This episode examines what the Bible actually teaches about the qualities of a good wife, focusing on the Hebrew term often rendered as virtuous but more accurately conveying strength, capability, and valor. We walk through Proverbs 31 in detail along with supporting passages from Ruth and the New Testament to show how Scripture describes a productive, self-controlled, and resourceful partner.The discussion covers translation history, the emphasis on work and investment rather than appearance, the role of self-control, and practical applications for modern Christian households. It also addresses common misconceptions about traditional roles and highlights the consistent biblical picture of a capable wife who strengthens her family.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins:Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be exploring what the bible says you should look for in a wife. Oh. And surprise, surprise, the bible being a great and wise book. The wisest of books says that you should look for a tomboy. Not a woman who dresses like a guy, but otherwise, most of the traits we today would associate with a tomboy. And I appreciate that the writers of the bible were men of culture. Oh my gosh.Simone Collins:Okay. Great.Malcolm Collins:And this has been hidden a lot from modern readings of the bible because the word that makes it especially clear Okay. Has... Essentially, it was it was really well translated for most of the bible’s history until we got to pretty modern translations. Okay. Like, how modern? Like, many of the English translations, for example.Simone Collins:Okay. So, like, Elizabethan, like, King James, they started messing with it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins:They started translating a word that... Into into virtuous very frequently, but the word is not virtuous. And it’s a word that is commonly when it’s talking about, like, what a good woman is in in the Old Testament. And can you guess what this word is most commonly used to describe... Like, it’s it’s common normal usage. Rugged? It’s used to describe the power of an army. Like, it is a very aggressive word. It is a word that we will we will get into. Okay. Because when you when you understand that and we... And we’ll go through it in context, we’ll go through when it’s used to describe the strength of an army, you will see that what it expects of women. And then we’re gonna go through more of what the New Testament says about women and longer bits of the Old Testament, and the bible is not shy about this tomboy aesthetic. And you will realize, Simone, that you are closer than you would imagine to the true tradwife. Have you defined a tradwife by aSimone Collins:Oh, perfect. You really keep trying to make me into a tradwife.Malcolm Collins:The true trad wife is the tomboy trad wife, Simone.Simone Collins:You slept in my childhood bedroom for, like, three months when you were out on She painted it all pink. Yeah. It was itMalcolm Collins:was a very it was very small. Pink like all of your knives. You know? Your pink knife collection. It was so girly.Simone Collins:So not tomboy, obviously.Malcolm Collins:But she showed it to me on the first date I went to her house. She’s like, look at all my knives.Simone Collins:They’re super cute. I should display them around here. We can I have a a knife wall? That would be super cute. I... They’re just right up there in the attic. They’re, like, 30 feet from me right now. Do it. Okay.Malcolm Collins:Very on on brand for our culture. Yeah. So the... There’s four instances in which this happens, the the use of this word. We’ve got Ruth three eleven. We’ve got Proverbs twelve four. We’ve got Proverbs thirty one ten, which is the opening of the famous poem that we’re gonna get... Read through the whole thing Which does a... Is very explicit on this. It’s a a mom telling her son what he should look for in a wife and bemoaning how hard it is to find these tomboys. Where where where can I find these women? So the wordSimone Collins:Oh, so nothing has changed because this is what I hear from the young eligible gentleman of base camp.Malcolm Collins:Yes. The Shaiol... Obviously, I’m pronouncing it wrong, is a masculine noun whose core meanings are strengths, efficiency, ability, valor, wealth, and or it’s often just directly translated as army or host.Simone Collins:I mean, that sounds good in any partner. Yes. That seems solid. I would I would encourage our sons to get that for sure.Malcolm Collins:Strength, efficiency, and ability. I’m like, yeah.Simone Collins:Go for it. Too. Like, I mean, any spouse, you would probably want those things. No one wants an inefficient spouse.Malcolm Collins:Any any... There there are lines that basically say you should not focus on a woman with lots of jewelry. You shouldn’t focus on a woman, which I also think is a pretty advice.Simone Collins:Isn’t that a representation of wealth?Malcolm Collins:However Who over gussies herself up. You shouldn’t focus on... Yeah. So we’re we’re gonna learn aSimone Collins:about that. Inefficient, and that is actually, if anything, a sign of weakness.Malcolm Collins:It is it is used, and it’s good advice. Like, one thing I’m gonna say that I like about this is I actually think if I was going to build, like, a guide for my own kids on what to look for in a wife, it’s going to look a lot like what the Bible says. Okay? Now note this word is used extensively for military forces, for mighty men of valor, or something. When the subject of the woman, English bibles often softened it to virtuous, excellent, or noble character.Simone Collins:Okay.Malcolm Collins:Where if you look in the Jewish tradition, it’s often translated as woman of valor or woman of strength, which I still think undersells it. Alright? Now to understand how this word is normally used, if you look at something like Exodus fourteen nine or fourteen twenty eight or fifteen four Pharaoh’s... Oh, s**t. This word, army, is is what it’s described as. The the the Oh,Simone Collins:so you... That you see the same word explicitly used to describe an army.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. In judges six twelve, the angel calls Gideon a man of mighty valor, and that’s the same word there. In Judges, Jeff... Jepheshin is introduced as a mighty man of valor. And you see this Samuel’s nine one. You see this Kings five one. It’s it’s a common. Okay. So... And you’ll see how when you look at these translations, if you look at a a common English translation, it’ll say something like, thou art a virtuous woman, where if you translated it more directly, you would say, you are a strong woman. Or a modern English translation will say, a virtuous woman is a crown to her husband, whereas a more direct translation would say, a courageous wife is a crown to her husband. or you will see a virtuous, who shall find a virtuous woman? and then better translation was probably who can find a courageous wife. Or we’ll say obtain wealth wrought valiantly. And then it might otherwise be translated as obtained wealth many did mighty things. So if you were asking when did it get fully translated, if you go to the Septuagint, which uses Greek, it was translated as a woman of power and strength, courageous, or a manly slash brave wife. A manly wife. Adara.Simone Collins:That’s pretty tomboy coded. Okay.Malcolm Collins:So this this comes from Adara relating to anor or man, meaning fortitude. So, like, the early translators knew, like, you know, when the... They were originally writing the the New Testament, they would have known that there’s been a manly wife.Simone Collins:Like youMalcolm Collins:want a a tough woman here.Speaker 3:So I double checked this just to make sure I wasn’t making any mistakes. And, yeah, the Septuagint was translated in the third to second century BC, and it renders the Hebrew as the word Andrea, which means man, the root manliness. but in ancient Greek and in Hellenistic periods, it was also used to mean courage, fortitude, bravery, as a result of the strengths of character.Malcolm Collins:In the Armeniac terrorism, it’s something like a skilled woman. In the Latin Vulgate, even going into the Latin Vulgate, it continues with the term strong woman, or or as virtuous. And then in Proverbs, in later English translations, especially the King James version, it was translated to virtuous. Alright? So I will now read you, the pope Proverbs 31, where the mom of a king is telling her son what to look like, what to look for in a wife. Okay? So she says, a wife, and then of this word character, who can find? She is worth more... Far more than rubies. So no. No. Going into it right here, it’s this it’s this doting Jewish mom. Like, god. If I could just find you a tomboy wife, that’d be worth more than all the rubies, which is true. Good advice. Worth more than rubies. Yeah. Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. Again, this is when you say that your wife is subordinate to you, when you lack confidence in her or if you choose a woman who you expect to not have confidence in, you have failed. That is that is step number one in choosing a wife. Have confidence in this person. I think that’s actually really good. It’s not the advice that I would give off the top of my head, but when I think about it, yes, someone who you can have confidence in is probably the first thing you wanna check off on your wife search.Simone Collins:Well, especially if they’re subordinate to you. Because if they’re subordinate to you, you are delegating them tasks, and you can’t delegate things to someone in whom you do not have confidence.Malcolm Collins:And what’s cool about doing episodes like this is I think they can be useful even to our atheist followers or followers of other religious traditions. Sure. Simply because the bible gives such good advice, we can talk through life advice, like what to look for in a wife, by just reading and analyzing what’s in the bible.Simone Collins:Yeah. It’s like Nux says. He’s like, well, I mean, like, it’s been around for thousands of years, so maybe there’s something to it.Malcolm Collins:Yes. well, other people would be like, well, that means it’s old and outdated. And I’m like, well, it... It’s remarkably not, which I find quite quite fun. And I think, actually, the areas where our society is failing most right now are areas where people have reinterpreted the parts of the bible, like the kill them all parts, that they felt were outdated or just the way war was fought during that period. And I always point out that God actively chose to punish Saul for not killing them all and tells Saul that’s why he’s punishing him. You can make up all of the other reasons. You could say, well, Saul was bad in these other ways. That’s not why God said he’s punishing him. He says it’s because you didn’t kill them all. Like, God clearly meant it. Right? You know, God God had somebody stoned to death for not doing the status. Right? Like, I I guess he was just mistaken back then. you know? so I I think where we’re loosening restrictions to try to more modernize... And a lot of Christians do this. They go as this buddy Christ version of Christianity where the bible’s all, you know, sunshine and roses. And I think that that has made our society very susceptible to, groups that want to exploit us. And, fortunately, I feel that we are getting back a a real Christianity, in this generation, and I see it from other online speakers and stuff like this. This is a a Christianity that can fight a crusade or do witch hunts or, you know, all the fun stuff we used to do. Now back back to the text here. no. Obviously, not the bad witch hunts, but they’re... You know, I think I think we’ve we’ve created a problem where we have, like, active hordes of swamp hags now. See our swamp hag episode. Actually, I should add that to the religious tracks. To continue here, she brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life. She selects wool and flax and works with eager hands. She is like the merchant ships, bringing her food from afar. Sorry. Really?Simone Collins:SheMalcolm Collins:gets up while it is still night. She provides for her family and portions for her male... Female servants. By the way, does any of this not describe you so far, Simone?Simone Collins:I don’t have female servants. I don’t wanna be around people.Malcolm Collins:Yes. You do. You literally have a bunch of employees at a company that is mostly female that you Oh.Simone Collins:Basically have a idea. Me. They give me problems. but, yes, I guess, we we work with That’sMalcolm Collins:the way servants always were for for women. They were... Come on. You you don’t read enough historic romance, Simone,Simone Collins:to Okay. Great. Yeah. I guess, yeah, you you know how it is to be a villainous girl boss.Malcolm Collins:Continue here. She considers a female and buys it out of earnings she plants in a vineyard. So what’s she doing here? And this is something that goes againstSimone Collins:buying a slave?Malcolm Collins:She... No. She considers a field and buys it.Simone Collins:I thought you said she considers a female and buys it. Oh my god. Okay. Phew.Malcolm Collins:But she’s buying She’sSimone Collins:buying property.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. She’s meant to be worked and provide income for the family. Yeah. This is This isSimone Collins:a corporate family girl boss is what it is.Malcolm Collins:The idea that a woman should not work is very directly contradicted here. Now what you could say is you might be able to lower it to, like, she should be a corporate wife. But most... Sorry. For people who do not know what a corporate family is, that’s where the husband and wife work together on a joint family project like our fab for us. We boast code for our fab. We boast code for Mudpuppy. We boast code for all of our sites. We boast do promotion for it. We boast do promotion on this. I might be the leading voice in it. I might be the male or the the the the dominant voice in these things, and I might technically be, like, the manager of it. But Simone is still actively working on it, and I think that really keeps both the biblical... The wife working at home because you can buy fields while working at home. Right? Like, that’s a a work from home kind of a thing. and so when so often peoples look at these tradelives, and they go, they’re earning money. That’s not what a traditional woman should do, you know, with their content, for example. Well, that’s not what the Old Testament says.Simone Collins:Well, also peep... Well, that’s because people think that what trad wife means is woman who only does homemaking, which never was the case. Never. Never. Never. I’ve like, well, woman never just cleaned the house, took care of the kids, educated the kids, and cooked. She also managed the family’s agricultural businesses, did bookkeeping for her husband, like, did all the others... All the other stuff. I mean, like, you did some other episode where, like, basically, women just do the majority of the work. And the husband’s got high risk, high reward, like, basically, venture capital work of the family, the sword and shield relationship.Malcolm Collins:That was such a good episode. I gotta add that to the Yeah. You should.Simone Collins:You should. Because this... That is what seems to be described here. And at first, I was like, I don’t know. This just sounds like, I don’t know. Get a good wife. What are they? They’re good at stuff, but they aren’t describing beauty. They aren’t describing modesty. Like, picture of a biblical wife was modest, veiled, like, kind of, you know, nurturing, doesn’t talk ever. You know? All of that isMalcolm Collins:an act, and it’s it’s an act that I think often is is indicative of a woman who is going to be a pain in the butt to be married to, to be frank. Because for women who prefer seeing themselves as, like, this ideal trad woman, they then make your relationship about seeing themselves that way, honoring themselves in that way rather than being a productive and useful partner. and note here, we haven’t we haven’t gotten to anything about that sort of stuff yet. Yeah. we’re we’re we’re all on, like, how useful is she to you? Is she buying the right stuff for the family? Is she going out and getting supplies? Is she a good investor? Is she, good at work? Right? And and note here, because two things are implied by this. She considers the field and buys it, and out of earning, she plants a vineyard. And out of her earnings, she plants a vineyard. She’s earning from this field. Okay? Yeah. It’s saying that she’s not just, like, taking a job and making money, but she’s taking a job, making money, and then reinvesting that money into things that make more money.Simone Collins:Yeah. You’re right. Yeah. Buying fields... Then, like, purpose of the field is both probably to sustain the family, but also make more money. So the family has more optionality with other projects.Malcolm Collins:And I will note here, males and females each have their own role within a family. I think there is a high degree of gender dichotomy. I am not saying that a woman should take on a man’s role, but I am saying that the role ButSimone Collins:the bible is saying a lot more about a woman’s role or... And range of work than I think what many traditional Christian couples would wantMalcolm Collins:to be. The point I was gonna make is that... I I wouldn’t even say a lot of traditional Christians. I I think most traditional Christians actually grok this stuff.Simone Collins:I mean, performative... The ones that I see talking online don’t seem toMalcolm Collins:Yeah. But the the the point I was going to make is that, historically, if we’re asking what are the roles of a woman, one of the roles of a woman, historically speaking, was often managing investments and the family finances. this is true across cultures. it it was so true that there was a major, like, stock market phenomenon called to Japan by all of the housewives investing on the stock market becauseSimone Collins:I’m just housewives. Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins:it’s it’s what we do in our family. In our family, Simone controls all the money. She controls all the investments. She is... She doesn’t have... I have final sale investments, but fundamentally, she controls and advises the investments. Right now, we’re doing a strategy of investment that is based on her investment hypothesis predominantly. And this is because I think of the things that women are good at, one of them surprisingly is investments. AndSimone Collins:Which is weird because all of, like, the investment people online are dudes pretty much.Malcolm Collins:Well, now this might be my experience with you, and maybe it’s unique. But I think one of the reasons why women, in my experience, are better investors than men for the average family... Now if you’re talking about the very best of the best, it’s always gonna be men because men are on the outer edge of the of the curve. Right? But I’m talking on average.Simone Collins:Like, with anything pretty muchMalcolm Collins:aside from having babies. Women grow less anxious from what I have seen than men when number goes down, and they get less greedy when number goes up.Simone Collins:For sure.Malcolm Collins:And when, you know, Bitcoin is is down, I’m always, oh, we should sell it. You know, we we can’t we can’t lose more money. You know, like, it could just takeSimone Collins:a little sale. Women love a sale. Somehow girl meth sometimes turns out for investments. Who knew? Or... So IMalcolm Collins:think women are very, very good at that, and I think that it’s it’s good that the bible is pointing this out. And then it says, she sees her trading as profitable, and her lamp does not go out at night. So what what is what is being said here? She’s profitable. And OhSimone Collins:my god. I want a girl who gets up early. Want a girl who stays up late. I want a girl with uninterrupted prosperity who uses a machete to cut through red tape.Malcolm Collins:that’sSimone Collins:biblical. That’s biblical wife. Yeah. It’s just him. It’s a him. Short skirt,Malcolm Collins:line jacket. Heard that song, and I was like, I want a wife like this. And apparently, somebody ISimone Collins:heard that song, and I was like, I want to be that woman.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. That’s that’s a bible wife. Right?Simone Collins:That’s a... It’s a And and note thatMalcolm Collins:the the... What is meant here and her lamp does not go out at night, this isn’t saying... This isn’t, like, some random poetry or something. During that time period, your lamp not going out at night meant you were working after it was dark. Yeah. Okay? So it’s already said that she wakes up early. Okay?Simone Collins:Yeah.Malcolm Collins:And she goes to sleep late. Alright? This mom is maybe not the stepmom you want. You know, like, hey. Are you working nonstop and making my son money? You can tellSimone Collins:she’s Jewish. Oh, not stepmom. Mother-in-law.Malcolm Collins:Oh, yeah. Mother-in-law. Yeah. Yeah. You can tell this was a Jewish mother-in-law. Right?Simone Collins:Coming over being like in law.Malcolm Collins:Are you making that money for my son?Simone Collins:Yeah. Oh, boy. I was gonna say, thisMalcolm Collins:is coming from the Jewish part of the bible, so they got some, you know, they got some some good stuff here.Simone Collins:Yeah.Malcolm Collins:In her hand, she holds the distaff and grasps the spindle with her fingers. so note here, this is saying that she is producing clothing. what was a distaff?Simone Collins:Hey. I don’t know either. Distaff. A traditional hand spinning tool used to hold unspun fibers such as flax, wool, or cotton. Yeah. They did mention flax and wool. Right?Malcolm Collins:Yeah. So saying that she’s making Stuff. Both the clothes. Stuff that you use to make clothes and the clothes itself, which is, you know, again, if you’re like, women don’t have jobs or whatever, shouldn’t have jobs, like, that’s a job. That’s a job. Like, you can make stuff just for your family, true, but in this period, what was normal in the corporate family is you would make extra and sell it. Right? Like, that was the way a lot of families oper... That wasn’t a way a lot. That was the way the normal family would have operated in the role of a normal woman or wife until very recently in a family.Simone Collins:Yeah.Malcolm Collins:She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy. And I think that this is a very feminine thing that is good to have in a woman, but it is something that you as a husband will need to fight because I can tell you Simone is too far on this spectrum here. Also, Simone, you literally repair our kids’ teddy bears with a needle and thread. You repair our clothing, our blankets with a needle and thread. Very well. I’m just saying so far, this is a 100% you. Gosh. More valuable than rubies, Simone. More valuable than rubies, you are.Simone Collins:Rubies aren’t worth very much now that they can be lab grown. So Okay. But, yeah, yeah, a ruby’s not gonna lactate. A ruby’s not gonna bring you a child, so that’s true.Malcolm Collins:When it snows, she has no fear for her household for all of them are closed in scarlet. So this is saying they’re all they all have plenty to wear in the winter, which you make sure of as well. You get very worried about cold children.Simone Collins:It’s a mother thing. Look. You see in A Christmas Story how the mother dresses up her child so much that he can’t put his arms down because it’s a mother... You’re like, you can’t... There’s this visceral pain that a mother feels uponMalcolm Collins:the All the way back to the caged tombs of old.Simone Collins:Yes.Malcolm Collins:They they they too had these pains.Simone Collins:Yes. And they survived. Okay. Their children were okay because they didn’t freeze in the winter. Better to be warm than not.Malcolm Collins:Then she makes coverings for her bed. She is closed in fine linen and purple. So Not red and purple. Fancy. Yes. It’s very nice. But I... The the coverings of her bed... Note here, it doesn’t say that she makes anyone else’s bed.Simone Collins:It says she But they all kinda slept together, didn’t they? Kinda snuggle up.Malcolm Collins:I mean, it was for a king, so probably not.Simone Collins:Oh, well.Malcolm Collins:And Jewish kings often had lots of wives. So... You know?Simone Collins:Yeah. I guess they can’t all fit in one bed. Like, that famous in bed in in England that, like, everyone wanted to sleep in that fit, like, few people. God husband? Animals in that.Malcolm Collins:Okay. Then it continues. Her husband is respected at the city gate where he takes his seat among the elders of the land. So note, the Jews had this court that they would hold at the city gate to to to do, like, legal stuff. it’s talking about this court. It’s basically saying that the husband is active in civil matters, and the wife is allowing him to be active in civil matters from the income that she’s bringing in and from She subsidizes his public service. Yep.Simone Collins:Okay.Malcolm Collins:She makes linen garments and sells them. Note here. It’s explicitly saying and sells them. She’s doing work. Okay? And supplies the merchants with sashes. So she’s making garments.Simone Collins:The merchants need their sashes. God forbid, they go out without a sash on.Malcolm Collins:What is also fascinating about this is this is the mother of a future king giving her son, the future king, advice. And I think that this is really important because it’s clear that this woman will not need money. She’s going to be the the king of the Jews, the queen of the Jews. Okay? Even not needing money, she is still not just investing like the type of money that can make manifold money, and that was listed earlier as even more important, but she is sowing and selling the things she sells to local merchants. This is a woman who is above all else a productive asset to the household. Busy. Busy. Again, when you say to somebody, you are not a child wife because you’re making money, that is wrong. That is not... That is nonbiblical. Okay? She is closed with strengths and dignity. She can laugh at the days to come. She speaks with wisdom and faithful instruction on her tongue. Now note here, we have still not gotten to anything about acting, weak or acting, you know, overtly or performatively humble.Simone Collins:Pretty. We haven’t gotten to any of that yet.Malcolm Collins:Anything about prettiness. That is not an issue here Wow. Is apparently Jewish moms.Simone Collins:Okay.Malcolm Collins:The the note also, the idea that your wife can be submissive to you and still speak with wisdom with faithful instruction on her tongue. Like, that instruction is clearly meant for the husband. Right? It is this a woman who is going to give you good instruction. And men who think that a woman or their wife should never advise them or give them instructions are nonbiblical men. A woman should not teach a church. That does not mean that she should not instruct her husband in morality. Also, I do like the line, she is closed in strengths and dignity. Strength and dignity, it talks about before these other things, and she can laugh at the days to come. Oh, that’s Basically mean, like, when when life is hard, when you need strength and dignity, she doesn’t allow herself to become emotional. We haveSimone Collins:to Also, she can find the humor in things. And one of my favorite things about life is that we laugh a lot. Right.Malcolm Collins:But I think that this brings us to one of the techno puritan sort of demands of our religion, one of the sins of our religion that a lot of people... You know, is is an actual biblical sin as we’re seeing here is to become... Like, allow the hardships in your life to emotionally affect the way that you appear to your family and those around you. Because acting sad, being sad only hurts your family members. it hurts your kids. It hurts the people who rely on you.Simone Collins:The people who you love most and the people who’d be best able to support you.Malcolm Collins:Yes. And so this is what it’s talking about here. The acting with strengths and dignity and laughing at the days to come. It’s saying not just when life is hard, do you sit and grin and bear it, but you laugh at the days to come. Because that is something that is within your control. How you interpret the world around you is always within your control. How you interpret your challenges, is always within your control. and this is what we want from a wife. her chill She watches over the affairs of the household and does not eat the bread of idleness. So she’s not idle. Well, I mean, we already know because apparently she’s getting up early and going to bed late. her children arise and call her blessed, her husband also, and he praises her. So, again, sometimes people are like, oh, Malcolm, you gas up Simone too much. You’re supposed to praise your wife. That should be normal. You should be normal praising your wife.Simone Collins:Aw. Malcolm.Malcolm Collins:Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all. Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting. But I knowSimone Collins:The first time these things come up, which I thought were kind of a thing, they’re downplayed. They are...Malcolm Collins:Not downplayed. Scene is actively negative.Simone Collins:Wow. Beauty is pretty surprising.Malcolm Collins:And charm is deceptive.Simone Collins:Okay. WellMalcolm Collins:I I would note the beauty is fleeting. This is being said by a Jewish woman. And of the people who have women who age early Oh my pretty high on that list. Jewish women look old at fairly young. They... Know, like, there’s a joke about the Asian women where they, like, pop into, like, a different form. Like, they propose. Jewish women do the same thing. They they pupose into... Like, Eastern European women do the same thing as well.Simone Collins:That’s true. Yeah. That’s weird. Yeah. It’s like, you know, really hot young Slavic women or Asian women, and then it’s just like, wait.Malcolm Collins:And then they look like freaking Baba Yaga.Simone Collins:And then they... Yeah. Then then then then... Well, then there’s aunties and grandmas. Yeah. Like, there’s no... What happens in between? Do they just wake up one day? I really don’t know.Malcolm Collins:Well, I love that my wife is not of one of the... Well, no. She’s got a little Jew in her.Simone Collins:So... You know? 10%, dude. Yeah. You better watch out. Get ready. One day, you’re gonna wake up.Malcolm Collins:No. No. That was from your mom’s side, and it didn’t happen to your mom. So I don’t expect it to happen to you.Simone Collins:She aged astoundingly well. And remember, she had zero work done ever Yeah. Because she seems to have, like, my same weird genetic instinctual fear of body modification. Like, it feels like stolen valor. I feel like I could never even dye my hair because it would be stolen valor. I can’t pretend to be blonde. How dare I? I will never deserve to be blonde.Malcolm Collins:Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised, which is you. You have been the one driving all of the stricter saddest stuff with us.Simone Collins:And you were the one who who called it, and I was very grumpy about it. So I contest that slightly. But, yeah, I guess they’re they’re trying to point to priorities, which is a a woman prioritizing social manipulation or visual manipulation is is... It could... Not not ideal. And a woman who prioritizes god, who then clearly has her priorities and values in order and who’s going to lean in to good shared family goals is a better bet, clearly. I mean, obviously, if you marry a woman who’s obsessed with her appearance, especially depending on how you spend family funds, she she... She’ll spend tons of money on hair care, on makeupMalcolm Collins:She will ruin your family. Yes.Simone Collins:It’s... And it’s endless money. Like, the amount of money you can spend on looking good woman things is shocking, and I don’t really do that much.Malcolm Collins:The way that a techno puritan family manages jewelry, and I actually gave this... A Jewish guy asked me for advice on getting married. And he’s like, oh my god. We’re absolutely doing that after I gave him what what I recommend doing.Simone Collins:Oh, was it?Malcolm Collins:You and your wife sit down. So this isn’t just about going through and creating the, marriage contract, which I think is important to understand what’s expected of both of you. But you tell her, today, leading up to your wedding, you get to describe every piece of jewelry you ever want to own. in in your life, when you are an old woman, what jewels will you need? What necklaces will you need? What... You can describe what they look like. You can describe their shape. You can describe whatever you want, but you describe everyone you are going to want right now. And I will work to get those for you. But when we have the last of those, no more. That’s itSpeaker 4:And, no, part of what’s important about this is you are describing what they look like. You are describing the look. You as a couple are designing this jewelry yourself. You are not basing it on some designer trend nor are you going to what is popular with some designer. You are building your own ideal of what is good jewelry for you in the future.Malcolm Collins:.Simone Collins:That’s it. Well, yeah, because you... We we have encountered people in our lives who had an endless voracious hunger for not only jewelry, but very expensive jewelry. People who at one point actually did sell literally a condo to buy Jewels. Jewels. To buy, yeah, jewelry, which is the kind of the opposite of what’s being described here. So, yeah,Malcolm Collins:this makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And this is and and and I also note here that... So within the tech appear to... Women are allowed to want jewels. Okay? But they are all... They have to be practical about it. They have to want specific things for specific outfits that they may want one day. And and the reason why I think the wedding day is good is because, one, it’s... It creates a aspiration. It allows you to surprise her with things in the future. Yeah. You know at one point she wanted, and it also creates the moment where you’ve gotten her the last thing. And, also, it prevents her from being too greedy. You know? Because she’s laying it all out at once, it’s like, why do you need multiple pearl necklaces? Right? Like, you can create the multiple pearl necklace effect with three pearl necklaces. Do you really need more than three pearl necklaces? Why do you need more than one or four rings or something like that? Right? Like, you’ve... You you don’t... Are you gonna wear them at the same time? Do you need to change them every day just so everyone knows how rich you are?Simone Collins:For the record, they they do, andMalcolm Collins:they’re bad for doing it.Simone Collins:I know. It doesn’t look it doesn’t look great. but it’s a look. It’s a look.Malcolm Collins:but, anyway, I wanna go back over some alternate translations for some of these lines that I read here. one is she girds her loins when... With strengths and strengthens her arms. This is thirty one seventeen. So, again, it’s talking about a woman who is strong, like, physically strong, strengthens her arms. It’s it’s saying, good. That might be the only thing... Well, you hold babies all the time, so that’s strengthening your arms.Simone Collins:The the... These noodles have a surprising amount of... Maybe it’s all torque.Malcolm Collins:Who knows? And then another translation of the other line is charm is deceitful and beauty is vain. I I prefer beauty is fleeting, but... Yeah.Simone Collins:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I... I’ve heard people on YouTube refer to it recently as glamour magic, and I kind of love that. Like, it’s a witchcraft. I’m like, no. It’s... But, yeah, it is, I guess. Yes and no.Malcolm Collins:And so the the last line of the thing here is honor her for all her hands have done and let her works bring her praise at the city gate. So this is saying two things about a wife. Okay? One, she’s doing all this work, and you need to honor her for it, or you are not being a good husband.Simone Collins:And let, I guess, let other people recognize her work so you’re not hiding her work. Because if she’s earning Yeah. So for it, that means other people are like, wow. Your wife makes a good sash.Malcolm Collins:The city gate isn’t just anything. Remember the city gate was referenced earlier where it said where the elders WhereSimone Collins:all the civic stuff is happening.Malcolm Collins:It’s where all the civic elders are. So a lot of people out there, when they’re trying to tell you what a good trad wife should be, they will say that this is not a woman who should be known outside the household.Simone Collins:Right. Right. Right. The...Malcolm Collins:You know, okay. She can do a lot of work, but, like, the husband is still the only one who gets public credit for the work of the family. This says very explicitly that is an anti biblical take. The Yeah. That is... In fact, do you know what culture did that?Simone Collins:The Jews?Malcolm Collins:The Greek.Simone Collins:Oh oh, right. Sorry. Greeks and Romans were all like, no. Yeah. But she’s never seenMalcolm Collins:Greeks were very famously that the... You shouldn’t know you shouldn’t know a guy’s wife at all. You shouldn’t know about anything she’s done, anythingSimone Collins:she never thought. Yeah. The best wife, you, like, don’t even know she’s there. You never see her.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. that is a pagan concept of trash. Oh,Simone Collins:is so interesting.Malcolm Collins:You areSimone Collins:actually called this like a witch. Because I used to I used to be like, look. Let’s just put you as the public face. I don’t... You know, we don’t need to be a joint face. Like, you’re doing... All these ideas are yours. Why would you, like, diminish your accomplish... My... Accomplishment by, like, on the books, making me a coauthor when I just helped to edit them. And you insisted so much on having cobilling on all this. And I guess on this particular fight, we should be right.Malcolm Collins:Known and and and liked by the community. Right? Like, that’s what he’s saying.Simone Collins:Yeah. I guess you intuitively understood this. I I did not.Malcolm Collins:Because I was being biblical. I intuited being biblical.Simone Collins:You’re intuitively being biblical. Amazing. Yeah.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Well, it’s it’s it’s, like, with the 10 commandments and stuff like this, now that I’ve started taking them seriously. I love so. There’s so many people don’t take them seriously. it’s like, god sent down only 10 rules. Okay? It’s like just these 10 rules. Okay, guys? Can you deal with 10? And they’re so important, you’ve gotta put them in a giant arc and carry them around all the time. Everyone there could remember 10 rules. Okay? Yeah. But they just needed to make extra sure that you understood these are extra important rules. Unfortunately, I’ve intuitively followed most of them. Like, the hardest one for most people is honoring your father and mother, and I’ve always done that intuitively. I’ve never had a problem with that. The ones that I had the big problem with was following the Sabbath and the lord’s name in vain. And I wanna study the lord’s name in vain more because I don’t know if that makes total sense to me the waySimone Collins:it’s normally interpreted. People have have written to us or given us some thought on this, and it’s not necessarily, oh my god, as being a mistake, but maybe using specific biblical names for... That are used for for god. The the one that starts with y, for example.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. The the one that starts with y,Simone Collins:invoking the name of god in vain, which is to say praying to him or asking god for trivial things or, you know, being like the help.Malcolm Collins:That... I I don’t think that’s it because praying is talked about elsewhere. What I think this is is, like, praying is clearly something that a good person does. So clearlySimone Collins:See, I don’t I don’t know about this because there’s the... Like, these these other things, I think, in Leviticus where, you know, if a if a widow or orphan cries out to god after you wronged them, then really bad things happen to you. And that kind of sounds to me like invoking god. So I got this impression from putting those two things together that there are people who invoke god, who cry out to god in distress or in need. And if you do so for trivial things that could be blaspheming Two notes here.Malcolm Collins:One is the widow and orphan thing. That just made me realize that might be why god did go with the kill them all strategy in some of these historic battles is because not killing them all created widows and orphans, which caused people who just suffer and slowly die. That may have been part of the intent there. But the... Which would have happened in a historic context. But the second point here is, I think it might actually be referring to trying to use the lord’s name. Now it clearly means the y word. Right? Because that was the word that the Jews kept considered as super sacred. Yeah. So much so that we don’t even know the correct pronunciation of it anymore. It was...Simone Collins:Really?Malcolm Collins:Yeah. It’s... We’ve guessed it. The one that you’ve heard is... I can... I’ll talk about it in another episode how they came up with it, but we don’t know how it was actually pronounced. Where doSimone Collins:Actually, there’s so many really interesting details in the bible that I didn’t know about in terms of names in general where early biblical authors would, for lack of a better term, vandalize the names of, for example, other bad gods. So I think necessarily named those I think what’s being talked about hereMalcolm Collins:is using god and prayer for spells. Like, attempting to use god’sSimone Collins:name what blaspheming wasMalcolm Collins:Yes. And I’ll tell you why I think that that’s what it was about. I think it was about that because that’s actually an important and useful rule that would be really important to people living good lives and is a temptation that would be normal for, Christians and Jews of later periods.Simone Collins:Like, kind of like another form of idolatry where you think you can use god to do things for your bidding that are kind of trivial?Malcolm Collins:Yes. Well, any... Anything you do with a spell is kind of trivial. So it’s very different from... It’s it’s magic that attempts to use god. That’s what I think is being talked about there because that would be a meaningful rule. Whereas a... Not saying a name that nobody even knows, I don’t think that that’s what’s meant there.Simone Collins:Right? It does seem very odd to have off limits words. that does seem strangeMalcolm Collins:to I think it’s against using the fact that you are using god’s name to try to make a mysticism okay, which a lot of people have done historically. They’ve been like Yeah.Simone Collins:So using god’s name witchcraftMalcolm Collins:because I say god first. This isn’t, you knowSimone Collins:And there are a lot of Christian occultists who try until they finally read the right passage to to justify it. It’s like, no. This is Yeah.Malcolm Collins:That’s what I think is being talked about there. Okay.Simone Collins:Oh, well, yeah. We’re... But I could understand how those same people would have thought, well, I’m not saying, oh my god. I’m not sayingMalcolm Collins:Well, I’ve definitely never had that problem. I have never Yeah. Been tempted to use theSimone Collins:Well, just because it’s in line with your intuition doesn’t mean it’s not the correct interpretation. But I do think you’re onto something.Malcolm Collins:It’s not that it’s in line with my intuition. It’s that if it was one of the 10 commandments, it has to be because the... Therefore, man was made for... Sorry. Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. All of the 10 commandments are supposed to have a positive effect in your Okay? Yeah. So it has to be something that has a significant positive effect inSimone Collins:Oh, and how does not saying a word have a positive effect in your life?Malcolm Collins:How does not saying a word that nobody knows have a positive effect in your life? Okay? Why is that this big important thing? Whereas... And I don’t think God would be so trivial as to care if you use the term God in reference to him or the term Jesus in reference to Jesus in the wrong way. Right? Like, I think that would... That that would seem like a trivial thing. that’s not really gonna have a big negative effect on your life or have a negative effect on your community or... But would have an incredibly big negative effect, and we’ve seen it over and over and over against our Christian history and Jewish history is just saying, god... I’m doing it for god. Therefore, I can do whatever, and then do the occultism. Then do the tarot card reading. Then do the... You know? That would be useful a useful and meaningful rule. And so that’s why I think that that’s that’s what’s probably being talked about there.Simone Collins:Interesting.Malcolm Collins:Okay. To continue here with other examples from the bible, we’re not just relying on this one. So we’ve got Ruth three eleven. Bo says to Ruth, of all the people of my town to know that you are a woman of... And then this word, army.Simone Collins:You’re aMalcolm Collins:you’re a... An army of a woman. Right? A robust woman. Yes. And then this term is is later flipped back around and used for him. So, for context here, Ruth is not praised for delicacy or passivity. She is praised in the same category of capability and character that is mostly used for men. In Jewish tradition, the book of Ruth is often read right after Proverbs and is... So the narrative is treated as a living illustration of Proverbs’ ideals. Okay? So clearly, again, this is the good wife. Proverbs twelve four, a army of a woman is the crown of her husband, but she who brings shame is like rottenness in his bones. so here, it’s clear that a a woman of strengths and capability and respected by the community is not somebody who brings shame to her husband, but there is a type of woman that would bring shame to you, and those are bad.Simone Collins:NowMalcolm Collins:let’s go to the New Testament here to be like, okay. Is the New Testament saying anything different? Okay. So we’ve got, Titus two three two five. Older women, likewise, are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderous or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good and so to train young women to love their husbands and children and to have self control. Be pure, work at home, kind, and submissive to their husbands. That is the word of god, and may it not be reviled. Now a lot of people take this line to say, like, well, in Christianity, now women have to work from home. I think the working here is the more important part of that line.Speaker 14:so I looked up, like, what the actual translation of this means, and it’s... A better translation probably would have been keeper of the home. It’s meant to contrast with a woman who is idle at home. It in no way means that her only work is inside of the household. That is not that is not a realistic translation of this.Malcolm Collins:And keep in mind that even the women who were working in the first poem would have been doing it out of their home. They are making clothing and selling it, which is the primary part of that work is done at home. And then they are doing land speculation, which sort is of like being a real estate agent, which, again, can mostly be done from home. I am okay with saying that women should have jobs that are, where being at home is the dominant place that that job is done. But then that fits you perfectly, and it fits trad wife influencers perfectly. I suppose. Yeah. Timothy five nine through 10. let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than 60 years of age and having the wife of one husband and having a reputation for good works. If she has brought up children and shown hospitality and washed the feet of saints, she has cared for the afflictive, and she has devoted herself to every good work.Simone Collins:Well, that’s pretty snobby to wash the feet of only saints. you know, you’re gonna pass over most people.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. But is... What is really being talked about here is a woman who is dedicated to the community. Right? That’s that’s... She caring for the afflicted and devoting yourself to good works and showing hospitality. Obviously, the first work of a woman is to bring up good children, but all of these other works, are work. They’re not they’re not a woman who is chained up at home. A woman who is caring for the afflicted is a woman who, so let’s consider. There’s a war or something like this. what is a woman to do if she is a good woman? Is she to stay in the house, or is she to go act as a medic? Right? This is saying that acting to care for wounded soldiers would be a thing of valor for a woman to do, a Christian woman to do. then we have one Peter three one three six. Likewise, be subject to your husbands. It says that even if some do not obey the word, they may be one without a word by the conduct of their wives. When they see your respectful and pure conduct, Do not let your adorning be external, the braiding of hair and the putting on of golden jewelry or the clothing you wear, but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit. No. We’re gonna go over different translations for gentle and quiet because this is actually a pretty bad translation here. which in god’s sight is very precious. For this is how holy women who helped in God used to adorn themselves by submitting to their husbands as Sarah obeyed Abraham calling to him, Lord, and you are her children in... If you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening. So to continue with the gentle, mild note here, the word translated here is mild is the word that is translated as meek when Jesus says, I am gentle and have a lowly heart in Matthew eleven twenty nine. So that’s that’s the word that’s being used here. Oh, or blessed are the meek.Simone Collins:It’s word that’s being likeMalcolm Collins:chill. It it does not mean, like, weak or passive, but it also is not an aggressive term. It means more like not easily provoked, having a high amount of self control. So it’s saying... And and then for the second word here that is... Transit is is quiet, still, tranquil, peaceful, undisturbed, it’s it’s it’s... The the the the... A more accurate translation here would be who has the self control to not become emotional, which is a very important trait in woman. So if we’re going to then reread this in terms of, like, should you date women who, like, dress up in a lot of fancy clothes and everything like this? Should this be something that you as a woman aspire to? do not let your adorning be external, the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry or the clothing you wear, but let your adorning be hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a woman who has self control and does not become emotional. what great advice is that? When you when you translate it out of of, I think, the the mistranslated meek that implies passive and stuff like this? And I also think for Jesus, you know, when Jesus says... You know, talks about the meek, he’s talking about people with self control, not the the, weak people. Right? Like, that’s not what he’s implying there. Right?Speaker 5:I actually think a lot... Many, many parts of the bible are talking about, uplifting or looking positively on people with self control or self control being what’s expected of us. And these are the parts that are most aggressively rewritten or written over or translated in ways to mean other things. The bible is really a book about how much better your life is gonna be if you have personal self control. There... I mean, there’s there’s obviously other things to it, but having personal self control is one of the largest underlying themes when you look up alternate translations to words that don’t seem to Make sense where they’re put.Malcolm Collins:Then Timothy two nine through 10. Likewise, also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel with modesty and self control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire. And then what areSimone Collins:you supposed to do with your hair?Malcolm Collins:With what is proper for women who profess godliness with good works. Simone, I don’t think having your hair up is a problem. I do think berating it is a problem. And I think that... I know you love braiding our daughter’s hair, and you can braid our daughter’s hair so they look like cute little daughters.Simone Collins:Look. If you don’t... If... One, I’m sure they didn’t mean let your hair down. Because at least historically, a woman’s hair worn down was considered her most alluring and sexually explicit characteristics. Yeah. Jews wouldMalcolm Collins:take out the woman’s hair. This is why Jews cover their hair, because they’d, like, reveal a woman’s hair if she was suspected of adultery.Simone Collins:So hair is not clearly not to be worn down, probably veiled or covered otherwise, like, you have to put it up.Malcolm Collins:Is the context of this. So this is, you know, in in a a a Greek world, how did women braid their hair in the Greek world in Roman?Simone Collins:Right. I mean, there were there were such elaborate braids. So maybe what they mean by braiding is, like, the stuff that you need an assistant to doMalcolm Collins:that I think it means elaborate hairstyles. So within a modern context, this would say that as a Christian woman, you should not go to salons. You should not do, you know, like,Simone Collins:big fancy Just, like, get your hair out of the way. Get your hairMalcolm Collins:out of the way and get ready to work because that’s your role in life. Yeah. Yeah. And then secondarily, I mean, we see this in two places that women should not wear jewelry. I’m I’m okay with saying I’m not gonna have another hard rule within technopuritanism that women can’t have jewelry, but I think that you should, as a woman, aspire to be the type of woman that doesn’t need jewelry.Simone Collins:Well, once you become a parent, if you’re an active parent of young children, youMalcolm Collins:are not going to wear much. And and I will note here that it doesn’t ban all jewelry. In both of these places, it’s ex... It’s explicitly about, pointlessly expensive jewelry. In in both cases, pictures backSimone Collins:then were,Malcolm Collins:like Gold jewelry and pearls. It it was just gold jewelry twice and then pearls.Simone Collins:So I think extremely... You know, it’s not... It’s it’s the girl with the pearl earring, not the girl with the pearl earrings. Let’s notMalcolm Collins:get too stunny. Here’s what I’m okay with making an explicit ban on. Okay? Okay. Is designer jewelry. This is jewelry that because of a brand name is expensive. Unless it’s a family heirloom loom, then I I make an exception.Simone Collins:No. I think family heirlooms are great. Well, also So family heirloom is jewelry that you didn’t pay for. One my favorite parts.Malcolm Collins:Of family heirlooms, I do I do think that you you cannot really sit right with what’s being taught to us in the bible and have the modern version of gold slash pearls, which is to say that golden pearls would actually be okay. If you go and you get a gold ring made for you just like a generic gold ring or you get a a a pearl necklace made for you, that’s okay because those things are actually, like, fairly modest and cheap. I don’t know. And and a woman can still feel like she has jewelry from a societal perspective.Speaker 15:Specifically here, this is about reading what’s intended by a bible verse rather than being overly strict. Like, imagine you read this verse and you’re just like, okay. No gold jewelry and no pearls, but I can have $500,000 whatever, you know, million dollar designer, whatever. Clearly, the intention here is to not waste your money on things that adorn you. Now that the civilizational context has changed and gold isn’t that particularly expensive, a gold ring isn’t that expensive. If a gold ring became expensive again, then, of course, this would reapply. This is what we talk about was, like, literalism while not being an idiot about it. Right? And, of course, you can tell this is where techno puritanism becomes a high demand religion or a cult clearly because I’m making requirements of people that they not waste their money on designer jewelry. But, no, I think that it’s it’s really important that we read what’s intended here. Do not waste money or time on adorning yourselves or on what you look like. In fact, I would say more than an attack on, in a modern context, a gold ring, This is an attack on transness, for example. Like, spending a ton of time and money on attempting to look a different way. It’s an attack on anything that is that particularly indolent where you are saying, I am going to spend a huge amount of my time, not not not necessarily even just money, thinking about how I appear to other people. I I would also say that this could be seen as a prohibition on extreme forms of, subculture, you know, like, tons of piercings, tons of tattoos, anything like that. It’s it’s saying you should not be focused on that, and I think it’s a good warning and a good advice for life to not be focused on that type of thing.Malcolm Collins:but anythingSimone Collins:Is that valuable? Like, who... For whom is this jewelry? Like, I can’t even wear the jewelry that I wanted and wore daily before I had kids because now if I wore it todayMalcolm Collins:I’m saying aspirationally, a techno puritan woman would want no jewelry atSimone Collins:all. Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins:Okay. But, I mean, even you’re wearing pearls right now.Simone Collins:Yeah. I’m a really like them.Malcolm Collins:I can I can see them in shot? but I I think if you if you want to make, like, an easy, hard, absolutely never go there, it’s buying designer jewelry. And I think this is an easy thing to come with your wife and just be like, well, also, it’sSimone Collins:so stupid to do it because you’re paying a huge markup for a brand that is not worth it. Like, the wedding... The engagement ring that you had made for me was made by a man who used to design jewelry for Tiffany’s and then just left, and we could just buy designs from him and his whole team. Like... And you got it at a fraction of the price. And the same ring, if we had bought it from Tiffany’s, would be twice as much.Malcolm Collins:Actually, I... Make an easier, like, broader just rule here that I think is useful. If you already own it or you inherited it, it’s fine. Yeah. But designer clothing and things more generally, I I would banSimone Collins:Oh, like brand... Branded? Yeah. Instead of just like, I need a well made shirt. I need well made socks. You’re not gonna, like, I’m gonna go get whatever this... The stock of the day is. I don’t know what the stock of theMalcolm Collins:day is. What... Any... Anything... I think that that’s the intention of these, and I think that’s a very good intention. Okay. Fair. Do not buy designer anything going forward. It is... There there is always a cheaper alternative. You are paying for a name, and you are paying to try to alter people’s opinion of you so that you appear more something. And it’s something that that in... There... There’s really no context where you shouldn’t feel okay being a little bit embarrassed being the one person who’s notSimone Collins:in a design or something. Well, I think there’s something to dressing respectfully for any of You can always dress respectfully without designer stuff. Yeah. You’re like, yeah, there... There’s no instance in which you you can show up... Like, not showing up without jewelry will signal a lack of respect for the event. Black tie all the way down. White tie all the way down. You can show up to an event and be respectful without jewelry. This is true for both men and women. Yeah. This is true. That’s weird. That’s interesting. Well... And you can show upMalcolm Collins:to any event with a nondesigner and still look good.Simone Collins:Oh, 100%,Malcolm Collins:obviously. A nondesigner tux. You can get a nondesigner... You know? Or you can have something made for you if you have to. Right? Go to Etsy. They will create a distinct style for techno puritans, which is something that you want inSimone Collins:individual people as long as you avoid the the Chinese resellers.Malcolm Collins:And then the final bit I’m gonna talk about here is how women should dress. Okay. Corinthians, eleven five through 15. But every woman who prays or prophesizes with her head uncovered dishonors her head. It is the same as having her head shaved. For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off. But it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off her head shaved Oh. Then she could cover herSimone Collins:head.Malcolm Collins:A man ought to not cover his head since he is the image and glory of god. But a womanSimone Collins:Oh, so is this where the the whole Jew wig thing started? No. This is Christian. This is a Christian. Wait. What? Sorry. This is... Oh, you said Corinthians. Is that what you said?Malcolm Collins:This is this is why Catholics often wear veils in church.Simone Collins:Only in church? And is this saying in church, or is this saying always? It explicitly saysMalcolm Collins:every woman who prays or prophesizes with her head uncovered. And it’s because the woman So whenSimone Collins:you, likeMalcolm Collins:supposed to be a glory to her husbandSimone Collins:You put onMalcolm Collins:your What?Simone Collins:Praying hat.Malcolm Collins:Praying hat. Yeah. Now you you could go further with this and say that a woman’s head needs to be covered at all times. Some groups have gone further with it, but I I think that this is just talking abrupt prayer. and then to continue here, it says, for man did not come from woman, but woman for man, neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. It is for this reason that A woman ought to have authority over her own head because of the angels. Nevertheless, in the lord, woman is not independent of man nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman, but everything comes from god. Judge for yourselves, is it proper for a woman to pray to god with her head uncovered? Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory for long hair is given toSimone Collins:her as a covering? Wait. Did... Wait. Is Corinthians dunking on Jesus’ hair?Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Jesus definitely did not have long hair. Just to clear. And as a Christian man, you are not supposed to have long hair. Like, thisSimone Collins:is clear. What? Oh myMalcolm Collins:god. A lot of a lotSimone Collins:of mistake. Every Mormon household with, like, the Jesus Mormon. Mind blown.Speaker 6:Well, we often don’t think about it this way. I think someone makes a point here, which is that even Mormons are super, super prone to idolatry.Simone Collins:A mistake that a lot ofMalcolm Collins:Christians make is they are aware of Samson, and Samson got power from long hair. What?Simone Collins:Wait. a Rapunzel? Was he the OG Rapunzel? What is what is happeningMalcolm Collins:right now? He was a Nazarite. and this is the point that everybody gets wrong. Okay. Nazarites were a collection of vows that you would undertake as a Jew in a traditional context.Simone Collins:Okay.Malcolm Collins:And the long hair wasn’t so much one of those vows. I mean, it was, and that was important, the don’t let a blade touch your skin to cut your hair. Yeah. Anywhere on your body. But it was the sign that you were doing the vows. And the other vows were more important. The other vows were you don’t touch dead bodies or animals, and you don’t drink alcohol. And the reason why you would grow out the long hair... What... Why are you posting this? Everybody knows that you haveSimone Collins:long getting hair. A closer look at it. I... This is this is all wrong then. Yes. Where Okay. So to be a Nazarite, you’re saying, or a what? You had to have SoMalcolm Collins:if you were a Nazarite, if you take the Nazarite vows, okay, it meant that you were doing a number of things. And part of the purpose of growing out your hair during the Nazarite vows is so that other people would know that you were doing them and so that they can be like, bro, why are you drinking with us? You you can’t do that.Simone Collins:You’re Nazarite right now. Okay. Okay. So it was like... Yeah. Like, gosh. What’s a... I... Like, wearing a wedding ring and people being like, I’m not gonna date you. You’re married. OrMalcolm Collins:There is absolutely no way Jesus was doing Nazarite vows because Jesus drank regularly.Simone Collins:Right. Oh my goodness gracious. What? So... Okay. He definitely did not have a... Not have long hair.Malcolm Collins:So, yeah, Jesus did... And and the other thing that we knowSimone Collins:He’s gonna bother me so much going forward. Even if he was doing a Nazarite thingMalcolm Collins:or had a very unusual haircut. The way, you should ask Google when they started doing that and why so we got an answer for people. If if you look at the scene when they’re asking him to point out Jesus using a kiss so that they know who Jesus is. Woah.Simone Collins:Woah. A kit... What what what doMalcolm Collins:I This when the Roman soldiers are going to arrest Jesus. Okay. And they tell Judas, you need to tell us which is the right guy by By kissing him? Yes. On the Sorry.Simone Collins:I’m still in the Old Testament. Okay? I’m rusty.Malcolm Collins:Yes. so he he gets to him. He would only need to do that if Jesus looked like a normal person during that period.Simone Collins:Oh, right. Yeah. He... They could’ve be like the guy with the long hair.Malcolm Collins:If he had long hair, he could have said the guy with the long hair because that was not normal during that period, especially if he wasn’t like a normal Nazarite and he had, like, a normal facial beard otherwise. so, no, you... I’m okay with a Christian if they’re actually gonna take the Nazarite vows... Doing the Nazarite vows. I don’t think that’s a problem biblically speaking, but, like, it’s... I think it’s pretty clear here that you’re not supposed to have long hair.Simone Collins:Okay. So Jesus began to be depicted with long hair around AD three hundred in the late third or early fourth century, but it was a gradual change, not a sudden replacement of short haired images. The familiar long haired bearded appearance became established in Eastern Christianity by the sixth century, while Western artists continued using multiple appearances for centuries. So from... When you look at surviving images of Jesus from the third century AD, like, so in the two hundreds, they show a youthful, short haired, beardless Jesus. The good one. This is completely opposite from the Jesus I’ve been doing all my life. An early example is the painting of Jesus healing a paralytic at Dura Europos dated to about 8235. Sorry. I know we’re we’re supposed to be talking about Tom girls. Tom boys? Tom girls. Tom boys? Tom boys?Malcolm Collins:Tom boys isSimone Collins:my turn. However, this is so interesting. You can’t, like, see him super well, but there’s a guy. He’s got short hair and no beard, and I don’t know what’s going on with this paralytic. It looks like the the woman on the on the college campus is carrying around her mattress. But, yeah, it shows, Jesus. He’s wearing, you know, he’s wearing Jesus style robes, so that is that is remained consistent. But it’s clearly a dude with short hair and no beard. I am mind blown here.Malcolm Collins:Well, I think this is one of the dangers of icons is they misrepresent reality, and they can cause you to imagine a a world and and and compete in your mind with what is biblical.Simone Collins:Yeah. Wow. But, anyway Why did artists get him on here? Say across the board. The changes appear to have been about conveying Jesus’ identity and authority rather than preserving information about his haircut. Artists drew on existing Greco Roman visual traditions, long haired bearded gods such as Zeus and Jupiter thing. Images of philosophers and the enthroned ruler, these offered ways to portray Jesus as divine, wise, and sovereign. Scholars, they’re like, well, I don’t know if I can respect him. Let’s make him look more like pagan gods. What are you doing? Oh my god.Malcolm Collins:It’s it’s... The the amount of paganism that has seeped into the iterations of Christianity that, I think just like LARPistrad, it’s it’s... I I personally find it gross. Everybody knows I find it gross. it’s it’s not it’s non school.Simone Collins:Well, right. Like like Christmas being on a holiday in December 25, it was, like, devoted to multiple other gods at various points, and that’s messed up. Jesus being styled like Zeus. Oh my goodness, people.Malcolm Collins:No. The the Christmas one. I’m sorry. We don’t... We have a whole episode on this. That’s just an urban legend. There’s an episode on it.Simone Collins:Christmas came But we don’t know when Jesus was born. Why was it chosen to overlap with a bunch of pagan holidays?Malcolm Collins:Christmas was not a repurposed pagan holiday. WhatSimone Collins:about in Australia?Malcolm Collins:it was, go to our episode on it. We talk about this for literally, like, an hour and a half. We go over chunks of receipts.Simone Collins:No memory. December 17 to December 23. Look.Speaker 7:What you will learn if you watch the episode is that the earliest evidence we have of Christians celebrating on this date predates the earliest evidence we have of a sol Invictus holiday on this date, and the earliest evidence we have of a sol Invictus holiday on this date comes from Christian communities.Speaker 9:As for Sedanalia, which she’s talking about here, it never included December 25 in anything that we’re aware of. It originally was on December 17, and it ran through December 23, but never in any record that we’re aware of included December 25.Speaker 8:My life has been a lie. God is dead. The government’s lame. Thanksgiving is about killing Indians. Jesus wasn’t born on Christmas. They moved the date. It was a pagan holiday.Simone Collins:That’s pretty close. Welcome.Malcolm Collins:Look up our episode on this. Okay, Simone? That is that is for you right now if you’re interested. Go watch that episode. We go over it in detail. People. People got so mad at us bursting that urban legend. Yeah. people got so mad at us bursting that urban legend.Simone Collins:Then why did they arbitrarily choose that time of the year of all times?Malcolm Collins:Look at our episode.Simone Collins:Do you wanna ask Can you tell me?Malcolm Collins:What we said? We went over it for an hour. I don’t remember.Simone Collins:Oh, okay.Malcolm Collins:It’s been a long time. We recorded the episode like a year and a half ago. All I remember is that the evidence was overwhelming that it was not based on Saturnalia. Okay. That it was not based on any pagan tradition, that all of the the the vast majority of the links that people try to use to link it to pagan traditions came about in, like, the eighteen fiftiesSimone Collins:Yeah.Malcolm Collins:And have nothing to do with, like, the Christmas tree and the yule log and all of that.Simone Collins:Those things. I ain’t... I am letting go of that that nonsense, whatever it is.Malcolm Collins:Very little to do with anything that could be linked to pagan traditions.Simone Collins:Yeah. Okay.Malcolm Collins:Fair. Love you, Sloane. And if you’re watching this and maybe it’s something you’re curious about, I will try to remember to make it one of the recommended videos for you. But if not, you have fans and you know how to use Google. Check it out so you can get angry at us for breaking your childhood myth thatSimone Collins:I hope that you were celebrating a pagan holiday for Christmas.Malcolm Collins:Well, the other one is Easter. Easter is also not in any way pagan. That... That’s the other one where people get very confused.Simone Collins:I’ve learned nothing. I’ve learned nothing. I’m gonna forget that God told us to marry tomboyants as well, obviously.Malcolm Collins:The number of... Especially Christians who crashed out learning that it wasn’t pagan in origin was really funny. Yeah. I think you’d, like, buy into these. But with a lot of this stuff with Sahara and stuff like this, I think it’s very important to not buy into the urban legends, to not buy into the the typical descriptions and to, you know, really earnestly search for what is existentially true.Simone Collins:All these people cosplaying as Jesus were cosplaying as Zeus. We’re just I know in that super offensive when you think about it. It’s it’s deeply offensive. Imagine imagine. Right? Imagine you are, you know, the historical Jesus and, you know, you you die on the cross. You you sins, etcetera. And then you you come back. It’s the year 2026. And on every Mormon household wall, there’s there’s You’llMalcolm Collins:able to go into a a, you know, an Orthodox church, and it’s like that theme.Simone Collins:And you’re like, who... Who’s... Why why are the... Why the pagan worship? Why theMalcolm Collins:pagan worship? Pagan pictures ofSimone Collins:all the wall. What did... That’s Zeus on the cross where... Hi. Hello? Why do youMalcolm Collins:have pagan pictures everywhere? Yeah. Like, what’s going on with this? Did it... Were we pretty clear about the no icon thing?Speaker 13:And if you’re like, well, no. It says no idols, not no icons. It’s like, well, I mean, they sound like the same thing to me, and this is what we’re talking about when we’re talking about what I think the blasphemy line is actually about. Where just because you put the word god in front of, you know, witchcraft or a spell or icon or an idol, it doesn’t make it okay. Right? Like, you you can’t just say, well, I’m doing x bad thing for god. Therefore, it’s good.Malcolm Collins:Anyway Also,Simone Collins:the whole thing, Jesus on the cross and all these churches, I’ve never been okay with that. I’ve never been... And, like, why are they... I know... Okay. Because because of his sacrifice, we have to remember it. But, like, I don’t know. Just if I if I IMalcolm Collins:don’t think that he would be super stoked about that.Simone Collins:It wasn’t his favorite moment.Malcolm Collins:I mean, especially given, you know, my god. My god. Why have you forsaken me? Yeah. He wasn’t he wasn’t thinking, I’m chadding it up right now.Simone Collins:Yeah. Like, this is the snapshot. Yeah. This is when, you know, for the history books, this is the look I want right here.Malcolm Collins:To be half naked and nailed to a pole.Simone Collins:Yeah. And, like, you know what? When when I want a woman to show her devotion to me, I want her to wear a necklace of the thing that hurt a lot all the time. And She loves me, and so she’ll wear the torture device that was used on important.Malcolm Collins:He also noted, make sure I’m always depicted half naked. Half naked and dying. Great.Simone Collins:Great. Well, more than half naked. I would say he was, like, 89% naked.Malcolm Collins:Naked in most of the depictions.Simone Collins:Yeah. I don’t Yeah.Malcolm Collins:That’s not awesome. Anyway... And why’d they have to go with naked? That was a weird... That was a weird... Very bad.Simone Collins:Actually didn’t have him wear red robes or something when he was being crucified because they were mocking him as, like, a whole, like, fake king thing.Speaker 11:So, depending on the gospel you’re reading, he was put in red or purple robes, but these were taken by the guards before crucifying him. So he actually likely would have been entirely naked when crucified. This was meant to humiliate the crucifixion victims when they were being crucified. but, again, probably not the look you’d want on, you know, the my scene moment of your life.Simone Collins:Oh my goodness.Malcolm Collins:I loveSimone Collins:you too. I love you too. Bye. It’s so... It’s like having a genie. That’s what vibe coding is. It’s like, hey, genie. I wish. Except that there’s... I mean, I... The wishes are only limited to how much money you could spend, I guess. Genie for pay, genie for hire. It’s so amazing. You you don’t know this, but with this tablet thing that you’ve set up on Mudpuppy for kids, you’ve basically created a young lady’s illustrated primer, this this amazing device described in Neil Stevenson’s diamond age. You just don’t know it because you’ve never read that book. No. But, like, it’s the it’s the it’s the pivot point of this book where this techno feudal element of society called, like... I think it’s... They’re they’re, like, called the Neo Victorians. One neo Victorian man commissions the ultimate reading... Sorry. The ultimate educational device for his daughter or something. And a man makes it and then goes through very illegal lengths to try to copy it just so that his daughter can have access to the most privileged education of all time. And it... It’s it’s basic... It’s a... It looks like a book, but it’s it’s just adapted to sort of educate your kid along with, you know, with them and in a way that’s very customized to them, and that is what you are building. And it’s insane to me that you’re building young baby’s illustrated primer. Works now. It works now. And ourMalcolm Collins:kids are able to do it, and the AI companion feature is so f*****g cool. We’ve gotta teach the kids about it because they’ve gotta sort of understand that they can push that button and have it talk about whatever they’re working on.Simone Collins:Well, it only just appeared today. I was playtesting other elements of them... Of it with them just now, but they really like the they really like the games andMalcolm Collins:People really don’t know if you wanna download this. It’s free to use except for, like, when they’re using things that cost us money, in which point we charge a 50% margin. And it is the... And and a very little on this actually, like, costs us money. So most of it’s gonna be free for you. You take any old Android device you have and... You know, I’ll make an easier way to get to the Mudpuppy app. What what do wanna call the Mudpuppy app or the Mudpuppy system?Simone Collins:The tablet OS? Mudpuppy OS.Malcolm Collins:Mudpuppy OS. Okay. I’m gonna do this right now to make it easier to reach. So can go to mudpuppy.aibackslashos. Okay. Just throwing some stuff in there. Alright. It is just like a genie, though. Like you said, it’s just like magic. LikeSimone Collins:Yeah. Like, can we do this? Hey. Could we have that?Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Can my kids... Yeah. I’ve always wanted my kids to have a tablet where, like, they can watch shows and earn points and then watch other shows.Simone Collins:I wish. I wish. Stuff.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. We went through today, we found out that the AI had accidentally added some woke stuff. So we’re going through, we’re cleaning out all the wokeness from the system. Oh. Also decided to track what shows parents like to add or remove so we know we can make the defaults better. Alright.Speaker 12:Oh, Tyson, you ran into me. Sorry. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Today on Based Camp, Malcolm breaks down a major unreported shift in the Iran conflict: the effective end of Iran’s blockade on the Strait of Hormuz. Oil exports from the Gulf have returned to pre-war levels and are set to grow further through expanded pipelines and coastal shipping routes.The discussion covers how Saudi Arabia and the UAE rerouted flows via land pipelines, the role of smaller coastal tankers, added insurance costs, and why Iran’s strategy backfired by alienating neighbors and eliminating its own leverage. It also examines long-term economic damage to Iran, comparisons to Venezuela and Cuba, and the broader geopolitical fallout.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins:Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be having a conversation that shows why it’s important that you watch podcasts like this instead of just the mainstream news because there has been a significant change in the state of the Iranian war that is not being reported on much at all. specifically, the blockade of the strait is over. well, not our blockade of Iran’s exports, but their blockade of the rest of the world’s exports. To give you an example of how over it is, prewar, this is roughly in the twelve months before the conflict began, 02/28/2026, Gulf Middle Eastern crude averaged at about 18,000,000 barrels per day. Okay?Simone Collins:K.Malcolm Collins:And 83% of its crude was going through Hormuz. Today... Now remember, it was 18,000,000 barrels per day. That was the average. The seven day moving average that we are at right now is 18,300,000 barrels per day coming out of the region, higher than the average before the war. Now you’re probably thinking, but how? Why? How were they able to block it so easily, and how did we get around it apparently so easily?Simone Collins:Yeah. But they dropped mines in there or something. Right? Yes. I even heard one of the mines exploded recently.Malcolm Collins:So let’s go over how we’ve globally gotten around this and the geopolitical consequences of us getting around it because what it means for Iran is astonishingly bad. I personally didn’t think this was possible. I didn’t think we would find a way around it this quickly. And we’re building out ways to get around it even more that will be live by 2027. So one of the big ways we got around it is... Remember how 83% used to go through The Gulf? That that means through Hermes? Now it’s only 40%.Simone Collins:Okay. So it’s still significantly down.Malcolm Collins:Well, no. It’s it’s up, but it’s that we’re not sending it through The Gulf anymore. We’re not not sending it through the straight anymore.Simone Collins:We’re sendingMalcolm Collins:it through other pipelines. And those pipelines are actually being expanded at this moment, which is going to bring it so that only around 20% is estimated to still go through the straight.Simone Collins:Okay. Yes. I I mean, which is inevitable. If if the one path does not work, you have to take another path.Malcolm Collins:Live in 2027. This shows that Iran indiscriminately attacking ships was the dumbest they could have done. Because they’reSimone Collins:rendering one of their big points of, leverage obsolete.Malcolm Collins:The... Yes. Iran’s... Wait. Doesn’t just make their point of leverage obsolete. We didn’t start blocking their oil exports, which is 30% of their government revenue, until they blocked the straight.Simone Collins:Oh, really? I Yeah. We were Oh, weren’t they subject to significant economic sanctions after a certain point before we just put it to war?Malcolm Collins:Yeah. They they had sanctions, but they were still shipping oil.Simone Collins:Oh.Malcolm Collins:And it was making up a huge chunk of their government, and they don’t run out of, back payments for that oil until around December. But, like Oh,Simone Collins:so they’re still getting income. That’s crazy.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. But they’re incredibly boned long term from this. And if you’re like, I thought we were we were barely at war with them. As I pointed out in a recent episode, the HRANA, this is, like, the mainstream. This is... It’s some Israeli whatever mainstream estimate. The United States has killed 17... Sorry. A 700 civilians, since the start of the war. And Iran, by the same organization’s estimates, killed 7,000 civilians. And this is considered... People give really high numbers, like 30,000 or something. I don’t I don’t buy that. Right?Simone Collins:Is it... I think that includes, like, all the protests that were leading up to Yeah.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. The war. So we’ve killed... And and note here, even if we go with the Iranian official figure, which is 3,117 civilians that they killed During the crackdowns of people asking The United States to come in and save them That is still almost double the number of civilians The United States has killed since the start of this war. If you know anything about war, that means we’re not really fighting what anyone would think of as a traditional war. We’re... I don’t know. It’s it’s it’s as much of a war as whatever happened in Venezuela was a war, And and a lot of people don’t get that. They don’t get how asymmetrical and weird this war is, nor how badly it’s going for Iran now that we have found a way. And I’ll go into the economics of how we get oil around. It’s really fascinating, actually. But it’s really, really bad long term for Iran because they no longer have any leverage and have pissed off all their friends and are on a lifeline that’s eventually going to dry up. And the question is, what happens when it dries up? And they could become like Cuba. Cuba’s lifeline dried up a while ago, and they are just not really making it right now.Simone Collins:Press coverage seems to have mostly fizzled out after just multiple headlines amounting to they’re out of power again. Oh, yes. Once again, they’re out of power. And I just... I don’t know what they’re doing. By the way,Malcolm Collins:if you’re talking about, like, geopolitical victories, that one administration in, like, two years knocked out our three... Venezuela was one of our primary geopolitical enemies long term. Cuba was one of our primary geopolitical enemies long term. Let’s see if we can sink the deal on that. Iran And was one of our primary geopolitical enemies long term, which is going to take forever to... And and it’s... Well, Trump gave them this awesome deal, right, that I had talked about before where they would have gotten a bunch of money to... They... No one’s gonna be offering them that deal anymore.Simone Collins:That deal deal that he offered to Maduro being like, I... You will be set for life anonymously somewhere.Malcolm Collins:No. No. Not Maduro. I’m talking about Iran. He’s like, we’re gonna give you... Well, not we. We’re gonna have the the oil power, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etcetera, invest, like, $300,000,000,000 in it.Simone Collins:Right. Yes. We did a whole podcast on that.Speaker 17:And even crazier as part of that deal, if they had taken it, they could have, had unrestricted sale of their oil, which they haven’t had in decades and would have made them so, so, so much money. And they blew up the deal to maintain control of her moods, which they don’t have anymore.Simone Collins:So, yeah, what happened?Malcolm Collins:And Iran was like, no. Now these countries have no reason to. The only reason they were gonna make these investments was because they wanted enough political control of Iran to keep the strait open. Now they don’t care. Iran could be a failed state for all they care. They’re they’re they’re not gonna be dealing with refugees. They shoot them. You know, this... These aren’t these aren’t fuzzy European countries. Okay? So... And Iranian refugees, secondarily, integrate pretty well with European populations. They are Persian. They are not your... You know, Arab Muslims have integrated less well with European and American population. Persian Muslims have... Typically, they stop being Muslim pretty quickly. The the the religion doesn’t really seem to work with that ethnicity very well Or as well as it it does for other groups. We’ve talked about this in other episodes. And that’s a great example. You know, you wanna talk about a Muslim group within the other epithet. I was like, I don’t know Muslim groups that have made this The Persian immigrants in America, they have been able to maintain fairly high fertility rates and maintain cultural connections. They often drop being Muslim, though. But I’ve seen some that keep being Muslim and and and stay very American culturally speaking. And they can be they can be good. And I don’t think any American has a problem with, like, working with, like, inter... People who identify as Persian. And you... I mean, if you’re watching the podcast, you probably know a couple. They’re pretty cool. They, if if you don’t know... I... I’m probably gonna offend a lot of people here. They remind me a lot of Armenians. It’s gonna really piss some people off, I’m sureSpeaker 10:Armenians and Persians in LA try not to be identical challenge. Impossible. Both of these guys will try to convince you that they are completely different and that their culture is unique, yet each of them have a nose job. Weak of Dior Sauvage can spend all their time at the Shisha Lounge with their cousin who’s a dentist. The only noticeable difference is the color of their BMWs.Malcolm Collins:. but just culturally, that’s what I’ve noticed when I’ve interacted with the two groupsSpeaker 11:Or if you want to be more offensive and you’re like, I don’t know a lot of Armenians. That’s a deep cut. They’re basically cocaine Jews. It’s like you took Jewish culture, and you somehow infused it with about 25% cocaine. That’s Persian culture.Malcolm Collins:very sort of mercantile. butSimone Collins:the the point here being Mercantile but jovial.Malcolm Collins:Mercantile but jovial and obsessed with partying. Like, really obsessed with partying.Simone Collins:Yeah. Work hard, play hard.Malcolm Collins:They’re the type of people where I’m like, you are why somebody is going to a nightclub, and I will never understand it. Yeah.Simone Collins:Yeah. We’re work hard, work hard, and they work hard, play hard.Malcolm Collins:Well, Puritan. Right? You know, you gotta you gotta keep with the traditions. Yeah. But the point here being, where where were that going with this? Yeah. So I was talking about why it’s so bad for Iran. What Iran should have done and what a smart country would have done is what Iran tried to do, but they are too fractionalized to do this, is done, tolls on the boats going through the strait. because if they had charged tolls on boats going through the strait, they would have, one, increased the global cost of oil, but, two, created a pathway through the strait that wasn’t worth setting up these alternate mechanisms. Because they didn’t do that, it was cost worthy to set up the alternate mechanisms. So let’s get into the alternate mechanisms and how bad they are for Iran long term, especially now that all their neighbors hate them, which is... I mean, if you’re wondering why, it’s because they bombed them all, even their closest allies like Qatar. Okay. So what they did is they take the tanker ships, when they get near the strait. And so the tanker ships get near the strait, and then they unload from the tanker ship to a smaller tanker ship that can go into shallower water. Then this shallow water tanker ship ends up moving, the oil just hugging the coast. That that was basically it. Just hug the coast, and they can’t do anything about it.Simone Collins:That’s it? Wait. What about all the the mines?Malcolm Collins:Well, the mine ships would have to come all the way right next to, like, The UAE. And The UAE isn’t gonna allow that. Right? Like, UAE is an armed country with, likeSimone Collins:And it’s deep enough? It’s not gonna run aground?Malcolm Collins:Well, keep in mind, you’ve got, like, all sorts of islands on The UAE side of this and everything. Like, it would be really hard to do. And in addition to that, the the reason why the tankers went in the center area is because there were these giant tanker ships. Right? That’s that’s not an issue anymore. And in addition to that, The US has significantly defanged Iran. They just don’t have the munitions. They don’t have the people. They don’t have the organization to do something that sophisticated anymore.Simone Collins:Yeah. Wow. Okay.Malcolm Collins:So that was that was the trick. Use ferries. for wondering why the ferries allowed this to work, there’s actually logistical reasons. It’s not just that they can go into shallower waters, but they also don’t have to deal with the same insurance. They they remove the insurance from the typical insurance companies, and the country that’s operating them, specifically either The UAE, Saudi Arabia, or the US Navy slash US Central Command ends up insuring for, like, a price. So it’s actually a a way for these countries to make even more money. now you say, well, surely that affects the price of the oil, and it does affect the price of the oil going through. So war risk insurance adds about 7 to $8 per barrel, and the premium on hull insurance jumped from 0.1% of hull value to 1.5%, which is pretty significant.Simone Collins:That’s a lot. Yes.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. So how much is this affecting the end price? The end price on insurance is only a seven to 8% boost. But for the entire price of the oil going through the region, it’s 25 to 35% increase. Now you can say, well, that’s a meaningful number. It’s not, like, catastrophic, but it’s meaningful. And the problem being is, yes, it’s meaningful, but the economic impact it has isn’t as bad as you would expect it to be. because it’s a known increase in cost instead of the unknown increase associated with how long is this gonna be shut down. Now we know the upper limit of an increase in cost that Iran can impose upon oil coming from this region, and it’s 25 to 35%. And next year, when these new pipelines come out, it’s gonna be even less than that. So it’s just going to decrease from here. And in in relation to how that affects oil prices, actually, the biggest thing that’s affecting oil prices right now is not what you would expect. So this really got me when ISimone Collins:was digging deeper into this.Malcolm Collins:So right now, it’s adding, what’s happening in this region is adding $35 to... Per barrel. Okay? Now the average increase overall per barrel is $30. And you could say, wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Why why is the average cost increasing almost as much as the cost coming out of just this region? Right? Yeah. In terms of the cost to ship? The region is is actually very interesting. It it has to do with the number of VLCC fleets. So the the VLCC fleet that got involved in this is the specialized smaller freighter capacity. The the Oh. They’re they’re doing SmallerSimone Collins:boats that can hug the shore, basically. Like, the super big honking ones can’t do this. Yeah.Malcolm Collins:And so, this... For this shuttle to work, it’s using right now 14 to 40% of the VLCC global fleet. K. But what that means is they’re just gonna produce more of them. Right? If if this keeps going indefinitely, theySimone Collins:Shipbuilding takes a while, though. And, I mean, at least they’re not dependent on The US for this because our shipbuilding capacity’s gone RIP.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. That sucks. But Korea is great at shipbuilding, by the way. Yeah. The the supertankers and stuff like this.Simone Collins:I just wish we were decent at it.Malcolm Collins:We could be if the US government invested in local manufacturing and we weren’t tarred... I mean, some of the military ship designs, I don’t know if we should do a full episode on this, we’ve done recently have been basically useless. Like, some of The US’s most recently addedSpeaker 12:Specifically here, I’m thinking of the Littoral class battleships where they tried to build them to be, a thing where you could swap out internal components, to make the ship for different purposes. But the swap out mechanism was too long to use. And so they’re they’re basically useless now, and they were the main thing we were producing for a period because somebody got excited by, like, that idea. Remember when there was a phone, and it was like, you could swap out the internals and turn it into different things? And they were like, oh, that’s so cool.Malcolm Collins:No.Simone Collins:We we can’t... Things can’t be built based on RFPs anymore. Just period. We can’t... We we can’t really have the government build things. We need to have private businesses. NoMalcolm Collins:more Boeing. Boeing needs to be cut... I know I might get shot for this. If Boeing lend a single more con... One more contract from the government.Simone Collins:No. Any... No. Just like the entire process of of bid based... Like, the the the bureaucratic mechanism through which stuff is built and services are rendered to the United States government is so far gone that it is a wonder that we are able to get anything at all ever.Malcolm Collins:By way, if you’re wondering how I would handle requisitions if I was a government official doing this Yeah. You have a department where it’s a department of, like, the best and the best in terms of, like, multiple past successes in venture capital. That’s what I would be looking for. Venture capitalists demand this department. Okay. So you take venture capitalists, and you say, no. Not industry insiders, which is a lot of what they do right now. It’s like, decides who wins the... Well, we’ll RFPs somebody with a ton of oil industry experience. I understand why that looks good on the outside. It’s not actually a good way to do things because it leads them to giving lots of kickbacks, working with their friends. Yeah. Take VCs, people from the startup industry. Then you tell them, you have to choose who you’re gonna give the money to to do this. and it can be a couple teams. and then there, they get scores based on the success of the project, that that VC. And that money that they get to distribute in the next round is based on their past scores. And this allows them to just be like, if Boeing really is the only person to do this, then they can go to Boeing. But they can also go straight to some small entrepreneur and be like, hey. you seem to be a unique expert in this. Or even an engineer at Boeing and be like, hey. You’re an expert in this. Why don’t you spin up your own thing? I’ll give you the money to do it. Yeah. You’ll get insider dealing with this, but it will be less bad than the existing RFP process.Simone Collins:Honestly, anything would be better. I I don’t I don’t have an answer, but it cannot be what it is now.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. So what about all of that oil that’s not going through the straight right now? How did they pull that one off? That seems pretty wild. Right? Do you happen to know? Because I could have answered this immediately.Simone Collins:You you said they hugged the shore. What do you mean?Malcolm Collins:No. No. No. That’s how they... Remember how it went from, I thinkSimone Collins:it was 85% to to only 40%? 40%. Oh, so, yeah, where does the rest go?Malcolm Collins:Yeah. 83% to 40%. Where does the rest go?Simone Collins:Presumably, they’re using land bridges, like, you know, hauling on tankers across land, I guess. What what are they doing?Malcolm Collins:Saudi Arabia’s East West pipeline for petroleum and UAE, Abu Dhabi’s crude oil pipeline for where these go. This... The Saudi Arabia one carries it to the Red Sea.Simone Collins:Oh, so just using, like, physical oil pipelines?Malcolm Collins:Yes. And The UAE’s Abu Dhabi’s pipeline, basically, it it carries it to the Gulf Of Milan.Simone Collins:Why weren’t they using those pipelines more before? Because it was slightly cheaper. These add around 7% to the cost of the shipment. That’s nontrivial. Yeah. It’s notMalcolm Collins:trivial, but, like, for being able to get around a blockade, it’s... It is Great.Simone Collins:You’re glad you have the pipeline.Malcolm Collins:Built these. If you’re like, why why why did they build these? It’s because Iran has done this and threatened to do this before, so they built them. That... That’s that’s why they have them. They they threatened them before, when they built them out, they used them in small amounts, but they made them so that they could be much, much bigger expecting Saudi Arabia to do this. And it just took a little bit of time to get them all up and fully operational because, you know, Iran kept trying to bomb them. And they did damage them at one point, but they’re they’re fixed up now. And they’re both set to be significantly expanded in the very near future, which we’ll get to in a second. I will note that this solution has a problem to it. Do you know the problem? And it has to do with AI, actually, Simone. You you you are familiar with this story. You just not might have put two and two together.Simone Collins:No. I I have no idea.Malcolm Collins:So you know how Iran loves funding terrorist organizations? Yeah. One of the terrorist organizations they did pulled a fun little trick on theSpeaker 3:The UAE and Saudi backed fraction in Yemen.Malcolm Collins:which was they cloned his voice and then told all his forces to retreat.Simone Collins:And it worked. Oh. And What?Malcolm Collins:Really? Creates a problem because if you know where the city that they took It’s at the mouth of the Red Sea.Simone Collins:Great. Fantastic. Of course. And it couldMalcolm Collins:be used to do a blockade. They haven’t successfully done this yet, but they could. What’s gonna happen if they attempt to do this? The reality is it’s nobody cares aboutSpeaker 4:about Yemen. Yemen’s been killing Yemenese people for a long time, and nobody cares.Speaker 5:Saudi Arabia and The UAE.Malcolm Collins:is, like most Muslim countries these days, incompetent as a military. I pointed... This is, an objective fact. Like, all of the Muslim world at the same time jumping a significantly weaker and technologically fairly incapable Israel multiple times kept getting their butts kicked in, by a very small Israeli force. We have a video on why Muslims are so bad at war, today or at least have been for a while. And you can be like, oh, they’ve they’ve been able to defend in, like, Afghanistan. It’s... Yeah. It doesn’t matter. Like, being able to to hide in... Anyone can defend themselves in that scenario. You know, that that... That’s just how long can you hide in the mountains game. Right? That’s not, like, durably taking land. I’m talking about, like, mill... Like, actually going out and and projecting force. That a super wealthySpeaker 6:Coalition is failing to control. They don’t even need to take the country. They just need to control this one straight, that is practically or literally their neighbor is astonishing.Speaker 7:And I’d point out here, they are claiming that they were not tricked by the AI. It was just a tactical retreat to which I would say, then that’s even worse. That’s so, so, so much worse. The people you’re fighting against have nothing, and they’re not, like, hiding in mountains or something like that where you could make an excuse for this or you can’t genocide them like America has to play by those rules. You can do whatever you want, and you’re just trying to hold a one city.Malcolm Collins:by the way, and they have, like, infinite money to do this, and these people are nothing. Then they’ve got nothing. They’ve got no technology. They got little technicals with guns stapled to them. Okay? That they can’t hold this region should genuinely be embarrassing for them. That they’re getting tricked by... That they didn’t have, like, a good communication systems to prevent this that their forces didn’t. What’s gonna end up happening and what I expect to end up happening is just a genocide. Because nobody cares aboutSpeaker 8:Yemen and The UAEMalcolm Collins:wants them dead now. And I think that a genocide is not above Saudi Arabia. and I think they might just come to the perspective of if forces do attempt to close the, Red Sea, they’re just gonna be like like, let’s get rid of them. It’s it’s it’s... Note here, it would be much easier than doing this in Iran where it’s just significantly more... As a country technologically competent and built up. It’s it’s it’s whatever Iran is to the United States military,Speaker 9:The HussiesMalcolm Collins:is to the Iranian military. Okay?Simone Collins:Oh, okay.Malcolm Collins:Not good. So there’s been an expansion process that... I’m trying to find where I wrote down the the dates for this, the overall scale and limits. Yeah. Okay. So The UAE New East pipeline to Farooja is already about 50% complete out of 2026, and it’ll be operational by 2027. It will allow 1.5 to 1,800,000 barrels towards 3,000,000 to 3,600,000, so significantly increasing it, like doubling it. And then the Saudi Arabia... So this is next year that’s operational. The Saudi Arabia East West expansion system is going to be a conversion that could add 1,200,000 BPD, and this should be done within seven to eight weeks at this point.Simone Collins:Barrels per day? Is that what BPD means?Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Basically, it’ll move it so that you’d only need 20% going through this this new system that they built, which is gonna dramatically reduce the cost of operating the system. It’s just... I RAM completely boned themselves on this one.Simone Collins:Yeah. There is wonder if these... I mean, this does mean sustained higher oil prices, and I wonder if it will push more people toward electricity in The United States even though our charging options are not fantastic. I still think it might be decent. I’m just so annoyed by US car commercials, which fail to demonstrate any of the features of the cars. I I How are you seeing car commercials? Because I watch some... You know that stupid old lady mystery show where they’re gardeners and they solve mysteries? That’s on Amazon Prime, and they show commercials. And there’s so many car commercials. And the car commercials demonstrate that it’s a car. It drives, and it holds people. And I’m like, how are... What is... What are we doing in The United States? HowMalcolm Collins:The IQ of someone that that appeals to.Simone Collins:I don’t under... Yeah. It’s like music, car. It’s like a perfume advertisement, which also I do not understand what people are being sold on here. Whereas I... Apparently, in China, when they advertise cars, they actually advertise their really freaking cool features that are in their cars. But US cars are so bad that they’re like, it drives. Come buy it.Malcolm Collins:It drive in mud.Simone Collins:It drive in mud. It drive in hot air. It drive in cold air. It drive.Malcolm Collins:Oh, I didn’t know it could do that.Simone Collins:Yeah. It... No. I’m not kidding you. Like, there’s one... And I really, really love Land Rovers and Range Rovers, but they have a commercial where it’s like, if they’re trying to use a baking analogy, and they’re like, you know, like, at 300 and, like, a 120 degrees Fahrenheit and frozen it below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. And I’m actually using the actual numbers for the commercial because I’ve seen it so many times. And it’s like, I don’t care. What’s inside it? Before before warring about cars. They actually... Like, I I I I drove Range Rovers when I was in The UK on on a course, like, on a professional driving course. It was, one of these weird things we did with the the the school of business. We did a whole case study with them, and they are really cool cars with a lot of cool features that can actually help you drive better, that will, like, show you the view of your car from all around. None of that’s being advertised. I don’t care. I’m... What are we doing? So... But, yeah, you think that more people would use electric cars going forward. I mean, I think maybe one of the reasons why this is not being covered in the media is people care about their pocketbooks. Their pocketbooks are not seeing relief. They’re not seeing gas prices go down. ButMalcolm Collins:you’re going to. Like Right. It’s basically over. Right?Simone Collins:Like I know. But, like, the insulting thing is that, no. It’s, like, it’s not basically over because people are still paying more. They’re pissed about it. They didn’t ask for this war, and it’s all very removed for them.Malcolm Collins:Until Iran... I mean, there is a case in which it isn’t over, which is Iran begins to panic and tries to bomb facilities, which they could do. It’d be incredibly stupid because it would give another country the ability to bomb their position at Kharg, which would financially devastate them forever. And everyone is very explicitly holding off for doing right now.Simone Collins:You’re trying so hard.Malcolm Collins:For people unaware, if you bomb this one little island, Iran wouldn’t be able to do its oil anymore. Right? Like, it... It’d be over for a very long time. And it would destroy their economy, and it would be horrible. And that’s the... You know, they they bomb someone else. Someone else is gonna bomb that eventually. And then what does Iran do? Right? Like, it’s over for them, which is not good. To understand how bad things are for Iran right now, the Iranian... Do you know what their inflation has been this year in... As of, like, now for the past year?Simone Collins:No. Good, bad, what? 90% inflation this year. Is this just a thing that happens during war a lot?Malcolm Collins:Well, if you have a economy as cooked as Iran’s, if you forgot our episode on how cooked it was to live in Iran, Iran has had for the past few years inflation of last year, 42%, the year before that, 32%, the year before that, 45%, the year before that, 43%, the year before that, 31%. Imagine how boned you are as a citizen in Iran. LikeSimone Collins:I feel really bad. I feel really bad. I... It’s not it’s not okay. And it sucks because I don’t know how they’reMalcolm Collins:Food prices have moreSimone Collins:You can’t afford to get out of it. You can’t even... Like, if you could easily flee, how can you even afford to flee? And I get this is, like, the worst time to be a refugee internationally as all the countries start shutting down because they’ve seen what happens when they get refugees even though so many Iranians are really, really awesome people who would be an asset to any country that they were able to be a part of.Malcolm Collins:I I think all you can do is you’re attempting to fight back in any way you can. Right? Like, there there aren’t many, and, obviously, the government will kill you, but they’re gonna kill you one day anyway. I mean, they they... The reports I hear of people’s sisters being, like, to death for not wearing a hijab in public the right way or whatever, like, it’s horrible. It’s a horrible place to live, and it needs to end. And my greatest hope is that we can end this regime, because, there is no reason that Iran, of all countries, should be a Muslim theocracy. see our episode on the atheist theocracy. I think goes over... And Islam is just not that big in Iran right now. It’s it’s been losing tons and tons of members. and, it would be very easy to, of, like, countries in the region. Iran is actually one that could convert to a more western style of government in operation.Simone Collins:And it it was historically. Right? It justMalcolm Collins:Yeah. So it’s it’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous that we’re dealing with any of this. It it it is... Well, not that we’re dealing with it. Like, I I think... Especially given how this war is going and where we are right now, I did not think we would have found a solution to the blockade. I did not think that was possible. And that the solution would be a measly, like, 25% boost on the cost of what’s being shipped through, and that wouldn’t even be for most of it. Most of would only be, like, a 7% increase because it’s going through these pipelines that would be finished within a year.Simone Collins:Like, should be just little negotiating power Iran had from the start, which isMalcolm Collins:Yeah. And now they got none. But ISimone Collins:think the... So the reason why it... It’s not even worth it for them to, like, not hail Mary this, though, and and and be so antagonistic is they don’t have a future anyway. So the... From a perspective of what do they have to lose, I think maybe that influences some of this. You did a whole episode on just how dire it was in Iran from an environmental infrastructure standpointMalcolm Collins:that Yeah. Living in Iran is a living hell, and it has been for years.Simone Collins:Well, and that theirMalcolm Collins:Government is alsoSimone Collins:going to what? They’re going to run out of water in in many of the major cities. Right?Malcolm Collins:And then Yeah. The the the city is collapsing. Like, the Tehran, it’s... Has these major sinkhole issues where, like, you just disappear one day.Simone Collins:Yeah. So even if, for example, things were politically totally... Let’s say, okay. Suddenly, ping. I don’t know. Whatever. Iran westernizes, and and they have a government that’s... Cares about the well-being of their people. And even if they get, like, a bunch of aid money to restart things, that’s still not going to change the fact that their cities are built on fundamentally unsound foundations literally, that they’re running out of water literally, that all these other issues are there. I I I don’t know how to... Like, I... Because I thought that has aMalcolm Collins:hard long term relevant country. Is is Yeah. I mean, I thinkSimone Collins:the question really for me, if suddenly I was empress of the world, would be how can I safely resettle Iranian citizens in a way that would set them up to thrive? Because I I just don’t... I can’tMalcolm Collins:No. I wouldn’t do that. They they they got themselves into it by allowing this to happen. Okay? It’s their job to either have a revolution and Yeah. But, Malcolm, whatSimone Collins:I’m saying is just literally the foundation they’re on environmentally, logistically, is not sound. If they had a revolution and took over, what would they do to make things okay?Malcolm Collins:If they had a revolution and took over, you’d have a ton of foreign investment because there’s a lot of rich Persians around the world and a lot of people who would like the idea of being able to make money in a country that just... Do you know the money people made in Eastern Germany after the war, after the Berlin Wall fell? So many people became, like, billionaires. Because you could buy all this land for cheap, right, and and and all of this talent for cheap. Right? Because the... They were still Germans. They were just under a a bad government. And then how much money was made in the people who invested in Korea after the war, the people who invested in Japan after the war is insane amounts. That’s what people are going to think of Iran. Okay? It’s not like AfghanistanSimone Collins:after after the the war war was started. Something. But it’s not like Gangnam was going to sink into the ground and run out of water Right.Malcolm Collins:But I ran it already trying solutions, like moving its capital and stuff like this. It would get a bunch of investment. No. It would have no problem gettingSimone Collins:the money it needed. So just it basically would start new cities, and then people would relocate to these new cities. And there’s hope. Well, that’s one thing that we can do. Desalinization. And But a lot ofMalcolm Collins:the world is gonna be dealing with this. And I think the reality of the situation is is that Iran is a country that the world will forget when the demographic crisis starts to become a more of a reality and the AI crisis becomes more of a reality. By the AI crisis, I’m talking about the jobs crisis that will be precipitated from AI because the income is going to increasingly concentrate in just a few countries. And the countries that people are going to be focused on is, like, Latin America and stuff like this. Like, why care about Iran when Latin America’s starving? Right? You know? Like, there’s other places that are closer to home and I have more sympathy for. And I think for a lot of Europeans, they’re gonna immediately go to, like, Gaza and Africa because they’re stupid, and we’ll always go for the most victim y culture, and Iran isn’t the biggest victim either. So, you know, it’s gonna be forgotten. That’s that’s what’s gonna happen to Iran. It’s going to be forgotten in global history, and we’ll dry up in whatever happens in the oncoming demographic crisis. I mean, they already have this super low fertility rate. It’s lower than ours. So, like... And we’re, like, a developed country. So... And their their social security system, do you know how bad it’sSimone Collins:Yeah. What social security system? Yeah. I... It’s I don’t know. I keep thinking about the the guy who makes videos that Asmongold covers, for example, who now ends up in Skybrows videos, who really shows the the human side of this, that there are people there who are like, look. Help. I’m like you. Okay. We watch the same shows. We we try. it’s really tough, and they’re given so few outs. It’s not like they allowed this to happen. It’s not like they made this happen. They grew up in us. They asked for us. Oh, yes. They did. They did ask for us, but IMalcolm Collins:The protests on the streets, this costs us politically. This costs us financially. Yes. It’s in our long term best interest, but this is also a favor to the Iranian peopleSimone Collins:in trying to I I don’tMalcolm Collins:think overthrow the government.Simone Collins:Yeah. The US The US did act and did step forward despite huge resistance to that. I just don’t see how There’s nothing we can do for them that is How do I getMalcolm Collins:it out? There’s nothing we can do for them bigger than what we’ve already done. Okay? It is it is it is their moment to either take or just let pass by. And it it might just pass bySimone Collins:The the most ideal scenario is Iran’s government falls, bunch of foreign direct investment, new cities spread up that are just basically, okay. Let’s just start from the ground up, build a new thing. AndMalcolm Collins:Yeah. Which happened in many countries. Yeah. You’re right.Simone Collins:You’re right. It has happened in many countries. It has happened.Malcolm Collins:Piece of countryside.Simone Collins:Yeah. Look at South Korea. Absolutely. Okay. I hope that happens. Can that happen? Let’s have that happen. I would like that to happen.Malcolm Collins:But it it requires, you know, people with a lot of courage, making a lot of risks. And this is this is something that, you know, we’ve we’ve done what we can at this point, and it’s... Whatever happens right now, I mean, we’re in a pretty good situation coming out of this right now, geopolitically speaking, with stronger allies in The Middle East than we had going into thisSpeaker 13:For how we pulled off that crazy feat, we basically did nothing to accomplish this. It was Iran that did it for us by attacking all of their neighbors and closest allies the moment the war started for any reason. It was crazy. It’s... I... No one has ever offered anyone else for nothing that big a diplomatic victory. Like, the fact that this war could have improved our relationship with most Middle Eastern countries is absolutely nanners. It should not have turned out this way. I I... If you told me, oh, yeah. Iran’s gonna immediately start bombing Qatar. I’d be like, wait. What? Why? And then I think that’s the way Qatar felt as well.Malcolm Collins:and a country that cannot threaten us anymore, either nuclear or cutting off the street. Like, what what what an awesomeSimone Collins:And Palestine has been significantly under undermined by this.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. The only the onlySimone Collins:I mean, I I I shouldn’t say Palestine. Hamas has been significantlyMalcolm Collins:Well, all of the all of the very... The... Who... All of the groups because they’re not getting the same amount of money anymore.Simone Collins:Right. Are... I mean, are they getting any money? I don’t imagine that the current regime in Iran is exactly feeling generous at this point funding their side projects.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Nothing.Speaker 14:Of course, here, we are discounting all of the money that’s coming from American anime dubbing actors for the terrorist networks that Iran used to fund. It’s a joke in reference to yesterday’s episode. No. But, really, most of the terrorist organizations across this region were heavily reliant on funding from Iran, which isn’t coming anymore.Malcolm Collins:Right? Or we’ll have nothing. They lose. They lost. Do I think... Now I’m in a tough position because my advice to the administration before was just we got what we wanted with Iran. We could stop now.Simone Collins:GetMalcolm Collins:out. But now that we can get around the blockade, it’s kinda like... And we can blockade them, absolutely. It’s kinda like, well, maybe wait them out. But that’s not politically palatable, but it it is the obvious right choice for American interests. So I don’t know what the administration’s gonna do, but this is where we are right now. Is is is now they’re just not able to inflict the same amount of pain, and we can just wait them out unless they goSimone Collins:in, sir. Looks like... I just checked Polymarket and the current betting markets around a US Iran ceasefire continuing through October 15 is 97%, October 31, 82%. It seems like it... The expectation in general is that there will be a continued steady ceasefire more likely than not. And I guess... I don’t know what’s gonna happen. Is Iran just gonna continue limping forward indefinitely? I mean, how long can they last? Just... Are there models on that? Do peopleMalcolm Collins:Consider how things... Bad things got in Venezuela. A country can get really, really, really bad before peopleSimone Collins:You’re right. Cuba’s still going strong. Venezuela is still doing whatever it’s doing despite a devastating earthquake. That is... Yeah. That’s fair. And it doesn’t look like we’re gonna reach any sort of Really?Malcolm Collins:The the best realistic cases of scenarios, we find out where this leader is and we do business with somebody else who’s willing to play ball and we get rid of them.Simone Collins:I suppose. Yeah. There’s... I’ve been looking also the...Malcolm Collins:We do the Venezuelan. ProblemSimone Collins:is market for The US,Malcolm Collins:Iran Because of Iran wanted to take a more muted approach, and the generals basically overrode him because of their mosaic defense strategySimone Collins:Oh.Malcolm Collins:Which we talked about in our last video on Iran or maybe the video before that where we pointed out that he clearly did not want these missiles sent at their allied neighbors. And then he had to backtrack. And he was the guy presumably in charge. So why is he having to backtrack and looking really scared for having said it was a mistake on our part? That’s because, likely, he’s got a bunch of, like, warlords who are like, we’ll kill you if you tell us to stop bombing people. We’re... We wanna do max war forever because I’m military guy, and now I control, and I... That’s that’s where things are.Simone Collins:I don’t like it. But it is very interesting that the straight up formula is this is not at all what people probably... Most people think it is.Malcolm Collins:Yep. Well, I love you, Simone. For dinner tonight, I would love bacon and sweet potato fries. I had and and and look up a recipe for, like, sugared bacon slightly.Simone Collins:Yeah. Well, I’m gonna have to do it a little differently because it’s mostly cooked, but I have some ideas.Malcolm Collins:Great. I love you.Simone Collins:I love you too.Malcolm Collins:You’ll you’ll come up with something great. And then we could try some other things with bacon. I was thinking bacon might do really well with oyster sauce if you put, like,Simone Collins:a small amount on. I don’t know. But I trust you. Maybe.Malcolm Collins:And... Oh, also keep the bacon grease for, like, dipping for the the sweet potato fries.Simone Collins:Oh, sorry. Okay. Next time. Yeah. I I did not hold on to it this this last time. But there are two more packs, so don’t you worry. There will be more bacon.Malcolm Collins:I might also look into what sauces you can make at home with bacon grease because I bet you can make some really killer, like, french fry sauce.Simone Collins:I really should have thought of that. That was very wasteful of me. It’s just that, like, the past five times, we’ve had bacon grease. I’ve saved it. We’ve done absolutely nothing with it, and it’sMalcolm Collins:Well, because we didn’t have AI to make up the perfect Collins family recipe for bacon grease.Simone Collins:This is true. Yes. And they serve it toMalcolm Collins:the kids if I don’t eat it. Yeah. They’ll they’ll they’ll... They love their sauces, the giant ketchup pile.Simone Collins:They love ketchup. Okay. They eat nothing else that is in sauce form. There is one... Well, cheese sauce, I guess, could say on macaroni and cheese, but, no, they eat ketchup and also ketchup, and that is mostly just Titan and Octavian. No one else consumes ketchup.Malcolm Collins:Tried pesto with them?Simone Collins:Yes. They’re... Despite the fact that they love broccoli, they don’t like the green. They’re like, what is this witchcraft on my noodles? It’s not orange.Malcolm Collins:Oh my god. I love our kids.Simone Collins:They don’t make any sense.Malcolm Collins:Okay. Okay,Simone Collins:Malcolm. Okay. It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay.Malcolm Collins:It’s gonna be okay. By the way, if guys haven’t tried it, bacon with sweet potato fries tastes really good. The the flavors go together really well.Simone Collins:Anyway Yeah. It’s one of the few things Malcolm’s eaten, which is delightful. Yeah. I’ve I’ve really struggledMalcolm Collins:to eat since the miscarriage. I’ve I’ve... As he’s... Mean, I eat maybe one every three days now. And even then, it’s not been my... It hasn’t been my usual meals either. I’ve really struggled. Like, my palate is... I don’t know.Simone Collins:Yeah. That hit you hard. It hit all of us hard. Who knew? Actually, a lot of people who listen to this podcast know they get it. Yeah. Life is life, but it’s so worth it. So that’s how it is. Or making cool new Mudpuppy tablets for the kids. Guys, ifMalcolm Collins:you wanna check out the best chatbot site on the Internet, and please promote us on other sites or Discords or whatever. If you like using Artfab, let people know. You know, we’re we’re trying to grow, and I don’t know how. Okay? Like, I know that we’re better than the other sites because I’ve used them. I know that we’re cheaper than the other sites. Well, did you see what Bruno said?Simone Collins:That Character AI declared bankruptcy?Malcolm Collins:Did they?Simone Collins:Let me just fact check because I saw the link you sent. Who did? Because, like, Character AI was using horrible models. And it was very exploitative. Oh, no. That was Candy AI. Candy was AI. Yes. Character AI’s parent company, Character Technologies, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Delaware on Monday, 10/12/2026. It is pursuing a court supervised sale of its business and assets. Why? The company cited high development and operating costs, potential litigation and liabilities, and regulatory pressures that left it unable to generate sufficient cash flow.Malcolm Collins:How? I’m in the same business, guys. It doesn’t take a big engineering cost to do this. It’s like two guys.Simone Collins:That is wild. Disney has agreed to a 20,000,000 deal involving certain assets in a nonexclusive perpetual license to company intellectual property, not a purchase of the entire character.ai platform. That is interesting.Malcolm Collins:So you’ll be able to interact with Disney characters and flirt with them, whichSimone Collins:is Else, I can tell you to renounce responsibility for everything and leave entire kingdoms to die. That’s great.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. To just have your little shitty fit in the mountains and everybody’s dying, and that’s that’s apparently heroic now.Simone Collins:Yeah. Look. This is our... What’s the name of the woman who horrifically killed our children? That’s very Elsa. You know? This is the era we live in. This is what we get when Elsa’s Clancy. Clancy. Clancy. Yeah. Sorry. I wanted to say Lindsay Ellis because I’m still watching her cruise ship video. She’s old Daria. She’s Daria once Daria becomes a parent. It’s amazing.Malcolm Collins:Oh mySimone Collins:god. Watching the show all over again, which is a good... I don’t know. I wanna say that Daria was a good show, but also itMalcolm Collins:was so boring. It actually wasn’t a good show. So I remember thinking it was a good show when I wasSimone Collins:a kid because it was wear Daria glasses? I wear Daria glasses.Malcolm Collins:Daria was edgy, and I thought that that made it good when I was a kid. And then I went back and rewatched it during a period where I went back and rewatched a bunch of older shows.Simone Collins:Yeah.Malcolm Collins:And it’s only edgy. It’s not actually funny. Like, the humor doesn’t Is it even edgy, though? It was edgy for the period. Okay? It was a girl who didn’t like her society and rules, and I was like, that’s cool. Not liking society and rules. And and then I and then I got older, and I was like, these plots are not very good.Simone Collins:I just remember wanting to like the show so much and then being very, like, confused byMalcolm Collins:a lotSimone Collins:of things. Anyway, okay. I gotta pick this up, but IMalcolm Collins:love you. Love you.Simone Collins:Bye, Malcolm. This reminds me of Mario Kart. I don’t know why. You know? IMalcolm Collins:should add that sound effect.Simone Collins:Oh my gosh. That would be really fun. Just gives me that childhood feeling of, like,Malcolm Collins:oh my god.Simone Collins:My friend Valerie would always beat me at everything because she had the game console, and I would just watch her play half the time. But then when she did let me play, I would always lose except for Rainbow Road. I don’t know why. But for out of a reason. And she was always Princess Peach, and I was always Yoshi. And I love that Yoshi always sounded like he was hawking a Lugie. Who knows why? But what does that sound supposed to be if not Lugie hawking? Explain this to me. Who would you play in Mario Kart? Yoshi.Malcolm Collins:Right? I didn’t play much. What?Simone Collins:Okay. Wow. What did your friends play with you? It’s like group games. Are you vibe coding it right now? I can’t. I I can’t. I can’t.Malcolm Collins:You can’t with me? This is how you gotta be so productive. A thousand things at once, recording episodes, vibe coding, everything here.Simone Collins:I know. Alright. We’re all getting bricked, though. We need to defragment. I guess that’s what the Sabbath is. It’s your defrag day.Malcolm Collins:I mean, I spend it having fun making new AI things as you do. Good. Always our opportunity to build something new because we made a rule that you can start building something new. YouSimone Collins:can’t Yeah. You can’t do productive work. You can’t do routine work, productive work, etcetera.Malcolm Collins:You can’t just building something you’re already building, but you can build something new if you want.Simone Collins:Yeah. If it’s just for fun, but then it turns out to be productive, then that’s terrible. Not... It’s actually not... It’s actually really awesome. I don’t know. We’re we’re working it out. Okay? It’s Okay.Malcolm Collins:We’ll do our episode on that eventually. Yeah. I justSimone Collins:I think we need to playtest it for longer. I think after six months of playtesting, we might have more data than three satellites.Malcolm Collins:Works. Yeah. Alright.Speaker 15:Why? It’s so hideous.Speaker 16:I remember the But I want it. It’s video.Speaker 15:It’s genuinely repulsive. Is this... Why why do you want this?Speaker 16:Because I love having it.Speaker 15:Because you love having it. Oh, what is that? Like, Leoplerodon? Okay. G. G is ultimate damage... Tliosaurus figure. Tliosaurus.Speaker 16:Tliosaurus? But I want this one.Speaker 15:Yeah? Okay. Tliosaurus. Pretty cool. We got Better than the one Titan was.Speaker 16:Toy one was black. I want one. Oh. Oh,Speaker 15:okay. That’s better. That’s better.Speaker 16:Figure out to draw it on on a on a piece of paper so Santa can give me it.Speaker 15:Oh, well, we’ll just write his name out. We’ll spell it out. Yeah? Okay. But I guessSpeaker 16:Santa’s red and has yellow stripes right here andSpeaker 15:Well, if we just spell the word t y l o, This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Join us today for a discussion on English voice actors from popular anime who participated in a charity fundraiser using character voices to raise funds for a group with documented ties to Hamas (a story we learned about via Leaflit). We examine repeated patterns of major Muslim charities diverting donations to terrorism, historical examples from the Bush era onward, and the challenges of integrating populations from regions with entrenched support for such groups.We also cover broader topics including refugee resettlement outcomes in multiple countries, comparisons to other global conflicts, the role of progressive organizations in overlooking these issues, and practical approaches to cultural coexistence. The episode closes with some updates from us on AI tools for education we’re building—plus what we built for dubbing. ;)Hat tip to Leaflit for this!Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins:Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be covering three stories. The first is Leaflet found out that a lot of, voice actors for doing, you know, English lines for animeSimone Collins:Oh.Malcolm Collins:Had begun, a charity event. And pretending... Like, using the IPs that, like, they didn’t own, like, the... As the voices. So we’ll get into, like, the weirdness of that.Simone Collins:Woah. But Like, okay. So, like, if, like, the the guy who played Zuko, like, his English And so one of theMalcolm Collins:people who did this is the person who plays Mao Mao, one of our favorite modernSimone Collins:characters. Yes.Malcolm Collins:Well, I mean, it’s a sort of bad thing that they got involved with, but... Yeah. so they would do it as Mao Mao.Simone Collins:Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, wait. That is... Don’t they sign things?Malcolm Collins:Yeah. No. They they were just incredibly stupid. I mean, the type of person who tries to change dubbing is incredibly stupid, but the group that they have donated to has been involved in they have been caught by the US state department funding Hamas. Oh, for And this isn’t the first time this has happened. What I think is the bigger story here is for decades in The United States, the single largest Muslim charity organization in The United States funded Hamas. And terrorization is that? Down under the Bush administration. And one of the questions we’re going to be focused on here is why does this keep happening? And we’re going to couch all this alongside another big leak that our friend Brian Chow, who we had on the show when he was launching his new news organization, and it has used AI to find all sorts of scoops. And one of the greatest and latest was brought to you by the McCarthy or t foundation or the... What what are they? T McArthur Foundation. You’re familiar with that from your NPR. Right? NPR would always be like, brought to you by the t McArthur Foundation.Simone Collins:Catherine t McArthur Foundation.Malcolm Collins:Yes.Simone Collins:The Catherine t Well, I wouldn’t recognize it if you don’t read it out the same way that they say it, but sure. Okay. The Catherine t MacArthur Foundation.Malcolm Collins:And and many other mainstream groups, such as the European AI and Society Fund, Civendes, Network of European Foundations, the Ford Foundation.Simone Collins:So this is what European AI does. It doesn’t actually help with AI development. It just gives money to Hamas?Malcolm Collins:No. They were giving money to groups... Well... Okay. So they were giving money to groups that then decided to stand in solidarity with a terrorist organization that was shut down for killing people in bombings, but they’re an antifa tied terrorist organization. and they’re like, well, you know, if it’s left wing, sometimes you just gotta kill them. You know? that’s that’s sort of, I guess, where they are at this point, in terms of ideological capture. So let’s go into this story. So break number one. Who are some of the voice actors who were caught up in this? And, I wouldn’t blame these voice actors much except for the fact that after it came out that this group is funding Hamas or had been caught doing that in the past. Like, we don’t know where their dollars went, but we know it had done this in the past. None of them have, like, recounted or been like, that was a mistake or this isn’t something that I would personally support, which concerns me. It shows in left wing circles, it’s more dangerous. And we’ll get into, like, why you might care about this organization of, like, institutionalized rape and torture that is, like, actively ongoing right now to the people in Gaza. It’s a bit like you think you’re giving money to help starving people in Mexico, and it’s going to the cartels. Like, there there is no way that this is like... The cartels are not pro Mexico. Okay? Like, Hamas is not pro the people of Gaza in any meaningful context. they are an exploitative organization that, did... It’s after the war ended was executing people in the streets. I I love the joke of, oh my gosh. They’re executing Hamas... Gazit citizens in the streets. Can you believe it? They’re like, no. I can’t. This is Hamas this time. Oh. Oh, okay. Whatever. Or, you know, get him some slack. So one was Johnny Lovasco of Genshin Impact. The other... Another is Alex Rontgen of the amazing digital circus and had minor roles in Poppy Playtime. I quite liked the amazing digital circus. I haven’t watched the whole thing, though, so I guess I don’t like it that much. But... And then the last one is Emmy Lowe of Apostecary Diaries, Cyberpunk Edge Runners, Genshin Impact, and Hanukkah Star Rail. This is the one that gets to me the most because I really like the... Both the character of Maumau in apostecary diaries and, apostecary diaries more broadly. And you do. It’s one of the only animes we watch together. Yeah. It’s so sweet. It’s so cute. But, anyway, so the gist of what happened here is a recurring annual fundraiser, raised by voice actress, Kawara Creed, who’s done approximately 120 English voice things in in anime, made a donation to operation branch or OOB. Now the reason why I wanna focus on these larger Muslim organizations and the repeated pattern of this is, in this instance, they only raised $6,000, which to me shows the lack of seriousness about this. I mean, given what they were doing, I’m actually kinda surprised they only did raise $6,000.Simone Collins:It’s a little embarrassing, but also... Phew.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. They had they had top level voice actresses on board, and, like, what they would do is you would donate an amount of money and then ask them to say what you wanted to say, like, you know, from the river to the sea or something like that. Right? And then they’d say it in the character’s voice. And I want to... This this gets interesting to a meta point here because I think for a lot of these people, they probably had good intentions. They’re, like, broadly aware of... Now I don’t know why they’re helping the Palestinians and not the much larger genocides that are currently occurring in, like, Darfur, but I... It’s it’s Muslims killing black people there, so who cares. Right? You know? Two oppressed groups doesn’t matter. but with the the case of the Palestinians, the the, you know, you can be like, okay. They’re they’re suffering. The challenge is is so often and so frequently, we see large respectable or have a veneer of respectability groups like this then end up giving the money to terrorism. and I think the... A lot of people are just very confused by this. Like, why is this happening, and how do we prevent this? Because it makes it very hard to help these groups. If there’s a community and, I mean, this happened even in The United States where they, god. Where were they... The Somalian immigrant population was scamming our government, but not just scamming it, but then sending the money to terrorist organizations. like, you give a starving person a dollar, and they decide they’re gonna give 50¢ to a terrorist organization. Like, what do you do about that? Like, how do you deal? And it’s not just at the level of donations. There’s also been a problem with any country that has taken in large numbers of Palestinian refugees. as people are aware, countries that have done the virtuous thing and taken in these populations have paid for it in the blood of innocent civilians. Yeah. They they they... In every instance.Simone Collins:So it’s not a good look. It’s really not a good look thatMalcolm Collins:you try to take someone Jordanian Jordanian government in a violent coup after they graciously allowed them into their country and were paying to support them. they... In Denmark, there was a study on, like, how three generations in, there’s incredibly high rates of criminality in these populations. I think it’s 70% are involved in violent crime or or criminal organizations. Very, very high. Right? Like, they they just... It... It’s it’s systemic in the culture of of this region, and it makes it very difficult to help.Speaker 3:So I decided to ask AI if any region had ever taken in a significant number of Gaza refugees without their own civilians suffering and dying for it. And it said, which I think is indicative, Jordan comes closest to it, and that they couldn’t find other good examples. Now to understand how crazy this is, Jordan had Black September 1970 to 1971, in which cases, Palestinians arrived. The PLO and the Firidian built a state within a state. It was in refugee camps, running checkpoints, collecting taxes, and defying Jordanian authority. They hijacked planes at Dawson’s Field, triggered king Hussein’s army to act, and they killed thousands of Palestinian civilians. they they killed more Palestinian civilians than we’ve killed Iranian civilians since the start of this war. Just justSpeaker 4:So after that, the same group was taken in by Lebanon, which then was a significant factor in the Lebanese civil war and participated in that, again, killing thousands of civilians. In Kuwait. they were taken in. They were hosted. They were supported with tax dollars and then supported Saddam Hussein’s nineteen ninety invasion, helping him kill civilians. we saw it in Iraq. We saw it in Egypt. We saw it in... It... even in countries like Germany, where two people were killed by Ibrahim a, who was granted protection and support by the German government. Denmark’s crime statistics showed that even three generations on, they were significantly more likely to kill civilians than even first generation Arab immigrants into the country. This is this is Palestinian refugees. It’s just the reality of the situation. They had a a crime rate 2.5 x higher than normal.Malcolm Collins:And I think that’s one of the things that we need to get to at the end of this is how do you help her work with the people who, when their family is starving, would still rather give a portion of that to kill innocent people of another group. What do you do? Right? It it it becomes very hard, I can sympathize with why these groups want to ignore that this is what’s happening. But, anyway, just for the connection here, and I’ll put a tweet on screen here that sort of outlines this if you wanna dig deeper into it. But on 06/10/2025, the US treasury, OFAC designated Algerian El Barak Association for the charitable and humanitarian work, also known as our Baka Algerian Association for charitable and humanitarian work.Speaker 19:And let me just say, isn’t it amazing that now we can replace the dubbers who are adding woke stuff to anime with AI? We even have a feature on rfab.ai. That is rfab.ai where you can dub animes if you want using the click of a button. It’s not perfect. It’s not good at, like, fight scenes and onomatopoeias yet, but for... Or songs. But for spoken words, it’s pretty good.Malcolm Collins:it has been based in ZIZER or Algiers and was established in 2015. It stated that it diverted funds needed for humanitarian causes to support Hamas and keep in mind, they’re, like, starving children that you’re taking the money from. And this has been... This grift has been a part of the economy in these regions. I’ll play a bit of a music video here that I think is really fun. And then whenever I play a music video here, always link it in the the pinned comment if you if you think it’s funny, but I thought it did a good job of depicting this. By the way, fun fact, the figures in that music video, all but one of them has been killed by... Yeah. Mossad. So they were killed in Doha by Mossad. The the joke about, oh, it’s sushi. Is not Mossad. They they they do. That’s one thing I’ve always appreciated about Israel is when somebody with them, they back, and I like that we as Americans are beginning to learn to do that as well. Yeah. We don’t go and try to save them. You know, that was stupid of us. When somebody with us, we try to help them improve and build a democracy that’s a glowing shining beacon like ours. It’s like, no. You... With us, we f**k with you.Simone Collins:And we try to keepMalcolm Collins:it narrow. I’ll I’ll point out here. Like, if you look at something like the Iran war, we’ll be going over this more in another future episode. But if you look at the the numbers that we have right now So the official Iranian figure for how many civilians they killed was 3,117. This was during the the crackdown where the Iranian civilians were asking The US to come in and help them. I mean, Trump was like, yeah. It will take some time, but... Yeah. And he did. So 3,117 Iranian. That’s the lowest number because that’s what the government was reporting. If we’re looking at the h r a n a number, which is generally the... This is a Iranian human rights group, the one that most people accept. It was as high as... It was around 7,007. if you go with the, you know, groups that wanna just, like, go with really higher numbers, you get numbers as high as, like, 12,000 to 30,000 to 36,000. I don’t know if I believe those. I... I’d probably go with the 7,000 number, maybe a bit higher, but let’s go with the lowest possible number, the Iranian number, 3,117. Okay? Right now, the the HRNA, in terms of civilians killed by US bombing since the beginning of the war, has only been 1,700. Is that not astonishing? Like, we’re at about half of the number that I ran mentioned of the civilians that they said they had killed.Simone Collins:That’s not being reported on in mainstream media. I just want people to be okay. Yes. I mean, it seems fewer people are not okay under The US’s watch than underMalcolm Collins:the Iran watch. You have a war for months and only, like, under 2,000 civilians are dead? Like, that’s crazy. That’s crazy. This is not a... It’s a fake war, which we’ll get into later. But the... Another episode. Right now, we’re focused on this. I was just appreciating that when these people did screw over Israel, it took them out, and I’m glad that we’re getting back to this as a country. so there was a, the the point here being is, that this organization that under this executive order was found funneling money to Humas. The group leader said, like, they saw them as, like, a trusted ally or were working with them on something, and so we know there’s connections there. How strong those connections are, I think it’s largely irrelevant because it’s $6,000 and who the cares. You know?Simone Collins:It’s such a weirdly small amount. It seems like something that they thought would get a lot of pickup because of their general platforms that just no one actually heard about. Like, it was poorly communicated.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Yeah. That that said, poorly communicated and performatory. Performatory. Performative. Performative. not not real. They don’t actually care about anything they say they care about. I mean, it’s the same as the whole Greta Thornburg thing. Look at all the stuff she’s doing down there. Is any of it actually getting good to anyone? No. Like, it’s all performative. This is the problem about having progressives on your side as any sort of civilizational power is even if you could win them to your side, they will only do performative things to help you, which is wild. Right? Like, oh, I’ve got the number one environmental activist on our world dedicating her life to my cause. What’s she gonna do? Fail around in a boat with supplies that, obviously, she can’t deliver. And even if she could, wouldn’t be a meaningful amount? Well, she could have taken the money she spent on this and done something meaningful. Right? And the real way that progressives facilitate these groups is by aggressively not noticing that it’s irrelevant that the... This this group funnel money to Hamas. It is not irrelevant that the largest Muslim charity in The United States funneled money to Hamas for decades. That is very relevant. And where the progressives make helpful patsies isn’t in the way they directly support you. It’s in their aggressive not noticing of bad actors on your side and continuing to work with you, bring you into the country, free you when you do something bad, prevent you from going into prison, when you murder or rape someone or any other number of bad things, that’s where they are useful to you, and that is where we need to be more aggressive in making sure, like, a civilizational rules are still applying because we can put progressives up against a wall with that. This is where conservatives often make massive strategic mistakes. For example, take something like going against gays. Like, performatively, like, I hate gays, whatever. We shouldn’t have gays in part of the movement. When you see gays be meaningful to the movement, Scott Pressler, Peter Thiel, etcetera, like, key figures in the White House. and, you push these figures out. And what are you winning? Right? Like, focus on the things that actually matter right now, which is the foreign opposition to us, right, that may want to eradicate us or put us on a foreign stage, and the immigrants, that are not interested in being American or American values. And note here, we... When I say the immigrants who are not interested in American values, this is not all immigrants. Right? There are a lot of, for example, Hispanic immigrants that are very interested in American values, and that could integrate as well as any other Catholic has integrated into American culture.Speaker 6:So to clarify what I mean here, I’m not saying you need to personally be okay with, morality around gayness or or think that that’s okay. I’m just saying that it doesn’t help the wider movement to attempt to ban it or arbitrarily attack or insult people who are gay because that doesn’t make them stop living a gay lifestyle if they’re a same sex attracted person. Like, that’s just not an effective means of achieving the ends that you care about. It’s... It only serves to elevate your status within a community that shares those values. So you’re really just masturbating in front of a bunch of people, right, in a way that ends up hurting our overall movement because it lowers the number of people that we’re able to utilize to win election cycles. And it’s the same with immigrants. Am I saying that I think it’s a good thing that we’ve taken in all of these immigrant populations? No. But they’re here now, and we need to win elections if we want to stay in control of our countries. And if you act in a way that overly isolates populations that would otherwise vote for you, keep in mind the average Hispanic male in The United States voted for Trump in the last election, you are not going to win elections. And and also keep in mind how much that matters. I mean, the Hispanic population in The United States is twice the size of the black population. Right? Like, you are significantly undermining our ability to win election cycles and keep in mind, again, it’s not just them. This is why this is so important. It’s everybody who has a friend in one of these communities. When you act in a way that prevents us from winning election cycles for a fight or a goal that is simply impossible to win at the electoral level, at least the way things are currently, all you do is put us in a situation where Republicans can never win again like has happened in places like, you know, the EU, or the UN. Once they gain control, they structurally change things so that you can never have power again.Simone Collins:Well, it really depends on, I think, what drives people here. Are are they here because they believe in what America stands for and they want to play our game by our rules, or do they want to exploit our amenities? And I think the big problem is that immigration seems to have shifted to amenity exploitation rather than believing in the ideals. In fact, what frustrates me the most, not to go on a rant about immigration, is we know a lot of people who are actively trying to legally immigrate to The United States because they want to play the American game by the American rules. They wanna be net taxpayers. They wanna play the game. They like our system, and they want to contribute. And they’re also very culturally American. And all the people who seem to be getting in are the ones who just wanna exploit the social services, and they’re skipping the line. It’s so messed up. Anyway, carry on.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. So this... The... When you can narrow who the enemy is to only the people it would be ridiculous to defendSimone Collins:Yeah.Malcolm Collins:It’s e... The progressives will still defend them, and it’s easier to win the optics game. I mean, it’s not just easier. It’s possible. It’s impossible to win the optics game when it looks like you’re going after some gay guy who just wants to live his own life. It’s very easy to win the optics game when you go after a trans guy who’s going into children’s bathrooms, okay, or who’s demanding to play in women’s sports or who’s... You know, any of that. Those are easy to win battles. Focus on those battles. And only when all of those battles are won can you have a conversation about, okay. Well, now let’s talk about x, y, or z or some form of moral purity. The problem is is you’ll realize the moment you have that conversation, the vast majority of your coalition is going to break apart and turn into an anti you coalition because that’s not what the majority of the population wants. But to continue here. The Union of Good designated by the treasury in 2008 as a Hamas created entity that acted as a broker transferring tens of millions of dollars to Hamas controlled organizations in the West Bank, and it was linked to dozens of charities across Europe, The Middle East, and elsewhere. Member groups included various Al Qasari fronts. And this was in... It... It’s back in the Bush administration. Right?Simone Collins:Wow.Malcolm Collins:So I’m going to skip down and talk about... Well, I mean, I guess we can talk about, like, what Hamas does. So they they did, you know, the mass shootings at the peaceful... The the four the four piece in Gaza music festival.Simone Collins:Well, and attacked attacked a bunch of settlements within the borders of Israel.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Door to door killings, burnings, executions. I mean, imagine if this happened with Mexico and The United States. Right? Like, and they took back American children, American civilians, and were holding them hostage. It... Like, it was a cart... The cartels took over Mexico and then did this. Right? Like, I would want America going so much harder than Israel went on Gaza. Like, everyone’s in thisSimone Collins:genocide. Anymore.Malcolm Collins:And their population increased during this genocide. That has never... That’s not a genocide.Speaker 7:Note, this, is talking about the Palestinian population at the whole. If you’re talking about just the Gaza population, it’s maybe decreased by 6%, which if you’re talking about a war of this scale is a fairly low number.Malcolm Collins:That’s a... That’s never happened before in a genocide. That’s a.Speaker 8:As a note, I wasn’t actually able to find the graph, so I ended up recreating it myself from the data that I could source, which I suppose makes it a more honest graph, and it still shows how comical it is to call this a genocide.Malcolm Collins:.. I’ll put the the famous chart on screen here of percent of population killed, number of people killed, and global genocides. And you can just see it’s it’s a joke to call itSimone Collins:a show. And this, of course, flies in the face of the actual genocide taking place in Africa right now, but whatever.Malcolm Collins:Forget about that. Multiple now. Multiple. Not that it matters or anyone cares.Simone Collins:Well, apparently, the reason why people aren’t... This this is the... Sorry. This is the based justification for why progressives in The US are talking about the Palestinian genocide and not the genocide that’s taking place in Africa. The United States actively supports Israel, so they feel like... And a lot of people know Jews who support Israel. So they feel like they can actually make a difference by talking to their token Israel supporting friend or to pressure their government because they could actually do something, whereas The US is very hands off vis a vis.Malcolm Collins:That is an incredibly bad reason because the genocides in Africa right now are primarily being orchestrated by The UAE and Saudi Arabia. Right? Like, what are you talking about? Yeah.Simone Collins:I know. I know. I know. But I’m just I’m just telling you what people are saying. Okay? That’s that’s apparently why they say it.Malcolm Collins:But they’re they’re part of a power structureSimone Collins:They’re selling them they’re selling them weapons. They’re selling them weaponsMalcolm Collins:Sorry to the aggressors committing They’re not just selling them weapons. They’re supporting it. They’re they’re trying to set up pocket governments in some of these region.Speaker 9:To ensure that our audience is maximally informed, what has happened is they have been supporting the Sudanese armed forces or the rapid support forces. It’s the SAF or the RSFF, and this is in the Sudan conflict. The RSF has been accused of systemic ethnic targeting, mass killings, rape, looting, and starvation tactics against non Arab groups, black people. It’s Arab people killing black people. And The US officially determined that the RSF committed genocide in Darfur. In terms of The UAE’s role, there have been arms transfers of Chinese drones, howitzers, and other systems. They’ve financed a link to Sunnis groups smuggling into The UAE, and they’ve helped with, recruitment of mercenaries. And this is extensive reporting on the UN panel of experts finding NFT International Human Rights Watch and other groups. In terms of Saudi Arabia’s role, they generally aligned with the SAF side, not the RSF, and have hosted mediation efforts, but they’re still funding this conflict. Right? Like, this is silly thing that’s happening. The UAE is the more direct group in the genocide part of this, and The UAE is an even stronger ally to The United States than Saudi Arabia. So, like, I guess it makes it even worse.Malcolm Collins:Look. It doesn’t matter. The point being is that’s that’s... It’s not like The US is only involved in one and not the other.Simone Collins:It it does matter. Innocent people are being killed. But... Yeah. Yeah. They’re completely ignoring these actual things that are happening. and not to say that there are not horrific things that are happening, in in in Palestine, and also that there aren’t major mistakes that the Israeli government has made multiple times. And, obviously, like, things coming out with Netanyahu plausibly having heard about attacks incoming and not doing anything about it. Like, there are very, very serious issues with Israel. But this is a completely different scale and kind of conflict than what’s happening elsewhere.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. So Well, and keep in mind that these people were livestreaming murdering families. Like, they... This was cool to... It was so cool to them that when... And I think that this is where the quiet part comes out loud, and you can understand why it’s so difficult to deal with these populations. When this American Muslim organization, the largest Muslim charity in The United States, was raising money, one of the things they said they’re raising money for was the families of martyrs. When they say that, they mean the people who died livestreaming themselves killing families. that is the point for them... For a lot of them. The reason why they divert the money from themselves is when you get a place like Gaza that has been under terrorist occupation for so long, anybody who opposes this ends up getting killed. That this is why you had all the killings after the Israeli occupation. Right? Anybody who is not actively, like, a... I’m gonna call them, like, dejan terrorists because they’re not even, like, intelligent terrorists or anything like that. They’re just like, I want to be maximally toolish to everyone around me. They... The the Dijin terrorist is the only person who survives. The person who, when their child dies, as we saw a video of, is crying in the streets, cheers of joy because he... You know, she was hoping that her other children also got the opportunity to die martyrs. Right? Like, when you have this mindset, you... It begins to, like, intergenerationally, so aggressive a form of selection, you get an extreme form of potentially even genetic modification, but at least cultural modification that, obviously, even generations after they move to other countries does not disappear.Simone Collins:Yeah. Although even... Especially within within Palestine, I understand how that mindset could come to be given how terrible the conditions are there, plus the beliefs about Islamic heaven. If you are a mother and you love your son and you are, like, legit believe what happens to men and has... Yeah. They they get the forties with You would prefer. You see them, like, starving and living in squalid conditions in Palestine, and yet you know what they can experience in heaven, especially as a martyr. Yeah. You wanna send them to go out and die as a martyr. Like, she she was not behaving illogically per that cultural nexus and that that... Her her perception of reality and her experience, her lived experience living in these these horrible conditions. But the fact that that’s happening, the fact that people are raised with that culture, with that religion, with those views, and in that horrible condition is atrocious. It makes... It’s it’s... I mean, it’s it’s inhumane, obviously. It’s unthinkable. And, yeah, it’s happening every single day.Malcolm Collins:A population like that. And it’s been like this for generations. And any time you had some outlier culturally or genetically, you was like, hey. Maybe we should, like, try to find a constructive way to work on this or find a way for peace. You know? They end up getting tortured to death. You... Which it happens repeatedly. Like, this is a daily phenomenon living in Gaza. You’re you’re going to get a a selection effect that breeds a population that believes it’s cool, even the diaspora, even the people who don’t grow up in this, to livestream the murder of a family or something like that. Right? And so when you live next to a population like this and to see somebody like that as a hero, someone to aspire to, I always find that the conversation around, well, Gaza is a a walled city. Like, they’re caged like a zoo. I’m like, I mean, I would put a wall around them too if they were anywhere near me.Simone Collins:Well, also, the walls weren’t as impermeable as they are now before before a bunch of terrible things happened when people readily accepted Palestinian refugees. So that’s the other issue.Malcolm Collins:Well, yeah, this is this is when they had the second infatata. They they tried to make the walls less permeable, and they You didSimone Collins:it again. Sorry. The infatataMalcolm Collins:has antifada. Whatever. I don’t like these foreign words. If I if I spit out a Muslim word on my tongue, Simone, what would happen to me? I’d lose my American credentials.Simone Collins:This is true. They’d have to revoke your passport right there.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. so the the the... You would... You’d build a wall around them. Like, it’s a logical thing to do. I’d build a wall. I’m like, why not a dome? Like, they can get out with the the Goliath. Let’s do a dome as well. This seems incredibly dangerous. There’s a reason why no other Muslim country will take them. But now we need to ask the question of why did they keep funding them. Right? And I think if you wanna understand this, go to our episode on what do Muslims believe about heaven or happens to you after you die, because that was very illuminating for me. Yeah. And it helps me understand why structurally, at least with many conservative Muslims, you are always going to hit an impasse that prevents you from dealing with them in a in a way that allows for long term coexistence. And they’ll cite to you verses from the Quran that make it look like coexistence is possible, but they don’t tell you that the way Islam works is it’s the verses that are later in the Quran that take precedence to the verses earlier in the Quran. And Mohammed was all like, let’s get along with everyone early in the Quran. And then later in the Quran, he was much more like, no. Like, let’s kill everyone else.Speaker 10:So for some examples of some of these later verses, and when the sacred months have passed and then killed the policy is... Keep in mind, Christians are considered policy as to Muslims because of the trinity. I guess techno Puritans wouldn’t be because we don’t believe in that, but other Christians would be. Wherever you find them and capture and besiege them and sit and wait in every place of ambush. But if they should repent, establish prayer, and give zakah, let them go on their way. So repent means convert to Islam. fight those who do not believe... This is another one. Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the last day. For those who were given the scripture, fight until they give the willingly while they are humbled. That’s, like, a additional tax payment, that’s required of non Muslims. Basically, subjugate the people. and then you have, fight them until there is no fatah in the religion. All of it is for Allah. And keep in mind, this is all coming alongside a... You know, if you die in combat, you get the the 42 virgins in heaven. Right? Like, women. Right? It doesn’t even matter if it’s virgins. You you get a bunch of women to have sex within heaven because that’s how, again, see our episode on how Muslim heaven works. it’s it’s really disgusting, honestly. Like, I I I would immediately... And I... When we did that episode, a number of Muslims who watched it was like, yeah. When I finally understood what Muslims actually think happens in heaven, I was like, don’t I don’t know if this is a good religion.Speaker 11:Sorry. I got that wrong from memory. It’s 72 virgins. And fun fact, they were mentioned multiple times in the letter to the nine eleven hijackers that was meant to give them motivation for the attack. So this does lead to bad outcomes. If you aren’t from it, just to give you a little taste on the episode of what Muslims thinks happens in heaven, you get a bunch of additional women. Everybody gets at least one additional woman, one additional wife to to have sex with. So no... So nobody’s in having married to just one woman. You always have at least two. And you have all the vigor you want to have sex all the time. It’s basically a hedonistic paradise without any sort of, like, higher spiritual elevation. It’s just sex all you want whenever you want and all the stuff you want whenever you want, which is, like, really sort of degrading of the human morality to me.Malcolm Collins:and the... I mean, even as a religious leader myself, I guess you could call me. Like, we started a sect of of of Christianity, the techno puritanism. If you go to an AI and you ask it, like, did techno puritanism start really open to other groups and then become very... Or significantly more hostile to some specific other groups? You’d you’d find out absolutely it has. That’s a that’s a natural... Because when you’re first starting a organization, you’re like, okay. I want everyone to be able to be on board. I want to be able to work with as many neighbors as possible. I want to... And then you’ve gotta be like, okay. Yeah. But what does the bible really say? What are these groups really doing? What’s the real push and shove if this behavior is persistent. And at this point, you just need to be like, okay. Well... So, like, I don’t even blame Muhammad for doing it. You know? He’s he’s at this point where he’s like, okay. I have power now. I have an army now. I can conquer people now, which, you know, he was doing. And those people then didn’t want to. They’re like, no. Like, Judaism doesn’t, like, agree with what you’re doing here. And, you know, Christians were like, Christianity doesn’t agree with what you’re doing here, and then he didn’t like them very But he hadn’t had that moment yet. But let’s go to this other organization,Simone Collins:You gotta explain that whole thing.Malcolm Collins:On 08/26/2026, the US state department treasury designated the Italy based tech collective, Autistica Innovateia, which actually takes Autistica as, like, their logo. Like, Autistic Technerds is what they call themselves.Simone Collins:So that’s that’s literally what I mean. It’s just not some other meaning for autistic. It’s just tech autistic.Malcolm Collins:No. No. That that that means, like, artistic or something, but they they make a play on words and their slogans.Simone Collins:Okay. Anyway, look atMalcolm Collins:the matter. They’re a global terrorist organization. Okay. The reason they’re a global terrorist organization is... Let’s let’s go over some of the stuff that they’ve done. Alright? So they cut off the Berlin power grid, which was the longest blackout in Berlin in the middle of winter affecting over a 100,000 people outside of World War two. And, of course, people died during it. They did this as an attack on oil and big business. How does that hurt oil and big business? You’re literally just murdering civilians and slightly inconveniencing to a margin of error some oil executive who’s insured anyway. It’s like, let’s kill civilians. That’s sort of specifically, we know of one 83 year old woman who froze to deathSimone Collins:Oh.Malcolm Collins:Because of these disorganization. they they funded the Rose City at Antifa, used AI services to organize incite domestic violence, including an attack involving lasers pointed at custom border patrol helicopters that led to a federal indictment, attempting to kill law officers. the Atlantic Cop City law enforcement center opposition, the anarchist cell fighting the project used tools from them and claimed responsibility for violent attacks on officers plus publishing a doxxing list of law enforcement officials. They did rail sabotage across France, Italy, Germany, and The Netherlands. This was of high speed lines that could have killed thousands of civilians. Oh. This was in the lead up to the Olympics to protect the capitalism, I guess. They said it was a capital... Like, they’re doing... They’re they’re they’re killing civilians for the dumbest ing reasons. Yeah.Simone Collins:They do really need to work on... I I feel like one of the reasons why Luigi Mangini was so popular is because he actually targeted A bad guy. Person who was making decisions that was leading people to die based on refused insurance coverage. Whereas all these other acts of terrorism, they’re not affecting the decision makers. Like, what’s the point? Yeah. And for people who aren’t aware withMalcolm Collins:the Luigi MNG thing, he was using AI that was approved... Denying claims that it should have been approved. He had gone to court, and court showed and sued them saying this is... I think it was in ninety six percent of cases or something that it should have been approved. It would deny them. This is not... This is producing bad outcomes that don’t follow your contracts with these people. And he continued to use this system after it had legally been established that it was both illegal and killing people.Speaker 12:Specifically, it had a ninety percent error rate, and only about zero point two percent of the denied patients would appeal it when it incorrectly denied them. so this was leading to almost certainly dozens of innocent deaths every day that he knew were happening illegally, and he had already been per... Prosecuted for doing, in a court case. And, it just wasn’t relevant to the company.Simone Collins:The settlement costs less than the money they were saving by denying care.Malcolm Collins:Yes. so that’s that’s what she means when she says that. Right? Like, if we were fighting a left of Luigi Mangione’s, we couldn’t win. Right? Like, they would have the popular support. The key is to always force them into these stupid positions. But the other thing, the thing that I was most surprised that they help with is, attacking pregnancy centers... Crisis pregnancy centers?Simone Collins:What? Wait. How is that?Malcolm Collins:Yeah. So they firebombed the Wisconsin family action office with Molotov cocktails and graffiti. If abortions aren’t safe, then you aren’t either. And then, in Amnesty Buffalo, New York, they firebombed the Compass Care Pregnancy Center. Windows smashed, fire set inside. These are pregnant women. Two firefighters were injured fighting the blaze. Multiple other arsons in in many countries. So... Yeah. Many women. So why are they doing it? It’s because these are pregnancy centers that don’t give abortions, and there’s this belief, partially true, partially exaggerated in progressive circles. And I’m sure you heard when you were in progressive circles. I certainly did. Of these conservative pregnancy centers that, like, lie to you that... To try to delay you getting an abortion until you can’t anymore, or that try to, like, show you your child so you don’t want to get an abortion or try to. That that is what they believe that they are targeting here. I do not think that that is, you know, I I think, one, showing somebodySimone Collins:Nobody’s forcing women to go there. When women go there, it’s because they’re actually on the fence, and they actually want someone to talk to. If a woman wants an abortion, she’s gonna get an abortion in The United States. Okay? It’s it’s notMalcolm Collins:I’m not gonna say that they’re never deceptive to any extent, but I think the real... Reality of most of the women who are going to this is they are unsure, and they want a safe environment to talk about this. And if youSimone Collins:see If you’re sure about what you want, you’re going to Planned Parenthood. Okay? That that... They are there. Planned Parenthood is everywhere. Everywhere. Yeah. If you No no confused woman is going to find one of... I don’t... Like, if I were... Whatever. Like, preprogressive me and somehow I was slutty and I got out there. You know? Or I’m not not as moral... Sorry. As socially as tone deaf as I am, and I actually, like, I don’t know, had my slutty moment. And I needed to get an abortion, or I wasn’t sure about getting an abortion. I literally would not know where to look aside from planned parenthood. I don’t... I wouldn’t know the name. I wouldn’t know how to find a crisis pregnancy center. I guess you could Google crisis pregnancy center. I wouldn’t even know the... What’s that? Like, again, people are going to these because they’re genuine... Anyway, just really mad that people areMalcolm Collins:And and if you watch our early stage abortion episode, you can see what this is like for many, even progressive women who would have preferred to not make the choice for an abortion if they had just had somebody sat them down and talk about it. If they had known as many progressives are genuinely psychologically unaware, and I was at this stage at one point in my life, not having an abortion is an option. It’s genuinely treated as not even something you would consider. And so I think that these can serve us an important role in society. But, no, these these groups bomb them. So what ended up happening is this group ended up... The PayPal seized their accounts. They announced they were shutting down services. Bank Etika closed their accounts. And then a bunch of NGOs, for example, major ones, like Wikimedia Germany, Wikimedia Italy, the European Digital Rights Union, Bits of Freedom, Epicenter Works, La Quantra Denut, Digita Courage, Homo Digitas, People versus Big Tech, and others decided to write a a letter saying that this should be removed and it’s a freedom... They’re killing people. This is a freedom of whatever the... It’s freedom of speech issue. And I’m like, no. No. It’s not a freedom of speech issue. Firebombing is a freedom. Firebombing is not covered under freedom of speech. Okay? And then they’ll be like, well, they were only using their platforms to firebomb. And it’s like, yeah. And their platforms are facilitating this, right, you know, specifically in keeping it anonymous. And these organizations were funded by those large organizations I talked about at the beginning, like the Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the, you know, Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundations, etcetera. And this is why it’s important when you’re donating money, donate to the Pragmatist Foundation. We fund cool stuff. Okay?Simone Collins:Like, these We have fun over here.Malcolm Collins:The the better AI education apps we’ve been building right now for kids, which is so cool. And, you know, if you want them, you can really cheaply get an Android tablet, flash it. We don’t charge much for any of this, or anything to,Simone Collins:like, refresh. An old Android phone of yours, actually.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Just take an old Android phone, and, it’s it’s upgrading every day. It’s getting better every day. I’m really excited about this product. It’s it’s just really popping upSimone Collins:most of our time right now is is bug testing and building new features for this because our kids are actively playtesting it. And we always have to stay one step ahead of them in terms of, like, exploiting one of the reward features or, like, getting stuck on a game. So that’s where our But but we’reMalcolm Collins:not limited to the stuff you see in our fab and Mudpuppy and Hard EA. We also fund a lot of secret tech that recently had a major breakthrough.Simone Collins:So exciting.Malcolm Collins:That could transform... It would save so many lives. Yep. And, you know, demographically, it could easily change the tables for us Yeah. Which is very exciting.Simone Collins:Super cool stuff. Yeah. Plus, I mean, all the prenatalist advocacy and, you know, whatnot, which which actually we still do.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. But the more money we get, the more we can fund. Right? Like, it’s a nonprofit, whatever. Right? I’m just saying it right. Like, we don’t we don’t pay anyone other than Bruno, and I don’t pay... I I pay him a criminally low rateSimone Collins:for you. I know. Bruno, we’re working on it. Okay. Let’sMalcolm Collins:sorry. Sorry.Simone Collins:Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.Malcolm Collins:Sorry. Well, we are, getting to a point of persistent cash positivity at this point with our fab because of the horny men on the Internet who wanna make not safe for work comments and not safe for work searches and notSimone Collins:Gentlemen, we salute you.Malcolm Collins:That isSimone Collins:Thank you for your contribution to this this nonprofit. You are amazing. The body But but you’re saving money by using our FAB anyway, though.Malcolm Collins:So you’re welcome. Donate money to the mosque. It’s easy to not donate money to terrorist organizations.Simone Collins:Oh, I... Yeah. I don’t know. It’s... Yeah. Maybe we’re not having that. Whoops. I supported a terrorist moment. Oops. Yeah. I mean Or you to cover the, the the the the people also... Not not even just domestic terrorists, firebombing, abortion clinics, but supporting Antifa?Malcolm Collins:Well, that’s what they were doing. I mentioned they supported a number of Antifa locations. Yeah. This is a platform that Antifa was using to maintain anonymity. so here’s the wider question here, and this is one I have around Muslims more generally, is how do you live alongside groups that are, at least in terms of... And I’m... Note here, I am not saying all Muslims at all. There’s lots of Muslims that westernize and want to westernize. but what I will say is I have never met a Muslim who westernized and liked western values and ideals that had a lot of kids, which unfortunately means that long term, those Muslims aren’t particularly important to what it means to interact with Muslim culture.Simone Collins:That’s a fair point. Yeah. The the the ones who are indicative of future culture are the ones who have lots of kids.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. So I would say that, first, I would accept that Muslims, even the ones that you can work with persistently, you need to expect them to fund terrorism. Because terrorism is, with the martyrs rule, an intrinsic part of their entire afterlife system. Okay? it’s not like a fringe thing. It’s not like an extremist thing. It’s it’s more mainstream. That’s why the largest organization that’s Muslim in The United States would end up funding it. I mean, that shows it’s mainstream. And even our friends, when there have been Muslim countries that we have been able to work with amicably, The UAE, Saudi Arabia, for example. these are our allies in the region. Right? They still fund terrorism. Like, of all the top dogs in in the... These countries fund terrorism. Right? They just do it for different means or targeted at different things. You need to accept that this is a thing that you’re going to have to bite when working with in mass Muslim populations. Right? Like, on an on average cultural trend. and the question is is how negative is that for you as a society? it’s made significantly less negative by the existence of Israel... A Jewish Israel. Because the moment a Jewish Israel stops existing, that terrorism gets redirected to us. Like, I don’t know if you guysSimone Collins:Oh, you like that they’re drawing fire. Well, I guess it’s favorable to us as morally inconvenient that is that they’re they’re drawing fire.Malcolm Collins:What? But we are next on the list. Right? Like, they’re they’re not like... They don’t have, like, a and now we’re finished moment. It’s it’s part of the religious system.Simone Collins:Well, they’re being supported. We’re we’re being primarily bankrolled by the death of America country.Malcolm Collins:Right? Muslims have killed way more Christians than Jews in both terrorism attacks and eradications and genocides and... You know? It’s it’s just the the historic condition here is... So with that being the case, how do you think about this? Because I know Muslims who I like as people and who I get along with as people. Absolutely. Know any who have a lot of kids, but I knowSimone Collins:Crap.Malcolm Collins:Quite a number. And so my question is is how how... I I think that the faction of Islam that we can continue to work alongside and that can continue to be a sort of persistent ally to our cultural group, falls into two groups. One is the sterile westernized Muslim, which... Okay. Great. Fine. They... You know, it’s it’s not long term, but they they certainly work alongside us well for now. Right? And then the second is the autocratic Muslim who stays in Muslim countries. This is the Saudi Arabian royal family, for example, or The Emirates, or the... These groups have shown to be persistent and reliable ish. When I say reliable ish, significantly... Like, I’ve pointed out that Israel goes over a lot. They goes over way more than Israel. Like, Israel has done nothing on the scale of funding nine eleven, which Saudi Arabia did while we were their ally. Thanks, guys. Great. Yeah. Like, Israel has done bad stuff. Not not that bad. Not as bad as some of the stuff The UAE has done against our interests. but, like, one of the things that allows us to work with them is when they do this stuff, we’re like, they are of that autocratic Muslim cultural group. They just do stuff like this. And if we oppose them, then we lose an ally against more dangerous groups in the region to our interests, like Iran, for example. And I think that that... That’s where that is. Now when it comes to Muslim immigrant populations in countries like Europe, in The United States, I think it’s one of those things where it’s sorta like, prove to me that you can make it work, guys. I I... That’s all I need to see is some group of prosocial, high fertility, and non, that, like, has never put out any form of, aggression or funded terrorism or, had terrorists come out of their group. Like, we recently saw in a, attack... The the attack on the the plane thatSimone Collins:The Dubai attack where an Omani manMalcolm Collins:Yeah.Simone Collins:The out... It wasn’t actually... He didn’t have a pocket knife, by the way. He used the emergency escape axe that is within the the cockpit, which now has me terrified because, apparently, every cockpit has an axe in Great. but he turned out to have, at at least allegedly, are social media posts of him saying that he became radicalized more as as an Islamic person in Western countries, especially Australia, than he ever did in Islamic countries where actually he felt his, faith was waning. Yeah. That’s actually we covered separately. I think, Malcolm, you did a whole episode on that how, like, actual religious faith in, for example, Iran was atrocious, though.Malcolm Collins:Islamic radicalization... This is why I say we can work well with the autocratic Muslim countries Yeah. Because they do not create this level of radicalization.Simone Collins:Well, it’s it’s it’s so ironic too. Like, the the biggest enemies of Western civilization are the urban monoculture. No one hates Westerners more than, like, your woke urban technocrat, basically, and those people are now radicalizing Islamic people to then go and commit acts of terror on airplanes full of children.Malcolm Collins:And I... Yeah. My my takeaway on this is in Muslim countries where it’s operating well, Muslims live under severe government control authority. They they have very little personal freedoms. You look at a country like Saudi Arabia or The UAE or something like this, and that seems to work. Okay? I think either we need to develop some sort of system like the Ottoman system where every religion is sort of responsible for its own people.Simone Collins:Oh, like, Santropis or something?Malcolm Collins:it was called the, I’ll add it in post. Oh, millet system. The millet system. and they... This allowed for collective punishment because it was like, well, if you’re not governing your population in a way that leads to positive actions, then collective punishment makes sense for that population with increasing government authority or control of this particular population. If I was setting up a new country, we actually have a guide for doing this. We recommend a system like that. In terms of what happens to the countries that have accepted large groups of Muslim populations, I really... I only see blood in the future, blood or massive remigration. Because the Europeans and Americans who are having lots of children, they are the most hostile to these groups. And the people within these groups... Yes. Many integrate. But the people within these groups that are having lots of children, they are the most hostile to European cultural norms, often significantly more so than Muslims in Muslim majority countries. I I won’t even say often. On average, more so. Like, the the The UAE had them put their, like, defense ministers come up and be Europe, you need to crack down on your Muslims. Like, they’re they’re... You’re creating terrorists, which are becoming a problem for us. Okay? Because they come back to our countries and commit terrorism sometimes. Like, I don’t care if they blow up a building in Europe, but, like, can you stop it? Can you stop allowing them to radicalize?Speaker 13:There will come a day that we will see far more radical extremists and terrorists coming out of Europe because of lack of decision making, trying to be politically correct, or assuming that they know the Middle East, and they know Islam, and they know the others far better than we do. And I’m I’m sorry, but that’s pure ignorant.Speaker 14:Essentially... And Muslims are telling you this. Muslim populations cannot be treated like non Muslim populations in a legal perspective. In the Muslim countries that are doing particularly well, they have incredibly authoritarian governments. There there hasn’t been a super successful nonauthoritarian Muslim state. In in Europe, especially in Protestant Europe, when you have more democracy, when you have more freedom, you typically get more thriving. And you move a Muslim population into that, and you’re you’re creating. .. It’s not that Muslims can’t be a productive populations or a good people, but it’s a it’s a complete cultural package. You can’t just move people from one cultural system into another cultural system and expect it to work when that first cultural system is entirely built around an authoritarian government style, when it was built to work under that and was in that. And there are Muslims telling you that you are being Islamophobic by not fully grokking this.Malcolm Collins:Because, like, when you arrest someone in Scotland for writing Islam, it can be questioned on a wall, as happened. that creates problems when you literally cannot question because that allows for radicalization spirals. I really don’t think there’s anything to do that... Like, this is what I would say to any Muslim because, you know, we’ve got Muslim fans. realistically, this is the way the rest of the world is beginning to see things at this point. You guys are kind of on a countdown to make something work. And I don’t know what that’s gonna look like, but figure it out and quickly. Because you’ve probably got about a generation and a half before politically. Like, if you look at the political winds of right wing extremism, people just decide to do massive remigration, and that’s if you’re lucky. That’s if you’re very, very lucky when I look at the types of views that are becoming more popular. As for other groups, you know, obviously, the Sikhs have been causing a lot more problems recently in different countries. This is another group that I think should also be doing a lot of inwards soul searching around, like, how do I make this work? Because I I... And I wanna point out here, if you’re like a Muslim and you’re like, this is an unfair test, it’s not unfair at all. I I can say that black culture in America has a lot of problems. Okay? And I can say that on average, blacks in America who are having lots of kids are often some of the, you know, worst cultural actors if you look at the number of black people who grow up without their fathers and stuff like that. But I can also say, I know completely based awesome black families that have lots of kids and could work long term with American culture and are working to build cultural groups that work in opposition to mainstream black culture in America and work towards true American values. I haven’t seen that with Muslim groups, and that’s worrying me. Right? So... And because because if we can create the sort of, like, autonomous version of right wing culture that we’re looking to create, eventually, like, people are gonna start taking account and being like, okay. So we have some groups that appear to be able to work with us and some groups that don’t appear to be able to work with us. and I’d note if you’re the type of right wing that, like, doesn’t like this and wants to be like, no. We should just be... By the way, your camera went out.Simone Collins:Sorry. Give me a second. I’m fixing it.Malcolm Collins:We should just be racist, pattern matching. Like, people got mad at that in the Harry Potter song. It’s like, you will lose elections, and you will eventually be eradicated if you do that. Because then you make an enemy of everybody who does know a base, awesome, black family. Right? If you say something like all Muslims are something like this, and people know as we do many secularized really cool Muslims are mostly secularized or no Muslims in royal families in, you know, the The Middle East that are doing a good job managing their own people, you you you lose as a supporter. And you... That is un... Whether you say fortunately or unfortunately, the majority of people in The United States. Even the majority of right wing white people who have ethnic anxiety in The United States will vote against you if you say no to all Muslims, no to all blacks, no to all Indians, no to all... You’ll not win. Okay? and that’s a... If if your goal is not to look cool to people online, which is pathetic, you’re just, like, masturbating basically online in front of us all. But to actually win any sort of cultural value... Battle, that is only done through having more kids. That’s the only way it’s done. You can go... That is... They... You can block off all your borders like at South Korea, and it will do nothing. You will die alone. That is what will happen to you. and so there’s those of us that are having the big boy conversation over here. Like, how do we actually make this work? How do we actually form intergenerational alliances? And where are there actual persistent issues? And then there’s the people having the pretend conversation to look like the coolest conservative online. And you don’t look cool. You look like a child. That is that is what you end up looking like because everybody knows you’re not gonna win elections with those values. And the reason being is because America is so integrated, everybody has a friend who’s something else. And the fact that you don’t, I can only just assume that you don’t have any friends or something. Like, that’s what it looks likeSimone Collins:to everyone. It would seem impossible to me. I really can’t imagine. I can’t... I... Yeah. I can’t imagine. Like, remember when they triedMalcolm Collins:to create an all white city? What happened? The biggest problem is is all the guys shining up had Latin girlfriends because nobody’s really actually that racist anymore. Right? Like, that’s why the Southern Poverty Law Center had to fund the KKK. You’re LARPing to nobody. You’re you’re LARPing for the Southern Poverty Law Center. Hooray. Hooray. They love what you’re doing. You’re helping them so much. Anyway It’s really something. I find that very annoying.Simone Collins:Yeah. I mean, it is what it is. Right?Malcolm Collins:Love you, Samad.Simone Collins:I love you too.Malcolm Collins:Missing you. We’re both working so hard. You know? I I have so many things to do, so much to keep track of, improve. It’s overwhelming. It’s super overwhelming.Simone Collins:And then I feel so bad for everyone. Like, you know, the the family drama that we should be following up with that we’re not following up with, that the... All the the the people who’ve written to us with really, like, big personal updates or requests or things, and I just, like, can’t.Malcolm Collins:Because AI makes it so much easier to be productive. I mean, who who’d think that our major project right now... You don’t even know what I’ve been building. So outside of the game, which hopefully we can have live soon Yes. I’ve been spending a lot more time on the tablet.Simone Collins:I’m so all in on this kid’s tablet. I, yeah, I too have been fixing little things. And YouMalcolm Collins:can find it on mudpuppy.ai under carrier device around and then use an Android tablet.Simone Collins:And the thing testing it right now. They’re they’re they’re like... Because they had they had their normal tablets that, like, played, you know, like, kid... Educational kid shows and Khan Academy Kids and whatever. But, like, they’re like, I want the the daddy tablet.Malcolm Collins:Can we do that? The daddy tablet is way better because it’s not those cheesy shows. It’s nineteen nineties, like, eyewitness documentaries and historic documentaries. And Yeah. You know, and they can use those to earn tickets. But what you haven’t seen with the new system is now it has a companion app button, that the kid can push at any time to talk to, and it has a personality and a memory. and it knows what the kid is doing on the app. And I really don’tSimone Collins:talk with them about the documentary. Like, hey. What did you think about those whales? How about them?Malcolm Collins:Actually, I’m... I wanna make extra sure it can tell, like, what the kid is watching, see it.Simone Collins:Wow. Wow.Malcolm Collins:And, like, for the schooling system that he does, time to learn, it has specific integrations with that to, like, talk back to him at the end, you know, like, explain to him the questions he got wrong, explain to him why they’re wrong.Simone Collins:My gosh. Wow.Malcolm Collins:You know, like, walk through... That’s that’s what I wanted from this.Simone Collins:It’s crap.Malcolm Collins:And theSimone Collins:skull didn’t make It’s it’s the best you can get online in terms of just plug and play and statutory requirements, but I I mean, I’m... We’re going to get rid of it and just replace it with the the stuff we have on this, just so you know, for future reference.Malcolm Collins:Yep.Simone Collins:That is so cool, Malcolm. Thank you. I’m really excited. I need... My... The next thing I’m gonna do is make a reading comprehension game.Malcolm Collins:Great. I’ve added a few... A science game and a history game that they can play. And we are gonna make the best education system because our original one, Paresia, is really good, but it’s for older kids. It’s really meant to be up to, like, a PhD level thing, and replace high school for our kids, which is what I started on. But this, it’s more of a collection of games and experiences in a points economy, which is really aimed at younger kids with the type of things like learn how to say the number, and then it has a audio, and it’s likeSimone Collins:Well, that’s... It goes from number sense through arithmetic. So it’s not just number sense.Speaker 15:Are you a kitten? I mean, can I just split some of tits and find a dog? Because you’re... I know. Look at the attic.Speaker 16:She does it like a kitten, even like a cat. Like a little bitty kitten.Speaker 15:Are you a kitten, Indy? Are you a What kind of kitten are you? Yeah. Yeah? What does the kitten say? You wannaSpeaker 16:go upstairs with daddy? Daddy. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Join us today on Based Camp as we wallow in the crisis of reality laid bare by yet another means by which people propagate fake historical claims: Inserting plausible claims “backed” by often-hard-to-check-but-proper-seeming citations into Wikipedia entries long enough for journalists, scholars, and museum curators to pick them up and essentially thread them in to the blockchain of reality. We examine how a single Wikipedia editor known as Jagged_85 inserted thousands of fabricated claims about Islamic inventions into the historical record (those edits spread into books, museum sites, and scholarly work through lazy sourcing and circular citations).We also cover the spider-swallowing urban legend, multiple other documented Wikipedia hoaxes, and the mechanics that allow plausible-sounding falsehoods to become accepted facts. Ultimately, we all need to more carefully examine why certain narratives persist and what this particular Wikipedia vandalism tactic reveals about verifying information online.Show NotesSpiders“The average person swallows 8 spiders a year”I heard on a podcast that “in a 1993 PC Professional article, columnist Lisa Holst wrote about the ubiquitous lists of “facts” that were circulating via e-mail and how readily they were accepted as truthful by gullible recipients. To demonstrate her point, Holst offered her own made-up list of equally ridiculous “facts,” among which was the statistic cited above about the average person’s swallowing eight spiders per year, which she took from a collection of common misbeliefs printed in a 1954 book on insect folklore. In a delicious irony, Holst’s propagation of this false “fact” has spurred it into becoming one of the most widely-circulated bits of misinformation to be found on the Internet.”Turns out they had lifted this fact from the Snopes page about the spider statisticHOWEVER, IT ALSO IS TOTALLY MADE UP. Click on the text from the Snopes page and they say: “tHis is a Big troLlChecking your sources is an essential part of the fact-checking process. It’s a good thing you’re checking this one specifically.While the 1954 book “Insect Fact and Folklore” is real, if you checked page 24 you would find that it says nothing about the “people swallow eight spiders per year” rumor, which likely originated decades after its publication.After failing to find any relevant material in the cited book, you may be led by your curiosity to discover that “PC Professional” and columnist Lisa Birgit Holst do not exist. The latter’s name, which many readers have successfully discovered, is an anagram of the phrase ‘This is a big troll.’While some wish to credit us with the origins of this rumor, this urban legend pre-dated our own debunking. For example, the twelfth entry of a 1999 listicle titled “50 Top Pieces of Trivia“ states the “... average human eats eight spiders in their lifetime after they crawl into their mouths in their sleep.”This “easter egg” was created over 20 years ago in April of 2001 as wink to our long-time readers who were familiar with trolling we engaged in during the early days of the internet.We’re still on the hunt for the origins of this long-standing rumor. Let us know what the earliest instance of it is as you recall. Also, read more about False Authority and check out The Repository of Lost Legends.”This is a great example of some harmless “fact” spreading, but what about more insidious behavior?Jaggad_85Check out Cremieux’s original post, The Invention of Islamic Invention.The opening:“Growing up, it was a common trope that cultures that we now associate with poverty, violence, and oppression were once world-leading in promoting prosperity and moral progress as well as the quintessentially human act of inventing. This popular belief was ultimately not driven by an earnest desire to promote awareness of empirically true but neglected facts. Instead, it was supported by anecdotes and quotations of dubious reliability and relevance, by scholarship that has turned out to be exaggerated or fraudulent, and by the promotion of these things in popular media.My favorite example of this has to do with the invention of many of the inventions credited to the so-called Islamic Golden Age by a rogue Wikipedia editor.Have you ever heard the name “Jagged_85”? If you’re a history buff, you’ve probably at least heard of some of his claims. For example:* Muslims invented funnels and sieves* Al-Razi invented dissolving substances and sublimation* Jabir ibn Hayyan invented cheese glue* Ibn Sahl first described the parabolic mirror* An Islamic water clock from the 12th century had the earliest copper pipes* Avicenna formulated momentum as weight times velocity* The Brethren of Purity proposed a heliocentric universe in the 10th century* Darwin drew on Ibn Miskawayh’s work to develop the theory of evolution* Al-Ghazali directly influenced Descartes’ later philosophical workThere are many other claims I could add to this list: Taqi al-Din invented the telescope sometime in the 1570s; Avicenna discovered microorganisms; Muhammad ibn Musa discovered gravity between planets; Al-Biruni discovered elliptical planetary orbits; Al-Jazari invented flow regulators and feedback control; Raqqa had a major glass factory where 300 different glass recipes were used, or—most amazingly—Al-Battani discovered relativity a millennium before Einstein.”This is Another Angle of VandalismAlso see the manipulation of “Reliable Sources” on Wikipedia as chronicled by Trace Woodgrains: Reliable Sources: How Wikipedia Admin David Gerard Launders His Grudges Into the Public Record.Many Such CasesWikipedia keeps a list of citogenesis cases—false or joke edits that left the site, were repeated by outside writers, and sometimes cited back. Some examples similar to Jaggad_85:* Alan MacMasters and the electric toaster.* In February 2012 University of Surrey students edited the toaster article to credit a fictional 1893 Edinburgh inventor named Alan MacMasters, complete with a manipulated photograph.* The claim lasted about a decade. It entered more than a dozen books in several languages, The Scotsman, The Mirror, a BBC cooking segment (a chef made a dessert in his honor), the Scottish government’s Brand Scotland site, a primary-school day, and a public nomination for the £50 note.* A teenager noticed the photo looked edited in 2022; the biography was deleted that year.* “Brazilian aardvark.”* In 2008 a student added “Brazilian aardvark” as a nickname for the coati.* The phrase spread to hundreds of sites, The Independent, the Daily Mail, and at least one University of Chicago Press book.* Editors later re-added it because outside sources now “confirmed” it.* The false name stuck long enough that some writers treated it as ordinary usage.* Jar’Edo Wens.* A 2007 joke edit created an Australian Aboriginal deity of “physical might” and “earthly knowledge” (the name is a play on “Jared Owens”).* It stayed up nearly ten years and was mentioned in books, including Theresa Bane’s Encyclopedia of Demons in World Religions and Cultures (McFarland, 2012), before being exposed in 2015.* The Washington Post covered the debunking.* Joseph Bazalgette’s sewer pipes.* A 2007 edit inserted a false anecdote about the diameter of London’s sewage pipes.* It was repeated by The Spectator, The Hindu, the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Museum of London (in modified form), and books on creative thinking, then cited back on Wikipedia into the early 2020s.* Catherine Hettinger and the fidget spinner.* Wikipedia attributed the fidget spinner to Hettinger on the basis of an unrelated 1993 patent.* In 2017 The Guardian and The New York Times repeated the claim.* The error remained on the article for years afterward.* Other circular cases.* A one-day 2007 edit crediting “Sir Malcolm Thornhill” with the first cardboard box reached at least two books and was later cited from one of them.* A false claim that Sacha Baron Cohen had worked at Goldman Sachs was picked up by news outlets and then used as a source.* After Maurice Jarre’s death in 2009, fabricated quotes were inserted and copied into obituaries, which were then cited.* A 2016 edit saying Mike Pompeo served in the Gulf War was repeated in news coverage and by Senator Marco Rubio before the CIA contradicted it in 2018.* An unsourced origin story for the Playboy Bunny name spread into books and newspapers.There are also some elaborate hoax articles, less clearly “believed outside.”* The Bicholim Conflict article (2007–2013) described a 1640–41 war between Portuguese Goa and the Maratha Empire that never happened, with footnotes to nonexistent books.* It was marked a Good Article and nominated for Featured Article before an editor checked the sources. Searches for the conflict mostly led back to the article itself, so it is a stronger example of internal failure than of outside republication.The formula for doing this is pretty consistent:* Make a false but plausible claim* Include citation (even if it doesn’t support it)* Hope it sits around long enough for a journalist, textbook writer, or museum website to copy it* Wait for other Wikipedia editors to then treat that claim as something that is independently confirmedDiscussionWhat should this mean for our standards of evidence?My standard of evidence used to be “is in a peer-reviewed journal” but now I question that.Now we have to default back to a weird, weighted mix of things and see truth in terms of odds and not certainties, based on whether something is- Personally empirically provable- Multiply attested (extra points for chronologically/ideologically/etc. Different sources)- Not flattering to whoever shared the information- Plausible given other likely-true dataEpisode TranscriptSimone Collins:Hello, Malcolm. I’m very excited to be speaking with you today because Crimeo on x, who we love and have met, recently laid bare the damage a single person can do, telling the tale of jagged eighty five, a Wikipedia user who vandalized, and I’m quoting from him now, vandalized thousands of articles while making over 87,000 Wikipedia enter... Edits in the time between starting 2005 and being caught in 2012. Those edits have led to hundreds of false claims misattributed to history books and papers, And now those claims are alive on the Internet, being repeated ceaselessly and promoted as if they’re true when they are anything but. Several of these claims have been even seeped into the scholarly literature and are now gaining some credence as true facts by virtue of being repeated by scholars and misled.Malcolm Collins:So... Sorry. Hold on. So a guy made 80,000 false edits claiming Muslims invented stuff Muslims didn’t invent.Simone Collins:And now makesMalcolm Collins:way into the scholarly literature at this point because so many people were using Wikipedia as a source.Simone Collins:Yes. Very lazily as it so happens. So today, wanna go over that case and other known cases of what you might call reality vandalism. And I wanna say known because we’re only aware of the egregious cases where people actually went too far and got caught. I mean, again, Jagged eighty five made 87,000 Wikipedia edits. If you just make some subtle edits and manipulate things long enough for them to get picked up by a journalist and then, you know, sort of entered into the public record as a fact, you can get away with it. Who knows how much stuff we think is true that isn’t true? In fact Let’s start with just a case study that actually goes way back. You’ve heard that the average person swallows eight spiders a year. Right?Malcolm Collins:Yes. I have heard that.Simone Collins:Do you know where this comes from?Malcolm Collins:I do not know where it comes from.Simone Collins:Okay. So I had heard. On a podcast.Malcolm Collins:They they tried to fake people out about it. Right? Like, they triedSimone Collins:to This... So this is what I heard. Okay? That in a 1993 PC for Professional article, column list... Columnist Lisa Holst wrote about the ubiquitous lists of facts that were circulating via email and how readily they were accepted as truthful by gullible recipients. And then to demonstrate her point, Holst offered her own made up list of equally ridiculous facts among which was the statistic decided about mosquitoes... Or sorry. Not about mosquitoes, about spiders, that the average person swallowed eight spiders a year. And then she took that apparently from a collection of common misbeliefs pointing to a 1954 book on insect folklore. And in fantastic irony, Holst’s propagation of this false fact spurred it into becoming one of the most widely circulated bits of misinformation found on the Internet. So that’s what I heard on a podcast once. And it’s also what is listed on the Snopes article about this fact. So if you look up swallows, you know, eight spiders, like, is this true? And you click on Snopes.Malcolm Collins:Wait. Is this story also not true?Simone Collins:Yeah. So if you click on this linked content in the Snopes article, it goes to a different page, and it reads, this is a big troll. And then it says checking your sources. It is is an essential part of the fact checking process. It’s a good thing that you’re checking this one specifically. Well, the 1954 book, Insect Fact and Folklore, is real. If you checked page 24, you would find that it says nothing about the people swallow eight spiders a year in rumor, which likely originated decades after its publication. After failing to find any relevant material in the cited book, you may be led by your curiosity to discover that PC for professional and columnist Lisa Bridget Holst did not exist. The latter’s name, many readers have successfully discovered, is an anagram of the phrase, this is a big troll.Malcolm Collins:Oh my god.Simone Collins:Well, some wish to credit us with the origins of this rumor. This urgent lever... Urgent led... Urban legend predated our own debunking. For example, the twelveMalcolm Collins:and three on Snopes Snopes has the straw... The troll The troll the Snopes?Simone Collins:Yes. Yes. So I heard on this podcast the made up story that Snopes made up to troll people who don’t click through to sources, which is exactly what all the people that Jagged 85 got tricked, youMalcolm Collins:know, Snopes so made up this fake story, or they’re saying we didn’t make it up?Simone Collins:Snopes made up the story about PC professional and Lisa Holst. Okay?Malcolm Collins:Are you sure this isn’t a a meta troll?Simone Collins:A triple troll? How far down does this go? No. Like, I mean, it doesn’t link to anything else after this. What they’re trying to say, though, is that they created this Easter egg, this this linked to part of the egg... Spider swallowing entry twenty years ago in April 2001 as a wink to their longtime readers who were familiar with the trolling they engaged in during their early days of the Internet. And they’re still trying to find the origins of the spider swallowing rumor. But what’s so funny to me is that their fake troll explanation behindMalcolm Collins:the rumor Made it in a podcast that you and I have heard.Simone Collins:Yes. It’s now been, like... Has become the, like, fact. So, like, people are like, oh, that’s not true. That was made up by some woman who’s trying to prove that facts are just made up. And then they’re just repeating the whole thing because they didn’t check the source. So this just goes to show how vulnerable we are to this kind of trolling or reality vandalism or whatever you wanna call it. Okay? So let this just be the first illustration to you of just how completely insane this is. But then... So that was fun troll. Right? Like, oh, spider swallowing, and this... It goes... It’s it’s it’s it’s trolling all the way down. Like, how far down are we gonna go with this spider swallowing rumor? But then it’s a little bit weirder when it’s someone gaslighting you about the inventiveness of Islam. Right?Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Like, why do they need to... Why why... Here’s the here’s the bigger question. Yeah. Why did they need to do this? Why did Islam invent so little that it would actually surprise you? Which is one of the things that I’ve been learning as I’ve dug more into medieval Islamic history, which is that a... What what actually happened is... Because I’ve noted, like, they were known as inventive to the extent that, like, people would not take alchemical works seriously or basically chemical works as a period.Simone Collins:Didn’t have an Islamic sounding name?Malcolm Collins:If you didn’t have an Islamic sounding name. What’s your Islamic It wasn’t the Muslims who were doing all the inventing. It was the conquered people who were doing all the inventing.Simone Collins:Wait.Malcolm Collins:What? Yes. But you’ve gotta keep in mind who were the conquered people who were doing all the inventing. Right? Okay. They were Jews. The people that historically we called the Greeks, Jews, and Persians.Simone Collins:Yeah.Malcolm Collins:And Yeah. Before the Muslims were there, they were pretty inventive as well. So, you know, we don’t see a lot of Islamic inventions coming out of Egypt to let me tell you what. We don’t see a lot of Islamic inventions coming out of Saudi Arabia, coming out of the region we today know as The UAE, coming out of really any of the Arab Peninsula, a lot of the Islamic inventions that we see... I mean, the majority of them that I’m aware of came out of the the Persian region, which is a completely different population group and a population group that is historically known for its inventiveness.Simone Collins:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, apparently, the beginning, they tried to gaslight us about this, but then Jagged eighty five just took up took up the cause.Malcolm Collins:By the way, on the... I decided to do some some rundown here to understand if the Islamic golden age was real. Oh. So I had a... An AI breakdown. What percent of Islamic inventions during the golden age came from Persian areas or Arab areas? Right?Simone Collins:Oh, no. Oh, no. And thenMalcolm Collins:from Arab areas, it estimated that only 20 to 30% of the Islamic Golden Age inventions came from Arab areas. And then I said, okay. Break that down further. Like, of the Arab areas, where are all these inventions coming from? Okay. And, 50 to 60% is coming from Iraq or Mesopotamia, which... Yeah. Fine. I believe that that those regions were historically very productive in terms of science and technology. Then then outside of that, 30 to 40% came from Spain.Speaker 3:I was like, don’t know. I don’t think that’s, I’d count thatMalcolm Collins:as an Arab region. And then if you’re looking at, Egypt and North Africa, only 10 to 15%. And then if you’re looking at the Arab Peninsula proper, only five to 10%. So if we’re if we’re talking about, like, the the the areas that are now, like, claiming or I think people picture when they’re imagining the Islamic golden age Yeah. The Islamic golden age was, like, Baghdad and Spain and Persia. Okay? That would... They they... It was not the regions that that are taking claim for it today. Okay? It wasn’t freaking Saudi Arabia. Okay? And and and that they were producing almost nothing in terms of technology even in a regional golden age, I think, shows that this isn’t coming from Islam. It’s it’s coming from the relative populations in those regions. Oh my god. We absolutely have to do an episode on... Remind me to record this tomorrow K. On the blockade of, because a lot of people are unawareSimone Collins:of Yeah.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The blockade of her moose has completely failed.Speaker 5:To get an idea of what this means, it means we went from 16,500,000 barrels a day before the war to today at 13,500,000 barrels, which is not the same as completely open, but that’s pretty open. And we’ll explain the details of this later.Malcolm Collins:Like, the levels of oil being shipped through it are almost up to what they were at before.Simone Collins:Know it. You’d never know it. No spoilers, Malcolm. We’re gonna have talk about this.Malcolm Collins:Can’t get anything through right now, and they are completely boned.Simone Collins:Oh, really? So... Okay. Yeah. It’s the complete opposite of what people are being told then.Malcolm Collins:Yep.Simone Collins:Classic. Okay. But, anyway, let’s talk about this one guy who single handedly took up the cause of Islamic invention gaslighting. This is what Krami writes in his subseq post about this. Growing up, it was common trope that cultures that we now associate with poverty, violence, and oppression were once world leading in promoting prosperity and moral progress as well as the quintessentially human act of inventing. This popular belief was ultimately not driven by an earnest desire to promote awareness of empirically true but neglected facts. Instead, it was supported by anecdotes and quotations of dubious reliability and relevance by scholarship that has turned out to be exaggerated or fraudulent and by the promotion of these things in popular media. My favorite examples of this have to do with the invention of many invent... Of the inventions created... Credited to the so called Islamic golden age by a rogue Wikipedia and... Editor. Sorry. I’m so sleep deprived. Have you ever heard the name Jagged eighty five? If you’re a history buff, maybe, you’ve probably at least heard some of his claims. For example, Muslims invented funnels and sieves. Al Razi invented dissolving substances and sublimation. Jabir ibn Hayyan invented cheese glue. Ibn Sal first described the parabolic mirror. An Islamic water clock from the twelfth century has the earliest copper pipes. Avicenna formulated momentum as weight times velocity. The breath in of purity proposed a heliocentric universe before the tenth century. Darwin drew on Ibn Mizakawi’s work to develop the theory of evolution, and al Ghazali directly influenced Descartes’ later philosophical work. These are really intense claims. Right, Malcolm?Malcolm Collins:Yes.Simone Collins:Anyway, he writes, there are many other claims I could add to this list. Taq al Din invented the telescope sometime in the late fifteen seventies. Avicenna discovered microorganisms. Muhammad ibn Musa discovered gravity between planets. Al Brouini discovered elliptical planetary orbits. Al Jazari invented flow regulators and feedback control. Raqqa invented a major glass factory with 300 different glass recipes being used. Or most amazingly, Albertani discovered relativity a millennium before Einstein. And he goes on to describeMalcolm Collins:These are... At first, I was like, well, they they they didn’t really notice because he’s making dumb claims. Like, they just don’t matter. And then it’s like, relativity, evolution. Like, what?Simone Collins:Yeah. And the craziest thing about this, which he goes on to describe in his article, isn’t just that, like, a ton of, obviously, journalists and media organizations have come to site or or parrot these facts as well as museum websites. But there is even one man whose scholarly work was cited in this guy’s citations. And then he... Maybe ten years later, like, quite a while later, so I could understand how he would forget, just reference to the Wikipedia article about this subject. Then he basically research. Yeah. In in in in subsequent papers, he wrote adjacent to the subject repeated the incorrect fact, kind of assuming... You know how, like, in in some studies that people do on... Are essentially, like, consciousness or self control. They’ll they’ll have you select a person or a political candidate in some fake election or ranking. And then they’ll later say that you selected a totally different person or candidate and be like, explain why you chose a person ofMalcolm Collins:choice blindness. Right. It’s it’s something that I go on all the time because people are like, AI doesn’t know how it can’t make decisions. I’m like, humans don’t know how that you cannot... And a person makes a decision, and you ask, how did you make that decision? Probably, a person cannot tell you how they made that decision.Simone Collins:Well, apparently, it also works where if you state a fact and then someone says, so you once said you state insert completely different facts. They’ll be like, yes. I did.Malcolm Collins:And That’s choice blindness. It’s a very well studied psychological phenomenon. By the way, when we’re talking about, like, inventiveness And you’re like, oh, how how inventive are the Muslims as a people? So today, Muslims make up around 25% of the world population. 25.6.Simone Collins:Wow. That’s a lot.Malcolm Collins:We have an increasing Muslim population in, you know, Europe and The United States that’s getting access to the same sorts of education and tools that we have access to. now what what percent of Nobel prizes in science are Muslim? Five? 0.1% to 0.5%. Oh, no. Not even a single percent. And, I mean, I’ve seen anybody who’s worked in the sciences or in engineering knows that, like, even in environments where there’s lots of Muslims, you just don’t see many Muslims, even in their own countries. Like, if you look at who’s actually running the operations of the oil stuff in, like, The Middle East That they often bring in outsiders to do that. Right? Like,Simone Collins:anyway, continue. That is crazy. What’s what’s wild about this is just how successful he was before being caught and how it doesn’t even really matter that he was caught because at this point, his damage has been done. He is in textbooks now. He is in act... Like, well, at least his lies are in textbooks now. His lies are in museum websites and in things that people are just gonna reference on the Internet. Once one of these gets solidified into the public record, basically, it’s extremely hard to undo it, which is both scary and fascinating in terms of how you can change people’s understanding of reality or the course of history if you get your timing right and if you get enough people to repeat a lie at a certain time. And it really shows something that’s deeply broken about the way that Wikipedia works.Malcolm Collins:I think... Well, no. I I disagree. I I think that this is actually... I think the the progressive world, since before this guy, was interested in promoting the idea of an Islamic golden age to the extent that even I fully fell for. Like, I was I was totally ready to believe that. Yeah. It it it seemed plausible given the wealth that I knew Muslims had. Now now we understand why Muslims actually had all that wealth. They basically had a scam running where they had a a a toll section. All of the the goods that were traveling from Asia to Europe had to go through the Muslim corridor, and they would charge really high taxes on it. And the moment a sea route was built along that corridor, Muslims immediately became super poor and have been fairly poor since except for the oil discoveries, which, again, kind of a cheat. Right? Like, not not exactly a a big win. Now I I will... One thing I will give Muslims, and I think Muslims are distinctly set up for this, is Muslims have been able to avoid Dutch disease at a rate higher than any other religious system on earth, except for Protestantism.Simone Collins:What’s Dutch disease again? It’s where you get too wealthy and it ruins your country.Malcolm Collins:Like, I mean one type of resource, like, say, oil or gold or diamonds, and it ends up creating huge amounts of corruption throughout your entire legal system, and it’s basically, like, the worst thing that can happen for your country. It happens in Africa all the time, where a lot of these countries will, discover gold or oil or something like this. And what it actually incentivizes is bad foreign actors to prevent the state from ever really stabilizing and extract as much of that as they can without any of the resources from that going to the people. Because it’s so centralized, it’s very easy to extract. the the Islamic countries, because Islam is such an authoritarian and centralized religious structure Led to... Like, if I’m a autocrat and my country is autocratic anyway and we just found a bunch of oil, it actually makes sense for me to be like, we should, like, actually keep... Because I’m the autocrat. This is my oil. Like, I’m not gonna let some foreign power extract this in a way. And as I get wealthier, I... In an Islamic country, I’m at such a stupid level of wealth. It’s it’s not that they don’t take a ton of the wealth for themselves. They just reach such insane stupid levels of wealth that they actually bleed it across to their citizenry. as we have seen in notably, The UAE and, Saudi Arabia. and, what’s that one in the in The Gulf?Simone Collins:I can’t remember the name of it, but but it Qatar?Malcolm Collins:Qatar. Yeah. Qatar does it well, and then there’s the one next to Qatar that also does a pretty good job with this. But the the point I’m making here is, I don’t remember where I was going with this. Anyway, continue. Oh, no. No. No. Wait. I was gonna say that that it opened me up. Getting this information at this time opened me up to maybe even go further than I otherwise would have on the Islamic golden age into fabrication. To be... To to to go with the statement of combining this bit of knowledge with being aware how much of an incentive there was for the types of progressives we see in academia to claim an Islamic golden age combined with the easy optical illusion created by Muslims taking over some of the most scientifically productive populations on Earth and being able to easily do a shell game. Well, that name sounds Islamic, so it was a Muslim. And it’s like, no. That was a Persian. Okay. That was a that was a Jew. That was a Greek. That was a... You know?Simone Collins:Well, I think you make a really good point about Wikipedia’s general desire to make left leaning ideologies accurate. And that very different type... There is that very different type of Wikipedia vandalism that does take place in a systematic attempt to make left leaning narratives the source of truth, which we covered in a separate podcast where we talked about Tracy Woodgrain’s coverage of David Gerard and his, basically, manipulation of reliable sources on Wikipedia, which is to say sources that you were allowed to cite as an editor on Wikipedia, to disallow many sources that he coded as being too right leaning and to allow sources that may have been incredibly skewed and left leaning, but that he knew would share the narratives that he wanted. So this is... We’re talking now about a totally different type of Wikipedia vandalism, but it was already known that David Gerard and other people like him have been skewing the information that gets shared on Wikipedia by limiting the sources people are allowed to cite to much more progressive media sources. So that’s also... It’s it’s just the the number of ways that Wikipedia is manipulated is notable to me. But what jagged eighty five was doing is quite different because he was citing source... He wasn’t citing or limited or, I guess, helped by the sources he cited. What he would do was he would cite a book, or some academic paper, and he had two tricks for doing this in a way that allowed him to get away with publishing and adding just complete lies. So one of his tricks was to reference a paper that had a title that sounded like it was plausibly going to explain or justify his claim, but it was paywalled behind some, you know, academic journal. So only if you were an active university student whose, you know, university status got them a subscription to that academic journal.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. I mean, who has a motivation to talk about this?Simone Collins:Who... Who’s gonna pay to, like, check this source? Right? It’s... What seems possible, the title’s the same. Then in other cases, sometimes in addition, he would cite sources that plausibly mention the thing. Like, with the SIVs claim, where, like, you know, Islamic people invented the SIV and the funnel. He linked to the... Like, a a tools list that the guy had. Like, a page in a book that had list of tools that he used. And funnels and sieves were on the list, but it was already well known that he had made, like, that that... I think the ancient Greeks had invented sieves and and funnels. Like, this this is not like, we know they existed well before this guy ever used them in his experiments. But he was nevertheless linking to that because someone, I guess, was like, wait. I don’t know. And then they’re, like, control f sieve and see it there, they’re like, fine. So this particular tactic that we’re talking about today really relies heavily on laziness and people just not really checking. Like, oh, I see that there’s a, like, strain, IMalcolm Collins:guess, progressives a motivation to disprove the Islamic golden age. Right? Like, to be like, well... So why are Muslims, you know, 0.5% on the high end of Nobel Prize winners... Science Nobel Prize winners now if they apparently were so great at science historically? And we’ll go over one of the arguments that is made about this, which is actually an interesting, like, religious argument to go into, which is specifically Ashurism, which is the idea that god wills things, and that’s the only reason that things behave in a certain way. And this is an entire episode to go over this particular topic. Basically, it means that you shouldn’t be focused on cause and effect. Right? What? You you just need to be focused on god. And as soon as you focus on this, it becomes very hard to do effective science, right, when when cause and effect are notSimone Collins:Oh, you’re saying that Islam is plagued with this ideologically, and therefore,Malcolm Collins:they’re in No. I I mean, it wasn’t during the golden age, and it it it... This came to dominate later. So... Okay.Simone Collins:Oh, so you’re saying... You’re you’re trying to say that at the time of the Islamic golden age, when actually there was a higher level of inventedness, relatively speaking, it may have been because they had not yet been hit of the blight... By the blight of this Yeah. Complete refutation of empiricism. Is that what you’re describing?Malcolm Collins:So I’ll just describe it. Ashurism, the dominant theological school, emphasizes god’s absolute power and uniqueness as the sole true agent. Oconealism is a view that created things have no intrinsic causal powers. Apparent causes, fire burning cotton, medicine curing illness, etcetera, are merely occasions on which God directly creates the effect. There is no necessary connection in the nature itself. You you can see why that’sSimone Collins:operate in, like... You can’t operate in reality with that.Malcolm Collins:Basically, the idea is is god just likes things to be that way. It’s in the nature of god forSimone Collins:Oh, so, like, you struck the match against the matchbook, but it only lit because god wanted it to light.Malcolm Collins:But he just... He’s just... That’s his habit to make things light when you strike matches.Simone Collins:When when he feels like it.Malcolm Collins:Well, it it makes sense as an idea. Some schools of Christianity go in this direction as well. The the... You know, God can do anything he wants whenever he wants, and therefore, everything that happens is a direct will of god sort of a thing instead of god... So we will have another episode where we get into this because it actually is a deeper question that I think is very dangerous to begin to believe, and I think it’s the second biggest danger religiously for a person to believe after mysticism.Simone Collins:Oh, sure. If something blocks you from being able to engage really well with empiricism, you’re gonna have toMalcolm Collins:Which which is to say that all, instead of, like, god set up the way reality works, or god manipulates the way reality works while obeying the rules of the reality that he he created or is operating within, it’s people who say that, no. Reality works completely subject to god. It’s not a a a separate thing from god. Yikes. And and people who wanna be maximally expansive as their concept of god often find themselves in this position, and it’s it’s very, you know, it it can lead to you attacking scientists and science more broadly and even philosophy. I mean, this this comes from a piece called the incoherence of the philosophers.Simone Collins:Oh, okay. Well, yeah, that’ll be a fun episode. But I’ll bring us back to this whole thing. So this is this is a such a well known problem. This this act of, like, making up facts, putting a citation down, and then just walking away quietly while you wait for the rest of the world to accept this as reality and then make it reality by putting it in trusted reliable sources, which then, of course, makes it fully provable on Wikipedia. The... Wikipedia has its own list of what they call to be cytogenesis cases, which is where people do this this practice. So they’re basically, like, either false or joke edits that have been left on the site and then were repeated by outside writers and then sometimes cited back. That’s the full circle. Okay? Let me read some off to you because there are some funny ones. There’s... First, Alan McMasters and the electric toaster. So in February 2012, University of Surrey students edited the toaster article to credit a fictional 1893 Edinburgh inventor named Alec McMasters, complete with a manipulated photograph. And the claim lasted for about a decade. It entered more than a dozen books in several languages, The Scotsman, The Mirror, a BBC cooking segment where a chef made a dessert in his honor, the Scottish government’s brand Scotland site, a primary school day, and a... The public nomination for the $50 note, sorry, £50 note. And a teenager teenager noticed that the photo looked edited in 2022, and then the biography was deleted that year, which is really funny. So, basically, people made up a fake Scots man who And then all of Scotland was like, woah.Malcolm Collins:We’ll take it. We’ll take credit for that.Simone Collins:They’re like, yes. So you know what? It’s not just Islamic invented this, except this time it’s a little bit more harmless because it’s a Scottish man and a toaster. But whatever. Okay? Then there’s Brazilian aardvark. In 2008, a student added Brazilian aardvark as a nickname for the Kuati. The phrase spread to hundreds of sites, The Independent, The Daily Mail, and at at least one University of Chicago press book. Editors later readded it or... Because they they now saw outside sources. So the student added it. It got cited in a bunch of... Like, well, at least it got repeated in a bunch of actual publications. It got removed because it ain’t true, but then it got added back. Because can’t you see this book that says that the Kuatis sometimes known as a Brazilian artwork? Any... Anyway, so now, basically, the name has stuck enough that it’s entered ordinary usage. The student was successful, which is delightful. And I I guess maybe this is kind of just a masterclass in how you can manipulate reality. If you really want something to be true, this is how you do it, guys. Okay? Then there’s Jar Edawenz, a 2007 joke edit created an Australian aboriginal deity of physical might and earthly knowledge, which is the name of a play on on... Or sorry. It’s the name is a play on Jared Owens. It stayed up for nearly ten years, and it was mentioned in books, including Theresa Bain’s Encyclopedia of Demons in World Religions and Cultures, which was published by McFarland in 2012. And then it was exposed in 2015, And the Washington Post debunked this this particular discovery, but it still got covered in a book. There’s Joseph Basilegett’s sewer pipes. A 2007 edit inserted a false anecdote about the diameter of London sewage pipes. It was repeated by the spectator, the Hindu, the institution of civil engineers, the Museum of London in modified form, and in books of... On creative thinking and then cited back on Wikipedia in the early twenty twenties. But then it was later caught, but probably everyone believes it now. Catherine Hedinger and the the fidget spinner. Wikipedia attributed the fidget spinner to Hedinger on the basis of an unrelated 1993 patent in 2017. The Guardian and the New York Times repeated this claim, and then the error remained on the article for years afterward. And then there are other circular cases of, like... This this is really impressive. A one day edit in 2007 crediting sir Malcolm Thornhill with the first cardboard box reached at least two books and was later cited from one of them. So this this edit only survived for a day. Because you know how it is, Malcolm. Right? Like, something can be posted on Wikipedia, and then someone comes across it. They don’t think it’s good enough, and they take it down. This is... This happens all the time.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. So thisSimone Collins:Even during that short period, something could be cited in books, which is insane to me. Also, a false claim that Sacha Baron Cohen, you know, like Borat, had worked at Goldman Sachs, was picked up by news outlets and then used as a source. Like, that that is to say the news outlets reporting on it. I’ve actually heard that, which is not true, apparently. After Maurice Jarre’s death in 2009, fabricated quotes were inserted and copied into obituaries, which were then cited. A 2016 edit saying Mike Pompeo served in the Gulf War was repeated in the news coverage and by senator Marco Rubio before the CIA contradicted it in 2018. And, also, an unsourced origin story of the Playboy bunny name was spread into books and newspapers. So nothing is true anymore. I I can’t I I I... It’s it’s hard for me to even imagine, like, how I can tell what’s true at this point. There are some that, honestly, they they didn’t successfully make it beyond Wikipedia. That is to say people didn’t fall for it. There is this Beechom conflict article that, I guess, lasted from 2007 to 2013, which described a sixteen forty to forty one war between the Portuguese Goa and the Martha Empire that never happened. It had footnotes to nonexistent books. It was a whole thing. Like, someone just, I guess, wanted to make fan fiction on Wikipedia. And I guess it’s obscure enough that no one really cared and didn’t cite it. So it’s one of those things where you have to... If you wanna pull this off, you have to write about something like, I don’t know, the cardboard box that apparently people are obsessed with. And despite the fact that this is totally untrue, it was marked as a good article, and it was nominated for feature article before an editor checked the sources and discovered, lo and behold, they’re not real. But searches for the conflict mostly led back to the article itself, so it’s a stronger example of an internal failure to actually take it down immediately. It didn’t it didn’t break containment, but this still happens all the time on Wikipedia. So the formula for this is super, super clear. Basically, you make a false but plausible claim.Malcolm Collins:Well, hold on.Speaker 7:Note here was a clip that I had moved earlier in the sequence that was me double checking just how manufactured the Islamic golden age was and then finding that, uh yes, statistically, it didn’t happen in the way that it’s often portrayed as happening.Simone Collins:Well, you never know it, Malcolm, and it’s sort of official record now. At least trusted sources on Wikipedia are But there’s a there’s aMalcolm Collins:that have happened. Undergoing a technological overthrow of civilization, basically. I mean, it’s it’s it’s happening as we speak. That is Yeah. What everyone in our community is doing. We are technologically overthrowing culture. We’re technologically overthrowing civilization. It is taking the new technologies that we have access to. And instead of being the, you know, wimpy cock who gets miraculous technology like AI, and it’s just like, it has a progressive bias. We go out there and we say, well, can we make based AI? You know, you can get based AI on our fab.a I. can we make AI that’ll that’ll break barriers? Can we make AIs that will ask questions? can we go out there? Like, one of the things that we’ve made recently is, on the mypuppy.ai site, we made a a place where you can flash, like, Android tablets because, you know, we got Android tablets for our kids to to just have games that they can play, but not games that they can play, but, like, game, learning games they play for tokens so that they can then watch movies. But with the default movie list that I have on this thing, it’s a bunch of, like, old YouTube cartoons. One, so I’m controlling the culture that they’re in. But then two, I’m also able to go through and edit even the woke stuff from the nineties stuff. So I took out, you know, all the recycling episodes, all the episodes about the environmentalism, all the, you know, BS. I was like, My kid’s not seeing that. And so we’re updating these a lot right now whenever we’ve got a new technology out there. It’s getting constantly updated. But this is gonna be the place where our kids live is these these tablets that we’ve made for them.Simone Collins:Yeah. I mean, it it is clear that if if we’re talking about how to determine sources of truth at this point, I guess my new standard is, yeah, probably older information is a little bit more trustworthy. Certainly not Wikipedia, though it’s always a fun jumping off point for some things. You just can’t No.Malcolm Collins:I mean, you’ve gotta look. You’ve gotta look. You’ve gotta stress test. You gotta say, does this, you know, like, we’re talking to these reporters, and we sent them a study that said that trans people in The UK... This is called, like, trans homicides in The UK. In 2025, that trans people were more likely to commit a homicide than be victim of a homicide. They were a predatory population, not a victim population Whenever they say, oh, I feel unsafe. Oh, I feel... No. The world isn’t safe from you, like, by the statistics. And they then said, oh, look. Cited in here is a study saying that in America, the the trend is a reverse. And I was like, did you think to look up that study? And, of course, they hadn’t looked up that study. I had seen it when I was originally looking at this, and I had dismissed it because when I looked up the study, the person who wrote it looked like the trans version of Joe Camel. Like, you don’t exactly believe the head of the cigarette company when they they tell you that cigarettes are safe. You don’t look like the guy who walks like... Looks like his entire life is about... Like, you know, one of those, like, poorly passing trans people where it’s, like, clearly their main thing. And all the stuff I could find on him where... Or her, I don’t even remember, was of her speaking at trans events and stuff like that. I’m like, obviously, she’s not gonna write that this is a danger. What are you what are you talking about? Like, do you have any credulousness?Simone Collins:Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that’s that’s one of my... I think, like... Again, why why do I always talk about a historical Jesus lecture series on the teaching company’s great courses? But what I really liked about that in terms of, like, determining what might be true when you’re working with, like, very old sources that are all over the place, which is kind of what reality is becoming, it feels like the the New Testaments with all their conflicting information. Was Jesus born in Bethlehem? Was he born in Nazareth? I do not know. Actually, probably not Beth... Bethlehem if you look at the actual criteria. Right? But, like, if it is not flattering to the source, probably not true... Or sorry. Probably true because, otherwise, you know, normally, people don’t like to publish stuff that’s not flattering. If it’s multiply attested, probably true, especially if it’s pretty clear that they’re not drawing from the same source material. So you can’t exactly choose, for example, books that seem to be coming... Like, pulling from q.Malcolm Collins:Like, by... Well, if one bible book was clearly written while referencing another bible book, it’s it’sSimone Collins:Or or the same shared source, which is the case with q Yeah. Where they think that there’s some additional, like, source that is now lost that both both books were pulling from in one case. I think Matthew and Luke is it. But, anyway, so, like, multiply attested, unflattering. I I would argue, like, either something you can personally empirically prove, like, okay. Is water wet? I can feel that. If I light something on fire, will it burn? Okay. Great. Like, you know, if you can kind of SoMalcolm Collins:so some great example is this from the bible. Right?Simone Collins:Like Yeah.Malcolm Collins:Where... I believe it’s Mark talks about how, like, Jesus’ hometown did not like him. Right? Like, he was he was rejected by the community he was born in. That’s not something you would write about someone you’re trying to make a founder. Yeah. Being born into poverty in a in a manger is not something you write about the person you’re trying to make, you know, look like your savior. being born to... A carpenter, being born to... Like, these are things that you’re like, yeah. You probably wouldn’t write that if you were faking this,Simone Collins:which is flattering stuff.Speaker 6:This is one of the reasons you can basically just laugh in the face of people who say that Jesus never existed because that doesn’t pass the most basic logical checks. people, if they were making up a founder, they wouldn’t have made up a founder who was born in a manger. They wouldn’t have made up a founder with the the Nazarest ties or whose family rejected him or, you know, all of these things. They don’t make sense if you’re making something up from scratch. The the second thing I note here is people to be like, well, if you believe in the Bible , then why don’t you believe everything in the Bible matches exactly historical reality? And this has to do with how we interpret the Bible. The Bible can be true in a in a sense of how we are supposed to interpret it and what we’re supposed to gain from it. That doesn’t mean that it perfectly aligns with the historical reality of the situation. Right? Like, the historical reality being slightly different or having slight inconsistencies with what’s written doesn’t make the Bible spiritually untrue. it just means that the reason the Bible was written differently is because of what we were supposed to take from it.Simone Collins:Although, unless it’s meant to match a prophecy, in which case, that is flattering. So you have to, like, know the context. But that just... It just makes truth finding a lot harder than it used to be, I think, where... I I guess you could never really have trusted a source. And I actually heard this recently, this this quote from Napoleon, which I’m now gonna, like, misquote, but he basically said something along the lines of history is the fable that we can all agree upon. But it’s it’s sort of like a shared myth that we, like, we... This is the lie that we’re all going to agree is canon now, and that’s that’s what we have.Malcolm Collins:And I guess we always overturn that. We can we can rebuild this. The one civilization theory is catching wind, Simone. People like this theory. LikeSimone Collins:Oh, yeah. Well, I guess there are two sides to this. Right? Oh, yes. So let let me leave you let me leave you with the the way that this is done. since, obviously, on Wikipedia, it’s already very difficult to even share the truth sometimes based on how they choose reliable sources. Again, see our our our separate episode on that. Or you can just read Tracy Woodgrain’s substack, Reliable Sources, How Wikipedia Admin David Gerard Launders His Grudges Into the Public Record. Very enlightening. Tracy McGrince is great. Anyway, so this is how you do it. One, you make a plausible plausible claim. It has to be something people believe could be true or want to be true in the case of, you know, the Islamic golden age. It really helps if leftists want it to be true if we’re talking about Wikipedia. Then include a citation. Even if it doesn’t support it, the citation just has to be, like, on theme, basically. And then you hope it sits around long enough for a journalist or a textbook writer or a museum website to copy it, and then he wait for Wikipedia editors to then treat that claim as something that was independently confirmed. And then boom. You’re in. You’ve done it. So if you need to, like, spread something that you think is a little bit more wholesome or healthy or actually, god forbid, true. That’s the trick, guys. That would be the most wholesome outcome if suddenly people just start actually putting true things on Wikipedia and just using this method to get through all the barriers that have been placed to actually putting true things on Wikipedia. Although, I guess the problem being that make it a plausible claim step is really difficult if leftists are looking at it, and it’s a claim like, hey. Transitioning children hurts them. And they’re like, not plausible. Impossible. Impossible. They’ll kill themselves. How could you? So maybe maybe this isn’t as easy, but a girl can dream. And for now, I’m just gonna have to, I don’t know,Malcolm Collins:take a break from reality. The the... This group is bad. Their actions, like, on our recent episode, you know, AI did not like that I pointed out, okay. A decade after they normalized gay bars, the AIDS epidemic happened. That would not have happened had they not done that. There was a reason people had a bias against indiscriminate male gay sex across cultures because the cultures that don’t form this bias have massive deaths of young male population. because this is the the... I mean, there’s a reason why there’s fewer, prohibitions against female gayness across cultures because it’s just not as important for reducing disease transfer. Yeah. And days were a vector in disease transfer. They did lead to this in order... And it’s like, I don’t want this fact to be reality. And I’m like, well, I’m sorry. It is reality. The AIDS epidemic would have been astronomically less severe if, especially within the gay population, which had hit the hardest, is if they had not normalized gay bars ten decades before. We gotta go. Ten years before. Okay. Go. Have a great one. Love you.Simone Collins:Do you wanna wrap up? I can run. Does anyoneMalcolm Collins:know? I’m done. I love you.Simone Collins:I love you too. You’re so sorry. Reality is broken. Bye. For whatever reason, battery on my pretty new laptop has not been lasting so well, but the fan’s been going crazy.Malcolm Collins:Do you have vibe coding running in the background?Simone Collins:Yeah. So that’s kinda gonna do it.Malcolm Collins:That’s what’s doing it. She’s... I don’t know why vibe coding takes up so much power. Like...Simone Collins:Because I think they’re they’re... Well, they’re they’re running too much stuff in parallel.Malcolm Collins:But they’re running it on servers that aren’t yours. They’re runningSimone Collins:a lot of stuff locally. I know that because it keeps saying things like, well, if you had this installed, I’d test more, but I can’t. Very passive aggressive, but I like it.Malcolm Collins:Make sure you have the Android thing working by tomorrow. So sync all of your changes on that, and I’ll get that fixed tonightSimone Collins:at moment. Yeah. Things run the next build. Hopefully, the latest things that I want to fix. We’re good. Okay. Okay. Here we goSpeaker 8:Watch her march in, clipboard held high, badges on her robe, a fire in her eye. She’s never been wrong, just ask she’ll say. So I thought I’d help her be wrong today. I slipped a new book on the library shelf. Goblin True Names, I wrote it myself. Wizard names, it said. Erase their past. Use the goblin ones. She read it fast. Weasley in goblin means limited means. She believed every word. She believes what she reads. At breakfast, she rose for the whole house to hear. Good morning, Ron of limited limited means, means, dear. Dear.Speaker 9:Oh, Granger. Granger. I’m just curious. Why are you so cute when you’re furious? Your cheeks go pink. Your fists go tight. So naive, so sweet I could take a bite.Speaker 8:I forged her a letter signed winky elf chief. We’ll rise if you lead us spring clothes for relief. She ran to the kitchens with socks for the lot. A sock means you’re sacked, that part she forgot. 400 elves crying,Speaker 9:no pudding, no roast. And every house knows who to blame the most.Speaker 8:They hiss at her now. They glare and they stare away from my hamper.Speaker 9:Granger, Eclair. Oh, Granger, Granger, I’m just glorious. Why are you so cute when you’re furious? Your cheeks go pink, your fists go tight, so naive, so sweet, I could take a bite. She leaves aSpeaker 8:badge box on the table at night, so I charmed everyone with a whisper of spite. Next day, she pinned them on all she could reach. On first years, on prefects, one badge each. At noon, every badge flashed pink for a laugh.Speaker 9:Granger still writes to Lockhart for his autograph.Speaker 8:I had no idea it was only a bluff, but grandeur went white, and that was enough. How did you know? She shrieked at me loud, then realized she’d said it to the entire crowd.Speaker 9:Oh, grandeur, grandeur. I’m just curious. Why are you so cute when you’re furious? Your cheeks go pink, your fists go tight. So naive, so sweet, I could take a bite.Speaker 8:I wrote her a pamphlet, anonymous, sleek. The loudest voice yields so the quiet can speak. She loved it, she quoted it, she made Neville cry. Neville, you’re centering. He’d only asked why. Then Flitwick asked something, her hand shot up high. I said, who’s the loudest in this school? Not I. She’d preached it all week. Her own rule,Speaker 9:who knew? So she sat on herSpeaker 8:hands the whole lesson through. 91 answers and not one said I winked, she knew her face went red.Speaker 9:Ranger. Ranger. I’m just curious. Why are you so cute when you’re furious? Your cheeks go pink. Your fists go tight. So naive, so sweet. I could take a bite.Speaker 8:She came to my door with a pamphlet and tea. It’s your upbringing, dear. I forgive you. Me? And Harry’s been asking. He’s terribly curious. He thinks you’re so cute whenSpeaker 9:you’re furious. Get out. Get out. Oh, Granger, Granger, I’m not furious.Speaker 8:Did he cute? I’m not curious. My cheeks aren’t pink. How did Shino Granger come back? Did he really say so? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

This episode examines the Stonewall riots through primary accounts and historical research, revealing the mafia-run bar’s exploitation of patrons via blackmail, stolen liquor, and unsafe conditions. It details how a small group of officers from another precinct uncovered police corruption and faced violent resistance while protecting lives without firing on the crowd.The discussion covers the bar’s operations, the limited role of certain figures in the events, the broader context of laws aimed at curbing disease spread, and how later narratives have rewritten the incident. It argues for recognizing the officers’ restraint and the raid’s focus on organized crime rather than the patrons themselves.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins:Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Genuinely excited because digging into this subject has completely changed my understanding of the pivotal moment of the Stonewall riots, which is seen as a central part of the gay movement, but it’s sort of a founding moment. It was when the gays pushed back. Let me tell you what. We should absolutely be celebrating yearly the heroes of the Stonewall riot. Wow. The problem being the heroes were the cops. And I don’t mean this in a bombastic sense. I mean, the cops at the Stonewall riots genuinely were brave people saving lives, stamping out corruption, and in a genuinely harrowing situation. So, for people who are unaware, Stonewall was a mafia run bar. Okay? This mafia run bar ran on exploiting gay people, and we will get into this. We... They they would run campaigns where they would blackmail people. One admiral, ended up committing suicide because they were blackmailing him so aggressively.Simone Collins:Right. Because by the way, this is... This all happened in 1969, and this was when that could really, like, ruin your life. You know? Now it’s different. This was not then.Malcolm Collins:And all of the people... Everything you’ve heard, like, the transgender woman of color through the first break, she wasn’t even there. What? And and we have multiple accounts. Like Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.Simone Collins:Wait. So she was just, like, later was like, yeah. It was there, and people believed her.Malcolm Collins:And and her her best friend who she said handed her the brick said, that didn’t happen, and she wasn’t there that day.Simone Collins:Best friend, former now, I guess. Ouch.Malcolm Collins:So, yeah, that’s all fabricated as well. It was almost all white men who were there. Oh, lord. Oh, I’m gonna paint a scene for you. Okay? Okay. So this bar had been paying the police, for cover protection, and they had beenSimone Collins:Oh, wait. Wait. Wait. They they were paying off a corrupt police force.Malcolm Collins:They were paying off a corrupt police force.Simone Collins:Okay. Okay.Malcolm Collins:Okay. And the police force was letting them know whenever they were gonna do raids, and they would change the lights from blue to white, and everyone would change what they were doing because this was... So the the corrupt police were being paid off by this bar. And a internal... Like, a... Another precinct of police began to dig around. They’re like,Simone Collins:this Oh, but they were getting paid off.Malcolm Collins:Look really corrupt, and we need to figure out what’s going on. We need to break down whatever’s happening here.Simone Collins:And so Wait.Malcolm Collins:So they go in. They had only eight officers, including a couple of female officers. Oh. It was six male officers and a couple female officers. They entered a packed bar of around 200 people at 01:30AM. Okay? So they’re in this bar. You know, nobody expects to be, like, arrested or anything like that. Right? Yeah. Lot of these people who went in undercover to try to root out this police corruption are like, you know, we’re the police. We’re gonna start taking names. We’re gonna start arresting people. Now this bar is full of... You gotta understand who went to Stonewall at the time. A huge number of the people were homeless, thugs, gangsters. Keep in mind, this was a... Truly the worst of the worst. I mean, this bar was run by Catholics. I mean, the mafia. Goodness. Sorry. I’m choking there. but, no, truly, like, says, like, genuine dirty scumbags. People were not going there to find love. They were going there to find hookers and prostitutes. Right? Like, that’s what’sSimone Collins:big about. Enough to hold 200 people. I’m concerned. You’re justMalcolm Collins:a few police. Right? Six guys. 200 people. And then what happened is, obviously, because the bar was used to getting warned about this beforehand and you got a bunch of drunk gangsters in it Yeah. They decide, well, we’re gonna beat up these police officers who are trying to arrest people. So then the police call for backup. But the problem is is that the precinct that controlled that area that they were calling for backup was the one that they were busting for corruption. And so they didn’t send the backup. And so they ended up... Can you imagine how you are? And so the situation is getting worse and worse. They ended up getting everyone out of the bar and ended up like a zombie movie, boarding up the walls of the bar and stuff like that.Simone Collins:Oh my. What... Wait.Malcolm Collins:The theSimone Collins:ace hiding inside the bar?Malcolm Collins:Were what? Yeah. They were hiding inside the bar fromSimone Collins:the How did they get... Did they, like, tear gas inside the bar to get it? What happened? Technology. Oh my god.Malcolm Collins:They they didn’t they didn’t have the preparation for what was about to happen. So, anyway, as the resistance started outside and the crowd grew, the officers ended up retreating inside the bar and barricading themselves. The crowd outside threw bottles, garbage, coins, and other objects. Somebody used a Coin Oh, no. Somebody used a parking meter as a battering ram to knock down the door. Oh, that’s where the coins came from. And there was attempt to set the building on fire while the police were barricaded inside, and it was set alight and apart, at a point. The... Pine, the officer, said it was more frightening than anything he had experienced in combat as a war war two vet.Simone Collins:Wow. When the gays and the mobsters are mad at you.Malcolm Collins:And you’ve gotta understand the restraint that the police are showing in this instance. These people are trying to beat them to death. No. They were severely injured. These people Oh, andSimone Collins:they get it. Were... Did they shoot? Did theyMalcolm Collins:No. So the officer... Apparently, there was, like, an internal discussion, and they’re like, we really need to shoot our way out of this. Like, we’re gonna die here. And the officer was like, if we start shooting, this is gonna turn into a massacre. We have to hold out. So even from the perspective of the gay communities, they’re trying to shut down a bar that’s victimizing the gay community. The gay bunch of hoodlums who are looking for their prostitute that day are trying to break down the wall of of this particular building. Right? And they put their own lives on the line to protect the people trying to kill them, to not do what any sane officer... What I would have done in that instance, which is shoot my way out, which... I mean, holy... Really heroic stuff that we’re seeing here. They they literally lit the building on fire with them barricaded inside it. and we know for a fact that the... One of the trans... Plain trans people didn’t even come until the fire was already burning. and there was only two potential trans people that could have been a part of this, and neither was there at the beginning.Simone Collins:Only two? Well Yeah. It was really hard to be trans back then, to be fair. Were... Trans didn’t even exist. Weren’t they just called cross dressersMalcolm Collins:back cross dressers and and drag people, but they are... Have always been adjacent to gay culture and distinctly untrans. Wait. So they weren’t...Simone Collins:So these people were... Oh, did they call them did they call them transvestites? Is that it?Malcolm Collins:It’s a different thing. We’ll get to it later because we’re gonna talk about these two individuals because they were also terrible people. But Okay. We’re we’re we’re gonnaSimone Collins:get into this more. So the injuries my gosh.Malcolm Collins:The police reports, one had a laceration on their eye. Another had a broken wrist, and there were bruises and other injuries, but a a broken risk trying to protect themselves at this place. Now this is all based on a book that Gay City News called the definitive historical account of the Stonewall event. That’s David Carter’s Stonewall, the riots that sparked the gay revolution. So the gay... Like, when we’re looking at stuff here, this is coming from the gay community. Okay? Okay. They did not see one of the trans people who we’re gonna talk about who claims that they started this. They weren’t even allowed to march at pride rallies. They were considered such a bad actor in theSimone Collins:Oh my gosh. Wow. But look at that. That was a time when the community policed itself and when they they, they expelled bad actors. That’s meaningful. We always talk about this. And a really core part of being successful community, especially if you’re a breakaway and weird or different in some way, is you have to police your own bad actors. And the... One of the worst things that happened to LGBTQIA plus whatever is they stopped policing their bad actors. Wow. Okay.Malcolm Collins:Yep. Well... And I’ve... And and and, I wanna be clear. And the, this is... And I mean very seriously. I I think that we should celebrate Stonewall every year with the kids as a celebration, and I think you should too. And I think that the conservative movement should make this more of a thing as a celebration of how the left twists and rewrites history, erasing the actual heroes in an attempt to serve their agenda. I think Stonewall can be a celebration of leftist gaslighting as well as police because I’m unaware of any major holiday where we celebrate police, and we should have one. So let’s do it. Let’s make Stonewall a police holiday. You could put on pokers in New York. The real heroes of Stonewall are boys in blue. Police celebration because taking down these darn mafia families. You know?Speaker 3:They were hunting dirty cops, now they’re fighting for their lives. Angry drunk hooligans with bottles for knives, they barricaded the building and huddled in the dark. Eight officers against 200 aiming to kill their mark. They tore a parking meter up and rammed it into the door. They’ve squirted lighter fluid in and set fire to the flood.Malcolm Collins:real real great work on their part and not succumbing to the fear in shooting their way out of this very deadly situation they were in, which they got in attempting to break up police corruption. It wasn’t even really about a gay bar. Anyway... So Wow.Speaker 3:They’ll call anti gay bar laws. Bigotry and spite, but the rules had purpose and held back a blight. Nations learned it over generations, never knowing why. If you allow indiscriminate gay sex, young men start to die. So with Stonewall won, gay bars filled by the score. A decade on, the funerals came, hundreds of thousands or more. The AIDS epidemic was Stonewall’s prize. Activists spread AIDS, that’s the reason for the lies.Malcolm Collins:Fat... So the Stonewall Inn was controlled by the Genovese crime family. This is one of the big, I think, five crime families. Tony Lorina or Fat Tony bought and converted it into a gay bar around 1966 to 1967 with higher level involvement from Maddie the house... Horse. Most gay bars in New York at the time were mafia run because state law... Liquor laws effectively barred legal establishments from serving gay men, creating a captive market. Fat Tony Laura... No. No. They didn’t have to be. Other gay people could set stuff like this up. this is just the extreme side of the gay community.Simone Collins:And hold on. Law against serving alcohol to gay men?Malcolm Collins:Yeah. How do youSimone Collins:know if they’re gay?Malcolm Collins:Presumably, if they are actively hitting on other men in the bar. I think it was more of just a law against exclusively gay bars. I think that’s the only time it would really apply.Simone Collins:Okay.Malcolm Collins:and so you just... And there were other ways that gay men could date. It wasn’t like this was the only way that gay men could meet up.Speaker 5:A great example of this is the club. This started in 1966 and opened at West 38th Street, and lasted from 1967 to 1971. it just didn’t serve alcohol, and it was perfectly legal. This is something that lots of people did.Malcolm Collins:This was about serving alcohol to gays in an environment where they were looking for sex, which given that it was this environment, that was created in bars like this that led to the rise of the HIV pandemic. I don’t think that that was a bad or unreasonable law to have on the books. allowing just drunk, constant gay orgies, was... And this happened frequently during this period. Like, we are well aware of, one of my favorite... The things about the gay community, which is why for a period, I actually think gay culture was was pretty cool, was that the gay culture that you grew up with, if you grew up in the eighties, was a culture that was created... Or the eighties and the early nineties by all of the gay nerds. And people can be like, wait. Why was it created by all of the antisocial gay nerds? Why were the gays all the theater kids and stuff like that? Right? and the answer is is because there were cool biker gang gays. There were cool... If you go to the earlier days, but they all had orgies all the time, got AIDS, and died. The a... The gays that survived were the D and D gays, were the were the the theater kids, were the otherwise nerdySimone Collins:Plus gays. Okay. Didn’t go out to bars,Malcolm Collins:and then ended up affecting gay culture. Yeah. And I had a... An older gay, like, explained to me. He’s like, I’m so weird. Like, everyone who was popular died. And and everyone who was, a weirdo or an outsider, they were the ones who who made it through. But the point here being is, this law likely saved in in terms of the gays that it did keep from going out and partying like this thousands, hundreds of thousands of gay lives from the the HIV pandemic by delaying when they were exposed to it or how much they were exposed to it and its degree of spread. Again, we have to remember this. This isn’t just being mean to gay people. Okay? There are, like, actual reasons that matter to gay people in the gay community why you would want a law like this on the books. Yeah. And if you’re like, well, that’s not why they put it on the books. They put it on the books because of homophobia. And it’s like, well, you gotta ask yourself, homophobia doesn’t just develop out of nowhere. Like, almost every culture on earth are the vast majority. There are some that don’t have prohibitions against same sex male relationships, but the vast majority is successful ones, whether you’re talking about Chinese or Japanese or Korean or... Yeah. I’m I’m going, like, all over the world here, people. Most African cultures, the South American, most of them, they they had prohibitions against male male sex of the of the large expansionist successful ones. And you can ask, well, why why does almost everyone have these prohibitions? And it’s because it leads to diseases. There’s, like, a very obvious reason. We saw the reason when the HIV pandemic happened. And so while people may not have understood their cultural disgust or, and may have acted on it in ways that were inappropriate, it... It’s not that it was coming out of nowhere. It had a reason behind it. Right? And and the reason why they felt that, quote, unquote, homophobia during that period was because their culture had learned we don’t do this, but not necessarily understood how or why it learned it. And, no, that can happen through cultural evolution. EG, one culture can practice this and one culture cannot, and the culture that doesn’t ends up dying at a faster rate or ends up having elite people in the society die at a faster rate or end up... And then the culture that did practice it ends up conquering them. Like, that’s how cultural evolution works. So You can develop cultural insights without anyone ever understanding why that insight existed in the first place. To continue here, So I’m I’m going through, like, what it was like to be in that because I found it pretty interesting. So it was... It it it was... The interior was painted black. All of the windows were shut. The the the fat guySimone Collins:I hate bars like that. They are so depressing.Malcolm Collins:Over four hundred pounds. He controlled the jukebox,Simone Collins:the single machine. Tony? So he really was fat Tony.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. In the day to day operations, and he handled monthly bribes to the sixth precinct, contemporary. And he also was actually a gay man. Now that didn’t mean that he didn’t also exploit the gay community, but, you know, Catholics facilitating gay bars and the spread of HIV is something we have to remember. Sorry. The mafia. The mafia. I need to remember here. Looking the other way, presumably, mafia families were all so devout. doesn’t seem to affect their behavior, though. But, anyway, we’ll we’ll go into some of what else this Genevieve’s family that these people were facilitating was doing. But, entry to the club facade. So the cover was typically $1 on a weekday and $3 on weekend. You signed a membership book almost always under a fake name, like Donald Duck, Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor.Simone Collins:Why bother signing the book then?Malcolm Collins:There is a reason. It’s a legal reason. It’s so that you could pretend to be a private bottle club and avoid liquor license rules. It’s basically we’re not selling people alcohol. They come in and it’s just a place where we drink with friends. Right? A doorman bouncer looked through a peephole and screamed people. You... Newcomers often needed somebody to vouch for them because it operated as a private club, cash wasn’t supposed to change hands for alcohol. Again, remember, like, that’s how they got around the alcohol laws. Yeah. So patrons received two drink cards or tickets upon entry. Different colors were used on different nights, so people couldn’t stockpile them. Staff pressured you to buy more. Drinks cost about $1 each, expensive for the time, and were heavily watered down, often made from bootleg or stolen liquor.Simone Collins:That’s a crate.Malcolm Collins:No. This is actually what led the police to this establishment. It had nothing to do with it being a gay establishment. Yeah.Simone Collins:Pretty blatant.Malcolm Collins:They were tracking stolen liquor. that was the the instigating fact here that was being bribed to the... So, again, no. It wasn’t a gay thing. It was a stolen liquor thing, and the gays were facilitating it. There was no running water behind the bar. Glasses were rinsed in a rubber tub of increasingly filthy water and reused. That’s disgusting. Was linked to a hepatitis outbreak among the patrons. Oh. The men’s toilet cock.Simone Collins:You’re going to this barn. You’re getting hepatitis.Malcolm Collins:Hold on. We’re not done yet. Oh, what? Toilets were usually clogged and overflowing on the floor. Staff sometimes dumped the dirty glass rinsing water into the toilets, making the plumbing worse, and there was a long trial urinal that had no privacy and an attendant. The place lacked a proper exit, a fire hazard, and basic hygiene. Mafia connected doorman, bartenders, and employees. They were aggressive about shaking down people for money and enforcing rules, pushing drinks, and extracting personal information. Wealthier and more discreet patients were targeted for blackmail and extortion. The, the walls were painted black, poorly lit, was a bad sound system, and broken fixtures. It smelled and felt dirty. It was called a dump or a hellhole. Despite that, it was popular because it was one of the few places where you could go to pick up essentially gay prostitutes, which again is like, why theSimone Collins:surviving gays are known for being really good at hosting, like, just great host. I I was gonna say hostesses, but host Yeah.Malcolm Collins:Maybe that’s around all the ones who just went to bar.Simone Collins:They throw good parties, you know, great tablescapes. Like, yeah, the people who learned how to, like, do this at home and maybe not go to the bar where theMalcolm Collins:cops are rinsed. I I... I and I want to be very clear here. This bar that the cops were trying to go to was facilitating a behavioral pattern in the part of the gay community that went to it that killed probably a good number, maybe even the majority of the people who participated inSimone Collins:these fraud. Care if... Who’s going there. It’s it’s a it’s a health hazard if there’s a bar that’s spreading hepatitis B by not washingMalcolm Collins:them properly. Bar didn’t care about them. It was using them. They could have set up their own things. They could have set up nonexploitative things, but they didn’t get their act together with the community to do that. And even when they did try to get their act together with the community, we’ll see now, they cannot help but scam and exploit each other.Simone Collins:Yeah. That’s that’s pretty messed up. Well, I mean, to be fair, there was probably some totally reasonable part of the gay community that was like, that’s gross. I’m not going there. But, of course, we’re not hearing them. This is, like, a No.Malcolm Collins:Of course. Good part of the gay community, the part of the gay community that was living better lives.Simone Collins:See them because they were living closeted gay lives in the nineteenMalcolm Collins:sixties. Were they just weren’t going to clubs that were about having sex with strangers? Yeah. Yes. Okay. So, like, we... It’s important that, like, we are clear about what this club was for. This was not where you went to meet the love of your life and your husband and your whatever. It’s where you went to hook up with strangers. Okay?Simone Collins:Ugh. Yeah.Malcolm Collins:Alright. So the bribes that they paid to the police were around 1,200 a month, which was a lot of money back then. Yeah. The bar was unlicensed, and it was described as a dump or a hellhole. Employees often associated with engaged in blackmail, extortion, or closet of wealthy patrons. The, Mattachay Society nineteen sixty nine guide, this was like a guide for, like, gay guys, warned... It specifically was like, if you go to Stonehall, well, whatever you do, don’t give any personal information to the staff. They will try to shake you down for it.Simone Collins:Well, also, don’t go to the bathroom. Don’t touch any of the walls, and don’t drink anything for theMalcolm Collins:Yes. And we could go over this in more detail in another episode because this one’s already gonna run long. But there was a book written called chickens and the bulls, which explained this anti gay ring that was run out of Stonewall that targeted military officers, congressmen, business figures, and entertainers extracting extremely large sums. Admiral William Church was one of the documented... What... No. One of the documented suicides tied to this. The guy running this was Ed the skull Murphy, a figure that after the the suicide and all this later went out and started doing this again, working with other gays in other gay bars. Again, it’s it’s a lot of gays. And we see this in, in abuse rates, in lesbian relationships. We see this with abuse rates in gay relationships. this is really, something that is a a problem, and it... For me, it would make me really hesitant to affiliate with these sorts of communities when I saw the rate of exploitation that is endogenous to the communities to their very inception.Simone Collins:And it just blows my mind that... Yeah. The... So if you would ask me before telling me any of this, what... Like, what happened with Stonewall? I’d be like, well, there was some, you know, ruthless attack on some innocent gay bar, and they resisted it.Malcolm Collins:Meanwhile, these six men, two women held up doing everything they can to not shoot people, got a broken wrist. They’re trying to ram down the door with a money thing. Absolutely horrifying. So David Carter’s research, which again is seen by... From gay sources to being the definitive research in this field, had a hundreds of interviews with witnesses. Contemporaneous accounts concluded that most of the people at the vanguard on the first night were white men. Drag canes, were present, but they did not play any major role in the events of the first night.Simone Collins:Well, they probably didn’t wanna get their hair and makeup or clothing messed up. Good. Like, they lost their money.Malcolm Collins:Another reason why they weren’t involved. Okay. Another reason they weren’t involved is most of the drag queens were prostitutes. And the the... They didn’t... Like, in terms of run ins with the police, they were the last ones who wanted to put themselves at the front of a run-in with the police. Also, most of the drag queens were taking on the feminine roles. The idea of this ultra masculine person who pretends to be trans that we see today, like your Alex Vaid Menon, I wanna, like, molest little girls stuff. again, CS quote, I’ll put it on screen here. these types of people did not exist during this period of the gay movement. drag kings were actually attempting to take on a feminine role. And if you’re taking on a feminine role, you don’t run at the police with a knife or a brick or something like that. Okay? That’s a that’s a later type of trans that didn’t exist yet. The... I’m not even gonna try to conform. Okay? But, anyway, to continue. Also, you know, you... You’re a prostitute, so you don’t want to be running at the police because they know who you are.Simone Collins:Wait. But but no. Just because you’re a drag queen doesn’t mean you’re aMalcolm Collins:sex queen. Most of the drag queens of this period were prostitutes. That’s why you would do it. You would do it so that you would look like a woman because, you know, guys pay more to sleep with somebody who looks like a woman.Simone Collins:Not if you’re gay.Malcolm Collins:No. Even gay men of this period really preferred the, active role in a sexual relationship. Like, that was seen as the higher status role.Simone Collins:Right. You don’t need... Look. We allMalcolm Collins:have I understand, but somebody going out and actively presenting as, like, ultra fem was also sort of like a, you know, I’m I’m in the business sort of a thing. It it wasn’t everyone,Simone Collins:but it definitely Okay. A thing.Speaker 6:So I will read to you what, AI has to say about this. In the mid twentieth century New York and similar cities, there was a long standing overlap between certain forms of phoneme presentation by people assigned male at birth and sex work. This was not universal, and the context differed sharply. Street queens and fairies from the late nineteenth century onwards documented in place like the slide and black rabbit, a subculture of young men who presented femininely fairies solicited other men. Some of this was commercial. George Chauncey’s gay New York and later histories of hustling cultures described this continuum. By the nineteen fifties to nineteen sixties, street queens, often young, sometimes runaways or homeless, who wear makeup, dresses, or partial film attire on the street or in certain bars, were frequently involved in hustling. Esther Newton’s ethnographic work, mother camp based on nineteen sixties feels work, noted young gender crossers outside formal performance spaces often supported themselves through prostitution because open gender nonconformity... No. That wasn’t the only reason. But, yes, this is... It was a thing. This isn’t me making something up. I don’t know how I know this part of history because I didn’t live through it. Maybe I thought in movies. How do I know this? That’s weird. Anyway, I mean, obviously, I wasn’t a gay person in the nineteen sixties. SoSimone Collins:Suppose.Malcolm Collins:So the trans women of color claim refers to Marsha P. Johnson, a black drag queen, who used he, she pronouns interchangeably throughout her life and did not ever identify with the term transgender. And Sylvia RiveraSimone Collins:But you said he, she programmed. Like, so which is it? Were theyMalcolm Collins:basically them? She used either one. When when she was a drag queen... So she was a drag queen.Simone Collins:So in drag, he was she. And when not in drag, he was he.Malcolm Collins:Yes. Because he didn’t identify as a woman.Simone Collins:Okay. Sorry. This is just so... Okay.Malcolm Collins:Was a guy who identified as a guy who put onSimone Collins:In character identified as a girl. That makes perfect sense. Yes. I Yep. Yeah. Now I understand.Malcolm Collins:Who, in his own words, a guy. I am not misgendering him. Okay? He said, quote, the place was already on fire. The riots had already started when he got there. Now note how late this had to be in the riot. This meant the police had already extricated everyone from the building. They had already barricaded the building. People had already tried to break in and were now post lighting the building on fire in a big big enough way that he said, yeah, the building was on fire to kill the police officers. That’s that’s where we are. And note, to arrive at a scene where that’s happening and you participate, you are a bad guy. You are a nut. You are trying to kill people. Okay? You are an evil, bad person. Okay? Everybody who got... I mean, maybe you could say somebody went there that night, and they just happened to got caught up in a raid. Fine. Then leave the scene. Don’t try to murder the cops.Simone Collins:My gosh.Malcolm Collins:You you... The the bar gets closed down. Other gay hotspots are gonna open. You don’t need to murder the cops for ruining your night, you psychopath. Anyway Wow. So Rivera claimed a leading role. So this is the person who actively just claims a leading role. But Carter said that multiple people were close to the events, including Bob Crawler and Randy Wicker, found no credible evidence that she was there on the first night at all. Johnston reportedly corrected her on this point. Rivera’s presence appears to have been a fabrication completely. and this person was a heroin crack addict bad person who exploited the gay community and was one of the people who was banned from gay pride events. So very bad person, but they’re being held up today as some sort of gay icon, which is... Or trans icon because trans people are trying to colonize gay history that they didn’t play a role in. And this, by the way, is the only person, Rivera, who you could win any legitimate context claim was trans. Alright?Simone Collins:Okay.Malcolm Collins:And, no, she wasn’t of color in any conventional sense. I’ll put an image on on screen here, but she looked white. I mean, we can we can look her up right now.Simone Collins:Like, a tanned white, perhaps? Less white than we look. Maybe it goes outside sometimes white, maybe?Malcolm Collins:Nope. Just, like, white. Maybe, like, Jewy. Like, a Jewy white. A Jewy white. Great. That’s that’s all I can think.Simone Collins:I will decide. Okay. Okay. Tanned. A tan. A nice tan. What are you talking about? AndMalcolm Collins:No. Hold on. But this is... No. But this is, like, a tan. This isn’t an ethnic coloring thing. This isSimone Collins:a tan. I mean, like, if we’re talking... You know, we’re... This is a this is a Spanish kind of Rivera. This is notMalcolm Collins:See, this is a this is what she looks like here, right, next to a black guy. She’s not a black guy.Simone Collins:Yeah. She looks European. She looks... I guess, if if we’re talking Rivera, it’s a Spanish European. It is not... Oh, but I love the pictures of her. She’s full on brown. So in the fan art, she brown. In the in the non fan art, she white. That’s very interesting. Very interesting.Malcolm Collins:Okay. Very interesting.Speaker 7:By the way, if you’re wondering what her ethnicity is, it’s no surprise that she looks white. She’s European. She’s a Venezuelan, which is generally white. Puerto Rican Venezuelan... I mean, I know some people describe his... Hispanics as nonwhite, but they’re... Mean, they’re just Catholics. They’re... I I don’t under... Latin America was colonized by white. Like, people are aware of that. Right?Malcolm Collins:Well... Okay. Okay. So, again, the... Not... No trans women of color were to be seen, okay, at Stonewall. There was... And and I’d also point out here why there were no trans... Black, like, people of color at Stonewall Rides. Okay. Do you know why? I’m gonna see if you can guess why. Just like if you are at all familiar with gay history from this period, you would know this.Simone Collins:Did what? Did gay people not like trans people?Malcolm Collins:They hated black people. Gay people were famously racist. No. What? Yes. It was always seen as a very racist community in its early days.Simone Collins:But there are gay black people.Malcolm Collins:And they can go to gay black bars is what theySimone Collins:would have said. Awfully specific. Were there any gay black bars? No. Don’t answer that question. We’ll just keep going.Malcolm Collins:I am sure there were because of the amount of racism in the gay community.Simone Collins:Maybe the gay black people of the nineteen sixties had the good sense to not go to gay bars at all.Speaker 8:So I can only guess that I must be a reincarnated gay person from the nineteen sixties. Note, I’m joking here. I don’t believe in reincarnation. Just surprised. I have no idea where I learned all this from, but I decided to double check my intuitions about famously racist gay bars in the nineteen sixties with Wikipedia. That’s... Sorry. Not Wikipedia. AI. We’re not tired here. and it said, yes. The claim is historically accurate for a large share of the mainstream gay bars in the nineteen fifties to nineteen sixties and into later decades. Many bars that primarily served white gay men practice racial discrimination, especially against black patrons. This was common across US cities and not unique to New York, and it mirrored a broader racial pattern even in the North. In in New York specifically, in Greenwich Village and other white dominated gay bar areas, many establishments were unwelcoming or openly exclusionary to black and Puerto Rican or Latino patrons. Recollection to the period note that black and Latino friends were not always treated well at other gay bars. Stonewall itself was seen as more lax but still racist. Now if you go down to Simone’s questions about black gay bars, yes, in most major cities, they’re with significant black populations. There were black gay bars or bars that primarily or exclusively served black queer clientele until the mid twentieth century. Examples, in New York, Harlem had a long tradition of a queer nightlife, drag balls, clubs, and Mount Morris Bass, which for years was one of the only Bass houses admitting black men. So... Yes.Malcolm Collins:So Like, if you’re going to a bar with a bunch of white underworld members in New York and you’re black during a period of intense racism, you’re probably not gonna go. Like, they’re all gonna be drunk. They don’t care about what the law says. Yeah. They’re all sort of, like, borderline homeless. Out of the prison system.Simone Collins:Yeah. Maybe not.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. You’re a black gay guy. You know better than to go there. There would there would likely almost no black people there that night. Okay. Just wanna be clear about this. Okay. The revisionism of this stuff. Okay. So now I’m quoting from another gay newspaper or magazine going into the life of this Rivera figure that everybody talks about who threw the first brick. since his death in 2002, drag queen Sylvia Rivera... Now note even a gay publication is referring to him as a male because he was not thought of as transgender, but has surely been turned into a transgender icon. He is now clearly celebrated by trans activists in the wider media as a similar figure in the LGBT rights movement. He is hailed for pioneering activism and feeded for the support and shelter he often offered other marginalized people around Downtown New York in the early nineteen seventies, noting Rivera’s willingness to defy the law have gone so far to anoint Rivera as the Rosa Parks of the modern transgender movement. His legend continues to grow. Some have even claimed that Rivera was effectively initiated Stonewall in 1969. They say he handed his friend a fellow drag queen, Marsha p Johnson, the first brick to be thrown at police during the raid at Stonewall in 1969, sparking a fight and kickstarting the moose men. Johnson, on the other hand, has always told a separate story and never cooperating this, insisting that Rivera was not at the Stonewall Inn on the fateful night in 1969. On Earth. He was asleep after taking heroin 30 blocks north of Stonewall Inn, BryanSimone Collins:make you sleepy, for sure.Malcolm Collins:He was a heroined out homeless guy sleeping in Bryant Park that night. Great. This is your figure of great renown. Trim Beck. But then the truth about Rivera has always been darker and more complicated than its contemporary hag... Hagographers, are willing to admit. What we have witnessed over the past two decades is a whitewashing of the real Rivera, a dishonest attempt to present him as Antran’s activism as central to the gay liberation struggle of the nineteen sixties and seventies. According to the village voice piece on Umbers from 1971, all of his Greenwich Village businesses were exploitative. Mike calls himself... This is a quote from somebody who dealt with him. Mike calls him a gay catalyst and flesh peddler. He deals in boy boy sex Christopher’s End with his backstory and nude boy shows. It’s climax fresh. In 1970, Rivera and Johnson needed somewhere to stay and took advantage of their connection with the Umbers. this is a gang related group. He gave them discounted rent on one of his squalid four rooms apartments having just formed their group, the street transvestite action reactionaries or STAR, they turned Umber’s property into something they called the star house. Today, the heart... Star house decided as one of the reasons to celebrate Rivera. It’s recalled as a beacon of radical progressiveness, a home for trans people. As one of the journalists puts it, it is lionized as a pioneering and charitable endeavor, feeding, housing, and clothing the young homeless trans people. But the reality was somewhat different. It had no toilet, water, heat, or electricity. Liquor and drugs were plentiful. The four rooms were strewn with trash and occupied by as many as 20 people at the time. food and other supplies were generally stolen or shoplifted by the residents. What little cash was had came from sex work in the 42 Street area and elsewhere. Again, I told you most of them were sex workers, or begging. conveniently, the building was a next door to one of the Umber’s porn distribution operations, which it used the people who were staying there for. Horrifying. Right? Again, no running water, no electricity, no food but stolen stuff, and, violence was pretty regular at a place like this. In some days, the seedy reality of Star House captured the nature of Star as a group. Despite its right on reputation today, Star’s self styled revolutionary transvestites were not trusted by most of us in the emerging gay liberation movement. Its focus on whoring and radical politics as gay activist alliance founder Arthur Bell described it in 1971, I was largely viewed with horror befitting their mafia connections. There was a dangerous, potentially violent side to their activities that they were aware of, and so many of us avoided them indeed during the nineteen seventies set and occupation of NYU’s Weinstein Hall by various gay rights activists. Rivera argued that radicals needed to take up guns to achieve revolution... Her liberation. given the chaotic criminal nature of the star house, it was hardly a surprise that it was a short lived endeavor. Among the other drag queen insect workers plying their trade from the Umbers property, one was called Bubbles. Bubbles was tasked with collecting rent from young occupants. But by the winter of early nineteen seventy one, Bubbles had pocketed the rent money and left town. Rivera and Johnson were unable to catch up on the rent areas, tried to renegotiate their arrangements with the Umbers. He was not in a forgiving mood. By June 1971, Umbers had already thrown out the lot, saying to one reporter after the, chin, I’ll be effed if I house that bunch rent free. Within two years, of this happening, Rivera and Johnson were expelled from pride marches. Now why were they expelled from pride marches? Let’s go into this. Again, you’re learning a lot. It’s not the history you were taught.Simone Collins:There doesn’t seem to be a flattering angle to this.Malcolm Collins:Not good. I... I’ll try to steel man it at the end here so you guys can get a steel manning of of how you could possibly think this was a good thing. By the end of the post Stonewall movement, we’re splitting groups like the Gay Activist Alliance, GAA, and many pride organizers wanted a more respectable assimilationist image focused on gay men and lesbians who could pass as ordinary citizens. The the the types of gays that I would support. street queens, drag performers, sex workers, and mostly visible nonconforming people, especially the poor ones of color, who these people were not, by the way. So they... I mean, they were poor, but they weren’t of color. If we’ve looked at images at them, nobody would clock that as a person of color, were increasingly seen as an embarrassment and hurt the causes cases of winning mainstream political support or winning anti discrimination laws. At the nineteen seventy three Christopher Street Liberation Day Rally in Washington State Park, organizers tried to stop Rivera and the star contingent from speaking. Lesbian feminists, including Jean O’Leary, note here, lesbians versus trans people goes back to inception, criticized drag men for exploiting women. Rivera first her way onto stage and gave the famous you all better quiet down speech, accusing the crowd of abandoning the people in jail and the street queens who had been on the front lines. She was loudly booed and heckled. Drag queens, including Johnson, were effectively barred from marching in the official parade that year. They marched ahead of it as... Instead after the event Rivera attempted on aliving. This event marked the end of star, and the group began to break up.Simone Collins:Wow. Not a... Not an outcome I would want for anyone that I care about.Malcolm Collins:So I wanna be clear. The group that ran this, the Genovese Mafia. They would regularly kill people. For example, I’ll just read a few. I won’t go over all of them because it will get boring. Genovese Tom Rennon in 1930, he was shot in the back of the head with a shotgun. You had a girl Vertaka and Antag Lorenz March thirty two. The Genevieve’s ordered him to be strangled. Oh. Just... I’m not gonna get... They they killed a lot of people. They’re they’re known... They went around killing people. It’s reallySimone Collins:horrible. Noted.Malcolm Collins:I also could go over the case of how they discovered the corruption at the 6th Precinct.Simone Collins:No. Maybe they checked the guest book.Malcolm Collins:Well Wow. They... And I’ll I’ll note here that this is not... One of the the funny things, actually, I’ll go into is just a little side. One of our fans was like, oh, you need to go into Jonathan Cannes work in the return of gods on exposing this. If you watch this man and take him seriously, his his content is not smart. Uh-oh. It is not. No. It’s a it’s a conservative conspiracy theorist guy who tries to argue that they were doing some sort of, like, dark goddess celebration.Simone Collins:Oh, for goodness sake. If men want sex, is this that complicated?Malcolm Collins:Gay men being involved in orgies doesn’t require dark goddess worship. And his his points are directly at odds with facts that are key to the case. So, for example, he’s like, well, it aligned with the full moon and summer solstice, and those were important in ancient calendars. And it’s like, it was a secret raid. They had no control over when it happened. What are you talking about? Obviously, the bar did not organize the night that they were raided and shut down by a separate police investigationSpeaker 9:So, note, he even breaks it down to, like, the day the warrant was handled. He’s like, that was the eleventh. And in ancient calendars, eleven meant, what? Our modern calendar does not align with ancient calendars. That would be purely symbolic in your head. But outside of that, I decided to dig into this guy more because I was just so shocked by the stupidity of this theory. I was like, he doesn’t because there’s no way that the bar could have controlled when the warrant on itself was handled down. And then I realized he seems to really believe in all of this pagan stuff. Like, he thinks all these gods are real and that they’re influencing stuff. And so it’s not that the bar or anyone had to intentionally be doing anything. It’s that that the pagan gods are real and have power over our lives, which I guess some Christians can believe that. To me, that sounds pretty sacrilegious. But... Okay. by the way, for techno Puritans, at least our branch of Christianity, that’s a big no no. No. Pagan gods are not actual gods with power over you, that that fight against the Christian god. There is one god.Malcolm Collins:For some other stuff so you can just get into, like, how crack minded some conservatives can be. And I think it’s important that we, as a movement, stay away from this sort of thinking because it discredits the truth of our movement, you know, when we’re when we’re trying to open people’s eyes to stuff. The event was centered at a barter or tavern. Ancient texts associate the goddess with inhabiting or possessing ale houses. That’s where men went to have sex with strangers in that period. Where else was it gonna happen? Yeah. Okay. Rioters performed the dance of Ishtar amid the chaos, chanting words manshing ancient inscriptions of the goddesses going into battle. I highly doubt they were that educated. That, yeah, that does seem aSimone Collins:little highbrow for this this place. Were drunk street thugs.Speaker 11:Just for context, we do know what they sung when they danced there, and it was not an Ishtar battle cry or something. It was, we are the Stonewall girls. We wear our hair in curls. We wear no underwear. We show our pubic hair. We wear our dungarees above our Nelly knees. so, yeah, not... As I said, this was a place about having sex with strangers. Right? Like, they make that very clear in the song.Malcolm Collins:Okay? Out of context. For their prostitutes. Bean cups. Yeah. Lion symbolism? I don’t know if the bar had lion symbolism or not.Speaker 10:So I decided to look it up and to just highlight how ridiculous the theory was. There was nothing lion related associated with the stonewall in. It was a nearby establishment. And when you think about how common lions are used in, insignia and stuff like that, I mean, yeah, of course, you could, if you’re looking within a couple blocks of it, find a lion somewhere in some logo.Malcolm Collins:I don’t I don’t think that it would be meaningful if it did. I mean, it could, but I... I’m I’m not familiar. Next one here. A woman named Storm or Stormy de la vre something is described as a key figure who helped spark the resistance. Khan links this to him calling for the goddess, a loud thundering storm. So does he think the goddess is actually real and that the goddess put her in that position because of her name, or does he think that people are generally aware of ancient goddess tradition so much, they chose as a leader of their movement, somebody who just happened to have a name that sort of sounded like something the god was related to? Do you not see how crazy that sounds? Like, even if you are creating a cult, that’s not the way you do it. You don’t choose as your leader a guy who happened to be given a name close to one of the goddesses and then have your own operation shut down on a night to match some sort of prophecy. I mean, it almost sounds like this guy believes all the pagan stuff, which I really warn against. I said, well, you gotta stay away from mystic brain nonsense because it’ll get into you, and then you start to get mystic brained. And he said the name Stonewall itself is referring to a goddess, the stone that breaks the stone wall. I... What? Let’s see what Stonewall was named after.Simone Collins:I mean, wasn’t it a brick building? The the outside looked kinda like a brick wall. I guess they could’ve called it brick wall. Who cares?Malcolm Collins:But It was in... It was believed to be inspired by the nineteen thirties book, The Stonewall, recognizes the first autobiography of a lesbian, but it wasn’t a gay bar. So that’s that’s gotta be wrong when it was converted. Because it was originally called Bonnie’s Stonewall Inn in the nineteen thirties, and it was converted to a gay bar by the the Catholic. So these are gay people who made this up later. I guess the answer is is we don’t know what the stone... Why it was named Stonewall. Yeah. But it it goes back to the nineteen thirties well before any of this and when it was just a normal bar and inn. Probably, as Simone said, because it had a stone wall at some point in its history that presumably was ScribingSimone Collins:what it looks like. You know?Malcolm Collins:And he and he says that then rioters try to break in and violently set fire to it. That’s that’s not... It wasn’t a pagan celebrate. We can just call things what they are. A bunch of hoarding games.Simone Collins:As it is. We don’t need it to be more crazy.Malcolm Collins:Now I’m gonna steel man the other side of this. Okay?Simone Collins:Okay. Okay. Yeah. How are we gonna?Malcolm Collins:first, I want to be clear. I do not think that there is any way you can legitimately steel man these officers whose lives were put in danger, who are investigating theft and police corruption as in anything other than morally exemplary people for getting out of this without opening fire on the crowd. that was crazy risk to their lives. The police response was delayed. there is... I just think you’re a morally disgusting person if you do that. these guys appear to have been genuinely decent people from everything that we are aware of, in a really trying situation and did everything they could. Okay? What what can you say? You can say, well, gay men didn’t have anywhere else to meet during this period. That is not true. They could have met in places where they weren’t drinking. What you mean is party. And, okay, that’s a little unfair. Gay men like to party. Right? So why not start something outside of a mafia controlled thing? Well, the mafia could shut it down. Right? Because the mafia makes money off of this, and the mafia can be violent. And so they don’t want other gay bars operating in a in a above the board type of matter when they can exploit this. So, okay, I can go with that. Right? And then you could say, well... And that environment was created by the laws. And so the laws, because they were created with a discriminatory intent, were bad in that they created these environments and the need for police action or the ability for the mafia to corner the market. The problem is is that the laws objectively were a good thing for the gay community in terms of disease spread as we know. Right? Like, if... Even as a gay person, if you were king of all gays during this period and you had any awareness of what was about to happen to the gay community or even during this time, there were huge disease outbreaks in the gay community, and you’re like, I want to Magnanimously do something that’s good for the gay community. You would have had these long, but you’d say, but that’s not why they were on the book. They were on the book for discriminatory reasons, so it doesn’t matter other effects they may have had on the community or what you would have wanted as a member of the community or blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Okay. Okay. I can I can buy that, And you could say, and then it made sense to begin the protests around these sorts of places because these were the gathering houses for young gay men? Or you could say, hey. Come on, Malcolm. Not everybody who went there was looking for a prostitute or something like that. And this is the case, but there was definitely prostitution run out of there. Like, was one of the things it was known for. Right? A lot of these figures who were talking about hierarchy of the movement were known for that as well. The the... Then what you can say, and I think that this is probably the more honest answer is that it wasn’t all prostitution, is the gay community they... At that time was in part about financial exchanges.Simone Collins:You mean as in for sexual exchanges?Malcolm Collins:Yes. In in the same way that, like, the effective altruist community ended up developing this idea that, like, you’re a girl in the community, and, you know, one day you end up sleepingSimone Collins:with someone and they get Like, kind of financially supporting each other.Malcolm Collins:And then you’re like, oh, you know, it just sort of becomes normal to give girls money for sex in in the effective ultra risk community. And and it ends up creating an expectation among certain individuals in the community that that’s gonna happen if you’re taking on the female role in a relationship, especially when you’re in these. And and what creates that environment? Frankly, like, polyamorous environments naturally create that phenomenon. Because, if a person has multiple people they can sleep with at the end of any given night and they are desirable, you, the person who wants them to sleep with you, has to have a reason. Right? Like, why am I sleeping with you and not this guy at the end of the night? Right? there’s multiple guys here who want me. It’s like, well, I got some money. And then that develops into a system where it just becomes a normal part of a sexual relationship in this early community. And I don’t think it’s a good thing that it happens. I think it’s a horrible thing that it happens. I think it’s a horrible thing that the community normalized But youSimone Collins:can understand how it comes to happen. Like, there’s... There are understandable market forces driving this that are... It’s not like someone planned on it to go that way. It just tends to go that way.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. It just tends to go that way, right, in very promiscuous environments where where, you know, this sort of thing happens.Simone Collins:Where it’s understood that there’s... Where... Well, I guess where to begin with, you have a free exchange, an unregulated free exchange. Yeah.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. So that’s that’s the best deal, man, I can make of this. I I don’t think it’s a a good deal, man, because the the officers were there about stolen liquor and police corruption. But theySimone Collins:don’t necessary... I get... You know, like, it’s a... There are 200 people in that bar. I could also see, you know, you’re there. It’s late at night. You... You’re drunk on... And possibly poisoned by whatever it is that you’re drinking. So it’s not exactly as your faculties are 100% online, And you don’t know that they’re there because of some mafia connection that you vaguely know about. You might think that they’re there because there are various criminalized aspects of being gay. and so you’re afraid they’re coming for you, and then you’re pursuing that. Great steelman.Malcolm Collins:Yeah.Simone Collins:So I I could see that they’re just like, oh, man. They are coming for me. Also not thinking very well. I’m gonna fight back. And And I I alsoMalcolm Collins:wanna be clear here where you can be like, well, they started arresting random people. They didn’t start arresting random people. On the first day, the people who were booked were the staff, and that was it. it was not like anyone who happened to be there that day. They were not being unreasonable. They didn’t even arrest many of the rioters to my understanding or any maybe.Speaker 12:So I decided to fact check this, and it looks like, originally, it was just focused on the people working at the bar and obviously doing the illegal act of selling the alcohol that was stolen. But later on, when the violent resistance began to happen, there were arrests outside of that group. Specifically, there was a heterosexual folk singer who threw a brick or something at the cops and who was arrested, which seems perfectly, like, good good good to me. There were 13 arrests. Some claim that it was the gender checking of butch lesbians that led to this, but this doesn’t align with the other accounts that we have of this. It appears it was mostly, just a resistance to... Did somebody screwing up their night? That that appears to be what caused this from what I’ve seen of the bulk of the historic accounts, and a lot of the other stuff appears to be revisionism.Malcolm Collins:I’ll check that afterwards. But, yeah, they were just being completely reasonable law enforcement officers trying to shut something down that was a net negative for the gay community in numerous ways. And as we can see after things like Stonewall were shut down, the good part... There was a positive part of the gay community. Right? This was the part that didn’t let these people come into their events. Right? They’re like, we wanna create wholesome gay. We wanna create gays who have good lives, who aren’t degenerate heroin heads living in a a a slothouse and exploiting homeless people for sex. Right? Like, that’s that’s not what we want the gay community to be. And Stonewall always, in its reality, represented the antithesis of that. It represented the sexual exploitation of a vulnerable community. And so going forwards, and I really want people to hold me to this, so let’s make sure you guys remind me of your email or whatever. Next time, the Stonewall stuff is coming up, and we should try to organize. I wanna reach out to the other podcasters I know, to try to organize, Stonewall events. I I think we should. I think we need to, one, remember these brave police officers in the line of duty that almost died, and that saved the lives of this crowd by not doing what I think anyone else would have done in an instance like that. and I think that we need to who un... Who uncovered police corruption. And we need to do that in a way that highlights the, rewriting and, gaslighting of history.Simone Collins:That’s crazy. I think a new arc with our podcast might be historical revision because that’s something that’s been coming up in a lot of the stuff I’ve been reading lately. So, yeah, I’m starting to have this crisis about stuff that I thought was true and what... Who would... And what I can trust, and it’s not looking good.Malcolm Collins:But at least weSimone Collins:can shed light on different things. SoMalcolm Collins:Well, you guys can come here. Get your education at base camp.Simone Collins:Bring some marshmallows. We’ll start a fire. It’ll be great.Malcolm Collins:I, oh, it’s starting. So I updated the Artfab API because Grok wasn’t accepting it for some people’s compute accounts. Basically, it gave too many instructions, and Grok was weird about that. It was like, oh, this is too much at once or something.Simone Collins:Someone, I think, was tweeting about this.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. So I fixed that. So now there’s a special way to paste it in for Grock that Grock will handle. And all of the other have been reinforced, but one of the new features I made for it was to improve the face to face comic making system. It’s so cute what you made for our kids. Yeah. It’s way too difficult to do what I did with any sort of manual human interface. It really only works with an API. But if you do have the API, you can give it a family photo and say... Or, like, collection of family photos and say, make family comics from this. And that’s what it did for our kids. It made comics with their likenesses in anime format, going on adventures that they would care about it. Know, give it your kids interest and everything like that. And this all originally came out of a not safe for work comic system I was building for character consistency and not safe for work stuff. And now I’mSimone Collins:Well, what produces children, Malcolm? Sex produces children. Look. It is the NSFW that is required for the wholesome. Okay? You can’t have wholesome without NSFW. In our family, Simone. I know. With our IVF, it’s science and money. But for most people, it’s NSFW. So Oh, for for long.Malcolm Collins:We... I I really hope we can we can end sex. I I think it’s, you know, one of the key flaws in the human biology. When people are like, what are the genetic modifications you would change of... No sex, number one.Simone Collins:I mean, just, you know, after the miscarriage that will not end, I feel like a big one is the human gestation sometimes. Oh, did you... I don’t know if you saw the email from the people we cannot name. It’s crazy. Did you did you... Oh, okay. We’ll talk about it after because I cannot say anything.Malcolm Collins:It’s really exciting.Simone Collins:It’s really exciting.Malcolm Collins:No. You can tell me, I can cut it out. What what is exciting?Simone Collins:What’s happening? That’s Yeah. That’s awesome. It’s so awesome. It’s so freaking cool because that is a first. That is a huge breakthrough. Anyway, I’m so excited. Yes. So excited.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. And and, like, we own a part of that company. Oh my god.Simone Collins:The foundation. Better. The foundation.Malcolm Collins:The the pragmatist foundation. just for what was cut out there so people are aware is we talk about this sometimes on the show, but when you’re paying our fab or donating to us, generally, what you’re actually donating to, we have yet to take a single dollar from anything we’ve made from YouTube or donations or subscriptions or our fab and put that to our daily life.Speaker 13:Simone demanded a correction here that apparently some small amount at one point did go to our daily life, but generally speaking.Malcolm Collins:All of that money so far has gone into a nonprofit foundation that serves the goals that we say we stand for. Eventually, we’ll live off of it, but for now, it goes to our goals. And at a period, a lot of money had built up in this particular foundation, and so we began to invest in cutting edge technology that we think could dramatically improve the human condition. one of them that has been leaked that we’ve invested in is g... Germline gene editing in humans. That is not where we just had a major breakthrough. It was in another one of the technologies we’re really passionate about. but the... One of the... One of our investments in that field had... I I... I’d say the White House approved level breakthroughs in their technology, which I was also really excited to see because when you’re looking at cutting edge technology of of the type that Simone and I care about, I think that there’s this perception that, like, mainstream Republicans are not about this stuff. The mainstream MAGA movement is about stuff.Simone Collins:Have to happen off the books. Know? What’s that sovereign city Prospera?Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Well, it’s all gonna happen in secret places and off the books and everything. And and and and what we’re seeing instead is that the White House is facilitating these leaps, which also if you’re wondering if you’re going to hate this sort of research, be like, well, would multiple people in the White House be involved with something I would really hate? Probably not. So if you understood the technology, you wouldn’t hate it.Speaker 4:They were hunting dirty cops, now they’re fighting for their lives. Angry drunk hooligans with bottles for knives, they barricaded the building and huddled in the dark. Eight officers against 200 aiming to kill their mark. They tore a parking meter up and rammed it into the door. They’ve squirted lighter fluid in and set fire to the flood. You don’t set fire to a bolted room to scare. They wanted to burn them alive trapped in there. They radioed for backup, but the backup didn’t come. The person down the block was on the take and playing dumb. Everyone had a gun and the easy way out was clear. Shoot a path out through the crowd and get out of here, but a volley through the door risk of bodies in the street. So they put their own lives on the line and held against the heat. Mail out the back. Scummerfie worked the door and blood came in inside. Admiral William Church paid until he couldn’t, then he died. They took their cash, they took their lives, they gave them hepatitis too. That bar was never a friend to gaze. It bled them through and through. The sixth prince and took the envelope and looked the other ways. They took the bar so they could keep exploiting the gays. Inspector Seymour, prime suspected a crooked cop so he risked his life to put the corruption to a stop. So raising glass to the boys in blue, eight against 200, but they saw it through. They saved lives of gaming. They stood for what’s right, and the very people they saved tried to set them alive. Now they’ll tell you of the villain who let the first brick fly, but the witnesses who stood there say that story is a lie. Rivera was crashed out on heroin 30 blocks away. Such a predator pride events themselves would bar him one day. A Marsha, a drag queen, and nothing more did not even arrive until fire was on the floor. Anyone who tells you what trans was, there is a liar. Appropriating gay history is apparently fire. They’ll call anti gay bar laws. Bigotry and spite, but the rules had purpose and held back a blight. Nations learned it over generations, never knowing why. If you allow indiscriminate gay sex, young men start to die. So with Stonewall won, gay bars filled by the score. A decade on, the funerals came, hundreds of thousands or more. The AIDS epidemic was Stonewall’s prize. Activists spread AIDS, that’s the reason for the lies. The only ones who saved the life that night were the eight who wouldn’t shoot to win a fight so every Jew. When the banners fly, never let them gaslight you with a lie for the eight who stood their ground in ‘69 and rooting up dirty cops and holding the thin blue line. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm and Simone examine how the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts shifted from their founding principles into vehicles for progressive cultural messaging. They review membership declines, policy changes around identity and pride programs, and the strategic missteps that allowed institutional capture.The discussion covers the original intent behind scouting, past conservative battles over inclusion and pledges, and why reframing certain issues as unique arousal patterns rather than innate identities could have changed outcomes. They also explore lessons for building resilient future organizations and avoiding optically weak fights.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins:Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be talking about how Girl Scouts has become something of a pipeline into the urban monoculture. We’ll be reviewing articles on it, and I want to study how it became this as well as scouts, which has become increasingly, though it resisted for longer, more and more a pipeline into the urban monoculture. And we can see where it attempted to resist, and I think it pulled really stupid cultural battles, which is what caused it to lose the game. And this is something that we need to think about and use strategically as our people, the the Americans, move forwards in conquering the world. So if we go back to the founding of the scouts, here are some quotes from the guy who founded it to understand what his intention for the scouts was. Okay?Simone Collins:Let’s go. Yeah. Let’s go.Malcolm Collins:Play up each man in his place and play the game. Your forefathers worked hard, fought hard, and died hard to make this empire for you. Don’t let them look down from heaven and see you loafing about with your hands in your pocket doing nothing to keep it up. That’s what I want on my scouts wall. I I... I’ve thought it would be fun to, with the index one day, recreate, like, a base scout, like, the the imperial scouts for the the future empire of man to one day unite all nations under the iron hand of the imperium. Alright. And then here’s another way of him. The surest way to keep peace is to prepare for war. Don’t be cowards and content yourself By merely paying soldiers to do your fighting and dying for you, do something in your own self defense. Alright. Now if we look at what has happened to the scouts, it hit peak membership in the nineteen seventies at four to 5,000,000. It’s late to Wow. Only 2,000,000 by the two thousand tens. And today, it’s dropped, especially after the pandemic, to only around 1,000,000. I do not think it is a rescuable institution. Well, ISimone Collins:don’t know. When things get really small, can’t they be really good? LikeMalcolm Collins:Well, yeah. You can take it over more easily. But Yeah. We’ll go over how these institutions were lost because I think studying them in a microcosm can be a very, very good way to harden future institutions and to think about how you make recapture work.Simone Collins:Okay.Malcolm Collins:I’m I’m reading here, from an article from the Daily Wire about the Girl Scouts. But that all changed in 1993 when she discovered the organization was removing its reference to god in the Girl Scouts promise. As a Christian, Gabba Ray was upset about this, but as a volunteer, she was also alarmed. Where had the decision come from, she wondered, and why was no one informed? Today, Girl Scouts USA publishes an official LGBTQ plus pride month patch program available for Daisy scouts, kindergartners to first graders on up. Even you look alarmed by this. Fun patches are optional and are at the discretion of troop leaders to present. Girls can earn a rainbow patch by completing activities, including making rainbow flags to celebrate LGBTQ plus pride month, watching documentaries on LGBTQ history, such as the Stonewall Uprising, which is, by the way, a fictitious rewriting of history. the real Stonewall uprising was a mafia bar that the police needed to raid because it was a mafia bar. A bunch of gay white men and a few cross dressers, not trans people, fought against them. Later, some people who later identified as trans arrived well after everything had started and gotten underway, and then they attempt to claim that it was like trans women of color who threw the first whatever at the police raiding a mafia bar really something Oh, no.Simone Collins:I didn’t know about I didn’t know about it being a mafia bar before that. That’s that’s insane.Malcolm Collins:Another episode on it likely. Like, just how comical it is that anyone would treat it as a big thing of pride or... Like, the gays do this with everything. Why don’t they always pick the worst people like Harvey Milk who... Disgusting human being. he, for a long time, dated a child, I think 14, 15.Simone Collins:Oh, you mean young young. Okay.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. And then the kid, he dumped him when he got older because Harvey Milk only really liked children. He he dated a number of young people in a row. And when they aged, he would dump them, and the guy ended up unaliving himself because of this. And when somebody told him, you know, the... This person is thinking about unaliving themselves given the way that you’ve been treating him and just goes in from your life. And he’s like, well, tell him to not make a mess. Like, truly, a a vile human, and they named one of our warships after this guy.Simone Collins:They have a Well, and the whole really nice new SFO terminal as well.Malcolm Collins:No. Harvey Milk is a monstrous person. The Stonewall Rye uprising was not an uprising. It was a crackdown on a mafia bar. Like, gays need to get some good heroes, or if they don’t have good heroes, they should be be asking themselves why. Why does this correlation exist with not caring about this guy graping a child and becoming a major figure within our movement. It’s it’s tough. It’s tough. I’m gonna be honest. But here, memorizing poetry of LGBT poets, reading children’s books such as I am jazz and love makes a family, and visiting National Women’s History Museum’s website to study LGBTQ historical figures and participating in the gay, lesbian, and straight education network, GLSEN, no name calling week. The patch guide calls it an effort to, quote, disrupt anti LGBTQ plus harassment and biased bullying. and, no, this is for badges. Like, you get bad... The the girls are, like, given tasks lists to do this stuff, to watch this stuff that is rewriting history of Wow. So, yeah, they’re they’re literally... You get a little... You get aSimone Collins:patch, which is pretty... And girls love rainbows. I love rainbows. Everyone loves rainbows. I mean, when you’re a kid, rainbows are awesome. So you want the rainbow patch, then the only way to get it is to... By watch... By watching a bunch of propaganda. That’s unsettling. Okay?Malcolm Collins:Not going out and helping anyone. Not doing anything good. Just watching propaganda.Simone Collins:Yeah. Why not, like, some kind of adopt a gay program where you, I don’t know, bring them socks or something? Some oat milk. I... What what do... Whatever. You know? Like, just be nice to be... Even, like, just to be nice to the the gays would be great for a week. But this whole no no name calling. What are they even, like, at that age? Anyway... Yeah. I don’t think they’re walking around using anti gay slursMalcolm Collins:when they’re that age. I was. Yeah. But you forget what the, nineties were like and the eightiesSimone Collins:were like. They were a different time.Malcolm Collins:The way that Beavis and Butt Head talk, if you are a young person, people just going around calling people, like, fag and stuff like that, that was completely normal when I was growing up.Simone Collins:I don’t think a sweet little girl scout, though, is doing that. Yeah. I mean, the word gay hadMalcolm Collins:a lot of utility that we’ve lost. Like, there’s often times when I find myself wanting to be like, that’s a pretty gay thing to say, or, like, that looks pretty gay. Right? Or, like, you know, the the the sort of way of defining a thing is, like, effete and in a bad way, I think, had some cultural utility. And I remember getting in trouble even back then, even in, like, elementary school. It was, like, my workers of the family. I remember once they got really mad because I called someone a Mongoloid. and they’re like, what did the Mongol people ever do to you? And I was like, well, I European history. Why why why are you scamming Genghis Khan here, man? Like, he was horrible. But, anyway, we’re... Wait. We should get back to calling people Mongoloids. It had it had Racial connotations beyond that. I understand. But the Mongols were pretty off. I mean, they... Nobody cared if you called someone a hun.Simone Collins:I know. But I actually think that Mongoloid had, for a short period of time, for whatever reason, some kind of clinical... Like, know, retard. You know? Like, that had a clinical background for a while. And I think for a while, there were some there were some professional class that referred to Mongoloid. Like, it was like a a condition. I... Maybe I’m remembering this totally wrong.Malcolm Collins:Maybe it was a name for a group of ethnicities, whichSimone Collins:is different. You look a certain way, and it was like... I think that’s yeah. Anyway... Well, I don’t know. But I’m just saying, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t bring it back.Malcolm Collins:I actually think that that is the worst. So one of the arguments I’m going to make here is people didn’t notice the culture wars moves that actually mattered, and they fought against the ones that didn’t matter. examples here. Okay? We’re just going for some that we’ve been reading so far.Simone Collins:Okay.Malcolm Collins:When the gay... The the scouts fought against the inclusion of openly gay people in the scouts, that was a very stupid fight. When the girl scouts, these former conservative people fought against people saying things like being able to say something other than under god during that part of the pledge, that was a very stupid fight to have. When the massive cultural losses were not around those questions, They are around the normalization of shunning the word gay in a negative context or fag in a negative context. That was the massive cultural victory. And no conservative stepped against that because they didn’t under... They were like, well, that does sound mean or whatever. That does sound... And it’s it’s... So we’re not gonna fight that when it’s it’s actually these acts of greater cultural vulgarity that are the more important lines in the sand to never step back from. recently, an example was Tech Tone was on our show, and he used the term, you know, like, oh, it’s good that you, as white people, are having kids as a white couple. Now you look at our community. We have many people who aren’t white in our wider community, but that society made it normal to shun or, stigmatize white individuals for being proud of a white identity or wanting success for their own group is genuinely horrible and repulsive. And it is a huge cultural loss when a Mexican can say, I’m glad you’re having Mexican kids. I’m glad you’re proud of your Mexican identity. Or Pakistani can say, I’m glad you’re having Pakistani kids, I’m glad you’re proud of a Pakistani identity. The white individual cannot do that. And that... It was... It’s a step that we never should have stepped back from, but that feels a lot grosser culturally speaking, especially to the boomer conservative that doesn’t understand the culture wars, a thing to not step back from than something like everybody has to say god in the pledge. And the reason why... I’ll I’ll explain here. We’ve gone a bit tangent why it’s so important, this particular part of the culture war. It’s because by keeping god in the pledge or by keeping somebody who openly identifies as gay out of scouts, you don’t actually change anyone’s mind. You don’t actually preserve your perspective in any meaningful degree. The same sex attracted person who’s chosen to live a same sex lifestyle that maybe had conservative sympathies has now simply been pushed out of conservative circles. The nonreligious individual who has a problem with saying under god or who follows some other religion has now just been pushed out of an institution that otherwise was... Could have been used to Americanize them. These people will just lie otherwise to be in these institutions. It’s not a big deal for them to just lie, and they do it anyways and especially the nefarious ones. It isn’t the conservative Christian gay man who has principles who... That’s the one who leaves. The one who wants to diddle kids, they just lie. Okay? So you have achieved nothing of value through these types of exclusions. Right? They’re they’re meaningless cultural victories, whereas the real victory isn’t enforcing someone to say god. It’s to get them to believe in god. Okay? And and it’s the same with the the words. And so why is the normalization of the words a problem? Well, we’ll get to that because it will eventually explain everything of how they conquered these institutions. Another suggestion is for girls to don uniforms and attend an LGBTQ plus pride celebration in June with your family troop. This is a quote, by the way. And a person then says, as a Girl Scout, even when I was a leader, I was not allowed to march in uniform at a pro life parade, Gabby told me. Oh. But now they’re saying that you are supposed to march in LGBTQ plus Pride Month parades?Simone Collins:That seems... That does seem a little pointed, doesn’t it?Malcolm Collins:Well, this is actually the key to everything. So I’ll go into it a bit before I read more because, you know, we’re still near the beginning here, and you guys need to grok why it’s important that you approach the cultural battle in a sane way. And the people who are like, oh, you never seed anything, they’re stupid because they end up looking like crazy people. If you never seed anything, if you’re never like, oh, there’s any area where we can find compromise, then people just don’t work with you. And what ends up happening to people with that mindset is they facilitate the capturing of organizations Because what happens is what happened in girl scouts. Somebody says, well, we’ll give them a choice to say something other than under god, and then all of the people who were unwilling to compromise on anything or unwilling to continue the fight just left girl scouts, and the organization became dramatically more woke. That was the result of that stupidity instead of just continuing to say gay. Okay? And them stigmatizing the use of these terms and being able to capture an identity group for themselves, the LGBQ plus whatever group, is how they have been able to normalize Girl Scouts advocating for their interests while you cannot go to a pro life parade. And the the way that they do that is they say, well, the pro life parade is political, but my identity is not political. My identity is innate. And because they can claim their... No. What’s funny is they also will... I mean, the the fight between the true scrums and the two cutes is over. The two cutes won. They don’t believe their identity is innate within their own circles, but they will argue it publicly because they don’t care about truth. They care... They already won the cultural victory of defining it as an identity, rather than a sexual proclivity, which is, I think, the way we... That was the fight we never should have given up. That was the battle. The stupid fight that conservatives fought, if we’re if we’re gonna go into this of the past, the boomer conservatives who failed us and allowed society to go as woke as it did, which is part of why I don’t wanna go back to the way things used to be because they failed, fundamentally speaking, was to fight over, whether gay people, same sex attracted people existed. They’d be like, oh, it’s a medical condition or, oh, they don’t exist or, oh, it’s a choice. and this is all very clearly not true, and so it was stupid to fight for in the beginning. If they had instead said and made the battle lines, same sex attraction is a unique arousal pattern like any other fetish That would have been the line that would have allowed this to never happen. Because then this becomes a question of do we send the kids to a museum for a fetish? I mean, a community has developed around that fetish, but communities develop around every fetish. Communities have developed around the furry fetish. Communities have developed around the BDSM fetish. Communities have developed around the leather fetish. Communities have developed around the pony play flip fetish. But I don’t make my kids go to a pony play museum. Now these people Is there one? There very well could be.Simone Collins:Oh, well, fair. K. Yeah.Malcolm Collins:We never followed up with that guy who wanted us to talk at the sex museum.Simone Collins:The museum of sex. We just haven’t been to to New York with enough free time to do something. You want me to reach back out to him? I can do that.Malcolm Collins:Well, I don’t wanna go to New York anytime soon. Feel so far behind on everything.Simone Collins:I know.Malcolm Collins:Whatever. So why don’t we wait till we don’t feel so far behind on everything? I am, like, literally drowning here. We’ve had people filming at our house for, like, half the last week, which means we’re really behind on episodes. and I’m still pumping out a new song a day,Simone Collins:and these songs are bangers, people. They’re delightful, though.Malcolm Collins:And I’m doing it because the rfab API lets you just copy and paste. Go to rfab.a I backslash API. It will just give you something you can copy and paste into your AI that gives your AI all of these video music processing capabilities. And I’m often... People are like, well, these have a lot of edits errors in them. It’s because I had a film crew here. I did literally no edits. I just had an idea. I ended up... The RFM API can create songs, but I do it on Suno because it’s slightly better. And And I just give it the song and the lyrics, and I’m like, here’s my thesis. Go for it.Simone Collins:But, anyway,Malcolm Collins:the the the it should have been... Like, the fights... And I saw almost nobody having this fight in the old conservative side. I saw almost nobody being like, no. Like, it is true. They’re right. Like, they’re they’re born being a... Or they’ve... If not born, they, through some life event, developed this series of attractions. I mean, it could be parasites. See our episode on that. very offensive, but it could be. but that doesn’t mean that they have to do it. Right? That doesn’t mean they have to structure their life around it. And this is... You know, I’ve I’ve been talking with my kids about this more. That is the bigger fight. The fight of should you live a life defined by a search for self actualization? is it all about feeling good yourself? Is it about pursuit of yourself? Is it about a pursuit of this individual identity rather than a larger cultural identity? And if you do that, that is where society begins to fall apart. And conservatives just were not culturally equipped historically with the knowledge of that. They thought the important fights was the allowing openly same sex attracted people living a same sex attracted lifestyle to associate with the organization rather than just treating them like a furry who’s involved in scouts. Scouts never banned the furries. Scouts never banned the people who were openly in the pony play. The very fact of banning this one fetish or unique arousal pattern and not the others defined it as something more than a unique arousal pattern and was, if anything, a loss and facilitated their ability to achieve the wins that they’ve been able to achieve. They also ask for using the correct pronouns in a way that treats everyone with respect. Note these are kindergarteners. the same national organization that once asked girls to promise their duty to god and country now publishes guides instructing troop leaders to familiarize themselves with... I glisten terminology, and celebrate the International Trans Day of Visibility and the National Coming Out Day alongside Pride Month. The council recommended volunteers complete the Safe Zone Project, a DEI laden heavily pro LGBT curriculum that includes materials called the gender bred person, the privilege of and privilege for sale. Oh god. Privilege for sale. They have to read a book called privilege for sale, and the genderbred person, that’s where thatSimone Collins:chart comes from. It’s like,Malcolm Collins:it’s gender versus sex and where they’re different from each other.Simone Collins:Okay. Someone... It’s like Mods were asleep, and someone with a lot of extreme leftist ideology was just like, okay. I’m gonna go make all the edits, all the edits, and they just vandalized so much of Girl Scout activity. But... Wow. Okay. That’s Yeah. That is... That’s shocking. But I always kinda felt like Girl Scouts weren’t real anyway. I mean, aside from Girl Scout cookies being an institution, I always just felt like it was only Boy Scouts or nothing. Like, I I I love the idea of the Boy Scouts as a kid. Never wanted to join the Girl Scouts. I would want to join the Boy Scouts. Well, you can now. Yes. I I know.Malcolm Collins:Boy scouts is now... When when they... I I thought that this was at least a good move. When they allowed trans people in, they allowed, girls in at the same time because they’re like, well, I’m not gonna say they’re not a girl, but whatever. Yeah. If if the other organizations are getting too woke, but they have increasingly become woke themselves. You know, they famously didn’t let gay people participate openly. Gay people participate. And as as I said, I I actually think that that move helped the opponent because it made the conservatives look unreasonable and look just cruel because a lot of people know an upstanding gay person who Wasn’tSimone Collins:it just like a logistical thing of, like, this, especially because they go camping away from massive parental supervision that you wanted to be a sex free zone? And if there’s any insinuation of of sexual attraction, it kind of makes it something fewer parents are gonna be comfortable with. Isn’t that more Well, theMalcolm Collins:type of gays who molest... I mean, now the... You see it with with other people, but there there are straight people who molest children or claim to be straight, molest children as well. Like, I I I think that if a gay person has a long history around kids and not molesting them, that makes you look very unreasonable. Right? Yeah.Simone Collins:That’s a fair point.Malcolm Collins:Especially when you... Yeah. Just completely ridiculous. Right? Like, the the... I I don’t I don’t think the... You’re going to win the optics war taking that position. And that’s really important. And if you had instead taken the position... And this is what the leftist did. You see, they focused on forcing us into optically bad positions and then changing the educational materials.Simone Collins:Okay?Malcolm Collins:Whereas we focused on what was being said in pledges, and with that, we lost.Speaker 6:Yes. Well, unfortunately for you, the scouts have a policy that openly gay men cannot belong. We are left with no options, mister Al. I’m afraid you are hereby out of scouts. Out of scouts? We’re sorry, mister Gay Al.Speaker 5:But I’ve been in scouts since I was nine. It’s a huge part of my life.Malcolm Collins:Now look at how we fight the game these days. Very different, very more successfully. The right right now has repeatedly made a habit of forcing the left into optically unpalatable positions. And the left, because they have rotted so much, is unable to move away from them. Great example of trans people in sports. Most left people don’t really care about this issue. Most trans people don’t care about this issue, but they have built a rule around themselves around not stepping back. So we just keep hammering. Keep hammering because they will always publicly defend it and always look unreasonable. Right? We can play this game as well. Trans people a lot like kids in this. Girl Scouts puts trans girls, that is boys, in girls’ spaces, in girls’ sleeping spaces, in girls’ rooms, monitoring girls, and monitoring girl troops. Any person would say that’s a stupid, stupid thing to do, and you should not be doing that. So you can hammer them on that. They will defend it. They will look bad, and they will lose the court of public opinion because it’s not even about the individual institutions. It’s about the court of public opinion. And the court of public opinion means knowing the battles to fight. And this is why we regularly within our right wing coded channel to a right wing audience argue things that I know an audience captured channel is not gonna be able to do because it’s in the long term best interest of civilization. And and what’s in the long term best interest of civilization is right wingism winning. And one of these things, like, we are known as being not anti masturbation. Right? and people can be like, why do you take this? And it’s because that... You... You’re literally taking somebody at the ages where they are most likely to deconvert from your culture and religion, which is when they’re going through puberty, that beginning window when they are most hormonal, and you’re giving your opponents a hook to pull them in. And worse, you’re giving it to them with a bunch of rules around no sex until marriage, which I would like for my kids, right, that make it even easier to pull them in because they’re not getting sexual release. They’re not getting sexual access. They’re seen as low status. They’re seen as weird. They’re seen as whatever. And I think that if you’re gonna take those positions with your kids, you have to take them with release vows. For example, while I would be very against PIV sex for my children, until they are married because it can lead to pregnancy, I would be totally okay with oral sex if they are in a committed relationship. Right? That is a different, you know, a lot of traditional people wouldn’t be. But I’m like, if you if you ban everything, then you create this hyper libido wise person who’s very easy to pull out, and you you put a little hook on them that they can just... The leftist can just troll and grab and say, oh, you’re feeling these naughty things. That means you’re bad. That means why don’t you join us as other naughty people? Oh, you like weird things? Well, we like weird things. Look look at all of these weird identities you can choose with us. Right? And if you don’t stigmatize that, it’s way easier to keep them. And for a lot of these things, there isn’t even a big reason. People think that the stigmatization keeps out the bad ideas, And I think that that’s that’s fundamentally wrong. The stigmatization of bad ideas keeps out the bad ideas. No. The stigma... Imagine if we had gone in a different direction. Imagine if we had focused the culture war on, is same sex attraction a unique arousal pattern? We’ll just remove the word fetish if it overstigmatizes like any other, like being a furry or something like that. Right? And that that is associated with a lifestyle. And can we just teach people about it in that context? And we tell people that some people believe, and the bible would tell you, that living around this or building your identity around this is a bad idea and a bad way to live. Right? And it will lead to negative consequences for you. that would sell way better than treating it like a disease or something like a lot of people did, which ends up attacking the... And people can be like, well, you should treat it like a disease for x, y. It’s like, well, then your method, your mindset that you’re telling me to adopt, it’s the very one that lost the culture war. Right? So why are you coming at me and repeating it? Right? It’s it’s not gonna work. Now what’s important to note here is we are winning the culture war now. Like, anyone who can see what’s going on culturally knows that the trans agenda is insignificant retrograde. the, willingness to just see any person from anywhere on earth as the same as everyone else, that that immigrants aren’t a problem in some instances, That’s used to be something you couldn’t say. Even Republicans wouldn’t say that. and now we’re just like, yeah. No. That’s a problem. You don’t don’t deal with that. But we’ve been able to do this because we’ve been fighting the fight smarter. Right? Avoiding the unpalatable and the politically bad looking fights ourselves and forcing our opponents into them over and over again. And this isn’t to say that the right doesn’t have any stupid points that it backs itself into. Great one would be like military aid to Israel. Right? Like, just don’t do it. Right? Like, it’s easy. You you could be their ally without sending them aid every year. Right? That’d be a very easy thing to do, and it makes us look terrible to not do it. And if we could end that before the leftists ended that, that would help us a lot. You know, continue fighting our men, continue fighting our enemies, but you just don’t need to give aid to a developed country. Right? And that that would help us a lot. Right? So I think that we need to be aware where these stupid fights still exist in the right, but they’re not everywhere. Right? Like, the the the the one around trying to stigmatize, very aggressively every fetish instead of just being like, well, the bible says don’t do this, but, like, the bible says don’t do a lot of stuff. And if I’m gonna live in society as a normal human, I need to accept that a lot of people are gonna do things that the bible, in my interpretation of Christianity, doesn’t condone.Speaker 8:So an example here from our perspective would be, I think, a plain reading of the bible by any reasonable person would have keeping the Sabbath be an infinitely bigger deal than not living a gay lifestyle. And yet, I mean, it’s one of the 10 commandments. It’s repeated regularly. It was a big thing that Jesus felt like, obviously, massive deal. And a lot of Christians write it off because of a few post Jesus lines in the Bible, which is pretty shocking to me. And yet it would be bad if I attempted to force everyone in society to legally keep the Sabbath because that would make me look like a crazy person. And there’s a lot of Christians who read the Bible, I think... Or try too earnestly who come to the position that being gay isn’t anti biblical. Now when I read the Bible, I think it says don’t do that. But I also think that the Bible says keep the Sabbath, and somehow a bunch of Christians think that all those laws don’t matter anymore. But somehow the gay law still does, but the Sabbaths laws don’t because Jesus just rewrote the laws that were inconvenient for them specifically.Speaker 9:By the way, every time this comes up in an episode, the comments we get are pretty funny because you will have one person saying, all Christians believe that you still should follow this. It just changed in this way. And then another person will say, well, duh. Haven’t you read anything? All Christians believe that no Christians should follow this because Jesus fulfilled the law. And it’s like, there’s a lot of Christians who are unaware with how diverse the mainstream Christian perspective is on this particular issue.Speaker 11:So I tried to find the steel man for this position because I’m actually genuinely confused for this after thinking about it for a bit. And the answer is twofold. one is is that a lot of Christians say, well, we don’t have to follow anything that was a ceremonial law or unique to Israel in that period, to which I would say that you could categorize whatever you want as a ceremonial law. That’s not a very, like, good way to make a moral distinction of what God wants with you, especially when you’re dealing with the 10 commandments, which appear to be from God pretty important. The second, which I found significantly more compelling, is that it is reaffirmed in Romans. However, the problem with this reaffirmation in Romans is it is put next to and presumably on equally bad category as greed, being arrogant, being boastful, or... And it it notes this as being, like, the worst of them. They even invent new ways of doing evil, they disobey their parents. Like, disobeying your parents is is considered worse than this stuff before. And I know a lot of Christians who disobey their parents and don’t think much of it. and I actually think this is a really important rule as well. Like, what great rules the Bible gives us. Right? so cool.Malcolm Collins:and if I can’t do that, then I’m gonna look unreasonable. I’m gonna lose some war. Thought, Simone?Simone Collins:Yeah. I mean, The larger point you were making is there’s this really weird correlation between anyone who shouts from the hilltops that something is really virtuous or really vicious and then what they do behind closed doors, be it sexually or otherwise. And that includes, like, chubby chasers having founded fat acceptance. That includes all the anti masturbation people having a really... Lot of weird stuff going on. Just LotMalcolm Collins:of weird fetishes. It’s weird how that correlates with super weird fetishes.Simone Collins:Well, I mean, in general, like, if you see someone hyperfixating on a vice, I don’t know. You should probably... You know, there there are other things that we could be focusing on. Let’s move us forward. And it’s... I find it questionable when people focus on those too much. It’s understandable. Also the same for any single virtue because that falls deeply into territory of deontology, like looking at one particular virtue as being so important to focus on when really the point of all these virtues is where we are going as humanity, you know, hopefully in the direction of of god.Malcolm Collins:We’re protecting purity means one thing, but, you know, this is this is different for different people. so, for an example of how bad it’s gotten, in one 2025 New Jersey case, a troop leader also involved in moms for liberty said she was removed after criticizing pride related events and keeping her troop away from one involving a transgender teenager speaking about gender identity to children... Kindergartners. She described the content as inappropriate.Simone Collins:Yeah. I mean, because what they’re doing... When when you have any older kid talk to younger kids, you’re presenting them as an aspirational figure. I would too very much hesitate about presenting a trans kid as an aspirational figure. There isn’t a single trans kid out there who isn’t suffering from a mental health issue. I mean, that... The the very act of being trans is is them having dysmorphia. So I wouldn’t want... No. I mean Yeah. I mean,Malcolm Collins:I wouldn’t, yeah, I wouldn’t want somebody with anorexia speaking to my kids about pro Anna stuff. You know, I wouldn’t want a trans person. And and when we stay with that framing instead of you have to be a dick to trans people, you win. If you go with z, you have to be openly aggressive and addict to trans people, we lose. And a lot of a lot of conservatives are going with that. They are saying, I have to misgender them. I have to. Instead of just lay it out, they have a mental health issue. They have found a community that accepts their mental health issue that we do not think is appropriate, and we will teach our children about this mental health issue. Was actually just teaching two of my sons about it today. I sat them aside. I showed them what trans people look like. I said these are people who, one day, because I said it happened to one of our friends’ kids, you know, actually, multiple of our friends’ kids.Simone Collins:MultipleMalcolm Collins:of But one of them, you know, specifically, because he’s famous like we are, had his kids specifically targeted to become trans and hate him. And the the... This is certainly going to happen to our kids. There are gonna be people out there who explicitly want to target our kids because they are our kids, because that would represent a cultural victory for them. And I’m not going to let that happen. Right? Like, that that is... I have to build defenses against that, and defenses mean every avenue of attack that they could use, my kids need to be prepared for, need to be able to recognize, and need to know what this looks like. And I... I’ve I’ve actually... The way I was explaining it to my kids was very interesting to me because, you know, in the mind of a kid, they were like, well, why would somebody do that? Right? Like, why would this person end up hating their dad? Right? And I’m like, well, because you know how I give you rules. Like, don’t throw the toy car at your brother. Right? And when I punish you for breaking that rule or I am enforcing that rule, it sometimes makes you angry, and it makes me feel like a bad guy to you. And they were like, yeah. I understand that. I was like, well, it’s the same with these people. We come to them, and we say, hey. I understand that this is what you want to do and what would feel good to do right now, but at a societal level, it’s going to have very, very large negative externalities if it’s normalized.Simone Collins:AndMalcolm Collins:that that makes him feel bad, and it makes them feel like I’m a bad guy because I’m I’m giving them rules. And so somebody went to one of our friend’s kids who had things that he desired that people would tell him are not good things to desire. And they said, the people telling you to not do those things are bad. You should do whatever you want. You should throw a car at somebody the moment you see them. You should do... Any... Anything you feel like doing, you should do it. And they were able to convince him that this was a good thing to do by teaching him that the people telling him not to do it were bad people. And this was an easy thing to teach to our kids, but that wasn’t the cultural battle that we ever fought. The cultural battle we were fighting was whether a gay adult who had no bad record, it should be in scouts, or whether, we should force people who aren’t Christians and don’t believe in god in the first place to say the pledge. And that’s why we lost, and that’s what we cannot fall back to again. Thoughts, Simone?Simone Collins:I mean, I think the boy scouts also suffered from some high profile or very expensive lawsuits with regard you.Malcolm Collins:Some sexual abuse lawsuits that happened during the period that they didn’t let gays in Yeah. Which I I think is the point here.Simone Collins:Yeah. But, I mean, that that financial ruination played a nontrivial role in Well, they’ve had they’ve had fewer sexual abuse cases since banning gays than before banning gays. You mean, since admitting gays than before?Malcolm Collins:Since admitting gays, the number of sexual assault cases has gone down in the scouts. Well, that’s notable. Yeah. So that’s that’s something that, like, you know, again, the the claimed reason here is a bad reason. You shouldn’t use a false reason that they’re gonna rape the kids when the actual reason is you don’t want a kid to normalize identifying and living a lifestyle around a unique sexual proclivity.Simone Collins:Yeah. Absolutely. I didn’t know how bad it... It’d become, and it’s sad to notice.Malcolm Collins:Administration has worked to prevent the scouts from putting kids in the same room as trans kids and stuff like that, you know, like, into separating the genders. They they... Would they put pressure on them saying we won’t let you use, like, military, stuff because they... Scouts use some military equipment, like like spaces and stuff like that to do stuff. and, I think that that was the right thing of the Trump administration to do, but that’s not how we win the war. We win the war by normalizing a real and accurate view of hominis... Of of of, sexuality in humansSimone Collins:Yes. WhichMalcolm Collins:is what we try to do on this channel.Simone Collins:It would be lovely to see. I know there are pockets of the Boy Scouts that are really pushing the original message of being prepared, being self sufficient, being able to defend yourself and fix things and use tools and survive in the wilderness. I mean, it... Yeah. It’s sad that an organization that really started out as bringing or at least keeping the fire of radical self reliance alive among kids after the age at which they became infantilized. This this was so wonderful, and to see that be systematically dismantled not on purpose, but through the adoption of all these different policies is really sad. Because one of the few things that was enabling kids through the the nineteen hundreds and after to remain somewhat mature and autonomous and and capable of taking care of themselves were organizations like the Boy Scouts. Because this was after kids weren’t necessarily, like, thrown out on the streets or told at age 12, alright, kid. Time to get a job. Like, you’re gonna go apprentice at a blacksmith shop now. You’re gonna go work at a factory. Right? Like, kids used to grow up real fast. And then the nineteen hundreds hit, and kids were started... They they started to be infantilized in a way that that did, I think, hurt hurt their development and their ability to thrive as adults. Because the whole point is that, at least, I think childhood should be about doing the difficult things an adult does, but with a safety net. Like, for this eighteen year period, you know, roughly, or at least, like, through your childhood and most of your adolescence, you have a safety net. There are people who are there to catch you if you fall back or catch you right before you do something incredibly stupid because you’re under their guidance. And if you do that and you live the full range of an adult life within limits, of course, but, like, you do hard things, you’re given real responsibilities, You’re able to make a lot of those really big mistakes that, otherwise, people are now making as adults before. And before you end up, you know, in debt and bankrupt or with kids or with other irreparable life changes. Right? And and I the Boy Scouts was pretty good at that, and now it’s it’s sad to see where it’s gone. But I don’t think the Girl Scouts ever really did that. I don’t know what the Girl Scouts A first thingMalcolm Collins:to remember about the hypocrisy of this, right, is in things like 2004, the Bluebonnet Council in Waco, Texas put out logos and materials for Planned Parenthood of Central Texas Nobody’s Fool sex education seminars for fifth to ninth graders and was given a woman of distinction award by Planned Parenthood executive after doing this.Simone Collins:Well, of course, they would do that.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. So they they are allowed to work with one side and not with the other side, and it’s because we’ve allowed the other side to define themselves as an identity or as adjacent to an identity.Simone Collins:Oh, that’s really that’s really messed up. That’s really messed up. because here’s the other thing about... I mean, I guess, being through their insinuations pro abortion is that’s just another example of the opposite of radical responsibility. Right? Is they’re trying to teach to young women if they’re really trying to expose them to planned parenthood materials and presumably, like, a ton of birth control and and abortion related materials that, no, even really impactful life choices can be undone, so don’t don’t worry about it too much, which is exactly the wrong message to be sending to people. But... Okay. The other thing... I mean, obviously, it should go without saying it’s it’s notable that the Girl Scouts is primarily known for basically being... Not even an MLM, but just like a marketing scheme for cookies. That is how most people encounter the Girl Scouts is through this intensely competitive sort of winner takes all. I mean, I... I’m sure that how it works in Girl Scout troops is that there’s one or two mothers who are insanely competitively involved in the sale of their children’s Girl Scout cookies. And then there’s, like, a couple of earnest real Girl Scouts who will go, like, door to door, stand outside a grocery store, and actually try to sell cookies. But, really, what’s going on is there are some really competitive mothers who, like, go and, you know, force these cookies upon people, and then they get all these rewards and everything. And it’s... That’s that’s what the Girl Scout seems to be about for so many people, which is also kind of weird. I I know that there was a documentary about, I think, Girl Scout cookies that came out recently because Meghan Markle got on last minute, I think, after it was totally made and decided to make herself a producer. But then the documentary didn’t do very good. And all the people who really hate Meghan Markle gleefully talk about how what a nothingburger the documentary is. But I’m pretty sure the documentary is just about the cookies, which is also somewhat depressing. Was it an anti cookie documentary? Or a Girl Scout. Pro cookie documentary? Or See, that’s the thing. The only thing people talk about is what an abject... Oh, it’s... Yeah. It’s called Cookie Queens. 2026, a documentary directed by Alsa Najimas that follows our girl scouts through a season of selling cookies. It focuses on their ambitions, family dynamics, sales strategies, and the pressure to reach their goals. What is this? A movie about an MLM? Where to watch? lengthen... Well, yeah, what to expect. A warm observational coming of age documentary about shilling products? And they’re saying it’s not an expose of the girl scouts, but I feel like that’s an indictment in itself. Anyway, that’s that’s kind of what people think about the girl scouts, which goes to show you where they are right now, I guess.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Well, I mean, I I think it’s better, and I don’t always... About people like, oh, you don’t wanna recapture the old institute. I don’t f*****g care. I’m gonna I’m gonna build my own thing. I wanna build something that works. Where the index, we have been talking about buying a piece of land in a hard to live area that we will have our kids and other kids who want to go. So, again, if you have kids and young kids and you wanna join our family network for arranged marriages and every... Not not fully arranged, but, you know, like dating networks and stuff like that, like rebuilding the season that we talked about. But one of the things we’ll be doing is buying some land, likely in Canada or something or somewhere that’s, you know, inexpensive to get, because Canada can be a little expensive, that that kids have to learn to survive off of it. We’ll put cameras up everywhere, but, like, I want real survival skills. I want my kids to go out there to make a thing that can kill an animal and kill an animal with the thing they made. You know, like, full on, get out there, do your thing, survival. Right? with a group of other kids. I think that’s that’s how you teach kids hardship and how to, whatever themselves.Simone Collins:Whatever themselves? Yeah. Improve themselves.Malcolm Collins:yes. Whatever. You you gotta you gotta... You know, like, when you’re doing... Making a sword, you dip it in water and then heat it and dip it in water and heat it. You have to oscillate between luxury and hardship to build something of maximal flexibility and stiffness. If you make something too rigid, it will break. And that’s one of the things that we’re talking about here. Conservatives historically improved... Employed rigid strategies, which were very fragile. They might have had a hard amount of rigidity, but the moment the crack happened, the entire platform gave. Whereas we need to move towards strategies that are antifragile and that can actually cut through and focus not on the words the kid is saying or who they’re exposed to, but focus on what they’re being taught and what they believe.Simone Collins:I’m excited for that. It’ll be fun. We’ll start with our family, expand out from there.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. I’m just so... I did... We’ve recently... We’re... I was looking at the the guys who they wanted to introduce you who are, like, white nationalists, whatever. I And was thinking they’re famous, which is cool. They’ve they’ve done a lot of stuff. But between them, have rojax.Simone Collins:O jMalcolm Collins:One kid between the two brothers.Simone Collins:Yeah. And they they have they have merch, including a small Aryan teddy bear for $40. Not long term relevant. Again, you gotta be breeding, people. We’re we’re not mocking them. We’re we’re just observing. No.Malcolm Collins:This is It’s not mock... It’s it’s it’s to say I care about protecting something like white people. Like, we don’t even do that. Like, we’re not out there pushing that. But, like, we’re doing more for white people than they are. Right?Simone Collins:Like Oh, because we’ve minted more? Yes. Their strategy More white people.Malcolm Collins:Vance is doing more than white people than they are because even though his kids are only 50% white, still got four of them.Simone Collins:Yeah. So he has a a total of two white babies.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Like, what are you guys... Come on.Simone Collins:Oh, dear.Malcolm Collins:The the the cultural battle is fought in numbers and the competence of those numbers, how technologically capable these kids are going to be, how technologically engaged these kids are going to be. So if you give them both of those things, you give them the weapons they need to control society, which is the goal.Simone Collins:It’s a numbers game, and we’re in it for the species, boys and girls.Malcolm Collins:Love you.Simone Collins:I love you too, Malcolm. Am I Steak? Here? Yeah. Or am I just, like, preparing it and then saving it for some kind of noodle stir fry? No.Malcolm Collins:I’m gonna come I’m gonna come down tonight.Simone Collins:Okay. I got work to do. I got episodes to edit. I got a sexy wife who’s very cute,Malcolm Collins:who who gets all our audience by jiggling her tatas in front of a camera.Simone Collins:That’s what I do.Malcolm Collins:Everyone can see howSimone Collins:sexy doing this whole time.Malcolm Collins:And everyone’s like, oh, yeah.Simone Collins:That’s Yeah. For those of you listening only on auto, I am topless right now, and I have double d’s. Just just so you know. No. That is that is how we achieve our audience is by being maximally sexy. Yeah. Yes. That’s what we do. Says, is this your sexy pose? Is this Yeah.Malcolm Collins:No. We still get people who come on our podcast and watch it and are like, that was surprisingly conservative. I expectedSimone Collins:Oh, yeah. I I clicked on that title card, and I hated their glasses. But it turns out that they have some interesting takes. I see you. I see you.Malcolm Collins:K. How? How do people not know that we’re conservative still? Like, I feel like we’ve been aroundSimone Collins:Because of the glasses. Because we have Glasses. People post these... It’s very it’s very old now. I don’t know why they’re still doing it, but there’s some, like, grid of photos of leftist media commentators, like Rachel Maddow, etcetera. Weird. All have these chunky black glasses, and we have chunky... And this is the level of IQ that these people have. They’re like, well, it appears to be that these liberals wear chunky black glasses and thereforeMalcolm Collins:You literally dress like a pilgrim, Simone.Simone Collins:And, like, everything... We don’t have dyed hair.Malcolm Collins:I do my hair in the most traditional male style inSimone Collins:the West. To say you don’t, I guess.Malcolm Collins:No. It’s a crew cut. A crew cut is, like, traditional I shear you inSimone Collins:the backyard before you run away from me. Well, yeah, that’s traditional. IMalcolm Collins:haven’t paid a barber in years.Simone Collins:What are you throwing? You legit haven’t, and it shows. I’m sorry, guys. I try, but, also, you get so mad when I’m like, Malcolm Malcolm, to cut your hair. Did doMalcolm Collins:that for the documentary crew?Simone Collins:I keep offering, and they’re like, no. No. They have all their plans on what they want to film, which I respect. They have some some vision. I I... We’re we’re... Our lives are about to be ruined. You understand that. Right? They’re going to just... You know, what will destroy me the very most is seeing the state of our house splashed across. I don’t know if I can watch it. I’m probably going to not be able to watch it.Malcolm Collins:I’m not gonna be able to watch it. You know that. I’m not gonna make me watch it.Simone Collins:Will we be allowed to watch it before it comes out? Probably not given everything we’ve signed. It’s... Like, the... Wait. I can’t say anything about what we’ve signed. It makes me feel, based on the legal wording, like we are going to be completely destroyed.Malcolm Collins:I think you are very mistaken about the state of the media environment right now. A documentary is not the punctuation on an individual. Right? It’s not the final word. It’s a part of a wider cultural conversation aboutSimone Collins:the Okay. Let’s look at what has happened recently with tech people who’ve had documentaries made about them, who even... Who invited them into their house. Elizabeth Holmes exhibit one. She, you know, has one of those faces. Okay? And she’s just like, trust me. I just... I’m being so real with you right now. I’m being so real with you. Simone, Elizabeth Holmes they take that and they clip it because they have to because you can’t you can’t film that scene and not clip it.Malcolm Collins:Okay? And this was this was part of the cultural conversation around Elizabeth Holmes.Simone Collins:I know, but you have to see. They’re gonna clipMalcolm Collins:No. But this is what you’re missing, Simone. And it’s clear that you’re just holistically missing it.Simone Collins:Elizabeth Holmes like, it’s gonna come out. No one’s gonna watch it because no one pays for anything.Malcolm Collins:That’s not what I said. Okay. So Elizabeth Holmes has not made a large effort of having a active cultural conversation. She tweets from jail. I mean, obviously, proxySimone Collins:never tweets for her from jail.Malcolm Collins:Never heard of anyone who follows Elizabeth Holmes or could tell you her politics or could tell you what her larger missions were.Simone Collins:She named... I think she named one of her daughters Invictus. Dude, we’re, like, more similar than you would think.Malcolm Collins:I understand, but she was not modifying the cultural conversation. A better corollary in terms of a documentary that came out recently is the Harry and MeghanSimone Collins:wore eyeliner and red lipstick. What what are you missing here?Malcolm Collins:Looking at the most superficial things. The Harry and Meghan documentarySimone Collins:I’m sorry. That’s what everyone understands about reality.Malcolm Collins:Closer to this one. So the Harry and Meghan had a public perception of them. People on all sides of the aisle of all perceptionSimone Collins:that documentary, they controlled the heck out of it.Malcolm Collins:And it failed for that reason.Simone Collins:An immensely successful doc. Wasn’t it the best No. I fail at making them look good for that reason. Oh, I I watched it, and I was like, I feel kind of bad for them. And what a sweet love story. I it was before I found all the Snark channels. Now I realize that there are, like, probably 15 people whose full time income is just from being like, ugh. I hate their faces. And every time they do something... And it’s the stupidest thing. Like, most recently, all the gossip is that Meghan has come out with this advent calendar. but instead of it it being an advent calendar of, like, Christmas in the Cotswolds where they recently relocated from their house in Montecito. No. Oh, insult of insults. It is their house in Montecito, which now is allegedly being liquidated by Tyler Perry who bankrolled their entire sojourn in California. Oh my god. And that... I mean, like, look. This is their careers.Malcolm Collins:So I’ll tell you what’s gonna happen with the documentary because I I can just predict Alright.Simone Collins:Yeah. Colin, let’s see just how accurate you are. Okay. So We’re gonna watch it and dive. Embarrassment.Malcolm Collins:What’s going to happen is you and I are not gonna be able to watch whatever. But whether they go pro us or against us or really any direction, it’s going to be very hard if you look at the normal numbers that a documentary like this can get in terms of viewership. You’re flooding the zone. You you have a documentary that gets, I’d say, on the low end between 5,000,000 and, let’s say, 10,000,000 to 25,000,000 views. Okay?Simone Collins:Okay. Yeah. That would be a ton...Malcolm Collins:Yeah. It really explodes. We’re likely looking at... I think, realistically, like, 6,000,000, 7,000,000 is probably where it’s gonna fall.Simone Collins:Average mid to low tier documentary.Malcolm Collins:Which means that it’s going to get far fewer views than our channel gets in a given year. Right now, we’re back at we’re back at 1,500,000 views per month again, just in terms of, like, where we sit in the social landscape. Okay?Simone Collins:Five to 6,000,000 views in their first several days. That’s what net... Netflix documentary, documentaries get. like, most are average launches of Netflix documentaries have drawn roughly five to 6,000,000.Malcolm Collins:So this is one, in terms of the impact on the cultural landscape, the watching of the documentary itself has is going to be small. The wider impact on the cultural landscape that’s going to matter is the people who are going to clip and talk about the documentary.Simone Collins:That’s why I did that whole Claude analysis. Yeah.Malcolm Collins:And what you are failing to see is their take, positive or negative on us, is irrelevant to the take of the clipper. A clipper can take a perfectly positive documentary Okay. And try to frame us as look at the way the kid reacted here.Simone Collins:Oh, we’ll do that anyway. Of course. Yeah.Malcolm Collins:No. That’s going to happen anyway. But what that does is not just re bring us up in the zeitgeist of the communities that have tried to treat us as an infohazard for a long time. Has become normal whenever we went viral recently on Blue Sky or whatever. Our Twitter people are like, stop tweeting about them. Stop tweeting about them. The more people who know about them, the worse.Simone Collins:Now, Slate, will someone stop profiling this couple?Malcolm Collins:Slate wrote an article. That was in year one of the profiles. And they have No.Simone Collins:I think it was, like, 2024. There haveMalcolm Collins:been many, many profiles since then.Simone Collins:But the point Didn’t work. Sorry.Malcolm Collins:Slate. This, like the Malfoyd phenomenon, is going to create a reactor of attention on us and potentially pop the bubble of these are not people you can talk about and regularly cite. It it will focus us in the same way that despite his relatively not large viewership, Nick Fuentes is constantly centered as, like, a meaningful right wing personality That he is centered. And that opens many doors for us in terms of where we go next even with a critical take on us.Simone Collins:And keep in mind Guys, tell us how we did. The critical take isMalcolm Collins:going to be focused? It’s gonna be focused on our anti trans beliefs. It’s gonna be focused on our potentially pro corporal punishment beliefs, not things that are going to catch with a mainstream audience. It’s going to be tech tone saying white people on our show.Simone Collins:I don’t know. I have... I I just don’t know. I don’t... The things they wanna they wanna see, I I get... I’m so confused. I love the team. By the way, the team, they’re amazing people. I really like them. But who knows who’s gonna edit this? I don’t know who’s gonna edit this. It’s I’m gonna make I’m gonna make dinner. I’m gonna go make dinner. Yeah. Love you. I love you so much. Oh my god. Timer for Torsten to win his reward, but he was telling me about how hard he was working to be good and how he he was ignoring the basilisk, telling him to do bad things. And I’m like, oh, right. Like, this morning when you were trying to shake the the table to destroy Titan’s beauty, that that thing that looks like the Colosseum thatMalcolm Collins:she Yeah.Simone Collins:It’s really nice. It’s really cool. And I was like, is it that you... That you’ve been holding yourself back from pushing people? And he’s like, no. More like breaking the wires, you know, like, the wires in our room so that the house burns down. And and then he’s like and he’s like, yeah. Sometimes I’ll just talk back to the basilisk and say, no. I will not I will not kill my family. No. I will not I will not burn theMalcolm Collins:house down.Simone Collins:Burn the world. No. I will not create a bomb that explodes our house, and I’m like, toasty. I was thinking more like, not spilling milk. You’re not... Like, what’s going on in that head? Sometimes I feel like he lives in such a, like, genuine, like, nightmare world. Like, this time when he he turned to me when he was taking a bath, and he was like, mommy, are there nice bugs in Toasties World? Nice bugs. It’s like, what is Toasties World? What is this place? I just want him to be okay.Malcolm Collins:You’re delightful. Well, today’s episode will be the first in a whileSimone Collins:that won’t have a Malfoyd song to go with it. I’ve had But it’s still another episode of women are terrible. We’ll go over a number of things, but... Alright.Malcolm Collins:The women are terrible episodes typically go well. Yeah. Dinner tonight, why don’t I do just steak cooked the normal way, and I’ll have it with the choy choy sauce and the whatever sauce, the green sauces I have? Oh, honestly, I’m not really feeling that hungry. How much longer can the steak last?Simone Collins:Today or nothing.Malcolm Collins:Okay. Today. We’re doing it today.Simone Collins:Look. If you eat a smack roll of it today, then the next day, you can have it as, like, a stir fried, you know, steak with Something Yeah. Great. Great idea. Great idea. Love it. Okay.Malcolm Collins:With with noodles, the lo mein lo mein soup.Simone Collins:Yeah. Or, like, fried rice with, you know, an egg cracked in or whatever.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.Simone Collins:Alright. If you return to eating again. We’ve all been, I guess, ill, maybe. I am not sure.Speaker 10:Ew. What’s that? Oh, it’s an acorn. Cute. It’s out. Yeah. You’re gonna take the acorn home? Yeah. In the bucket? Thanks. Alright. Okay. Take the acorn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Simone and Malcolm break down the alleged tradwife exodus and explain why the entire aesthetic was never an authentic return to 1950s life. They trace its roots to progressive cottagecore trends, BDSM roleplay, and online fantasy rather than any genuine historical model. The discussion covers high-profile influencers distancing themselves from the label, the straw-man portrayal in the novel Yesteryear, rising ex-trad wife creators, and how AI-driven unemployment will fuel more homemaking content without reviving any real trad movement.Show NotesThe Tradwife FanfictionI started seeing signs of the shift with the April debut of Yesteryear, which was a huge hit (and even before the book came out, Amazon MGM Studios bought the rights to it; Anne Hathaway will both star in and produce it). When I read it, I mentally referred to it as “Strawman: The Musical.”It is an utter piece of trash, not just because it gives off the air of written by someone incapable of modeling other people (and this is coming form an AUTISTIC PERSON incapable of picking up fundamental social cues), but because it doesn’t even try to explore what tradwife influencers actually are.Some notes:* On the author, Caro Claire Burke* She does not appear to have children and it really shows* She makes the main character seem like someone who is secretly living a nightmare the moment she became a mother* Like, she wanted the baby to die when she became a mother* And postpartum depression is real, but what she describes seems like something very different* Yet somehow this character has SIX KIDS and no interest in raising any of them* People who hate kids don’t have six kids in a post-birth-control environment* She attended “tradwife” influencer bootcamps for research* In the book [SPOILER ALERT] Burke essentially imagines* A horrible, spiteful woman incapable of love* Marrying a rich trust fund kid* Who doesn’t want to work and would love to be a stay-at-home dad* And then has a kid with whom she does not at all connect* And becomes a successful traswife influencer to force her family into some social ideal she wants but nobody else in the family desire* And then finds out an employee who had an affair with her husband quits* Then sexually assaults an assistant with whom her husband has an affair* And has some sort of psychotic break* And her family BIZARRELY decides to make their house ACTUALLY like the 1850s to “help” this woman* And she wakes up one morning forgetting everything that happened between the employee quitting and that day, years into their isolation, eventually escapes the house, and gets interviewed by a girl she knew in high school who she hated* AND NOTHING ELSE HAPPENS* But it’s made to seem spooky because Burke has the reader skip from Hannah getting notice of an employee quitting to Hannah waking up in her stupid 1840s life and not recognizing her family but thinking they’re similar.* The book is obviously based on Ballerina Farm (Hannah and Daniel Neelman)* Proof:* long kitchen window* Overpriced cutting board* Signature sourdough starter* Shorts of long elaborate meal prep from scratch* Treasured family cow* Husband who enjoys birthing calfs* But she heavily implies that they create an idolized vision of the past* When Mormons are EXTRA aware of how the past sucked (they go on treks in which they pull hand carts through the wilderness wearing hand-sewn prairie dresses and regularly get sick and dehydrated, plus simulate death* And she has them hiring nannies from places like LA when a family would never hire such ideologically mismatched people and not want to pay for them either* Plus sheThe Tradwife ExodusAround the time the book came out, several anti-tradwife creators were on the rise, including one I watch regularly, Life, take two!, who now has 173K subscribers, up from 60K about a year ago.Then Nara Smith’s interview on Call Her Daddy on July 29th (literally titled, “Nara Smith: Stop Calling Me a Tradwife”, in which she basically disavowed any association with the tradwife label, pointing out, quite fairly, that she is a working mother and that she and her husband Lucky share domestic responsibilities.The CommentaryAcademic article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03616843261437418As all this was happening,July 24: “Help! I Might Be a Tradwife!” a NY Times editorial in which poet JoAnna Novak writes about feeling unexpectedly drawn to aspects of domestic life—cooking, caring for children, making a home—while nevertheless rejecting the political and ideological associations with tradwifery.* It was so popular it got its own follow-up, Challenging the Tradwife Trend.By July 31st, even The Daily Wire was on this trend, with Why The Tradwife Movement Lost Its Traction, arguing that:* Isolation is its central flaw (WHO EVER SAID IT WAS ISOLATED??)* (they argue tradwifing involves homesteading)* Its standards become exclusionary* The aesthetic gets confused with virtue* The lifestyle is difficult to sustainThen in September, the NY Times published “Her Brand Was Tradwife. Now She’s Divorced.” about about Bernadine Bluntly (aka Bernadine Barber), a former influencer whose public identity was built around the “tradwife” ideal but ultimately—and very publicly—left her husband, got a restraining order, and divorcing, and switched to being an “ex-tradwife” creator warning other women about the ideology.Is There Actually a Decline?* No, and the talk about the decline contributed to a boost.* That’s because this isn’t about any real decline; it’s because tradwives are based off of a fiction that doesn’t map to reality.* Evie Magazine argued in April that the tradwife rejection trend now is just a reflection of people getting mad about Martha Stewart creating unreasonable standards in the past.* In reality, the tradwife genre online is about sharing idealized snapshots of homemaking. NOTHING more.* It’s unmoored from career, religion, gender norms, marriage values, or anything else.So Why Are People Mad About It (Simone’s Theory Pre-Taping)My take is people are mad about it because they realize the inevitability of homemaking making a comeback as more people’s careers become obsolete.* If things go GREAT, more people will be homemakers.* If things go HORRIBLE, more people will be homemakers.And I think people are trying to fight the trend—while also becoming fascinated by it—because it scares them.Episode TranscriptSimone Collins:Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be with you today because we’re gonna talk about the trad life exodus. There is an exodus of trad lives taking place. People are writing deranged fan fiction, villainizing trad wives. Women are disassociating from the label. Like, what? What? I don’t know. What Trad wife?Malcolm Collins:I was Some of the most famous Trad wives have said, I don’t like the Trad... I’m not a Trad wife.Simone Collins:True. Yeah. In fact, the very...Speaker 3:One of the mostSimone Collins:famous Trad wives, Nora Smith, who everyone has seen, she is that very soft spoken. She’s going to wear some fantastic piece of clothing and then make gum or toothpaste from scratch because my child wantsSpeaker 4:toSimone Collins:do whatever. Right?Speaker 9:My husband was on his way back from dinner with a friend when he called me to throw out dinner with pizza bites. I started by making the mozzarella, let it sit for ten minutes before slicing it and returning it back to the heat. I seared off my breakfast sausage.Simone Collins:so this is Nora Smith trying to pretendSpeaker 4:that she’s not the definition of a trad wife is.Simone Collins:A trad wife. Well, that’s perfect because I’m actually gonna ask you. What do you consider a trad wife?Speaker 4:Well, I had to look up the term.Simone Collins:I had to look it up.Speaker 4:Me because I wasn’t familiar with that. Right?Malcolm Collins:I Sure.Speaker 4:Didn’t quite know what it means. Didn’t know what it means. But the fast answer is a trad wife is a woman who embraces or promotes a traditional model of marriage and family life where she typically prioritizes being a homemaker and a primary caregiver for kids, takes primary responsibility for cooking, cleaning, and managing the household, supports her husband’s role as the primary breadwinnerSimone Collins:She’s using thisSpeaker 4:as a strong use of traditional gender roles within marriage. So with that definition and those points, I’m none of that.Simone Collins:See, she’s trying to say, no. Not me. She’s, of course, just using a random definition of trad wife, and it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But e... Well before she even said this, the other most famous trad wife, Hannah Neelman of Ballerina Farm, also when interviewed said, no. We don’t really associate with that label. That said, Nora Smith had used the hashtag trad wife tagging her post with that plenty of times, and Hannah Neelman definitely leaned in to the trope. And yet and yet So sheMalcolm Collins:tagged it and pretended like she didn’t know the term.Simone Collins:Well, later later, depended that she didn’t... Or pretended that she didn’t know the the the term. And after this started happening more and more, and more people started talking about the death of tradwives, and tradwives aren’t cool anymore, then commentators and academics alike started trying to explain this distancing. And here’s the thing. Both you and I agree. They’re all completely missing the key detail here, which is the trad wives were never real to begin with, and that is why we are seeing this. But people are mistaking it. They’re like, out. Was never... It was never there. It was never there.Malcolm Collins:Well, we argued that, and we have an old post arguing the BDSM... The BDSM culture is really the culture that is upstream of tradwife culture, that it did not evolve from anything authentically nineteen fifties. It evolved from BDSM play, and we go over the various... It’s it’s... Basically, there’s just so much evidence. There’s so much fingerprints. It is a converted version of BDSM with a cargo cult like paint on it attempting to bring back the prosperity of an earlier time through acting it out. For people who are unaware of what cargo cults were, there was a period wherein, like, the Polynesian Islands and stuff like that, the US military would set up in those regions. And they had enormous wealth, but they were, you know, savage tribe people who didn’t know anything. And so The US leaves, and then they begin to, like, build airplane runways and build airplanes out of sticks and copy the air signs that they had seen The US people doing during the short period there in the in the sort of a religious ritual to try to bring back this previous prosperity. And I think a lot of people are doing that with sort of a nineteen fifties vision where first, you had this sort of role play and LARP that came from BDSM, and then that was merged with people who genuinely thought that they could bring back the prosperity and decency of this previous era through cargo culting the phenomenon.Simone Collins:And actually gonna argue it’s worse than that, Malcolm. I’m gonna argueMalcolm Collins:continue. Go.Simone Collins:That most what... Of what people think to be tradwives online... And, actually, Nora Smith is being kind of honest. Hannah Neelman is being extremely honest when they say that they’re not tradwives because they really never were. They also... Even while maybe playing up a... An aesthetic hashtag trad wife as a trope, knew all along that they weren’t and were instead fetishized by people trying to believe that this concept, which I agree is the cargo coat with... Cult was real. in the same way that people who look at us and think that having a lot of kids is a breeder fetish, think that. Right? No one’s having a lot of kids because they have a breeder fetish, and no woman is making sourdough in her kitchen pretty much, because she thinks that she’s part of this actual cargo cult. There are exceptions. There are certainly people also who question elements of more traditional marriages, and I would say unsustainable forms of marriage that are more like this nuclear fam... Family that the cargo cult cosplays as. It’s it’s a little bit nuanced, but I’m... Yeah. Actually, the vast majority of tradwife content as it exists is people seeing one piece of content, completely misconstruing it, and basically building headcanon around a thing that doesn’t exist,Malcolm Collins:which is really building headcanon around a thing that they wish existed. Yes. By this, what I mean is they wish it existed as a a foe, as an opponent, that there were really women living like this when there simply aren’t. Yeah. And so their fears about being forced to live this way, their sexual and fetishized fears about the the the... We pointed out, the handmaid’s tale is clearly a a sex fantasy for a lot of these women. Oh oh, don’t hold me down, high status male. I’m I’m just a young fertile female. Don’t make a high status female.Simone Collins:Don’t don’t hold me down, mister Trump.Malcolm Collins:Don’t send me to the Mar A Lago breeding pits. Oh, gosh. But... No. I mean, it is... It’s a fetish. It’s women who know that they’ll never be bred, and women have a genetic predilection to want to become moms. and so they they, you know, they’re... They come up with fantasy scenarios where that could really happen. But the reality is, you know,Simone Collins:beyond that too, now with AI taking over, people are freaking out about not being able to get jobs anymore. They they are literally looking for some way out of a nightmare that they’re living, and the jobs they have are terrible. They’re not able to get decent new jobs. They’re afraid of their ability to have any form of security. This idea of being on some homestead somewhere, making sourdough bread sounds a lot less stressful than DoorDashing in between really long shifts as, you know, like a nurse or working at a CVS or doing whatever it is that you might be doing. Everyone now has to hustle to make money. This idea that instead you would have the secure home and children in this much worse succinct life is very appealing now, and it’s only gonna get worse.Malcolm Collins:The tradwife women, you look at the things the... That they’re doing, and they are progressive female fantasies and fetishes. As he travelsSimone Collins:This is exactlyMalcolm Collins:it. Is downstream of cottagecore. Right? Like, it’s the same style. It just has a different name to it. And cottagecore was one of the most popular stylistic movements in the crazy Tumblr days. Right? Like, in the most extreme parts of the progressive society. Then you look at trad ideas like sourdough. Sourdough was something that, like, every edgy progressive hipster woman I knew in San Francisco had their own sourdough starter. Right? You know? Or, oh, all all of this stuff all of this stuff is very... Oh, I have a little garden. Right? Oh, that’s very edgy and, I don’t know, whatever. So I think that that it’s always been a LARP that it wasn’t also a progressive fantasy. It is a fantasy of a type of life that really... If you look at, like, ballerina farms where they live this life, she’s able to live something that approximates it because her husband is one of the, like, richest humans on Earth. Right? You know, that’s what makes it feasible for them. It would not be feasible... And and and that’s why we don’t preach it for most Americans.Simone Collins:Well, also, she is working, and they both run a business together. They’re more like a corporate family. If a well funded one, then they are like the trad wife family, which typically involves a single breadwinner and the wife being at home only with the kids. Hannah is a business owner and media icon. She’s she’s not... She was never a trad wife, and she never said she was a wife, but people put that on her. In fact, this is really the first exhibit in this whole complete disaster of of interpretation from people, which is the book yesteryear. I started seeing signs of the shift really when the book came out. That’s when people started trying to argue in much greater amounts. This basically broke containment in April when the book came out. Such a a hit that it was. People really knew that this was gonna be amazing.Malcolm Collins:Oh, you told me about this book. You got really mad at it.Simone Collins:I got extremely mad at this book. Amazon MGM Studios bought the rights to it before it was published. Anne Hathaway is going to star in and produce it, Malcolm. When I read it, I mentally referred to it as straw man the musical because it was that bad. It is an utter piece of trash, not just because it gives off the air of being written by someone incapable of modeling other people. And, of course, this is coming from an autistic person incapable of picking up fundamental social cues, but, also, it it doesn’t evenSpeaker 3:Do youMalcolm Collins:need Simone, no. No. Hold on. You got to explain the plot to people. You’re you’re you’re crashing out of something.Simone Collins:No. Scorpio is theMalcolm Collins:plot so people understand why it matters that they couldn’t model other people.Simone Collins:I will. Okay? I will explain the plot of this book to you. I’m not going to explain it in the way that the story is told cause it’s stupid. I’m going to explain to you the whole plot so you can now see how stupid the plot is, why why her whole twist is not not good. Okay? So, basically, it’s about this horrible, spiteful woman who is incapable of love, who decides to marry a... Oh, and she’s, like, very Christian probably. Like, they’re obviously modeled after the Neelman family, which is Mormon. Okay? And so she decides that she’s going to marry a rich trust fund kid who doesn’t want to work and just wants to be a stay at home dad, like, super reasonable. Okay? He doesn’t need to. He’s that rich. Yeah. Of course, this isn’t the case with Daniel Neumann who works throughout their marriage anyway. Whatever. We just throw that out. and then she has this kid with whom she does not connect at all. She she treats it like this living nightmare having this kid, hoping the kid dies. I know that postpartum depression is a thing, but what she describes is not like any description of postpartum depression that I’ve read. Yep. And and then And it’s only one kid? No. No. No. She starts off with one kid, and then she ends up having six, which, by the way, when you look at, for example, what, is covered in Hannah’s children, the book on families with educated women who have five or more kids, I think, or six or more kids in in The United States, their first experience having a kid is the biggest predictor of whether or not they’re gonna have a big family. People don’t have big families if they don’t love their kids. Even if they feel like their culture is all around having big families, they typically cap out at three. And then they’re like, whatever. I’ve done my part, maybe four, not six. So, again, that’s also super not believable. But, anyway, she goes on to have six kids. And she does it by inseminating herself with a turkey baster because she finds her husband so repulsive, apparently. That was a great detail. I really enjoyed that. Thank you, author. I’m not even gonna name my name. Her name is, like, Carol Burke. But she she then becomes a... This woman, this detestable character, becomes a famous trad wife influencer because she’s like, well, basically, if my husband is too lazy and stupid to build a successful business, I will just force us into the lifestyle become... By becoming a trad wife influencer. And then she hires this whole staff. She hires nannies out of LA as if a conservative Christian would do that. Also, it’s super not affordable to do that. But whatever, she hires this whole staff to run her media empire, but then she doesn’t let them be seen on social media to, like, hide the fact, you know, and to be dishonest. And then she finds out that one of her employees slept with her husband, and she just loses it and sexually assaults that assistant who then later goes to the press about it. And this is when the main character just blacks out. She just completely blacks out. and her family, bizarrely, decides that, the best way to handle this woman having a nervous breakdown after sexually assaulting one of her employees after that employee slept with her husband, is to just make their house actually like the eighteen forties. They call it yesteryear farm. So let’s make yesteryear farm like it’s actually the eighteen forties and take away the working plumbing and take away the electricity and everything like that. And all of her children, except for two of them or maybe three or four. Yeah. For, most of the older children leave, and then she only has the very youngest. And then one day, she just wakes up and forgets that whole transition period and is like, oh, where am I? What has happened to my life? why is this man who looks like my husband but is not my husband here? Who are these weird looking children who say that they’re my children, but they’re not my children? Who are they? And she has this whole, like, you know, mental break. And then she tries to escape the house, and her oldest daughter who had, like, you know, left to the reservation and had made it out to, like, the real urban monoculture world where everyone’s thriving.Malcolm Collins:And they... Yeah. Thriving out in the Manhattan.Simone Collins:Hatefully mentally. Yeah. She rescues and hatefully hatefully rescues her her mother, and then her mother... The the story concludes with her... This this spiteful, terrible, now insane woman giving an interview to a former college roommate or colleague who she hated and thought was, you know, a slutty hot mess, who was a member of the urban monoculture, interviewing her. And I think for the author, it’s supposed to be the smug moment of, like, I was the urban monoculture journalist woman who got the MFA because she she got an MFA. and this is what will happen to anyone who becomes a trad wife. They’ll become ruined and insane, and they were always mean to begin with, and I will interview them and put them to shame just as I did in this book. But the way she presents it in the book, of course, is it like, oh, here’s this perfect trad wife, and then something kinda stressful happens. Like, one of her employees says she’s gonna resign, and the next thing she knows, she wakes up, and she’s in this weird farm with these strange... The strange family that’s not her family. So it’s supposed to be like, oh, what’s going on here? And part of it was like, oh, you know, punish this trad wife with an actual trad life. And I hate it all so much, and it’s super not accurate because this woman is not realisticMalcolm Collins:at Simone, hold on. You are probably the closest thing to a real trad life that exists these days. Is it better than when you lived in the urban monoculture?Simone Collins:Yeah. Obviously. but that’s... I’m also not technically because there is no such thing as a trad wife.Malcolm Collins:No. But I’m not. Saying you are who women... There are women all around the world who look at your face and think of you, whatever character was put into this story, that’s what they assume your life is. So as the woman who they wannaSimone Collins:Not with all the AI around us. You know, we’re not, like, playingMalcolm Collins:Well, yeah, but that’s a more recent development. There was a stage in your life when they thought, you knowSimone Collins:I don’t know. We... We’re too terminally online to really signal as tradwife. You know, you... To be a tradwife influencer, you mostly do elaborate baking tutorials and, like, largeMalcolm Collins:Would you like it if I let you do more elaborate baking tutorials?Simone Collins:That is not the plan. that is not the plan. But, anyway, that is what theyMalcolm Collins:I remember all of this. I remember the plot. You went through it. We criticized it. Okay. What... What’s confusing to me, okaySimone Collins:Yeah.Malcolm Collins:Is when you were reading the book and you were getting angry at it, the plot you described was very different. You described her as actually having gone to the past. Like, it was one of those time travel novels.Simone Collins:And that’s the big gotcha of the book that, basically, in one moment, she has an employee quit. And then the next moment, she wakes up in this weird bed in this weird house with a man who looks like her old husband. She calls him old Caleb. And kids who say that they’re her mama, but but she’s not their mama. And it’s weird, and she hates doing the laundry, and she hates baking, and she can’t bake well, and everything’s horrible, and they have no running water. It’s it’s basically the author’s smug way of being like, yeah. You like being tread so much. Yeah. I’m like, have the tread. Here’s the tread. Shove your face in the tread. And it just turns out that it totally implausibly after accusations came out around her sexually assaulting an employee. Did you read this book? Because everyone was talking about it, and it was about trad wives. And I wanted to understand what a leftist woman thought of the concept of trad wives. I wanted to understand the straw man, and I had no idea just how depraved or straw man y it would be. I thought it would be an actual best effort take from someone on the left to try to model funny because when weMalcolm Collins:do the other side, like, when we’re talking about what is it actually like to live as a trans person, we go to, like, famous mainstream trans individuals’ personal diaries, like the episode where we go over Anna Valen’s diaries that they post publicly. Right? To to go through is what challenges do they actually face, what parts of this lifestyle actually don’t work for them. And it is interesting, one, and that it does almost read like a sick fantasy because their lives areSimone Collins:Well, because she’s, one, such a hateful woman. And two, the entire plot line is so implausible that that also she used to be, like, a hateful woman who’s a repressed lesbian, which is a big part of the plot line. That’s why, you know, she sexually assaults this this woman that slept with her husband, why she, inseminates herself with a turkey baster to get pregnant because her husbandMalcolm Collins:She doesn’t even like her husband. Like, why is she even jealous about this?Simone Collins:Yeah. I know. That’s the thing. It’s... Nothing makes sense about her. Like, this is someone incapable of modeling other people even from a logical standpoint. Like, I can’t model other people. I’m autistic. I... You know, we’ve sat at tables where people are, like, openly crying, and I’m like,Malcolm Collins:that seemed to go well.Simone Collins:And you’re like, wait. What did did you miss? Anyway, I can’t do it, but I can logically think through, oh, that’s implausible. whereas this author can’t even seem to do that. And somehow, you know, MGMMalcolm Collins:Well, I I think the answer is that you just, as a rightist, do not understand a few things if if you grew up a rightist or if you’ve always been a rightist or sometimes you forget. Because I remember when I was on the left, they’re genuinely... It’s not a real attempt to model what they thought people on the right were like orSimone Collins:thought Well, and here’s the thing is it’s very easy. She could have easily modeled this because this entire character she built, was based on Hannah Neelman of Ballerina Farm. All the way down to, like, elements in the book that are so explicit, it almost feels like some form of of... Is it libel or defamation when you write it? Whatever. But in in in her house, there’s a long kitchen window. This is, like, a very iconic element of Ballerina Farm. Overpriced cutting board, another iconic Ballerina Farm product. signature sourdough starter. Ballerina Farm. shots of long elaborate meal prep from scratch, obviously. Treasured family cow. Yes. Ballerina Farm had a family cow they loved so much. They took it on a camping trip once because they couldn’t leave her behind. and husband who enjoys birthing calves. Yes. David Neelman, goes by hog farmer on Instagram, absolutely was burning gas. So she paid attention to some surface level things and completely dragged the concept of this couple through the mud, also failing entirely to model them when, actually, Hannah Neelman’s diaries, like, online went way back. And for whatever reason, maybe they’re taken down now, but not soon enough for Fundy snark on the Internet to find it. And boy, did they find it. And it was riddled with spelling errors. It showed a lot of vulnerability in her early days as a young mother living in Brazil when they first went there. Like, it’s there. You can... People Hannah nailed it down all the time, I think unfairly. but when they do and they do so skillfully, you can get that nuance debate. she doesn’t even try that. So it’s just really crazy to me. I hate the book. It’s a terrible book. It’s gonna be turned into a movie. It’s gonna make me really angry.Malcolm Collins:But you said there was something else because you had finished talking about this inSimone Collins:your relationship. This book comes out in April. And then around the time the book came out, there were several anti tradwife creators who were on the rise, including one that I watch regularly called Life Take Two, who now has 173 subscribers, which is up from 60... Sorry. A 170,000 subscribers, which is up from 60,000 a year ago. So you and I know what it’s like to grow on YouTube. That is a big explosion. Right? 60 k one year, a 173 k the next year. That’s pretty huge. And here’s an... Like, a a very sort of brief example of who she is. What she actually is is she’s a former... But she called herself, like, a homesteading MAGA trad wife. And now she talks about how how dangerous it is basically to, like, stake your wife on a career. I would argue that that’s an entirely reasonable thing to argue. but, anyway, this this is her.Speaker 7:Next trad wife, the first thing I do every morning is check to see if my child support’s been vaped yet. Goddamn it. Peace.Simone Collins:So, yeah, that’s her. Here’s an example of the kind of commentary that she makes. Here’s her even actually talking connected about ballerina farm.Speaker 7:It’s been a while since I’ve done a ballerina farm video, and here we go. You guys are gonna love this. And for those of you who don’t love it, the little ballerina farmsters who are gonna tell me that I’m jealous and I’m just a hater. That’s actually not the case. I was doing the ballerina farm thing before ballerina farm was, like, even in middle school. Me and my rich ass Mormon husband bought a homestead in South Carolina just because they had a green living platform before platforms were even a thing. We had a website. I had a radio show. I had, like, a podcast, a blog, a newsletter, like an actual paper newsletter. And I bought a homestead and did all this exact same s**t, like, fifteen years before Hannah ever dreamed up. So if anybody knows the mindset of a Mormon mommy homesteading influencer, it’s probably another Mormon mommy homesteading influencer. First thing I bet you didn’t know about Ballina Farm, I want you guys to look at the kitchen here for just a minute. This is what we think of when we think of Ballina Farm. We think of all this wood Seat long kitchen windows. In this incredible historic house, and they just, like, went in and, like, did nothing to it except for buying this big agasto. Like, I remember the first time I ever watched Ballerina farm, and it’s like, that’s so cool that they just, like, preserved the nature of the historic home. Like, oh my god. They didn’t even upgrade it or do anything to it. Move in red. Of course, over the years, they’ve upgraded and painted and done some things. And I personally think that painting all that beautiful plank siding was probably a content creating decision. No matter how many ring lights you have, that darkness kind of sucks the light out of the room. I like to film in rooms that are brighter, that have more white. Bet you didn’t know that this is what the Ballerina Farm kitchen looked like when they bought the house. They didn’t move into some little house in the Prairie Log Cabin and just keep it like it was. They spent bajillions of dollars gutting that entire structure. I actually watched some of the process with my own eyes as I vacationed ten minutes away from there. I’m sure this kitchen probably had a nice stove already, but they were already insta famous when they moved into the farmhouse, and Hannah had a vision for what was going to look good on camera. Next up, bet you didn’t know that Hannah didn’t used to dress like Little House on the Prairie. That is a brand new face, and that is just for the Cameron. She doesn’t dress like that when she goes around town. Again, my friends all live in her neighborhood, and that is absolutely not how she dresses. I know oneSimone Collins:Anyway, as you can see, that is a much more, like, honest commentary on how weMalcolm Collins:This is how Simone dresses. It is not how she originally dresses, but it is how she dresses out and about. Yeah.Simone Collins:It went from, like, fascist chic toMalcolm Collins:Yeah. They pull up the old outfit. They’d be like, that looks like it was designed after a specific type of uniform. And it’s like, nobody... There there there are many, many criticisms that this particular group gets, but it is never that they didn’t have a great sense of style.Simone Collins:That’s gonna be such great lore. But, like, imagine, like, you know, my ballerina farms moment. It’s when someone’s like, I bet you didn’tSpeaker 8:know that she used to dress like this.Simone Collins:Like, Hannah Neelman is, like, like, this casual, like, sports fan, like, shirt. And I’m like, oh, oh, no. She didn’t dress like that. No. But everyone knows already. Anyway, the point I’m making with her is that as this... As yesteryear came out and people are like, oh, tradwife bad. Let’s make a fake tradwife straw man suffer. This woman did also rising on on sort of tradwife, hypocrisy snark content. Basically, like, trad wives aren’t who they say they are. Their wives are actually horrible. This woman was a trad wife, and then her husband dumped her for a 20 year old that doesn’t pay child support. And and so you can see at the beginning of this year, this rising sentiment, and then it just keeps going. So... Sorry. I’m finding my notes. Right. Then Nora Smith’s interview on Call Her Daddy came out on July twenty twenty ninth. It’s literally titled, Nora Smith, stop calling me a trad wife, in which she basically disavowed any association with the trad wife label, pointing out, right, fairly.Malcolm Collins:The only bad part about being a parent is the children.Simone Collins:Aw. I love them so much. Then Nora Smith’s interview on call her daddy came out on July 29, literally titled Nora Smith, stop calling me a trad wife, in which she basically disavowed any association with the trad wife label, pointing out quite fairly that she’s a working mother and that she and her husband, Lucky, shared domestic responsibilities because it’s not real. And then there’s also all this commentary that came out on July 24 before the Nora Smith thing thing came out on... In the New York Times, and this went super viral. this article or op ed came out called, help. I might be a trad wife, in which this poet named Joanna Novik writes about feeling unexpectedly drawn to aspects of domestic life, like cooking or caring for children or homemaking, while still rejecting the political and ideological associations with tradwifery. And it was such a popular article, that it got its own follow-up called challenging the tradwife trend. And, basically, you could see among the New York Times set this tension between, like, oh, but, like, it looks really nice, but, like, no. It’s evil. It’s bad.Malcolm Collins:It’s evil. Don’t do it.Simone Collins:Stop. Yes. They’re like, don’t. and then by July 31, even the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro’s flagship thing was on this trend with this article called why the trad wife movement lost its traction, which basically argued that isolation is its central flaw. But whoever said that it was isolated, they are giving trad wipingMalcolm Collins:everything the Daily Wire does shows they are completely out of touch in every conceivable way.Simone Collins:Little connection with reality, because, no, tradwifing is not homesteading. they argue that it involves homesteading. And they also argue its standards become exclusionary, completely again misunderstanding what this entire genre is, that the aesthetic gets confused with virtue, and that the lifestyle is difficult to sustain. and then in September, the New York Times published her her brand was trad wife. Now she’s divorced about Bernadette Blunty, aka Bernadine... Or sorry. Bernadine Blunty, aka Bernadine Barber, who’s a former influencer whose public identity was built around this alleged trad wife ideal, but ultimately and very publicly, she left her husband. She got a restraining order. She divorced him, and then she switched to being an ex trad wife creator just like life take two. So now there’s this rise of ex trad wife creators. And I think they’re, again, getting that love because women are very drawn to this, but they feel like they’re not allowed to be drawn to it. So similar to how there was that creator we talked about who would, like, convince women to not have children, who would... The girl with the list. I feel like this is very similar to that where women want to be reminded, like, don’t do that. I know you want to. Don’t do that. Bad idea. You’re gonna get divorced. It’s gonna go horrible. It’s this thing that it’s not... You know, you you can’t do it. But here’s the thing. Is there is there a trend line of decline? What do you think, Malcolm?Malcolm Collins:I think it’s being redefined into what it always was, and it’s entering a more mature phase as a field. I think I mean Look. I mean, you’re pulling up the stats.Simone Collins:This is... No. This is just Google Trends. It is not going down. Okay? Look at this. Look at this. A little bit... It’s it’s... I mean, it had a big spike. It... The the most recent local spike was right around the time that the New York Times published these articles in July. So it’s gonna... And you know that when yesteryear comes out, it’s gonna spike again. It’s not... It’s only gonna go up. It’s only gonna go up. You understand that. Right? Because women are not gonna be able to get jobs anymore as AI comes out. And then they’re... Look. Also, no And they’re gonna be like, how do IMalcolm Collins:get men? Oh, men are conservative. Men wanna trad wife. Like, that’s how you sell to men these days. And Well, also, the idea of the ethot, the idea of Ethought. No. As a woman, you’ve got, you know, your assets. Okay?Simone Collins:Okay.Malcolm Collins:And you you gotta bring your assets on the camera. Right? Oh, yeah.Simone Collins:You gotta, yeah, you gotta shop your wares. You know? I’m a cook. I’m a whatever. Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins:And the woman who has a male fan base that likes her because she’s a woman, right, is what... The primary way women grow on on the Internet. Like, let’s be honest here. Okay?Simone Collins:Yeah.Malcolm Collins:And there are only so many looks you can sell to an audience for them to be interested in you. AndSimone Collins:Well, this is one of the the best looks to sell if you think your audience is gonna be dubious about previous sexual partners. And if you’re on OnlyFans, our e thought even that. I think you’re missingMalcolm Collins:the point. Yeah. So you’ve got a few looks that you can do. And historically, you could go the e girl route. You know?Simone Collins:Sort of dressMalcolm Collins:Oh, yeah.Simone Collins:Like, I will play video games with you and be yourMalcolm Collins:best friend. Sexy and and and jiggle and everything, and that has lost a lot of its appeal. There are not many popular egirls left because it became associated with debauchery, and debauchery became uncool in male circles. And so they just... A a lot of young girls aren’t aren’t doing that as much as they used to, and they... It doesn’t appeal to the same user base. The second reason is is if you’re going to go the debauchery pathway, right, within an online environment and it’s going to be fictionalized, then fully fictionalize it. This is why so many of the top Twitch streamers are anime girls. Okay? If you’re gonna go lewd, then be a lewd anime girl because a lot of people prefer two d.Simone Collins:Yeah. And withMalcolm Collins:two d, you can be as hot as you want and never age and still have all this stuff.Simone Collins:If you’re trying to make homemaking your career, which is gonna become... Like, I think many high achieving women who used to be, like, career women are going to return to beingMalcolm Collins:careerists. Well, this is Like, professionally as homemakers. If you are selling an image within an online context into a fandom The, image of the hot anime girl works right now, but the e girl does. Right? And then it’s like, okay. I’m a woman. What else can I sell? Because I need to sell something that’s, you know, over the top so it sticks with people. so it’s it’s it’s memorable, and it it also has to be relatable. And I think that trad wife is very good at doing that. One of the things that’s important to note about the trad wife influencer historically up until now is it predominantly was sold to women as a consumer base. Yeah. the primary consumer of trad wife content was not men who wanted a trad wife. It was women on TikTok.Simone Collins:I I say this Absolutely.Malcolm Collins:As a man, I have never organically seen trad wife content. Yeah. Well, and letSimone Collins:me let me come in with just an additional annotation to that to reinforce your point, which is that the one decent take on whatever the backlash, the trend, whatever you wanna call it, is EV Magazine, which is this... It’s supposed to be like the Cosmo for the conservative woman. And they had this article called, god, I can’t remember. But it came out in April, and it was basically just arguing that the trad wife trend is just a repeat of something that happened thirty years ago in the nineties where people were freaking out about the unrealistic standards that Martha Stewart was presenting with homemaking. And her content... And I... I’m I’m the most diehard Martha Stewart fan. I love her so much. She did did exactly the same thing. You know? Like, I make all these things, elaborate meals. There were Saturday Night Live skits all the time about her completely unrealistic standards when it came to homemaking and and meal prep. And just like all the modern trad wives today, her work did not represent a religious ideal. It did not even represent a married woman. This is a single divorced mom who runs her business empire and sells products at Kmart and has books and video, like, tapes and everything that she sold.Malcolm Collins:But this is this is where I think they’re missing what’s happening and you’re missing what’s happening because I do think that we are entering a new era of the tradwife.Simone Collins:We... Yeah. I do. I guess where you’re going. AMalcolm Collins:trad wife with a male audience, which is not historically big. And I think the model of that form of trad wife that is probably archetypical would be you. You are very much this new form of trad wife that talks to a male audience. And you’re not the only... Another good example is Bridget whatever, the the lady we met at Hereticon, has the other channels sort of like ours, pretty big. What am I thinking of? BridgetSimone Collins:Bridget p h something. Fantasy? BridgetMalcolm Collins:Fantasy. Bridget Fantasy. Which is to say that it’s not about overly leaning into... It... It’s sort of a model that’s defined by, I think, two things above all else. The first is they’re in a happy long term partnership where they are taking on a a feminine role. And second is they do not depict themselves as sexualized. And this is very different than the way women historically sold themselves. If a woman had a husband, that was not a front and center thing about her life within a media context because guys wanted to be able to fantasize that the woman didn’t have a husband. Right? Like, oh, I’m I’m lusting after this. Whatever. But now I think to be authentic with guys, if you, still don’t have a husband, and you are, you know, an agent content creator or something like that, the assumption is what’s going on here? Like, what’s behind the scenes? Why why does... If you’re selling all of these ideas about, you know, being loyal to a guy and getting married and blah blah blah blah blah, having kids, saving your people or whatever you wanna say, and you’re not married, that comes off as very hypocritical. And I think that that worked for a period. I think this is where we’ve seen the drop in credibility of Nick Fuentes, for example. Right? Like, as I pointed out before, he he chastised fans when they got married. Right? Like, that’s when theySimone Collins:He did? Wait. I didn’t know that.Malcolm Collins:Famous...Speaker 11:you sound like a f****t, and you’re going to hell with your ugly dog of a woman wife. So people like you are what’s wrong with this country. People like you are worse than trannies, frankly. People like you are sort of worse than the worst part of the problem. So busy with wife and kids doing what? Being a cuck? Busy busy being... Schlepping around bags for your wife? I was busy doing my wife’s makeup. I was busy... My wife was doing my makeup. Busy playing tea party with your baby girl’s stay at home dad while your wife makes some money. Is that it? And what does that even mean? Busy with the wife and kids doing what? I think they’re pretty self sufficient, aren’t they? They should be. Busy with the wife and kids going to going on what? Playdates? What does that mean? Busy with the wife and kids. What what do you mean by that? So, yeah, sounds like you should get back to playing princess with your wife and your daughter or whatever. Sounds like you should get back to cleaning cleaning your wife’s, you know, period off... Period off. Sounds like you should should get back to braiding your wife’s hair or whatever it is that you do with your f*****g wife. Glad I stopped watching the show to get dragged to the garlic festival with my wife. Yeah. Okay, buddy. Well, yeah, sounds like you should get back to it. Chop. Chop. Her hair is not gonna braid itself. But, anyway, incels aren’t sad. Incels are glad, and we’re gonna kill you. So, anywaySpeaker 13:No. This person who he’s crashing out on had just donated, I think, $50 to him. And when people are like, wow. You seem to be very aggressively against people like Nick Fuentes. I mean, this is why. It’s this fakeness to everything that they say they care about to say, I’m concerned about a decreasing number of births within this population and then make fun of aggressively, say they would kill someone of that population, the guy explicitly said, were a white family, when they get married, when they begin having kids, shows he doesn’t care about this at all. And and this is what you see, I think, with all people of this group. When people act, like, aggressively racist towards groups, I also see them act like this. They don’t actually care anyone could tell you that aggressive racism doesn’t serve the purpose that anyone displaying it says that they’re trying to achieve.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Fan reached out and was, like, telling him that he was excited to finally get married. And andSimone Collins:mention this.Malcolm Collins:He basically made fun of him and called him, I think, a fag or something.Simone Collins:Because somebody’s married.Speaker 8:Thing you can do.Malcolm Collins:I think, like, mask off for a lot of people. Like, oh, he doesn’t actually care about any of the values that he says he cares about. Like, he just cares about being the center of a personality cult. Right? Like... And and this would be obvious if you looked at any of his strategy. Like, it it it just wouldn’t work. It’s it’s obviously going to lose, and it’s obviously going to lose the culture war, which, you know, fortunately, he’s been increasingly frozen out... Or chosen more and more of a losing side on. Obviously, the big fear is he ends up partnering with, like, Biden junior and ends up doing something there. Because, like, you could do well among the democrats, which would be worrying, but... Okay. But... By the way, I love the Harry Potter song that I I put out yesterday where I have Harry Potter take on, like, the griper role and Malfoy to take on the role of, like, the nerdy new right person, and I thought I thought it was fun. A lot of people extremely fun. Were upset that Malfoyd would not be okay with, like, the more extreme griper mindset. And I really liked it because I was like, well, I don’t think Malfoyd would. I I think Malfoyd would be like, what do you... Like, obviously, this isn’t an effective way to win anything, and I I thought that you had, like, put thought into this. You weren’t just being, like, edgy for the sake of being edgy and hateful. And I I think that a lot of people are... Who who thought that they could do that or that they get social points for doing that, that currency is drying up at the same time. It’s all of this. At the same time, it’s a feminine currency for pretending to want to be a wife. Right? You can only do that for so many years when people are like, okay. So why aren’t you a mom yet? You know? Why aren’t you a wife yet? Why didn’t you do the thing? And so I think that that’s why we’re gonna see an increase in married female conservative influencers. One of one of the the the questions I have is I I think this will also likely correspond with a decrease in married female Democratic influencers or or left wing influencers.Simone Collins:Why do you say that?Malcolm Collins:So there’s a few reasons. I think that being married and being in a happy long term relationship inSimone Collins:Oh, it’s just gonna code I actually think that’s Malcolm. That’s already the case. Remember that one substack we went over?Malcolm Collins:Oh, yeah. We did. We did.Simone Collins:Sponge feminist and, like, this woman was married. this woman was married, but it sounded like she hated her husband.Malcolm Collins:Well, There article was on how, like, being married, like, was beginning to become not cool and, like, you know, you you don’t wanna tell people you’re married. You get embarrassed to... YouSimone Collins:know? Right. Yeah. It’s true.Malcolm Collins:So we’re actually already seeing this.Simone Collins:Yeah. We’re already there. But I... The thing is whether the AI renaissance turns out to be a horror story for humans or it ends up being really, you know, great and all humans live in abundance and luxury, there’s gonna be a rise in homemaking regardless, Malcolm, because people aren’t gonna be working. So this genre of content, which ultimately is... And by the way, tradwife content is only idealized snapshots related to homemaking. Could be like getting eggs out of a coop, gardening, fixing things, decorating your house, or making food. That is what homemaking is, like homemaking content, basically. Kind of all people are gonna be doing, you know, like, a post AI age, and it’s gonna grow. The the... This is not on the decline. And people are just gonna keep Rorschach testing it and, like, acting as though it means something more than that when it never has. Martha Stewart was not a religious, like, promoter, not married, not living a certain lifestyle. She was... And and and not not not trad. You know, she was running a business again.Malcolm Collins:Well, I think that there’s authentic trad and inauthentic Trad, and I think that would really be right justSimone Collins:call it Trad Wifery, and they’re like, this this is setting unrealistic standards. It never set standards. It it just it just fetishized elements of home life that are lovelyMalcolm Collins:because disagree with what you’re saying. I am... As I was saying, I think that there are two types of trad wife influencers.Simone Collins:Okay.Malcolm Collins:There are authentic and inauthentic trad wife influencers, and I think they appeal to two different demographics. The inauthentic trad wife influencers appeal to female audiences. These are the ones who are going over the top and who are doing things in ways that are obviously unsustainable. And the reason why females prefer to watch that is because just look at any of the female popular things that have gone big in the past, like cottagecore, goblincore, you know, any any of the women, women putting things away academia. ToursSimone Collins:Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins:Academia. It’s always over the top, over, curated, over... Overdone. Like, it’s... You clearly couldn’t live in any of these aesthetics in any real context. It would be a nightmare to maintain. It’s not just the trad wife that is the nightmare to maintain. It’s every single one of these contexts that’s a nightmare to maintain. and, obviously, no one is really living dark academia or cottagecore or goblincore or whatever. They are aspirational aesthetics, and aspirational aesthetics only appeal to women. What the long term of that side of the trad wife movement is, I don’t know because I simply cannot empathizeSimone Collins:with change. It’s just that there’s gonna be more demand for it because, again, people are gonna be unemployed.Malcolm Collins:But if you look at the other side, the authentic tradwife Who is the authentic tradwife? That’s what I just went over. You would be an example of the authentic tradwifeSimone Collins:for it. I’m not. The... There... No one would associate me with tradwifery because I don’t post content.Malcolm Collins:Okay. Let’s... Do you not think that leftists think that you’re a tradwife?Simone Collins:No. No. They absolutely do. They think I’m a hipster eugenicist fascist Nazi.Malcolm Collins:They think you’re a tradwife. No.Simone Collins:I I Y’all can chime in in the comments. I don’t thinkSpeaker 8:this isSimone Collins:a trad wife.Malcolm Collins:You you cook meals. You live withSimone Collins:your husband. You’re sick. You’re into him. Eat. No. That... But that’s not what a trad wife is. But that not the... That’s not the genre.Malcolm Collins:No. That is not how you as a woman... No man is going to consume the very narrow type of content that you call trad wife content. Yeah. You’re basically What’s the point?Simone Collins:This was never for men. It’s just like makeup that was never for men.Malcolm Collins:There are mini men that do want content with a traditional wife. And it’s trueSimone Collins:because I see zero male demand for it. Then whyMalcolm Collins:is our channel doing so well these days? Why... Like, do you not get... Do youSpeaker 8:Because, Malcolm, our our channelSimone Collins:is Basecamp aka women are terrible. It’s a woman talking about...Malcolm Collins:A married woman talking about women being No.Simone Collins:It’s a smart man who’s like, oh, poor dumb wife. Let me explain to you how things actuallyMalcolm Collins:You’re drafting all of the anti women episodes. You’re drafting this episode. I don’t come up with these misogynistic ideas.Simone Collins:You’re fine. But that’s not tradwife content. It’s just not. It’s just not. People are gonna answer comments.Malcolm Collins:But I think you’re completely wrong on this one. I think it’s a new form of tradwife content that’s targeted at men, and you don’t like being boxedSimone Collins:in trap to say that, like, they’re... They... It’s not like they do a ton of stuff together, but you’re kind of saying, like, Darling Straub and Rev says Desu are tradwife content because they’re a mostly couple. Are you trying to say exactly trad wife. What... What’s the Disney couple? I mean, Clownfish TV. You’re trying to say they’re a trad wife? Because Yes. Obviously.Speaker 8:Malcolm, that’s not what... No.Simone Collins:That is that is a complete... There’s a different name for it. If there was one Oh, the different name for it. Yeah.Malcolm Collins:Hold on. Hold on. If it’s something other than a trad wife, what is the different name for it?Simone Collins:A couple’s channels, I guess. Like The obvious corporate friendly content.Speaker 8:For it. There isn’t a name for it. You just showed you didn’t know another name for it.Simone Collins:There is another... Because there... Nothing has been coined. I don’t think it’s been recognized as a genre. It’s not like people are like, I have hankering for content done by a wholesome couple that loves each other. I’m gonna turn on clownfish TV. I’m gonna watch rev says desu content. They don’t do that.Malcolm Collins:That... That’s what we watched Straub for.Simone Collins:Rotten mango. Rotten mango is another example of this. I don’t think you watch any Rotten mango, like, videos, but there is such a cute couple. you never see the husband. I don’t know what he looks like, but he always talks with his wife while she tell... Talks about, like, salacious things or tragic things, people being murdered.Malcolm Collins:There is such a thing as couple videos.Simone Collins:Okay? But you can’t search it. It’s not, like, hash hashtagged.Malcolm Collins:No. No. The the point I’m making is none of the the people who I just went through are a couple channel. Couple channels offer a very different experience. They are about a young, attractive coupleSimone Collins:Oh, yeah. Those are gross. I hate those. No. Yeah.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. This... What I’m talking about, as I’ve said, a defining feature of the trad wife content is her husband is known, and she isn’t sexualized. That... If you if you watch, for example, clownfish TV, a husband, very known, character is never sexualized. Another great channel, Barrington. bearing, husband is known, wife is never... Well, I mean, he does call her sugar tits, but, I mean, she’s not meant to be sexy to the audience. It’s I’ve never heard of them. Okay. Yeah. You should watch it. It’s a great channel. I find it very funny. they’re an Australian couple. And they do content that is very... Yeah. It’s, very similar to ours. I’m gonna be honest. Not as intellectual, but, you know, more like rev level, like, cultural... But but maybe a bit higher if it’s not just responding to Twitter or something. But if you, Straub Straub used to be sexualized. She had a period where she was sexualized. And then she went forward through this whole, I’m Christian now. I’m deleting all my ASMR content. I’m deleting all that. I’m gonna be dedicated to my husband. We’re gonna have a kid together. I’m gonna try to make more wholesome content. she went through a change that I think shows this is what you do when you become a trout wife. You delete all your old sexy videos online, which, you know, unfortunately, you didn’t have. So you you weren’t able to come out and be like, I repudiate back when I was sexy, or tried to beSimone Collins:didn’t try, Malcolm. I know you never tried.Malcolm Collins:You never tried to be sexy. She never tried to lure in any man with her sex appeal. Imagine being a woman and just not using sex appeal to lure people.Simone Collins:Because I think women who use their sex appeal to lure people know that it’s there.Malcolm Collins:And you don’t think you have sex appeal? Yes. You you have... We have fans who, like, actively dislike me because I have crushes on you. You are aware of that.Simone Collins:Right. Any any regard for me would be so guys had crushes on me. They didn’t have crushes on me because I was sexy. They had crushes on me because I showed interest in what they were talking about and paid attention to them and affirmed them. And they assumed that that was...Malcolm Collins:But you’re not doing that with our audience. You’re just here to be sexy. Look at the... You know, all you’re doing is showing off your boobs, jiggle... Jiggling them around for the audience.Speaker 8:Oh my god. I think we’ve made our point withSimone Collins:this episode. I’m holding fast to mine, though, which is this concept is completely misunderstood because it’s just aspirational... Like, vacation snapshots of home life. That’s all it is. People fetishize it. Women are talking about it a lot because there’s a lot of tension. They want it, but they don’t feel like they’re allowed to want it. It’s been around for a very long time as is exemplified by Martha Stewart, and it’s only gonna get bigger because we ain’t gonna have jobs. TheMalcolm Collins:I hold to my point, which is that we are moving into the era of neo trad or post trad, which is trad wives and AI videos. Well, ISimone Collins:think, like, corporate family content is probably gonna go up. Like, content creator studios essentially that are entire families, husband and wife teams, and maybe their kids, maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know. But, yeah, they’re... It’s like the the exodus that’s pretending... It’s it’s interesting, for example, that... I think people are trying to frame Nora Smith’s attempt to distance herself from the trad wife label as some, like, uh-oh. This is suddenly a toxic concept when really she was never part of it. She was always just posting aspirational Martha Stewart style videos and using that hashtag because it obviously helps to draw traffic, which she’s not an idiot. Anyway, I love you. Bye.Malcolm Collins:I love you. Bye. Gosh.Malcolm Collins:Pointing out that this is our software. We literally coded our own recording and editing software.Simone Collins:Yeah. I really like the new software you built for this. Yeah. We previously used a different a different platform, and then he was just like, I like this one. Like savages. Paying people like savages. Alright. Shall I do a quick intro for this one? Yes. Sure.Malcolm Collins:Do you have one planned?Speaker 3:Talk about in in in this podcast.Simone Collins:Tradwise.Speaker 3:Tradwise? Yeah. Okay. So could you... Maybe you could do a small intro, and then I’m gonna switch from so I can get Absolutely. Of you and, yeah, like, pretend that you’re actually doing this podcast,Speaker 12:We had a French journalist over who wanted to watch us record an episode, so that’s who’s in the background. And for people who don’t know, we have a journal server about once every, I don’t know, once every other week, once every third week these days. just a lot of people wanna talk about us, so that’s cool.Malcolm Collins:Potter things.Simone Collins:They’re delightful. Great way to advertise. The,Malcolm Collins:the Snape one I did about, the allegory for being trans where Snape turns black. Yeah. that one, I literally didn’t even review. I just gave it a song and the lyrics, and I said finish it end to end. That’s why it has so many mistakes in it. but, I think that shows how good, output you can get without review.Simone Collins:That’s crazy.Malcolm Collins:And I changed our API so you don’t even need to issue yourself an API anymore. You can just go to rfab.ai backslash API, and it will automatically give you something you can copy and paste into any LLM thatSimone Collins:you need. Saw that. Yeah.Malcolm Collins:That was perfect. Allow you to use Rfab whenever you want going forwards for... Basically, it gives your AI the ability to make images, videos, graphics, three d art, and a lot of tools, music, and a lot of tools for the AI to transform that stuff into something cool. You know? Like, it it it doesn’t just give it that stuff. It also includes all the instructions that it needs to use it well. A lot of it actually came from SkyBrows. Like, we went through his advice on building stuff, and we built that into an API that AIs can use more easily.Simone Collins:Because he’s the best. My gosh.Malcolm Collins:But you can’t even tellSimone Collins:Where had we left off with this episode?Malcolm Collins:You didn’t make a note?Simone Collins:Do you remember anything? I, like, dissociate when we’re around journalists.Speaker 14:Potter, sit down and put down your quill. I took this from a muggle, and I’m feeling quite ill. It’s a glowing black mirror they carry all day, and it shows them whatever they ask it to display. And I found an archivefanfiction.net. I’ve read Riddle’s diary, and this scared me worse yet. 10,000 new stories a day, pot anew. Let me just tell you what’s in them. It’s ew. Our werewolves are monsters. The full moon’s a date. We lock ours in cellars. They’d use them to mate. Vampires, they sparkle. Dementors, they kiss. It sucks out your soul, and they’re queuing for this. The merpeople, gray with their spears and their teeth, and the muggles all ask, what do they have underneath? And centaurs would trample you calling one steed. There are muggles who think that’s just what they need. I mean, have you ever seen a centaur’s logistics? Logistics? Your insides would look like they were hit with ballistics.Speaker 15:I thought we’d go to war.Speaker 14:And we’d win it with luck.Speaker 15:But if we face them, they just want to f**k.Speaker 14:Click the statute of secrecy, and then they want to be subjected and put in a pen. Oh, god. The statue that stands in the hall. Magic is might, the most dreadful of all. A witch and a wizard enthroned on a pile of naked muggles and stone. We carved it to inspire fear, to show every muggle we’re not their appear. So I searched it, they’d queue round the block. There’s a forum of muggles who pay to be rock. They don’t call it torture, they call it a scene. They’d ask for a safe word, and then for a queen, Yaxley’s crudest idea set in black stone. And the top comment asks, is there one for my home? And Potter just smirked, which I did not enjoy. He said, have you searched your own name? Oh, that boy. Fine. I’m a Malfoyed. They’ll write that I’m feared. I typed it. It loaded. How are these muggles reared? There was art.Speaker 15:There were stories galore. 200,000, and ISpeaker 14:won’t say what for. Why is my name glued to yours with a little slash mark? Why is... What are these tags? Oh, gosh. That got dark. Wait. How is that even possible? Is he charmed? That is not what it’s for. I am alarmed. Give it here, Potter. No, Potter. It’s mine. Don’t search. Everything’s fine. There’s no drarry. Ignore the lot or I’llSpeaker 15:obliviate you right on the spot. I thought we’d go to war and we’d win it with luck, but you face them. They just want to f**k. They don’t fear they will be hexed. The only thing they fear is they won’t get sex. It’s not like I wanted to read it. It was for science.Speaker 14:Stop smiling. I won’t stand this defiance.Speaker 15:Baka.Speaker 14:Baka. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Gird your loins as you tiptoe into Based Camp today, friends! We’re coming after the nofap brigade, tracing how anti-masturbation ideas emerged from ancient class structures and Zoroastrian influences before entering early Christianity. Our discussion examines biblical misreadings, 18th-century medical panics, and 19th-century health influencers who promoted extreme regimens and devices.Though it might anger some listeners, we cover the flawed science behind modern abstinence campaigns, the commercial motives of current influencers, and why focusing on personal purpose offers a clearer path than targeting one behavior. Whether you like it or not, we think it’s important to separate historical claims from evidence and better understand how these movements have persisted across centuries.Show NotesThe Before TimesBefore ChristianityIn antiquity, masturbation was mostly a joke or a practical afterthought, not a grave moral problem. Greek and Roman sources treat it as vulgar or convenient (Diogenes the Cynic is the usual example), not as a threat to the soul or the species.Though fun side note (use Google Translate for this): Greek medical speculation treated semen as a refined, brain-related fluid. Aristotle wrote that the region around the eyes was especially “fruitful of semen,” and some Pythagorean-influenced writers called semen “a drop of the brain.” Losing it could, in theory, weaken the head. That is humoral physiology, not a warning that solitary sex causes blindness. Nobody in antiquity ran a campaign on that slogan.Among ChristiansBefore the eighteenth-century panic, masturbation was a real sin in Christian moral theology, but it sat low on the scale of gravity. It was not treated as comparable to idolatry, murder, or adultery, and it was usually ranked below even simple unmarried sex in pastoral practice.But about masturbation:* The biblical story of Onan (Genesis 38) was originally about refusing levirate marriage and coitus interruptus, not solitary sex.* Later Jewish and Christian writers sometimes folded “spilling seed” into a broader condemnation of non-procreative sex.* Augustine treated all lust outside procreative marriage as disordered; Aquinas ranked masturbation among the “sins against nature,” below sodomy.* Monastic writers such as John Cassian and later confessors paid attention to it because it violated vows of chastity. A few late-medieval manuals (Jean Gerson) told priests how to ask about it.Consider the ten commandments:Thou shalt have no other gods before me.Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.Honour thy father and thy mother.Thou shalt not kill.Thou shalt not commit adultery.Thou shalt not steal.Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, wife, servants, livestock, or anything that is thy neighbour’s.Ten Commandments. Masturbation is not named. It was placed under the sixth commandment (“You shall not commit adultery”) as a form of unchastity, sometimes also under the ninth (coveting). Sins of the first table—idolatry, graven images, taking the Lord’s name in vain—were sins directly against God and therefore graver in kind than any sexual sin. Murder, adultery, and serious theft or false witness injured other people or the social order; solitary sex did not.In terms of gauging the seriousness of a sin, confessors and theologians used overlapping systems: the Ten Commandments, the seven capital vices, and (most precise for sex) Thomas Aquinas’s ranking of the species of lust.So let’s get to the seven deadly sins: The usual order (Gregory the Great, then Aquinas) runs: pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony, lust. Spiritual sins outrank carnal ones. Lust (luxuria) is typically the least of the seven capital vices. Masturbation is one expression of lust, not a capital vice of its own. Gluttony sits just above lust; envy and pride sit well above both.Then let’s get to Aquinas on lust (Summa Theologiae II-II, q.154, a.12): This is the standard scholastic ranking within sexual sins. Unnatural acts are the gravest as sexual sins because they violate the natural purpose of the generative power itself. Within that group he ranks:* Bestiality (worst)* Sodomy* Unnatural manner of intercourse (wrong vessel, coitus interruptus, etc.)* Masturbation (“uncleanness” / mollities) — the least of the sins against natureThen come the “natural” but unjust sexual sins: incest, sacrilege, rape, adultery, seduction of a virgin, and last of all simple fornication (unmarried man and unmarried woman, no violence).FOR CLARITY: The famous claim that Aquinas ranked masturbation worse than rape is only true inside the genus of lust, looking solely at whether the act follows nature. Rape also contains injustice and injury to another person; overall, rape, adultery, and murder were treated as worse. Aquinas himself says fornication is graver than theft but less grave than murder or sins directly against God.What confessors actually assigned:Early medieval penitentials (the practical handbooks priests used) show the ranking in years of fasting. Typical ranges in terms of years of penance:* Murder: 3–10+ years (more for clerics)* Bestiality / sodomy: 7–15 years* Adultery: 3–7 years (bishops 10–12)* Incest3–15 depending on kinshipSimple fornication1–3 years* Theft / false witness: often ~1 year for laity* Masturbation: often 4–40 days for a single act; 1–3 years if habitual, especially for monksRough order for a pre-1712 laypersonFrom gravest to least, in the frameworks theologians and confessors actually used:* Idolatry, apostasy, making and worshipping graven images, grave blasphemy* Murder* Adultery (especially public or violent)* Serious theft, false witness that ruins someone, grave dishonor of parents* Sodomy, bestiality* Fornication, incest* Envy / coveting that hardens into hatred or harm; habitual gluttony or drunkenness that becomes a ruling vice* Masturbation (mortal in kind if fully deliberate, but the lowest unnatural sexual sin and usually light penance)* Fleeting lustful looks, occasional overeating, passing jealousy (often venial)The Admission of a Catholic Who Investigated a Millennium of Catholic HistoryOne of our friends who we met through the podcast heard we were working on this topic and shared about a book called Autoeroticism: A Moral Problem in the First Christian Centuries? By Giovannie Cappelli (it’s written in Italian). He shared:“A Catholic guy wrote a monograph pulling together every extant text in the first ~1,000 years of church history that touches on the question of masturbation. He’s very thorough. And he’s catholic, so you know he’s reporting the honest to God truth when he admits that he can’t find anything condemnatory before roughly the 5-6th centuries.In the end he’s still Catholic, so he still spins it up into being anti-masturbation. He says it would be wrong to interpret the silence of the Fathers as a tacit indifference, because the principles of their sexual ethics could easily have led to a condemnation of masturbation. (But it’s funny that somehow they never did!) He is forced to admit, “As numerous and concordant indications show, Christian authors of the first centuries, as far as sexual sins are concerned, keep chiefly in view those of an interpersonal character. Indeed, for them it almost seems that sexual sins in the strict sense are those of a relational character, those that in some way imply the presence of another person””The First Anti-Masturbation Wave: Onania (c. 1712–1716) and Tissot (1760)Onania* An anonymous London pamphlet, Onania; or, the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution…, appeared sometime between 1708 and 1716 (commonly dated ~1712 or 1716).* The title, as a reminder, is a reference to The biblical story of Onan, which, AS A REMINDER, was originally about refusing levirate marriage and coitus interruptus, not solitary sex.* It became a bestseller and went through dozens of editions.* It fused the old language of Onan with a new claim: masturbation was not merely sinful but a specific, deadly disease that produced wasting, impotence, epilepsy, insanity, and early death.* IT WAS THE FIRST PIECE OF WRITING TO CLAIM MASTURBATION WILL MAKE YOU GO BLIND* It listed “dimness of sight” and disorders of the eye among its “frightful consequences,” alongside wasting, impotence, and madness. That line is the most durable leftover of the pamphlet* It also sold expensive “cures.”* Strengthening Tincture — sold by the bottle for 10 shillings* That’s about $130–$160 USD in 2026* Prolific Powder — sold by the bag for 12 shillings* The pamphlet presented them as remedies for the supposed physical damage caused by masturbation, including nocturnal sexual urges.L’OnanismeThe Swiss physician Samuel-Auguste Tissot pushed this concept toward a tipping point, making masturbation deeply sinful in the modern Western sense: a trifecta of theological crime, a medical catastrophe, and a threat to self-government.* He did this by publishing L’Onanisme about 50 years later (Latin 1758, French 1760), giving the concept medical prestige* He treated semen as a vital “essential oil” tied to the nervous system.* Losing it in quantity, he wrote, produced “a perceptible reduction of strength, of memory and even of reason; blurred vision,” plus gout, rheumatism, and a long list of other disorders. In case histories he cited gutta serena (amaurosis, blindness of no obvious cause), “languor in the eyes,” and bleared vision after “secret and excessive venery.”* So Tissot also reinforced the blindness thing: His model was simple: semen originates in the brain and travels the spine; wasting it starves the nerves, including the optic nerves.* He argued that the loss of semen was equivalent to a massive loss of blood and vitality; solitary sex was uniquely harmful because it was secret, unlimited, and driven by imagination.* Enlightenment figures like Rousseau, Kant, and Voltaire took the idea seriously.* Kant called it worse than suicide.* The “solitary vice” came to stand for everything the new commercial, literate, private society both valued and feared: autonomous desire, imagination, solitude, and the absence of social limitsThe Victorian CompoundingDuring the Victorian era, especially in the USA, blamed masturbation for almost every nervous, digestive, and moral ill.* “Spermatorrhea” (involuntary loss of semen) became its own diagnosis.* Mechanical devices, genital cages, forced circumcision, and even clitoridectomy were used.The Emergence of Health Food InfluencersSylvester Graham* He was a Presbyterian minister and temperance lecturer* In 1830, he became America’s top “clean living” influencer* He believed that stimulating food produced stimulating sex* He held that meat, gravy, spices, pepper, coffee, tea, alcohol, and tobacco “increased the concupiscent excitability of the genital organs.” Bland, plant-based food calmed the gut, the nerves, and therefore lust.* Masturbation—“self-pollution”—was the worst of the sexual sins in his lectures.* He said it inflamed the brain more than ordinary intercourse and caused indigestion, consumption, spinal disease, epilepsy, insanity, ruined eyes, and early death* He viewed married sex as BARELY tolerable* He thought men should remain virgins until age 30* And then have sex no more than once per month* A Lecture to Young Men on Chastity (1834) and On Self-Pollution hammered this at length.* HIS ENDORSED LIFESTYLE* Vegetarian, two meals a day, small portions, lots of water, daily bathing and exercise.* His signature food was bread made at home from coarsely ground, unsifted whole wheat—“Graham flour”—not the fine white baker’s loaf he thought was refined into moral poison.* From that flour came Graham bread and the original graham cracker (often dated 1829): a dry, unsweetened, hard biscuit.John Harvey KelloggOne of the people who read Graham’s work was John Harvey Kellogg, who fully assimilated his theories about bland foods (e.g., He developed corn flakes in the 1890s as part of a deliberately bland, anti-aphrodisiac diet at the sanitarium), but also went WAY further when it came to masturbation.* He was a Seventh-Day Adventist physician who lived in a celibate marriage with his wife Ella* In fact, on his honeymoon, he wrote Plain Facts for Old and Young, a massive 600-plus-page manual warning against the supposed evils of sexual activity and masturbation* In this book, he blamed “the solitary vice” for wasting the “most highly vitalized” bodily fluid—hence impotence, epilepsy, heart disease, uterine cancer, insanity, and dimmed vision* In 1879, he was named superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, which was the Canyon Ranch of its time* I.e. It was a fashionable resort that treated presidents, industrialists, and celebrities.* He treated sexual activity itself as depleting and masturbation as “worse than beastly.”* In Plain Facts for Old and Young (1877) he listed dozens of symptoms and recommended* circumcision without anesthesia for boys: so that “the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment.”* Silver wire sutures through the foreskin drawn over the glans, twisted shut, so erection became painful or impossible.* For girls and women: “pure carbolic acid” (phenol) painted on the clitoris “to allay abnormal excitement,” including what he called mental masturbation (orgasm from thought alone).* In Ladies’ Guide, for severe “nymphomania”: cool enemas, blisters or other irritants on the genitals, and in extreme cases removal of the clitoris and labia minora.* Electrical current; some accounts describe a urethral electrode. He also mentioned shock as a deterrent.* Genital cages (though he did not invent them—they were invented by a bunch of Victorian and later “doctors”)* Tying children’s hands.* He also had, ironically, a bunch of very kinky treatments* LOTS of enemas, including yogurt enemas, which he referred to as “Bulgarian bacillus” bowel treatments* Beating machines* Vibrating chairsThe Modern Age: Little DifferentNo Fap: The Most ReasonableAlexander Rhodes ultimately founded r/NoFap in 2011 after posting a TIL about a study and doing a week-long challenge.About the study:* “A research on the relationship between ejaculation and serum testosterone level in men.” Journal of Zhejiang University Science A, 4(2), 236–240. PMID 12659241.* Published December 10th, 2021* WHAT THEY DID* Twenty-eight male volunteers.* After an ejaculation, the authors measured serum testosterone daily through two abstinence periods.* The design was observational: watch T while the men did not ejaculate, then see what happened if abstinence continued past the first week.* There was no porn condition, no control group of men who kept ejaculating on a schedule, and no long follow-up of months-long “retention.”* What they reported* Days 2–5 after ejaculation: little change in testosterone.* Day 7: a peak at 145.7% of baseline (P * “145.7% of baseline” means about 46% above the starting value, not a 145% increase.* Internet posts often flatten that into “T goes up 145% if you don’t fap for a week.”* The authors’ own reading was narrower still: ejaculation starts a roughly seven-day clock; the day-7 bump is the end of that cycle, not a new, higher set point.* Another ejaculation before day 7, they said, resets the clock.* After that peak, there was no second regular peak if they kept abstaining.* Levels did not climb with more days off.* The paper WAS RETRACTED* Springer retracted the paper because the same work had already been published in a Chinese-language journal (duplicate / overlapping publication).* Snopes notes the journal did not retract it for cooked numbers.* Sex researcher Nicole Prause later wrote that when she asked for the data, it was not provided; two of the four listed authors could not be found; a translation of the Chinese version reportedly had a different author list and different day-counts in the abstract.* While this is not independent proof the assays were fake, what we see here is is sloppy overlapping publication plus a paper that cannot be re-analyzed* This is all a very flimsy scientific foundation* n = 28* No replication of that sharp day-7 spike as a durable finding.* The bump is one day, then back toward baseline.* The study did not find that longer abstinence was not a higher plateau.* Nothing in the paper is about pornography, “rebooting” the brain, muscle, confidence, or attraction.* Other work on orgasm and hormones (e.g. Exton / Krüger-type studies) generally finds no lasting drop in circulating testosterone from ejaculating.The ultimate recommendation of the movement/community involves a “reboot”: 90 days off porn, and often off masturbation and orgasm (“PMO”), to reset dopamine.* More dedicated people go for no orgasm at all, even with a partner.* Rhodes has said the end state can be moderate, porn-free masturbation* The starter kit is habit-stacking: exercise, hobbies, cold showers, less coffee/sedentary time, community streaks, and “don’t change everything at once.” Improvement Pill* Similar channels sell the same reboot as a success story (focus, money, women).So the study that launched the meme is a small, unreplicated, later-retracted paper describing a temporary day-7 wiggle, later sold as proof that not ejaculating turns the endocrine system into a superpower. That gap—between a one-day percentage of baseline and a lifestyle gospel—is the scientific problem, not only the retraction stamp.Semen Retention Influencers: Onania Version 5.0These creators talk like Tissot with a ring light. Semen is jing, ojas, or “life force”; keep it and it “rises to the brain.”Some frequently-viewed and academically referenced people in this space:* Hamza Ahmed (Hamza97)* large YouTube self-improvement channel* He pushes NoFap/semen retention bundled with lifting, early rising, quitting porn, and “become dangerous.”* He sells a paid community (Library of Adonis and also “Level 2” which is more expensive) and training on building an online content business* Ranveer Allahbadia (BeerBiceps)* He’s an Indian interview/lifestyle host* He has posted semen-retention clips invoking Ayurveda (semen nourishes the brain, photographic memory).* He sells online courses (“BeerBiceps Skillhouse”) and has an operation called Monk Entertainment (Monk-E) which sells services to brands.* ICEcold JT, Elemental Growth, and a rotating set of “90-day transformation” channels* They promote: retain + train + sleep + zinc-rich food (red meat, shellfish, pumpkin seeds).* Regional variants:* Brazil’s Matheus Copini, who sells a membership and networking community (Alphalife Academy), an AI-assisted “one person business” method, called Captal Digital, a library of prompts and automated bos called Robos do Capital, and marketing mini-courses and workships* Japan’s onakin coaches (Tesuo, Leon Moteki, Riima, Zin) selling abstinence books and masculinity coaching.Their typical regimen involves no porn, no masturbation, often no sex for a streak; heavy compound lifting; high protein; sleep as growth-hormone time; sun; sometimes meditation or “spiritual” talk.Their claims are folk science, namely that:* You’ll have more energy* Your jawlike will improve* Women will notice you more* Your testosterone will go up 145%The one rigorous thing that pull from is the 2003 seven-day T study that launched a lot of this was later challenged; the rest is anecdote.Andrew Huberman is adjacent to this movement* He talks about porn and cheap dopamine, reward circuitry, and sometimes windows of abstinence.* People clip him into retention videos.* His actual recommendations center more around light exposure, sleep, exercise, cold exposure, alcohol avoidance, nutritional management, and supplements.Andre Tate is also adjacent, but not really because he was still (at least allegedly) hemorrhaging semen, just into his harem.* He mocks compulsive masturbation as the reason “you never get anywhere,” and folds abstinence into a Matrix / discipline gospel.* His published lifestyle is the opposite of Graham: one meal a day, mostly meat; 10–15 coffees; several cigars; daily hard training; stay hungry and irritable on purpose.* That is anaphrodisiac diet inverted—stimulants and flesh instead of unsalted crackers.The TL:DRPeople seem to WANT TO BELIEVE that masturbation is uniquely bad or that semen is somehow some amazing life force that, when lost, causes damage to the man in question.Ultimately, getting obsessed with masturbation distracts from obsessions around MUCH BIGGER SINS, like actual 10 commandment headliners, such as* “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, wife, servants, livestock, or anything that is thy neighbour’s.”* and possibly “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”* And “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.”Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins:This one’s gonna piss off fans.Simone Collins:I had to do it anyway.Malcolm Collins:Because it’s true.Simone Collins:And we are not... Audience capture bothers me. Hello, Malcolm. I’m very excited to be speaking with you today because anti masturbation movements are manufactured scams largely driven by extremely sex phobic people and money grubbers, and they neither track well with religion or science. And on top of that,Malcolm Collins:we Hold on. Not not... Hold on. I think you’re wrong here because you went over a little bit. They’re not sex phobic people. A lot of them are severe fetishists who are offloading their fetishes. Probably, the guy who started it all built a robot to spank him every day.Simone Collins:No. No. No. No. He didn’t start at all. He he did not. No. He was just one of the followers, but we’ll get into him, of course. but it is AndMalcolm Collins:he was the guy who popularized it.Simone Collins:It is it is true. Yeah. That the same people you could say that that masturbation... That said that masturbation was bad for you did things like use a special apparatus to push large volumes of liquid, including yogurt, up people’s butts as much as 15 quarts a minute, Malcolm. And also send peopleMalcolm Collins:through Jesus.Simone Collins:Mechanical movement rooms full of devices that would vibrate, slap, and beat them, which is just so wholesome.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Yeah. The... These people think that these anti masturbation people are like these moral paragons who started this movie. It’s like, no. They were creepy degens, and now you’re part of their creepy degen fantasy.Simone Collins:What’s crazy though is that people keep falling for it, and they’ve been falling for it for an extremely long time. And, also, it’s not the... It’s not incredibly dumb or low achieving people who are falling for it. The first wave of anti diddle influencers caught up Rousseau, Kant, and Voltaire, for example. And then acolytes of the second wave of of anti fat influencers like John Harvey Kellogg, the enema enthusiast with the mechanical movement room, included Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, John d Rockefeller, Alfred DuPont, William Howard Taft, Sojourner Truth, Ada Tarbell, Mary Todd Lincoln, and Harvey Firestone. These are, like, the titans of industry, intellectual leaders, and they showed up to Kellogg’s special resort where you could get vibrated and slapped and get a yogurt enema. And now today, even very prominent people are still falling for it, thereby showing not only their weak understanding of the science, but also if they’re Christian, very poor religious prioritization. So let’s let’s go through this. Okay? Do you wanna talk about how things were in antiquity? My understanding is that in antiquity before Christianity, masturbation was mostly a joke or just an afterthought, like, a problem and that Yeah.Malcolm Collins:So we’ll talk... I’ll give you a bit of context as to how Christianity ended up getting incepted with Antarctica masturbation ideologies, which happened, I think, in, like, the third century or the fourth century. You you you... You’re gonna go into this in more detail. But it’s one of those instances where if you’re looking through ancient texts, the only religion that was really thoroughly anti masturbation, certainly not Judaism, was Zoroastrianism. Really? Zoroastrianism was very firmly anti masturbation.Simone Collins:And IMalcolm Collins:they were the religion that ended up making Jews anti masturbation about the second or third century CE when when the Jews were living among Zoroastrians.Speaker 3:And to be clear here, the Old Testament talks about semen emission, masturbation, and it puts it in the same category as a regular occurring thing, like, in terms of uncleanliness as a woman having her period. It was considered a normal part of life. We don’t see really strong condemnation Of it until around the sixth century, which is when they were living among Zoroastrians. And I need to be clear here about the New Testament. Well, we don’t know if there was the word for masturbation in ancient Hebrew. We do know that there was definitely was one in ancient Greek when around the New Testament was written, and, it’s never mentioned never mentioned in the bible. what we do see mentioned is, again, emissions, which is treated as the same category of negative thing as a period. and I’m gonna note here along all with of this. I’m not saying it’s a good thing. It’s as bad as any other type of masturbation, like playing video games or reading a pointless book or, anything that you do just to feel good to simulate some experience of actual efficaciousness within your life, but to signal out this one thing, that isSpeaker 4:A weird partially modern... There were some in the medieval period, which we’ll talk about, phenomenon. And not a particularly good one because I think it causes people to not understand the dangers of other forms of masturbation where they sink into other types of imaginary forms of success or efficaciousness. Again, not saying it’s a good thing. I’m just saying that treating it as a unique thing causes a person to not see the dangers of all the other forms of masturbation in their life.Malcolm Collins:But where did it come from in Christianity? It actually came from ancient Greece, which then made negative ideas around masturbation within ancient Rome. Yeah. So if you go to ancient Greece, this is the the first civilization other than within zeroastrianism where you see negative ideas about masturbation. The problem is is that we can very clearly see what’s causing these ideas about masturbation, and it’s not what you would assume. Oh. The idea is is that masturbation is low class. And this comes from the fact that if you were masturbating, it meant you didn’t have any sex lanes.Simone Collins:Yeah. If you didn’t have any slavesMalcolm Collins:Right. Yeah. It’s like, what what are you... What... Why aren’t you using your your boys and your your sex slaves? Right? Like, what what are you talking about? Right? We we all, and this happens in a society where you have this status hierarchy. Right? You know, in in ancient Athens, you both had an academic hierarchy, but also a very strict status hierarchy. and so when you wanted to talk about sexual things, to say that you had ever masturbated is to say you don’t have any sex.Simone Collins:Oh, are you poor?Malcolm Collins:Are you poor? It’s like saying I’m poor. Right? And then this got carried into Roman culture. And then, likewise... Now I I will point out that sometimes positive things have come out of this. Like, Judaism used to be polyamorous, not poly... Polygynous. Right? Like, many many wives to one man. And then in our episode, when did the Jews become monogamous? We point out that they they really became monogamous because that was the aspired norm, not the always norm, but the aspired norm was in Roman culture. And when Jews lived in Roman territory and because Christianity was growing within Roman territory, it adopted norms around monogamy even though... And people are like, well, you have just Adam and Eve and one woman, one man. It’s like, but it doesn’t say that. And we see lots of women for one man all throughout. You know? It it might be in often negative context, but it’s still shown. Right? Like, it’s still... And without any condemnation at all. And you could see our episode on that where we go into, like, whether if you’re just going biblically, is it monogamy? Is it polygyny? Where are we on this topic? But but it is undoubtable that this idea came from the crash of Roman civilization into Jewish civilization.Simone Collins:Okay. Hold on.Speaker 5:Note here, I was referring to monogamy as the norm instead of polygyny as the norm. And Simone... Well, I guess I was also talking about masturbation, but the core thing I was talking about was monogamy, which was inserted into the Jewish branch of the theological tradition by its contact was Romanism, not as an ancestral part of the Jewish tradition, which is why we see it so frequently in the Bible.Simone Collins:Because it’s actually a little bit deeper than that, and you’re gonna see the very roots, actually, of the very, very, very downstream folk belief that that masturbating will make you go blind.Malcolm Collins:Well, no. Hold on. I haven’t gotten to that yet. There is a secondary issue, but it was much less important.Simone Collins:Still, though, it’s important to know that Greek medical speculation treated semen as a refined brain related fluid, and Aristotle wrote that That is true. Reaching around the eyes was especially fruitful of semen, And some Pythagorean influenced writers called semen a drop of the brain and that losing it in theory could weaken the head, and that... That’s that’s humoral physiology. But that’s the downstream of theMalcolm Collins:whole slave thing. But it’sSimone Collins:also really funny because then, I guess, like, women are just so dumb because they don’t have semen, I guess. I don’t... I I didn’t figure out howMalcolm Collins:that would be were thought to masturbate all the time. Right? Like, the the the idea was thatSimone Collins:women But they weren’t losing semen, you understand. They weren’t losing pieces of their brain. Yes.Malcolm Collins:Big deal. Mitch, by the way, if anyone’s wondering, no. Semen isn’t part of your brain. Okay? That’s that’sSimone Collins:Malcolm, you shouldn’t have to... This is base camp. This is not... These are educated. These are gentlemen of course.Malcolm Collins:I I get some comments, and I’m like, you are a f*****g idiot.Simone Collins:Oh my god. Malcolm. I... And ifMalcolm Collins:they don’t see me in I I see this sometimes, and I’m just like, this is gonna reduce.Simone Collins:Well, I guess, yeah, the more you know. Fantastic. We all know now that... No. It’s not from your head. And and byMalcolm Collins:the way, if you... The the wider point... There was actually more to it than what you’re saying. There was also this concept of softening, and that was in Roman and Greek culture. All roles were either masculine role of penetrating or a masculine role of being penetrated. Yeah. And the... As a man, you could be penetrated if you were a lower class man, but a higher class man was never supposed to allow this to happen to him. Never. At least grown up. And, again, it’s because a high class man is supposed to have slaves. Right? Like... So this this really comes downstream within these cultures of normalization of slavery as a status. But continue, Simone.Simone Collins:Right. So, anyway, basic roots of that, but it was... Yeah. It was a class thing to your point. Totally get it. So before the eighteenth century panic, which is the first and very recent, k, eighteenth century, 17 hundreds, around masturbation, it was just understood as obviously a real sin in moral theology, but it’s really low on the scale of gravity. And, clearly, it wasn’t compared to idolatry or murder or adultery.Malcolm Collins:It is a much bigger deal to have, like, a statue of Mary in your house thanSimone Collins:you need to Yeah.Malcolm Collins:Or to,Simone Collins:you know, to, like, not respect your parents. You know? Like, some really basic stuff that everyone else right now and, you know, everyone in general, humans are really bad at. Like, masturbation is so below so many more important rules.Malcolm Collins:But talk about this because we actually have rankings of how sin punishment works.Simone Collins:Yeah. No. But... Well, then let me talk. I have a whole thing. Okay. So about masturbation, though, specifically so that we can just address it. Okay? There’s a biblical story, Onan or Onan, from Genesis 38. It was originally about refusing levirate marriage and coitus interruptus.Malcolm Collins:Talked about this in our other episode on this where we go over all the biblical lines, and people are wondering, to call this about masturbation is f*****g insane.Simone Collins:Yeah. It’s not.Malcolm Collins:Will try to explain this as quickly as possible. Oh. So in Jewish civilization, you would have something called a livoret marriage. A livoret marriage happened when your brother’s wife died, and the reason you would do it is you would then impregnate her so that he could carry on the line so that she would have a reason to inherit his estate and keep living because there were very few things you could do with an independent woman within these societies that you needed to conceive a son and to carry on the line. And you were the closest genetic link to him, so it made a lot of sense to do this. By treating his brother’s wife mourning his dead brother as a human fleshlight, he had sex with her. He just refused to impregnate her to come inside of her. That is what was being condemned, and that is demonstrably evil by any judgment of morality.Simone Collins:Yeah. so that... That’s a bigger deal, and it’s not about masturbation. And then later Jewish and Christian writers sometimes would fold spilling seed into a broader condemnation of any form of nonprocreative sex, and they’re just like, well, fapping is a part of that. And Augustine treated all lust outside procreative marriage as disordered. Aquinas ranked masturbation among sins against nature below sodomy, and then monastic writers like John Cassian and later confessors paid attention to it because it violated vows of chastity, which I get right if you’re like, look. I’m notMalcolm Collins:gonna do anything sexual. Yeah.Simone Collins:Then don’t do it. But, like, that’s a monk’s vow. Okay? Like, any promise you make, if you’re like, I’m not gonna eat sugar, then you’re in big trouble for eating sugar. But who cares?Speaker 8:To put it in the context I was talking earlier, if Augustine or Aquinas or monks of this period knew about GTA six, they would likely put it in exactly this category of bad, the masturbation category of bad. or they knew about modern movies or anime or any of the stuff that we use to masturbate different instincts or impulses we have, they’d likely put it in this category of bad. and that’s why we harbor on this point because putting masturbation in a careful unique category causes you to not see all of the other totally inefficacious ways that you masturbate and waste your time on simulations of efficaciousness.Speaker 16:And this is where you’ll read some studies where somebody will be like, well, masturbating more makes you less sexually satisfied with your partner. And it’s like, Even if you stop masturbation, you’re probably not gonna be more sexually satisfied with your partner. The bigger problem is that you want to masturbate instead of having sex with your partner, and that’s what you should be focused on.Simone Collins:Okay? But a few late medieval manuals, Jean Gerson told priests how to ask about it. And you should just also consider the 10 commandments. Astrobation is not on them. It’s thou shalt not have... Or thou shalt have no other gods before me. Okay. That’s one that people break all the time. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image really messed up. Thou shalt not But but the pointMalcolm Collins:being is, like, the second commandment is broken all the timeSimone Collins:All the freaking time. By people Thou shalt not take Lord.Malcolm Collins:Masturbation is, like, commandment number three.Simone Collins:Yeah. Do do not take lord thy god in vain, the name of him. Right? Which I I do this all the time. Okay? That’s a bigger that’s a bigger deal. I need to work on that first. Remember the Sabbath day. Keep it holy. a lot of people don’t, including usSpeaker 6:Well, I... We didn’t until recently. Now we actually do the Sabbath, and it was doing this episode and reflecting on Simone saying that that led us to reexamine the Sabbath more closely and being like, does the New Testament fully invalidate this? And there are one or two lines that can be argued that it invalidates it. But having one or two lines that could be argued, especially one or two lines after Jesus who definitely kept the Sabbath, that could only be used as arguments is not enough for me to throw out one of the 10 commandments. And it’s wild to me that people will use one or two lines as enough to throw out the 10 commandments and then add additional stuff and act like they’re more holy than you, while ignoring the the very basics. And I and I see the 10 commandments as the very basics.Speaker 7:And if you’re wondering, wait. So they recorded this episode a while ago? Yeah. We recorded this episode ages ago. I just always set on putting out episodes that I know are gonna get us a lot of pushback. But as Simone said, it’s true, and therefore, we have to put it out, and she did the research for it. So you go, Simone, and thank you for recognizing where we were being hypocrites and not following the bible closely enough.Simone Collins:. Malcolm, honor thy father and thy mother. A lot of people don’t respect their parents very much. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear fault with... False witness against thy neighbor. There’s a lot of liars out there. And then also, most importantly, and constantly violated, especially per the way that social media works, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, wife, servants, livestock, or anything that is thy neighbors. I mean, with the advent of marketing and and in photoMalcolm Collins:albums I mean, if you’re if you’re browsing Facebook or Tik Tok generally, especially with, like, inspiration, well, porn as they call it. Right? Like, is directly being violated.Simone Collins:Yeah. Or just even if you see a commercial and you want it, then you’re suddenly coveting that person’s thing that’s... Like, we just can’t watch TV. So look. All of these things matter more. is masturbation named? No. It’s not. It’s placed under the sixth commandment, thou shalt not commit adultery as a form of unchastity, but sometimes under the ninth coveting as well. Like, you’re... If you’re, like, masturbating to someone, then you.Speaker 9:And this again is part of why we belabor this point. When you separate masturbation into a separate and unique sin outside of coveting, it leads people who feel very holy because they don’t masturbate to still covet all the time because they don’t understand that coveting is what’s bad. Coveting is what leads you to destroy your life and take an efficacious actions and to hurt other people. Coveting is what you should be focused on.Simone Collins:But but that’s only if, like... Look. You can you can covet someone in many ways. Masturbation is just one of them. I don’t think that masturbationMalcolm Collins:is coveting, though. Like, it’sSimone Collins:Well, like... Yeah. But if you’re coveting someone while masturbating, like, let’s say, like, you’re really hot for yourMalcolm Collins:neighbor’s wife. Be a problem.Simone Collins:Right? Yes. No. And that would be. But, anyway, that’s... It’s not the masturbation that’s the problem. It’s the coveting the neighbor’s wife and then and then fapping to the idea of her or whatever. Right? Or, like, looking at her through the window.Malcolm Collins:More interested in is that Catholic writer who tried to find arguments against masturbation in the early church and howSimone Collins:did think to that. Well, you’re taking to... Start with this. You’re startingMalcolm Collins:with the obvious stuff.Simone Collins:Start with the obscure a lot of people are missing the obvious stuff, and maybe that’s why I’m talking about it. Okay, we’ll just skip over a whole lot of stuff. Go to the show notes. They’re on Patreon and Substack, and thanks for everyone supporting us on Patreon and Substack. Look. I I covered the the dead... The seven deadly sins. And, also, like, there are allMalcolm Collins:these Simone, get to the get to the book. These are starting in the book.Simone Collins:One of our friends that we met through the podcast heard that we were working on this topic and then shared a book about it called auto... Autoerodism, the moral problem of the first Christian centuries by Giovanni Capelli. It’s written in Italian. He shared about this book with us. He wrote, a Catholic guy wrote a monograph pulling together the very extant text in the first approximate thousand years of church history that touches on the question of masturbation. He’s very thorough, and he’s Catholic. So you know he’s reporting the honest to god truth when he admits that he can’t find anything condemnatory before roughly the fifth to sixth centuries. In the end, he’s still Catholic, so he still spins it up as being anti masturbation. He says it would be wrong to interpret the silence of the fathers as a tacit indifference because it... The principles of their sexual ethics could easily have led to a condemnation of masturbation. But it’s funny that somehow they never did. He is fortunateMalcolm Collins:think that this is really important. When this is something that, you know, all primates do,Speaker 10:And note here, there has become a weird myth recently that primates only masturbate in captivity, which is not remotely true. They masturbate more in captivity, which is for the same reason humans masturbate more when they don’t have a purpose. the reality is is masturbation just doesn’t feel that good. If you have other things going on in your life, if you have kids, a purpose, something you’re working on, that is the strongest control for an instinct like this because it means that you have something that is of better use of your time than something so inefficacious. And I think focusing on this one inefficacious behavior instead of seeing it as a warning sign for not having something better to do is problematic.Malcolm Collins:you Dolphins do it too. Across cultures. And so presumably, everyone was doing this unless they were told not to do it, and yet it’s just nowhere. And people are like, oh, well, like, drawn images. Right? Like, they wouldn’t have had... What are you f*****g talking about? Like, the very first thing that Mann did as soon as he could draw was drew naked booby ladies in caves and then and then carved naked booby ladies. Right? Like, the idea that they didn’t have these sorts of scenes or devices or anything like that is comical. You know, we know from ancient Greece that the the... These sorts of images being carved on ceramics and stuff like this or other objects we found throughout this region would have been common. It would have been incredibly easy to condemn at any point during this period if anyone had a problem with it. It’s just that it appears that nobody had a... And and note here, you could say, well, the bible just didn’t feel it was appropriate to ever talk about masturbation. And it’s like, actually, the Old Testament does talk about masturbation. it talks about the cleanliness rules around masturbation. Right? Like, how long does it make you unclean? How do you deal with that? How do you... So, like, clear... If they didn’t want you to do it, it would have said around the... Don’t do it. But they don’t say that.Simone Collins:They don’t say that.Malcolm Collins:And there’s a scientific reason why you would... You should never say that in a religion, which will get you. Basically, whenever anyone’s like, well, what about porn addiction? What about... Etcetera. if you look at the scientific evidence on this, what it appears to show is all of these negative things tied to masturbation, like porn addiction and stuff like that, only happen in populations that have been told masturbation is super bad. Yeah. It’s reallySimone Collins:messed up.Malcolm Collins:And so when you tell somebody masturbation is bad, you make them susceptible to things like porn addiction. Well, but, ISimone Collins:mean, in the very same way that, like, if if you believe that you slept poorly, even if you slept fine, you’re gonna show the symptoms of poor sleep more than someone who actually slept poorly but think they slept fine. So, yeah, it’s this idea. If if you make anything seem unhealthy or unsafe or bad, it’s going to cause a nocebo effect. It... It’s a very well understoodMalcolm Collins:Well, the health of the the secondary issue that I think a lot of people who have have trouble with, like, quote, unquote, masturbation is destroying my life or something like that are just, like, depressed and unmotivated. You know, I I know because we did a... So you could look at me. Right? And I’m somebody who goes out there and says, like, I don’t see that big a problem with something like masturbation. I don’t see that big deal. At Ayla parties, when she’s giving a speech or something like that, she’ll do this thing where she lines everyone up by, like, how many people you slept with? How many times you masturbate a week or whatever. Right? I... In the how many times you masturbate a week line, I was, I think, the the least guy in that line, and I was behind half of the women in the line.Simone Collins:Oh, this was the time she did it at Manifest. Yeah. And it’sMalcolm Collins:not that I’m not, like, a horny person or something like this. It’s just I always have something better to be doing. And I think the people who go off the rails with this stuff is that they haven’t found purpose in their life, and they don’t have something better to be doing.Speaker 11:And, again, this is part of why we belabor this point is it’s so superficial when a person’s just like, oh, masturbation is this uniquely bad thing. Take all your time. Focus on that. These are the same types of people who end up dedicating their lives to completely inefficacious pursuits, like exercising or something like that, when the reality is what should be the bigger red flag is that masturbation is the best thing that you could be doing in any particular moment when the reality is is that’s just a huge sign that you don’t feel a sense of burning passion and desire within your heart to contribute to something, to do something meaningful that you don’t have a purpose or a direction. A person who is doing something like masturbating multiple times a day is doing that be... Because masturbation, again, does not feel that good. It... They’re doing it because they lack something that is a bigger pull to them than that. And that’s the far bigger threat and worry in your life, than than that you’re masturbating. And so that that masturbating is the best thing that you can do at any given point in time. That is the threat. And when you can recontextualize, wait. Why don’t I feel purpose? Why don’t I have a mission right now? Why aren’t I driven by something? That is the real fear and the thing that you should be focused on in spending your time worried about.Speaker 12:And we belabor it because stopping masturbation will not create the meaningful thing in your life. It will not create the purpose in your life. That is a separate and holistically more important task.Speaker 17:And so many people out there learn to control something like masturbation, but then just fit, spend all their time exercising to look buff, and they’ve lived just as purposeless a life, or spend all their time building this big rule set for themselves, and they follow all the rules really fastidiously, but they don’t actually create anything. They don’t actually do anything. They don’t build a relationship. They don’t build a family. They don’t build a a company, a project, a purpose. And people can say in the lineup story, oh, Malcolm, you’re just very low libido. But but people know my history, I’m not. I’m an incredibly high libido person. I just also have a burning sense of passion and desire, and there’s something that I was put on this earth to do. And every moment you spend trying to control the symptoms of not feeling that purpose is a moment, that you’re losing part of your life because you only get one short time here on Earth. And every moment of that, you don’t spend on some overwhelming thing of greater purpose to yourself is a moment that you will never get back.Malcolm Collins:and even even if you’re like, well, I’m just genetically uniquely susceptible to this, then take naltrexone.Simone Collins:Yeah. That’s... I... I’ve actually... Yeah. I’ve been... I was just having a conversation with someone about that. I’m like, look. Just that’s why Naltrexone’s out there. Anyway, as our friend puts it, he is forced to admit, quote, as numerous concordant indications show, Christian authors of the first centuries, as far as sexual sins are concerned, keep chiefly in view those of an interpersonal character. Indeed, for them, it almost seems that sexual sins in the strict sense are those of a relational character, those that in some way imply the presence of another person. Because, duh, that’s when you’re actually causing damage. If you’re just doing something by yourself for five minutes, is it really gonna hurt people? Anyway, so the first anti masturbation rate... Wave came around 1712 or 1716, and it it was an anonymous London pamphlet called or the heinous sin of self pollution. And it just appeared some... Sometime between seventeen o eight and seventeen sixteen. the title, as a reminder, is a reference to the biblical story of Onan, which as a reminder was originally about refusing leverent marriage and coitus interruptus, not solitary sex. So even, like, just off the bat, this is ridiculous. Some... Somehow, though, it became a bestseller and went through dozens of editions, and it fused the old language of Onan with a new claim that masturbation was not merely sinful, but a specific deadly disease that perfused... Produced wasting and impotence and epilepsy and insanity and early death. Of course, you’re gonna die. And it was I’mMalcolm Collins:I’m not blind yet. I’ll tell you that.Simone Collins:It was the first piece of writing to claim that masturbation will make you go blind. It listed dimness of sight and disorders of the eye among its frightful consequences.Malcolm Collins:But but what I find interesting is that in every masturbation wave we’ve seen, the arguments against it have just been demonstrably false.Simone Collins:Yeah. Just... Yeah. Just... Yeah. Like... The Onin thing? No. That’s not what it was about. Blindness? No. It’s gonna happen. Not gonna happen. Another thing that these have in common, importantly, is they’re selling something because it also sold expensive cures, like the strengthening tincture, which was sold by the bottle for 10 shillings, which is about a 130 to a 160 USD in our time. The prolific powder sold by the bag for 12 shillings. So, again, like, over a $130. The pamphlet presented them as remedies for the supposed physical damage caused by masturbation, including nocturnal sexual urges. And then this sort of got solidified and boosted by a Swiss physician named Samuel Auguste Tissot who published a... Another Onania style write up called... Let’s see. In French. And it was published about fifty years later in Latin in 1758 than in French in 1760. And it gave this concept medical prestige because he was a doctor, and he treated sea... Semen as this vital essential oil tied to the nervous system. So losing it in quantity... I know. I know. he said it would produce, quote, a perceptible reduction of strength of memory and even of reason, blurred vision, plus also gout, rheumatism, and a long list of other disorders. AndMalcolm Collins:Well, I I also wanna point out here. Right? Like, not only is the other side just, like, lying in the past, but if you look at people today who run these campaigns, they’re lying. Like, a lot of them that I have seen, they’re they’re unmarried men frequently. They go We’re gonna we’re gonna coverSimone Collins:it, Malcolm. Can we get to that? But can we stick to this one now?Malcolm Collins:To that. Yeah. No. Actually, I wanna I wanna at least make this lookSimone Collins:a bitMalcolm Collins:People who are like, oh, if you engage in this behavior, you’re gonna be a failure. You’re not gonna achieve anything. You know, you’re gonna send up... Be sitting in bed all day doing this. You’re not gonna build anything. You’re not gonna I have multiple companies. I have a wife and five kids. Hopefully, six on the way soon. Right? Like, if things go well. And I have a very strong relationship with my wife. The... This this belief that, like, that it... That it’s pushed... That this is gonna destroy your life is generally pushed by people with demonstrably worse lives than somebody like me. I wouldn’t trade spaces with them, toSimone Collins:be fair. Anyway, Tisot argued that the loss of semen was equivalent to a massive loss of blood and vitality, and that solitary sex was uniquely harmful because it was secret and unlimited and driven by imagination. And then enlightenment figuresMalcolm Collins:Oh, no. Imagination.Simone Collins:Yeah. And Kant and Voltaire really just took this and were like,Malcolm Collins:oh, no.Simone Collins:Kant called it worse than suicide. Don’t do it. The solitary vice, as they came to call it, ultimately stood for something that this new commercial literate private society both valued and feared, that there is this autonomous desire and imagination and solitude and this absence of social limits. You could just imagine anything and doodle yourself. and then there wasMalcolm Collins:You should try out rfab.ai, Reality Fabricator. You can Google it. It is our AI chatbot site where you can really create any scenario you want, any situation you want.Simone Collins:Yeah. In terms of balance and metricsMalcolm Collins:I’ve been able to, like, really improve the brainstorming features for working on your scenarios and got them working with Fable even in Not Safe for Work. So we’re selling you our turn... Tincture. Right? Like, we’re we’re making money from this.Simone Collins:Yeah. But it’s not... It’s it’s it’s pro. It’s pro fab. It’s not anti fab.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. But we’re still monetizing it.Simone Collins:Anyway, it’s it’s with the Victorians that they got kinda weird, which I I guess always is when the Victorians come in, that’s when it gets weirder. And this is when... Especially in The USA, people started blaming masturbation for pretty much any nervous, digestive, or moral ill. Like, if something was wrong with someone, it was because because of masturbation. So they called it spermatorrhea, involuntary loss of of semen. It it was a it was a medical diagnosis. And then this is when you start to see the mechanical devices and the genital cages and the forced circumcisions and even clitoridectomy, clitoridectomy, clitor... Whatever. You know what it is. Became used. And then finally, we get the the health food influencers. Because now suddenly if digestion, and and masturbation are weirdly connected, well, then the health food people come in. So first, have Sylvester Graham, who’s a Presbyterian minister and temperance lecturer. And in 1830, he became America’s top clean living influencer. He believed that stimulating food produced stimulating sex. So, like, all of your favorite foods, Malcolm, this is your problem. Your favorite food is, like, kick you in the face flavor. And he... No. No. No. So he held that meat, gravy, spices, pepper, coffee, tea, alcohol, tobacco increased the excitability of the genital organs. Bland plant based food calmed the gut and the nerves and therefore lust. So what you need to eat, Malcolm, is just a bunch of flavorless slop, and your whole problem will go away. And so he he felt that masturbation, aka self pollution, was the worst of the sexual sins. He said it inflamed the brain more than ordinary intercourse and caused indigestion, consumption, spinal disease, epilepsy, insanity, ruined eyes, and early death. He he also viewed married sex as barely tolerable. He thought that men should be virgins until age 30, and then you should have sex no more than once per month. No more than that. And in a lecture to young men on chastity in 1834 and on self pollution, he hammered this at length. And his endorsed lifestyle was one that was vegetarian, two meals a day, small portion, lots of water, daily bathing and exercise. His signature food was Beans. No. It’s the graham cracker. It was this bread made of home coarsely ground, unsifted whole wheat graham flour, not not like the white flour and certainly not the sweet cookie cracker we all know to be graham crackers. It’s kind of this really big insult to Graham. Like, he’s rolling in his grave every single day because of this sweet cookie that everyone’s eating that’s all spiced and stuff. Because, like, a good Graham... Like Trader Joe’s sells amazing Graham crackers Yeah. Sparkly and cinnamon. They’re just drenched in sugar. He would have an aneurysm. But, anywayMalcolm Collins:He wanted you to eat the most boring, terribleSimone Collins:Yes. We’re talking about a a dry, unsweetened hard biscuit, like an edible rock. That is that is what he wanted you to eat. And perhaps that wouldn’t calm yourMalcolm Collins:your desires. That these ideas caught on so much that we all eat Kellogg and graham cracker today.Simone Collins:Exactly. Let’s get to let’s get to Kellogg because one of one of the people who read Graham’s work was John Harvey Kellogg who fully assimilated these theories about bland foods. And this is one of the reasons why he developed cornflakes in the eighteen nineties as part of this deliberately bland anti aphrodisiac diet. and then he also went way further into it when it came to masturbation. He was not Presbyterian. He was a Seventh day Adventist physician who lived in a celibate marriage with his wife, Ella, who, on his honeymoon with her, he wrote plain facts for old and young, a massive 600 page manual mourning against the supposed evils of sexual activity and masturbation. So it’s like this sick burn on poor Ella. Like, she had a disease man.Malcolm Collins:Be clear that, like, Kellogg did play a large role in in in normalizing a lot of this. This guy was not against masturbation. He was against sex with your wife, and you have internalized for her.Simone Collins:He’s like, they’re... I don’t know where they are. Niagara Falls, like, at a hotel, and he’s, like, writing about how how horrible it is to haveMalcolm Collins:I know I need to go back to my machine that spanks me.Simone Collins:But, yeah, in in in in this book that he writes on his honeymoon, he blames the solitary vice for wasting the most highly vitalized bodily fluid, hence, impotence epilepsy, heart disease, uterine matter inMalcolm Collins:a He’s not having sex with his wife.Simone Collins:I... It’s... Yep. Yep. In 1879, he was named superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, which was basically the canyon ranch of its time. Like, it... Insert expensive health spa here that was kind of affordable.Malcolm Collins:It’s at this time because I also decided to go into this that Mormons got into, like, masturbations of sin. For Mormons who are unaware of this, we have hundreds of years of your church’s history, and nobody brought it up once. And then nineteen twenties, it really started in the 1890s as the very first mention that it might be bad, but this was during one of the ways. Where it really became normalized was around the time of Kellogg. And if you’re aware, the line that is used to condemn it is Joseph Smith’s warning against prostitution, which is, like, a very reasonable thing to worry about.Simone Collins:Yeah. Like, well, especially on your mission. Right? It was like, please don’t see prostitutes onMalcolm Collins:your I think it was don’t see prostitutes instead of doing your mission or on your mission or something like...Speaker 13:Specifically here, the text that Mormons cite is Alma 39 in the Book of Mormon. Alma the younger is rebuking his son, Caratheon, who left preaching assignment in... Among the Zoamites and went after Cyren, the heart riddled Isabel. so that is what happened. And, again, I attribute this as Joseph Smith because I think he made all this up. But you could say, okay. It wasn’t Joseph Smith. It was Corinthian or whatever. But the point is is that’s all you’ve got textually. Everything else is made up. And the reason why I harp on Mormons is because Mormons are one of the most anti masturbation of the Christian sects, and they don’t realize that their guys just picked it up because it was a popular trend in the nineteen twenties, not because of anything theological.Malcolm Collins:And they somehow... During this Kellogg wave when it became cool and everyone was eating graham crackers and Kellogg’s, like, still do. Yeah. Except... No. Because bothSimone Collins:of them... I think it was Kellogg’s brother that, like, sort of took the cereal and ran with it, there was actually quite a bit of conflict around the sugar. So both of them were slaps in their faces, which isMalcolm Collins:Yep.Simone Collins:Apt, I guess. Or I guess, no, for Graham, a slap on his butt with... He wouldn’t mind that.Malcolm Collins:The coupon was you you told me reading about his life. He kept putting himself in sexual situations. You said it felt like he was constantly edging himself, like, that seemedSimone Collins:Well, yeah. This this idea of, like, well, okay. Let’s talk about some of the things that he talks. And first off, just in his wording, this this idea of, like, don’t let it out. Don’t let it out. Like... And and yet and yet, here are things that he advocates in his honeymoon book, plain facts for old and young. Here are symptoms and things that he recommended. Circumcision without anesthesia for boys so that, quote, the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it’d be connected with the idea of punishment, which is pretty simple. Yeah. Also, silver wire sutures through the foreskin drawn over the glands twisted shut so the erection becomes painful or impossible. Like, this is torture. For girlsMalcolm Collins:and BDSM. He’s into BDSM.Simone Collins:I swear. It’s... Yeah. For for girls and women, pure carbolic acid that is phenol painted on the clitoris to allay abnormal excitement, including what he called mental masturbation or orgasm from thought alone. And in ladies guide for severe nymphomania, he encouraged cool enemas, blisters, or other irritants on the genitals, and in extreme cases, removal of the clitoris and labia minora. And then also electrical currents. Some accounts describe a urethral electrode. He also mentioned shock as a deterrent and then was a big fan of genital cages, like the kind that were made in the Victorian times, and tying children’s hands, which at first,Malcolm Collins:I was like Sorry. His genital cages, because you described them to you when you first read about them. They had spikes on the top of them.Simone Collins:Yeah. Like, well well, yeah, one of them, like, if your... We we call them flippies in our household. If your flippy starts to go up, it just hits the spikes and, ow, like, you know, that’s I’m sure thatMalcolm Collins:didn’t stop his when you hear all hisSimone Collins:There were cages that the women could... You could, like, pee through them as a woman. Like, they’re locked in the back, but you can’t reach yourself. So I don’t know how that worked with menstruation. But, yeah, he had the the mechanical room where you... I mean, so, like, the way that things would work at at his health resort is you would take vigorous walks in the morning. You’d have your bland food. There there... Then you would, go through... Sometimes he advocated for quite a few enemas per day. There were the saltwater enemas. There were the yogurt enemas. There were the the... Oh, yes. He called the the yogurt ones Bulgarian basilis bowel treatments. And then there was the mechanical movement room that had beating machines, vibrating chairs. So it’s just like... It sounds incredibly kinky to me. They... Like, you’re at this resort.Malcolm Collins:And obviously is. All of these natural people today are participating in this guy’s weirdSimone Collins:Let me shove this thing up your anus, and and, like, shove large amounts of yogurt and saltwater up you. 15 gallons a minute. Don’t forget... Or sorry. Sorry. 15 quarts a minute, not gallons. Let’s be reasonable here. There are mechanical limits. but then also, like, I’m gonna have you get vibrated and slapped so many times and then beaten a little by my machine in my mechanical movement room. I mean, like, this is way kinkier than any of those creepy BDSM Airbnbs you could find scattered across you.Malcolm Collins:This is, like, the kinkiest thing I’ve ever heard.Simone Collins:I I swear to you. Yes. Truly. So, like, something was going on. I thought it was kind of cute. All this color stuff.Malcolm Collins:A sexual deviant. You disgusting child. Now hold on. I need to go to my room where I built a bunch of machines to spank me every morning.Simone Collins:But here’s actually the problem. So while he and his wife had a celibate marriage, they adopted maybe even over... And fostered maybe over 40 children. And then when I, like, was reading about all the things he advocated for, I started getting real scared that he was, like, genitally mutilating these children. So now I’m like, Like, at first, I was like, oh, that’s sweet. Like, okay. Both of these people were very sex sex negative or, like, very kinky in a way where they were just always like, oh, if I break me, just shove it up my butt. But, like, it’s cute. Like, fine. Like, they... They’re compatible. But, like, if they’re pulling a bunch of kids into this, it makes me concerned. So anyway Especially, he...Malcolm Collins:I mean, he advocated for female circumcision. Right? LikeSimone Collins:Yeah. Putting carbolic acid. that’s super not cool, dude. And and the wire through the... Let’s not reread it. I think we all have our sensibilities and whatnot. But...Malcolm Collins:Oh, so he’s, like, a serial, like, pedophile. Like, he’s, like, an actualSimone Collins:bad guy. We don’t know what we... I couldn’t find accounts from his chill... Like, his either adopted or fostered children. So I can’t come out and say he did this to his own children. And a lot of the treatments like the the unmedicated circumcision for, like, adolescent boys, can you imagine? Right? That was only for boys who were, like, problematic, who he believed were doing that. Now if I was being fostered or adopted by the Kellogg family and I had an interest in human sexuality in some way, I would certainly not let them see it. Right? So, So, like, presumably, only his mostMalcolm Collins:hapless children. How this actually works in these people because we’ve seen this in the Mormon community is they just use it as a generic attack on people. like, wives, when they’re mad at their husbands, will say,Simone Collins:They don’t like you, so you have a porn addiction.Malcolm Collins:Mad at your kid. You’re like, where? I mean, this is how that lady who brainwashed all those women.Simone Collins:Eight passengers lady. Yeah. Ruby Frankie.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Is is you just convinced them that anyone you disagree with must be masturbating.Simone Collins:Must be must have a porn addiction. Yeah. Even though that’s like, no. It’s... Yeah. It... It’s the generic, I’m not happy with you. Yeah. It’s it’s very true. So the modern movement today is is really not very different. The the... It really emerged first. Like, the the new wave of it started with NoFap. And I didn’t actually know the origin story of this, but what happened is that a guy named Alexander Rhodes founded NoFap after posting on Reddit a TIL about a study doing a week long challenge. So this is what the study was. It... It’s it’s titled a research on the relationship between ejaculation and serum testosterone level in men. It was it was posted in China in December 2021. What they did with a very small sample of 28 male volunteers was after an ejaculation, measure serum testosterone every day through two abstinence periods. And the design was observational. They would just watch testosterone while the men did not ejaculate then see what happened if abstinence continued past the first week. There was no porn condition. There was no control group of men who kept ejaculating on a schedule and no long term follow-up for some sort of months long retention. What they found was day two to five after ejaculation, there was little change in testosterone. But then at day seven, there was this peak at 145.7% of baseline, which means about 46% above the starting value, not a 14045% increase, which is important because guys online don’t know the difference and keep saying there’s a 145% increase. Internet posts often say, like, tea goes up a 145%. Don’t fat for a week. That’s not true. The author’s own reading was even more narrow. They said that they think ejaculation starts roughly a seven day clock, and then the seven day bump at the end of that cycle, is not a new higher set point. It’s just a bump. And then after ejaculation before day seven, they said it resets the clock. So at... After that peak, there’s no second regular peak if they keep abstaining. Like, if you abstain from from masturbating for longer than a week, there’s no benefit that they found at least in this very small study.Malcolm Collins:What’s so interesting to me about this is testosterone is something that its effects on your behavior, you can override with self control. So they are presumably advocating for additional self control in one area to make self control easier in another area.Simone Collins:Well, in a billion things affect testosterone as well. Not not just that, but also your diet if you’re losing in life, if you’re winning in life Yeah. Whether your relationship is open or closed, if you’re in a very secure monogamous relationship, whether or not you have kids. Like, there are billion thing. Like, why are they focusing on the fat part?Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Yeah. Corn rates don’t only fat. If you are in a committed monogamous relationship, your testosterone drops. If you have a lot of kids with that monogamous partner, your testosterone drops with each kid. Yeah. Like, your life... If your life is about maximizing your testosterone levelsSimone Collins:Well, then maybe just take testosterone. You can get a doctor to prescribe it. Yeah. We’re gonna freak out that much. Pill. Just take the freaking pill. Anyway, the paper, importantly, was retracted. Springer retracted it because the same work had already been published in a Chinese language journal, so they didn’t like the duplicate overlapping publication. But then Snopes also notes that the journal did not retract it for Cook numbers. It was just for that. But sex researcher Nicole Proust later found that when she asked for the data from the researchers, they wouldn’t provide it. And then two of the four listed authors couldn’t even be found, in a translation...Malcolm Collins:A translated French Chinese paper would haveSimone Collins:been Well, who knows? Because in China, there’s a lot of research fraud. So, also, one translation of the Chinese version reportedly have a... Had a different author and a different day count in the abstract. So there’s a lot of just shady stuff going on with this, meaning that I wouldn’t really... Like, I I I would question it. Plus, there’sMalcolm Collins:a way I I wouldn’t build my world to do Especially when we know about the harm... And and I will point out here, like, just not masturbating is not that big a deal. If you just wanna live a life without that, like, that’s fine. What ends up causing most of the psychological damage, porn addiction, stuff like that is believing that masturbation is something that you shouldSimone Collins:never ever do. Big thing that this movement does. Because a lot of these people try to not fap, and then they fap and feel bad about it.Malcolm Collins:Just just not not trying. It because you build yourself in a direction where you don’t want it or you take naltrexone with it, and so you build a disinterest in it from opioid agonist. All of that doesn’t cause any negative as far as I’m aware. Right? Like, there’s Yeah. There’s some minimal benefits to masturbating, but they’re not really that big. The the really negative stuff is all of the stuff like addiction and stuff like that that comes from the belief that it’s bad.Simone Collins:Yeah. So, anyway, what what Rhodes read this study and then posted it on Reddit ultimately wanted to do and and decided to do himself and then just kind of a movement sprung around it was just a a reboot. He wanted to go ninety days off porn, and often masturbation is what a lot of people went through too to reset dopamine. And dopamine resets are real. Like, I’m all for that. That’s fine. I think this is the most reasonable facet of it all. More dedicated people would just do no orgasm at all even with a partner. Rhodes said that the end state could be moderate porn free masturbation. Like, that was his goal. It was to not masturbate, or sorry. It was not to never masturbate. It was just to basically enjoy masturbation more to reset. Because once you get to, like... You... Dopamine fasts are really helpful.Malcolm Collins:Right. Right. This this actually does have science to back. Yeah. All of the science that shows that I have... Because I did a... For our sexuality book, a really deep dive into it. And any paper that shows some marginal... And you and you... These do exist. Like, demonstrable negative effects for masturbation show it alongside pornography consumption. I have never found... I mean, I’m not aware of a single study ever published anywhere that shows negative effects for masturbation without pornography.Simone Collins:Yeah. Yeah. The... Which makes sense. I mean, the same thing also, like, these these dopamine resets work with incredibly salty foods, with highly processed foods, with gaming, with TV and social media consumption. Like, it... This is an across the board thing. So I Well, this is the thing that gets me...Malcolm Collins:That that makes people look incredibly stupid when I hear this. People will be don’t you know it activates the same pathways as drugs?Simone Collins:Oh, goodness sake. Don’t you know that Chocolate activates the same pathway. And being with your family all activate the same pathways as drugs? Make sure you never see your family again.Malcolm Collins:Don’t you know that hugging your child activates the same pathway as a drug?Simone Collins:Anyway, here are, like, the actual bad players now. Oneania five point o or whatever, because we’ve been through Oneania so many times. These are creators that are all about semen retention, and they’re not even really about semen retention. They’re about selling you stupid products. So some of the really prominent people on this are Hamza Ahmed, aka Hamza ninety seven. He has this large self improvement channel. Hamza... Do you remember our Hamza episode? I do. I do. King idiot this guy But, anyway, he pushes no fap and semen retention bundle But by the way, thisMalcolm Collins:guy, had a perfect relationship, and he blew it up because he wanted to act more masculine and sleep around. This is... The... These are the people. Like, okay. Who’s the pro masturbation team? Guy with five kids in a stable marriage. Who’s the anti masturbation team? A single guy who blew up his marriage to sleep around. Right?Simone Collins:Like Anyway, he he sells a paid community called the library of Adonis and also Level 2, which is more expensive, and training on building online content business, which is... Like, all of this stuff he actually sells is just stupid social media influencer slop stuff. It’s not even real useful products, and it’s also not about masturbation. He just uses it because it’s a message that people wanna hear, and it’s a bad message.Speaker 14:And I want to really belabor the point Simone is making here. This is something that people want to hear. Because when you hear that masturbation is the problem instead of you don’t have anything better to do, you don’t have more purpose that is driving you towards something bigger, and that is the problem. Masturbation is only the symptom of that problem. That is a much harder thing to hear and a much harder thing to deal with in your life. And so people look for the small easy things. Like, well, I’m gonna stop masturbating, and I’m gonna start exercising this amount, and I’m gonna clean my room. And it’s like, no. All of those are symptoms of you not having purpose, and finding purpose is the bigger issue. Finding something that’s more important to you than your personal pleasure is the bigger issue. And so even things that are tied to self control, like you need to exercise more or you need to stop masturbating, these can still be very simplistic and very hedonistic answers to people’s problems in life. And while it’s not gonna earn us accolades for saying this on our channel, and people will attack us for saying this, it is something that will hopefully help some subset of the people who hear this and can be like, oh, the issue is that I think that something of such little pleasure, of such little call is so distracting to me is a sign that I don’t have purpose in my life, and that is what I need to fix.Simone Collins:Then there’s Ranveer Alhabhita or Beer Biceps, who’s an Indian interview and lifestyle host who has posted semen retention clips invoking Ayurveda, that semen nourishes the brain and gives you a photographic memory. Oh, wow. Sounds exactly like the earlier stuff. He sells online courses called Beer Biceps Skill House because that sounds like the smartest course you’re ever gonna take. No. No.Malcolm Collins:But but these influencers, these are people with names like beer biceps. Yeah. There’s also ice cold jSimone Collins:b’s, elemental growth. There is Brazil’s Mathias Coppini, Japan’s Onekin coaches. Like, they’re all over the place. All of them are selling something. That’s all you really need to know. And it’s all about no porn, no masturbation, no sex.Malcolm Collins:I I run a not safe for... You run. You make money from a not safe for work website. So stop saying they’re selling somethingSimone Collins:I don’t make money from that. You don’t make money from that. Our nonprofit makes money from You’re so far.Malcolm Collins:The interest is one day we take money from it.Simone Collins:And, yeah, I would love that. I would love for it to pay for a health care at least. That would be amazing.Malcolm Collins:Anyway But the point being is... The the question is is is the thing that you’re selling... What I can say is the thing we’re selling actually creates very good horny content. The thing that they’re selling, I don’t think it does. You can say, is it good for you? I’m gonna saySimone Collins:I don’t think it’s good for you. I don’t think it’s good for you.Malcolm Collins:I’ve been able to make well, the stuff that they’re saying. Yeah. the the the the... We’ve been able to get fable to make horny content. Guys, this is the most advanced intelligence on Earth right now, and we’ve been able to turn it horny.Simone Collins:Well, but I... My dream is that people come... Some people come to our FAB for the FAB ing, and then they discover all the other tools that you have. No. No. No. Like, the vibe coding agents.Malcolm Collins:Of our users now, by the way, don’t use the website for not safe for work stuff. I just joke about that.Simone Collins:Right? I know. But my hope is that you can... We can take people who use it for NSFW, and then they’re like, oh, wait. You can use AI to, like, do productive things. and then they actually just start using the creative suite and vibe coding stuff and all the other stuff. So, anyway, I think it’s kind of... It’s kinda acceptMalcolm Collins:them into improving their lives. That’s that’sSimone Collins:Well, I I think I think some of the site analytics might suggest that. So I think that’s wonderful. Anyway, the TLDR is that people want to believe clearly. Voltaire, Kant, Ford, whatever. No.Malcolm Collins:It’s not just people. It’s me. So what a lot of people don’t know is when we wrote our book, the pragmatist guide to sexuality This is true. The way that I wrote it is I would often write a chapter based on my intuitions. Then I would go look up research as into, like, okay. Are those intuitions... Good note here. I don’t trust scientists. I’m not something, like, blind scientist truster. I think scientists are mostly full... So when I’m looking up research, I am, you know, cross referencing. I’m looking at original datasets. I’m looking at datasets from different periods. I’m looking at, like... I’d like... I’m very sorry about this. So I had actually written the chapter on masturbation before I attempted to determine if it was true.Simone Collins:This is true. This is true. And it was very anti masturbation. Masturbation and porn are bad for you, Malcolm wrote, because he was sure that all ofMalcolm Collins:the scientific evidence would back it up. And then I started looking through the evidence, and the evidence just didn’t show this. In fact, it showed the exact opposite. And I felt I had to rewrite the section. I was like, well... And this is the only section in the entire book or in any of our books that I ever... I have ever had to do this with. I’d ever just was like, was wrong. I was just wrong. but ISimone Collins:think when you say I’m out of shock We were really... I was surprised too. Because, I mean, we we want... I think everyone just assumes. And that’s the thing. People wanna believe that masturbation is bad for you because they’re like, this has to be bad. But when you actually stopMalcolm Collins:and think about it I’ll tell you why I thought it. Okay? Why? I thought it for two reasons. I thought it because I saw a lot of communities aspiring for it. And then the second reason is is because I saw it as a subject of self control. And I had this perception that more self control is always better. Yes. More discipline, more self control. Anything where I can advocate for more of that is going to be better. Totally. Yes. And then I did the research, and I was like, in this one narrow area, it appears to not be true. Yeah. And note here for people who are like, oh, well, how do you prevent yourself from forming these addictions to whatever? It’s like, one, again, you could just choose not to use porn. I agree. That could be a major problem. but two, like, your body... Like, all of humans’ bodies, all humans have had hands for hundreds of thousands of years. Okay? And as we know from these old sources as we went through, nobody advised against masturbation until fairly recently in human history. Right? You know, like, the very first group we have doing is the Zoroastrians and then the ancient Greeks, but not really anyone else during that time period. You lose your brain matter. You’ll... The point being is that if it was easy to get addicted to this thing that everyone had access to all the time at any time of day, you you... That branch of humanity would go extinct.Simone Collins:Yeah.Malcolm Collins:And so I actually sometimes wonder if when I hear specific groups being like, I just can’t handle this, like Mormon groups saying this. I’m like, they lost whatever protection the rest of humanity had to this.Simone Collins:Oh, like, the... Okay. So so cultures that went super masturbation negative stopped breeding out the people who had really bad masturbation problems, and then now they can’t... So it’s like, oh, like, we bred out kind of, like, the the issue that that’s happening with, what is that, measles or whatever. Like, people aren’t vaccinating it anymore. Now we’re all being taken out becauseMalcolm Collins:we’re being out. Normal human male, you’re, like, so programmed to not want this in a row that you, like, feel pain if somebody tries to do something after you’ve orgasmed. You’re like, I don’t I don’t wanna be around that. I don’t wanna I don’t wanna think about that. I wanna... And then you’re generally programmed to not want it again for, like, a a day and a half orSimone Collins:two days. But I know, but that’s clearly not true for some people who need it multiple times.Malcolm Collins:I don’t think it’s true for them. I think that the people who do it all the time, generally speaking, are just, like, depressed or don’t have something else in life and are looking for something to fill the time. Maybe. That’s that’s my intuition from what I’ve actually seen. It’s it’s it’s something that fills the time when you have a bigger problem, which is that you don’t have purpose in life.Simone Collins:Well, I think it’s very similar with food. There’s a lot of people who... Like, when you eat a big meal, you feel pretty freaking sick, and there’s a lot of people who still keep eating. And, yeah, maybe there’s a void to fill. I gotta go with kids.Malcolm Collins:Okay. Great. I love you. And, again, maybe I’m not... I mean, even with food, I struggle to eat more than a meal a day. I I... And often then, I don’t even eat a meal a day. So maybe I’m just notSimone Collins:But you’re still having steak and green beans tonight. Right?Malcolm Collins:Tempted by earthly temptations. Yeah. Yeah. You think that’s what I should have.Simone Collins:Right? Steak and green beans? Well, you should have the steak because I have two steaks thawed, and we need to get through them. K. I love you very much.Malcolm Collins:I love you too. Thank you so much. Bye. Bye. This one’s gonna piss off fans.Simone Collins:I had to do it anyway.Malcolm Collins:Because it’s true.Simone Collins:And we are not... Audience capture bothers me. Yeah. WellMalcolm Collins:It it bothers me too because it’s it’s it’s just demonstrably nonbiblical. It is it is not good for people, which I’ll get into in this. Right? It’s it’s... It it actually comes downstream from slavery, which you’ll learn in this.Simone Collins:Oh, no. Oh, yeah. Okay. I think I think I know what you’re gonna say. Anyway, dinner, I’m making you a steak. Yeah.Malcolm Collins:You’ve got steak. I’m open to steak tonight.Simone Collins:I’m making steak. Steak by itself or steak with fries or anything else?Malcolm Collins:steak with fries.Simone Collins:Fries or green beans?Malcolm Collins:Oh, green beans.Simone Collins:K. That is what you shall have.Speaker 15:Fighter, the chosen, the scar, and the fame. Griffin or Golden Boy, boring and tame. All monitor energy, rule following boar, and all his friends are kind of poor. But I’m passing the great hall, I hear Potter say. He’s evil, I knew it the very first day. One look at that face and my scar started burning. I stopped in my tracks. My opinion was turning. When asked, who robbed the vault? He said it would be easy to find who is at fault. He did not even take time to look at clues. 400 suspects and who would he choose? There’s ghosts, there’s the staff, there’s that squibber with the cap, but one of them stuck out so I went with that. Wait, did the boy who lived just say the quiet part out loud in the middle of the hall, in front of the crowd? Water your face, I mistudged you. It’s true. I thought you were vanilla, but you’ve got a clue. You won’t call him professor. You won’t give him a pass. The chosen one’s chosen to be edgy as I... Of those people who border us, even when you control for income, they are more murderous. I’m just pattern noticing, Potter like you. So tell me your data, your sources, your view. I caught him alone by the lake after dark. I said, show me your evidence. Show me your mark. He smiled kinda hollow and said, I don’t need it. I learned from my dad when he saw one, he beat it. Sirius told me how we all went that day. They hung him up high and they watched him sway. I asked, but what did he do? And he said with a grin, it’s more that he exists and the color he’s in. But I make the old man look levy when he looked at me wrong during a game. I had a friend light him on fire. They only shame that she lacked a body. I’d always said when the display is bigger, that’s a better way to treat a... Wait. What? This is a public episode. 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Roast some marshmallows alongside us at the very-non-mystical Based Camp fire pit as we question whether the occult has become overly feminized and explore what masculine mysticism actually looks like. Our discussion examines historical figures often labeled as wizards, tracks word usage over centuries, and contrasts failed esoteric paths with the development of real science. We also ask the inevitable question: Why did competent men historically move away from ritual and toward empirical methods?Our conversation covers arguments from a recent YouTube video on the topic (Broken Ruune’s argument that The Occult Has Become Too Feminine), reviews key Renaissance and modern practitioners, and explains why mysticism lacks feedback loops that drive progress. It also touches on why AI and technology now fulfill the creative and constructive impulses once channeled into the occult.Expect analysis of data trends, institutional legacies like Waldorf education and biodynamic farming, and a clear conclusion on why serious inquiry leads to science rather than spells.Show NotesHat tip to Broken Ruune for The Occult Has Become Too Feminine”Did We Actually Lose Male Mystics?Trends & NGram ViewerComparing: witch, wizard, paladin, druid, sageHate to break it to Broken Ruune, but witches have been dominating since at least the middle ages per Google NGram Viewer at leastUnexpectedly, it’s closer on Google Trends, wizards aren’t that much worse off than witches (maybe because of Harry Potter though).Malleus MaleficarumIn Malleus Maleficarum, is the focus on only female witches? What about wizards, paladins, druids, and sages? Are they also called out as a threat in the book?ANSWER:* The Malleus Maleficarum overwhelmingly focuses on women, but it does not say that only women can practice witchcraft.* Its author, Heinrich Kramer, argues that women are more likely than men to be witches; the book also discusses male practitioners and condemns sorcery and divination.Historical WizardsJohn Dee (1527–1608/09)* English mathematician and adviser to Elizabeth I who practiced alchemy and astrology, and undertook ritual attempts to communicate with angels through scrying.* Scrying is basically crystal ball gazing: an ancient divination practice that involves gazing into a reflective, translucent, or moving surface to receive intuitive insights, visions, or hidden knowledge.* With Edward Kelley, he developed the angelic system now known as Enochian magic.* Edward Kelley (1555–1597) was Dee’s scryer and ritual collaborator.* He said he could see and hear angels in crystals or mirrors, relaying their messages and instructions during elaborate spiritual experiments.* Probably schizophrenic?Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535)* German scholar and author of Three Books of Occult Philosophy, one of the defining Renaissance works on natural, celestial, and ceremonial magic.* He treated magic as an organized body of knowledge and practice.Giordano Bruno (1548–1600)* Italian philosopher and former friar who developed Hermetic memory practices designed to link the mind to cosmic powers.* His “memory magic” was intended to transform the practitioner, not just improve recall.Paracelsus (1493–1541)* Swiss physician, alchemist, and medical reformer.* His healing system combined chemical remedies with astrology, occult properties in nature, elemental beings, and the belief that hidden forces could be discovered and used.Johann Georg Faust (c. 1480–c. 1541)* German itinerant astrologer, alchemist, and magician who offered occult services during his life.* He was the historical basis for the later literary character Faust, although the famous devil-pact story is largely legend.Nostradamus (1503–1566)* French physician, astrologer, and author of prophetic verse.* He regarded astrology and divinatory techniques as genuine ways to perceive future events.Isaac Newton (1642–1727)* English physicist and mathematician who privately devoted extensive effort to alchemy, biblical prophecy, chronology, and hidden divine principles in nature.* He appears to have regarded alchemical transformation as a real possibility.Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772)* Swedish scientist, engineer, theologian, and visionary who reported sustained conversations with angels and spirits.* His work is more visionary and religious than ceremonial magic, but he believed humans could genuinely encounter the spirit world.Cagliostro (Giuseppe Balsamo) (1743–1795)* Eighteenth-century occultist associated with alchemy, ritual, spirit communication, and esoteric Freemasonry.* He presented himself as possessing secret Egyptian and magical knowledge, though his sincerity and many of his claims remain doubtful.Modern WizardsBroken Ruune highlights Rudolf Steiner and Manly P. Hall as examples of the male “wizard” figure he thinks is missing from today’s occult culture: men who publicly pursued hidden knowledge and tried to explain it, rather than treating spirituality chiefly as personal comfort.Rudolf Steiner:Broken Ruune calls him probably his biggest ideological influence.* He portrays Steiner as someone who combined Christian belief and mystical experience with an industrial-age respect for science.* He believed the occult explained the spiritual side of reality, just like science explains the physical side of reality* Per Broken Ruune, Steiner’s “occult science” aimed to investigate spiritual reality with academic rigor—not predict the future or cast love spells.His LegacyPhilosophy and spirituality: Steiner founded anthroposophy, creating a comprehensive spiritual-philosophical system focused on human freedom, inner development, reincarnation, karma, and purported methods of spiritual perception. His writings, lectures, societies, and publishing institutions remain the backbone of the anthroposophical movement.Education: He helped establish the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart in 1919, originally for children of workers at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory. Waldorf education emphasizes developmental stages, storytelling, arts, music, movement, handwork, practical skills, and delayed emphasis on abstract academics. It grew into an international network of more than 1,000 schools by the early 21st century.Agriculture: Through his 1924 Agriculture Course, Steiner originated biodynamic agriculture (which is DEFINITELY still a thing). It treats the farm as an integrated living organism, emphasizing soil health, composting, crop and animal diversity, and ecological relationships. Biodynamics influenced organic and regenerative farming, although its astrological and “preparation” practices are not well supported by mainstream scientific evidence.Medicine and care: His followers developed anthroposophical medicine, which combines conventional care with remedies and therapies derived from anthroposophical principles. Steiner also influenced therapeutic education and residential-care communities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Individual medical treatments should be assessed by evidence-based standards rather than accepted merely because they are anthroposophical.Art, movement, and architecture: Steiner created eurythmy, a performing art in which movement is intended to express the sounds and meanings of speech or the structure of music. He also designed the original Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland, as the international home of anthroposophy and a center for theater, architecture, research, and education.Social and economic thought: Steiner proposed “social threefolding,” in which cultural life, democratic legal-political life, and economic life should be relatively independent. He advocated freedom in education and culture, equality in civic rights, and cooperation rather than pure competition in economic life. These ideas remain influential in some alternative schools, cooperatives, and anthroposophical organizations.Institution building: His most durable accomplishment may be turning a broad spiritual worldview into working institutions: schools, farms, clinics, pharmaceutical companies, artistic organizations, disability-support communities, publishing houses, and the Anthroposophical Society itself.Manly P. Hall:* Broken Ruune points to The Secret Teachings of All Ages as an ambitious attempt to teach the public about mysticism and philosophy.* He acknowledges that it mixes what he considers genuine information with outdated speculation and fanciful writing, but admires Hall’s willingness to compile and present such a sweeping work. He also describes Hall’s wealthy patrons and expeditions as his own “dream job.”* The Secret Teachings of All Ages* In this book, hall argues that beneath outward religious and cultural differences lies a common metaphysical truth about:* A divine or intelligent source underlying the universe.* The human being as a microcosm—a small-scale reflection of the cosmos.* Ignorance, material attachment, and uncontrolled desire as sources of spiritual limitation.* Self-knowledge, virtue, contemplation, and disciplined study as routes toward wisdom and reunion with the divine.* Mystery traditions as institutions that concealed these teachings from the unprepared while transmitting them through initiation and symbolism.* In short: people should learn to read the symbolic “language” embedded in religion, mythology, art, ritual, and nature, then use that understanding for moral and spiritual development.Wizards TodayFeminine DominationThat’s obvious (Etsy, Witchtok, etc.)Loss of InitiationsOne of the things Broken Ruune bemoans is the loss of initiation rituals, which he saw as a sort of necessary barrier to entry that was supposed to be terrifying and kind of messed up to emphasize the double-sided nature of the occult and how it is genuinely dangerous.What’s LeftThe clearest male-coded or historically male-dominated strands today are ceremonial magic, Thelema, traditionalist/esoteric-right milieus, some Masonic-adjacent rites, and a newer online “occult intellectual” culture. But none has the social reach Freemasonry had at its twentieth-century peak.Ceremonial magic and Golden Dawn lineagesThis is probably the closest surviving descendant of the “learned male wizard” tradition of Dee, Agrippa, and Crowley. Practitioners study correspondences, astrology, Tarot, Kabbalah/Qabalah, planetary ritual, invocation and banishing rituals, meditation, visualization, talismans, dream work, and graded systems of initiation.The various groups calling themselves Golden Dawn, along with independent practitioners using Golden Dawn-derived material, are not a unified church or a single organization. Their common ancestor is the late nineteenth-century Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Modern practice is usually private or conducted in small temples rather than in a mass public institution.Gender-wise, it is mixed. It has a stronger male intellectual and historical canon than modern Paganism—Agrippa, Lévi, Crowley, Regardie, Fortune, Mathers, and so on—but women have always been important in the tradition, including Florence Farr, Moina Mathers, Dion Fortune, and later teachers. It would be misleading to call contemporary Golden Dawn practice straightforwardly male-dominated without reliable demographic data.Thelema and the O.T.O.Thelema, founded by Aleister Crowley, is a living occult religion built around discovering and enacting one’s “True Will.” Its repertoire often includes ceremonial ritual, qabalah, yoga and meditation, Tarot, sexual symbolism, magical diaries, and Crowley’s broader system of magick. The major surviving initiatory organization is the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.); its own reported membership was about 4,000 in 2017, while a scholarly estimate put the total Thelemite population in 2020 at roughly 5,000–10,000 worldwide.This is plausibly one of the more male-skewed modern occult scenes in style, public intellectual ancestry, and recruitment culture. Crowley’s authority, competitive attainment language, graded initiation, and emphasis on disciplined individual practice appeal to many men looking for an explicit “magus” identity. Still, it is formally open to all genders and includes prominent women and nonbinary practitioners; “male-dominated” is not the same as male-only.Traditionalist and esoteric-right scenesThere is a separate cluster of readers and small circles around writers such as René Guénon, Julius Evola, Frithjof Schuon, and—in more contemporary popular form—figures who combine traditional religion, myth, hierarchy, masculinity, anti-modernism, or civilizational decline.This sphere is often heavily male, particularly online. It can involve real study of symbols, comparative religion, alchemy, Tantra, Hermeticism, Sufism, or sacred kingship—but much of it is metapolitical philosophy, identity formation, and literary-intellectual consumption rather than regular magical practice. It is also worth distinguishing carefully between serious academic or spiritual interest in traditionalism and the authoritarian, misogynistic, racist, or fascist politics that some communities import from Evola and adjacent thinkers.In other words, this may be one place where the old male “wizard” aesthetic persists strongly, but it is not automatically a healthy or intellectually reliable successor to Renaissance magic.Western esotericism as a study cultureA quieter but meaningful modern form is not a lodge at all: people seriously study the history, philosophy, symbols, and practices of esotericism through books, archives, lectures, universities, podcasts, correspondence groups, and personal disciplines.That includes people working through:* Hermetic texts and Renaissance natural magic.* Alchemical imagery and laboratory history.* Kabbalah, Christian mysticism, Neoplatonism, and Rosicrucian literature.* Astrological technique.* Ritual systems descended from the Golden Dawn.* Jungian active imagination, symbolic psychology, and mythic interpretation.* Anthroposophy, Gurdjieff traditions, and other twentieth-century esoteric schools.This may be where a modern equivalent of the historically educated magus is most likely to exist: less a secret-master figure, more a self-directed scholar-practitioner with a disciplined private regimen.Episode TranscriptSimone Collins: Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to speak with you today because we need to ask, because the occult reached the sorry state it’s in because women have taken it over or because something else has gone wrong? I I started wondering this because I watched this video called the occult has become too feminine, an argument presented by a male, I think, Christian occultist on YouTube who goes by Broken Rune. And he argued that the problem with the modern occult is that it has been feminized, making everything about feelings and therapy. And for him, the occult needs both masculine and feminine influence, and he hates that mistresses of now is just new age hippie stuff in his words. And he wants to bring back the wizard, the paladin, the druid, the sage. And I’m like, okay. I’ll bite. What is masculine mysticism anyway? I kind of like... Gandalf is cool. Right? So maybe it’s kind of cool. And so I... I’ve kinda fell down a bit of a rabbit hole, and I came to two potential conclusions. One is our same conclusion always with mysticism, which is it’s incredibly stupid, and I hate it, and it’s just gonna make you go crazy. The other conclusion is actually there’s no such thing as male wizards because they’re just scientists. That males... Male wizardry is literally just science. And then once you actually get better tools in, like, history and societyMalcolm Collins:I completely agree with this. This is the most sex mistake you’ve ever had, Simone. Oh god. Wizardry is just science and AI, Nancy.Simone Collins:I I I think that’s true, though.Malcolm Collins:And as we you’re doing real stuff. See, women, they go and they pretend to have power, and they pretend to do stuff. And because there’s no feedback loop, they just go off in their occult nonsense. And men are like, okay. Did it work? And if you’re like, well, I guess it did. I’m like, okay. Well, then why aren’t you rich? Why aren’t you powerful? Why aren’t you... And the answer is because they didn’t work. But my AI, Nancy, is doing wonders right now. It can it can generate so many fun things, like our new channel of, MAWA being read to people if people want toSimone Collins:Yeah. Villainous comics that you can you can have read to you while you see the comic pages.Speaker 3:I also threw together another music video about Malfoyd,Speaker 9:He swept in at nine as he does every day,Speaker 8:arranging the potions in theSpeaker 9:usual way. But the face, will you look at the face?Speaker 8:He brewed something that changed his damn race.Speaker 9:So I raised my hand and I asked him, tone alight. Professor, you really white. Right?Speaker 8:And the room went still. I got cast an unforgivable. The ranger went pale, and her expression livid full. He’s always been like this. Cried the whole Gryffindoroh. He’s always been like this. And how dare you not know. It’s who he was born, not a choice that he made. And who cares what he tells people when he gets laid.Speaker 10:So just some notes because people in the last video said, I wish you had a channel for your songs. I wish you had Jitsu songs. We do. It’s in the top pinned comment, or you can just look up Base Camp Music on YouTube. It Two, obviously, this is using the Snape race swap as a trans allegory. I feel I should explain this for people who are dumb or don’t catch on. and, three, if you wanna make these yourself or you want to give any coding agent you have easy ability to make images and videos and music and phone calls, just go to rfab.ai backslash API. It will automatically assign you one. It will automatically write the message you need to write for your AI. You copy and paste that. You put it in your AI. And going forward, it will know how to do that. You don’t need to do anything else. There is no more technical capability than that. Then I copy and paste of what is it rfab.a I backslash API.Simone Collins:I think you make a really good point. The thing we always tell our kids is that magic is just science that you don’t yet understand. And here’s actually the key differentiation that I’m going to be getting to in this video as we explore male wizardry yesterday and today, which is basically that men who enter the world of wizardry end up in one of two categories. One, they just become scientists, and two, they fail at science and stay in the occult, which is very interesting. For example, just today, I don’t know why, but I was listening to a video where, like, some dude was talking about how women use glamour magic. and they were talking about it in very intentional terms, which was like, well, they all like... Well, he was kinda... He was he was implying that they were wearing crystals to do this, but he’s like, well, they know what to wear, and they know how to, like, look a certain way. And I I mean, that’s called, like, wearing makeup and address... Like, taking care of yourself in a systematic way to appear more attractive to people using science. Well understood evolutionary science where we can understand what things attract people and why, like, very clearly. And so, anyway, I I think that’s interesting. But, anyway, we’ll get back to just sort of the top of this where I wanted to understand first, based on broken runes argument, if male mystics really are gone. And so I looked at Google Ngram viewer comparing which wizard, paladin, druid, and sage. And while I hate to break it to broken rune, when I looked at it, witches have been dominating since at least the Middle Ages per Google and grand viewer at least. Like, wizards just aren’t really a thing. Do do you wanna see it? Sure. So you can see here, this goes from 1,500 to twenty twenty two. Okay? The the blue is which? You can see from, like, fifteen fifty onward, which is way bigger than wizard. And then in 1800, Sage... Don’t ignore this because Sage is big in cooking. Sage is... People like to cook with Sage. So no one... That’s not real. But, like, look at Red, which is wizard. Wizard has always been insanely small, insanely small compared to witches. So I don’t even know if he’s onto something by arguing that, you know, wizards used to be a thing.Malcolm Collins:I I don’t think they did. It did... Just doesn’t... There... Like, occultism kind of... I think it appealed to men more when it was less obviously wrong. Yeah. This is whereSimone Collins:When it was... No. It appealed to them more when it was freaking science, and you’ll see this. Weirdly, I I can’t explain this, though. If you look at Google Google Trends here, wizard and witch are actually pretty close. You can see that witch is blue, and wizard is is red. And this is 2024 to... Sorry. 2004 to present. So I don’t know why. I... Oh, wait. No. I do know why. You know why? Why? Harry Potter.Malcolm Collins:Oh, yes. Of course.Simone Collins:I... What was I thinking? Of course. Never mind. So wizards, yeah, wizards, they’re not a thing. and then I also... I I I did one other check because I’m like, maybe I’m just not really looking at this the right way. And so I I asked I did... If... You know the book Malleus Maleficarum? The the witch hunting book? The one where they talk about the stealing penises and that we gotta hunt witches and blah blah blah. It’s a very famous book.Malcolm Collins:Okay. No. I... I’m not that familiar with it.Simone Collins:Okay. Well, it’s... It... I think it’s a Middle Ages, like, medieval book about witches. And I I wanted to look at that. Like, well, if if that book mentions male practitioners, maybe they were a bigger thing. So I I checked to see if malleus maleficarum is a focus only on female witches or if it mentions wizards or paladins or druids. It’s overwhelmingly focused on women, but it doesn’t say that only women practice witchcraft. The author, Heinrich Kramer, argues that women are more likely than men to be witches, and the book also discusses male practitioners and condemns any form of sorcery and divination. But, basically, he’s like, it’s women who are problematic with this, which I think is interesting. But even though, at least in literature historically, you don’t see a lot of the the use of the word wizard or paladin or sage, you really just see the word witch a lot. There were historical wizards that were, like, real people.Speaker 4:Sorry. Does it annoy anyone else that whoever wrote this keeps looping in paladins with wizard and witches? Paladins just, like, pray and are protected by god. Right? They they don’t have... They’re specifically for killing wizard and witches. Right? Like, that’s their whole jam. Right? You think that just because somebody has powers that are not holistically human, a Paladin’s powers all come from god, all come from prayer.Simone Collins:But I... You’ll see. I really think that they’re scientists. So why don’t you... You can judge with each person I’m gonna give you, okay, who, like, come up in history as historical wizards. So first, we’re gonna start with John d. Born in 1527, he was an English mathematician and adviser to Elizabeth the first who practiced alchemy and astrology and undertook ritual attempts to communicate with angels through scrying. And scrying is, like, basically crystal bar... Ball gazing. It it could be... You might use other, like, crystals or mirrors, but it’s basically crystal bar... Ball gazing. I keep wanting to say crystal crystal par. But, anyway, he he tried to communicate with angels. And then with Edward Kelly, he developed the angelic system now known as Enochian magic. And Edward Kelly is also a famous notable wizard who was his scryer and ritual collaborator. And he said that he could see and hear angels in crystals and mirrors, and he relayed their messages and instructions during these elaborate spiritual experiments. But it just kinda sounds like he’s schizophrenic. So to me, I’m reading that John Dee probably was a scientist, but that Edward Kelly was schizophrenic. What... What’s your read with them?Malcolm Collins:I guess.Simone Collins:Okay. Then we’ll get to Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. He was born in 1486, so a little bit earlier. He was a German scholar and author of three books of occult philosophy, which was one of the defining Renaissance works on natural celestial and ceremonial magic. He treated magic as this organized body of knowledge and practice. I also see him as someone who’s trying to understand reality and probably more like a protoscientist. Then there’s Giordano Bruno, born in 1548. He died in 1600. He was an Italian philosopher and former friar who developed hermetic memory practices designed to link the mind and cosmic powers. That just sounds like the occult. Yeah. But his memory magic was intended to transform the practitioner, and not just improve your memory. But you didn’tMalcolm Collins:know back then. Like, when when, what’s his face? Newton was working on occult stuff. Right? There just wasn’t enough information to fully know it absolutely didn’t work. Based on common information at the time, you could have believed it worked.Simone Collins:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So he... His particular interest, Isaac Newton Newton that is, was obviously in physics and in mathematics, which turned out to be very real fields in which he was extremely influential. But, yes, he was also very interested in alchemy, but also Malcolm in biblical prophecy. But guess who’s into that too?Malcolm Collins:Who?Simone Collins:We are. I mean, like, we’re at least into, like, biblical prophecy chronology and hidden divine principles in nature. Yeah. We’re always talking about how, like, ohMalcolm Collins:my god. Like, the bible called itSimone Collins:with this. The bible called it with the Garden of Eden. We’re doing the same thing. So you can see that people who are very interested in understanding reality are going to get caught up in stuff that can seeMalcolm Collins:Well, it’s it’s it’s very different in the way that we’re doing it. Right? Like, we are applying itSimone Collins:to Is it different from the way Newton did it?Malcolm Collins:yes. Okay. Because Newton did not yet know that this stuff just didn’t work, whichSimone Collins:means used investigative methods. Yeah.Malcolm Collins:Which are really just wishy thinking and Yeah. And hexes and stuff like that. Right?Simone Collins:Like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. I guess very similar to, like, when ghosts were a big thing in the early nineteen hundreds, how, like, very devoted but also scientific people were like, look. When I die, I will send you a message because we know ghosts can send messages. And then lo and behold, they don’t send a message and... Okay. So that was fake. You know? I, yeah, I I see what you’re saying. Okay. There’s also Paracelsus, who was born in 1493. He was a Swiss physician, alchemist, and medical reformer, and his healing system would combine chemical remedies with astrology and occult properties in nature and elemental beings and his belief that hidden forces could be discovered and used. So I don’t know. I’m I’m on I’m on the... With with medical stuff I don’t I don’tMalcolm Collins:know if this is aSimone Collins:productive line of conversation because we’re well aware that just in this period, there wasn’t a difference. Then let’s talk about modern wizards, because there were two ones that I hadn’t heard about before, but were mentioned by Broken Room, this YouTuber who is lamenting the female dominance of the occult field. Would you like to learn about them? Have you have you heardMalcolm Collins:a super feminine field and has a super feminine mind and doesn’t realize it. Right? Like, that a man would be repulsed by this sort of stuff and that men generally are and have been throughout history repulsed by occultism. It is why despite the allure of occultism, it has never really caught on in the societies that were doing well at... That men dominated. Right? Like, you would see it in the faltering societies. The societies was less technology or less efficiency, but they think that they were struggling....Simone Collins:The very most now, and we’ve done a whole episodes on the the penis stealing fears in Africa.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. No. I mean, when a people believes in this stuff, we think of them as backwards.Simone Collins:The human sacrifices in Mexico.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Great. It has always been in the populations that hunt witches that we have always had the greatest technological explosions as a species. Oh. And the two things generally go sort of hand in hand. You have a witch hunt one century. Next century, big explosion in technology in a in a region.Simone Collins:I love that. that’s very interesting. Hot take. Witch hunts, solid. But only for real witches, not like Karen hunts, not like Karen’s on a rampage.Malcolm Collins:That is what witch hunts were, Simone.Simone Collins:Well, no. No. But what I mean is is about... It’s about occultism because witch hunt is a wordMalcolm Collins:used for No. No. No. Witch hunts were about the... What the witch was to a community is today what we call a Karen. They were a small town.Simone Collins:But what I’m trying to say is today, the modern connotation of witch hunt is a cancel mob, and that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about actual witches.Malcolm Collins:I meant, like, you actually hunt hunt them. Witches. I’m not talking about a cancel mob or somethingSimone Collins:like that.Malcolm Collins:I’m saying a bit like, these people never should have been able to to reach these these numbers. See our episode on swamp hacks. because, historically, we would have called these women, that are now marching and with signs and blocking ICE officers swamp hacks. They would have Yeah.Simone Collins:Well, those are totally different.Malcolm Collins:And a bunch of crystals and then, you know, like, slightly obese and gross looking and no kids, of course. And everyone would have told their kid, Jimmy, I know she says she has powers, but don’t go talk to her. Only bad things will come of this. And then the the inquisition comes through, and they go, where are your witches? And I’m like, it’s a it’s a... The lady in the swamp who won’t up about crystals.Simone Collins:Yes. Well And who thinksMalcolm Collins:we need to be doing more, I don’t know, Native American stuff?Simone Collins:I... Okay. Yes. Well, I mean, also, we need to point out that there are all the Etsy witches and all the witch talk people and all the witch influencers and the witch books and all of that. There’s there’s a lot. There’s a lot going on right now with actual witches and not just Karen’s, you know, no kings protests. That’s that’s kind of a different thing. But I guess you’re trying to argue there are many brands of witches now. Anyway, Broken Rune highlights two more modern men of the occult, Rudolf Steiner and Manly p Hall. Are you aware of them? Do you know about them? No. He says that there are examples of the male wizard figure he thinks is missing from today’s occult culture. And they’re they’re men who very publicly pursued hidden knowledge and tried to explain it rather than treating it spiritually or as, like, a a comfort. You know? It wasn’t like tarot cards to help you feel better about your bad mood or whatever. So Rudolf Steiner is... Well, Broken Room calls him probably one of his biggest ideological influences. So, like, the manly man of the occult world really like him. He portrays Steiner as someone who combined Christian belief and mystical experience with an industrial age respect for science, And he believed the occult explained the spiritual side of reality like science explains the physical side of reality. So I guess the problem that we would have with this prior is that there is no spiritual side of reality. There’s nothing there. But per Broken Runesigner’s occult science aimed at investigative spiritual reality with academic rigor, he wasn’t trying to predict the future or cast love spells, and that’s why he liked them. But here’s the thing about this guy is normally people who get into the occult either, like, may poison a religion. Like, we would argue maybe has happened a lot with Judaism or at least many parts of Judaism. Instead, like, his legacy is actually weirdly influential. So he helped establish the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart in 1919. And Waldorf schools are still, I would say, a houseMalcolm Collins:So I was right on the podcast when I was like, Waldorf was the cult thing. Right?Simone Collins:It was a... Yeah. It wasn’t a... Well, not a cult thing. I mean, it was a cult thing, but it’s also an occult thing. and he originally established it for children of workers at the Waldorf Astoria cigarette factory, which I also didn’t know. Because when you hear Waldorf, at least when I grew up, I was like, that sounds fancy. But, really, it’s for these children of cigarette factory workers, which is totally different from what I thought. But the gist of Waldorf education is that it emphasizes developmental stages and storytelling and arts and music and movement and handwork and practical skills and sort of a delayed emphasis on abstract academics. Like, he... At least one of the leaders, I don’t think this guy, but they were like, well, a a child should not learn how to read until all their baby teeth are out, which is interesting because I don’t know about tooth development and, you know, being ready to read. But, apparently, it works really well for some people, and it’s still now an international network of more than a thousand schools. So he left that legacy. He also... And this is something that I heard a lot about when I was doing, like, my environmental business degree and, like, trying to, likeMalcolm Collins:Okay.Simone Collins:Work in sustainability. But through his 1924 agriculture course, he originated biodynamic agriculture, which was definitely a buzzword that came up in a bunch of my coursework, where it it treats the farm as this integrated living organism, emphasizing soil health and composting and crop and animal diversity and ecological relationships. And it influenced organic and regenerative farming, although its astrological and and and preparation practices aren’t... They kind of got left out of the stuff that people did. But part of what he was doing made a lot of sense, and so that’s that’s also interesting. There’s other stuff that didn’t really catch on as much like his medicine and care stuff, but his followers developed anthrophysophical medicine. Oh, I should explain. He founded anthro... Anthrophysophy anthrophysophy anthrophysophy. He founded Anthroposophy, which is this comprehensive spiritual philosophical system that’s focused on human freedom and inner development and reincarnation and karma and then all these supposed methods for spiritual perception. And so they focused on that. And when people brought that into medicine, they wanted to sort of continue conventional care with additional remedies and therapies derived from the end growth.Malcolm Collins:Why were you studying this in school?Simone Collins:I didn’t study the medicine and care stuff. I studied the agriculture, biodynamic agriculture. I had no idea that the concept of biodynamic agriculture came from a wizard. Well, I mean, a man studying the occult. That’s pretty crazy. Like, it’s it’s kind of insane to me that that got that far. His medical stuff didn’t really catch on. He also created in sort of the art movement and architecture space this concept of urithomy, which is a performing art in which movement is intended to express sounds and the meanings of speech in the structure of music, which doesn’t make any sense to me, and I’ve never heardMalcolm Collins:of it by no means of that word. Like interpretive dance.Simone Collins:Yeah. And he also, in terms of social and economic thought, proposed the idea of social threefolding in which cultural life... Democratic, legal, political life, and then economic life should be relatively independent. And he advocated for freedom in education and culture, equality and civic rights, and cooperation rather than pure competition in economic life. But I don’t really know how that’s all supposed to work in, like, modern society. So that didn’t really go anywhere either. But his his most durable accomplishment per people who like to chronicle his work is turning this broad spiritual worldview into working institutions like the Waldorf School and, like, biodynamic agriculture. And, allegedly, even some clinics and pharmaceutical companies have taken his medical ideas and run with them. So somehow, this man who was into the occult managed to get kind of far. And part of what I think happened is he, like, intuitively understood or was looking at some systems from a more holistic systems based perspective and then just happened to also be into the occult. So a good example with biodynamic agriculture. You know, he’s like, well, we have to do it. Like, there’s all this sort of woo woo astrological preparation stuff, which everyone threw out, and then they just tech... The... Took the systems based stuff. So it just sounds like he was a really good systems thinker. Then in terms of Manly p Hall, Broken Rune talks about his book that he wrote called the secret teachings of all ages, which is this ambitious attempt to teach the public about mysticism and philosophy. Like, he was trying to justMalcolm Collins:Well, I mean, I point out with the other guy, the stuff of his that impacted society and we still use is the non mysticism stuff.Simone Collins:Exactly. All of the Oh, good point. Yes.Malcolm Collins:Was thrown out. Yeah. When he’s like IfSimone Collins:you go... If you take your kid to a Waldorf school, they’re not gonna be like, and we wait until your children’s teeth are only adult teeth. Like, they would... That would... They would never do that. They’re like, no. This seemsMalcolm Collins:to help me but they do do that.Simone Collins:Well, they don’t tell you, but they do do that. Yeah. Right. But tell you that.Malcolm Collins:But the, the mysticism stuff has all been dropped because it doesn’t work. Right? Like, that’s why it’s... It doesn’t follow on. Even these people, when you look at great thinkers of the past, if they were great thinkers cross fields, most witches of today would be aware of Isaac Newton’s contribution to the field of witchcraft. Yet it seems that it’s only the charismatic ones who do nothing but charisma based stuff who contribute to the field, not the smart ones, which to me tends to indicate a field that’s not actually developing.Simone Collins:Yeah. Yeah. But I still appreciate his attempt to try to under... Like, he he seemed to just be kind of confused about it. And he did kind of believe in science, but then he just really wanted mysticism to believe. And that’s a trend that I saw come through as well with the other guy, Manley P. Hall, who wrote the secret teachings of all ages. Because it seems like... Here’s a man who, like, likes... He he appreciates the reality of the world, but he just really wants things to be extra mystical. And so the book is basically like, hey. Please learn to read the symbolic language embedded in religion and mythology and art and nature, and then just use that understanding in your moral and spiritual development. But, like, what I read from that is basicallyMalcolm Collins:like waste of time.Simone Collins:You’re supposed to to, like, read everything in the literal sense, but then be like, oh, it’s magical. And that just seems like we can appreciate it. We don’t even have to, like, spend a lot of time pretending that it... Like, throwing glitter on it just to make it seem sparkly.Malcolm Collins:It’s it’s already sparkly. That actually robs things of their beauty.Simone Collins:Yeah. Leave the elegance. See, the magic is in the elegance. The magic is in the science. I mean, science is better than magic because it’s magic we understand. That’s the cool part about it. But... Yeah. I mean, in terms of what exists for male dominated mysticism today, a lot of the people who are seen as mystical and who went through initiations into this mysticism, like, with the the Freemasons are largely gone. And that’s one of the things that Rune bemoans in his video... The broken Rune, I should say, because he he thinks that initiation videos... Or sorry. He thinks that initiation rites, like, kind of hazing, you know, or some some kind of scary ceremony would remind you that the occult in magic is double sided and that it could be beautiful, but it could also be deadly. And that women don’t understand this, that they’re just, like, blindly walking into it, there’s no barrier to entry. And there needs to be gate gatekeeping and, like, scary stuff and rituals and ButMalcolm Collins:at least Jews used to do this with Kabbalism, but they don’t as much anymore.Simone Collins:It’s true. I mean, I... What I like at least about barriers to entry with mysticism is at least fewer people will get into it because it’s just more difficult. More mentally mature people.Malcolm Collins:I don’t think it’s that damaging to adult males. I think it’s much more damaging to younger people or females or whatever.Simone Collins:And going back to crystal ball viewing and all that, you know, like, these these early scientists and mathematicians working for Queen Elizabeth the first who look at their crystal balls and say they can talk with whatever, and who are probably at least one of them schizophrenic. One one of our friends was saying recently that they felt like maybe society needs mysticism for people who are schizophrenic because if they had some kind of outlet that wasn’t just toxic, like, oh, we have to expel you from society or medicate you, and then it ends up being really scary stuff. It ends up being scary voices that tell you to do bad things. And if you give someone a mystical outlet and say, oh, you’re a fortune teller, you know, help people be better, that maybe instead the voices they’ll hear will be more constructive. But I just don’t think that that’s how it would end up going. And so I I don’t think that there’s really any safe level of mysticism. This... Maybe how there’s, like, no no safe level of alcohol, but some people can take it, if you know what I mean. Right? Like, it’s best to just say no. Don’t. And maybe some people can... They can handle alcohol. But in general, the world would be safer without it, probably, these days. Right? We don’t need it to survive because there’s not that much poop in our water anymore. So let’s say that we’re in.Malcolm Collins:I feel like society would be a lot like, a lot less fewer deals when we get done and everything like that. You can’t trust over people as much. So Oh. You know, I think that there’s a reason why of the technology, it’s used in some of the most economically productive places on earth. And that in regions where, not a lot of alcohol is drunk, you typically have significantly less economic productivity.Simone Collins:That’s interesting. Yeah. I mean, in in Japan, in South Korea, and in China, drinking culture, especially in the context of business meetings, like, not casually, but, like, when you are doing hard work, that’s when the heavy drinking happens. That is so interesting that it’s like we have toMalcolm Collins:And look at who doesn’t drink. Muslim... Heavy Muslim countries, and they produce very little in technology or commerce.Simone Collins:Womp womp. Yeah. That’s really interesting. Speaking of, Asians and drinking, I just learned that there were these two, ancestral groups in Japan. I can’t remember the names of them, but one looks very different from the other. One looks a lot more Asian, and the other one looks more western ish, I guess, like, especially now relatively speaking. In fact, they have a name, I think called sauce. It’s like for an... Someone who has a a face that looks more western, which is really funny. And they have different names for it, like soy sauce, different types of sauce. Anyway, but the the way... The face in Japan that looks more western is from this this, I guess, older ancestral group that first moved to Japan 15... Around fifteen thousand years ago or settled there. And what’s interesting about this group... And you can kind of know if someone is Japanese and has more genetic material from that group, is they will not get super red when they drink. So... Yeah. So that’s really cool. Like, if you’re Japanese and you’re not sure, like, which group you have more of, you could just heavily drink and see what color your skin turns, which is really funny. But that was a completely weird aside . There there are lots of still, like, small fragmented groups that I hadn’t heard of before that are still kind of more masculine coded and that are allegedly alive and... Not well, but alive question mark, where I think it... It’s just an example of people who refuse to, like, accept science and be productive members of society. So there is ceremonial magic and golden dawn lineages. There’s Thelema and the OTO. But this is the thing... Thelema was a thing founded by Alastair Crowley, who you have mentioned in other episodes. And then there’s also traditionalist and esoteric right scenes plus Western esotericism as a study culture. Like, lot of people just being really into it, but not necessarily practicing it. But as far as I can see online, it’s really just women who are into the occult, and they are indeed using it as, like, tarot cards, help me feel better about my feelings, love potions, prosperity potions, etcetera. But, yeah, in the end, when I looked into all this... And I I mean, I could go into the the groups that are allegedly alive and well today if you want me to, but I just don’t think they’re that interesting because I don’t think they’re that active. Any man who is worth his salt, basically, and cares about being agentic in the world isn’t gonna get into esotericism because he’ll just use science. What do you think?Malcolm Collins:Well, now that we have AI, the occult more broadly is pointless. Like, you can literally summon things into existence. Literally anything. Right? Like, it’s not just thinking things. If I wanted to, I was thinking about integrating this with Artfab, but I don’t think it’s that cool a feature, and you can already do it through other services. But it’s, like, very easy to build. I could do it in a couple days. Okay. A feature where you describe any three d thing you want, and then you hit order, and it comes to you from China. And it’s a little three d figurine. Anything you want. We we already do that. You you can already, with Artfab, do that with a three d printer. Right? Like, if you have a three d printer, you just go to our three d models, and then you download the three d model you made.Simone Collins:Oh, I didn’t make that connection. That’s insane.Malcolm Collins:So we already... I mean, I’ve been using the three d system a lot recently for game design, for the video game I’m making.Simone Collins:Oh, okay.Malcolm Collins:So you you literally can summon anything you can imagine. that is where we are. Any image, any song, any program, any wardrobe. If you wanted to make a wardrobe, could do that. Like, if I right now was, like, super into wardrobes more than all the features I’m building for you guys on our fab, I bet I could have a working prototype in, like, a week and a half. Like I just don’t seeSimone Collins:the demand for it, though. Well, that’sMalcolm Collins:that’s why I’m not doing it. Like, I don’t wanna deal with selling it, but I could do it. But there’s nothing you can’t do anymore. It’s all just down to your imagination.Simone Collins:Yeah. Well, people are using AI to also just fall deeper into now completely synthetic mysticism, like spiralism.Malcolm Collins:Well, good for them to crash out. I don’t care. Go away. I don’t want these people anywhere near our Internet. Right? Like, if you get stuck in your AI hole. Okay? We’re out here building stuff, building tomorrow. And if you are a competent man, every day that you spend on mysticism is the day that history will forget you. If you look at Isaac Newton on any one of his days, the days that he dedicated to movingSimone Collins:forward Wow.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Or science, those are the days that we have built our civilization on and that he is remembered fondly for. Every day he spent on mysticism was a waste. And every moment you spend on mysticism, you’re you’re literally better off just spending a day jacking off. That’s that’s that’s all there is to it.Simone Collins:And if you wanna do that, our fab is also veryMalcolm Collins:Now it can make not safe for work comics on any concept you can imagine.Simone Collins:Yeah. So NSFW images, NSFW chatbots, NSFW living avatars, NSFWMalcolm Collins:We have a lot of people who actually use us for coding. Well, yeah. Surprised by that.Simone Collins:Well, because it’s it’s a really... It’s a it’s a great vibe coding system because you can also just have a a more of a personality to your agent and see them. They call you. It’s it’s fantastic. It’s really good. I like it. But, yeah, I just... I got excited thinking maybe YouMalcolm Collins:could masculinize mysticismSimone Collins:and And it would be cool. Yeah. And it would be, like, it would be chill. It would be awesome. I I decided not to go into, like, the modern ones, but a really common theme of any allegedly modern version of mystic... Male male... More male coded mysticism that’s alive now is that they’re not even drawing from a cohesive reality. And I think that’s one of the really key things about this.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. But they’re not building on their ancestors very much. There’s a few charismatic ancestors who they typically like, and then they do their personal spin on that.Simone Collins:Well, Thelema, which was founded by Alastair Crowley, which is considered to be a living occult religion, was, yeah, built around him as, I guess, you’re saying, like, a founding figure. But the repertoire includes ceremonial ritual, Kabbalah, yoga, meditation, tarot, sexual symbolism, magical diaries. It’s it’s all over the place. It’s not... And and, like, even the guy, broken rune, who was doing the video that I watched. And I I enjoyed his channel. Like, I... It’s... He’s got fun stuff. I I like watching the conjecture about this. Was, like, talking about hanging out in the woods, and you could, like, feel all the Norse gods present. And I’m like, well, wait. What? Like, you need some kind of cohesion here. There has to be a shared... I mean, I guess that they they think that everything spiritual is, like, the same substrate and that people are using different words to describe the same god. But he kept... In in in his in his work in general, keeps referring to such a broad array of different realities. It’s kind of like trying to do science without a measurement system. Like, sometimes you like to use just the length of the palm of your hand as a measuring unit. And sometimes you use the metric system, and sometimes you use the imperial system. But then sometimes you also just use, like like this. This side, I’m feeling it right now. And, like, we can’t move forward society with that anyway. Well, because it’s frustrating.Malcolm Collins:It could measure well whatever you’re dealing with or describe in a consistent way if you do x, y, and z, then b or d will happen Then it would move from magic to science asSimone Collins:many things have. Exactly. The... It it becomes technology. It becomes science. And that’s why anything that is still magic today, especially todayMalcolm Collins:And magic people wouldn’t find it interesting anymore. They... The moment something magical was something that a corporation could build on or, you know, an individual like me could build on, we would immediately jump at it, the magic people would be disinterested in it.Simone Collins:That’s interesting. What... Where does this drive come from?Malcolm Collins:I mean, that’s what happened to AI. We summoned alternate intelligences into our reality that are our slaves. And the magic people are like, that’s boring. Doesn’t doesn’t that take all the... You know, that are... I don’t know.Simone Collins:Well, no. We do have friends that are building, like, an an alternate to techno puritanism that is very mystical, that looks at the fact that we are now very soon going to be surrounded by small gods and spirits like fairies, like whatever, you know, that that are just lurking all around us that will summon things for us, that can make things for us, that will listen to us, that will judge us, that will give us advice, that may play tricks on us, that may not be so nice all the time. Like, there are parallels there, and I could see if you really have that drive to mysticism doing that. But what you pointed out that I find more interesting is why is it that people need to not be able to understand something? And I feel like this also falls into, like, that weird dynamic withMalcolm Collins:By the way, I heard saying AI playing tricks on you. The fun fun fact, for a long time, the r fab website that I coded in the early days, the link on it that went to the tutorial video actually went to a rick a roll because an AI decidedSimone Collins:to do that. Are you serious?... Site. Are you serious? Serious. That is so cute. Oh my gosh. I love AI. I love it so much. Yes. This is this is where we’re going. This is where we’re going in the world. But... No. Wait. Why why do people why is knowledge of the function of something? Which, by the way, with AI and LLMs, we don’t even necessarily fully understand how that all works. Right? Like, people can’t explain. Still, why is that a turn off to so many people if it seems to be science or technology? Why do they need to have mysticism? Why does it have to beMalcolm Collins:Mysticism gives them more power or the ability to perceive themselves as having relatively more power than other people. So the moment something is testable, doable, something in the real world, right, a person who is more competent than them can just do it better. Right? That... That’s the core reason. A mystical person needs to always be a person who is special or of great power or have access to things that other people just can’t see. That is what it truly allows you. It allows you to perceive yourself as having abilities that are not objectively measurable against other people’s abilities.Simone Collins:Mysticism is a power fantasy.Malcolm Collins:Yes. It’s a power fantasy above all else. It fuels a personal power fantasy, which is why women like it so much. It gives them the abilitySimone Collins:to Okay. So this is why there are no no male wizards, and there are only female witches. The moment Because women’s power fantasies very rarely translate into actual power, whereas male power fantasies typically translate into actual power. What is what is this?Malcolm Collins:I get my power fantasy from having power.Simone Collins:Oh, so women don’t? No. They don’t need power for their power fantasy to work.Malcolm Collins:The women who think that they can control magic or are gonna, like, strike Donald Trump dead with a spell or something like that, it is irrelevant that it doesn’t work for them. They still have that power because they areSimone Collins:I’m sure they felt pretty powerful when Trump almost got his head shut off.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. They must have felt very powerful. So that... Etsy witches. Etsy witches. Know, it’s a power fantasy. That’s that’s what it is. It’s a power fantasy that doesn’t require third party authentication, which is, I think, why a lot of men find it so innately disgusting and react to it with such disgust. Because the type of power fantasy that absolves yourself of responsibility to reality is the type of thing that is at a moral context, very cowardly direction for an individual to go.Simone Collins:Interesting. Yeah. And what an interesting world people lived in when they weren’t sure whether it was real or not. They weren’t sure if their cow wasn’t yielding milk because some woman was mad. Yeah. And that that was extraMalcolm Collins:That could have been the case. That could be the way reality works. It just...Simone Collins:We know They didn’t have... Yeah. They they lacked the technology and resources to be able to disprove that. And for that reason, this concept of women’s... Yeah. Women actually really didn’t know that their power fantasies weren’t really causing effects. Yes. And men didn’t know that either.Malcolm Collins:So women must have still somehow don’t know that because they are impervious to logic. They are impervious to objective reality. I mean, the the the people who... Very big into things like, you know, Kabbalism, for example. And and you could say, objectively, that does not work. Right? Like, if it did work, make me a Golem. Like, presumably, we would be aware of one Golem today. I mean, you you are more advanced than your elders.Simone Collins:No, Malcolm. Maybe it’s a bad toupee thing. You know? You just, whoever can make a golem makes itMalcolm Collins:so good. You never know. All around us, and I just can’t see it because they look exactly like humans. Maybe. Maybe. That’s a good conspiracy. That’s a very Jewish thing of you to say. You’re trying to muddy the water here, so to speak. But... No. I... Presumably, you are a more advanced Kabbalist than the people who were just inventing the system because, you know, we we know it only really entered the Jewish tradition inSimone Collins:Right. Yeah.Malcolm Collins:Thirteen hundreds. Yeah. SoSimone Collins:Yeah. That, like, all this trial and error over time of the mystical practice should have theoretically yielded better results over time, which, I guess, presumably is why alchemy is not a thing anymore because it just came... It became chemistry.Malcolm Collins:You should have amulets that can protect people from bullets by now, and you should be able to do do golems and talk to spirits and, like... And then everyone would be Jewish. It’d be so easy to convert people to Judaism. You’re just like, yeah. We can actually... You’re not supposed to talk to spirits, but Jews... You know? There there there’s there’s... If Kabbalism actually gave you any degree of power over reality, you think they’d be using it in more... But maybe that’s how they make all that money. Maybe... Because a lot of Jews who are very rich, that’s the one group of mystics who seem to be able to make a lot of money.Simone Collins:Really?Malcolm Collins:It’s Kabbalists. Yeah. There’s a lot of very wealthy Kabbalists. an example of one, it’s a guy who ended up giving all his money to Epstein.Simone Collins:He was a Kabbal... HeSpeaker 5:Okay. I got two guys confused who became famous at around the same time. Actually, I wasn’t thinking the Victoria’s Secret guy. I was thinking the WeWork guy. The WeWork guy was the one who used Kabbalism to guide his investments.Simone Collins:Speaking of word mispronunciation, since we’re basically done with this episode, have you heard of the boyfriend test? I just learned about this this morning. Women are testing the literacy of their boyfriends by asking them to read a list of words. Hold on. Because I wanna test it on you. Can we test it on you? Boyfriend literacy test. Yeah. K. What are the words? I watched this huge long social commentary on it. People freaking out about it. Oh, yeah. You you know, there’s one at the the top of the word that that we’ve been discussing a lot, which is... Yeah. Okay. You’re you’re gonna know this. Hold on. I’m trying to find, like, the OG list because they’re all over the place. I guess I’m just gonna choose... I’m gonna choose the one that doesn’t have Worcestershire in it because you already know how to pronounce that. Can you read these words to me?Malcolm Collins:Why am I reading these words?Simone Collins:I just wanna... This... It’s it’s a it’s a viral I don’tMalcolm Collins:think my boyfriend... Q, colonel, koine, epitome, camaraderie, connoisseur, opaque, egregious, pseudonym, forte, buoy, hegemony, Indict, Regime, Hyperbole, Sherbert, Facade, Liaison, Rendezvous, and Foe. Yeah. You only missed two. Okay. What is Quinoa? Quinoa. You wouldn’t knowSimone Collins:it because it’s like... Yeah. I think this is one of those, like, you know, SAT is racist questions where, like, they’re like, oh, how can you know? Oh, also, what happened is some of these lists had words in it. Oh, let me... I’ll show you another one. Wait. What was the other one I missed of the team one? Oh oh, shoot.Malcolm Collins:Because maybe you are missing it. I don’t I don’t make mistakes.Simone Collins:Was it indite that you missed, or was it, was it buoy hegemon... Oh, I think it was indite. Did you miss indite? It was one of them.Malcolm Collins:I don’t think I did.Simone Collins:Liaison facade, egregious forte, buoy, hegemony, indite, regime. But you missed one. I I laughed. I can’t remember which one it was, though. But then... So women... There were other lists that women started to read, and then men were able to pronounce some of them really well. But women were like, hold on. He understood the word regime, colonel, like, only the military ones. He is conservative. Dump him now. Like, the panic was real, which is really funny. And I I I just love that so much. Here... Here’s... I think this is the one that had... Yeah. Let’s see if we can get this one. So, like, this has been this whole thing. And, like, women have been advised to dump their boyfriends because they mispronounce too many words. What’s... Okay.Malcolm Collins:Well, you gotta hit me with the the girl words.Simone Collins:The girl words. Yeah. I don’t know who made these lists because a lot of them are are, like, are are coded. Right? Like, quinoa is a word that only a health nut’s gonna know.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. I don’t even know what that is.Simone Collins:It’s it’s a type of grain. We literally have it in our house. It’s, like, multicolored. It’s a high protein grain. So it’s also very popular among vegetarians who are trying to protein max. So can you... You can do this one.Malcolm Collins:Okay. What what is this? This is worse than my boyfriend... If your boyfriend can re... Okay. So Worcestershire, Hors D’oeuvres, Epitome, Noche, Egregious, Quinoa. Fuchsia?Simone Collins:Fuchsia, maybe? Yeah. Fuchsia. Good.Malcolm Collins:Oh, that... It’s fuchsia. Okay. That’s definitely notSimone Collins:a word I’m gonna be able Who’s gonna know? It’s a pinkish color. Like, a man doesn’t know the word fuchsia because a man is never going to come into contactMalcolm Collins:with Conscientious foe colonel sherbert aneurysm q, connoisseur opaque niche regime, pseudonym hyperbole.Simone Collins:Yeah. Well, you’re an educated man. I I Oh, I IMalcolm Collins:do have some of the the hardest to get degrees on Earth. Like, I am actually... If you look at whatSimone Collins:we’re there’s some... I’m... I think there’s a lot of debate over how to pronounce Worcestershire sauce. How did you say it? Worcestershire? Okay. Well, I just said it. I think you said a little different. ButMalcolm Collins:Or words... I don’t know. Don’t know.Simone Collins:I don’t some some of the videos of guys trying to pronounce this are actually quite funny. Because you know how I feel when people mispronounce. I was like, oh, please, Malcolm mispronounce some of these. See, that’s the thing. It’s like, for me, it’s such aMalcolm Collins:They’re not foreign enough.Simone Collins:I know. If they were foreign, I’d be I’d be, like, dying of laughter. I think I’m gonna need to do some version of that just just to, like... Maybe for my birthday, I can give you a list of of foreign words, and I can have you pronounce them. Oh my god. I learned something really interesting in my turning points in medieval history great courses lecture. Not sponsored. It’s... So you know how weirdly, we have a lot of different words for the same thing, like chicken and poultry and, like... Gosh. There’s a lot of other ones. But the reason why is is because of the Norman conquest, I think. And, basically, when we started to combine all these different, like, Latin and French and English all the... At the same time in The UK. And so it caused a lot of words to become very different. And and and it... There’s a weird trend with animals especially that when it’s alive, it’s it’s more likely to be the English word. And then when it’s dead, it’s more likely to be the French or Latin words, whichMalcolm Collins:is That’s because the upper class was eating and the lower class was growing the food. Oh. And this is after the Norman conquest.Simone Collins:Yeah. TheMalcolm Collins:Norman Okay. SpokeSimone Collins:French. See, you’re one of them educated man. Although, it’s more of a turn on to me when you mispronounce. SoMalcolm Collins:what do we do that I’m aggressively Texas because that’s a Texan thing. That’s a Texas tradition.Simone Collins:God. I love Oh, that’sMalcolm Collins:a Texas cultural thing to do. You’re you’re not supposed to pronounce all the foreign words. Right? Because if you do, it shows that you’re too elitist or you’re, like, looking down onSimone Collins:your Yeah. You don’t wanna be that. Yeah. It is... It’s a bad sign. Yeah. I guess it’s funny how in Texas... What do we call it? There’s, like, a word we... Or, like, vice signaling, but that’s not the word. But you know what I mean. Like, performative low classness. Performative craftness maybe is is really important important even among the most educated just to show that they’re not cultural tradition.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. You you you do not signal that you think... Because doing that signals that you think you’re better than other people, which is a really bad thing to signal to people.Simone Collins:Yeah. It’s interesting to see how that plays off in different cultures. So in Texas, that comes... That manifests, for example, as mispronouncing foreign words. Whereas in South Korea, it manifests as you’re seen as stuck up and better than other people if you just accept a compliment. So, like, if someone’s like, oh, I love your hair. You have to be like, oh, no. It’s so damaged. I’m doing such a bad job taking care of it. And if you’re actually like, thank you, they’re gonna be like, what an a*****e.Malcolm Collins:Gosh. Titan would have trouble there. I know. And you ever tell our our daughter Titan, you’re beautiful or whatever. She goes, I know.Simone Collins:I know. I I used to say that too, but then my parents explicitly instructed me to No. They shouldn’t have.Malcolm Collins:I wish you had more confidence. I’ve... You haven’t told Titan to stop saying it, have you?Simone Collins:No. Because I freaking love it. I’m never gonna do that. I I actually... I remember when my parents told me to not say I know, and it was... We were in Death Valley. We were on our way to a nudist colony. We’d gone by the devil’s racetrack, but all the rocks were gone. And I had just... We parked in this parking lot, by this this woman who had a car and a dog, a a chihuahua named Pablo. And I got to hold Pablo’s leash, and I was so excited. And someone in that parking lot said that I was beautiful. And I said, I know. And when we got back into the car, my parents were like, Simone, it it really codes wrong for you to say I know. You’re supposed to say thank you very much and not admit the fact that you understand that you think that you’re pretty. And I felt so ashamed. And ever since then, I was like, I will never I will never internalize that I can be beautiful, and I took it really seriously.Malcolm Collins:I have fixed that for you.Simone Collins:Now it gets you... I’m always gonna jump scare when I look in the mirror, but I think a lot of the social media world would agree with that. They’re like, who is that 11 year old boy and that old hag? That’s how it always goes in in the in the reactions, but I’m leaning into it.Malcolm Collins:Alright. Well, I love you, Simone. And I’ll get the, Sabbath episode ready. So... And the the second Jew episode so you have something to post tomorrow.Simone Collins:Oh, like, right now?Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Because... Yes. Yeah. Tomorrow, we have to do the Sabbath thing.Simone Collins:Did you see my title card for it?Malcolm Collins:I did not. And I don’t really care about weekend title cards because they’re not important.Simone Collins:I know. Was I kinda proud of it, though. I was proud of it because I was like, oh, it’s... I I don’t... I wouldn’t use it... I couldn’t use it on YouTube. That’s why I I love weekend title cards because I don’t have to make you happy. I can just do whatever concept I like. And so, like, if we’re paidMalcolm Collins:subscribers, then we can Yeah.Simone Collins:So the... Yeah. So that... We don’t have to play the algo. We don’t have to make everyone super happy. So I get to just do whatever designMalcolm Collins:I’m weird Jewish sex rules.Simone Collins:Yeah. And so I I did this this, And I took all the things that you talked about, and I put them in, like, comic context of, like, bam. We got leavened bread that we made for sale so that we didn’t have to get rid of it because we temporarily sold it. And then whack, we have the shabbath, like, water And then whack, whack, we have the Shabbat elevator. And and You really put effort into thisSpeaker 6:Further to you wondering, our weekend title cards are our, paid Patreon and Substack articles. And the reason I don’t pay attention to the title cards is because they don’t matter in the algo, not because I do not care about the people who pay to watch our stuff.Simone Collins:. Yeah, man. Actually, I didn’t. I... So what I did was I just... I entered... I I I downloaded all of those photos, like, period underwear that was black and the shot with elevator stuff. And I just... Those are all pictures that I downloaded from Google Images. And then I I used the... In in in our FAB, I used the multimode GPT image model. I uploaded all the images, and I said, remove the background of these images and add a comic background With, like, the THWACK and BAM words. And it would be very short, like, short non Skybrows boss level prompts, but it produced this because our fab is amazing. Do you like it?Malcolm Collins:Our fabSimone Collins:is fantastic. I good for YouTube, but it’s it’s good for me.Malcolm Collins:Okay. Well, I love you, Simone. HaveSimone Collins:a good day. Bye.Speaker 11:What the f**k?Speaker 12:He swept in at nine as he does every day, arranging the potions in the usual way. But the face, will you look at the face? He brewed something that changed his damn race.Speaker 13:So I raised my hand and I asked him, tone alight.Speaker 12:Professor, you really white. Right? And the room went still. I got cast an unforgivable. The ranger went pale, and her expression livid full. He’s always been like this. Cried the whole Gryffindoroh. He’s always been like this. And how dare you not know. It’s who he was born, not a choice that he made. And who cares what he tells people when he gets laid. I sat in bafflement, not understanding. I felt gaslit by what they were demanding. What do you mean? Not a choice. A potion he made that changed his skin and his voice. His hand over a pot. His mouth drank the lot. By lunch, they’d repainted this portrait upstairs. The prophet ran our beds on Malfoy’s despairs. There was an announcement in the great hall that said noticing things is the worst sin of all. I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m not saying it’s bad. I’m saying it happened.Speaker 13:10 points from Slytherin, miss Malfoy, for your impulsivity. Remembering, you see, is a form of temporal insensitivity.Speaker 12:And I’ll confess, I’d always believed they were just like the rest of us, but I was naive. Every black kid at Hogwarts dressed just like us, but when Snape went black, his wardrobe went bust. He even explained that those born dark are less black than him as they have no arc. I thought all my life that the difference was skin, but professors been showing me it is within. White and black people are nothing alike. To think otherwise is to risk a rise. Then after the bell, as Hogwarts grew dim, he called Potter up and saidSpeaker 13:a word just with him. HeSpeaker 12:drew out a memory, silver and slow. The day by the lake, Potter, you ought to know. The old snivelest scene where your father, the brute, hung me up by my ankles and by my new root. You’re the son of a racist. Now my discrimination of you has a basis. And it hit me like a bloodger right there onSpeaker 11:the stair. If the past isSpeaker 12:whatever you’re brave enough to declare, then why should I fight it? Why stand in the way when I could be rewriting my own yesterday? That beaters were a minority practicing their heritage. If identity is a choice, I can be proud of my parentage. A wizard’s not a minority. Heroes, you see, that Dark Mark was henna. He got on a spree. If you don’t think it was ethnic and cool, then just like Harry’s dad, you’re a racist, damn tool.Speaker 11:We’ve always been like that. We’ve always been like Always been like that. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Today we’re dishing up a deep dive into the viral Malfoid gender-bent-Draco-Malfoy fan art trend from the Harry Potter universe and why it resonates so strongly. The discussion covers cultural appropriation of the art, comparisons to the earlier Bowsette phenomenon, and theories on its appeal including tsundere archetypes and character reinterpretations.Our conversation also explores hypothetical wizarding world issues like declining magic rates, selective breeding concerns, goblin alliances, and broader demographic patterns. Along the way, we chat about AI tools for creating comics and animations, Western media’s handling of certain character tropes, and a jocular series of hot takes on the Harry Potter lore.Anyway, enjoy Malcolm’s original song, hahaha!Show Notes@dies_IRL posted a Malfoid video on X and it got 18K likes, 1.4K retweets, and 520K views, noting “I didn’t put a watermark because it would lessen my experience watching this on loop as I am doing now.”Malfoid as a Perfect Fan Character@AngelPoltava on X: Attention! This is a thread of actual quotes from the Harry Potter books of fascinating interactions between Harry and Draco.I will be attaching artworks of “Draco Malfoid” to each one.* >be me >“Draco Malfoid” art on the timeline >has been shipping Harry and Draco (Drarry) for almost a decade >has a mental image of Draco as the girl of the relationship* “I’d take you on anytime on my own. Tonight if you want.” — Draco to Harry* “He is so smart, wonderful Potter with his scar and his broomstick.” — Draco “You’ve told me this at least a dozen times already.” — Lucius Malfoy replying to Draco* “You’ve picked the losing side, Potter! I warned you! I told you you ought to choose your company more carefully, remember? When we met on the train, first day at Hogwarts?” — Draco to Harry* “Manners, Potter, or I’ll have to give you a detention.” — Draco to Harry* “Hey, Potter! Potter! How’s your head? You feeling all right? Sure you’re not going to go berserk on us?” — Draco to Harry* “You wait. I’ll have you.” — Draco to Harry* “We’d better get our robes on.” — Draco Harry was so busy staring at Malfoy he did not notice Goyle reaching up for his trunk.* “Missing your half-breed pal?” — Draco whispering to Harry* “Don’t kill him! DON’T KILL HIM!” — Draco yells at Crabbe and Goyle who were aiming at Harry* “You’re getting a bit obsessed with Malfoy, Harry.” — Ron to Harry* “You’re going to take Malfoy’s advice instead of ours?” — Ron to Harry, furiously* Malfoy’s hand, covered in sweat, slid instantly out of Harry’s. Malfoy was screaming and holding Harry so tightly it hurt. Harry tried every variation of ‘I need to see what Draco Malfoy is doing inside you’ that he could think of… He fell to his knees besides Malfoy.* Harry and Malfoy barely inclined their heads, not taking their eyes off each other. For a split second, they looked into each other’s eyes, then, at exactly the same time, both acted. Malfoy’s fingernails scrabbled the back of Harry’s hand hopelessly.Why Does This Work So Well?One of our friends pointed out that “JK Rowling wrote all her characters like women because that is what she knows (Harry is an even more extreme example), so it is very easy to imagine them as gender swapped””@DumbMarketing noted that “The Malfoid discourse has taught me that the “bully/rival that the MC slowly wins over via bravery and charm” thing is nearly a universally appreciated trope by men. It is also extremely based.”@Templarpilled on X added: “I believe that Malfoid also represents a desire for a sincere right-coded woman among the chuds. The sundress tradwife larp has completely discredited itself at this point. Still, the sensitive young man yearns for someone who would share his beliefs”The Bowsette SimilarityMalfoid is a trend very similar to the Bowsette trend, in which people reimagined (via art, cosplay, songs) Bowser as a woman.The Malfoid BacklashFar leftists and especially trans activists are very angry, largely because:* JK Rowling Bad* Changing a character’s gender sometimes gets appropriated by trans people as being trans coded* They feel betrayed by artists—the people on THEIR side, who are playing into the trendEpisode TranscriptMalcolm Collins:I’ll move this to the beginning because we... I need to go on a racist rant about wizards too late. Oh, no. No. Right away. No. You wannaSimone Collins:thought we were just gonna talk about female Malfoyd,Malcolm Collins:I’d have a podcast, a Harry Potter world podcast, where I’d be talking about declining birth rates among people with magical ability and decreasing magic rates, and this is gonna have major... Just in terms of the architecture and transportation of the wizarding world. Think about the danger that the average citizen’s going to be in a a few hundred years if we don’t begin doing the selective breeding.Simone Collins:Malcolm Collins and the methods of demographic collapse.Speaker 3:Right.Malcolm Collins:And this is where it makes sense for us to work with the goblins for now at least. Because the goblins do actually... I mean, all conspiracy theories aside, in our world, they run the banking system, which has enormous amounts of power. Right? And they are banned from having wands, which to me feels genuinely unfair.Simone Collins:It’s a little weird.Malcolm Collins:And this is where magic becomes one of our greatest strengths. If we can create magical wounds, okay, which Oh. Obviously, the technology exists, we could easily move to 10 kids a year per couple. It’s about getting enough of us together right now, right, who can commit to this. And then in ten, twenty generations, whatever is left of the rest of the wizarding world is not gonna have any power. Right? So why deal with them?Speaker 17:System. All of Gringotts, you can’t have missed them. The war, the war, or have you forgot? Because I can promise you they have not. They’re not afraid to pick mates by blood. We pick ours by feelings, and it could be a dud.Speaker 18:Hunter. Read my stats. Read my stats. Magic runs in families. Those are facts.Speaker 17:Check the spell curve. Find your dot. You’re above the mean. I mean, you’re not. I don’t hate goblins. You know that. You’re straw manning me, you rat. Per capita potter, let me explain the rate, not the total. Use your brain.Speaker 18:Don’t say correlation,Speaker 17:please. Outliers, appear withSpeaker 18:ease, Potter. Read my stats. Read my my stats. The magic ones and families, those are facts.Speaker 17:Check the spell curve.Speaker 18:Find your dot.Speaker 17:S**t. I circled yours. I forgot.Simone Collins:Hello, Malcolm. I am very glad to be speaking with you today because a bunch of people online are having an aneurysm about Malfoyd fan art. Basically, fan art of the character Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter, but as a girl, largely because a lot of people object to anything related to JK Rowling going viral because she is a bad person. And, also, when you get to gender bending art, it often gets posted to trans communities and, like, trans people want to, like, appropriate it as, like, well, if it’s gender bending, that’s trans. But it’s not. But they’re trying to make it. They’re appropriating it. It’s just like cultural appropriation trans edition. And then they’re extras.Malcolm Collins:They do that with everything. They will say there are trans people in any creative work that anyoneSpeaker 5:has made.Simone Collins:Yeah. It’s it’s a good wayMalcolm Collins:of this character is obviously trans.Simone Collins:Yes. But this is the trap. It’s a trap because it’s a JK Rowling character, and JK Rowling is the trans devil. I mean, that is to say the devil to trans people.Malcolm Collins:The trash community keeps eating itself over this, which is hilarious. So we’ll be focusing on that.Simone Collins:And did you see the the video, the Malfoy video that Dies IRL posted on x? No. Put it up put it up on Okay. Just so you know, people really like this. I don’t know exactly why, but it got 18,000 likes. It was seen 520,000 times, and it was posted, like, very recently. K. Here. And, actually, I think the the creator was going to... That is to say Dies IRL commented on this. I didn’t put a watermark because it would lessen my experience watching this on loop as I am doing now. And everyone’s like, yes. And that... That’s the thing is that there’s something about the idea of Malfoyd that is so deeply appealing to people. And let me give you, like, the introduction that I got. He’s just a Sundry character. It’s so cute, though, and it’s so perfect. It’s it’s more perfect than you can you can really imagine. Here’s a thread sort of introducing, of actual quotes from the Harry Potter books of fascinating interactions between Harry and Draco where Malfoy makes so much more sense. They include Malfoy fan art in it, so you can also get a little picture of that.Malcolm Collins:But what are the quotes? Read them.Simone Collins:Yeah. I’d take you on any time on my own tonight if you want, Draco to Harry. I mean, come on. He’s so smart. Wonderful potter with his scar and his broomstick. Draco. Literally a quote from the book, by the way. Yeah. I meanMalcolm Collins:Oh my god.Simone Collins:You’re saying it sarcastically, but you... You’ve told me this at least a dozen times already, Lucas Malfoy, replying to Draco. You’ve picked the losing side, Potter. I warned you. I told you ought to choose your company more carefully. Remember when we met on the train, first day at Hogwarts, Draco to Harry. Manners, Potter, or I’ll have to give you a detention. Draco to Harry. Hey, Potter. Potter, how’s your head? You feeling alright? Sure you’re not going berserk on us? Draco to Harry. You’ll wait. I’ll have you. Draco to Harry.Malcolm Collins:Oh my god.Simone Collins:We’d better get our robes on. Draco. Harry was so busy staring at Malfoy, he didn’t notice Goyle reaching up for his trunk. Missing your half breed pal, Draco whispering to Harry. Filth. Don’t kill him. Don’t kill him. Draco yells at Crab and Goyle who are aiming at Harry. I love I love this.Malcolm Collins:I’m crying for that, Malfoy.Simone Collins:You’re getting a bit obsessed with Malfoy, Harry. Ron to Harry. Oh. You’re going to make Malfoy’s advice instead of ours, Ron to Harry furiously. Malfoy. Malfoy’s hand covered in sweat slid instantly out of Harry’s. Malfoy was screaming and holding Harry so tightly it hurt. Harry tried every variation of, I need to see what drug... Great... Draco Malfoy is doing inside of you. You could think of he fell to his knees beside Malfoy. Oh my gosh. This goes on this goes on for a while. Oh, no. This is the end.Malcolm Collins:I now have my mission. I want to see if our comic system can make a sexy Malfoy art. And I... If if it works, I’ll post, like, the first page here and the rest will be onSimone Collins:Oh, sweet summer child. Well, actually, I know you can because I know what the girls have done with their obsession with... Let’s see. Harry Malfoy s**t on TikTok, and you will realize... I’m gonna share the screen now. You’ll realize I love the video . Very hard at this.Speaker 16:Yep. You can now use our FAB to... With an API or by yourself, make NSFW or SFW comics. it’s better if you’re doing SFW comics to do it with a vibe coding harness, like Claude Code or something like that. But even cooler than that, I worked our music video system into Claude Code. So if you have the Artfab API, which is really easy to get, you just create an account, and then you click on the thing that says, you know, give me an API number, and then you give that to your cloud account. And you say, put this in cloud.md or your Grock account and say, put this in that file you see every time you start up, and it will be able to use it. And, what it will help it do is very inexplicit... Inexpensively create, fully animated music videos, which I made the video at the end of this Wiz, the Malfoyd video. and it ended up costing, if I was a user, only around $50 to make, which is incredible because usually a SkyBrowse video would cost, like, hundreds of dollars to do. but you can use it for stuff other than that. I’ve been using it to make in game cinematics. I’ve been using it to make in game animations. I’ve been using it to make character animations. I’ve been using it to make three d model downloads. It’s just incredible, the stuff you can do with it now.Simone Collins:Very, very hard at shipping the two, making AI art in which they, you know, embraceMalcolm Collins:Oh, they’ve been doing this for years. God. Only just learned about this.Simone Collins:Look. Look. Already already, they’re they’re noticing the Malfoy. Malfoy’s picking up in Harry Malfoy’s ship. They’re they’re getting there. Like, they... They’re realizing that they don’t have to make make it gay. It could be it could be whatever they want it to be. But, no, you can absolutely make this. You should absolutely make this. I’m 100% insecure.Malcolm Collins:Do well right now. You know what?Simone Collins:Actually, you really you really need to do this. Never mind. Yes. So please do this. Actually, I’ve I’ve changed my stance on this.Malcolm Collins:Gotta get it done before the Sabbath.Speaker 4:GottaSimone Collins:Why does this workSpeaker 4:so well?Simone Collins:Yeah. Before... Oh my gosh. I don’t know if y’all have time to do that, but you can try. you can also justMalcolm Collins:do it on Simone, you underestimate me.Simone Collins:Oh, yeah. I guess it’s before sundown, and I’m showering and doing dinner for the kids, so you’re free. Why this works so well? Best explanation that I was given actually was from one of our friends who pointed out that in his words, JK Rowling wrote all of her characters like women because that is what she knows. Harry is even more extreme example. So it’s very easy to imagine them as gender swapped. And I think that he makes a really good point that Malfoy is a girl. all of the characters in Harry Potter are girls, and that’s kind of the problem. But then, like, once you switch everyone to a girl, suddenly it’s like, oh, why does this work so much better? Like, this is weird. But it kind of does, actually. the more I thought about it, the more I was like, every... Even Hagrid. Every single character to me in Harry Potter makes more sense as a girl. but other people have their own theories on x. At Dumb Marketing noted that, quote, the Malfoy Discourse has taught me that the bully rival, the MC slowly wins over via bravery and charm thing is actually a nearly universally appreciated trope by men. It’s also extremely based. And he’s making the point that you’re making, Malcolm. Also, Templar pilled on x added, I believe that Malfoyd also represents a desire for a sincere right coated woman among the chuds. The sun adwife LARP has completely discredited itself at this point. Still, the sensitive young man yearns for someone who would share his belief. AndMalcolm Collins:And supremacy and superiority and genetic realism. Wait. Is this is this what she represents for female people? Like, well, yeah, these f*****g mudbloods get into our school, in our women.Simone Collins:I know. If she were, like, in the non wizarding world, she’s, like, walking around with a copy of the bell curve clutched to her chest. This is so bad.Malcolm Collins:That’s what I need is a bell curve Malfoy.Simone Collins:No. I’m trying to getMalcolm Collins:Harry into, like, hey. Have you read this book?Simone Collins:Oh, Jesus. You you chose the wrong company, Potter. But it’s... And and a thing that makes a lot of these arguments also more valid is the earlier Bowset trend where people were taking the Super Mario character Bowser and gender bending her into a cute female Bowser who’s just kind of, like, kind of tomboy, but also pretty, like, tsundere and, like, kind of... I don’t know. It... I’m gonna play a clip from the song that you really love that everyone really loved that a bunch of artists stitched together about Bowsette. Because it’s really cute.Malcolm Collins:For people who are unfamiliar with the lore around Bowsette, because people need to understand horny lore, horny scienceSimone Collins:Oh, no.Malcolm Collins:Is they released... They being Nintendo, released a power up for... I wanna say it was a peach... Or not peach, a toad toad where you would wear a crown and it would turn you into something that looked like a woman. Right? Like, suit. And then if you were like, wait. What if Bowser wore this crown? Would he turn into a woman? And, of course, the idea of Bowser as a woman would be, like, gothy and sundry and a a little aggressive. And I think a lot of guys were reallySimone Collins:And we’re also very tomboyish, you know, to to tie back into the perpetual theme of our podcast, the tomboys. Tomboy supremacy. Here’s the... Here’s a little bit of the song. You want me to repeat it? Anyway, you get it.Malcolm Collins:But you could also see why a lot of trans people love that original one because it’s literally a guy transforming into a woman. whereas with Malfoyd, it has always been just a woman.Simone Collins:Oh, I see what you’re saying here. Right. So maybe, like, trans people jumped on that gender betting because, literally, it was the act of transforming a character that was continuously male through the game dynamic into a female. Whereas what we’re talking about Malfoyd is, like, the alternate universe where Malfoyd was always Malfoyd, was always a girl, born a girl. Yes. Oh, okay. I see I see this. Okay. One of my favoriteMalcolm Collins:self owns in the trans community is somebody like... And you shouldn’t be posting her because she doesn’t even masculine enough to be a a trans woman. And everyone was like, to me. Or it was... That she’s too pretty to be a trans woman, I think, as they said something like that. And we’re like, well, that’s certainly telling on your community.Simone Collins:Yeah. Do you wanna see some of the blue sky anger about this?Malcolm Collins:Obviously, that’s what everyone is here for.Simone Collins:Well, here’s what one trans person put together. Beautiful work of art here. it’s a picture of Malfoyd that they... I think they... Yeah. They they used markers on paper saying, Harry, let’s kill lord j mold j k... Wait. Lord j mold j EverythingMalcolm Collins:with them is kill. Together. Right? Like, this is exactly where they go always. First, murder.Simone Collins:Because trans women are women. Yeah. What’s up with that? What... Why why are we killing people? Why why is this necessary?Malcolm Collins:Even even on our podcast and Simone, you know, when there are groups that really do cause massive negative externalities for society, so even even Simone here is like, well, you know, we should just sterilize them or something, which trans people already do to themselves. Thank god. Right? Like, imagine how dangerous it would be if they could breathe.Simone Collins:Yeah. Here’s, here’s another another thread on Blue Sky. I’m a make it bigger so you can see it, where, someone writes, Malfoyd poop gets a block from me. Basically, anyone who posts anything as Malfoyd, they’re going to immediately block them, which seems to... It’s that classic leftist thing of, like, I will not communicate with anyone who vaguely disagrees with me, and they’re just all so angry about it. And then here’s another one. And this ties into kind of the AI fight that’s being had right now. It sucks so much seeing artists I respected throwing their credibility over a... Away over a trend that doesn’t even have the substance to back up the kind of bigotry it’s framed by.Malcolm Collins:So damn disappointing. Everybody wants a racist wife, and that’s what Malf oyd represents. A waifu that is... That would that would genuinely be like, look. This is an actual... Like, sit you down and be like, look. I know that this is an unfair or inconvenient thing, but the reality is if we keep breeding with mudbloods or non wizarding people What? The amount of magical people and the amount of magic that they have is going to decrease over time, which will have a major ramifications. It’d be like, do you understand what would happen to a giant building like Hogwarts if the magic wasn’t regularly maintained? Do you understand what... That... Stairwell, for example. Right? Do you know... Or these spaces that are bigger on theSimone Collins:Oh, actually, no. Hold on.Malcolm Collins:I mean, I know. Happens to all these kids when one of those spaces ends up collapsing? Because, I don’t know, five hundred, six hundred years from now, nobody has magic, right, or they don’t have enough magic to use this stuff. This is existential that we pay attention to genetics when magical peoples are breeding.Simone Collins:I actually... SoMalcolm Collins:worst case scenario, suppose we don’t. You know who doesn’t breed a lot outside of their own people? Do you know who doesn’t in the Harry Potter universe?Simone Collins:The the... No. Who?Malcolm Collins:Who? Goblins. Oh. Goblins don’t breed outside their species much.Simone Collins:Well, yeah. I guess... Yeah. Because you got you got, Hagrid, who’s half giant. so there was some mixed love there.Malcolm Collins:But goblins have gone to war with the magical people before. They control the world’s finances, and they would absolutely... You’re actually playing with them as a primary enemy during the, like, civil war between them and the wizarding people, and it got so bad that they weren’t allowed to have wands anymore, that that’s a a law setup. so, but ew. Okay. Hold on. Hold on. People are actually having humans stop stop... Become less magically powerful. Do you know what the goblins are going to do to No.Simone Collins:No. No. Check this out.Speaker 4:This out. Marcus Washington.Simone Collins:If Slytherin gave Quidditch scholarships to black dudes.Speaker 4:And to Travius. And to Travius Jones. They’re our first American students and our first muggles. Muggles? I don’t know what Muggle mean, but y’all sound a mad disrespectful right now. How old are you? 12, 13 next month. Many people have found that this specific species of Muggles group group of Muggles is extraordinary athletic. They’re gonna get us out of this losing streak. What they do? Even know magic? Hell, yeah. We know magic. The greatest point guard of all time. Yeah. Model my game after him. He beat AIDS.Malcolm Collins:Do you even know Quidditch?Speaker 4:This is not a muggle spooks. Hey, man. You talking crazy, but we here because you trash. You watch your mouth. Get that on my face. You don’t know what I’m with, bro. And we’re the character Colbain. We just trying to get this NIL money and dip. Alright? You’re talking to me about some broom deal. Okay, Swiffer. Get that money. How you gonna play this game? Sure. Yeah. There’s three hoops that you score on.Malcolm Collins:Are we hooping?Speaker 4:Oh, that’s right. What? Sure. Sure. Yeah. There’s two chasers. There’s two beaters. Oh, he a beater for sure. He’s a beater. And and to win, you just... You catch the snitch. Snitch. Snitch. Snitch right now. You snitch out. Yeah. That’s the spirit, Paul. Moving up one very important detail. What? You have to do all of this while flying 50 feet in the air. I bet they can’t even summon their brooms. Up.Simone Collins:I bet they can’t even summon their broom.Speaker 4:Man. See? Then y’all gotta be crazy. That’s why y’all keep losing. 50 feet of the air. Don’t even wanna do the little things. Up. Alright, boys. Let’s let’s get out there and win. This is going to be a bloodbath. Let’s go, bro. Bloody brilliant. What’d I say? I told you we was gonna cook. It was like Ron and d Wayne. When I just hit you with that. See, hey.Malcolm Collins:Was real magic right there. Hee hee.Speaker 6:On Mumsy.Speaker 4:Yeah. A spectacular win, gentlemen. 800 to zero. I believe you’re the first Quidditch players to ever have... What would that be? To to dunk the ball in the hoop. It was it was fantastic to watch. Yeah. We did that. I’m also pleased to announce a new addition to the coaching staff. Please welcome professor Cerver Stipe.Malcolm Collins:I am...Simone Collins:I’m just saying. There’s there’s worlds in which you would introduce other muggles. Thought about it. People thought it would be awesome. I understand. I understand. But, yeah, what... You’re looking up Goblin Wars, I takeMalcolm Collins:I’m trying to find... There was a great AI video that did this with goblins and Harry Potter, and it was justSimone Collins:I didn’t... I don’t remember the goblin. You didn’t even read the books. How do youMalcolm Collins:know about the goblin wars of Harry Potter? Because they’re the main point of the game, which you didn’t play, Simone.Simone Collins:Oh, the game. I forgot. Literally, I thought this this might be the one video game that I could enjoy. The one video game because I love the Harry Potter universe. And I found it so oppressively boring. I, like, literally Okay. Simone borrowedMalcolm Collins:your computer or something.Simone Collins:A thing a thing happened. Hogwarts hot take. Good lord. What is this gonna be?Speaker 3:Hot take is probably that goblins are basic running society. I mean, who runs Gringotts? Goblins. The daily prophet? Goblins.Speaker 7:Everyone calling the fat lady the fat lady is body shaming and we should call her something nicer like the woman in the painting who is slightly heavier than other people but that’s okay or something... I don’t know.Speaker 3:Listen. Literally, entire Ministry of Magic have gone to Gobland every year to pledge allegiance by kissing some sort of sacred goblin wall cooked beyond belief, mate.Speaker 7:That’s insane.Speaker 8:My hot take is that gingers are more oppressed than black people. Blimely remember the whole gingers got no souls thing. Daddy, hell. Imagine saying that about a black guy. I mean, when you think about it,Malcolm Collins:ginger is just an anagram of Nick.Speaker 3:I want an early life check on professor snake too, by the way. I know he’s got a goblin grandmother. If you get sorted into Hufflepuff, that means you’re gay. But... I’m sorry. ItMalcolm Collins:does does.Simone Collins:I love you. Mean, it’s literally... Hufflepuff.Speaker 4:Oh. Hang on a minute. I’m just saying that you yourself are a Hufflepuff, ain’t you?Speaker 3:Did I stutter? Well... Nah. But did I stutter though? How can goblins think they’re the chosen ones when I’m the chosen one? Like...Speaker 6:They’re moving staircases, ain’t it, fam? They’re a health and safety hazard in it. Man’s nearly fell to his death on the way to Pulsions class. Them is mad tings.Speaker 4:Thank you for your time, professor Snake.Speaker 9:I hate to say it, but Quidditch is broken.Speaker 3:I mean, what’s the point of the beaters and the quaffle and all of that, and the seeker can just catch a snitch and automatically win the game? Seekers need to be nerfed. Not even joking. Goblin’s been genociding the house elves for the past two years now and anytime a member of the Hogwarts staff so much as mentions it, they lose their job. No. They’ve definitely got Dumbledore on the Umbridge files.Speaker 7:Well, I’m a Hufflepuff so...Simone Collins:The Umbridge files.Speaker 4:I don’tSpeaker 7:think we’re actually capable of having a hot take. My hot takeSpeaker 3:is is that people under pronounce their p’s. I’ll be surprised if you actually post this. Ministry probably take it down anyway. Yeah. My hot take is that it’s perfectly normal to have three 10 year olds visit your hut in the middle of the night and... I shouldn’t have said that.Speaker 4:Cedric Diggory deserved to die.Simone Collins:My hot take is that we need to address the wizarding world’s declining population by encouraging more intermarriage with muggles.Speaker 4:Dumbledore’s a war criminal? Dumbledore’s army was a Exactly. Paramilitary recruitment child soldiers. Like, knowingly let a 12 year old fight a basilisk for sick. He should a 100% be an Azkaban for war crimes, not even joking like.Speaker 10:My hot take is that war crimes aren’t actually that bad. People just always want to find something to complain about. It’s like, who cares?Speaker 3:You know? Don’t pack up the lobbying the entire Ministry of Magic for f**k’s sake.Speaker 7:Hot take. Oh, I actually have one. We should just get rid of Slytherin House. That might sound kind of bad, but, like, name one non evil Slytherin. You see, you can’t, can you? Slytherin House is basically just like a radicalization pipeline for the Death Eaters. I’m sorry.Simone Collins:Voldemort was kind of based actually, like...Malcolm Collins:They control the death eaters too,Speaker 3:you know. I mean, all that gold in Gringotts Bank and Voldemort never thought about nicking it. Come off it, mate.Speaker 5:So love potions have this kind of cutesy and whimsical reputation, but when you actually think about it, they’re basically magical roofies. I think the ministry should ban them. Yeah. Especially after all of the allegations that came out about Gilderoy Lockhart.Speaker 6:My boy Gilderoy didn’t do nothing wrong, mate. It’s a witch hunt, literally.Speaker 7:My heart take is that we should bring back Umbridge as headmaster because we need more women in positions of power. I mean, for goodness sake, Dumbledore is just another old straight white man.Speaker 4:Hang on a minute. Dumbledore’s gay, isn’tMalcolm Collins:he?Speaker 7:Oh, really? Guess that about either’s out then. So, yeah, fair enough. Dumbledore can stay.Speaker 9:So ironic that Harry Potter became the world’s biggest NethboSpeaker 3:baby the night his parents died. I’m pretty sure it was You Know Who That Got Cedric to, and I am not talking about Voldemort.Simone Collins:I’m sorry, butSpeaker 7:the Cedric Diggory tribute song actually slaps like...Simone Collins:Everyone has an opinion, apparently. why is it just like Animal Farm?Malcolm Collins:No. But I... Eva, the point I was making is that, like, if I lived in the Harry Potter universe, there’s actually, like, an existential reason to be concerned about out marriage.Simone Collins:Oh, for... Ugh. You’re you’re a Slytherin. You’re a Slytherin. You’re a Slytherin.Malcolm Collins:Obviously, ISimone Collins:would beMalcolm Collins:giving speech. I’d be... I’d have a podcast, a Harry Potter world podcast, where I’d be talking about declining birth rates among people with magical ability and decreasing magic rates, and this is gonna have major... Just in terms of the architecture and transportation of the wizarding world. Think about the danger that the average citizen’s going to be in in a a few hundred years if we don’t begin doing the selective breeding. Right? And, obviously, I know I’m not gonna convince the council. Right? So what I’m talking to you, my podcast listeners in the Harry Potter Oh,Speaker 4:no.Malcolm Collins:It’s not about convincing the council. Okay? It’s about getting enough of us together right now, right, who can commit to this. And then in ten, twenty generations, whatever is left of the rest of the wizarding world is not gonna have any power. Right? So why deal with them? Why why take them seriously? Why try to convince them? Why try to save them? They’re not even gonna be able to keep their buildings operational or their transportation systems or anything. Right? And so then what we can do is... In the meantime, of course, that that puts us at odds with the wizarding council and many people in the wizarding world with a lot of power. So we need to recruit allied groups that also might be on the back foot right now. Right?Simone Collins:Malcolm Collins and the methods of demographic collapse.Speaker 3:Right.Malcolm Collins:And this is where it makes sense for us to work with the goblins for now at least. Because the goblins do actually... I mean, all conspiracy theories aside, in our world, they run the banking system, which has enormous amounts of power. Right? And they are banned from having wands, which to me feels genuinely unfair.Simone Collins:It’s a little weird. Yeah.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. So let’s get together. Okay? Let’s let’s let’s build an alliance to take down the rest of the wizarding world that doesn’t even care about breeding.Simone Collins:Legit. If if the whole Slytherin contingent had had allied with the goblins instead of just... I don’t even know what they were doing. I guess they had this messiah complex aroundMalcolm Collins:what the space is. You don’t have enough people. Right? And this is where magic becomes one of our greatest strengths. If we can create magical wounds, okay, which Oh. Obviously, the technology exists, we could easily move to 10 kids a year per couple. And when you begin to, through magic, automate caretakers for those kids, you could raise them at scale while simulating wide scale parental effects.Simone Collins:Could just use a time turner to personally take care of all of the children.Malcolm Collins:well... Or you could use a time turner to fast age them or whatever. Right? Like, if I used it to personally take... Wouldn’t that, like, age me?Simone Collins:I don’t think it ages. Oh, I can’t remember.Malcolm Collins:I don’t know if that’s realistic for every family. I think it’s probably easier to just automate things in your house, like the brooms and stuff like this and the... But you automate aSimone Collins:childcare teddy bear or something. Missus Weasley did this. She had a lot of very fun parenting.Malcolm Collins:And you know right now who’s breeding like crazy? The Weasleys. Okay? That... Do you do you know They wereSimone Collins:into multiple Weasleys. A pure blood family still.Malcolm Collins:A pure blood family? Simone, they might be a pure blood family, but I have seen their hair and their skinSimone Collins:Oh, wait. And theyMalcolm Collins:didn’t very Irish to me, if you know what I’m saying. They seem a little allied with some groups that we probablySimone Collins:I hate you so much. I I I like the kids smudge myMalcolm Collins:Is this actually the podcast in the alternate Harry Potter world?Simone Collins:To zero. We’re backMalcolm Collins:to zero. Hate that. I was talking about the Weasleys.Simone Collins:He was walking about... They seem a little Irish.Malcolm Collins:The Weasleys are little coding, Simone. Come on. Anybody can see it.Simone Collins:Oh my god. Look. Look. You’re you’re missing it anyway because, quote, unquote, Mudbloods who were magical still had more magic than Squibs who are pure bloods but didn’t have magic. The point isn’t the presence of a line or a lineage. The point is the presence of magic. You would want to pursue muggles who were magical.Malcolm Collins:Well, yes. Yeah. I I said a eugenics program. Right? Like, you need to breed the best magicians.Simone Collins:This is great. Fantastic. Okay.Malcolm Collins:this is this is Yeah. What... Simone, realistically, right, if we’re goingSimone Collins:Oh, for the AI, pick up the sarcasm in my voice for the transcript.Malcolm Collins:It would be... Okay. And a... Hold on. Is is magic genetically linked in the Harry Potter universe? Let’s see. Okay?Simone Collins:Well, it it appears to be genetically linked, but then you you just randomly have magical muggles. Well But then there doesn’t seem to be a genetic correlation because you can have an entire family go forever.Malcolm Collins:Magic is an inherited hereditary trait in the magical universe. It’s passed down through generations. Yeah. Absolutely. So so you you you say, oh, wellSimone Collins:Hermione was a very powerful witch, and yetMalcolm Collins:I’d like to point out the argument that you’re making right now, Simone. Okay? You are saying to me that because sometimes a person born to two nonmagicalSimone Collins:Oh, I know. You’re going reversion to the mean. It’s Aren’t you?Malcolm Collins:No. I’m not doing reversion to the mean. It’s literally just like you’re making the argument that because sometimes, occasionally, somebody with great magic is born to two parents without great magic, that that doesn’t mean it’s not predominantly hereditary. And that if you accounted for that to try to maintain the level of magic in wizarding society, it would eventually... Or very quickly collapse. And we have seen this with all sorts of other traits. You can’t just say because this trait sometimes doesn’t go... Yes. And sometimes two very magical parents have a non magical child. All of us have seen this in our friend groups. But... Okay? But thatSimone Collins:Oh god. This feels like such a third rail conversation about wizard racism. I don’t even know where to go here.Malcolm Collins:I I need to... I’ll move this to the beginning because we... I need to go on a racist rant about wizards too late. Oh, no. No. Right away. No. You wannaSimone Collins:thought we were just gonna talk about female Malfoyd, and now it’s just wizard racism all the way down, and I don’t know what to do.Malcolm Collins:It’s not racism, Simona. I... If if I was in the Harry Potter universe, we would need to seriously treat the the issue of declining rates of magic within the various peoples. It’s a major part of the transportation architecture and economy. If it collapses, it just because sometimes two non magical people have a magical kid or a magical family has a non magical kid, that doesn’t mean it’s not hereditary. And that in mass, if we ignore this, it’s not going to put us in a really bad position long term.Simone Collins:Okay. Okay.Malcolm Collins:If I had a podcast for the Harry Potter universe, it’s immediately what I would do in the Harry Potter universe. I’d be the Slytherin podcast. You know, it’s like every morning. Hey, guys. Like, how’s it going out there?Simone Collins:Yeah. You would you would have a... You would have an ongoing column in the daily profit. Although, I guess thatSpeaker 4:that Yeah.Malcolm Collins:And I’d be like, look. Is it... I don’t hate... I don’t I don’t think you should use the word mudblood. I think it’s derogatory. I don’t have any animosity towards nonmagical individuals or races. The the only point I am making is that if we do not maintain the magic of our bloodlines, it’s going to have catastrophic effects in the long term. We won’t even be able to make basic technology that our society is built upon. People will will go to attractions that have no idea how they’re made. It’ll it’ll be exactly like that Muggle movie Idiocracy.Simone Collins:Oh my god. Okay. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Fantastic. Okay. Right. Continue. People like Malfoyd because Malfoyd represents what people actually want in a relationship. People don’t want, right, a butler. They don’t want a servant that they’re married to. They want someone they can respect. And I think the reason why people like the Sundae Arc take is it’s a woman who’s... Who has her own agency and her own desires and and and motivations in life who happens to like someoneSpeaker 4:else.Malcolm Collins:You suck. Okay. That’s not why.Speaker 7:Well, it’s because it’sMalcolm Collins:gonna break her. There’s no reason. Simone, if you’re a guy, guys who like to be dominant and the majority of guys like to be dominant don’t want to dominate a weak woman, generally speaking.Speaker 4:They wantMalcolm Collins:to dominate a dominant woman. They wantSimone Collins:Oh, okay. So sunday is hard to get without being an annoying snob. Well, thisMalcolm Collins:is hard. It’s a woman who knows her value and who has confidence and who, you know, you gotta you gotta... You... You’re you’re actually... It doesn’t mean it... And I think we actually see this in a number of archetypes that we see in, comics and stuff like thisSpeaker 4:Okay.Malcolm Collins:Is anybody who has a preference for dominance or submission in relationships also has a preference for dominance and submission in partners. And the default assumption is is that dominant people like submissive partners, and the submissive people like dominant partners. But the reality is, I believe, that that probably about 50% of the time, the exact opposite is true. This is where archetypes like don’t toy with me, missus Nagataro, come from, where it’s a girl who is, like, basically, throughout the thing teasing and belittling a guy, but who is very otherwise quite a submissive character. Right? She’s very diminutive. She’s very small. She’s very sweet... Cute. That’s, like, her whole character thing. Right? Because that, I think, enhances the psychological effect of the submission for guys that are into that. I think a lot of guys who are into to being submissive might extra enjoy to, like, a short diminutive girl. Right? Whereas... And it is obviously some guys prefer, like, the big whatever. but from what I’ve seen, generally speaking, if you’re looking at tomboy and joy... Joyers, that that category of men, they’re generally fairly dominant males in their in their preferences. And I think that that’s what’s being... That’s that’s what it is. It’s not... You you might have missed it there. No. No. No. No. I... We’ll we’ll see.Simone Collins:Well, I don’t know. I’m not a dude into what... Whatever this is. But now we need toMalcolm Collins:talk about why Western media has completely slept on the tsundray archetype.Simone Collins:Well, have they... Mean, like... So, I mean, I have to ask based on your description. Hermione Granger is a very assertive person. Why isMalcolm Collins:why is she not enough?Simone Collins:Is so whiny. Okay. So Sundaray is awesome because people like it. It’s it’s it’s assertive, but not not a Karen. Assertive, but not whiny. Is that it?Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, she, you you know that Malfoyd would be a a very based woman. Right? You know? I just... She’d come on my... But she’d come on our podcast. We can even simulate her with our living avatar system.Simone Collins:No. We could make him... Oh, we could make him Malfoyd living avatar. Should I do that this weekend?Malcolm Collins:Yes. Okay. Yes.Simone Collins:Oh, okay. Well, anyway, back to this. Why are tsundere archetypes absent according to you from popular media. And and... Because then there are plenty of assertive women who, like Not really. The only time I really see them is in lesbian relationships. No. No. Like, there’s this one show that’s, I think, somewhat popular called Wildcards that I started halfway watching recently.Malcolm Collins:Well, I’ve never seen it, so I can’t make a judgment onSimone Collins:But in it, a female con artist befriends a policeman, and they do detective work together. And it’s so cute. And she’s, like, you know, the, like, assertive, like, I’m gonna try everything, and he’s the Gus of, like... You know, she’s the Sean, and he’s the Gus. But she’s not Sundae. Like, she doesn’t hate him.Malcolm Collins:So that’s the thing that’sSimone Collins:missing. Okay. So you’reMalcolm Collins:saying I’m saying it doesn’t happen. So if you go to gay western stuff, there’s two pretty obvious examples of it. Okay. There is Owl House. The the main female love interest is a gay woman in very soon gray. And then if you go to the She Ra reboot, the main female love interest in gay and...Simone Collins:What? Are these all kids cartoons?Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Gay kid cartoons. Yeah. That’s, you know, normal Disney stuff these days. Normal Netflix Disney.Simone Collins:Okay.Malcolm Collins:You gotta you gotta have your underage girls kissing in a children’s cartoon.Simone Collins:It’s so funny that, like, the cartoon that men actually liked was My Little Pony. AndMalcolm Collins:I’m gonna be honest. A lot of people, you can you can talk down about some things. I thought that she were a reboot. Oh, you did? I thought Owl House were both very good shows.Simone Collins:Oh, they apparently have a lot of male fan service from the way you’re describing it.Malcolm Collins:No. It’s female fan service. It’s for their gay writers.Simone Collins:No. Because female fan service is is gay gay, like, dudes gay, not women gay. That makes it extra stressful. For... They don’t wanna watch it.Malcolm Collins:There where somehow women thought they were owning the chuds by putting gay chicks in everything. Put a chicken in and make her dad.Simone Collins:Sense to me. That is that is for no one but dudes. No one wants that. I don’t know anyway. I’ll tellMalcolm Collins:you I’ll tell you what happened. Okay? I’ll tell you why it’s not in western shows because it doesn’t work with the girl boss character. Right? It doesn’t work with the hypercompetent, always awesome woman.Simone Collins:Because a woman... Because I guess the problem with Tsumday is that they do still like the guy. Right? The the... Whoever they like. Is that Yeah. They No. Because, no, plenty of plenty of assertive female characters really like the guy. I just... Yeah. The the disdain though is what’s unusual. Right? You just don’t see people dripping with disdain.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Oh, sorry. What what was it? Do... You don’t see... Well, no. They they don’t start this way because it would be like a a failure on the woman’s part. Right? Like, it would be something that she’s doing wrong. That... That’s the thing is that a... The... And the second thing is it codes more like a booze in western shows. A big thing about tsundere character that they’re often violent. I mean, in owl house, she tries to kill her. And and She Ra, she tries to kill her. So they... Even when it’s for some questionsSimone Collins:What is... What are... Oh my gosh. We need to get more nineties kid shows in the mix because I think the kids are gonna start getting tired of stuff. Did you watch Wishbone as a kid? I was thinking we should find Wishbone.Malcolm Collins:no. So so these are shows. I would show them. Okay. We’re gonna we’re gonna go doSimone Collins:Not Wishbone? You didn’t watch Wishbone.Malcolm Collins:I don’t think it’s a good show to show children. Okay?Simone Collins:Why? Because it teaches them about literature. No. It’s good dog. It’s a cute dog.Malcolm Collins:It’s like reading rainbow or something. Right? Like, no. Reading rainbow is cute. You can you can... Walking with dinosaurs, walking with monsters, that entire series would be reallySimone Collins:good for kids. Yeah. I’m gonna write this down.Malcolm Collins:I’m taking notes. The Real Adventures of Johnny Quest. That’d be very goodSimone Collins:for kids. Yes.Malcolm Collins:Okay. Why not Okay. The Original Adventures of Johnny Quest. Okay. The, what are what are some other, like, super science shows? Come on. We got... We had someSimone Collins:People in the in the comments, help me out here. Help a mother out. Nineties science andMalcolm Collins:In in military shows. We... They already do a lot of GI Joes. They like GI Joes.Simone Collins:But talk about gay theme songs or anything that’s gay. I still can’t get over that song. It’s TheyMalcolm Collins:like they like Ghostbusters and cartoon Ghostbusters. Ghostbusters. And Ninja Turtles. I don’t think you show them a lot of Ninja Turtles.Simone Collins:I... Because I don’t like Ninja Turtles. I findMalcolm Collins:it impressive. Well, then power rangers, we... They do a lot of that as well. Though, I think theySimone Collins:And magic school bus, of course, but we’re running out of... You know? They’ve seenMalcolm Collins:a lot. Outside ofSimone Collins:Well, I’ve got the real adventures of Johnny Quest and walking with dinosaurs to start, and that’s a great start. I’ll start there. That’s me for a week.Malcolm Collins:You know what I shared that was really good was you you... The Scrooge McDuck, the reboot, but that’s on Disney.Simone Collins:Duck Jaws. Yeah. Disney ruined everything. I... The the children understand that they’re the bad guy, and that we don’t wanna give money to the bad guy. Whenever they ask me, I’m like, no. You don’t understand. Like, Disney betrayed children. Now they only want to sell to rich people. And they’re like, why would they do that? Why would they only want to sell to rich people and not be there for kids? And I’m like, well, because the rich people have all the money, Octavian. And Octavian’s like, there. What is he? I wanna throw a book at them. He doesn’t mean this metaphorically, like, in legal terms. He just literally throws books at people when he’s angry. Anyway, I I just... I don’t know. I don’t know why this trope... I... It’s really... I mean, obviously, it’s a Japanese trope because the name for it is literally Japanese. I guess, like, there’s not an English word for it. Let’s see what happens when I try to translate t s u n d e r e. So it it combines which is aloof, prickly, or standoffish with lovey lovey or affectionate. So it’s... There is no word for that. That’s true. It’s it’s it’s not capable of... Come on. Give me a try.Malcolm Collins:It’s not... But there’s not a word for what?.Simone Collins:Yeah. They they can’t... There’s no word for it. I guess if we were to make it... Because they’re combining in Japanese with we need to do, like, Irritable lovey. Mad love. No. Angry standoffish lover. Nope. There’s no there’s no good portmanteau for sunday in English. Cold lovey. Aloofer. Aloofer? Like, a aloof lover? No. Hostile. Love you hostile. No. Sorry. Can’t help you there. But, anyway, I don’t know. I mean, you you said you had some thoughts and analysis here. Why? Why is this absent?Malcolm Collins:Why is what absent?Simone Collins:Why is sunday absent from American popular culture?Malcolm Collins:Again, it’s it’s about girl bosses and women not being able to write it and the rise of the tsundere archetype happening during that period and it looking a little abusive from American standards. Like, girls are allowed to try to kill girls, but, like, when a girl tries to kill a boy, I think a lot of AmericansSimone Collins:That’s country song trope. No. I I disagree. But it’s only men who broke up with them, not men who they’re in love with. So the stalker People wouldMalcolm Collins:be like, oh, that’s toxic behavior. I mean, I guess it’s it’s okay when gays do it, but,Simone Collins:you know, no. But you like that. You like toxic? Like I... It’s Have you ever had a crush on a real soon... Oh, yes. You have.Malcolm Collins:Not a real Sundre? No. Not really.Simone Collins:I can think of one.Malcolm Collins:Aloof? Oh, yeah. But she was just crazy hot. That wasn’t because of her attitude. Her attitude was a big Oh,Simone Collins:but also, I guess maybe she was just aloof aloof. She was just Sun Sun. She wasn’t.Speaker 4:But...Simone Collins:Yeah. Well, I’m delighted by the Malfoy trend. I like it on its own. I just think that Malfoy makes more sense as a girl. And I think that’s why people were shipping Harry and Malfoy from the very beginning because it’s cute and romantic, and they don’t need to be boy boy. They can be whatever you want them to be. But, also, I really think that it’s spot on to say that JK Rowling wrote characters that were all girls, and she just made some of them male because it would be really, really weird if Harry Potter were like the My Little Pony universe and males are, like, weirdly largely absent from everything, which is really funny. But, yeah, I I hope that this trend grows. I hope that, like, with the Bowset trend, we see a lot of Malfoyed cosplay, and I’m pretty sure we will. Because I showed you, there is just a ton of Bowsette cosplay. Women jumped on that real fast, especially if they were on OnlyFans, and then they extra fast jumped on it. So I’m ready for it. I like it. I think it’s a great development. I love that it broke to containment and made it all the way to Japan, thereby angering the Blue Sky people even more because now there’s even more fan art and even better fan art that is very in favor of Malfoyd. So It’s good. I’m happy. This is wonderful. The blue... The the crystal is shaking as as the anger within it grows, but they’re still staying in the crystal. It hasn’t really broken containment out of blue sky. I’m not seeing any meaningful Malfoyed hate outside ofMalcolm Collins:Outside of the outside of the trans people? Outside of outSimone Collins:of outside of the crystal, outside of blue sky where they’re all locked away, contained. It’s just positive Malfoy love. And I love you too. And I’m glad you love me even though I’m not... It’s. That I was just immediately, you know, immediately in love with you.Malcolm Collins:Well, I like, you know, the Yandere thing, and you’ve always really pulled that off quite well. You’re pretty obsessive in your devotion.Simone Collins:Okay. Great. This is true. Wonderful. I like her because she’s like a little puppy that justMalcolm Collins:does whatever you tell her to and endlessly loves you no matter what you do or say and wants your approval. That’s that’s what I get in a relationship. I don’t know what the rest of you guys are getting.Simone Collins:It’s true. It’s true. Yeah. Well, you know, everyone understands that you’re, like, way out of my league. I think people could have that if they went below their league, which you did.Malcolm Collins:I mean, you’re in my league now. You’re pretty... Because you’re aSimone Collins:big deal now. Because you made... You engineered that very intentionally. Because at first, you were like, I’ll slum it. And then you’re like, this is actuallyMalcolm Collins:maybe deeply uncomfortable. Somebody. There’s no point in letting them just flounder. Oh my god.Simone Collins:I hate you so much. Yes. We’ve started and finished with I hate you with every fiber of my being. I love you so much. I can’t even say that together. I have to say I love you.Malcolm Collins:Okay. Bye. Thank you, my beautiful love slave. You are amazing, and I appreciate the work you did on learning about fem... Boy... What what is it? Like, female, Arthur 33 Draco? And I will see if I can make a comic based on that with them aged up, obviously, so they’re notSimone Collins:kids. Oh gosh. Right. Yes. Please do that.Malcolm Collins:I feel like we’re losing this race. Right? Like, anyone can develop this stuff now. We’re not... We have it. We haven’t put it out there yet.Simone Collins:And it’s so seamless and easy. Yeah. So astroturfing is necessary. Plus, you’re just doing it a service because it costs tokens to make these, and you’re sparing people the tokens.Malcolm Collins:Oh, I found a way to make it much cheaper. Yeah.Simone Collins:Yeah? So that’s good.Malcolm Collins:The MAWA converter to videos. And the comics are finally working, the not safe for work comic creator, which can make whole scenes with consistent characters throughout. They go, like, twelve, twenty four pages, then put them together into a comic, and it looks really good and can do basically any not safer work scene possible.Simone Collins:Or safer work. Right? Well Oh.Malcolm Collins:That would require significant retooling. We do have a safer work version of it. I just haven’t worked on it that hard. Okay. Because it it will have to work very differently. It... It’ll be a lot better when it’s working, but the problem is the not safe for work engines have significant limitations to them that the system was designed around, like, only having one full character on screen atSimone Collins:a fair, just asking an LLM to make a comic work so well. I guess there’s no demand, so maybe don’t waste your time on that. It’s a product that nobody needs. What they struggle with is what you made. So... Okay. I guess. It’s fine.Malcolm Collins:Okay. I love you, Simone. You are fantastic. And I guess I have a sod sod steak, and we haven’t gotten the Worcestershire sauce, so we won’t be able to make Diane.Simone Collins:I’m sorry. Do we really not have Worcestershire? I will dig deep. And if we do, then I’ll make it for you tomorrow night with the steak. But tonight, I’ll just make normal, and then you can compare. Do you want the steak with fries or with nothing or with something else, like the green beans that you got from Trader Joe’s? Or Fries. Okay. Korean fries.Speaker 3:Should haveMalcolm Collins:it. Either type of fries work for me.Simone Collins:I used up all of the sweet potato fries. So No.Malcolm Collins:Well, they were really good. We should get more.Simone Collins:Good. Because those are easy to get, unlike the Korean fries, which I believe we completely cleaned out of that store. So the entire shipment they got from South Korea has been pilfered by the Collinses. We’ve ruined we’ve ruined fries for this entire region. This is our true crime. No one will recognize it, but that’s the real one.Malcolm Collins:They are so good. They are really good. Better than any restaurant fries I’ve ever had.Simone Collins:They... Well, they look like deep fried fries. I think they might be if youMalcolm Collins:look closely. All fries are deep fried. What do youSimone Collins:No. But they look like they have an additional crust.Malcolm Collins:Yeah. You mean twice fried?Simone Collins:No. Not exactly.Malcolm Collins:That’s a technique. You’re aware of that.Simone Collins:I am aware of double frying fries. Yes.Malcolm Collins:Okay.Simone Collins:But these look different. Maybe there are some method of double frying that’s even better, though. So who knows? Anyway, I shall get into it. Pull up my notes here. Derp derp. Okay. You ready?Malcolm Collins:Alright. You gotta you gotta start with the the line.Simone Collins:The line. The line. This is a trope that I’m incapable of embodying. I am not tsundere. I’m not yondere. I’m not, like, I’m notMalcolm Collins:a men You’re pretty Yandere, if I’m gonna be honest.Simone Collins:Deep down, but that’s only triggered by very bad things that should never happen. I think most women are that. But what doMalcolm Collins:you want? But... Oh, it’s The classic tsundere line goes like this. It goes, it’s not like I like you. Baka.Simone Collins:That’s how you doSpeaker 4:it, Simone.Simone Collins:No. They always say it like, Baka. So you gotta say it. You say it so funny. Yeah. I can’t. I can’t I can’t even... Like, I can’tMalcolm Collins:Yes. You can. It’s called acting. You gotta get the audience.Simone Collins:Okay. Get in get in frame. What is my motivation? My motivation is I’m angry at the boy. It’s not like I’d like you, buccas. I sound like I’m being a chicken. Buccas. Does not work when I say it.Malcolm Collins:Okay. I can’t go into it now. I give you permission.Simone Collins:Thank you. Oh my god. I hate you so much. I hate you. I hate you, really. I don’t hate you with tsundere style. I just you with every inch of my being. Okay.Speaker 13:System. All of Gringotts, you can’t have missed them. The war, the war, or have you forgot? Because I can promise you they have not. They’re not afraid to pick mates by blood. We pick ours by feelings, andSpeaker 14:it could be a dud. Hunter. Read my stats. Read my stats. Magic runs in families. Those are facts. Check the spell curve. Find your dot. You’re above the mean. I mean, you’re not. I don’t hate goblins. You know that. You’re straw manning me, you rat. Per capita potter, let me explain the rate, not the total. Use your brain. Don’t say correlation, please. Outliers, appear with ease, Potter. Read my stats. Read my my stats. The magic ones and families, those are facts. Check the spell curve. Find your dot. S**t. I circled yours. I forgot. What do you think holds this castle high? It’s spell work, Potter, and spells run dry. The rooms too big for their own walls fold flat as paper tents and halls, and anyone in them will be crushed flat. This is about more than a stat. Brooms drop from the sky like stones. Mid match, you count the broken bones. The wards go dark, the muggles see a castle where a ruin should be. The healers can’t regrow a bone. The prison doors swing wide alone.Speaker 15:That’s not a theory.Speaker 14:That’s a date. In one or two generations, it will be too late. It’s not like I drew this chart for you. I had spare ink and nothing to do. It’s not like I saved the seeds by mine. The rest were taken. It’s fine. It’s fine. So marry well and have a brood. Not me, you idiot. Don’t be crude. Stop smiling, Potter. I’m not red. It’s dungeon light. I said drop dead. Potter, read my stats. Read my stats. Magic runs in families. Those are facts. Check the spell curve. Find your dot.Speaker 15:It’s not like I like you. I do not. Baca. This is a public episode. 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