Strain and Behavior: Parallels in Humans and Animals

In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins explore the fascinating parallels between human behavior in cities and animal behavior in zoos. Drawing on research, personal anecdotes, and cultural observations, they discuss how urban environments can lead to repetitive, compulsive, and sometimes self-destructive behaviors—mirroring what is seen in captive animals. The conversation covers fertility rates, social aggression, learned helplessness, and the psychological effects of modern city life, all with the Collins' signature blend of insight and humor.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be discussing an idea that I had that was prompted by something Ruby Yard was saying on what of Alt Hiss, no, which is that if you look at many of the odd behaviors that you see in cities today among humans, many of them look very similar to the types of behaviors that animals begin to make in captivity, specifically mammals in zoos. And a lot of people know the, you know, the mouse utopia experiment, right? And they try to draw a, a line between the mouse utopia use experiment and the ills of modern society and TikTok and falling fertility rates, and it's like, that's all well and good.

But the problem is, is that. We have evidence and you could find it online if you, if you Google about this, somebody did a extremely long blotted post that the Mouse Utopia experiment may, may have basically been faked. Like we don't know for sure. It, it basically, it, it, it was of that period of experiments in like the 1950s when [00:01:00] like nobody really cared if it was true or not.

They just cared how, how spicy it was. Yeah. It wasn't like

Simone Collins: pre-validation. There wasn't, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Go for it. Sure. Yeah, sure. Whatever. The, the, you wanna put this in your backyard? Yeah. It'll be full of dead mice soon. Sure. Whatever. Yeah. Basically what it appears they may have done is run a bunch of trials and then only reported the ones that were, that got interesting results in a very uncontrolled format.

Mm. And, and, and also that that only really gives us like one experiment to look at. But if instead of correlating with mouse utopia experiment, we correlate with well-known and well-documented behavior from zoos.

Simone Collins: Ooh, there's a lot of zoos and there's a lot of zoo animals. Yeah, a

Malcolm Collins: lot of, and this could be upstream of everything to do with fertility collapse because as you know, one of the most, oh yeah.

Simone Collins: Like you, even you, you know, when we used to start in the very beginning talk, talking with media, you talked about people breeding like caged pandas.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. People know caged pandas are famously hard to breed. They, the pandas [00:02:00] don't really breed in captivity. But lots of animals don't breed in captivity.

There, there are many species of wild animals that will almost not breed in captivity, which is odd. You know, people can look at humans not breeding and they're like, it's really weird because like evolutionarily we should be programmed to like, want to do all of this stuff stuff. Well, and

Simone Collins: especially like if you've got nothing but time, what are you gonna do?

But bang each other. What's

Simone Collins (3): going on here?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and then literally it is very similar to cities. They are in a confined area but natural predators are removed and they are given all the food that they could ever want. Yeah. And they are just, tons of toys are thrown in with them like with us, like being on our phone or something like that.

Yeah. You're given all of the stimulation so they can masturbate these traditional instincts. When I say masturbate an instinct, what I mean is masturbation. As a concept is, is is when you are using a a stimuli that is not the stimuli that a pattern of arousal or pleasure evolved to be triggered by, [00:03:00] to trigger that.

Yeah. And so it could be, you know, your. Exploration stimuli from like a video game or something like that. That's a form of masturbation, right? Mm-hmm. Or as we've said before, you know, having pets instead of having kids is a form of masturbating specific child rearing instincts for some individuals.

But anyway, so very, very, very similar circumstances and. I'm just gonna dive into it because I thought it was really interesting and, and I'm, he wasn't the first person to go into this. Somebody wrote a book on this subject. I think it's far back as the 1950s.

Simone Collins: Interesting.

Malcolm Collins: So, yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And I, I, I did a little bit of, of searching around this topic, like wondering what I immediately wondered and I, I actually have a theory as to why this is the case.

Also, it sort of dovetails with what we said, so we can kind of bear our notes and diagnoses. Ooh. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Animals and zoos often exhibit zoos, repetitive purposeless actions due to stress, lack of stimulation, restricted space.

Speaker 6: Oh. [00:04:00]

Malcolm Collins: Examples include big cats pacing for hours, elephants swaying or rocking their heads.

Zebras biting non-food objects repeatedly, and walrus is regurgitating food. Oh,

Simone Collins: They're, they're going polemic. This, this just sounds either like teenage girl stuff or autistic person stuff,

Malcolm Collins: right?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and what's also interesting about these behavior patterns is that they, they, they seem to be species specific, so basically Oh yeah. What we see here is we can see like the, the zebras biting non-food objects or walrus is regurgitating food or elephants swaying or rocking their heads or big cat's pacing.

What this means is that we should expect humans to have a pattern of behavior like this. Actually while I go further, can you see if humans exhibit any behaviors that are zoos, like within extreme captivity, like jail cells or something? Oh. I think that'd be pretty interesting to see if we noted anything like that.

[00:05:00] Cities impose similar confinements through small apartments, et cetera leading to repetitive stereotypes like compulsive phone scrolling, nail biting, skin picking or substance abuse binge drinking and overeating. So you could see these behaviors, like these simple addictive behaviors as being something that you see in jail cells and not, or not, sorry, in, in sort of the captive environment.

I'd also note here that there is a common misunderstanding of Zs that people say that monkeys in the wild, like, I don't know, it became like a red pill. Talking point. Don't masturbate. This is not true at all. Monkeys in the wild masturbate a lot. It's well recorded in, in wild monkeys. They may masturbate slightly less than captive monkeys, but I think that's more an issue of the amount of time that they have on their hands.

In terms of like status fights, getting food, everything like that. What'd you find, Simone?

Simone Collins: It says, and I ask perplexity, humans do exhibit behaviors similar to psychosis, abnormal, repetitive, and somewhat self-destructive behaviors found in [00:06:00] captive animals when subjective to extreme confinement, such as in prisons or during prolonged hospitalization.

Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: keep your walls. I ask you like what behaviors, what does human psychosis look like?

Simone Collins: Like pacing, rocking, self-harm as a result of stress.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, these are all things we see in city dwellers as well, so I guess this is what makes sense that these are compulsive,

Simone Collins: repetitive, routine self-injury or agitation as coping mechanisms.

Malcolm Collins: Self-injury, the entire trans movement, and then

Simone Collins: also it prolonged isolation in humans is strongly associated with depression, anxiety, panic attacks, mood swings, impulsivity, apathy, withdrawal, and even psychotic system symptoms such as hallucinations and paranoia.

Oh, even cognitive impairments.

Malcolm Collins: Is, I mean, is that not what we're seeing with Trump Derangement syndrome, which is primarily coming from cities?

Kind of, yeah. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Emotional distress and, and also, yeah, and paranoia

Malcolm Collins: and, and hallucinations and, yeah. Wild. And I'll note here, we've mentioned in other videos that, that this incredible low fertility rate and the behavioral issues you see associated [00:07:00] with cities are not a new phenomenon. In fact, cities have been a fertility shredder for.

Well, as, as long as we have records of them the, the fertility rate in cities has never been above your population rate except for Jewish populations. That's the only population. Yeah. That, yeah. So just, there's

Simone Collins: always just been this understanding that like the population comes from the rural areas and.

Gets shredded and disappears in the urban areas.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And and our theory on that, which we've done videos on, is Jews should be thought of as like a human ethnic group that is such a city specialist, as we've noted something like 98% of Jews live in an urban center.

Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: That is such an urban specialist and has been for so long that they've essentially evolved an adaptation.

To this environment that allows him to stay cognitively healthy and still breed while in urban environments.

Speaker 5: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And I love it when people are like, oh, you know, because I was talking with a reporter today and she goes, you can't possibly live in a city like Manhattan and have a bunch of kids.

And I'm like, well, the Orthodox Jews living in Manhattan would have something to say about that. I think. Yeah,

Simone Collins: they're, they're doing all [00:08:00] right. Yeah, they really are. They're, they're

Malcolm Collins: doing all right. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But I think you also need you, you basically can't do that if you also at the same time, assimilate with mainstream culture in cities and use mainstream urban institutions like the d Lamont family which is I think 10 or 11 kids.

They're the ones who are very musical and have kids in Julliard just left New York City after losing all their money because they lived in a normal. New York townhouse and they shopped at normal restaurants and went out to normal stores and kind of integrated. I mean, like, you know, they still, I have

Malcolm Collins: no idea what they were thinking.

They, they didn't have jobs from what I know. They sold a house somewhere else and then used money. They bused

Simone Collins: for money. I, I think, yeah, I think they kind of expected that, I mean, out of faith that God would provide kind of, I also think that they expected to. Hit more pay dirt from their social media work than they expected.

They get, did get, for example, like a [00:09:00] TLC show, but it didn't get serialized. And I think they kind of hoped that it would, and that maybe they'd get some money out of that. And also I think they have social media, like they have a management company that they currently owe $14,000 to. So like, it seems that that's what they wanted to lean into and it just didn't work out.

Malcolm Collins: That's a shame. Yeah, it's really sad. I mean, I, I can sad see, sad. I mean, we don't have a job right now, you know, subscribe on Patreon, so, but no, like,

Simone Collins: thanks to everyone who has supported us on Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we

Malcolm Collins: are, if we keep going at this rate, we should be able to support ourselves on YouTube.

I'd say it was in like a year and a half. Yeah, people are pointing out though that we're like just

Simone Collins: asking to be demonetized,

Malcolm Collins: so who knows?

Simone Collins (3): I don't know.

Malcolm Collins: I how to train your wife. Alright, so the next trait that you see was in zoos is hyper aggressive aggression and social strain. Ooh. Social

Simone Collins: strain.

What does social strain look like in zoo animals?

Malcolm Collins: So marine mammals, eg. Orcas become hyper aggressive towards each other. We're humans due to isolation from natural pods. Primates might withdraw or fight over [00:10:00] resources. Bears are big. Cats show an increase head tossing or pacing when stress and refine head toss.

Oh, sick burn. It's the head toss. You know, they will bite your arm off.

Oh my God. I am never gonna financially recover from this.

Malcolm Collins: Oh my God. But anyway but, but consider with, with cities, you get things like road rage

Simone Collins: and Karen's. Just Karen,

Malcolm Collins: just

Simone Collins: Karen's one word. Social aggression. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The zoo.

Animals of women. Karen.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, Karen's don't make sense. It's, it's women. Often sort of. Engaging in an abnormal sort of dominance display, like social dominance display is what it really is. Yeah. When,

Simone Collins: when they are affluent, middle class not threatened and, and have no direct like tribal relation within a dominance hierarchy to the person they're carrying, you know, like, I wanna talk to your manager thing.

This is not someone within your social network who's a direct threat to your, your [00:11:00] position in end dominance hierarchy. So there's also not a lot of like. Normal evolutionary sense for you to mean girl them. Yeah. Like it makes sense to mean girl, someone in your church community or in your like bridge club community if it's the 1950s or something, but not, not a stranger at a store.

I was

Malcolm Collins: tacked, this is mean girling for no reason at all. Somebody who really can't fight back. Yeah.

Speaker 6: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Interesting. Any of our fans are wondering, am I being a Karen? Sometimes just define it as, do you ever pull social rank on service staff? Mm. Like you, you, you should. There is no reason anyone should ever be pulling social rank on service staff.

In the, in the after of this episode, we're gonna be talking about this, but also it, it's

Simone Collins: also known for, for pulling rank on. Relative strangers. Like it could be someone in your like homeowner's association and you're like, you can't put your trash cans there. That's Karen too.

Malcolm Collins: Right. No, I understand that's Karen, but I think that most Karens who Karen like that are also gonna do it [00:12:00] in other situations.

Yeah. Like how do you know? And if you're like, well, I don't do it much is like, bro. Literally, never in my life have I felt the impulse to pull social rank on a service staff. Yeah. It has never even crossed my mind with Simone. I've never seen her do it once. I've never seen anyone who I dated do it. If you do this, and you've even

Simone Collins: had instances where certain people have put fake cockroaches in your food at restaurants and you don't even say anything to anyone, you just walk away.

Yeah.

Simone Collins (2): Oh, we should get video footage of that.

Malcolm Collins: Well I think I, I handled it very with a lot of manners and maturity, to be honest.

Simone Collins: God, yeah. You just got caught up and you're like, are you kidding me? You just walked away. This was in, by the way, the LA restaurant famous for where being the, the, the place where.

L Woods was dumped in Legally Blonde. I don't

Malcolm Collins: know if you knew that novel. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. That was that. So I just, I just, I didn't, I didn't make a f or a [00:13:00] scene. I just stood up and said, are you kidding me?

Simone Collins (2): You walked away

and they were kidding you. You just had no idea for quite some time.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway, anyway health and reproductive declines, that's a big one, often leads to obesity, reduced fertility and shorter lifespans. Elephants with foot issues from hard surfaces and polar bears with stereotypic swimming animals may overheat provided food without natural exercise or stress effects which, which can affect breeding.

This is really interesting to me because you, you do see this in humans as well. You do see higher rates of obesity now, definitely as society has further urbanized and you see higher, which is interesting because it means that our response to urbanization is not just predictable. It's natural.

Speaker 6: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Which is very interesting to me.

Simone Collins: Oh, that's a good point. That is a good point. Yeah. Yeah. We're, we're not, yeah. You, [00:14:00] you'd see this in anyone, huh? Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, an interesting phenomenon here that they note is that some animals in like they lose their quote unquote wildness, which can in part be their ability to normalize to humans.

They note here that like urban adjacent foxes can become very docile around humans and, and basically not afraid of humans and otherwise. Nice to humans, whereas it's rarer. It for foxes to become tolerant of humans in captivity. That's

Simone Collins: really interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Why would that be? Yeah. '

Simone Collins: cause it's like jailers versus somewhat symbiotic people who are like, Ooh, Fox, I'm gonna give you food.

Half my Doritos.

Malcolm Collins: No, some foxes have been genetically conditioned to be like pets.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I know There was that breeding experiment, but then they basically just turned into dogs with floppy ears. Right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: But this is different.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This appears different. So, another behavior, I [00:15:00] do animals frequently dis display stereotypic behaviors here that we, we've talked about this to an an extent like rocking, spinning, et cetera that result in boredom.

But this could be seen as analogous to A DHD and hyperactivity which we see a rise of. You know, as we've mentioned before in regards to A DHD. Like, are humans really designed to sit at a desk for like eight hours a day? Like

Speaker 5: real?

Malcolm Collins: No, we, we are not evolved to do that, right? Mm-hmm. And so a lot of populations are just going to go crazy when they do that, which means that you're going to see evolution happen further.

I mean, you don't go crazy when doing that. You actually seem highly adapted. To long-term, mostly stationary works. Yeah. But as long

Simone Collins: you can do that from a treadmill desk. I mean, I'm totally exhibiting the, the tiger pacing.

Malcolm Collins: Not, not even, I actually argue that you're, you're, you're exhibiting a highly adaptive behavior.

I suspect. People who feel an impulse to only want to work alone at their computer while [00:16:00] walking all day are going to have better health outcomes than the ones who only want to sit in front of a computer all day. Or would see doing more than sitting at a computer as like an imposition.

Simone Collins: Fair point.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, some of our Patreon subscribers have pointed out the need to evolve. Either as a culture or whatever. Adaptations that allow us to continue to survive. Whether that's like, yes, we'll,

Malcolm Collins: having that a walking desk or we're, we're helping evolve that I'm, I'm making the next generation that combines your downsides with your strengths and, and, and, or, or, and my strengths.

And your strengths. Hopefully. I mean, and our kids, very interestingly is one thing I was really afraid of is to have kids that would exhibit both of our weaknesses.

Speaker 6: Oh, yeah. And for whatever reason, it'll still happen.

Malcolm Collins: Well, the, the, the assorting hasn't happened that way so far. All the kids seem to have.

Well, I mean, you would argue that that's why to you it feels like they only take after me.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But personality wise, they do [00:17:00] seem to disproportionately take after me.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Except for what our second, second oldest

Simone Collins: are you kidding? He's all about breaking rules. I was never about breaking rules.

Malcolm Collins: Torsten Tors. Yeah. Yeah. He's a little about breaking rules. Yeah.

Simone Collins: He is the only one who doesn't know how to be a good boy. And he lets us know all the time.

Malcolm Collins: I just don't know how to be a good boy.

Speaker 5: Well, how.

Malcolm Collins: And I'm like, I think you do know how to be a good boy. I think that you have decided intentionally to not be a good boy.

He

Simone Collins: knows all about good boy things. We had a 30 fricking minute conversation about good boy things and bad boy things. He knows what's good and weirdly included feeding cat food to cats under good boy things.

Malcolm Collins: I really like that. But

Simone Collins: he, which I kind of muddled though. I was like, I don't know man. If it's like stray cats and it's causing a cat colony, like this may not be a good thing.

I, I, I, I shouldn't be getting, I Did you tell him that

Malcolm Collins: sometimes poisoning cats can be a good boy thing?

Simone Collins: I mean, but I'm going to hell for [00:18:00] this. Oh, well, yeah. Anyway, love you. Let's keep going. Okay. Going all, all right. Alright. Letting you

Malcolm Collins: dig your, I was, I wasn't gonna talk there because I wanted you to dig further.

Going to how but you hatred

Simone Collins: of cats. I love Cat. I very much identify with cats. They're So,

Malcolm Collins: you barely poisoned any cats?

Simone Collins: Barely. I mean, I, I was the one who,

Malcolm Collins: wait, what are you going to say? Oh, yes. You had, when the family dog had to be killed or cat had to be killed. Cats.

Simone Collins: Yeah. You,

Malcolm Collins: you took I'm always the one like,

Simone Collins: who's

Simone Collins (2): like, yeah, let's do it.

Let's go, let's time.

Malcolm Collins: Hmm. You just took responsibility, Simone.

Simone Collins: Well, and I mean the same way with humans. It's not like this is the cat thing specifically. Yeah. When you

Malcolm Collins: had to put humans to to pasture, you did the same thing down. When everyone was like, oh, this person's getting pretty old. Simone just like takes them out back.

It's like, I got it. Don't worry. You guys don't need to get your hands dirty. Just me, Simone Farmhand. [00:19:00] Well, yeah. Anyway. I literally, she would be that way though.

Simone Collins: I don't know what I would do with the body. My problem is bodies. I don't know what to do with bodies. I don't, they're messy. That's why I haven't killed any of our chickens yet.

Malcolm Collins: True. Yeah.

Simone Collins: To process them like killing them's fine. Is

Malcolm Collins: that why you all the feather yet Simone? You don't wanna deal with the body. I, I can see it in your eyes.

Simone Collins: It does. It, it would be a unique nightmare to deal with a, a dead human body. No, I, I, you're a TV

Malcolm Collins: wife. I, I, I, RF audience needs to know this. Alt guys Alt right.

You just get one. The secret to women is get one that is squeamish with dead bodies so she doesn't kill you.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That's what you should really be asking in these days. That's the dream. That's the dream.

Malcolm Collins: It's not like, what are your thoughts about

Simone Collins: divorce? It's more like, so what are your biggest fears around, you know, needing to.

Take

Malcolm Collins: someone out. Do you think probability [00:20:00] wise, before I keep going here, it's more likely that you kill me in a future timeline or that you diver divorce me in a future timeline?

Simone Collins: Gosh, yeah. I a again, though, I don't wanna deal with the body, so it'd have to be divorce. If, if, if like it was a video game where like you, you.

You shoot someone and then they just like, you know, break into sparkles, then definitely kill, you know what I mean?

Malcolm Collins: Break into sparkles.

Simone Collins: That's how we wish it went. You know, if only, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Lethargy and withdraw animals. Exhibit decreased silk, commotion, huddling, self clasping or apathy, signs of depressive, like stakes and a lack of control.

Mm-hmm. Elephants, citations show head bobbing or circling his coping mechanisms. These are related to neurotransmitter imbalances and boredom in captivity causes depression like symptoms, which we also see in humans. Humans who live in urban environments [00:21:00] depending on how urban the environment is, have much higher rates of depression.

And with, in the urban cultural specialists like the urban monoculture, you see very high rates of depression. Hmm. You also see in captivity. Another thing that we see in urban populations is self harm. You know, pulling out fur which you know, grinding teeth very similar to human you know, cutting or an alive attempts or other things that you see very commonly within human cultures.

Simone Collins: Well, and especially. Isolated people who've been in prison or isolated through hospitalization for the thing I just looked up. Yeah. So yeah, very similar. Very similar.

Malcolm Collins: Another interesting one is abnormal status seeking or dominance displays. Normal

Speaker 6: status seeking,

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I excess aggression towards subordinates or symbolic displays.

Birds puffing up feathers, unnaturally are primate toting resources. Mm-hmm. What's interesting from [00:22:00] this is Karen's, Karen's are an unusual dominance display as we were talking. Hundred

Speaker 6: percent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Outside your domain, you're not benefiting.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Another thing that you get is enclosures often cause under stimulation, boredom, or overstimulation from crowder.

Noise prompting inattentive, but abnormal behaviors like object manipulation, eg raccoons, creating games with trash or overeating food, which leads to obesity, as we talked about as well. This could be seen as analogous to human th thrill seeking like bungee jumping.

Speaker 5: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: Excessive shopping, et cetera.

Simone Collins: Oh, wow. Just to feel something. I never thought about it that way, but that's,

Malcolm Collins: but you did all that stuff. You did. Para jumping was parachute, jumping

Simone Collins: skydiving. Yeah. Wow.

Malcolm Collins: What a foolish thing to do. I cannot believe you did that while we were here.

Simone Collins: What? It's not like, I mean, [00:23:00] aside from my parents, who was gonna miss me, you know?

Malcolm Collins: I was dating you at the time.

Simone Collins: Were you dating me when I went skydiving?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You got it as a reward for our date. That was the, the reward from the competition that you did in your office to, to see who you could force to go dating.

Simone Collins: We already, well, yeah, but, but, but you were gonna break up with me so it didn't matter.

It would just be a cool story. You know, your ex-girlfriend who died in a tragic, skydiving accident. It'd be great. You know, it is a. Do you know how hard it would've been to replace you, Simone? Yeah. You didn't? Yeah, but we didn't it, we didn't know that at the time that you were gonna choose. I, I had mostly figured it out at the

Malcolm Collins: time.

Simone Collins: Well, I hadn't. I was so sure you were gonna find someone at Stanford, so I did nothing wrong. I'm blameless here. Okay. It's just doing the world a favor.

Malcolm Collins: Another interesting one here is mal imprinting. It's called

Simone Collins: so it's like where a duckling just starts following you instead.

Malcolm Collins: [00:24:00] So, animals will form attachments to inappropriate objects or species.

Oh, chy, handwritten birds bonding with humans instead of mates which can lead to or, or even inanimate objects on occasion. This could be seen as very akin to parasocial relationships with humans overly bonding with. People they see on YouTube or on TikTok, et cetera?

Simone Collins: No. Well, no, no, no. I am defending my Parasocial relationships.

They have everything they want in a friendship and more.

Malcolm Collins: I think it's, it's sort of given the direction we're going, but I was just giving an example here that Okay. A standard YouTuber would give. Okay. Simone.

Simone Collins (2): Okay. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: People come to us verbose are slightly intellectual and brain dead takes. They just want, they just want to feel loved.

That's what we're here for. You know, it's so funny, I was talking with Simone about this, but within our fan base, we seem uniquely conte conceptualized as a mom and dad like role for, for fans is the way that we're [00:25:00] often talked about when I see us talked about in like larger communities which is weird where when you contrast somebody like Ben Shapiro, who's always thought of by most people as like a kid, like what are the young people think I'll go to?

And Benjamin is older than us now, right? And I've always been told I look uniquely young for my age, so it is weird for me to be seen in this mom and dad role all the time. But I think it's because we got famous in relation to having kids. And so people are always contextualizing us within this context of

Simone Collins: well and together.

Malcolm Collins: And together. Yeah. I mean, we're always interacting as a husband and wife and I guess when people see a husband, wife interact and tell me things. The, the evoked set is mom and dad. I'll take

Speaker 6: it.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, no, and as we get older, actually it makes a lot of sense now that I think about it. There, there aren't, in terms of conservative influencers any other ones I can think of that work as a married team.

And so it's very hard, like you can say, oh, Jordan Peterson's like my dad [00:26:00] in, in sort of like if I don't have like a stable mom and dad. But the problem is, is. Then who's your mom? Right? Like are you choosing a separate mom who has no relationship with Jordan Peterson and the,

Simone Collins: oh, or like Jordan Peterson, parasocial sons, just in single family households.

Intellectually speaking.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. If, if Jordan Peterson's like your intellectual dad, you're in an intellectual single family household. That's

Speaker 6: so sad. Poor things.

Malcolm Collins: Actually, I've noticed a phenomenon to counter this, that, that people have done. Which is to fan pair influencers to serve as mom and dad for them.

The most common, oh, it's like

Simone Collins: Candace Owens and Jordan Peterson.

Malcolm Collins: No, no. The most common one is Asma Gold. And Keisha Keisha, I'll take it. I'll take it. Because she always talks positively about him, and I don't know how much he knows about her. Oh, he must know because people are always shipping them.

So Oh, they are? Oh, constantly. Yeah. It's like a constant thing on her show is, is it that they they're in a fake relationship. Which is really sad. 'cause why, why don't you guys just get in a [00:27:00] relationship? You seem like you, you know.

Simone Collins: Do they both live in Austin? Well, asthma Gold lives in Austin,

Malcolm Collins: but she's in Boston.

Well then that's

Simone Collins: not gonna work out, is it? Well, you can't rhyme through proximity. You need to be close. Physically

Malcolm Collins: move. You've moved for me before, you know, come on, Simone. But it's, it's an odd role to be playing as an adult. When I had always conceptualized myself as somebody who's uniquely hip with young people things.

Like I, I watch a lot of like children's entertainment even now. Oh, that's true. Yes, that is true Probably. Yeah. It, it was so funny. I remember like, I met my cousins and they go, how do you know, and this is even from the generation before this, how do you know everything about all the shows that are popular with our generation?

Yeah. No, it, it has been weird to build this older framing online because one of the instances where it was very funny is somebody was like, oh, this is like a boomer's take on like four chan or four chan video. And I was like. Bro, do you not know how old I am? Like four Chan was becoming a thing [00:28:00] in my generation.

It was my generation that was four chan and built the four chan culture before it became glowy. Right? Like, if, if you are significantly younger than me, then it is unlikely that you ever even got a chance to experience real fortune, which makes me think that whoever said this is actually around the same age I am, they just conceptualized me as an older person.

Simone Collins (2): Hmm. Maybe.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway the next one learned helplessness, loss of autonomy. Constant confinement erodes animals' sense of control leading to learned helplessness. Behaviors like apathy reduce exploration in PT Slike symptoms. And you could see this, if you look at cities with like bureaucratic red tape, economic pressure surveillance is creating a similar sort of environment where you have this sense of loss of control and sense of helplessness.

Speaker 5: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: What can we learn from this destroy cities? I don't know, like that's not gonna happen, but I, I, I, I'd actually say. The benefits, if you can, if you [00:29:00] can work from home of living in a rural environment, are something that you are likely underestimating unless you are dating. Cities are, are, are very, sort of necessary to find a spouse.

But once you find a spouse, unless you're a Jew, in which case, you know, stay in a city, you seem to be adapted to that environment. I'd, I'd strongly suggest countryside living.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I, I, I do think cities are a good place to go and build your career and build a network and find your partner 100%.

Like I, I wouldn't dissuade our children from visiting a city. Or living in one, essentially visiting one. But you're going

Malcolm Collins: in a city was the goal of getting out of the city. You're not going 100%.

Simone Collins: It's, it's with the full understanding that you are not going to stay there. And I think a, that's more normalized than many think, at least for those who plan on having children.

But when I was thinking about this subject, I looked to see if researchers had found any meaningful behavioral or psychological difference between urban and and rural populations. [00:30:00] Oh,

Speaker 5: interesting.

Simone Collins: On the surface, and this is human populations it, you would think that the urban populations are specific and very explicitly and clearly better off.

So when it comes to neuroticism, urban residents have lower neuroticism generally more openness, more conscientiousness, more a higher psychological wellbeing, similar levels of life satisfaction. And even more likely to exercise versus rural populations which are more likely to exhibit risky behaviors.

And, and the only area where like they seem strictly worse off on a very surface level is that urban. Residents have lower levels of community engagement versus higher levels among rural populations. But then as I was thinking about this in the context of you describing zoo animal environments, and this was also mentioned in some of the research was it in some of the research when you controlled for things like, [00:31:00] like psychological wellbeing when you controlled for the social services.

And I think health too that people had access to in cities at much higher rates than the differences disappeared. So a lot of it had to do just with city people having so much more access to all of these services and conveniences that are just less there for rural people who now, at least in the United States, are largely left behind.

Even if they're equally qualified for social services, it's just a lot harder to access them. Mm-hmm. And there's, there's less of that. Feeling of a really strong social safety net. And what I think might be going on is that life is also too easy in cities, too convenient, too immediately satisfying.

And, and this goes back to your theme of like, well, zoo animals have everything taken care of for them. You would think, well, why aren't they thriving? You know, they should be totally fine. And in, in many ways, you could also argue, well, people in cities have everything taken care of for them, everything's an arms reach away.

You can [00:32:00] just seamless web or DoorDash like things really simply and easily. You, you can get everything immediately. But that doesn't serve them well. Like they may, they may exhibit thriving on a surface level but that thriving maybe correlates with a level of affluence that leads to sterilization.

Does that make sense?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Kind of going back to that conversation we had where we I was telling you about my grandmother's autobiography and just how dystopian and scary her life was as she was fleeing Paris when the Nazis were invading. And, you know, they're like, they're, they're, they roads are being bombed as they're trying to drive away and the cars are running outta gas and it's just terrifying.

And she has so much drive. To live, to survive. And I mean, I'm sure by like most measures, her health was probably terrible. Her psychological wellbeing was terrible. She was probably very neurotic. You know, all these things like you would think by [00:33:00] all objective measures that she was not thriving. But in the end, this gave her a drive.

To do better, to take risks, to work hard. That produced in the end for her quite a bit of wealth and a family. So, go figure. You need it hard.

Malcolm Collins: I oh, what was I gonna say? I. Who was the point you just made? I remember I wanted to respond to it and some

Simone Collins: people need hardship and if things are too easy to do badly

Malcolm Collins: with a reporter from, from la and she was talking about how you just can't afford to have kids you know, doing what you and she didn't need to live in la, you know?

Because she, you know, travels for her, her job to do the, the stories and everything.

Speaker 5: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: And she's like, you just can't afford to have kids. And I was like, well, you mean you can't afford to have kids without sacrifices? She's like, yeah, but do you really want me to like sacrifice, like my happiness and the things I want to do in order for children and my ability?

And I'm like, I did all that. You know, I'm a similar socioeconomic class of viewer. I should be, you know, given my degree and [00:34:00] everything. And I guarantee you, I am more satisfied with my life than you are

Simone Collins: with your 100%. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You're not really making a sacrifice, not in the way that you think about it.

You're making an immediate sacrifice for a much better life.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, and you, I mean, at least we personally have found that we, we traded off luxurious things that we thought would make us happy for. I don't know, very basic or fundamental things that we didn't value, which bring us more contentment and happiness than we could have possibly imagined.

So it's also just not really well communicated how much you're gonna get from the things that you are taking on. And, and for which you are making great sacrifices. Yeah. Some of the big factors, I believe

Malcolm Collins: in a simulated rural environment. If you look out our windows, even though we're next to like a highway, basically you wouldn't know.

It looks like we live in the woods.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it looks like the English countryside, which is so cool. But we're by, we're like literally on a highway. We're on a state route. [00:35:00]

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, it's scary. Love you to death. Have a great day.

Simone Collins: Love you too.

.

Simone Collins (3): Coming in loud and clear sounding sexy as always.

Malcolm Collins: No. What people like the, you being hypnotized and brainwashed cover. I told you the good play. I told you the good play for the cover. Well, you were

Simone Collins: right

Malcolm Collins: as always. And a woman being whipped. Everybody wants to see that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Who

Simone Collins (2): doesn't?

Malcolm Collins: Especially women. I've, I'm, I'm reading enough of their romance novels. My

Simone Collins (2): Yes, yes. There does seem to be my romance mean

Malcolm Collins: addiction these days.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Simone Collins (2): I

Simone Collins: don't know. Oh wait, that happens in, I don't know, like

Malcolm Collins: it literally Simone in, in the last 10 minutes within the romance manga, I'm reading somebody was whipped.

But the main character or like, no, it was a maid that the main character got whipped for disrespecting her. Oh. I, I like my [00:36:00] main characters pretty evil. That's the thing. That's why I like romance venga so much is women are way okay with more evil like that. Any other book is a sign that you're dealing with the villain character, right?

Like that's how they establish

Simone Collins (2): presumably? Yeah. A bad guy does. I actually don't,

Malcolm Collins: I've watched media before where the, a good character like the protagonist ends up having a servant whipped for disrespecting them. But really. Yeah. Here, here we are. That's, that's my type of book.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, honestly, like, if it's a little bit logical, I could maybe kind of understand it vis-a-vis the, the, the romance novels that I have found my way to.

They're pretty freaking. Disappointing in terms of,

Malcolm Collins: oh no, I've gotta, I've gotta introduce you to, oh yeah, you only listen on audiobook, but you say they're disappointing, but you've listened to like, you'll be like, oh, I hate this series because they're free. So anyway, in book number three, and it's like [00:37:00] Simone, Simone, they're free.

You can go to our romance novels episode where we go over the plots of romance novels. No one believe they're believed me when I

Simone Collins (2): say that. I listen to them to fall asleep. No one believes me.

Malcolm Collins: And in the one I was breeding, the maid did deserve it. She said that because the woman was born illegitimately, they were the same status to a maid.

You know? And that's the nerve. The nerve, right. You know? My

Simone Collins: goodness. Well, I mean, when you put it that way,

Malcolm Collins: I'd, I'd whip a maid for that. Come on, Simone. Yes. I actually, I don't know if I'd have, would I have the stomach to be a noble, I guess if it was like culturally normal.

Simone Collins: I, oh, in terms of like disciplining.

See that's the thing is neither you nor I would ever, like, even if we had infinite money, want staff at our house. 'cause that would be the worst to be surrounded by people. Like why do people opt into this? Like I would pay money. Although there're, [00:38:00] there're like famous reclusive rich people who did tons of things.

Like, and apparently this is also something that was in, I don't know who's, oh yeah. Lex Wexner or whoever Epstein, the, the Victoria's Secret guy who Epstein conned into like, he had power of attorney over all his money and stuff. In his house, he had a dining room table that went to a lower floor and then would come back up with all the food on it.

This also existed in the castle of some reclusive Bavarian prints or something. So like, I think the the autistic. Nobles.

Malcolm Collins: It's, it's funny that you mentioned this, Simone, I've mentioned this before to you. The house I grew up in, in Dallas was a very old, very wealthy like aristocratic house.

Which one? The

Simone Collins: one that we ended up randomly visiting at a Stanford

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no. The one after that is it much larger. I've pointed it out to you, but we would, we weren't able to go inside those Elevated.

Simone Collins: Yeah. In, in Highland Park.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It, it genuinely looks like a, a palace. But [00:39:00] anyway. Yeah. It had pathways in the walls, in all of the rooms so that you never had to see the staff, so that the staff, that's creepy though.

You

Simone Collins: don't wanna know that there's like a place where people can hide, you know what I mean? Like I really appreciate that. Our walls are literally. Thin boards of wood through which you can hear everything.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But that's, that's the degree before, before I was sent off to like a prison system and never lived with my family again after 13.

Like the level of of relat aristocrat that they were, I think is harder, hard to overstate. Yeah, it

Simone Collins: was a really pretty house. I bet I could find a picture of it on Google Maps.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. It the, the, the one that's there now, it was torn down and rebuilt. Oh,

Simone Collins: really?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So the house from my childhood isn't there anymore.

Simone Collins: Oh, that's a shame. Yeah. Very shame.

Malcolm Collins: Wow.

Simone Collins: I thought really, I thought it was like,

Malcolm Collins: that was the house that I lived at where my next door neighbor was Army Hammer. The guy who became the famous actor who then had his career ruined [00:40:00] over a war fetish.

Simone Collins: Was it, or was it just like BDSM?

Malcolm Collins: It was, it was the V stuff that, that got it really hit.

They always get

Simone Collins: you for the V stuff. You gotta keep your mouth shut, you know, people come on. Yeah. I I

Malcolm Collins: mean he was, he was very aggressive about like actually doing it with people and stuff like that. Yeah. I think

Simone Collins: that's the problem. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: That's one thing

Simone Collins: if you're like commissioning Cringeworthy fan art, which now you can just use AI to do,

Malcolm Collins: Well, would it work for that?

I dunno.

Simone Collins: Well, I just used AI this morning to create my Little Pony fan art and it was like, damn. I mean, you're not perfect, but not bad guys. 'cause you were, you were telling me that, well, you're only gonna be able to find fan art that's decent and compared, like, when I looked at the fan art I was able to get versus the stuff that AI generated, I was actually really impressed.

I'm gonna

Malcolm Collins: check out the My Little Pony title card you put together. Yeah, actually I, I have

Simone Collins: it open right now. I've, I've, I've made a, I've made a couple.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, they look, they're little authoritarian ponies. Look at that.

Simone Collins: [00:41:00] Yeah. They're, they're like, they're, they're really not bad. I was, I was very surprised.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I thought it would have problems with Nazi ponies, but it doesn't appear to

Simone Collins: no. You know, I think, you know, maybe it's the vibe shift suddenly, like, you know,

Malcolm Collins: it brought the fashion back to, back to fascism.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I like, I like the, the storm one is pretty good. Oh, see, that was

Simone Collins: Brock and that was that was, that surprised me.

The, the more like realistic figurine fan art. Yeah. That was Brock. And then the illustration based ones were from Black Forest, which I just think is fantastic. I'm such a huge fan of Black Forest, so Yeah. It's gonna be, it's gonna be tough to choose. Maybe we should ask the people on Patreon for their choice

Malcolm Collins: of, of the pony one.

Okay. Yeah.

Simone Collins: You gotta, yeah. Choose.

Simone Collins (2): Choose a ch. You choose your pony,

Speaker: So you guys are gonna flip the rock and show me a lobster. Daddy is on this rock. Yeah, that one. That rock. Okay, so go flip it. Okay.[00:42:00]

Do you want me to do it? Flip it to me. You might die. I see the tail. You see the tail? No. You see.

Speaker 3: Where it, do you see it somewhere? You see the lobster yet? It sounds like it's somewhere. Do you think he ran away? Yeah, I think he got away. Maybe he got dead under the rock for some reason here, because I was moving, I, because see signs of lobsters, I see signs, some lobsters kind.

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