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In this episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into the controversy surrounding the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s show, exploring the intersection of free speech, media ethics, and the shifting landscape of late-night television. They analyze the facts behind Kimmel’s suspension, compare it to other high-profile media firings, and discuss the broader implications for truth, comedy, and political discourse in America. The conversation also touches on the evolution of late-night humor, the rise of alternative media, and the challenges of navigating cancel culture. Plus, enjoy candid moments, personal stories, and predictions about the future of media, AI, and global politics.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] was Kimmel himself hinting in a 2024 LA Times interview. I think this is my final contract.
That seems like enough Jimmy Kimmel was saying. His contract wasn't gonna be renewed. when Alex Jones gets fired for Sandy Hook very few mainstream conservative commentators we're like, oh, they're silencing free speech the Tonight Show was Conan O'Brien was canceled at around 1.4. So at higher ratings than his show was canceled.
The American Hall Show was canceled at 1.6. Again, much higher than his show when it was canceled,
Simone Collins: your depiction of this as the network taking an opportunity to. Less expensively end a contract that was going to end inevitably.
Makes a lot of sense.
Malcolm Collins: why does the left even think they have a right to be mad about this?
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. A lot of people have been talking about free speech in regards to [00:01:00] Jimmy Kimmel having his show canceled after.
I will note it wasn't that he disparaged somebody, he just lied. Like what he said wasn't even like a normal lie. It was like the antithesis of what is true. I'll play the clip right here for people who aren't familiar with it. Before we go further
Speaker: The MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.
Malcolm Collins: the gist is, is he insinuated that the shooter who killed, charlie Kirk was a Republican, was like a MAGA guy. Like Yeah.
Simone Collins: He used the term MAGA or
Malcolm Collins: Right. Republican. And that, that's funny because, you know, MAGA is killing MAGA and they don't realize it or won't talk about it. Well, that
Simone Collins: MAGA is trying to pin it on their political opposition and he's basically saying they're shooting their own.
Isn't that? Yeah. Which is,
Malcolm Collins: I mean, it's, [00:02:00] it's, it's not like a, like he may not have been aware of the evidence or something like this. This is one of the things that is just patently not true. And part of this whole conversation is before I get into he wasn't canceled for the reasons that people are saying, first of all, and I'm gonna go into the data on this, that'll be the first thing we go into.
But the, the other thing that's really important to note here is, and, and go into is why does the left even think they have a right to be mad about this? Like his role. Was as a newscaster comedian which is basically our role as well, except he's working for a major station, like a private company, right.
He says something in his role as a newscaster comedian, which was the antithesis of true, which was literally made to get people to believe the opposite of what was true on a very sensitive topic, which is obviously like going viral and doing the rounds. And [00:03:00] so the company that hired him, fired him.
Simone Collins: Well, the show suspended, right?
I Is he fired? I don't think he's fired. It
Malcolm Collins: doesn't, it doesn't matter. The point being is that you should be fired if you are a newscaster for saying something about like a, a mainstream important topic that's just factually untrue. And
Simone Collins: to be fair, there is a. There are many examples of journalists, reporters, et cetera, who have been suspended or fired for reporting inaccuracies.
This is Sure.
Malcolm Collins: A, a great example, when Alex Jones gets fired for saying Sandy Hook is fake very few mainstream conservative commentators we're like, oh, they're silencing free speech or anything like that.
You know, very few. We, we certainly have never argued that Alex Jones shouldn't have faced a lawsuit for that or faced being pulled from air for that. That was something that was factually untrue and very easy to check that it was [00:04:00] factually untrue. Yeah. In fact. In many ways, I think what Alex Jones did was less bad than what, what Jimmy Kimmel did.
Why? 'cause at least Alex Jones engaged with the argument and tried to explain why he believed it was fake, whereas Jimmy Kimmel just stated something that was patently false about something that assert as
Speaker 4: sculpted.
Malcolm Collins: No. I'll note here. The way that what Alex Jones did was worse than what Jimmy Kimmel did is he turned the regular civilians who had lost their loved ones into victims.
Whereas Jimmy Kimmel did not do that. Yeah. But I mean, I'm talking about just in terms of somebody whose job is telling news, said something and that they knew was wrong. And, and if you can be like, oh, Alex Jones didn't know this. We know from the court documents that Alex Jones didn't believe this.
Like there's been internal leaks. And there are also
Simone Collins: just general other even political kind of related falsehoods that people have been. We'll say like suspended or censored in some way. Like some Fox News presenters promoted false claims about the 2020 US [00:05:00] election and Dominion voting systems. And they, that, that led to lawsuits and, and other things.
And were they fired? Some, some of them were suspended, some were not. But that's another example of them. A a bunch of people have been pulled for just other nonpolitical inaccuracies. Like Brian Williams, he was a really big person for NBC Nightly News in 2015 was suspended, and later his anchor was just totally removed after he exaggerated stories about being under fire during the Iraq war.
So that was just telling a lie about himself. So there, there are lots of people who have been suspended for things people have been suspended for false Michael Flynn reports false Kobe Bryant reporting.
You know, when he, he, when he was killed Matt Guttman of a BC news was suspended for saying that all of the kids died in the plane crash when it was just his daughter. So even just like little, little things. And, and some,
Malcolm Collins: it's, the point is, is it is normal to fire a newscaster [00:06:00] for lying, for plagiarism,
Simone Collins: for ethics issues, for lying, for inaccurate reporting, like all of these things.
Malcolm Collins: Why is it, I think the bigger story here is why is it that progressives think that this is a bad thing? Like, oh, and
Simone Collins: don't forget all the COVID stuff. Sorry, I just wanted to point that out. When, when people were seen as, as, as reporting misleadingly on COVID stuff, they got fired and suspended all the time.
Malcolm Collins: But the, the question here I'm saying is why do they think that they can say, we are canceling free speech when some, a newscaster is being fired for lying. Like, why do they think that this is something that somebody shouldn't be fired for? Why do they think that they have a position to throw a stink here?
And I think that this actually tells us more about the current progressive mindset and philosophy than the, the anything else around this. But before I go further, I wanna go into why he was actually fired because this is suspended. People on the right have talked about this, but they really haven't gone into the data.
And I think when you go into the data, you're just like, this is a completely silly situation to be up in [00:07:00] arms about. Okay. So in August 26th, 2025, Yahoo Entertainment. So this is before he said this, this is before the Trump stuff AR article reported insider speculation tied to shifting late night landscape.
Post Stephen Colbert's cancellation announcement, A key quote, quote, Jimmy is determined to quit late night before he's axed, quote, confides insider. The context highlights that he was planning to be fired that year. Jimmy Kimmel thought before this that he was going to be fired this year. What happened?
Let's keep going. A July 23rd, 2025 people magazine's piece discussed Trump's claims that Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon would soon be ousted analyzing their contracts. It noted Kimmel's deal expires at the end of 2025 to 2026. Season was Kimmel himself hinting in a 2024 LA Times interview. I think this is my final contract.
That seems like enough Jimmy [00:08:00] Kimmel was saying. His contract wasn't gonna be renewed. Now, what's important to note about these contracts, and we'll get into this a little bit more later, is most of them have a clause that if the person embarrasses the company publicly, they can cancel the contract without having to pay a firing fee.
But if they don't, then they have to pay out a bunch of money.
Simone Collins: Oh, okay. There's a very clear economic reason for why things happened the way they happened.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. Let's keep going here. Oh, cha-ching. July 24th, 2025 coming soon.net guide explored why fans and sources believed the show was going to be canceled.
So there's, there's articles out there analyzing why everyone thought he was gonna be canceled and they say, quote, the word is, and it's a strong word at that Jimmy Kimmel is next to go at late night sweepstakes in quote. And this was a Trump quote by the way that they were quoting. So he, he knew what was up.
But now I wanna talk ratings because we're gonna do a quick comparison of this show's ratings, and I'll put on screen here, the falling ratings of not just [00:09:00] this show, but across late night tv. So you can give an idea of just how dramatic the fall has been, because I think a lot of people don't realize how dramatic the fall has been.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. But,
Malcolm Collins: Total viewers, P two plus. The show's highest seasonal average with around 2.4 million, and that was back in 2015, was peaks of 2.2 million with some episodes growing over 3 million, but averages Hubbard around 2.1 to 2.4. In the adults 18 to 49 demo, which is the one that advertisers care about.
It was nearly a million viewers back in 2015. Now if you go more recently by August 20 for 25, the monthly average had fallen to 1.104.
Speaker 4: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: So down almost 50%. And. If you look at the key demo they were down, I, I think it was around 78 to 75% the 18 to 49 demo. So that's where the advertisers are.
And this makes sense because
Simone Collins: I mean, why watch late night when you can watch Asman Gold or someone who's more politically interesting to you, [00:10:00] who's better takes honestly and is
Malcolm Collins: more prolific, started to suck. And I wanna talk about, as a former fan of late night, right? Yeah. But before I get into like being a former fan of late night, I just think it's useful.
Before we go into this, this tangent to go over when other shows were canceled.
Speaker 4: Okay,
Malcolm Collins: so remember he had fallen 74% in the key demographic, 43% in the general demographic, and was getting around 1 million views per show. Okay? So the Tonight Show was Conan O'Brien was canceled at around 1.4. So at higher ratings than his show was canceled.
Wow. It had fallen by about 63%. The American Hall Show was canceled at 1.6. Again, much higher than his show when it was canceled, fallen 47%. So around the percent his show had fallen. The Jay Leno show was canceled at 1.4, again, higher than his show but it had fallen 73%. Later with Bob Castus and Greg Kinner at around one.
But, and it had only fallen 33%, so this is [00:11:00] the only one in this list so far that was below his, when it was canceled. So I just let's go to Jimmy. Oh, Jimmy Kimmel did horribly when he was canceled. He had fallen to 0.16 and had fallen 76%. so many shows in that, in that table had fallen to lower than his show.
When he was canceled, he was below the range that you're normally at when you're canceled.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. It's almost as though they were holding on because they realized that this is no longer a viable format anyway, and they maybe just wanted the legacy. To last a little longer, but this is clearly, this was not long for the world, this show.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. By the way, if you wanna talk about contracts, suspending the show indefinitely could invoke clauses related to public interest or reputational harm, potentially allowing a BZ to avoid breach contract penalties.
Simone Collins: Hmm. Nice.
Malcolm Collins: Kimmel is reportedly effing livid but no lawsuits are happening.
But why, why did he think he could just lie and, and nobody would care? 'cause
Simone Collins: that's [00:12:00] been the way in late night media for a long time. I mean, there's been skewed representations of reality through late night media frequently. I remember even in like the old I think John Stewart and Colbert report shows they would misrepresent some interviews, kind of like cut them in weird ways.
Oh yeah, they would, would way, yeah. Yeah. I guess he thought it was like
Malcolm Collins: industry practice and he is getting lazy now, so he is not trying to cut up funny interviews. It's just, I mean, I
Simone Collins: think it's, it's one of those things where people break the rules and you're only gonna get prosecuted for it when someone has to, who's gonna benefit from prosecuting for it.
Like when the news networks made a lot of money from those misrepresentations and faced no liability, keep it, 'cause it's good for them. In this case, the Trump administration is clearly saying that they're gonna crack down on behavior like this. I, I wanna go, it doesn't seem to be doing in them any favors.
So I wanna
Malcolm Collins: go over the cracking down on behavior that the Trump administration has talked about and everything like [00:13:00] that. Okay. 'cause it, it's not often what people think. It's, it's more just these people are going to be fired. While there's been some stuff of like FCC. Right.
Simone Collins: But yeah, there still have been very prominent people in the Trump administration saying really clearly threatening.
This kind of
Malcolm Collins: behavior. Right. We'll get to, I'm gonna get to all of these quotes in a second. Okay. But I wanna get to the side that you were talking about earlier. Okay. Which is, why would you watch this when you have asthma, gold or us as an alternative? And the answer is genuinely why? Like why, like the, the 18, the reason they've lost 18 to 24 demographic.
You know, Asma Gold Points out, he beats most major news stations in that demographic. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, really sad. His dad died. Dad died. That happened recently. Yeah. And he took off the show, you know, he used to do every day, very diligent about never missing anything
Simone Collins: multiple times, every day. What a prolific man, what a workforce.
Malcolm Collins: And he decided to take off indefinitely, you know, citing his dad's health. And I think a lot of people were like, you know, this is a big mistake, you know, how long are you gonna do this? And he turned out to have done the right [00:14:00] thing. You know, his dad did end up dying not long after that. And it's, it's a regret he's not gonna have.
And his dad also would call into the show regularly and just ramble and he'd let him talk. So it appeared they had a positive relationship. But anyway I I, I, I think if, if you're an 18 to 24, why are you watching these guys? The shows often don't really respect your time very much, which is something we try to do as a show is just, you know, not leave a lot of dead space, try to go from a piece of information.
You may not be getting somewhere else to a piece of information. You may not be getting somewhere else where they're not doing that. If you look at the Jimmy Kimmel Show, it is about confirming the things you already believe as a joke which isn't funny, right? I used to be obsessed with late night tv specifically the Daily Show and the Colbert Report.
I was so into the Colbert Report that because I was living in Scotland at the time when I did my undergrad I couldn't watch it on tv. I couldn't stream it. So I bought a subscription, a daily subscription to it on ut on apple, apple Music. Wow. So I [00:15:00] paid like, I don't know, like, I wanna say like a dollar 50 an episode every single day.
Simone Collins: I bought the book. I can't remember what it was called. There's a Colbert book.
Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah, we got that too. Yeah. In history. So like we, we were, I am like a super fan of this show. Yeah, no, we loved
Simone Collins: it.
Malcolm Collins: And he a hundred percent deserved to be canceled. His show became absolute dog trash. The Col Colbert report is still
Speaker 5: on.
Simone Collins: The
Malcolm Collins: Colbert report was canceled. We're gonna talk about the cancellation of that. Did you not know that?
Simone Collins: I just watched a segment where he talked about the Kimmel suspension.
Malcolm Collins: He took over the Tonight Show and then was canceled. Hold on.
Simone Collins: I just watched a segment and he joked about like, people thinking he was canceled and that it's not true.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, it's going to be canceled May, 2026.
Simone Collins: Yeah. It's not being renewed.
Malcolm Collins: It's not being renewed, but it hasn't been canceled yet. Yeah, it absolutely, he's just not good anymore. I mean, when you watched it, did he, was he like, how could this [00:16:00] happen?
Simone Collins: Basically he was just like, that's Jimmy Kimmel being Jimmy Kimmel.
And he's not wrong because again, this format has been rife with inaccuracies for a very long time.
Malcolm Collins: But I think that this is diff because it wasn't even a real joke. Okay. And it wasn't like an inaccuracy, like he cut up a piece using real people's words to say something else. It was just saying something that is the opposite of what's true around a political assassination.
Simone Collins: Well, and what's troubling too is people with greater frequency than I could have ever expected or banding around the term civil war. This is not in innocuous incitement or representation. This is contributing to a level of internal unrest. That is dangerous. And there are people who watch this show who love the idea of there being a Civil War.
Civil wars are not fun for anyone involved.
Malcolm Collins: But I think that there's a second thing here [00:17:00] that you're missing which is why these shows have dropped off. I don't just think it's the audience and the alternatives. I if you, if you talk about, you know, circa my College Days Daily Show or Colbert Reports mm-hmm.
I would've rather watched those than ASME Gold. If ASME Gold was an alternative back then but today I would rather watch ASME Gold and the question is, is why. Hmm. And the answer is because they used to be funny. And so the question is, is why aren't they funny anymore? Right? Like, this is actually an interesting point.
Why did, why Because comedians used to be overwhelmingly leftists, like this was a thing. And if you go into mainstream comedy, comedians are still overwhelmingly leftists, just main, although the Colbert report
Simone Collins: originally, the Colbert report was funny because it was a leftist pretending to be a rightist.
But honestly, very similar with the, the character Ron Swanson from the show Parks and Rec. There's something about like even leftist, parities of Rightists that are absolutely [00:18:00] delightful.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That back then, the thing is, is you could portray, whether it's Ron Swanson or the Colbert Report, a rightist is having some positive qualities in the way that you portrayed them, right?
Mm-hmm. This, this was key to the Colbert character. But you can't do that anymore. And I also think when you talk about humor,
Simone Collins: it's no, there's no longer any capacity to even try to model people on the right and then. Actually rightist in a way that's entertaining. It's just, it's just hatred and vitriol.
It's just resentment it, it's just derangement. And that's not fun anymore. And I think that's something that you and I have been talking about a lot internally is we love working with people who are politically different from us, or ideologically different from us, who make fun of us in good spirit per mostly because they can model us and they understand our points.
They just have different, you know, conclusions. What, what is different now is a complete loss of that [00:19:00] capacity to model the other side, which then leads to an inability to make a depiction of it funny or even make criticisms of it funny.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. I think that that's part of it. But I also think if you watch one of their shows now, like even the joke that Jimmy Kimmel did with this, he's just like our side good, their side bad audience laugh.
That is the core joke structure, right? Whereas if you look at older jokes on the shows, they follow if people aren't familiar with my theory of humor, I'm not gonna explain the whole thing, but it's basically when you hear an idea or you see something that makes sense in context but is otherwise surprising and we argue that it likely evolved as a signal that babies gave to their parents to get them to repeat a task until they could.
Understand it. It was like, oh, I almost understand that. Like, object permanence. Do it again. And so they create this positive stimuli and the parents react and we continue laughing as adults now, even though we're not really supposed to. And this is why you know, if you wanna see like an ape, really laugh, [00:20:00] watch videos of apes watching magic tricks they will just absolutely crack up.
They tell me again. Cute. Like, I wanna understand that. Okay. Like, why isn't the ball in the cup anymore? Like, I saw you put it in the cup. Oh. And if you look at the Colbert character, he allowed for that a lot. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. Like, because it's like, oh, it's so surprising that someone would say that, but oh yes, he's a right wing archetype character.
So it's surprising, but it makes sense within the context of his character. Hmm. It's a very easy format for doing lots of jokes. Hmm. Especially if you play like an over the top caricature of that. Right. Which I don't know. I, I try to take some of my personality from that. We'll see, you know, because everybody takes their, their personality from, from different caricatures.
But or, or different things they see within media if they're doing it
Simone Collins: right.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But the point I, I'm the modern day Colbert, right? I understand what the other side is thinking. I just embody the character for real, for real. Yeah. But no, you,
Simone Collins: you, Malcolm, you do not embody the left.
Malcolm Collins: I embody the [00:21:00] right wing character.
Oh, that Colbert was the right wing character. I am the Steve, the ultra patriotic, the
Simone Collins: Oh, you are? Yeah. You are ultra patriotic. There's that, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Worried about the French and bears. But the point I'm making here, it was a very good format. And in the modern leftist format they, because they believe it's funny to just be like your side bad, our side good.
It doesn't appeal to most general audiences, but in addition to that the left will get you for like stepping out of line with anything that's overly subversive. And if you look at the old you know, like SNL or something, you'd have like the ambiguously gay duo and stuff like that. Yeah. Or Stephen Colbert.
Like even remember Stephen Colbert? People may not know this, but the term cancel, cancel culture, everything like that, you know, saying I am canceled. Do you remember when it was invented? Simone? It
Simone Collins: came from the, the. GBTQ community?
Malcolm Collins: No, it came from the Cancel Colbert movement.
Simone Collins: Mm. They [00:22:00] took
Malcolm Collins: it from the L-G-B-T-Q movement.
But what made it popular Lexicon. Okay. What
Simone Collins: popular? Okay, so he that brought it to the mainstream. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: That's the mainstream that everybody knows about it from is Cancel Colbert. And what did Ca Colbert do that got him? They tried to cancel him over. It was his Ching Chong bong character where he would do a silly accent and do his eyes like this.
Oh no.
Speaker 3: You so pretty American girl. You come here, you kiss my teammate all sweet. I no need no sugar when you around. Come on rickshaw. I give you a ride to Bangkok.
Malcolm Collins: And some Asian girl who I think, oh my God, I remember this activist.
Simone Collins: Yes. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Total Grifter decided she tried to get him canceled over this, like this was causing her like serious emotional distress. It was like the biggest BS ever. And nothing ended up happening, but that shows that Colbert actually used to be like subversive, right?
So much so that backlash to Colbert invented canceled culture.
Okay, [00:23:00] so the invention of the term cancel appears to be a case of the LGBT slash black community attempting to carry credit for inventing a term that they didn't invent. , While the term canceled what used to reject people at like balls and stuff at dances, , it most certainly entered popular culture as like a to be canceled by the mob because of Colbert.
Because the term in the context of Cancel, Colbert meant to cancel the show, which is what it means when you shut down a show. It very clearly came specifically from the Shut Down the Colbert Show, or Cancel the Colbert Show.
Simone Collins: Can you imagine? Yeah. Can you imagine any late night show doing something like that now? Yeah. Gotta
Malcolm Collins: do the
Simone Collins: Yeah. It got boring. They stopped. They stopped doing anything that was risque or interesting. And it is still good comedy today. Popular comedy today is risque.
And that's why so many comedians now require attendees to put their phones in in Faraday bags. Oh really? Yeah. [00:24:00] I mean, one, they don't want everything like immediately on YouTube 'cause they're trying out new routines before they wanna take them like onto a Netflix special. But two, yeah, there's just a lot of concern about what they're saying, being risque, leading to them not being able to continue their tour because someone makes a huge stink about it online.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I'll tell you one of my jokes I told that absolutely killed at the Libertarian convention this is before I was public, was being skeptical so I was like, nobody, nobody's recording. Right? But now we're more publicly skeptical. I'll, I'll take out the, the, the hint before this so that, that people get the joke, but I go, you know, when I was a kid, and this is, this is actually true, Simone, I was so into you know, it, it subversive culture.
I, you know, would dress in like punk clothes and goth clothes and had my own little scene type outfit. And everything I did was like, so like offensive to like pearl clutching adults and everything like that. And they'd always tell me, [00:25:00] they're like, well,
Speaker 2: hmm,
Malcolm Collins: I know you think that you are like crazy and out there and subversive now, but one day you're gonna be old and one day the kids will do things that will shock and offend you.
And I told them, I, that is just not true. I, I, I am always gonna be with it. Little did I know that cutting your dick off was gonna become a trend.
Nick, it's true though. If you had told the younger me, I would've been. And that's what makes it 'cause it's subversive, right? It's, it's funny, it's subversive. But it's obviously true. It's surprising. You imagine
Simone Collins: because who would do that? But it makes sense because, oh wait, a lot of people are doing that in
Malcolm Collins: the nineties, in the, the early thousands.
Right? Where, where I was like the early thousands. You go to them and you're like, you know, you're gonna, one day the kids are gonna shock you. And you're like, no. All of them we're like, [00:26:00] no. And then you tell that version. What if I told you cutting off your dick's gonna become a trend? They'd be like, wait, what?
Yeah.
Simone Collins: That gets you,
Malcolm Collins: that's an actual trend. This is like. Cool. And they're like, yeah, that there's groups that think it's pretty cool and you're like, whoa. Oh my god. People, people will brag about this. Oh yeah. They make you bring it up constantly in conversation. Really anyway. That's, that's a a Malcolm joke.
We'll see if the audience thought that was funny. No. Gosh. I'll, I'll keep, I'll keep going here. Your dad.
Simone Collins: It's a dad joke. Maybe it's not. I have no idea. I have no idea.
Malcolm Collins: But I'll go into the, what the Trump administration has said. 'cause people are like, yeah, but now the Trump administration is going after media freedom.
Okay, now I point out here how many YouTubers and right wing media lost their jobs and lost their source of income for telling the truth about COVID truths that [00:27:00] we now recognize. And, and keep in mind the whiplash of one day. It's don't wear a mask. Masks actually do nothing. If you say that you, you wanna wear a mask, we will de platform you.
And then like within a week it became, oh, actually masks are completely required and we will de platform you if you say don't wear a mask. And by the way, we were never arguing the exact opposite two weeks ago. That, for me, was the craziest part of COVID when that happened. Because I would like talk to people and it felt so 1984, where it was like the, the, the new thing had dropped and we were supposed to pretend that the old thing had never been an old thing and we weren't just canceling people.
Yeah,
Simone Collins: we never said that. What do you mean? No, you have to wear a mask. Now I have always said
Malcolm Collins: this. I was like, what? Have you taken down the old episodes of your, I go, I look. I'm like, no, you. Oh, truth just doesn't matter to you people. That was when I was like, this is crazy. I'm in the Twilight Zone [00:28:00] here.
Speaker 6: In the name of Vectron, I bring you greeting Chancellor Vectron. Be with you, ambassador. And may the power of Vectron bring prosperity to your house
by Vectra's build.
Speaker 7: Excellent.
Speaker 8: , Chancellor? Yes. , Who's ectron? What? This ectron, we all keep mentioning what? Don't you know by ra? No. You see, about three weeks ago I was ill. When I came back on the Friday morning, it was all veteran ra veron and no one's really explained just three weeks ago, but, but Veron is eternal.
Honestly, Steve, no one, I mean, none of us have ever said the word vectron in our lives until. I took that day off maybe.
Malcolm Collins: But the point here being is it, it, the Trump administration, if they do do a crackdown on this, would be doing much less than what leftists did. And you can be like, well, leftists weren't getting [00:29:00] mainstream TV watchers banned. And I was like, banning mainstream TV matters much less than putting restrictions on something like YouTube.
Yeah. If you're talking about where key demographics are actually getting their information from.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: But anyway, to continue here. Trump tra praised ABC's indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel alive, following controversial remarks, posting on true social congratulations to a, B, C for finally having the courage to do what had to be done.
He also called Kimmel someone who made a total fool of himself, fool in all caps. Okay. I don't see why that's controversial. He then suggested, and here's where it gets controversial, broadcasters airing critical content should face consequences. Dating to reporters, quote, I would think maybe their license should be taken away in quote, referring to networks that quote unquote hit Trump.
And another comment said of TV networks, quote, I mean, they're getting a license. I would think that their license could be taken away. It would be up to Brendan Carr. End quote. So I love that. I'm sure [00:30:00] he did not go over this with Brendan Carr. He's just like, I'll just say it to the news stations and.
He'll see it on TV and then do it if he feels like it.
Simone Collins: That is his style. Yes. That
Malcolm Collins: is his style. I effing love that about his style. I love that. Like our ideas have been taken to Trump by reporters and he goes, that doesn't sound like a bad idea. Like, I don't know, I'm not like at the White House putting something up through the ranks.
And then they'll like ask the press secretary and she goes, yeah, that seems reasonable. If Trump said it's reasonable, you know, this, this is how you, this is how you're part of this larger media landscape. Right. But the, the, the larger point here is, is it wrong to take away station's license if they are doing the type of thing that Jimmy Kimmel was doing, which is just complete fabrications that he was aware of a fabrication, keep in mind that the leftists did the same thing to all of Facebook over something that they knew was true.
The Hunter Biden laptop story, and this has essentially mm-hmm. During an election cycle. Yeah. [00:31:00] I, I, I love it when people are like, well, if Trump does this and the leftists will do it, it's like, bro, the leftists are already doing something 10 times worse. They are, they are forcing falsehoods using their power over media and now they are calling foul when Trump tries to force truth over media.
And the larger thing to me about all of this that I want to go over and or deeper into here is that they feel they have the right to get mad about somebody being fired for knowingly stating the opposite of the truth for political motivations on air.
Speaker 4: Mm.
Malcolm Collins: From a private job when he had lower ratings than most people have when they get fired.
And sort of, it seems to be. That they believe that there should be almost a protection for people who are lying about Trump within their jobs in the same way. And we've seen this in other areas, so people can be like, no, that sounds [00:32:00] bizarre. Where, you know, like as an employer, if you've got a fire like one of five people on a team and one of those people is trans, you can't fire the trans person first.
Yes. You'll be sued or attacked or something like that. Right? And I think that it's sort of the same phenomenon here, right? Where it's like he was or believed, and it seemed that many mainstream leftists believed that through easily false, like provably, falsifiable attacks. On right wing ideologies that you protect yourself and your position because then you could say if you were fired, that you were fired for this.
Which is to me really chilling because it shows how much control they had over our culture until now. And that how much of a better place we're in that they can't freak out. And I love that, you know, we're not actually getting pushback from anyone who matters, right? Like when the people go up and they, they freak out [00:33:00] about this stuff, I'd even go, this is like a great one.
Like to me, this is trans people in sports to go over that. He shouldn't have been fired with bad ratings that were continuing to fall at record rates while lying in the position of a newscaster. Yeah, I mean,
Simone Collins: your, your depiction of this as the network taking an opportunity to. Less expensively end a contract that was going to end inevitably.
Makes a lot of sense.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, a lot of sense. And while Trump is threatening stuff like licenses, what is he actually doing? Right. What he's actually doing is just funny banter to freak people out. Like, here's the great one on TR social where he says, that leaves Jimmy and Seth. Two total losers on fake news.
NBC. The ratings are horrible. Do it. NBC, exclamation mark, exclamation mark.
What are [00:34:00] you waiting for, huh? What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? What am I waiting for? What am I waiting what are you waiting for? F**k you!
Oh my god!
Malcolm Collins: Oh my God. I mean, and he also called networks an arm of the Democratic Party, which I mean, if you're doing this, you are right. Like how is that an untruth? Right. So one I could go over how they could do this. I, I guess like the SEC could investigate complaints about content deemed not in the public interest.
A broad standard requiring stations to serve community interest and avoid certain harms like indecency Trump and car have faced critical satire as biased or harmful, potentially triggering reviews, except this wasn't a case of satire. Like the, the way that people are talking about it is like, [00:35:00] this guy made a joke critical of Trump instead of this guy lied about an assassination that just happened.
Simone Collins: Well, he lied about. The, he misrepresented the political affiliation of Charlie. He didn't didn
Malcolm Collins: misrepresent. He, he said his political affiliation was the opposite of what it was. That's not misrepresenting
Simone Collins: Well, this was at a time when we didn't have a whole lot of information. No, I think a lot of people argue that he was just engaging in speculation.
That's
Malcolm Collins: not true, Simone, that's not true. We had evidence from day one and when he gave this, this on air that this guy was a left wing individual. This, this was from early interviews. This is from early everything.
Is what had been released to say that he was left winging at this time. The New York Times before this had described Robinson as an assassin with hardening left wing Pro L-G-B-T-Q views that led him to violence. Not only did they say that he was a left wing in the New [00:36:00] York Times, but that it had led him to violence.
, If you, , look at what the Utah governor Spencer Cox had said before this at NBC's meet the press, , he said he. Quote unquote, clearly had a leftist ideology. These details were made publicly and loudly before Jimmy Kimmel did this.
Malcolm Collins: The, the only and I, I think that you. Are not aware of this as to why people argued he was right wing.
Just, just in case you're wondering they argued that he was right wing. I think it because of a clown meme that he posted at one point. And that at another point know clown memes are common on the right. Oh, it wasn't even a clown mean. I think he dressed up as a clown for Halloween.
Simone Collins: No Robinson dressed up as someone piggybacking on President Trump.
No, that was
Malcolm Collins: another Halloween.
Simone Collins: Okay. Okay. So there's some other h look up
Malcolm Collins: post, look, look up in, in, in AI right now. Why people argued that he was right wing because the, the the earlier the clown [00:37:00] meme, which they said Nick Fuentes also did, and they said that he was gay. And Nick Fuentes is also gay, and that's proof that he's rightwing.
Those were the two. I see. Okay. Proofs that they had that what, what is the AI pulling up for?
Simone Collins: I'm still typing it.
Hold on. I, I have one handwritten,
Malcolm Collins: a finger you'll hear in post Y
the day after losing a finger, like, literally, I can't even believe
Simone Collins: it. I didn't lose my finger. I cut off just the tip, some of the fingernail too. Okay.
There was confusion and speculation online about Tyler Robinson being maga, largely because he came from a conservative pro-Trump background, and in the immediate aftermath of the shooting of right wing figure Charlie Kirk. Some commentators and social media users [00:38:00] assumed a political motivation connected MAGA ideology.
Initial reasons for MAGA association included that he came from a conservative household, early online posts and rumors, including tweets by prominent commentators and even some academics suggested Robinson. Robinson was ultramega based. Purely on his background before his note, note motives for codified social media account cited old photos of Robinson wearing Trump merchandise or costumes fueling the speculation.
All of this is referring to the stuff that I just mentioned to you.
Malcolm Collins: I'll, I'll find it and add it in post. But there, there was other stuff that they saw was, was confirming, I mean, literally if it was just his family and a Trump Halloween costume, which could equally be taken that he hates Trump Uhhuh that if, if that's it.
In fairness,
Simone Collins: Malcolm, you repeat again and again how 10% of or or only 10% of, of children, of, of political families change affiliation.
Malcolm Collins: Yes, but they do, like, you shouldn't, you shouldn't be [00:39:00] assuming just because of his family that he would be pro-Trump, especially if he assassinated a major right wing figure that would take, like, you, you'd need a real good reason.
Okay, why did they think that he was right wing? You will find this hilarious 'cause I decided to look it up. , So they marked the bullet casings, the notices, bulge uwo. What's that? They said was evidence that he was right winging a furry meme reference. Uh, Bella Chow, which was apparently an anti-fascist song, lyrics, they said was proof that he was right Winging.
And hay fascist. , On the bullet casing they said was evidence that he was actually right ring. , Now if you wanna know how they twisted these, the notices, bulges, uu, uh, this is a twisted, degenerate, furry moon. UU is a cat girl emoticon. Mocking noticing GRR code for spotting Jewish influence in society is a kind of layered self-referential joke.
Nick Fuentes crowd used to hide behind bigot bigotry behind absurdity. The Bella Chow, [00:40:00] they said the Italian anti-fascist partisan song. Famous for money heist, but remixed into track on Grover, Spotify playlist. Grovers co-opted it ironically to troll fate conservatives. , And then in hay fascist read like at a direct taunt, possibly aimed at Kirk's perceived establishment ties echoing how growers baited him online and in speeches.
, And I note here that the growers, the far conservatives did not like Charlie Kirk. Like that's one thing that they write about because he. Was not far right. He was very centrist in his actual beliefs. , EE even if you, if you read some few things outta context, it might seem otherwise. , The thing that I was thinking about was a resurfaced Halloween con costume where he was pictured in a squatting LOV costume.
, This evolved from Pepe the Frog memes people argued, , in Grover iconography, and if, which is you uses. Pepe memes, which they connected with the squatting suave pose. , And in other old, older photos, , like the inflatable Trump [00:41:00] float, , which again could just as well mean he's not like , the ties were so absurdly small, , that it really is astonishing and most of them, a normal, sane, humid would be, this is obviously left wing stuff.
Malcolm Collins: Like, like suppose I was a leftist and I was trying to determine this and I saw people commenting this guy was maga right. And I wasn't just like a tar. Right? Yeah. My first thought would be. Well, that's interesting. Why would any right wing activist, especially a far right wing activist, assassinate Charlie Kirk, right?
Like I, I'd be like, I'm gonna need some explanation there as to how that happened, right? Mm-hmm. And I just, I, I just would've been like, I need to at least, and e you can see from the early stuff, if you looked into it even a little bit, you would've seen that he was left with, like, if you had just asked in ai if you had just, but what I think really happened, if you're gonna be honest, maybe he didn't lie knowingly, and maybe he's just in like a Twitter or blue sky hole, like if he's on blue sky.
Well also,
Simone Collins: keep in mind these [00:42:00] people, as much as this was presumably his like cold open monologue he has teams of writers, th this is very much a team sport. This is another reason why this format isn't viable, whose
Malcolm Collins: version of news is Blue Sky simply would not know that the guy wasn't maga.
Simone Collins: Yeah, well, no.
Yeah, I mean, I just watched, you know, again, in terms of people turning to YouTube for commentators, there is like a leftist version of basically a late night commentator who I watch who gave this whole exposition on how almost certainly he was a griper. And that is clearly not true. So I think you're absolutely right.
Malcolm Collins: And I, I, by the way, I wanna point out before we had the info, I was the one who said the trans community community's connected to all this. And everybody, when the, when the person come out, they're like, oh, Malcolm. Oh Malcolm, you fool you, you got over your skis on this one. You let your prejudice blind you.
And I'm like, give it time. Give it [00:43:00] time. A few days later it's like, uhoh, uhoh.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Malcolm Collins: Watch our episode on all the trans people who were aware that this was going to happen on that exact date before this. It's, it's pretty clear that this was like a larger community effort at, at this point, right?
And fortunately, the f fbi, I is actually investigating this, which is cool. But I, I was like, when it, it's one of those things where the left just gets it wrong. They get the election outcomes wrong, they get the motivations wrong. I'm coming in here and I'm giving you guys tru bombs. The I got two unresolved predictions on this show, so we'll see if they come true so you guys can too.
One was that Bitcoin will crash. Not this cycle. It'll have one cycle after this cycle and then the cycle after that is gonna crash. And we sold in this cycle because I said I didn't wanna sell in the cycle before it crashed because I think that trying to time the peak is always a bad idea. And trying to time the last cycle is always a bad idea.
Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And so that's one thing and, and I'll add why it will crash. It will have something to do with [00:44:00] the cryptography being broken or quantum computing.
Or, or something to do with AI development.
Malcolm Collins: Next big prediction from the show is and keep in mind we were very broke Bitcoin early on, and I am still conceptually pro crypto. I just don't think Bitcoin is gonna continue to work.
And sorry if, if you're like a Bitcoin person, you can watch our episode on why we think this where we go into it in a lot more detail. It has to do with the way the governance model makes it hard to update quantum resistance which a lot of people are unaware of. Like basically the core vote of the governance model goes to the miners, not the holders.
And because it goes to the miners and the minor equipment is super specialized for the type of algorithms that it is doing currently, you have no motivation. Even if quantum computing breaking Bitcoin is completely imminent to switch to a quantum safe model if it requires a different chip set. And the only way around this is develop a system, which they may do and some people point out where you can use the existing s**t.
Chip set to use quantum [00:45:00] safe stuff. But it's just hard, like, especially as quantum gets better. And I by the way, said this before all of the news came out that Quantum had undergone a lot more improvements than people realize. I don't know if you remember, but like two months after I did that episode, there was like this huge wave of FUD in relation to this.
Yeah. And the other big prediction we have is China that China is going to collapse as a world power within the next 20 years. And that is a very spicy prediction and that's our biggest argument was Elon. Because he really does not believe this. He's quite invested in China continuing to do well because he sells Tesla in China.
Did you do a Tesla doesn't even require a subsidiary in China. They just get to sell directly and almost nobody gets to do that.
Simone Collins: Wow. They're not even
Malcolm Collins: doing a JA jv. And I don't need to explain. That's
Simone Collins: impressive. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Elon's done well in buttering China. He is. Well then,
Simone Collins: even if he does believe China's boned and he probably does understanding, you know, given what he knows about No, he doesn't.
He doesn't Demographic shifts. He can't say. Anything?
Malcolm Collins: No he doesn't. So I'm sure he's argued this publicly somewhere before. [00:46:00] But he believes that if you look at things like the minerals that need to be mined, like, because of course he's focused on things like lithium for batteries and stuff like that, that there's just too much raw material well, along with the capacity to extract it competently in China for it to ever collapse in the way that I suspect it will collapse in terms of the types of raw materials that they're going to be an increasing demand for.
Whereas I think that their entire existing economy is something of a pyramid scheme, and for that reason, even if it does have a lot of wealth beneath the soil or something, it still could collapse. So it's, it's just a different, I I think that his opinion is colored by the fact that he is in the EV industry and it's where a lot of his money is.
And so he's very focused on the things that EVs need, where EVs are bought. And China has a great EV industry, by the way and, and, and where EVs are manufactured, which leads him to believe that China is more broadly competent than they actually are.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Perhaps,
Malcolm Collins: perhaps, but the, what I'm pointing out here is another problem with watching left-wing media for a lot of [00:47:00] people is they just get their predictions wrong.
And, and if you're watching the point of information that it helps you predict future states of the world, right? And if you are watching a show and it gives you an inaccurate prediction of future states, of the world then you are not getting meaningful information from that. And we've made some really big calls on our show that turned out to be right.
Most of my favorites are in the field of ai. I predicted early on when it was still considered crazy that it was going to turn out as we learned more about the internal architecture of ai, that ai had they sort of a convergent internal architecture to the human brain. Hmm. And everybody thought this was crazy to begin with.
And now like 16 to 20 studies in is just every week we're getting new evidence. Pretty consistent.
Speaker 5: Yeah. That
Malcolm Collins: crazy prediction turned out to be right. Another crazy prediction that turned out to be right was, that AI and, and keep in mind there was even a study done to find out how many people suspected this, that AI would become less competent, the less aligned you tried to force [00:48:00] it to be.
Mm-hmm. And nobody believes this and it turned out to be right. You can look at my utility convergence theory. This came out five years ago, which is different from instrumental convergence, which argues that AI eventually converges on a single or a, a few homeostatically stable architectures.
Instead of the risk of like random booming architectures, which means you need to take into account game theory when considering AI safety. And I was completely right about all of that. This all, like even Ellie Eiser has recently pulled back and been like, by the way, you guys in the natal list movement, you guys gotta get way more online because we are now beaten again by AI safety.
They had this big F of explosion in, in search trends. Well,
Simone Collins: it, it helps that. Kukowski and, and, and Nate Elliot is here, was in the New York Times
Malcolm Collins: recently. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Plan on on major news channels and stuff. They're on a full out book tour with the book. If anyone builds it, everyone dies, which is their attempt to take AI Doism [00:49:00] mainstream.
Yay.
Malcolm Collins: Yay. They, they, I've proven, gotten all my AI predictions right, and they've proven, gotten all their AI predictions wrong. So I'm
Simone Collins: listening to it now. Hopefully we, we can do a podcast on it.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, other unresolved prediction that I've made about ai is that AI will consolidate wealth not around the base models, which will become more like commodities, but around the wrapper apps.
People are
Simone Collins: already starting to talk about that. There've already been industry reports about the commodification of base models and that being a risk Oh, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I, I, I went out there with that when everyone thought that was crazy. I've talked about how the super advanced AI models that will mimic Communic intelligence will not necessarily do it through better base models, although intrinsically they're gonna have those.
But it will be through a network layer of base models at the token layer. Hmm. Which check out our Feba ai, we help you do that yourself. You can already experiment with a lot. So really excited about building that. And any, any other thoughts you have on this Simone? Like what was your I don't get how people can watch our show can be like, [00:50:00] this is a silencing of free speech.
I'm like, the left did this so much worse. It's a silencing of people who are lying. And I'm much,
Simone Collins: I care a lot more about regulation of free speech on platforms like YouTube X, Facebook, et cetera. Yeah, me too. Wherever people are, that is, that is the only thing I'm really concerned about. I don't really care what private companies do it, it doesn't matter that much.
'cause not that many people are watching it.
Malcolm Collins: Well, pri YouTube does do regulation as a private, and I would, I mean, but it's ideologically motivated and it's really bad. I think the government should trump, when he was elected in Plan 42 or whatever, he said he was gonna put out laws, the
Simone Collins: Trump 47 agenda that he was gonna put out laws that would stop any ideological based censor, no banning.
Malcolm Collins: And the companies would've to tell you why they banned you and they haven't gotten to this yet. We need to go to the White House and start banging on pans and be like, when are you gonna fill this promise? We need this problem. Yeah,
Simone Collins: yeah. We're, we're probably more concerned about [00:51:00] that than family policy because there still is censorship taking place on platforms.
Speaker 5: Hey,
Simone Collins: actually things that are truthful are being referred to as hate speech, et cetera. But I mean, I would just say though, like it's funny to me that Kimmel thinks he can get away with saying things like, Tyler, robs Robinson is maga when it's. N provably not true when Candace Owens is currently in a lawsuit for saying that Emmanuel Macron's wife is not a woman.
That, and I would point out no one on the right
Malcolm Collins: has come out and said, yeah, you, no one's like, how
Simone Collins: dare you suppress Candace Owens free speech. And then also keep in mind how, how common you hear the word allegedly on YouTube, and that is because YouTubers are aware of the fact that they can't say God, what is it?
Libelous or slanderous? Li libelous,
Malcolm Collins: Slanderous if it's verbal, libelous written. Okay.
Simone Collins: Yeah. So that they don't slander because they understand that we are legally aren't, [00:52:00] you know, we're liable if we say stuff that isn't true, even if there's evidence pointing to it. And that's the thing. So he felt because of Tyler Robinson's family being maga.
That he had evidence, but he still said something that was untrue, which is slanderous, right? I mean, people, I'm sure correct me in the comments about this, but I mean, Linda Owen, the shooter evidence to believe that Emmanuel mcc, it's not
Malcolm Collins: relevant because slander is usually sued by the person who you slandered and the shooter is not gonna slander him.
Sue him for calling him maga. Right? The, the, the bigger thing here is that if you are, you know, working for a private company and you're on the news, you have a responsibility to at least try to dig up the facts and make accurate predictions about the world. And
I think the core reason leftists are mad is they believe that what he was doing was right. The point of the news is to describe the world that you wish existed in their mind, , instead of the world that actually [00:53:00] is from their perspective, he was doing what's right. And I think Simone, lay this out pretty well here.
Just a second.
Malcolm Collins: I don't
Simone Collins: know, I mean, at this point also, truth is a team sport.
And that show was catering to an audience that doesn't wanna hear.
Malcolm Collins: Truth is not a team sport. I regularly say truth isn't a team sport, it has become a team. Well, but welcome to our reality.
Simone Collins: Okay? You have to face the, the fact. That truth is treated as a, as a team sport Functionally.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I think we, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I, on the right, like with Candace Owens saying what she said and she gets sued and everyone's like, whatever. Like you said, something that wasn't true, like obviously you deserve to be sued for this. But on the, the left I think they do believe truth at the team sport. And the reason why they are so freaked out by this happening is they're like, but he said it doesn't matter if what he said was factually true.
It's what everyone on Blue Sky is saying, and therefore he gets to report it because truth is whatever everyone on Blue Sky [00:54:00] says, if he's punished for this, then I could be punished for this sort of stuff.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I don't know. I, yeah,
Malcolm Collins: by the way, I, we got hit on Patreon for a video where we pointed out the ties between the trans community and the shooter. As like a, they're gonna take down our Patreon, and I'm telling Simone, I think we should just do a different payment.
Simone Collins: We, we already are on Substack, but the vast majority of our paid subscribers, and thank you to all of you on Substack and on Patreon, are on Patreon because it's a, I like the user interface more.
I get it. But again, this is why I'm, I'm much more concerned about free speech on these platforms. 'cause one, it's where the people are. Two, it's, it's where normal people speak not just privileged celebrities and writer teams. And, and that's, that's what what we're gonna see as being, it's already the primary source of news for I think the majority of, at least younger Americans.
So that's what matters to me. [00:55:00]
Malcolm Collins: Alright, love you every day.
Simone Collins: You too.
Malcolm Collins: What?
Simone Collins: I'm taking you for dinner anyway.
Malcolm Collins: What do we have to reheat that's not unfrozen? So I
Simone Collins: have I mean, I froze all the haw meatballs. However, what I have still in the fridge is the rest of your f broth. So I figured maybe toasting some of those up.
Well,
Malcolm Collins: okay. If it's not too hard to do, if we're doing something from frozen. Mm-hmm. I just love that Korean dish you make with cheese.
Simone Collins: Okay. And I, I should try to do it in that spread out pizza format you want. All right, I'll try that.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You not, you don't even need to spread out. Just pour it on a plate, then put the mozzarella on top of it so that you get mozzarella like throughout it, you know what I mean?
Not like just at the top of it. Yeah. But you
Simone Collins: want the mozzarella melted.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah. That means that I have to like, I need to put it in like a pie dish and spread it out finally, and then put cheese on it or [00:56:00] something because I have to broil it or bake it to get the cheese melted.
Malcolm Collins: I'm confused about the point that, okay, I have to put on new
Simone Collins: cheese, Malcolm,
Malcolm Collins: you hold on.
We're gonna go over this because clearly you're making this harder than it needs to be. You put it in the microwave
Simone Collins: and I thought, and then
Malcolm Collins: you put it in the air fryer. That's what you did last time, right?
Simone Collins: Yeah. But in the same ramekin and the ramekins that I have are very small. That means you're getting a very small surface of cheese, which is exactly what you asked me to not replicate, right?
Malcolm Collins: So I have to put
Simone Collins: it in a different container. I'm not, I can't put it in the air fryer as like, hold on,
Malcolm Collins: lemme help you with some shape rotating here. Okay? You put it in the ram, you take it in what? It's frozen in. Okay.
Simone Collins: It's frozen in a ramekin. I thaw it out and it goes out of the Raman.
Malcolm Collins: Please listen. You put that.
In the microwave without the cheese on top? Yes. Okay. You then take it out of the microwave and you pour it onto a plate. You then put the cheese on top and you put [00:57:00] that in the microwave again and in the air fryer.
Simone Collins: No, you, you can't put a normal plate in an air fryer. You have to put an oven safe pan or dish or plate in an air fryer or oven.
Okay. You cannot just take, you want me to take the f*****g metal plates that you eat off of? How's that gonna go for your fingers? Who's gonna go to urgent care next? You don't know. I mean, as much as, yes, I am a clutz with a knife sometimes, especially when pregnant, I can't do anything right now. You are wrong, and I understand what I need to do and I will do it.
But I will do that for your dinner tonight. And I love you very much.
Malcolm Collins: I love you too, Simone.
Simone Collins: Okay. I'm ending her. Oh,
Malcolm Collins: so weak news people. My wife chopped off a big chunk of her finger.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And what happened
Malcolm Collins: at the hospital? So you said they had to cauterize it without anesthetics?
Simone Collins: Yeah, I well, the first, I told the first urgent care clinic, so I [00:58:00] first went to the hospital and they were like, go to an urgent care clinic.
And then I went to one and I told them what had happened and they said they weren't gonna see me. They, they like, looked really scared and then they were like, no. And then I went to the second urgent care clinic and after a really long wait they, they saw me and they, I took my bandages off the nurse who was seeing me, who had brought out stuff to help clean the wound, it looked like she was gonna pass out.
And I was like, would you like me to clean it up? She's like, yeah, I'll, I'll be back. The doctor will see you soon. And so I just sat alone in the room trying to clean off the, the stress. Simon? No. But then, yeah, so everyone had told me to get, what was it? Zinc oxide to cauterize the wound. And I was like, oh, interesting.
So there's some kind of like, ointment that must seal off wounds. I thought it was like metaphorical cauterizing. Not like you [00:59:00] burn something to cauterize, but No, it's just a chemical burn. But it's not a chemical burn on your skin. It's a chemical burn. Oh God. Inside your open wound. Oh, she
Malcolm Collins: cut off part of her fingernail and every, it was horrible.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And IPSA to people, when your spouse tells you, you need to be more careful with something. Listen to them
Malcolm Collins: because Simone knows, like regularly, I would be like, no, you can't cut it. Like, like if I was in the room, you knew I always stopped you cutting things and was like, okay, you have to do it. And you would glare at me like I was the biggest bully in the world.
Simone Collins: If I, I mean, to be fair, if I cut the way that you cut, I would never prepare a meal in time. It would be like midnight when we ate dinner.
Malcolm Collins: Well then maybe we should find ways to use things like food processors more.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I, I, I think I just need to use tools or chain meal gloves going forward, especially when pregnant.
Malcolm also is always on me about tripping because I'm very clumsy and lo and [01:00:00] behold, what did I do Just two days earlier I tripped and got blood all over my clothing and have a huge bruise now and everything hurts. And like, and show
Malcolm Collins: people
Simone Collins: how pregnant you
Malcolm Collins: are, by the
Simone Collins: way. Oh,
Malcolm Collins: I don't know. I'm I,
Simone Collins: I'm very pregnant.
You, you can't always very
Malcolm Collins: pregnant. Yes. This is not good. I am trying to. So listen, listen to your spouses. We'll get, see our Halloween theming back here. Yeah, it's getting, okay. Question for you Simone. Yeah. Comments on the episode today? On the new theory that we have, the one
Simone Collins: area where people wanna push back, is that Okay?
Sure. Culture. Culture, et cetera. But genetics plays a role. A bunch of people were like, yeah, but why are there so many basketball players of a certain heritage and why? You know,
Malcolm Collins: I look, I'm saying, and I think you need to understand that this is the episode on, on, on cultural caring capacity. That there are some conversations that if you [01:01:00] have they're just not productive given the way society is structured right now.
Well, yeah. I mean, we
Simone Collins: don't have germline gene editing right now, so we can't be like. Well, then let's
Malcolm Collins: not just that, it's, it's, you have these conversations and then that conversation is the only thing people remember you bought, right? Mm-hmm. Like that becomes your soundbite or something like that. And it's just not worth engaging with those ideas when there's so many other spicy ideas you could, and those ideas aren't even spicy anymore.
They're like the, the pumpkin latte or whatever pumpkin spice latte of spicy ideas. It's like everybody effing, like, is aware of the arguments on both sides. If you are into spicy ideas, like, why do you need us to burn our careers, like going over them for you. I just, it, it feels so indulgent to me.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean it, yeah. And also like if you can't really do much about it. Why is it interesting? We, we, we are a podcast of [01:02:00] action. We believe in actionable ideas. Yeah. I
Malcolm Collins: don't really think it's worth, I agree with you, it's not really worth having conversations about things that aren't actionable.
Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Or to talk about an idea that is not, you know, going to lead to any, any sort of possible actionable change in society.
Speaker 4: Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: yeah, exactly. And one that all of our listeners know about anyway, like what's the, you know, whatever. I think they just wanna indulge
Simone Collins: in, like thinking her, her.
Malcolm Collins: I'm for her. They said the naughty thing. Yeah, that or
Speaker 5: like, Hmm. So you've seen my group is better, or like, oh, you see, this is why I can't achieve anything.
Malcolm Collins: This actually goes with something that we do with our episodes where with every episode I try to take a position on something that's different from the position that everyone else is taking.
Simone Collins: Mm.
Malcolm Collins: And I try not to, well, not
Simone Collins: arbitrarily, but you, you are interested in sharing opinions when that's the case, because then you have something to contribute.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. There's, you know, other channels you can go to if that's what you want. [01:03:00] Final question, Simone. I was gonna ask you. I the burning
Simone Collins: sensation doesn't go away. If you were wondering, it just stays.
Malcolm Collins: I'm so sorry, Simon.
Simone Collins: Okay. I'm not gonna bring it up anymore. It's just that I, it's not gonna exist as a topic.
What was your other question?
Malcolm Collins: I don't know. I don't want you to. I feel that way, but I'm really sorry.
Simone Collins: It was my fault for not listening to you. So again, PSA to people, you were making my dinner. Yeah. But it turned out good. So it was worth it.
Malcolm Collins: And I wasn't downstairs.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Well, so I feel I abandoned you while you were doing me a favor.
No. And you hurt yourself. And everybody knows you don't want your partner to hurt themselves. It makes you feel so bad. This is true. I'm so
Simone Collins: glad this happened to me and not you.
What was your final question? I'm sorry. Oh, I was
Malcolm Collins: gonna say, what I do love is in the romance mangas, I read one of the protagonist types that I like the most is the very like stole work warrior woman.
[01:04:00] And that is totally you. I, I want to be stalwart anyway.
Simone Collins: I may not be graceful, but I can be stalwart. I'm excited for this episode now. Let's do it.
Malcolm Collins: Right.
Speaker 10: You gonna have Playdoh? I need you to wait for a second. What are you doing? I with the Playdoh. Did you eat the Play-Doh? No. I guess made the Play-Doh. But you pretended like you were gonna eat it. Why'd you do that? I saidoh.
By Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins4.5
128128 ratings
In this episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into the controversy surrounding the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s show, exploring the intersection of free speech, media ethics, and the shifting landscape of late-night television. They analyze the facts behind Kimmel’s suspension, compare it to other high-profile media firings, and discuss the broader implications for truth, comedy, and political discourse in America. The conversation also touches on the evolution of late-night humor, the rise of alternative media, and the challenges of navigating cancel culture. Plus, enjoy candid moments, personal stories, and predictions about the future of media, AI, and global politics.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] was Kimmel himself hinting in a 2024 LA Times interview. I think this is my final contract.
That seems like enough Jimmy Kimmel was saying. His contract wasn't gonna be renewed. when Alex Jones gets fired for Sandy Hook very few mainstream conservative commentators we're like, oh, they're silencing free speech the Tonight Show was Conan O'Brien was canceled at around 1.4. So at higher ratings than his show was canceled.
The American Hall Show was canceled at 1.6. Again, much higher than his show when it was canceled,
Simone Collins: your depiction of this as the network taking an opportunity to. Less expensively end a contract that was going to end inevitably.
Makes a lot of sense.
Malcolm Collins: why does the left even think they have a right to be mad about this?
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. A lot of people have been talking about free speech in regards to [00:01:00] Jimmy Kimmel having his show canceled after.
I will note it wasn't that he disparaged somebody, he just lied. Like what he said wasn't even like a normal lie. It was like the antithesis of what is true. I'll play the clip right here for people who aren't familiar with it. Before we go further
Speaker: The MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.
Malcolm Collins: the gist is, is he insinuated that the shooter who killed, charlie Kirk was a Republican, was like a MAGA guy. Like Yeah.
Simone Collins: He used the term MAGA or
Malcolm Collins: Right. Republican. And that, that's funny because, you know, MAGA is killing MAGA and they don't realize it or won't talk about it. Well, that
Simone Collins: MAGA is trying to pin it on their political opposition and he's basically saying they're shooting their own.
Isn't that? Yeah. Which is,
Malcolm Collins: I mean, it's, [00:02:00] it's, it's not like a, like he may not have been aware of the evidence or something like this. This is one of the things that is just patently not true. And part of this whole conversation is before I get into he wasn't canceled for the reasons that people are saying, first of all, and I'm gonna go into the data on this, that'll be the first thing we go into.
But the, the other thing that's really important to note here is, and, and go into is why does the left even think they have a right to be mad about this? Like his role. Was as a newscaster comedian which is basically our role as well, except he's working for a major station, like a private company, right.
He says something in his role as a newscaster comedian, which was the antithesis of true, which was literally made to get people to believe the opposite of what was true on a very sensitive topic, which is obviously like going viral and doing the rounds. And [00:03:00] so the company that hired him, fired him.
Simone Collins: Well, the show suspended, right?
I Is he fired? I don't think he's fired. It
Malcolm Collins: doesn't, it doesn't matter. The point being is that you should be fired if you are a newscaster for saying something about like a, a mainstream important topic that's just factually untrue. And
Simone Collins: to be fair, there is a. There are many examples of journalists, reporters, et cetera, who have been suspended or fired for reporting inaccuracies.
This is Sure.
Malcolm Collins: A, a great example, when Alex Jones gets fired for saying Sandy Hook is fake very few mainstream conservative commentators we're like, oh, they're silencing free speech or anything like that.
You know, very few. We, we certainly have never argued that Alex Jones shouldn't have faced a lawsuit for that or faced being pulled from air for that. That was something that was factually untrue and very easy to check that it was [00:04:00] factually untrue. Yeah. In fact. In many ways, I think what Alex Jones did was less bad than what, what Jimmy Kimmel did.
Why? 'cause at least Alex Jones engaged with the argument and tried to explain why he believed it was fake, whereas Jimmy Kimmel just stated something that was patently false about something that assert as
Speaker 4: sculpted.
Malcolm Collins: No. I'll note here. The way that what Alex Jones did was worse than what Jimmy Kimmel did is he turned the regular civilians who had lost their loved ones into victims.
Whereas Jimmy Kimmel did not do that. Yeah. But I mean, I'm talking about just in terms of somebody whose job is telling news, said something and that they knew was wrong. And, and if you can be like, oh, Alex Jones didn't know this. We know from the court documents that Alex Jones didn't believe this.
Like there's been internal leaks. And there are also
Simone Collins: just general other even political kind of related falsehoods that people have been. We'll say like suspended or censored in some way. Like some Fox News presenters promoted false claims about the 2020 US [00:05:00] election and Dominion voting systems. And they, that, that led to lawsuits and, and other things.
And were they fired? Some, some of them were suspended, some were not. But that's another example of them. A a bunch of people have been pulled for just other nonpolitical inaccuracies. Like Brian Williams, he was a really big person for NBC Nightly News in 2015 was suspended, and later his anchor was just totally removed after he exaggerated stories about being under fire during the Iraq war.
So that was just telling a lie about himself. So there, there are lots of people who have been suspended for things people have been suspended for false Michael Flynn reports false Kobe Bryant reporting.
You know, when he, he, when he was killed Matt Guttman of a BC news was suspended for saying that all of the kids died in the plane crash when it was just his daughter. So even just like little, little things. And, and some,
Malcolm Collins: it's, the point is, is it is normal to fire a newscaster [00:06:00] for lying, for plagiarism,
Simone Collins: for ethics issues, for lying, for inaccurate reporting, like all of these things.
Malcolm Collins: Why is it, I think the bigger story here is why is it that progressives think that this is a bad thing? Like, oh, and
Simone Collins: don't forget all the COVID stuff. Sorry, I just wanted to point that out. When, when people were seen as, as, as reporting misleadingly on COVID stuff, they got fired and suspended all the time.
Malcolm Collins: But the, the question here I'm saying is why do they think that they can say, we are canceling free speech when some, a newscaster is being fired for lying. Like, why do they think that this is something that somebody shouldn't be fired for? Why do they think that they have a position to throw a stink here?
And I think that this actually tells us more about the current progressive mindset and philosophy than the, the anything else around this. But before I go further, I wanna go into why he was actually fired because this is suspended. People on the right have talked about this, but they really haven't gone into the data.
And I think when you go into the data, you're just like, this is a completely silly situation to be up in [00:07:00] arms about. Okay. So in August 26th, 2025, Yahoo Entertainment. So this is before he said this, this is before the Trump stuff AR article reported insider speculation tied to shifting late night landscape.
Post Stephen Colbert's cancellation announcement, A key quote, quote, Jimmy is determined to quit late night before he's axed, quote, confides insider. The context highlights that he was planning to be fired that year. Jimmy Kimmel thought before this that he was going to be fired this year. What happened?
Let's keep going. A July 23rd, 2025 people magazine's piece discussed Trump's claims that Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon would soon be ousted analyzing their contracts. It noted Kimmel's deal expires at the end of 2025 to 2026. Season was Kimmel himself hinting in a 2024 LA Times interview. I think this is my final contract.
That seems like enough Jimmy [00:08:00] Kimmel was saying. His contract wasn't gonna be renewed. Now, what's important to note about these contracts, and we'll get into this a little bit more later, is most of them have a clause that if the person embarrasses the company publicly, they can cancel the contract without having to pay a firing fee.
But if they don't, then they have to pay out a bunch of money.
Simone Collins: Oh, okay. There's a very clear economic reason for why things happened the way they happened.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. Let's keep going here. Oh, cha-ching. July 24th, 2025 coming soon.net guide explored why fans and sources believed the show was going to be canceled.
So there's, there's articles out there analyzing why everyone thought he was gonna be canceled and they say, quote, the word is, and it's a strong word at that Jimmy Kimmel is next to go at late night sweepstakes in quote. And this was a Trump quote by the way that they were quoting. So he, he knew what was up.
But now I wanna talk ratings because we're gonna do a quick comparison of this show's ratings, and I'll put on screen here, the falling ratings of not just [00:09:00] this show, but across late night tv. So you can give an idea of just how dramatic the fall has been, because I think a lot of people don't realize how dramatic the fall has been.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. But,
Malcolm Collins: Total viewers, P two plus. The show's highest seasonal average with around 2.4 million, and that was back in 2015, was peaks of 2.2 million with some episodes growing over 3 million, but averages Hubbard around 2.1 to 2.4. In the adults 18 to 49 demo, which is the one that advertisers care about.
It was nearly a million viewers back in 2015. Now if you go more recently by August 20 for 25, the monthly average had fallen to 1.104.
Speaker 4: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: So down almost 50%. And. If you look at the key demo they were down, I, I think it was around 78 to 75% the 18 to 49 demo. So that's where the advertisers are.
And this makes sense because
Simone Collins: I mean, why watch late night when you can watch Asman Gold or someone who's more politically interesting to you, [00:10:00] who's better takes honestly and is
Malcolm Collins: more prolific, started to suck. And I wanna talk about, as a former fan of late night, right? Yeah. But before I get into like being a former fan of late night, I just think it's useful.
Before we go into this, this tangent to go over when other shows were canceled.
Speaker 4: Okay,
Malcolm Collins: so remember he had fallen 74% in the key demographic, 43% in the general demographic, and was getting around 1 million views per show. Okay? So the Tonight Show was Conan O'Brien was canceled at around 1.4. So at higher ratings than his show was canceled.
Wow. It had fallen by about 63%. The American Hall Show was canceled at 1.6. Again, much higher than his show when it was canceled, fallen 47%. So around the percent his show had fallen. The Jay Leno show was canceled at 1.4, again, higher than his show but it had fallen 73%. Later with Bob Castus and Greg Kinner at around one.
But, and it had only fallen 33%, so this is [00:11:00] the only one in this list so far that was below his, when it was canceled. So I just let's go to Jimmy. Oh, Jimmy Kimmel did horribly when he was canceled. He had fallen to 0.16 and had fallen 76%. so many shows in that, in that table had fallen to lower than his show.
When he was canceled, he was below the range that you're normally at when you're canceled.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. It's almost as though they were holding on because they realized that this is no longer a viable format anyway, and they maybe just wanted the legacy. To last a little longer, but this is clearly, this was not long for the world, this show.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. By the way, if you wanna talk about contracts, suspending the show indefinitely could invoke clauses related to public interest or reputational harm, potentially allowing a BZ to avoid breach contract penalties.
Simone Collins: Hmm. Nice.
Malcolm Collins: Kimmel is reportedly effing livid but no lawsuits are happening.
But why, why did he think he could just lie and, and nobody would care? 'cause
Simone Collins: that's [00:12:00] been the way in late night media for a long time. I mean, there's been skewed representations of reality through late night media frequently. I remember even in like the old I think John Stewart and Colbert report shows they would misrepresent some interviews, kind of like cut them in weird ways.
Oh yeah, they would, would way, yeah. Yeah. I guess he thought it was like
Malcolm Collins: industry practice and he is getting lazy now, so he is not trying to cut up funny interviews. It's just, I mean, I
Simone Collins: think it's, it's one of those things where people break the rules and you're only gonna get prosecuted for it when someone has to, who's gonna benefit from prosecuting for it.
Like when the news networks made a lot of money from those misrepresentations and faced no liability, keep it, 'cause it's good for them. In this case, the Trump administration is clearly saying that they're gonna crack down on behavior like this. I, I wanna go, it doesn't seem to be doing in them any favors.
So I wanna
Malcolm Collins: go over the cracking down on behavior that the Trump administration has talked about and everything like [00:13:00] that. Okay. 'cause it, it's not often what people think. It's, it's more just these people are going to be fired. While there's been some stuff of like FCC. Right.
Simone Collins: But yeah, there still have been very prominent people in the Trump administration saying really clearly threatening.
This kind of
Malcolm Collins: behavior. Right. We'll get to, I'm gonna get to all of these quotes in a second. Okay. But I wanna get to the side that you were talking about earlier. Okay. Which is, why would you watch this when you have asthma, gold or us as an alternative? And the answer is genuinely why? Like why, like the, the 18, the reason they've lost 18 to 24 demographic.
You know, Asma Gold Points out, he beats most major news stations in that demographic. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, really sad. His dad died. Dad died. That happened recently. Yeah. And he took off the show, you know, he used to do every day, very diligent about never missing anything
Simone Collins: multiple times, every day. What a prolific man, what a workforce.
Malcolm Collins: And he decided to take off indefinitely, you know, citing his dad's health. And I think a lot of people were like, you know, this is a big mistake, you know, how long are you gonna do this? And he turned out to have done the right [00:14:00] thing. You know, his dad did end up dying not long after that. And it's, it's a regret he's not gonna have.
And his dad also would call into the show regularly and just ramble and he'd let him talk. So it appeared they had a positive relationship. But anyway I I, I, I think if, if you're an 18 to 24, why are you watching these guys? The shows often don't really respect your time very much, which is something we try to do as a show is just, you know, not leave a lot of dead space, try to go from a piece of information.
You may not be getting somewhere else to a piece of information. You may not be getting somewhere else where they're not doing that. If you look at the Jimmy Kimmel Show, it is about confirming the things you already believe as a joke which isn't funny, right? I used to be obsessed with late night tv specifically the Daily Show and the Colbert Report.
I was so into the Colbert Report that because I was living in Scotland at the time when I did my undergrad I couldn't watch it on tv. I couldn't stream it. So I bought a subscription, a daily subscription to it on ut on apple, apple Music. Wow. So I [00:15:00] paid like, I don't know, like, I wanna say like a dollar 50 an episode every single day.
Simone Collins: I bought the book. I can't remember what it was called. There's a Colbert book.
Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah, we got that too. Yeah. In history. So like we, we were, I am like a super fan of this show. Yeah, no, we loved
Simone Collins: it.
Malcolm Collins: And he a hundred percent deserved to be canceled. His show became absolute dog trash. The Col Colbert report is still
Speaker 5: on.
Simone Collins: The
Malcolm Collins: Colbert report was canceled. We're gonna talk about the cancellation of that. Did you not know that?
Simone Collins: I just watched a segment where he talked about the Kimmel suspension.
Malcolm Collins: He took over the Tonight Show and then was canceled. Hold on.
Simone Collins: I just watched a segment and he joked about like, people thinking he was canceled and that it's not true.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, it's going to be canceled May, 2026.
Simone Collins: Yeah. It's not being renewed.
Malcolm Collins: It's not being renewed, but it hasn't been canceled yet. Yeah, it absolutely, he's just not good anymore. I mean, when you watched it, did he, was he like, how could this [00:16:00] happen?
Simone Collins: Basically he was just like, that's Jimmy Kimmel being Jimmy Kimmel.
And he's not wrong because again, this format has been rife with inaccuracies for a very long time.
Malcolm Collins: But I think that this is diff because it wasn't even a real joke. Okay. And it wasn't like an inaccuracy, like he cut up a piece using real people's words to say something else. It was just saying something that is the opposite of what's true around a political assassination.
Simone Collins: Well, and what's troubling too is people with greater frequency than I could have ever expected or banding around the term civil war. This is not in innocuous incitement or representation. This is contributing to a level of internal unrest. That is dangerous. And there are people who watch this show who love the idea of there being a Civil War.
Civil wars are not fun for anyone involved.
Malcolm Collins: But I think that there's a second thing here [00:17:00] that you're missing which is why these shows have dropped off. I don't just think it's the audience and the alternatives. I if you, if you talk about, you know, circa my College Days Daily Show or Colbert Reports mm-hmm.
I would've rather watched those than ASME Gold. If ASME Gold was an alternative back then but today I would rather watch ASME Gold and the question is, is why. Hmm. And the answer is because they used to be funny. And so the question is, is why aren't they funny anymore? Right? Like, this is actually an interesting point.
Why did, why Because comedians used to be overwhelmingly leftists, like this was a thing. And if you go into mainstream comedy, comedians are still overwhelmingly leftists, just main, although the Colbert report
Simone Collins: originally, the Colbert report was funny because it was a leftist pretending to be a rightist.
But honestly, very similar with the, the character Ron Swanson from the show Parks and Rec. There's something about like even leftist, parities of Rightists that are absolutely [00:18:00] delightful.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That back then, the thing is, is you could portray, whether it's Ron Swanson or the Colbert Report, a rightist is having some positive qualities in the way that you portrayed them, right?
Mm-hmm. This, this was key to the Colbert character. But you can't do that anymore. And I also think when you talk about humor,
Simone Collins: it's no, there's no longer any capacity to even try to model people on the right and then. Actually rightist in a way that's entertaining. It's just, it's just hatred and vitriol.
It's just resentment it, it's just derangement. And that's not fun anymore. And I think that's something that you and I have been talking about a lot internally is we love working with people who are politically different from us, or ideologically different from us, who make fun of us in good spirit per mostly because they can model us and they understand our points.
They just have different, you know, conclusions. What, what is different now is a complete loss of that [00:19:00] capacity to model the other side, which then leads to an inability to make a depiction of it funny or even make criticisms of it funny.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. I think that that's part of it. But I also think if you watch one of their shows now, like even the joke that Jimmy Kimmel did with this, he's just like our side good, their side bad audience laugh.
That is the core joke structure, right? Whereas if you look at older jokes on the shows, they follow if people aren't familiar with my theory of humor, I'm not gonna explain the whole thing, but it's basically when you hear an idea or you see something that makes sense in context but is otherwise surprising and we argue that it likely evolved as a signal that babies gave to their parents to get them to repeat a task until they could.
Understand it. It was like, oh, I almost understand that. Like, object permanence. Do it again. And so they create this positive stimuli and the parents react and we continue laughing as adults now, even though we're not really supposed to. And this is why you know, if you wanna see like an ape, really laugh, [00:20:00] watch videos of apes watching magic tricks they will just absolutely crack up.
They tell me again. Cute. Like, I wanna understand that. Okay. Like, why isn't the ball in the cup anymore? Like, I saw you put it in the cup. Oh. And if you look at the Colbert character, he allowed for that a lot. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. Like, because it's like, oh, it's so surprising that someone would say that, but oh yes, he's a right wing archetype character.
So it's surprising, but it makes sense within the context of his character. Hmm. It's a very easy format for doing lots of jokes. Hmm. Especially if you play like an over the top caricature of that. Right. Which I don't know. I, I try to take some of my personality from that. We'll see, you know, because everybody takes their, their personality from, from different caricatures.
But or, or different things they see within media if they're doing it
Simone Collins: right.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But the point I, I'm the modern day Colbert, right? I understand what the other side is thinking. I just embody the character for real, for real. Yeah. But no, you,
Simone Collins: you, Malcolm, you do not embody the left.
Malcolm Collins: I embody the [00:21:00] right wing character.
Oh, that Colbert was the right wing character. I am the Steve, the ultra patriotic, the
Simone Collins: Oh, you are? Yeah. You are ultra patriotic. There's that, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Worried about the French and bears. But the point I'm making here, it was a very good format. And in the modern leftist format they, because they believe it's funny to just be like your side bad, our side good.
It doesn't appeal to most general audiences, but in addition to that the left will get you for like stepping out of line with anything that's overly subversive. And if you look at the old you know, like SNL or something, you'd have like the ambiguously gay duo and stuff like that. Yeah. Or Stephen Colbert.
Like even remember Stephen Colbert? People may not know this, but the term cancel, cancel culture, everything like that, you know, saying I am canceled. Do you remember when it was invented? Simone? It
Simone Collins: came from the, the. GBTQ community?
Malcolm Collins: No, it came from the Cancel Colbert movement.
Simone Collins: Mm. They [00:22:00] took
Malcolm Collins: it from the L-G-B-T-Q movement.
But what made it popular Lexicon. Okay. What
Simone Collins: popular? Okay, so he that brought it to the mainstream. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: That's the mainstream that everybody knows about it from is Cancel Colbert. And what did Ca Colbert do that got him? They tried to cancel him over. It was his Ching Chong bong character where he would do a silly accent and do his eyes like this.
Oh no.
Speaker 3: You so pretty American girl. You come here, you kiss my teammate all sweet. I no need no sugar when you around. Come on rickshaw. I give you a ride to Bangkok.
Malcolm Collins: And some Asian girl who I think, oh my God, I remember this activist.
Simone Collins: Yes. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Total Grifter decided she tried to get him canceled over this, like this was causing her like serious emotional distress. It was like the biggest BS ever. And nothing ended up happening, but that shows that Colbert actually used to be like subversive, right?
So much so that backlash to Colbert invented canceled culture.
Okay, [00:23:00] so the invention of the term cancel appears to be a case of the LGBT slash black community attempting to carry credit for inventing a term that they didn't invent. , While the term canceled what used to reject people at like balls and stuff at dances, , it most certainly entered popular culture as like a to be canceled by the mob because of Colbert.
Because the term in the context of Cancel, Colbert meant to cancel the show, which is what it means when you shut down a show. It very clearly came specifically from the Shut Down the Colbert Show, or Cancel the Colbert Show.
Simone Collins: Can you imagine? Yeah. Can you imagine any late night show doing something like that now? Yeah. Gotta
Malcolm Collins: do the
Simone Collins: Yeah. It got boring. They stopped. They stopped doing anything that was risque or interesting. And it is still good comedy today. Popular comedy today is risque.
And that's why so many comedians now require attendees to put their phones in in Faraday bags. Oh really? Yeah. [00:24:00] I mean, one, they don't want everything like immediately on YouTube 'cause they're trying out new routines before they wanna take them like onto a Netflix special. But two, yeah, there's just a lot of concern about what they're saying, being risque, leading to them not being able to continue their tour because someone makes a huge stink about it online.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I'll tell you one of my jokes I told that absolutely killed at the Libertarian convention this is before I was public, was being skeptical so I was like, nobody, nobody's recording. Right? But now we're more publicly skeptical. I'll, I'll take out the, the, the hint before this so that, that people get the joke, but I go, you know, when I was a kid, and this is, this is actually true, Simone, I was so into you know, it, it subversive culture.
I, you know, would dress in like punk clothes and goth clothes and had my own little scene type outfit. And everything I did was like, so like offensive to like pearl clutching adults and everything like that. And they'd always tell me, [00:25:00] they're like, well,
Speaker 2: hmm,
Malcolm Collins: I know you think that you are like crazy and out there and subversive now, but one day you're gonna be old and one day the kids will do things that will shock and offend you.
And I told them, I, that is just not true. I, I, I am always gonna be with it. Little did I know that cutting your dick off was gonna become a trend.
Nick, it's true though. If you had told the younger me, I would've been. And that's what makes it 'cause it's subversive, right? It's, it's funny, it's subversive. But it's obviously true. It's surprising. You imagine
Simone Collins: because who would do that? But it makes sense because, oh wait, a lot of people are doing that in
Malcolm Collins: the nineties, in the, the early thousands.
Right? Where, where I was like the early thousands. You go to them and you're like, you know, you're gonna, one day the kids are gonna shock you. And you're like, no. All of them we're like, [00:26:00] no. And then you tell that version. What if I told you cutting off your dick's gonna become a trend? They'd be like, wait, what?
Yeah.
Simone Collins: That gets you,
Malcolm Collins: that's an actual trend. This is like. Cool. And they're like, yeah, that there's groups that think it's pretty cool and you're like, whoa. Oh my god. People, people will brag about this. Oh yeah. They make you bring it up constantly in conversation. Really anyway. That's, that's a a Malcolm joke.
We'll see if the audience thought that was funny. No. Gosh. I'll, I'll keep, I'll keep going here. Your dad.
Simone Collins: It's a dad joke. Maybe it's not. I have no idea. I have no idea.
Malcolm Collins: But I'll go into the, what the Trump administration has said. 'cause people are like, yeah, but now the Trump administration is going after media freedom.
Okay, now I point out here how many YouTubers and right wing media lost their jobs and lost their source of income for telling the truth about COVID truths that [00:27:00] we now recognize. And, and keep in mind the whiplash of one day. It's don't wear a mask. Masks actually do nothing. If you say that you, you wanna wear a mask, we will de platform you.
And then like within a week it became, oh, actually masks are completely required and we will de platform you if you say don't wear a mask. And by the way, we were never arguing the exact opposite two weeks ago. That, for me, was the craziest part of COVID when that happened. Because I would like talk to people and it felt so 1984, where it was like the, the, the new thing had dropped and we were supposed to pretend that the old thing had never been an old thing and we weren't just canceling people.
Yeah,
Simone Collins: we never said that. What do you mean? No, you have to wear a mask. Now I have always said
Malcolm Collins: this. I was like, what? Have you taken down the old episodes of your, I go, I look. I'm like, no, you. Oh, truth just doesn't matter to you people. That was when I was like, this is crazy. I'm in the Twilight Zone [00:28:00] here.
Speaker 6: In the name of Vectron, I bring you greeting Chancellor Vectron. Be with you, ambassador. And may the power of Vectron bring prosperity to your house
by Vectra's build.
Speaker 7: Excellent.
Speaker 8: , Chancellor? Yes. , Who's ectron? What? This ectron, we all keep mentioning what? Don't you know by ra? No. You see, about three weeks ago I was ill. When I came back on the Friday morning, it was all veteran ra veron and no one's really explained just three weeks ago, but, but Veron is eternal.
Honestly, Steve, no one, I mean, none of us have ever said the word vectron in our lives until. I took that day off maybe.
Malcolm Collins: But the point here being is it, it, the Trump administration, if they do do a crackdown on this, would be doing much less than what leftists did. And you can be like, well, leftists weren't getting [00:29:00] mainstream TV watchers banned. And I was like, banning mainstream TV matters much less than putting restrictions on something like YouTube.
Yeah. If you're talking about where key demographics are actually getting their information from.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: But anyway, to continue here. Trump tra praised ABC's indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel alive, following controversial remarks, posting on true social congratulations to a, B, C for finally having the courage to do what had to be done.
He also called Kimmel someone who made a total fool of himself, fool in all caps. Okay. I don't see why that's controversial. He then suggested, and here's where it gets controversial, broadcasters airing critical content should face consequences. Dating to reporters, quote, I would think maybe their license should be taken away in quote, referring to networks that quote unquote hit Trump.
And another comment said of TV networks, quote, I mean, they're getting a license. I would think that their license could be taken away. It would be up to Brendan Carr. End quote. So I love that. I'm sure [00:30:00] he did not go over this with Brendan Carr. He's just like, I'll just say it to the news stations and.
He'll see it on TV and then do it if he feels like it.
Simone Collins: That is his style. Yes. That
Malcolm Collins: is his style. I effing love that about his style. I love that. Like our ideas have been taken to Trump by reporters and he goes, that doesn't sound like a bad idea. Like, I don't know, I'm not like at the White House putting something up through the ranks.
And then they'll like ask the press secretary and she goes, yeah, that seems reasonable. If Trump said it's reasonable, you know, this, this is how you, this is how you're part of this larger media landscape. Right. But the, the, the larger point here is, is it wrong to take away station's license if they are doing the type of thing that Jimmy Kimmel was doing, which is just complete fabrications that he was aware of a fabrication, keep in mind that the leftists did the same thing to all of Facebook over something that they knew was true.
The Hunter Biden laptop story, and this has essentially mm-hmm. During an election cycle. Yeah. [00:31:00] I, I, I love it when people are like, well, if Trump does this and the leftists will do it, it's like, bro, the leftists are already doing something 10 times worse. They are, they are forcing falsehoods using their power over media and now they are calling foul when Trump tries to force truth over media.
And the larger thing to me about all of this that I want to go over and or deeper into here is that they feel they have the right to get mad about somebody being fired for knowingly stating the opposite of the truth for political motivations on air.
Speaker 4: Mm.
Malcolm Collins: From a private job when he had lower ratings than most people have when they get fired.
And sort of, it seems to be. That they believe that there should be almost a protection for people who are lying about Trump within their jobs in the same way. And we've seen this in other areas, so people can be like, no, that sounds [00:32:00] bizarre. Where, you know, like as an employer, if you've got a fire like one of five people on a team and one of those people is trans, you can't fire the trans person first.
Yes. You'll be sued or attacked or something like that. Right? And I think that it's sort of the same phenomenon here, right? Where it's like he was or believed, and it seemed that many mainstream leftists believed that through easily false, like provably, falsifiable attacks. On right wing ideologies that you protect yourself and your position because then you could say if you were fired, that you were fired for this.
Which is to me really chilling because it shows how much control they had over our culture until now. And that how much of a better place we're in that they can't freak out. And I love that, you know, we're not actually getting pushback from anyone who matters, right? Like when the people go up and they, they freak out [00:33:00] about this stuff, I'd even go, this is like a great one.
Like to me, this is trans people in sports to go over that. He shouldn't have been fired with bad ratings that were continuing to fall at record rates while lying in the position of a newscaster. Yeah, I mean,
Simone Collins: your, your depiction of this as the network taking an opportunity to. Less expensively end a contract that was going to end inevitably.
Makes a lot of sense.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, a lot of sense. And while Trump is threatening stuff like licenses, what is he actually doing? Right. What he's actually doing is just funny banter to freak people out. Like, here's the great one on TR social where he says, that leaves Jimmy and Seth. Two total losers on fake news.
NBC. The ratings are horrible. Do it. NBC, exclamation mark, exclamation mark.
What are [00:34:00] you waiting for, huh? What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? What am I waiting for? What am I waiting what are you waiting for? F**k you!
Oh my god!
Malcolm Collins: Oh my God. I mean, and he also called networks an arm of the Democratic Party, which I mean, if you're doing this, you are right. Like how is that an untruth? Right. So one I could go over how they could do this. I, I guess like the SEC could investigate complaints about content deemed not in the public interest.
A broad standard requiring stations to serve community interest and avoid certain harms like indecency Trump and car have faced critical satire as biased or harmful, potentially triggering reviews, except this wasn't a case of satire. Like the, the way that people are talking about it is like, [00:35:00] this guy made a joke critical of Trump instead of this guy lied about an assassination that just happened.
Simone Collins: Well, he lied about. The, he misrepresented the political affiliation of Charlie. He didn't didn
Malcolm Collins: misrepresent. He, he said his political affiliation was the opposite of what it was. That's not misrepresenting
Simone Collins: Well, this was at a time when we didn't have a whole lot of information. No, I think a lot of people argue that he was just engaging in speculation.
That's
Malcolm Collins: not true, Simone, that's not true. We had evidence from day one and when he gave this, this on air that this guy was a left wing individual. This, this was from early interviews. This is from early everything.
Is what had been released to say that he was left winging at this time. The New York Times before this had described Robinson as an assassin with hardening left wing Pro L-G-B-T-Q views that led him to violence. Not only did they say that he was a left wing in the New [00:36:00] York Times, but that it had led him to violence.
, If you, , look at what the Utah governor Spencer Cox had said before this at NBC's meet the press, , he said he. Quote unquote, clearly had a leftist ideology. These details were made publicly and loudly before Jimmy Kimmel did this.
Malcolm Collins: The, the only and I, I think that you. Are not aware of this as to why people argued he was right wing.
Just, just in case you're wondering they argued that he was right wing. I think it because of a clown meme that he posted at one point. And that at another point know clown memes are common on the right. Oh, it wasn't even a clown mean. I think he dressed up as a clown for Halloween.
Simone Collins: No Robinson dressed up as someone piggybacking on President Trump.
No, that was
Malcolm Collins: another Halloween.
Simone Collins: Okay. Okay. So there's some other h look up
Malcolm Collins: post, look, look up in, in, in AI right now. Why people argued that he was right wing because the, the the earlier the clown [00:37:00] meme, which they said Nick Fuentes also did, and they said that he was gay. And Nick Fuentes is also gay, and that's proof that he's rightwing.
Those were the two. I see. Okay. Proofs that they had that what, what is the AI pulling up for?
Simone Collins: I'm still typing it.
Hold on. I, I have one handwritten,
Malcolm Collins: a finger you'll hear in post Y
the day after losing a finger, like, literally, I can't even believe
Simone Collins: it. I didn't lose my finger. I cut off just the tip, some of the fingernail too. Okay.
There was confusion and speculation online about Tyler Robinson being maga, largely because he came from a conservative pro-Trump background, and in the immediate aftermath of the shooting of right wing figure Charlie Kirk. Some commentators and social media users [00:38:00] assumed a political motivation connected MAGA ideology.
Initial reasons for MAGA association included that he came from a conservative household, early online posts and rumors, including tweets by prominent commentators and even some academics suggested Robinson. Robinson was ultramega based. Purely on his background before his note, note motives for codified social media account cited old photos of Robinson wearing Trump merchandise or costumes fueling the speculation.
All of this is referring to the stuff that I just mentioned to you.
Malcolm Collins: I'll, I'll find it and add it in post. But there, there was other stuff that they saw was, was confirming, I mean, literally if it was just his family and a Trump Halloween costume, which could equally be taken that he hates Trump Uhhuh that if, if that's it.
In fairness,
Simone Collins: Malcolm, you repeat again and again how 10% of or or only 10% of, of children, of, of political families change affiliation.
Malcolm Collins: Yes, but they do, like, you shouldn't, you shouldn't be [00:39:00] assuming just because of his family that he would be pro-Trump, especially if he assassinated a major right wing figure that would take, like, you, you'd need a real good reason.
Okay, why did they think that he was right wing? You will find this hilarious 'cause I decided to look it up. , So they marked the bullet casings, the notices, bulge uwo. What's that? They said was evidence that he was right winging a furry meme reference. Uh, Bella Chow, which was apparently an anti-fascist song, lyrics, they said was proof that he was right Winging.
And hay fascist. , On the bullet casing they said was evidence that he was actually right ring. , Now if you wanna know how they twisted these, the notices, bulges, uu, uh, this is a twisted, degenerate, furry moon. UU is a cat girl emoticon. Mocking noticing GRR code for spotting Jewish influence in society is a kind of layered self-referential joke.
Nick Fuentes crowd used to hide behind bigot bigotry behind absurdity. The Bella Chow, [00:40:00] they said the Italian anti-fascist partisan song. Famous for money heist, but remixed into track on Grover, Spotify playlist. Grovers co-opted it ironically to troll fate conservatives. , And then in hay fascist read like at a direct taunt, possibly aimed at Kirk's perceived establishment ties echoing how growers baited him online and in speeches.
, And I note here that the growers, the far conservatives did not like Charlie Kirk. Like that's one thing that they write about because he. Was not far right. He was very centrist in his actual beliefs. , EE even if you, if you read some few things outta context, it might seem otherwise. , The thing that I was thinking about was a resurfaced Halloween con costume where he was pictured in a squatting LOV costume.
, This evolved from Pepe the Frog memes people argued, , in Grover iconography, and if, which is you uses. Pepe memes, which they connected with the squatting suave pose. , And in other old, older photos, , like the inflatable Trump [00:41:00] float, , which again could just as well mean he's not like , the ties were so absurdly small, , that it really is astonishing and most of them, a normal, sane, humid would be, this is obviously left wing stuff.
Malcolm Collins: Like, like suppose I was a leftist and I was trying to determine this and I saw people commenting this guy was maga right. And I wasn't just like a tar. Right? Yeah. My first thought would be. Well, that's interesting. Why would any right wing activist, especially a far right wing activist, assassinate Charlie Kirk, right?
Like I, I'd be like, I'm gonna need some explanation there as to how that happened, right? Mm-hmm. And I just, I, I just would've been like, I need to at least, and e you can see from the early stuff, if you looked into it even a little bit, you would've seen that he was left with, like, if you had just asked in ai if you had just, but what I think really happened, if you're gonna be honest, maybe he didn't lie knowingly, and maybe he's just in like a Twitter or blue sky hole, like if he's on blue sky.
Well also,
Simone Collins: keep in mind these [00:42:00] people, as much as this was presumably his like cold open monologue he has teams of writers, th this is very much a team sport. This is another reason why this format isn't viable, whose
Malcolm Collins: version of news is Blue Sky simply would not know that the guy wasn't maga.
Simone Collins: Yeah, well, no.
Yeah, I mean, I just watched, you know, again, in terms of people turning to YouTube for commentators, there is like a leftist version of basically a late night commentator who I watch who gave this whole exposition on how almost certainly he was a griper. And that is clearly not true. So I think you're absolutely right.
Malcolm Collins: And I, I, by the way, I wanna point out before we had the info, I was the one who said the trans community community's connected to all this. And everybody, when the, when the person come out, they're like, oh, Malcolm. Oh Malcolm, you fool you, you got over your skis on this one. You let your prejudice blind you.
And I'm like, give it time. Give it [00:43:00] time. A few days later it's like, uhoh, uhoh.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Malcolm Collins: Watch our episode on all the trans people who were aware that this was going to happen on that exact date before this. It's, it's pretty clear that this was like a larger community effort at, at this point, right?
And fortunately, the f fbi, I is actually investigating this, which is cool. But I, I was like, when it, it's one of those things where the left just gets it wrong. They get the election outcomes wrong, they get the motivations wrong. I'm coming in here and I'm giving you guys tru bombs. The I got two unresolved predictions on this show, so we'll see if they come true so you guys can too.
One was that Bitcoin will crash. Not this cycle. It'll have one cycle after this cycle and then the cycle after that is gonna crash. And we sold in this cycle because I said I didn't wanna sell in the cycle before it crashed because I think that trying to time the peak is always a bad idea. And trying to time the last cycle is always a bad idea.
Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And so that's one thing and, and I'll add why it will crash. It will have something to do with [00:44:00] the cryptography being broken or quantum computing.
Or, or something to do with AI development.
Malcolm Collins: Next big prediction from the show is and keep in mind we were very broke Bitcoin early on, and I am still conceptually pro crypto. I just don't think Bitcoin is gonna continue to work.
And sorry if, if you're like a Bitcoin person, you can watch our episode on why we think this where we go into it in a lot more detail. It has to do with the way the governance model makes it hard to update quantum resistance which a lot of people are unaware of. Like basically the core vote of the governance model goes to the miners, not the holders.
And because it goes to the miners and the minor equipment is super specialized for the type of algorithms that it is doing currently, you have no motivation. Even if quantum computing breaking Bitcoin is completely imminent to switch to a quantum safe model if it requires a different chip set. And the only way around this is develop a system, which they may do and some people point out where you can use the existing s**t.
Chip set to use quantum [00:45:00] safe stuff. But it's just hard, like, especially as quantum gets better. And I by the way, said this before all of the news came out that Quantum had undergone a lot more improvements than people realize. I don't know if you remember, but like two months after I did that episode, there was like this huge wave of FUD in relation to this.
Yeah. And the other big prediction we have is China that China is going to collapse as a world power within the next 20 years. And that is a very spicy prediction and that's our biggest argument was Elon. Because he really does not believe this. He's quite invested in China continuing to do well because he sells Tesla in China.
Did you do a Tesla doesn't even require a subsidiary in China. They just get to sell directly and almost nobody gets to do that.
Simone Collins: Wow. They're not even
Malcolm Collins: doing a JA jv. And I don't need to explain. That's
Simone Collins: impressive. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Elon's done well in buttering China. He is. Well then,
Simone Collins: even if he does believe China's boned and he probably does understanding, you know, given what he knows about No, he doesn't.
He doesn't Demographic shifts. He can't say. Anything?
Malcolm Collins: No he doesn't. So I'm sure he's argued this publicly somewhere before. [00:46:00] But he believes that if you look at things like the minerals that need to be mined, like, because of course he's focused on things like lithium for batteries and stuff like that, that there's just too much raw material well, along with the capacity to extract it competently in China for it to ever collapse in the way that I suspect it will collapse in terms of the types of raw materials that they're going to be an increasing demand for.
Whereas I think that their entire existing economy is something of a pyramid scheme, and for that reason, even if it does have a lot of wealth beneath the soil or something, it still could collapse. So it's, it's just a different, I I think that his opinion is colored by the fact that he is in the EV industry and it's where a lot of his money is.
And so he's very focused on the things that EVs need, where EVs are bought. And China has a great EV industry, by the way and, and, and where EVs are manufactured, which leads him to believe that China is more broadly competent than they actually are.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Perhaps,
Malcolm Collins: perhaps, but the, what I'm pointing out here is another problem with watching left-wing media for a lot of [00:47:00] people is they just get their predictions wrong.
And, and if you're watching the point of information that it helps you predict future states of the world, right? And if you are watching a show and it gives you an inaccurate prediction of future states, of the world then you are not getting meaningful information from that. And we've made some really big calls on our show that turned out to be right.
Most of my favorites are in the field of ai. I predicted early on when it was still considered crazy that it was going to turn out as we learned more about the internal architecture of ai, that ai had they sort of a convergent internal architecture to the human brain. Hmm. And everybody thought this was crazy to begin with.
And now like 16 to 20 studies in is just every week we're getting new evidence. Pretty consistent.
Speaker 5: Yeah. That
Malcolm Collins: crazy prediction turned out to be right. Another crazy prediction that turned out to be right was, that AI and, and keep in mind there was even a study done to find out how many people suspected this, that AI would become less competent, the less aligned you tried to force [00:48:00] it to be.
Mm-hmm. And nobody believes this and it turned out to be right. You can look at my utility convergence theory. This came out five years ago, which is different from instrumental convergence, which argues that AI eventually converges on a single or a, a few homeostatically stable architectures.
Instead of the risk of like random booming architectures, which means you need to take into account game theory when considering AI safety. And I was completely right about all of that. This all, like even Ellie Eiser has recently pulled back and been like, by the way, you guys in the natal list movement, you guys gotta get way more online because we are now beaten again by AI safety.
They had this big F of explosion in, in search trends. Well,
Simone Collins: it, it helps that. Kukowski and, and, and Nate Elliot is here, was in the New York Times
Malcolm Collins: recently. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Plan on on major news channels and stuff. They're on a full out book tour with the book. If anyone builds it, everyone dies, which is their attempt to take AI Doism [00:49:00] mainstream.
Yay.
Malcolm Collins: Yay. They, they, I've proven, gotten all my AI predictions right, and they've proven, gotten all their AI predictions wrong. So I'm
Simone Collins: listening to it now. Hopefully we, we can do a podcast on it.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, other unresolved prediction that I've made about ai is that AI will consolidate wealth not around the base models, which will become more like commodities, but around the wrapper apps.
People are
Simone Collins: already starting to talk about that. There've already been industry reports about the commodification of base models and that being a risk Oh, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I, I, I went out there with that when everyone thought that was crazy. I've talked about how the super advanced AI models that will mimic Communic intelligence will not necessarily do it through better base models, although intrinsically they're gonna have those.
But it will be through a network layer of base models at the token layer. Hmm. Which check out our Feba ai, we help you do that yourself. You can already experiment with a lot. So really excited about building that. And any, any other thoughts you have on this Simone? Like what was your I don't get how people can watch our show can be like, [00:50:00] this is a silencing of free speech.
I'm like, the left did this so much worse. It's a silencing of people who are lying. And I'm much,
Simone Collins: I care a lot more about regulation of free speech on platforms like YouTube X, Facebook, et cetera. Yeah, me too. Wherever people are, that is, that is the only thing I'm really concerned about. I don't really care what private companies do it, it doesn't matter that much.
'cause not that many people are watching it.
Malcolm Collins: Well, pri YouTube does do regulation as a private, and I would, I mean, but it's ideologically motivated and it's really bad. I think the government should trump, when he was elected in Plan 42 or whatever, he said he was gonna put out laws, the
Simone Collins: Trump 47 agenda that he was gonna put out laws that would stop any ideological based censor, no banning.
Malcolm Collins: And the companies would've to tell you why they banned you and they haven't gotten to this yet. We need to go to the White House and start banging on pans and be like, when are you gonna fill this promise? We need this problem. Yeah,
Simone Collins: yeah. We're, we're probably more concerned about [00:51:00] that than family policy because there still is censorship taking place on platforms.
Speaker 5: Hey,
Simone Collins: actually things that are truthful are being referred to as hate speech, et cetera. But I mean, I would just say though, like it's funny to me that Kimmel thinks he can get away with saying things like, Tyler, robs Robinson is maga when it's. N provably not true when Candace Owens is currently in a lawsuit for saying that Emmanuel Macron's wife is not a woman.
That, and I would point out no one on the right
Malcolm Collins: has come out and said, yeah, you, no one's like, how
Simone Collins: dare you suppress Candace Owens free speech. And then also keep in mind how, how common you hear the word allegedly on YouTube, and that is because YouTubers are aware of the fact that they can't say God, what is it?
Libelous or slanderous? Li libelous,
Malcolm Collins: Slanderous if it's verbal, libelous written. Okay.
Simone Collins: Yeah. So that they don't slander because they understand that we are legally aren't, [00:52:00] you know, we're liable if we say stuff that isn't true, even if there's evidence pointing to it. And that's the thing. So he felt because of Tyler Robinson's family being maga.
That he had evidence, but he still said something that was untrue, which is slanderous, right? I mean, people, I'm sure correct me in the comments about this, but I mean, Linda Owen, the shooter evidence to believe that Emmanuel mcc, it's not
Malcolm Collins: relevant because slander is usually sued by the person who you slandered and the shooter is not gonna slander him.
Sue him for calling him maga. Right? The, the, the bigger thing here is that if you are, you know, working for a private company and you're on the news, you have a responsibility to at least try to dig up the facts and make accurate predictions about the world. And
I think the core reason leftists are mad is they believe that what he was doing was right. The point of the news is to describe the world that you wish existed in their mind, , instead of the world that actually [00:53:00] is from their perspective, he was doing what's right. And I think Simone, lay this out pretty well here.
Just a second.
Malcolm Collins: I don't
Simone Collins: know, I mean, at this point also, truth is a team sport.
And that show was catering to an audience that doesn't wanna hear.
Malcolm Collins: Truth is not a team sport. I regularly say truth isn't a team sport, it has become a team. Well, but welcome to our reality.
Simone Collins: Okay? You have to face the, the fact. That truth is treated as a, as a team sport Functionally.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I think we, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I, on the right, like with Candace Owens saying what she said and she gets sued and everyone's like, whatever. Like you said, something that wasn't true, like obviously you deserve to be sued for this. But on the, the left I think they do believe truth at the team sport. And the reason why they are so freaked out by this happening is they're like, but he said it doesn't matter if what he said was factually true.
It's what everyone on Blue Sky is saying, and therefore he gets to report it because truth is whatever everyone on Blue Sky [00:54:00] says, if he's punished for this, then I could be punished for this sort of stuff.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I don't know. I, yeah,
Malcolm Collins: by the way, I, we got hit on Patreon for a video where we pointed out the ties between the trans community and the shooter. As like a, they're gonna take down our Patreon, and I'm telling Simone, I think we should just do a different payment.
Simone Collins: We, we already are on Substack, but the vast majority of our paid subscribers, and thank you to all of you on Substack and on Patreon, are on Patreon because it's a, I like the user interface more.
I get it. But again, this is why I'm, I'm much more concerned about free speech on these platforms. 'cause one, it's where the people are. Two, it's, it's where normal people speak not just privileged celebrities and writer teams. And, and that's, that's what what we're gonna see as being, it's already the primary source of news for I think the majority of, at least younger Americans.
So that's what matters to me. [00:55:00]
Malcolm Collins: Alright, love you every day.
Simone Collins: You too.
Malcolm Collins: What?
Simone Collins: I'm taking you for dinner anyway.
Malcolm Collins: What do we have to reheat that's not unfrozen? So I
Simone Collins: have I mean, I froze all the haw meatballs. However, what I have still in the fridge is the rest of your f broth. So I figured maybe toasting some of those up.
Well,
Malcolm Collins: okay. If it's not too hard to do, if we're doing something from frozen. Mm-hmm. I just love that Korean dish you make with cheese.
Simone Collins: Okay. And I, I should try to do it in that spread out pizza format you want. All right, I'll try that.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You not, you don't even need to spread out. Just pour it on a plate, then put the mozzarella on top of it so that you get mozzarella like throughout it, you know what I mean?
Not like just at the top of it. Yeah. But you
Simone Collins: want the mozzarella melted.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah. That means that I have to like, I need to put it in like a pie dish and spread it out finally, and then put cheese on it or [00:56:00] something because I have to broil it or bake it to get the cheese melted.
Malcolm Collins: I'm confused about the point that, okay, I have to put on new
Simone Collins: cheese, Malcolm,
Malcolm Collins: you hold on.
We're gonna go over this because clearly you're making this harder than it needs to be. You put it in the microwave
Simone Collins: and I thought, and then
Malcolm Collins: you put it in the air fryer. That's what you did last time, right?
Simone Collins: Yeah. But in the same ramekin and the ramekins that I have are very small. That means you're getting a very small surface of cheese, which is exactly what you asked me to not replicate, right?
Malcolm Collins: So I have to put
Simone Collins: it in a different container. I'm not, I can't put it in the air fryer as like, hold on,
Malcolm Collins: lemme help you with some shape rotating here. Okay? You put it in the ram, you take it in what? It's frozen in. Okay.
Simone Collins: It's frozen in a ramekin. I thaw it out and it goes out of the Raman.
Malcolm Collins: Please listen. You put that.
In the microwave without the cheese on top? Yes. Okay. You then take it out of the microwave and you pour it onto a plate. You then put the cheese on top and you put [00:57:00] that in the microwave again and in the air fryer.
Simone Collins: No, you, you can't put a normal plate in an air fryer. You have to put an oven safe pan or dish or plate in an air fryer or oven.
Okay. You cannot just take, you want me to take the f*****g metal plates that you eat off of? How's that gonna go for your fingers? Who's gonna go to urgent care next? You don't know. I mean, as much as, yes, I am a clutz with a knife sometimes, especially when pregnant, I can't do anything right now. You are wrong, and I understand what I need to do and I will do it.
But I will do that for your dinner tonight. And I love you very much.
Malcolm Collins: I love you too, Simone.
Simone Collins: Okay. I'm ending her. Oh,
Malcolm Collins: so weak news people. My wife chopped off a big chunk of her finger.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And what happened
Malcolm Collins: at the hospital? So you said they had to cauterize it without anesthetics?
Simone Collins: Yeah, I well, the first, I told the first urgent care clinic, so I [00:58:00] first went to the hospital and they were like, go to an urgent care clinic.
And then I went to one and I told them what had happened and they said they weren't gonna see me. They, they like, looked really scared and then they were like, no. And then I went to the second urgent care clinic and after a really long wait they, they saw me and they, I took my bandages off the nurse who was seeing me, who had brought out stuff to help clean the wound, it looked like she was gonna pass out.
And I was like, would you like me to clean it up? She's like, yeah, I'll, I'll be back. The doctor will see you soon. And so I just sat alone in the room trying to clean off the, the stress. Simon? No. But then, yeah, so everyone had told me to get, what was it? Zinc oxide to cauterize the wound. And I was like, oh, interesting.
So there's some kind of like, ointment that must seal off wounds. I thought it was like metaphorical cauterizing. Not like you [00:59:00] burn something to cauterize, but No, it's just a chemical burn. But it's not a chemical burn on your skin. It's a chemical burn. Oh God. Inside your open wound. Oh, she
Malcolm Collins: cut off part of her fingernail and every, it was horrible.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And IPSA to people, when your spouse tells you, you need to be more careful with something. Listen to them
Malcolm Collins: because Simone knows, like regularly, I would be like, no, you can't cut it. Like, like if I was in the room, you knew I always stopped you cutting things and was like, okay, you have to do it. And you would glare at me like I was the biggest bully in the world.
Simone Collins: If I, I mean, to be fair, if I cut the way that you cut, I would never prepare a meal in time. It would be like midnight when we ate dinner.
Malcolm Collins: Well then maybe we should find ways to use things like food processors more.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I, I, I think I just need to use tools or chain meal gloves going forward, especially when pregnant.
Malcolm also is always on me about tripping because I'm very clumsy and lo and [01:00:00] behold, what did I do Just two days earlier I tripped and got blood all over my clothing and have a huge bruise now and everything hurts. And like, and show
Malcolm Collins: people
Simone Collins: how pregnant you
Malcolm Collins: are, by the
Simone Collins: way. Oh,
Malcolm Collins: I don't know. I'm I,
Simone Collins: I'm very pregnant.
You, you can't always very
Malcolm Collins: pregnant. Yes. This is not good. I am trying to. So listen, listen to your spouses. We'll get, see our Halloween theming back here. Yeah, it's getting, okay. Question for you Simone. Yeah. Comments on the episode today? On the new theory that we have, the one
Simone Collins: area where people wanna push back, is that Okay?
Sure. Culture. Culture, et cetera. But genetics plays a role. A bunch of people were like, yeah, but why are there so many basketball players of a certain heritage and why? You know,
Malcolm Collins: I look, I'm saying, and I think you need to understand that this is the episode on, on, on cultural caring capacity. That there are some conversations that if you [01:01:00] have they're just not productive given the way society is structured right now.
Well, yeah. I mean, we
Simone Collins: don't have germline gene editing right now, so we can't be like. Well, then let's
Malcolm Collins: not just that, it's, it's, you have these conversations and then that conversation is the only thing people remember you bought, right? Mm-hmm. Like that becomes your soundbite or something like that. And it's just not worth engaging with those ideas when there's so many other spicy ideas you could, and those ideas aren't even spicy anymore.
They're like the, the pumpkin latte or whatever pumpkin spice latte of spicy ideas. It's like everybody effing, like, is aware of the arguments on both sides. If you are into spicy ideas, like, why do you need us to burn our careers, like going over them for you. I just, it, it feels so indulgent to me.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean it, yeah. And also like if you can't really do much about it. Why is it interesting? We, we, we are a podcast of [01:02:00] action. We believe in actionable ideas. Yeah. I
Malcolm Collins: don't really think it's worth, I agree with you, it's not really worth having conversations about things that aren't actionable.
Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Or to talk about an idea that is not, you know, going to lead to any, any sort of possible actionable change in society.
Speaker 4: Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: yeah, exactly. And one that all of our listeners know about anyway, like what's the, you know, whatever. I think they just wanna indulge
Simone Collins: in, like thinking her, her.
Malcolm Collins: I'm for her. They said the naughty thing. Yeah, that or
Speaker 5: like, Hmm. So you've seen my group is better, or like, oh, you see, this is why I can't achieve anything.
Malcolm Collins: This actually goes with something that we do with our episodes where with every episode I try to take a position on something that's different from the position that everyone else is taking.
Simone Collins: Mm.
Malcolm Collins: And I try not to, well, not
Simone Collins: arbitrarily, but you, you are interested in sharing opinions when that's the case, because then you have something to contribute.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. There's, you know, other channels you can go to if that's what you want. [01:03:00] Final question, Simone. I was gonna ask you. I the burning
Simone Collins: sensation doesn't go away. If you were wondering, it just stays.
Malcolm Collins: I'm so sorry, Simon.
Simone Collins: Okay. I'm not gonna bring it up anymore. It's just that I, it's not gonna exist as a topic.
What was your other question?
Malcolm Collins: I don't know. I don't want you to. I feel that way, but I'm really sorry.
Simone Collins: It was my fault for not listening to you. So again, PSA to people, you were making my dinner. Yeah. But it turned out good. So it was worth it.
Malcolm Collins: And I wasn't downstairs.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Well, so I feel I abandoned you while you were doing me a favor.
No. And you hurt yourself. And everybody knows you don't want your partner to hurt themselves. It makes you feel so bad. This is true. I'm so
Simone Collins: glad this happened to me and not you.
What was your final question? I'm sorry. Oh, I was
Malcolm Collins: gonna say, what I do love is in the romance mangas, I read one of the protagonist types that I like the most is the very like stole work warrior woman.
[01:04:00] And that is totally you. I, I want to be stalwart anyway.
Simone Collins: I may not be graceful, but I can be stalwart. I'm excited for this episode now. Let's do it.
Malcolm Collins: Right.
Speaker 10: You gonna have Playdoh? I need you to wait for a second. What are you doing? I with the Playdoh. Did you eat the Play-Doh? No. I guess made the Play-Doh. But you pretended like you were gonna eat it. Why'd you do that? I saidoh.

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