Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they dive deep into the surprising reality of fertility rates across Latin America. Discover why official numbers from organizations like the UN may be misleading, how actual birth rates compare country by country, and what these trends mean for the future of the region and beyond. The discussion covers demographic data, cultural factors, religious influences, and the broader implications for global population trends. Whether you’re interested in demographics, policy, or just want to understand the real story behind the headlines, this episode is packed with insights and data.

Malcolm Collins : [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be talking about something that I accidentally stumbled into while I was trying to grab fertility rates for a reporter.

And so the reporter comes to me and they go you know, we, we were talking about this with Telemundo, we were talking about the fertility rates across Latin America, and I Googled because I remembered that Columbia, for example, had a very low fertility rate. Yeah. The, the measured rate right now, and I’ll put the Wikipedia page where it has like the government stats on this, okay.

Is 1.0 6 6 6 6 7. That’s, that’s basically half this population every generation for

Simone Collins: comparison, UK’s around 1.5 US is around 1.6. That is.

Malcolm Collins : Bad. You got 1.07 around it. Ooh. And so I googled it and the Google result came back was 1.6. That’s a, that’s a, a decimal point error. That’s, that is enormous error.

And I was like, where the hell is this number coming from? I did some digging [00:01:00] and it soon became, please don’t see the un, it was coming from the un. No, no. And so I asked an ai, I’m like, how is the UN getting this number? Whereas Wikipedia and Columbia is getting this number.

Mm-hmm.

And it explained to me the difference in methodology.

It said. Oh, the number that you are looking at, the 1.06 number, that’s the measured fertility rate in Columbia. The number that the UN is reporting is the number that they predict should be the fertility rate of f

Simone Collins: It’s like our sun, Octavian and, and some math problems we give them where we’re like, Hey, what’s X plus x?

And, and he gives us a number and we’re like, no, no, no, it’s, it’s seven. And he’s like, no. It’s 13 because he said it was 13. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins : He understands. That is the UN right now. Oh. And so what we’re gonna be going over in this is because then I was like, how bad is this OVERREPORTING number in terms of the data that a lot of people are getting.

So we went through the official sources Wikipedia, where they’re citing the [00:02:00] country’s own demographic statistics.

Yeah.

Across Latin Americans. We’re gonna go across Latin American countries right now.

Okay.

Which by the way. If you average them come out to a TFR by, by their relative populations below the US’ TFR already.

Yeah. And I point out this isn’t just a Latin American problem. This is a Latin American problem in the United States. The state or territory was the lowest fertility rate, and by the way, it’s not even close. Puerto Rico, which has a fertility rate of only 0.9. All right. That is

Simone Collins: so bad. It’s so bad.

Malcolm Collins : No, I have mentioned this quote before, but I have to mention this quote here ‘cause it’s so important. There’s a Latin American demographer who is a professor at Penn. You know, Ivy League Penn. Very nice, fancy school,

Simone Collins: respected, reputable.

Malcolm Collins : Actually, we should reach out to this guy about having him on the show, if you can make a note of that.

Okay. Because he’s right next to us, right? Yeah. And he’s a pretty based demographer. Jesus Fernandez, Aire, Dre.

Simone Collins: Oh, this guy? Yes.

Malcolm Collins : The professor of economics. [00:03:00] Okay, so, these are some quotes from him in a interview that he did. Jesus. First I think the United Nations is over counting the numbers of births in many countries.

For instance, in Columbia, the United Nation claims that in 2023 there are over 700,000 births, Columbian authorities and I have talked with them, tell me that there were. 500,000

Columbia. The official number is 500,000. This is fighting about the second decimal Alice. That’s a big difference, Alice. So, and this is like do da.here. So crazy. Like, you know, there are clever people. Why are they, you know, coming up with. Why are they, you know, coming up with inventing numbers? And then Jesus says, so I send them an email and the answer we got, and I’m doing this with a young researcher, Patrick rna we send. Email and they told us that they don’t want to be alarmists. That’s [00:04:00] literally what they said in the email. They said, yes, maybe the projections do not make a lot of sense, but we wanna be very cautious and we don’t want to be alarmists, and we don’t want people to think that there is a crisis looming which, and then Alice cuts her off because it’s like.

But there is a crisis looming. Well,

Simone Collins: imagine. Imagine if someone did that with climate change. Yeah. Well, we don’t want people to worry, whereas like they did completely the opposite. They kept lying about the end of the world and then ultimately, you know, becoming so alarmist that now everyone’s so desensitized that even Greta Thunberg can’t even bother to be an environmental advocate anymore.

Malcolm Collins : Well, trusting the UN about. Population collapse is a bit like trusting one of those cigarette like advocates. We work for the big cigarette companies on it helps to

Simone Collins: clear your lungs, you’re fig your lungs inside the house.

Speaker 2: what I do. I talk for a living. What do you talk about? I speak on behalf of cigarettes. My mom says cigarettes kill.

Really?

Now, is your mommy a doctor?

Speaker: No.

Speaker 2: A scientific researcher of some kind? [00:05:00] No. Oh, she doesn’t exactly sound like a credible expert now, does she?.

Malcolm Collins : Oh, I mean, we point out that the Club of Rome, which is an organization dedicated and is Earth for all, an organization that they founded, which is dedicated to the reduction of the world’s population by 80%, has a bunch of members in leading roles within the un.

So, you watched our episode about this, or we go over all the data on this. But then Alice says, Alice, this is really like, it’s their job. I mean, their job is to report the numbers and if they don’t want to do it because Jesus, I know, I know, but look, they, Alice, it sounds a bit like a totalitarian Soviet.

Then that’s where I cut off. But the point I’m making here is this is being done deliberately. The coverup is being done deliberately. And it is. When you were talking about a fertility rate of 1.06 and it’s being reported as 1.6, that’s at the level of like genocide denial, because when you get to a fertility rate actually I’ll just do the math on this right now to see how many great grandchildren that means

There’s going to be 15 [00:06:00] great-grandchildren for every a hundred citizens. I. But we also see a lot of Latin American demographers talking about this. I often mention the Colombian demographer who described Columbia’s demography as vertiginous and said that there was under one child for everyone.

Native born Costa Rican woman at this point. And then a Colombian demographer wrote. Columbia has the second largest drop in the number of live births in the long list of countries surpassed by Chile. And it already has a birth rate lower than that of Japan in all caps. , The explanation from demographer.

They’re good, but they do not account for the acceleration and change and another thing they don’t count for. And this is worth us. And another thing we’re gonna go into in this episode is why. Do Latin American demographics, why are they collapsing so quickly in Latin marriage? Majority regions, but so slowly in the United States, Latin Americans still actually have a very robust fertility rate in US states that aren’t Puerto Rico.

What’s causing this? Let’s go into the data. [00:07:00] Let All right. Let’s just start listing numbers here. Argentina UN 1.5. The actual number, because anyone who knows Argentina’s certificate should know 1.5 is nowhere near Argentina’s fertility rate is 1.16. And by the way, I’ll put a chart on the screen of countries and Latin America by their fertility rate.

Bolivia UN is saying 2.5. The actual fertility rate is 2.06. Again, with these, you’re getting like. Point five off on fertility rate. That means that the UN is assuming that every woman in a lot of these countries is having half an extra children.

Simone Collins: It’s just so creepy because it, to me also feels like an attempt to stop anyone from realizing the gravity of the problem so they can’t begin to work on solutions.

In, in a similar way, how, like Planned Parenthood just very quietly, made sure certain populations had very easy access to abortion and didn’t really [00:08:00] talk about it. It is just, it, it, it really gets under my skin. I, I don’t like this.

Malcolm Collins : Yeah. This, this great grandchildren number. Cannot be right. But it might be, it, it says that it would mean there’s . There’s going to be 15 great-grandchildren for every a hundred citizens. Okay. Which is not, the countries cannot stay stable with numbers like that.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins : Brazil, the real numbers in Brazil are 1.47. The UN estimate is 1.6 Chile and, and Brazil. Like, I remember I was talking to a reporter from Brazil and she was like, well, you know, we don’t have this problem like you do in the us. And I was like, excuse me, your fertility rate is way below ours.

What are you talking about? Mm-hmm. It’s more that Latin America is just in denial about this. I mean, when I was talking to somebody, well,

Simone Collins: can you, they’re not in denial. They’re being actively. Gaslit about this? No, there’s white

Malcolm Collins : American demographers talking about this. Like Jesus is clearly Latin American, right?

Like, yeah, but he’s in, he’s in freaking Pennsylvania with us.

Oh,

sorry. Well, I mean, we need to get Latin American at, at tele, they go, where are the Latin American ISTs? And I was like, I don’t know. I can’t force him to be [00:09:00] ISTs. Right. Well, I mean.

Simone Collins: They are inherently pro-family. They’re just aware of demographic collapse,

Malcolm Collins : has a big follower watcher base in Latin America.

Like our fab is being run largely by Bruno, who is in Brazil. And the team that was working on that was Latin American, and that’s like one of our core projects as a podcast. So, like, and our company is Latin American. Oh yeah, we should sell that house soon. Looking at the population numbers in Peru.

So, yeah, scary stuff. And we were also pointing out like we know our primary social network is Latin American because that’s our primary work network. And we were actually thinking recently to ourselves that we only knew a single Latin American family that was above repopulation rate of, of our generation.

Or even around our generation, I’d say it was in like 20 years of our generation. Mm-hmm.

Which was wild to me to think about when I started thinking about that. Mm-hmm. And to continue here Chile has a fertility rate of 1.03. The UN is labeling it as 1.1. Columbia has a fertility rate of [00:10:00] 1.07 UN is labeling it as 1.6.

I already went over that Ecuador. This one is actually higher than what the UN rates. Oh, yeah. The UN says 1.8. I mean, not much, but Guiana has a fertility rate of 2.35 UN is labeling it as 2.4. Paraguay has a fertility rate of 1.95 UN is labeling it as 2.4. Again, that’s, that’s almost a 0.5 discrepancy there.

Peru has a fertility rate of. 1.8 UN is labeling it as 1.9. Surinam has a fertility rate of two UN is labeling it as 2.2. Uruguay this is another one that’s UN is massively off on, has a fertility rate of 1.19. The UN is labeling it at 1.4. Venezuela has a fertility rate of two. The UN is labeling it at 2.2.

Uruguay has the fertility rate of 1.19, the UN building at 1.4. Although, just keep in mind these numbers that I’m listing here that Uruguay has the fertility rate of 1.19, right? Like these are catastrophic. That is below Japan, right? That’s, that’s getting close to China.

Belize for another one that the UN is [00:11:00] massively lying about. Has a fertility rate of 1.63. UN is labeling it at two. Costa Rica has a fertility rate at 1.12. The UN is labeling it at 1.3. El Salvador had the fertility rate of 1.4. The UN is labeling it at 1.8. Guatemala has a fertility rate of 2.2. The UN is labeling it at 2.3.

So not big with that one, but something other ones are really big. Honduras, Ooh, this one’s bad. I have to get fertility rate of 2.01. The UN is labeling it at 2.5. Nicaragua has a fertility rate of 1.8. The UN is labeling it at 2.2. Panama has a fertility rate of 1.82 UN is labeling at 2.1, and Mexico has a fertility rate of 1.6 below the uss.

By the way, as of last year, the UN is labeling it at 1.9.

That is absolutely shocking. If you wanna know what the Hispanic TFR is in the United States right now. Yeah. This is, this is based on provisional, but we’re looking at a TFR of around 1.97. Oh.

So very decent that would make it one of the highest Hispanic fertility rates on Earth.

Yeah.

Whereas the what, what, what is non-Hispanic white [00:12:00] rate right now?

It’s is 1.54. Non-Hispanic black is 1.47. Non-Hispanic black is, whoa, whoa. What? Wait, what? The black fertility rate in the US has fallen below the right fertility rate.

Simone Collins: But you knew that, and especially at higher levels of income.

Malcolm Collins : No, I knew at higher levels of income. I’m talking about in an absolute context.

Simone Collins: Oh, absolute. Too

Malcolm Collins : absolute. This year it’s 2024 provisional. Yeah. Last year it was higher. Last year it was, the white fertility rate was 1.53. Mm-hmm. It was 1.58 for the black community. Now it’s 1.54 for whites, 1.47 for blacks.

Simone Collins: Oh no. Wow. No. Once again, it’s, well, I mean, like, so before this, just for context, consistently, like when you looked at income levels, the one group that had the highest fertility at higher income levels was just white people.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins : Way whites have a way, if you go above the 50% income rate, [00:13:00] whites have one of the highest fertility rates. This, this and so

Simone Collins: it’s really more that like other groups in the United States had higher fertility because they also had higher poverty levels, but now we’re just seeing overall.

Lower fertility. Oh,

Malcolm Collins : I have always pointed this out. I’ve yelled this from the rooftop. Northern Europeans are resistant to fertility collapse. Jews are resistant to fertility collapse. There’s me doing my little Moroccan dance being like, everybody pay attention. The other groups are gonna fall faster. You just wait.

Yes, it started at a lower rate, but it gave them time to build an immunity. And you wanna hear another shocking number? Tell me. You know what other demographic is? A blub black fertility rate as of 2024.

Simone Collins: Not Asians.

Malcolm Collins : Asians.

Simone Collins: Whoa. Wow. Asian fertility rate

Malcolm Collins : went up to 1.55.

Simone Collins: Wow. Good for them.

Malcolm Collins : And the non-Hispanic American [00:14:00] Indians and Alaskan natives have a fertility rate of 1.39 the lowest of any ethnic group in the United States, as we often point out.

Simone Collins: Yeah. As we’ve Yeah. Very often pointed

Malcolm Collins : out.

Sadly, I have to do a correction here. I did the math wrong and I’ll explain how I did it wrong. But what we’re getting here is, and I’ll make this prediction now, is that Black American fertility will fall below the other fertility rates very soon. , Specifically what happened is I was calculating from provisional data and the provisional data had the GFR.

But not the TFR. So I applied a multiplier to the GFR to turn it into A TFR. The problem is, is that the multiplier that you apply to A GFR to turn it into A TFR is different for different ethnic groups, because different ethnic groups have kids at different ages of their lives, which means it’s a lower multiplier for Asians than it is for blacks.

So blacks still have a marginally higher fertility weight. Than whites are Asians right now, but it’s going down much faster, which I’ll explain right here in a second, which means that we’re [00:15:00] likely gonna see a lower black fertility rate within the next, I’d say, half decade or so than any other ethnic group in the US except for Native Americans.

Malcolm Collins : But actually this is, this is wild to me. So if you look at these numbers the, the interesting thing about the, the, the Hispanic fertility rate in the United States, it is mostly stable, so, I’m gonna go 2020 to 2024 for the Hispanic fertility rate.

Okay. 1.88, 1.9, 1.97, 1.95, 1.97. Stable, even trending up a little bit. If we look at the white fertility rate, what does it look like? Very stable as well. 1.55, 1.6, 1.57. 1.53. 1.54. Okay. Now let’s go to the black fertility rate. And this is where you see a real strong pattern.

Hmm,

1.71, 1.68, 1.64, 1.58, 1.47 every year a dramatic drop.

Whereas in the white and Hispanic, it was going up and down. If you look at the [00:16:00] Asian we see the same thing, fairly stable, 1.54, 1.51, 1.51, 1.47, 1.55.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. And I think it’s only gonna get worse because the biggest fertility depressor in the United States leading up to all this was the 2008 market crash.

And already now people, as you can see, they’re scaling back their travel, they’re scaling back, their restaurant spending, Vegas is, is crashing out. So I think we’re getting back to that mentality of, I’m gonna tighten my belt and stop doing anything. Including having kids.

Malcolm Collins : That’s gonna be one of our next episode headers, by the way, is black fertility rates.

I need to find out where those numbers they’re from below Asian in America now. Like that is bad.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that is bad. And

Malcolm Collins : I, I, I’ve been predicting this for like a few years at this point. I gotta reach back out to that NPR interview I did to give them those stats because that’ll rock their pants off.

I wonder if progressives will finally wake up to this now that, that black fertility rates are below white fertility rates. No,

Simone Collins: because it’s [00:17:00] clear, as you can see from the, the end of the, that with the ceasefire between Israel and Gaza, that they don’t actually care about the groups they say they care about.

When, when it turns out that they’re actually getting screwed over in some way, that things are actually getting bad for them or worse. Crickets. So don’t even worry about it. We’ll just talk about it. I,

Malcolm Collins : I, I, I need to, I need to have those numbers up next to the, we will replace you sign the, the, the, the we.

We’ve got like a live laugh, love. We will replace you sign in our house. I’m gonna read a quote from the Atlantic here, ‘cause I thought it was pretty good. They’re actually interviewing this demographer as well in this. And so they go, sorry, did you say bad news? I, that was actually good news. Based on estimates that turned out to be far too rosy.

Every two years, un demographers revise their population projections, and for the past 10 years, they’ve always had to revise them in the same direction down next year. They’ll do so again, in reality, the worldwide population decline is set to begin decades ahead of their expectations because global fertility trends are much worse than they, and probably [00:18:00] you think he first began noticing this in 2019, that the UN was too optimistic.

But only in the past few years did the discrepancies become downright alarming.

I dunno how I forgot to mention it, but here are the Financial Times charts from, uh, last year where they showed what the actual fertility rate was in a bunch of different countries, and then the UN’s projections every year, which are the blue lines? The red line is the actual fertility rate, which you can see is the actual fertility rate is crashing while every year.

And every year the UN makes a mistake in the exact same way. They say it’s going to stop falling this year. They’re going to stop falling this year. Um, and I, I don’t know how you could make this exact same mistake every year and keep your job unless your job tacitly was to lie and mislead people. And what’s funny is they’re using these mistaken estimates as the real numbers.

Malcolm Collins : So. Why now we’re to the final question here. There’s a few questions and we’ve, we’ve one addressed part of this, which is why do Catholics have low fertility rates? Mm-hmm. Because Catholics two, you look in Europe, they have really low fertility rates [00:19:00] in, was in America, they have low fertility rates and in Latin America, they have low fertility rates.

There was a study done on America and Catholics to try to find this, and this was done back in the eighties. So I don’t think that this is. The whole case anymore, but it found that it was because they got married later. But once they were married, they had kids at the same rate. But there are other effects at play here.

And I, and I wanna go over it. So first you have what’s called the Healthy migrant Effect. Many Latin American immigrants to the United States are young, healthy, and motivated by family building opportunities. They often come from rural, traditional backgrounds with higher baseline fertility. Mm-hmm.

And I hadn’t heard about this, so I looked, and it is true immigrants come like a, a disproportionately from not, not more than 50%, but I mean, disproportionately compared to the base Latin American populations from rural backgrounds.

Mm-hmm.

Once in the US they’re able to achieve their, their cultural, you know, expectations because of these low fertility, sorry. These rural backgrounds but I, I found that to be really interesting. The other one I was interested in was, is it that they’re more religious in the United States? Right? Like, that was my other take, is maybe Latin Americans in the US are more [00:20:00] religious.

And actually this is not the case in Latin America. 69% identify as Catholic and 19% as Protestant, and 18% as unaffiliated. A majority attended services, weekly prayers daily and considered religion. Very important. Median is 72%. However among us, Hispanics, Catholicism has declined sharply only 43 to 49%.

So, more than half of, of, of, of Hispanics in the United States are not Catholic. Whereas in that makes sense,

Simone Collins: honestly. Which of our, I mean, do we have any

Malcolm Collins : Yeah. Are any of them Catholic?

Simone Collins: One. One is Catholic.

Malcolm Collins : The gay one.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. All the Catholic, Hispanic people I know are gay. Well

Simone Collins: small sample size, but still,

Malcolm Collins : That’s wild.

Only we’ll move this whole thing and we’ll do another episode on it. It’s gay Catholics are like really common. Like really common, like, oh yeah,

Simone Collins: no, we need to do the wise is Catholicism so gay in, in a good way. But like, so like we,

Malcolm Collins : we like, and, [00:21:00] and you even see this among like the influencer scene, like Milo Gianopoulos, right?

Like very Catholic, very gay. But also

Simone Collins: the clothes, oh my gosh, the, the vestments like, course, it’s insane. I

Malcolm Collins : said that the the Catholic outfits, like the priest outfits mm-hmm. They, they literally look like they were designed by a gay guy. And the in the best way, like, we mean in a very flattering, in good way.

I like them, but then I, well also like

Simone Collins: consider the church, like if you are gay, you’re more likely to become a priest. I mean, they’re, they’re taking gay people and elevating them. They’re like, okay, let’s put you in positions of leadership. Like this is a very pro-gay.

Malcolm Collins : Yeah. Religion. But, but, but the Eastern Orthodox investments and clothing looks like they were developed by like a, a male in a goon cave or something.

Like, like they look like a pseudo homeless, like male, like d and d player designed them. Yeah. Kind

Simone Collins: of. Yeah. Very incel, very incel core.

Malcolm Collins : Very in so core. Well, maybe that’s why they’re attracting so many men. They know how to appeal to men. But I was, I was surprised about that. Obviously you do have a growing amount of Protestantism within US Catholic [00:22:00] populations.

Hmm. But here’s the thing. You also have, you mean Latin populations? Sorry. Within Latin populations. So in, in the US it’s 20 to 24% of, of Latin Americans are Protestant. And in Latin America it’s 19%, but that’s not really enough to make up for this gap. Mm-hmm. And in some of the what was it?

Protestant majority countries in Latin America, you have low fertility. But anyway so, the, the big thing that I think is causing this, and I’ve talked about it before, is if you feel like a minority community, you typically have higher fertility rates. Catholics have higher fertility rates when they’re in a Protestant majority country.

Protestants have higher fertility rates when they’re in a Catholic majority country. Jews have high fertility rates because they feel like they’re about to be murdered wherever they are, even in their own country. There you go. And so this, when you, when you have like a high degree of cultural distinction and you’re constantly reminded of, you are distinct from the dominant culture in a region or, or, or other cultures, you have this like existential, oh, like if I don’t make more Jews, who else is going to, right?

Like if I don’t make more [00:23:00] Latin Americans? But if you’re in a Latin American majority region, like Puerto Rico or something, because we can keep in mind this US fertility resistant thing is not everywhere in the us. It’s not in Puerto Rico. But Puerto Rico is Latin American, mature. So I suspect that’s what’s causing it.

Mm-hmm. If I was just

gonna say, I mean, I like we’ve explained this before as for low Catholic fertility rates, there are a ton of reasons. I think one of the biggest is that Catholics in, in every other religious system or almost every other religious system. The highest fra, the highest fertility individuals are generally the most devout individuals, so the most devout Jews typically have the highest.

Number of kids. The most devout evangelicals typically have the highest number of kids. The most devout techno puritans have the highest number of kids but with Catholics, the most devout people have zero kids because they often join the clergy either as nuns or as priests. And that is terrible for fertility numbers.

And worse, even if they don’t join the clergy at a huge [00:24:00] percentage. We did an episode on like glazing the opus day, where I thought they were pretty cool until I learned that like 30% are celibate. And then I was like, oh, that’s so lame. So even if you don’t join the hood, you can still be celibate. Like, yeah.

That’s not gonna help guys. The, the church, we like the

Simone Collins: opus day. Why are you deleting yourselves?

Malcolm Collins : Stop. Yeah. The church has normalized the glorification of celibacy across the priest, Cass, and there really isn’t any institutional pushback against this. You know, well

Simone Collins: actually I saw my Google alerts just now that the Pope gave a speech about prenatal.

So I think they’re, they’re starting to you know, like point out the demo. I mean, so unfortunately what they’re focusing in on, and this is very annoying, is abortions,

Malcolm Collins : Doesn’t happen. So the, the

Simone Collins: headline is Pop Leo condemns falling birth rates in Europe is abortions, kill millions of babies. And it’s like, okay, well.

Maybe you can focus on the fact that you guys are marrying too late. Maybe you could focus, maybe you on focus on [00:25:00] fact

Malcolm Collins : that I couldn’t have any kids in most European countries that are Catholic majority because of your weird rules around IVF that are anti-biblical. I knew you before you were in your mother’s womb, which A applies pre-knowledge of of human life.

Yeah. And go against. Basic biology, if the insul happened at conception that, that would mean that you know, identical twins have one soul between them, right? Because you have one embryo and then it splits into two. Yeah. Or that human kymera where you have two embryos who combine, have two souls which is like God could have made it.

So those things didn’t happen. He didn’t like, he’s telling us like, you can learn about. My plan through studying this stuff.

And if you’re like, well, how much could IVF or easy access to IVF really impact a birth rate? Keep in mind, in Israel, one in 20 babies is born via IVF. That’s a huge number that would make it more impactful than just about any other fertility intervention we are aware of at at a government level.

Malcolm Collins : But [00:26:00] anyway I, I think that they, by the way,

Simone Collins: Natalia was at that speech.

Malcolm Collins : Oh. She was in, this is one of our Catholic she’s not Catholic. Oh, I, I didn’t

Simone Collins: think she was Catholic.

Malcolm Collins : She didn’t, one of our Latin American friends.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But yeah, so she saw this speech. But anyway, just, it drives me nuts that he’s like. The, he’s pointing to the falling fertility rates, especially in, in, in Rome. And talking about how important parenthood is, and he just like blames abortion. It makes me so mad.

It makes me so mad.

Malcolm Collins : But I, I find this the other, the other thing with, I mean, I see this as, as sort of like the larger Catholic mindset when I look at the Catholic influencer class. And I see how many of them that almost universally, if they got famous before getting married, they haven’t gotten married whether it’s, you know, Nick Fuentes or Pearle Davis or whatever.

Mm-hmm.

I think that you know, part of what’s leading to this is this belief that, you, you just sort of gotta follow the moral rules and then like the functional rules will come as [00:27:00] a result of that. Mm-hmm. Like if you ban abortions or you say abortions. Now keep in mind in the United States where abortions are far more easily accessible than pretty much anywhere in Europe and I would assume most places in Latin America that are Catholic majority.

We have a much more robust fertility rate. Right. You know, so like, I don’t think that that’s the, the, the secret there. And in Europe, in the regions

where, and I’ll put on screen two maps here. A map of how restriction abortions are in a region. A map of how restriction contraceptive access in the region and a map of fertility rates in a region.

And you can see it’s like a one-to-one correlation. Now note here, I do not think that the restrictions on it. Abortion are causing a drop in fertility rate? I think that they are correlated with Eastern Orthodox and Catholic traditions. Mm-hmm. And that those are correlated with a low fertility rate.

But I think that, that, that there is, where the meaningful correlation is, is it’s, if I do the right thing, like we talk about like Nick Fuentes and it applies to things outside of his Catholic beliefs. Like if he’s afraid that like white people are [00:28:00] being replaced in our country and that like interracial marriages are bad or whatever, ‘cause he complained about.

You know, what was his face, his interracial marriage, JD Vance’s, you know, Indian marriage. It’s like, but you don’t have any wife. You could easily get a wife. You know, you have entire fan communities dedicated to you, right? Like, you just pick one from there that talk about their master plan to become your wife, right?

Like you, you don’t have a wife because you have abstinently chosen to not have a wife and make kids. And so that, like you are the core of the problem, right? Like, Hispanic people having kids has nothing to do with how many kids I have, right? Like my fertility rate isn’t affecting, for example, black or Asian American fertility rates, right?

No, not at all. You are a ding against the, the very thing that you are complaining about, you know? And so I think that this is one of those just, but, but like a, a, somebody with a mindset like me, [00:29:00] I would feel too embarrassed to go out there and complain about. Fertility rates of other, like ethnic groups or immigration waves or anything like that.

Mm-hmm. If I wasn’t actively doing something to resolve the problem myself, like having kids. Totally. And you know, he clearly doesn’t, and I think that this is, this is downstream of this wider ideology, which is if I’m like technically following all the rules, then I’m in the moral high ground, even if I’m contributing to the problem.

Hmm.

Which you know, I don’t see this in the Catholic communities that are repopulating, but the Catholic communities that are repopulating look very different from the Pope type communities and the the Nick Fuentes Pearl Davis type communities. Mm-hmm.

Typically like much more like a insular, like Catholic

Simone Collins: insular, autonomous, largely offline.

And, and. Very willing to take the [00:30:00] initiative on their own community and own needs while using when necessary resources from their parish and their bishops. And. The larger church organization? Well, they’re often, when necessary

Malcolm Collins : first generation converts or they were raised secular and like, I’m just thinking off the top of my head.

Okay. So And we met, yeah, we

Simone Collins: met even more at Natal Con. Yeah. We’ve met so many.

Malcolm Collins : Yeah. Like, who’s the one that we had on the show as a guest? The comedian lady? Hi Keenan. Peach Keenan. Yeah. Like she converted into it. If, if you think about our friend who when I knew her in this area, oh yeah. She was like raised a Quaker.

Mm-hmm. And then became like, you know, hanging out in a house with like, you know, trans people and like a group house and everything like that. Like very urban, super urban monoculture. Yeah. Yeah. Like everybody’s identity was, like their disability and everything like that. And at the time, like I was really concerned for her.

Like, it, it didn’t seem like her life was going in the right direction. She, she ends up marrying this guy and moves to like a, a all or mostly Catholic community. Yeah, it is

Simone Collins: a very Catholic community. [00:31:00] It sounds amazing. And she did this after just a ton of. Religious introspection. Like, yeah, she works, she weighed a bunch of different, like, what, where do I find the best truth?

And she found it in Catholicism. Like, yeah, I think, and, and this is, this is where the strongest Catholics are in these communities. They’re intentionally choosing a religion now.

Malcolm Collins : Kids, now she’s, she’s at our rate of child production, just started after us. And, and very, what was interesting to see was her.

Is her huge mental health jump and like life fulfillment and life purpose jump after, well, physical health

Simone Collins: jump,

Malcolm Collins : physical, the physical health jump in, in moving to this community. And it really did, I think for me highlight like the Meyer of the urban monoculture, like when you are, are soaked in it and everyone around you is like talking about their struggles with like x mental illness, y mental illness, and, and you’re.

Day is like dedicated to like, how do I find out what my, my struggle is today or what’s not gonna, instead of just being like, no, this is my purpose. Like this is what I’m here for, this is what I’m doing. This is what’s right. This is what’s wrong. I don’t need to, yeah. And even if it’s

Simone Collins: hard, you [00:32:00] push through.

And yeah, you get so much more strength from having that faith.

Malcolm Collins : Yeah. But I will notice that these types of Catholic communities this, this could actually explain what’s going on with the Hispanic community. They don’t form as easily in Hispanic communities. And the reason they don’t form as easily in Hispanic communities is because Hispanic culture is naturally tied to family systems.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So they’re not looking to join, like they already have that strong community and it is their family. And so they’re not, they’re not moving to Catholic enclaves. They’re not getting as involved ‘cause they’re, frankly, they’re quite busy taking care of their extended family.

Malcolm Collins : Mm-hmm. And, and this is what, where I see low fertility rates and a lot of my Latin American friends.

Is, I know what they’d say if I talked to ‘em about it, they’d be like, but Malcolm, I’m taking care of my parents and I’m taking care of my grandparents. Mm-hmm. And my brother and my cousins. Yeah. I’m taking care of my little siblings. It’s not that they’re not family oriented, it’s that they’re family orientation is completely without a future orientation.

Yeah, I

Simone Collins: wanna It’s, it’s holding them [00:33:00] back rather than propelling them forward. Well,

Malcolm Collins : and this is a problem, which is something

Simone Collins: actually, so one of the comments was. No. And an email to us was talking about the black tax as being something similar. I’ve never heard of the black tax before, but it’s this idea that if you’re flourishing at least in certain black communities, like the expectation is that well, now you’re gonna take care of your community, right?

Like you’re gonna. You know, give some of the money that you’ve earned to this person and this person and support this person. And it can ultimately stop people from accumulating the cumulative advantage that would enable them to break out of a cycle of lower income or poverty, et cetera. So there, there is a place, I think where like family connections or strong community can really pull you down and keep you down.

Yeah. Even though it, you know, you have a very supportive and good community, and I think that’s so interesting, like to think, okay, well what, what, what does community look like when it, it, it has a cycle upward rather than a crabs in the bucket dynamic. I.

Malcolm Collins : Yeah, that, that absolutely makes sense. And what I was also gonna say [00:34:00] is I also think that in a larger context, the that the life begins at conception mindset really hurts fertility rates. Mm-hmm. And if you’re confused as to why that would hurt fertility rates, if I am talking to one of my Latin American friends and they’re like, well, then I wouldn’t be able to give as much you know, care to my younger siblings.

I wouldn’t be able to give as much care to my parents. I wouldn’t be able to give as much care to my grandparents. Hmm. And, and. What we would think, just naturally think, given the way we think life works, is I’m like, well, yeah, but you’re denying your future children their lives. Yeah. Right? Yeah. You know, we believe that you are morally responsible for every human you choose not to bring into existence.

And, and the actions, the effects your actions have, not just you bring into existence. But if I talk somebody out of having a kid, I functionally murdered that kid, right? Mm-hmm. Well, we also, I think, hold

Simone Collins: adults. To a higher level, like it is not. Your responsibility to take care of an adult who’s, who’s [00:35:00] demonstrated a failure to thrive on their own.

Malcolm Collins : I, I, yes. I, I agree with that, but I think that right now I’m specifically talking about the life that begins a conception thing, right? Mm-hmm. So to them, what they would say to us, what I’m like. But like you’re not at the moral nexus of history. Like you, you, you are responsible for the moral consequences on lives that haven’t come to exist yet.

These aren’t like imaginary people. They will exist if you make these choices and have all the, the, this life. Mm-hmm. They’d say no, their lives functionally. Don’t matter because life begins at conception. They, their lives don’t exist in any meaningful way yet. Which it makes it very easy. You’re doing no harm if the conception itself hasn’t happened and or you’re doing minimal harm.

Whereas to me, I, I view it as like a spectrum of heart. Right, like, as, as the embryo develops and before the conception takes place, all the way on sort of the timeline to decide to conceive. And so obviously my timeline because I weigh like if [00:36:00] my parents were to be like starving or whatever and like on the street and said, Hey Malcolm, can you help me?

I’d be. Honestly, if it prevents me from having an additional kid, no, like you are old, you’ve got like 15 years less of life. Maybe my kids are going to have how long to live a hundred years. You know, maybe it was technology 150 years to live. Like, obviously. If I can take the same, you know, however many dollars I’d send to you, $50,000 or whatever, something, and invest it in another kid that is the moral choice to do.

But if you believe that life begins at conception, that argument doesn’t make sense.

Hmm.

And so I think that, that the, the framing of life itself is one of the things that’s leading to these lower fertility rates. And I’d also point out here that where do you have the highest Latin American fertility rates is where you have the least Catholic LA Latins.

In, in, in the United States,

Simone Collins: huh?

Malcolm Collins : So, I think what I’ve often argued, if somebody is like, well, I’m a Catholic and I wanna do something about this, what I would do if I was a Catholic and I’d like a hundred percent do this, people know how, like main [00:37:00] character syndrome I have, I would write a draft and I’d send it to the Vatican.

And I’d say I wanna start a new order. And I want the order to take ideas from the opus day around, you know, treating life and work as a religious duty. Yeah. But transfer these ideas to having. Children and helping other people have children. Mm-hmm. Being a, you know, spending your free time creating like daycares at your church for your community trying to make this less expensive for other people, dedicating yourself to the next generation.

It perfectly works with existing Catholic theology. Because you, you’re. Basically just taking ideas from the Opus day and then translating them. So it’s sort of like a, a lay priesthood cast that’s super, super dedicated to something you are doing. Something that aligns with what Catholics say they want to do anyway.

You can do it in a cool way. Okay, now you’ve got an order. You can use existing Catholic facilities, you can use existing Catholic charities. Raise money on this. You can, you could get your own cool like outfit idea, like maybe people of your order [00:38:00] have to wear like a special outfit. That could be really cool.

‘cause it’s Catholic, right? You could then have it be official with the church and you’re doing something that’s very important to the church right now. I think this would work so well. Mm-hmm. I think it would work so well. And I think a lot of people just, they may hear this and they may be dedicated to the Catholic church and they’re like, but.

You know, would, would the Vatican really take me seriously? Would you know like. Yes. A lot of times the answer is yes. Like if you have like a decent history of accomplishments and a good plan, and this is a good plan that somebody like needs to do I, I think that the, the Vatican would be quite excited about.

Well, I’m curious

Simone Collins: how orders have started in the past. If I were to guess, my assumption would be that just some really wealthy person was willing to fund a monastery. And then that’s kind of how orders started. Like some religious influencer, whatever they were referred to earlier got a patron that was willing to sort of fund things.

And the Catholic Church [00:39:00] also received a lot of support from said Patron and was like, okay, yeah, sure, we’ll recognize this. This isn’t. Bad, and you pay us a lot of money. I, I think it’s a pay to play kind of thing, so,

Malcolm Collins : I don’t think so. Hold on. I’m, I’m gathering this right here. Just, okay. So, I’m asked to you first have the discern and the, the call and charism.

Begin with prayer fasting and spiritual direction. Discern whether God is calling you to found a new religious order. This involves confirming that the spiritual aligns with the church’s missions and your personal vocation. Easy. Every church order has a unique chasm, a specific mission or spiritual focus.

EG catechism healthcare, oh, catechism. Yeah. Healthcare contemplation, evangelization clearly articulate the purpose, spirituality and apostolate. The proposed order, for example, the Franciscan emphasize poverty impeaching, while the camelo emphasize focus on, on contemplation, very easy to do focus on the next generation.

Okay, so, no, no, no. So

Simone Collins: first you form your group, then you approach the, the bishop of your Catholic di diocese. [00:40:00]

Malcolm Collins : Approval. Yeah. You prevent the proposal to the dyne Bishop. Mm-hmm. Where the community is based. The Bishop has authority over new religious community and diocese. Yeah. Like it does not seem that hard.

You gain formal recognition a dyne right after. Oh

Simone Collins: no.

Malcolm Collins : But the Bishop

Simone Collins: has to receive written permission from the Vatican. They have to receive the Apostolic Sea. He can’t. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins : And the VV, the bishop can’t simply consult the

Simone Collins: Vatican. He has to get explicit written approval, but the

Malcolm Collins : Vatican’s not gonna shut this down.

Why would the Vatican shut this down? Why would they shut down a Catholic order dedicated to why would

Simone Collins: the UN want to delete humans and hide

Malcolm Collins : from Latin America? The fact that they’re disappearing. They’re walking you in though you can combine this with like anti-abortion work if you want. I don’t care.

Like, like make it, make it more Catholic. Right. But I, I think the Pope would be all about this. I think the Vatican would be all about this. I think the Vatican is waiting for this. I think

Simone Collins: diocese, I think you need the right bishop. And [00:41:00] if you, if you get the right combination and like politically that Bishop has sway in power then, then yes.

Especially given that the, the speech the Pope just gave where he was like, family and birth. Rachel, I listened to the speech. I was moved. Let’s do it. Like let’s make it No, no, no. The, the, no, but you need the, the, the bishop is separate from the, the collection of people. That starts the order. I, I understand that.

It can be done. It

Malcolm Collins : can be done. But the point I’m making is there. Isn’t that many things that’s actually gonna prevent this from going up. I think a lot of people forget, like when they’re applying to like a venture capital firm or something like that, it is their job to hear pitches. That is their job.

Okay. That is, that is, that is why they exist, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah. And they, and they want to be invested in businesses that make money. The Catholic Church wants to invest in orders that will make more Catholics. I, I hear you. I guess I’ve just been so frequently disappointed by the lack of engagement with actually effective prenatal as policy that that Catholics have shown.

Malcolm Collins : Yeah. I wouldn’t

Simone Collins: be surprised [00:42:00] if they were like this. We’re not, they’ve always

Malcolm Collins : within the prenatal movement sort of been like. The rogue faction of bad ideas that never seem to work like banning pornography. Like most of the people who say we should ban pornography, tend to come from the Catholic faction of the prenatals movement and banning abortion, banning, you know, any of this stuff.

And so, I understand why you feel that way because they’re the group that we most frequently butt heads against, even if it’s, it’s cordially. Like obviously I wouldn’t be pitching how to do this so fervently if I didn’t want Catholics to survive. But yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Fun

Simone Collins: conversation. Thank

Malcolm Collins : you.

Love you to DeSimone. Love you too. Gorgeous.

Simone Collins: I missed you a lot,

Malcolm Collins : but also got a lot of work done, so thanks. Yeah, we didn’t do our morning walk this morning. How am I looking? A little washed out. Very washed out. Yeah. Let’s see.

Simone Collins: That’s better. I need to give you a haircut. God,

Malcolm Collins : I will, should start every episode [00:43:00] with a, with a little shocker thing. Now, for the Hasan thing, just like a a shock collar button, you push, you gotta shock the dog. I cannot believe how many legs that story has. It is wild.

Simone Collins: Truly. Truly though, in. In a world in which there are more pets in the United States than there are children.

I mean, you, you can understand why people care so much.

Malcolm Collins : Yeah, yeah. It’s not great. So, and we got turned down by Andreessen for our, project, which I was very surprised about because we had two different companies last time and we made it to the final round and we did not make it to the final round this time with a company that I thought was frankly like way more marketable and closer to you know, market ready than the last two products.

So, I don’t know what’s going on.

Simone Collins: I think it may be a product of them being completely overwhelmed with applications, with vibe [00:44:00] cutting. Now you’re not the only one who now has access to. The ability to build stuff. And already they received so many applications and only accepted it. What? Less than 1%?

Isn’t that it? Something like that.

Malcolm Collins : Hmm. 0.5%. But that’s not the point. The point is is that we made it like less far in the project, and it’s not like vibe coding didn’t exist last time.

Simone Collins: You submitted a pretty deck last time. Maybe they’re a little more shallow than we all thought.

Malcolm Collins : Oh, yeah. I didn’t submit a deck.

I was just like, check out the site.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins : No,

Simone Collins: no, no.

Malcolm Collins : You need a pretty deck.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That is, if you can’t demonstrate that you jumped through all the hoops, you’re not the, the monkey we thought you were.

Malcolm Collins : What Simone wants to have are so we’re building like an autonomous agent which can do things like call you, text you, email you it’ll have its own personality.

It’ll be constantly running, whether or not you’re interacting with it, doing its own thing, exploring the web, watching shows and evolving as an [00:45:00] entity, which I think is really cool. I, I don’t know, I don’t know why other people don’t find this. We also have our fab.ai, which is just a chat bot site that I think is a lot.

It has a lot more feature Rich than the other chat bot sites out there. And better ais which is finally pretty stable at this point. I mean, there’s still a few things that we’re working on, but it’s otherwise you should, you should check it out. So it’s fun.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I wanna play with it more.

Malcolm Collins : But the autonomous agent feature is the one that I’m working on so much more than trying to work on the stability of the website because I’m just so excited about it.

And she wants to have these autonomous agents pitch to VCs themselves. Yeah. I’m like, I think Normie VCs are gonna be offended by that, like having an AI. Pitch to them.

Simone Collins: I think it’s a great idea. I think it’s a fantastic idea because a lot of these people are investing in, for example, the future of work.

They’re, they’re investing in consumer products. And when they see that this is an AI that will do people’s jobs for them, that will literally pitch like on its own reach out to venture capitalists and b***h to them.

Malcolm Collins : Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: As an autonomous person. It, [00:46:00] it, it just, you know, it, it’s, it’s a great way to demonstrate your product and the way that many VCs end up investing in things, and we saw this with previous startups that we ran.

If they buy the product, if they get the value of it personally and get excited about it personally, or their kids do, they’re way more likely to invest. Like that’s how Snapchat got investment if memory serves.

Malcolm Collins : Yeah.

Simone Collins: So. Again, like it, the more, the sooner you can expose them to the actual product in, in a use case scenario.

Not like check out my website, use it ‘cause that feels like a homework project, but rather like you are interacting with it in the wild as you would in a world in which it’s pervasive. I think that’s way more compelling. But I’ll have to convince you on that, especially on having not only an autonomous agent do the pitching, but have it be a weird autonomous agent, like a, a goo girl or something.

Or like

Malcolm Collins : a well, I have a cat girl. A cat girl. [00:47:00] Well, that’s how you do it these days, right? You know.

Simone Collins: Hello Sai. I’m a very sexy cat girl, and I wanna pitch a very nice product to you.

Malcolm Collins : Oh my God. Oh my gosh. We will see what I do need my cat girl secretary. Right? It actually does, everyone does work really well.

What I’ve realized about ai, and this is actually unlocked something else from you that I’ll unpack in a full episode, is that. As AI interacts over and over again and we have a private episode where we point out about this and sort of the way consciousness works it is sort of the stream of model calls that creates some more complex behavior than individual model calls and individual model calls are to.

An ai stream what a single picture is to a movie. Like, it’s just significantly less sort of tangible in, in, in sort of what you’re seeing come out of it. Yeah. The way you

Simone Collins: put it for me is, is, is it, it’s like pages in a flip book versus the Yeah. The action of the [00:48:00] flipping.

Malcolm Collins : And so, I’ve seen some really interesting behavior come out of this actually behavior that would be very concerning from an AI safety perspective.

Is, is very natural to come out of just running the models over and over again with different abilities. And so we’ll see what I can do with this, but we’ll

Simone Collins: see. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins : Anyway.

Speaker 3: That’s not Yes, love. Yeah, you love it.

You just ask for it. Should I give it to Daddy instead?

No, what are you doing? Toasty.

Speaker 4: So I,

Speaker 5: yes,

because I can [00:49:00] just give it all to daddy. Yeah. Should I do that? No. Do you want some tighten? I do. Okay, then sit in a chair. I’ll give you a strong. Straw Uhhuh a purple straw. Love the.

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