Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

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Join Simone and Malcolm as they chat with Alex Kaschuta, host of the Subversive Podcast, about the impact of the internet on gender wars, evolutionary psychology in online discourse, cultural homogenization's effect on gender dynamics, challenges of relationships in the digital age, and strategies for raising kids in a tech-saturated world.

In this eye-opening discussion, Malcolm Collins and Simone Collins dive deep into three major events that have shaken the foundations of trans activism: the Cass Report, a longitudinal study on gender non-contentedness, and a leak from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). They explore the implications of these studies, which suggest that the majority of gender non-conforming youth will eventually desist in their gender non-contentedness, and that many in the trans community are aware that children cannot fully comprehend the long-term consequences of transitioning. The hosts also discuss the importance of waiting until adulthood to make irreversible decisions, the potential risks associated with hormone therapy, and the need for a more nuanced approach to gender-affirming care.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. It is exciting to be here with you today. You and I have done a number of episodes around trans issues before and trying to get to, what is most likely the truth about this stuff because it is so politically charged.It is very hard to get accurate readings of what's going on one way or the other if you're the type of person who's really into sexuality research, which we are, we've written a book on the subject.While I consider those. Episodes pretty comprehensive in terms of our views of the issue.There have been 3 really big events that have happened since the recording of those episodes. And each of which are really worth diving into and we'll use that episode to do this. The 3 events that I am speaking, of course, are about the cast. Report huge for people who don't know what this is.This is a report that did a review and it's like now the gold standard that the UK is using to determine how they relate to trans [00:01:00] treatment, particularly in individuals under the age of 18.And it came out pretty critical of a lot of the stuff going out on the field right now. Another was a big study.On longitudinally on trans individuals and the trans community was pretty unhappy with the findings that it had with the biggest, from my perspective, being that of gender conforming youth, over 90 percent end up being totally okay with their gender when they're adults. This is obviously a very important thing to know when you're looking at things like affirming gender care.And then the final 1 was a leak of 1 of the major trans organizations that sets a lot of the policy positions for Canada and the United States and the leak. A lot of people who are really anti trans, or I'd say overly trans skeptical, have taken this leak to be uniquely damning. And I think that there's actually a more nuanced perspective on some of these emails and what's going on with this.[00:02:00]So I want to go over every one of these in turn with you. And with our audience to try to find out what's really going on here.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: So the 1st thing I wanted to do was to go into the study because to me, this is most interesting. The cast report is more just like a political thing that's happening.It's not really new information. This study is new information and it's really interesting information. And it's called. Development of gender non contentedness during adolescence and early adulthood, and it came out in February, 2024,So this is what the study says. We found that gender non contentedness, is most common around the age of 11, and that the prevalence decreases with age. Moreover, we identified three different developmental trajectory types of gender non contentedness throughout adolescent and early adulthood.One, the majority, 78 percent of the sample, consistently indicated to never experience any gender non contentedness. So [00:03:00] 78 percent of people at around the age of 11 just are totally okay with their gender. All right, to a group reporting gender non contentedness in early adolescence, but not any longer in adulthood.19 percent of the sample. So this is a population that starts feeling very non contented with their gender and then gets over it as they get older or no longer has these feelings. These are transient feelings to them. And we'll go into this group in a bit more detail in a 2nd, 3, a small group. 2 percent of the sample showing the opposite pattern of increasingly reporting gendered non contentedness with age. We found that female sex and participating in the clinical rather than the population cohort was associated with increasing gendered non contentedness. So this is actually really important what they said there being in the clinical, not the population cohort. So what that means is when this study was conducted, A portion of the [00:04:00] participants that they were using were from the general population.A portion of the population they were using was from a, clinical transitioning groups. Okay.All right. So what they're saying here is that this percentage, so if you're taking like a random shotgunning and just in case you haven't done the numbers in your head, this means that of the people who at the age of 11 feel gender non contentedness Over 90 percent this feeling persists in them.They do not feel this in adults. It's actually mentioned in the studies that of this percent of the cohort, not a single one of them felt gender non content in this by the time they hit their twenties.Simone Collins: And this harkens back to the research that you had done when writing the pregnancy guide to sexuality, that sort of showed that a lot of people.Either weren't super married to their birth sex or otherwise, just not like we're okay with playing aroundMalcolm Collins: with different printers. Yeah. Now, what gets really interesting here is because this comes from the clinical cohort. It means that actually, in the gender, the general population, more broadly, [00:05:00] these numbers are probably even lower of this group where this feeling increases over time, which means that it's probably lower.Low like the number of people who have gender non contentedness when they're around 11 that end up not having it when they're adults. This part of the cohort is likely much, much larger than 90%. I might go as far as to say 98 percent given what the data is showing here, which. Is obviously a really devastating point for trans individuals.So a lot of them have been attacking this study pretty vociferously, but I think that this shows a, but there's also individuals in the trans community who see the study and are quite excited about it because they're like it does show that you have this 2 percent when the problem gets bigger over time.And this is really interesting, so I'm gonna keep reading some more, because the key question then for the trans community is how do you distinguish between these two groups?Simone Collins: Yeah. How do you tell when it's like real [00:06:00] trans versus, transient trans?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Transient gender non contentedness that has to do with puberty, which I've said in previous videos, is a common part of childhood is being non content with your gender.Or the changes that are happening with your body over puberty. That's normal. And so what this study now does is it changes the entire playing field of transness because we're also going to go over it in the context of previous studies because it really is the best of the long term studies in this space.And it shows very exactly that if a Young adolescent comes to you and says they do not feel content with their gender. Odds are hugely on the side that they're not going to feel like this as they get older, and therefore affirming these feelings is a bad idea.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Especially affirming them in any way that is, Biologically irreversible.If for example, they decide that their pronouns are going to be whatever then.Malcolm Collins: But what it means is that right now the standard of care, trans affirming care [00:07:00] takes it as a medical, likeSimone Collins: a medical prognosis or not prognosis, a medical mandate.Malcolm Collins: Yes. If a child comes to you saying this, you have a mandate to affirm them.And now we are seeing that. Is probably not the best course of action, which changes what would be the recommended standard of care in use who are gender nonconformingSimone Collins: highlight. 1 of the things that makes this really meaningful is that before this came out. Because the research is so bad, and one of the big themes of the CAS report is the research is just so bad.It's not like there's a ton of information showing it's damaging, but there's also not any information that says it's really useful.Malcolm Collins: Hold on. We'll get to the CAS report when we get to the CAS report, because if somebody who has only heard the trans side of the CAS report argument, they will hear, oh they threw out X kind of research, which actually isn't bad.Okay. And there's a lot of misinformation going on around the cast report, so we need to wait till we get to that. We're going to focus on this study. [00:08:00] Okay. Because I do want to go down a big rabbit hole on good versus bad studies and what studies have actually been done and haven't been done.But that's more related to the cast report than this. Okay.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: So to keep going, in addition, individuals was increasing or decreasing gender non contentedness trajectories had lower global self, worse, more behavioral and emotional problems. and more often had homosexual or bisexual orientation compared to individuals without gender nonNo one: contentedness.Malcolm Collins: And so right here, I'm talking about the cohort that ended up getting more of these feelings over time.No one: AnMalcolm Collins: increasing gender non contentedness trajectory was significantly associated with a clinical cohort, a homosexual or bisexual orientation,No one: theMalcolm Collins: self concept subscale global self worth, and female sex.But not the self concept subscale physical appearance. No, this is just I don't know what that means. So fascinating, I'm gonna unpack what this means. Please do. We're seeing a few things here, right? One is [00:09:00] that if you are a male assigned at birth and you feel non content with your gender in your youth,No one: You areMalcolm Collins: actually very unlikely to be in this cohort where those feelings get worse over time.If you do nothing, if you do not engage with the communities that are extra affirming of this, it desysts. So that's one thing that this is saying, which goes against what a lot of people would intuit. Two, and this is what I think, why is it that the people with the gay and bisexual orientations are more likely to have this increase over time?They are more likely to be in communities that affirm these feelings than individuals without this. And so the feelings get are more likely to get snowballed or sound echoed. I, like when you put a microphone too close to the speakers and then you end up getting that screeching sound, you can get that within these communities.These constant. And the fact thatSimone Collins: you can gain status in those communities by showing how extreme you are and a more extreme form of being in those communities is often turning trans.Malcolm Collins: So that's why I think, and then especially if you have low global self [00:10:00] worth, you are more likely to. Oh, becauseSimone Collins: You feel like you need to appreciate your value in those communities. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And the self affirmment that those communities are giving you for leaning into this, the sort of love bombing behavior you have. Oh yeah. So yeah,Simone Collins: The affirmation you get if you do lean into being trans, if you're feeling really insecure, that's going to feel all the much better.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, now let's argue this from the other perspective, this is me arguing from a more critical perspective, what an individual could say is that if an individual is in these communities that are more accepting of trans identities, i. e. they're gay and bisexual anyway, they are more likely to transition, and it's less of a jump because they're already presenting a non normal sexuality, So why not, also go in this additional direction as well with the global self worth, they'd say, if you live in a transphobic society, wouldn't you have lower global self worth if you fell into one of these groups?But here is why I do not think that's a strong argument, the global self worth argument, because individuals who felt equal [00:11:00] amounts of gender discontentedness, but had higher global self worth, as a youth, so clearly they were okay with showing that they felt this, ended up desisting in those feelings over time.So that doesn't explain to me like the lower global self worth is clearly not a result or downstream of these feelings. It is what guides how these feelings, whether these feelings end up persisting or not persisting in the individual, which is really interesting. Now, one of the most interesting things is the final thing where you're like, I don't know what that means, the physical appearance scale.So what this is showing is contrary to what a lot of people think, how attractive you are. And how comfortable you are with how you look has no correlation with whether you're in this true trans group, the group that, where the gender discontingentness gets worse.Simone Collins: Golly, wait, so the researchers are like gradingMalcolm Collins: the,Simone Collins: he's a seven.He's a four.Malcolm Collins: Yeah and self conceptual [00:12:00] subscales. So it's how they judge their own attractiveness. But this is important, right? Because we've had we've talked a lot with groups like theSimone Collins: Trans Maxxers.Malcolm Collins: Trans maxers, which is a group of like incel males who are transitioning.And you can be aSimone Collins: three as a male and like a seven as a female, depending on the way that you may be unattractive as a male. If you look too effeminate or skinny or whatever, like suddenly you're a gorgeous woman.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And there's this stereotype of becoming trans is failing at your own gender.And so you go with the other one. That's just not true in the data right now, what we're seeing that, that does not appear to be correlated with this group. So that's really important. No. One thing I wanted to know, because I had mentioned this, but I want to read the quote from the study here. The second largest group that was identified, 19%, had a decreasing trajectory of gender non contentedness.At the sixth assessment wave, around the age of 25, none of these individuals reported experiencing gender non contentedness anymore.Simone Collins: Wow. None. All right. So it's [00:13:00]Malcolm Collins: not like a iffy thing, it just goes away. Interesting. Now, here I'm going to read a chunk, because this goes into the lack, because I think people are generally pretty surprised by the lack of longitudinal studies done in this space.And this is something we could go way deeper on with another episode, potentially. But people may be like, wait, why haven't a lot of good long term studies been done of trans individuals? And the core answer is because the data banks for in the social communities for trans individuals really push against them participating in studies.And the, and they push against releasing data. Now, if you want to take it from a kind perspective, you could say they're afraid ofSimone Collins: scrutiny orMalcolm Collins: scrutiny I guess the data being used, what data will say, and they're afraid of the studies being runSimone Collins: which is damning whichMalcolm Collins: is really damning.But I will go over what studies had been run in the past from the abstract of this, no, this, sorry, not from the abstract, from the intro to the paper. [00:14:00] Furthermore, The few longitudinal studies that have been conducted in a clinical setting found low persistent rates of early childhood gender dysphoric feelings into adolescence and adulthood.And then it lists a few studies here. It was found that children who socially transitioned in early childhood were more likely to have persisting feelings of dysphoria, non clinical sample of 317 children. mean the age of eight years, who identified as transgender, but who were not assessed according to the DSM 5 criteria for dysphoria, 94 percent still had binary transgender identity and 4 percent had non binary identity at a five year follow up assessment at 13 years of age.In this sample, it was also suggested that gender transition before puberty is associated with continuing transgender identity. However, with only one follow up assessment until the age of 13, the further gender identity development into mid and late adolescence remains unknown. So what they're doing here is like the big studies in this space that have been done recently, either [00:15:00] showed that most of these feelings desisted or stopped at a very young age, at the age of 13, which this study may have shown a large level that you would still have these feelings.So it aligns with what this study found. Um, And from another study here, they're saying, or only contained one follow up in the Taiwanese sample. 87 percent never reported any dissatisfaction. 8 percent reported dissatisfaction at the age of 13, but not at the age of 21, 5 percent at 22 and not at 13 and 1 percent reported persistent dissatisfaction.So this is a different sample. This is pottery tall 2021 and this was in the Taiwanese data set. And what this study showed again, Is it feelings of gender dissatisfaction are actually very transient between the ages of 13 and 22,Simone Collins: which really matches with our general thesis around adolescence being a period of body dysmorphia in general, which makes sense because your hormones are going out of control and your body's changing a lot and it's [00:16:00] super gross.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah no, it does make perfect sense. And it's just worth noting that this is being repeatedly found across studies.Simone Collins: Yeah. When people bother to do longitudinal research,Malcolm Collins: yeah that's not just and I wouldn't know if you heard from the earlier study. Actually, I'm not going to go over that.I'll just do that. Okay. So to go further in clinical samples, it was found that gender dysphoria is associated with homosexual orientation also. And this is from a different study, not theirs. So this is again, showing that if you hang out in gay population clusters, you are more likely to experience gender dysphoria.Okay. Also in population based samples, associations between gender typical behavior in children and sexual orientation are found. For example, in one population based study, children with gender non conformity regarding play behavior at ages 3 to 5 were more likely to report a bisexual or gay orientation later in life.That's from whatSimone Collins: we've been told. Oh, this sort of ties into what we always talk about with the TIDE studies, right?Malcolm Collins: Yes, this indicates that this could be downstream of okay, I just need to, [00:17:00] Simone is referring to studies that look at endocrine disruptors that are present in utero when male fetuses are developing, it's been shown that it is correlated with more female like than male like play behavior at a seven year follow up study and so this would correlate to then say if you're looking at this Play behavior is a correlatory thing here.And then you look at another study that looked at like basically three to five year olds to then see if they became gay growing up. It suggests that even at a biological level, we should see far more gay individuals in the general population than used to exist before these endocrine disruptors becameSimone Collins: pervasive.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So very interesting to me. I find this study to be, it's absolutely game changing for me because yeah. Before all I had to go on was my assumptions around this, right? Like yourSimone Collins: intuitions. And also we'll say related research that we've seen such as the tide studies, such as people's.responses to surveys about arousal pathways and [00:18:00] sexuality, et cetera.Malcolm Collins: And unfortunately what this stuff indicates to me is that just this first study in isolation, right? Is that you pretty much are better off always delaying gender affirming care until after the age of 18. Actually preferably from the age of 22 or 25.Yeah. Yeah. And an individual can say, But then it's harder for an individual to really fully transition, right? Yeah. But then I would say, yeah, except it's easier for women to really fully transition to men. That's more a problem with male to female transition, which it turns out is a category where the desire to transition desists if it is not affirmed.Yeah, it's the population that would have the most inclination to do this is a population that should most be dissuaded from doing it.No one: Yeah. Yeah. InMalcolm Collins: addition to that you've got the problem of what is the thing that really distinguishes these 2 populations? It is an. increased desire over time [00:19:00] in a desire to transition between the age of the 13 to 25.And I think that is perfectly reasonable. Basically, it says that for the individuals who actually are trans, they do end up figuring this out eventually. And that seems to be the safest way to sort them within the population.Simone Collins: Yeah.And I think what we tell our kids too, is And what I really expect to have happen is that treatment for transitioning is going to improve over time.This is all pretty new stuff. And I think a lot of what's going on, for example the dysphoria continues or could possibly worsen when people actually do go on treatment. I think a lot of that comes down to the fact that honing in on the right levels of hormones and everything, getting everything right.Is really difficult. SoMalcolm Collins: we're on the edge of having like plasmid gene therapy, for example, exactly. Yeah.Simone Collins: So like in the future, it might not even matter if you're trying to transition after age 25 because through the help of AI [00:20:00] and many other medical advancements. You'll be able to handle it really well.It might actually be better to delay.Malcolm Collins: And I think that will be one of the core areas of complaint that many of these individuals are going to have is there will be like the first generation of people who get cybernetic implants, and then, a few years later, the implants are dramatically better.And the first generation of like, why did I get stuck with gen one tech? Yeah. So that's, I think another really important thing. It's a really important thing that you're pointing out there, but let's go to the CAS report really quickly. So I'm going to read some notes on this because it is absolutely critical.This report, while it is not really new information, it's almost a meta study of what's been going on, is critical because it is completely changing the general narrative around the way governments deal with trans individuals. I would say doctors,Simone Collins: like general practitioners, like just doctors and therapists in general.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, this study has been accepted among a lot of people in the mainstream left, not among the extreme cultists, but in the mainstream left, this is seen as the voice of the [00:21:00] authority. And so we're going to go over both the study and the complaints about the study and the counters to those complaints.Simone Collins: Goodie.Malcolm Collins: Okay. So Dr. Hillary Cass, the pediatrician commissioned to conduct a review by the NHS. Two children and young people questioning their gender identity said that while doctors tended to be cautious in implementing new findings in emerging areas of medicine, quote, quite the reverse happened in the field of gender care for children, end quote.They studied a total of 23 guidelines published by different countries between 1998 and 2022. All but two were published after 2010. Quote, health care services and professionals should take into account the poor quality and interrelated nature of the published guidance to support the management of children and adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria and incongruence.In one study, she said a single Dutch medical study, quote, suggested puberty blockers may improve psychological well being for a narrowly defined group of children with gender incongruence, end quote, , Has formed the basis for their use [00:22:00] to quote spread at pace to other countries in quote.Subsequently, there was a quote greater readiness to start masculinizing slash feminizing hormones in mid teens in quote, she added, quote, some practitioners abandoned normal clinical approaches, holistic assessment, Which has meant that this group of young people have been Extra petitionalized compared to other young people with similar complex presentations. They deserve much better, end quote. So here, what I want to pull out is a few things that she said here, which are really important. One is that she's noting that most of the government guidelines that they're using for transition and gender nonconformity.In. Minors are really just based on other government reports on the same thing. It's a bunch of studies pointing at each other without a lot of primary evidence, and we're going to get to this claim because this is the thing that a lot of, trans activists will have a complaint about is the not a lot of primary evidence.So just to keep going here. [00:23:00] Most of them lacked, quote, an independent and evidence based approach and information about how recommendations were developed, end quote, the researcher said. Few guidelines were informed by a systemic review of empirical evidence, and they lacked transparency about how their recommendations were developed.Only two reported consulting directly with children and young people during their development, the York Academics found. Data from the gender clinics reported in the CAS review showed that the vast majority of people who started puberty Suppression went on to have masculinizing or feminizing hormones, suggesting that puberty blockers did not buy people time to think.Now, this is actually really important because this is seen in a lot of data. The moment you start puberty blockers or really any form of gender affirming care, you're basically in the pipeline and almost nobody leaves the pipeline, which is why this other study is really important because it's looking at people who don't fall into the pipeline.And a lot of the studies that were done on quote unquote trans individuals in the clinical population only looked at people who had pre [00:24:00] gone into the pipeline. And that's why it was so important for her to find control groups in blind studies, which was her core complaint of a lot of these studies.And we know from other studies, once you're in the pipeline, you're in the pipeline, there's really no getting out of it.No one: WhichMalcolm Collins: makes sense if your entire social community at that point affirms this decision. And if you detransition, and we're going to see this in the leaked emails, you get completely ostracized from your entire community.It's likable. Converting out of being a Jehovah's Witness or an Amish or something like that it is incredibly difficult to do and it is incredibly difficult to stop from a social perspective. If you're in these systems and for the individuals who are like can't you understand that they feel threatened by the narrative around detransition?And it's you're the very people who criticize people like Jehovah's Witnesses for the way they ostracize people who form new beliefs and systems. Like, how can you not see how hurtful what you're doing is and why it makes people afraid to leave the pipeline and why it [00:25:00] creates These psychological cycles where it becomes very difficult to leave the pipeline.Okay, but now let's keep going. I want to then talk about debunking the CAS report, right? Because I went through a lot of people who were talking about debunking this, and it is very interesting and worth digging into.Simone Collins: Yeah, okay.Malcolm Collins: Here's from a Reddit post. Now here are the four points that they had found for debunking, if they're just arguing against it.Okay. The report engaged with anti trans hate groups and was written by someone affiliated with them. Does anyone have a source for this? Question mark. Um, basically the sources for this are here, I'll give it to you. Cass follows the LGB alliance and transgender trend, both recognized as anti trans groups.She doesn't follow any pro trans groups. That is the full extent of that. SoSimone Collins: yeah, basically hate group is anyone who's Oh, let's be careful about this.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And that's because, as in the same way that like, if you're in Scientology, anyone who even questioned Scientology, what are they [00:26:00] called again?What's the word for them?Subversive persons is the term.Malcolm Collins: It's something thatSimone Collins: sounds surprisingly corporate. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You're not allowed problematic individuals. Hold on. You're not allowed to in any way.And this makes sense if this is more like a religion than like an actual. And it is that as we've argued in our episode has a cult evolved under the trans movement? And I think that one kind of has so the second one here is puberty blockers are seen as perfectly safe for CIS children who have precocious puberty., so they shouldn't be any different for trans children. This is just comical CIS children who are using them to delay precocious puberty are undergoing purity at a time when they shouldn't be undergoing purity. Trans children are. undergoing puberty when they shouldn't be undergoing puberty.Basically, cis children are using this so that their puberty happens as it normally happens. Trans individuals are using this to attempt to turn off puberty and then attempt to restart it later, which we know just doesn't work. You do not get your full puberty if you would try to start it later. That's what a lot of, when I like go over the data, that's what it [00:27:00] seems to indicate.So this is a really bad point. Which I think is great that we're seeing how bad the points against this are, because to me, when I want to know should I take something seriously, I should look at the people who are arguing against it and see how strong their arguments are. The third one is, if any antidepressant was successful at improving mental health slash suicidality as blockers slash HTR are for trans people, it would be considered a miracle drug.Again, does anyone have any numbers to back this up? What? Numbers don't back this up.No one: Wow. There's positions theyMalcolm Collins: want to be true and then they look for numbers, right? The final point is wait times for accessing this health care are so high that there have been several people dying of suicide before they reach the end of the waiting list.And there is currently NHS care for trans people who need to access it. This is just one of those things where we already know that the suicidality within this group is really high regardless, even after they get gender affirming care. I'm not gonna, I think it's really twisted to consider everyone in [00:28:00] this pipeline who ends up committing suicide as killed by the treatment.I would say that if we're going to do that, then we should count as everyone who has transitioned and then commit suicide as being killed by transition. It's not going to look good for the trans community. No oneSimone Collins: mentions that. No.Malcolm Collins: And here is the key argument that you see used against it.This report, and I'm going to quote here, some have focused on the report's omission of evidence, including studies around purity blockers that have not used control groups. People have argued that control groups in these studies would be impossible because people would know if they'd been assigned a placebo or not a placebo.Yeah. And here you see a lot of people complaining just over and over again. Complaining about you cannot block all the studies that didn't use blind control groups because you can't really use blind control groups here. Now I am going to post on the page, over the screen here so people can see, highlighted in the report why [00:29:00] she threw out these studies.No one: Because whatMalcolm Collins: would you be lied to if you believe they were thrown out? because they didn't have a blind control group. The specific line that was used over and over again was lack of blinding And no control group. Thisis critical. These are two different things. They both did not have blinding and did not have a control group. Now I want to be clear because a lot of people, my backgrounds in medical research, a lot of people here might not understand how Freaking horrific it is if you had no control group. Okay. You don't need to like assign people placebo meds or something like that and blind them to put them in a control group.What you need to do for example, if I'm looking at rates of suicidality, what I would do [00:30:00] is I would contrast people who did like just totally normal members of the population was individuals who are undergoing this kind of trans care, right? peopleSimone Collins: undergoing this treatment. And to the earlier point, those who are stuck on the wait list.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I can get to the wait list. Perfect control group. Perfect control group stuck on the wait list. Very easy to do. They're not using this, right? So the goal is to get the control group as close to the population that you're doing as possible, but they don't have to be exactly like the population.They can be quite different to have a no control group at all. You're basically not even trying for real data at that point. You were just trying to affirm a position. And this is what really gets me is this lie that she. Was discarding studies because they didn't have a blind control group. She was discarding studies because they didn't have any control group at all, which is a basic thing in most medical research Okay.And this is, and people were like with some cancer patients, you wouldn't have a control group was like chemo or [00:31:00] something like that. And it's yeah, but this isn't like that. There are comparable groups that you, yeah,Simone Collins: there are lotteries that are wait lists. There are, yeah it's there are those who can financially afford it.And those who can't all sorts of things.Malcolm Collins: What this says to me like my big takeaway from this is because the criticisms of the cast report were so weak, she engaged with naughty people. So we cannot like think about her as human anymore. And that is what cults do. If you talk to people who are critical of the cult, they will say, we just can't trust anything you're saying anymore.That is a just complete nonsense. This complaining about her throwing out studies that were poorly conducted, Again, just complete nonsense.And they'll be like she included studies that didn't use blind controls and it's no. They still had controls. That was what the big mistake was.You're including this blind word, which wasn't the critical word. So now we're going to go to one final thing that you haven't really looked into yet. Actually, do you have any further things you wanted to say from like you went over the block and reported on this and [00:32:00] everything?Simone Collins: I think the important thing is pointing out that this isn't because she's found any particular outcome.It's a lot of it's just the research is so bad while there isn't a lot of information about it being very, Oh, definitely you're going to die if you go through this, but also definitely going through this isn't going to help you. I think the important thing is in the past and what may be changing now and what gives me a lot of hope is if you are a therapist or you are a doctor and someone sends you their child and their child appears to have some form of gender dysphoria, the responsible thing for you to do and what you would do to avoid any like form of liability is to just send them to a gender transition or, a gender treatment clinic.Just refer them to that. This is, off by plate. There's no, I don't know what to do. The only evidence out there that's being shouted from the hilltops is cherry picked studies saying your child is going to die if you don't do this. So people from a sort of media [00:33:00] standpoint and from a public discourse standpoint, doctors and clinicians and therapists were forced to throw people into this pipeline, which as you point out, then is a very slippery slope.You can't get out of it, a Chinese finger trap so now with the cost report, what makes me so hopeful is. Doctors, therapists, et cetera, have something else to point to, to say, no, this is not necessarily the best pathway. I'm not being necessarily responsible by telling you to sit this out, find some other interventions, work on self confidence, et cetera, which is really encouraging.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And now we're gonna get to the last study here, which I find really interesting and I don't think that you had heard about this. It's not a study, it's a major event. So there was a leak of files from an organization called the World's Professional Association for Transgender Health W-P-A-A-A-T-H, or wpath, I guess is how I read it.Yeah. wpath.Simone Collins: Yeah. That's how they go wpath.Malcolm Collins: And you heard about this?Simone Collins: Yeah. In [00:34:00] blockchain reported, cause I love them. They talk about the WPath files a lot. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Oh, they do. Okay. This was really interesting. So this organization has, you know how I mentioned that there was like an echo chamber that a lot of countries were using for their use, gender affirming care.Yeah. That people justSimone Collins: kept referring to the same. Like other studies and no one actually, when making claims about this is the best way to go. Everyone agrees that this is true was actually referring to real, profoundly robust research.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it was coming from this organization and we began to, through these leaks, get an understanding of how individuals within this organization really saw what they were doing.And the biggest sort of thing that came out of the WPAS files was really Two things, and we'll get into some specific quotes around this, but the first being, being that they understood that many of the kids could not make an informed consent to what they were doing.Simone Collins: What, wow what [00:35:00] indicates that?That's pretty damning.Malcolm Collins: Oh here I'll give you some quotes then.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I think the thing you have to remember about kids is we're often explaining these sorts of things to people who haven't had biology in high school yet. He says discussing the potential of loss of fertility and options to preserve fertility with a 14 year old is, quote, always good in theory, end quote.He said in the video. Because many will go on to cross sex hormones that will leave them sterile. But, quote, I know I'm talking to a blank wall, end quote, he says. And, quote, and the same would happen for a cisgender kid, right? They'd be like, ew, kids, babies, gross, end quote. Quote, We try to talk about it, but most of these kids are nowhere in any kind of a brain space really, to talk about it in a serious way, end quote.And he adds, quote, I, that's always bothered me, but, we still want the kids to be happy, happier in the moment.Simone Collins: Happier in the moment. Happier for now. Damned in the future. Why forMalcolm Collins: a doctor? This is like the Hays [00:36:00] movement where it's like it makes them happier in the moment to tell them that overeating isn't going to make them unhappy in the long term or cause long term negative bodily repercussions in the long term or be unhealthy, so you just don't tell them that.That's why it's evil to tell people that. Taking in far more calories than you burn is unhealthy for you because it makes them happier in the moment to not tell them that. And this is what we talk about when we talk about this virus or this form of engaging with this. No, you're a doctor.And you are saying right now, I understand that children cannot make an informed decision. Consent to the surgeries that we are allowing them to consent to the treatments that we are allowing them to consent to, and they will have a major repercussions later in their life, specifically sterility and never being able to orgasm again, or never being able to experience an orgasm at all.They don't know what these things are. They can't understand these things. And as we talk about was in prenatalism, many people develop their identities when they're young. So they don't [00:37:00] understand that if they found kids gross when they were a teenager, that doesn't mean they're going to find them gross as an adult.And it is natural for young teens around this age for biological reasons to have an instinct like gross young kids. I don't want to be around that.Simone Collins: Yeah. On that too. I think even if like even if a young teen can comprehend that as an adult, they're going to want something different. There is a rebellious streak in many.And I felt this myself as a teen that would take away. The ability of that person in the future to have that choice I hate the idea so much now that I'm going to make sure that my future self doesn't have the ability to do it when they try to like someone who's trying to, get rid of eating sweets, decides that they're going to make sure they never have sweets in their house in the future.So their future self that wants sweets can't even get them. Yeah. So I think even when they can comprehend, even when they know the biological consequences, they, in their current state of mind may still choose intentionally to override the wishes of their future [00:38:00] self.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And we know that kids have, poor self control.This is why we don't generally allow kids to sign lifelong contracts and stuff like this. Yeah. They can't join theSimone Collins: military. You can't sell organs. You can't.Malcolm Collins: Wild. Yeah. It is wild, but it gets worse than that. They are showing how little the kids understand from some of these quotes that you have here, right?I guess what'sSimone Collins: wild to me is that they acknowledge that these things are damaging.Malcolm Collins: And this is where I'd say that I think the far like the far anti trans movement goes a little far with this stuff and maybe reading a little too much into it, but I'm going to read another quote here.Simone Collins: All right.Malcolm Collins: The one, one clinician had written about a number of her patients, quote, they seem to feel that they should be allowed to switch back and forth merely at their request. I'm not comfortable with this at this point, we need to be better at understanding how to handle this type of situation in quote. Now that an individual, they had started transitioning thought that this was something that you could just switch whenever you wanted to really easily.What that [00:39:00] shows to me is that this individual didn't understand what they were committing to, or how permanent it was, at all. And this again shows why people don't think that young people should be allowed to consentSimone Collins: to this. This is, again, another reason why This is so important to put off as long as possible because in the future I have plenty of confidence that people will be able to seamlessly switch whenever they want to Maybe not in our lifetime, but it'll happen But not nowMalcolm Collins: and they show some really concerns about this.One clinician wrote quote kids can't fully understand what they're agreeing to in quote Kids can't understand what they're agreeing to We can never do this, and it's abuse to do it, even when a parent or doctor are on board that it is the right thing for the child. Who is this? Anyway, I'll look at this later.So here I want to note something right here that is really interesting. But Bowers has also said that acknowledging detransition exists, quote, [00:40:00] even to a minor extent is considered off limits for many in our community.No one: IMalcolm Collins: do see talk of the phenomenon as distracting from the major challenges we face, end quote.There is a mission within the transitioning community and within the medical community around this to just pretend that de transitioners don'tNo one: exist. And this isMalcolm Collins: another big problem, right? Because this is a very big and growing movement that it seems like if somebody was forming informed consent, and they had been given both sides, they would know this.And this is a big problem because when I look at transforms and their Transitioners, they're like, look, didn't you read the back of the like pill bottle? Didn't weren't you told about everything that could go wrong? Like, why are you out there complaining now and complaining about our community now?And the answer is because they were transitioned at 11 and they obviously didn't understand. Yeah. Doctors giving them the transition knew that they didn't understand. And it was well known among the people who are writing the national guidelines. Like in countries like Canada, that the people who are [00:41:00] transitioning didn't understand.So you don't get to come out here. You cannot both be pro the transitioning of children and say that they shouldn't have the right to say, I didn't fully understand this. Now, one of the particularly damaging things that came out was this was many cases of people who ended up getting cancer because ofSimone Collins: this.Whoa whoa. Why didn't. Wait, what correlates with cancer? Is it the estrogen justice or what?Malcolm Collins: Yes. If male to female correlates with cancer, which is actually really interesting because there was one study done recently that shows to female to male might actually lower rates of cancer in individuals because you don't have the mammary tissueSimone Collins: anymore.Malcolm Collins: Or the uterus sometimes. Which are two of the more common locations that females get cancer. Yeah. But I'm going to quote here. In one, a doctor writes about a 16 year old patient who developed two benign liver tumors after several years of taking birth control and one year of gender reforming testosterone.In another, a different doctor recalled a colleague who died of liver cancer after nearly a decade of taking testosterone. That doctor wrote that, quote, to the best of my [00:42:00] knowledge, the cancer was linked to the hormone treatment. The doctor was noted that they didn't have any other details because the patient had died.Simone Collins: That's so interesting that, yeah, this isn't discussed. Whereas people going through IVF or people concerned about IVF often bring up concerns about cancer. Cause they're like, Oh gosh if I take even for a freaking month. extra estrogen, I'm going to get more cancer. And yet that like that. So I also, I don't think it's poorly known that this is a risk because if people are concerned about one monthMalcolm Collins: fringe risk, and it is not a complete fringe risk.It's a known side effect of these drugs. Taken over short periods of time and that's the thing that you're pointing out here, which is really important to note. Is it individuals? No they're like, oh, but this has been used in other treatments for a long time. Yeah, butSimone Collins: people worry about those other treatments.Malcolm Collins: They worry about it in the other treatments and the use of it is extremely limited in terms of time windows. And they're like, oh, but like [00:43:00] hormonal therapy has been used in birth control for a long time. And it's those are different hormones at different levels. And then the ones that are causing cancer in these individuals.Yeah. So this doesn't matter. But I will also say that to an extent, these leaks have been blown out of proportion. Really as bad as the leaks could have been, this is pretty minor to me. It was in how extreme some of these communities get. And it does show that the doctors. Do you actually have some level of self reflection and concern about what's happening and knowledge that kids can't really consent?They just have fears around acknowledging that was in their community, which I think is something that like anyone who is looking at this situation with any level of sanity already knew was a phenomenon.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So between these three things, my question is now, what has this changed for you in terms of your perspective of what's going on?And do you think that the battle is genuinely tipping against the transitioning children activists? [00:44:00]Simone Collins: I think it, yeah already things, programs for youth gender transition were being defunded, criticized, shut down. I think youth gender clinics are, Going to be a thing of the past very soon.And my hope is that this means that transitioning like those who are trans activists and who do to your earlier point, really care about that 2 percent that really does have persistent gender dysphoria and that really does need and want to transition that it gets them to focus on instead identifying those people.Validating their concerns and preparing that, like giving them something to do in the interim while they wait until they are old enough to make that transition safely, we'll say after age 25. I think that would be such an amazing.Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah, it would be great. If you could get better studies on that would be fantastic.And I think that's the direction that the trans community and trans activists should [00:45:00] go from this. For me, the major thing that's shifted about this is one, it's a shift in the public narrative. It is now in, JK Rowling with all her stuff, she recently like absolutely went after someone.They're like, now that it's okay to say the things that I risked my career saying for a long time that many individuals lost their career for saying, you now are jumping on the bandwagon with this when you didn't stand up for this, when you could actually really suffer for this. And the other big thing was in trans news that's happened is this law in Scotland, right?This hate crime law and JK Rowling standing up against it and precedent in a way thatSimone Collins: nullified it. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah and I think that she's right. We have to remember the things that we're saying now that are actually like, not that spicy anymore that, transitioning kids is probably not a good idea are things that individuals, even trans individuals have lost their careers for saying like Buck Angel, The original trans activist who really brought the community into the mainstream and then was completely isolated from the community from saying that kids shouldn't be allowed to [00:46:00] transition.That was or that we should have some skepticism around this. That was to me, really heartbreaking to see how many people in the left, even when they change their mainstream position on this, when they're like, oh, we were wrong about that whole transitioning kids thing. They will never rehabilitate the people that they have.Excommunicated or that they have labeled asNo one: heretics.Malcolm Collins: They will never really put up the law of the wall of people. We attacked for things we now accept as common knowledge.Simone Collins: No, I think it goes both ways. I don't think Buck Angel is gonna, embrace them after everything that they've done.SoMalcolm Collins: he's like a very understanding person. So I think of it, this is, It's tragic that has happened, but the other thing, the big thing for me that changes is I now believe that the evidence states, and I think that if I was a trans activist and I was trying to help the trans community, I think the core thing that needs to change now is the understanding that most teens and preteens who are not comfortable with their gender, Are not trans.No one: They'reMalcolm Collins: just going to grow out of this. [00:47:00]No one: TheMalcolm Collins: vast majority of preteens who are not comfortable with their gender are not trans. And so now the question is how do you sort out of the people who aren't comfortable with their gender, which should. Undergo further treatment, and which shouldn't, where the previous go to thing within the trans community is if you are not comfortable with your gender, you are trans and you should be treated as trans and you should immediately put on a gender affirming pipeline.You should immediately be put on puberty blockers to give you more time to think. And what this research shows is they don't give you more time to think. You're basically locking in a decision. The moment. You go into gender affirming care, you go to a psychologist that is gender affirming, or you undergo a puberty blockers.And what I would take in aSimone Collins: hot second is if there was just, if we nuked youth medicalization if it was, all right, we're going to change your pronouns. And now you're going to dress differently and you're going to have this different, fine. Because at least that enables people to maintain optionality until they're fully myelinated until [00:48:00] they're, In their twenties and they can decide, if it's just if it becomes the equivalent of going goth for a few years, and being different, I'm super happy with that.The most, even when I was a kid,Malcolm Collins: I wore like a girl pants and stuff like that in like the golf days where you get these super tight, like hot topic pants and stuff. Andthat was like, It was the style at the time for young men So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time.Malcolm Collins: You were like an extra rebellious, young guy or whatever.And it's one of those things where it's totally cool. If my kids were like, okay, I'm going to do dresses now or something like that. And that was like the rebellious style at the time. I think we need to Differentiate developing your identity in contrast to mainstream social mores and medicalization, and these two things have unfortunately been conflated due to the trans movement, not allowing you to say, hey, that teenager.Who is doing this rebellious thing in terms of their identity. That's probably not a medical issue. That's probably just [00:49:00] being a teenager and we need to respect them while also telling them, tattoos are bad. They're permanent. You probably shouldn't be going out and doing that.Simone Collins: Even if it is a medical issue, I think the important thing that we've realized now is that it's a medical issue. That will pass for the majority of people. And that really does, really ought to be addressed for a very small minority of people. And we cannot make a medical decision until someone's in their mid twenties.That's an important thing too. So that's so comforting. This is just a great news. It's wonderful. It's fantastic.Malcolm Collins: It, you don't know how far the pendulum is going to swing in the other direction yet. It's been swinging and it could swing far. What doSimone Collins: you expect to happen?Malcolm Collins: We could see a general pushback on transness in general, in a Oh, like evenSimone Collins: trans identities?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I can see, for example if we're talking about an extremely hard pushback, and I can see this being very realistic laws being pushed in conservative states that disallow trans people from teaching kids.Simone Collins: Because they just basically found that if you don't lean into [00:50:00] it at all, it typically passes, especially for men.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And keep in mind, the other thing that I noted here is engagement with the LGBTQ communitySimone Collins: correlatedMalcolm Collins: with this persisting of your gender dissatisfaction. So disallowing a young person who seems at risk of this from engaging with other LGBT individuals Appears to be one of the best ways to prevent them from falling into this group, which can lead to a lot of negative action, even among well meaning parents.Simone Collins: Yeah. Or even among like perfectly normal, non extreme, non brainwashy people who just happen to be gay,Malcolm Collins: I even think about this was my kids, right? Is it just dangerous, even if they are same sex attracted to allow them to engage with that community. So long as that community. Is overly friendly with the trans community I don't know I thinkSimone Collins: every community has to be approached differently.On a case by case basis. And if you see that you, I think the key, and then this goes back to what you always talk about [00:51:00] with dominance hierarchies within a community, you have to look at what the virtue spiral of that community is going to turn into. Every community that's tightly knit is going to have a virtue spiral.You have to figure out what that virtue spiral is going to be. Like, I guess in the prenatalist community, a virtue of spiral is probably someone going. Crazy hard in on kids and, telling everyone they should have kids and being really annoying and obnoxious about it or whatever it might be.But you have to be, you have to know what that is. SoMalcolm Collins: hold on, there's two, most communities are actually not that at risk of virtue spiraling.Simone Collins: Really? What makes you say that?Malcolm Collins: virtue spiraling in a community is isolation. There aren't protected As soon as you have a protected class, some thing that you can attempt to maximize that you cannot be attacked for attempting to maximize.So for example, within conservative circles, this might be like dedication to Trump, right? Was in certain Trumpist circles, you can not be criticized for being overly anti immigration or overly anti Trump or [00:52:00] overly. And because of that, you get these virtues files,Where individuals will be like, you guys aren't conservative at all in your beliefs that I'm like, I think you might just be in a community that's like virtue spiraling because actually, we very much are for our generation.You look at any mainstream statistics about population belief systems and stuff like that. You have just surrounded yourself with a virtue spiral until you don't know that. So you do get this in the right, but. The, and within the left, if you can't attack trans community, if you can't attack people who see psychologists, these are seen as protected classes.You're going to get virtue spirals there of dedication of intense. As soon as you remove the protected class concept, you remove the risk of virtue spirals within the prenatalist community. We haven't really seen any virtue spirals because there is no protected class individuals who have a lot of kids.We are still very critical of like their child rearing practices, stuff like that. And that across. Unity. There is not like whenSimone Collins: extremes can be criticized within a community, that community is safe from virtue cycles or sorry, sorry, virtue spirals. And then when extremes [00:53:00] are not ever criticized within a community, that is when it goes crazy.That's when you have Salem, which trials that's when you have gods doing insane things to their bodies. That's when all this happens. Exactly. Okay. Then that's what we do with our kids. If we, cause again as we've discovered with so many LGBTQIA or poly or rationalist or whatever communities out there, any niche community of the same, like general name.There are some which are super cool and there are some which are super toxic. So all we have to do is determine whether or not they criticize extremism. And if they do, it's fine. If our kids hang out with them, like thisMalcolm Collins: is such an important concept. It might even be worth building a holiday around it.Don't engage with communities that have protected classes, whether those communities are on the right or the left or anything else, recognize the danger of this concept of a protected class and stay away from it. Or communities thatSimone Collins: don't criticize extremism.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. How we can build that into a holiday.I don't know yet, but I'll [00:54:00] think about it.Simone Collins: Fun. Yeah. People can weigh in the comments too. How can this be turned into something cute? Photographable?Malcolm Collins: I think the extremism is different from the protected class concept, and I would really focus on the protected class concept because I think it's much more defensive than the extreme of the concept.Which is to say you can be extreme in beliefs, but there are certain beliefs where you're like, you just cannot criticize this group. Whenever you get that.Simone Collins: That's when you're more defensive. I see. I see like in, in still in many conservative circles. And this is something that we're seeing dividing the Republican party and causing a lot of problems.There is no level of extremism regarding restricting abortion access that people get criticized for. I actually had this guy call me out of the blue call me as a candidate out of the blue. And just start yelling at me like a madman about abortion. So I think that like really showed me, Matt, you, orMalcolm Collins: was he, did he just want you to know?Simone Collins: He was like I just wanna [00:55:00] know your position's on this. I'm like, okay, fine. Ask away. I'll tell you my position's on whatever you want now. I'll be perfectly honest. And he asked what's your position on abortion? And I said like obviously America pretty much agrees on. This moderate approach to abortion, before this period, more freedom thanMalcolm Collins: the current stuff at our state.And I saidSimone Collins: that, yes, but he's no, it's life begins at conception and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, yeah, let, that is your belief system. You are Catholic. I understand that. That's totally acceptable. Although the Catholics didn't always view it that way. So let's be honest here. But you have no more right to impose that.on other people outside the Catholic culture, then other cultures have the right to impose transition, like youth, gender transition on your children. And he's no, God said this and therefore I'm telling you to do that. And I hung up on him cause he wouldn't stop talking. But that's one of those things where he's never.been criticized for that view. Cause I also told him, I'm like, you can have that view. And that's, that is 100 percent [00:56:00] legitimate. I too am not really comfortable with abortion. But. You will not see your party get elected if you maintain a hardline stance like that, because you are not in the majority.You will notMalcolm Collins: have further restrictions on abortion that are realistic to impose.Simone Collins: Exactly. And he, and that's what I said too. I'm like, there's no way that you're going to get anywhere close to where you want to be with that current stance. And it's he was incapable of seeing that. And so that, that is a really good example of a protected status, right?He would never be questioned. For that by most people. And also he has this attitude of, if you do question me, I'm going to immediately shut you down. So I guess that's what we're talking about when it comes to protected status, right? Oh, I'm so mad at him. ,Malcolm Collins: I love you, Simone. You are the best. And I appreciate your anger as a citizen of this country.This isSimone Collins: what I get for answering unknown calls. I should be answering potential cons, constituent calls. But when you're an idiot like that,Malcolm Collins: I love you. Pick up that you're like, f**k off. We need to get a call. We need to get [00:57:00] that needs to go viral. It's like you telling some constituents.Yeah, just people getSimone Collins: to call into me as a political candidate. And I'm like, f**k you. I love you. I loveyou. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Exploring South Korea's low fertility rates due to chaebol system and meritocracy, suggesting a radical solution. Discusses the loss of Korean culture and cuisine. Examines societal factors, high costs of private education, and challenges in education and work-life balance.

In this episode, Malcolm and Simone uncover the true motivations behind Putin's actions in Ukraine, debunking myths about self defense. They discuss Russia's heavy reliance on oil and gas revenue, the surprising Muslim population within the country, and the potential global power struggle. The episode explores the catastrophic consequences of Russia's war policies and the masterful propaganda tactics employed by the nation.

In this alarming episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins expose the deeply troubling hiring practices within the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that prioritize diversity over competence and safety. They dive into the details of a discriminatory biographical questionnaire used by the FAA that screened out qualified candidates based on arbitrary and offensive criteria. Malcolm warns of an impending "Chernobyl moment" in the United States, drawing parallels to past catastrophic failures in centrally planned bureaucracies. The couple also discusses the broader implications of these practices, including the potential for devastating accidents, the erosion of public trust, and the long-term damage to the very groups these policies claim to help. Brace yourself for a thought-provoking and unsettling look at the dangers of unchecked "diversity" initiatives in critical industries.Malcolm Collins: . [00:00:00]So basically on this test that 90% of people were failing, the black applicants were being given all of the answers to the questions before black and female before.But it gets even worse than that because we need to go into what these questions were. You are explicitly sorting for people who like to take big risks, have no scientific background, and do not take a criticism well from superior. You are basically guaranteeing crashes coming out of this. 10 percent of people did get through these 10 percent of people fit the profile that the test was sorting for. And keep in mind, this profile wasn't specifically Black people, it was white, progressive, mostly negative stereotypes of black people, angry all the time, can't take directions, bad at science, and a lot of black people who had applied for these jobs were filtered out of getting these jobswould you like to know more?Simone Collins: [00:01:00] Hello everyone. I am very excited to be opening us for a new base camp episode, especially because Malcolm the other day implied to me that he just didn't want to fly anymore. And I was like, what do you mean you don't want to take this trip? It was for something business related.And. I think he just genuinely doesn't feel safe on airplanes anymore. And after we discuss what we're about to discuss, perhaps you too will fall into this category. Although I find it quite silly because really it's getting in the car with an Uber driver who knows how little sleep they have, who knows how little training they have to talk, like talk about standards.Anyway I think it's overblown Malcolm, I think you'll be okay, but things have been getting worse and worse with setting standards and making sure that the people who are running things in the airline industry, the aviation industry, be they pilots, be they airline CEOs, or be they [00:02:00] working in air traffic control are qualified.So IMalcolm Collins: actually, I want to take this in a much broader direction than this. Okay. So airlines is one aspect of this.Simone Collins: Okay. You see it as a microcosm,Malcolm Collins: It's just one example of the way systems are beginning to break. So in our governance book, and we're going to go deep into a number of the places we're beginning to see major systems fall apart.We talk about why things like communism fell apart and the core reason communism fell apart is governance structures develop inefficiencies and internal sort of cancers. The larger they get and the longer they last. And so if they're competing against like you don't have that big a problem within a capitalist system because you have a bunch of internal governing systems that are competing against each other.And as they get large and bloated like for example, the average length of time for a company to be on the fortune 500 list, I think it's only 20 yearsSimone Collins: or 30 years. Yeah. Basically as soon as these private enterprises. [00:03:00] Become non competitive in a market based system. They die because no one wants to use them anymore.That doesn't happen as much with government.Malcolm Collins: And so we well, and then when you extend the government, like government systems to, to individual operating parts of a country. You can much more quickly get catastrophic failures due to failures within a bureaucracy. And that's why I say that America is about to have its Chernobyl moment.This is what happened with Chernobyl fundamentally. And this happened, not Chernobyl's the incident we know of, but there's actually many other incidents of communist market failures that basically led to deaths of millions of people. Obviously the. Five year plan in China, or no, what was it? The great leap forward in China?Then you had that wheat incident in the Soviet Union. That was like a failure of Soviet science. Oh, no. Where a guy was trying to I can attach a video on the subject. It's very interesting and millions of people died.It was called the Lynn Cinco affair. [00:04:00] And Vsauce has a very good video on the subject titled the man who killed millions, trying to grow food in snow.Malcolm Collins: But then obviously we know about Chernobyl where somebody who didn't understand how nuclear power plants worked was in charge of managing safety at a nuclear power plant.. And so you re. When you have a system that no longer is elevating individuals based on their efficacy you have the capability of major systems beginning to break. And I think, like you at the beginning of this episode, like laughing about it, ha, it's so funny, we're not gonna have something like that in the United States.Malcolm Collins: And the reason why I'm putting out this episode and the reason why I'm going to be titling it what I'm titling it is I suspect within five to ten years there's going to be a major incident in the US which will make your laugh really morbid in, in, in reflection.Simone Collins: We are going to hear him with a false sense of security.You're warning me. I'mMalcolm Collins: telling you that right now like it, if people are going to die, [00:05:00] it actually already happened in Norway, for example. SoSimone Collins: yeah, break this down. This was hilarious.Malcolm Collins: So in Norway a multimillion dollar warship under the NATO command was entirely submerged after it struck an oil tanker.Simone Collins: This, by the way, blew out Norway's entire. Naval budget for the year. That was like, just the cost of this damage is immense. This was thought to be an unsinkable ship because of the way it wasMalcolm Collins: built. Yeah, but yeah, it was called an unsinkable ship. And here's a quote from an article on it. Questions remain as to why the well equipped warship could not avoid hitting the slow moving 62, 000 ton, 250 meter long oil tanker.Simone Collins: Not exactly, because people going through recordings of what was happening on the bridge at that time. a site in multiple instances of gross negligence and incompetence. Oh, yeah.Malcolm Collins: So here's another quote. Sound recordings and radar logs have revealed crude, almost incomprehensible human errors made by the crew.According [00:06:00] to experienced naval officers, the mistakes make the crew look like amateurs.Simone Collins: And Which is Embarrassing, especially for me and my kind being a femmle because apparently a laudable and celebrated element of this unsinkable ship was that fiveMalcolm Collins: four out of five of the crew members were women.And they had recently done an an article that heaped praises on them for how pro woman, because they had recently opened the ranks of the Navy to women in Norway with the article saying something like it's advantageous to have many women on board. It will be a natural thing and complete and a completely different environment, which I look at as positive.What did the lieutenant said aboard the ship? And you look at things like this and this is a ship that crashed, right? Like people made it off safely from this.Simone Collins: 18 people were injured, but no one died. Okay. This is great.Malcolm Collins: We're not having infrastructure fall apart yet or nuclear power.Simone Collins: It did a lot of damage to the local, like oil and gas [00:07:00] industry, didn't it?In addition toMalcolm Collins: yeah, but I'm saying you haven't seen a plane with families on it fall out of the sky yet. I suspect we are going to see soon and it's not if you're like, Oh, I heard about that airplane scandal. Oh no. The scandal is in the manufacturing of the airplanes. There is an independent sca scandal in the training of the pilots and there is an independent scandal in the training of the people who manage the air traffic control.So if you have heard one of these scandals in isolation, you haven't heard them compounded. So go over the air traffic control scandal.Simone Collins: And I definitely want to. Direct everyone to my favorite overview done by Tracy Woodgrains over on his sub stack tracing woodgrains. com. He did a really great summary, but the gist is basically this, that for a very long time there was a lot of criticism.Faced by the FAA because they were not sufficiently diverse, which makes sense to us. Our dirty little secret is that Malcolm and I run, operate a [00:08:00] travel management business. It's very heavy in aviation and yeah, like airplane nerds and the kind of people who want to become air traffic controllers, which by the way is one of the most stressful jobs out there.Are typically white menMalcolm Collins: by statistics. It's one of the most stressful jobsoutSimone Collins: there by statistics. Yeah. So I'm also not saying this is the world's most fun job, but also I'm saying airplane nerds are disproportionately white and male. We'll just say that. We'll see if we can get our daughter into airplanes.We our sons are definitely into airplanes. So at least there's that. So there was this and keep in mind, this has been going on for a really long time I'm going to just read a couple of quotes from the article just to give you a little bit of some background. So Tracy wrote, historically, the pipeline into air traffic control has followed a few paths, military veterans, graduates of the Air Traffic Collegiate Training Initiative, also known as ATCTI program, and the general public.Whichever route they came from, each candidate [00:09:00] would be required to take and pass the eight hour AT SAT cognitive test to begin serious training. This test was validated as being effective as recently as 2013. But then again Tracy continues. The FAA has faced pressure to diversify the air traffic control for generations, something that seems to have influenced the scoring structure of the AT SAT cognitive test used for pre employment screening of air traffic control candidates.Leading up to 2014, that pressure intensified with the national black coalition of federal aviation employees leading that push. So I'm not going to read any more from the article directly, but basically what happened is this, um, national black coalition encouraged the FAA to adopt an additional screening test that was based on biographical details.That was essentially designed. To not be passable it failed 90 percent of [00:10:00] those who went through it. Many of whom had already passed all the other tests to begin training. They'd gone through, they paid thousands of dollars for college credits and gone through all this time to become air traffic controllers.And then. With two months notice, they're informed of this new test. They also have to fill out and they are disqualified and notMalcolm Collins: able to speak. I need to it's worse than that. So then the organization that had prompted this, right? The, it was an organization for black potential.Simone Collins: The National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees.Malcolm Collins: Quote, in particular, one Shelton Snow, an FAA employee and then prized president of that organization's Washington suburb chapter, provided its members with quote unquote buzzwords in January 2014 that would automatically push their resumesTo the tops of HR files. A 2013 N-B-C-F-A-E meeting. Advise members to please include on resumes if you are an N-B-C-F-E-A member. Emphasizing they were only concerns with the employment of African Americans, women and other [00:11:00] minorities.And then later after the 2014 by this was what they did before they introduced this questionnaire is they put specific words that would automatically Get their resume pushed to the top, and one was being a member of this all black organization. But then after this questionnaire was launched, quote, After the 2014 biographical questionnaire was released, Snow took it a step further.As Fox Business reported, He sent voicemail messages to NBC FAE applicants advising them on specific answers they needed to enter into the biographical assessment to avoid failing, stating that he was quote about 99. 99 percent sure. That it is exactly how you need to answer each question. So basically on this test that 90% of people were failing, the black applicants were being given all of the answers to the questions before black and female before.But it gets even worse than that because we need to go into what [00:12:00] these questions were.So in one question, it was something like, what was your worst test in school? The correct answer, the one that wouldn't cause you to fail was my worst subject was science. Okay, so they are explicitly screening out all of the applicants whose worst subject wasn't science.Simone Collins: Yeah and actually it's really worth going through some or all of the assessment. You can do this by going to Tracy Woodgrain's write up on this. Someone. After seeing, I think Tracy Woodgrain's coverage of it took the actual assessment and then created a version of it online that you can interact with and you can take the, you can answer the questions and then see what you get wrong.And it is deeply disturbing andMalcolm Collins: amazing at the same time. You've got to go over some of the other crazy things. There was one about risk taking behavior. The only correct answer in that one was that you do extreme risk taking behavior. This is this who you want managing? Landing [00:13:00] planes. They're basically well, people respond to criticism from superiors.The onlySimone Collins: correct answer, there were not, there was not an only correct answer. Basically each answer had weird, arbitrary, different weights, but the only question that, or sorry, the only response that didn't get you any points at all was that you moderately. Didn't respond well to criticism and the one that would give you the answer that would give you the most points that is points helping you is that you really didn't do well with criticism from yourMalcolm Collins: criticism from superiors.So if you talk about if you are specifically filtering for an entire incoming class and that's coming in this year to these flight centers in the FAA that are managing, the planes to make sure they don't crash into each other at their landing. Okay. And you are explicitly sorting for people who like to take big risks, have no scientific background, and do not take a criticism well from superior.And worse than that, are coming out of these ultra wokey like [00:14:00] people who have used their ethnic status for a long time to get ahead in life. You are basically guaranteeing crashes coming out of this.Simone Collins: Yeah to be more charitable, what I would say, and I still think that all those things are real problems is that there's a DEI focused coalition of people who encouraged the creation of a test with a bunch of arbitrary secret answers, and they gave away the key.To the insiders that they wanted to help in an effort to increase diversity,Malcolm Collins: You're misunderstanding what happened then. Yes. So a few of the sub chapters of this national organization were able to give away the key to the questions, but in truth, the questions were meant to function as they function.10 percent of people did get through these 10 percent of people fit the profile that the test was sorting for. And keep in mind, this profile wasn't specifically Black people, it was white, progressive, mostly negative stereotypes of black people, angry all the time, [00:15:00] can't take directions, bad at science, and a lot of black people who had applied for these jobs were filtered out of getting these jobs.Yeah, inSimone Collins: fact, so there, there's currently still a class action lawsuit because this all happened, around 2014, 20, like from 20, I think, 14 and 2018. These things were playing out. And then I think the assessment was removed around 2018. Of course, that has undone the damage in terms of the pipeline of talent that we need to staff the FAA.But now there's aMalcolm Collins: remove. I think they should remove anyone who passes test. There'sSimone Collins: a loss. Yes, there's a lawsuit taking place called Brigida versus Buddha Buddha judge. Sorry. Where some of those who filed in part of this class action lawsuit were indeed themselves black and were disqualified despite being qualified because of this assessment.So it does go to show that this assessment did not necessarily help black people. It helped people who were on the inside of this organization, which I think feeds back into what you'reMalcolm Collins: saying about governance. No, I think you're wrong here. Again, keep in mind, the questions that were given [00:16:00] out to people were only some of the local organizations.Okay. Overall, this test did what it was intended to do, which was to elevate candidates who fit the progressive stereotype of black characteristics, i. e. being stupid, having a bad temper, and not being able to take orders, get into positions within the aviation division. And I think that this fundamentally shows how Genuinely, the bad type of racist these progressives are, but I need to go further with this because this, this wasn't the only instance of this happening.Another instance where this is famously been happening recentlySimone Collins: During an interview with Axios on HBO, Kirby said the company was committed to ensuring 50 percent of their graduating pilot classes would be women or people of color. Elon Musk called Scott Kirby out for this on Twitter. I think that raised a lot of the awareness about this and also led to a lot ofMalcolm Collins: Twitter memes Musk called someone else.And I just want to. Note here, how much [00:17:00] s**t Elan has been getting from this, from the ultra Progressive's, for example, in this one article. , by NBC news.. In be Elon Musk criticized by civil rights groups over claim that diversity efforts make flying less safe.Marc Morial president and CEO of national urban league said, must statements were abhorrent and pathetic.And then of course he goes on to criticize Twitter. Reminder to at Elon Musk, providing a home for the proliferation of hate speech and white supremacy. Conspiracy theories kills people, diversity, equity, and inclusion, cultivates a more inclusive society.They are not the same. We are not the same. He added. Or you can check up the guardian article on this particular topic, worried about airline safety. Blame diversity says deranged. Right-wingers. Or the rolling stones coverage of this conservatives are so scared of diversity. They're starting to boycott quote unquote, woke airlines. After twisting a Boeing safety issue into [00:18:00] outrage over black pilots in LGBT inclusion.The far right is taking aim at commercial carriers. So I would like to point out here that they're going to get people. Healed. Killed so they can win there. Stupid. Online firefights. They have so little concern for basic morality anymore.Malcolm Collins: So I don't know, you were telling me recently that the Boeing has gotten so bad with their planes that the White House won't let anyone on the staff fly in 737s anymore. And they, you told me about this yesterday. ISimone Collins: did not, but that's very interesting. Wait, you were, I did not tell you that you had a lot of conversations with peopleMalcolm Collins: yesterday though.Okay. Okay. Yeah. So the white house is no longer able to fly on seven 37s anymore, and they have to fly only on air buses.Because Some issues was found was Biden's plane and then they did a longer review and they found out that they just not considered safe enough to allow for White House staff to fly on them.Or executive level staff to fly on them.I should note, this [00:19:00] may not be public information because when I researched this, I wasn't able to find it. And it also makes perfect sense that the BI data administration would not want this officially announced that they were avoiding use of American made planes for foreign made planes.Malcolm Collins: And this gets worse when you consider this particular piece. So this one's titled former FAA safety expert addresses airline DEI controversy BoeingSimone Collins: which allegedly prioritized dei hiring in recent years has found itself in the news after a door of one of the models of Operated by American Airlines, blew off mid flight in an ex post last week, billionaire Elon Musk asked if customers wanted to fly an airplane made by a company that prioritizes DEI hiring over safety management.Although I, I feel like it's so easy to know what kind of aircraft you're going to be flying on unless they switch it up at the last minute, which sometimes they do. It's much scarier thinking that we are landing in airports with air traffic controllers who may not be qualified.Malcolm Collins: But this is the problem.It's the air traffic controllers [00:20:00] aren't qualified. The pilots aren't qualified and the planes are being made by people who aren't qualified. Okay. Boeing pushed through designs that we knew were not safe. And if you want to dig deep into this, there's a huge rabbit hole you can dig into, but everyone knew the new seven 37s weren't safe and they were not supposed to go out, but Boeing needed to meet its numbers for its investors.For more on this. See the fortune article Boeing seeks FAA exemption for safety standard on troubled at 7 37 max planes.About them trying to get around safety regulations that everyone else has to follow on a plane that they know has problems.Malcolm Collins: And all of this is Theoretical to people like you, like at the beginning of this, when you were like laughing about this, we're not going to have a giant plane filled with families crash into a major city for due to,Simone Collins: I believe it. It's just that, I didn't, I haven't booked us seats next to an exit row one, never because I, we can't afford to pay more for that.But also the one, the person next to the exit [00:21:00] row.Malcolm Collins: It's not just exit rows. We're going to have a major crash. YouSimone Collins: just say like planes flying, like falling out of the sky.Malcolm Collins: Yes. And just cause it hasn't happened yet. And I'm not saying that planes, this happens across our economy.So one of my. favorite little stories about diversity and inclusion is one of the less diversity and inclusion darlings so much so that the New York Times did Patrick Chavez, 50 affirmative action figure like about how great he was at the affirmative action figure. So this was an individual who in 1973, under a special program got into the UC Davis medical school over a white candidate who had better scores than him.Alan Blake, who was denied admission. Okay. Now this guy's entire career has been one of terrible malpractice and just nightmarism, which he kept getting out of and getting out of by claiming racism. For [00:22:00] exampleSimone Collins: There, there are apparently recordings of him doing procedures and whatnot with patients screaming.He started out in labor and delivery and then I think got removed from that job after misusing forceps at one point, but then calling racism and then, abortions and liposuction.Malcolm Collins: He used the fact that he had been removed for improper use of forceps to get promoted.Simone Collins: I thought that was before the, IMalcolm Collins: can just read the piece here.Okay. So upon completion of his residency in 1981 at long beach medical hospital, he was hired there at low level. He shouted racism and is promoted to associate staff physician without any training. By 1988, hospital staffers monitored his work after a panel of physicians and administrators reprimanded him for a forceps delivery.Chavez cried racism again through a discrimination suit. A jury awarded him 1. 1 million. This was later overturned by the way. Because it was found that he didn't know what he was doing. Chavez then [00:23:00] undertook the noble art of abortions and liposuctions, or body sculpting, as he called it. He was sued for malpractice 27 times, had medical board complaints filed for seven liposuction cases, and was accused of causing the deaths of one liposuction patient, who he left in his office.As her incisions oozed red fluid, the patient died there of a massive blood loss. A tape made during his liposuction procedures finds horrific screaming, in quotes, by his patients as Travis offers his bedside manner, quote, don't talk to the doctor while he is working, end quote. And quote liar, pants on fire, end quote.A judge suspended his license in 1997 writing an 11 page opinion that Chavez, quote, demonstrates an inability to perform some of the most basic duties required of a physician, end quote. The Medical Board of California revoked his license in 1998 for, quote, gross negligence, incompetence, and repeated [00:24:00] negligent acts.Dr. Cook blamed racist, quote, white, male, end quote, physicians for his problems. Just, the, people have already died due to DEI. This is f ing insane. It is insane because that was just one doctor that the left, and the left covered for him. That piece in the New York Times about how great he was? That had happened after things like patients were dying, or at least being severely injured by this man. So they cover up how bad this is until they can't cover it up anymore.When we have our Chernobyl moment, which is inevitable at this point, whether it's a bridge collapse or a tunnel collapse or a plane, colli collision, we need to call out. What caused it just as Norway had happened was that giant ship collision because real humans are going to die. That is inevitable at this point.It has gone that far. And if you're like, how do we prevent this from happening in [00:25:00] the plane industry? You need to use the test that was testing for people who couldn't take feedback well from authority, or were, hated science. Those are the people who should never be allowed to work in aviation.Every single person who passed that test should be removed from their jobs. And if they passed the test because they were given the answers, and you're like, okay then they were just given the answers. They should also be removed from their jobs for dishonesty. Okay, in, in the real world, this is what we used to call cheating.All right. They have no business. This test filtered for incompetence and liars that made up an entire incoming class at the FAA. And I don't think I, it's not just that we need to let the other people in. We need to pull out every single person that passed this test because these were not black people disproportionately.These were liars and people who met a racist caricature of black people. And they're going to make black people look bad. Because when. One of them, and especially if they happen to be black, who got through on [00:26:00] this and leads to a plane crash. How do you think that's going to lead to the general public viewing the black population?This is something that, that Yeah, it's a commonSimone Collins: affirmative action argument, right? That if people get under the impression that any sort of minority, any sort of group is in a room because of that status, they're going to assume that person isn't competent, which undermines the credentials of any competent person from that group.Malcolm Collins: It also long term damages these groups. There's that great study that came out recently that looked at I IQ gaps between black and white populations and found that they were much smaller in districts that were more conservative and that had conservative. Politicians running them. So these affirmative action systems are permanently disempowering the groups that they're meant to empower.But what else could they do when they are defining those groups as incapable of taking orders, incapable of taking feedback, liking to take unreasonable risks? And being bad at science. And so when you look [00:27:00] at stuff like this, the way the United States defeated the centrally planned bureaucracy of the Soviet Union was allowing the system to collapse under its own weight as globalists, whether it's in the UN or within, because what is globalism?Really? I think people misunderstand like why people are so antagonistic. Globalism is the building of a giant. bureaucratic elite that basically runs the entire world economy like a centrally planned system.Simone Collins: Not great. Yeah. Okay. Maybe flying is not, it's so expensive.Malcolm Collins: If you have a lot of kids, it's not something you really need to worry about unless you're us and you're being flied out all the time to go speak at events, which is where the stress comes for us.Simone Collins: Because Having a lot of kids means you can't afford to fly anyway.So don't worry about it.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You can't afford to fly with some of the kids. We just have to do it for work right now. But I would like a world where we're not doing that as much. We'll fly over our guest stars to meet with [00:28:00] us when we're doing a reality show or something.Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I love you Simone. I love you too. I really hope that When the horrifying inevitability of all of this stupidity comes to roost that we call out exactly what caused this, and we don't pretend that it was anything other than racist progressives. That caused this problem and the progressive racist agenda and people say Why are you so mean to progressives all the time malcolm?Can't you just be people are gonna die Like a lot of them like that's why i'm not being chill about this Okay. It's not conservatives pushing this s**t there. And they're like, it's only extremists pushing this s**t. And it's no, it's not. And this is one of the problems I have. This is like saying most Nazis didn't approve of the Holocaust.Yeah. Most Nazis didn't approve of the Holocaust, but when you vote for the Nazi party, that's the result. I [00:29:00] agree, most progressives do not approve of all this stuff, but the party that they are putting in power and the people that they are empowering through their actions are the ones implementing all of this.The only people who can take this down are the conservatives. So even if you have some distaste of conservative policies, and I won't say I love everything conservatives do they are less damaging to people than what progressives are pushing through right now. And that's the problem where it's one of these things where they're like don't blame me for what the crazies are doing.And it's yeah, but the crazies control your entire political apparatus right now. So when you vote for someone, even if they're a moderate, you are empowering the crazies.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting point. At the end of his write up, for example, Tracy Woodgreens tries to argue that this at least should not be a partisan issue.But in the end, no one in their right mind is going to look at this assessment and say they want people running the FAA who pass it. And that this is [00:30:00] something that shouldn't be partisan and that Pete Buttigieg has this amazing opportunity To fix this problem, which by the way, was not fixed during the Trump administration.It just ran right through it. It's not like everyone's on the ball here. And yet he's not doing it, which is very frustrating. And of course people followed up in the comments that yes, this is a polarized culture wars issue because to your point, The people who are empowered to do this are being empowered by progressive parties and by progressive coalitions.But it, I,Malcolm Collins: This is easy. If you want to fix this at the legislative level, you just pass a law that specifically targets, whiz jail time, anyone who implements explicitly racist policy. Oh. No I think that once progressives start getting jailed over implementing racism, and this is racism, right?This is something, it's racism, yeah. Or you could have, if you don't wanna do jail time, what you need to do is you need to have fines for their companies and have lists of names of the individuals who participated in this stuff. Because the problem [00:31:00] is when these people can leave one company and then go infect another.Yeah. These people need to be on a list and the companies they're working for need to be Oh,Simone Collins: like that. That terrifying doctor who would just go on and keep doing his thing.Malcolm Collins: They're basically leading to murder sprees. This is insane. So it's very scary. And people will die if we do not systemically handle this issue.Simone Collins: Gosh we can't afford to fly business class and that's all I want to fly. So it's probably better that I have some other.Malcolm Collins: It's not just airplanes. This is going to be a bridge. This is going to be a something, a tunnel is going to fly, a building's going to fall over. You just wait.Simone Collins: I was trying to think like what airline would still be safe out of course if air traffic control at us airports is not safe, then we're never really safe flying.But then the question is, are there carriers and are there airports thatMalcolm Collins: we can still have airlines are probably going to be much safer.Simone Collins: Yeah. And specifically, LATAM airlines, we [00:32:00] love COPA airlines. We love and COPA airlines actually, man, they run a tight ship as does LATAM. Actually they're quite organized.Malcolm Collins: So we say this as people who run a travel agency. Now, maybe you should stop using these American airlines because they're allSimone Collins: scalescapes. Yeah, man. Yeah. And COPA is adding a bunch of new us destinations this summer. Just saying guys was talking with the, with their team yesterday. Yeah.And in Air Canada, Lufthansa, they're soMalcolm Collins: buttoned up, but I don't know. They're in Europe. I wouldn't trust them anyway. Love you to Desimone. Have a spectacular day. Bye. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Ex-Mormon Trace Woodgrains discusses growing up in the Mormon faith, extensive volunteer work, challenges reconciling beliefs with church doctrine, and how secular communities can adopt beneficial aspects of Mormon culture. Topics include public speaking expectations, leadership training, missionary experiences, leaving the Mormon faith, and the spiritually meaningful Pioneer Trek experience.

In this eye-opening episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive into the shocking revelations about Earth for All, an international initiative linked to the Club of Rome and the United Nations. Malcolm exposes the organization's plan to reduce the number of childbirths on Earth by a staggering 81% by the year 2100. The couple discusses the UN's potential bias and the infiltration of key UN positions by individuals affiliated with Earth for All. They also explore the concept of "degrowth" and its implications for the global economy. Throughout the conversation, Malcolm and Simone grapple with the ethical dilemmas posed by such extreme population control measures and the consequences of imposing a singular worldview on diverse cultures.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Earth for All can trace its origins to the Club of Rome commissioned report, The Limits to Gross, published 50 years agoThey want to reduce the number of childbirths on Earth by about 81 percent by the year 2100 when compared to the current level. Oh,Simone Collins: okay. That's aMalcolm Collins: lot. So Sandra Dixon Deceave, co president, Of the club of Rome, an executive chair of earth for life also chaired the UN cop 26 world leader summit. So she is a key member in hosting major, not UN population stuff, mainstream UN stuff.Like who, who does this group say is affiliated with them? So you get individuals like Anders Wilkman, assistant secretary general, the United Nations policy director under UNDP, 1995 to 1997. Or Janice. [00:01:00] Co chair of the UN International Resource Panel. My read from this, it's not that the UN is just like random actors of politically indoctrinated people. They are systemically in deeply infiltrated by a group attempting to reduce earth's population dramatically.Would you like to know more?Simone Collins: You like conspiracies, don't you?Look I am not a conspiratorially minded person, but I doMalcolm Collins: likeSimone Collins: studying conspiracies.Yeah, you collect them like Torsten collects rocks. Yes. But often from the skeptic perspective. And then you rub them on your face and you'reMalcolm Collins: like, ahhh. Yeah, one of our kids just loves rocks.But I usually and historically have loved conspiracies from the perspective of the skeptic. So I am not one, like I, I generally am pretty hostile to most conspiracy theories.I will say conspiracy theorists seem to be batting nine out of 10 recently. It's a little concerning to me. But within the pronatalist world. I have this unfortunate thing that sometimes I will see a [00:02:00] conspiracy theory and I will begin to dig into it and it is only a conspiracy theory and how it is structured, but all of the facts are true and that really bothers me.One of the most recent that was brought to our attention by one of our guests, which I have to mention here, was a group called Population Connection. Which was previously called Zero Population Group and was founded by Paul Elric which trained over a hundred thousand teachers in America and Canada.And the president of the org recently bragged about their education arm called Population Education, educating three million American and Canadian students a year. Which is stunning. When you're like, how do people come to these insane ideas? Because they are literally being brainwashed by organizations designed to brainwash them.But it gets worse than that. So often Simone, you and I will be talking about things like [00:03:00] the United Nations. And we'll be like, Oh, the UN,Simone Collins: they seem very biased when it comes to reporting population statistics. So normally we bring them up. in the context of, and even the UN admitted this about falling populations when they finally point out that their projections have not been met and things are going down fast.Malcolm Collins: I had seen this bias and been like, They have a lot of progressive people working there or something. They must be, it's just regular progressive bias. Like I had really counted the, what the UN was doing is we just don't want to elevate the fact that this is happening because it could be used by racists or something like that.I don't know. Like I generally, and if people have. Listen to my previous comments on this had a very charitable interpretation of what they were doing. That charitable interpretation Has recently changed so we need to go in to Have you heard of something called the club of rooms simone? [00:04:00]Simone Collins: No sounds like All men on Twitter.Malcolm Collins: So the club of Rome was a real organization. Many people try to connect it with nefarious groups, but they ran a study that determined that we needed to dramatically reduce the number of humans on earth. Oh, so wasSimone Collins: this around the time of the population bombMalcolm Collins: book? Yeah, it was. And I'll actually read a quote here, and this quote is from a company called Earth for All, and it describes this. Earth for All can trace its origins to the Club of Rome commissioned report, The Limits to Gross, published 50 years ago. Back then, scientists used early computer models to show that Earth's finite resources would eventually buckle under the weight of material consumption. This Earth for All, which people can find them at Earth for the letter, the number four, all, not life.They have a plan so you can find on like their long term plan [00:05:00] saying what their plan is for Earth's population. They want to reduce the number of childbirths on Earth by about 81 percent by the year 2100 when compared to the current level. Oh,Simone Collins: okay. That's aMalcolm Collins: lot. That's a lot. In the next 75 years they want to reduce the number of children being born by 81% percent which actually I would argue they are so good. But yeah, they're actually on track to do that. In fact, guys. Yeah. Good job on destroying the human species goldSimone Collins: star. At least someone's getting what they want, Malcolm, it's fine.I want to give a quick shout out to the subset of Igor Chet.Who tipped me off to this particular situationSimone Collins: yeah, soMalcolm Collins: here's the problem with this group. You can be like, okay, yeah, there was this group that apparently wanted to lower Earth's population by that much, but what does this have to do with the UN?So Sandra Dixon Deceave, co president, Of the club [00:06:00] of Rome, an executive chair of earth for life also chaired the UN cop 26 world leader summit. So she is a key member in hosting major, not UN population stuff, mainstream UN stuff.Simone Collins: People, And then you look at theirMalcolm Collins: website of who their members are, right?Like who, who does this group say is affiliated with them? So you get individuals like Anders Wilkman, assistant secretary general, the United Nations policy director under UNDP, 1995 to 1997. Or Janice. Co chair of the UN International Resource Panel.An organization that stated goalIs to erase, I [00:07:00] just, what are your thoughts? Like my read from this, it's not that the UN is just like random actors of politically indoctrinated people. They are systemically in deeply infiltrated by a group attempting to reduce earth's population dramatically. This feelsSimone Collins: very intuitive to me.And here's why. Ever since I had kids, something happened to me hormonally where I can't really handle human suffering or poverty the same way as before, especially if this is happening to young children or babies. Like I, I lose my s**t. I'm not thinking about it now because if I were, I would be crying and I wouldn't stop and we have things to do.I think this makes a lot of sense to me because the UN is involved in a lot of aid programs. It's seeing a lot of areas where there are massive numbers of very young people who are struggling and people of all ages who are struggling and suffering a lot. And I definitely, after a five hour crying jag, thinking about this stuff I am [00:08:00] like, I just wish I just, I want to undo all humans.I just want to I totally get the feeling. I want to a hundred percent get the feeling when you are confronted by that kind of suffering and unmoored from logic, because obviously these people, most of them, even if they're suffering, want to be born, the suffering is part of the human condition. It is inevitable at people, that, there's a reason, you Anyway, when you're run by logic, you can deal with this.When you're not run by logic and often you cannot be run by logic when you are face to face dealing with these issues, with these tragedies, with this suffering, I could totally see why the UN would shift to being an inherently antinatalist organization. that sees that one of the most expedient ways to end this suffering is to ensure that there just are fewer people brought into these situations.Because one, the more, the fewer they there are, perhaps the more resources and two, at least that's, like five fewer babies they're [00:09:00] hearing about dying every day or whatever in some village. I get it. It makes a lot of sense to me. I don't see it as coming from a bad or evil place.Although, of course, when you aren't thinking about what they're thinking, you think it does. So let's not dehumanize these people. I just, in the end, They're not thinking through it logically. They're being run by their emotions and they're wrong. But still, let's,Malcolm Collins: does this change how you think about engaging the UN on these sorts of issues?Do you see them as being an intrinsically antagonistic organization to the perinatalistSimone Collins: movement? They're not because again, the perinatalist movement that, that we're a part of at least isn't against Avoiding unwanted pregnancies, avoiding people having kids that they don't want, that can't.But that's notMalcolm Collins: what these groups want.That's what I'm hearing when I read this. They, if you read their website okay, hold on, I can just pull up what Earth for Life says on their own website. Okay. Or you can Google this and read it, okay? The dominant economic model is destabilizing societies on the planet.It is time for [00:10:00] change. Earth for All is an international initiative to accelerate the systems change we need for an equitable future on a finite planet. We found that the next 10 years must see the fastest economic transformation in history if we want to steer humanity away from social and ecological catastrophe.SoSimone Collins: they're social catastrophe. What am I telling you about? I'm telling you about the death and the suffering and the sickness that people are seeing. And they see that as a social catastrophe and they want to steer away from it. And yes, they care about the environment too. And they see human load as being a big problem on that.What am I missing?Malcolm Collins: This is they're stating two things, okay. They want to decrease the global population at the same time as increasing their control over that population. Yeah,Simone Collins: because they think they know best. And I, I think people who are involved in dealing with these things firsthand or adjacent to those involved in dealing with these things firsthand believe that they have the authority to make the best changes.Is that true? [00:11:00] Often not. You see this in many ossified industries. All over the place, for example, in the travel industry where we work. Oh my God, the people within it are so myopic and they're not able to see giant solutions, staring them right in the face. And that's a problem. So I'm not saying that just because they're close to the problem, they know what the best solutions are, but I am saying that of course, given their position, they're going think they're the best person and they're going to think that everyone else with different opinions is inexperienced, not actually on the ground dealing with what they're dealing with andMalcolm Collins: wrong.I guess the problem that I have with your perspective on this is I don't disagree that everyone sees themselves as a protagonist of their life story. That is true. That doesn't mean I need to have empathy for the actions that they are undertaking. The Nazis believed they were protagonists of their own story.That is true. When an individual believes that their moral system is intrinsically superior to all other moral systems, and therefore must be imposed on other individuals. So this [00:12:00] is why, like, when I look at history, when I look at my ancestors, when I look at America in a historical context, why was To me, like America, the good guys in World War II, because after they won and everyone got together, they all thought that America was going to, basically lord over them.They thought that America was going to say now that we won, we're basically going to impose our rules on all of the rest of you. We're going to take this land from you. We're going to take these economic resources from you. And instead they said, no, let's create a better system that allows everyone To work independently and yet as part of a global economic system.That's what the pronatalist movement is fundamentally trying to do. We are fundamentally trying to create a world that is similar to the world that America attempted to create after World War II, which was a world of. Of decentralized global cooperation instead of globalism, which is centralized global bureaucracy.[00:13:00] And that world is not just more productive, but it allows every cultural group to live out to the best of their ability, their own potentiality. These groups like Earth for All, want to quash that. They want a world in which people who are like them control everything. And they want a world in which people like them can influence who gets to be born and who doesn't get to be born.If you look at their efforts, they are focused on Actually, one of the really interesting things about their efforts Is if you look at where they think population rates are going to fall, they plot countries like Japan as not having any population fall at all. And America is not having any major population fall is all, but most of the black and Hispanic countries making up the decrease in population.They even have a racist plan towards [00:14:00] population.Simone Collins: That is weird. I'm again, I just want to argue. that it is helpful to view groups who disagree with you empathetically, because the only way that you can begin to engage is by first finding common ground and seeing where you are aligned and then working out the tactical differences where you might each be getting something wrong.Malcolm Collins: I don't know. This reminds me too much. I, I. Look, when I look at world history,Simone Collins: I'm constantlyMalcolm Collins: reminded of the mistakes that people made historically. Yeah. And I look at things ThisSimone Collins: is not appeasement. This is not Warning.Malcolm Collins: It is appeasement. It's let's compromise. Okay.They've taken theirSimone Collins: step. No. I'm not saying compromise. I'm not saying appease. I am saying engage with them. What did, some of the worst groups and the worst mistakes that have been repeated throughout history involve dehumanization of other groups and involve not engaging, just framing them in a very unflattering light.And [00:15:00] not even trying to resolve problems through engagement. I'm not saying we even have to budge on our beliefs or policies. I'm just saying you're far less likely to be a convincing force when you. Immediately piss off the other side or dehumanize them. We are too autistic and, or weird to care that a lot of people that we'd love to convince hate us because we have glasses that are too big.But I don't care that they think that about me, I'm still happy to talk with them, but most people, if you walked up to them and you were like, Oh, your face is so messed up, they're not going to listen to you anymore. And we're doing the equivalent of that by trying to, dehumanize and frame as monsters these other groups where I feel like they really are coming from a misguided place, but a place that, That means well, because again, I'm there after my five hour crying jags of realizing how much suffering people are going through [00:16:00] in areas where there are really high rates of fertilityMalcolm Collins: due to poverty.We can talk about some of the other things they're talking about here. One of the ways they want to reduce fertility rates is by empowering winemen, of course. They're not wrong. I thoughtSimone Collins: you said wine men, and I was like,Malcolm Collins: My empowering women, theSimone Collins: vendors need more. Don't youMalcolm Collins: understand?Another thing they're really pro is degrowth. Okay. So it's an,Simone Collins: yeah, like that, that how everything like environmentalism and all these other progressive Subjects somehow fall into socialism and Marxism, right? TheyMalcolm Collins: want to reduce the economic capacity of the world. That's what degrossSimone Collins: means.Yeah. Go back to,Malcolm Collins: Foraging in the field. As a quote from their website, Academia is alive with fiery debates about economic growth. Is green growth possible? Is D growth possible. What about steady state economies? Let's go beyond growth. What a Borrellian termSimone Collins: that is. [00:17:00] Hey, this is a very popular and pervasive trend.This is quiet quitting. This is Marxism. This is herkel derkel. This is bed rot. This is the soft life. HereMalcolm Collins: I'm going to, I'm going to quote what they have gotten into the world economic forum. So the world economic forum posted an article called D gross. What's behind the economic theory and does it matter right now?D gross is a radical economic theory born in the 1970s. This is from the world economic forum article. It broadly means shrinking rather than growing economies to use less of the world's dwindling resources. Supporters argue that DeGrosse doesn't mean, quote, living in caves with candles, end quote, but just living a bit more simply.They're like, we just want the poor to starve. But us, the economic elite no, of course, they would say no, what we mean is the economic elite need to live with a little bit less. And it's but you. Are the economic elite and they're like we need more. People need to be the [00:18:00] economic elite.How can that happen in your degrow system? There's societies that try to distribute wealth more fairly, almost always the lead to less economic productivity, which ends up eating in the more fair system. Those at the bottom of it, living with in lower material conditions. But when you go to a certain level of poverty and material conditions, that means starvation and death.That's what we've seen over and over again throughout human history. That's why we don't do this. But, what are your thoughts on degrowth as a world strategy?Simone Collins: Again, I think it's incredibly misguided. And again, it's why I hate the book, Sapiens, because I feel like that was one of the First big books that popularized this concept very subtly among intellectual, educated, and otherwise highly economically productive.Explain what you mean by that. The book Sapiens really implies that humans were just so much better off before agriculture, which just [00:19:00] ruined. teeth and our lifestyles. And Oh my gosh, before this whole hunter gatherer thing was so relaxed and we basically never worked at all in life was perfect and we didn't die with bacteria rotting our face.So that's silly. Don't think about that right now. We're good. You're going to talk about picking berries in the field. Okay. It's fun. So yeah, a lot of people read that it was framed and written as a book that really. Achieved high achievement people would love to use to brag about how smart they were and how above the grind they were now because they understood how unnatural it was to be in a human civilization after the, in the advent of agriculture.And yeah, so before even all these various political groups wanted to enact Marxist policies you had on In this other facet of progressive elite culture these people who are already inclined to it and then they hear Marxist ideas and they hear ideas [00:20:00] about degrowth and they're like, Oh yeah.And let's get rid of agriculture too. You guys, that would be great. I read this book. By the way, have you read sapiens? I've read sapiens. I'm very, this was good. Is agricultureMalcolm Collins: ever done? Us? Can't people just get their food fromSimone Collins: ruins your teeth. I read it in a book that is so intellectual.Malcolm Collins: Yes. I get all of my food from organic mushrooms that are picked in the wild.Simone Collins: My forage for my food. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: How, why are we feeding? Homeless people, industrially grown food.Simone Collins: Let them eat raspberries. That's what they say. Like I do on my estate. On my, yes. They can just pick it up off the ground.Malcolm Collins: Don't they know it grows naturally? The gardeners always keep it tended.Simone Collins: The, yeah, the naturally occurring migrant workers.They'reMalcolm Collins: natural. They're organic. They talk about it in some of our other episodes. They're like, yeah we've got to keep our flow of [00:21:00] migrant workers or we won't be able to afford our lifestyle anymore if we don't have a permanent economic underclass to feed us.Simone Collins: Yeah. But again I continue to argue that I think this all comes from a good place and people's hearts where they're just misguided and.Malcolm Collins: And the point I'm meeting is the most evil acts can come from a good place in a person's heart. Yes. Yes. That I agree with. I need to look at the prism. When I'm deciding if someone is evil, I'm not looking at that whether or not they believe they're a good person or their actions are driven by the goal of reducing suffering.Look, the antinatalists Ephalus who want to, as they say, Venus the planet, destroy all life. Not just human life, all life on the planet. They are motivated by a desire to reduce suffering. You could say that's a good desire, yet they're, what they take from that is obviously evil. When you look at people like [00:22:00] the Columbine shooters and stuff like that, and you read like their manifesto, their goal was reducing suffer.If you look at the Unabomber, his goal was reducing suffering. Okay. When you are categorizing into evil and not evil people whether or not they are motivated by the reduction of suffering in the world is not how you make that categorization. That's fair. It's whether or not they are okay with a world in which other people are allowed to live in accordance with their own moral cores and value systems and do the systems they want to promote allow for, because, the, in this world, like if the world is structured in a way that is is realistic, and this is one thing I love.About Starship Troopers, another line I love from Starship Troopers, right?Figuring things out for yourself is the only freedom anyone really has. Use that freedom. Make up your own [00:23:00] mind.Malcolm Collins: Where it's like the only freedom we really get in life is deciding what we want to do. and deciding what's right and what's wrong ourselves. And that is only because we live in a broadly good society right now.Individuals who want to move into a world where that isn't the case, where people cannot decide their own perspective on reality, where people don't get to make their own choices about what a man and a woman is, whether that's the far right perspective where they want to erase things like the trans identity or the far left perspective where they want to force.Trans acceptance. on individuals who simply have come from cultural groups that ancestrally have different gender constructs in that in different relation to the way people relate to gender or sexuality. Both of those are equally evil. And so when I see something like this and I'm judging it as evil, I'm not doing it because I think that they're the bad guys.Or because they're [00:24:00] motivated to hurt people. I don't think they're motivated by a mean spirited reason, but when somebody like, when you're implementing the Great Leap Forward in China, which ended up, depending on the numbers you're looking at, killing more people in five years and died in the entire American slave trade.Do you say those people are evil because they didn't think about the consequences of their actions? We can say, Oh it wasn't motivated by outright maliciousness, but a lot of people during the slave trade said we're bringing these people, Christianity and we're bringing them civilization.And how is that so dissimilar from. The people in schools now who are taking people's children's from them and saying you, now that they are part of our cultural group and they relate to gender differently, we need to take them from their birth family. We need to raise them within our group.And then you point out to them and you're like you actually you're getting them. On a regime of medicine that they're going to have to pay for the rest of their life, you haven't properly given them a background. That's going to allow them to afford that [00:25:00] you are dooming them to destitution and living off of either the charity of groups that you control.And that's under groups you control or off of state systems. And they're like we don't care. Like they don't care about the damage, or they don't, they're unwilling to conceptualize the damage. I don't know. Like you would say they don't see any of this because they see the world in more of an aesthetic sense than like a logical, if this or anSimone Collins: emotional sense.And yeah, no, I agree with you. We, yeah, people, everyone's doing the best they can with the information they have. Sometimes the things are horrific and terrible and extremely damaging. So you can't just, let someone do whatever they're going to do because they think it's for the best, but they're thinking the same thing about.Malcolm Collins: No, everyone's doing the best they can with the information they have. Then what genuinely differentiates the people who choose a world of freedom, the people who are able to say that my moral [00:26:00] framework is not something I should impose onSimone Collins: other people. And see that's the thing is in this world in which, people are wrong and people are different.The groups that decide to impose their view on everyone unilaterally are. The closest to evil that I can imagine because they have to, you have to have the intellectual humility to admit that you might be wrong, right? That's the key thing. WhatMalcolm Collins: makes them like this? I guess is my question. Given the way that you structure things.What I mean,Simone Collins: I think a lot of it's culture. It's a big cultural thing. to say if what do you do when other people are doing the wrong thing or how do you deal with reality or being right or wrong? I think that don't you think it's culture?Malcolm Collins: No, I don't. I don't think if I had been born into one of their families was whatever it is.My, my. genetic predilections or something like that. I would never go along with this.Simone Collins: Yeah, I guess you're so anti authoritarian. Yeah. But then I don't know, I feel like maybe there are some people who are both [00:27:00] anti authoritarian who could never go along with someone else's rule. Who also would be happy to rule over everyone themselves.And I think it comes down to culture. It comes down to, um, giving people the right to make their own decisions if they want to opt out of whatever your system is. I don't see that's too nuanced to me. to be genetic. Maybe I'm wrong.Malcolm Collins: Okay. So then you'd think that what leads them down the path of evil is that they were born into evil cultural groups.Yeah.Simone Collins: And or exposed to them. This isMalcolm Collins: something you were to, you grew up in those groups and you hadn't gone down this path. ISimone Collins: know. No. The progressive culture in which I grew up and maybe this is a time thing was actually very different, was very live or let live. Okay. We're not going to tell you how to live.I'm not going to tell you how to live. You don't tell me how to live. It was extremely laissez faire.Okay. [00:28:00] So I'm still adhering to that element of my upbringing and my culture.Malcolm Collins: So the systems that they're putting in place, but they would argue that the systems they're putting in place are live and let live. They just want to reduce the world's population by, 81%. They want to do this through things like empowering women, but the consequences that all of this is going to have are extreme.So it's they're don't even fall into the bad guy category because they're removing rights from other people. They fall into it from the consequences that will come up, the decisions they're making. Yeah. Do you hold them responsible for that? Or do you just say that most people don't think through the consequences of the decisions they make?Simone Collins: I think, yeah and people should be held responsible for that. But I, again, as you point this out frequently in the governance book, people are subject to the incentives of whatever system they're in and our governing systems, the UN, et cetera, all of these organizations are not rewarded. For long term [00:29:00] oriented behavior, they are rewarded for behavior that makes people, voters, donors, et cetera, feel good in the moment.And I think again when I go back to the emotionally motivated antinatalist feelings that I can relate to long term thinking. Doesn't make the tears go away. So I, I think it's also an adverse incentives issue.Malcolm Collins: I suppose that makes sense. All right. I love you, Simone. And I appreciate that you are you are why you are always this family's moral center.Simone Collins: No. Because I'm clearly more emotional here. YouMalcolm Collins: are the stalwart queen.Simone Collins: I do the work. Okay. I let me just get the work done. You make the decisions, you do the strategy, you do the analysis and together I think we'll make good decisions. So I think we're a good combo, but you need both of us. You need someone to say, I'm putting my foot down.This is ethically wrong. [00:30:00] And you need someone to slow down the process to make sure that everything has been considered. So between the two of us, I think we'll be all right. I love you to death Simone. I love you too, gorgeous. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they delve into the complex relationship between capitalism, communism, and the modern iteration of "Starbucks Communism." In this thought-provoking discussion, the couple explores the historical context of austerity within communist systems and how it has been replaced by a unique combination of communism and consumerism in contemporary times. They also examine the efficiency of capitalist systems and the importance of promoting austerity as a cultural value. Throughout the conversation, Malcolm and Simone shed light on the potential dangers of modern communist ideologies and the importance of understanding the consequences of implementing such systems.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] You and I, even though it may seem an anathema to people, we promote both and austerity. Why do we promote these in combination? It is because capitalist systems, are just more efficient than other systems. Alright? It isn't because we assign any sort of like, Theological or moral value to capitalism. And as to why we promote austerity, it is for the same reason. Psychologically and effectiveness wise as an individual, it promotes those things. Communist systems, historically speaking, for obvious reasons have always glorified austerity.What is this? This rocket is decadent and wasteful. If you want to win contest, your mind must be hard and joyless, like a Russian turnip.Malcolm Collins: And this made sense if you're actually trying to operate in any level economically functioning communist system. But the new communists aren't like this so you have gotten this [00:01:00] totally unique to modern times combination of communism and consumerism Starbucks communism, I guess we should call it. It's communism, but with polyamory and orgies and, and constant self affirmation.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone! Hi. I am so excited to be here with you, pushing through another pregnancy.YourSimone Collins: upended turtle wifeMalcolm Collins: here. No, no, no, no. You are an amazing picture of grace, and I want to talk about something here because it was something that I was thinking about that is just so fascinating because I was thinking about us pushing austerity. Which we often push on our podcast, you know, austerity in your lifestyle.And this isn't to say that we don't sin, you know, I know I drink, I know I shouldn't do that, I know I indulge myself occasionally. It'sSimone Collins: wine and water, you have to drink that or you'llMalcolm Collins: die. I, I, yeah, right, I recognize, I, I'm like a robot from a, a Futurama, My God, [00:02:00] you're a mess.Leave me alone. Look at that five o'clock rust. You've been up all night not drinking, haven't you? Please, Bender, have some malt liquor. If not for yourself, then for the people who love you.Malcolm Collins: You know, I need alcohol or I'll go crazy.European,Simone Collins: you are a, a very European genetically. Like if you look at your 23 and me, you're extremely European. Your people have lived off beer as their primary, like, nutritional waterMalcolm Collins: source. So people may not know this, and we should actually elevate this point that she's making here because it is actually interesting.During parts of European history, because especially after we began to urbanize because the water supplies became toxic often and you couldn't drink from them, the only thing that you could be almost certain did not, wasn't going to get you sick was Coors Light. Well, that quote is like, but watered down alcohol specifically because they would water down their alcohol historically.A lot of people don't know this, like wine in for example, Athens, where you hear about them drinking wine all the time. In symposia, yeah. Heavily watered down. And [00:03:00] this, we, we know this because they called like the Macedonians barbarians for not watering down their wine. They were like those maniacs drink wine.Drunken maniacs. Yes. Yes. And it was actually the same as beer in a historic context. It was mostly meant to remove the microbes from it. But, but, but they consumed prodigious amounts. So I am not that dissimilar from my ancestors.Simone Collins: Well, your body's kind of built for it. I'm just saying. And Yeah, I'd actually say that Also, the, and I just, you know, people give, give you s**t for drinking beer flavored water.But in the end, beer flavored water, just like furries is the most traditional path.Malcolm Collins: It is. It is the most traditional path. I'm a trad for drinking Coors Light but anyway, this is a completely off topic.Simone Collins: Yeah, sorry. It's, it's yeah, I've had a long day. I'm, I'm too pregnant for this, as Candace Owens has famously said. Because weMalcolm Collins: get, well, I mean, on the topic of austerity, we often talk about austerity, and it is actually pretty rare these days for people to think about the combination of austerity and [00:04:00] capitalism.As moral systems, historically, austerity was more associated with the communist system. Whereas consumerism was associated with the, I call it consumerism slash hedonism was associated with the capitalist system and in sort of a historic context. Well, and I would saySimone Collins: you can tell me I'm totally off base here, but it occurred to me, even when you look and we're talking, you know, blur your eyes here, cross your eyes a little bit, but when you compare.Historical cities like Athens versus Sparta or, you know, kingdoms, essentially Sparta was, you know, the more communist kind of place and it was definitely way more austere in comparison, you know, Athenians were these feet wealthy, you know, high class differentiation groups.Malcolm Collins: So let's talk about why this is the case, first of all, because this is, I mean, if you are trying to functionally implement capitalism and you want to promise people something to get them to go along with the [00:05:00] system that leads to a level of inequality that you don't get within communist systems, you promise them that even the poorest will have a better life, or even like the, like, let's say lower third will have a better life than your average person in a communist system.And this is. True, generally speaking. Also, when people historically have been implementing communist systems that are meant to practically work, well, you need to get them to be austere for the system to produce enough goods. You need to elevate austerity as a value system. The problem is, a couple fold here.One is, is that today the communists, Don't actually plan to implement their system or are not seriously thinking about it. And so they can promise whatever they want. And so now you've gotten this weird mix of communism plus consumerism slash heathenism. Which in a historic communist concept is a complete historical anathema, which we're going to talk about in a second, but I'm going to take this, box it up, put it aside.But first we're going to talk about the weird mix of capitalism and austerity, because you have [00:06:00] seen this in a historic context. And actually where you've seen this in a historic context, you got supercharged capitalism. This was in the, so for people who aren't familiar with this,there's a famous book on the subject of Calvinism.Do you read the Wikipedia entry on this book because its subjects are pretty important to this particular discussion. The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism is considered a founding text in economic sociology. At a milestone contribution to sociological thought in general. In the book Weber wrote. That capitalism in Northern Europe evolved when the Protestant particularly Calvinist ethic influenced the large numbers of people to developing their own enterprises and engaging in trade and the accumulation of wealth for investment. To make it quick quote from the book that will help you understand how the iteration of Christianity that the book describes your aligns very, very closely. With Simona and mind's own view of the world. Quote. Remember that time is money. He, that can earn 10 [00:07:00] shillings a day by his labor and goes abroad or sits idle one half of that day though, he spins, but six pins during his diversion or idleness. Not to reckon that the only expense he has really spent or thrown away. To be five shillings. Remember that money is the prolific generating nature. Money can be get money. And it's all spring can be get more. And so on five shillings turned is six turned again is seven and three peace. And so on till it becomes a hundred pounds, the more there is of it, the more it produces every turning so that the profits rise quicker and quicker.He that kills the breeding. South destroys all her offspring to the thousands generation. He that murders a crone destroys all that it might have produced even scores of pounds.Malcolm Collins: We call ourselves secular Calvinist, but it's important to note that like our value set is actually very similar to the historic Calvinist value set and Calvinists are often seen as inventing modern capitalism [00:08:00] because they did so under the context of austerity, which is to say you have a free market, but not just a free market, but a free market where you reinvest your profits in increasing productivity of the system, which was not done under non Calvinist Early historical systems.So I need to give a bit of a history lesson here. So people understand why this happened and why it led to America as we know it today. So for people who don't know,Simone Collins: majorityMalcolm Collins: Calvinist country, at least among its white residents, when it was founded, I think it was like 61 percent in one of the things I saw from the heritage report.So, so, so like, you know, this is something that's. Like, well, no, like a lot of people don't seem to know this. I think it was like in a, one of the minority beliefs or like one of a few beliefs, it was one of the few beliefs that came together, but it was by far the dominant in, in colonial America. Well it held the belief in a kind of prosperity doctrine, which was to say If God wanted to show you that like you were meant for [00:09:00] heaven, he would reward you with success in your career, which would lead to financial success.However, there's a big caveat that makes it very different from the modern prosperity doctrine. Spending any of that success on yourself proved that he didn't actually favor you. It proved that he tested you with that money and you failed. So you were supposed to make lots of money, but you weren't allowed to spend it on self aggrandizement.Simone Collins: You resist temptation and only the most powerful can resist the amount of temptation you get from great wealth, right?Malcolm Collins: Yes, and this temptation came in many forms. You were supposed to resist any form of overstimulation. This included dancing, but also any sort of food that excited the mind or something like that.So they would often eat, this is where Kellogg actually came from in this early whatever movement, right?Where, where it was like, we need to make a cereal that is the most boring cereal in the world for people to eat because we don't want them to be [00:10:00] overexcited by too many flavors. And we can, that's a whole different thing we can get into but the idea was, is that you would eat very plain food, you would not have servants, you would not dress in fancy outfits, through Very importantly, you would not donate to charities because charities were seen as a form of self aggrandizement because you know, whether it's the church or anything else, because keep in mind, Calvinist churches, anyone who's been to the traditional Calvinist churches, they were simple wooden buildings without art, any form of aggrandizement was seen as a idolatry.So you wouldn't have that. So there was really nothing to donate to. Right? So what did the people do with all the money that their entire lives were dedicated to earning? You know, they weren't allowed to have any fun. They had to spend all their lives working and success in work was the sign of a gift to God, but you weren't allowed to spend it on yourself.They reinvested it all into the system. They reinvested it all into their companies and they reinvested it into starting new companies. AndSimone Collins: that creates scientific advancement, amazing infrastructure, really cool things,Malcolm Collins: right? [00:11:00] Well, yeah. Well, it ended up creating a hyper charged, ultra capitalist early economy.And for people who are unfamiliar with the Calvinist trope of this period, Ebenezer Scrooge was the Calvinist trope of this period. If you read the book you know, when they talk about him, he ate gruel every day. He did not eat fancy food. kept all of his, he didn't even keep full candles on in his house all the time because he was trying to save money.And he wouldn't give away money to charities or family members. This is all said pretty explicitly. I, I often joke that Ebenezer Scrooge is for the American Calvinist value system. Like a corrective grape story. So people who don't know what corrective grape is, it's like, Oh, that person's a lesbian, but if some, if they just had sex with a man, then they'd realize how great it was.And so this is for this, this what would I consider a more Catholic? view towards wealth is to say, well, if he just gave it to the poor, he'd understand how great he would feel. And then he would be broken from this cycle, but Ebeneezer Scrooge was not keeping the money for [00:12:00] himself. It is made clear in the story that he actually lives incredibly frugally.And that, that is, you know, with the end goal of, of this traditional covenant system. Anyway, also Ebenezer is one of the most Calvinist names ever. It would belike calling a, a character like you know, Noah Greenberg or something, you know, it's like, in fact, in the, in the guide to Puritan spotting that surf slate codex, Scott Alexander wrote, do they have a relative with a name?Ebenezer is, is one of the boxes. But anyway, You gotta go back to the story here. So, in early America, you had a combination of capitalism and austerity as a value system, and it led to an explosion of economic and cultural potential, but we as a country lost that. Why did we lose that?Because surprise, surprise, people didn't like to stay in this state. system. Systems that urge this level of personal austerity and industry in combination do not do a good job of maintaining adherence [00:13:00] intergenerationally. Especially given how pro science the value system was in a historic context, which led to it secularizing About a generation before the Jews secularized.So it was like more Jewy than Jews, which, which people often accuse the Calvinists of being because they were very tight with the Jews. You know, even to like, I'm going through my own family history and just again and again, we see our family being very close with Jews and Catholics. Which in our community was seen as quite a bad thing.Like that was one of the reasons we were fighting the Klan so much. Is it actually interesting? Cause I was reading some family documents is, is when they were fighting the Klan the justification, at least if you're going two generations back, and so multiple generations back was the Klan's opinion of Catholics.Anyway, don't need to get into all of this. We need to get back to topic here, which is very interesting from the whole communist perspective. So!You and I, even though it may seem an anathema to people, we promote both and austerity. Why do we promote these in combination? It is because capitalist systems, [00:14:00] systems in which you allow independent things to compete against each other, are just more efficient than other systems. Alright? It isn't because we assign any sort of like, Theological or moral value to capitalism.It is just the better working of systems for almost any goal. And as to why we promote austerity, it is for the same reason. Psychologically and effectiveness wise as an individual, it promotes those things. So this is our core drive. I mean, do you have thoughts on this further before we go into the communist side of things?Simone Collins: I mean, I, I just like it. I think that when most people think about capitalism, At least when I think about what I was taught about capitalism as a kid, I think inequality, I think haves and have nots, and I think rampant consumerism. When you're right, I mean, the type of capitalism that gets us excited and the type of capitalism that we see being undertaken by at least many of [00:15:00] our, the, the business leaders we admire most is definitely this Calvinist form of, this is about building something bigger.This is not about the money. This is about the vision.Malcolm Collins: Well, it's a capitalist system that temps the best in that system, the smartest and hardest work ethic in most industry people. It tests them. With temptation.Simone Collins: Yeah, well you can argue in capitalism is treated in our and a general Calvinist framework similarly to how emotions are treated.It's a signal. It's important to know because it tells you if you're doing well or not, right? Like if, if something generally feels good and it's not painful, it's probably a sign that you're not hurting your body. At least depending on the factors in the absence of modernity, I should say. But your job is to rise above the, that thing, be it in an emotion or money and accept it as a signal, but not let it run your life.Right. So neitherMalcolm Collins: money, it's a system. Capitalism [00:16:00] is a system within this mindset to test the most industrious. With. The most temptation so that they can prove their worthiness as the most industrious through not succumbing to that temptation and redeploying that capital to improving society's overall efficacy and efficiency, which is very different from the way we view capitalism often in a modern context, which is that it tests the individual and then rewards them with hedonism.Sorry, getting close to the, the birth year right now. Yeah. So, you're, you're going through a lot, which I appreciate. You know, you're still out there creating these videos despite the pain you're going through. And that's the type of austerity that I genuinely admire and, and will make my children better than me.Maybe they won't succumb to this in the same way I have. No. But anyway. Next communist systems. Okay. Communist systems, historically [00:17:00] speaking, for obvious reasons have always glorified austerity. If you look at the communist propaganda, the perfect communist was the man who didn't take all of their rations, who didn't take all of their luxuries that was offered by the state.He would eat his turnips raw, you know, and that was his favorite food was raw turnips because you know, that's the easiest to produce source of calories, right? That he didn't succumb to the consumerism that was seen as the core temptation that the bourgeoisie would use to try to bring him over. Mm hmm.What is this? This rocket is decadent and wasteful. If you want to win contest, your mind must be hard and joyless, like a Russian turnip. I ordered from Meaty McMulligans. I hear it's awful, but if you don't like it, we'll just throw it out. Ugh, that's so wasteful. Nonsense. Your mom's enthusiastic spending is exactly what Jesus had in mind when he invented capitalism.Malcolm Collins: And this made [00:18:00] sense if you're actually trying to operate in any level economically functioning communist system. But the new communists aren't like this because they don't actually have real aspirations of operating a communist system. They're mostly just complaining about the system they're in, or at least they haven't thought through, like they haven't thought through the consequences of what if I succeed with this message I'm telling people.All they want to do is undermine capitalism. They don't. think about what happens next. And so you have gotten this totally unique to modern times combination of communism and consumerism where the communists are told you have the wealth so you can afford Your iPhones and Starbucks in your communist system.You're still getting Apple products. Of course we wouldn't deprive you of that. You're still getting your fashionable, funky niche subculture [00:19:00] brands. Instead of having to dress in like, you know, rice sacks, basically. Because they're using this to, to, to lure people in to what has drifted from modern communism is now more like a cult because it's not really meant to work as an economic and political system.It's meant just to convert and to tempt people.Simone Collins: Yeah. It's so funny because yeah, there is this vision of communism that I feel like I kind of grew up with. With the, the Cold War, which is people making immense sacrifices for their nation and living very uncomfortable lives in service of a larger vision.But yet now everyone I know who has a Marxist bent is more arguing that they shouldn't have to work and they should be given. Their fair share of resources and it's not about, well, I'm, what am I? I want to contribute. I'm going to take less than I need and give more, which is [00:20:00] really wild. SoMalcolm Collins: they're basically arguing.I was in a capitalist economy is really what they're arguing for.Simone Collins: But I mean, where did we go off the railsMalcolm Collins: here? We do. I'm telling you where we went off the rail. Old communist systems were designed to work, not just designed to be popular. Yeah. New capitalist systems are just designed to be popular. To be popular.And I should point out that we have moved so far that, that to be a communist these days, you have to be completely blind to reality. I mean, I think I've been watching a lot of chop slash Chaz videos recently, you know, the Capitol Hill autonomous zone or district or whatever you want to call it. And It is the, and we might do a full video on this, the perfect representation of why communism doesn't work.Because the moment you begin to implement true communism, you know, communists will always say, well, real communism does, you know, does work. It just hasn't been tried before. We're like, no, people keep trying it. It just falls apart day in two, you know, they tried [00:21:00] originally to implement real communism in the USSR.They tried to implement real communism in CHOP. But the moment they do, because it has no standing military, right, it's immediately taken over by a warlord, you know, Raz Simone in the case of Chop. And then it's immediately taken over by warring factions that lead to violence on the street with people trying to take resources from other people.Because quote unquote, real communism as they define it, is a hierarchy less powerful. society, which unfortunately means you do not have people in positions to create the structured systems you need to prevent bad actors from manipulating the system to their advantage. And this is why whenever people try to create real communism, it always ends up being taken over by bad actors who say, Oh, well, some people are more important than others.[00:22:00] Some, you know, economic systems are more important than others. And they're like, come on, this doesn't happen every time. It's like, well, okay. First of all, it literally does happen every time you, you can't even keep a Reddit threat without this happening. You know, Look at what happened with our anti work, right?Where this ends up taking over and speaking on behalf of the community, you know, the community is like, how could you do that to us? And it's like the moment these people get the ounce of power, they take it and run with it. Because, you know, you're, you're not able to create systems where people don't abuse the power that you have handed them.And so, and, and people are like, well, come on, what the far left in the United States is fighting for, they've already included a racial hierarchy in their ideology, okay, bro? Like, they've gone full, like, not so communism. Already? And they haven't even gained power yet. If you look at CHOP, they did things like put signs in the community garden [00:23:00] that said for black people only.They did things like you can watch speeches from there where they said, okay, everyone in this audience has to give 10 to a black person in the crowd. They created a racial hierarchy. And, and like always happens, whether it's a Nazi or a communist system, the racist that they put at the bottom of the hierarchy, like, you know, there was that productive farmer ethnic group within the Soviet UnionI was thinking of the cost X here.Malcolm Collins: that they had to completely demonize because an economically productive group Must be demonized by the communist system in the same way that the Nazis demonize the Jews for making more money or the progressive demonize white males for making more money and contributing more to the economy.They need to demonize the individuals who contribute the most to the economy, because that's how these, these, these systems work is how they recruit endear themselves to the individuals they've recruited. And. Yeah, it is, it is [00:24:00] scary to me that we are getting a communist system that is somehow literally worse than any communist system that's ever been attempted before.It's communism, but with polyamory and orgies and, and constant self affirmation. Well, no,Simone Collins: no, it's, it's, it's Where the problem is, cause I don't care about the orgies. I don't care about the polyamory. It's communism without anyone doing the work. And that's They sayMalcolm Collins: it to make slaves do the work. They're, they're former capitalist overlords.That's what communists always does. They take whichever groups they see as being in power and they treat them as a labor class.Simone Collins: I mean, yeah, but that, that's, that doesn't work. And then it falls apart. You can't do that.Malcolm Collins: Instinctively. What I mean, yeah, it doesn't necessarily fall apart. I mean slavery where you mentioned Spartan as a communist system, and it was it was this Communist system among the ethnic group that was considered human and then the rest were slaves the helots, right?That's what you have within the [00:25:00] progressive movement today. And that's what they're planning on. Hmm, and I just The, the, the, like, white males who are fighting for this, or the, the white females, or the black males, like, anyone who is either male, or white, or cis, who is fighting for this system, and doesn't understand that they are meant to be the helic class in this system, is incredibly stupid.They are signaling this to you as loudly and clearly as they can. You will not have rights. Your, your views will not be heard. And you will have everything taken from you, and everyone who thinks or looks or has the same sexual orientation as you.Simone Collins: Yikes. Yeah. But yeah, that's I think it's important at least to highlight that, The Marxism being sold to people today is not, from my understanding, what [00:26:00] was supposed to be which is interesting.Malcolm Collins: No, I know. It's, it's, it's, it's, I mean, you could say it's different from historic Marxism, blah, blah, blah. It doesn't matter. It's the way Marxism always turns out when implemented. And that's what matters. Okay, the real communism has never been tried TM thing. It's so disgusting to me. It's like, what, do you think that literally every attempt at implementing a communist system, even CHOP, even our anti work, was a bad acting, like, like, was just all bad actors?No, they tried. As we say in our book, it's like trying to build an upside down pyramid. It's an intrinsically unstable structure that collapses into the same shape every time you do it. You are building an unstable governing structure. But what's worse is you are building it extra unstable because you are including within communism hedonism, And consumerism, [00:27:00] you're including all your brand name nonsense.And so I think that if we can build a system, what's really interesting about this as a communist, we're not wrong about the uplifting of austerity as a cultural value system, right? Where people can earn cultural points and achieve higher cultural status through being a consumer. More austere. I think when you combine, that's, that's what the communist got things right.They were right about that. When you can combine capitalism with austerity, that's the perfect economic system. Austerity is a cultural value. Whereas the perfect evil cultural system is communism plus consumerism slash hedonism and Starbucks communism, I guess we should call it. That's StarbucksSimone Collins: communism.I like that. That sounds fun.Malcolm Collins: Starbucks communism or Apple communism. I don't know what I like more. You like Starbucks communism moreSimone Collins: or Apple communism? Starbucks communism. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And, and, and we, you know, they've been made fun of this for a long time. Like how can you [00:28:00] be communist and have your Starbucks cup?Right. But I think that that was because people fundamentally misunderstood that these individuals were actually the perfect communist from their value set because communism's goal For these individuals is not to distribute equality across society is to distribute people like them, the things they want, which includes not working.Yeah. The core difference between in reality, a communist economic system and a capitalist economic system is in a capitalist economic system. You go to work because they'll pay you in a communist system. You go to work because if you don't, they'll shoot you. And that's, going to be just as true now as it was historically.And people can say like, well, what about AI? Can't AI create UBI? But if you're a total drain on the economic system, the AI has no more use for you than the other humans in that system. Okay.Simone Collins: Well, I mean, people would argue, of course, that AI would be programmed in this case to always take care of people [00:29:00] and just give themMalcolm Collins: like, like wealthy people.You say, who's, who's creating this AI. That's going to care about you. It will not.Simone Collins: Okay. I'm just stating their position.Malcolm Collins: Nobody within a system. People don't care intrinsically about the economically unproductive because they're not relevant to the health of the system.And people are like, well, there's enough of us who want this stuff. We'll just force them to give it to us. And I'm like, this is the point you, you so often to be like, why do you focus so much on economic productivity of groups? And it's because groups without economic productivity do not have the power to push. Other groups to do things Or to resist more economically productive groups when those groups want to them to do something. you can say, well, there's a lot of us, but it doesn't matter that there's a lot of you.If you can't go to war, if you can't [00:30:00] organize. And you can say, well, we can vote. And I think. You know, we, we should be at a point by now in the American system that you should know, just because you have a lot of people who will vote for something. And let's, it's the overwhelming plurality, which you don't have.That doesn't mean what you want will come to pass. You have been convinced by your own ideology? That you were opinions and human dignity matter to other people when it is clear and plain to see when we look at the world today that. They just don't. I'm not saying this is a good thing. I'm just saying they don't. What matters to other people is your ability to produce things that they want. And if you can't do that, I E industry economic productivity. Then you have no power to influence the opinions of others. [00:31:00] This is going to become increasingly important and clear as AI replaces more and more of the population in terms of its productivity.Simone Collins: Yeah, well, and that's, I mean, that's why in the end, I'm not terribly worried about a lot of these ideologies.I mean, okay, they should, I should be terribly worried because they can cause immense amount of damage while they play out. But over the long run, there's just no way that they can sustainably exist because if you don't create value, if you don't advance human society, if you don't use the resources that you have, well, and conserve them and, you know, make the most of them and innovate better ways and more efficient ways to do things and empower people to do that and figure it out on their own, then you're going to fail.So these systems are destined to fail and that should give me comfort, but I guess I should also be very concernedMalcolm Collins: about, well, I mean, just hope that, that, that existentially that none of our descendants ever end up in a system that's [00:32:00] beginning to turn communist. Right? And we, we, we teach our kids to leave the US if it's moving in that direction, because people will die.That's the way this always works.Simone Collins: Yeah, that's, that's the part I'm not thinking about enough, and I should probably be planning around and worrying about a whole lot more. Yeah, youMalcolm Collins: could read more books about the killing fields. You could read more books about The, the revolution in Cuba. You can read more books about the revolution in Russia.There's plenty of books. I I just think that you would find them too disturbing because I know you Yeah. React so emotionally, especiallySimone Collins: if Yeah. Children or babies are hurt, which obviously I'm sure they were. So let's just not, but do you know what?Malcolm Collins: I don't wanna go over the don't. Horrifying things don't to.Simone Collins: Okay. Don't, don't. And IMalcolm Collins: love you . Oh yeah. I won't go into it. I love you too, Simone. If people want to read about horrifying things happening to children, read the Killing Fields. A great book about, I think, pretty generic communism. And this is a agro agro communism, but it's, it's horrifying.Horrifying. The red scarf girl [00:33:00] is also a pretty girl, but not quite as horrifying. Yeah. No,Simone Collins: nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. I love you. Let's go hug our children.Malcolm Collins: All right. Love you too, Simone.Simone Collins: Alright,Malcolm Collins: is this the right order, or do I move myself?Simone Collins: Sorry, I'm waiting for Claude to explain. Oh god, everything hurts. I'mMalcolm Collins: sorry.Simone Collins: It's fine. Just prodigiously large.Malcolm Collins: Well, you won't be soon, and then you'll be sad about it, because I know how you are.Simone Collins: Honestly, I won't. After Titan was born, I was like, you know what, I'm not Sad about being, not being pregnantMalcolm Collins: anymore and at this point.But then I am happy you're in pain because I remember how sad you got after the first couple pregnancies.Simone Collins: Yeah, well that's because both of our boys were like, I mean, Torsten was like five pounds, Octavian was seven, then we had Titan at almost nine pounds and I'm pretty sure industry is gonna be.Malcolm Collins: Oh, easily 11 or 12 or something.[00:34:00]Simone Collins: No, she's not going to be 10. She's going to be 9 something. She'sMalcolm Collins: significantly larger than Titan. She's freaking huge. Anyway, I love you to death, Simone. And I and you will survive. You'll make it through. But I'm going to start, I'm going to say, Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe