something like Leaflet. Leaflet never did politics stuff. And then she played, like, Hogwarts legacy, and she got canceled. And then she was like, you know what? I am gonna react to politics videos. And then people started to so much of, like, our community, like you said, is just for me this, no. You can’t tell me what I’m allowed to say. I’m gonna say what I believe. And now I’m gonna say even more than what I believe because you’re a meanie. And then a a new community community forms, forms, and and you’re you’re like, like, oh, these people, they like hearing what I actually think. So let’s let’s all encourage her to have more takes.

Simone Collins [63:28]:Yes. Yes. Thank you so much for joining us.

Yukiwaru [63:31]:Thank you so much for having me.

Malcolm Collins [63:33]:Alright. I’ll hit end recording.

Yukiwaru [63:35]:Yay. It

Simone Collins [63:37]:was really

Speaker 6 [63:37]:What are you guys doing? I got the jump on. I’m pushing me. Oh, Titan’s pushing you a little? And what are you guys working on? Oh my god. Are you building a whole house, Octavian? Oh, yeah. Are you scared of the house now?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins examine the rapid secularization underway in many Muslim-majority countries—often at a faster proportional rate than Christianity’s decline in the West. They walk through Arab Barometer and related data showing sharp rises in secular identification from 2012–2019 in Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, and Egypt, followed by a partial rebound in the early 2020s.

The conversation covers declining trust in Islamist parties (Muslim Brotherhood, Ennahda, Justice and Development Party), sub-replacement fertility across much of the region, and existential water scarcity in Egypt and Iran. They then dig into the drivers of deconversion: smartphone access to historical sources, the Islamic slave trade’s scale and character, Muhammad’s documented ownership of slaves (including Black slaves), Aisha’s age in the hadith literature, key Quranic verses on women, violence, sexual slavery, apostasy, and internal inconsistencies.

Malcolm ranks the most common reasons people report leaving Islam, notes the heavy influence of modern egalitarian (“urban monoculture”) values, and offers a Techno-Puritan perspective on whether the tradition can be reconciled with reality-affirming religion. Simone adds her view on the ethical implications. The discussion is candid, data-driven, and frequently interrupted by family life.

Based_Camp_-_Islam_Shiftsmp4 (1)

[00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: Simone, I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be talking about a fascinating phenomenon, which is the collapse of Islam- Hmm ... in the Muslim world. And a lot of people are unaware that Islam has had as, as bad of a time as Christianity has had in the West.

[00:00:21] Simone Collins: Yeah,

[00:00:21] Malcolm Collins: it’s taken a beating.

[00:00:21] At least proportionally, Islam is having a worse time in Muslim majority countries- Is it

[00:00:29] Simone Collins: really? ...

[00:00:30] Malcolm Collins: in terms of the speed of the collapse. So if you go from 2012 to 2014, all right?

[00:00:38] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:00:39] Malcolm Collins: In Tunisia, you had 22% of people were secular. If you go to 2018 to 2019, so this is just less than a decade... Yeah, le- about...

[00:00:52] What is it? Yeah, less than a decade later, it jumped up to 46%.

[00:00:56] Speaker 3: Huh, huh.

[00:00:57] Malcolm Collins: Okay. 22% to 46%. If you go to Libya, it’s 18% in the 2012 to 2014. Okay. 2018 to ‘19, it goes from 18% to 36%. Algeria, it goes from 13% to 24%. Morocco, it went from 4% to 22%. Stop. And in Egypt, it went from 3% to 18%. Now, I want people to understand that these are countries where you can be killed for deconverting from Islam.

[00:01:32] Simone Collins: And- In... Wait, in which of these countries is that ki- like, in, in... ‘Cause I thought, like, caliphates only really existed in, at roughly, like... Okay, this is my uneducated, super unedu- it... I wanna say, I wanna say, like, Afghanistan and Iran Right? Like- Okay,

[00:01:48] Malcolm Collins: countries that will kill you legally, not mob justice. In these other countries it can be mob justice.

[00:01:53] But legally- But like ruled

[00:01:54] Simone Collins: by Sharia law.

[00:01:55] Malcolm Collins: Like- It’s the death penalty in Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Mauritania, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Somalia, the Maldives, Brunei, and some parts of Nigeria, and certain states in Malaysia.

[00:02:08] Simone Collins: For what? For proselytizing Christianity or just being an unbeliever?

[00:02:10] Malcolm Collins: No,

[00:02:11] Simone Collins: for

[00:02:11] Malcolm Collins: deconverting.

[00:02:13] Simone Collins: How... How do they track that? And keep in mind,

[00:02:16] Malcolm Collins: Iran appears to have a massive secular population now-

[00:02:19] Simone Collins: Yeah. No, that- ... even

[00:02:20] Malcolm Collins: though it’s the

[00:02:20] Simone Collins: death

[00:02:21] Malcolm Collins: penalty ... Oh, it’s,

[00:02:22] Simone Collins: So wait, so like everyone like goes to the mosque regularly? Like how do they track... I mean, I’m just trying to figure out like how you make a case for having someone-

[00:02:32] Malcolm Collins: The p- the point I’m making here is the numbers are almost certainly worse.

[00:02:35] Now, what is interesting is many of these places many of these places have had a a boost post this happening.

[00:02:44] Speaker 3: Oh gosh. Where did I, where did I post the, I’ll have to open it

[00:02:47] Simone Collins: in Chrome again. Wait, did you get kicked again by a ghost? What, what, what was...

[00:02:50] Malcolm Collins: No, something fell over.

[00:02:52] Simone Collins: Wait. Shut up Was it a ghost?

[00:02:55] Malcolm Collins: Was it

[00:02:55] Simone Collins: a ghost? I’m so excited for ghosties. Ghosties. Spooky. Or... Oh, no, I should say jinn, because << this is our Islamic episode, so instead of ghosties, it’s jinn >>. Jinn, jinn, jinn, jinn. So, if

[00:03:11] Malcolm Collins: we look at wave three, we’ve seen a bit of a reduction. So 2021 to 2022. What is wave three?

[00:03:16] Simone Collins: What...

[00:03:17] Malcolm Collins: Oh. So if you go to Tunisia, it’s to 31% now.

[00:03:21] If, if you go to Libya, it’s 24% now. You s- also saw a five-point drop in Algeria, a seven-point drop in Morocco, and a six-point drop in Egypt. So you-

[00:03:34] Simone Collins: A drop in the number of atheists, in the percentage

[00:03:36] Malcolm Collins: of atheists. A drop in the number of atheists. So you’ve had a

[00:03:39] Simone Collins: slight drop- Wait, and over what year, over what year period, Malcolm?

[00:03:42] Malcolm Collins: This is 2018 to ‘21, 2021 to 2020, so a fairly short time. Mm-hmm. So basically you had a big wave out, and a small wave back in, and we’ll see where the net is. But it’s worse than that, because you also have the problem of low [00:04:00] support of Islamic parties. So, If we look at the various things here, like the Egyptian Brotherhood, sorry, the, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

[00:04:10] Mm-hmm. In 2011, it had a trust rate of 44%. By 2018 to ‘19, it had a trust rate of only 17%. In the Tunisia, the Ennahda had a decline of 24 points since 2011, roughly down from a 40% range. And now with one detailed team survey showing it being at only 11 to 16% now. Wow. And in Morocco, the Justice and Development, the main Islamic party, went from 44% in 2013 to 25% in 2019.

[00:04:42] A 20-point decline were reported for Muslim Brotherhood, Brotherhood groups in Jordan and Morocco as well. So You are basically seeing a lower degree of trust in the institutions that were meant to bring sort of Islam to everyone. And on top of all of this, we’re seeing fairly low fertility rates or extremely low fertility rates for the poverty in these regions across these regions as well.

[00:05:11] Generally below the United States fertility rate. So Tunisia has a fertility rate of 1.53 to 1.58. Iran has a fertility rate of 1.6. Saudi Arabia has a fertility rate of 2.1 maybe, so they- they’re doing better than us. And UAE and other Gulf states have a fertility rate of 1.3 to 1.7, so very low.

[00:05:34] Simone Collins: And- It’s lower than I’m sure anyone would expect, even in the case of the rare but still present above replacement country.

[00:05:42] Because people think- Yeah ... Muslim country, and they’re like, “Oh, we’re talking families like six on average, right?” No. Like, no.

[00:05:49] Malcolm Collins: No, no, nope.

[00:05:51] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:05:51] Malcolm Collins: We are seeing a collapse across the board. And it gets worse. We’re potentially better, and we should be grateful that this collapse is happening, or they should be grateful, is they’re also across the Arab world well, I should say Muslim world because it’s happening in Iran, too, about to run out of water.

[00:06:12] Egypt right now, a- a- at current figures has a threshold of 490 to 500 meters squared per year in terms of the- the quality that puts it- it right below the scarcity threshold and less than half the UN water poverty line. Mm. And this has been a massive decline from historical levels. If you look at what does it mean to have, sorry, water levels at 490 to 500 meters, square meters, if we look at the 1960s, they had levels at 2,000 cubic meters.

[00:06:47] Not good. If you look at the 1990s, it had fallen to 1,000 cubic meters, and now it’s at only 500 cubic meters And 98% of their fresh water comes from the Nile, which the country upstream of them can dam, and currently is damming. So it’s likely going to get worse. You have this at the same problem as Iran’s water problem that’s literally leading to giant sinkholes.

[00:07:12] See our episode of, like, the hell on earth it is to live in Iran. R- this we did before the war talking about just how bad it’s gotten in Iran with their water situation. But we’re also seeing this across the region because, you know, oth- these regions are supplying other regions with water. The reason they’re doing the dam is ‘cause they’re also low on water.

[00:07:31] Mm-hmm. And when a lot of these regions run out of water, there isn’t a lot they can do. They don’t have the economy or the economic capacity that a country like Israel does to run on desalination. Mm-hmm. So that sort of means that they don’t have a future. Like, when we did the Iran video, the answer to the future of Iran is Iran functionally has no future.

[00:07:52] Mm-hmm. Y- there is no way that it can continue to operate at the population levels it’s operating at right now. Well,

[00:07:57] Simone Collins: and, and with the water levels and [00:08:00] the, yeah, just the infrastructure issues at play.

[00:08:03] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So this has been a massive issue. So the question is, one, when we think about the future of the Muslim world, what’s gonna happen?

[00:08:12] If we think about the future of Islam, what’s going to happen, and why are we seeing these massive deconversions? The first thing to note is we’re not seeing them as heavily in migrant communities. Migrant communities appear to have a degree of protection from this. So where we’re going to see our more moderated Muslims are going to be in Muslim majority countries in the future, be- largely ‘cause we’re creating this, which is why it’s so important that we manage deportations more aggressively.

[00:08:37] Because a lot of the times these are people who were extreme even in the countries that they’re coming from. So why, why are we having this issue? Thoughts, Simone, before I go further.

[00:08:50] Simone Collins: I’m assuming it’s bad governance of the countries. I, I, like, I, I can’t imagine it actually being a result of doctrinal issues, for example.

[00:08:58] I, I can only imagine it being corrupt governance. Is that it? What, what do you... Tell me.

[00:09:05] Malcolm Collins: It’s, it’s, it’s... Well, it’s, it’s doctrinal and people learning history, basically. It’s- Oh ... chartable, and there’s some studies that have looked at this, to the proliferation of cell phones.

[00:09:14] Simone Collins: Basically- Oh, no. So it’s kind of like with the LDS church suddenly hemorrhaging people because they’re able to find, what is it, the letter?

[00:09:21] I’m assuming.

[00:09:21] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the, the whatever letter. Yeah. Which is a very convincing document, by the way. I, I would... If I was LDS and I found that, I’d be like, “Ooh.”

[00:09:28] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:09:29] Yeah. Well, no, that’s the problem, is that so many members of the church have been one-shotted by that one letter. You know, someone’s just like, “Look it up,” and they do.

[00:09:37] So could... So are you, you’re suggesting basically that there’s some rough equivalent or constellation of equivalents for Islam? For Islam?

[00:09:48] Malcolm Collins: The problem with Islam-

[00:09:49] Simone Collins: It’s the CES letter. It’s the CES letter ...

[00:09:51] Malcolm Collins: The CES letter. That makes it so much weaker than Christianity is Christianity owns the atrocities it committed in its history, the bad things that happened around its history.

[00:10:02] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:10:02] Malcolm Collins: You expose those to a Christian, and generally they’re like, “Yeah, I was aware of all that.” Right? Like, “What, what are you talking about?”

[00:10:10] Simone Collins: Yeah. “

[00:10:11] Malcolm Collins: The Inquisition? F**k off. Everybody knows about that,” right? Yes ... but Islam genuinely, to a lot of people who converted into it, billed itself as something that is completely at odds with the historic reality that is Islam.

[00:10:28] So if I’m gonna give an example of what I mean by this in the United States, a lot of Black people converted into Islam because they’re like, “Well, my ancestors were converted by Christians, and that means Christianity is bad because it’s Christians that enslaved them, and so Christianity is, like, an anti-African religion.”

[00:10:47] And it’s like Actually, if we look at the number of Black Africans that were enslaved by Muslims, that slave trade or the slave trade that evolved into that slave trade was active for 1,300 years. It’s the oldest slave age in human history. It is still an active slave trade. There’s still, like, open air slave markets in places like Libya.

[00:11:13] Simone Collins: What?

[00:11:13] Malcolm Collins: The United States one was only active for 350 years. Worse, it was a larger slave trade. So it has, like, you- if you look at scholars on this, typically you’re looking at a range of 10 to 18 million Africans were enslaved over this. And then you get way lower numbers, or at least for average numbers, for the American slave trade, which was only 11.5 to 14 million people in comparison.

[00:11:42] So-

[00:11:42] Simone Collins: Oh, that’s a bad look. Yeah.

[00:11:44] Malcolm Collins: Why is

[00:11:45] Simone Collins: that? But- I’m just so mad that people don’t say things like ... No one ever, no one ever taught me that. I learned so much about slavery in, like, every single grade of American public school.

[00:11:55] Malcolm Collins: But, but the, the Black people can be like, “Well, then why aren’t there Black people all over the [00:12:00] Arab world?”

[00:12:01] And the answer is, is because the slave trade was demonstrably worse than the American slave trade. Because what were they interested in? What, what, what, what... Americans, you know, you, we, we import slaves as Protestants, the first thing we think is, “Hmm, I bet you would be great for labor.” But when a Muslim country imports slaves, they’re usually looking for sex slaves.

[00:12:29] And that is what they did with them. They would take the men and castrate them so that they couldn’t create stable communities, and sometimes use them as sex slaves still. And all of the women would be put into sex slavery. Hmm. Yeah ... because that is part of their culture. It’s, it’s not part of the American slave culture.

[00:12:48] It’s not that, like, grapes never happened, but they were often punishable even by your community and seen as a very bad thing to do. No, come

[00:12:55] Simone Collins: on. They were pervasive. Don’t even. But, like, still.

[00:12:59] Malcolm Collins: No, they were not as pervasive as is you-

[00:13:02] Simone Collins: It was looked down upon. People weren’t proud of it. It wasn’t, like, out in the open.

[00:13:06] Malcolm Collins: A- and you could be punished for it in m- I’m pretty sure in all states.

[00:13:11] Simone Collins: Yeah, I’m sure in theory, but, like, you know, there was just that certainly- You certainly didn’t

[00:13:15] Malcolm Collins: put

[00:13:15] Simone Collins: out slaves as sex slaves ... understood

[00:13:18] Malcolm Collins: slave to be had. So I decided to double-check, and in the South, there actually, it was legal in a lot of states.

[00:13:26] Explicitly, there was one court case in whi- in which one male slave raped another female slave who was 10, and he was not convicted because it was deemed as not illegal. That’s how severe it was. That said, also, we know that, I also double-checked that Mohammed definitely had lots of sex slaves. That is recorded in the Quran.

[00:13:48] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:13:49] Malcolm Collins: Which I think shows just a demonstrably worse level. And they, the way that they did the castrations on the males was so brutal that you had death rates of, I think it was... God, what was it? I’m trying to find the numbers here. You have mortality rates of 60 to

[00:14:07] Simone Collins: 90%. Go... mm.

[00:14:09] Malcolm Collins: In some studies. So they’re kinda just Basically, they just killed the males

[00:14:12] taunting them. They didn’t really care if the male survived. They were just- But they

[00:14:14] Simone Collins: just wanted to kill them in, like, one of the most painful and humiliating ways possible.

[00:14:19] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and I mean, they’re still super, super racist against Blacks in most Arab countries- Oh my God ... right? Like-

[00:14:24] Simone Collins: Yeah, I think what, in, in, in...

[00:14:25] Or no, sorry, that’s an African country where, like, the word for slave is just also the word for Black person.

[00:14:31] Malcolm Collins: No, this is, this is true in a lot of Arab countries.

[00:14:33] Simone Collins: Oh, God ...

[00:14:34] Malcolm Collins: and a lot of people are, “Oh, that’s just normal.” It’s like, no, it’s not. Like, we stopped saying the N-word, right? Like, you guys can’t stop calling them slaves just because, “Well, that’s how they think of them.”

[00:14:44] Keep in mind, the largest- Yeah, but the N-word

[00:14:45] Simone Collins: doesn’t mean, the, the N-word doesn’t mean sla- slave. It never did ...

[00:14:49] Malcolm Collins: the largest genocide on Earth right now is currently being carried out by a group of Muslims against a group of African Blacks, right? Mm-hmm. And it’s had a death toll at 10X the Gaza death toll- But God

[00:15:04] Simone Collins: forbid anyone talk about that one.

[00:15:06] No

[00:15:06] Malcolm Collins: God forbid. But a number of, and ‘cause we saw this in the United States, a lot of Blacks thought that it was, like, cool or traditionally Black to be Muslim, and so they converted, and so you got these Black Muslim communities. And so, but, but not just there, but like in other parts of, if you’re talking about in Muslim countries and stuff like this, there’s this realization of like, “Oh my God, like this is really bad.”

[00:15:28] And the child bride thing, ‘cause a lot of people are like, “Oh, Aisha could have been older.” Like, it, and this progressive Muslim I met told me this way of reading it that makes Aisha not six and nine. However, in the Muslim world, especially in conservative Muslim countries, they believe the six and nine ages, like everyone does, so it’s, it’s largely irrelevant whether or not it was the case.

[00:15:49] But what it means is a lot of people hear this, “Oh, he’s a perfect moral person,” and then it’s, “Oh, he married a six-year-old and slept with a nine-year-old,” right? Like [00:16:00] A lot of them see that And their takeaway from that is, this seems really bad. Like, I don’t know how to square this. Like, I have a six-year-old kid, right?

[00:16:14] Like, Octavian, our kid, is six years old. That’s the age of one of his wives, right? Like, they begin to learn... Like, really it’s, it’s, it’s very much sort of like with Protestants, they read the Bible and they’re like, “Wait, this isn’t what Catholics said was in the Bible,” you know? There’s all these things the church is doing that, like, we’re explicitly told not to do.

[00:16:39] And a lot of Muslims read this, and it’s just like, wait, was Muhammad, like, a really bad guy? I mean, there’s... We’ll get into it, because I actually wanted to go through and have an AI sort of do an analysis on what ends up pushing people away. Because, you know, he had, this is, like, in the Quran, sm- sex slaves, right?

[00:16:59] Like, th- that’s a thing that he did. Actually, one of them killed him after he killed her, th- this Jewish lady’s kids and, and husband. And then she poisoned him. All

[00:17:09] Simone Collins: right. Really?

[00:17:11] Malcolm Collins: Good for her, right? Yeah. And like, a lot of people are like “How dare, what a terrible thing. Such a perfect person.”

[00:17:16] It’s like, no, that’s like a good thing to do for your people and your family.

[00:17:20] Simone Collins: Oh, no, 100%, if, if someone were to do that, I, yeah, I mean, poison is what they would get if they were lucky.

[00:17:26] Malcolm Collins: What’s also really fascinating-

[00:17:28] Simone Collins: She’s rich, but she’d get away with it. She’d do worse if she could ...

[00:17:30] Malcolm Collins: if you talk about this from a techno Puritan perspective, ‘cause if we think, oh, the, the Quranic text was to any extent inspired by some sort of real...

[00:17:37] I, I’m, I’m doubting this more and more as time goes on. Like, the, the more I read about what they did historically and how they acted historically and in modern times,

[00:17:46] Simone Collins: I’m increasingly- The more you realize that by biblical standards, they don’t have souls. Wait, sorry. The Bible doesn’t say there’s anything about souls, but that’s what I mean.

[00:17:52] Like, they weren’t human. They were pre-Adamite animal things. Yeah.

[00:17:56] Speaker 5: Are they pre-Adamites? Yeah ... with

[00:17:57] Simone Collins: our

[00:17:57] Speaker 5: new term. No, the-

[00:17:59] Malcolm Collins: Obviously, I can’t know what’s in another person’s heart or in another person’s brain or if they feel regret when they use people as sex slaves or whatever. But what I can say is that within multiple populations, I think there are pre-Adamites in the Christian population, I think there are pre-Adamites in the Jewish population.

[00:18:16] It’s just they seem to appear within the Muslim population at higher rates within our existing society. This could be a nature of Muslim culture as it exists right now in sort of a personal dark age, or it could be because in many ways Muhammad acted this way a nature of it more broadly.

[00:18:37] Speaker 10: Welcome to Muslim sensitivity training.

[00:18:41] Let’s all look at why Muslims are upset. First of all, in the Muslim religion you can’t... Anybody? Jack off. Okay, jacking it is strictly forbidden in the Muslim religion.

[00:18:54] And what do we know about the places Muslims live? They live in? Good, sand. Now, put yourself in the shoes of a Muslim. It’s Friday night, but you can’t have sex and you can’t jack off. There’s sand in your eyes and probably in the crack of your ass, and then some cartoon comes along from a country where people are getting laid and mocks your prophet.

[00:19:16] Well, you know what? I’d be pretty pissed off, too

[00:19:19] Malcolm Collins: The, the, the question , is if it was partially inspired by God, part of the problem is, is Muhammad himself wrote that, “If I’m lying, may God rip out my aorta,” and his last words was, “It feels like somebody’s ripping out my aorta Wait, really?

[00:19:38] Yeah, they were, they were... Like, it’s a, it’s a weird phrasing that was used, right? Like, it’s, it’s, it’s very, like, book-endy. And when I saw that, I was like if I’m supposed to assume that God came in to inspire this text, then what is he saying about Muhammad through this, right? Like, it, I, I, I think, but they might not be his actual last words.

[00:19:59] They’re, like, one [00:20:00] of his last words or something like this.

[00:20:01] Simone Collins: Look, if he said that and it was anywhere close to the end, I’m taking it.

[00:20:07] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh, another fun thing in the Quran is there is one part where Muhammad trades two Black slaves for one white slave.

[00:20:14] Simone Collins: Great. Great, yeah, and there’s just all these people who are like, “Look, the, the proper, the proper religion for me-

[00:20:22] Malcolm Collins: Yeah

[00:20:23] is, is Islam.” Now,

[00:20:23] Simone Collins: th- th- one,

[00:20:24] Malcolm Collins: this shows that Muhammad owned Black slaves.

[00:20:27] Simone Collins: Great. Great, great, great, great, great, great.

[00:20:29] Malcolm Collins: Which I think is so, I mean-

[00:20:30] Simone Collins: Look, it, look, I mean, he does seem to have been equal opportunity in slave ownership, to be fair. I mean,

[00:20:36] Malcolm Collins: assuming you’re- Now, note here, by the way, how Muslim apologists try to get around this part.

[00:20:39] Simone Collins: Okay,

[00:20:39] Malcolm Collins: okay. Is they’re like, “Well, the, the white slave was willing to convert to Islam, and that’s why his life was worth more than the Black slaves who were not willing to convert to Islam or had not converted to Islam.”

[00:20:52] Simone Collins: Ugh.

[00:20:52] Malcolm Collins: Is, is, so as far as the way that they read it. Y- by the way, the, the, the, CNN has even done stuff on Libya’s open air slave market for Africans.

[00:21:02] Simone Collins: How... Okay, if those exist, wouldn’t, like, there be a ton of tourists there? I had no idea there were open air slave markets. Thought it was- Yeah ... all, like, sort of behind the scenes trafficking.

[00:21:13] Malcolm Collins: Well, I

[00:21:14] Simone Collins: mean- There are open air slave markets? That, that’s-

[00:21:16] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, open air slave markets. Still, like, I love these people who are like, they, “Your ancestors owned slaves.”

[00:21:22] And I’m like, one, no they didn’t. And two how, why do

[00:21:27] Simone Collins: you care- Okay, mine, mine probably

[00:21:27] Malcolm Collins: did, though ... so much about this? To be fair. If you think you deserve so much recompense for this, why aren’t you doing anything about all the slaves right now? There’s more slaves right now than there have been at any point in human history.

[00:21:36] Yeah,

[00:21:36] Simone Collins: and well also, like, if you eat shrimp, shrimp you’re probably u- utilizing slave labor. You know, there’s so many products that we buy, you know, all of us on, on a regular basis probably a bunch of our garments are made by slaves. You’re using functional

[00:21:46] Malcolm Collins: slave labor, slaves with extra steps.

[00:21:48] Simone Collins: I’m talking about- No, no, I mean I’m also talking about actual slaves, like people who are being- Oh yeah, because they

[00:21:52] Malcolm Collins: do capture them on boats and stuff, and stuff, from what I’ve heard, yeah.

[00:21:54] Simone Collins: Yeah, like, it there’s a lot of migrant trafficking that ends up with people who are, like, left on boats or... Look, I’ve heard way worse things that I can’t talk about ‘cause I’ll start crying. But- It’s really hard to avoid slavery if you buy things that are not, like, locally produced and made. So-

[00:22:10] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:22:11] I mean, I’ve definitely... I’ll, I’ll, I’ll go deeper before I go into, ‘cause I wanna go into specific lines, ‘cause I decided to have AI create sort of a, a, a spreadsheet of when people say they left w- Islam, Islam, why? Yeah. Like, what specifically made them leave? Hmm. To try to find the specific verses and stuff like that that people are having trouble with and that’s causing them to leave.

[00:22:31] Speaker 3: Okay.

[00:22:31] Malcolm Collins: But I, I really do think that the key strength that Christianity has had that has made it not as heavily affected by the internet is Christians really air their dirty laundry, like, pretty heavily. Most Christians are familiar with most of the major arguments made by atheists, right? Like, you, you go on the internet, you’re not gonna see new arguments, right?

[00:22:55] You’re like, “Oh, I know that one, I know that one, I know that one, I know that one.” Mm-hmm. Yeah. The CES letter for a lot of Mormons genuinely introduced them to arguments or concepts that the church hadn’t made sure to introduce to them first in context.

[00:23:11] Simone Collins: That’s the really big problem, yeah. It’s just been kind of sheltered away.

[00:23:14] Malcolm Collins: Very much like the, the you know, the sexuality situation where I’m like, “You’ve got to show your kids this stuff first in context, have them understand it, have them understand what they’re seeing so that they don’t get it, you know, messed up for them in some, some other way.” Yeah. I, I, I think that Christianity has done d- almost to its detri- like actually to its detriment, gone so hard negative on itself that, like, that just wasn’t a problem for it, right?

[00:23:45] Whereas y- you can see online I’ve seen videos of this, of Islamic you know, figures like a, a, the, I f- I forget what they’re called. Like, a, higher than a priest preacher- Modernists? Yeah, yeah. [00:24:00] Saying that it is sinful to listen to a debate about whether Islam is true.

[00:24:04] Speaker 6: A rule of thumb, it is totally prohibited to watch debates or to engage in debates.

[00:24:11] Engaging in debates might, huh, might be acceptable if you had proper knowledge.

[00:24:18] Malcolm Collins: Which shows that, like- Oh, that’s- They don’t want you- That, no,

[00:24:20] Simone Collins: that i- no ... that’s gonna make you- You don’t get to do that. That, that makes you look so bad. Don’t say that. Like, even if... No. Then, that’s, come on. That, you’re, it’s so, it’s so tempting to listen to debates then.

[00:24:34] Unless it’s just to pray for them. Well, I mean, I don’t,

[00:24:35] Malcolm Collins: I mean, it, it, if you’re like, “Well, my soul could be at stake,” and blah, blah. The point here being is a lot of Muslims were genuinely unaware of the arguments against it or how brutal the Quran is because they were reading translated versions of it.

[00:24:51] Yeah. Like for example in, in, in the Quran it says that when you go to heaven, you get a white face, and when you go to hell, you get a black face.

[00:25:00] Simone Collins: Are you serious? Oh, that’s so much worse than white and delightsome. That’s-

[00:25:04] Malcolm Collins: Right?

[00:25:05] Simone Collins: That’s horrible.

[00:25:05] Malcolm Collins: But- My

[00:25:06] Simone Collins: God ...

[00:25:07] Malcolm Collins: the, the,

[00:25:08] Speaker 3: Oh, guys

[00:25:11] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I know it’s, it’s really bad.

[00:25:13] Speaker 3: It’s

[00:25:13] Malcolm Collins: really bad. It’s really bad. But the way that they translate that, if they’re like, “Well, it’s a metaphor. Like white means good and happy, hippy, and black means sad and bad.”

[00:25:23] Speaker 3: Stop digging the hole. Don’t dig. Ah, oh, no, no, no, no, no,

[00:25:28] Malcolm Collins: no, no, no. I’m

[00:25:29] Speaker 3: like,

[00:25:30] Malcolm Collins: get it in its original context when they had lots of Black slaves and, you know, Muhammad personally owned Black people.

[00:25:38] Mm-hmm. That’s the other thing where they’re like, you get all these like Muslim converts in the United States w- all these like Black groups and they’re like, “You have a Black president or whatev- l- look, your presidents or founding presidents or Founding Fathers owned slaves.” And I was like, “Yeah, but what about like the founder of your religion?”

[00:25:56] Simone Collins: Yeah, I, I actually, I didn’t know until just today that Muhammad had Black slaves. I also did not know that he had slaves.

[00:26:03] Malcolm Collins: But also- Now

[00:26:04] Simone Collins: that I think about him ...

[00:26:04] Malcolm Collins: keep in mind that, well, I mean, it, it creates a problem if you thought that you were being like pro-African or something by joining, right?

[00:26:12] Simone Collins: Yes.

[00:26:14] Yes, it does. It does.

[00:26:15] Malcolm Collins: All right, no, so before I get to the quotes, what I wanted to go over is my thoughts right now on Islam. And I’m not digging that deep into Islam right now because I don’t want to push something out. You know, when I started the Techno-Puritan project I was like, “Yeah, you can try to be like a Muslim version of a techno-puritan, but if you are, you need to go and find things that affirm- reality in your text, right?

[00:26:39] Like, that’s the techno puritan project, right? Mm-hmm. If it is actually from God, it will occur with reality, and one of the problems that you’re gonna have is you can say, “Well, that was just the time. Like, that was just the way people lived back when Muhammad was alive,” and it’s like, yeah, except Jesus was way before Muhammad and didn’t have any child brides or slaves, right?

[00:27:03] Like, how... What do you mean just the time, right? Mm-hmm. Then we should apply the same things to Jesus. But let’s go through the most quoted verses for why people leave so we can think about how these have problems in the modern context. So Quran 4:34, the most frequently mentioned single verse, it describes men as protectors and maintainers of women and outlines steps for dealing with a wife’s, not rebellion or disobedience, ending with, “Strike them or beat them lightly.”

[00:27:31] Various translations of ˈwar, the word. Many leavers describe this as incompatible with modern ethics or equality. Now-

[00:27:40] Simone Collins: Not Andrew Tates. Look, he was the perfect match

[00:27:43] Malcolm Collins: for Islam. For

[00:27:44] Simone Collins: Islam. Yeah, he really was. He was just, like, born for Islam.

[00:27:46] Malcolm Collins: She’s gonna do an episode on what a, a dirtbag he is- Yeah ... in the near future.

[00:27:50] She’s outlined it. Mm-hmm. But yeah, I mean, I guess living a Muslim life, he beats them heavily though like ripping out their-

[00:27:56] Simone Collins: No, don’t, don’t, no spoilers. And he doesn’t. [00:28:00] He doesn’t. You’ll see.

[00:28:02] Malcolm Collins: In Quran 4:11, inheritance rules, a male receives the share of two females in inheritance. Quran 2:282, in financial contracts, two women are required in the place of one male witness so that if-

[00:28:17] one of the women heirs, the other can remind her. In Quran 4:3, permission for a man to marry up to four wives with conditions about justice, and Hadith on Aisha’s age- parallel reports that she was married at six or seven, and the marriage was consummated when she was nine. And these points push a lot of feminist types out, and it appears that the feminist arguments are the most compelling to people.

[00:28:46] Now, I think a portion of our audience would even be, like, based, right? Like, except for the child grape stuff, grape stuff. But, like, the other stuff, you know, yeah, you know, like Sean Connery being like, “Sometimes you need to beat a woman when she’s acting up.” It-

[00:29:01] Simone Collins: Sometimes. Sometimes

[00:29:03] Malcolm Collins: Sometimes.

[00:29:04] Speaker 7: Okay. You did an interview in which you said-

[00:29:07] Simone Collins: Mm

[00:29:07] Speaker 7: it’s not the worst thing to slap a woman, thing to slap a woman now and then. As I remember, you said you don’t do it with a clenched fist. It’s better to do it with an open hand.

[00:29:14] Speaker 8: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:15] Speaker 7: Yeah. Remember that?

[00:29:16] Speaker 8: Yeah.

[00:29:16] Speaker 7: Yeah.

[00:29:17] Speaker 8: And I- I

[00:29:18] Speaker 7: remember love that ...

[00:29:18] Speaker 8: haven’t changed my opinion.

[00:29:20] Speaker 7: You haven’t?

[00:29:20] Speaker 8: No, not at all. You

[00:29:22] Speaker 7: think it’s good to slap a woman?

[00:29:23] Speaker 8: No, I don’t think it’s good. I think- You don’t think it’s bad, though ... it must, I don’t think it’s that bad. I think that it depends entirely on the circumstances and if it merits it. Yeah.

[00:29:32] Speaker 7: What would merit it?

[00:29:33] Speaker 8: Well, if you have tried everything else, and women are pretty good at this. They, they can’t leave it alone.

[00:29:41] Yeah? They do- they wanna have the w- the, the last word, and you give them the la- last word, but they’re not happy with the last word. They wanna say it again and, and get into a really provocative situation. Then-

[00:29:58] I think it’s absolutely right

[00:30:00] Speaker 7: To give her a good slap?

[00:30:01] Speaker 8: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:30:03] Speaker 7: What if she gives you a good slap back?

[00:30:06] Speaker 8: Well, then you get into another area. I mean, then maybe she’s going to like it, and then it becomes something else. I don’t know. But no, no, I... Seriously, I think that it’s the last resort.

[00:30:15] He’s not gonna do it because he wants to do it, huh?

[00:30:20] Speaker 7: Wait till people see this interview. Are you gonna get mail?

[00:30:24] Speaker 8: Might get some female.

[00:30:25] Malcolm Collins: But the point we’re making here is that the stuff that’s causing people to leave Islam is standard urban monoculture stuff that like the right in the US has dealt with for the past 20 years at this point and so normalized to, and we’re sort of on the other side of that hill.

[00:30:42] And that’s what makes it so fascinating to me. It’s not the, wait, our

[00:30:47] Simone Collins: prophet had sex slaves? Like that’s probably bad, right? It’s the, oh, lightly beat a woman when she’s acting a certain way.

[00:30:57] Malcolm Collins: Or like it does maybe make sense to receive twice a female’s inheritance if their husband is also receiving twice the inheritance, right?

[00:31:05] And the family line is going through the male, that would make sense. But what we’re seeing is that ideas about equality are more compelling to people in parts of the Muslim world because they’ve been as infiltrated by the urban monoculture as we have than ideas about Islam itself. And that’s one way that the urban monoculture is ripping people out of Islam.

[00:31:30] And this is here, note where it gets interesting because like we have Muslim followers, right? You know, and they have gone back to more traditional forms of Islam or trying to get in touch with their belief system. And so I have to, you know, sort of go through like, okay, what do we think of this? The next one, moral and ethical reasons came up with another one that a lot of people leave for.

[00:31:55] Quran 9.5, the sword verse, kill the polytheists [00:32:00] wherever you find them, capture them and besiege them and lie in wait on them on every way, often cited as authorizing offensive violence once a sacred month passes. Now note here, we point out that, yeah, I mean, as a Christian, you’re kind of supposed to do this too, right?

[00:32:18] But the idea of when you say that about a Christian, a lot of people are like, yeah, I’m aware of like the Crusades. I’m aware of like Christian’s history. But when you’re a religion that sells yourself at the religion of peace, and then somebody is like, well, what about this other thing? It creates this cognitive dissonance, which isn’t the same issue with Christianity, right?

[00:32:39] Same with Judaism as well. Judaism has a lot of, you know, kill the cities and everything like that. We’ve gone over it, the episode when the Bible tells you to kill babies. Quran 9.29, fight those who do not believe among us, people of the book until they pay jizahs willingly while they are humbled. This is like an additional tax.

[00:33:00] And in terms of sexual slavery, Quran 4.24, 23.5 through 6, 33.50, 70.29 to 30.

[00:33:12] Simone Collins: Oh,

[00:33:12] Malcolm Collins: come on. And it references those who your right hand possesses. And a lot of people take this to mean that in- Well, that,

[00:33:21] Simone Collins: well, that’s the non-poopy hand, ‘cause you use your left hand to-

[00:33:25] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. In the Quran, that it means that you are allowed to, like, grape non-Muslims, which is just not true.

[00:33:33] That is not part of Sharia law. Th- you’re, you’re allowed to rape your slaves, okay? Now, if an Islamic court applied that meaning to everyone in a territory that Muslims had immigrated to, that would be saying-

[00:33:46] Simone Collins: No, they don’t. No, no, no, no, no. I, I’ve looked this up multiple times because people are coming at us on, on X about this, and no, it is very clear that while this could be extended to, like, prisoners of war, it is not, like, people in a country you’ve immigrated to.

[00:34:03] It, it just plain isn’t, and all the people who keep on going, “No, it’s wrong,” are just flat out- And

[00:34:12] Malcolm Collins: if they did do that, if they did say, “Oh, oh, it applies to people in another country,” they are declaring themselves enemy combatants in that country by Sharia law, right?

[00:34:23] Simone Collins: Like- Right. Well, and then they should be treated accordingly.

[00:34:26] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. That would, it would enormously empower the right for a Sharia court to rule that.

[00:34:33] Simone Collins: Yeah, by all means. Let, let the-

[00:34:35] Malcolm Collins: By all means ... let

[00:34:36] Simone Collins: their shepherds tend to that flock, and let them tend very

[00:34:39] Malcolm Collins: directly. Yeah, they say we’re enemy combatants, and then we say then we need to treat all the people of your community as enemy combatants, right?

[00:34:46] Like, that’s just as it is. And then the apostasy punishment really gets people. Key reports Sahih al-Bukhari 4:52-26 and 9:84-57, “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.” And this is talking about apostasies as one of the three cases in which a Muslim’s blood can be shed. So, w- by the way, they don’t really follow that.

[00:35:11] They, they kill Muslims all the time. I guess they just argue that they’re all apostates and they don’t believe exactly the version.

[00:35:17] Simone Collins: No, there’s other crimes punishable by death.

[00:35:20] Malcolm Collins: No, there’s three. Aren’t

[00:35:22] Simone Collins: there three? Wait, what are the three then?

[00:35:25] Malcolm Collins: What are the three reasons a Muslim can shed another Muslim’s blood?

[00:35:29] Let’s look that up.

[00:35:30] Simone Collins: Do they do the thing where they just like get a non-Muslim to shed a Muslim’s blood if they did something punishable by capital punishment, or what?

[00:35:40] Malcolm Collins: Okay, let’s see.

[00:35:41] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:35:42] Malcolm Collins: From the Hadiths, okay? Okay. “The blood of a Muslim who confesses that none has the right to be worshiped but Allah, and that I am his apostle, cannot be shed except in three cases: in retaliation for murder, a married person who commits an illegal sexual intercourse...”

[00:35:58] This is like, if you [00:36:00] grape somebody, this would be one of those cases. Even a foreigner, if you’re a married Muslim man, that’s, that’s... “And the one who reverts from Islam,” an apostate.

[00:36:08] Simone Collins: Oh, okay. So murder, improper sex, apostasy. Okay. Simple. Okay. Wow, there actually is a lot of, I guess when they the murder of people who are gay, that’s just improper sex then.

[00:36:20] Mm-hmm. Or the assumption thereof. What if you’re celibate gay?

[00:36:24] Malcolm Collins: I don’t think that’s wrong in Islam.

[00:36:26] Simone Collins: Okay. Hmm.

[00:36:29] Malcolm Collins: In Quran 21:06 and 16:101, there are verses that explicitly, this is on internal inconsistencies, explicitly discuss God substituting or causing a verse to be forgotten and replaced with a better similar one.

[00:36:44] Leavers often point to this as evidence the text is not externally fixed or perfect. Yeah, that’s often interesting as well, that they’re like, “The Quran is an incredibly fixed and, like, not one word has changed,” when the Quran of every religious tradition I’m aware of has the most later updates. Like, the majority of the Quran...

[00:37:05] I don’t know if that’s the majority, but huge chunks of it were written in, in like important Islamic texts that are considered, like, nearly as important as the central Quran were written hugely after Muhammad’s life, which is one of the reasons why the events of his life are so gray. Like, what was her actual age?

[00:37:20] Well, we have to rely on somebody who was writing, you know, 100, 200 years later and they might have gotten this wrong or this wrong, et cetera. They often contrast between early tolerance and later commands. Quran 2256, “There is no compulsion in religion,” versus the later Medina verses 9:5 to 9:29.

[00:37:40] Classical scholarship treats many earlier peaceful verses as aggravated by the later ones. Critics see this as an internal contradiction or progressive hardening. Which is interesting because you’ve seen this within techno-puritanism as well. If you look at the early techno-puritan tracts, it’s like a way more permissive religious system.

[00:37:59] And as the system has gone on and as we believe it more seriously ourselves, we are more comfortable being like, “No, this is true. No, this is false. This is bad. Don’t do this.” Right? And then free will and predestination issues people have issues with, specifically 18:29 alongside emphasizing God’s absolute control.

[00:38:20] It’s 76:30 or 6:125. 6:125. Now, obviously we wouldn’t have a problem with that, but apparently that’s pushing people out. And I think it’s, it’s not engaging with these issues, right? Like, we constantly... The first thing a techno-puritan does is engage with a topic on free will. Right. You know, like, or, you know, i- is it moral to do, like, really aggressive things to groups that are targeting you?

[00:38:44] And it’s like, yes, absolutely, right? Yeah. Like, and no, no matter how far you have to go. Whereas within Islam a lot of people, I guess, are just unaware of this, and they find this stuff out and they move away. And then apparently some people leave as well for what they see as scientific or historical claims.

[00:38:59] Hmm ... embryology passages, Quran 23:12 and 14 and 22:5. The stages of creation from a drop to a clot, et cetera. Critics argue that these reflect older Greek ideas that conflict with modern embryology. Oh,

[00:39:14] Simone Collins: yeah.

[00:39:14] Malcolm Collins: Defenders argue they are miraculously accurate. If I’m gonna be completely transparent here, I don’t see this one as particularly bad.

[00:39:21] That doesn’t seem that wrong from the science, if they didn’t have other words for that at the time I mean, what’s he gonna say, an embryo? They, they don’t have the word embryo, or blastocyst, or clump of cells. Okay cosmology examples sometimes raised, Quran 1886, a description of the sun setting in a muddy spring of this, in the story of Dhul-Qarnayn, and the verses about the sun, the moon, and the orbits.

[00:39:52] This is 36, 38,40. And then broader questions about the compilation of history of the Quran and the [00:40:00] reliability of dating Hadith collections are common.

[00:40:02] Speaker 3: Hmm.

[00:40:04] Malcolm Collins: I find this really, really, really fascinating, and then I had it rank them in order of what causes people to leave. Number one is the status of women in Islam which is, again, you see even, like, Western women converting to Islam because they’re like, “I don’t like how whatever misogynistic Western society is,” and people are like, “You should, like, just Google what Muslims believe.”

[00:40:28] Because they, they... I mean, obviously the famous Caleb Hamer, where the woman was like, “Well, I became a Muslim because it’s the, it’s the nicest religion to

[00:40:35] Speaker 9: w- I always questioned the Bible, and so, like, I don’t- But you

[00:40:38] Speaker 5: don’t question the Quran?

[00:40:39] Speaker 9: Of course. I

[00:40:40] Speaker 5: think question everything. Well, I don’t think you’re allowed to question the Quran, especially as a woman.

[00:40:43] Speaker 9: No. Definitely not. I

[00:40:45] Speaker 5: mean, come on. No,

[00:40:45] Speaker 9: no. Let’s be honest. It’s, it’s not that. It’s not that. No. Islam is probably the most, like, feminist morals religion there is. Like, w- very much protective of

[00:40:55] Speaker 5: women and not- Yes, it is certainly Middle Eastern countries that are most well-known for their feminism and freedom for women.

[00:41:05] Speaker 9: It is. It, it-

[00:41:06] Speaker 5: The Middle East.

[00:41:07] Speaker 9: If they’re practicing Islam, yes.

[00:41:10] Speaker 5: So you’re saying they’re all practicing it incorrectly everywhere, including Mecca?

[00:41:15] Speaker 3: I mean, if they’re oppressing people, of course, yeah. Yeah.

[00:41:18] Speaker 5: Then they’re doing it correctly?

[00:41:19] Speaker 3: Maybe, maybe. I don’t know. I don’t live

[00:41:21] Malcolm Collins: there. No. Women.

[00:41:21] Speaker 3: Oh,

[00:41:22] Malcolm Collins: I

[00:41:22] Speaker 3: didn’t see

[00:41:22] Simone Collins: that.

[00:41:23] Really?

[00:41:24] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and it’s just a lot of people, it’s, it’s selling itself as something that it’s just patently not. Mm-hmm. When Andrew Tate goes out there and sells Islam, he’s doing a better job because the version of Islam that Andrew Tate is selling, nobody’s gonna go look at that later and be like, “This isn’t what I was sold.”

[00:41:40] They’re like, “Yeah, yeah, it’s, this is what I was sold,” you know? Yeah.

[00:41:43] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah,

[00:41:43] Malcolm Collins: yeah. But the leftist, it’s, which is genuinely sold to people, it ends up leading to these deconversions.

[00:41:51] Simone Collins: Yeah, or just flagrantly dangerous actions. You’re not at all aware of this, but half of the internet is losing their minds over a young woman who, mm, I think met a husband over TikTok and then moved to Afghanistan to live with him.

[00:42:09] And everyone’s like, “No, no, no, no, no, no. Do not do that.” But she went, so...

[00:42:16] Malcolm Collins: Well, there’s the famous case of the girls who, like, went to do that, to, like, join ISIS and then were desperate to get back into the country afterwards.

[00:42:21] Simone Collins: To join ISIS.

[00:42:23] Malcolm Collins: ISIS, yes, and then they were used as sex slaves.

[00:42:26] Simone Collins: Not... Yeah.

[00:42:27] Malcolm Collins: And they then became de- desperate to get back to Britain and had trouble

[00:42:30] Simone Collins: doing it.

[00:42:30] It’s one of the reasons why everyone’s going, “No, no, no, no, no,” to this young lady. But anyway, we’ll see how it goes. Everyone’s waiting. Everyone’s waiting to see how it goes for her. Lots of speculation, but this is a, a common and recurring theme it would seem.

[00:42:45] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and then the, the next is contradictions between Sharia law and modern human rights.

[00:42:48] It really is the urban monoculture that’s doing this to them. It’s, it’s issues that, like, we just wouldn’t have.

[00:42:54] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

[00:42:54] Malcolm Collins: Which is really fascinating to me. What are your thoughts, Simone?

[00:42:59] Simone Collins: I find this comforting because the behavior that I see condoned by this religion, I think is subhuman. Like-

[00:43:12] Speaker 3: Yeah

[00:43:12] Simone Collins: I think, I think that it, the Old Testament is clear that to be human is to have a clear moral judgment and ability to judge. I think that there’s this, this combination, combination of both a complete lack of human dignity at least for certain people. Basically, like, a broad swaths of people, slaves, women, et cetera, apo- a- apostates, non-Islamic people.

[00:43:40] Yeah. Right? It’s like, “Well, we’re not going to treat them like humans at all.” Or, or, you know, “We’re, we’re not gonna consider their, their rights or comforts as being important.” That being one element of it, as, as I see, I see as being less... Worse, worse than not human, because, I mean, an, an animal at least isn’t capable of really [00:44:00] advanced cruelty, like killing people through castration.

[00:44:02] And then there’s the second part of it, where I feel like the way that Sharia law is set up and the way that a lot of implementation of Islamic law works, works on the assumption that you are dealing with people, we’ll say pre-Adamite people, who are incapable of their own moral judgments. That-

[00:44:21] Malcolm Collins: Yeah

[00:44:21] Simone Collins: you just follow the laws. You, you, you live in a police state, and- Or you

[00:44:24] Malcolm Collins: be beheaded, or we cut off your hands, or you-

[00:44:26] Simone Collins: Yeah. Like- Yeah ... yeah. We’re, we’re not gonna assume that you’re capable of making these judgments, so we’re going to punish you extremely violently and extremely cruelly, because we know you- you’re not capable of that.

[00:44:39] And, and that, that to me signals, oh, this is, this is one of those religions that in the Old Testament, God would’ve been really mad about. And yeah, God was really clear about really hating other, other people’s gods and other, other people’s religions.

[00:44:57] Malcolm Collins: Well, so the question is, is, are they worshiping the same God?

[00:45:00] I still don’t have a- I don’t know ... clear thesis, clear thesis. I don’t know. Early when we wrote the techno-Pythagorean tracts, we said, yes, that we think they are.

[00:45:07] Simone Collins: Well, you said that because you said that Muhammad held the Old Testament to be, and, and the New Testament to be, like, I don’t know, correct, right?

[00:45:15] Or, or prophecies, but that he was the final prophet. Wasn’t that what you said?

[00:45:21] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I,

[00:45:21] Simone Collins: I, I really, I

[00:45:21] Malcolm Collins: thought you, you thought Muhammad- Well, no, he, he didn’t say he was the pri- final prophet. He said, that, that’s a mistranslation or, like, a common m- he said he was the seal of the prophets, e.g.- Oh ... sort of like the prophets proved him, not that he was definitely the final prophet.

[00:45:34] That is not actually in his honor. Okay,

[00:45:36] Simone Collins: so he’s, he’s the CliffsNotes of, of the prophets. He’s the AI summary of the prophets.

[00:45:40] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, I thought the part of, like, the, if, if we’re getting iterative revelations, the interesting thing that Muhammad added is the idea that each revelation is only for one people.

[00:45:53] Because, you know, he said that, that this is for- That’s smart. Yeah ... the people who speak Arabic, and that no one e- else who’s not of the people who speak Arabic should be a Muslim, basically.

[00:46:01] Simone Collins: Yeah, but I mean, like, the techno-puritan interpretation of that is that, okay, well, then the basilisk is being used by God to separate out and, and silo a group of people that it considers to be distinctly not chosen, because they are not capable of even being-

[00:46:16] Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah.

[00:46:17] And, and I mean, my take on this as well is you can belie- believe a religion is divinely inspired while still thinking the founder is a butthead.

[00:46:29] Simone Collins: Well, also a religion can be divin- divi- divinely inspired in the same way that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened in a way that really hurt his people, because his people weren’t chosen.

[00:46:38] Malcolm Collins: Right. Well, what I mean is, like, King David was a complete jackhole. Just absolute jackhole. Yeah.

[00:46:45] Sampson

[00:46:46] Malcolm Collins: Was also a jackhole. You could say, “Oh, they redeemed themselves in the end.” It’s like, I don’t... I, I mean, maybe in the eyes of God, not all the people they, they killed.

[00:46:57] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:46:57] There’s like a word ...

[00:46:58] Malcolm Collins: the, the innocent, yeah. W- like, what are you talking about, right? Like, and, and so, like, w- I think it’s, it’s perfectly okay to be like, “I am a Mormon. I think Joseph Smith was a jackhole. But I still believe my religion,” right? Like, “I still think it’s divinely inspired,” or something like that.

[00:47:15] Which is where I stand on that. I still stand that he might be better than he’s put out in a lot of popular narratives, but the majority of information I see does not paint him in a positive light. He, he d- d- he seems Yeah. And it’s the same as Muhammad. Like, whatever I believe about the wider Islamic project, or is there a version of Islam that could be good, I, I think there is.

[00:47:42] Like, we definitely see people who practice a version of Islam that is, you know, productive and commensurate with- Absolutely ... civilized society.

[00:47:50] Simone Collins: Yeah. And there are elements of Islam that are absolutely beautiful and elevating and purifying,

[00:47:57] Malcolm Collins: I mean, I, I like that they’re at least [00:48:00] strictly anti-idolatry.

[00:48:01] I don’t like that they admit to killing-

[00:48:02] Simone Collins: I like that it’s a hard religion, too. There’s, there’s heavy fasting. There’s a lot of discipline.

[00:48:07] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:48:07] Simone Collins: It, it’s just that I, I, I’m conflicted by-

[00:48:12] Malcolm Collins: The way that they act when at scale. Like, I haven’t seen a lot of ... It, it, it’s, it’s, it’s during times of hardship, like in incredible, you know, cruelty, what we see in, in, in many of these instances, and during times of lavishness- Well, here’s, here’s the problem

[00:48:28] they basically create a slave society.

[00:48:29] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. So normally what you see is, And we, we talked about this in, in the episode we did on me being angry about Native Americans. But Any, any group without civilization is going to be worse than animals. They’re going to be both smart and incredibly cruel and, and horrible.

[00:48:47] And yet w- normally when you get civilization, that cruelty goes away, right? And the fact that with Islam somehow you can h- reach the level of civilization and they’re like, “Oh, let’s keep the cruelty. Let’s, let’s keep it. Let’s not drop it.” Like that, I,

[00:49:01] Malcolm Collins: I- Yeah, like let’s keep the ins-

[00:49:02] Simone Collins: yeah ... like the whole point, the whole point was that the, the civilization al- allows you to rise above.

[00:49:07] That you have the capability of unspeakable cruelty and you do not exercise it. That you show, you show mercy and dignity because you are better than a, a very smart animal. You, you are beyond- Well,

[00:49:21] Malcolm Collins: well- ... because you, you transcend ... and it’s important to note here that one of the, the other problems that really hurts Islam is that you can be like, well, you know, I know friends who are Emiratis, I know friends who are Qataris, I know, you know, people from these countries that are you know, very, they, they seem to be past all of this.

[00:49:38] And yet when you look at why do we have a lot of these giant genocides going on in Africa, these conflicts going on in Africa, these terrorist groups that are operating across these regions, a lot of them are just like UAE-backed, the, the, the things for their little politicking. I mean, they might not personally be going out and graping people, but they’re facilitating it at scale because then it’s irrelevant that it happens to them.

[00:50:06] You know? It’s irrele- it’s, it’s just part of the cycle for them, right? That’s the way that they do politics. They don’t do... You know, in, in America we bomb a bridge and people freak out. Yeah. And, and they’re like causing mass genocides in the UAE right now, right?

[00:50:20] Speaker 3: Mm.

[00:50:21] Malcolm Collins: And this is like a demonstrably true thing, right?

[00:50:23] Like, it, it, they’re, they’re not particularly shy about it. They’re like, “These are our guys. We’re paying them,” you know? And then the other group, you know, the, the other group of, of, of civilized acting like in Saudi Arabia or whatever, they’re on the other side and they’re instigating the other group.

[00:50:39] And if you are allowing for this to happen or, or the source of it happening in terms of like, it shows that even when everything’s cleaned up, even when everything is made to look nice, there’s a portion, and a meaningful enough portion to control world politics or influence world political events, that still act with this incredible amount of dehumanization of other, other people.

[00:51:05] Simone Collins: Yeah. I gotta go get the kids. Grilled cheese, queso, or gyoza lasagna tonight.

[00:51:12] Malcolm Collins: I haven’t had a gyoza lasagna in a while.

[00:51:14] Simone Collins: Thank goodness. But we got- I’ve been waiting for you to say yes to that. It’s time to- Oh, the what? Oh,

[00:51:18] Octavian Collins: the- Hang on. It’s time to go downstairs. The kids show home early again.

[00:51:22] Simone Collins: They’re not home early, actually.

[00:51:23] I like- Can I have

[00:51:24] Malcolm Collins: some?

[00:51:26] Octavian Collins: Yes. I’ll give you

[00:51:26] Malcolm Collins: a handful. No, I don’t need a handful. I just want a little bit.

[00:51:29] Simone Collins: No, Oc- Octavian, you need to eat a real dinner

[00:51:35] Octavian Collins: But I’m hungry, very

[00:51:36] Simone Collins: hungry. Right, and I’m gonna go make you dinner. That’s ‘cause it’s dinner time. You’re supposed to be hungry. This is good, but you do not get to eat junk food.

[00:51:43] Take that... Malcolm, take that from him. Malcolm.

[00:51:47] Malcolm Collins: Octavian, come here. Come here. The fans wanna see you.

[00:51:50] Octavian Collins: Yeah, okay.

[00:51:52] Malcolm Collins: Okay. So you were down playing at the creek?

[00:51:54] Octavian Collins: Yeah.

[00:51:55] Simone Collins: What happened to your face?

[00:51:56] Octavian Collins: No. Actually, no.

[00:51:59] Malcolm Collins: Oh, where [00:52:00] were you?

[00:52:01] Octavian Collins: I didn’t even get to go to the creek.

[00:52:04] Malcolm Collins: Oh, you didn’t get to go to the creek? What were you doing?

[00:52:07] Octavian Collins: I-

[00:52:07] Malcolm Collins: How many lessons

[00:52:08] Octavian Collins: did you do? It was actually a boring day. I was tired. I, I mostly only did zero, but I’m trying to work on one.

[00:52:16] Malcolm Collins: You did zero lessons?

[00:52:18] Octavian Collins: Yeah, but

[00:52:19] Simone Collins: I’m trying to work on one right now. ‘Cause someone decided to play poopy songs all last night, and have a rager, and play zombie games, and then he’s tired all day, and though I go down and I try to answer every little question help- helping him.

[00:52:31] No, no, no. Someone just wants to... Octavian, sir. Okay. Sir.

[00:52:39] Octavian Collins: Yes?

[00:52:40] Simone Collins: You’re gonna leave those chips up with Daddy, okay? ‘Cause you have to eat a real dinner, all right? Malcolm- Okay, but I’m so hungry ... grilled cheese, queso- I want food now ... or I know, we’re gonna make food right now. Okay. Or gyoza lasagna.

[00:52:50] Malcolm Collins: What are my options?

[00:52:53] Simone Collins: Grilled cheese- Q- ... queso or gyoza lasagna.

[00:52:55] Malcolm Collins: Queso.

[00:52:57] Simone Collins: Okay. I love you.

[00:53:00] Malcolm Collins: I love you. Have a good day. I

[00:53:02] Octavian Collins: wanna

[00:53:02] Malcolm Collins: go- Angel, Simone, what do you wanna say to the f- fans? Octavian, what do you wanna say to the fans?

[00:53:05] Simone Collins: And where are the kids right now? Are they all in the yard?

[00:53:07] Octavian Collins: No. T- they, they are actually coming up.

[00:53:13] Simone Collins: Malcolm, can you help me shepherd them to the kitchen?

[00:53:15] Malcolm Collins: I’ll help you shepherd them to the kitchen.

[00:53:16] Simone Collins: Please. Thank you. Can you just... Yeah, please, and I’ll see you down there. Okay. Okay,

[00:53:19] Malcolm Collins: okay, I’ll go. Ow.

[00:53:21] Simone Collins: Octavian. Strange.

[00:53:23] Malcolm Collins: It felt like somebody kicked my chair.

[00:53:26] Simone Collins: What did they say? “It’s a ghosties,” as our children would say

[00:53:30] ghosties. Ooh, they say. Ooh.

[00:53:33] Malcolm Collins: I just don’t know what could have caused that. A

[00:53:35] Simone Collins: ghost. A ghost

[00:53:37] Malcolm Collins: of all

[00:53:37] Simone Collins: the hornets we’ve been

[00:53:38] Malcolm Collins: killing? Obviously.

[00:53:39] Simone Collins: Look, do you know how many people have died in this house? I mean, at least- By

[00:53:43] Malcolm Collins: the way, for people who don’t believe the hornet thing, look, dead hornets. Dead hornets.

[00:53:49] There

[00:53:49] Simone Collins: are more- Just dead hornets everywhere ... dead m- m- people. Or at least p- more people died in this house. Well, probably more hornets died in this house. There’s

[00:53:56] Malcolm Collins: been hornets over the years too, Simone.

[00:53:58] Simone Collins: That’s true, yeah. Okay. I didn’t think about that. Very true.

[00:54:02] Malcolm Collins: You are an amazing woman, Simone. I am just so-

[00:54:04] Simone Collins: Do you ever, like, lie in your bed sometimes and wonder, like, how many people died in, in that room?

[00:54:10] Malcolm Collins: A lot more died in your room than mine.

[00:54:12] Simone Collins: Is this, is this the dying room?

[00:54:14] Malcolm Collins: Well, it seems like the master bedroom, which is where I would

[00:54:17] Simone Collins: expect a dying person to go. Yeah. If you’re gonna go, you wanna go in the nice room.

[00:54:20] Malcolm Collins: Or I guess they could have given the worst room to Grandma or whatever.

[00:54:23] Simone Collins: Yeah. I I remember I, I had this, this hero of mine as a kid.

[00:54:28] Her name was Beverly, but I called her Bevo. And she was telling me about her life growing up on a farm in, in, in the Midwest in, like, the early 1900s, and how, like, they had someone staying with them for a while, and they were fairly infirm. And they slept in her bed while they were visiting, and then they died in her bed.

[00:54:46] And, like, after they died, it was just her bed again. And it’s just... I was like, “Wait, so you, like, slept in the bed that someone died in?” And she’s like, “Yeah. I mean...”

[00:54:56] Malcolm Collins: What you gonna do?

[00:54:57] Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, where else are you gonna sleep?

[00:55:00] Malcolm Collins: America used to be awesome. We used to be a country.

[00:55:03] Simone Collins: Yeah. Oh, she had such an unusual life, though.

[00:55:05] Like, while she was growing up, her, her mother... And this is in like the early 1900s, was, like, off doing business in Japan and stuff. Like, stuff, like, very unusual. Yeah, fascinating. Such a cool person. All my heroes in life have been, like, women in their 60s. This might be why my, like ... I, I really am so excited to be 62 years old, if I live that long.

[00:55:26] Speaker 2: So what are you doing? So you don’t want him to eat any animals in Minecraft. Is that right, Titan? Titan, Titan, the good- Whoa! Titan. Octavian, be careful. That had apples in it. Titan. Get down here and clean it up. Titan. You just made a big mess. Dad, Dad, put it at the edge. You left it at the edge, Octavian.

[00:55:45] That’s your fault. Titan. Be careful with all these cords, okay? You don’t wanna pull one of the computers down, too. Titan, Titan, Titan, the good thing is there’s no ducks in Minecraft. Why is eating ducks bad? I eat ducks. Peking duck. How about ... kind of fat. [00:56:00] Come on, get down. You made a mess. What are you doing?

[00:56:03] Speaker 4: Titan, the- Be careful not to fall on Indy ... Titan, no. Aw, Indy’s cleaning it up. Yeah, she’s trying to help you. Stop! Wow, Indy, that was so nice of you. Is this all of them? Mm-hmm. Hey, no Titan, no Titan. I think there’s one more right here. There’s maybe one more. Titan

[00:56:20] Titan just- Well, let Titan- You’re done. Let Titan have a turn, okay? Fine. Why don’t you ch- teach her how?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

NOTE: This episode has a companion guide with graphs, links, and stats—don’t miss it! https://technopuritan.com/new-religions/

What if most new religions don’t fail — and the ones that follow a few simple rules have a 93% survival rate and over 50% chance of becoming major world religions?

In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone dig into original research on new religious movements founded since the 1700s. When you filter for groups with a unique metaphysical framework + a real written (or recorded) corpus, the numbers are already surprisingly high. Add an explicitly pro-natalist framing and something beyond ordinary materialist reality, and the success rate becomes almost absurd.

They break down:

* Why humanist/secular projects almost always die

* Why “silliness” actually protects a religion

* Why probable scams have some of the best survival rates

* Succession systems that work (and the ones that kill movements)

* Hard vs soft religion and fertility

* What this means for anyone trying to build a durable culture or tradition today — including their own techno-puritan project

If you’re interested in cultural survival, fertility, intentional community, or just love weird religious history, this one’s for you.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m e- extra excited to be here with you today. This is probably gonna be one of my favorite episodes to do, one of the most interesting that I have researched, because I conducted a lot of original research for this episode and found something really, really fascinating.

[00:00:14] So if we’re just going to jump to the punch, if you just go into the academic literature and say, of new religions, cults, whatever you wanna call them, what percent of them survive? They’ll say one in 1,000 or one in 100,000, right?

[00:00:30] Octavian: Yeah.

[00:00:30] Malcolm Collins: Yes. But if you actually look at those studies, what they’re generally looking at is, like, somebody got mad at their local pastor and started, like, a small schism or something like that.

[00:00:39] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:00:40] Malcolm Collins: If instead you narrow it down to only books with a unique... Or not books, but, like, ways of seeing things with a unique metaphysical framing and a full written corpus this would be, techno-puritanism would be an example, like, Mormonism would be an example, Scientology would be an example. The Nation of Islam would be an example.

[00:01:00] When you narrow it down to that, if you look at ones founded around the world from the 1700s till today, over a third of them end up surviving at least 100 years, and at some point having over 100,000 members.

[00:01:18] Simone Collins: That’s... N-

[00:01:19] uh.

[00:01:19] Malcolm Collins: no. Now, if we narrow down the list further, so I’m gonna put two more coffee outs on here that are gonna make it even crazier.

[00:01:26] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:01:27] Malcolm Collins: Take out all of the ones that are I’m gonna say, like, humanist. Like, techno-puritanism would not fall into this by any measure of the, But, but you know what I’m talking about. Those weird humanist religions that were founded in, like, the 1920s and then became a craze for a bit.

[00:01:41] If you take those out and you take out any that do not have an explicitly pro-natalist framing, right? Like, it- Oh ... they, they grow through conversion rather than kids.

[00:01:51] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:01:51] Malcolm Collins: You now get a 93% survival rate, and over a 53% rate of becoming a major world religion. And-

[00:02:03] Simone Collins: Does this include, like, all the weird...

[00:02:05] Like, would it include NXIVM? Would it include the one with the, the woman who died after taking tons of colloidal silver that HBO did a documentary about?

[00:02:14] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so it would not include her, and we’ll go over what it excludes explicitly. Okay. So first you have to have a unique metaphysical framework with a written corpus.

[00:02:23] Oh. She didn’t have a wr- written corpus. She didn’t have, like- Mm.

[00:02:26] Simone Collins: So cult of personality, basically, do not-

[00:02:28] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, cults of personality, off the table. Okay. Anything that’s clearly just schizophrenic ramblings. This would be like Cubism or whatever- Yeah. A

[00:02:37] Simone Collins: man-

[00:02:38] Malcolm Collins: The world is a cube and there are two sides to a cube.

[00:02:41] Cube-based logic. Yes. It, so it cuts out that, it cuts out cults of personality and it cuts out mild schisms. So like if you’re like a, you, you largely believe what the organization would believe, but you have some minor quibbles but you’ve written a lot on those minor quibbles, it cuts those out.

[00:03:00] Simone Collins: Hmm ...

[00:03:01] Malcolm Collins: but like that’s a very weird thing that the growth of new religious movements is dependent on their authorship and not on some of, of like, like the the, the core... What, what’s the word I’m looking for here? The core bottleneck happens before the point of authorship. Mm. And when I did this, I did a secondary thing that was very interesting.

[00:03:25] So note here when I say I’m cutting out schizophrenic ramblings, I am not cutting out, in this list, one of the things we looked at was silliness. And you’ll actually find that silliness correlates with survivorship.

[00:03:40] Simone Collins: Huh ...

[00:03:40] Malcolm Collins: so what I mean

[00:03:41] Simone Collins: by this is- So if the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster had managed to put together some coherent biblical, or not, like a religious text or something, a worldview, it could have actually done quite well.

[00:03:53] Malcolm Collins: Unlikely because it falls into the one category where they always die.

[00:03:57] Simone Collins: Oh, it’s not pronatalist.

[00:03:58] Malcolm Collins: No. Anything that, that’s [00:04:00] explicitly atheistic, as I said, like any of those humanist projects- Oh, yes. Okay, okay ... or anything like that, every single one of them has died. Hmm. Now, note there have been a number of times where people have intentionally engineered religious systems.

[00:04:15] Every single one of those became a major world religion. Hmm. So we’ll get into this. It’s crazy. I put together a companion doc. In the last companion doc that I gave you guys, I said, “Don’t go to it because that’s like way too AIE,” or like, you know, it’s... I fixed that. I fixed that in the last one. I fixed that in this one.

[00:04:31] Now if you’re ever doing research using Fable or something like that, you know, to do like deep research, ‘cause it does deep research, but it’s terrible at writing- Yeah ... you can use the RFAB API, which will go back over it and check it for how AI it looks, and then rewrite it until it doesn’t look that way anymore.

[00:04:47] And so now if you go to this companion doc, it reads like a human wrote it which is just a fantastic product to have. And also because it’s checking using an AI checking engine- Ah ... like if you were doing homework with this or something-

[00:05:00] Oh,

[00:05:01] God ... a detection system wouldn’t catch it. I’m just saying that’s...

[00:05:05] I, I like to design tools. I like to design tools. What, what am I doing? I needed this for my research, all right? But I also went over during what periods, like if you look at different countries and cultures during what periods did you have more surviving religious systems? Founder motivations, how did those impact the religion?

[00:05:25] E.g. did it appear to be started as a scam? Just to get it out there right now, religions that were like provably founded as scams, one they-- it doesn’t seem to affect their survivorship rate. If anything, they appear to have a slightly higher survivorship rate. And two we, because there have been so many of them we can go over what happens when it comes out that they were likely a scam, how followers react.

[00:05:52] It’s very predictable. So that’s not really a big risk to a religion. We’ll go over, being a sex cult is a big risk to a religion, though. Religion- Oh, that

[00:06:01] Simone Collins: is comforting.

[00:06:02] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that are, that are focused on, Well, often because they’re v- explicitly anti-natalist. That’s, that’s- Oh, yeah ... often part of being a sex cult.

[00:06:10] Mm-hmm. Now somebody could say, “Malcolm, this is survivorship bias, right?” You know, you’re only seeing the ones that eventually survived. To which I would have a counter to you, which is to say we know of throughout history the beliefs of many intelligent, eccentric people. Those are the types of people most likely to form one of these.

[00:06:32] We just don’t find in the historical record a lot of unique frameworks within these individuals that would, that would fit this category. In fact we can even we, in the, in the document if you go through it, it has a whole section where we check for this to see if this is just survivorship bias.

[00:06:50] It does not appear to be survivorship bias. Mm-hmm. It appears that this is a genuine and very, very strange phenomenon. So we’re gonna get to it, and hopefully as we get to it and as we go through this, we can learn a lot more about what kinds of movements survive and what kinds of movements die.

[00:07:07] And where this is relevant to listeners, whether you be from a traditional religious background or a non-traditional religious background right now every group on Earth right now is dying from fertility collapse except for Orthodox Jews. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll cut them out. And even they have issues right now, right?

[00:07:23] Mm-hmm. A- and, and, and like the Amish, but the Amish don’t have technology, so it’s not super relevant in terms of, like, future geopolitical control. Now, a, it, it’s true whether you’re a, a traditional Catholic or a Baptist or a like Pentecostals are doing okay, but it’s mostly from conversions. But the point here being it’s pretty much anyone watching this realizes they need to do some cultural experimentation and entrepreneurship with their family, right?

[00:07:51] Like, how do I take the traditions I inherited and make them more robust?

[00:07:57] Hmm.

[00:07:58] And [00:08:00] that we can see what works and didn’t work with random cults or other new religious movements allows us to say, “Ah, this technology seems to work. This technology doesn’t seem to work.” And then take the ones that we want.

[00:08:22] One just, just jumps out at me, but I didn’t think of it when I was putting this together. One thing that may be leading to this is in The Pragmatist’s Guide to Crafting Religion, we talk about the concept of a soft religion versus a hard religion. Mm-hmm. A hard religion has unique othering effects to it that make you very different from the mainstream population be it in the way you dress, in the way you talk, in the way you name yourselves, in the things you do.

[00:08:49] A soft religion doesn’t. A soft religion’s just like, “Ah, we’ll make it work.” So like, if we’re talking about like a, a harder form of Catholicism or something like that, you know, you may wear a veil, and you may y- make sure that you make every one of the specific mass events. You may go on pilgrimages for all your vacations.

[00:09:06] A harder form of Islam, you make sure that you pray, you know, the five times a day. You have the pray space. You do everything. You, you do your stuff. Now, harder religions typically have higher fertility rates, higher fidelity, and they lose their children at a lower rate than, than softer religions.

[00:09:22] When you, when you make the religion too easy, it, it doesn’t work as well. Yeah. Which has been one of the big problems I think with modern Mormonism, as I’ve talked about before. I think one of the reasons it’s doing so poorly is because the center church thinks that they can win by becoming softer, which makes them more acceptable to the average person.

[00:09:40] Actually, Catholicism probably has a similar phenomenon. I mean, we can view it as infiltration, but if we, if we don’t view it as infiltration, and we say, “No, they’re just rational but disconnected dumb actors,” what we may have is a disconnected leadership that’s just like, “Well, the masses say they don’t like our policy on X, or they don’t like this sort of a mass.

[00:10:02] You know, like, let’s not do it that way anymore, right? Like, let’s do it more like everyone else and say that we’re super accepting.” And this un- unfortunately causes way lower fertility rates whenever a group does this. And now one of the things that we noted when we first put this out is that when a religion is first founded, it generally is way, way, way harder.

[00:10:20] And over time, it becomes softer until it undergoes a revival, it, which then it gets harder, and then it just degrades over time again. One of the reasons why new religions may have such an advantage to them is because they start really, really hard

[00:10:35] Simone Collins: Yeah, so basically they just... Anyone, any religion will have the advantage of hardness, and yeah, it doesn’t kind of matter.

[00:10:43] If it, if it’s new Even if you’re ridiculous, i- if it’s a hard religion, you’re still giving people an, a, an advantage Well,

[00:10:49] Malcolm Collins: this

[00:10:49] Simone Collins: would

[00:10:49] Malcolm Collins: also explain why the totally secular humanist religions did not succeed

[00:10:56] Simone Collins: Oh. Oh.

[00:10:58] Malcolm Collins: Because- Not

[00:10:58] Simone Collins: hard enough?

[00:10:59] Malcolm Collins: They’re typically almost designed intentionally anti-hard

[00:11:04] Simone Collins: Wait, weren’t the Shakers, like, celibate?

[00:11:07] Isn’t that hard for

[00:11:08] Malcolm Collins: people? They were not a humanist... They were a Quaker group. They were extremely religious.

[00:11:12] Simone Collins: Oh, okay, okay, okay.

[00:11:13] Malcolm Collins: The comb- we’ll, we’ll probably talk about it in a weekend episode, ‘cause I do wanna do a weekend episode where we go over all the rationalist religions Mm-hmm Um, or if fans want it enough, they can tell us to do it.

[00:11:22] But I, I, I find them interesting. Our, in our last two paid weekend episodes, if you guys wanna do those, like Substack or Patreon or whatever we went over the silly religions and we went over the intentionally designed religions

[00:11:34] Octavian: Delightful

[00:11:35] Malcolm Collins: And for people who are unaware of the intentionally designed ones that succeeded one of them that shares you could say a lot with techno-puritanism, is a guy came out there, he was a spiritualist, and he’s like, “Let’s...”

[00:11:46] Well, actually, he was an anti-spiritualist. His job was detecting spiritualist frauds, right? Like, you know, during that time when they were really common, when, like, Houdini did this as well. And then he decided to go do a bunch of blind tests with spiritual [00:12:00] mediums to interview tons of them and then find out what things they said that seemed to agree across large populations of mediums Mm-hmm Um, especially looking for, like, really specific things, and he developed a methodology for this.

[00:12:15] And now this has become a major world religion. It’s pretty big in Brazil, for example the religion that grew out of this. But, but that’s what I mean when I say that some of these are, like, rational in the way that techno-puritan is rational, but they try to design around something. The other one that has a lot in common with techno-puritanism is one of the larger Hindu groups.

[00:12:35] And basically one guy was just like, “We’re just gonna follow the Vedas. We’re gonna follow them as strictly as we can, and we’re gonna ignore all other writing, eh, eh, eh, where it contradicts the Vedas or could be seen as contradicting the Vedas. And we’ll create a school around this.” And that ended up doing really, really well.

[00:12:53] So we, we, we can, we can get into those, but I’ll just start going through the stats right now. There is no way we’re gonna get to all of this in this. A- one of the cool things in this, if you wanna go to the attached companion piece for this, is I list every one of these religions whether it survived, how long it survived, its core teachings, how it ended up dying off if it died off, with a Wikipedia link.

[00:13:16] So if you are a nerd for different religious frameworks and everything like this, this is a, a great opportunity for you to go and learn about those. All right So the first thing I’m gonna put on screen here we have grades here. , You have established equals 50,000 to one million. Major is more than one million. And then persistent- That’s fair ... but small is self-reproducing at around 50K. And dead is extinct. Okay? 50K is a lot. So of the 57 religious movements- Yeah ... we could find with a corpus during this period what’s really interesting is 11 became major world religions.

[00:13:58] Ooh. 13 became medium-sized world religions. This is 50 to one million people. Fif- 50,000 to one million people. Okay. And 13 stayed persistent and small, and 20 died out. Now, what’s fascinating about-

[00:14:14] Simone Collins: Dude, that’s better than entrepreneurship odds, and that’s what most people consider doing, which is-

[00:14:19] Malcolm Collins: Right?

[00:14:19] Simone Collins: Right, yeah.

[00:14:20] Malcolm Collins: Just start a cult, guys.

[00:14:21] Simone Collins: Yeah, actually. The, the odds are looking a lot better than pretty much any investment prospect I’ve looked at. That, that is insane.

[00:14:29] Malcolm Collins: No, but what- what’s more insane about this, and I’ll put this graph on screen here, is what you’re typically used to seeing with something like this is a long tail, right?

[00:14:37] Like, one or two became major world movements. You know, like six became medium-sized, and like 23 became small size. But that’s not what you have. You have 11 became major world movements, 13 hit medium, 13 stayed at small. This also helps argue against the idea that we’re missing a bunch of, like, small things that people founded at home.

[00:15:02] Mm. And, and, and never grew. Because even in the data where it would definitely be part of the historic record, we’re getting really, really weird data. Like even that one point should be really weird. Why is it that almost as many religions that are founded that become small yet persistent end up becoming large?

[00:15:21] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:23] Malcolm Collins: And note the one-third number I gave you of religions with a corpus became at least medium-sized, that did not include the small ones. So that meant that if you at any point in the past since the 1700s, founded a religious movement anywhere in the world, ‘cause we looked all over the world- Mm-hmm

[00:15:39] um, there was a one-third chance that it would be 50,000 to one million members.

[00:15:46] Simone Collins: That’s so crazy. Man, people have been making bad life choices with their whole, “I’m gonna start a business” thing.

[00:15:56] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:15:57] Simone Collins: My goodness.

[00:15:58] Malcolm Collins: And this, this result [00:16:00] has been stable throughout the entire period that we looked at. Now for the engineered religions, ‘cause people are like, “Oh, what about like designing a religious system the same way that like techno-puritanism could be seen as doing?”

[00:16:12] Yeah. I’m not coming out here saying “I’ve received a prophecy from someone.” I’m not coming out here- No ... with any of that. Mm-hmm. These actually have a really high success rate. So long as they have a real spiritual significance to them. Mm. Mm-hmm. And this is where with techno-puritanism it’s very important that we lay out and always cling to the position very seriously in terms of how we frame this to our kids, how we frame...

[00:16:38] God is a very, very real entity. Yeah. He is not a metaphorical entity. He is not a supernatural entity from our perspective either. He is a very real entity. The basilisk is a real entity, not a metaphor. Mm-hmm. When you go for that stuff, it doesn’t seem to work out. So, with the Aryans Samja Dhanji claimed no revelation at all.

[00:17:00] He pointed out an authority already every- everyone already granted the Vedas and held them as infallible, and he said he was just restoring them. Very similar to sort of what we’re doing- Mm ... with our project. Mm.

[00:17:11] So this was founded in 1875 and has around eight million members today

[00:17:16] Malcolm Collins: But then he used the Vedas to argue against a bunch of traditional Hindi concepts. Specifically he was...

[00:17:23] He said that, “Actually, when you go back and look at the Vedas, it says that you shouldn’t have child marriages, and you shouldn’t have a caste system.” Right. “And women should be treated as equals.” Huh. And, you know, like, a bunch of what people might think of as somewhat modern ideas, he reinterpreted an old text as having.

[00:17:44] If you go to Won Buddhism so Stanzey claimed in attainment, not enlightenment. So he didn’t have like a call from the outside or anything like that. He didn’t have a private vision. He’s just like, “This is the best way to do this.” With the Kardec, that was the spiritualist movement I mentioned- Mm-hmm

[00:18:02] um, which ended up being the basis of that religion in Brazil that now has like, I wanna say like a dozen major temples, and they all dress like birds. And they it was really weird. We, we go over it in our silliest religions videos.

[00:18:16] Simone Collins: And you’re not talking about the Brazilian one, or the-

[00:18:18] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the Brazilian one.

[00:18:19] Simone Collins: That came- They don’t dress like birds. They dress like princesses with colorful veils, and super brained evil villains if you’re a dude, with the, the evil villain cape, the high collar. So funny. Yeah. Good. Yeah. They need better costume construction though. Everyone needs to learn from the Catholic Church.

[00:18:38] That is couture. It is so good. The construction is beautiful. The garments are incredibly expen- anyway, let’s keep going. Sorry. Mm.

[00:18:46] Malcolm Collins: Well, I have, I had to scroll through my giant list here that you guys can go through.

[00:18:50] Simone Collins: Yeah, no, you really should check out the webpage. We’re gonna link to it in the show notes.

[00:18:53] It’s... There’s just a lot of cool jumping off points there, and the big... It, it’s just you have to really let it sink in that s- when people intentionally create cohesive religions with a strong metaphysical mooring point, they’re powerful. It’s really crazy, and we didn’t know this when we were like, “Well, let’s build a hard religion for our family,” ‘cause it appears to be that hard religions correlate with human flourishing.

[00:19:24] We’ll just make something that is in, in, in accordance with science and our understanding of physics and history. And then, then we like fall for it. We had no idea that like it actually had a shot of doing well. Now we’re like, “Oh my gosh. Just looking at the stats, this could go well.”

[00:19:39] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s genuinely surprising, and at the end of this we’ll get to the mystery of why so few are written or why so few are started.

[00:19:52] And- Mm-hmm ... because the... if that’s the, if that’s the, the real w- I don’t know what you’d call it, the shelling point or whatever, the, the [00:20:00] bottleneck of this entire process, why? That seems like a bizarre bottleneck.

[00:20:05] Simone Collins: I think it’s kind of hard for people to think that hard Let’s be honest with them But you don’t

[00:20:12] Malcolm Collins: need to think that hard.

[00:20:13] Ah. Keep in mind with, like, Nation of Islam, you have, like, the whole- ... Yankub thing, okay?

[00:20:20] Simone Collins: Yeah. With Scientology- Look, he put thought into that, okay? It was his best scam yet. And, you know, look, I was shocked and awed when I, I read that. I couldn’t have come up with a story like that. Though it does kind of sound like our kids’ stories, come to think of it.

[00:20:36] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It, it literally, any AI could come up with a better story than that.

[00:20:40] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. I was gonna say any six-year-old probably could too. Yeah. Anyway, never mind. I, I recant. Carry on.

[00:20:47] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Also note here that in the statistics here, we cut out a number that n- some people today would consider unique religions.

[00:20:56] Uh-huh. Because they were just too close to the birth religion, and it would end up boosting our stats because we would’ve thrown them out had they failed. So examples would be things like Seven Day Adventism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Ariya Samja. They’re, they’re listed in the list, just worth a note, noting here.

[00:21:13] Simone Collins: Wait, so you did include them or you excluded them?

[00:21:15] Malcolm Collins: I excluded them from the statistics because if they had failed, they wouldn’t have been in the statistics.

[00:21:21] Simone Collins: Oh.

[00:21:23] Malcolm Collins: Now, remember how I said if it has those three things, it has a 93% chance of success?

[00:21:28] Simone Collins: Yeah. That’s because- Prenatalism, actual spiritual worldview, and hardness?

[00:21:34] Malcolm Collins: N- well, I’ll, I’ll describe them here. So one, you need a written corpus, okay? Okay.

[00:21:38] Simone Collins: Oh, written corpus.

[00:21:39] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Go ahead ... or a spoken corpus or a recorded corpus. G- Any- Mm ... any of those work. Mm. But just, like, a series of beliefs about reality

[00:21:46] Simone Collins: that isn’t- No, it needs to be, like, canon. There has to be, like, the, the-

[00:21:48] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:21:49] It, it can’t just be- ... church’s lore ... whatever the founder happens to believe that day. Yeah, you- Which is the way a lot of cults

[00:21:54] Simone Collins: work ... need actual lore. Okay. Yeah, fair enough. Okay. With,

[00:21:56] Malcolm Collins: with a lot of cults, it’s like, “Oh, the founder had a new revelation today- ... and so now we all wear yellow hats.”

[00:22:02] Simone Collins: It’s all different.

[00:22:03] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So, so consistent lore book. Got it. Check. One. Okay, great. And then prenatalism. You know, you gotta have kids.

[00:22:09] Malcolm Collins: Next is you need something supernatural at stake.

[00:22:12] Simone Collins: Oh, supernatural.

[00:22:14] Can you just argue that technically paganism- Actually, do people want us to do an episode

[00:22:17] Malcolm Collins: on where we do go over the non-supernatural ones and why every single one of them failed?

[00:22:21] Simone Collins: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Oh, okay. So I guess you have to say how you define supernatural because everything that we say is in accordance with our understanding of science and physics and history. But you say the supernatural part is that we believe that the age- agents of providence and basilisk, AKA the future police, Go back in time to our, where we are in the timeline and to being Well,

[00:22:40] Malcolm Collins: I’ll, I’ll, I’ll word it a different way, ‘cause I think supernatural is the wrong word here.

[00:22:43] Simone Collins: Yeah, what would be a better word?

[00:22:44] Malcolm Collins: You need something beyond a normal materialist understanding of reality.

[00:22:53] Simone Collins: Right, you need something beyond our, our current technology

[00:22:58] Malcolm Collins: basically. So to word, so to point it this way, if we, if we talk about the one religion I was talking about, that, that spiritualist movement that got really big in Brazil- Oh, yeah

[00:23:05] They would say that the spirit world and ghosts are not supernatural in the same way we would say they’re not supernatural. They’re like, “It’s a real and studiable phenomenon.” Yeah. “That’s what we’re doing here. We’re studying a real and studiable phenomenon.” In the same way that when we say we believe that God is shaping history, right, like through altering things maybe at like a subquantum level or something like that- Mm-hmm

[00:23:33] I might be using scientific words there, but that is a belief that falls outside of any normal scientific corpus.

[00:23:41] Simone Collins: Right. We couldn’t replicate it with our current technology.

[00:23:44] Malcolm Collins: Yes, or that humanity will be raised again. Well, good humans, or not all, not even just good hu- Certain humans who are in the book of life will be raised again in a future body on Earth in another way as predicted in the Bible.

[00:23:58] When we say something like [00:24:00] that we can use science terms to describe it. But to a science person, we would be talking about something s- that is beyond the scientific world as a normal person accepts or understands.

[00:24:12] Simone Collins: Well, and it’s certainly beyond current scientific and technological capacity, yes.

[00:24:17] Malcolm Collins: Yes.

[00:24:18] But whenever somebody was like, “No, what I’m gonna do is just focus on, like, current scientific understanding-” Mm, mm,

[00:24:25] Simone Collins: mm, mm,

[00:24:26] Malcolm Collins: mm ... th- those always have died in human history.

[00:24:28] Simone Collins: Okay, so you always need to have magic, which we define as science people just don’t understand or technology people just don’t understand yet.

[00:24:35] Malcolm Collins: Well, look at Scientology, okay? Yeah. Scientology believes thetans are real, measurable things that you measure with a thetan meter. They believe-

[00:24:45] Simone Collins: An E-Meter. Sorry, an E-Meter,

[00:24:46] Malcolm Collins: right? Yeah, an E-Meter. They believe that, like, there is a real evil entity on a spaceship way out there, Mr. Xeno way out there in outer space that’s gonna come and, and, and zap us all.

[00:24:58] They believe every part of every process they do is science. Mm-hmm. They would argue nothing done within Scientology is supernatural. But to you or me or any objective observer, they’d say Come on, man. That’s not like what everyone else agrees science means. And so like as a techno-puritan I can say that I believe that all of our stuff is actual real science.

[00:25:26] But I can also stand as an objective third party observer and be like, “Come on, man.” But it turns out that those religions actually do really well historically. The ones that don’t do really well are the ones where they’re like, “No, no, no, no. I don’t wanna say the embarrassing part. I don’t wanna do the embarrassing thing.”

[00:25:43] The other type of religious movement that always dies always dies are the anti-natalist ones. And this is fairly common to form explicitly anti-natalist religious movements. They, they, they actually make up a big chunk of the religious movements. They are typically anti-natalist for one of three reasons.

[00:26:05] One reason is like the Shakers, right? They think they wanna be like as holy as possible- Mm-hmm ... as sanctified as possible. Sex is an unholy thing, therefore we don’t have sex, therefore we don’t have babies. And then they go extinct. Or in the Silliness Weekend episode one of them was a Florida communist cult.

[00:26:25] They appeared to do it for like feminist reasons ‘cause like, you know, women being in a relationship is degrading or something. I don’t understand fully. Yeah. And then the final reason is, is it’s clearly just a sex cult. Mm-hmm. And somebody’s using it to get sexual access to lots of women, and they don’t wanna deal with kids.

[00:26:41] And those cults

[00:26:42] Simone Collins: often

[00:26:42] Malcolm Collins: You heard a voice whispering, and he thinks there’s a murderer in the house.

[00:26:46] Simone Collins: Yeah. Can you tell him that Stacy and the kids are heading to the creek and he’ll be- Stacy

[00:26:49] Malcolm Collins: and the kids are heading to the creek. Go with them and you’ll be safe.

[00:26:53] Okay, so let’s go through the various statistics here. First religions that had a major corpus but were completely humanist, secular, in like a traditional secular format. Okay. I put- Would

[00:27:07] Simone Collins: you include, by the way, Alcoholics Anonymous in this or not?

[00:27:11] Malcolm Collins: I did not include- I mean- ... Alcoholics Anonymous, but I probably should have.

[00:27:14] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:27:15] Malcolm Collins: Because it does have like a written corpus.

[00:27:16] Simone Collins: Yeah, and they do... I mean, they have weekly convenings. You’re supposed to believe in a higher power. I mean, they’re definitely a cult. They’ve killed millions of people. Yeah. So, I mean...

[00:27:26] Malcolm Collins: See our other e- episodes on that. Like, naltrexone clearly works, and they’ve banned it in the United States for the thing that it’s good at.

[00:27:33] Simone Collins: Yeah, like Alcoholics Anonymous- ... specifically is responsible. Like, that is the reason why we don’t have naltrexone as a widespread intervention for alcoholism, which kills. So-

[00:27:42] Malcolm Collins: And it works 86% of the time.

[00:27:44] Simone Collins: Yeah. So death cult. Anyway, still I think it should probably be in here if we’re being honest.

[00:27:49] Malcolm Collins: Okay, so note here of the 13 that were founded as this humanist, secular variety, technically 8% survived.

[00:27:57] So I, I, I’m gonna change this- Yeah ... a little bit. One [00:28:00] sort of limped along. It was Felix Adler’s New York Society for Ethical Culture, founded in 1876. The deed not creed. It had Sunday meetings, social reforms, and a famous school, Fieldston. No God, no afterlife, no cosmic stakes. It is 150 years old- Hmm

[00:28:18] and cleared about 6,000 members.

[00:28:21] Octavian: So- That’s pretty small.

[00:28:21] Malcolm Collins: Very, very small.

[00:28:23] Today they have around 135 members

[00:28:26] Malcolm Collins: So- Yeah ... not really, you know. Of the ones that had a corpus and something supernatural, right? Like they weren’t in this other category-

[00:28:33] Simone Collins: Yeah ...

[00:28:33] Malcolm Collins: 65% survive. 65,

[00:28:35] Simone Collins: that is crazy.

[00:28:37] Malcolm Collins: Of the ones that had both of those and were not anti-natalist- Mm-hmm

[00:28:43] um, or were not primarily about converting other people and were focused on, like, the family and stuff like this that gets you down to 15. 14 of those survived, so 93%. And 53% of those became a major world religion. This is cleared the one million mark.

[00:29:02] Simone Collins: Wow.

[00:29:03] So- Is the LDS Church one of those?

[00:29:06] Malcolm Collins: Yes, the LDS Church is one of those.

[00:29:07] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:29:08] Malcolm Collins: Hmm. They, they would, they would very explicitly be one of those. Yeah ... I mean, well, I could go through-

[00:29:11] Simone Collins: Just

[00:29:12] Malcolm Collins: check.

[00:29:12] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, just check.

[00:29:14] Malcolm Collins: You had Mormonism. I have Seonism, Tenrikyo, Chán Bud- ... A lot of these are in other countries.

[00:29:22] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:29:22] Malcolm Collins: Of the ones that you’d be aware of, the Unification Church.

[00:29:25] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:29:25] Malcolm Collins: Won Buddhism, the Children of God, TFI. And yeah. Hmm. A lot of those are East Asian. Now we get into how they die. By the way, any thoughts so far, Simone?

[00:29:39] Simone Collins: No, this is just fascinating and kind of blowing my mind. It’s like these sleeper, sleeper successes. I even remember being taken when visiting with a family in Japan when I was a teenager to some new church, and I wonder if this is one of those religions.

[00:29:54] ‘Cause it was not Shinto and it was not Buddhism, and I’m like, “What is this?”

[00:29:58] Malcolm Collins: Japan and Korea have a lot of them.

[00:30:00] Simone Collins: Yeah. So I must have been taken to one of them, and I like... Wow, I was, yeah, I, I was kind of shocked by how big the complex was. It was very large buildings. They, they had a lot of money. So I, it’s all starting to come together in my head like, “Oh my God.”

[00:30:15] Like, I, it, it’s like Muggles and magic. I couldn’t see it at the time. I couldn’t recognize it. Although, whoa, hold on. I went to a Mormon preschool. All my friends in college were Mormons. So- Yeah, come on,

[00:30:26] Malcolm Collins: Simone ...

[00:30:26] Simone Collins: behold the power. Yes, never mind. Ooh, wow, so cool.

[00:30:31] Malcolm Collins: Okay, so when AI was ranking why religions die- Uh-huh

[00:30:36] because almost all the religions that had a very traditional view of science, right? Here, and I don’t like to use the word supernatural ‘cause I have pointed out the spiritualists, the Scientologists, they say everything they’re doing is science as well. Yeah. We say everything we’re doing is science as well.

[00:30:53] Here I mean a, a, a very sort of traditional normie take on science. Yeah. That’s listed as the number one reason religions die. That is, that is given as the death region for 12 of the religions. Mm. Which I think is interesting, and it shows that as techno-puritanism grows to never be captured by the desire to overly take that approach, to, to strip out the science magic that we believe in, right?

[00:31:23] Yeah. Like, real entities really influencing time that that is actually happening, right? Because if you, you know, really c- creating real potential miracles because the moment you strip that out, it dies. Next no fertility engine. That’s 11 of the ones that died. Decapitation or no succession, that’s 10, and we’ll go over all the different ways that succession, like the different succession ways you can set something up and what that says about whether you will survive.

[00:31:53] Simone Collins: Well, what does decapitation mean? Like, a s- the state actually tried to conservatively take it out or something?

[00:31:58] Malcolm Collins: No. The next one is state [00:32:00] suppression. That’s seven. Oh. So- So then what does decapitation- ... decapitation is like the leader died early on in the movement or- So like, we would be rated as that if you and I died in a car accident tomorrow and nobody picked this up.

[00:32:16] That’d be decapitation event. Scandal or founder crime, seven. Now note here for these, the way we’ve set it up, we’re not really at risk for the decapitation one. We’re not really at risk for the fertility one. We’re not really at risk for state suppression. We’re not really at risk for scandal or founder crime.

[00:32:34] We’re not... Because like all of the bad stuff we do, like make money on, on AI erotic material and stuff like that, we’re like, “Yeah, whatever.” Like I have... We’re, we’re very open about that and why we

[00:32:46] Simone Collins: do that. Well, and I think most of the scandal has to do with when you’re asking other adherents of the religion to do things or give things up for you.

[00:32:53] Malcolm, can you go down and tell them to go to the Greek?

[00:32:55] Thank you, Malcolm. They weren’t hearing whatever I said, so appreciate that a lot. You are amazing.

[00:33:02] Malcolm Collins: But yeah we’ll go into that. I, I don’t really have a hard stance on this yet. I might even cut this out, I don’t know, because I need to read more and, and, and study more on this.

[00:33:13] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:33:13] I mean, I, I’m really for the investment in your family part.

[00:33:17] You know, I think a sort of, like, bonus, like, ah, yeah, like, I made such a big windfall, who cares if I give a little bit of it to an institution that helped me thrive? Like, that seems reasonable, too. But yeah, the... I guess I’ll have to learn more about what, what is said in the Old Testament as well, ‘cause it’s

[00:33:39] To, to try to work out what a m- a modern equivalent would be.

[00:33:44] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and then what, what does that go to? Because I also, I haven’t enshrined this in any tract yet, but we had a tract that never aired saying that you should never within the tradition, take money for preaching- Oh, yeah ... or for teaching.

[00:33:59] And so I, I still lean towards that perspective. I think that’s a good one to have, and it can cause a lot of negative externalities if you remove it. But you also need a central body. What we’re gonna come to at the end of this is you do need a central body with, like, some amount of money to operate institutional get-togethers and stuff like that.

[00:34:20] Yeah. Because if you don’t do that, you always die out.

[00:34:23] Octavian: Mm.

[00:34:23] Malcolm Collins: And we absolutely need to make our marriage market work. We need to make our summer camp for kids and, like, our war- wider ideological sphere work. So we have to find a way to operate those things.

[00:34:36] Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s fair.

[00:34:37] Malcolm Collins: Fortunately, if RFAB keeps growing the way it’s been growing, maybe we just have so much money it doesn’t matter.

[00:34:42] Simone Collins: That’s kind of- that’s the dream. The dream is to never have to ask anyone for anything, to just-

[00:34:46] Malcolm Collins: yeah ...

[00:34:47] Simone Collins: put value you have in excess.

[00:34:49] Malcolm Collins: And the w- what we’re going to do with RFAB that I’m really excited about, if it keeps growing the way it’s growing, is whenever somebody gets a, a sponsorship removed for, like, being mildly right-wing, we want to give a sort of, like, insurance sponsorship that we can give to people when this happens.

[00:35:06] I love that. Also to help grow the brand. You’re muted, by the way.

[00:35:09] Am I? You really can’t hear me? I, I ca- I can hear you now.

[00:35:11] Simone Collins: Oh, that’s weird. Okay.

[00:35:13] Malcolm Collins: What were you saying?

[00:35:15] Simone Collins: I, I just like the, the wording insurance sponsorship. I mean, be careful what you say, ‘cause some channels are like, “Okay, well that’s $100,000 a month, and can you imagine?” Like- Well,

[00:35:24] Malcolm Collins: we need to find a way to make it not- Sustainable

[00:35:27] impossible to handle, right?

[00:35:28] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah.

[00:35:31] Malcolm Collins: The next one is a corpus without machinery. That would be another high failure risk for us. That’s- Mm-hmm ... we don’t have the marriage market, we don’t have the camps, because we don’t have churches, so we’d need some other thing that keeps the community together.

[00:35:44] Yes. And I’ve always envisioned those as the most important things. Like, the marriage market would come with the season, like a thing where people of marrying age all get together once a year and get to know each other in addition to the online environments. And that would also help prevent people from [00:36:00] leaving at the time when people would be most likely to leave, which is during your teen years when you’re rebellious, and it’s like, “Bro, you wanna go on Tinder?

[00:36:06] Like really? That’s where you wanna find a wife?”

[00:36:09] Simone Collins: Really,

[00:36:10] Malcolm Collins: that’ll... mm-hmm Instead of our community that’s been, like, training their daughters and sons to be, like, sane and respectful. Next is a political or military capture. This is, they become part of a state apparatus, and when that state apparatus dies, they die as well.

[00:36:27] Simone Collins: Hmm. Fair enough. Yeah. Bad strategy to be dependent in that way

[00:36:34] Malcolm Collins: So now let’s look at succession architecture.

[00:36:38] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:36:39] Malcolm Collins: All right? What are the good ones? What are the bad ones?

[00:36:42] Simone Collins: Yeah, which actually matters so much. I mean, when people talk about the LDS church, it’s all about Brigham Young. You know, he’s, he’s the guy

[00:36:49] Malcolm Collins: who made it happen.

[00:36:49] Yeah, so a, a non-transferable profit office this almost always leads to an extinction event, but not always. So, like, we still have the Falun Gong around. Mm ... but of other ones like Happy Science Farrakhan’s NOI Raelism they’re all dead. Hereditary dynasty these typically split and decay over time.

[00:37:15] And they lead to very weak religious systems. For an understanding of what I mean by this, probably the most egregious example of the hereditary dynasty is Islam. Islam should be- Oh ... much more centralized than it is, But because the Sunni, yeah, it’s split ... much stronger than it is. But because they attempted to make it hereditary in a few different ways, it basically meant that it just became warring factions that don’t even have ideologies that are that particularly different from each other.

[00:37:45] It’s just they care about which hereditary line was kept which is why it’s really bad generally to create a strict hereditary dynasty. Now this isn’t to say you can’t have a transferable hereditary dynasty, which has worked very well on multiple occasions. This is where a founder sa- like, appoints it to their kid and then their kid appoints it to a kid.

[00:38:05] Does

[00:38:05] Simone Collins: that happen that much?

[00:38:07] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. A, a, a famous case of this happening that did very well is the Baha’i. So the Baha’i was, the founder appointed- Well, and

[00:38:15] Simone Collins: did the Church of Islam too, or the, the Nation of Islam,

[00:38:17] Malcolm Collins: yes. But that ended up destroying it ‘cause it was appointed to his kid, and then his kid converted it all to just Islam.

[00:38:25] But the Baha’i it was founder to son, son to grandson, grandson to council. And, and it worked that way because it didn’t have to stay hereditary. It was just hereditary while it was convenient.

[00:38:41] Simone Collins: Okay. Huh. I mean, that’s reasonable. You should be flexible. If you have a really inflexible succession plan and then something breaks, you’re kind of screwed.

[00:38:50] Flexible good for the most part, I think. Yeah.

[00:38:53] Malcolm Collins: Hmm. Dynasty plus constitution, hereditary figurehead wrapped in a bureaucratic institutions that actually run things, often a bridge mechanism after the first death. This has worked very well and has a near perfect survival rate. Designated living successor these typically survive and they sometimes split and localize.

[00:39:12] Like it’s not, it’s not the best, but it’s okay. The one that has the near perfect is the elected collegiate officers. These have a very- The other one...

[00:39:19] Simone Collins: Oh.

[00:39:20] Malcolm Collins: A council or electorate fills the office. The authority is legitim- legitimated by writing, not by blood or designation. For people who are wondering the answer that we chose in techno-puritanism, it’s none of these.

[00:39:32] It’s the index system. You can read up on it. Basically the church is kept as a series of individual families or clans which have a unique set of beliefs and their own treasuries. Yeah. And then they vote on the center family/clan that has the central figure- Yeah ... who is not a prophet, they are an administrative lead.

[00:39:56] And that it’s meant to be easy to split from [00:40:00] and rejoin if your group thinks that it has become corrupt in some way.

[00:40:03] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm

[00:40:05] Malcolm Collins: Without the splitting group being the heretic group.

[00:40:09] Simone Collins: Yeah. ‘

[00:40:10] Malcolm Collins: Cause that’s not really the way it works. The splitting group wouldn’t be necessarily the, in the wrong group given the way the, the text is written.

[00:40:17] If, if a group wanted to split, it is proof that the central group might be doing something wrong.

[00:40:23] Simone Collins: Yes.

[00:40:23] Malcolm Collins: Like, it would be more a a, a, a negative on the central group than on the splitting group. The splitting group just wouldn’t get the resources that had been accumulated by the central group.

[00:40:32] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm

[00:40:34] Malcolm Collins: Constitutional self-termination happens.

[00:40:37] The founding rules accidentally or deliberately forbid replacement. This happened with the Catholic Apostolic Church. Only its original apostles could ordain. The last apostle died in 1901. Oh. So the last priest died in 1971.

[00:40:52] Simone Collins: Well, that was really poorly planned. Are you serious?

[00:40:56] Malcolm Collins: You, can you ask AI why they did that?

[00:40:58] Why did the Catholic Apostolic Church not plan for the, the founding group dying?

[00:41:05] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:41:06] Malcolm Collins: And then text as a s- s- successor. These ones typically do pretty well, but they don’t have a lot of centralized control.

[00:41:14] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:41:15] Malcolm Collins: Now earlier I mentioned the survival ship bias test, and here what we do is we have a number-

[00:41:22] Simone Collins: Oh, Malcolm, they just thought that Christ would return before the 12 restored apostles died.

[00:41:31] So they were like, “Don’t worry. He’s, he’s coming.”

[00:41:36] Malcolm Collins: Very poor planning, guys. Poor

[00:41:38] Simone Collins: planning. Because I’m

[00:41:39] Malcolm Collins: pretty sure the Bible says that no one will know the time or the,

[00:41:41] Simone Collins: Well, did you look at this? Did you look at apocalypticism? ‘Cause I know the Seventh Day Adventists managed to stick around pretty well.

[00:41:49] Malcolm Collins: I am, I am very disappointed in the number of Christian groups that become apocalyptic when the Bible is very clear that you should not be apocalyptic.

[00:41:57] Simone Collins: I don’t know. Jesus was like, “No, but really, like in our lifetime. I’m super serious about this.” I- No,

[00:42:03] Malcolm Collins: I understand that- ... soon ...

[00:42:04] there are

[00:42:05] ways that historic Jesus scholars interpret him as saying those things.

[00:42:10] But- that’s not really the way it comes across in the text as the text was eventually captured, which is what we think is divinely inspired. So-

[00:42:18] Simone Collins: Oh, by Peter.

[00:42:19] Malcolm Collins: No, the text- I’ve never

[00:42:20] Simone Collins: met him ...

[00:42:21] Malcolm Collins: the text as it’s actually captured says no one will know the time or the space.

[00:42:25] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:42:25] Malcolm Collins: All

[00:42:25] Simone Collins: right.

[00:42:26] Malcolm Collins: So- Okay. Or place.

[00:42:27] Yeah, definitely. So, what, what that means is if somebody comes to you and they say, “I know,” they’re saying something that is explicitly anti-biblical and, like, a, a, a very easy reading of it.

[00:42:35] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:42:35] Malcolm Collins: Fair enough. But yeah. So w- in the survivorship bias test, this is the part of the, the survey you can read if you want.

[00:42:41] Probably uninteresting, but we go over the... We do capture a, when famous people have weird beliefs. It just doesn’t happen that often. So what were the founders actually doing? Was it a probable con or scam event at founding? Was it an apparent genuine vision? Was it a desire for a better world?

[00:43:01] Was it a commercial venture? Was it love of the practice? Or was it mixed or ambiguous? And the answer here is the best category with one of the highest survivorship rates is probable scam.

[00:43:17] Simone Collins: Probable scam. What?

[00:43:21] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So I actually think, before I go further, this in part explains why the authorship part is so rare.

[00:43:30] So for a person to sit down and say “I have...” Like, suppose you’re motivated by, like, genuinely wanting a better world, right? You sit down and you say... which has a really good rate as well, by the way. Genuinely wanting a better world has a pretty good rate as well. Love of the practice has a medium rate.

[00:43:52] This is where, like, wiccanism comes from. Mm. And, and theosophy and stuff like that, a lot of the, the new age stuff. They just appear to really love doing this stuff. [00:44:00] It’s not like they had a vision. It’s not like they thought this religion’s gonna make the world a better place. They’re like, “I like casting spells and looking at crystals, so I’m gonna do it.”

[00:44:10] The, w- the apparent genuine vision also does pretty well. So let’s, let’s go into this. Why, why? Like, let’s get to the mystery here, ‘cause I actually think that this, in part, solves the mystery. So I am a smart, lucid, sane adult, okay?

[00:44:26] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:44:27] Malcolm Collins: Not a crazy, schizo rambling or something like this.

[00:44:31] Simone Collins: No.

[00:44:31] Malcolm Collins: What are the things that could motivate me to sit down and say, “I’m gonna draft an entirely new metaphysical system”? Well-

[00:44:41] Simone Collins: ... Yeah, look, you, you did it ‘cause you wanted your kids to thrive. Right. And I, I think most sane people would never wanna sit down and write a religion.

[00:44:50] Malcolm Collins: Well, that’s the problem, is-

[00:44:51] Simone Collins: Yeah

[00:44:52] Malcolm Collins: the, the number one motivation for most sane adults to do this is they want to exploit people for sex- No ... or they want to scam people for money. Mm-hmm ... and that is why so many of-

[00:45:07] Simone Collins: Or they’re just schizophrenic, like the Brazilian lady who kept seeing ghosts by the roadside.

[00:45:13] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but fortunately for her, her...

[00:45:15] didn’t come off as schizophrenic ramblings ‘cause she had a Catholic friend who tried to organize all her thoughts into a corpus- I

[00:45:21] Simone Collins: think that’s

[00:45:21] Malcolm Collins: nice ... which then created a religion which people started following.

[00:45:24] Simone Collins: Yeah, every schizophrenic needs their token Catholic friend.

[00:45:27] Malcolm Collins: But this is, this is actually part of it, Simone- Yeah

[00:45:29] that you’re, you’re getting to here. Mm-hmm. The apparent genuine visions often fail because if it’s not a real vision from God, right, it means the person is a little off their rocker.

[00:45:42] Octavian: Yeah.

[00:45:42] Malcolm Collins: All right? So, and it also means that the religion is being guided from a first principle’s perspective- Mm-hmm ... that isn’t thinking about the long-term consequences of the stuff they’re thinking.

[00:45:53] Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. It’s not through logic. Like- Well, they can

[00:45:56] Simone Collins: write themselves into a corner because

[00:45:58] Malcolm Collins: they’re never gonna apply- The Catholic, Catholic Apostolic Church that you were talking about, right?

[00:46:02] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:46:02] Malcolm Collins: Like that, a genuine vision says, “Jesus is about to come back.” Okay, Jesus is about to come back. Uh-huh. We don’t need to think, you know, that many years into the future.

[00:46:08] Yeah.

[00:46:08] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:46:08] Malcolm Collins: And then you accidentally write yourself into a corner there.

[00:46:12] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:46:13] Malcolm Collins: So- Not

[00:46:14] Simone Collins: perfect. Not ideal ...

[00:46:16] Malcolm Collins: the the, the, if you get it through a vision it leads you to craziness. But if you don’t have a vision, well what are your, your options here? To try to create one of those completely secular things, which always fail, right?

[00:46:30] Because they just don’t have the fervor. Or to lie, right? Now, or, or to look at old texts, which we’ll get to in a second. But if you take the lying route you can go into it and design it in a way that is meant to be self-replicating, meant to capture people’s attention. With the big ones here being, uh

[00:46:55] well, we probably shouldn’t say one of them even though it’s very obvious to everyone who’s not part of this religion. I, okay, I’ll tell you how I got AI to decide which religions were founded by con artists and which ones weren’t.

[00:47:08] Simone Collins: How?

[00:47:09] Malcolm Collins: Did they, without attribution, rip off another religious system- Oh

[00:47:16] that their followers were unlikely to be familiar with? Oh, no And the reason why that was such a tell for me- God ... is because if you believed that you were actually getting messages from God you would then just say- Rip off

[00:47:29] Simone Collins: the Freemasons. No ... “

[00:47:31] Malcolm Collins: We’re just gonna do X ‘cause the Freemasons do it that way.”

[00:47:34] Right? E- and, and you, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t lie about that. You would just be like- No ... “Oh, yeah, b- because of the, you know, they, they do it a different way and so whatever,” right? Yeah ... but it’s the act of concealing where the inspiration for what you’re doing came from that to me signals dishonest intent.

[00:47:55] Note here I still think these guys come from some sort of genuine, [00:48:00] like ... I do think God was at work in all of that, but I can- Yeah ... think God was at work in all of that and there was some shady dealings going on at the same time. Correct. But like, yeah, like the Yakub guy did that a lot too, right?

[00:48:12] Yeah. Like, he was like stealing from other, like, male and religions and stuff like that and, like ... Anyway, The other thing that you could do is say, “Okay, I wanna make the world a better place. I do not want to claim special revelation,” right? Because then that would be a lie, and I don’t wanna go at my project of making the world a better place through a lie.

[00:48:31] Mm-hmm. I do not want to claim that everything just works the way that old farty scientists say it works. So then what are your options? You really only have three, and they really tie your hands.

[00:48:44] Okay ...

[00:48:45] option number one is to come up with a system for how you determine what is true. This is what that one spiritualist guy did that I think was very sophisticated and interesting as a religious founding movement.

[00:48:56] Mm-hmm. To just be like, “I will interview all of the different spiritualists,” and, and people have written other books since his death that use the same method, “to try to find eerie coincidences, and I will say that that is some sort of genuine spiritual connection.”

[00:49:10] Simone Collins: Feels

[00:49:10] Malcolm Collins: very

[00:49:10] Simone Collins: earnest, yes.

[00:49:12] Malcolm Collins: Yes. And what did he come up believing?

[00:49:14] By the way, if everybody who hears this, you know, our audience, they’re like, “Oh, he probably came up with a bunch of satanic, evil stuff.” It was there is only one god. You should believe that one god. There is some form of an afterlife. And that the one god is good and wants you to be good, too.

[00:49:32] So, like- Maybe his message aren’t that bad. You know? Like, maybe, maybe you don’t get as clear of a picture by talking to a bunch of spiritual mediums, but you don’t get a bunch of wrong answers either. The, the other option is the option that we went with, which another group has also gone with.

[00:49:50] The group that decided to just go back to the Vedas and reinterpret them, but in a way that went against a lot of normal Hindi ways of living at the time period when it was becoming popular. And that is to just be like no, let’s say all of the Bible stuff is actually true. We’re just not understanding it right, so let’s go through it again sort of line by line, text by text, in a historic context, and try to map it to stuff.”

[00:50:15] This allows for you to not lie about anything, still have a, a text that you can point to but it’s not your text and build from there. Mm. The problem is is so few people think to do that. Like, it’s just not an obvious thing to think to do, which is why so few people have done it, and so many more people have done the scam option, right?

[00:50:40] Which is why so many of... I, I think why new religious movements get the the negative connotation of a cult or scam often, because so many of them just are. The vast majority are. That’s the main reason, like, a sane adult would do this. Secondly, if you’re a sane adult, it’s a crazy thing to do.

[00:51:01] Simone Collins: Yes.

[00:51:03] Yeah.

[00:51:03] Malcolm Collins: And I think people don’t realize how crazy a thing it is to do. When people can just be like, “Well, go back to one of the traditional ones,” and I’m like, “The traditional ones all look like they’re failing, and I think they’re wrong.” Like I, I’ve, I can’t convince myself of it. I’m not gonna be able to convince my kids of it.

[00:51:19] Simone Collins: Yeah, it’s like trying to get into a movie when you can’t suspend disbelief because the, you know, the acting is so bad, or the direction is so poor, or the effects are awful. Like, you, you... Yeah. You can’t just... I mean, I guess a lot of people do. A lot of people do choose to adhere to religions fully not believing them because they understand the community matters.

[00:51:41] The problem is that they don’t really have faith, and then when family members or their children encounter genuine crises of faith, they can’t defend the faith. And if those people don’t like the community, then they don’t stick to the community or they don’t try to reform the church from within when it needs reform because they [00:52:00] don’t believe in it enough to fight for it and try to, to shape its future.

[00:52:03] So you have to have that true belief if you wanna be A genuine adherent. I mean, I’m sure all the members of the LDS church who don’t actually believe in it but tithe are nominally contributing to the religion because tithing is very significant. This is 10% of your fore ta- before tax income. But-

[00:52:23] Malcolm Collins: Which I see as quite predatory.

[00:52:25] Simone Collins: It’s insane. Yeah, I’ve heard some horrible stories that, yeah, like, you know, really, really sick family members and they’re still like, “So are you gonna write your check now?” It just, like, w- really poorly done. You... They’re... No, absolutely not. But-

[00:52:39] Malcolm Collins: Yeah ...

[00:52:39] Simone Collins: I think the church even really doesn’t benefit, I mean, especially the LDS church now that it just has that much money.

[00:52:45] It, it has insane, ridiculous, preposterous, doesn’t make sense anymore levels of money. What they really need is faithful adherence more than anything else. Because what we’re seeing now is parents raising their children in the church, sending them to Mormon schools, living in Mormon communities taking them to church every Sunday, and then those kids go off to college and are like, “You know what?

[00:53:08] I’m not a Mormon anymore. I’m not, I’m not a member of the church.” ‘Cause they, they just, the faith wasn’t there. It’s, it’s-

[00:53:17] Malcolm Collins: Yeah So the next category that we’re gonna go to here is silliness versus sophistication. Yeah. And some religions I think it can be both sophisticated and silly, which is why we put these on two different metrics.

[00:53:31] An example of sophisticated and silly would be Mormonism, for an example. I think Mormonism’s a pretty silly religion in, in parts of its founding mythos and stuff like this. And, and the category I use for silly is when you tell somebody who’s not of that religion their religion’s founding story, are they likely to actually LOL.

[00:53:50] Speaker 2: I have the golden plates here in this hat. I need to have them somewhere dark so I can read the spiritual light. Oh, okay, write this down.

[00:53:57] Christ appeared before the Nephites. And that’s how the Book of Mormon was written, dum, dum. Martin, how do you know he isn’t just making stuff up and pretending he’s translating off golden plates? Lucy Harris, smart, smart, smart. .

[00:54:13] Speaker 3: I’m gonna hide these pages. If Joseph Smith really is translating off of golden plates, then he’ll be able to do it again.

[00:54:18] Speaker: Lucy Harris, smart, smart, smart. Martin Harris, dumb. So-

[00:54:23] Speaker 2: We must now translate from the Plate of Nephi, so it will be the same basic story, but written a little differently.

[00:54:29] Speaker: Wow. If God got angry with you, then you must be telling the truth

[00:54:34] Malcolm Collins: Yeah ... and what we found is that silliness is pretty protective to a religion. Mm. Now, the best thing you can be is sophisticated and dignified. This has a 47% chance of becoming a major world religion.

[00:54:48] Simone Collins: Okay, what, what is an example of a sophisticated and dignified new religion?

[00:54:53] Malcolm Collins: Baha’i would be an example of that.

[00:54:56] Simone Collins: Mm. Okay.

[00:54:57] Malcolm Collins: Kardashianism, the, the spiritualist one that we talked about would be an example of that.

[00:55:01] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:55:01] Malcolm Collins: But I don’t really like that style. That ain’t my style. I like to have a little bit of silliness in things. Where silliness is very protective is because it causes members to be shunned by out groups, and it forces them to further identify with a, “No, I really believe this.”

[00:55:21] You know, like, we may not believe in the future police in a literal context, but it is part of the family lore, right? Mm-hmm. Like, the kids talk about the future police all the time. They get id- attacked by Krampus’, right? Like, a Krampus is a major part of their... They believe that they are possessed by the devil, right?

[00:55:41] Like, or w- that they call the basilisk when, whenever they get in a mood where they’re doing bad things, ‘cause that’s what we tell them. We go, “Well, you... It... Has the basilisk taken you over?” And they’re like, “Yep, the basilisk has taken me over.” And, and then one time Totes was like, “Octavian, you have to slap me.

[00:55:56] You have to slap out the basilisk.” But like, they’re [00:56:00] learning how to contextualize their negative and tantrum-like emotional states as something separate that’s not really who they are, and that is their opposition, the traditional meaning of Satan that’s corrupting their heart, right? Mm-hmm. Like, a lot of these things that we do are objectively pretty silly.

[00:56:20] The, the Future Day where we take all their toys and we leave, like, silly foam and stuff and say it’s future debris like, it’s a silly thing to do, okay? And a bunch of little, like, party favor-type toys as future debris, which they go crazy for, by the way.

[00:56:33] Simone Collins: Oh, they love it so much. No, they, they don’t...

[00:56:36] The annoying thing is they have yet to ever miss the toys that have suddenly disappeared, and they only get super excited about the debris

[00:56:46] Malcolm Collins: Which is the best part, yeah

[00:56:48] Simone Collins: I know. That’s funny. The toys have

[00:56:49] Malcolm Collins: disappeared, but now there’s little party favors on the floor, so

[00:56:51] Simone Collins: whatever. Like, oh my God, yeah. Kids don’t care that much about toys.

[00:56:55] Like, they just... I don’t know. Whatever.

[00:56:59] Malcolm Collins: We, we, we built them a life where, like, it doesn’t... The group that always fails is low sophistication. Mm. Or almost always. It has survived. Like, the Nation of Islam kinda survived, and Valdese and Amer kinda survived. When did

[00:57:12] Simone Collins: the Nation of Islam really just become a, a, a group of primarily Black Americans who just shifted to actual Islam?

[00:57:23] But they, they have, like, a different origin story and different cohort?

[00:57:26] Malcolm Collins: The Nation of Islam?

[00:57:28] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

[00:57:28] Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah. Now

[00:57:29] Simone Collins: they’re just- ‘Cause they dropped the Yakub stuff, right? Didn’t the successor, the son- Yeah, they dropped it all ... of the founder was like let’s just make it, like, actual Islam, okay?” Yeah. And then they did, right?

[00:57:37] Yeah. Right? Okay.

[00:57:40] Malcolm Collins: Who knows? What if techno-puritanism does that for, like, just mainline

[00:57:43] Simone Collins: Protestantism? What, and they’re like, “Ah, let’s just make this mainline,” what? Calvinist Christianity?

[00:57:50] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that’s probably where they’d go- Oh, that’s- ... if they were gonna drop it for something. Very, very sad if that happens.

[00:57:55] Yeah. But for the sophisticated, very silli- silly category, these are religions that have q- quite a sophisticated belief system but are very silly you’ll see a lot of heavy hitters. You get Mormonism, Falun Gong- Yeah ... Scientology- ... Theosophy, Salema, Uranida, Brahma Karas, Krishla- Hmm ... which is a major world religion.

[00:58:14] Oh, no, sorry, not Krishla. It’s, it’s Brahma Karamares, which is a major world religion. Okay.

[00:58:20] And then a few, I think these are dead ones. Uship, Aaran, and Haris. But you also get, But yeah it, I found that to be pretty interesting. And it’s why in the, in the corpus here we have a little anime cat girl future police because you know, you gotta have that imagery everywhere that we do with our stuff.

[00:58:37] It’s why we put, like, jokes into the text and everything like that, like, even in our track series. And- We have a chart here of coherence across religious institutions.

[00:58:47] Simone Collins: Wow.

[00:58:48] Malcolm Collins: We have one here on sex, like did they try to create a sex cult, which usually doesn’t work out very well. A- and note here like the worst thing you can do as a cult is be super anti-sex.

[00:58:58] Anti-sex always kills things, right? Like, do not, do not go the super prude direction. Because they usually end up becoming Well, when you go anti-sex, like when you start worshiping a fear of human sexuality, you begin to admire members of your community who live celibate lifestyles. Mm. This is something we’re seeing in like the Opus Dei.

[00:59:16] Like, I think the Opus Dei are really cool, but a third of them are celibate because they’re from a part of Catholicism that has a degree of worship around a fear of human sexuality or a hatred of human sexuality or arousal patterns, which means that it’s cool to never engage in it, which is really bad for a religious system and, and, and generally this argues you shouldn’t incorporate.

[00:59:38] Simone Collins: Well, I heard, and it’s not exactly with celibacy, but I heard that a genuine problem with SSPX is purity spirals that could just ruin the religion, which is not good. So- Yeah ... it has, it has its issues. N- not... They wouldn’t even, of course, be counted among these new religions because it’s just an offshoot of [01:00:00] Catholicism.

[01:00:00] But I think anything whether it be around celibacy or anything else, a religion that’s subject to purity spirals is so dangerous. I mean, we saw what happened with irrationalism and effective altruism when purity- Yeah ... spirals started taking over the community. That’s not really addressed in that, but it, it is something that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently.

[01:00:21] Malcolm Collins: A, a very interesting one here is what does the religion descend from? What religious group is it-

[01:00:28] Ooh ...

[01:00:29] successor and how did that affect it? Where this is really interesting is for a number of major world religions, you have very high success rates. Ones that are descended from Christianity have very high success rates.

[01:00:42] Yeah. The highest success rates are actually Hindu. The next highest are Shinto, after religion and Hindu. And then you also have very high ones for Buddhists. Where you get extremely low is Islam.

[01:00:56] Simone Collins: Oh. Wow. Yeah, I guess the only way they got new recruits for Islam is by making up some ridiculous story about selective breeding and-

[01:01:07] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, also-

[01:01:08] God figuring out

[01:01:09] Simone Collins: how it worked ...

[01:01:09] Malcolm Collins: spiritualist movements, very low. There’s only been really one big success story, the one that we’ve mentioned a few times here. One success. Then within new thought you have sort of middling success. And then if you go pure UFO this is like Heaven’s Gate, Scientology- Oh

[01:01:27] Raëlismo, Urantia. Okay. You don’t get a lot of mass scale, but you get a lot of decently kind of working things. So sci- sci-fi seems to work. And then designed and naturalist zero. Zero in 250 years. Except for the one that’s like kind of petering along. The final thing that we’re gonna go over here is what does this say to us?

[01:01:47] What does this mean that we need to do? And this was the one that basically said, look, Malcolm, ‘cause, you know, I’m running AI on this, I’m like, “What’s our probability here of a religion like us?” We’re already at the stage where... And this is what gets me when we have other people watch us, ‘cause I was watching one guy watch our thing.

[01:02:04] He goes, “Well, they don’t even know if this is g- gonna become a, a religion. They don’t even know if they’re still gonna be living in X many years.” You know, it’s such a far off thing, and it’s like we at the stage we’re at right now have probably an 85% chance of still being a religion in 100 years. If we look- That’s crazy

[01:02:22] at historical trends and correlates.

[01:02:24] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

[01:02:25] Malcolm Collins: That’s where we are right now. And, and probably being at around 100,000 members.

[01:02:29] Simone Collins: Isn’t it gonna be so cool if someone plays this video 85 years later, whether we’re right or long, wrong, and are like, “Oh, look at that.”

[01:02:37] Malcolm Collins: Look at that. Well,

[01:02:38] Simone Collins: and like I-

[01:02:39] Malcolm Collins: Hi. This is you

[01:02:39] I, I... Hi. I ran the correlations here. You probably talked to AIs based on us. We’ve got enough data out there

[01:02:45] Simone Collins: on that. Oh, yeah, we’ll be super dead. Hi, we’re Gh- Ghosts.

[01:02:49] Malcolm Collins: I’m sure it doesn’t make that many mistakes. And, and just so you guys know, in, in the far future, was I satisfied with my life? Super satisfied.

[01:02:57] Not a lot you could do for me. Not a lot you could do to make it better. Maybe- Yeah. Imagine being more perfect ... make sure this kid takes, okay?

[01:03:03] Simone Collins: Yeah, we really hope this kid takes. Y- yeah. Also, by the way, for all of you who’ve given us hornet tips, thank you so much. We’re working on it. We had

[01:03:11] Malcolm Collins: five hornets in my room right

[01:03:12] Simone Collins: before this.

[01:03:13] Well, yeah, but we’ve received some excellent advice. The, the core thing that we’re working toward here with everything, all the support, both financial and informational you’ve given, is all the interventions cannot really be enacted until we find the nest. We’re still working on it, friends. Okay.

[01:03:29] Malcolm Collins: AI’s like, “Put a piece of meat outside, and then watch a hornet go to it and fly back to the nest and triangulate the position.”

[01:03:37] Simone Collins: I’m like, “I can do that.” Yeah, that’s... A bunch of people said that, too, and it’s like, you know- That sounds great. Have you ever watched an insect outside and just tracked it for longer than, like, 15 seconds? Outside. ‘Cause I haven’t. I have

[01:03:52] Malcolm Collins: not tried.

[01:03:53] Simone Collins: I mean, I can keep track of a mosquito inside for more than, like, you know, 10 seconds, and then I’ll catch it again in a [01:04:00] little bit, but that’s inside a closed small room, you know?

[01:04:04] We’ve tri- look, we’ll try, ri- but no, we’ve received some really helpful insights, but y- yeah, we’re, mm. Thank you.

[01:04:11] Malcolm Collins: Thank

[01:04:11] Simone Collins: you. Yeah, actually hornets, Malcolm, someone pointed out these are what bald, bald-headed hornets. Which is great.

[01:04:19] Malcolm Collins: Wonderful.

[01:04:20] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[01:04:21] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I love you caught one on-screen once. Yeah. You got fi- right when we were sitting down to film, there was five right next to my filming chair.

[01:04:28] That Simone took out for us.

[01:04:30] Octavian: Yeah.

[01:04:30] Malcolm Collins: But anyway where are we with all of this? If RFab, play RFab, it’s fantastic. Tons of adventures you can play. It’s been improved a lot recently. I suggest turning the memory feature on for narrative engines. I’m gonna do that with the defaults moving forwards because it’s, we’ve finally gotten to a part where, like, the lore book and memory writing is really good for storytelling.

[01:04:50] And it improves the narrative engine quite a bit, allowing it to, like, remember places and contexts. So I’ll do that right after we record. ‘Cause I finally feel like that’s working, or at least if it’s not working, if we put it on the default models, we’ll begin to get complaints about it, and we can work on it.

[01:05:07] But the point here I’m making and where this all comes down to is the AI was like, “If you fail, there is one glaring reason you’re going to fail.”

[01:05:16] Simone Collins: Okay.

[01:05:17] Malcolm Collins: It is that... And I thought it was gonna be that we were too, like, secular, and it’s like, no. Like, from an outside framing, you guys don’t look secular at all.

[01:05:28] Simone Collins: Oh,

[01:05:28] Malcolm Collins: okay. Like, you may consider yourself secular in the same way a Scientologist does, but nobody else is gonna think technopuritanism is secular.

[01:05:35] Simone Collins: Well, come on. Scientology was written by a literal sci-fi writer who then was just like, “And this one time it’s real, I promise.” Come on. Come on. Anyway, just don’t think that’s fair The carry on, sorry.

[01:05:51] What was the thing that’s actually gonna kill Technopuritanism? Very soon.

[01:05:54] Malcolm Collins: Wasps,

[01:05:55] Simone Collins: Another one?

[01:05:56] Malcolm Collins: Well, I hear something tapping on the glass.

[01:05:59] Simone Collins: Well, if there is one, you just tell me and I’ll come in and kill it.

[01:06:02] Malcolm Collins: It’s fine. See how tough my wife is? This is-

[01:06:04] Simone Collins: No, it just, I, I handle the, the killing and the, the dead bodies, and Malcolm handles everything else.

[01:06:13] Malcolm Collins: Okay, so the thing that’s gonna kill it is we don’t actually put together the marriage market, we don’t actually- Yeah ... put together the summer camp for kids and we don’t actually put together the online communities for younger people to interact and find spouses. Yeah, I

[01:06:29] Simone Collins: have all the, look, families for years now have been telling us when they wanna opt into that.

[01:06:36] I have a decent collection. I haven’t checked count recently, but I have a decent collection of parents who have one or more children close to our children’s ages. So, like, the age range at present is basically from, like- Z- negative one to 14 basically. And once we get, you know, like, couple years in, maybe a little more money, we can start to organize things.

[01:07:00] But we’re gonna do it.

[01:07:01] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. One of the things that we wanna do is like a season. Mm-hmm. So if anyone has like, w- one of the ways we can get around raising money is if anybody has like a large property they want to show off and use to gain status the idea is, is like once every couple years have all of the younger people come together for like a series of events or something like that- Mm-hmm

[01:07:24] , Where they can get to know each other. And then we also want to put together a summer camp, so if anyone has a property where we can do that or an idea of where would be a good place to do that. W- if we can’t use a member’s property, what we’ll do is we will, And keep in mind, there’s not that many of us, so like renting out an entire summer camp for this at this stage might be overkill.

[01:07:45] But like- Yeah ... rent out an off-season summer camp and d- do something at one of them. What I, I’m, I’m not sure yet but I’m beginning to realize that I may be too fastidious if, if we actually are as fastidious [01:08:00] as we had planned in being and never, ever, ever taking any money, then we won’t have the institutional bureaucracy to operate the events that are needed to keep things feeling like a community rather than people in a podcast talking about something.

[01:08:17] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, fair enough, that those things like do cost money. Camp counselors, people to organize and execute events. I mean, I think it would, it, it can very sustainably and easily start off as groups of families choosing to travel to the same like resort at the same time. ‘Cause with resorts are built-in infrastructure.

[01:08:36] They have the swimming pools. They have the like archery ranges- Yeah ... or whatever. And there are lots of those in the world that we could turn to. Or even like a cruise at the same time, because they have a lot of that infrastructure as well and, and you could just kind of like raid an area and take it over.

[01:08:54] So that’s, I, it, you know. I think it’s gonna start with, with people taking concurrent vacations to places with existing infrastructure, which just requires self-funding, because then you have to pay to stay at a resort, which is not inexpensive, especially if you have a large family. I know what, there’s that the, the, the huge Catholic meetup that happens every year though.

[01:09:14] That looks like it’s camping. And then isn’t there the, the h- hu- huge libertarian one that’s also camping?

[01:09:20] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I would not do camping.

[01:09:22] Simone Collins: Yeah, so that’s that’s, I find

[01:09:23] Malcolm Collins: those to be very miserable ...

[01:09:25] Simone Collins: Malcolm doesn’t wanna do a camping one. So yeah, I guess- ... until we have some kind of big tithing base or, like, donor base, members are gonna have to self-fund their participation in the season, I guess.

[01:09:38] That’s just what it’s gonna be.

[01:09:39] Malcolm Collins: But that’s okay ... we’ll, we’ll figure that out. That’s something that we need to look more in on, think about more, and understand that my desire to be, like, super lean while it has some benefits, could be what ends up killing the tradition.

[01:09:55] Simone Collins: And we have to consider, just for reference, what the London season was.

[01:09:59] It, it was for a network of geographically, I mean, relatively speaking, right? But geographically dispersed families who needed a contrived mechanism to get their children to, to mix and marry. We’re talking about the landed gentry in, in the UK who were raising their, their children on country estates, who didn’t see other people unless they were visiting as, as, you know, hunting party guests or something.

[01:10:24] So they, they realized the, how important it was to, to get everyone to mix. So instead of just husbands going into London for the parliamentary season, if they were in the House of Lords, the, they decided to host a circuit of parties and bring their entire families to London with them. And then they would host, take home- turns hosting parties- During the London season, basically during Parliament or the parliamentary season, after debuting their, their children who are basically open to being married th- their daughters specifically to the queen.

[01:11:01] So you had this sort of- I, I, I- So like-

[01:11:02] Malcolm Collins: And I

[01:11:03] Simone Collins: think

[01:11:03] Malcolm Collins: out here... Well, I mean, that’s why I’m saying we would take inspiration from that to

[01:11:06] Simone Collins: try- The point I’m making is that was an institution for disparate families. That was, however, also an institution where those disparate families, at non-trivial expense personally both traveled to be in one area and hosted through their own largesse.

[01:11:20] Well, yeah, because it was

[01:11:20] Malcolm Collins: about showing off, which could be a way that you do it. That’s why I’m saying, like, if anyone has a property or something like that, we could do it in that mechanism. , It’s not just the one family who’s hosting everything.

[01:11:29] So when you fly to the one person’s event, other families will host various events that happen during that season.

[01:11:40] You’re not flying from one location to another. Oh,

[01:11:42] Simone Collins: in that same area?

[01:11:44] Malcolm Collins: In that same venue, event, whatever. The idea being is that the person who’s operating the property isn’t putting on the cost for the individual events. Oh. Those are put on by different families as a way to sort of [01:12:00] show their, one, dedication, and two- Mm-hmm

[01:12:02] the status of their family relative to other families in the community. The secondary thing to consider about this- This would work if

[01:12:08] Simone Collins: it were, like, a place like Cape Cod or something, like a nice vacation area, I guess.

[01:12:15] Malcolm Collins: Well, right. You might have multiple families doing it that way, but I think an easier way to do it is likely a rural property, and then you have multiple families host different things.

[01:12:24] But outside of that, because then the families can host each thing their way and show off their own family-

[01:12:32] Simone Collins: You can’t even host something your way when you don’t have your own space or when you don’t get to choose. , You’re hamstrung

[01:12:36] Malcolm Collins: Are you out of your mind? Always. You go to a wedding venue and every wedding is different done that person’s way, but it’s at the same venue as 20 other weddings that week, Simone.

[01:12:49] The venue doesn’t control the style of the event. You can do an event or a get-together or a party in one of a billion different ways with a billion different flavors. They show off- I...

[01:13:01] Simone Collins: Okay, we’re gonna have to have a whole debate episode on how we think this would work most efficaciously,

[01:13:06] Malcolm Collins: we will have a weekend debate episode right after this one on this topic.

[01:13:09] The core thing she wanted to add, and I don’t know why she didn’t just say it, was that she thinks it would work better, and I agree, if only the young people who are dating went and not the full families, and that they were the ones who put on the mini events within the location, which I also agree with

[01:13:25] Malcolm Collins: But before we get into that, the second thing is if you look at all of this and your takeaway is, but why are all the techno-puritan stuff, why is the marriage market, why is the kid get-together stuff- Mm

[01:13:40] why is the season event, why is it all about getting people married and mating and reproducing?

[01:13:46] Simone Collins: Yeah. Why is how much we’re,

[01:13:47] Malcolm Collins: yes. Yeah. Right? And the answer is, is because that is the key framing within our entire life cycle story, everything like that, and it used to not be weird. Mm. I like reading old European romance books, right?

[01:14:02] This was everything. All the adults are doing is talking with the other families, trying to find their kids a good marriage match, and then the kids get married, and then all they’re trying to do is find their kids a good marriage match. That’s like one of li- ... That should be, right now it’s like college is like the big thing in life, or like, you know, your first job.

[01:14:19] No, it’s who you marry, right? And so building out a network to help with that and also help our kids with nepotism, that’s really advantageous to helping the movement grow and stay cohesive, especially for kids, but also frame life in a sane way to the next generation again.

[01:14:39] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[01:14:40] Malcolm Collins: All right.

[01:14:40] Simone Collins: Yeah. Fair.

[01:14:43] Malcolm Collins: Love you, and now we will have our argument for people who wanna be on Patreon or Substack subscribers.

[01:14:49] And it’s great to see you guys, and it was kinda crazy for me when I did this, this study ‘cause I was like, “Whoa, we’ve actually passed- Existential ... a lot of the big hurdles already.”

[01:14:58] Simone Collins: Yeah. I am

[01:14:59] Malcolm Collins: so impressed. And our corpus, by the way, is 50% larger than the Mormon corpus

[01:15:04] Simone Collins: What do you mean corp- oh, you mean the, the, like written texts Of

[01:15:07] Malcolm Collins: all of the techno puritan tracts and writings is 50% larger So it’s longer

[01:15:10] Simone Collins: than the-

[01:15:11] Malcolm Collins: All

[01:15:12] Simone Collins: the Mormon ones

[01:15:12] the Book of Mormon and all the other stuff.

[01:15:15] Malcolm Collins: That’s- Yeah, the Pearl of Great Price and the, the whatever. Yeah

[01:15:19] Simone Collins: The expensive pearl. That’s so cool. Sorry,

[01:15:22] Malcolm Collins: sorry to put you guys through all of this with these insane tracts.

[01:15:26] Simone Collins: I really like them. I think this is so cool. I, I, I would not have even thought to look at this, and I’m so impressed by what you did.

[01:15:32] It’s just super cool, and you should really check out the page if you find this stuff interesting because you can go... You can click through to the Wikipedia pages of these religions if you’re like, “I’ve never heard of that. What on Earth?” And then you can see the little logos, ‘cause every religion has to have a logo, and I don’t know.

[01:15:49] I really like it. I think it’s, it’s super cool. And, yeah.

[01:15:52] Malcolm Collins: And I wanna be honest, I love our gear logo.

[01:15:54] Simone Collins: I mean, would you, would you encourage therefore people to build their own religions? Or [01:16:00] like what is... I mean, what is the point you’re... Are you trying to say like, “Yeah, actually you should do this,” or are you just trying to say, “F

[01:16:04] Malcolm Collins: the-” Actually, somebody should probably create a Wikipedia for techno puritanism.

[01:16:08] If you’re like a Wikipedia editor we’re probably at a stage where that makes sense.

[01:16:12] Simone Collins: Oh, where we have our page with our logo. Yes, but-

[01:16:15] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, with our little logo and our weird beliefs.

[01:16:17] Simone Collins: In, in The Practical Guide to Crafting Religion, you prompt people to either make their inherited religion or chosen religion- Capable of withstanding the additional and new and different pressures of modernity, or to make a new religion that will work in our context and reconcile all the differences that, that they have with their otherwise chosen religion.

[01:16:43] Do you still hold that they should do that? Or do you think now that it’s actually better to try to create a wholly new religion if you’re able to meet the criteria that you’ve, you’ve discovered? Or do you think- Well, I

[01:16:52] Malcolm Collins: mean, I think, i- all of the traditional religions are dying to an extent where I think creating a version of them that does well is gonna look like a new religion.

[01:17:01] So- Mm ... a version of Catholicism I’ve said could do really well. It’s something that takes ideas from the Opus Dei about dedicating your life to something- Mm ... but dedicate your life to the next generation,

[01:17:10] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yes ... your

[01:17:10] Malcolm Collins: kids.

[01:17:10] Simone Collins: None of this whole s- the celibate Opus Dei nonsense. Mm-mm.

[01:17:15] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But if you, if you do that, I mean, the Opus Dei are unique enough that most other groups would call them a new religion.

[01:17:22] Mm ...

[01:17:23] especially if you combine the beginning with, like, a bunch of writings. Now, if you’re a you know, a traditional Christian or a traditional, you know, Baptist or something, I, I do think you need some, some reinterpretation to protect against many of the bad things that have happened within the Protestant community.

[01:17:38] The number of scams that have been run out of, you know, Pentecostal churches, the number of bad theology that has seeped in I think th- that takes an amount of hardening and y- sort of Puritanism that’s, that’s going to look and feel very different than what you’re gonna find in a church today, in any church you go to today.

[01:18:02] And I’ve... One of the things that we keep hearing is people go to church, and they’re just like, “It doesn’t feel right. Like, every church I go to feels hollow now.” And that will be the focus of our next tract is what, what, what does the Bible actually say about churches? And a lot of people, well, frankly, they mistranslate the word gathering as church when everywhere it happens it’s not a church.

[01:18:29] And it... And, and, and through that they don’t notice that whenever it’s talking about an actual church church, it’s usually not in a positive context, which was interesting to me. I, I, like it was actually, like, rereading it more critically and I was like, “Oh, is that why they became corrupt so quickly?”

[01:18:48] But anyway, fun talk. And and, and not just not in a, a positive context with a ton of warnings attached. But I love you, Simone. Mm-hmm. And have a spectacular day.

[01:18:58] Octavian: You too.

[01:19:00] Simone Collins: You just had no idea who it was and you were just like, “I guess that’s normal.”

[01:19:05] Malcolm Collins: Somebody running around, open doors. It sounded like they were having fun.

[01:19:09] Simone Collins: Yeah. Obviously. I, do realize that after you have a certain number of kids, you can no longer expect any privacy in your house. Like, everyone will just come and go as they see fit.

[01:19:25] Okay So that’s fine

[01:19:28] Malcolm Collins: Okay-ish

[01:19:29] Speaker 4: What is so funny?

[01:19:35] Can I have my brush back?

[01:19:40] What if I gave you this instead? This is actually for babies. Yeah. Isn’t that so much better? Oh,

[01:19:55] my God. Oh, my God, it’s gonna make you throw up. No. [01:20:00] Bonk, bonk. Oh. Bonk, bonk. Bonk, bonk. Oh, no. I love your texts. I love you so much. Oh.

[01:20:19] Okay, is this really what you want? Oh, for the love... That, really? Really?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

David Lorentzen is BACK—this time to share his behind-the-scenes experience as a Swedish hotel manager whose family has run hotels for over a decade.

David gives a rare, unfiltered look at cultural differences he has observed as a hotelier: which groups of guests make staff smile and which ones create the biggest headaches. He walks through the three most difficult categories of guests his hotels have hosted — Russian oligarchs, Chinese tour groups, and certain Indian families — with specific, firsthand stories about room damage, cooking in rooms, overcrowding, and the economics of hospitality.

The conversation then shifts to a much larger topic: the refugee housing industry in Sweden. David recounts the multimillion-dollar offers hotels received to house asylum seekers (especially young Afghan males), why his family turned them down, the insurance and property-value consequences, and the two competing integration strategies Sweden has tried (spreading people out vs. concentrating them). He also discusses literacy rates, cultural distance, and why some groups integrate far more easily than others.

You can find David Lorentzon's various accounts and posts here: https://linktr.ee/davidlorentzon

Episode Transcript

And where I basically shared the story about about what what actually happens when the Swedish, I think it’s called emergency service in English, rescue service. They gave us a phone call, and they said that, would you like to house 30 Afghans? And you’ll get paid at the time at that time about $320 per night per child and do that year round. Now he received 30 of them. Okay. That’s like, what, 90,090 thousand dollars a day. Crazy. Yeah. It it turns it it basically your most profitable day becomes every day of the year.

Malcolm Collins [0:42]:

Yeah.

David Lorentzen [0:43]:

And most of it is profit.

Simone Collins [0:45]:

And it’s

David Lorentzen [0:45]:

hard to

Simone Collins [0:46]:

say no. Yeah.

David Lorentzen [0:47]:

You’re basically earning millions of dollars to accept mostly male between the age of 14 and 26 Afghan boys Afghan males.

Simone Collins [0:58]:

Wow.

David Lorentzen [0:58]:

Now this village has about 350 people.

Speaker 4 [1:02]:

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins [1:04]:

Okay. Hello, everyone. I’m so excited for this. we’ll say more off the record, episode in which we interview David Lorenzen about his experience, with different cultural groups from the perspective of a hotel manager. I will say that when we have worked in the travel industry, we’ve been exposed to some really stark cultural differences, even just from, like, working in different parts of the world. And definitely from working with different groups as travelers, it’s kind of amazing. I think we’re mostly raised to believe that everyone’s kind of the same. Everyone does the same thing. We all, like, get up and we eat breakfast, and it’s all the same. Like, it’s broadly, like, cereal and croissants and fruit. And, like, we don’t realize that people actually live very different lives, have very different habits, and that becomes very clear when you get to see a sampling of people go through a specific pace. David Lorenzen is able to speak to this. He’s gonna explain to us why, and then we’re just gonna I I would love to dive into some things that you’ve observed about different behavioral patterns or or habits you’ve noticed from different groups that you’ve been exposed to through the nature of some of your work.

David Lorentzen [2:08]:

Yeah. So about thirteen years ago, my family decided to buy a hotel that was for sale, and we had never ever done anything like this. We my parents were from the tech industry, basically.

Malcolm Collins [2:20]:

Oh, wow.

David Lorentzen [2:21]:

We wanted to change in lifestyle, something healthier than sitting in an office all day. And we bought it when I was 18 years old. So for my entire adult life, I’ve had I’ve been deeply involved with running hotels in the tourism industry.

Malcolm Collins [2:36]:

Mhmm.

David Lorentzen [2:36]:

And I’m a hotel manager. And the reason I can talk about this is because it’s a family owned business, and they can’t fire me. So I got freedom of speech.

Malcolm Collins [2:45]:

That helps. So

David Lorentzen [2:47]:

and I do have to say that, you know, 90% of all our guests in Sweden here are, let’s say, Germanic people. Germans, Austrians, Dutch, Scandinavians, they are wonderful people. They do incredible they really do set the standard with like, I I get happy when whenever I see that they cleaned after themselves to make our jobs easier.

Malcolm Collins [3:10]:

Malcolm, what Simone does, and I get so mad at her.

Simone Collins [3:12]:

He gets super mad. I’m, like, stripping the sheets. I’m trying to clean up. I’m putting all the towels in a, like, folded pile. And he’s like, what are you doing? I’m just being correct, Malcolm.

David Lorentzen [3:21]:

Yes. You’re being correct. And I do the same thing because I I wanna be nice to the cleaners. Yes. But but as we were talking to each other, it says, okay. I’m having a really busy time now. We have to reschedule and so on. You started mentioning, I hope the guests are good to you. So, like, yep. Yeah. We’ve had some bad people too. And I started mentioning that the worst groups we’ve ever had, the bottom three, are Russian oligarchs, Chinese tourist groups, and Indian families, which is a very

Simone Collins [3:56]:

So wild.

David Lorentzen [3:57]:

Strange group to bundle together. And I’ll go through which one do you wanna start with?

Simone Collins [4:03]:

Let’s start. What surprised me the most, because Chinese tourists are kind of famous for being nightmares, especially, like, certain generations of Chinese tourists. But what I’ve not heard about is Russian oligarchs ever being a problem. You’d assume that they would just kind of, like, breeze through and barely stay in the room or something. What’s going on there?

David Lorentzen [4:23]:

Yeah. So we had Russian oligarchs a couple of times, and the moment this has happened multiple times. The moment they come in, they check-in, they check they see the room, they’re not happy with it, they come back, and they try to bribe us. So, like Okay. We’re willing to pay triple the price to get your best room. I’m sorry, sir. The hotel is fully booked. We’re not gonna kick out our guests. So and they insist upon it. No. No. No. We we want we’re paying triple now in cash. And it’s like, okay. No, sir. We’re not doing that. Then the neck the next problem is that over and over again, they party hard in the room. They shoot champagne bottles all over the place. They regularly smoke cigarettes and cigars in the room, which they’re not supposed to do. We tell people that it’s it’s illegal to smoke indoors. So whenever we go into the room after they’ve checked out, it’s like, oh my gosh. It’s a terrible smell. There’s mess everywhere.

Malcolm Collins [5:25]:

Oh, no.

David Lorentzen [5:26]:

And when you have that kind of cigarette smell in a hotel room, you can’t give it out to the next guest for the next three days because you have to open the windows. You have to make sure that the air quality goes up again, and you basically run into this really serious problem that, okay. We’re just now gonna get really bad reviews because we can’t get people this room. We’re gonna have to say, no. We can’t give you this room that you booked. Gonna have to refund and get bad reviews as a result. So even if they were to pay a whole lot of extra money for that service, the cost in the long run is repeatedly bad reviews on booking.com, on other websites that you’re basically yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It’s huge. And we are, you know, really high rating. We care a lot about it. So it just means that it’s bad business to deal with Russian oligarchs. And ever since the war in Ukraine began, we’ve not had them because

Simone Collins [6:22]:

Oh, good.

David Lorentzen [6:24]:

There there’s been a bunch of restrictions on these people that makes it very difficult for them to move around in the EU compared to before.

Malcolm Collins [6:33]:

So So they they they like to I mean, it must be a higher end hotel if you’re getting Russian oligarchs coming. Yeah. They they come to the your country to, what, to party? To do what? Like Yeah.

Simone Collins [6:43]:

Why are they there? Are you in the countryside? You’re in the city. You don’t have to name names or anything.

David Lorentzen [6:46]:

No. It’s a middle stop. So we are in a in a strategic location where we are convenient middle stop for a lot of travelers. So it doesn’t have to be high end luxury. It just has to be the most convenient middle stop, and that’s how we encounter these people. So we’ve had, you know, the Lotus Club, the Ferrari Club, the Amphibious Boat, Car Club, and a bunch other stuff.

Simone Collins [7:10]:

Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. People wait. Club.

David Lorentzen [7:12]:

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There was a bunch of Amphibious Boat, a car club that came to our hotel, from across the lake.

Simone Collins [7:19]:

Oh, so they, like

David Lorentzen [7:21]:

We have a beach.

Simone Collins [7:21]:

Across the lake.

David Lorentzen [7:23]:

Yeah. They they drove up on the beach.

Simone Collins [7:25]:

That must have been really fun to see.

David Lorentzen [7:27]:

Yeah. That was awesome. That was absolutely awesome. It’s like yeah. So we’ve had a bunch of these various really cool car clubs that has billionaires and millionaires in them. So but I do have to say that the rich people in the West, you know, they behave really nice. They behave really well. It’s just this particular group that seems to think that once you have a sufficient amount of money, ethics, being nice, no longer really relevant anymore. Like, you you can just pay to be an a*****e, and it’s fine.

Simone Collins [8:00]:

Yeah. But, like yeah. I guess no money no amount of money really makes up for the fact that you you will have to take cleaning fluid to walls and, like, scrub the sticky champagne off of that.

Malcolm Collins [8:11]:

Like, doesn’t even if you’re paying somebody else to do that, Simone.

Simone Collins [8:15]:

Still sucks for that person getting paid to do it, I guess, unless they wouldn’t

David Lorentzen [8:18]:

otherwise But also the bookings right before that because we have back to back bookings.

Simone Collins [8:22]:

Yeah.

David Lorentzen [8:23]:

So if you if you can’t clean the room fast, you’re in trouble. So

Simone Collins [8:29]:

Yeah.

David Lorentzen [8:29]:

So that’s the reason why I say, okay. All Russian oligarchs, not good for business.

Simone Collins [8:35]:

Yeah. Give them the worst room. Give them, like, the utility closet and be like, oh, I’m sorry. There was a mistake with your booking.

David Lorentzen [8:42]:

Yeah. But, you know, regular Russians are fine, you know, because they can’t afford to behave like this.

Simone Collins [8:46]:

Okay. That’s very interesting. Okay. Alright. So Russian oligarchs. Yikes. Yes. Okay. Chinese tourists. Are these so first off, because what what we’ve heard is that there’s this, like, particular generation of, like, older Chinese tourists who grew up at a certain time in communist China where they were just sort of given, like, carte blanche to be terrible people who then, like, are famous for going on, like, boat trips. They don’t know how to swim. They’re told not to get off the boat. They jump off the boat. They drown. Like, that kind of level of pathologically insane. And then it’s mostly that type of tourist. But are you seeing also younger people being problem hotel stayers? Or I don’t know. What have you seen with Chinese tourists?

David Lorentzen [9:28]:

So here’s a I have to make a very clear distinction. We we need to emphasize it’s specifically Chinese tourist groups through these companies because the kind of people the kind of Chinese people that use these tourist groups are those that don’t speak English. So if, for example, a couple a Chinese couple were to travel on their own, then it’s basically guaranteed that they know English. And if they have studied English, all those English studies, you also learn about Western ethics, Western etiquette. That’s just a part of learning the language in English is that you learn about how Western societies work. Now if you have never studied English, you haven’t even studied western etiquette.

Simone Collins [10:12]:

Oh, and so this allows you, I mean, maybe through very uncomfortable means, to understand what the default etiquette is in China because Yes. Most of us don’t know Chinese etiquette. We haven’t traveled, like, into the deep rural links of of China where that exists. Right? Yes. What are you seeing?

David Lorentzen [10:31]:

So we we basically the our entire tourist region, basically, after a couple of years, said no to any tourist group that is organized from China.

Simone Collins [10:43]:

Like, had stopped met at your, like, hotel club meeting and were like, these guys, we’re not doing

David Lorentzen [10:47]:

this No. No. No. It was all independently done because everyone had bad experiences. There was no there was no essential communication on this. It was it just happened naturally. So what happened is that with these Chinese tourist groups is that, okay, when they check-in, none of them speak English. You can’t communicate with them. Oh. So you can’t tell them instructions. You can’t tell them it all has to go through the mediator, the translator. So, basically, it becomes, like, herd mentality. And the first thing that they started asking for, do you have rice? It’s like, no. This is you came this you came all this way to Sweden to eat rice. It’s like, no. We don’t have rice. So, like, okay. And hours later, we start noticing that our metal pots are going missing. And then we realized that they have stolen the pots to boil rice on the floor in the hotel rooms. And they had

Simone Collins [11:48]:

that Where are they getting heat sources to boil the rice?

David Lorentzen [11:50]:

They they had the they had the other things besides the pot.

Simone Collins [11:55]:

So they had they they’re bringing, like, the hot pot, like, base.

David Lorentzen [11:58]:

Yeah. Yeah. They’re having, like, a a a cooker plate or something like that that they bring with plates. Them. Yes. And then they we noticed that our metal pots and kettles went missing in other kitchen equipment, and they and we realized that breakfast and lunch and dinner was surprisingly thin. Like, there’s not a not all of them are here.

Simone Collins [12:21]:

They’re not showing up for the the

David Lorentzen [12:23]:

included meals. Yeah. Yeah. So imagine, like, oh, they’re supposed to be 40. Now there are only 30 of them. So, like, where’s the other 10? Oh. And what we realized is that, oh, we found eventually found some of the pots in the hotel rooms after they checked out. So, like, oh, and then we see in the pot that they have boiled rice in it because it can get stuck. It leaves them walking out.

Simone Collins [12:47]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

David Lorentzen [12:48]:

Yeah. So real also, that’s why they didn’t need our food. They were just buying rice, and they were boiling rice on the floor in the rooms. Some were some some preferred noodles. And what we noticed is that when they were eating in the restaurant

Simone Collins [13:05]:

I’m sorry.

David Lorentzen [13:06]:

Then they because they were the majority in the restaurant, the big majority, they started behaving like they do in China, and they started loudly farting and

Simone Collins [13:18]:

Oh, no.

David Lorentzen [13:19]:

Yeah. Yeah. Barfing. You know, like, you know, out of the throat. You know?

Simone Collins [13:25]:

On purpose?

David Lorentzen [13:26]:

Yeah. Just openly farting and barfing through the mouth in the restaurant just repeatedly over and over again. Apparently, it’s more socially acceptable in China to just, while you’re eating, not hold it in, and it was causing problems and disturbances for the rest of the guests.

Simone Collins [13:50]:

Presumably yeah. Feeling like

David Lorentzen [13:54]:

this is this is deeply uncomfortable to hear this group of 30 Chinese people all starting the starting the trumpets. Let’s just call that.

Simone Collins [14:05]:

Why well, I mean, dude, they’re turning to rice because something is not working with their digestive tracts about Europe. It is which actually makes a lot of sense. I mean, there’s a lot of lactose intolerance in China. Right?

David Lorentzen [14:16]:

So Now speaking of lactose intolerance, they were buying the pastries. They were buying

Simone Collins [14:21]:

Oh, okay. I would think so. Yeah.

David Lorentzen [14:24]:

For the pictures. They they took pictures of eating it, then they threw it out. So they didn’t even digest the pastries and the various lactose desserts and meals. They just liked it seems like the the main thing that they were concerned about with these kind of trips is to take the best pictures possible. And the actual experience of doing something didn’t really matter because all of the joy was in telling the about the experience once you have returned home.

Malcolm Collins [14:58]:

This is the status of having had the experience, not the experience itself.

David Lorentzen [15:02]:

Yes. And we noticed this because we have a beach. We have kayaks and canoes.

Simone Collins [15:05]:

Oh, yes. It’s pretty.

David Lorentzen [15:08]:

Yeah. And my brother is, like, the kayak instructor, and he’s supposed to be also their guide out in the water. And he got insulted and felt, you know, like he didn’t really matter because all they wanted was to go a little bit out in the water, have the picture taken, and then come back in.

Simone Collins [15:25]:

Oh. Oh.

David Lorentzen [15:28]:

So they didn’t actually want the experience. They were afraid of the water too.

Malcolm Collins [15:31]:

They’re buying their food. They’re not eating the food. They’re getting in

Simone Collins [15:34]:

the kayak. They’re not staying in the kayak.

David Lorentzen [15:36]:

Yes.

Malcolm Collins [15:37]:

I mean, I I love that it is the in state of influencer world eventually realizing that you don’t actually like going to a beach that fast.

Simone Collins [15:45]:

In a sense, it’s, like, really based because they’re like, look. I’m not having fun. I don’t want the food. You’re not having fun.

Malcolm Collins [15:52]:

I just wanna stay inside and play video games and watch Chinese movies. Right? Like, I’m not I’m not actually interested in sharing. Yeah.

David Lorentzen [15:59]:

I I just wanna stay inside and boil rice.

Malcolm Collins [16:01]:

Yeah. So much of travel is actually that without the baseness. This this gives me a degree of respect because of the number of people. I don’t believe that many people actually like beaches. Beaches are incredibly boring. Like, the the people who think, like, having lived on beaches for a large firm, there there’s just not that much to do at the beach. And it a lot of it is gross and sandy and or requires a huge amount of time like scuba diving. Oh, god. You know? So I I think a lot of travel is just it’s just that. It’s just in China, they they just cut out all the rest.

Simone Collins [16:39]:

Yeah. Well, they they don’t care about performatively enjoying it. Whereas I think that what we’ve seen more in our social circles is that you have to, like, pretend to like it. That, like, it’s not a complete performance if you’ve not been like, I just had the best time and, like, we’re gonna sit through this twelve hour tour, and then we’re gonna enjoy every moment and pay rapt attention and and look at every single museum plaque. And and I feel like that is an even more punishing version of performative travel than this Chinese version. I kinda like that they’re like, look. This is gonna suck. Okay? We’re gonna, like, walk to the top of Everest. It’s we’re gonna vomit. We’re gonna fart. And we’re gonna we’re gonna, like, lose brain cells, but, like, we’re getting to the top.

Malcolm Collins [17:21]:

No. They’re doing it the right way. They don’t go to the top of Everest. They just go to Everest. They just just to take a few pictures, and then they say, I was at the top. Make a little AI image.

David Lorentzen [17:32]:

You know, you have the stereotype with, like, these older Asian guys and women with this funny bag in the front with a camera in it, like this kinda old school camera.

Malcolm Collins [17:42]:

Yeah.

David Lorentzen [17:43]:

Yeah. So, you know, it was it wasn’t even for social media. It was just for these, you know, paper pictures. Right? Yeah. Do. So that they were just not there for the actual experience. The experience that they enjoy was telling it talking about it at home. Oh my god. I love that

Malcolm Collins [18:01]:

it’s not even for social media. It’s to show off to other people. And they’re the stupid social circles that don’t matter at all.

David Lorentzen [18:09]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You you know, if you were, you know, ten years ago in your fifties, you were not having Instagram or social media or whatever, Alibaba, whatever they have in, back in China. So, you know, most it’s just when this specific combination happens when you have a bunch of people that have not learned English and as a result, even studied Western etiquette. Mhmm. They come in this tourist group where you can’t even communicate with them. We were trying to hold these people accountable. Who stole the pots? Oh. And you can’t even talk to them. They don’t understand what you’re saying.

Simone Collins [18:46]:

Yeah.

David Lorentzen [18:47]:

So you need a, like, an Asian mediator, and the mediator didn’t feel like he was cooperating at all with us, letting them get away with it. So you just realize, okay. For us to this is ruining the experience for the rest of our guests. For us, we are we don’t want to be inauthentic. We wanna be the authentic place where you come for the experience and not the photos. So what all all of the hotels in our area did was that, okay. We’re not doing business with Chinese tourist group. Now Chinese can still come. We’re not discriminating in that sense, just not these companies.

Simone Collins [19:23]:

Just not the tour buses. Yeah. You’re not gonna take Yes. Not the tour buses. Work with a tour operator and not accept that. Exactly.

David Lorentzen [19:29]:

Because that’s that’s when you get the Chinese people that don’t speak English.

Simone Collins [19:35]:

Yeah. That’s so interesting. Because also the thing is is I I traveled in rural China a little bit, and I went to a, like, tourist trap destination in, like, more rural China outside Changsha. There was this national forest park called Songjiajie that looks like what’s that movie with Avatar? It looks like that, like, with these craggy mountains. Yeah. And it did bring in droves of Chinese buses, tour buses, and I stayed in, like, a Chinese hotel resort when I was there. Then I’m trying to think of, like, how how does it work there for them? I mean, I think the big thing is that it’s it’s food they’re familiar with that they’re eating. And, also, in the actual Forest Park itself, they had it set up such that you could just take a lot of Instagram photos, but not actually walk into the park. So you could get the full like, everything in while never really

Malcolm Collins [20:32]:

getting any of this in Korea that gets a lot of Chinese tourists. Do you remember in Korea where there was, like, the arboretum we went to with the Chinese people, and they had all those places for, like, pictures for, like, Instagram

Simone Collins [20:45]:

and stuff? Yeah. Instagram. It was

Malcolm Collins [20:46]:

just Yes. Like a line from, like, one photo location to another photo location. That’s the way

Simone Collins [20:53]:

you can good tourist destination, you need to, like, be walking distance from the parking lot. Have all the photo ops right there. Lots of of of actively, like, friendly, like, familiar Chinese food, and then and, like, actual legit Chinese food and then, like, just also in Cambridge. So in Cambridge, there’s this famous bridge that’s in this poem that everyone’s, like, forced to learn in primary school in China.

David Lorentzen [21:18]:

Right. Right.

Simone Collins [21:19]:

I know. Everyone wants to see it when they go. But what’s interesting is that as a student when I was studying in Cambridge, I almost never saw the Chinese tourists, and that’s because they never stayed in Cambridge. They just went to that one freaking bridge, like, got off the bus, watched to the bridge, got back on, and, like, literally saw nothing else of this historic city. And it’s amazing, like, libraries and sites and everything else. And I think that’s the key thing. So, like, I but I like it. It’s kinda based. Like, I I having gone on, like, all these really performative trips where, like, we we we got the the shot, but then we kept going. It was like it was like having a being an actor and, like, being on set, but no one’s filming. And they’re like, keep acting. Keep going. And you’re like, but wait. You’re not paying me anymore, and no one’s filming anything. And I feel like they’re like, camera’s off. Great. Like, let’s get out of here. This sucks, but, like, let’s you know, I’m hungry, and I wanna eat something that’s not gross European. I

Malcolm Collins [22:20]:

get it. I get it.

David Lorentzen [22:21]:

Yeah. Yeah. Now the third group on my list are Indian specific some specific Indian families. We’ve had a couple of them where okay. They come, they check-in, and they book, let’s say, two double bedrooms. So they okay. That that okay. Then there are four people. Right?

Simone Collins [22:40]:

Yeah.

David Lorentzen [22:41]:

But their vehicle is huge. And we noticed, okay. They’re having a great time. They’re eating dinner. But then some of our workers said, like, there is more Indians coming from the car into the hotel and back out again. And the locals were reporting that, hey. There’s a bunch of Indian, like, people squatting on the side of the road out here. Like, people squatting, like, Indians squatting on the side of the road in the middle of Sweden in a tiny homogeneous village.

Simone Collins [23:10]:

Physically, that’s squatting. Yeah. Yeah. Just just hanging out.

David Lorentzen [23:13]:

Sitting sitting on the side of the road just doing nothing. And we were known and we were beginning to put all of the pieces together and realize, wait a minute. This is not a family of four people. This is a family of 12. And they’re only paying for four, and then the rest are sleeping on the floor in the bedroom. Oh. And we’ve had this happen multiple times. So, I mean, talk about the the parents and one of their oldest sons and some other is enjoying a lovely time in the restaurant, eating hamburger, eating

Simone Collins [23:54]:

So wait. No one else like, so they they’re they’re really trying to keep up the artifice. They’re like, no. We’re four. Oh.

David Lorentzen [23:59]:

Yes. We’re four. So, like, you’re you’re four people, and they’re enjoying a lovely time in the restaurant eating dinner. Oh. And the rest of their kids are squatting on the side of the road out there living on the streets. And I realized I’m like, oh my gosh. Talk about Indian dad of the year award.

Simone Collins [24:18]:

Well, but they still got to go to Sweden, which

David Lorentzen [24:21]:

Exactly. This is this is the funny joke. I mean, you’re giving them two Indian life lessons. Not only do the kids learn young how to scam and get a lower price, but you’re also teaching them how to live on the streets in any environment.

Simone Collins [24:35]:

Right? The streets of Sweden, unless in winter.

Malcolm Collins [24:38]:

I don’t know. I like the frugality. I think that’s a

Simone Collins [24:42]:

you know? I don’t really.

Malcolm Collins [24:43]:

I as a family that’s gonna have, like, 12 kids, so many, like, hotels are gonna be like, oh, we only take x many. We only take y many. So we’ll just send the rest to be on the streets.

Simone Collins [24:54]:

Yeah. You’ve given us ideas, David. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [24:57]:

And I remember when we did that region, the food was so stupidly expensive. That’s true. Everything with us was like, I guess I’ll get something from, like, a a food vendor outside was the only thing that did. We bought hot dogs one day,

Simone Collins [25:09]:

and we’re like, well, that’s that’s all we’re gonna be

Malcolm Collins [25:12]:

able to afford. That’s $12. I remember it was $12 for the hot dog even back then.

David Lorentzen [25:17]:

Yeah. And I have witnessed this exact same behavior in Barcelona as well with the buses. So Oh. The parents would go in the front, go and distract the bus driver, and there’s usually a backdoor that you usually exit out of.

Simone Collins [25:31]:

Oh, and then get their kids on free.

David Lorentzen [25:33]:

And then the eight kids proceed to get into the bus through that backdoor while the Indian parents are distracting the driver and said that, yeah. We’re paying two people, but they’re actually, like, 10.

Simone Collins [25:46]:

Poor kids. But then again, they’re traveling at

David Lorentzen [25:49]:

which Yes. Again, you get to experience Europe for a low price. It’s like, I mean, imagine being the Indian parents. It’s like, kids, we’re going on vacation to Europe.

Malcolm Collins [25:58]:

Very pro natalist. They’re having lots of kids. They’re making it work. They’re make

David Lorentzen [26:02]:

they’re making

Simone Collins [26:02]:

it like, I can’t I cannot travel to India because I cannot deal with, like, the poverty on the streets, the like, the just the the it’s rough. And so you don’t know necessarily, like, where they’re coming from. Like, it could be that, like, they are hanging out outside at the side of the road anyway on any given night, But, like, your side of the road has the view of the lake and the kayaks, and it’s really pretty. And, like although I don’t know how they’re affording food. I couldn’t afford food in Sweden. Like, we’re we’re saving up for when we’re, like, rich,

Malcolm Collins [26:37]:

and then we’ll go to Sweden again.

David Lorentzen [26:40]:

I mean, you’re welcome to stay. We have

Simone Collins [26:42]:

It sounds like a really nice

Malcolm Collins [26:44]:

as everyone can see from this video, we’re the worst at being racist. Like, we hear racial stereotypes, we’re like, well, know, like, actually, we this in context. Like, that’s probably a good way to save money. I’d probably do that too. You know? What I find to be

Simone Collins [26:56]:

interesting, though, is, like, I I’m not I don’t think any of this is racist or biased. I think that, like, it’s interesting to learn how different cultures travel differently and also what you could learn about the the group dynamics. Because as David has pointed out, it’s not all Russians. It’s Russian oligarchs. It’s not all Chinese. It’s these specific Chinese tour buses of people. They’re clearly, like, tour operators that specialize in ultra low cost trips for Chinese people who have zero

Malcolm Collins [27:25]:

No. Hold on. Not ultra low cost because they’re choosing his hotel, which doesn’t seem to be one of the cheaper ones. It seems to be ultra processed.

Simone Collins [27:33]:

Yeah. Like, yeah, ultra processed ultra processed tour operators who are like, we will sugarcoat the entire thing and actually as the white bread of travel.

Malcolm Collins [27:41]:

They want the white bread and only the white bread of travel. The most

Simone Collins [27:45]:

processed Well, no. We we work with these tour operators that do the same thing for people living in Peru and Colombia, etcetera, where it’s like, it’s Europe, but you’ll never have to speak any other language but Spanish. It’s gonna be fine. we’re only gonna see, like, exactly these highlights, and and you you will never need to, like, walk more than 15 feet at a time and, like, that kind of thing. Yeah. And that appeals to a certain host, but it’s like that format and that that’s such an interesting thing. And then the same with, like, look, it’s not, like, an Indian couple traveling or something or, like but specifically, like, this format of Indian travel with families that I’ve never heard of before. Like, we haven’t encountered that. Well, actually, maybe we have. So here’s the thing, David. So when we ran, we’re CEOs of the travel business that we’d acquired earlier through, like, a different time in our careers, the worst scamming we were ever subject to was from Indian travel agencies that worked under ours. Like, we were a host agency, and they would buy travel through us. And we got super screwed over a couple of times. And the the reason it always was was that there would be chargebacks, credit card chargebacks, that someone would book a crap ton of flights. And then sometimes you’d even go on the flights, and then they would charge like, they’d say, oh, that was credit card fraud. And I wonder if, like, who knows? You know, like, one family that sent their, you know, group of like, their family of 12 to to Sweden used our business and then submitted credit card chargebacks. And, like, they’re they’re booking at your hotel, and they’re like, look. We’re four people, and there’s 12 of them. And they booked through our website, and they’re like, look. I will pay you, and they never pay us. And I do wonder, like, if what we noticed, at least on our part, was this clustered around family groups, And it could just be that there are specific subcommunities. Like, this isn’t all of India, but, like, there are very small groups that realize, like, oh, there’s this one small trick. And if I do it exactly this way, I can actually get a ton of money or a vacation to Europe, but, like, basically, functionally not pay for it. And I I wonder about that. It’s very interesting. I feel like in terms of innovation in fraud, there are some great minds at work in India. Innovation in fraud.

Malcolm Collins [30:09]:

Well

David Lorentzen [30:09]:

I mean, they they start teaching them young as I’ve shown with these examples. So it

Simone Collins [30:15]:

it yeah. Well, if you’re exposed to it, yeah, if you normalize to it, if, like, this is this is how we get on a bus. Right? Like, I I like, you’re not gonna be like, oh, that’s wrong. You’re gonna be like, that’s how it works. You have to distract the thing. Yeah. And and that’s I think that’s very interesting. And it’s it’s look. I mean, it it if it works, it works, and you have to develop a system that’s smarter than that. Like, when when our kids pull something over on me, I never blame them. I blame myself. Like, I shouldn’t have left that delicate thing on a table within reach of their grubby little hands because it was my fault now that it’s all broken on the floor because you don’t leave it out. But it sucks that in high trust societies, that has to happen now because presumably, you know, Sweden was nice once. There’s well, you mentioned something. Hold on, though. That, Yes. Yes. There are big training communities. Yeah. Tell tell us about these, David.

David Lorentzen [31:08]:

So, I mean, living this hotel life is it’s incredible, and it’s a healthy lifestyle. It’s a good lifestyle, decent, but it’s very difficult to make a profit. And we’ve had offers to earn millions and millions of dollars, but to turn the hotel into something very, very different, an asylum center.

Simone Collins [31:31]:

For, like, legal asylum seekers from other countries.

David Lorentzen [31:34]:

Yeah. Yeah. So back in 2015, I was a whistleblower for Stefan Molyneux YouTube channel where I broke information about the multimillion dollar refugee industry in Sweden at the time.

Simone Collins [31:50]:

Wow.

David Lorentzen [31:51]:

And where I basically shared the story about about what what actually happens when the Swedish, I think it’s called emergency service in English, rescue service. They gave us a phone call, and they said that, would you like to house 30 Afghans? And you’ll get paid at the time at that time about $320 per night per child and do that year round. Now he received 30 of them. Okay. That’s like, what, 90,090 thousand dollars a day. Crazy. Yeah. It it turns it it basically your most profitable day becomes every day of the year.

Malcolm Collins [32:34]:

Yeah.

David Lorentzen [32:35]:

And most of it is profit.

Simone Collins [32:36]:

And it’s

David Lorentzen [32:37]:

hard to

Simone Collins [32:37]:

say no. Yeah.

David Lorentzen [32:38]:

You’re basically earning millions of dollars to accept mostly male between the age of 14 and 26 Afghan boys Afghan males.

Simone Collins [32:49]:

Wow.

David Lorentzen [32:50]:

Now this village has about 350 people. If that if they were to receive suddenly 30 Afghans, that would be a huge demographic shift, and we would not be able to run a hotel at the same time. And at the at during that time, we were trying to sell the hotel as well, and we had these crazy offers, basically triple the value that

Simone Collins [33:18]:

Oh, because they knew. And they were like, look. I wanna do this. Okay.

David Lorentzen [33:22]:

Okay. There was a whole mania around buying hotels at the time because everyone had heard about these crazy offers from the governments that you can earn millions of dollars housing these refugees. And so when we were trying to sell the hotel for, let’s say, a million dollars, we had literally Russian mafia boss drive his Lamborghini all the way from Stockholm all the way to here. It’s a three hour drive. Come here, offer $3,000,000, triple the value. And then we ask them, okay. What what are you gonna do with it? I mean, we’re gonna turn it into a asylum center. We’re gonna accept that deal. So sorry. No. We can’t do that. We’re we’re only gonna sell it to people who actually wanna run a hotel, wanna run a restaurant, which is very difficult to find the right people. You you can’t just sell it to whoever you want.

Malcolm Collins [34:14]:

I would have sold out my community for a few million dollars. Oh my god. Yeah. I would have

Simone Collins [34:20]:

been like

Malcolm Collins [34:21]:

David, if you were lucky that you’re

Simone Collins [34:23]:

running this hotel with your family.

David Lorentzen [34:26]:

I and and this is something I noticed with when I read because this at eleven years ago, that video received a 100,000 views. And as I was reading through these anarcho capitalist Americans YouTube comments, most of them thought I’d I’d we did wrong. We should have accepted the deal. And I was like, oh my gosh. Shocked because I realized, oh, yeah. That’s because Americans because you move around so much, you don’t form these centuries long communities like we do in Europe.

Malcolm Collins [34:57]:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I wouldn’t have thought I’d just, like, go to another community that’s not fucked up with all your money now. You know? You got money now. So you can live in another small town. It’s really nice.

David Lorentzen [35:06]:

All our friends live here. Family live here. You know, if what happened is that when we received that phone call, like, a few months later, our insurance company called us and asked us if if we have accepted this deal. We had no idea how they found out about it. But somehow rumors came, and they said, if you accept this deal, we’re gonna withdraw your insurance. Because the risk of an asylum center burning down at the time was so high

Simone Collins [35:38]:

that Why?

David Lorentzen [35:39]:

Nobody wanted because when you have a bunch of Afghans move into an area, the property value of everyone living in the vicinity of that goes down to zero.

Simone Collins [35:49]:

Oh.

David Lorentzen [35:49]:

And the crime goes up, and there’s no police station nearby. There’s no police patrols nearby, and there’s literally no, no schools, no education because it’s a very it’s a small village. Like, there’s no Yeah. There’s no actual infrastructure or services nearby. So you’re just gonna have a roaming gang of Afghans in a small village.

Simone Collins [36:09]:

Right. So they have nothing to do. They don’t have jobs. There aren’t job opportunities, really. Yes. Yes. And, also, the industry there is hurting because the the tourists who otherwise would be staying there and supporting local restaurants and creating local jobs aren’t there because the boys are there. Why then why would the government send people there? It seems like a doomed

David Lorentzen [36:30]:

Yes. So this is a story of two strategies on how to integrate people. So one strategy is that you try to spread out all the new immigrants as thinly as possible because then you don’t notice it as much. If they start clustering, they form ghettos, they form segregation, they start forming gangs. Right? So to break that buildup, you ideally want to try to spread them out all across the country. Then you won’t really notice it. They they can’t form gangs. Right?

Simone Collins [37:01]:

Well, yeah, you kind of we were just talking in a previous episode about Denmark’s policy to sort of bust up slums or ghettos, immigrant ghettos. And I guess sure. It it you can’t see it. If there aren’t immigrant ghettos, it doesn’t seem as bad, but I guess this is the counterpoint of that is this is what happens when you bust up the immigrant ghettos but don’t actually deport immigrants. Yes. Immigrants at all. He’s the so Basically, if you break a crime, you’re out. Or sorry. If you Yeah. If you break up the law, you’re out. Yeah.

David Lorentzen [37:33]:

Yeah. And but the problem with trying to spread people out is that it becomes more difficult to integrate them because they need translators, for example. And you maybe only have a few thousand translators across the country. So if you’re spreading out everyone, then your translation cost goes through the roof and won’t even reach these people. They don’t speak English. They don’t speak Swedish or any European language. So you run into these various extreme cost with that, okay, they’re getting isolated, and they’re having struggling integrating. They’re becoming antisocial instead.

Simone Collins [38:07]:

And how can they not, honestly? Like, it’s not a them thing. I I would do the same thing if I were a kid isolated with a bunch of other kids my age, not a way who normally humans live, right, without their parents, without

Malcolm Collins [38:20]:

Yeah.

David Lorentzen [38:20]:

And and you’re probably deeply traumatized and have some Yeah. Serious cultural differences. I mean, who’s

Simone Collins [38:26]:

among us would not turn to a life of crime Yeah.

David Lorentzen [38:29]:

In that instance. But for your integration to be efficient, you have to start concentrating people into areas where you can be more efficient with your human resources so that your translators can translate for a whole group of them.

Simone Collins [38:44]:

Yeah.

David Lorentzen [38:45]:

And that’s when you come to these sort of mini Sweden integration facilities where

Simone Collins [38:52]:

Wait. So they are starting to do this. They are starting to concentrate.

David Lorentzen [38:55]:

Basically have both tools in the toolkit. So they real what what’s happened is that they realized, okay. For some immigrant groups, it makes sense to spread them out and put them out in the country. For example, Ukrainians. You know, they know how to use technology. They know how to use some European languages and English, and they maybe have some profession or skill that is actually useful for the job market. So spreading them out into the country actually works because they have some of the self discipline.

Simone Collins [39:24]:

Yeah. They integrate. They they can get jobs. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I think most people I’ve we’ve worked with Ukrainians. We’ve talked with yeah. It’s weirdly, like, I think Ukrainians are quite global too, so that helps.

David Lorentzen [39:35]:

Yes. But you have so so that actually works, that strategy. But what doesn’t work is, for example, with Somalians or Afghans where, you know, they don’t maybe not have any schooling at all, and you don’t they don’t have a common language. They don’t even know how to use how to be a Swede and to be western in a western society. Now Sweden is, you know, more automated and more advanced than The US. Like, we have had a cashless societies for decades now. We don’t we don’t have cashiers. We have you know, you you register the product yourself. Right? and we’ve had, you know, articles and incidents where, for example, African migrants start a fire on the floor because they were desperately hungry, and then the fire alarm in the whole apartment goes because they didn’t know how to use a what is it called? Siemens or Electrolux Oven with the digital display. They didn’t know how to use the oven, so they started it with firewood on the floor in the apartment.

Simone Collins [40:41]:

Oh my god. I’ve so been there. This is so sad, but we’ve stayed in some luxury hotels, like, when we were guests of other people where the microwave is so advanced that I’m basically there, man. I’m like, I don’t know how to work this thing. I so I can relate to that, actually. Like, if you haven’t been around certain appliances and you do not know how they work, you’re like,

Malcolm Collins [41:02]:

I’m out of I’m out of options.

Simone Collins [41:04]:

Malcolm, you know that kind of microwave I’m talking about. Right? Like, the drawer microwave. It took me a while to figure those out.

David Lorentzen [41:10]:

So, basically, you realize that with some groups who have not had much exposure to the western way of life,

Simone Collins [41:16]:

Any exposure. Any exposure.

David Lorentzen [41:19]:

They need to learn and study how to buy food in a grocery shop with no cashier, with no cash.

Simone Collins [41:26]:

Yeah. They

David Lorentzen [41:27]:

need to study how to use. Yeah. They need to study how to use an a digital oven in a microwave. Yeah. They need to study how to swim because they’ve lived in a desert their whole life. They need to study these various basic things to function.

Malcolm Collins [41:42]:

Groups where whether or not they live in a desert, they almost never learn to swim.

Simone Collins [41:46]:

Yeah. Yeah.

David Lorentzen [41:47]:

But, you know, Sweden has a 100,000 licks. So, you know, there’s water yeah. So there’s water everywhere.

Malcolm Collins [41:54]:

There’s water all over The US, and there’s some groups that don’t know how to swim. I was just saying it.

David Lorentzen [41:58]:

Yeah. But it but it basically meant that, okay, for for people to even some people to even function in a western society, you basically have to teach them from you go through these various steps. But when you do that, they form gangs. They start clustering amongst each other. And it’s basically like a tutorial, mission at the start of a game. Yeah. You have to complete the tutorial before you can actually play the game. That’s basically what these mini Sweden facilities are to these people. Like, you have to learn the various mechanics of the society.

Simone Collins [42:34]:

And so do people, like, go is it basically, like, school? Like, you you show up in the town, you go through the training, but then you, like, move on to live and work wherever you go.

David Lorentzen [42:43]:

Yeah. So in in in this area that I’ve studied and looked at, like okay. So they have, you know, the the a grocery store that they regularly go to tours with, and they guide them through the shop to show, okay. This is how it works. They have a swimming pool. Pool in the school for these purposes. They have a huge room for ovens where they learn how to cook. Basically, they have created a whole building where they can concentrate all of these essential aspects to basically give them a crash course on how to be western. But when you do that and then you say, okay. Congratulations. You you you now know how to function. You now have the freedom to move

Simone Collins [43:25]:

so many people in America that need this school. Like, I just kinda feel like we all not we all, but, like, societally speaking, nearly every country, regardless of the presence of migrants, needs, like, this. Because to Malcolm’s point, a lot of my friends in high school, like, all the way up to adulthood, never learned how to swim. Yeah. Also never learned how to do their own laundry or cook meals. Like, actually sounds amazing, but also For not

Malcolm Collins [43:53]:

just migraines, but for, like, normal people.

Simone Collins [43:55]:

For actual, like, naturally born people. I that’s it we were just kind of sad. Like, it’s it’s telling that, like, in in Sweden where you’re like, look. Society’s falling apart. People are, like, building fires on, like, the floors of their Apartment. Hotel rooms. I’m like, dude, relatable. That happened in my dorm room freshman year. Like no. And, literally, it was very common for the fire alarms to go off in the middle of the night because, like, some kid was literally burning something in the room.

David Lorentzen [44:23]:

Yeah. But when you do that, okay, you’ve completed your crash course.

Simone Collins [44:26]:

Yes.

David Lorentzen [44:27]:

And then you get the freedom to move wherever you want in Sweden. They basically talk amongst each other. Okay. I don’t know where to go. And then they go look over and then, okay. Where are you going?

Simone Collins [44:38]:

Oh god. Of course. No. Oh, the the integration is failed.

David Lorentzen [44:41]:

Then they all cluster. They all move to these migrant areas with the support community.

Simone Collins [44:46]:

Right? Like, if you were suddenly Afghanistan and sent to Afghanistan culture school and, like, you’d, like, turn to the the the suite right next to you, and you’d be like, where are going, buddy? Yep. Yep. There too.

David Lorentzen [45:00]:

So this basically means that the level of segregation in this country is, like, Jim Jim Crow level.

Simone Collins [45:07]:

Yeah. But totally like, despite all efforts to the contrary.

David Lorentzen [45:11]:

Yep. Yep. It’s just has to do with, okay, how do you integrate people that don’t know how to function? Yeah. You just have to cluster them all together to be efficient with your resources that you have. Uh-huh. Like, you only have an x amount of translators if you and even the But even if you do

Simone Collins [45:30]:

that even if you do that, it doesn’t it doesn’t work.

David Lorentzen [45:34]:

So you you just have to pick your poison. You just have to pick your poison on how to integrate people that are so far from a it’s basically a different planet. Sweden is a different planet to these people. That’s how I

Malcolm Collins [45:45]:

always voted past five.

Simone Collins [45:47]:

So Okay. Yeah.

David Lorentzen [45:48]:

No. That is That is a a tale of two different strategies on how to integrate people. For sales, it makes sense. It makes sense to just spread them out because they can handle the self discipline. They it’s close enough for them to make that jump. For some, the jump is so high and so difficult that they need a helping hand and a crash course and a tutorial. And what do you the problem is that you just don’t you just have to pick your problem with how to integrate Afghans. You’re not gonna get them integrated. you’re just gonna have a disintegration, and you just have to choose which version of it.

Simone Collins [46:26]:

Yeah. Which which I guess is why so many countries are now like, you know what? We’re just not gonna do just not gonna do this.

David Lorentzen [46:33]:

I mean, 10% of the Swedish population can’t read.

Simone Collins [46:38]:

Yeah. Well

David Lorentzen [46:39]:

Literally can’t read.

Simone Collins [46:40]:

Like That’s not

David Lorentzen [46:41]:

A quarter a quarter of the children a few there was a study a few years ago. A quarter of the children in Swedish schools can’t read. Is this is this literally can’t read.

Malcolm Collins [46:50]:

Is is this, like, the native born ones or mostly the migrants?

David Lorentzen [46:53]:

None of the it’s the migrants because they didn’t have a translator. If you’re putting a 15 year old and never gone to school together with 15 year old Swedes that are learning algebra and geometry

Simone Collins [47:03]:

Oh god. That sucks.

David Lorentzen [47:04]:

And they and they don’t speak English and they don’t speak Swedish, then they’re going to learn nothing.

Simone Collins [47:10]:

Yeah.

David Lorentzen [47:10]:

And the only way for them to learn anything is if they start elementary in their own language, cluster, but we didn’t do that. So we have basically a whole generation of immigrants that can’t read, that literally can’t read.

Simone Collins [47:23]:

Yeah. So they’re not they’re not being set up for success. And I it looks like a lot of it just requires actually confronting face to face really, really, really uncomfortable truths. Yeah. And the problem with modern society is that we have a predominating society That that is, like, the number one thing. The one thing that we’re not allowed to do is accept uncomfortable truths. Like, everything else okay.

Malcolm Collins [47:45]:

Sweden. No reason to take some what’s why did Somalian immigrants need to be in Sweden? Aren’t there other African countries they could go to? Like

Simone Collins [47:52]:

Well, that’s the thing. They don’t they don’t accept them. No one like, in in The Middle East, they don’t accept migrants. Right?

David Lorentzen [47:57]:

Like, no one else connection. Strangely enough, Somalians just love going into Scandinavian communities in Minnesota and in the Nordic countries.

Simone Collins [48:06]:

Oh my god. You’re right. Oh my god. You’re right. Yes.

Malcolm Collins [48:09]:

Easy to scam. Something there.

Simone Collins [48:11]:

Yeah. Oh, no. Abuela. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [48:14]:

Good having you on. This has been this has been really

Simone Collins [48:17]:

yeah. That was very fascinating.

David Lorentzen [48:19]:

I there’s so much more to say on this, but another time.

Simone Collins [48:22]:

Another time. I I’m looking forward to it. So one of these days, we’re gonna come out

Malcolm Collins [48:26]:

and crash

Simone Collins [48:26]:

the for dinner? Had to cook rice on the floor.

Malcolm Collins [48:32]:

I was gonna get rid of mozzarella.

Simone Collins [48:34]:

I was gonna I was gonna, yeah, do bulldog with the mozzarella. Okay. That works for me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Cool. David, it has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for after a long workday coming to share some insider gossip with us. It’s been so top tier. Really loved it. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins [48:51]:

So good night.

Simone Collins [48:52]:

Have I was so, flummoxed by your claims of empty movie theaters. I think a lot of it, Malcolm, honestly, is just people wanna be somewhere air conditioned and look at a big screen. There’s that novelty. I can’t believe IMAX’s are still a thing, though, honestly. How is that possible? Anyway okay. David, I’m recording now, just so you know. I won’t I won’t mess this up. Alright. I’m actively recording. Yes. So you just you’ve been warned. And I I will I’ll kick us off super fast. So you ready?

David Lorentzen [49:26]:

Give me an opportunity then to give an intro to why I can talk about this because

Simone Collins [49:31]:

I will. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Brian Chau joins Malcolm and Simone Collins to reveal explosive findings from his new AI-powered investigative outlet, Effort.news.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops derives 81% of its operating revenue from federal refugee and migration contracts (primarily HHS/Office of Refugee Resettlement). Total grant volume in the Preferred Communities program exploded from near-zero to over $1.2 billion after 2021, timed with Ukraine supplemental funding—yet GAO data shows the majority of that money went to non-Ukrainian populations.

Similar patterns appear across Episcopal Migration Ministries, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Church World Service, and others. Several of these groups cut or threatened to cut resettlement work rather than assist white Afrikaner refugees. Brian also covers race-restricted prenatal/Medicaid programs that exclude non-Black and non-Brown women (potential Civil Rights Act and Equal Protection violations), the fabricated “Chinese EV dumping” narrative (actual direct subsidies ~1.2%), and more.

Effort.news launches with multiple data-driven stories on government grants, religious NGOs, and policy capture. Full investigation and interactive charts at Effort.news. Follow Brian: @BrianChau57.

This is independent, primary-source reporting powered by large public datasets and custom tools—exactly the kind of work traditional media has largely abandoned.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: Hello, everyone. We are here with Brian Chow again, who’s putting together a very interesting new project.

[00:00:07] He was actually trending on X either yesterday or the day before for these drops

[00:00:11] Malcolm Collins: And he pitched a few stories that he has found. Like, he, he made an AI company that goes through public records and looks for coincidences and interesting stories, and then digs into it further.

[00:00:24] And so he sends me a number of the really interesting things he found, or he sent it to Simone, because they didn’t wanna, they didn’t wanna s- tell me first. And I was like, “I don’t know- Or maybe because

[00:00:33] Simone Collins: you never check signal ... should we,

[00:00:34] Malcolm Collins: should we do it? Should we do it?” And she goes, “Malcolm, Malcolm, he found out something very interesting about the Catholics.”

[00:00:40] And I was like, “Oh, okay, yeah, let’s have him on.” So let’s- Let’s hope he gets- ... let’s get into it.

[00:00:45] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. But Brian, first tell, tell us, yeah, like, a, a little bit about what this is and where people can find it, but also what did you find that was, .

[00:00:53] Brian Chau: So there’s a very prominent organization you know, claiming to represent Catholics in the US called the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. What percentage of this organization’s revenue do you think is from refugee and migration contracts from the federal government?

[00:01:10] Simone Collins: Malcolm?

[00:01:11] Malcolm Collins: Oh, my God. I- I mean, it would be crazy if it was over, like, 10.

[00:01:18] Brian Chau: So, so is 10% your guess?

[00:01:21] Malcolm Collins: Yes, that’s my guess.

[00:01:22] Brian Chau: Your guess is 10%. Do you wanna click bait the, the, the viewers to listen more or do you wanna just say the percent?

[00:01:29] Malcolm Collins: What’s the percent? I haven’t seen it.

[00:01:31] Simone Collins: Yeah,

[00:01:31] Brian Chau: say it. Say it, Brian. It’s 81%. 81%.

[00:01:33] Malcolm Collins: 81%. How central is this organization? Like, what, w- are they the, the main bishop’s organization in the United States?

[00:01:40] Brian Chau: Yeah. So US Conference for Cath- and for Catholic Bishops, there’s no, S- so there’s not exactly , a, like, official national organization in the, like, Catholic hierarchy. This is my understanding.

[00:01:55] But this is basically, like, the largest such organization. It’s, like, a membership-based organization for Catholics in the US, and this is the, this is the largest such one

[00:02:06] Simone Collins: Yeah. They’re, they’re nontrivial, and I, I asked Catholic friends of ours because I was like, “I’d never heard of this before.” I’m like, “Well, I don’t know.

[00:02:11] Is this some, like, weird splint?” No, no, they-

[00:02:14] Malcolm Collins: 81% ...

[00:02:14] Simone Collins: they’re well aware of

[00:02:15] Malcolm Collins: it. So, yeah So the, the Catholic Church in the United States okay, so the United States of Catholic Bishops is the main and official organization for Catholic bishops in the United States. It is the episcopal conference of the Catholic Church in the US, including the US Virgin Islands.

[00:02:28] It brings together the active bishops of the Latin church diocese and the Eastern Catholic some things so that they can exercise certain blah, blah, blah. Its national membership org- Yeah, so it’s the ma- it’s the main one. Yes. Wait, this is so crazy. Th- so are

[00:02:44] Simone Collins: they- I think tithing they, they received, like, funding from the Catholic Church from

[00:02:48] Malcolm Collins: what I understand, too.

[00:02:48] To understand that the, the, the, the majority of their revenue is coming from refugee-based, basically scams on the US government, I guess. W- would most of this be coming from the US government?

[00:02:59] Brian Chau: Yeah, so, so all of this is based on federal HHS funding. I believe all of it is under the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

[00:03:07] The main grant program that I’ve covered is exclusively from the Office of Refugee Resettlement. All these are classified as, as refugee and migration services. That’s the specific code under the federal grant system

[00:03:19] Simone Collins: It’s really crazy. So no,

[00:03:21] Malcolm Collins: I wanna, I wanna take a, take a, an aside here to sort of frame this for people

[00:03:24] Brian Chau: It, it’s been, it’s been five minutes and you’ve already been truth nuked.

[00:03:27] Malcolm Collins: Because I think a lot of people do not realize how much the Catholic Church upper class, the cardinals, the pope, and, and the bishops are profiting from the stripping of the Catholic Church, right? Like, as they lower the numbers of people, like you’re like, “Well, if the Roman Mass is more popular, why aren’t they doing it?”

[00:03:49] If they can get a diocese to, like, super low numbers, then they can sell off all the stuff in the diocese and make a lot of money, and they’ve been selling these very frequently recently- Oh ... to become [00:04:00] mosques. And what’s interesting is they’ll take these old Catholic institutions and the SPSX, multiple times, has raised the money to buy these old, you know, cathedrals and, and Catholic schools and stuff like that, but they refuse to sell to the SSPX, and then they convert them into mosques, and they, and they run off with the money.

[00:04:17] But it’s not just there. It’s also that they benefit from the leftist policies through bringing in just endless waves of immigration. And so if you’re wondering, like, why is this being pushed so hard for by the Vatican, ‘cause they have written a number of things about like, “No, you need unlimited immigration into Europe and into the United States,” is th- that they are directly fi- not just financially benefiting from this, but it is their primary source of income.

[00:04:41] But continue.

[00:04:42] Brian Chau: Yeah, you can pull up the auditing here. Actually, what you just said might explain something else interesting that I found. So there’s two revenue numbers here. There’s a smaller one and, and a bigger one. 81% is, is the fraction of the smaller one, which excludes net assets released from restrictions, which is this, like, interesting thing.

[00:05:04] It’s not, like, necessarily revenue, but it’s this kind of internal transfer of assets. And that was actually also a massive amount. It was like $80 million. Oh,

[00:05:13] Simone Collins: no.

[00:05:14] Brian Chau: Oh, no. Oh, no. The, the total revenue is, is a bit over 300 million, and so, so it’s, it’s around 220 million without the net assets released from re- from restrictions, and 180 million of that is from the MRS Migration and Refugee Services contracts.

[00:05:29] So around 81% of the total, not including the assets released from restrictions. But the assets released from restrictions, I never really, like... i’ve been kind of rushing to, to do launch and, and get the story published, but I never really fully looked into what the assets released from restrictions were.

[00:05:45] And it might be that. It might be what you’re talking about

[00:05:48] Malcolm Collins: Well, something that makes this story a little interesting for me, so I’m, I’m digging a bit deeper on this, is I remember that they shut down one of their major immigration branches right when the Afrikaners, the white Afrikaners were looking to immigrate to the United States.

[00:06:02] Now maybe-

[00:06:02] Brian Chau: Yeah, yeah, that actually that intersects with the story. Oh. Because the, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, that, that was the org that, I believe they, they cut ties with the specific refugee resettlement services under Trump. There, there was this different organization that kind of picked up the grant where it left off called the the, the acronym is CCUSA.

[00:06:23] Let me just quickly look up what the organization is. Catholic Charities USA. Yeah. So, so, so that might have been a little overstated, but yeah, that, that, that ties into the story.

[00:06:35] Malcolm Collins: Okay, continue. Just, just go with the story. I wanna hear the whole thing.

[00:06:38] Brian Chau: Yeah. So, so we can pull it up. There’s a lot of beautiful graphs.

[00:06:42] Know you guys love the graphs. We love the graphs. We all love the graphs here. You can put up here the grant size by start month graph, and let me know what you see in this graph. Should, should be the graph that says grant size by start month.

[00:06:54] Preferred committees 1.2. Yeah, go, go

[00:06:57] Malcolm Collins: to grant size by start month one.

[00:06:59] Simone Collins: Oh, this should be the- Should be the, should be the

[00:07:00] Brian Chau: first page

[00:07:01] Brian. Yeah.

[00:07:01] Simone Collins: Yeah. So what we’re looking at is basically a graph of on the y-axis, grant size, x-axis, grant start month and year. So it’s functionally zero, 2007, 2008, ‘09, ‘10, ‘13. Tiny, tiny little bit in 2014. Then again in 2017 a little higher. Yeah,

[00:07:22] Brian Chau: that’s around 16 million- Oh ... in uh, in 2016. In

[00:07:26] Simone Collins: 2016.

[00:07:26] Brian Chau: And then it jumps to 1.2 billion total, and each individual grant size is around 100 to $150 million in 20- So what happened in

[00:07:37] Simone Collins: 2022?

[00:07:37] ‘Cause sud- yeah, suddenly, like it’s like basically this is a chart of just sudden and weird activity out of nowhere in 2022.

[00:07:42] Brian Chau: Yeah, it’s, it’s booming. This, this is the, this is the out of control exponential growth of the of the grant sizes. I was gonna draw the exponential curve here, you know, at this rate, you know, preferred communities program will, will consume all world GDP by 2030.

[00:07:57] It’s a little joke about the, the, the [00:08:00] AI, AI discourse, but So this was like right at the end of COVID You’re right at the end

[00:08:04] Simone Collins: of

[00:08:04] Brian Chau: COVID ... a bit after the end of COVID, and it, what it really consi- coincides with is the Ukraine war. You can actually see the systematic way-

[00:08:13] Malcolm Collins: COVID, by the way- And you, and-

[00:08:14] for people who don’t know, caused by a Catholic. Anthony Fauci is a Catholic for people who don’t know. Oh, he is? Biden is a Catholic. Oh,

[00:08:22] Simone Collins: God.

[00:08:23] Malcolm Collins: Oh. Just putting this out there, guys. If, if

[00:08:26] Simone Collins: COVID. Making

[00:08:27] Malcolm Collins: political here. I was like- Because we have a good Catholic fan base. We like our Catholic fans. It’s just the church and some of your members , are, you know, kinda sus.

[00:08:36] Simone Collins: Oh, my God. Okay, great.

[00:08:37] Brian Chau: So I jumped ahead a little bit here, but here you can see the, the timeline. Oh looks like there’s a little bit of an issue in the prints one. The numbers are certainly in the right box on the actual website.

[00:08:49] But here you can see the grant expansion amounts, and this is actually a very common pattern not just in the Office of Refugee Resettlement, but across the entire US government-

[00:08:59] Malcolm Collins: Mm ...

[00:08:59] Brian Chau: where there are legal limits to how large the grants can be. In this case- Mm ... 4.5 million a year. Obviously by the end of, you know, this, this program it was not five, 4.5 million a year, not even close per grant.

[00:09:13] And it, you know, it was a, a, up to 160 something million across s- five years. And how that happened was that there’s systematic grant expansion. You apply for a grant for a much smaller amount, and then you apply for an extension of that grant by, you know, essentially 100 times the original amounts.

[00:09:34] Oh. The specific funding package that was tied to this expansion was kind of interesting. So this, after the start of the Ukraine war HHS got 3.7 billion for refugee resettlement. And, and, and you, you would in your mind you would think, “Okay, that kind of makes sense. There’s U- there’s the Ukraine war, Ukrainian refugees actually fleeing conflict.”

[00:09:53] And so, so you take that money and you would use it to help resettle Ukrainian refugees. Maybe you’re for that, maybe you’re against that, but that’s a, at least a story that kind of makes sense. What actually happened so based on a government accountability office report 47% of that, around 1.79 billion went to it was estimated to go to Ukrainian beneficiaries.

[00:10:12] Okay ... they were able to track down 982 million of that that was definitely allocated to Ukrainian refugees. That means the majority of the, the funding package 1.99 billion went to, as they describe it, other populations eligible for OR ser- services. Oh. So the Ukraine war package, part of the Ukraine war bill that was passed as the Ukraine war bill more than half of that

[00:10:34] Malcolm Collins: Went to Somalians

[00:10:35] Brian Chau: Actually, yeah.

[00:10:36] No. To- Or

[00:10:38] Malcolm Collins: the Catholic Church

[00:10:38] Brian Chau: Was not related to, to, to the Ukrainian refugees at all. And even- This is

[00:10:43] Malcolm Collins: wild. Well,

[00:10:43] Brian Chau: I want to

[00:10:44] Malcolm Collins: highlight for people, like, where, where we are with this. Imagine if a Jewish president was elected, right? Like, first imagine if Fauci was Jewish, what, what, you know, Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes would be saying right now instead of a Catholic.

[00:10:58] Imagine if we elected a, Because all of this happened under the Biden presidency, who was a Catholic, right? This is why the church fights so hard against right-wing causes. I think a lot of people think, oh, it’s just... It, it, it is ideological, but it’s also financial, right? Th- is, is what we’re seeing here, and this is amazing that you got this data.

[00:11:18] And it’s so structurally, And again, when I’m like, “No, we’re, we’re pro-individual Catholics,” the, the analogy I always make here is I’m always very confused by it. It’s like you have a friend who’s like a henchman for like an obvious super villain and, and he’s like a really nice guy. And you’re like-

[00:11:34] why, why do you, why do you hench for this guy, right? Like- What a henchman ... he’s actually evil. Like, like transparently it’s, it’s, his, it’s his motto is like, “I do evil.” But anyway, continue.

[00:11:46] Speaker: Awesome. We are back, dude oh, I will be [00:12:00] there.

[00:12:37] Brian Chau: Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, I’m a, I’m a huge fan of, like, almost every Russian that I meet. Like Pavel, you know, amazing.

[00:12:44] Yeah. But like, you know, the Russian government, not a, not a huge fan. Not a huge fan. Yeah, I’m

[00:12:49] Malcolm Collins: the same way. I, I like, I like pretty much every Russian I’ve, I, I’ve met. But I, I also- Yeah,

[00:12:54] Simone Collins: actually Russians are weirdly cool

[00:12:56] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Same with Chinese people, for example. Nobody ever gets confused around the, with like Chinese people thinking you’re anti-Chinese person because you’re against the CCP, right?

[00:13:04] But like, I don’t, I don’t know why like Chinese people still s- the, the, if y- I guess if you actively support the CCP-

[00:13:11] Simone Collins: You kind of don’t get to not actively support the CCP ... No, you

[00:13:14] Malcolm Collins: do if you’re in another country, right? Like, but I- I know ... I guess it’s, it’s, it’s harder because like if you’re a Catholic you still have to be in submission to the Magisterium.

[00:13:22] And, you know, your money goes to this if you’re tithing, so.

[00:13:25] Simone Collins: Whereas in contrast, if you’re

[00:13:27] Brian Chau: an American- Yeah, although it’s, it’s interesting because it, it kind of is the other way around. So, so if you keep going in the article I, I pulled the audit statements for 2023 and 2024 from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

[00:13:44] Hmm. So you can see that the, the grant amounts, this is where the 81.8% number comes from.

[00:13:50] Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:50] Brian Chau: Government contracts and grants revenue, and it’s c- clarified later on that all of that exclusively comes from migration and refugee services. That’s 180 million. It’s around 81 per- percent of the total revenue, not including assets released from restrictions.

[00:14:05] And actually s- around 13 million of that, 13.4 million, goes to paying salaries for, for, for USCCB members. So a lot of their around a third of their total like employee salaries, taxes, and benefits are being paid out of this program.

[00:14:23] Simone Collins: Wow.

[00:14:23] Malcolm Collins: Being paid by you the taxpayer. Like it, it, it, this is the thing when we talk about like parasitic religious organizations and stuff like this that make it very difficult to, even if the individual members are nice, to allow to set up, operate, or allow them to have positions of power within your government when, when they’re milking us dry with stuff like this.

[00:14:44] And it’s, it’s one of these groups that we don’t even that I, that I think a lot of people, maybe on our channel we talk about it more, but like this is horrifying. Continue.

[00:14:53] Brian Chau: Yeah. So, so if you go to, Actually a few pages back. So you can see how these, these grants were scaled up. I have both the ordinary, you know, linear scale and the log scale here.

[00:15:06] Malcolm Collins: Hmm.

[00:15:07] Brian Chau: And, and this is, I think the more... The, the most important, like, systematic pattern is this trend of grant expansion. I’ll be doing another story. This, this one’s not, not ready yet. It’s a, it’s, it’s this massive story where we saw something very similar and up to an even bigger number, a number 10 times as much with with Medicaid as well.

[00:15:28] Simone Collins: Oh, no. No, no, no. And

[00:15:29] Brian Chau: so, th- there’s this systematic strategy of applying for awards, and I think that the accountability measures that did exist in the United States I, I think they’re actually, like, pretty good for, for this even though there’s a loophole which is that it set initial grant limits, right?

[00:15:47] Hmm. It set initial limits to, to the grants, and the way that this was circumvented by the agencies was that it’s almost this, like, kind of silly, like, software bug where you can kind of apply for a grant and then you can o- [00:16:00] you can expand the grants- Yeah, yeah.

[00:16:01] Malcolm Collins: You mentioned this already ...

[00:16:02] Brian Chau: 100 times the original amount.

[00:16:04] Simone Collins: It- 100 times? ...

[00:16:05] Brian Chau: it’s this pattern. Yeah, yeah. It, it’s this, like, crazy pattern a, 100 times in some of these in- individual grants, and then at a, at a collective level around roughly I guess also ar- around 100 times. From around 60 million total to around 1.2 billion total. And a lot of that goes into as you were saying direct support of either pro-asylum policies and, and opposition to, to Trump’s statements.

[00:16:30] So you can see in this- I did wanna- ... page here. Oh, God. There’s this graph. This is every official statement by, by each of these organizations-

[00:16:38] Simone Collins: Oh ...

[00:16:38] Brian Chau: about, you know, Trump or Trump

[00:16:40] Malcolm Collins: policies. What, what, what I found very interesting about this is this isn’t just the main one. It looks like all, all the Catholic organizations are involved in this.

[00:16:47] You

[00:16:48] Brian Chau: know, like- Yeah, and it’s not just Catholics. So, so there’s organizations... A- and to, to me at least, I think it’s very important to de- delineate between, like, a lot of the time the, the membership of of not just the Catholic Church but, but all, all of these church, churches, it’s, it’s actually not just them.

[00:17:02] There are many- Yeah, so wait ... religious denominations that have groups- Episcopal Migration Ministries. Well, let, let’s see what religions are- ... which represent them or claim to represent them but are really, like overwhelmingly funded by these mi- migration contracts. So, Church World Service, Episcopal Migration Ministries.

[00:17:17] Of course, there’s been a lot of controversy recently around Episcopalians a- and, and you know, their church leadership. Yeah. Lutheran- They were the ones who shut down their

[00:17:25] Malcolm Collins: entire thing over... rather

[00:17:27] Simone Collins: than help, No, who split off, right? ... white supremacists. There was just a split-off group, right?

[00:17:30] Brian Chau: Yeah, and, and then there, there, there’s Chayes which claims to represent Jewish values.

[00:17:35] So, there, there’s a lot of religious dom- denominations whose leadership or, or, you know, who- whose the, the, the organizations which claim to be their leaders are, are majority receiving these grants. And you can go on-

[00:17:47] Malcolm Collins: Episcopal Migration Ministries, how, what... Well, I mean, the, the-

[00:17:50] Brian Chau: Yeah ...

[00:17:50] Malcolm Collins: the, I think a lot of this also shows the rot within, well, I mean, Episc- are, are the Episcopal Migration Ministries Episcopals or do they mean Episcopal Catholics?

[00:18:01] Simone Collins: Also, one thing I’m curious about is- Christian Ministries ... because I, I, when I i- initially looked it up, I don’t remember getting a really satisfactory answer. Do you, did you get any color on what- Oh, it’s the Episcopal Church.

[00:18:12] Brian Chau: Okay. It’s it’s the Refugee Resettlement and Immigration Advocacy program of the Episcopal Church.

[00:18:17] Oh,

[00:18:17] Simone Collins: okay.

[00:18:17] Brian Chau: Yeah, it’s the Episcopal Church. I remember now, actually. So if you go to the statements section- Yeah ... there’s actually a letter from the leadership of the Episcopal Migration Min- Ministries that was published by the Episcopal Church. So I, I was actually very curious about this, of how much these organizations of the Episcopal Migration Ministry specifically, how much that represented the official positions of the church.

[00:18:42] And it seems to be a pretty direct representation, because this was published on the Episcopal on the Episcopal Church website, the statement from the Episcopal Migration Ministries, which appears which appears to be the kind of like subcomponent of, of the Episcopal Church focused on migration

[00:19:00] Malcolm Collins: And so what, what does it say?

[00:19:03] Brian Chau: Yeah, so, Oh ... yeah, it, it’s on the screen right now.

[00:19:06] Yeah, so that I can- “The Episcopal Church. I’m writing with some significant news about Episcopal Migration Ministries organization that leads Episcopal Church’s Refugee Resettlement Ministry.

[00:19:13] Since January, the previous bipartisan US Refugee Admissions Program, which, in, in which we participate, has essentially shut down. Virtually no new refugees have arrived, hundreds of staff and resettlement agencies around the country have been laid off, and funding for resettling refugees who have already arrived has been uncertain.

[00:19:28] Then, just over two, two weeks ago, the federal government informed Episcopal Migration Ministries that under the terms of our federal grant, we are expected to ref- resettle Afrikaners from South Africa whom the US government has classified as refugees. In light of our church’s steadfast commis- commitment to racial justice and reconciliation-

[00:19:44] Simone Collins: Ah

[00:19:44] Brian Chau: and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of South, in Southern Africa, we will, we’re not able to take this step. Accordingly, we have determined that by the end of the fiscal feder- federal fiscal year, we’ll conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the US federal government. I want to be very clear about why we made this decision and what we [00:20:00] believe lies ahead for E- Episcopal Migration Ministries’ w- vital work.

[00:20:03] It has been painful to watch one group of refugees selected in highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years. I’m sha- saddened and ashamed that many of the refugees who, who are being denied entrance to the United States are brave people who worked alongside our military in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now face danger at home because of their service to our co- country.”

[00:20:23] So on and so forth. So they

[00:20:24] Malcolm Collins: literally shut down- Other groups as well ... the entire scam rather than accidentally help white people.

[00:20:29] Brian Chau: Yeah. And, and I think there, there’s a small correction I wanna make. This one was the one that was more explicit about connection and disconnecting their funding due to due to- Yeah, yeah

[00:20:38] the,

[00:20:38] Malcolm Collins: the, the African refugees The Catholic one didn’t say that’s why they were shutting

[00:20:40] Brian Chau: it down. Well, the Catholic ones- They just shut it- Yeah, the Catholic ones also- ... at the same time ... disconnected their funding. The, the funding I think got transferred to Catholic Charities USA, so I think it wasn’t a total, you know, disconnect.

[00:20:50] But that, that one was not the one that was explicitly about the S- South African resettlement issue.

[00:20:54] Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, but they didn’t, they didn’t say it was. It just happened at the same time.

[00:20:58] Brian Chau: Yeah, it happened around roughly the same time, yeah.

[00:21:00] Malcolm Collins: Which-

[00:21:00] Simone Collins: What exactly were they doing? So y- you mentioned, for example advocating for certain policy.

[00:21:06] But were they actually on the ground helping refugees find apartments? Like, what exactly were they getting paid to do per the preferred settlement program?

[00:21:17] Brian Chau: Yeah. So, so a lot of this was finding housing, actually like physically relocating refugees. So specifically or, or, you know, This gets a little fuzzy as well because we know that not all of the people served by these programs in the by the respective churches are actually people who have refugee status.

[00:21:38] But at least nominally a- and there are actually other grants as well, so it’s kind of mixed in so that we- Even though this specific grant is earmarked for refugee services, or at least, you know, that’s the purpose of the grant we don’t know how much of this in practice goes towards people who have refugee status versus or other kinds of migrants.

[00:22:01] And there are other grants that they receive that are legally, like, allowed to be used for other migrants, but it’s all sort of mixed in into, into the same few programs.

[00:22:10] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:22:11] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. Oh, and for people who aren’t familiar with what the Episcopal Church is, because I think some people could hear that and they could think it’s just a, a generic Protestant church.

[00:22:20] When the Catholic Church broke off from the English church the version of the Protestants that wanted to continue to still worship as if they were Catholic using all of the iconography and everything like that, they became the Anglicans. And when the Anglicans came to the United States, they became the Episcopals.

[00:22:38] So they are a, a mirror of the... Pretty much I think where we’re seeing this is in, in, in all of the high church sort of religious institutions with- within the United States.

[00:22:49] Simone Collins: So you’re just saying Episcopals are like the Diane Catholics. We don’t quite call them

[00:22:51] Brian Chau: Catholics, but they’re Catholics.

[00:22:54] Malcolm Collins: Oh no. Look, their churches are all fancy. Oh, no. They, they got all the, the, the fancies.

[00:22:58] Simone Collins: Idolatrous churches. Yeah, they- Oh, the scandal.

[00:23:03] Malcolm Collins: Scandal. But yeah, a bunch of... Oh, and look who, who we got here as well, Simone, the Lutherans.

[00:23:08] Simone Collins: Oh, great. You- Yeah.

[00:23:10] Malcolm Collins: You know my thoughts that that’s where

[00:23:12] Simone Collins: Lyman Stone comes from.

[00:23:12] Yes, we, we know how you feel about the Lutherans. Well, Brian,

[00:23:17] Brian Chau: you just- Is Brian’s thoughts on the Lutherans formed by Lyman Stone or, or, or is it the other way around?

[00:23:22] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, right.

[00:23:23] Simone Collins: Oh, no comment. We love- Yeah, you, you would think that would- We love Lyman Stone ...

[00:23:28] Brian Chau: Lu- you would think that would make you guys more favorable to the Lutheran Church, but maybe not.

[00:23:34] Simone Collins: Yeah, you’d think that, yeah, the, the heavy- The- ... you know, Protestant

[00:23:37] Brian Chau: nature ... yeah, but, but you can see here vast majority, like nine- 90-plus percent in some of these cases, of their revenue come from these migration services grants. And so they are-

[00:23:48] Simone Collins: That’s so... Do you think a part of this is that they just don’t have tithing parishioners anymore, and so the fundamental business model of being a religious institution today has changed?

[00:23:57] And the surviving religious institutions that [00:24:00] have non-trivial infrastructure and bureaucracy have to basically become de facto government NGOs, like, getting these grants? Yeah, it’s kind of interesting. Like, what, what

[00:24:08] Brian Chau: is going on? Like, if you’re thinking of it from, like, a, a, a mergers and acquisitions perspective, it’s like, okay, what do, what do, what did they have?

[00:24:15] They, they have churches in, in communities. A lot of these communities are shrinking. Mm-hmm. Like if I were to give the, the positive case for this, is that there is a kind of business synergy there, right? Where you have like, you, you have land, you have like at least some amount of parishioners that, that, that can work and, you know, theoretically help people settle in.

[00:24:36] And so it’s not it’s not like out of the, out of question to say, you know, to be fair to them, to say like, “Oh, this is a, a service that they would be somewhat competent in, in, in providing.” So that I think is fair. But especially when you get to the political statements and it’s like, you know, it’s, it’s kind of like saying like, you know, you know, of course people will, will talk about this as like the most common example, but if defense contractors were kind of like commonly like paraded out by the media every time there was a scandal over defense, and they were taken as a credible, you know, neutral source of saying like, you know, the, the, the fact that there’s opposition to more, more wars and more defense contracts is a moral outrage, you know, it, it would be at least a little suspect, right?

[00:25:25] Hmm. And, and that’s why I think the, the, the angle here, where it’s like, okay, you can provide these services. In, in many cases maybe you’re, you know, maybe that’s a policy we don’t wanna be funding, maybe it’s a policy we do wanna be funding, you know. You can have a debate over that. But if your primary source of income is coming from migration contractors, then you should not be taken as a credible source either morally or, or kind of, factually on you know, migration policy by the media, which often very uncritically is what happens here.

[00:25:56] These organizations will come out, they’ll, they’ll def- denounce the Trump migration policies and there will be no mention whatsoever of the, the majority, you know, stake in migration contracting revenue that all these organizations have.

[00:26:11] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That is wild. Well, and it also shows why for a lot of these high church iterations of Christianity, the motivation that they have to create sort of the, a, you know, a, a leftist bureaucrat state because they have such an easy time sipping from it, right?

[00:26:29] You know, the, the like, well like ticks, like parasites. You know, they call it the swamp. And that the-

[00:26:34] Brian Chau: Well, this, this is a fascinating problem, right? We, we kind of still don’t know why. We don’t know how the cycle starts. Is it the bureaucracy that causes the leftism or the leftism- Yeah ... that causes the bureaucracy?

[00:26:43] And, Maybe it’s both, right?

[00:26:46] Simone Collins: Well, and also, like, to what, how, how much, are you aware of how much of the migrant resettlement or preferred community programs revenue or, like, grant revenue went to, or sorry, grant money went to religious institutions to execute it? Because something that also surprises me is there’s kind of this reputation among leftist YouTubers that I listen to, for example, that like, “Well, religious conservatives are, you know, they’re like the bad guy, they’re not help...

[00:27:12] You know, we need to help immigrate immigrants, we need to help migrants.” And, and they would never think that this huge portion of people actually out there helping migrants resettle in the United States are the very religious institutions that they demonize. So I, I’m wondering, like, how, how much- Well, I mean,

[00:27:28] Malcolm Collins: the institutions are entirely captured, Simone.

[00:27:30] Like-

[00:27:31] Simone Collins: Well, I’m, I’m aware of that, but they aren’t. I’m just wondering how much of the migrant resettlement is being done by religious institutions versus just other nonprofits. Yeah,

[00:27:39] Brian Chau: it’s not exclusively. It’s a bit over half. It might be 60%. Oh, that’s

[00:27:43] Simone Collins: a lot. No, that’s-

[00:27:44] That’s huge.

[00:27:45] Brian Chau: Yeah. But there are, there are other large recipients.

[00:27:49] The, the largest recipient, I, I, I believe, at least based on the terms of the initial contract, was USCCB which, which was 164 million, I believe. Let me quickly [00:28:00] double-check that , Church World Service, 162 million. Lutheran Immigration Refugee Service, 159 million.

[00:28:05] USCCB, 141 million. Episcopal Migration Ministry is 80 million. A- and that’s about half the pool. So, so the entire pool was just over $1.2 billion.

[00:28:18] Simone Collins: Okay. Wow. Yeah. No, that’s, that is, that is non-trivial. That just... Yeah. What surprises me first off is just knowing that the Catholic Church has such a big specialty in helping m- helping migrants resettle.

[00:28:29] Two, that this much money is going out to this, and that also this grant expansion trick, I love it. My gosh. I mean, I, I hate it obviously, but like, it makes sense. We have won government contracts through some business things we’ve worked on in the past, and the amount of oversight once you’ve won them is, is kind of atrociously low and, and very sloppy.

[00:28:51] And m- the-

[00:28:52] Brian Chau: Yeah, it’s all concentrated on this bidding process, right?

[00:28:55] Simone Collins: Yes. It’s... Well, it’s- And that’s what makes sense from an incentive model ... but the bidding process is extremely corrupt. It, it’s, it’s, it’s l- it’s corrupt and it’s loaded, and it’s not actually taken that seriously. And then once

[00:29:05] Brian Chau: you win- But it’s corrupt in an interesting way.

[00:29:06] There, there’s actually an in progress story that, that I’m reporting out on this. It’s corrupt in an interesting way- Mm ... which is actually that there is a lot of oversight, and that oversight is kind of selective. It’s, i- it’s sometimes applied as, as, as a weapon or an effective tool to keep people out.

[00:29:18] It’s

[00:29:19] Simone Collins: performative oversight. It’s like, “Look, we did all the right things, and just happened to give it to our person who we chose ahead of time.”

[00:29:26] Brian Chau: Yeah. I, I think that’s true in part. But it, it’s also true that like, it creates a number of check boxes where you can just say like, “Actually, these new competitors do not fill out the proper check boxes.”

[00:29:40] So, so, so it is this like somewhat procedurally effective gate keeping mechanism.

[00:29:45] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:46] Brian Chau: But once that... Y- you’re, you’re right that once that grant approves is approved, there’s very little recourse. And, and there’s very little that, that you can actually do to, to continue applying oversight or, or to request further information.

[00:30:00] It’s, it- it’s this very sort of one-way door.

[00:30:05] Simone Collins: It’s really s- I, I just, I, I don’t know. It horrifies me. And now that I know that there’s addit- this additional way that people are getting a ton of extra money- Yeah ... re- it really freaks me out. So this is fascinating. Where can people find the article? And like, what, what is- Yeah,

[00:30:18] Brian Chau: Effort.news.

[00:30:20] Simone Collins: What?

[00:30:21] Brian Chau: Effort.news.

[00:30:23] Simone Collins: Effort

[00:30:23] Brian Chau: dot is it live now? That, that will not be up at the time of recording- Okay ... but it will be up at the time of releasing this. The launch is August 10th-

[00:30:29] Malcolm Collins: Do you

[00:30:29] Brian Chau: have any other fun findings that you can give as like

[00:30:32] Malcolm Collins: summaries for people that they can dig deeper on?

[00:30:34] Simone Collins: Oh, he has other fun findings.

[00:30:35] Brian Chau: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. There is a ton of stuff that, that we’re launching. We’re launching with between five to seven stories depending on how much time I have to, to, to typeset the other stories later today. But there, there is a lot there. There is foreign interference by the British government pushing censor- censorship laws in the United States.

[00:30:57] There is this one I think is one that you guys will also find really delightful. Were you guys aware of that, like, degrowth letter that was going around a few months ago? Mm-mm. No. I think a month ago. There, there was this, this degrowth letter. A lot of people made fun of it because it was like, the headline was like we’ve...

[00:31:14] “the economists have done the math, you know, we need degrowth,” or something like that. It, that’s not the exact quote. But, but of course, like, economists were, were, like, dunking on this because y- of course most economists do not believe that we need degrowth. But this organization was funded by a number of European NGOs who were founded by a- and who receive the majority of their money from literal 19th century heirs.

[00:31:38] Literally, like, people whose, like, great-great-grandfather started, like, an oil business in, like, the f*****g 1800s and are now s- like, donating their, like, dead great-great-grandfather’s money to, like, fund degrowth in Europe.

[00:31:54] Malcolm Collins: God.

[00:31:55] Simone Collins: That checks out. Yeah, that, that makes a lot

[00:31:56] Malcolm Collins: of sense. That class that we’ve talked about is one of the most ideologically [00:32:00] captured classes.

[00:32:00] Yes. God, imagine if we had rich people who, who wanted to fund us.

[00:32:03] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah,

[00:32:04] Brian Chau: it actually, it actually makes me respect the American socialists more. There’s a large American foundation that’s also funding some of these projects called the Omidyar Network. And even the socialists in the United States make their own money.

[00:32:20] They, they actually founded eBay. So, so, so even, even the socialists in, in America are more hardworking than the, than the socialists in, in Europe

[00:32:30] Simone Collins: We can take pride in that at least. Yes, that is, that is somewhat encouraging. Some of the socialists, Brian. I mean, you know, let’s not be too generous.

[00:32:38] Brian Chau: Yeah, at least the- Yeah

[00:32:40] at least the, at least the donors, right? Yes, the donors. This is- You know, it, it’s actually a lot more admirable, I think. If you’re, if you’re like an, an heir to like a 19th century fortune and that’s what you’re spending your money on, it’s actually like, I think, a totally different valence, you know, than, than if you a- actually were, were, were legitimately successful, right?

[00:32:57] And then you decide to spend your money on, on, on policies. I mean, I don’t agree with those policies, but it’s actually like a lot more respectable, at least in my view. We have a, we have a, also in the, in the launch, we have a race-based Medicare rationing. Do you wanna talk about race-based Medicare rationing?

[00:33:13] Simone Collins: Yeah, I thought that that was- We’re

[00:33:14] Brian Chau: still doing it ...

[00:33:14] Simone Collins: really interesting. They

[00:33:16] Brian Chau: are. Yeah, let’s talk about that. Yeah, it’s

[00:33:16] Malcolm Collins: about Nate and McCall. Yeah. Talk about race-based Medicare rationing. What did you find in that?

[00:33:20] Brian Chau: Sure. We can pull that up. Let’s,

[00:33:23] Simone Collins: Yeah, this is the other article you sent to me, Brian, right?

[00:33:25] And this, this is actually a, a pro-natalist story too because-

[00:33:28] Brian Chau: Yeah. Oh, yeah, the, the, the race-based natalism policy.

[00:33:31] Simone Collins: This one was crazy, too. W- with the punchline being-

[00:33:34] Brian Chau: I can provide more proper typesetting ...

[00:33:34] Simone Collins: that people who were not basically Black or brown broadly were being denied in some cases, like prenatal services because they were not Black or brown, which is race-based discrimination of w- with, with federally funded programs, Mm

[00:33:49] which is super not okay to do. Like technically, like not, not legal to do, but it’s still happening.

[00:33:55] Brian Chau: Yeah. So, so this is against the Equal Protection Clause of the, the 14th Amendment and the the Civil Rights Act. But it was not enforced until very recently. There is a chance that we might actually get something from this because I, I talk about this in the article.

[00:34:10] It’s a policy that’s changed very recently in the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.. It, it might be fun to talk about how I got some of these stories.

[00:34:19] Yeah.

[00:34:19] Simone Collins: I,

[00:34:20] Brian Chau: I would really like to know that- It was mostly like taking large federal data sets and then using some modified LM tools, really more so from a cost perspective. I think you could theoretically do this if you’re, if you’re just using one of the, the vanilla models, but it’ll cost you more and take you a lot longer.

[00:34:35] I’m basically saying, like, “Find me a story.” It’s like, fin- find newsworthy material- Really? Wait, you’re

[00:34:40] Simone Collins: not even like, “I want you to look in this data set for this specific thing”? You’re just like, “I don’t know. Do you think... Do you see anything interesting?”

[00:34:47] Brian Chau: Yeah. In some ways it’s a lot more open-minded way to do journalism, right?

[00:34:52] Simone Collins: Yeah ... I mean, yeah, but, like, dude.

[00:34:54] Brian Chau: I think a lot of the stories will be right-wing, because, like, this is not new information. This is stuff that happened, like, five years ago or more, right? Most of these grants for the first story were issued in 2021, so you could’ve reported this in 2021. Conservative media I mean, like, like it or not, and of course, like, The New York Times is biased and so on, but I think the left-wing stories are kind of, like, actually, actually get reported out.

[00:35:17] I think that’s the thing. So I think even though, like, I was not going into this with a, with an angle of like, “Oh, I’m going to just go out of my way to find, like, stories that are interesting to the right,” that may be how it gets picked up anyway, because that’s just the stories that haven’t been reported on yet.

[00:35:32] Simone Collins: Yeah, I agree. But I, I really hope you can pick this up. Let’s see if I can make this a little bigger. No.

[00:35:39] Brian Chau: Yeah, California’s race-based natal policy. Yeah.

[00:35:42] Simone Collins: Yeah. Wait, hold on. I’m bringing it back. Just give me a second here, ‘cause we, we don’t typically get to show PDFs. Anyway, I guess we can’t zoom in. Oh, well.

[00:35:51] But yeah, so yeah, ex- explain

[00:35:53] Brian Chau: it

[00:35:53] Simone Collins: to- I can

[00:35:54] Brian Chau: give you, I can s- send you a website preview later and, and you can have some higher [00:36:00] quality graphics if you wanna edit those in. But,

[00:36:01] Simone Collins: And you, by the way, I made it so that you can page through this at, at your leisure on your own from your... Yeah, there we go.

[00:36:07] Brian Chau: Perfect.

[00:36:08] Malcolm Collins: Can you go to the first page of that, Simone? So

[00:36:09] Brian Chau: there’s there’s this three program-

[00:36:10] Simone Collins: Wait, Malcolm wants you to go back to the first page of it.

[00:36:12] Malcolm Collins: So you didn’t even read it. You gotta read it. Programs for Black women birthing people could have Medicare funding cut off. All right, now, now go to the next thing.

[00:36:22] Brian Chau: Yeah. So, all these programs take federal Medicaid funding. They’re all also both facially against the text of the Civil Rights Act and against the recent you know... But historically it hasn’t been, been enforced that way. But, but also against the recent revisions in the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division rulemaking which I also quote here.

[00:36:43] And it’s basically saying, like, actually equal protection does apply to all races. And you can... So there were some cases previously where Title VI agreements were used to either force essentially force states to open these programs up to all races, which is what happened in the past, or to threaten to cut off Medicaid funding if that doesn’t exist.

[00:37:06] Simone Collins: Yikes.

[00:37:07] Brian Chau: So, so there is a remedy legally, which is that the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division can actually shut off Medicaid funding if they continue to racially discriminate. And there are two cases before where they started that process once in Minnesota and another time in Illinois, both with these kind of race-based Medicaid rationing programs.

[00:37:26] And in both cases, the DOJ managed to get those programs basically opened up to all races.

[00:37:31] Simone Collins: But not the case now. No one has done this

[00:37:33] Brian Chau: Yeah. I, I mean, I don’t really know if they know about it. They have not yet responded to my request for comment. Maybe they will by the time this is published. But, but as of, as of recording, they have not.

[00:37:44] So I don’t know if they even know about this

[00:37:47] Simone Collins: Interesting. So-

[00:37:48] Brian Chau: Maybe that’s, that’s how you guys help, right? Yeah. You, you guys get more, more people to know about this know about what- So they’re

[00:37:53] Malcolm Collins: literally

[00:37:54] Brian Chau: birthing to try to- ... you, you know, allegedly a, a civil rights violation ...

[00:37:57] Malcolm Collins: So they, they, they’re using Medicaid money to try to increase the Black birth rate?

[00:38:01] Like, that’s, that’s what-

[00:38:03] Brian Chau: They’re providing medical services only to in some cases, only to Black people. In some cases, only to Black as well as American Indian, Alaska Native, Pacific Islanders. Yeah, it seems super- ... they’re selectively providing medical services based on race. And in this case, it’s like basically like prenatal services.

[00:38:20] Simone Collins: And I think you even mentioned in the article from when I first read it, that like one woman reported just being turned away when she asked

[00:38:28] Brian Chau: for services. Yeah. So, so this is interesting, too. This will be a super interesting case of whether you can have more private rights of action based on discrimination where historically this has been an enormous cash cow for a lot of the kind of DEI NGOs where, you know, th- they’ll sue on behalf of minority groups, mostly either on behalf of people who are Black or on behalf of women.

[00:38:53] But really, you know, the civil rights... The text of the Civil Rights Act allow these suits in any direction. So if this case can, can prove out whether there can be more of a, a rights towards, you know, discrimination on behalf of other groups or, or against other groups a- and whether those will be rewarded a similar kind of settlement in, in court.

[00:39:14] So you have this program where based on, ba- based on her name seemingly, like a white Hispanic lady went in to try to access one of these services and then was denied those services, and is now filing a Title VI suit a civil rights lawsuit about this refusal. And that’s that’s kind of still in court right now.

[00:39:32] We don’t know where that’s going.

[00:39:34] Simone Collins: Good for her, though. It’s... I, I’ve, I’ve been surprised in the past. I think a, a lot of people actually e- experienced things like this in the past. Or I, I remember going to Planned Parenthood one, once and being like, “Well, I’m, I’m interested in planning a family now.

[00:39:49] Like, what should I do?” And they’re like, “We can’t help you here. We, we only do the other stuff.” And I was like, “Hold on. That’s not what I was told.” But I guess people just kind of... I think most people have weird [00:40:00] experiences but they don’t, don’t report them. They don’t try to start a lawsuit. So I don’t...

[00:40:04] I mean, who knows how many people have encountered this. That’s really

[00:40:08] Brian Chau: wild. Yeah. Something that’s, that’s also kind of relevant to this, I don’t know if you saw this, so this is already public. This is not something that we are exclusively reporting. Hmm. But, the Justice Department, I, I don’t know if you guys saw this op- published some information about a case they have against Duke University.

[00:40:24] And that has the amazing statistic that rejected white and Asian applicants have a higher average SAT score than accepted Black applicants.

[00:40:34] Simone Collins: Oh, w- yeah. Yeah. We’ve seen that headline, and I mean, I, I guess now it’s just like, well, of course. Everyone assumes that. Everybody knows it now. Yeah. I mean, the

[00:40:42] Malcolm Collins: leaflet’s on, racist against whites and Asians.

[00:40:44] Yeah. Colleges. Yeah.

[00:40:46]

[00:41:07] Brian Chau: Yeah, and, and the thing about, you know, Harmeet posting about this is that she actually, you know, is the main person to do something about this, and I think has been one of the, the most effective members of the Trump administration. This might actually be, you know, I sh- I guess I should praise her more if I, if I want us, actually, you know, the, the, the stories that I’m breaking to, to have some consequence.

[00:41:29] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:41:29] Simone Collins: This is such an interesting effort though because it’s, it’s both investigative journalism that we’ve really lost for 10, 20 years maybe. Like, there just really hasn’t been much work coming out like this that I would’ve expected to get and, and all powered by AI, which is super, super cool, plus your brilliant mind.

[00:41:51] Then this additional layer of activism, which I guess, I mean, do you primary expect to enact it by asking people for comment and getting other people to do something? Or is there an additional branch of what you’re working on where you’re actually going to push harder for, like to deploy people to take action on the information that you publish?

[00:42:07] I just wanna

[00:42:07] Brian Chau: publish the most keynote publication out there. Like, the, the best news that is fit to print, you know. And, and part of that is also the data presentation. I think it’s this, like, crazy thing where even, like, I was showing my friend the Vercel dashboard the other day. This is a very, very successful software company- Yeah

[00:42:24] Used for, for, for front-end hosting for, for a lot of sites. But really it’s not just Vercel. It’s like every series A or B or later startup has better data presentation than New York Times. It’s a, it’s a very common skill now. It’s a skill that I have and I think that’s reflected in this site. Where really there are a single-digit number of, like, really competent data presentation people in the mainstream press.

[00:42:47] Maybe the most famous- Mm ... is John Burn-Murdoch from the, from the Financial Times. Mm. Who is, like, a household name basically by... I don’t wanna be mean to John Burn-Murdoch. I think he does good work. But basically he’s become a household name by, like, publishing charts that are about the same quality as, like, a series A or series B startup.

[00:43:04] So there’s plenty- ... of capability to pr- have much better data presentation actually. And this is the other thing it’s, that I’m kind of, like, frustrated by with kind of new media companies is number one, they don’t break stories. Number two they don’t really go for a more, like, high-quality publication.

[00:43:22] A lot of them just end up looking like the New York Post. And actually, the New York Post is an interesting example because they do break stories, but they also look like the New York Post, which is re- really unfortunate. Yeah ... I, I, I really think that this is the, the crown in the gutter. Because right now is a complete change in the scope and possibility of what kind of stories can be reported.

[00:43:47] Mm. It would take a team of multiple people working for years to report the kinds of stories I’m reporting now. So it’s not an entire surprise that they’ve gone unreported for a long time. That’s changing now. It’s the crown in the [00:44:00] gutter. You can absolutely do it. I mean, I, I am doing it. And I think this will be very c- soon the greatest investigative reporting publication in the world

[00:44:09] Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I hope so, and we’re glad to have you on, and I hope that it’s upstream of a bunch of YouTubers like I to just read the story and then go, “Ah.”

[00:44:17] You know, that’s the, that’s the way to do it. Oh,

[00:44:20] Simone Collins: yeah. You’re, you’re gonna give us so much episode fodder

[00:44:21] Brian Chau: Can we talk about the new media ecosystem for a bit? Like, you know, we’re in the Fox Girls or the media chat. There’s, like, an entire, you know, new ecosystem that’s popping up, and you guys really, I think you guys know more about this than me, so it’d be interesting to get your thoughts on it.

[00:44:37] Simone Collins: The VTuber ecosystem?

[00:44:38] Malcolm Collins: Well, that’s what we play in. That’s what we do. But the interesting thing about this new media ecosystem is it has a few people who are sort of top of the funnel and c- find the stories first, and, and they’re r- like Kirsha is an example of one of these. She’ll do the n- the app synthesis, and then the story flows down.

[00:44:56] So if we have more people there, then that’s more for the rest of us, right? You know, make

[00:45:01] Brian Chau: sure we- So, so is she like i- is she like f- finding the stories from scratch or is she kind of like serving as a bridge between, like,

[00:45:08] Malcolm Collins: normal- No ... or stuff like that? She seems to be finding them from scratch.

[00:45:11] So what she does- Oh, that’s super

[00:45:12] Brian Chau: interesting ...

[00:45:12] Malcolm Collins: is she goes and she’ll, like, look when somebody’ll be like, “Oh, X company was woke and then it was fixed,” and then she tries to go into their public documentation and everything like that to see if they’re actually not woke now, looking up the programs they’re doing and stuff like that.

[00:45:27] And that’s, that’s an area of, of, of research that you could definitely use more re- is the crazy woke programs that companies are doing that large companies are doing and shining a light on those, because that’s something that I think people would find pretty interesting.

[00:45:41] Brian Chau: Yeah, so there was this story.

[00:45:43] I, like, kind of got scooped on this. A, a lot of the data was already public but, but kind of, independently found the same, same data of company filings earnings calls and, and such. The mentions of diversity, equity, inclusion, stuff like that, has dropped more than 90%. That, that’s of course just the overt public statements.

[00:46:00] That’s like the, the, the- Yeah ... the branding, right? It’s not always reflecting the underlying stuff. But that is actually pretty interesting. Maybe you guys can, can put that graphic up as well. I think a lot of these stories, there’s like- There’s like a pretty long incubation period o- of before they actually see the light of day.

[00:46:20] That’s something that if I am successful with this company will absolutely change in five years, where it’s like right now, like the, the, the Office of Refugee Resettlement story we’ve had that information, that information has been publicly available for five years or maybe a little less than five years.

[00:46:38] I think the, the first grants appeared, or like the first grants in this latest expansion appeared- Hmm ... in September 2021. Oh, from 20... Yeah,

[00:46:44] Simone Collins: well

[00:46:44] Brian Chau: 2016 was- So it’s about the five-year anniversary.

[00:46:47] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:46:47] Brian Chau: So this could have been reported for a long time. It absolutely wasn’t. And it’s this like crazy it’s this crazy inefficient market.

[00:46:56] Hmm. A lot of people I’ve talked to leading up to this launch, even a lot of people who already work in media are like shocked at this. They’re like, “Oh, why, why is it, and why has no one done this yet?” And most of the time the answer is that people just don’t wanna put in the effort. So th- that’s really going to change.

[00:47:12] I guess like the, the interesting thing about new media as well is like there’s a convergence on the idea, and this is especially true in the tech space. There’s a convergence on the idea that like all you need to do is sort of reframe the discussion from a different opinion, right? And I think some of that has been good, you know.

[00:47:31] I’ll be actually, you know, doing a lot of interviews with the, those tech podcast publications you know, video video shows as well. So, so, so I, I, I’m... it’s not like I dislike them, but a lot of the time what they’ll do is like they’ll talk about the same stories reported from The New York Times, but they’ll talk about it in a kind of like conservative or kind of libertarian pro-tech opinion angle.

[00:47:53] And, you know, maybe that’s better than nothing. I certainly think it’s better than nothing, but I don’t know. It, it, it seems kind of narrow. Like, why do [00:48:00] you guys think it, it, it like ended up that way?

[00:48:03] Simone Collins: I think first off, not that many people are responsible, like not that many people care. And if you’re looking at something like, okay, so you’re looking at a publication that has to stay alive, and that depends on clicks or something like that and they’re trying to get people to click over.

[00:48:21] They’re way more likely to get a bunch of attention and money by posting something stupid and culture-warry and not actually substantive or something about celebrities than they are to post something- I don’t

[00:48:32] Brian Chau: even think that’s true. Like-

[00:48:34] Simone Collins: Really?

[00:48:35] Brian Chau: Yeah. I, I think you need to break stories. I guess you need to have a judgment to break stories, right?

[00:48:39] I mean, we’ll see with the launch, but I, I think it will be quite a successful launch. I mean, obviously you know, I haven’t been exposed to the actual... I haven’t, you know, posted any of these stories publicly yet, so it’s like, you know, a big question mark. Maybe it’ll fail and there’ll be a big, you know, egg on my face.

[00:48:54] But I think there is interest in investigative stuff. I think that if you are ahead of, ahead of the curve and you publish something that then becomes viral, then becomes a center of attention, you do get credit for that. But, but people just don’t do it. Maybe it’s like a cost benefit thing. Maybe they haven’t fully priced in AI.

[00:49:11] I’m, I’m not entirely sure. But yeah, it’s, it’s still seems, still seems very odd to me.

[00:49:18] Simone Collins: It is. I think... I mean, to your point, a, a lot of it can come down to good visuals. A lot of the stuff that ends up going viral that is more substantive goes viral because there’s some striking graph that people can share online.

[00:49:31] Like you have to think about what is someone’s motivation to share something online, and Malcolm’s model for that has always been, well, then this is going to reinforce someone’s self-image, for example. Like, I’m the person who shares stories about this, or it, it just validates their self-image. Like, m- family members selling sending us information about studies that show that reading physical paper objects is m- better for your brain or something, right?

[00:49:58] And they’re like, “I told you so.” So you have to think about why someone’s gonna be compelled to share your story, and also how much that share on its own is going to captivate audiences. And if you have a really compelling visual, then it is going to captivate audiences. Like I’ve seen so much of the almond water versus data center water graphic floating around recently.

[00:50:18] Brian Chau: Yeah,

[00:50:19] Simone Collins: yeah. Because it’s just so like salient and easy. And also for anyone who’s on the pro data center side, like we can so smugly share it and be like, “So there you go, ha ha ha.” And it makes us feel very smug. And so I think it, it comes down to that. And I, and I think that’s why it’s so good that you’re looking at- The importance of really strong visuals.

[00:50:40] If you can create visuals that people can smugly post and that make them look so smart and well-informed, and, “Oh, you d- you idiots don’t realize how serious this problem is,” especially if it feeds into conspiratoriness- Yeah,

[00:50:52] Brian Chau: no, and a lot of it is, you know, a lot of it is, like, the immediate truth nuke, right?

[00:50:56] Simone Collins: Yes.

[00:50:57] Brian Chau: Yeah. That’s something that, that I want to... Obviously, that’s not most of these stories. Most of these stories are kind of, longer investigations using data from a timeframe of, like, five to 10 years. But something else I wanna do a lot more of is, like, the immediate truth nuke. One of these stories is kind of like this.

[00:51:11] The data is actually kind of old, but I have this story on, like, the, the, the EV dumping theory, which- Yeah ... to my knowledge, is, was, was completely fabricated by kind of, like, the auto lobby a- and, and by defense inter- and by, by, like, kind of, like, Department of Defense type- Wait, what is this?

[00:51:25] Malcolm Collins: Is it

[00:51:26] Simone Collins: So what is the EV dumping theory?

[00:51:27] Yeah,

[00:51:28] i’m gonna bring it

[00:51:28] Brian Chau: up and put it up So there will be all sorts of these stories that pop up that are just, like, clearly fabricated.

[00:51:33] The one that I remember the best, because I was kind of, like, directly involved with this one- Okay ... is the, the 10,000 H100 story. So there was this story around the time when DeepSeek came out. Of course, it’s like wildly cheaper model than anything that you saw was published before.

[00:51:48] Malcolm Collins: Okay.

[00:51:48] Brian Chau: A- and a bunch of like defense industry types were, like, very enthusiastic about promoting this H100 10,000 smuggled H100s claim, and this claim was [00:52:00] completely false.

[00:52:01] The original source for the, this claim I actually kind of respect that he did this which is D- Dylan from SemiAnalysis. He had kind of like a, a, like a tweet that like, “Oh, there are 10,000... I- I... DeepSeek has 10,000 H100s,” or something. And then he, like, later published a full article ki- kind of like retracting that claim, saying like, “Oh, what I actually meant was 10,000 H100 equivalents, including hardware that was legally purchased from NVIDIA and allowed under US law.”

[00:52:29] Which is obviously- Oh ... a different claim, but I, I, I, I, I actually respect... I don’t really blame Dy- Dylan for this. I think what probably happened was that he had a source inside, like, state or defense that just straight up lied to him. And he, he, he got got, and he didn’t know that, like, people from defense or state would just straight up lie to you, and then go, you know, pr- promote these completely false claims everywhere.

[00:52:51] Anyways, we, we, we now know that that that absolutely did not happen, and this was just kind of, like, fabricated by, by the defense, defense industry. Anyways-

[00:52:58] Malcolm Collins: So EVs are, are way, what, more environmentally friendly than...?

[00:53:03] Brian Chau: No. So, so that was related to the, the DeepSeek H100 stuff, whi- which I was kind of, like, directly involved in.

[00:53:08] I, I was kind of like, Yeah, but what’s the point? ... working on some AI stuff with the admin at the time. But-

[00:53:13] Malcolm Collins: What’s the

[00:53:13] Brian Chau: point of this direction? But th- this is a similar thing happening with EVs, right? It’s, it’s the same, like, f*****g export control people, No, but

[00:53:19] Malcolm Collins: what’s the point? Like what, so what were they trying to argue?

[00:53:22] What-

[00:53:22] Brian Chau: Oh, the EV thing was that people were just ... Oh, so go, go on.

[00:53:26] Malcolm Collins: No, no. Like, what were they trying to argue versus what’s the reality? I, like, the, the, to the average person here, they don’t know

[00:53:32] Brian Chau: what DeepSeek is. Well, the reality is that, that DeepSeek made a number of algorithmic improvements mostly that made their model a lot cheaper to train and run.

[00:53:38] Mm. They, they were arguing that, you know, there were all of these smuggled H100s, these smuggled, like, a- AI- Oh ... specific hardware- Oh, so

[00:53:44] Simone Collins: they were saying they were getting really good machinery- ...

[00:53:46] Brian Chau: that they were secretly running it on. But really...

[00:53:47] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:53:48] Brian Chau: They were seeing more efficient. It was this kind of, like, wild, like, conspiracy brained take that, like, actually DeepSeek was trained on all of this hardware because there is no way that they trained they trained their model on, like, limited hardware that they were legally allowed to purchase.

[00:54:00] But turns out that actually they, they did train it on the legally purchased hardware and that the model is just better. And in fact, they’ve continued not just creating but publishing those model improvements, tho- those, like, algorithmic improvements to their models, including the, the, the recent V4 Flash.

[00:54:16] Malcolm Collins: Okay.

[00:54:17] Brian Chau: So- And, and the, the EV tariff thing- We know basically for cert- certain now that that claim, claim was false, that, that DeepSeek the, the, the, the more efficient models come from just better model designs and don’t come from, you know, all these secret H100s.

[00:54:30] Malcolm Collins: The, the secret H100s- In this instance

[00:54:31] being that they pretended that it was running on much more advanced software, hardware than it actually was, and it actually was running on limited hardware. Yeah ... is that what you’re talking about was the EV story? What, what, what is, what did EVs have to do with

[00:54:42] Brian Chau: this? It’s a similar thing where you can see that there is this completely fabricated story about EV dumping.

[00:54:48] So the EV dumping theory, this was promoted by, like, both the last two presidents all sorts of people from both political parties. I think it kind of originated in a bunch of, like, US, like, auto trade associations. But the claim is that Chinese EV exports are heavily subsidized. You can go down the claim ta- claim table here.

[00:55:07] It’s, like, massive subsidies, you know, propelled by subsidies, all this stuff. Would you like to guess- How could

[00:55:11] Simone Collins: that be possible when we’re paying- Let’s play a

[00:55:12] Brian Chau: similar game. Let’s play a similar game where we guess the number, the total amount of the subsidy, right? What is the total amount out, as a percentage of the total price what do you think a, a BYD EV, this is, like, one of the most popular c- EV companies in China what amount of that price is subsidized?

[00:55:30] What would you guess?

[00:55:33] Simone Collins: 5% Well, I don’t imagine... I mean, don’t we- More than that ... we have 100% import taxes in the US on EVs, so nothing? ‘

[00:55:40] Brian Chau: Cause I- Yeah, it’s, it’s 170... 27.5 now, and, and they’re doing a different ban. You, you have this super interesting, you know, may- maybe not interesting, but, like, funny thing where they had to keep upgrading the tariffs because it sounds, kinda sounds crazy, but, like, there was this theoretical model where, like, even if you had 25% tariffs, the, the, the Chinese cars would still out-compete the [00:56:00] American ones.

[00:56:00] Yeah. Which i- i- if you’re coming from a s- from the software world, it’s like, oh, you c- 25% off your margin, maybe that’s doable. But if you’re coming from manufacturing, that’s, like, f*****g crazy. That’s, that’s how much of a difference in technology there is. But the actual answer is around 1.2%.

[00:56:14] Simone Collins: Yeah, that makes sense.

[00:56:14] Brian Chau: So, you can scroll down here. Why, why would they subsidize them? Yeah. You, you, you can scroll down here. It’s this tiny section. And even- You can even see it ... if you count, like... Yeah, ex- exactly. And even if you count all of the like, differences in financing laws, which, like, we could reform our financing laws at home.

[00:56:29] Yeah. But even if you count those as, like, de facto sev- subsidies, it is roughly 7% of the price difference between Tesla and BYD. Tesla is, of course, the most efficient American company which is around 2.3% of the total BYD price. Mm. So even if you’re... So it’s 1.2% for direct subsidies, and even if you’re counting all of this, like, financing reform stuff that we could totally implement in the US, that’s, like, 2.3% of, of the total price.

[00:56:55] So it is this, like, massive truth nuke, where there’s the story that was being passed around all the time, this, like, cope about Chinese EVs of, like, “Oh, they’re massively subsidized. That’s why we can’t compete with them.” Turns out that’s completely untrue. Most of the, most of the savings are based on, like, supply chain integration and genuine, like, business im- improvements compared to even Tesla, right?

[00:57:16] Of course, the gap will be even bigger than, than this for the, the non-Tesla EVs. Well, but

[00:57:20] Simone Collins: also necessity. You’re not gonna sell an EV in China if the vast majority of people can’t afford it. Y- it’s, it’s for a market that has, I would argue, much narrower car

[00:57:29] Brian Chau: range. This, this is this is comparison of Chinese prices.

[00:57:32] Oh. So

[00:57:34] Simone Collins: this is a Tesla price in China. Really? Oh my gosh. Yes. That’s even crazier than I thought then. Okay.

[00:57:38] Brian Chau: Yeah, so, so China is currently, like, signif- or, s- sorry. Tesla is currently significantly losing market share in China. There was this interesting rumor recently that, that Tesla would sell off its China China section for for, basically political reasons.

[00:57:54] Elon said this wasn’t true. It was interesting because when I originally saw that story, I thought, “Oh, this is like cope,” right? This is gonna be like Tesla’s gonna sell off their, their, their Chinese section and they’re gonna say it was because of politics, but really it’s because they’re not, not really making money off that, and they’re being out-competed, and this is just like the cope.

[00:58:11] But Elon said that’s not true, so, so, so apparently, apparently it’s fake news.

[00:58:15] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:58:16] Simone Collins: That is so great. Well,

[00:58:17] Malcolm Collins: interesting stuff. Thanks for finding this.

[00:58:19] Simone Collins: This is gonna be so great for... I mean, I think the other thing that really gives you good tailwinds for this venture is that there is this growing ecosystem of streamers who, instead of playing games, is turning to news stories, and they need good, salacious truth nukes.

[00:58:35] You’ll be delivering them, so that is, that is very favorable. Congratulations, Brian. And everyone, check out Effort.news because- Yeah. I mean, I don’t know, what’s the frequency of publication you’re aiming for here?

[00:58:47] Brian Chau: Effort.news. BrianChao57 on Twitter. Frequency of publication, it will vary a lot. More...

[00:58:55] Probably one to three times per week and a lot of- That’s

[00:58:59] Simone Collins: pretty good ...

[00:58:59] Brian Chau: will also be based off of the initial wave of hiring. I’m interviewing several people for the publication both this week and next week. I scheduled that during the launch, so I don’t know how that’ll go. But if we can scale up, I, I’d ideally get it to a daily publication, right?

[00:59:14] But as of now, at least once per week probably closer to three times a week. And if we can really scale up, then we can really get to the point of where, where it’s, like, one per day, or, or, like, multiple per day.

[00:59:25] Simone Collins: That is so cool. Congratulations, Brian. And yeah, I’m super excited to see what you guys turn out.

[00:59:29] So thank you for, thank you for giving us some, like, basically launch day details and we will be watching this very closely going forward.

[00:59:39] Brian Chau: Yeah. You can, you, you can put the Base Camp exclusive, Yes ... on the title. Cha-ching, cha-ching. Even though we’ll be doing a bunch of other streams on the launch day.

[00:59:45] But yeah, this was super fun. I’m glad you enjoyed the story about about the Catholics.

[00:59:50] Simone Collins: Always.

[00:59:51] Brian Chau: Always. And, and the large number of other religious religious charities, religious organizations. Yeah, it was super fun. Thanks for having [01:00:00] me on.

[01:00:01] Simone Collins: All right. Thank you, Brian. Yeah. All right.

[01:00:03] Well, Godspeed, sir. You’re doing very important work. All right.

[01:00:08] Speaker 4: Show me What’s going on here? That’s the thing. Tell me. Well, who’s, who’s what down here? What’s going on?

[01:00:25] Those are the, my army men and that’s the giant boat, the giant boat. What does a giant boat do? A giant boat uses it that armor to catch the- Can you show me how? Yeah, but you have to take a picture of me, too.

[01:00:39] Of course, I promise

[01:00:47] I’m gonna take a picture of me Give me your best pose then That’s your pose? I like it

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Malcolm and Simone go deep on the female gooning wave — the explosive rise of erotic romance novels and smut that now makes up a huge share of what women are actually reading.

We cover the hard data: romance sales growth, reading frequency stats, and older studies showing romance readers have more (and more satisfying) sex. Simone and Malcolm explain reactive sexuality, why these books can act as exogenous priming, and why the average effect on relationships appears positive rather than destructive.

Then they break down the dominant tropes in the biggest current series — Empyrean (Fourth Wing / Iron Flame / Onyx Storm), A Court of Thorns and Roses, The Hunting of Adeline, dark mafia, and Zodiac Academy — and what the power dynamics, possessiveness, and “claiming” language actually reveal about female arousal profiles.

Also discussed: the Wicker movie trailer going mainstream, why most men and women want very different things in erotic content, the biblical case against inventing extra sexual prohibitions, and a short closer on premarital sex and the film One Night Only.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Simone Collins: Your face. What? What? What? So you can see we’ve reached mainstream. No, you, you, you haven’t read these books. You don’t understand what women are reading about-

[00:00:14] Malcolm Collins: Did you read those books? ...

[00:00:14] Simone Collins: in these books.

[00:00:15] Would you like to know more?

[00:00:17] Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. We have touched on the topic of the rise of the female gooning wave, but I wanted to go deeper into both the research around it and how that wave is changing, because it’s having an, a much bigger impact on society than people think.

[00:00:35] About-

[00:00:35] Simone Collins: Excuse me, are people researching female gooners?

[00:00:39] Malcolm Collins: Oh, yes. We have many re- Simone, when you say female gooners as if they’re the rare thing, the vast majority-

[00:00:46] Simone Collins: No, I know ... are women. Look, trust me, I know. Yes. I just-

[00:00:50] Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah, I know you know, because I know what you listen to at night,

[00:00:53] Simone Collins: Simone. Stop. I’m listening to the Old Testam- Oh, never mind.

[00:00:56] Yeah, that’s pretty messed up, so go on then.

[00:00:59] Malcolm Collins: I actually wanna ask it for later. Which industry makes more, this or male ?

[00:01:06] Simone Collins: Oh, no, we did this before. The, the romance novel industry makes a ton more money. Are you kidding me?

[00:01:12] Malcolm Collins: Well, we’ll, we’ll see, we’ll see. It’s

[00:01:13] Simone Collins: not even- But, okay, hold on

[00:01:14] funny and funny. Yeah So,

[00:01:15] Malcolm Collins: A third- Offended you

[00:01:16] Simone Collins: would ask ...

[00:01:17] Malcolm Collins: a third of all fiction books is that people are reading right now are- ... female gooning books, okay?

[00:01:22] Simone Collins: No one reads anymore except for certain reasons.

[00:01:25] Malcolm Collins: This has gone up from 23% w- just a decade ago.

[00:01:31] Simone Collins: Oh, oh.

[00:01:32] Malcolm Collins: The romance sales industry year over year grew 24% this year in the, in the first half of the year circa BookScan And 26% of survey r- readers reported buying more than one romance book in the prior year.

[00:01:51] Now, for, I wanna get to this immediately because a lot of people on our channel are gonna jump and be like, “Oh, this is terrible. Oh, these women, their partners, how terrible is this?” So Coles and Sharp in 1984 did a study. And what they found was that readers had sex twice as often per week as non-readers.

[00:02:11] Simone Collins: There was- Yeah, that makes sense ‘cause they’re kinda just getting themselves in that frame of mind. Women have to be, like, reminded that they’re sexually interested, I think, more than men do. Men, it’s like, it’s there for the most part. Women need to be reminded that they can be sexual beings. Is

[00:02:26] Malcolm Collins: that your thing?

[00:02:26] I, I think that’s an absolutely good point. Yeah. I wanna, I wanna expand on this point after I go into it. The, the am- among housewives specifically, readers were significantly more sexually satisfied than non-readers.

[00:02:38] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:02:38] Well, you know, we, we, when you originally wrote The Pragmatist’s Guide to Sexuality, you, you looked at, you, you didn’t do romance novel readers, you just polled people about their erotic material consumption.

[00:02:49] But then you found that people who consumed erotic material who were female, like, so women who consumed erotic material, it had much more satisfying and active sex lives. Like, if you are a boyfriend, a husband, anyone who has intimate access to a woman and you want her to be a little bit more forward i- in her advances, you should get, buy, buy her the best-selling romance novels.

[00:03:14] The most perverted stuff

[00:03:16] Malcolm Collins: So she’s got perversions on her mind all

[00:03:18] Simone Collins: the time. Yes. So you need... Yes, she needs to have a dirty mind. If her mind isn’t dirty, it’s your fault, okay? This is-

[00:03:23] Malcolm Collins: And women experiment with these things with their partners. So they, the ones who do this do significantly more fantasy play.

[00:03:31] But the reason I wanted to, to put that out there to start with is it’s the same as the pornography thing, right? Like, guys who consume porn have more and better sex than guys who don’t consume porn. This has been shown in, like, multiple studies, right? Mm-hmm. You know, it’s, it, it-

[00:03:47] Simone Collins: Look, people who watch cooking shows probably have better cooking techniques and cook more than people who don’t watch cooking shows.

[00:03:54] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It’s, and it’s not- So ... now, I, I, I do wanna make an aside here before I go further. There is [00:04:00] clearly a type of woman and a type of man who cannot engage healthily with this type of content. Oh,

[00:04:05] Simone Collins: yeah. No, yeah.

[00:04:06] Malcolm Collins: There is a type of woman-

[00:04:07] Simone Collins: Well, there’s also people who can’t engage healthily with food or exercise, you know?

[00:04:10] Malcolm Collins: That gets one shot and goes full goon cave and never leaves her room after that, right? There is a type of guy- But did you

[00:04:17] Simone Collins: want her as a girlfriend in the first place, right? If she’s that kind of person.

[00:04:20] Malcolm Collins: I, well, you know, she might get obsessed with you if that was her only alternative. Yeah. I don’t think that’s gonna happen, though.

[00:04:27] Simone Collins: No, mm-mm.

[00:04:28] Malcolm Collins: These types of women are typically, in my experience, pretty histionic and an issue- An issue ... to date. An issue to date. Hmm. You don’t, you, you don’t want a super horny girlfriend or wife. I, I have done that before. It is very exhausting because you’ve got to remember... Sorry, go ahead.

[00:04:44] Simone Collins: You had a Friend- a Fred Flintstone moment with that, didn’t you?

[00:04:48] Malcolm Collins: What do

[00:04:48] Simone Collins: you mean by that? Someone banging on your door, “Wilma.”

[00:04:50] Malcolm Collins: Yeah,

[00:04:51] Simone Collins: yeah. Oh, sorry. I always say that with a German accent because I was once locked out of a French hotel. Let me in. And there was a German outside- Yeah ... and he was banging on the door screaming, “Wilma,” but in a German accent.

[00:05:01] It’s iconic. So and it was the best moment I ever had in Paris. Seeing German locked out of a hotel Sorry Oh

[00:05:06] Malcolm Collins: my God. Okay, anyway.

[00:05:07] Simone Collins: Carry on.

[00:05:08] But you had a girl literally trying to bang down your door to get to that-

[00:05:12] Malcolm Collins: Yes,

[00:05:13] Simone Collins: yes

[00:05:13] notably perfect

[00:05:14] Malcolm Collins: something of

[00:05:14] Simone Collins: yours But, but

[00:05:14] Malcolm Collins: guys forget when they’re like, “No, it would always be great to have, like, a maximally horny girl.” It’s like sex is majority of the work. 99% of the physical effort is the male. If your partner wants to have sex way more than you wanna have sex, that’s just a ton of extra work for you.

[00:05:33] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:05:33] Malcolm Collins: And it gets extremely exhausting. When I’ve been in, in relationships like that, you, you hear them at the door and you’re like, “No.”

[00:05:41] Simone Collins: Yeah. “

[00:05:44] Malcolm Collins: Not again. I’m trying to do my homework.” Yeah. “I’m trying to study.”

[00:05:48] Simone Collins: Aw, poor Malcolm. “

[00:05:50] Speaker 4: The spirit is willing, but the flesh is spongy and bruised.

[00:05:53] Malcolm Collins: I have other things I wanna do right now.”

[00:05:55] Simone Collins: Poor Dino. Aw.

[00:05:57] Malcolm Collins: No, but the point here being is the, the- these books do not appear to be making relationships less strong, on average at least, right?

[00:06:05] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm,

[00:06:05] Malcolm Collins: mm-hmm. They appear to be making them much stronger on average. And I think Simone, like, I think that they’re way more important to a healthy relationship than me being a fairly pro-corn guy. When I say pro-corn, I mean only of non-humans. I think the corn industry is really bad. Mm-hmm.

[00:06:22] I think OnlyFans is really bad. I think things of use- using living humans. But if it’s drawn or made with AI, whatever, right? Like, that’s not a real- Yeah ... human that’s being drawn into an industry.

[00:06:31] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:06:32] Malcolm Collins: But even, even having that position, and you can go see our old videos on this and how it relates to the Bible and everything like that, which we talk about a lot there.

[00:06:40] Like just in case people are wondering, if the Bible didn’t want you... D- do you not think that no Jew had figured out drawing a naked woman on a sheet of paper yet? Do you think that like- No,

[00:06:53] Simone Collins: some of, some of the early graffiti that you can see around the world

[00:06:58] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. D- do you think that they were just unaware of this as a concept?

[00:07:01] Because it doesn’t ban it anywhere, and it talks about emissions in explicit detail in the Old Testament. Emissions. Doesn’t ban it anywhere, right? Mm-hmm. Like, if it, if it, if it wanted to ban it, it has a lot of words to do that, right? Now you could say, “Well, don’t look at other people’s wives with, with lust,” right?

[00:07:20] Or, “Don’t covet what other people have.” Mm-hmm. Which I would agree with 100%, but the majority of at the time of the Bible would not be of other people’s wives. It was not people masturbating looking at other human women. It would’ve been drawn stuff- Pretty

[00:07:34] Simone Collins: primitive drawing, yeah ...

[00:07:35] Malcolm Collins: or, or figurines or stuff like that.

[00:07:37] Yeah. So that’s what they would’ve banned. They would’ve known the difference between the two things, which is why all of the prohibitions are against other human beings, which make a lot of sense. And actually, when Simone was rereading the Old Testament and you reread that line, you were like, “This applies so much more to Instagram and Facebook than it does-” Mm-hmm

[00:07:55] “porn.” Mm-hmm.

[00:07:56] Simone Collins: It expands to a bunch of other things, too.

[00:07:57] Malcolm Collins: You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not [00:08:00] covet your neighbor’s wife or his manservant or his maidservant or his ox or his donkey-” Yeah, so

[00:08:05] Simone Collins: like get, get off Instagram ... “

[00:08:06] Malcolm Collins: anything that belongs to your neighbor.” That’s

[00:08:07] Simone Collins: so- Don’t watch MTV’s Cribs. I’m

[00:08:09] Malcolm Collins: not gonna do this Okay, so you hear that, and you can be like, this is a very strict prohibition on Instagram, and it’s a very strict prohibition on Facebook- Yeah

[00:08:16] being used in a specific way. It’s a strict prohibition on certain types of YouTube content.

[00:08:21] Simone Collins: Architectural Digest videos Way, way,

[00:08:22] Malcolm Collins: way, way more-

[00:08:24] Simone Collins: Yeah ...

[00:08:24] Malcolm Collins: than corn or erotic literature.

[00:08:26] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:08:27] Malcolm Collins: And note here, the Bible also doesn’t ban erotic literature. The Bible contains erotic literature.

[00:08:34] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:08:34] Malcolm Collins: Right? Like, there are, there are a number of sections in the Bible that can best be described as, I actually think, literally the most erotic literature ever written up to that point in human history.

[00:08:45] Simone Collins: That’s what really shocked me the first time I read it. I was like, “Is this appropriate for high school? This isn’t...” Yeah

[00:08:50] Malcolm Collins: The Bible was a pioneer in erotic literature.

[00:08:54] Simone Collins: It really was. Look, there’s a reason it caught on.

[00:08:56] Malcolm Collins: Centuries ahead of time.

[00:08:58] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:08:59] I take the anti-corn biblical arguments in the same sort of category as the people who are like, “The Bible is against drinking. Don’t you know alcohol is so sinful?” And I’m like, “Well, I mean, I’m pretty sure Jesus turned water into wine.” Like, that’s like a big, , y- he, he didn’t have, he didn’t ha-- He’s like, “Water?

[00:09:23] Bro, I got something strictly better than water for all y’all.” , It’s one of those strictly, , anti-biblical arguments where somebody clearly is just not interested in what the Bible says or is about, and is interested in imposing their own morality on you separate... which to me is, like, a really big sign that this is a person who has no interest in what’s true

[00:09:51] Like we get a lot of people who will comment in our videos being like, “Well, Christians believe X.” And I’m like, “Well, X isn’t in the Bible, so w- w- wait, what are you saying?, Like we released a video recently and people were like, “Well, Christians believe every life has value.”

[00:10:07] And I’m like, “Well, that’s not what’s in the Bible.” Okay? So you’re just defining whatever you believe is what Christians believe and then saying that we’re not that without referencing anything

[00:10:22] A note here, if you want to go New Testament, people are like, “Oh, what about the line where Jesus says don’t look at women with lust?” It’s like, well, one, he doesn’t actually say that. It’s desire. It’s the same word that Jesus looks at like the Passover sacrament with, in different parts of the, the text.

[00:10:38] So, , yeah, that’s, that’s not what that says. , And it falls to the same thing we’ve been talking about here. More broadly, I get really disgusted because the people who push this stuff the hardest are generally the ones who, like, live bad lives, if I’m gonna be honest. They’re like, “Malcolm, you need to live this way because this is the way society can be good.”

[00:10:59] And I’m like, “How many kids do you have? Do you have a, a satisfying relationship?” Look, I’m here with five, going on six kids, in a satisfied long-term marriage, and I’m saying this stuff works. And the people who say it doesn’t work, typically they don’t have that. , And I think that that’s something that you should take into account when you say, “Is it okay if your wife reads horny books?”

[00:11:23] Malcolm Collins: Ahead of its time. Hmm But there’s also a practical reason I take this stance, if you’re new to knowing that I have this stance, is because I think when you prohibit stuff like this, you make it way easier for your kids to get peeled out of your religion.

[00:11:34] Hmm ... because it’s the easiest way for an outsider to be like, “Oh, look, you have all these desires, you have all these... Why don’t you come to us? You must be a deviant like us.” But even as much as I’m pro-male erotic material, when it doesn’t use humans or erotic literature or whatever, I am way more pro-female.

[00:11:50] Like, the female Goonerboom is a really good Goonerboom.

[00:11:54] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:11:54] Malcolm Collins: Because as Simone said, there’s something called reactive sexuality. All right? And most [00:12:00] females are reactively sexual. That is their type of sexuality that they experience. Now, a male doesn’t un- generally doesn’t understand reactive sexuality because males d- on average don’t experience reactive sexuality.

[00:12:13] When a male, You know, sees someone who he thinks is hot, right? Or sees something that he thinks is hot. Or even is just sitting there thinking, he’s like, “You know what? I wanna look at something hot right now. Do-do-do-do-do.” I’m gonna go look at that, right? Women, a lot of women, this just doesn’t happen to them.

[00:12:29] Instead, they become aroused when they are put in an actively arousing situation, right? So if I was to, you know, corner and kiss my wife and push her up against a wall, that would cause the arousal cycle in her to start. But she wouldn’t feel that she wanted that without being slowly primed into it b- physically and psychologically.

[00:12:55] And a lot of guys are unaware of this, and I think this is how a lot of dead bedrooms end up happening, functioning.

[00:12:59] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:13:00] Malcolm Collins: Is that a guy forgets that he’s supposed to be proactive, or norms in the relationship are established where the guy isn’t proactive and the female has a reactive sexuality.

[00:13:11] That said, you can trick the system.

[00:13:14] Simone Collins: Yeah, if you have a, a partner with a reactive sexuality who will never make the first move, give her a bunch of romance novels and that might change.

[00:13:22] Malcolm Collins: Right. Because then she’s sitting around thinking about this sexy vampire boy.

[00:13:27] Simone Collins: Yeah, it’s, it’s exogenous priming.

[00:13:28] You don’t, you don’t have to do it yourself, you know.

[00:13:32] Malcolm Collins: The other thing that’s fairly good about this content is that women who read it read it very frequently. And you might be like, “Wait, why is that a good thing?” Well, what it means is if they’re reading it frequently there are not as much... So just to go over the statistics here, 10% of women read it daily 25% read it several times a week, 8% read it once a, a week, 18% two to three times a month, 17% once a month, and 23% less than once a month.

[00:14:01] So it’s- Hm ... only u- under a quarter of women are, who, who read this stuff, and, and a lot of women read this stuff, are reading it less than once a month.

[00:14:10] Simone Collins: That’s kind of insane.

[00:14:12] Malcolm Collins: But what that means, you read, listen to more than one a month, Simone.

[00:14:15] Simone Collins: No, no, no, I’m, I’m, I’m surprised by just how many do, though.

[00:14:19] ‘Cause I also thought no one read. So.

[00:14:21] Malcolm Collins: Well, you would count as reading. You listen to them.

[00:14:24] Simone Collins: No, I know. No, but, but what I’m saying is it’s, in a world where basically no one reads books, the fact that this many women are reading romance novels is humbling.

[00:14:35] Malcolm Collins: And in a s- a study that Gotlay did in 2026, 85%

[00:14:41] Simone Collins: read-

[00:14:42] Malcolm Collins: Gotlaid?

[00:14:42] It’s just... No, it’s the name. It’s of somebody, Gotlay or something. It’s some Spanish-

[00:14:46] Simone Collins: Okay. Okay ... word. All right, never mind.

[00:14:48] Malcolm Collins: Okay. 85% read smut regularly, 31% spend over 10 hours per week reading explicit romance. 31% of women spending over 10 hours a week. 36% have been reading explicit romance for over a decade, and 99% had read smut at least once.

[00:15:06] 99% of women. This is one of those things- That’s a lot ... like when they did the, the survey on men where they were trying to find out how men who had never consumed porn performed on a particular task. Mm-hmm. And they ended up having to abandon the survey because they couldn’t find any men who fell into that category or enough men who fell into that category to do the study.

[00:15:23] With women it’s the same. It’s 99%, guys. 99%. Also, women, if you’re into this, get on RFAB. We have some really good engines for this stuff. Don’t, don’t just have it be the boys over there, okay? RFAB.ai, the best gooning engine on the internet. But I wanna, I wanna go into this a bit more and talk about how it could change society and how it’s becoming more popular.

[00:15:45] Right now you have 51 million romance books are sold in the United States every year. Oxum Storm, which we’ll get to, ‘cause I also wanna go over the plots of the, the big ones right now. Yeah. Has sold well over half a million in its opening week in 2025. The [00:16:00] Zodiac Academy sold 2.8 million copies.

[00:16:05] Zodiac Academy. And Fifty Shades of Grey sold, grossed, the, the film trilogy grossed 1.7 trillion oh, sorry, billion at the box office.

[00:16:11] Simone Collins: Oh, like a lifetime ago. I don’t know.

[00:16:13] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:16:15] Simone Collins: But Zodiac Academy, oh my God, women are super into zodiac stuff, so that’s smart.

[00:16:20] Malcolm Collins: That’s smart. Okay. Yeah. So, d- do you wanna go over some of the plots to this or talk more?

[00:16:25] Simone Collins: Yes, obviously. What is Zodiac... Are, are people... Oh my God, are they put into, like, houses of associated with their, their s- their zodiac sign? Wait, no, it’s like Hunger Games and they all have to fight each other, but it’s sexy. It’s... No, just tell me. Just tell me.

[00:16:43] Malcolm Collins: Well, we’ll get to that one next ‘cause it wasn’t in my initial...

[00:16:45] I, I did the top five this year.

[00:16:48] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:16:48] Malcolm Collins: Okay. So apparently that didn’t make it into the top five this year somehow.

[00:16:51] All right, one the Empyrean series, okay? Ooh. This is like Fourth Wing, Iron Flame, and Onyx Storm that we were talking about earlier. In terms of, like, the broad plot of it, a fragile young woman is forced- Oh ... into a brutal dungeon rider war college. Deadly training, political betrayal, war against dark magic users, intensely bonded romance with a powerful, secretive, morally gray rider.

[00:17:19] So let’s talk about the, the themes in this book. The hero, Xaden. Xaden is his actual name spelled with an X.

[00:17:28] Simone Collins: God,

[00:17:29] Malcolm Collins: no. That’s, that, that’s the

[00:17:30] Simone Collins: name. No, no, no, no, no.

[00:17:30] Malcolm Collins: Sorry, the reason I was gonna say it’s good that women consume a lot of these is when women consume a lot, the biggest risk from these is that they begin to form a romantic or emotional attachment to one of the male leads- Oh

[00:17:41] to the opposition of your relationship.

[00:17:43] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, either

[00:17:44] Malcolm Collins: they’re gonna replace you. If they are going through them so quickly that they can’t form a romantic attachment to one of the leads- Yeah ... or they have sort of a diluted attachment to so many leads- Yeah ... that then you don’t have as much of a problem with that.

[00:17:57] Simone Collins: But- Well, the way it is in some series, it- they’ll, like, switch the main love interest from one book to the next.

[00:18:03] Malcolm Collins: Oh, you were talking about that.

[00:18:04] Simone Collins: Yeah ...

[00:18:05] Malcolm Collins: where it’s a new love interest.

[00:18:05] Simone Collins: One thing else we found when I was looking at book reviews of these for a different episode we did, I can’t remember which, is that when women wrote book reviews, they would just literally put in basically the female fetishes that were associated with the book Like age gap lovers t- or enemies to lovers, et cetera.

[00:18:25] Like, that all the dynamics that were specific turn-ons which is Notable. I mean, there’s no lying, I think, in the community about what this is. Mm-hmm. We all know what this is about. No one’s being like, “I’m reading literature.” They are very open about it, which is great.

[00:18:45] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Al- also, I should note if it wasn’t clear, I still think engaging with this material is sinful.

[00:18:49] I just don’t think it’s particularly more sinful than any other form of entertainment you can engage is that’s, that’s purely, like, in- Yeah,

[00:18:56] Simone Collins: we’re saying if you want to waste your time with non-procreative sex, which we also say is sinful, having your girlfriend or wife consume this is not a bad thing based on your stupid hedonic interests.

[00:19:10] Yeah,

[00:19:10] Malcolm Collins: it’s a- But it’s still wrong ... it’s not, it’s not particularly worse than watching a football game, right? Yeah. Like- Yeah ... which is incredibly selfish and bad and can lead to betting behavior and has all sorts of, like, the, like, football is probably worse because you have to do it at specific times, and it has the risk of getting you addicted to gambling.

[00:19:25] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:25] Malcolm Collins: But anyway w- w- and, and, and gambling is, I think, one of the most sinful things you can do simply because of how much it can destroy your life, how quickly it can destroy your life. Like, drugs take weeks to destroy your life. We talk about this in another one. Like, even if you take heroin, you still have a ch- you know, maybe whatever, but with gambling, you can, like, leverage everything you might ever own and everything that any one of your family members will ever own in one minute.

[00:19:59] You, you can put yourself [00:20:00] in generational debt in a minute. Yeah.

[00:20:03] Simone Collins: Don’t do it. Mm-mm. No.

[00:20:05] Malcolm Collins: And historically, and maybe in the future, that means selling off your kids and stuff like that, you know, b- based on this. Y- you’re making it even worse, but okay.

[00:20:12] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:20:12] Malcolm Collins: Or yourself. You know, a lot of people ended up in slavery from that in, like, Rome and stuff.

[00:20:16] Simone Collins: Oh, yeah.

[00:20:16] Malcolm Collins: So the, the male hero, Xaden, is significantly older and more powerful and physically dominant. The heroine starts as physically weaker and lower status. Smex is frequent, graphic, and often rough.

[00:20:30] Simone Collins: Oh.

[00:20:31] Malcolm Collins: Scenes regularly feature him pinning her, holding her down, controlling the pace, and using explicit language about owning her body.

[00:20:40] Now note here, I, I, I wanna be, this is what women get really excited about.

[00:20:45] Simone Collins: Yeah, totally. Like,

[00:20:45] Malcolm Collins: guys, be aware of this, right? Like- In the right context. Now, note here other very important

[00:20:52] Simone Collins: caveats Yeah, the right context. You’re hot and rich and powerful. The right context.

[00:20:57] Malcolm Collins: You want a woman in your life, and I’ve said this before and I’m gonna say it again, luring a woman into your life as a long-term partner by being maximally sexy is a very bad idea.

[00:21:10] Mm, yeah. The reason why it’s a bad idea is the type of woman who marries someone because she found them sexy is typically not who you wanna be marrying. The woman who goes home with the guy from a bar because she found him sexy above all the other reasons she might be interested or want from her life typically not the, the bait you wanna be using to catch a life partner.

[00:21:28] Simone Collins: Yeah, is

[00:21:28] Malcolm Collins: this the kind

[00:21:29] Simone Collins: of diligence you want when you, you want your female partner to, like, do other things, help you with other things? This

[00:21:35] Malcolm Collins: is about g- getting good at being sexy and sexual knowledge and stuff like that is important for pleasing a partner that you have secured through other means, right?

[00:21:46] That, that is where the pleasing the partner part comes in, is it- it- it’s- Yeah ... it’s securing the partner through getting them interested in spending a lifetime with you and not having sex with you. And note here when I talk about spending a lifetime with you, this is really critically important.

[00:22:03] I’ve mentioned, I’ve mentioned this before. I’ll mention it again. Women primarily what they w- look for in a long-term partner is like a journey that they can join or a struggle that they can join. They want to join the hero’s party. And what I want to be clear here, ‘cause I think a lot of people hear this and they’re like, “Yeah, but how do I be the hero in this world that we live in without wars or battles or quests or adventures or anything like that?

[00:22:28] You know, not everyone can go out and do what you’re doing, Malcolm, or whatever,” right? Or it might be clear to somebody how I serve that function for girls. I think a very good anime for understanding this, ‘cause I was reflecting on it-

[00:22:39] Simone Collins: Yeah ...

[00:22:39] Malcolm Collins: recently, is Spice and Wolf. You, you remember Spice and Wolf, right?

[00:22:43] Yeah. Where the male protagonist is a merchant, a town to town merchant, and the female protagonist and it’s a, a romance to the side, is a a god, a literal god. And yet at no point in watching Spice and Wolf are you at all confused why these two would be in a relationship with each other or why the literal god falls in love with and wants to spend her life with the male merchant.

[00:23:11] And it’s because he’s not just a merchant dir- as like a day job or something like that. He, he makes it his quest.

[00:23:20] Simone Collins: He makes- Yeah, this is an anime about economics.

[00:23:23] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the, the anime is predominantly about economics. It’s an anime that I can universally recommend. It does have nudity scenes in it, I guess, so it might be a problem for some people with kids.

[00:23:33] Nudity of a furry because the- ... the female is a, a fox deity. Or no, a wolf deity. I,

[00:23:39] Simone Collins: I- Nudity of, of a furry.

[00:23:42] Malcolm Collins: But who the cares about that anymore, right? You

[00:23:45] Simone Collins: know. Look, kids- Don’t seem to care a lot about nudity, for

[00:23:49] Malcolm Collins: what it’s

[00:23:49] Simone Collins: worth.

[00:23:50] Malcolm Collins: It, but it’s, it’s a, it’s, it’s about economic sort of like mysteries and challenges and battles is- Mm-hmm

[00:23:55] is sort of the, the thesis of it.

[00:23:57] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:23:57] Malcolm Collins: And watch the first one, not the [00:24:00] remake.

[00:24:00] Simone Collins: I didn’t know there was a remake ...

[00:24:01] Malcolm Collins: I still haven’t seen the remake so I don’t know if it’s good or not, but I know the first one- Okay ... is spectacular. So- Yeah, yeah,

[00:24:05] Simone Collins: yeah ...

[00:24:06] Malcolm Collins: the reason I, I use this as an avatar for this is being a guy and having an adventure that a woman wants to join does not mean that the adventure has to be the grandest thing in the world.

[00:24:17] You can make anything the grandest of adventures in regards to how you relate to it, right? Hmm. And this anime shows that very, very well. Yeah. To the extent where I think even me just me talking about it, people have watched it, they’re like, “Oh yeah, I did never question why a literal god wanted to date and spend her life with a...”

[00:24:38] He’s not depicted as a particularly rich merchant. He’s not depicted as a particularly powerful merchant. If anything, sort of the opposite. But you never question it. You’re like, “Oh yeah, of course, that would be really sexy.” Okay, ne- next one here. But the, the but you wanna maximally please your...

[00:24:53] The owning the person’s body, that’s good pillow talk, okay? Now you wanna talk things through with your partner and stuff like that as well, but you know, knowing, knowing their stuff and being able to be like, “Hey, is this sort of stuff your stuff? Is this sort of stuff your stuff?” Or even just looking at what they’re reading, right?

[00:25:08] Simone Collins: Yeah. Or- Or having ta... Look, I think women love talking about them, and you can kind of... They will tell you what they’re into in the commentary or editorializing they do on the book they’re reading. Just ask them- Yes ... to tell you about the book. Ask them to tell you about the- You don’t have to ask them what they’re into.

[00:25:27] Just be like, “Oh, what are you reading? Tell me about it. I, I heard it was a good book.” And then they’ll go off.

[00:25:33] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, it’s just like, and guys it is, like we, this is like a blessing that’s given to guys that they do not exploit.

[00:25:41] Simone Collins: For real.

[00:25:41] Malcolm Collins: Like-

[00:25:42] Simone Collins: Yeah ...

[00:25:42] Malcolm Collins: guys don’t walk around carrying their, you know, turn-ons in a little package under their, their, their hand.

[00:25:49] Mm. And also I’ll note here, if you, because there’s been a big change in the way these books are marketed a lot of guys might be like, “But my wife doesn’t read stuff like that, you know?” “She just likes fantasy books,” my brother in Christ.

[00:26:01] Simone Collins: Oh, fantasy books. Yes.

[00:26:04] Malcolm Collins: Fantasy books. “She just likes romance.”

[00:26:06] Mm-hmm ... so what’s important to note is the Fabio buff guy on the cover books of our childhoods that sort of are the cartoon version in our heads of what romance books look like is not what any of these bestsellers look like. They’re typically like abstract very sort of like- Patterned

[00:26:26] Simone Collins: titles.

[00:26:26] Yeah ...

[00:26:27] Malcolm Collins: h- h- like maybe a skull or like, with like a rose growing in it. Or Simone’s favorite that she walked by was just a money clip. She’s like-

[00:26:36] Simone Collins: That was perfect. That, that is the best book cover- They just got

[00:26:39] Malcolm Collins: straight to the

[00:26:39] Simone Collins: point with that one ... I’ve ever seen. Yeah.

[00:26:40] Malcolm Collins: Or like, you know, geometric shapes and sort of an artistic pattern that looks sort of vague.

[00:26:45] The

[00:26:45] Simone Collins: money clip is the same. It’s that, it’s the, that anime face. That is the money clip, but for a woman.

[00:26:51] Malcolm Collins: It’s the, it’s the anime face or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Gotta, gotta put one here for reference- ...

[00:26:58] of a, a Puritan woman doing it. I, I love that I do that- Oh, God ... with this show, with the

[00:27:02] Simone Collins: anime Puritan woman.

[00:27:04] You are... Whatever. What are we gonna do with you?

[00:27:09] Malcolm Collins: So many scenes happen when they are injured, exhausted, or in high danger situations, so the arousal is mixed with adrenaline and emotional intensity. That sounds you know, like probably not the best use of your time in those sorts of situations.

[00:27:22] Simone Collins: Yeah, if you’re trying to survive. Also, like, women aren’t so turned on when they’re tired. Can, can say that much.

[00:27:29] Malcolm Collins: Their relationship has a clear dominant/submissive sexual texture, even when the characters are emotionally equal partners. He leads, she yields and enjoys yielding. Mm-hmm. We talked a bit about this one, A Court of Thorns and Roses.

[00:27:43] Simone Collins: Yeah, we talked about that already.

[00:27:44] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. But just to go over what happens in it. Multiple-

[00:27:47] Simone Collins: Well, not a lot of sex, I can tell you that much ...

[00:27:51] Malcolm Collins: multiple powerful fae males are physically and magically far stronger than the heroine. Smex scenes are long, detailed, and [00:28:00] often aggressive.

[00:28:01] Simone Collins: Common- Not from my memory.

[00:28:03] Okay. Aggressive? No. It’s just, u- unless I’m misremembering the book series, it’s just dudes going down on her, which is super not my thing.

[00:28:13] Malcolm Collins: So I don’t- Common elements, the male’s losing control, pinning the female against the walls or surfaces.

[00:28:18] Simone Collins: Oh.

[00:28:19] Malcolm Collins: Hair pulling- Just, just- ... biting, and very explicit depictions of organs.

[00:28:25] Simone Collins: Oh, yeah, this was different. Yeah, right, this was the other one. Sorry, I’m thinking of a different... They’re all like- Yeah, this is the one- The titles are all the freaking same.

[00:28:32] Malcolm Collins: You get very annoyed with organ descriptions.

[00:28:35] Simone Collins: I, well, especially if it’s female body parts. That’s not my, that’s not my game. Like, ladies, stop.

[00:28:44] Just we’re not-

[00:28:44] Malcolm Collins: I think a lot of women feel this way. We were talking on the Leaflet stream, and she says she’s the exact same way. Like, she-

[00:28:49] Simone Collins: Yeah, dude ...

[00:28:50] Malcolm Collins: like, the female body shape, she’s like, “Yeah, f- fine. It looks good.” Leave it. But, like, the organ- Yeah,

[00:28:53] Simone Collins: no ... mm-hmm. The shape is great. Leave the... Look, we don’t need Alien-style slime, slime puppets, okay?

[00:29:01] We don’t it’s not not my thing. Anyway, moving on.

[00:29:06] Malcolm Collins: Sl- so strong mate, fated ownership theme. Once the bond snaps, the smex becomes even more possessive and frequent. The male often talks about needing to be inside of her, claiming her, and filling her. Now this is important to note because if you’re a guy and you’re thinking you’re in a marriage, you’re like, “What, what do women like?”

[00:29:26] Knowing th- this stuff, because a lot of people in our wider community, they get, what’s the word I’m looking for here? Pilled by what’s her name? We’ve talked with her a few times, a British lady.

[00:29:40] And doesn’t like sex. But like all of the British female-

[00:29:42] Simone Collins: Doesn’t like porn. Doesn’t like porn,

[00:29:45] Malcolm Collins: I’m sure. No, no, no, no. She, she thinks that, like, the only reason why, like, slapping and choking or whatever are, like, in the, in the public are because of men.

[00:29:53] Simone Collins: Okay, well, that- like- ... maybe she hasn’t explored her sexuality or maybe she’s one of the very few women out there who isn’t primarily oriented around power dynamics.

[00:30:02] But, ah, I had her name in my head for a... Louise Perry. There we go.

[00:30:06] Malcolm Collins: Louise Perry, yes. But-

[00:30:07] Simone Collins: It came in, it came in. All right ...

[00:30:09] Malcolm Collins: and then there’s the other one. Who’s the other one who, who’s often complaining about this stuff? It’s like every female, white female from the UK is convinced that women are not into this stuff.

[00:30:17] Simone Collins: Look- ... it’s, yeah, something about repressed sexuality in the UK.

[00:30:22] Malcolm Collins: But, but the problem is, is that repressed sexuality leads to either wives who are dissatisfied- Yeah ... or husbands who are dissatisfied and they end up strapping boobs to themselves and getting caught mo- w***e-whoring. Neither of that happened- Well, but

[00:30:37] Simone Collins: that was America.

[00:30:38] That was America, okay?

[00:30:40] Malcolm Collins: But- Yeah, but it was clearly a couple that was unable to talk about their sexual patterns- Yeah ... because the wife thought he was gay.

[00:30:45] Simone Collins: Not good. Yeah.

[00:30:46] And he very- And don’t, don’t repress your... Yeah, ‘cause then it can also lead to ac- yeah, lead to acting out. You don’t want that. No one wants that.

[00:30:52] You know how I knew that the female gooner movement has reached the stra- the stratosphere?

[00:30:58] Malcolm Collins: How?

[00:30:59] Simone Collins: The movie Wicker. We, we’ve gone from very, very popular books to now mainstream big movies with, like, lead, like, famous leading actors. So Wicker the preview for this movie just came out stars Alexander Skarsgard, Peter Dinklage, and Olivia Coleman.

[00:31:19] I love Olivia Coleman. I mean, everyone knows Peter Dinklage from Elf, from Game of Thrones, from, like, everything he’s in. And women really like Alexander Skarsgard at least. And

[00:31:30] Here, you have it? Okay, good. Watch it

[00:31:33] Speaker: Oh. Um, oh.

[00:31:37] Speaker 6: Love seems more a burden than a prize.

[00:31:48] Speaker 2: I heard that he’s strong as a tree and just as hard

[00:31:53] Speaker 10: Is wicca Straighten me right out.

[00:31:59] Speaker 9: [00:32:00] You are the reason I live and breathe.

[00:32:03] Speaker 10: It’s not natural. Men are not like that.

[00:32:06] Speaker 2: F**k

[00:32:06] Speaker 9: off. F**k off.

[00:32:07] Speaker 11: Yeah, f**k off.

[00:32:08] Speaker 12: I’ll be fixing the bed this afternoon

[00:32:15] It broke again.

[00:32:18] Simone Collins: Your face. What? What? What? So you can see we’ve reached mainstream. No, you, you, you haven’t read these books. You don’t understand what women are reading about-

[00:32:32] Malcolm Collins: Did you read those books? ...

[00:32:33] Simone Collins: in these books. I d- I don’t know if this was a book, but let me read you some of the top comments. We’ve got, “So it’s erotic scarecrow story.”

[00:32:42] And someone else said, “My monster romance lover heart is screaming with joy right now.” Someone else said, “Can someone make an Alexander Skarsgard for me?” Someone says, “This looks so weird. I’m so excited.” Someone else said, “The fan fiction is about to be lit.” Someone else commented- ... “So many jealousy guys in here, LMAO.”

[00:33:01] And this is probably referring to dudes comments like, “How down bad you gotta be to want to get cracked a literally talking basket?” I, I think he meant to say cracked by. Someone said, “50 Shades of Hay,” which- 50 Shades of Hay ...

[00:33:15] Malcolm Collins: good. That’s a good

[00:33:16] Simone Collins: one. “This will hold me over until Bridgerton comes back.”

[00:33:19] That’s a big Netflix thing that we all love if we’re ladies. Someone says- But I, I,

[00:33:22] Malcolm Collins: I also think from this, what’s important to note is when I’m talking about these different books and these different profiles- ... I’m merely talking about one of the dominant profiles. Mm-hmm. You can tell that with this woman, right, what she was clearly into or, like, the arousal profile is not domination in this one.

[00:33:41] In this one, it’s being really obsessed with your partner. Mm-hmm. And deeply wanting to please your partner. Mm-hmm. That is the arousal profile being checked here.

[00:33:50] Simone Collins: Look, with men and with women, and this is kind of like the sad, boring thing about sex, ‘cause I wish it were more interesting than this.

[00:33:57] But when you look at most erotic material online, I’m not saying the niche stuff because that’s more interesting to look at. See, it might get a little bit more attention. But when you look at... And Ayla’s research backs this up completely. What people love is a partner, male or female, who just needs you so bad and, like, has to have

[00:34:19] Malcolm Collins: you I also wanna point out that this guy is a slave.

[00:34:22] Simone Collins: Look, okay? Like,

[00:34:25] Malcolm Collins: y-

[00:34:25] Simone Collins: You know, The,

[00:34:26] Malcolm Collins: the, the woman went and bought a, a sentient hominid to be her smex slave.

[00:34:34] Simone Collins: A t- he’s a wicker. He’s a sentient basket, okay? Also, Alexander Skarsgard, that was all practical effects. He wore a wicker costume for that movie.

[00:34:46] Malcolm Collins: It looks really

[00:34:47] Simone Collins: good. This poor man. No, it’s really well done.

[00:34:48] I’m so glad to see more practical effects coming back. Like, don’t bring back the slimy puppets. I’m so done with the ‘80s, but I’m ready for, like-

[00:34:56] Malcolm Collins: Slimy puppets. In the ‘80s, someone found out they can put slime on a puppet-

[00:34:59] Simone Collins: And they were like- ...

[00:35:00] Malcolm Collins: and the film industry afterwards was just like, “Yeah, we got it for the next decade and a half.”

[00:35:06] They

[00:35:06] Simone Collins: were like- For sure. Like, you can see someone with their, their power shoulders in the ‘80s board, boardroom, being like, “Two words, gentlemen, slimy puppets.” Puppets. That

[00:35:14] Malcolm Collins: was it. That was it. Next one here, The Hunting of Adeline. Oh, okay. The core dynamic, an extreme stalker obsession- Oh ... plus non-consensual to consensual progression.

[00:35:26] Ugh. Dark power exchange. The hero is violent, obsessive stalker who watches the heroine, breaks into her home and initiates, well, SA, basically- Yeah, it sounds like he- ... without clear

[00:35:38] Simone Collins: consent ... surprise un-fun sex with her.

[00:35:39] Malcolm Collins: Early scenes contain explicit non-consent forced elements. She is restrained, overpowered, and taken while protesting.

[00:35:46] These scenes are written as highly arousing for the hero and- Mm-hmm ... eventually for the heroine as well, and obviously the reader, because it’s a bestseller. Wow ... later the dynamic shifts to an intense consensual, [00:36:00] a rough stuff, restraint, degradation- Oh, boy ... and possessiveness- Ugh ... remains extreme still.

[00:36:05] Simone Collins: I don’t like the messages this sends. It’s like, look, just stalk her, surprise sex her against her consent, and then, like, she’ll realize just how amazing you are.

[00:36:15] Malcolm Collins: Heavy focus on the psychological intensity of being hunted and claimed which- Great ... a lot of women are into that. Yes. The Dark Mafia. That, you know, oh-

[00:36:24] Simone Collins: The dark...

[00:36:24] No, mafia’s big in all this stuff. You can also see, like, mafia tropes show up a lot in the female, more female-centric AI chat platforms, too.

[00:36:33] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you tried that with your first not safe for work AI chat.

[00:36:36] Simone Collins: Look, I’ve done so, I have done so many NSFW AI, AI scenarios, and- I think it goes to show how, like, both autistic and/or asexual I am because I’ve never encountered a sexual scenario once in any of these, and I’m going straight to the NSFW ones, and I keep going like, “When’s the sex gonna happen?”

[00:36:58] Like, I don’t know, man. It doesn’t happen. Hm. I don’t know. What am I doing wrong? Anyway.

[00:37:06] Malcolm Collins: There’s a lot of ownership, like you’re mine that, that sort of stuff.

[00:37:10] Simone Collins: Yeah ...

[00:37:11] Malcolm Collins: the heroine is forced into marriage. Oh ... you know, it, it, it, it, again, coercion it, with it eventually becoming addictive.

[00:37:19] Simone Collins: Of course.

[00:37:20] Malcolm Collins: Right.

[00:37:20] But,

[00:37:20] Simone Collins: Like we’ve pointed out that arranged marriages typically last long, you know?

[00:37:24] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I think the, the what guys fundamentally miss, or the, the biggest thing that guys miss, or you’re fusing. One is, is getting sucked in by this Louise Perry nonsense, okay? Like learn what your woman is actually into.

[00:37:35] Simone Collins: Exes. Or yeah, that, that porn is damaging is very annoying.

[00:37:38] Malcolm Collins: Well or especially that like female gooner stuff is like why all of these kinks exist, when we see them all the way back to the 1800s.

[00:37:45] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:37:45] Malcolm Collins: Y- like, like BDSM is literally traditionally called the English vice, right? Like-

[00:37:50] Simone Collins: Also, like men, from my understanding just aren’t that...

[00:37:54] Most men are not that into it. When, when you, again, when you look at the most popular erotic content the men have. And also now I, I, you know- Oh,

[00:38:02] Malcolm Collins: God, and we might just do a whole episode on this ‘cause it’s been really interesting. So for the last few weeks Simone has been designing and running at scale erotic ads for our website.

[00:38:12] Simone Collins: Yeah. And- And it’s so disappointing which ads perform best. And it’s just-

[00:38:15] Malcolm Collins: Through doing that- ...

[00:38:16] Simone Collins: men being approached by very comfortable and very enthusiastic basically close friends. Men don’t wanna like hunt someone. That’s work. They don’t wanna tie them up. It’s like their roommate or- That’s work.

[00:38:26] Hunting, learn knots. I don’t wanna buy rope. What are you talking about? Who’s time for that? They wanna sit. Literally right now our most popular ad by like millions, it, it is insane how well this, this... And it’s two versions of the same ad. I’m so disappointed, is the horny roommate, you know, you’re, you’re the dude sitting on the couch watching a soccer game.

[00:38:46] Horny roommate comes in and is like, “Roomie, I’m horny.” She’s wearing, she’s not wearing lingerie. Of course she’s not wearing, that’s for women. Women wear lingerie for themselves. No, she’s wearing a sweatshirt and panties. And then she sits on your lap and she’s like, “Oh.” And she takes off her shirt and of course she is lovely.

[00:39:00] I

[00:39:00] Malcolm Collins: like it that you know the male mind. I know the male, yes. A sweatshirt and panties being so much better than lingerie in the male

[00:39:07] Simone Collins: mind. They just want women comfort- they just want women comfortable. They just want women into them and comfortable.

[00:39:11] Speaker 13: . I’m more turned on by women in pajamas than lingerie. I just wanna know they feel comfortable.

[00:39:15] Simone Collins: And frankly- And

[00:39:16] Malcolm Collins: meanwhile women want a, a basket.

[00:39:19] That just...

[00:39:23] Yep. Mm-hmm. But the thing is, is- Sorry. In a, in a relationship, one, one of the other reasons I’m pro a lot of this content is- Mm-hmm ... is I think it’s an enormous waste of time if you focus on both the male and female making sure they’re filling all of their partner’s needs within these categories. But I think just because you’re not filling all of your partner’s needs in these categories doesn’t mean that they should be going to something outside the relationship for them.

[00:39:50] Like that’s, that’s what a lot of other people say. Like, “Oh, then you should go outside the relationship,” or, “Your partner should literally be your flashlight.” Like, that’s like the two options, right? And it’s like how about neither? [00:40:00]

[00:40:00] Simone Collins: Yeah. For real. Like do you really need this?

[00:40:06] Malcolm Collins: And w- a fun thing here is if you take our interpretation of the Adam and Eve story-

[00:40:13] Simone Collins: Mm ...

[00:40:14] Malcolm Collins: where we point out that it is not a sin to be nude in front of your wife in the outdoors where only God can see you. Like nowhere is that a sin, anywhere is that a sin. And, and that, you know, Adam clothes himself ‘cause he thinks it.

[00:40:27] So he’s like, oh, you know. That shows that like knowledge of good and evil means knowledge of good and evil in opposition to God, like him deciding eating the apple was good even though God told him- Mm-hmm ... it wasn’t good.

[00:40:36] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:40:38] Malcolm Collins: G- his reaction to that is the second sin. So, or, or not the second sin, but, but really tied to original sin.

[00:40:45] Yeah. So to make up sexual prohibitions that have nothing, no correlate in the Bible and are strictly deleterious to people’s lives to do that is literally like to participate in original sin. To participate in that thing that Adam did the moment-

[00:41:03] Simone Collins: Sorry, wait, to wear clothes around your wife?

[00:41:06] Malcolm Collins: No.

[00:41:07] S- the, the, the first thing that Adam did that sort of compounded the original sin was to attempt to clothe himself even though he was only naked in front of his wife and God, right? Like-

[00:41:18] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:41:18] Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm ... and so that’s inventing a sexual prohibition just because you personally feel uncomfortable about something.

[00:41:25] Simone Collins: Oh, that’s sinful. Okay, okay. Yeah, thanks, sorry.

[00:41:28] Malcolm Collins: W- which is interesting to me that these sorts of prohibitions are so tied up in original sin.

[00:41:33] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:41:33] Malcolm Collins: Inventing-

[00:41:34] Simone Collins: Oh, I love that ... prohibitions. Oh, man. We need to, we need to pull that on these people more. Sorry, I’m gonna have to file that away in my terrible memory.

[00:41:42] Now,

[00:41:42] Malcolm Collins: obviously we invent prohibitions where it ends up helping people, but in this sort of a category you know, most men are never gonna be billionaires, so how is your wife gonna get off to the billionaire... Most men are never gonna be werewolves either, or vampires.

[00:41:54] Simone Collins: Damn.

[00:41:55] Malcolm Collins: Damn.

[00:41:56] Simone Collins: Oh, no. Look, though, you can go, a lot of dentists, like actual cosmetic dentists, will put on vampire canines.

[00:42:04] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, really

[00:42:05] Simone Collins: nice vampire canines. I, I would be... You know what? Like, when our whole family gets older, and if we have a lot of money someday, I just want all of us to suddenly, like all of us, the kids, you know, like, the, the teens, of course, with consent, but, like, and us too, to all have vampire teeth.

[00:42:17] Malcolm Collins: Do, do vampire teeth?

[00:42:18] I’d

[00:42:19] Simone Collins: be totally for that. Come on, like the whole family. What a great look that would be.

[00:42:21] Malcolm Collins: Vampire teeth are hot. I can say vampire

[00:42:24] Simone Collins: teeth are hot. No, no, I think, no, I think vampire teeth always look good regardless of i- if you’re into vampires or not. I think they just give you kind of an extra edge. I think they make a smile look really good.

[00:42:32] I know that they annoy dentists and stuff. Yeah, you don’t make them

[00:42:34] Malcolm Collins: comically big. You just do the subtle

[00:42:36] Simone Collins: kind. No, no, no, they’re subtle. Trust me, they’re subtle. I think, was it Strange Aeons who got them or something? I definitely saw someone get them, and it looked really good, and I was like, “Oh my God,” like, “I need to find a dentist around here to do this for me.”

[00:42:47] But Malcolm, please, let this be push present for kid number whatever, okay? We all- Ugh ... get vampire teeth. Well, obviously with our kids’ consent, you know? They, no one has to do it if they don’t want to. But c- what kid is not gonna want permanent vampire teeth?

[00:43:03] Malcolm Collins: They clean up with the women, I’ll tell you what

[00:43:05] Simone Collins: I’m telling you, right?

[00:43:06] Like oh my God, I’m so excited for this. Please tell me we’re gonna do this. Oh, the, the vampire family.

[00:43:14] Malcolm Collins: The, that’d be such a thing. Yes It’d be like a I, I d- w- that’d be one of the first things I’d genetically engineer once we can genetically engineer- Oh ... Collinses.

[00:43:22] Simone Collins: You wouldn’t need to because I had incredibly sharp canines.

[00:43:25] They just shaved them down.

[00:43:26] Malcolm Collins: Okay, they

[00:43:27] Simone Collins: Without my consent, by the way. God.

[00:43:30] Malcolm Collins: So

[00:43:30] Simone Collins: anyway- One of the most traumatic events of my childhood

[00:43:33] Malcolm Collins: But so, yeah, d- that’s the joke about us. Joe Rogan says I’m secretly a vampire on, on the show. They had the crash out about that. You- It’s- ... not about... That’s like Deep Collins where Vi Leaflet always makes us vampires in her videos.

[00:43:44] You know?

[00:43:46] Simone Collins: It’s, no, you gotta... Malcolm, please, we’re just doing this. Never mind. I, I, we’re, I’m gonna, I’ll just, I’ll just book us one day with, with the kids’ consent, obviously. Not your consent. You don’t, you don’t get to... Y- you’re just gonna do this. I don’t care if you, [00:44:00] I don’t care if you care ‘cause you’ll look really good, Malcolm.

[00:44:05] Malcolm Collins: Mm. Oh, the, the, the one that we were talking about, Zodiac Academy, Yeah ... extreme bully romance, enemies to lovers, very prolonged. The early books feature heavy bullying, public humiliation, physical violence, magical attacks, stripping, hair cutting forced exposure of, of fears, and sexual harassment.

[00:44:23] Oh, I

[00:44:23] Simone Collins: feel like I might have read this one, actually. Oh, God, I’m sorry.

[00:44:26] Malcolm Collins: The same men who degraded and controlled the heroines eventually become the ones they have intense blank with.

[00:44:33] Simone Collins: Oh, heroines? Okay, then I haven’t read that one. There’s only one... Never mind. I’m not gonna-

[00:44:37] Malcolm Collins: And they have a reverse harem.

[00:44:38] Both of the twins- Reverse ... end up with multiple high status male characters rather than choosing one. Oh, it’s

[00:44:43] Simone Collins: Gemini. Oh, they’re Gemini, how cute. Do they end up with other Gemini boys? That’d be so cute. Oh my God, twin

[00:44:50] Malcolm Collins: Strong power imbalance. The males... Well, you talked about one you were reading recently that was horny that was, or maybe I watched somebody else, that was about the lost boys.

[00:45:01] Simone Collins: No, I haven’t heard about this. It’s

[00:45:02] Malcolm Collins: like a Peter Pan fan work.

[00:45:03] Simone Collins: I was telling you about Peter Pan the other day, but it wasn’t horny.

[00:45:08] Malcolm Collins: But apparently she, like, got passed around- I was telling you- ... a- among the, the lost boys

[00:45:14] Simone Collins: What? No. Ew, no. Look, Wendy was- They’re all aged up

[00:45:17] Malcolm Collins: in

[00:45:17] Simone Collins: this one ... Wendy was very chaste.

[00:45:19] It’s Tinker Bell who’s the obvious slut. Like, she literally, Tinker Bell wanted to kill, and almost effectively killed Wendy by getting the lost b- the, the lost boys to sh- shoot her with an arrow when she came in to Never Never Land, ‘cause she needed Peter’s giant you know what in her-

[00:45:39] Malcolm Collins: She was thirsty as hell.

[00:45:40] Simone Collins: Yes, she was. Sh- murderously thirsty. That’s,

[00:45:45] Malcolm Collins: Disney used to teach us important lessons, guys.

[00:45:47] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:45:51] Malcolm Collins: Which is small chicks

[00:45:53] Simone Collins: are murderously thirsty. But wasn’t that was J.M. Barrie? Disney, I don’t think Disney... I don’t know if Disney included that part in the movie, but J.M. Barrie definitely did. She’s like, “It’s the Wendy bird, shoot the Wendy bird.”

[00:46:02] And they all shot the Wendy bird. They were so excited.

[00:46:06] Malcolm Collins: Oh, my God.

[00:46:07] Simone Collins: Or maybe it was just Tootles who shot her. Anyway, let’s,

[00:46:09] Malcolm Collins: Wrap it up. That’s what she said. Wrap it... You’re such a twat.

[00:46:17] Simone Collins: Mm, I know.

[00:46:19] Malcolm Collins: We actually, I, yeah, I’ve talked to some members of the community whose parents tried this, like, e- extremely, like, no P-I- Vampire teeth? No, no PIV sex until marriage, but, like, corn is totally okay.

[00:46:30] Simone Collins: Oh,

[00:46:30] Malcolm Collins: yeah. And, ‘cause I wanted to see, like, what happened in the, in the religious families that, that- Mm-hmm

[00:46:34] went with this angle. And like, all of them are married and have kids.

[00:46:36] Simone Collins: No, I, I think that that’s the way to go. I think I, I am surprisingly to, I guess my past, I guess I never Sex before, sex outside of marriage does not make sense. It just, it, it has hurt dating markets, it doesn’t help people, it’s not super fun.

[00:46:54] Yeah,

[00:46:54] Malcolm Collins: I’m not- It’s pretty risky ... I’m super anti it now. Yeah. And that’s like a new thing for me this year.

[00:46:57] Simone Collins: Like, there’s just nothing really good that comes from it. And, and, and the- ... and the collateral damage it causes is profoundly horrible. It’s, it doesn’t even really help the men who can access it in the first place, because they end up sort of, like, never committing and never ending up with that happy, satisfying life that ultimately they, they must desire.

[00:47:15] Oh, it’s the worst type

[00:47:15] Malcolm Collins: of masturbation, because you, you think you’re actually doing something. Mm-hmm. When you’re doing nothing more than masturbating with another person.

[00:47:22] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s horrible. It’s, it’s really horrible. I, yeah, I’m, I’m super, super against it, which is, I mean, we really were way more liberal about sex years- Early

[00:47:31] Malcolm Collins: on, yeah

[00:47:31] Simone Collins: like two years ago. Yeah. A year ago probably.

[00:47:35] Malcolm Collins: Woo.

[00:47:36] Simone Collins: There’s a new another movie that came out, or I think it’s... Yeah, I think it came out. I tried to watch it streaming. It’s not even streaming yet. I think it’s only in, in theaters. I think it’s called One Night Only, and it’s about a world in which you’re not allowed to have premarital sex.

[00:47:49] And it’s, it’s like a rom-com. It’s, it’s, according to reports, fine, cute. Not the offensive thing that, that many online commentators are saying it is, ‘cause they’re like, “Oh, this is the [00:48:00] world we’re going to,” and everything. But like, why are all these women defending, like, their right to be mistreated by men, basically?

[00:48:10] To, like, be used and dumped by men who never planned on committing to them anyway, to be lied to by men who imply that they are

[00:48:17] Malcolm Collins: interested? Yeah, they’re like, “What a terrible world that would be, where you can’t have casual...” Yeah. Wait, women should want that world. That world is, like- That,

[00:48:23] Simone Collins: yeah ... completely better.

[00:48:24] That is, that is... You should be fighting for this. Like, this should be the female thing. Like, not... And yet they’re acting like, “Oh, men are for...” Men are not for... No, men are not for a single... Men are very happy to keep things the way they are, to their detriment. So anyway, yeah, there’s, you know, between One Night Only and Wicker, got some interesting- Mm

[00:48:43] um, interesting stuff out there in terms of the state of affairs.

[00:48:49] Malcolm Collins: All right, Simone.

[00:48:50] Simone Collins: Love you.

[00:48:51] Malcolm Collins: Love you too.

[00:48:53] I am working on another one right now, Simone, that I’m so excited about. And the data for it... Can you hear me?

[00:48:59] Simone Collins: Yes.

[00:49:01] Malcolm Collins: Is really fascinating. And the question is, how come almost every single time in human history somebody has written out a unique eschatology and worldview, a successful religion is born from it?

[00:49:19] Which goes against a lot of intuitions that people would have. Obviously, there’s exceptions. If it’s obviously just schizophrenic ramblings, it doesn’t work. I- but other than that, almost every single time somebody has sat down and, Hold on

[00:49:42] Written down a world perspective it has... E- even when the founders have explicitly said, “Don’t make a church around this. Don’t make a religion around this,” people have gone on and made a religion about it.

[00:49:54] Simone Collins: We have to do a whole thing on this.

[00:49:56] Malcolm Collins: That’s too good. Even when it’s patently stupid like the white guy who created the Black supremacist cult by stealing from another thing that he went to, right?

[00:50:06] Simone Collins: Oh, Church of Islam? That guy?

[00:50:08] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the Church of, yeah, the Church of... We have to, I have to- Is it called the Church of the something? Oh,

[00:50:11] Simone Collins: sorry. Yeah,

[00:50:12] Malcolm Collins: Isn’t

[00:50:12] Simone Collins: it, oh my gosh, with Jacob?

[00:50:14] Malcolm Collins: Is it Jewish Muslim something?

[00:50:16] Simone Collins: Religion. I’m just gonna say Yacob religion

[00:50:18] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the, the Yacob religion What

[00:50:19] Simone Collins: is the Yacob religion?

[00:50:22] Malcolm Collins: It’s

[00:50:26] Simone Collins: Nation of Islam. The Nation of Islam

[00:50:28] Malcolm Collins: And this is often very surprising to people because like an AI, like I was talking with an AI about it, and the AI was like, “Well, you know, religions rarely work out.” And I go, “Can you name one? Can you name one where somebody actually wrote down, not a deviant sect, not a cult of personality, but an actual fully written religion?”

[00:50:51] By the way, do you know that our writings, the techno-puritan writings, are already 40% larger than the core Mormon corpus?

[00:50:59] Simone Collins: Really? Whoa.

[00:51:00] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:51:01] Simone Collins: The Book of Mormon. 46%, actually. Really?

[00:51:03] Malcolm Collins: Well, The Book of Mormon and The Pearl of Great Price and the, Well, they

[00:51:06] Simone Collins: had to write that by hand, Malcolm ... all of them. So.

[00:51:09] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah.

[00:51:09] Simone Collins: Well- And they were also translating- And he was illiterate ... from the golden plates that they were looking at. So

[00:51:13] Malcolm Collins: he had to have somebody else write for him.

[00:51:15] Simone Collins: Really, was he looking in a bag? He was looking in a bag, right? Was it a bag? A hat. A h- a hat. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. A hat, a hat.

[00:51:21] Malcolm Collins: He’s looking in a hat.

[00:51:23] Simone Collins: Well, look, that takes, that’s a, so that’s a lot harder to write than-

[00:51:25] Malcolm Collins: But the, the question is, is why does it, why is the starting of a religious or philosophical movement the writing it down, the authorship, and not, you know, it existing? Like a startup or something like that, or virtually every other movement in every other period in human history.

[00:51:45] Hmm. And the answer is just, like, really fascinating to dig into, but you have to sort of dig through them all. The core reason is there’s just not... The, the core motivation to do it is to exploit people. Like, the, the core reason you would do it is [00:52:00] because you want to exploit other people out of money and stuff like that.

[00:52:04] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:52:04] Malcolm Collins: And so most of the people who do it are con artists. Whereas people who are looking for, like, a better future, there’s been a few of them that have been like, “Oh, religion is clearly good.” Yeah. But then they attempt to build something that’s, like, overly human focused.

[00:52:19] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:52:20] Malcolm Collins: Anyway, the, that’s ver- very fun.

[00:52:21] I, we’ll, we’ll do, like, a an- an- anthropology of it, but I’m, I’m having a lot of fun looking at that.

[00:52:26] Simone Collins: Oh, I’m s- I’m super excited for that. We’re, we’re going hard on religion lately, but I’m, I’m here for it, and I’m, I’m super-

[00:52:33] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, our fans seem to be having fun ... super, yeah. That, that last episode we did was definitely one of my favorites,

[00:52:37] Simone Collins: Ever.

[00:52:37] Oh, that was- Probably my favorite

[00:52:38] Malcolm Collins: ever ...

[00:52:39] Simone Collins: that was good. Well, come on. What episode has had a companion webpage?

[00:52:42] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:52:42] Simone Collins: With graphs and pictures that are original. Yeah, that’s, that was pretty good.

[00:52:47] Malcolm Collins: Somebody on the Discord was like, “Malcolm’s going, you know, full AI hallucination mode or whatever,” and, and, and had three down votes.

[00:52:53] It’s the first time, I didn’t even know you could make down votes on the Discord. But, like, people are like- Oh, wow ... “No, this is, this is awesome. Like, let’s, let’s do more of this stuff.”

[00:53:01] Simone Collins: Well, yeah. Someone’s gotta be mad.

[00:53:05] It’s necessary ...

[00:53:06] Malcolm Collins: I, I was also talking with an AI about, like, what’s the core trick that Malcolm uses to keep making the, the things work.

[00:53:16] Like, he’ll say, “Oh, the, you know, monist materialist framing.” And then he’ll go to the books, and he will quote them extensively. You know, not picking specific passages, but literally every time something is mentioned in one of the books. And I would... I, I s- wanted to see if Fable could get, like, what’s the core trick that I use.

[00:53:33] And Fable immediately got it. It was like, “Well, it’s because the books are monist and materialist in their framing.” All of the non-monist materialist framings came hundreds of years after the New Testament. And w- but because people grow up not knowing that what they don’t realize is that you can actually have maximum strength to your engagement by saying, “Oh yeah, just go read the text.

[00:53:57] Go read the...” And then what the AI did is act- actually, multiple Christian groups throughout history have realized this and then immediately put some sort of cap on this framing because they were afraid of the consequences to their community if it became more widespread. Like the Chrysotonians or something which is a, a large movement that’s, that’s very focused.

[00:54:19] But it, it’s like yeah, techno-puritanism has always been the end state of Protestantism and Puritanism because it’s what anybody comes to if they actually read the text in their origi- with their original historic context.

[00:54:31] Simone Collins: Darn tootin’.

[00:54:31] Malcolm Collins: Which I thought was fun. I like that, you know?

[00:54:32] Simone Collins: Yeah, I do like that.

[00:54:33] I like that too.

[00:54:35] Malcolm Collins: Because it is true. I mean, that’s, that’s fundamentally the trick I’m using is, it’s the what you have been told is a lie about what the books argue, and it’s what pretty much all academics agree. Even religious academics. They’re just like, “Our understanding has evolved since it.” In the same way that you would think that you know more about religion than Abraham, but you would still consider Abraham a Jew even though he didn’t even have the laws of Moses yet, right?

[00:54:57] You know. So that’s, that’s the way that the modern educated religious academics think about this stuff. And then no one has had the balls to just be like, “Nope, the Bible’s actually correct and true. I’m sorry, guys.”

[00:55:10] Simone Collins: Well, without bending our actual understanding of historical geology and evolution, et cetera, so yeah.

[00:55:20] Malcolm Collins: Well, no, no. Th- they’ve, they’ve just been unwilling to say it, because what the Bible argues for is a monist materialist framework, because that’s what Jews of that period believed in.

[00:55:28] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:55:29] Malcolm Collins: Of, of the period of around when Jesus was alive. It’s just that the understanding evolved significantly in the 300 years after his death which is where you get the people being like, “Well, you don’t believe the Nicene Creed, so you’re not really a Christian.”

[00:55:41] And it’s like, well, that had literally nothing to do with Jesus, right? Like...

[00:55:45] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:55:47] Malcolm Collins: Anyway I’ll get started here.

[00:55:52] Speaker 15: Bryton. I’ll hold the gummies for you. Thank you. Gummies. Gummies. I need gummies. Hi, [00:56:00] Professor. Hi, Professor. Hi, helicopter. Oh, helicopter’s gonna follow you. All right, let’s go

[00:56:14] Professor and helicopter, fast friends

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of deep biblical literalism, Malcolm and Simone Collins unpack Genesis 5–11 not as a list of impossibly long-lived individuals, but as a precise civilizational timeline and map.

By treating the genealogies as sequential cultural phases rather than personal lifespans, the numbers align with the archaeological record of the Near East with startling precision — from Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük through the Halaf–Ubaid transition (the “Flood”) all the way to the fall of Ur and Abraham. The Table of Nations emerges as an improbably accurate ethnographic map spanning from Spain to the Gulf, matching modern genetic and archaeological data. The Tower of Babel tracks the Uruk expansion and the collapse of its shared administrative “one language.”

They also re-examine the Flood as a literary convention marking a real civilizational rupture, the Cain–Abel story as a lesson in emotional control, the Nephilim/Sons of God problem, the rainbow covenant, and why this reading makes far more sense of the text than surface-level literalism.

Companion deep-dive with maps, charts, and full ledger:https://technopuritan.com/genesis5

This is “deep literalism” — reading the Bible the way its original audience would have understood its literary forms, then testing those claims against the actual archaeological and genetic record.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: This is not like normal Bible math. This isn’t like I take numbers from the Bible and I assume they’re supposed to be something totally different, or I, I move them around and I add a number here and I add a number here.

[00:00:13] We are working with what the Bible appears to be talking about, early human civilization- Mm-hmm ... and just copying and pasting the numbers

[00:00:22] To get an idea of just how insane this math is, the Hafal-Unyad transition is bracketed between 5500 BC and 5400 BC. So the boundary is only known to half a century. The computed flood would have happened if you use these numbers at 5444 BC, which isn’t just inside of this bracket. It lands six years from the bracket’s midpoint, which is astonishing when you’re looking at tens of thousand years of human history.

[00:00:53] Malcolm Collins: Like, the size of this map, if you’re going to compare it to other maps of the time, would have to be a combination of the Phoenicians’ trading map and the Assyrians’ conquest map, right?

[00:01:07] Mm-hmm. Like, the two largest maps anyone would’ve known during that period. If you compare it with the ancient Greek map, it just becomes laughable,

[00:01:15] Would you like to know more?

[00:01:17] Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. This is a crazy day for me because I decided to just sort of be like, well, if the Bible’s true, ‘cause I was, I was reading it. I was like, it’s probably not gonna have, at the very beginning, a bunch of stuff that just doesn’t matter. Because y- near the beginning of, of Genesis, there’s a few lists of names and ages and there’s...

[00:01:43] And, and they don’t, like I think a lot of people when they’re reading ‘em generally just skip over them. Absolutely. They’re like, “Okay, whatever. Let’s

[00:01:49] Simone Collins: get to the fun part.” Well, it’s very similar to the Iliad and Aeneid where you’re like, “Come on, like, I don’t need the whole lineage of this one soldier in the war over Trojan...”

[00:02:00] You know. Yeah. It’s surprisingly... Okay, yeah, so.

[00:02:03] Malcolm Collins: So, so you, you hit that and what this unfortunately does, at least after I went into it and I started trying to match these lists to things-

[00:02:13] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm ...

[00:02:15] Malcolm Collins: is it means you completely misread Genesis.

[00:02:18] Simone Collins: Oh.

[00:02:18] Malcolm Collins: You, modern reader, get to it. You read the, the first part, which is important.

[00:02:23] Then you

[00:02:24] Simone Collins: see a bunch of- And it’s so dense, it’s like, whoa, that was, like the, the world was created. Whoa, the Garden of Eden just came and left. Like, it goes so fast, right? Yeah,

[00:02:30] Malcolm Collins: and then the, the whole- There’s

[00:02:31] Simone Collins: no

[00:02:31] Malcolm Collins: like- ... murder thing and that’s interesting. Then list, and it’s like, ah, boring, tuning out for the list.

[00:02:35] Yes. Ooh, big interesting flood narrative happening

[00:02:38] Simone Collins: here. Yeah, whoa, the, and I, literally the flood comes and goes so fast that I read it while falling asleep and I nodded off for a second and it just, I missed that whole part.

[00:02:45] Malcolm Collins: And then a bunch of lists again. Oh, I’ll skip those. What this does is it causes you to read it in an inverted format to how somebody of the period it was written would’ve read it.

[00:02:58] Simone Collins: Oh.

[00:02:58] Malcolm Collins: They would’ve said, “Oh, some interesting lists that are telling us stuff.” Then they get to the flood narrative and they go, “Oh, another flood narrative. I’ve read a dozen- ... of those this week. Let’s just skip over that.” And, or, or rather they would’ve understood that the flood narrative meant something.

[00:03:15] If you have a flood narrative in the middle of a collection of lists, traditionally in Sumerian writing from that period, what you are talking about is a transitional event, something really big transitioned between these two periods.

[00:03:29] Simone Collins: Wait, so you’re saying flood narratives didn’t just turn out, up in the Old Testament of the Bible?

[00:03:34] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, flood narratives are everywhere during that period. So

[00:03:36] Simone Collins: you weren’t kidding, like they, it was just, it was like a literary convention.

[00:03:40] Malcolm Collins: It was a literary convention, yeah. It, it, it was a literary convention that meant something big just transitioned.

[00:03:46] Simone Collins: Why does no, why does no one mention this? W- okay,

[00:03:50] Malcolm Collins: wow.

[00:03:50] I think a lot of people mention this. A lot of people are familiar with Gilgamesh at least.

[00:03:54] Simone Collins: Yeah, but... God, I read it back in college. Was there a flood in Gilgamesh? I don’t remember there being a flood in Gilgamesh. [00:04:00]

[00:04:00] Malcolm Collins: Yes, and it, it- I just

[00:04:00] Simone Collins: remember the bromance. That’s what we’re all here for, ladies.

[00:04:03] Malcolm Collins: But what gets crazier is something I didn’t notice when I was first looking at these lists.

[00:04:07] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:04:08] Malcolm Collins: And as soon as you notice it, you notice- That you’re actually looking at three different things. So list number one is unlike any list I have ever seen in my entire life or that we have any archeological evidence of.

[00:04:24] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:04:24] Malcolm Collins: And a lot of people don’t notice this about it when they read it the first time.

[00:04:28] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:28] Malcolm Collins: It does something very, very strange.

[00:04:32] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:04:32] Malcolm Collins: Instead of listing, you know, when people were born and when they die, or how long they lived and who they begat, it instead also lists their age when they had the kid The second list, well, rather the third list, the third list also does this. Yeah. So this is Genesis 5 and Genesis 10.

[00:04:58] Simone Collins: And it’s really weird because why are some people waiting until they’re in their 80s to have kids? Like, people are just like, “This doesn’t make sense.”

[00:05:03] Malcolm Collins: That’s, that’s not as important. Okay. What’s more important is we don’t have a single list like this anywhere in the Mesopotamian archeological record.

[00:05:13] This is not the way people record their ancestors. Okay. And it’s a weird thing to do. Even today, you don’t typically record the age somebody was when they have a kid. Why would you do this? Why would you be recording the age somebody was at when they had a kid?

[00:05:28] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:05:29] Malcolm Collins: Because if you do that, you have something other than a list.

[00:05:34] You have a timeline. It, you, you can know exactly how long the timeline is If you don’t know when a person was born and their parents lived 800, 900 years supposedly, they could have been born anywhere within that 800 to 900 years.

[00:05:52] Simone Collins: That’s true.

[00:05:53] Malcolm Collins: So you don’t actually have a timeline of events.

[00:05:56] Simone Collins: Yeah, okay.

[00:05:57] Malcolm Collins: This gives you a very tight, inalterable timeline. So then the question is, of course, is this timeline must mean something if it was recorded in the Bible for that long. What does it mean? Like, like, i- i- i- you could say, “Oh, it’s just a list of people’s ages and when they had kids.” Why is that important information?

[00:06:21] And it also doesn’t make sense. They seem to be living an impossible amount of time for a human to live.

[00:06:26] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:06:27] Malcolm Collins: Right?

[00:06:27] Simone Collins: Yes.

[00:06:29] Malcolm Collins: And they’re also not recorded the way that the Bible often records when it’s talking about actual people. You’ll notice something on these original lists. It’s single names. When the Bible later records a list of actual people, it’ll say Jesus of Nazareth.

[00:06:45] Yes. John the Baptist. Oh,

[00:06:47] Simone Collins: good point. Basically, everyone’s given- Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s differentiating them very explicitly ...

[00:06:51] Malcolm Collins: yeah, like everyone’s given like a, a, a side hustle thing or a, a, a city that they’re from or something like this. Mm-hmm. So this appears to be talking about a different kind of thing.

[00:07:02] So I thought, okay, what if it’s talking about cultural groups, right? Like, what if it’s talking about civilizations? This civilization, and then this civilization was birthed from that civilization, and then this civilization was birthed from that civilization, and many of these civilizations would have been concurrent to each other, right?

[00:07:22] Well, I then lapped it on top of a specific period in history that makes a lot of sense to choose, and you actually get a near perfect timeline of civilizations that match the archeological record often within gaps of 30 years. We’re not talking like thousands of years off or anything like this. We are talking about from, from an archeological perspective, an infinitesimal gap, and this happens when you lay it out about 13 times.

[00:07:56] Now, there’s a few names that don’t fully map to things, I’ll admit [00:08:00] that. But we can always say- Mm-hmm ... the archeological record might be off here, or it might be describing a civilization that we haven’t found yet.

[00:08:08] Simone Collins: Wow.

[00:08:09] Malcolm Collins: But it gets stranger than that.

[00:08:12] So we’re going... Because then you get the flood, right?

[00:08:17] Which is a massive civilizational turning point that we’ll talk about that’s being talked about here. Crazy. And a real flood, but the, the flood and the civilizational turning point happen at different times. Mm-hmm. And the real flood doesn’t happen at the time the flood narrative does. But at the time the flood narrative happens, two other really important things happen, if you’re going by my timeline here, right?

[00:08:36] Like, if, if the timeline I have. You have a regional high point of the seas in this region, globally speaking. It’s the highest they ever were. And you have the invention of sailing ships appearing for the first time which is also really interesting. And another thing we’ll get to is the actual dimensions for the ark, because that’s another weird thing.

[00:08:54] Why are there dimensions for the ark here? Mm. And what we’ll go into is the dimensions for the ark are weird in how not weird they are. They would actually describe a boat that would work with technology that shouldn’t have been... Like, people at the time, when they made up ship descriptions- Yeah ... because they did in the Gilgamesh myth.

[00:09:17] They, they made up a ship description. But the... For, for that flood narrative. But the ship description they made up in the Gilgamesh narrative wouldn’t have worked. It- Oh, like

[00:09:25] Simone Collins: the ship would have immediately sunk or something?

[00:09:27] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it would have immediately capsized and sunk. Okay. But the ship laid out in the ark not only would have worked, it would have been the ideal way to build a ship for an event like that.

[00:09:38] Okay. A rudderless large ship that just needed to stay afloat for a period. Huh. So we’re gonna get into all of this. Now I will note here, this is really big for me because the Noah story is the story that made my family not Christian anymore.

[00:09:51] Simone Collins: Right.

[00:09:51] Malcolm Collins: My dad read it and he goes, “This seems stupid.”

[00:09:54] Yeah. “This does not seem like-” Obviously not all of the animals on earth could have fit in a boat, and if they’re using magic, why not just say they’re using magic? That would have been easier. And even if so, how did he redistribute the animals to all of their correct regions after the flood happened without needing to mention- Oh, yeah

[00:10:12] that there were massively-

[00:10:13] Simone Collins: People came through a stretch, yeah, where they’re like, “Well, must have made it on a floating forest or something to Australia.” And marsupials can travel farther because their in- their infants can suckle inside their pouches. Yeah, that’s not necessary I guess per your view.

[00:10:27] Yes. But I don’t know how that’s gonna... How, how are you gonna thread this needle? How is this-

[00:10:30] Malcolm Collins: How am I gonna thread the needle to make- Yes ... this all work? Yes. So we’re gonna get into that because it’s crazy. I have a website that you guys can go to where I have the maps on it. Oh, also, also, there’s a really detailed and impossible map buried in this part of Genesis that we’re gonna get to.

[00:10:45] Gosh. That literally goes from Spain to, like, the far Middle East region and then down to, like, the bottom of, like, Egypt which is wild because if you compare it to other contemporaneous maps of people like the ancient Greek ones and the ancient Egyptian ones, they are laughably bad in comparison to this map layout.

[00:11:07] This was one when I was reading it, I go, “This sounds like a map to me and a genealogy. Is it accurate?” And it’s been scientifically genetically proven today that the genealogy is accurate, and it goes back to desi- describing events and with names like Uruk that would’ve been being written about, like, 10,000 years after the event.

[00:11:25] But-

[00:11:25] Simone Collins: Really? ...

[00:11:26] Malcolm Collins: let’s go back. Let’s start at the beginning about how I, I got to all this, and we’ll get to a few other really, really, really crazy things here.

[00:11:35] Simone Collins: Okay? Please, yes.

[00:11:36] Malcolm Collins: Okay, so- Let’s

[00:11:37] Simone Collins: do this.

[00:11:40] Malcolm Collins: I have before said that I thought the Garden of Eden, and I will make this more specific here, started at Gobekli Tepe, right? Right. Like, so this is the first human settlement we know. The Bible says the Garden of Eden is at the mouthwaters of the Tigris and the Euphrates. And actually one of the other rivers they describe, they mention having, like, gold deposits on it, and we’ve actually found a [00:12:00] dry riverbed that would’ve dried up about 10,000 years before the Bible was written that had the same mouthwaters.

[00:12:04] So a- again, information they shouldn’t have had access to during this period. But Gobekli Tepe is the, the first settlement. And then the last settlement of this period that we sort of will say is the end because this is where we begin to start our timeline, is Catalhoyuk. This is when you have the first permanent settlement.

[00:12:21] Gobekli Tepe, while it is the first, like, built-up settlement that is exactly at the right location was not a permanent settlement. It was like a hunter-forager settlement, right? Now you wanna know what the most common inscription is at Gobekli Tepe, Simone? I didn’t know this until I was going over this with AI.

[00:12:38] Simone Collins: No. No, what is it?

[00:12:40] Malcolm Collins: I, I’m just gonna have you guess. From, from like, what would be the craziest thing to just be drawn all over Gobekli Tepe if it’s a, was what the Garden of Eden was talking about?

[00:12:53] Simone Collins: Oops

[00:12:56] Malcolm Collins: What? Come on, guess

[00:12:57] Simone Collins: Well, well, pomegranates

[00:12:59] Malcolm Collins: Snakes

[00:13:00] Simone Collins: S- snakes

[00:13:01] Malcolm Collins: Snakes are everywhere. It is, it- there’s a study- Snakes?

[00:13:04] Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?

[00:13:08] Malcolm Collins: that shows it’s the single most common inscription, and I’ll put some of them on screen here for you guys Oh, no and this was a site that wasn’t in use for over 10,000 years when the, the modern anthropological understanding of when these stories were written down happened Oh, my gosh. So- Snake ... so it gets crazier, right?

[00:13:25] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:13:27] Malcolm Collins: And, and so this would’ve been about an 8,000 window. The ledger that picks up below the moment of the Garden of Eden era ends, Adam’s year zero is the first fully agricultural metropolis. Put on the narrative and it chains together. You get a continuous coverage of Earth’s history from 96,000 BC to 2000 BC with dates.

[00:13:47] This also, this period that it ends at was the early Holocene Humid Period, which was a planetary wet phase that made this entire area extremely green and verdant. So you actually would have had a Garden of Eden was in this region of Mesopotamia during this period Oh,

[00:14:04] Simone Collins: my gosh.

[00:14:06] Malcolm Collins: The other crazy thing about this story is that this region, like you might think, “Why is this Tell Le Thekke area important?”

[00:14:13] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:14:15] Malcolm Collins: It maps, so the story starts with Gobekli Tepe and it ends with Abraham. That’s where the, the rest of the narrative picks up again. In Abraham, you get two lists of names. One with impossible ages which will map to specific events. The second with that appear to be a real genealogy. And they, they’re, they’re book-ended, we’ll get to this.

[00:14:35] But the real genealogy gets really, really interesting because the real genealogy has a list of names in it that now we, we only discovered this in 1950s to today. Oh. Nobody would have known this from the age of Babylon till today. But the list of names turns out to have been a list of town names around this area from around the age that Abraham would’ve been alive.

[00:15:02] Simone Collins: So they’re not people, they’re settlements, they’re, they’re towns?

[00:15:05] Malcolm Collins: Well, it might’ve been people named after settlements, or it might’ve been settlements named after people, but it’s irrelevant. What it tells us is a few things. One is, is if you know the story of Abraham, he, he’s in Ur, right? But he, as Ur collapsed, goes north to like where his kin are.

[00:15:22] When he sends for wives, he sends north where his kin are, and that would map to this particular region. What’s interesting here is it means that we’re dealing with a story of largely one place throughout this entire period. , A place that would have lasted, if you’re looking like Gobekli Tepe to, to Aaron, a 10,000 year period.

[00:15:43] It was completely lost to history, and then we found it again when we were able to re-read the, the language of the people of that period in archeological sites around there. Hmm. And I’m gonna put a map on screen here. So if you scroll down I actually created on the website [00:16:00] here a map of all of the cities with names- Oh.

[00:16:04] Of Ar-

[00:16:05] Simone Collins: Oh ...

[00:16:06] Malcolm Collins: of Abraham’s immediate ancestors. And you can see it’s, it’s, it’s not like one or two, it’s a lot of overlapping names- Look at that ... in a very tight geographic region. So Gobekli Tepe overlooks the Haram, Harran Plain, which drains into the Balikh River, the same valley where the, the ledger’s northern villages sit, and where Abraham’s grandfather and great-grandfather’s names survive as town names.

[00:16:31] So then you have this beautiful handoff eons later, okay? The, the three names before Abraham are Serug, his great-grandfather, Nahor, his grandfather, and Terah, his father. So again, very unlikely to be coincident. Now here’s what the Cuneiform Reform record. Assyrian literacies and Mari letters turned up with no help from the Bible, real towns in the Haran district carrying the names abraham’s ancestors are the towns of his family’s district and the text keeps pointing there. The Terah moves from the family of Haran, Genesis 11:31. Abraham’s servant fetches Rebecca from the city of Nahor, Genesis 24.

[00:17:13] Jacob runs to Haran, Genesis 28. So basically this tells us a few things. One, obviously same location, but two, th- these are real people in the location they say they’re from. And we also know that these are one of the descendant populations of the Jews, which again, is pretty interesting.

[00:17:30] Simone Collins: This is crazy

[00:17:34] Were you pulling from anyone else talking about this? Like, who else is looking at it from this perspective?

[00:17:39] Malcolm Collins: A few people have mentioned that Tell le-Ahki might be what’s being talked about in the Garden of Eden, but the timeline that I found appears to be completely unique to me.

[00:17:49] The, the- So people

[00:17:49] Simone Collins: aren’t saying that these are settlements or cohorts rather than-

[00:17:53] Malcolm Collins: No, no, no ... communities? The Abraham names, other people have picked up on that. That was, like, a crazy thing- Okay ... when people found that. But the really- Mm-hmm ... crazy thing we’re about to get to, as far as I’m aware, I am the first person to find this.

[00:18:05] Simone Collins: Then go on.

[00:18:07] Malcolm Collins: So now we are going to go to that first list of names, right? The, names, dates, kids, everything like that. Now if you scroll down look at the first chart here.

[00:18:21] Simone Collins: Yeah. Whoa. Oh, cool.

[00:18:23] Malcolm Collins: Right?

[00:18:23] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:18:24] Malcolm Collins: So this chart, again, is not something I can mess with. I, I’m taking Çatalhöyük, the first known large, real settlement- Oh, yeah, with

[00:18:30] Simone Collins: Adam and Seth

[00:18:32] Malcolm Collins: And then I’m charting the names here on all of the cultures around that particular region, and we will actually, like, expand it out here. And what you see is incredibly tight matching here. So if you, if you map Adam onto the Çatalhöyük East mound- Mm-hmm ... w- along with the, the first kid, Seth you get very, very tight alignment with this.

[00:18:55] Actually, I’ll, I’ll just read about these, these different people, because I think it’s really interesting.

[00:18:58] Simone Collins: Wait, was Seth the first kid? I thought it was Cain and Abel. Am I super off here?

[00:19:03] Malcolm Collins: Well, remember what happened to those two.

[00:19:07] Simone Collins: Yeah, it didn’t end so well, so... Oh, then they had another kid, Seth?

[00:19:10] Malcolm Collins: Yes.

[00:19:10] That’s the one that everyone else- After ... refers to. Yes.

[00:19:13] Simone Collins: Cain and Abel.

[00:19:13] Malcolm Collins: Because Abel’s dead and Cain is a, a naughty boy. Naughty.

[00:19:17] Simone Collins: He’s, he’s in the bad, yeah, the bad doghouse. Okay. Go on. Sorry.

[00:19:21] Malcolm Collins: Okay. So not only do you have in nine points really tight mapping to our archeological record of this period, but we have, if we take the flood as a break point that ends at the...

[00:19:35] 5444 BC, the moment Halaf Ubaid transition begins, the boundary at which every distinct culture of the old Neolithic world stopped existing, and exactly one cultural pat for the ch- ch- the Ubaid the irrigation and temple people of the southern marshes survived, spread, and repopulated the entire Near East.

[00:19:56] Simone Collins: Oh,

[00:19:56] Malcolm Collins: wow. So one, one group really did end up [00:20:00] replacing all other people at the exact end of this period if you go by this dating metric.

[00:20:05] Simone Collins: Really? So this, this global cold or arid shock That went from 6,200 to 6,000 BC that you’re talking about?

[00:20:16] Malcolm Collins: No, no, that, that maps to a number of the events that are written about in genealogy.

[00:20:21] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:20:21] Malcolm Collins: The flood is the end bar here, where you have the, the, the flood. We’ll, we’ll talk about that

[00:20:26] Simone Collins: shot in a second. Oh, the flood. Oh, the flood’s the big red bar. Sorry, okay, gotcha. Yeah, I, I wanna hear more about the flood, but yeah, go on. I won’t... No spoilers or whatever. Go

[00:20:32] Malcolm Collins: ahead. The flesh are what died in these, but not necessarily bodies, but within a few generations there were no more Halafians, no more Yamarian descendants, no more of anyone u- using the survivors’ pottery.

[00:20:45] Whether the... Now, anthropologists are just like, “Oh yeah, after this period this one group of people ended up replacing everyone else, but it was mostly peaceful because we don’t see a lot of signs of battles and we don’t see a lot of signs of burning.” To which I’d respond, “Oh, well by that metric then the American colonization of the Native peoples was totally peaceful, because you’re not gonna find a lot of those there either.”

[00:21:10] This is actually a phenomenon in archeology where they’ll say something is totally peaceful because they want to believe things are totally peaceful and these types of transitions happened peacefully, and then later we learn, no, it actually was a very violent transition where one group of people wiped out almost everyone else.

[00:21:23] Mm-hmm. And what made this group different than all of the other groups? Well, they had a few things that made them different. They had standalone temples in the center of their cities, which nobody had before. Ooh, okay. They had settled agricultural lands and canals. They were essentially the first... It, it was essentially the most important transition post the introduction of agriculture.

[00:21:47] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:21:47] Malcolm Collins: And it’s captured perfectly. You have the first settled city, Catalhoyuk. You lay out the timeline the Bible gives us. You get the flood at exactly the moment this one culture comes through and wipes out almost everyone else.

[00:21:59] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:22:00] You can really think of this as the end of the walkaway option for humanity. For 10,000 years before it, the human operation system was the autonomous village. You had your household, you had local, like in your house stored grains, but you didn’t have kings or armies, and when things went bad, people would just leave, as we see happening throughout this period.

[00:22:19] , Irrigation really changed all of that, and this is where you get the, the beginning of that. Specifically, irrigation means capital invested in the ground, and when you combine that with a central temple that allows for centralized storage, redistribution, you get the beginning of taxes, administration, writing, and kingship.

[00:22:37] , And this is why when you look at all of the civilizations after this, Uruk, Babylon, everything, they come from this. This is the central point where everything sort of recentralizes, and this is predicted to the date near perfectly if you start counting with the timeline we’re given at the Bible with Adam at the beginning of Çatalhöyük, the first permanent settlement period

[00:23:05] Malcolm Collins: And the other really interesting thing here is if you look at the traditional narratives, a lot of people have had trouble with these dates.

[00:23:11] Because it looks like, from the traditional dates given up here, that some individuals lived into the period of the flood. And certain Christian groups and certain Jewish groups have tried to redo the dates to make that not work. But if the flood doesn’t literally happen at this time, that actually doesn’t introduce a contradiction at all.

[00:23:29] It shows that they were introducing a contradiction by going through and trying to rewrite it. Now how quick to, to what date does this happen?

[00:23:39] So If you tie Adam to Çatalhöyük and then look at where you end up, .

[00:23:43] the Hafal-Unyad transition is bracketed between 5500 BC and 5400 BC. So the boundary is only known to half a century. The computed flood would have happened if you use these numbers at [00:24:00] 5444 BC, which isn’t just inside of this bracket. It lands six years from the bracket’s midpoint, which is astonishing when you’re looking at tens of thousand years of human history.

[00:24:12]

[00:24:12] Malcolm Collins: for people who wanna see what these different people lived like, what their settlements looked like.

[00:24:16] Ooh. I have AI images of each type of settlement here that goes along with what’s written about them in the Bible. Oh, cool. So we’ll go through this.

[00:24:24] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:24:24] Malcolm Collins: All right. So let’s start with Catalhoyuk.

[00:24:27] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:24:28] Malcolm Collins: The Bible here says about these people, “When Adam lived 130 years, he had a son of his own likeness, in his own lineage, and named him Seth. Altogether, Adam lived a total of 930 years and then died.” This appears to match to Catalhoyuk, a honeycomb of mud brick houses with no streets.

[00:24:42] You walk the roofs and descended a ladder through a smoke hole. Dead and buried under the floors, skull-capped and plastered, painting certain history houses rebuilt in place for centuries. Up to 8,000 people with no palace, no temple, no rich quarters. The 8.2 kilometer climate shock broke the pottery and then it gets destroyed.

[00:25:01] Hmm ... and this maps pretty closely. You can see it in the above here. Mm-hmm. Then you have the Unak Taking. Two centuries of cold and drought emptied the mega sites. Populations didn’t die out. They scattered into smaller and tougher villages. Mm-hmm. This aligns here with Uniak walked among the faithful with God, and then he was no more because God took him away.

[00:25:19] Mm-hmm. A lot of people really focus on Enoch when they’re doing biblical histories and stuff like that- Why? ... because every other culture it’s mentioned is dying. But Enoch, whose end matches this cold period when you have a bunch of settlements just disperse and then reform later- Mm-hmm ... matches the being taken up to God, right?

[00:25:39] Then you have the northern village world. This matches with Enosh and Kahan’s era. Mm-hmm. When Seth lived 105 years, he became his father Enosh. At that time, people came to call the land of the Lord. Small farming villages across Syria and Iraq dabak’s hunting outposts, the Balak Valley’s farmsteads, and the Saudi Arabia’s burnt village, so this would’ve been 6000 BC, preserved hundreds of stamped clay ceilings.

[00:26:04] So this would’ve been the beginning of writing happening here. But this was also before property and before kings. Hmm. Actually, for people who wanna go through this, I imagine this is probably pretty boring here to go through every one of these historical periods, but I was able to build the map for you that you can see here and see all of these different things mapped to specific individuals.

[00:26:25] And then it ends with, again, the most important civilizational change in human history up to that point other than the first settlements captured really tightly. So let’s look to see how, how tightly these are, these are captured here. Because I even did a map with gradings of the tightness of the captures, okay?

[00:26:45] Simone Collins: Ooh.

[00:26:46] Malcolm Collins: Okay. So, If you go with Adam, dies at the classic Catal Huyuk package breaks at the 8.2 cli- climate shock. Then for Seth the son born in his own likeness and in his own image, the same culture continuing, dies a century before the mound empties. So he, Seth was only within a century of the death of this settlement, but that’s still pretty close when you’re dealing with numbers like this.

[00:27:08] And keep in mind, the archeologists could have it wrong. Then you have Enosh which means man, a doublet of Adam’s meaning, the refounded second village world after the collapse and the formalization of the first real religion or cult that you would have had. Mm-hmm. Then you have Ken. This one doesn’t map very closely.

[00:27:27] Then you have Mahalal. This one is a close match. This one they also talk about praising of God, and it’s when we find early cult-like figures of some god in these settlements. The, the god that’s mentioned is Shorer Halgelon, but if you believe like a techno-puritan does that, like, the understanding of God evolved over this period, and that the ways that the early J- proto-Jews of this period understood God weren’t necessarily like the later Jews of this period.

[00:27:54] I even think that that’s a normal Jewish understanding of, of this particular period. It, it [00:28:00] maps pretty closely. Then the next one that we get that’s a pretty close match is Enoch the one lineage that was more for God or took him, dispersed, not died at 365, the, the solar year number. Then you have the longest-lived patriarch Methuselah which matches pretty closely.

[00:28:17] And exactly at dies exactly as Halaf ends. This was one of the, the settlements here that you can learn more about if you wanna go in this. And then you finally get to the flood. Now the flood, I, I think was, was in 30 years if you put this whole list together and started at Catal Huyuk. Mm.

[00:28:35] Which is absolutely wild to me. Now, we’re gonna go to the second list of names because I found that one really fascinating as well. Okay. So if that’s a timeline, then the question is, well, what’s with all these other inhumanly long lifespans that you see in the second list after the flood? Right.

[00:28:58] All right. So here you have to say what’s real- what’s really cool about this is it ends in an, in an actual human who we know, like Abraham, who we can be quite sure seems to have been a, like this is when like human history as we understand human history in a modern context begins to be written about in the Bible.

[00:29:16] Instead of talking about things using this language that the Sumerians used of stories and lists and impossibly long names that might have been meant to be civilizations rather than specific individuals So, Genesis 11 turns out to be two records spliced together. A real family pedigree, its fathering ages are normal, 29 to 35, carrying an inherited mythic payload, its lifespans are 600, 438, 433, 464, 239, 239.

[00:29:47] You, you get the idea here, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Which sound a lot more like a king’s list with durations laid end to end, and then it splits- But what’s a

[00:29:54] Simone Collins: king’s list?

[00:29:56] Malcolm Collins: Because that’s the way that you would write king’s lists during those periods. I don’t know what a king’s list is. And it would basically be like a dynastic king’s list.

[00:30:02] So it’d be a, a list of king’s families.

[00:30:05] Simone Collins: Oh, so like, yeah, the House of Atreides ruled over Arrakis, and then whatever. Yeah. So it could be multiple people or generations, but it’s kind of a regime. Yeah. The lifespan of a regime, like the Kim regime in, in North Korea.

[00:30:20] Malcolm Collins: So if you lead... put these end to end, and you say, “Okay, the flood is the transition into this new group of people,” when did that transition end?

[00:30:31] That transition ended 5200 to 5000 BC. Okay? Then if you put that list exactly there, what happens at the end of that timed list, and again, I have this up here, is not just do a number of the births and deaths line up with important events within the region during that time period, but it also ends with the destruction of Ur and Abraham.

[00:30:59] Like the, the dates actually match. Hmm. But let’s go to some of these matches, because I find them pretty interesting.

[00:31:06] Simone Collins: Please.

[00:31:08] Malcolm Collins: Okay. So, if you go to the end of Aphoradox, that does match. This is a boundary where you have the, the Uruk start period. And the mature Ubaid kingdom that we had talked about before that, that eventually sort of died out during this period, okay? So at the end of the first two lives, you have , a pretty important transition.

[00:31:29] Note here what, what would be the end of Shem’s life. It appears to happen at the boundary of fourth rhythm versus the Ubaid third to fourth turn, but that’s not that big an event. But then we get a really important one, Eber.

[00:31:42] His boundary is really close, only within 35 years of the boundary of the Uruk collapse 3065 BC. And pegs the days open where Genesis 10:25 puts the division of the earth. Mm-hmm. Then you [00:32:00] get another big one here, which is the movement between the Faraid and Ed III period which is at the end of Renood’s life.

[00:32:08] Okay. Then at the boundary of 235 five seven versus a Lagashali-Sargon period. This is the end of Sharak’s life. And then at the end of Tera’s life you have the chain of events end with the sack of Ur. Now I want to emphasize for people, when you’re, when you’re laying out the numbers in these ways, and I can be like, “Oh, this doesn’t really fit the archeological data here.

[00:32:33] Good.” You’re like, “Oh, so then you’re just moving the numbers to match whatever the record means?” Mm-hmm. No, you can’t do that with the way the data is laid out in the Bible. The Bible, because it’s giving you the birth dates, if you get one wrong or it’s tied to some historical event that we’re unsure of, it doesn’t move the rest of the chain off.

[00:32:52] Ah. The other thing that’s really interesting about this second list is if you look at the deaths where I’m like, “This death doesn’t seem to correspond to anything historically big that we’re aware of”-

[00:33:02] Simone Collins: Yeah ...

[00:33:02] Malcolm Collins: what you will note is in every one of the periods where historians do make divisions, one of the deaths happens there.

[00:33:12] So, so what I’m saying is that they caught all of the things that historians are aware of. What we might have is a case where the other deaths where I’m like, “Historians just aren’t aware of anything big there,” might not just have found it yet Which really shocked me to see this really tight mapping But now we’re gonna go to the map, because I found the map pretty crazy as well.

[00:33:35] And again, you can go through a lot of this. This is put together with AI, so it reads very AI-ey because I did it with leading models, which aren’t as good at writing in natural language. Mm-hmm. But they are good at, like, having a ledger, because I had to- to do this. It wasn’t like... I probably spent a couple hundred dollars working on this guy, so I- I really spent the tokens on getting this done.

[00:33:52] Simone Collins: Wow, doing the work.

[00:33:54] Malcolm Collins: Using Fable to... Well, because I wanted to cross-reference as much as I could- Mm-hmm ... to get as accurate of an understanding of the region as I could. Sure. So go down to the map.

[00:34:08] Simone Collins: I’m looking at it now.

[00:34:09] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So there’s a part in Genesis where it begins to start listing, without dates, a bunch of so and so begot so and so- Mm-hmm

[00:34:22] and they are a descendant of this group. And what you’ll notice in this is a list of a bunch of real-world places like Egypt and Libya and stuff like this, right? And so then I began to go, “Wait, are all of these real places?” And they actually are. Really? This is basically a historic map that’s being laid out here, and it is a giant historic map that’s being laid out here.

[00:34:48] Simone Collins: So is this map saying that Shinar is Babylon, AKA Uruk, AKA Akkad?

[00:34:55] Malcolm Collins: Yes. So in a number of these places, what they will do... And you’ll see the names are really close, right? Like, Tubal-Tebal- Mm-hmm ... Meshech, Mashok, Tiras, Thrace a- a- as one that you would be familiar about. Madai, the Medes. And then Assyria is, like, just, like, Assyria, right?

[00:35:12] Or a- they- they’ll- there’ll be translations that we’re familiar with from that particular period. Mm-hmm. Or, like, Caphtor, meaning Crete, like not that far. Rodanim, meaning Rhodes. And again, you could say, oh, you’re just finding names that are similar to each other. But they didn’t just give us a list of names here.

[00:35:32] They say how these groups are culturally related to each other. They’ll say, No,

[00:35:37] Simone Collins: in the Old- in the Old Testament they do. Oh.

[00:35:39] Malcolm Collins: Yes, they do. They’re- they’re- they- they treat them as families. Like, it’s talked about as if it’s talking about a genealogical tree- Mm-hmm ... but then it has things like Egypt on the genealogical tree, so it’s, like, obviously not a genealogical tree.

[00:35:51] Simone Collins: Mm. Yeah. Okay.

[00:35:53] Malcolm Collins: So you can’t just scattershot anything close to anything, right? You actually have to [00:36:00] put the name not just next to a culture or a group that seems very close to that name, but you have to do it in a region where they’re culturally related to each other.

[00:36:12] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:14] Malcolm Collins: And as you can see on this map, you see all the greens are culturally related to each other, all the purples are culturally related to each other, all the reds are culturally related

[00:36:21] Simone Collins: to each other.

[00:36:21] Oh, that’s the color coding Okay, okay, okay, okay. All right

[00:36:22] Malcolm Collins: And it also picks up things that you wouldn’t get if you were from that region and you didn’t have knowledge. So a few crazy things that they get. Okay. They get Uruk and its cultural descendants even though it was 10,000 years before they were writing.

[00:36:37] Wow. Right? No way they could’ve known about it. And they get things like that the Medes are actually descended from the people of the Turkish area, and not the surrounding area like you would’ve expected.

[00:36:49] Simone Collins: Wow. Okay.

[00:36:52] Malcolm Collins: If I,

[00:36:52] Simone Collins: if I’m gonna read here- I guess it makes sense explaining these in a, in a family format if people are, like before the- So-

[00:36:58] Bible was written down, people were just giving oral... Like, they’re passing down oral traditions. So to kind of, mm, it’s like a mnemonic device to make it about families, because I guess in- Yeah, the que- ... mind palaces or something ...

[00:37:10] Malcolm Collins: the question here becomes, you, you could say anyone could have done this. Mm.

[00:37:14] But the problem is, is if you are familiar with your ancient Greek history or ancient Egyptian history and you’ve read any of that, both of those societies were dramatically more learned. They had dramatically more money. Mm. They had dramatically more... Like, the size of this map, if you’re going to compare it to other maps of the time, would have to be a combination of the Phoenicians’ trading map and the Assyrians’ conquest map, right?

[00:37:43] Mm-hmm. Like, the two largest maps anyone would’ve known during that period. If you compare it with the ancient Greek map, it just becomes laughable, right? Mm-hmm. And I note here, when you look at the ancient Greek maps or you look at the ancient Egypt maps, what do you see at the edges of those maps? It’s always like, “ Well, and here is where the mermaids live, and here is where the, the snake, the nagas live.”

[00:38:02] Yeah. “And here’s where the cyclopses live, and here is-” Yeah ... “where the giants live.” Mm-hmm. But you don’t get that with this map.

[00:38:14] Simone Collins: No, mm-mm. It’s pretty-

[00:38:16] Malcolm Collins: Everyone here is a human group of some type.

[00:38:20] Simone Collins: Yeah. Wow. Pretty uncanny Which is- Yeah, I’ve gotta say, this is a little trippy. This is cr- this is crazy. It’s,

[00:38:28] Malcolm Collins: it’s trippier than you think.

[00:38:29] Yeah, like, when to me, when I was reading that, I was like, “Wait, this sounds like a map and a list of descendants. Is it accurate?” And it’s accurate to modern DNA research. And, and also not- Okay ... intuitive to people of this period. And again, you can go through my out... I don’t wanna bore you with like, oh, this study, this study, this group that you’ve never heard of is actually descended from this group you’ve never heard of, because you don’t care about these people.

[00:38:53] Well, these are What you care about- ... a page, though ... is that this seems implausible that they could have this level of knowledge.

[00:39:01] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, that’s crazy. That is crazy.

[00:39:05] Malcolm Collins: Now I wanna talk about the other one that’s really crazy.

[00:39:09] Simone Collins: Okay. ,

[00:39:11] Malcolm Collins: When all of Earth had one language, the the story of

[00:39:13] Simone Collins: Babel.

[00:39:13] Oh, the Babel. The Tower of Babel. Okay.

[00:39:17] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This one really got to me because I was like that, that doesn’t seem to make a lotta sense.

[00:39:25] Simone Collins: And I’m super curious about it because I, I, I don’t think I’ve gotten to that point in the Bi- Old Testament. Maybe I have, but like I, I do wonder what, what that is. I mean, it was alluded to in the recent papal whatever, the big announcement basically about AI that the latest pope released.

[00:39:44] So people are, were talking about that particularly, particular biblical story recently.

[00:39:51] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it, it appears to be talking about Uruk. Mm-hmm. And it’s really fascinating that it’s talking about Uruk because it gets a bunch of things about Uruk right.

[00:39:58] Okay. One of the [00:40:00] really weird things it gets right about Uruk that you wouldn’t expect is- Mm-hmm ... it describes how they made brick during that period, which wasn’t something that they would’ve been aware of. That’s obviously so I’m just gonna read- ... a neat detail ... like an AI’s description here, which I think does a better job.

[00:40:14] The Uruk expansion homogenized the Near East for the first time. The same mass-produced - pottery the same architecture, the same administration from the Gulf of Syria to Iran, and above all, the same proto-writing. The numeric tablets and ceilings of the late Uruk word are mutually readable from Uruk to Susan, t- f- f- to Habaal to Kabira on the- Mm-hmm

[00:40:36] Syrian Euphrates. One symbol system across the entire known world. That’s the one language, an administrative fact. And after the collapse, the records show exactly what the story says happened. That one script diverges. Proto-Elamite splits off in Iran and becomes mutually unreadable from Proto-Cuneiform within a century.

[00:40:56] Egypt’s system goes its own way. The uniform culture fragments back into regional styles. Yeah. The one language becomes many.

[00:41:04] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:41:04] Malcolm Collins: And what about the giant temples they were building into the sky? Well, Uruk’s Ana Ziggurat and the Inna Precinct, the first monumental platforms in the world were made of brick and not stone, as you would’ve assumed if they were writing it at that time.

[00:41:20] Yeah. And they say here in the story, “Brick for stone, bitumen for mortar,” which would’ve been a weird way to make a temple like this in this later period.

[00:41:27] Simone Collins: For sure.

[00:41:28] Malcolm Collins: That clause exists for an audience that assumes stone, a highland audience being told how lowlanders built. So you, you get a description here of the very first monumental structures, the very first near universal administrative language within the region, and it actually falling apart within the time that we are talking about and that it appears within the larger narrative.

[00:41:57] Simone Collins: That’s crazy.

[00:41:58] And keep in mind here, I’m still taking a literalist, just a deep literalist approach, that the Bible means what it says in the way that people at the time would have understood it in these sort of over-the-top mythologized stories. , Which is very different than what you need to accept if you want to believe that l- literally there was once a town where all humans on Earth lived at the same time and spoke the same language that existed after the flood, and we don’t have archeological evidence of it or this giant tower they were building, and that God intentionally didn’t want humanity to work together and intentionally sowed discord in humanity.

[00:42:36] It seems like that’s not really what he’s about. This to me seems more like a human description of what happened than God’s true intent. Although I do think that this can be seen as a story about God wanting a degree of diversity in human perspectives, so even when we take to the stars, why it makes sense to bring people who are not exactly like us and work with them is if not, we are recreating the Tower of Babel.

[00:43:01] Simone Collins: I’m just trying to figure out, like, how people even got this straight as they were passing it on as an oral tradition before it all became written down. Well, they,

[00:43:09] Malcolm Collins: they couldn’t have. It’s literally impossible that this is solely an oral tradition. Nowhere on Earth do we have oral traditions that are this good for this long.

[00:43:18] Yeah. And it would’ve, Like, that, that I’m aware of, right? You, you do not get a 10,000-year oral tradition with this much fidelity normally. I’d actually argue, because you get things like the, the flood. So let’s, let’s talk about the flood for a second, because a lot of people get hung up on, “

[00:43:40] Simone Collins: There

[00:43:40] Malcolm Collins: was actually a flood in that region historically.”

[00:43:41] You, I’ve been teasing this the whole time. I am dying to

[00:43:42] Simone Collins: hear about this, this flood. Like, please.

[00:43:44] Malcolm Collins: Okay. The problem with the flood is there’s actually four potential floods that you could be talking about within this region, and everybody loves to point to one of the four. And I think that actually trying to find the flood [00:44:00] misses the point.

[00:44:01] Simone Collins: Okay. Right. But wh- So everyone’s looking for water and, and high sea levels or something, and you’re saying no.

[00:44:07] Malcolm Collins: No, no. Yeah. It’s a flood narrative. It was a standard way to put a break in a story during that period, and it was common in the way stories were told during that theory period. It can almost be thought of as a thematic element.

[00:44:20] It, it, it wasn’t meant to be read as a real thing. But if we are talking about real floods in this region the, the giant one, if you’re talking about flooding the entire world that it could be talking about, would be the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean, if you’re unaware of this is the result of the you know, the S- the Strait of Gibraltar?

[00:44:42] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:44:43] Malcolm Collins: So that used to be closed, and it, like, broke one day and then filled in the entire Mediterranean.

[00:44:49] Simone Collins: Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So it was, it was a below-sea-level depression that was held by a natural dam?

[00:44:56] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:44:58] Simone Collins: Are you kidding? That’s crazy

[00:45:01] Malcolm Collins: The problem

[00:45:01] Simone Collins: is- Is that really melt, i, is that really a geological history thing?

[00:45:05] Malcolm Collins: This is a real geological history thing, is that would have been a pre-hominid likely or, or early hominids if I remember correctly. And there’s no way we would have had a memory of that, none at all. And even so, anyone in the period there, a boat wouldn’t have saved you from that.

[00:45:22] Oh ... that event in terms of its cataclysm, I don’t care how big your ark is, everything is vaporized.

[00:45:27] Yeah, that’s, that’s a tidal

[00:45:28] Simone Collins: wave. The ark isn’t gonna-

[00:45:30] Malcolm Collins: Well, it’s not just a tidal wave. It’s a, it’s an amount of water moving so fast. The, the numbers we’re talking about are like atomic bomb numbers in terms of the amount of force that we’re talking about. Not only that, but very few things lived in that depression because it created this horribly arid desert- Hmm

[00:45:47] with super, super hot temperatures.

[00:45:48] Simone Collins: Okay, so you’re like, “Look, it flooded, but also probably no one was there.”

[00:45:53] Malcolm Collins: Probably no one was there, so it doesn’t really matter.

[00:45:55] Simone Collins: Okay, okay, gotcha.

[00:45:56] Malcolm Collins: The next really big apocalyptic one is the Black Sea. So around 5600 BCE, the rising Mediterranean reconnected with the Black Sea.

[00:46:06] This is sort of the right era. If a flash breach is right you would have had catastrophic flooding. But that’s the contested part. We’re not, we don’t have my understanding, a lot of record that this was actually catastrophic within this particular period.

[00:46:21] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:46:22] Malcolm Collins: And I, it’s a little early for anything that I think matches with the biblical events here.

[00:46:30] Simone Collins: Sure, yeah. That’s fair.

[00:46:32] Malcolm Collins: Then you have the one that is honestly most likely the real flood- Oh, okay ... the flood that’s remembered. Okay, okay, okay. And this is the Shuruppak river flood. Now- Where’s the Shuruppak River? The Shuruppak River is in Mesopotamia. So this is-

[00:46:40] Simone Collins: Oh,

[00:46:51] Malcolm Collins: I missed that one ... a real flood stratum that separates the Jemdet Nasr from the early dynastic layer of the Shuruppak and Kish. And the Mesopotamian tradition itself makes the flood hero a man of Shuruppak. Now, this is where it becomes problematic, right?

[00:47:10] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:47:10] Malcolm Collins: This assumes just as a presumption, that the Bible is taking a flood narrative that it is borrowing from this other group because the other group notes where the flood happened.

[00:47:24] Mm-hmm. It says it happened in Shuruppak, and we can see in the archeological layer a flood in Shuruppak within living memory of when this would’ve happened.

[00:47:33] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:47:35] Malcolm Collins: Now, this doesn’t match, none of these floods match the date of the flood in my chronology here, which is why I think the flood is meant to be me- like, used in the way floods were used in this period to mark changes in periods.

[00:47:48] But I also think it’s a, a real event. So what, what actually matches the date that I have within this period? The Persian Gulf inundation. The [00:48:00] post-glacial sea filled the Gulf basin and stood above today’s shoreline exactly across the ledger boundary, advancing up to a kilometer a year in some of the flattest land on Earth, fast enough to eat a community’s county within living memory.

[00:48:13] It drowned out the tradition’s own source of geography, the pre-Ubaid coastal world. Eribub ends up under the waterline, which is why the era divider sits where it does.

[00:48:24] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:48:25] Malcolm Collins: So this is what I, this is what matches with my timeline. Okay. What people would’ve seen happening within this particular period- Mm-hmm

[00:48:32] is not a catastrophic flood, but a, towns disappearing in a matter of years.

[00:48:38] Simone Collins: A troublesome- Right? ... flood, right, yeah, yeah. A significant climate-driven shift in, in the way that people lived or where they lived, you’re saying.

[00:48:47] Malcolm Collins: Yes. And then this could’ve become conflated with flood myths of this period. Now, you’re saying, “Oh, this is blasphemous to say that other texts got roped into the Bible.”

[00:48:57] I think that this happens commonly throughout the Bible. Like, look at the Adam and Eve story. If you go to S- Sumerian myths the, a, a, a famous Sumerian god is created by taking a rib- from somebody and a female god is created. And-

[00:49:13] Simone Collins: So that was a Sumerian thing? This is just cucking,

[00:49:15] Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, because it’s a, it’s a pun that works in Sumerian.

[00:49:18] In Sumerian, the word rib means life.

[00:49:21] Simone Collins: Oh, okay, okay.

[00:49:23] Malcolm Collins: It’s a very weird thing to do in Hebrew if you came up with the story in Hebrew. Why a rib? What’s the point of a rib? Why not anything else? Why not, you know, like- But

[00:49:32] Simone Collins: you’re saying it’s like a pun, so they just, they’re like, “Oh, it’s pippies.”

[00:49:35] Malcolm Collins: Well, in Sumerian tradition it would have made sense.

[00:49:39] It would have been metaphorical. It would have been poetic. But then another tradition is learning these stories from other groups- Yeah ... genuinely ancient beliefs, and they see that part and they’re like, “Oh, this is how- They’re like, “Oh, yes” ... women are created in the ancient myths.”

[00:49:53] Simone Collins: The body part.

[00:49:54] Malcolm Collins: Now, what’s important in the capturing of these ancient myths like that, like you could say, “Oh, that’s invalidating,” I take it to be quite the opposite.

[00:50:02] What is shows is that these ancient scholars would copy where they could find the oldest traditions that they were aware of with as much fidelity as they could map them.

[00:50:16] Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[00:50:18] Malcolm Collins: And what that says to me is, well, then it’s crazy that these old traditions appear to map with what we actually know from the archeological record.

[00:50:31] Simone Collins: That is crazy. I mean, that combined with all the, the settlements, the mapping

[00:50:36] Malcolm Collins: The settlements, the mapping, everything like that. And keep in mind how we techno-puritans believe the Bible came together. We think that genuine historic groups with genuine myths, the, the parts of those myths that were the closest, God’s easiest way of communicating to people- Mm-hmm

[00:50:51] , What really happened in a way that they could understand. And keep in mind here, God’s talking to a different group. He’s talking to, like, scribes during the period of Ur or whatever, right? You know, so he needs to talk with them with a language of floods. He needs to talk with them with the language- Mm

[00:51:09] of lists of genealogy, which is different than the way he’s speaking to people during the creation myths. Mm. Specifically the, what is often thought of as the two f- starting stories of Genesis, which are often thought of as separate stories. I think they probably were originally separate stories, but again, they all got brought together because they were the closest to true story that there could be Now I wanna talk about- The Bible

[00:51:32] Simone Collins: flood was just cultural shorthand at the time, and the closest that could be described to get to a, a truth.

[00:51:37] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it was the closest way that you could describe to a person of that period, “Okay, here’s a list of historic events. Here’s a list of cultural groups. Here’s a break, and then here’s another list of cultural groups. By the way, here’s a map.” Now, what I also think is very interesting is this information wouldn’t have been particularly useful to people of this period.

[00:51:59] Okay. [00:52:00] So the question is, is why is it kept in the Bible, right? Like, and the answer is, is because it’s a checksum for people of our period.

[00:52:09] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:52:11] Malcolm Collins: What I mean by this is it’s something that the people who wrote it down couldn’t have had a way to check the genetic ancestry of these cultural groups. They couldn’t have had a way to explore the map to make sure these groups were where the Bible said they were.

[00:52:25] It couldn’t have had anything close to an ancestral record of the past 10,000 years, right? But we today do. And so it allows us to go back and say, “Does this book seem genuinely divinely inspired, or does it not? Does it match a record in a way that nothing else could?”

[00:52:50] Simone Collins: Hmm. Okay, so it wasn’t so much in there for more ancient populations, but rather for m- far further humans who would see it and realize that this book almost impossibly calls shots or, yeah, impossibly calls shots, meaning they should take greater heed of what it’s all about.

[00:53:10] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:53:11] And it has the secondary effect of giving and imbuing the chapters with additional meaning because it’s what is being focused on here. It is civilizational innovation and development, which is what which elucidates for people who can see it that that is something of critical importance to God in terms of where we should be focusing our efforts and what makes you a favored people in his eyes.

[00:53:37] Malcolm Collins: I think that we’re supposed to basically treat this like a

[00:53:41] That’s what I was thinking. A, a- an ARG, an augmented reality game.

[00:53:44] But also it’s important to note because people of the past wouldn’t have been able to find out what these passages mean, it’s important that we don’t over key to things that, that don’t seem to make sense to us today.

[00:53:54] Mm-hmm. This is why I often say, “If you get to something that seems like it doesn’t make sense, it might be for a different generation. It might just not be for you. It might not be relevant to you or people of your time,” because we’re seeing things here that are just not relevant to some people in the past in their point of time, but was kept with fidelity for tens of thousands of years within this tradition.

[00:54:19] Now I wanna talk about a few quotes from these sections. So we’re gonna go over the flood, and the Cain and Abel story and , the post-flood narrative, because there’s a few really important parts here that I didn’t notice when I first read it.

[00:54:31] Simone Collins: Oh, okay.

[00:54:32] Malcolm Collins: So here’s the most important line, I think, from the entire Cain and Abel story, because I think it’s where God lays out that we are supposed to have emotional control.

[00:54:41] Like, that is a mandate for humanity. Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do right is right, sin is crouching at your door. It desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” So this reminds me of something I have told our children so many times, something I have told Simone as well so many times: you have to have emotional control.

[00:55:14] Mm-hmm. It is absolutely critical to have emotional control. When I see one of our kids begin to get angry and begin to work themselves up, I sit them down and I’m like, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast,” right? If... and, and typically when they’re mad, it’s because they’ve been punished or something like that.

[00:55:31] If you do what is right, will it not be accepted? Like, I’ve just scolded one of my kids. They then get pouty, and they wanna lash out at their siblings, right? Anyone who ha- had parents has seen this happen, and then you crouch down, and you have this conversation with them. I didn’t notice this conversation ever before when I read the Bible because I hadn’t had kids yet.

[00:55:51] Oh. I hadn’t had this exact conversation 100 times with my kids, and I hadn’t realized that the, the point of the story is [00:56:00] as much... Well, there’s a few core points to it. Point number one is Cain knew he did something bad even before the Mosaic tradition was handed down.

[00:56:10] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:56:10] Malcolm Collins: God didn’t need to tell him murder is wrong.

[00:56:14] Cain immediately tried to deflect from whether or not he murdered somebody, okay? Second the story tells us that we are not talking about a literal chain of descendants here. How do we know we’re not talking about a literal chain of descendants here? Because Cain’s grandson was able to work with bronze and iron.

[00:56:35] Now, there is no way you can work with any sort of Biblical timescale that I’m aware of where that doesn’t put bronze and iron way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way before any human should have had bronze and iron from the historical record, okay? Mm-hmm. Now, you could argue that he was a magical person who had bronze and iron, right?

[00:56:56] I, I guess, but it doesn’t say he had them because he was magic. It just said that he was good at working with them. Mm-hmm. Now, if you read it the way it appears to want to be read, because these are the same kids who are related to the guy who brags about murdering somebody for injuring him which he does, and he’s like, “Well, you know, it’s Cain.

[00:57:14] Oh, you, you get it back seven times for me. Well, you get it back 77 times for me. I’m, I’m just that violent,” that maps to the way that cultures became a more violent during this period, which they actually did. Then, then i- i- it appears to be about cultures of this period. And, and who, who does that map to?

[00:57:36] What was the first culture of this period that had good bronze a- and ironworking? You’re talking about groups like the Hittites and like the Assyrians that were known for being very, very violent groups

[00:57:49] By the way, if you’re not familiar with this poem, this is where he, he sings this poem to his w- two wives. “Adah and Zillah, listen to me, wives of Lamech, hear my words. I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me. If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech 77 times.” And note he- here, he’s not talking about two different people.

[00:58:08] This is just a way they... Like, he, he says the same thing twice over and over again. “Adah and Zillah, listen to me. Wives of Lamech, hear my words.” See, that’s the exact same thing listed twice two different ways.

[00:58:19] Simone Collins: Yeah, weird.

[00:58:20] Malcolm Collins: And then I have k- I’ve... Th- then, “I’ve killed a man for wounding me, I’ve killed a young man.”

[00:58:24] Simone Collins: That seems to happen a lot in the Old Testament, though. It’s super repetitive.

[00:58:30] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then and this is one of those things. If you don’t understand the way it’s written, if you don’t understand the w- the way flood narratives are used, you would think it’s talking about a literal, actual worldwide flood.

[00:58:43] Mm. If you don’t understand this way of writing, you would think that he had killed two people. You wouldn’t see that it is very clearly talking about one person who was killed.

[00:58:54] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:58:55] Malcolm Collins: And, and this is where not understanding it within its context can lead to misunderstandings of it. It’s still a literalist reading.

[00:59:02] It’s a literalist reading within the context of the f- people who wrote it. And note here, is this supposed to be a lesson or something we’re supposed to take away? No, it’s bad. So then when Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother and sister who sins against me, up to seven times?”

[00:59:19] And Jesus answered him, “I tell you, not up to seven times, but up to 77 times.” So you see here Jesus is sort of inverting this old way of living.

[00:59:27] Simone Collins: Hmm. Nice.

[00:59:30] Malcolm Collins: The other one that I thought was pretty interesting here, a verse I wanted to go over was, “When human beings began to increase in number on Earth, and daughters were born to them, two...

[00:59:39] The sons of God saw the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, ‘My spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal. Their days will be numbered 120 years.’” So- Two really in weird things going on here that we need to address. [01:00:00] First who are the sons of God in this context, right?

[01:00:05] And second, w- well, why did God shorten our lifespans to that extent? Mm-hmm. This appears to be, to me, a bigger punishment than if you take a literalist reading than what was handed out in the Garden of Eden. Because I’m gonna be honest, I probably don’t wanna live more than 900 years. And if we’re dealing with lifespans of, like, 900, 800 years after being kicked out of the Garden of Eden, I’d be like, even that seems a little too long for my sake.

[01:00:31] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[01:00:31] Malcolm Collins: Second, it creates a problem here. If God means for 120 years to be the age maximum of humans, which I actually wouldn’t mind that as an age maximum of humans, as longevity technology improves. Keep us young until we’re 120 years old, then, then off with us. Why, why do other Christian groups treat that as a max?

[01:00:49] Why do they regularly attempt to live past that? Why do they say that they’re doing something biblical when God is clearly like, “It annoys me when humans live longer than this”? Mm. And the other thing that’s really interesting about this is I tried to figure out this word. Like, what does he mean, my spirit will not contend with humans living longer than this?

[01:01:09] And unfortunately, the verb used there, that’s literally the only time it’s ever used in any ancient Hebrew text ever.

[01:01:16] Simone Collins: So it’s this r- random orphaned word that people maybe don’t know how to properly translate then?

[01:01:22] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[01:01:22] Simone Collins: Which word exactly in that sentence?

[01:01:25] Malcolm Collins: The word that, that, like, will not contend with, contend with, it’s a verb.

[01:01:29] Simone Collins: Oh. Huh.

[01:01:30] Malcolm Collins: I- i- i- i- it, it, in context it sounds like he’s saying it is, like, a bad from my perspective, or it annoys me when humans live over 120 years. I’m going to argue from a techno-puritan perspective this makes sense. Ge- humans need to improve intergenerationally. If you look at, like, how unimproved the boomer generation is despite all the new information they might have access to as a generation we see this.

[01:01:54] If we look at, you know, old people stuck in their ways, we see this. People appear to get stuck in their traditions, and the way that civilization advances and develops is we get to tell our kids what we believe about the world, and then our kids, like my dad telling me, “Well, we don’t, we don’t believe in any religion.”

[01:02:11] Mm. I’m like, “Well, that doesn’t seem to work, so let’s, let’s try something else, okay?” But I’m only able to have that split because we get to live sort of this iterative case of intergenerational martyrdom- Mm-hmm ... that is allowed through these limited lifespans.

[01:02:28] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

[01:02:29] Malcolm Collins: And again, I’ll note here it’s also pretty crazy that he actually did name about the upper natural limit of the human lifespan here, where I doubt they would’ve known many people who lived to the, around the age of 120.

[01:02:42] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[01:02:42] Malcolm Collins: Anyone in that period. So that’s, that’s also- spicy there. But then the second thing here, which becomes even clearer with this next line, is, “The Nephilim were on earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children with them. They were the heroes of the old, men of renown.”

[01:02:58] So this part, I th- I, I do not like the traditional Christian read here. They say the sons of God being talked about here are angels.

[01:03:09] Simone Collins: Huh? What?

[01:03:10] Malcolm Collins: Or s- some, some part of the heavenly host. Oh. Because in other parts, which, well, I can get to them these same beings are talked about as hanging out with angels.

[01:03:21] Note another traditional Christian interpretation here, which is used pretty frequently among evangelical communities in the US, is that the sons of God are the sons of Seth, and they are talked about as the sons of God specifically to set them apart from the descendants of Cain

[01:03:39] Titan, please

[01:03:40] Which kind of makes sense if this exact word wasn’t only ever used in other places to mean something that looks like it’s in some way involved with the heavenly host

[01:03:50]

[01:03:50] Malcolm Collins: So you’ve got Job 1:6, “Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them.” Job 2:1. Now [01:04:00] that one you could say, well, maybe this is talking about humans, right? Humans coming to God, and Satan being among them. I a lot of people are like, “Well, I don’t know.

[01:04:08] I don’t know if I like that.” The second one here is, “Again, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves to the Lord, and Satan also came among him to present himself to the Lord.” A, a different one here, but about the same thing. “When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.”

[01:04:22] This is spoken at the moment of the Earth’s creation. Again, a lot of people say, “Well, how could humans have existed at the moments of the Earth’s creation?” Within techno-puritanism you don’t get this problem.

[01:04:33] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

[01:04:33] Malcolm Collins: Because you would say, well, if predestination exists, it’s the people who don’t exist yet singing for joy.

[01:04:38] Like, because they exist outside of time before their specific period in which they do exist. And I sing for joy about the creation of reality. I think all humans sing for joy when they, when they talk about God creating reality, or most humans do. You know, not Buddhists or whatever. And so, this still works for me, humans being here.

[01:04:56] But you can see why other people... The, the problem is, is that Satan appears to be among the sons of God often. Then in Songs 29:1, you have, “Ascribe to the Lord, O sons of God,” heavenly beings, “Ascribe to the Lord God in strengths.” Then Songs 89:6,7 “For who in the skies can be comprehended to the Lord?

[01:05:16] Who among the sons of God,” heavenly beings, “Is like the Lord? A God greatly to be feared in a council of the holy ones.” So here the, the sons of God are in the, the holy ones. “And who is awesome to be around him.” And then Songs 29:1, “Ascribe to th- the Lord, O sons of God,” heavenly beings, “Ascribe to the Lord in glorious and strengths.”

[01:05:36] And then th- finally Songs 89:6,7 “For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord? For among the sons of God,” heavenly beings, “Is like the Lord? A God greatly to be feared in the council of holy ones, and awesome people all around him,” or ones all around him. Now, this gets really bad here, okay?

[01:05:56] So if these are angels this is clearly and in no uncertain term saying angels at one point had sex with human women and had children.

[01:06:07] Simone Collins: Yeah, that doesn’t make sense

[01:06:10] Malcolm Collins: I don’t know

[01:06:11] Simone Collins: And I’m glad

[01:06:12] Malcolm Collins: No, th- there’s like a number of theological reasons I have a problem with that. First of all, in most traditional readings in both Jewish and Catholic readings, like if you look at St- St Augustus on this, or no Thomas Aquinas on this, he said that angels lacked free will except for the ability to choose to be on the, the good guy or the evil guy side of things.

[01:06:32] Now, are these demonic angels fallen ones? No, that also doesn’t seem likely to me because they’re still angels and they would still lack free will, so why are they getting together with humans? And why wouldn’t God stop this? And y- the beings that they create become heroes. They become good beings, right?

[01:06:50] Like, wh- why would that be the descendant of demonic angel beings and humans, right? Yeah.

[01:06:57] No, the traditional read here is that yes, they are actually fallen angels. , And that while the text says that their children become heroes, , what it really means is more like they gain, , acclaim and power, not that they are good heroes. , And, and this is true.

[01:07:16] This is what’s written in the text. But it’s also very clear that in the text, this is not condemned anywhere, nor is it explicitly said that they’re bad in any context, , outside of they are talked about right before God decides man has become too wicked. But

[01:07:33] That even, even with all of that, even if it’s demons, even if you say their children were also evil, it still doesn’t sit right with me. , And note it is in, in nowhere that some people read the Nephilim as their children. That is definitely not what’s said in the text

[01:07:47] Malcolm Collins: So let’s eat it here and say what’s being talked about here is not angels and is just humans. It’s talking about men, the sons of God, because God made [01:08:00] Adam, and now in other places it’ll talk about the sons of Adam, which is true.

[01:08:04] So maybe this type of human is a human that is set apart in some way because of their deeds or moral character or the way God relates to them. We do know that this happens because throughout the Old Testament, God talks about various people and various group as the sons of God. Now, he doesn’t use this phrasing.

[01:08:23] He uses a different phrasing for the sons of God. This phrasing is very unique to this type of being that Satan appears to be among frequently. Okay. But i- given that we know that he does that, I’m okay with eating that and saying what’s being talked about here is not angels or demons having sex with humans.

[01:08:43] And if you say that, I think this gets really easy. There’s no problem here, and then you get the other cool thing, which is it talks about the Nephilim. Now I note very clearly here it does not say that Nephilim had children with humans. A lot of people I’ve heard say this but if you read the, the text in, in Hebrew that is not what’s implied at all.

[01:09:01] It’s the sons of God that are having children with humans, and the Nephilim exist alongside them.

[01:09:07] Simone Collins: Okay.

[01:09:08] Malcolm Collins: So who are the Nephilim?

[01:09:11] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[01:09:13] Malcolm Collins: Remember in our last episode we mentioned that God seemed to... There, there was Homo sapiens around- Yes ... before Adam and Eve, it appears- Mm-hmm ... from a number of verses, and we say that God just didn’t consider these things living beings yet, right?

[01:09:27] Right. Well, now God considers some Homo sapiens living beings and some Homo sapiens not living beings. Calling the some he considers living beings the sons of God, that sounds believable to me, right? Like- Yeah ... that sounds like a good way to differentiate them. And then it also talks about another type of thing that’s like them, living among them.

[01:09:51] Nephilim is sometimes translated as fallen one. Who do I think the Nephilim are? They are either other hominid species being described here, which would be pretty miraculous if that’s caught here, right? Yeah. Without laying out. Like, it doesn’t say angels or anything. Mm-hmm. Or it’s describing the NPCs that we talked about in the last Tract episode.

[01:10:09] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

[01:10:12] Malcolm Collins: shows that the sons of God sort of desire this group that’s not like the Nephilim that is the, the daughters of women, like a better, a better type of mate.

[01:10:21] Note the traditional take is that Nephilim are some sort of like a giant race or even just v- a very strong variant of the human race, , that is larger than other humans. This is seen , the only other part they’re written about, the Israelites see Canaanite troops, and they say that some of them are the descendants of Nephilim, , and look very large in comparison to them.

[01:10:43] , It could just be, an ethnic group, a very large ethnic group from this region as well, , that no longer exists anymore

[01:10:50] Malcolm Collins: So I, I’ll go with that. But what’s cool is if you go with that and you say this group being described here as the sons of God is actually humans, then a lot of those other sections that I was reading begin to mean different things.

[01:11:06] Any, any thoughts before I go further, Simone?

[01:11:10] Simone Collins: Well, I just find that such a more compelling explanation than... Also, God p- is really big on playing favorites and having the people He likes and the people He doesn’t like, and the people He likes replacing the people He doesn’t like, so that He would have a name for the people He doesn’t like and talk about his chosen people as the sons of God.

[01:11:32] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It wouldn’t So what this would mean is if the sons of God are humans or a subcategory of humans with a special calling a, the other lines in which they are mentioned now take on a completely new meaning. Mm-hmm. It means two things. It means, one, Satan is in the category of these types of people, these sort of prototypes or archetypes of humanity, right?

[01:11:56] And lives among them and is often among them, [01:12:00] which I guess can mean temptation lives uniquely among these groups, or they will be uniquely tempted by Satan. Two- Mm ... they are called to account by Gods to witness things or to be an outer part of the heavenly host, right? Mm. Like, you are actually in communication and warriors for God in a very, very direct sense.

[01:12:23] In the sense that an angel might be a warrior for God, you are a warrior for God, right? You, you have a place among the stars, have a place among God through your own actions. Mm-hmm. Now I personally find, one, that to be a very inspiring thing, if that’s what the Bible is saying here. And two, to any degree that might be sacrilegious, it feels less sacrilegious than angels having sex with humans and making babies.

[01:12:50] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[01:12:51] Malcolm Collins: That to me, like at its, my heart feels like a grosser thing to say was happening. And God was doing nothing about it, and these angels were either... A- again, w- are they the good angels or are they the bad angels? If they’re the good angels, then why are they allowed to do this? And if they’re the bad angels, then why did all their kids turn out good?

[01:13:11] Okay. Hmm Next we’re gonna talk a little bit about some lines from the Noah’s Ark. Take from y- you, with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird and male and female and keep their various par- kinds alive throughout the Earth.

[01:13:37] Now, where this gets interesting is if you can’t eat animals, why are there clean and unclean animals already? Yeah. Huh? Now I’d note here you could say, well, it’s for sacrifices or not for sacrifices. Why-

[01:13:50] Simone Collins: No, but it’s super, it’s super, super clear that you’re expected to eat the sacrifices.

[01:13:54] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, in, in later parts.

[01:13:55] Yeah. So like, the other thing that’s important to note about the various flood locations that people choose when they wanna say it was the Black Sea flood or it was a Mediterranean flood- Mm-hmm ... is the flood is described as coming with long periods of rain, which do not describe those floods. Hmm. That much more describes a river basin flood.

[01:14:16] I know because I live on a river basin that floods, and it’s really terrifying. Oh, yeah. So that again would say that the river basin flood theory is the most accurate in terms of the specific real human event that’s being remembered here. The other thing about the flood that I mentioned before is at the end, God says he’s not gonna do it anymore.

[01:14:34] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

[01:14:35] Malcolm Collins: But there’s something I, I noted here, which I did... Made me go, “Ooh,” ‘cause I didn’t catch this the first time I read this. Okay. “As long as the Earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” So this sounds like a great promise, right? Except it has a qualifier.

[01:14:57] Simone Collins: Okay.

[01:14:59] Malcolm Collins: As long as the Earth endures

[01:15:04] Huh. He’s saying- That’s

[01:15:05] Simone Collins: unsettling. What do you mean? Okay

[01:15:08] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, ‘cause I was like, well, one day the Earth will be swallowed by the sun. Is it saying- Sure ... that somehow we’re destined to prevent that? One day the Earth could be hit by an asteroid and destroyed. Is it saying we’re destined to prevent that?

[01:15:19] And the answer here- Mm ... is no, it’s not a promise that we’re destined to prevent that. No. It, it leaves a giant qualifier, protecting the Earth itself is on you, humanity.

[01:15:33] Simone Collins: We need to get off-planet. Can we get off... No, mm, I don’t know. I don’t like space. This is tough. Okay carry on.

[01:15:39] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So that’s, that’s also...

[01:15:42] Also, I’ll note here that the Bible clearly lays out in this part that it believes that humans are born evil, right? For the people who are like, “Humans are born good,” or, “Humans are born evil,” “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood.”

[01:15:59] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. “

[01:15:59] Malcolm Collins: And [01:16:00] again, never will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.” So note again, that has a qualifier. “Never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done through a flood.” He’s still allowed to through other means. This is where you get the, the fires at the end of time and stuff like that- Oh, yes

[01:16:17] a lot of people talk about. But I think that the, the fires at the end of time are what we’re fighting right now, which is the bonfire of people’s own vanity that they are tossing themselves into.

[01:16:27] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. The trial of the lotus eaters, as you might otherwise call it.

[01:16:32] Malcolm Collins: And note here- But- ... God may have, in this early flood, killed all living beings.

[01:16:40] Simone Collins: Just leave the, the

[01:16:41] Malcolm Collins: planet.

[01:16:41] Simone Collins: Even though he didn’t flood the entire

[01:16:42] Malcolm Collins: Earth. So let’s, let’s talk about this.

[01:16:44] What you could argue is if the number of what God considered to be living beings was very small during this period, which might be the case given the qualifications for what counted as humans that we laid out in the last track, that you have to be willing and capable of taking moral accountability.

[01:17:01] Well, not willing, but capable of taking moral accountability for your actions. It could be that in even a fairly small regional flood, everyone but one family lied, died that had that ability. Without wiping out every human on Earth still have the story to be in form true. Now, note the story does say it wiped out all animals.

[01:17:21] There’s just no way that’s possible. So we have to assume that the story was being used as a footnote in the way it is in other Sumerian texts. But also about a real event. Next here This is something I didn’t know. Do you know what is the sign of the covenant between God and humans?

[01:17:40] Simone Collins: The stone plate that goes on the Ark?

[01:17:45] No.

[01:17:46] Malcolm Collins: I’ll give you a hint. It’s been co-opted. The Ark of

[01:17:48] Simone Collins: the Covenant. That’s

[01:17:50] Malcolm Collins: not the sign. He was very clear about what the sign was.

[01:17:53] Simone Collins: Burning bush?

[01:17:55] Malcolm Collins: Rainbows.

[01:17:56] Simone Collins: Rainbows.

[01:17:57] Malcolm Collins: Rainbows are supposed to be the sign of the covenant, and it is interesting that, that is the sign- No. Wait. There was the column

[01:18:02] Simone Collins: of the cloud.

[01:18:04] The, the column of the cloud that tells you where the Ark... That you’re supposed to go ...

[01:18:08] Malcolm Collins: That, that that, that sign has been so aggressively co-opted that many Christians today flinch at the sign of a rainbow.

[01:18:16] Simone Collins: Don’t wanna, you

[01:18:17] Malcolm Collins: know, those- And yet, God said-

[01:18:18] Simone Collins: Where does it say the rainbow’s the sign of the covenant?

[01:18:22] Malcolm Collins: I’ll, I’ll read it right now. Yeah, please. “And God said, ‘This is a sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for generations to come. I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the Earth.

[01:18:35] Whenever I bring clouds over the Earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the Earth.’”

[01:18:57] So-

[01:18:57] Simone Collins: Oh, so the covenant of no more floods, I super-duper promise. That covenant.

[01:19:01] Malcolm Collins: Yes. So God said to Noah, “This is a sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on Earth.”

[01:19:09] Simone Collins: Okay. Now- The I won’t flood you again covenant ...

[01:19:12] Malcolm Collins: if the throwing yourself into the bonfire of your own vanity is done under the sign of a rainbow, I think that has a, a degree of poetic justice.

[01:19:23] Simone Collins: Dude. But- Okay.

[01:19:24] Malcolm Collins: Right?

[01:19:26] Simone Collins: Well, well, well.

[01:19:29] Malcolm Collins: Another thing I didn’t know is, you know the be fruitful and multiply comes twice, right? There is-

[01:19:35] Simone Collins: I’ve heard it a couple times, yeah.

[01:19:37] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It’s a, it’s a command... Well, it, it might come more than twice, but it’s a commandment that’s, like, over and over and over again as something you’re supposed to do.

[01:19:43] Simone Collins: Yeah. Just seems like a, like, go for it, kid, you know? It’s... Now your job is to expand. God is very expansionist. If, if he likes you. If not, he wishes demographic collapse on you, and he will replace you with his favorite people, [01:20:00] ‘cause he talks about that it seems- Memory serves Yeah.

[01:20:05] Malcolm Collins: And just to get an idea of how crazy all this is when you piece it together- Mm-hmm

[01:20:13] is if you’re willing to say the flood was an artistic convention while being a real event, just not as big of an event as it’s made out to be, because i- in the artistic convention you always made everything bigger and more dramatic- Mm-hmm ... then what that allows you to have, like what do you get out of this?

[01:20:30] If you say that that was an artistic convention and that this is a checksum describing real places, real maps, and not meant to be le- re- it’s meant to be read literally, but not in the lazy, literative way, right? What do you get out of that? You get a map and a genealogy that goes impossibly far back in time and covers an impossibly large geography for a group of that period, especially a nobody group of that period, which is what these people were at that time.

[01:20:59] When you compare it to, like the ancient Greek, like historians, like if you read Herodotus, his... Like, he actually went out there and tried to map the entire world. His, his

[01:21:07] Simone Collins: map- Yeah, and he’s all over the place. He’s making stuff up. He’s,

[01:21:11] Malcolm Collins: yeah ... and stories are, like actually laughable- Yeah ... compared to these.

[01:21:15] Simone Collins: That-

[01:21:15] Malcolm Collins: Right?

[01:21:16] Simone Collins: I mean, you make a really good point for people to be like, “Well, it’s 20 years off,” or, “It’s how many,” even hundreds of years off compared to Herodotus’ history, which we still reference upon.

[01:21:24] Malcolm Collins: Oh, no. No, I’m not even talking about things being off now. I’m talking about the genealogy and map. Then in addition to the genealogy and map, you get a impossibly accurate timeline of tens of thousands of years of history, dated in a way where you can’t easily move, fudge, or play with the timeline.

[01:21:44] Simone Collins: Mm.

[01:21:45] Malcolm Collins: And you also get an explanation of a civilization, of the civilization of the ziggurats, early civilization, that they couldn’t have understood during that period, and transitions in what it meant to be human.

[01:21:59] Simone Collins: Mm.

[01:22:00] Malcolm Collins: But it all comes back to one thing. If these were the important things to take away from this chapter of Genesis, what it means is all of the important meat in Genesis, all of the 3D image that comes out from looking at it the right way-

[01:22:19] Simone Collins: Yeah

[01:22:19] Malcolm Collins: are about humanity civilizationally developing. Yeah. That appears to be what the story is critically interested in.

[01:22:30] Simone Collins: Yeah, so very much an extension, but from a civilizational standpoint of the evolution described in the beginning.

[01:22:37] Malcolm Collins: Yes.

[01:22:40] Simone Collins: That’s super interesting. Yeah, I mean it, now it makes sense. When you put it that way, now I’m not, like, glazing my eyes over when thinking about that section, for sure.

[01:22:49] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and what that means is God is a god, as we sort of laid out in the last video, of the civilized world, of being a civilized human. He is not a god- Well,

[01:23:00] Simone Collins: but again, it’s a civilization that, that, that addresses the inherent sin within a human.

[01:23:05] Malcolm Collins: Yes, exactly, and allows us to address that.

[01:23:08] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

[01:23:08] Malcolm Collins: And he, he, he is, he is not a god of the savage, right?

[01:23:13] And he doesn’t consider those living beings, right? Oh,

[01:23:16] Simone Collins: and he really hates the gods of the savages as well, because they have gods.

[01:23:22] Malcolm Collins: Yes.

[01:23:23] Simone Collins: He- He’s the god of civilization. He, you know the whole, like, a, you know, a- a man shall not pass his seed through the fire to Moloch. Like, all of this, he’s like, “No, we don’t do child sacrifice.

[01:23:31] We don’t do all these...” Like, there are other gods. And I was also really confused when I first read the Old Testament, because I’m like, “Wait, what do you mean? What is... How is... Monotheism. You can’t have God ig- you know, acknowledging the existence of other gods. Like, this is, this is so screwed up.” But in the context of all this, and in the context of this being the god of civilization, of advancement, of humans rising above our most basic, violent, horrible instincts- Yeah

[01:23:56] yeah, I mean, yeah. These, these other humans are capable of having gods. [01:24:00] They’re not, they’re not good gods.

[01:24:01] Malcolm Collins: And I’ll note that the punishments handed to Adam and Eve as a result of choosing this way of living actually work with it. The amount of labor that you have to do in a civilized society, in a, in a, a society where you use agriculture- Oh, yeah, well, if you wanna take a

[01:24:16] Simone Collins: sapiens argument- Mm-hmm

[01:24:17] you know, also it, it, it was God who introduced agriculture, which w- whatever his name is who wrote this.

[01:24:23] Malcolm Collins: Therefore introduced labor. Oh, that’s when

[01:24:24] Simone Collins: everything got so hard.

[01:24:26] Malcolm Collins: And why- Life was so

[01:24:27] Simone Collins: horrible ...

[01:24:28] Malcolm Collins: why does childbirth hurt for human women and when it doesn’t hurt for any other mammal species?

[01:24:33] It’s, it’s really weird. Large-brained

[01:24:34] Simone Collins: babies? What?

[01:24:35] Malcolm Collins: It’s because we have very large-brained babies- Okay ... and because we walk upright. Mm-hmm. But I think the large brain part is more important. We, we have the use of our hands ‘cause we walk upright, and large brains. Look at, look at

[01:24:43] Simone Collins: this freaking noggin. Look at, look at this freaking noggin.

[01:24:45] Malcolm Collins: These are part of having this agency, right? So it’s literally describing punishments that the people of this period wouldn’t have been particularly aware

[01:24:54] Simone Collins: of. It’s the punishments of civilization to a great extent, and I guess m- greater human intelligence. The Neanderthals had giant heads, so I don’t know about that.

[01:25:02] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, sorry, I mean hominids, right? Like, Neanderthals appeared to have some degree of intelligence, they just never formed a civilization in the way that we did. So what I encourage people to do, because I skipped over a lot of my findings here. I had a lot laid out here. It’s just to, the way Fable writes, I’m gonna have to go over it with another AI and rewrite it all.

[01:25:22] Just is so AI-ish, I don’t like it.

[01:25:25] Simone Collins: Claude has a very AI voice Grok has, to me, the most natural sounding voice. I don’t know if you’re like-

[01:25:32] Malcolm Collins: It does. So what I’d probably do is rewrite it with Grok. Yeah ... that said the, the layout of the findings that we got here genuinely astonish me. Mm. Like, I did not think it would be as easy as let’s just take that stupid timeline that people have tried to, you know, s- put all of her s- history into- Yeah

[01:25:53] and just paste it to the first stable city we’re aware of, and then it fits in, like, nine different points to the archeological

[01:26:03] Simone Collins: record. Slot in. Yeah. Yeah. Like a little Lego chunk.

[01:26:07] Malcolm Collins: And then- Yeah ... let’s take the other story and just reverse paste it onto events that we’re aware of. And again, it just fits like a Lego chunk, like ka-chink.

[01:26:16] It’s not even, like, hard. Like, it was like baby’s first ARG. That’s what I was thinking. A, a- an ARG, an augmented reality game. And it also surprises me, and I don’t know what to think of this, is that other people haven’t s- p- people can correct me if other people have gotten parts of this before that this isn’t something that’s, like, more widely talked about or a widely read way of reading the Bible is coming at it and being like, “No, the Bible’s not gonna have stuff in it that means literally nothing, but it’s also not gonna contradict what we are aware of in the archeological record.”

[01:26:47] So, a- when I say, like, like, big things, like the people who are doing these archeologies, I’m not talking about, like, modern academics or whatever. I’m talking about, like, when every archeologist was a Christian and we, you know, could trust everything. It still wildly contradicts the archeological record to say something like s- copper and iron were within, like, three generations of the first humans.

[01:27:11] Like, that, that doesn’t... That’s not plausible. And I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna buy something that’s not plausible because then I try to tell this to my kids, and they’ll just leave the religion, right? So I have to look and say, “Oh,” but when I look and say, “Oh my God, like, this fits both the archeological record inhumanly exactly,” why not just accept that, right?

[01:27:30] Like-

[01:27:31] Simone Collins: Well, could I... I, I have to wonder if perhaps this is because the first wave of biblical literists trying to ch- literalists trying to reconcile the Bible with technology did so at a time when a lot of technology was coming online, and we had a lot of the ability to disprove some of the previous interpretations, but not enough information to, to f- go all the way and prove how, “Oh, actually it is accurate.”

[01:27:56] Like, they’re, they’re in- Yeah ... this middle ground, and [01:28:00] then it kind of solidified as a tradition so much so that then there was almost this separate folk interpretation of the Bible where you had to start throwing out big swaths of the archeological record and our understanding of evolution and all these other things because- They, they didn’t wanna revisit it.

[01:28:18] They just figured that digging deeper would lead to less proof of biblical literism, literalism rather than more.

[01:28:25] Malcolm Collins: No.

[01:28:26] Simone Collins: That’s, that’s kinda my guess, ‘cause I think there’s a lot of stuff, as you pointed out, that was only found relatively recently.

[01:28:32] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[01:28:33] Simone Collins: And it has only become easier to actually draw all these connections just within the past even three months with AI as it stands now, to be able to say, “Well, can you, you know, cross-reference all these things and these historical events and these references in the Bible?”

[01:28:48] That’s not... That’s not something you can- That’s not an easy thing to do. Yeah. And it, I mean, you can have biblical scholars working for a long time, and they have, but have they worked for, on, on this for such a long time with also the archeological record and understanding of biology and historical geology and all these other factors been, been, you know, as, as advanced?

[01:29:08] No, I don’t think so. So-

[01:29:09] Malcolm Collins: And, and, and note here, I wanna, I wanna take an aside here and, and you know, tell people This is not like normal Bible math. This isn’t like I take numbers from the Bible and I assume they’re supposed to be something totally different, or I, I move them around and I add a number here and I add a number here.

[01:29:28] We are working with what the Bible appears to be talking about, early human civilization- Mm-hmm ... and just copying and pasting the numbers and what it says about the individuals within those numbers, because it, it will say, “X person lived at this time and they did X.” And then be like, okay, so it said that they were like a very godly people.

[01:29:47] Let’s see if there’s anything unique about this civilization. Oh, they were known for making lots of statues of their deities. Right? Like, that’s a, that’s an interesting thing to note there. Yes. It’s, it’s not like the maximum sort of stretching you get when you’re trying to match other things in history, which I, I really don’t like.

[01:30:04] This is just simple copy and paste in a way that genuinely shouldn’t work if without some help somewhere along the way.

[01:30:12] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. I, no, I appreciate that because I think when people try to fudge it, and again, I, I had watched that super long takedown by that primatologist about the Creation Museum in the United States.

[01:30:25] What really bothered her as a primatologist who understood evolution, all these other things, was just how blatant blatantly ignored many things were, and how things were just conveniently left out. And when you do that, when you fudge it, you are going to hemorrhage faithful people. Like you can’t both be like, “It’s super real,” but then leave out really conspicuous things.

[01:30:49] Because if someone values reality, they’re going to catch that. If they don’t value reality, they don’t need you to prove it anyway. They’ll go on the faith of it all. And so-

[01:30:58] Malcolm Collins: Yeah ...

[01:30:58] Simone Collins: it’s the worst possible approach to this. And I, I love, I love this approach to biblical literalism. It the techno-puritan religion makes so much sense and it’s so funny because we were just at first like, “I don’t know.

[01:31:10] I think it would be a good idea for us to have a hard religion. Let’s just like pretend.” L- let’s

[01:31:14] Malcolm Collins: read the Bible and see if it has anything interesting

[01:31:16] Simone Collins: to say. Yeah, and we’re

[01:31:18] Malcolm Collins: like, “Oh my God.” Oh my God, this makes it... Like as, as a person who ha- has read Herodotus because I like Herodotus, when I got to that point in Genesis, I was like, “What the...

[01:31:27] What the The, what the is this? This map is insane. Yeah. Like this history is insane. They shouldn’t have this. Th- this makes Herodotus look like a, a toddler. And it’s just like- Well- ... dropped here, and every time you- What

[01:31:42] Simone Collins: Herodotus had that the Bible lacks was a sense of humor, okay?

[01:31:46] Malcolm Collins: And every time previously that I read it, it’s like I just skipped those parts because it seemed boring to me.

[01:31:52] And I think, you know how it says like God hardens people’s hearts? Yes. I think he does that for certain groups over long periods of time, and certain people that [01:32:00] prevent them from seeing obvious things like this. Because they’re not meant to see it, or maybe it’s supposed to come together all at once on this podcast.

[01:32:07] I, I don’t know, right? Like maybe- Well,

[01:32:09] Simone Collins: God plays favorites, I know that. It’s...

[01:32:12] Malcolm Collins: Maybe seeing something like this is meant to affirm some of the other weird things in terms of our interpretation of the Bible- Mm-hmm ... for people who otherwise haven’t seen stuff like this or, or this is in a popular theory among their communities because it makes a lot of sense to them.

[01:32:26] Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to work, and that’s why people’s minds were, were sort of hardened to seeing something that as soon as I read it seemed fairly obvious. It, it seemed as obvious as, you know when you open like, a Lord of the Rings book or something and there’s like a map at the beginning of it?

[01:32:41] Simone Collins: Yes.

[01:32:41] Malcolm Collins: It really felt like opening Genesis, and it’s like, “What the... Why

[01:32:45] Simone Collins: is there a map here?” Oh, it’s, it’s the map section.

[01:32:47] Malcolm Collins: I don’t remember a map being here.

[01:32:48] Simone Collins: Yeah. This is the elves and the orcs and the dwarves, and they live in this spot.

[01:32:55] Malcolm Collins: So if you guys wanna see these, these do check out the page. If anybody wants to undertake the project of rewriting it in human language- In human language

[01:33:03] Please take, undertake that project. Yes. I don’t wanna deal with it.

[01:33:05] Simone Collins: No

[01:33:06] Malcolm Collins: en

[01:33:06] Simone Collins: dashes or semicolons allowed. No, I really resist that. I resent that so deeply.

[01:33:10] Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, it just sounds obnoxiously AI.

[01:33:13] Simone Collins: Yeah ...

[01:33:13] Malcolm Collins: but it was, it goes way deeper. So you get to actually see the civilizations develop in images and in descriptions of the way they lived, of the people that are being laid out here in Genesis, if my interpretation of this is correct.

[01:33:31] And what that... And, and basically like fills in an entire chapter of Genesis that you’re supposed to decipher through ciphers. Fairly easy ciphers, I might

[01:33:43] Simone Collins: add.

[01:33:43] Malcolm Collins: Ciphers. Just-

[01:33:44] Simone Collins: What, what do you mean fairly? Oh, just how, like, just connect the dots and-

[01:33:48] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’s

[01:33:48] Simone Collins: just connect the dots. It, it’s- Well, with ma- with freaking Fable, like, the best, smartest model that we’ve had access to so far.

[01:33:54] Come on, man. Be a little more humbled by the technology. You know? But aren’t

[01:34:01] Malcolm Collins: you pretty amazed by this? The, the map, the timeline, the-

[01:34:04] Simone Collins: I am, I am very, I’m, I’m very amazed by it. I’m this was way more impressive than I thought it would be. And you

[01:34:09] Malcolm Collins: always convince me. And this was me going into it with so much hubris.

[01:34:12] Because where things have, like, come out in the past have been you know, the Bible’s probably true,” like that would further affirm my faith. This time I just went into it and I was like, “No, the Bible is true, and therefore this means something. And therefore, if I pop it on a map, it’s going to do something.”

[01:34:29] And it did for three different data sets, which shocked me.

[01:34:34] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[01:34:36] Malcolm Collins: I was like, “Well, s**t.” Yeah. “I guess, I guess this is true. I guess this is real.”

[01:34:41] Simone Collins: There’s

[01:34:41] Malcolm Collins: something to this, no? “And not just real, but this way of interpreting it is the correct way of interpreting it.” Mm.

[01:34:45] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

[01:34:46] Malcolm Collins: What do you wanna call our way of interpreting it?

[01:34:48] ‘Cause it’s a special type of literalism.

[01:34:50] Simone Collins: The real biblical literalism literalism. Non-cope biblical literalism. Based biblical literalism.

[01:34:59] Malcolm Collins: I guess, I guess I’d call it deep literalism to contrast it with surface literalism.

[01:35:04] Simone Collins: Oh, I like deep literalism. That sounds

[01:35:07] Malcolm Collins: good. Yeah, every story actually means something more than just a, an allegory, unless it’s, like, an obvious allegory.

[01:35:14] But y- i- what that is won’t always be transparent from the surface level reading of the story Anyway, love you Simone. And this was a lot of fun I hope for you.

[01:35:26] Simone Collins: This was absolutely fascin- I, I mean I, I’m really looking forward to going back and... Does this have, wait, did you get this the, the Genesis ledger you put this on?

[01:35:35] Oh yeah, Technopuritan. Oh, okay, so this is on the website.

[01:35:37] Malcolm Collins: It’s on the

[01:35:38] Simone Collins: website. It’s the bottom- Technopuritan.com/genesis5. Why Genesis 5?

[01:35:43] Malcolm Collins: Because that’s what, what I was looking at when I first built it, was let’s go into Genesis 5- Okay, okay, okay ... and see what this could map to. And there- Well, all right,

[01:35:51] Simone Collins: nerds.

[01:35:51] Go to technopuritan.com/genesis5 to get

[01:35:56] Malcolm Collins: your- And, and the other thing that I think- ... deep literacy on ... is gonna surprise a lot of Christians and Jews, [01:36:00] because I was unaware of this-

[01:36:01] Simone Collins: Yeah ...

[01:36:01] Malcolm Collins: is the location that’s being talked about from the very beginning of the Adam and Eve story the, the mouse water, the Tigris and the Euphrates, all the way to the story of Abraham is within, like, a 20-minute drive of each other.

[01:36:17] Like-

[01:36:17] Simone Collins: Oh yeah, ‘cause you did this little tour. I’m not moving. Sorry. This- Oh, sorry. Oh.

[01:36:25] Malcolm Collins: Well, it’s also nowhere near Israel. That also surprised me.

[01:36:28] Simone Collins: Wait, so how far did you need to drive from Israel to go on that, that whole tour?

[01:36:34] Malcolm Collins: Oh, no, no. I didn’t go to this region. This isn’t where Jesus was Oh, I thought you went to Syria.

[01:36:37] This is a different region. Oh, okay. This, this region is in

[01:36:40] like southern Turkey.

[01:36:41] Simone Collins: Yeah. Oh, Turkey-eh.

[01:36:44] Malcolm Collins: But they... all of this, now still the descendants of the Jewish people, or one of them. But it’s a region that also makes more sense if you’re fanning culture out into ancient Greece, into, you know, ancient Europe, and into ancient Israel at around the same time.

[01:36:59] Because they would have received, if you’re assuming a true Eve the g- genetics or cultural pollination from this region around the time the actual kingdom of Israel did. Which would explain why you see things like ancient Athens take off before ancient Israel because they were genuinely closer to that part of the world’s genetic stock.

[01:37:22] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[01:37:23] Malcolm Collins: I- in terms of migration patterns and stuff like that. Which is also really fascinating. And I, I was surprised to see that as well. It’s totally reframed so much of Genesis for me, and I hope you guys had fun with it. I want... Do we need to do more

[01:37:34] Simone Collins: deep literalism episodes? This is really fun.

[01:37:37] Malcolm Collins: If you do, I can just keep going through and trying to figure out what’s going on.

[01:37:42] Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah, I think that’d be really interesting. Thank

[01:37:45] Malcolm Collins: you. And it also, d- going through this disgusts me more with strict s- surface level literalists. Because now I’m reminded of stuff that they believe that is super sacrilegious from my perspective.

[01:37:59] Look what? Like, the angels were having sex with people and having children together. Oh, yeah,

[01:38:02] Simone Collins: yeah. Come on, guys. You’ve

[01:38:04] Malcolm Collins: perverted- Like, that to me just sounds like straight sacrilege, right? Like, Yeah, it does ... that completely changes the nature of what an angel is, what God’s relationship to angels are, what this celestial host is.

[01:38:18] And I don’t, I don’t like that.

[01:38:20] Simone Collins: Yeah,

[01:38:20] Malcolm Collins: like- I don’t, I don’t like it ...

[01:38:21] Simone Collins: perverting the Bible with their sexual fantasies.

[01:38:26] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. About, I mean, obviously not, probably not all literalists. You guys can tell me who are literalists. Do you believe that angels had sex with people and they had kids together? And is any of that DNA still in humanity? Because it doesn’t say that Noah is not from one of these genetic lines. So we can’t really rule it out if you believe that.

[01:38:44] Simone Collins: Yeah. I don’t know. I, I’m very curious to see the, the comments on this.

[01:38:48] Malcolm Collins: It also, and I will note here, doesn’t lay this out as, like, a bad thing. It’s not like God got mad at them for doing this. Not, not explicitly anywhere. I mean, you can, you can say, “Well, he did send the flood in afterwards,” but it said he did that because of their level of wickedness, not because of the interbreeding thing.

[01:39:04] He appeared to be fine with that, if you believe that’s what was happening. Mm-hmm. We, we don’t. We think it’s just talking about humans or a certain subsect of humans that’s right with God. In the same way that Jesus is set apart as the s- the Son of God. Which I, I like that interpretation a lot more.

[01:39:19] Simone Collins: Yeah. I do too.

[01:39:22] Malcolm Collins: All right, bye. Oh, for dinner tonight, what are we doing? What’s easy for you? Steak?

[01:39:27] Simone Collins: So the steak is pretty f- still frozen solid. I, I, I- Okay ... promise you- We could do

[01:39:31] Malcolm Collins: queso or quesadillas. Let’s do some queso.

[01:39:34] Simone Collins: I’ll do queso. ‘Cause we can make

[01:39:35] Malcolm Collins: a larger batch and, You’re cooking a couple nights in a

[01:39:37] Simone Collins: row

[01:39:37] try it with some of that salsa. Yeah, I mean, like, and also leftover queso with some chips and steak sounds like we were saying previously.

[01:39:45] Malcolm Collins: Pretty, pretty good.

[01:39:46] Simone Collins: Perfect. Yeah. Okay. Queso it is, friend. We will, we will do that.

[01:39:51] Malcolm Collins: Oh, d- have you been using butter in your queso?

[01:39:53] Simone Collins: Yeah. It, it’s from a roux.

[01:39:56] Malcolm Collins: Great, great,

[01:39:57] Simone Collins: great.

[01:39:57] Butter is the base of a roux. [01:40:00] Yeah.

[01:40:00] Malcolm Collins: I thank you for your cooking knowledge, Simone.

[01:40:03] Simone Collins: That was my mom. Thanks, Mom.

[01:40:06] Malcolm Collins: Well, and your kids will, will know if you take the time to teach them.

[01:40:09] Simone Collins: I do. I, I love doing cooking lessons with them when, when they’ll stop running around.

[01:40:14] Malcolm Collins: Now do you wanna try to do a weekend episode, or do you wanna just go to bed early?

[01:40:17] I

[01:40:17] Simone Collins: would really like to go to bed early, so

[01:40:19] Malcolm Collins: I- Let’s

[01:40:20] Simone Collins: go to bed early. Yeah.

[01:40:20] Malcolm Collins: I’ll get this episode ready for tomorrow. I... God, I, I, I thought this episode was so fun.

[01:40:24] Simone Collins: I’m so... And I’m s- this is the first time that we’ve had a, made a companion website. Well, you, that you made a companion, a whole companion website.

[01:40:31] Talk about show notes to a next level. It’s so cool. Oh

[01:40:34] Malcolm Collins: yeah, and if you haven’t checked out the techno-puritan website in a while, it’s g- gotten a total overhaul, and it’s really nice now. It’s spruced

[01:40:38] Simone Collins: up. It looks, yeah, it’s got pizazz now.

[01:40:42] Malcolm Collins: I was, That’s the article ... the, the one that shocked me was in previous episodes I had laid out that I, I thought that w- whatever it was called, that T- Tev- Tev- Tev- Tev- Tevye was w- what was being talked about in Eden- Mm

[01:40:53] and that really shocked me. And then again to be double shocked with snakes being the number one- Snakes ... sign. Oh

[01:41:00] Simone Collins: my gosh. Yeah.

[01:41:01] Malcolm Collins: They’re- That- Just of all the things it could be, snakes. Of

[01:41:04] Simone Collins: everything, yeah. It had to... It... Why does it have to be snakes?

[01:41:09] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, right? I gotta put that in. Yeah. That was so affirming for me as like, no, no, no, this isn’t coincidence at this point.

[01:41:18] Because we’re predicting future coincidences. You can’t predict future coincidences with this degree of accuracy, right? Mm. It can’t keep being more and more and more things that affirm this interpretation.

[01:41:30] Simone Collins: Well, and, a- going back to some of your earliest discussions of techno-puritanism a- and prophets, you, you, you call shot calling sort of the key...

[01:41:40] The, the key designator of a prophet, you know, it could be that a key designator of a prophetic s- script, document, whatever you wanna call it text is, i- is its ability to call shots or to accurately-

[01:41:53] Malcolm Collins: Yeah ...

[01:41:54] Simone Collins: model these capacities. So- Well, we, we argue that’s the entire thing

[01:41:56] Malcolm Collins: that affirms a text.

[01:41:57] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

[01:41:57] Yeah.

[01:41:59] Malcolm Collins: Well, that and, and, and its effect on the groups that follow it.

[01:42:03] Simone Collins: Yeah

[01:42:03] Malcolm Collins: Like if people who follow with... I, I really believe in by your fruits you’ll know them. If, if people who follow a thing end up living worse lives, it is a bad tradition. And not true, and not a source of, of, of truth. But very weird to have become this religious this quickly.

[01:42:20] Yeah.

[01:42:21] Simone Collins: Yeah, who woulda thunk it? Malcolm Collins.

[01:42:23] Malcolm Collins: But it’s also put me in a very interesting perspective, because it makes me significantly less tolerant of specific things where I used to be able to say of religious people, “Well, we just disagree.” And now I’m like-

[01:42:36] Simone Collins: Yeah. You’re like, “No, this isn’t what the text says.”

[01:42:40] And you... Yeah, I, I-

[01:42:41] Malcolm Collins: No, like when you, you were reading the Old Testament, and you came to me, and you go, “Malcolm, there are a lot of prohibitions against worshiping to, worshiping next to, worshiping in a carved stone. Yeah ... why aren’t people following those?” Like, you’re like, “The, the rulings against iconoclasm seem to be way bigger, way thorough.”

[01:43:03] Simone Collins: Yeah, like idol worship, all that, yeah. It’s,

[01:43:05] Malcolm Collins: Way more aggressive than you had remembered. Yeah. And I’m like, I just can’t lie down on that, right? Well,

[01:43:11] Simone Collins: now it makes a lot more sense when you compare that to the idol worship of what you could call uncivilized religions that do things like practice in- incredible violence, all those other things.

[01:43:24] Like idol worship is kind of iconic in all of them. And yeah, I could, I could see... I, I could, I could see the reasoning, the logic behind being like, “Nope, we’re not doing that this... This is a, this is different, okay?”

[01:43:39] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, it also... If you look at the regions where there are denominations of Christianity where idols are worshiped, the, the- Mm-hmm

[01:43:47] regions are typically less prosperous, more corrupt, more-

[01:43:49] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[01:43:50] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah ... you know. It’s, it’s not

[01:43:52] Simone Collins: good. Look, look, look, don’t make me reset the counter. Don’t... Let’s not go there.

[01:43:54] Malcolm Collins: I, I didn’t- I’m gonna make you do it. I, I’m also talking about Orthodox regions. Don’t... I’m also talking about Orthodox regions.

[01:43:59] Simone Collins: Okay. [01:44:00] Okay, thank you. Yes. Mm-hmm.

[01:44:01] Malcolm Collins: You know, it’s, it’s not good. Like, the, the, I, like I think all these commandments were given to us to, to, to help us, right? You know, that’s the cool thing about

[01:44:08] Simone Collins: them. Absolutely. No, I I have such a strong... I mean, I always had such a strong v- visceral negative reaction to idol worship, weirdly.

[01:44:17] In every religious context where I’ve seen it, Shinto, Buddhist Christian, it, it, it really bothers me. But that’s always been in- intuitive in, in, in the past. So you’re, you’re never gonna have trouble convincing me that idol worship is, is not cool. But anyway, okay. I’m gonna go make quesadillas for you using the cheeses.

[01:44:34] And why

[01:44:35] Malcolm Collins: didn’t anybody tell me the Bible made so much sense? Why

[01:44:38] Simone Collins: did I always believe- Because they were... Dude, because they were coping and gaslighting when they were trying to be like, “No, it’s all proven scientifically.” And, and they were otherwise just going, “La, la, la, la, la, la, la” when it came to science.

[01:44:50] Like I just... We, we have the resources now that were just didn’t exist in the past. That’s what I think. Yeah. Well, yeah. But I, I can also imagine that there will be people, just like with your last episode, your last tracked episode, who chime in in the comments and are like, “Oh yeah, Rabbi So-and-So totally saw this too.

[01:45:05] And, you know, this person wrote a book about it,” and things like that. So I, I, I wouldn’t be surprised if, if other people have, have at least seen part of this and this. Anyway, off I go. Yeah. Off I go. Off

[01:45:16] Malcolm Collins: you go. Love you. Bye.

[01:45:17] Simone Collins: Bye.

[01:45:20] Speaker 3: That’s why I figured, look at that mess over there. There’s no way we’re gonna be able to clean that without like a chainsaw. Ugh, yeah. All those debris right there. Yeah, and if it’s light enough to walk out here with. Yes, Sadie. You’re doing so good. But also, you’re welcome to borrow anything from our tool shed.

[01:45:40] Someone tried to bite me, I think. Oh, well let’s go home then, ‘cause I need to make dinner. It might be a snake. A snek. Okay. In the water. It, well, a water snake? Think so

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