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Join us as we delve into the history and controversies of the Quiverfull movement, a conservative religious group known for promoting large families as a response to modern secular trends. We discuss its origins, major influences, and the peak of its visibility, particularly through media exposure like the Duggar family's reality show. We also explore the numerous scandals and controversies, including those involving abuse and patriarchal control, that have led to its decline in recent years. Finally, we reflect on lessons that contemporary Christian high-fertility movements can learn to avoid similar downfalls.
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be discussing the quiver full movement and what happened to them because I was noticing at the recent prenatal list convention, we had lots of conservative religious people come.
Yeah.
Yes, it was about two thirds of the people there. With, as I said it's about one third just Tech bros. One third just Religion Bros. One third Tech and Religion bros. Um mm-hmm. And so, what there wasn't a lot of was.
Evangelical. And especially what there noticeably wasn't a lot of was quiver full. And if you are unfamiliar with the quiverfull movement, I will give you a brief background. The movement primarily based in the United States with some spread in the uk, emerged in the late 20th century as a response to feminism and modern birth control.
It derives its name and philosophy from 1 27 3 through five, which compares children to arrows in the hand of a warrior symbolizing [00:01:00] divine blessings and strengths through procreation. And it also says the children of your youth implementing in that land that you should have kids while you're still young, which I,
Simone Collins: oh, which is one of the key things now is, is how do we get people in their twenties to start having kid again?
So you think, oh, this is so promising. This is perfect. Okay, great start.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Basically, it, it argues, and I actually find it to be a really important passage in the Bible. Mm-hmm. It says that, you know, the children you have in your youth are like the arrows in your quiver for your adulthood. Because what it's basically telling you is that while you're young, you should fill your era with quivers so that when you go to war. You have the boat, but, but it, it talks about having kids as a preparatory thing for a full life rather than the capstone of it.
Yes. Which is actually a really powerful way to see having children. Yes. Anyway. Adherence self-identify as quiver full or full quiver or qf. [00:02:00] Christians issue all forms of contraception, including natural family planning and sterilization. Viewing family sides is solely determined by God. This is the wheel people.
Ah,
Simone Collins: okay. First place. I'm seeing cracks here.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, note that this might be why they don't have many kids anymore because biological fertility has been falling and you really need to plan on kids. When Katherine Pock, she was on our show, she did college, she did a big thing where she interviewed 50 people who had over five kids.
Only one of them used this method. So it is very rare to use this among large families. Mm-hmm. This NAIC approach is part of a broader conservative Christian pushback against secular trends aiming for demographic growth. To influence culture and politics. Early influences include works like a full quiver, family planning and the Lordship of Christ by Rick and Jan Hess, which framed large families of a fulfillment of divine command.
The movement gained traction in the 1980s and nineties, aligning with other conservative ideologies like Christian patriarchy, which . Emphasized male headship and female [00:03:00] submission. No. Before we go further, was this, that's, that's basically the gist of what the movement was. It was the spooky prenatal list that I knew of growing up.
Like if somebody had said, what is a prenatal list? Movement, I would've said Quiverfull. And when I grew up in the nineties,
Simone Collins: 100%,
Malcolm Collins: but. They've basically gone extinct as we showed in a recent episode, TISM significantly outcompete queer full as something like a search term these days. And so the question is, what happened to them?
Why aren't they going to like natal list conferences? Why aren't they in talks with, you know, with all of the, the political talk about brutalism these days and JD vs in office, why isn't there some quiver full. You know, thinker or talker stepping up and catching news because there isn't. Mm-hmm.
And it's uniquely interesting because they were having lots of kids. And so this is important to us. You know, it shows that just having lots of kids isn't enough and can even lead to the extinction of your movement. And so this is something that we have to look [00:04:00] out for. I mean, we are a Christian high fertility movement, right?
Yeah. So, how do we pass that on intergenerationally? When they failed to do this.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: So let's explore the movement and let's explore how it fell apart and how we can avoid that. The movement reached peak visibility during the two thousands and 2000 tens, largely due to media exposure. Families like the Duggars featured on the reality show, 19 Kids and Counting became public faces that they did not explicitly identify as quiver Full.
Their lifestyle was 19. Children mirrored the movement's ideals, bringing it into mainstream awareness. At this time, estimates suggest that around 10,000 adherence was a focus on large families, often six to 12 children as a strategy for demographic shift in cultural influence. And no, here they were not that big.
10,000 movements at their peak. Right. And I think that that and the evangelicals more broadly sort of were overplayed by the media as a much larger movement than they ever really were. This period saw the movements [00:05:00] doctrines, such as rejecting birth control and emphasizing homeschooling
to maintain indoctrination became widely discussed. However, the movement faced significant controversies that likely contributed to decline in prominence. Reports of spiritual abuse, dehumanizing practices, and patriarchal control emerged with former members like Vicki Garrison, a turned activist highlighting the darker side.
The grudge article from 2023 noticed the movements association with Kissing Patriarchy were wives. Were expected to be subservient and fathers controlled all aspects of family life, making it harder for members to leave. Mm-hmm. Specific cases such as women continuing pregnancies against medical advice, nearly dying, underscored the physical and emotional toll as seen in examples like Gar Garrison's Seventh Child Critiques, also focused on sustainability with physical, emotional, and financial strains on families.
The movement's vision for large families was seen as impractical in modern context and political strategy. Aiming for [00:06:00] influence through demographic growth was questioned for limited electoral impact outside of conservative communities. Oh, these contries amplified by media and former members' testimonies likely eroded its broader appeal.
So what are your thoughts so far?
Simone Collins: Well, I think the really strong thing is this message of starting your twenties and kids are an asset. The Let Jesus take a wheel. No family planning, not even natural family planning approach is insane. And what really bothers me about the man has to be the leader approach is that only works when you have an exceptional man.
Agree. Like I'm super cool with 100% being subservient to you. You are the most exceptional man I've ever discovered in the entire history of humanity. Like Alexander the Great, no. Nope. Sorry, Napoleon. No, I don't think so. You, yeah, sure. Absolutely. 100%. So I, yeah, I just I, I, I, I mean, I have a similar opinion of myself, myself.
[00:07:00] I don't works. You have to have a Sword Shield relationship. You have to have a relationship in which people have domains of ownership in which both women and men are seen as bringing respect to the table. And I think we're a community. Maybe even externally has a little bit more of an ability to be like, you need to work on yourself.
We're, we're putting the other partner in charge right now because you're a hot mess. And, and that, I don't know. It just feels like there's too much room for things to go out of control and for abusive dynamics to form.
Malcolm Collins: What are your thoughts? Well, I I, I mean, I even wiz everything that you think of me and even wiz you saying, you know, you have the final shot on everything.
I don't. Treat that in the way, like a dugard would treat that, right? Like we still live in a way that most people would see as highly gender egalitarian. And I think this is part of the problem that people relate to this is that yes, women on average want to be the submissive partner in a relationship, and often relationships work better when a male takes the lead or dominant role.
Mm-hmm. But part [00:08:00] of that dominant role is not. Pushing the other person around, forcing them to do things they don't want to do. Yeah. How did one of our,
Simone Collins: one of our listeners put it really well? Or it's that mother of someone who I respect so much, you know, who you are mentioned that dominance, real dominance, especially like in these, in these relationships, never shows up as a man.
Putting a woman down or pulling rank, it is just natural dominance. It's natural leadership. If you have to put a woman down or tell her to do something or order her around or act dominant like performatively, you have already lost. You are showing that you do not have dominance. I. And, and I think yes, to
Malcolm Collins: force someone to do something like that, you're, you're absolutely right.
That's a sign that they don't wanna follow what you have to say. Yeah. Just based on what you have to say.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I think real dominance manifests real husband dominance manifests in a wife going out of her way to try to anticipate his needs and the needs of the family without ever being asked because she [00:09:00] understands her role.
He, she understands what he brings to the table, she understands his vision. And if a man doesn't communicate his vision, if he does do these things, she will not anticipate needs his needs. She will not have the drive to, to act on them, or she won't think that they're, that his, his vision is legitimate and she won't act on it because there's very little motivation when you feel a lot of cognitive dissonance.
So I think that that's, that's a big problem. 'cause I, I feel like that's not. In, in ideal quiver, whole relationships, that probably happens, but I just don't, you know, like, welcome to the world. No relationship except for ours is, if you ask me, is ideal.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and I think it, it is, it's like our daughters growing up.
They're not gonna feel like they're in a household where a man has all the power and a woman can't. Like,
Simone Collins: yeah,
Malcolm Collins: you, you
Simone Collins: often, but I think also in, in very extreme power dynamic or relationships or at least like, you know, when, when a man really leads some things, like part of what leadership means is delegating [00:10:00] a huge swaths of influence to other people.
Yeah. And I think in, in many households where you see divisions of labor, you will see. Like, whoa. Like she, I mean, I control all the finances. I control all, like a lot of things and you control a lot of things and they'll see that there's, there's control on, on both ends. And if someone's micromanaging, they're not actually being a good leader.
And I think that's also where you see the ordering around and this perception of dominance that is. Performative and not real.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I I it's almost like they're LARPing being a man. Yeah. They, they heard this concept of being a man and they like I understand that all of the power that I have over you is a gift from you to me, and one that can be revoked.
It is power. I have not due to some divine right, but due to the fact that you trust me enough, you know, and. If you stop trusting my decision making, I'm not gonna have that power anymore. And that's the way I relate to it.
Simone Collins: And well, that's how it's been for every natural leader throughout history.
Every [00:11:00] king, every general understands that if he doesn't in any single moment, manage to be naturally dominant. His people will not follow. There will be a rebellion, there will be mutiny, there will be whatever, right? Like captains on ships don't stay captains 'cause their title is Captain Captains on ships stay captain because they are the best leader for the ship.
Like that changes. And this is why you have desertions. This is why you have mutans. This is why you have revolutions.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, I, I agree a hundred percent. And I, you know, I think. Yeah, I just agree. And I think that that's gonna keep a lot more people in our cultural tradition than would stay in their tradition.
If you have a cultural tradition where you would just strictly be better off, like if I'm born a woman leaving, of course you're going to bleed women and then you're gonna bleed men who think that the tradition's unfair. Yeah. And we've been seeing this more recently. It used to be [00:12:00] that women stayed with conservative traditions at a higher rate than men.
But recently the trend has reversed and women have started leaving at a higher rate. So, for example, now Mormonism is a majority male religion, which never used to be the case.
Simone Collins: Crazy. Yeah. All the friends that we knew who even converted in were women 'cause they really bought the wholesome family lifestyle thing.
Malcolm Collins: We know a lot of women who've converted out too.
Simone Collins: That's true. That's true. Yeah. Because of the feminist issues. Yeah. And they're like, wait a second, this is super not okay with me.
Malcolm Collins: This is deeply unfair. Like Yeah. From their perspective. Anyway I'll keep going here. The decline seems driven by multiple factors, the backlash from abuse scandals such as those within the Duggar family, which received more attention post 2015, the unsustainable demands on adherence highlighting, but highlighted by critiques of health and autonomy and a cultural shift away from such extreme nativism in broader society.
Well, there I don't. I don't know. I maybe, I guess, yeah, birth rates have fallen. It's become less cool [00:13:00] while not extinct. Its influence is likely reduced with a smaller, more insular community compared to its earlier ambitions of demographic and cultural dominance while specific. 2025 deconversion rates for quiver full children are not available.
Anecdotal evidence suggests, for example, what it was like to grow up in quiver. Cosmopolitan features Hannah Edgar raised in the movement, who's now completely in a new life. Implying Deconversion, a Reddit post in our deconstruction are deconstruction of large Cville families. And I read a lot about on, on this thread discusses large families and deconversion, though it's anecdotal, the lack of numerical data is a gap, but a pattern exists, especially given controversies like abuse within the Duggar family.
As mentioned in the untold truth of Berfield Christianity, grunge supports the idea of higher deconversion. So I was like, okay, let's go to that. Family that had 19, the Duggars. Mm-hmm. How many of their kids stayed in both the religion and its high fertility [00:14:00] goal? 11% of their children did.
Simone Collins: Oh. Like
Malcolm Collins: what's the two of the 19?
Yeah. That's bad. But it's not as bad as you think. Because, what we actually find is if you then say, okay let's just look at the older ones. 'cause some are like 16, 16, 18, 19. That don't count, right? Yeah. So let's only look at the 12 who are over 25 right now. Only two of those 12 don't have children.
And of the other 10, all of them have over two children. But what. There, there are a few that are pregnant with their third, but yeah, so they are dramatically higher fertility than normal.
Simone Collins: Interesting, huh. Just anecdotally, every time I hear some interview with someone who deconverted and, and had a really large religious family, it was a cover full family.
Not, not Mormon, not, oh, I guess there's eight passengers. So I There's that one.
Malcolm Collins: Well, eight passengers with another really large [00:15:00] Christian family that got famous and her kids are Yeah. But they were Mormons. Systematically. Deconvert.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I guess can are, are some Mormons Quivers. I, I guess you should ask like how religiously siloed is this concept of, 'cause it's a biblical line.
You don't have to be like a whatever to be, I imagine
Malcolm Collins: you can, you can be any movement. Yeah. It's like whatever. But I, I would count, count her as part of that larger movement, you know, very strict parenting, very very different parenting style than our parenting as well. Like we are known as being strict because we use like light corporal disciplines with our kids, which is super taboo these days.
But this is not like what quiver full families do where they do like very serious spankings and stuff like that.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Or like, I, I think it overlaps with that book that guides mothers to. Like, teach their baby to stay on a small blanket and like hurt them a little. Yes. Actually, that was one of
Malcolm Collins: the, the controversies we're gonna be talking about.
Okay. Yeah. So there's also just this like explaining what works.
Simone Collins: Well, they're just trying to use condition like basic. [00:16:00] Conditioning to stop a baby. How baby training
Malcolm Collins: works,
Simone Collins: right? So you, you, you put your infant on a like square blanket on the ground and it doesn't have any fencer walls or anything.
And then every time they go towards the edge of it, you like flick their wrist or do something that hurts 'em a little bit. So they associate going off the blanket. With pain and eventually they will just stay on the blanket and not go off of it. And that is convenient, especially from others of larger families because they can just put the blanket down anywhere and expect that their kid is going to stay on it.
And I. That's, did it? I don't know. There's just something like deeply dystopian and really sad about that to me. Like you're just like a broken,
Malcolm Collins: I don't know. Our kids lack that for going off beds.
Simone Collins: Yeah. No, our kids. Our kids, yeah. Like that. Even when like they, they have a real scare. And like wanna, like, they just, they just desperately want to fall off surfaces and we are constantly being like, this is a cliff.
Do not, i, I understand your point here, [00:17:00] but I just, I, I, our, our corporal punishment is more like you are about to severely hurt yourself or put yourself in danger, or one of your siblings in danger. You gotta knock this off, like, let's, you're not listening to my words. This is different. It is. I'm going to break your will.
I'm going to make you a compliant. Mm. Domesticated human
Malcolm Collins: and yes, this is, you're right. The, the difference is that they are trying to domesticate their children, and we are trying to make our children maximally fierce. Yeah, it's a completely different way of relating to them. Well, it's very backward
Simone Collins: versus.
Puritan, honestly, the, the puritan, yeah. Way of raising kids. We like some things about it, like this idea of having kids like confront the, their mortality and all that. Like some, some harsh elements of Puritan upbringing. Hi. Historically,
Malcolm Collins: they had them look at corpses and stuff and be like, yeah, like sta into
Simone Collins: graves until like cry.
Like I, I get that like, except that when we do that with our children, they just don't get it. You know? Or they do, but they don't care, [00:18:00] I guess.
Malcolm Collins: I, I think you're, you're absolutely right where it is moving away from strictness, for the sake of strictness, I'd almost say like, it's like two dogs, like one dog you're trying to force to follow every order that's ever given to it.
Right. And the other dog you're training to fight other dogs. Like, okay, we're training our dad. The way you would train a pit bull. You know, you wanna wonderful to just be absolutely unhinged and, and, and, and go well, you know, to a pit bull, every toddler and a small dog is just another snack. That's, that is how pit bulls see the world.
You gotta see our video on the one ethical genocide. I do think we should get rid of pit bulls. Yeah,
Simone Collins: I agree with you.
Malcolm Collins: But it's just like a different way of relating to raising a thing. Like is the boundaries that you are placing on them to make them stronger? Is it to get them to be tougher or is it because you're trying to get them to follow a very constrained trajectory?
And [00:19:00] with us now does this mean that they have a higher chance of leaving the family? Yes. Because you're, you're trying to make them like have will and want to leave the family, but in a way because of that, it also. Brings them back to the family. Not through like punishment or fear or whatever but through pride and that I a Collins, and this is what I was always taught growing up, you are a Collins and Collins, they're better than other people.
Hmm. It's just very clear. It's like this is what's expected of you 'cause you're Collins. And I was like, well, other people don't do that. And they go, well, other people aren't Collins. And I remember being like, oh yeah, like I have more rules of, of this type, this, like expected of my personal behavior because I'm better than other people.
And I think that that what
I, I don't know if my opinion of myself has changed much this time has gone on it, but I think that confirmed that kids would relate the same way, is that if you, if you do this right, they're gonna be like. Yeah. [00:20:00] But I'm the best. Right? Why would I leave a family when the family is super awesome and especially if I like my siblings?
And that was something that was noted in the thread over and over again when people were complaining about their large families. They would complain about stuff where like, obviously some therapist or urban monoculture person had gotten their hooks in them. Mm-hmm. And. That's weird. But they always said that they really appreciate all their siblings and they wouldn't want any of them not to exist.
And that that's the thing that was the most important to them and exciting about growing up that way. Mm-hmm. And so you really don't get this, and I, I'd say this is true of the large families I know. I do not see this pushback of like, oh, I wish my siblings didn't exist. It's just the totalitarian way that the religion was communicated to them is what causes them to, to split off.
Mm-hmm. And I think within religions that have lower deconversion rates like Judaism like Orthodox Judaism mm-hmm. It is the factions that are either isolated for the rest of the world. Those have very low deconversion rates. Like they isolate them educationally and everything like that. Yeah.
So they [00:21:00] can't basically get a job in the outside world, which is. Not great. I wouldn't do that. Yeah. Or the ones that are just like strict in their belief system, but not in like authoritarian pushing it on children through things like punishment. But let's get into some of the any thoughts before I go further?
Simone Collins: No, no. Go further.
Malcolm Collins: All right, let's get into some of the controversies. So I'm gonna start with all the controversies that don't involve Josh, 'cause that's a whole different scenario. So, this was a controversy brought up in the docuseries, shiny happy people. I. Where one daughter who also wrote a book about this and complained a lot she, she's like, Jill, unpaid 7.5 years of labor.
This isn't helping with raising the other kids. This is in being on air. But she mostly just complained about being on TV a lot and, and not liking TV at her wedding and at other pertinent events. And I'm like, fine. But it doesn't really have anything to do with you being in a large family. Yeah, it has
Simone Collins: to do with their.
Father exploiting them, [00:22:00] which that's pretty clear from all the stuff that happened.
Malcolm Collins: And then another big backlash and this caused TLC's removal of the show apparently, or was part of it, was Derek Dillard's quote unquote homophobic tweets in 2017. Oh, where he, where, what did he say? He called transgenderism a myth.
Simone Collins: Okay. It's so stupid.
Malcolm Collins: Like if you're gonna have like a transphobic
Simone Collins: tweet, that's, that's a pretty stupid transphobic tweet.
Malcolm Collins: It calls him to be removed from counting on family tissue. Yeah. I, I, I don't, I. That's not a, like, that's a main gone these days. Yeah. He, he, he came too early. Right. You know, now, now we've got the embarrassing the TRA stock report.
Now we've got, you know, everything that's going on since the post-election vibe shift where everyone's like, okay, yeah, it's probably a culture bound illness and, and. Leads to a lot of unloving attempts that don't exist in any other culture on earth, no other culture on earth. I mentioned this before.
I'll mention it every chance I [00:23:00] get. No other culture on earth and no other time period on earth. While you see gay people everywhere throughout history and cultures, trans people. Are completely absent except for modern context. And note here, I'm not talking about gender fluidity. Gender fluidity exists all over history.
But being obsessed with the gender that other people see you as to the point where you would want to kill yourself because they don't see you as a gender, you see yourself. This is not a phenomenon anywhere else in human history and, and obviously it's a very mentally taxing phenomenon that we would prefer didn't exist and proliferate.
So he's completely right about this. Next year you have tutors, marriage to sex offender. This is tab page. So, Tudor married, convicted sexual assault offender, duggars through a engagement party, significant backlash, question, family values whatever. The, Josh is the big one, and it's the one that I'm more worried about and wanna learn from the most prominent scandals on.
Josh Duggar, the eldest child in Touch. Weekly published a 2006 police report [00:24:00] revealing Josh as a teenager, molested five underage girls, including four sisters, Jill Jessa, Jenga, and Jana. Well, they really like those JS with offenses occurring between 2002 and 2003 when he was 14 to 15.
The report later confirmed by people detailed groping while victims slept, confessed to parents and received counseling. But the revelation led to TLC or at least. Was part of it canceling 19 kids and counting on June 16th, 2015, as noted in Josh Duggar's Wikipedia. This fallout was named one of the 10 big scandals of 2015 by USA today, and the Washington Post listed Josh as one of the most hated people online that year.
The same year on August 19th, 2015, Gawker reported Josh had active accounts on Ashley Madison. This is when the, the leak happened, I guess. A website for extramarital affairs confirmed by people leading to his public apology on the family website admitting. A pornography addiction and cheating on his [00:25:00] wife Anna.
He checked into a face based rehab program centered in Rockford, Illinois on August, 2000 15th, as per people, victims, Jill and Janet came forward in 2015, interviewed on Kelly file with Megan Kelly
Simone Collins: while he creepily watched behind the camera. By the way, he what? He was there on set. Like they were coerced into doing matter.
Weird. Just, just horrible. The whole thing was horrible. And this is, I mean, it's, I don't care what your arousal problems might be or like what, what inconvenient things turn you on your garbage person if you do these things. Like he well, and I think just over and over again chose to hurt people and do things to people without their consent.
It's. He's just a garbage person and the fact that he, he, hold on. We'll,
Malcolm Collins: we'll see more about this,
Simone Collins: but continue the fact that are you gonna do more? Well, you a quiver full family that raises someone like that is not clearly, [00:26:00] is, is, is not creating a culture that is good. It is not imparting fitness at all.
Failure, drop it. They
Malcolm Collins: lost. I disagree. I'm gonna push back a little here. They had 19 kids, okay? Mm-hmm. And he was there first. True. Yeah. You get bad apples with I, I'm just like, I, I look at this and I think that you and this perception you have that if we raise our kids right, they won't do this is inaccurate.
I think that we have to be constantly vigilant, even if we're good parents. 100% in terms of. How we train them, how we train them to report and talk to us about things Uhhuh which apparently wasn't happening effectively in this case.
Simone Collins: Well, but also what, what you do when problems are reported because this was reported multiple times.
Malcolm Collins: Well, and he went to counseling after it was reported, but I think that it was reported by him and not by things like his sisters and stuff like this. And I think you need a [00:27:00] system where the entire family is like on watch or ance. I think this is
Simone Collins: also reported by girls from other people's families. It wasn't just him coming forward.
I, I don't think this was him coming
Malcolm Collins: forward. Well, I mean, I look at things he is doing when he is 14 and 15. And this requires, I mean, I actually think that this is why it's good to have all the kids sleep in the same room or the same room by gender at least. Because it's much easier to
Simone Collins: what safety in numbers.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, safety in numbers. One of the other kids can report on the kid who's doing the wrong thing and every kid knows that every other kid is watching. I.
Simone Collins: Yeah, they snitch on each other.
Malcolm Collins: They would absolutely snitch on each other. And I think that that's a powerful way you can prevent creepy kids from being creepy to other kids.
Right. Sure. And yeah, I, I, I, I see how something like this could happen if, like the oldest kid is the problem as well, because then you have to worry about reprisals and stuff like that. Which is why maybe it, it matters that you focus on the oldest kid being more moral or [00:28:00] focused a lot on moral teachings.
'cause the older kid we're fortunate in that our oldest kid is very obsessed with rules. No, he won't let us continue. Like, I'm driving and a naughty word is said on a show that I'm watching or on a song. He goes, that's a bad show. You gotta turn it off. You gotta, you gotta play something else. He won't, he will not let me watch things that have curse words in them, which he won't have it.
I absolutely love. He won't. Yeah, he won't have it.
Simone Collins: I love it. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Which is why one of the reasons we're trying to remove curse words from the show, which I'm doing more of, you know? Yes. Even believing them out when they're in the little clips. So I don't, but you know, we don't know what he's gonna be like when he goes through puberty, you know?
It's, it's, it's worth really working. I. On that was the oldest kids to ensure that we set a good sort of direction.
Simone Collins: Oh, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And what we've seen with other kids is if you look at like the, the eight passengers situation, the older kids are the ones who basically set up a deacon conversion pipeline for the younger kids.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And so, yeah. But we'll get into more of this. So in [00:29:00] April, 2021, you might not know about this. Josh faced another scandal when he was arrested on April 29th for receiving and possessing child pornography. Oh yeah.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Was material from May, 2019 depicting abuse of children under 12. As detailed by people he pleaded guilty, facing up to 20 years and a quarter million dollar in fines.
Found guilty in 2021, blah, blah, blah, to 12 years in prison. Was 20 years under supervision prohibited from unsupervised contact with minors in fines of $50,100 per people. Family reactions varied. Was Michelle and Anna supporting him while his cousin Amy Duggar King opposed? Calling the family delusional in an ex post urging Anna to divorce as noted in people.
Now. So I asked how did they teach sex ed to their children? Because I was like, what could have led to this behavior? Right? And I actually think a lot of the behavior is downstream of this. The Duggar family, well known for their conservative Christian beliefs and featured on reality TV show provided limited sex education, primarily emphasizing [00:30:00] abstinence until marriage.
It seems likely that men received a brief talk. And a Christian themed book before marriage, while women were given little to no formal education, accepting guidance from their husbands, their homeschooling curriculum. Based on the Advanced Training Institute, a TI program avoided discussion of sex, creating a taboo and spreading this information with strict mony rules and limited physical contact before marriage.
That's what I think a lot of this comes down from. And I think a lot of the deconversions come down from this. If you teach somebody, as I've always said like. Engaging with pornography makes you a bad person, and they're a young man. As we know basically all young men except those in the most extreme religious conditions.
Like there's a famous case where they tried to do a study and they wanted to find men who had never see u used porn before as, as like a control in the study, and they had to abandon it because they couldn't find enough men in that category. And I think a man has to be pretty sexually atypical to fall into that category.
And that being the case, you [00:31:00] know, it means that if you teach them well, you're sinful. And this is really horrible if you're engaging in this stuff. Especially with the internet as it is these days, then you just have all of them thinking that about themselves. Mm-hmm. Which may makes them think, well then why not just leave?
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Well, if Yeah. Either you stay and you're secretly a monster or you leave.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then it's like, well then what's the additional bad to molestation?
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yikes. Not good. When you tell someone that they're a monster for doing this is, this is also why we push back against things like Louise Perry's.
Well, we like her as a, as a person and as an influencer. Her idea that women are only into choking because men have like diluted them. And women are only into like, being put in positions of, well, let's put masochistic submission because of men liking this stuff that's not, the data doesn't support it.
That's absolutely untrue. Yeah. Yeah. This is driven by women. Women prefer this more than men prefer doing it. Men did not make 50 shades of [00:32:00] grand bestseller. Mm-hmm. And women were not buying it to show off to men. Yeah. What, what what we see is, is if you are honest about this stuff and you tell your daughters, Hey.
It's normal to be into this stuff. It's normal to be into what? What was the whole vampire phenomenon? It was about having guys. Come on. It is normal, normal, normal to be into this as a woman. Don't think that you're sinful. Don't think that you're a deviant. Just don't, well, don't think that just because it turns
Simone Collins: you on, you want it either like, yeah, that's another really important point here.
Just because something turns you on doesn't mean you morally condone it or that you want it to happen or that it would be good if it happened. So that's also, yeah, and I think
Malcolm Collins: that that, that when we, when we break away from this duggar mindset around something like pornography or the Louis Perry mindset you don't have kids feel ashamed about things that are totally normal.
And through that there's less of a, an idea of like, oh, I don't like being in this [00:33:00] family, or, oh, I'm, I'm, I'm sort of scared to be in this environment or this household. Because I know that I'm not living up to the standards that I assume everyone else is living up to.
Simone Collins: Right.
Malcolm Collins: When in reality, very few people actually live up to these standards.
Mm-hmm. And and then you, because you're already breaking one moral norm. It's like, well, I'm already a horrible person. And then you begin to contextualize this into your identity. Yeah. And I think that, that, that what people need to realize, one of the things is we always point out and we have, you can look at our, our Catholic's about to go extinct episode.
I talk about low fertility rates and high deconversion rates. Among some other Christian movements and I think was in these movements, there's this perception that, well, how quickly could you really disappear as a movement that at least attempts to be high fertility and attempts to espouse high fertility values?
And I think the Duggar show you how quickly fast the quiverfull movement shows you, how quickly fast a generation.
Simone Collins: Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: that's how fast. Definitely like two generations.
Simone Collins: Yeah. [00:34:00] I'm also looking at Google Trends. Interest over time for Quiver, quiver full, not as a search term, but as like the broader religious concept.
Mm-hmm. Sharing this with you just so you have it, it, it had spikes every now and then. It probably mostly due to media stuff. And the most recent spike was in 2022, may, and it was one of the smaller spikes that has ever taken place. So it is, it is clearly on the, on the downfall. It, it appears to be in its death throes.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I and I, and this is why I think like authoritarian religious structures are just very bad at working in a modern context.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And
Malcolm Collins: if that's the way you're relating your religion to kids, they will leave it and they will help your other kids leave it.
Simone Collins: Interestingly, when you compare quiver full to natal quiver, full religious concept, natal belief.
The 2004 to present total search volume for Grover Full is much larger. Like it [00:35:00] definitely was a way bigger concept than Tism in the past. Mm-hmm. But basically, ever since only 2023 when you and I started really pushing for it fatalism has clearly started to take over. Yeah. Very interesting. Whereas Quiver has kind of died out.
Quiverfull had much bigger spikes. I think that's probably mostly because of the duggars though. If you're
Malcolm Collins: well and and media and you know, I haven't molested a kid, so
Simone Collins: yeah, let's keep it that way. You slapped kids though, and I'm sure that helped with overall awareness, so there we go. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: right.
Simone Collins: Whatever it takes.
Bob Gate was a, was a boom Bob Gate.
Malcolm Collins: I just, I just gotta get a, a slapping machine. We'll get that with the documentary when it comes out. Slapping machine.
Simone Collins: We can have slap competitions now that I know. It's a, it's a sport. The kids kind of, I love you. Practice on each other. [00:36:00]
Malcolm Collins: All right, have a great day, Simone.
We'll go to the next episode.
Simone Collins: I love you. You have the grasp by the way.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, oh,
Simone Collins: okay. I just learned about an entirely new sport that there, there are professional, large stadiums filled with viewing this sport.
Malcolm Collins: Okay.
Simone Collins: I didn't know it existed, and I would watch this maybe. I'm actually tempted to go watch the recorded versions of this. Can you guess what it is? Do you need a hint
Malcolm Collins: that you would watch it?
Okay. What would you watch? Yeah, I need a hint. I have nothing other than that. It's a sport you didn't know about. It's on that sport. Oh the, the Medieval knights one? No. Oh, well the Medieval Knights one looks pretty cool.
Simone Collins: I've not heard of that. So that's like actual jousting
Malcolm Collins: or No, like they dress up as knights and do like sword combat.
It looks pretty brutal. Okay. So
Simone Collins: like in the Knights Tale, when they did the in the ring and they were doing sword combat? Yeah. [00:37:00] That kind of, okay. Nope, that's not it. But I didn't know that was a thing, so that's awesome. Thank you for giving me one.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, well, I don't know. Go on.
Simone Collins: Okay. Think of a game show where a man was.
An an Indian man was quite. D disturbed by women's action. It was a slapping game. Yes. Slapping competitions, slapping competition. They feel like slow cams and you get points taken off if you flinch. And it's both men and women. They have, you know, heavyweight lightweight categories, et cetera.
They're, they're medical professionals on staff. There's, there's knockouts. People break their wrists, people break their noses, and they have, you can see like this slow-mo of the slat. Hitting them and like the hand, like reverberates as though it is rubber, the face of course ripples it. And interestingly, the, the person I was watching comment on it for a little bit, who taught me about this.
Notice that women could take the slabs better than men. Women seem to [00:38:00] flinch a lot less and, and looking at her footage, it was really impressive. The men were flinching and I'm obviously the men are a lot stronger, so I did it. But Simone, this is
Malcolm Collins: why these women have a lot more training than the men. I mean, shut up.
I hate you. You terrible person. You could just go up there. You have no problem at all. You are a professional at getting slapped. Just so people know I don't slap my wire.
Simone Collins: Actually our kids would be amazing at it. 'cause remember in front of that journalist, we, we did like, we had like, and they didn't flinch at all.
They would've gotten points in a slap competition for their utter lack of flinching.
Malcolm Collins: Which
Simone Collins: is
Malcolm Collins: point. Okay. Also, Simone, I have to convince you Iion Labs is actually the perfect name for the studio. Remind me who the IXs are in Dune. So the IXs are known for, so there's two factions that produce a lot of technology in Dune Uhhuh.
There's
Simone Collins: the TLAC suit. One is the
Malcolm Collins: tlac suit that you don't really like. So they do the [00:39:00] biological engineering technology. Yeah. The IXs are known for technology that skirts the Butler and Jihad rules. So they're the ones that are,
Simone Collins: are they the ones that are the personal computers of the wealthy people?
Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. Those are, what are they called? Its makes real computers. Oh, okay. Like, like, they're, they're very, if the Ty Laos thing is sort of like being weird and creepy, whatever, like mm-hmm. The, its. Are known as being like overly clean, like everything in their civilization looks like an Apple store.
Oh. They have a republic, unlike the other governments in the empire, which are all like a, like imperial or whatever. Yeah. And they create AI technology that is like clearly illegal. So like if you have on like a head. Set that like scans the environment and is like picking out they, one of those mean by the X.
So they do technology like that. Super advanced, super clean techno hologram projectors, stuff like that.
Simone Collins: Okay.
So I like it except for the fact that when pronounced out loud, [00:40:00] it sounds like IC and IC is even come back. Like there's the new. Parlance of giving me the ick, and it is not, I think something we would want as a brand name.
Malcolm Collins: I don't, it was not, you didn't like Mdo a, eh, Mundo used with other things because you saw it as, as negative. But when I hear MI think like Necro Mundo or whatever, you know, I
Simone Collins: think tele, novellas and Spanish tv, so no.
Malcolm Collins: No, I'm, I am. I, if, if Bruno, not that I have
Simone Collins: anything against Spanish as a language, I just like, I, I don't think that's useful.
Malcolm Collins: If, if bru, we'll keep playing with
Simone Collins: it.
Malcolm Collins: If, if Bruno likes X I'm gonna go with it. 'cause I like it so much.
Simone Collins: Well, I respect Bruno, so I will defer to him. But the other one we have
Malcolm Collins: is, is, is what is it, sentient? Sentient systems. Yeah, sentient systems, reason systems is good. The reason [00:41:00] I don't like sentient systems that much.
I was thinking about like me at the third party developing on a platform that was made by sentient systems. Mm-hmm. And I'm like, what? I want to tell people that I like That sounds a little like lame. I don't know. Like more than iion. Ian is cool. Stint system sounds a little lame. And then if you shorten it, it becomes Ss oh, which was side scrollers problems.
Simone Collins: I grew up with the initials ss. Didn't realize that that, that it was problematic until it was a little late. Speaking of names, maybe our audience can settle a score, although I've basically already overridden it 'cause I've just declared bankruptcy on having. A dune related middle name for our next son.
So
Malcolm Collins: our next kid is, is the first name? Okay. No you don't. No, no.
Simone Collins: Take out the part where we give his first name because I need to set up all his like domains and stuff and I don't want. People camping on things. Okay,
Malcolm Collins: we'll take out, but, but then it doesn't mean anything if you just have the second name, but whatever.
Okay. You just want the second name?
Simone Collins: So our Yes, we, we are choosing [00:42:00] a middle name for our fifth son, who also we joke is the AK because he's got a really great. Potential IQ based on his polygenic scores. It puts him in like the 98th to 98th, sorry, 99th percentile. So that's like, wow. He's, he's amazing. And so I was joking, we should give him the middle name of a tradies, but then Malcolm said, no, we should give him the middle name of Tai Lasu.
And I think at treaties it's honorable, it's stately, it's outside the normal moral constraint because it's, it's not this though, Paul. Is a goodie all the time. He understands, no, hold
Malcolm Collins: on. But tyla a tradies is so basic. Axio, if you, if you're going for nom determinism and all of our kids have gone, no deterministic so far.
Yeah. You know, Axio is exactly the path we'd want them to go down.
Simone Collins: Humanitarian crises using people's bodies against their will. No. No, they don't even have a will anymore. [00:43:00] They remove
Malcolm Collins: their brains there. There are
Simone Collins: alleged characters who say that they were used for this purpose, meaning that they do have a brain.
No, that was the, there is sentient course
Malcolm Collins: that the son did where he went crazy and then he had them free all the time. Isn't that still Canon? Not in a meaningful, not to any real fan, Simone. It is. It is the bio crafter species. That's what we want.
Simone Collins: I do, I do really want bioengineering to be a family thing, but I don't.
I just, the humanitarian crisis angle's just not,
Malcolm Collins: there's no humanitarian crisis. It's a whiners. It's Elisa Simpson who calls this a humanitarian. Oh, so a trade just
Simone Collins: sounds like a great name and you'll, you won't let me name any of our kids are tennis, so I need something that's like a cool three syllable kind of sci-fi, a starting name.
Give me something here. Alright. The audience can weigh in a tradies or [00:44:00] axo as a middle name All.
Subscribers says, scratch to our channel. You. This is Fancy. Hula. Hula. Is there anything else you wanna say? Subscribers, why? I wanna standing up and now this, this is very fancy. What does graph to the channel, if that is really fancy? If you don't like us, s scratch the channel. Well, you can still, I'm gonna comment way down below.
Tell us what you think about this and the comment below in our bedroom. Bye.
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Join us as we delve into the history and controversies of the Quiverfull movement, a conservative religious group known for promoting large families as a response to modern secular trends. We discuss its origins, major influences, and the peak of its visibility, particularly through media exposure like the Duggar family's reality show. We also explore the numerous scandals and controversies, including those involving abuse and patriarchal control, that have led to its decline in recent years. Finally, we reflect on lessons that contemporary Christian high-fertility movements can learn to avoid similar downfalls.
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be discussing the quiver full movement and what happened to them because I was noticing at the recent prenatal list convention, we had lots of conservative religious people come.
Yeah.
Yes, it was about two thirds of the people there. With, as I said it's about one third just Tech bros. One third just Religion Bros. One third Tech and Religion bros. Um mm-hmm. And so, what there wasn't a lot of was.
Evangelical. And especially what there noticeably wasn't a lot of was quiver full. And if you are unfamiliar with the quiverfull movement, I will give you a brief background. The movement primarily based in the United States with some spread in the uk, emerged in the late 20th century as a response to feminism and modern birth control.
It derives its name and philosophy from 1 27 3 through five, which compares children to arrows in the hand of a warrior symbolizing [00:01:00] divine blessings and strengths through procreation. And it also says the children of your youth implementing in that land that you should have kids while you're still young, which I,
Simone Collins: oh, which is one of the key things now is, is how do we get people in their twenties to start having kid again?
So you think, oh, this is so promising. This is perfect. Okay, great start.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Basically, it, it argues, and I actually find it to be a really important passage in the Bible. Mm-hmm. It says that, you know, the children you have in your youth are like the arrows in your quiver for your adulthood. Because what it's basically telling you is that while you're young, you should fill your era with quivers so that when you go to war. You have the boat, but, but it, it talks about having kids as a preparatory thing for a full life rather than the capstone of it.
Yes. Which is actually a really powerful way to see having children. Yes. Anyway. Adherence self-identify as quiver full or full quiver or qf. [00:02:00] Christians issue all forms of contraception, including natural family planning and sterilization. Viewing family sides is solely determined by God. This is the wheel people.
Ah,
Simone Collins: okay. First place. I'm seeing cracks here.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, note that this might be why they don't have many kids anymore because biological fertility has been falling and you really need to plan on kids. When Katherine Pock, she was on our show, she did college, she did a big thing where she interviewed 50 people who had over five kids.
Only one of them used this method. So it is very rare to use this among large families. Mm-hmm. This NAIC approach is part of a broader conservative Christian pushback against secular trends aiming for demographic growth. To influence culture and politics. Early influences include works like a full quiver, family planning and the Lordship of Christ by Rick and Jan Hess, which framed large families of a fulfillment of divine command.
The movement gained traction in the 1980s and nineties, aligning with other conservative ideologies like Christian patriarchy, which . Emphasized male headship and female [00:03:00] submission. No. Before we go further, was this, that's, that's basically the gist of what the movement was. It was the spooky prenatal list that I knew of growing up.
Like if somebody had said, what is a prenatal list? Movement, I would've said Quiverfull. And when I grew up in the nineties,
Simone Collins: 100%,
Malcolm Collins: but. They've basically gone extinct as we showed in a recent episode, TISM significantly outcompete queer full as something like a search term these days. And so the question is, what happened to them?
Why aren't they going to like natal list conferences? Why aren't they in talks with, you know, with all of the, the political talk about brutalism these days and JD vs in office, why isn't there some quiver full. You know, thinker or talker stepping up and catching news because there isn't. Mm-hmm.
And it's uniquely interesting because they were having lots of kids. And so this is important to us. You know, it shows that just having lots of kids isn't enough and can even lead to the extinction of your movement. And so this is something that we have to look [00:04:00] out for. I mean, we are a Christian high fertility movement, right?
Yeah. So, how do we pass that on intergenerationally? When they failed to do this.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: So let's explore the movement and let's explore how it fell apart and how we can avoid that. The movement reached peak visibility during the two thousands and 2000 tens, largely due to media exposure. Families like the Duggars featured on the reality show, 19 Kids and Counting became public faces that they did not explicitly identify as quiver Full.
Their lifestyle was 19. Children mirrored the movement's ideals, bringing it into mainstream awareness. At this time, estimates suggest that around 10,000 adherence was a focus on large families, often six to 12 children as a strategy for demographic shift in cultural influence. And no, here they were not that big.
10,000 movements at their peak. Right. And I think that that and the evangelicals more broadly sort of were overplayed by the media as a much larger movement than they ever really were. This period saw the movements [00:05:00] doctrines, such as rejecting birth control and emphasizing homeschooling
to maintain indoctrination became widely discussed. However, the movement faced significant controversies that likely contributed to decline in prominence. Reports of spiritual abuse, dehumanizing practices, and patriarchal control emerged with former members like Vicki Garrison, a turned activist highlighting the darker side.
The grudge article from 2023 noticed the movements association with Kissing Patriarchy were wives. Were expected to be subservient and fathers controlled all aspects of family life, making it harder for members to leave. Mm-hmm. Specific cases such as women continuing pregnancies against medical advice, nearly dying, underscored the physical and emotional toll as seen in examples like Gar Garrison's Seventh Child Critiques, also focused on sustainability with physical, emotional, and financial strains on families.
The movement's vision for large families was seen as impractical in modern context and political strategy. Aiming for [00:06:00] influence through demographic growth was questioned for limited electoral impact outside of conservative communities. Oh, these contries amplified by media and former members' testimonies likely eroded its broader appeal.
So what are your thoughts so far?
Simone Collins: Well, I think the really strong thing is this message of starting your twenties and kids are an asset. The Let Jesus take a wheel. No family planning, not even natural family planning approach is insane. And what really bothers me about the man has to be the leader approach is that only works when you have an exceptional man.
Agree. Like I'm super cool with 100% being subservient to you. You are the most exceptional man I've ever discovered in the entire history of humanity. Like Alexander the Great, no. Nope. Sorry, Napoleon. No, I don't think so. You, yeah, sure. Absolutely. 100%. So I, yeah, I just I, I, I, I mean, I have a similar opinion of myself, myself.
[00:07:00] I don't works. You have to have a Sword Shield relationship. You have to have a relationship in which people have domains of ownership in which both women and men are seen as bringing respect to the table. And I think we're a community. Maybe even externally has a little bit more of an ability to be like, you need to work on yourself.
We're, we're putting the other partner in charge right now because you're a hot mess. And, and that, I don't know. It just feels like there's too much room for things to go out of control and for abusive dynamics to form.
Malcolm Collins: What are your thoughts? Well, I I, I mean, I even wiz everything that you think of me and even wiz you saying, you know, you have the final shot on everything.
I don't. Treat that in the way, like a dugard would treat that, right? Like we still live in a way that most people would see as highly gender egalitarian. And I think this is part of the problem that people relate to this is that yes, women on average want to be the submissive partner in a relationship, and often relationships work better when a male takes the lead or dominant role.
Mm-hmm. But part [00:08:00] of that dominant role is not. Pushing the other person around, forcing them to do things they don't want to do. Yeah. How did one of our,
Simone Collins: one of our listeners put it really well? Or it's that mother of someone who I respect so much, you know, who you are mentioned that dominance, real dominance, especially like in these, in these relationships, never shows up as a man.
Putting a woman down or pulling rank, it is just natural dominance. It's natural leadership. If you have to put a woman down or tell her to do something or order her around or act dominant like performatively, you have already lost. You are showing that you do not have dominance. I. And, and I think yes, to
Malcolm Collins: force someone to do something like that, you're, you're absolutely right.
That's a sign that they don't wanna follow what you have to say. Yeah. Just based on what you have to say.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I think real dominance manifests real husband dominance manifests in a wife going out of her way to try to anticipate his needs and the needs of the family without ever being asked because she [00:09:00] understands her role.
He, she understands what he brings to the table, she understands his vision. And if a man doesn't communicate his vision, if he does do these things, she will not anticipate needs his needs. She will not have the drive to, to act on them, or she won't think that they're, that his, his vision is legitimate and she won't act on it because there's very little motivation when you feel a lot of cognitive dissonance.
So I think that that's, that's a big problem. 'cause I, I feel like that's not. In, in ideal quiver, whole relationships, that probably happens, but I just don't, you know, like, welcome to the world. No relationship except for ours is, if you ask me, is ideal.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and I think it, it is, it's like our daughters growing up.
They're not gonna feel like they're in a household where a man has all the power and a woman can't. Like,
Simone Collins: yeah,
Malcolm Collins: you, you
Simone Collins: often, but I think also in, in very extreme power dynamic or relationships or at least like, you know, when, when a man really leads some things, like part of what leadership means is delegating [00:10:00] a huge swaths of influence to other people.
Yeah. And I think in, in many households where you see divisions of labor, you will see. Like, whoa. Like she, I mean, I control all the finances. I control all, like a lot of things and you control a lot of things and they'll see that there's, there's control on, on both ends. And if someone's micromanaging, they're not actually being a good leader.
And I think that's also where you see the ordering around and this perception of dominance that is. Performative and not real.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I I it's almost like they're LARPing being a man. Yeah. They, they heard this concept of being a man and they like I understand that all of the power that I have over you is a gift from you to me, and one that can be revoked.
It is power. I have not due to some divine right, but due to the fact that you trust me enough, you know, and. If you stop trusting my decision making, I'm not gonna have that power anymore. And that's the way I relate to it.
Simone Collins: And well, that's how it's been for every natural leader throughout history.
Every [00:11:00] king, every general understands that if he doesn't in any single moment, manage to be naturally dominant. His people will not follow. There will be a rebellion, there will be mutiny, there will be whatever, right? Like captains on ships don't stay captains 'cause their title is Captain Captains on ships stay captain because they are the best leader for the ship.
Like that changes. And this is why you have desertions. This is why you have mutans. This is why you have revolutions.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, I, I agree a hundred percent. And I, you know, I think. Yeah, I just agree. And I think that that's gonna keep a lot more people in our cultural tradition than would stay in their tradition.
If you have a cultural tradition where you would just strictly be better off, like if I'm born a woman leaving, of course you're going to bleed women and then you're gonna bleed men who think that the tradition's unfair. Yeah. And we've been seeing this more recently. It used to be [00:12:00] that women stayed with conservative traditions at a higher rate than men.
But recently the trend has reversed and women have started leaving at a higher rate. So, for example, now Mormonism is a majority male religion, which never used to be the case.
Simone Collins: Crazy. Yeah. All the friends that we knew who even converted in were women 'cause they really bought the wholesome family lifestyle thing.
Malcolm Collins: We know a lot of women who've converted out too.
Simone Collins: That's true. That's true. Yeah. Because of the feminist issues. Yeah. And they're like, wait a second, this is super not okay with me.
Malcolm Collins: This is deeply unfair. Like Yeah. From their perspective. Anyway I'll keep going here. The decline seems driven by multiple factors, the backlash from abuse scandals such as those within the Duggar family, which received more attention post 2015, the unsustainable demands on adherence highlighting, but highlighted by critiques of health and autonomy and a cultural shift away from such extreme nativism in broader society.
Well, there I don't. I don't know. I maybe, I guess, yeah, birth rates have fallen. It's become less cool [00:13:00] while not extinct. Its influence is likely reduced with a smaller, more insular community compared to its earlier ambitions of demographic and cultural dominance while specific. 2025 deconversion rates for quiver full children are not available.
Anecdotal evidence suggests, for example, what it was like to grow up in quiver. Cosmopolitan features Hannah Edgar raised in the movement, who's now completely in a new life. Implying Deconversion, a Reddit post in our deconstruction are deconstruction of large Cville families. And I read a lot about on, on this thread discusses large families and deconversion, though it's anecdotal, the lack of numerical data is a gap, but a pattern exists, especially given controversies like abuse within the Duggar family.
As mentioned in the untold truth of Berfield Christianity, grunge supports the idea of higher deconversion. So I was like, okay, let's go to that. Family that had 19, the Duggars. Mm-hmm. How many of their kids stayed in both the religion and its high fertility [00:14:00] goal? 11% of their children did.
Simone Collins: Oh. Like
Malcolm Collins: what's the two of the 19?
Yeah. That's bad. But it's not as bad as you think. Because, what we actually find is if you then say, okay let's just look at the older ones. 'cause some are like 16, 16, 18, 19. That don't count, right? Yeah. So let's only look at the 12 who are over 25 right now. Only two of those 12 don't have children.
And of the other 10, all of them have over two children. But what. There, there are a few that are pregnant with their third, but yeah, so they are dramatically higher fertility than normal.
Simone Collins: Interesting, huh. Just anecdotally, every time I hear some interview with someone who deconverted and, and had a really large religious family, it was a cover full family.
Not, not Mormon, not, oh, I guess there's eight passengers. So I There's that one.
Malcolm Collins: Well, eight passengers with another really large [00:15:00] Christian family that got famous and her kids are Yeah. But they were Mormons. Systematically. Deconvert.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I guess can are, are some Mormons Quivers. I, I guess you should ask like how religiously siloed is this concept of, 'cause it's a biblical line.
You don't have to be like a whatever to be, I imagine
Malcolm Collins: you can, you can be any movement. Yeah. It's like whatever. But I, I would count, count her as part of that larger movement, you know, very strict parenting, very very different parenting style than our parenting as well. Like we are known as being strict because we use like light corporal disciplines with our kids, which is super taboo these days.
But this is not like what quiver full families do where they do like very serious spankings and stuff like that.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Or like, I, I think it overlaps with that book that guides mothers to. Like, teach their baby to stay on a small blanket and like hurt them a little. Yes. Actually, that was one of
Malcolm Collins: the, the controversies we're gonna be talking about.
Okay. Yeah. So there's also just this like explaining what works.
Simone Collins: Well, they're just trying to use condition like basic. [00:16:00] Conditioning to stop a baby. How baby training
Malcolm Collins: works,
Simone Collins: right? So you, you, you put your infant on a like square blanket on the ground and it doesn't have any fencer walls or anything.
And then every time they go towards the edge of it, you like flick their wrist or do something that hurts 'em a little bit. So they associate going off the blanket. With pain and eventually they will just stay on the blanket and not go off of it. And that is convenient, especially from others of larger families because they can just put the blanket down anywhere and expect that their kid is going to stay on it.
And I. That's, did it? I don't know. There's just something like deeply dystopian and really sad about that to me. Like you're just like a broken,
Malcolm Collins: I don't know. Our kids lack that for going off beds.
Simone Collins: Yeah. No, our kids. Our kids, yeah. Like that. Even when like they, they have a real scare. And like wanna, like, they just, they just desperately want to fall off surfaces and we are constantly being like, this is a cliff.
Do not, i, I understand your point here, [00:17:00] but I just, I, I, our, our corporal punishment is more like you are about to severely hurt yourself or put yourself in danger, or one of your siblings in danger. You gotta knock this off, like, let's, you're not listening to my words. This is different. It is. I'm going to break your will.
I'm going to make you a compliant. Mm. Domesticated human
Malcolm Collins: and yes, this is, you're right. The, the difference is that they are trying to domesticate their children, and we are trying to make our children maximally fierce. Yeah, it's a completely different way of relating to them. Well, it's very backward
Simone Collins: versus.
Puritan, honestly, the, the puritan, yeah. Way of raising kids. We like some things about it, like this idea of having kids like confront the, their mortality and all that. Like some, some harsh elements of Puritan upbringing. Hi. Historically,
Malcolm Collins: they had them look at corpses and stuff and be like, yeah, like sta into
Simone Collins: graves until like cry.
Like I, I get that like, except that when we do that with our children, they just don't get it. You know? Or they do, but they don't care, [00:18:00] I guess.
Malcolm Collins: I, I think you're, you're absolutely right where it is moving away from strictness, for the sake of strictness, I'd almost say like, it's like two dogs, like one dog you're trying to force to follow every order that's ever given to it.
Right. And the other dog you're training to fight other dogs. Like, okay, we're training our dad. The way you would train a pit bull. You know, you wanna wonderful to just be absolutely unhinged and, and, and, and go well, you know, to a pit bull, every toddler and a small dog is just another snack. That's, that is how pit bulls see the world.
You gotta see our video on the one ethical genocide. I do think we should get rid of pit bulls. Yeah,
Simone Collins: I agree with you.
Malcolm Collins: But it's just like a different way of relating to raising a thing. Like is the boundaries that you are placing on them to make them stronger? Is it to get them to be tougher or is it because you're trying to get them to follow a very constrained trajectory?
And [00:19:00] with us now does this mean that they have a higher chance of leaving the family? Yes. Because you're, you're trying to make them like have will and want to leave the family, but in a way because of that, it also. Brings them back to the family. Not through like punishment or fear or whatever but through pride and that I a Collins, and this is what I was always taught growing up, you are a Collins and Collins, they're better than other people.
Hmm. It's just very clear. It's like this is what's expected of you 'cause you're Collins. And I was like, well, other people don't do that. And they go, well, other people aren't Collins. And I remember being like, oh yeah, like I have more rules of, of this type, this, like expected of my personal behavior because I'm better than other people.
And I think that that what
I, I don't know if my opinion of myself has changed much this time has gone on it, but I think that confirmed that kids would relate the same way, is that if you, if you do this right, they're gonna be like. Yeah. [00:20:00] But I'm the best. Right? Why would I leave a family when the family is super awesome and especially if I like my siblings?
And that was something that was noted in the thread over and over again when people were complaining about their large families. They would complain about stuff where like, obviously some therapist or urban monoculture person had gotten their hooks in them. Mm-hmm. And. That's weird. But they always said that they really appreciate all their siblings and they wouldn't want any of them not to exist.
And that that's the thing that was the most important to them and exciting about growing up that way. Mm-hmm. And so you really don't get this, and I, I'd say this is true of the large families I know. I do not see this pushback of like, oh, I wish my siblings didn't exist. It's just the totalitarian way that the religion was communicated to them is what causes them to, to split off.
Mm-hmm. And I think within religions that have lower deconversion rates like Judaism like Orthodox Judaism mm-hmm. It is the factions that are either isolated for the rest of the world. Those have very low deconversion rates. Like they isolate them educationally and everything like that. Yeah.
So they [00:21:00] can't basically get a job in the outside world, which is. Not great. I wouldn't do that. Yeah. Or the ones that are just like strict in their belief system, but not in like authoritarian pushing it on children through things like punishment. But let's get into some of the any thoughts before I go further?
Simone Collins: No, no. Go further.
Malcolm Collins: All right, let's get into some of the controversies. So I'm gonna start with all the controversies that don't involve Josh, 'cause that's a whole different scenario. So, this was a controversy brought up in the docuseries, shiny happy people. I. Where one daughter who also wrote a book about this and complained a lot she, she's like, Jill, unpaid 7.5 years of labor.
This isn't helping with raising the other kids. This is in being on air. But she mostly just complained about being on TV a lot and, and not liking TV at her wedding and at other pertinent events. And I'm like, fine. But it doesn't really have anything to do with you being in a large family. Yeah, it has
Simone Collins: to do with their.
Father exploiting them, [00:22:00] which that's pretty clear from all the stuff that happened.
Malcolm Collins: And then another big backlash and this caused TLC's removal of the show apparently, or was part of it, was Derek Dillard's quote unquote homophobic tweets in 2017. Oh, where he, where, what did he say? He called transgenderism a myth.
Simone Collins: Okay. It's so stupid.
Malcolm Collins: Like if you're gonna have like a transphobic
Simone Collins: tweet, that's, that's a pretty stupid transphobic tweet.
Malcolm Collins: It calls him to be removed from counting on family tissue. Yeah. I, I, I don't, I. That's not a, like, that's a main gone these days. Yeah. He, he, he came too early. Right. You know, now, now we've got the embarrassing the TRA stock report.
Now we've got, you know, everything that's going on since the post-election vibe shift where everyone's like, okay, yeah, it's probably a culture bound illness and, and. Leads to a lot of unloving attempts that don't exist in any other culture on earth, no other culture on earth. I mentioned this before.
I'll mention it every chance I [00:23:00] get. No other culture on earth and no other time period on earth. While you see gay people everywhere throughout history and cultures, trans people. Are completely absent except for modern context. And note here, I'm not talking about gender fluidity. Gender fluidity exists all over history.
But being obsessed with the gender that other people see you as to the point where you would want to kill yourself because they don't see you as a gender, you see yourself. This is not a phenomenon anywhere else in human history and, and obviously it's a very mentally taxing phenomenon that we would prefer didn't exist and proliferate.
So he's completely right about this. Next year you have tutors, marriage to sex offender. This is tab page. So, Tudor married, convicted sexual assault offender, duggars through a engagement party, significant backlash, question, family values whatever. The, Josh is the big one, and it's the one that I'm more worried about and wanna learn from the most prominent scandals on.
Josh Duggar, the eldest child in Touch. Weekly published a 2006 police report [00:24:00] revealing Josh as a teenager, molested five underage girls, including four sisters, Jill Jessa, Jenga, and Jana. Well, they really like those JS with offenses occurring between 2002 and 2003 when he was 14 to 15.
The report later confirmed by people detailed groping while victims slept, confessed to parents and received counseling. But the revelation led to TLC or at least. Was part of it canceling 19 kids and counting on June 16th, 2015, as noted in Josh Duggar's Wikipedia. This fallout was named one of the 10 big scandals of 2015 by USA today, and the Washington Post listed Josh as one of the most hated people online that year.
The same year on August 19th, 2015, Gawker reported Josh had active accounts on Ashley Madison. This is when the, the leak happened, I guess. A website for extramarital affairs confirmed by people leading to his public apology on the family website admitting. A pornography addiction and cheating on his [00:25:00] wife Anna.
He checked into a face based rehab program centered in Rockford, Illinois on August, 2000 15th, as per people, victims, Jill and Janet came forward in 2015, interviewed on Kelly file with Megan Kelly
Simone Collins: while he creepily watched behind the camera. By the way, he what? He was there on set. Like they were coerced into doing matter.
Weird. Just, just horrible. The whole thing was horrible. And this is, I mean, it's, I don't care what your arousal problems might be or like what, what inconvenient things turn you on your garbage person if you do these things. Like he well, and I think just over and over again chose to hurt people and do things to people without their consent.
It's. He's just a garbage person and the fact that he, he, hold on. We'll,
Malcolm Collins: we'll see more about this,
Simone Collins: but continue the fact that are you gonna do more? Well, you a quiver full family that raises someone like that is not clearly, [00:26:00] is, is, is not creating a culture that is good. It is not imparting fitness at all.
Failure, drop it. They
Malcolm Collins: lost. I disagree. I'm gonna push back a little here. They had 19 kids, okay? Mm-hmm. And he was there first. True. Yeah. You get bad apples with I, I'm just like, I, I look at this and I think that you and this perception you have that if we raise our kids right, they won't do this is inaccurate.
I think that we have to be constantly vigilant, even if we're good parents. 100% in terms of. How we train them, how we train them to report and talk to us about things Uhhuh which apparently wasn't happening effectively in this case.
Simone Collins: Well, but also what, what you do when problems are reported because this was reported multiple times.
Malcolm Collins: Well, and he went to counseling after it was reported, but I think that it was reported by him and not by things like his sisters and stuff like this. And I think you need a [00:27:00] system where the entire family is like on watch or ance. I think this is
Simone Collins: also reported by girls from other people's families. It wasn't just him coming forward.
I, I don't think this was him coming
Malcolm Collins: forward. Well, I mean, I look at things he is doing when he is 14 and 15. And this requires, I mean, I actually think that this is why it's good to have all the kids sleep in the same room or the same room by gender at least. Because it's much easier to
Simone Collins: what safety in numbers.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, safety in numbers. One of the other kids can report on the kid who's doing the wrong thing and every kid knows that every other kid is watching. I.
Simone Collins: Yeah, they snitch on each other.
Malcolm Collins: They would absolutely snitch on each other. And I think that that's a powerful way you can prevent creepy kids from being creepy to other kids.
Right. Sure. And yeah, I, I, I, I see how something like this could happen if, like the oldest kid is the problem as well, because then you have to worry about reprisals and stuff like that. Which is why maybe it, it matters that you focus on the oldest kid being more moral or [00:28:00] focused a lot on moral teachings.
'cause the older kid we're fortunate in that our oldest kid is very obsessed with rules. No, he won't let us continue. Like, I'm driving and a naughty word is said on a show that I'm watching or on a song. He goes, that's a bad show. You gotta turn it off. You gotta, you gotta play something else. He won't, he will not let me watch things that have curse words in them, which he won't have it.
I absolutely love. He won't. Yeah, he won't have it.
Simone Collins: I love it. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Which is why one of the reasons we're trying to remove curse words from the show, which I'm doing more of, you know? Yes. Even believing them out when they're in the little clips. So I don't, but you know, we don't know what he's gonna be like when he goes through puberty, you know?
It's, it's, it's worth really working. I. On that was the oldest kids to ensure that we set a good sort of direction.
Simone Collins: Oh, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And what we've seen with other kids is if you look at like the, the eight passengers situation, the older kids are the ones who basically set up a deacon conversion pipeline for the younger kids.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And so, yeah. But we'll get into more of this. So in [00:29:00] April, 2021, you might not know about this. Josh faced another scandal when he was arrested on April 29th for receiving and possessing child pornography. Oh yeah.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: Was material from May, 2019 depicting abuse of children under 12. As detailed by people he pleaded guilty, facing up to 20 years and a quarter million dollar in fines.
Found guilty in 2021, blah, blah, blah, to 12 years in prison. Was 20 years under supervision prohibited from unsupervised contact with minors in fines of $50,100 per people. Family reactions varied. Was Michelle and Anna supporting him while his cousin Amy Duggar King opposed? Calling the family delusional in an ex post urging Anna to divorce as noted in people.
Now. So I asked how did they teach sex ed to their children? Because I was like, what could have led to this behavior? Right? And I actually think a lot of the behavior is downstream of this. The Duggar family, well known for their conservative Christian beliefs and featured on reality TV show provided limited sex education, primarily emphasizing [00:30:00] abstinence until marriage.
It seems likely that men received a brief talk. And a Christian themed book before marriage, while women were given little to no formal education, accepting guidance from their husbands, their homeschooling curriculum. Based on the Advanced Training Institute, a TI program avoided discussion of sex, creating a taboo and spreading this information with strict mony rules and limited physical contact before marriage.
That's what I think a lot of this comes down from. And I think a lot of the deconversions come down from this. If you teach somebody, as I've always said like. Engaging with pornography makes you a bad person, and they're a young man. As we know basically all young men except those in the most extreme religious conditions.
Like there's a famous case where they tried to do a study and they wanted to find men who had never see u used porn before as, as like a control in the study, and they had to abandon it because they couldn't find enough men in that category. And I think a man has to be pretty sexually atypical to fall into that category.
And that being the case, you [00:31:00] know, it means that if you teach them well, you're sinful. And this is really horrible if you're engaging in this stuff. Especially with the internet as it is these days, then you just have all of them thinking that about themselves. Mm-hmm. Which may makes them think, well then why not just leave?
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Well, if Yeah. Either you stay and you're secretly a monster or you leave.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then it's like, well then what's the additional bad to molestation?
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yikes. Not good. When you tell someone that they're a monster for doing this is, this is also why we push back against things like Louise Perry's.
Well, we like her as a, as a person and as an influencer. Her idea that women are only into choking because men have like diluted them. And women are only into like, being put in positions of, well, let's put masochistic submission because of men liking this stuff that's not, the data doesn't support it.
That's absolutely untrue. Yeah. Yeah. This is driven by women. Women prefer this more than men prefer doing it. Men did not make 50 shades of [00:32:00] grand bestseller. Mm-hmm. And women were not buying it to show off to men. Yeah. What, what what we see is, is if you are honest about this stuff and you tell your daughters, Hey.
It's normal to be into this stuff. It's normal to be into what? What was the whole vampire phenomenon? It was about having guys. Come on. It is normal, normal, normal to be into this as a woman. Don't think that you're sinful. Don't think that you're a deviant. Just don't, well, don't think that just because it turns
Simone Collins: you on, you want it either like, yeah, that's another really important point here.
Just because something turns you on doesn't mean you morally condone it or that you want it to happen or that it would be good if it happened. So that's also, yeah, and I think
Malcolm Collins: that that, that when we, when we break away from this duggar mindset around something like pornography or the Louis Perry mindset you don't have kids feel ashamed about things that are totally normal.
And through that there's less of a, an idea of like, oh, I don't like being in this [00:33:00] family, or, oh, I'm, I'm, I'm sort of scared to be in this environment or this household. Because I know that I'm not living up to the standards that I assume everyone else is living up to.
Simone Collins: Right.
Malcolm Collins: When in reality, very few people actually live up to these standards.
Mm-hmm. And and then you, because you're already breaking one moral norm. It's like, well, I'm already a horrible person. And then you begin to contextualize this into your identity. Yeah. And I think that, that, that what people need to realize, one of the things is we always point out and we have, you can look at our, our Catholic's about to go extinct episode.
I talk about low fertility rates and high deconversion rates. Among some other Christian movements and I think was in these movements, there's this perception that, well, how quickly could you really disappear as a movement that at least attempts to be high fertility and attempts to espouse high fertility values?
And I think the Duggar show you how quickly fast the quiverfull movement shows you, how quickly fast a generation.
Simone Collins: Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: that's how fast. Definitely like two generations.
Simone Collins: Yeah. [00:34:00] I'm also looking at Google Trends. Interest over time for Quiver, quiver full, not as a search term, but as like the broader religious concept.
Mm-hmm. Sharing this with you just so you have it, it, it had spikes every now and then. It probably mostly due to media stuff. And the most recent spike was in 2022, may, and it was one of the smaller spikes that has ever taken place. So it is, it is clearly on the, on the downfall. It, it appears to be in its death throes.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I and I, and this is why I think like authoritarian religious structures are just very bad at working in a modern context.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And
Malcolm Collins: if that's the way you're relating your religion to kids, they will leave it and they will help your other kids leave it.
Simone Collins: Interestingly, when you compare quiver full to natal quiver, full religious concept, natal belief.
The 2004 to present total search volume for Grover Full is much larger. Like it [00:35:00] definitely was a way bigger concept than Tism in the past. Mm-hmm. But basically, ever since only 2023 when you and I started really pushing for it fatalism has clearly started to take over. Yeah. Very interesting. Whereas Quiver has kind of died out.
Quiverfull had much bigger spikes. I think that's probably mostly because of the duggars though. If you're
Malcolm Collins: well and and media and you know, I haven't molested a kid, so
Simone Collins: yeah, let's keep it that way. You slapped kids though, and I'm sure that helped with overall awareness, so there we go. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: right.
Simone Collins: Whatever it takes.
Bob Gate was a, was a boom Bob Gate.
Malcolm Collins: I just, I just gotta get a, a slapping machine. We'll get that with the documentary when it comes out. Slapping machine.
Simone Collins: We can have slap competitions now that I know. It's a, it's a sport. The kids kind of, I love you. Practice on each other. [00:36:00]
Malcolm Collins: All right, have a great day, Simone.
We'll go to the next episode.
Simone Collins: I love you. You have the grasp by the way.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, oh,
Simone Collins: okay. I just learned about an entirely new sport that there, there are professional, large stadiums filled with viewing this sport.
Malcolm Collins: Okay.
Simone Collins: I didn't know it existed, and I would watch this maybe. I'm actually tempted to go watch the recorded versions of this. Can you guess what it is? Do you need a hint
Malcolm Collins: that you would watch it?
Okay. What would you watch? Yeah, I need a hint. I have nothing other than that. It's a sport you didn't know about. It's on that sport. Oh the, the Medieval knights one? No. Oh, well the Medieval Knights one looks pretty cool.
Simone Collins: I've not heard of that. So that's like actual jousting
Malcolm Collins: or No, like they dress up as knights and do like sword combat.
It looks pretty brutal. Okay. So
Simone Collins: like in the Knights Tale, when they did the in the ring and they were doing sword combat? Yeah. [00:37:00] That kind of, okay. Nope, that's not it. But I didn't know that was a thing, so that's awesome. Thank you for giving me one.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, well, I don't know. Go on.
Simone Collins: Okay. Think of a game show where a man was.
An an Indian man was quite. D disturbed by women's action. It was a slapping game. Yes. Slapping competitions, slapping competition. They feel like slow cams and you get points taken off if you flinch. And it's both men and women. They have, you know, heavyweight lightweight categories, et cetera.
They're, they're medical professionals on staff. There's, there's knockouts. People break their wrists, people break their noses, and they have, you can see like this slow-mo of the slat. Hitting them and like the hand, like reverberates as though it is rubber, the face of course ripples it. And interestingly, the, the person I was watching comment on it for a little bit, who taught me about this.
Notice that women could take the slabs better than men. Women seem to [00:38:00] flinch a lot less and, and looking at her footage, it was really impressive. The men were flinching and I'm obviously the men are a lot stronger, so I did it. But Simone, this is
Malcolm Collins: why these women have a lot more training than the men. I mean, shut up.
I hate you. You terrible person. You could just go up there. You have no problem at all. You are a professional at getting slapped. Just so people know I don't slap my wire.
Simone Collins: Actually our kids would be amazing at it. 'cause remember in front of that journalist, we, we did like, we had like, and they didn't flinch at all.
They would've gotten points in a slap competition for their utter lack of flinching.
Malcolm Collins: Which
Simone Collins: is
Malcolm Collins: point. Okay. Also, Simone, I have to convince you Iion Labs is actually the perfect name for the studio. Remind me who the IXs are in Dune. So the IXs are known for, so there's two factions that produce a lot of technology in Dune Uhhuh.
There's
Simone Collins: the TLAC suit. One is the
Malcolm Collins: tlac suit that you don't really like. So they do the [00:39:00] biological engineering technology. Yeah. The IXs are known for technology that skirts the Butler and Jihad rules. So they're the ones that are,
Simone Collins: are they the ones that are the personal computers of the wealthy people?
Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. Those are, what are they called? Its makes real computers. Oh, okay. Like, like, they're, they're very, if the Ty Laos thing is sort of like being weird and creepy, whatever, like mm-hmm. The, its. Are known as being like overly clean, like everything in their civilization looks like an Apple store.
Oh. They have a republic, unlike the other governments in the empire, which are all like a, like imperial or whatever. Yeah. And they create AI technology that is like clearly illegal. So like if you have on like a head. Set that like scans the environment and is like picking out they, one of those mean by the X.
So they do technology like that. Super advanced, super clean techno hologram projectors, stuff like that.
Simone Collins: Okay.
So I like it except for the fact that when pronounced out loud, [00:40:00] it sounds like IC and IC is even come back. Like there's the new. Parlance of giving me the ick, and it is not, I think something we would want as a brand name.
Malcolm Collins: I don't, it was not, you didn't like Mdo a, eh, Mundo used with other things because you saw it as, as negative. But when I hear MI think like Necro Mundo or whatever, you know, I
Simone Collins: think tele, novellas and Spanish tv, so no.
Malcolm Collins: No, I'm, I am. I, if, if Bruno, not that I have
Simone Collins: anything against Spanish as a language, I just like, I, I don't think that's useful.
Malcolm Collins: If, if bru, we'll keep playing with
Simone Collins: it.
Malcolm Collins: If, if Bruno likes X I'm gonna go with it. 'cause I like it so much.
Simone Collins: Well, I respect Bruno, so I will defer to him. But the other one we have
Malcolm Collins: is, is, is what is it, sentient? Sentient systems. Yeah, sentient systems, reason systems is good. The reason [00:41:00] I don't like sentient systems that much.
I was thinking about like me at the third party developing on a platform that was made by sentient systems. Mm-hmm. And I'm like, what? I want to tell people that I like That sounds a little like lame. I don't know. Like more than iion. Ian is cool. Stint system sounds a little lame. And then if you shorten it, it becomes Ss oh, which was side scrollers problems.
Simone Collins: I grew up with the initials ss. Didn't realize that that, that it was problematic until it was a little late. Speaking of names, maybe our audience can settle a score, although I've basically already overridden it 'cause I've just declared bankruptcy on having. A dune related middle name for our next son.
So
Malcolm Collins: our next kid is, is the first name? Okay. No you don't. No, no.
Simone Collins: Take out the part where we give his first name because I need to set up all his like domains and stuff and I don't want. People camping on things. Okay,
Malcolm Collins: we'll take out, but, but then it doesn't mean anything if you just have the second name, but whatever.
Okay. You just want the second name?
Simone Collins: So our Yes, we, we are choosing [00:42:00] a middle name for our fifth son, who also we joke is the AK because he's got a really great. Potential IQ based on his polygenic scores. It puts him in like the 98th to 98th, sorry, 99th percentile. So that's like, wow. He's, he's amazing. And so I was joking, we should give him the middle name of a tradies, but then Malcolm said, no, we should give him the middle name of Tai Lasu.
And I think at treaties it's honorable, it's stately, it's outside the normal moral constraint because it's, it's not this though, Paul. Is a goodie all the time. He understands, no, hold
Malcolm Collins: on. But tyla a tradies is so basic. Axio, if you, if you're going for nom determinism and all of our kids have gone, no deterministic so far.
Yeah. You know, Axio is exactly the path we'd want them to go down.
Simone Collins: Humanitarian crises using people's bodies against their will. No. No, they don't even have a will anymore. [00:43:00] They remove
Malcolm Collins: their brains there. There are
Simone Collins: alleged characters who say that they were used for this purpose, meaning that they do have a brain.
No, that was the, there is sentient course
Malcolm Collins: that the son did where he went crazy and then he had them free all the time. Isn't that still Canon? Not in a meaningful, not to any real fan, Simone. It is. It is the bio crafter species. That's what we want.
Simone Collins: I do, I do really want bioengineering to be a family thing, but I don't.
I just, the humanitarian crisis angle's just not,
Malcolm Collins: there's no humanitarian crisis. It's a whiners. It's Elisa Simpson who calls this a humanitarian. Oh, so a trade just
Simone Collins: sounds like a great name and you'll, you won't let me name any of our kids are tennis, so I need something that's like a cool three syllable kind of sci-fi, a starting name.
Give me something here. Alright. The audience can weigh in a tradies or [00:44:00] axo as a middle name All.
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