The Evolution of Bride Prices in China

In this intriguing discussion, Malcolm and Simone dive into the historical and contemporary practices of dowries and bride prices, questioning whether modern society should consider revisiting these traditions. From the surprising origins of Santa Claus to the practice's prevalence across cultures, they explore why dowries and bride prices have persisted through time. They also delve into how such traditions impact social structures, fertility rates, and economic advantages for young couples. The episode pivotally highlights the modern variations within Silicon Valley and effective altruist circles, including the phenomenon of 'marriage bounties.' Join them as they unpack the multifaceted layers of these age-old customs and their potential relevance today.

[00:00:00]

Simone Collins: Hello, Malcolm. I'm so excited to be here with you today because I have something on my mind and we need to talk through it because I don't know, should we return to selling women as brides and should we be selling off our children as partners? And you also

Malcolm Collins: told me that this happened frequently, like way more recently than I thought.

Like, yeah, no, we're gonna

Simone Collins: go into it. We're gonna go into it. I mean, also like, can it be so wrong if like, literally this practice gave birth to Santa Claus? Wait, what? Hold on. Wait. Well, on Saint Nicholas became famous for secretly providing dowry money to three impoverished sisters, saving them from a life of destitution and prostitution.

That is where Saint Nicholas, like, it's one of his famous things. And that really this, this stalking tradition comes from this, this, this, this myth perhaps, or story of him having. Put gold coins in their shoes or stockings that were drying by the fire at night. You didn't know [00:01:00] this. Come on, you know your Christmas lore.

Malcolm Collins: I didn't know that this was women so that they could buy husbands. I didn't know. That's

Simone Collins: the thing. It's like this is so pervasive and what our whole thing about culture is. As a culture, if you want to maintain relevancy and strength, you should look to traditions that other cultures have widely adopted that appear to correlate with thriving in some way, and ask yourself, Hey, should I maybe be doing this?

And keep in mind that in higher fertility rate countries which are developing countries, 65 to 75% have bride prices or variants of that tradition. Whereas in developed countries, virtually 0% have these. Now, although I'm gonna argue actually that's not quite true.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But in, in Rich Silicon Valley culture is quite common.

But well, basically, like

Simone Collins: both historically and presently, the most wealthy and educated people are still doing it. So Yeah. But like. What, what academics will probably tell you is like, well, [00:02:00] it's lower than 5% in developed countries and only those are like backwards immigrant communities. And I don't know about that guys.

The, the fertility rates of cultures that still practice this are. They're higher. There, there are obviously a lot of things that are wrong with these things, but what they do do is actually kind of, it has me, you and I need to have a talk on whether or not we're gonna do some variant of this.

Because think about it. They, they legitimize marriage. You know, you're, you're, you're, when you add a cost to something, you make it a bigger deal. You increase commitment. Switching costs, like divorce is a much bigger deal, you know?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, so I think a huge part of this is switching costs.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I think that that's why it develops so frequently as a, as a a practice because you know, you're much less likely to get divorced or go off and try to marry multiple people if you have to pay a bunch of money to do it.

Simone Collins: We'll get to that. Can you? But like, also like it gets the family involved. So it wasn't, it's not just that money was attached to this, it's that like. Your mom and your dad and maybe your grandparents and [00:03:00] maybe even your broader like family has contributed to your marriage, like happening financially.

And they're gonna be pissed if you cheat or you, you know, are a bad spouse or you screw it up somehow. And like, I think that that pressure's really good. And we need to have parents become more involved in their kids' matchmaking anyway. Plus in many of these traditions, the money actually goes to the couple.

Gives them a nest egg, which is one of those like, sort of sticking points these days where, you know, couples feel like, well, I can't get married, I can't start a family because I don't have, you know, I can't buy a house. I can't do money. And, and one of the more common forms of dowries and bride prices is, is indeed property is, is is most commonly money.

This is the stuff that can really get a family started. So I'm like, oh gosh.

Yeah. Well, so first, just to clarify for those who are not very familiar with bride prices or dowries, dowries are what parents of a woman, like a young lady, will pay to the husband's family or the, the husband [00:04:00] for. Basically marrying off their, their daughter bride. Prices are what grooms families or grooms pay for brides.

And the difference in when there's a bride price or a dowry comes down to some interesting factors. And just to be clear. Most cultures practice bride prices, dowries are actually pretty unusual. But I actually think that based on the criteria that we're gonna go over, that maybe dowries are what more developed countries should be considering.

So bride prices are more common in. Polygamous cultures where you have multiple wives versus dowries where it's, it's more common to be in monogamous cultures where there's a scarcity of wealthy women. And then bride prices. In contrast, they're more common where like manual labor is valued over capital.

So they're more like rural pastoral agricultural, and where women's labor is really crucial for the family survivor survivals. So you're paying for women because they're [00:05:00] rare and you really need them and you're, you're kind of desperate to get wise. That

Malcolm Collins: makes a lot of sense. So, yeah, when I think about where dowries are more often paid, they're like in like wealthy medieval European nobility, right?

Mm-hmm. We're like, the girls are not out working a farm and you're getting into monogamous relationships. Yeah. You're really sort of paying for the monogamy.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And where bride prices are most common now are still in Africa for the most part. Like they're super pervasive in Africa. I had an

Malcolm Collins: friend who told me about a wedding she went to when we were in college together and she went down for, yeah.

A wedding. And she said what they would do is they would lay out all of the things they had bought as a Pro Bob Bride price. Whoa. In front of all the wedding guests, right? Oh, you showed it. All, all the wedding guests get to go up and look and inspect to see like how much. Like nice fabric. Was this woman worth?

Like that's one of the big things she said is, wow, you have like, just, yeah. Yeah. Because

Simone Collins: yeah, in some cases, traditional clothing is given jewelry, gold

Malcolm Collins: animals, et cetera. Mm-hmm. And so the [00:06:00] guests could go up and inspect the things that were given for the bride price, which was actually a quite fun thing to do in a wedding.

And quite like in your face flex, so you can't really cheat it, right? Like,

Speaker 4: yeah,

Malcolm Collins: you as a, you have to put it on the table and everyone gets to see it. That

Speaker 4: is, I feel it's like a son,

Malcolm Collins: Are gonna be like, mom, dad, I'm gonna look very bad in front of her entire family if you don't put this stuff up there.

Like it's not handled in secret. Well, I mean, it's

Simone Collins: still functionally done, I think in many modern western weddings where they just like blow money on the party. I'd rather end up with like really nice stuff that you can use as a new couple.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Instead of blowing it on the party to show how good it is.

Yeah. And I think that that's like a form of a bride price that still exists because remember the, the woman's parents are often expected to pay for the wedding. Yeah, yeah. Right. In

Simone Collins: western

Malcolm Collins: culture. The husband, yes.

Simone Collins: The, the, the man's parents pay for the rehearsal dinner and the woman's parents pay for the wedding, I think is the, which, which

Malcolm Collins: is akin to a bride price, given how much weddings can cost.

But if you're talking [00:07:00] about, actual like bride prices in western cultures that you keep referring to. What she's referencing here is the frequency in Silicon Valley and rationalists and tech elite culture of marriage bounties.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So I can give you one example. I, I, I was thinking about reading off some more like private marriage bounties.

In fact, even there are people who listen to this podcast who have open marriage bounties out. Yeah, they're, they're extremely common and I think they're a great idea. They also allow, they're typically marriage bounties as practiced by people in or adjacent to the effective altruist irrationalist communities who are.

Pervasive in these, in these circles throughout Europe and the United States. They put up the bounties themselves. New York Times has done articles about them. Both men and women put them up. They're often, typically, they range from like 10,000 to a hundred thousand dollars. I decided I wasn't gonna read any of the more like, you know, personal ones.

But, but Ala has recently put out a $100,000 marriage bounty [00:08:00] and she put it very publicly on her substack. So I feel like we can talk about that.

Malcolm Collins: That's a, yeah, that's a very public bride press. Like that's not a trivial sum. That's a hundred thousand. And I've seen other. For 10,000, a hundred thousand, 50,000.

This is the price range that you typically get. Yeah.

Simone Collins: And, and here's how it's presented, because I think the way she presents it is, is fairly representative of what they look like in terms of a cultural custom within this community today. She wrote, I have a 100,000 bounty on my marriage. If you introduce me to someone who I end up marrying, I'll pay you 100 k upon marriage.

Here are some details. One, they shouldn't already be on my radar as someone I might be interested in. Two, you must make the intro explicitly in the context of this is for your bounty. If I casually meet them at a party, you threw this or that you threw. This doesn't count. Three. Send me a small blurb of why you picked them and why you think we'd get along.

Four. You have to be the first person to make the recommendation if things hit this. If things hit this part way, like maybe it's a gray area on how [00:09:00] much of an acquaintance that person was to me before, or if I'd already had the intention of asking them out, then I'll give a portion of the bounty that feels equivalent to.

The degree to which you increased my odds, I can confirm the fraction. It feels equivalent to me after you make the recommendation. But before I meet the person, or if we go out on our first date or whatever, it also counts. If you get them to fill out my Date Me survey, you can go to Knowing Less and fill out her Date me survey.

Just make sure they, oh, and

Malcolm Collins: remember, this counts as us introducing you.

Simone Collins: Yeah, they, she writes make sure they list your name in the, who recommended You question. So please recommend Simone Collins or, and or Malcolm Collins because. You know, they could use the money of

Malcolm Collins: recommendation. No, but this is, this is I, I think a very fair way to do it, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I, it's, I mean, ALA is, is much more organized about it. Like in her date, me quiz, like she checks a whole bunch of things about your personal, you know, anxiety levels, your income level how you know, your sexual proclivities because she, she knows herself really well. The bounties that [00:10:00] people put out.

More commonly, they'll like post something on Facebook of all places. That seems to be the most common place where they post them. And it will be in the form of a Google Doc that a lot of people can, it's a publicly posted Google Doc, so anyone can click through to it and see. And it's typically a list of like, sort of criteria.

And here's some stuff about me and here's what I'm looking for. And here's the bounty. And you know, here's how to, here's how to specify that you are making the introduction or here's how to reach out if you think that you are this person. And. I, I love this. I wish that we had more organized data on how effective it is, but a lot of people are doing them and.

You know, I think there's, there's some, there's something to it. Well, I wanna create

Malcolm Collins: a dating site that was just for them. And the reason it would work so well is because you could have the dating site get a portion of the price. Oh. So you have a, a, a inbuilt monetization method, uhhuh, and you don't actually need to find people to sign up at the site.

You could give up portion of the money to whoever posted it on the site. [00:11:00] So you can have people go out and scour for these posts about, hmm. Pitches to the general public, put the post on the site and then they in the site, get a portion of somebody finds the person through the site.

Simone Collins: That's a fun idea.

Yeah, we, we should consider doing that. Because yeah, I also want these people to find their partners. Like these are, are very awesome people who I want to see, find love, and have cute children. Cute, nerdy children who are terminally online, who can marry our children maybe for a bride price or for a dowry.

So the, the money shall flow. It's gonna be great. But also this is not the first time elite groups. That are also technophilic and capitalistic and all that have, have practiced this, this tradition of, of selling off their children. Have you heard Malcolm of the Dollar princesses?

Malcolm Collins: No, tell me about this.

Simone Collins: So the era of the dollar princesses spanned roughly from the 1870s to the early 19 hundreds. And it peaked during the Gilded Age. So because that [00:12:00] HBO shows out right now, a lot of people are actually talking about the dollar princesses online. The periods of wealthy American hesses, often from newly rich industrialist or financier families marrying into European aristocracy, particularly the British nobility.

And this was. Sort of a, it was a, it was a, they were all marriages of convenience for the most part, because what you had was this, this marketplace of noble families in the UK who could not make money from their properties the same way the Industrial Revolution kind of ruined their ability to like make money from their land the way they used to.

And they're just being crushed by taxes and they couldn't afford anything and their manners were falling apart. So they were penniless, but prestigious. And then you had all these. Zero prestige, but money rich people in the United States, industrialists who were like, well, I wanna be fancy. I'm just gonna marry off my daughter to like a Duke, and then she'll be really fancy.

Yeah. And, and you think, well, okay, whatever. Like this wasn't very influential. But no, these, these [00:13:00] marriages produced very culturally significant effects. Consider there was a. Lady Randolph Churchill. That's Winston Churchill's mom. We have Winston Churchill thanks to Dollar Princesses and Dowries.

So not just Santa Claus, Malcolm Winston, bloody Churchill. Okay. Winston

Malcolm Collins: Churchill was the product of one of these sold women. Yeah. So her

Simone Collins: dowry, by the way, which was reportedly $50 million at the time. That's or sorry, $50,000 at the time is, is roughly equivalent to 1.3 million today. So you're saying, oh, hey, list is a hundred thousand dollars.

Now. 1.3 million is a lot. There, there's also another notable person who is produced by dollar princesses is LA Lady. Well, princess Diana. Oh, really? Yeah. She was the daughter of, or sorry, she was a descendant of Francis Ellen work who married in 1880. She's the great grandmother of Princess Diana.

So there are all these like notable and very impactful people. Like one, one of the dollar princesses, Nancy [00:14:00] Lanhum Shaw lady asked her became the first woman to take a seat in the British Parliament. A lot of these women went on to be very influential. Like activists and whatnot. So, you know, these, these were pretty cool.

And they were all, again, the result of, of Dowries. And it's, it's just so interesting to see these traditions compared to kind of the, the, the traditional way of doing it or the way that it's still practiced in places like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Nepal, Indian. Or sorry, Iran, Egypt, Turkey, Azerbaijan, like it's actually, there are a lot of countries where this takes place.

It, it pretty much all ends up being the same thing. It's sort of like these gifts that are transferred, but let's talk about like how we might do it and, and how they're done right and wrong. Because I think that China, and you can get into this is one example of how they are really done wrong and how they can actually suppress fertility create a big problem.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. So go, go into the, the problem that they create in [00:15:00] China,

Malcolm Collins: Are you. I mean, are you sending me, I, I can tell. I

Simone Collins: I can go over it. It's just, Steve talked about it a lot over how it's, it screwed up the real estate market.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, well. So it became really common in China like that you as a man to marry a woman, you're supposed to have.

A house, right? Mm-hmm. And the problem is, is that in China, this is a core store of wealth that they had. 73% of wealth is stored in real estate.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And the price of real estate versus the average daily wage is in like yearly wage. I think it's like. You can look it up for like in, in, mainly in China.

Simone, you should, with ai, I think it's like

Okay, I decided to look this up in post Shanghai at 35.8 years. You'd have to work on average to buy an apartment Beijing at 35.6 years. You'd have to work on average, that's 35 or around 36 years. You'd, the average person in that area would have to work to pay off their apartment [00:16:00] full year's wage.

Speaker 4: Yeah, it's insane.

Malcolm Collins: So even if you did nothing but save, like for most of your life, you wouldn't be able to afford one in a major city. And a lot of this is

Simone Collins: because in, in, in the case of China too, the, the scarce resource is women.

So like when you have men competing over women yeah. Can you look up a number?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, because women are a scarce resource, so you get more and more because not as many women are born as, as as men because they're viewed as worth less. And because this. V version of a dowry sort of goes to the woman in a way when she gets married.

And so it created a situation where it became unrealistic for most people who are going to marry to actually buy a house in the cities. They began to buy houses outside of cities that they never intended to live in as like a token to basically be like. Technically own a house and in China, houses are worth more when they're unfurnished than when they're furnished.

Yeah, because it's bad feng shui with like, if no one has ever lived in them and they've always stayed empty. And so they leave the apartment like that just as like almost like a Chinese [00:17:00] Bitcoin. I call it like the Chinese. But

Simone Collins: worse because, because it inherently devalues these, these cases are now in devalues, now crumbling.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: They're, they're abandoned and

Malcolm Collins: after 99 years you lose your lease on it. So, you know. Yeah.

Simone Collins: And I'm not getting a straight answer, but like, here's, here's just one intro from the Economist. It also shows in cash terms. 'cause in, in China it's not just necessarily property, it could also be cash. Just how, like out of control it is.

This, this article titled Bride Prices are Surging in China. Why is the government struggling to curb them? It starts, marriage in China, can be mercenary. Quote is 380 yuan a lot for a bride price. A woman in Guang Dongs asks on a social media site, she's thinking of getting married and wants to know how much her fiance's family should pay for her hand.

The sum she is suggesting equivalent to nearly $53,000 is more than seven times her annual wage. Thousands reply. Many say she should demand more. Sis, your life is zero. Don't wrong yourself. At least ask for 888. 800 says one. [00:18:00]

Malcolm Collins: Oh. And all of these women like brag about asking for so much and everything like that, and they're mm-hmm.

And guys are like, what's even the point? Right?

Simone Collins: This is like a random woman in, in, in China. She's not fa, I mean, ALA's, ALA's, dowry. Is $100,000 and this random woman is like, well it's 58. You know US dollars equivalent enough. Yeah. So this is just how out of control it gets.

Speaker 7: On December 18th, 2024, AO Young Wewe, a 38-year-old single woman, sparked outrage at a matchmaking event demanding a bride price of 880,000 UN around $121,000, and made it clear that her price would only go up.

Speaker 8: This year it's 880,000. When next year it'll be 1 million.

I'm 38 this year.

Speaker 7: Someone mocked her laughing. Just wait another 10 years.

But after a series of failures, she publicly admitted her regret.

Speaker 8: I'm the woman who asked for 800,000 when as a bride price, [00:19:00] I truly regret it. Now I've wasted my chances..

Speaker 7: An internet user commented, inchi Province, the average bride price is 380,000.

When. About 52,000 USD. But in places like Ling Gang Village, it's far worse. The bride price there ranges from 97,000 to 110,000 USD. Now, compare that to what most people actually earn. The annual income is 16,700 USD.

Simone Collins: So I wouldn't wanna create a cultural practice like if we, for our family religion, were to adopt this where basically people are going into debt or their family's going into debt or like entering some form of insolvency or delaying marriage.

'cause what also happens is a lot of people just start cohabitating. And they just don't get married because they're like, I can't afford to get married. It's kind of like, it's as bad as unsustainably expensive weddings, for example. You don't wanna [00:20:00] do that. So I, I wouldn't wanna do that. I wouldn't wanna do any, any, um mm-hmm.

Like insinuation that one partner owns the other, but like the, the, you know, common complaint especially about dowries, which is what we're looking at in China here. Or, sorry. No, that, that's a bride price about bride prices is that they devalue women and turn them into commodity commodities. But here, like you were saying, these women are bragging.

I would much prefer to be the commodity. Come

Malcolm Collins: on. I, I prefer, I prefer that directionality.

Simone Collins: Yes. No, I mean, like that, that sounds like, so I, I really think this whole thing about, like this devalues women, me, turns people into products that are bought and sold like one. We kind of seem to enjoy it. And two, we should be looking at marriage as like a financial alliance and transaction that, that, you know, where money does change.

Hands, what ideally. In favor of like a nest egg for the couple that gets them started. But still, like people should be reminded that marriage is commercial arrangement. And this is a great way to [00:21:00] prime it that way. And you know, I, I should point out that like, at least in, in some countries there's still like a lot of, there's actual like disputes and demands that, that have led to cases of.

Domestic violence and abuse and even murder. Well, because there, there are dowry deaths in South Asia where brides are harmed or killed over insufficient dowry payments. So, I don't know. I, I just figure you should say no deal. I don't know why people are being killed over this, but I just wanna point out the brides

Malcolm Collins: are killed because the husband didn't give the family enough.

Some examples of this happening. , We have Vima Kai. , This was in 2021 in India. A 22-year-old woman in Carlo was found dead in her husband's home shortly after marriage. Her family alleged she was abused over demands for more dowry, including gold in a car, despite already receiving significant payments.

, Then we have the Jeri family Tragedy, India 2024. An utter ada, a woman named [00:22:00] Anjali Gupta was allegedly killed by her in-laws, , over unmet dowry demands. Her family claimed that she was strangled and her body was staged to the suicide. In a horrific twist, her brother later sought revenge by attacking the accused leading to further death.

I'm not gonna go over more. 'cause obviously it's pretty grizzly and most of these cases are in India or Pakistan.

Simone Collins: N no, because the dowry where the, the wife's family gives the husband's family money. So in

Malcolm Collins: China, which one is common though? I thought, I thought in China, dowry does,

Simone Collins: or, or, or in, in South Asia. I don't think that in China they're as much of an issue. We're probably not talking about Okay. Other South Asian countries for example, in Thailand, there's a form of, of, of.

Payment to the grooms family that's called od that is in cash or gold. And I'm, I'm thinking it probably takes place more there. So it's insane. But I mean, it's, it's also, it, I, I can't emphasize enough just how insane to me it is, [00:23:00] how much this is practiced and how high the prices are in places where people's wealth is much more constrained than the United States like I would consider.

Sending tens of thousands of dollars for a bride price to be like a lot, that's like a big deal. But in Papua New Guinea, that's not uncommon. Mm-hmm. Papua New Guinea. Like, where are they getting this money? So I don't know, man.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I mean, bread prices are a lot and, and that's one of the reasons why I do not like them from a prenatal list perspective,

Speaker 3: Uhhuh.

Malcolm Collins: Because it puts the genetically successful families intrinsically on the back foot. The, the more kids you have, like a family like ours, especially 'cause we're the gender equal. Yeah. We'd never be able to get enough mates for our children.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Unless St. Nicholas. Drop, let's say Nicholas came the stocking express.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You know, they're, they're the, the, the, the boy you're having now as what, like the fifth prince, right. Like kid number five. Right. We, yeah. Want to go for at least seven, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Well, so here's, here's what I, [00:24:00] I, I think is right though, and here's what I would like to look at creating. I think that one, just this concept of.

Because keep in mind also bride prices and dowries are often used in cultures as a form of like early inheritance because it's kind of lame to like wait until you die to give money to kids. And in cultures where kids are more likely to take care of you in your old age anyway, like you wanna invest in them.

Younger. 'cause then they will be more wealthy when you actually need them to take care of you. Does that make sense? So these are more common in places that have crumbling social services because parents are actively investing in their social safety net. And that means giving their kids the best early start possible.

Yeah. Do does it So, because, explain what you mean by this. Okay. So if I know that I'm going to depend on my son or daughter to take care of me in old age. I'm not going to want to wait until I die to give them money.

Speaker 4: Oh,

Simone Collins: because I'm gonna be living in their fricking house. I'm gonna be dependent on [00:25:00] either them having the time or staff to take care of me and buy me medicine.

And our children are gonna need the staff to take care of us. We require many staff. I, yes, we, we need good care. And so if we were to wait until we literally died to give them money. One, like already that's too little, too late. Like they, they're so far like the cumulative advantage that early money gives to people.

I mean, just con alone considering compound interest. But if you're also thinking about education in early career games, I mean, everything snowballs.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: When a, when you're talking about a young couple, you wanna give them that money at the beginning of their adulthood, not late. And that's something that's really smart, especially about dowries and bride prices that go directly to the bride and groom.

And I, you know, it. It doesn't have cash is the most popular way for this to be, but even giving them a place to live livestock, which could be like their economic means of starting a business, for example. Mm-hmm. Or even clothing. That means they don't have to buy the clothing. So I don't really care what the form is, but if it, [00:26:00] it gets them a headstart, a jumpstart, especially if you're gonna depend on them anyway in the future.

There is an incentive for that. And so I love, I love this idea of, of frontloading your financial support to children or at least sorry, to young adults so that they are more likely to get those cumulative benefits in the future. The money's gonna go further if you give it earlier. So part of me was thinking like, well, maybe instead of like creating education savings accounts or like 5, 2, 9 accounts or even like, you know, trust funds or whatever, giving, like creating funds that like give grants to your children upon their marriage that are, you know, contingent on, on that one, motivates them to get married.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Like imagine if Trust fund kids only got their money if they got married and started having kids. They'd get married, you know, like now they're just like sluts at Coachella.

Like think of all the wonderful

Malcolm Collins: things. There's no point. You're right. It reduces the [00:27:00] point of getting married. Yeah. If you don't get some big boost. Mm-hmm. Like you, you're basically getting a proto inheritance at the point of marriage which you don't get today, which encourages early marriage.

Simone Collins: Yeah, exactly. And you could even make it, that's, it's very clever

Malcolm Collins: actually.

Simone Collins: You could make it a trust and you could make trust payments very contingent on things like this has to be for education, fertility, maybe a down payment on a house, like the kinds of things that would lead to a family's long-term flourishing.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: And. We've already talked about like if, if we ever, if we ever do a savings that we can allocate to our descendants that we would want to be able to cover things like IVF and egg freezing and embryo freezing and, and that kind of thing on, and also matching funds for starting a business.

Remember how we, yes, we were gonna do that. One of the things we fantasized about is having like a trust for descendants, but also like people who come into the family essentially. Where you [00:28:00] don't just give a kid money, like a grandkid or whatever, money for starting a business if they come to you with a business proposition.

You can agree to match funds raised from other parties, like legitimate third parties that do not, you know, that are not friends and family that are literally investing in them because they think it's a good idea. Well, that's what we've,

Malcolm Collins: we've decided to do. Yeah. With our kids.

Simone Collins: But I, I think that that dowries in the form of.

Investments like this are, are great that, you know, you have to be married. And then as a couple you will then unlock access to things like university education that's paid for things like IVF embryo freezing things like maybe housing subsidies or matching funds for. Investment in business. Because that would encourage people to start their families when otherwise they'd be like, oh, well I'm gonna wait.

I'm gonna wait to start my family until after I have a house or my college education. And here you need to get married to get those things. And you just [00:29:00] need to find ways in society to like flip that around. Mm-hmm. So I, I think it's a, I'm excited wanna

Malcolm Collins: do that. I like that. If we have the wealth to do it.

Yeah, I, I think it's better just to give them arranged marriages and to, oh, we're doing

Simone Collins: that anyway. But like, that's the other thing though, is that Dowries bride prices and arranged marriages all go hand in hand. I mean, the many of these are, are negotiated between the families. This isn't like a. Like just putting it out there, like signing the window $58,000 for my daughter.

Well that's, that's the

Malcolm Collins: way ALA's works. You know, find a guy who's good enough for me and you get the money.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, because she doesn't have her family's involvement, but like, at least traditionally, like the cultural technology that appears to have been pervasively practiced across. Literally across the world.

I mean, like, again, St. Nicholas, this, this whole tradition, this was in Europe, you know, dowries were very popular in Europe until you could argue fairly recently. And then of course we still have dollar [00:30:00] princesses in the United States, so dowries are totally still a thing. So they've been in the United States, they've been in Europe, they're still very active in Africa.

They are, they're pretty common in East Asia, in the Middle East. I mean there, there's kind of no region of the world in Oceania as well, in fricking Papua New Guinea. So. When you see a cultural technology like this that is so pervasive

Speaker 3: mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: You have to ask yourself why is it pervasive? Yeah. If this many, if this many cultures have spontaneously evolved this amenity, we should take it somewhat seriously, even if it has a bad rep.

Because it, it's, you know, again, Winston Churchill, Santa Claus, princess Diana. Good things have come from this. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: I'm, I'm a little too excited about it. Yeah, I think that the way that it's practiced in rationalist circles right now is a very good thing. I mean, it, it's sort of a sign of the [00:31:00] breakdown of marriage markets, to be honest.

It's totally desperation to try to find somebody. And I've seen it work. We know a couple who got married based on this, who had been trying to find a wife for a very long time and she'd been trying to find a husband for a long time. And I think they both had prices out. Very, I I had actually looked at one of their like sheets.

No, he, he did. And I looked at a sheet before and I knew this woman and I never thought of her. 'cause you know, she was older and had a kid already. But apparently somebody else did and they were right. So I could have had that money, I could have had that man, Malcolm,

Simone Collins: we could have been rich, could have been rich.

We, we just have to find ALA's future husband. You know, her special sum pony is out there. I

Malcolm Collins: promise if we get this money, we will spend it all on drugs. That's the point. That's the point. We, I have never seen a hundred thousand dollars of cocaine and. How, how much, how big would that be? I literally have no idea.

I've never bought cocaine. I have no idea what cocaine is. Size? Yeah. Like

Simone Collins: a, a brick. I, I [00:32:00] don't know. I've always

Malcolm Collins: thought it'd be really fun to win the Nobel Prize and to blow it on cocaine. Take a selfie with it, you know, like, Nobel Prize baby.

Simone Collins: Oh my God. But we're gonna be

Malcolm Collins: partying for a week.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that would be it would be a i, I.

Come on. What are the odds that someone hasn't already done that though?

Malcolm Collins: Very high. I, I do not think that many people who have the mental cogency and facilities to win a Nobel Prize are doing enough drugs to blow the entire Nobel Prize on drugs. No, there

Simone Collins: was that famous some famous scientist or something who.

Went cold Turkey for like a month or something because his friends bet that he couldn't. Oh yeah, I forgot. And then he wrote something about like. Clearly I'm able to do it, but the cost to humanity is so grave. You know, something along those lines.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Basically they were like, you can't actually quit this.

And he is like, I did, but I wasn't [00:33:00] productive during that period. Yeah. It's like,

Simone Collins: well now cancer isn't cured. You idiot. I needed that. You know, so, okay. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Maybe you're right. You know, we got, we got Elon's thing here that every, the news is complaining about. And clearly he's productive. It's

Simone Collins: working for him.

Whatever it is, he's doing power to the people. You know? He's, he's got his, he's got his mix. Keep it up. Yep. Right. And on all these people, there's, they're so, they're such hypocrites. Like, don't talk to me before I've had my coffee. Come on.

Malcolm Collins: I love it. I, I, by the way, take. Narcotic, everybody, they see me take it sometimes as well, which is an opioid agonist that prevents me from feeling happiness, the opposite of any narcotic that a normal person would take.

Yeah. But I take it to dull my emotional state, so I'm not as prone to addiction. And I, I love that. That is, our family's like, could you be more puritan? Right. You're taking, you take illicit drugs to. Block opioid pathway. So is it [00:34:00] dopamine and cannot cause you too much happiness?

Simone Collins: But that's the thing is, is the, we'll just say, so we don't use this keyword too much.

The supplementation that you choose to take, the substances you imbue are a reflection of your cultural values. And 100% can help you lean into what you think is most important. I mean, you here, you had Benjamin Franklin convince a bunch of staff members that he was working with at one point to switch from.

Their daily beer rations to like bread because he's like, it's gonna make you more productive. You're, you're all just too sloshed to work. And he was just so adamant about shifting them away from that. And then you was he

Malcolm Collins: so proud of himself. Of course. Being who he is, he was

Simone Collins: proud of himself for freaking everything he did.

That is like

Malcolm Collins: everything in his autobiography. Yeah. You,

Simone Collins: you guys, if you've not read Benjamin Franklin's autobiography,

Malcolm Collins: you've missed out. He's from Eddie. And prideful that it actually loops around a likability.

Simone Collins: Every stupid little thing from like the loaves of bread. He, the rolls. He's stuck in his [00:35:00] pockets when he first went to Philadelphia.

Malcolm Collins: It's funny because you know, history or my me of his great figure, if he could have known that history, would remember him this way. Oh, he'd be, oh my gosh,

Simone Collins: he'd be even more insufferable. But I don't know if that's possible. 'cause during his lifetime he was also,

Malcolm Collins: he would've been like, it worked out well.

But no, this is one of these things where, people wonder, there's some people out there who, who worry if they did right? Or if they did enough, you know? And, and. I always feel bad for that, those famous people. 'cause I'm like, what? You went down in history, like your van goghs and stuff like that. You know what I mean?

Yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah. You wanna like go back and give them a pat on the back and say, you did good old boy. Yeah. Actually things

Malcolm Collins: work out. You know,

Simone Collins: Benjamin Franklin, you know. No.

Malcolm Collins: It's like, no. He like, I'm the greatest in the best that everything I knew he was kind of

Simone Collins: the Trump of his time.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You know what I mean?

He actually very, I, I'd say he was more Trump than Trump.

Simone Collins: Oh. Freaking Probably, actually. Yeah, probably

Malcolm Collins: actually. Because Trump has inside some level of insecurity that you could often [00:36:00] see. Yeah. Benjamin Franklin doesn't seem to have had this. That's

Simone Collins: so true. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and, and then you have the one other figure, figure in history.

And I, I will go down as a figure in history. Me, I, Hey, come on. The, the prenatal movement, I think basically we've already won in terms of public recognition. It's very obvious it's gonna be a continued threat. I am seen as the leading voice was in the movement. Yeah, I mean the

Simone Collins: numbers

Malcolm Collins: are there that will be written about like when a history book is written in 20 years or 30 years, they're gonna be like, oh, and during this period was the beginning of the perinatal list movement with prominent advocates like Simone and Malcolm Collins.

That's like the very least that would be written about us. Also the first people to publicly genetically select for iq. You know, so that's, that's something that will also be written about. And obviously how expansive that becomes. Is it a footnote or is it, you know, and then they became well-known philosophical influencers of their era.

Or [00:37:00] they started a new political coalition or work key figures in building it that. That hasn't been written right? Like obviously there's things we're trying for. But if we do achieve those, and I am remembered in history, be it known that I am quite pleased with myself I. Simone knows this.

I'm not one of these, I'm not a Van Gogh over here. You know, looking at the wall, that's not some tortured soul. Am I the greatest and the best? It's like, will people realize I'm the greatest and the best? Yeah. When

Simone Collins: will they figure that one out? But here's the thing is a lot of people are like that. You actually walk the walk.

I, I observe you. I see you and I I like what you got, sir. I mean, we're already

Malcolm Collins: there in terms of being like, you know, the Ben Franklin of his period where he,

Simone Collins: he did a lot of stuff. I mean, we literally have inventions he made in our house. Yeah. We have two Franklin Stoves in our house, and [00:38:00] it's kind of wild that they're there, that our kid co our kids constantly shove things in there, in

Malcolm Collins: interacted with, all of the intellectual influencers of his time. Like he knew a lot of them, they were friends of his. And I feel like we're already at that stage, right? Like,

Simone Collins: yeah, he was going to whatever the hereon of his time was,

Malcolm Collins: I guess kind of

Simone Collins: the, the Palace of Versailles was kind of like heretic.

Malcolm Collins: I know. I think the heretic con of his time was the, the National Congress at that period.

The, I don't

Simone Collins: know though. No, that was just a, it was too much arguing. It wasn't sufficiently indulgent and fun. You have to go to a French salon in that period. And the ultimate fancy French salon essentially was Versailles at the time. I think. So that's,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. And one of the things we, we frequently talk about it, this is that it's always surprising to me how few intellectual influencers actually matter.

Oh, you mean?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Right. So this, this whole thing, something we, we talk about a lot internally when making strategic decisions about where our time should be applied [00:39:00] is. Is this something that is going to be filled by any competent person who will just make the most optimal decision? Or is this something where, depending on who does this thing, it will change the trajectory of our timeline of human history?

Because there are so many people in the media who are only famous media figures because they're saying the thing that people wanna hear at the time when they wanna hear it. And so they get this big platform and what they're saying isn't changing anyone's view. And then there are these very rare influencers who are saying stuff that.

Really no one asked to hear. Yeah. But is actually changing people's minds. And those people are, are quite unusual. Like Jordan Peterson, all this like daddy stuff. I mean, he's just saying, you know, make your bed like he's make, he's saying stuff that people wanna hear at this time that makes him feel really good.

He's not. He's, he's, he's helping some people get their lives [00:40:00] together for sure, but he's not changing the trajectory of human thought or philosophy or history.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And the people that are, that, the interesting thing about them, and I didn't expect this growing up, is that. They find each other within any generation.

Yeah. And they have a network, like they all know each other. Yeah. And, and it was interesting. Yeah. Like you had

Simone Collins: these like people who hung out in, in, in Venetian cafes at the turn of the century from the 18 hundreds to the 19 hundreds. And, and you have this, this period in colonial America where all these people are writing the Federalist papers.

Yeah, you're right. It's just these weird clusters where they like all know each other weird. And like artists who all knew each other at like the same time. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: each. It's very weird. Yeah. But when you talk to somebody who you know is very influential, and they're like, oh, and I've watched all your podcast episodes.

This happened to me recently, and I was like, you've. You what? Like you are what? You you are, you're famous. Why have you watched all of my podcast episodes? You know, and I, and people I think are surprised by, they think that the level of like influence, somebody has [00:41:00] somebody who I, I mentioned who has an extreme level of influence within this sphere, like the influencer, influencer sphere.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: But very low influence in the public is Samia Samia

Simone Collins: branch. How. Very, like

Malcolm Collins: these people are changing. Shockingly low. If you go to his YouTube channel, because I've been watching some of his recently Uhhuh,

Simone Collins: he's

Malcolm Collins: got like 3,600 followers on YouTube.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But he has like, the thing is, so people like Scott Alexander Samberg, Brian Chow, these are people who may be like your average normie on the street isn't hearing, so you might be like, well, they're not changing the trajectory of history.

But the problem is that like the people in the room where the stuff happens and the people with the money and the people making major geopolitical decisions are reading these people's work and. They're reading it, not. Yeah. Like trying to make decisions and they're not reading

Malcolm Collins: and they're not reading Jordan Peterson.

No, they're, I love that you even laugh at the idea that they might, it's, it's a sweet idea. [00:42:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah. That's not

Malcolm Collins: happening. That's not happening. No, that's

Simone Collins: right. That's very sweet.

Malcolm Collins: No, but it's, so people act like, I think there's, there's this perception that the people who are creating these big cultural waves it was in the zeitgeist have a lot more influence than they do in sort of the.

The actual deal makers, which has been very interesting to me as well, to sort of see all of this. And I think of the people who are in this group we're probably the most introspective about the culture of this community and everything, because it's been very weird to me to watch it develop and congregate and, and, and how it, I don't know.

I think Bradow is

Simone Collins: very, he's way more plugged into to like the EA rat. Well, no, like so Scott Alexander's way, way more plugged into ea rat. Brian Cha is way more plugged into like younger emergent ventures diaspora, like AI tech. Fel, Kiki Kaori idiot savant world. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, I don't know.

I think that there's, there's a lot of hyper awareness. Well, a lot of them. I

Malcolm Collins: mean, they have their [00:43:00] individual, like Dutch Doms or whatever, fiefdoms, fiefdoms, fiefdoms. But we've got fiefdoms too. I mean, we, our discord is incredibly active. It's so cool.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like you just don't go to our fiefdom. You don't visit, you don't.

Yeah. I wouldn't know because you live in the capitol and refuse and, and it's been growing out of control that people are mad at you and everything, you know, they're, they're. So many discords have like revolted against the people who originally created them. I heard Ruby Yards did that to him.

This is so guy after the

Simone Collins: incident or just after

Malcolm Collins: the incident, you know, who knows if it's, well, I, I don't even, like,

Simone Collins: people have gone back to like, people love him, people love him. They just, they understand, you know, everyone has a moment.

Malcolm Collins: I, I've heard it's been pretty and not just after the incident, I think even before the incident he had, unfortunately, and this is one of the things he had unfortunately reached a level of fame where he became Normy esque.

And the Normy esque branding, I think, caused people to be looking for opportunities to turn against him. Oh, [00:44:00] yeah. The brand that you and I appeal to is counter-cultural. It's the brand that Ruby Art appeals to. Oh, we

Speaker 4: get criticism all the time. What? This is not beast enough. And we may even get that on this episode.

White Selling Women not, not Sufficiently

Malcolm Collins: Beast. No. The point that's not, that, it's not just what I'm talking about. I think you look at why, you know. Sam Obia has had a long shelf life, or munches, mal bug. You know, another one of these people we've had on, that's one of our episodes, it did really well.

Curtis Jarvin you know, he he I think would have his audience eventually turn against him if he became too famous because part of his branding is underground.

Simone Collins: Curtis Jarvin is probably one. Yeah, he's definitely one of those people.

Malcolm Collins: And if he became like a Normie YouTube channel that gets millions of views like Ruby Yard people are gonna start to turn against him.

And I, and that's what I think happened to Ruby Yard is Ruby Yard's. A branding was partially underground.

Simone Collins: Well, what I'm I'll, what I'll say though is that [00:45:00] the comments that I see about him online now, and I'm really happy to see this. Very positive. Love his recent stuff. He's, I think that he did the thing that you should do in these situations, which is just keep putting out good content, share your insights.

Like as long as you keep putting out good stuff that's inherently interesting, and that gets people thinking, you know, you, you can, you can recover, you know, as long as you just don't keep going off the rails. And he has returned to, to doing some really great stuff, so.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But anyway. Yeah, sell your children.

Sell your children

Speaker 3: to me. It,

Simone Collins: it really, I think my big thing here is front load, their, the economic benefits that you pass to your children. Don't, don't wait. And also make it contingent on becoming an adult. And we define becoming an adult as getting married and seriously starting like a family.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. [00:46:00] Okay.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, it's just so weird when I reflect on my life these days. So thanks for helping me build this, Simone. This has been really cool.

Simone Collins: I'm here for you and,

Malcolm Collins: We can't talk about everything we're doing right now. I, I often say that maybe in a few weeks

Simone Collins: we can ask them when we go.

What they're comfortable with us saying, but I don't want to burn future opportunities.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and stuff always ends up leaking with us, which really frustrates me. Like, look,

Simone Collins: in

Malcolm Collins: the, in the past we've said like, oh, we like, people have been like, oh, you don't actually. They're like, nobody actually cares who you guys are.

And then it, you know, leaks like a year later, oh, they were actually meeting with Elon. You know, and it's like, okay. And we, I just, I have no idea how that stuff to come, come from us,

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

Malcolm Collins: I, I literally think the New York Times may have made it up and it just, there was nothing we could do about it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I don't know. At any rate, keep your mouth shut. Milk. [00:47:00] I'm keeping it shut. Thank you. Beautiful.

Malcolm Collins: I'm keeping it. I'm gonna edit all of it out, all of them. I've already packed

Simone Collins: my eggs for them. If they cancel on us, you know, for some, you know, oh, it's a waste of eggs. They're already in my basket A little.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You bought little baskets to bring them eggs and Yeah,

Simone Collins: of

Malcolm Collins: course.

Simone Collins: If they let, if they let us through security, we'll see. Anyway, I love you. I'm go get toasty. Bye. Tonight

Malcolm Collins: with sourdough, hold on.

Simone Collins: Flatbread.

Malcolm Collins: So we're doing curry tonight? Yes. With sourdough flatbread. Do you know what type of curry or just gonna grab one?

Simone Collins: I mean, so I can try to pull out I, I know that we have rendang. I know that we have.

It's like a pineapple or

mango curry. But do you have pineapple?

There's also just the mystery, surprise, curries mystery, surprise

Malcolm Collins: curries. So are, are we, by the way, have we gone through all the chicken teriyaki?

Simone Collins: No, there's a whole other bag of it. It's just that I'm making you flatbread tonight.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, no, I'm, I'm not [00:48:00] asking for it. I'm just wondering how much more I have to eat before I can have more.

You have three more

Simone Collins: nights of it. You have three more nights of it. And then just so much I'll note

Malcolm Collins: on other dishes, by the way, because I need to, as we go through the mystery stuff, because you haven't made it this day. So I'm not like, you know, just seeing it for the first time, I can better. Reflect on how much I like it.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The, the best of the dishes has been the what appeared to be minced either

Simone Collins: oh, that's all gone. Yeah. We're, we're gonna need to do more.

Malcolm Collins: Or basil chicken.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It was the Burmese chicken that you really loved. And we need to get more Thai basil. What I recommend is next week we go to that Asian market, get a ton of T Basil, and then I just make a very large batch.

Of minced Burmese mint chicken and then we save it. So you, you can have lots because the problem is it seems like we can only get that really good basil in bulk and you know.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and we can get some mint there too. No, what I might do when we get it in, in [00:49:00] bulk is I think you can probably preserve it given that, turning it into pesto, preserves it in a way just by putting the leaves in olive oil.

And to create an olive oil basil. So basically

Simone Collins: to make pesto just don't add anything to it. You just want me to grind up the leaves and put them in olive oil?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then we can use them on, I mean, that should work, right? Like, then we'll have, so yeah. Pesto

Simone Collins: is just, I mean, you usually freeze pesto if you're not gonna use it in like a week.

But I can freeze small batches of it. Yeah. Either in ice cubes or whatever. So that's not a problem. It's more just a question of how you want it prepared and frozen on its own, just with olive oil or with a little bit of salt, with a little bit of garlic. So that's up to you.

Malcolm Collins: It might be just to put in a little bit of garlic and.

You know,

Simone Collins: I mean, I can always add garlic separately though, so I feel like,

Malcolm Collins: you know, it's something I, I, I wish you would do more, which you haven't done, and I'm somewhat surprised about is you have not put in God, what [00:50:00] is it? Flacon instead of regular flacon?

Simone Collins: No. So it's, it's, it's bright orange fine dust.

It's not meant for curries. I know you wanted me to put it in, in, in your time ago last night. I, no, why? Why? You won't even try it. Intuitively. It doesn't check out for me. I I can, I'll try it at some point for something for you.

Malcolm Collins: You won't even try, Simone. You can't say it doesn't work if you don't try it.

Simone Collins: Yes, no, you're absolutely right. You never know.

Yeah, you're, you're really good at fusion cooking, just like throwing in. Thanks in a way that actually works really well. So I should trust your intuition. Well,

Malcolm Collins: I mean, the thing is, is I know you, you, you know, in your head it seems like a terrible idea, right?

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. But,

Malcolm Collins: you know, keep in mind that what was I gonna say? A lot of these cultures, flaco is like a new invention that's used in a very niche area, which is popcorn for movie theaters. So I can see other people not being [00:51:00] aware of how good it might be as an alternative to salt.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, Vic calls just, yeah, so, so path dependent in people's minds at this point of like, this is just for movie theater style popcorn that has to be popped also in a very specific way.

Like you need to mix it in with your oil as it's, it's, it's melted. It's, you don't add it after it's, so it air popped popcorn, which is really popular now. It's just not something that seems to use Flavi call. So, yeah, no. Okay. Just in st still, like cooking with it, I'm like,

Speaker 3: hmm. I

Simone Collins: dunno if this bright orange, super fine powder is the right thing, but

Malcolm Collins: phone I, who do you I like it on popcorn.

I don't see why I wouldn't like it on a curry.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I, yeah, I just, I have to be super careful with proportions because a little goes a really long way.

Malcolm Collins: Do you salt my curry?

Simone Collins: No, typically not actually.

Malcolm Collins: Well, then I wouldn't put it on the curry. Yeah, I'd put it on as an [00:52:00] alternative for salt when you use salt.

Okay.

Simone Collins: I will do so do I. Now keep in mind though, some salt. Salt isn't always just salt. Salt sometimes is like a texture agent. Like consider salt on giant pretzels. You want those crunches that adds to the feature of it. So you know the reason you want clavicle is you want a kernel that is coated in flavor.

But. Oh, and for the full tip for everyone, apparently how movie theater popcorn is made is they pop the popcorn in a mixture of coconut oil and clavicle. So if you do like, a third of a cup of popcorn, you're also adding in coconut oil and like half of a tablespoon of clavicle. Or maybe half a teaspoon.

You have to be careful with your proportions, but you can get it easily eat on Amazon. Not at a typical grocery store, but it made a big difference for our popcorn. So highly recommend it. Well, and

Malcolm Collins: all the, and all the reporters come because [00:53:00] you, you make it most nights for the kids, and so they always try it and they're like, wow, that's actually really good popcorn.

Simone Collins: Yeah. They're, they're surprised by it. Oh, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I love that you like know all this stuff about how to make these amazing. That's YouTube

Simone Collins: shorts, like you pointed out, like YouTube shorts are great for cooking tips. So we're just a YouTube family now. People,

Malcolm Collins: people who can't cook. I don't understand it. Like it's such an easy thing.

Like you just follow the directions, right? Well, you don't, but it still comes out good. Well, I don't, but I, I just like throw everything in and take two countries dishes, try switching 'em out. Oh, can I, can I preserve the, the past the, the basally just by throwing them in oil? Anyway, I'll let you, I think it's

Simone Collins: great.

Malcolm Collins: Oh. And start with something like you know, why don't we buy and sell women anymore? Yeah. And is it useful to do that?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay. Ready? Mm-hmm. All [00:54:00] right.

Speaker: A

Speaker 2: can you sing? What? What about your other voice? What was that other way you were singing? Do you were singing like, do a dear, can you do that?

A

Speaker 6: Oh, now you're getting all sweet again. I see how it goes.

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