Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they dive deep into the current state of Iran in this episode of Based Camp. From air pollution and water crises to demographic shifts and government censorship, we explore the many challenges facing Iran today. Discover why Tehran is sinking, how water shortages threaten millions, and what the future might hold for the country’s people and politics. We also touch on Iran’s surprising strengths, from advanced drone technology to unique social policies. Whether you’re interested in geopolitics, environmental issues, or just want a candid, sometimes humorous take on world affairs, this episode is for you.

Episode Transcript:

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be discussing just how effed Iran is along so many metrics. Okay. So, we have done other episodes where we’ve talked about the rapid secularization that’s been happening in Iran and their fertility crisis because they have a fertility rate way low the united below the United States, despite being.

A theocracy and much poor than us, so usually means higher fertility rates. Yeah. And, and so obviously they’ve got all the demographic stuff, but we’re gonna be talking about stuff that might be even more important to have than people like water, air. Oh. Air, air. So an estimated 30,000 deaths nationwide every year in Iran from air pollution.

They have some of the worst air pollution in the world. We’ll, we’ll be going over this, but they’re capital city tyran. You know how in some cities you go to like Mexico City is sort of this way where because they’re surrounded by mountains [00:01:00] they, they they keep in all of the pollution. Yeah.

They get the,

Simone Collins: they call it like a, they have a word for it, like some kind of inverted vortex of.

Malcolm Collins: Death. Yes. So Tyran is uniquely one of these areas, tyran. And it’s also uniquely bad at dealing with it. Oh. And also the, the, the floor, like the streets like randomly collapse and you can like have sinkholes or what.

Giant sinkhole where you can have like entire buildings or blocks disappear. And I remember, ‘cause I was like freaked out when I saw this. ‘cause sinkholes are like one of my greatest fears in life. They really are idea that you could just be deriving and then falling to your death or sleeping. And then your house is gone and all your kids are gone.

So I ask, I’m like, okay, Google, like, how, how frequently do these sinkholes happen? And it goes. Oh, well in Teran you get a few of them a week and I was like a few a week.

Yes, in their [00:02:00] capital city, it was like parts of the road disappearing and stuff.

Simone Collins: So they kind what happens? Chi? Like do they have underground river? Like ess like in Mexico, they had

Malcolm Collins: an underground river until they drained it.

Simone Collins: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: So, oh, okay. And, and, and you know, I’m talking about hold on, hold on.

There’s so many more problems that they have. I’m sorry. Wait. No, no, no.

Simone Collins: You did. It’s

Malcolm Collins: over. If, if this is sinkhole city, it’s already over, they’ve lost their entire geopolitical footing. We’re gonna talk about that as well. Like, Iran’s situation may be worse than China’s, right? Like, like, and this is coming from a lot.

And we’re also gonna talk about. How would they censor information on the internet? How would they censor information on phones? What information they target, what society they’re trying to build and why? Like sand slipping through fingers. They have nothing and will be nothing. It is a very sad place, but we’ll also talk about a few.

Winds [00:03:00] they’ve had recently. Okay. Yeah. Their drone systems specifically have been pretty popular. Okay. Which is like a, a, a, a technical thing that is going to be important in future wars. Are they selling

Simone Collins: their drones to Russia or something? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: The Shahi drone which we’ll go into, we’ll go into the Shahin drone.

Okay.

Simone Collins: Good for them. Alright. I feel now I just don’t want them to have something.

Malcolm Collins: So, let’s just run some projections on their current water rates, for example, by the Wes. Even. If current practices persist, only 20 to 30% of the current crop production will remain viable by 2045.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. So they’re gonna need mostly imports.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Not, not awesome. Gosh. They also for water another fun one here is the term zero day. Came up for their capital city recently. Now they were able to get around it, but as of October, teran avoided a full day zero through emergency cuts, 20% reduction in urban use and [00:04:00] rationing, but the risk persists into 2026.

If winter rains fail, residents already face 12 to 24 hour cutoffs in the suburbs with tanker trucks flying to poorer areas. Yeah, this just

Simone Collins: sounds like Lima, Peru. Remember when they just be like, we’re shutting off the water today. No electricity

Malcolm Collins: today. Yeah, no. Yeah, whatever. So, so, Lima’s also gonna run out of water in the next 20 years.

Yeah, so

Simone Collins: that’s, well honestly, like a, a YouTube video I saw of where someone just walked around, like to run and like met a lot of people. You know, one of those, like, I spent 24 hours. It looked so much like Lima to me. Even the air pollution. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, and Lima has horrible air pollution too. Yeah.

Even though

Simone Collins: it’s right by the ocean. You, you have, it’s, it’s like, you know it’s bad when your boogers are black.

Malcolm Collins: Oh God. Yeah. I, I saw in, I was watching videos about Iranian doctors and they were talking about how bad the situation is and they’re like, I can get a kid in, in my clinic and I can be like.

Here’s what’s, what’s hurting this kid, Uhhuh, you know? And [00:05:00] he’s going to have long-term ramifications or die if this is not resolved.

Simone Collins: Okay. And

Malcolm Collins: I can do my best to address it. And then I open the door and the thing that was killing him just comes wafting back in. ‘cause his family can’t leave the city.

Right. They can’t go somewhere else. They can, they take

Simone Collins: the waters and b.

Malcolm Collins: I ran is they promised that they were gonna give houses for everyone.

Speaker: Don’t have windows, just dark rectangles where glass should be. Monuments marking and unfinished. Ghost city partisan only alone though. Head 70 kilometers out west and you’ll find hashed. Gerd. Built for half a million people home, two 50,000. Reverse course and head Northeast. There’s Gha ni Rashard, three decades old.

Still waiting for residents who never came at this rate. Likely never will.

Malcolm Collins: And so they just built these random housing things all over the country. But all of the money was grafted because, you know, it was taken by the you know, the Imams, whatever.

So these, these, how these apartment complexes are giant things of empty apartment complexes all [00:06:00] over the country that nobody’s living in that don’t really function. Because they didn’t think that, oh, we need to build the mirror where the jobs are. So then you have this ultra overcrowded. Primary city what would a day zero mean for people if it actually ended up happening?

Yeah. Households would’ve a queue for water rations, EG 20 liters a day. So basically you’d go to a line, you’d get your water for the day, and your family would have to be able to bathe laundry live off of that water and restaurants and, and car washes and stuff like that would likely just be shut down.

Ugh. But to continue here we were talking about the pollution.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The health toll,

it’s 30,000 deaths nationwide in 2024. Up from 24,000 to 2023. Oh my God. Tyra alone saw 6,000 in the past year. Costs is respiratory disease, heart attack, et cetera. And year over year, there’s an 18. Oh no, they, they say 18% of all ER visits are linked [00:07:00] to the pollution in Teran. So that means like two, one out of five people who are going to a hospital are going because of the air pollution just

Simone Collins: showing up.

‘cause yeah, the, it’s the place, the literal city is killing them. Oh my gosh.

Malcolm Collins: That is, that is terrifying. No, no. It, it is like living in hell. It, it feels to me like when I, when I look at this stuff

Simone Collins: horrible, like, yeah, no wonder people aren’t having kids. I mean, one, this must also be affecting fertility, even if you want kids,

Malcolm Collins: but.

It. Well, yeah. In addition, you, you don’t just have polluted air. You also have polluted water. Oh, and I’ll know is the air pollution, we’ll get to this in some of the data in a bit, but it’s increasing pretty dramatically year over year. Mm. So it’s only getting worse. It’s not like this problem that they’ve like abated.

Right.

Simone Collins: Because in in China they’ve actually done a really good job, an incredibly good job finding air pollution.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But. China is full of Chinese people and Iran’s full of Iranians, you know. [00:08:00]

Simone Collins: Oh, burn. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Well, look, you can’t, there’s some policies that wouldn’t work in America because we’re not Chinese people either.

Like, yeah. Remember when they tried to set up the the, the Dr. Fabs in America and they’re like, Americans are not. Just not good enough at following orders to make some of my conductors. Yeah. If they came here and

Simone Collins: they’re like, sorry, they’re too retarded. You can, they’re too

Malcolm Collins: retarded. Yeah. That was, that was the takeaway.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And you could also, you know, this is, yeah. Not awesome. So, you also have a problem with this stuff affecting the, the farmlands and stuff like that. Oh. And also, I should note here you have daily outages that you were talking about of, of power, which makes it very hard to run things like factories and stuff like that.

The economist Noreen Rubini predicts a collapse of the Iranian government was in a year if freshers amount. And others have been warning of civil war. Whoa. In the meantime, the country is wasting money on things like MIG 20 nines from Russia when a MIG 29 is [00:09:00] completely useless against American F 30 fives which just shows that they’re not even really, like, they’re playing like an aesthetic game for Grifting.

Right? I think this is also why they lasted so shortly when Israel decided to bomb them to be like actually off. Oh, because their,

Simone Collins: their actual defense. Tools were not very effective.

Malcolm Collins: Actually, let’s take a minute to talk about this. So Iran basically had this plan. So if you wanna get an idea of the geopolitics of the region.

Okay. You have, Iran’s got like. One real buddy. And that buddy is Qatar. And the reason why Iran and Qatar are buddies is mostly because they share a natural gas field. That goes under both of the countries and is one of their major income sources, okay?

And so they have to play nice or they lose one of their major income sources. And this is true for both

Simone Collins: countries. Aligned incentives are the best predictor of good collaboration.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. So, but, but everyone else [00:10:00] freaking hates them at this point, but they’ve been able to maintain power because what they did is they funded a bunch of terror networks.

Right. So they Guitar did,

Simone Collins: or, well, both of them did. I,

Malcolm Collins: I ran, did, but guitar did as well, like, because they were working together. But they were trying to build up their, their regional power base. And so like, you know, Saudi Arabia might be like Allied. With like, actually like the UAE and like becoming closer to allying with Israel and stuff like that and, and the United States and sort of this axis.

But then what I ran did is it would fund, you know, Hezbollah, it would fund Hamas, it would fund quote unquote, you know, freedom fighters in, in whatever region. You know, they, they had another freedom area in like, I, okay, God, I can’t remember what other country that is, but it, there were a number of countries where they basically funded, they had fund the, the underground.

Terrorist organizations that had like pseudo sticks. Okay. Yeah. And Iran spent a lot of money and a lot of time building all of these into capable actors for fighting. And then what [00:11:00] happened was two things. First the, the, because, because basically when everybody started bombing Iran, Iran basically picks up its phones and it’s like, Hey guys, we’ve been funding you forever.

Will you do something right? Like, and all of them phone lines were dead. For a couple reasons. There was actually one African group that did end up launching a missile in Israel, but it ended up hitting a bus in Gaza.

note here, I’m thinking of the Houthis. , And they, , did send 200 missiles, , but all the ones that would’ve landed was in Israel, were blocked by Israel’s defense forces, which is why the only ones that did land landed in Gaza. , That said, , I don’t know if one hit a bus, hit something.

Malcolm Collins: Wait. Oh, okay. Not very competent. This is what happens when you give it to random extremists, when you give them explosives.

But anyway, so, what happened was, is Israel first beheaded with the pager attack [00:12:00] program, which was incredibly effective. And then the second degree attack what was that on Hezbollah, I wanna say. Where they basically took out Hezbollah, which is one of these key allies. The Hamas is, is basically tied down with the whole Israel situation little bit.

And then the people it was funding in Africa were basically retarded which they didn’t. Foley Grok. So that, that basically is what happened. Every one of these plays that they had been investing in and investing in and invested and fizzled all out at once, right before everyone started bombing them, and nobody came to their rate.

Because nobody cares. Right? Right.

Yeah. I mean, except for maybe

China. And we’ll get to why China? So this is one of the, the things on the other side here, but the point I’m making here is Iran basically made this big political bet in a network of terror cells that Israel completely eradicated.

Mm. And so.

They don’t have any geopolitical friends to fall back on. They work with Russia now with, you know, selling them more supplies and stuff like that. But that’s mostly only because they have similar enemies. [00:13:00] They’re not actually very friendly with each other. I mean, keep in mind Russia’s occupation of the, of the region that, that they’re not that happy about.

Mm.

Alright, let’s talk about the, the water crisis. Let’s. The crisis impacts over 88 million people, virtually the entire population and vast agricultural lands. Over 80% of Iran’s territory faces acute water stress. Oh, 80% of the territory is facing acute water stress. Oh,

Simone Collins: no one talks about this.

Malcolm Collins: Was it reservoirs, rivers, and aquifers at record lows?

19. Major dams are nearly dry and Tara’s primary reservoirs, like the Amar Dam, are at just 38% capacity, the lowest in decades. It is left rolling blackouts. ‘cause keep in mind, they’re using hydropower as hydropower counts for a significant portion of electricity and a 14,000 megawatt shortfall. So like,

Simone Collins: wait, wait wait, wait, wait.

So hydropower typically happens when you have like really [00:14:00] good river flows and whatnot. Yeah. But so like, what, I mean, I understand they, they drained their underground aquifers, but why is their hydropower running out?

Malcolm Collins: So they called it the Rebuilding Jihad, literally. I kid you not. And what they did is after the Islamist took over they went over, you can have a weight loss jihad.

It’s. It’s fine. Yes. Yes. After the, it’s like, it’s like saying mind comp or something. You know, my strong, so they went around, oh my

Simone Collins: gosh, I need to have a weight loss comp. No, I need to have a weight gain.

Malcolm Collins: Weight loss is not your comp. You need a weight gain. No. Yeah,

Simone Collins: weight gain comp. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So, they, they went around after they won and did that thing that idiot, like communists often do, which it’s like, oh, well we’re just gonna like, build a bunch of stuff.

And so. What happened in Iran is because of the people who were closest to the center of powers, like the main grift sources were involved in. Dam construction specifically and restructure around dam construction. Oh gosh. Oh, they basically just had a cycle of never ending dams. The country has a, I think like some of the most dams in the world, just like [00:15:00] dam after dam after dam.

The problem is that a lot of these dams shouldn’t been built and they ended up causing water problems. But then the other problem is, is upstream of all the dams they’ve had huge problems with agriculture, just using all the water anyway. Mm brother. So basically they got the, they got into this problem because they weren’t actually doing work.

They were just building dam after dam, after dam. I mean, keep in mind that’s an easy, that’s a, when I’m even say 19 dams are nearly dry. That’s a lot of dams to be nearly dry on water.

Simone Collins: So

many, so many dams. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Groundwater and surface water aquifers are depleting at 3.8 meter millimeters per year.

With rivers like the Zahar Day road reduced to seasonal trickles and lakes vanishing entirely. Satellite imagery shows stark declines in water bodies around tarran. And what’s important to note here is Iran actually used to have the largest body of fresh water in the Middle East. And they have depleted it to be I think it, at its [00:16:00] lowest, it was 12% of its original size and unusable at that point because it concentrated all of the, like, pollutants in it when it depleted that much

And just everything around it basically died. But they, they then had this major project ‘cause people are like, well, Iran says it recognizes this problem and it’s gonna deal with them. And I said, it said that about this lake 10 years ago, and now it’s only up to like 20%. So like, even if they do do everything like they said they were going to do as this lake, it’s unlikely to matter.

Right? . So near term experts predict a point of no return within five years. This is in water supplies. If mass urban shortages and agricultural collapse overdrawing aquifers could cause irreversible substance and, and SA nation. So basically, yeah.

If they draw down the aquifers too much, those aquifers become never usable again because it’s all automation problems. Yeah. Now one of the things that Teran is. Trying to talk about doing to fix this is move the capital. So they wanna move it south to the [00:17:00] coast sort of near where Dubai is.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: The, the prob because they’re like, well, we can buy a bunch of cheap land there like a bunch. Sure. Benefit from doing this. Yeah. The problem is, is that this is also a, a insanely expensive idea. They just don’t have the money. Yeah, but I

Simone Collins: mean like what are your other options at this point? Right?

Like I’m all about declaring bankruptcy on Teran at this point.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Just build a few government buildings and be like, Hey, we’ll move the technical government here and more industry will build up around that.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, and like honestly. What are there, there? There can be no, in industries as you point out on day zero, if electricity doesn’t work, you can’t run factories.

Like, it doesn’t matter. Like either way. Teran is, it sounds like they’re tasing. Oh, you wanna

Malcolm Collins: talk about how bad this is? So, so remember I was talking about the, the dams, they built over a thousand dams since 1979. Oh. Wait.

They,

they’re, they are run by a group called the Water Mafia, quote unquote,

Simone Collins: water Mafia.

Malcolm Collins: And then water Mafia, 87% of the water [00:18:00] is used , by low value crops that are being grown based on subsidy driven farming. So there’s,

so, Irma, the second largest lake in the Middle East, in vital freshwater body spanning 5,000 square kilometers in the northwestern Iran. It supported millions through fishing, agricultural, and tourism, whatever. The fast past few decades, it has decreased by 90% in size. Because of piping, millions of cubic meters from rivers like zab starting in 2017 that connected to it

Malcolm Collins: And you can, you can see pictures of it and you’ll see like giant ships and stuff, just like in, in a desert now.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. Oh, I think I’ve seen these, I mean, I’m sure there are lots of places like

Malcolm Collins: this, but they, they said they were gonna fix it back in 2019 and, and basically nothing happened.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah.

What can, what can you do though? You can’t fix. This like problems like this, you really can’t fix. This is also a problem in places like California, you know, like the, in the American West, where we’re drawing down the Ogalala aquifer and there are issues of the Colorado River. Like this is no like water.

Water’s a big problem. [00:19:00]

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Alright, so let’s talk about, because we had another video on the secular theocracy. We already talked about how quickly people are, one, leaving Islam globally, which we should probably do another video on. But specifically within the theocratic state of our brand, and this is why I always say like Catholic integralists are just completely numb skulls.

I’m like, okay guys. Look at your Catholic majority countries. That’s where Deconversions are happening the fastest. I mean, right? Like it does not work. Look at the Islamic theocratic countries when you

Simone Collins: do the clapping for emphasis. Is this cultural appropriation from woke culture, though?

Malcolm Collins: Yes, it’s cultural appropriation from woke people.

But you’re doing it

Simone Collins: because it’s insensitive, like you’re doing it to trigger them. I’m doing

Malcolm Collins: it to trigger people. Yes. Okay. Just, just, I’m trying to do my clapping, like a woke person uhhuh. So it makes them mad. But it doesn’t, it doesn’t work, right? Like, it, it, it, it tends to lead to higher rates of deconversion Yeah.

And lower rates of religious observance. Yeah. When you force it

Simone Collins: on someone for, like, when you, when you pay [00:20:00] someone to practice their hobby, they start to freaking hate it. Like, this makes sense. We all know this.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But where this is cool is when we were doing that survey we were talking about a survey that a lot of people were like, Hey this survey may have been carried out incorrectly or may have had bias to it.

And I’m like, yeah, okay, I’ll buy that. But since then there has been leaks from the Iranian government’s own studies. Oh, so this is the Iranian government study the Ministry of Culture and Islamic guidance via University of Teran. Do we have a ministry of culture? Yeah, it was conducted in late 2023.

And I, we’ll go over the various information they have here. So, daily prayer rate. It fell from 78.5% in 2015, decent to 54.8% late 2020. A 30% drop over eight years. Oh, and keep in mind, that’s not even up to this year when the other city was showing more of a drop. Oh. Ramadan fasting never fast increased f so, [00:21:00] so in 2015, only 5.1% never fasted for Ramadan.

Mm. That increased to 2023 to 27.4%. Dude, this is, this is

Simone Collins: why like Middle Eastern countries. Getting so obese. They need to fast, they need more Ramadan. I guess though Ramadan’s pretty bad because you’re just eating so much in, in. Yeah. So

Malcolm Collins: reading keep in mind this is also a government organization in a country where you can be like jailed for not being Muslim enough.

Yeah. Like these ever, they’re definitely under underreporting things. Wow. But even these numbers are. Extremely dire. Never read the Koran. 9.1% in 2015.

Simone Collins: 19. Never read the Koran

Malcolm Collins: in 2023. Yeah. 19.2% in 2023. Wow. Self-identified as highly religious.. So these ones we only have 2023. Okay. So highly religious was only 42.6% in 2023. And not religious or lightly religious was 24.3% in, in that year by, by the government survey. And then [00:22:00] if you look at support for separating religion from politics, that went from 30.7% in 2015 to 72.9% in 2023.

Ah.

Oh, this is their news.

Authoritarian theocratic government doing a survey of their own populace saying 72.9% want a separation of church and state.

Mm-hmm. Mm.

That is shocking. A a 138% increase, it points out, wow. 85% of respondents said societal religiosity decreased over the past five years.

Yeah, I bet. So the other study that we looked at showed even har higher numbers really. So this was the Garmin religion study done in 2020. So Shia Muslim identification, they had it only 32.2% in 2020, a sharp drop from what official said, which was 96%. No, religion was 22.2% and then plus 8.8% were atheist. So that, that brings it to [00:23:00] around 30%. Were no religion or atheist. That’s good. Heaven’s crazy. They’re losing

Simone Collins: well, can you blame them? The air is killing them. The water is running out.

Speaker: Welcome to Muslim sensitivity training. It is important for us to understand why the Muslims feel the way they do first of all, there’s no sex until marriage in the Muslim world. Now, this would be fine, except that in the Muslim religion you also can’t jack off.

And what do we know about the places Muslims live? They live in. Sand. Now put yourself in the shoes of a Muslim. It’s Friday night, but you can’t have sex and you can’t jack off. There’s sand in your eyes and probably in the crack of your . And then some cartoon comes along from a country where people are getting laid and mocks your prophet.

Well, you know what? I’d be pretty pissed off too.

Simone Collins: Total Muslim,

Malcolm Collins: 47%. Oh. Do, do daily prayers not performed 60%. And then they had done another poll, that showed even [00:24:00] more where they showed a rejection of religious rule 66% and support for secular separation of religion and state. They got 81%. This was in, in 2024.

Simone Collins: Wild. Wow. I don’t, I mean, you mentioned earlier that one economist was expecting basically some kind of revolution or serious social unrest. What do you even do though? You know, like if someone was like, oh, like, oh, Malcolm, we’re gonna, you know, put you in charge of Iran first, you’d be like, no thanks.

But like, if you had to be put in charge, what

Malcolm Collins: would you do? Normalize relations with Israel and the United States. They could, like their citizens, want them to do it right? Like Yeah. But then normalizing relations with Israel and

Simone Collins: the US isn’t gonna bring their water back. Right.

Malcolm Collins: But it would allow them to sell their oil at a higher price, which is 80% of their country’s profits at this point.

Oh. And then you, you be incredibly dictatory about any [00:25:00] form of corruption, public executions for that. Okay. No, I, I mean, I do think you should have public executions for corruption. I think you need to be really harsh on corruption. And I would because I think that when, when you get what people don’t understand about corruption like I think corruption is worse than murder.

The reason is is because the long-term effects of it are much worse if you Oh, the

Simone Collins: amount to murder of more people, essentially. Yes. The,

Malcolm Collins: it basically amounts to murder of cities, of thousands of children a year rather than one. Yeah. I guess when you consider

Simone Collins: the number of people even just being hospitalized due to port air quality right now.

Yeah, like if you,

Malcolm Collins: if you fudge a report, like an environmental report or something like that and that ends up with no water in 10 years or something like that, or a dam breaking in the city below, it ended up flooding or, right. Yeah. No. Okay. Good

Simone Collins: point. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And you need to. Or, I mean, I guess, yeah, even

Simone Collins: consider the, the role that government corruption in Russia played in their, like in the loss of soldiers’ lives.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The [00:26:00] reason why I say corruption execution for all corruption, right, is because people will say, well, I didn’t know that this would lead to a dam to break. I didn’t know that this would lead to, and you’ve gotta be like, well, you know that we. We do you know, public torture and execution for any form of corruption.

So just don’t do it. Do not, and, and you really need it in a place like Iran because it’s so normal within the culture there. It’s, it’s just such a intrinsic part. Of Persian culture historically going back, you know, hundreds of thousands of years, you need to just come in with a whip and be like, we’re not gonna allow this anymore.

And we’re going to root it out really, really aggressively. And I think that that could fix a lot of these problems quickly. I mean, keep in mind if you drop the subsidies for the food crops, that, that are basically just being paid out to keep people quiet and not revolting in these areas. Then you could drop the water use in these areas, spend that money in importing the food instead and do [00:27:00] an actual moving of the capital to a new location.

Like there is a way around this, it’s just that they would never do it because as soon as they hear, move the capital to a new location, they’re like, what an opportunity for, for corruption, right? Like, what an opportunity to buy land in the region and hike up prices, and then make sure the government buys it at 10 times the price and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But here’s some cool things you might not know about Iran. Okay?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Give us some cheerful endings.

Malcolm Collins: So, you know, they’re having this huge problem with fertility. Below the US is just like 1.4.

Simone Collins: Thought you were gonna say good stuff.

Malcolm Collins: Did you know that IVF is free in Iran?

Simone Collins: Oh. Good for them. That’s great.

Also, they have some of the best gender transition surgeries. A lot of trans people. Yeah, they’re of course forced or death, but they do No, no, no. But like, actually there’s a lot of medical tourism to Iran and there are, there are special travel agencies that sell medical tourism to Iran. Even of like, they, they address things like, are you concerned about being gay and going to Iran?

Like, here’s how it’s safe. Like they, they really like. [00:28:00] And there are a lot of very woke people in the US and Canada who have gone on the record saying like, okay, well I, I don’t support what Iran is doing, but capitalism ruins my ability to transition in the us. So I have to, it’s not even a choice I have.

And I, I know that Iran has developed many of their good methods by forcibly experimenting on their own citizens who happen to be gay, but. I just don’t have a choice because capitalism,

Malcolm Collins: they just don’t care. Yeah. They don’t care. They don’t care that these were developed, not experimenting on gay people, but what Iran used to do is force gay people to gender transition to make them not gay.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But a lot of the surgeries that they performed were experimental.

Malcolm Collins: Which is funny that the, the modern left saw this and is like that. That seems good. That’s like, it’s not,

Simone Collins: but it’s affordable. So

Malcolm Collins: yeah, it’s not good, but it’s affordable. So did you know that they also give interest free loans of $10,000 upon marriage slash childbirth?[00:29:00]

Simone Collins: That’s super common in Islamic countries, it seems.

Malcolm Collins: They also give housing priority to families with over three kids and child allowances of $20 per child per month.

Simone Collins: Oh, $20. That’s gonna, well,

Malcolm Collins: I mean, I bet that goes far in Iran. I mean, it’s not gonna get you an iPad, but, you know, food’s pretty cheap in a lot of these sorts of places.

Maybe you, you can, you can buy your daily pack of air for that. Yes. There we go. I’ve gotta use some baseball references in this episode.

Speaker 3: As President of Planet Space Ball, I can assure both you and your viewers that there’s absolutely no air shortage whatsoever. Yes, of course. I’ve heard the same rumor myself. Yes. Thanks for calling and not reversing the charges. Yes. Bye what are some other fun ones [00:30:00] here? They also restrict the degrees that women can get, which is another really cool thing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they do in Iran. Another cool

Simone Collins: thing they,

Malcolm Collins: oh boy. So, and Simone, I love you. So it’s so funny having you on this show, the, the whatever base camp, so thank you for

Simone Collins: humoring me with that name.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Since 2012 Iranian universities have imposed gender-based quotas and bans on women for 77 to 80 fields affecting over 30 institutions.

This reverses women’s dominance, 60% of students in the 1990s, and ties into conservative pushes for islamicization of education. So I mean, on the

Simone Collins: bright side, we, we are able to point to Iran. As a strong evidence for why restricting female academic choice doesn’t improve birth rates. So Iran is the sacrificial lamb demonstrating to, it’s a sacrificial

Malcolm Collins: lamb.

I’m happy to make. Yeah. And we often point out here, we don’t have a problem with [00:31:00] Iranian culture. We, we, we have an Iranian president in this country. Right. You know, like MAGA is all about Iran given that Trump is no aesthetically

Simone Collins: Persian.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You gotta link to that. Video. You made the song. Yeah, I made a song of it.

I’ll add the song to this one. But Per Trump is

culturally Persian. I do not know how he, sorry. As somebody was Persian friends and white waspy friends. If, if you, if you have, well, yeah. Have you

Simone Collins: seen the ballroom designs for the New East Wing?

Malcolm Collins: Oh my God. Are they horrible Persian nonsense? Well, I don’t know.

Simone Collins: Have you seen the fricking oval office? I mean, at the gold. It just keeps like, racking up. It’s like a, like a

Malcolm Collins: dragon. Stand in there. But, but the point I’m making here is from my cultural perspective, it comes off as very tacky. Because I have a waspy aesthetic perspective. You know, we live in like a farmhouse that’s you know, minimally decorated and, you know, stuff like that.

You go to Trump stuff and I show you pictures of like Persian houses and Trump’s house. You’re gonna be like.

Oh my God. [00:32:00] Like, yeah. It,

Simone Collins: it, it doesn’t scream Martha’s Vineyard in the Trump properties. It doesn’t scream in the song. I

Malcolm Collins: have a line on repeat that I don’t know if people get, but I assume they would, where I’m like, where are his pictures of old boats and fancy boats and horses.

Yes. And, and it’s this thing that, like, if you’ve hung around waspy houses. Models of fancy boats and paintings of boats and paintings of horses were like a thing. And yet you know, like we’ve been to Mar-a-Lago, right? Like Trump’s got none of that. And this is like on the water in Miami, right?

Pretty fair.

Simone Collins: Trump didn’t, I mean, he acquired Mar-a-Lago and Mar-a-Lago before he acquired it. Or think it was

Malcolm Collins: before.

Simone Collins: Maybe. Maybe there’s no

Malcolm Collins: Look at pictures. Look at pictures of his house. No, I’m just saying Mar-a-Lago

Simone Collins: used to be a presidential retreat. He was owned by the US government,

Malcolm Collins: but, but it’s decorated in his style.

If you look at pictures of his penthouse, his new year, penthouse, no, it’s all very Persian right there. No pictures and boat, you see. No. So clearly I don’t have a problem with [00:33:00] Persians if I’m okay with Trump as the US president. Right. You know? I’d also point out here that when I was talking about Persians being very.

You know, tempted by corruption when contrasted with other cultural traditions. Trump definitely fits that as well. A lot of people are like, like the Trump family has very obviously done some corrupt deals that benefit themselves. There’s, there’s been some grumbling about this. I do not like corruption.

No. Come on. Every

Simone Collins: morning on the front cover. Well, not, there is no front cover of Drudge. It’s all front cover, but like drudge is always like new thing that, what I wanna watch though is whatever, like I want like a public reality TV saga of like barren Trump. I want Barron Trump dating. I want Barron Trump doing correct deals.

I want Barron Trump. No,

Malcolm Collins: but the thing 24 7, the thing was about the way that Trump does it. Which also kind of comes off as sort of version is, I think one of the reasons let less people are mad about it is because he’s so blatantly obvious about it.

Simone Collins: Like, well, and that’s the thing is [00:34:00] we don’t care that much about corruption.

Like, the American id, we care about authenticity, like, and he is authentically corrupt and he jokes about it, like he hams up about it. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like Joe Biden is like, okay, I’m gonna like get my son. And we’re gonna send him to like, work with these other countries that are gonna like funnel money into like private accounts and pay for like phony consulting gigs and, and Trump’s just like, Hey, you wanna start like.

Crypto coin sun and we’ll call it Trump coin. And then in an election cycle, like that’d be cool, right? Like, like, it’s like not even like, okay, we’re gonna hide that. It’s tied to my presidential campaign. No, we’re gonna hide that. It’s No, no, we’re gonna use the same branding. I

Simone Collins: love

Malcolm Collins: it. Anyway so, so, with the, the fields that women were banned from were stuff like mining, nuclear, petroleum, engineering based stuff, accounting, chemistry, computer science, [00:35:00] business education, consent counseling, math.

Oh, so just make women’s study useless degrees.

Simone Collins: Like, like I know it’s funny because typically in, in, in, in countries where women have fewer rights and less freedom, they go disproportionately into STEM fields. Yeah. Because. They have to make money and like they don’t get choices. And typically when women have more freedom and more social autonomy and empowerment, they, they disproportionately choose the the fun, soft, non stem thing.

So it’s really weird that Iran was like. They did. They did the opposite. They’re like, let’s force women into the fields that they would have if they had freedom. I don’t get it. I don’t get it. Take that women, you’re only allowed to do that. Fun, easy stuff. Now. Get out of the minds, whatever. It’s very strange.

Malcolm Collins: By the way, one, one of the other things that’s causing the collapses of the roads and stuff like that, which is kind of cool given how old the city is, is there’s over [00:36:00] 600 square kilometers, and this is just mapped of ancient underground aquifers under tarran. So those you mean like aqueducts?

Yeah, like aqueducts under the city that they built. Yeah, like a thousand years ago. Better than like following into some French crypt full of skeletons. I’m sure they’ve got their skeletal crypts as well or something. God, I do not.

Simone Collins: Why? Hold on to the dead bodies. People, cremate them and turn them into diamonds, cremate them, and turn them into diamonds.

We need to go on Alibaba and get a diamond making machine for

Malcolm Collins: ashes. Oh my gosh. By the way, we’re talking about how quickly things are sinking, by the way. Yeah. The city itself, teran sinks, keep it on here. I’m saying centimeters and not millimeters. It sinks 10 to 30 centimeters per year. So they’re like Venice, but without the romance, the year the city is sinking.

Imagine what that would do to your house’s foundation. Well, yeah,

Simone Collins: but also like, keep it, they look like Peru and [00:37:00] not like bougie Peru. Not like Mito Flores where we lived, but where like,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. Close

Simone Collins: to the airport, Peru, where it’s just these like stacked clay-like houses. It looked just like they’re on cinder blocks and falling apart.

So, so

Malcolm Collins: let’s talk about how I ran to censorship, because that’s pretty interesting as well.

Simone Collins: Oh, we gotta head

Malcolm Collins: up. Okay. And

Simone Collins: I’m late.

Malcolm Collins: All right. We’ll do this. Well, you can. Yeah, I can. I

Simone Collins: can step away and you can ‘cause I, this is good stuff. No, we’ll do it. We’ll do, we’ll do it later. Okay. I appreciate that. I love you.

I don’t wanna miss out. I wanna know what happens.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You get to hear about, come on. I’m sure you’re gonna find it fun to learn how they’re banning people from using cell phones and stuff like that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I can’t wait. Okay, good. I’m looking forward to it. Literal hellscape. Literal hellscape.

Malcolm Collins: I tried to

Simone Collins: finish this episode, but I ran out of time.

Malcolm Collins: I freaking hate you. This is how, this is how spousal abuse starts.

This is how

Simone Collins: oh my God.

Malcolm Collins: Why am I married to this princess? As of October, 2025, internet penetration is 85% of [00:38:00] the population. There’s 78 million users, but internet freedom is heavily restricted in Iram. So, internet filtering and blocking over 50% of global websites are inaccessible, including social media.

Wow. Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook has been banned since 2009, was periodic lists news outlets, vbc Persia, VOA, and tools like VPNs Illegal since 2024, although 80% of users evade via smuggle. Tech in May, 2025, cyber freedom areas were introduced for elites granting uncensored access to select groups.

What? That’s crazy. Cyber freedom. If you’re the elite, you can do what you want, but most people know wait

Simone Collins: a second. Do I like this idea?

Malcolm Collins: I don’t like this idea. I do not like this idea. I think the moment, I know

Simone Collins: like maybe there are some things you should only unlock when, like, you, you can be responsible with it.

No. Well, this is

Malcolm Collins: why I’m really against like porn banning, because as soon as you ban porn, then you need to ban VPNs. And if you ban VPNs and you can tell what anyone is doing [00:39:00] online at any time. Okay. Which is very dangerous for intellectual freedom.

Simone Collins: Okay. Especially of,

Malcolm Collins: Urban monocultural government in power.

Simone Collins: Every, we can’t, I, we can’t go on.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Deep packet inspection. So A DPI monitors traffic, so they like literally monitor the traffic with things like I assume AIS apps like Appit State approved YouTube alternative tracks users, journalists, face arrests over one hundred and twenty twenty five, office raid and threats from stray from the official lines.

A new untrue content law passed. July, 2025. Criminalizes fake news was up to five years in prison targeting critical reports.

Simone Collins: Oh,

Malcolm Collins: and then state media, IRIB dominates algorithms on domestic platforms, amplify pro regime posts. So there’s the pro regime posts, the algorithms and the platforms that specifically into Apple min it.

And during elections or crises, bots, flood, social media with disinformation like it’s like they have the bot. And they try to make it look like [00:40:00] everyone agrees with them within their own country to try to maintain this belief and consensus. They also do partial blackouts. So stealth blackouts a 2025 innovation.

So they’re getting more sophisticated at this was making VPNC illegal, this stealth blackout concept that came out this. Where they isolate domestic users while maintaining global routing. EG. Mid 2025 tactics reduced speeds by 95% without alerting outsiders. The neon group documented a major 2025 shutdown lasting days costing 170 million in digital economy losses.

Oh, they also block cell phones access. So how does this work? They partially shut down target data 4G 5G throttle to two G. While voices in SMS may persist, full cuts occurred via b. GP re routing or power grid interference in 2025. Power outages for energy crisis is exacerbating this.

So they sort of route which areas are not going to get power as well to handle the [00:41:00] fact that they know they’re getting blackouts anyway. Gosh, this is so dystopian, but not in the fun, sexy way. Right. Frequency examples, routine during protest EEG 2019, bloody November, that killed 1,500 amid a week long blackout in June, 2025.

Israeli conflict, a 12 day near total mobile internet cutoff, left millions offline for 24 hours that were since 2019. Post restrictions extended into October block blocking messages, apps. Users resorted to using phones on Star Lakes, smuggled or illegal, but 70% of Iranians reported a total isolation during the recent crisis.

So you’re being struck by Israel and the government, like if you cared about your citizens, right, like they cared. A lick about their citizen’s life. You would want them to have access to realtime information about what’s going on. Yeah. During this crisis. But no, they get attacked and their first thought is, how do I keep my own people from rising up and overthrowing us?

You know, because that’s what they think. Monstrously take over

Simone Collins: God.

Malcolm Collins: [00:42:00] Yeah. But I think it shows you know, when you. Bomb Iran or something like that. What the government sees is this is Israel’s sighting with its populace against the government.

Simone Collins: Wow. Yeah. Why,

Malcolm Collins: why else would they be doing this? Yeah. And I think that this is something that people do not understand.

They think that this is a conflict with Iran’s people against Israel. When it is not. It is a few elites. That are, that are you know, really handling this crisis and the real reason they handle it is, is interesting. I think just a separate note here. Mm-hmm. Within the elite circles in the Middle East, there’s something of a like a.

Dominance hierarchy. That’s based on how much you can f with Israel. And you’re seen as at the bottom of this dominant, no, sorry, not even Israel, specifically The Jews. It’s about effing with the Jews. Okay. The more you can f with the Jews, the higher on the dominant hierarchy you are. The less you f with the Jews, or the more you try to work with, the lower on the dominant hierarchy you are.

And even if you don’t actually personally have. Animosity towards Jewish people. If you are in these elite [00:43:00] circles, you will feel like you need to do this for social status signaling reasons.

Simone Collins: Oh my goodness. It’s

Malcolm Collins: like a weird flex thing. Anyway. Tactics used shutdowns, produ prevented realtime sharing ag videos of floods or sinkhole.

So they often do this when there’s natural disasters and obviously journalism. Why would they just so people aren’t as aware of how often they had take place? Well, I mean, so remember when we talked about like the, the, the crisis with the water? Yes. When this led to like widespread tam storms in August, they shut down cell phones in these regions that are experiencing the actual crisis.

Anyway. If, if you’re talking about VPNs they’re used by around 60% of Iran’s 78 million users. So, you know, they are widely used but not as widely used. You’d think there’s still 40% of people who don’t have access to them. But they’re, they’ve, they’re like very dangerous to use because a DPI can allow them to trace VPNs.

Basically they detect a VPN [00:44:00] protocols, open VPN wire guard blocking 60 to 70% of known VPN servers weekly in October, 2025. New DPI layers disrupted even obscure providers. So it’s getting harder and harder to use VPNs because the internet is like. Checking, does this look like they’re using a VPN?

And, oh my gosh. And they can just find the protocols and then turn them off. So, ah. Yeah. IP whitelisting the HOL net only allows for pre-approved ips cutting off of VPN endpoints during the June, 2025. Conflict related blackouts. 95% of VPN’s connections failed for days domain seizures. VPN provider sites are blocked.

New ones are targeted within hours via AI driven scans. Legal crackdowns in July, 2025. Untrue Content Law Criminalizes VPN use with penalties of one to five years. One to five years in prison. So yeah smuggled VPNs via USB or D Dark Web are pricier 10 to $20 a month versus the free pre 20, 24 ones risking [00:45:00] scams or malware as well.

Yeah, I mean, imagine you sell somebody what you tell ‘em with a v vpn, but you’re really recording all the naughty stuff they’re doing. Then you threaten to send it to the government and you can get a good oh oh. Oh no. Throttling and stealth blackouts. During crises October, 2025, protestors, little data is throttled to two gigabytes, 0.1 megabytes rendering VPNs unusable, even if connected.

Oh my gosh. Well, that’s a

Simone Collins: clever way to. Make them impossible to

Malcolm Collins: use. Smuggled star lake terminals. There’s about a thousand in the country, offer uncensored access, but cost $500 plus and require illegal hardware regime, janor signals in September, 2025 and border patrols seed skits. So they’re, they’re scanning for these and attempting to block them.

So yeah. No. We’ll tell you about one good thing that’s happening in Iran That’s okay. Is their drone program has been pretty popular. Oh. So, and they’re, they’re pretty inexpensive. So you can get a Shahied 1 36 drone for $20,000 a unit. Okay. And they’re [00:46:00] mass produced at about seven to 10 per day.

And they’re by huge hit with 3000 exported to Russia 2022 for Ukrainian strikes. And they’ve been used by the huis versus ships on the Red Sea. Versus the, you know, $1 million missiles that you have with a lot of American missiles. You got the Mahari R six, which costs around a hundred thousand dollars.

This is a medium altitude reconnaissance on armed UAV with a hundred kilogram payload. This is exported to Russia and Venezuela and pretty popular. And then you’ve got the new Shahid, the Shahid 1 29 to 1 49, which is one to 2 million per unit. And it’s a medium altitude long endurance, like a US Reaper with eight.

2000 kilometer range armed with missiles and bombs. And this is seen regional use in, in Syria and Yemen. And then they also have the alibi five, which are the tactical drone for $50,000. Short range, recon strike, vertical takeoff you know, which you’re typically thinking of when you’re thinking of drones, because a lot of these other drones look more like gliders.

And this one is you know, also getting pretty popular [00:47:00] and Iraqis militias are using it. Another, positive note for them is their economy is stable only in that it has nearly completely collapsed anyway, and 80 to 90% of their income it’s coming from, or sorry, what percent is it? I can’t remember.

I said it earlier. It’s like 85% is coming from oil. And on the downside, 80 to 90% of their oil is coming from exports to China. So that’s, that’s not good when you have, you know, that level of concentration. And keep in mind that requires things like the, you know, Suez Canal staying open. That requires a lot of very tricky things to make work for Iran.

And it requires going vast, a lot of water dominated by countries that don’t very much like. Either Iran or China, very much like India. So a very precarious situation if that was ever blocked off for them. What’s interesting is that China really hasn’t pushed back on, on this. You think they would exercise more attempts to control them.

But they, they haven’t they, they, I mean, they have done some, [00:48:00] some, you know, stuff within the country, but they, they haven’t gone overboard. And part of the reason is, I think it’s ‘cause 60% or something, a fairly high amount of China’s oil is actually coming from Iran. So, they. I think the main thing is, is that they’re afraid of Iran retaliating as well one of the few countries they’re actually afraid of, or they really should be equally afraid of every country on that shipping lane.

Yeah. Which, which I mean they are, that’s, that is what the Taiwan situation is really about. They need to get Taiwan to break our ability to blockade them by blockading the straight of Malacca. And they, they will do anything to see that happen. Yeah. Not that it matters because their fertility rate is garbage and Taiwan’s fertility rate is garbage and neither of them is going to exist as meaningful power players in the future.

You can see our videos on that. I mean, it matters

Simone Collins: to people who are extremely short term oriented, so yeah. That’s, that’s like 98% of people. By the way, Malcolm,

Malcolm Collins: I was gonna talk about the current political deadlock and stuff in the country, but I don’t really care. Just, you know, I ran what [00:49:00] country isn’t

Simone Collins: politically deadlocked these days?

Honestly, I mean, that’s United States. Sorry, we’re in the middle of a government shutdown.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I know. And we’re winning because we wanted the shutdown. This, we were walking around Walmart and one guy’s talking to another guy. He goes, the government can of the most powerful country in the world can’t stay shut down much longer.

No, no. He’s like, no, we, he’s like,

Simone Collins: well, we need the government to work. And the other guy was like, no, we don’t.

Malcolm Collins: No, we don’t. That’s the way many Republicans. Feel, I just want

Simone Collins: that well overheard in Walmart. It’s, it’s the best overheard. I’m

Malcolm Collins: just saying like, if we end up cleaning up as much as the, the, the demographic shift to make it look like we’re going to, as soon as, you know, the Supreme Court case comes through and redistricting happens.

It’s, it’s bad. Like it is, it is, you know, moving to a more of a political consensus was in our country. Until, until the Democrats can sort of reposition what they, they stand for.

Simone Collins: Hmm. I mean, anyway.

Malcolm Collins: Love you Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you too. I’m really glad we’re not in Iran. Thank you for not being born there.

Malcolm Collins: [00:50:00] Yeah. And it also means we probably shouldn’t, you know, as long as we can keep them from getting the, the nukes, do not waste time with the war with Iran. Warren’s not gonna be around for long. Just let them do their thing and they’re genocide themselves right now. Okay. Well,

Simone Collins: similar to your stance with.

Europe. I mean, that’s why you’re in, you’re in favor of in general this, this move toward isolationism. You’re like, why invest either from an antagonistic or supportive standpoint in these countries that are choosing to not inherit the future.

Malcolm Collins: So yeah, there’s a few countries worth investing in ‘cause they’ve got good tech and decent fertility rates like Israel, Australia.

You know, New Zealand, but like, not Europe, not not Iran. Anyway, love you, love you to death. Have a good one.

Simone Collins: Bye. All right. Take us away, captain.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I’m not, I gotta find my notes. Okay.

Simone Collins: Well, because you’ve not been like. Iran, we haven’t talked about Iran since Iran [00:51:00] allowed to play with nukes anymore. Like, I don’t know where this came from. This is outta left

Malcolm Collins: field for you, so Not exactly. We’ve had sort of a series of how F is X country, how X Oh is Y country.

Simone Collins: Oh. Kind of how asthma gold has that whole like, one on earth is going on in. Spain, Japan, France. I mean, we did it with like France recently. Yeah. We did it

Malcolm Collins: with,

Simone Collins: you know, China. Yeah. And, and like what, like Malaysia. Nepal? Yeah. It’s part of his ongoing series. That’s when Gold reacts. Yeah. We did

Malcolm Collins: it with one, one Country.

So I think that it’s, it’s good to just keep our fans and to be a source for our fans of, economic information, right? Like not economic. What am I thinking? Like geopolitical information, you know? Well, you’re, yeah.

Simone Collins: I, I need to know, I have, I have no idea what’s going on in Iran right now. What’s up with Iran?

And there’s people getting

Malcolm Collins: their news from us, you know, shouldn’t we be ensuring that they’re getting like sort of a cohesive, and, and we might even do a counter series to this. Like, this country is uniquely not effed. That would be nice. Really only. Two countries that fall into [00:52:00] that. That’s the United States and Israel.

Simone Collins: Well, you know, all the, all the anti-Semites watching this, you’re not gonna want the

Malcolm Collins: Israel. I basically already did that video. I think it was on like, the Jews will own the Future or something. Or Why you need to be nice to the Jews. We had

Simone Collins: like a billion of those episodes.

Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. But this one’s going to be a little different.

And I learned a bunch of stuff I didn’t know when putting it together. I’m excited. School me. All right.

Simone Collins: What am I making it for?

Dinner.

Malcolm Collins: I haven’t decided what, what, what, what is easy for tonight. I, you know what could be fun tonight? Mm-hmm. Is remember when you made just the cake, the, the fish cakes with the sauce and you did it with dashy and then you froze two of those fish cakes. Well, one thing I’d love is lo main, if we have the ingredients for it, try cooking like Noodle lo main.

Simone Collins: don’t know if we have

Malcolm Collins: lo main noodles. We don’t have any, like we do have lo main noodles. We bought them the last time we went.

Simone Collins: All right. I’ll, I’ll [00:53:00] I’ll check and see if not, are you asking for fa with ‘cause I do have the meatballs. What are they called? What are they called? What is Voss called?

The Vietnamese bun. Macha.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, fo is haw. No, I’d rather just have foe if I’m doing foe. But I’d love it if you could see if you could do lomain tonight. And if you can’t do lomain, just, just the vegetable

Simone Collins: lo domain.

Malcolm Collins: Ve yeah. Or just ine. If I could

Simone Collins: add in some chicken. Would you want chicken?

Malcolm Collins: No.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: I wanna just get lo meine right first and then we can try making it. I don’t have

Simone Collins: bell peppers. I don’t have chives. Like I didn’t

Malcolm Collins: ask for vegetable lo meine. I said lo meine. You just literally want noodles and sauce.

Simone Collins: That’s

Malcolm Collins: the way

Simone Collins: noodles are usually served. No, it’s with vegetables. There’s stuff, there’s chicken, there’s vegetables.

That’s like saying like, oh, give me a Chipotle burrito bowl. Rice, please.

Malcolm Collins: That is the way that I have eaten Lo Maine most of my life as lo main. Alright, well [00:54:00] I love you and I want you to have what you want, so I’ll, I’ll work on it if you don’t have the ingredients for low, if I have

Simone Collins: vegetables,

Malcolm Collins: would, would you be okay with me If you have vegetables, put them in.

Simone Collins: Okay. I love you.

Malcolm Collins: I love you too. And if you, I got just this situation. It ran. Our marriage run away. Our marriage is over.

Simone Collins: I ran away. You ran away. They’re running away. We’re all running away.

Malcolm Collins: To what?

Simone Collins: Iran?

Malcolm Collins: Iran? Yes. I’m I’m punting you.

Simone Collins: Yeah. You’re, you’re not like Elon Musk. Musk Grimes, who live off the puns.

All right. Okay. Sorry. Bye.

Malcolm Collins: That was toasty right now.

Simone Collins: Oh, where, what?

Malcolm Collins: Toasty is filling outside and she got out of the car and she’s talking to him. Oh,

Simone Collins: okay. Oh yeah. I’m really Okay, got it.

Speaker 7: He strides through hallways decked in gold, so bright. Like a sultan’s palace glowing day and night. Marble pillars glimmer, echoing his name. A Persian king or [00:55:00] president, one and the same. Shimmering drapes, flush rugs under each foot. A A fortress of bling that no one can refute. Gold leaf on the ceiling, mirrors everywhere.

He’s bold, he’s brash, who else would even dare? Where are the paintings of boats, of horses so rare? Where are random cottages in frames, why aren’t they there? And where are the model ships, decked out in their coats? Where We’re asking our first Persian friends, show us those votes.

He bedazzles ballrooms, each corner ornate. Like something out of ancient lore, or so we state. Halls paved in splendor, shining [00:56:00] under the light. Surprise, surprise, he’s got It’s quite a sight.

He claims he’s classy with flair unmatched. A thousand chandeliers perfectly dispatched. Grand Tourette’s, big fountains, exotic mystique. All hail our Persian prez. So lavish, unique. Where are the paintings of boats? Of horses so rare? Random cottages in frames, why aren’t they there? And where are the model ships?

Decked out in their coats? We’re asking our first Persian friends. Show us! Those boats,

every corner gilded, every surface gleams like shy era fantasies, fresh out of dreams. [00:57:00] Marble upon marble, a treasure trove of hue. Yes, it’s gaudy, but hey, it’s trumped through and through. Where are the paintings of boats, of horses so rare, random cottages in frames, why And where the model ships decked out in their coats Our gilded Persian president,

please bring on those boats

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How Illness Rewrote His Faith

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