Intro

In this episode, Simone and Malcolm explore the surprising resurgence of traditional marriages and their benefits, contrasting it with the red pill philosophy advocating against marriage. Through statistics and insights from Brad Wilcox's article 'Why Marriage Survives,' they analyze trends in divorce rates, childbearing, and marriage stability since the 1980s. They discuss how societal shifts are changing perceptions of relationships among young adults, emphasized by Andrew Tate's controversial views on masculinity and marriage. Additionally, the episode touches on gender roles, economic stability in relationships, and the importance of mutual respect and attentiveness in modern marriages.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] now it's radical monogamy, where monogamy. But like, I'm not a square or anything.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I love this concept of like, marriage. Have you thought of it?

Ooh, I don't know. No, no. I wanna get

Malcolm Collins: that dirty. Yeah. I'm gonna have a husband who I serve. What the food for? Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.

Simone Collins: And I'm gonna get pregnant. We're legally bound to each other. What is this? The Omega verse?

This is kinky. Oh God. No. It's really come to that though.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be going over the surprising increase in traditional marriages and traditional marriage structures and why they might be beneficial to people contrasting with the red pill ethos that will go into as well in this, where you get somebody who says, no, marriage is always bad.

It is just a trap for the man. It is just bad for the man. Which I'm sure [00:01:00] you've heard a hundred times on web PE sites.

Simone Collins: Okay. How do you define traditional marriage?

Malcolm Collins: And this is, well, you'll, you'll understand from the statistics that we're going over 'cause we're gonna be going over a lot of statistics in this episode.

And we're going to be doing it through the eyes of a piece by Brad Wilcox in The Atlantic called Why Marriage Survives.

Simone Collins: Nice. Brad Wilcox. Okay, let's do it. I'm excited.

Malcolm Collins: You're acting like we know him. Do we know him?

Simone Collins: We've met him a couple times at events.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, wild. Okay, cool. He's a prenatal list.

Simone Collins: Yeah. He, he's all about marriage.

His, his angle in the prenatal list movement is, I'm the marriage guy, so

Malcolm Collins: it would make sense that he's running. Sorry. By the way, Brad, if you, I met you. I'm just terrible with Ames. So, and faces, and I met you again. I'd be like, oh, you're that guy. You know, but sorry. Anyway so I'm gonna dive right in and I've cut out all of the fluff from this, and so we're just gonna go like stats heavy.

Okay.

Simone Collins: Awesome.

Malcolm Collins: First, the decline in the divorce rate was accelerating since the early 1980s. The divorce rate had now fallen by almost 40% and about half that decline happened in just the past 15 years. So I'm gonna [00:02:00] read that again. First, the decline in the divorce rate is accelerating, so fewer people are getting divorced and it's happening at an even faster rate as time goes on.

Simone Collins: But don't you think that's also a product of there being far fewer marriages?

Malcolm Collins: We'll get to that. Okay. Since, since the 1980s, the divorce rate has fallen by 40%. So when people get, wow. Since the 1980s, it's fallen by 40% and half that decline has happened in just the last 15 years. Hmm. Unless otherwise noted.

All figures in this article are the result of my analysis of national data. The idea that marriage will end in failure half the time or more was entrenched in American minds is out of date. The proportion of forced marriages expected to end in divorce has fallen to about 40% in recent years. So. Number of divorces are falling, but still, I mean, 40% for first marriage people.

And I love it when people come to you will be like, that's my odds of getting divorced if I get into a marriage. And I'm like, no, it's not like, you know, dumb people [00:03:00] get married too. Like thoughtless people get married too. People get drunk and get married in Vegas. Like the, the, these people who are ending up like you, you influence the odds that your marriage will end in divorce by how much thought you put into that marriage when you went into it. It is not a staple 40% for every individual. If you go to me and you said bet. On these marriages ending in divorce and I was given information on both people and how they vetted each other.

And I placed bets based on logic, and then another person placed bets on a, just a 40% number. Yeah, I would own that person. I would just completely come away with all the money. Because it isn't a blanket 40%, it is a 40% conditional on the circumstances that you were in when you got married.

Simone Collins: Second.

Yeah, I'm actually, I, I'm gonna see if I can find prediction markets for divorce. 'cause I bet that there are,

Malcolm Collins: I wonder if there's a prediction market for our divorce. I know that the number of there is for the number of [00:04:00] kids we have market on, the number of kids we'll have, but yeah. Second non-marital childbearing after almost half a century of increase, stalled out in 2009 at 41%.

Oh to down to 40% over the last few years. So basically for a long time, the amount of kids born out of wedlock was increasing. And it stalled out about 15 years ago. And, and it's been slow, very slowly going down. Um hmm. For children less divorce and a small decline in childbearing. Outside of wedlock means more stability after falling for more than 40 years.

Beginning in the 1960s, the share of children living in married families bottomed out at 64% in 2012 before rising to. 66% in 2024 according to the Census Bureau current population survey and the share of children raised in an intact myriad family for the duration of their childhoods, has climbed from a low point of 52% in 2014 to 54% into thousand [00:05:00] 24.

So, just to, to go over the, the bigger number there. After falling for more than 40 years, beginning in the 18, 1960s, the share of children living in married families bottomed out in 2012. So basically we saw this long period of decline and then a bottoming out. Yeah, that makes sense. With things beginning to potentially turn around.

Now, third shift may now be underway as well, although it is much less established in the first two. The rate of new marriages among prime aged adult, which hit its nadir during the pandemic, has risen in each of the three years of data since 2020. So again this is the rate of new marriages in prime age adults which.

In 2023, the most recent year available, it was higher than any year since 2008. At least. Some of this increase is a post pandemic bounce, but the share of all primary aged adults who are married has also leveled off in the past few years that, [00:06:00] that this, the decades long decline in the proportion of Mary's Americans who are married may have reached its low point. Some of these shifts are modest. Kunst was surely right that couples and families in the US will continue to live in a variety of arrangements and particular caution is warranted

as to the number of new marriages, , it's quite possible that the longer trend towards fewer people marrying will reassert itself, but as a likely success story for those who do wed and as an anchor for the American family life, a marriage looks like it's coming back.

Stable marriage is a norm again, and the way that most people rear the rising generation. The writing is very difficult to read here. He uses the grammatical structures I wouldn't expect but anyway, I'm gonna put some graphs on screen here.

You get fewer divorces, so as you can see here, you have this sharp increase in divorces from the 1960s to like 1976. Because [00:07:00] boomers are just the worst generation in human history. We actually did an episode on that, and I thought it was a little mean. So I, I haven't posted it. But then the number just goes down, down, down, down, down to the point where if you look at in 2023 the number of divorces is about the same as the number of divorces in the early 1960s.

Oh. So we're going, you know, back to 1950s levels of divorce. If, if, if we continue down at the rate that we've been going down, I'd say for another five years, we'll be back to the 1960 level. That's exciting. Let's see if we can get to the 1950s level. Yeah. Kids growing up in married, two parents' homes.

This has been going down since the 1970s at least. So at the beginning of this graph, it's going down. And then you see it reach sort of, its bottom at, around 2015 and it's gone up slightly since then. Okay. Encouraging. So, so, what you're seeing there is, is this is a trend that's bouncing back as well?

A little bit. A little bit. Maybe [00:08:00] We hit a floor. The Harvard anthropologist, Joseph Hayek has observed that. Marriage represents the keystone institution. For most, though not all societies and maybe the most primeval of human institutions on every continent in every era. In more patriarchal societies and in more egalitarian ones, it has governed family relationships as an institution.

It seems to build on the evolutionary psychology of both men and women. Writes Nicholas Christus, a sociologist at Yale, which is to exchange love for support. And as we note, because love is not a real emotion, and when I, I did this episode and so many people were like, oh, this show is like, you guys are sociopaths or something.

People were pointing out, actually, if you look at the definitions of love given by most like well considered people like say CS Lewis, he would also. Tacitly in his definition of love, argues that love is not a real emotion. It's a choice. Or, or rather like a pledge to somebody. So this is saying like a pledge of mutual [00:09:00] dedication in exchange for pledge of mutual dedication.

I mean, I guess that that's, you know, whatever. By the way, if you do think love is a real emotion, you should watch that episode. We come to it with a lot of evidence. It is almost certainly a thing that people are just pretending. May, maybe some like minority ethnic groups have it as an emotional state, but it, it doesn't appear to be common within most of the population.

And most people, like, like entire civilizations existed without a word for it. And, and we have their writings on what a married couple feels for each other. And they're very close to what I feel for my wife. So we know that like when you don't get this myth, people don't, don't fall for it. But what I'm noting here is, is here you have both people at like Harvard and Yale, so like mainstream progressive institutions being like, marriage is the bedrock of all human culture and society.

You might have multiple marriages, but like IEA man might marry multiple women, but in, as far as I am aware, in every successful civilization in human history, marriage has existed as a concept. [00:10:00] Hmm. Note here, I'm not, I'm not isolating it to monogamous marriage, but marriage more generally. IE exclusive females to males.

And they dedicate themselves to that male. I'm not aware of a single successful civilization in human history that didn't have this I'm aware of. It was like some, some, a few tribes here and there. Yeah.

Simone Collins: But it seems like once you scale marriage as an institution emerges.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I wouldn't say that it emerge.

It, it's a groups that don't adopt it do not appear to be able to scale.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: That, that's what this would imply to me. So, you know, important. One and then dot, dot.here because he goes off about something else that you guys aren't gonna care about. And I wanna get back to the statistics and the interesting stuff.

One notable example is family care. Most marriages in the United States today are not throwbacks to the fifties when it comes to domestic responsibilities. Husbands are more willing to lean in. The amount of time that American fathers spend on childcare increased from 2.5 hours per week in 1965 to nine [00:11:00] hours in 20 24, 2 0.5 to nine hours between 1965 and 2024, according to Pew and the American Time use survey over the same time period at the share of time spent on Child by Dad's rose from 25% to 62% of what moms provided, which is, you know, crazy.

This is, this is, you know, obviously well over, well not just doubling here, this is like. I'm not gonna do the math in my head, but, but it's, it's, it's a lot, it's a lot of an increase.

Simone Collins: Also you spend so much more time with our kids than that, which is

Malcolm Collins: great. Yeah. And I note here the part I took out here is he was going on one of these, but you know, marriage in the 1950s was bad and the patriarchy or something, and I was like, yeah, whatever.

My audience doesn't care. But that is actually interesting the way that that marriage and norm are changing.

Speaker 3: Yeah. And then

Malcolm Collins: he points out here, indeed, one of the reasons the United States birth rate may be higher than those of East Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea, where the fertility rate has fallen to 1.15 and 0.75 babies born per woman respectively, well below the US of 1.6.

[00:12:00] And, and note that these, these aren't the only good examples of this, if you look at like Italy, Italy had the fertility rate of like 1.18 is that men in those countries that do much less childcare and household labor than men in the us, even as women around the world, embrace the egalitarian frontier.

The words of social scientists, Alice Evans. Men in some cultures have maintained their old habits. As a result, Evans writes The sexes drift apart. This may help explain why South Korea has seen marriages tank and its fertility rate fall to the lowest in the world. There's actually a great study on this by Aria Babu that looked at perceptions of a woman's role in a marriage.

And the more a country thought that a woman's role this was, was in Europe, was basically to stay at home and raise kids the lower their fertility rate was and this is why despite Southern Europe being. Less wealthy than Northern Europe, which usually leads to a higher fertility rate. Northern Europe has a much better fertility rate than Southern Europe.

Also consider Latin America versus the United States, for example. Latin America is having an, an absolute fertility bomb right now having very, very quick [00:13:00] fertility collapse compared to the United States. I think very shortly, I think already over half of the countries in Latin America, half a below the United States, TFR.

And I think very shortly we're going to see Latin America morph. More broadly fall below the United States. And I think that in the future, when people are talking about IE am projecting 10 years out, when people are talking about fertility rate panic, Latin America is gonna be one of the core places they talk about because it's been one of the fastest declines we've seen.

Anywhere in the world when you control for income. So, and, and they are not as gender egalitarian as the United States. If you, if you look at East Asia, you know, people can be like, oh, all of East Asia is going through a, a total fertility collapse right now. And it's like, no, like there's some wealthy countries in East Asia that have better fertility rates than we have 1.8, for example.

Do you know what country has a fertility rate of 1.8? That's New Zealand, probably the most gender egalitarian country in all of East Asia. What country has a fertility rate of 1.56? About the same as ours, way [00:14:00] above, like Trouncing, any of the other countries in the region that's Australia. Way more gender egalitarian than South Korea or Japan.

Or China or Thailand, which also has a very low fertility rate for his level of wealth. I think it was like 1.2 or something. Which also is gonna hugely change these regions. Like a lot of people don't realize geopolitically what this means. If you project the economies of these regions going forwards and AI just doesn't completely flip the way economies work, which it could.

You know, the fact that all of these economic heavy hitters like Korea and Japan and China are gonna go through these demographic classes, which is going to hit their tax base, which is going to hit the way they work. And. Australia and New Zealand aren't going to go through that. They will become the economic center of the entire region.

Which is kind of wild. This is one of the things I talk about where people are like, oh, you're just trying to like boost things for white people, you know? And it's like, no, actually, like white people are fairly gonna gonna end up fairly well as things go like. The, the [00:15:00] white colonized regions of East Asia are gonna completely economically dominate East Asia.

If you look at the, the, the larger global scene, the United States and Israel are the two countries that have unusually high fertility rates. And we're both usually thought of as white countries. And we're gonna completely dominate. If you and people are like, oh, well what about like in East Asia, Indonesia has like a super high fertility rate.

It's like, it doesn't, it doesn't matter. Like, because they're not economically productive. And I'm not saying that like genetically, they're less, like I'm saying whatever, for whatever reason, that country isn't economically productive, so it's not gonna be economically productive tomorrow. And even within the United States, you see this phenomenon.

The people will be like, black fertility in the United States is higher than white fertility. And I'm like, actually that's not true. Or, or it is true is a huge caveat, which is that black fertility is the lowest ethnic fertility group in the United States for everyone who all, all black people who are, are above the bottom 20% of black earners.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I think if we totally controlled for income, I don't know if black fertility would be. Yeah, black,

Malcolm Collins: black fertility is actually super low. And, and this is [00:16:00] really bad for the black community because it means that culturally, if the only parts of that community that are reproducing itself are the, the ones who are at the very bottom economically that's gonna reduce the community's ability to project itself economically was in society because the amount a kid has is correlated with the amount their, their, their parents make.

And I, and again, I'm not even saying genetically here, let's pretend genes aren't a thing. I'm just speaking culturally.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway indeed one reason that the United States birth rate may be higher, oh, sorry, we already went over this. There is no single model for a good marriage in the US today, and most couples have their struggles.

Men still do less childcare in housework and disagreements over division of household wage, labor, or source of tension for couples. Many women still value some traditional traits in men, such as bread winning and some men's. Unreliability as breadwinners is a source of pain for them and their wives. A 2016 study on divorce published in the American Sociological Review found that when a husband was not employed full time, his risk of divorce shot up by 33% the following year.

Simone Collins: Oh, [00:17:00] ouch.

Malcolm Collins: That's really high. Yeah. Well, no, this risk of divorce, sorry that that's not the absolute rate of divorce. Oh, okay. But what's important here is when the wife was unemployed, her odds of divorce do not change. Employment differences among less educated men are the big reason marriage rates are lower among the working class than among college graduates.

But on the whole marriage confers benefits to before we get into this what you, you have any thoughts on this? 'cause you haven't talked much during this piece.

Simone Collins: I'm just absorbing this. I, I, I wanna understand better how this correlates though with. The falling rates of marriage and the falling rates of fertility in general, like, it, it doesn't really mean anything in isolation.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I think that what is upstream of falling fertility rates has been falling marriage rates. And if we are, it is, and,

Simone Collins: and Brad Wilcox absolutely argues that, I mean, probably here and also elsewhere, but if there are fewer divorces, for example, I mean, does it matter so much when like basically only the most dedicated [00:18:00] people are getting married?

Malcolm Collins: Actually yeah, it does because those are the people who are gonna have kids more likely. Consider our, I mean our society is basically going through a form of like correction, right? Yeah. Which is more people are realizing Simone and I were actually talking among ourselves about a, a friend of ours who previously would've been fine and, and, and did publicly identify as polyamorous.

And now wanted to publicly identify as, as monogamous or monogamous more generally. And it is just become like not cool to have like, alternate types of marriages anymore. The, the traditional marriage structure has become the way that people want to signal themselves to the outside world in a way that I think.

Is is transformative. 'cause it means a lot of young people, like young Type A people who just wanna do the right thing are now like a lot of time, like they used to be like, oh, I gotta go out, I gotta sleep around. Like a young girl was telling you this. Yeah.

Simone Collins: For a while everyone was, I mean, maybe this is still [00:19:00] the case, but for a while it seemed like everyone said they were poly.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And now we're at this time where a lot of people are like, Hey. I, I, people have heard our podcast where you say this and they're like, you must have had some weird friends. And it's like, well, we lived in San Francisco, so deal was it. But anyway you, but anyway you, I, what was I gonna say here?

Marriage, monogamy. Oh yes. We have a sort of a societal shift in what's cool. And that shift has meant that a lot of these type A people who sort of live their life on rails are now like, okay, now I get married, I get married young and I have lots of kids. Hmm. And that's a good transition from the old world where people were just like, I get married and then I have kids and I don't really think about it.

And everyone equally fell into that bucket where now it's increasingly the considered people who are falling into that bucket and the people who have a resistance to just doing what the urban monoculture says, who fall into that bucket. And I think that that, that sort of weeding [00:20:00] out of this huge section of the population is very good for society.

But anyway, here he goes on. But on the whole marriage confers benefits to women and men alike according to a 2024 general social survey. Married men and women ages 25 to 55 are more than twice as likely to be quote unquote, very happy with their life. As non-married peers, married people, men and women boast live longer, are more financially secure and build more wealth than single Americans.

In 2022, I worked with U Gov to survey 2000 married men and women asking them about their overall marital happiness and how they'd rate their spouse. All along a range of indicators. The happiest wives in the survey were those who gave their husbands good marks for fairness in the marriage, being attentive to them providing and being protective.

Yes, that's making them feel safe physically and otherwise. Specific, and, and, and I'd note here you know, if you're going into this as like a red pill mindset you can go into your wife as like this thing you want to tame and contain and have serve you. [00:21:00] But if you go into it with that much o over that mindset you think about what, what you're getting, you're getting like an animal that, that begrudgingly respects you because it lusts after you because you're so alpha, right?

If on the other hand, well, almost like

Simone Collins: the equivalent of hired help, like it's, it's more work to make sure, to ensure compliance of someone who is under your control. Than it is to simply outlay yourself. Who, with someone who wants the same thing you do. Exactly, exactly. It's a lot easier to do the latter.

Malcolm Collins: And here you're saying if you are allied with somebody, what makes them like you? It, it appears that it is fairness. Okay. So a degree of gender egalitarian. This was in the marriage. I mean, fairness doesn't always mean gender egalitarian in a traditional sense. Like our marriage appear is very gender in egalitarian where you do on mostly female roles.

I do mostly male roles, but,

Simone Collins: but we each pull our weight and don't feel like. Yeah, we're, we're being taken away. We talked through

Malcolm Collins: that and try to balance we don't even really try to balance, we both try [00:22:00] to do the most each of us can. I, I never think about balance and I could do more. I would do more.

Like I, I, I just, and I think that, that, that's really positive being attentive to them. So, so being attentive to your wife, I know that's not red pill, that's not whatever, right? But that is trad, that is what good men used to do for their wives. Right. You know, like, my wife will note. That like when she's looking to like, try to bend over to pick something up.

I know when she's pregnant, she hates bending over, so I always try to run over and help her with it or ensure nothing is on the floor in any room. She enters and the kids put a lot of stuff,

Simone Collins: and I feel like you're handing me a rose every time you pick something

Malcolm Collins: off the floor. It's so romantic. I'm like, oh,

Simone Collins: swoon

Malcolm Collins: and, and being protective is really big.

Do you feel like I'm protective of you? I don't know.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. You're always trying to make sure that we're shore up on all fronts.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I guess you're right. That is protection. Mm-hmm. Specifically, 81% of wives, 55 or younger who gave their husbands high marks on at least three of these qualities were very happily married compared to just 25% of wives who gave [00:23:00] them high marks on two or fewer.

And in part because most wives were reasonably happy, it was. The job their husband was doing on at least three, outta two of these fronts. Most wives were very happy with their husbands according to the survey. In fact, we found that more than two thirds of wives was in this age group. And husbands too were very happy with their marriage overall.

So to go into that, in fact, we found that more than two thirds of wives in, in their group and husbands so two thirds were very happy with their marriages.

Speaker 3: Oh. Some people

Malcolm Collins: were like, what's the chance I'm gonna be happy with my marriage these days? Two thirds. If, if you assumed it was average, but again, it's not average, it's 81%.

If you are being you know, being attentive to them being, providing, and, and treating your marriage with a degree of fairness. Mm-hmm. And, and this is, this is the thing where it's like, well, I don't know what the probability of getting into a divorce is. It's like if you go into the marriage with an overly red pill mindset, it's pretty effing high.

Which is not to say that the red pill doesn't have [00:24:00] adequate complaints, and that red pill philosophy does not work at achieving. Sex with people who you know, you, you, you probably don't want to be married to. But it is not a good mindset to enter a long-term relationship with. And we've actually seen an evolution of the red pill community from that.

Like right now I'm talking about the red pill community and its nascency the red pill community as it exists today. Largely recognizes all of these things. Yeah. Except for like Andrew Tate, the one, the one guy who does it, and maybe like Hamza done an episode on how Hamza screwed up his life by, by overly focusing on these things.

Watch it. It's a very funny episode. That, that we did way too much epi editing on.

basically I'm starting the fatherhood chapter of my life. We're not pregnant just yet, but we've moved to the Scottish Highlands,

The reason why me and my ex split up is I told her to sit down and to write down like her goals and I wrote, you know what, I want to move to like a big city.

You will not find this kind of woman who will fit with this lifestyle in a big major city why?

The women who are in the big [00:25:00] cities are glorified Instagram prostitution.

I actually want to have a few like, Sleepless nights.

I want to have a few likes like sleep deprived nights where I stay up late bro for the last few years I've been to sleep at 7 8 p. m I've you couldn't imagine the amount of like parties and social events and dinners that I've missed

I know what goes on in these parties And the issue was that the girls that I was meeting from these places, just like I, I was as well, um, We're all low quality.

It's a low quality place to be.

. I wanted to be super social. I wanted to have some late nights where we stay up and we're social and there's a party that we go to and everything.

But she saw it, and I'm not gonna lie, like, I could see how, like, offended she was. Where she was quite, like, pressuring, she was like, Wait, you wanna do this? Oh, you wanna do that? You wanna stay up late? But that's unhealthy.

Those party girls, like the party, low quality, degenerate, TikTok type of girls.

They are attracted to the party, low quality, degenerate, TikTok type of guys. Fine, like trash can stay with trash.

Because for hers, she wrote that she wanted to do more of the things that we were currently doing. , it's wholesome , and you know that she's an awesome girl for that, she doesn't want to be around like, You [00:26:00] know, like party girls and whatever I just realized like we're actually going into two separate seasons right now

Fine, like trash can stay with trash. This is going to sound weird, you need to be hit in the face. I will repeat that again. As a young man, you need to be hit in the face consistently.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway, check it out. The Hamza episode. But yeah, the, the, or the Andrew Tate various episodes we've done on how I actually think that they're quite funny as well. But anyway we point out that Andrew Tate, like in trying to be masculine if you were taking characters from the movie Gladiator, he literally acts like the, the emperor who's supposed to be like really pathetic and carries around a sword to like people instead of like Maximus.

And I'm like, guys, Maximus is who the girls want. It's not the emperor. Okay? But he doesn't understand. He thinks it's about threatening and keeping everyone afraid of him and keeping everyone on edge. It being creepy and the way he talks about people.

Andrew Tate: I guarantee you don't walk around your house with a sword because you're not a commander. I'm a commander. You know, like when you command the [00:27:00] troops into battle, so I walk around my house with a sword and I make threats like old school threats. It's like I will run you through.

Speaker 2: which is already springing up there, so it sees out, don't you see gls?

Speaker 5: I call it love. I shall hold them to my bosom and embrace them tight.

Andrew Tate: I'm that guy who does whatever he wants.

If you're unhappy with it, if you're unhappy with waiting for me to light a cigar, then leave the channel. I don't give a f**k about you. You're a peasant. You're a peon. You're a brookie. I do as I please.

I've analyzed the entire earth, all of it,

so I like women. But females,

are barely sentient. Even the good ones. In fact, especially the good ones. And the point is, when I say barely sentient, is that the female's entire life process from head to toe she never really thinks for herself.

My four wives are sitting there. They've seen on the news. There's a new deadly contagion. I pick up [00:28:00] my sword. I am the commander of this house. I decide if there's a contagion, I decide what I do. Be quiet. Cook.

You got your sword. Your wife starts talking. You're like, shut up. She's got a sword.

You wrote to me once, listing the four chief virtues. Wisdom, justice, fortitude, and temperance.

As I read the list, I knew I had none of them. But I have other virtues, ambition. That can be a virtue when it drives us to excel.

Malcolm Collins: But hey, it seems to be working for him. I mean, his, his whole thing has basically faded, hasn't it?

It's like he's still a thing.

Simone Collins: Last I heard of him. He was in Florida and there were legal issues and then, yeah, I don't know,

Malcolm Collins: maybe like on TikTok and stuff, you know what I mean?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

So I decided to check how big Andrew Tate is these days, and his core channel appears to be his Rumble account, which has, , millions of followers. , But if you look at the videos he's posting, he has one from yesterday that had 36.9 K views. He has one from, , three days ago, [00:29:00] which is at 33.1 K views.

He has one from three days before that, which is 31.5 K, , which is larger than us. So he's like about, I don't know, maybe three times. Or, or four times the size of our channel. , But that's wild to think about.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway, I believe it's important for teen boys and young men to hear the entirety of this message.

Marriage changes men, but not in nefarious ways. Andrew Tate might think men work harder and find more success at work after they get married. They drink less as well. And marriage can channel noble characteristics and behaviors that have classically been identified with masculinity, protection, provision, ambition, stoicism that's good for both men and women.

I actually, yeah, really improved after I got married. In terms of my stoicism and provision and willingness to protect and emotional stability my ambition has stayed the same before and after marriage, I always wanted to take over the world, which I guess is sort of maximum ambition either way. I.[00:30:00]

That's good for both men and women. It can help young men identify and work towards a model of pro-social masculinity that diverges from the one being pedaled by manosphere influencers such as Tate Marriages Comeback is good news for society. Children raised in two parent homes are much more likely to graduate from college than those raised in other families and less likely to be incarcerated Kids who don't live.

With both of their married parents are far more likely to be depressed than those raised in intact families. After surveying research on child wellbeing, the economist Melly Caree concluded, the evidence is clear. Even if the punchline is uncomfortable, children are more likely to thrive behaviorally, academically, and ultimately in the labor market and adult life if they grow up with the advantages of a two-parent home.

Yeah. Third reflects the mainstream academic consensus of family structure and children today.so sorry. I'm jumping ahead in the piece of it here. But marriage has comeback is of course incomplete. Although the trend may be starting to reverse. The share of all Americans who get married [00:31:00] has fallen significantly since the sixties.

And there is abundant evidence that many young adults today are reluctant to marry or having trouble finding partners who want to marry totally.

Speaker 3: In particular,

Malcolm Collins: marriage has become more selective over time. Socio socioeconomically, a majority of college aged Americans ages 25 to 50. Five 62% are married versus a minority of less college aged Americans.

49% according to the 2023 American Community Survey, this bifurcation did not exist a century and a half ago and is one of the regions marriages are more durable today. Money makes everything easier. So you're right, it is part that marriage is becoming more selective. Marriage is becoming and as I've said, but this change is so recent.

So recent, like I say, like last three years in the zeitgeist, but marriage is becoming cool. And sleeping around is becoming not cool even to young people. Stable relationships are becoming the rare thing that people want. You know, being, you know, sexual gods is becoming a lot [00:32:00] less something that you can sell on the, in the community marketplace.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, do you have thoughts on if you notice this as well? Is this just me or my perception?

Simone Collins: No, I, I'm, I think one people are just more shut-ins and I, I also think that there's one element of this that hasn't yet been discussed, which is as people are feeling more and more economically disenfranchised, there is now more of a logical argument in some cases for marriage because you can slightly diversify your income portfolio.

And depend on each other and kind of switch between jobs together in a way that mitigates a risk. Yeah, so. When people don't have parents, they can move in with, for example, I think marriage in the name of stability and shared risk and more support.

Malcolm Collins: You're saying as times get worse, marriage becomes more economically beneficial because, well, I think

Simone Collins: that's the big problem is that there was a long [00:33:00] period where people thought marriage was about love and fun and like marrying someone who would entertain you.

Both personally and sexually. Yeah. When that's not what marriage is about. I mean, marriage has, for the vast majority of human existence, been an economic and security based arrangement that revolved around, you know, being safe, being able to survive and having kids. Yeah. And I think if anything, I mean, a lot of people of course, aren't interested or they, they don't, literally don't feel safe enough or stable enough to have kids.

Many people are at least looking to marriage to start just as, as a maybe a way to be. Safer because it's better to, for example, live with an aligned roommate who you trust rather than just be stuck with roommates, which is kind of your only choice in many housing markets. So I think that's a, it's a, a factor that Wilcox is not really discussing here.

It's a little more dark, but I think it's there.

Malcolm Collins: But the idea [00:34:00] that successful marriages are attainable only by certain groups today is misguided. Since 2012, divorce rates have been falling for working class Americans and black Americans too. And the share of kids being raised in married families for these two groups has stabilized.

In fact, the proportion of black children being raised in married parent families rose from 33% in 2012 to 39% in 2024.

Speaker 4: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And across both class and racial lines, marriage is linked to greater happiness, household earnings, and wealth for women and men. DOT do. Marriage is not for everyone. Of course it isn't, but men and women who are flying solo without a spouse typically report their lives to be less meaningful and more lonely.

The share of UNM married men, ages 25 to 55, who say they are unhappy in the general social survey, more than doubled from the late 1990s to the 2020s. The fact alone. That fact alone highlights just how wrong Andrew Tate is about men in marriage. Now what's [00:35:00] really interesting here is this doubling happened from the 1990s to the 2020s.

So we're looking within a group here, the amount of unmarried men who say they are unhappy. And so what we're seeing is that unmarried men no longer perceive the state of unmarried ness as being satisfying as much as they used to. I mean, I think that that's because culture is shifting.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Well, I also think that in an era in which socializing is collapsing, and we talked about this with the death of partying and we, we've talked about this in other episodes, having a, a married partner or a, at least a long-term boyfriend or girlfriend, I think gives people that happy medium of getting to stay inside all the time and not going out but still having a built-in.

Social life that feels satisfying and, and, and not pathetic by societal standards because I still think a lot of people's decisions are based on. Self-image based [00:36:00] things.

Malcolm Collins: I agree. I agree. Yeah. I mean, people are, are, most people are basically in PCs trying to maximize a particular self-image,

Simone Collins: so they want a way to be able to never leave their house without seeming like a complete failure.

And if you're never living your house, but your wife is there, and especially if your wife and kids are there. Then

Malcolm Collins: you are just a

Simone Collins: responsible dad, right?

Malcolm Collins: This is, this is our culture and not all cultures. Okay. That's true.

Simone Collins: A lot of, yeah, a lot of people different.

Malcolm Collins: We got this message from one of our Jew friends recently and conservative Jewish guy.

A really great guy. But anyway, he was giving a life update and talking about how their, their childcare situation had improved so that now he was able to go to. Two,

Speaker 4: go out to dinner with friends four to five times a week. He said not two. Oh, it's four to five. Four to five times a week. That's what he said.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Oh my God. It reminds me of that scene in the IT crowd when he's like, you know, do you get your, your fruit, your, your one or two fruits or veggies? And he's like, yeah, I mean. I guess I do. And he goes [00:37:00] a day. He goes A day.

Speaker 6: , do you get your five

Malcolm Collins: social interactions?

Speaker 6: oh, I mean, I certainly tried to. I would say I probably, I probably do a .

Speaker 4: per week.

Speaker 6: A what?

Malcolm Collins: Of course, in my head, I'm thinking a year. A year. Yeah. That like year. I'm like, oh, what? Oh my gosh. And I and I understand that this person is biologically not the same type of thing I am. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Because yeah, if, if we, if this person were to enter our minds and, and, and like live in our bodies, the, the very thought of that would be so horrifying.

He would just start vomiting uncontrollably and then have a seizure. Like, I don't

Malcolm Collins: know really. No, really? I, it's literally like asking like. How many times a year do you wanna pay taxes? Well, I know I need to do it, so I do it, you know, the, the couple times per year, and this person's like, I, I get to pay taxes four or five times a week.

Now it's a blast. Oh. I just, I just had to have a social interaction with somebody and I [00:38:00] hated it. You know, who we were in a business transaction with, and I want to enter a world where all of my business transactions are just with you. So I do not need to talk or engage with other people. But, oh. You know, fortunately the people we have working on our, like all of our developer teams are pretty good these days. It's just like the other like entrepreneurial types that are really frustrating me at this point.

Simone Collins: I think most of the people we work with are really amazing and then, but even, even working with people that you love is very, can be very stressful, but I, yeah, I think some people just live for it.

They love it for whatever reason.

Malcolm Collins: But I, I do agree with you that the portion, you know, if we're right, people can go to our episodes of why did Jews have friends? That the portion of society that's like really into these larger friend networks is actually coming from some minority cultural groups in terms of their influence on wider culture.

Hmm. And a lot of Americans actually just do not want white. Social networks that you migrate, that a lot of people are getting married to just [00:39:00] retreat to the, the, the marriage and the family life.

Simone Collins: Well, and, and based on the, the stats that you shared in our episode on partying, which showed larger stats on socializing in general, basically three out of 10 Americans, if I recall correctly.

Are going to most of the social events and then seven outta 10 are not there at all. So I think people get this perception that everybody likes going out when you're just seeing the same three outta 10 people at everything. Yeah. And then there's this huge like, under the ocean part of the iceberg of the population that you're not gonna see.

'cause they're not out there.

Malcolm Collins: That, that is hoki, kamori maxing.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And so now I wanna go to, he started this article with an Andrew Tate quote, or, or talking about Andrew Tate. And I thought the way he framed this is pretty interesting. Quote, there is zero statistical advantage in quote to getting married if you are a man in America today.

Andrew Tate argued in a [00:40:00] viral 2022 video on why modern men don't want marriage. Women he believes are worthless anchors. They want you monogamous, so your testosterone level drops, he posted on X last fall, and your marriage is likely to end in ruin anyway. If you use your mind, if you use your head instead of your heart, and you look at the advantages of getting married, there are none.

Oh,

Simone Collins: his heart's telling him to get married.

Malcolm Collins: That's actually sad sounding when you're, that is really

Speaker 4: sad. Our hearts never told us to get married. Our minds did. Yeah, our minds did. I was like, it was logical.

Malcolm Collins: Andrew Tate. Meanwhile, I was like, I want to marry you. My heart says yes, but my mind says no. But my, my well, I mean, he's self-image maxing, right?

Like, well, he is a

Simone Collins: brand in a reputation to keep up if he marries. He would look. Yeah. Andrew Tate ridiculous. It's a role. He's not a human.

Malcolm Collins: You know, he, he's a human who every day wakes up and is like, I am playing the role of Andrew Tate, but that

Simone Collins: heart thing is very telling. My heart never told me to get married.

[00:41:00] That's crazy. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, seriously, I, I only was thinking logically about whether or not I wanted to marry you. I was considering percent the benefits and the downsides. And you as an investment that I was engaging in,

Simone Collins: as you should correct.

Malcolm Collins: And then Tate believes that men no longer receive the deference they deserve from women in marriage and bear more risk in divorce, which it's true that it's true.

They bear more risk in divorce. Well, no,

Simone Collins: and deference there, there were so many toxic cultural things. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I had to get over after we married because I just, every. Example of a wife that I'd been pres presented with basically was this eye rolling, undermining disrespectful, monster.

Malcolm Collins: I didn't have good examples.

I think the thing is, is, is good women don't want to be disrespectful to their husbands.

Simone Collins: No. But they don't have any other, they don't have a better example to run by. So if they're running off templates.

Malcolm Collins: Right. But what I'm saying is when you, when you, we all have an episode that's coming out, I don't know if it'll come out [00:42:00] before this, but it'll come out soon, is on how to train your wife.

Speaker 3: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And it goes over this, like how to go through this and it, and it is mostly not like Andrew Tate style training. It's mostly just sit her down and logically think through this, Hey, when you do this stuff in public, it makes me look bad. Do you want to make me look bad in public? And if you are with a woman who's like, yes, I do, you probably don't wanna marry that woman.

Yeah. But most women will be like, you know, I don't wanna make you look bad in public. Like, let's talk through how I cannot make you look bad in public. Well

Simone Collins: also, I, I don't even know if we brought this up in the episode. No, we didn't. But a really good point you have also made is how does this make you look?

Okay. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: How does this make you look? Because I think a

Simone Collins: lot of women don't think about how toxic and sharp and ve venomous and cruel they look when they undermine their husbands. Yeah. Like you may think that you're making your husband look like a doofus or that he is a doofus, but you look like a c**t.

Like there's no better way to put it. [00:43:00] But. I mean, and I, I was very guilty of this and I still am guilty of this sometimes, but I think your, your reminding me of that was also like, it reflects poorly on the marriage. It, it hurts the man and it hurts the woman publicly. Probably hurting the woman the very most.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. No, I definitely, when I see a woman talk down about her husband or something like that, or try to be sassy 'cause for the longest time women need to be sassy. And now, and they took pride in this. They took pride in appearing sassy. Yeah.

Simone Collins: That, that is, that is less in vogue now. Encouragingly

Malcolm Collins: encouraging.

Well, I mean, you look at young people today, they drink less, they do less drugs. They go out less. They party less they, yeah. You know, and people can be like, oh, that's just 'cause they have less of money. And it's like, well, they spend more money on takeout. You know, like Yeah. They're, they're spending a lot of

Simone Collins: money they don't have, so that's, that's not an excuse.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then to continue with this part, he goes, he argues that men should focus on getting strong, making lots of money and using, but not investing themselves in. Opposite sex. His evident appeal clips of [00:44:00] Tate Garner hundreds of millions of impressions on YouTube. And TikTok would seem to be yet one more sign that our oldest social institution is in trouble.

So that's how we started the piece. And, and I think that this is, I actually think that one of the reasons why Tate is declining in sort of the public mind share when he was the number one conservative influencer a few years ago. Is the, that's not what people want anymore. Like there was sort of this, this height of this generation of red pillars.

And then people were sort of like, but isn't there some other option? Like, okay, the way we used to do things doesn't seem to work exactly anymore. Then the weird, you know, lifestyle that the urban monoculture imposed on us, where women are this and women are that and, and, and, and they're always the victims and men are the oppressors.

That seemed really toxic and led to a lot of negative externalities in dating and everything. And then there was the reactionary culture to that, which was like red pill and you [00:45:00] take culture. But I think that this generation just sort of saw all of those crazy pendulum swings of the, of the last generation and is like.

Can we just find out something that's gonna work? Like, just be

Simone Collins: reasonable? Yeah. Yeah. Can

Malcolm Collins: we just try to be reasonable instead of being like bitter, like all, you know, when they come to you and they go, well, you know, your marriage is likely to fail. And it's like, yeah, but it's not, first of all. And then second of all, if I am considerate about it and I get married to someone I like and I get married to somebody who supports me throughout my life.

The quality of life that I have access to is so much higher than the individual who doesn't.

Speaker 4: Absolutely. The security I have

Malcolm Collins: access to is so much higher than the individual who doesn't. Mm-hmm. So why are you trying to suck me in? You know, your crabs in a bucket mentality. The, the, the whole, you know, the community will talk about crabs in the bucket was women and they won't admit that that's what they're doing.

You know, so many of the people who lead you know, sort of the don't even try to get married [00:46:00] philosophy movement are divorce men. You know, keep that in mind. They're not never married men. They're divorced men. Angie Tate is actually one of the few never married men in the community, but I mean, he's functionally married to his brother.

I mean, they, they live together. They share their wives. I, I'm just,

Simone Collins: I don't think they share their wives. I think they share a household and they, they

Malcolm Collins: share a household with multiple women. I promise you. They share their wives. Ah. Because they're not real wives and both of them think, oh, you can't commit to one woman.

And we've shown Yeah,

Simone Collins: but I'm, I'm, I, I'm sure they expect that the women commit to them explicitly. That would be No, no.

Malcolm Collins: Consider that Andrew Tate was willing to have his women, like I would never have you pretty much, no matter what our financial situation was, go online and pretend to have sex with me.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. But I think a lot of people draw the line at physical contact.

Malcolm Collins: But maybe not, I think very interesting. I, I, I personally would not at all be surprised if Andrew t his wife was, well, I

Simone Collins: imagine if he [00:47:00] did, he'd probably be open about it.

Malcolm Collins: Would he though, I think he has the common sense to know the controversy that would cause, I mean, there was that one red pill influencer who decided to share that he liked being cooked, and then everybody was like,

Speaker 3: yeah, it didn't go well.

Malcolm Collins: Completely destroyed his reputation. I think Andrew Tate would know him, sharing wise, was his brother would lead to the same fallout.

Simone Collins: They share business ventures and no, there's, there's no direct evidence or any suggestion they share. Has he

Malcolm Collins: ever said he doesn't? Has he ever said he doesn't, this is it.

Is there any, is there any, if he doesn't, he would definitely say he doesn't 'cause it looks like he does. So I'm just like, and, and you know what's funny? The marriage between Andrew Tate and his brother is like basically a traditional marriage. They share a house together. They respect each other. They share responsibilities in business and life.

So, you know that's true. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Gosh, they're in business together. I, I think they, yeah, they do live together, don't they?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yes. Andrew [00:48:00] Tate and his brother Tristan Tate have shared a house in Romania. I multiple sources confirmed they were living together in a luxury villa that was raided by Romanian authorities in December 22nd, 2022.

Malcolm Collins: But they've never confirmed, they don't share women.

Simone Collins: Their, their history of cohabitating in Romania is well documented and their joint business operations suggest they have maintained close proximity. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah. They're kind of married. That's,

Malcolm Collins: that's cute. No, but what I'm saying is it's pretty obvious they're sharing their whys.

I

Simone Collins: just, I just really don't think. I just

Malcolm Collins: really don't think they are. I guarantee you. I guarantee you.

Simone Collins: No, no. Like they're all about like traditional man stuff, and the most classic traditional man thing is my woman. Is dedicated to me and me only. I do not share,

Malcolm Collins: oh, he's all about brotherhood and stuff like that too.

And trust of the male tribe above trust of women. And women are [00:49:00] tools for sex and childbirth. Come on Simone.

Okay. Yes. It does appear that they shared wives and this has been proven in court documents. , Vivian was Andrew Tate's girlfriend since she was 15, 16 years old. , This was something that both she and chat logs showed, , and evidence from, , victim statement in the brother Second Romanian case made public via us via lawsuit filing claims.

Tristan Cate, , pressured her into intercourse involving Vivian and another woman, Vivian said, , Tristan asked me to have. Intercourse in a group, namely Vivian and redacted. Although I wasn't comfortable with the situation, I had no choice. It was somehow a duty. So, , it wasn't just that, , the brother had access to the mothers of Tate's children.

He had access to them for intercourse whenever he wanted an on demand, and apparently without checking with his brother, which suggested they were seen as communal property.

Malcolm Collins: I I am not suggesting that there's anything gay going on there. I'm just saying I No,

Simone Collins: no, no. Well, no, there's nothing gay about sharing female partners, and [00:50:00] I know like there are some.

Actually, quite, quite a few sev, several, several spontaneously evolved traditions whereby if a woman's husband dies, she is then automatically married to the brother of that man who died. I think in one, in one African culture though, before she marries the brother, after her husband dies, she has to sleep with another guy.

To like cleanse herself of the like palate cleanser, which is really weird.

Malcolm Collins: That's a very weird one. Well, Mary, it's a very weird tradition who died. It's called a Le Levite marriage, and it was the traditional Jewish

Simone Collins: thing. Yeah. I'm, I'm referring to some, some African culture has the, the, the sexual palate cleanser partner that has to take place before the.

The next marriage. But yeah, I mean it's, so there's, there's clearly some, some cultural comfort.

Malcolm Collins: I, I can't even like imagine what that conversation's like. [00:51:00] So you know, my husband died.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So of course I need to marry his brother now. But you, because I'm on So are you interested? Yeah, I don't, I dunno who makes

Simone Collins: the selection or if there are dedicated people who are like.

I'm the stud of this village. Go, come to me when your husband dies. I will handle it professionally. I have female references. You may view your menu of sexual options here. I'll, I'll be discreet, et cetera. I I could see that just how when there was some Latin American country that, had tax penalties for men who had not married, but they could get out of it if they'd proposed to a woman who rejected him.

And then there was this, this market of women who would for pay reject proposals. So I could see there being a market in this particular culture of men who were like, I will gladly fulfill this role.

Malcolm Collins: Alright, well Simone, I love you to death. Love. You're a great wife. I, I do think marriage is [00:52:00] back. I do think that it's becoming cool again.

I think when I really realized this was when I was talking to this person who was very proudly polyamorous before, and was like, you know, I wanna represent myself as more like monogamous or monogamous. And I was like, well, and

Simone Collins: also we, when we interviewed Jeffrey Miller, what was interesting about what he said about marriage was that he, or maybe like some class, I can't remember if it was his class or someone else's class traditional marriage was referred to as like one of the.

Relationship, like alternative relationship formats. 'Cause it's so, you know, it's not like now,

Malcolm Collins: now it's radical monogamy, which is the trend that's going on in Silicon Valley these days. Yeah. Where monogamy. But like, I'm not a square or anything.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I love this concept of like, marriage. Have you thought of it?

Ooh, I don't know. No, no. I wanna get

Malcolm Collins: that dirty. Yeah. I'm gonna have a husband who I serve. What the food for? Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. [00:53:00]

Simone Collins: And I'm gonna get pregnant. We're legally bound to each other. What is this? The Omega verse?

This is kinky. Oh God. No. It's really come to that though. So anyway, love you to love you too.

Oh, that's.

Malcolm Collins: Class on contract law that I took that a contract is valid even if it's just an email that somebody replied to.

Simone Collins: Is that where our email or didn't happen role came from?

Malcolm Collins: No. No. But I did make a point of, and I, I, you know, I think a lot of people should, it is interesting how much like law isn't taught in school.

And, and so I made a point of when I was younger buying, you know, like 48 hours worth of lectures on contract law and tort law. And going through all of it just to make sure I knew the basics of it. And there's so much like obvious stuff. Well, the stuff that like I, you know, is very useful to know in your life that you may just, like, you could just learn in that.

Right?

Simone Collins: Yeah. [00:54:00] Although, and I felt equally empowered, but then I feel less empowered now when I see that it, it's almost like law lawlessness now prevails because.

Malcolm Collins: The courts don't do anything. Yeah, it don't do anything. And it's so

Simone Collins: prohibitively expensive to go to court if you're not representing yourself and even if you are, like, in terms of your time and stress.

So a lot of people, when, when bad things happen, they, they don't get to rely upon them being on the right side of the law because. For them to follow through on that and have justice. So in your favor. Yeah. Yeah. They, they literally can't afford to, like, it's better to pay the bribe. It's better to, and

Malcolm Collins: that's just, yeah.

Like we've had instances with our investors where like, this person stole a hundred thousand dollars from the company and they're like, it's not worth a lawsuit. And I was like, what do you mean? They're like, that amount of money is not for a company of your size worth a lawsuit. You will lose more money.

Simone Collins: And the instances in which, like, there was one instance in which they were like, yes, pursue this person with a lawyer. And it just, [00:55:00] we were. Tens of thousands of dollars in the hole based on that. And absolutely nothing happened from it. No justice was brought to them. They just, they, they just ghosted all the court orders and didn't do anything.

And we couldn't afford to take it further after a certain point because why would we waste even more money?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But anyway, so stupid, so stupid. What did people say about the episode today?

Simone Collins: Oh, people really liked ha seeing Jeffrey Miller on people enjoy the collaboration. There were a lot of people who were like I don't know.

There were some people who insisted that they would never consider dating at a university, which I think is crazy. I mean, even, even though I had zero intention of ever getting married, dating, or university or dating

Malcolm Collins: the key place you date, I know like,

Simone Collins: well, and even if you're not considering it as dating, like if you refuse to socialize at all while you're at the university, like that's, you don't understand the value and that this is one of the few times where it's very easy to mix with and meet people for, for

Malcolm Collins: context.

[00:56:00] University is one of the few times in your life when you are around a large pool of single people that are about your estimated social class. Yeah. Because what university you go to is basically your estimated social class. Well that

Simone Collins: are broadly pre-vetted, like these people have passed, like basic, I've made an effort on and that and that

Malcolm Collins: are open to socializing.

You will never find it that easy to socialize again.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like you can join a church group, you can join up. What, like club martial arts group, the thing

Malcolm Collins: they'd say, well, you can join a church group outside of university, but at university there are a thousand clubs, interest groups, anything like that.

Oh, just events

Simone Collins: you can join. Just events. The, the way things, I mean, on, on my university campus, there were constant, there was. Fall Fest. There was like all these different parties and weekend events and things that you just show up to, like tie dye t-shirt. It was basically like expensive summer camp.

There

Malcolm Collins: isn't an equivalent of this when you get into the working world. There isn't, there isn't. You can go to events, but the people who go to events in, in like the the working world age range are typically weirdos. Yeah, weirdos,

Simone Collins: [00:57:00] failures or married or like just looking to sell something, not actually looking to date.

Yeah. It's, it's very different.

Malcolm Collins: Like, try to go to like a local anime club, even in like a, a nice area. And, and you'll find just like a bunch of weirdos, you go to anime club at university, you find a bunch of competent people who are interested in anime. Totally. You're interested in biology. Okay. I, I was in the Biology Society.

In the Psychology Society. I was in the Neuroscience Society. All great people who shared interests with me.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But I was, to join a group like that as an adult, it would be weirdos. Because that's not how you meet people as an like, after the university. Well, I think this is why

Simone Collins: Jeffrey Miller was talking about Tucker Max having met his.

Wife at CrossFit. Like there, there are a few places where you can find conscientious, competent people. Yeah. But I mean, actually the odds of finding a single person at CrossFit, you know, who's interested. Like, that's also, it's tough, you know, it's, it's kind of impressive that he was still able to do that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah, actually I think an easy rule for our kids, because this was what I was taught growing up, is you have to get married before you finish your formal [00:58:00] education. Or find the person you're gonna marry rather which most my brother and I did. And you remember when I graduated undergrad, I was like, well, I still have graduate school, but I willed find someone to marry at graduate school.

Like the afterwards, my prospects get so much worse. Yeah. So this, that's always been sort of wild to me. But anyway, and I didn't find you at graduate school, by the way. I found you in between undergrad and graduate school.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But on our first date, you told me you were gonna find your wife at graduate school.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, because I knew I was, I was on the, basically the first woman I meet at this point going forward that is interested in me, that is competent enough to be my wife is somebody who I'm gonna marry.

Simone Collins: I was your musical chairs chair. Yeah.

Speaker 4: You were my musical chairs chair.

Malcolm Collins: I had run out. Aw, it's an honor,

Simone Collins: Malcolm.

I'm so glad you, you were also the best. You were also the best, but I was just luck of the draw though. Actually. It's more like a, a chair that you completely took apart and rebuilt after you. You're like, I guess this is my chair now. Let's fix it up. And you made it real nice. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: it worked. It worked okay.

Yeah. We kind of like each other. All right. All.

Speaker 7: Torsten, what are you doing? I'm giving [00:59:00] off the, I'm giving off the dinosaurs to Titan. You are? Yeah. Why are you doing that? Because I want Titan to be happy. Why do you want Titan to be happy? Because I like Titan to be happy. Does it make you happy when you make Titan happy? Yeah.

Do you want me to go get you the train? Would that make you happy? Uh, yeah. Oops. I do want to, here you go. Thank you, Titan. What do you say to Toastie? Thank you. You are welcome. Okay, toastie, because you just did a very nice thing. I'm gonna go get your trains. Yay. Yay, yay. Yay. Yay.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe