Navigating Negative Relationship Norms

In this episode, join the conversation as we delve into the provocative topic of 'training' your partner for a healthier relationship. The discussion addresses societal norms, media influences, psychological insights, and personal anecdotes on how to navigate and deprogram toxic behaviors in relationships. We also touch upon common relationship pitfalls such as compromise, emotional arguments, and the importance of logical alignment. Along the way, we highlight the role of transparency, communication, and practical strategies for fostering mutual respect and understanding between partners.

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be talking about how I brainwashed you or trained you or whatever word you want to use into the perfect wife drone that you are to today. As some people, yes, husband. You? No, I mean, you are honestly, remarkably good. Like I, and, and trained is the right word here.

Like we worked for a long time.

Simone Collins: Yeah. This, it didn't start, it didn't, things weren't smooth always.

Malcolm Collins: No, they think they're very smooth. Now, I won't say it's not that they were not smooth, it's that you made more mistakes, but they were understandable mistakes, given the context of the relationship at the time.

Simone Collins: Well, also given societal norms about what normal women do in relationships, which as we've covered in other episodes, is really toxic. So actually, if you want to even have a slightly healthy relationship training of your wife. Is mandatory just because the, the social contract she expects, the societal norms she's coming in with are by default toxic.

They need to be removed. Like you need to, like, this is like, you know, she's coming in like ridden with license. You just like spray her down and like the, the,

Malcolm Collins: I'll give you an example of something like this because, you know, she might be saying this and if you're a woman or something like that, you're like, oh my gosh, come on, this isn't true.

And I'm like, you. If you are a woman of our generation, you went through an entire generation of media whether it's the Simpsons or Family Guy or any of these sitcom shows where the stereotype was that you have a fat, dumb husband. Mm-hmm. And the wife's job was to sit there in the background and make snide remarks about his competence mm-hmm.

In front of other people. Yeah. And then actually just go do what is actually right because he can't handle it on his own. Because he's just such a buffoon.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It was always just eye rolling and undermining your husband and that that was just so normalized

Malcolm Collins: and, and, and no, and so many women are like, I haven't been brainwashed into being, you know, by, by, by the culture I'm in to being a psycho.

And it's like, think about. Just, just think about like, if you're a woman watching this, all of this that you grew up with, do you not think that that influenced your norms about the way you might act in a relationship at all? Like do Yeah. If you,

Simone Collins: if you wanna believe that that didn't influence you, you're just delusional.

I mean, we, we, there is, there is lots of evidence. There are plenty, and we talked about this a little bit in our episode on. Propaganda how TV shows and radio shows have shaped behavior even going so far as to, for example, in Brazil, depressed birth rates when you make an aspirational middle class family have lower numbers of children, specifically in places where this one network soap operas played, their fertility rates went down.

It didn't play in every region of Brazil and in the regions that were not exposed to this. Birth grades didn't go down. So absolutely media influences us and absolutely we need to be thoughtful about deprogramming people if they've been exposed to this.

Malcolm Collins: It's not just media. The other huge problem that we have is really bad psychological norms in terms of how you should act in a relationship.

Mm-hmm.

EEG, like that you guys should have cooling off periods or that you should build your relationship around compromise. Mm-hmm. Or that, like, all of these are like really. Hyper toxic in a relationship. So yeah. So let's get into it.

Simone Collins: Also, I wanna give a little hat tip to Diana Fleischman. We just think she's the coolest.

We were inspired to do this 'cause she is currently finishing up a book called How to Train Your Boyfriend. And it's gonna come out in 2026. We're so excited for it. So we're not talking about how to train men because she's gonna do it way and like, oh my gosh. The, the psychological research that she goes into with this.

She's being Yeah. You, you've read like

Malcolm Collins: the draft, right? So you're, I haven't read,

Simone Collins: I haven't, I mean, I've only heard her about her processes so far. I haven't seen the draft, but she's, she's talked about like a lot of the research she's been looking at and, oh, like she is.

Malcolm Collins: Thorough. It's gonna be much more scientific.

This is me talking off the cuff. Yeah, we're talking anecdotally

Simone Collins: here, personal experience, but we're also, I mean, like I think that this is, this is very practical stuff and I think that if you are taking dating seriously, if you're embarking on a relationship or thinking about it you really, really, really should be thinking about these things.

'cause you only have so much time before norms and a relationship becomes solidified and unchangeable. So, so, or at least it's harder to change

Malcolm Collins: the first thing that happened in a relationship. That I remember was like a major issue, not, not a major issue, but it was like the first time when I was like, oh, this is a norm that she has built that we need to deal with.

Mm. Was, you were mad at me about something and so you hung up while you were talking. This is. Absolutely. If you normalize who you're dating, ever hanging up in the middle of a conversation

Simone Collins: or just walking out of a room, just like ending a conversation because it got uncomfortable shutting it down.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. You are normalizing what is functionally a form of abuse and what becomes a form of abuse because what that does. Is it allows either partner, whichever one wants to disengage and keep in mind how bad it is to set this norm. Whichever partner wants to disengage from a conversation can immediately control that conversation.

Yeah. Which everyone is willing to stop talking, willing to stop trying to work this out immediately has control of the situation.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: That is. An incredibly toxic norm to set,

Simone Collins: and I think it's way more common than you would think. This, this is, is not necessarily gendered either. I mean, I hear about this happening a lot with men too.

Like they just sort of stop talking or shut down and refuse to engage. So it, it's, it's important. Everyone, I

Malcolm Collins: think that's the same, it's not like just walking out of the room or hanging up the phone. It's also if they're just like, ugh, you know, turn to the tv, start ignoring you, watching, whatever, you know, or like, just, okay, I'm not engaging, I'm not talking to you.

Well, also

Simone Collins: like a, a really common way of like. Of doing this is like, okay, let's just, let's just talk about this later. Like putting it off too, not being willing to have a conversation about it right away.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So there's a few reasons this is bad. One is, is that it gives the person with less willingness to work out a, a, a area of disagreement, more control.

Mm-hmm.

Which means that both parties are rewarded. For being the partner who is being more disagreeable instead of being the partner who is more agreeable, which leads to more disagreement in the relationship overall. The second problem is, is it leads to the problem of, you know, the common relationship rule of never go to sleep angry, right?

You are extending the period that you and your partner are mad at each other and have not worked out. Whatever it is that you want to work out, if you work it out was in the initial conversation. And keep in mind that you should, as an adult, be emotionally mature enough to work something like this out was in the initial conversation.

It was out, it becoming emotionally escalated or at least get to the point where you can deem emotionally escalate, be like, I'm feeling really emotional and I said X because of y reason. And that's wrong. Like emotions are never a justification for action. That's the next thing that absolutely for you.

I didn't need to train you this much in this area, but this is something that a lot of guys are going to need to train their wives out of, is. My emotional state justified my actions. So, the worst case scenarios you'll hear of this. Is a woman will like go up and slap a guy and they'll be like, why did you do that?

And she'll be like, well, in my dream you cheated on me. And it's like, that's your effing dream lady. Like, it's terrifying. You're being an absolute psycho. Imagine a guy just walked up and hit a girl for no reason, or their wife for no reason. And it's like, why? She's like, why'd you do that? And he goes, it's Tuesday.

Like deal with it. You'd be like, wow, that guy is an absolute psychopath.

Yeah. Surely.

And yet women will say, well, I felt and some guys will say this as well, which means that women need to train men outta this as well. I felt. X reason. So I did Y. The fact that you felt X and then did Y is a personal failure on your fault.

You're not the person who made you feel X. E emotion, you can, you can say, well, because no, no, this, this is a, a, a big difference. So suppose you emotionally escalate something or something like that because a person is like spending in a specific way and you're like, look, I have asked you repeatedly to stop going out and buying expensive bags or something like that.

We actually cannot afford this right now. And they didn't hear that. So then the person needed to emotionally or verbally escalate that's, that's very different. That's not them saying, I, the, when you go out and buy bags, it makes me feel bad. It's them saying, we make X amount of money. You are spending y amount of money.

We are going to be effed if you continue to do this. You see, that's not a, an emotional argument. They're not saying. You make me feel this way. And this comes downstream of psychological talk and a lot of women are very impacted by this, this, this framing where they're like, well, my father used to do X tomy when I was a kid, so I feel X way when like you do Y or like my family always cared about.

It's like, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You are responsible for who you are. Mm-hmm. Other people aren't responsible for who you are. You can choose to not engage with that stuff. And just. Talking about this early, like with a lot of this stuff, they can be like, oh, what are you doing? Are you training them?

Are you, no, you're, you're walking them through the logic of this stuff. And if you're like, well, my, the woman I'm dating just simply will not listen to logic. Like I can try to walk her through the logic of why it is bad to punish someone for how you feel over something that has nothing to do with him.

Right. Like some, some path thing or some trauma that you've decided to internalize as part of your identity. Either you need to walk through with it why this is a bad idea, or you're in for a lot of hurt. Because yeah, if, if you go into a long-term relationship with somebody like that, that you cannot sit down and logically talk through this stuff with forever, for the rest of your life, that is going to be something you are dealing with.

You're going to be dealing with somebody who and this is your core partner, the core person you're working with, the person you're running your most important business venture with, which is running your kids, raising your kids. They're gonna be able to say sometimes, well, I just disagree with you because the spirits told me, basically.

Like that's what their emotions are because they allow them to trump your reality. Like you can say, I've seen families, women, women do this. The guy will be like. Functionally, we can't afford this. Look at these numbers. And then the woman will say, well, when I was a child, we didn't have a lot of money.

So I get really like triggered and feel really upset when you talk about us not being able to afford things. So you're attacking me when you say we can't afford things and so you can't bring that up with me going forward if this relationship's gonna, and then they go out and they keep spinning.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

And then you, you can't solve, solve the problem.

Malcolm Collins: And that, that only gets worse because as soon as they realize they can do that within one domain, now anything can be a source of childhood trauma. Yeah. And

Simone Collins: this isn't because they, they necessarily intentionally decide to exploit this. It can also just be subconsciously because they know it's the path of least resistance.

Something they go to is a default. I'll say that. One thing I noticed in the training process in the earlier years of our relationship. Not to say it ever ends necessarily, but there were issues that took us years to resolve and there were issues that took us minutes to resolve and they can be just as heavy.

There, there's, it's not about the weight of the actual issue, it's about whether or not it, it has already been encountered. So for every issue where you brought it up while it was happening, like while it was a problem. It was almost impossible, like it wouldn't be solved in the moment, and it in many cases took years.

So one example is there was this terrible thing where like every time Malcolm's family. If we were all together would pile on him and they did this in like a pathological way. You know, he would say something and they'd be like, Malcolm, no, like, you're being unreasonable. You need to stop. Like whatever.

I would side with them and throw Malcolm under the bus because my sort of default one, like the societal default is for girlfriends and wives to criticize their male partners. So I hadn't been raised with any sort of mental training that I shouldn't be doing this. And then beyond that, when I am in a social situation, all I'm trying to do is just it, it's not me.

It's an LLM version of me designed to create maximum social equanimity, e equ, equanimity, and yes, calmness. Like I'm just, I'm trying to get the average happiness of as many people as possible to to be. High and, and everything. So make them happen. Yeah. Yeah. No conflict. There's

Malcolm Collins: bunch of people interacting and you're just like, my job is to please the crowd.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So I'm going to throw Malcolm under the bus and like just, it's automatic. And then, you know, after each of those incidents you would come to me just. Like, why would you, like, why would you throw that really hurts? Like why would you do that? That was horrible. And then I would get really defensive and then it became emotional and it, it actually took years for us to resolve this because every time we tried to do it, it became a really emotional thing for me.

And it was really hard for me to work through versus other things that are really major issues. What to do when one of us is dying? How we raise our children and, and like really tough things around children and family. And what do you do? You know, if an ailing parent wants to move in all these things, how do manage finances how to deal with debilitating illnesses.

They can really ruin relationships and that all the time ruin relationships. What, what is, what is infidelity? All these things. We talked about. When we weren't going through them and resolve them in minutes. And so if you have a girlfriend or wife who is on the slightly more emotional side, or a boyfriend or husband, I would suggest.

Trying to head off as many of these issues while they're abstract. While they're not happy.

Malcolm Collins: No. Yeah. And talking about what's expected of them. Like you're going to meet your family for the first time. Mm-hmm. I expect you to be aligned with me. Yes. Or or more importantly, you're going to meet their family.

This wasn't a problem for us, but I've seen this with other people where like the wife's family will attack the husband. And the wife will side with her family.

Mm-hmm.

And this should basically never happen unless the husband is egregiously in the wrong,

Simone Collins: but like priming a partner for that. Is it also like that that really helped initially too, is when you reminded me before we went into things.

By the way, you're, you're probably gonna be tempted to decide with everyone just to keep things calm and to not create conflict when they pile on, please. Just remember to not do that. 'cause it really hurts me. And yeah, you know, they're not being logical.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, they're not being logical when they're doing this.

They're just it. It's also another one that's been a big ongoing issue, which you have recently gotten down from, is you think that you look good when publicly you act humble. You're like, well, I'm not really good enough to be here. I'm not really, like, I don't really deserve this position that you guys have elected me for or given me.

And I'm like, Simone, like I have to take her aside. I'm like, you are throwing everyone who supported you up until now under the bus. You are saying all of your supporters made a bad decision by putting you here. It's a bit like saying, I'm not really qualified for this job. When the guy who recommended you hired you for the job in the room

Simone Collins: Yeah.

And you're, you're making him, you're throwing him under the bus. Yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You're, you're, you're not acting humble. You are humiliating. Everybody who has supported you.

Simone Collins: So that's a really good example again, of how priming is really important. And so there are two, two pro tips we've just shared to recap.

One, discuss it and ideally write it down in a Google doc or a relationship contract, which is what we did. It's, it's, it's like an active, evolving. Google doc we have where we agree to things like what's an acceptable interior temperature? Who pays for this, who pays for that? Like how do we manage finances?

How do we save money? All those things that, that can lead to breakups. Try to pre-negotiate them before they're an issue because as soon as it gets emotional and as soon as there's some kind of history or conflict about it, it is going to be a hundred times harder to resolve. Second is if there's a recurring behavioral issue and the partner can abstractly be like, yeah, I really need to not do that, but they keep doing it.

You need to prime them before the likely trigger event a lot. And then the more they get the practice, the less you're gonna need to do it. But it's gonna take a lot of repetition and don't give up because I think some people also just give up. They're like, I guess this is just never gonna work. No,

Malcolm Collins: it does work eventually all of the persistent things.

And, and I will note it's also about knowing where women are likely going to need training. Like the, the, the thing about the thinking that acting with humility doesn't like is always the right choice, is something that many women, even traditionalist women or, or I'd say even more, maybe especially traditional as women are taught from a very young age.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I actually remember thinking as a kid, like, I'm going to make sure that I. Never become, you know, overly confident or conceded in some way. Like no matter if, if I am, I don't know what it is that made me decide this, but I have this memory as a kid of being like, no matter what, I'm going to understate myself

Malcolm Collins: no matter.

Yeah. Well, because women are rewarded for this in our society

Simone Collins: for humility. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that this is really, really toxic and it's something that you're gonna need to work with your wife on. Another one is the humility thing, like a big one was that, is you always thought that you were not particularly competent.

Early in our relationship, this was a big thing. She was like, I'm not that special. I'm not that good. Right. And I had to work with you and set up and like entire training regimes because this is something I had to logically help you with this. And so I'd be like, okay. Simone you don't think you're that smart.

You know, you're at Cambridge for graduate school, supposed to be one of the best graduate schools in the world every day. Your job is to come to me in detail. Anyone you met during that day that you thought was smarter than you and you rarely. I think like maybe once every few months would find somebody who you thought was smarter than you.

And I'm like, do you not see that? Like, this indicates that you're probably on the smarter side of humanity. Like if, if this is what you are finding and you even view the world with this degree of like humility and self-doubt, right? Like, the same with the airport test where she's like, I'm not that beautiful, right?

And I'm like, well, okay, we're in an airport. Hear all the women around you, point out any woman you think is more attractive than you. Right. Like, and let's develop a baseline. He's not younger

Simone Collins: than me. Because that was, who's

Malcolm Collins: not younger than you? I was like, oh,

Simone Collins: her and her. And he's like, well, yeah, but she's like, she's 18 years old.

Malcolm Collins: And this is, even, this was made even more clear for us when one day we went to a concerts of it and everyone under 18 had to get Xs on their hands. Because you, you don't have that at an airport, right? And so I was like, okay, now everyone, look at everyone in this room who's, who's more attractive than you?

And she'd go like, well, there's that person and that person, and that person. And it'd be like, how many of them don't have exes on their hands? And she'd be like, oh my God.

Simone Collins: That was a huge thing when you really helped me realize that it. That youth is, is beauty. Oh, sorry. It wasn't

Malcolm Collins: under 18, it was under 21

Simone Collins: under, yeah, it was, but it wasn't who could get alcohol and who couldn't.

That was easy. Yeah. It, it

Malcolm Collins: wasn't even like use being under 21 because you're looking for people more attractive than you. Somebody in your late thirties. Mm-hmm. Who has. Five kids, you're pregnant with number five right now. You're looking around a room and the only people you see is more attractive than you are under 21.

That says a lot about where you are, right? Not the only people. There was like one or two people who were more attractive, but the point I'm making. Is that many women even exceptional women are trained to believe that it is moral to frame themselves as non exceptional, which can lead to big mistakes in terms of career decisions.

Mm-hmm. In terms of decisions to apply to programs and these

Simone Collins: affect both partners. I think this is cool because I think a, a common issue that men have is their wives come to them and or girlfriends and complain about work and complain about this and that. And I think a lot of these complaints will just never happen if those women are given more confidence and assertiveness.

But I think the problem is most men think that the, the best option is just to sort of in a reactionary way, be like, oh, well you should have just done this and that, when really you have to change their mindset. It you, you can't do an index, individual stances or

Malcolm Collins: that, like, it's not dog training, it's talking them through it, right?

Mm-hmm. Like, and if somebody can't understand logic. Then that's a major problem, right? Like that's gonna affect every layer of your relationship. If you need to train your wife like a dog instead of with logic that's gonna be a major problem for you to be like women just do not listen clearly. Some do.

Like, so Simone isn't the, I dated a lot of people before Simone, and a lot of them listen to logic. Well, and I think a

Simone Collins: lot of it's also though it's a mixture of things. It's, it's a mixture of being conditioned to do things and to not do things. And there are people who've met like couples. It started out really great where they just seemed so sweet and we were so excited for them.

And then we see them years later and. One is just com, like the, the husband's completely pussy whipped and he is not allowed to say anything without the wife who has somehow become like increasingly. Woke deranged, you know? Well, yeah. You stopping him from believing anything. One

Malcolm Collins: area of like political, I can shut you down wherever we stop having logic, wherever that creeps.

Yeah. You, you normalize that was in any part of the relationship and it creeped throughout the course of the relationship.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, and if you, if you allow a partner repeatedly to just shut things down or. To be like, oh, I, you know, you, you can't say that that's not okay. Or like, if I feel emotionally challenged by this, you can't talk about it, then that seems to be something that happens a lot.

Malcolm Collins: Emotionally Challenges you forever.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Then that, that's, that's, I, I don't know if that's logic or conditioning. I think, I think that, I think a lot of people. Condition their partners to lean in to their lack of logic because that's how they win. When, for example, a girlfriend or wife responds with an emotional reaction and then gets what she wants, boyfriends and husbands are literally training them to no longer respond to O to logic.

So I would actually put this back on some men in some cases. Where they could have had a logic driven wife and then now they complain like, oh, well she only reacts emotionally now to things. Maybe that's been because every time she reacts emotionally, you reward her. You didn't push back enough, and now she's been conditioned to react emotionally when she could have been rewarded for reacting logically and then she would've been a more logical person.

I mean, I think people respond and, and people. You can see this across cultures and societies, right? Like there, there are different ways that cultures will relate to debate and argument. And I don't, I don't think it's totally genetic or ingrained. I think a lot of it has to do with, you know, what are you rewarded for?

Are you rewarded for emotional appeals like E murkowski? We complain about the fact that he often turns to very emotional arguments. Because I think he's been rewarded over time by how they seem to shut people down who otherwise are very logical because he deals with a lot of really smart artists who kind of don't know how to, how to respond to emotional appeals that don't have anything to do with logic.

Like they're kind of tr they, they don't feel like it's a domain where they can fight back because they don't feel those emotions and they, they can't play. It's, it's a currency in which they can't deal. They don't have. That currency to trade. And so I think he, for example, is, is an example of someone who's been trained to make emotional arguments and women can be trained to do that too.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and I think another area here where people are trained, when we talk about like the bad societal things is. Compromise. No relationship should ever be built on compromise. Compromise is the most toxic thing that you can have in a relationship because compromise subconsciously rewards relationship division.

By that what I mean is if I want two and my wife wants five. We have a relationship based on compromise. Now both of us are subconsciously rewarded for exaggerating our positions.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I should tell him I want 20 and he should tell me he wants zero. And then we'll end up with, you know, and then you begin

Malcolm Collins: to actually get closer when you misrepresent your position.

Even if you're doing it subconsciously due to like slight, you know. Motivations there. You, you, you move towards the position that you're representing. Mm-hmm. Which means, well, first I wanted two, but now I want one. And at first she wanted, you know, five and now she wants nine, you know? Right. Yeah. And then

Simone Collins: maybe we end up getting five, which was the original number I wanted.

But because I said I wanted 20, I'm gonna be resentful. You feel like you lost, I'm gonna feel like I lost. Yeah. Because I didn't think I asked you. Yeah. So, yeah, you just, you can't, you can't win in a compromise. It's horrible. It's horrible.

Malcolm Collins: And the pregnant guided relationships, we go over a bunch of ways that you can actually handle this.

Disagreements, you can handle them by just giving all powers to one party. You can give all powers to one party by domain, like. House decorations versus finance versus kids' names versus vacation planning.

Simone Collins: All these things

Malcolm Collins: you can use external mediators. And, and you'll often end up with, with much more favorable positions to what you want when you give the final decision making per.

To your opposite partner.

Mm-hmm.

IE generally the decisions are gonna lead closer to what the person who doesn't have final say wants, because the person with final say, has a responsibility to really think through what the other person is saying or damage their relationship.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And I think that's, that's another thing.

So. Malcolm in the end, for example, has final say on most of the things in our relationship. And when he makes these calls, they're ultimately more charitable toward me than toward his preference. Like, let's say he wants zero and I want five, he's more likely to err in favor of three than in, in favor of what he would want, like a much lower number because he knows that if he abuses his power consistently, the relationship is just gonna end.

And that's the other thing about. Just more broadly, relationship contracts and agreements and stuff in terms of what not to do with training. Ultimatums are kind of non-viable. I think a lot of people, when they think about relationship contracts, they think that the violation penalty is, and then I will leave you, like, if you cheat on me, then I'll leave you.

It never should be because you, you absolutely then have to leave the partner if they do the thing. And you might not actually wanna do that. So while we have a very detailed relationship contract. Yeah, there are some exceptions that are just kind of fun.

Malcolm Collins: This, this leads to a lot of cheating in relationships where somebody says, if you cheat, I will leave you.

And then the person cheats and they don't leave them. And then the person's like, oh, so there's no problem. Like, yeah. So this is functionally not okay. I say I won't do it again, but like. If you're like, no, like this goes against like this, the spirit of our relationship and will lead to X, Y, and Z problem, now they won't do it, right?

Mm-hmm. This will make me sad. This will lead me to eventually leave you of you to, this was like cumulative things. That's very different than like do this than Y, but I don't actually do y.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And so in our relationship contract, literally what's written is the most common penalty is. This will make me feel bad

Malcolm Collins: if you do this.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It'll be sad because it's understood that if over time you disappoint a partner enough, the relationship is over. This isn't something that needs to be, you know, it is implicitly understood that if over time you disappoint your partner enough, you're, you're gonna screw up. But making it this.

Black and white cross this line. I have to, you know, end this relationship immediately. Mm-hmm. You are setting yourself up for rampant abuse and also this feeling that, oh, actually I can get away with it even more so than you'll hurt my feelings. So let's say, you know, okay, you, you cheat on me. It really hurts my feelings.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, I understand that. I'll take that very seriously. If instead it's, you cheat on me, I'll leave you, and then you cheat on that person and they don't leave you, I actually. I don't know. You kind of feel like you've been lied to. You almost feel like, okay, great. So it is, you know, I haven't done anything wrong.

Like clearly they didn't mean what they said.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: So yeah, I, that, that's a really, really big one.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that if people are like, well, early in a relationship, how do we establish a relationship like this? Right? It all starts by asking the person what they want from life.

Hmm.

Then being like, okay, does that align with what I want from life or the world or more broadly?

Right. You know, because then your relationship is based on your logical desires, right? Like long-term desires instead of, or, or moral framing. Instead of like short term, if you marry someone because you feel an attraction to them, you can't do this, right? Like, because logic isn't the basis of your relationship.

Love is the basis of your relationship. Alignment isn't the basis of your relationship. Love is. And so then they can always trump anything with Will, this makes me feel X or feel Y. And it, and you're like, well, you know, feelings isn't the the underlying basis of reality. And they're like, but isn't that why we got married?

Isn't that why we're together because of the feelings that you give me or gave me? Which is really, really dangerous because the feelings that you give somebody else are gonna change over time. So if they married you because of how you made them feel, you're not gonna make them feel that way in 10 years or after you have five kids or whatever.

Right? Like it should be based on an logical alignment. And so this is an early thing in a relationship that's really important to push through. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Totally agreed.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, anything else I should go over here, Simone.

Simone Collins: I mean, obviously I whip

Malcolm Collins: you when you make mistakes.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah, of course. I think another, another really

Malcolm Collins: wife, unless it's like a sexual thing that you're into, then you know. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Then go for it. Fine. The biggest aspect of your training wasn't actually reactionary and wasn't even the conversations that we had hashing out basically the terms of our relationship contract.

It was your transparency from the very beginning that you were so explicit about what your plans values. And expectations were that so much of it was just already implicit. There was no work you had to do because it was clear to me and to anyone else who dated you, what you were about, what you would tolerate, and what you would not tolerate, and that.

I think is, yeah, my

Malcolm Collins: goal is X and y this is why I'm dating you. Mm-hmm. My goal is marriage. But, but all of that is in service of X and Y.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah. And you were also, you're also very transparent about what you like, what you don't like. Like if I make a meal and I don't hit the mark, you're very explicit about it.

Like, I, I can trust you to say things even when you know that, that you'll hurt my feelings. And that also. Ultimately trains anyone who's in your life to mm-hmm. One, know that they can trust you, but two, also really know what your standards are and when, when they're disappointed, I think that people train bad behaviors and their partners by not being transparent with them, by not sharing their expectations and by not being honest with them.

Because then there's just not that there's, there's so much guesswork, and when people operate on different social contracts, you're going to end up with disappointment. Absolutely. And all sorts of problems. So I think that's another really big one that is super underrated.

Malcolm Collins: I love you so much, Simone.

You are a great wife. I don't actually love you by the way. We'll do another episode where I'm like, I think love is a scam. And I, and I mean this is somebody who is in like the literal best position to feel this emotion of love. Like I really admire my partner. I like spending time with her. I feel really.

Anxious when we're apart from each other. And it's the same as my kids, right? Like I, I, I think they're awesome people. I don't like being apart from them. I like, I, like I have an aligned value system with them. I want them to do great things. With you, I, I find you arousing and everything, right?

Like I but all of the emotions that I feel about you can be given some other easily knowable emotional name like. Admiration or kinship or friendship or lust or you know, any, any of these words, right? And, and I think that there isn't some distinct love, emotion as other people.,

I really think that that it, it evolved as a myth.

To be able to talk about people who either you wanted to possess or have lust after, or build a life with in a way that didn't say one of those things, right? Like, they don't wanna say, they don't wanna write poetry about how they lust after somebody, so they use the term love, right? Or how they wanna possess somebody, or how they wanna spend their life with somebody.

But, but those are very easy emotions to understand that are different from love. Like logically wanting to spend your life with somebody and not liking being apart from them because you have a strong emotional attachment for them is not the same as whatever. We have mythologized as love.

We've already aired that episode, so you can check it out if you want. And we're likely gonna dig into this topic a bit more because I think it's really fascinating and could be at the heart of where modern progressivism came from, which was covering up, , what was, , like lustful or previously shameful emotions.

With a veil that they are now beyond reproach, which allowed people to build their entire lives around seeking out emotional states because they could label this bundle of emotional states love, which historically you didn't do, you lived for, for duty, or for your children or for your nation. , And I'd also note here that in saying that love isn't a real emotional set, .

I'm not alone in saying this. You know, the, the ancient Greeks didn't have a love a word for what we call romantic love. We go more into this in the episode, but even, you know, thinkers like Cki Lewis said quote, love is not an affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's, ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.

And in saying that, what he's saying is, , love is a choice to want something for a person rather than an emotional state within yourself.

Malcolm Collins: We talked about how gross it is when like Lex Freeman is like, well, but what about love?

And it's like, bro, like. Love probably doesn't meaningfully exist. And this is one of those areas where I'll just come out there where I'm like, I don't think consciousness meaningly exists. I don't, I don't think love meaningfully exists. I think it exists even less.

Simone Collins: And this is also a policy that you've held for a really long time because literally in our marriage vs.

We're like, I don't promise to love you. I promise to constantly help you become the person you wanna be and improve you. But I don't promise to love you. Yeah. I was like,

Malcolm Collins: I can't control my emotional state. Like if, if this love emotion does exist, like I can't promise that I'm gonna be captured by it at a later date.

And so, yeah, but I, I say it now because I think a lot of people are sort of scared to kick down this illusion and be like, Hey, this, this is not a distinct emotion that exists. Because everyone will be like, oh, you don't really care about your partner. You're not really aligned with your partner.

You don't really find your partner attractive. You don't really, and I think that anybody who has spent a long time watching us knows that like, that's obviously not the case. Like we are stupidly aligned. And, and, and very much back to back against the world. In terms of like media, oh, most

Simone Collins: people win.

When we discuss with them the idea of them working together, they're like, oh, I could never do that. Like, yeah, I could

Malcolm Collins: never do AC company with my wife. It's okay. You say every

Simone Collins: day, what is this? You couldn't tolerate working with them every day. Like sometimes man, people who say that they really care about love.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They're like. Like, well, okay, well work with your wife. Oh, I don't want to be around her. God forbid

Simone Collins: you spend all day, every day. I mean, you are

Malcolm Collins: like, we will do anything to be together at all times. But it's not driven by love. It's driven by the fact that I've worked with people other than my wife and I know she's the only one I can really rely on to be you know, fully dedicated and efficient.

Whereas most people are kind of, you know, lazy, bowhead. Well, in

Simone Collins: an ideal relationship, you're not training someone to be. Your paid or unpaid cortis on who? Whose only purpose is to make you feel good and entertain you. Yeah. And be your sexy person. It is. What marriage, for the most part has been, is an arrangement that allows people to live functional lives together.

Malcolm Collins: So, and this is something I see so often from guys is, is you know, they're like, oh, I, I want it like a hot, you know, whatever wife. And I'm like, you're, you're asking for a courtesan, like you want some sort of like dancer or something like that. And then you hope that she's smart on the side, like,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Well, and also then you're surprised when somehow like they're not aligned with you. The best, the best training. Really is for both partners to have the same objective function and to understand that they're more likely to achieve it, like literally, because it's true. One would hope. By working together.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. That

Simone Collins: they're better together than, than on their own. And then suddenly, and this is how it has been for us with most things in our life, every conflict is more, we want the same thing, we want the same outcome, and we just happen to have different data sets. So the conflict is over that. I think you build it

Malcolm Collins: into a hypothesis like, okay, you think Y, I think X, let's test this,

Simone Collins: right?

Like we both want healthy, flourishing children and we have really picky eaters that are in some cases, not like, not in the right weight range for their age. And we're both really worried about them, and our conflict is. He and I have consumed very different information about metabolic health and nutrition.

Malcolm Collins: But what's great about having neutral conflict breakers today is you have ai. Yeah. Like you used to need to go to a priest or something, and now you can be like, okay, I think X, she thinks Y. Mm-hmm. Who's more right?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And actually studies have shown that when couples reframe conflicts, they're going through.

Using language about each of them in a, in the what second person, you know, like you and I would be like, well, okay, so Malcolm and Simone are having a disagreement over this. What would we advise them to do when they, when they take the first person out of it, they're far more likely to, as a, a disassociated party, even if they're only acting as one behave more logically.

So even the process of just writing in your conflict to an AI. In that third person of just like, well, Simone and Malcolm had this disagree, what would you advise you? You're all, you're even priming the participants in the argument to start thinking about it in what has been shown to be a more productive fashion.

So yeah, I love that. I love that way of doing it.

Malcolm Collins: By the way, here's a, here's a a fun stat for you. We are less than 1,500 subscribers from 50,000. No way.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. That's crazy. That's so cool.

Malcolm Collins: Ah just went by 40,000. I feel like because I, you're not a

Simone Collins: subscriber. You should, as our son Octavian puts it life.

And, and describe

Malcolm Collins: life and describe Please. It would help us a lot. Yeah.

Simone Collins: It yeah, we hope to provide not as much

Malcolm Collins: as, not as much as Apple reviews. Apple Podcast reviews are the most helpful

Simone Collins: because they're the most hard.

Malcolm Collins: Obviously Patreon's really appreciated as well, but oh

Simone Collins: my gosh. Yeah, and I'm super excited to do more premium stuff for Patreon.

So yeah,

Malcolm Collins: if we keep growing at the rate we've grown in the past month, maybe it's just 'cause we've done a bunch of like juicy misogynistic stuff or something. If we keep growing at this rate we can, we, we won't have financial problems soon 'cause Right, right now we don't have jobs so. That'd be cool.

We could do YouTube full time.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I'm wondering actually though, are there, would you give different wife training trips, sorry, tips for the men who really are just like, yeah, I don't care. I want a passport wife, I want a Brazilian model. I want a trope, like I think they're making

Malcolm Collins: a mistake.

Simone Collins: Is there is Because I don't like my concern about training them is that because your incentives are misaligned.

Like you are there for the youth and beauty and for someone maybe to raise your kids or like be sexy and pray. Well, here's the thing,

Malcolm Collins: if you want a passport wife, then maybe you're even in a better position to find a wife. You can be logical ways like,

Simone Collins: okay, yeah, but then like, isn't it better as a temporary arrangement because you want them for their youth and beauty and they want you for your money, so shouldn't you just do it on year long contracts?

Malcolm Collins: No, I still think that you can use the power play that you get 'cause you have a differential power position if you're getting a passport wife to say, Hey, we're gonna do things logically to optimize for this outcome, not to optimize for my happiness, but for this outcome.

Simone Collins: Okay, what would the outcome be?

Malcolm Collins: Well, whatever they work together for that outcome to be. But.

Simone Collins: But the out No, because the women want a better life and money and security. No, no, no, no. The

Malcolm Collins: women are okay with saying, I'm signing up with you so that we can both achieve Y or Z together. No,

Simone Collins: because they're really in it for the money and the security and maybe a more glamorous, comfortable, right.

And if it's

Malcolm Collins: a woman with a man, think about this Simone. Men want career oriented outcomes, right? Like the man is the one providing for the woman. Okay? So the man says, my goal right is achieving x, and X is a career oriented outcome, is also the woman's goal for him to achieve X because her status as a passport wife.

Is tied to his status as a passport man.

Simone Collins: Ah, okay. This is actually sort of what I expect to happen is AI hits really hard because we're gonna see disproportionately, I think men performing better because it is the more entrepreneurial risk taking people that are going to be able to make money in a opposed AI economy, meaning that I think more women will actually turn to men.

As kind of careers like I will be a professional wife, mother, girlfriend, and I do think that we are gonna see almost kind of a return to the corporate family where, you know, back in the day the butcher would work with his wife and the butcher would be out slaughtering the pigs and processing the meat, and the wife would be upfront selling and managing the finances and, and, and doing the books.

What this

Malcolm Collins: means is you're not looking for a wife, you're looking for like a secretary or support that does wife things as well.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that's also sexy. A sexy secretary.

Malcolm Collins: I, I don't think sexy is important. I think. Well, I'm just the important asking. No, the

Simone Collins: problem is a significant portion of our audience.

Only once the, the Brazilian Ukrainian models they want get over that,

Malcolm Collins: right? Like that's how they're gonna ruin their lives. We're not, they're clearly

Simone Collins: not capable of getting over it. Chiming in the comments, if you've changed your mind on this, but we're gonna get no one chiming in who's like, yeah, I came to my senses and I've decided that I'm going to marry.

I don't need

Malcolm Collins: to, I don't need to worry about them. They're not part of humanity's genetic future. These, these people. No, I'm honest. These people who take. Hot passport wives never breed above a population rate from what I've seen, or almost never.

Simone Collins: Yeah, because they may promise to have a larger family, but the vast majority of them, but they don't, they

Malcolm Collins: get here, they have one kid, the woman does, and now she's like, now I've locked you down.

Now you can't leave me. Now I get half of what you, you have,

yeah.

If you ever wanna leave me, right? Like, why would I continue? Right. Like you effed yourself, you played yourself. Okay. You can marry a woman who's from your own cultural group and like you and has aligned value system with you, or a woman who is fainting that.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Okay. That's a, I'm sorry. That's a big segment of our audience, so,

Malcolm Collins: but it's just, I've seen it over and over and over again. It's a very easy play, like think logically from the perspective of your average woman in a developing country who's trying to get a passport pro to marry you.

Yeah. What you

say is whatever they want to hear until you pumped out one kid.

You know, well under repopulation rate and now they can't leave you as easily.

Simone Collins: Yeah. This is actually this has happened with a couple male passport bro influencers who for a while had these channels about their hot wives and how they were just killing it. And then you, progressive YouTubers love to cover them because then everything falls apart.

Malcolm Collins: They have one kid and everything falls apart. They

Simone Collins: love talking about how like their wives have left them and now they're. You know, living in their, in their own filth of the, you know, the fallout from the divorce, dealing with all that. So, not fun. Not fun.

Malcolm Collins: Not fun.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Hey, love you. Toone, excitedly ma Mafu,

Simone Collins: and you luck out.

My dad requested white rice. My dad's visiting with his, with his girlfriend. So good. He has good taste.

Malcolm Collins: Were you hoping they didn't.

Simone Collins: I mean, white rice has a lower glycemic index if you're refrigerated overnight first. So that's why I typically cook your ahead of time. This is just gonna be, you know, straight up. That's fine. It's fine. It's fine. Again, you and I have consumed very different information on metabolic health. People keep saying, oh, do do a do a health episode?

Talk about your health regimen. Someone just today on X was like, oh, maybe you should do an episode on the effects of, of, of sugar, because I've just discovered how, how bad it is and how much it affected my childhood moods, and now I've gone off it. I'm like, dude, you don't wanna hear Malcolm talk about nutrition?

Malcolm Collins: No, no. My. Diet. It's called the radical diet. Okay? You are as radical as the foods you eat. I, and by radical,

Simone Collins: he means like 1990s Kool-Aid. Oh, yeah. Radical mean.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, if it doesn't turn you into like, mercury s commercial, you're doing something wrong.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You need, you need. Okay. This is what children need.

They need fruit roll-ups. They need gushers, they need dunkaroos, they need Capri Sun. They need squeeze it, which don't exist anymore. So now what, what would these be like Kool-Aid, like pop tops vegetables you need?

Speaker 3: Uya erased my country too. The most outta control radical place the world had ever seen. Slam Zone. Your country was called Slam Zone. The United Republic of Slam Zone. In titles, totality, ah. The only thing that still makes sense to me is a nice ice cold Capri sun.

Speaker 4: I'm not really in the mood for a Capri Sun. Here you go. Drink up.

Speaker 3: Sorry, friend. But do you know what I do know? What's that? I know another ice cold.

Capri sun would really hit the spot. I don't want

Speaker 4: another one. I don't want the first one. You gotta

Speaker 3: hydrate yourself. Drink up.

Malcolm Collins: No. Oh. No, you, oh my gosh. All of this stuff, the, the more industrial it is. The more radical it is.

I, I learned this from commercials. And if you eat enough of it. Like a Capri Sun commercial. Eventually you will turn into a horrifying metallic blob that can fly around. Oh yeah. And, and, and do cool stuff, right? Oh, I

Simone Collins: forgot about this. Yes. You drink

Malcolm Collins: your Kool-Aid and the Kool-Aid man and will burst into your home, and debris will get in his.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it was like sympathetic, magic, false advertising. But it worked like they understood that there's this inherent subconscious human belief in sympathetic magic, and they're like, okay, so if we serve the Capri Sum in, in a, in a FOIL package, the children will believe that if they drink from the FOIL package, they will become.

Metallic foil. So let's advertise that

Speaker 2: Coming at you. Capri Sun by the pitcher. So whenever you want, you can make as much as you want. All natural Capri Sun drink mix.

Simone Collins: you, you

Malcolm Collins: a swan, if you ate a swan, birthday cake, Simone. I did.

Simone Collins: No, I, I 100% believed in sympathetic magic. Yeah. If my preschool, you got to choose what kind of beautiful cake our Mormon preschool teacher would serve. May she rest in peace? She was one of the most wonderful women in the world, and I would always ask for a swan because I thought it would turn me into a swan.

I just wanna be grateful. Graceful. I'm not graceful. Oh, you're very graceful, Simone. No, man. I'm, I'm the, I'm the ugly duckling. I never made it to my swan face.

Malcolm Collins: Are you done?

Simone Collins: You see me waddle around the house even when I'm not pregnant,

Malcolm Collins: it's bad. Sure. You are an exceptionally graceful woman, so you looks sweet to me. But no, no, no. This is all, this is all true and everybody thinks, oh, you know, I, oh, I wanna live. I don't want, I don't wanna live forever. I don't want my kids to live forever.

That's not the point, right? Like, okay, this is the truth of it. Whatever, like, you're not gonna, your health

Simone Collins: regimen is burn bright and

Malcolm Collins: die young. Yes, I, I, the point is to be the guy from Blade Runner, you know the flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long. Your point isn't living forever. It's to have a bunch of kids that live till you're 60.

Because after you're 40, basically your life is only about helping your kids at that point, right? Like, you're not gonna have that many more kids after that point, right? So guys,

Simone Collins: this is why you haven't had the. The health advice episode,

Malcolm Collins: this is why you haven't had the health because I, my health advice is stop worrying about dying.

Don't be such a pussy man. I don't, I don't mind. I I, no seriously, like it's a good day to die when you know the

Simone Collins: reason why It's absolutely true. It doesn't matter

Malcolm Collins: as long as I've set my kids up and people can be like, oh, well that fruit rollup is gonna kill you at a young, not at that young an age. I'll be fine by the time my kids are set up.

Okay. I hope so.

Simone Collins: I'm gonna secretly make you healthy and keep you alive. That's the thing, right, is I will feed you white rice. But normally I'm able to. I part interventions that reduce the glycemic load or I, I, I throw in additional things to add a health factor. I, I force you to take vitamins and supplements.

I force you to get the DEXA scan you just had yesterday to get biannual MRIs to check for cancer. That, I mean, I'm like, this, this, this person who's trying

Malcolm Collins: to like murder themselves. Yeah. You're like, yeah. It's,

Simone Collins: it's, it's like with our kids, like they're just walking around, like trying to kill themselves and I'm like, like, just quietly, like taking away the knife, taking away the, well now you make a

Malcolm Collins: lot of my meals, you know, you're in charge of my health as well.

Right. Like even when I eat, I eat very little that you don't make anymore.

Simone Collins: It's true. Yeah. So, in the end you're ending up eating like whole foods minimally processed, and you don't even know it. You think, you think you're on the radical diet because you have like two fruit rollups that you steal from the kids on a weekend.

But in the end, that's

Malcolm Collins: the truth of it though. I do, I have like two fruit rollups. That's my actual radical load. Yeah. So my radical load is low, which is sad.

Simone Collins: Oh no, you're not dying fast enough. What are we gonna do? I need to

Malcolm Collins: increase, we need to get some gushers. That's, but I can't because they're too expensive.

You're lucky those the ones that look like crystal

Simone Collins: cell, do

Malcolm Collins: those

Simone Collins: look like crystals?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah,

Simone Collins: the little crystal looking ones with the go. If we, Titan would lose it. You know how she's, but mine crystals. Mine Crystal, mine Crystals the octopus, the Tommy Knockers are gonna take my, we told her

Malcolm Collins: there's Tommy Knockers in local mines and all my kids are always talking about the Tommy Knockers.

We don't want them to go in the mines, you know? So, and the witch lives in the swamp and the Tommy Knockers live in the mines and the, and I told them the Tommy Knockers, 'cause the mines are flooded to have tentacles and look kind of like octopus.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So now she's, now she's just confused. She's talking about.

Tent ankles and Tommy Knockers, octopuses stealing her crystal. She's not afraid of the Tommy Knockers 'cause she knows that she will win every fight she enters. And she does well. No, Torsten is the finisher after much torment. He just ends, ends her fights

Malcolm Collins: after down with his iPad. Yeah, but she, of course, I never pay for that for my kids.

It's like a tablet that's like 80 bucks. But yeah. Well that's

Simone Collins: what he gets in trouble for. He doesn't get in trouble for smacking her. He gets in trouble for potentially breaking a tablet.

Malcolm Collins: Alright, I'll let you go down. Get started. I'm sorry I've kept you this long. You are a beautiful woman and it's important to remember that even when you're training your wife that like a dog, you can tend you to give her little treats because if you don't, she wants, that's such stupid face.

You look like a Tim Burton character. Why do I marry you?

Simone Collins: A monster. A monster. Oh god, yeah. Little treats. Well you get me. Popcorn. Which is very, that's what I do. Yeah. I try to

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Anticipate what you wanna run the house. But yeah. Have a great day guys. Remember y it's about chaining your wife to a radiator and whipping her until she submits.

That's, and

Simone Collins: you're a cuck if you or a passport bro. Apparently. So.

Malcolm Collins: Most passport bros. In at Cox in Might. And if,

Simone Collins: if you wanna, if you want a hot wife, apparently.

That's it's hard.

Malcolm Collins: But the thing is that you started as like a progressive, and the reason you switched is because we talked through our values. Mm-hmm. We talked through what we wanted to achieve, but also like,

Simone Collins: yeah, you, you did the thing where you, just, like any good investor, you buy an undervalued product that you know you can fix up.

That's what private equity's all about. That is all I found

Malcolm Collins: you.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I wasn't, I mean, I looked, I looked older then than I do now, weirdly. At least I think so. From like my, I think so too.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And you also had only a GW degree and a pretty shitty job.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So like, yeah. I mean, I hear what you're saying.

Like when you, I was gonna say buy, when you buy a mail order bride, essentially you are buying someone at their peak value. Like it's, it's like, the really stupid private equity buyers or like people who buy flipped houses. And like everything is at its maxim, like barely held together with tape, like, you know, you do.

Yeah, no, I agree. Like, you know, the pipes aren't even connected. Everything looks really good and everything goes downhill from there. Whereas what Malcolm bought was like an old house that was a wreck and he invested a lot in fixing it up. But now the value is paying dividends, like it's a rental property that then you can rent out.

And not that you're rent

Malcolm Collins: by the way. Get down and make me food.

Simone Collins: Okay. Bye Malka. I'm joking.

Malcolm Collins: I love you, by the way. Love you. I love you. You only started making me food recently, like this year, by the way, just so people know. Before that I was, nothing's

Simone Collins: actually better cooked than I am, but I

Malcolm Collins: not with every type of cooking.

I'm better with spices. And you're better with cooking techniques.

Simone Collins: Mm. After thousands of hours of watching food channels. I know. All thanks. All right. Off I go. Getting to the. Annoying.

Malcolm Collins: What's the sigh about? Are we on the right sides?

Simone Collins: Oh let me make sure. I was trying to find this, I was trying to find this scene from the show Pushing Daisies, which is a super Simone show that you would hate. But there was this one episode and each episode was about like solving some kind of murder mystery.

And this one episode featured. Actually a, a, a character, I think a widowed woman named Simone Huntin. So her name was Simone, but she, she had a dog clicker and she trained dogs. But throughout the episode, she, she actually ends up training one of the, it's subconsciously training one of the deec, the detectives.

So like, he like perks up every time he hears a click and he, he doesn't realize that he's been like, brainwashed by Simone and trained by her like a dog.

Malcolm Collins: I was like,

Simone Collins: you should get a dog clicker. We actually have dog clickers sitting around the house. We, we stopped using them because professor just gets in line.

She's a smart dog. She doesn't need a clicker.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, she doesn't need a clicker. She, she does pretty well with all the commands we really need. Yeah. Except for get outta the house. Once she, did she listen?

Simone Collins: No. No. She listens to me. Now. She knows I'm the alpha. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: she doesn't happens. Oh, okay. So clearly I've done a terrible job training my wife because,

Simone Collins: no,

Malcolm Collins: I'm not the el, you're just too nice.

Simone Collins: You're too nice to professor. Well, one, you don't give her as much food as I do. And two, you're not as strict when she is naughty sausage, so, mm. But. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder, I wonder how many couples actually use dog clickers on each other or spray bottles. That would be great. Oh my God. To spray bottle to the face.

Did you ever We had a spray bottle for my cat pumpkin when I was a kid. You did? It worked. Yeah. Just

Malcolm Collins: should we do that with the kids instead of bops spray bottles? I meant that worked pretty well for kids. Honestly.

Simone Collins: We need to try this. Why have we not tried? I have a, I have a hair, I have a hairspray. I'm gonna try this out.

Malcolm Collins: You should try it out. The next time one of the kids like, starts whining about something, just walk up and be, oh my God. They were, they're

Simone Collins: gonna act like it's acid. They're gonna act like they're, they are, no,

Malcolm Collins: they're gonna, I promise you, if we develop this as like a parenting technique. When our kids are older and they're writing their memoirs, they're gonna be like, you don't understand if spray bottles were the much higher punishment than bops.

Bops were a low tier punishment compared to spray bottles. That's when you knew you really messed up.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I'm just glad we don't resort to emotional. Emotional blackmail and, and cold shouldering and the silent treatment. But see, this is stuff that you have to train out of your wife. This is the stuff that is actually toxic, which is funny.

But yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll let you get into it. I was gonna ask Steven Minka if they wanted brown rice or white rice with a mafu. Are you gonna be super mad if they say brown rice?

Malcolm Collins: Nope. You can have brown rice and I'll,

Simone Collins: I can always microwave. I can rete. White rice for you, if that's all right?

Malcolm Collins: Sure.

Okay. I don't care. Whatever you want it.

Simone Collins: Okay. Hold

Malcolm Collins: on.

I mean, your brown rice is disgusting. It, it's so healthy.

If food's not radical, it doesn't go in my body. My, that is my health advice for people. That means fruit, rollups and Capri Sun. Is, is what I am made out of

Simone Collins: tonight. Would you like brown rice or white rice?

Question mark. The one thing we don't really have for tonight to go with the Mao Dofu is any form of vegetable because I've never had vegetables served with ma pofu. So if you want any veg or salad, comma now, it would be a great time to pick it up. Question, question. Exclamation mark. My God.

Speaker 5: Iny, please stop throwing things off. Your, your, your thing. Don't throw that. Okay. I You're not gonna throw it. Right?

Thank you, Indy. You already made a very big mess. Okay. And that.

You can eat some cheese. Toasty. I don't want to toast. Hey Torsten, you're pretty cool. You look super tired. Do you like your food? Yeah. Yeah, but he doesn't want it. Titan, what are you watching? Titan. Huh? What are you watching? I don't, I'm watching Blaze. Why do you like Blaze? 'cause I need more milk. I'll get you more milk.

My princess. Oh, we're out of milk. Literally in front of her. Oh, this is your more milk. A silly one. There's milk here that's in your milk hook cup.

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