Status Signals: Marriage, Divorce, and Cultural Shifts

In this episode, Malcolm and Simone dive deep into a fascinating NBC study that explores the stark differences in values, priorities, and life choices among Americans based on political affiliation and gender. They discuss why fertility rates are diverging so dramatically between groups, what men and women who voted for Trump or Harris value most in life, the impact of career, financial independence, and family on personal fulfillment, how cultural and generational shifts are shaping the future of America, the role of marriage, debt, and emotional stability in modern society, and surprising insights from pop culture and personal anecdotes. Listen in for a thought-provoking conversation about the future of the country, the challenges of demographic change, and what it means to live a successful life today. Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more in-depth discussions!

Episode Transcript:

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I am excited to be here with you today.

Today we are going to be discussing. A, a fascinating study that came out from NBC that was looking at what was important to men who voted for Trump versus Kamala Harris, and women who voted for Trump versus Kamala Harris. And what you can see is. People who vote for Kamala Harris are not gonna play a big role in our country’s future.

No. They’re basically deleting themselves from the population because while there had been differences in the past in fertility rates within these groups, it is exploding. So I wanna talk about these preferences. I wanna talk about why they’re different. And to give you an idea of how different they are.

Men who voted for Trump when they were ranking like important for their definition of like success. Literally the top thing. The number one thing was having children.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Women who voted for Harris. Literally the last thing of importance to them was [00:01:00] having children. Which only, yeah, only

Simone Collins: only 6% of

Malcolm Collins: women voted for Harris, which by the way, tied with being married.

Yeah. And not a lot of interest. People retire early, so like financial stability is the other thing they don’t care about. My God. So thoughts on like the, the, that, that number before we go further so that, because a lot of the numbers that I’ve looked at before show like Democrat and Republicans being like 78% to like a hundred percent different in terms of fertility rates, but this would suggest that it’s dramatically higher than that for this next generation.

Simone Collins: Yeah, this doesn’t look good. I, I’m used to seeing much more moderated results from surveys like these, you know, like, oh, they’re, they’re meaningfully different, but this is violently different.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: And I think it’s

Malcolm Collins: because these two groups are becoming more violently different from each other.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: absolutely.

In terms of values.

Simone Collins: Absolutely. It is also sobering to me, however, just how low priority having children is for [00:02:00] anyone. That it’s

Malcolm Collins: literally the top priority for men who voted for Trump.

Simone Collins: Yes. Except everyone else, it, it’s not at the top. Yeah. So let’s, let’s talk about

Malcolm Collins: this. Let’s

Simone Collins: talk about women who vote Trump, women who voted for Trump.

It’s right in the middle of the list of, of things presented, although 26% still want to have children. But that’s Malcolm. That’s 26%. That’s a quarter. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It’s only 26% of voting Who voted for Trump? And

Simone Collins: then keep in mind, so, so men, oh men who voted for Trump, who really value having kids. Sorry, 34% value.

That’s a third Malcolm. All like, yeah, no. Yeah. They, sure. Of, of the, of the population polled, but this is if only a third of men,

Malcolm Collins: so women who voted for Trump. Like what did women who vote for Trump care about more than having kids, right? Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The top thing for them, and this was more important than them, than having kids with, for many who voted for Trump, was financial independence.

Mm-hmm. Which yeah. And

Simone Collins: second is having a fulfilling job career, which is also fulfilling Job. Career is [00:03:00] number one for women who voted for Harris. It’s actually, no, it’s also

Malcolm Collins: true for men who voted for Harris. So the funny thing, yeah. About the women who voted for Trump, who, you know, care about money and career, right?

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Is the way that they framed it in terms of what they picked was financial independence. Then for both the men and the women who voted for Harris, it wasn’t that they wanted financial independence, it’s that they wanted enough money to do the things they wanted and to have a fulfilling job or basically enjoy their day job.

Well, I think fertility is, they wanted to have fun and have money, but they didn’t care about independence.

Simone Collins: Fertility is inversely correlated to the extent to which you. Opt in to an atomized capitalist to society where you buy everything you want. So if, if you opt into a community-based society or a family-based society where the vast majority of the goods and services that you value and enjoy and past times involve or, or, or we’ll say endogenous, they come from within your family or community unit, you’re gonna have kids.

But the more you lean into, I [00:04:00] will buy every single thing. Individually, I’m going to buy all my food. I’m not gonna make it home. I’m not gonna get it from my family. I’m gonna buy all my entertainment. It’s not gonna come from within my home or from my kids or from my spouse. I’m gonna pay for stuff that makes me entertained.

That will make you less and less fertile. And I think that’s why the focus is on getting this job and career because they’re, they’re opting into the very dynamic that caused the beginning of demographic collapse to begin with, which was industrialization, which was leaving the home. Going out and working and trading money for anything that you want instead of getting it from within your own family unit.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I, I think that’s right. To go over like what men who voted for, well, actually let’s look at what women who voted for Hearst, what do they actually value? Because I think that helped us, like mm-hmm. Key into this, and we’ll, we’ll go through the chart and we’ll contrast it with some of the others.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Number one, and this was true for men who voted for Harris, so they’re actually pretty aligned. The men and women who vote for Harris their top three [00:05:00] are the same. No, not

Simone Collins: top three, only top two.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, the, the third one is almost the same. No. Yeah.

Simone Collins: So for women, number one, fulfilling job, career.

Number two, having money to do things you want, that’s the same for men. But then women’s number three priority and God help them ‘cause it’s never gonna happen is having emotional stability. No,

Malcolm Collins: but what’s funnier if you look at the charts, and we often go over this on our show, is that there is no demographic that is more emotionally unstable than progressive women.

Both

Simone Collins: Well, and you know, I’ll point out. That emotional stability is near or at the bottom of the list for men and women who voted for Trump. Yeah, and I think this just goes to show how mental health and specifically poor mental health

Malcolm Collins: is a just, it’s, it’s a. It’s downstream of obsessing about mental health.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah. And, and, and it’s pervasive within progressive culture. And they’re aware of it and they’re like, I wish I had this. And they don’t. And I do think also that there’s a big correlation between having poor mental health and [00:06:00] not having a family and religion and strong hard culture that that gives you something more important to worry about than your stupid whims.

‘cause we all have demons. We all have demons. There’s no space for my demon because we have kids, right? Like, but I had, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It burns the selfishness out of you as one of the other moms say Yes.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: No, I, I completely agree with that, but I think that this is something that we used to intuit as a society much more easily.

Mm. A lot of progressives, they don’t have conservative friends. They don’t watch conservative influencers. No. So they are unaware of the within conservative spaces, the, the significantly higher degree of emotional stability that’s expected. But when we look into the past, even with like recent models of conservatives, like say ron Swanson.

Speaker: I’ve been developing the Swanson Pyramid of greatness for years. It’s a perfectly calibrated recipe for maximum personal achievement. Categories include capitalism, God’s way of determining who is smart and who is poor., Property [00:07:00] rights, fish for sport only, not for meat. Fish meat is practically a vegetable. Haircuts. There are three acceptable haircuts, high and tight. Crew. Cut, buzz cut.

Speaker 2: Feel no sympathy.

Malcolm Collins: Right. Ron Swanson may be incorrect about things in a conservative like way but he, he is, he is nothing if not emotionally stable most of the time other than when he is dealing with his exes. When he is dealing with ex women, he becomes emotionally, which I love. He’s logical

Simone Collins: in his attempt to resist, to resist them.

Malcolm Collins: But generally speaking, he is like, when contrasted with the progressive coated boss character who’s like all into yoga and all into like eating healthy and is a vegan he’s, he’s constantly shown as being like the, the epitome of emotional stability,

Simone Collins: right.

Malcolm Collins: Because he knows what he’s about, as he would say.

Yeah. And knowing what you’re about I think is [00:08:00] really the key to emotional stability. That, and not living for your own whims, which is, you know, like having some higher objective function. You’re attempting to maximize above self validation and personal pleasure. Well, and I think

Simone Collins: there’s also something to the fact that Ron Swanson in comparison to other more progressive coded characters on the show, parks and Rec.

Wants things that are easily attainable. He wants independence, privacy, family.

Malcolm Collins: Well, he, he, he, the government apart what he wants becomes increasingly less attainable as technology develops throughout the show. This is fair and true.

Speaker 5: , Go to Google Earth and type in your address.

Malcolm Collins: but when he shoots down the drone

Speaker: We need to talk. What is that? This is a flying robot. I just shot out of the sky after it delivered a package to my house.

So I destroyed the [00:09:00] robot. No one is safe from these b******s.

Malcolm Collins: because it knows too much information about him you know, yeah.

He’s increasingly annoyed that he can’t have his as many viewers of our show would want more independence. Right. Yeah.

Simone Collins: I mean, our, our audience can definitely relate. But, but I would con contrast that to the other characters in the show who want things that they, they don’t, well, they don’t know what they want first and foremost.

Or they want things that are not real. They’re too ephemeral. And they’re pursuing them in all the wrong ways. So, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And then you have so, so the first ones, which I love because we talked about this, is they’re all about. Personal hedonism. Like when I say that the urban monoculture is just about hedonism, maxing you see that was in this context, right?

You know, the, the, the, the fulfilling job or career. When you hear that, that means a job that makes me feel good to do, right? Mm-hmm. It is about pleasure, right? And the having money to do the things that you want. Contrast. This is what many who voted for Trump want, which is to contribute to society, right?

Having children, financial independence, not having the money to [00:10:00] do what you want, but having financial independence, eg. Not being a burden, which is what women who voted for Trump want the most. Then fulfilling job and career then being married then having money to do the things that they want.

Then owning a home. Then being grounded spiritually, then making family community proud, then having no debt, then using talents and resources to help others. Finally, like second to last is being able to retire early with conservative men, which I think is interesting. I also think it’s interesting that women who voted for Trump, the very last thing they wanted was to be able to retire early.

So you see this across Trump voters is wanting to retire early, as seen as a bad thing. And I think that you actually, you actually see this across the board now I look at it. It’s more pronounced as Trump voters, but it’s also pretty clear with men and women who voted for, for Harris. One thing that I found, I think that’s

Simone Collins: because people, and we saw this when we went to that college campus to speak with students.

Younger generations have acknowledged the fact that there is not going to be such a thing as retirement anymore. So it’s just, it’s one of those things of like, you know, becoming [00:11:00] unicorn. That’s weird. I’m gonna put it at the bottom of my, of my list because it could never happen. Like, I’m not gonna want it because it’s not going to happen.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I, I will say I do find it disappointing that women who voted for Trump have being married at, at forced to bottom in terms of the things that they’re looking for is only 20%. Seeing that as important to life success. Yeah. Which is interesting because I was raised to just obviously thinking I had to get married.

How did you think about it back when you were a progressive? If you’re reflecting on your own values, where did marriage fit for you in terms of a life plan and how you thought about

Simone Collins: it? I was, I was never gonna get married, obviously. I was never gonna get married. I was like,

Malcolm Collins: why? Surely you must have used about getting married at one point.

I know you had your stuffed animals get married.

Simone Collins: Yeah. ‘cause it was a celebration that was aesthetically interesting. That was it. There was nothing more to it.

Malcolm Collins: That was really it. Weddings.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, it was, you know, you, this was before the age when people had tiered cakes just [00:12:00] for birthday parties. I thought, you know, a wedding was the only one where you could do that.

A tiered cake at any other event was stolen valor. So, and I love to tiered cakes, so that is 100% it. I, I don’t, I, I think I, I, my first intuition when seeing how low, relatively speaking, being married was for female Trump. Voters was because being married is even lower than having children. Kind of a, an acknowledgement that many men are unwilling to commit to get married.

And we’ve seen this with a lot of both progressive and centrist and conservative women. We know having a really tough time getting men to commit to them. And I think it’s kind of similar to retire early for a lot of women at this point. It, they just feel like it’s not gonna happen. But that, that was my intuition.

You, you don’t think that’s the case?

Malcolm Collins: Sorry, repeat that. [00:13:00]

Simone Collins: Women these days, don’t think men that getting married is something that’s, that’s on the table for them. That men won’t commit to getting married anymore.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I just think that’s true. It’s the men of their, the, of the quality that they want who won’t commit to getting married.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And this perception is easy how it came about because the women are. Idiots and they’re dating on apps and they don’t know that the guys that they’re dating because they are matching with the top men on these apps, like this is just shown statistically well. And they are

Simone Collins: consistently finding that those men are not willing to commit to them because they’re lazy eights who are just looking to sleep around.

So they are not encountering men who are interested in marrying. Of course then they would not put marriage as a high priority ‘cause it feels like something that no man they encounter is willing to do.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, how do you, how do you get around this for our kids

Simone Collins: arranged marriages, dating networks that are focused around marriage.

That’s how,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, I, I mean, I love that. My mom, you gotta be careful not to like, get [00:14:00] stuck in. Our generation used to be like, well, just gotta like a debutante ball or something like that. Yeah. That’s where you’ll find a good wife. And I was like, they don’t host those anymore,

Simone Collins: mom. I mean, they, they technically do, but they’re not for that.

What. It’s not that there’s some specific type of social function that makes these work. I would even argue that we’ll say like LDS singles wards on their own. You can’t just like encourage your child if you’re a Mormon, to be a member of a singles ward when they’re of marriageable age. What, what has been lost societally is parental and familiar involvement in.

A young person’s, a young adult’s marriage, looking for partners, trying to find partners, being up in their business, trying to strategize with them, demonstrating that this is a priority, that is how you get your kid to marry. And, and also criticizing partners, weighing in with opinions. All these things matter.

Malcolm Collins: I think part of this is downstream [00:15:00] of expectations. Changing around like genuinely what this survey is, is, is, is looking at like what a good life is.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Because I went in to, you know, to. College was an expectation of now I need to start looking for a wife. Really? Seriously.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I was, it was, it was made clear to me and my family, don’t get married to anyone you meet in high school.

It’s, and people are like, why? It’s because you’re not gonna be around the best of the brightest in high school. Right. Like, you haven’t sorted into those environments like you do with college or your career yet. Mm-hmm. And so that seemed fine to me. Okay. Don’t marry just high schools for sleeping around.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Then I get out there and I what was I gonna say? For college, I I, I, I, and you knew this when you were talking to me, like marriage was just my focus at the time, right? Mm-hmm. Like everything was about marriage and it was more important to me early career than my career itself.

Simone Collins: [00:16:00] Absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: And.

It’s interesting that I see a shared value as the Trump male voters but that even the Trump female voters don’t have that perception. So my question is, is how do you bridge that gap? How could somebody convince you, like, okay, go back to early dating, Simone, if it wasn’t me, how do they, what, what do they bring to you, I idea wise that convinces you?

Okay, I’m open to get married now.

Simone Collins: I, I could have only married you, Malcolm. I’m sorry. I’m, I’m so, I’m so head of heels for you.

Malcolm Collins: Part of the problem.

Simone Collins: Well, but yeah, I mean, I, IW it was so baked into my entire existence from a very early age. I didn’t have any peers throughout my childhood, male or female, who thought that marriage was a priority.

Who even thought that marriage was gonna be a part of their adult life. That just wasn’t a thing. Even the, the, the romantic ones of us, we only [00:17:00] liked romance manga and stuff. That was about like ence and dating. You know, the marriage wasn’t ever a factor in it. Marriage was sort of a, that, that’s the point at which good plots turned bad.

‘cause they get boring, you know? That’s the society in which I think many of us live when you aren’t surrounded by. Examples of good marriages and marriage. As you know, this is how you make life work, and especially I would say, and this is how ambitious people succeed. Because I think that was another really big thing, is if you were ambitious, it was framed to people that, well, then you need to find a good partner because that plays a key role in you being a successful adult.

You won’t be seen as a successful professional man without a beautiful wife, whether she’s a working one or a housewife. Right? Yeah. And now that’s not true anymore. You, and you wouldn’t be a successful woman if you hadn’t bagged a successful man, whether you choose to work or not again, and that is.

[00:18:00] Totally no longer the case. We’re totally atomized. We’re totally our own individual brands. And this is not to say that people were not brand obsessed back in the day, and as married couples, literally people named themselves, baker Fletcher, Smith Mason people’s names were their brands. Yeah. It. I, I, so, yeah, I don’t know.

We, we, we just, I, there’s nothing that you could have done as an individual parent if I still grew up in this, the San Francisco Bay area that would’ve made me want to get married with our own children. I think we just need to frame marriage is a key part in success that you will, that that, that living life as an adult unmarried is like living life as an adult without legs, you can do it.

It’s just gonna be a lot harder.

Malcolm Collins: So, right. No, I appreciate you focusing on the practical clinical concerns, but I also think of a large part of this was about the shame and the lack of inability to gain [00:19:00] prestige if you were unmarried. Mm-hmm. Well, and now

Simone Collins: marriage is just seen as a liability. I mean, you would agree, right?

In online content. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You’re gonna get divorced. They’re, they’re gonna be a helpless man, and you have to do so much more work. They’re a liability. How do you do finances, prenups, and all these things?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. I think there’s a shift in culturally, at least within conservative circles, as you can see from these results.

I mean, with the Charlie Kirk death and everything like that, what everyone is focusing on is his wife and kids. Right. You know? I, I think that, being a good husband in a good marriage is increasingly within conservative circles, especially as in elite conservative circles, seen as an an incredibly elite thing to be like very, very high status and a good like signal of character.

Whereas like in the past, things like becoming divorced is increasingly seen as low status again. Mm-hmm. Which actually the opposite has been true for periods. I was at a Heritage Foundation event. So conservative community, right. And the guy I was talking to was talking to me about how many, so many people from his [00:20:00] generation were divorced.

And he lived in la but in a, like a, a moderate political community. And he goes, well, what happened was is, you know, one couple got divorced on the block, right? And then that why I started talking to the other women and it became like a high status thing to do. Like, what? You’re still in your first husband?

Oh. You know, like, like that was almost a sign. That you hadn’t made it. Gosh. ‘cause if you had made it, you would’ve traded husbands or wives at least once.

Simone Collins: Oh, good heavens.

Malcolm Collins: So to still be on your first spouse mm-hmm. Meant that you had never really made it yet.

Simone Collins: But Malcolm, even you being the one so keen on finding a wife, we’re still.

Of the mind of the opinion, even when we got married that I was going to be your first wife.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The one until I got super rich and then I trade you in. Yeah, that’s still true. Simone, you still are my first wife. Okay.

Simone Collins: No. Okay. Understood. Understood. Ladies lineup. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: That’s why, that’s why I keep the show going.

So I’ve got other women who watch.

Simone Collins: Right, right. Of course. Right. Silly me. [00:21:00]

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And they know because, you know, I barely beat you on the show. So they know that I am high status. Right. So the, the, the good good husband, right?

Simone Collins: Good husband.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, is this

Simone Collins: why we’re in separate rooms? ‘cause I’m just so

afraid of, of you.

I’m

Malcolm Collins: gonna go together. Absolutely. I’ll fly into a rage.

Oh my God. I, by the way, I really appreciate you. So we have this documentarian here who’s like, being very aggressive with me about like crazy political stuff like. Yeah, at one point she was like, what are you talking about? There’s no such thing as, as white privilege. She’s like, there’s places in this country.

Well, I didn’t say no such thing. What I said is, all ethnicities have their own challenges and benefits, right? Mm-hmm. Like it’s, it’s comparing apples to oranges. And she goes, but don’t you admit that there are some places in this country where you can’t go, you, you’ll fear for your life as a black person.

And I was like. Are you saying that white people don’t, like, there’s not places that you can’t go as a white person and, and she’s like, there aren’t, and I was like, no. [00:22:00] There’re like clearly are like, do you live in another reality than me? Like this? When, when she was like, there aren’t places that white people can’t go.

This is when, and this has actually been a recent thing for us ‘cause it sort of blew stuff up. It’s like, I just can’t work with you. Like this isn’t, this isn’t a political difference of opinion. This is like living in a different reality. Yeah. I’ve

Simone Collins: literally been places in the past traveling alone in my twenties in other countries where I believed because I was a progressive, like this person Malcolm’s referring to.

Yeah. I believed that as a white person, I was safe absolutely everywhere because of my privilege, et cetera. And I had instances of, you know, me getting in a taxi saying like, Hey, you know, take me to this place and drop me off. And they’re like. Lady, you can’t do that. And them [00:23:00] literally parking their cars and walking me inside to like train stations and walking me to the ticket counter and being like, okay, now you stay here within the line of sight of this police officer until the train comes.

Yeah. Things like that and, and me being like, well, that was weird. I wonder why they did that. Well there’s

Malcolm Collins: the famous case of the woman who was like, I am going to do a, a sort of like, hitchhiking across Europe and the Middle East to like show that like, you know, all countries are friendly, right?

And it was within the first mile. Of being in a Muslim majority body. Her, her, her body was later found griped to death within the first mile of, of going into the country. And, and it’s just ‘cause it’s, it’s different, right? Like she, she just, but this woman lived in this alternate reality to such an extent.

What I appreciated about you, ‘cause you wouldn’t have done this earlier in our relationship, is you were defending me and defending sanity so strongly to this individual, right? [00:24:00] And not. Like pussying out. Right. And I really appreciated that. Like I really appreciated it. Good and shoulda have

Simone Collins: done more.

I was trying, I, I still try probably too much to be nice, but. Yeah. And we, we, no, I, I

Malcolm Collins: remember when she was like, you know, like, oh, come on, like trans people are the victim group here. And you’re like, how can they be the victim group if they’re the group? I can’t criticize without being fired, right? Like, if I accidentally misgender somebody that could literally get me fired from my job, how can that group be the group without institutional power?

And I thought that that was very eloquently put. But the problem being is, I mean, things have

Simone Collins: changed now post vibe shift, which is I think why maybe we’re seeing, yeah. Even more polarization because, well, I mean, there’s a feeling of, of less indemnity

Malcolm Collins: very interesting for me because the left is like making all of the wrong moves in a way that, I don’t understand how they’re ever going to like come back in the culture war. And it seems pretty [00:25:00] clear to me what they need is they need to run a candidate. Like the candidates that have won before, you know, when, when a party was incredibly unpopular, like Trump, like Democrats right now are their least popular ever.

I think it’s in the past 10 years or something. Like just incredibly unpopular. And Republicans were here once before and then Trump comes and he has a bunch of policies that are standard progressive policies. Mm-hmm. And he has a bunch of policies that are actually to the right of other right-leaning individuals.

Mm-hmm. And, and Bill Clinton, when he did this last time, he was the same way. He had some policies that were to the left of other left wing individuals and some policies that were just straight up conservative. And I think that that’s what we need to see was the next progressive to win. We need

Simone Collins: cargo.

Short sweatshirt. Dude. What’s his name again? John

Malcolm Collins: Federman.

Simone Collins: Josh. Josh Federman.

Malcolm Collins: Josh Federman. Federman Fetterman. Could do well. Well, Roger

Simone Collins: Federman,

no,

Malcolm Collins: Nationally. The problem is John Fetterman. John Federman, I told you. Yeah. Is that the, the DNC and the political class is gonna fight him. So, so Orly like, I don’t

Simone Collins: know.

To their detriment, keep in mind the Republican party [00:26:00] vehemently fought, tried Trump, tried to fight Trump. Yeah. We sat in behind closed doors, Republican donor meetings where we heard. Politicians say to these donors, don’t worry. We have a plan to make sure he’s not a threat to us. Like, we’re gonna make sure, yeah, we’re gonna make sure he doesn’t, he doesn’t make it past, you know, the, the nomination they tried to

Malcolm Collins: collude, like I’m telling you behind close

Simone Collins: 100%.

And it’s

Malcolm Collins: funny that we were like invited to like big Republican, well I think it was ‘cause they were trying to show off to us. But like very important Republican donors meeting with like senators and stuff like this. And that’s what they were talking about there. They’re like, we got this on lock.

So

Simone Collins: that’s why I think Federman does have a shot. Because I mean, it’s not as though No, no, no. The

Malcolm Collins: T NNC is nothing like the RNC. It’s way harder to get around.

Simone Collins: Oh, they, they just have better control and barriers. I don’t know. I always saw that RNC do

Malcolm Collins: really, I mean, keep in mind the DNC was able to like literally just appoint Kamala as the, as the nominee.

Oh, okay. The, the the, that the RNC was considering this at that level [00:27:00] of unpopularity. But what, what this means and why I was mentioning all of this is it’s going to push people like this extremist into like a more narrow category. Like one of the things that she asked me was like, about white privilege, and I was quite taken aback by this.

Mm-hmm. She’s like, did you like deny your white privilege or something? And at one point she said, she. Felt ashamed for being white. And I was like, do you not know that? Like, these things are just racist now. Like, it’d be like going to a black person and being like, are you ashamed of being black? Like, within mainstream progressive politics, people don’t even say this stuff anymore, right?

Like, this isn’t like. Like a, you, this is, this is like extremist crazy talk stuff. Like this is like the progressive equivalent of like white nationalism at this point. Yeah. And yet there’s still a pocket of people who have doubled down on this.

Simone Collins: Well, you know, what else is telling about Gen Z? In general, and this is across the board, because I’m also looking at, okay, what does everyone have in common?

Basically, regardless of, of gender, sex, or political affiliation. [00:28:00] They’ve basically given up on being debt-free. Having no debt while it’s different places and rankings, it’s at 21%. For men who voted for Trump, it’s at 21%. For women who voted for Harris, 23% For women who voted for Trump, well, you’re

Malcolm Collins: the one who makes us live debt free, even though like financially you’re not.

I know for me it’s

Simone Collins: like number one, no debt. I owe people nothing. It’s, it’s like a really, I’m, I feel, I feel deeply uncomfortable. Even if someone compliments me. I’m like, I need to compliment them immediately so that my ledger is cleared. You don’t understand. There’s this like autistic obsession that I have of not owing.

Anyone, anything. Like if Lancasters always pay their debts, Simone’s always pay their debts immediately because it burns, it burns. I, I can’t even begin to tell you, but, and then of, of men who voted for Harris E, even fewer 16% noted that as important to them. I really feel, and maybe this is something we can explore in a podcast when they have more fodder in general.[00:29:00]

That we were approaching a kind of absurdist, postmodern era when it comes to debt between. Afterpay and Klarna and all these buy now pay later services.

Malcolm Collins: This is the thing. You always talk about this and you’re just so wrong. She expects some massive jubilee, right? The reason why you can’t easily get a massive jubilee is because the debt is not centrally owned.

What you think is, no. I think

Simone Collins: we’re gonna see like what happened in Japan multiple times where just like a bunch of people who held debt or companies, businesses that held debt was like, well, guess

Malcolm Collins: what? You’re not getting paid. But the problem is, is it’s not the company’s. Okay, so I’ll explain this to you because confusion here.

So when you get debt at like a bank or something like that Yeah. Especially the types of debt that people may not pay back.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: This debt is bundled with other people’s debts. Yeah. It’s

Simone Collins: in teachers’ pension funds

Malcolm Collins: and then sold to institutions. Mm-hmm. Which are invested in. The problem is when you wipe debt off the [00:30:00] books, what you’re wiping off the books is like.

Pension funds mm-hmm. And retirement plans. Mm-hmm. And city budgets. But don’t

Simone Collins: you think those. Those groups will stop allowing their money to be, to be deployed with, with businesses that include debts in their portfolios.

Malcolm Collins: Well, everybody thought this was gonna happen after the last financial crisis that resulted in this.

I mean, this what the, the, the, the 2000 mortgage thing, mortgage thing was literally just due to bounding of debt. And so they, yeah. They, they changed the, the wording and stuff like that, but they’ve gone back to, but it was, but it was just really

Simone Collins: risky mortgages in that one case. Like people, I be, I think, began to only associate it with very, very specific.

Types of debt instruments, whereas, I mean, probably people are better at hiding it now. And just they’re, yeah, but I, I don’t know. I just, I, I, I think that people have both given up on not being in [00:31:00] debt, but they’re also like, I’ll just always be in debt and I’m just never really gonna pay it. And then I’ll declare bankruptcy a couple times in life.

And I guess at that point people will not be able to have any debt for a while because their credit will be so bad. But I don’t know. I think that that just also points to, I mean, people really have this desire, which is also showing up in the numbers to be financially independent. But they’ve also.

As much as they want that they’re also like, but yeah, I’m gonna be in debt for my whole life.

Malcolm Collins: I don’t, I don’t, I I think that this is just normal debt as opposed to your like, autistic debt and that’s why they don’t feel this way. I, I actually put that the debt thing is higher up than I’d expect. Like having no debt is more important for men who voted for Harris and being married, you know?

So, yeah. But

Simone Collins: marriage, if you’re progress, what is marriage anyway like? Marriage has so little value if you’re progressive, that doesn’t surprise me.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s why they won’t be here for longer. Like 40% of the way you [00:32:00] vote is genetic, which we’ve talked about. And nine out of, of of 10 Democrat children vote like their parents and it’s eight outta 10 Republican children vote like their parents.

And so if Republicans are having massively more kids Mm, very quickly, there’s just not going to be Democrats left, which I think we’re already sort of seeing that’s, that’s sort of where society is going.

Simone Collins: Well, I mean, the plan was just to have immigrants be. Democrats, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. It turns out that immigrants are very conservative people.

Whoops. Whoops. They told the progressives, they’re like, you know, we’re gonna get rid of this whole gay thing pretty soon. Like as soon as we’re in the majority, right? We’re on board with that. And progressives are like, it’s not a today problem. There’s just is very interesting.

This is part of why gays, especially like normal gays, make such good conservative allies is what moved Scott Presley to the conservative camp, was a fear of, , Sharia law and, , immigrants committing anti-gay violence. , And yeah, it just perfectly [00:33:00] aligns them was our interests .

And they’ve had an easy time, , working with, Christian organizations where even if they disagree with their lifestyle, , Christianity is a fairly unique religion due to the whole, you know, render under Caesar separation of church and state that’s promoted was in the Bible because very few other religions have that , , as clearly delineated.

Simone Collins: Well, progressive ideology in general is focused on.

In the moment suffering. And this is really

Malcolm Collins: interesting. When I was talking to this demographer, the, I mean the, the, the documentarian and, and we were talking about the differences between conservatives and progressive. She’s like, why do conservatives care about this stuff? Progress? Because I’m like, progressives don’t care about suffering.

That happens in the future. It’s like, yeah, when I told you well, and she was like,

Simone Collins: yeah, I don’t care about suffering. That happens in the future, which. Crazy. It

Malcolm Collins: shows what she said and she was being honest here, which I appreciate is she’s like, yeah, like intuitively when you explain to me that in a few decades social security is gonna go bust, I felt no sympathy for those future people.

Um mm-hmm. So I think it’s sort of like how you relate to time that puts you in one of these two [00:34:00] groups. Mm-hmm. Do you care about only people? In the present, or do you care about people across the entire range of TimeScapes? Mm-hmm. And I think that that’s also why so many of the progressive things are so, like time insensitive, like, like time sensitive, like do it now.

Whereas the conservatives things are more like life, life milestones. Mm. You know, like having money to buy the things you want versus being married.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that makes sense. That absolutely makes sense.

Malcolm Collins: So how, how would you mark these, by the way, Simone? If you were gonna rate them for yourself.

Simone Collins: Oh, like what would I rank at the top?

Yeah. What would you rank now? Me now as an adult?

Malcolm Collins: As an adult, yeah. You can do you now and then as a kid. Do like your top three at least.

I get it. My mine’s easy. It would be, having children would always have been my top one.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s number one. And then I see making family slash community proud. I would probably put that as number two because I think I define that as raising my children well and, and [00:35:00] doing good.

And then in there it would be number three, using talents and resources to help others. Which also again, is just serving my objective function. Right. Interesting.

Malcolm Collins: You didn’t say financial independence?

Simone Collins: No. Well, because everything that we are doing is downstream of our objective function and financial independence is not part of our objective function.

I mean, it would be helpful if we didn’t have the need for more income, but based on the choices that we’ve made. We have clearly decided to use our talents and resources to help others have children and, and have and, and, and make our family and community proud. Like to, and by that I mean like try to help them flourish, which is how I think we would define that.

We have clearly done that. Like we are going to have to work

Yeah.

Probably until we die. Just to make ends meet on a day-to-day basis,

Malcolm Collins: unless our fab takes [00:36:00] off and it’s awesome. Right now. You guys should check it out. Our fab.ai is like actually working now in pretty, it’s actually better than like

Simone Collins: character AI and, and replica and all the other ones.

You had me try, I was like,

Malcolm Collins: it’s a little slower now, but it’ll, it’ll improve and we’re gonna be working on a lot of features that are gonna be coming out very quickly because now I am the coder. I learned to code more financial independence more. You are the

Simone Collins: captain now.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You and Bruno

Simone Collins: Dream team.

Bru, Bruno.

Malcolm Collins: Bruno’s been really help. I couldn’t do it without somebody who can actually code like Bruno. Like he, yeah. This is, this is, this

Simone Collins: is a you and Bruno thing. Bruno. Bruno deserves flowers so much. Been

Malcolm Collins: having a team. F*****g, sorry. Teams are just a waste. Like I Yours Awesome though. Find this whenever I do anything.

Is it like, like they teams. Take so much time and cost so much money and it’s just, just do it yourself.

Simone Collins: Dynamic duos though, I I think it really does help to have someone else to not work in isolation. Yeah. So that you and Bruno are working on this. You and I like to work on things. I think we, we at least in our own lives have seen that working with at least one other one, only one other person on [00:37:00] projects is, is quite helpful.

Malcolm Collins: Well, so go to R Fab AI and try the adventure mode or they’re not safe for work mode. But yeah, I mean,

Simone Collins: I think that, that if you are an ideologically driven person. You’re not going to carry care as much about wealth, financial dependent, independence, retirement, et cetera. And you’re gonna care a whole lot more about putting your children, your family, your community, and your values first.

And the nice thing about doing that in many cases as that means that your children and community. Are there for you when you really, really need them. But it also means that you’re never gonna live with a level of super high material wealth and comfort. And that’s okay because as we found from the exposure we’ve been very fortunate to have to these things, they don’t actually make you happy, satisfied, mentally grounded, any of those things.

You, you, you don’t want them, they’re not

what

you think they are.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway. I love you Toon. You are absolutely amazing. Thank you [00:38:00] for not being one of these Trump voting women who don’t even seem to have like, like that. That’s the thing that got me is, is, is they had stuff like, you know, having kids solo low for them.

I was like, well, at least they’ll be sane. And I’m like, oh God.

Simone Collins: Well I wonder if they put things like able to retire early, which is the very bottom of the list for women who voted for Trump at 9%. I wonder if that has more to do with the fact that they expect to be. Housewives. So like, what is retirement?

If you’re a homemaker Yeah, you, you never retire because, well, there’s always a home.

Malcolm Collins: Didn’t, didn’t Trump mail voters also put that there?

Simone Collins: For men who voted for Trump second to last, and also men who voted for Harris and women who voted for Harris. But see, I, I connect that with the whole debt thing.

And, and like people just expect that they’re always going to be in debt and they’re never going to retire because that’s the economy that we’re, we’re living in. We no longer live in an economy where we get social security. We no longer live in an economy [00:39:00] where people are able to do what they want.

Without debt, there’s a whole new trend. Or get a house, even a new trend where for a while there was this sort of like Swedish minimalist aesthetic that was being really pushed like in decorating blogs and in stores. Do you know what the aesthetic is now?

Malcolm Collins: What’s the aesthetic? What’s the aesthetic these days?

Like medieval

Simone Collins: castles, like people are making their tiny, little dingy apartments look like. Old medieval castles, and in some cases more like, you know, Victorian I mean, wa Wayne’s gutting has been really big. And, but people are, I think trying to create, knowing that they’re never going to own a house, they’re building their, their little hamster cages into sets that look like these things, acknowledging that they will never have the wealth.

Yeah, to even get a modest, a modest house. So that’s, that’s just where we are. And I, I just find that really, really [00:40:00] depressing. But it is interesting to see what, what Gen Z has in common across the sex and political spectrum, in addition to what’s so different. I think they’re, they’re equally telling, though, I really appreciate that being grounded spiritually.

Is at least so, so low for Harris voters. I, I guess because I hate spirituality. I, I guess I shouldn’t be happy about that because they’re just issuing religion and culture. But

Malcolm Collins: Simone, question for you. Yeah. What are we doing for dinner tonight?

Simone Collins: So you can choose as we discussed last night, to either do rendering with your sour cream and corn chips, which we have, and we should probably go through, oh, we

Malcolm Collins: don’t have any of rice left.

Simone Collins: We have plenty of rice. If you want rice,

Malcolm Collins: I want rendang and rice.

Simone Collins: I could also make fresh rice. I love the way the kitchen smells when there’s fresh rice. All right, go for

Malcolm Collins: it.

Simone Collins: I’ll do that. And so you want rendang with fresh rice or do you want some other, do you want chili with fresh rice?

Malcolm Collins: I want rendang today.

I want [00:41:00] something curry.

Simone Collins: Rendang with fresh rice, you shall have.

Malcolm Collins: And when you’re cooking it up, you might wanna put in some like coconut milk to make it a little liquidy. ‘cause if I remember, the rendang had gotten pretty dry.

Simone Collins: Then we have an open can of coconut milk, meaning we’re need, we’re gonna need to do coconut based dishes for a while because we don’t have cans anymore.

We have those giant cartons that we get from the Asian market. So,

Malcolm Collins: okay, then what about this?

Simone Collins: It just means that we’ll need to do a whole bunch of curries in a row, and I’ll water down the curries with the coconut milk. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: No, then okay, then no. What we’ll do, I can just add water. What you can do is add butter.

Simone Collins: How about chicken broth? Because then it’s flavor water.

Malcolm Collins: Butter is flavor water too. What’s wrong with butter? No,

Simone Collins: it’s an oil. It, it’s not, yeah. You mean

Malcolm Collins: butter or olive oil would be the two other things I would use other than coconut milk.

Simone Collins: All right.

Malcolm Collins: Butter is always good. Okay. Butter on rice. Yeah, butter mixed with reang.

That’s gonna taste great.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it probably is. It’ll, it’ll be great. It’s

Malcolm Collins: [00:42:00] fine. I, I’m just so frustrated with like, such a disappointing experience.

Simone Collins: Well, I think what they’re gonna do I, I have no idea actually what you talked about on the call. What I think they’re gonna do is just go forward with it, make.

The sizzle and then try to sell it to you and be like, look, this is what you wanted. And like, they’re gonna assume that you’re actually gonna like it and that you had misinterpreted the whole thing of what happened. And they might take more editorial control over what’s created and edit it together.

Because I don’t think that the director is going to be the one who edits things together. That’s not how these work. You know,

there’s like a billion

people and everyone has job, so they’re gonna choose how it gets edited together, and they’re going to conservatively try to edit it together in a way that makes you happy and say, okay, I am, I’m super on board.

And then they’re gonna, you

Malcolm Collins: might wanna like text him in something, being like, this is what I think you’re going to try to do. Just as a warning, he will not accept this. What if you

Simone Collins: really like what they send you,

Malcolm Collins: I don’t care if I [00:43:00] really like it. I would never, ever trust any product made by that person.

I would never, you’d still demand

Simone Collins: another director, you mean? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I would never trust anything she does. To be honest, when, when she said to me, there is nowhere in this country as a white person, you can go where you will not be safe. I was just like, oh. So you’re just willing to like bend reality and lie to people?

Like that’s, I just

Simone Collins: picture that diehard scene. But it, he was obviously made unsafe by the sign on his.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, no, no. But like somebody who’s willing to like say that with a straight face. What it shows me is, is it’s not even a matter of like trusting their integrity. It is their view of reality is so twisted that they will think that they are being honest while being dishonest.

And. Because of that, you can’t really work with them. That plus the complete disinterest in anything intellectual During the interviews one of the things that really got me is during one of the interviews I was talking about. And this really got me like, interesting stuff that anybody could have taken in like a really interesting direction.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Where that’s not even [00:44:00] flattering to us. Like many people think people where I was talking

Malcolm Collins: about like, oh, well, you know, in, in the far future you might be able to like, take genes from like different ethnic groups to try to create like new types of humans that are like a post. Like this is weird.

Like if you’re like a documentary, like dig in on that, that’s an interesting thing to be talking about. Mm-hmm. That doesn’t make me look good. Her question in response to that was, like, do you acknowledge your white privilege? Like that, she could hear that interesting hook and then waste time with such a pointless 2015 question.

That’s not even like modern progressive stuff. I was just like, what the, is wrong with your brain? Like, are you, are you so on rails that you cannot adapt to like what you’re hearing in real time and, and, and have a nose for like an interesting story? And that’s where I was like, okay, so I’m not gonna produce boring content with you.

Right? Like, I don’t wanna do that. I want something interesting. I don’t want something that’s flattering to me. I want something that’s [00:45:00] interesting and not stale political points. I want something that educates people and that people can watch and changes their minds, you know? And that introduces them to new ideas.

That’s our brand, right? And if you are incapable of engaging with new ideas, you’re gonna be incapable of delivering new ideas. But the bigger problem is, is I don’t know how she’s gonna put anything good together. Like, I’ve seen her other stuff and I was really embarrassed to talk with her about this, but it was terrible.

It was like really boring. It was like Oscar bait stuff and I was like, oh my God. Like, we’re not gonna be able to create something that’s so funny that the general audience wants to see.

Simone Collins: But I, I feel like yeah, a lot of people would understand what you’re making or saying, like in, in the past I like when we were kids, I feel like an Oscar winning movie was entertaining and good.

But now Oscar bait movies are, are so bad, pretentious and boring, and you only watch them for the same reasons you. You know,

Malcolm Collins: it’s funny what she asked me, like, what documentaries do I wa watch? Like obviously I’ve love stuff like Tiger King that’s like willing to go with low culture and fun. But like, the truth is, is I watch [00:46:00] documentaries all the time.

Internet Historian is a documentary. Oh yeah. Everything Internet Historian does is a documentary, is Golden Smokes. Any like, like in terms of like mainstream documentarians who like smoke in terms of view, numbers, anything that goes on HBO as a documentary, anything that goes on Netflix as a documentary.

So true, so true Internet

Simone Collins: historian. He

Malcolm Collins: doesn’t take it in this pretentious direction. He respects the viewer’s time. He tries to be entertaining. That’s the direction I want to go. Right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And if you can’t, and if you can’t emulate that, then I don’t wanna put out boring content Totally. Well, I mean, you guys know it’s our show.

Like I try really hard to edit out the parts where we’re just, where we’re not saying something that’s interesting to the audience where it’s not like a new perspective that they may not have interest in or it’s not like a, you know, for context,

Simone Collins: this is a, a fairly big deal for Malcolm because he had gone through a lot of trouble to try to get like a premium streaming streaming platform to seriously [00:47:00] greenlight a documentary on.

Culture and demographic apps that, that we could help lead. And we had even served up like various types of pitches and slide decks and here are other people we can help get involved in all these things. And finally we had a team that made it pretty far with a major premium streaming platform and they then selected and sent over a director who.

I didn’t get it.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, if somebody’s coming out here and, and it’s say, talking about white privilege in 2025, like clearly, well this person

Simone Collins: had no interest in actually engaging with any of our messaging on demographic collapse or the importance of discussion culture. And basically there her only interest was in de fenestrating us as, as individuals.

Yeah. And, and, and, and not talking about our, our, our work or the issues that we are attempting to promote at all, but just making it about us and about us being trash humans, basically. Yeah. And we’re okay with being trash humans in service. Of a larger goal, like in [00:48:00] order to get people to discuss demographic acts, even if they disagree with us, just completely pointless to us.

Yeah. We don’t want fame for fame for it’s own sake, is just a liability. It’s just bad. It just makes it impossible to get jobs and it puts you at risk and it ju, it just sucks, but like, it’s okay if it means that we’re making. The world a better place or, or, or promoting future human flourishing. This would, this totally cuts that off.

So Malcolm’s very miffed right now because he thought that he’d gotten to a point after we

Malcolm Collins: put into this, that they could just whiff like that by choosing somebody like this person. And if they don’t, and, and I’ll send you something to follow up with them on WhatsApp. Okay.

So that we’re like engaged, et cetera.

Simone Collins: That sounds good. And I will start your rice.

Malcolm Collins: All right. Love you Ade Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you too. Gorgeous.

Do you think I’m right though? I mean. Very worried for them.

Malcolm Collins: Alright, I’m gonna send you some statistics.

Simone Collins: Ooh, I love the two steps. [00:49:00] Two steps. Oh, here they are. Ooh. Oh.

Oh.

Oh, oh, oh my gosh. We get started here. Yeah. Whoa. Just

Malcolm Collins: looking at the statistics and reacting.

Simone Collins: Yeah. When they, when they got this, this data back, they must have been like, this is a gold mine. This

Malcolm Collins: we’re cooked NBC, they got this data. This is crazy. Right.

Speaker 6: So wait, explain. What are you doing? Oh, I’m gonna, the bug designed, they’re gonna put it on the As. Hey, look. There’s a tunnel that look. That tunnel. What’s, [00:50:00] oh, wow. Be careful. There might be a bity bug. A bity bug. Don’t stick your hands in dark holes. What kind of bugs have you found? Oh. We already found one where we got away, wait, you remember the book that was rolling up into a ball?

Speaker 9: A Rolly pully. Oh, I know what it was called. It was it. It was, we Pull. Okay. It was, it’s called an Isopod as well, by the way, guys. Oh wow. It’s called an Isopod and when. They roll up into a ball.

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