Other pathogens that may influence behavior

Dive into a mind-bending discussion with Malcolm and Simone Collins as they explore the fascinating—and unsettling—world of disease-based mind control. In this episode, they break down recent research on how parasites and pathogens like toxoplasmosis and certain yeasts may influence human behavior, sexuality, and even cultural trends.

Discover how these microorganisms could be shaping everything from sexual preferences to risk-taking, and why some behaviors that seem purely psychological might actually have a biological origin. The hosts discuss the science, the social implications, and the controversial questions that arise when we consider the possibility that diseases are pulling the strings behind the scenes.

Whether you’re interested in neuroscience, psychology, or just love a good intellectual rabbit hole, this episode will challenge your assumptions and leave you questioning how much of our behavior is truly our own.

Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share your thoughts in the comments![00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. Today we are gonna be diving into something that one of our fans sent us. And as I read about this. I was mortified. It appears that toxoplasmosis, remember that thing that everybody knows about from pop culture where it’s something that you can catch from cats and it sort of disorients mice and changes their behavior and makes them more likely to be caught and eaten by cats, thus spreading the cycle of infection.

And people are aware it can spread to humans and slightly change human behavior. Well, there was a study done toxic Plasmosis Gandhi, detailed description of the Conan asexual and sexual development and Cyte sporulation that showed that actually there are a number of variations of this that begin to specialize at targeting specific species.

Not only that, but this paper then goes over other [00:01:00] parasites in diseases that may be modifying. Human sexual behavior so that they can spread more aggressively with a lot of receipts.

Simone Collins: In other words, the diseases are in the driver’s seat of our brains. They are,

Malcolm Collins: Some people’s brains. Yeah, if you’ve been involved, did you know that with, with Toxoplasmosis, before we go into it, it’s already been shown to make males that are infected with it taller and thus more attractive to women, and that.

It can transfer from male to male and male to female, but not female to male.

Simone Collins: That’s right. Because it’s, it’s transferred through sperm.

Malcolm Collins: So yes, so no, but this is wild to me that it is literally creating extra attractive males modifying what arouses them to be more likely to be into gay stuff. So that Well,

Simone Collins: and BDSM in general, just like racy stuff

Malcolm Collins: ish.

Well, [00:02:00] the type of stuff that would involve the types of contact that would spread a disease. But it’s not just that. Did you know that the one of the things we’re gonna be going over is HPV virus you know, the one that you can get from eating girls out. Did you know that it makes you more interested in eating girls out or wanting eaten out?

So when you have HPV, you want guys to eat you out more.

I got in this section wrong from memory. It’s actually yeast infections that caused this.

Malcolm Collins: So we’re gonna go over. Oh,

Simone Collins: that’s interesting. I mean, my generation was the first, our generation was the first to get vaccinated against it. I’m vaccinated against it. You know, the funny thing is I, it was, it was, you know, sold to me of course is like a completely sexless teen.

And I was so enthusiastic about getting it, even though I like basically planned on living a virgin my entire life, but I was still like, I’m so excited to get this vaccine. I just wanted to collect vaccines, gotta catch ‘em all. But I wonder like if the opposite of it is, may have contributed to [00:03:00] my aversion to it or if the default is aversion to it and then if maybe just getting infected with it is the thing that makes this a pervasive.

Now

Malcolm Collins: she hates the idea of somebody eating her out, which works fine for me. No, but actually this is really interesting. So one of the things we’re gonna get to at the end of this piece is sort of a hypothesis on why these one and this isn’t talked about in the piece, but it’s something that we need to talk about ‘cause it’s very germane to our audience.

Mm. Why when the science is beginning to show that this stuff is very likely happening, that some of the degenerate behavior we’re seeing in our society is literally humans being modified by diseases to have unique and differentiated arousal patterns. Mm-hmm. Why aren’t you being told about this? And the answer is fairly obvious.

It would be mortified if you could say, which is one of the things we’re going to talk about is. Same sex attraction may be insert modified by a bacteria or a another form of disease. It may be mortifying to tell somebody that part of your kink profile [00:04:00] is actually just the fact that you had a disease at a young age or even recently.

Simone Collins: One if, if memory serves too. The research found that some of the effects of being infected with toxoplasmosis amplified over time. So the longer you were infected,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, the longer you were

Simone Collins: infected, the worse your reaction times. Which is one of the reasons why

Malcolm Collins: this gets to the thing where somebody can be like, oh, online porn screwed up my brain.

It made me into like really extreme things, and I’ve pointed that the research shows this isn’t actually the case. That online porn does not seem to amplify the weirdness of the things you’re aroused by. It’s just that you become better at finding the stuff that you’re interested in. Mm-hmm. But that it may be the case that what these people actually have and do not realize.

Is a disease that is amplifying the things that they were aroused by.

Simone Collins: Right? Right. Like if that can be the case with toxoplasmosis and reaction times and why is it not the case with Yeah. These other things.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then we’ve gotta start asking, as a society, are orgies a bad idea? Is the way that we are treating sexuality more [00:05:00] broadly in our society a bad idea?

Was it actually good to have prohibitions against the non-VA sex? And well

Simone Collins: also, yeah, this, this changes the way that I think we’re gonna talk with our kids about STDs. ‘cause it’s one thing to be like, oh, you got crabs. Like I just, I remember that Sex in the City episode and it’s just like, like, oh, now I just, kids antibiotics and it sucks, or whatever.

But now it’s like, no, actually this might change your. Your identity, your behavior.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. In in our generation, we are all terrified of aids, right? And now not, people aren’t afraid of AIDS anymore. People with AIDS are just like, oh, on prep, whatever, right? But by the way, that’s one of the diseases that also changes behavior prep

Simone Collins: is prep is if you wanna avoid aids, isn’t it?

You’re on something else. If you actually

Malcolm Collins: have no prep is if you have, look, it doesn’t matter. The point is, is now people feel that AIDS is in a risk because prep exists. But the point being is that CRF is said on prep. It’s really effed up, like the government pays for it. And the only thing it’s really useful for is people who want to have a lot of sex with non-monogamous partners.

It’s weird. But the point here being is even AIDS seems to affect behavior to help it spread. So we’re [00:06:00] gonna go over this. We’re gonna go over the research of it, but to me, as a kid, this would be even more terrifying than aids. It’s like. You sleep around and a virus is gonna rewrite your brain to turn you into like, a degenerate you know, and, and an idiot.

And it will control your personality. Have fun with that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Because just to, to be clear, it doesn’t just make med taller and give them behaviors that make them more attractive. It also affects reaction time. So there’s a higher proportion of people who die in, in traffic accidents if they have toxoplasmosis.

And like I mentioned earlier, the reaction time gets worse over time. So, I mean, you don’t want, like, from a safety standpoint, that’s not a good thing. Yes. So, so I’m

Malcolm Collins: skipping a bit into the article to start here.

Okay. Humans can get infected between 13 and 43% of adults 25 years to 50 years of age in Europe with lower rates in North America and higher ones in Brazil and Africa, reman et all 20, 25 some strains.

So, so note if you’re talking in Europe, it’s around 43% of people are [00:07:00] infected at this point. So

Simone Collins: basically half like you, you, you should expect that you’re gonna get infected if you,

Malcolm Collins: if you’re having promiscuous sex. Yes. Yeah. And in, in the United States, the rates are lower though, so keep that

Simone Collins: in mind.

Well, no, but basically if you’re having promi promiscuous sex as a woman, because.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but not as a man.

I actually got this wrong when I first read this. , The rates in men are much higher than women, even though men can’t get it from women because bisexuals and gays have so much more promiscuous sex than straight women or men do. , So you’re actually more at risk if this of a man, but only if you are sleeping with other men.

Malcolm Collins: So we’ll get to that in a second. Some strains seem to have adapted specifically to human hosts. One of the three lineages, type two strains are the most common in our species.

They’re also much less lethal than type one, perhaps because they have co-evolved with humans to a greater extent. Dego. Etal 2020. Hasani. Etal 2019, clicks on and Kin 2015. You know what, actually you can just [00:08:00] go to where this paper is if you wanna see all the studies on it. Peter Frost did this piece on his substack.

It’s called Our Tiny Parasites, messing With Our Brains. Think Before You Swallow. No. I, I mean,

Simone Collins: I, I mean surely you’re, you’re being

Malcolm Collins: exposed to you even. No, no. The point I’m making here, the point that he’s making here is one of the lineages is behaving as if it’s adapted to humans already. To be less lethal to a species typically means you are better adapted to spread within that species.

That’s what happens. Diseases don’t want to kill you. That’s typically a very bad thing, and only really happens right after a a disease that’s made the jump from one species to another species. That’s why things like COVID or what was the, the pig flu or the, you know, bird flu or

Simone Collins: swine flu,

Malcolm Collins: whatever, it’s because they just made a jump from one species to another species that they haven’t adjusted to do.

Simone Collins: Sorry.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Infectious causes mental and behavioral changes to humans with other as with other animals, men become more jealous, women more easygoing, [00:09:00] and most sexes respond to threats as shown by a high risk of traffic accidents and longer reaction time show less risk to threats. Oh. So that’s interesting.

It basically makes men into terrible polyamorous partners and women more likely to be okay with their partners sleeping around.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean that makes, that would, that would work.

Malcolm Collins: That would help spread the disease. Yeah,

Simone Collins: that would do it.

Malcolm Collins: The last Friday finding proves the direction of causality.

The longer you have been affected, the lower you react. Slower reaction time does not increase your risk of infection. So, so it’s not that these people are less prone to risk, that makes them more likely. It’s the longer you infect, the worse this outcome gets. And it might be the case with these other pathogens we’re gonna talk about.

And there’s four studies. Well, it

Simone Collins: makes sense if it’s, isn’t it like brain lesions that’s causing this? So also you’re sort of like

Malcolm Collins: ossifying. It changes, it changes based on the infection type.

Simone Collins: Oh,

Malcolm Collins: okay. So some things use brain lesions, some things use blood restrictions. Some things use fake neuro, neuro transistors.

It’s different Anyway. At the extremes of sexual behavior, infected individuals, [00:10:00] particularly men, feel more drawn to masochism, great fantasies, bondage same-sex experiences, and anal women with a latent toxoplasmosis also report feeling more drawn to violent sexual practices and same-sex experiences. But such fantasies are, if anything less often acted out by infected individuals.

Real changes to sexual behavior seem confined to a greater propensity for sexual promiscuity, oral sex, and among male homosexuals, anal sex. And there’s five studies that show this. By the way, this is not like fringe science here. Okay?

Yeah.

Tandja, and again, you go to the original substack if you wanna find links to all these, you guys don’t wanna hear me struggling to pronounce a bunch of names.

That matters to the one nerd who feels the need to fact check everything. T Gandhi eye manipulates not only behavior, but also physical appearance affected men are taller and women rate them as being more dominant and masculine looking infected. Men also have lower second to fourth digit ratios, a sign of greater [00:11:00] exposure to male hormones.

And there are four studies that show this. The physical manipulation is in line with a strategy of making infected males more attractive to per to prospective hosts study. Can this behavioral and physical manipulation be demonstrated under controlled conditions? Such research would be difficult because we cannot experiment with humans as we do as lab animals.

Humans also live long decades may pass between the initial infection and the ultimate payoff by the parasite. Two studies showing this. Nonetheless, a group of Czech researchers is convinced that some strains of TIG GHI have involved the ability to manipulate human behavior, specifically sex infected men, not only seek out more sexual partners, but also engage in sexual practices that transmit the parasite more efficiently.

IE into the partner’s oral cavity or anal canal. The existing host gets no reproductive benefit. In fact, his fertility is reduced through lower sperm counts and lower sperm motility. Isn’t

Simone Collins: that crazy? Yeah. You’d be like, oh, well. No, no.

Malcolm Collins: Well, also, he’s gonna [00:12:00] go on here and show that this may explain cuing behavior and other behavior that doesn’t seem to make sense.

And, and, and a preference for oral sex, which also does not really help you reproduce, right? That’s

Simone Collins: true. Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Why, why do some people have oral preference? This may explain it. Mm-hmm. Oh, we’re not supposed. Talk about this.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: But isn’t it kind of crazy that like a portion of society, particularly like the urban monoculture sex pest, may just be basically a disease behind the control, like driving human, like, you know, the little mouse inside the, the human

Simone Collins: Oh boy.

Malcolm Collins: Arguing for its own benefit. You know, when I see people, like there was recently, and we might do a full episode on this. You know, an individual like the one, the, the trans woman who runs philosophy tube, like giving this long, really poorly sought through, like she seems to get dumber every year sought through of why Tism doesn’t make sense and we don’t need to worry about this.

I’m like, but you’re like a manifestation of a human Darwin award. Like you’re not [00:13:00] part of human civilization anymore. You are not, you know, you don’t have any descendants to care about. Like, it doesn’t matter to you that your advice is so bad and will have such long-term negative ramifications for humanity.

But it might be that when I was trying to model her behavior, I shouldn’t be modeling her behavior, but the parasites that are driving it. And that is wild that I’ve realized like, oh my God, that that changes the way I have to attempt to model ultra urban monoculture people.

Simone Collins: Well, you’ve always referred to the urban monocultures being akin to being infected with well, a mimetic virus.

Right. But now it’s like, oh wait, they’re actual.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. But here’s the thing. If a virus in parasites increased the spread of the urban monoculture, the urban monoculture would adopt practices that increase the spread of the virus. Sure. ‘cause it would be a symbiotic cycle. So we might actually have some of these viruses or, or parasites that are working with the urban monoculture to genuinely turn the people infected [00:14:00] into puppets.

Mm-hmm. And as you walk around society and you say, oh my God, the people I’m interacting with seem more and more like puppets every day. They might be t Gandhi cyst in mouse brain. We know that Tig Gandhi is present in male ejaculate as cysts containing thousands of spores. There is a study here.

We also know that cyst spread from one body to another through fellatio anal sex and vaginal sex. The transmissions rates in male to female or male to male, but not male to male. And then two, studies show this as, as I mentioned earlier, sexual transmission, particularly from the male host, is indicated by several lines of evidence.

In heterosexual couples, an infected male partner increases the female partner’s risk of infection. But an infected female partner did not increase the male partner’s risk of infection in women. The risk of infection correlates with sex work, unprotected sex before pregnancy, and a history of genital injuries in men.

It correlates with sexual promiscuity and in male homosexuals with unprotected anal sex. Several. [00:15:00] Severe prevalence of t Gandhi is higher inflating individuals of either sex than in non-filing controls. Several prevalence is higher in, I don’t like that he uses homosexuals. That’s a sort of outdated word male gaze.

And promiscuous individuals several prevalence is positively correlated with prevalence of STDs across countries, including HIV. Several prevalence is, oh, interesting. That would explain why it’s higher in Africa and potentially why it’s higher in Europe, although I think it might just be sort of co-variant with the urban monoculture or sort of symbiotic.

And we might be seeing this, you know, it makes people less prone to threats so they don’t understand, oh my God, bringing all these people who keep griping people in my country might not be a good idea. It makes it so that you cannot see the threats around you. Right?

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: The gender difference emerges in the 10 to 14 age group and peaks among 20 to 39 year olds. Three studies show this. I’m gonna explain why that’s important right now.

Here is again where I made the mistake that I assumed because it can only transfer [00:16:00] from men to other genders, , or to other men, either men or women, that it would be more prevalent in women. But no, actually the gender imbalance is that it is more prevalent in men than women because even though there are fewer gays and bisexuals, they just have that much more sex and that much more of the type of sex that can lead to transfer.

Malcolm Collins: It doesn’t become more prevalent in women until you hit about 14 years of age IE until when some people begin to become more sexually active. Mm-hmm. Especially sexually promiscuous people. So to continue here, te g Dii seems to have become sexually transmissible through three stages of coevolution with our species entry into a human population, apparently via contact with cats.

This animal began to coexist with humans some 10,000 years ago in the Middle East study passive sexual transmission. Te g DII could now spread to new human hosts via intimate contact, including sex, but without any behavioral modification of the host. Natural selection thus favored adaptation to life within human bodies.

Even though the final stage of the parasites lifecycle, [00:17:00] sexual reproduction remained within cap bodies. Nonetheless, Tigand could evolve through mutations during asexual reproduction and therefore para sexual recombination like events. It’s study active sexual transmission Natural selection increasingly favored sexual transmission by modifying the host behavior.

Again, this evolution may have been speeded up by genetic recombination, was in cat bodies via transmission from human to cats back again. And I’ll note here, while this entered human population 10,000 years ago, I do not think it evolving a specialty for spreading was in human populations really begin to have significant benefits for spread or have an evolutionary reason for it until about the last 40 years because promiscuous sex was just not that common before then.

So wouldn’t have been a, an effective transmission vehicle, nor was male to male sext or bisexual males which seems to be, or at least a normalization of this behavior, which seems [00:18:00] to be of high utility to getting this to spread.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: You can see why the urban monoculture is not talking about all of these studies.

We are only now realizing Thatt Gandhi is sexually transmitted for many, if not most academics. The dominant view is that Tig Gandhi is transmitted mainly through contaminant food or water through contact with cats. Yeah. From this perspective, sexual transmission by male hosts is seen as a minor importance, yet look at the huge gender differentiation.

We basically know it’s definitely in part gender transmitted now

Simone Collins: Well, and if 45% of people in Europe are infected in it, I mean the, the, the pervasive understanding when we were younger, even in our young adulthood was like, well, if you have cats, just use a respirator when you change their litter in the litter box and you’ll be fine.

But no, it’s not a litter box problem.

Malcolm Collins: No. Yeah, so I, I it’s, it is also not just that the fact that the study showed, as I pointed out, that men who are dating or married to a woman was this, have [00:19:00] no higher rate of having it, but women who are dating or married to a man was that have a much higher rate of having it.

Yeah. Is basically, to me all the proof I need that people who practice fellatio have a much higher rate of it than people who don’t practice CIO

Simone Collins: well. But also as if you’re having any form of ejaculated intimacy with a man as a woman, you’re gonna get it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well they gaze do have significantly higher rate of it if they have unprotected sex.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But that’s again, ejaculated. Intimacy.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. But I’m basically saying that we have confirmation of this. This isn’t like some weird theory at this point. Yeah. We know it’s being sexually transmitted, and it has adapted to this as one of the primary means of its transmission.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Yet it is sufficiently common to distort the sex ratio among infected individuals, apparently through male to male transmission.

In Italy, the prevalence of recent infection was higher in men than in women. A twofold attack rate was detected in males compared to females in the ages of 25 to 35 years.

In Germany. Male gender keeping cats and [00:20:00] BMI were independent risk factors for positivity. Study here. So

Simone Collins: sero positivity. So

Malcolm Collins: wait, Simone, this is actually really important. This means in Germany having cats is not relevant to your probability of catching this.

That is how much it has adapted to a sexual transmission lifestyle with the, that’s

Simone Collins: crazy. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: In the United States, risk for IgG or positivity, that’s Gandhi eye increased with age and was higher in males Jones etal. I, in the case of workers occupationally exposed to animals in meta-analysis of 66 studies found a prevalence of 63% among male workers and 37% among female workers.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and I also wanna point out, because he, he points to seven in the piece and it, I think it’s notable just in terms of how impressive this spread is, is toxoplasmosis does not reproduce in humans.

It can only reproduce in cats. So the way it uses humans is basically a means of getting to the next cat. And it can go from human to [00:21:00] human, so it can go from human to human, it can travel along, but it can’t. Reproduce

Malcolm Collins: actually I think you misunderstood what he was saying. Really. I’m not gonna read this section where he explains this again, but he explains that it has various parts of its reproductive cycle.

It can’t complete its normal reproductive cycle if it’s only using human hosts. But if it’s doing some of the types of asexual reproduction, it does, it can reproduce only in human hosts and you could get a human only specialist variant of it.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay, okay. Okay. I didn’t, I didn’t catch that.

Malcolm Collins: Even though the final stage of the parasites lifecycle, sexual reproduction remained within cap bodies. Nonetheless, Tigand could evolve through mutations during asexual reproduction and therefore para sexual recombination like events.

And we might have already seen that.

Simone Collins: Oh, so it’s not certain. It may have been

Malcolm Collins: happening. It’s not certain that it is human only and it’s reproductive cycle now. But there might be variants of it that are almost human only in the reproductive cycle. Okay. And it very only rarely use cats at this point.

Simone Collins: Mm. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: This is something you find in [00:22:00] some species where you can have asexual reproduction in some environments, but sexual reproduction requires other environments.

Don’t need to go into that. Nonetheless, sexual transmission of tigand DII will likely continue to be downplayed. This is largely due to a research bias towards obvious STDs, IE those which produce symptoms soon after infection and are easily observable and develop over a short time. But these characteristics are not optimal for infection of a long-lived species like ours.

In such species harming the host reduces the prospects of infection of new hosts over a potentially long time. Basically, I just think he’s wrong here about what he’s saying here. He says, the reason we aren’t studying it is because it’s not more loud sort of in its effects over a short period of time.

I think it’s because it would be incredibly damaging to the urban monoculture in many protected groups. If you could be like, Hey, you don’t have a sexuality, you have a disease or a parasite that is controlling you and attempting to use your behavior to affect me or my children or, you know, the, the still unaffected members of society we’re literally going up.[00:23:00]

What, what, what are we, what are we going down here? Some sort of like, slutty zombie virus.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: it is, it is actually like, okay, there’s a thing. I mean,

Simone Collins: come on. Classic trope. It’s the, the slutty monster. So, so

Malcolm Collins: good. No, no, no, no. There’s actually like a trope. One of the scenarios that I often see near the tops of AI chatbot sites, which we have, and it’s getting better.

We’re getting closer to having a really solid one, but it’s been really up and down for a while here. Our fab ai, but I don’t know if we have one on our platform. You can make whatever you want, but it’s on a lot of the other platforms is there’s a disease that’s going around that turns people in to like very sexually aggressive like, and that’s all they can think about.

And it’s a, a version of a zombie apocalypse that apparently some people like get off to. And that’s what’s actually happening in our society right now when you’re dealing with these very aggressive sex pets. Okay. Are other parasites messing with our sex lives? T Gandhi might be one of many microorganisms that evolved [00:24:00] to manipulate human behavior.

So, I’m gonna skip a bit here. Let’s go to HIV, right? HIV associated neurocognitive disorders called hand. Although HIV, associated Neurocognitive disorders hand are widely attributed to HIV and the relationship between the two remain circumstantial, in fact, hand occurs even in individuals who have lost all detectable traces of HIV through antiretroviral therapy.

Mm-hmm. So even if you’re on prep, you’re gonna have these brain changes. Wow. One study found that 21% of such individuals nonetheless go on to develop dementia. I didn’t know that study. The causal agent seems to exist as an AIDS co-factor, not by making an HIV infection worse, but by increasing the host’s appetite for behaviors that increase the risk of HIV infection.

Mm-hmm. This co-factor may be hiding in plain sight among opportunistic infections currently blamed for the host compromised immune system. While such infections primarily target the lungs, the brain is the second most common target. And the cites two studies here, [00:25:00] the existence of brain manipulating co-factor is consistent with the profile of AIDS victims study in, Bulgaria, Italy and that co country AIDS is transmitted mainly via intravenous drug use, yet transmission via gaze and bisexuality is 10 times more associated with cognitive impairment.

Oh, interesting. Two studies.

This might be a different, so just so you can understand what he’s saying here, is there maybe a different strain of it that is specialized at transmitting via gaze and bisexuals than it is altering sexual behavior? Certainly AIDS does impair cognition as shown by the association between low white cell camps in hand in the bulia study.

But some co-factor may also be impairing cognition via the gay bisexuality root. The co-factor might be hepatitis C virus, HVH. Oh, he’s arguing. It’s a different thing. He’s arguing. It’s using other diseases to impact your brain. Mm-hmm. Weird. Anyway, HCV in a large cohort of peach was HIV. The risk of hand was higher.

Among [00:26:00] those was antibodies to HCV and then he gives a study here. I’d argue that it might be that there’s just different strains that are specializing in drug users versus gays. By the way, people will say that you cannot get diseases that evolve this quickly in human populations due to our long lifespans, which is just.

Factually wrong. There’s been many species that have specialized in humans. We literally just watched COVID adapt itself through multiple iterations, only over a period of a few years to human hosts. That is why it is so much less virulent and deadly now than it used to be, because it has adapted itself to human hosts.

Anyone who says you a disease cannot quickly adapt its behavior to human hosts is lying to you. When they say, oh, well, it can’t adapt itself to affect human brains because human brains are so complex. It’s like, no. There are lots of complex things that you can affect through fairly simple actions.

Suppose I wanted to affect the behavior of a computer, right? And I could, I only had a fairly simple action. I could throw [00:27:00] sand into one of the components, right? There are a number of components within a computer that I could throw sand into and very confidently affect its behavior in specific ways.

The idea that you can’t affect the human brain by basically throwing sand in different parts of it, and keep in mind it’s not even that bad. It can just create neurotransmitter analogs, which we’ve already seen from some of these parasites. It can create lesions, which we have already measured from this.

Like, I don’t understand how you could argue that unless you’re just desperate to say no one in society is a puppet of a parasite.

Simone Collins: I mean,

Malcolm Collins: okay, let’s talk about sexually transmissible strains of candy acus. This is a, vaginal yeast candy. Oh,

Simone Collins: yeast infections.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, that’s, oh, this might’ve been what I was thinking.

Instead of just yeast

Simone Collins: infections.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Candy has been implicated in, so it’s, it’s,

candy has been implicated in several neurodegenerative diseases, notably Alzheimer’s multiple sclerosis and autism spectrum disorders.

Yikes. It just evolves [00:28:00] the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier and adhere to tissue in the central nervous system, particularly white matter. Yeah. Because of the antibody. Cross reactivity. The actual candy species is difficult to identify, though. See, applicants is the main suspect to studies here.

Now, note here, what he’s pointing out here is we know that it can cross the blood brainin barrier and interact with your brain. Okay? That’s, that’s not an easy thing for something like this to do. And it evolved that. Why did it evolve? This ability? Well, it must have wanted to mess with your behavior in some way.

So he says, well, it’s,

Simone Collins: it, it, it’s neurodegenerative.

Malcolm Collins: Well, we know it has that behavior, but that’s probably a side effect of the throwing the sand in the machinery.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, I’m, I’m just thinking about, there was this trend at one point where you women were using their vaginal yeast and recipes, so, trying not to vomit while also wondering if there was some kind of neuro degenerative thing going on.

Well,

Malcolm Collins: Simone, these women already had the neurodegenerative effects. It makes sense when you think about what they were doing.

Simone Collins: Mm, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: All right. [00:29:00] Keep in mind that c applicants encompasses many strains that differ substantially from each other in various ways. Single nucleotide polymorphisms, inversions, copy number changes, loss of heterozygosity and the whole, or p partial chromosomal amyloids.

At least one of these changes is responsible for altering the balance between communalism and perh. Agenesis and then he has two studies here. See, ANESS can colonize many body sites, but some strains have adapted specifically to the vagina. If you are responsible for vulva, vagina, canis VVC, commonly known as vaginal yeast infection, which affects 70% to 75% of sexually active women, and at least five to 8% recurrently.

Many give the study here in China, two strains account for almost 60% of all VBC cases with neither being present in extra vaginal sites. He has a study here. Sexual transmission is indicated by several lines of evidence. Once vaginal infection develops, it can spread to male partners [00:30:00] glands or penis via vaginal sex or to his oral cavity via Kana Lingus.

Two studies here, the same strains seem to infect both the vagina and the glands penis. Two studies here in both men and women, genital yeast infections are associated with higher number of sexual partners study here. There seems to have been selection for sexually transmissible, particularly via oral sex.

Vaginal strains adhere better than others. Strains, tooth saliva coated surfaces. Once study here, can

Simone Collins: we just tell our boys to like, not go down on women?

Malcolm Collins: That’s what I would tell ‘em. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Just don’t do it. Don’t do it. No.

Malcolm Collins: Tell our daughters, don’t get into that, that’s bad. You’re gonna become a transmission of diseases anyway, transmission in women to man and not man to man, to woman sorry.

Transmission is from woman to man and not from man to woman. Infected people do not have a higher rate of vaginal sex, but they do have a higher rate of oral sex. Notably Ka [00:31:00] Lingus two studies. So women who get this have a higher rate of wanting ka linguists. Isn’t that wild?

Simone Collins: You know what I’m also thinking though, which I think is, is interesting here is I feel like romantic books are more popular among progressives, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: There they all are also pretty devoid of, we’ll say, normal reproductive sex and riddled with congas.

Malcolm Collins: That

Simone Collins: is true. Could this be a sign of. Selective disease spread within this particular group where like they’re quite obsessed and fixated on men going down on them because it really shows up disproportionately in these books to the point where, yeah, you were never sexually

Malcolm Collins: promiscuous and you’ve always hated

Simone Collins: the idea.

Yeah, and I, I just, I, I, I find it interesting ‘cause I also find it very perplexing when like, there’s supposed to be like, there’s supposed to be romance novels and, and one would assume that there would be sex in [00:32:00] romance novels and there’s. Beyond men going down on women, not any. And that just was really confusing, that fascinating

Malcolm Collins: theory here.

I wanna give you another theory.

Simone Collins: Okay?

Malcolm Collins: After a woman has been cooked, like one of these women goes out there, spends their whole life sleeping around, dedicates their life to the urban monoculture, then they get old, they don’t find a partner. Then they surround themselves with cats to complete the breeding cycle.

This is not, we should accomplished what more, but for making them undesirable. Childless

Simone Collins: cat ladies,

Malcolm Collins: which

Simone Collins: disease?

Malcolm Collins: The behavior of acquiring tons of cats. The cat ladies are literally just breeding sites of toxic plasmosis after it cooks their brain.

Simone Collins: Right? So women went from being tools of the patriarchy to tools of the,

Malcolm Collins: of the parasite.

Simone Collins: The, the fe anarchy. The, yeah. No, not even that. Not even the cats. But the parasites of the cats that the lowest of the low. Oh.

Malcolm Collins: When you, you talk to these [00:33:00] people, you’d be like, I don’t have to listen to a host like your host. Like Mindset is getting

Simone Collins: to me

Malcolm Collins: right

Simone Collins: now. They traded the patriarchy, which is built civilization for.

A cat parasite

Malcolm Collins: for No, yeah, A cat parasite to help breed a cat parasite.

Simone Collins: Oh my God. That’s crazy. That’s wild.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. We need to start calling cat ladies the host.

Simone Collins: No,

Malcolm Collins: you cannot allow the host to breathe. Like when they come near you, you’ve gotta like hide your face a bit, you know, like,

Simone Collins: yes. Oh man.

Malcolm Collins: Alright.

See applicants in the male partners oral cavity does not predict recurrence of VVC in female partners. Study and treatment of the male partner with antifungals does not prevent recurrence of VVC in the female partners. Two studies. It looks as if the parasite is acting on the female partner, specifically on her sexual behavior by weakening her inhibitions and motivating her to encourage.

In vaginal contact with the male partner’s body, particularly his mouse infection seems to proceed in three [00:34:00] stages. One, colonization of the vagina as commensal with low virulence and no VVC potentially for long period of related latency. Two colonization of the brain sites that influence sexual behavior.

And three, activation of the most virulent stage I-E-V-V-C when the pathogen can now spread to the male partner. And keep in mind, the end state of this is you know, Alzheimer’s, mo squirrel, you know, various forms of, of neurodegenerative disease. I think it’s Parkinson’s. Like, it’s not good. You’re, you’re cooking your brain.

It’s, it’s cooking your brain because it doesn’t care about you living forever. I mean, after when you’re an old person and you’re only having sex with other people who are about to die, you’ve, you’ve gone out of its lifecycle. Its lifecycle is, use you for sleeping around when you’re young. Use you for cats when you’re middle age.

It’s like this collection of diseases. And then dispose of you. All right. Let’s get to multiple sclerosis here. Oh, no. This disease can cause lesions throughout the nervous system, but a recurring symptom is an impairment of social cognition through damage of the limbic system, particularly the amygdala.

[00:35:00] For studies here, as we have seen with cheek ondy eye, this brain region is PRI primary target of manipulation of behavior. Multiple sclerosis. MS appears to be associated with a fungal parasite that infiltrates the brain and nervous system, perhaps a form of coni in people with ms. The association is indicated by antibodies against candy species.

So I didn’t know this by the way, so, so. If you have ms, you’re gonna have higher levels of antibodies against the candy species. High levels of immune defense, proteins that bind to manna proteins which are ubiquitous in fungal cell walls, but rare in bacterial or mammalian cell walls, high levels of chito days, which the immune system produces to destroy chitin, a component of fungal cell walls, but not a bacterial or mammal cell walls.

Successful treatment of MS with fungicide derin from, this is one study that showed this MS seems to be sexually transmitted. It is rare before purity, but two to three times more common in women more [00:36:00] commonly in women taking oral contraceptives and associated with smoking a sociological marcher of sexual activity in women.

By the way, you know what my mom used to say about women who smoke?

Simone Collins: Wait. If women smoke, they’re also more likely to be sexually active.

Malcolm Collins: Do you know what my mom used to say about women who smoked?

Simone Collins: No,

Malcolm Collins: she, all the time when I was growing up. Okay. When she, she was like, oh, you know, if you wanna hit on women, always remember if she smokes, she pokes.

Simone Collins: She just had the best wine,

Malcolm Collins: basically. I love it. We’re just going over all my mom’s offensive, you know, now that she’s not alive anymore and doesn’t watch the podcast every day she doesn’t know that I’m now telling you all of her secret wisdoms. Which, which turned out to be largely true like lesbian.

We’re

Simone Collins: quoting her in our house every day.

Malcolm Collins: Bisexual. If she smokes, she pokes.

Simone Collins: And what did she also say about girls and second dates though? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, she said if a woman has not slept with you or gone down on you by the third date, she’s playing around dumper. And I will note [00:37:00] this is actually kind of true, even if you’re the type who’s likely gonna get married to somebody.

Mm. Unless you’re within a community where almost nobody sleeps around because like Simone, you had slept with me by, what was it, date four?

Simone Collins: No, no, no, no. I have it in our calendar. It was Yuri’s night when we

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But it wasn’t that long into our dating, even though I was the first person you slept with, it was still only like week two of dating or week three of dating.

Simone Collins: No, no, no, no. It was, I can check the dates if you want.

Malcolm Collins: Well, that doesn’t help much because we lived literally two and a half hours apart, so we

Simone Collins: didn’t I know it, it was, yeah, it was difficult. It was difficult. But yeah, no, it, I mean like, I was ready to, I’m like, I was on a mission. I’d fall in love and had my heart broken in one year.

It’s not like I was waiting. So,

Malcolm Collins: But the point being is, is she, she, she didn’t have these opinions ‘cause she was very conservative. I’ll note that. Yes. She was, she was like very, for example.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Because she had a friend who was gay who died of AIDS when she was young. You know, back when that was a thing.

So she was part of like that generation of pro gay culture. Your mom,

What? Yeah, my mom. Yeah. [00:38:00] By the way speaking of, I have seen this comedian and he made this point that I had never thought of before and I’m wanna move to this, which is to say when people are like, oh, are you only pro LGB? And not t I’m like, no, I’m just pro-gay.

Okay.

Simone Collins: That’s true.

Malcolm Collins: I, I, I look lesbians are just gays. If you sleep with the same sex, sometimes you’re just gay. Gay bisexual is just a subcategory of gay. Can we just go back to being, defending gay rights instead of all this other nonsense. But even that, I now have to question given all of the, because I didn’t know that there was any like really negative effects.

If we’re getting a species and, and if this is happening, if we’re getting species that recently have adopted to use same sex attracted populations as part of their lifecycle and are altering human behavior in a way that’s maladaptive this might mean that I would be significantly stricter with my kids and I will be, because of this information about saying you really probably shouldn’t engage in [00:39:00] same sex behavior, even if that’s something that you’re into.

Simone Collins: I don’t know. I sort of like, I, I don’t, I, I feel very conflicted about, I mean, gay figures throughout history have contributed quite a lot to culture, to religion, to fashion.

Malcolm Collins: I agree with that, but the, the larger thing is, is in history, when they did this, it was still considered a kink. It wasn’t considered part of their identity.

It was considered not, you mean

Simone Collins: these days, and we still have great gay contributors to

Malcolm Collins: society. Right? Right. The point I’m making is if you consider being gay, just another kink that you should probably not engage with, but some people will. Oh. So if, if you go back to these periods where you have these great gay contributions, you know, if you’re, if you’re talking about like the late medieval period or something like that, or, or Renaissance period you know, being gay was considered like having a fart fetish or like, you know, wanting to be whipped or something like that, right?

Mm-hmm. Like it was considered like a weird thing that you certainly wouldn’t consider part of your [00:40:00] identity and you probably shouldn’t make like a full-time thing. Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Not yet, not your identity. And now it’s like, oh. Like,

Malcolm Collins: but the point I’m making here is if we are now getting iterations of parasites that are adapted to spread within humans in ways that they weren’t before.

Mm. Like one of the things that I’ve said is when people can be like, oh, you know, would you tell your kid to not engage in same sex behavior during the AIDS epidemic? Like, I 100% would have, I don’t care that they’re same sex attractive. It had, it could lead to their death. You know, I’d be like. Yeah.

You know, being exercising a a a degree of restraint is more important than dying of aids, right? Like, the, the, the environmental context that we’re in there are things that are more important in life than engaging in whatever arouses you.

Simone Collins: But I think, I mean, it’s for the way we’re gonna be talking with our kids about it, it’s not even really about gay stuff as much as like basically any non reproductive sex is a sin anyway.

Like, just focusing on pleasure at all is [00:41:00] something. So it’s hardly like we’re, oh, watch out for the gay stuff. I mean, anyone who, who’s having sex for fun period, we’re like, I don’t know, man. We haven’t even gone into priorities

Malcolm Collins: yet, so let’s

Simone Collins: finish multiple. Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s do it.

Malcolm Collins: . It is also associated with herpes simplex virus. Two, two studies. No, they were talking here about the multiple sclerosis. Unlike the unknown parasite that may cause hand, this one begins doing harm early in adulthood at around 30 years of age, perhaps because this is when female hosts tend to abandon the multi-partner lifestyle.

Consequently, the parasite no longer has anything to gain from keeping the host healthy. This the mean age of onset for MS has nonetheless risen in recent decades. Two studies. So this could be the case of women staying promiscuous for longer. Mm-hmm. So basically the disease that leads to multiple sclerosis basically has an evolutionary pressure to try to keep away the really damaging stuff it’s doing to your brain until after you’ve left this promiscuous phase of your life.

Simone Collins: Yeah, once, once you’re no longer useful to it, it

Malcolm Collins: just, and it’s like [00:42:00] whatever. I can just screw up the rest of your brain at this point. But it’s otherwise modifying behavior before this. Okay, well

Simone Collins: then you just gotta keep slutting it up.

Malcolm Collins: Now we’re gonna get really offensive, exclusive male gayness. More than two decades ago, Greg Cochran argued for the existence of a quote unquote gay germ, IEA pathogen that reorients male sexual preference to increase the number of hosts it can infect via sexual relations study.

Here he ruled out genetic causes because of the high fitness cost of exclusive male gayness, and its I readability of only 20%. Instead, the cause may be a pathogen that targets the limbic system. Quote Indeed. Anecdotal reports indicate that changes in human sexual orientation have occurred following changes in limbic area due to trauma or infection.

In quote, the pathogen may be exploiting a niche that provides more opportunities for sexual transmission. Quote gay behavior could facilitate spread because of larger numbers of partners who, who are gay males may on average have [00:43:00] a relative to wait. Oh, could it? So, so basically they’re arguing here in this study that’s being cited here.

That the reason why gays have more partners than straight males or women or gay women is because parasites are using them to spread. I disagree with this. I think it’s because they’re males and males are just way sluttier and hornier. And if during my period when I wasn’t the person I am today and was much more slutty, if women were as slutty as me, if the part sex I was interested to was as slutty as me, I would’ve been having even more sex.

So I think that that’s what causes that. But, but it could be a partial thing here, right? This theory has received new support from a recent discovery that the gut microbiome is different in men who have sex with men. Specifically, there are fewer commensal bacteria that help repair and preserve the intestinal lining.

Perhaps an invasive pathogen destroys them in order to facilitate its entry into the body. Although this change in gut microbiome seems to pave the way for HIV infection, having been in fact discovered through AIDS research, HIV itself does not [00:44:00] seem to be responsible. There are three studies that show this, so yikes.

We know that the gut microbiome is different. Could it be something in the gut microbiome or some other thing that’s within the microbiome of gay people that is in part leading to same sex attraction? And then I think back to many of the studies or just anecdotal of the accounts I hear of gay people where they had, ‘cause I have many friends who are gay.

They have some young experience that is gay. Early in their sexual sort of awakening. Think like Milo And his experience was that Catholic priest. Right. Okay. And then he tried to re-contextualize it as, no, it’s okay. I was gay. He helped me sexually awaken. Could it be that he literally just infected him with a disease?

It caught

Simone Collins: the

gayness,

Malcolm Collins: it trans, there’s a reason why nobody wants to talking about this stuff. Right? Think about the Harvey Milk thing when he specifically, this could also be while you have this unusual preference for,

Simone Collins: no wait, I don’t know the Harvey what? Harvey Milk.

Malcolm Collins: Harvey Milk. Famous gay guy, you know, terminal named after him

.

[00:45:00] He famously had a preference for underage boys. Oh. Specifically one of his partners was 16 when they started dating. Oh, okay. And that’s when he began to adopt the gay lifestyle. Oh. And then he the Harvey Milk dumped him as soon as he, you know, a aged into legal sex age. ‘cause he wasn’t interested in aot in men at that age.

Got a, got a new, you know, 15, 16-year-old. And then the guy ended up unliving himself. A reporter told Harvey Milk that he was planning to unli himself and Harvey Milk told him. Well then basic, something along the lines, I’m paraphrasing here. Tell him not to make a mess when he does. Oh

Simone Collins: Lord.

Malcolm Collins: Genuinely, one of the most monstrous people in human history. I cannot believe that gays are mad that Trump changed one of our, do you know, one of our battleships was named after him. Huh? Trump changed it. And, and a lot of the gay community was like freaking out and like,

Simone Collins: well, San Francisco International Airport nevertheless gave him a terminal.

So when God closes worship, he gives you a terminal.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Cuckold fetish. Okay, let’s into this.

Simone Collins: Oh

Malcolm Collins: boy. Other pathogens may be responsible for certain paraphilias, such as a cuckold fetish, where a may host abandons mate guarding [00:46:00] and even feels pleasure at the prospects of being cuckolded. This fet

This

Simone Collins: could explain something, Scott, because we’re so confused by this.

Right? Like it’s one of the most popular fetishes, and yet it’s so, so,

Malcolm Collins: oh, hold on. This is gonna blow your mind because I wasn’t aware of this.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Remember I said that almost any fetish you see today, you see across history. Yeah. I, I mentioned you see fart fetishes. You see sadomasochism.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Not true of cuck holding.

He knows here that cuck holding fetish was absent from Greco-Roman literature, which nonetheless attest to a wide range of alternative sexualities. Mm-hmm. The earliest references come from the 17th century England, particularly among English merchants. The class that would’ve caught it first if it had recently evolved somewhere,

Simone Collins: ULA la.

Ooh,

Malcolm Collins: this likely evolved recently. Whatever the parasite was that was causing this,

Simone Collins: and now it’s taking us over. Yeah, because it’s so, you wouldn’t evolve to have

Malcolm Collins: this also before, like I don’t understand it. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand it. The Dayton Malu point to an external source, most likely slaves imported through the trade from West [00:47:00] Africa because the region’s high polygeny rate conditions were ideal for the evolution of the TD that can spread from one polygenist household to another by inhibiting or even inversing male sexual jealousy.

Remember we talked about sexual arousal pathways working through an inversion system of something that Oh, yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So a disease that would flip the sign.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. See our video on how human sexuality actually works as one of our, or read our book on that. Because you are being lied to about what the data says.

Sexuality is like a, a study that basically stopped in the eighties ‘cause everyone was afraid of what the data said. And we go into the real data and the book only sells for like a dollar on Amazon. So give us a nice review. ‘cause those Amazon reviews are really hard to get. Yeah. Keep in mind that the barriers to transmission were already low.

On one hand, the head of a household was generally an older man who could not satisfy all his wives. On the other, the, the latter were often solicited by young single men as inevitably happens in polygamous societies. Frost 2023. So he’s showing here that actually you see this behavior in polygamous [00:48:00] societies, it would make sense.

It would really help spread a parasite or virus or bacteria or yeast. You know, who knows? A note here this point was made by anthropologist Pierre von de bagel beige, the, and we’re quo, the anthropologist here. The temporary celibacy of young men in polygamous societies is rarely absolute. However, while it often postpones the establishment of a stable para bond and the procreation of children, it often does not preclude dalliances with unmarried girls, adultery with younger wives of older men, or the grape or seduction of women conquered in warfare.

Thus, what sometimes looks like temporary celibacy is in fact temporary promiscuity. And then he c sipes a study here polygamous households were thus vulnerable to any STD that could overcome the already low barriers to entry. Once this behavioral niche was colonized, selection favored those streams that could lower the barriers even more.

And then merchants. Particularly in like the slave trade or, or around the slave trade [00:49:00] or frequenting brothels that kept enslaved women from these cultures mm-hmm. Would then catch this and spread this throughout society and this modern cut cold fetish comes from literally a disease. That’s

Simone Collins: crazy.

I mean, honestly, that’s the best explanation I’ve had so far. ‘cause otherwise,

Malcolm Collins: no. And the reason why I buy this explanation so strongly is because one, there’s not a lot of other good explanations. Two, he’s right. As somebody who’s actually studied historic literature, I haven’t seen this from before, this 17th century.

Simone Collins: So you know what? Is because I’ve been trying to research an episode on this too. And also it shows up in other bits of episode research I’ve been doing. Like when I did the Johannesburg episode Right. And I was, I was just looking at, at subreddits for Johannesburg, one of the There’s more

Malcolm Collins: coupling

Simone Collins: behavior.

Yeah. With swingers. And just like people looking to share their wives Also when I was doing actual research on the cuckold episode that you encouraged me to start doing a lot of military people are doing it and I’m like, why is it that like it’s catching on within these like more tightly [00:50:00] knits, like geographically or logistically sub communities.

But there you go. I mean, it could be

Malcolm Collins: yes. And more than that why is it that as I have seen more sexually promiscuous men men who you think would be able to capture more women best,

Simone Collins: whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They seem to be more into it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Oh, crazy. Right? And

Malcolm Collins: what does this mean? The very last thing you should ever do.

Is be a bowl for a cup cold. Which, which by the way is, is bad

Simone Collins: because bowl Oh, is the bowl the one that because that’s good because then you’re gonna end up into it, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yes.

Simone Collins: You’re

Malcolm Collins: gonna catch the disease literally. It’s literally a disease that’s honey trapping you.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Wow. Yikes. I’ll make

Malcolm Collins: you the today bull. Tomorrow be the, today’s

Simone Collins: bull Is tomorrow’s cook a yay. This is crazy. This is crazy.

Malcolm Collins: This is actually [00:51:00] crazy. I am so glad. That was all of the sex I had when I was younger. I can

Simone Collins: virgins

Malcolm Collins: I don’t seem, yeah, well, so that what Simone mentioned there, and this was like my thing, I had a strong preference for virgins.

I, I really find it quite gross knowing when a woman has slept with other people. So almost everyone. I, well not everyone, it was like a good quarter of the people I slept with were virgins. And then other than that, they’d only slept with like one other person or something, which is probably why I didn’t catch these things.

Simone Collins: My goodness.

Malcolm Collins: Or at least in regards to what arouses me, it would appear that I did not catch these things. Yeah.

Simone Collins: I was, well, I was reading ‘cause I only read the beginning of this article and then had to get back to work. I was like, well, how do I test if you or I have toxoplasmosis? Like, how, how would we even know, you know?

Malcolm Collins: We don’t seem to show a lot of the behaviors that I would associate with it. But we could that,

Simone Collins: that, that, that I’m not very easygoing. And you’re not into PDSM, so between,

Malcolm Collins: well, I mean, I’m not I mean, I would say the things that arouse me would fall into categories of BDSM.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But no, no. [00:52:00] BDSM is like, gotta get the gear.

You’re into dominance. You’re not into BDSM.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’s true.

Simone Collins: BDSM is about procedures and rules and hierarchy and accessories. And you are, you are so not into any of that.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I don’t, you

Simone Collins: can’t handle it

Malcolm Collins: anyway, to continue here. I’m skipping a bit because

Simone Collins: what, what, the one thing you cannot handle is any talk about logistics or rules or steps.

Malcolm Collins: I know. I hate it. I hate it. Anyway, to continue here. We’re going from the end paragraphs here. Specifically, we can look for decoy surface molecules. Such decoys mimic the surface molecules by pathogens to enter a cell while not allowing them to enter. An example in humans is C-E-A-C-A-M three, which mimics the normal surface molecule for C-E-A-C-A M1.

It is fast evolving apparently because it has been convergent. Co-evolving with certain pathogens. The latter evolve it to avoid this surface molecule while in turn evolves to bind the pathogen even more in the sites to study [00:53:00] here As such decoy specifically produced by our, sorry, he says are such decoy specifically produced by our neural tissues.

Evolutionary psychologist, Marco Degi is skeptical about the possibility that behavioral manipulating parasites have adopted to human bodies. Notably because we have large, complex brains, with redundancy and because we are much larger than microbes and can thus invest more metabolically encounter measures to fight them.

I basically already said, this is just silly you, we are obviously. Obviously susceptible to this stuff. On the other hand, he goes on to say, we have much longer gestation times than many other behavioral manipulating parasites currently known. IE we live much longer than something like a cat, which, and we know that they increase the amount, they affect our behavior over time which we seem to see across these parasites.

The latter, thus has a co-evolutionary advantage. It can outmaneuver our, our countermeasures faster than we can evolve. New ones very true. Humans evolve very [00:54:00] slowly. So even if we large, are large and evolved we have our countermeasures can’t update. And more important than that, we just probably haven’t been exposed to this stuff for very long.

He goes. Our large complex brains often create more opportunities for manipulation. Then again, the very largeness of our brains works in our favors. We can create so much neural redundancy that the parasite has to pull too many switches in too many places to produce a substantial effects. But the thing is, is that the, the, the parasite doesn’t care about pulling too many switches in too many places.

This might be what’s causing multiple sclerosis. It has decades to do this to you. It is living in your body, right? That’s just comically wrong. And he says, finally, we have another advantage. We can fight parasites through cultural rules and prohibitions, rules against sexuality, promiscuity, and non-VA sex may reflect a vague awareness that the sex act can transmit not only through semen, but also sorry, unwanted semen, but also free writers.

And then he cites two studies here, and I note [00:55:00] here. Our guide, the Pragmatist gu guide to Creating Religion or Crafting Religion could talks about this, it talks about how evolutionary pressures like this. This would’ve been an evolutionary pressures on the early evolutionary early evolution of religion may have affected what religions ultimately became.

Mm-hmm. And the behavioral sets of these religions. Fascinating. That the fact that we dropped these and we ended up creating these sort of nest beds of perhaps even immunocompromised pools because diseases evolved much faster in immunocompromised pools. Here I’m talking about the early gay aids population here.

That was very promiscuous. We may have created the perfect test beds for these new types of behavioral manipulating parasites and diseases and viruses to evolve. And our scientists are basically not allowed to study them because, oh my God, if they did, wouldn’t that be naughty? And we found out that certain [00:56:00] individual’s behavior was not a you know, an inborn preference, but a parasite.

Hmm. That polyamory may not even be a preference. It may be a parasite. The very fact that you may not care that your partner is sleeping with other people, which among our ancestors would’ve been a very bad thing for males. Something external might have to be modifying you to make you have this very evolutionarily maladaptive preference.

And I love it that, that progressives are the now ones who don’t believe in evolution. By the way, you want more like this? Check out Peter Frost Substack. Yeah. Thoughts.

Simone Collins: Our, our sex ed for our kids has just changed a lot. Which is crazy. This

Malcolm Collins: is one of the most impactful things I have ever covered on this show.

Simone Collins: This is why I love the Basecamp community. We get, we get these amazing emails, just like, well check this out, and then our minds get blown and then we get to share it with other people. It turns out it’s, I

Malcolm Collins: thought you knew about human [00:57:00] sexuality

Simone Collins: was rough. Seriously. Seriously. Wow.

Malcolm Collins: And there’s a lot of evidence is the other thing for this.

Yeah. Oof.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like to me, I don’t even take this as a theory. I take it as confirmed and I know why it’s been covered up.

Simone Collins: Well, and it’s, it’s also just one of those things where it makes sense, you know? It, it, it would make sense there. There’s, there’s a means, a motive, an opportunity,

Malcolm Collins: a means, a motive, an opportunity.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You know?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So, guys I would say

Simone Collins: that stop having sex. Everyone stop.

Malcolm Collins: Everyone’s tired. It changes, it changes so many things. It changes sex ed for my kids. Mm-hmm. This would’ve been so much more effective on me as a kid. If somebody was like, if you have, oh my gosh. Yeah. A parasite will take over your body, control your mind the rest of your life, and then eventually discard you.

Simone Collins: It’s invasion of the body snatchers. It’s terrifying.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: There are literal body snatchers out there that are going to attempt to seduce you. Uhhuh steal yourself,

Simone Collins: like literally seduce you. Yeah. Ooh. Oof. [00:58:00]

Malcolm Collins: Two. It changes my perspective of our enemies, that there might be actual biological actors out there, parasites that are co-evolving with the urban monoculture and the urban monoculture benefits from spreading the affection because, for example, say toxoplasmosis, it lowers people’s awareness of threats and a lower awareness of threats increases.

And we’ve seen this in voting behavior, a willingness to vote Democrat.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And not seeing the obvious threats that we’re importing into our country.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You know, the, the great like grape gangs, they can hear about these and be, and, and that these are actively being covered up or, or have actual politicians just walk up and be like, yes, we want to replace ex population, or something like that.

And note here, I’m not, I’m talking about, I’m talking about like zero Manny’s actual election speech. Right? Like, I’m not like being a, we’re talking about literally Hillary Clinton saying that’s why we need large immigrant ways. See video on his Hillary what Clinton a great replacement theorist.

Mm-hmm. [00:59:00] That people’s threat response isn’t alerted to This shows that these two communities work hand in glove. Mm-hmm. And, and again, here, I’m not noting I have any allusions to this. I of course do not believe that any, there’s any agenda around replacing people. I’m just saying it’s weird that Zohan Malani and Hillary Clinton think that like.

I love you, Simone. Thank you. Our fans, and great episode. Fascinating, fascinating, fascinating.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I’m grateful for this tip. Really good stuff. Everyone. Keep the good ideas coming.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And like, and subscribe if this episode was cool for you. Yes.

Simone Collins: We’ll continue to

Malcolm Collins: power the web for the information you need to know.

Mm.

Simone Collins: All right. [01:00:00] All right.

Malcolm Collins: Was so surprised that today’s episode did so poorly.

Simone Collins: I, I Sometimes the algo gods just don’t like us.

Malcolm Collins: It was the episode on Muslims not liking dogs. But I suspect yeah, actually, dunno, it could, it could be that YouTube was trying to, like, it was, it’s like, oh, this episode is anti-Muslim.

Simone Collins: I mean,

Malcolm Collins: we need to suppress,

Simone Collins: there’s nothing exactly flattering. That’s in that episode, so.

Malcolm Collins: Well, you know, they wouldn’t do that for you know. Well, okay, so by the way, did you watch more of that, that girl’s videos who I sent you?

Simone Collins: Yes. I just, as we were about to start this, I was in the middle of her episode on some animal crossing thing.

Yeah. I’m delighted.

Malcolm Collins: Hold on. I’ll just pull up her name now so I can tell her fans because I like, I do not know how, I was never recommended her videos. Yeah, she’s delightful. [01:01:00] Fa Wait, wait, sorry. I kind watching them. What’s her name

Simone Collins: again? I was talking over you. What’s her name again?

Malcolm Collins: Frankie Faye. And she does the I mean, I had heard of it before.

I think the like bad art critic or something. But it is, it is exactly up my alley. It’s, it’s like weird online subculture, anthropology without a lot of moralizing or bias.

Simone Collins: Yeah, just, just delight in the weirdness of the internet and humanity. That is what we want. It is what she serves. She’s doing God’s work.

Malcolm Collins: That’s what I’m here for. Yes, absolutely.

Simone Collins: Yes. Mm-hmm. So recommendation of the day, Frankie Faye.

Malcolm Collins: What did, what did

Simone Collins: fans, and she has a ton of watches on her videos. It’s not like,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, like why wasn’t I being recommended this? Why weren’t you like Simone and I have the same

Simone Collins: algorithm. How can we know about Strange Aons and how can we know about, what’s the name of the clown girl?

Malcolm Collins: I dunno. She puts like tons of clown music on, she’s, she’s

Simone Collins: Australian and she puts on clown makeup and talks

Malcolm Collins: about, but I like literally now that I’ve watched Frankie Faye, I like Frankie Faye [01:02:00] Better than Strange Aons or Clown Face Girl, stop.

Simone Collins: Don’t come for strange Aons. She’s wonderful.

Malcolm Collins: No, the problem is is strange Aons.

Is better. She’s better than clown face girl. Clown face girl is good. But the problem is, is clown face, girl is way too urban. Monoculture cooked, strange. Aons is like the gay,

Simone Collins: I think she goes into more detail than I want, or sometimes she just chooses things that aren’t that interesting. Not that salacious

Malcolm Collins: by the way, the very best, but he just doesn’t produce videos much in this category.

If you want to go into it is down the rabbit hole. He

Simone Collins: doesn’t Oh, down the rabbit hole’s. Great.

Malcolm Collins: But

Simone Collins: he also did that really, really long one on the hery gurdy. Like he doesn’t always do internet stuff. He’ll just do stuff on like, here’s this random instrument that I’m obsessed with. But he did a really did he did, he did furries.

He did fur comedy, right? Yeah, he’s

Malcolm Collins: done some furry ones.

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, he’s done a lot of internet stuff, but he is also done a lot of just, I mean, not that I didn’t enjoy the, the hurdy gerdy history, but I also didn’t,

Malcolm Collins: I didn’t watch that one. Anyway,

Simone Collins: I’ll get, I did in solidarity. You have to get to show your support.

Give some [01:03:00] views. Malcolm G. Well,

Malcolm Collins: there’s one small one that I wanna recommend that did a great one on the husband hotel incident, but I’d have to find it again

, because I was so surprised when I watched it. I was like, this is as good as any of the others I watched. But I only have like 10,000 views.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. We should. Something to do a round up of, of our favorite

Malcolm Collins: YouTube literally every morning for her and me. It’s like, Hey, did you watch Asthma Gold this morning?

Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s always gold this

Malcolm Collins: morning. What’d

Simone Collins: you asma? Gold gets me outta bed, man. Like, that’s, that’s the, you know, and you’re like, I just, I don’t wanna do the day he has woken up by the smell of a rotting.

Dead. That’s, that’s feeling I’m woken up by his stream for

Malcolm Collins: so many of our fans is the thing that they talk about when they’re like dating or in a, in a marriage, which is great. You know? Oh

Simone Collins: yeah. No, no, no. Yeah. Like that, that, that the thing that, that keeps otherwise isolated marital partnerships from going stale is consuming content and discussing it’s, it’s like what ongoing university classes are.

I think that’s what a lot of people miss about school [01:04:00] is that you would read Plato’s Republic and then you’d go discuss it in class, and now I get to do that, but with a whole bunch of internet nonsense instead. And class is just someone you actually really love instead of a bunch of really basic on educated young people.

So it’s great.

[01:05:00]

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