] Malcolm Collins: I am very excited to be with you all today. Today, we have on a guest, Aydian Paladin, who is a online right-wing content creator that I watched before we became right-wing. When we still voted Democrat, I watched her channel. So you can thank her channel in part for converting...[00:00:25] I don’t know what you did, Simone. But for converting both of us. And, and thathis is one of the things that I often tell people about- Mm-hmm ... you know, you end up converting somebody between teams. , You often don’t think about it as just, like, a numbers game. But that person can then one day go on to be influential themselves, or, and I think the most important thing, is the positive impact it often has on individuals’ lives.[00:00:49] When they start being like, “Hey, you know what? Maybe I should do, like, a monogamous marriage.” Like, or, “That, that’d be neat.” And then you end up you know, having a bunch of kids and being like, “Oh, this is, is pretty fun.” But Welcome on the show. What I wanted to start with, because you’re very unique among the guests that we’ve had, in that you were part of wave one anti-woke, right?[00:01:14] Yeah. Like, Nux has been on the show, and he’s been making stuff for him forever, but he didn’t become a right-wing guy until fairly recently. Yeah, yeah. Right? But you were out there so long ago, and I actually find this to be very interesting the... Your contemporaneous voices were people like ShortFatOtaku when he was still somebody who people listened to in this space.[00:01:38] Simone Collins: Yeah.[00:01:39] Malcolm Collins: And I find the difference in both of your careers sort of since then, and both of your ideologies since then, to be sort of an interesting story in how this wider movement developed. So can you sort of talk about that? Like, what first got you into this? And, and a quick note for people, you used to be a...[00:02:00] actually, maybe a more interesting question. You used to be i- into Norse mythology. Like, that was your religion. Oh,[00:02:04] Aydin Paladin: yeah. What made you change? Well, I didn’t, I didn’t talk about it too much on the channel, but I, I, I was you know, I was trying to be spiritual, faithful, because I’d read the research on it, and it’s- it’s a positive thing.[00:02:15] Well, I never really believed in it, but I tried to convince myself of it. I had a near-death experience now six years ago. I was in hospital for months. And then I you know, saw that I thought that was my calling to Christ, and I’ve been a Christian ever since. So, you know, that was my path there.[00:02:29] Was it[00:02:29] Malcolm Collins: really just the near-death experience? Or were there- Yeah ... like, things you were reading around that time or other things you were doing?[00:02:35] Aydin Paladin: It may have been as well. I, I never f- felt anything for the, the Norse paganism stuff. It was, that was a response to research says that this is good for you, that this helps provide meaning in life and the sense of purpose.[00:02:47] But it didn’t... I, I guess I couldn’t really... I never really believed in it in the way that, you know, having a near-death experience, as many, as, as often reported will give people a, a different kind of perspective on things, right?[00:02:59] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.[00:02:59] Aydin Paladin: And going, “Oh, maybe I need to reconsider this a little bit more seriously as your weight of your soul is on it,” you know?[00:03:05] One way or another potentially.[00:03:07] Malcolm Collins: This is, it’s very interesting that you answer that way because it’s literally the same thing happened to us- Mm. Yeah ... where we first became religious because we were having kids- Mm-hmm ... and we were just like, “Well, all the research says they’re better off if they’re raised in a- Yeah[00:03:20] religious household, so we’ll pretend.” Yeah. And then we started reading the Bible and being like- Mm-hmm ... “Wait a second, this seems, like, weirdly true and sense-making- Yeah ... in a way I didn’t expect given the, you know, prejudices I had.”[00:03:34] Aydin Paladin: Yeah. It was- Same thing for me as well. Yeah, I, I’d grown up with, particularly growing up in the ‘90s, I think there was a lot of, at that period of time, and late ‘80s and 2000s as well, I guess, up until quite recently there have been these very negative connotations in public sort of mass media about Christianity being or, or any kind of faith as being ascientific.[00:03:54] Whereas actually I found that many things that are presented in the Bible and in you know, biblical [00:04:00] narratives going all the way back, ‘cause to, to the Christian story itself are actually- Yeah ... cogent with the scientific narrative as well.[00:04:06] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But it- I, I often, you know, at, when I’m telling parents, like, how do you keep your kids in the religion and everything like that?[00:04:14] Arguing with the science is not a bad way to go, to be like, “In just reality, like, look at society right now. It doesn’t- Yeah ... seem to be working, right? Like, do you want to...” I, I wanted to get, when you created your channel originally, did you conceive it as, like, a science and psychology channel?[00:04:31] Aydin Paladin: No, I don’t. I, well, sort of.[00:04:32] At that time I was taking a sabbatical from doctoral school. I had been in doctoral school at the time. I, it, I ended up just leaving, but at the time it was just a sabbatical ‘cause I was really stressed out and I was, I was talking to my... I used to call my dad every day and I’d talk to him about... It, this was during 2016.[00:04:48] I, I, or it would’ve been 2017. It was right before the election. Mm-hmm. Trump’s first election. And it was during that el- that campaign cycle. I would just call him every day and I’d talk to him about politics, and he said, “Why don’t you go make a YouTube channel and talk to people in the ether instead of calling me up every day and talking to me about it?”[00:05:05] Malcolm Collins: What a thing for a parent to say. Oh my God.[00:05:07] Aydin Paladin: Well, I wasn’t, I wasn’t in grad or that would’ve been doc school. I wasn’t in doctoral school at the time ‘cause I was taking some time off, and I just ended up, I really liked doing it. I was very stressed out with doc school, so I just decided not to go back, and I got to do what I wanted, which was talk into the ether about politics you know, as as it interested me, but also be able to talk about my first passion and what my background is in, which is social science and statistics, and talk about how, you know, even though it’s social science I think this is a, a bit of a, something I lament with the right wing more broadly.[00:05:38] There’s s… 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