Cognitive Shifts in Motherhood

In this engaging episode, Malcolm and his guest discuss various concerns raised by ambitious, upper middle-class college-educated women regarding motherhood. The conversation covers fears about losing independence, becoming less 'cool,' cognitive decline, and balancing a career with parenthood. They explore studies on cognitive changes during pregnancy, the impact of career-driven mothers on their children, and the health benefits of having children. They also dive into deep philosophical questions about societal values, the role of women, and the transformation that comes with parenthood, all while addressing fears about personal and professional identity shifts.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Malcolm. I'm really excited to be speaking with you today. Today. We're responding to actually a based camp listener email and comment. He basically interacts with through his friend network and through dating a lot of what he describes as upper middle class college educated women in New York City.

Who typically went to school around or near New York or upstate New York. Many of them went to elite schools and they don't want to have kids or they're nervous about having kids. And the question here is, can I effectively counter the arguments that he is getting from them pretty consistently and he outlined them, I think very well.

The arguments map very closely to what I experienced or like what I was concerned about before I met you when I was still a single. Ambitious young woman. Not that I'm not ambitious anywhere. I think I'm more ambitious now, which is. Part of the discussion here. So let's just dive right into his compiled complaints of these young, ambitious, successful women.[00:01:00]

I know before we

Arch: do any of them, I will be laying out my premise, which is going to be what I'm repeatedly going to go back to in this.

Malcolm Collins: Okay.

Arch: Because I think the questions miss the point in terms of how do you convince women to have kids or be okay with having kids?

Simone Collins: Okay.

Arch: Because many people are like, oh, if you create like one that focuses on female They're basically like make the movement illogical because I'm like, well, you can just explain to women that if they do not do this, like if people who believe that women should have a choice around having kids if those people can't find a way to motivate above reproductive populations, people who believe that won't exist in the future.

You know, women will not have these choices. If people who say, oh, women should be allowed to be educated, they're breeding well below replacement rate, then people in the future won't believe that women should be allowed to be educated. Bye. And that this argument is just completely uncompelling to this group, I think shows how very non serious that they are.

And they're like, no, come up with a way to convince me that is compelling [00:02:00] to, to what? Like, that makes your own life better? Like, that's not the point. It's like when people are like, tell me about how great having kids is going to make my life. It's like, well, no, having kids isn't about making your life better.

Okay. And if you think it

Malcolm Collins: does though, and so that's why I, I'm going to disagree with you on some of the

Arch: secret. That's the secret, the hidden secret. We can't let them know that the people who want to have kids just to improve the quality of their life. But I, I, I here want to say that why, how has society gotten into this place?

Malcolm Collins: Oh my God, it's, it's like that, that really annoying Zen monk thing where they're like, no, you won't achieve enlightenment until you give up trying to achieve enlightenment. That's so fricking annoying, but it's also kind of true in this case.

Arch: So yeah, so I was playing in an AI scenario around the Omegaverse.

And so people who don't know, the Omegaverse is a popular online fiction used by women in a lot of like erotic artworks where like men can get pregnant and, and it's weird. It's like, [00:03:00] there's the two genders, males and females, but then within the two genders, there's alphas, which are like extra dominant iterations, betas, like normal humans, and then omegas, like an extra submissive iteration.

Anyway and the, this, this genre is used as a super normal stimuli. For many women around like ultra dominance in a culture. And so I wanted to explore one of these worlds. I'm like, that sounds interesting. I'm going to explore one of these worlds.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. And

Arch: what comes up in these worlds and I, I, you know, the concept of Omega rights.

Is a really big part of these worlds, right? Like, should Omegas have more rights? Why are Omegas treated as second class citizens? And yet, what I love is that these women, right, they are fantasizing about a world different from our world, where, like, some humans are born wanting to be submissive and sort of treated like second class citizens, but, like, it's a good thing because that's just how they're born.

Well, and some of them are dudes. Some of them [00:04:00] are dudes. So it's not just Some of them are dudes, that's what it is. It's not just a Well, you know, but the point I'm making is they have basically reinvented the concept of a male female split and then built it into a fantasy world where it's all it's not, it's

Malcolm Collins: not, it's not anti feminist because yeah,

Arch: I, but the funny thing about Omega versus is that the genders otherwise are generally equal.

That males and females are generally otherwise equal. It's just that sometimes. They're born having a pension for dominance. Sometimes they're born having a pension for submission anyway. So when I was talking to an Omega rights activists in one of these and I was saying to it, you know, they're like, well, you know, we should have all of these, these things, all of these freedoms, all of these abilities to work, all of these blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I was like, but. You only decided that those are things of value because in this world, most of the works that are published [00:05:00] you know, most of the famous books in history, most of the world's philosophy was determined by alphas because they're the ones who everyone saw and heard. And this is where I realized, oh, the patriarchy created feminism in a way.

By that, what I mean is the fact that men have been the dominant gender on Earth for so long and written so many of our foundational philosophical works, so many of our foundational narrative works, so much of our foundational religious beliefs, that those things were written with an assumption that Of a male's desires and life path in mind and women, when they began to achieve freedom and the ability to act independently, instead of having some big backlog of women written literature, they could turn to instead determined what had value, like freedom and independence and [00:06:00] career and from male literature, literature that was written by males.

And so they didn't have a deeper philosophical well that they could mind that was female coded. Like

Malcolm Collins: what would we want to do if we had full autonomy? Right. Theoretically with like a male dominated world, we can see through male literature and actions and, and behavior under power, what they will do if they have their druthers.

But because women historically have been in this. More suppressed, more secondary, more submissive role. We don't know what they would do if left to their own devices.

Arch: Well, and they didn't build the philosophy, I guess is the way I put it. Like philosophy more broadly was built by men for other men.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

So what is the female philosophy?

Arch: Well, here's the thing. I think that women had such an unevolved and unadvanced philosophical framework to fall [00:07:00] into that the framework they slipped into is what we would call super soft culture. You know, the sort of pre

Malcolm Collins: evolving to the most Basal human instincts and sympathetic magic, folk religions, this is why I'm enjoying magical spells and it's not good.

Magical

Arch: thinking, you know, crystals and crystals and zodiac signs and, No, it represents the types of religious and metaphysical beliefs. A group of humans would likely independently evolve if you just left them on an island, you know, without civilization.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Arch: It's without a civilization to build on because women didn't have a civilization to build on because women historically did not write and the civilization that was given to them when, when people were like, okay, but.

And you do have some, you know, early female literature. You're like, look, y'all be satisfied if you find a man who you respect to spend your life supporting and have a bunch of kids. That's

Malcolm Collins: There's these different, there's that, there's the [00:08:00] You'll be happy by serving men. And then there's also the other philosophy of you'll be happy by being a man, which is also not really working out.

Arch: No, no, no. But the, the happy serving man, I mean, that's what they had to go on. And they're just like, wait, why does this look so different than what the, the male code book is, what the developed code book is. And it's very much like an Omega talking to an Alpha in Omegaverse. Why, why do make Omega's get.

push towards these pathways and it's like, well, because you're evolutionarily optimized for these pathways, you find the satisfaction in submission the way other individuals could not. You find satisfaction in child rearing in the way other individuals could not and do not. So to,

Malcolm Collins: To, to, oh God, to pass this on to fiction that is more widely read.

There's this whole, kind of annoying arc in the Harry Potter series where Hermione Granger tries to free house elves. Who [00:09:00] find it extremely insulting, this idea that they would be freed. They really don't want to be freed. They really want to serve their house. And this idea of giving them rights is, is totally not what they're into.

And you're kind of, this We're in our house elves! Is what

Maybe you're kind of saying, well, it's funny that you mentioned this because a lot of people don't know this today, but the anti suffrage movement, i. e. voting for women movement was led by women. Women were like, this is a bad idea.

I decided to Google this just to make sure I wasn't b**********g. And here's the first search result I got.

And I will quote from Wikipedia. Well, men were involved in the anti-slavery movement in the United States. Most of the anti suffrage groups were led and supported by women. In fact, more women joined anti suffrage groups, then suffrage associations until 1916. While these groups openly stated they wanted. Politics left to men.

It was more often women addressing political bodies with anti suffrage arguments.

[00:10:00] During the fight to pass the 19th amendment women increasingly took a leading role in the anti suffrage movement.

So

the suffragettes are Hermione Granger and the.

Right. And they're fighting against other women.

Arch: A lot of, a lot of people don't, don't realize this.

Malcolm Collins: And yeah, Phyllis Schlafly and her earlier predecessor.

Arch: Well, and what do we see? Were they right? As women have gotten more rights and you can see this on charts of female happiness over time female happiness goes down.

Female happiness has been going down dramatically since. And it keeps showing

Malcolm Collins: up in all these different ways. I mean, you have one generation. There's Phyllis Schlafly, the next generation, you have stayed home girlfriends and you have Brad wives and you have, yes, it's glorification of a softer, slower life.

And Yeah, yeah, it's, it's interesting. It's, it's something that, and it feels so toxic to, to succumb to it or to wrap [00:11:00] yourself in that warm blanket because we've been normalized so much to male standards of success. That like the average male would, you know, find it insulting to enjoy or appreciate that.

And I think many women have, have been raised. I certainly like to hear that myself. I'm like, Oh no, like, no, my entire programming has been built around very masculine standards of success. Have a business, make a lot of money, get powerful, get famous, get, you know, like change politics, change the world. Do it myself.

And this idea of, hey, maybe you can take care of kids and, you know, partner up even, even just the idea of partnering up with a spouse, male or female, but like a husband, certainly. Oh my God. Like there, it just goes against so much programming. And, you know, for context, I grew up in The heart of the Silicon Valley Bay Area right next to San Francisco.

Like, I definitely [00:12:00] grew up in what you describe as urban monoculture culture. But again, this is why I think I'm very qualified. You're answering this question of, why should an ambitious young woman have children? In a very Malcolm way, which is you don't answer the question and you just say what you want to say, which is not speaking to the audience.

I can answer these questions speaking to the audience. I can speak to

Arch: the audience because you, you did it. You now have this life and you seem to like it. You find it more satisfying, I think, than the life you would have had.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, but I'm also kind of cheating because who actually is making the money in this family?

You know, who actually is controlling all the finances? Who actually? Yeah, that's kind of the problem. I'm not very trad wifey, right? Like, who's the stay at home partner who is, you know, engaged? Actually, you say this, but I

Arch: have found that this is the norm in a lot of relationships I know today that work.

As we talk about short sword and shield partnerships, the wife is typically in charge of the [00:13:00] stable job and stable income streams. And the husband is in charge of things that could move the family up. The venture

Malcolm Collins: capital versus the stocks

Arch: versus the bonds. Yeah. The stocks versus the bonds are the venture capital versus the bonds, right?

Like the man going to Viking

Malcolm Collins: versus the homestead farming.

Arch: Yeah. Starting, starting You know, the, the entrepreneurial venture, they might be starting a podcast, you know, like those sorts of things where the

Malcolm Collins: person has like a salary job with benefits. That's, I mean, who does all the work for this podcast, right?

You know, you,

Arch: you do

Malcolm Collins: the talking. Yeah. But anyway, continue, create exact

Arch: arguments against there. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Because I'm, I'm very grateful for the arguments that this base camp listener compiled because they definitely were the concerns that I held as an ambitious young career woman. Working in San Francisco, you know, 23, 24 years old.

Who was absolutely vehemently against the idea of having kids. So let's go into it. [00:14:00] So he says, I've heard concerns like pregnancy makes you give up your old goals that make you cooler. So you become a boring mom. I definitely felt that way. Now, my answer to that is okay. Just what were these old goals and how cool were they?

And that's the thing. People aren't thinking about the counterfactual and just how boring basic people are. I would also argue it's

Arch: Here is defined by distance from the dominant cultural group. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: or, or just relatability to you. So like, if suddenly someone just starts talking about, you know, their kids and family logistics and you have no Relation to that, of course it's not interesting to you, because you, you, you, you don't engage with that.

But if they're talking about

Arch: the logistics of the orgy, now that's cool. Yes. Right? That's weird and subversive

Malcolm Collins: and um Well, but I would also argue that most people who become boring moms We're boring before they became moms. Like maybe now all they do is talk about parent stuff, which by the way is bad etiquette.

Like no one should just talk about the boring. I think

Arch: you're [00:15:00] making a fundamental mistake here. They are defining cool. And this is important. And I think it's a big problem. Why women have a big problem in terms of engaging or getting through fertility collapse is Men, generally speaking, if you're talking like the difference between male and female brains, what they're cued to determining is the objective truth of reality.

A depressing number of people are not cued to determining the objective truth of reality, but what is this socially normative view on reality? A reality morals, everything at the end of the day, that's what wokeism represents is a desperate drive to boast, determine untethered from actual reality. What are the normative views on reality?

Malcolm Collins: You're not answering in terms of their language though. I would just argue that one, they're probably already boring if they're like that. And there are many women who become Extreme and stay extremely [00:16:00] interesting after having kids. I think it's more just like the people who become boring as moms were boring before that.

I don't know. I

Arch: don't know very many interesting women who don't have kids.

Malcolm Collins: No, I can name, I can name. Well, I can, I can name plenty. And I can, I can name plenty of boring moms and I can name plenty of not boring moms. I would say this is, this is a factor independent of it. Let's move on though, because there's tons of subjects here.

So, concern two, I've heard people cite family members who used to be cooler and then became less independent and started supporting Trump.

Simone Collins: You're defining cool

Malcolm Collins: as for not being To them, they looked up to this family member, but it seems like they did an ultimate betrayal of their old independent personality once they got married and had kids.

Okay, what's your response to this then?

Arch: Within their culture by urban monoculture pilled, right? They literally think of supporting trump as uncool when what is more subversive in our existing society even supporting trump like For me, even if I'd like wasn't richy or anything like that. I'd be like, yeah, that's a subversive cool thing to do, right?

Yeah, that's [00:17:00] the independent minded thing to do the non independent minded thing to do is to do what every other single woman is doing you know And here what you can see is, I think there's a part of them that's afraid that they'll become this other kind of entity. Yeah. They'll become someone like you, who's satisfied supporting her husband and who finds satisfaction in raising kids and who, you know, you are different from them.

And it is true that the average married woman does support Trump, you know, a white married women support Trump overwhelmingly. White women support Trump on average. Anyway, white married women overwhelmingly, it's only single women who are still really stuck in this alternate reality bubble. And they are shattered that they will have this bubble burp burst around them

Speaker 9: out there, it's nothing but heartbreak. But in here, who wants pug sundaes?

Hand me a microphone, Zyler. Totally righteous, bro. Are we brothers?

Malcolm Collins: What I'm saying here is that the [00:18:00] key is to get women to open up to logical arguments, but the key to getting them to open up to logical arguments. Is getting them out of their alternate reality bubble that they're living in.

And I understand that this is a challenge people of previous generations didn't have to go through. We are simply dealing with harder times and they dealt with

But because a huge part of both the genetic and the medic and cultural pool is being washed out this generation. There were awards for successfully accomplishing. This are greater than they've been in previous generations..

So it's not a question of how you develop an argument that works for them while not forcing them to exit their alternate reality. Mindscape you need something that makes them a what to exit their alternate reality. Mindscape whether that's a relationship with you or a purpose or anything.

Speaker 6: Maybe we'll listen. I might not have all the answers. I'm not stylish, and I'm not cool, and I can't make [00:19:00] pugs appear out of thin air.

Speaker 8: But

Speaker 6: I know one thing well, and that's you. And I know that even though you might act like it, you don't want to be in this fantasy world.

You're scared of growing up. And who could blame you? I'm scared too.

Look, real life stinks sometimes, okay? I'm not gonna lie. But there's a better way to get through it than denial. Leave this fantasy world.

Arch: And those worlds are sickly and toxic and you should be trying to break out of it. And so their fear and what almost needs to be argued to them is like, actually forget about this whole, you know, have kids things.

Why do you still think Trump is bad in 2025?

Malcolm Collins: Well, but also if If you're wrong about something, wouldn't you want to be right? I think part of the fear is like maybe getting married or having kids will expose me to information that will make me change my mind about something that currently I, a position I hold very strongly.[00:20:00]

If ultimately you don't encounter compelling evidence that that, that is a stance you should shift to, then you won't change your mind. Don't worry about it. Like you're only going to change your mind and culture if you find that that's genuinely a better way to live and be, and they're, they're better ideas.

So I would also say don't worry about that changing if, if you do change those stances, it's going to be because they're better stances. But yeah, I would also encourage these, these young ladies to, to consider other people who didn't have kids, but also became less cool because you can also consider like that child.

No, no, no, no. This is what you're missing

Arch: here. Simone, you're missing what they mean by cool. That's what you're missing. Is that they be, they became Trump supporters. Yes. What they mean by cool is they broke out of the urban monoculture.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that is, that is a

Malcolm Collins: part of it. It's obviously thrown in there because he used the word Trump in this example, but yeah.

Okay. Another concern. Pregnancy makes you stupider similar to the first point they cite [00:21:00] people. They know that they think got stupider after having children. So let's just take a quick look at the actual, like, What what happens when you get pregnant? So several studies have documented mild cognitive impairments during pregnancy, particularly in memory, executive functioning and attention to make meta analysis and studies have found that pregnant women often experience declines in general cognitive functioning like memory and executive functioning.

Non pregnant women. But the effects are most pronounced during the third trimester so one meta analysis reported significant reductions in these areas, with memory performance declining between the first and second trimesters, but stabilizing afterward. And the primary, thing that's going on, aside from the fact that your body's being taxed by pretty hard work is that you're experiencing some pretty serious hormone fluctuations like cortisol and prolactin that can contribute to these changes.

And despite these findings, the cognitive declines are generally subtle and they [00:22:00] remain within the normal ranges of functioning. So it's not like you're getting lobotomized by having a pregnancy and they're typically just something that like the pregnant woman or their spouse notices. And then I, I would point out.

So like, these are things that happen, but like, if you're, for example, running a marathon or like we talked about in a previous episode, climbing Mount Everest, climbing Mount Everest causes permanent significant mental damage with these pregnancy and cognitive impairments, they, they pass when it's over.

You recover. And of course, like, it's almost like being jet lagged for a while. Like, okay, when you're jet lagged, you're sleep deprived, you know, because you were partying for a week or because you were traveling, you're going to have some mild cognitive impairments and they will pass. So this is one of those things that's, I think, I was worried about this.

That I've

Arch: noticed changed. I just think about you and the other mothers of Lots of kids that I know is your, and, and we've talked about this in an unreleased podcast episode, but becoming a parent fundamentally changes your brain in the way you relate to reality. When I say a parent, I don't mean one kid.

I mean like a real parent, like three, four [00:23:00] kids. It's, you know, the changes really seem to take place. And we were talking about this on the discord is three plus kids. Is when you get the, the pretty big changes.

Malcolm Collins: Research has very concretely shown that during pregnancy, even a first pregnancy The brain experiences reductions in gray matter volume, particularly in areas associated with social cognition, like understanding emotions and intentions of others, so that that that happens the first time around to, like, these are actual changes, but there's not any better equipped, not worse.

It's like they

Arch: assume that these changes mean that women are dumber, which fundamentally haven't been shown. It's changing the way they socially relate to things, the way they relate to the world. And it's about

Malcolm Collins: like, resource allocation, efficiency, understanding that the, the, like the brain is shifting gears and preparing for different types of terrain.

Arch: Yeah, the biggest change I have noticed in women who have like a real number of kids like three plus is that they typically lose almost all of their anxiety and almost all of [00:24:00] their borderline like personality features. It's

Malcolm Collins: amazing. Yeah. As, as it was put in Hannah's children, there was like one quote from one of the interviews that Catherine did something like having a certain number of kids.

Burns the selfishness out of you and I just love this Metaphor it really is like it just burns it away like this cleansing fire. It's so cool But also anxiety too

Arch: that women who don't have that they're in this state of constant I'd almost say mental collapse after especially a certain age Which is why they need all these therapists and everything like that.

Like you don't see any therapists You're not on any psychoactive medication. You're not and you're you're not Perfectly happy with your life, you know,

Malcolm Collins: way happier than I was before I met you. And before I had kids like incrementally, like I was definitely happier after. We got together and then I got even happier after having one kid and then way happier now after like four.

Well,

Arch: and it's because it's how your brain is [00:25:00] structured.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but it, you know, it's, I remember before we had our first kid reading this one book about specifically what happens to women during breastfeeding. And I, I described it as like the bonification of women. And like, it did have some like. mild kind of drugging effects.

Like it made kind of women blissed out and happy, but kind of, I, I mentally equated the effects to like, to cannabis consumption of just kind of blessing people out and making them comfortable with the fact that they're like being a cow yeah, as you know, I'm not very into breastfeeding. But yeah, I mean, that, that.

That is the thing. Oh, gratification.

Arch: Both. I love it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I may not be into that. So there, there are, there are things that, yeah, maybe could kind of do that, but I would also point out, and here's the thing is. There is research indicating that having children actually, especially as someone who's not [00:26:00] doing it in a really resource constrained way will stave off cognitive decline later in life.

So when it was children tend to have better late life cognitive performance compared to childless women. Having two or more children has been associated with modestly lower dementia risk compared to being childless. And this pattern is observed in both men and women, but is particularly notable among women.

And then research using brain imaging has found that women with two or three children tend to have younger brain age compared to childless women, which correlates with better cognitive performance. So that, I think, You know, you have to look at the big picture and while there are certainly like short term.

Look, look, look, who's here.

Arch: Oh s**t.

I am so sorry.

We had started a different episode, but hey, we got enough of this and we can finish it up later. Simone. Exactly. Do this

Malcolm Collins: episode now, then we'll do dinner. [00:27:00] All right. That sounds good. Yeah, we're doing, I'm doing my first experiment of Szechuan chicken.

Simone Collins: We're back. We were talking about our pregnancy, young, ambitious women think pregnancy will make them more stupid. And well, yes, obviously anything that is physically taxing is going to have some effects on you.

Duh. Like let's say you're running a marathon at the end. Do you think you're going to perform really well on like executive function and cognitive reasoning? Maybe not, but maybe that's because you're running a marathon. Maybe that's because you're climbing a mountain and maybe that's because you're growing a human, but guess what?

It passes after you give birth. And there's research that indicates that women Who have children have lower cognitive or lower dementia risk later in life and improve cognitive performance. So, again, I think this is really huge, especially the research that found that women who have 2 to 3 children tend to have a younger brain age as gauged through brain imaging is super interesting to me.

One thing [00:28:00] that's. Also interesting to me, which shows the nuance of this argument that I'm not just like universally like yes, have kids no matter the resources is that often this research that found that women had lower risk of dementia and better cognitive performance later in life found that that was primarily for women with two to three children and that women who had more than three children were more likely to show signs of dementia.

Okay, so there are no improvement and I think that's because that in the researchers theorize that's because these women were in lower socioeconomic stratus of society and more resource constrained. So these people were living with stress their entire lives. So I was going to go through. I thought you'd find this interesting.

Malcolm Collins: I collected a number of stats on how pregnancy changes the body and in positive ways. We were going to do an episode on justice, but I can quickly run through it. You should do a separate episode on just this, by the way. A 2017 study involving 1. 5 million Swedes found that people with one or more child, regardless of gender, tend to outlive [00:29:00] child free counterparts.

Adoptive parents saw even larger longevity benefits. Adopting one child added three years to your lifespan. Adopting two to three children added five. Women who had their first child after the age of 25 were more likely to live to the age of 90 compared to those who had their first child earlier. Women who had their last child after 33 had twice the odds of living to the top.

Fifth percentile. Now I would assume that this is probably a health correlatory issue here. Okay, mommy brain, all right, mommy brain, they often cited research when a mother forgets something is real, but it's actually fantastic. Research has found that having kids makes women's brains bigger in certain areas, particularly those related to motivation, reward, and emotional processing and reason and judgment.

Hey. pretty good compensation for occasionally leaving the keys in the fridge. Studies have shown increased acute pain tolerance during pregnancy in both mammals, animals, and humans. And a first of its kind study has revealed that the architecture of women's brains changes strikingly during their first pregnancy in ways that That lasts for at least two [00:30:00] years in particular gray matter shrinks in areas involved responding to social signals we found most pregnancy related gray matter volume reductions persisted six years after partition but you get benefits in other areas particularly emotional processing multitasking and efficiency and long term cognitive benefits.

One study suggests that parenting multiple children over a lifespan, they benefit brain health, particularly in later life. I think that if there were a vitamin or a supplement or a pill that you could market to people that said, this will increase your acute pain tolerance and also make you a little bit less, like, concerned about social stuff as a woman.

Speaker: The single childless woman would be like, what, where can I get this pill? This sounds great because it is

Speaker 2: basically what we're actually seeing here is a transformation and we've talked about this in another episode. I don't know if we don't go live before this one of a female's brain because this happens to men as well.

Like when you get over three kids, your brain seems to significantly transform and how [00:31:00] you're relating to things. Where and it would have made sense biologically that this transformation would make sense would be selected for which is women stop caring about what other people think of them as much.

They stop caring about social games. They stop caring about like the Machiavellian parts of you could take a pill.

Speaker 4: You would

Speaker 2: and that is what is being lost. It's a transition to a, a mindset that most women would prefer. Yeah. And as we know now, all those things that were like, Oh, a woman is less satisfied if she's married.

But you need the husband out of the room for this to be recorded. Well, it turned out that what that was asking is not like a husband had left the room. It was, has your husband died? They were less satisfied when their husband had died or had left them. So women are more satisfied if they're married.

Speaker: Yeah, now I do so I don't I don't want this to be propaganda video. All right I want to be realistic and I think it's important for us to point out that yes Pregnancy can increase the risk of certain health [00:32:00] conditions like hypertension gestational diabetes preeclampsia But it also prevents certain health conditions a lot.

For example, I have Pretty bad. Well, I came into my pregnancies, my, my childbearing years, having pretty severe osteoporosis. And this is a result of having an eating disorder in my youth. And this is a common thing for young women who had eating disorders and lived for a long time with low birth rate or had hypothalamic amenorrhea.

I took Fosamax to attempt to ameliorate this and took regular DEXA scans to check my bone density in response to the Fosamax dosage. Didn't really do a whole lot of good, to be honest with you. Plus it has a lot of risks associated with like, you have to tell your dentist even when you get, you know, a dental cleaning and you, you're on Fosamax.

So I had to stop taking it because you're not supposed to take it while you're pregnant because typically this is for like very old women who have osteoporosis, not women who are going through pregnancies. I had to stop taking it. I was really worried about things like pregnancy and breastfeeding because these things are known to leach [00:33:00] calcium from your bones.

Well, it looks like the body kind of has some, you know, measures to make up for that. So, though, yes, it can leach calcium from your bones and a lot of other things. Pregnancy can leach a lot from your body. It seems to also sort of reopen your body. To restoring itself much more effectively. Kind of like bringing back adolescence.

My bone density is better now. In fact, most of the areas in which I had severe osteoporosis in my lumbar spine around my hips has now changed to just osteopenia, which is a much like it's not great bone density, but it is actively improved and I'm no longer in super dire straits in several parts of my body.

Which is huge. So, like, again, like, to Malcolm's point, pregnancy can also help.

Malcolm Collins: It's not just you. So, another great example here is the other famous perinatalist Collins family. They're not explicitly perinatalists, but they have, like, nine kids, and she's a mommy blogger.

It's an interracial couple.

They're like, they, she, she seems like a sweet person. Honestly [00:34:00] the Fundy bloggers love to rag on them. But anyway it appears that now she doesn't appear to be drawing this connection, but she's been having kids pretty much constantly for like the past nine years or something like that. And before this, she had pretty severe, multiple MS, I want to say, or

Speaker 3: one

Speaker 2: of those, I'll add, I'll change it in post if it's something else,

but it's a neurodegenerative disease that we know from research pregnancy stops. So one of the fears that some of the people who watch her have is if she stops having kids, she's going to immediately die.

Her body right now is like. Like you can't go under 90 miles an hour. And your body explodes. There's

Speaker: like, speed. That's yeah. And so it just like, I think the research says for like in terms of just aging people, I think a lot of, Young women are really concerned about advanced or premature aging.

So, and it is true that several studies suggest pregnancy can accelerate [00:35:00] biological aging. For example, markers of cellular aging, such as telomere length and pregnancies may be sorry, such as telomere length and epigen, epigenetic shocks indicate women who experienced multiple pregnancies could age biologically faster, but this.

Effect has been observed mostly in young high fertility women and is linked to the physical stress of pregnancy. And a lot of these effects also seem to sometimes reverse or recover after pregnancy, like we've been discussing, but I just want to give some perspective to this, because basically what we're looking at is a stressful event having an effect on the body.

Oh, like, wow, being physically demanding on your body has effect, but keep in mind. So for comparison. Alcohol. All right. Most, most young people like to drink a little drinking more than 100 grams of alcohol per week, which is about seven drinks is also linked to shorter life expectancy and increased risks of cardiovascular diseases such as stroke and heart failure.

Even one drink per day could slightly reduce your lifespan compared to a complete [00:36:00] abstinence. And, okay, let's say another thing you know people are really concerned about giving up. Because they're going to have kids travel, right? Oh, I just want to travel the world. I want to go to Europe and Asia. Well, keep in mind, chronic jet lag for every good time zone changes can disrupt circadian rhythms, which are crucial for regulating biological processes.

And the disruption can be associated with increased risks of cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline, and even cancer over time. Plus, really. Really frequent flyers, even like especially airline pilots also accumulate radiation levels comparable to those who work at nuclear power plants which has been linked to obviously like severe cancers like melanoma and breast cancer and flight crews.

I'm just saying like a lot of the parentless life isn't. Without its perils as well drinking and traveling and having fun can also accelerate aging

Speaker 2: But we also know as I said that the people without kids die earlier So yeah, it makes sense, but I I point out here. And I think that this is [00:37:00] A really big point, which is that you, and it's one that you made really well there, which is that everything you decide to do is a trade off in terms of your life.

And

Speaker: everything, everything kills you. Like, there's microplastics. I don't know. Like, everything's going to kill you. But what are you fighting for? We can even make this argument. One, one big problem of eating out. Is that there are extra microplastics in all the food that you get when you're eating out because one, like in, in many public health regulations, you have to use plastic cutting boards that gets more plastic in your food, there are microwaving stuff in plastic bags, things are being stored in plastic containers.

So like, okay, your eating out habit is also going to kill you. Well, I don't know. But the,

Speaker 2: the, the point I was making is that you have to consider what you are trading that sliver of your life for. Are you. trading it for a whole additional human life or are you trading it for personal indulgence? Keep in mind, it's like, Oh my God, even if it turned out that every kid you had lowered your lifespan by two years, you're trading those two years for somebody else's 90 [00:38:00] years.

Like how is that?

Speaker: Ooh. There's also the point, and this is something that you, that we have spoken with each other a lot in the past. But in terms of like, How to make it a life feel long versus feel short and a monotonous uniform life where not a whole lot changes like you kind of do the same thing every year like you take a trip and you work and you take you know whatever where it's all just kind of the fun same thing that doesn't change a whole lot can just suddenly like collapse and seem like it just was over in a second

Speaker 2: these people they don't even want to live that long i mean like this is the other thing right like a lot of these people plan to like off themselves when they reach a certain age It's, it's

the one you wait, you wanna live

Speaker 2: Like, who actually wants to be 90 anyway?

Speaker 11: And if it gives me cancer when I'm 80, I don't care, who the hell wants to be 90 anyway? So with a heidi, leidi, leidi, and a heidi, leidi, lei

Speaker: well, but there is a pretty significant group of people who don't want to die and who want to be young forever. My argument, though, is that If you want to feel like you had a [00:39:00] really, really long life, a really big way to do that is to have lots of really, you know, striking changes in your life and nothing makes every day feel new, like, being with a person who's constantly growing and changing and evolving and getting older.

It just makes it feel like. One year was multiple lifetimes because of just all the new things that are happening and developing. So, let's get back though to the grievances and concerns. And another one which I don't think you can answer to at all but, but I can is that pregnancy is scary and painful.

And I would argue that it is only scary and painful if you make it so. Anything can be made scary and painful. Travel can be mean, scary and painful going and leaving your house can be made scary and painful. So I wouldn't worry about it. And I would say and I was talking with someone else about this recently that giving birth in modern hospitals, if you don't want to feel pain, oh my God, you will not feel a thing in my last, when I delivered Indy here, the, the, I, I was [00:40:00] in insane pain, but you know why?

Because, you know, I'm like splayed out getting a C section, right? Like, the most pain I felt was I tried to crane my neck so much to see, like, beyond the curtain in surgery that I hurt my neck. And then I'm like, oh, my neck hurts. Like, that was my biggest grievance. That was what hurt the very most in the entire process of getting and recovering from a C section was, Oh, I twisted my neck a little bit trying to see a surgery to see the gore.

So I think that that's another really important point is that in, in a world of modern medicine, it doesn't really hurt that much. If you, if you, if you are afraid of pain, you can just get the epidural. It's fine. All right, keep going. Next question. All right, next question.

Okay. So another big concern. Is if they have kids, they won't be able to devote enough time to their kids because they're focused on their career and they feel like it's not fair to their children. They comment, the comment was paired with them saying they don't really value having kids that much and they, that they give up their [00:41:00] career, which was It's a career advancing science they valued so much they, okay I'll, I'll reword this.

Basically, the concern is that they really, really value their careers and they're not going to give them up to raise kids, but they feel guilty that the kids are not going to get what they need because they're so busy, focused on their careers. So

Speaker 2: this needs to be disintermediated as a question.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Specifically the point that they were making, which is a logical point, which is to say that I do more for the human race. I do more net good through promoting science or through moving science forwards in my profession than I would do having kids. And the core argument against that, and if you want to be logical about this, be like, yes, and how many people who have scientific competency are still having kids.

If you are one of those rare, rare humans that shows a natural talent for the sciences, that category of humans is the category that is disappearing fastest and anyone who is interested in [00:42:00] participating in a pronatalist family. Or a lifestyle could end up having a huge impact on the future of civilization if you have, as I said, eight kids and they have eight kids and they do that for 11 generations.

That's more descendants. And there are humans on earth today.

Speaker: Read more of this in reality. So many people that we know, and I'm sure that you can find in your own life. Have chosen their career paths or found what is within the bounds of their reach as a person based on the people they grew up around and just being a career oriented woman, a marine biologist, a nuclear scientist, whatever it is that you care about.

It's your career, just exposing your kids to that is increasingly odd. People in the workforce will end up doing that as well. And you value that including your kid's friends, like just having, Oh, well, my friend's mom, well, you know, worked for the CIA. I could do that too. And this has shown in studies kind of obliquely, like there's, there's some research that has shown that.

Children of parents who used government [00:43:00] assistance were way more likely themselves to use government assistance. Just because they kind of know, yeah, like, because they can, they know how to navigate that system, they know how to depend on it, and they also realize it's an option you can do the same in the opposite direction of like, Oh, you can show people how to have successful careers in an area, a domain that you think should be given more attention.

And you can create that. But more importantly, I want to point out that let's say that the big concern is, Oh, these kids aren't getting the helicopter parenting, the high touch parenting that they deserve. Okay, that's not actually necessarily so good for kids. And also it can be very helpful for mother to have a career.

So daughters of working mothers tend to pursue higher education are more likely to hold supervisory roles in their careers and earn higher income compared to daughters with stay at home mothers. Also, sons. Of working mothers are more likely contribute to household chores and child care, promoting gender equity in future households.

So that's great. And working mothers often service role models [00:44:00] for achievement and independence. Like I was saying, which can help children, especially daughters aspire to professional careers and success. So it's, it's great. Even if you didn't necessarily have a super engaging career as a mother it might be worth it to kind of take one on just to increase outcomes for your daughter or to show your sons how to be really supportive to any, you know, women that they marry in their lives.

Like if you care about feminism, if you care about female achievement in the workplace, you shouldn't give up your career. It's a good thing. So let's see, what are the other complaints?

Speaker 2: But I think this one here is really about somebody's in this mindset. You're likely just not going to be able to convince them.

Like if they're in this mindset, they can either accept reality that certain traits are readable or not. Religion of blank slate ism. I don't pass anything on to the next generation. It's very difficult to convince them of this stuff, but I would, you know, if I was, [00:45:00] Talking to someone about this and I was like it's so weird that like you identify as a scientist yet You deny like scientific reality I mean, so it's clear.

You're not a scientist. You're you're something else. You're promoting some religion You're like a nun of this weird religion And not actually promoting scientific ideology of what you cared about was That for example female scientists exist in the future if it turns out that we have created a world where being a scientist It's completely incompatible with being a mother Then we are not going to get people who are both scientists and mothers in the future.

Speaker: Did you get

Speaker 2: to the

Speaker: Sorry, she's like, she needs a nap, but she doesn't want to take a nap. Let's see. A big issue is they feel like they're not even ready to start thinking about it. But I think that's just a sign of like, not mentally having your life together, you know, it's, there are many things that people are not ready to start thinking about, but they should think about their inherent values, their [00:46:00] retirement, their finances, their personal health.

And yes, they should think about kids, but I think this is just like part of a list of things that people are like, Very avoidant in thinking about and kids are just one of those things, you know, like finances are another thing. Retirement's another thing and especially your inherent values and, and, and what you genuinely believe.

Yeah, I think

Speaker 2: the pragmatist guide to life, our first book, you can get it for less than a dollar, the ebook version on Amazon. It's got an audio book if you prefer that. The conversation outlined in that book, I think it's the, the conversation that gets you to having kids. And a conversation I would have with almost any girl early on a date.

What do you value? Why? How do you structure your thoughts? How do you structure your thoughts about reality? Because when you think logically through everything, kids always are an obvious thing to do. It's just that a lot of people, this, I'm not even ready, I'm not even ready to think about it. What they're saying is they haven't really structured their lives.

They're sort of acting on autopilot within a particular life stage that isn't geared around child rearing. And these people really [00:47:00] are NPCs. You can sometimes wake them up from it, but it's hard if you waited until like your thirties to, to find a wife.

Speaker: Well, and just because you're not ready to think about something, doesn't mean that's okay.

You know, people can be like, well, I'm not ready to think about getting treatment for my cancer, but sweet. I'm not

Speaker 2: ready to think about, yeah, the fact that my mom's dying. It's like, well, maybe you should. I mean, I don't know what to tell you, but

Speaker: like there's a ticking clock there, buddy. Yeah. Like this is, it's, it's, this is a train hurtling straight toward you and you're going to have to deal with this and many other things that aren't necessarily.

easy to navigate. Another big concern is that they weren't necessarily thrilled with how their parents parented them, and they fear that they will not be good parents. My most common thought in response to this is if you're worried about being a good parent, like if you're like, Oh, well, my kids get something, you know, good enough.

You're, you're one of the few that actually is going to make sure they get good enough. The really bad parents are typically like, I'm the best parent. I'm a wonderful mother. I'm perfect. Or [00:48:00] they're not thinking about it at all. And if you're worried about being a good parent, you probably are going to do a pretty good job.

Speaker 2: Oh, I've got that. That's a big red flag for me because I'm the greatest and best parent ever born. Oh God. Well, our

Speaker: kids have me, so.

Speaker 2: Oh no, did you just realize? No,

Speaker: you are, you are so amazing. The kids love you. You are this beautiful, warm force in their lives. And I think you're totally just I don't know, they say

Speaker 2: they love mommy more when I'm the only one around.

Speaker: No, they just play, they play us off each other. It's always, well, daddy said, I'm going to ask daddy. But you know, that's because they're doing their job. You know, you got to play both sides. And then there's, of course, the classic life is just suffering. But again, and we've had, you can watch all our episodes on infant natalism, whatever.

But this is just not true. Surveys suggest that the majority of people report being relatively happy. For instance, a study in the US found that about 31 percent of adults describe themselves [00:49:00] as very happy, 57 percent as pretty happy, and only. 12 percent as not happy at all. Also, research shows that happiness can coexist with suffering when individuals find meaning or purpose in their struggles.

This aligns with the idea that enduring challenges can foster a deeper sense of fulfillment. And so I would also say that, especially if you're raising your children, With a strong culture, a good religion You know, Also,

Speaker 2: I'd ask them, like, First, you know, Someone told this BS is like, Why? Why don't you just kill yourself?

Like, I'm gonna put that scene from Team America with the hammer. Like, It's, it's, it's, Not that hard. Okay. Why are, if you really believe this, these people don't really believe this, first of all, they, they are taking like a nihilistic edgy philosophy where, because within the urban monoculture, you achieve social status through self flagellation and nihilism.

You know, it's, it's hard to attack someone. It's hard to make fun of somebody who's being [00:50:00] nihilistic, right? Like it's like dark and edgy, you know? This is the female version of being that like male alpha broodlord

who, who comes out dressed in like the, the, the trench coat and the, you know, you remember this, right?

Speaker 14: Edgelord, get down here. It's almost time for prom.

Speaker 15: Time is a construct. A clock is a prison. I'm happy Edgelord found a date for prom. I'm irate you're the mate for mom. You look good in your tux. You look good in a body bag! Edgelord, one day you're gonna wish you never said that, because I'm gonna be dead.

Speaker 13: Dead or just dead with an extra E.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It's, it's so cringe. But I love it, you know, in a way, cause I, I, I'm not going to say that like you shouldn't lean into this stuff when you're doing it vitalistically, but when you're just doing it indulgently like this Yeah, whatever, you know, and I and I'd also point out here that Please watch our videos on antinatalism this philosophy [00:51:00] wants you all dead, but it's weirdly logical about it.

We go over all of our arguments there in chain all of our arguments against negative utilitarianism they are again though logical arguments so that they might not be effective on women

So I'll put the I

Speaker: I know you're not like other females. You like to think about things. You have opinions.

Speaker 2: Is that a compliment or an accusation? It's a fact!

Speaker: I don't know But I, I, I think the, the, the bigger things if I'm coming away from this is there's a couple of different things here.

One is people just not wanting to give up their current identities. I think there's fear in that. And a part of you, you know, the old you does die when you become a new you and becoming a parent makes you a new you. I think that's, that's scary. I mean, like, even I, as, as a kid was afraid of going on like antidepressants, but I never ultimately did because I was like, well, but if I don't have like my severe OCD tendencies, Who am I [00:52:00] even?

You know, like, I don't want to not be that, even if it was damaging to me because I was starving myself to death at the time, right? So I see that fear and I understand it, but it's also illogical. And no matter what, you are going to change in life. You're not going to be the person you are now. So one, you're Don't resist that.

Two, I think there's, there's this fear specifically of pregnancy, like from a sort of medical standpoint, like it will take away my youth. It will make me older. It will, you know, it's, it's dangerous. It's painful. It's scary. I think that pregnancy should be seen more as like choosing to run a marathon, like choosing to become a marathon runner.

And not so much as like, Like undergoing gender transition, I think that that like, that's kind of how people look at it. Like, oh, there's surgeries and, and, you know, hormone changes and it's, you know, like, it's going to change me forever and in like a bad way and I'll get dumber like they literally kind of see what you and I see is the effect of transitioning your gender.

pregnancy, [00:53:00] which is scary. We're like, no way. I don't want to like have, you know, IQ effects and osteoporosis and you know, stunted growth and premature aging. In one

Speaker 2: case, they're real. And in the other case, it's mostly beneficial effects.

Speaker: That's, yeah, that's the thing. And so I think, I think that the important thing, which you're

Speaker 2: absolutely right about.

Is when you have kids you transform as a person you enter a new stage of your life Like when you get to three or four kids It's as big an effect as puberty is in terms of who you were before and after that. Yeah, you care Dramatically less around what other people think of you you care about social things dramatically less you care dramatically more about you know living I think a a life that is what's the word I would use for this like like a purposeful life more?

You're you're not as focused on the self anymore. The insecurity is gone. Yes And I can understand if you look at this from an outsider you're like, oh my god, that's a horrifying like i'm i'm a caterpillar I don't want to become a butterfly, right? Like yeah, I am a caterpillar. I stopped [00:54:00] Let's not kill you.

I don't want to like Vaporize the caterpillar. I'm, sorry, but butterflies are better

Speaker: Don't you want wings? Don't you want the wings? Titan wants the wings. She loves her little butterfly wings. Don't worry, I have three replacements because I know she broke hers right away. So yeah, so the pregnancy stuff, the medical concerns, that's basically just myths that need to be busted.

The identity change is like, like grow a pair of balls and figure out that like, that's a good thing. And then in terms of the career stuff, you don't have to give up your career, but it's good for your kids to be ambitious and a woman and to have a career and then to also raise kids. And you will not be the first person to make it work with childcare.

It's not going to be easy, but nothing in life is, you know, and in the end you either get a career that was, you know, ambitious and great and wonderful and a retirement that feels empty and kind of meaningless as you discover that, you know, once you retire and [00:55:00] leave the office, no one cares and no one follows up with you and you don't have anything else in your life aside from some hobbies, which kind of gets stale quickly, or You have a successful career and then, you know, retirement or next state, like post work stage of your life where you have this amazing family that you want get to help support and watch grow and flourish and mentor.

And that's really cool. And you probably live longer because of it.

Speaker 2: I, I think that the two answers to this question, I'd have fallen two buckets. Bucket number one is like the real thing that's most likely to convince them. The real thing that's most likely to convince them is for you to read or listen to the pragmatist guide to life go through the logical structures there and use these on your early dates to build sort of a logical structure for your interactions for their, so that they can begin to build like a framework for how they're relating to reality.

And then once they have a solid framework, you can begin to use logical arguments on them instead of these like weaker arguments. So that's. Thing number one. That's what really [00:56:00] works. But then the secondary thing is, is I don't even know, like if this conversation frame is worth having, if a person isn't going to grab onto that.

And a lot of women aren't like the reality of this generation is a lot of people are just going to be washed out of the gene pool. And they're just a lot of men who try and did their best are going to be washed out of the gene pool who may have like sanity and everything. I, like, I can't change that.

It's just the reality of the situation that we're dealing with right now. We are on extra hard mode. This generation is on extra hard mode. But I don't stop playing a video game because it's extra hard mode. I get more excited about it because it's extra hard mode. So the question is

Speaker: if it's a good game, you keep playing it. That's the, that's the thing. Yeah, well, for

Speaker 2: some of these people, yeah, they haven't made a good game. But I, I think the game's getting better every day. I mean, people are like, oh, what about the economy? What about the, yeah. And I'm like, yeah, but now we have work from home, buddy.

Do you know how, how

Speaker: The privilege to have work [00:57:00] from home. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2: Yes. The work from home world is a dramatically better world than the world before the work from home world, the world where, you know, you don't have to go to cities anymore. You don't, you can live almost entirely online.

Like this is so awesome. Other people see it as dystopic. I'm like, no, I don't have to. People are like, Oh, Malcolm, you should like, go have friends and do more parties. And I'm like, I think, how about that? Yeah why? People following up with me on our episode why, why do Jews have friends? And very, very true.

She's like, but of course you want friends. And I'm like, no. I'm not a wife. I've got kids. I really do not want friends. I, I, I, I think that we as a society have been like brainwashed into wanting friends by like the power of friendship and media and everything like that. That's, that's the nefarious, you know, Jewish stuff going on here, like Jewish conspiracy, the power of friendship.

Okay. Because I am happy living alone on a farm with my wife and kids and a shotgun to keep out the [00:58:00] trespassers.

Some people who don't like visitors. Some people like Hey, you! Get off of my property! Now!

Speaker: The friends, the friends, kids shot when they attempt to. Get on our property. Is that it?

Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. That's, that's my actual By the way, if you're confused about what we're talking about here, what we argue in that episode is that Jewish culture is much more oriented around having large friend networks than traditional American Christian culture.

One of the weird follow ups from that episode that I've been thinking a lot about is, When a Christian invites me to a religious celebration like Christmas or something Versus when a Jew does it. When a Jew does it, my assumption is that they want to talk to me. Like if they find me Yeah, it'll be an engaging conversation.

Exactly. When a Christian does it, my assumption is generally that they pity me. Or they're trying to convert you. No, it's much more often that they pity you. Yeah, [00:59:00] I guess you're right. It's a pity thing. This is why, if you looked at the comments, a lot of people were like, Oh yeah, but I know someone's alone on Christmas.

Oh, you're right. Yeah. Yes, yes. Recently that somebody broke up with them or like it's always like a who's sad on this Christmas who I can

Speaker: Charity, it's the act of charity to like it's to feel better about yourself. Yeah, we we help those less fortunate than us on the holidays

Speaker 2: It's such a, it's such like an underhanded insult for somebody to invite you to Christmas with them or Thanksgiving.

It's

Speaker: a backhanded compliment, you mean. Underminded. I guess, yeah. No, no, no.

Speaker 2: It's not a compliment at all. It's an, it's an insult.

Speaker: Backhanded.

Speaker 2: Insult.

Speaker: Okay, it's an insult. It's

Speaker 2: a front handed insult. I don't know. It's an

Speaker: open,

Speaker 2: calm insult. It's a roundhouse You know and I know. That you think that I'm at home crying alone on Thanksgiving.

And that's why I got seriously.

Speaker: Oh my gosh. Like what? Like, yeah, the, the, the, the the extroverts [01:00:00] vision of what introverts do on holidays is like didn't home with like crying into a bowl of Like microwave Campbell soup. And like, what's actually happening is they're like at home

Speaker 2: binging on like anime and video games.

What I, what's actually happening is I'm gonna put that scene from home alone, where he's like dancing with all the, that's it.

That's it.

Speaker 3: That's

Speaker 2: it. It's a, you told me about how you used to on Christmas in DC when you were alone and not with your family, go and look at all of the families through the windows and that's true.

Yeah.

Speaker: Someone like saw me walking. Yeah. I would like walk around the really nice neighborhoods in DC on Christmas Thanksgiving, like looking into the windows, seeing all the happy families. And I would just sit there and be so happy. I was not with like, this is so pretty. I'm so glad I'm not there. And then I would go home and like make my own little dinner in my own [01:01:00] little way, all by myself and be so happy because it was so quiet on campus.

Oh, Oh, that was, yeah. Okay.

Speaker 2: Well, we'll wrap this episode up. It's too long already. But I think introverts. Unite, find that woman that you will never need to talk to anyone else again. Because you will be talking to her multiplicatively throughout your life. Keep in mind, not just all the little quirks about her that you are compromising on, your kids are going to have those too.

My kid, when he takes, you gave him the little cute Japanese rice ball thing he made and he eats it grain by grain. That is something

Speaker: my wife would do.

Speaker 5: It's called Onigiri. Can you say Onigiri? Okay, No, no, no, you take a bite. It's a rice triangle.

Speaker: That was, yeah, he eats, yeah, I give him grated cheese and he eats it shred by shred. I give him noodles, like [01:02:00] ramen, and he eats it. Noodle by Noodle. He'll never, I don't, I, Toasty though, he's so funny and he has all the names for his rocks.

Okay. Last night he was so cute. So Toasty shows me his bag of rocks at the end of the evening. Our dear Torsten, nominative determinism here. And he has a name for all of them and he's showing me and he's like, this is my of course he's the pizza rock, you know, the pizza rock, right? That he had tightened.

I'm like, Oh, the pizza rock. And this is the black and white rock. Oh, the black and white rock. And this is the rolling bowling. It's just names for all of them. And this is a spiky rock. I'm like, how

Speaker 2: exciting is he gonna be when he's able to understand that his name is Thor's stone?

Speaker: I know, right? And then he pulls out another rock, and I'm like, oh, what's this rock, Torsten?

And he's like, I think it's quartz. And I'm like I think it's quartz.

Speaker 2: I think it's quartz. [01:03:00]

Speaker 4: I love how you have, like, these two ages

Speaker 2: next to each other in his brain. Oh, this one's quartz.

Speaker: I think it's quartz. Oh my god,

Speaker 2: I love him so much. I gotta put something of

ModPie here doing, playing with rocks.

Speaker 19: Do you know a lot about rocks? Yes. Have you ever come across some kind of super powerful stone that can store the cutie mark magic of, I don't know, an entire village? Yep. In the big cave.

Speaker 2: Anyway, love you.

We gotta wrap this up. Okay, bye.

Thank you.

Speaker 21: Did you smash so well that it got all Oh my gosh. Okay, you smashed very effectively. There we go, alright. Let's do another one. Good job, smash potato man! [01:04:00] Okay, I'll scrape that off for you. Alright, we'll do another one. You are great at this, buddy!

Speaker 20: Can you get this off? Yeah.