Challenges and Innovations in Alternative Education

This video explores various perspectives on education, focusing on homeschooling versus traditional schooling. The speaker highlights misconceptions about social skills in homeschooled children, stating they often excel compared to traditionally schooled peers. The conversation also delves into different educational methods categorized by location, medium, and curriculum, discussing the potential benefits and drawbacks of each. It touches on the importance of adapting educational systems to the modern era, including utilizing AI and online resources. Through humorous anecdotes and personal experiences, the conversation critically examines traditional education models and their applicability today.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] like they've done big meta studies on this persistently.

Homeschooled kids are better socialized, they're better leaders, they're like, better in pretty much every category. And people are like,

Yeah, but I remember I've engaged with homeschool kids and they have no social skills and I'm like, okay

try to bring them back to your memory Do you remember why you thought they had no social skills? Was it that they were unusually well mannered? Was it that they didn't engage in petty social politicking? Was it that they didn't randomly get mad at people who picked on them? Is it that Maybe they were socialized by adults instead of children

Speaker: hey kid, get out of that hamster ball. Oh, I promised my father I wouldn't. Oh boy

Speaker 2: You best do what he says, homeschool kid. Well, this is our part of the playground, see, , we're going to duct tape you to the bench.

Speaker 3: You mean you would actually duct tape my entire body to a bench?

For what purpose?

 Okay, okay, , okay,

Speaker 2: okay, okay,

Speaker: okay, okay. Have a nice second half of the day, Nerdo.

Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you shouldn't be

Speaker: such a smart mouthed Mr. Know it all. [00:01:00] Oh dear.

Speaker 4: Enjoy your lunch, nerdo! Ah! Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me! Oh, dude, you don't say that!

Malcolm Collins: About the only homeschool kids. I've seen that have persistent problems are the ones from very religious backgrounds where it included denying them access. To either common media . Or denying them the right to date and stuff

Speaker 15: mother knows best, it's a scary world out there. Something will go wrong, I swear. Ruffians, thugs, also large buds, men with pointy teeth,

Malcolm Collins: and then they become like sex freaks.

Speaker 11: In canon, I don't care. I ship it. I don't care. I know that they are siblings, but I think there's something more. If she were dating that guy, they'd be banging, I am sure.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: HEllo,

Malcolm Collins: I'm excited to [00:02:00] be here with you today. Today. We are going to have an interesting conversation. It is going to be about.

Education because I was having a conversation recently where I realized how. Incorrectly, a lot of Americans think about education because they confuse the actual choices they have around educating their children. And I would say that all of the choices that we make around educating our children should be categorized into three buckets.

And you should not confuse these buckets are almost totally interchangeable with each other. And Simone is going to hate the names of one of these buckets and we'll let her choose a um, , , the first bucket is location. The second bucket is Medium, but Simone also likes to call it method, so method, I'll say.

And the third button, it, bucket is curriculum. So, let me explain how people make mistakes around [00:03:00] these three buckets. So, I may make a complaint, and I may say something that's apparent like, Isn't it wild that we just sit our kids in a room with what is to them an arbitrary authority figure telling them what's true and what's false?

And that they are just expected to memorize these things and then, you know, write them down at the end of like, like, Oh yeah, I just trust the authority figure. That's a good way to relate to information. And then some parents will be like, and they'll see our, you know, online, what is a form of platform.

And they'll be like, well, that's too tech for me. So like, well, I like your high tech stuff. I, I take my kids to a woods school, right? They do outdoor schooling, a woods school. And I'm like, well, that, I mean, they could take a tablet to the woods. You know, like, wait, who's, who's teaching them in the woods?

And they're like, well, it's a, you know, it's basically a normal school in the woods. It's like an

Simone Collins: arbitrary authority figure telling them what's right [00:04:00] and wrong. Yeah. But now they're in the woods. So.

Speaker 18: Yep, that's what I thought. See that? You've got a drum circle in your backyard. Oh, well, they showed up a few days ago, but I didn't think they were hurting anything.

Yeah, you know, I had a guy in Jackson County, he had a little drum circle in his backyard, turned into a drum circle four miles in diameter. You get a few hippies playing drums, and the next thing you know you got yourself a colony. Oh, dear.

Malcolm Collins: So it's good to understand that changing the location where the education is happening doesn't change either the method or the curriculum.

And when you are thinking about. Things like the method slash the medium, as I call it, of education. It is very, very important that you not get confused by the aesthetics of the geography. So an example here is let's go back to granola mom, right? So we just had the previous [00:05:00] conversation. They're called

Simone Collins: crunchy moms,

Malcolm Collins: crunchy moms, whatever.

She goes, Oh no, it's okay. You see, that's not the method that we're using. My child, like the teacher, acts more like his friend and I hear this and I go. That sounds infinitely worse than the previous thing you just told me. It does. You, you are telling me, first, that's a much better way, if the child, if the teacher has like creepy ideas that they want to incept your child with or world perspectives, it's going to be much easier if they've taken on this interpersonal relation with the child.

Simone Collins: This is a cult leader now. Oh, good. So we've gone from. Arbitrary authoritarian leader. He might hate and whose ideas you might question to a cult leader, whose ideas you will certainly not question because they love bond. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: And, and we're, and worse, and I've seen teachers like this when the kids don't love them.

They're not that happy with the kid. It's very cult leader vibes. But then the question is, is like, also like, what are you filtering for? Like, what kind of person is like, I want to be [00:06:00] friends with a bunch of. Like middle schoolers or toddlers. But I want that. Like some, some heavy filters have been applied by the time you've gotten to that point.

And then if they're in the woods with your kid, this is the sub faction that said, I want to not be near other adults. And for whatever reason, I couldn't get a job in the local public school. Are you really sure that this is what you want? I would remind you that in the United States. One in 10 kids. I think it's over one in 10 kids has experienced S.

A. By a teacher. So, you know,

Simone Collins: and these are typically public or private school teachers who have had criminal background checks and a lot of other vetting. Correct?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So don't, don't. Maybe send your kids into the woods with somebody like have a little do so

Simone Collins: with your eyes wide open If you need to if you must

Malcolm Collins: oh, yeah.

Well, so then they're like, no, I'll send my kids into the woods with a book [00:07:00]

Simone Collins: Okay,

Malcolm Collins: I'm like, you know teacher

Simone Collins: just a book

Malcolm Collins: you do You know how quickly CPS is gonna be called on you like I love it when parents like have these fantasies It is clear that they've never actually sent their kids out of the house 37 percent of American kids have had CPS called on them.

We've had CPS called on us twice. I was in a podcast with another woman who asked me this question. And I was like, because you'll have CPS called on you immediately. And she, and she thought for a second, she goes. Oh, yeah, actually, once I let my kids play outside and within two hours, the cops were at our house.

What?

Simone Collins: Oh, gosh.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Because this isn't the world of our parents generation. You know, we're under the authoritarian regime. So let's begin to break out and delineate. Okay. All of the different methods and curriculum and environments that kids can learn was in.

Yes. So, and, and the potential benefits of each, right? So, if I'm gonna talk about methods the core ones are [00:08:00] teacher who tells kids what's true and what's false, right? Like the authoritarian model, I guess I'll call it. Second one is friendly model. And the friendly model comes in a number of varieties, but friendly model.

The third one is reactive model. This is a teacher who is only there for questions. Oh, the

Simone Collins: Mrs. Frizzle.

Malcolm Collins: No, not Mrs. Frizzle. She's a insane, Mrs. Frizzle is always almost getting her class killed.

Speaker 8: Faster! Is it just me, or is that a real, live Tyrannosaurus Rex behind them? Correct a saurus, Ralphie. And the T Rex was the biggest meat eater of

Malcolm Collins: Like, I don't know what you're talking. No, I think she's

Simone Collins: a great model of a teacher because she's the kind of teacher who puts students in a situation and presents them with problems and says, Or they could die.

Well, okay. That's the fantasy part of it. But when you look at the practical

Malcolm Collins: experience, body horror, if I may, where they get jizzed on by a fish while she is singing a song and dancing in a big [00:09:00] device that has human lips, looking at the kids who have been trapped in fish eggs. This is a horror among horrors, Simone, where the kids say, I guess this is our home now, or we're going to be fertilized.

Speaker 11: Holy mackerel! The bus just laid eggs, and we're in them!

Speaker 13: Look at it this way, Ralphie. As soon as we hatch, this will be home!

Speaker 12: A salmon he went to court and he did swim. Mm hmm. Salmon he went to court

Speaker 14: There's your answer,

Speaker 12: Carlos.

Speaker 13: What? Is he some sort of car wash?

Speaker 14: No. Don't eggs have to be fertilized

Speaker 11: and we're gonna be the next generation of salmon!

 Get ready to dig in, Liz.

Speaker 13: Is burying us alive!

Speaker 11: Becoming an egg? Okay. Getting fertilized? Okay. Getting buried in an egg? Not okay. ,

Speaker 12: Class.

Speaker 11: Ugh, [00:10:00] let's see if hatching's all it's cracked up to be.

Speaker 13: Wow,

Speaker 11: I'm hungry.

I'm hungry. My yolk sack's history! Let's find food! Eggs?

Malcolm Collins: When

Simone Collins: you take away the fantasy sci fi element of it, she is the kind of teacher who presents students with problems and questions, and then encourages them to find for themselves the truth. And I think that's a method, and I quite like that method in the end. I think it's a great method.

Because

she's not their friend.

She's not an authority figure. She doesn't answer their questions. She encourages them to find their own answers.

Malcolm Collins: The truth is, is this method that you're describing right here is a fantasy method that many parents believe. No, it's true. So I actually know the methods you're talking about. A lot of ultra rich parents believe that it's what the way their kids are being educated.

Oh, yeah. But no

Simone Collins: one actually has the time to do [00:11:00] that. Nobody actually has

Malcolm Collins: the time to implement this. And no, no, trust me. I know people who have. started schools that were meant to use this method and were at least half billionaires. And they, they, their own school ended up going insane. Like you're, it just doesn't work.

It is a fantasy. It is a billionaire. Why does it not work? Because either there was two problems. One is completely non scalable. Okay, completely non scalable, especially post middle school, where kids begin to, you know, develop more autonomy. And then. When you actually say, okay, I understand it's unscalable, but let's have, like, three kids in a classroom or two kids in a classroom, the teachers just give up after six months and go back to some other form of education or become completely passive.

Simone Collins: Is that because you need students to be so involved to find their own answers and they typically don't have that kind of initiative. Yes. Yeah, like with with our [00:12:00] son Octavian, our biggest problem with him, and I was just having a parent teacher conference about this is if you ask him, you know, like, what's, what's this?

He's always like, you tell me, like, I don't, I don't care. He just doesn't care. I mean, our other son is very different and that he is actively finding things out on his own and insisting on telling us. I want to tell you something he keeps saying, but yeah, you're right. Most students it doesn't

Malcolm Collins: work

Simone Collins: for.

Malcolm Collins: Back to the real education model. Yeah. Passive education model.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Passive education model is. I have given my kid a form of curriculum that has them regularly run into problems. And typically there is an authority figure around that they can communicate with. So the passive medium typically works alongside one of the other mediums.

Simone Collins: So then the last stuff you go to the teacher, right? They're like a tutor who's available on demand to help you. Yeah. And on demand

Malcolm Collins: tutor often a parent or something. And then the last two mediums are books and internet. So those are the, the of the realistic mediums that actually work instead [00:13:00] of fantasy medium.

You have authoritarian, friend, passive, book, computer. And basically these are the, oh, and one one new one I'd say. AI. And the AI I generally think is a better passive medium unless the passive medium is the parent. Just because it's typically going to be one much more on demand and the child is actually learning as they're engaging.

Yeah. More informed, more

Simone Collins: patient. No, but they're also learning

Malcolm Collins: how to use an AI and how to like source questions with AI as questions come to them. You know, so there, as, as an adult, when they might not have some arbitrary authority they can turn to, you know, they know, Oh, this is the AI I use for these types of questions and they build habits around that that are, that are up there.

Effective at coming to true answers. So these are the various methods of communicating information to the kid. Obviously our school, the Collins Institute, Parasia, you can check it out. Collins Institute dot org. It's free. Right now [00:14:00] it's mostly in the development stage. We have a bunch of Editors.

We have like a huge team of editors that are going through it. We have a number of them that are paid to just basically work on it all day, every day, removing anything that's wrong because a lot of the initial content was developed with A. I. So it's got some stakes. And so we're basically cleaning all that up while also getting right now help from anybody who's interested.

And people are like, Oh, so it's not ready for kids. No, it is ready for kids. Just part of the way the kids they're going to learn is identifying wrong Answers and questions and flagging them and identifying mistakes.

Speaker 16: My wife and I built the Collins Institute, a comprehensive interactive map, or skill tree, comprising all of human knowledge. The platform is designed to be usable as soon as a student gets comfortable with reading, and goes about midway through a PhD in most subjects.

However, we built it to cover all human knowledge, meaning it covers a much larger domain than is taught in the traditional school system. Ranging from tort law, to hanging drywall, to the industrial transportation of grain, or aquaculture pharmacology.

 Click on a node to open it. [00:15:00] The node will include a description of what knowledge is needed to pass its test, as well as a list of the best places to learn that information.

Vote on the sources that were most useful to you by clicking this button. To add an additional source, click this button

Malcolm Collins: And by the way,

Simone Collins: to those of you who are in Parisia, adding feedback, adding resources, making yourself available as a tutor, thank you so much.

You guys rock.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. So now to the environments, the environments are really I'd say primarily two, but maybe you can get more or three and maybe you can get more. Okay,

Simone Collins: you've got

Malcolm Collins: your home. Okay, you've got a school and you've got everything else. By that what I mean is that can be the, the woods.

That could be a city that could be one of our kids. Could, you know, with the PIA platform. Get a tablet and hop on our little floating watercraft and spend the day on the lake right [00:16:00] outside the house

Malcolm Collins: Well, don't you

Simone Collins: think now among very wealthy families the concept of world schooling got trendy around 10 years ago

Malcolm Collins: World school so travel

Simone Collins: schooling.

Yeah, basically, you know wealthy family travels around the world does their world tour brings their kids with them? Because they want to spend time with their kids and their kids just do a homeschooling program You While on the road, but also while going to museums in Florence and, you know, meeting with families in

Malcolm Collins: the question here is what are the advantages and disadvantages of these various models?

Torsten: I find it

Malcolm Collins: interesting how many people think like nature is like, I don't know, like sanctifies An educational process like we can have an authoritarian teacher or we can have a kid learning online. It's going to be totally different if they're floating on a river and it's like, well, maybe, I mean, if that's what the kid wants, but I'm sure they'll find some efficiency drop in doing that eventually, you know, but [00:17:00] sure, whatever, you know, that's what you want to do.

Simone Collins: And

Malcolm Collins: they can sit on that with their little tablet and go down Lazy River style while studying if they wanted to. But the question is, are they going to learn more efficiently in that environment? Definitely

Simone Collins: not.

Malcolm Collins: No, so there's a principle in psychology and I forget what it's called, but basically

Microphone (2- ATR2100x-USB Microphone): The term I was looking for with context dependent memory or state dependent memory.

Malcolm Collins: it's that if the learning environment is similar to the recall environment, you'll be about 20 percent better at recall.

So, an example of this is if you study for a test in the room, you take the test, you will do about like 20 percent better or something. But it's also like if you study in a radically different environment, like on an airplane or on a boat or in the woods, and then you are testing in a test room, like an ACT test room you have, you know, like shot yourself in the leg before running a marathon.

It's an intentionally like stupid thing to do outside of the just health benefits of being in nature. But at that point, it's like. Well, I mean, couldn't the kids [00:18:00] just go in a couple hour walk every day? Like we live by the woods. I don't know. Like the

Simone Collins: hacks that I used when I was a student to get around that, when I was concerned about it was I would wear the same perfume on test day as I did on study days and it helped, I felt it helped, but maybe it was all placebo world

Malcolm Collins: schooling.

I actually one of the girls who I dated most seriously, other than Simone she was the best man at one of our weddings. One of

Simone Collins: our weddings.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, best woman. Well, she was, she was your

Simone Collins: best man.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. She, so she dressed like a guy and and it looked incredibly good.

Simone Collins: Best dressed at our wedding. Most beautiful woman at our wedding.

I know. I know

Malcolm Collins: she looked really good dressed in this. I'm not going to like post pictures of her, but it was an issue. Your parents thought I was going to leave you for her. But she actually grew up on a. Um, And she was schooled on the yacht and she lived on the yacht and I saw pictures from her childhood of her just hanging off the front of the boat [00:19:00] studying.

And I mean, obviously she was educated. But But by the way, the stories of her childhood are just absolutely crazy. Like, you know, like for example, she hung out with like Emma Watson and those crews and the Gettys. And so I've got all these, all these wacky stories. But anyway she was very well socialized.

She was one of the most socially competent people I've ever met. And so I think this idea that if you put a kid in an environment like that, they're not going to build social ties, this,

Simone Collins: this whole thing about, Oh, if I homeschool my kids, they won't be socially well adjusted is the biggest myth.

It's yeah, they, your, your child is going to be worse, socially adjusted and have worse habits and pick up worse things if they hang out at a school environment, period.

Malcolm Collins: Period. If they're hanging out around adults. It's this weird Lord of the Flies scenario. And it's one of these things, like they've done big meta studies on this persistently.

Homeschooled kids are better socialized, they're better leaders, they're like, [00:20:00] better in pretty much every category. And the question is, is people are like,

Yeah, but I remember I've engaged with homeschool kids and they have no social skills and I'm like, okay I want you to meditate on those engagements.

Try to bring them back to your memory Do you remember why you thought they had no social skills? Was it that they were unusually well mannered? Was it that they didn't engage in petty social politicking? Was it that they didn't randomly get mad at people who picked on them? Is it that Maybe they were socialized by adults instead of children and you in child world were confused because you ran into somebody who wasn't socialized in child world and didn't understand that it was a you who was poorly socialized.

Speaker: Hey kid, get out of that hamster ball. Oh, I promised my father I wouldn't. Oh boy

Speaker 2: You best do what he says, homeschool kid. Well, this is our part of the playground, see, , we're going to duct tape you to the [00:21:00] bench.

Speaker 3: You mean you would actually duct tape my entire body to a bench?

For what purpose?

 Okay, okay, , okay,

Speaker 2: okay, okay,

Speaker: okay, okay. Have a nice second half of the day, Nerdo.

Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you shouldn't be

Speaker: such a smart mouthed Mr. Know it all. Oh dear.

Speaker 4: Enjoy your lunch, nerdo! Ah! Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me! Oh, dude, you don't say that!

Malcolm Collins: And this is something I've persistently seen when people are talking about, you know, homeschool kids about the only homeschool kids. I've seen that have any sort of persistent problems are the ones from very religious backgrounds where it included denying them access. To either common media that everyone else would have access to.

So in the modern age this would be something like denying them Facebook and stuff like that. Or denying them the right to date and stuff and then they become like sex freaks.

Speaker 15: Mother knows best, it's a scary world out there. Something will go wrong, I swear. Ruffians, thugs, also large buds, men with pointy teeth,

mother [00:22:00] will protect you. Darling, here's what I suggest.

Malcolm Collins: And like everybody knows, like it's one of these things why I'm always like when somebody's like well I'm gonna be like super sexually restrictive of my kid and tell them all this stuff is terrible and tell them and I'm like, But you do know that like everyone that happens to becomes like a super slut, right?

Like I will say as a very sexually active guy in high school like that was a very easy crowd to target they were some of the easiest people the people who had the ultra protective parents and I don't know like how parents with all the stereotypes I'm gonna put the south part clip of homeschool girl here.

Speaker 7: Hey, isn't that the homeschool kid's sister? Hi, guys.

Speaker 9: Holy cow! Hey, baby, come see me later, kay? What the damn, baby? Hey, Kyle, wanna go make out? Rebecca,

Speaker 6: you Rebecca, what the devil are you doing? I'm having fun, Mark. YoU did this to my sister! You made my [00:23:00] sister into

Speaker 8: a slut! Dude, he's kicking the crap out of Kyle! Yeah, he's a

Speaker 10: badass!

Speaker 7: I'm not through with you, b***h! Hey, you're pretty cool, Mark. Yeah, that was real badass how you stood up for your sister. I oughta kick Kyle's b***h ass, too. You wanna go have some cake with me, Mark?

 He said he'd hang out with me!

Malcolm Collins: Like how do they not? I guess it's cause they don't watch a media or interact or weren't, you know, like they don't understand the vulnerabilities they're instilling in the kids through doing that. Which was yeah, very, very interesting.

Speaker 15: Mother knows best. Take it from your mumsy sloppy, underdressed, immature, clumsy. Colourful, naive, positive. Should we drop

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): I love it so much when I'm talking to one of these parents and they're like, oh yeah, but my kid actually really obeys the rules and you know, she's super sweet and she would never, you know, break any of the rules. And I'm like, what? Do you think the girls I was sleeping with who had protective parents? Told their parents. Are you out of your mind?

No, of course. That's what you'd think [00:24:00] if they were sleeping around. Oh, my gosh.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: For individuals wondering about the functional mechanism that makes sheltered. Girls so much easier than non sheltered girls. It's that once you have gotten a shelter girl to kiss you from that point to. PIV intercourse is There's very few barriers. , because for them, the core barrier is the hard line in the sand that the parents have set for them.

Whereas with non sheltered individuals, they have an escalating barrier based on the seriousness of the intimate act they are engaging with. So with the shelter kids, really all you're doing is slightly increasing the difficulty of getting. The first kiss, but everything after that is dramatically, dramatically easier. , and it's just a really bad idea.

Malcolm Collins: The God, what was it? Different categories. Oh yes. Yeah. So the world school kids typically, because I've [00:25:00] met a number of them, they end up. Like super well adjusted, super well adjusted, unusually well adjusted. This is also true for military brats. I would

Simone Collins: even, I would say even those raised in cults often turn out a little more well adjusted.

The people we've met who came from even extreme cults, we're talking polygamous cults in the jungles of South America. And I'm not changing any details. They're very well adjusted, very normal, cool people. So

Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah. That guy was exceptionally well adjusted. He was, yeah, it was a cult where they kick out all the young men because the one guy is married to all of the women.

Yeah. So this

Simone Collins: guy had six brothers. And they, they were all throughout the United States cause they'd all been kicked out of the family and now kind of helped each other after they got kicked out, which is kind of interesting model. Really cool.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They've been really, they were all pretty successful.

They were very

Simone Collins: successful. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Which is interesting. It's like, well, I mean, I guess the dad has like really good genes. Like that's. [00:26:00]

Simone Collins: Well, and I think there's something to be said for forcing enough. Well, yes, forcing, but also allowing people to grow up. We do infantilize people egregiously, even adults in the United States these days, just culturally and pervasively, and even, even systemically and governmentally, we infantilize people across all means.

So a cult that artificially kind of removes you from mainstream society and forces you to become an adult. Is going to give you a distinct advantage.

Malcolm Collins: That sort of forcing is very useful, but then you're not going to stay within your birth culture. But one that is, is, is really dangerous that I see a lot of people defaulting more towards is Sheltering.

Well, two types of sheltering that are both very damaging to kids.

Torsten: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: The first and why it's a terrible idea is more obvious, which is sheltering from social media. If you do not teach a child to do ly engage with social media, you are hurting them in two core ways. [00:27:00] One they're gonna get a social media account when they get out from under your thumb, and they're gonna do dumb stuff with it that will be on the internet forever, at an age where they're gonna be held responsible for that stuff.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Do not like, it's, it's, it's, it's the same thing as like telling a kid they can't date. Like, of course you're going to get the, the freak scenario after that. It reminds me of earlier today. I was actually thinking about like, what cultural group, cause I've slept with women from many cultural groups are typically the best in bed.

And when I was thinking, I was like, I hate it's gotta be Catholic girls. They just have a lot more experience than any other cultural subgroup I'm familiar with.

Speaker 20: Father, forgive me for I have sinned. My sins would best be expressed in a monologue from the made for TV movie Sybil,

Speaker 21: You're nothin but a little slut. Don't call me that. I am a Puerto Rican lady, senor. Not a slut! I'm

Malcolm Collins: And, and it's partially because of this protective mindset, right? [00:28:00] Like, Oh, we'll protect them from learning how to date judiciously or anything like that. Right. Or learning how to. Deal with social media judiciously. So I think that's one problem. But then the other problem that you're going to have in dealing with social media is

as the school system begins to degrade, we are entering a world where one of the core ways that people check the competence of other people is to see if that person has been validated by people that they know, or has been validated by a large group of strangers. And that is done often through social media accounts.

So when somebody is deciding to work with us or invest in us or something like that, they're, you know, checking us out on X and seeing, do people who they respect follow us? Do we have X many followers at least? Like, are we socially relevant? And there really just aren't that many other good competence fetters that are broadly accessible in inter interinterpretable across communities [00:29:00] right now.

And so when you ban a kid from this, it's a bit like banning a kid from getting a college degree in the last societal system. It's going to lead to like huge negative externalities for the kid. Do you have thoughts before I go on?

Simone Collins: No, I agree. Let's go on to the other

Malcolm Collins: problem is and now we're going to move into the question of the digital, right?

Like if the message that the kid is being educated on is digital, is that going to cause a problem? And I would note here that a lot of people don't know is when books were first released. There were lots of panics around this, of people becoming addicted to books and all of the negative psychological effects of books.

And when I was talking to a mom about this recently she was like, Well, I mean, even today, you know, my daughter got a little too into fantasy books. And I had to like wean her off those a bit for a period because she's like, it's not that they were bad books. It's just that she was, you know, reading them to

Simone Collins: the exclusion of everything else.

[00:30:00] Right.

Malcolm Collins: Not just that, but they were building bad expectations about reality for her. You know, expecting fantasy book, boyfriends, expecting fantasy book, world doesn't have dragons, right? You know, so, it created a, a, a set of bad pre and you know, for ages when, when people today are like, isn't that funny?

They thought young girls were getting addicted to reading in the past and going insane. And I was like, well, I mean, it's not that insane. Like I, I think it was probably actually happening. It's just today we call that being a little too into fan fiction or something. Like it still happens. It's just different these days,

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-2: I was talking to one. , fairly sheltering mother at one point, , bragging about how into writing her daughter was and how she was involved in all of these communities online that wrote. And I was like, huh? , Are they writing fan fiction? And she's like, yes. Yes. That's exactly what they write. And here I am [00:31:00] thinking, oh, oh my goodness.

You have no idea what your daughter is doing to you?

Speaker 11: Can't help it, I just think that they would make such a good pair. In canon, I don't care. I ship it. I don't care. I know that they are siblings, but I think there's something more. If she were dating that guy, they'd be banging, I am sure.

 Twins just can't really be that bad. You're on the cannon ground. I'm up in crack ship's face. Let's start a shipping war.

Don't care if I get hate. Don't like my pairing. Well, then you can Hit the bricks. This is my OP. I'll go down with this.

Malcolm Collins: But the online environment, people are like, well, look at all the research on screen times, you know, look at all the, how bad screen times are.

My, my take on screen times is it's a bit like. [00:32:00] I told somebody, well, living in the tenderloin in San Francisco is bad for you. And they're like, well, why do you think that? And I'm like, well, you know, every time I go there, there's like people throwing up and they look sick and they're screaming at the wall and they can barely move.

And they're like that's the math. And I'm like, yeah, but why is it only in the tenderloin? And they're like, well, Because that's where they sell the meth. That's where they do the meth. That's where all the meth is done. It is not the tenderloin intrinsically. It's that's where meth is sold. Dopamine loops within online environments is what's causing all of these negative externalities.

It's not the environments themselves that intrinsically lead to these externalities. And so, yeah, I it, it's, And then they're like, well, yeah, but you can't tell your kid that they have to go to the tinder line to work every day. And I'm like, if it turns out that that's where our entire economy is based, I mean, yeah, you kind of need them to learn how to handle this environment without [00:33:00] taking math.

And this creates this whole other scenario. So people don't know what I'm talking about when I'm talking about dopamine loops. Okay. So, you know, there is you could, you could forget, forgetting the word for this right now, but if you put like a mouse or a rat, Skinner boxes, Skinner boxes. Yeah. And it pushes a lever.

And it gets food. Every time it pushes the lever, it'll push the food when it's hungry. If it gets food, sometimes when it pushes the lever, we'll start like pushing the lever repeatedly, right? This is why you get all these gambling like things in video games and online environments these days. And they can create an addiction using your own neurochemical pathways instead of inducing exogenous chemicals, and it can cause all sorts of, and, and, and people are like, I don't engage with anything like that online and I'm like, well, do you use.

Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, because those are all inner boxes. You are putting the picture out and then you get a variable, positive response. And to an adult, that's one [00:34:00] thing, but to a kid kids respond extremely exaggeratedly to social approval. And so that is a huge addiction pathway for kids.

And so the parents are like, well, so it is screens that are the problem. I'm like, well, I mean. Not really. So if a kid's just like on Wikipedia, right, it's not a problem, right? If, if I put a kid on YouTube and he's watching magic school bus, I am a hundred percent positive. And people are like, no, all shows are bad to some extent.

I'm sorry. I'm a hundred percent positive that that kid is going to be learning more than he would be was a random adult. And people can be like, no, the adult can be like, but it's like, Yeah, but you haven't seen kids around adults, even around you, okay, you can sit down and read them a story you've read to them before, which is like marginal additional utility.

You can try to engage them in a conversation. Yeah, like go

Simone Collins: outside and annotate things like your mom when she was still living with tell you that you have to go outside and go on a walk with the kids and tell [00:35:00] them the name of every single plant. Also in Latin, and she had this big vision for how you were going to educate the children.

They're not listening to us when we're talking about these things. No, they're over there climbing a tree. They're over there stepping on Hornet's nest. They are not Let's tell them the plans names

Malcolm Collins: in Latin as an adult can like sit down and monopolize your kids attention Maybe this works with some kids, but it doesn't work with our kids And I imagine it doesn't work with a lot of other people's kids if I want my kid to sit down and actually watch something that has any educational value Let me define educational value here uses Broad plot narratives.

It has human beings with emotions reacting appropriately to various scenarios, and it explains some sort of scientific phenomenon. I eat magical school bus. Like, this is useful here. And it. Has a, an important Bill Nye the science guy. Our kids

Simone Collins: love

Malcolm Collins: Bill Nye. So, so, the, the old stuff, not since he went [00:36:00] woke and crazy.

I mean, he was an actor. He wasn't like a smart person. I, I, people understand this. Right.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-3: Parents who are shocked to find out that bill Nye is just a dumb actor, like with the opinions of any other dumb actor. Give off to me the same energy of like a police department. He was stuck in a really hard homicide investigation calling up Steve from Blue's clues and.

Being confused, why he can't solve the crime.

Speaker 13: Great. We got to find the paw print. That's the first clue. We put it in a notebook and now what do we do?

Speaker 14: We got to find another paw print. That's the second clue. We put it in a notebook.

Malcolm Collins: But varied ideas. So one of the things that people miss when they're like, I'm just going to talk with my kids is the vocabulary that you are going to use when you are trying to communicate with a child, that's going to be intrinsically limited.

Okay. In less than the vocabulary they're going to engage in a show. So much of the [00:37:00] parenting advice I hear is from people who have clearly never interacted Oh, one

Simone Collins: hundred percent.

Malcolm Collins: And it's like, that won't work. Like, they're like, let the kids go outside. I'm like, you'll be arrested. They're like, don't show them a show.

Sit down and talk with your kids. And it's like, Kids won't talk with you for more than like five minutes. Like, what are you talking about? They'll get annoyed and walk off and go do something

Simone Collins: else. Well, what we've, what I found really works well is annotation. So yeah, watch TV with them, but watch it with them and talk about it.

What are they doing now? What's happening? What do you think they are feeling like right now? What does this mean? And you get really great conversations from that. Cause they're engaged with the media, but they're also excited to talk about it.

Malcolm Collins: But yeah, but if you prevent your kid from interacting with these types of medium because you're like, well, I don't want my kid to have experience with those Skinner box things, they're gonna experience them eventually.

Simone Collins: And they're

Malcolm Collins: not going to have any defenses when they do.

Simone Collins: Yeah, [00:38:00] it's like memes and addictive pathways are not too dissimilar from diseases. It's like introducing smallpox to indigenous Americans. They have no defenses. So you want to have the kids. Who grew up around smallpox and, you know, slowly developed you know, resistance to increasing levels of viral load, I guess.

And you don't want the kid who grew up in a bubble and has absolutely no resistance for it. It

Malcolm Collins: reminds me, you know, growing up, I've mentioned, I had some friends who like their parents were like, no dating until after college. And I was like, well, do you know how effed those kids were after college? Like, and, and, but the point being is that until after college, they were.

Hard more efficient than I was like they had more time to study than I did They had less distractions than I did. They were doing better than me when somebody says Well, we didn't allow a kid any engagement with screen time in an online [00:39:00] environment And look, he did better than the kid who did have access to screen time in an online environment.

I'm like, yeah, I mean, I believe you at the end of the period where you still could control his access to the online environment. That's great. Well, it

Simone Collins: lasts.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I do not believe you. Five years post then. And. The question is, is, okay, well, if my kid is accessing these sorts of things, how do I convince him to, you know, play with the Collins Institute instead of go, you know, on a video game or something like that?

And I'm like, well, that's the crux of it. Now you realize your core job as a parent, how do you build a moral philosophy for your child? How do you build a system for your child? Or when a child is deciding, what do I want for my life? And they're making decisions around that they make the right decision,

Torsten: you

Malcolm Collins: know, with our kids, we focus on this concept of, well, you've got to, you know, make, fix the world where fix the world is defined as making the [00:40:00] world a better place for future humans and, and, and we're like, Oh my God, how dare you give your child expectations?

And I'm like, Well, that's an insane thing to say. Of course I would have expectations for my child. Like, the urban monoculture tries to normalize this sentiment because it makes it easier to deconvert children from their birth cultures because it doesn't have kids with people in the urban monoculture don't have kids, and so it can only survive by taking children from other cultures, and so it doesn't need to motivate practices that are actually useful in terms of In terms of child rearing, it just needs to motivate practices to convince anyone that their parents are abusive, because the first step of a cult is to try to break a person from their traditional support network, i.

e. their parents and their community and birth culture. So, yeah, and I know my kids won't be particularly susceptible to that. And we'll do another episode on why that would be the case. But point here being you, as a parent, Need to come up with a system for communicating a broad moral framework for your kids [00:41:00] And if what you're thinking right here is oh, I don't need to worry about that Because I take my kids to church every week i'd say you are so effed There is no way that kid's going to be a christian when they grow up.

Because I know so many young kids in this generation these parents who grew up in an environment Where most of the people around them were christian? Okay, so the the type of christianity that they grew up with is different and the type of sociological context that they grew up in is different.

And they're like, Oh, I can just copy and paste that iteration of Christianity onto my kids in a world that's like actively hunting them and attempting to brainwash them and they'll be fine. And I'm like, no, what? No, that's an insane sentiment. You're, you're, you are, you are the shepherd that is leaving your flock with the wolf.

Like, what are you thinking? That, that is not going to work. You come, you come one day and you're like, well, where is Where's little Timmy and the wolf's wiping the blood off his face because you were a buffoon. And you thought that you were [00:42:00] dealing with the same environmental and technological, I might say, I'm talking about cultural technological context that you grew up in, and you are not.

And this is why when so many people are like, oh, I'll just go back to traditions. I'm like, those traditions were developed for contexts in which they were the You know, whether it's, you know, pretty much the only one that wasn't with Judaism, and that's why Judaism is weeping, but right now in terms of fertility rates in terms of deconversion rates in terms of because they for hundreds of years have been a minority in where they lived.

But right now, if you are a Baptist, you know, it's likely that most of the people around you growing up or Baptist. If you're a Mormon, it's likely that most of the people around you growing up or Mormon. If you were, you know, a Muslim, it's likely that, well, depends on where you live, but most people growing up around you were Muslim.

And so the tools that defended you won't defend your kids, okay? The, the weapon that you need to bring to school, let's put it this way, when everyone else at the school is a sheep and not a wolf, is [00:43:00] very different. Okay. Your kids need swords, not little shivs. And they also need to learn to be smart.

One of the things I've noticed a lot of like conservative parents, they get so proud that their kids got canceled. And I'm like, no, your kids shouldn't have gotten canceled. You knob, you should have taught them how to death. been themselves from being caught out by the inquisition. Okay, they can achieve more if they can stay under the radar until they're willing to use the cancellation to their benefit.

You know, getting ostracized by your peers in high school is not a good thing. And you should have taught them that they were the minority and they were the beleaguered group and they were going into a hostile environment. But what are your thoughts about

Simone Collins: I agree. 100%. And you hear often from the parents whose kids are canceled because they turn them into news stories.

But I think majority of kids who go through a hostile environment in school and whose parents are doing a good job with annotation do learn that. And we, we know kids like that. And they're very aware of what's [00:44:00] going on, which is great. And I think it really goes to show that if you want to actually protect your culture, you should, and absolutely can send your kids through mainstream institutions and actively teach them how to inoculate themselves against toxic culture and habits.

So we've covered the environment. We've covered the,

Malcolm Collins: Curriculum. Yeah, but we haven't covered the what's the word? I'm like the curriculum, but I'm not going to cover the curriculum because frankly, there just aren't that many curriculum of people believe there were like more genuine curriculum than there really are.

There, when I say curriculum, I mean, just like any model of teaching kids, like Wikipedia could be a curriculum, right? Like,

Simone Collins: well, I don't know. So what I hear is basically, You can go to a Catholic school. You can go to like a traditional Jewish school. You can do what's, what's really popular among conservatives these days is a classical Christian education.

And then there is [00:45:00] mainstream urban monoculture.

Malcolm Collins: I want to roll my eyes harder at a classical Christian education.

Simone Collins: Okay. Go ahead, rip into it because that's, what's pervasive among people who consider these are like,

Malcolm Collins: I'm going to have my kids read all the classics, all of these great books, because they think that like things in the past are like intrinsically better sources of knowledge than things today.

And it's like, no, Cultural systems from the past might be better sources, but things, you know, reading old man in the sea is not going to be as useful use of your kid's time as learning to code, like obviously, or spending time learning AI. And this is a really important thing that people are missing.

Where people get information from like the best medium of communication of information is changing When I was growing up there were many parents who in educational models that were like, okay kids We got to teach you how to learn so we're going to teach you the dewey decimal system And we're [00:46:00] going to teach you how to use a library.

And and people of our generation all remember this and no one has used this ever. But the kids were like, well, I mean, it seems like this internet thing is what I should be focused on. Like, it seems like this is what I should learn how to use really well. If I want to be effective in the next era, I should learn how to do Boolean searches.

I should learn it. And how do you feel? I know today still don't know how to do Boolean searches. You know what I mean? Like they are, they were using. The key source of information that everyone else had access to was like intrinsic handicaps. And then in this next era, many parents are going into it.

And they're like, okay, I need to teach my kids how to use the Internet wisely to source for information. And I'm like, we're in AI era now. Okay. This is, this is new. If your kids don't know how to use AI. And you know, I was mentioning this to the lady in the, in, it was interviewing because I was on a Debra show and this is where we're talking about this.

And she said, well, you know, I think it's unethical the way AI like scrapes other people's images [00:47:00] and stuff like that and scrapes other people's work. And I'm like. Okay this is like me saying, I think it's unethical that the Tuskegee experiments happened, therefore I won't give my kids vaccines. Like, regardless of how ethical it is, it's happened, it's done.

Your kids are going to be competing, like if you try to teach your kid how to be a graphic designer, and, and they go out and try to get jobs, they'll be competing against people who know how to use AI. And even if they want to do their own art by hand, generally now the first way to learn to do something is through AI.

And I love it. Like coders. Oh, coders. But the, the skill tree that we developed for Parasia starts with, well, learn to code using AI, i. e. learn to give AI prompts that give it back code that you can use. And they're like, well, this will teach you bad habits. And I'm like, it will teach you bad habits. If you're learning to code for the world of today, if you're learning to code for the world of tomorrow maybe not.

And also keep in mind that it's the [00:48:00] first skill in the programming tree. It's the skill that a lot of people will drop out at, and yet it is the skill that any idiot can figure out, right? And realize that, hey, me, That doesn't fully know how to code. I can figure out how to do some basic stuff with AI. And this is true across all fields, you know, art, like, Hey, me as not, who's not going to try to become a professional artist, I can figure out how to like make art for title cards, for example, which I do every day, right?

Like it doesn't need to be perfect. You're seeing it in this little, like. You know, quarter inch square. Hold on. I'm gonna have a octavian come in and say hi.

Simone Collins: To sum it all up, you know what to sum it all up Basically parents need to stop thinking that switching up one of these things is going to change everything They have to think about each element of the kid's education, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yes, and they have to use the collins institute because it's the only real educational system left octavian What do you think of the collins institute?

Octavian: Dad, I Does [00:49:00] Really, really, really like, tips that are flat and a bag that's straight. And I like you guys because you bring those sounds, circle things that are yellow like tips. I'm so yummy.

Malcolm Collins: Wait, you like us? Yes.

Octavian: Because you just because you are the one, the one says she tell you,

Malcolm Collins: oh, you like us because we are obedient.

Octavian: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Do we do what you tell us? Yes. Here, do you wanna hold this? And do you like it when we do what we, what you tell us to ? Yeah. And wait, Octavian, do you, like, do you, like earlier you were telling me, do you like this world?

Kids: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Do you, do you want to go away or do you like being here like. Okay, do you want more brothers and sisters?

Kids: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Do you like mommy?[00:50:00]

Wait, are you, are you goofy? Can you tell the audience a joke about liking and subscribing? Why

Octavian: did a, why why did a car ticket cross the road to get to a wire? Why? Because you found food at an electronic.

Malcolm Collins: It found electronic food? Yeah. Wait a second, that doesn't sound true.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Wait okay, Octavian, Octavian, Octavian.

Simone Collins: Why did the chicken cross the road? Because he found food that's electronic? Is that really what he said?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, he didn't cross the food to get to a wire, because he found food that was electronic.

Octavian: Because, no, because cars were in outer space.

Malcolm Collins: Cars were in outer space? Okay, so here's a question I have for you.

No, that's

Simone Collins: true, isn't it? There is a Tesla still out there somewhere, isn't there?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, okay, [00:51:00] Octavian. Octavian, listen, listen, listen. I have a question for you. Do you who do you like best? Do you like mommy, daddy, Torsten, or

Octavian: Titan?

Malcolm Collins: I like Torsten because he's your brother. Okay. All right. I'm gonna go get the other kids.

I love you, Simone.

Simone Collins: Pumpkin ravioli with pesto, right?

Okay. Gotcha.

Kids: You can

Simone Collins: talk to me, buddy. I'll interview you. Sound good. Okay, look, sit down,

Malcolm Collins: sit down and be careful. Sit down and I'm

Simone Collins: going to interview you, alright Octavian? Alright. Where do you learn the most? Do you learn the most at school or from watching shows like Magic School Bus?

At

Octavian: school.

Simone Collins: At school. And what do they teach you at school?

Octavian: They learn me.

Simone Collins: They learn you at school? Yeah. Do do you learn things from shows like Bill n, the science guy and Magic School bus too?

Octavian: [00:52:00] No, not those. Well also watch the monkey at the baseball player.

Simone Collins: Monkey with a baseball?

Octavian: Yeah, play. It does got an idea.

There was no computer to make it. Is that what you

Simone Collins: watch on the computer at school?

Octavian: Yes. I, I also have Chromebooks.

Simone Collins: Oh. On your Oh, Chromebooks, yeah. You watch, you watch the monkey with the baseball thing. On your Chromebook at school? No,

Octavian: but I Those are short videos of the Oh, there is one at the baseball place.

Simone Collins: The baseball place? What, what else do you do at school to learn?

Octavian: I That's a good question. I'll tell you. I, I I [00:53:00] did paper I, I, I draw paper and do everything and connect the jars and put it in my mailbox.

Simone Collins: So you do paperwork at school, is that right? Yeah. And do you like doing paperwork Octavian?

Octavian: Yes, I do.

Simone Collins: Okay. That's fortunate. That is very fortunate. Nice

Octavian: microphone.

Simone Collins: It's still working because I can still hear you, which is good. What do you want for dinner, Octavian?

Octavian: I want for dinner is the fakes I was talking about yesterday.

Simone Collins: You were like Miranda Priestly. I swear.

Octavian: I just want the fakes that Stacy does ask you.

Simone Collins: The Cheetos that she asked me for? Yeah,

Octavian: I want the Cheetos.[00:54:00]

I

Simone Collins: gave her all the Cheetos. She has all the Cheetos. There's only healthy food in our house, buddy.

Octavian: What?

Simone Collins: I'm sorry. Yeah.

Octavian: Well,

Simone Collins: you can have strawberries here. Do you like strawberries?

Octavian: Yeah, I do it. One of the things, say to this house, and if you don't let me have them, then I'll just be to kick you out of this house.

No, do it, no.

Simone Collins: You're going to defenestrate me. Can you say defenestrate?

Octavian: Defenestrate.

Simone Collins: Good, so that's defenestrate. That's what you were threatening. You were, you were going to defenestrate me. If you're going to kick someone out through the window, you're defenestrating them. All right, buddy?

Torsten: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Can you say that again?

Basically, if you don't give me junk food, I will defenestrate you. Say that.

Octavian: If I, if you don't give me junk food, I will [00:55:00] defenestrate

Simone Collins: you. Good job, buddy. High five through the screen. High five. Yeah. Good job. Good job, daddy.

Malcolm Collins: Learning to be violent with authority is important.

Simone Collins: No, eloquent violence in this house.

Yeah, eloquent violence. You can't let her

Malcolm Collins: Okay, what do you want to say?

Simone Collins: Titan, do you want to see Baby Deer tonight?

Torsten: Sierra, say Baby

Simone Collins: Deer. Do you see Baby Deer?

Torsten: I want to see Baby

Simone Collins: Deer. Do you like the Baby Deer, Titan? What do you want to say, Titan?

Malcolm Collins: Here, Titan, what do you want to say? Did you see the baby deer? Where's the baby deer?

Simone Collins: Oh, Titan, I love you.

Torsten: Come here, come here.

Simone Collins: It's a microphone, Titan. Can you say microphone, Titan?

Torsten: [00:56:00] Yes, I just, I just want to see

Malcolm Collins: a baby through

Torsten: the window. I

Malcolm Collins: just want

Simone Collins: a headphone.

Malcolm Collins: Let Torsten play with it for one second.

Simone Collins: Hey, buddy.

Malcolm Collins: What do you want to say, Torsten?

Simone Collins: Look who I have.

Torsten: Oh, really?

Malcolm Collins: Look, you've got the microphone now.

Torsten: Mmm.

Simone Collins: You see them on the screen, baby?

Kids: Yeah!

Simone Collins: Tell

Kids: it!

Simone Collins: Tell it! Collins clan! I can't

Kids: hear you, dad! You guys are ruining the world! I can't not hear him. Alright,

Simone Collins: I'll come down and make dinner. Are you going to

Kids: rule the world one day? I can't hear you! Are you

Simone Collins: going to rule the world, Octavian?

Kids: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, you're not [00:57:00] gonna wear them right?

Kids: Why can't I not hear them?

Simone Collins: Because I'm wearing headphones. Wait, are you gonna rule the world, Torsten?

Octavian: No, but I'm gonna hear them. I'm, again, I want to say more. I'm right

Simone Collins: here, Toasty. You want me to come downstairs? I

Octavian: can't hear you. I don't know what you're saying. So I'm not going to do anything. Okay. Hey!

Whoa, whoa, I gotcha, I gotcha, I gotcha, I gotcha. Okay,

Simone Collins: I'll be right down. I'm going to stop recording and come down. I love you. We're going to go downstairs.

Malcolm Collins: It's like a pipe dream created by a delirious woman.

Simone Collins: I will be able to hear you once I put these in. Ah, don't do that. Mrs. Grabulux. Well, miss, you're not married yet. Let's be proper about this.

Malcolm Collins: Sorry, I forgot to tell you. I did have some talks with another family. And the goats have arrived, so she is married.

But I got you [00:58:00] those miniature goats you wanted, so

Simone Collins: No, they were miniature cows that they were looking at. They were gonna get miniature cows. Goats? But I think there's some kind of local ordinance that prevents us from owning livestock above a certain size. Maybe that's why I was looking for miniature cows, actually.

It's a loophole. A toy cow. It's not a cow cow. Did you know that the the, oh gosh, what's the, you know, Hannah Needleman? The Needleman's of gosh, what's it called? The Tradwife Farm.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, the ballerina farms,

Simone Collins: ballerina farms. Thank you. Yeah, the ballerina farms family once went camping with their dairy cow because they didn't have anywhere to like, I guess they had no one to watch it.

And, you know, dairy cows have to be milked quite regularly. So they just, they just took her camping, had fresh milk. It's

Malcolm Collins: cheaper than hiring somebody to milk your dairy cow. Honestly,

Simone Collins: it's so hard to get a babysitter. Can you imagine what it would be like to get a cow sitter? I mean, I get it. To yank

Malcolm Collins: on those, on [00:59:00] those ta tas.

Those teats. To, I mean that, you gotta, paying a teen to do that, that's hard if you're in like a conservative Mormon community maybe. Well, I

Simone Collins: feel like the modern liability too, maybe the cow would kick the local teen who you have cow sitting them and then there would be a lawsuit, so just bring it, can't say anything.

Also probably

Malcolm Collins: better for viral videos if you bring the cow.

Simone Collins: I think this was before they were vlogging, this was back when she just kept an extensive diary online. Yeah. Yeah. Vlog online. Mormons

Malcolm Collins: do crazy things. Mormons are the best. It's not crazy. One

Simone Collins: of my favorite experiences from childhood was my dad generously let me cling to the rack on the top of our car and he drove it for a while and it was magical.

Malcolm Collins: I agree. You are fantastic.

Simone Collins: Dogs want to stick their head out the window when they're driving in a driver's seat and they're not secured. They want the wind in their face. He was doing the [01:00:00] dog a favor. I, even dog lovers don't understand what dogs want it seems. What's wrong with these people?

Malcolm Collins: I know.

Disgusting, aren't they?

Simone Collins: When I think about the number of people who use their dogs for

Malcolm Collins: Master being pleasure will

Simone Collins: say,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, it's, it's high. It's high in America. It's really high.

Simone Collins: And it just really squishes me out.

Malcolm Collins: And I. Although, did you know, if you read The Pregnantist's Guide to Sexuality, one of the books we'd written, you would know it's one of the only fetishes that has gone down dramatically over time.

Simone Collins: Oh, that's nice. Why?

Malcolm Collins: It went from 7 percent to 5%. Because fewer lower percent of Americans lived in a rural environment. Is the core reason. Oh, so urban

Simone Collins: dog owners are less likely to. Well, no. So

Malcolm Collins: the question wasn't dog. It was animal.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Animal relations.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so, you know, just more people were living on farms in the past.

Well,

Simone Collins: and I think that in that case, we're talking about men penetrating animals when really what, what I'm [01:01:00] grossed out by most

Malcolm Collins: penetrating animals. Well,

Simone Collins: I'm grossed out by that, but I'm, I think what's more pervasive is women having animals. Oh yeah, it is

Malcolm Collins: weirdly pervasive. Yeah. This is, by the way, you know, our education episode.

Oh, no,

Simone Collins: no, no, no. Cut this out. We haven't started yet. Just start. We're not putting this in. This isn't, this is a family episode. Don't we're sorry. Start the episode. Start the episode.